Brandon's Buzz

A is in town this weekend for a whirlwind visit, and Sherry Ann will arrive bright and early Monday morning, whereupon the three of us are embarking on a tiny l’il road trip (or, as Sherry called it when we spoke last week, “a big gay adventure!”). My plan as of now is to pre-tape a few Buzz posts (at least a quotable or two, plus next week’s record store report and, ideally, a new playlist) so that my absence at the helm is not quite so obvious; regardless of whether that idea succeeds or fails, the Buzz will resume normal activity on Thursday, July 17. Among the first topics of discussion at that time: a salute to one of television history’s most groundbreaking and terrific series, which next week marks its 40th (!) year on the air. Trust me — you don’t want to miss that.

On a related note, the Buzz is almost certainly going to notch its 3000th pageview some time this weekend (we’re sitting somewhere in the 2980s as I type this, according to WordPress’ stats), which truly does blow my mind. I considered this wacky experiment a smashing success all the way back on April 22, when — on all of the fourth day of the Buzz’s then-tenuous existence — I actually managed to think of a worthy, valid topic for a strong third post. (Honest to God, all you have to do to understand just why most blogs stall in the very early-going is start one.) Now, 74 posts, 23 post categories, 267 post tags, and nearly thirty hundred look-sees later, I’m utterly speechless by the unfailing support and encouragement you’ve all shown both the Buzz and its chief cook and bottle washer. I seriously adore you guys.

“Roland Emmerich wanted to buy my book Mephisto and Onyx to do a movie, and he came to the house. First of all, he’s nine and a half feet tall, which immediately annoys me, because at five foot five, nine foot five people piss me off. So, I made him sit down…. He’s a very nice guy. He has a German accent, and he talks like a valley girl… and I don’t mean to be making fun of him, but this is really the reason I didn’t let him do the movie. He said, [adopts a heavy German brogue] ‘Well, when I made Stargate, you see, like, it was, like, it was, I had to, like, like, I had to get a movie that was really, would go back in time but, like, it was….’ And I said to him, ‘Excuse me, excu—” and he doesn’t listen. He’s still talking! And the person that was with him said, ‘Roland, Roland, Harlan’s trying to say something.’ And [Roland] said, ‘What? Like, what? Like, like, what is it?’ And I said, ‘If you say ‘like’ once more, I will nail your head to this coffee table.'”

— the brilliant Harlan Ellison, discussing the “return” of sci-fi with Tom Snyder in 1996