Month: August 2004

And yes, we’re going to be tough on spoilers this time. Why do you think we shrinkwrapped the book?

Tom Galloway pointed out this item from the Boston Herald:

“A Paris Street man was out strolling with his dog in Thursday night’s gentle rain when a woman appeared from the gloom with the unorthodox pickup line, “I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer!”
To prove her point, she threatened him with a 12-inch wooden stake. She missed her mark, prompting the would-be blood donor’s faithful hound to give chase. The dog didn’t get to sink its teeth in and police could not locate the witchy woman, which is probably one collar they and the brave pooch could do without.”

This is an example of lousy reportage. First, calling her a “witchy woman” is silly since Willow was the witch. And second, it should be clear that it wasn’t REALLY Buffy for the obvious reason that, if it were, the guy would–well–be dead. Tragically, a call to Wolfram and Hart could have clarified the situation, but with Angel no longer connected to them, they might not have been forthcoming.

PAD

What’s that, you say? When asked what’s the most recent sequel film that Stan the Man appears in, you say “Spider-Man 2?”

More fool you.

Stan told me about it at San Diego, but said he wasn’t sure it was going to be in the final print. So I didn’t want to say anything until I saw it myself. But yes, by gosh, folks who sit through “Princess Diaries 2” and actually remain conscious until the last twenty minutes will see Stan himself trading bon mots with Julie Andrews. His character makes a ham-handed, strangely accented pass at Andrews’ queenly character, punctuated by loud “Whoop whoop whoop” noises. The flummoxed Andrews is informed by the young woman accompanying Stan, “Please excuse my Uncle. He learned all his English from watching Three Stooges movies.”

Personally, I think the film needed much more Stan. But Ariel liked it, as did the movie audience which was almost entirely little girls and their moms, so I hardly think I was the target audience.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

PAD

We’re allowing people to post comments without registering with TypeKey, thanks to the hard work of Jay Allen and MT-Blacklist.

Here’s hoping it works. If it does, we can go back to the way it was, where everybody was posting with wild abandon and flamewars started daily and bandwidth was being consumed at an ungodly rate…

…uh, Peter, are we sure we want to do this again?

Anybody remember the details of that long-ago published story? Because I sure don’t, but I don’t have a copy handy, and I don’t want to duplicate any major story beats.

PAD

Well, I predicted months ago that Bush would announce a troop pullout right around the time of the GOP national convention to try and take the sting out of the situation in Iraq. What I didn’t see coming was that he would pull them out of places where people weren’t shooting at them.

The statement he gave was, “Our service members will have more time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career.” Now I’ve got no problem with this. Pulling troops out from Cold War posts when the Cold War has thawed is a sensible, reasonable thing to do.

The question left open is, is he going to milk the “Our boys are coming home” cow for the convention and then keep them home once they’re here (a process that will take a year or two)? Or, once re-elected, is he looking to turn around and ship them off to Iraq? Is it short-term popularity gain, long-term planning to replace dying Americans…or neither? Or both?

PAD

Since Marvel has announced the upcoming new “What If” series at Chicago, I figure there’s no harm in letting you guys know that I’ll be writing the Hulk installment, “What if General Ross Had Been Hit by the Gamma Bomb.” When I was approached about doing a What If contribution, I just really wanted to go back to the beginning; give it that original Marvel Age feel. I’m probably even going to break the story up into chapters (in the same issue) as they did in the early days.

PAD