Standing On Boxes

I’d planned on working on my Bond crossover… and it didn’t happen. I puttered around on the B/W Season 1 episode rewrite… but I’m not getting anywhere fast with that. Once I finish that one… I don’t think I’ll attempt any other episode rewrites… it takes more planning than I expected it would if I don’t want to just rewrite the episode.

If I change something then a lot of other things change… I’ve kept a few key points but pretty much the rest of the episode/season has to be different…

Some things I’m thinking about…

• I’m keeping the season villain (The Master) – but I’m not sure how to work him into the rewritten episodes yet.

• If Willow is gay 4 seasons early… then the whole Bronze scene where she wanders off with that vampire and Buffy and Xander follow to the crypt… doesn’t work. But I’ve kept A scene at the Bronze as the point where Willow and Xander find out about real vampires and Buffy rescues them.

• And somehow we need an event that starts Xander on his “I Hate Vampires” path – but does Jesse have to die or become a vampire for that to happen?

• And then there’s Giles – in canon it takes him much too long to outgrow that ‘Watcher knows best’ brainwashing… (and even then he still has that kind of attitude – but he doesn’t revert to it until Season 7) – so let’s fix that. Let’s have a more clueful Giles here.

• And the warning about the “Harvest” that Angel passes along… let’s do something different… but how do Buffy and Co. find out about it in time to stop them? Who does Angel tell instead? A note slipped under a door?

• Let’s throw Dawn into the mix… it makes the other changes easier to accomplish.

• No, Joyce isn’t going to be clued in about the vampires and slayers yet… I know it’s been done that way before… but not in my story. She wouldn’t be happy when she finds out…

• Does Angel become Angelus the following year? And how does that happen if we’ve hooked Buffy up with Willow by then (Or will we ? Just because Willow knows she is gay doesn’t mean they’ll get together that soon (if ever). ) I’ve seen the Judge used to separate Angel from his soul – so that’s been done. Not sure if there is an original way to do it… or not do it at all… not that it matters since I won’t be rewriting anything past Season 1.

So many things need to be different… for the story to really work…

And I just rewatched the two episodes this is centered around… and the Buffy and Willow I’m writing just seem too mature compared to how they are portrayed in those episodes…

Why yes, I did spend 2 hours at McKay Used Books (on Papermill in Knoxville) today. 6 books (5 Signet paperback editions of Ian Fleming James Bond novels ($3.75/total), a book of short stories (hardcover) for $6 and a movie (LoEG for $6.95).

And then I drove over to my favorite cheap grocery to get foodstuffs for the long weekend… and now I’m back…

The Bravo cable channel has a three part show – “Ultimate Super Heroes, Ultimate Super Villains, Ultimate Super Vixens” (an hour each) on tonight/tomorrow. Narrated by Adam West. You have to wonder who picked them. They seem to have lots of clips from movies that aren’t out yet… and movies that bombed… and you have to wonder about their experts…

And the “Entertainment Weekly” review is correct… all the clips with actors/actresses who played the characters in movies/tv are old… and obviously promo material filmed way back when…

And for some of the movies… all they have are bits of trailer… you have to wonder which movie advertising company paid for this “thing” – Marvel? Most of the movie clips are with Marvel comic book characters… including the new Fantastic Four movie that isn’t out yet…

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Apparently they couldn’t find enough female super heroes for their “Ultimate Super Vixens” Top 20 show so they also dragged in a few “evil” villianesses like #19 Mystique… (Hence the show title – ‘Vixen’ covers good and bad with sexual connotations.)

But #20 “Barbed Wire”, #18 “Red Sonja”, and #17 “Barbarella” ?

And #14 “Felicity Shagwell” (Heather Graham in “Austin Powers and the Spy Who Shagged me.”)

And #10 Breathless Mahoney, who made it on their list JUST because she was played by Madonna in the Dick Tracy movie. And yes, the narrator (Adam West) did say that.

Who picked them? And what’s with all the clips from Daredevil?

Okay… now that the lame ones are out of the way… some other interesting choices…
(Not necessarily in order…)… very few of whom I would classify as super heroes…

#16 Elektra	(Jennifer Gardner in the movie)
#15 Mrs. (Emma) Peele	(Diana Rigg) (No interview/clip)
#13 Storm	(played by Halle Berry in her first character on the list.)
#12 The Bride	(Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill” – the 2nd character on the list she played)
#11 Jamie Summers – The Bionic Woman	(Lindsay Wagner) (No interview clip?!)
#9 Princess Leia	(Carrie Fisher)
Wonder Woman	(Lynda Carter in the series)
Charlie’s Angels	(Huh? Do they get 1 or 3 entries)
#6 Ripley	(Sigourney Weaver)
#5 Xena
#4 Lara Croft
#3 Buffy
#2 The Bond Girls	(Isn’t that cheating?)
#1 Catwoman	(Okay… based on the other women who made it onto the list – she deserves to be on this list – but not #1. Especially after that Halle Berry atrocity )

Oh well… at least Lara and Buffy made it into the top 5…

But where is Max (Jessica Alba in ‘Dark Angel’) – I wasn’t a fan of the show after the 1st season but she was more of a “super vixen” than some who made it. Jessica Alba getting screen time during the Super Hero segment on the Fantastic Four isn’t quite the same thing. Must have been a promotional thing… at least they didn’t give all the spots to current pop favorites like most Top 20 shows do.

I’m currently working on the next two parts of “Bond Girls” but it’s going very slowly even though I have a good idea how they’ll go.

From looking at the referrer logs for my blog… someone worked their way though one of my stories today… all of it (It’s 50K+ words)… and not a single comment?

No… that isn’t actually a surprise… it’s a surprise when someone DOES comment.

This week, P and T take on Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and the Dali Llama…

Ouch!

New air compressor belt… a good thing.. it’s starting to get warm out around here…

Replacement hinge for door that covers gas cap. (A victim of my last trip). It was being held on by duct tape)

Front brakes next…

Last week was an oil change and leaky washer fluid tank replaced…

Many other things to go this summer… we’re now at the 11 year/130K mile maintenance stage…

Some sub-titled movie on Showtime -

Kunoichi: Lady Ninja

some Japanese nuns (Not sure which religion – Buddhist?) get help from a one eyed ninja to get revenge for the deaths of some other nuns.

The above is from the tv info… I haven’t quite been following the story… doesn’t make much sense even with the sub-titles.

Some nudity (the ninja girls/nuns and other women keep losing their shirts)… and some kind of “magic” (They like announcing their magical attacks – like it’s an episode of Pokemon – “Ninja magic blah blah blah”)

“You forgot something…” One-eyed samurai to one of the villains after chopping his right arm off…

I’m getting too old for this kind of nonsense…

Someone over on alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer took offense at my response to their response to something I said… and attacked me. Seemed to be insulted that I didn’t think their “joke” was that funny… my response contained just a single smiley. Which I thought was appropriate since they didn’t include any and assumed everyone would know exactly what they were trying to say was supposed to be a joke…

Ahh… some people seem to have only extreme reactions to things…

Not sure why.

In the abstract… I don’t care other than it annoys me when someone immediately resorts to petty insults when someone doesn’t respond the way they want to something they said.

Personally? I don’t appreciate being attacked for no discernible reason… unless they were offended that I said I wasn’t a “Spike worshiper” ? Nah…

Probably one of those clique things… some people feel entitled to insult anyone they don’t know… and feel morally superior to… which leads to a very hostile environment…

One of those people where, if you aren’t part of their little group… and you respond to one of their messages in an open forum… they jump all over you… for having the audacity to think you can participate. Driving out anyone who doesn’t want to play along…

So… not wanting to play those kinds of reindeer games… I’ve kill-filed that topic and that person… let them feel superior… I’ve done my venting here… unless they wander by here or someone tells them they’ll never know that I’ve stopped listening… let them think they “won”…

And now I feel much better… but I’m still annoyed at having to resort to kill filing someone because they attack and I don’t feel like dealing with it…

Must be old age creeping up on me… 10 years ago I would have stayed in the conversation and attacked back… now-a-days I try to hang out with people who are more civil.

You’ll notice that I don’t say what conversation/thread annoyed me… it actually doesn’t matter… I just needed to rant/vent without making things worse…

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Okay… I went back and peeked… the explanation seems to be that the person thinks I was attacking HER response to my response… I’m not sure why she thinks that… and that my response just wasn’t funny…

That’s okay… it wasn’t supposed to be “funny”… just amusing… guess it was too subtle. Which is probably my fault… my subtle humour tends to get missed by a lot of people… I guess I should have been more blatantly humourous.

And if my comments were seen as an attack and rude? … wow… I couldn’t even think of a response to that… so I didn’t… and left well enough alone… before I made things worse…

I don’t remember ordering an argument…

Finding errors in my BtVS/Bond crossover as posted on TtH (As I was preparing it to post on alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer.creative).

In pt 2:

I used the word “taked” (which isn’t even proper English so I’m not sure why it got past my spelling checker) instead of “taken” and no one said anything!

And after posting it… I found a misspelled word! After I posted it to USENet. I DO spell-check things… not sure how that happened

Argh!

In Pt. 3 –

- In one place I have Buffy and Dawn returning from Rome before Christmas, in another spot – after. Oops.

Fixed:TtH, here. – not sure I’ll bother with ff.net – maybe when I add the next part. Can’t really fix the error in the USEnet copy.

Not that I think anyone bookmarked it… but I’ve moved the page with my eBooked stories to stories/eBooks/ to make them easier to bookmark .

Pepe the Shrimp in Disney’s Wizard of Oz tv movie just as they’re about to enter the Emerald city. A few funny lines and classic muppet craziness but…

The cast:

• Dorothy Gale – Ashanti

  Cute but no Judy Garland (or even Fairuza Balk (who played Dorothy in the last Disney take – “Return to Oz“)

• Toto – Pepe
• Scarecrow – Kermit
• Tinman – Gonzo
• Cowardly Lion – Fozzy Bear
• Wicked Witches – Miss Piggy
• Poppy fields – a night club – the band is “Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem”
• Sam the Eagle – doorman for the city
• Scooter, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Scooter – all work for the Wizard.
• Flying monkeys – critters on flying Harley’s

And assorted regular muppet types.. see IMdb for details?

I’ve added a link to eBooks of my fics on my fanfic page. Only a couple ‘works in progress’ there so far…. But I’m working on it. I played with the demo version of the Palm eBookShop application (for Mac). Not impressed. Sure, you don’t have to know the format tags to use to do something… it’s all point and click… but the default font… kind of ugly. And the whole thing feels like something I might have used 20 years ago on my old Atari ST… and they want $30 for it?

The topic? “The Traditional Family” – apparently something invented in the 50′s by Hollywood to sell tv shows like “Ozzy and Harriet” (Sounds like a heavy metal band)

And the who and where – That would be Penn Jillette on the Penn and Teller show “Bullshit” on Showtime… talking about certain people using bad statistics and studies to prove a point…

The right-wing types: “This study says… blah, blah, blah. And no one has done a good study on that….”

The people who have done actual studies on this topic say “Sorry, you are wrong. We’ve been studying these things for 10-20 years.”

Can we just guess how Pen and Teller approached the topic? They don’t like people who make things up, especially when a little honest research will prove it.

Need I say more? Okay… it was funny if a little cruel towards the people they don’t agree with. Too bad the people who could benefit the most from this kind of show are the people most likely to NOT watch it…

Not trying to be too vague. Just don’t want to get into a discussion about this topic here…

The new fic, the one I shouldn’t be working on because I have so many others that need my time, is going in fits and starts…. I don’t think I’m going to be rewriting the entire first season any time soon. Trying to write it differently but still hit all of the major plot points so it is recognizable isn’t easy.

Need to finish plotting out “The Bond Girls” (notice the slight title change?) and get it under way this weekend.