Okay, I may still be posting semi-regularly to the BMT, but only short replies, and I haven't really left here. The Truck just always has so much more conversation going on than the Robot, which some of those talkative BMTers couldn't be bothered to ever post to. I'm just more of a replier (is that a word?) than a conversation-starter, especially right now. But I'm here now because now I've got stuff to reply to. And because Steph's psychic vibrations are helping. (Like that one old psychic hotline commercial said, the psychic energy that travels over the phone lines can be even more powerful than in person!) Yay! Am I making sense? I shouldn't get up at 7 in the morning, it just doesn't feel right for me to be awake unless it's all dark outside.

Back when it first came on, I thought Buffy was gonna be just some kid show-ish thing like Rusty said. Once I actually started watching it, what I first really liked was how it was basically the anti-90210. It took all these melodramatic issues that everyone always treats like end-of-the-world life-and-death struggles in those angsty teen shows and parodied them, turning them into over-the-top literal end-of-the-world life-and-death struggles. I think the first episode I saw was the one where Xander falls in with a bunch of kids in "the wrong crowd"--getting into trouble when they turn out to be a gang of evil hyena-people.

I really like the wit and humor and dialogue and characters, and the fact that the show can be deep and meaningful without ever taking itself too seriously. When it all comes down to it, it's a show about simple everyday life, only viewed through a freakishly distorted lens.

In case any of the Buffy fanatics here haven't seen it, the never-aired half-hour Buffy pilot episode is out there on the internet. Basically a shorter and not-as-good version of the first episode, with a different and not-as-cute Willow. I can't remember where I originally found it, but it's probably still easily findable with search engines and stuff.

I still need to get and play that freakin' Buffy game...

I see ol' Dave Lynch got a Best Director nomination for the bald guy statue awards, and Frodo and friends got a bunch of recognition too. At least there's that... but Jimmy Neutron for animated feature??? In a year where Waking Life and Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis were under consideration but didn't get nominated? (Okay, I haven't seen the whole Jimmy Neutron movie, just a few of the short minute-long excerpts that Nickelodeon has shown on TV, but those were horrible and ugly and bad enough to make me want to retch. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which was also eligible but didn't get nominated, looks like friggin' Citizen Kane in comparison...) How much bribe money did Nickelodeon/Viacom have to shell out to the Academy for this? Or was it a case of "OOOOH! They used some o' them fancy schmancy electronic computors to make that movie, so they must really know what they're doing, and that means it has to be rilly good and kewl!"

Good luck on the rest of them test things, Rusty.