My Buffy-versary present to me

So, with this being the Buffy-versary (specifically the 13th anniversary of the premiere episodes, "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest"), I had to get myself a gift. But, what to get for the Buffy fan who already has nearly everything?

Well, how about one of the few things I didn't have, the original piece of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" merchandise. This 12-inch statue by Varner came out way back in 1999, years before I ever started watching the show or collecting copious amounts of Buffy merchandise.

I'd come across this a couple times in the past few years, but never took the plunge on buying it, in part because it was kind of hard to find the other two Varner statues (and I hate having incomplete sets). But my local comic shop dug this out from the back a few weeks ago, and when I was there today picking up my weekly comics, I figured the time was right to get it. This particular one is #122 out of 4,500, so it's a low-numbered one to boot.

Eventually I'll get my entire Buffy collection back online -- I managed to dig out all the pictures from my iPhoto library and start to get them organized -- but for now, this will have to do.

Happy Buffy-versary! What did your Watcher get for you?

Happy Buffy-versary!

It's officially March 10th, and you know what that means... Buffy-versary!

While March 9, 1997 brought the death of The Notorious B.I.G., March 10, 1997 brought the birth of my favorite TV show of all-time. Not that I noticed.

As I've mentioned many times before on this blog, I didn't see an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" until December 14, 1999 ("Hush") and didn't start seriously watching the show until 2005 -- nearly two years after it'd gone off the air.

Now, 13 years after "Buffy" debuted, it's become my personal obsession. Yes, the "Buffy" section of my web site is down right now, and yes, most of the collectibles that were spotlighted in that section are now in boxes in my basement, but that doesn't change the fact that I love them and I love the show.

My Top 10 Biggie Songs

I spent a lot of time listening to Biggie today (mostly while driving or working) and kept trying to figure out which songs were my favorite. Every few songs, another great one would come on and I'd jot it down. By the end of the day, there were WAY more than 10 songs on my list. Still, I decided to forge ahead with a list, and here is what I consider to be my 10 favorite Biggie songs. Of course, this could change tomorrow, and I'm sure if I did this list again next year the list would be different. Here they are, my 10 choices, in no particular order.

"Juicy"
If you haven't seen the movie "Notorious", it's worth seeing, just for the scene where Biggie comes up with this track. Puffy plays the sample in the studio, and everyone laughs at it, because it's a silly-sounding song, but Biggie decides to give it a shot.  Everyone leaves the studio for a while so he can come up with lyrics, and when they come back and he lays it down, they're just in awe. Its the closest any of us are going to come to seeing how Biggie really worked.

"Who Shot Ya"
The other great scene in the movie involves this song. Yes, this song may have contributed to his eventual death, but it's still a great song.

"Hypnotize"
Because iTunes didn't start tracking play counts until 2003, it doesn't reflect how much I listened to this song in 1997. I remember driving around West Hartford with my co-workers from Marshalls all summer, constantly playing this song (and, really, the rest of the "Life After Death" album).

Desktop Girl of the Week: Alyson Hannigan

Now that the Olympics are over, my standard slate of TV shows is pretty much back on the air, which meant I had plenty of eye candy to pick from for this week's Desktop Girl of the Week.

Yes, when browsing the archive this weekend, I realized that somehow, I've never spotlighted Alyson Hannigan, so it's definitely time.

Sure, you can see her every week now on "How I Met Your Mother", but Lily Aldrin will never be my immediate association when it comes to Hannigan. No, that honor will always fall to Willow Rosenberg, the super-powered witch from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". I adore Willow, probably more than any other character in the history of television. She's hot, she's a redhead, she's a witch, and she's a lesbian. Sure, that means I've got no shot with her, but she's still awesome.

The Greatest Rapper of All-Time Died on March 9

It's hard to believe it's been 13 years since The Notorious B.I.G. died, but that's exactly what happened on March 9, 1997. Here we are in 2010, and Biggie's music is no less popular than it was back then, even though there's nearly an entire generation of kids who grew up not really ever knowing who he was (pretty much anyone 20 and under wasn't listening to Biggie when he was alive).

I remember the first time I heard the "Ready to Die" album and how blown away by it I was. It wasn't like anything I'd heard before, and arguably nothing since has matched it. I still get hype whenever I hear the opening strands of "Juicy" or "Big Poppa".

"Life After Death" came out just two weeks after Biggie died, and I'm pretty sure I bought it that day. That double-album was pretty much the soundtrack to my summer, particularly at Journalism Camp (yes, there is such a thing) at the University of Maryland. If it's possible to wear out a CD, that's exactly what we did -- and we actually did wear out a couple mix tapes that had plenty of Biggie material on them.

Biggie didn't leave us with a huge catalog of posthumous material like 2Pac, but in some ways I prefer that. It makes the music he made before he died stand out that much more, and really, no unreleased music was ever going to live up to his first two albums. I'd rather listen to "Ready to Die" a thousand times before listening to "Born Again" even once (not that "Born Again" is bad, it's just not up to the standards of "Ready to Die" or "Life After Death.").

Jersey Monday: Chris Webber

It's Championship Week in college basketball, so let's spotlight one of my favorite college hoops jerseys, my Chris Webber authentic Michigan jersey.

Webber only played two seasons with the Wolverines, but led them to the NCAA Championship game in both seasons (losing to Duke in '92 and UNC in '93). A few years later, Nike put out a series of NCAA Throwback jerseys for the players on its roster, and Webber was one of them.

That inclusion is what allows this jersey to exist with Webber's name on its back. Schools can sell numbered jerseys of active players, but can't put the names on the back while the player has amateur eligibility left, so it's rare to see a jersey like this. I happened to come across this one when I was working at Marshalls, and picked it up for $20.

About a year later, I had a friend get it signed for me when the then-Bullets were visiting the Celtics (as a thank you to him, I gave him my Chris Webber replica Bullets jersey, which he also got signed). I obviously haven't worn the jersey since, and I'm still waiting to get it framed, but at one point in high school, this was a staple of my wardrobe.

Jersey Monday will continue every Monday until I run out of jerseys to spotlight. And since I’ve got more than 150 of them, that could be awhile.

Now THAT'S an archive

Well, I've been writing about it for a few weeks now, but it's finally done. The transition of the AdamReisinger.com blog from MobileMe to Blogger is complete, with 946 posts in the archive (this will be #947).

I even went and dug out an old backup CD that had a copy of AdamReisinger.com from 2003 and added in the SportsBytes and Reviews from that site. Since that iteration of the blog really only existed to link to those posts, it only made sense to add them in here, even if I never did add them in to iWeb.

I also found my old LeBronJamesNews.com site on that disc and considered adding that too, but eventually decided against it, since that -- just like LeBron2010.info -- was always maintained as a separate site.

So now that I've got 946 posts (soon to be 947) in the archive, what have I learned about my blogging habits? Well: