By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
While San Diego Comic-Con gets most of the national and even international attention, Southern nerds tend to flock to a different fan convention altogether: Dragon Con, the five-day, nonstop celebration of all things nerdy. Sure, it’s filled with the usual con trappings like panels and vendor rooms, but everything has the boozy, woozy wobble of an endless party. So much so, in fact, that Battlestar Galactica reboot icons Edward James Olmos and Aaron Douglas felt inspired to tell a room full of fans about how the latter actor accidentally exposed his penis to a sound guy in a particularly raunchy blooper.
This Battlestar Galactica blooper story began with a basic explanation of how the actors had to have microphones attached to their costumes so that their dialogue could be heard. A wire was usually run down part of an actor’s clothing and connected to a power pack in a discreet place. For example, on an actor’s boots for a scene where the boots won’t be visible. None of this would have been a problem for the poor sound guy if Douglas didn’t have a funny tendency to go commando on set.
The Battlestar Galactica Blooper
Douglas began his part of this story by saying that a popular fan question he gets at conventions is whether he wears boxers or briefs, to which he joyfully responds “neither.” This odd admission quickly became relevant, though, as the actor described running late to the Battlestar Galactica set; he showed up to the hangar deck set wearing his familiar orange coveralls, setting the scene for an unintentionally hilarious blooper. He ran the sound cord down his leg, and Graham – a particularly tall sound guy – was kneeling on the ground, preparing to attach the power pack to the actor’s boot.
All of this was business as usual for all of the cast and crew, and Douglas continued chatting to various people while his microphone was getting attached. For reasons that he never fully explained, the actor suddenly decided to strike a Superman pose, which caused his coveralls to slip down. For most actors, this would have been only mildly embarrassing, but because this Battlestar Galactica actor hated wearing his underwear, he exposed his entire naked body, creating a blooper too spicy to ever share with fans.
Adama Saves The Day
Incredibly, Douglas didn’t realize that something had gone wrong until he felt his penis make contact with something, which he described as a “bonk.” He belatedly had a very troubling thought: “that shouldn’t have hit something…that shouldn’t have hit something warm and flesh-like.” As the rest of the cast and crew began to focus on what had happened, Douglas looked down and saw poor sound guy Graham looking horrified at both his proximity to and recent contact with the actor’s penis.
On the Battlestar Galactica set, this was a weird moment that could have been fairly traumatic to everyone involved. Fortunately, the show’s erstwhile Commander offered the perfect punchline to instantly pop all of the tension in the room. To the amusement and horror of Douglas, Edward James Olmos summarized exactly what had happened in the funniest possible way: “Aaron just cold-cocked the sound guy!”
During the Dragon Con panel, hearing his own punchline retold by Douglas (complete with a funny imitation of the older man’s gravelly voice) caused Olmos to cackle, and he couldn’t resist holding his fingers just a few inches apart to indicate that the other actor’s…um…Viper wasn’t so big. Rather than take offense, Douglas responded with a quip straight out of Seinfeld: “I was in the pool!” From beginning to end, this story demonstrates the weirdly funny chemistry between the Battlestar Galactica cast, though this is one blooper so raunchy that even the Lords of Kobol will never reveal it to you.
