I worship at the Whedon Altar

I’m not the kind of person who would celebrate a celebrity’s birthday as though they were someone I actually know. Wish them happy birthday on Twitter, yes. Acknowledge it publicly and personally, and do a little happy dance that they’re still in the world, and were born at all?

Pfft. That would never happen.

::cough::

Today is Joss Whedon’s 47th birthday. And I can’t think of a better person to get their own birthday blog entry.

Technically, I have been a Joss Whedon fan since I was 7 years old. I watched Roseanne religiously as a child, and he wrote for that show. Even before that, I watched the old school Captain Kangaroo, and you couldn’t tear me away from The Golden Girls. And that was his father. Not to mention? As a Nick at Nite child, I was a huge fan of The Donna Reed Show, and The Dick Van Dyke show. Guess who wrote on those? His grandfather.

Love for Joss Whedon is in my blood, and I didn’t know it on a random day in 1997 when I flipped through TV channels and saw John Ritter on my screen. I stopped to see what it was. Hmm. Robot. That’s odd. Oof, he just went flying down the stairs. Wow. And I changed the channel.

It wasn’t until Season 3 that I started watching the show, and I think it was more the sexy brooding guy and extremely sexy bad girl that got me coming back. But there was no denying this show had something special. And it was all thanks to the man behind the Grrr, Argh.

My love for the show grew with each episode. By 1999, I was an internet junkie, and I devoured every bit of information I could about the show, and its creator. By 2001, I had found a board on AOL to discuss the show with other fanatics, and it was really only then that I learned who Joss Whedon was, and got to discuss how amazing the writing and actors and everything was.

I didn’t watch Firefly at first. It was more a technical error than anything else. I set the season premiere of Buffy and the series premiere of Firefly to record that day, and neither came ended up recording. (Anyone remember VCRs?) Naturally it didn’t stop me from watching the Buffy, but I let Firefly fall by the wayside. It wasn’t until 2005 that I finally watched the entire series, and nearly cried from losing such greatness. After the pain of losing Dollhouse, I’m actually glad I wasn’t there for the original loss of Firefly.

RyAn is a much braver person than I, and he listed his top 10 favorite Whedonverse characters. This will not happen, as my brain is perfectly content not exploding. I will say that in the Whedon realm, nothing tops Buffy for me. It was the first, it was the best. Despite what happened when Marti Noxon took the helm.

With one glaring exception that RyAn will be quick to point out, I will and have watched everything Joss Whedon is involved in. Like many obsessive fans, he can essentially do no wrong in my eyes. I am not a comic book fan, but I will watch The Avengers, and I am genuinely looking forward to it.

Happy birthday, Numfar. Thank you for being you.