e-Bay, the original online flea market, celebrates its 14th birthday today. It is notable that on one old version of MTV's Daria website (c. 2001), Jane Lane began her own auction website called LaneBAY.The LaneBAY webpage is difficult to resurrect using the WayBack Machine, as part of the old website activates something on the current MTV website, which causes the page to vanish moments after it appears and be replaced by a 404-type error screen. (Hitting the Escape key prevents this if you do it in time.) I did manage to reassemble part of Jane's old auction site at right. It looks fuzzy, but click on it for the full effect and be amused. There was a lot more to the site, other webpages linked to this one describing funny items for sale, but parts are missing.
For more information on LaneBAY, in case you are using it in a fanfic, click on "lanebay" under "Labels," below.
BACKGROUNDERS NOTES: UU and I have discovered some weird things about the Backgrounder kids at Lawndale High in going through innumerable screen captures for the show. (The website is still being expanded.) Here are a few oddities we've found.
- The dress clothing that the students wear to the party in "Daria Dance Party" is the same clothing the students wear to the cruise in "Just Add Water." In nearly all cases, these are the only times the students are ever seen dressed up.
- In "Jake of Hearts," an unusual number of background characters based on MTV staff members appear in scenes with the DJs in the parking lot. Some scenes have three or four of them at once. Were the animators having some fun?
- Scenes in which the wrong color is unexpectedly used for a character's clothing or hair are not exactly common, but they are hardly unknown. There may be up to two dozen such error scenes in Daria, the most startling of which is an African-American girl (one of the Jennifers) who suddenly and briefly becomes a blonde.
- Changes in color are nothing, however, compared to the students who seem to teleport or duplicate themselves in certain episodes. Shaggy's infamous doubling-up trick in "The Invitation" is only one example. One kid in a jade-colored hoodie appears in a classroom with Daria, then reappears far down a hallway walking toward the class after Daria leaves the room ("Pinch Sitter"). The kid known as The Head doubles himself quite clearly in one scene, the hot dog eating contest at the end of "Prize Fighters."
- Students at Lawndale High are often shown eating alone in the cafeteria, which is very rare in real life.
- The black kids do not sit together at the cafeteria or even date each other, so far as can be told, except for Mack and Jodie.
- An unusual number of white students are redheads, or so it seems to me. By "redheads" I also mean students with orange hair, such as Quinn.
- The only episode in which you will see a lot of the background teachers at LHS is "Lucky Strike." Teachers do not seem to notice when students wear headphones in class, with Dawn being the worst but not the only offender.
- The majority of students shown in all episodes of the show are either in Daria's grade or Quinn's. We see no students who are either above or below them in other grades. What happened to them?
- Occasionally a student is shown in a startlingly different context, such as the girl nicknamed Petite Red, who started off as a Middleton college student before she suddenly showed up in Lawndale High again. Perhaps she was one of the students Ms. Li mentions in The Daria Diaries who had her math grades altered in the school's computer by a hacker, forcing her to return to LHS. Several students who are consistently shown in Quinn's classes appear among the group of graduating students with Daria and Jane in IICY?
- Kevin and Brittany last longer as a couple than any backgrounder couple, who seem to change partners quite often.
- Trike Girl, the kid on the tricycle at the beginning and end of "Daria!" shows up a number of times, appearing to grow and shrink at various times. She throws popcorn at Jake in a theater in "Aunt Nauseam" and stands near Daria in "I Loathe a Parade." She's also in the audience a few rows ahead of Daria and Tom in "Life in the Fast Lane." I still think she's a supernatural being from another dimension, slumming in Lawndale.
- It appears that background students are more frequently seen during the last season of the show than in any previous season.
