Finally got part two of Season 5 of Angel the other day; my collection is complete. It’d be the first time I’d ever owned all the episodes of a TV series, if it wasn’t for that cheating Firefly with it’s all in one boxed set.

The DVD’s quite good — a better than average gag reel, a whole bunch of commentaries, including a Joss Whedon one, and four little documentaries. The one that looks at the series as a whole is particularly nice. I hate it when people making shows act as if their last few seasons were the only good ones, and these folk don’t. Which is nice.

Unfortunately the Joss Whedon (and Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof) commentary is for ‘A Hole in the World’ and as a result they’re all sad and quiet for about half the time. Ripped off! They do apologise sincerely. Alexis Denisof continues to sound exactly like Kermit the Frog. Anyhow, this purchase means that I might actually review the last two episodes. At some point. Maybe.

Almost everyone I spoke to in the States, in two of the most liberal cities in the country — from bartenders to members of country/hip-hop fusion bands (a genre that, should it ever gain any success will no doubt be dubbed hick-hop) to homeless gay Irishmen — was at pains to make it clear what an evil man they thought W was. Once they found out that I was visiting both coasts they also wanted to ensure I had no intension of going anywhere near the mass of red states between SF and NY.

Meanwhile, Fox News ensures the other 50.01% of the nation gets its voice heard with its 24/7 spouting of hatred of anything liberal. While none of this is news, and has been widely reported, I was still shocked at how divided the country is and just how much disgust there is for the other side. It seems that last year’s elections have totally destroyed many people’s faith in democracy and their fellow countrypeople in much the same way that the Tampa election did in Australia. Speaking of which, you will be pleased to hear that Howard’s ‘me too’-ing has not been in vain and our own evil leader’s role in screwing up the world is well known here.

As the world anxiously awaits my in-depth review of Serenity, sensible folk know there’s only one reviewer who can really be counted on as completely reliable. Yes, Mr Schembri, reviewing in The Age‘s ‘eg’ section. His (complete) thoughts follow:

Totally forgettable, throwaway exercise by director Joss Whedon (Buffy creator) who appears to have stapled together two episodes of his failed sci-fi TV show Firefly. A group of space pirates get involved in one of those civilization-saving space adventures that involve a lot of poorly delivered jokes and crummy digital effects of spaceships that look like cereal boxes.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a One-and-a-half-star review. So, now you know, folks — SEE THIS FILM. Jim amusingly gives Transporter 2 three and a half stars on the same page, noting that the lead actor never has more than one expression, that the main character gets “emotionally attached to a kid” (which sounds new and exciting) and lavishing all his praise on the action sequences (fair enough, of course). But this anti-TV snobbery seems weird.

“Poorly Delivered Jokes”? Can I maim him? Just a little?

I noticed today an interesting upcoming movie that I hadn’t previously heard of, while reading a fascinating TIME interview with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon. Neil Gaiman is famous for writing the Sandman comic, his novels Neverwhere and American Gods, and writing a fantastic book on Douglas Adams called Don’t Panic.

He also wrote an episode of Babylon 5 one time, but unfortunately he got in late and wrote it in season five. On the upside, it did at least make his script look far better for all the crap hanging around it.

I’m assuming most people here know who Joss Whedon is.

Anyhow, I had a point, and it’s this. Mirrormask is a new film written by Gaiman, and involving the Jim Henson creature shop. According to Gaiman in the above interview, the creation of the film went something like this:

the brief with Mirrormask was Henson coming to us and saying, in the Eighties, Henson’s did The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. They were family fantasy films. They cost $40 million each. We’d like to do another one. We have $4 million. If we gave you that $4 million, could you come back with a movie, and we won’t tell you what to do? As deals go, it’s that bit at the end […] that was, okay, yes, I will happily take not enough money to make a huge fantasy movie and try and make a huge fantasy movie with it.

That could sound good or bad, depending on how you look at it. However, looking at the trailer, I reckon it’ll end up pretty good. Or at least, pretty pretty.

Ok, I’m in an internet cafe with fifteen minutes to type so you can expect a less rambling entry than normal.

New York, having about 15 times the population of San Francisco, is less easily summarisable in a couple sentences. Indeed, that is probably the thing I have noticed most about it. Even London and Paris have defining, destinctly London/Paris characteristics which you find throughout their many, varied suburbs. In the five days I have been in NY though, I have been unable to identify such an all-encompassing vibe. Each part of town, and I have only really seen Manhattan, could be in a completely different city.

The thing that has surprised me most is how much friendlier it is than I expected. I knew Giuliani had cleaned up a lot of the crime but the streets and subway feel safer here than in some parts of SF. And while there are the yellow cab filled, crowded, noisy streets around Times Square, there are many parts of downtown Manhattan, including the area we are staying which are distinctly green and suburban.

So far we have mainly just been wandering the streets of the different parts of town: the Financial district, paying the obligatory visit to the World Trade Centre site, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, Times Square, Broadway, Fifth Ave, Central Park… In our remaining two days we still need to do the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.

Anyway, time is running short. More updates (and possibly photos) soon.

The total amount of RAM available to Grapefruit staff writers today was boosted by two gigabytes.

A last-minute decision to stop by Moorabbin’s swap meet divulged the extra memory to Andy and I, for about the same price we were going to get it from the shop. So, not that exciting, but Moorabbin is much closer than Monash and so we figure we saved at least two bucks in travel costs. It would have been more but we were in an LPG car.

Mmmm. Speedy iMac. Now I’ve got to use my new found speed to make a computer-ish picture for this blog.