RUFUS WAINWRIGHT @ STUBB'S -- 8/11/07

It was a hot but very fine night to see Rufus Wainwright ply his craft in the backyard of Stubb’s BBQ. He freaking opened with the tune I was probably most looking forward to, the eponymous final track on his new album, rocking the horns and the kind of SNL/Motown flavor he first touched upon with 14th Street. Put that song to bed, killer opening. And what he was wearing had to be a deliberate crime against fashion, this striped number, really short shorts and a matching jacket, orange and green and white and blue. It was awesomely hideous. Followed the first tune with Going To A Town, probably my least favorite on the album. America upsets me at times too, but that number’s just no fun. Powered on with all new tunes, eight total before the intermission. Which is cool, you know, he’s toured heavily so might as well play the new stuff. That Sanssouci was third, great one there. When he started in on Tulsa, I thought it was Art Teacher, those tunes must both be in Eb. He played for an hour, then took an intermission.

Came back out (so to speak, yah-hah) in the lumberjack lederhosen he apparently picked up in Bavaria and they were a grand sight. Opened with Harvester of Hearts, another one I’m not in love with, but followed up with Do I Disappoint You, which he really tore up. Kept the Martha background vocals from the album, and how could he not? Then he let his inner Dorothy shine and sang a couple of numbers accompanied only by piano, A Foggy Day and another Garland tune I didn’t catch the name of. Impassioned solo rendition of Nobody Gets Off the Hook, followed by an excellent Beautiful Child, which I really felt owed, as his drummer completely fractured that tune during the encore when we saw them last time at La Zona Rosa in 3/04. He played the last two songs off the new album that he hadn’t played, that’s right EVERY damn tune got aired, I’ve never seen that in all my years, no, then he did this killer Irish ballad, sounded like Meshuggah (well, less Lovecraftian probably, but those were the phonetics) and then thanked us all for coming out and busted out 14th Street, which he tore up. Every member left the stage until it was just the banjo player. Killer rendition.

Obligatory encore for the sold-out crowd, of course. He came out in a bathrobe and told us all he was naked under there and then played I Don't Know What It Is solo; I did miss the loping McCartney bass on that one, usually supplied my Mr. Jeff Hill. Next was Pretty Things and Complainte de la Butte, the latter of which was especially gorgeous. Over the course of all this, he applied lipstick, then at the end of Butte, he jumped up and threw off his bathrobe to reveal not his johnson but a coat and panty-hose, kind of a Liza Minnelli Cabaret thing, he donned a top hat then had his poor band run out and do their best in a synchronized dance number while he sang Get Happy to, seems like, a backing track. Jazz hands and everything, it was hilarious. Haven’t seen choreography that awesome since Hot For Teacher. It was a spectacle, I tell you what. Great performance, over two hours of music in the hot Austin night.

Set List:

Release the Stars
Going to a Town
Sanssouci
Rules and Regulations
Tulsa
Tiergarten
Leaving for Paris No. 2
Between My Legs

(Intermission)

Harvester of Hearts
Do I Disappoint You?
Foggy Day
Judy Garland #
Nobody's Off the Hook
Beautiful Child
Not Ready To Love
Slideshow
Meshuggah
14th Street

Encore:
I Don't Know What It Is
Pretty Things
Complainte de la Butte
Get Happy

COMIC-CON. SUNDAY

Last day. Tough choice at 10:30, too. Go hear Neil Gaiman and Darwyn Cooke and others talk about how awesome Jack Kirby is or hit the DC panel in which Morrison, Johns, Dini, Reis, Pacheco etc discuss the Big Guns, the major heroes of the universe. I mean, Morrison or Gaiman. What a bitch. We wound up splitting the difference, the X-Men panel later was going to be in the room with the DC guys, so we hit Gaiman first, heard a great 5-minute monologue/anecdote about Kirby’s impact on him through British reprints of 60s Marvel, then excused ourselves down the way to hear Grant Morrison respond to a multitude of FINAL CRISIS questions with “Dogs will eat dogs. Wolves roaming the streets. Worms everywhere. Final Crisis!” which was really hilarious with that accent. Can't freaking wait for that book.

Then we hung out for the X-Men, or I guess, Mutants panel. Brubaker was on hand along with Carey (announced as having killed Cable, I don’t believe it for a second) and Way and Peter David. No big revelations here. Some cool Silvestri art for Messiah Complex. Way kind of came off like a dick, further justifying my decision to drop ORIGINS. David was funny. Brubaker worked in like four CRIMINAL plugs, which was also amusing. This one guy asked a question that was more of a paragraph on how great the entire line of books is right now and, lo and behold, it was Jason Street from FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, just another incognito fan, loving on the X-books. Cool little moment, there.

Then we hit the FABLES panel. Willingham and Buckingham and co. were all there and walked us through a page of FABLES, what it takes to create it, every step of the way, choosing the most recent at the time, pg. 22 of, I think #63. They also gave out a free one-page comic. It was all cool, but man, we was fried.

That one let out at 2, and we were done with official business. Time to hit the floor one last time, get pictures of the Vader masks and Batman and Droids LEGOS, and find some damn comics! Which it was fun to do, after all that other. I asked everybody for FLEX MENTALLO, most people hadn’t even heard of it, will Atlas ever let the TPB happen? What is the deal? Found a great dollar bin and scored some old BATMAN annuals, including #11 by Moore, that wacked out Clayface story, along with the first NEW MUTANTS annual that I’ve somehow never read, and a $3 reprint of ACTION COMICS #1. Figured I’m never going to be able to see every page of THAT one cheaper, so what the hey.

And then we were done. It was kind of sad, looking around and realizing it was time to leave the Convention Center. I told Catherine we could stay another couple of hours and keep thumbing through bins, but no takers. Took quite a few pictures:

Batman made out of LEGOS













The prototype Iron Man armor from the upcoming movie starring Downey Jr. as Stark. Looks amazing.














Black Lightning.














Finally left and went down to the beach with Paul and Lane and got some killer seafood and wine and beer and then went out to this seriously longass pier and toasted the sunset with whiskey and wine.
















Then went down to the beach to just get our feet wet but that wasn’t enough so Paul and I swam out into it, dove as hard as I could into wave after wave, to make them batter off the parts of me that weren’t strong enough to hold on, planes taking off and flying right over our heads, one of them heading out right in the direction of Hawaii which was so perfect, the beach and the sound of the Pacific crashing in and all. Goodbye, San Diego.

Drumbeat cut, white letters over black screen.

COMIC-CON. SATURDAY.

So, wiped. We didn’t want to make anything until the HEROES panel at 12:45 but knew that Saturday was going to be crazy. However, we forgot to trill our r’s in a high voice when we said c-r-r-r-r-r-azy. Got some great burritos with Paul and Lane, sauntered into the Convention Center just before 11, plenty of time we figured, but it was the One True Madness. Ballroom 20 was the hot ticket of the day. They were screening the Bionic Woman pilot with the cast, then HEROES, then the Women of Battlestar Galactica, then the cast of Futurama, then Joss Whedon. When we rolled in, the line stretched so far back that we followed it almost the entire way around the Center. A few minutes later, the line lapped itself. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. I hung out for half an hour then went to go get in line for the JH Williams Spotlight at 12:30. Then they tried to disperse the line outside Ballroom 20, told people they had to right no stand there. In America! Well, Catherine was having none of it and managed to claim a place after hundreds of lesser faith bailed. But the HEROES were lost to us. They trotted out Kevin Smith and said he was going to write and direct an episode of ORIGINS. He said that he wanted to figure out a way to sandwich the two gay Japanese guys in there. When asked what his favorite part of the season was, Mohindir said “Surviving it.” which led Nathan Petrelli to quip “We signed on for a show called HEROES, but none of us realized we were really joining the cast of Survivor.” And the PA started squealing and no one could fix it so Hiro jumped down to fix things. And then gave Sylar trouble for not being able to do the Live Long & Prosper with his right hand.

And there’s lots of other great stuff they said and did. We didn’t get in. But at least we dodged the Season 2 clips they showed.

The JH Williams panel was solid entertainment. I sat on the front row, ten feet at most from Grant Morrison, who was there to discuss their collaboration on SEVEN SOLDIERS. One of the best panels I was lucky enough to catch, felt bad that Catherine had to miss it waiting in line. It was especially interesting when PROMETHEA came up and GM did an impression of Moore calling Williams up to tell him he had the gig. The PowerPoint presentation of the art looked amazing all blown up, shots of Batman and the seven mystery men from Slaughter Swamp who all looked like GM and some truly choice pages from PROMETHEA, including both sides of the cover to #32. The man truly is one of the best in the business. When asked why he bailed on DESOLATION JONES after the first arc, he just said that he accepted the gig thinking it was for him and decided that it wasn’t after six issues. Our loss, but certainly a professional answer. There were a million questions I wanted to ask Morrison, but didn’t want to slight Williams since it was his panel so just asked if they were going to pick up the stories of any of the 7 soldiers, or even do the concepts like GM did with ATOM or METAL MEN last week. Williams said that he had a pitch in for one as a writer (!) but wouldn’t specify. Morrison said he’d love to “but I can’t write EVERYthing!” Never occurred to me to bring stuff for those guys to sign, I blew it on PROMETHEA #1 and anything by GM, but still went up and shook GM’s hand, thanked him for the inspiration, I had written a lot of words on his fuel, he gave me a “Keep AT it, brother!” in his Scottish accent, which brought one Desmond David Hume to mind and made me all kinds of happy.

Made it back to Catherine. Got let in just in time for the GALACTICA panel. Showrunner Ronald Moore of ST:TNG fame came out with Starbuck and Caprica 6 and Lucy Lawless (because she’s so much more than just D’Anna) and Rose Darko herself, the President of the Human Race, Laura Roslin, Miz Mary McDonnell. They were all entertaining enough talking about the show as they head into the homestretch. Showed a clip from the RAZOR movie that should be excellent this Thanksgiving. (Stew, if you haven’t caught up yet, do!, so worth it)

We hung out for the FUTURAMA panel, which didn’t crush me, though it was cool to see Groening in person joking about what a slow weekend he was having.

Then, Joss. It was crazy, he just came out with nothing really to tout except the release of a SERENITY DVD. But then he dropped some crazy news. It looks like he’s going forward with the BBC on a RIPPER movie starring Tony Head, huge for Giles fans. Can’t wait for that. And he’s written the greatest horror movie of all time, his words, with the new wonderboy of writing Drew Goddard, a little number called THE CABIN IN THE WOODS. Wouldn’t say anything else about that, but that’s pretty enticing on title and writing talent alone (to say nothing of the hyperbole). Says he’s still focusing the totality of his energy into THE GONERS. Wants to write Buffy comics for the rest of his life. Goddard’s doing the next arc after BKV. As noted, we had just powered through the entire run of BUFFY and all but the last season of ANGEL so we could read the comics and not have anything spoiled for us. Did people ask about the comics? Did they talk about Buffy? No. All anyone wanted to know about was damn ANGEL 5! It started out all right at first. Someone asked who his favorite character of all to write was. I figured it had to be Mal. But, no, someone we’d never frakking heard of. Illyria. Then he explained who she was and how Amy reading Lady Capulet at the Sunday Shakespeare readings at his place was the genesis of the whole thing. And, yeah, pretty big thing in Season 5, apparently. The second half, looks like. Then the dude got up and dropped the Wesley bomb last, big shame, but we still don’t know a huge chunk of what goes down. (only 11 episodes left, as of this writing)

Then back up Fifth to rest, it was 6. Ate leftovers. Powered some red wine. Went back down to catch Warren’s Q&A at 9. There was a Buffy screening, but it didn’t look like anybody was going to be there and since we just watched them all anyway, Catherine joined me.

I laughed my ass off at that thing, like really fell out of the chair a few times, and there’s no way to do it justice, his accent saying those words just falling like a steel trap on the unwary. I hit him with the influences question, knew he loved Moorcock but was surprised that he was a big Kerouac fan, I asked what besides ON THE ROAD, he said DESOLATION ANGELS was the best one, to which I just told him “excellent” and walked away, just finished that one a few weeks ago myself. This is a better summation by someone who actually took notes:

(http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/08/01/sdcc-44-things-said-at-the
-spotlight-on-warren-ellis-panel/)

(I’m there at #11, and #13 was certainly the best news of Saturday, would’ve been the whole convention if not for Morrison)

Okay, no wait, someone asked him for his best Alan Moore anecdote. He thought about it then said he rang AM up one day to see how he was doing and (in an even better impression than Gaiman or Morrison) said "I'm excellent, Warren. I've changed my diet." "Oh? How?" "I used to smoke sixty spliffs a day and eat one meal. Now. I smoke twenty spliffs a day and eat three meals. And I feel wonderful."

And, you know, I always suspected, but there you have it.

Catherine was falling asleep by the time it was done and it WAS a very dense 2 hours. We trudged up the madness of downtown Fifth Avenue at midnight. Saw Cobra Commander and Destro doing some crazy disco dancing while selling food on a street corner. Everything looked and sounded garbled and strange.

We finally made it back to Paul's. She passed out, I took a little nap then got up and had Guinness with Paul when he got home. Only one more day left.

COMIC-CON. FRIDAY.

Got up at 9 to Paul making us eggs and bacon, above and beyond the call. Shoved those down then hauled ass down Fifth because they were giving away the tickets to get Warren Ellis’s 2:00 signature at 10:30, the same time as the panel with all seven Image founders. So Catherine went and got the ticket and I sat and watched the Image Seven stroll in one by one and it was pretty cool. It’s very fashionable to blame these guys and their upstart company for the massive dip in quality comics took as a whole in the 90s, and some of the blame is certainly well-placed, but at the time I remember it being like three Tom Cruises and a few Anthony Edwardses starting up their own Airborne Division. They might not’ve been the Navy but by God they sure tore it up with that initial aircraft carrier. I was close enough to hear what they were saying while milling about waiting for it to start. Coolest thing was easily Liefeld walking up next-to-last, shaking hands, looking around and asking too casually “Where’s Jim?” So much went into those two syllables, friendship and competition and insecurity and affection, it was crushing. Then the panel started. McFarlane talked 70-80% of the time, which was kind of funny when Silvestri would call him out on it every ten minutes or so. Catherine showed up with the Warren ticket, we watched for a while, then took off to damn Hall H.

Here, a mistake. They were showing a bunch of other movies I didn’t care about previewing, the Kidman Invasion flick and Beckinsale in Rucka’s WHITEOUT and a couple others, running from 10:30-12, so silly me, I figured it was early enough in the morning, we could catch the first half of Image, get the Warren ticket, then make it into H by 11:30 or so, in time to watch Snyder take questions about WATCHMEN, which of course I care about quite a bit. Not so, of course. There were hundreds of people in line sitting outside H, no chance of being let in, but just sitting there anyway, in case Crudup showed up as Dr. Manhattan and displaced half the crowd, I guess. That was the thing, the cast got announced. Bad News Little Child Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, by far the most inspired casting. He showed up with Akerman, the chick they got to play Laurie, never heard of her. And the guy for Comedian seems solid, too. The worst part was later, I saw some dude with a giant poster, a cover that never was, the logo up the left like always and a killer POV as he’s decking the Comedian, sending his cigar flying, a picture of Nixon and Blake up on the wall next to a newspaper article about Jon with the old Who Watches . . tag. Gibbons drew it up special. 3.6.09, children.

So, too bad to miss that. Richard Kelly was doing a signing at 11, got held up because the Rock was stuck in traffic but they let the people who didn’t care about his sig go through, so I got to shake hands with the man who gave us DONNIE DARKO, he signed my Director’s Cut liner notes and we were off to the ungodly line for a chance, a CHANCE, to get a ticket to get in line later for Gaiman autographs. It was insane. Catherine stayed there when Joe Quesada’s panel started. I went and found out that Marvel stole Jimenez away from DC and the awful news that Ramos is going to draw RUNAWAYS when Whedon’s run is over, so that’s one monthly off my list (still pissed about X-MEN #200, should’ve been a classic). DC was mocked. Catherine showed up and said she was unable to draw a winning ticket. I would’ve stayed if we’d understood the system, so I took off and waited a half hour for a shot. And drew a winning ticket! We were to be allowed to line up for Neil! Joy.

Quesada finished. We stayed in the room for a presentation on the Spider-Man animated series, which looked all right. But the reason was to get solid third row seating for the 2:00 Spotlight on Gaiman. And he tore it up.


It was like when you’re at a festival seeing pretty good bands, then the superstars start playing and you’re like “Yes, THIS is why we’re here.” Came out in typical leather jacket and mussed hair. Joked that he might should’ve prepared something, seeing as there were 6,000 of us. My favorite part was him recounting the tale of how Alan Moore dubbed him Scary Trousers (available in a slightly different form, and worth checking out, here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7644816109439364924). I asked him what stories or authors cut into him as a child and made him know that he was in fact destined to be a master storyteller. He cited Roger Zelazney and Samuel Delaney among others, but I can’t remember them, because he was looking me in the eyes and it was pretty wild. Plenty of other great bits, talked about how someone gave him a Tori Amos tape at the Con in ’91 because she wrote that first song about him and how they got to be friends from that. Said DEATH might actually happen, but he’d be the last to know. And that Gilliam still wants to make GOOD OMENS if someone’ll just give him $70 million. Can’t believe we live in a world where no one will.

Neil finished at 3 and now we had to hurry because Warren was done signing at 4 and Neil was done at 4:15 and we had to get them both. Went over and was surprised to see no line for Ellis. I trooped up, bought his new novel, and got him to sign that as well as PLANETARY #26. He was so nice and subdued, I wasn’t sure what to make of it, really threw me. I expected him to bawl me out for choosing #26! Not quite as ornery in person. I told him what an accomplishment PLANETARY was and he said “Oi jest make shit up, ‘m glad yew loiked it!” Heartening exchange. Went and joined Catherine in line for Neil. Called Stew back.

Got Neil to sign SANDMAN #1 (he drew lines of energy radiating out from McKean’s Morpheus eyes, too) and thanked him for everything, shook hands, even.

Then went to the Vertigo panel with maybe 20 creators on stage, including the FABLES guys and Mike Carey. No BKV, though. He’s trapped in a room, dictating island goodness! It was fine. We were cashed.

Walked back to Paul’s at 5:30. Drank some wine, I had a Guinness, then we got a little dressed-up and got these amazing fish tacos take out from this place Paul recommended and ate them in line for the Eisners, which started at 8:30, really 8:45. And they were fun, but much more slipshod than I would’ve figured, PowerPoint presentations messing up and such. Brian Poseyn was awesome, delivering an entire group of nominations in Klingon. A couple guys from RENO 911 were pretty funny. But the killer was Gaiman and Johnathan Ross, this English chap who assured us he was a massive celebrity from across the pond but not to worry, he loves comics more than he loves to masturbate and he really does love a good wank. He expounded on this theme to the point that Gaiman was reduced to absolute laughter and the rest of us were in the aisles. Earlier, a couple of women reenacted the Madonna/Britney kiss to honor all the women nominees and the rise of “queer comics” in general (how this actually honored them, I can’t say). But Ross thought it would be funny to badger Neil into doing same, so we did actually witness mouth-to-mouth between the two. It was pretty hilarious. Almost made up for Morrison not showing up to collect the Eisner for ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, which would have been a hell of a speech at 11:30, I wot.

Home, home to bed. That second day really took it out of us.

_______________________

Huge news of the day: I've been wishing they'd cancel ASTONISHING X-MEN after Whedon/Cassaday are done because I honestly can't see who could top it. Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi are the best candidates that I can come up with. Should be great.

Huger, yet: Morrison. JG Jones. FINAL CRISIS. May 2008. Best. Event. Ever.



To Be Continued . . .

COMIC-CON. THURSDAY.

Spoilers Abound. Some fuck ruined my favorite Wesley for us, and for no good reason, disclosure without comment even, so you can all take your chances from here on out. Lost, too.


So, we got up at the crack of dawn and I powered the Indian food that was left from the night before, a spicy way to start the day, and we were off to the airport. On the flight, we read all five issues of Buffy’s Season 8*, having knocked out the series finale the night before, as well as the excellent Angel 4 finale# and I was also drastically impressed with Warren’s DOKTOR SLEEPLESS, as well as Morrison’s Satanic Batman issue on the re-read, such a great trick. At any rate, we landed, got our luggage. Paul picked us up and drove us past boats and a warship right into the heart of downtown where he lives. We left our luggage in his and Lane’s swanky 3rd floor loft and walked ten minutes down Fifth Avenue straight to the Convention Center. Paul lives on the same street as the place where Comic-Con is held. I think that’s pretty cool.

Right away, we could see that there were lots of people lining up to be let in. People who had logged onto Teh Intrawub (as Warren has it) and paid their hard-earned $ for badges. The Pre-Registration line, it’s called. Well, that got funnier and funnier. We turned left and followed the line down, walked around the Convention Center, kept going, turned a corner and another corner and it was sad and then got funny because we soon realized that what we should have done as soon as we saw the mob was veer right and run as fast as our little feets would carry us and we would have beat a few hundred people for their place. Because the line yawed all the way back to the Harbor on the far side. Over yonder.

Didn’t look too good to get into that Battlestar Galactica panel at 12:15 (we finally found the end of the line at 11:30 after all that walking)(landed at 10:20, left Paul’s at 11:00 if you’re keeping score). The JJ Abrams at 1:30 also seemed dubious. I was frankly just hoping we cleared LOST at 5:30, that’s how ugly the line was.

Long story short, finally got let in at 2:15, hauled ass to the Paramount booth so we could get a pass to Gaiman’s STARDUST sneak-preview, were told to come back at 4:30, hauled ass to the Line to get into the massive Hall H (which come to think it, we never actually witnessed, for all of its mythical glory), stood in said line for I think half an hour, the hall has a capacity of 6,000, they packed it and, shit ya not, doyekennit, they closed the doors with 10 people between [Catherine and I] and entrance. So we had to miss the Indiana Jones teaser. And Neil Gaiman talking about and previewing Beowulf and Stardust. And JJ Abrams bringing out facking Sylar and announcing that he’s going to play young Spock, and here’s Leonard Nimoy for good measure. Missed all of that. But I can still hear the sound of the lady cop closing the door.

So, there was a Darwyn Cooke Spotlight, but at that point, all I cared about was getting in to see Lindelof & Cuse talk about my favorite TV show. But we still figured we had a second to check out the Floor, the Exhibit Hall, so we did so and boy was it insane. Like the way too much sugar will create diabetes, too much time down there will create agoraphobia.^ Too many people, we hit the ripcord, lined up for the L O S T. They let us in at 3:45, we got seats on the 7th row, a drag I know, but there weren’t any good ones on the row behind us. I ran and got us those Stardust passes before 4:30 and even got Catherine to come get some too so Paul and Lane could join us. Then, LOST.

So great. The pair walked out with tabletop bells and announced that this was their own failsafe, they would be chiming them if the other was getting too close to spoiling anything, since the plot was in such a very delicate place after Jack's “We’ve got to go back!” horrified 15 million people by seeming to occur in at least ’07 if not later. Good talks about the writer’s room. I wanted so much to ask them a question but couldn’t think of a single one that I don’t want answered in the course of the show. Until. Someone asked whether Ben got captured in Rousseau’s net on purpose in 2.14 and it hit me that I had seen those chinos he wore in 2.23 walking by as the fourth man (Cheers, Mr. Snow!) that Eko and Jin glimpsed in 2.5 and so I ran back to ask them that.@

But then (turn back! Season 4 spoiler!)

they brought out &#&$&HaroldPerrineau&&&& and said he was definitely returning, though they quite happily declined to specify when or how. And, what else, Lindelof said they were drunk and that they hadn’t forgotten about Libby and they were so happy to know the end date, they were waiting on that to drop the flashforward bridge, which they’ve had planned since late first season . . . then they closed with an orientation clip of Edwin Halliwax (who looked just like Marvin Candle and Mark Wickman) explaining that surely you’ve understood that Station 6 – The Orchid is not a botanical research facility, he mentioned a kasimir effect and then it seemed like an Incident took place, an assistant ran in and said that the levels were at –20 and this shouldn’t be happening, Marvin said “What the fuck?!?” which was pretty funny and great, then he snarled at the camera to Turn that thing off! and that was it.



Also at some point, there was film spliced in that had the text GOD LOVED YOU AS HE LOVED JACOB and later on, very brief upside-down footage of someone riding a bicycle through the Others’ pre-crash of 815 Village.

So yeah, that two minutes made it all worthwhile.

Made it back to Paul and Lane’s at 6:30. Met Boba Fett on the way. His voice-speaker was perfect.



Lane had fixed lasagna. We drank wine. Great downtime. I hauled everybody out of there before 8 so we could make the Stardust sneak. Of course, it was long-gone. Probably had been since we were walking back. No matter. We found a piano bar that served alcohol. Unfortunately the special that we partook of was something called a Lunchbox shot which is actually about the worst thing I've ever heard of. You drop a shot of Amaretto into half a pint of Miller Lite and orange juice. It was heinous but the girls got them so we had to man up. Quite a shame, felt like they should've paid us $2 to drink them. But the piano guys were rocking. The second song they played was by Journey.

And it goes on and on and on and on . . .

Doooooon’t stop



_____________

*favorite Buffy finale moment: well, a tie: the 4-Point Core one by one walking away down the hall from each other, first losing Giles, then Willow, then Buffy holding Xander’s hand and squeezing it goodbye/slash/the look on Spike’s face “I want to see how it all ends”, so much more the vampyre rock star in ways that Lestat and Anne Rice never even imagined.

# the Wolfram/Hart twist, who saw that coming?

^if it even is real, ya-hah

@and as it turned out, it would have been the most microscopic potentially EP-flattening question of the afternoon, but the question-line had already swelled past the point of contention by then. Alas.