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As regular followers of my blog and Facebook have learned over the years, I’m a huge fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I can’t truthfully say it’s my favorite television show of all time, but it’s quite high up on the list. Despite Buffy’s creator, The-Ginger-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, doing his absolute best to destroy the mythos I and millions have come to love by making all sorts of wacky decisions for his own amusement (including delivering Buffy her very worst birthday ever with the issue of the comic that hit stands today), but when one overlooks the totally bizarre second life the series has in print (seriously, could have lived without Buffy/Angel sex that destroys mountains and winds up in space), it’s still the same, lovable old Buffy.

Oh dear, I didn’t mean old. I know how it felt to turn thirty, myself, and since today is Buffy’s big 3-0, I thought a list of my top five Buffy must see episodes is the perfect gift.

1. “The Zeppo” Season 3
   This episode is the top of the list because it’s so damned weird. A huge plot is going on involving the end of the world and the opening of the Hellmouth, but instead of focusing on impending apocolypse, the viewer instead followes Xander Harris on a hellish journey of self-discovery that begins with a donut run and ends with zombies, a bomb threat at the school, and a werewolf attack. Oh, and somewhere along the way, he loses his virginity.
2. “Hush” Season 4
   No list of favorite Buffy episodes would be complete without “Hush.” A group of shit-your-pants-scary baddies known as The Gentlemen roll into town in search of seven hearts to fulfill their nightmarish quota. After stealing all the voices in Sunnydale (the human voice is the only thing that can defeat them), they go on a rampage, surgically excising the hearts from silently screaming Sunnydale residents. The sharp acting in this one is what makes it so enjoyable to watch, as the characters have literally no voices for most of the episode.
3. “Fool For Love” Season 5
   The plot of this episode is simple: Buffy gets hurt on the job and, suddenly faced with her own mortality, goes to Spike to learn about the two slayers he killed. On the surface, the story is about Buffy desperately trying to glean any information about her predecessors and the mistakes they made that wound up getting them killed, but on a deeper level, it’s all Spike’s story. As the reasons behind his wannabe hard-ass attitude are revealed through flashbacks, he becomes a fully developed character for the first time, a desperately lonely man who has never fit in with anyone.
4. “Innocence” Season 2You know how for some people, their first time is amazing, and some people’s first time is completely lame? Buffy loses her virginity and her boyfriend in the same night, when Angel loses his soul in a “moment of happiness”. Over the course of the series, this somehow got reinterpreted as “had an orgasm.” You say “soul-deep happiness,” Joss says “orgasm.” Whatever. After Buffy wakes up alone and spends the better part of a day tracking Angel down, he cruelly berates her for her inexperience and makes it clear that the night before meant nothing to him. Of course, Buffy doesn’t realize yet that Angel is now evil, and she spends the rest of the episode coming to terms with the fact that the man she loved is now her enemy. This episode was so important to a certain highschool girl dealing with her first broken heart, she couldn’t leave it off the list.
5. “The Body Season 5During season 5, while Buffy deals with Glory, a foe more powerful than any she’s ever faced, her mother undergoes treatment for a brain tumor. Joyce is out of the woods and making a full recovery when Buffy, returning home from the previous episode’s plot, finds her mother dead in the living room. It’s a brutal hour of watching Buffy and the Scoobies come to terms with the fact that, for all Buffy’s strength, there are forces beyond her control, and the evil of the supernatural world takes a backseat to the horror of everyday life. The episode’s title is taken from the callous words of the 911 dispatcher, who tells Buffy not to move “the body”. This is a theme throughout the episode, as Buffy shocks herself by referring to her mother as “the body” and Anya goes on a heart-wrenching tirade about death and what happens to “the body”.

So, those are my five must-sees from the series. I love all the episodes, except for the one where Xander joins the swim team, but these are the standouts for storytelling and general awesomeness.

Happy birthday, Buffy! Who knew a slayer would exceed their expiration date.

First of all, let me just say that everything you have heard about Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is true, unless any of the things you have heard are said without irony. The truth is, Black Swan isn’t a great movie, if taken as a 100% serious thriller. In fact, it’s a down-right terrible movie. But I refuse to believe that such a celebrated director and top-notch cast worked on this film, delivering lines like, “Everything she does comes from some dark impulse within her,” without having some kind of out-of-body experience where they’re hovering over themselves, looking down as they realize that they’re in a really, really shitty movie. Instead, I choose to believe that everyone involved in this movie, from the producer to the director to the actors and the craft services people, were in on the biggest movie-related prank of all time.
I’m not going to cut for spoilers, because you’ve probably heard all the details by now, spewed out by an ecstatic press that has embraced Black Swan as a tour-de-force. Yes, there is a big ole lesbian sex scene. Yes, Natalie Portman’s toenail totally splits in a bloody mess. All the sex and blood surprises of Black Swan have already been spoiled. What you probably haven’t heard are the subtle-as-a-sledge-hammer moments where Nina (Natalie Portman) is shown vomitting in a public toilet, only to return home to find that her mother (Barbara Hershey) has bought a huge pink cake to celebrate Nina’s casting as the Swan Queen in a new production of Swan Lake. Or the many times that Nina looks at rival ballerina Lily (Mila Kunis) only to find that Lily’s face has been replaced with her own.
But there was a particularly telling moment, the one in which I realized that no one involved with the production could have possibly been taking it seriously: Beth, a formerly celebrated ballerina played by Winona Ryder, looks at Nina and says, like some giant wink to the audience, “You stole my things?”
How could anyone, the casting director, the writer, the director, Winona fucking Ryder, assume that line would elicit anything other than laughter and disbelief from the audience. Which, by the way, was exactly what happened. A huge, unamimous “HA!” from everyone at our showing.
So, basically there are two ways of looking at this movie. As a prank, a group of very talented professionals seeking to make the absolute worst movie of our time and passing it off as brilliance. Or, as the absolute worst movie of our time.
The second scenario is one of optimism and joy for someone like me. If a movie as terrible as Black Swan can be lauded by critics of the highest caliber, then other creative storytelling types don’t have to work as hard anymore. This includes me. As long as Black Swan exists and is praised, I don’t have to worry about writing a story that makes sense. I don’t have to sit up at night worrying about loose plot threads or whether or not my dialogue is realistic. Black Swan sets a new standard for excellence, and that standard is so low, it could win a limbo competition.
I’m not sure which I like better. But I’m absolutely gleeful about the badness that is Black Swan. It might be my new favorite movie.

For the past five or so weeks, I have received one question, over and over, from friends and family members, from facebook people I don’t know, even from major media outlets:

“Are you watching The Walking Dead?”

Or, if you’re my Grandma, “Are you watching that show on that channel that has people turning into some kind of creature? I think it’s vampires? That doesn’t look like anything I’d want to watch. They put the damndest things on tv these days, it’s no wonder that kids are being violent.”

Up until three days ago, I was wondering where all of this was coming from. At first I thought, “What the hell, guys? Do you even know me at all? I don’t watch stuff like that. I watch Family Guy and reruns of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I like dumb, goofy stuff that is easy to understand while high. I don’t watch “serious drama”.

(Yes, that’s kind of a lie, I have been watching and enjoying Boardwalk Empire this season, but my point stands)

I thought people were recommending The Walking Dead because I write about vampires and ghoulish stuff. Also, since 2006 I’ve been telling everyone that will listen about this awesome idea for a zombie book that no publisher wants to buy and that’s too bad for them because it will go down in history as the best zombie book ever written. Everyone just wants funny zombie books, and this one is going to be scary beyond all belief, but maybe the tides are starting to turn, what with this new show and Romero getting back in the game. Did you guys know that Mister Rogers and George A. Romero were friends, and that Mister Rogers thought Night of The Living Dead was “a lot of fun”?

I got off track somewhere. Oh, The Walking Dead. Right. So, At first I was pretty sure that people were just assuming I would love The Walking Dead because I write gross-out stuff. The same way all my friends assumed I would like Firefly because I liked Buffy, and they were all wrong. I became resistant to the idea of watching it, just because people were hyping it up so much. I went to my friend Scott’s house, and he convinced me to watch just the opening scene of the series (extremely graphic, so be warned):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsjrJrf78VM&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Yes, that’s the opening. There’s no wading in to see how the water is. This is where you dive right into the show. I was intrigued. More so when Scott explained that the show is adapted from a comic. So, at least I knew it was written by someone passionate about telling a good story, because let’s face it, comic writers are the best storytellers we have in our culture right now. I promptly went home and obtained episodes of the show through entirely legal means that do not in any way involve a word that rhymes with “warrant”, and started watching. I thought, “I’ll [totally not download] the whole series, in case it hooks me, and I’ll give the pilot a chance.” I watched all five episodes in one day, only to learn that the season finale would air the next day. Once I got the chance to watch the finale, I thought to myself, “Okay. Great. Now what?”

That’s the state I have been operating in for the past twenty-four hours. “Okay. Great. Now what?” Because this was a pilot season, AMC only produced six episodes. They’ve already renewed the show for another season, but rumor has it that one won’t release until Halloween of 2011. That’s a long time for me. I need to know what happens next. It’s bad enough that Harry Dresden left me hanging this year, I can’t take another cliffhanger.

If you, like myself, are working through this strangely grief-like state, I recommend the following:

1. Stay calm and put a cold washcloth over your eyes.
2. Take up smoking. I don’t care what. Cigarettes, grass, insulation. You gotta do something to take the edge off.
3. Write fan fiction, but only good stuff. I’m not kidding, I really don’t need to stumble across any The Walking Dead MPREG or “Everyone is in high school and also Twilight is there”.
4. Oh my god, what happened to Merle? They let the whole season finish and they never wrapped that up? I’m going to go shake and cry in a corner.
5. Shake and cry in a corner.
6. Panic. Just blindly panic.

I have no answers. We’re all in this together, people who watched The Walking Dead. People who didn’t watch it, I’m not going to tell you to watch it. Because then you’d be in this same predicament. What I’m going to suggest is that you wait. You wait until the new season starts. Then, you start watching season 1, one episode a week, until you are are always six weeks behind and your viewing pleasure can last longer, cutting your withdrawal time down by six weeks. You’re welcome.

Today, I’m guest blogging as Abigail Barnette over at Tina Donahue’s blog! Visit to enter for a chance to win a copy of Glass Slipper by Abigail!

I have cut Joss Whedon a lot of slack over the years. When he allowed the atrocity that was Buffy/Spike. When he couldn’t stop whining about networks not giving him a chance while he had two successful cult franchises in his wake. When he mentioned Firefly‘s cancellation in every interview for two years. When I realized that no matter what show he wrote, he would always be leaving out non-white characters and making women into his ultimate strong-woman-helpless-emotionally jack off fantasy in which Eliza Dushku looks slightly shocked and saddened as she punches him in the throat while begging him for help in learning the ways of love.

Okay, that last one is admittedly me losing patience with him. But his latest transgression is far and away a hundred times worse than any dickbag move he’s made so far. Buffy fans be warned, there will be comic spoilers from here out.

Joss Whedon killed Giles.

For reasons that I can only chalk up to just not giving a shit, in the January Buffy comic, Angel, who is evil again, kills Giles by breaking his neck. I remember something like that happening before. In season two. When killing a character actually meant something in the Buffy verse and before everyone expected Joyce to be back any minute.

Joss recycled Giles’s girlfriend’s death to kill Giles.

I can see what he was going for. For Giles to die by the hand of the vampire who killed the woman he loved, in the same manner as she died, years after reconciling with the man who killed her and coming to trust him enough to fight beside him, should have packed an emotional wallop. It would have been perfect, if he hadn’t waited for the series to end before he did it. You can’t do a “call-back” to an episode that aired over ten years ago and expect it to have the effect you intended. Instead, it looks like you’ve run out of ideas. And when that lack of creativity extends to a beloved character, fans are going to be pissed.

I know the Buffy comics are supposed to be canon, but as a fan, I cannot and will not accept any of the trainwreck that is the Buffy comics. No “Dawn loses her virginity and becomes a giant,” no “Buffy is lesbian now because Joss can’t function without the thought of girl parts touching and straight women who have bad enough luck with men will naturally become gay,” no “Giles is dead, aren’t I awesome at making you feeeeeel things?” The Buffy comics bear no resemblance at all to the show the I remember, and I can add that to my list of reasons why Joss Whedon is an overrated jackass.

I did an interview at Dark Angel Fiction Writing. Go check it out!

Somehow, in the course of an argument over who is hotter, Amy Adams or Idina Menzel,

(It’s Idina Menzel)

I somehow was reminded of how much I love Mister Rogers. Let me paint a picture of my childhood for you. I was raised by my loving family, most notably my maternal grandmother, who was my primary caregiver during my early childhood. My grandma Z is wonderful person, always ready to express love and able to talk to a child on their level. Especially about their fears.

Grandma Z used to do this thing that, in hindsight, is probably the reason for my enduring night terrors. She used to go in and take her bath at night, and every time she would yell, “Help, Jenny! Help!” I would come running and find the tub was empty of water, and my grandma was missing. “Grandma, where are you?” I would yell, and she would answer, from some far off place, “I went down the drain!” I would run over to the tub to peer down the drain (and now, since you’ve never seen what my grandparent’s bathroom looked like in the 80’s, you have no concept of how scary the tub was, but the walls were crumbling and the drain was all rusty and forbidding) and then, when I was frantically yelling, “Wait, I’ll get help!” she would spring from her hiding spot and scare me.

I fell for it every time. Because I was four.

Anyway, one afternoon I was watching Mister Rogers on PBS. And he had this to share with me:

“See, Grandma!” I shouted triumphantly. “I can never go down the drain!” I can’t remember what Grandma was doing at the time, but it was the kitchen. Actually, no, I do remember. She was making donuts for her dad for his birthday. And she said, “Mister Rogers is a liar.” My aunt Mary, who was a teenager living at home at the time, said, “Mister Rogers is a pervert.”

I didn’t know what a pervert was, but I knew what a liar was. It meant I could still go down the drain.

Oddly enough, even though I had been assured that Mister Rogers had lied to me, I still loved him. And I still do. I learned about hanging chads from Mister Rogers:

I learned about being cool:

Most importantly, I learned about being kind. And for all my swearing and wishing that people would burn to death while exploding in the vacuum of space, I truly am a good person. Just the other day, when I was lamenting to my mother that my kids are missing out on Mister Rogers, she said, “I’m sure you could download it from the internet.” And I said, “I couldn’t do that. It would be stealing. Stealing from Mister Rogers. And he told me stealing was wrong.”

Basically, the best piece of advice I can give anyone is, if you’re in a situation where you don’t know what to do, think, “What would Mister Rogers do?” and then do that. And remember that you can never go down the drain. No matter what my Grandma might tell you.

See, I have a theme going. Dear Author pointed out today that RWA hasn’t really done anything about sound rogering Dorchester has given some of its authors, but back when Harlequin was going to start up Harlequin Horizons, they called an emergency meeting and removed Harlequin from their list of approved publishers.

Okay, let’s look at the facts here:

Harlequin Horizons

• Harlequin announces that they are going to offer a self-publishing model.
  
• Before the service can actually launch or generate any kind of revenue, RWA calls an emergency session and boots Harlequin.
  

Dorchester Publishing

• Dorchester decides that for the next six months, all mass-market titles will be released digitally. Books scheduled for mass-market release will have their release dates moved to some nebulous time in the future, and they will be digital only. Authors who have taken out ads and otherwise spent money promoting their book are basically told to deal with it.
  
• At this point, RWA has already smacked Dorchester’s hand for not paying authors.
  
• Dorchester reverts rights to work back to some authors, but continues selling (and making a profit on) those works that are no longer legally owned by them.
  
• RWA still hasn’t made a decision.
  

It boggles my mind that Harlequin got straight up spanked by RWA because they were going to do something that possibly would hurt authors. It was a big enough emergency that RWA national had to hold an emergency session to make a decision. But Dorchester is and has repeatedly harmed authors and it’s no big deal?

Inconsistent leadership and spotty protection for authors is one of the reasons I no longer belong to RWA. Unfortunately, there really isn’t an organization out there that compares with them in terms of helping someone become a writer. So, if you’re considering joining RWA, I would say approach it the way a person who just wants a discount on makeup approaches starting a Mary Kay business: Get in, pay for what you need, get out.