From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #719 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, September 23 2008 Volume 16 : Number 719 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Holy Bologna! ["Nectar At Any Cost!" ] Re: Stackenblocken ["Miles Goosens" ] Re: Stackenblocken ["Jeremy Osner" ] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] RE: Stackenblocken ["Bachman, Michael" ] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] Re: Stackerbuffyen [Christopher Gross ] Re: Stackerbuffyen [2fs ] Re: Stackerbuffyen ["(0% rh)" ] Re: Stackenblocken [HSatterfld@aol.com] RE: Stackenblocken ["Bachman, Michael" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia ["kevin studyvin" ] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] Re: Stackerbuffyen [Christopher Gross ] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] Re: Stackenblocken [2fs ] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] Re: Stackerbuffyen [2fs ] Re: Stackerbuffyen [Carrie Galbraith ] Back In The Saddle ["Nectar At Any Cost!" ] Re: Jewels, for Sophia [Rex ] Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons [] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:01:25 -0700 From: "Nectar At Any Cost!" Subject: Holy Bologna! this new mogwai disc is just fucking *pummeling* the ever-lovin' fuckamajig straight out of my dimpled ass. yeah, ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:05:57 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: Stackenblocken Also re: VERONICA MARS... something I both liked and disliked about the show were the abundant '80s references. I mean, those references were smart and I got them and enjoyed them, but they were coming out of the mouths of Veronica, Logan, Wallace, etc., i.e. people playing teenagers in 2004-2007 who wouldn't know that stuff any more than I'd be able to do an accurate Adlai Stevenson imprssion. Since the writers and producers were mostly in that 35-45 demographic, it was stuff *they'd* say and think. So there was this whole anachronistic disconnect, albeit an enjoyable-to-me one. Anyway, back to your original programming. To put things on-topic: though this is largely a theoretical question at this point, since I lack the funds to make it happen, are the Yep Roc boxes worth me doing an upgrade? I have the Rhino reissues, and heck, owned everything on Glass/Midnight CDs (and before that, vinyl) in the first place. If I had large gaps in my collection, they'd be no-brainer wish list items, but as it is, I keep thinking my money is better spent on wholly new-to-me stuff or more dramatic sonic upgrades to other non-Robyn older stuff. What's the FegVerdict? later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:21:14 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > To put things on-topic: though this is largely a theoretical question > at this point, since I lack the funds to make it happen, are the Yep > Roc boxes worth me doing an upgrade? > The "While Thatcher Mauled Britain" disk in the first box set is pretty great. I would say the best way to answer this question would be to look at the track list for that and see what you think. J - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:41:08 -0400 From: "(0% rh)" Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons interesting idea for a list. summer turning to fall is one of my very favourite things. by october, the album on the stereo will be "the days of wine and roses" by the dream syndicate. nothing is fall to me like that album, most especially the song "halloween." i think the mood of that song is much the mood of the entire album. a bit hopeful, a bit scary - foreboding is maybe the word. and go ahead and laugh, but the song "the last good day of the year" by (i assume) one-hit-ish wonder cousteau, for me, is just about the last word on autumn. i'm sure there's at least one belle and sebastian song, but i don't feel like figuring it out right now. actually, i think one of the reasons i love belle and sebastian so much is that they just generally feel like fall to me. as ever, lauren - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:48:42 -0400 From: "Jeremy Osner" Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons Of course you would need to include a couple of tunes by The Fall. And w/o question, "Hey Joe" by The Leaves. J - -- READIN 2.0 http://www.readin.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:49:11 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Stackenblocken - -----Original Message----- From: owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org [mailto:owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Osner Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1:21 PM To: Miles Goosens Cc: fegmaniax Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: >>To put things on-topic: though this is largely a theoretical question >> at this point, since I lack the funds to make it happen, are the Yep >> Roc boxes worth me doing an upgrade? >> >The "While Thatcher Mauled Britain" disk in the first box set is pretty great. I would say the best way to >answer this question would be to look at the track list for that and see what you think. It was an easy choice for me to invest in the Yep Roc boxes as I didn't pop for any of the Rhino reissues in the 90's. I'm keeping all my original cd's though as Robyn has signed all the inserts. Michael B. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:21:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Stackerbuffyen There will be spoilers below for Buffy season 7, just in case anyone here is watching the show but hasn't made it that far. Maybe spoilers for other stuff too. On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Miles Goosens wrote: > I don't think BUFFY's last season will ever be redeemed for me, > though. I was recently thinking about the whole BUFFY/ANGEL run > again, maybe because of the thread here on the comic, and at this > point I'm thinking ANGEL was the superior show. I mean, both were > superawesomely great overall, but it's all because ANGEL just f'in > nailed it in its last few episodes, whereas BUFFY spent S7 in that > weirdo torpor. I sometimes feel that Buffy is the greater show, but Angel is more consistently good. It certainly has disappointing episodes and a couple of truly lame ones, but at least Angel rarely gets into an extended rut. The lame episodes are usually isolated, and the overall plot arc is usually strong enough to carry you past them. Maybe this is because after S1, Angel built its seasonal stories out of nice manageable 3-5 episode sub-arcs, thus making it easier to focus on the story arc when an individual episode goes bad? Anyway, Angel might show a little rut in S1 and again in S5, but there's nothing like the extended wheel-spinning of Buffy S7. Angel never clumps its weaker episodes together the way Buffy S6 did, either. And while Buffy's finale isn't bad by any means, Angel's simply work better on almost every level. > I spent the last couple of months of the show saying to the TV, "why > am I having to watch Buffy and Spike have the umpteenth conversation > about why they're bad for each other? Why is Anya pointlessly bonding > with Andrew? Don't they know that they only have [fill in the number] > episodes left?" To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs, shows are better when > stuff happens. I think the latter is the fundamental problem with S7. The interpersonal drama feels padded and forced in part because there isn't enough overall story to give it context (or simply balance it out). Compare to previous seasons which had just as much relationship drama but better story arcs to go with it. Add to that a feeling of letdown: thoughout the middle of the season, the threat from the First simply never gets as cool or interesting as the ominous catchphrase "From beneath you it devours" initially promised. It doesn't help that the Ubervamps get progressively weaker throughout the season. And they spend too much time in Buffy's house, resulting in a claustrophobic feel long before a horde of extras start hanging out there. Not to say that there weren't problems within the personal drama, either. You mention Buffy and Spike's umpteen conversations about why they aren't right for each other. I think that's part of a larger problem with the writers trying to give the audience as much Spike as possible, without always having a good idea what to *do* with all that Spike-time. Maybe they got lazy, simply dropping another Spike scene (preferrably shirtless) to fill up any extra time, saving them the effort needed to flesh out plots, etc. Or maybe the writing team was split on what they wanted to do with Spike, and each side insisted on having its say. Either way, the result is that the Spike scenes tend to crowd out the other characters without actually doing Spike justice. Even some of his key moments, like his demented monologue at the end of Beneath You or his heart-to-heart with Buffy in Touched, feel overlong and padded to me. But IMO the *worst* part of S7 is the completely unnecessary and indeed harmful introduction of the Shadow Men and the Guardians. I guess they were intended to make the show's feminist message more explicit, but simply showing us more nasty men and good (but notably passive) women is a fairly shallow and lame excuse for feminism. Ugh. The Shadow Men sequence was at least effectively filmed and creepy, while the Guardian scene didn't even have that. That was seriously one of the low points of the entire show, coming right before the finale to boot. (On the other hand, in restrospect I can appreciate all of Buffy's heavy-handed speechifying and dictatorial tendencies through much of the season. They were deliberately showing her as making a lot of leadership mistakes once her "army" suddenly expanded to include a bunch of total strangers. I wouldn't say I dislike S7. There are a few great episodes (CWDP, Selfless) and a lot of very good ones (eg, Help, Storyteller, Bad Girls, Chosen). I'll always remember great moments like Buffy's "It'll choke on me" speech, Robin Wood learning who killed his mother, or a certain popular character's final blaze of glory. But more than any other season of Buffy, the whole of S7 is less than the sum of its parts. > Sometimes I wonder if the show's braintrust thought > they might get Sarah Michelle Gellar to re-up at the last minute, even > though the entire rest of the universe knew she was leaving. > Otherwise, I'm at a total loss for why they chose to fritter away S7 > in such blah fashion. I lean more toward the divided-writing-team theory, myself. I also suspect that Joss, Marti and company had gotten overconfident, figuring that they'd be able to improvise a lot of details (especially about the First) as the season went on, only to find the plotting a lot more difficult than they expected when the time came. A couple of notes on other shows: I enjoyed The X-Files' mythic arc episodes at first, but they came to annoy me in the late 90s. Although Chris Carter's own views are apparently a combination of left-liberal and libertarian, all those conspiracy episodes irresistably reminded me of the far-right "secret UN forces in black helicopters are coming to steal our guns, poison our precious bodily fluids and brand us with the Mark of the Beast" crowd. I agree with everyone who says that Veronica Mars got gradually worse with each season. S1 (which I just rewatched) was clearly the best. I mostly liked the extremely convoluted overall story of S2, but as one of you said, the final revelation was a little hard to swallow. Then S3 suffered from a lack of a compelling overall story. I'll bet the network told Rob Thomas "Hey, the main story really worked in S1, keep that up next year ... no, wait, too much main story in S2, tone that down in S3 ... oops, sorry, you didn't give us a compelling overall story in S3, so we're going to cancel you." Another thing that hurt S3 was the decreased emphasis on the conflict in Neptune between the wealthy oh-niners and everyone else. I'm not some sort of vulgar Marxist who sees class conflict as the one and only key to understanding life; but in the case of VM, class conflict *did* give the first two seasons a useful background context that tied everything together and made it more than just a series of mystery stories. Campus life just isn't as compelling. - --Chris, blowing off work ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:27:27 -0400 From: "Stewart Russell" Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons 2008/9/23 Jeremy Osner : > Of course you would need to include a couple of tunes by The Fall. Mark E. Smith would kick your arse for even thinking that the band name was autumnal. You need "Same Old Man", the Holy Modal Rounders tune so ably covered by both Karen Dalton and Joanna Newsom: Hey little leaf lying on the ground Now you're turning slightly brown Why don't hop back up on the tree Turn the colour green like you're meant to be - -- http://scruss.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:33:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen Oops, I accidentally cut a couple of sentences there. This paragraph -- > (On the other hand, in restrospect I can appreciate all of Buffy's > heavy-handed speechifying and dictatorial tendencies through much of the > season. They were deliberately showing her as making a lot of leadership > mistakes once her "army" suddenly expanded to include a bunch of total > strangers. - -- was supposed to end with: Like Buffy's depression in S6, this wasn't always fun to watch, but it was a logical character development. It also helped set up the series finale, when Buffy leads in a different way, by empowering her followers.) - --Chris, still blowing off work ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:41:24 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Christopher Gross wrote: > Spike... (preferrably shirtless) Just thought I'd provide the Lauren Elizabeth Cliffs' notes version. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:14:56 -0400 From: "(0% rh)" Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen 2fs says: > On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Christopher Gross wrote: > >> Spike... (preferrably shirtless) > > > Just thought I'd provide the Lauren Elizabeth Cliffs' notes version. ahhhh (sp?), thank you jeff. while i printed chris' e-mail to read later while i'm on campus, i *did* notice said phrase. one of my (few) skills in life is finding things, patterns in particular. pulling "shirtless spike" out of a page-long fegpost is child's play ;) as ever, lauren - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:11:09 EDT From: HSatterfld@aol.com Subject: Re: Stackenblocken I watched the pilot for Fringe, and it seemed to be unnecessarily impressed with its own special effects. Constantly superimposing map letters onto live action was not nearly as clever as somebody thought it was, and I was tired of their whole deadly seriousness well before Blair Brown pointlessly showed off her robotic arm. I'd be willing to watch this on SciFi after it has been on the air for about five years, but knowing FOX they will cancel it after a year. Don't ya know that you can count me out. Robin Tunney is on its competition on CBS, The Mentalist, and I get the feeling they might know how to tell a joke there. **************Looking for simple solutions to your real-life financial challenges? Check out WalletPop for the latest news and information, tips and calculators. (http://www.walletpop.com/?NCID=emlcntuswall00000001) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:33:39 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Stackenblocken - -----Original Message----- From: owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org [mailto:owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org] On Behalf Of HSatterfld@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 3:11 PM To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Subject: Re: Stackenblocken >I watched the pilot for Fringe, and it seemed to be unnecessarily impressed with its own special effects. >Constantly superimposing map letters onto live action was not nearly as clever as somebody thought it was, >and I was tired of their whole deadly seriousness well before Blair Brown pointlessly showed off her robotic arm. >I'd be willing to watch this on SciFi after it has been on the air for about five years, but knowing FOX they >will cancel it after a year. Don't ya know that you can count me out. >Robin Tunney is on its competition on CBS, The Mentalist, and I get the feeling they might know how to tell a joke there. It's missing the classic Scully-Mulder banter as well. I still have hopes for improvement though, especially when Darin Morgan's imprint starts showing up. Michael B. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:33:53 -0700 From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen On Sep 23, 2008, at 11:21 AM, Christopher Gross wrote: > > On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Miles Goosens wrote: > >> I don't think BUFFY's last season will ever be redeemed for me, >> though. I was recently thinking about the whole BUFFY/ANGEL run >> again, maybe because of the thread here on the comic, and at this >> point I'm thinking ANGEL was the superior show. I mean, both were >> superawesomely great overall, but it's all because ANGEL just f'in >> nailed it in its last few episodes, whereas BUFFY spent S7 in that >> weirdo torpor. > > I sometimes feel that Buffy is the greater show, but Angel is more > consistently good. It certainly has disappointing episodes and a > couple of truly lame ones, but at least Angel rarely gets into an > extended rut. The lame episodes are usually isolated, and the > overall plot arc is usually strong enough to carry you past them. > Maybe this is because after S1, Angel built its seasonal stories > out of nice manageable 3-5 episode sub-arcs, thus making it easier > to focus on the story arc when an individual episode goes bad? > Anyway, Angel might show a little rut in S1 and again in S5, but > there's nothing like the extended wheel-spinning of Buffy S7. > Angel never clumps its weaker episodes together the way Buffy S6 > did, either. And while Buffy's finale isn't bad by any means, > Angel's simply work better on almost every level. Oddly enough, I re-watched Buffy S7 this past weekend. And I'm not sure why. I agree it's the weakest season, it just seemed to cast about for a reason to be. I felt it in the actors at times - they seemed bored and frustrated throughout the season. And Giles was so terribly underused. I have to agree with Miles - I've felt, since watching them all this year, that Angel is the better show for many reasons - and Chris nailed most of them. I also found it never lost it's humor and ability to flip from dark to comic, while keeping us focused on the story arc. Buffy, S6 and S7 esp., lost a lot of that balance of drama and comedy that carried it throughout the earlier seasons. > On Sep 23, 2008, at 11:41 AM, 2fs wrote: >>> Spike... (preferrably shirtless) >> >> Just thought I'd provide the Lauren Elizabeth Cliffs' notes version. >> Sorry Lauren - I'm an Angel girl, all the way. - - c "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. " - - Thomas Jefferson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:14:27 -0700 From: "kevin studyvin" Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia > Anyway, while watching the dance component of the Byrne show, I was > imagining the Scorchers' fans' reaction to the dance component... but I live > in both worlds and love them > equally. > > And lest I be representing myself as a special little snowflake, I think > Rex would be right there with me on this. Right, Rex? Rex? > > Speaking as one who used to go around town back in the punk daze defacing everything in sight with DEATH TO DISCO in Big Black Magic Marker but has lived to see the error of this behavior I can only say, open up yr ears, kids... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:26:50 -0700 From: "kevin studyvin" Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons It's always "Farewell Farewell" by Fairport Convention for me. Goosebumps & weepitude in plenty. And "This Little Town" from Dave Stewart & the Spiritual Cowboys. Cowboy Junkies' "200 More Miles" too, I guess. On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 10:41 AM, (0% rh) wrote: > interesting idea for a list. summer turning to fall is one of my very > favourite things. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:32:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Carrie Galbraith wrote: > seemed bored and frustrated throughout the season. And Giles was so > terribly underused. Oh, that's right! I should have mentioned that too. The misuse of Giles was one of the biggest disappointments in S7. Especially since they wasted some of his limited screen time on that rather silly "is it really Giles?" subplot. - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:45:04 -0400 From: Caroline Smith Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons On 23-Sep-08, at 1:41 PM, (0% rh) wrote: > interesting idea for a list. The song that comes to mind immediately for me is Yo La Tengo's Your Autumn Sweater. And I was just thinking the other day that Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree suits autumn quite well. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:12:53 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Stackenblocken On 9/23/08, Bachman, Michael wrote: > > - > > >I watched the pilot for Fringe, and it seemed to be > unnecessarily impressed with its own special effects. > >and I was tired of their whole deadly seriousness well before Blair Brown > pointlessly showed off her robotic arm. > > > > It's missing the classic Scully-Mulder banter as well. Haven't watched this one at all - but I feel compelled to point out that hte Scully/Mulder banter wasn't there from the beginning either. Makes sense, as they didn't know each other at first, and Mulder was (rightfully, given the conditions of Scully's hiring) suspicious of her at first. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:14:48 -0700 From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons On Sep 23, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Caroline Smith wrote: > >> interesting idea for a list. > > The song that comes to mind immediately for me is Yo La Tengo's > Your Autumn Sweater. And I was just thinking the other day that > Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree suits autumn quite well. September Cones, by that Robyn something or other. Love that song! - - c "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. " - - Thomas Jefferson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:16:37 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen On 9/23/08, Carrie Galbraith wrote: > > On Sep 23, 2008, at 11:21 AM, Christopher Gross wrote: > > > > On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Miles Goosens wrote: > > > > > I sometimes feel that Buffy is the greater show, but Angel is more > > consistently good. > > > Oddly enough, I re-watched Buffy S7 this past weekend. And I'm not > sure why. I agree it's the weakest season, it just seemed to cast > about for a reason to be. I felt it in the actors at times - they > seemed bored and frustrated throughout the season. And Giles was so > terribly underused. To be fair, at least part of that underuse was because Head was overseas, wasn't it? I have to agree with Miles - I've felt, since watching them all this > year, that Angel is the better show for many reasons - and Chris > nailed most of them. I also found it never lost it's humor and > ability to flip from dark to comic, while keeping us focused on the > story arc. Buffy, S6 and S7 esp., lost a lot of that balance of drama > and comedy that carried it throughout the earlier seasons. Of course, _Angel_ benefited from Whedon et al. having learned on the job for several years from _Buffy_, too...and from beginning with (mostly) established characters as well. That said, as much as the developments in S6 & S7 of Buffy were well-motivated, I almost think if they'd been compressed into a single season that would have been much more successful. There seemed, in both seasons, an awful lot of torpor (some of it justified character- and situation-wise, but not all of it). - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:40:33 -0700 From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: Re: Stackerbuffyen On Sep 23, 2008, at 2:16 PM, 2fs wrote: > On 9/23/08, Carrie Galbraith wrote: >> Oddly enough, I re-watched Buffy S7 this past weekend. And I'm not >> sure why. I agree it's the weakest season, it just seemed to cast >> about for a reason to be. I felt it in the actors at times - they >> seemed bored and frustrated throughout the season. And Giles was so >> terribly underused. > > > To be fair, at least part of that underuse was because Head was > overseas, > wasn't it? > Which makes the lack of his engagement when he WAS on the screen all the more worse. They had him for such a small amount of time and yet his screen time is spent listening or agreeing with someone, mostly in the background. Not really the old Giles the Ever Vigilant Watcher and Father Figure to the Scoobies that we had seen for so many years. A question to ask is how "hands off" was Joss during S7? He was busy with Angel and then Firefly - how much did he let the Buffy machine run itself? And perhaps that is what we see - his lack of day-to-day involvement. The writers were adrift in a Whedonless sea... - - c, who is really back to work now "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. " - - Thomas Jefferson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:28:25 -0700 From: "Nectar At Any Cost!" Subject: Back In The Saddle after a bit of a summer lull, '08 is back on track, to say the least. tv on the radio = very good mogwai = fucking awesome cold-war kids = fucking awesome blitzen trapper = fucking crazy-assed awesome (rex, i think you'd especially like this one) admittedly, pink spiders = fucking terrible; but that's nevertheless one helluva good week for new releases (and i still hain't even listened yet to the jenny lewis nor the anberlin). i frickin' love 2008. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:33:10 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Jewels, for Sophia On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Miles Goosens wrote: > > And lest I be representing myself as a special little snowflake, I > think Rex would be right there with me on this. Right, Rex? Rex? > Yeah. I've tended to think that patrons of the arty side of the equation are more likely to cross over into earthier music than vice-versa, but recently I've noticed-- and this really is kind of a new thing for me-- that hipsters, at least as we think of them today, are a lot closer to the snooty stereotype of them than I'd believed. I know, where have I been? Answer: selling all my CD's at Amoeba, which probably explains the above epiphany. (For some reason, having the people on the other side of the counter tell me that I had really good taste was way, way more upsetting and awkward than it would've been had they just sneered at me like I was a moron.) Trickle-Up Effect: two of the stores that I've contacted have stopped buying CD's over the past two weeks, and the third is seriously limiting what they'll take compared to when I started selling stuff last month. Thank you, Wall Street. Rains It Pours Effect: my house is overrun with fruitflies, and the screen on my laptop seems to have died overnight. But it's good to have some Miles posts to read! - -Rex - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:08:41 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Dead leaves and the dirty ground: 25 sad songs for changing seasons On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Stewart Russell wrote: > 2008/9/23 Jeremy Osner : > > Of course you would need to include a couple of tunes by The Fall. > > Mark E. Smith would kick your arse for even thinking that the band > name was autumnal. > Or for some other reason. Or perhaps, indeed, for none at all. Point is, he would kick your arse. Crossing threads, I'm in the silent minority who actually far preferred the X-Files mythology episodes to the stand-alones... it seemed to me that that arc was what made the show kind of unique, whereas the standalones ran hot and cold (the mediocre ones being pretty bad). So I was well pissed off when the mythology stuff went to hell, since that basically coincided with the time when suddenly *none* of the stand-alones were any good. Anyways, you gotta remember that when the show started, there weren't as many genre shows with any kind of continuity at all, let alone what seemed (for a few years) like a pretty sophisticated and original one. Seriously, the tanking of the narrative thread on that show put me off TV. For reals. - -Rex ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #719 ********************************