The Vampire Slayer Diaries: Epilogue & Prologue

Exactly one year has passed since I mentioned on this blog the impending launch of Nikki Stafford's Great Buffy Rewatch over at her blog, Nik at Nite. The exercise in entertainment and insight ended this past week, as our group viewing of and conversations about the seven seasons of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer — including, for some of us, the first four of five seasons of spinoff series Angel — drew to a close.

Uncanned X-Pun

Why can't the X-Men use Twitter?



Because you're limited to 140 characters.

I've been holding onto that one at least since the X-Men: First Class movie came out.

And if anyone knows a better graphic to run here than the above stuffed-but-not-stuffed-enough shot that looks to have been drawn by Carlos Pacheco (inker, colorist, and source unknown), they're more than welcome to tip me off to it.

Image copyright year of production, and featuring characters who are trademarks of, Marvel Comics.

Muppet Monday 12/26

When these posts began their avowed purpose was to make sure the blog had some content while my attention was mostly directed elsewhere, stoking my own and hopefully my readers' enthusiasm for the new Muppet movie.



Of course these past few months have ended up being among the busiest on the blog, not only in terms of posts posted but viewers viewing them — which is one reason why I decided to keep the new content flowing with more than just Muppet Monday stuff, but that too, even after the movie opened. I'll share some further thoughts on bloggy business in a couple of weeks; right now I'm wrapping up this volley of Muppet Monday with one last round of links.

Here's a list of seven sites for Muppet lovers interested in further exploration, most official and most mentioned on the blog before.

Stocking Stuff

Christmas is here. As always, I wish you a day of peace — and family, and tradition, and fun. My grab-bag of goodies is especially full of music this year.

I heard a very clever parody of The B-52s' "Love Shack" called "Toy Sack" on WXPN the other day. Bob Rivers apparently wrote and recorded the ditty for his 1997 album More Twisted Christmas. His version is on Vimeo set to holiday lights at the preceding link.


photo © 2011 Brian Saner Lamken

This year the winter holidays have been a bit different for my family. We had a bunch of cousins move up here to the Philadelphia suburbs from South Florida this past summer, bringing with them an annual tradition of doing Christmas big, whereas usually I either try to visit my father in New Jersey or hang out with friends if I'm able to get out at all. Last weekend there were almost twenty of us decorating cookies; the menorah with the blue background at the bottom of the photo up there and the Christmas tree right above it are both mine, paying homage to my interfaith heritage.

I Melt with You

Gelt is the Yiddish word for money. You almost exclusively hear it today in the context of "Chanukah gelt" — unless you know people who routinely speak Yiddish and talk about money. In older times, parents and wealthy community members might give money to children at Chanukah, but now kids mostly get presents and Chanukah gelt mostly comes in the form of foil-wrapped, coin-shaped chocolate.

My Chanukah this year, as you can see above, has been full of melt.

Projections

The last three movies I saw were about movies. And one of the next ones I see probably will be too, as The Artist is opening soon at my local art-house theater. I came to this realization walking out of a screening of My Week with Marilyn the other day, my last cinematic indulgences having been Hugo and The Muppets.

Fired Up

Right in time for Chanukah...

I'm not gonna say it's a miracle. Over the past couple of days, though, I was finally able to get up some blog posts that I've been trying to publish properly since the start of the month. So, y'know, it's no oil lasting in the Temple for eight days, but I'm happy about it.

Muppet Monday 12/19

Jimmy Fallon returned to Saturday Night Live this weekend — and so did Horatio Sanz, Tracy Morgan, and Chris Kattan, to help him close out 2011 with a rendition of their old standard "Christmas Is Number One".


Screencap © 2004 NBCUniversal.

The last time the song was performed on the show, seven years ago, Sanz was the only one of the four still in the cast, and stopped the tune almost before it had begun when he realized there was nobody to back him up. Until, that is, Kermit the Frog popped up to tell Horatio that his friends would happy to join in... Here's the video from this past Saturday, to jog your memory, and the 2004 clip with the Muppets.

Muppet Monday 12/12

Screencap © 2011 Disney.

Given that last week's installment was another long one — also that I've had trouble posting, with both that and this going up late — I thought I'd keep today's Muppet Monday brief. A music video for the song "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets (performed by the new Muppet, Walter, and Jason Segel as his human brother Gary) has been released with clips from other parts of the film interspersed with the song's scene in the movie. For those who've seen The Muppets, the song is a treat to revisit, but for those who haven't seen it and plan to there are some surprises spoiled — like what's probably the funniest cameo in the film, even if like me you don't actually watch the show that made the actor in question famous.

Ghosts in the Machine

Whether you're fortunate enough to still be in touch with your sense of wonder or have lost it and thought it never to be regained, I beseech you: See Hugo.



Directed by Martin Scorsese from John Logan's screenplay, based on Brian Selznick's acclaimed book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo is 126 minutes long. About 120 of those minutes are pure cinematic nirvana. I'm almost mad, yet also strangely relieved, that no matter how many films I see as this stacked season progresses — and no matter that it's difficult to compare movies of wildly different styles, aims, and approaches — I've clearly seen the most fascinating, most captivating movie of the year (unless, somewhat ironically given their subject matter, The Artist ends up matching it).

I haven't yet read Selznick's book, although I plan to do so before I see the movie again, so I can't say how faithful the film is to it. I can only tell you that Scorsese has delivered a masterpiece.

41 Favorites: #5

The look at some of my favorite things begun last year after my 40th birthday is finally continuing. Now, though, it's 41 Favorites, since I took over a year off after my last post; I'm going to try to wrap it up before I turn 42.



My fifth favorite thing in alphabetical order of the bunch that I spitballed last October is the music of Edie Brickell.

Muppet Monday 12/5

Above is a neat homage to the iconic, oft-mimicked Robert Freeman photograph used on the cover to 1963's With The Beatles and early the next year for the US release Meet The Beatles! It's from a recent Parade article titled "Meet the Muppets (Again!)" — which is also the general theme of this post.

Cover Album: Marvel's 25th

I'll have the rest of the Fantastic Four #1 Cover Album up as soon as possible. First I wanted to run a gallery of the covers celebrating Marvel's 25th anniversary before November 2011 got too far behind us — because last month was, ignoring the discrepancy between on-sale dates and cover dates, the 25th anniversary of that 25th anniversary. A special border appeared on issues of most ongoing series published by Marvel Comics dated November 1986, surrounding a head shot of a (if not the) lead character of each series.


cover to Marvel Age #44 [AW]

As noted in the first post of the aforementioned Cover Album quartet, Marvel traces not only its main fictional universe but the very existence of Marvel Comics to the debut of Fantastic Four. Yes, Marvel Comics #1 hit the streets in 1939, with — The Grand Comics Database's relatively new brand-tracking field shows — the word "Marvel" appearing on covers in some context across the line as early as 1946. The publisher was still largely known within the industry as Timely, however, even during the years commonly referred to as the Atlas era. A little box with the initials "MC" began showing up as of June cover dates in 1961, several months before FF #1, and remained through the first dozen issues of Fantastic Four before the first version of the "Marvel Comics Group" label was finally introduced.

Just to keep things confusing, in between celebrating its 25th anniversary back in 1986 and its 50th anniversary this month, Marvel also marked its 70th anniversary — counting from Marvel Comics #1, Timely Publications' entry into the comics field — in 2009.

Yucky and Mean

Due to me being under the weather, some posts that should be up are getting delayed even further. Here to start the month off with some fun is the lucky 17th edition of the word-verification definitions that I leave when commenting on other blogs, starting with a seasonal one that's been gathering virtual dust until the holidays came back around. You can find an explanation of what's going on here and a collection of all the definitions to date on the phenomenon's dedicated page, "The Mean Streak".

• adynog — [ad ee nahg] n. (Spanglish) Having promotional material in one hand, a traditional Yuletide drink in the other.

• britend — [brit end] n. 1. A bum (not a panhandler; a tush, a fanny, the buttocks region) in Merry Olde England. 2. Farthest point of the United Kingdom's territorial waters in the English Channel or Atlantic Ocean.

• colifou — [koh ly foo] n. French bacteria strain that takes your sanity.

• copone — 1. [kop wun] v. Get handsy. 2. [koh pohn] v. Make cornbread in tandem.

• Exhiali — [eks hee ah lee] Alien race of heavy breathers.

• Flumenta™ — [floo men tuh] The first FDA-approved treatment for psychic influenza.

• grizato — [grih zah toh] n. Italian ice cream made from brown bears. [No animals were actually harmed in the creation of this definition.]