Review: Tom Lenk's 'Last Minute Show'

Photo courtesy of Mike, as we forgot our camera (like dumbasses.)

It was packed at Don't Tell Mama's last night and my ears were already ringing from all the excitement before the show even began. There were a lot of familiar faces around; people we'd met at CSTS, people from DWNY, and fans of a certain blog I like to call home. A few minutes after eight the lights dimmed, the crowd hushed and yes, my fellow Buffyfesters, Tom Lenk was in the house.

Neither Tara nor I had any idea what to expect. How surprised I was when Tom started singing! I guess I should have figured that would happen, given that the joint was a piano bar and all but, well, it had been a "fire bad, tree pretty" kind of a day so the obvious may have been escaping me at the time. At the risk of sounding like someone's grandmother: quite a set of pipes on that boy! I had no idea our young Mister Lenk was so multi-talented.
So he sang a little song about how he kind of threw this show together while on a five hour flight. He's in New York auditioning for the Broadway production of "Rock of Ages" (which would explain said golden singing voice). More on that in a bitsy bit.

The bulk of the evening was spent talking about Tom's nerdy youth. He was a marching band geek and a fan of Cher (and Andrew Lloyd Weber). He suffered many the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that I and so many other geeks did. For the record I was a theater nerd whose favorite musicals were Les Mis and My Fair Lady. Don't judge me. [Tara's note: Hey, look, I wasn't a youth nerd but I still cracked the hell up at those geek stories...right down to the prom photo Tom showed complete with pubescent "crustache".]

In order to explain where his mind was at back in the late 80's and early 90's, Tom broke out some of the songs he'd written to describe his own personal trauma. Some were homages to Cher ballads while others were destined to be B-52's number one hits on the top 40. What really impressed most though was that, in the midst of all this funny, Tom really brought a deeply personal story. He talked about his friend, the one who got him through it all, who he went to homecoming with, who he wrote his songs for, who he visited in the hospital whenever she was sick. The friend that made him feel like he was worth something. The friend he lost. Tom, you broke my heart with that one, sir. I just lost a close friend so the moment felt especially personal for me. It was really poignant and beautiful.

Then Tom dressed like a German Star Trek fan, complete with mustache and hilarious accent. No kidding. It was amazing.

What else, what else. Oh! He read a bunch of actual internet forum posts written by teenage girls on Alloy.com back in the Buffy days, when he was hoping to be a teen heartthrob. We have a bunch of low quality clips from that so I'll let Tom fuzzily speak for himself there.

One last thing from the performance that we found hilarious was Tom banging a 23 year old Buffy fan and having to look at an "Andrew" era photo of himself during sex. Oh my god, seriously? Seriously! I would die. But honestly he's super hot right now. Is it alright for me to say that? Tom, you wanted to be a teen heartthrob well I may not be a teen but, if I weren't an old coot I would have totally swooned for you like a 14-year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. I'm just saying.

Tara and I got to speak with Tom briefly after the show and he is honestly the nicest. He was kind enough to sign a comic to be donated to the CBLDF (I'll post a link whenever it gets auctioned off). He actually talked to pretty much everyone there. The line was epic and we were about in the middle of it. When we spoke to him he hadn't even broken a sweat. Really, this boy is so good to his fans. I can't say enough good things.

So Tom is here auditioning for "Rock of Ages". Tom, if you're reading this, everyone here at Buffyfest is hoping you get it so that you will be in NYC. Everyone reading this should comment here or on Twitter hoping he breaks a leg because, for real and for sure, Tom is awesome.

Tom Lenk with most of Buffyfest. Thanks to Maria for this pic.

Thanks for the Memories

Buffyfest would like to send an enormous thanks out to our amazing guest blogger, JayUnderscoreZero. Your posts were fun, insightful and you helped us out a whole bunch! Just like the relationship of Buffy and Angel, we know you have to go, but there will always be a place for you in our Buffyfest hearts. Cheesy, but true.

Also, I wanted to give an extra special thanks from me for taking on the work during my absence. You were really terrific!
Love, Michelle

We have 3 extra reservations for Tom Lenk tonight!

Tom Lenk's Stand-up and Musical comedy show at Don't tell Mama tonight is sold out! But we have 3 extra reservations and we'll share them with the first 3 people who ask for them! Email us at Buffyfest [at] aim.com and we'll give the meet-up details. It's $10 to get in plus a 2 drink minimum per person. Cash only!

A bientot

Well, that's it from me, Jayunderscorezero, aka Michael, for now. My brief tenure as guest blogger over here at Buffyfest has come to an end and I just want to extend yet another great big "thank you" to my gracious hosts for letting me come on board.

Say, let's make this a bit more audience-participatory, shall we? Feel free to gush, laud and otherwise show your appreciation for the original Buffyfest bloggers here in the comments thread.

Review - Fallen Angel Omnibus

If ever there were a comic I would recommend to fans of Buffy and Angel, it would have to be this one. In fact, as rumors continue to circulate about a potential reboot to the Buffy franchise, I'm kind of shocked that Peter David's name has never been mentioned as one of the few who could actually pull it off. Not only is he one of the most prolific genre writers out there, he's also without question one of the best. He's written for Trek, the Hulk, X-Factor, and that's just on Tuesdays. I could go on but what I really want to get across to you is the following: Fallen Angel is one of the best works of fiction you will ever read and Liandra, the story's protagonist, will absolutely resonate with those of us who found a certain Slayer so compelling. Let's get to it.

What it is: The Fallen Angel Omnibus collects the first 21 issues of the IDW run of the Fallen Angel series. It is written by the aforementioned Peter David and predominantly illustrated by the fantastic J.K. Woodward. It tells the story of a guardian angel, Liandra (Lee for short), whose betrayal of the dude upstairs left her exiled on earth, specifically in the ultimate city of sin, Bete Noire, a city that's changing nature shapes that of the rest of the world. There she gets drunk nightly at Furor's and acts as a sort of final court to the dispossessed. She faces off against angels, demons, ghosts, and any other bastards foolish enough to take her on.

The Review: As I may have already mentioned, this book is kind of awesome. Without giving too much away I'll try and give you a little of the why here. Let me begin with the first five issues that appear in this collection. Here David weaves an excellent origin story that, combined with the heart-stoppingly gorgeous art painted (you heard me) by J.K Woodward, provides one of the finest first arcs you're likely to read.

The rest of the remaining issues tell the story of Liandra's son, Jude's, joining the ranks of the damned in the city of sin. His ascension to magistrate and subsequent rule over Bette Noire, are the major focus of the anthology. It is through his unlikely journey that we get to know Bette Noire and its many inhabitants and they are quite a cast of characters. You can meet anyone there from the Snake who tempted Eve to a potentially reformed Hitler.

But of the most interest to me and to Buffy fans as well will always be Liandra. Watching her go from completely unflappable to white hot vengeance personified will never get old. Unlike so many female comic book characters, she doesn't fall prey to ridiculously tight and revealing costumes nor is she a subject to the whims of her male counterparts. Like Buffy she's taken her responsibilities into her own hands and to hell with what anyone else has to say about it.

So should you buy it?: Well, considering you can buy it on Amazon for around eighteen bucks.... uh, yeah. I would say so. It's over 500 pages. Do the math and you'll discover that's precisely 500 ridiculous amounts of bang for your proverbial buck. If you have any doubts though, keep in mind that you can begin by reading Fallen Angel Reborn co-starring a certain blue ancient one. What was her name again? Illy-something or other? For more information on that you can check out our interview with Peter David here.

Sufficed to say it's an outstanding read and gets Bearded Bitsy's Pick o' the Month for things you ought to be reading. Right now. Well, what are you waiting for? Shoo!

Bump! Sarah Michelle Gellar is baking nicely.

Paparazzi shots!! Up top is Smidge leaving pilates and bottom image she's with her dog Tyson and mom Rosellen.

Images sourced from jfx images.

Just how many vamps can there possibly be?

I'm very wary of the fact that this may have already been posted on this blog and that I somehow missed it, which would make me a very careless blogger indeed for inadvertently reposting it. Still, just in case it hasn't come to your attention before, I present to you: Vampire Population Ecology.

Yes dear readers, that's right, some clever clogs (one Brian Thomas*, in fact) has taken the maths and science applied to analysing population sizes and changes and applied it to the vampires of the Buffyverse, ultimately calculating exactly how many there'd have to be in order to have a stable ecology (i.e. not die out and also not have a population explosion).

If you don't want to read the whole paper, there's some neat summaries at these two sites that link to the piece; the latter even throwing in a little dig at Twilight for good measure.

This is far from the first attempt to 'study' vampire populations, I know, but this is a fairly decent - and, hey, Buffy-centric - one.

Quite understandably, the study restricts itself to Sunnydale. No doubt at least partly because there was some much crazier stuff going on with vampire populations over in LA...


...and don't even get me started on the whole "the grandaughter will sire the grandmother" thing.

*I'm such a Buffy geek. I initially read this guy's name as Brian Thompson.