Limes with Orange

If you're a regular reader here, you probably already know that I'm a wee bit of a Buffy fan. (Holy understatement, Batman!) Well, I was over visiting the Internet Movie Database for that Movie Meme when I noticed they have a new FAQ for Buffy the Vampire Slayer! And I just learned that they've started "season 8" in the form of a comic book. I just might have to return to my comic book roots for that. And do ya wanna see the original unaired pilot? Me too! And you can watch it here: Buffy Unaired Pilot Season 1 Episode 0. I haven't read through them all yet but just picture me rubbing my hands together with glee.

Labels: buffy, pop culture, tv

Whilst browsing through the Blogger's Choice Awards, I discovered that Jane Espenson has a blog! And it's not just a this-is-what-happened-to-me-today sort of blog, it's Jane's screenwriting advice. (Mentally clapping my hands with glee.)

And I just realized that not everyone knows who I'm talking about. (Sad but true, I guess.) Well, Jane Espenson is a TV writer extraordinaire. A Joss Whedon crony who worked on Angel, Firefly and Buffy (she wrote two of my favourite Buffy episodes, granted I have many favourite episodes but these are definitely amongst them: Earshot and Life Serial), I've recently noticed her name on Battlestar Galactica episodes! (Dirty Hands was hers... the one where I said that the Chief was Savio-like in his glory; I'm rather fond of that line of mine and I'm rather fond of that episode of hers.)

Now I just saw something on her blog that makes me want to imitate a girl I went to elementary school who would get so excited when she knew the answer to something that she didn't just raise her hand but she slapped her other hand under her raised hand (right around armpit level) saying: "oh, oh, oh!" So what's making me want to behave in this ridiculous fashion? Jane has a short story in "Flirting with Pride & Prejudice: Fresh Perspectives on the Original Chick-Lit Masterpiece." Must! have! that! book!

Labels: battlestar galactica, blogging, buffy, pop culture, tv, writing

I originally misread this week's Sunday Seven question as favourite TV episodes, each from a different series. As you will see, that's not really what Patrick intended. But I decided to keep what I wrote anyway because I wrote so damn much!

THIS WEEK'S QUESTION:
Name your top seven favorite individual episodes of any single television series. If you feel especially enterprising, give a few lines explaining why you think makes your chosen episodes so good.

1. The West Wing, "A Proportional Response"

One of my favourite shows on TV until Aaron Sorkin left, there are countless episodes that I would call favourites. Here I opted for the one where Charlie was first hired. I love how he keeps insisting that he's just there for the messenger job but keeps getting pulled deeper into the West Wing. And the dialogue at the end provided a wonderful example of what I call a "West Wing moment." After Charlie has figured out where the President left his glasses, and gets yelled at for his pains, he decides that he should just leave. Then President Bartlet pulls him aside...

BARTLET: Listen, Leo McGarry filled me in on the situation with your mother. I'm so very sorry. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of calling Tom Connolly, the FBI Director, and we had the computer spit out some quick information. Your mother was killed by a Westing 38 revolver firing KTWs, or what are known as "cop killer" bullets. Now, we have not had a whole lot of success yet in banning that weapon and those bullets off the streets, but we're planning on taking a big whack at it when Congress comes back from recess.
(beat)
So, What do you say, you wanna come help us out?

CHARLIE: (pause) Yes sir, I do.

After a bit more banter between other characters, Charlie whispers to Josh...

CHARLIE: I've never felt like this before.

Josh smiles...

JOSH: It doesn't go away.

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More With Feeling"

So many Buffy episodes to choose from, I was tempted to follow Carly's example and list all my favourite Buffy episodes, but I didn't want to be a copycat. Given my intense love of musicals and all things Buffy, this particular episode seemed like a natural choice.

3. Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2"

I've made no secret of the fact that BSG is one of my favourite TV shows, so again, tough to choose. But Chief Tyrol's speech, and its echoes of Mario Savio, made me opt for this one hands down.

TYROL: There comes a time when you realize that the engine you built with your blood and your sweat and your tears is being used for something so foul, so perverted, it makes you sick in your heart. And it's then that you must throw your body on the gears, and on the levers, and on the machine itself and make it stop! And you have to show the people who run it, the people who control it, that unless we're free that machine will be prevented from working at all!

4. Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Darmok"

The first TV episode I ever purchased, back when you had to buy them on VHS one episode at a time. Such a brilliant, thought-provoking episode. I attempted to address it in a previous post (The Language of Metaphor), but was overwhelmed by how much I wanted to say about it. So maybe that's a post for the future. (In case you're wondering, the title of this post is from Darmok and means "giving; receiving.")

5. Star Trek: Voyager, "Drone"

Expanding greatly on concepts first presented in the Star Trek: TNG episode, "I, Borg" I found this episode truly moving, especially at the end when Seven says, "You're hurting me," a line that One had used previously in a literal context. Ironically, this oh-so-touching episode also contains one of my favourite bits of funny dialogue from Voyager:

ONE: I was an accident?

DOCTOR: Call it a random convergence of technologies.

ONE: Am I unwelcome here?

DOCTOR: On the contrary. Our primary mission is to explore new forms of life. You may have been unexpected but given time, I am sure you'll make a fine addition to the crew. After all, you've got my mobile emitter driving your neo-cortex so you're bound to make a dazzling impression.
(beat)
That's called a joke.

ONE: Joke. A verbal comment or gesture designed to provoke laughter.

DOCTOR: I see you've got your mother's sense of humour.

6. Rock Star: Supernova, "Week 10"

This may sound like a strange choice, but this was the week when Storm Large sang her original song, "Ladylike." Her performance still rocks my world.


Do you want Storm to come to Calgary?

7. Sex and the City, "An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux"

I wish I'd thought of this one for the Sunday Seven about our favourite series finales. Anyway, I loved how all the storylines wrapped up in such touching ways, while remaining completely true to the characters.

Best line...

CARRIE: I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love.

Sounds good to me.

Labels: battlestar galactica, buffy, memes, pop culture, rockstar, tv

Get a load of some of the latest Japanese footwear trends. Um, so... the Chinese have footbinding and now this is how Japanese women torture their feet?



Not to say that I've never worn shoes (or clothing or hairstyles) that others have considered crazy, but they didn't even come close to comparing to these boots. How do you even walk in them?

And now I am reminded of a Buffy quote, from "Earshot" the episode where she can hear people's thoughts. And she hears Giles think: "Look at her shoes. If a fashion magazine told her to, she'd wear cats strapped to her feet."

Yep, I think that pretty much sums up the shoes shown here.

Labels: buffy, fashion, pop culture, weird stuff

I finally got around to playing Patrick's Sunday Seven this week and decided that I couldn't really play the way I'm supposed to.

THIS WEEK'S QUESTION:
Name your seven favorite television series finales.

I don't have seven. I have two. Unless I'm forgetting some (which could easily be the case). So I'm splitting up my list...

Favorite TV series finales:

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation ("All Good Things...")
2. Star Trek: Voyager ("Endgame")

Okay TV series finales:

3. Frasier ("Goodnight, Seattle")
4. Friends ("The Last One")

Disappointing TV series finales:

5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Chosen")... they killed Anya!!!!
6. M*A*S*H ("Goodbye, Farewell & Amen")... I was so stoked for this finale and so crushingly disappointed afterwards; for me, it almost seemed to negate everything that went before.
7. Seinfeld ("The Finale")... ditto

And an extra couple of categories just for the heck of it...

TV series finales that would have been good had they bothered to mention that it was series finale, not simply a season finale:

8. Judging Amy ("My Name is Amy Gray...")

TV series finales that I didn't watch because Aaron Sorkin didn't write it:

9. The West Wing ("Tomorrow")

Labels: buffy, memes, tv

While exploring the sites of other meme participants, I came across this entry: "Thirteen Favorite Joss Whedon Moments".

It was both amusing and informative. I had no idea that Joss Whedon had written a few Roseanne episodes (the blog has a clip from one of the episodes; I never had any desire to watch that show, but I must admit the clip was good). I didn't realize that there were Joss Whedon graphic novels that take place in the Buffyverse (cool!). Nor had I realized that he had written Alien Resurrection (but I guess I can forgive you for that, Joss, because of everything you've done since).

In my opinion, they missed a couple of key Buffy moments. Particularly Becoming, part 2 (Season 2 finale)...

In the moments before Buffy kills Angel, he gets her cornered and disarms her. Then he says, in that mocking way of Angelus: "Now that's everything, huh? No weapons... No friends...No hope. Take all that away... and what's left?"
Buffy looks up at him with one of her famous Buffy stares and says:
"Me."
Then she stops his sword with her bare hands.

Yep, I would definitely swap that one for the Gingerbread episode doodle moment.

But you've gotta head over to the blog just to check out he video of Angel dancing at the end. It's hysterical!

Labels: buffy, pop culture, tv

Was watching last night's intro to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and was quite tickled by the segment about the latest report critiquing U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities (and the NY Times' use of the phrase "doody-headed nincompoopery"... one can't help but wonder if the decline in their vocabulary is the result of William Safire's retirement... but I digress). While pondering why the authors of this report didn't seem to have access to the three previous reports that reached the same conclusions, Stewart suggested that a new report would be issued to explain this lack of communication, entitled:

"The Report Commission:
Reporting on Reporting Redundancy on Commission Reporting"
>>> watch segment

Naturally, this made me think of the phrase "Department of Redundancy Department." (Did I mention that this was going to be one of those tangentially meandering blog posts?) And I started trying to figure out who first coined that phrase. I remember reading it in "Anguished English" by Richard Lederer, but I'm sure it was around before then. It almost sounds Orwellian but it's kinda the antithesis of the Newspeak in "1984," which is intended to simplify language to its barest, most essential parts rather than make it more complicated than it needs to be (hmm... complicated like my run-on sentences that spew verbosity at every turn). Ironically, the Newspeak translation of "extremely bad" into "doubleplusungood" actually sounds more complicated to me, even though its root words are simplistic. (By the way, check out this Complete Newspeak Dictionary.) But I'm digressing yet again. (Though how can one tell in such a tangent-based rambling?)

Now where was I? Oh yes, Newspeak. The purpose of Newspeak is to dehumanize language and discount the emotion behind complex constructions of words. So if a culture's language does not contain the word for a concept, will the people of that culture be unable to comprehend it? Apparently, some linguistic anthropologists seem to think so (one website that I stumbled across claimed that Noam Chomsky is one of them, but being more familiar with his anarchist politics than his lingustic theories, I can't vouch for that). Taken to its extreme: if no word for "suffering" exists, how can one appreciate that they are, indeed, suffering? Likewise, how can an oppressed people rebel if they do not understand what "to rebel" means?

Hmm, interesting idea. But I counter with Buffy creator Joss Whedon's claim that language can sometimes have the effect of inhibiting true communication. (Have you seen the Emmy-nominated Buffy episode "Hush"? The majority of the episode is completely without dialogue and what little dialogue there is at the beginning and end of the show focuses on speech and communication... very on theme.) Who was it who said that words conceal as much as they reveal? [Google search result: "Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within." ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson]

Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE words (as anybody who reads my blog can attest). But I would argue that the hypothetical culture that doesn't have a word for suffering or rebellion will still suffer and rebel AND communicate about it. That communication may involve action or art instead of language, but the lack of a word doesn't prevent the intuitive thought. Does it? Or maybe I'm naive and uneducated and I just need to read more about the various theories of linguistics. And maybe that's more than enough inconclusive ramblings for today.

Labels: books and literature, buffy, humour, jon stewart, language, philosophy, politics, tv