Life in the Buffyverse

Now that Leslie and I are living together during the week again we are determined that we won't just sit home on the couch every night watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So tonight, we went attended one installment of a lecture series on campus during which we watched reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then said very intellectual things about them.

I can say without any fear of overgeneralizing whatsoever that there are two and only two kinds of people in the world: those who think Buffy the Vampire Slayer must be stupid because of the movie and/or the title, and those who think it is the single best creation of all time in any category of art or science. I started watching it when I met Leslie, who was such a fan that it seemed clear that becoming a fan myself would be an absolute prerequisite to ever winning her attention. So no problem. And, lo and behold, it actually was a really good show, which made it then worthwhile to watch for two reasons.

But apparently I was quite the naif, watching it because it was funny and entertaining and well-written and featured Sarah Michelle Gellar jumping up and down a lot. I wasn't paying any attention at all to the Freudian subtext of the contrajuxtaposition of Faith's "want, take, have" attitude as the Slayer id to Buffy's caretaking but repressed superego. There was some discussion of the fact that Faith wore leather a lot, but it didn't really go in the direction I personally had in mind.

But actually, it was really pretty interesting and I enjoyed the discussion. I even thought of a point or two I might have contributed, but I was kind of worried that if I tried to express a serious thought about the fact that Faith's eventual descent into darkness at the side of the evil Mayor of Sunnydale was, at least in part, directly attributable to the fact that Buffy, who represents the Good, chose to reject her and exclude her from the beneficial influence of the Scooby Gang I would probably crack myself up in the middle of it, and it didn't seem like most of the people in the class would appreciate that. I think there's also fertile ground for discussion in all the jumping up and down that Sarah Michelle Gellar does, but I fear the Women and Gender Studies crowd might have misunderstood.

Hey, by the way, before class we went out to dinner using a coupon we got from
Restaurant.com. I'm stumped by their business model, but basically you buy a voucher from them online that's worth either $10 or $25 off your meal for $3 or $10 respectively. That's a pretty good discount, but we only joined it (it's just a free registration) a couple of weeks ago and they've been having at least half-off sales the whole time, which means you can get the vouchers for even less. The first time we used it the waitress looked a little skeptical but somebody back there must have recognized it because they gave us the discount. At the place tonight they didn't bat an eye. Restaurant profit margins, to my understanding, aren't necessarily that great so I really don't know how they're take $25 off a $35 check and still make money for both the restaurant and the Web site on a coupon I only paid $4 for, but I suppose that's not my problem. They've got a lot of restaurants in Asheville and Greensboro, so those of you who live in bigger cities would probably have even more. The current special is 60 percent off the vouchers through Halloween, and the code to use at the checkout is 44355.