Showing posts with label Nikki Stafford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nikki Stafford. Show all posts
Head Space
I had a neat dream last night. Since content might be light here for a spell, I’ve
written it up along with a couple more I scribbled down from earlier this year.
The one from last night involved the work of Nikki Stafford, author of books about Lost and other cult TV, whose blog was among my select re-entry points to online activity when I finally got a working computer a handful of years ago now. Co-starring in the older dreams were actor/filmmaker Lena Dunham, creator of the HBO series Girls, whom I’ve never met, and comics scribe Kurt Busiek, creator of Astro City, whom I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with online and in person a fair amount over the past couple of decades.
In the snippet of last night’s dream that left an impression, I was mostly running around from table to table in a large dining room with a gravy boat of salad dressing.
At a certain point that scene, which I vaguely associated with a college dining hall, transitioned to me teaching a class on Buffy the Vampire Slayer that drew from Nikki’s work as well as my own blogposts. The real-world irony of the latter is that I’d hoped to publish a series of relevant posts during Nikki’s year-long rewatch of that show but I had to suspend that plan. (I did earlier share thoughts on my first exposure to Buffy
on television and review the original movie.)
My Buffy Summer
A few weeks gone by, Nikki Stafford declared June to be Vampire Month on her blog, Nik at Nite. The primary topic of conversation — a TV show which I’m observing a moratorium on speaking about — had begun to eat itself, and Nikki had fangdom on the brain for at least two good reasons: (1) ECW Press, where she’s an editor and which publishes her Finding [censored] books, has a True Blood companion coming out. (2) She was preparing to attend Slayage — an academic conference devoted to the work of Joss Whedon in general and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in particular. I think there was also something to do with The Vampire Diaries in there.
I was surprisingly late getting into the adventures of Buffy Summers.
Nik in New York
The soup can is back in effect. Which signals, as regular visitors here know and the
rest of you can find oat in another post, that one’s blog is being updated more sporadically than usual. I’ve plenty of reviews and bits of commentary almost ready to go, but I keep dropping them to get my old Lost entries back up, the look at this past week’s episode finished, and my grand think-piece(s) on the series in shape.
Did I say “find oat”?
Before Six
The Lost Rewatch hosted by Nikki Stafford wraps up its review of the pivotal
third season this week.
I couldn’t join in when the Rewatch began in July but jumped on board last month
with Season 3. While I’ve fallen behind again, I’m trying to catch up and looking forward to discussion of Season 4, on which more in a few paragraphs.
End of Isle
The Lost season finale airs tomorrow night, leaving us bereft of new episodes for
eight months.
I like Nikki Stafford’s idea of watching the whole series to date again before the final season begins in early 2010 and discussing it episode by episode over at Nik at Nite. We’ll even have the 5th-season edition of Finding ‘Lost’, now available to pre-order, in hand by the time we revisit this past year. But I’m reminded of an exchange between young Daniel Faraday and his mother, Eloise, in a recent episode: When Daniel is told that there’s no time for such pursuits as the piano, he says that he’ll “make time” — a sentiment to which Eloise knowingly replies, “If only you could.” I recall my dad more than once musing that there should be an extra day of the week that by Constitutional (or perhaps cosmic) decree would be devoted to all those hobbies and projects that never seem to get the attention they deserve. Sign me up!
... in Thought
I’m not alone in being driven to enjoyable distraction by ABC’s Lost.
Although the show has seen ratings drop considerably over the last few years, many
die-hard fans remain. You can still find viewers like my mother who tune in purely for the wild television entertainment week after week — or wait month upon month, since Lost switched to a no-repeat season that runs from January to May and goes dark the rest of the year. You’ll also find viewers who suffuse cyberspace, reading and often participating in discussions that dissect and speculate upon every nuance of each chapter, DVD extras, pronouncements from the show’s producers to journalists and Comic-Con audiences, interactive multimedia games, etc. You might even find other viewers like me, who are somewhere in-between.