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shadowkat1. On a brisk sunny Tuesday morning, with a crystal blue sky - I lugged myself off to the doctor. It's about twenty-twenty five minutes. Train is fifteen. Walk is about ten to fifteen, depending on how fast I go? Ten blocks.
The knee wasn't bothering me though, sciatic, yes, knee no. I'd been using a hip compression, and wandering about at home. Also I can sit with my legs elevated at home. This was leading me to believe that - it was indeed sciatic nerve and back/hip related, not knee related.
Got the X-ray. Waited about thirty-five minutes to see the doctor. And after the assistants took my vitals. A wet-behind the ears kid came in.
I stared at the kid. Okay, granted the doctors are getting younger - but this is ridiculous. I have Doogie Howser.
Kid: Hi I'm Lucas, I'm the student intern working with the Doctor.
Me (oh thank god.): Oh...right.
His job was to ask me what was going on. I was kind embarrassed because after killing me for weeks on end, the knee decided not to hurt today. When the Doctor eventually came in - he wasn't a kid at least (thinking mid-thirties) - he quipped, yeah it's like taking your car to the mechanic and all of a sudden it stops having mechanical difficulties.
The Knee Orthopedist thankfully found nothing wrong with my knees, outside of mild arthritis. (I was relieved. Mother was relieved - after I told her.) This is the second time I checked the knees out this year. So clearly this is a hip alignment/sciatic nerve issue. The knees just have mild osteoarthritis. Additional proof - the hip compression sleeves that I've been using this weekend, which I bought on Amazon, have actually helped. My knees weren't bothering me that much today. Of course I only went to the x-ray/doctor's office, then shopping after. Less steps, more walking, than I do going to and from work. The commute has more steps, less walking.
Apparently the knee doctor sees approximately eighty patients a day (explains a lot) while the pain management doctors only see ten, which is why it is almost impossible to get an appointment with the pain management. He didn't recommend muscle relaxants either - last resort and all the do is knock you out (or screw with digestion). PT is the best bet - and I've scheduled that.
Afterwards - I bought stuff. I went to Duman's Housewares on Court - they had a sale, and bought a bunch of hand painted Latin American pottery (which I love), along with a new mattress pad. (I need one, the current one is falling apart). Then bought stuff from the grocery store - including a mini-blueberry pie from the Maine Pie Company, gluten free croutons, gluten free vegetarian lasagna, sushmai (basically raw fish over lettuce - it's tuna and salmon with wasabi and ginger slices), cesar salad fixings, peanut butter chocolates, zucchini noodles, gluten-free spinach ravoli, carrots and celery, and something else. After that, high-tailed it to Planted, which has gluten free vegan baked goods - all are gluten free. So I picked up a blueberry muffin, a chocolate banana muffin, a kiwi and strawberry tart, and a brownie. I almost grabbed the mini-corn bread and apple tart as well but stopped myself. I'll be back in the area again not this weekend, but next weekend for the optometrist. It's close to impossible to find gluten-free baked items at the moment (the fad ended, stupid people) - so when I do? I kind of go nuts? (Also because of the Doofus in the white house, the FDA has stopped making people label everything with allergens and state whether there is gluten in it or not.)
2. Voted on Saturday. I will be happy when the election is however, the ads are annoying. So is the discourse.
Mother: Did you vote for the Muslim? (Mother calls him the Muslim, while everyone else calls him the socialist. I call him Z.)
Me: You mean Zohran Mamadani? Or Z? Of course.
Mother: Oh good.
Me: It was no contest really - it was between Thing 1, Thing 2, and Mamadani. I chose sanity.
Also, I'm hoping Cuomo will go away. We'll see. He reminds me of the thing in the white house. Why people insist on keeping evil bullies around is beyond me.
Speaking of politics, an evil Republican Politician bites the dust. (I thought he was already dead?) Except he bit the dust after he was rendered harmless, and is no more than a toothless puppy. Universe? I need the current regime to bite the dust, not the one from over twenty years ago that the current regime makes look relatively harmless by comparison. Priorities?
However...Rest in Peace, Diane Ladd. She was an excellent actress. (Although, I admittedly keep confusing her with Jennifer Coolidge.)
We won't know the results until tomorrow - I think - or late tonight, since the polls close in NY at 9pm. Over 300,000 voted early. It's the highest turnout for early voting in the State's history.
3. Still rewatching Buffy and Angel.
* There's two very subversive character arcs in these series, actually more than two. But Spike and Cordelia, which are in some respects similar characters - are at the top of the list. Cordelia is a subversion of the Rich Mean Girl - without changing her personality completely - they evolve her, reveal various layers, and show depth. Mid-way through S1 Angel - Cordelia is a whole lot more than the mean bully that the audience loved to hate. The character is a lot more developed and interesting on Angel than on Buffy, as is Angel and Wes. Spike similarly is a neat subversion of the cool villain character, he starts out as a sort of Wile E Coyote character, or sexy villain, but they give him layers and start him, much like Cordelia, on a twisty redemption arc, punishing both characters with brain-crushing migraines. Cordy gets visions. Spike's are a kind of mechanical conscience, that restrict his demonic impulses. He can't be evil - completely. Physically hurting humans or attempting to do so - results in a migraine.
The headaches send both down a twisty path towards redemption, kicking and screaming along the way. So, it's also an odd twist on that as well. Their devotion to the "hero" helps them along the way, Cordelia's to Angel and Spike's to Buffy, except, they do another subversive twist - Cordy's redemption is a mislead, while Spike's isn't. The audience used to the trope - was expecting the opposite.
My take away from "A New Man" and "I in Team" is that they've begun playing with redeeming Spike, and demonstrating why the chip isn't quite enough - his impulse, being a demon, specifically a vampire, is towards destruction.
He even informs Giles of it - when Giles turns into a Fyarl demon - that the demon feels rage, and wants to crush. And Giles should give in to it, Spike can't, he can live vicariously through Giles. It's driving Spike nuts. Meanwhile, over on Angel (Expecting, She, Parting Gifts, Prodigal), Cordelia resents the visions - they interfere with her life, aren't useful to her, and she really is only into the whole saving thing for the money.
Giles asks Spike if he thinks there's a higher purpose and maybe? But Spike shrugs him off - he doesn't care. Of the two - Cordy is slightly more heroic, which makes sense - she's human and per the rules of the verse, has a soul.
I find this clever on the part of the writers. It would have been easy to make both heroes off the bat. Instead they choose to explore the gray area, and go in a zig-zag. The difficulty with the whole Spike/Cordelia arc - is a lot of the fandom didn't necessarily want what the writers came up with? Which is actually the friction between reader/viewer and story? Sometimes the story in the head of the viewer/reader doesn't fit what is on screen or in the book - and they get disappointed. A lot of viewers for example - wanted Spike to be redeemed without a soul - which wasn't possible in the verse. Vampires are categorically evil. If they could be redeemed without a soul - then Buffy wouldn't be a hero. This doesn't prevent the writers from playing along the spectrum - because there's EVIL, then there is welll..evil...For example? Spike isn't as evil as Angelus, but he's still evil, just a different kind. He can do good things, but often they are to further his own goals and needs in some way. The writers wanted to play around with that concept and moral view. They also wanted to play with addiction. I found how they played with it via Spike was rather clever.
And hugely entertaining. They do it with other characters as well.
Cordelia is growing on me. And her arc is also a zig-zag. She has similar issues - she's very opportunistic. And much as Spike is in some respects used as a reflection of Buffy, Cordy is for Angel, and in a way Cordy is a reflection of Buffy, as is Spike for Angel. Both characters were controversial with the fandom, as were their arcs. And both defied the show-runner's ability to control their arcs. Whedon wanted to kill Spike off in S2, and turn Cordelia into a villain and have Connor kill her in S4, the actors foiled his plans. Whedon didn't want to redeem Cordelia - yet he inadvertently did with Your Welcome. And he didn't want Spike to initially have an arc, let alone get his soul and be redeemed, but he did. Which makes the two characters all the more interesting to me - because they weren't planned. It's the things that we don't plan as writers or artists that I find the most interesting? That's when we are channeling something greater than ourselves or influences outside of us are at work - it's magical.
The other takeaways from Buffy - is Buffy and Riley don't really work. They become bland fast. There's not enough conflict. It's kind of like Buffy S3 with Angel take 2? But from another angle? It's kind of boring? Not enough friction. And the actors, unfortunately, don't have much in the way of chemistry. Riley actually had better chemistry with Willow and Xander and Spike. SMG is working over time to make it look good, but Blucas...is kind of stiff? Spike shows more yearning for Buffy than Riley does at this point. Riley looks bewildered - as if he's trying to figure out why he's into Buffy, and then kind of dopey.
Although it is interesting that Buffy is both relieved and surprised to see Riley still next to her in bed the next morning. Every time she slept with Angel - he took off in the middle of the night, something horrible happened to him, and he either turned into a jerk or decided to rewind time, as if it never happened and only he got to remember it. That would do a number on anyone. Then of course, we have Parker, who did somewhat the same thing - she sleeps with him, he turns into a jerk.
So, Riley is a nice shift in the opposite direction. He's also a shift from Daddy Issues to Mommy Issues. There's some huge red flags concerning Riley?
1) He doesn't ask questions, and basically likes having a militaristic structure, rules, guidelines, categories, everything in its place - and colors within the lines. Riley likes rules, and follows them without question.
2) He calls Walsh Mother - and he didn't like Buffy until Walsh told him that she liked Buffy. That's disturbing all by itself.
3) He's a pretend frat boy, and a bit too good to be true. I can sort of see that this will not end well. (Also Buffy is a horror series not a romance.)
Anyhow, I can see why they did the romance, but it's pretty obvious by I in Team that this won't last. Their sex scene was...well...kind of meh? The Buffy/Parker sex scene was hotter?
Meanwhile they hit liquid gold with Tara/Willow - they have chemistry to spare.
They kill off Walsh by the end of the episode - which was a surprise. (They didn't plan to originally - but Lindsey Crouse wasn't available, and they had to write her out - she did agree to come back for the last couple of episodes, however. But I actually think killing her off in Episode 14 was inspired in a way, because it frees up Riley to be involved with Buffy. But it also took away a main conflict not to mention 90% of the friction between the two characters, and the writers had to work around it.)
Overall - the episodes are still good, even if the central plot is flawed?
Oh, learned recently that Robin Sachs who played Ethan Rayne died several years back. He was a good friend of Juliet Landau's, apparently.
Almost forgot? S4 Buffy makes it clear to me that the writers watched Doctor Who, the Prisoner, and various British sci-fi shows. Buffy almost states - when she runs into the secret underground facility underneath Riley's frat house - that it's bigger on the inside than on the outside.
And..I realized that biggest problem with the whole Initiative storyline, is that they kind of combined Reptile Boy with Some Assembly Required - not the best episodes of the series? I get where they were going with it - and it is decidedly creepy - also delves into combining powers to become greater, or collaboration is better than a solo effort (a continuing theme of the series - what makes Buffy powerful is her ability to share her power with others, and her connections to those around her, it's why she survived and other slayers didn't - her friends, they keep saving her, or bringing her back to life as the case may be.) Walsh appears to be a female take on the Mayor, but from the science perspective as opposed to the mystical one. Actually that's another interesting thing about episodes 4-7, the villain becomes female or maternal. The writers shift from the disapproving father to the devouring sick mother. With a misogynistic male character in the mix - hoping to obtain Mother's approval and show her how great he is. I think S4 is kind of transitioning into that metaphor, and it's why they switched Spike from being sired by Angel to being Sired by Dru, and made him closer to Joyce than Giles. The other interesting thing - is science, the writers start expanding the world and showing the battle between the mystical and the scientific, and how the scientific can go awry. It's been an on-going theme, but more in the background before this season, also has the beginnings of how tech can be problematic.
***
On Twitter, someone asks to name a better show than Buffy. And people named Charmed. Charmed??? I found Charmed unwatchable at times. I tried. But it took campy to a whole new level. Also I felt the writing was horrible.
The knee wasn't bothering me though, sciatic, yes, knee no. I'd been using a hip compression, and wandering about at home. Also I can sit with my legs elevated at home. This was leading me to believe that - it was indeed sciatic nerve and back/hip related, not knee related.
Got the X-ray. Waited about thirty-five minutes to see the doctor. And after the assistants took my vitals. A wet-behind the ears kid came in.
I stared at the kid. Okay, granted the doctors are getting younger - but this is ridiculous. I have Doogie Howser.
Kid: Hi I'm Lucas, I'm the student intern working with the Doctor.
Me (oh thank god.): Oh...right.
His job was to ask me what was going on. I was kind embarrassed because after killing me for weeks on end, the knee decided not to hurt today. When the Doctor eventually came in - he wasn't a kid at least (thinking mid-thirties) - he quipped, yeah it's like taking your car to the mechanic and all of a sudden it stops having mechanical difficulties.
The Knee Orthopedist thankfully found nothing wrong with my knees, outside of mild arthritis. (I was relieved. Mother was relieved - after I told her.) This is the second time I checked the knees out this year. So clearly this is a hip alignment/sciatic nerve issue. The knees just have mild osteoarthritis. Additional proof - the hip compression sleeves that I've been using this weekend, which I bought on Amazon, have actually helped. My knees weren't bothering me that much today. Of course I only went to the x-ray/doctor's office, then shopping after. Less steps, more walking, than I do going to and from work. The commute has more steps, less walking.
Apparently the knee doctor sees approximately eighty patients a day (explains a lot) while the pain management doctors only see ten, which is why it is almost impossible to get an appointment with the pain management. He didn't recommend muscle relaxants either - last resort and all the do is knock you out (or screw with digestion). PT is the best bet - and I've scheduled that.
Afterwards - I bought stuff. I went to Duman's Housewares on Court - they had a sale, and bought a bunch of hand painted Latin American pottery (which I love), along with a new mattress pad. (I need one, the current one is falling apart). Then bought stuff from the grocery store - including a mini-blueberry pie from the Maine Pie Company, gluten free croutons, gluten free vegetarian lasagna, sushmai (basically raw fish over lettuce - it's tuna and salmon with wasabi and ginger slices), cesar salad fixings, peanut butter chocolates, zucchini noodles, gluten-free spinach ravoli, carrots and celery, and something else. After that, high-tailed it to Planted, which has gluten free vegan baked goods - all are gluten free. So I picked up a blueberry muffin, a chocolate banana muffin, a kiwi and strawberry tart, and a brownie. I almost grabbed the mini-corn bread and apple tart as well but stopped myself. I'll be back in the area again not this weekend, but next weekend for the optometrist. It's close to impossible to find gluten-free baked items at the moment (the fad ended, stupid people) - so when I do? I kind of go nuts? (Also because of the Doofus in the white house, the FDA has stopped making people label everything with allergens and state whether there is gluten in it or not.)
2. Voted on Saturday. I will be happy when the election is however, the ads are annoying. So is the discourse.
Mother: Did you vote for the Muslim? (Mother calls him the Muslim, while everyone else calls him the socialist. I call him Z.)
Me: You mean Zohran Mamadani? Or Z? Of course.
Mother: Oh good.
Me: It was no contest really - it was between Thing 1, Thing 2, and Mamadani. I chose sanity.
Also, I'm hoping Cuomo will go away. We'll see. He reminds me of the thing in the white house. Why people insist on keeping evil bullies around is beyond me.
Speaking of politics, an evil Republican Politician bites the dust. (I thought he was already dead?) Except he bit the dust after he was rendered harmless, and is no more than a toothless puppy. Universe? I need the current regime to bite the dust, not the one from over twenty years ago that the current regime makes look relatively harmless by comparison. Priorities?
However...Rest in Peace, Diane Ladd. She was an excellent actress. (Although, I admittedly keep confusing her with Jennifer Coolidge.)
We won't know the results until tomorrow - I think - or late tonight, since the polls close in NY at 9pm. Over 300,000 voted early. It's the highest turnout for early voting in the State's history.
3. Still rewatching Buffy and Angel.
* There's two very subversive character arcs in these series, actually more than two. But Spike and Cordelia, which are in some respects similar characters - are at the top of the list. Cordelia is a subversion of the Rich Mean Girl - without changing her personality completely - they evolve her, reveal various layers, and show depth. Mid-way through S1 Angel - Cordelia is a whole lot more than the mean bully that the audience loved to hate. The character is a lot more developed and interesting on Angel than on Buffy, as is Angel and Wes. Spike similarly is a neat subversion of the cool villain character, he starts out as a sort of Wile E Coyote character, or sexy villain, but they give him layers and start him, much like Cordelia, on a twisty redemption arc, punishing both characters with brain-crushing migraines. Cordy gets visions. Spike's are a kind of mechanical conscience, that restrict his demonic impulses. He can't be evil - completely. Physically hurting humans or attempting to do so - results in a migraine.
The headaches send both down a twisty path towards redemption, kicking and screaming along the way. So, it's also an odd twist on that as well. Their devotion to the "hero" helps them along the way, Cordelia's to Angel and Spike's to Buffy, except, they do another subversive twist - Cordy's redemption is a mislead, while Spike's isn't. The audience used to the trope - was expecting the opposite.
My take away from "A New Man" and "I in Team" is that they've begun playing with redeeming Spike, and demonstrating why the chip isn't quite enough - his impulse, being a demon, specifically a vampire, is towards destruction.
He even informs Giles of it - when Giles turns into a Fyarl demon - that the demon feels rage, and wants to crush. And Giles should give in to it, Spike can't, he can live vicariously through Giles. It's driving Spike nuts. Meanwhile, over on Angel (Expecting, She, Parting Gifts, Prodigal), Cordelia resents the visions - they interfere with her life, aren't useful to her, and she really is only into the whole saving thing for the money.
Giles asks Spike if he thinks there's a higher purpose and maybe? But Spike shrugs him off - he doesn't care. Of the two - Cordy is slightly more heroic, which makes sense - she's human and per the rules of the verse, has a soul.
I find this clever on the part of the writers. It would have been easy to make both heroes off the bat. Instead they choose to explore the gray area, and go in a zig-zag. The difficulty with the whole Spike/Cordelia arc - is a lot of the fandom didn't necessarily want what the writers came up with? Which is actually the friction between reader/viewer and story? Sometimes the story in the head of the viewer/reader doesn't fit what is on screen or in the book - and they get disappointed. A lot of viewers for example - wanted Spike to be redeemed without a soul - which wasn't possible in the verse. Vampires are categorically evil. If they could be redeemed without a soul - then Buffy wouldn't be a hero. This doesn't prevent the writers from playing along the spectrum - because there's EVIL, then there is welll..evil...For example? Spike isn't as evil as Angelus, but he's still evil, just a different kind. He can do good things, but often they are to further his own goals and needs in some way. The writers wanted to play around with that concept and moral view. They also wanted to play with addiction. I found how they played with it via Spike was rather clever.
And hugely entertaining. They do it with other characters as well.
Cordelia is growing on me. And her arc is also a zig-zag. She has similar issues - she's very opportunistic. And much as Spike is in some respects used as a reflection of Buffy, Cordy is for Angel, and in a way Cordy is a reflection of Buffy, as is Spike for Angel. Both characters were controversial with the fandom, as were their arcs. And both defied the show-runner's ability to control their arcs. Whedon wanted to kill Spike off in S2, and turn Cordelia into a villain and have Connor kill her in S4, the actors foiled his plans. Whedon didn't want to redeem Cordelia - yet he inadvertently did with Your Welcome. And he didn't want Spike to initially have an arc, let alone get his soul and be redeemed, but he did. Which makes the two characters all the more interesting to me - because they weren't planned. It's the things that we don't plan as writers or artists that I find the most interesting? That's when we are channeling something greater than ourselves or influences outside of us are at work - it's magical.
The other takeaways from Buffy - is Buffy and Riley don't really work. They become bland fast. There's not enough conflict. It's kind of like Buffy S3 with Angel take 2? But from another angle? It's kind of boring? Not enough friction. And the actors, unfortunately, don't have much in the way of chemistry. Riley actually had better chemistry with Willow and Xander and Spike. SMG is working over time to make it look good, but Blucas...is kind of stiff? Spike shows more yearning for Buffy than Riley does at this point. Riley looks bewildered - as if he's trying to figure out why he's into Buffy, and then kind of dopey.
Although it is interesting that Buffy is both relieved and surprised to see Riley still next to her in bed the next morning. Every time she slept with Angel - he took off in the middle of the night, something horrible happened to him, and he either turned into a jerk or decided to rewind time, as if it never happened and only he got to remember it. That would do a number on anyone. Then of course, we have Parker, who did somewhat the same thing - she sleeps with him, he turns into a jerk.
So, Riley is a nice shift in the opposite direction. He's also a shift from Daddy Issues to Mommy Issues. There's some huge red flags concerning Riley?
1) He doesn't ask questions, and basically likes having a militaristic structure, rules, guidelines, categories, everything in its place - and colors within the lines. Riley likes rules, and follows them without question.
2) He calls Walsh Mother - and he didn't like Buffy until Walsh told him that she liked Buffy. That's disturbing all by itself.
3) He's a pretend frat boy, and a bit too good to be true. I can sort of see that this will not end well. (Also Buffy is a horror series not a romance.)
Anyhow, I can see why they did the romance, but it's pretty obvious by I in Team that this won't last. Their sex scene was...well...kind of meh? The Buffy/Parker sex scene was hotter?
Meanwhile they hit liquid gold with Tara/Willow - they have chemistry to spare.
They kill off Walsh by the end of the episode - which was a surprise. (They didn't plan to originally - but Lindsey Crouse wasn't available, and they had to write her out - she did agree to come back for the last couple of episodes, however. But I actually think killing her off in Episode 14 was inspired in a way, because it frees up Riley to be involved with Buffy. But it also took away a main conflict not to mention 90% of the friction between the two characters, and the writers had to work around it.)
Overall - the episodes are still good, even if the central plot is flawed?
Oh, learned recently that Robin Sachs who played Ethan Rayne died several years back. He was a good friend of Juliet Landau's, apparently.
Almost forgot? S4 Buffy makes it clear to me that the writers watched Doctor Who, the Prisoner, and various British sci-fi shows. Buffy almost states - when she runs into the secret underground facility underneath Riley's frat house - that it's bigger on the inside than on the outside.
And..I realized that biggest problem with the whole Initiative storyline, is that they kind of combined Reptile Boy with Some Assembly Required - not the best episodes of the series? I get where they were going with it - and it is decidedly creepy - also delves into combining powers to become greater, or collaboration is better than a solo effort (a continuing theme of the series - what makes Buffy powerful is her ability to share her power with others, and her connections to those around her, it's why she survived and other slayers didn't - her friends, they keep saving her, or bringing her back to life as the case may be.) Walsh appears to be a female take on the Mayor, but from the science perspective as opposed to the mystical one. Actually that's another interesting thing about episodes 4-7, the villain becomes female or maternal. The writers shift from the disapproving father to the devouring sick mother. With a misogynistic male character in the mix - hoping to obtain Mother's approval and show her how great he is. I think S4 is kind of transitioning into that metaphor, and it's why they switched Spike from being sired by Angel to being Sired by Dru, and made him closer to Joyce than Giles. The other interesting thing - is science, the writers start expanding the world and showing the battle between the mystical and the scientific, and how the scientific can go awry. It's been an on-going theme, but more in the background before this season, also has the beginnings of how tech can be problematic.
***
On Twitter, someone asks to name a better show than Buffy. And people named Charmed. Charmed??? I found Charmed unwatchable at times. I tried. But it took campy to a whole new level. Also I felt the writing was horrible.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-05 12:43 pm (UTC)Well done, New Yorkers!
Robin Sachs was such a loss. He and Tony Head really riffed off each other at The Harvest.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-06 02:29 am (UTC)I agree, he was a loss. I adored him as Ethan.
Thank you!
Yup, sigh...I couldn't get through the first season of Charmed. It's a show I kept trying to watch and kept giving up on.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-06 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-07 01:27 am (UTC)Also, I don't like meeting people who I know more about than they know me? Makes me very uncomfortable. But I do like watching youtube Q&A's from conventions and reading about them, just not being there in person.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-08 01:51 am (UTC)