Going, Going, Gone Digital

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.
  

Back Again As Usual

Sorry I missed yesterday. I got back into fanfic writing and sort of let everything else drop. Let's see if I can juggle things a little better this time.

Today is the day, years and years ago, when the TV show McCloud premiered. This is important because Daria dreamed that she was McCloud in the episode, "Murder, She Snored." Yeah, that was pretty trivial, but it's my blog.

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the airing of the Daria Day Marathon on MTV. Good times. It was also the day (yesterday was) when the second season of Daria debuted, according to this article. That means yesterday, which I missed, was the 11th anniversary of "Arts 'N Crass." Dang. Well, happy birthday to that episode.

Getting back to today again, this is the 10th anniversary of the musical "Daria!" which has become everyone's third season favorite. Not. Well, it's still great fun finding ways to explain that episode in fanfiction. Also still think that Trike Girl is the cause of all the trouble.

This is about the time of year when "Daria's Tears" took place. Might want to check that one out.

WacoKid created a great new Iron Chef: Late for Valentines Day, or Confused Cupid. This should get some good responses.

Another teaser is out from Brother Grimace for the Legion of Lawndale Heroes series. This one is for Chapter 13.5. Enjoy.

The Urban Dictionary has a definition for "Daria." Interesting.

And.... it's time to get into fanfiction, which will take a while to get together. We'll start slowly.


Other

• Data Dump, by CINCGREEN (COMPLETE!)): Jane looked at Daria. “Hi, kiddo. Long time no see.” She then absorbed the sight of Daria’s expansive house. “How has life been treating you?”

PPMB

• Daylight: Visiting Camp Grizzly, by Richard Lobinske (COMPLETE!): Small streams of smoke rose above the trees ahead as a man carefully made his way long the unpaved road. He carried a bow in one hand and had a modest sized wild pig, already field-dressed, slung over the other shoulder. (A sequel to "Daylight: Recruitment Day.")
  
• LATIFA: In the King's Navy, by SoCalledGoodeGuy (Part 3): “So where’s this **** on a shingle?” asked Jane.
• Two Halves, by Dark Kuno (continued): “What were you thinking?!” Quinn asked angrily of the three boys standing before her in the kitchen.
  
  

Speaking of Aliens, I Forgot About This Guy....

This is a scene from the SF movie Jake was watching in "Aunt Nauseam," just before Trike Girl and her evil minions bombarded him with popcorn. The setting looks like Mars (red landscape, pink sky, two moons in background). You can click on the image to get a larger version of it. I was wondering, what if the alien was real and trying to make a living in Hollywood with bit parts? What if the female astronaut was actually Vivian Taylor and she and the alien had an affair off-camera and they came back to Lawndale to announce their engagement to Brittany but Brian Taylor electrocuted the alien just to see what it would do and Vivian was so distraught that she had an affair with Jake Morgendorffer only Jake didn't know it was Vivian because he had too much to drink in his cheap hotel room after he and Helen had another fight and Vivian got pregnant only she didn't know if the baby was Jake's or the alien's so there was a Very Special Episode of Daria in which everyone had to decide if they would be accepting of the baby even if it had six legs and big yellow eyes and just as Vivian is being rushed to the hospital the ambulance has an accident and Vivian is thrown into the back of the Good Time Chinese restaurant into the wormhole and Jake decides to go in and save her until he develops ringworm and now it's up to Brittany Taylor to rescue her mother and half-sibling and she goes into the wormhole and comes out just as her full grown half-sibling is attacking Tokyo? Wouldn't that be cool? I'm kind of stuck as to what happens next, though. More later.

Trike Girl Strikes Again!

One of the most striking characters in the musical episode "Daria!" is the one I call Trike Girl, a pigtailed preschooler on a Big Wheel pedaling fearlessly around Lawndale just before and after the hurricane passes by.

Trike Girl manages to insinuate herself in other episodes as well. She stands near Daria and Ms. Li on the sidelines of the parade in "I Loathe a Parade," and sits behind Jake Morgendorffer in a movie theater in "Aunt Nauseam," throwing popcorn at him when he acts up. Her high pigtails make her stand out in any scene. Why would anyone suspect that she is anything other than a sweet little girl?

Because she opens and closes the insane episode "Daria!" with her appearances, for one thing. She never seems to have been afraid one bit, nor did she seem to go home at any time during the hurricane. Coincidence? I think not. Also, Big Wheels were generally out of production in the 1990s. Where'd she get hers? She first appears (so far as I know) in the third season, when things got really out of whack. Remember the Good Time Chinese restaurant? Could she be a supernatural godlike invader from another dimension, prowling Lawndale for her amusement? Is she just "slumming" around town on her trike, playing tricks on mortals? What secret agenda does she really have? Was it she who brought Tom Sloane in to ruin Daria and Jane's friendship?

Post your thoughts and suspicions here. Let the world know.