Tim's Gauntlet: Day 6

Wow, it's challenge #6 already, I guess I've officially reached the home stretch!

I mentioned yesterday that challenge #5 had been the most difficult in terms of me trying to come up with a card, #6 here has proven to be quite the opposite, in that I had any number of a couple of dozen cards that could have qualified. Thankfully though, my decision was narrowed down rather quickly after yesterday's card was chosen, and if you don't know where I'm going, feel free to go back and check out #5.

The late 90's were not a great time for me, mostly because my health had started to go to sh*t a few years earlier, and had gotten considerably worse by the latter part of the decade. Chronic migraines were my primary problem, and thanks to these little slices of hell, I missed tons of school, was abandoned by many friends, and put a terrible strain on my family's home life.

I also happened to be rather rebellious at that particular time in my life, which was most likely brought on by a combination of unhappiness, and the ever popular, teen-angst. So on the rare days when I wasn't laid up with a migraine, I was usually out looking for trouble, and even when I wasn't, it developed a nasty habit of finding me. And as you can probably imagine, this didn't help the home life any either, and was the source of many a heated row.

Films and television had always been an important part of my life, but around '97ish, they practically became my life! They often felt like my only means of escape, and since escape was what I was looking for, my television watching ended up increasing ten-fold. Although, anyone who's ever experienced certain kinds of migraines, knows that watching television isn't always doable, at least not without extreme discomfort, so a lot of my watching was actually listening. Books and comic books were certainly a way to escape as well, but again, it's awfully difficult to read while one's being besieged by a raging migraine, so I wasn't able utilize those forms of fantasy nearly as often as I would have liked.

I know that this all probably sounds a little depressing, and it is, but the one saving grace that I had, was that mid to late 90's television was awesome, especially if you had cable, which we thankfully did. Not only were there a plethora of good current shows on at the time, but this was also pre-reality tv (well, other than Cops, and The Real World), and cable channels were rarely producing their own original content yet, so most of their programming consisted of shows (and films) from the past, which was just fine by me.

There were no shortage of good current shows on at the time, and one of my personal favorites, which debuted in 1997, was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I had been a fan of the '92 film since seeing it in the theater, despite it not turning out the way that Joss Whedon has envisioned. Although in retrospect, it was probably a good thing that it didn't, as he might not have pushed so hard to get the television show made had the film turned out the way that he wanted -- but it didn't, so he did!

I realize that 99.9% of my reading audience doesn't, and won't, care about this show, so I'm not going to waste too much of my time (or yours) going into it's complexities, but I will say that like a lot of other people, the show struck a chord with me, and I would end up sticking with it for it's entire run (seven seasons).

The show produced many memorable characters over the years, but two of the most iconic would debut together in the first episode of the second season ("School Hard"), those being vampires, Spike (James Marsters) and his girlfriend, Drusilla (Juliet Landau). Even though they were "bad", both characters became immediate fan favorites (which forced Joss Whedon to change his plans for them), so much so that Spike would later become a regular cast member, and Drusilla would appear in a number of episodes over the years, on Buffy, and it's eventual spin-off, Angel (a show that I ended up liking more) -- although many fans would argue that she wasn't in nearly enough episodes of either show, myself included!

Drusilla was my favorite character to come from Buffy, and is one of my top 5 favorite television characters of all time. I won't bore you with in-depth look into her background, but will say that she was a seer as a human, and was intentionally driven insane before being turned in to a vampire -- this often made for wonderful bits of seemingly nonsensical dialogue (although they really weren't), which was greatly enhanced by Juliet's delivery.

Juliet Landau has appeared in quite a few things, but will always be remembered best for her role as Drusilla. As teased yesterday though, one of her other more memorable roles was that of Loretta King in Ed Wood, which just so happened to also star her dad, Martin Landau.

As for the card, it comes from the 2004 Inkworks BTVS Women of Sunnydale set, and I got mine, along with two others from the set (Julie Benz and Bianca Lawson), in a lot off of eBay somewhere around 7 or 8 years ago. The Julie Benz auto was desirable too, but being able to get Juliet was my primary goal. I don't recall exactly how much I paid for the lot, but I'm pretty sure that I got it for less than Juliet's sells for by itself now, so not a bad purchase if I don't say so myself.

Hard to believe that tomorrow will be the last day of this challenge, and as of this typing (Sunday morning) I have nothing planned, so hopefully something will come to mind sooner than later.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.