The Cute Little Red-Haired Girlfriend and I settled in this past Friday to watch Lucy Lawless perform in the final segment of Celebrity Duets. The show was built around a competition and Lucy came close to winning but wound up in second place. If you missed it, you can download clips from all of Lucy's performances or just view pics at Mary D.'s subsite devoted to the show. There's even more available at Lucy's official fan website, where Lucy is periodically posting, podcasting, and videocasting.

Earlier that day there had been another close call involving Lucy. I'd picked up a copy of the October 10 Advocate because there was a feature on Lucy focusing on her appearance on Celebrity Duets but also touching on other shows, including Battlestar Galactica. One of the questions asked in the interview was whether Lucy would be making an appearance on The L Word, a question that has crossed my mind, say, a zillion times.

As soon as I read Lucy's answer, I knew I had to call the Cute-Little-Red-Haired Girlfriend immediately and tell her about it. This was a mistake. Because Lucy's answer was that she had been considered for a role on The L Word, but hadn't gotten it--the role ultimately went to Karina Lombard. This tantalizing message, once delivered to the Girlfriend, almost resulted in the world's first death by completely unassisted orgasmic implosion. Just the thought of Lucy Lawless in The L Word was almost enough to do her in. It was a close call, but I am happy to report she made it through.

Incidentally, I thought I would report that I am not reading the new Xena comic books from Dynamite, though I have given them the once over. From what I've seen in the comic store and read online, they seem to be focused on or around the season two timeline, in a very Joxer-centric sort of world. I've been through too much blood, sweat and tears on the road to a fully acknowledged subtext to go back to stories where Joxer's courting Gabrielle.

Plus, if you've seen the covers of the Xena comics, you'll see they've drawn Xena's breasts all wrong. There's been a lot of focus on how to draw proper breasts in the comics blogosphere of late ("comics--the breastiest fandom of them all!"). However, this is not about "proper" it's about Xena. We have spent a long time observing Xena's breasts chez In Sequence and I can say with some authority that those are not the breasts you're looking for. (Ooops, that's another fandom entirely!)

Now that I've both sent and received books successfully through BookMooch, a service that allows people to swap books through the mail, I thought I'd let my readers know that I've tried it and liked it. PC Magazine just gave a positive review to a similar service called PaperBackSwap, but I find the BookMooch interface a bit less hectic. Incidentally, the two books I've traded so far have both been hardbacks. I don't know if you can trade hardbacks at PaperbackSwap, but you can at BookMooch.

There's a nice graphic on the front page of the site by Andrice Arp, which I've shown here. I like the way the book is running into the arms of a new reader, as if they're long-lost friends.

A lot of attention has been paid (including by me) to the presence of Batwoman in the comic 52, but I was incredibly excited and even charmed to see Isis making an appearance in the week twelve issue of the title.

I'm not sure where the story is going with this character, or even if her story will be developed, but I see an enormous amount of potential in the set-up. So far I like the contrast between her seemingly altruistic intentions and the awesome power that has just been handed to her.

Of course, I had to trundle over to YouTube and immediately watch the transformation scene from the old Shazam/Isis hour, a TV show which was on when I was a kid. I had completely forgotten that the character who turns into Isis was a schoolteacher. Somehow that fact makes it more ridiculous to watch and at the same time kind of hot.

Lots of folks on my blogroll have mentioned this contest (although I think Boing-Boing was the first), but if you haven't seen it you should check out the Superhero ModRen contest over at Worth1000.com. The rules of the contest were to incorporate a superhero in a piece of fine art. There are many fine, fine entries, but my favorites include the several renditions of Nude A Descending Staircase and, of course, Mona Xena's smile.

(Edit: I just received written permission from worth1000.com to use this image from their site, which I asked to use in accordance with their terms of service. Thanks guys!)

It seems like this had to happen eventually. There is now a podcast for Xena lovers, the XenaCast by Amy Boatman. There's only one episode available so far, and although there's a web address attached to the episode, all you'll find at the site are the words "Coming Soon!"

I found the podcast through the built-in directory in Juice, but you can also find it through podcast aggregator sites like Podcast Pickle.

The first episode is over an hour and includes a personalized summary of the first four episodes of Season 1. This seems to be the format of the show: show summary, but Amy Boatman is asking for feedback on the podcast so here's your chance to give her shape future shows.

The podcast is subtext-friendly, but the summary format of the Xenacast puts the emphasis on plot, rather than the characters. Amy Boatman does describe Xena as she appears in the first episode as "don't touch me, don't love me," which I thought was a nice description.

I'm interested to see how this develops, and if other Xena fans decide to enter the podcasting space.

A planet, I mean. In case you haven't heard already, back in July some scientists named a possible tenth planet Xena. Now they've discovered the planet has a moon. The scientists--good geeks, all of them--named the moon Gabrielle. There is some debate on whether Xena is really a planet at all, but since I still think of Pluto as a planet I am not the best person to fill you in on that argument.

In addition to the "maybe not a planet" issue, I discovered another potential roadblock to claiming Planet Xena. As it turns out, the names "Xena" and Gabrielle" are only "informal" and the planets will be officially named at a later date: "The International Astronomical Union, a group of scientists responsible for naming planets, is deciding on formal names for Xena and Gabrielle."

Once I found this out, I hustled on over to the International Astronomical Union to see what the naming procedure is. As it turns out, the IAU web site has many helpful public FAQs, including one dealing with the topic of Naming Stars after People and Buying Star Names. I felt reassured knowing the IAU had thought through the process, especially when I considered the "Buying Star Names" issue. I mean, I'd be dissapointed if they chose not to name the planet Xena, but at least I can feel certain there will be no planet Paris Hilton or planet Donald Trump in the near future.

Even if the planet hasn't been officially named yet, I don't think it's too early for fan fiction writers to tackle this tricky subject matter. I can't wait to see the first uber fan fic featuring Xena and Gabrielle as celestial objects. It reminds me of a story that the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend, fan fiction connosieur that she is, once gave me to read. It's called Before the Dawn of Time by BladeMast. In this fic, the roles of Xena and Gabby are played by the universe and a light in the void. Similar, but not quite a planet and a moon.

I am one of those people who freaked out when Firefly was cancelled and, not surprisingly, I am also one of those people who went to see Serenity this weekend. (NO SPOILERS) I'm not going to say very much here other than it exceeded my expectations and you should go see it. Oh, and here's a lovely photo of Gina Torres.

One thing I would like to say about Joss Whedon is that he has done a superior job of maintaining the integrity of theFirefly story across multiple media. As it becomes more common for stories to be told over and across many formats--movies, TV, comics, games, fan fiction--audiences will be scrutinizing not just the way a story is told in one format, but how it is deployed across several. Some stories will be packaged in ways that disrespect the audience, cashing in on fan interest with half-hearted story extensions and silly licenses. Others will find innovative ways to knit stories across media experiences. For instance, I appreciate the way the Firefly comic book fits into the overall storyline. Also, I think Whedon did a remarkable job in making Serenity a movie that tells a whole story for new viewers and extends the original story for the fandom.

After Stars Wars: The Clone Wars came out, I wrote here about how I was intrigued with the history of the Sith. I recently entered the word "Sith" into Wikipedia's search and was surprised to see a fairly extensive entry on the subject. Myth-making in progress.

However, when I was searching the Wikipedia, I wasn't looking for information on George Lucas's Sith at all. I had been looking for the history of the Sith as it relates to Irish fairy tales. I was investigating whether Lucas might have knowingly taken the name from an existing mythology and reapplied it to his Star Wars universe. At the top of the Wikipidia entry for Sith, I found the meaning I was looking for in a redirect message: "For the Irish fairy, see Sithe."

I came across the reference to Sith as fairy folk while reading the book Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. The Cute-Little-Red-Headed-Girlfriend--who is a bit of a ufologist--eagerly gave me the book to read, based on my having expressed interest in the ideas of Jacques Vallee, whose views I had encountered online.

I do not want to summarize the book's thesis here, which is both complex and unexpected. It is, how shall I say, a mindfuck. It reminded me of The Matrix in some ways, as well as the philosophical arguments surrounding the question, "How do I know I am not just a brain in a vat?" Although it is about the UFO phenomena, it also has much to say about the identity of the gods, the nature of reality and the boundaries of human knowledge.

I enjoyed watching the ABC mini-series Empire, which aired recently on ABC. I noticed a number of watchers criticized the series for its historical inaccuracy. I get the point, but it seems weak sport to pick on a gladiator flick. I mean, Ben Hur is subtitled "A Story of the Christ," but that's not really what one remembers, is it? We remember it for the arena, the chariots, the blistering homosexual subtext.

Anyway, I watched Empire primarily because I was led astray by a TV reviewer that promised me a lesbian scene during the Roman orgy in episode 3. I think there may have been about 10 seconds of that, and even now I'm not really certain if I ever saw anything. But that's okay with me, because I liked the series even without it. There was something fun about its schizophrenic movement back and forth between lowbrow gladitorial combat and a middlebrow political plot.

By sheer coincidence, I happened to be playing Gladius on my GameCube at the time the series was on, so I was really excited when Empire made use of various gladiatorial classes, such as the secutor, a very quick-moving fighter type that I was using in my game. At one point in the series, the two lead characters, Augustus and Tyrannus, become captives at a notorious gladiator prison called Arkham. Now there's historical accuracy for you! I laughed myself to pieces over that.

In a few weeks, I plan on watching the HBO mini-series, Rome. I just discovered its being co-produced by the BBC, which can only be a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Since I recently finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (along with half the world, it seems), I thought it would be fun to listen to some Harry Potter fan podcasts. The one that's stayed in my subscription queue is Harry Podder, an intergenerational podcast co-hosted by a child and an adult. The show has been spoiler-free through July, but the August podcasts assume you've finished the latest book.

In a recent podcast, I heard about a scandal involving "'shippers," fans who've become advocates of a particular romantic pairing between characters in the books. It interested me because there have been similar disputes among 'shippers in Xena fandom as well. Although Harry Podder is clearly geared towards children, it deals intelligently with some fairly complex subjects. The latest podcast, for example, delves into a professional tiff between author J.K. Rowling and author Terry Pratchett.

As soon as I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I felt very hungry for information and had to go crawling around the fan boards. There were a lot of mysteries I needed help with. Turns out the best information I could find was at The Severus Snape Fan Club Forums. Now it feels like a long wait until that next and final book.

I can think of no better example of the destructive power of advertising than the Batman series of films. Each time one is released, I tell myself in advance I won't go see it. Each time, the hype penetrates to some place in my skull that makes me powerless to resist seeing it. I wind up sitting in the movie theater looking around like an amnesiac wondering "How did I get here?" Then I leave the theater at the end of the film filled with self-hate.

It remind me of that drug they supposedly give to women about to give birth. It doesn't keep you from experiencing pain, it makes you forget the pain once you've been through it. Could I have been exposed to a time-release version in the movie theater? I just don't know how to explain it.

So I am wary of Batman Begins. I am also resigned to seeing it. I hold onto a glimmer of hope that it won't completely suck, based on Roger Ebert's positive review. I generally trust Roger in otaku matters, even though I've never really gotten over his thumbs-up review of The Passion of the Christ.

I love DIY stuff generally and DIY art stuff in particular. Lately, I've found a lot of DIY comics links for the artistically impaired. For example, there's a new Mac program called Comic Life that lets you easily create comics from photographs. Over at Mac Merc, there's a tutorial on achieving a "comics art look" from photographs using Photoshop. Via Boing-Boing, I found two interesting community-oriented web sites: one allows you to create and share comic strips online and another uses game screenshots to create comics.

The game site seems like an interesting extension of the "fan media" movement, in which fans use a commercial property such as a TV series as a jumping-off point for fiction, movies, songs, and now comics based on but extending the original premise. I just read through the archive of The L Ward, a site that uses comic strips based on screen shots from The L Word to comment on the series. I imagine programs like Comic Life are going to make this type of fan media much more prevalent.

If you read any of the fan sites for the L Word, it doesn't take long to discover that many viewers are not fond of the show's theme song, written and performed for the second season by BETTY. It takes me at least 24 hours to get it out of my head after watching the show, so it is catchy in a fiendish sort of way.

Having seen this site that reworks song lyrics into an outliner format, I decided to see what I could come up with by doing the same for the L Word theme. I produced the following:

• Women
• Girls
• in tight dresses
• who drag with moustaches
• Chicks
• driving fast
• Ingenues
• with long lashes
• Who
• long
• love
• lust
• give

• This is the way
• that we live
• talking
• laughing
• breathing
• loving
• crying
• drinking
• fighting
• writing
• winning
• losing
• cheating
• thinking
• dreaming
• and Love
• fucking
• kissing

Caution: I do not recommend this highly addictive lyric-outlining activity to you, as once you discover it you will while away many hours transforming your favorite songs into planning lists. I would not have thought that a productivity tool like an outliner could be used to waste so much time.

It's true what they say about Los Angeles. Living here, one frequently has celebrity sightings. What you probably don't know about celebrity sightings is that 95 percent of the time, you run into someone who is of no interest to you. Like Carrot Top, to give an example from my own history of sightings.

That's why I felt incredibly blessed this weekend when the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend came wheeling around the magazine rack of a local bookstore and whispered fiercely to me, "You will never guess who is here." We then calmly sauntered over to the shelter magazine rack, where we pretended to be deeply engrossed in various architectural glossies while secretly stealing glances at the incredibly hot Sarah Shahi, who plays the incredibly hot Carmen on The L Word.

Speaking of The L Word, many people continue to complain of the lack of realism on the show. Last week, for example, I noticed that LAist was skeptical of the nude sex scene in the pool at the Chateau Marmont. Although realism was not particularly on my mind while I was watching that scene, I do take your point.

However, let me counter by drawing your attention to the scenes involving the Hollywood executive, played by Camryn Manheim. For instance, take the scene where she trails Shane in her limo, calling to her as if she were a housepet, or the scene from last night's episode, in which she flies into a screaming rage and throws her cell phone at her obsequious underling. That's pure reality television, baby.

I am so ready for social TV. If you haven't read about it already, you can mosey on over to Plastic Bag for a good description and some prototype images of what social TV could look like.

For the impatient, here's a quick recap: you have an instant messaging app on your TV screen, letting you know which of your friends are watching television at the same time as you. You can send an instant invite to ask friends to watch TV with you, or you can respond to someone else's invite. Using a webcam mounted on your TV, you can send live images of yourself watching TV to your friends or engage in live tele-discussion.

I already have a preliminary social TV schedule mapped out. First thing, I'll message Neilalien so we can watch Alias together. I can't wait to see his huge bulbous head and insectoid eyes shining back at me from out of the TV screen.

Next, I'll issue an open invite to watch The L Word with me. I can guarantee there'll be a looooong discussion afterword. Then I want to get the list of comic bloggers who drink gin from Rose over at Peiratikos. I have no idea what we'll watch together, but I'm sure it will be a lot of fun.