A Green Mushroom

This book hooked me.  I started it not really expecting much and ended up finishing it over the course of one weekend. It's a biography but it's mostly about his history of creation in media.  It doesn't focus much on his childhood, and it's all the better for it.  Instead, it's broken down by what he was working on and when that happened.  There are multiple chapters devoted to some of the longer works, like Buffy, but it covers all of his film, video, TV, and comics up through The Avengers and prepping for Age of Ultron. The book gives lots more context for his work and it's made me appreciate things I already liked, but in a new light.  I have to admit, as soon as I finished it I re-watched Dr. Horrible.  It's probably my favorite made for the internet thing ever. Mostly, it just makes me excited to see what his next project will be.  I understand Joss Whedon as a creator so much more now and I'm definitely already interested in all  ...

After writing up my Buffy Season 1 impressions I dove into season 2 hoping to see the series really come to life.  But after hitting the half way point in season 2 I realized that the week to week 90s-ness of the show isn't for me. There are too many filler episodes and tons of episodes that don't move the overall narrative arc forward.  I know Buffy isn't really a horror show but it's setting is definitely "horror" for lack of a better word.  That genre/setting has never appealed to me and the monster of the week formula quickly got stale. But I could see the core of the show and there was still something there that I liked.  The core cast and central story arcs are good.  So I googled "best buffy episodes" and "essential buffy episodes", consulted a bunch of lists, and then kinda mashed them together in my brain. Then I started skipping. Sometimes just a couple episodes at a time and later almost entire seasons. But I really...

I've been listening to the Story Wonk podcast series lately.  They do story seminars and pop culture analysis in podcast form and they're amazing.  After listening to their entire backlog of the general pop culture podcast The Lightbulb , their Harry Potter series Dear Mr. Potter , and the Star Wars series Story and Star Wars I still wanted more. I saw that they had a Buffy The Vampire Slayer podcast series called Dusted   going through the entire TV show episode by episode.  I had always kind of dismissed Buffy since it was before my time but I figured if these two people think it's worthwhile to cover the entire series then there must be something there to check out. The first season of Buffy is rough but I can definitely see the core of a series that could become good.  The setup to kick off the series isn't bad but then it's followed by a lot of "monster of the week" type episodes that don't hold up as well.  The episode about Angel halfwa...