Frak party

A friend invited me to a Battlestar Galactica season-premiere party last Friday night, but with one condition: “Seriously, you can’t talk during the show. Not a word.”

My friend and her husband just got a new high-definition LCD flat screen, and BSG and a handful of friends officially would christen the slick boob tube.

Vegetarian chili, glow-in-the-dark Hacky Sack, a cat that bites when you pat it on the ass—the party was fun. Nine o’clock rolled around and the show began … as did the freakout.

High-definition TV is like staring into Comcast’s soul. Sometimes, it’s not pretty.

“Oh my god, Edward James Olmos should never be in HD,” someone yelled.

“You could go swimming in his acne scars.”

So much for “not a word”; the peanut gallery was in full effect, and arguably more entertaining than BSG itself, which is not to say BSG is lame. I’d never seen an episode, and will probably never watch it again, but I’d definitely rather watch it than Gossip Girl, which, if I don’t play my cards right, I end up sitting through on a weekly basis.

Frak Blair Waldorf.

Yes, frak. A friend explained that they don’t say “fuck” on BSG. Instead, they use frak, as in, “I want to frak you like an animal.” Hard-core BSG fans call viewing parties “frak parties.” Nerdy, sure, but cooler than “big game” parties, as per the Steelers-Cardinals match in a couple Sundays.

The evening wore me out: I slept a ridiculous 26 hours from Friday to Sunday, but made the best of my waking hours.

I did yard work and cleaned the garage.

Great things come to people who spring-clean in January: (1) I found my old library card, and (2) I discovered $10 inside Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Note: Beer tastes better after raking leaves.

On Sunday night, I watched five hours of the now-defunct HBO show The Wire, a police-crime drama about drug dealers in the D.C. projects and the bottom-of-the-barrel cops working to shut them down. President Barack Obama has stated that The Wire was his favorite TV show and that Omar—a gay gangbanger who lives on the run in the D.C. ghetto’s shadows—his favorite character. This is a promising revelation: The Wire is the anti-24, a compassionate portrayal of coming of age as an impoverished, inner-city minority that explores and critiques war-on-drugs politics.

The very fact that Obama has seen this show is reason for hope.

Think Election 2000: President George W. Bush cites Austin Powers as his favorite movie. Sigh.

We should have known, but we’ve come a long way. Frak yeah!