My brother's a couple of years younger, and he totally had hair like that in high school. Natural, mind you. Of course, that doesn't argue for coolness.

Eeeee! It's the CARROT TOP EVIL TWIN PICTURES!!!

See, the yearbook headshot makes me think Brooke Shields. I dunno.

Hmmm, I think with hair that curly he probably didn't have much choice except to cut it really short. (Which also wasn't that cool.)

Did his "real" voice bother anyone else during the A&E thing? Everytime he came on the screen and started talking, he wasn't so...Spike...anymore. Did not likey.

I didn't see the A&E thing--but I do avoid cons and interviews with James to avoid this.

cereal to add that I've finally gotten the nerve to click the links to the pictures. Not as bad as I was expecting. Totally early 80's. At least his curl is natural. My dad had the 80's 'fro and it was a perm. * shudder *

I've no idea what was hip in Modesto but in Manhattan, where I grew up, that look was 5-10 years behind the times.

From my brief stay in Modesto (for my bro and SIL's wedding), I have to say it's not exactly the most happening corner of California. I'd buy them being a bit behind Manhattan trends.

Which reminds me I really need to find out if SIL ever knew JM. She's only a few years older, and IIRC he's a Methodist PK, and her family faithfully attended the biggest Methodist church in town...

Well, I'm about the same age as JM, and I can tell you that I went to high school with plenty of curly-headed boys who had hair-dos (hair-don'ts?) just like his. It was the Ugly Decade, after all.

Those yearbook pictures are priceless. And if I read the very small type correctly, JM played Thoreau in The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, a play I was in back in high school. (I was Ralph Waldo Emerson's wife, Lydian.) Loved that play to death. It makes me very weirdly happy to know that JM was in the same play.

I totally had hair like Marsters in high school - a few years earlier - completely natural. It can't be that uncommon among Jewish kids (me - not Marsters as far as I know) cause I've heard it called a "Jewfro".

Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker (a longtime Buffy fan) gives the last episode an A+ and says, "Here endeth a magnificent series, magnificently."

When I was in junior high school, which would have been about the same time JM was in high school, the Jewfro was a big ol' no-no. Then again, So Cal versus No Cal. No Cal held onto the 70s looks way longer than So Cal did.

And this is from the penultimate Buffy review at Scoopme. I admit it made my allergies act up:

How will we carry on without them?

Whatever happens. Whoever lives. Whoever dies. We lose them anyway.

It hurts. It hurts a lot, and it hurts already. I can’t watch now, without it being connected to this inevitable ending, this final bow. Every moment of beautiful joy extracted from clever, intelligent, hysterical, awesome, captivating writing wrecks me as it lifts me up.

Every line pricks, because I smile or cheer, and then remember that it is the last time that Anya and Andrew will ever get to wheelchair fight. It is the last time that Buffy and Faith reach across the void at each other. It is the last time that Willow doubts her magic, or Giles holds the family together.

Every thing is the last thing, and knowing it is coming makes me incapable of seeing just the moment.

It’s because we love them. We will lose them, and we will mourn them, and, in a way, that preemptive grief is all we have. Because when it ends, next week, there will be nothing left to hold on to. Nothing rational. It will just be gone, and each and everyone of us will clutch the empty spaces where our hearts used to be, and we will feel silly for mourning something so seemingly trivial and small as it were actually family.

It is almost easier to say goodbye now, but it really isn’t goodbye, as long as we know there is one tale left. We still have one week left to rationalize that these people aren’t really real. They aren’t really with us.

But we’re just fooling ourselves, or at least I am.

They are real, if only because they are the better natures we hope for in ourselves. Through thick and thin, these people have laid it all out on the line for each other because of friendship and loyalty over crisis that we could never hope to overcome. We all want friends like these.

We all want to be like them ourselves, and not because they have powers and gifts and a calling.

Anya summed up our allegiance to them best:

"And, yet, here’s the thing, when it’s something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they’re lame morons for fighting, but they do. They never... they never quit. And so I guess, I’ll keep fighting too."

Amen.

Go.

Go be heroes.

One last time.