All roads lead to Joss and Jane...Billy Joel coming to Rock Band 3

Billy Joel image from Zmarter.com (modified from his Glass Houses album artwork)

I'M OLD!
The first time I realised this for sure was when watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I already had the feeling sometimes that perhaps I wasn't necessarily in the youngest target audience, but 'Band Candy' brought it home in spectacular fashion. It's one of my favourite episodes (6) from Season 3 of Buffy and it is written by Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson. It's funny, dark and sets up a great line in 'Earshot':  "...on the hood of a police car?!?"

In the ep, all the adults who eat the school's Band Candy start reverting and acting like irresponsible teens. The Scooby gang go to The Bronze to check out what's going on where they discover teachers, Snyder (the non-eaten-yet Principle) and various adults jumping around in a most uncomely manner. They can't understand what going on, so Willow delivers the killer line:


"Maybe there's a reunion in town or, or a Billy Joel tour or something." 

Hubby and me looked at each other with horror when we heard those words the first time. We had both enjoyed listening to Billy Joel in our teenage years and had several of his albums. Yep. WE WERE OLD!

Fast forward a few years...
Yesterday I read this article on zmarter.com called "Billy Joel coming to Rock Band 3 out of spite". It recounts the story of how Billy Joel came to license his music for the game, with this quote from a USA Today article:

"I've never allowed my music to be used in a game before," but an Entertainment Weekly review of NBC's The Office changed his mind. Alluding to an episode in which characters mention a Rock Band featuring Billy Joel, "the critic wrote something like, 'God forbid that ever should happen.' So I called my people and said, 'Get me (on) that Rock Band game.' Then I wrote the critic, saying that every time I get a check, I'll give him a little nod."

 :) you have to love that story! Good ole Billy. And, of course, it made me think of Buffy. And Joss. And Jane. Because, in the end, all roads lead back to them.

P.S.
Teen son was listening to some Country and Western music while lying on his bed the other day. I told him I understood, because everyone knew that it was the music of pain. He knew what I meant. It was a precious moment.

Happy Birthday, Joss! Gratuitous cake post...

Will he have a cake? 

As we once again thank the 'Verse for Joss, thought turn towards how he might celebrate this, his *cough* birthday. I'd like to think that Joss will be eating cake and perhaps imbibing a glass or two of his favourite tipple. He's had an incredibly busy year or so and deserves a day to relax and reflect. And so, I present for you a selection of cakes fit for the Master:

A stake-cake?

Cake Nouveau have this brilliant Buffy Cake:

And this was baked by one talented lad for his lucky girlfriend:

I pretty sure he won't be getting this from Cake Wrecks...

A Horrible Cake (or five...)

CakeNoveau has this medley of Dr Horrible-themed goodies:

Or, to celebrate all the Can't Stop The Serenity screenings...

...how about a Serenity cake?

Now there are some pictures of Serenity cakes floating around (!) according to Whedonesque which I couldn't find and also there's apparently one on greatwhitesnark.com but the site appears to be down at the moment. I have sent a couple of emails so if I hear anything I will get back to you.

Are you going to a CSTS screening?

The Vancouver screening is this Saturday, June 27th and I can't wait! Last year was a great event and not only will I be able to meet up with some great BC Browncoats, some special friends are flying in that I can't wait to meet, too. If you want to know more about CSTS, why people organise and attend these charity events each year, and where the money goes, there is all the information on the Can't Stop the Serenity website.

Happy Birthday, Joss!

Girl Geeks and Pink Rayguns

Do you wear girlpants or boypants?
That might be a bit presumptuous, but it is relevant for today's discussion (honest!). I, myself, wear girlpants and I am also a girl. Ordinarily I wouldn't have bothered to put this. I like the sexlessness of the Internet.
[Reader (there is one): "Are you kidding - the Internet has brought 'sex' to the masses like never before!? You are a fool and a simpleton!"
My gentle reply: "Oh dear reader, you are indeed discerning in your tastes in that you read my blog almost frequently, but I must make a slight correction. I meant only that I chose my name to be one that could be either male or female, because I feel that gender is not important in this sphere. You are right to correct me, but next time no name calling. Or else."]

Closet geek
For years I've been a closet geek, hiding my obsessions from most people. In my previous life it was fine - I was a geek at work because I 'did computer stuff' and everything else (the Buffy DVDs, the Angel DVDs, Lord of The Rings, the hours on the Internet....) were completely separate, like oil and water and a....third unmeshable thing. Where I grew up, girls didn't like computer games, computers or sci-fi, and a girl has to hide what a girl has to hide.

Geek, born again
Now, I am still in the closet. Make no mistake about that. I'm all growed up but old habits die hard. But I've opened the door enough to peep out and see what's going on in the outside world. One of the great things I discovered, via the Buffy: Between the Lines website, was Pink Raygun. Now, it is not, as I hesitantly thought when I heard the name, a website catering for adults with time (and other things) on their hands. Well, it is, but not in that way. It is aimed at female geeks (those wearing boypants are allowed, though) and I've just spent far more time than I should in the name of 'research' looking at what it has to offer.

A cornucopia of geekness
Ooh, and what treats it has! It is billed as a "webzine for the modern fangirl. A place to discuss and read about science fiction, fantasy and horror in all of their forms...". When you enter PinkRayGun.com the 'Intergalactic Law' cartoons grab your attention first off and they are very good, very funny and oh so true. Then you realise that there is so much that you want - no must! - read. A great article about Buffy:Between the Lines, a brilliant series about Firefly, must-not-look-at-'Cylon says'-for-fear-of-spoilers, Buffy, Xena, Heroes....if you have an interest (obsession has such bad connotation these days) then chances are you can pander to it here. Just don't blame me if you find yourself, two hours later, still there with all your work not done.

Hats off to Buffy!

Happy Birthday to Sarah Michelle Gellar
She turns 31 today. With at least one film being released this year ('Possession', scheduled for October release) and several others in production/postproduction, Sarah will be as busy as ever. Always renown for her hard-working and professional attitude to acting, she has not stopped since the end of Buffy, some five years ago. Let's just hope that her birthday goes much more smoothly than any Buffy ever had!

How not to celebrate...
And it's not only Buffy that has birthdays that could go better. In Episode 10 of Buffy: Between the Lines, Dawn's birthday finds her still trying to find out where she fits into a life without parents and Buffy. The series is set between Seasons 5 and 6 of Buffy and this is a great episode to get your teeth into. And while you're over on the Buffy: Between the Lines website, you might want to check out their kind review of my recent 'Podcasts, audio dramas and fanfics...' blog.

Short and sweet
That's it for today - computer problems and extra tough work calling! Tomorrow we'll hopefully hear some more from Joss Whedon's Journal among many other exciting things...

Nathan Fillion - the Repo Brothers rise again

You tend to remember a guy whose eyes bleed.
The being cleft in twain made an impression, too. I was first introduced to Nathan Fillion via Buffy Season 7, where he played Caleb, a defrocked preacher far south of normal with an unhealthy appetite for The First Evil and an unholy sideline in misogyny. He was quite magnetic and, at the time, I wondered where this actor had come from and why I didn't know him from anything else. The final episode of Buffy Season 7 starts with Caleb, bleeding darkly from eyes, nose and mouth, being rendered impotent (as an enemy) by Buffy slicing him in two with her neat new toy.

Oh, the irony
Of course, Nathan had been busy working away for many years before Buffy. Including a starring role in another of Joss Whedon's quality products, a little-known space/western. You might have heard of it: Firefly. In fact, Mr Fillion has been working his butt off (I refrain form any further comments in this direction because I know it is not a subject that he wishes to be discussed) on lots of projects, films, voice-overs etc. For a very complete run-down of his many works try NathanFillion.org or the Internet Movie Database.

Nathan Nation
And now he has added another string to his bow. The pilot for 'Repo Brothers', written by the man himself, has been picked up by ABC. Apparently the idea came to him while he was demonstrating his lock-picking abilities to Alan Tudyk (yes, Wash from Firefly) in his front room... See NathanFillion.org for more information. What I'd like to know is will Nathan return the favour and ask to cast Joss Whedon and his brothers Zack or Jed in the roles?

More Nathan!
Kids Need To Read, as if anticipating a Nathan-heavy news week, have an auction of a 'White Noise 2: The Light' DVD signed by Nathan. The auction is on ebay until 4th April, so you need to hurry on that one.

More Auctions!
Kids Need To Read are also auctioning a signed photo of Ashley Cole, the rightly-famous football (ok, soccer!) star. Any Chelsea or England fans should go to the KNTR website or head over to ebay. This one finishes on the 6th of April. And remember, if you want to support KNTR but don't think you could use any of the items up for auction, think about Christmas /Holiday / Birthday presents.

Joss' Journal
Will return tomorrow. Is the strike going well, and have the Minions revolted for the last time?

Jayne's monkey is up for grabs...

A spanking good auction!
Those crazy people at Kids Needs to Read have done it again. I've just finished counting the pennies in my piggybank to see what bid I can go to for Mr Sulu's signed photo when they go and put a Terrify'n Space Monkey signed by Adam Baldwin (who played Jayne in Firefly and Serenity) up for auction. Eek! Check out the great piccies of Adam playing with his monkey (I'm trying real hard here to keep a rein on this folks, the temptation to give in to the entendres is building...) on the website. The auction runs from the 24th of March to the 29th of March so you need to hurry on this one. Get off your bunks and get bidding! I'm going to have to resort to looking down the back of the sofas now for fallen cash (wonder if I'll find Anya's necklace while I'm there...?).

Happy Birthday Alyson
And talking of Willow, it's Alyson Hannigan's birthday today. I hope Alexis bought her a brilliant present, preferably one that didn't raise the dead or leave a bad taste in the mouth (...sorry, it's getting late and still on innuendo-overload from Jayne's monkey).

Nathan, Nathan, Nathan...

I haven't got any news about Nathan Fillion, just wanted to mention him. *Breaking news* Actually it's just been announced that he is set to appear in Australia in May at the Firefly Hub convention along with Ron Glass (Book) and Jason Palmer (artist). Not heard anything more about Dr Horrible as yet, but I think we will hear something very soon.

Wil's got stamina
I've not mentioned Mr Wheaton for a while. That doesn't mean I haven't been lurking and checking his blog out, though. He seems to have mostly recovered from his sinus work and is back in fine form - no less than 4 separate blog entries today! Makes other, less worthy, blogs seem a bit half-hearted. Wil is the sort of person that you either love or hate, but he sure makes me laugh. And cry a bit, too. If you are not a fan of coarse language skim over the naughty bits, it's worth your while. And if you still harbour resentments over Wesley Crusher we've covered that - grow up already!

Woody's gone to bed
That's all for today, folks. Kinda tired and out of words. If you've made it this far down, let me know by posting a comment. Seriously.

It's a biege alert

Do fans of 'The Exorcist' have re-enactment parties?
Hubby asked this question today as we cleared the fountain of vomit one of our offspring had hurtled all over the landing. It's an interesting question and one for which we might never have the answer. As for the carrots....

Geek is the word
For light relief I found myself perusing the 'Dear Margo' pages. It always cheers me up to read about the problems of others and I do not in any way feel guilty about that. It's part of the human condition. Some of the questions are heart-felt indeed, and obviously one can hardly not be moved by some of the terrible predicaments people find themselves in, so I don't always laugh. I was happily reading away when I came across a letter entitled 'Computer nerds are people too!' (scroll down the page to find it). In it the writer complains that he knows plenty of great guys in computer-based jobs who fail to find women because once women know they are in that line of work they stop being interested. The letter ends with the writer advising single women to go to a Star Trek or comic book convention because there "are plenty of single men with great jobs who are just aching to meet a nice woman."

Is the word that you heard
Margo, in her wisdom (and I do think her answers are generally spot on), seems to think that it is not necessarily the job that puts women off because even funeral directors get dates. But she does wish the nerds well in their bid to find dates, which is encouraging. I'm going to refrain from any other opinion on the matter for fear of bias, but I'd be interested in what you have to say (and by that I mean for goodness sake someone make a comment!).

The XX factor
But what about the female geek? How do they get on with dating? Clearly having brains and possibly glasses does not always guarantee prom-queen (that's PROM) popularity but I never had a problem finding a date. Maybe because I had brothers and found it easy to talk to boys. I didn't suffer from the shyness say, Willow, in Buffy had. Most guys worth talking to are actually interested in women who have an opinion on technical stuff. This was beautifully realised in the scene in the 'Firefly' episode 'Shindig' where Kaylee (who can be thought of as a mechanics geek) starts out at a posh party (shindig) as the butt of the popular girls' jokes but ends up surrounded by men hanging on her every word as she details the pros and cons of the 80-04 (space craft?). *Sigh*. Joss knows how to tell 'em.

Call me 'yu bun duh'
Anyhoo, got to dash. Need to be ready to deploy the mop and bucket at a moment's notice.

P.S. 'Shindig' is also the episode where Kaylee calls Cap'n Mal 'Captain Tightpants'. Yes, indeed....

News from the 'Verse

I don't wanna explode!
Ok, so far not much about Firefly, Serenity, Buffy, Angel or even Joss. What's going on? Well lots, just I'm a little shy. If I tell you too much then that's like sticking your head (or other bodypart) over the top so it might get shot off. But then again, that one other person who read the blog that wasn't me might get upset if I don't write something soon. Probably.

A leaf on the wind.
Firefly was cancelled in 2002, 5 years before I saw it. There were differences in opinion between the show's creator Joss Whedon and Fox, the episodes were shown out of sequence and some of the completed episodes were never aired. Maybe you've never seen it or the film it eventually spawned, Serenity. That would be a real shame, because both are excellent. Really, really, on lots of levels and planes, excellent. Joss Whedon, who created Buffy and Angel (and so much more) was surprised by how vocal the fans were when the series was pulled. The fans were so active, in fact, that a follow-up film, Serenity, was released by Whedon and Universal Pictures in 2005.

I read a poem. Try not to faint.
So what? Weeell, it's hard to say. Mr Whedon has said that he would revisit the Firefly/Serenity 'Verse but that funding and timing are the major issues. Plus he has a new TV series in the pipeline with Eliza Dushku ('Faith' from Buffy) called 'Dollhouse' that's supposed to be out this September. But I really loved this series and I would really like to see it return to TV. Which it will be doing this Monday! The SciFi Channel are doing screening back to back episodes (spotted on the http://www.fireflyfans.net/ website). Not quite the same as a new series, but hopefully will attract some new converts.



You can't take the sky from me
So hope flies eternal. It would be a great shame if Firefly didn't have another TV or cinema outing, but stranger things have happened. And the fan sites are there and growing. And Steven Brust has just published a Firefly novel that's available to download from http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html which I've just started to read and looks to be very promising. So in the interests of science (I am a nerd and a geek) I took a quick look at the Google search stats for Firefly, Buffy, Angel and, as a comparison, Star Wars.

Google search results

Search phrase	Type: all the words	Type: exact phrase
Firefly tv series	362, 000	16, 600
Buffy tv series	474, 000	12, 600
Angel tv series	2, 340, 000	26, 400
Star wars tv series	1, 040, 000	49, 000
Star wars movie	5, 930, 000	1, 780, 000
Serenity	39, 000, 000	39, 000, 000
Serenity movie	234, 000	66, 500

(thanks to Blogger tips and tricks for help on table formatting! http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/2007/06/avoid-large-white-space-above-table-in.html)

Tomorrow, we will postulate on what the figures mean, but for now - not even 6 million pages for Star Wars movie? The shame!

numfar, do the dance of shame.........

Ever feel like you're out of step with, like, everything? Apparently, when I wasn't looking, the following happened:

Joss Whedon (bow, you dogs!) had a show murdered by Fox.

I bought the Firefly box for Xmas and was completely blown away by it. I knew Joss was Boss through Buffy and Angel, but I couldn't believe that this series had been killed. The worse part is that is was cancelled in 2002! How did I not know? 5 years? I had heard a few comments on other websites but being based in the UK until very recently it had slipped me by. So now I have got to become a Browncoat - but am I too late?

Wil Wheaton started blogging, then apparently stopped
Look, say what you will about the CHARACTER Wesley Crusher (and believe me, I hated that CHARACTER as much as the next geek), I hope I never really believed that the ACTOR was anything like that. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

And what a witty guy Will turned out to be when I saw his blog on Wil Wheaton dot NET. His description of Star Wars Ubernerds queueing outside the wrong cinema in protest of the non-screening of 'Revenge of the Sith' still has me laughing ( see http://www.wilwheaton.net/mt/archives/003246.php). But guess what? It looks like that site hasn't been updated since 2005.

Still, he was also working for suicidegirls apparently, so I looked that up and 'horror!' he got the boot in Dec 2007 sonogo there.

England are not playing in the World Cup this year
Actually, I was all too aware of that, but it still sucks anyway. And yes, they play FOOTBALL, not soccer. Except they haven't been playing it very well. At all.

What else have I missed?
Now I'm a bit worried. I used to know all about geekdom, what was cool (relatively speaking), what was good, what I shouldn't waste my time on. But I must have taken my eye off the ball at some stage because there is so much I don't know - and even worse - lots of it happened a long time ago.

I need help
That much is obvious, but not for the reasons you're thinking (come on now, I could hear you from here!). What don't I know that I should? Why didn't I know about it? How can I make sure that I do know about it in the future without chaining myself to the 'net 24/7 (not necessarily a bad thing, but I got other stuff to do, too)?

I don't want to miss the last geek bus home so this is my SOS.

I need you to tell me what I didn't know about what's going on in the world that matters most - cybergeekspace.