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Whoa! Check out this warning from The Founders’ Great Mistake in The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2009): “Unless these problems are fixed, it will only be a matter of time before another hot-rodder gets hold of the keys and damages the country further.”

Garrett Epps writes an article that has a cogent, liberal summary of weaknesses in the Constitution vis-à-vis the presidency. I recommend the article to you. At the end, he makes a couple of recommendations for change along the lines of what you’ve learned — and a couple recommendations completely out of left field!

From nowhere, he suggests a Cabinet – Vice President – Midterm Election shuffle. Wha?! Maybe this is a good idea, maybe not. But your other good ideas are connected in some way to the previous paragraphs in your article, Mr Epps. Did The Atlantic trim your writing, or did your political ideas trump your writing skills?

Same with your suggestion to vote for President and Attorney General. Not a worthless idea, no sirree. But you threw another curveball there, buddy! Please provide additional history and background on this one, too.

SciFi Network put out a little catcher-upper to encourage newbies to watch the last 10 episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I for one will be watching the last 10 episodes — no catcher-upper needed! Though I missed most of the first two seasons, I’m a fan. It’s smart, and it’s entertaining, and it’s approximately the only piece of fiction to address our post-9/11 world.

Here are some comments inspired by/during the promo (now free on iTunes), with a slight emphasis on anything that might be a clue.

• The creators say it’s important for everybody to end the series the right way. Here’s to proper resolution in a TV show! But, they counter, if you think you know what will happen, you’re wrong.
• The 30 thousand (ish) humans mentioned in the opening titles are “the entire human race as far as they know.” I predict there will be new humans introduced in the final 10 episodes.
• Side note: hairstyles have changed since they started shooting.
• Lee and Kara aka Starbuck: What were you thinking, marrying others? We all wonder, right? Well the creators say, “That tension has never quite been resolved.” Ooh-la-la! I predict love making!
• Baltar is the “crazy uncle,” the “most human character of everyone on the show.” We’re all flawed, blah blah blah, a wonderful side of the show being discussed here, but no clues or predictions.
• Cylons that look like us. There are only 12 models, but how many faces of the 12 have we seen? Eleven. No news here. No comments on Rick Worthy and Matthew Bennett, the actors who play #4 and #5, the two you hardly ever see. No predictions do I offer for #12! Except disappointment. Honestly, how can it not be? If they manage otherwise, I will worship them as the greatest writers of all time.
• Athena and her daughter Hera will have a greater destiny revealed.
• Starbuck’s special destiny will be revealed.
• That part where they found Earth and felt good: the creators loved dashing hopes at that moment of celebration. Be warned! I predict there will be more hope-dashing. Big time.
• The last 10 episodes start from a place of no hope — so I’m sure you can expect a turn around from there, too.
• Specific questions that will be answered: Who is the last Cylon? What happened to Earth? What’s going to happen to Laura Roslin? (I predict Laura Roslin will die before the final episode. Really, I do. And I half expect her to resurrect and become #12, despite the Resurrection ship having been destroyed.) And what about the other Cylons, the half still presumably interested in humans’ ultimate demise?

They say, “We view this leg of Battlestar Galactica as the final act of a three-act story” — “which has its own beginning, middle and end.” I like it! Good story telling makes for good watching, even for newbies. But what I really wish is this: less use of the word frak. I noticed an inverse relationship between the number of motherfrakkers per episode and that episode’s quality.

Okay, nothing very juicy, I admit. Oh well — the juice is in the viewing! Here’s to this coming Friday night, when BSG returns. I’ll be watching.

I like actors. Except when I don’t.

Actors that I meet through The Actors’ Network are all right. I have enjoyed meeting them very much. But some actors are asshats. That’s all I’m saying.

I cannot believe how beautiful Zoe McLellan is.

The other day, I quickly ordered a few items from drugstore.com and the message I got the next day saying my order had shipped told me that the items got sent to my parents’ house. Which kind of worried me because (1) I don’t know how they got that address and (2) did I order anything that might raise an eyebrow? A very quick check told me that there were no worries regarding (2), and a phone call to their 800 number ensured I’d get my items. But still!

Have I ever sent to my parents’ address before? I have from Amazon or others, I’m sure, but I checked my drugstore.com orders and that address didn’t come up. Furthermore, they had lost my current home address — and I just ordered from them two months ago. So, maybe I should be worried about their servers and privacy issues and stuff? And if they didn’t have my current address, why did my credit card company let them process the charge? Man oh man.

Anybody else have technical problems with drugstore.com lately?

My first encounter with Doubt was reading John Patrick Shanley’s fine, fine play in a park in Worcester, Mass. I was on breaks from full-time rehearsals at Foothills Theatre there. What a read! Powerful, wonderful, beyond good. I knew I wanted to select a monologue, eventually settled on some lines from the scene where Father Flynn and Sister James talk in the courtyard.

Then, just a few months later, I worked on the set of Brotherhood with Brian O’Bryne, the talented actor who originated the role of Father Flynn. In our brief conversations, I mentioned that scene to him and he told me of shifting his approach to it, ending up with something much less strident or aggressive than during first rehearsals. He also told me that his girlfriend was the actor who portrayed Sister James — that’s how they met. Other discussions were about his more-recent work in The Coast of Utopia so I never got around to asking him what he and Shanley decided on as back story for Father Flynn’s guilt. Sure wish I’d asked that!

Fast forward a year, and a solid production of Doubt in Gloucester was the last piece of theater I saw in Massachusetts before leaving for California. I knew all four of the actors, and I saw there one of my favorite Boston performances of 2008. Originally, I thought I might be jealous of my friend Lewis, who was portraying Father Flynn, but his strong performance and my impending departure and a million other factors resulted in me just absorbing, appreciating, being moved and grateful.

Now here’s the thing. All three of these experiences were stronger and better experiences than watching Doubt in a movie theater on New Year’s Day. It’s a good movie, but these other things were beyond good. Streep, Hoffman, Adams, Davis, others — all are great actors whose work I enjoyed and learned from. (Loved Amy Adams so much, just as I loved Melissa Baroni’s performance in Gloucester. It’s a great role.) But there are key differences that matter so much!

In the play, the very first thing is Father Flynn’s sermon on doubt, directed to the audience. You attend the play, you attend his sermon. That is key. Conversely, the film opens with families getting ready for church, altar boys preparing, street scenes for a sense of time and place (1964, the Bronx) and then after a while you observe Flynn’s sermon — observe rather than experience. The same difference applies to reading the play, versus seeing the movie. When reading that sermon, it spoke to me personally. And I’m not at all Cathloic! The movie, while good, is simply more removed.

As the plot unfolds without us seeing any of the children, the play allows for an amazing journey in the mind. Reading the play, working on monologues from it, seeing a strong production — all allowed for me to have rewarding, extraordinary meditation. The movie, to be sure, is very worthy of post-popcorn contemplation, and I’m happy for that. I’m sure that this good mental thing happens much more after this movie than after, say, The Dark Knight. But the movie “takes us from the realm of philosophical meditation to one of evidentiary fact-finding, where every expression is scrutinized for incriminating information.”¹ And this is why it’s not as good as the play. The film’s realism makes it smaller. No more meditation, just facts. Remember: it’s supposed to be about doubt.

Somewhere in the above, probably more than in Hoffman’s acting work, lies the reason that the movie’s Father Flynn seemed to me more arbitrary in his reactions. More ambiguous for the sake of ambiguity. More like an exercise in writing. Not for a second did I have such heretical thoughts before seeing the movie. Some play-going audience members see him as guilty, some as not guilty; all see their opinion as clearly the only right one. In that sense, you can think what you want about Flynn. But don’t you want to think, “He did it” or “He didn’t do it,” instead of “I don’t get it”? (Or maybe the movie set him up as clearly guilty, while the play is more wonderfully ambiguous, and I don’t want him to be a pedophile.)

Maybe if you haven’t been exposed to Doubt before seeing the movie, none of my ramblings will make sense. If you know the piece beforehand, however, you may feel like I did, that you are seeing a good, but distracting, production — just like the snot you see running down Viola Davis’s face as she pleads with Sister Aloysius. Is it bad? No, how can it be? It’s real, it’s honest, it shows great work from a creative artist. But it’s distracting as hell.

Possible Facebook status update for the first day of 2009: “Kevin predicts chicks, flicks, pics — and Styx! — in MMIX.”

If you pronounce the Latin right, that sentence really kicks. Otherwise, nix.