My turn! I’m inadvertently piggybacking off Marisa’s bonus item, because these are the top 5 moments of 2008 that made me scream at my TV. Most of this is happy screaming; the vice-presidential debate would have landed around #6 just for the number of times my roommate hissed at me to stop leaping off the couch and shrieking at the box in the corner.

5. Justin Timberlake recaps a future, fictional SNL.

You know, there are a few things I love (actually, there are a lot of things I love: cheese, tiny blonde detectives, Olympic swimmers, my pajamas, Friday Night Lights, dark chocolate, romance novels, red wine…) and two of them are Justin Timberlake and Weekend Update. Oh, and Seth Meyers. And The Barry Gibb Talk Show. Okay, let’s just say I love a lot, a lot of things.

4. The Kevin Garnett puppet at the ESPYs.

Hey, it’s Justin Timberlake again! He hosted ESPN’s fake awards show this year. And he did a giant musical number that recapped the year in sports, including a reggae number featuring the Celtics’ big three, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett. My favorite moment is when Garnett, in the audience, makes the exact same face as the puppet. (Garnett is the puppet on Timberlake’s left.) This is the only time in recent memory when I could stomach listening to reggae.

3. Galactica gets to Earth.

Hey, remember back on New Caprica when we were getting high and rolling around naked? Yeah, that was so much more awesome than this.

There are a lot of my-mind-is-blown moments across the four seasons of Battlestar Galactica, starting with “Holy shit, Boomer is a Cylon!” all the way up through “Holy shit, soylent earth is people!” last June with a little detour on the way for “Holy shit, Apollo married Dualla!” and “Holy shit, Admiral Cain is batshit crazy!” Personally, I often find it to be a slack-jawed in awe and/or horror kind of show, like when one of the Cylons ripped out Tigh’s eye and when the latter four Cylons all got together to the tune of “All Along the Watchtower,” but this final, silent, grim vision of the future, following so closely on the heels of the scenes of wild, joyful celebration all over the ship when they find Earth (it kind of looked like #1, below), caused me to make some sort of stunned, keening noise I can only describe as agony.

2. Jason Lezak wins the Olympic men’s 4×100 free relay.

MANLY HUGGING!

Even though we were watching it a couple of hours later, Roommate and I were on our feet, hollering like they could hear us on the other side of the world. The monster? Out of the cage!

1. Obama wins. WE ALL WIN.

Crying. Screaming. Weeping. Hugging everyone. Gesturing madly with cups of champagne. Crying and screaming some more. I only remember very vividly where I was, what I was doing, what I was wearing, a few moments of my life. Even having had quite a quantity of wine that night, I hope I’ll remember this one as long as I live.

In case you haven’t gotten around to watching them, there have already been three Battlestar Galactica webisodes!  And it’s all good, clean fun — in that dreary way only Battlestar can deliver.

The series starts off with Gaeta and Hoshi gaying it up with a cute little smooch and bedroomy eyes (and not to be all “oooooh, boys kissing,” but… well… oooooh, boys kissing!). I’m still trying to get a grasp of homophobia in alternate-reality Galactica-land, but there does appear to be some sort of fleet-wide don’t ask, don’t tell policy given Hoshi’s awkward encounter with Tigh. Or, perhaps, it’s just don’t ask or tell a crusty old cylon with an eyepatch.

Here’s the first of the webisodes, entitled Face of the Enemy.

Watch the other episodes after the jump.

It’s odd that the fusion of two things I love (or, well, one thing I love and one thing who I think is pretty good), can become such a monstrosity.

I recently came across this fan-made clip of Battlestar Galactica favorite Starbuck acting dramatic to a soundtrack by the New Pornographers. While this must have been a labor of love, it comes across as sentimental and melodramatic.  Like a Freddie Prinze, Jr. movie or one of those Army commercials they show before movies these days.

If these things-I-love-mergers are going to be like this, I guess this doesn’t bode well for my hopes of Jake Gyllenhaal starring in that David Rakoff biopic.  Or chocolate-covered Indian food.  Or a hoodie that dispenses Jack Daniels. Or a half-puppy, half robot.

Actually the robo-puppy sounds incredible (no poop!).

I jumped on the Battlestar Galactica train late in the game. I binged on three seasons in a row a while back before finally watching the first half of season four in real time — so my retention isn’t what it could be.

But by now I’ve pretty much forgotten everything that’s happened. I seem to recall something about robot-people, a blonde chick who is always angry and then Donnie Darko’s mom saying she was the president.  I guess I have some catching up to do.

For those of you in the same place, here’s a teaser/refresher on where we left things at the end of the first half of season four and what’s to come.

Her hair is all 80s in this picture. Almost a little Joan Jett-y.

While it may not have the heaps of honors we may may think it deserves, but the Emmys may have thrown Battlestar Galactica a tiny bone. Mary McDonnell appears to have made the cut as a semi-finalist for an Emmy in the category of Best Lead Actress in a Drama.

Here’s the list of speculated-upon nominees, along with their corresponding shows and submitted episodes.

• Patricia Arquette, “Medium” ( “Aftertaste”)
• Glenn Close, “Damages” (“Pilot”)
• Minnie Driver, “The Riches” (“Dead Calm”)
• Sally Field, “Brothers and Sisters” (“History Repeating”)
• Mariska Hargitay, “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” (“Undercover”)
• Holly Hunter, “Saving Grace” (“Tacos, Tulips, Duck and Spices”)
• Elisabeth Moss, “Mad Men” (“The Hobo Code”)
• Mary McDonnell, “Battlestar Galactica” (“Faith”)
• Kyra Sedgwick, “The Closer” (“Manhunt”)
• Jeanne Tripplehorn, “Big Love” (“Take Me As I Am”)

I don’t think I’ll be able to take it if Patricia Arquette and her dead eyes and her inflectionless voice get another Emmy nomination. Although I’m guessing that, like me, many people have kind of forgotten that Medium exists. In any case, I could live with any member of the Baby Boomer Actress Basic Cable Revolution (Close, Hunter, Sedgwick) wins.

I remember hearing about the Battlestar Galactica cast doing a Letterman top ten list, but I never actually sought it out.  Well, just because I care enough to give you something you don’t want three months late, here it is.[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/YatjlSJNRHM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

For what it’s worth, it’s mildly amusing to watch:

• Tricia Helfer politely fake-laugh through the entire set
• The guy who plays Baltar try to sell a really lame number 7
• Jamie Bamber accidentally lapse into his adorable English accent.

Bless this mess.

Well, well, well… three and a half seasons, a mini-series and a movie into the story, and the crew of Battlestar Galactica has finally reached Earth.

And so, what do we find? Earth sucks. (For the record, Maggie predicted the Earth suckage quite a while ago.) At first glance, it would appear that it’s a post-apocalyptic war zone — either World War Three broke out or there was a giant fire-breathing lizard or some other catastrophe that would decimate cities.

As the Galatica crew celebrated their discovery (hugging crew members, baby-smooching Chief, Tigh blubbering alone into his whiskey), you just knew that there would be some sort of gigantic tease at the end. (Just so you know, my favorite part of the revelry was Lee “Pinstripes” Adama standing on the table and doffing his jacket — it was uncomfortably nerdy). There’s never a tablespoon of sugar on this show without a cup of salt.

This latest twist is reminiscent of the season three finale when the four newfound Cylons were brought together by Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” It’s a disconcerting trend, to say the least, when the creators are uniting the entirely disconnected world of Battlestar with the one we live in now. I can’t say I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of a world with New Caprica and FTL drives and downloading Cylons co-existing with a world with Britney Spears and Philly Cheesesteaks and the Hubble Telescope.

Now that we seem to be semi-permanently settled on Earth for the time being (complete with those depressing camera filters the producers love so much), let’s think of some potential directions for the next 10 episodes.

• A third, hostile force (the one that killed the Earthlings) comes, forcing Cylons and humans to cooperate.
• Earth is just a marker and there’s a new destination.
• The humans make a life among the the wreckage, and it’s a big sociological commentary.

Anybody got a better idea? Here’s the teaser for season 4.5.[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/K5WPM_obGic" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

If you’re interested, perhaps you are and perhaps you’re not, Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer is in the new video for alt-country group The Old 97s. She’s playing all fabulous and hard-to-get.

Take a look:[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/DDDyD0Hj5n0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I’m not sure why Battlestar suddenly decided to take a little breather in the middle of the season — it’s been a long couple of weeks long week now that we’ve gotten used to a weekly serving of Adama and the gang.

(Apparently there was a new episode on Friday that I’m going to have to find some way of watching online. Why doesn’t Sci-Fi schedule Battlestar on normal nights? Accordingly, this might be an old preview. I care about you guys enough to warn you that it might be an old clip, but not enough to track down something new. Sorry.)

But this Friday’s episode is finally new and it promises to have a helping of long-lost Cylon Deanna played by Lucy Lawless. The following preview hints that we may finally find out who one of the final five is.

Have a look-see.

No one likes to get sucked out of the airlock. It’s not a very nice way to go.

So far, the people we’ve seen meet their demise that way include at least one cylon body, a few people deemed traitors by the New Caprica vigilante jury and, most recently, our beloved Cally.

I’ve always thought that when you get sucked into the vacuum of space that you just blew up immediately. Your body has air in it, so I thought that there would be a big bloody explosion. This can probably be traced back to my sophomore year in high school when we read The Cold Equations — which is a pretty wrenching story about an ill-fated space stowaway. My teacher, a mustachioed veteran who was more excited about snow days than a teacher should really tell his students, told us that’s what happened to you in space and I think that violent image has stuck with me.

I’ve asked the oracle of the Internet and found some answers.

Says one article:

When the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, a number of injuries begin to occur immediately. Though they are relatively minor at first, they accumulate rapidly into a life-threatening combination. The first effect is the expansion of gases within the lungs and digestive tract due to the reduction of external pressure. A victim of explosive decompression greatly increases their chances of survival simply by exhaling within the first few seconds, otherwise death is likely to occur once the lungs rupture and spill bubbles of air into the circulatory system. Such a life-saving exhalation might be due to a shout of surprise, though it would naturally go unheard where there is no air to carry it.

A writer for Slate tackles the issue in the context of the Danny Boyle movie Sunshine (which was great for the first two-thirds until it decided to become 2001: A Nightmare on Elm Street). He mentions that the body undergoes ebullism when exposed to the vacuum of space, which means that the reduced pressure makes your bodily fluids’ boiling point reduce.

Slate writes:

An astronaut who fell unconscious from lack of oxygen would last for a few minutes more before dying from asphyxiation or the effects of the pressure reduction. Ebullism would result in the formation of bubbles in the moisture found in the eyes, mouth, and skin tissue. One NASA test subject who survived a 1965 accident in which he was exposed to near-vacuum conditions felt the saliva on his tongue begin to boil before he lost consciousness after 14 seconds.

Both articles seem to indicate that you’d probably live for at least ten to fifteen seconds without a space suit, which is a hell of a lot longer than I thought you could. The first article states you could even last a minute or two.

That article also claims that frostbite probably isn’t as big an issue because heat leaves the body slowly in a vacuum. Not being protected from the sun’s UV rays, though, could be a problem.