I'm not sure I've ever gotten involved in grammar/punctuation issues before. But I'd think "ho's" might be acceptable under the rule that allows apostrophes to indicate omitted letters (e.g., "att'n"). However, since "ho" is short for "whore," you really should say 'ho' and 'ho's.

This I approve of. I am putting away my hanky.

(Sorry, skipping and ignoring ongoing conversations and posting. I apologize.)

So, at first I thought I wouldn't get to watch "Dr. Horrible" due to my crazy-close deadline ( Billy may have a PhD in horribleness just thanks to a little plastic bag of goo smelling like cumin (sp?), but I don't think I have the goggles or the laughter to even try to pull that off in 10 days ). But, as my parentheses just showed (I am in a whitefonted discussion! ME! For probably the first time ever!), after a sleepless night with an extremely uncooperative computer, I decided to give myself this treat before shabbat. I had a blast.

And then, I had to babble. Because, um, well, there are no graphs or equations I can have around this whole thing, so words are all I'm being left with. And, I guess, music - but, being me, music is more like magic to me than any matter transporters (after all, electrons do that on a regular basis) or freeze rays (unlike anything else, I know of, but hey, the seminar I wrote on time travel was a few years ago, who knows what changed since).

Music, for me, is magic. I can't hold a note to save my life (or even the lives of those dear to me), I can't even hear when somebody doesn't manage to sing right, I have no idea how this beautiful and complicated language works, what are its rules, its grammar, its puns and poetry and prose. I have no words - in any other language - to describe what's going on with it, other than "Pretty!" "Loud" or "Yay!"or "No, please". So even before the very first note, I'm already in awe of anybody who can write, read, speak or rhyme in music. It's just like magic. I'm already sold (even though, sadly enough, I know too few musicals).

Oh, and before we go on, I just wanna make sure y'all are fairly warned (um, just in case somebody managed to forget, since I'm so sparse lately on the board) - I'm the sappiest sap who ever sapped the earth. If there were a superhero who could save the world by being sappy, they'd have to choose me for he role (though I can't think of any matching outfit). And it's affecting everything. It can't be avoided. Continue to this mess of words and sap and no protecting gloves at your own risk. I can't do more than warn you, I'm sorry.

Oh, and one last "Oh" - I'm afraid I know nothing of the whole superheroes and supervillains and comics and flying capes and who was born with his power and who got it by accident and who doesn't want it at all and who fought for it and what each of that means - all I know is that there's a whole world of this. I don't know how to read comic books (I never seemed to find the proper balance between the pictures and the words), and I know I miss great stories this way, but, again, I just don't seem to speak the language.

I mean, I know that there's Superman (with a cape and a blue and red, and I probably never saw any of the movies), and Spiderman (with other reds and blues, and again, never reading or seeing anything), and Batman (with a different set of colors for his suit, and even less reading and being exposed to anything about him other than several Buffistas' deep love of his stories). In fact, the one superhero story that I am sure I was exposed to was "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay". Which I loved-loved-loved, but still never managed to speak the language of comics. Sigh. So I'm probably going to express some staggering amounts of ignorance, and, again, you are warned.

No, wait, one more thing. About babbling. Despite lacking the ability to shut my keyboard up, I do realize what this Sing-Along-Blog is. It's for fun. I laughed all throughout the thing and had such a great time. But you know what? It also had an actual story in there. I'm only half not-serious, all throughout watching, because I don't think the so-funny (and, oh, it was so funny!) would be indeed so perfect, for me, if there weren't an actual story behind it,with actual characters and emotions. I'm a sap, remember? So if you think I'm over-reaching, seeing things that aren't there or just (continued...)

( continues...) exaggerating, you're probably way more right than I am. Still, I stand by my sap defense, and can't avoid that.

And now, after these apologies are out of the way (goodness, how many words do I need before I can even begin? I'm totally ridiculous, and that's even before showing my softy-ness all over the internet. Maybe I need a Please-Never-Ever-Sing-Along-Blog. Hmm), I can cheerfully finally jump to the very first moment in which I knew that despite all this, I was thoroughly enjoying myself - when I noticed, on the first monologue, the kitchen visible in the back of the lab, just to make sure it's clear that the lab is hiding in somebody's back room, so the combination of that thingy with all the colorful wires and the lights and the mad scientist, with those little chairs and the pots and pans which were fuzzy at the edge of the picture was great.

And then Dr. Horrible wanted his standards (remember Giles saying similar things in that episode of BtVS when Wesley arrived? How secrets were sold to Xander for cash and the demons lived in motels and there were no standards anymore? I loved it then already), and the status was not quo, in the first pun I could trace, and I was already having such a good time.

And then something surprising happened (oh, a plot twist, even before the plot started) - I realized h ow much I liked that sweetie Dr. Horrible (who would probably want to freeze me just for saying that, and would filter any e-mail with those words landing in his mailbox, but still). I liked that combination of "Oh, yeah, I'm the super-villain" and the superiority over the people writing him e-mails in fake names just as ridiculous as his (and yet, not having a blog and goggles and transmitter rays they allow themselves to criticize), with his brutal yeah-I-lost honesty (dislocated his shoulder, again, last week, poor dear).

And then, of course, worrying about the children in the park and not willing to duel around them. As if it's all just one big game for all those who participate, until somebody can really get hurt, and then, he's careful about them. While looking down at that e-mail writing person, of course, but still. Adorable.

And then the laundromat song started. And I knew I was completely won over. The actor is amazing - the total different body language, voice, facial expressions, everything changes the minute he leaves his back room and his blog where he's totally ruling the world, and going out to the real one. The one time he dares to try to speak to Penny ("love your hair") during the song is when those lyrics are inside the song, rhyming and all. The poor kid needs all that cover and courage in order to just speak. And once she notices and the "magic" breaks, he's mumbling again (and completely selling, to me at least, both personalities), poor dear.

OK, I may become too much of a Jewish mommy even for my own sappy tastes.

But, oh, how I loved that song. How it combined so perfectly those two lines - at times about the Dr. Horrible Freeze Ray and at times about an embarrassed geeky boy not finding the words in front of a pretty girl, and how that combination, to me, was exactly the point of the story. He says he wants to show "her" how evil he is, and all that, on the blog. But in the laundromat, all he wants is to manage to be able to have his wits enough with him and control his clumsy tongue enough to manage to think about something to tell her.

And I loved the visual of stopping the time (with all the laundry spilling) and seeing his illusion - he just leans there and looks at her at first, poor baby. He needs the rest of his song, some of it in his suit and goggles, with all his ruling-the-world, just in order to imagine himself dancing with her (not even talking!).

And again, with his adorable honesty: "How you make me feel" goes through all the less-than-pleasant side effects of falling in love, all the way from "special needs" up to "stop the pain". But still he talks about "the feelings *you* don't dare to feel", poor not-knowing-himself kid. Oh, and as if he has nothing to offer her, all he can think of giving her is not anything regarding him - or her - self, just the world, space-time continuum dominance, and the like. As if it takes something that huge in order for a pretty girl to say "hello" to a cute boy. (continued...)

( continues...)

And yet - a secret cmputer persona, practically not related to the everyday one - um, don't all of us who post online do that, at least partially? I mean, if any of my students had known what I'd been doing for the last half hour, instead of finishing writing their exam, I'd rather hide behind some gloves and goggles and boots in order to avoid the need to detail an explanation.

So when Penny says "I know you" on the street, he actually stops for a brief second (and maybe even changes his manner of standing and talking) and wonders if she knows him from the blog, his main avenue of connection to the world, because why would a pretty girl remember somebody like him from a place like the laundromat, where he didn't even dare to talk to her? The shift between the personas, the mixing of them, the "which me am I now to this person?".

So Billy's and Horrible's two personalities clash when he wants to both rob the wonderfluoniom (what a great name!) as well as talk to Penny. When he can combine them (cut the head of the fish or humanity), he's in his element, but then he's again about the van and the heist. He wonders about that choice for a second, and then - again, with a song, chooses the "Horrible" over the "Billy" (OK, typing those names makes me realize how many letters they share. Fun).

And then my falling-in-love with this is complete, with NF having such a wonderful time in being such a cheesy villain-hero-good-guy bad-guy, believing his very presence stopped the van, all about the day needing him, not him doing anything good for anybody, all big hands movements and going so precisely over the top with it - I couldn't stop laughing all throughout the time he was onscreen (maybe because I already knew that he can be Mal, with all that tortured past and love and loss, so just letting go and having a good time was even more priceless. And, frankly, if Mal could sometimes let himself pass with these gestures, I'm sure he wouldn't want to give them up, himself, you know?). And I loved it that the villain is in white and there's nothing horrible about him, and Captain Hammer is in all black, and he needs that little hammer picture and Penny asks captain of what he is when he rescues her, and he can't see anybody and anything other than his own thoughts about his own wonderfulness. At least Horrible sees the people in front of him, even if only as strangers-writing-mail and blog audience. Hammer doesn't even have even that. I love how the good guy is such a bad guy (and how much fun it is to watch him at it). I loved how the connection and difference between them was emphasized, for me, by them singing the same tune, sharing several of the lyrics, but so differently. What a lovely way to do this!

At least, Billy's Freeze-ray is all about being able to find the right thing in the right time to tell Penny. He wants to do nothing else with her. He takes all the practiced-laughter and knowledge and mails and attempts, in order to do what she did in a blink of an eye - start talking to a person. Captain Hammer, of course, is all about the breeze in his hair and the loving him to death. He wouldn't even notice if there are any kids next to cars he's demolishing, and if he does, he'll probably throw them to the garbage as well, just in order to show how quickly and with what a graceful arch he can toss them.

Billy actually does the stuff for Penny, rather than for his ego. She even shares - to some degree - his ideas about changing the current hierarchy of power. He signs her petition for her (even though he is internet savvy enough to know how tiny is the effect of such stuff), not just in order to convince her to date him (as the second part showed Hammer to do. And he's even worse - he doesn't just lie to her into dating her, he also does it just in order to hurt Billy). (continued...)

( continues...)

But, wait, that's the second part. First, in the first - I loved the little touches of attention: pronouncing the letters "BTW"; the names of the e-mails writers (I laughed out loud at "Jonnie Snow" because I just recently started reading "Song of Ice and Fire"); the little break in his voice when he sings "mumbling" (I mentioned already how much I liked the actor? Less than seventeen thousand times?); the laundromat song ending when he says "stop"; iron hoof (and how naturally it's said); Moist's willingness to help him any way he could, even though that's not much (and me writing each and every name of these characters seriously, especially "Moist"); Billy's constant blinking when he's nervous, both in trying to get into the league as well as when Penny does the simple act of speaking to him; the puns ("all that matters, taking matters into my command" was all kinds of "if nothing that we do matters, all that matters is what we do", with that turn of the "matters"), "my wish is your command", Hammer's curtain - oh, and Billy's expression regarding the curtains (yeah, I love the actor); the drumming of Billy's head on the van as marking the lines in the final song (I'm not going to write "poor kid", again. I'll write it enough when I babble, in a few minutes, about the second part.

[Edited to gasp at even myself for the length - why here and not in my dissertation? Also, it's probably way longer than the whole show itself, how embarrassing. And I still have some large paragraphs to throw at the second part. Oops. But no oops in the world will stop me. In the meantime, anyway.]

waiting impatiently for Nilly to write more

NILLY NILLY NILLY NILLY.

Oh how I have missed Nilly's reports. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

SPICY BRAINS FTW.

::sets up camp to wait::

Oh bless. I haven't read a Nilly review in Too Damn Long.

::settles beside Ailleann. Pokes up fire. Roasts marshmallows::

If there were a superhero who could save the world by being sappy, they'd have to choose me for he role

Wait, you AREN'T a superhero who can save the world by being sappy (though I think you misspelled "awesome")?

Love the return of Nilly analysis. Love. It's been too long.