In Wuhan, where we watched the eclipse we were joined by an American astronaut, Alvin Drew. Drew at the time was the US representative to the Russian space program and was stationed in Moscow for a year. He had read about our group in an article in the New York Times and decided to join us.

In this earlier blog post, http://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2009/07/23/a-solar-eclipse-is-much-more-than-just-a-visual-experience/, I wrote about the overall experience of watching the eclipse and included a picture of Drew with myself and another member of our group Howard Spero.

And here is a picture with Drew, myself, and Miriam and Tamar:

Drew was selected to be a member of the current visit to the Space Station, the last visit, http://www.nasa.gov/.

It was an honor to spend time with him talking about the space program and a thrill to actually have met an astronaut who has now flown in outer space. He even let us put on his special multi-million dollar sun glasses, a great guy.

Now if they would only bring back Firefly with new episodes, http://www.whedon.info/Firefly-Reruns-Join-The-Sci-Fi.html.

This was an animated cartoon based on the series where DC killed off Superman in the early 1990′s. At the time, it cause quite a reaction, getting coverage in the national and even international press. Millions of readers who had never read comics, bought copies.

While I had religiously read lots of comics when  young, by 1992, under the pressure of pretending to be adult, I had stopped. Thus I never read the original series.

Evidently throughout the 90′s there were attempts to turn this series into a movie; it almost got off the ground with of all people Nicolas Cage scheduled to star as Superman with Tim Burton directing. The mind boggles at what might have been the result, however it was never made.

Instead a direct to DVD animated cartoon was released in 2007, it was this that I got from Netflix.

I thought it was pretty good. It was interesting watching the story of how the original comics were created. A number of the people got pretty teary about some of the scenes in the comics when Superman died. Don’t tell my daughters, but so did I a little bit when watching the cartoon.

If you ever read Superman comics, I would recommend renting it. It brought many fond memories.

AND as an added bonus, Adam Baldwin, who played Jayne in the Firefly TV series, was the voice talent for Superman.

For references to this, see the end of the interview I gave for the DotGov Buzz, http://www.usa.gov/Federal_Employees/USA_Buzz/Newsletter_0522.html#dotgovspotlight, and the reference from a column in Federal Computer Week, written by then rising star Chris Dorobek, http://fcw.com/Articles/2007/09/16/Circuit_633659049783559373.aspx.

I even ran into Firefly fans when in China this last summer when we went to see a solar eclipse, http://www.ourownlittlecorner.com/2009/07/21/serenity-on-the-yangtze/.

I was glad to observe a Firefly reference last night in the latest episode of the Big Bang Theory, http://www.cbs.com/primetime/big_bang_theory/. In it the two leads, and roommates, Sheldon and Leonard have a big fight over who will get to accompany Leonard to see the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva on Valentine ’s Day, Leonard’s girl friend Penny or Sheldon.

Even when Sheldon points out that in their very detailed Roommate Agreement  it states clearly if one roommate is going to see the Large Hadron Collider and can bring the other roommate with them, they have to; Leonard still insists he will take Penny. Other Agreement clauses include one that if one roommate becomes a Zombie, the other promises not to kill them.

Sheldon tries to embarrass Leonard by saying that Darth Vader, Rupert Murdoch, and Leonard were three notorious traitors. Rupert was in the list because he owned Fox and Fox canceled Firefly. And thus the reference.

Firefly was a TV show created by Joss Whedon, who among other things was the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which lasted less than one season. It was shown on the Fox Network who evidently weren’t exactly clear on what to do with a quirky, character driven, space western whose principals ran around in a spaceship, used six-shooters, rustled cattle, and whenever feeling strong emotions would rattle off a phrase or two in Chinese. 

The end result is that only 11 of the 14 filmed episodes were ever shown on TV and the show was canceled. 

I never saw Firefly on TV during that season. 

However, Firefly fanatics, often called Browncoats from the color of the jacket that the Captain in the show wore as did other rebels during the losing war against the Alliance (don’t ask, rent the DVD’s), agitated and lobbied enough that Universal decided to authorize a film version of the show named after the name of the spaceship, Serenity. 

I saw Serenity in a movie theater and loved it. Rented the TV DVD’s and loved the TV show even more. 

Since then I have demonstrated the results of that passion in a number of different ways. I hosted a Firefly lunch once a month for the three years I was a the US Department of Transportation as the CIO for a small but equally addicted group where we watch one of the Firefly TV episodes, repeating the set when we finished the 14 filmed episodes. Getting dispensation from the DOT General Counsel that we were conducting Team Building exercises, we showed the two-hour movie, Serenity, twice, at the end of each cycle. 

I attend and this year worked at the annual showing of Serenity at the Arlington Cinema and Draft House which also servers as a fund raiser for Equality Now, a favorite charity of Joss Whedon. 

And here I am finishing up my Yangtze River cruise in China, getting ready for the eclipse we hope to see in Wuhan. The other day at lunch, I sat with members of a family from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

“Edmonton”, I noted, is the home of Nathan Fillion, the Captain in the TV show Firefly. Amazingly the response from the otherwise seemingly normal fellow members of the group, was the beginnings of a detailed discussion of which episode they liked best and which individual scenes illustrated the qualities of each of the characters from the show. They too had not seen the show on TV, were loaned the DVD set from a friend, watched the shows and joined me in wondering how such a great TV show could have been canceled. 

The family was even familiar with the Edmonton comedy group, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggy, a completely unexpected bonus. A conversation I rarely have been able to have anywhere and certainly unanticipated on the Yangtze River in the middle of China.