Weekend Plans and Television

My spousal unit Len Wein is being interviewed at noon at the West Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday. It should be a fun day. It sounds like a smaller version of the L.A. Times Festival of Books which is held in the spring. He'll be on stage at the Comics, Sci-Fi, and Beyond Pavillion from 12-1 ("Watching Len Wein: In Conversation with the Book Editor and Video Game Writer of Watchmen"), and then at the Golden Apple Comics booth for an autographing session. He'll be followed on stage by Ray Bradbury. There seems to be a fair number of celebrities in attendance, among them Adrienne Barbeau, Robert Wagner, Heather Thomas, Ed Begley, Jr., and Laraine Newman. Len's connection with Adrienne Barbeau and Heather Thomas? Both actresses have been in Swamp Thing productions, Barbeau in film, Thomas on the television series.

I'm going with my camera and audio recorder.

Sunday night, the Amazing Race returns to television, so we'll be gathering up the usual gang to have dinner and cheer. Rumor has it that at least one of the teams may have someone from the science fiction or comic book fan community.

The season premier of Big Bang Theory did not disappoint. We were particularly delighted when Sheldon started listing his favorite X-men in order, starting with Wolverine, who then got shifted to second place by Professor X and then to third place by Nightcrawler coming in second. Since Len created both Wolverine and Nightcrawler, we considered it a winning night. Sheldon had also called Hallie Barry his fifth favorite Catwoman, putting her behind every other actess who has played Catwoman on television or screen: Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfiffer, Ertha Kitt and Lee Merriweather. There was also a wonderful riff early on where Sheldon explains that he couldn't ever be Green Lantern, but with enough money (it was put much more creatively), he could be the Batman. When Leonard questioned that, Sheldon did a scary impersonation of Christian Bale's "I'm Batman." We love this show.