#we get it you watched a video essay (i saw it too) now let's expand on that

[cctinsleybaxter]

I know people clown on the cellphone in saw saying September 10th 2001, but maybe worth mentioning that the popularity of the franchise and that wider genre* in the early 00s was, in part, a cultural response to 9/11

#*colloquially called ‘torture porn’ though imo that’s a gross misappropriation of those two terms for very different reasons #and it obv has a much more complicated history in america than i’m getting into with one text post #idk i'll leave this grousing to the tags but people on here constantly bring up 9/11's impact on early aughts country songs #but don't really seem to understand its impact on the production and reception of all music. all movies. #we get it you watched a video essay (i saw it too) now let's expand on that #films

[bumbleboarhd]

Where The Wild Things Are (2009) - Crumby review #1

Hello! Thank you for reading this review! In these reviews I will try to encapsulate what I loved or hated in a piece of media. At the end, instead of giving it a score I’ll compare it to a food or a specific taste and experience. Enjoy!

The first time I saw this film was my freshman year of college. I was severely depressed and spent most of my days grinding through movies I’d always wanted to watch but never got the chance to. I can’t remember what specifically inspired me to watch this one in particular. I was interested in the film when I was a kid but never got the chance to see it. It could’ve been some podcast or video essay but either way this movie captivated me back then. There was no doubt in my mind that I was watching something truly special. I couldn’t quite verbalize it at the time but the movie resonanted with some forgotten part of me. 

Well, it’s been 5 years and lucky for me but unlucky for you. I now have the capacity to verbalize why this movie slaps! This film is an enigma. When most directors are given the chance to adapt a childens book they usually choose to either expand on the initial work while staying recognizable or do the same plot but pad it out with humor or OCs voiced by whoever is popular at the time. WTWA is definitely the former rather than the latter. Spike Jonze (who I was shocked to learn was asked to make a children’s film) examines the themes of the original book and shows them to us not as they actually were but as we remembered them. It captures the duality of childhood especially for those of us that grew up emotionally unsatiated. The parents are overworked and tired, the siblings are bored and apathetic, and we the child want all the attention but are also repulsed by the world around us. Max wants his mother’s attention but can’t understand that she’s barely making ends meet and is exhausted. He throws temper tantrums and demands to be looked at with authority but cannot handle any repercussions. This is all expected because Max is a literal child. The film isn’t trying to punish max nor does it seem interested in criticizing him. Max does face consequences but it doesn’t feel like watching veggie tales or my little pony where there’s an unseen moral inquisitor making sure everyone suffers. In this film it feels natural and like the characters are truly making organic decisions. Max is confronted by monsters who mimick his ego and through this confrontation he realizes what he needs to change in his own life. The best part of all of this is it’s done through subtle storytelling. A lot of Max’s feelings and actions are only explained through visuals, there’s no exact moment when a character just says the point of why everything is happening. Nor, is there a moment where Max just says “This is the lesson I learned”. It truly feels like the film is trying to present and define elements of the human experience that are intangible. It’s more about the emotions and thoughts that are evoked than it is about bringing the viewer to one unified answer. There is no perfect phrase for when you know you’ve gone too far but can’t apologize or when you go from an emotional high to a sadness that leaves you nonverbal and sobbing. the cinematography helps to support this goal of portraying rampant whimsy married with brutal emotional unruliness. We get tons of wide shots filled with negative space and the film is not afraid to let the camera linger for just the right amount of time. The opening of the film is a perfect punch in the face to introduce us to Max. It was honestly one of the best looking movies I’ve seen in a while. The cgi faces of the monsters took a bit to get used to but props on them for using actual constumes for the most part. 

 I found the characters to be off putting at first with their super laidback manner of speech but soon I warmed up to them. The film even got several verbal chuckles out of me which is a good sign! Not that I’m a hard nut to crack lol. Max’s acting was absolutely superb. I’m too lazy to look up if this kid was nominated for anything but this has got to be one of the most realistic portrayals of a troubled child in film and there are A LOT of troubled children in film. The ost was phenomenal except for a few licensed songs that just felt too generic for me. “Hideaway” is a hood classic ofc but some of the other songs were just too on the nose. Any time I heard an indie musician scream as Max was getting angry I cringed. Lastly, while I would suggest anyone reading this to watch the film, I can’t really reccommend it for children. I don’t agree that it’s inappropriate but I don’t think they’d really get it. This film is more like Boyhood, Eighth Grade, or The Florida Project, where the point is moreso to look at childhood in retrospection than to explain these feelings to children. Those are my thoughts at least, I’m not a parent yet haha! 

I’d consider this movie a subtle and masterfully crafted parfait you have on a lonely stroll through the city. The beginning of your day was full of dissappointments and all your plans fell through. The museum is closed and your friends forgot any plans you may have made. You think about just heading home and calling the day a bust, but on your way to the car you see a cute, humble, diner having a sale on desserts. You decide to treat yourself and partake. Plus, it’s been a while since you ate out and payday was yesterday so it won’t hurt too bad. The line moves too fast and you get anxious when the cashier asks for your order. So you pick a random parfait. Great, another dissappointment. You go to an outside table and sit. At first, you feel angry at yourself. This was the one mistake you could’ve controlled but you failed like you always do. You grab a spponful of your food expecting something that’s ok but not as good as it could’ve been. You’re wrong, the parfait is not too sweet but not underwhelming either. It’s just enough to kep you chasing for more. Your cheeks feel flush and for the first time all day your body is able to relax. You keep digging into your cup taking bite after bite riding this high of creamy sweetness. In this pursuit, you feel happy but before you know it there’s no parfait left. Usually you’d get mad at yourself for eating too fast but then it hits your stomach. You feel like a boulder. There’s no way you can get up now, so you stay and watch the cityscape. You see a nervous couple on a date. You can tell it must be a first one becuase they keep chattering away stealing the silence with nervous yet authentic banter. They seem truly happy. You see a child walking with their father. the kid trips and scrapes their knee. As they look up towards their dad it seems like a meltdown is imminent. Tears are sloshing down and their face is turning to a violent shade of red, resembling that of a scared and dejected yet powerful stop sign but the dad is able to make enough silly faces and noises to bring the kid back to a state of happiness. watching this reminds you of when you were a kid. You feel the cold autmn breeze pass through you and dance through the trees, bringing that nostalgic autumn scent with it. You realize it’s been a while since you’ve had a moment like this to yourself. A moment to just be. It feels nice, today was nice. 

Thank you for reading this! It took a lot of motivation lol. Look forward to more and have a Happy Valentines Day! 

#where the wild things are #wtwta #review #movie review #review blog

[immergladsss]

Moonacre Week 2021

Day 1: Zoom/Video Call

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31641653

“For next class, please read chapter 9 and be ready to discuss the social and political impact of the Norman Conquest on England—and don't forget, your essays are due this Friday. Have a wonderful day and stay safe!”

Maria watched, unblinking, as square after black square disappeared from the virtual ‘room’. Not even the professor had their camera on.

‘This meeting has been ended by the host.’

The zoom window finally closed.

Maria blinked.

4:56 pm read the time centered against the starlit wallpaper of her Mac book screen. She turned to look at her planner that was strewn over her bed.

No more classes for the day.

Maria fell back onto her bed with a groan. She rubbed her dry eyes, not caring one bit that she was smearing the little make-up she coaxed herself into putting on that morning.

“ 'Dress the part’ they said. ‘It'll make you feel normal’ they said,” Maria mumbled to herself.

She didn't feel normal, all she felt was drained. It was the start of her second year at university… and well over six months into a pandemic that showed no signs of stopping.

She raised her iphone. 4:57 pm. The locking screen was of her family. A picture taken the day of her nephew’s first birthday, December 2019. Georgie was centered in the picture, sitting between her uncle Benjamin and Loveday. Maria stood next to her uncle, leaning over his shoulder, while Ms. Heliotrope, their nanny, was by her side with an arm around her back. To Loveday’s other side was Loveday’s father, Mr. De Noir, and her brother, Robin.

Maria wiped her eyes with the hem of her t-shirt. It felt like an eternity since she last saw them. She missed them. Unlike her roommates, she didn’t move back home at the beginning of lockdown. She had just started an internship, one that was supposed to go well into the summer. Yet only 3 months later, she and the rest of the interns were dismissed, with promises to still receive full class credits.

With public transportation being the only way to get home, she didn’t want to risk her or her family’s safety. Yet day after day, her longing for home depressingly grew like the number of covid cases.

María turned on her side and clicked her laptop back on. She opened her FaceTime app and typed in Loveday’s name.

She propped herself on her elbow and began the call. As she waited, she grimaced at her disheveled appearance. Her red curls were in a messy bun, black mascara smeared around her eyes, her university-themed t-shirt was slipping over her shoulder. The very picture of a work-from-home student.

Lately, she and Loveday had begun a new game, ‘Fashion: Covid’. They would jokingly judge each other's "outfit”, as well as the rest of the family’s, as though they were judges on Project Runway or Next in Fashion. Maria smiled. She couldn't wait to see what Loveday would tease her about today.

“Maria!” A husky voice greeted, “It's been a while—”  

Her eyes flew open as she slammed her laptop shut.

She scrambled out of bed and ran to her bathroom, stumbling over her laptop’s charging cables. Maria washed her face with cold water and soap, doing nothing more than smearing her make-up.

“Oh bugger...” Maria pried open her mirror cabinet, spilling some products as she grabbed her make-up remover. ‘What was Robin doing at the Manor?’ Maria hastily squirted the remover onto the cotton ball, splashing some on her shirt and cursing under her breath. She scrubbed her eyes, ignoring the sting of the remover seeping in.

She rinsed off her face. Grabbing her hand towel, she rubbed her face dry, and ran back to her room, diving right into her bed.

She opened her laptop. 5:01 pm. ‘Crap’. she took longer than she intended. Maria redialed Loveday, hoping he would still be there.

“Maria, what happened?” Loveday answered the phone. Her blond curls were tucked into a fish-tail braid that draped over her shoulder. She was wearing her uncle’s faded brown jumper from his university days.

“Hi Loveday… sorry my internet went down for a bit. You know how it is.”

Loveday nodded with a frown. “Your face looks a bit red, are you running a fever?”

“No, I—”

“Fever?” She heard Ms. Heliotrope shriek from the back. Maria was startled as Loveday’s camera began to shake, before finally settling a bit too close to Ms. Heliotrope’s face.

“Oh, my goodness, Maria you’re red! I must go to you at once!”

“Ms. Heliotrope, I’m fine! I just washed my face.”

Ms. Heliotrope narrowed her eyes, bringing the phone so close to her face that Maria could only see her forehead.

“I don’t believe you. If I take a plane, I can be there by the end of the day.”

“Hang on! Look, I’ll prove it.” Maria climbed out of bed and pulled out the thermometer gun her family had sent in a care package. Sitting back down in front of the camera, she pointed the gun to her head.

Beep. 36 C.

“See, I’m healthy. Besides, it’s much too dangerous for you to travel.”

Ms. Heliotrope looked crestfallen, almost as though she wished she had a reason to be with Maria. “Hmm… Alright my dear. Make sure you check your temperature every day and report to us any symptoms. Please take care and let me know if you need anything! I love you and miss you dearly.”

“I will Ms. Heliotrope, I love and miss you too.” Maria waved goodbye as the phone was passed back to Loveday, but her uncle intercepted it, planting a quick kiss on Loveday’s head as he took the phone from her grasp.

“Maria,” came her uncle’s gruff voice. Even during a pandemic, he was dressed smartly with his hair neatly combed.  “How are you doing? Do you need anything?”

“Hello uncle, I'm alright, thank you though. The care package you sent is not yet half empty.”

“Good, good. Only say the word and I’ll go pick you up myself. We miss you.”

“I miss you too but it’s too risky.”

“It’s worth the risk if it's to have you back with us.”

Maria’s heart ached. “Thank you, uncle, I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”

Finally, the phone was handed back to Loveday. “I’d ask how you were doing but it seems everyone’s done so already.” Loveday chatted away, telling Maria about how bored they’ve been.  How Marmaduke’s cooking expanded to include various intricate pastries and bread. She recounted with a laugh how only Wrolf and Georgie seemed to love their constant presence.  Though Maria laughed and nodded her head to Loveday’s words, her eyes kept darting to the background trying to see if she could spot him. Loveday grew quiet, she watched Maria with a raised brow and crooked smile, waiting to see how long until Maria noticed.

“Oh, er sorry Loveday, I don’t think I heard you. Were you waiting on my response?”

“Its alright, it seems you’re looking for someone else?”

“No, no…” Maria said sheepishly, “but earlier, Robin answered the phone. He’s back?”

“Yes love. He returned about a month ago but was quarantining at the castle. He’s now running errands and getting groceries for both of our families. I always offer to help, but he insists, and you know how he gets.”  Loveday bit her growing grin. “Do you want to talk to him? He’s playing with Georgie at the moment.”

“Sure, why not,” Maria tried to say nonchalantly. Though she never outright confessed to him, her childhood crush on Robin was no secret. But with four years her senior, Robin always brushed off any comments made about them, saying she was just his best friend. Once he compared her to a little sister. That one stung. Though Maria tried to grow out of it, even having a few boyfriends through her teens, that never stopped Loveday from trying to set them up.

The camera turned black momentarily before turning back on. They were in the parlor now. Robin was on the floor, playing with Georgie and his action figures. Maria’s heart warmed.

His hair was much longer and held up in a messy bun much like hers, though she hated to admit he looked better in it. He wore a black t-shirt with faded black ripped jeans. There were a couple of black and silver chain bracelets on his wrist.

“Oh Robiiin,” Loveday teasingly called. “Seems like someone misses and wants to talk to you.”

“Loveday stop playing!” Maria hissed under her breath, feeling her cheeks grow warm.

Robin jogged over to the phone with a merry grin on his face. Loveday flipped the camera back around, blew a kiss at Maria with a wink, and passed the phone to Robin.

“Hey,” Robin greeted. “Cleaned your face?”

“No!” Maria lied against the growing blush.

“It’s alright princess, not all of us can look as good as I did in smeared eyeliner.”

“Oh please, you mean that emo phase you went through?”

Robin stilled. The corners of his mouth turned up into a faint smile. He shut his eyes as he threw his head back and clutched Georgie’s toy like a microphone. “I got your picture! I'm coming with you! Dear Maria count me in!” Robin sang at the top of his voice.

“Oh god no! Not that song again! You were so annoying! I’ll hang up if you don’t stop right now!” Maria threatened through Robin’s laughter.

“It wasn’t a phase. It was a lifestyle! I’m thinking of bringing it back. Reckon I’ll look better with it now.”

“Ugh, your ego has grown along with your hair.”

“Wouldn’t yours too if you looked this good in a bun?”

“Please, I’ve seen better.”

“Oh yeah, name a few.”

“Chris Hemsworth, Ben Barnes, Jason Mamoa, Orlando Bloom, Timothée Chalamet—”

“Alright, alright, I get it. And please don’t get me started on that Chalemutwat. Such a sap, can’t believe that’s what girls are into nowadays.”

“You're just sore you don't fit the profile anymore. Face it Robin, the rock and leather days are long gone. It's all about k-pop and softbois now.”

“Softboys are just fuckboys with flowers in their hair,” Robin grumbled in disgust.

Maria snorted, thinking about the time he wore a flower crown for a May Day festival. “So, I heard you got back a month ago?”

Robin was walking out of the manor. She could see the setting blue sky and moving landscape in his background. “Yeah… The parks closed down. Figured it was time to come back home. I’m surprised you aren’t here.”

“Aww miss me?”

Robin shrugged his shoulders and looked away. “Want to see the gardens?” Robin flipped the camera, showing her around the manor grounds. As he walked her through, he talked of how covid affected his job. The craziness of people. How some thought escaping to the outdoors was the solution, only to end up trampling on preserved wildlife and littering about.

Maria had settled down, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand, she wore a wistful look across her face with a soft smile. Robin paused. His eyes focused on the screen, and he swallowed.

“Such a shame that happened to the park,” Maria said. “I’d be heartbroken if something like that happened to your forest.”

Robin cleared his throat, “Erm-yeah. Really annoying.” He forced his eyes back to the gardens as he continued on his way.

The camera stopped moving as he sat by a tree and flipped the camera back on him. 

“You got an earring?” Maria asked leaning closer to the screen.

“Yeah, was thinking about it for a while.”

“Ooh! Show it to me.”

He brought the phone close, it was a black stud, with a charm of a red feather.

“I like it.”

“Looks good on me, eh?”

“Bring that ego down a notch and then we’ll see. How’s your father, I’m guessing he had to stop with his falconry lessons?”

“Yes, we shut down the school temporarily. The castle feels lonely.”

“I’ve always wanted to learn.”

“Really? I’ll teach you when you get here.”

“Okay! Oh, I took up archery—Well before covid shut it down.”

“No way.”

“Yeah, I can teach you that!”

“Sounds like a deal,” Robin paused, “are you really not coming back soon?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What if lockdown ends?”

 “Don’t bet on it. Words going around it’ll be like this until the vaccine comes out. Give it another six months, maybe a year.”

“A year?”

“Yep.”

“Bloody hell.”

Robin frowned. “When did you start cursing?”

“I’ve learned a thing or two at uni. Even got drunk!” Maria said with a proud grin.

Robin’s face fell. “When was this? Who were you with?”

“Oh, lay off. You’ve gotten drunk plenty of times. Don’t forget about that time you broke your arm after trying to climb my tower.”

“That’s not the problem. You’re tiny. Were you with trusted people? Who took you home?”

“Relax birdboy, I was with friends. We went to a pub. I got tipsy, not black-out drunk. My roommates and I walked ourselves home. I didn’t even have a hangover. And I’m not tiny, I’m average.”

“Just barely,” Robin said with a snort though he seemed to relax back against the tree. “Never, ever, get drunk without someone you truly trust. And remember the pack rule. People are shifty.”

“I know, I know. I still remember your lesson before I left for school. Besides with this pandemic, doubt that’ll be happening anytime soon.” Maria told him about school. The weird things she’s seen on her classmate’s cameras. How everyone seemed to care less and less. She was over it all.  

“You should just come back to Moonacre. Study from here. Even my friends are back, they’ve been helping me fly the falcons.”

“The gangs back too? So not fair. I miss them,” Maria whined. “I want to, but it’s too dangerous. My uncle’s the only one working right now, and the upkeep of that old manor is so expensive. I can’t risk their health. If I could get home safely, I would be there in a heartbeat.”

Robin got pensive. “Alright. Well, hopefully I’ll see you soon.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “I just told you that’s not likely. I already feel bad enough as it is. Don’t rub it in.”  

Robin shrugged his shoulders, “Never say never. I should let you go now, it's late and Loveday’s phone is about to die.”

Maria pouted, surprised to see the clock in the corner of her screen read 8:47 pm. “Wow, we don’t speak for ages and you’re already wanting to hang up. I see how it is.”

Robin shook his head with a chuckle and a sad look across his eyes. “You know that’s not the case,” he said softly.

“I know. I’m only teasing. Good night Robin. I…I miss you.”

“Good night princess. I miss you too.”

The screen turned black. Instead of Robin’s face, she now sat staring at her own glum reflection.

8:49 pm.

She closed her laptop and stared at the photo collage above her desk. Pictures of her adventures with friends and family adorned the board. In the middle was one of her and Robin competing in a race at that May Day Festival. Still wearing the flower crown, Robin was giving her a piggyback ride. She was laughing.  They lost after Maria freaked out when a bee landed on a flower in front of her nose, causing Robin to trip. It was the last thing they did before her leaving to school.

Sitting back up, she opened up her essay and began to type. Wondering when she would see him and her family again.

…A few weeks later…

A resounding knock came from the door. Maria frowned. She hadn’t ordered dinner yet… It was probably some package getting delivered. Shrugging her shoulders, she went back to work, deciding to deal with it later... Until the knocking came again. Then her phone lit up. Maria glanced at the screen, wondering who could be calling: Robin.

#moonacreweek2021 #incorrect-quotes-of-moonacre #theres supposed to be a second part to this... but i havent finished it #oops #the secret of moonacre #robin x maria #modern au #covid-19 #pandemic #marias bored #all time low #dear maria #i totally think robin had an emo phase #and he works the man bun #this was fun #i wish i could participate more #the prompts are soooo good #the possibilities

[a-student-out-of-time]

There's a good and a bad way to subvert expectations. Unfortunately what's been happening a lot lately is that many works go for twists for the sake of being twists, the Star Wars Sequels being a prime example of this. Or the later sessions of Game of Thrones. There is a fine balance between being able to surprise your audience and not being extremely predictable.

//I’ve absorbed more complaints and feelings from both those series through pop-culture osmosis than I have from watching them. I’m more of a casual observer, but I do have some feelings on both these points (which I will put under here if you’re interested.)

//tl;dr version: I think we should unbiasedly judge media on its own merits and look over what works internally within the story and what doesn’t, be willing to make our own judgements rather than jump on bandwagons and tell people what they should or shouldn’t like, and not treat opinions as straight facts.

//And also that I’m honestly tired of hearing about the sequels and GoT ^^;

//I disagree with a lot of people on the Star Wars sequels (aside from 9, fuck 9), but I’d rather not start a debate about it nor their quality overall. Only that I think people really overreacted to them  and many others jumped on the hate bandwagon when emotions were running high.

//Frankly, many of the criticisms I saw about the films felt either wildly inconsistent about what they’re upset about or what they wanted it to be (7 was criticized for being too much like old Star Wars, 8 for not being enough like old Star Wars) and others felt like they came from bad faith and I can’t take them seriously.

//And yes, the last season of Game of Thrones is trash and wrecked everyone’s storylines for the sake of being shocking, but let’s also be real: GoT was never going to have a happy ending if it wanted to stick to its “realism.” Whoever got on the Iron Throne was inevitably going to have to purge all opposition to consolidate power. That’s just how real revolutions and coups work.

//To be clear, Daenerys’ turn to evil murderousness was stupidly executed, but it wasn’t necessarily unprecedented. What I frankly dislike about fantasy in general is its tendency toward the Divine Right of Kings. That only certain bloodlines have the right to rule and you just need to put the “rightful heir” on the throne. In other words, giving absolute power to a magically omnibenevolent person will fix everything. I may be an optimistic humanist, but I know that simply doesn’t happen.

//The entire point of GoT is that DRoK is stupid and royalty in general really kinda sucks. If you go back, you see most of the lords we follow, including “good king” Eddard Stark, are either totally indifferent to the masses or are completely sadistic and torture them for funsies since the legal system doesn’t protect peasants.

//The Starks are no better than the Lannisters simply by virtue of being overall “nicer” than them. Both sides start wars that get thousands of people killed. Also, everybody loved John Snow, but he also fucking hanged a kid and I’ve never heard anyone bring that up since.

//Most importantly, Daenerys was a likable character with a sympathetic backstory, but even before the last season, she was fully embracing being a Targaryen by blood and was openly murdering people who got in her way while she was conquering territory after territory.

//Yes, a lot of the people she killed were slaveholders, but let’s be real for a moment: not everyone who participates in an evil system is evil themselves. It’s easy for us as the audience to judge them for participating in a slavocracy, but living in one comes with being told slavery is okay. That doesn’t make them evil by nature, just subject to the biases of their culture.

//Also, slavery is evil but conquering people is fine? And burning people to death for opposing you is acceptable since you’re going to be better and free everyone, or because you had a sympathetic backstory? These are the kinds of things that get villains criticized for, but is treated as a necessary evil at worst for the protagonists.

//This is protagonist-centered morality. The show is framing it in a way where you’re being drawn in to see it that way, but also telling you not to see blatant hypocrisies for what they really are. Daenerys was even called as mad as her father by Tyrion. It wasn’t well-executed, but it was going to happen regardless of how much anyone liked her.

//Violence for a good cause is still violence. If you’re going to burn people for disagreeing with you, then say that other people shouldn’t and should listen to others, that’s full-on hypocrisy. That goes for most of the characters in the show, frankly, and the message is executed well for most of it.

//That being said, don’t think this means I think the last season of GoT is good, that the Star Wars sequels are perfect, or that I hate all fantasy books ever. That’s not what I’m saying. I try to enjoy what’s good about them and point out their flaws regardless.

//What I’m saying is it’s important to, when you want to be critical of media, put your feelings and biases aside and judge the media you’re criticizing on its own merits. In my opinion, the claims that the sequels only did things to subvert expectations is unfounded. They were going their own direction, which was admittedly controversial and not what many people wanted, but just because you don’t want it to happen doesn’t mean it’s a bad twist

//Just like how a character isn’t a Mary Sue just because they’re too OP or you don’t like them. That’s not what that term means and hearing people use it like that irritates me. While I do have my complaints about characters, people use that term as if it’s a form of literary criticism that has more use than is necessary.

//If a character is OP, they’re OP. If a character is flat, they’re flat. If a character is poorly written, they’re poorly written. If a character is at the center of the universe and literally everything else exists just to amplify them and their role in things, then they’re likely a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. It’s not a label to slap on  a character you don’t like or to give a critique (or complaint) more weight.

//This is why I say DR3 Chiaki isn’t a Mary Sue, she’s just not a very well written character. All Mary Sues are poorly written characters, but not all poorly written characters are Mary Sues. She’s not terrible, but she’s not explored much and her only big roles are being the person who brings Class 77-B together and her death turns them to despair.

//While her death was tragic and brutal, we didn’t really get a good look at who she was as a person beyond just being nice and opening up to her friends. If they’d expanded on that a little more, maybe it would’ve been more effective, but the way she died felt...manipulative and shock baity in a lot of ways since it banked mostly on our familiarity with her despite it being a totally different person.

//DR3 honestly had a whole host of shocky and just plain gross scenes that I really don’t think needed to be there.

//But likewise, if a story has a plot twist that you don’t like, that doesn’t automatically make it purely shock bait or subverting expectations just for the sake of doing so. There’s a difference between “this character was evil all along and there were a lot of clues and we just didn’t want to believe it” and “this character was evil all along for reasons we’re dumping on you now.”

//Just so I don’t seem like a hypocrite, while I personally don’t like what happened with Mikan in chapter 3 of SDR2, it was an effective way of foreshadowing the truth of them being the remnants of despair. It was set up that every had lost their memories and this was a sign that getting them back wasn’t necessarily going to have a good outcome.

//And I’ll be real: I can’t take a lot of the complaints about the Sequels or GoT seriously because much of it carries overtones of racism, sexism and antisemitism. For those more into Star wars, I think you know what I mean already and that’s all I’ll say. As for GoT, I’ve seen reddit posts viscerally attacking the writers directly and even saying that we should’ve expected the ending to suck since it was “written by Jews.”

//Yeah, go figure I can’t read any of that. I know not all people who hated the show’s ending or the films are like that, but it’s impossible to deny that those attitudes are very real.

//In the end, if you want to be critical of media, the worst way to do that is to just watch a video of someone complaining about it for half an hour. Yes, those video essays can be fun, but the only way to be truly critical of media you enjoy is to examine it yourself and look closely at what’s in it and how it’s presented. That goes doubly for shows you like.

//I know not everyone will do that and all opinions are ultimately subjective, but don’t let someone else tell you that you should hate something or that something is bad just because they didn’t like how it ended. Watch or read it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Don’t just follow the crowd and also be respectful of people who don’t agree with you. You can learn a lot when you talk to someone with a different opinion.

#mod talks #mod rambles #a student out of time #just giving my thoughts #Anonymous #cw: racism #cw: sexism #cw: antisemitism

[whatspastisprologue-blr]

Writing Advice, the Completed Version

This is a follow up to this post: https://whatspastisprologue-blr.tumblr.com/post/184968470815/writing-advice. I’d written that on my phone, I think, and goofed somehow, so I didn’t post the entire thing. 

Now, to start, I love reading what you guys have to say, and I consider you guys basically geniuses. You spend hours, or what seems like hours, analyzing SPN (and also other works as well, but mainly SPN), and you’re willing to put up with horrible backlash from people too dumb to realize they’re wrong. 

And I keep thinking how I would love to write something, be it a novel or a TV show, that people love so much that that they’re willing to write meta for it. Contrary to what I’ve seen around about some creators being upset when their audience figures out what’s going on, I’d be delighted to know that people care so much that they pay close enough attention to figure it out. As for things like subtext, I see myself jumping up and down like, “You’ve got it! I thought you would! I put that in there to see if you’d notice and you did! Yay!” To me, meta has become a high form of praise just by its existence, but from the standpoint of literary criticism and how art both reflects and transforms society, also absolutely necessary. Please, critique art!

Which leads me to part two: how do I actually put stuff into the work for people to write meta about? Like, I’ve seen mini-essays ranging from fictional parallels/references/shout-outs to alchemical practices to entire discussions about, for instance, specific shirts (”x character is wearing x shirt again!”) to various pieces of decor to the meaning of various types of food (bacon, cake versus pie, burgers) and how food is used (Sam and food, or Cas and food). I’ve seen posts written analyzing songs used in episodes and how they inform the episodes or a character’s arc, etc. I’ve watched fascinating yet trippy videos about narrative spiral that make me wish I was approximately 400% smarter so I could properly appreciate and understand what I was watching. I’ve seen meta about colors and symbols, and the symbolism of different types of beer, which means that someone must have thought of it.

Someone, at some point, decided, “let’s have a beer that symbolizes family, a family beer”. And others agreed. And someone else, or perhaps that same person, decided, “let’s have a beer that shows up whenever things aren’t as they seem”, and again, others agreed, so now we have a running list of El Sol appearances. 

I’ve seen some truly mind-blowing, fantastic meta that’s been written, but obviously, that analysis works because there’s something to analyze. It wasn’t pulled from nothing, as some mistakenly believe. We can talk about the Red Shirt of Bad Decisions because there’s evidence for it in the text. Someone put it there. Someone made sure to include El Sol enough times in episodes with a similar theme (things being not what they seem/alternate realities/djinn hallucinations) that we can talk about its significance and know, in upcoming episodes, that when we see that beer, it’s a sign that there’s incorrect assumptions being made by characters, that what we see isn’t necessarily real, etc. 

So, how do I put content into a work so that people can pick up on it and then write about its meaning and significance? 

I guess, relevant to this, is a third question, that could possibly help me figure all this out as well: what makes “Supernatural” worth writing all this meta about? That might not be phrased right to get my meaning across. While, granted, I have fandom lanes that I stay in, so I could just be unaware of meta being written for that work, but I don’t hear of people analyzing, say, “Psych”, or “Bones”, or “NCIS”. I don’t hear of long, in depth-articles about how food is used on “Glee” to give insight into a character’s mental/emotional state or closeted bisexuality. Is that just because there’s nothing to write meta about for those shows, or is it because, even if there is something to write meta about for those shows, “Supernatural” lends itself to that analysis and criticism in a way those other television shows don’t?

On a related note, people have been publishing books and YouTube videos and even teaching college classes at least partially about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and its spin-off, “Angel”, for 20-odd years. Is all of the meta surrounding “Supernatural” the progression of that phenomenon, with SPN at least partially reaping the benefits of what BtVS helped establish? Does it have something to do with being a paranormal genre show?

Don’t get me wrong, I truly and wholeheartedly believe that SPN is a show worth writing meta about, and I’m always excited to see more of it. So it’s not whether or not the show is worth it that I’m questioning, but what specific qualities contribute to the show’s worthiness that so many other television shows don’t seem, to my knowledge, to have?

As a budding literary critic, meta is fascinating; as a creator, it’s kind of overwhelming, because that’s a lot of analysis of a work, a lot of studying with a magnifying glass. But, as someone who’s starting to see the willingness of people to write meta as a benchmark or grade of how good that work is (because people, I would assume, wouldn’t spend several hours writing an analysis of a show that sucked), it means that I want to do a good job of putting things in there for people to pick at, and I want to do what I can to make sure that what’s being analyzed is something good (as in, the messages are positive and/or useful, no harmful lessons or unfortunate implications). 

I’ve been working on the backstory for my series for at least a year now, and I still feel like I’m less than halfway done. I don’t want to start writing without a clear plan of where I’m going, at least for a little while (my idea is to have a few “little endings”, thinking for if this is going to be a TV show one day, and if the show gets cancelled before the “Big Ending”, I still want there to be an ending that’s satisfying, even if it’s not the Big Ending that I hoped to get to, so I suppose I could plan to the first little ending). Sometimes, I feel like I’m behind, drastically behind, that I should have at least one book (or season) planned by now, but then I think about how I’m still in my early twenties, and how I want to write something worth writing meta about (and thus, the work needs to contain something to write meta about) and part of me wants to freeze and is grateful that the going has been slow so far. 

But, with “Supernatural” ending, and given my love for the sandbox that it’s helped define and re-define, with episodes that push the bounds of storytelling in so many fascinating and delightful ways, given my appreciation for shows such as SPN, BtVS/Angel, and Wynonna Earp (and also Stranger Things and Lucifer), I’m inspired to write. Part of it is to honor SPN’s legacy by re-defining the sandbox even further, by taking what it’s done so wonderfully and, sort of like a relay race, doing my part to carry the baton a little farther--because that show has been so amazing that, since I truly love and appreciate it, how do I not pay it forward? Pay tribute? How could I just drop the baton? And part of it is because the general sandbox that those shows play in is just one that I love, one that I want to play in and expand on, and help continue to demonstrate that genre shows are (or can be) awesome, transformative pieces of art, not just some semi-obscure show about fighting monsters. 

To do all that, however, I’d really appreciate your advice, and if you think of others who should weigh in, I’d be thrilled to hear from them as well.

Thanks!

@mittensmorgul @occamshipper @tinkdw @dimples-of-discontent @drsilverfish

P.S: I saw this GIF, or a picture of it, before I knew it was from SPN. When I saw it in an episode, I was just like, “?!”. (Oh, the things I’d seen from SPN before realizing it, or all the scenes I could recognize/quote that I’d maybe seen clips of at most, because I’d seen GIFs and screencaps so many times--that show took over my life before I ever started watching it). Anyway, as much as I truly love storytelling and I want to do it for my life because I love it and because I want to inspire hope in people through art, I’ll leave with this:

[sugar--pie]

Recently I made a post talking about Barlee’s recent tweets and how I personally believe it doesn’t kill off Klance. I recommend reading it before you continue reading this HELLA. LONG. POST. As I might refer back to it a few times.

Edit: just want to add in here, that Barlee said those tweets weren’t about Klance, and that they were about Shiro being Rep. She also said she doesn’t know the end result of the series though... so I’m still gonna keep this post. But a lot of the things I talked about in that post about Klance in general, I’ll still refer to. Please remember to read my edits at the end too! Thanks :)

Okay.

So even after I made that post, I still had a major panic attack and slowly lost hope in Klance again. Idk, I’ve fallen way too deep into this it’s not even healthy probably, it felt like literal heart break. And I’m not even LGBT, I have another reasoning behind why I’m not really for Allura/Lance... and Season 7 kinda fuelled it a bit more. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. That post will be made after Season 8... if I manage to somehow be horrifically incorrect about what I’m going to talk about here. Which... I highly doubt I will. But I’ll keep a cushion to be safe.

I’m going to make bullet points:

One of the biggest problems the Klance fandom had before was that they put the Klance GogglesTM on for everything. Some specific things in the show were obvious yes, or at least it should be to everyone, but some things were stretched out way too far.

One of these scenarios is the theory (yes theory, this was never confirmed to be true, it’s just an assumption) that Hunk was given what was meant to be Lance’s arc with his family.

Reason why this became a theory was because of Barlee’s Tweets. And this is kind of where I started to lose hope again.

If Hunk was given Lance’s arc then that must mean Klance was written out. Because it was all about Keith and Hunk, when it “should’ve been” Keith and Lance.

However, I was seriously thinking about it as my last few morsels of hope started leaving me during work UNTIL BAM! IT HIT ME!

Yeah. Klance gogglesTM. Fans have grown to projecting Klance on to everything. And that includes Hunks arc, but trust me when I say this. Hunk was never given Lance’s arc. This is meant to be Hunks arc, through and through.

Keith was also included in Hunks arc because he is the one who didn’t have a family from the start. Including Keith in Hunks arc is demonstrating the growth Keith has had throughout the series.

Hunk was admitted to being the most underdeveloped character in the show. I remember it from an interview (video I believe) where Joaquim and Lauren say they had trouble with Hunk when creating him because, comparing him to his 80’s counterpart, was a lot different and they had trouble putting him in certain roles.

That is really lame, don’t get me wrong, but this explains why Hunks arc in Season 7 felt rushed and out of place. Hunk only mentioned missing earth or “not wanting to be a paladin” once in the beginning. And he wasn’t super upset about it.

Lance on the other hand was. He was vocal about missing earth, He was shown getting upset, leaving the room and opening up to Coran about it. This is where I think people mistook what Lance’s arc was meant to be. Even I misunderstood because of this scene.

however, this is where I’m going to point out, that yes, this is the start of Lance’s arc (“Lance and Keith’s arcs have been the only two that have lasted the entirety of the series” - incorrectly quoted by Joaquim)(I’ll expand on this a little later), but Lance’s arc isn’t about family.

I know, shocker. And it should’ve been obvious from the get go. But oooooh nooo, it wasn’t because we focused too much attention on Lance missing his family here. But let me ask:

How many times in the show has Lance voiced about missing home besides this scene? Yeah... try making a list for that lol. That’s because we took it way out of context and made it a bigger deal for Lance’s character when... it isn’t. Lance’s arc was never about family or missing earth.

Writing a show, you need to make sure the characters move into the spot they’ll need to be in. They used Lance missing earth in order to make him go off on his own, and have Coran follow.

Why you ask? It should be obvious. This could be a stretch but a very realistic one: Lance needed to be by the Crystal with Coran when it explodes, to ultimately, lead to the Bonding moment. Boom.

Lance’s Arc started here. Lance’s arc is a Romance Arc and it’s been in our faces the whole time.

He’s had more scenes voicing his charm and making it known from the get go.

He’s flirted.

It’s canon he wants to fall in love with someone.

His blog talked about crushing on Allura and wanting to be called pretty.

He’s the most feminine coded character as he enjoys generally feminine tropes like taking care of his appearance, even more so than Allura, who has only ever referenced being “girly” by having her hair done by mice(?) and wanting something sparkly.

This is also why Lance’s romantic life is such a focus not only for us, but when being talked about at Conventions. He’s the only one to have a canon romantic endgame. Gee, should’ve been obvious there what his arc is about.

And what finally made me realize Lance’s arc is a romance arc, is remembering when Lauren and Joaquim told us during a discussion that “Lance doesn’t know what he needs. We know what Lance might look for, but it’s not necessarily what he needs.” Lance being the only one known to have a canon endgame, ties into this.

This, made me realize. Lance’s arc, will be him realizing what he needs. I think it’s already leading up to it, personally because of this season alone. But arguably, it started picking up once Keith left in Season 4.

So No, Lance’s family arc was never given to Hunk because Lance was never meant to have an arc based around his family in the first place. We knew Lance missed his family and earth, but it wasn’t the main focus for him so that’s why all we saw was this glorious reaction to seeing his family again. And why the only lead role out of his family is Veronica.

(Keep in mine Keith is made out to be a focal point within this scene as well. Hunk too. I’ll bring this back up.)

So... now that I’ve covered the ground work in this long ass essay. Let’s continue the essay!

Now that we know Hunks arc was never meant for Lance, and Lance instead has a Romance Arc, let’s consider his endgame options:

In my post about Barlee’s Tweets, a lot of people assumed she was referring to a lot of things implying Lance will just end up in a rushed relationship with Allura, and I was one of these people too at first. But then it made me think. There was a lot, and I mean a lot of Keith and Lance interactions, and most of those, as I said in the Barlee post, demonstrated the trust and teamwork between the two right away, as well as had undertones and subtlety towards romantic intentions. Keith also has been a focal point in generally Lance centric moments, like above when he runs to hold his family. Hunk makes sense of being present because it starts the “family” portion of his arc this season. Keith however, only makes sense if he has purpose in Lance’s Arc, otherwise he wouldn’t be a focus and made apparent that he’s watching Lance reunite with his family. Make note that Allura was not.

The game show for example, If Lance liked Allura so much and was meant to end up with her, he would’ve picked her to leave. But instead, he chose Keith and also had a very sweet reasoning behind why, including a very dopey fond look on his face.

That’s why I love Pidge’s reaction in that scene because she practically sums up pretty much everyone’s reaction. Even mine. All of them were probably expecting him to pick Allura, (maybe even himself) but nonetheless, they weren’t expecting him to pick Keith, even Keith himself.

That’s why Keith reacts the way he does. I guarantee you he panicked.

Filler episodes in Voltron have always foreshadowed in some way, I wouldn’t be surprised if having Lance and Keith choose each other isn’t blatant foreshadowing.

Overall, there was more Keith and Lance interactions that included romantic subtext, compared to Lance and Allura, this season alone.

This is why it confused me a lot if the showrunners did write out Klance. They wouldn’t have included such strong scenarios with the two in this season if that’s the case. Not only this season but also the smaller ones that implies something more between the two in season 4, and season 6.

This is the point I’m going to bring in something interesting I read in this post. The OP said it’s probably a reach (when are they ever not?) but this is where I think Allura randomly having feelings for Lance, comes into Lance’s Arc.

Like we’ve been saying since the beginning, Allura has been what Lance has wanted from the start. But in OP’s post, they mentioned how the only time Lance had shown insecurity and being unsure of himself this seaosn, was right after his scene with Allura (and Veronica teasing him about it). That was the only scene that caused insecurity.

THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT YALL.

Lance had been secluded from season 4-6. He started getting closer to Allura, but then Lotor came along and changed that.

This is where I believe “what Lance wants isn’t necessarily what he needs,” makes sense. Allura has started having feelings for Lance, but then ending up together would be, as said by Lauren, “a disservice to both their characters.”

Allura getting feelings so soon kind of proved to me after realizing all this, that, no she isn’t Lance’s endgame. Like we’ve been saying Allura is what he wants. But not what he needs.

But who... pray tell.. is what he needs.

Keith.

I know, I know. This is the part where the typical Klance Goggles would probably come in. But I’m serious about this guys.

The moment Keith came back into the picture, Lance had been put into a more important role.

Keith listened to him, trusted him immediately and asked Lance to take over multiple times. Lance never had a moment of insecurity because everything fell back into place, and Keith made him feel useful again. Lance was once again the Red Paladin and Keith’s Right hand.

Tying in Lance being vocal about Keith “running away”, I don’t think people are far off from thinking Lance actually opened up to how he actually felt when Keith Left. And even showing worry when Keith said he’s going back for Acxa. Might as well put it in a present and wrap it up with a little bow.

Keith is ultimately what Lance had been needing the whole time. And Lance, I believe, will realize it. He’ll figure out that Allura isn’t what he needs, and because his moment of insecurity stems from an interaction he and Allura had, is also foreshadowing it too.

Throwing back to when I said Lance and Keith have had the longest arcs since the beginning, (quoted by Joaquim himself), this would explain why Lance’s finality to his arc hasn’t happened yet. It’s because it includes Keith, and Allura (possibly even Acxa which I explained in the Barlee post) and will most likely happen in season 8. The ultimate slowburn endgame.

This is where the bonding moment will be acknowledge.

They’ll also acknowledge two important scenes; Keith’s almost sacrifice, and Lances actual death (which included parallels to their season 1 bonding moment with Lance and Allura.)

And also “the other part” to Keith’s reason for leaving the team for the BOM.

Parallels are for a reason. And oooh boi.

Did my brain manage to restore faith back in Klance. Yup. Even if I’m the ONLY ONE LEFT IN THE FANDOM, I know what I’m talking about here. And if Allura/Lance do end up canon after all when it really makes no sense to, I will be one confused fucking bitch.

I believe I covered everything my jumbled brain puked out. So please, keep the faith Klance fandom. There is more story to unfold!

Edit: and technically I’m already again a really confused bitch. The Barlee post might be useless now, since she specifically stated she was referring to Shiro. And he was the intended rep.

I’m not upset again I’m just downright confused once again. Butttt... at this point. Maybe stuff will be answered in season 8. But overall, a lot of my points in this still stand!

Edit 2: Ultimately (I say this a lot), the one thing I knew from the start, is that Keith and Lance would have something to do with eachothers arcs, and arguably, they have, considering Lance and Keith’s arcs have been the longest arcs in the show. So even if Klance isn’t endgame. At this point, they have definitely become best friends and have grown on their own and with each other. And that, is still a very, very beautiful thing. No they don’t have to be together romantically. But they can and will be by each others side for a long time after the series ends.

Because that’s what Klance is. Lance and Keith, back to back. Thank you for reading. :)

#klance #laith #voltron #vld #voltron legendary defender #voltron crew #voltron s7 #voltron season 7 #keith #lance #kogane #mcclain #faithinlaith! #voltron season 8

[madscientistjournal]

Fiction: Tempo Rubato

An essay by an unnamed musician, as provided by Jonathan Danz Art by Errow Collens

Tonight, backstage is too hot, too dark, too much like some high-ceilinged mausoleum straight out of one of those old Friday night TV horror shows. The strap of my dinged-up Telecaster bites into my shoulder. Tonight, like most nights in recent memory, this guitar is like my very own stone of Sisyphus. Truth be told, I don’t know if I can roll it up the mountain one more fucking time. I don’t know if I can go out on stage yet again and pretend I’m me.

Vegas–swarm cams, drinkbots, holo-betting, omni-feeds, every last bit of it–can go to hell. The guy on stage now, the Buddy Holly impersonator, even with his bitglam in effect, comes off more like an impersonator of a Buddy Holly impersonator. He’s opening with “Peggy Sue.” Poor bastard. There’s nowhere to go from there but downhill.

Everyone’s an entertainer these days, what with voice plugins, appearance modifiers, movement enhancer neuro-mods, and every other trick. There’s no work at the art anymore, just show up and let the tech do the work.

Me and my new band, we’re the only completely analog performers in Vegas. Re-Invaded And It Feels So Good, that’s our act. Real clever stuff. The crowds eat it up. It’s fresh, in a manner of speaking, especially after seeing a hundred enhanced shows in a hundred casinos. After a while, it all blurs together.

I know, I know, that’s what they said when we were all flooding into the U.S. during the British Invasion. I’m a connoisseur of irony. But when something stands out from the pop-star one-offs and Rat Pack 3.0 crooners, people take notice. People don’t know they’re craving something different until they get it.

These Vegas performers could stand a lesson in “less is more,” but instead they’re all in on everything. All that tech must seem like magic to these fools, but tech ain’t magic. Believe me, I know from magic. Not like this Buddy Holly guy.

Look, I liked Buddy Holly back in the day–we all did–but that sound aged about as well as a bottle of piss. When you hear it, you know exactly when it came out. It never evolved. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if his plane hadn’t crashed.

Sometimes I wonder if Buddy wasn’t the lucky one.

~

It was the 1960s, and the Beatles exploded out of Liverpool with us right on their heels, and the British Invasion was on. The money began rolling in free and easy like juice through a Marshall stack. In a move that would become the hallmark of making it in rock and roll, I bought a posh estate in the English countryside.

That’s where we were between tours in ’70. One night, December 11–Christ, you’d think I’d forget after so long, but the memory is like tough old scar tissue that’ll never go away–anyway, we were in the studio, turning a three minute song into something epic. I dove into my solo, weaving amplified heat through drums and base and rhythm guitar, stitching it all together at first. Then I began teasing strands out into the dark corners of sound. My fingers slipped and slid high on the fretboard. My guitar wailed and moaned with an urgency I could feel. I raced out ahead of the rhythm, then eased back into the mix by turns. I scooped time from some measures and poured it into others. The world around me wobbled and shimmered.

By the time the cops barged in, I was fully lost in the solo. It was as if someone had accidentally stuck a needle in my artery and my life was spraying out everywhere. It wasn’t blood, though, dig? I swear it was life itself flowing from me, streaming into my mates. Everyone was higher than an old vicar’s waistband. The cops’ shouting tore it all down and the music collapsed. I was wasted, could barely stand.

The cops’ arrival probably saved me, but all they saw was some weed, some pills, and whatever, and that’s all they needed to know. They grabbed their headlines for busting some punk kids who’ve risen far too high, and I grabbed some jail time. Prison was no great shakes, but there was something about the monotony of the routine. It freed up time to think. And I had a lot to think about.

~

Vegas Buddy Holly slides smoothly into “Rollercoaster.” It’s a checklist for him: hit this note, do that hiccup thing, take three steps. Technically, it’s perfect, but there’s no love for the music, no heat. Choosing to impersonate Buddy Holly is purely mercenary. He’s found a niche and it pays. It’s calculated. And I’ve got to tell you, hearing exactly the same thing done exactly the same way night after night gets tiresome.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the music itself; I feel like I could play forever. It’s everything else. Some might say the world has passed me by, but I’d argue it’s the people who flock to this place on the regular who are being passed by. Was a time when people would spend hours parsing song lyrics or album cover art. Now everything wheels by like startled birds, gone in an instant, replaced by the latest streaming shows or VR episode or vending machine stimdrugs. We’re so fixated on what’s coming next, we can’t enjoy whatever it is we’re consuming right then and there.

The marketers’ll tell you their latest con expands the mind and taps into unexplored landscapes of the imagination. Rubbish. It’s about making money. It’s always about making money. Just ask ol’ Buddy Holly on stage there.

The guys in my band are no different. Sure, they tolerate the analog sets, occasionally even enjoy themselves when they’re not thinking about it. But they’re just gigging with me to pay the bills while they seek online stardom. That’s where the real money is, even if the odds are so long they stretch well beyond the horizon. They just need one video to virus out, and they’ll have it made.

I hear you, telling me to fuck right the hell off. I made my money, so why shouldn’t they make theirs, right? I say, have at it. There’s no magic there. You want magic? Strip it all down, get rid of the enhancements. Focus on the music, the guitar strings beneath your fingers, the vibrations of your vocal cords, the buzz of a packed venue. If you let yourself fall deep enough, you’ll find the space between it all.

You’d think songs almost a hundred years old would lose their luster, but that ain’t so. There’s that quote about not being the same person who crossed the river the first time or some shit. There’s truth there. Songs are like rivers, always changing, waiting to show you something new, if you’re willing to look. That’s why I hang around, every single day and twice on Saturdays.

~

After the bust, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at that rehearsal. I needed to know what that was. As a band, we were looking forward, working on new songs, planning new tours, finding new ways to spend our windfall. But as an individual, I’d decided to look backwards as well.

I searched for answers in the deep, slippery roots of music, looking for the faintest whiff of anything even remotely like what happened the night of the bust. Whenever we hit a new city, I scoured libraries and bookstores and pored over rare tomes, letters, and sheet music for something like magic.

Then I found tempo rubato.

Now, I know you’re thinking of that Styx song about the robot. That was Japanese. Tempo rubato is Italian, mate.

The definition of tempo rubato in music texts refers to, and I quote, “the slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor to be more expressive.”

But here’s the thing, Tempo rubato isn’t just an Italian term on some sheet music like sotto voce or fortissimo or any of that lot. Now I had no idea if the concept originated in Italy or not, but the Italians nailed the naming of whatever this phenomenon is.

In Italian, tempo rubato means stolen time.

As a musical cue, that was all fine and well, but I was positive there was more to it than that. Slowing down, speeding up, everything I’d been doing that night, it was all there.

I began playing around on stage, messing around in subtle ways with what almost killed me the night of the bust, learning, refining. I did it carefully until I unpacked tempo rubato and put it to work for me. I pilfered small bits of time so as not to cause harm and, as much as we played, the stolen time accumulated like the juice on a mob loan.

~

We’re a long way from Vegas, now, aren’t we? What does this have fuckall to do with tech enhancements and swarm bots and flash androgynous technicians? Well, hang tight, bruv, I’m getting to that. Besides, Buddy Holly’s got one more song yet.

He launches into “That’ll Be the Day.” When he hits the chorus, like he does every night, I can’t help but think that maybe in some alternate universe I’m dead, and he’s here in Vegas in real life, the original watching some mercenary performer imitate me.

“That’ll be the day that I die,” Buddy sings. Well, the real Buddy Holly boarded a plane that flew him right into his grave at the tender age of 22. And, despite the booze, the drugs, and other depredations of the body, here I am still going strong well beyond my expiration date. Is it fair? That’s not for me to say, but I’m fully aware of the irony.

The ubiquitous “they” insist everything that’s old is new again and I’m inclined to agree. Maybe that’s true, but it’s a cycle, ain’t it, which bloody well means everything that’s new becomes old again as well.

I think about all those musicians who hung around too long. I’d need more fingers than I’ve got to count everyone who couldn’t let it go, guys who wished they headed out at the top of their game, leaving the fans wanting more.

But damn if every time I hit that first chord on stage, I’m not transported back to our first live gig in Coogan’s Pub in Dartford. Now there’s a magic all its own, you know? Throw in the fans and the applause, and small wonder musicians can’t let it go.

What I miss, though, what has me in this funk, is that I’ve got no one to share any of this with. Everyone’s gone. What’s the use of hanging around as long as I have if you can’t share the honest-to-god artistry?

There are days I’m aware the only person I’m really playing for is myself, searching the music for ghosts of the long-gone boys who crossed the Atlantic and got rich with me. There are days I wonder if stealing time during all those tours with them might have hastened their respective ends. Shit, we were all getting older. People just age differently, right?

I search through the music. Maybe some combination of sound will bring them back, but inevitably the ghosts are always just out of reach. I’ve seen musicians wind up searching elsewhere, the needle or the booze or something just as deadly even though we know whatever it is we need isn’t there at all. And sometimes you don’t even know you need anything at all until you’re shown otherwise.

~

Inside some nondescript sound studio in Memphis in the late ’20s, I was waiting to record an interview for some classic rock retrospective podcast. At least I think they were still calling what we did way back when “classic.” The host was explaining to an angsty lad on the sound crew what vibe he needed and who I was.

But damn if every time I hit that first chord on stage, I’m not transported back to our first live gig in Coogan’s Pub in Dartford.

“Seriously?” the angsty lad asked. “I thought that guy died years ago.” No embarrassment. No apology. Just a statement of fact with perhaps the smallest hint of a question or accusation in his tone. That’s when I realized I couldn’t keep on as myself forever. No matter how good I felt, no matter how I looked, someone would do the math and start asking questions I had no intention of answering.

And so I did the only thing that made sense: I disappeared to sort things out. For a few decades, I traveled to places where people had no idea who I was. For a while, it wasn’t so bad, the newness of it, you know. I tried out things I couldn’t do when we were touring, things like gardening and painting and woodworking, whatever struck my fancy.

Even as I did these things, in the need was always there, waiting. I told myself it was just the music I needed, just the feel of the guitar in my hands, the heat of the stage lights, the cheering crowds. I mean, the music was definitely part of it, but I missed what I was able to do with the music even more. I needed tempo rubato.

What better place to resurface than Vegas, the impersonator capital of the world? If I couldn’t be me, at least I could pretend to be me. I mean, I had me down pretty good.

~

Buddy Holly wraps up with a deep cut, one of his b-sides that has surprising layers. Something about this song appeals to Buddy. I can tell, because he loses himself in it. He’s so close to touching the music and doesn’t even know. The crowd applauds just enough to encourage Buddy Holly to do an encore.

Buddy Holly launches into a respectable version of “Not Fade Away.” Huh. Normally he trots out a tired medley of songs that roll into that other song that’s not by Buddy Holly but about Buddy Holly, when his plane crashed, and the music died, and all that. Tonight, Buddy Holly’s veering off script.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

One more song to figure out how I’m going to break it to the band. Since I returned to Vegas–what has it been, 30, 40 years?–I’ve asked myself why I keep going so many times it feels like a vocation unto itself. If there’s an answer to that question, I’ll be damned if I know what it is. Now’s as good a time as any to call it quits.

“Hey, Billy,” I say to my bassist.

He turns to me and raises his eyebrows in question.

Time to tell the crew tonight is the night I stop, but the words die in my throat just as Buddy Holly strums the last chord of his encore.

The applause for Buddy Holly packs more punch this time around, there’s real enthusiasm behind it. Buddy comes off stage. His bitglam distorts and winks off. Bruv looks tired, but he’s smiling.

We nod at each other.

That simple gesture is like a smack upside my head. It’s straight out of those days right before the British Invasion, back when we were just one of a hundred bands were trying to make it. Yeah, we hated each other, but there was some measure of respect for the fact we were all chasing the same thing. There’s a camaraderie that comes from mutual suffering.

Maybe I’ve been too hard on ol’ Buddy.

Then the host is announcing us to the crowd. Cheers and stomping feet shake the building. The crowd is as amped as I’ve ever heard it. That sound … that sweet, goddamned sound washes over us. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stands at attention, expectant. My heart thrills and prances inside my chest. A smile spreads of its own accord across my face.

Billy smiles the same me. He’s feeling it too. “What were you going to say?”

My guitar feels lighter, and the only thing on my mind is strumming that first chord. “Forget it,” I say.

Billy’s no longer the fresh-faced kid I brought in to hold down the beat a few months ago, but that’s what the business does to a musician, isn’t it? The pull of the stage and the lights are like an old friend’s arm around my shoulder, warm and comforting.

A British Invasion musician learns the secret to rock on for evermore, but after outliving his mates and winding up as an impersonator of himself in Vegas, he wonders if it’s time to hang it up.

Jonathan Danz is a speculative fiction writer living in West Virginia with his wife, daughter, and cat, all of whom are artists in their own right. He attended Viable Paradise 21 and narrates for various science fiction, fantasy, and horror podcasts. He likes books, bikes, and beer.

Errow is a comic artist and illustrator with a predilection towards mashing the surreal with the familiar. They pay their time to developing worlds not quite like our own with their fiancee and pushing the queer agenda. They probably left a candle burning somewhere. More of their work can be found at errowcollins.wix.com/portfolio.

“Tempo Rubato” is © 2019 Jonathan Danz Art accompanying story is © 2019 Errow Collins

Fiction: Tempo Rubato was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Errow Collins #Jonathan Danz #Science of Music #Time Travel #Unnamed Musician

[honeylikewords]

Gimme your thoughts about Us, I’m still dumb af - You know who it be

I’m putting off an essay to write this but let’s ROCK and ROLL, BABY!

So, spoilers below the cut, just as a warning for anyone who still wants to see Us (2019), dir. Jordan Peele. If you’re unable to see the movie for whatever reason, you can feel free to read this and garner some ideas from it, but I still suggest seeing the film, in the end. A lot of this won’t make sense unless you’ve seen Us!

I normally don’t go out for too much horror, but I do think the Jordan Peele movies are legitimately great works of art, and very culturally relevant, so if you want to be supportive of black artists, black art, and the vocalization of the black experience, I highly suggest going to see these movies or watching them at home. 

They’re not actually overly violent or exploitative, and understanding that the violence in the films is meant to be metaphorical for the systemic violence perpetrated against oppressed groups helps to contextualize the stuff you do end up seeing. So, without further ado, let’s get into some Thoughts about some Cinema.

So, first of all, I have to say that I haven’t stopped thinking about this movie since I saw it at, like, 5:30 pm on Sunday. It’s been on my mind non-stop, and I’ve been fixated on the soundtrack, particularly “Anthem” and “Pas de Deux”, along with the “Tethered Remix” of “I Got Five On It”. I love the intentionally jarring combination of sounds, and how “Anthem” is directly reflective of the idea of the “U.S. Anthem”. “Us Anthem”. 

Jordan himself has been very open about the fact that the title Us is meant to also represent “U.S.”, and when Red is asked “what she is” and she rasps out “We’re Americans” it just... stuck with me. 

The nonsense-singing of “Anthem”, too, fixates me, since the scorer for the film has talked about how it’s the “voices of the Tethered”, and how they’re “angry” and “ready to get free”. We know that the Tethered cannot speak, which is a major and interesting facet of their life, to me, since they’re never given “a voice” beyond this kind of animal screaming and groaning. 

It’s what makes a lot of viewers see them as “sub-human”, but always gets to my heart and makes me think about the fact that they are so very keenly human. It makes me think about the repression of “lesser” languages, native languages, “non-verbal” languages. The Tethered DO have a means of communication-- clicks and rasps, cries and screams-- which definitely do pull at the human fear of “unnatural” noises, but also remind me of native languages that utilize clicks or throat sounds often not found in English. 

The Tethered are deeply, intimately human. While it is mentioned by Red that two bodies cannot share the one soul, that doesn’t mean to me that the other is soulless. I really don’t think that about the Tethered. I think that they are their own people, and that their rising proves that. They’re not hollow machines that just mimic their “original” on the surface, but are just people with their own souls, people who have been wrongly oppressed and mistreated.

Us is openly a discussion about the way we, as people and as Americans, treat “others”. Whether that means the racial other, the cultural other, the class other, the gendered other, or anything other system we try to dichotomize, binarize, or diametrically oppose to something else, it’s very definitely about the ways we abuse and mistreat people in order to systemically oppress them and gain from that.

Adelaide represents this interesting kind of class-traitor, in a way, because she rises “above the others”, both literally and figuratively, and instead of making an effort to free those around her, she just rises to the top and forgets where she came from. Whether that’s about assimilating into white culture and “rejecting” the culture one came from (joining in the oppression of your own people by claiming to ‘not be one of those kinds’) or about rising to a wealthy position and oppressing the poor, forgetting what it was like to be poor one’s self, or about any number of other things, that’s up for interpretation. But the issue is still there.

Jordan intentionally left the specific meaning of the film open so that every viewer would be forced to engage with it personally. Who do you, personally, help to betray? Who do you, personally, help to oppress? Whose suffering do you, personally, benefit from? You’re forced to grapple with that, and forced to acknowledge the reality that every single one of us is part of the issue. You only climb higher by putting someone below you, and this movie forces you to recognize that. 

I’ve heard people complaining that Us isn’t as good as Get Out specifically because it’s more open-ended, but I think that’s what makes both films fantastic and beautiful. Get Out brazenly exposes the direct experience of everyday black horror, and is completely open about it. It’s a one-to-one analogy. But Us is for everyone, making you wrestle with yourself. You are your own Tethered. You are the good and the bad of yourself. And neither one is fully good and neither one is fully bad. Get Out was a master-class in analogy, but Us is more of a metaphor; it doesn’t need to have everything laid out. Its horror and its beauty lay inside of its intentional cloudiness.

I’m really obsessed with the rabbit imagery, too. I love bunnies, and seeing them become symbolic of this horror really was an interesting take. Jordan himself has expressed being uncomfortable with and scared of rabbits, specifically because he can see that they’re “soulless” inside; he says that if you took the brain of a rabbit and put it in a person, you’d get Michael Myers. Totally void, just ready to hurt. And I think that’s an interesting take on them. He also points out that the image of rabbit ears, the shape of their head, mirrors the shape of the scissors that the Tethereds use.

I also love the way that rabbits are largely docile little creatures, but can bite pretty hard if provoked, and I feel that’s a good way to look at the Tethered. I don’t see them as inherently evil or violent, just pushed beyond their own limitations. They did what we all did as Americans: they led a violent uprising against their oppressors, then ‘peacefully’ took their place, all the way across America. They are us, for better, for worse. 

The choice to use the 80′s references really often also caught my attention; Jordan talks about how the 80′s nostalgia is this double-edged sword, since everyone is longing to go back, but not realizing the costs and weights of that, the evil lurking under the placidity and “wholesome American image” that the 80′s sought to project.

The all-American, apple pie, small-town fun and games of the 80′s also came with the Reagan administration, the AIDs crisis, the war on drugs, a massive rift between the rich and the poor (with a steadily more wealthy middle class expanding from just middle class into rich, upper middle class individuals and extremely poor lower middle class), and “sublimated racism”. We pretended, as a nation, that we were now post-racial, but that was such, such, such a huge lie.

So setting the memory scenes in the 80′s, using 80′s film references, 80′s imagery, 80′s sound-a-likes, the Michael Jackson stuff: it all points to the duality of what we love, what we are nostalgic for. Michael was a hero of the 80′s, but now... 

Speaking of Michael Jackson, notice carefully the costuming of the Tethereds. Red jumpsuit, single glove, ‘the monster is not what it seems’, the “Thriller” t-shirt... why, Jordan, one might think that you made the Tethereds look like Michael in “Thriller”!

Which he obviously did, guh-doy.

I mean, the glove/sharp symbol also is an homage to good ol’ shithead Freddy Krueger, too, but it’s definitely a potent nod to Michael Jackson. We know that Adelaide (now Red) had seen the “Thriller” video as a child, and that she wanted the shirt with him on it, so the image of the Tethered is this combination between the Hands Across America symbols and the Michael Jackson look in “Thriller”. Adelaide (now Red) never forgot. 

Also, god, Hands Across America? Talk about 80′s false optimism! It’s incredible how potent that image is for the issue being discussed. For those of you who don’t know, Hands Across America was an initiative in the 80′s to help end hunger and homelessness in America. The idea was that every person in America would join hands and form a line “from sea to shining sea” across the entire lower 48 continental states, and for each person in line, $10 dollars would be donated to the cause.

The event, of course, failed in many ways. First, there’s no POSSIBLE way for people to join hands across the whole continent; the terrain of the US makes it entirely impossible. Plus, the time necessary to conduct that would be incredibly exhausting for people standing in line! But what’s worse? The project did successfully raise ~$34 million, but nearly $20 million of that disappeared into “event costs”: paying the celebrities that endorsed it, paying the event organizers, et cetera. Only around $15 millions made it to the homeless and hungry. While $15 mil. is no small number, that’s.... less than half of what was raised. So where did all that go? Into the pockets of the already rich. It’s such powerful symbolism, especially within the context of the film.

Oh, also, while still on the 80′s talk, the opening shot of the film features a VHS copy of the movie C.H.U.D., a movie about “sub-human underground sewer dwellers” who rose up to eat the surface humans. These “CHUDs” were one-to-one analogies for the homeless and impoverished.

I cannot get over how strong the storytelling is in Us, I just can’t. I’m obsessed with it. I cannot help but wanna talk about it all the time! It’s so GOOD and I’m so FRUSTRATED that I’m gonna cut myself off here to stop from ranting about every teeny tiny thing and every big major thing because no one will know what I’m on about, but, seriously, do yourselves a favor and go see Us. 

This movie will make you have to sit down and think about whose suffering you’ve benefited from, and what you need to do within yourself to change this.

Also, before I go, I just gotta say I love, love, love the decision Jordan made about having the 1980s version of the hall of mirrors be “Native American” themed, only to have that “politically corrected” in the 2010s to be “Merlin’s Hall Of Mirrors”, which is just a facade thrown up over a still-racist, exactly the same hall of mirrors. The problem lurks within, never gone, just covered.

Also, that ties to the Kubrick connection (The Shining is a major inspiration for Jordan) and the genocide connection, so, uh, it’s deep out here, lads.

Anyway, I have opinions about movies.

#also lupita deserves an oscar for this role no joke #her 'red' voice? ogh my god... oh my god #HER M II I I I I N D !!!! #messages #long post #us spoilers #Anonymous

[inktae]

You made me super curious about that veganism essay, if you ever feel like sharing, I'd really appreciate it (no pressure though!). I gave up dairy recently because it gave me almost daily headaches and I'm considering going fully vegan (I never really ate a lot of meat to begin with), but I find it really hard to make up my mind. I feel like a lot of the information out there is very us-centric too and doesn't really apply to me, so I'd love to hear a more European/international approach ^^

I did end up translating it, so here you go! :)

a few things I need to point out: I wrote this for a middle school student, so I didn’t delve too much into scientific facts — so please take everything I say with a grain of salt and do your own research if you’re curious, because these are things I learned after reading a lot of studies from certified nutritionists and medical researches.

I also most likely got a little preachy at times (sorry) but please remember that I’m not judging anyone because that is never my intention. I wrote this while keeping in mind that this girl needed it for a school debate where she needed to try and convince people of veganism, which is exactly what I tried to do. ^^” if you are still curious after reading and want to know what kind of documentaries to watch, let me know and I’ll be happy to lead you in that direction.

There are plenty of reasons to approach veganism, or to at least adopt some of the vegan principles into your everyday life; but the most important ones are health, the industry and the planet, and ethics.

Although a healthy diet does not necessarily need to be vegan, a plant based diet can be very beneficial for your body, especially for people with certain chronic diseases, deficiencies or to simply improve your overall health. It has been long since proved that nutrition is tightly linked to the reduction of particular symptoms and the improvement of the quality of life, and a plant based diet definitely carries these benefits. Personally speaking, veganism got rid of my migraines and stabilized my (otherwise disastrous) hormonal situation. It is also proved by nutritionists that a balanced vegan diet, based in real and varied foods, can cover almost every deficiency (except B12, which I will talk about in a second).

One of the myths that worry non vegans the most is the supposed lack of proteins in a plant based diet. This does not suppose any issue at all, as plant based foods are abundant in proteins and it is quite easy to reach the necessary daily intake as long as the diet is varied. A great example are grains — chickpeas, beans, lentils (these in particular are not considered complete proteins as they don’t carry all the amino-acids, but they can easily be completed by including another food that has said amino-acid into your diet, like rice, for example), tofu, tempeh, soy, etc. Plant based proteins are even of higher quality than animal based.

When it comes to supplementation, the only one that is absolutely necessary is B12. This vitamin comes from a bacteria which animals obtain from the ground and the food they’re fed (animals do not have the ability to manufacture vitamin B12), and we would obtain it if we did not wash our vegetables (which we obviously have to do), so it is not necessarily a bacteria that comes from the animals themselves. In some cases they’re even supplemented with said vitamin.

Plenty of people might argue that taking B12 supplements means that it is not a “natural” way of living or that we are not “designed” to be vegan, but in a world where we’re surrounded by technology, where we use phones and cars on a daily basis, what is natural is very relative and what is unnatural does not necessarily mean it’s harmful. The 21th century allows us to be vegan quite easily and that’s what truly matters, not that we were carnivores in the past. It may have been true that millions of years ago it helped us evolve, but we live in a time when we can lead a completely normal life without eating animals, especially if we take into account how harmful and dangerous the industry (industrial farming) has become.

Which leads me to my next point: the industry and the planet. The industry has definitely worsened over the years, as the more it expands and the more its production grows, the quality of the food gets worse and a piece of meat of one hundred years ago is completely different to the one they might sell you today, which is filled with chemicals, antibiotics, hormones… just so the animals grow faster and bigger and taste better. All of this is harmful for the human health (which is a longterm process you might not notice until you’re of adult age. After all, deficiencies take a long time to show up) and it also affects the quality of life of the animals. Unfortunately, there are very few regulations in the industry (both in America and in Europe), which continues to destroy natural landmarks and plays a huge part in the deforestation of the planet. This occurs because the industries need insane amounts of land to be able to grow the crops that serve as food for the animals. If you think about it, it’s quite illogical to destroy so much land to feed the animals that people will then feast on as processed meat full of hormones, instead of directly giving those crops to all the poor people around the world who have no food to get by.

At the same time, it is proved by diverse studies that animal farming produces more greenhouse gases than all of the transport clumped together, which has a huge effect on the planet and global warming. It is also a completely unsustainable system, as the demand continues to rise towards insane levels that the industry can’t even keep up with, which only worsens the deforestation issue. We have reached a point where every second more than three thousand animals are killed in inhuman ways, which only gets worse overtime. All of this is proved and studied through statistics (I really encourage everyone to do their own research on this), but most environmental organizations do not raise awareness as they are sponsored by the same powerful industries (Greenpeace, for example, is sponsored).

(now I get a little graphic on the following paragraphs, please avoid if you’re too uncomfortable about animal torture. Carry on after the *)

When it comes to ethics, I believe that everyone (or most people) would recoil if they saw the living conditions of these animals. As I mentioned before, there are not enough regulations in the industry that look out for the way they live, and the abuse and mistreatment of the animals is quite normal all over the world (even though I did my research through american studies, I was surprised to see that here in Spain it is actually way worse).

These industries only care about selling meat, not the animals. They’re beaten up, tortured, locked in enclosed spaces where they can barely move, they get so fat that their legs break under their weight, the hens get their beaks cut off (they are crammed so close together, they try to peck each other due to stress), and the chicks are gotten rid off by crushing them alive or getting thrown in the trash, where they asphyxiate due to lack of oxygen. It is quite cruel, and there are plenty of videos and documentaries where you can see that this is in fact very real. Earthlings is the most famous one.

*

Another discussion is related to organic meat, and if it is a good option when faced against veganism. Though it might be true that some companies treat their animals better, it is hard to be 100% certain as the regulations (and advertising tactics) can be quite confusing and ambiguous. In some places of the world it can be legal to say a product is organic just because the cages of the animals are just slightly bigger. From an ethical point of view, veganism is still the better choice. When it comes to health, I have to recognize that experts accept that there are lesser risks by eating high quality meats (except red meat, which is still unadvised by nutritionists) but if you compare how much you would spend a month eating organic meats against a whole foods plant based diet (without any processed junk or vegan substitute meats - they tend to be quite expensive, and that’s where the myth of veganism being expensive comes from) then the latter option is way cheaper and more comfortable.

One last argument I have to acknowledge is that veganism is said to be too “extreme”. In my opinion, it should not be considered something extreme or negative to do something good for your own body and for the planet, where the pros definitely outshine the cons. Meat should not be considered an essential staple into your diet, or something you need to be happy — if anything, it should be something additional, and it is crazy to think how so many people view vegetables that way when it should be the other way around. It should not be extremist to base your way of living around plant based sources, not when our society has forced people to believe that meat is essential for a healthy, happy living when it is far from the truth.

It is true that each case has to be treated differently, because each body is different and certain foods will suit some people better than others, but it is something relatively easy to delve into as long as you do your extensive research and are aware of what you’re doing. Veganism is not extremist at all as long as you have the knowledge and the support of a professional, as any changes in your diet (not necessarily related to veganism) needs to be monitored by a doctor.

Veganism should not be perceived that way — because in my opinion, it is mainly focused on reducing animal suffering in the best way we can. It is not absolute. It is not giving up everything in your life. We cannot solve all the problems of the world, but we can make an effort into supporting one cause and having a positive influence in it within our possibilities. We are only human, and just because we are defending one cause in particular (in this case, animals), it does not makes us hypocrites nor insensitive to human issues. There will always be unjust situations we will not be able to solve, and it is in our hands to choose our own battles.

Being vegan does not mean torturing yourself for it, it does not mean to stop enjoying life or getting obsessed with food just to “live a few years longer”. One argument I always see is that we will die sooner or later, so we have to live the way we want to and in the best way possible without worrying too much about those causes or the way we nourish our bodies. But if you truly want to lead an optimal, happy life, and leave a good print before you leave this world, should it not mean giving your body good, delicious and healthy foods that affect positively both your health and the animals, so you can lead an even better life? it is quite disappointing to see that veganism and a healthy plant based lifestyle are so related with “unhappiness” or “obsessing yourself” when it is the complete opposite. When it is done for the right reasons, when it is done right, it does not suppose any major struggle and it can turn around your life for the better. A well balanced plant based diet can even give you a better emotional wellbeing (scientifically proved), which inevitably comes with more happiness.

It is not extreme, it is simply making an effort (which can obviously be hard at first, but easily becomes natural as long as you do it right). Even just going to a restaurant and ordering the vegetarian menu instead of the one with meat does so much good, because you’re creating demand for those kind of products and are showing the world that there is growing interest in this kind of lifestyle.

And I have to add that even though I do defend veganism, I also defend small steps, and that being conscious of these situations and trying to approach some of the ideals of veganism (like meatless mondays, for example), is already beyond incredible in itself, and it is something anyone could easily do. I am sure that a lot of people would genuinely consider the entire transition if they at least tried some of these small steps and saw how easy and fulfilling it is. The sensation you get when you know you’re doing something good (for yourself and for the planet) when there is no meat on your plate is quite indescribable, even more pleasing than the act of eating meat. There are just too many advantages to this kind of lifestyle, and I promise it is truly worth it in the long run.

#no hate pls #just peace and love #messages #Anonymous

[lynchgirl90]

Ep. 8 Of #TwinPeaks Is David Lynch's Purest Marriage Of Television And Video Art

Adam Lehrer ,  CONTRIBUTOR

It’s hard to describe how inestimable an impact David Lynch had over me when I first saw Mulholland Drive as a 14-year-old. Something I’ve been discussing with fellow artist friends of mine is the fact that the art that changed our lives the most and still carries the most weight over our own sensibilities is the art that we were exposed to very young, maybe even too young to fully understand what it is exactly that you’re viewing. I developed a taste for disturbing aesthetics at a very young age; when I was about five or six-years-old, my cinephile father would have “movie nights with dad” when my mom would go out with her girlfriends, and he would let my brother and I watch watch Ridley Scott’s Alien, James Cameron’s Terminator, and/or Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop when I still should have been reading children’s books (and boy am I thankful for that).

That early exposure to art, whether it be John Carpenter films, or Brian DePalma films, or Bret Easton Ellis novels, or my favorite music (Wu Tang, Lou Reed, or Marilyn Manson), is still the art that I think about and gravitate back towards even after decades of being exposed to just about everything contemporary art, cinema, literature, poetry, and popular music has to offer. But watching Lynch’s Mulholland Drive for the first time feels like a monumental point of epiphany in my life. A point where I thought to myself, “Maybe I want to create stuff when I grow up.” I had no idea what Mulholland Drive’s fractured plot meant, but its images left me confounded, and fascinated. I loved the dreamy, hallucinatory Los Angeles Neo-noir stylizations of its setting. I had never felt more terrified than when I first glimpsed that monster lurking behind the Winkie’s diner.

That film made me blissfully aware that cinema and art could be a simultaneously erotic, horrific, and thrilling experience. I knew how powerful art could be,  but Mulholland Drive gave me my first taste of the sublime. Since then, I’ve been a David Lynch fanatic. I’ve watched all of his earlier films, binge watched Twin Peaks over and over (finding myself asking new questions each time), wrote college essays on Eraserhead and David Foster Wallace’s article that documented Lynch’s process on the set of Lost Highway, have searched out all his early forays into video art, have found merits in his more oft-overlooked output in advertising (his 2009 commercial for Dior is Lynch at his funniest), and have read countless analyses on the man himself and his cinematic language.

So, when you read what I’m about to say, know that I do so with much hesitance, consideration, and ponderousness: the eighth episode of Twin Peaks: The Return is the piece of filmmaking that Lynch has been building towards for his entire career. It is a singular cinematic and artistic achievement, and the purest distillation of the multitude of ideas and concepts that live and breathe in the Lynchian universe. I believe that years from now we will be looking upon this single episode as one of, if not the single most, defining artistic achievements of Lynch’s unimpeachable career. Bare with me.

Aesthetically, episode 8 would leave a powerful impression on even the most half-hazard of David Lynch converts. A hallucinatory, nightmarishly kaleidoscopic consortium of images of blood, flames, fluids, and demonic figures spews towards the viewer while Krystof Pendrecki’s tortuously atmospheric soundscapes underline the episode’s inescapable atmosphere of existential dread. Episode 8 is an hour long work of experimental video art, no doubt. But if you have been paying attention to this season of Twin Peaks and you know enough about the mythology of the show and know even more about Lynch’s artistic interests and visual touchstones, then you know that this episode was no mere act of meaningless artistic overindulgence. In fact, this was Lynch telling the origin story that set the entire series of Twin Peaks into place.

This was the origin story of BOB, the demonic force that forced Leland Palmer to rape his daughter for years and eventually murder her in Twin Peaks’ initial 1990s run. BOB, we learn in episode 8, was forged from the the United States' earliest forays into nuclear bomb testing.  BOB was already the perfect metaphor for mankind’s capacity for cruelty, depravity and evil, and becomes an even more powerful metaphor now that we know his nuclear genesis. Any Lynchian fanatic will rave to you how delicious this notion is. What David Lynch has done, and in many ways has always been trying to do, is to create a piece of pure atmospheric video art that also works as a classic piece of narrative storytelling. In this episode, Lynch has perfectly located a zone in which vague and aesthetically menacing imagery also serve as clear and precise storytelling and, like the best cinema and storytelling, illustrates a metaphor for modern human existence. While Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, Lost Highway and Blue Velvet utilize video art aesthetics, they are also pieces of storytelling with easily identifiable stories if you look for them (well, maybe not Inland Empire). Episode 8 of the return of Twin Peaks is a mostly dialog-less piece of distorted, haunting images. It is art. But it also still tells a story. The story of a television series no less! This is all the more impressive in that television as a storytelling medium is the most reliant on expository dialog and over-crammed storyboarding.

David Lynch pays heed to the form while mainly utilizing the language of pure image. Who needs a script, and who needs dialog, when you can see that delectably menacing, fascinating and torturous world of Twin Peaks from inside the actual head of David Lynch? Episode 8 was the truest portal to the imagination of Lynch that has yet been put to screen.

I’m sure there are more casual David Lynch fans that are growing impatient with the restrained, at times glacial pace of this new season of Twin Peaks. I however have understood what he’s been doing this whole time. He hasn’t just been making a television season, he has been commenting on the current importance of television in our culture. Television has replaced cinema at the heart of cultural conversation for many reasons. Partly, this has been a result of the groundbreaking work that has been done in television over the last two decades: Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, and more recently, The Leftovers have all expanded the possibilities of what people believe can be done with the form. There are also financial concerns: as major film studios continue to spend their whole wads on sure thing blockbuster action and superhero films, auteur filmmakers have had harder times getting their films properly funded. Cable and streaming television services like HBO or Amazon however have the means to give filmmakers the funds they need to realize a vision, and indie filmmakers have resultantly flocked towards the small screen.

Television’s prevalence has had connotations both positive and negative on culture. The negative, in my opinion, stems from its causing people to no longer be able to get lost in a pure, imagistic cinematic experience. Even the best shows are still mainly concerned with story and dialog, whereas cinema is about mood, atmosphere, and aesthetics. When Twin Peaks premiered in 1990, Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost (a television veteran) were very much interested in marrying the Lynchian world with the conventional tropes of television: serial drama, mystery, and even soap opera. Throughout its first season, it worked beautifully. Both Lynch aficionado cinephiles and mainstream television viewers alike were captivated, and the series was one of the year’s top-rated. But after the second season revealed Laura Palmer’s killer to be her demonic entity-inhabited father Leland far too early during its run, Lynch’s boredom with the constraints of television grew apparent. The show starts to feel like a standard nineties television show, albeit one with a quirky plot and wildly eccentric characters. Lynch mostly dropped primary showrunner duties to focus on his film Wild at Heart only to come back for Twin Peaks’ stunner of a series finale, when the show’s protagonist FBI Agent Dale Cooper travels to the mystical red velvet draped alternate universe of the Black Lodge, and eventually becomes trapped inside that Lynchian hellscape while his body is replaced with a doppelgänger inhabited by the demonic entity Killer BOB and set out into the world.

In the Black Lodge, Laura Palmer tells Cooper that she’ll see him in 25 years, and that's exactly where Twin Peaks: the Return starts off. It was apparent from the premiere episode of this new season of Twin Peaks that Lynch is benefitting from a new TV landscape in which Showtimes has awarded him full creative control over his product, and he’s directing all 16 episodes of this new season. Also, it’s quite obvious that the technological advancements over the last two decades have enabled Lynch to fulfill the fullest extent of his vision. Twin Peaks: The Return is a much purer marriage between narrative driven television melodrama and Lynch’s hallucinatory experimental video cinematic language. That first episode barely spends any time in Twin Peaks, but spends plenty of time with Cooper in The Lodge. There are some truly unforgettable images in that first episode: a demonic entity appears out of thin air in a cylindrical orb and viciously attacks a young couple having sex, a woman’s corpse is found on a hotel bed with most of her head missing, and who can forget Matthew Lilard, perhaps the newest victim to be inhabited by Killer BOB, in a jail cell accused of murder while Lynch moves the camera from cell to cell until we see the horrifying silhouette of BOB himself in high contrast red and black ghoulishly smiling? But at the same time, Lynch is able to move the plot forward in ways that should be familiar to all television viewers; through procedure, dialog, and plot device. Lynch is still working within the confines of television, but has peppered the narrative scenes with unforgettable imagery. It’s been almost as if he’s been subtly preparing us, the viewers, to not just respond to what we normally respond to in television: story, story, and story and dialog, dialog, and dialog. And to slowly reacquaint us with the thrilling experience that can be derived from watching a set of shocking, beautiful, erotic and terrifying images move along in a sequence on a screen.

And episode 8 of this new series is the pinnacle of this new body of work, and very possibly of Lynch’s career at large. The episode begins similarly enough, with evil Cooper escaping from jail only for his escape driver to attempt to murder him out in the woods. And that is when Lynch kicks it into overdrive. As evil Cooper’s body is bleeding out, a group of dirtied and horrific men called 'The Woodsmen' start picking over his body and smearing themselves in his blood, with Killer BOB himself appearing and apparently resuscitating Cooper’s lifeless body. And then, Lynch proceeds to tell BOB’s, and quite possibly Laura’s, origin stories through a 45-minute nightmarish experimental video art piece. The NY Times has called this episode “David Lynch emptying out his subconscious unabated.” That is totally accurate, and there has never been and most likely never will be an episode of television like this ever again. This episode was video art, but it was also still television, and it also served as a piece of and critique of cinematic and television languages. Allow me to explain.

Episode 8 functions in a way similar to that of the video art of Janie Geiser. Without any knowledge of the world of Twin Peaks or the themes of the Lynchian universe, one could admire this piece similarly to how they would admire the experimental video art of Janie Geiser, and in particular Episode 8 recalls Geiser’s film The Fourth Watch in which the artist superimposed horror film stills within the setting of an antique doll house. Episode 8 uses that same nightmare logic, but empowers it with the budget of a major Cable series. There are also similarities to scenes in Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant Under the Skin when the alien portrayed by Scarlet Johannson devours her male prey in a grotesque nether realm. And perhaps its greatest antecedent is Kubrick’s Big Bang sequence in 2001: A Spade Oydyssey, and in many ways Episode 8 is the hellish inverse of that epic sequence. Like the Big Bang, episode 8 tells an origin story of a world created by an explosion, but instead of a galactic explosion, Killer BOB and his world of evil were born of a nuclear explosion. Brilliantly, Lynch believes that Killer BOB was birthed by man made horrors, going back to something FBA Agent Albert Rosenfield said in the original series about BOB being a “manifestation of the evil men do.” Indeed, in Episode 8 Lynch brings us inside an atomic mushroom cloud set off during the first nuclear bomb test explosion in White Sands, New Mexico in 1945. As the camera enters the chaos and giving view to one horrid abstraction of flames and matter after another, we eventually see a humanoid creature floating in the distance. The humanoid eventually shoots tiny particles of matter out of a phallic attachment. One of those particles carries the face of none other than Killer BOB. The imagery is clear in its meaning: once humans created technology that could kill of its own planet, a new kind of evil had emerged into the world. Killer BOB is that evil imagined as a singular demonic entity.

But enough about the content, or the plot of the episode. There have already been plenty of recaps documenting its various thrilling enigmas: The Giant seemingly manifesting Laura’s spirit as a mutant bug that crawled into a young girl’s mouth via her bedroom window, or the horrific drifter walking around asking people for a light before he crushed their skulls with his bare hands and delivered a terrifying and poetic sermon over a radio airwave, or the impromptu Nine Inch Nails performance that preceded the madness. What is more important to note is the fact that there is a strong case to be made arguing that this episode was the pinnacle of all that David Lynch has ever tried to achieve. Lynch has always been a kind of pop artist. He comes from a background in abstract painting and sculpture, but he also has a deep and profound love for cinema that eventually influenced him to sit in a director’s chair. All kinds of cinema, from the kind of abstract cinematic geniuses you’d expect like Werner Herzog and Federico Fellini, to rigorously formalist filmmakers like Billy Wilder. From Eraserhead on, Lynch has tried to marry the formal conventions of cinema (plot, narrative, tension, juxtaposition, conclusion, etc..) with abstract and surrealist contemporary art. Twin Peaks was initially birthed of his interest in marrying conventional TV tropes, like soap opera and mystery, with that sense of terror art that he got famous for. But nevertheless, the constrictions of TV in the early nineties exhausted, and eventually bored, Lynch and he moved on. But now, he has been able to bend the conventions of television at will in this new season of Twin Peaks, and episode 8 was when he blew them up entirely. This hour of TV finds him drawing on all of his cinematic language and themes, from the surrealist ethos of his subconscious dream logic to origins of evil to the concept of dual identity (as this episode alludes too, Bob and Laura might be each other’s opposites, two side of one coin, if you will), while still working as a plot building episode within a contained, albeit sprawling, television narrative. There is no doubt that this episode will make the broad and at times confusing plot of the new season of Twin Peaks come into focus as it continues.

It was also the most mind-blowing cinematic experience I’ve had in years. And I watch everything. By successfully pulling off this episode, Lynch has also reminded viewers of the overwhelming potency that cinema and moving images can have that other mediums just don’t come close to. There is a lot of great stuff on TV right now, and one could even argue that something like Damon Lindelof’s The Leftovers had some jaw-dropping moments of pure cinema. But after watching Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return, even the best shows feel like hour long scenes of conversation between people without much cinematic impact (on his podcast, American Psycho author and famed cinephile Bret Easton Ellis argues that television can’t do what cinema does visually because the writer is the one in charge, not the director, but that’s for another think-piece). Episode 8 is a reminder of the power of cinema, art and images. But it also still works as plot device for the over-arching narrative of the show. More than ever before, Lynch has pulled off a piece of work that indulges his wildest artistic dreams while still paying heed to the kind of formalism that television production necessitates. I don’t know about you, but when Twin Peaks: The Return returns for its second round of its 18 episode run this Saturday, I can’t wait to see what Lynch does next. We are witnessing something that will be written about by art historians as much as it will be by academics of pop culture. This is thrilling.

Link (TP)

#Twin Peaks #David Lynch #Mark Frost #Forbes

[mcdouglecompany-blog]

John Stossel- Free Stuff 2020, Government Bullies Steal Houses, No Filming on Farms, Minimum Wage Hurts Beginners etc...

John Stossel- Free Stuff 2020, Government Bullies Steal Houses, No Filming on Farms, Minimum Wage Hurts Beginners, The Paid Leave Fairy Tale, Birthright Citizenship: What the Constitution and Common Sense Say.

  John Stossel- Free Stuff 2020

Mow Your Lawn or Lose Your House!

No Filming on Farms

Minimum Wage Hurts Beginners

The Paid Leave Fairy Tale

Birthright Citizenship: What the Constitution and Common Sense Say

  Free Stuff 2020

Watch this video at- https://youtu.be/G5odA8Gsmzs

John Stossel

Published on Jul 30, 2019

Presidential Candidates promise expensive new programs. We added up the cost. Never before have so many politicians promised to spend so much. Among some candidates, the 2020 presidential campaign has turned into a contest to see who can offer the most "free stuff." So far no one has tracked their promises, so the Stossel team did. Stossel compares the top five candidates, based on the betting odds. He looks at Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Bide, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Bernie Sanders' expensive promises, issue by issue: education, health care, climate, welfare, and … well, let's make it a contest! There's a grab-bag round too. Some examples of what the Democrats would spend if they become president: Sanders wants to "eliminate student debt" and "make public colleges and universities tuition-free." Sound nice, but he seldom mentions the $220 billion. price tag. Mayor Buttigieg promises to spend $31.5 billion to give teachers a pay raise. Kamala Harris likes that one too. Senator Harris also wants government to pay your rent if it's more than 30% of their income. $94 billion a year. The Democratic candidate promises keep on coming: Medicare for All, $3 trillion. Increase Food Stamps, $10.8 billion. Expand National Service, $2 billion. A federal job guarantee $158 billion. But the Republican incumbent is a big spender too, says Stossel. Since Donald Trump became President, spending has risen about $500 billion. But the Democrats want to spend MUCH MORE. Stossel's tally includes more than 50 spending proposals. Watch to see who wins the title, "Biggest Spender". Stossel says, no matter who wins, taxpayers are the losers. Since we completed this video Friday, Senator Harris proposed her own "Medicare for All" plan. She says it will be cheaper than Senator Sanders' version, but as of now there is no independent calculated cost. She also proposed a new plan to spend $75 billion on minority-owned businesses and historically black colleges.

--------- Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/y7eqz8th ---------

  https://youtu.be/MjV2autXVTc

Mow Your Lawn or Lose Your House!

John Stossel

Published on Jul 9, 2019

Florida man may lose home because he didn’t cut his grass. --------- Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/y7eqz8th --------- Jim Ficken left his home to take care of his recently deceased mother's estate. While away, the man he paid to cut his lawn died. The grass in Ficken's yard grew more than 10 inches long. The city of Dunedin has an ordinance against long grass. City officials fined Ficken $500 a day. Over time the fines added up to almost $30,000. "I was shocked," Ficken tells John Stossel, "It was just amazing that they would fine me that much." Ficken doesn't have $30,000, and now the city wants to foreclose on his home. Ficken's Lawyer, Ari Bargil of the Institute for Justice, points out that the city had other options: "Hire a lawn service to come out and mow the grass, and send Jim a bill for 150 bucks, but they didn't do that." The reason, says Bargil, is that the city "wants the money. Code enforcement is a major cash cow for the city." Dunedin collected $34,000 in fines in 2007. Last year, the fines ballooned to $1.3 million. "That's an almost 4,000% increase," Bargil tells Stossel, adding the city attorney "has called their code enforcement body a 'well-oiled machine.'" The city released a statement, saying they "have come under recent unfair criticism." They argue that Ficken is a "repeat offender" and has a "chronic history" of not maintaining his property. Stossel confronts Ficken, "The town says you're kind of a public nuisance." Ficken admits he is a "bit of a slob" but adds "I got everything taken care of when they notified me." Bargil argues Dunedin's big fines violate the 8th Amendment. It not only protects us from cruel and unusual punishment but also from "excessive fines." Stossel agrees: what's more excessive than politicians taking your home because you didn't cut your grass?

  No Filming on Farms

John Stossel

Published on Jul 16, 2019

Recently hundreds of animal activists have sneaked onto farms to do hidden-camera investigations. They often expose animal abuse. --------- Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/y7eqz8th --------- Their videos led companies like Wal-Mart and Wendy’s to impose stricter animal welfare requirements on companies that sell them meat. Of course, farm groups don’t like the secret recordings. Kay Johnson Smith of the Animal Agriculture Alliance tells John Stossel that the videos often mislead consumers into thinking farm conditions are worse than they are. She says “activists ... [are] stalking farms to try to capture something that the public doesn't understand.” Her group, and others, push state politicians to pass so-called “ag-gag” laws that make it a crime to mislead in order to get a job on a farm – that’s often how activists get on farms to film. “We call it farm protection,” says Johnson Smith. Stossel asks: “what about everybody else? Why do you get special protection?” She responds: “the agricultural community is the only business community that this sort of tactic is really being used on right now.” Stossel pushes back: “I'm an investigative reporter. I can't do my job if there are laws that prevent me from showing things. Nobody believes it if you don't see it.” “These activist groups want to eliminate all of animal agriculture,” Johnson Smith replies. Some activists do want to stop people from eating meat. But many of their undercover investigations show real animal abuse. Some led to convictions of abusive farm workers. “These groups are exposing issues that are happening,” Stossel points out. “If they really cared about animals,” says Johnson Smith, "they would stop [the abuse] right then. Instead, they go weeks and months without reporting anything to the farm owners ... [because] they want to make their sensational video!” The Agricultural Alliance now pushes for laws that would force activists to report abuse quickly. But that would kill investigations before they can document much, explains Amanda Howell of the Animal Legal Defense Foundation. One has to film for multiple days, Howell notes. Otherwise, “a company can say, ‘This is a one-off!’” Johnson Smith replies, “There are bad apples in every industry, but 99.9% of farmers do the right thing every single day ... farming isn’t always pretty.” Howell says that the only way for the public to learn the truth is if undercover investigations are allowed. “We should all be worried when corporations are supporting laws that impinge our right to free speech.” Stossel agrees. “Whatever you thinks of the activists, and I have problems with many of them, government shouldn’t pass special laws that prevent people from revealing what’s true.”

  https://youtu.be/JIKqN5z2Hh0

Minimum Wage Hurts Beginners

John Stossel

Published on Jul 23, 2019

Seattle was the first big city to pass a $15 minimum wage. --------- Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://tinyurl.com/y7eqz8th --------- People there were excited. “I think it's pretty awesome since I benefit from it,” one told us. Another added: “I wish it was all over the place, not just Seattle.” Now, five years after the law passed, the evidence is in: while some did earn more, entry-levels jobs decreased. (https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/fi...) The politicians never mentioned that when they passed the bill says Erin Shannon of the Washington Policy Center (https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/): “It’s really presented by minimum wage advocates as ... a win-win for employers ... a win-win for workers.” But she pointed us to a factory that moved hundreds of jobs out of state, and to a store that stopped hiring beginners because of the $15 minimum wage. “The politicians, in Seattle especially, have no sense whatsoever about what it means to small businesses like us,” the owner of Retrofit Home tell us. A minimum wage hurts young people who need a first job, say three young people who won a contest organized by Stossel in The Classroom, which provides free videos and lesson plans about free markets to teachers. Dillon Hodes won the high-school level video contest. He says a friend who worked at Kroger saw her hours cut as the store implemented a $12 minimum. “Raising the minimum wage causes increased unemployment,” explains Rigel Noble-Koza, the college-level contest winner. Stossel says he learned things from Noble-Koza’s video, which noted that Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland have no national minimum wage. The minimum wage “stops us from actually getting a job,” says Esther Rhoads, who won the high school essay contest. She points out that the earliest advocates of the minimum-wage wanted to price black Americans out of the market. About hundred years ago, blacks were often paid less, but they were more likely to be employed than whites. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2122891) Congressman Clayton Allgood said he hoped the min wage would stop: “cheap colored labor in competition with white labor.” “It was meant ... to keep the poor and the minorities from getting jobs,” Esther tells Stossel. The minimum also harms young people. Esther explains: “I'm 14, it'd be very difficult for me to find a job ... my labor wouldn't be worth $15 an hour.” “If only politicians were as smart as those kids,” Stossel says.

    https://youtu.be/M3jYM04y7Ic

The Paid Leave Fairy Tale

John Stossel

Published on Jun 4, 2019

Why mandated paid family leave is bad for business and bad for most women. --------- Subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/johnstossel Like me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnStossel/ Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnstossel --------- Most 2020 presidential candidates support government mandated paid family leave. That means government will order businesses to provide a certain amount of paid time off for new parents. That sounds kind. Politicians and the media point out that only the U.S. and Papua New Guinea do not require paid time off for parents. "It's disingenuous to say [that]" explains Patrice Lee Onwuka, a senior policy analyst at Independent Women's Forum. Onwuka tells John Stossel that most full-time American workers already get paid leave. "About 17% of workers have paid parental leave … but you jump to 60, 70, 80 percent when you consider people have sick time off, overtime or all-encompassing personal time." These benefits are voluntarily provided to even lower-level employees.     "Chipotle workers, CVS workers, Walmart workers…," says Onwuka. "Why would CVS and Walmart provide this voluntarily?" asks Stossel. "For an employer to attract … good talent or retain their talent, they need to offer benefits that really resonate with workers," explains Onwuka. "Paid maternity and paternity leave is one of those benefits." "Politicians are so arrogant," says Stossel, "that they now tell people that mandating leave for all employees will be 'good for business.'  Somehow they don't know that business knows better what's good for business." In truth, says Stossel, mandated leave turns out to be "bad for business and not even good for most women."  Onwuka points out, "If we look at how the rest of the world has provided very generous, mandated paid leave plans, we see that it actually has a negative impact on women." Why would that be? Because mandatory leave makes companies fear hiring young women.  "If an employer has a young woman in front of him of child bearing age," say Onwuka, "he's thinking, okay, I have to provide paid time off. I have a potential other employee who's a male…" A family leave mandate makes the man a safer bet. "In California, the first state to mandate paid family leave, a study found women of childbearing age were more likely to be unemployed," explains Stossel. Comparing Europe to America, Onwuka explains, "American women are twice as likely to be in senior level positions, managerial positions, then women in Europe … it's very much tied to these mandates around paid leave and paid time off."

      Birthright Citizenship: What the Constitution and Common Sense Say

1st November 2018

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Donald Trump has indicated his desire to overturn the practice of birthright citizenship, a position Ron Paul and Rand Paul alike have long held. Opponents claim the Fourteenth Amendment requires birthright citizenship. Does it?

Articles Mentioned

“The Question of Birthright Citizenship,” by Peter H. Schuck and Rogers M. Smith “Birthright Citizenship Is Not Actually in the Constitution,” by John Eastman

Free Resources!

1) Free guide on how to start your blog or website. Click here to get it. Plus, check out my step-by-step video taking you from no blog to a blog in about five minutes!

2) Free publicity for your blog. As a special thanks if you get your hosting through one of my affiliate links (this one for Bluehost, or this one for WP Engine), I’ll boost your blog. Click here for details.

3) Free History Course: The U.S. Presidents — Politically Incorrect Edition. Get access to this 22-lesson course: 22 videos, 22 mp3 files for listening on the go, and a bibliography of reliable books on the presidents. Get it at FreeHistoryCourse.com!.

4) $160 in Free Bonuses. Free signed copy of my New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, plus a free 10-lesson bonus course on the foundations of liberty, plus a free year’s subscription to LibertyClassroom.com, when you subscribe to the Ron Paul Curriculum site through RonPaulHomeschool.com.

5) Free Books. Boost your intellectual ammunition with my free libertarian eBooks, including 14 Hard Questions for Libertarians — Answered, Bernie Sanders Is Wrong, and Education Without the State. Find them at TomsFreeBooks.com.

Audio by Chris Williams Audio.

Read the original article at TomWoods.com. http://tomwoods.com/ep-1273-birthright-citizenship-what-the-constitution-and-common-sense-say/

  For Several ACU Show on Birthright Citizenship visit-

http://acu.libsyn.com/size/5/?search=birthright+citizenship

  Click here to download the episode

[theliterateape]

Problematic Movies of the 80s | Bachelor Party (1984)

by Don Hall

Warm up time is over. The movies of my ascension and my going through them was all starting to lead here. No more gloves. Time to get my hands dirty in the potential muck of the truly problematic films. Yes — Fast Times, Class, The Three Amigos all had some edgy areas to look at askew but these were and are not the films we think of when the 2018 word of the day problematic comes up.

Part of the point of these essays/reviews is to look under the hood of the engine that drives men my age (including guys like Brett Kavanaugh) and see what we saw in our most formative years. Journey and Blue Oyster Cult and MTV. What we consume, entertainment-wise, has to have some influence on how we walk through life. I’ve stretched the muscles with some of my favorites from days gone by but the point is to squat down in the weeds and like the opening sequence of Blue Velvet, dive underneath the cheery facade and see the creepy crawlies under the carpet of green.

So, here we go.

I don’t recall much of Bachelor Party. I remember my buddies and I thought it was hysterical and that Tawny Kitaen (the girlfriend of David Coverdale of Whitesnake as well as the eye candy for several of their videos) was in it. Going in to the first viewing of the film since I was seventeen-years old was a bit like seeing it the first time except that I now have an image of star Tom Hanks as America’s Dad so it’s a bit like peeking behind a beloved actor’s early life and seeing the seedier side of things.

Bachelor Party Written by Bob Israel, Neal Israel, and Pat Proft Directed by Neal Israel 1984

Is it possible that I was indelibly stupid as a teenager? It must be possible (indeed, probable) if I found anything remotely funny about this film. I mean, in rewatching it, I had to pause the movie five times just to get up and remind myself to keep watching. 

SIDENOTE:

During my five years as a member of ComedySportz Chicago (1993 - 1998) I found that the kind of broad, dumb humor that was most embraced by the audience could be reduced to me getting up onstage, wild-eyed and with my hair teased up into what could best be described as “Heat Miser Aesthete,” lifting my shirt, smacking my belly and screaming. The audience laughed hysterically and my time with that group was defined by it. I slowly began to hate the audience for it.

At a certain point, I became so bitter about how stupid our comedic output was and how willingly our drunk audience lapped it up like dogs eating vomit in a corner, that I had to leave. No one likes an angry comic judging them from the stage and trying to inject politics or social theories on a stage meant for the humor of five-year olds.

Rick (Tom Hanks) is an impossibly smug young man who announces to his arrested moron friends that he is getting married to Debbie (Tawny Kitaen.) After first reacting as if he has announced his decision to cut his penis off, they decide that it is the perfect opportunity to have a bachelor party with drugs, booze, and hookers. Rick tells Debbie about it and she makes him promise to not have sex with a hooker. He does and then we get to see that this paragon of responsibility is hated by her father (who is an uptight businessman who vastly prefers Cole (Robert Prescott), Debbie’s former boyfriend. Dad and Cole decide to sabotage the engagement.

That’s the first half of the movie.

The second half is the ever expanding party, located in a suite of a premium hotel. A suicidal drug addicted friend comes into town to join them. The nerdy friend is charged with getting hookers for the party. Adrian Zmed brings a 16 millimeter porno that is terribly disappointing. Cole tries to buy Debbie back, offers his Porsche, then decides to kill Rick with a crossbow.

The hookers are intercepted and sent to the bridal shower so the bride decides to first take the shower to a male strip club and then dress as hookers and go to the bachelor party. They are mistaken for real hookers and get locked in a room with a bunch of horny Asian men. They escape (leaving her sister to be gang banged by the Asian men) and Debbie goes to the party, Rick pretends she is a real hooker, she alls off the wedding, he convinces her that he didn’t have sex with a hooker, her father is blackmailed with a bunch of real hookers, the cops come. Cole kidnaps Debbie, Rick saves her and they get married.

Beyond the problematic elements coming up, I found the humor to be forced. Even Hanks is trying too hard to be smarmy and cute. This is like watching a bedroom farce written by thirteen-year old boys whose idea of sex is a dog pile on top of girls. They even introduce a mule for a bestiality bit (the mule eats the addict’s line of pills and cocaine, dies and they haul it off into the elevator) that is so benign that the stripper who is supposed to have sex with the creature merely dances around it.

PROBLEMATIC MOMENTS/THEMES

There are two black characters and one Indian character in this drek. The black actors get the dignity of playing a prostitute and a pimp and the Indian actor gets to be…another pimp. Couldn’t Rick have one black friend? Couldn’t Debbie have one? Just for shits and giggles?

Gary: Are you the pimp?

Rajah: Yes.

Gary: You look like Gandhi!

Rajah: I've got girls to sit on your face.

Oh, there’s also the seven or eight Asian businessmen who chase the fake hookers around their hotel room after preventing them from leaving who end up gang banging the sister. Phenomenal representation.

We also get treated to a comedic bit of anti-trans or homophobia (the prostitute is either a cross dresser or a pre-op transgender woman) as well.

Gary: [after being arrested and handcuffed to the she/male he slept with earlier] NO, NOT HER, SHE PEES STANDING UP, NOT HER!"

From start to finish women exist in the film as opportunities to show their tits (a lot) or be the object of seventh grade lust. There is no other reason for women to exist in this movie. 

O'Neill: I wish I had someone I could really respect. Hey, look at the cans on that bimbo! 

Rudy: Let's have a bachelor party with chicks and guns and fire trucks and hookers and drugs and booze! 

Gary: Yeah! Yeah yeah! All the things that make life worth living for!"

Cole Whittier: Rick, I want Debbie. You dump her and I'll give you cash. Ten thousand dollars, plus a G.E. toaster over; a Litton microwave; a Cuisinart; Michelin tires, brand new; a set of Sears' best metric tools... 

DID IT HOLD UP?

Nope. Not at all.

I don’t get the sense that the filmmakers were in this thing to make any sort of big societal statement. This was supposed to just be in good fun and it feels harmless in that way. I’m not outraged by the cardboard cut-out representations of minorities and women because the main characters themselves are made of paper mâché as well.

My biggest problem with Bachelor Party is that it isn’t funny. Which may make me more than problematic myself because I suppose, if it were genuinely funny, I’d have less of a problem with a movie that is nothing but a series of broad stereotypes and lots and lots of boob shots.

OVERALL

Scale of 1 to 10 1 = Classic 10 = Burn all VHS copies of it

Bachelor Party gets an 9

Next Up: Porky’s (198

#Bachelor Party #Tom Hanks #Problematic Movies of the ’80s

[davidcarterr]

John Rattray Interview

John Rattray has been a friend of Slam City Skates for years. John spent a fair amount of time in London while filming for WFTW, the seminal UK video from Blueprint Skateboards. We were recently in Portland were John now resides and we were stoked that we managed to catch up with him to speak about the Good Egg Project among other things...

Where does this interview find you?

I’m in my house in Portland, Oregon right now. I’m sitting in bed in the attic, it’s Sunday morning and the boy is still asleep downstairs. How long have you been living in Portland for?

I’ve been here for around 5 years.

What’s the best thing about living out there, are there any drawbacks?

It’s an amazing city. It’s got walkable neighbourhoods, it’s pretty well set up for cycling, there are a bunch of skateparks dotted around all over the place. It’s in the Pacific Northwest, which is beautiful. It’s still rapidly expanding and it has the problems of any city really.

What we got to see was really beautiful, do you spend much time out in the mountains?

We try to get out and hike as much as possible. The summer is prime time. That’s when we’ll be hitting the Columbia Gorge and floating the rivers and heading to the coast the most, but through the winter and spring there are spells where you still get out there.

How long have you been working at Nike SB for?

I worked specifically at Nike SB for a little over 3 years. From late 2013 to the start of ‘17.

What’s your role there?

I was digital brand manager, so coordinating all the creative across all the online channels. For the last year I’ve been out of SB in a marketing innovation roll working across all of Nike. It’s been an interesting experience.

It must be nice working with Colin Kennedy again, we met a solid crew out there on this trip...

The Nike SB crew are awesome. I haven’t worked super close with Colin so much as he is strictly Europe. Hopefully things can evolve in that direction.

It was good seeing you do a backside air in Sandy Bodecker’s bowl. You’re still managing to keep skateboarding keen?

I manage to skate once or twice a week at this point. I skate mainly in the weekend mornings with Ivor at either the Nike warehouse or the eastside warehouse that Silas and that crew run. My friend Phil has a key there. Occasionally I get an evening session in at Nike and try to catch an air on the extension, skate the ledge and the euro gap and maintain muscle memory as best I can. It’s still the best to get deep into a session so your mind can switch off for a while.

Do you ever miss the life of being a pro skater or is dad life just as challenging?

I do miss it. Kind of. It’s a weird one. It seems like such a different life to now. It was just me and Philippa, living in California. I managed my own projects, traveling, skating, working towards video and editorial deadlines. It was a dream really but I sometimes feel like I could have done more to set myself up better to deal with…life after skateboarding. Not sure what steps that could have been. Long story short, I’d say dad life is way more challenging than pro-skater life, so yeah, I miss it, but there’s no reverse gear in life, so onward we charge.

Could you imagine yourself living back in Scotland one day in the future?

I totally can, I’m just not sure what I’d do there. Right now I just want to get as much work experience as I can so I can remain employable and moving is realistic. It also gets interesting with Ivor. He’ll be graduating pre-school this summer and we live round the corner from a k-5 school he’ll be going to.

Can you recommend us a book and a film that will enrich our lives?

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to devote to books and film, which is a bit of a bummer. But if you’ve ever had chronic back pain, check out Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. If you wonder how evolution works, check out The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Film-wise, I just saw Coco in the cinema and it had me crying. It’s a good one.

It’s good to catch up with you after many years, we wanted to speak more about the project you just put together. Before we start we want to say that we were very sorry to hear the heartbreaking news about your sister. Lots of love goes out to you from all of us here at Slam.

Back at you.

Did it take long to put together the Good egg Project together?

I started the campaign in around early May ‘17, so about 9 months ago. We did the ride at the beginning of July, so it took a couple of months to get the crew and plan together. But I suppose it had been in the back of my mind for a couple of years before that.

What about getting other people on board?

That just naturally happened. As I put it out there that this was a real mission, friends hit me up to come with and support. It’s another example of the internet as a power for good. A tool that we can choose to use for our betterment.

Had you ever done anything like that for a charity before?

I have not.

Can you tell us a little more about the charity this was for?

I did this in support of the Scottish Association for Mental Health. My cousin started working there after Katrina died and they were there as a registered organization on the Just Giving app that I used to get the campaign going. So, it was a no brainer for me. The SAMH organization specializes in outreach and education around suicide prevention and mental health support in Scotland.

You mentioned filming pieces of this on your phone. Did you have a clear idea of what you needed to capture before you set out?

Capture the ride as best we can. Kurt Hayashi and Jon Humphries did a fantastic job on that. Scott Pommier helped shoot the skate session at Lincoln City. And beyond that it was writing and delivering my own pieces to tell the tale and get some of the points of view of the other crew on the ride. That’s where it gets more improvised and you collage it together based on what people come back with.

Did you edit the piece yourself?

I did.

Was the editing process a learning curve?

Learning curve was not too much. I’ve been consistently working on video projects of varying complexity for a long time. Not on the daily, but enough that I have a decent comprehension of the fundamental principles and can navigate premier fairly quickly. The main difference with this project was the workshopping. Sending work-in-progress versions around a select crew of friends and getting professional feedback on the various iterations as I built and refined the timeline. That process was vital to getting it into a watchable state for someone with not much context. That’s one of my main rules of thumb. Can someone who knows nothing about this, as well as someone who was literally on the trip, both sit and watch this and understand, sentence to sentence exactly what’s going on without getting lost or bored? It’s the same as writing an essay, except with moving images and audio to wrangle. There’re still things I’d do stylistically differently on a future project – I still feel like there’s a little too much straight-up piece-to-camera segments – but for now, I’m happy with how it came together.

What advice would you give to anyone else who wanted to put something like this together?

Make a to-do list. Get started. Go for it.

Was it gnarly physically? You must have had jelly legs when you started hoisting that egg plant out there...

The egg plant was the next day after the ride, so muscles were worked pretty hard, but I think it’s slightly different muscle tissue that’s used for riding distance as opposed to the quick reflexes for skating. That said, yeah, I was not exactly feeling the loosest I’ve ever felt. Definitely tight, but in the bad sense of the word haha.

Photo: Joe Brook

Are you going to throw one into every session now?

I wish. I want to get a good session going soon where I can get to the point of throwing myself upside down. Those sessions are too rare these days.

It’s great to see something positive like this arrive out there. How important do you think things like this are?

I think it’s super important or I wouldn’t have made this thing happen. I’d love to be able to be working on projects like this full time. That would be awesome.

What message do you hope is taken away?

That there is help out there for people with depression. That it’s way more common than we think. And that there are things we can do to help. Raise awareness, talk. I hope that it makes a tough subject a little more accessible by painting it into a positive context. I hope that it shines a little light into a world that can sometimes feel pretty dark.

Can you recommend any reading or support for anyone going through difficulties both suffering from depression or supporting someone who is?

Reading: In Scotland there are resources on the SAMH website. Support: family and friends. I know when you’re in the throes of it you can feel like you have no support, but I’m convinced that everyone has someone. Sometimes it’s luck. Get to the doctor. Chemistry can help symptoms.

Any last words...

I suppose it’s like Cardiel says in the video, there’s a little bit of light, if you can see just that little bit of light, grab onto that, and don’t let go.

This mission was in aid of SAMH who do a bunch of community work, suicide prevention training and mental health outreach around Scotland. In 2016, they carried out 177 suicide interventions and their work has been integral in reducing the suicide rate in Scotland by 17% over the last ten years. Find out more about the charity this was in aid of HERE

John Rattray Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar

[davidcarterr]

John Rattray Interview

John Rattray has been a friend of Slam City Skates for years. John spent a fair amount of time in London while filming for WFTW, the seminal UK video from Blueprint Skateboards. We were recently in Portland were John now resides and we were stoked that we managed to catch up with him to speak about the Good Egg Project among other things...

Where does this interview find you?

I’m in my house in Portland, Oregon right now. I’m sitting in bed in the attic, it’s Sunday morning and the boy is still asleep downstairs. How long have you been living in Portland for?

I’ve been here for around 5 years.

What’s the best thing about living out there, are there any drawbacks?

It’s an amazing city. It’s got walkable neighbourhoods, it’s pretty well set up for cycling, there are a bunch of skateparks dotted around all over the place. It’s in the Pacific Northwest, which is beautiful. It’s still rapidly expanding and it has the problems of any city really.

What we got to see was really beautiful, do you spend much time out in the mountains?

We try to get out and hike as much as possible. The summer is prime time. That’s when we’ll be hitting the Columbia Gorge and floating the rivers and heading to the coast the most, but through the winter and spring there are spells where you still get out there.

How long have you been working at Nike SB for?

I worked specifically at Nike SB for a little over 3 years. From late 2013 to the start of ‘17.

What’s your role there?

I was digital brand manager, so coordinating all the creative across all the online channels. For the last year I’ve been out of SB in a marketing innovation roll working across all of Nike. It’s been an interesting experience.

It must be nice working with Colin Kennedy again, we met a solid crew out there on this trip...

The Nike SB crew are awesome. I haven’t worked super close with Colin so much as he is strictly Europe. Hopefully things can evolve in that direction.

It was good seeing you do a backside air in Sandy Bodecker’s bowl. You’re still managing to keep skateboarding keen?

I manage to skate once or twice a week at this point. I skate mainly in the weekend mornings with Ivor at either the Nike warehouse or the eastside warehouse that Silas and that crew run. My friend Phil has a key there. Occasionally I get an evening session in at Nike and try to catch an air on the extension, skate the ledge and the euro gap and maintain muscle memory as best I can. It’s still the best to get deep into a session so your mind can switch off for a while.

Do you ever miss the life of being a pro skater or is dad life just as challenging?

I do miss it. Kind of. It’s a weird one. It seems like such a different life to now. It was just me and Philippa, living in California. I managed my own projects, traveling, skating, working towards video and editorial deadlines. It was a dream really but I sometimes feel like I could have done more to set myself up better to deal with…life after skateboarding. Not sure what steps that could have been. Long story short, I’d say dad life is way more challenging than pro-skater life, so yeah, I miss it, but there’s no reverse gear in life, so onward we charge.

Could you imagine yourself living back in Scotland one day in the future?

I totally can, I’m just not sure what I’d do there. Right now I just want to get as much work experience as I can so I can remain employable and moving is realistic. It also gets interesting with Ivor. He’ll be graduating pre-school this summer and we live round the corner from a k-5 school he’ll be going to.

Can you recommend us a book and a film that will enrich our lives?

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to devote to books and film, which is a bit of a bummer. But if you’ve ever had chronic back pain, check out Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. If you wonder how evolution works, check out The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Film-wise, I just saw Coco in the cinema and it had me crying. It’s a good one.

It’s good to catch up with you after many years, we wanted to speak more about the project you just put together. Before we start we want to say that we were very sorry to hear the heartbreaking news about your sister. Lots of love goes out to you from all of us here at Slam.

Back at you.

Did it take long to put together the Good egg Project together?

I started the campaign in around early May ‘17, so about 9 months ago. We did the ride at the beginning of July, so it took a couple of months to get the crew and plan together. But I suppose it had been in the back of my mind for a couple of years before that.

What about getting other people on board?

That just naturally happened. As I put it out there that this was a real mission, friends hit me up to come with and support. It’s another example of the internet as a power for good. A tool that we can choose to use for our betterment.

Had you ever done anything like that for a charity before?

I have not.

Can you tell us a little more about the charity this was for?

I did this in support of the Scottish Association for Mental Health. My cousin started working there after Katrina died and they were there as a registered organization on the Just Giving app that I used to get the campaign going. So, it was a no brainer for me. The SAMH organization specializes in outreach and education around suicide prevention and mental health support in Scotland.

You mentioned filming pieces of this on your phone. Did you have a clear idea of what you needed to capture before you set out?

Capture the ride as best we can. Kurt Hayashi and Jon Humphries did a fantastic job on that. Scott Pommier helped shoot the skate session at Lincoln City. And beyond that it was writing and delivering my own pieces to tell the tale and get some of the points of view of the other crew on the ride. That’s where it gets more improvised and you collage it together based on what people come back with.

Did you edit the piece yourself?

I did.

Was the editing process a learning curve?

Learning curve was not too much. I’ve been consistently working on video projects of varying complexity for a long time. Not on the daily, but enough that I have a decent comprehension of the fundamental principles and can navigate premier fairly quickly. The main difference with this project was the workshopping. Sending work-in-progress versions around a select crew of friends and getting professional feedback on the various iterations as I built and refined the timeline. That process was vital to getting it into a watchable state for someone with not much context. That’s one of my main rules of thumb. Can someone who knows nothing about this, as well as someone who was literally on the trip, both sit and watch this and understand, sentence to sentence exactly what’s going on without getting lost or bored? It’s the same as writing an essay, except with moving images and audio to wrangle. There’re still things I’d do stylistically differently on a future project – I still feel like there’s a little too much straight-up piece-to-camera segments – but for now, I’m happy with how it came together.

What advice would you give to anyone else who wanted to put something like this together?

Make a to-do list. Get started. Go for it.

Was it gnarly physically? You must have had jelly legs when you started hoisting that egg plant out there...

The egg plant was the next day after the ride, so muscles were worked pretty hard, but I think it’s slightly different muscle tissue that’s used for riding distance as opposed to the quick reflexes for skating. That said, yeah, I was not exactly feeling the loosest I’ve ever felt. Definitely tight, but in the bad sense of the word haha.

Photo: Joe Brook

Are you going to throw one into every session now?

I wish. I want to get a good session going soon where I can get to the point of throwing myself upside down. Those sessions are too rare these days.

It’s great to see something positive like this arrive out there. How important do you think things like this are?

I think it’s super important or I wouldn’t have made this thing happen. I’d love to be able to be working on projects like this full time. That would be awesome.

What message do you hope is taken away?

That there is help out there for people with depression. That it’s way more common than we think. And that there are things we can do to help. Raise awareness, talk. I hope that it makes a tough subject a little more accessible by painting it into a positive context. I hope that it shines a little light into a world that can sometimes feel pretty dark.

Can you recommend any reading or support for anyone going through difficulties both suffering from depression or supporting someone who is?

Reading: In Scotland there are resources on the SAMH website. Support: family and friends. I know when you’re in the throes of it you can feel like you have no support, but I’m convinced that everyone has someone. Sometimes it’s luck. Get to the doctor. Chemistry can help symptoms.

Any last words...

I suppose it’s like Cardiel says in the video, there’s a little bit of light, if you can see just that little bit of light, grab onto that, and don’t let go.

This mission was in aid of SAMH who do a bunch of community work, suicide prevention training and mental health outreach around Scotland. In 2016, they carried out 177 suicide interventions and their work has been integral in reducing the suicide rate in Scotland by 17% over the last ten years. Find out more about the charity this was in aid of HERE

John Rattray Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar

[davidcarterr]

John Rattray Interview

John Rattray has been a friend of Slam City Skates for years. John spent a fair amount of time in London while filming for WFTW, the seminal UK video from Blueprint Skateboards. We were recently in Portland were John now resides and we were stoked that we managed to catch up with him to speak about the Good Egg Project among other things...

Where does this interview find you?

I’m in my house in Portland, Oregon right now. I’m sitting in bed in the attic, it’s Sunday morning and the boy is still asleep downstairs. How long have you been living in Portland for?

I’ve been here for around 5 years.

What’s the best thing about living out there, are there any drawbacks?

It’s an amazing city. It’s got walkable neighbourhoods, it’s pretty well set up for cycling, there are a bunch of skateparks dotted around all over the place. It’s in the Pacific Northwest, which is beautiful. It’s still rapidly expanding and it has the problems of any city really.

What we got to see was really beautiful, do you spend much time out in the mountains?

We try to get out and hike as much as possible. The summer is prime time. That’s when we’ll be hitting the Columbia Gorge and floating the rivers and heading to the coast the most, but through the winter and spring there are spells where you still get out there.

How long have you been working at Nike SB for?

I worked specifically at Nike SB for a little over 3 years. From late 2013 to the start of ‘17.

What’s your role there?

I was digital brand manager, so coordinating all the creative across all the online channels. For the last year I’ve been out of SB in a marketing innovation roll working across all of Nike. It’s been an interesting experience.

It must be nice working with Colin Kennedy again, we met a solid crew out there on this trip...

The Nike SB crew are awesome. I haven’t worked super close with Colin so much as he is strictly Europe. Hopefully things can evolve in that direction.

It was good seeing you do a backside air in Sandy Bodecker’s bowl. You’re still managing to keep skateboarding keen?

I manage to skate once or twice a week at this point. I skate mainly in the weekend mornings with Ivor at either the Nike warehouse or the eastside warehouse that Silas and that crew run. My friend Phil has a key there. Occasionally I get an evening session in at Nike and try to catch an air on the extension, skate the ledge and the euro gap and maintain muscle memory as best I can. It’s still the best to get deep into a session so your mind can switch off for a while.

Do you ever miss the life of being a pro skater or is dad life just as challenging?

I do miss it. Kind of. It’s a weird one. It seems like such a different life to now. It was just me and Philippa, living in California. I managed my own projects, traveling, skating, working towards video and editorial deadlines. It was a dream really but I sometimes feel like I could have done more to set myself up better to deal with…life after skateboarding. Not sure what steps that could have been. Long story short, I’d say dad life is way more challenging than pro-skater life, so yeah, I miss it, but there’s no reverse gear in life, so onward we charge.

Could you imagine yourself living back in Scotland one day in the future?

I totally can, I’m just not sure what I’d do there. Right now I just want to get as much work experience as I can so I can remain employable and moving is realistic. It also gets interesting with Ivor. He’ll be graduating pre-school this summer and we live round the corner from a k-5 school he’ll be going to.

Can you recommend us a book and a film that will enrich our lives?

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to devote to books and film, which is a bit of a bummer. But if you’ve ever had chronic back pain, check out Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. If you wonder how evolution works, check out The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Film-wise, I just saw Coco in the cinema and it had me crying. It’s a good one.

It’s good to catch up with you after many years, we wanted to speak more about the project you just put together. Before we start we want to say that we were very sorry to hear the heartbreaking news about your sister. Lots of love goes out to you from all of us here at Slam.

Back at you.

Did it take long to put together the Good egg Project together?

I started the campaign in around early May ‘17, so about 9 months ago. We did the ride at the beginning of July, so it took a couple of months to get the crew and plan together. But I suppose it had been in the back of my mind for a couple of years before that.

What about getting other people on board?

That just naturally happened. As I put it out there that this was a real mission, friends hit me up to come with and support. It’s another example of the internet as a power for good. A tool that we can choose to use for our betterment.

Had you ever done anything like that for a charity before?

I have not.

Can you tell us a little more about the charity this was for?

I did this in support of the Scottish Association for Mental Health. My cousin started working there after Katrina died and they were there as a registered organization on the Just Giving app that I used to get the campaign going. So, it was a no brainer for me. The SAMH organization specializes in outreach and education around suicide prevention and mental health support in Scotland.

You mentioned filming pieces of this on your phone. Did you have a clear idea of what you needed to capture before you set out?

Capture the ride as best we can. Kurt Hayashi and Jon Humphries did a fantastic job on that. Scott Pommier helped shoot the skate session at Lincoln City. And beyond that it was writing and delivering my own pieces to tell the tale and get some of the points of view of the other crew on the ride. That’s where it gets more improvised and you collage it together based on what people come back with.

Did you edit the piece yourself?

I did.

Was the editing process a learning curve?

Learning curve was not too much. I’ve been consistently working on video projects of varying complexity for a long time. Not on the daily, but enough that I have a decent comprehension of the fundamental principles and can navigate premier fairly quickly. The main difference with this project was the workshopping. Sending work-in-progress versions around a select crew of friends and getting professional feedback on the various iterations as I built and refined the timeline. That process was vital to getting it into a watchable state for someone with not much context. That’s one of my main rules of thumb. Can someone who knows nothing about this, as well as someone who was literally on the trip, both sit and watch this and understand, sentence to sentence exactly what’s going on without getting lost or bored? It’s the same as writing an essay, except with moving images and audio to wrangle. There’re still things I’d do stylistically differently on a future project – I still feel like there’s a little too much straight-up piece-to-camera segments – but for now, I’m happy with how it came together.

What advice would you give to anyone else who wanted to put something like this together?

Make a to-do list. Get started. Go for it.

Was it gnarly physically? You must have had jelly legs when you started hoisting that egg plant out there...

The egg plant was the next day after the ride, so muscles were worked pretty hard, but I think it’s slightly different muscle tissue that’s used for riding distance as opposed to the quick reflexes for skating. That said, yeah, I was not exactly feeling the loosest I’ve ever felt. Definitely tight, but in the bad sense of the word haha.

Photo: Joe Brook

Are you going to throw one into every session now?

I wish. I want to get a good session going soon where I can get to the point of throwing myself upside down. Those sessions are too rare these days.

It’s great to see something positive like this arrive out there. How important do you think things like this are?

I think it’s super important or I wouldn’t have made this thing happen. I’d love to be able to be working on projects like this full time. That would be awesome.

What message do you hope is taken away?

That there is help out there for people with depression. That it’s way more common than we think. And that there are things we can do to help. Raise awareness, talk. I hope that it makes a tough subject a little more accessible by painting it into a positive context. I hope that it shines a little light into a world that can sometimes feel pretty dark.

Can you recommend any reading or support for anyone going through difficulties both suffering from depression or supporting someone who is?

Reading: In Scotland there are resources on the SAMH website. Support: family and friends. I know when you’re in the throes of it you can feel like you have no support, but I’m convinced that everyone has someone. Sometimes it’s luck. Get to the doctor. Chemistry can help symptoms.

Any last words...

I suppose it’s like Cardiel says in the video, there’s a little bit of light, if you can see just that little bit of light, grab onto that, and don’t let go.

Find out more about the charity this was in aid of HERE

John Rattray Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar