There's being snubbed, and then there's being slamed against a wall head-first.

Buffy, always a bastion of exceptional writing and in a genre of its own, usually has one exceptional episode per season, pushing its own bar even higher. In 1999 that episode was "Hush" which was quite justifiably nominated for the 'Best Writing in a Drama' Emmy award, remarkable because over 75% of the episode took place with no dialog at all. It didn't win, but it's an honor just to be nominated.

In 2000, the breakout episode was "The Body," detailing the aftermath of the death of Buffy's mom. Sadly it didn't get the nomination which, in my opinion, it richly deserved.

That's fine though. Votes are votes; democracy in action.

Last year, "Once More, With Feeling!" was absolutely outstanding. In my mind, and in the minds of many others I've talked to, the best Buffy episode ever, and very possibly the best hour on TV in 2001.

People were talking about Buffy's first 'real' (read: not in makeup or music) Emmy with confidence. UPN was so proud of its new acquisition (having taken over the series from WB just that season) that they spared no expense in including, along with the customary 'for your consideration' ad in industry-mag Variety, a complimentary DVD of the episode. The DVDs sold on eBay for prices ranging from $120 to upwards of $600 just for that episode.

Emmy nomination forms went out to voters earlier this month, with a list of the episodes being put forward for nomination in each category, and inexplicably "Once More, With Feeling" wasn't on the list.

This isn't sour grapes or whining: Each show on television gets to put forward what they feel is their strongest episode and that gets presented to voters for conideration. OMWF was supposed to be on the list, and the Emmy coordinators made a typographical error.

Now, after being made aware of their error, the Television Academy has sent out postcards letting constituents know the procedure for retroactively changing their vote, but the process is considerably more difficult than the original voting, and industry experts forsee that a reasonable percentage of those who would otherwise have voted for OMWF won't bother to change it after the fact, if they even take notice of the junkmail-like postcard.

Losing in a fair vote is one thing. Losing because your show just doesn't have enough visibility is another, but both are par for the awards course. Being left off a ballot by a clerical error, though: that's simply fucked up. It's 2002, and voting still sucks. What will it take to have a peer review be a standard step in the ballot creation and certification process?

Sick for the last three days: sore throat, fever, achy, chills, digestions, you name it.

Not my ideal way to spend a vacation (err, the Brown Island trip I'm on now, not last week's Pittsburgh trip), but the TheraFlu's kicking in and I'm feeling a little better. Anyhow, I'm getting back tomorrow which, among other things, means I won't have to dodge call-waiting and tunnel through a copper wire from Washington State to Pennsylvania (free CMU dialup) to get some net access.

Thanks fer stickin' 'round. I'll reply to the more amusing comments tomorrow or Monday...

A hotel room in Friendship, PA - 11:27pm, June 18th: When I left Los Angeles to go to college at Berkeley, 11 years ago, I was so ready. My sister had left two years earlier, and I'd never had a very good social life in high school. There wasn't much to miss, and there was a whole world, what I perceived as my new life, to look forward to.

Of course I missed my parents, but unlike when I would cry myself sick at summer camp in 6th grade, I could feel their love, support, and pride, and I was eager to do right what I did wrong in high school. I was starting over, and I was looking forward to it.

As it turned out, this is exactly what happened. It took a one year false start, with people who were my friends mostly due to proximity, before I foud my niches, the seeds that would grow into friendships, loves, and connect me to others that helped for the network of people I care about, those who make me what I am.

And now I'm leaving them.

Cue the melodrama, I know. I'm terribly excited about starting school, and I realize that the twin traumas of my very voyage out here yesterday and this morning are the devils on my shoulders, weighing me down and typing these very words, but at the same time that knowledge helps as little as the recognition of widthdrawl symptoms for what they are helps the addict deal with them.

Speaking from less than 24 hours of experience, there are parts of Pittsburgh that I really like, and if I find the right place to live, I know that I'll be centered, and will feel a lot better.

At the same time, my friends are my identity. Being a chameleon, I take on the perceived characteristics of the people that I'm with, which makes me really picky about who I spend time with. Today I joined forces apartmenting with Chad, with the idea that we might get a place to share. We spent the day looking, making a very efficient team of driver/navigator, scanning the exteriors of dozens of available spaces to narrow the search quickly. At the end of the day we still hadn't been inside a single building, which was par for the plan, but doesn't wash my anxiety. Back in my hotel room, I realized that though if I were to have a roommate, Chad would be an excellent choice, I can't have one. As a chameleon I can't live with someone else if I have any hope of accomplishing the secondary task of this one-year experiment of finding out who I am. What's more, for every moment where I saw my behavior transmuted by my roommate, I would feel trapped, and as anyone who has honestly fallen victim to a chinese finger trap, knowing you're immobilized can be a hundred times worse than the actuall immobilization. This is clearly my problem, but my own place, at least at this moment in time, is a vital part of the solution.

But this isn't the message that at 11:30 at night, after going on 3 and 4 hours of sleep last night and the night before last respectively, got me to break out the powerbook instead of the pillow. I wanted to tell people how much I care about them.

This pre-emptive farewell, nearly two months in advance is for Ali, Mark, Crystal, Ammy, Em, Mara and Karen; you've all become such a part of me that I couldn't seperate myself from you if I tried.

This is for Forest, Gina, Christyn, Rick, Gary and Chris, who in and out of the years, have woven it all together.

This is for Dinah, Benjy, Kristin and Jessica; for MJ and Ernie, who all started out as blogging friends buy have become so much more to me, and for Heather and Derek, who I hope still might.

This is for Trisha. I'll always wonder what might have been if I wasn't so slow or, paradoxically, close.

This is for Dawn and Bates, whose gentle beauty shines twain like a lighthouse with beams on either side, complimentary.

This is for Pamila, and for the radiance she brings to Berkeley just as I'm leaving.

A year is an enigmatic period. It's short enough to be short, and long enough to be long. It's a complete cycle. Everything that I could hope for could happen in a year, or everything I could fear. Will I haunt these people, an apparition using the net as my tunnel? If so, my friends at the other end would surely be the light. On paper it's too quick, in torment too long. I can only hope for the former.

Friends, I love you all, and though I know you'll still be there in a year, it's still a necessity to tell you that I hope for it so. Even when I know it's a fear given voice by sleep deprevation and unfamiliar surroundings. With any luck in the coming days, let alone the coming months, both of these imbalances will diminish, leaving only my left-coasted social imbalance, which will serve to propel me back to the place I call home when I finish this journey.

Now, to bed, for I have many things to do in the morning.

A suite in Friendship, PA, 2:30am, June 18th:

I've finally arrived in my hotel room. I'm far too tired to write a long post just now, but to tie up loose ends, and describe a few others: My flight landed in Chicago as predicted. Though the attendants asked passengers to let those with connecting flights to get off first, so they might have a better chance of catching their connection, the fact is that on United, at O'Hare, nearly every passenger is meeting another flight, so being in the back of the plane, I waited about 10 minutes to get out. When I finally did get myself free of the gate, I looked at the little red clock on the walkway which informed me that, indeed, it was 8:46pm and I had four minutes until my flight to Pittsburgh left from a gate over a half-mile away. ...and the doors would close three minutes before that...

Still, I had to try. A plane can be late by a few minutes as easily as another can be delayed two hours, and better to feel righteous running up to the just-closed gate than walking sdately to the same fate plus the knolwedge that a stitch in my side would have saved time.

So it all played out exactly as I thought: Run, walk, run, wheeze, pant, run, walk, gasp. And so it was that I made it to gate C-3 a scant minute after the 8:50 departure time, to see the welcoming open face of a gangway and two of United's finest waiting. Trying to control my breathing I make my way to the plane and to my center seat, trying to pretend that I'm not radiating heat like the sun, and probably smelling none too fresh.

Five minutes later the door is still open and a few elderly people, presumably from my flight, make it on the flight as well before we pack it in and taxi into the sunset. Like I said, I'm just happy to not be spending the night chasing winks on the O'Hare concourse floor.

It's late, so I'll keep the rest short: O'Hare was only the first trauma tonight. Wanting (stupidly) to feel self-empowered on this trip to a city where I'd never been, I decided to take the airport flyer bus and a connecting bus to my hotel. Ignore for the moment that I don't know what connecting bus to take, nor am I really aware of the scale of my simple map, so I don't know what's walkable (or even what's a safe walk with a suitcase at one in the morning!). The airport shuttle took me to the CMU campus and the driver gave me a transfer and some advice on what bus might bring me closer to my destination. When that bus came 20 minutes later, he told me no, I wanted this other bus that I could catch around the corner. I thank him and wait around the corner for literally 40 minutes. A taxi sidles up to my bus stop, begging me to not be so stubborn, but I look away and he trundles on. I memorize the number on the side though. Now, knowing the taxi's true name (err, number) I can summon it at will using my magic wand (um, cellphone). (Can you tell I'm punchy? Does it show? Does it?)

So a 71A goes by the other direction and I'm at least gladdend by the knolwedge that the line exists and is still running at this late hour. About 10 minutes later a 71A comes my way and I step on, asking the driver if they go to Baum and Negley. Sure, but you want to catch it across the street, going the other direction. I just saw that one go by. How long will it be before there's another? Well, I'd probably be the next one. Well I'll just hop on then. Are you sure? (note to self: As if I didn't learn this lesson well enough when handing Jeff and Kelly Hanock my blank college recommendation forms 12 years ago, when someone unexpectedly asks you "are you sure?" pay attention and think about why they'd ask that.) Sure; it beats sitting on this bench for another half-hour.

Wrong.

Like any city, Pittsburgh has nice areas, decent areas, and iffy areas. Unfortunately Pittsburgh has areas where even Iffy wouldn't go with a bodyguard detail and I was on the bus that ran through it.

Okay, enough about that. So nearly an hour later I get to my stop, walk to the hotel to find that they're closed up, and the promised envelope with keys isn't in fact, under the doormat. Seems they tried to call and confirm my arrival and they had the wrong number for me, which equated to my not showing up, hence no key. Now it was 2am, and I'm sitting on an eave contemplating sleep, even my jetlag-battery was running low, a subjective 11pm offset by little sleep and a very full day. Luckily the hotel phone number forwards to the owner's son who woke up to answer it on the eighth ring and set the gears turning to get me into not my room, which had been booked on the aforementioned assumption of my own non-arrival, nor the slightly larger room they were going to put me up in the last night of my stay, but a very nice one-bedroom suite with kitchen.

Happy to be in a room, any room, the owner's detailed instructions of how to operate the satellite tv box, however handy, fell on very tired ears. Now he's gone and I'm settling in, drawn inexorably to the hundreds of channels now available to me. It's 3:30am, and I'm writing a post...

goodnight.

So I'm starting to post my four or five Pittsburgh entries. I'm spacing themout a bit, both so the place doesn't seem so empty while I'm in the islands (writing more!) and so it progresses in realtime, if a week removed.

Just wanted to let you know in case it's a bit confusing (isn't he in Washington? Err, Pennsylvania? Um, California?).

Cheers!

Five miles above Cedar Rapids, IA - 7:53pm, June 17th:

Q: When are two legs not better than one?
A: When the legs are flights, and the first one's late.

At this very moment it's 7:53pm Central Time, and I'm 37 minutes outside of Chicago O'Hare as the United 757 flies. Our anticipated arrival time (revised, refined, and reported to us by our trusty Captain Orloff), is 8:30pm, and my connecting flight to Pittsburgh International departs at 8:50pm.

That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Well just wait 'till we apply airline time distortion and see where we are. 'Arrival time' is defined as the moment that tires hit tarmac. It's another ten minutes before the plane finishes rolling to the gate, and another two before the gangway is opened. I'm in row 26 of a front-vacating aircraft. Even if everyone's nice and waits for those with connecting flights to get off first (which is fully half of us) this will be at least another 4 minutes. Time that I emerge from the gate: 8:46pm. Now, if you've ever been to O'Hare before, you'll understand what it means when I say that we're arriving in Terminal B, and my next flight is in Terminal C. If you're a Chicago native or frequent United flyer, you might gain further insight from knowing that I get in at B-14, and leave from C-3. (For those not in the loop (ugh, Chicago pun!) Terminals B and C are very long, parallel terminals connected at their midpoints by a half-mile underground walk/slideway, and while gate B-14 is about midway between the connector and the end, gate C-3 is smack on the far tip of Terminal C. Total distance to run-walk-run-wheeze-walk-jog: about a mile. Time to complete said sprint: 4 minutes.

Though I do have needing-to-pee going for me, I don't think I can break a four-minute mile, in an airport terminal, with a 12 pound backpack.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the last bit of airline math, which is that the 'departure time' is the time that the plane pulls away from the gate. They close the door of the plane 3 minutes before this (How I know this is a story dealing with a raging freshman dorm party, a last-minute airport switch, and an airport rush that but for that fact I would have been very proud of. But that's a tale for another time).

So now I have one minute.

Oh, the Captain just came on again. She let us know that we're still on (revised) schedule for our landing at 8:30 or 8:35. Ugh.

So now I'm hoping that lightning strikes twice and my connecting flight will be at least a few minutes late. Of course I can't be certain until I show up at the gate, which means that despite the slim chances, I have to give it the old new college try.

Now, of course, to better convey the suspense I feel right now, I'm going to post this story as-is. at this moment I don't know what the outcome will be, and so neither should you. ;-D

For anyone who might be trying to reach my cell I have no coverage! I get zero signal here, and can't even check any messages I might have, because I have to do so from my cellphone.

I'll leave the # here on my home voicemail message, or you can just send me email.

Went kayaking today, lots and lots of fun. More later.

Oh' and I've been writing, as soon as I can figure how to get the stories from my Mac to this internet cafe CPU I'll post them. :-)

For you Neil Gaiman fans out there (who happen to be local to Berkeley), he'll be performing a full three-hour reading (two 90-minute acts with intermission) of his new book, Coraline, at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley on Tuesday, July 2nd. $10 for adults, $5 for ages 8 to 16. All admissions come with a $3 discount on the book, should you choose to buy it.

I'm so there. I've seen him read excerpts to standing-room only crowds at Cody's, and he's a great reader of his own works. It looks like this time they're doing it one better, on the very release day of the book. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this church is on my block, just a few hundred feet from my place.

At the moment (and through the Pittsburgh trip) I've been reading stories from Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, and I'm absolutely in the mood to walk down the block to hear one of my favorite authors sit down for a few hours and read his new book to me aloud.

I'm going to miss this place.

---

Update: There are still a few tickets left when I went this morning. You can order them online.

Y'know, there are people who do the same thing every day without skipping a beat, then one day, inexplicably, an odometer deep in their subconscious ticks over back to zero and they look at that task with new eyes, usually ones filled with a lot of terror-white.

There's the high-rise construction worker who suddenly sees just how thin the razors edge is that he walks upon each day, or the doctor who, in the middle of surgery, suddenly realizes that he really is playing god, and that this is a life in his hands, and is overcome with fears of inadequacy.

With bloggers, we sometimes look at the online life we've been living and suddenly think "wow, my posts are full of shit. I'm transparent and shallow at the same time!" Or worse, we suddenly feel like we can't write another word on the weblog because it's just one more tile on a Jenga tower that's starting to waver each time a pair of eyeballs hit it anyhow.

When this happens, sadly, the writer often has no choice but to, at least for a time, stop blogging altogether, in order to get a better perspective on their own life. Once the 'break' is over, they usually have a better idea of why they blogged in the first place, and whether they should, or even can, come back...

...

But I'm not one of those people. I've just been super busy and have been storing up stories for the last week. I need a little more fibre in my blog, but that's about it.

---

Worth mentioning, I suppose, are the two instant message conversations immediately following ths post:

Kevin: http://fury.com
Ernie: you are a dork.

and 15 seconds later...

Kevin: http://fury.com
Benjy: heh, dork

I can't remember, outside the last 3 minutes, the last time I was called a dork...

I'm back!!! Okay, yes there are stories to tell, and yes, most are half written. I'll start posting them tomorrow, and we'll have new content through the whole week. And of course there are pictures too.

PS: Thanks so much for the pages, guys! Some of them were very timely, and all were very well received. I love that you can touch me from across the country (triple-entendre, two of which apply, and a third that doesn't [well, it depends who you are, really. A few, yes.]).

It's good to be home. It does make me sad that this place won't be my home for much longer. But you know what they say about when doors close, doors open. At least I still have the keys to this city, and the door's kept ajar for me.