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thethirdromana · 3 months

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Some covers of Kidnapped

The ones with a kidnapping

There are heaps of these, including a couple of kinkier ones where Davie is tied up. I'm on board with these as a) clearly depicting a scene from the book and b) not spoiling too much of later events. As illustrations... none of them are really calling to me.

The ones with a fight

Let's swash those buckles! I'm not a big fan of the left-hand one, where Davie looks to be about eight years old, nor the middle one, where Davie is entirely absent. But the right one, which precisely captures the physique of a gawky 17-year-old who isn't yet used to being so tall, is perfect. Overall, though, I think these covers risk giving the impression that Kidnapped is a very swashbuckling novel, which it is not. Alan is a bonnie fighter; Davie is not.

The ones with a shipwreck

The third one there is the 2012 Vintage Children's Classics edition, which I think is stunning. If I wanted a physical copy of this novel, that's the one I'd be buying. I don't love that depicting the shipwreck effectively means spoiling events that happen more than a third of the way through the novel, but against that, it does demonstrate the spirit of the thing more than the swashbuckling piratical ones. I enjoy Davie's little tartan coat in the Penguin Classics edition, just so you know that we're in Scotland.

The ones with ALAN

We're going even further through the narrative of the novel here, but I find myself minding less, because ALAN. I particularly like the very Scottish-looking purple landscape. This is what the book is about, really - especially Alan's lovingly-depicted fancy coat.

The ones with... who is that, anyway?

From the covers that really get what the book is about to the ones that... don't. From left to right, we have Davie as Scottish Dick Whittington (aged about 12), Davie as Elvis (aged about 35), and for good measure, a cover that suggests that the main characters of this novel are Ebenezer Balfour and his talking seagull friend.

Baffling.

#kidnapped weekly

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gumnut-logic · 1 year

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Seagulls

Just a very quick bit of random this time inspired by the fact that I have to go back to work and really don’t want to. Also been suffering from fog brain.

Don’t expect too much sense. ::hugs you all::

-o-o-o-

Water lapped against his ears, its gentle embrace muffling the sound of the seagulls diving into the water around him.

He closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to think, just exist, hang in the moment and ignore the implications.

He was floating on his back and the sea was calm except for the determined birds diving around him. One landed on his leg, claws catching his harness, the link clinking against avian toenails.

He ignored it.

Gordon would be proud of him. He had that at least. Proud that he had survived, that all those water drills that had doubled as revenge for all the drills his brothers had dragged him through had been worth it.

Always worth it.

Something nibbled at his hand.

He shook it off.

The vague thought of sharks wandered through his mind but it proved to be something more to ignore.

Scott would frown at him. His big brother was always about the details, the strategy, the future. It worked well for the Commander.

But right at this moment? He just wanted to exist. If that had implications for the future, he would face them then.

The Scott in the back of his mind facepalmed.

Scott did that a lot.

Alan thought it was hilarious. In fact, Virgil suspected that he and Gordon had a running bet on how many facepalms they could conjure from their older brother on any given day. Outside of professionalism, of course, but even then they gained a few bonus points each time they sported a Fischler type for a client.

Or a Lemaire.

There were far too many Lemaires.

And that was definitely something he didn’t want to think about right now.

Now, John, red hair and elegance itself. Yes, elegance. The John at the back of his head was glaring.

Is it possible to glare at yourself?

He didn’t care right now. John was elegant…in space at least, and definitely once he had reacclimatised on Earth.

His little brother could dance…and sing. He really could.

That thought of John spinning around the room like a red haired Frank Sinatra used up a few smile inducing moments.

Enough for a roar to enter his consciousness.

He opened his eyes to blue sky and the sudden appearance of Thunderbird One. Honestly, the rocket plane moved so fast it just appeared as if it teleported.

“Virgil, respond!”

It was then he realised that the sounds of seagulls were not birds at all, but his brothers trying to contact him.

Scott sounded distraught.

It was Virgil’s job to protect his big brother, to save him from stress and worry. Apparently, he had failed again.

He sighed into the breeze.

Something fell from the hovering plane and splashed off to the side.

Virgil hoped it didn’t hit any seagulls.

More splashing and…“Virgil? You with me, big bro?”

He blinked and turned his head.

Water got into his eyes.

“Hey, hey, hey, no, don’t do that. I’ve got you.” Strong arms wrapped around him and scooped him up, taking him from his floating position and pulling him into an embrace. He found himself held tight. ‘Thank god’ was mumbled into his collar bone.

A hiss of an indrawn breath. “I’ve got him, Thunderbird One. Conscious, but no response. He has a head injury, puncture wound to the thigh and he is losing blood.” A clink of joined harnesses. “Pull us up.” And then back into his collar bone. “I’ve got you, Virg. Hang on, Scott’s got us.”

And then, wrapped in a little brother’s arms he was lifted from the water and into the air.

He was flying.

“Virgil! Stay with me!”

Those hands gripped tighter, but he had wings and floated away.

While the seagulls yelled his name.

-o-o-o-

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #Virgil Tracy #Gordon Tracy #Scott Tracy #nuttyfic #nutty writes crap #nutty doesn't want to go back to work #traffic sucks #nutty has fogbrain #might blame it on the flu shot from yesterday #or it could just be me #I will write something better eventually

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thealmightyemprex · 15 days

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So I have been revisiting some Gen Z franchises lately,I marathoned and ranked the Shrek films last year,Im one third the way through the X Men films......And there is a ranking I really wanna do cause I wanna talk about it and no one has talked about it the way I want to :Harry Potter .See most people want to ignore it cause of the transphobic elephant in the room ,or ignore the problematic shit entirely and mindlessly gush over nostalgia

Heres the take I want to do.,...I want to view them as movies cause ,even before we knew JK Rowling was nuts ....I dunno where I land on this franchise .I saw the first 4 in theaters ,enjoyed them as a child ,then wasnt allowed to see 5 due to a fantasy hating stepfather ,saw 6 and was totally confused ,saw 7 on DVD which was so visually dark I had no idea what was going on,saw 8 in probabbly the worst theater experience I have ever had due to tothunder blacking out the power thrice ,and finally saw 5 last .I also saw that first Fantastic Mr Beast movie or whatever the fuck that was called(Wouldnt include those in the watch through ),saw the first film at a church screening 10 years ago where I did cosplay as Snape (Mainly cause I can do a decent Alan Rickman impression ) which I believe is the last time I viewed any of the main series movies

I wanna stress as far as memory tells me there is stuff I liked (Like of course ,the cast is stacked )and stuff I really hated (Voldemort is one of the worst villains ever )and that I know Rowling sucks.....But shes not the only person who made theser movies ,film is collaborative and I wanna see if the series is good ,bad or meh just as films .I just feel like I need to see why these films which were massive hits took off like they did

@the-blue-fairie @themousefromfantasyland @countesspetofi @theancientvaleofsoulmaking @princesssarisa @ariel-seagull-wings @piterelizabethdevries

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amalthea9 · 8 months

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So I watched another Alan Arkin comedy with Dad last night. Inspector Clouseau, 1968. And who should I see as one of the bad guy lackies? But a young Anthony Ainley! (Had to take pics with my phone because it was streaming and Amazon prime doesn't allow screenshots)

He is so young babyyyyyy

Anyways I wanted to share with the class that I found a rogue Ainley while crushing on Alan Arkin 🤣🤣🤣

I also recommend this movie because Alan is adorable and hilarious and it made my little crush on him worse🤣

@ariel-seagull-wings @thealmightyemprex @ariel-seagull-wings @professorlehnsherr-almashy

#anthony ainley #hes so cute!!!#alan arkin

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princesssarisa · 1 year

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A Christmas Carol Holiday Season: "Mickey's Christmas Carol" (1983 animated short)

This 25-minute Christmas Carol was a landmark for the Walt Disney Company in several ways. First of all, it was the first theatrical Mickey Mouse cartoon released since the 1950s. Secondly it marks the voice acting debut of Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse and Alan Young as Scrooge McDuck – characters they would voice until their respective deaths in 2009 and 2016 – as well as the last time Donald Duck was voiced by his original actor, Clarence "Ducky" Nash.

The cartoon's premise is simple: A Christmas Carol starring Disney's iconic animal characters. Scrooge McDuck stars as his own namesake, Ebenezer Scrooge, with Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, and Scrooge's "real-life" nephew Donald Duck as Fred. Goofy is cast as a uniquely clumsy, comical version of Marley's Ghost, while the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are portrayed by Jiminy Cricket, Willie the Giant from Mickey and the Beanstalk, and (spoiler alert) Peg-Leg Pete. Daisy Duck appears as young Scrooge's fiancée Isabelle (as she's named here), Minnie Mouse makes a silent cameo appearance as Mrs. Cratchit, and the supporting and background roles consist of many familiar figures from Disney's classic Silly Symphonies and animated features.

Predictably, the story is retold in a concise, abbreviated way. Christmas Past omits Scrooge's childhood, Christmas Present consists only of visiting the Cratchits, and Christmas Future just shows Scrooge two graves, Tiny Tim's and his own. And for both comic and dramatic effect, the whole story is slightly exaggerated. Scrooge's villainy is cranked up: he only gives Bob half of Christmas Day off, without pay, and praises Jacob Marley for having "robbed from the widows and swindled the poor." The Cratchits' Christmas dinner consists of a bird literally as small as a canary. And at the climax (recalling Scrooge of 1970), Scrooge falls into his own grave toward a coffin from which hellish fire spews. But of course the ending is happy, as the redeemed Scrooge indulges the Cratchit children with toys and makes Bob his new partner.

Not all Dickens lovers will enjoy such a cartoonish retelling, but to me at least, it has enough charm to justify its lasting popularity. Even intertwined with slapstick and exaggeration, the story's emotions can still be felt: the brief, silent scene involving Tiny Tim's death, with a tearful Mickey/Bob placing Tim's crutch against his tombstone, is especially poignant. The cast of both new and veteran voice actors makes the most of their roles, the warm and colorful animation is of the quality we expect from Disney, and the main musical theme, "Oh What A Merry Christmas Day," is a sweet, memorable melody.

This cartoon can't replace a faithful adaptation of the book, but as a warm, funny, engaging Christmas Carol for children, it's a classic.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @thealmightyemprex, @faintingheroine, @reds-revenge, @thatscarletflycatcher

#a christmas carol holiday season #mickey's christmas carol #1983 #disney #animation #animated short #scrooge mcduck #alan young

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constructbreakdown · 29 days

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LSD Dulcimer Freestyle (150ug original)

youtube

Recorded April 19th, 2022

Instrument is a Seagull M4 Dulcimer.

I don't really know how to play that well but I decided to mess around.

Remember folks:

"If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments like microscopes, telescopes and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen."- Alan Watts

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scavenger-toll · 6 months

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ava VI part 2 spoilers!!

art i made for the episode

[Image ID: a digital painting of two gray stick-figures: Victim and Chosen. The darker gray stick-figure, Chosen, is laying on the ground with a purple rope around their neck; they look up at Victim looming above them. Victim holds the end of the rope in their hand.

The background goes from dark to light in a circular motion. The lightest and smallest circle acts as a halo around Victim’s head. End Image ID.]

#alan becker #animator vs animation #animation vs animator #seagull’s art #stick art

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pacifymebby · 29 days

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For the music ask, any 3 questions you haven’t answered yet but would like to! Sorry for being lazy. Just got off work so I have no brain power. 😆

29:A song that you remember from your childhood

January Song / Alan Hull (like the live album) my dad had it on in his car a lot.

3:A song that reminds you of summertime

Photograph (wishing) / a flock of seagulls

I think I was just really really into it a few summers ago, and the fact that a flock of seagulls really remind me of the show a town called malice which is set in Spain so.

7:A song to drive to

Star roving / slowdive

I had a ride from my mate the other day, lying on my back in the back of their van, it was like 3am and I put this on in my headphones and was just watching all the lights through the windows, it was a vibe haha. Felt very teenage.

Hahah thank you, and don't say sorry I love when people send me one like this <3 hope your work was alright and that you got some rest after!!

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flowerbarrel-art · 1 year

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Long post. Follow up to “Jokes”.

As Dark learned to talk he liked learning jokes from Second to cheer Chosen up, and Chosen appreciates it (even though they do make everyone groan sometimes).

What does a clock do when it’s hungry?

It goes back four seconds!

Why are spiders so smart?

They can find everything on the web!

Why don’t seagulls fly over the bay?

Because if they did, they’d be bagels!

#Alan Becker #AvA #AvM #Sticks #Second #Dark #Chosen #jokes #FlowerBarrel art #long post

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devoursjohnlock · 2 years

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Riddles of the Sphinx

There are a few things in BBC Dracula that I just can’t seem to let go of, and this is one. I’ve tried to write this meta a few times, and never found a particularly satisfying “solution” to it, but I think now it’s time to present it.

In the final episode of BBC Dracula (The Dark Compass), Mark Gatiss plays “Frank”, a modern-day version of Bram Stoker’s Renfield, who eats insects and is enthralled to Count Dracula. The extent to which Frank’s mind has been overtaken by Dracula is demonstrated by his... unique... solution to a cryptic crossword. Like Jonathan Harker’s journal in the first episode (The Rules of the Beast), Frank thinks he is writing rational, intelligible text in his crossword, but it all comes out in Dracula, with a single phrase spilling out over the grid.

“Dracula will be served” | “Dracula is my Lord”

Spoilers under the cut for the Inside No.9 episode The Riddle of the Sphinx, which is among the best episodes of that series (though should probably come with a few trigger warnings); if you’ve been planning to watch it, please do so before reading further.

The crossword Mark is solving in The Dark Compass was set by someone named “Sphinx”, and this is why I find it interesting. Sphinx is a pseudonym for Mark’s longtime League of Gentlemen collaborator Steve Pemberton. This isn’t the first crossword that Pemberton has written; in fact, his first (co-written with cryptic expert Alan Connor) was the central theme of an episode of Inside No.9, which is co-written by and co-stars Pemberton and another League of Gentlemen alum, Reece Shearsmith. For those who are unfamiliar, Inside No.9 is an anthology series, with half-hour episodes that are usually a mixture of horror and comedy.

The Riddle of the Sphinx is about a Cambridge professor who writes cryptic crosswords for the student newspaper; one night, a young woman breaks into his rooms, demanding that he teach her how to solve his puzzles. Together, they work their way through his latest creation, which was quietly published in the real-life Guardian newspaper on the day the episode aired in February 2017.

In the first scene of the episode, Sphinx brandishes a weapon at the intruder, a prop gun from a student performance of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. The gun is then safely stowed away until the end of the episode, when we’re told explicitly that Chekhov’s gun cannot simply remain in the drawer:

TYLER: Never show a gun in Act One if you’re not going to fire it in Act Five.

I do hate to have a joke explained, but never fear, they gave us an unexplained joke, too. The intruder goes by the name Nina. When we meet her, Nina appears not to understand the workings of the cryptic crossword, but soon we learn that she’s actually an expert. Not enough of an expert, however, to have noticed a hidden clue in the crossword that could have saved her life.

I S W A P P E D C U P S

The unexplained joke is that in a cryptic crossword, a hidden clue of this sort is called a “Nina”.

Sphinx takes his own pseudonym from the same mythic figure that gives the sphinx cat (like Sekhmet, who was blamed for murder in Sherlock’s The Great Game) its name. The riddle of the sphinx is well known to everyone: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening? The three stages of the riddle describe the ageing process, such that the answer is “a man”. According to the myth, the sphinx asphyxiated and consumed anyone who could not answer the riddle correctly; when finally the riddle was answered by Oedipus, the sphinx destroyed itself. Most of these beats are also hit in this Inside No.9 episode.

So, as you can see, The Riddle of the Sphinx is all rather meta; as his first lesson for Nina, Sphinx creates a hypothetical 7-word clue that is meant to be solved as “ARCHITECTURE”...

... but which is actually a half decent summary of the night’s events. This, in itself, is fitting, because a cryptic crossword clue is typically composed of two parts: the definition of the word, plus a bit of wordplay to help you solve it. Ordinary crosswords trade in relatively straightforward definitions; the cryptic crossword requires creativity, it requires looking at the clues from different angles, and I would say it also requires a sense of humour.

So, to hammer that metaphor home: Nina is asking Sphinx to teach her how to read his subtext, so that she can win the game.

Steve Pemberton has published a few other cryptic crosswords as Sphinx since The Riddle of the Sphinx aired, one in January 2018, when the subsequent series of Inside No.9 aired, and one in August 2020, which was solved on the YT series Cracking the Cryptic, if you’d like to see how an expert tackled it.

Like the crossword in The Riddle of the Sphinx, the Dracula crossword was also published in the Guardian on the day that The Dark Compass aired, in January 2020. And while the solution Mark’s character “Frank” offers is Dracula-focused but, well, insane, the actual solution to the crossword is a bloody, vampiric thing in its own right, as shown in these highlighted examples in the solved crossword below.

You may notice that I’m trying to be conservative here; I might also have included “DOOM”, “NOVEL”, “PSYCHIATRIST”, and perhaps a few others (”IBEX” is particularly tempting, for its devil horns) as Dracula-related. There are also a few treats among the clues, including:

20A Mountain dweller to be found in 9 (4)

...which has a clue “inside no. 9″ (9 = IX, and “BE” is found within it), such that there’s an Inside No.9 reference in each episode of Dracula, which is pleasing.

So, when I first heard that the Dracula crossword was set by Sphinx, what I wanted from it was a Nina... the potentially life-saving clue, hidden in plain sight. I haven’t been able to find one in it; in fact, I don’t think any of Sphinx’s cryptic crosswords since the original have included Ninas, which strikes me as odd, given their prominence in Riddle of the Sphinx (in the end, there were two in that crossword alone) and the value of hidden clues in Moffat and Gatiss’s work.

And for that reason, I might not have written up this meta if it weren’t for @victorianpining‘s reading of BBC Dracula, which casts Dracula as a stand-in for the writers. In this adaptation of Dracula, we are told repeatedly: blood is lives, and more specifically, blood is stories. Agatha tells Jonathan this as she holds his indecipherable manuscript in her hands: “Perhaps stories flow in our veins, if you know how to read them”. In the novel, Jonathan, as a diarist enthralled to Dracula, is a self-insert for Bram Stoker, just as John Watson the chronicler was a self-insert for Arthur Conan Doyle, writing stories in both text and subtext. In BBC Dracula, Moffat and Gatiss appear to have boldly claimed Dracula himself as their self-insert. And look how well this works... in their universe, blood is stories, and their thirst is insatiable. Stories grant them immortality, but what keeps them young is the game. It’s being understood by a present-day audience. It’s Jonathan. It’s Lucy. It’s us. It may be intellectually satisfying to sit in one’s room setting puzzles, but if no one else can understand them, what’s that worth? Sphinx persuades Nina to keep playing after she threatens to leave, for exactly this reason. Genius needs an audience. Artists always wish to be understood.

I briefly mentioned a third character in Riddle of the Sphinx above (he’s also the ‘mystery guest’, 12 Across, in that crossword). As he says to his host,

TYLER: I always hated cryptic crosswords. Why can’t people say what they mean, rather than trying to trick you all the time?

And from 2017, that’s a familiar sentiment. In Riddle of the Sphinx, both Nina and Sphinx have a go at murdering each other—through the game—but they would both have survived if it weren’t for the interference of this outsider, who insists that the prop gun be used for real. Tyler ends the game, and cuts short Sphinx’s immortality, ensuring that he fulfills his namesake’s destiny by destroying himself.

So, even without the pleasure of finding a Nina, the Dracula crossword resonates with these themes, on a micro-scale. We watch Mark, pen in hand, playing a game that requires decoding encrypted clues; the solution he shows us (repeatedly, “Dracula is my lord”) is nonsense, and suggests that he is self-obsessed (a writer of Dracula obsessed with his own self-insert). But if we reject that surface solution, and figure out the cipher for ourselves—if we act as the Nina here—we find blood. We find stories.

Among these crossword clues, the one we hear Mark read aloud as he sits waiting for Dracula in The Dark Compass is the same one he tweeted along with the Guardian story:

A Mark Gatiss character wields a pen while playing a game. #justmofftissthings

The clue for 12 Across is easily recognized as not being about Dracula at all, but a different Victorian story, Frankenstein. This solution is a little too on the nose for even an “&Lit” clue (cryptic-speak for a relatively literal clue). And maybe Mark quoted it in his tweet because an easy clue makes for a better hook for the show. Or maybe he quoted it because he’s a fan of Victorian horror generally. But as someone used to seeing double meanings in both cryptic clues and literary subtext, I can’t help but be reminded of another unscrupulous doctor, who might also be described as a “tanner”. This ‘mystery guest’ doesn’t fit the grid, but... that never stopped Mark, now did it?

And of course...

... you know what they say about a weapon introduced in the first act.

#BBC Dracula #Inside No.9 #Sherlock #The Dark Compass #Riddle of the Sphinx #Steve Pemberton #Mark Gatiss #cryptic crosswords #text and subtext #learning the rules of the game #blood is lives #blood is stories #Chekhov's gun #BBC Dracula meta

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get-back-homeward · 2 years

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Brian Epstein’s first visit to the Cavern

[O]n Thursday, November 9, 1961, at the Cavern lunchtime session, the tracks that had been running in parallel for so long finally converged.

Brian Epstein’s “My Bonnie” inquiries had taken him so far but no further. He knew it was a foreign record, probably from Germany, and found it “very significant” that Nems had received three orders for it.23 He knew the Beatles were a Liverpool group and for the first time actively searched Mersey Beat for their name. The current issue (which, also for the first time, had a Nems front-page ad) included Wooler’s report of the Beatmakers’ spectacle, and the Beatles advertised for appearances at Litherland, New Brighton and the Cavern.

They were listed three times at the Cavern. Brian had been here when it was a jazz cellar run by its founder Alan Sytner—they’d grown up together, boys of the same age at the same synagogue.24 Now it was “a teenage venue,” the very thought of which intimidated him … though not enough to squash his interest. He phoned Bill Harry, who made inquiries and found out the Beatles were playing the Thursday lunchtime session; Harry informed Ray McFall that Brian Epstein of Nems would be coming down to speak to the Beatles; doorman Paddy Delaney was told to expect him—he was to be signed in without a membership card, special dispensation. Going to see live rock music wasn’t new to Brian—he’d been to Empire shows and, with his sharp eye for presentation, always found the staging dismal, noticing that few acts projected their personality across the footlights—but going to the Cavern was sure to be a different experience. Brian suggested his PA Alistair Taylor join him: they would go for lunch and drop into the Cavern on the way, to find out more about this “My Bonnie” record.

The club was just a two-hundred-step walk from Nems, but November 9 was one of those smoggy, cold early-winter days in Liverpool, so damp that smuts glued to skin, so dark that the sooty buildings lost detail and car headlights couldn’t put it back. Flights were canceled at the airport and foghorns groaned over the Mersey sound: the cawing seagulls and booming one o’clock cannon. The businessmen picked a path through narrow Mathew Street, between Fruit Exchange lorries and their debris, and at number 10 Paddy Delaney showed them along the dimly lit passage and down the greasy steps.

Bob Wooler was in the bandroom when Delaney ushered in their visitor. Wooler recognized him from Nems, though they’d never met. Brian waited for a pause in that cellarful of noise, then leaned across and asked, impeccably RADA, if that was the Beatles on stage, the group on the “My Bonnie” record. Wooler confirmed it was: “They are they, they’re the ones.”25 The visitor made his way to the back of the center tunnel and watched.

It was pretty much an eye-opener, to go down into this darkened, dank, smoky cellar, in the middle of the day, and to see crowds and crowds of kids watching these four young men on stage. They were rather scruffily dressed—in the nicest possible way, or I should say in the most attractive way: black leather jackets and jeans, long hair of course, and rather untidy stage presentation, not terribly aware and not caring very much what they looked like. I think they cared more, even then, what they sounded like.26

The Beatles had started the second of their two lunchtime spots. As Brian watched, Ray McFall made a point of introducing himself to the man whose elegance instantly impressed him, and Cavernites consuming cheese rolls and soup wondered about the natty feller. Margaret Douglas remembers he was “standing at the back, near the snack bar. He looked so out of place that people were saying ‘What’s ’e doin’ ’ere?’ Ray McFall and Bob Wooler always wore suits and ties but they were nothing like Brian Epstein—he always looked like his mum got him ready.”27

The Beatles were rocking, smoking, eating, joking, drinking, charming, cussing, laughing, taking requests and answering back; they spoke local, looked continental, and played black and white American music with English color; John and Paul vied and gibed for attention, George smiled quietly to the side and sang from time to time, Pete drummed and kept his head down. It was another lunchtime session—and not one of their best. They were jaded, losing interest. But Brian saw enough to see beyond:

Their presentation left a little to be desired as far as I was concerned, because I’d been interested in the theater and acting a long time—but, amongst all that, something tremendous came over, and I was immediately struck by their music, their beat, and their sense of humor on stage. They were very funny; their ad-libbing was excellent. I liked them enormously, I immediately liked the sound that I heard: I heard their sound before I met them. I think actually that that’s important, because it should always be remembered that people hear their sound and like their sound before they meet them. I thought their sound was something that an awful lot of people would like. They were fresh and they were honest and they had what I thought was a sort of presence, and—this is a terrible, vague term—“star quality.” Whatever that is, they had it—or I sensed that they had it.28

From Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In (Ch. 22)

#underappreciated how much brian just fell down the beatles rabbit hole like every other fan #i have another post of all the excepts of him talking to people about his idea to manage them and their reactions #everyone kept telling him he was mad we’re so fortunate he was both a gambler and stubborn af once he set his mind to something #brian epstein #the beatles #1962 #the cavern #had to post this to go with the new statue unveiling #i love that they chose this day #i appreciate the details lewisohn adds about his 200 foot trip even more now #200 steps!#its so wild he didnt know about them sooner #he knew bill harry whos paper had articles written about the band and by j&p #i love margaret douglas's bit because you can just hear this whole crowd of beatles fans who recognize him from nems buzzing around him #the blockquotes are from brian's 64 interview with bill grundy and excerpts from the mersey sound (1963)#happy to post the other sources later if anyones curious #tune in #mine

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