Geeking out on Battlestar Galactica

Sorry I’ve slowed down on my posts a bit, but I really haven’t been feeling like writing when it’s triple-digit degree weather. So what I’ve been mostly doing when I haven’t been desperately seeking anywhere air conditioned (definitely not my house) is watching Battlestar Galactica.

I know I’m a bit late in the game — I’m halfway into season 2 — but now that I’m finally watching this show after years of everyone telling me to, I find that it’s just as compelling as people have been saying it is. Now the cool thing about having your own loosely-themed blog is you can basically write about anything and make it relate, so here I can talk about one of the stars of Battlestar Galactica…the Korean-Canadian Grace Park, who plays several versions of a Cylon often known as Sharon Valerii.

It’s really refreshing to see an Asian actress in a mainstream American(/Canadian) TV show where she doesn’t even play a character that is specifically supposed to be Asian. Not that I’m totally adverse to “Asian-specific” roles, but it’s nice to see an Asian woman playing a character that could just as well be a white character. Of course, this shouldn’t even be a big deal — especially for a show filmed in Vancouver, BC — and maybe the fact that I do think it’s worth pointing out says something about the industry.

Apparently it took some effort on Grace Park’s part to not get cast in stereotypical roles, too. She said at last year’s Asia Pacific Actor’s Network conference that she “had to really hold out.”

I hope she continues to pick good roles and showcase her considerable beauty and talent.

Bird Men

I love Japanese TV.

…but we’ll get back to that later.

Over the weekend, Red Bull’s Flugtag competition came to Portland. According to local news, 80,000 people showed up at the waterfront for the event. I’d never heard of this thing until this year, and I was sad to have missed it when it was in my own hometown.

It reminded me of the 鳥人間コンテスト (literally, “Bird Man Contest”) I used to watch every year with my parents (we had a Japanese video rental store nearby with taped Japanese TV), which was always fun and exciting. So I was a little deflated to find that the world record for this touring Flugtag event is only 195 feet.

Check out this video from the Japanese Bird Man Contest; this particular person went 417 meters, which is about 1368 feet:

I’m getting the sense that half the point of Red Bull’s Flugtag is to have something that looks showy, and not so much to have something that actually flies but I’d rather see some flying! Oh well, at least it means I didn’t miss much.