#i *think* it's about a south african lady band

[cazzyf1]

Some of my favourite quotes from David Benson's 'Hunt v Lauda'

'He was nursing a toy yellow-eyed gorilla which made alarming noises and clapped a pair of cymbals attached to its hand.

"Whats with the gorilla?"

James looked tired. "It's called smiler. Alistair and Teddy gave it to me to celebrate my championship."

Teddy smiled benignly: "The gorilla was not very popular in first-class lounge I'm afraid."

"No," said James, "and they wouldn't let me blow my whistle either." He produced a police whistle and blew it.' - p7

"When we boarded the plane, he (James Hunt) insisted on joining mechanics in touring class until the lights were turned down for passengers to sleep." - p8

"Niki had always wanted to marry Mariella but she had refused to do so until he had become world champion." - p21

"The unsuspecting young actress Marlene Knaus was going to endure a trial that few women, even with a tremendously experienced and well-founded background, could have endured." - p21

"I telephoned James Hunt in Johannesburg where he is preparing for the South African Grand Prix. He told me, "I have been in daily contact with Susy and am fully informed about what is going on. I wouldn't stop her getting a divorce. I am trying to help her as much as I can so that she makes the right decisions. Obviously if she wanted to come back to me, I would help her do that." - p40

"I walked out of the dinning-room to an annexe alongside it, and sitting in the corner with a lady I didn't know was Niki Lauda; he smiled and asked a Carol and me to join him for a cup of coffee. He introduced the girl alongside him very simply, "This is my lady," She was, of course, Marlene Knaus, a very beautiful girl, with her hair in a rather severe style, brushed back, and a bun on the top of her head. We had a long chat about seat belts - both were empathetically in favour (that evening the house of commons in the UK were debating on making seatbelts in cars compulsory) - but the important thing was that I established a friendly relationship with Marlene when other people on the racing circuit cold-shouldered her, thinking she was merely some local pick-up. In fact, she and Niki were planning to get married as soon as they flew back from South Africa." - p44

"The main topic of conversation was the break-up of the long relationship between Niki Lauda and Mariella. Helen (Stewart) offered, with the best possible intentions, to get in touch with both Mariella and Niki is necessary to heal the breach. Having seen how close Niki and Marlene were in South Africa, I doubted if this were possible. As it turned out, a day after we had our discussion in Nina's home, Niki went quietly to a register office near Vienna and married Marlene." - p47

"He tried awfully hard not to hurt me." - (Susy about James) - p58

"James was standing right alongside me. Tears welling in his eyes. "It's stupid," he said, "It does not affect the performance of the car or make it any faster. Not even the Ferrari team protested and they were the ones who have the most to win..." - p62

"It was in triumph, therefore, that Hunt, six weeks before his 29th birthday, left for Britain in preparation for the John Player Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. With good humour and in high spirits, he took part in an event before the race and revealed another facet in his talents. It was at the Albert Hall at the Grand Prix Night of the Stars, a concert in aid of the Graham Hill Memorial Fund. The hall was packed with evening-suited celebrities who had paid up to £500 for a private box. Hunt was introduced by astronomer Patrick Moore who had just done a soft-shoe shuffle. Suddenly, Moore reached for a trumpet left behind on the bandstand by Chris Barber, who had done an earlier turn. "You're supposed to be good at blowing your own trumpet," he said, "so try this one." The audience dutifully laughed expecting a knockabout comedy turn. But Hunt took the trumpet, the studio band started to play and Hunt's clear, clean notes echoed through the vast auditorium. It was a memorable moment. When the audience realised that Hunt was playing for real, they roared their approval and then sat in silence as James plaved like a professional. Hunt's brother, Peter told me later: "I had a hell of a job convincing the BBC, who were recording the show, that James really was a good enough trumpet player to perform on TV. He learned to play at about 12 or 13 when he was at Wellington. He was in the school orchestra and the school band and played solo at concerts. Stuart Turner, Public Affairs Director of Ford of Britain, had a box at the Albert Hall. He turned to me after Hunt had finished his solo and said: "Now I have seen everything: James Hunt playing the trumpet at the Albert Hall we'll have Niki Lauda doing a comedy act next." - p73-4

"Niki himself, having almost killed himself in a first-lap accident there in 1974, has always campaigned against the Nurenburgring. He argued that the 1976 German Grand Prix should be switched to the Hockenheim Ring, a purpose-built circuit with outstanding safety facilities installed after the death there of Jim Clark in 1968. But Lauda was reviled by the Germans for his attempt. In practise at Nürburgring spectators displayed a huge poster of Lauda and his car. Across it was written, 'Lauda 20 kilometres per hour. Aus.' Ring bystanders are hard on anyone threatening the thrill of the race." - p80

"Sunday's race day was altogether depressing from the start. The young American driver Brett Lunger had heard the night before that his father had died unexpectedly in the United States and Brett decided to stay and go on with the race before returning home. It was to be a vital decision in the saving of Niki Lauda's life." - p81

"Jackie had a remarkable story to tell that Niki's agents had telephoned him soon after the crash and asked him to appear at a promotion for a new line of jeans which were being marketed in Niki's name. Jackie refused, saying he would only appear with Niki's permission. Niki was telephoned and they were told that he was determined to be there himself." - p86-7

"What would the situation be if Niki was fit to drive and Ferrari still wouldn't come to the track?" I asked Alastair, without hesitation he replied: "We will lend him a car so he and James can fight it out." - p89

"Then Niki arrived in his Jaguar with Marlene and Willi Dungl, his masseur/confidant, the man responsible for building Niki up physically in preparation for the race. There was a last-minute panic when it was discovered that Dungl had left his passport back at the house but he had an identity card and Niki knew that with Ferrari influence we would have no trouble getting Willi into Italy. Niki insisted on carrying out all the check-out procedures himself and we made a beautiful take off from Salzburg Airport." - p95

"At one point I was asked if I wanted to see a priest. So I said: "OK." He came in, and gave me my last rites - crossed my shoulder - and said "Goodbye My friend". I nearly had a heart attack! I wanted someone to help me live in this world, and not pass into the next." - p98

"I was watching his wife Marlene's eyes as she protectively, solicitously, studied her husband. She seemed almost proud of his scarred features." - p101

"A beautiful elegant grey/green-eyed young woman by the name of Marlene Knaus enjoyed life of a promising screen actress and model. A member of one of the most respected families in Austria she fitted easily into the jet set world of show business. She moved easily too in the rarefield world of medicine in which her grandfather was a renowned gynaecologist and in the artistic circles into which she was born as the daughter of a famous painter." - p101

"I used to smoke maybe one or two cigarettes a day, but from the time of the accident I have become a chain smoker. I know that this is not good for my health but it helps me through the crisis." Niki does not smoke and he says that this fact helped him recover from his lung injuries, but he does not reprove Marlene for smoking." - p102

"Marlene is a delightfully warm person. Her handshake is firm. Her eyes are steady and constant. They are the eyes of a woman who could inspire a man to great things, and she likes to touch the person that she is talking to. She looks at her husbands scarred face and gently strokes it." - p103

"Hunt, who had trotted through the driving rain along the length of the pits to salute the supreme courage of his world title rival Niki Lauda." - p104

"I just wish there bad been no accident, no disqualifications, no aggrevation, and Niki and I were fighting it out fair and square on the track. After what Niki has achieved, he deserves that at least. What Ferrari have done is to devalue the world championship and to cloud Niki's brave recovery. His recovery is absolutely amazing and he really is fit again." - p125

"His wife Marlene was happy with his decision. She had said earlier; "When he got into the car and drove away, I wanted to throw myself in front of it and stop him." - p140

"All Hunt knew was that he had to pass everything in sight. It took him two laps to catch and pass Alan Jones in the Surtees. Now he was fourth. Almost on the same bend he came upon Regazzoni in the Ferrari. Would the Swiss Italian let him through or hold him back? Ostentatiously Rega moved over and waved Hunt through ar a point where the Ferrari pit could clearly see his manoeuvre. As Rega passed his pit he gave them the two finger sign to show his disapproval that he had been dropped from the team for 1977." - p142

#niki lauda #classic f1 #f1 #formula one #formula 1 #james hunt

[fdrlibrary]

First Lady of Struggle - Mary McLeod Bethune

“The responsibility rests on us. We can get better results thinking and planning together. We must think about each other’s problems. Let us band together and work together as one big brotherhood and give momentum to the great ball that is starting to roll for Negroes.”

—Mary McLeod Bethune, Remarks at 1st Meeting of the Federal Council on Negro Affairs (Black Cabinet), August 7, 1936

Mary McLeod Bethune in her office at Bethune-Cookman College, 1943: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017843210/

Much of the success of the Black Cabinet was due to the influence of its leader, Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1936, FDR appointed Bethune as Director of the Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration (NYA). She served there from 1936 until the agency’s demise in 1943. The highest ranking African American in the federal government, Bethune was also the first Black woman to administer a federal program. A forceful and inspiring leader, she helped make the NYA the New Deal’s most racially progressive agency.

Bethune occupied a uniquely powerful position among Black officials in Washington. Before joining the New Deal, she had forged a distinguished career as an educator, women’s club movement leader, and civil rights advocate. Bethune was the founder and president of Bethune-Cookman College and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). In 1940, she would become a vice president of the NAACP. Her speeches and regular contributions to Black newspapers further raised her public profile, helping her earn the title “The First Lady of the Struggle.”

During this time, Bethune became a close friend and confidante of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She used her connection to ER to bring racial discrimination issues directly to President Roosevelt’s attention and FDR held her in high regard. At Bethune’s invitation, ER spoke at the National Conference on the Problems of the Negro and Negro Youth that Bethune and other Black Cabinet members organized in 1937. In 1938, the two friends co-hosted a major White House conference on the problems of Black women and children.

Members of the Black Cabinet acknowledged the power of Bethune’s dynamic personality and White House ties and usually deferred to her leadership. Her offices at the NCNW served as a hub for Black Cabinet meetings and she provided critical support to other Black racial advisers.

“I am writing to urge your support of H.R. 10340.”

-- Mary McLeod Bethune to Franklin Roosevelt, June 3, 1938

In June 1938, Bethune solicited FDR’s support for a bill to increase federal funding for African American education in the South. A handwritten note from FDR’s personal secretary Grace Tully on the upper right instructed the President’s assistant Marvin “Mac” McIntyre “to prepare reply after taking up with the Congressman who is responsible for it.”

AR 2023.1.71/Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

Learn more about Bethune in our current special exhibition BLACK AMERICANS, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND THE ROOSEVELTS, 1932-1962: https://www.fdrlibrary.org/civil-rights-special-exhibit

#mary mcleod bethune #black cabinet #women's history month #international women's day #iwd2024 #eleanor roosevelt #civil rights #black american history #american history

[mermaniic]

I was tagged by @hermionegrindr like 2 weeks ago but forgot about this so doing now. Thank you!

Name: Merlin (Mer)

Sign: On the cusp of Sagittarius and Capricorn

Height: 180cm

Current time: 8:29am on the bus to work

Birthday: December 22

Fav band/artist: Little dragon, bjork, ashnikko are my top 3 today

Last movie; Scooby doo

Last show: A Netflix doco about a lady who was lds and doomsday prepped and her kids went missing

Blog created: boon on here since like 2010 but this one I made in 2013 I think

What I post: What ever tickles my pickle really but, spooky shit, memes, ocean things

Last googled: banana ripeness scale. (Dating a cute boy and had to make sure he didn’t like gross brown bananas baba)

Other blogs: I have a few side blogs. One for tattoos, one for dnd stuff, one for attractive men

Do you get asks: not often any more

Following: not sure I might check and edit this in

Followers: mostly inactive users and porn bots but 2.8k

Sleep schedule: in bed by 10:30 normally asleep by 11 sometimes 12

Do you play instruments: ukulele

Currently wearing: doc martins, blue chinos, blue flannel shirt( untucked) and a read beanie

Dream job: I don’t dream of labour. But if I have to work in this hell scape I would like to be a marine biologist

Dream trip: Japan

Nationality: South African

Fav song: Been obsessed w this lately:

Let book: my family and other animals

Gonna tag some cuties, if you already did it just know

that I thought about you.

@box0fun 3rd-r8-wtrnbendr @jockoppressor @worsehaircut

#Spotify

[dear-indies]

hello! first of all, i'd like to add that i'm extremely appreciative of how you continue to repost awareness about palestine to this day and how you haven't been afraid to toss aside one thing to uphold the blog's main purpose. if that makes sense, haha. as for a request, i'm wondering if you have any face claims that could fit a woman or nonbinary person that looks as though they have the vibes of being in a modern-day band, please? i have no preference for ethnicity, and the fcs should be able to pass as 30 or under i think! and i'd be happy with fcs who are actors or are musicians themselves, though appropriate resources are always perfect. thank you so much!

Mae Whitman (1988) - is pansexual - Jack.

FKA twigs (1988) African-Jamaican / English, Spanish.

BbyMutha (1989) African-American - is non-binary and bisexual (they/she).

Eliot Sumner (1990) - has said that they did not believe in gender labels and did not identify with a particular gender (they/them).

Sarah Kameela Impey (1991) Indo-Guyanese / British - We Are Lady Parts.

Lucie Shorthouse (1991) Ugandan, Irish / English - We Are Lady Parts.

Sky Ferreira (1992) Ojibwe, Cree, Chippewa Cree, Cheyenne, Brazilian of Portuguese and Possibly Other descent, Galician Jewish, Bukovina Jewish, Irish, Scottish, English, and French - has Chronic Lyme Disease.

Faith Omole (1992) Black British - We are Lady Parts.

Mads Paige (1992) - is non-binary.

Katie Gavin / MUNA (1992) - is queer.

Rhian Teasdale / Wet Leg (1992/3)

Taylor Momsen (1993)

Naomi McPherson (1993) West Indian and Irish - is queer and nonbinary (they/them).

Jup do Bairro (1993) Afro Brazilian.

Naomi McPherson (1993) - is queer.

Park Gyu Young (1993) Korean - Sweet Home.

Nemahsis (1994) Palestinian.

Hester Chambers / Wet Leg (1994)

Ryan Destiny (1995) African-American, 1/4 Irish.

Yseult (1994) Cameroonian.

Dua Saleh (1994) Sudanese - is trans non-binary (they/xe) and gay.

Josette Maskin / MUNA (1994) Jewish - is queer and nonbinary (she/they).

Liniker (1995) Afro-Brazilian - is a genderfluid trans woman (she/her).

Kehlani (1995) African-American, French, Blackfoot, Cherokee, Spanish, Mexican, Filipino, Scottish, English, German, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish, and Welsh, as well as distant Cornish, Irish, and possibly Choctaw - is a non-binary womxn and a lesbian.

Nat Puff / Left at London (1996) - is a non-binary trans woman, has ADHD, PTSD, borderline personality disorder and OSDD-1b, and is also autistic.

Juliette Motamed (1997) Iranian - We Are Lady Parts.

Rico Nasty (1997) African-American / Puerto Rican.

Kaiit (1997) Papuan / Gunditjmara, Torres Strait Islander - non-binary (she/he/they).

MegaGoneFree (2001) African American - is non-binary and pansexual (she/they).

Stella Quaresma / Flo (2001) Black British.

Jorja Douglas / Flo (2002) Black British.

Renée Downer / Flo (2002) Black British.

SuperKnova (?) Korean - is a genderfluid trans woman (she/her).

Amy Love / Nova Twins (?) Iranian and Nigerian.

Georgia South / Nova Twins (?) Jamaican and Australian.

Bobbi Lanea Tyler / Flyana Boss (?) African-American.

Folayan Omi Kunerede / Flyana Boss (?) African-American.

Here you go! And people who don't post about literal genocide need to do better.

#fc help #rph #rpc

[eueden]

 ⟨ MAUDE APATOW. CIS FEMALE. SHE/HER. ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, EDEN KOPPELMAN is actually a descendent of H E S T I A. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-THREE year old VETERINARY from CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite THOUGHTFUL & QUIXOTIC.

hi, hello, allô, hola, ciao, ella here again with another character. okay so there’s not much to say about me that most of you don’t already know, i have no life and i’m always lurking even if i never do replies (don’t tell the admins) hgsghssghs anyway, this is eden and in a shocking turn of events i actually have a good idea of who she is and look i even made a graphic, if that’s ain’t dedication then i don’t what it is.

basic information.

NAME: eden atara koppelman

PRONUNCIATION: EE - d uh n

NICKNAME: E?? idk

GENDER: cis female

PLACE OF BIRTH: brisbane, queensland, australia

HOMETOWN: cape town, south africa

DATE OF BIRTH: june 26, 1997

AGE: twenty-three

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: heterosexual so far but secretly curious

MAJOR: veterinary

EXTRACURRICULARS: president of the jewish student association, vice president of the herpetology club, president of the volunteer service, women in leadership member, student government member

SPORTS: captain of the climbing team and co-captain of the track & field team

character inspo.

Jessica Day (New Girl) ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

Elliott Reid (Scrubs) ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

Amy Santiago (Brooklyn 99) ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

background.

tw: death, infant death, car accident, fire

Eden was born in Brisbane, Australia. She comes from an animal lover family. Her grandparents are very popular down under because they had an animal TV show à la Steve Irwin. Her dad followed their footsteps and it’s a well-known zoologist who also had some TV shows (think of Bear Grylls).

TW: death, infant death, car accident. Matthias Koppelman (her dad) had been previously married but lost his wife and child in a car accident and after that he isolated himself from the public eye and moved to Namibia. 

At twenty-eight, he felt the need to climb Mount Everest as one does, ya know? But ofc this man hadn’t climbed in years (he had experience but he’d been too sad to climb mountains. I mean he could barely leave bed, let alone climb Everest). That didn’t stop him and he did.

He almost d worded there bc as I said he was not ready but that’s when Hestia queen of fire showed up and warmed him (in a non sexual way bc she’s pure okay) and he was like oh that was a near dead experience and didn’t think much.

After he conquered the Everest with the help of Hestia, he moved back to Australia and oh surprise a few months later he opened his door and voilá a bebé was there with a note that said “you deserve to have a family, love hestia” 

He was shocked like “did i just impregnate a fantasy?”  but then Hestia was kind enough to send another and explain everything.

Anyway, Eden lived in Brisbane for four years before her dad took a job in South Africa. They moved to Cape Town (and her grandparents came with them) and pretty much had a happy life surrounded by animals. 

TW: fire. When she was nine, her dad took her to a game reserve in Limpopo and by some reason a fire started endangering animals and flora. Everyone was panicking bc I mean wouldn’t u? But Eden was attracted to the flames like a pyro (the good kind tho) and since everyone had better things to do than taking care of a child, they left her unsupervised and she delved into the fire.

Ofc nothing happened to her because ✨immunity✨ but guess who showed up again? Hestia!!!! Being a great goddess and mom, she taught Eden how to use her powers so she could absorb the fire and save all the animals and people. 

Everyone was like holy shit a miracle and the firefighters were like “the fuck? we did shit but we gonna take the credit lol”

Eden was like “did that just happen?” and yes, it did but she was like “meh that was imagination” and her dad was like *nervous chuckle* “yeah…” because he didn’t want to tell her the truth since that could put her in danger.

At 13, she had her bat mitzvah and it was all fun and games until fire lady showed up aka Hestia. Her dad and Hestia explained everything and Eden was like: 

Hestia claimed her and off to camp she went. For the next few years she went to camps all over the world as a treat.

She never went on a quest bc she was afraid and also because she couldn’t put herself in danger and risk losing her life bc her dad already had lost a child… so yeah

Her dad remarried when she was seventeen and a year later she welcomed a new baby brother and that’s why she decided to take a gap year to be with her bro and also work with her dad in the reserves.

She moved to Athens when she was nineteen and decided to go into veterinary school. So yes Ella will get her dog one way or another idc what the admins say :chaos:

Ahhhh that’s all folks!!! We did it!

FULL BIO (yes, i completed it this time)

personality.

Eden never loses her sense of curiosity. You could say that she sees life through rose colored glasses as if she lived on the edge of a mirror country where worldly objects come to life, where flora and fauna assume almost human qualities.  

She has the ability to see the good in almost anyone or anything and tends to sympathize with even the most unfriendly person. She often hides the extreme depth of feelings from her, even from herself, until circumstances elicit a passionate response. 

She has a deep sense of idealism that comes from a strong personal sense of right and wrong. She sees the world as a place full of possibilities and potentials and is governed by her intuition. She is quite reserved and is not easily manipulated. 

She is a good listener and considerate, they try to care for and understand others in a deep way. She can be very calm and intuitive with the people around her, being able to search for hidden meanings in the actions and words of others.

Of course, all of life is not rosy and Eden is not exempt from suffering the same disappointments and frustrations that are common to others. She tends to be a perfectionist and often strives for personal ideals that can be exhausting or very difficult to obtain.

She also struggles with time management, always leaving everything to the last minute claiming she “works better under pressure” but the truth is she’s just a procrastinator. 

Very sensible, she cries almost every day either because of a commercial or a sweet story she read on Facebook. It doesn’t matter, if it’s slightly emotional she will shed some tears.

powers.

pyrokinesis: This power first manifested when she was nine years old and she helped to save an animal reserve from the flames with the help of Hestia. Since she was claimed when she was thirteen, she’s learned how to use this power. Now she can summon fire without any problem and put it out just as fast. This is very helpful because she loves baking but she’s a bit clumsy so she often burns herself, but thankfully, she’s immune, so no pain. However, Eden has never been able to create a hot wall of flames nor she has ever asked how to do that, she just hopes she never has to use it.

serenity inducement: Eden avoids conflict at all cost, not only it makes her cry but also makes her very uncomfortable and anxious which is why this was the first power she manifested. She was just a child but from what she remembers it was during a class in preschool that a kid started hitting another one. Eden panicked at such an act of violence she went there and touched the bully’s shoulder which immediately calmed him. Back then she didn’t know it was a power but after finding out about her true identity, many other events like this started to make sense. This is the power she uses the most, also with animals which is why she makes such a good veterinarian because she can calm an animal's nerves.

bond manipulation: She wouldn’t say this is one of her weakest powers but it’s one she didn’t use often growing up because she came from such a stable family that it didn’t seem necessary, however, she sometimes catches herself using it in group projects or at her workplace, you know, to keep things healthy and positive.

ability to summon food: By far the one she uses the least (personally speaking), she likes cooking and baking, so she doesn’t see the point but she does use it to feed stray animals.

headcanons.

Eden speaks fluent English, she has a mixed South African and Australian accent but she can switch. At school, half of her classes were in Afrikaans, so she also speaks it fluently. Greek comes from her demigod side, but she also took some classes back in school upon her father’s request. Growing up in a very Jewish family, her grandparents believed it was pretty important that Eden learned Yiddish and Hebrew, she can read it perfectly but struggles speaking it, especially Yiddish because she also attended Hebrew school. As for French, she learned in high school and she still takes lessons at Eonia but she hates it.

Her father started taking her to a climbing gym when she was five and by the time she was ten she was already climbing 6a routes which is pretty much an intermediate level and very impressive for her age. 

She had her own TV show on Discover Kids titled “Eden’s Wildlife Adventure” in which she explained the importance of different types of animals. The first seasons were shot between Australia and South Africa, but in later seasons she traveled across Africa and South America. The show ran from 2005-2011 (which was when she was claimed).

Dreams of climbing Mount Everest before her 30th birthday.

Her father is a classic rock band and so is she. Her animals have been named after influential musicians. Right now she has a cat named Hendrix, a horse named Cobain, a dog named Mick. Growing up her father took care of a baby lion which they named Little Richard because he was smaller than most lion cubs. Over the years, his father and grandparents have fostered several wild animals while they recover or before they are sent to a reserve. Among the animals they have fostered are elephants, giraffes, zebras, cheetahs, leopards, hippos and more.

While she loves rock, she’s also a sucker for 2000s pop. Please don’t ask her about modern artists because she’s clueless. 

She’s fed up with the Mean Girl jokes, we get it she grew up in Africa and she’s white.

She is a proud Jewish girl and follows many traditions. She does attend the local synagogue during Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. And of course, Hanukkah is her favorite holiday. Her family practices Reform Judaism, so she doesn’t follow a kosher diet.

Eden was raised as a vegan and her whole family is vegan. In the past years, she has been in the process of becoming vegetarian.

Favorites: Anything written by Agatha Christie(book); Say Anything (1989) (movie); Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fear (song); 

Again, no one asked me but I will reply: “Ella, does Eden hate Iker?” “Well, thanks for asking. In a shocking turn of events, no she doesn’t. How come you might ask? Well, she doesn’t hate anyone but if she ever did then yes, she would hate him.”

pinterest | wanted connections

#euintro

[firelord-frowny]

I’ve talked a little bit about how at least one ~negative aspect~ of white supremacy/racism that impacts white people is that it can be SO DIFFICULT to avoid being Accidentally Racist over something that really shouldn’t have been that deep, and WOULDN’T have been that deep if not for the pervasiveness of white supremacy in america, and this bit about the lil country band Lady Antebellum and the controversy surrounding their name illustrates that pretty well, I think:

The band members have always said that the band's name was chosen arbitrarily, complaining about the difficulty of choosing a name. Inspired by the "country" style nostalgia of a photo shoot at a mansion from the Antebellum South, they said, "one of us said the word and we all kind of stopped and said, man, that could be a name"[40] and "Man that's a beautiful Antebellum house, and that's cool, maybe there's a haunted ghost or something in there like Lady Antebellum."[41] Haywood concluded, "[We] had a lady in the group, obviously, and threw Lady in the front of it for no reason. I wish we had a great resounding story to remember for the name, but it stuck ever since."[40] The name was always controversial, with a critic in Ms. Magazine writing in 2011 that the band's name "seems to me an example of the way we still — nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act; and in a supposedly post-racial country led by a biracial president — glorify a culture that was based on the violent oppression of people of color".[41][42]

On June 11, 2020, joining widespread commercial response to the George Floyd protests,[41] the band announced it would abbreviate its name to its existing nickname "Lady A"[43] in an attempt to blunt the name's racist connotations.[1] The band members stated on social media that, never having previously sought the dictionary definition of the word "antebellum", they now consulted their "closest black friends and colleagues" so that their "eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn't even know existed have been revealed."[44] Fan response was mixed, with many decrying virtue signaling or even disparaging the protests.[41]American Songwriter said, "Given that the world knows what that A stands for, to many this change does little more than add extra insult to this ongoing injury."[45]

The next day, it was widely reported that the name "Lady A" had already been in use for more than 20 years by Seattle-based African American activist and blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer Anita White. The band again admitted ignorance of any prior use, which White called "pure privilege". Interviewed by Rolling Stone, White described the band's token acknowledgement of racism while blithely appropriating an African American artist's name: "They're using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn't have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It's an opportunity for them to pretend they're not racist". A veteran music industry lawyer observed that such name clashes are uncommon due to the existence of the Internet.[46][47] The band members contacted White the next week to apologize for having inadvertently co-opted and dominated her name,[48] saying that the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired them to a collaborative attitude. They nonetheless required retaining the same name, though she believed dual-naming is inherently impossible.[49]She said "We talked about attempting to co-exist but didn't discuss what that would look like"[48] because the band members would not directly respond to that explicit question three times during the conversation or in two contract drafts. She soon submitted a counteroffer that either the band would be renamed, or that her act would be renamed for a $5 million fee plus a $5 million donation to be split between Seattle charities, a nationwide legal defense fund for independent artists, and Black Lives Matter.[49]

On July 8, 2020, the band filed a lawsuit against White, asking a Nashville court to affirm its longstanding trademark of the name. The press release read: "Today we are sad to share that our sincere hope to join together with Anita White in unity and common purpose has ended. She and her team have demanded a $10 million payment, so reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that we need to ask a court to affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years."[50]

On September 15, 2020, White filed a counter-suit asserting her claim to the Lady A trademark and rejecting the notion that both artists could operate in the same industry under the same brand identity. She is seeking damages for lost sales and a weakened brand, along with royalties from any income the band receives under the Lady A moniker.[51][52]

Like????????? this REALLY didn’t need to be a thing. 

And one thing I think black folks and other poc need to chill out with is dismissing any white person’s attempt at Being Better in how they move through a white supremacist world in a way that seeks to undo or at least not exacerbate white supremacy. I can TOTALLY believe that, in their white ignorant bliss, this band really did choose their name without realizing for a moment that it might leave a fucked up taste in some people’s mouths. Honestly like... antebellum IS a cool sounding word lmfao and if it wasn’t so heavily associated with slavery-era america, i’d wanna name something antebellum, too! 

And like, yes, it’s true that it ~shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death~ for anyone at all to suddenly decide that they want to go a little bit out of their way to denounce or at least not seem to promote racism in some small way. But it did. And it does. And every fucking time there’s a gross act of violence and injustice acted out on a person of color in front of the world, there’s always going to be a brand new white person out there who Sees The Light for the very first time. That doesn’t mean their new perspective isn’t genuine, and it doesn’t mean it happened All Of A Sudden. If anything, it was something they’d been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to address it, or what to say, or who to say it to, or how to talk about it in their own community. OBVIOUSLY that problem is WAY LESS BAD than, ya know, actually experiencing racism, but it’s still a real thing that some white folks go through, and being mad about it isn’t going to make it NOT a real thing. it shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death. it shouldn’t have taken trayvon martin’s death. it shouldn’t have taken the instatement of one of the most vile human beings to ever assault the face of the earth for This Person or That Person to finally want to make a positive and public change, BUT IT DID. It always does. That, unfortunately, is How It Works. 

And so, this band adjusts it’s name in an effort to not seem hostile. OBVIOUSLY it’s not a grand show of solidarity. OBVIOUSLY it’s not meant to convince anyone that they’re Super Amazing White People Who Will Stop At Nothing For Racial Equality. It was literally just a small, simple gesture. They’re just modifying their image, because they were no longer comfortable with knowing how that word makes a lot of people feel. Bc like... let’s be real: probably a solid ZERO of their fanbase would have given a shit if they’d just left the name as it was. Nobody who’s going to a Lady Antebellum concert was pouting about the name. And if anything, they prolly stood a better chance of LOSING fans for ~being politically correct~ than gaining fans for changing their name to something less annoying. 

And it JUST SO HAPPENS that the slight lil adjustment they made to their name steps on the toes of an existing artist, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that this artist is black, and is also an ACTIVIST in social and racial justice. 

Oops. 

And so, obviously people don’t interpret it as an honest mistake. Instead, it’s a result of white privilege. And I mean like??? ok, maybe it is. But I ALSO had never heard of Anita White until I read this fucking wiki page lmfao. So like... my ignorance isn’t due to no white privilege on my part. Maybe it’s a consequence of a white supremacist culture that wouldn’t glorify her and celebrate her and put her name everywhere... but that’s a different thing from privilege. 

So now not only are the bands efforts to adjust to a world that’s becoming more aware of racial injustice being dismissed as disingenuous or too-little-too-late, but now they’re ALSO being accused of Using Their White Privilege to trample all over an artist they’d never heard of. 

i DO think that after finding out the name was already taken, and after talking with her about it and determining that she wasn’t interested in sharing - as is her right - they should have just said “ok, sorry, thanks for talking with us about it” and picked something different. i think it’s kinda ridiculous that they think they should sue her and i think she’s HELLA right for suing their asses right back, and I hope she gets her damn money. 

But I’m also cognizant of how emotionally/psychologically upsetting it can feel to have to just Change Your Name after so many years of living with it. It makes sense that despite their desire to adapt and choose a new name that doesn’t make people cringe, they still want to try to hold on to the feeling that THEY associated with their own name. “Lady A” seemed like a happy medium: They can remain Who They Are while also showing that Who They Are is someone who’s not trying to glorify a disgusting era of history. But if “Lady A” isn’t an option... what’s left? What else could they call themselves that wouldn’t feel like a totally new, alien identity?? 

So, I understand how, on an emotional level, they want to fight to keep it. 

But uh. They really need to just Be Sad about it and let it go. Just consider it one of the small, upsetting sacrifices that white folks may sometimes have to make as we ALL struggle and stumble through this fuckin long-ass road of Making The World Less Terrible For People Of Color, and move on. 

But yeah, like. 

It’s fucking ridiculous that this was even an issue, and it was only an issue because of racism!!!!! If white supremacists didn’t manufacture a culture that oppresses people of color and glorifies the pre-civil-war era SPECIFICALLY for the good ol slavery, then perhaps people could wax poetic about the artistic and environmental aesthetic of that era without it being assumed that they Must Be Racist. Bc like??? idk if yall know this lmfao but i LOVE????? colonial american music. like, the kind of stuff with that Ashokan Farewell vibe. I think it sounds beautiful. And i really fuckin love the black spiritual music that was developed in that time. and i think so much of the architecture and fashion was so???? Nice. Just pleasant! But I can’t even get myself to fully enjoy it because of all the fuckin connotations that have been stuck to it. 

A band should be able to name theirself a name without it being such a goddamn fucking cultural crisis. 

But they can’t! And it is! 

Thanks, White Supremacy! 

[anyways-wonderwall]

The Eurovision Special!!

Starting in 2017, I've listened to all the songs in Eurovision every year and anxiously awaited the winner. It started from my desire to listen to more and more foreign music, although I found that maybe this wasn't the best avenue for that as most of the songs are just pop music in English. Even though I only really like 2 songs every year I still keep coming back for more, and was actually really sad when there was no contest last year, which led me to go all in for this one.

I am a sucker for grading things via a spreadsheet, and for this I graded each song on a scale from 1-10 on the singer, song, catchiness, and performance. There was also a bonus category which is where I gave points if I actually liked the song or if it wasn't in English. This means that while generally the songs with a higher score I like more, that's not always the case (oh and the notes were my way of remembering what each song sounded like since there were so many). Well, without further ado, here are my top 5 songs of Eurovision 2021.

5) Belgium- The Wrong Place by Hooverphonic

Score: 25/40

Notes: “I actually really like this one, and the singer hit low notes really well”

Final ranking: 19th

Hooverphonic are among the oldest artists in the competition and you can hear that they know what they're doing. A lot of Eurovision songs are just in your face trying to make something memorable. This song is very low key and clear that they set out to make something that was good above anything else. The vocals are very very smooth and give the song a haunting feeling, and I'm a sucker for a good guitar part.

Most of the songs have both a performance video and a music video, so I just went with whatever was linked on the Eurovision website to give everyone a fair shot. For this song it was the music video, which I also really liked. Like the song it didn't try to be in your face, it told a story, and had some nice shock value to it that wasn't heavy handed.

4) The Netherlands- Birth of a New Age by Jeangu Macrooy

Score: 32/40

Notes: “people hurt and children dying people dying”

Final Ranking: 23rd

Okay the fact that this song didn't place that high is a federal crime because it is so freaking good. What I wrote in the notes is a reference to that one Black Eyed Peas song that I can never remember the lyrics to but this song has the same vibe as that. It's uplifting with a chorus that makes you feel like you belong, something that I didn't know I missed hearing in music.

What I think is especially interesting about this song is the clear African influence you can hear it in. The artist is from South America though, so it is fascinating to see all these cultures mix and then be presented in a European song competition. I think a LOT of focus was put this year on immigrants, with many of the contests having grown up in another country or being first generation. I really hope that trend continues because it led to a huge variety of songs this year and I liked them more than ever before.

3) Portugal- Love is on My Side by The Black Mamba

Score: 33/40

Notes: “Perfect score until he picked up the guitar”

Final Ranking: 12th

Okay this song is so so so good. The singer has a really unique voice and his live performance sounded just as good as a recording. It's wonderfully low key with some nice acoustic guitars and even a French horn solo. A French Horn! This song sounds timeless and I absolutely love it for that.

Now here is the only bad thing I have to say about it. In the performance video right at the end the singer picks up the electric guitar next to him to play the solo at the end. Fine right? Well he didn't have a strap on the guitar. My first thought was “is this mad lad actually about to play a solo like that?” but I was wrong because he totally just pretended to play the solo. It was so obvious that he wasn't actually playing it that it hurt. Just why would you do that. Why.

2) Iceland- 10 Years by Daði Freyr

Score: 38/40

Notes: “Dude it keeps getting better”

Final Ranking: 4th

Okay there is not a single bad thing I can possibly say about this song. It's infectious, it has a killer synth part, a keytar solo, it makes you want to groove, there's a choir, it's Scandinavian, and they even made their own dance for it. Everyone performing this song seems like they are just genuinely having a good time and watching both the performance and the music video makes anyone smile. I keep finding myself listening to this song over and over again and if you listen to anything on this list I really hope it is this one.

1)Italy- Zitti E Buoni by Måneskin

Score: 36/40

Notes: “Mi favorito”

Final Ranking: First!!

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in Eurovision history my favorite band won the whole thing. I don't think you understand how crazy this is. Usually the song that wins is unlistenable or at least very annoying. For the first time in a while actual talent won and I am beyond shocked. Maybe they needed a year off to think about what good music is. Whatever it took I am so glad that this song is getting the recognition it deserves.

So this one really doesn't fit the description of an average Eurovision song. It's hard rock with the whole song in Italian. The music video is gritty and all of the people in the band are the kids that would be deemed a “bad influence". I have no idea how this even made the cut for Eurovision truthfully. But I'm so glad it did.

The musicianship? Amazing. The vocals? Incredible. The lyrics? Well I know just enough Italian to know that they are about society seeing them as crazy and different. I love this song so much I think I'm going to listen to this entire group's discography, so you may see them in future reviews.

While Eurovision took a year off and devastated the world, I think this year definitely makes up for it. There was a much greater variety of genres this year and I don't think a rock song like this has ever won. I think now they're finally living up to their motto of “celebrating diversity".

(In case you're wondering, my least favorite songs were from Cyprus, Ukraine, and Ireland. All of them are completely unlistenable imo)

#eurovision #eurovision 2021 #maneskin #music review #music recommendation

[marunalu]

Disney Movies List

Ok first of all I want to make clear that english is not my first language. I therefore apologize in advance for any grammar or spelling mistakes. Please don't be too strict with me =D

I recently bought Disney+ and I plan now to watch and review every movie, Disney has ever produced or participated in it. And I tell you, this will be a hell of a trip, because my list now contains no fewer than 701 movies. That means if I watch at least one movie every day, it will take me about 2 years to see all of them. And since I will most likely not watch a movie every day, I will definitely need at least twice as long....

For the films on my list, which I marked with a cross at the end, it means that I have seen them already. However, since I last saw most of these movies in my childhood or teenage years (so at least 15 years ago), it will be interesting for me to rewatch them after such a long time. I have probably already forgotten most of the plots.

I also plan to watch them in chronological order and rank them. The movies that I don't find on Disney+ I will watch somewhere else.

Here is the list: (The films follow the chronological order in which they were published. However, it is quite possible that I accidentally swapped a few. But I think most of it is accurate).

1930:

Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons (X)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (X)

1940:

Pinocchio (X)

Fantasia (X)

The Reluctant Dragon ( )

Dumbo (X)

Bambi (X)

Saludos Amigos ( )

Victory Through Air Power ( )

The Three Caballores ( )

Make Mine Music ( )

Song of the South ( )

Fun and Fancy Free (X)

Melody Time ( )

Seal Island ( )

So Dear to my Heart ( )

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (X)

1950:

Cinderella (X)

Treasure Island ( )

In Beaver Valley ( )

Alice in Wonderland (X)

Nature's Half Acre ( )

The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men ( )

The Olympic Elk ( )

Water Birds ( )

Peter Pan (X)

The Sword and the Rose ( )

The Living Desert (X)

Bear Country ( )

The Alaskan Eskimo ( )

Prowlers of the Everglades ( )

Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue ( )

The Vanishing Prairie ( )

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ( )

Siam ( )

Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier ( )

Lady and the Tramp (X)

The African Lion ( )

The Littlest Outlaw ( )

Men Against The Arctic ( )

The Great Locomotive Chase ( )

Davy Crockett and the River Pirates ( )

Secrets of Life ( )

Westward Ho the Wagons! ( )

Johnny Tremain ( )

Perri ( )

Old Yeller ( )

Navajo Adventure ( )

The Light in the Forest ( )

Tonka ( )

Grand Canyon ( )

Sleeping Beauty (X)

The Shaggy Dog ( )

Darby O'Gill and the Little People ( )

Zorro the Avenger ( )

Third Man on the Mountain ( )

Mysteries of the Deep ( )

1960:

Toby Tyler: Or, ten Weeks with a Circus ( )

Kidnapped ( )

Pollyanna ( )

The Sign of Zorro ( )

Jungle Cat ( )

Ten Who Dared ( )

Swiss Family Robinson ( )

Island of the Sea ( )

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (X)

The Absent-Minded Professsor ( )

Parent Trap ( )

Nikki, Wild Dog of the North ( )

Greyfriars Bobby: The True Story of a Dog ( )

Babes in Toyland ( )

Wonders of the Water Worlds ( )

Moon Pilot ( )

Bon Voyage! ( )

Big Red ( )

Almost Angels ( )

The Legend of Lobo ( )

In Search of the Castaways ( )

The Prince and the Pauper ( )

Son of Flubber ( )

Miracle of the White Stallions ( )

Savage Sam ( )

Summer Magic ( )

The Incredible Journey ( )

The Sword in the Stone (X)

A Tiger Walks ( )

The Misadventures of Merlin Jones ( )

The Three Lives of Thomasina ( )

The Moon-Spinners ( )

Mary Poppins ( )

Emil and the Detectives ( )

Those Calloways ( )

The Monkey's Uncle ( )

That Darn Cat! ( )

The Ugly Dachshund ( )

Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. ( )

The Fighting Prince of Donegal ( )

Follow Me, Boys! ( )

Monkeys, Go Home! ( )

The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin ( )

The Gnome-Mobile ( )

The Jungle Book (X)

Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar ( )

The Happiest Millionaire ( )

Blackbeard's Ghost ( )

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band ( )

Never a Dull Moment ( )

The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit ( )

Guns in the Heather ( )

The Love Bug ( )

Smith! ( )

Rascal ( )

The Computer Whore Tennis Shoes ( )

My Dog, the Thief ( )

Ride a Northbound Horse ( )

1970:

King of the Grizzlies ( )

The Boatniks ( )

The Wild Country ( )

Smoke ( )

The Aristocats (X)

The Barefoot Executive ( )

Scandalous John ( )

The Million-Dollar-Duck ( )

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (X)

The Biscuit Eater ( )

Now You See Him, Now You Don't ( )

Napoleon and Samantha ( )

Run, Cougar, run ( )

Snowball Express ( )

Chandar, the Black Leopard of Ceylon ( )

The World's Greatest Athlete ( )

Charley and the Angel ( )

One Little Indian ( )

Robin Hood (X)

Mustang! ( )

Superdad ( )

Herbie Rides Again ( )

The Bears and I ( )

The Castaway Cowboy ( )

The Island at the Top of the World ( )

The Strongest Man in the World ( )

Escape to Witch Mountain ( )

The Apple Dumpling Gang ( )

One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing ( )

The Best of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures ( )

Ride a Wild Pony ( )

The Boy Who Talked to Badgers ( )

No Deposit, No Return ( )

Treasure of Matecumbe ( )

Gus ( )

The Shaggy D.A. ( )

Freaky Friyday ( )

The Littlest Horse Thieves ( )

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (X)

A Tale of Two Critters ( )

The Rescuers (X)

Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo ( )

Pete's Dragon ( )

Candleshoe ( )

Return form Witch Mountain ( )

The Cat from Outer Space ( )

Hot Lead and Cold Feet ( )

Child of Glass ( )

The North Avenue Irregulars ( )

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again ( )

Unidentified Flying Oddball ( )

The Black Hole ( )

The Muppet Movie ( )

The London Connection ( )

1980:

Midnight Madness ( )

The Watcher in the Woods ( )

Herbie Goes Bananas ( )

The Last Flight of Noah's Ark ( )

Popeye ( )

The Devil and Max Devlin ( )

Amy ( )

Dragonslayer ( )

The Fox and the Hound (X)

Condorman ( )

The Great Muppet Caper ( )

Night Crossing ( )

Tron ( )

Tex ( )

Trenchcoat ( )

Something Wicked This Way Comes ( )

Tiger Town ( )

Never Cry Wolf ( )

Love Leads the Way (X)

Where the Toys Come From ( )

Return to Oz ( )

The Black Cauldron (X)

The Journey of Natty Gann ( )

One Magic Christmas ( )

Teen Academy ( )

The Great Mouse Detective (X)

Flight of the Navigator ( )

Disneys Fluppy Dogs ( )

The Parent Trap ( )

The Christmas Star ( )

Benji the Hunted ( )

Return of the Shaggy Dog ( )

Mr. Boogedy ( )

Return to Snowy River ( )

Oliver & Company (X)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit ( )

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (X)

Cheetah ( )

The Little Mermaid (X)

Bride of Boogedy ( )

1990:

DuckTales: The Movie – Treasure of the Lost Lamp ( )

The Rescuers Down Under (X)

White Fang (X)

Shipwrecked ( )

Wild Hearts Can't be Broken ( )

The Rocketeer ( )

Beauty and the Beast (X)

Newsies ( )

Honey, I Blew Up the Kid ( )

The Mighty Ducks ( )

Aladdin (X)

The Muppet Christmas Carol ( )

Day-O ( )

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (X)

A Far Off Place ( )

The Adventures of Huck Finn ( )

Hocus Pocus ( )

Cool Runnings ( )

The Nightmare Before Christmas ( )

The Three Musketeers ( )

Iron Will ( )

Blank Check ( )

D2: The Mighty Ducks ( )

White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf ( )

The Lion King (X)

Angels in the Outfield ( )

Squanto: A Warrior's Tale ( )

The Santa Clause (X)

The Jungle Book (X)

The Return of Jafar (X)

Heavyweights ( )

Man of the House ( )

Tall Tale ( )

A Goofy Movie ( )

Pocahontas (X)

Operation Dumbo Drop ( )

A Kid in King Arthur's Court ( )

The Big Green ( )

Frank and Ollie ( )

Toy Story (X)

Tom and Huck ( )

Gargoyles – The Movie ( )

Muppet Treasure Island ( )

Homeward Bound: Lost in San Francisco (X)

James and the Giant Peach ( )

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (X)

First Kid ( )

D3 The Mighty Ducks ( )

101 Dalmatians (X)

Aladdin and the King of Thieves (X)

Wish Upon a Star ( )

Susie Q ( )

The Darn Cat ( )

Jungle 2 Jungle (X)

George of the Jungle (X)

Air Bud (X)

RocketMan ( )

Flubber (X)

Mr. Magoo ( )

Tower of Terror ( )

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas ( )

Under Wraps ( )

Northern Lights ( )

Angels in the Endzone ( )

Mighty Ducks the Movie: The First Faceoff ( )

Pooh's Great Adventure: The Search for Christoper Robin ( )

Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves ( )

The Love Bug ( )

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella ( )

Oliver Twist ( )

Meet the Deedles ( )

Mulan (X)

The Parent Trap (X)

Air Bud: Golden Receiver ( )

I'll Be Home for Christmas ( )

A Bug's Life (X)

Mighty Joe Young ( )

You Lucky Dog ( )

Halloweentown ( )

Brink! ( )

Whoopi – A Knight in Camelot (X)

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit ( )

Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World ( )

The Lion King 2: Simbas Pride (X)

Belle's Magical World ( )

Armageddon ( )

Don't Look Under the Bed (X)

Genius ( )

The Thirteenth Year ( )

Johnny Tsunami ( )

Can of Worms ( )

Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century ( )

Horse Sense ( )

Smart House ( )

My Favorite Martian ( )

Doug – The 1. Movie ( )

Endurance ( )

Tarzan (X)

Inspector Gadget ( )

The Straight Story ( )

Toy Story 2 (X)

H.E. – Double Hockey Sticks ( )

Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas ( )

Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving ( )    

Annie ( )

2000:

Fantasia 2000 ( )

The Ultimative Christmas Present ( )

Phantom of the Megaplex ( )

Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire ( )

The Other Me ( )

Quints ( )

Ready to Run ( )

Stepsister from Planet Weird ( )

Miracle in Lane 2 ( )

Rip Girls ( )

Alley Cats Strike ( )

The Color of Friendship ( )

Up, Up and Away ( )

Angels in the Infield ( )

Air Bud 3 ( )

Mail to the Chief ( )

Geppetto ( )

The Tigger Movie ( )

Dinosaur (X)

Disney's The Kid ( )

Remember the Titans ( )

102 Dalmatians (X)

The Emperor's New Groove (X)

An Extremly Goofy Movie ( )

Whispers: An Elephant Tale ( )

The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea (X)

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command ( )

Life-Size ( )

The Miracle Worker ( )

Bounce ( )

Jett Jackson: The Movie ( )

The Other Side of Heaven ( )

`Twas the Night ( )

Halloweentown 2: Kalabar's Revenge ( )

The Poof Point ( )

Jumping Ship ( )

Jennie ( )

Hounded ( )

Luck of the Irish ( )

Zenon: The Zequel ( )

Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse ( )

Motocrossed ( )

Recess: School's Out ( )

Lady and the Tramp 2 – Scamp's Adventure (X)

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (X)

The Princess Diaries ( )

Max Keebles Big Move ( )

Monsters, Inc (X)

Princess of Thieves ( )

Air Bud 4 ( )

The Scream Team ( )

A Ring of Endless Light ( )

Gotta Kick It Up! ( )

Get a Clue ( )

Tru>> confessions ( )

Cadet Kelly ( )

Double Teamed ( )

Snow Dogs (X)

Return to Neverland (X)

The Rookie ( )

Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True (X)

Lilo & Stitch (X)

The Country Bears ( )

Tuck Everlasting ( )

The Santa Clause 2 ( )

Treasure Planet (X)

Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year ( )

The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 ( )

Tarzan & Jane ( )

Mickey's House of Villains ( )

Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time ( )

Air Bud 5 ( )

Full Court Miracle ( )

The Cheetah Girls ( )

Eddies Million Dollar Cook-Off ( )

The Even Stevens Movie ( )

Right on Track ( )

You Wish! ( )

101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London Adventure ( )

The Jungle Book 2 (X)

Inspector Gadget 2 ( )

Piglet's Big Movie ( )

Ghosts of the Abyss ( )

Holes ( )

Atlantis: Milo's Return (X)

The Lizzie McGuire Movie ( )

Finding Nemo (X)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (X)

Freaky Friday ( )

Brother Bear (X)

George of the Jungle 2 ( )

The Haunted Mansion (X)

The Young Black Stallion ( )

Stitch! The Movie ( )

Recess ( )

Recess: All Growed Down ( )

Going to the Mat ( )

Pixel Perfect ( )

Zenon Z3 ( )

Halloweentown High ( )

Tiger Cruise ( )

Stuck in the Suburbs ( )

Teacher's Pet ( )

Miracle ( )

March of the Penguins ( )

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen ( )

Ghost in the Shell 2 – Innocence ( )

Home on the Range (X)

Sacred Planet ( )

Springtime with Roo ( )

Around the World in 80 Days (X)

America's Heart and Soul ( )

The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement ( )

Mulan 2 (X)

The Incredibles (X)

Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas (X)

The Lion King 1½ (X)

National Treasure ( )

Mickey, Donald and Goofy: The Three Musketeers (X)

Aliens of the Deep ( )

The Three Musketeers ( )

Kronk's New Groove ( )

Once Upon a Mattress ( )

Kim Possible Movie – So the Drama ( )

Go Figure ( )

Life is Ruff ( )

The Proud Family Movie ( )

Twitches ( )

Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (X)

Pooh's Heffalump Movie ( )

The Pacifier ( )

Ice Princess ( )

Herbie: Fully Loaded ( )

Sky High ( )

Valiant ( )

The Greatest Game Ever Played ( )

Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie ( )

Now You See It ( )

Buffalo Dreams ( )

Chicken Little ( )

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (X)

Tarzan 2 (X)

The Muppet's Wizard of Oz ( )

Air Buddies ( )

Read It and Weep ( )

Wendy Wu – Homecoming Warrior ( )

Cow Belles ( )

The Cheetah Girls 2 ( )

Return to Halloweentown ( )

High School Musical ( )

Brother Bear 2 ( )

Glory Road ( )

Roving Mars ( )

Bambi 2 (X)

Eight Below (X)

The Shaggy Dog ( )

The Wild ( )

Cars ( )

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (X)

Leroy & Stitch ( )

Invincible ( )

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause ( )

Bridge to Terabithia ( )

Johnny Kapahala – Back on Board ( )

Jump In! ( )

Meet the Robinsons ( )

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ( )

Ratatouille ( )

Underdog ( )

The Pixar Story ( )

The Game Plan ( )

Le Premier Cri ( )

Enchanted ( )

The Fox and the Hound 2 (X)

The Secret of the Magic Gourd ( )

Pooh's Super Sleuth Christmas Movie ( )

Twitches Too ( )

High School Musical 2 ( )

Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time (X)

National Treasure: Book of Secrets ( )

Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert ( )

Snow Buddies ( )

The Cheetah Girls 3: One World ( )

The Little Mermaid – Ariel's Beginning (X)

Tinkerbell (X)

Camp Rock ( )

Minutemen ( )

College Road Trip ( )

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ( )

Dasavathaaram ( )

WALL-E ( )

Beverly Hills Chihuahu ( )

Morning Light ( )

High School Musical 3: Senior Year ( )

Bolt (X)

Bedtime Stories ( )

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience ( )

Iron Man ( )

Race to Witch Mountain ( )

Hannah Montana: The Movie ( )

Earth ( )

The Incredible Hulk ( )

Trail of the Panda ( )

Up ( )

Lilly the Witch: The Dragon and the Magic Book ( )

G-Force ( )

Walt & El Grupo ( )

The Book of Masters ( )

Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie ( )

Santa Buddies Here Comes Santa Paws ( )

Disney's A Christmas Carol ( )

Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure (X)

Old Dogs ( )

Princess Protection Program ( )

The Princess and the Frog ( )

Tigger & Pooh and a Musical Too ( )

Hatching Pete ( )

Dadnapped ( )

Space Buddies ( )

2010:

Alice in Wonderland (X)

Waking Sleeping Beauty ( )

Oceans ( )

Santa Paws ( )

Avalon High ( )

Den Brother ( )

Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam ( )

Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue (X)

StarStruck ( )

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ( )

Toy Story 3 ( )

You Again ( )

The Sorcerer's Apprentice ( )

The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos ( )

Secretariat ( )

Do Dooni Chaar ( )

Tangled ( )

The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story ( )

Tron: Legacy ( )

Iron Man 2 ( )

Geek Charming ( )

Good Luck Charlie, It's Christmas! ( )

Phineas & Ferb – The Movie ( )

Spooky Buddies ( )

Anaganaga O Dheerudu ( )

The Suite Life Movie ( )

Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure ( )

Lemonade Mouth ( )

Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 ( )

Thor ( )

Lilly the Witch: The Journey to Mandolan ( )

Mars Needs Moms ( )

Zokkomon ( )

African Cats ( )

Prom ( )

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ( )

Cars 2 ( )

Winnie the Pooh ( )

Pixie Hollow Games (X)

The Muppets ( )

Girl vs. Monster ( )

Santa Paws 2 ( )

Sofia the First: Once Upon a Princess ( )

Radio Rebel ( )

Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3 ( )

Treasure Buddies ( )

FRenemies ( )

John Carter ( )

Chimpanzee ( )

Arjun: The Warrior Prince ( )

Brave ( )

The Odd Life of Timothy Green ( )

Frankenweenie ( )

Let It Shine ( )

Secret of the Wings (X)

The Advengers ( )

Wreck-It Ralph ( )

Teen Beach Movie ( )

Super Buddies

Oz the Great and Powerful ( )

Wings of Life ( )

Monsters University ( )

The Lone Ranger ( )

Planes ( )

Frozen ( )

Saving Mr. Banks ( )

Iron Man 3 ( )

Thor: The Dark World ( )

How to Build a Better Boy ( )

Zapped ( )

Cloud 9 ( )

The Pirate Fairy (X)

Muppets Most Wanted ( )

Bears ( )

Million Dollar Arm ( )

Maleficent ( )

Planes: Fire & Rescue ( )

Khoobsurat ( )

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day ()

Captain America: The Winter Soldier ( )

Guardians of the Galaxy ( )

Big Hero 6 (X)

Into the Woods ( )

McFarland USA ( )

Cinderella ( )

Monkey Kingdom ( )

Tomorrowland ( )

Inside Out ( )

ABCD 2 ( )

Ant-Man ( )

The Good Dinosaur ( )

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (X)

Teen Beach 2 ( )

Tinkerbell and the Legend of the NeverBeast (X)

Bad Hair Day ( )

Descendants ( )

Avengers: Age of Ultron ( )

The Finest Hours ( )

Zootopia (X)

The Jungle Book ( )

Tini: The Movie ( )

Alice Through the Looking Glass ( )

Finding Dory ( )

BFG ( )

Pete's Dragon ( )

Queen of Katwe ( )

Moana (X)

Captain America: Civil War ( )

Doctor Strange ( )

Rogue One. A Star Wars Story (X)

Growing Up Wild ( )

Dangal ( )

 L'Empereur – March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step ( )

Beauty and the Beast ( )

Born in China ( )

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales ( )

Cars 3 ( )

Ghost of the Mountains ( )

Jagga Jasoos ( )

Coco ( )

Lillys Bewitched Christmas ( )

Descendants 2 ( )

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ( )

Spider Man: Homecoming ( )

Thor: Ragnarok ( )

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (X)

Expedition China ( )

A Wrinkle in Time ( )

The Incredibles 2 ( )

Christoper Robin ( )

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms ( )

Ralph Breaks the Internet ( )

Mary Poppins Returns ( )

Zombies ( )

Black Panther ( )

Avengers: Infinity War ( )

Solo: A Star Wars Story ( )

Ant-Man and the Wasp ( )

Dumbo ( )

Penguins ( )

Aladdin ( )

Toy Stor 4 ( )

The Lion King ( )

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ( )

Lady and the Tramp ( )

Noelle ( )

Frozen 2 ( )

Descendants 3 ( )

Captain Marvel ( )

Avengers: End Game ( )

Spider-Man: Far From Home ( )

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ( )

One Day at Disney ( )

Togo ( )

2020:

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made ( )

Onward ( )

Stargirl ( )

Dolphin Reef ( )

Elephant ( )

Artemis Fowl ( )

Hamilton ( )

Mulan ( )

The One and Only Ivan ( )

The Beatles: Get Back ( )

Soul ( )

Secret Society of Second-Born Royals ( )

Magic Camp ( )

Howard ( )

Urgh! Wish me luck, that I survive this....

#disney #disney movies #reviewing disney movie #ranking disney movies #disney+ #list #hell of a trip #long post #english is not my first language

[independentartistbuzz]

Good News, Good Music 1.0

Here we are at the end of 2020. We don’t need to tell you that this has been a very hard year. We are feeling beaten down by the bad news and music is the one thing that lifted our spirits again and again and saw us through. We have partnered with our friends at Cyber PR Music to bring you a series of GOOD News from artists who carried on making music in spite of all of the insanity that was happening and continues to grip us.  We have cried listening to some of the tracks, felt deeply inspired and yes we laughed as well.  What we have seen is the Cyber PR artist community is rich and varied - there are artists from all across the USA included as well as Jamaica, Australia, South Africa, France, Sweden, The UK,  Germany and Scotland.

So - we bring you part 1 of our 4 part series GOOD NEWS, GOOD MUSIC.

Please Follow the Spotify Playlist below to hear all of these amazing tracks.

Thanks to all of the artists who shared their music AND their good news.

JVMIE & Lionel Cohen | “We Will Rise Again”

Started A Collaboration From A Quarantine Hotel Room and Got Nominated For A Major Award

We had a crazy year but some great things came out of it! I was forced to leave LA and head back to Australia until things ‘calmed down’ but started a remote collaboration with LA based film composer Lionel Cohen - we received a grant from HOTA (Home Of The Arts Gold Coast) to create an album and we were just nominated for a HMMA Hollywood Music In Media Award :) The whole process of collaborating and talking every day was what helped me keep my sanity throughout this crazy year!

Perle Vybz | “Electric Dancefloor”

Almost Lost Her Partner To COVID And Took The Leap Of Faith To Release Music 

My debut single 'Electric Dancefloor' was released on Dec 8th, against the odds. A few months ago , my partner almost lost his life (to COVID). He was hooked up on a ventilator and had a really rough time. At the same time, I lost my main source of income and so, during the pandemic lockdown I had more time on my hands to focus on my music. So I'm glad that in spite of what was happening around me I was able to take that leap of faith and get my music out there.

Arielle Silver | “What Really Matters”

Became Music Connection's Hot 100 Live Unsigned Artists and Bands and Top Prospects 2020 lists in their year-end issue

As COVID shut everything down in April, I leaned into my commitment to authentic connection and inspiring creative expression with the creation of two weekly livestreams: Tomes & Tunes, a weekly show where I interview songwriters about books, and Arielle's Acoustic Happy Hour, both of which are going strong. In June, I released a new album, A THOUSAND TINY TORCHES, along with two official music videos (one shot entirely during quarantine), which have been featured in American Songwriter, Music Connection, and more.And in September, in the wake of closing studios, my sweetheart and I launched a new online yoga studio, Bhavana Flow Yoga, with online classes, workshops, and retail. 

Alongside my own sorrow at the pandemic, I have been living a year of creative expansion, and was recently featured in Music Connection's year-end issue on both their Hot 100 Live Unsigned Artists and Bands and Top Prospects 2020 lists.

Hannah Judson | “Deep Sea Diver”

Launched The Backwards Record Release Concept  And It Worked!

The 2020 lockdown was an exploration of new ways of doing and connecting. Everything became an experiment as new processes were developed to replace the no longer actionable old ones. I launched the Backwards Record Release for "Stingray," a rock/folk collection of songs. The 8 week campaign started with a socially distanced concert in a chateau courtyard, was fueled by my new podcast the Hannah Judson Beat, conversations with women in music, and concluded with a capstone edition of MUSEfest Online, a music festival I normally produce in major cities that promotes women in music, film, art and culture. I stayed connected with colleagues and fans, envisioned future projects, and maintained momentum and enthusiasm for creative projects, present and future. 

Evan Mazunik | “Comfort and Joy”

Funded, Recorded & Released A New Holiday Album

I’m grateful that I was able to successfully fund, record, release, and sell my new holiday album this year.

Eli Lev | “Anywhere We Can Go”

Released A Touching Global Fan Driven Music Video 

I had a powerful experience this year when my music community from all across the world helped me create the music video for 'Anywhere We Can Go.' I was in happy tears editing it and seeing all these wonderful faces come together and make something truly special. Here it is and I hope it brings some joy to folks.

Jeff Oster | “Five Great Mountains”

Found Solace (And Music) In Mother Nature

I was lucky to spend three months in the fall of 2020 up in Vermont. In the midst of all of the turmoil, Mother Nature just kept on shining. I was able to create this video on my iPhone, in an attempt to capture her beauty.

Beca Dreams | “Calm Before the Storm”

Had A Creative Burst That Resulted In Ad Campaigns & New Singles

It’s been a very challenging year, and yet I’ve somehow managed to have some awesome wins I am super grateful for. 

Partnered with Bounty to write/perform Quicker Picker Upper, currently streaming on all major platforms and has gotten over 7M views on Tik Tok and 150K streams on Spotify so far. Composed/performed song for an ad campaign for fashion designer Asher Levine on launching his new groundbreaking LED outerwear line (who’s recently worked with Doja Cat, Lil Nas, Lady Gaga). I also released 2 singles “Calm Before The Storm” and “Taking Time For Myself” and  most recently was featured on “Dance Party In The Living Room” by UK producer Fritz von Runte, about making the most of the quarantine.

I feel so lucky to be making music and doing what I love, which has been a huge silver lining during these dark times.

AfriCali | “The Struggle”

Turned An Eviction Into A Special Retreat & Healing Place 

Our landlord lost her pilates practice and couldn’t afford her Oakland home so

Our family of four with a baby due any month now had to figure it out and find the humanity in moving out before the lease was up. In the magic of mother earth and without knowing we were blessed with a beautiful place to be away and seven thousand feet above the mountains where we could have this beautiful bundle of joy. Which would turn into a special retreat healing place after our departure this past October.

Akira AK | “Pearl”

Completed His New Release Remotely Over Zoom

My "good news, good music" story is simply how I was able to release 2 major projects this year despite everything that is going on: putting out my second EP and my first music video.  The EP in particular had been in the works for 3 years and was SO CLOSE to being done when everything started to shut down, so with the work of my engineer, we set up remote sessions via zoom that helped put the last song over the line and get the release out there! From there I was able to promote it with it's adjacent merch.

As far as my first music video is concerned; I was able to safely show up in person in NYC and film it with the help of a great videographer. The conceptualizing of the video is very special and I think speaks to the experiences some of us have had about going to that special place inside your head where you feel most powerful/comfortable/fierce to deal with whatever is going on externally. The promo for the video was also a success in terms of being able to schedule it on time and put it out there to hype the video itself. And once it was out it was really (unexpectedly) well received!

Those are just my personal success stories and I'm excited to see others' as well!

Monsterboy | “Ain’t Worth the Dime”

Played 60 Livestreams That Reached 7,000 Households

When my husband and I found ourselves without gigs and our small business closed, we decided to go live with our music and stay in touch with our fans. We cobbled together equipment from our home studio and gigging rig, going live in that first week. We really didn't know what to expect. The messages we got from people were so heartwarming, we built a little community for them night after night, reconnecting with existing fans and finding new.  In total, we did over 60 live streams during the shutdown and reached over 7k households on some streams. Entertaining and interacting with people was our way to do our part for our community. A podcast found us via the streams and started hiring us to produce music for their shows from it.

Artist: Crotona P., Producer: Pablo Brownbeats | “Silk”

Forged An International Collaboration South Africa and the USA via A Chance Facebook Meeting

I'm Pablo Brownbeats, a producer  who has been producing  since my youth and creating music for the last 12 years. I just released my new Ep with Crotona P from Rochester New York featuring Street Da Villain, Dj Shawn Touch, KING Flamez all from Rochester New York and SOLO MAJITA from Free State South Africa. The African Ep is available on digital stores and Bandcamp.  I enjoyed making this project and it will be an honor to share the leading single Titled Silk.

This project was recorded during the  early days of Covid19. Me and Crotona met over Facebook and exchanged some few words and he agreed to do the single (silk) then African EP was born.

Scott Whitfield | “A Bi-Coastal Christmas, Vol. 1, by Scott Whitfield & Friends”

Released A Christmas Album That Features Artists Who Have Passed That Started Recording in 2004.

Despite the challenges, I was able to release a Christmas album on Bandcamp!  It's available as a digital download OR a physical CD.  This is the culmination of MANY years of work (some tracks date back to 2004, and, sadly, a few of the artists who played on them are no longer with us).

John Maksym | “Drinkin’ & Thinkin’”

Worked With 22 Collaborators Spanning 7 Countries and 16 Cities

I kicked off this year as a solo recording artist for the first time in my life and had an ambitious goal of releasing music every 5 weeks. When the pandemic struck, I had just started recording my 4th single in the studio and everything got shut down. Within a couple of weeks I was able to pivot and invest money into building my own little home studio, to continue to create. With every musician in the world stuck at home, I was able to connect with a dream team of collaborators who helped me finish the song that I had started and go on to record 8 more songs through remote session recording from their own home studios. All in all I worked with 22 collaborators, spanning 7 countries and 16 cities, which I would never have thought of doing had the world not been in lockdown. It also allowed me time to revise my original release plan and build a more robust plan to release a number of singles and eventually an album throughout 2021.

Stay tuned ...There’s more Good News Coming!

#2020 #2021 #independent artist buzz #indie music #music blog #spotify #spotify playlist #positive vibes #good vibes #cyberpr #cyberprmusic

[one-neo]

SiR in Joburg - Oct. 26 2018

Full transparency: I’d probably heard about 3:25 minutes of SiR’s music before the concert he was performing at in Johannesburg on October 26. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of soul, rhythm & blues and all the beautiful vulnerability that comes with it. I just haven’t been able to connect with a lot of the new school R&B guys easily. They either sound too much like each other, or are trying too hard to bring in the 90s nostalgia we’re all suffering through.

That aside, I would give my left pinkie toe to attend a live music gig, doesn’t matter who’s performing: take my pinkie toe; i’m going. 

The SiR show was to be my second visit to the Victoria Yards, Joburg’s relatively new hipster hangout; a multi-purpose precinct that is market cum pop up concert venue complete with hidden nooks and crannies and even a tropical-themed selfie booth. The venue is gritty, in an endearing way, and well worth checking out. Think previously abandoned buildings turned into the perfect venue for Sunday Markets, and concerts apparently. Something like the Maboneng District 4-5 years ago.

Anyway, back to the show. The first opening act was the lady who sings the chorus on that one Kwesta love song that’s been really popular for the last 2 years. The one that’s been so popular that I’ve avoided listening to, and yet simultaneously hear everywhere, all the time.* She performed the song, slow, then fast, then did a few of her own tracks - some not-bad afropop(?). i.e. time for food.

Then the Jager Brass Band took to the stage, doing their renditions of popular South African and international jams. This was one of the major highlights of the night. If they’re ever on a bill near you, check them out. Seriously.

Next up was female rapper, Rouge, who’s lively performance was accompanied by some high energy dancers and an enthusiastic hype man who resembled Classic Man-Jidenna (waistcoat and everything). The sound at the venue let her down somewhat, her vocals were distorted depending on where you stood in the room. Still, she was fly as fuck. And now I know it’s pronounced Rouge (as in the lipstick), and not Rouge (as in rogue). 

Then it was time for a pee break, but we never quite made it to the toilet before we realised the main act for the night, SiR, had taken to the stage. First things first, this guy can saaang! What?! Ok. Shock aside, I was able to properly get into the performance, where he showed a lot of love to his hometown, Inglewood in his songs as well as his anecdotes.

It was a somewhat lengthy set, with many people getting to hear their various favourite songs. As was the case with Rouge, the sound did let him down and his sensitive-sounding lyrics were unclear. Bummer. What the sound couldn’t distort however, is the fact that this is a remarkably talented artist, who switched seamlessly between singing and rapping, between high and low vocal registers. If you could imagine what it would sound like if Marvin Gaye had a baby with Chuck D. Super talented. SiR ended the show by giving a preview of his new music which sounded as though he’s been experimenting with trap sound influences. 

The Joburg crowd is always something special to witness; (they sing really loudly during their favourite songs, they whoop and holler at the sound of you attempting any South African vernac, there’s generally a lot of whooping and hollering which I assume creates great energy for the performer). So it was no surprise that SiR announced “I love ya’ll” on a couple of occasions and that he’d definitely be coming back to visit (cue more whooping and hollering).

Watching this immense talent was definitely a good re-introduction to the artistry that is SiR and his albums and EP have been on rotation longer than 3:25 minutes since then.

*The lady is Thabsie and the song is Ngyaz’fela Ngawe.

[radio-charlie]

Hey Charles! Heres an ask for you. You are hip and current. what do you suggest a completely imaginary person whos tastes in many culture things is really out dated and old, but who desires to be more invested in current culture read or watch or listen to or do? All suggestions are welcome. and an unrelated question thats bothered me a while: how do they clean out those natural looking onsen with rocks and things? what if they get slimy or contaminated.

wow hmm as i truly have no idea who this completely imaginary person could be, the following suggestions are not closely tailored to their preferences at all:

these youtube channels  emmymadeinjapan : a nice japanese-american lady tries all manner of foods and recipes, she even did a military rations series pangzai : he’s a farmer from hebei province in china, got viral because he can drink like nobodys business, extremely popular in that country. has some nice vids showing his life in rural northern china. there’s a lot more going on at his twitter but idk how this person feels abt looking at twitter boiler room : one of my favorite music youtubes ever, they show a lot of cool electronic music artists and they stream performances from all over the world (but the focus is on the UK). all shows are free to watch and sometimes u can even download sessions! not a youtube channel but soulection radio also has great and very current music

i don’t think this person wants to know about any fights between famous ppl or call-outs etc so will not recommend anything on the subject

online publications:

https://jessicainthekitchen.com/how-to-make-whipped-coffee-dalgona-coffee-tips/  for if they’d like to learn how to make a coffee that took movement control order malaysia by storm just 2 months ago. apparently it’s very good but my friends couldn’t sleep afterwards lolol

http://www.the-wknd.com/v3/ 

a mag that posts stuff about hip and current music in south-east asia. i found out about the venopian solitude from them! the singer-songwriter for that band writes extremely sick burns into her songs, sadly the sickest of the burns are in malay but i can translate for this person if they’d like.

https://forafricans.tumblr.com/

a great blog showing pics and vids of daily life in different parts of africa. it’s cool to see photographs that humanise africans more i guess, and show the complexities of their existence, instead of being all like OOO look at these Resilient and Exotic Peoples enduring such horrible hopeless circumstances

phew. sorry dude i can’t really think of much more at the moment. but will bring up more things as they come to mind with the passage of time.

haha re: the onsen q, the onsens i’ve seen have a little drainage filter at the bottom and a water supply that can be turned off. so i think when they wanna clean those they just open up the drainage, let all the water out then give everything a good scrub, rinse thoroughly and then refill. luckily the one i went to in yufuin wasn’t slimy at all, maybe coz not many ppl use it everyday too

hope this person enjoys some of these things! thanks for the ask

#food cw #parles #long post

[voicesfromthelight]

How to Effectively Initiate Positive Alliances With Appropriate Spirits Outside of Your Immediate Sphere

Today, I want to write a bit about something very useful I’ve discovered about initiating positive, tangible relationships with spirits who are (at least seemingly) outside of your immediate circle of spirit guides, for purposes of guidance and magical collaboration.

Aside from sometimes collaborating in readings with my clients’ departed loved ones, as a medium who occasionally practices “emergency magic,” up until recently, my spirit guides never let me work with any spirits who weren’t part of the circle of guides assigned to me at birth, or ones sent to me by them for a given purpose, such as helping me predict the future more accurately. This “forbidden list” included saints who are often petitioned in popular forms of practical magic, such as St. Expedite, as well as employing the magic of other practitioners (often working with other spirits) by ordering candles from them, etc. These restrictions existed, and mostly still do, for my own protection, in order to ensure my spiritual and energetic integrity. I know better than to second-guess my guides’ advice.

Luckily, once these restrictions had been established, I came to realize that any magic I had practiced before, without soliciting spiritual helpers, which would involve fairly elaborate manipulations of physical objects as energetic focal points, would pale in comparison in effectiveness to the results I would get from simply going through my channeling preparations, clearly and passionately telling my guides what I needed, and then asking for help.

Sometimes, the results would be dramatic and nearly instantaneous - and if not, my guides would be sure to inform me that results would take a while. Coming to realize just how simple effective magic could be was incredibly liberating!

However, magical work aside, I would sometimes wonder what it would be like to receive guidance or help from a spirit who held a particular cultural or emotional significance for me. Mostly, these were departed artists with whom I felt a kinship.

With the possible exception of murder investigations, etc., the conventional wisdom on evidential mediumship is that you can only successfully interact with a departed person who knew you or your client in life. So, this spring, I decided to do an experiment with an inspiring artist with whom I had a fleeting in-person encounter in life, and about whom I had been thinking about a lot during quarantine: David Bowie. The personal connection may have been tenuous, but it was there.

What I discovered turned out to be an extremely effective way to form new, rich relationships in the spirit world.

One day in May, before it felt safe to get on the subway, after 100 days of  not leaving my home borough, I walked all the way from South Brooklyn to Manhattan. When I reached SoHo, I realized that I was not far from where David Bowie used to live. So, I took a little detour.

As I came up to his house, I focused my mind inward, as I would when asking a question of my spirit guides, and silently addressed him:

“Hi, David! It’s Emily, here. Remember me? I’m the teenage girl who quietly interrupted your lunch back in the summer of 1998, at French Roast on 6th Ave., to thank you for all the inspiration you had given me as a musician and artist. You were so touched, you blushed like a beet! I never forgot about it. I’ve been thinking about you a lot, lately, and could really use some inspiration and guidance from you again. We are kindred spirits! Musician to outsider musician, can you hear me? I’d love it if we could interact, and you would accept to be my guide.”

Within a couple of hours, David sent me a synchronicity in the form of the gif below, posted by my friend right around the time I made the connection. (In these cases, I don’t believe in coincidences. My guides pull off stuff like that all the time, and it isn’t limited to random internet posts.)

A similar process has subsequently helped me form several new, extremely satisfying spiritual connections, including with Frida Kahlo, whose birthday party I posted about earlier, and even a couple of saints I never thought I had a connection to before.

That is how I found out that under the right circumstances, there is some flexibility in my “collaborative restriction,” and it is sanctioned by my personal guides. However, it isn’t arbitrary.

When you wish to form a relationship with a spirit outside your immediate sphere, the key is that there needs to be an affinity, cultural, familial or even personal connection between you and what you know of this spirit. This holds true whether it is a person who was known as a prominent spiritual teacher, an artist who passed away relatively recently, or a saint or spirit whose existence has taken on a more “storied” status. (Religions of the African Diaspora such as Santería, Vodou and Espiritismo - which I have no affiliation with - affirm this in their teachings, as well.)

So, here is my technique for forming new alliances with spirits you’d like to work with.

1. Identify the spirit, and define for yourself why you wish to work with them. Look into the spirit’s history, and the various ways in which people have defined and worked with them before. Do you feel comfortable with all of the connotations of what this spirit stands for?

2. Define the connection between you. What is it that you have in common in your temperament, your likes and dislikes, your interests, your cultural connections, your life experiences, your “life missions,” and your general energy? Why and how does your energy “match” theirs? (This is super important!)

3. If the connection isn’t immediately apparent, is there a work-around? For instance, say you wanted to work with The Virgin of Guadalupe, who is a Catholic patron saint of Mexico, and particularly a protector of indigenous peoples, but you weren’t Mexican, indigenous, or even Catholic. Guadalupe is also known as “Empress of The Americas,” and is an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Mary was Jewish. In my case, I’m Jewish-American. I’m a Jewish daughter. Mary is a Jewish mother. I’m part American, and live in the USA. She’s Empress of The Americas - not just Mexico. That would be an effective approach to initiating the connection.

4. Find a way to focus your energy on forming the connection. This could be through setting up a little altar with a picture, a candle, some water and flowers, or simply meditating in a quiet place or sacred space, especially if that place is directly connected to that spirit.

5. Address the spirit with love, trust, enthusiasm and respect. In your own words, explain the connection between you, and why you wish to work with them. So, for the above example, I might say: “Dear Guadalupe, I would love to work with you and your gentle, motherly energy. You’re a Jewish mother, and I’m a Jewish daughter - that makes me your daughter! People love you in my neighborhood. You rule over the Americas. I know your presence is strong here. Would you help to bring peace and love into my home?”

6. Look for a sign of acceptance. In my case, that will usually come in the form of a synchronicity, a dream, or having them straight-up announce themselves in my channeling sessions. (Often, it will be more than one sign!)

7. Once you receive your sign of acceptance, especially if they happen to grant a request, GIVE THANKS! I love buying flowers for my spirits. It’s also great if you can thank a guide or spirit ally with charity or a good deed that benefits people or causes you know are loved by them. In the above example, I would make sure to buy the flowers for Guadalupe from the ladies in my neighborhood who are immigrants from Central America - and possibly undocumented. I might also make a contribution to charities that help detained immigrants at the border. Sometimes your allies will telepathically let you know what pleases them.

And that’s it! 

You can maintain your ongoing connection to these spirits through practices such as meditation and channeling, and also doing good deeds in their name. If you only wanted to form a short-term alliance, that’s OK, too. Just be sure to thank the spirit properly for their help, and politely say your goodbyes.

As a final note, it isn’t completely clear to me whether the initial lack of connection to spirits such as these is only skin-deep. One might have past-life alliances, or other unknown connections to these spirits from the get-go. Sometimes, if you feel pulled to a particular spirit, but can’t figure out the connection, if you ask your guides, and the connection is genuine, they will explain why!

We all have “inner circle” guides assigned at birth, whom we can most easily connect with, and especially if we work in the spiritual arts such as mediumship, a whole network of “outer band” helpers in our “team,” who may prefer to remain anonymous, but help us coordinate communication with our clients’ loved ones, etc. You won’t always know immediately who is helping you “behind the scenes”!

Explore these concepts for yourself, and see what you think! ...But do choose your allies wisely, and protect yourself by keeping your energy high, joyful, compassionate, optimistic and loving, and by properly opening and closing your communication sessions. Don’t fall for impersonators! Look for tangible signs.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments!

Good luck!

Love,

Emily

#spirits #spirit guides #spirit allies #espiritismo #magic #magick #practical magic #mediumship #channeling #spiritual journey #guidance #david bowie #guadalupe #spiritual #shaman #shamanism #psychic #psychic medium #psychics of tumblr #mediums of tumbler #witches #witches of tumblr #witchcraft

[coffeesandfilm]

You’re terrible Muriel...

Muriel’s Wedding (dir. P.J. Hogan, 1994), came as part of a new-wave of Australian films that reached international success during the 1990s, along with the likes of Strictly Ballroom (dir Baz Luhrmann, 1992) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994). But what makes this particular film so special? All these films contain kitschy elements and are almost bizarre tonally, with larger than life characters, theatrical performances, and dance numbers, but part of what makes Muriel’s Wedding so addictive is its relatable central character.

To summarise, Muriel Heslop is an awkward, insecure young woman with an antagonistic father, a down-beaten, depressed mother, and two siblings who sit around the house lazy and unmotivated. Her ‘so-called’ friends, cliched popular girls, bitchy and materialistic, enjoy putting Muriel down any chance they get. They inform her she is not invited to their group holiday and is out of their ‘gang’ because “she brings them down and embarrasses them”. Undeterred, she sneakily follows them to the resort they are holidaying at, where she bumps into her old schoolmate, Rhonda Epinstalk. When Muriel’s former friends discover and demean her, Rhonda rushes to her defence humiliating the girls by calling them out on their behaviour, thus cementing a strong friendship between the two. Muriel then moves out of her home in Porpoise Spit, to Sydney with Rhonda where she changes her name to Mariel and starts to gain some self-confidence. Despite this, her constant desperation for marriage puts a wedge between the girls’s relationship, with Muriel agreeing to marry young, handsome, South African Olympic hopeful, David Van Arkle, who is looking for a green card in exchange for money. Ultimately Muriel chooses what is right, and the two girls reunite and return to Sydney together, Muriel now more secure in herself than ever.

On paper, Muriel is a pretty unlikeable character. She is a compulsive liar, she steals clothes, she does not try and get a job even though her father continuously sets up interviews for her, and she under appreciates her mother who is overlooked by everyone in the family, particular her husband who is having an affair. These negative characteristics should be enough to turn you off her, and for some film characters it would be. But these ugly parts of her personality, and her constant self-loathing, are very relatable and recognisable traits for many viewers. To put it simply, Muriel is a loser, and I think most people have felt like that at some point. All of her friends are moving on with their lives, getting married, finding successful jobs, but she is stuck at home, a constant disappointment to her parents, made only worse by the cruel jibes from her father. This builds up her insecurity and makes her resent herself even more, fuelling the cycle to continue on and on. It is a very raw topic, something that many people do not like to talk to their friends about, perhaps not even admit to themselves. But for me, the feeling of not being enough, and subsequently feeling guilty about not being enough has never been depicted more honestly on film. 

On another note, I never tire of the stream of larger than life characters we are introduced to. Personally, I find many of them to be very indicative of this era, the ‘laddish’ 90s, with its blowback to 2nd wave feminism creating a new place for men. It’s hard to speak from an Australian perspective, but here in Britain a new culture was arising, lads’ mags such as ‘Maxim’ and ‘Loaded’ were hitting the shelves, a new genre of pop music aptly labelled ‘Britpop’ was taking over the radio, skyrocketing bands such as Blur and Oasis to fame, laddish sitcoms such as Men Behaving Badly and Game On, which involved lots of ogling at pretty ladies, were emerging on our TV screens. I see many of these traits personified in the male characters of Muriel’s wedding, in particular Chook and his cronies. Chook is the husband of Tania, the leader of Muriel’s former friendship group, and the leader of her antagonisers, he resembles the stereotypical Australian surfer dude, with tanned skin and bleached blonde hair, Tania’s counterpart in every way. The first scene of the film takes place at the couple’s wedding, as Muriel successfully fights to catch the bouquet, Chook sarcastically jeers “sorry love I’m already taken” with his friends crowding around him laughing. We later see him exchange a flirtatious glance with Rose (another from the mean girl pack) and they sneak away to have sex in the middle of his wedding reception. These two instances already indicate to us the type of man he is, despite being his only appearance in the film. Tania does reference him in a later scene though, “they've accused him of raping a Japanese tourist, which is ridiculous! Chook hates the Japanese!”, effectively outing him as a racist, adulterer and sexual offender, displaying how his playful macho bravado does actually have sinister undertones. Characters like Chook, Tania and their friends almost seem like caricatures of 90s laddish culture, I wonder if they were included as a form of backlash to this emerging scene, and to highlight how poisonous it could be. Considering the levels of toxicity Muriel was surrounded by, ranging from grotesque men to nasty friends who constantly belittle her, it comes as no surprise that she fantasized about an alternative dream life and for a knight in shining armour to rescue her. Her knight in shining armour of course turned out to be Rhonda, but she did not conform to Muriel’s idea of an idyllic life, she taught her to stop caring about those who did not did not matter, and to start caring more about herself. A common and perhaps cliché idea used in films, but a very important one nevertheless. 

So... to sum up this brief digest, if you love films about true friendship, self-love, ABBA, Australian wit, larger than life characters and a hapless protagonist then this is the film for you, and even if not I would still give it a go, I am sure you will feel slightly better after watching it.

#muriel's wedding #toni collette #pj hogan #australia #australian film #muriel heslop #rachel griffiths #bill hunter #daniel lapaine #1990s #lad #lad culture

[ckret2]

Out of all the human music, what do you think Ghidorahs heads would enjoy most?

It took over three thousand words to answer this question and I enjoyed every second of it.

So!

Did you know that dogs can communicate with each other through their pee?

I swear this is relevant to the question.

Dogs pee to mark their territory. And they have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell compared to humans. From a few drops of pee, they can tell another dog’s sex, whether the dog’s in heat if it’s female, whether the dog’s been spayed/neutered, which direction it was traveling, how long ago it was in the area, whether the dog’s stressed or sick…

So if you ask a dog what their favorite pee scent is, what are they gonna say? Probably something relevant to the data they’ve evolved to put into and get out of dog pee. They’re probably gonna say something like “mine, because it’s familiar and means that I’m home somewhere safe,” or “the smell of a lady that’s dtf” or “the smell of stress because I’m an evil dog sadist that relishes other dogs’ suffering” or “the smell of neutered dogs because it means there’s gonna be less fights in this neighborhood between horny dogs” or “i don’t care as long as there’s LOTS of dogs because play pals!!!” Something like that, probably. I’m making this up as I go.

If you ask a human what their favorite dog pee scent is, the answers you get are probably going to be “They have different scents???” or “idk, whichever pee smells the least" or “my puppy’s pee smells different when she’s sick, so, uh, whichever scent is Not That One.”

Ask a human what their favorite kind of music is, or assign a favorite kind of music to a human character, and it tells you something about them. If they say that they like 90s anime themes & JRPG soundtracks, then that’s going to tell you something about them. It’s going to tell you that either they’re from Japan and grew up with that on TV, or they’re a weeb. “Counterpoint: maybe it just tells you that they like that kind of music?” Yeah but where were they gonna stumble on that music if they aren’t either from Japan or a weeb? If they only like the music because of its sound, then they would also be interested in Hasidic Jewish music, right? After all, anime/JRPG music and Hasidic music sound a lot alike:

https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/187677604232/krakenpocalypse-jewishmagpie-tlbodine

But you never see people say “I like JRPG soundtracks and Hasidic music,” because people don’t like music because of the way it sounds. They like it because of the way it sounds AND because they were exposed to it (you can’t enjoy music you don’t know about) AND because they were exposed to it frequently* AND because they feel at home in a community that values that kind of music AND because that kind of music is accessible to them AND because that kind of music has positive associations for them AND because either they heard a bit of that music and sought out more just like it or because they’re in a place where they were passively exposed to a whole lot of that music… etc etc etc. 

(*Fun psychology fact! Understanding certain sounds as “music” is learned, not just innate—if you hear a new song and it immediately sounds pleasantly musical to you, it’s because you’ve heard enough songs similar to it that your brain auto-interprets it as music. Which is one of the reasons why music in genres that you don’t listen to as often might “kind of sound all the same” or “blend together” or fail to hit any emotional chords in you the way that songs in genres you listen to all the time do. It’s not because you found the One True Emotionally Gripping Musical Genre and everyone else is listening to genres that don’t have that emotional punch for some reason; it’s because your brain is tuned, just like an instrument’s strings, to resonate with those kinds of songs, and other people’s brains are tuned to resonate with other kinds.)

I swear all of this is still relevant to Ghidorah headcanons.

So anyway, if somebody tells you that they’re into anime themes and JRPG soundtracks? It tells you either they grew up in Japan or they’re a weeb. If they tell you they’re into anime themes and Hasidic music? Then they grew up in Japan or they’re a weeb, and also they’re Jewish or close with Jewish folks which is why they were exposed to Hasidic music; OR, they’re a tumblr user who was into one of the genres, saw that same hundred-thousand-note post I linked above, and looked up the other genre. If a millennial says their favorite band is Backstreet Boys, that implies something very different about their overall musical tastes—and possibly their social circle, their fashion taste, their TV and movie preferences—than if they say their favorite band is Evanescence. That’s not to say you can’t be a goth-as-fuck dressed-in-all-black purple-dyed-hair vampire-lit-devouring Grown-Up Emo Kid if your favorite band was Backstreet Boys—but it doesn’t correlate as highly as Evanescence does, does it? Someone whose favorite band sings about the light of Jesus filling their soul probably has very different religious beliefs from someone whose favorite band sings about blowing Satan in a cemetery.

And all of those associations are massively intensified if we’re talking about fictional characters instead of real people. Me, grown up goth that I am, driving to work singing along with Evanescence songs and songs about blowing Satan—when I was a kid I had a phase where Backstreet Boys was my favorite band, and what’s that say about me, my personality, and my overall identity? Ultimately, not a lot, except that they were everywhere when I was a kid, I could name four of their songs (more than most artists!), and I thought three of them were pretty good. People’s tastes are varied, weird, pick up strange chunks, and drift around, and it doesn’t always tell you something deep about their character.

But, if you create a goth character but say when they were a child Backstreet Boys was their favorite band, why did you, the writer, assign them a favorite band that goes against their type so hard? What are you trying to say about them? Did something happen in childhood that changed them from the kind of kid who’s into pop (generally perceived in fiction and sometimes reality to mean a person is normal, well-adjusted, optimistic, mainstream, average, boring—or “has good taste” to other people who like pop) into the kind of kid who’s into goth music (generally perceived in fiction and sometimes reality to indicate a person is sad/angry/anxious, pessimistic, counterculture, overtly rejects the mainstream, weird, mysterious—or “has good taste” to other people who like goth music)?

Is it because something sad happened in their childhood and changing their style/music was how they coped? Is it because they met someone important to them who opened their eyes to The Beauty Of The Dark And Macabre? Is it because they were only allowed to listen to parent-approved pop as a kid and chose to dive into the most out-there genre they could find as an act of rebellion? Is it because they became a vampire and that’s apparently just what vampires do? Is it because they realized they were unconsciously faking being attracted to guys because they thought that was normal and picked an appropriate boy band to latch onto, but when puberty was kicking in at age 13 they saw a cute girl with black nails and clothes at the mall and went “hecc im love girls” and grabbed the first album they could find with a female vocalist in similar makeup on the cover?

What’s this character’s backstory? What’s the significance of that decision? Why did you give this character that favorite band? Why did you choose to have this music in this character’s life? Why pop, punk, jazz, rock, metal, rap, country? Why American, Japanese, Indian, Spanish, Arabic, South African? Why that mainstream, or why that obscure? Just the decision to make their favorite artist “Benjamin who plays his guitar at the local coffee shop” versus “Veniamin who plays his guitar in a coffee shop in Greece and puts the videos on YouTube” tells you something about whether they find their Obscure Favorite Artist in the local community or in Internet deep dives (unless they actually live in Greece). All those decisions tell, suggest, or imply something about that character’s position within their surrounding human culture.

That’s the key here: within their surrounding human culture. What music a character listens to suggests a whole lot about the millions of intricate connections they have with their surrounding culture when that character too is a human.

Assign a favorite kind of music to a non-human character, and you say something about them, too. What you say about them, before you say anything else, is “the way that this character’s brain is wired to interpret sound waves into pitch and rhythm is nearly identical to the way that human brains are wired to interpret sound waves; and furthermore, they’re familiar enough with human culture that they know and recognize different ‘categories’ of music and pick categories that they do like based on their assigned similarities versus categories they don’t like based on their assigned similarities.”

And that ain’t something that can be said about Ghidorah.

See I told you all that would be relevant.

To say “Ghidorah likes rock,” you first have to give Ghidorah the capacity to differentiate rock from rap, from country, from Bollywood, from 8-bit chiptunes, from whatever the fuck Tchaikovsky was up to—and even humans aren’t born with the innate ability to sort songs into categories like that. Hell, even humans who are familiar with music have a hard time telling apart different kinds of music the deeper and deeper you get into specific genres. Like, do you know the difference between Electroclash and Filthy Electrohouse? Probably not? Would saying that Filthy Electrohouse is Electroclash with a house kick help? No? What about saying that Filthy Electrohouse is basically the same as normal Electrohouse except that Electrohouse evolved out of House whereas Filthy Electrohouse evolved out of Electroclash? No? Sound like gibberish to you? You probably know the difference between rock and metal, though, even if only vaguely. Try explaining it to an alien who’s never heard either genre before. To the alien whatever you say is going to sound like explaining Filthy Electrohouse because they haven’t got any of the background understanding of the genres to sort them apart.

(And if you want to know more about what the hell is this Filthy Electro French Clash House thing, may I recommend https://music.ishkur.com/# as an absolutely terrifying but very interesting guide to the complete history of electronic music and its subgenres? I like to click on random things and listen to them. The above genres can be found way at the bottom under Eurotrash.)

So the tl;dr is: I can’t give Ghidorah favorite music. Not in a normal “oh, they prefer to listen to death metal/Italian opera/Tibetan throat singing/golden oldies/traditional children’s lullabies” way because all of that, any of that, implies a knowledge of and connection to human culture that not only do they lack, but just imagining asserting a preferred genre/artist like that mentally strains my internal willing suspension of disbelief.

And I had to say all of the above to say that tl;dr because, like, listen. Listen. “I can’t give Ghidorah favorite music” is a boring, uninteresting answer. It’s a lack of information. “I can’t give Ghidorah favorite music because the vast cultural background knowledge necessary to understand music on humanity’s terms is as alien to Ghidorah as the nuances of dog pee smell are alien to humans.” That, that actually says a lot about Ghidorah, and I think that it says something interest.

So with all that said! Lemme tell you what kind of music they do like.

Because they do like music. A whole lot. Lots of music from lots of alien species.

It’s just human music that’s unfamiliar to them. They will gain familiarity with human music—as soon as they gain access to a means to hear human music (and I do have that in the works!)—but the way they interpret and categorize it won’t necessarily have any correlation with how humans do.

Ghidorah’s wired for singing. Loooves singing. I haven’t decided yet whether that’s a natural dorat thing and over time they added in music from other species as they learned it, or if it’s specifically a trick that they picked up after being fused together and needing a way to weaponize their empath abilities. In either case, their singing is tied directly into their empath capabilities. Half of the “songs” they know aren’t “songs” in any conventional sense, but “the sounds that they figured out would interact directly with the way a target species’ brain functions in order to cause whatever emotion they want their target to feel.” I’ve talked about this before in my Ghidorah-as-siren post. https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/185784244462/ghidorah-as-siren

(Things like that—specific sounds that directly cause emotions in a species due to an instinctive response rather than a learned reaction—are precedented in real life! There’s a certain sound frequency that causes humans to feel fear/panic/dread/paranoia and sometimes hallucinate ghosts, and it’s theorized that this sound might be found at a lot of “haunted” locations: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/oct/16/science.farout )

So, when Ghidorah does this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA-QJUyBdJU

That’s literally a song, from their perspective. It’s a short song, but it’s a song. It’s a “become afraid and rampage against anything threatening (which means everything)” song. At the end of The Glorious Resurrection of Bouvet Island (here https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/187594976987/the-glorious-resurrection-of-bouvet-island ) when Rodan is “ whistling a high soothing note” and then they do this:

“It took him a while to notice that the middle head had started copying his whistle, letting out a single endless note at the exact same pitch. Then the other two joined in, turning it into a high, trilling, reverberating sound, an “ii-lii-lii-lii-lii.” The sound got into his head, made him feel like he was floating. Made him feel like he was in the safest place in the universe.”

They heard Rodan making a sound (something like a single long high-pitched bird whistle) which Rodan instinctively knows as a “soothe somebody” sound; they learned the sound, and from it learned something about how Rodan understands and processes sound; and they immediately turned it around and used it to soothe him. When Rodan immediately feels Super Safe, that’s not just because they’re being all nice to him—that’s full-on song-based dorat empath mind control he’s under the effects of.

So a loud trumpeting roar that induces “be afraid and smash things!” feelings is a song. A single high-pitched continuous note that induces “you’re extremely hella safe!” feelings is a song. So far, those are the only two Earth songs they know, because those are the only two songs they’ve got that work on Earthlings. One they composed themselves, and one they remixed from a song Rodan accidentally taught them.

Based on this, the human definition of “music” and Ghidorah definition of “music” are very different. Our music can be included somewhere inside his definition; but his definition is far broader than ours and includes things we’d never hear as musical.

Ghidorah can sing, like, non-mind-controlling songs too. He does do that. Just sing for fun rather than for megalomaniacal world-destroying reasons. Songs composed for normal reasons! All the ones he knows at this point are alien but he could sing them. There’s a mention in the one-shot from Gigan’s perspective that he likes Ghidorah’s singing and wants to expose him to more.

However, he doesn’t have to separate “normal songs that sound like actual music” from songs that can evoke emotions. Especially if the song itself is somehow intended to evoke an emotion, it’s pretty easy for Ghidorah to learn the emotion that it’s supposed to cause and actually weave that into the song itself. Because, generally, if a species goes “ah yes this song should inspire This Emotion,” then they’re likely to include sounds that physiologically/psychologically help induce that feeling in the brain. Humans do it! So if he’s singing a sad-sounding song with sad lyrics, the odds are good that if a member of the species that produced the song hears it, they won’t just think it sounds sad, they’ll be telepathically forced to feel sad.

The songs they most enjoy singing are ones that can make use of all their musical abilities. Of course, they’ve got their voices—and when they’re singing, they tend to go for higher pitch ranges. You ever hear this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eogtlyDg4Y

Dude can pull off soprano if he wants. If they do hear enough human songs to be familiar with them, yes, they’re going to sing along with the music—and yes, they’re going to do it even if they don’t know the words, which they won’t, because they’ve probably never heard a human voice except when it’s screaming loud enough that they can faintly pick it up from five hundred feet above. They’re going to sing anyway. Don’t pretend you’ve never tried to sing along with a song in a language you don’t know and ended up going “AAA LALALA DA DADA GSDKLFJGLKJ” as you sing.

But like it’s not gonna be limited to human voices because they’ve been all over the galaxy, what separates a “voice” from an “instrument”? Nothing! They can sing violin & viola parts. They can sing brass instruments. They can sing piano.

You know that their tails rattle? Like rattlesnakes? They’ve got maracas on their tails. They can keep rhythm to music with their tails. Or their feet, if they’re on a hard enough surface that they can tap their claws.

You know this scene? With the wing thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhDdXXr9dfQ

Ever heard a tesla coil sing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f6GijQXaBI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee5evlN8Bbs

Yeah they can do that. Probably with greater actual range than a tesla coil. I imagine it works best on synthesizer music and some electric guitar. Probably other things too that I haven’t thought of, but uh I listen to synthesizer & electric guitar so that’s what I think about when I imagine singing space dragons lmao.

Their preferred music, therefore, is going to be stuff that 1) give all three heads parts to sing, 2) also lets them use their tails and wings, and 3) ideally, gives them some interesting emotions to steal/replicate/inflict on others. Which is very broad! Covers a lot of things, no doubt!

Eventually, yeah, they’re going to probably develop more specific human musical preferences—but the preferences are going to be based on their own alien criteria, and it’s also going to be based on what human music they have access to. At least initially? That means that their musical taste is going to be limited to whatever music they can pick up on AM radio in the Gulf of Mexico just off the northeast tip of Mexico. Which, depending on the exact stations available where the Rio Grande dumps into the ocean will probably mean “the current chart toppers in Mexico & the US” and “extremely local Mexican music.“ 

It took over three thousand words to reach that answer. I hope you found the journey rewarding.

#reference #writing #music #king ghidorah #ghidorah #godzilla #headcanons #(this is as much about Music Itself and about The Act Of Writing as it is about Ghidorah) #(if u wanna scroll for a while the ghidorah stuff is in there tho) #(like uh... a little over halfway down) #sableghoste #ask #(i didn't edit this because it's bedtime) #(enjoy typos)

[blackkudos]

Darius Rucker

Darius Carlos Rucker (born May 13, 1966) is an American singer and songwriter. He first gained fame as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of rock band Hootie & the Blowfish, which he founded in 1986 at the University of South Carolina along with Mark Bryan, Jim "Soni" Sonefeld, and Dean Felber. The band released five studio albums with him as a member and charted six top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Rucker co-wrote most of the songs with the other members.

He released a solo R&B album, Back to Then in 2002 on Hidden Beach Recordings but no singles from it charted. Six years later, Rucker signed to Capitol Nashville as a country music singer, releasing the album, Learn to Live that year. Its first single, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It", made him the first black artist to reach number one on the Hot Country Songs charts since Charley Pride in 1983. (Ray Charles hit number one in March 1985 in a duet with Willie Nelson with "Seven Spanish Angels".) It was followed by two more number one singles, "It Won't Be Like This for Long" and "Alright" and the number three hit "History in the Making". In 2009, he became the first black American to win the New Artist Award from the Country Music Association, and the second black person to win any award from the association. A second album, Charleston, SC 1966, was released on October 12, 2010. The album includes the number one singles, "Come Back Song" and "This".

Early life

Rucker was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his family history goes back generations. He lives in Charleston with his wife and three children. His single mother, Carolyn, a nurse at Medical University of South Carolina, raised him with his three sisters and two brothers. According to Rucker, his father was never around, and Rucker saw him only before church on Sundays. His father was in a gospel band called The Traveling Echoes. Rucker has said that he had a typical Southern African-American upbringing. His family attended church every Sunday and was economically poor, and at one point, his mother, her two sisters, his grandmother and 14 children were all living in a three-bedroom house. But he says that he looks back on his childhood with very fond memories. His sister, L'Corine, recalled that singing was always his dream.

Hootie & the Blowfish

Darius Rucker has been the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish since its formation in 1986. He met fellow band members Mark Bryan, Jim "Soni" Sonefeld, and Dean Felber while attending the University of South Carolina. Bryan first heard Rucker singing in the shower, and the two became a duo, playing R.E.M. covers at a local venue. They later recruited Felber and finally Sonefeld joined in 1989. As a member of Hootie & the Blowfish, Rucker has recorded six studio albums: Cracked Rear View – 1994, Fairweather Johnson – 1996, Musical Chairs – 1998, Scattered, Smothered & Covered – 2000, Hootie & the Blowfish and Looking for Lucky – 2005, also charting within the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 six times. All six albums feature songs that Rucker, Bryan and Felber wrote. As the frontman, Rucker began to be called simply "Hootie" by fans, though the band title combines the nicknames of his college friends. Before his rise to fame, he lived in the basement of the Sigma Phi Epsilon house at the University of South Carolina, attempting to launch his career through the college bar scene.

Rucker's signature contribution to the band is his baritone voice, which Rolling Stone has called "ingratiating," TIME has called "low, gruff, [and] charismatic," and Entertainment Weekly has characterized as a "barrelhouse growl." Rucker said they "flipped" the formula of the all black band with a white frontman, like Frank Sinatra performing with Count Basie. Musically, he has sometimes been criticized or spoofed for not being "black enough". Saturday Night Live ran a sketch of Tim Meadows playing Rucker leading beer-drinking, white fraternity members in a counter-march to Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March. He also received death threats for singing the Hootie song "Drowning," a protest song against the flying of the Confederate flag above the South Carolina statehouse.

Shortly after gaining a measure of fame, Felber and Rucker (who consider themselves best friends) moved into an apartment in Columbia, South Carolina. With Rucker's recognition as the frontman of a successful band came increased opportunities. In October 1995, he was asked to sing the national anthem at the World Series. Frank Sinatra invited him to sing at his 80th birthday party; he sang "The Lady Is a Tramp." That same week, he made a voice cameo in an episode of the sitcom Friends. He also joined Nanci Griffith on the song "Gulf Coast Highway" for her 1997 album Blue Roses from the Moons, and sang backing vocals on Radney Foster's 1999 album See What You Want to See. He encouraged Atlantic Records to agree to a deal with Edwin McCain and made a guest appearance on McCain's debut album, Honor Among Thieves.

In regard to the future of Hootie & the Blowfish, Rucker was quoted by CBS news as stating in late 2011, "I don't think we'll ever break up totally. We're Hootie & the Blowfish. ... We'll make another record and do another tour someday. I don't know when, but it will happen. There's one more in us." After a ten-year hiatus, Rucker and the band announced that they will be touring with Barenaked Ladies in 2019 while releasing a new album the same year.

Their sixth studio album Imperfect Circle was released on November 1, 2019.

Solo career

In 2001, he made his solo R&B debut album, The Return of Mongo Slade, for Atlantic Records. Because of contractual changes, it was never released by the label. Hidden Beach Recordings, an independent label, acquired the masters from Atlantic and released the album as Back to Then in July 2002. The album included work from the production team of Jill Scott, and she made an appearance on the track "Hold On." The single "This Is My World" was featured in the 2001 comedy film Shallow Hal. In regards to the album, "That was just a minute in my life," he later told The Arizona Republic about the record. "I was listening to a lot of Notorious B.I.G. and Lauryn Hill at that time, and I wanted to make a neo soul record." He also said in the article that he doesn't anticipate recording an R&B-styled disc again. "Country music is my day job now. I'll probably do this till it's all over, but that album was a lot of fun."

Rucker appeared on a pop-star edition of the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in July 2001. He also portrayed a singing cowboy in a television commercial for the fast-food company Burger King, promoting its TenderCrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch sandwich in 2005. In the commercial, he sang a jingle set to the tune of "Big Rock Candy Mountain." In 2006 Rucker lent his voice to the track "God's Reasons" written by Dean Dinning and Joel A. Miller for the film The Still Life.

Country music2008–2009: Learn to Live

In early 2008, Rucker signed to Capitol Records Nashville as the beginning of a career in country music. His first solo single, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (which he co-wrote with Clay Mills) debuted at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts for the week of May 3, 2008. It is the first single from his second album, Learn to Live. For this album, Rucker worked with Frank Rogers, a record producer who has also produced for Brad Paisley and Trace Adkins. Rucker also made his Grand Ole Opry debut in July 2008. The single reached number one in September, making Rucker the first solo, African-American artist to chart a number one country hit since Charley Pride's "Night Games" in 1983.

Learn to Live was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 6, 2009, and received a platinum certification on August 7, 2009. The album's second single, "It Won't Be Like This for Long", spent three weeks at the top of the country chart in mid-2009. Its follow-up, "Alright", became Rucker's third straight No. 1 hit, making him the first singer to have his first three country singles reach No. 1 since Wynonna in 1992. The album's fourth single, "History in the Making" was released in September and peaked at No. 3. The singles also crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at 35, 36, 30 and 61.

Billboard magazine said that "there's a sense of purpose that makes Rucker feel like a member of the country family, rather than calculating interloper." Rucker made visits to various country stations around the United States, explaining that he was aware that he was the "new kid on the block." Mike Culotta, the program director of Tampa, Florida, radio station WQYK-FM expected that Rucker would be "somebody who would have entitlement," but instead said that "Darius engaged everybody." When Rucker found that "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" went to number one, he cried. On November 11, 2009, Rucker won the Country Music Association New Artist of the Year award (formerly known as the Horizon Award), making him the first African American to do so since the award was introduced in 1981. Only one other African American has won at the CMAs: Charley Pride, who won entertainer of the year in 1971 and male vocalist in 1971 and 1972.

2010–2011: Charleston, SC 1966

Rucker released his second country album, Charleston, SC 1966, on October 12, 2010. The title is inspired by Radney Foster's solo debut album, Del Rio, TX 1959. Its first single was "Come Back Song," which Rucker wrote with Chris Stapleton and Casey Beathard. It was his fourth country number one as well as a NO. 37 hit on the Hot 100. The album's second single was "This", which was released to radio in November 2010 and also reached No. 1 in the country chart. Rucker wrote it with Rogers and Kara DioGuardi. "I Got Nothin'" was the album's third single, peaking at No. 18. Also included on the album is a duet with Brad Paisley titled "I Don't Care". Charleston, SC 1966 received a gold certification.

2012–2014: True Believers

On May 20, 2011, Rucker delivered the commencement address to the graduating class of the Medical University of South Carolina.

On December 14, 2011, CBSnews.com reported that Rucker was working on a third country album with recording set to begin January 2012 followed by the release of the album early in the year. The album's lead-off single, "True Believers," made its chart debut in September. On October 12, 2012, Rucker told Broadway's Electric Barnyard that his album would also be titled True Believers. "True Believers" peaked at No. 18. Its second single is a cover of Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor's "Wagon Wheel" (previously made famous by Old Crow Medicine Show), featuring backing vocals from Lady Antebellum. "Wagon Wheel" reached No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart in May 2013. True Believers was released on May 21, 2013. The album's third single, "Radio", was released to country radio on July 22, 2013. The album's fourth single, "Miss You", was released to country radio on February 3, 2014.

On October 2, 2012, Rucker was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry. Halfway through his set at the Opry that night he answered questions from the audience which included a question from Brad Paisley. Paisley said: "I have two questions. One, are you still the worst poker player in the world? And two, would you like to become the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry?" Rucker accepted, and it became official on October 16.

Rucker was a featured performer at the C2C: Country to Country festival in London on March 17, 2013, which was headlined by Carrie Underwood.

On News Year's Day 2013. he sang the national anthem at the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Florida.

On May 11, 2013, Rucker was the speaker at the commencement ceremony for the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Before his speech, he received an honorary doctorate of music.

Rucker also sang the national anthem at the NBA finals on June 16, 2013.

On December 6, 2013, it was announced that Rucker's version of "Wagon Wheel" had earned him a nomination for Best Country Solo Performance for the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. At the awards ceremony on January 26, 2014, Rucker won, becoming only the third African American recording act (the first being Charley Pride, the second being The Pointer Sisters) to win a vocal performance Grammy Award in a country music category.

2014–2015: Southern Style and Home for the Holidays

On August 25, 2014, Rucker released a new single titled "Homegrown Honey" to country radio and to digital retailers. It served as the lead single to his fourth country studio album, Southern Style, released on March 31, 2015. It reached No. 2 on the Country Airplay chart in April 2015. The album's second single, the title track, released to country radio on May 4, 2015.

On September 15, 2014, it was announced that Rucker had completed his first Christmas album and that it would be released on October 27, 2014. Included is a collaboration with Sheryl Crow on "Baby, It's Cold Outside".May 30, 2015 Rucker headlined Philadelphia's famous XTU 31st Anniversary Show at the Susquehanna Bank Center. Christopher Bousquet named President of the Hootie fan club

Rucker makes an appearance on Sister Hazel's new album, Lighter in the Dark.

2016–present: When Was the Last Time

On January 6, 2016, Rucker announced that he was working on his fifth country album. The album's lead single, "If I Told You" was released to country radio on July 5, 2016. It reached number one in the Country Airplay chart nearly a year later, and peaked at number four on the Hot Country Chart. Rucker also returned to the C2C: Country to Country festival in the UK in March 2017, where he was second on the bill to Reba McEntire.

On May 29, 2016, Rucker performed the national anthem prior to the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. Rucker also performed the national anthem for a game between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets on September 15. Rucker agreed to perform the song at the behest of personal friend and former Bills player Bruce Smith, whose jersey was being retired that night. He sang the national anthem again ahead of the Saints-Dolphins game held at London's Wembley Stadium in October 2017, as part of the NFL International Series.

Rucker was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again" and "I Will Always Love You", which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards. On July 24, 2017, Rucker released the second single from his upcoming album, titled "For the First Time." On July 26, 2017, he shared details of his fifth country album, titled When Was the Last Time and it was released on October 20, 2017.

Rucker appeared as a mentor on seventeenth season of The Voice for Team Blake.

Personal life

Rucker is an ardent South Carolina Gamecocks fan as well as a Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Reds fan. He also likes the film Stir Crazy, which he has seen more than 100 times.To show his loyalty to his University, he gave a free concert which was held at the Colonial Life Arena after the football team was able to win 6 games following a pair of losing seasons after joining the Southeastern Conference.

Rucker's mother died in November 1992 of a heart attack. His grief inspired two Hootie & the Blowfish songs: "I'm Goin' Home" and "Not Even the Trees." On April 21, 1995, his girlfriend (Elizabeth Ann Phillips) gave birth to Rucker's first child, Carolyn Pearl Phillips. His second daughter, Daniella Rose, was born to his wife, Beth, on May 16, 2001. They had a son, Jack, in 2005. The Hootie song "Where Were You" is about Rucker's strained relationship with his father, and was released only in Europe, where Rucker thought that his father would be unlikely to hear it. His country single "Alright" was inspired by his marriage.

Rucker is a friend of the golfer Tiger Woods, whom he met in a bar when Woods was 18. Rucker sang at the golfer's wedding with Hootie & the Blowfish and at his father's funeral. His interest in golf goes well beyond his relationship with Woods; he was a VIP guest of Team USA at the 2016 Ryder Cup, and he attended Arnold Palmer's funeral shortly before the Cup.

On November 7, 2016, Rucker told ESPN that he had become a partner in MGC Sports, a sports agency that currently represents golfers (among them Steve Stricker and Kenny Perry), football players, and coaches. He added that he was planning to reduce his performance commitments from 100 dates per year to about 30, and that he thought that his experience in the entertainment business would be an asset to potential clients. Rucker will be able to work without restrictions for golfers, but because he is not registered with the NFL players' union, he initially will only be able to meet with NFL players under very limited circumstances.

For the Undercover Boss series episode "Celebrity Undercover Boss: Darius Rucker" which premiered May 12, 2017, Rucker disguised himself as a 62 year old music teacher, ran an open mic night and worked as a roadie.

Philanthropy and impact

Rucker has regularly worked with charities that support sick and underprivileged children, via benefit concerts, volunteering, the PGA The First Tee Program, and the Hootie & The Blowfish Foundation which has raised nearly $4.5 million to provide funding to public education systems throughout South Carolina.

He serves as a board member of the MUSC Children's Hospital in Charleston, SC. where his mother worked for over 30 years from the time Rucker was a child, and has helped fundraise millions of dollars to help build a new hospital.

He also made a commitment to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital after touring the facility in 2008. Since then, Rucker has spearheaded an annual event focused on amazing music, memorable collaborations and heartfelt stories resulting in over $1.6M raised for St. Jude's to date.

#05/13

[claudia1829things]

"JEZEBEL" (1938) Review

"JEZEBEL" (1938) Review Following the release of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, "Gone With the Wind", some Hollywood studios scrambled to find a way to cash in on its success. Producer David O. Selznick managed to purchase the film rights to Mitchell's novel. However, Warner Brothers Studios decided to do its own Southern melodrama called "JEZEBEL". 

Directed by William Wyler, "JEZEBEL" starred Bette Davis in the title role as a headstrong New Orleans belle named Julie Marsden in the early 1850s. Julie's vanity and willful nature leads her to a series of actions, culminating in the loss of the man she loves, a banker named Preston "Pres" Dillard. The movie begins with Julie and Preston engaged and the former demanding the full attention of the latter. When Pres refuses to drop his work and accompany her on a shopping expedition for the upcoming Olympus Ball, Julie decides to retaliate by ordering a red dress (in New Orleans society, virgins wear white). Although Pres accompanies Julie to the ball and dances with her, he eventually has enough of her temperamental and foolhardy behavior and breaks off their engagement. Then he leaves New Orleans to spend some time up North in New York City. Julie eventually realizes she had made a major blunder and spends a year grieving over her broken engagement. However, she becomes determined to mend fences with him, when he returns to New Orleans. But their reunion proves to be bittersweet, due to Pres' new companion - his bride - and the potential danger of a yellow fever pandemic within the city. The road to the 1938 movie began with playwright Owen Davis Jr., whose play of the same title made its Broadway debut in December 1933. Starring Miriam Hopkins, the play only ran on Broadway for over a month before it eventually flopped. Someone at Warner Brothers must have seen some kind of potential in this Southern melodrama for the studio had purchased the play back in 1937. Rumor has it that the studio had specifically purchased it for Bette Davis as compensation for her failure to win the part of Scarlett O'Hara for David O. Selznick's film adaptation of Mitchell's novel. The truth is that Selznick had yet to consider his leading lady for the 1939 film back in 1937. I think Warner Brothers saw the story provided a juicy role for Davis and purchased it. Miriam Hopkins, who had starred in the 1933 play, had hoped to be cast in the coveted role. Needless to say, she was very disappointed when Wallis informed her that he had only "considered her" for the role. Warner Brothers had originally cast Jeffrey Lynn for the role of Julie's true love, banker Preston Dillard. However, the producers of a play he was appearing in refused to release him and the studio eventually turned to 20th Century-Fox star Henry Fonda as a last minute replacement. As for the film's director, Wallis and studio chief Jack Warner's first choice as director was Edmund Goulding (who had directed "GRAND HOTEL"), who was eventually dropped. Next, they approached Michael Curtiz (future "CASABLANCA" director), who dropped out at the last moment. They finally hired William Wyler, who had a contract with Samuel Goldwyn at the time. There have been many comparisons between "JEZEBEL" and the 1939 movie, "GONE WITH THE WIND". Considering the settings and leading female roles for both films, I could see why. But this is about my opinion of "JEZEBEL". The 1938 movie is not perfect. Since the film is set in the Antebellum South, naturally it would feature characters that are African-American slaves. With the exception of two characters, the majority of them are portrayed in the usual "happy slaves" literary trope that has marred a good number of Old Hollywood films set during the 19th century. You know . . . infantilizing the black characters. One scene featuring Julie's maid, Zette, enthusiastically accepting Julie's infamous red gown as a present. Now, any maid worth her salt would recognize the gown as trash. A black maidfrom the 1939 comedy, "DAY TIME WIFE", certainly regarded a cheap rabbit fur as trash and contemptuously rejected it as a throwaway present. But this wince-inducing portrayal of blacks in "JEZEBEL" seemed to be at its zenith in one particular scene that featured the Halcyon slaves greeting Julie's guests upon their arrival at her plantation . . . with cheers. Mind you, I have seen worse in the 1957 movie, "BAND OF ANGELS". Another major scene that I found equally wince-inducing featured Julie and a group of young slaves surrounding her, while they sing "Raise a Ruckus" to her guests. Yikes. I find ironic that a film like "GONE WITH THE WIND", which was equally guilty of its cliched portrayal of African-Americans, managed to feature at least three or four memorable black characters. I cannot say the same for "JEZEBEL", despite having the likes of Eddie Anderson (who was also in the 1939 Best Picture winner) and Theresa Harris in its cast. William Wyler redeemed himself, I am happy to say, in his 1956 movie, "FRIENDLY PERSUASION". Ironically, a good number of the white minor characters - namely men - seemed to be stuck in some kind of "Southern gentlemen" cliché from stories set in the Old South. You know the type - he wears a wide planter's hat, while either holding a glass of booze, a cigar or both; while discussing duels or putting down Yankees. This was especially apparent in one of the film's first scenes at a saloon, inside the famous St. Louis Hotel. There is also one scene, earlier in the film, that left me scratching my head. It featured Preston Dillard at his bank's board meeting, discussing the possibility of constructing rail lines through New Orleans and throughout Louisiana. I realize that the other board members' negative reaction to Pres' support for the railroad was suppose to be a sign of the South's backwardness and unwillingness to accept the advancement of technology. But I found this hard to accept. The movie began in 1852. During this period, the state of Louisiana was already expanding the railroad throughout the state. Nor was the South adverse to accept technological advances, as long as its elite profit from it. If the region - especially the Mississippi Valley - was willing to use steamboats to ship their cotton and sugar to the North, why not railroads? One mode of transportation was just as good as the other. And Southern planters certainly had no qualms in using Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin to become the number one producer and exporter of cotton in the first place. So, this scene seemed a bit unreal to me from a historical point-of-view. I have two other problems with "JEZEBEL" that I consider aesthetic. One of those problems featured the film's production designs, supervised by Robert Fellows. I had no problems with the production designs for New Orleans' French Quarter. I had a big problem with the production designs for Julie Marsden's plantation, Halcyon. At least the exterior designs. In the scene that featured the arrival of Julie's guests, Halcyon's front lawn and the exterior designs for the house resembled a large house in a Southern suburb, instead of a plantation house. I did not expect Halcyon's exteriors to resemble some clichéd Southern manor. But it seemed quite clear to me that Fellows, along with art director Robert M. Haas and the film's art department did not put much thought in the plantation's exterior design. Quite frankly, it almost resembled a facade constructed in front of a matte painting, on the Warner Brothers back lot. I certainly did not have a problem with most of Orry-Kelly's costumes for the film. But I had a problem with one in particular . . . namely the infamous Olympus Ball "red gown":

I realize that in the movie, the gown had been originally created for one of New Orleans' most infamous courtesans. And I did not have a problem with the gown's full skirt, which accurately reflected the movie's early 1850s setting. But that bodice . . . seriously? A strapless ballgown in 1852? I do not care if the gown was originally created for a prostitute. No such ballgown existed in the 1850s. The gown's bodice struck me as pure late 1930s. The ballgown is practically schizophrenic as far as historical accuracy is concerned. And I am surprised that so many film critics and movie fans have failed to realize this. Surprisingly, there is a good deal to admire in "JEZEBEL" . . . actually a lot. Many critics have compared it unfavorably to "GONE WITH THE WIND", due to the latter being a historical drama. Somewhat. Well, aside from its use of the New Orleans 1853 Yellow Fever Epidemic and the U.S. sectional conflict of the antebellum period in its narrative, "JEZEBEL" is not what I would describe as a historical drama. Which is why I find the movie's comparison to "GONE WITH THE WIND" rather questionable. Besides, the movie is basically a character study of one Julie Marsden, an orphaned Louisiana belle who also happened to be the owner of a plantation called Halcyon. Screenwriters Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel and John Huston structured the film's narrative as a three-act play - which is not surprising considering its literary source. All three segments of the film - "The Dress", "The Duel" and "The Fever" - served as different stages in Julie's tenuous relationship with Pres Dillard. But the best I can say about "JEZEBEL" it is a well-balanced mixture of character study, melodrama and a touch of historical drama for good measure. I can honestly say that "JEZEBEL" was not some uneven mixture of genres. There is something about "JEZEBEL" that I found rather odd. On one level, the whole movie seemed to be about how a willful and over-privileged woman finally received her comeuppance after causing so much chaos and even tragedy in the lives of those close to her. Yes, Julie Marsden was a selfish and rather childish woman who believed the worlds of others - especially Pres Dillard - should revolve around her. After all, it was her petulant reaction to Pres' refusal to accompany her on a shopping trip that set their break-up in motion. But I must admit that I was surprised to find some aspect of the film's narrative that questioned the 19th society that demanded Julie remained in her place, as a woman. Yes, she was selfish and childish. But she possessed a bold personality that seemed unfit for conforming to society's rigid rules. In a way, I could not help but wonder if some of her attempts to do what she wanted had sprung from some kind of frustration at being expected to remaining below the glass ceiling. Surprisingly, one example was the character Preston Dillard. As I had pointed out earlier, "JEZEBEL" featured the usual "happy slaves" clichés in its portrayal of the African-American characters. But it also used the Pres Dillard character to criticize the South's dependence on slavery. Pres denied more than once of being a follower of abolition. Yet, his criticism of slave labor, his respectful attitude toward slaves like Uncle Cato, his decision to live in the North and his support for technological advances in transportation and an improved sanitation system for New Orleans seemed to hint otherwise. A better example of the film's criticism of 19th century Southern society came from the film's second act, "The Duel". Yes, I felt contempt at Julie's efforts to humiliate Pres and his new bride Amy by manipulating her former beau, the hot-headed Buck Cantrell, into goading them. And I also felt disgusted when her manipulations led to a duel between Buck and Pres' younger brother, Theodore "Ted" Dillard. This proved to be especially ironic due to the close friendship between the pair. But what really disgusted me was not only did Julie eventually realized she had went too far and tried to prevent the duel; both Buck and Ted knew that Julie had manipulated them into that duel and her reason behind her action. Yet, those two morons insisted upon carrying out the duel. For face. I was especially disgusted with Buck and his blind adherence to this "gentleman's honor" nonsense. Buck and Ted's insistence upon carrying out their duel, despite knowledge of Julie's role in it, seemed to be a harsh criticism of a society that encouraged such duels. This is pretty rare for a Hollywood film made before the 1960s, let alone the 1950s. Despite a few quibbles, I was very impressed by the production and art designs for "JEZEBEL". Red ballgown aside, I thought Orry-Kelly did an exceptional job with the film's costumes. The Australian-born designer's costumes came very close to reflecting the fashions of the early 1850s - not only for women, but also for men. I was also impressed by the production and art designs that also did an excellent job of reflecting the film's setting - 1852-1853 Louisiana. The exterior designs for the Halcyon plantation may have been a bust, but I cannot say for the other exterior and set designs. This was certainly the case for the exterior designs for the New Orleans French Quarter scenes, as seen in the image below:

I simply found them exquisite. This artistry was on full display, thanks to the movie's long opening shot that introduced movie fans to New Orleans circa 1852. And we can thank both director William Wyler and cinematographer Ernest Haller for this memorable scene. And this was just the first. Another creative sequence from Wyler, Haller and the film's art designers featured a montage that introduced movie audiences to the film's third and final act - the Yellow Jack epidemic. I did not have a problem with the film's performances. In general. But as I had stated earlier, I found some of the performances for minor white planters and black slaves a bit over-the-top. One of those over-the-top performances came from Donald Crisp, of all people, who portrayed Dr. Livingstone - Pres Dillard's mentor. I thought Crisp took the whole Southern gentleman cliche just a bit too far. I was also a bit troubled by Theresa Harris' portrayal of Julie's maid, Zette. It seemed a bit too cliched in my opinion and I wish that William Wyler had reined in her performance a bit. Harris had better luck portraying another maid in the 1941 period comedy, "THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS". There was one more performance that failed to impress me and it came from Margaret Lindsay, who portrayed Pres' Northern-born wife Amy. How can I say this? Would one consider a limp and underwhelming character like Amy as another literary trope? At least for a story set in the mid-19th century? I could say that Lindsay was a bad actress, but I find this hard to accept, considering her performance in the 1940 melodrama, "THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES". Fortunately for "JEZEBEL", it did feature some very solid performances. Eddie Anderson gave a pretty solid performance as Julie's competent stable hand, Gros Bat. Matthew "Stymie" Beard struck me as equally solid as his young son, Ti Bat. Spring Byington was amusing as Julie's slightly snobbish neighbor, Mrs. Kendrick. Margaret Early gave a lively performance as the former's daughter, Stephanie Kendrick. Henry O'Neill was pretty solid as one of Julie's guardians, General Theopholus Bogardus. But I did not find him particularly memorable. Lew Payton gave excellent support as Julie's major domo, Uncle Cato. And Richard Cromwell really impressed me as Pres' younger brother, the intelligent yet temperamental Ted Dillard. But there were two supporting performances that truly impressed me. One came from George Brent, who I believe gave one of the best performances of his screen career, as the uber-macho Buck Cantrell. One, his grasp of a Lower South accent really impressed me. The actor also managed to convey the glimmer of Buck's intelligence behind his masculine posturing - something that made the rupture of his friendship with Ted Dillard rather tragic. The other impressive supporting performance came from Fay Bainter, who portrayed Julie's other guardian, Aunt Belle Massey. Bainter did such an excellent job of conveying the character's tiring efforts to make Julie conform to society's rules, especially those for women. Bainter made Belle Massey's struggles so apparent that when Julie's manipulations led to the Buck-Ted duel, Bainter gave that infamous "Jezebel" speech with a superb performance that may have sealed her win as Best Supporting Actress Oscar. I have read a good number of reviews for "JEZEBEL". And for the likes of me, I cannot understand why Henry Fonda's portrayal of banker Preston "Pres" Dillard was dismissed as either wooden or weak. I find the contempt toward the character rather mind-boggling. I even came across an article in which the author could not decide which male character was this film's Rhett Butler - Pres Dillard or Buck Cantrell. Was that why so many had dismissed Fonda's character? Because he was no Rhett Butler? I hope not. Personally, I found Fonda's performance spot on as the intelligent, yet beleaguered Pres, who finally decided that he had enough of Julie's antics. Fonda's Pres Dillard wooden? I beg to differ. Fonda did an excellent job of conveying Pres' emotions throughout the film - whether it was his initial passion for Julie, a combination of confusion and exasperation in dealing with Julie's childishness, his determination to save New Orleans' citizens in dealing with a potential pandemic, any lingering physical attraction he might feel for Julie following his marriage, and his anger. Like his younger brother, Pres had a temper, but he controlled it through a very intimidating stare that left others unwilling to confront or challenge him. It is a pity that he was never acknowledged with an acting nomination for his performance. Bette Davis, on the other hand, more than deserved her Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the spoiled Julie Marsden. What can I say? She was superb. She would probably be the first to thank William Wyler for his direction of her performance. And perhaps the director deserved some credit for guiding her performance and eliminating some of her bad habits of exaggerated behavior. But Wyler could only do so much. The talent was there - within Davis. She recognized that she had a first-rate director on her hands and did everything she could to give a stellar performance as the bold, yet childish and vindictive Julie. And Davis knocked it out of the ballpark with some of the most subtle and skillful acting of her career. I realized that I have not discussed the movie's most famous scene - namely the Olympus Ball. I can see why so many critics and moviegoers were impressed by it. The film's production manager had scheduled one day for Wyler to shoot it. The director shot it in five days and created a cinematic masterpiece. Each moment was exquisitely detailed - from Julie and Pres' arrival, the other guests' reaction to Julie's dress, Pres' insistence that the band begin playing, the dance, the manner in which the other guests slowly pulled away from couple . . . I could go on. But what really made this scene for me were Davis and Fonda's performances. Between Davis expressing Julie's growing unease and humiliation and Fonda conveying Pres' intimidation of everyone in the room, it was easy for me to see why these two, along with Wyler, became Hollywood icons. I cannot deny that "JEZEBEL" had its problems - including some of its production designs, one particular costume, and the inclusion of Southern character stereotypes - especially African-American slaves. But . . . I cannot deny that when push comes to shove, "JEZEBEL" is a well-written melodrama and a character study of a complex woman. The movie greatly benefited from a pretty damn good script written by Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel and John Huston; an excellent cast led by Oscar winner Bette Davis and Henry Fonda; and superb direction from the likes of William Wyler. I never understood why "JEZEBEL" had to exist within the shadows of "GONE WITH THE WIND". It is more than capable of standing on its own merits.

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