It’s been a long time since I wrote here, but some­thing is going to hap­pen tonight that sadly will be the begin­ning of the end for the best show on tele­vi­sion today (sorry, “Lost”). The reimag­ined “Bat­tlestar Galac­tica” fires up for the sec­ond half of sea­son four and I couldn’t be more psy­ched about it.

We last saw our band of pil­grims as they arrived at Earth, but not the Earth that we cur­rently know. It’s a bombed-out radioactive-looking waste­land that doesn’t look very wel­com­ing to the voy­agers from the twelve colonies. I would guess we’ll get our ques­tions answered this sea­son, at least I hope we do. Bat­tlin’ Bill Adama has brought these peo­ple this far, I doubt that he’ll leave them hang­ing, but what about hope at this point? Most of what was keep­ing every­one going onboard those fly­ing tin cans was the hope that Earth would be out there, some­where, and that it would be hab­it­able. It’s like get­ting half of a prayer answered. Sure, you made it to Earth, but are you going to like it once you get there? Good luck. Brother Cavil is still out there with his com­pa­tri­ots, and when they find Earth…eek.

We’ll also finally get to see the last secret Cylon. I guess after Baltar’s aborted Cylon Detec­tor didn’t fig­ure out that four of the Final Five weren’t human that some­one we know and love will be the last one. I’m hop­ing that it’s not one of the top two (Adama or Pres­i­dent Roslin), and I don’t think that the cre­ators of the show would take so obvi­ous a tack. My gut tells me that it could be Tom Zarek, but who knows. It would also be a com­plete mind f*ck if it was Billy Keikeya, who died in a bar­room shootout, or Ellen Tigh, who was killed by her hus­band back on New Caprica.

And is Lee Adama still the pres­i­dent now that Roslin is back? Does she even want to be pres­i­dent any­more? If Lee is still pres­i­dent, will Zarek keep try­ing to influ­ence him(another rea­son that I think he is a top con­tender for The Last One)?

My only com­plaint? That the Sci-Fi net­work sur­vives off of peo­ple watch­ing this one show, and because of that they aired the first ten episodes of sea­son four and then had the audac­ity to hold onto the final 10 until 7 MONTHS LATER. Shame on you, Sci-Fi Chan­nel. At least you’re finally going to air them.

And I’ve waited so long for this show to come back on. Please lord let it be good. No, be bet­ter than good, please be great and remind me why I love this show so much. Please.

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I love Bat­man. Always have. Always will.

I sucked it up and watched all but one of the 80’s/90’s Bat­man movies Bat­man & Robin. (Why any­one would look at that and think it was good is just crazy) and used to col­lect the comic books off and on, watched the crummy 60’s TV show in reruns when I was a kid, so don’t even try and not call me a Bat­man lover. Not in a Batman/Robin…you know…well…not-that-there’s-anything-wrong-with-that kind of way, but I’ve always enjoyed Bat­man. Bruce Wayne went from wimpy kid one minute to crazed future vig­i­lante in the next with the death of his par­ents. He donned the cape, the mask, he became what crim­i­nals would fear, and he ruled, which was the best part.

Superman…yeah, he’s alright, but Bat­man was a nor­mal per­son wail­ing on some­body. You could feel your blood pump and the adren­a­line go up as he started in on, as the Fan­tas­tic Four’s Thing would say, “clob­berin’ time.”

Bat­man never really cared much about the con­se­quences of his actions like Super­man did. Clark was always the fine upstand­ing man that he was raised to be and was sup­posed to be. He was good and kind and saw the world in black and white. But the world has never been black and white, sure there are good guys and bad guys, but some­times the bad guys are on your side fight­ing for your inter­ests The CIA in the 80’s try­ing to get rid of the com­mu­nist San­danistas in Cen­tral Amer­ica, for instance and some­times they’re not. Al Queda Some­times they’re out for world dom­i­na­tion and other times they just want money or power or some­thing that makes them look sexy in the eyes of oth­ers. And it’s those rea­sons that would make me want to be a super vil­lain. But not just your nor­mal run-of-the-mill vanilla super vil­lain. No sir. I’m look­ing to be unique, if possible.

Good guys always have to look out for the inno­cent bystanders and are racked with guilt if they cause an inno­cent life to be extin­guished in the process of sav­ing oth­ers. Look at the fight between Spi­der­man and Green Gob­lin towards the end of the first Spi­der­man movie I’ve read that Warner Bros, the stu­dio that puts out the Super­man films, is think­ing of tak­ing a hint from the Cristo­pher Nolan lead Bat­man films and that they might reboot the Super­man series in a darker light. What are they think­ing? Super­man is sunny, Bat­man is dark. Is Super­man not going to care what he does? He’s the son of Kryp­ton sent to Earth to be this planet’s pro­tec­tor, not some gray-area hero.

Which is why it would be cool to be a supervil­lain. You just wouldn’t have to care. Your whole rea­son for liv­ing is to gain street cred, or cash, or babes, or some­thing intan­gi­ble that makes up for that hor­rific time in your life that made you that evil bas­tard that you became. And it would be fun because tak­ing out your aggres­sion is fun, even if it’s a plane­load of peo­ple you’ve never met before, sure, one of them did some­thing that they deserve a huge pound­ing for. Heat vision to the wing of the plane, that’s the way to do it.

I’d drive a cool car and live in some fore­bod­ing super-fortress in the Himalayas and have a legion of war­riors at my beck and call and have min­ions, evil min­ions, that would do what­ever I com­manded. They’d prob­a­bly be nin­jas. Or some rogue para­mil­i­tary out­fit that I have on my pay­roll. I’d be friends with dic­ta­tors and inter­na­tional crim­i­nals and I’d nat­u­rally flaunt it in pub­lic, because what’s the fun in being a supervil­lain if you can’t rub it in the face of the peo­ple that you call your mor­tal enemies?

And I’d have to be best friends with my mor­tal enemy too, just like Mag­neto and Charles Xavier. I don’t know any­body who is bald and needs a wheel chair, but I’m evil. I’ll put some­one in a wheel­chair and then shave his head or some­thing. And after I’ve been caught and put in some fool­proof prison where only the hard­est of the hard vil­lains reside and my best friend comes and vis­its me we’ll rem­i­nis­cence about the old days and I’ll make allu­sions like I’m plan­ning to escape and he’ll threaten me in veiled terms and we’ll glare at each other and then we’ll laugh as I block his king with my knight in the game of chess we’ve been play­ing and I breathily whis­per, “Checkmate.”

Now that’s a heck of a career right there.

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My old­est son loves him some Curi­ous George. The books, the show (on PBS) and even the toys, but he wouldn’t buy one of those toys because it’s not a super­hero or a Planet Hero, but if those didn’t exist he prob­a­bly would buy some Curi­ous George toys.

He and I read Curi­ous George books prob­a­bly twice a week thanks to the library. Curi­ous George Goes to a Restau­rant. Curi­ous George Plays Base­ball. Curi­ous George Flies a Kite. Curi­ous George is Bored. Things like that. You know the drill.

And no one in this coun­try or world would know about Curi­ous George if it wasn’t for his ubiq­ui­tous friend, the Man With the Yel­low Hat (MYWH for those in the know). He has no name, no his­tory, he just exists as the Man With the Yel­low Hat. We do know a few things about him though. He is an explorer, as we know from the first Curi­ous George book. He also appears to be wealthy, hav­ing an apart­ment in “the city” and a house in “the coun­try” and because if this he is a man of leisure. There are no real world loca­tions in Curi­ous George, but one can assume that given the his­tory of his cre­ators, the hus­band and wife team of H.A. and Mar­gret Rey, who fled Nazi Ger­many to even­tu­ally live in New York City, that New York is “the city”, but I’m com­pletely and totally get­ting off topic.

The Man With the Yel­low Hat is ALWAYS wear­ing yel­low. He never wears blue. He never wears red. He never wears black. Only yel­low. And it can only be yel­low or else part of his per­sona and psy­che is gone, like a war vet­eran who lost a limb that can still feel it itch­ing when he gets back to “the world”. This weird char­ac­ter trait would make it dif­fi­cult for a nor­mal per­son to shop for clothes, but he does live in “the city”, so he prob­a­bly gets his clothes tailor-made at some hab­er­dasher, being a wealthy gen­tle­men and all.

And for the love of all that is holy, don’t lose his hat. Few things are worse than this sce­nario. As he said in one of the episodes of the Curi­ous George show, which I watch with my old­est, “With­out my hat, I’m just not…me.” No kid­ding, Man With the Yel­low Hat. Then you’re just “The Man”. A generic plot point in a children’s book. He. Is. Nothing.

The Man With the Yel­low Hat also seems strange just for the fact that he’s a strap­ping young guy in a city full of avail­able ogling females who lives with a mon­key. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that! And he’s always leav­ing George by him­self, say­ing things like, “Now I’ve got to con­ve­niently go over here. Don’t get into trou­ble!” What does this moron think is going to hap­pen, George is going to just sit there? Every­body in the books calls the mon­key CURIOUS George. There is no “Mild-Mannered George” or “Dullard George”.

But all in all the Man With the Yel­low Hat seems to live a pretty cool life. He’s an explorer, he dri­ves a con­vert­ible, he flies a plane, he has a pet mon­key. My old­est would kill for that life.

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Kim kept bug­ging me. “You should join Face­book. Everybody’s get­ting on Face­book. You’ll find peo­ple on Face­book that you haven’t talked to in years. You should join Facebook.”

Face­book is a social net­work­ing site, mean­ing that peo­ple that you talk to already on a reg­u­lar basis can now have another way of talk­ing to you on a reg­u­lar basis. You can chat, email, do lit­tle appli­ca­tions (I have book reviews for books I’ve read/am read­ing on there) and other stuff. It’s pretty easy to con­nect with peo­ple but not so easy to always find peo­ple you’re look­ing for. Say you have a friend named “Bill Smith”. Good luck find­ing the cor­rect Bill Smith, espe­cially if he didn’t include a pic­ture of him­self in his profile.

And peo­ple who are friends with other peo­ple that you’re already friends with will then try to add you as their friend (yes, it sounds com­pli­cated). Some­one will want to add you to their “friend list” and then they’ll email you ask­ing your per­mis­sion. You can ignore, deny or approve their request. If you approve it you get added to their friend list, and then you two are “friends” in the vir­tual sense.

It only gets weird when some­one that you don’t know sud­denly emails you ask­ing to be friends. I got a request the other day from some­one that I lit­er­ally had no idea who they were. Some girl. Sup­pos­edly we went to high school together. Did I rec­og­nize her? Nope.

So what do you do then? Be a jerk and not add her? Deny her? Or just ignore her? Or do you say, “Okay, let’s take the plunge and see where this goes.” I more often than not ignore these peo­ple. I don’t think of myself as a jerk; I just don’t want to be friends with every­one. I’m pretty selec­tive. If I like you and I have some idea of who you are, then sure, I’ll add you, but if you’re like this girl that I’ve never met before, for­get it sis­ter, ain’t gonna hap­pen no mat­ter what tan­gen­tial link we share. It’s like some­one walks up to you on the street or in a bus and just starts talk­ing to you. “Hey, you look famil­iar.” Can’t place them to save your life. Then they say, “Let’s be friends.”

I like to know who my friends are and those who aren’t my friends. What’s so wrong with that? So if I don’t know you and you want to be my friend on Face­book, think twice.

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Every­one,
I’ve decided to leave the pro­tec­tive arms of Feed­burner behind for RSS and email feeds. They bro­ken my feeds (for both this site and tellyouwhatithink.com) over and over and wouldn’t couldn’t let me send out the last post that I’d put on tellyouwhatithink.com let­ting every­one know that I was mov­ing the blog to glennvance.com for some stu­pid rea­son. Enough is enough! I’m host­ing the feeds from now on myself. I’ve always prided myself on self reliance. Who needs a Google-run com­pany to do it for you when you can do it yourself?

I’m going to do away with the email feed for awhile. I can’t get the plu­gin that runs it to work. Sorry.

So, if you’re read­ing this, and you sub­scribed at some time to my website’s feed, please point your eyes to the new feed in the upper right of the grey bar at the top of the screen. Thank you.