On Basketball and the Lack of Cable

[dlgood]

Hey - does anybody have the "One Shining Moment" clip - either the song or this year's video clip - from the NCAA Tourney. I didn't get to see it...

1. Congrats to hjcallipygian for finishing first in the NCAA Tourney Pool. HJ made the big move out of the first week second division, mostly because all the favorites lost, and his Gators won. Yay to HJ! Even if it means a member of the tribe (UCLA's Jordan Farmar) had to lose...

2. Good luck wishes to my University of Maryland Terrapins women's basketball team, who upset #1 UNC and will face #2 Duke tonight in the Championship game.

3. A damn gopher chewed through my cable line. When I came home yesterday, I had no internet and no TV. CRISIS! It's a good thing there are bars. Otherwise, I would have had to read books or clean my house. Stupid gophers.

4. In a discussion of Human/Vampire romantic relationships and the unfeasibility thereof, came across the best encapsulation of why I first wound up liking the Buffy/Angel ship during BtVS6/AtS3:

Maybe the problem is that Angel isn't being compared to anyone in particular, but just to "a human". He might not be better for Buffy than the ideal human guy, but he might be better than any actual human guy you could name. It's like the old joke: 60% of voters say they prefer an unnamed democrat over (for example) DeLay. It's the named democrats that they don't want.

5. I think that Barry Bonds (and other players accused of cheating with steroids pre-steroids testing agreement) should only be punished for it, if MLB is going to go ahead and kick Whitey Ford and Gaylord Perry (among other notorious cheaters) out of the hall of fame.

Comments

[tyreseus.livejournal.com]

Is this what you're looking for?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

damned gopher. is it fixed?

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Temporarily. THey have a big bright orange wire running around the yard. They have to come back and dig in a new permanent line. But I'll get by...

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

better than nothing right

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[sistakaren.livejournal.com]

Rassum, frassum tourney. Well the men's anyway; congrats to your ladies! That's pretty sweet! It's nice that the women's tourney had something awesome going on. The fucking men's tournament... GAH! Ugh. And that's not because I didn't threepeat (hee!). The final games just kinda sucked. Bah. I just don't feel like the best team won. Sad times.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Did you watch those games? Our ladies are clutch!

We especially like the way they did it by going through Duke and Carolina. How bad is that, to win by upsetting teams in your own conference...

And yeah, so the Final Four was pretty sad, but the first rounds were just awesome. Mason baby!

[cleapet.livejournal.com]

So, Angel was the best for Buffy for lack of anyone else, but this didn't hit you until BtVS S6/ AtS S3? Hm...Interesting. I know you're not crazy about Cordelia/Angel but in S3 I kinda dig it. I think Cordy fills some hole in Angel; I just also think that Buffy makes his cup runneth over.

Stupid gopher! At least your cable co. was able to come out reasonably quickly.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

this didn't hit you until BtVS S6/ AtS S3? Hm...Interesting.

It's a few things... partly, I don't know that I'm not really that much of a romantic at heart. But some of it is about my own viewership of the show. I started watching back in BtVS-2, but I was still in college and I didn't watch regularly and attentively until S5/2. When I watched BtVS-2 and 3, I liked it enough to move the entire story, and I wasn't huge on it... because we're talking about an 18-year old with a whole lot more life to go.

And I didn't really get into online discussions of the show until the end of S5. (Which, not by coincidence, is when my RL friends checked out of the show because they thought it had gone to far downhill and gotten way too boring.) But when you get toward the end of a series, it starts looking more like a closed loop, and you stop saying - well the right person is someone they haven't met, and start looking at who fits best out of those they already have.... That and the way latter season relationships went rehabilitating ones I thought looked better.

Sort of like how BtVS-7 really rehabilitated S4 for me. Keeping in mind that I was in grad school when S4 aired and missed half the episodes...

I know you're not crazy about Cordelia/Angel but in S3 I kinda dig it. I think Cordy fills some hole in Angel

She does, but I think she did that much better when they were friends then she did as romantic interest... I think, they could have written a C/A relationship in a way that worked better for me -- there were issues I would have needed them to address and characterization of Cordelia that needed more work. What they actually put onscreen clanked really hard off the rim.

I just also think that Buffy makes his cup runneth over.

I think that - having watched the first three seasons of BtVS, there was a lot of growth both characters really had to go through to be viable romantic partners for anybody. Which is probably why I wasn't all huge about them back when the shows were airing at that point... But at the close of the series, I think he'd grown more as a person into being anle to be in a relationshp. Except for how I think the curse makes any long-term relationship for him a non-starter.

[jgracio.livejournal.com]

Sort of like how BtVS-7 really rehabilitated S4 for me.

Could you expand on this? Or is it just a case of S7 made S4 look good by comparison?

On the Bangel thing, IMO, it's bound to end in pain, and the soul issue could complicate matters. Also, I don't think it's Angel's fate to have a happy relationship. That's not Angel. Buffy, I'm of two minds. As an empowering tale, yeah, a happy relationship could be in the cards. As the tale of misery and hardship, huh, no, no real happiness for the Buffster. I'm not sure which of these BTVS is.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Or is it just a case of S7 made S4 look good by comparison?

Part of it was actually getting around to watching the S4 episodes when they ran in syndication... and the other part was noting how those episodes were considerably better than the S7 episodes.

IMO, it's bound to end in pain, and the soul issue could complicate matters.

The mortality/immortality issue is a huge barrier. Vampire/human is a huge barrier. I think they have particular sets of values and (now) have a set of experiences that could mesh well... if they could work past the aforementioned barriers. To my mind, the soul issue doesn't 'complicate matters' - it makes trying to work on it a non-starter. He can't have a happy long-term romantic relationship with anyone, because it's IMHO not worth the risk.

Like you, with her, I don't know. The existence, now, of large numbers of slayers - I think - makes her a more viable romantic partner. She can now actually take a sabbatical (which I think she desperately needed) without feeling like a horrible person for doing so. I think she can grow up fine with that pressure being released.

[jgracio.livejournal.com]

For all the grief people piled on S4, some of the better episodes of the entire Series were in S4. So, Season not so great, but some eps, gah, the best. :)

Yanno, I've thought about writing a story with a seventy or eighty year old Buffy staying home while Angel/Spike/Morty go out to fight with the new Slayers, just to show how that thing would end in an insecure, crushed Buffy, but I'm not a good enough writer.

And I'm not talking about the characters as people, but rather as tales, if I can make myself understood. Angel will never be happy, because his tale is a tale of trying to make up for all he did, and never quite managing it. Of seeing everyone he cares about die. In short, of pain with brief interludes of happiness.

Buffy, I saw as something else. As an optimistic tale, of growing up, finding your place in the world, becoming a better person, an empowering fantasy. That view changed, changed so much I see Chosen as pretty much a "bad" ending. Knowing that JW planned to have Buffy end by jumping into a portal to a hell dimension, getting rid of all magic on Earth but trapping herself pretty much in hell forever also makes me think that Buffy isn't an empowering tale. :)

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

I've thought about writing a story with a seventy or eighty year old Buffy staying home while Angel/Spike/Morty go out to fight with the new Slayers, just to show how that thing would end in an insecure, crushed Buffy

My expectation is that... should Buffy live so long... she would have developed a lot of other interests and found other things to do with her time such that not being the primary fighter is something she could deal with reasonably well. Particularly with not having the same load to carry if the newer slayers demonstrate capability and responsibility. Assuming that Buffy doesn't turn into Joyce when she hits 40.


I'm not talking about the characters as people, but rather as tales, if I can make myself understood.

Then that where we diverge, fundamentally, in terms of how we view things. I look at that over-arching narrative, but I also like to demysitify it and put myself inside of the world and see them more as people. So we're looking for different things.