Joss vs. His Birthday

In honor of Joss Whedon's birthday, here's two fanvids on birthdays in the Whedonverse:

Charmax, Birthday Buffy (Warning: really, really peppy song)

Slayer Gal, Bad Buffy Birthday

And there's the fact that Hulu has the second most devastating Buffy birthday episode available for free streaming: Helpless.

Slayage: Day 2 recaplet.

Second day at Slayage in Saint Augustine.  Okay it was a week ago, but things happen and people (named Kristen) get sinusitis from the airplane.

Slayage: Day 1 recaplet

Although this is the end of the second (full) day of the Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses, I've found a bit of time where I'm finally able to sit down and give a short recap of the fun we had on Day 1.

Slayage: Lunchtime report.

Here we are at lunch amongst the Whedonite elite.  The real highlight, for me, in the first half of this day has been the very first keynote address of the conference: Janet K. Halfyard's presentation Listening to Buffy: Music, Memory, Meaning, and Moping.  Some of you may know Halfyard's name from her book Danny Elfman's Batman: A Film Score Guide.  (Okay, I know her from that book.  A few of my fellow film score nerd friends from college may as well.)

One of the first things Halfyard said is what resonated most with me, and I believe it speaks truth about the function of music in film: "Music remembers and reveals."

I would love to go into further detail, but I'm being pulled away for the next sessions.  Stay tuned!  A full report will follow.

"All this is a show. And when the music stops, the rest is silence."

My apologies for quoting the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.  I know that I'm one of three people in the world who actually liked it.¹

It's been pretty quiet here on the blog since publishing Watcher Junior Issue 5, but we've been hard at work behind the scenes.  Our editor in chief, David Kociemba, has been fine tuning his paper for The Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses, so there hasn't been much action beyond re-watching Season 1 of BtVS and picking apart its secrets.

Whenever I get to catch an episode here or there, it's always a great moment of nostalgia for me because the series first ran when I was 16 and a sophomore in high school.  My friends and I were the same age as the characters on the show and it was like watching superheroes playing out weekly adventures, yet still having to deal with school the same way we did.²

Anyway, in two days we'll be blogging, complete with pictures and maybe even video, from Flagler College in Saint Augustine.  In the meantime, enjoy Issue 5.  It's awesome to see the number of readers who have been flooding our site since Friday.  Let us know what you think!



¹: Give me a break, I was 12.
²: My Class of '99 graduation was much less eventful, however.