Of All the Gin Joints in All the Towns in All the World...

I've talked a lot about all those strange coincidences which came together for me as easily as pie and all the disasters which befell Buffy because they didn't do it my way, so it wouldn't surprise me if most of you think I'm full of shit. That no one could be that lucky. That it was all coincidence. That, like Psycho-Pirate in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths (1986), I'm locked up in Arkham Asylum, gibbering about multiple universes...

Or like Buffy herself, in the episode Normal Again...

So for argument's sake I'll tell you another story, never before written down, about one of the greatest Buffy-related coincidences I ever experienced. Post-pandemic, I started travelling abroad again. In this case to Seattle (a destination neither Buffy nor Landau-related) in September 2022. One fine day, I took the ferry across to Bainbridge Island, found the famed Madison Diner and enjoyed a fantastic burger.

That was all.

I booked another trip to Seattle in April 2023 for that September and cheerfully informed all and sundry that I would definitely be going back to Bainbridge Island for another burger.

That I'd definitely be going right back there.

Definitely.

A few weeks after I booked my trip, the Hollywood actors and writers strikes erupted. They may arguably have permanently crippled Hollywood, and I vaguely wondered if this was the ripple effect of the road not taken spreading ever wider...

First Buffy, then Joss Whedon, now most of the industry supporting them.

Facing studio shutdowns and a serious employment dry spell, A-list actor Mark Ruffalo suggested to his fellow stars that they all "jump into indies." and that got me thinking.

What if I pitched Dear Miss Landau to an independent film-maker?

I made a shortlist of possibles and quickly knocked it down to a celebrity deathmatch between Dan Myrick (The Blair Witch Project) and Sofia Coppola, settling quickly on Myrick as my target. Then I checked his website and, as they say, my breath caught in my throat.

He had a mailing address. Rare these days.

He lived on Bainbridge Island.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...

First Juliet nearly turned up in Telford. Now this.

So while latter day Mark Antonys cried havoc, let slip the dogs of dispute and ripped themselves asunder on the streets of Hollywood in a firestorm of Sturm und Drang reminiscent of Thomas Cole's Destruction while the media, fixated, looked on; one lone man no one even knew was there climbed a hill on an island just across the bay from the Emerald City, looking either for another Oz or his sunlit city.

I loped up near to the farthest edge of America easily enough, and found Dan Myrick's mailing address on High School Road was a UPS store where I guess he kept a mailbox.

Expecting to be ushered swiftly out of the store with some stern warnings about federal law, I asked the staff if they could drop my little package into Dan's box. With that wonderful American affability I've come to know and love over the years I think they instead deposited it in his wife's mailbox and, knowing I'd pushed my luck far enough, I duly departed.

Well, I never heard from Dan. But those are the breaks and if there is a God, the one thing he sure can't do is mess with Man's free will.

I, however, had done my bit, so while Buffy and Hollywood burned I had a burger with Dru at the Madison.

She and I seem to be well out of the picture and far from the madding crowds; but perhaps we're actually an immutable pivotal mote, strong and secure in the eye of the storm.