Okay…if I did this right, then you should be seeing the Mike Kaluta painting for the first issue of “The Fallen Angel.” It’s slightly darker than the actual printed version will be, but it gives you an idea.

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Well, I was fooled by recent episodes of both “Buffy” and “Angel.” Both did so with bad writing, but in one case, it was “bad” writing, and it was so “bad” it was good.

So Giles isn’t the First. Oookay. The problem is, I theorized he was the First because it was the best explanation for bad writing. Now it turns out he’s tangible. Which leaves us with no explanation as to why no one has touched him, or hugged him, or shaken his hand. No explanation as to why he didn’t try to haul Buffy out. What explanation do we have at present? Ha ha, got’cha, made you think he was the First. Problem is, it’s easy to fool people using bad writing. Is there some further twist? He’s not the First, but instead he’s…what? Giles, except he’s just been out of character for five weeks.

Once upon a time, BTVS would lead you to think one thing was going to happen, and then something else utterly unexpected does. In this case alert fans were led to believe Giles was the First, except actually he’s…not. If that’s where it’s left, then it was a pointless red herring for no reason other than to have a red herring. Which is pretty fishy.

Now “Angel,” on the other hand, continues to get it right. At the end of last week’s episode, I was furious to realize the previous 45 minutes had been mere hallucination. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized they’d played fair. Any number of times during the episode, I was amazed and annoyed how everything seemed to fall conveniently into place. I even thought at one point, “This is all too perfect” without once putting it together. Would I have accepted the notion that the Shaman could just have waved his hands and boom, Angel’s soul is gone? Sure. We all did in the 3rd season episode where Buffy and Angel hosed Faith. The fact that it was a hosing was beside the point. But the producers obviously want to stick to the Gypsy curse and maintain that *only* a moment of perfect happiness loses the soul. Okay, fair enough, especially since he’s never lost it any other way. And that being the case, the way they staged it was right on the money. What seemed to be bad writing as one convenient thing after another occurred, and each bit of character conflict was too tidily resolved, turned out to be a major “got’cha.” I admit it: I was had. Should’ve seen it coming; didn’t. Nicely done. Everything that “Buffy” does wrong, “Angel” does right.

If only the two series were produced by the same people…

By the way, this week’s episode–“Angelus of the Lambs”–absolutely rocked. When Cordy came downstairs, I was dying for Angelus to purr, “Hello, Clarice…”

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…to the byline. This is Peter, back on line. Unfortunately, I can’t get Kath’s name out of the heading. Should have that straightened out in a day or so.

I’m back from the woefully underattended Creation Con in Pasadena. Expecting between two to three thousand people, they pulled in perhaps 800 attendees on Saturday. On Friday and Sunday, you could have fired off a cannon in the dealer’s room and hit only frustrated dealers. This was a convention that included Stan Lee, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, both Romitas, Russ Heath, and scores of others. I’m not sure whether it had to do with promotion, ticket prices, or the spiralling market.

Surreal moment #1: Driving to a Saturday morning business breakfast in LA, putting on the radio to hear traffic reports, and the first words out of the radio were, “shuttle debris.” And I thought, Oh, this can’t be good.

Surreal moment #2: Doug Murray, who spearheaded my coming out to the convention, pointing out to me some of the notables attending the convention, drew my attention to a leggy, gorgeous blonde. “That’s Lana Clarkson,” he said. “She’s an actress. She was in “Amazon Women on the Moon.” Barely 24 hours later, I would hear she’d been found lying in a pool of blood on the floor of Phil Spector’s mansion after being picked up by him at the House of Blues in LA.

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Hello, and welcome to Buffy Talk. I’m your host, Glenn Hauman. Again, filling in for Peter David, who, thank God, is on his very last day of visiting the left coast, because he’s getting shpilkes in his genecktageesoink. No big whoop.

Since I don’t know when Peter’s getting back, or when he’s going to be caught up watching all his videotapes and all the blonde shiksas on 24 and we all know how farklempt you get if you don’t talk about Buffy, I figured I’d give you a place to do so.

Talk amongst yourselves. Here’s a topic– last night’s episode, “The Killer In Me”, was neither a killer, nor me. Discuss.

Peter will be taking back up his blog tomorrow. Here is a subject near and dear to my heart.

The Muppets have been up for sale for a while. EM.TV has had them on the block for over a year. It looked like a deal was about to be struck and now it seems dead. Some of the other companies that were looking at obtaining the frog and company including Disney have withdrawn their offers. Then there is SciFi’s decision about not producing the 5th season of Farscape which is a whole other can of worms.

All this is very frustrating to long time Muppet Fans. I should know. I am one.

I started watching the Muppets when they were on Sesame Street. I already had a fondness for puppets that, according to my mother, goes back to the age of two with a set of Wizard of Oz puppets that were bundled with Downey Fabric Softener. But I digress. Then came the Muppet Show, which I think is one of the most brilliant TV shows ever. My siblings and I can still quote large chunks of sketches from those shows. I became a Muppet Fan. Jim Henson had a big effect on my life. I would not be the puppeteer I am today without the Muppets. I can’t imagine a world without Muppets, but I may if this whole mess with EM.TV is not sorted out. The Sesame Street characters are owned by the Children’s Television Workshop and are not part of the deal.

People talk about “Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth” as movies that changed movie making and what is possible. Jim Henson had a HECK of a time getting the financing together for those films. One of the reasons he did the deal with Disney was to get some financial security for his company.

But all is not doom and gloom. FOX is still talking about doing a new Muppet Show based on the old one. Time Life is releasing the old Muppet show on VideoTape and DVD. Pallisades has some rocking action figures available with more on the way. Hot Topic and other teen trend stores and catalogues have Muppet related stuff for sale. There is talk of more Muppet movies on the drawing board.

I’ll cross my fingers that when the dust settles the company that Jim Henson started is owned by those who know and care about my favorite felt and fun fur friends.

Peter is having a grand time out in California at the convention.

He’ll probably tell you all about it either here or in the CBG down the road. So I am not going to post anything related to his trip. I am going to post something about conventions and my experience over the years going to conventions.

I attended my first Science Fiction convention when I was 14. It was a local one day convention called MiniCon. It had authors of both comics and books, a movie room, and a dealers room. The dealers room was an eye opener for me. I didn’t know that there was that much STUFF related to my hobbies or that many people interested in the same subjects I was. I also got my first autograph in a book. It was Michael Bishop and I still own the book. From that point on, I went to conventions.

My first out of state convention was a ChattaCon where I made new friends there that are friends to this day. Some of them even came to my wedding. I started participating at conventions by volunteering. I was a gopher, badge checker, art show flunky, any job that needed doing I did. Somewhere in there I started costuming and it snowballed into running costume contests. Eventually I agreed, for better or worse, to be the Tech Director for DragonCon. It was an education to say the least. Along the way I met a lot of really great people and made some cool friends including my husband (I think I’ll save the “how we met” story for another day. We met at a convention.)

Now I go to conventions as a professional since I am an associate editor at Del Rey Books and work on the Star Wars series with Shelly Shapiro. It is possible to make your hobbies and interests into a full time job and conventions helped me to get where I am today.