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thegunlady · 2 years

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Movies I watched in 2021:

Was this a largely pointless exercise that reveals too much about the painfully boring inner machinations of my mind? Probably! But I have to do something with my film degree, so please enjoy this list of the 70 movies I saw this year, complete with IMDB links and my own deeply insightful (and spoiler-free) commentary:

January:

The DUFF (2016) - This movie is so dumb but it brings me such joy and I’ve seen it a bunch of times because Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell are so obviously having a great time and enjoying the hell out of each other.

Austenland (2007) - Do the plot details of this movie make any sense? Certainly not. Do I care? Also certainly not. It’s the very epitome of genre-savvy, Austen-inspired, parodic delight and I watch it regularly.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - I have not sat and watched these movies in full since they came out, and I also decided I wanted to watch a bit more Seminal Classic Cinema this year (in theory) so here we are. It was a great decision, actually. I expected to appreciate it, but be a little bored/confused because complicated high fantasy is not my bag and neither is a 3-hour movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it! It was much easier to follow and more relationship-driven than I remembered.

February:

Leap Year (2010) - I have a vague memory of disliking this movie, but it’s been so long and tumblr seems to really like it so I thought I’d try again. Turns out my memory was Correct and I did not like it, which is a bummer because this movie has a lot of really good things going on! There’s a version of the same script that could have been a classic IMHO, we just didn’t quite get there.

In Time (2011) - I saw this in theaters and haven’t even thought about it since then so I’m not sure what triggered it, but I just had the sudden urge to watch this movie. So much so I literally paid 4 of my actual, personal dollars to rent it. And listen, this movie was critically eviscerated for being terrible and I get it. But I still think the designing principle is unique and interesting—and you guys know I’m a sucker for anything aesthetically ultra-stylized. This would be GREAT updated as a limited series.

Booksmart (2019) - A delightfully conceived teen comedy with stellar performances top to bottom. A very few brief moments slightly more gross and slapstick-y than I personally find entertaining, but good work all around.

March:

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) - A very short and quirky romp that’s a little dated but I enjoyed very much. Plus time travel! (sort of) which is a personal favorite. I really appreciate the emotional through-line of this one.

Falling Inn Love (2019) - I can’t explain what made me randomly hit this on Netflix. It’s absolutely every single thing you think it is and nothing more but I had fun.

The Illusionist (2006) - I watched this so many times in high school, and I saw a random gifset of it recently and wanted to know if it held up. Honestly, it kinda doesn’t. It’s a little cringe, as the kids say, and the VFX are...not that great. But I still love it?

April:

The Craft (1996) - Okay, don’t take away my tumblr cred but this was actually the first time I’ve seen this movie! I'm sure I would have loved it more had I seen it during my formative years, but nonetheless it is a vibe™ and deserves it’s high place in the lexicon. I am overcome with the desire to purchase black tights and burgundy lipstick.

Thunder Force (2021) - This one got a little gross and slapstick-y for me, especially the extremely weird and pointless romantic b-plot but I LOVE the premise of middle-aged lady superhero best friends being hilarious with each other.

The Stand-In (2020) - I can’t believe this movie slipped my notice all this time but we love a bonkers dark comedy with important themes about identity and two (2) Drew Barrymores!

The Dig (2021) - I really wanted to love this movie and I can appreciate it’s whole theme and aesthetic but it just did not do anything for me at all. I just watched it and I can barely remember it.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) - A classic! I’ve seen this one a few times and it’s aged...not super great, but weirdly well for what it is? It just cheers me to watch. And y’all know how much I like almost anything about time travel.

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) - A double feature!! Hmm, this was my first time seeing this one and it is...markedly less charming and evergreen than its predecessor. Barely even any time travel! The poor ladies are just beyond fridged. And I was bored. Also there was so much screaming. I did love the whole grim reaper thing, though.

Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020) - A triple feature!!! The first movie is still the best, and I’m not always the biggest fan of the years-later franchise continuation but this one was really fun! Also, I know it’s not the point, but I would have liked it if this movie was even more (or exclusively) about the daughters.

Dazed and Confused (1993) - Listen, I love ‘70s music and a loosely-structured cruising movie so I fully appreciate what made this film so special. But I am too old and too square to be watching 28-year-old stoner teen movies for the first time. That love and nostalgia just doesn’t really pull through over the slow, un-PC weirdness when you don’t have an existing relationship with the movie. I really enjoyed parts of it though.

Jumper (2008) - Probably because it’s so akin to the beats of my beloved time travel, I find the premise of this (admittedly kind of silly) movie to be rad and I’ve seen it several times. I’m still disappointed that they didn’t adapt the next book.

May:

One For the Money (2012) - I used to love these novels so I was STOKED that they finally started making movies. I’m still upset that this movie bombed and we didn’t get any more, because I think it’s extremely well-made and delightful, and it’s one of my go-to comfort movies. Is it not enough for Katherine Heigl to be endearingly vengeful, comically reckless, and surprisingly good at bounty hunting??

June:

The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) - Oh-ho-ho this one hit. I clicked it on a whim and discovered an unfortunately titled but endlessly endearing, slightly unconventional romance that got me right between the ribs. It’s dreamy and witty and mildly existential and quite affirming for me, personally. I can’t recommend it enough.

Corpse Bride (2005) - Another one of those classics-among-my-people-that-I’d-never-actually-seen. I ADORED the style, character design, and general concept but I am DISPLEASED with the ending. The mechanics of the world also make little sense and the movie is suspiciously short. Having read nothing else about it, I’m wondering if it did not go through fairly extensive cuts and rewrites. A shame. And perhaps worthy of being adapted again in some form?

After (2019) - It’s no secret that I LOVE bonkers melodramatic romances and will gladly watch and read even the worst ones. Also I needed something to put on while terraforming in Animal Crossing so I thought this would be perfect—and it worked out on that front I guess, but wow this movie is unwatchable. Even for me. In so many ways. It’s so bad.

After We Collided (2020) - OKAY FINE Netflix queued up the sequel and I let it because a.) I was not done terraforming and b.) I was so shocked the first movie did well enough to warrant the sequel (and apparently a three-quel??) that I had to see what it was about. Honestly, I still don’t really know or care what happened in either movie, but this one was slightly better than the first.

Luca (2021) - A most joyous and colorful adventure! I wish to visit Italy, and I wish for more Sea Monster Cinema (which is the name of my new pop punk band).

July:

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) - I may have watched most of this movie through my fingers in awkwardness but it was SUCH a delight in every way. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time. My only note is that I kinda wish they could have continued to be a poly couple but it’s fine, I get it.

Hysteria (2010) - A genius premise! This movie was so much fun and delightfully unique. The events happened really fast though I almost wish it was a series. Also a bit tonally unsure of itself I think, but joy was had and that’s really my main rubric for anything.

Suicide Squad (2016) - I almost didn’t add this to the list because I just threw it on in the background while working, but I did watch the whole thing. It’s perfectly enjoyable. Gosh I love Joel Kinnaman. Also Leto’s joker is /barf emoji thanks.

Home Again (2017) - What have I been doing since 2017 that I missed this movie entirely?!?!? It is SUCH a cute story and my heart is so unbelievably full!! More justice for middle-aged ladies! And more chad-like film-bro-style characters who are actually sweet and decent dudes!

Midnight Sun (2018) - Following in the trend of After from last month I’m going for the ridiculous teen romance melodramas again. This was your standard YA tearjerker fare if not worse, but I guess I picked an emotional day to watch it because I cried anyway.

Isi & Ossi (2020) - Absolutely chaotic fake dating shenanigans! I actually thought this was a series when I started watching it and I’m disappointed that it’s not because I would absolutely watch these characters do more things.

Lucky Number Slevin (2006) - Loved this! It was my first time seeing it and I knew very little about it even though I know it’s a cult classic. Maybe a tad too much Old Dudes Talking but still a blast. Lucy Liu really makes the whole thing.

The Twilight Saga (2008-2012) - Yes, all 5 movies. I think we can agree they don’t need individual entries. These all dropped on Netflix while I was trapped in my brother’s disgusting apartment after agreeing against my better judgement to dog-sit his (blameless, still beloved) demon corgi for a week, so it was the perfect self-indulgent movie marathon. The first movie is objectively the best but I think New Moon is my favorite? Eclipse is definitely better than New Moon but IMHO it’s just kinda there. And the Breaking Dawn movies are so goddamn weird.

The Kissing Booth (2018) - I’m really outing myself with this whole list re: secretly enjoying ridiculous teen movies. This is definitely that, but it’s so cheery and rote that it’s a great comfort watch.

Ever After (1998) - A classic in every sense of the word! I can’t resist a Cinderella retelling and this one is easily top 3 of all time. The earnest romance! The French countryside! Anjelica Huston!

August:

Jolt (2021) - This movie is purely capitalizing on the success of Atomic Blonde with almost none of the artistry or gravitas, but it’s also purely about Kate Beckinsale wearing great outfits and wrecking many buildings and dudes under neon lights and I am not opposed to this.

Freaky (2020) - Clearly someone in a pitch meeting said “what if Freaky Friday, but a serial killer and his would-be victim instead of a mother and daughter”— and they had a point. I would have liked some more interaction between the two of them and also I’m not really sure what the killer’s goal or motivation was at any point but I still had fun. Also I was engrossed in trying to paint a lil strawberry with my new watercolors for most of this movie so I might not be the best judge.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - Ok in fairness, James Gunn brought some much-needed Guardians of the Galaxy flair to the whole show and I appreciate that. I am however NOT remotely okay with the death of my beloved [REDACTED], and this movie in general was. Very bizarre.

Jackie & Ryan (2014) - This movie was pretty slow and not super well-structured, but it was sweet and simple with lovely scenery and Ben Barnes singing country music. Also movie endings in general I find are the weakest part of them but I think it was the strongest part of this one. It’s been a while since I loved the way a movie ended.

Fantastic Fungi (2019) - So I thought this was going to be more of a nerdy sci-comm thing about how fungus works, and it sort of is, but it’s also mostly for aesthetic and entertainment purposes, and is very pro-psychedelics. Which is fine! I confess I am a bit skeptical of some of the science and experts they have, but it was still cool! Mushrooms are the best!

Tenet (2020) - You guys know I love stuff that messes with time and time travel and this movie did a lot of cool things but it was also Very Serious and Very Long and the story engine felt pretty flimsy to me. I wanted to see way more of Neil and the Protagonist interacting and doing emotionally-grounded character things, and way less of extras running around in gas masks and wide shots of helicopters. I should really watch it a second time to get a better grip on it but I’m not sure I care enough to do it.

Roman Holiday (1953) - A charming and fashionable romp that changed cinema forever! Despite myself, I’d never actually seen it from credits to credits and I’m very glad to add it to my repertoire. Also I intend to wear far more swishy skirts and Gibson rolls.

September:

Bo Burnham: Inside (2021) - I guess this isn’t a movie per se, but I make the rules here. I visited my best friend for my 30th birthday and she couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen this and she insisted we watch it immediately and she was right. Bo Burnham gets it. I felt things. I already downloaded the album. Oof.

Cruella (2021) - This movie is preposterous but honestly about 30% less preposterous than I expected. I actually thought the punk rock ‘70s backdrop was kind of a cool idea. It was very long and very silly but I am always willing to watch charismatic leading ladies wearing bonkers outfits and being cinematically unhinged™.

Buffaloed (2019) - Not only is this a clever and poignant premise for a movie, highlighting the insanity of American household debt, but I just got the vibe that the whole cast really got along and was having a blast getting to do so much screaming, scuffling, and dramatically slamming phones down.

Savages (2012) - Hoo boy. This movie is painfully 2012 and super weirdly paced, but for the first half I thought I would like it anyway because it’s a pretty slick and compelling concept with a fun cast. But it’s way too long, and the second half goes bizarrely off the rails for no reason, and the pointless double ending (?) does nothing to resolve the themes the movie set up and it was just a vaguely unpleasant time all around.

Guys and Dolls (1955) - Despite myself, I just love the frothy midcentury musicals. Not to mention, my dad used to sing songs from this one to me all the time when I was a kid so it’s got a special place in my heart. I haven’t watched the movie in a long time though and I was struck anew by 1. how cool the sets are, and 2. how entirely delightful the chemistry is between Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons.

Love and Monsters (2020) - A very gross bug movie but very worth it. I love a romantic adventure quest! I love an underdog story! I love an actual dog! I love Dylan O’Brien!

October:

Crimson Peak (2015) - Starting October off strong! Although a spooky and highly-aesthetic fairytale is a good idea anytime of year. I’ve seen this movie a few times and tbh the story doesn’t hold up to too much scrutiny but who cares! Ghosts! Incredible gowns! Crumbling mansions! Blood red snow! It’s got everything.

A Little Chaos (2014) - Having watched them mere hours apart, it strikes me that this movie is kind of....reverse Crimson Peak? It’s incredibly bright and polished and lush with endless pastels and flowers and golden sunlight, featuring a common woman who is lovingly accepted by high society. It was honestly just okay but I liked it!

Free Guy (2021) - Oh man did I not expect the Ryan Reynolds video game action comedy to have such heart! I just wanted to throw on something goofy, but this movie had my full attention. It’s so sweet and clever and so much more than I hoped for.

Paradise Hills (2019) - This was the flowered, color-soaked, half-futuristic and half-victorian dreamy and deranged horror thriller I never knew I needed. Is it kinda ridiculous? Sure. Does it leave so many questions entirely unanswered? Oh yeah. But it’s cool as hell.

The Aeronauts (2019) - I saw this when it first came out, and it is, surprisingly, just as spellbinding on a second viewing. This movie plays like the most beautiful old time-y storybook, complete with ball gowns and brass telescopes, but it’s also an IMPOSSIBLY HARROWING hot air balloon adventure. I love it so much.

Love and Other Drugs (2010) - Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway are both great and thus fun as a banter-y couple, but this movie takes the bizarre stance of a romantic dramedy with the designing principle of...pharmaceutical sales? It also takes place in 1996 literally just so the invention of Viagra can be part of the plot but doesn’t really do anything with it story-wise that couldn’t easily be done a million other ways, or do anything else to make the movie look and feel ‘90s (I know it’s based on a book but the book is from 2005). Relatedly, some of the 2010 humor is a pretty darn yikes.

Casablanca (1942) - I swore I was gonna watch more Important Classic Films this year and I haven’t really been doing it so here we are. It’s no surprise that this movie is a staple of Hollywood history because it is incredibly stylish and well-observed.

Twister (1996) - Frick I love this movie. It’s another shining star in the firmament of movies with a lived-in, nuanced, and delightful ensemble working together against a cool ‘monster’ of sorts, with the monster being fun and aesthetic but sufficiently background to the character stuff at play. An unbeatable dynamic also found in movies like The Mummy and Ocean’s Eleven.

Happy Death Day (2017) - This might be my favorite horror movie ever. It’s so clever and funny and well-constructed. It’s Scream updated for the new generation. And of course, I am always on board for a time loop.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) - Have I been calling myself an Edgar Wright fan all these years even though I’d never seen this movie? Yes. But I have rectified the situation. This movie is so funny and I’m never over the way almost every bit happens twice, in a pre- and post- zombie context. It’s brilliant.

November:

Fool’s Gold (2008) - I saw a some random gifs of this and inexplicably decided on a whim that I was going to watch it immediately. It’s surprisingly good for being a mid-2000s romcom. More romcoms should be adventure-based.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - Once again I attempt to add Classic Cinema™ to the list and once again, despite my literal film degree (and having seen this movie before), I don’t have that much to say about it. This movie is striking to look at and a huge part of movie history and I have total appreciation for that. But hanging out in 2021, it’s just not super fun to watch.

All Too Well: The Short Film (2021) - This is my first short film this year, and I’ve decided that they count for this list - even if this one is more of a music video, but whatever. Loved it. I was quite struck by the awareness that I, like Taylor Swift, was Sadie Sink’s age when the song was first released, and am Dylan O’Brien’s age now. The video was poetic and beautiful and painful and it’s just an amazing song. 10/10.

Contact (1997) - You guys know I love alien shit so I truly can’t believe one of the most famous alien movies of all time was barely even in my cultural awareness. My total loss, too, because this movie rules so hard.

Mr. Right (2016) - A forever favorite! This movie is so colorful and hilarious and romantic and weird and I never get sick of it. More surprisingly wholesome action comedies about feral paleontologists and their reverse-hitman boyfriends!

Chaos Walking (2021) - This movie wasn’t really good enough for it’s Dark Seriousness or clever enough for it’s Jokiness (which was really just the same joke over and over). It set up a bunch of interesting things that never paid off, and threw in a bunch of random stuff that didn’t really matter. It’s a decent concept and an impressive cast, but we are not in the strand of the multiverse where this movie worked.

December:

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) - I saw someone on twitter recently say that Tobey Maguire was a mediocre spider-man in a franchise that really understood and loved spider-man. And that Garfield was a truly spectacular, god-tier spider-man in a franchise that sorta-kinda understood spider-man. Where Tom Holland is a close second to Garfield, in a franchise that doesn’t really give a shit about spider-man OG themes and lore at all. Watching this movie for the first time in several years, I must concur. Story-wise it’s perfectly fine but nothing special - except that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are absolutely flawless in their roles.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) - Oof That Part™ of this movie is still a soulcrusher. This movie also has markedly less fun and interesting side characters than the first movie. But still a cool watch and also this version of peter x gwen 4ever!

The Hating Game (2021) - Ok, technically I watched this after midnight on New Year’s Eve, but I didn’t want to end my night on the minor bummer that was TASM2, or end up with 69 total movies. I just couldn’t. This is your fault, internet! But anyway! The Hating Game is one of my absolute favorite romance novels of all time, and I’ve always thought it could make a great movie (which I actually DON’T think about most romance novels), and survey says it was: so good! It’s a really faithful adaptation and I actually think a lot of the changes they made are even an improvement. Highly recommend. And Happy New Year!

#movies by year

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silent-stalker · 3 years

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ѩ - Are there any characters that you love, but simply cannot role play?☢ - When was the last time you went to the cinema? What movie did you watch?

//meme

ѩ - Are there any characters that you love, but simply cannot role play?

Literally any Autobot, ever, unless they're the SG version. I just...I can't do "nice just to be nice" characters. To be more specific - First Aid, Bulkhead, Prowl (though I do rp his SG version), thought about dabbling in writing Longarm Prime/Shockwave from animated, but....went with tfp Shockwave because well, I'm kinda a sucker for broken 'bots with more trauma than their frames can hold (and I'm steadfast on the idea that EVERY Decepticon deserves to figure their shit out and be better, but that's more because I've always been more on their side 👀)

....I also would love to write Sunstreaker, and Bob by extension, but I also feel like I'd fuck up his character because I've never been able to read all of the comics, and also I simply do not vibe with Sideswipe. And I'd feel obligated to write him too if I did a Sunny blog.

(I just........did not like Sideswipe's schtick ok. I don't even know why considering half my other muses are similar in a way, I think I've read too many fics that paint him in a weirdly villainous light or place it in a setting where he's just dead.)

☢ - When was the last time you went to the cinema? What movie did you watch?

Ah, that would have been sometime in I believe.....February, 2020, with my then-partner on our I think??? second or third date? We went and saw the invisible man or whatever it was called. It was stupid and we mocked it the entire movie. Didn't make any sense whatsoever.

Anyway, they ghosted me a bit after 2021 started, so, wasted my last trip to the cinema on them.

Haven't gone out socially since then between COVID and finding work. I've never really liked the theater anyway, I prefer dicking around downtown and going to small shops and finding things like silly socks, mints in the shape of, ahem, things, and books dedicated to making puns out of every single word in the English dictionary.

Last time I went, I found zombie tarot cards that I use on occasion.

#ooc #polyhexianchicken #I love downtown olympia tbh but I never have anyone to go with that isn't family #and its not the safest area to go alone #esp not when you're a small afab person who looks easily mugged #though I do plan on taking my sister downtown for her birthday so #that'll be interesting #munday

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popwasabi · 3 years

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The monster of “Shin Gojira” is government incompetence

I know it doesn’t feel like it but we’re just three months away from March again.

It’s been almost a year now since the beginning of quarantine, when the world had to be shut down due to the escalating nature of COVID-19 and things have…largely only gotten worse.

In the US specifically.

On March 13th we had 2,204 cases of COVID in the United States and a total of 49 deaths. Today we have 14 MILLION cases across the country and currently 274,000 plus deaths. To put that in perspective we have nearly as many cases of COVID in the US alone as there are people in the cities of Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago combined and we’re experiencing a 9/11’s worth of new deaths every day.

This is not even to mention the economic strain the pandemic has put the country under. Lockdowns and quarantines, without supplemental income to bolster those losses have led to closures, massive unemployment, people running deeply behind on their rent, and crushing debt for many if not buried in medical costs from being infected. Common people are trying their best to navigate a year unlike any other and are largely floundering with little to no help in sight.

And all this can be chalked up to one culprit in particular: our government’s incompetence.

(Remember all that fuss made about “breadlines” in the global south back during grade school?)

From the beginning when this virus first reared its ugly head in 2020, not enough was done to prepare the country for what would come next. Call it hubris or American Exceptionalism, but our government just was not taking it seriously as the President boasted cases would just “disappear” after late February and our leaders largely pretended it either was a) not a big deal or b) would never be a big deal.

Nearly nine months later senate Republicans still think another massive bailout for the nation’s richest coporations is the way to go, all while giving us $1,200 band aid for our troubles.

And make no mistake, the Dems have hardly been guiltless during this crisis themselves.

(“It’s a biiiiiig club, and you ain’t in it...” ~ George Carlin.)

As we see other countries largely find ways to navigate around COVID and create a safe environment where some normalcy can be maintained it becomes increasingly clear to anyone who isn’t a psychopath that the US has grossly mishandled this threat from the beginning. It’s a slow moving disaster that could’ve largely been avoided if our leaders gave a damn and it feels increasingly like we’re all just going to get the virus at some point because there’s virtually no structural safeguard in place to protect us.

This lamenting of the futility of our government’s response to crises is the central theme of one of my favorite monster movies of all-time; “Shin Gojira” (or “Godzilla Resurgence” for American audiences). Directed by “Neon Genesis Evangelion’s” own Hideaki Anno, “Shin Gojira” tells a similar story of a literal slow-moving disaster in the form of titular atomic fire lizard rising from the Pacific Ocean to decimate Japan once again and how the government poorly responds to it.

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For most Americans, Godzilla is something of a joke as a movie character.

He’s Japan’s version of King Kong, a great fire-breathing reptile for thousands of random Japanese to scream “AAAAHHH! GODZILLA!!!” at while a man in a rubber suit knocks down model buildings for two hours. For several decades, he was even a bit of a superhero for children; the good monster who fought bad monsters like King Ghidorah, Gigan, and Hedorah.

The newer American remakes by Legendary Studios have not done much to change this perception. In these films, Godzilla is again depicted as a “titan” for the people doing battle with the bad titans set with people in mo-cap suits duking it out in front of greenscreens that create elaborate cities for the monsters to stampede through.

It is just not that deep to most people and who could blame them? Godzilla is cheap popcorn escapism for most audiences and most of his films see him as such.

(“Wait you mean to tell me this isn’t serious theater??”)

But Godzilla has a much darker origin, however. 1954’s original “Gojira” isn’t some cheap monster flick; it’s an allegory for the atomic bomb and the terror it brought upon the people of Japan. At the time of its release the Japanese hadn’t really reckoned with what happened in WWII, it was a source of deep shame and horror and it broke the spirits of many back then. After an atomic bomb test accidentally radiated the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in 1954, director Ishiro Honda became inspired to create the King of the Monsters after Japan’s own government largely mishandled the fallout. The film was a huge hit and Japanese audiences were moved by the dark allegorical nature of the story.

With “Shin Gojira” Anno brings Godzilla back to this grimmer tone. He was inspired by the events of 2014’s Fukushima nuclear plant disaster and how the Japanese government once again failed to act in a major crisis. Through his 2016 film, Anno aimed to depict the slow moving nature of a developing disaster quite literally with the character of Godzilla and how a crisis can only get worse and worse if left largely unchecked by those tasked to protect us.

(Hardly Hideaki Anno’s first forray into movies about crises, of course, but that’ll be for another write-up. Stay tuned...)

Godzilla begins in “Shin Gojira” as a small, destructive, but ultimately killable lifeform as he appears in the waters off Tokyo Bay. His beady, soulless eyes, tadpole like form, oozing putrid toxic blood everywhere through his malformed gills are pretty gross and Anno directly references Fukushima as the beast creates a tidal wave as he makes his way toward land in the opening sequence.

Meanwhile as Godzilla causes horrific damage to the city in this small (comparatively to earlier films) but powerful form, the Japanese Government tries to put an end to it. But as they try to address the escalating nature of the problem, bureaucracy gets in the way at every turn. Through the use of fast cuts and dark humor, Anno creates his own “Dr. Strangelove” set of scenes as Japanese politicians scramble from one board room to another to weigh options in cold math against the very real people who are fleeing for their lives as they debate with one another. Anno, doesn’t go out of his way to depict anyone as explicitly the villain here, but he does make it very apparent that when government officials refuse to accept the reality of a crisis people die. In a scene that is played partially for laughs, that feels all too relevant and frankly on the nose now, the Prime Minister addresses Japan on TV by assuring the people that there is “no way” Godzilla can make landfall and everyone will be safe. Moments later he is interrupted on live TV as Godzilla has in fact made landfall.

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(Yea and he’s one ugly motherfucker in this movie too...)

Early in the film though, as Godzilla has done already immense damage in his adolescent form, Japan’s government has a chance to kill the monster once and for all by mobilizing the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF) a move, that if you are not familiar with Japanese politics, is rife with concerning optics. The moment comes where Japan’s government can pull the trigger and kill the threat once and for all but in another, darkly humorous, turn of events decide not to as some nearby citizens who could be caught in the crossfire become a hazard for the JSDF. Godzilla goes back into the sea from there and Japan is left to pick up the pieces.

In the early months of the COVID lockdown, things appeared to slowdown. From about April to June, those states that took the virus seriously at the start saw some plateauing of the daily cases. While hardly a victory, things at least appeared to be going in the right direction. Then inexplicably in July a bunch of states declared premature victory and began reopening back up in certain areas such as gyms, salons, and some restaurants. I wouldn’t say we had the virus on the ropes but we were trending generally in the right direction (though nothing was really being done about loss of employment and cancelling rent and evictions, of course…). So, in a moment when the government could’ve kept trying, mostly at least, to do the right thing they failed to keep going and pull the trigger.

And just like in the movie, COVID (ie: Godzilla) came back stronger and even worse than before.

(Again, just the ugliest motherfucker...)

After the JSDF failed to kill Godzilla in the opening act, the big guy returns later on in the movie having evolved into his more indestructible final form. Where the JSDF’s weapons may have had an effect before they find their tanks, helicopters, and other military hardware have no effect on Godzilla now. It is too late to stop what is now inevitable. Godzilla walks literally through it all, causing waves of destruction with each step and Japan’s government watches in horror as they lament their failure to stop him when they had the chance.

This failure comes to its ultimate head in the final moment of this sequence when Godzilla revs up his dorsal fins and unleashes his horrifying atomic breath. It’s more powerful than anything he has done previously and absolutely wastes Tokyo in a brilliant display of raw destruction that is honestly one of the best most terrifying sequences in Kaiju filmmaking ever.

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Godzilla is best used in cinema when he is a titan-sized walking metaphor for the destruction that happens when governments fail their people. Where the recent American Godzilla depicts him as a force of nature, like a walking hurricane, Ishiro Honda and Hideaki Anno see him more as a vengeful God coming to punish the wicked for their sins or, in the case of the government, their incompetence.

If COVID is a metaphor for anything this year, it is a microcosm for a wide range of problems that go unaddressed for too long by our leaders and only given notice when it’s far too late. Climate Change continues to get worse and worse each year as I am quite literally choking on ash as I type this due to yet another wildfire in the California area. The riots that erupted over the summer and continue to go on in response to the gross militaristic, overfunded, and racist structure of law enforcement in this country are the result of decades of not doing the right thing to curb the problem. The reason we are by far the worst equipped first world country to handle this crisis right now is quite literally due to years of gutting our social safety net, slashing our wages, and privatizing our health insurance.

Though there is a wide range of Japanese specific politics in the film, “Shin Gojira” is an unfortunately timeless film for people who have suffered from leaders who fail to act in moments like these. It shows what happens when our government drags its feet on transformative legislation and actual measures that can save lives. It criticizes our leaders for choosing to save themselves in the moment, with performative optics, over helping their own people. It argues that the results of bureaucratic red tape and bad politics will always end in disaster for its citizens. And most relevantly it states that governments have a duty to stop a crisis in its infancy before it’s too late.

“Shin Gojira” is a perfect monster film for the year of COVID and distressingly accurate to the way the US has mishandled this crisis from the beginning. Everyday, more and more people suffer and die because our leaders have failed to act in an unprecedented time, whether it’s the usual suspects who think any government social service is “cOmMuNiSm” or the feckless cowards who twiddle their thumbs and shrug each time a conservative tells them “no.”

We are far past the stage where this can be solved the easy way anymore and though there are still many proven ways to help the common people right now, it unfortunately feels like 2020’s Godzilla cannot be stopped…

Yea, things will totally get better in 2021, guys...

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apeironaxiomaton · 3 years

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2020 in review

tagged by @7rc --thank you, I love doing these kinds of things. and since i always write too much for them, the list is under the cut.

Top 5 movies I saw this year:

Emma. (last film I saw in a theater!)

Roman Holiday (hOW did it take me this long to watch this. how is roman holiday not more embedded as a fanfic au plot trope? a pure delight.)

The Host (went through all the Bong Joon Ho movies I could find after seeing Parasite and this one was my favorite. B-movie but make it art!)

Naussica of the Valley of the Wind / The Castle of Cagliostro / Porco Rosso (As of this year, I’ve watched every Miyazaki movie! all three of the ones I caught up with are great, and I can’t bring myself to choose between them.)

The Hateful Eight (we hooked our laptop up to our stereo to watch this after Liminal Election Week and it was so cathartic to live in a world with different, more visceral problems and to see people in lockdown for a different reason)

Top 5 TV shows I watched this year:

Halt and Catch Fire (I didn’t post much about this show at all when I watched it in June because it was so good that I watched all four seasons in one weekend. Stick with it thru the first season where it’s still just “diet 80s Mad Men and Lee Pace and MacKenzie Davis are there” and you’ll get a show that’s also a stunning mediation on how people you’ve grown apart from can still be part of you even after time changes both of you several times over and what it means to be able to forgive and be forgiven. you’ll feel like you lived a lifetime after finishing this.)

The Simpsons (first nine seasons! this is what I watched over the summer when packing up the apartment I’d lived in for four years)

What We Do in the Shadows (the first season was a great time, but somewhere around the Jackie Daytona episode was when I realized I was watching a masterclass sitcom)

Derry Girls (this was the perfect stress-barricading watch for the first week of quarantine! absolutely sublime.)

Simone Giertz’s youtube channel (loved the consistent experience of being able to watch a cute, talented woman follow the inscrutable exhortations of her soul, especially when those exhortations were things like “make a coffee table out of matches and then light those matches,” “build a robot deer I can hunt with a compound bow” and “build a scissor lamp.” her whole spirit of “yeah, fuck it, I’m just gonna manifest this thing because I want to” is infectious and brought a lot of joy back into covid summer)

Top 5 Songs:

Choose literally any Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters track and insert it here

Fleetwood Mac - “Angel”

Throwing Muses - “Not Too Soon”

Adrienne Lenker - “Anything”

Haim - “Don’t Wanna”

Top 5 Books I Read This Year:

The first four Earthsea books by Ursula Le Guin, with special mentions to The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu which both gave me the delightful “I am spending a week just living in this book and lapping it down as if it’s water” experience. #tenarhive.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I was going to describe this novel where pretentious students form a Greek cult and then murder the weak link of the squad as “fun” which seems a little incongruous but like...it’s a taut, perfectly paced thriller and I got to understand the Greek allusions in it and there was some delicious dramatic irony in how the book’s narrated. so yeah, i did have fun with it. it’s fun.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Baldwin can write epigrammatically and that’s how I first encountered him, as a quotation. But the reason he gets quoted is because he makes sure to never simplify his ideas or reduce the world to something less complex than it really is, even when he’s also going for pith and wit. And of course, like all writers, he improves all the more with context. As a Christian, I found his critique of how the church has let itself be used as a tool of white supremacy particularly lucid and helpful.

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. “Fictional oral history” is such a fun and breezy conceit for a novel and I tore through this one in a day during the first week of quarantine. a lovely little pastiche of some very familiar tropes if you happen to love the archetypes and mythology of popular music and/or are a boomer. this is what is responsible for the Fleetwood Mac.

Pyrrhus and Cineas by Simone de Beauvoir. I leaned on this little essay A LOT for the honors thesis I spent this year writing and reread it three times. It’s such a clever and intriguing discussion of why we bother doing anything at all or why we should choose one goal over another when it all just ends in us dying anyway, which are themes that really hit this year. The last paragraph of the first part always gives me chills.

Top 5 positive things that happened to me in 2020:

this was back in the part of 2020 that isn’t part of 2020, but I had one really fantastic 48 hours back in February where I helped host the speakers my job invited to a philosophy of religion conference, went to two really nice dinners, talked about so many interesting things, and then went on a impromptu outing with an art history major to see a pop art exhibit.

I participated in several different classes and reading groups, mostly organized by two of our professors, that gave me something to do over the year other than doomscroll and vegetate. I read Kafka, Nietzsche, Toni Morrison, Camus, Philip K. Dick, and Foucault for the first time over the course of these and it was a precious gift to have a built-in venue for social interaction when I was stuck in an apartment by myself.

I moved to an apartment in another city with one of my best friends to ride out quarantine together and that decision has been such a boon for my mental health in the back half of this year. finding the place was a nightmare, but it’s in a nice neighborhood that has a beautiful park and a sculpture garden in walking distance and it was wonderful to put up art and make the place our own. it was a refreshing and much needed change in a year when change was hard to come by.

I used online school to go home for thanksgiving for the first time since I moved away and then just stayed for the rest of the holidays. I usually only get three weeks down here on winter break, so it was nice to have a month and a half instead.

I graduated from college! and one silver lining of having no idea what 2021 is going to look like is that I’m forced to take at least a semester break to heal from the burn out instead of automatically starting the application cycle for grad school (although the “oh I have no idea what I’m going to do about grad school” is dawning on me and figuring that out will be a huge part of whatever happens next year).

i feel weird tagging people to think back about this last year now that we’re safely out of it? like don’t go back into 2020, that’s where the 2020 is! but, if you want to, i’m tagging @justthatspiffy @aahsoka @theraisincouncil @cosm-i @letsoulswander and you, if you also wanna revisit this kind of stuff.

#asks #2020

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keepingupwithlinmanuel · 4 years

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Best of the Decade: Lin-Manuel Miranda on making history with Hamilton

No 18th-century U.S. statesman had more sway on stage, more measure on music, or better brought the decade’s zeitgeist to its zenith than Treasury treasure Alexander Hamilton, the immigrant hero about whom Lin-Manuel Miranda spun a Pulitzer-winning, genre-defying, generation-defining Broadway musical that demanded, among other things, a renewed spotlight be shone on the theater as a cornerstone of American culture.

Since Hamilton’s February 2015 debut at the Public Theater and subsequent transfer to Broadway that summer, Miranda has had five years, three tours, half a dozen productions, hundreds of pre-show concerts, and a star-stacked mixtape to say just about everything he could about creating one of the biggest Broadway musicals of all time. And he’s heard everything you can hear about it, too.

“The thing that always trips people up is the incongruity of a hip-hop musical from this historical tone, which I always find surprising,” says Miranda, 39, whose previous Broadway successes included 2005’s Tony-winning In the Heights, 2012’s Bring It On the Musical, and the 2009 revival of West Side Story. “Because I live in musical-theater land, I know a disproportionate amount about Argentine politics because of Evita,” he continues. “I know about a failed revolution in France because of f—in’ Les Miz. I know what I know about the Constitution from 1776. To me it was not [out of place] to have a musical address historical subjects, and the musical forms I was applying to it were just musical forms I had been working hard to master. When I started reading [Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of Hamilton] I thought, ‘Well, this will be my Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ll do a cool concept album and hopefully someone will figure out how to stage it.’ That’s not how it ended up panning out, but all I was looking to was tradition. I’ve been consistently surprised by how groundbreaking it has been perceived as because I feel like I’m just one in a long tradition of people who have used musical theater on unconventional subjects.”

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With its 46-track album quick to become ubiquitous in every high school theater department across the country, a show about the might of the people swiftly belonged to the people. “Anecdotally, I heard from countless families who say Hamilton’s the only thing my family can agree on in the car — it’s not the teen’s music, it’s not the grown-up’s music, it’s sort of everyone’s music, and that has been thrilling,” Miranda beams. He’s heard tales of children with learning disabilities surprising their families by memorizing the words of the show, of kids with behavioral issues who found focus, relaxation, or solace in engaging with the libretto. “I think the tonnage of it is actually something that has its own legacy,” Miranda points out. “The fact that it’s literally so much show and so much music, it becomes this challenge for kids to wrap their minds around, the way my friends and I would memorize the Rent soundtrack and assign each other parts in high school a generation before. It’s done that for a new generation of kids, so that’s been really thrilling to see. More often than not, if someone is asking me for a signature or a selfie, it’s on behalf of their children. A lot of, ‘My kid would kill me if I didn’t ask for this photo.’”

And yet, it’s still tough to crack Miranda’s humility (and through the years, EW has tried). Miranda would sooner list 50 line-item debts he owes to Jay-Z and Les Miz and N.W.A. and ALW and Menken and Moreno and Method Man than praise his own impact or boast of the creative genius others have described him as having. Perhaps that’s why Hamilton’s crossover into the mainstream brought him along with it, into a stimulating new leg of a career that taps into his acting (His Dark Materials), songwriting (Moana), dynamic displays of dramaturgy (Fosse/Verdon), and even downright old-school showmanship (Mary Poppins Returns). But Miranda also uses his star power to redirect his spotlight elsewhere: on hurricanes, on history, on anxiety and artistry and the difficult intersection of both.

Only anecdotes (and EW) force Miranda to acknowledge how Hamilton did in fact change the game, especially in its electrified dialogue around the multiplicity of perspectives and representation in entertainment. He offers one such tale he particularly treasures: “I had seen Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time in theaters opening weekend, and they actually quoted my words and the show — I will never forget that as long as I live — and I had the chance to meet her and she told me that when she first met with Disney about the movie, she said, ‘I hope you know I’m doing a Hamilton on this,’” Miranda recalls. “The fact that she used that as shorthand for ‘I’m casting this with actors of color and it’s all hands on deck’ — that was very, very moving to me. The fact that this show is cast the way it is and has been as successful as it has, I think broke down some kind of door. I hope we’ve ended the conversation about nontraditional casting in a very real way. There’s no going backwards now.”

Only going forward, into whatever creative heir to Hamilton lies in our 2020s and his future 40s. “I spent my 20s writing Heights and I spent my 30s writing Hamilton,” says Miranda, whose milestone ages are tied to the turn of the decades themselves (he’ll be 40 on Jan. 16, 2020). “I was actually pretty down at the top of this decade,” he recalls. “I remember the hangover after my 30th birthday party… it was a great party, but I just remember feeling like this was adulthood for real, and [not knowing] what’s going to happen. But it has also been the most fulfilling and joyous decade I’ve had so far. It’s been unreal.” And he’ll enter his 40s in similarly surrealistic fashion: In addition to a movie of Heights arriving in June, he’ll make his directorial debut helming a Netflix film adaptation of Tick, Tick… BOOM!, the 1990 musical by the late Jonathan Larson about a composer’s midlife anxiety over his artistic accomplishments. Miranda doesn’t need to point out the parallels. “We’re shooting ‘30/90’ the day I turn 40, so you wanna talk about decades? Jonathan Larson is almost exactly 20 years older than me, and to begin the decade telling his story, telling the story of the person who allowed me to believe I had a life in the theater? That feels like a really nice way to start.”

#lin manuel miranda #entertainment weekly #hamilton #tick tick boom #representation #interviews

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thegame-r-boy · 3 years

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2020. The year that was not optimal for gaming conventions. In Slovenia.

This year was really a bad year for having or being at various conventions, due to the unexpected COVID-19 outbreak. In Slovenia, there were literally no conventions, since the disease struck us totally by surprise and therefore costed us almost a 1000 deaths! That is what surprised me the most. In February, we were doing jokes and all that stuff, were pretty much not aware of this virus. Now, in November, we are all affected by it. I won’t go and speak about the economical colapsese and such things that are hapenning right now. Although I would like it, but that is not the purpose of this post. I’m going to tell you how miserable this year was. 2020 was not good. For having conventions or getting money out of gaming conventions. Let’s see, what’s up with all the Slovenian conventions. CONVENTIONS, THAT WERE POSTPONED/CANCELLED IN 2020 IN SLOVENIA: Na Meji Nevidnega (NMN)”, a Slovenian Comic-Con Convention - It was said that this convention should have been in the middle of September, but due to the rise of COVID-19, it was postponed to a Saturday on 16th of January 2021. I really doubt that at that mentioned timeline, this convention will start, because we probably won’t have a COVID-19 vaccine in Slovenia at that moment. And also, by having this event in winter, you’re not going to watch some skinny clothed cosplayers. The Gaming Tournaments (Virtualna RETRO Arena) in the Film Theater of Idrija” - this event was just cancelled. There was no Retro arena in my hometown Idrija. I’ve spoken with the main guy who gave us their film theater every year so rent. And he said to me, that there will be an arena, no matter what is coming to us. Fast forward 3 weeks later, when the situation got worse and everything that guy said just vanished. I understand, that it would be nearly impossible to have this kind of event in a time when COVID-19 infections rise through the rooftop. But still, you could say that at least to me, to the main organiser of this event. Now I can freely say which system would be used this year - we would have an event that would be specialised on the legendary Sega Mega Drive system and compete in the greatest games of all time (Sonic 2, Mortal Kombat 2, NBA Jam, etc.), maybe even watching movies from that time period (Sonic The Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, Space Jam, etc.). But we did not. Just don’t think that this event will happen next year, because I’m done with this project. “We wish you a very Makkon (2019)! (3x times) And a happy 2020!” - this event, on which I found out my soulmate and now “partner in crime” in 2017, @aquamoon33, was not cancelled, nor postponed, but instead, was moved to a internet stream via Twitch, that wil happen on the 11th and 12th of December 2020 between 16. and 20. hour. It’s said that there will be lots of things going on this named weekend. Even gaming tournaments. I sicerelly can’t even think about having a SMASH tournament for this convention, because (a) I don’t have a decent fast internet connection and (b) I’m not so used to the internet - don’t forget, I’m a 90′s kid kind of guy! Also I was not even clicked by the organisers, now was I asked to have some tournaments over, so therefore, I’m not going to do this all by my own. And most importantly: not even get paid!!! CONVENTIONS, THAT TOO PLACE IN 2020 IN SLOVENIA:

... those were literally none. Thought on second though, no, we had one convention! Well, it was not really a convention after all, but we/I had a tournament in SMASH, over the internet. I think it was in June. And I had to have it by the house of my soulmate @aquamoon33, who has a much more speedier internet connection than I have in Idrija. And I must say, that this tournament was quite fun, indeed. We had player from Slovenia and Serbia. The youth centre Mladinski Center Idrija was my contract who had this tournament over. It wasn’t that bad. Though in the end, I’ve got nothing out of it, that means in a payment, it was actually quite fun. CONVENTIONS, THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE ABROAD IN 2020: This years savior was definitely the Nerd Show in Bolognia, Italy. This was THE BEST CONVENTION OF 2020! They had just everything - from Retro consoles to retro games, youtubers, cosplayers and more. It’s a shame that at the end of February, Italy was almost broke due to COVID-19. But still, it was worth the drive, definetely! And if everything goest well, we’ll go there next year. For sure! That was all. 2020 was a miserable year for having conventions. Let’s just hope that everything will change next year. And I’l finally get some cash for having those kind of gaming tournaments!

#gaming #tournament #2020 #covid-19 #pandemi virus corona #so miserable #TheGame-R-BoySays

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jennylouwho81 · 4 years

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Beware the Ides of March

On this the Ides of March, Anno Domini 2020, I finally faced annihilation head-on.

I had girded myself for the prospect - outfitted with a hip flask of applejack (the closest thing to good French Calvados on hand), a half-liter of beer, and my own sense of reckless immortality, I proceeded to my local arthouse theater for a presumably-final cinema viewing of my latest obsession, Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu. When I say “presumably,” I mean of course to factor in both the fact that social institutions are shutting down in light of an unprecedented pandemic response to COVID-19, and the fateful circumstance that, after long delay in getting here, Portrait is in its final week of local theatrical runtime here in my artsy, liberal corner of Virginia. I had rather blithely, and admittedly obsessively, committed myself to 15 previous cinema viewings at the two venues in town that opted to carry it - Alamo Drafthouse and Violet Crown eternal blessings upon them. Of those 15, I had usually been by myself, attending at various times of day or night to factor in varied emotional cycles, but on rare occasions had been accompanied by a single friend.

In the wake of the generous, exhausting press tour that the film’s director, Céline Sciamma, and her two incandescent female leads (Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel) had embarked upon after Cannes in May of 2019, I already knew, with an impending sense of doom mirrored by the film’s plot, that our time together in the black boxes of various theaters was drawing to a close. An obsession, borne of a happy accident in time management during last October’s Virginia Film Festival, had morphed into my utter devotion to the message and artistry of the film, such that I resolved, upon its long-delayed local release in late February, to see it as many times as possible. And under a myriad of circumstances, to the tune of pouring all available financial and temporal resources at my disposal into showing this film - and its marvelous creators - my love. In short, though a devotee of the medium since my early youth, this was (and is) a film that became a touchstone in my life - a rubric on how to appreciate not only the subtleties of the cinematic medium in terms of storytelling, but also on how to savor the sweet joys and sorrows of all that is beautiful, empowering, and transient in life. Moreover, Portrait forced a confrontation with my own personal relationship to love and loss, and in turn and by yearning happenstance, opened my heart to a whole community of like-minded people who shared with me the sense of finally being SEEN and represented and remembered by a great piece of artistic collaboration. People of Tumblr and the p.28 Discord, I’m looking (respectfully and gratefully) at you.

So there I am tonight, doggedly determined in the midst of a pandemic crisis, to sit through one more all-but-private screening of my favorite film. Armed with emotional lubricant in the form of copious alcohol, relatively sure in the knowledge that this could be the end of the cinematic road for awhile, I’m sipping away at my flask of applejack, checking in with family during the previews (memorized by now after repeat viewings). I’m awaiting the the emotional catharsis that I know, with long practice, the screening is soon to evoke. I’ll never know if it was the chill that went down my spine when my public-policy-connected brother informed me, via text, that within 48 hours we’d be under mandatory quarantine. I don’t know if it was the strong liquor compounding this sense of dread, easing its externalization to the fore of my emotional output. I don’t know if it was once again the film itself, which hasn’t failed to make me cry every time after that initial shell-shocked discovery in late October. Drawing me in to a love story for the ages, only to leave me destroyed and nostalgic and ever-yearning. But tonight, finally, instead of a few moments of silent tears, I absolutely lost it. A full span of early tears, stifled gasps, and full-on sobs once I got home. It’s over, I have to say goodbye, c’est fini. And I’m sad. Instead of deciding, per the film’s line that “à un moment, on s’arrête,” that decision has all but been made for me by exterior factors.

So my cinematic journey with this timeless masterpiece of a film is likely over, at least until the powers that be dig it up every so often and do special screenings over the coming years. Maybe if I’m lucky, Céline, Noémie, or Adèle will make an appearance and share new insights. I can only hope...

When I got to double digits last week and realized Violet Crown would be generously holding it over for another week, my heart leapt and I somewhat arbitrarily decided to try for 20. For those interested, I think my previous record for cinematic repeats was 3, and I’m not even certain to which film that would apply. Maybe something Star Wars or LOTR...

Tonight I completed my 16th large-screen viewing of Portrait, including that fateful night in late October that changed everything. Between my own sense of prudence (or possibly guilt) in wanting to abide by social distancing, and the likelihood that we will, within the next day or two, all be quarantined in our homes subject to the Stafford Act, I think my cinematic journey with this masterpiece is at long last ending. Like so many beautiful, intangible priceless things in life that came before. But what a marvelous journey it’s been, what a devastating, glorious, cathartic ride. I still shed tears over what was and what may be, but a broken heart is an open heart. And my heart is so replete and overflowing because of this film.

En avant, et bon courage. Be good to each other, y’all.

#céline sciamma #adèle haenel #noémie merlant #portrait de la jeune fille en feu #portrait of a lady on fire #violet crown #coronavirus #discord #chagrin d'amour #plaisir d'amour #alamo drafthouse #virginia film festival

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

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Is there someone you’d like to hug right now? Not at the moment.

Do you feel like you’re gonna lose someone that means a lot to you? I pray that doesn’t happen for a very long time, but it is a thought that likes to creep to the forefront a lot for some reason to mess with me.

Do you want someone dead? No.

Why aren’t you in bed? I am.

How many hours did you sleep last night? Almost 9 hours, which is extremely unusual.

Last person you talked to? My brother.

How many different people of the opposite sex have you cried over? Too many.

Do you have any plans for tomorrow? Nope.

Do you like ferris wheels? Nooo.

Anything you’re giving up on? I’ve given up on a lot over the past few years. :/

What is on your mind right now? My mind is jumbled.

Are you waiting for anything to happen? I really wish it’d start cooling down now ughhh. We’re STILL having triple digits and high 90s with no end in sight. D: With the way 2020 is going, I’m honestly scared we’re going to get an even longer summer. In California it doesn’t start to feel like fall until like mid October, but we can see the temps dropping progressively. This year we’re having record highs for this time of year.

Do you like anyone right now? Not in the romantic sense.

Do you like to sleep? I love it.

Do you enjoy late night phone conversations? I don’t have any.

Last movie you saw in theaters? The Invisible Man back in February. I miss going to the movies.

Are you a jealous person? I can be, but I haven’t felt that in years. I feel envy often, though. :/

Do you enjoy Facebook? Sure. I don’t spend a lot of time on there, but there’s interesting stuff. On my feed, anyway.

Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? Nope. Could you go out in public looking like you do now? I’d fix my bun first. I don’t go anywhere nowadays except for my one doctor appointment a month.

Are you a morning person or a night person? Night.

What did you do Saturday night? Same stuff I do every night that I’ve listed many times.

Is your bed comfortable? Yeah, I mean it better be since I spend most of my time in it.

What were you doing at 1 in the morning? Eating ramen and watching YouTube videos.

On a scale from 1 - 10, how much do you like to cuddle? I don’t have much cuddling experience to be honest.

Has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes? Yeah, only like once or twice.

Get asked anything ridiculous lately? No.

Does it annoy you when people send three more texts while you are trying to respond to the question they asked in the text before that? Not really.

Do you like to read? I love to read.

Have you ever played a Wii? Yeah.

Would you ever become a vegetarian? No.

Who was the first person you talked to today? My brother.

Are you sarcastic? Sometimes.

How is school? I’ve been done with school for awhile now.

What color eyes does the person you like / love have? Are they pretty? I don’t like anyone in that way.

What color is the keyboard you are currently using? The keys are black with white lettering. <<<

When was the last time someone took your picture? My mom did on my birthday.

What color was the last jacket or hoodie you wore? Black.

Can you recite the alphabet backward? I could, but it would take me a little longer.

Do you eat chili when you get a hot dog, or do you like it plain? Was never much of a hot dog person, but on rare occasions I’d have a chili dog or one with just mustard and ketchup.

Would you say it’s easy for people to make you smile or laugh? Usually.

Do you own any dresses? If so, what colors are they? I have one back dress.

Would you say you drink more pop / soda than you should? Nope. I only drink a little bit when I have to take my medicine, otherwise I don’t drink soda. I used to have one can or sometimes one 16oz bottle a day for several years until about 2 years ago.

Would you rather have orange juice or milk with your breakfast? Ew, two disgusting options. Give me coffee.

How many different colors has your bedroom been painted? Just white. I’ve never painted it.

Would you ever tell your mom about the things you’ve done sexually? Even though my mom and I are close, that’s not something I’d want to discuss.

What was the worst news you’ve heard this entire week? My state is still burning, in fact yet another huge fire started recently because of someone’s gender reveal party gone wrong. That really infuriates me because it’s like, we’re already burning and they decided to literally add more fuel to the fire. It’s fire season and we’re having triple digit temperatures, like wtf were they thinking? AND we’re in a pandemic, why were they having a party anyway??? Ugh. In other bad news, it’s still really hot and there’s no cool down in site. D;

Have you ever been in a car wreck? No, thankfully.

Do you have your ears pierced? If not, what do you have pierced? I do.

Has anyone ever told you that they think you have ADHD? No. I can’t imagine why anyone would think I had that.

Would you say you’re really good at cooking and baking things? Uh, no. I don’t cook or bake.

How is the weather outside right this second? At 5:32AM it’s 73 F. That is way too warm for this early in the morning.

Do you have a lot of trees around your house? What about buildings? Around the neighborhood, yeah. There’s a lot of buildings nearby as well.

Has anyone ever called you a sociopath before? No. I can’t see why anyone would call me that either.

What did you last heat up in the microwave? My eye mask when I was dealing with that awful stye last week.

What is the last thing someone bought you? Food.

Who was the last person you talked to last night in person before bed? I’m still up, but my brother came to say goodnight a few hours ago as he was headed off to bed.

What are you listening to? An ASMR video.

Have you made a mistake this past week? I make a lot of mistakes.

Has anyone ever taken your clothes off of you before? No.

Have you ever stayed up at night waiting for someone to call/text you back? I’ve waited for texts/IMs in the past.

Have you ever touched a dead body? I touched my grandma’s hand at the viewing. I’m surprised I did that, but I was an absolute mess when she passed away and seeing her lying there like that was really hard and for some reason I just did it. I almost wish I hadn’t because I don’t want that image of her in my mind. It also made it harder because touching her was obviously not the same as when she was alive.

Were you anybody’s New Years kiss? Nope.

Laptop or desktop? Laptop. I haven’t had a desktop since like 2004. After that, the only time I used one was at school.

Don’t you hate when radio stations continue to play the same songs? That was always annoying, but it’s been a few years since I’ve listened to the radio, so I no longer have that problem. Although, I listen to the same stuff on my Spotify playlist lol but that’s different okay.

Does your bedroom door have a lock on it? Yes.

Have you ever had a real tea party? Or been to one? I went to a cute tea place with my Nana, aunt, and cousin for high tea on my Nana’s birthday a few years ago. The finger sandwiches and desserts were delicious. I forget what tea I had, but it was good.

Where’s the last place you got Mexican food? This local place.

Have you been called a tease? Yeah, which I never understood. I never led him on, used him, or played him like he did me.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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altik-0 · 4 years

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Personal Revelation

I've spent the last two weeks trying to figure out how to write this post, but my mind has felt like it's tumbling around a washing machine and trying to figure out how to straighten my thoughts into a coherent message has felt impossible. But I'm driving myself crazy continuing to hold off on saying something, so I'm going to just rip off the bandage now, and we can talk in more depth after the cut.

Hi! 👋 I'm Asexual and Aromantic! Let's talk about it.

Where to even start

This month has been a fucking trip.

On the one hand, this has been the fourth month of nearly continuous quarantine for the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other, the end of May was the spark that began a wildfire of protests against police brutality that have swept across the country, including the seemingly milquetoast land of Salt Lake City. I found myself simultaneously figuring out the umpteenth way to keep myself entertained while being in home nearly uninterrupted for over 90 days, while also desperately searching for the courage to exit my home and join the marches against injustice.

And in the background of all of this, it was Pride Month.

On the 12th, a Youtube creator I follow released a video about their experience discovering themselves as non-binary. You should watch it, but what is important for the sake of this post is that the bulk of the video is an asynchronous telling of various moments throughout their life that, in reflection, show them that "[they] were who [they] are now, back then". These moments form a tapestry that tell a story of self discovery, and the result is incredibly powerful.

They released a rough cut about a week earlier for Patreon supporters, and I was immediately transfixed. I watched it three times in a row on the first day it was uploaded. I watched it twice more after the release. Hell, when I pulled this video up now to get the share link I couldn't help but sit and watch through it all over again.

At first I didn't really know why I felt so attached to this piece in particular. Yet still, I spent multiple nights laying awake for hours in what felt like a dreamlike haze at the time. It took three nights like this for me to realize I had spent all this time reflecting on my own past moments, and revisiting them through the lens this video had shared with me.

How I got here

It is September 2005. I am currently at a school dance. I know I am supposed to be finding someone to dance with and enjoy that for some reason, but all I want to do is go home. I might consider mustering up some courage and just asking someone, anyone, to dance, if it weren't for the fact that I still didn't have any friends. Instead, I feel trapped, wandering up and down the side wall, waiting for it to be over so I can finally leave. I stumble across a small group also sitting on the sides; a girl reading manga, and another playing Yu-Gi-Oh! with a boy across from her. I approach: "I didn't realize anyone still played this" They invite me to join, and soon I find myself with genuine friends at school for the first time in years. I never think about asking someone to dance again.

It is the summer of 2017. I am at a bar with some coworkers at the end of the week. I don't drink, but I've opened myself up to joining people for happy hour because it feels like a good way to socialize, and I've genuinely enjoyed getting to know folks. My team lead makes a comment that he feels it's impossible for a man and a woman to ever have a friendly relationship without having some element of sexual tension between them. I rebuff this comment -- initially I feel a sense of feminist frustration at the concept, as if it is implicitly saying that men and women should not work together. As the conversation continues, I realize the real reason I feel so sure this is wrong is because I have never felt this way toward anyone I've worked with.

It is the summer of 2008. I am in church, listening to the new instructor for my Sunday school class shift the discussion towards politics. Since he began, every lesson without fail will eventually derail into right-wing screeds. For him, any issue that is even vaguely left-leaning is a potential avenue for Satan to take hold of you: feminism, activism, even environmentalism. But lately he has had a particular fixation on the topic of gay marriage, and it is beginning to take a toll on my mental health. Being in these classes, hearing a man in a position of authority repeatedly say "it is not that we shouldn't love these people, but we need to still understand that they are committing a sin" has become physically painful to listen to. Of course, I am not queer, just an ally -- I can only imagine how painful this must be for those who are directly affected. I will nearly pass out from exhaustion and anxiety during sacrament meeting a few hours later.

It is February 2020. I am out to lunch with a friend and coworker. I have just recently changed jobs after less than a year, because I was hopelessly miserable at my last one. It should have been a dream job, marrying two of my closest passions, but instead I felt suffocated by being in a world where everyone seemed indifferent towards me at best, or actively hated me at worst. My friend invited me to join this job, and although it is a miserable job, I find solace in being able to go to lunch and have genuine conversations with someone I get along with. He mentions his wife is pregnant, and the stress of tending for his current child while she is resting. I acknowledge the frustration, though somewhat awkwardly since I am still single. "Oh, yeah, I sometimes forget you aren't married yet, haha. Well, don't worry, you'll get to join in on the fun soon enough!" I want to say "I very much doubt that"; instead I say "Well, I guess we'll see." The conversation does not feel so genuine anymore.

It is January 2009. I am watching House M.D. with my dad. We bond a lot while watching tv. We're both avid fans of MST3K, and we are invariably the obnoxious people in a movie theater a few rows down cracking jokes throughout the film. It feels fun and rebellious, even if we're doing it at home where nobody will be annoyed. This episode starts with Foreman and Thirteen waking up together in bed after clearly spending the night together. My dad cracks a joke about how "they're going to get in trouble, since they aren't married!" I quip back "nah, it's not a big deal, they just slept together, haha." My dad pauses the show and turns to me, deadly serious: "Who told you that was okay?!" I am a deer in headlights. I suddenly realize that I meant "slept together" literally, but nobody else uses it that way. I don't understand how I missed that.

It is October 2010. I am at home, speaking with my mother after coming home from school. She has always been a political firebrand, and especially after I left the church and started college the two of us have connected on this a lot. She has just read an article that mentioned the expanded acronym "LGBTQIA", and says she doesn’t know what all the "I" and "A" refer to. I don't yet know what the "I" refers to, but I suggest the "A" is probably for "asexual". She says she hadn't heard of asexuality, though that does make sense. I realize I don't recall hearing about asexuality before either. I don't actually know if anyone identifies like that. It just somehow feels like something that must exist.

It is the spring of 2007. I am at a local game store playing at a Friday Night Magic event for the first time. I suffer from very extreme social anxiety, and I spent the entire week a ball of nervous energy. Despite myself, I have managed to drive myself to the event and register. I have promised myself dozens of times over that I already knew Magic players were people similar to me, so there was no reason to worry. My first match is against someone wearing a frilly dress, cat ears, and tail. She mews at me several times while playing. On the surface I have frozen and only robotically go through motions of playing the game because my anxiety has boiled over to the point that I cannot quite function properly. Inside, I am filled with pure delight at realizing that someone could feel comfortable expressing themselves that openly in a space like this. I eventually become friends with this person who I will later learn is trans -- I had never met a trans person before. I will become close friends with three more trans people, at least two enbies, and countless other queer people over the next decade of playing this wonderful game.

It is November 2019. I am at work, sitting at my desk, feeling completely numb despite starting the day energetic to the point of mania. I've just had an argument with a close friend -- perhaps the closest friend I've ever had -- and it ended... poorly, to put it mildly. So poorly, in fact, that it is safe to say we are just not friends anymore. The reality was that there were always problems between us, and this was a culmination of conflict that never really got effectively resolved. It might not have even been possible to resolve. In the moment, though, I cannot escape the suffocating feeling that I am a failure as a human being; someone who simply does not know how to maintain a relationship. My mind goes through loops of how I could have said something differently to have it end better. The emotional pain will not fully make sense to me until several months later, when I realize this was the closest thing to a break-up that I've ever experienced.

It is January 2012. I am watching House M.D. with my dad again. Since leaving the church, watching shows like this has been a desperate lifeline for our relationship. We don't joke as much anymore. This episode features a side plot with an asexual couple, who House determines is simply impossible, and uses his power of supreme logic to prove the asexuality wasn't real all along. I have heard of asexuality, though I don't know where or when, so I am angry at this. Of course, as an ally. I want to joke with my dad to release some frustration, but he is still in the church, and I don’t think he will empathize. I stay silent, and do not enjoy this episode.

It is December 2019. I am scrolling through a Discord channel I was invited to from one of the leftist creators I follow. This community has been a breath of fresh air in many ways, and one I found surprisingly helpful was an NSFW adult content chat channel where people are open about sex, fetishes, and more. I've considered myself fairly open-minded and sex-positive, but I'm still a virgin at 28 so I've found there is a lot I just don't know about. Today, someone has started a conversation about what qualifies as "taboo" and relating it to kink-shaming. Another member replies, mentioning they are asexual and find the whole notion of taboos being kind of bizarre. My mind reels at seeing someone who identifies as asexual in this chat. Over time I find out there are several other people who identify at least gray-ace in this chat, some who even draw risque artwork for commission. I realize how little I actually understood about what asexuality really was, and begin scouring the internet for articles and wikis on asexuality.

It is April 2010. I am at an Apollo Burger across the street from the local game store where I am playing in a Magic prerelease. My friends I followed over are talking about weekend plans, and one of them makes a joke about doing some chores to butter up his partner to have sex. The joke does not go over my head -- I am straight, and understand sex, even if I am still a virgin -- but I still can't help but think out loud: "You know, I just don't get why people make such a big deal out of sex." The awkwardness and confused looks are suffocating. I drop the topic immediately.

It is June 2020. I have just watched a video from an enby Youtube creator about their experience discovering their own gender identity. Over the next three days I will see every one of these past experiences, along with hundreds of others, flash before my eyes in rapid succession, over and over, until I begin to realize that I haven't allowed myself to truly identify how I do. Every time I asked "am I asexual?" in the past, I would dismiss it because I understood sex and have a sex drive. Once I actually researched asexuality, though, I almost immediately found stories of people who identify as ace and still experience a sex drive. I also discover a lot of stories from aromantic people that sound painfully similar to feelings I hadn't even realized were not the norm. For the first time I begin to realize I may not just be an ally.

So what does this mean

I came to a sense of satisfaction with living alone and single a long time ago. At first this came with a certain level of shame, because I felt like it was only because I was too cowardly to enter the dating scene and try to find a relationship for myself. Over time the impact of the shame diminished, but it never went away; it just became a quiet background noise that I got accustomed to pushing back.

But now that I feel comfortable calling myself "Aromantic", I don't feel any shame. A romantic relationship is simply something I don't need. Instead, I can focus on fostering the kinds of deep relationships that do feed my soul. That will likely be a difficult thing to do -- awkwardly traversing intimacy was something most people worked through as a teenager or young adult, and I'm nearly 30, haha. But it at least feels possible now.

But really the biggest change for me is that I feel like I can be honest and public about who I am in a way I never was before. Simply being open about this piece of my identity somehow feels important if for no other reason than to let other people who felt like I did growing up that they aren't alone.

So... yeah. I'm aroace. And I always have been.

#coming out #aroace #aromantic #asexual #pride #god it's nice to have an emotional post that doesn't need to be tagged as garbage for once

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Romney votes to convict Trump on charge of abuse of power, becoming the lone Republican to break ranks

By Dan Balz and Robert Costa | Published February 05 at 7:16 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Feb 05, 2020

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) sealed a place in history Wednesday by voting to convict President Trump of abuse of power, becoming a lone voice of dissent in a Republican Party that otherwise has marched in lockstep with the president throughout the impeachment proceedings.

Romney voted against the second article of impeachment, which accused the president of obstruction of Congress. But on the first article, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said that he found the evidence against Trump overwhelming and the arguments by the president’s defense ultimately unconvincing.

Romney’s decision, announced in a deeply personal speech on the Senate floor where he spoke of his faith and constitutional duty, sparked an immediate and intense outcry among Trump’s supporters — fury that Romney acknowledged is unlikely to fade.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, called for Romney to be “expelled” from the GOP, while many of Trump’s congressional allies cast him as a bitter and irrelevant relic of a Republican establishment that has all but crumbled before Trump in recent years.

Romney stood by his decision as Republican criticism mounted on Wednesday, maintaining that Trump abused his office by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

“I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me,” Romney said in his floor remarks, calling Trump’s conduct “grievously wrong.”

Romney added, “We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen.”

Romney’s vote — coming after other centrist GOP senators such as Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) decided to acquit Trump even as they scolded him for acting inappropriately — was hailed by many Democrats as an example of unflinching political courage from a Republican they have long battled.

Following Romney’s speech, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), walked off the Senate floor in tears and remained speechless for several seconds.

“He literally restored my faith in the institution,” Schatz said.

Presidential historian Jon Meacham said Romney is an “emblem of what so many of us feared was an entirely vanished kind of moderate voice that is guided by reason and not passion. What he did was in the tradition of Dwight Eisenhower, his own father, and George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford.”

Romney’s father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, was a prominent Republican who was known for being guided by his Mormon faith and a commitment to public service and civil rights. Romney does not speak often of his father, but is inspired by his example far more than he discusses publicly, friends said Wednesday.

“There’s no question that the president asked a foreign power to investigate his political foe,” Romney said in an interview with The Washington Post ahead of his floor statement. “That he did so for a political purpose, and that he pressured Ukraine to get them to help or to lead in this effort. My own view is that there’s not much I can think of that would be a more egregious assault on our Constitution than trying to corrupt an election to maintain power. And that’s what the president did.”

The crux of the case against Trump was the allegation that he withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president.

Romney was one of two Republican senators who supported the effort to summon witnesses and documents. He was the only Republican who crossed party lines on Wednesday to join Democrats in voting to convict Trump on the first charge, abuse of power, while voting to acquit on the second, obstruction of Congress.

Inside the Senate GOP cloakroom, Romney’s decision was greeted with disappointment but little surprise. Ever since Romney was elected to the Senate in 2018, the 72-year-old senator has parted ways with his party at times and has occasionally criticized Trump — an approach that has won him few allies in a chamber where Trump’s political capital and favor is a prized commodity.

“He’s made it very clear from the beginning, even on the witness vote, that he was going to go his own way,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said. “This is one of those historical votes where everybody has to do what they think is the right thing.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared ready to move on from the trial and did not threaten Romney.

“I was surprised and disappointed, but we have much work to do for the American people, and I think Senator Romney has been largely supportive of most everything we’ve tried to accomplish,” McConnell said.

For Romney, breaking with Trump carried not just political consequences in a party he once led as its standard-bearer, but familial dynamics. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the daughter of Romney’s older brother, is one of the president’s loyalists — and she firmly stood by Trump on Wednesday.

“This is not the first time I have disagreed with Mitt, and I imagine it will not be the last,” McDaniel tweeted.

The RNC also sent an email to reporters Wednesday taking aim at Romney, under the subject line, “Mitt Romney turns his back on Utah.”

Other Trump allies were far harsher in their response to Romney. “He’s now officially a member of the resistance & should be expelled” from the party, Trump Jr. tweeted.

Romney knew his vote to remove the president from office would bring consequences. Already, there is a bill in the Utah legislature that would allow voters to remove a sitting senator. Last week, the Conservative Political Action Conference disinvited Romney to their annual event. He expects worse in the days ahead.

When Romney was in Florida last weekend, a person at the airport called him a traitor, and someone else later told him to “get with the team,” followed by an epithet. “It’s going to be there a long, long, long time,” he said in the interview. “And you know, the president’s going to, you know, use me in rallies. I mean, he likes theater, and I can be part of that. So it’s going to be tough.”

Recently appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), facing a tough intraparty primary fight from Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), has already used Romney as a foil, attacking him last week for supporting the call for witnesses.

Romney said his decision to vote to convict the president was “the hardest decision” he has ever had to make and one that he hoped he would never have to make. “When [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi indicated we’re now going to pursue impeachment, my heart sank in dread,” he said.

For a time, he thought — or at least hoped — that Trump’s request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for an investigation into the Bidens during a July 25 phone call represented little more than a throwaway line. As more information came out, Romney came to a different and more worrisome conclusion: that the president had committed a potentially impeachable act.

“He’s the leader of my party,” Romney said of Trump. “He’s the president of the United States. I voted with him 80 percent of the time. I agree with his economic policies and a lot of other policies. And yet he did something which was grievously wrong. And to say, well, you know, because I’m on his team and I agree with him most of the time, that I should then assent to a political motive, would be a real stain on our constitutional democracy.”

Romney said he hoped the president’s defense team would present evidence during the trial that would exonerate the president. He said he even contacted the White House Counsel’s Office, through a fellow senator, asking if they would provide affidavits from officials such as former national security adviser John Bolton or acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, but to no avail.

“I was hoping beyond hope that the defense would present evidence, exculpatory evidence, that would remove from me the responsibility to vote where my conscience was telling me I had to vote,” he said. “And that’s one of the reasons, by the way, that I wanted to hear from Bolton, which is I hoped he would testify and raise reasonable doubt.”

Romney dismissed arguments that a president could be impeached only if there were a statutory crime, calling that “absurd on its face,” and saying he could not think of “a more egregious assault on our constitutional system than corrupting an election and getting a foreign power to do it for you.” What Trump tried to do, he said, is “what autocrats do in tinhorn countries.”

He also dismissed the arguments that the president was justified in asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. He said the former vice president might have been guilty of a conflict of interest, but added that a conflict of interest is “a matter of judgment, but it’s not a crime.” As for Hunter Biden, he said, “He got a lot of money for his father’s name. That’s unsavory. But again, it’s not a crime.”

Romney acknowledging that Trump threw up “a barrage of efforts” to keep the House from receiving documents or testimony from key administration officials with firsthand knowledge, but decided against supporting the obstruction charge. “I don’t think that was an appropriate approach, necessarily,” he said, “but [Trump] did follow the law, and the House did not take the time to go to the courts as I think they should have.”

Some of Romney’s Republican colleagues have suggested that the issue should be left to the voters in this year’s election, rather than having the Senate render judgment. Romney said his reading of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers led him to conclude that the Senate must make the decision.

“The Constitution doesn’t say that if the president did something terribly wrong, let the people decide in the next election what should happen,” he said. “It says if the president does something terribly wrong, the Senate shall try him. And so the Constitution is plain.”

Romney said he made his decision knowing that the president would be acquitted by the Senate. Were mine the deciding vote” to remove Trump from office, he said, “I hope I would have the strength of character to cast that vote. That would be the right thing to do.” He added at another point, “No one wants to vote to remove a president of the United States, and I sure don’t.”

Romney said the question of Trump’s fate now will go be decided in the November election. “It’s going to go to the people, and they will make the final decision,” he said, adding that he is “highly confident” the president will be reelected. “Given the strength of the economy and the record established so far, I believe he gets reelected. And I think if they [Democrats] nominate [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders of Vermont] or [Sen.] Elizabeth [Warren of Massachusetts], he’ll get elected in a landslide.”

Yet in a later season of a political life that began at the side of George Romney, Romney said he kept coming back to questions of duty and faith.

“Again, how do I say before God, ‘I agreed to render impartial justice and let the consequences for me personally outweigh my duty to God and my duty to be to the country that I love?’” Romney said, explaining how he settled on his vote. “That’s simply putting my head down and saying what was done was perfect — there’s nothing to see here. [It] was not something I could do.”

______

Paul Kane and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

**********

HOUSE MANAGERS: TRUMP WON’T BE VINDICATED. THE SENATE WON’T BE, EITHER.

By Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Sylvia Garcia and Jason Crow

February 05 at 5:29 PM EST

Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Val Demings (Fla.), Sylvia Garcia (Tex.) and Jason Crow (Colo.) were the Democratic House managers in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

Over the past two weeks, we have argued the impeachment case against President Trump, presenting overwhelming evidence that he solicited foreign interference to cheat in the next election and jeopardized our national security by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to pressure Ukraine to do his political bidding. When the president got caught and his scheme was exposed, he tried to cover it up and obstruct Congress’s investigation in an unprecedented fashion. As the trial progressed, a growing number of Republican senators acknowledged that the House had proved the president’s serious misconduct.

Throughout the trial, new and incriminating evidence against the president came to light almost daily, and there can be no doubt that it will continue to emerge in books, in newspapers or in congressional hearings. Most important, reports of former national security adviser John Bolton’s forthcoming book only further confirm that the president illegally withheld military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv announced the sham investigations that the president sought for his political benefit.

Although Bolton told the House that he would sue rather than appear to testify pursuant to a subpoena, he appeared to have a change of heart and made it clear that he would be willing to testify in the Senate. Yet, rather than hear what Bolton had to say, Republican senators voted to hold the first impeachment trial in U.S. history without a single live witness or new document.

Notwithstanding the Constitution’s mandate that the Senate shall have the sole power to “try” impeachments, a narrow majority of senators opted not to, and instead acted as though it were an appellate court precluded from going beyond the record in the House. Nothing supported this unprecedented prohibition on witnesses and documents, except the overriding interest of a president determined to hide any further incriminating information from the American people and a Senate majority leader in his thrall.

Instead, the president’s defenders resorted to a radical theory that would validate his worst, most authoritarian instincts. They argued that a president cannot abuse his power, no matter how corrupt his conduct, if he believes it will benefit his reelection. The Founders would have been aghast at such a sweeping assertion of absolute power, completely at odds with our system of checks and balances. Even some of the president’s lawyers were ultimately forced to back away from it.

And so, at last, the president’s team urged that it should be left to the voters to pronounce judgment on the president’s misconduct, even as it worked to prevent the public from learning the full facts that might inform their decision. More ominously, this leaves the president free to try to cheat in the very election that is supposed to provide the remedy for his cheating.

Just this week, with the vote on impeachment still pending before the Senate, the president’s personal lawyer and emissary, Rudolph W. Giuliani, repeated his call for Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rival and urged the president to carry on seeking such illicit help.

When we made our final arguments to the Senate, we asked whether there was one Republican senator who would say enough, do impartial justice as their oath required, and convict the president.

And there was. Mitt Romney. The senator from Utah showed a level of moral courage that validated the Founders’ faith that we were up to the rigors of self-governance.

No one can seriously argue that President Trump has learned from this experience. This was not the first time he solicited foreign interference in his election, nor will it be the last. As we said during the trial, if left in office, the president will not stop trying to cheat in the next election until he succeeds.

We must make sure he does not.

Republican leadership in the Senate had the power to conceal the president’s full misconduct during the trial by disallowing witnesses and documents, but they cannot keep the full, ugly truth of the president’s conduct, and that of all the president’s men, from the American people. Not for long.

Because of the impeachment process, voters can now stand forewarned of the lengths to which the president will go to try to secure his reelection, violating the law and undermining our national security and that of our allies.

By denying the American people a fair trial, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also deprived the president of something that he desperately sought — exoneration. There can be no exoneration without a legitimate trial. Out of fear of what they would learn, the Senate refused to hold one. The president will not be vindicated, and neither will the Senate, certainly not by history.

The Constitution is a wondrous document, but it is not self-effectuating; it requires vigilance, and a pledge by every new generation of voters and public servants to safeguard and fulfill its lofty promise. And it requires a kind of courage that Robert F. Kennedy once said is more rare than that on the battlefield — moral courage. Without it, no constitution can save us, but with it, no hardship can overcome us. We remain committed to doing everything in our power to preserve this marvelous experiment in self-governance.

America is worth it.

*********

It’s not over. Congress must continue to hold Trump accountable.

By Editorial Board | Published February 05 at 4:34 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 05, 2020 |

SOME OF the senators who voted Wednesday to acquit President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress claimed he had surely been chastened by his impeachment by the House of Representatives. We suspect they know better. Not only is Mr. Trump brazenly unrepentant for his attempt to extort Ukraine’s help for his reelection, but also he is likely to take the Senate’s vote as vindication and license for further improper actions. That makes it incumbent upon responsible members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to do what they can to protect the integrity of the November election, as well as that of the Constitution.

An initial step could be a resolution of censure by the Senate. That wouldn’t remove Mr. Trump, but it would challenge Republicans who say they regard his actions as “inappropriate” to vote accordingly. If they do, it might have a deterrent effect. If they don’t, voters will have cause to judge those senators up for reelection this year. A bipartisan censure motion would make it difficult for Mr. Trump to go on claiming he had done “absolutely nothing wrong” and that the case against him was “a hoax.”

In the House, committees that pursued the investigation of Mr. Trump’s actions in Ukraine should continue to do so. There is much that remains unknown, including whether the president extracted favors in 2017 and 2018 from Ukraine’s previous government. There is also a public interest in the airing of evidence that the White House has illegitimately suppressed about the pressure campaign against the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky. The House should subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton, along with documents related to Mr. Trump’s withholding of military aid from Mr. Zelensky’s government.

If court battles are needed to obtain this evidence, the House should fight them. It is vital that Congress’s power to conduct oversight of the executive be confirmed. Otherwise, Mr. Trump can be expected to continue a blanket refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations during the remainder of his time in office, thereby neutering what should be an equal branch of government.

Above all, legislators, the media and patriotic government officials must remain on guard against new attempts by Mr. Trump to subvert democracy. The president has publicly called on China as well as Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, and has said he would accept dirt on an opponent if it were offered by a foreign government. There’s no reason to believe that Russia, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian regimes favored by Mr. Trump won’t try to help his campaign, as Russia did in 2016.

If evidence of such interference or other wrongdoing emerges, Congress must not hesitate to pursue it. Mr. Trump’s supporters crow that the impeachment investigation backfired politically, boosting the president’s poll ratings. Even if that is true, it must not deter Congress from holding the president to account. The lesson of the Ukraine affair must not be that there is no remedy for a president who would use his powers to undermine U.S. democracy.

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WAS IMPEACHMENT WORTH IT? YES

By Max BOOT | Published February 05 at 4:34 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 05, 2020 |

After 134 tumultuous days, the impeachment of President Trump ended in a predictable near-party-line acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate. Out of 250 Republicans in Congress, only one — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — had the courage to vote his conscience, voting to convict on the first of the two articles. (Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a former Republican, also supported impeachment.)

Was it worth it? As Zhou Enlai supposedly said of the French Revolution, it’s too early to say. But so far, impeachment has not lived up to either the greatest hopes or the worst fears of its advocates.

In the best-case scenario, the incontrovertible weight of evidence would have led more than one Republican to turn against the president. No one ever imagined that there would be 67 votes to remove him, but it was at least conceivable that advocates of impeachment could obtain a bare Senate majority and thus make it harder for Trump to claim that this was all a partisan plot.

That that didn’t happen is a testament to the power of political polarization, with a record-setting 87-point split between Democratic and Republican views of Trump in the latest Gallup poll. (He has the support of 94 percent of Republicans and 7 percent of Democrats.) The craven Senate Republicans were so terrified of Trump’s hold on their base that all but two of them voted against hearing from witnesses for the first time in impeachment history. Their behavior brings to mind the Nixon defender who defiantly declared: “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind.” Wednesday’s acquittal comes despite, not because of, the evidence.

Trump emerges with higher than normal — if far from stellar — approval ratings. The latest FiveThirtyEight polling average has him at 43.4 percent approval and 52.1 percent disapproval. He has gone up in the polls recently (49 percent support him in the new Gallup poll), but this is probably because the public approves of the economy, not of his conduct. Consumer confidence in the IDB/TIPP poll is at its highest level in 16 years and the incumbent tends to get credit — which Trump was eager to claim in the State of the Union.

The good news for Trump’s opponents is that so far there is little evidence of a popular backlash against impeachment. Nearly 50 percent of the public supports impeachment and removal in the FiveThirtyEight polling average. That’s not enough to drive him out of office. But it is actually slightly higher than the number (46 percent) who wanted President Richard M. Nixon convicted in July 1974, just a few weeks before he resigned, and it’s far higher than support for impeaching President Bill Clinton, which topped out at a paltry 35 percent.

The Economist/YouGov poll shows that, by 50 percent to 34 percent, Americans think Trump is guilty of withholding military aid to Ukraine to force an investigation of the Bidens and, by 48 percent to 39 percent, they think he is guilty of obstructing Congress. By an even larger margin, respondents in recent polls said the Senate should call witnesses. The Republicans’ failure to do so denies Trump the full exoneration he craves.

The public isn’t rallying to Trump and the Republicans as they rallied to Clinton and the Democrats after impeachment in 1999 because what Trump did was far worse than lying about sex. In those days, Clinton’s popularity shot up to 73 percent and the Democrats’ advantage in party identification expanded to 17 points. By contrast, the RealClearPolitics polling average for a generic congressional ballot, showing a 7-point advantage for Democrats, is now nearly identical to the average of polls taken right before the 2018 midterm election.

In short, impeachment hasn’t fundamentally altered the political dynamics — and its impact is likely to dissipate even more before the election. Impeachment could have its biggest impact on House Democrats in red districts and Senate Republicans in blue states, but opinions of Trump are so entrenched that it doesn’t seem likely to leave a lasting mark on the presidential race one way or the other.

I still believe impeachment was the right thing to do, because it brought out so much evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing — even without the testimony of important witnesses such as John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney. Even five of the senators voting to acquit acknowledge that Trump did something wrong. They just don’t care. Now it will be up to the voters to decide if it matters to them or not.

I’m resigned to the likelihood that Trump’s outrageous abuse of office won’t prevent him from winning a second term. But I don’t think there’s much House Democrats could or should have done differently. Ignoring Trump’s attempt to rig the election wasn’t a serious option and pushing for censure wouldn’t have been any more successful in winning bipartisan support. Sure, Trump may be emboldened after he’s acquitted — but he also would have been emboldened if there had been no consequences at all once he was caught in a corrupt quid pro quo.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and the other House managers proved their case. They did their duty with honor and eloquence. All of the vulnerable Democrats such as Sen. Doug Jones (Ala.) and the House freshmen who risked their seats to support impeachment were profiles in courage. So too were all the civil servants — beginning with the heroic whistleblower — who exposed Trump’s dirty deeds at real risk of retribution. It’s not their fault that in Trump’s America “truth” and “right” matter less than partisan might.

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George Conway: I believe the president, and in the president

By George T. Conway III | Published

February 05 at 11:04 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted Feb. 05, 2020

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York and an adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC.

I believe the president, and in the president.

I believe the Senate is right to acquit the president. I believe a fair trial is one with no witnesses, and that the trial was therefore fair. I believe the House was unfair because it found evidence against him. I believe that if the president does something that he believes will get himself reelected, that’s in the public interest and can’t be the kind of thing that results in impeachment.

I believe former national security adviser John Bolton has no relevant testimony because he didn’t leave the White House on good terms.

I believe the president’s call was perfect. I believe he is deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine. I believe the president can find Ukraine on a map.

I believe Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election, and that the intelligence community’s suggestion otherwise is a Deep State lie. I believe the Democratic National Committee server is in Ukraine, where CrowdStrike hid it.

I believe President Barack Obama placed a “tapp” on the president’s phones in 2016, and that the Russia investigation was a plot to keep him from winning, even though the plotters didn’t think he could win.

I believe former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was conflicted because he quit one of the president’s golf clubs, and that he and his Angry Democrats conducted a Witch Hunt to destroy the president. But I believe Mueller’s report totally exonerated the president, because it found no collusion and no obstruction.

I believe it would be okay for the president to say he grabs women by their p-----s, because he is a star, and stars are allowed to do that. But I believe he didn’t say that, even though he apologized for it, because I believe the “Access Hollywood” tape was doctored, because he said it was.

I believe E. Jean Carroll lied when she accused the president of rape, because he said she’s not his type. I believe the dozens of other women who accused him of sexual misconduct are also lying, because he would never think of grabbing them by their p-----s or anything else.

I believe the president didn’t know Michael Cohen was paying off porn star Stormy Daniels, and that Cohen did it on his own, because the president had no reason to pay her off. I believe the president was reimbursing Cohen for his legal expertise.

I believe the president is a good Christian, because TV pastors say so, and that it’s okay he doesn’t ask for God’s forgiveness, because he doesn’t need to, since he’s the Chosen One. I believe the president knows the Bible, and that two Corinthians are better than one.

I believe the president wants to release his taxes but has not because he’s under audit, which is why he has fought all the way to the Supreme Court not to disclose them. I believe he will disclose them when the audit is over, and that they will show him to be as rich and honest as he says he is.

I believe the president is a very stable genius, and that he repeatedly tells us so because it’s true.

I believe the president can spell. I believe any spelling mistakes he makes are because he’s a very busy man who doesn’t watch much TV, or because he’s intentionally triggering the libs.

I believe Hurricane Dorian was headed straight for Alabama. I believe the president’s map wasn’t altered with a Sharpie, and that if it was, he didn’t do it, since he didn’t need to because he was right.

I believe the president didn’t call Apple’s CEO “Tim Apple,” and that he said “Tim Cook of Apple” really, really fast, but that if he did say “Tim Apple,” it was to save words, which he always tries to do.

I believe windmills are bad and cause cancer. I believe there was a mass shooting in Toledo and that there were airports during the Revolution, because the president said so.

I believe the president is defeating socialism, despite the subsidies he’s paying to save farmers from his protectionism and the $3.2 trillion he’s added to the national debt during his term.

I believe the president has made tremendous progress building the wall, that Mexico paid for it in the trade deal, that the wall will soon run from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico, that it will stop those caravans cold, and that it won’t fall down.

I believe the president has a 95 percent approval rating among Republicans, and that there’s no need to cite polls for that.

I believe the president had the largest inaugural crowd ever, regardless of what any photos from liberal bureaucrats might show.

I believe there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.

I believe China pays all tariffs levied on imported Chinese goods.

I believe the president is truthful. I believe the Fake News media lied each of the 16,241 times they have said he has made a false or misleading claim.

I believe the president is selfless, and always puts the nation’s interests first. I believe he isn’t a narcissist, but he’d be entitled to be one if he were one. I believe the president would never exercise his presidential powers to advance his personal interests, but if he did, that would be okay, because whatever is in his personal interests is necessarily in the nation’s interests as well.

I believe Article II of the Constitution gives the president the right to do whatever he wants.(This is just the short list!!!)

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PELOSI RIPPED UP A SPEECH. TRUMP IS RIPPING UP OUR DEMOCRACY.

By Greg Sargent | Published February 05 at 10:07 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 05, 2020 |

Nancy Pelosi ripped up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, and the civility police are on a rampage: On “Morning Joe,” host Willie Geist lectured that the House Speaker’s act is “not what the country needs.”

As many pointed out, Pelosi’s theatrical gesture, which came after Trump appeared to refuse to shake her hand at the outset, is tame alongside Trump’s own constant shredding of decorum — the hate rallies, the insulting of lawmakers and so forth.

But there’s a more precise point to be made here. If the underlying premise of the criticism of breaches of decorum is that they pose a threat to our democracy’s functioning, then much of what Trump has done well beyond such breaches — for three years now — actually does pose a severe threat to that functioning, while acts like Pelosi’s actually do not pose any remotely comparable threat.

This isn’t whataboutism. It’s meant to correct a massive category error. Breaches in civility are not the main threat to our political system. Indeed, if Trump only went on half-cocked rally rants and merely insulted Democrats, the current damage would not be nearly as severe.

It’s all the other misconduct that threatens the fabric of democracy — Trump’s unchecked lawlessness, his abuses of power, his public racism, his unprecedented lying, his treatment of the opposition as illegitimate.

In this context, hand-wringing about a mutual deterioration of decorum — the New York Times discerned a “mutual snubbing,” while an NBC reporter sniffed that Pelosi indulged in “antics” that are “Trumpian” — is profoundly misleading about the wildly asymmetrical realities of the moment.

Pelosi defended the gesture, describing Trump’s speech as a “manifesto of mistruths.” As it happens, Trump’s speech actually was full of lies, but for some reason this isn’t seen as a breach.

More broadly, their showdown is now being widely treated as the capstone of a troubled relationship — a “tumultuous” and “sour” one — which culminated in Trump’s impeachment.

But such descriptions won’t do. This is not a matter of Pelosi being angry at Trump for his policies and rhetoric on one side and Trump being angry at Pelosi for impeaching him on the other.

TRUMP TREATS THE OPPOSITION AS ILLEGITIMATE

When the Senate acquits Trump, it will come after Trump worked in every conceivable way to render the House an illegitimate or even nonexistent arm of the government.

No matter how vigorously Trump’s propagandists lie to the contrary, the impeachment — for extraordinary abuses of power designed to subvert our national interests to Trump’s own and corrupt our elections, the foundation of democratic government — was a legitimate exercise of constitutional authority. It was handled in a manner commensurate with the gravity of the undertaking.

The Trump administration refused to turn over any documents and laid down a blanket (but only partly successful) ban on witness cooperation. And so, Trump didn’t merely say the House’s constitutional impeachment function was illegitimate — “a coup” — he treated it as such in a manner designed to make this so.

In acquitting Trump while refusing witnesses and evidence, Senate Republicans will not only be clearing him for the article levied for this obstruction of Congress (as well as for abuse of power). They will be carrying through that delegitimization of the House’s institutional role to completion.

Team Trump argues he’s above accountability

Trump’s team has unabashedly argued throughout that Trump is not subject to legitimate accountability of any kind.

During the special counsel investigation, Trump’s lawyers argued he can close down an investigation into himself for any reason, even if it amounts to a corrupt effort to shield his wrongdoing from scrutiny. Then, during impeachment, they argued Trump cannot be impeached for abuses of power, a view widely dismissed by legal scholars.

As political theorist Will Wilkinson noted, the upshot of this is that the House lacks the “legitimate authority to second-guess anything the president does,” in effect meaning that “Democratic power is illegitimate.”

Acknowledging the legitimacy of the opposition is a hallmark of accountability in government. In allowing for it, a president in effect allows he’s not just accountable to his own voters but also to those of the opposition — such as the national majority that elected the Democratic House in 2018.

But this conception of accountability, for Trump, is simply a dead letter. Trump has delivered speeches that are literally scripted to make opposition voters disappear. He declared impeachment an affront to “the American voter,” as if only his voters, and not those who elected the House, exist.

And well before impeachment, Trump vowed to stonewall “all” House subpoenas, to protect his corrupt profiteering off the presidency — which itself is severely destructive to democracy’s functioning — through maximal resistance to legitimate congressional scrutiny.

Trump’s lawyers also argued that impeaching Trump would disenfranchise voters by denying them a choice in the next election, which is the proper mechanism of accountability. But they also claimed that in soliciting foreign interference rigging that same election, Trump did nothing wrong. In short, no political accountability mechanism for Trump is legitimate or beyond Trump’s corrupting powers.

On top of all this, there are the threats to turn loose law enforcement on political opponents; the constant racist denigration of parts of the country represented by nonwhite lawmakers (which are not mere “antics,” but tear at the country’s fabric); the nonstop lying (a form of deep contempt for the very idea of deliberative democracy) and the perpetual manipulation of government to validate lies (another form of deep contempt for government in the public interest).

I don’t claim to know whether Pelosi’s act was bad or good politics. It probably won’t matter in the least. But in this broad context, debates about an erosion in decorum are at best utterly meaningless and are at worst actively misleading about the deep hole we’re in.

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Here is what we can take away from Trump’s impeachment and acquittal

President Trump’s four-month-long impeachment saga is over: He was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday on both charges, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Trump will forever have an asterisk next to his name as the third president to be impeached by the House, but he’ll remain in office. Now we’ll see a president for the first time in modern history seek reelection while carrying that asterisk.

About the Senate vote

Just as the House of Representatives did in December, the Senate voted on each article of impeachment separately. To kick Trump out of office, 67 senators needed to vote to convict him on at least one article. There was nowhere near that much support for either article.

The most important political takeaway from the vote is how partisan it was. Not a single Democrat voted to acquit the president, not even the senators representing Trump-friendly states. Only one Republican voted to convict him, Mitt Romney of Utah, after no House Republicans supported impeachment.

But Romney’s lone vote changes how Trump can talk about his impeachment going forward. He can no longer technically say his impeachment was solely driven by Democrats. One Republican — a prominent one at that — voted to convict him.

Romney voted to acquit Trump on the second charge of obstruction of Congress. His conviction vote on the first charge was historic though: He’s the first senator in an impeachment trial to vote to convict a president of the same party.

“The president’s purpose was personal and political,” Romney said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday announcing his vote. “Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of the public trust.”

Takeaways from the entire impeachment process

1. IMPEACHMENT IS POLITICALLY DRIVEN

So many readers I talked to wanted to think of impeachment as a process where blind justice reigns. And sure, there were some House Democrats who put their careers at risk by voting to impeach Trump even though their districts had supported him. Romney said he expects to be “vehemently denounced” by some in his party for his decision. (Fact check: True. Donald Trump Jr. is already driving a push to kick him out of the party.) But by and large, lawmakers voted with their political futures in mind, rather than the facts.

That’s because you can’t take the political calculus out of Congress. In fact, impeachment was designed to have an inherent contradiction. The nation’s founders set up a check on the executive, but they gave a political body — and not a court — the ultimate say on this.

The partisan process allowed Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to say the quiet part out loud, that he was working in “total coordination” with the White House on how to hold a trial that best benefited Trump. And his supporters could accurately point to instances of Democrats doing the same when their party’s president was being impeached. Democrats and privately some Republicans may truly feel that Trump should be kicked out of office, but at the end of this, their decisions were driven more by politics than conscience.

2. TRUMP’S GREATEST ASSET WAS HIS PARTY’S LOYALTY

At one point during impeachment, former Arizona Republican senator Jeff Flake told reporters he thought there would be “at least” 35 Republican senators who would vote to convict Trump if the vote were private.

We don’t know if that was true, and it obviously didn’t bear out in a public vote. But Flake got at the fundamental dynamic within the Republican Party, which is many lawmakers privately disagree with the president on policy, politics and character, but have decided their political futures rest on standing by Trump.

Party loyalty is not abnormal politics, but the degree to which Republican lawmakers have defended the president is. Trump has created an environment where there is no room for deviation from him even (or perhaps especially) on something as serious as the allegations facing him on Ukraine.

By the end of the trial, some Republican senators were forced to acknowledge that Trump did do the things the House accused him of. But they were in the minority of their party and, save Romney, still voted to acquit the president.

Flake also served as a powerful reminder to Republican lawmakers of what happens when they cross Trump. He was watching the trial from the public gallery, a senator who retired last year in part because he chose to publicly speak out against the president. The lawmakers below him have kept their jobs in large part because they have chose not to speak out against the president whenever possible. That is how Trump survived impeachment even though some of his own former advisers said he did what he was accused of doing.

3. WE DON’T KNOW HOW THIS WILL AFFECT THE 2020 REELECTION

In fact, it’s possible it doesn’t have much of an impact. From the beginning of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry in September to the end on Wednesday, the nation has been divided on whether Trump should be removed from office. And — surprise — Americans’ opinions on impeachment are baked into their political views.

Precisely because of that partisanship, it has seemed difficult if not impossible for Democrats to peel off supporters from the other side, and vice versa. The independents are also split down the middle.

In addition, the result of Trump’s impeachment has inevitable for many voters: House Democrats impeach Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate acquits him.

So if there aren’t surprises on impeachment (save one Republican senator’s vote), what about this process should move the average voter in November?

4. THE INVESTIGATION INTO WHAT TRUMP DID IS NOT OVER

There will be more revelations about what Trump’s intentions were when he paused Ukraine’s aid and asked Ukraine’s president to investigate the Bidens, whether they come from former national security adviser John Bolton’s book, or from others who resisted House subpoenas speaking out, or from witnesses called by House Democrats.

Already, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold E. Nadler (D-N.Y.) has said Democrats will subpoena Bolton (who said he’ll talk to the Senate and has written Trump has political intentions on Ukraine). Other lawmakers cautioned to The Post’s Rachael Bade that decision hasn’t been made yet. They are likely aware of how political it will look to continue investigating Trump’s actions on Ukraine after impeachment is over.

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#u.s. news #trump administration #politics #president donald trump #politics and government #trumpism #republican politics #donald trump #trump scandals #us politics #trump impeachment #impeach trump #trump is evil #trump impeachment trial #u.s. senate #senate #republican party #republicans #republican congress

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John Oates

Keeping It Grounded on the Road with Stories and Songs

By Jay S. Jacobs

John Oates knows a thing or two about popular music. After all, he has spent most of his adult life as half of the rock and soul duo Daryl Hall and John Oates, one of the biggest selling hitmaking bands of the 1970s and 1980s. Since their heyday, the band has been a strong concert draw and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

However, he is not merely a part of pop music history, he’s also a student of it. He has been fascinated with the roots of music and the songs that inspired him to go into music when growing up in suburban Philadelphia. Over the last decade and a half, Hall and Oates has been a regular touring entity, but Daryl and John have also had thriving solo endeavors.

For well over a decade, John Oates has been living in the Nashville area, recording critically acclaimed music that is more rootsy and Americana-based than the pop-soul for which he is most well-known. Now he is doing a brief “An Evening of Songs and Stories” tour of the Northeastern states with his good friend guitarist Guthrie Trapp. As the shows are described, it is “Just two guys, two acoustic guitars, and a bottomless well of timeless songs and the stories behind them.”

A couple of weeks before Oates and Trapp set open the tour at the Colonial Theatre in the Philadelphia suburbs, we caught up with John Oates to discuss the tour, his solo work, and his other job as half of a superstar Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted blue-eyed soul duo.

Like the rest of the world, you spent a good amount of time in the last couple of years stuck at home and unable to tour for the first time since you were young. How did that experience influence the idea of a current tour?

It was an interesting thing. When I finally accepted that I wasn't going anywhere, (laughs) which took me a little while to readjust to, because honestly, it was the first time that I never traveled from 1972. So, it was a weird adjustment. Then I began to embrace it. I had one of the most amazing creative spurts that I've ever had. I wrote a bunch of songs, started to think about music in a different way, got involved in a movie project. So really, it was a very interesting time. For me, it turned out to be a very good time. I got to reexamine a lot of things I was doing business wise. My wife and I really bonded together at home and really enjoyed being home. So, that was the positive side. On the negative side, I love to play live, and we definitely didn't do that. Daryl and I had to put off a tour that we had planned for 2020. We played Madison Square Garden in February… I believe it was the 28th. We sold it out. That was going to be like the kickoff to this amazing tour. We were so pumped. (chuckles) And then it was just done. So, that was a weird thing.

I can imagine…

We did get back on the road in August of 2021. We did 20 cities. We got a few of those shows out of the way. Then I started settling back in Nashville with the idea of playing smaller venues and doing a songwriters-oriented show. After the tour, I was sitting with my buddy Guthrie Trapp, who I've worked with for 15 years, and we were playing in the living room. Literally just sitting around playing old songs and he said, “Man, isn't this fun? This is cool.” We said, why don't we just bring the living room live? That's the concept. The concept is bringing the living room to you. We booked a few small theaters, played a couple shows in Nashville, played one in Colorado. We actually had two sold out shows in Colorado over Christmas. Due to Omicron, they were cancelled. Now we have some shows that were booked and we're going to go out in March. We're doing Paste Magazine on March 10. Then we're going to stream our show that we recorded in Nashville in November. We're going to stream it on Mandolin on March 13.

While it’s not exactly close, Phoenixville is in the Philadelphia area, not all that far from where you grew up in North Wales. Obviously, you have often played in Philadelphia with Daryl, but how is it special to return to the Philadelphia area to play?

Yeah, it always is. It's interesting. I actually booked the Phoenixville show because it's near where my dad lives. I don't get to see him very much. He's 98 years old. I don't get to see him as much as I'd like. So, I thought to myself, you know what, I’m going to book a show near him and maybe he could even come. So, the rumor is that he's actually going to come to the show. My sister's going to try to bring him hopefully. He's still in pretty darn good shape considering how old he is. So, hopefully he'll be able to see me play. It’ll probably be the last time he'll be able to see me play. I'm very excited about that. Honestly, that's why I booked the Phoenixville show.

When you were in Temple with Daryl all those years ago, could you have ever imagined that you would still be working as a musician at this point in your life?

No. To be honest… well you know, yes. Yes and no. Yes, I thought I'd always be a musician because I've never been anything but a musician. From the time I've been a baby literally, a little kid. I've identified myself as a musician. Now, whether that meant that I was going to be a famous musician or be able to make a living being a musician, that was up in the air. But I always knew that I'd be involved in music in some way, shape or form. But the fact that the music Daryl and I have created over the years has stood the test of time and still resonates with the younger generations, it's a miracle. And honestly, it's something that I do not take for granted. I'm very appreciative of the fact. I realize that it's something that very rarely happens with musicians and people. So, like I said, I don't take it for granted.

A few years ago, you wrote your autobiography, Change of Seasons. Between that and also your new “Evening of Songs and Stories” tour, how interesting has it been to sit back and reflect on your life and career and to share it with your fans?

It's important for me because I have a legacy. I have a history. I think it's a history that's unique. If you read my book, you know that I have a lot of interests more than just music. When you’re part of a world-famous entity like Hall and Oates, you become, you become part of… it's ironic that Daryl and I call our company Two-Headed Monster, because that's what it is. It is a monster, but in the best possible way. It's this thing that overshadows everything else in your life. People associate with me with the MTV videos. I'm the guy that jumps around in the background and all that stuff. But personally, I'm way more than that and these the solo opportunities – writing a book, writing the autobiography, playing these type of shows – gives me the opportunity to express that part of me. Gives people the opportunity to see that I'm more than just that. I think Daryl feels the same way. He wants to go out and play his solo music as well. We both have a wealth of musical experience. Because the hits overshadow everything we do, we don't really get a chance to show it off and express it. These opportunities give us that chance.

Both you and Daryl are doing solo tours this spring, but are there any plans for a group tour again this summer?

Absolutely. We already are planning it right now. There'll be Hall and Oates shows in the summer.

When I spoke with you like six or seven years ago, you said that on your solo tours you tended to do mostly your own solo music with maybe a few older songs done as complete rethinks, because if people wanted to see Hall and Oates songs they can always go to those shows. This new tour apparently does have you doing some of the band songs, as well as possibly some covers of songs that have inspired you and the solo stuff. How did you come up with the set list for the tour?

In 2018, I released an album called Arkansas. It was originally supposed to be a tribute to Mississippi John Hurt, one of my childhood heroes. As I got into the making of that record, I wanted to expand that idea. The record ended up being really more of a snapshot of the early days of American popular music. When radio and the phonograph machine, were really changing the way Americans heard music and could appreciate music. I found that to be very interesting. I started doing a lot of research about the early days. I realized that a lot of people might mistakenly assume that pop music started with rock and roll. But it didn't. I started actually thinking to the point, what makes a pop song? Well, if you can hear it on the radio and buy it on a record or some listening device, that's kind of the definition of a pop song. I went back and I realized there were million selling records back in the 1920s. I started to explore that. It became very interesting to me. I thought, “Well, here I am. I'm a pop musician. I made my whole career based on that. But I didn't even know what the history of American pop music was really about.” So, my show is really kind of a musical journey, going back to play some of the first songs that influenced me as a child, some of the songs that were influential in the making of American pop music. I take people on a chronological musical journey. We go up through my solo stuff and interesting collaborations that I've done. Then I do get to the Hall and Oates songs. I play some of the songs that are near and dear to me, but as you said, I do them in a reimagined way, because there's no point in trying to replicate what I do with Daryl.

Who are some of the musical influences you’ll be discussing in the shows?

I'll tell you a quick story. A while back… this was quite a while ago, seven or eight years ago… I was doing a show similar to this with a guy named Pete Huttlinger, who was a friend of mine. Amazing guitar player who unfortunately has passed away. He and I were booked at a place called the Don Gibson theater in Shelbyville, North Carolina. We went to the Nashville airport, and we're getting ready to fly over there. I was sitting down next to an older woman, and she was on her cell phone. I could overhear her conversation. She said, “I'm going to see John Oates play at the at the theater tonight.” I thought it was kind of funny, I was sitting right next to her. When she got off the phone, I introduce myself. She goes, “I'm Miss Bobby Gibson.” She was Don Gibson's widow. When I was a kid, one of the first songs I ever played on guitar and sang was a Don Gibson song, “Oh Lonesome Me.” I thought, this is so unbelievable. I mean, this is amazing, Kismet, returning to something. When I got to the venue, I told Pete, “Hey, Pete, let's learn ‘Oh, Lonesome Me,’ and let’s play it.” She's going to be in the front row. Ever since that day, I've kept that show that song in my show.

Very nice.

It really goes back to my earliest days as a performer. That's just one thing. I tell that story, of course, and play that song. The other songs are songs like a Jimmie Rodgers song called “Miss the Mississippi in You,” which I performed at a Jimmie Rodgers tribute in Bristol, Tennessee. Then later I found out that Mississippi John Hurt, and even Robert Johnson, believe it or not, were highly influenced by Jimmie Rodgers, the old the country singer. So, I put that song in the show, and I recorded that song. Little by little, I began to kind of put together this patchwork of influences that not only influenced me as a musician but influenced the way roots music evolved. It became a theme for the show. That's essentially what we do during the course of the show.

When you were coming up music was not so regimented. You could hear rock, pop, country, soul and other things all on the same station. The new tour is described as “explore the musical roots of pop, tracing its origins back to the beginning, and perform an eclectic blend of blues, folk and mega hits.” Why do you feel that the music world has become so segmented and as a musician do you feel that having a wide palette of influences helps your own work?

Oh, absolutely. It’s being open to the world around you. Not only the contemporary world around you, but the past and the history, if you don't understand when to reexamine and to reference. The music of the past is a key to going forward in the future in a sense. I'm old enough to remember music before rock and roll. My parents were the World War II generation. They listened to big band music. That was the music that was played in my house growing up. As a musically sensitive little kid, I heard that. That music has seeped into me. It's part of me. I think that perspective is unique in today's world where most music lovers really reference music from the beginning of rock and roll onward. So, sure I'm dating myself, but in a way I'm proud of the fact that I have that reference point that I'm able to reference music prior to rock and roll.

Since you moved to Nashville your songwriting and recording seems to have blossomed. What do you feel it is about the Nashville music scene that has opened up this vein of creativity?

I started going in the mid-nineties and started making friends. The more I came to Nashville, the more I realized there were a lot of people who had the same musical DNA and roots that I did. Especially among the Americana and roots musicians, not so much the contemporary country musicians, because I never really gelled in that world. But among the people like Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas and Bela Fleck and Jim Lauderdale and Buddy Miller, the real authentic roots musicians here in Nashville, I entered into that community. The more I played and got to know those folks, the more it brought out the early days in me. I realized this is something that's been simmering in my soul all these years and [I’ve] never been able to express it in the context of Hall and Oates. Nashville has given me that opportunity. The more I embraced it, the more my creativity blossomed.

You’ve also done an awful lot of work with lesser-known musicians in recent years – in fact you appeared on an album by a good friend of mine, Ken Sharp.

(chuckles) Yeah, Ken.

You’ve also worked with Mutlu, who we’ve interviewed a couple of times.

Yes.

Is it fun to discover new musicians and help them to refine their musical visions?

Yeah. I am very open to good music. I'm not locked into genre and style and chart positions and success. I try to keep an open mind. If I have the time and if I like what I'm hearing, I'm definitely interested in working. I just did a few songs for this movie that's coming out soon. It's called Halfway to Somewhere. I did a duet with a Mexican female singer named Jamina Sariana. I did a song with a very adventurous rapper from South Carolina named CerVon Campbell. We did things that were really outside the box for me. The more I do these things, the more I want to be versatile. I want to try different things.

The music world has changed so much since you were coming up. When you started the band released four albums before you had your first hit.

Right.

It’s been a long time since bands had that kind of time to grow. Nowadays with the label system being on life support and the money so much harder to come by due to streaming and downloads and stuff, do you think it’s harder for musicians to find an audience than it was in your day?

Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. The digital world has created this unique opportunity for everyone to have a voice. On every level; musically, socially. At the same time, because everyone has a voice, it's hard to cut through the clutter to find things. (laughs) Every musician can be heard in some way, shape or form now. But to the extent that they're ever going to be able to generate mass appeal is very rare, and very difficult. It's one of those things, but the younger generation has grown up in that, with that reality, and they've accepted it. I see how young musicians are utilizing their social media platforms and utilizing the digital platforms to be heard. If you're good, someone's going to pay attention to you eventually. You just got to work your ass off. (laughs again) That's basically what you got to do.

You’ve been active on social media too. What is it like to be able to interact directly with your fans, as compared to the old days when there was a bit of distance?

I wasn't that comfortable with it to be honest with you, but COVID cured that pretty quick. In the beginning of COVID, I didn't even know how to use Zoom. Then I began to do some co-writes, some song collaborations or writing collaborations via Zoom, etc. It took me a while to come to grips with it, but now I'm totally comfortable. It's really opened the door that's never going to close. It's going to be part of our reality. I mean, look what we're doing right now. It's part of our reality now.

What was it like to get back on the road after missing a year and a half of touring due to COVID?

When Daryl and I were going to do our first show in August, I thought it was going to be really weird and really hard. Luckily, the Hall and Oates family of support people – the crew, the production folks, the band – are really tight and good people and they weathered the storm. When we got back together, we did our first show up in Rhode Island. We did one day of rehearsal. It just (snaps his fingers) came back like nothing. Honestly, the hardest part was [whether] the mixture was in good enough shape to sing and write and be on the stage for two hours. Other than that, it really it was surprisingly smooth.

Will the “Evening of Songs and Stories” tour just be you and Guthrie acoustic, or will there also be a band?

No band. No nothing. No amps. With two acoustic guitars, three microphones and we actually use this new… well it's not new, but it's a really unique thing, it's called the ear trumpet system. It's these super high quality acoustic mics that we're using. It literally feels like we're playing in the living room. It doesn't feel like music is amplified. It's this very transparent, amazing, high quality microphone system that we're using. We've done a few shows and people are like, “Wow, I never heard a guitar sound like that.” Plus, we use amazing vintage instruments as well.

You’ve been a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for several years now. How exciting is it to you that your band’s music has been recognized in that way, and yet you’re still able to do much more low-key stuff like you’re doing as well?

It's very important to me to be able to do that. I've always felt like I wanted to maintain my feet on the ground, regardless of how I'm perceived. Being in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was fantastic for the public profile. It opened a lot more doors. It created a greater awareness for me and Daryl above and beyond where we already were. So, I’m always appreciative of that. But I just make a point of doing things like just popping into a small club here in Nashville and playing. Jamming with people. It's important for me to stay grounded musically.

#John Oates #2022 #Music Interviews #An Evening of Stories and Song #Jay S. Jacobs #George Seth Wagner

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