Some of us are old-fashioned. We believe in something called evil. It goes by various terms, and sometimes it’s dressed up as mental illness, but in general it equates with people getting hurt in very bad ways and sometimes on a large scale and for generally no good reason or for reasons that could have been avoided.

Some of these are easily identified. Hitler = evil. That’s an easy one. Often it requires more thought, no matter what the scale. Dr. Jack Kevorkian — savior to the suffering, or someone who seeks to legitimize his personal thrill in ending a life? But in general, I think we could agree that an atrocity on the scale of killing billions of people in an effort to extinguish an entire race should rightly be seen as:  evil.

Except on “Battlestar Galactica,” where it appears to be God’s will. Or an unavoidable part of a natural cycle. Or something.

I watched the show’s finale last night and as much as one can be troubled by popular entertainment, I found it troubling. Troubling not just because the ending calls into question the entirety of the series’ supposed noble purpose, but also because it has been met with just unthinking universal acclaim, both in the mainstream media and on message boards.

On the macro level, Cylons and Humans reconcile, intermingle, and repopulate — and we are their offspring. But the way I understand the series, Cylons wiped out about a dozen planets full of humans, reducing the entire population to 39,000 that they ardently sought to wipe out.  Welcoming them with open arms to end a cycle of violence is akin to setting aside the morals of the enlightened to embrace the Nazis.

On the micro level, we have Gaius Baltar, an unrelentingly self-interested and self-serving race traitor who allows Caprica Six entree into the inner workings of human defense so that he can get laid. In the finale, we learn that Baltar was a poor lower-class farm boy who in adulthood strove to leave behind his past and who makes one — one — gallant effort, in joining a small firefight in the climactic battle scene. So, I guess, now that we understand the shame of his boyhood all is forgiven for those  billions who were murdered. (It’s interesting that the vice-president and a ship’s officer are court-martialed and executed by firing squad for leading an insurrection that kills a few dozen, while Baltar, the greatest mass murderer in history, is free to return to his roots.)

Dressed up as it is in the show’s liberal politics, where all can be forgiven if only we share our feelings, we are reassured at show’s end that all is according to God’s plan. Because of our bipolar nature — good/evil, Cylon/Human — we are forced to repeat this cycle until we decide to break it. Which would be fine — except we now learn that much of the action of the series has been guided by — wait for it — angels. The Caprica Six who has appeared to Baltar from episode one:  an angel. The Kara Thrace who returned from death? An angel. What I would ask is this — and I understand that these are age-old questions — what hope can humans have to break a cycle that is ordained by the almighty? If God wanted us to break a cycle of violence, well, why doesn’t He do it? Or, at the least, why doesn’t He simply stop sending angels and demons who keep us stuck in the groove  of this neverending cycle? Even more disturbing, if this is God’s plan, then how can we ascribe blame to Hitler, Stalin, Ted Bundy, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, the architects of the Spanish Inquisition, Cheney, Bush? How can we judge against them, if they are part of a divine plan?

Questions of divinity and morality are only the most obvious disturbing element. The show has also been relentlessly anti-technology. For the record, technology is not evil in itself (although it can be used for evil purposes) and throughout human history has greatly improved the lives of billions. It seems foolish to have to say this, but in an age when people esteem mysticism (angels) and naturalism (chaos) over rational improvement, I suppose we should all of us take more time to stick up for civilization. In the series premiere, it was made clear that the Galactica survived only because as a museum piece it was not hooked up to Baltar’s integrated defense system. This is a favored trope of many a nostalgic Westerner:  that while your newfangled car’s computerized engine can be counted on to fail, that old rustbucket in the yard will always start right up. This is the kind of thinking that would have kept life nasty, brutish, and short. I make my living almost entirely through two devices, one called the phone, the other the computer; for much of human history I and everyone else would have been relegated to, paraphrasing Steinbeck, working in the dirt with a stick all day. Anyone who complains about office work hasn’t given it enough thought. The prehistoric alternative is hunting/gathering, and dying young from wild animal attack, other injuries and infectious diseases. If you are troubled by technology, then by all means, try the alternative.

(As a side note, this is why I so thoroughly enjoyed T.C. Boyle’s  “A Friend of the Earth.” The chapter where the Earth Firsters decide to live naked in the woods for 30 days is instructive. Any thoughts of sex or enjoyment or the wonders of nature fall away quickly when the imperative turns to finding another two-ounce lizard to eat raw. Boyle is no deluded fool, succored by indoor lighting while railing against the electric company.)

The organic alternative is where the Galactica’s various species — Human, Cylon, and hybrid — wind up. They redub Sol III as “Earth” and settle here, engendering the rest of  human history. In so doing, they reject cities and ships and weaving and printing and everything else manufactured from their past and go rustic. I watched this scene and asked the basic questions that the writers would rather you didn’t:  “What happens when those clothes fall apart?” “If they don’t build structures, how will they survive the cold and rain?” “What happens when the medicine runs out?” and on and on. Laura Roslin was already dying of cancer, but it seemed hard to believe that the first time someone had an infected cut they wouldn’t be sorry they’d destroyed all the penicillin. How many millions of lives has penicillin saved, and how many died in the past for want of it? These are the questions that are left utterly unasked, and they are the right ones.

In place of all these hard questions, precisely the sort of hard questions that inform global actions every day, questions of morality, and of choice, of individual responsibility, what we’re left with is the freefloating sentiment that mankind should just decide to get along together. Yes. I agree. Just as I wish that every board, panel, committee, and commission I have ever sat upon, or indeed every play-production group to which I have ever belonged, would just agree. But we don’t. We seem to have differing ideas. Individual ideas. And here’s the revelation:  Sometimes there’s a bad person involved. Someone who’s damaged or deranged, someone who is willfully malcontent, someone who enjoys actively undermining the efforts of others. Breaking bread with that person feeds him and leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth. Certainly at this point, we’ve learned that, haven’t we? Seventy years later, haven’t we learned the essential difference between Churchill and  Chamberlain, and why we’re all of us in Churchill’s debt? Surely this is something about which we can all say, “So say we all.”

Say, when is Free Comic Book Day?

And what is it?

Here’s everything you need to know.

Set your calendar accordingly.

My friends and I were able to get a room for this  year’s Comic Con.

Last year they sold out in 9 minutes. This year it was just as harrowing, but three of us were working the phones and the online registration system. All seemed lost — until a celebratory cellphone call from good friend Paul Crist.

Phew!

… is one that gets you in to see President Obama while he’s here.

In all fairness, his predecessor was good at turning out a crowd too. Just two months ago, millions all across the nation gathered to watch him leave. It was a fine show.

This brief instructional video will come in especially handy at local parks and McDonald’s Playlands.

I’m just back from Otto’s Hungarian deli. I’ve been going there for years and years because Otto carries a spicy beer sausage that I enjoy and haven’t found elsewhere.

Otto is an elderly accordionist from the old country for whom pricing remains a matter of speculation. Today, for example, a $4.99 sausage and two 99¢ ice creams for my kids cost eleven bucks. I asked Otto for a breakdown on this charge, which led him to the subtotal of “about seven-fifty, and the rest is tax.” I know that California is in fiscal crisis, but I don’t believe state sales tax has gone up to 58%. Unlike me, I just paid it. That’s because last time I was there, Otto undercharged me by about five bucks and I couldn’t talk him out of it. I say “undercharged,” but that’s not accurate, because clearly pricing isn’t set. Perhaps pricing depends upon the level of admiration you express for polka music, unpronounceable beers, and packaged delicacies with no vowels on the label. Today he was screening a broadcast of Hungary’s national holiday — “Like Fourth of Ju-ly,” he said — and I complimented the aural beauty of the chorus and the imposing leadership of what I take to be Hungary’s present leader, a neatly dressed man in his 60’s whom the camera kept cutting away to, someone who serenely expressed his appreciation for all those young voices and the fittingness of whatever it is they were singing. Despite my praise, the sausage and the two ice creams were still eleven bucks. But it’s my belief that over the past 10  years, Otto’s pricing has balanced out. Once I stopped and got sandwiches for my business partner and myself and almost needed a bank loan. The next time it seemed he was paying me to take them. Whatever it actually costs, it’s always tasty.

I also find Otto himself to be interesting. In a Joyce Carol Oates story recently in the New Yorker (a story I stopped reading halfway through because life is short and it was dull) she describes a certain foreign-born type as “trying too hard.” I think that’s Otto, with his bad wisecracks that I can’t quite decipher and his countertop gimmicks, like the fake money and the singing plastic mechanical bird and the stacks and piles of dusty Hungarian tchotchkes, offset by a getup of shorts with suspenders, black dress shoes and white socks. There is something charming about all this, and there is something very friendly and personable about him that you find all too rarely. Little does Otto know his level of influence. When I was directing a play called “Grandma’s Christmas Goulash” by David Vegh (part of a show I conceived called “Hate for the Holidays” — just so you see where I’m coming from), the actor Richard Ruyle asked me where I thought he could pick up a Hungarian accent. I sent him do some business with Otto. I have no idea what he paid.

By the way, you’ll note that Otto will ship worldwide. He carries a fascinating array of meats, desserts, and, well, rubbing alcohol. (Perhaps the Hungarian kind burns deeper. Who knows?) Best to ignore the posted prices.

Loudmouth cavemen commentators are losing their jobs.

Yes, I’m on Facebook. And when I (finally) get around to actually designing this blog — or having this blog designed, say, by this firm I’m intimately acquainted with — I’ll have the “Find me on Facebook” link. (This is definitely a tale of the cobbler with no shoes.) In the meantime, I’m the only Lee Wochner there, so I won’t be hard to find.

Yes, I’m on Twitter. And when I [insert almost everything above…]. In the meantime, I’m the only Lee Wochner there, so I won’t be hard to follow.

No, I’m not on Friendster. Not really. Not since 2003. And whoever that last final lonely Friendster member is who keeps plaintively messaging me via that system:  I won’t be replying.  It’s over. Friendster, I mean.

Just thought I’d say those things for now in case you were wondering.

A friend posted this on his Facebook page. He swears it’s not photoshopped and that it’s an actual site in Silver Lake. Now, I’m in Silver Lake all the time — that’s where my theatre is, that’s where my workshop meets, that’s where my good running buddy Steve lives, that’s where the good pizza is found — and I haven’t seen this. But I’ve asked for the address. Because I want to see this. In person.

Until I have further information (which I’ll share), I surmise that this is a further result of LA’s gaping-black-hole budget, and that the rest of the phone pole was sold as firewood at a Do-It Center near you.