TV Series: My Babysitter's a Vampire

Newspaper snapshot from My Babysitter's a Vampire, Season 1 Episode 3. Click here to enlarge.

It seems from this newspaper that the inhabitants of Whitechapel, Ontario, where the series is set, are fluent in Pidgin Latin. The text begins "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Ut vestibulum diam et erat mollis elementum". The great orator and defender of the unjust Cicero would be turning in his grave.

This television series is based on the film with the same name. Unlike "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" it continues from the film with the same characters played by the same actors. In fact, the series jumps straight into the action without introducing the characters, so anyone who hasn't seen the film first would be confused. If anyone wants to know if the series is worth watching, here are two compelling reasons:

Kate Todd without fangs

Kate Todd with fangs

Kate plays Erica Jones, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who bites on the first date. But then again, she has to, because there won't be a second date. I would be begging her for a date.

---

On a personal note, this is the 1000th post since I started this blog in September 2010. Yesterday I sat for a long time wondering what to do. I didn't know whether to make a special post, or just post a picture of the letter M. I used to have a great interest in typography, back in the early 1990's when fonts were in rare supply on PC's and very expensive. I lost interest when TrueType was introduced and the font glut began. After long deliberation I decided to continue with business as usual and make a normal post.

Nevertheless, here's the letter M that I planned to use. It's too good to waste. This is the letter M from the typeface Palatino, designed by Hermann Zapf in 1948. I've used the version that was digitised by Bitstream Inc, respectfully renamed Zapf Calligraphic. The italic version of this font is considered by many to be the most beautiful font ever created. Microsoft refused to pay the licensing fees for using Palatino and has created a similar but inferior clone called Book Antiqua.

The letter M is significant in typography, especially computer typography. The size of a font is described as the M height, more commonly spelt as "em height". Fonts are calibrated to the size of the capital letter M. This means that if a font is a 36 point font, the capital M is exactly half an inch tall from top to bottom. (One inch is 72 points). This is a mark of quality in the free computer fonts that can be downloaded from many sources. Fonts in which the capital M doesn't match the font size are poor quality and shouldn't be used.

Hermann Zapf without fangs

Maybe I'll make a few posts in the future featuring my favourite fonts. They will all be old fonts, because I haven't concerned myself much with computer typography since the mid 1990's. I'm open to recommendations of high quality new fonts, if my readers know any.

This month my reader numbers are soaring up to record levels. But are the readers really paying attention? If you've read the post this far, please leave a comment congratulating me on my 1000th post. I'm curious if anyone will do this.