Rainy Bank Holiday Monday ( with Cylons )

In the time-honoured tradition of English Bank Holidays the weather is bloody awful outside, so I've spent most of the day indoors, doing essential things like messing about on Facebook and watching TV. I know I could have been doing some DIY or having another go at that Play Guitar In A Day manual or even starting that long-postponed first novel...

But I went for a Battlestar Galactica marathon instead.

I admit I was embarrassingly late for the BSG party. When it was first shown in the UK we didn't have Sky so I couldn't catch it when it was broadcast, and my long-standing bias against macho "military" Science Fiction meant I didn't make any kind of effort to seek it out. However, all the rave reviews in SFX and elsewhere finally convinced me to buy the Season One box set last year. And I loved it! It's a gripping, exciting, complex and mature series with some fantastic effects and fine performances.

( And, it has to be said, some serious eye-candy in the shapes of Tricia Helfer, Grace Park and Katee Sackhoff. OK, so I'm superficial... ) Episode One, "33", in particular is one of the most tense, exciting and morally demanding pieces of TV SF ever, with the ragtag fleet of spaceships that comprises the remains of the human race desperately trying to escape the dreaded Cylons, whilst under almost constant attack. It's just a great episode! The only problem for me was that it started with a "Previously on..." caption, because the 2003 mini-series wasn't included in the box set :-(

Anyway, I finally tracked the mini-series down this weekend and jumped straight into the story of the destruction of the Twelve Colonies Of Kobol by the Cylons and the emergence of the Galactica as the last, best hope for humanity. ( Or is that a different show? ) I've got hooked all over again and am working my way through Season One - it's frakkin' awesome!

To while away the rainy hours I've also been listening to some LCD Soundsystem, Flaming Lips and a Was ( Not Was ) Greatest Hits compilation I bought for a quid in a charity shop. I always used to like those mutant funksters back in the day, when they produced such cool songs as Shake Your Head, Out Come The Freaks and Spy In The House Of Love. My CD features all these but, surprisingly, not Walk The Dinosaur, which was their biggest UK hit. Sarah walked in when one of their more trad-Soul songs was playing and she laughed "What's this? Lionel Richie?"

I'm surrounded by Philistines :-)

I don't think Lionel Rich Tea ( as he's known in our house ) would have given us a song like this: