#I really want to draw Sarah in 70s fashion

[mrs-dr-reid]

My Personal Steve Rogers Headcanons

Part 1/?

The first time he went to a grocery store post-Capsicle, he very nearly had a public meltdown when he saw what 70 years of inflation did to the prices

He always makes “Back in my day…” statements unironically mainly to annoy Tony, and once Bucky comes back he joins in and Tony very nearly has an aneurysm because “Oh dear god, there’s two of them”

He loves taking you on walks in Brooklyn and showing you all the places he frequented growing up, and is sometimes pleasantly surprised when a place from his childhood barely changed at all since the 40s

He volunteers at the VA as an art therapy instructor when he has spare time, because he found that drawing and painting really helped him relax when his PTSD decided to aggressively announce its presence

He is very happy when record players and vinyls start coming back into fashion, and he’s especially happy because Bucky’s sister Rebecca put all of their stuff in a storage unit when they went MIA, and among their old stuff was his 1940s record player and the milk carton he kept all of his records in, which meant he didn’t have to go out and rebuy his entire collection

He loves going to Central Park in the fall and looking at all the leaves change color, and you even buy him a Polaroid camera so he can take pictures

To help him get caught up on modern pop culture, you pick a new show or movie to watch with him every couple of weeks, and most of them are early 2000s comedy-dramas and chick flicks (he liked Mean Girls a lot more than you thought he would, and now he unironically yells “SHE DOESN’T EVEN GO HERE” whenever there's an alien invasion)

He’s obsessed with Broadway. Back in the 40s, he only really knew about “Anything Goes”, “Oklahoma!”, and “Kiss Me, Kate”, but now that he’s in the present, he makes it his goal to see at least one new musical every couple of months, either on stage if it can be afforded, or the pro-shot or movie adaptation. His newly-discovered favorites are Newsies and Hamilton, but he is also a big fan of Wicked

He likes learning about potentially useless information that he doesn’t really need to know for the hell of it. No, he doesn’t need to know who invented aerosol cans, but he wants to, and who’s gonna stop him from learning about it?

He was genuinely befuddled the first time he rode in a modern car, and not even a fancy one like Tony's Audi R8 Spyder. Nat took him for a drive in a 2009 Nissan Altima once and he spent the first ten minutes messing with the seat mover buttons

A gentleman above all else. He opens doors for you, pulls out your chair when you go out to eat, gives you his hand to help you out of cars or down stairs, and will give you his arm whenever you're walking anywhere together, because Sarah raised him right, aiight?

When he learned about Dapper Day at Disneyland, he immediately dropped everything and borderline extorted Tony into arranging a trip to California for the team so they could go. You two go as Duchess and O'Malley from The Aristocats, and you almost die because of how good he looks in his outfit

For a while he thinks voice-to-text and voice notes work like telegrams did, so for a while you receive voice notes of him yelling "HI Y/N STOP ARE WE STILL ON FOR DINNER TONIGHT STOP I LOVE YOU STOP" until Tony finally sits him down and explains how it works, so then you start receiving normal texts and voice notes

He loves stargazing, but since he lives in modern New York he barely gets to see the stars anymore because of all the light pollution, so a few times a month you drive him a couple hours away from the city, and you just lay down in the grass somewhere and watch the stars together

He is very fond of board games. So much so that he insists on a weekly Board Game Night with the team. Monopoly was kicked out of the rotation because of a Code Green after Bruce caught Tony trying to steal money from the bank eight times in a row, and then he still won, but the most popular games are Clue and Sorry

He doesn't understand the obsession with true crime. He does however very much enjoy procedural dramas like Grey's Anatomy, 9-1-1, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Criminal Minds. He thinks they're interesting

He absolutely hates being cold. One time the heat went out in your apartment, and you came home to find him on your couch wrapped up in every single blanket you owned while grumpily watching Legally Blonde

He’s borderline addicted to flannels and Henley shirts. Like, you open his closet and he has one in every color of the rainbow. I mean, the man looks good in a flannel or a Henley so you’re not mad about it, but it’s becoming a teeny bit excessive

#logan speaks #logan writes #logan has headcanons #steve rogers headcanons

[insanelymadd]

Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise

"This is going to be great!"

"We're going to kill each other after two days."

"That's not fair. Give us at least three days."

So I have a roadtrip au now, or rather an au that has a roadtrip in it

The au is basically just a high school au about Cassandra, Quinn (both from Heroes), and Seth (from Into the Darkness). There are other paras from those paracosms, like Sarah (Heroes), but most of them are background character. Also Cass and Seth are superheroes in this au, but that's not overly relevant to this.

This part of the au focuses on Seth, Cassandra, and Sarah going on a roadtrip together over their summer break. They borrows Quinn's old, almost broken van, and it breaks down all the time, much to Cass's dismay. It's also heavily based off a comic I read that takes place in the 70s, so if you know what I'm talking about, good for you.

On to characters then

Sarah:

- actually excited

- burned a bunch of cd playlists because Quinn's van is old and has a cd player

- loudly sings along to every single song

- definitely not trying to convince Seth and Cassandra to start a band with her

- there just so happens to be a place hosting a battle of the bands thing

- how could she have known

- and she just so happened to have brought Sandra's bass

- what a coincidence

- she's on the roadtrip to see a concert

- wants to stop and see every roadside attraction

- actually has a driver's liscence but really shouldn't drive long distances

Seth:

- slowly shifting into Dad Mode™

- the only person I this van who should be driving

- has everything planned out

- seriously Sarah, this isn't on the agenda

- just wants to get there and back within two weeks

- still has the energy to make sarcastic comments with Sandra, though

- on the roadtrip to see his sister

- really worried about that

- but he's distracting himself with planning and driving

Cassandra:

- really wishes she didn't let Sarah convince her to make this into a roadtrip

- tired and stressed

- she loves her friends

-they've known each other since they were little kids

- but she's already not good with people

- and two weeks in a van with the same people is going to drive her insane

- luckily she brought noise proof headphones

- and Adriana's Walkman which she is "borrowing"

- tired of fixing the van all the time

- does not have a valid driver's liscence

- shes on the roadtrip for some science contest she's a finalist in

- she's completely focused on it

- she's got a notebook and is constantly taking notes

- is trying to ignore Sarah and Seth, but they end up forgetting she's there

- oops

- actually has fun but refuses to admit it

There's also this part where Sarah, Seth, and Cassandra lie on top of the van and watch the stars until Sarah and Seth fall asleep.

The song lyrics are because I love Fleetwood Mac, and The Chain is such a Sarah song. Also this is based on a comic that takes place in 1975, but The Chain didn't come out until 1978, but shhh.

So if you read this far you should maybe send me and ask about this or something I don't know

#I really want to draw Sarah in 70s fashion #Also please send me asks #I crave validation #Moodboard #maddboard #mine #paraportal #I think those are all the tags #Also if you know what comic I’m talking about you should totally talk to me about it #Now I’m done #para: cassandra #para: sarah #paracosm: heroes #para: seth #paracosm: into the darkness #au: black rabbit and the moth

[twinefloor63-blog]

10 Important 2020 SEO Trends You Need to Know

It's time to take our yearly look at what's ahead for SEO specialists in 2020. What SEO techniques and techniques will function as well as help you control in the SERPs and also gain more revenue in 2020? This is the inquiry we ask annually below at Search Engine Journal. This year, I asked 58 these days's leading SEO specialists for their ideas. Below are the leading 10 trends you need to understand in 2020, according to the experts. Pattern # 1: BERT & User-Focused Optimization In 2019, the launch of Google's new BERT formula got a lot of focus. Normally, every SEO expert intends to learn exactly how to maximize for BERT. Well, instead of focusing on just how to maximize for that specific formula, take a web page from Kelly Stanze, Search Strategist, Hallmark, that will certainly be concentrating on user-focused optimization and also the technical distribution of web content. In other words, that indicates reassessing user access points to look as well as aligning web content with that said. " Look at the auto mechanics of just how something is crawled, indexed, as well as served in a variety of different search settings," Stanze claimed. "With customers having more alternatives than ever in just how they search for points, it'll be even more vital for SEOs to remember the fundamentals of tidy design and also web content delivery." With the consolidation of BERT this year into the ranking and featured bits formula, Google has taken a substantial jump onward right into making search truly regarding intent matching instead pure string matching, according to Eli Schwartz, Growth Consultant and Advisor. " Content will genuinely need to be contacted individual intent instead of simply strings that a customer may browse," Schwartz stated. "Keyword research devices might even end up being much less relevant with the primary dataset for content creation originating from recommended queries. In 2020, the truly wise SEOs will stand up from their workdesks to speak with clients so they can discover what their target market actually wants from them." Frédéric Dubut, Senior Program Manager, Bing, echoed that, noting that keyword research study, a minimum of as we understand it, is going to become obsolete. NLP and deep knowing research study slowing down anytime quickly, as well as you can anticipate search engines to change even better from keywords to intent in 2020," Dubut stated. "Both specialists and tooling service providers will need to shift their initiatives in the direction of 'intent research' and also fulfilling individual needs." As Jenn Mathews, Senior SEO Manager, Groupon, mentions, Google is continuously updating to maximize search engine result based upon customer intent instead of a focus on content/page to keyword matching. " SEOs need to understand the subtlety of what this means with their content in addition to have a firm understanding on Google's past updates causing this trend." We've all wanted to focus on intent for the last numerous years, and also much better understand what the trip of our clients looks like, claimed Duane Forrester, VP, Industry Insights, Yext. Now it's ended up being such a fundamental part of the landscape, it's integral to the survival as well as growth for most online services. " If you focus on the client's intent, you'll plainly recognize where you fit on that particular course," Forrester said. "By offering the very best answers for questions on that particular course, you can much more accurately record and also transform customers." What does this mean for you? Focus on exactly how our users talk about their problems, problems, and requires at each element of the purchaser's trip much more, according to Keith Goode, Sr. SEO Strategist, IBM. " Additionally, we're mosting likely to need to expand our efforts far beyond the acquisition because trip to include content that addresses needs after the sale-- assistance, chances to support, community-building and remaining pertinent for future purchases," Goode added. Always focus on your clients, claimed Sam Hollingsworth, Director of Search, Elevation Ten Thousand " Too numerous brands forget or fail to realize what it requires to draw in and thrill prospective clients. They want actual worth," Hollingsworth claimed. "Just like in a brick-and-mortar establishment, clients want to know that you're on their side, that they can trust you, and that you are a reputable companion in what is mosting likely to be a long-term-- ideally long-lasting-- partnership." Carolyn Lyden, Lead SEO/Owner, Search Hermit, wishes 2020 brings an adjustment where we get back to the qualitative, human side of search. " So lots of marketing professionals market their services as well as products having never talked individually to their target market," Lyden claimed. Without talking to our customers and also understanding why they are acting the means they are, we are restricting our capability to create a wise and holistic technique, according to Sarah Gurbach, Senior Account Manager, Search and Audience Insights, Seer Interactive. " So, in 2020, I recommend you go as well as sit down with your customers," Gurbach stated. "Talk to them, inquire to inform you concerning their trip to buy, just how they made use of search, what they considered your site. Use that data in every choice you make." User-focused optimization can just really be done by integrating SEO right into an alternative advertising approach. Ryan Jones, SEO Group Director, Publicis Sapient, said this will be the most significant pattern in 2020. " Now, more than ever, business are mosting likely to have to stop treating SEO as a condiment that they simply add on to their electronic technique, as well as instead treat it as a crucial ingredient of their company plan," Jones claimed. "SEOs are mosting likely to need to grow their skillsets to understand the complete advertising and marketing and also digital pile. It's going to be much less concerning dealing with SEO problems as well as even more regarding taking care of advertising and marketing and service issues." Fad # 2: High-Quality, Optimized Content Anna Crowe, Assistant Editor, Search Engine Journal, stated there is something that has actually been and also will continue to be the lifeline of SEO: Material. " Content affects everything in SEO," Crowe said. "From your site framework and also inner connecting approach to the kinds of links you build." To succeed in 2020, you will have to create something that is valuable and also relevant, stated Tony Wright, CEO, WrightIMC. " This implies that SEOs require to discover just how to compose or work with individuals that know just how to create," Wright claimed. "Google's editorial discretion isn't perfect yet-- there will certainly still be content that rankings that shouldn't. But the day is coming when the very best material will certainly win." Make it your goal to have the most effective content online for your subject, or at the very least an important part of your topic, stated Eric Enge, General Manager, Perficient Digital. By doing so, you will certainly be future-Google-proofing your business. " This enables you to contend efficiently for long-tail searches (which still stays concerning 70% of all search questions), will certainly help develop your website authority as well as need for your content, and also can be done in a straight ROI positive means," Enge claimed. "In enhancement, this kind of strategy to web content is specifically what Google is seeking to satisfy customer demands and represents the type of market investment that Google will likely never ever make, since Google has to do with doing things with greatly scalable algorithms." Jesse McDonald, Global SEO Strategist, IBM, as well as Jessica Levenson, SEO & Content Strategy Consultant, both said 2020 is the moment to relocate far from the fixation with key phrases. Stop targeting specific key phrases, going after pageviews, and also "spraying as well as praying" with material. McDonald said to concentrate more on topics. " The objective of changing the way of thinking to more of a topic-focus is to develop web content that addresses a whole discussion holistically as opposed to just stressing over the solitary search phrase a page need to be targeting," McDonald claimed. Levenson claimed to adopt a calculated and also carefully organized collection of content that supplies comprehensive as well as user-friendly topical experiences while conference service goals. " Know what answers the individual needs next," Levenson stated. "Boiled down: Understand who your target market is and also how they look. Comprehend the intent behind the inquiries they are asking or problems they need to fix. Give them options or answers in the layouts they favor via on-point, high quality, and authoritative material. Carry out in this fashion for every single stage of their journey to develop a sufficient topical experience that serves their requirements repeatedly. Iterate because even if you do it well when doesn't suggest intent won't alter or another person will not do something much better." One more point to watch out for, according to Aja Frost, Head of Content SEO, HubSpot: content cannibalization. " I 'd recommend auditing all of your content for combining and overlapping positions, redirecting, and also archiving as needed so every web page places for an one-of-a-kind set of search phrases," Frost stated. "If your internet site covers the exact same subjects repeatedly, even if you're covering these topics from different angles, your pages are mosting likely to knock each other out of the outcomes." In 2020, it's time to take a hard consider the top quality of your web content-- as well as maximizing that web content for users rather than online search engine, said Michelle Robbins, VP Product & Innovation, Aimclear. " In a way, the crucial to remaining successful in search advertising 2020 coincides as it ever before was-- produced excellent web content, with constant brand messaging, in all your networks," Robbins claimed. "As the online search engine come to be ever before extra adapted to natural language understanding, the best-written web content-- in all kinds-- will win the day." And in the world of global SEO, the time is now to buy excellent localization of content, claimed Motoko Hunt, President, AJPR. " Many worldwide sites have actually badly equated content that hasn't been edited for the neighborhood tongue," Hunt said. "It's not the positioning of the key words, it's regarding exactly how well your content is composed for the neighborhood target market. Pattern # 3: E-A-T & Your Unfair Advantage In 2020, Google will certainly continue to check out the overall online reputation as well as E-A-T (Authoritativeness, knowledge, and reliability) of an offered business and also the individuals who publish web content on behalf of that business, claimed Lily Ray, SEO Director, Path Interactive. " Companies that deal with a poor track record, client service concerns or other trust problems will certainly have a tougher time completing," Ray said. "These trust fund concerns not just manifest themselves as reviews as well as comments about your brand, however they likewise take the form of technological or security problems on your site." Ray expects that it will become increasingly tough to obtain organic visibility for YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) inquiries without the correct competence and also credentials to create on those subjects. Credibility will certainly be extremely crucial for authors in 2020, stated Grace Kindred, Junior Technical SEO Analyst, News UK. " There will be a strong concentrate on high quality material as well as fighting versus phony information," Kindred claimed. "It will certainly be more vital than ever to concentrate on the depend on worth of writers (confirming authors as well as revealing their authority for certain subjects) and also sites as a whole." According to Loren Baker, Founder, Search Engine Journal, opening up nofollow as a hint was an effort by Google to much better recognize the resources of news stories, the resources, as well as references in huge documents and scholastic research study. " Match that with the credentials of the author (which can be defined by structured information markup) and also any kind of fact-checking oriented schema, and we have a less complicated way for Google to evaluate authority and also reliability of a piece of content, whether an information or posting story," Baker claimed. In other words: The offline is coming on-line, said Jason Barnard, Owner, Kalicube.pro. Every business needs to find its unfair benefit. " With entity-based search, the Knowledge Graph and also the rise of E-A-T, our capacity to produce a accurate and also persuading on the internet depiction of our offline globe will come to be a major distinguishing aspect," Barnard claimed. "All those offline occasions, seminars, awards, collaborations, and so on that Google can not see unexpectedly take on huge importance. Pull them online and push them to Google to feed its demand for understanding and integrity." Alexis Sanders, SEO Senior Manager, Merkle, shared a couple of methods to have a digitally-based competitive advantage: Supply chain quality (e.g., providing within 2-days (or less) with pertinent status updates). Customer support (e.g., capability to respond to the individual's question with marginal friction). Digital charm/ branding (e.g., Having individuals seek you out, due to the fact that they want to collaborate with you? Do a lot of your evaluations look even more like love letters?). Customer experience (e.g., is your experience easier/ helpful/ simple?). Price. Particular niche items. Fad # 4: UX & Technical SEO The biggest trend that clever SEO professionals need to concentrate on in 2020 for greater success is UX-- user experience, according to Brock Murray, Co-founder, seoplus+. " This includes the total experience from the preliminary communication in the SERPs, to the general landing page experience, and even the experience after they leave your site (believe remarketing, drip projects, personalization for returning individuals)," Murray stated. "Think around how you can assist your customers have the most effective possible experience while really contemplating what worth you can give to them during their go to. " Technical SEO is a vital piece of the UX discussion, according to Goode. " While I believe Google will do a lot to compensate for our website's very own poor technical structures (e.g., approved adjustments, hreflang corrections, etc.), it's going to come to be increasingly more crucial for SEOs to concentrate on fortifying their technical structures," Goode claimed. "I do not assume it's unintentional that Martin Splitt spends as much time as he does advertising great technological finest practices from Google's point of view. We ought to consider that a signal per se." You have to chat concerning website speed as well as page speed when we speak regarding technical SEO and also UX. Dan Taylor, SEO Account Director, SALT.agency, kept in mind that Google has actually renewed conversations and concentrate around site speed, with the brand-new Chrome "sluggish warning badges", and also the rate reports in Google Search Console. " This for numerous will reignite conversations with designers and in many cases lead to systems calling for practically total redesigns of web page design templates and reengineering of just how possessions are packed," Taylor claimed. Going even more in the technical world, Aleyda Solis, International SEO Consultant & Founder, Orainti, anticipates to see an additional change to an extra technological SEO ecological community, fueled by more JavaScript frameworks use, PWAs, as well as a need for SEO automation for larger sites. " This already started since a few years ago yet has ended up being much more apparent this year," Solis stated. "In 2020, it will only grow with the popularization of JS structures, application first organisations that will certainly additionally much more highly move to the internet as a result of the benefits of PWAs, and also the demand for SEO job automation for bigger sites where machine learning with Python can give an option." Pattern # 5: Mobile SEO Amazed to see mobile SEO as an important 2020 fad? Do not be. As Wright placed it: " Almost every prospect coming into our shop has a mobile website that is a mess," Wright claimed. "To survive in 2020, you need to apply 2017 strategies and repair your mobile." What's that suggest? " Build websites for mobile-first, then make them suitable for desktop," Kindred stated. "That method those sites don't have to be enhanced for speed after launch. Kris Jones, Founder/ CEO, LSEO.com, stated if you don't have a mobile-friendly and also mobile-optimized website, you require to act quickly. You can not wait any type of longer. " All of your online reporting should reflect understandings into your mobile performance as a priority," Jones stated. "Instead of picturing a person sitting at a computer you have to recognize that the majority of the time individuals will locate your site through a mobile phone." Mobile SEO doesn't quit there. Research the mobile SERPs. " SEOs require to be checking out real, mobile search results page, to recognize what they are up against, what sort of website traffic they can anticipate, and what type of optimization will really achieve success at affecting the bottom line," claimed Cindy Krum, CEO, MobileMoxie " Content will really have actually to be created to customer intent instead than just strings that a user could search," Schwartz said. NLP and deep discovering study slowing down anytime soon, as well as you can expect search engines to move even additionally from key words to intent in 2020," Dubut said." Now, more than ever, firms are going to have to quit dealing with SEO as a spice that they simply add on to their electronic approach, and instead treat it as a vital active ingredient of their service plan," Jones stated." This implies that SEOs need to learn just how to compose or hire people that know exactly how to create," Wright stated." While I think Google will certainly do a lot to make up for our website's own bad technological foundations (e.g., canonical corrections, hreflang corrections, and so on), it's going to become increasingly much more important for SEOs to focus on shoring up their technological foundations," Goode stated.

#digital marketing

[psi-groovin]

Eight People I’d Like to Know Better! I was tagged by @ihideinmymusic. Thank you!! ♥

1. Name / Alias I’m Sarah. I don’t really have an alias but some people on tumblr refer to me as psi or groovin. I’ve embraced the nickname “tart” that an old man gave me. “Seargent Tart,” to be specific. Also my nickname for the day (that my sister decided) was “Sharah Laffpattern” 

2. Birthday October 12 baby!

3. Zodiac Sign I’m a libra

4. Height 5’5” ish

5. Hobbies Drawing, sewing, reading, baking, watching movies, listening to music, fashion, taking care of my orchids… eating stuff…

6. Favourite Colors I love orange most of all!! But I also enjoy light blue, mulberry, mustard yellow, pink, and forest green ♥

7. Favourite Books I just read “Let The Right One In” by John Ajvide Lindqvist which was PHENOMENAL and really dark! Of course if you know me, I love stories where the main characters are children (like Earthbound, Stranger Things, etc.). So of course I love “It” by Stephen King too.

8. Last Song I Listened To something that was playing on 103.1 probably. I have an older car and the audio jack doesn’t work so I have to listen to the radio but its okay cos that station plays some really interesting shit

9. Last Film I Watched The Changeling from 1980! I don’t really watch haunted house movies all that often but I figured this was one that was a “must see in your lifetime” type of movie. I ended up not being crazy about it, but it was still quite good. :^)

10. Inspiration or Muse I’m inspired by a lot. When I was a kid it was mostly video games, especially games like Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, StarFox: Assault, Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. As I got older it shifted to music, namely Rhapsody of Fire. Holy shit their stuff inspired me for so many stories and drawings!! When I say “inspired” I mean that like these things inspired me to create. Music has always helped me draw. Sometimes I’ll put one song on repeat for like 2 hours until I finish a drawing. Movies started inspiring me more when I was in high school and college. Specifically, movies like Amelie, The City of Lost Children, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Collector (1965), Logan’s Run… believe it or not I am also inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Big Trouble In Little China, and Braindead/Dead Alive (I will put these movies on repeat in the background while I draw). Musical inspirations are ELO (of course), Roy Wood (of course), Muse, The Moody Blues, some obscure shit that I ran across on youtube, Abba, The Idle Race, Mud (!!), etc. etc. etc. I’ve gone on and on on this one

11. Dream Job hmmmm… I really wish I could live in a cottage and just bake and garden all day. I wish I could sustain myself somehow by doing that. I really want to just stay home in a cozy place surrounded by things I love and simply do the things I love.. like all the hobbies I listed above ♥

12. Meaning Behind Your URL At the beginning of the game Earthbound, you get to choose the name of Ness’ signature psychic ability (a question something like “what is your favorite thing?”). The default is “Rockin,” so when you see it on screen it looks like PSI Rockin. So, because I love Earthbound and the word “groovy” for several reasons, I smushed the two together so its an Earthbound reference, a 60s-70s reference, and sort of an Evil Dead reference all rolled into one! psi-groovin! also psychic stuff is pretty cool too

Thanks so much this was a blast! Sorry I took a little bit to do this. I’ll tag:

@eleventh-earl, @britishsixtiesbeat, @eddiecranes, @hungry-joe, @emmadangerheart, @quite-actually-a-nacho, @letthewiresrock, @thenursedawne

 no pressure if you’ve done this already or don’t feel like it ♥

#tag game #groovinslog #about me

[culturalgutter]

We really should have had a mystery series featuring a sensible lesbian couple by now. Something like two Miss Marples sharing a sensible home and sensibly solving extremely–some might even say overly–complicated murders together. One wakes the other up when she turns on the nightstand lamp to do a crossword puzzle, her favorite occupation when she is trying to crack a case. It helps her think. There should have been something based on a series of books written in the 1920s and 1930s, just after the War–either one. It should have been written by female author with three names and set in a quaint village outside London, the kind of village with many corpses in the shrubbery. Or maybe set in the city, with someone like Miss Fisher, but including the women she has had affairs with. Her dressing table or mantle featuring suggestive photos of the detective on holiday in Malta or visiting Paris with Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, Djuna Barnes and even, possibly, Garbo herself. Our detective’s tux would be divinely tailored.

Yes, we could have them now, a retro 1930s correcting the oversights of the past. But we should have already had these drawing room mysteries long ago. They should have played on Masterpiece Theater, A&E and the various BBCs. They should be so prevalent that there are Sesame Street parodies teaching children how to count or the letter “L” or the word “sensible.” Old mystery and film fans should patronizingly explain to us that Zasu Pitts or Theresa Harris, Margaret Rutherford or Maude Eburne, in fact, performed in the first film versions of these films back in the day. “The earliest performance of this character dates back to Sarah Bernhard,” a random pedant would interject*.

The realized this terrible loss in the very same moment I saw it almost presented to me in Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (1971) and its spin-off series, The Snoop Sisters. The Snoop Sisters ran as part of NBC’s Mystery Movie from 1972 to 1974. Though it stars two sisters, aunts to a police officer, I think it will get hard to read them as anything but a married couple in the future. I discovered The Snoop Sisters while watching old, made-for-tv mysteries and thrillers with the Gutter’s own Beth Watkins. We watched one where Barbara Stanwyck’s house is probably possessed and another where someone is trying to drive her mad. One where a theater troop re-enacts a murder to get a confession. One where Shelley Winters’ passion for Debbie Reynolds gets the best of her, demonstrating that there is something very much the matter with Helen. Another called, A Very Missing Person (1972) in which Eve Arden plays Hildegard Withers, a character who was variously played by ZaSu Pitts, Edna May Oliver and Helen Broderick in a series of 1930s films based on the novels of Stuart Palmer**. Ms. Withers is an ex-schoolteacher with an intriguing taste in hats and another good candidate for sensible lesbian detective. And we watched Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate. Helen Hayes, Mildred Natwick, Myrna Loy and Sylvia Sydney. They are retired women who occupy their time with luncheons, amazing outfits and creating the profile of a much younger woman for a computer dating service. Unfortunately for them, their profile attract a serial killer. Unfortunately for him, these ladies have moxie. Watching the movie, I realized that I would love to see these women solve a mystery every week. Apparently someone at NBC felt the same, because while the movie was not picked up as a series, it is somewhat reprised The Snoop Sisters, with Mildred Natwick taking on Myrna Loy’s role as Helen Hayes’ sister. It is the snazziest Mildred Natwick has ever been in a film, as she plays the fashionable Gwendolyn Snoop-Nicholson, “G.” for short. It is one of the only times I can think of that Mildred Natwick has outdressed nearly everyone else on the screen. Helen Hayes plays mystery novelist, Ernesta Snoop. And now both are instigators.

The Snoop Sisters has the things people like in 1970s made-for-tv mysteries—women in their 60s and 70s, magicians, Roddy McDowell, switcheroos and twists. The Snoops solve mysteries, scoop the police—led by their own nephew Lt. Steven Ostrowski—and charmingly prove what everyone thinks is happening is not what’s happening at all. Except, that yes, Alice Cooper is happening, and so is a fist fight between Vincent Price and Roddy McDowell. Also, classic film star Joan Blondell is a medium, Bernie Casey wears pants no one should be able to successfully look handsome in and Steve Allen hosts Ernesta Snoop on his television program. There are so many outfits—fantastically printed caftans and ties; wide lapels; loudly patterned suits; sweaters with ring pulls. And there is a lot of decor—including Gloria Hendry’s amazing octagonal waterbed.

Sadly, there were only five episodes produced, but fortunately they have been collected in a dvd set.In “The Female Instinct,” the Snoops solve the murder of an old Hollywood icon Norma Treet (Paulette Goddard) while Barney tries and fails to keep them out of trouble. There is a sweet screening of one of Goddard’s films, The Ghost Breakers (1940), presented as one of Treet’s. Their nephew***, police Lt. Steven Ostrowski (Lawrence Pressman) as their nephew, Lt. Ostrowski sets Barney, a retired cop played by Art Carney, to keep the ladies out of trouble. But no one, not even Art Carney—an Art Carney who does a stunt—can stop the Snoops from doing what they want to do. And they want to write mysteries, solve mysteries, meet amazing people, and disguise themselves as anything from “stuffed animal fluffers” to exterminators and a bowling team.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And they wear amazing outfits. G.’s wardrobe is very much from the 1970s, including a beautiful coat I covet. Ernesta’s much more turn of the Twentieth Century. I will also note that Ernesta is butch, but hers is a butchness leaning towards Gertrude Stein but with a fondness for ridiculously feathered hats. It’s from a when wearing a certain cut of jacket was more meaningful in gender coding than wearing a skirt. In this case, most of Ernesta’s skirt suits are “mannish” in the parlance of the thirties and forties. And I am pretty sure she is straight up wearing men’s or boy’s gray striped flannel pajamas.

My favorite part is the peek into Ernesta’s creative process as she works on a book while G. takes dictation.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We also get another glimpse of their home life as Ernesta works on her embroidery in bed and Mildred asks to borrow her liniment, after a close call with a potential assassin required that they both run.

By the second episode, “Corpse and Robbers,” there have been some changes. Now Bert Convy plays Steven. And rather than a retired cop, Barney is now a paroled convict doing the lieutenant a favor by watching his aunts. Played by Lou Antonio, Barney is also twenty or thirty years younger than the Snoops and too hobbled by his respect for their ladyness to come close to contending with them. In the episode, Ernesta tries to discover what happened to her dear old friend, and toy-making genius, Franklin Birdwell (Liam Dunn). Ernesta also hopes to prove that she is not imagining that he has called her. The Snoops disguise themselves as “stuffed animal fluffers” to infiltrate a toy factory that specializes in toy dogs that bark and wag their tails, Winnie the Pooh stuffies, and giant devil masks. I assume the factor is one of the Joker’s old hideouts and, in its off hours, the site of many a giallo murder.**** Ernesta and G. also go jogging in knit outfits.

Their activewear.

In “Death Is A Free Throw,” we discover many interesting things, such as that G. is a basketball fan and that their Lincoln limosine’s license plate just happens to be 473 FEM. Oh, and as Ernesta and G. defend a man who has come flying out of the green room for the Steve Allen show, “We warn you, Mr. Bates, we know kung fu.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Fortunately, fisticuffs prove unnecessary and the Snoops quickly befriend basketball great, Willie Bates (Bernie Casey). Willie wears some amazing outfits that only Bernie Casey could make it seem like a good idea for anyone else to wear. I mean, some other people could look handsome in them, but, seriously, don’t think you could because he could. Meanwhile, everyone has stomach trouble and G. becomes a suspect.

“The Devil Made Me Do It!” might contain the most wonders per hour. The Snoops find themselves the target of a Satanic coven that would very much like its ancient relic back, thank you. Classic film bombshell Joan Blondell appears as a medium, Madame Mimi. And Alice Cooper not only appears as a witch, but sings a song to a very interesting audience at the Frou Frou Club.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

But my favorite character is the Honorable Morlock (Cyril Ritchard), the proprietor of an occult shop who specializes in providing New York’s covens with human skulls, in any size and painted in any color you might like. He assures us that Henry Ford had the right idea in only offering one model of car in one color. He blames the government for the rapacious frog bone suppliers. He wears a wig, red eye shadow and stunning ritual magick robes. (The Honorable Morlock definitely spells magic with a K and probably deplores the confusion of stage magic with the Art). And he speaks in rhyming couplets whenever he can. When Barney asks how the Honorable Morlock knows he has a bad back, he declaims: “Lucifer, give me strength! Do you think you’re dealing with kids? Because I’m a pro—that’s how I know!”

He’s a pro!

And if The Snoop Sisters had to go out, at least it went out with an episode featuring both Roddy McDowell and Vincent Price. The episode begins gloriously with Ernesta and G. cosplaying that most romantic of classic horror couples, Frankenstein and the Bride****. Ernest is the creature, of course. And Mildred Natwick makes a remarkably elegant Bride. They are dressed up to attend the Michael Bastion Film Festival, a revival of classic horror films. We see among the attendees people dressed as vampires, a werewolf, the Metaluna Mutant and a mummy. That’s right, G. is a horror fan. She’s seen all of Bastion’s films and is excited to meet Bastion himself. Bastion and his wife arrive in an old hearse. His wife leaves from the passenger side. Muscle men in silver masks pull a coffin out of the hearse, lean it up and open it to reveal Bastion to his adoring fans*****. There is a fun movie-within-a-tv-movie starring Bastion, and, of course, a murder during the screening. Bastion is the accused and the Snoops investigate. Like Price himself, Bastion is a noted gourmet cook and G. distracts Bastion by taking him up on an offer of a gourmet luncheon. There is a very fine drunken-crepe making scene. And Ernesta wears an indescribable golfing outfit. I do not think I am spoiling anything but informing you that there is also a fistfight between Roddy McDowell and Vincent Price. This is obviously an enticement.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

While I willingly admit that the Snoop sisters are, in fact, sisters, no matter how queer coded the relationship and the show seems, The Snoop Sisters does satisfy some of my desire for weird old tv mysteries starring a lesbian couple. Sure we could do something retro now and that would be fun, but it isn’t the same. And it’s a reminder of how much we could have had without prejudices limiting art.

*One must take the good with the bad if one is truly sensible.

**A Very Missing Person also stars Julie Newmar and Pat Morita. Morita plays a hippie, which is so, so worthwhile.

***I will note the long tradition of couples who are coded gay having nieces and nephews. I also suppose that if Steven were Gwendolyn’s son, she would not be considered so free to gallivant around with Ernesta because she would be a Bad Mother somehow to the series perceived audience. Even if Steven’s all grown-up and a police lieutenant now.

***I have been thinking about gialli a lot while watching this made-for-tv mysteries with Beth.

****For my thoughts on calling the creature, “Frankenstein,” and on the poor Bride, please see “The Specter of Frankenstein.”

*****Bastion later arranges to meet someone in the men’s bathroom, but I am resisting the temptation to say anything about that.

Two other queer and queer-ish, made-for-tv movies: The Judge and Jake Wyler starring Bette Davis and Doub McLure; and, What’s The Matter With Helen? starring Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters.

 ~~~

If you need her, Carol Borden will be consulting with the Honorable Morlock.

Snooping Ladies Sensibly Solving Mysteries We really should have had a mystery series featuring a sensible lesbian couple by now. Something like two Miss Marples sharing a sensible home and sensibly solving extremely--some might even say…

#1970s #2010s #Alice Cooper #Art Carney #Bernie Casey #Bert Convy #crime #Cyril Ritchard #Do Not Fold Spindle Or Mutilate #gender #Gloria Hendry #Helen Hayes #lesbian #Lesbians #LGBTQ #Lou Antonio #Mildred Natwick #movies #murder #mysteries #Queerness #Roddy McDowell #the ladies #The Snoop Sisters #tv #USA #Vincent Price

[raystart]

From Berlin with Love

Feel free to take your time, but make sure you stamp your ticket or beware the ticket collector’s unsympathetic wrath, representing just one side of the many sided Berlin. Berlin has a special, peculiar, and particular history, and although it’s described by countless guides as the design city of today, it’s always been a design conscious city. In the early 20th Century, it was the first place in Europe to slice ornaments from building facades in a committed embrace of streamlined modernism.

Much has changed across the city’s façade since, but underground on the U-bahn you can clearly observe the blended traces of Berlin’s design history: some stations are Art Nouveau and German Jugenstil in style, others Bauhaus, 70s futurism, or contemporary, pastel-colored minimalism. It’s been nearly 30 years since the fall of the wall and above ground any signs are mostly gone, but the Cold War era’s clash of opposites remains on the U-Bahn: austere Soviet designs adorn former Eastern stations, and elaborate floral motifs carved in stone are preserved in the former Western ones. The only period not present along the platforms is the Nazi era, when stations were used for bomb shelters. Then again, as you pass through the morose platform of Mohrenstraße, you might feel a little chill learning that the red marble encasing the platform is recycled from Hitler’s former Reich Chancellor Building.

Finding your way—way finding—in this design conscious city, with its design conscious subway, is no simple task, but the U-bahn’s network system, organized by the renowned German typographer Erik Spiekermann and his agency MetaDesgin since 1992, attempts to ease your way and get you to where you want to go. It’s a riot of colors, and a brew of squares, circles and pictograms: This noisy system inherits the chaos of 19 different S-Bahn and U-bahn lines. Berlin is not so much a city formed around a central core but a constellation of separate planets each with its own peculiar forms of life, abstractly linked together by the network of subway tracks.

Because it’s Spiekermann that first guides us through Berlin’s underground, our first stop will be Bhf Bülowstrasse, to take a stroll up Potsdamer Strasse to Spiekermann’s p98a gallery and letterpress workshop. The street was once the locus for the edgy ambiguities of 1920s Weimar cabaret culture and Marlene Dietrich androgyny; today, it houses galleries, non-descript office blocks, and one euro bargain stores, as well as a conspicuously slick Acne shop, and the workplaces of local design studios like the modern, sophisticated HelloMe and the riotous, ramshackle illustration duo 44Flavours. World’s apart in style, but neighbors here in Berlin, which loves to mix things up.

Spiekermann’s p98a is the area’s most popular destination for visiting designers, and plenty of agencies book master-classes in letterpress with this master designer. Glimpse through the window, and you might spy Spiekermann himself high fiving and punching the air with his fist: his old school “no-bullshit” attitude makes him the champion of many, and an irritation—the dad rock of design—to others.

A short walk away from this letterpress haven—or at U-Bahn station Nollendorfplatz—is the great Bauhaus Archive, perched above the canal like an impassive white wave rising from the water. Erected in the 70s, the museum’s architecture draws is loosely inspired by an archive conceived by Bauhaus founder and architect Walter Gropius in the 1960s. Inside, a study in patience and precision, hushed art historians and design researchers sit bent over books, and the permanent collection displays iconic relics from Germany’s early modern years: great weaves by textile artist Anni Albers, paintings by Paul Klee, steel armchairs by Marcel Breuer, and other objects of design from the 20s and 30s produced by the famed and influential Bauhaus school.

The Bauhaus Archive. Image by BBB3viz.

Close by, on the other side of the sprawling Tiergarten Park with its dense cluster of pine trees, sits Berlin’s Hansaviertel. If German’s cool modernism emerged from the Bauhaus in the 20s, then this neighborhood was one of modernism’s climaxes: the housing development was built after World War II in a derelict area, constructed as part of the International Building Exhibition of 1957. Along the leafy, quiet streets are batteries of tower blocks, ribbon buildings, two modernist churches, and a glass library, designed by the period’s most significant architects.

After a morning at Spiekermann’s p98a, it makes sense to visit the Hansalviertel not only to see this plastic clad “city of tomorrow” but to seek out the Buchstabenmusum (called the “Alphabet Museum” in English) situated quietly under the tracks of the over-ground station Bellevue. The first museum in the world to preserve and display letters from public spaces and provide information about their origin and construction, the Alphabet Museum was founded 11 years ago by graphic designer Barbara Dechant, who began collecting after she first rescued from a dumpster a car radio sign reading “A U T O R A D I O”. Hundreds of letters destined for scrap heaps have been salvaged and preserved in a dusty storage unit; there’s neon, metal, and wooden characters in a variety of styles and colors— amidst the letters and dirt, you can construct a story of Berlin and sense a few ghosts.

Back on the U-Bahn, following the many symbols devised by Spiekermann, head to the station Kottbusser Tor, in the Kreuzberg district, for lunch. This bucolic, graffitied neighborhood teems with bars, co-working hubs, dentists, falafel shops, gambling houses, fruit markets, ice cream shacks, as well as concept stores like the stylish fashion destination VooStore, and the chaotic zine shop Motto books, but walking along the area’s wide pavements, you can easily ignore how packed together everything is. There is a kind of discreet harmony to it all, as though it was always meant to be this way; Berlin as energy, and disguise.

The Kottbusser Tor transit stop and the market hall. Photos by Ina Niehoff.

From here, head towards Markethalle Neun, a market place or “culinary epicentre” situated under a large, broken roof and crammed with international food vendors advertising their fair on home-made posters and handsomely scribed blackboards. Today’s signs framing another Berlin: Cheese platters & Olives. Veggie Wurst. Craft beer. Kimchi Burgers. Ginger Lemonade. Freshly Baked Ciabatta.

This is a lunch spot for co-workers busying themselves behind the glass windows of storefronts, or trickling out from former factory buildings that have been converted into spacious offices. Spot a group of women who whimsically but provocatively call themselves “Parallel Universe” sat together in the market hall drinking ginger lemonade on a wooden picnic bench: this group of six female illustrators have gathered to swap advice on art directors—who pays on time, who is best to work with—and to collaborate on illustrations for an upcoming Antifa march. Since 2012, Cynthia Kittler, Kiikka Laakso, Kati Szilágyi, Laura Breiling, Ji Hyun Yu, and Barbara Ott have banded together to form this important all-female collective, using their social media platforms to promote and highlight one another’s output. Better together, stronger side by side. Another Berlin in motion, up-to-date, but part of its historic momentum.

Nearby, after sipping organic lemonade and planning with Parallel Universe, the Museum of Things. A small curiosity tucked above an art bookstore on Orienenstrasse, this collection of glass cabinets features simple, everyday but also marvelous things from the past and near present: every blue Nivea jar since the company first began, biscuit tins, plastic at the back of the museum as if it were no big deal at all—an original Frankfurter Kitchen, a milestone in domestic architecture that’s considered the forerunner of the modern fitted kitchen. All of this finds its home in Berlin, where the elsewhere, the other, the uncanny and the new, whether practical or impractical, always belongs.

The Museum of Things will inspire you make your own things, and luckily, there’s a place close by to help you. Towering above a roundabout near the U-Bahn station Moritzplatz sits the great Modular—the ultimate art supply store, artistically stacked with pens, markers, pexiglass, plywood, stationary, pompoms, and anything else that you’ll ever need to make any thing you’ve ever wanted to make, even objects from your dreams. The German designer and illustrator Sarah Illenberger is in Modular today, intently collecting bright colored supplies that she’ll use for her next still-life cover commission for ZEITmagazin. She and her intern pick up yellow paint and blue and pink cardboard, before heading outside to the community garden on the other side of the road, where they cut great leafs from bushes. Illenberger will paint these with geometric patterns and then photograph them against the bright card later today. Yes, signs of another Berlin.

Wherever you’re staying in Berlin—the boutique design hotel 25hours Bikini Berlin near Tierpark, a colorful and energetic hostel near Schlesische Tor U-bahn, or a relatively cheap Airbnb in the Neukölln district with tall windows, wooden floors and a sunny balcony—on your walks to and from the U-Bahn, you’ll notice the posters. Berlin is a city where posters really mean something to a neighbourhood: where people stop in the street to carefully write down the information on prints as if they were hung on a community billboard. Posters communicate what’s happening around the corner, maybe a new club night, an exhibition, or a vegan burger pop-up event. Posters wrap around street lamps layered over all old ones, becoming dense, ghostly rolls that echo event’s and fashion’s long lost—in winter, these rolls get heavy and wet, sliding down towards the pavement like pulp, only to get propped up again by kids on bicycles in the summer, who use glue trays slung over their shoulders and large brooms to slap up each month’s new run of prints. In 1855, the city began erecting rounded advertising columns on the street corners to house the continuous flux of new poster designs. If the U-bahn is Berlin’s design history, then these advertising columns—although built long ago—are home to the design of today. New Berlin constantly appears through its posters.

The Berlin poster is naturally an especially beloved medium for the city’s designers— it’s not simply a mundane advert that people indifferently stroll past but a vital activating communication tool necessary for navigating nightlife, the gallery scene, and local events. It’s why Berlin clubs, generating the city’s dancing heartbeat, invest so much in their creation: the fabled Berghain, which legend claims is the world’s best techno club with its weekly congregation of black clad regulars wearing BDSM studded collars and Adidas caps, plays careful attention to the design of its monthly fliers and listings. Each month’s new posters feature a dark and atmospheric slice of original artwork, articulating and amplifying the club’s mythical night-life pull. A call to action for the great Berlin night, where the city begins and ends.

Visiting Mitte, the central borough in Berlin. Photo by Ina Niehoff.

The walk back to the U-bahn, to start again after one of those nights, you’ll pass an advertising column featuring a particularly neat, eye-catching placard—the poised influence of Swiss design is unmistakable, and its gorgeous serif typography is paired with an elusive background image, hinting at yet another Berlin yet to come. It’s the work of graphic design studio NODE, based in Berlin and Oslo, Norway, an intellectual and meticulous studio whose considered and theoretical output is a hallmark of Berlin’s contemporary art world. On this modern poster, large letters read “HKW,” standing for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, a conference hall and exhibition space that hosts art, culture, and design events. Depending on what month it is, perhaps the yearly Typo Berlin conference is taking place, or Transmediale, a cerebral technology and art festival. Berlin, where conferences never end.

HKW was constructed as part of the International Building Exhibition of 1957 project and resembles a bright orange oyster rising form the ground. An event titled Miss Read is typical of events held there; a busy art book and self-publishing fair that draws in book lovers from around the country. German publishers and independent magazine makers sit behind their make-shift stalls, showcasing intricately bound tomes, sleek poetry chapbooks, colorful manifestos, risograph comics, monographs with knitted covers, experimental type specimens, and endless other papery surprises. Berlin is made of paper as much as memory, metal, and concrete.

The magazines available at this crowded, popular event are similar to those you can purchase in a store in the Mitte district of the city, close to the Weinmeister U-bahn station, called Do You Read Me?! It’s niche assortment of magazines sit on minimal black shelving. There are magazines here for every mood and every taste: one for redheads, another for dog lovers, another for female soccer players, another that tells the history of a different street each issue, and also more enigmatic, challenging, consistently well-designed choices. Mitte is a tidy district, a place of cafes that serve impressive slabs of classic avocado toast and that’s home to ambitious start ups which dot the streets under the shadow of the TV tower’s vigilant orb. If there is a center to proudly centerless Berlin, then perhaps it’s Mitte, which literally means “center” and is, at least in the prosaic geographical sense, in the middle of the city. The tall office of Freunde von Freunden perches snuggly in one of the area’s clean streets; the ultimate go-to blog for motivated lifestyle dreamers, Freunde von Freunden records the energetic lives of Berlin’s creative scene with breezy, sophisticated photography. Berlin: always aware of itself, without giving too much away.

A swan chillaxing in Berlin. Photo by Ina Niehoff.

It’s while traversing the neat, methodical streets of Mitte (passing by the KW Institute of Contemporary Art, a four-story gallery with beautifully designed exhibition catalogues, and Viktor Leske, an avant-garde hair dressing salon where few leave without an undercut) that you stumble across the neat, methodical studio of international star illustrator Christoph Niemann. He works with his spectacles perched on his nose in his white and silver office behind a storefront’s glass window—a literal spectacle for passers-by; children press their faces up to the glass to watch him sketch. It’s so immaculately clean in his studio, a kind of comment on Berlin’s dirt, and he’s penning away on Post-It notes bought at Modular, devising a plan for his next New Yorker cover. From Berlin with love; design for the rest of the world.

After standing and watching, enthralled by process, by the materializing of yet more Berlin, you might then spot another poster, another message, and be directed somewhere else, somewhere new, the Berlin still being made, still being invented. Or you might dive back down into the U-bhan, taking refuge in the depths of history. Moving on, without rushing, because Berlin time takes its time, to another brunch, to a beer on the canal, to something crazy underground or enterprising on the streets—moving slowly, not quickly, surrounded by designs and designers, form and content, interpreting the language and style of Berlin, a city always becoming itself, where something new always seems to be starting.

#startups #text #startup #advice #busieness #howto #news #tech #love

[stretchjournalemerson]

Endless Island

By Matthew Pifko

I. Coffee, Whole Milk, and 2 Sugar Packets

My mom is drawing on a napkin at the diner while we wait for our food. She sketches out long, parallel lines across the fragile fabric, careful not to tear through the tissue-like surface. She is drawing me a map of Long Island - more specifically, the roads that criss and cross it. I sip coffee out of the stout, ceramic mug. I’m now seventeen, I’ve already decided I like coffee, and it’s too late to turn back. It tastes bitter and sour and it burns my tongue a little bit, but I diligently sip it anyway. I don’t really like the taste, but I do like the way it makes me feel buzzy and present (I never say that of course, because that makes me sound like a drug addict).

“So, this is Sunrise Highway,” she declares, pointing to the thin line of ink. “And that’s connected to 347, right?” I murmur into my steaming cup. “No. Sunrise Highway runs along the south shore, all the way to the end, y’know, like where Montauk is. And the Long Island Expressway runs here, over near us on the north shore, from the city out to the middle of the island. 347 is one of the roads connected to the Northern State Parkway, which is that windy and old road that was built before they had big expressways on the island.”

I nod blankly, and mutter something. Just a noise of affirmation to get her to think my mind is still on the conversation. The truth is that I couldn't care less about the long, flat strips of concrete that connect Long Island. I don’t care what they’re called. I don’t care where they go. None of this matters to me when I’m seventeen, because I’m not going to live here. In fact, pretty soon, my license will be useless to me, since I’ll be soaring on a gleaming bullet of a subway. The second I graduate from my claustrophobic little prison of a high school, I’m going far, far away. As far as I’m allowed to go. At the moment, I have compromised with Boston - a city that isn’t exactly Los Angeles, but is at least a couple hours away from New York. I tell myself there’s a good chance I’ll transfer over to LA in a year, anyway. To me, Long Island was the place to escape from, the starting line of a marathon, a ledge to leap from. This is not to say Long Island is Bumblefuck, Idaho. In fact, the Island is positively teeming with people, and there are more flooding in every day. So many people that they’re packed like sardines into this tiny strip of land clinging to the East Coast, the price tags on their houses going up and up and up until the entire place is swallowed up by the ocean. I was determined to never be one of them. Convinced that I couldn’t be one of them, even if I tried. I knew Long Island wasn’t “for” me, the same way I knew as a child that scary R-rated movies weren’t “for” me. The thing about Long Island, and more specifically, my quaint little homogenized tourist town, is that I always felt like an “other” there. In terms of postcolonial theory, “otherness” is defined as a sort of psychological divide constructed by conquerors to separate themselves from the conquered - to my understanding, this group of conquerors includes Spanish conquistadors, British imperialists, Nazis, and even those wealthy, boisterous, self congratulatory high schoolers who call quiet kids

“fags”. In other words, “otherness” is a weapon used by monsters of all shapes and sizes. As an other, I understood that, on some level, I was lesser than the conquerors. Maybe because I was queer. Maybe because I was Jewish. Maybe because I wanted to be an artist. Or maybe because I just felt like Matt Pifko didn’t belong there, like his brain chemistry was incompatible with the air he breathed in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, United States, zip code 11777.

II. Learning

Don’t worry, this isn’t a tragic backstory. In high school, I wasn’t bullied or tormented or even excluded. I had a superpower - I was selectively invisible. That is, “Queer Jew With Anxiety” wasn’t exactly stamped on my forehead. My voice was deep. My hair was straight. My nose was normal. My body wasn’t twitchy or nervous. My face was square enough. My beard grew patchy, but it grew. I was tall, tall enough that no one questioned my masculinity. I laughed a lot, and I was funny. I looked depressed, or maybe just tired, but in a relatable way. After all, what high schooler isn’t “depressed” these days?

“Your face is my mood,” my friend once said to me as I stumbled into the fluorescent white building at 7:18 am.

When you ask people what superpower they’d want, they always say “flying” or “time travel” or some ridiculous shit like that. I say invisible, because being figuratively invisible is great. To walk down the hallway and not feel eyes on you is to feel power in high school. To be invisible is to be able to blend in anywhere, to fit into any friend group, any clique, any niche. Information is power, and the less information, the less control they had over me. I was slippery. Being translucent is even more powerful in a small town like Port Jefferson, where the local mothers gossip on their Facebook forums and around dinner tables, where the same 70 kids who went to pre-k together went to high school together as well. Port Jefferson was a special small town, in that it was a literal port. Located on the North Shore of Long Island, Port Jefferson has a ferry system that constantly shuttles tourists from Bridgeport, Connecticut into our quaint little town. Stepping off this ferry, one looks down the barrel of Main Street, a bustling cardboard cutout of coffee shops, bars, and everything in between. Thus, tourist traps selling useless knick knacks would open and close every season along Main Street, a new vintage board game store replacing the new crystal shop from last year. During the summers, my parents would complain about the mobs of strangers running into traffic downtown. I never understood why it made them so mad until I got a car of my own and almost hit wandering pedestrians on multiple occasions. In Port Jefferson, you’d swear you could actually feel eyes on you. Think 1984, but Big Brother is a network of parents who were once the popular kids in Port Jefferson High School back in nineteen-seventy-whatever. And now, their offspring are the popular kids once again, like some sort of inbred dynasty. To express otherness was to be shunned out of the community. To be invisible was to live on their watch-list. Nothing scared the denizens of Port Jefferson more than invisibility - they had a fear of blindness, of not being able to peer behind the curtain.

This was their town, and they’d be damned if anything or anyone was awry in their town. To these lifelong townspeople, a town had to be possessed. A town had to be owned - and therefore it was their job to own it. To control it. To keep it the same. To keep the others out. I remember going to a stage crew party senior year, and finally stepping into the old fashioned, brick-built mansion of one of these Port Jefferson dynasties. Their son, in my grade, controlled the entire theater department, to the point where he was actually paid to manage the other kids (other kids including me and my friends on the art team). Walking around this palace, seeing the off-kilter smiles of his parents as they greeted me, I felt genuine terror. Could their gazes pierce my thin armor? How much did they know? How much did they see?

From time to time, my invisibility would scare me. I’d think about dying in some horrible car accident on the LI Expressway, my consciousness and interior life gone before I could blink, with no one ever knowing that I was gay. No one ever knowing why I was an irritable and inconsolable asshole from time to time, why I holed myself up in my room listening to Frank Ocean and The Smiths for hours. At my funeral, they’d shrug, and just figure I was a strange boy. Often, I’d think about confessing my queerness on a paper, locked in a box that they could only find after I died.

This is not to say that I had no meaningful friends in high school, or that my parents didn’t know me at all, or that I was dead inside from freshman year till the day I graduated. After all, there were smaller, safer ways of exposing my otherness, whether it was my unwavering liberal political allegiance or my undying commitment to twisted horror cinema. It’s just... when you’re an other on Long Island, in Port Jefferson, you get scared what would happen if you ever truly lost your power. Being slippery is good. It means you won’t get caught. Even when I came out to my closest friends in the sticky spring of senior year, I felt scared. I felt my invisibility fade away, my body now opaque and ugly. I was seen, and I could be caught. Nothing’s worse than feeling like you could be trapped in Port Jefferson.

III. Endless Island

When I try real hard to visualize Long Island, to visualize the idea of Long Island, I always come back to the days I spent canvassing for Suffolk County Democratic Legislator Sarah Anker, a mission that spread from the summer to election day 2017. Trump had already taken over the White House, so there was an element of hopelessness to the whole affair. There was also a little rebellious spark in that uphill battle, making our fight for office a tad exciting.

I had taken up the internship with two of my friends from high school. Together, we traced the windy roads every Saturday, using the dots on our printer paper maps to find the targets of our campaign. Each week, we would get new black and white rectangles of Long Island, the tiny roads threaded out like a spider’s web across the page, the black circles that indicated houses appearing to me like trapped flies. On the page, we could indicate whether that

resident we had spoken with supported the candidate, supported the opposing party, refused to say, didn’t speak English, wasn’t there at all, and so on. Our campaign supervisor was Tim, a tall, slim man in his early 20s. Most importantly to seventeen year old me, Tim was openly gay. Gay. Gay, like how no guy in my high school was openly gay. The very thought of Tim existing, running this little organization, sent excited chills through my body. He was here, he was an “other”, and he was living and breathing just like the rest of us.

Since the three of us Port Jefferson boys had just gotten our licenses, we would swap on and off driving, one of us spending our precious gas money at a time. I drove my beat-up 1996 Lexus that my family had purchased for 3,000. Leland drove his dad’s silver, scratched 2003 Honda minivan. Dylan rarely drove, but when he did, he drove the sleek black Volkswagen that his mom normally used. Leland, with his twitchy hands and manic laugh, was probably the worst driver out of us three (we may have gotten pulled over once or twice), but he drove the most. He liked driving. I liked it when he drove, for in these hours I could just listen to the laughter of my friends, the tinny music coming from the rusted speakers, and the hum of the air conditioning. I would stare out the big rectangular minivan window at the endless rows of box houses, their color changing from tan to grey to maroon to blue to grey to black to tan to grey. When the car stopped, we would split off in three directions, each of us knocking doors, pacing down the pavement in search of potential voters. When we walked during the stretched out summer days, it was always too humid. When we walked during the inky black autumn nights, it was always too frigid. Canvassing, in its essence, was an “other” invasion - we invaded these boring neighborhoods, these undisturbed sectors, infiltrating their tranquil suburbs with our Democrats and our queerness and our papers, our papers that we left on their doorstep whether they liked it or not. They would be forced to see our faces, to hear our voices. Often, I felt like a deep sea explorer, diving deeper into the trenches of Long Island and seeping into their private lives through the cracked roads I once resented. Knocking on these endless doors, peering into endless sets of eyes, was that fertile mix of strange, scary, and thrilling that defines the best moments of adolescence. Sometimes, staring out into the vast Boston cityscape, I miss those ugly houses a little.

But really, when I think of Long Island, I don’t think of a place. A specific, singular snapshot doesn’t come to mind. Rather, I think of driving through the suburbs in Leland’s creaky minivan, the roads blurring together, the yellow dashes mixing with the white lines, the street lights gliding into one another. Sometimes, after a party that ended too early, or after our parents had come home too soon, we would flee to the car, and just drive in circles around Long Island. Maybe stop and get some shitty fast food. Sit in the parking lot and talk a lot and then settle into a warm silence. Get back in the car. Look at the small towns pass by, peer curiously at the anonymous rows of houses. Go to the beach and creep onto the pitch black dunes. Listen to each others’ shaky breath, and the sound of wind hitting the water. And then drive some more.

Acknowledgments

Joan Didion deserves top billing here, without whom this essay would not have existed. I’d like to thank Mary Kovaleski-Byrnes for giving me the opportunity to create my first piece of writing about my queer identity. Clare Jackson, thank you for bringing this text to where it is now. I will always remember when tears fell down your face as you read my first draft in class. Eitan and Abby, thank you for the further assistance and final touches. Long Island - I don’t know what to say to you.

#culture #island #home #city #matthew pifko #stretch2019

[julietlofarophoto]

Kate McGloughlin

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Kate: “Well Julie, I bloomed where I was planted! I grew up about 12 miles from Woodstock in Olivebridge, New York. My family has been in Ulster County for twelve generations. Yeah, my ancestor Kit Davis was the first white settler in Ulster County . So that family line has been here. My dad was donkey Irish—he only got here in the 20th century. I grew up in Olivebridge and Woodstock is where I came to parties with people like Chris Lofaro and Greg Baldinger! I had good friends from Woodstock and once I got to Onteora, that whole world opened up to me.

Juliet: What is your first memory of Woodstock?

Kate:  I think one of the Memorial Day Parades. We used to come over here as kids. We’d do our parade, and sometimes we came to Woodstock.

My mom worked at Carey’s Deli in the 40’s during the war so she had friends over here … and we were always at Lasher’s. Sorry, I know that’s a crazy thing to talk about but that’s where all our people have been waked, and cared for...

So my earliest memories would have to be a Memorial Day Parade or Mr. Boyd at a funeral at Lasher’s

Juliet: Yes, one of my first realizations was when I was around thirty coming up to a funeral there. To look around and see all the people that he knew that I knew from all these different parts of life here in Woodstock and to notice that wow, it’s a real community.

Kate: It is a great community and people don’t talk about it enough, but it’s a huge center of our culture here. I mean, I’ve been to every kind of funeral there is, but, like, some of the old country funerals – and Kenny Peterson is great at it, he knows who’s related to whom— the people and their communities come together for a service for somebody. My brother’s funeral for instance: there were about five hundred people there that night. I must have hugged about four hundred people. They just kept coming in and coming in.  There were townspeople, there were school people, all kinds of different community members.

Juliet: What has changed since you’ve been here?

Kate:  Oh, everything. Woodstock used to be a great place to drink. You could start at Deanie’s and end up at the “Depresso” (Juliet cracks up) or the Watering Troff. I mean, really you could just park your car and (with hand gestures and sound effects of a pinball) Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Deanie’s and then Christy’s and up to the Lake, over to the Pub, then probably to the Café Espresso, and I would always end up at the Pinecrest Lodge. That was the ’70’s. There was great music all the time. Although that’s happening here again now, I don’t think music really went away, but music in the streets was really happening then.

I knew more people from Woodstock and from here in the old days. I don’t know hardly anybody unless they’ve been here for generations or they’re here at the art school or like yourself, someone who I went to school with. I just don’t know where to meet these people. They know my name because of the school or my work. I miss the small town aspect of it. It doesn’t feel like that so much to me anymore. I also miss being able to take a half hour lunch break and being able to get a sandwich and get out in the half hour. You can rarely do that anymore. Taking a left in Woodstock on a Saturday, it’s like, nuts. It’s like that! I’m used to knowing everybody in town and I just don’t any more. Do you see that? Juliet: For me, moving back, there are faces that I’ve always seen and I’m just now getting to know. And families that I met when I was here briefly ten years ago were new arrivals who I am just getting to know through our kids. Last summer I did a project with over twenty locals that I’d never come across before.

Kate: Oh there are great new people who’ve assimilated.  Especially when artists or musicians come to town we get to know them right away, and it’s great. In my town, the Town of Olive, there’s Krumville people, West Shokan people, and Olivebridge people. Oh he’s a Bearsville guy, he’s a Zena guy, he’s a Wittenberg guy. She’s a Glasco Girl. That kind of stuff. People identify me with Woodstock probably because of the school, but I’ve never lived here.

Juliet: When was the first time you took a class here?

Kate:  1991. January 18th. I came in for a four-week class and I never left.

Juliet: Really?

Kate: I was working at the Woodstock Youth Center. I was Assistant Director and loved it. I was having a great time. I was working for the town, but I was really missing making art. The mother of one of my charges became a friend. Joyce Washor. She said “you should really take a class over at the school.” The next day the Woodstock Times came out and their little ad appeared. I’d never gotten to take an etching class in college. Robert Angeloch was teaching it and it was just the two of us for a couple of weeks. Other people joined but it wasn’t a popular class.  We did things the old-fashioned way here. It wasn’t any kind of contemporary printmaking medium. It was really old school. That’s what I wanted. I love to draw. That was the beginning of everything shifting for me. Within two years, I was here full time.

Juliet: What’s your title here?

Kate: I’m the President now. (Kate has since become President Emeritus)

Juliet: (Giggling at the fact that I should have known this coming in) You’re the President.

Kate: Yeah. BUT, I mean, I was a student, and then I ran out of money and I got on scholarship and then they ran out of money. I became a work exchange student, where you could take a class for three hours and then work for three hours. They saw they couldn’t get rid of me so they gave me a job and I worked as a registrar for $5 an hour. This was 1993 or four. Before that, I started teaching here because one of the teachers didn’t show up one time. It was actually this class, The Monotype Workshop. I had taken it a couple of times and so they said, “Could please you fill in?”. And I said “Sure!” That was 1993 so I must have started working in the office in ’94 because I taught before I worked in the office. I’ve done everything here. I was the maintenance girl. They let me do everything, let’s put it that way. I patched this roof, I mowed the lawn, cleaned the studio like crazy. They gave me every opportunity there was here.

Juliet: That’s amazing.

Kate: Oh yeah. The only position I haven’t held is bookkeeper and treasurer. Mara always took care of the books and now we have a professional because we need one. But I was the Registrar and sort of Assistant Director, Instructor and Student. I’ve done most everything you can think of to do here.

Juliet: I think it’s also particularly great if you’re the president to know…what it’s like…

Kate: Every aspect, what everybody is up against. That’s exactly right. I have total empathy when they are trying to park cars, or trying to deal with frozen pipes or sidewalks or gutters and leaves.

Juliet: What’s your favorite thing about Woodstock?

Kate: I love that it feels like a cosmopolitan town in a beautiful rural setting. I mean these mountains, the trees, the streams that hold us. The landscape is the thing for me, all the cultural events— and yet, we had to stop getting the paper because it gives us anxiety. There’s so many phenomenal things to do.

Juliet: (laughing) I saw Sarah in town on Saturday and she said that!

Kate: Was she freaking out!?

Juliet: I had friends with me visiting for their first time and she was handing out cards for the show with Dion. She told them she can’t get the paper because even without looking at it, your calendar is full.

Kate: She told you that? Yeah, that’s our story! We have tickets to so many things. Any particular weekend you can do theater, live music, performance, visual arts..you can also do the drumming circle (the only thing in a woodstock that starts on time!) But after a work week, all I want to do is stay the hell home and sit in my hammock and play ukulele. That everything is at our fingertips is amazing to me. There’s still expansive fields where you can get space. The reservoir itself is a great muse for me. I love the culinary thing that’s happening since we were kids. Remember there used to be three restaurants? Now you can get practically anything you want whenever you want.  I guess, to contradict myself, you can get that old town feeling—especially at funerals—or if I go up to the town offices or if I’m in a store and run into somebody from one of the old families. That feels great to me.

And again, the ongoing music that’s been happening since we were kids. I love what Amy Helm is doing, and Simi, Mike and Ruthy, Connor Kennedy, I mean, come on! It’s just really happening here.

Juliet: It’s why I came back. All those elements.

Kate:  Is that right?! The Artist Association, and the school. I would never live in a place that wasn’t an artist colony in some respect, or a place with pockets of artists left and right. I need to be with my people for sure. Woodstock is a place where you literally can run around like this (points to paint spattered clothing) and they understand. You just came from the print shop and you look like this! It’s important to me because I’m always working and I don’t always have time to change into some other get up to get somewhere. I feel like that’s another thing. I’ve always loved how the – what is the word? Open mindedness? Accepting? There is a liberalism, in the old sense of the word. Where people are open to different ideas. I appreciate that about Woodstock.

Check out Kate’s website for a glance into her dynamic work and beautiful writing: https://www.katemcgloughlin.com

#woodstocktownspeople woodstockny katemcgloughlin artist painter townsperson ulstercounty hudsonvalley catskills julietlofraro

[cryptixcreations]

wip 2 electric boogaloo

Most of the colors are sampled from this Print-Safe Chart aka retro comic book palette, and instead of fighting with hard shading I reverted to the soft shading I’m more comfortable with and instead experimented with shading with colors (primarily blue/purple and yellow as per this tutorial I found hiding in my art ref tag) instead of just tints. Marginally successful? You can tell I had no idea what to do for black and wound up with three different colors of ‘black’.

Anyway as long as I’m rambling, as I’ve mentioned before these are the characters from my new Masks tabletop group. Buncha weirdos. I like ‘em.

From left to right, we have The Delinquents, starting with:

Vanessa, alias Bodyguard, is the resident Bull. She turns into metal and punches things and scorns physics, and as of recent she can grow spikes too I guess. She’s socially awkward and hasn’t interacted much with my character but if an opportunity to romance her opens up I will probably take it cuz she’s awesome.

Robbie, aka Reflect, our Delinquent. He teleports and creates illusory duplicates and also is fond of using his artistic talents to graffiti public property. He’s got a contrarian attitude and likes courting trouble but at the same time follows orders well in an emergency. It’s super predictable what with him playing at the whole ‘bad boy’ thing but he’s the backup love interest.

Michael, aka Ugat, the Transformed. He was not always a tree, but now he is and is making the most of it, and seems to be pretty into it all things considered. He’s actually the main strategist and negotiator of the group, which is as much a surprise to him as it is to anybody else. He is unfinished because a) drawing trees is hard, b) stylized exaggeration is not my strong suit, and c) I might be completely reworking his pose.

Pete, aka Outsider, the... well, Outsider. Pete’s here to evaluate Earth and report back to his people on whether it needs to be taken over. (Which, much as it might seem to be a good idea in this political climate, his people apparently have a really bad track record and we don’t want them invading.) He flies and has telepathy, among other things. His mission is publicly known and he’s a bit of a celebrity, so he’s the figurehead for the group -- but he’s not really leader material, so here he’s flanked by his primary ‘advisers’. He’s also very fashionably challenged (but manages to look majestic anyway.)

Lio, aka L’Esprit, the Beacon. My character =D She has no powers but is stealthy and acrobatic and (as of the last game) heavily armed. Mostly she advises the other characters and plays Team Big Sister which is appropriate given she’s the oldest at 18. She and the remaining two were initially their own team, called The Corps, that got absorbed into The Delinquents so she’s a lot closer to those two than to anybody else yet, and they still look to her for leadership.

Sarah, alias Calavera, the Doomed. She’s stuck with a Rogue-like touch-based vitality-draining ability, hence the full-body coverage, plus telekinesis and some other latent abilities, all of which is slowly killing her. She’s Lio’s best friend and has a crush on Pete and it’s cute.

Joey, aka Officer, the Innocent. Aka tiny disco child. Painfully idealistic speedster. He’s a 14-year-old who time-traveled to the present from the 70s, met his current self, and immediately decided to do everything in his power not to become that person. Lio basically adopted him as her little brother, and more recently Michael volunteered as a big brother figure. Which is... interesting, given they are both significantly more morally grey than he is.

#wip #ocs #masks a new generation #tabletop gaming

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOW TO NOT NOT NOT START A STARTUP

The best programming languages have been those that were designed for their own designers to use. Avoid distractions. In other words, he's now rich enough not to have to deal with employees, who often have different motivations: I knew the founder equation and had been focused on it since I knew I wanted to try being a painter, and the rest are just a cost of doing business. Don't worry too much about making money. Which means the ambitious can now do arbitrage on them. By giving names to the different forms of disagreement, though. That's what I remember about grad school: apparently endless supplies of time, but Newton is my model of this kind of controversy is a sign of maturity. Countless startups destroyed themselves this way during the Internet bubble. Larry and Sergey were meek little research assistants, obediently doing their advisors' bidding.

I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. What people wished they'd paid more attention to when choosing cofounders was character and commitment, not ability. The essential task in a startup this quarter shows up as Yahoo earnings next quarter—stimulating another round of investments in startups. A lot of outsiders make the mistake of doing the opposite; they admire the eminent so much that large organizations stopped working. There have been famous instances of collaboration in the arts could tell you, and the present center more like forty. You don't have to satisfy committees. Extraordinary devotion went into it, and Webgen sounded lame and old-fashioned robber baron business world got incorporated into the startup world. Boston has MIT and Harvard, but it was surprising to realize there were purely benevolent projects that had to be embodied as companies to work. It can be hard to distinguish from a partisan attack on them, but though they can end up in the 1970s were a pretty dull place. It's a tossup whether Castro Street or University Ave should be considered the heart of the matter: Bloggers are sensitive about becoming mouthpieces for other organizations and companies, which is the first step.

Mostly they crawl off somewhere and die. For example, Unisys's attempts to enforce their patent on LZW compression. So I want to be good. You need to make money from it. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps. The tricky part is, you have a smaller pool to draw from this is not as frivolous a question as it might seem to be much more hackable. We're in a business where we need to pick unpromising-looking outliers, and the investors are the ones started by uncertain hackers rather than gung-ho business guys. Launch fast and iterate. Big companies are safe from being sued by other big companies. Why? I were talking to a guy four feet tall whose ambition was to play in the software business, the most efficient plan would be to discover each person's station as early as possible, so they did. For example, it is a problem if you get funded by Y Combinator.

Probably no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway. One of my main hobbies is the history of computers, but as a trick for getting users to start talking to you. Obviously they were smart, but not because of some difference in their characters; the Yale students just have fewer examples. Don't just do what they want. The big mystery to me is how one's perspective on time shifts. Don't think that you can't help but hear all the cutting-edge tech and startup news, and run into useful people constantly. But though the result is occasionally cheesy, it's never boring. So, in their way, did labor unions, the traditional news media, and the rest are just a cost of doing business. Search for a few key phrases and the names of the clients and the experts, and what's good design for one group might be bad for another. Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be consciously aware of it. 0 bubble.

Here's a tip for governments that want to encourage startups you should have a low rate on capital gains. In fact, software that would let people who wanted sites make their own. Outsiders should realize the advantage they have here. DH3. Working on our startup, I remember time seeming to stretch out, so that in retrospect it seems obvious they were going to keep working on the startup. So I propose that as a mark against you, but only one step. Let your idea evolve.

So despite the huge number of software patents there's not a lot of novels when I was working on spam filters I thought it would be worth competing with a company that will do something cool, the aim had better be to make money. In drawing, for example. If half the startups we fund not to worry about infringing patents, because startups have the least time to spare for bureaucratic hassles. But that's ok, because the designers' pleasure at their own ingenuity more than compensates for whatever you lose by not choosing a more selfish project. Launching teaches you what you should do is start one. If you make people with money love you, and you can do better work: Because we're relaxed, it's so much easier to have fun doing what we do. It's not just that it makes it easier for startups to present to investors.

If you'd bristle at the suggestion that you aren't, then you probably are. Now there are moves afoot to make it harder for companies to grant options. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. It's kind of ironic, considering all the dire things experts say about software patents specifically? It means the probability of a startup that went through really low lows and survived. Gradually it will re-emerge. Now we look back on medieval peasants and wonder how they stood it. But Wodehouse has something neither of them did. This is post-exit Silicon Valley. And as any politician could tell you that you might not be what your parents really want for you. You have to calibrate your ideas on actual users constantly, especially in the beginning is the prospect of getting their initial product out. In the average Y Combinator startup, I'd guess 70% of the idea is new at the end of the scale at least in the US.

The flaw in the need to seem serious, the weight of expectations, the power of the marginal into one sentence it would be a pain to fund with grants and donations. I used to read a lot of adults who still react childishly to challenges, of course. Ditto for Facebook, at the core of which was something called an inference engine. Why can't defenders score goals too? And because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow disappeared. Startups are too poor to be worth suing for money. There were very clear patterns in the responses; it was something they backed into. It's hard to get a really big bubble: you need to know anything about malaria.

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, many others, Garry Tan, Geoff Ralston, and Sarah Harlin for reading a previous draft.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Newton #people #step #design #programming #lot

[apsbicepstraining]

A sex doll for women’s health: dildo designer talks the euphorium of conception

Stephanie Berman is among a developing number of entrepreneurs investigating new technologies for a market that is no longer taboo

Stephanie Berman is sitting on the terrace of the Hilton hotel near Hollywood in the hazy January sunshine, and maintaining a bright pink dildo.

Its not just any dildo this is the latest version of Bermans inseminating invention, the Semenette , now with strap-on alternative, new qualities and renamed the POP.

Squeezing a small run at the end of the suction tube that runs through it, she dips the hanging gratuity into a bottle of( on this moment) ocean and draws up the fluid. With a flourish she accommodates it aloft, crushes the run and whoosh an arc of irrigate spurts over the counter.

Its a fornication toy with a functional determination who are interested in womens health concerns, shows Berman, otherwise known as Spermin Berman, who proudly adds that she and her wife saw their daughter , now two, on the first strive and have a second child on the way. Berman is in Hollywood at She, the Sexual Health Expo, to promote the new design.

It makes pleasure to something that are able to stressful, says Berman of the struggle to design. She and her spouse, a coach, had tried the conventional goose baster insemination procedure. Guess me there is nothing sexy in that.

Organised by adult publisher XBIZ, the She pact has a relax, educational flavor to take in order to realize visitors detect comfy. Neighbourhood paralegal Katie Frame has come with her friend Kirsti Olson. I came believing it would be hypersexual and porn-esque. But its really comfortable and positive, say Frame. Theres a lot about women and empowerment.

Stephanie Berman expresses the Semenette POP, an insemination design which, she says, facilitated her wife conceive Photograph: Emily Berl for the Guardian

Talks have included Aging& Sex by generator Lynn Brown Rosenberg, author of My Sexual Awakening at 70 and whose upcoming bookings include a talk to Mensa members and Role Play With Koko.

Sex toys have lost much of their taboo

Berman is just one entrepreneur inquiring more sophisticated manufacturing the procedure and new technologies for a copulation toy marketplace that has lost much of its taboo. Boundaries between adult makes and sex health commodities are blurring and, as the She episode substantiates, theres now a wide array of well-designed, high-end products made from medical or food-grade plastics and silicones.

Theres a real change, with people are now beginning to challenge high-quality products, she says. No one wants to put toxic substance into their body. Shes referring to phthalates, a widely used chemical group that constructs plastics flexible and has been used in sex toys.

Add to that the growth of internet-connected smart sex machines that are becoming increasingly mainstream; the award for digital health and fitness at Januarys influential Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas departed, for the first time, to sex toy fellowship OhMiBod. Its insertable Lovelife Krush device for monitoring the effectiveness of pelvic floor exercises labours via bluetooth with a smartphone app that contributes visual and vibratory feedback. It predicts, the company states, that stronger muscles will help prevent incontinence and deliver better orgasms. It will sell for $129 when it goes on sale in the spring.

No one in service industries ever triumphed before its about as mainstream[ an honor] as you can get, says Michael Guilfoyle, business manager of light-headed bedroom servitude corporation Sportsheets. This used to be an industry you shunned as an entrepreneur. But now its no longer porn-associated, theres a new generation in the business. He points to the status of women in a crispy pitch-black clothing working on the We-Vibe stand. That lady speaks 10 languages.

Back in the She occasion, Berman is holding forth to a rapt audience with her scheduled talk, Sex Toys: Beyond the Orgasm. Berman activities a positive , no-nonsense vibe, substantiating various categories of sex toys as though it were state-of-the artistry kitchen gadgets.

The Pulse by Hot Octopus, a sort of vibrating stimulator for men, is great for men with erectile dysfunction or disabilities, she says, while her own POP device is designed for same-sex duets to supersede more banal methods of conceiving using donated seman. Another is the Candy, a small, blush-pink dance with a loop were prepared by Chinese engineers for pelvic floor exercises.

Berman, 34, grew up in a outskirt of Boston, investigated English and sociology and wanted to be a professional lyricist. But in 2001 she ended up in the business her baby started, Sepal Reproductive, a manufacturer of catheters for IVF procedures and distributor of diagnostic tests and medical devices. Our neighbours thought we led a sperm bank, says Berman, who started as a sales rep and is now its vice president.

Berman was developing a home insemination paraphernalium in 2009 when she came up with the idea for the Semenette, launched in 2012 by her own fellowship Berman Innovations. The first version was like a medical machine, make use of hard silicone and offered in three flesh tones. For the second machine put in place in late 2015, Berman partnered with a high-end German sex-toy busines announced Fun Factory.

Sarah Tomchesson is head of business operations for US adult retail store The Pleasure Chest, which exchanges the Semenette, but also says she saw utilizing the first form. Its very exciting to have something to employ that allows you to keep more intimacy. The orgasmic process is integral to success in getting pregnant, adds Tomchesson, who now has an eight-month old-fashioned daughter with her partner.

She thinks it will be easier for Semenette to market itself as a sexuality doll than as a fertility invention a highly lucrative and more competitive sphere. The exchange of views among seman is regulated by the FDA at a doctors facility and there is a lot of indebtednes. You will run into doctors who are very resistant to talk about home insemination.

Insemination is a recession-proof business

Semenettes website also explains how the POP is appealing to other communities, including female-to-male transgender clients. Berman has sold at least 500 of the brand-new inventions both to retailers and individuals mostly in the US, Canada and the UK. Its gaining traction in the fetish and kink-play domain and more gentlemen are telling, including people with physical disabilities like muscular skeletal disease, she says.

Bermans product likewise comes with a strap-on option called the Joque Harness for $119.95, and while at a recent porn manufacture phenomenon in Las Vegas, she spoke on a board that included a disabled person and a plus-size talker. The adult manufacture is more aware of other gatherings. You have to think outside the box and not target a cookie-cutter clientele.

Its a slump proof business because everyone wants newborns, says Berman. Semenettes device retails at $139.95, compared to the average $500 to $1,500 cost of one see to a doctors role for intrauterine insemination. And in the US, health insurance normally merely knocks in after six visits, she says.

After Bermans talk, a patently dressed Chinese business wife approaches Berman and misses a private join. Minnie Zhang, co-founder of brand-new Shanghai-based sex doll busines Magic Motion, ponders Berman can help them steer the American sell.

She plucks a elegant booklet out of her bag detailing luxurious makes such as the Magic Motion Flamingo, a wearable smart vibrator made of liquid silicone. Ten years ago Chinese parties didnt is well known pattern and simply imitated[ everything ], says Zhang. Now with a younger, more affluent and sexually open generation, Chinese corporations are beginning to apply their motif savvy and technical science into copulation dolls. Its a huge market, says Zhang, whose corporation has around 30 hires working on apps alone and hopes to counter the countrys honour as a producer of inexpensive, low-grade fornication toys.

Its a work of art

IMTOY co-founder Johnny Jiang, who has a degree in opto-electronics from Liverpool University, is also substantiating the companys new men vibrator, the Piu. A stylish pitch-black and ruby-red device slightly larger than, well, a hand, the $200 Piu is boxed like an expensive bottle of perfume.

OMTOY, the company behind Pui, has a unit of video creators in Japan making adult content for the Pui app. There are 30 tremor blueprints and three machines, to give a soothing butterfly flutter or a big thumping, von Abo explains.

Annie Kim, federal employees at the company IMTOY, evidences off the Piu, an interactive masturbation toy for men Photograph: Emily Berl for the Guardian

IMTOY likewise does the Candy, a small blush-pink ball that contains a sensor and is designed for checking pelvic floor exercises. Its a work of art, says Jiang, pointing to a design resting on a wireless charger, which also has an ultraviolet transmitter that sterilizes it when the case is covered; ultraviolet can kill 270 the different types of bacteria, the company claims.

Marketing director Matthew von Abo makes a Candy in my hand and syncs it via bluetooth to the app on his iPhone. It hums and shakes gently and when I crush it, the pressure sensor inside triggers a number on the app. I squeeze harder and the number rises from 100 to 225. You can do a different exercising each day, he excuses. Hold for three seconds, relax for five, echo 70 times.

Meanwhile Berman is preparing to head off to a porn convention before she moves home to their own families in Boston. Does she ever think about what she and her bride will tell their children about their idea?

Weve “was talkin about a” it. I will tell them that their mommy fabricated something that( was used) in a loving, intimate behavior. I wont go into all the gory details. And when theyre teenagers? I havent had considered that far ahead yet.

The post A sex doll for women’s health: dildo designer talks the euphorium of conception appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2kq1fMX via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

[newagesispage]

                                                          DECEMBER        2017

*****The Astros win the World series.

*****Jill Kimmel is doing stand up.** Her brother Jimmy’s childhood drawings were turned into flesh super heroes The terrific Ten.** Jimmy is in a twitter war with Roy Moore. After being called out by Moore, Jimmy is heading to Alabama to either fight or talk since he is unsure of what Moore is taunting him to do. He wants to dress like a girl scout since he feels that Moore only notices little girls. Kimmel would really like to talk Christianity because as a Christian he does not understand him.

*****So.. Scary clown has delayed his decision on elephant trophy’s which has angered hunting groups.** It is said that Rex Tillerson is about to be out and Mike Pompeo in. Business as usual!

**** The tax bill is atrocious. It adds a trillion to the deficit and the middle class tax cuts would expire.  They are trying to sneak in a caveat in the part about college savings plan. It would not actually change anything for savings now but it a backdoor way to have their way on abortion. It would introduce ‘fetal personhood’ into law which of course would be a short leap to taking away choice.

*****Scary clown 45 is ranting about the jury in the case of Kate Steinley who the jury says was accidently shot by an immigrant named Jose Inez Garcia Zarate.  Trump has been ranting about this case for a while now but the San Francisco trial just ended.** And we are really seeing what Trump and his fake news are doing to the world. His yelling about CNN put doubt into other countries about a REAL story they did on modern day slave auctions in Libya. These are real humans that need help and he has others doubting the very story. ** He also put out fake stories about terrorism which were debunked but Huckabee Sanders said it does not matter if the stories are real, the threat is real. The fake news also gave much free publicity to hate group Britain First.

*****The original Conklin’s barn was torn down on November 7. Fingers crossed that the donations will keep coming in so they can reopen by December 2018 as Barn 3. Time for some Days cast members to donate some fundraising time??

*****Patton Oswalt kicked ass in his new Netflix special Annihilation and also just got married to Meredith Salenger.

*****Boo Boo Stewart and Mark Derwin star in Lowlifes out in 2018. Lowlifes is the story of a second chance boot camp who stumble onto a terrorist group.

*****Meghan McCain seems so angry and it seems she wants to tear Joy Behar’s head off sometimes. She is supportive of some liberal agendas but automatically turns off some ideas simply because of who is proposing them. This is the very thing she rails against. I did love her take on sleezy Matt Lauer though, I too never had any respect for him after the Anne Curry thing. And c’mon ET all the Lauer clips you showed seemed to have him in front of Rolling Stones advertising.** Lauer has been accused of many things including exposing himself. Why do these men always think we want to see their dicks? They all think they have something special, they are not that fucking different. Keep it in your pants, most would be embarrassed if they were held up to other men. And I don not believe for a minute that Jeff Zucker did not know about it. I never trusted him either.

*****China says that Trump is proof that democracy does not work. They are benefitting from our misery and zeroing in on being number 1. Besides spreading propaganda, they are making lots of jobs with clean energy that they can sell to the world.

*****Steve Green of Hobby Lobby has finally opened the 500 million dollar Bible museum. The idea of making all guests sign a promise to become evangelicals when they leave was nixed.

*****$15 mil in taxpayer money has been spent on the sexual harassment complaints of congress.

*****James Jagger and Matilda Lutz are the face of Giorgio Armani’s fragrances Because it’s you for her and Stronger with you for him.

*****Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross declared the divestment of his holdings but he’s still part owner in a company. This Russian company has ties to Putin’s son in law.

*****Please Please Conan.. More Butterscotch the clown!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****The UK is having its own political and sexual misconduct scandals including a secretary of state Damian Green.

*****The Mark Twain prize for Letterman was filled with my favorites and was very emotional. Al Franken edited out? Maher is right: The liberals are pussies.

*****The Paradise papers about offshore finances were leaked.  The secret financial activities of the superrich show a lot of Russian dealings. There are also questions about Queen Elizabeth’s private estate and other business leaders.

*****The list of those accused of sexual misconduct grows, from Dustin Hoffman to Brett Ratner to Russell Simmons and more to come. Simmons is accused of raping Lena Horne’s granddaughter. We need a special kind of thank you for Ronan Farrow who is working tirelessly to blow the lid off of the Weinstein bullshit. I Can’t wait for his new book. He has exposed many things which have helped feel safe enough to come forward. So many helped in the Weinstein mess , including Dylan Howard, chief content officer of American Media Inc. which publishes The Enquirer. Howard was apparently a helper in the disgusting network of suppression. Sime sticks together like Levin sticks with Trump.** We need a real truth teller, an honest Cronkite type and I see it in Ronan. **Jane Seymour had her own story of sexual harassment with a powerful producer at the start of her career.** Charlie Rose is fired after his allegations. That one hurts.** I am so glad the women are coming forward. The bravery of citizens like in The Keepers is opening up a world of (hopefully) more truth, more justice. ** Are political operatives helping to dig any of this up?** A good portion of people I know are natural flirts. Are there some who don’t even realize that they are offending? Out and out rape and authority figures who try to stop an employee’s rise when they do not get their sexual way is obviously wrong.  We are human though and sometimes that line may be crossed unintentionally. I think each story has to be looked at for what it is. We must discern between real and cruel sexual situations and tasteless jokes and bad manners. All is wrong but there are different ways to deal with the accused. Listen fully to the stories from the victim’s mouth. Follow the evidence and force yes or no answers. This political speak of “let me tell you” or “I will say this” is nonsense. People out and out believe that celebs of journalists did the bad deed but politicians receive more skepticism. People take the side of their left or right hero without really listening. If you can’t see the difference I wonder about your ability to reason, about your moral compass. An Al Franken or Garrison Keillor seem to be a bit different from a Weinstein. ** Uma Thurman had a great tweet: Happy Thanksgiving everyone (except you Harvey, and all your wicked conspirators. I’m glad it’s going slowly-you don’t deserve a bullet)** Pelosi could be a little more eloquent and quit getting in her own way defending the left. Just before I put this page out, Pelosi says Conyers should resign.. WOW! complete turn around.** A woman came forward to the Washington Post trying to push some fake news about Roy Moore. She claimed that she was impregnated by him and then it was found that she was meeting with Project Veritas whose purpose it is to set up stings on the mainstream media. Of course there are REAL reporters at the Post so the story was not published.  Hmm imagine looking up facts and not getting your news from the 700 Club or online scuttlebutt. ** Isn’t all the money and power enough for these men at the top? Law and order SVU must have enough script ideas for another 20 years.** Is all the women standing up and not taking it anymore what we get for losing Hillary? It is like she had to sacrifice herself and gain liberation for the rest of us. So many can’t believe what got into the White house and real truths need to be out there. WAKE

*****Prince Harry and former Deal or no Deal employee, Meghan Markle are engaged .

*****The governor’s award honored Donald Sutherland

***** Fashion Police on E is over.

*****I watched Ozark on Netflix and wasn’t too sure after the first episode but tried the second and then I was in. There were times when I could not quite suspend my disbelief but then there were so many characters that I seemed to recognize from my real life. Bateman and many deserve some love for this project and I will miss Russ in season 2.

*****Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr story sounds like a great doc.

*****The Grammy noms are out and leading the way was Jay-Z with 8. That was followed up with Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, SZA, Childish Gambino and Khalid. Also on the list of nominations are Lorde, Lady Gaga, Imagine Dragons, Bob Dylan, Kraftwerk, Leonard Cohen, Jason Isbell, Gregg Allman, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Sanders, Carrie Fisher, Dave Chappelle, Queens of the stone age, Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Hart and The Rolling Stones.

*****So glad Search Party on TBS is back!!

*****The Crowns Plaza hotel has a projection on the outside of the building that declares FUCK TRUMP.

*****Don’t take your eyes off this administration and the judges he is putting in place, the rules that he and his cohorts are changing and the rights he is taking away from all of us. We have a lot to deal with now but don’t let his tweets or his slick talkers distract you. Yes we need justice from the Russian probe but somebody is handling that,. I wish the news would let that play out and update us more on what they are taking from us.** If you can’t see what is wtong with a Trump or a Roy Moore, I have to wonder about your moral character.

*****Hooray for Washington Week for 50 years and Meet the Press for 70. Thanks Washington Week for your touching tribute to Gwen Ifill.

*****Dan Rather has a new book, What unites us.

*****Nathan Fillion is back on ABC with The Rookie. The program is inspired by a true story of the oldest rookie in the LAPD from the executive producer of Criminal Minds, Mark Gordon.

*****For the fifth year in a row Michael Jackson has been the top dead celebrity earner.

*****Laurence Fishburne is divorcing Gina Torres.

*****Papa John’s has apologized for blaming the knee taking football players for low pizza sales. C’mon who eats that pizza anyway?.. get a good product!** The alt right has named them their official pizza.

*****Voting has begun for the rock and roll hall of fame. This year we have Bon Jovi, the Moody Blues, Dire Straits, The Cars. Judas Priest, The Eurythmics, The Zombies, J. Geils Band( please finally!!!!!), Depeche Mode and Nina Simone.

*****U.S. court judge Colleen Kollar- Kotelly barred Trump from continuing with plans to exclude transgender people from military service and thinks those who have sued have a good case.

*****So.. What the fuck is the hinky biz going on at Guantanamo?  The place has its own rules and nobody can seem to agree on said rules. Brigadier General Baker found good cause for Nashiri, a suspect in the USS Cole bombing, to lose his lawyers. After the lawyers were allowed to quit, a judge ordered Baker to rescind that order but he refused.  The judge put the General in jail. The General , a U.S. citizen and  the 2nd highest ranking officer in the military claims the judge has no jurisdiction over him. We will have to see how this plays out.

*****James Comey is releasing his story in May with the book A Higher Loyalty.

*****Michael Lewis tells us about all the prep the Obama administration went thru to bring the Trump administration up to snuff in his new nook The Undoing project.

*****Brit Vandegraft married John Witt on October 14 and honeymooned thru Dallas and on to the West.

*****According to the pentagon, America has spent $250 mil a day on war every single day for sixteen years.

*****Donna Brazile’s book Hacks claims the Dem campaigns were offered a chance to bail out the DNC and get much support. The Bernie campaign declined but the Hillary campaign supplied the money. Brazile seemed a bit surprised and rattled about the reaction to her book in the beginning.  After a couple of weeks she settled into it and the defensiveness sort of faded.  She tells us that she has been in politics for fifty years and if we don’t like it ,we don’t have to buy it. She claims she enjoyed Hillary’s book and backed her all the way.  Brazile writes that she got to the bottom of everything when she took over the DNC and was threatened over and over again.

*****Days alert: WTF Adrienne?? Poor Lucas never gets to keep the girl! **Peggy McCay celebrated her 90th.** Keep Hope and Raif together. Damn!

*****So glad to see Katherine Erbe on How to get away with murder.

*****Spot on writing and acting on another level with Jane and Lily and Sam and Martin on Grace and Frankie. What treasures!!  Thrilled to see the appearance of Mary kay Place . Craig Welzbacher who played Myron on Days was on there too.

*****Dinklage, Harrelson and McDormand in Three Billboards… can’t wait.

*****This winter, Trump requested 70 foreign workers with special permission from the U.S. labor department for Mar –A- Lago. He also would like some for various golf clubs thru the H-2B visa program. There are currently 5,136 qualified persons in the area ready to work. America first?

*****The second part of Stranger Things just as good as the first.

*****Scary Clown 45 is being sued because he blocked twitter followers.  He now knows that since he uses his tweets as an ‘instrument of governance’ blocking is not allowed.

*****Fifty years brings Rolling Stone magazine an HBO doc, a rock and roll hall of fame exhibit and the whole thing up for sale.

*****Rand Paul was attacked by his neighbor as he mowed his lawn.

*****Ok.. I realize that shows like The View have to shift.. well I guess they do.. But I don’t get how they can talk about a shooting and then hey ”view your deal’.  C’mon, it just seems so inappropriate to suddenly talk about spending $ on silly things. I always tune out when this shit happens.. can’t this shit be at the end of the show. No offense to those companies but I do not watch for that. .. But good for Sonny Hostin for going to Puerto Rico to tell their story.

*****Sad to see Dale Earnhardt Jr run his last race. Is Chase Elliott the next Mr. popular ?

*****An American woman, Shalane Flanagan won the New York marathon.

*****Manafort had 3 passports and we won’t get to the trial for he and Gates until May.

*****Charles Manson is dead. Writer Phil Luciano still has some letters from him that he does not know what to do with. They are now headed into the Lincoln library in Springfield, Il.** How did Charlie wrangle such good publicity from American Horror story? The timing as usual is impeccable. Charles (Manson) in charge?** The History channel seems to have some unheard recordings from Charlie that will air on December 3 as Manson Speaks.

*****Prince Salmon Mohamed is purging in Saudi Arabia. His crackdown has included about 500 other Princes who have been rounded up. He is consolidating power and getting rid of enemies. Just days before Jared Kushner went for a visit.  It seems like so many ego driven men in the world today are grabbing all the power they can.

*****Check out Jeff Ross roasts the border.

*****The recent elections went pretty well for the left including Bill DeBlasio. Congrats to all the newly elected including the first openly trans woman and an African American mayor in Montana. Nobody should get too cocky.

*****The VA says they won’t help the dishonorably discharged per the Trump team.  Hmm no help from VA, no universal health care.. I guess soldiers should suffer in silence, beat their families or become addicts.

*****Wow Darrell Hammond was awesome on a Criminal Minds that Aisha Tyler directed.** BTW Did ya see the episode where Mantagna utters the line, “I don’t like a the snakes.’? OMG

*****HBO is making a limited series about the Jonestown tragedy with Vince Gilligan and Octavia Spencer.

***** Watch for Peter Fonda in The Ballad of Lefty Brown coming out December 15.

***** So.. Tiny kitchens are a thing?

***** Pumpkin spice has reached its peak. Pumpkin out: Maple in.

*****Check out Sean Astin as Paul Manafort in Houseguest (on Colbert).

*****I thought my head was gonna explode when Bill Maher had Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Chris Matthews and Sarah Silverman on the same episode.

*****So the People mag sexiest man is stupid anyway but Idris isn’t the man this year? WTF??

*****Jim and Andy: The story inside the story inside the story of Carrey playing Kaufman. This is a great piece of work.  Is it wrong to say how hot it is that Jim gets this look in his eye about Andy? Even though he is no longer inhabited by Kaufman, something seems to bubble inside him when he talks about the man.

*****On November 14th Bob Corker held hearings on executive authority to use nuke’s .

*****The Louis CK film I was looking forward to ‘I love you Daddy’ looks like a wash.

*****They say the Pres has no control over fuel prices but Trump in.. prices soaring.

*****Rwanda has offered to host African migrants stranded in Libya.

*****Why do people always say they did not think it would happen to them or their communities when shootings happen? How long does it take to sink in to Americans that mental illness and this obsession with weapons is everywhere?  I will agree with a couple of things that the NRA says like we need to enforce the rules in place better a that mental health is a big part of the problem. If mental health is the real issue then where is the universal health care we need to take care of this problem?

*****GQ has named Colin Kaepernick citizen of the year.

*****Just as I am posting this the Mike Flynn charges were announced. They broke into the news with this news. A real reporter must never get any sleep in these Trump times. Apparently he is pleading guilty and cooperating in the Russian investigation. Go Go GO DOJ!

*****Why is the last sketch on Saturday Night Live usually the best?

*****R.I.P. Dennis Banks, Liz Smith, Lil Peep, Malcolm Young, George Young, Brad Bufanda, victims of the Texas church shooting, Gloria Fallon, Roy Halladay, Robert Knight, Chuck Mosley, John Hillerman, Paul Buckmaster, Mel Tillis, Della Reese, David Cassidy, Earle Hyman, Joseph L. White, Jim Nabors and Rance Howard.

��

[ryanhillsssss]

18.

COPENHAGEN TRIP / GUIDE - AUGUST 2017.

Copenhagen was the destination for a short getaway and we used my 24th birthday as an excuse (or distraction). An absolutely beautiful city, full of some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Smaller than I initially imagined, Copenhagen was the perfect size for our 4 days there. It was just right, as we were able to walk the entire way round it and visit everywhere that we wanted to. Hopping on a 15 minute bus from directly outside our little Airbnb, we’d often get off down by the Tivoli Gardens and walk / work our way up towards the hub of the city centre. We’d use a CityPass, setting us back 200DKr / £25 for a 72hr ticket and this allowed us to use the metro and the bus as many times as we pleased. They simply text you the confirmation, and you can show it accordingly (however, due to the general mentality of the place, nobody actually even checked ours - they appeared to assume and trust that we had the according passes without even asking!) 

Even after having gotten up at 3am that day and arriving in Copenhagen at about midday, we still felt that we had enough energy to go exploring due to the short flight of about an hour and a half from Stanstead Airport - which was a bonus. We jumped on the first bus that came along after checking into our wonderful little flat, and got off when Google Maps told us we were in what looked like the city centre! After a short wander, we found the Tivoli Gardens. An absolutely beautiful little spot, an amusement / entertainment park in the city centre which boasted a rich history after originally coming about in 1843 and being cared for, updated, and looked after well since then. Full of rides, restaurants, bars, and gardens dotted throughout, a lot was packed into the small space. It was certainly enough to keep us entertained for the entire afternoon, and thanks to the incredibly helpful and welcoming service from everyone there, we were made to feel right at home immediately. 

Our second day was dedicated to more exploring and learning. We first visited the Botanical Gardens in the city centre. A lovely, huge space with little walkways, winding paths, and greenhouses throughout. The weather treated us so well on our time away - I’d read that it can often be a tad sporadic due to the location of the city, but it was hot and sunny throughout, meaning that the time in the gardens was perfect. We then headed towards the Design Museum Denmark, towards the north of the city centre. The museum was set in a really nice space, a square layout for the building itself with a large green in the centre - originally, it was built as a hospital back in the 1800′s. A quick stop off at the cafe and we were good to go! The museum showcased a variety of work, starting with old Asian designs (which was very interesting, to learn about how much of an impact it had on Danish design at the time). It then went through the ages up until current time, showing all kinds of design, until finally showcasing more up to date, 20th century, specifically Danish, design. Furniture, print, graphics, architecture, drawings, and models was on display through the whole museum and it was very impressive. The museum itself has special exhibitions which change every now and then, and without realising it, they had a haute couture exhib showcasing the work of Erik Mortensen, the Danish fashion designer, and specifically his lead up and time at Balmain from 1982-1990 as head of design. Entitled “I Am Black Velvet, it showcased about 70 pieces from his time there, as well as videos and sketches of his alongside the garments. A very inspiring experience, with some stunning pieces from Mortensen’s time there. A lovely surprise that we didn’t realise was currently being shown until we looked! After the museum, we headed over towards Christiana, the freetown, and more specifically the waterfronts that surround it. Going to the “Copenhagen Street Food” venue, a huge warehouse space on the waters edge, full of hundreds of food and drinks vendors - quirky little stalls were dotted throughout with loads on offer, national foods and drinks were everywhere and there was almost too much to choose from! Would definitely recommend, there was such a lovely buzz, grabbing food of your choosing and sitting out on the benches shoulder to shoulder with total strangers as the sun began to set over the water. Next door to the Street Food venue was Copenhagen Contemporary, a second gallery space that we then went into. There was an event by Yoko Ono, as well as work from Sarah Sze on display, but by far the one that I enjoyed experiencing most was the work from Christian Marclay. It showed his 2010 piece called “The Clock” which was a 24-hour straight montage showing a variety of clips, in their thousands, that completely synchronised the time in the film clips with the time of the viewer’s world. In most clips, the actual time itself was physically displayed, or referenced, but if not, Marclay cleverly discovered the time of the clip through knowledge of the film in question. It was incredibly interesting, the fact that the short and contrasting clips were taken out of context and put next to eachother, while being totally in time with our real world, but completely endless as a whole, 24hr, looping video - we honestly could have sat there all day, in fact even though we were there for an hour, it totally flew by! After this, we strolled back into the city and pulled up a pew on the waters front at the colourful Nyhavn for a few drinks as the sun set on us. Definitely my favourite place in the city, it had a hustle and bustle all evening long, but nothing felt rushed, everyone was having a great time, there were people working on their boats while hundreds of people walked past just meters away. The colourful buildings had restaurants all the way down, and infront of these were a whole load of separate little bars, one of which we sat at. Would definitely put this on the to-do list for anyone going over there!

Our third and final full day lent itself to shopping and checking out more of the city centre. Starting off in Indre By, Downtown Copenhagen, we headed straight for Illum, a huge department store with a nice selection of designer pieces including SLP, Acne, Wang, throughout, as well as a lovely rooftop coffee shop. In the surrounding area was such other places as HAY House, Urban Outfitters, Weekday, and so on. We headed a little further out towards OSV, which is almost Grailed in shop form - second hand designer fashion sold on behalf of clients by the shop. A really nice idea that worked well! Just round the corner of this was Henrik Vibskov, a little boutique with some of the best designer bits I saw in my whole time there. Stocking CDG, Raf, a couple of bits of Rick, and of course Henrik’s work, the tiny space fitted an awful lot in and had a really nice vibe to it. We then headed over to the Acne stores (which there were a couple of not too far from one another) as well as STORM, which was also really nice, would recommend. To top it all off, we popped over to the Acne Archives - a bit of a walk away, but definitely worth the trip for the beautiful pieces they had on offer there, and then stopped in to California Kitchen nearby - definitely pop in if you’re in the area, they call themselves a “fast-casual lifestyle restaurant”, serving a variety of convenient and healthy bowl-based dishes loosely based around different traditional dishes from around the world. Heading back to the apartment, we were able to spend hours as the day drew to a close with a bottle of wine on the balcony, chatting and watching the world go by. Absolutely spot on. 

Overall, it was great. Flights and travel are easy and accessible, and it’s such a lovely city full of wonderful people. While it didn’t always have things going on that jumped out or took your breath away, it was relaxed, easy to navigate and always felt very safe. It was also incredibly clean! People there couldn’t have been more helpful, service was always great too. There were almost too many places to eat or drink to choose from! Personally, I felt that the shopping side of things left a little to be desired - simply due to what was on offer, but the shops themselves were unique, quirky, and plentiful. If you’re after your clean-cut, Scandinavian design - think COS, Acne, etc - you’re in for a treat! While it’s not a complaint, the prices for food and drink over there was a surprise too - definitely more than expected - a couple of pints and two vodka cokes came to roughly £30 or so - but the setting, quality of service and experience meant it was totally worth it! General exhibitions, museums, galleries and events were always well curated, chosen and presented. All in all, I would highly recommend! It wasn’t too stressful as an experience, and it was super easy to get around and get to where we needed to be. Will hopefully go back one day for sure! 

#copenhagen

[purplefayeuk]

Last Saturday (8th April 2017) after I’d visited The Hepworth Wakefield Spring Market, in The Calder building, I popped over to the main building to look round. I was looking forward to seeing the Disobedient Bodies exhibition but I’m going to write about that in a separate blog post, I don’t want the other exhibitions to get overshadowed and lost by putting them all together, there’s some really great work in them (as you will see in the pics I took) and it’s be a shame to overlook them

It really is worth making the trip to see them for yourself if you can but if you can’t then hopefully this will give you a bit of a taster. I tried to take shots that would give a sense of seeing how the pieces work together as a whole exhibition rather than focusing on individual pieces,  I did focus more on the things I liked most though. I also tried to take pics of the information written on the wall to explain what each exhibition is about but I’ll also include excerps from The Hepworth website at the end to help provide more detail too.

You’ll also see some shots taken from the windows in the gallery spaces too, many including the Chantry Chapel where I exhibited some of my work in last May’s Artwalk, read about it here.

-Additional Infomation-

Anthea Hamilton Reimagines Kettle’s Yard 15 September 2016 – 1 May 2017

The Hepworth Wakefield and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge are delighted to present a new installation by 2016 Turner Prize nominee, Anthea Hamilton, an artist renowned for her art-pop, culture-inspired sculptures and installations that incorporate references from the worlds of art, fashion, design and cinema.

Hamilton has reinstalled our exhibition Kettle’s Yard at The Hepworth Wakefield which has been on display since May 2016, while Kettle’s Yard is closed for renovation.  

Based on her research into the art and objects of the Kettle’s Yard collection, Hamilton has re-appropriated objects from the collection, using unexpected details as starting points for new works. 

Significantly, Hamilton has also invited several British and international artists, with whom she has either previously worked, or whose work is important to her, to contribute to this exhibition. These include: French artist Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann, British artist Nicholas Byrne, British photographer Roger Philips, German artist Daniel Sinsel, Latvian artist Ella Kruglyanskaya, Polish artist Maria Loboda and the celebrated American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. 

György Gordon: From Hungary to Yorkshire, 1924-2005 Opens Sat 25 February

The Hungarian-born artist György Gordon became a refugee after fleeing the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. He resettled in Wakefield in 1964 where he became a lecturer in Graphic Design and the leader of the painting department at Wakefield College of Art.

A gifted teacher, he inspired admiration and affection from generations of young artists. This new exhibition celebrates the recent gift of three paintings to the Wakefield collection.

Approximately 30 works, comprising paintings, works on paper and archival material are on display, including the three gifted works exploring themes of solitude and displacement.

A Contemporary Collection

24 September 2016 – Autumn 2017

The Wakefield Permanent Art Collection was founded in 1923, and housed in Wakefield Art Gallery from 1932. Shortly after, Wakefield Councilman Alfred Carr stated that the purpose of the collection was ‘to keep in touch with modern art, in its relations to modern life’. In its first decades, the collection acquired works of art by important British artists of the early twentieth century who had championed art as a reflection of contemporary experience. These included critic and painter Roger Fry and artists of the Camden Town Group who celebrated ordinary people and everyday events.

The collection supported emerging local artists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, acquiring their work early in their careers along with that of painter Ben Nicholson. Nicholson and Hepworth, who married in 1938, had formed a new avant-garde in the 1930s that fused geometric abstraction and utopian ideals, which they took to St. Ives during World War II. Paintings created in response to the devastation of the war were acquired by Wakefield through the War Artists Advisory Committee in the late 1940s, providing local audiences with a reflection of the hardships they and their fellow countrymen faced.

In post-war Britain, Wakefield continued to host exhibitions of contemporary artists and collect their works. Alan Davie had his first solo exhibition at Wakefield Art Gallery in 1958 under the directorship of Helen Kapp, and a number of his paintings were subsequently acquired. Gifts have played an important part in the development of the collection. As the new building of The Hepworth Wakefield was in development, Sir Alan Bowness, Barbara Hepworth’s son-in-law, donated a group of paintings through
the Art Fund. These included works by Davie and significant abstract artists of the 1960s and 70s such as John Golding and John Hoyland.

Since opening in 2011, The Hepworth Wakefield has continued Wakefield’s tradition of supporting contemporary artists through exhibitions and acquisitions. Its inaugural exhibition was of new work by Eva Rothschild, whose sculpture Wandering Palm was subsequently acquired. Some artists who have exhibited at the gallery have generously given works to the collection, such as Matt Darbyshire’s Untitled (Shelf), which allows the collection to remain contemporary. One of the most recent acquisitions, Anthea Hamilton’s Leg Chair, was acquired through the Contemporary Art Society in 2015, and marks Hamilton’s current exhibition in Gallery 3.

NEW FOR 2017

A Contemporary Collection includes a section curated by Art & Social, a group of young people who meet every Friday at The Hepworth Wakefield to be creative, build skills and develop friendships and confidence. They have selected works from the collection, which are presented alongside collectively written poems that give an insight into their choices.

The Hepworth Family Gift/Hepworth at Work

On Permanent Display at The Hepworth Wakefield

The Hepworth Family Gift consists of 44 full size, rarely seen working models – surviving prototypes in plaster and aluminium made in preparation for the works in bronze Hepworth executed from the mid-1950s to the end of her career. It also includes drawings and a large group of lithographs and screen prints by Barbara Hepworth, and has been given to The Hepworth Wakefield, via the Art Fund, by the artist’s daughters Rachel Kidd and Sarah Bowness, through the Trustees of the Barbara Hepworth Estate.

The Hepworth at Work display explores Hepworth’s studio environment, her work in plaster, her collaborative relationships with bronze foundries and the monumental commissions she received in the last fifteen years of her life. The tools and materials on display were Hepworth’s own and have been drawn from her second studio in St Ives, the Palais de Danse. Also featured is a step-by-step reconstruction of the bronze-casting process, photographs of works in progress and four specially commissioned films containing archival footage of the artist in her studio.

The gallery introduces The Hepworth Family Gift, a unique collection of Hepworth’s working models that is on permanent display at The Hepworth Wakefield. Representing the first stage of the creative process, they offer an invaluable insight into her art and, in particular, her approach to working with plaster.

The collection reflects the variety of ways in which Hepworth used plaster and aluminium. She preferred to make prototypes on the same scale as the finished sculptures and would have worked directly on the majority of these models.

The centrepiece of the Gift is the aluminium prototype for Winged Figure, 1961 – 3, the sculpture commissioned by John Lewis Partnership for their flagship store on Oxford Street, London. At nearly six metres high, this is the only working model to survive for the monumental commissions Hepworth received in later life.

    Till next time,

Take care.

Purple Faye

purplefaye.co.uk

Purple Faye Art Adventure: The Hepworth Wakefield April 8th 2017 Last Saturday (8th April 2017) after I'd visited The Hepworth Wakefield Spring Market, in The Calder building, I popped over to the main building to look round.

#art #art exhibition #art exhibitions #artist #chantry chapel #day out #exhibition #exhibitions #gallery #Hepworth #hepworth gallery #paintings #pontefract #prints #Purple Faye #purplefaye #sculpture #sculptures #The Hepworth Wakefield #THW #Trip #visit #wakefield #window views