Month: May 2002

First off, thanks to all of you who’ve had such nice things to say about the site.

Second, re: BID archives: we’ve found the vast majority of BIDs from 3/01/91 (CBG #902) in electronic format. Before we start digging for the earlier 26 columns, I figured I might as well ask here to see if anybody already took the time to place any of them into some sort of electronic format– if you did, please let me know via e-mail. (Yes, that includes if you got them out of the trade paperback, as we’re still looking for those files too.)

Third, thanks to the work of one such archiver, Allyn Gibson, we’ll soon be reprinting the lo-o-o-ong out of print The TARDIS at Pooh Corner here, probably in the next day or three. Watch the skies.

Attended the first readthrough of the first play I’ve gotten involved with in a while (in my occasional hobby of actor in the Long Island theater community.) I’ll be appearing in a play called “Checking Out” at the Broadhollw Center Stage at Malloy College in Nassau County the last two weeks of June. The play revolves around an elderly Jewish man who calmly decides that he’s done with his life and informs his grown children that he’s planning to take a bottle of sleeping pills. They show up en masse to talk him out of it. I was asked to play the part of his eldest son Ted, the middle-aged utterly neurotic Jewish psychiatrist. Because of course, when you’re in Long Island and you need an utterly neurotic middle-aged Jew, you think of me. Who wouldn’t?

It’s a challenge because it’s the most dramatic role I’ve ever undertaken, and at one point I have a monologue that goes on for an entire page in which my character completely melts down, much to the horror of his younger brother. And the guy who plays my father–an established LI actor with the unlikely name of Harvard Mann–is absolutely terrific. I’m also excited to be working with the director, Jack Howell, who directed me as Sancho in “Man of La Mancha.”

Oh, on another topic–in response to popular demand, I will be doing a BID column detailing which scenes I added into the novelization of “Spider-Man” that were purely my invention, as opposed to scenes that were in the script but cut. Also, for those who want to read the script, the Previews Exclusive edition of “Behind the Mask of Spider-Man: The Secrets of the Movie” has the entire shooting script printed in the back. And no, I don’t get a percentage; this is a self-interest-free plug.

PAD

Well, Tara is toast. We followers of “Buffy” pretty much saw it coming the instant that Amber Benson was added to the opening credits. Obviously a stunt to lure the unwary into a false sense of security.

On a personal level, I’m rather upset because I’ve met Amber a couple times and she’s a really sweet girl whose character deserved better than to die a pointless death from a stray gunshot by one of the Lone Wáņkërš. Still, let us consider the track record of interpersonal relationships in Sunnydale. Buffy & Angel: He dumped her. Buffy & Parker: He dumped her. Buffy & Riley: He dumped her. Buffy & Joyce: Joyce died. Buffy & Giles: Giles left. Buffy & Spike: She dumped him *and* he tried to rape her. Giles & Jenny Calendar: She was killed. Giles & Olivia: Left town after realizing Giles was telling the truth about all that black magic stuff. Xander & the Sexy Teacher: She tried to eat him. Xander & Inca Mummy Girl: She tried to suck the life out of him. Xander & Cordy: She dumped him. Xander & Faith: She humped and dumped him inside of ten minutes and later tried to kill him. Xander & Anya: He dumped her. Willow & the Demon in the Computer: He tried to kill her, as demons are wont to do. Willow & Oz: He dumped her and returned only to be dumped himself. Spike & Dru: She dumped him for a fungus demon, came back to him, and dumped him again. Spike & Harmony: Alternated between dumping each other and trying to stake each other. Amy & Larry: The classic Sunnydale romance–Before it could go anywhere, Amy got turned into a rat, Larry acknowledged he was gay, and then got killed by a serpent demon.

So you can say what you want about poor Tara’s fate, but you sure can’t say it’s inconsistent with what’s gone before. Dating someone on the Hellmouth is a lot like being an old friend of Jessica Fletcher’s: You’re going to die, or someone’s going to try and kill you, or you’ll be suspected of killing someone.

PAD

Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” in one of his headline reports stated, “And the Israelis and Palestinians move ever closer in the peace process, which is expected to be concluded NEVER.” He said it a year and a half ago, back when Clinton was making his last ditch effort to bring Sharon and Arafat together. Back when Israel puts its best offer *ever* on the table, and Arafat instead simply walked out and supported terrorist attacks.

It is a sign of the world’s unfair expectations that Israel is expected to express regrets (and does so) over the unfortunate deaths of women and children caught in the crossfire, but no one seriously expects Palestinians to express regrets over guerilla assaults that kill Israeli women and children as a matter of design. The Palestinians continue to be painted as victims. It is incomprehensible. Meantime the major Arab countries don’t understand why Israel doesn’t take their generous offer of rolling back to the pre-Six Day War boundaries in exchange for which the Arab nations will finally recognize Israel. My. What a generous concession. The governments will acknowledge that which has been in existence for nearly three quarters of a century. And once they do so, then what? Continue to indoctrinate their citizens from an early age into Anti-Jew philosophies? Three out of four Arabs still refuse to believe that Arabs had anything to do with 9/11. You’d think they, of anyone, would know that “Denial” is not just a river in Egypt.

Israel’s neighbors want to kill them. How does one negotiate with people who want to kill you?

PAD

Greetings and solicitations.

This will be the first of what will ideally be daily updates in this on-line journal. In the near future, we’ll have a regular Q&A set-up, plus we’re trying to figure out how to produce an on-line whack-a-mole.

Have just returned from Florida where I attended John Ordover’s 40th birthday party (while Kathleen was shangheid off to Indianapolis, in connection with her assistant editor job at Del Rey, to attend the Star Wars expo, attendance 60,000, jeez). We hit Universal on Saturday with laser-sighting as to the rides we wanted to go on: The Men in Black ride and the Spider-Man ride. The MIB ride involves riding through a shooting gallery of aliens coming out at you, and the biggest trick to the ride is knowing when precisely to hit the red button on your console which you’re told that you should not, under any circumstances, hit. Smacking it at just the right moment garners you a 100,000 point bonus. And the Spider-Man ride remains the best ride in any Florida theme park, although now I’m wondering whether they’re going to replace the cheesy animated intro with specially shot footage featuring Tobey Mcguire and J.K. Simmons who was so brilliant as Jonah Jameson. Picked up some nifty souvenirs, including an absolutely spectacular Spider-Man hockey shirt that I cannot recommend highly enough. Only thing that groused me was that my novelization of the movie was nowhere to be seen in the stores anywhere in the Park.

And yes, I’ve written a review of the film, which will be running in CBG in a couple of weeks.

PAD

Hi. I’m Glenn Hauman, the guy who’s helping Peter build this web site.

I’m the former publisher of the late lamented BiblioBytes, and have shown up as the CMO of the Enterprise in Imzadi, the leader of the planet in Restoration (along with my assistant Brandi and my minions Bibbyte and Lio) and in Genesis Wave as a researcher at the Daystrom Institute (much to the surprise of the original author, John Vornholt) and even wrote one of those Star Trek things myself– a lovely little work called Oaths which should be out any day now.

But I digress… which is a roundabout way of getting to the real topic of this post.

A lot of people have asked if we’ll be putting up the old But I Digress columns here, and yes, we will, but… well, we don’t quite have a complete archive. Actually, we’ve gone through all the old hard drives and we think it’s reasonably complete, but we have no idea what appeared when or quite in what order.

So we’re just going to post them here as we finish translating them, in what we hope is something vaguely resembling chronological order… and then we’re going to rely on the truly dedicated readers to tell us when and where they appeared. If you can tell us where it appeared, just post the issue number and date in the comment section for the page and we’ll update the entry to reflect it. Then, after we’re more or less complete, we’ll try and archive them with a bit more order.

In the meantime, hey, the search function works, so use that to find that BID that slammed [insert name here]…