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fortheloveofdeaddove · 7 months

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No one asked, but this is the void where I dump things

My sister turned to me yesterday to rag on Jada Pinkett Smith. I let her give her points, but then I responded calmly after each one with why it was all an incredibly misogynoir take.

"She's emasculating him."

"She talks way too much."

"No one wants to know this."

"She's using him."

"She just talks about Tupac all the time."

We're both white, lol. As two white women, we often share a safe space with each other to talk about race in a critical way (we grew up in a mixed race family so we have more to discuss than your typical white person who keeps a primarily white circle and only has white family). We challenge each other, we say things out loud we know we can't say in a group, we do our best to hold each other accountable as much as two white chicks can.

I don't really know why she thought I was going to agree with her? Because "Jada is cringe!"? My dear sister, do you knowest whomst you sitteth next to? Jada will never know my lengths of cringe, nor I hers. But we are sisters in this respect. She also watched me go toe-to-toe with several Tumblr History Racists (TM) over the Cleopatra documentary. I don't know why she bothered to get mad after barking up the wrong tree.

What I see when I look at Jada is Jada Pinkett Smith. I don't see Will's wife - I NEVER have. She has never just been Will Smith's wife, and based on that alone, many people don't like her. They didn't like her before she married him, they didn't like her after. She steps out of that and most boxes on the regular. She is an actress in her own right, a musician and artist in her own right, an activist and public figure in her own right. That she won't stuff herself into the "wife" box bothers people right off the bat.

She talks a lot, huh? She wrote a book? Demi wrote a book. Drew Barrymore wrote books and talks a lot, is very emotional and discusses many of the sordid tales of her personal history over and over again, but we only got mad at her after she crossed the picket line. Nicole Kidman, like every major actress out there, contributed heavily to her own autobiography. Oprah has multiple books about her life and life partner, who she never married or had children with. Where's the hate there? Jada is not the first actress to discuss her personal life. She is furthering the work of other women before her in discussing her life so openly, but people are angry about that because it sheds a nuanced, unorthodox light on Will Smith. And she's a black woman. How dare.

By the way, people were emasculating Will Smith as soon as he came onto the scene for reasons that had nothing to do with Jada. Men who never would have claimed to like Gettin' Jiggy With it or Parents Just Don't Understand suddenly began putting Will up as the ultimate, masculine hero after Jada started talking. It was all his wife making HIM weird and different, making their KIDS weird and different, and this pinnacle of masculinity was at the mercy of weird, weird Jade this whole time.

Red Table Talk was popular for a reason. And it was popular, even if folks hate-watched it. You still watched it. I only found out about Jeanette McCurdy's story because of Red Table Talk. Jada has 20 executive producer credits and more than 40 acting credits. She was the voice of fucking of Toki in the English dub of Princess Mononoke. Fight me. You may not want to hear what she has to say but plenty others do.

Jada is an accomplished actress who for many years was at the top of many young man and boy's and sapphic's "wanna fuck" lists. I'm not mis-remembering all those teen magazine articles from the 90's and early 2000's. She's a - I'll repeat myself - pioneering, black, female heavy metal musician. After finding success she married another successful actor, and together they built a fucking empire. Do I need to list the other actresses who have done the same who are NOT getting this hate?

Simmer down about Tupac Shakur. No, not Jada, you. Of the millions of online comments (and offline), who among those commenters knew either party? Close to zero, I'd imagine. She knew him, had a close relationship with him at one point in her life, dated him, whatever. That's all she had to do. People hate her for it. They're jealous and resentful. No one should be able to take away her experiences or ability to talk about them. Just like they shouldn't have tried to do to Courtney Love about Kurt Cobain. Some people are reserved, some are not. You're a motherfucker if you try to moralize that.

A grown man lost control of himself at a prestigious awards show over something offensive said onstage about his wife. A grown man went up on that stage and assaulted another grown man. That same grown man faced minimal consequences, even as his wife received most of the public vitriol for the event that she had nothing to do with. Her facial reaction didn't have anything to do with it. Every moment of her life leading up to that incident had nothing to do with it. That is, unless you believe Will Smith is a child with no personal autonomy. I personally think its offensive and insulting to believe so, given that he is a famous, talented, rich celebrity with resources and access and fame and intelligence (probably boinked Margot Robbie, too, and cheated on his first wife, so let's not turn him into some Precious Moments celibate monk Dudley-Do-Right). I'm not going to infantilize Will Smith because he doesn't deserve it.

Will Smith is going to be okay. So will Jada. We don't understand them or how they work - you can stay mad about that. I'm grateful for her.

#jada pinkett-smith #jada pinkett smith

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

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Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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keiratheraven · 4 years

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Bentley 8 Squad Characters Description

(First, forgive me for my broken English. Second, sims close-up in sims 3 gameplay isn't so good and I can't install pose player for some reason, so I have to go to CAS just to take their closeups).

This is the description of the characters from my fanfiction, Bentley 8 Squad. Like I said in my previous post, they called themselves "Bentley 8" because all of them like Bentley cars. They are living together in a house in Sim City. Each nicknames represent their traits/styles and positions in this squad. Their friendships are inseparable, and they're always there for each other. They established a mental health community named "Im-perfection", and their goal is to help everyone who struggles with mental health. Their Im-perfection community tagline is: "It's okay to not be perfect, and we are perfect because of it". Despite their obstacles, they're always finding ways to chase their dreams in their early 20's. By the way, some original characteristics are changed for the storyline.

Angela Pleasant (Bentley Queen) - age 20

She's ambitious, fashionable, popular, cheerful, and a trendsetter. As a cheerleader captain and queen bee of Pleasantview high school, Angela knows how to fit in. She's always friendly to everyone despite her stuck-up personality, and it made some people nicknamed her "phony" behind her back. But as she gets older, she became more sincere, especially after she's taking a master's degree in psychology. She and her twin sister, Lilith, disliked each other when they were teens. But she apologized to her and they became friends. She also has interests in fashion design. She's a great home cook, and excellent at making cakes. Angela is a good listener to her seven housemates. She loves Dustin so much although they came from different social circles. She suffers from eating disorders and endometriosis, but it doesn't limit her to become a (soon-to-be) psychologist.

Lilith Pleasant (Bentley Gothic) - age 20

She's often misunderstood due to her attitude and black clothing. She's sharp, gloomy, sarcastic, hot-headed, and somewhat rude. But she's really nice if you know her well, and she will do everything for her close friends and lover (especially her boyfriend, Dirk).

Despite her parents (Daniel and Mary-Sue Pleasant) treated her unfairly and favored Angela over her, plus she and Angela disliked each other when they were teens, she's forgiving and didn't hold grudges. Unlike Angela who was a queen bee, Lilith was one of the outcasts in high school. As a lead vocalist in her high school band, and she's taking art major, Lilith is a great artist and talented rock singer/guitarist. She has bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, but her manic-depressive phases make her even better at making arts and music. That's the way she deals with her mental disorders : pouring all her emotions into creations as a coping mechanism.

Dustin Broke (Bentley Rogue) - age 22

He's rebellious, bad-ass, tough, daredevil, and likes to break the laws. He used to be a criminal and drug dealer in high school. He liked to smoke weed and use cocaine. Back then, he liked to steal things. But actually, he's not a bad person. He's really soft on the inside but pretends to be tough. He cares a lot about his seven housemates, especially his beloved girlfriend (Angela). His mother, Brandi Broke, is married to Dirk's father (Darren Dreamer) several years after his father (Skip Broke) passed away.

Then, he realized his dream was never to become a criminal. He quits his criminal career to become an architect. Also, he suffers from schizophrenia caused by the drugs and trauma (his then-alcoholic mother, Brandi Broke, often beat him up when he was a teen), but medications and his job keeps him stable. He's getting nicer and trying to do good, although his rebellious nature is never faded.

Dirk Dreamer (Bentley Brain) - age 21

He's good, selfless, genius, bookworm, and compassionate. He's the smartest among them in this squad. He graduated from medical school at age 19, then he took psychiatry specialization aside from his dream to be a general practitioner because he wants to recover his girlfriend (Lilith), his step-brother (Dustin), and his best friend (Angela) from their mental disorders. As a kind doctor, Dirk is always helping people or put everyone's priority first before him, especially all of his housemates. His hard-work is because he wants to make his late mother proud. He's good at treating sick people or saving lives, and he'll be distressed if he fails to keep them alive. But, he has a terrible sense of humor. He has a library in their house, full of his book collections. Despite his struggle with type 1 diabetes, it doesn't stop him to become a successful doctor. He wrote a best-selling book about his journey as a diabetic psychiatric resident.

Johnny Smith (Bentley Leader) - age 23

He's nice, athletic, charismatic, commanding, and a party animal. He's so confident despite having a green skin due to alien descent. As the squad leader (and the oldest member) who has a black belt in karate, Johnny is trying his best to guide and protect all his friends and lover (Ophelia) in this squad. Johnny is a great organizer and planner. His perfectionist nature makes him never missed any arrangement. He has a bachelor's degree in business. He also likes to be a party DJ in the clubs. He's the second-best home cook in their household after Angela. Although sometimes he's loud and bossy to his seven housemates, it's because he cares and wants the best for them. He suffers from OCD and PTSD because he got beaten up by 9 people, stabbed on his abdomen, and thrown to the filthy dumpster due to hate crime against green-skinned sims when he was 18. But, he's trying to let go of the past, learning karate, and became a successful young executive.

Ophelia Nigmos (Bentley Flower) - age 22

She's kind, worrywart, mysterious, graceful, and patient. She likes every kind of flower, and her hobbies are gardening and writing. Motherly and nurturing, Ophelia knows how to give attention to her seven friends/housemates (especially her boyfriend, Johnny). She likes children, and she's working as a kindergarten (sometimes elementary school) teacher. She's also a talented writer. She has a strong interest in literature and has a bachelor's degree in it. She's also a successful blogger and their Im-perfection website admin as well. Her parents died when she was 10, and she became independent and quiet since she moved to Olive Specter's house in Strangetown. She's often panicking and worrying about the smallest things. Although she has anxiety and paranoid personality disorder, caused by the ghosts of her old house, only writing and gardening that can calm her down beside the meds.

Ripp Grunt (Bentley Clown) -

age 21

He's playful, humorous, hyperactive, talkative, and a heartbreaker. He slept with more than ten women (and also slept with men). But, he never fell in love with them like the way he fell in love with Ophelia and Johnny. As a drama student, Ripp is a talented actor and entertainer. He's great at imitating impressions. He can do a pantomime or stand up comedies as well. He likes to sing/play guitar and often posting duet cover videos with Lilith. He also likes to post pranking videos. His nice and funny personality makes him great at consoling his seven housemates when any of them gets sad, even though he often cries alone when he remembers his past because his father and older brother (Buzz and Tank Grunt) abused him when he was a teen. He wants to become a successful actor and musician despite his struggles with ADHD and chronic gastritis. Although sometimes he can't control his manners or actions, He's still trying to do the best.

Puck Summerdream (Bentley Fancy) - age 22

He's good, shy, polite, thoughtful, and serious. Charming and well-mannered, Puck knows how to treat everyone nicely. Coming from the most respected and wealthy family beside The Capps in Veronaville, makes him the richest sim in this squad. But he's still humble and doesn't want to talk about his wealth. Unlike his peers in Veronaville, Puck didn't want to get involved with Capp-Monty feuds, and he's always trying to be nice to both sides. He likes to wear suits and bowtie. He's an expert in classical music because he has double degrees in mathematics and fine arts (music branch). He likes to play the piano, violin, saxophone, and he can conduct an orchestra as well. He often treats his seven friends at the restaurants, movie theatre, and concerts. His sensitive nature makes him a little bit over-emotional. Despite his weak heart, and his depression caused by the death of his girlfriend (Hermia Capp) due to the mass shooting at Academie Le Tour three years ago, Puck will never let grief or disease obstructing his dreams. He became a successful conductor, and his dream is to bring peace with his music.

Bonus pics

Six of them autonomously spending time together at the gym (Lilith is not in the pic).

Puck and his new girlfriend, Marina Prattle from Bridgeport. She's really a pretty sim for a sims 3 premade.

#sims 2 characters #sims 3 screenshots #angela pleasant #lilith pleasant #dustin broke #dirk dreamer #johnny smith #ophelia nigmos #ripp grunt #puck summerdream #squad #mental illness #description #fanfiction #sims story #marina prattle #bentley 8 #sims 3

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mochiwritingdump · 2 years

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Act I; Abbie & Elijah // his POV

Not many people know this about me, but truth is that I used to do a bit of drama at school when I was in junior school. Being the overachiever I was during my school years, it was no surprise that I did want to try and do as many activities as I could, and excel at those while being at it. However, years later, it dawned on me that besides wanting to keep being my school’s and parents’s golden boy, what I truly wanted was to find my own calling. Sports, arts, academics... I did try it all. Surely I always enjoyed tinkering with stuff and engineering was at the top of my list, but what if... what if there was something else out there for me? Something that I’d enjoy more. Something that would fill me. I remember being quite lost back then, but never truly realized.

And for that reason, I joined drama club when I was a pre-teen. Unfortunately, after a couple of plays, my drama club adventures and days of dreams of becoming an actor were over for me. While it was a fun experience, I realized it wasn’t quite my thing to much dismay of my fellow mates and drama teacher. I do remember the praises, yet up to this day I still think I wasn’t remotely close to being as good as my other mates. Many of them shone on stage and I’m happy to know that a few of them did go on to become full-fledged stage and screen actors.

I’m aware that I could have easily had a successful career in arts, but what I currently do for a living was closer to Arts than most people would consider. Developing video games, at the end of the day, was creating compelling stories and characters people could relate to and feel they are part of those stories. That plus all the actual artistic side of it such a character design, world building, graphics, etc.

Although, being completely honest that’s not my only connection to the Arts. Our mother happens to be an exceptional pianist and used to be a part-time piano teacher at home once she quit her job not long after I was born to become a housewife, therefore, both Oliver and I grew up in quite a musical environment at home. I do remember those lessons with my mom and Oli as if it was yesterday. Poor Oli could never focus and was always rocking back and forth on the piano stool while she tried to teach him over and over. In my case, while I was also an active child, my energy could never match Oli’s and also our five year gap played a role there. I know she also intended to teach Oli just like she did with me, but that was sadly a lost cause. I however found myself liking the instrument and was something I did whenever I wanted to have a moment of peace since it always eased any concerns I could have. I was glad though, that she never pressured me into being a gifted pianist (unlike with school or sports) and it was more of a leisure activity at home– that’s why I never considered myself a good pianist or someone who would be the right fit to play in front of an audience, despite my obvious self-confidence. I did keep on playing well into my teens and early 20s as a hobby.

And so when Jay mentioned one of his friends was looking for a pianist, I was pretty shocked. While honored by it, I was surprised I was among his options when he surely knew actually gifted musicians, who played piano for a living. Meeting Abbie was more of a favour than an active thing I wanted to do, but I must admit Jay was right when he said new encounters were the key to moving forward, for the female proved to be hilarious company. I guess it also helped we were both from the same country, so in a way we both felt at home. After the first meeting, we kept on exchanging texts here and there while I weighed the pianist offer. I ended up agreeing to it, after a couple of days of thinking it over. It was well worth a try, I thought as the top reason why I should just do it.

Attending the first few rehearsals felt like being back to the days of my very short lived career as a stage actor– it all felt much more professional, despite the venue being rather small with around not more than 50 seats. As Abbie previously mentioned, it was about the life and struggles of the writer of the production and he was tasked with providing the piano for the few songs that were performed. The production itself was a hybrid between an actual play and a monologue as some of the parts were performed by actors and some others by the writer herself for the songs part. I, though, enjoyed being part of the small family of actors and staff, who most of them were in their early 20s, but I felt they were already quite brilliant. Abbie herself was a real hard worker and naturally talented. She had a very sweet singing voice– she provided backup vocals in some songs while playing the main role, which I thought she was exceptionally good at. She managed to transmit raw emotions in a way you don’t see that much. More often than not, I would find myself being completely fascinated by her during rehearsals and that was... a concern and I tried to shove that to the back of my mind as much as I could, but the more I did that, the more I looked her way.

“Good job today as usual, Elijah.” Abbie greeted me with her usual charming yet weary after a long rehearsal smile while approaching me. “Let me just say this though. After each rehearsal, I find it harder to believe your words when you said you were far from being a pro. I almost believed you.”

“Fake modesty suits me well, doesn’t it?” I joked while I bowed my head at the other cast mates as most of them were Korean.

“Over confidence is what suits your arrogant ass the most.” She blurted out plainly. As blunt as she always was. I was long used by now to her brutal honesty and it was amusing to say the least. From time to time, my ego deserved some kind of serious beating.

“We certainly agree on that one.”

One by one, her cast mates and other staff members left the venue until it was just her and me. I usually stayed for an extra thirty minutes or so practicing a bit by myself since I didn’t have a piano at home and I didn’t want to ruin their hard work with my poor performance. “Aren’t you going home yet? It is pretty late, Abbie.” I asked, casting a glance her way as she simply sat next to me by the piano. “Or are you staying, clearly fascinated by my exceptionally good piano skills?”

“Has anyone ever told you you deserve to be kicked? Because honestly, your ego can surely be seen from outer space.” She shook her head, yet I could catch a glimpse of an amused smile forming in her lips.

“Hmm my brother often tells me so, but my charisma needs to be let free and fly away.”

I’m well aware of how cringe my comments could sometimes be, but those were another part of me. Another layer. Some other times I tend to exaggerate the comments just to make my friends laugh (now I very well know myself I’m pretty dashing with a good personality, but that’s not the thing here) and have a good time altogether and in some other cases whenever women were involved... what woman would seriously get interested in a man with such an ego floating over his head? It was, in some way, another barrier to guard myself. No woman would fall for such a guy.

“I didn’t know you had a brother. I pity the poor soul that has to put up with you every day of his life.” She nudged my side playfully and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Have I never mentioned Oliver?” Surprise could be noted on both my face and tone, albeit it soon switched to a soft and affectionate one–my usual tone whenever talking about Oliver. ”My dearest baby brother. He’s also friends with Jay, so you’ll probably hear about him sooner or later.”

“I’ve seen his profile I think.” She mused. “Judging my his photos, his ego seems bigger than yours.”

“It’s actually quite the opposite and very far from that. How we present ourselves online vs. how we actually are can be two completely different worlds, you know.” I nodded before continue speaking as my fingers began to gently touch the keys out of habit– a delicate tune soon becoming the background music of our conversation as if it was a moment out a theatre play. “ My brother loves his thirst traps, but he’s the sweetest, softest and most humble guy out there. And honestly, if you got it, flaunt it. Have you got one yourself though? A sibling?”

“Touché. Couldn’t agree more with that. He does seem nice, but those photos stand out.” She laughed. “A sibling?” Upon my question, I could see the hesitation in her expression. The way her eyes looked everywhere but me, the way her eyebrows slightly furrowed and her lips pursed in deep thought. And seeing her expression, I knew better than to push the topic. ”I’ve got a much older step-brother. He is... very well spoken and gentle. Too overprotective at times. But he feels like a real brother to me.”

It felt nice being able to talk to Abbie like this– nonchalant yet easy. The conversation always flows naturally whenever we are talking. We’d switch from playful banter to normal or even more serious topics like this very moment and I loved that. Despite our seven years gap, it was simply effortless to chat with her. About anything and everything at the same time.

“I always say this one thing; blood sometimes is not as important but rather the connection and feelings. Sometimes those things are stronger than just being blood related,” I simply said and kept on playing to a certain piece that’s been on my mind for a long time. A piece that is always in my mind and is my companion everywhere I go.

Debussy’s Rêverie, L. 68.

Eve’s favourite. I hadn’t played this piece ever since... hence, I’m sure it sounded as rusty and bad as ever since I haven’t played piano at all for years until this play came to me. I loved sharing this skill with Eve as music wasn’t her forte, hence, I adored playing for her and tried to teach her –failed attempts but she kept on trying. Ever since resuming piano playing, sometimes I would play pieces I used to play back then after everyone left and always after rehearsing the songs from the play. Why was I playing this piece? I wonder. My fingers moved on their own, always wanting to reminiscence my memories with Eve– wanting to keep her memory alive.

I only hope Abbie wouldn’t notice the dampness around my eyes, regardless I kept on playing in silence, her shoulders brushing mine as she was sitting rather close. And soon my surprise when she joined me hitting a few of notes. Quite a nice attempt. I then moved my right hand towards her left one, hovering as I guided her over the keys.

I couldn’t pinpoint what was it, but I noticed something about Abbie, especially ever since I saw her rehearsing the first few days. There’s many talented performers out there, but one’s that capable to emit such raw emotions... besides their talent and hard word, you also could see their own experiences and pain in their performing.

I did not know what it was, of course, but sharing a moment like this with her, felt relieving. Whatever it was, we could wordlessly share our deepest sorrows and I was content with it.

Content yet scared. And guilty.

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toyahinterviews · 3 years

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TOYAH ON CATtales 21.5.2020

CAT: Hi, you're listening to CATtales and my guest today really needs no introduction. She appeared in the 1978 film “Jubilee” and “Quadrophenia” the following year. Her early hit singles included “It's A Mystery” and “I Want To Be Free”, and by 1982 she had made two platinum selling albums. After more than 40 years in the music business, she is as creatively hungry as she was in her teens. She's a singer and actress, a writer, a punk rebel and an icon. But most importantly, she is an independent, strong woman who doesn't take any prisoners. This is the one with Toyah Willcox. What a ridiculous time we’re in! TOYAH: Well, I certainly won’t be promoting concerts! (they both laugh) CAT: I know, I know, it's terrible, isn't it? Everybody’s saying the same thing ... it's like they have tours and had to cancel it all. It's heart breaking, isn't it? TOYAH: The thing is like a lot of us have been building up to this year and it's been a phenomenal journey from about 2001, the wave of 80's being so popular has been incredible. But a lot of artists had just been building to this year with their kind of independence.

So yes, we do all these fantastic festivals and we do these multi-star line-ups but quite a few of us to work really hard to go out and be solo on tour and and this year we’re supposed to going out with Hazel O'Connor on a completely sold out tour, but also my own tours at the same time. So it's very, very frustrating. CAT: Oh, it must be. As I saw about the tour that you were doing with Hazel and I thought that's going to be a must see, so I'm not surprised to hear it's been sold out. TOYAH: It is still going to happen. And I think what will happen once we find a way of being out in the open safely. And I suppose the most obvious way that's going to happen is a vaccine. I think we're going to have a decadent 20s. We're going to go back 100 years to a lifestyle of complete decadence. I think we're all like pressure cookers waiting to go off. And we're gonna party party party.

And I know from talking to venues and promoters from my side, the venues need as much help as they can get. So even though this year was going to be one of the busiest years of my life, I think next year is going to be beyond the busiest years of all our lives because we're going be opening the venues, helping the venues, keeping those venues running almost 24 hours a day so that the rock economy can get back on its feet. I think next year, technically, and kind of wishful thinking is going to be an incredible year.

CAT: I think that's a really good observation. You could be right, as long as we can also hold on that long, which with the human spirit we will do. It will be like the end of the war years, won't it?

TOYAH: Yeah, we are in recession and I mean I've not earned a penny for 14 months. But you know I can survive. The passion to work and the passion to be in front of my audience is not diminishing - its growing and I think it's the same for everyone and come the point where we could all go out there and work I just think we are going to just run our socks off and make everything come back the way we knew it, but much better. CAT: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and you do sound so passionate about stuff which is so refreshing with 40 years in the industry, you sound actually more alive now that you probably ever have done. TOYAH: Well, I think like many artists my age, I turn 62 on Monday, we're in control of our lives now and what we do we do because we really love it and I don't feel the pressure I was under in my 20’s. When you’re a new upcoming artist and you've got to just keep coming up when new looks, new music and it was relentless and I found it very very … it wasn't conducive to being creative, whereas these days where we can go about our lives as kind of sixty somethings, we’re driving the engine, we can put out there when we're ready to put out there and it makes life a lot more rewarding. CAT: Absolutely. I think the 60 is the new 40, isn't it?

TOYAH: I think it's the new 30’s personally ... CAT: Yes! (laughs) TOYAH: I didn't enjoy my 30’s so I'm determined that 60 is going to make up for that. CAT: The autumn years are the best years. So you’ve got lots and lots of strings to your bow. You started out in acting. You’re better known as a musician probably, but you do presenting, producing, voiceover, writing. That's a lot of balls to have in the air, Toyah. What’s your preference or are you just a good juggler?

TOYAH: I like to be busy and if I can do it and do it well, I'm gonna do it. Obviously I love music, but I can't relentlessly stay tuned in that way. It drains you. So I find going away doing a film, doing a stage play or voiceovering or making a documentary ... they refuel me. They kind of give me new ideas, they connect me to new people. So I find it's all complimentary. It all helps the other, I find it very healthy and I think a lot of people are working that way. I know when I started in the business, I think 42 years ago, you couldn't do that. People wouldn't allow you to do that. There was so much snobbery in every area. But now I think you're able to do it and people still respect you and see you for what you are. CAT: I totally agree. Actually, it's more like the entertainment business now, isn't it? Rather than having those specific genres, that you couldn't crossover those boundaries, which I suppose I should say it helps your creativity in different areas? TOYAH: Yes, totally it does. I agree. But also, I think with the internet everything has become slightly diluted. I remember when I started my career I was at the National Theatre, I was 18 years old and this is in London and actors just wouldn't do voiceovers. Actors wouldn't do adverts. Stage actors wouldn't do TV and they had no money (both laugh)

Learning from an actor who didn't act much but made over 75 K a year, 42 years ago, doing voiceovers, everyone was just dribbling at the thought of it so I think we live in a much more balanced world. I don't think people beat themselves up so much over those kind of snobberies anymore. CAT: That's true, that's possibly down to the internet, as you say, isn’t it and social media being a big influence really? TOYAH: For me this learning curve on this particular lockdown has been social media because I'm slightly technophobic and I've had to learn how to do it and I've had to turn it around to give myself presence and it's been a fabulous journey in that alone. I got my first 1.2 million hits on something I posted and all of that is such an important thing in this time - that you can stay connected to your audience via social media. So it's all a learning curve.

I'm quite an insular person when I'm being creative, which is virtually everyday - it's a silent process. It's not a process where I want a phone in my hand, so I had to learn a way that I can connect to my fans through social media. And what I'm doing I absolutely love, and it's just posting slightly Dadaistic films to make them laugh. It's done me the world of good, my agent is calling me everyday and saying, "do you know so and so has just seen this" "do you know know they’ll book you because of this film" and it's worked and I'm very very grateful.

CAT: It’s wonderful. I've been watching some of them, I've been having a right laugh at you with a tutu and Robert there doing it. Doing the Swan Lake impression which is wonderful! TOYAH: That’s the controversial one. It made the headlines in Italian newspapers that one because Italians pride themselves on being almost exclusively intellectual and for Robert (below with Toyah in 1997) to do that, my husband's Robert Fripp of the band King Crimson - for him to do that was blasphemous, and you had super über authors in Italy debating this and my husband is not kind man if you criticise him and he attacked these people online and again that was making headlines. It’s well known in the industry if you diss my husband he’ll diss you a 100 time more (they both laugh) and this was making headlines and my husband found it very entertaining and last week having journalists say in an Italian newspaper, top newspaper, “Oh yes, I was reading an interview with Fripp” ... I mean not even having met him or interviewed him - “I read an interview with with Fripp and I came to the conclusion he’s a jerk” Boy, was that the red rag to the bull!

CAT: Oh dear! First of all it’s terrible for him to say that full stop, but not even sitting and meeting him ...

TOYAH: Well, thats’s the power of … we all have a voice now, so it's just been very, very enlightening and at sometimes entertaining. CAT: Absolutely and what's lovely about that. Is it still that rebellious side of your nature and Robert joining in there creating it for you, how wonderful is that? You're known for your rebellion, aren't you? TOYAH: Yeah, I think my rebellion is slightly kinder (they both laugh) But yes, I just never conformed to this thing about age. I think age is a privilege. I think the fact we live so long is a privilege, but it doesn't mean that I diminish and I’m just totally against this attitude, especially within the music industry. I think it's improving in TV and film now but because a woman hits a certain age, she's no longer a sexually driven or desirable creature, and no longer has thoughts. That's changing but in the music business it's going to take a bit longer to do that. But thank goodness my audience and my generation still love what I do, and I always say to my audience the reason I'm standing on this stage is because of you. And it is you only so I'm really appreciative of that.

CAT: Yeah, I think that's a really great thing to say actually. We're still the same people even though we're ageing. Everybody's ageing. But there is this attitude against women, isn't there? And it's such a ridiculous concept that you're only desirable or you're only talented or whatever when you're young. It’s just bizarre ... TOYAH: Well, I mean obviously when we're young the energy is 10 times stronger. But I think the whole thing about growing old is we become better, we become enriched, we become deeper and that needs to be recognised and appreciated because we have so much to offer. We've been there, we've seen it. We've got the t-shirt. We know the warning signs. So we have just so much to give. I also think with the lockdown and everything with the internet being what it is, we've been able to explain ourselves a bit better because that's given us a platform. But musically I find that OK, I'm still Toyah. I still have my voice. I still sound like Toyah. Technically I'm a better singer than I have ever been because when I started out I was singing through pure will and ambition and determination. Now I'm technically a singer. I'm really, really good at what I do and I just don't want to not use that, it's a gift. When it comes to writing, my writing is clearer. And I don't feel under pressure to do 4 albums a year, which people would have had me do 42 years ago.

But the creativity and that flow, and the connection with my audience is very, very alive and I just don't want to be told that I should slow down. It's it's such a bizarre thing to be told when you can see your finite amount of time. I find myself speeding up and I'm trying to fill that time positively with the best work I can possibly do, because I know that is the memory I leave behind and memories have value.

CAT: Absolutely. It’s your legacy isn't it and that's really your purpose on this world is finite as you say, and to have something that you can in fact leave (which) is tangible and has touched so many people, it is absolutely wonderful. TOYAH: I know and I think prime examples of that is George Michael, Prince, Michael Jackson, Hendrix, Bowie. I mean, it's just such an example of the power of our lives. The power of our lives continue. So I really value the time I have. CAT: Yeah, I totally agree and it's great that you can actually tap into all that experience that you've had over the years and so your writing, for example, is possibly, as you say, more enriched because of it. TOYAH: Because experience, I just want my next album to be a danceable album. I wanna go out next year and perform music where you see tens of thousands of people dancing and dancing because I think we all need to just celebrate this together.

CAT: Yeah, you're right. And it's nice to hear that you are saying that you want to do something a little bit different with that. That's your sort of your trademark really. Progressing through the years, doing something different through the years. I mean, just even going back to the early days, having such amazing hairstyles and the make-up and everything was very of the moment grabbing it while you could, but you changed and moved with the times and I think that's really good.

TOYAH: Yeah. There's two reasons for this. I'm auditioning for movies virtually every day. An I can't send a film in because at the moment because we’re all self- taping. I can't do that if I've got pink hair. You can't send a film to a world class director if you look like a punk rocker and you're reading for woman from the 18th century. So I've I've had to kind of control my look and also I just didn't want to look or even attempt look how I did 42 years ago. It's not right. The only woman I know who can getaway with that is Sandra Rhodes because she is a designer. She's absolutely stunning. She's brilliant and that is her trademark. For me my trademark is energy and my voice so I just want to look good at 62. That's what I want. CAT: Yeah, absolutely. And don't you just, I have to say. I'm admiring your your your energy, your look and everything. You look wonderful to have to say. So I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to play “Sensational” just for you off your album “In The Court of The Crimson Queen” because you are. We will be right back in a moment.

CAT: (after the song) What I was going to talk about was about this idea of conformism and rebellion. Have you found that actually that has left you that feeling of wanting to rebel and you just held onto the energy and tapping into your experience? Or is there still something that you feel that you can rebel against? TOYAH: I feel as though I rebel every day and it's purely that kind of theme of agesism and again I also feel I rebel every day because since I got married 34 years ago I've always been the little woman at home in the eyes of men. I rebel against that all the time, so my rebellion is ongoing. It's slightly more sophisticated. I'm not a political person and I think where rebellion is very, very valuable is in the political field, but I just don't think that way. So my rebellion is is a lot more gentle, but it's definitely there and it's definitely a way of life. And part of that is I just will not conform to someone else's view of what a woman should be and that will always be with me. Apart from that I think within my work my rebellion is still there because again, I just don't think I can conform. I don't fit in and this started when I moved into the outside world at the age of four and a half and went to school, I just realised I was never going to quite fit in.

And if you're always a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, you're not in the right place. You find your place and for me it's by being observationally different. So I am just me and I won't kind of hone those edges ...

CAT: Yeah, I read some of the interviews you’ve obviously done before, saying you had like a violent childhood and you were sort of kicking back against everything. Do you look back at that now and think that you overreacted to things? Or was that just part and parcel of growing up and trying to hone this energy? TOYAH: OK, my background I wouldn't say was violent. It was mentally aggressive. It was psychologically cruel. So I didn't understand this until I was an adult. So my rebellion was I had to get out of that situation and I had to have my independence and that still remains. Whenever I feel trapped, that just still remains, I need my independence. It made me very solitary and distrusting. I'm a bit better on the trust front. My background was an all girls school where the clever, clever girls attacked the non-clever girls. Slight physical disability that amused many people a lot of the time.

My nickname was Hopalong and an exceptionally unkind mother who thought she was being kind. So my reaction was over the top, but it was my way of surviving so I think that's definitely made me what I am today. My mother and I reconciled in the last two years of her life, but even two weeks before she died we were having ferocious shouting matches. We were just not made for each other and that happened but we still loved each other. I held her as she died. So you can still experience love for someone that you just will never ever agree with. CAT: Personalities, isn't it? Everybody is an individual and you've got have your own life that you need to lead. And people need to recognise that and give freedom, don't they?

TOYAH: Yeah, but I would also say for anyone out there that nurture above everything is all that counts. If you have a child and your child pisses you off - nurture is the only thing that works. The only time I feel I've ever really had nurture is when I met my husband, who is phenomenal at nurture. And he's taught me so much about giving nurture back. It's a very, very powerful creative thing to do. And mean, I remember I phoned my mother in 1982 when I won Best Female Vocalist in what is now the Brit Awards (above). And she said, "well don't boast about, it will never happen again". And I ignored it ... and I explained what the award looks like. She says "don't fall on it - it will kill you. I mean, she did not have one good thing to say to me in 55 years. CAT: Sounds a bit like jealousy though, to be honest ... TOYAH: She had a similar background, I think something terrible happened to her when she was young. If she'd had therapy and could talk about it we would have got over it. But I am who I am because I have been in self-defence for so long.

I think that's made me feel a lot of empathy towards those I work with and towards my audience because I just realise how damaging negativity is and it's why I kind of don't engage personally on a daily level on social media as I've had so many years of just being pushed back all the time that my tolerance is non existent so I lose myself in my work and by bringing other people joy and that's my way of nurturing and it's hugely important to me. Hugely import. CAT: Yeah, sounds lovely. Part of that nurturing of course is releasing material, isn't it that you know that is going to partly be your legacy, but it sounds to me like it's important that it moves somebody emotionally as well?

TOYAH: Yeah, I think I definitely agree. I think it's very important when you're writing to be truthful to yourself, but also to remember someone is going to be listening to it and I feel very responsible about that. When I've written my most intensely emotional stuff – a song on my album last year “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” is called “Dance In The Hurricane”, which is about the loss of my parents. And when that came out, the response was huge and I think it was just holding a mirror up and people seeing themselves. And there was recognition. So I think it's really important to write about things that help people recognise in themselves and it's taken me a long time to get there. A long time, which is why I'm pretty determined to keep writing. CAT: And in your tour with Hazel are you going to be touching upon some of this kind of material? What's that going to look like when people actually come to see you? TOYAH: I think my tour with Hazel is going be a non-stop party (they both laugh) Because of circumstance and everything. Hazel and I have a lot of hits and we both agree we’re doing the hits! But luckily my album last year was a hit so we will be doing “Dance In The Hurricane” and “Sensational” which was a single off it and other tracks. But I've had well over 14 Top 40 hits. They're gonna be in there and the same with Hazel.

So we've already rehearsed (below). I mean, obviously we're going to have to rehearse again. We didn't expect a 2 year break or whatever, so it will be our hits. Hazel wants to open because she works in a trio. And then my band will come on and work with her. There will be an interval, then I come on and that's nothing to do with star billing. It's just the way that the sonics work at the evening. And then Hazel and I do a set together and it's going to be absolutely wonderful. It it is going to be riotous.

CAT: It sounds amazing. I can't wait to see it actually, I have to say, you're sold out but you must put more dates on because people are going to be listening to this thinking I've got to go to that! TOYAH: There will be tickets available because obviously we're rescheduling so everyone that's got tickets those tickets are valid, but if you can't make the date we're rescheduled to those tickets become available so it's all on my website toyahwilcox.com, two L's in Willcox. All the information and the updates are there. So if you want to come, look at the venue and see if they have availability. Because this is a very fluid experience. Everything is changing weekly so just keep informed. CAT: Yeah, keep an eye there and in the meantime they can of course buy your DVD anthology for Toyah and The Humans, can't they?

TOYAH: On the 3rd of July Toyah and The Humans is a 3 CD box set that's also going to have accompanying vinyl coming out as well. This is my very experimental art rock band with Bill Rieflin, who was the drummer in REM. It's three albums that we made together. The first album is very stripped down. I wanted to do music that was completely stripped bare and then the second album “Sugar Rush” is really rocky and it’s phenomenal. And then the third album “Strange Tales” is melodic and beautiful. And so the whole 3 albums is a kind of harmonic journey. Also out at the moment is Toyah "Solo” and that is albums that I have released since about 1985 and that is a beautiful package. So that is “Minx”, “Desire”, “Ophelia’s Shadow”, Take The Leap!, Velvet Lined Shell”. That's a real fan collector’s piece and also we've got “In The Court of The Crismon Queen”, so there's a lot going on. All those are on Demon, which is part of the BBC and then next year all my early albums come out. So it's kind of a huge year for me. We've got “Blue Meaning”, “Anthem”, “Sheep Farming In Barnet”, “Toyah! Toyah! Toyah!”, “The Changeling”. They’re all being re-released.

CAT: Wow, that's brilliant. And what a treat for everybody to actually be able to get their hands on those and they look amazing from what I’ve seen and also you're doing some vinyl as well, aren't you?

TOYAH: The vinyl is beautiful. Everything that I'm rereleasing is multi coloured and the vinyls are just gorgeous! Every colour in the spectrum. There's quite a lot of vinyl out there. “In The Court Of The Crimson Queen” has crimson vinyl. Toyah “Solo” each CD has a different colour of the CD. With The Humans you've got a beautiful deep egg yolk yellow. You've got a wonderful kind of chaki bright olive green and then you've got a wonderful purple colour for “Strange Tales”. It is just the most beautiful packaging. CAT: I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Toyah. Let's be honest, you’re colourful in every single way. It's absolutely wonderful. So I think people need to go on your website and have a look at all that, because there's plenty to see. Plenty to watch and obviously with you on social media is very entertaining as well. TOYAH: And there's also a lovely website which is a fan site. It’s an archive site called toyah.net and that's phenomenal. Davie, who runs that knows more about me than I do. He knows when I'm about to do TV before I know it ... He really is ahead of the game and I love that website. So you’ve got toyahwillcox.com and toyah.net if you really want to stay informed that's all you need see

CAT: It's all there for the taking, isn’t it? It's been a pleasure speaking to you, you’re an absolute sensation, let’s say it that way and I'm sure this is going to be a very very popular interview. So can't wait to see you when you're on tour again. I'll be there. TOYAH: Thank you! CAT: Have a lovely day and stay safe! TOYAH: OK, bye for now! CAT: Take care, bye bye! You can listen to the interview here

#toyah #toyah willcox #toyahwillcox #toyah2020 #toyah 2020 #toyah interview #toyahinterview #podcast #the toyah willcox interview archive #thetoyahwillcoxinterviewarchive

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lordendsavior · 6 years

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Olly Alexander, the frontman of the British band Years & Years, has blood-red dyed hair. He wears a brass safety pin through one ear and sometimes grins so widely, so wildly, that the edges of his mouth seem to disappear around his narrow, fine-boned face. What soon draws the eye is a scar on his forehead. “I ran into a brick wall as a kid,” the 27-year-old says over lunch at a cafe in London. He touches the scar. “I was playing at being a Power Ranger. Ouch.”

These days, Alexander plays at being a pop star – and on the surface, at least, it seems like a game that’s going well for him. With the launch of their first album in 2015, Years & Years enjoyed a really remarkable few months. They were named BBC Sound of 2015 in January, promptly going to No 1 in the UK singles chart in March, and likewise topping the album chart in July. The band’s propulsive, 90s-nostalgic dance pop (like Disclosure or Clean Bandit, only up the randiness and add a little disco) caught on. And Alexander made a quick Meghan Markle-like ascent to something like pop royalty. “One of the most influential gay pop stars of this generation,” the Gay Times wrote. “All hail the King!”

Years & Years are a three-piece – also made up of keyboard and synth player Emre Türkmen and bassist Mikey Goldsworthy – but it has always been clear that Alexander is the band’s guiding force, their chief lyricist, a Gaga-like taker of risks when he performs and a political voice, off stage, who has an appealing, glitter-speckled sense of activism. A pithy and witty speaker on LGBTQ+ rights, Alexander has also opened up engagingly about his struggles with mental health. “A lifeline to troubled young people,” the Observer wrote of him, in 2016, around the same time that Years & Years played at Glastonbury. There, Alexander wore an oversized choirboy smock strung front and back with rainbow-coloured ribbons – it was Pride weekend – and made a widely admired speech about battling prejudice. “Shove a rainbow in fear’s face,” was how he put it.

Musicians must pray for debuts like this – to come over credible, commercial, with real-world clout. No brick walls clattered into, no obvious “Ouch” moments. Or were there?

Years & Years are almost done on their second album, due this summer, and from the demos I’ve heard the new music admits a brittleness and vulnerability in Alexander that wasn’t so obvious on the 2015 debut. He is still a fabulous and steely man when in pop-star mode (at the photoshoot, he prowls around in heels and a collared lace bodysuit that make him resemble a steampunk, space-bound Queen Elizabeth I), but he cuts a shyer and less certain figure at lunch.

He arrived with a cigarette pushed behind his ear, and smoked it outside with quick, jittery puffs. Now he hunches over a salad, an elbows-in kind of eater and a nervous giggler. Of his pop-mode confidence, he says, “I wish I carried that around with me in my day-to-day life. But I don’t.” He’s wearing a pair of dungarees that he likes, he says, because they feel “like clothes that give you back a hug”.

As Alexander eats, he talks about what happened in the aftermath of that famous Glastonbury performance, once he was out of public sight. The band had been cheered off, a career high. And once backstage, the musician recalls, he sat down and wept. Inconsolable, feeling lower than he’d been in months. “It happens,” he shrugs. “A falling off a cliff. The pendulum swings.”

“When I was younger,” Alexander says, “I thought that if you were famous and successful, it would mean that you just felt happy all the time. That you would become, like, this mystical creature that people just adored. And so you would adore yourself.”

Alexander doesn’t always make eye contact, and he addresses this next bit at the napkin dispenser between us.

“Obviously I realise how ridiculous that sounds. But it wasn’t until our album got to No 1 that I realised I still believed in it. We’d basically won the lottery. I felt like I’d won the lottery. And at the same time I still felt like the same person I’d always been. And all the things that I associated with my depression, and my anxiety, those periods of feeling really low, they were still there. And I was so annoyed at myself. ”

Alexander talks about first discovering the transformative, strengthening power of a good costume. It was on a trip to Disneyland, when he was nine. “The greatest experience of my life up to then,” Alexander says. “The pomp! The whole make-believe nature of that place. It was very powerful for me.People were all wearing costumes, playing characters. It was this other reality where fun things happened, more than they seemed to in real life. And I just remember wanting to be a part of something like that.”

Theme parks were a big feature of his young life. Alexander grew up living next door to them, not one but three, first Alton Towers, then Blackpool Pleasure Beach, then Drayton Manor. His father helped launch and market new rides in these places, and the family moved wherever the work was.

He was born in 1990, the younger of two sons. His mother ran community craft groups. His father, while employed in the theme parks, tended side dreams of being a professional musician. Of his father he says, cautiously: “Quite a difficult man... Definitely not happy within himself.”

Alexander is more explicit about his own early troubles. “I used to have hallucinations and hear voices and stuff as a kid. Which sounds alarming, but it’s just the way it was.” Also: “I had what would now be called sleep paralysis, from six years old until maybe I was 16. Terrifying dreams.”

His parents separated when Alexander was 13, a daunting and confusing period for him. “My dad had been very absent, even when he was there. Then he left the family and moved away. Our relationship, it feels to me, ended when I was 13.” With his mother and brother, Alexander relocated to a sleepy village in Gloucestershire called Coleford.

Part of Alexander’s conversational charm is that he’ll veer between the frank and sober discussion of the self-doubt and difficulty he experienced as a young man, into brilliantly catty and droll little anecdotes about his upbringing. Here he is, describing his first paid employment – a Saturday job in a Coleford shop called Moonstones. “We sold incense, candles, spellbooks. Um, bongs. Chocolates shaped like penises. Everything you’d need really – a one-stop shop.”

He wasn’t a popular teenager, and was bullied at his secondary school in Coleford just as he had been at his old primary schools. He marvels, thinking back, at his response to this. “I started wearing eyeliner to school. Nail varnish. Choker necklaces.” He put on a costume: a counter-intuitive form of self-defence. “I’d been bullied for years and all I wanted was for that to stop. But at the same time I had this sense that I was different, I was weird, and wearing makeup and crazy clothes was my way of trying to find an identity, in the face of people who were going to rip me apart anyway.”

What brought him out of his “goth phase”, as he calls it, was the music. Alexander chuckles. “I could never really get on board with the bands you were supposed to like.” He couldn’t shake the love for pop music he’d developed as a pre-teen, when pop bands would visit the theme parks his dad worked for. “Remember [the Irish pop band] B*Witched? They came to open a ride once. Then Steps – I got all their autographs.” So when it was time for the school talent show, Alexander chose to sing a TLC song. At home he obsessed over Christina Aguilera videos. He was pop through and through, and wanted to be a star in the mould of all these heroes.

Half by accident, he embarked on a different artistic career first. At 16, Alexander auditioned for the Channel 4 drama Skins, and was in talks about a role. The job didn’t materialise until he was well into his 20s, when he was cast as a creepy student photographer, but meanwhile his agent put him up for other stuff. By the time he’d finished his A-levels and moved to London, he was getting varied work – in Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void and Laura Wade’s The Riot Club and a corporate video for Google, playing a confused consumer who didn’t know how much he needed the advice of a really good search engine. Probably his peak as an actor came in 2012 when he was cast in a Michael Grandage production, Peter And Alice, alongside Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.

This West End run coincided, in Alexander’s breezy telling, with the busiest period in his romantic career. “Lot of sex.” He had known that he fancied boys from the age of about 10, though the concept of being gay was something only introduced to him via playground insult; he can remember drawing stick figures in a geography textbook, bewildered, trying to figure out how two men could ever even manage it. These days, Alexander says, “my sexuality is part of my music, part of my identity”, but this was a clunky journey in its early phases and it wasn’t until he arrived in London and got into a first relationship, with the brother of a friend, that he felt he could properly come out to those closest to him.

After that – whoosh. “I figured out that I could pull, basically. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. I realised that, actually, everyone’s pretty horny, pretty desperate at times, and all you needed to do was maintain eye contact and be confident and that was kind of it.” Since then, he’s sampled romance in many of its forms, being single and shagging a lot, being single and not shagging so much, being in an open relationship, being in a celebrity relationship (with Clean Bandit’s Neil Amin-Smith), being in a quieter relationship with somebody unknown – that was the most recent, and it came to an end about 18 months ago. What has he learned? “That the longer you’re single, the more you notice how everyone else is in a relationship. But that’s a whole other thing.”

He says he finds it harder to pull in clubs without the freedom of anonymity he used to enjoy. “I’m having much less sex than I did in my early 20s, for sure.” He’s tried the hook-up app Grindr, but the men he messaged with wouldn’t believe he was who he said he was. “So that didn’t go very well.” After years of living with flatmates, he recently moved to live on his own, in a flat in east London. “The last few months I’ve been wondering, ‘Will I just be alone, for ever? And would I be OK with that?’ I want to be OK with that.”

Thinking of how ill-informed he felt as a kid, and of the anxiety he might have been spared had he only known more and known better, Alexander has resolved to be a public figure who is as vocal and open about his sexuality as he can be. As soon as he was asked, in an early-career interview for a blog, he said he was gay. (This was actually how his beloved grandmother found out: Alexander hadn’t yet got around to telling her.) Last year, he made a BBC Three documentary, Growing Up Gay, that is still on iPlayer and gets broadcast around the world. “I get messages about it at weird times of night.”

Soon after our lunch, he’s due to give the keynote address at an annual Stonewall event. He hasn’t written his speech yet, and is still toying with points of view he might want to get across: that LGBT-inclusive sex education should be compulsory in schools; that LGBT support groups need more government funding than ever; “that yes, we can get married now, but that’s not the end of the story, that’s not gay rights done.” When the event does take place, Alexander will speak about how, as a young actor who went through media training, he was told it might be best not to speak about his sexuality at all. (“I ignored advice.”)

Alexander made an interesting choice, in 2013, when major labels started showing an interest in Years & Years. He entered therapy, specifically in anticipation of what a frontline music career might do to his fragile emotional state. Polydor were still six months from formally signing them.

He knew fame was coming, though – that early?

No, he says. But if there was a chance of the band making it, however slight, he reasoned he’d better be prepared. “And I’m grateful I made that decision. I’ve been seeing the same therapist through the whole process.” Through the band’s kick-starting anointment as the BBC Sound of 2015, then their smash No 1 single King that spring, then their No 1 album Communion that summer. “To go from zero to 100. To have an idea of what success is, your entire life, and then it happens to you. It’s overwhelming. There’s a lot of noise. And people start talking to you differently.”

Which people?

Alexander laughs, frowns – speaks at the napkins again. He starts talking about his dad, with whom Alexander went through an awkward episode after Years & Years topped the charts. By then, father and son had no relationship to speak of, Alexander says. They hadn’t said a word to each other in seven years. “And, um, my dad started tweeting at me.”

A pause. “It’s hard for me to talk about. It’s a hard issue, because it’s tied up with my family, and also his new family. I want to be respectful.”

He doesn’t sound sure whether his father even knew whether what he was doing was public; but anyway, he messaged him over Twitter, in full view of social media. “And it got really, really messy. There were some Years & Years fans who started tweeting him back, trolling my dad. He was talking back to them. It was a real head-fuck.”

However clumsy the timing and the method, was a part of Alexander gratified that he got in touch?

“The best way I can describe it is that when me and my dad last knew each other, when I was 13 or 14, that’s frozen in time for me,” he says. And back then, he continues, he couldn’t have imagined any better future for himself than becoming a pop star and having his father want to be a part of his life again. “But then he did get in contact with me. And it was then I realised that what that 13-year-old wanted, that wasn’t actually possible. Not any more.”

What did the 13-year-old want?

“I realised that a part of me wanted to be successful in music because my dad wanted to be a musician. That a part of me thought, if I became a musician and I did well, he’d be proud of me. Or he’d, y’know, be so sorry for not being the dad I wanted him to be.”

But that’s not how it felt?

No, he says. When they did come together, Alexander noticed that, “I’d become something that my dad was sort of intimidated by. I’d been wanting to be successful, in part, because I wanted to prove something to him. And when that happened, I realised it didn’t feel good, it just felt like… like I’d tricked somebody.”

Listening to demos from Years & Years’ new album, there’s a sense that fatherhood has been much on Alexander’s mind in the aftermath of this episode. Person-to-person, the musician says, he and his father “have very, very minimal contact” right now. But a dad figure stalks the new work. On one song, Alexander sings about breaking with his DNA. On another, it’s as if karmic retribution is being summoned and directed at a “daddy [who] said I never could win”.

Yeah, he says, his father was foremost in his thoughts when he wrote that one. But he’d been thinking, too, about past relationships, those various boyfriends he’d dumped or been dumped by. Alexander sees a clear thread running through it all, from parental to romantic difficulties. “I guess at its heart it’s just not really being able to trust someone who says they love you. If that’s something that’s ingrained in you, then I think it’s hard to get past that.”

We’re finished with lunch. Having travelled deeper into his psyche than he expected to – “normally I would have these mental conversations alone with myself, in my flat” – Alexander starts to wonder about another cigarette, and pats the pockets of his dungarees. I tell him that, yeah, I can see why he might choose to wear clothes that feel like they hug. He smiles.

Before we stand up and gather our things, he asks to add a couple of “bookends” to what’s been discussed. That he experienced a lot of love and support, growing up, from his mother and grandmother. (“I feel I have to say that: My mother loved me! She tried her best!”) And also that he’s profoundly grateful to music, to his band and their followers, to the rainbow smocks and lace bodysuits and the whole pop palaver, for the release-valve it has offered a troubled mind.

“There’s a lot of quite raw emotion inside me,” Alexander tells me. “Obviously. And most of the time it can only come out in these tiny little cracks. One of those cracks – that’s the music.”

#this is such an amazing read #i cried #i love him so much #btw i didn't know he smokes #olly alexander #a human rainbow

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newyorktheater · 4 years

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Check out:

Favorite stage performances in 2019.

Top 10 Lists of Top 10 Theater in 2019.

Best Broadway Cast Recording of 2019.

Top 10 Theater of the Decade.

Worst Theater of the Decade.

People who engaged with the arts frequently had a 31 percent lower risk of dying, according to a new study from the British Medical Journal. This was independent of demographic, socioeconomic, health related, behavioral, and social factors. Even those who were infrequent consumers of culture had 14 percent lower risk of dying than shoe who never engaged.

The Journal’s editors observe:”The data show that the very people who have the most to gain from participating in cultural activities are least likely to do so. More than 40% of patients with lung disease, depression, or loneliness reported never engaging with the arts despite robust evidence of the potential benefits. Over 40% of participants in the least wealthy group also reported that they never accessed cultural activities. Work must now be done to ensure that the health benefits of these activities are accessible to those who would benefit most.”

The Week in NY Theater Previews and Reviews

The Sorceress The Sorceress (Di Kishefmakherin), the first work of Yiddish theatre ever presented in America, is back on stage in New York 136 years after its U.S. premiere. In my article for TDF Stages, Yiddish Culture Is Alive and Well and Playing in New York, I talk to Motl and Mikhl, the director of the play and the star, who portrays the wicked witch, Bobe Yakhne, in drag. Though Babe is the villain, she is the title character.

The Sorceress, by the same company that put together the acclaimed “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish, is just one of three events this month that demonstrate a resurgence in interest in Yiddish language and culture.

Luke Kirby as stationmaster Thomas Hudetz in “Judgment Day” at the Park Avenue Armory

Judgment Day with Luke Kirby Luke Kirby, who portrayed a movie star hired to play “Hamlet” in the cult TV comedy “Slings & Arrows” 16 years ago, is now on stage for real, as Thomas Hudetz, a murderer in Ödön von Horváth’s 1937 drama “Judgement Day” at the Park Avenue Armory.

Kirby has lived in New York for some two decades now, but has only appeared in a handful of plays, spending most of his time in television — currently as the real-life comic Lenny Bruce in Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” for which he won an Emmy earlier this year, and as closeted civil servant Gene Goldman on HBO’s “The Deuce.” Why so few stage roles…and why this one now?

Those are the questions I put to him in an interview for TDF Stages.

Ian McKellen as Gus the Theatre Cat in “Cats,” co-written and directed by Tom Hooper.

Cats the movie – pics and reviews Cats” isn’t for everyone – much of it is a cheesy, B-grade affair seemingly crafted solely to take over midnight-movie slots from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ Those with an open mind, though, as well as little kids and the T-Swift posse, might find it somewhat pawesome.” Brian Truitt writes in USA Today, in the most positive review I could find. He’s enchanted by Taylor Swift, but turned off by the “nightmare fuel…when human faces are put on tiny mice and Rockette-esque cockroaches.”

More typical is Manohla Dargis in the New York Times: “It is tough to pinpoint when the kitschapalooza called “Cats” reaches its zenith or its nadir, which are one and the same. The choices are legion…

Sing Street

“Sing Street” is a stage musical based on the sweet, funny “happy-sad” 2016 Irish movie by writer/director John Carney about a teenager named Conor growing up in Dublin during the economically depressed but musically vibrant 1980s, who forms a band to impress a girl name Raphina. The musical has its pleasures, especially for those nostalgic for the era of made-for-MTV, New Wave synthesized tunes. A talented group of young adult actor-musicians, ages 16 to 25, perform mostly original pastiche songs by Carney and Scottish singer-songwriter Gary Clark, who was part of the 80s scene and continues his hit-making now. But “Sing Street” the stage musical is likely to disappoint anybody who has seen “Sing Street” the movie (which is currently available for viewing online, through IMDB TV, for free.)

The Week in New York Theater News

The opening of West Side Story has been pushed from from February 6 to February 20 due to a knee injury that left the show’s star Isaac Powell unable to perform. The show began preview peformancs on December 10

.@mockingbirdbway will be the first-ever Broadway show to perform at @TheGarden on February 26, 2020, in front of some 18,000 New York City public school students. Here’s playwright Aaron Sorkin and the new cast posing at the arena. pic.twitter.com/txrecILSJm

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2019

..@TheCrownNetflix stars Claire Foy and Matt Smith will perform in @SleeveNotes‘ “Lungs” at @BAM_Brooklyn March 25-April 19 2020. The play is about a couple wrestling with the morality of having kids in an overpopulated planet. pic.twitter.com/96r9elP5hB

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2019

View of the Shed from The Highline

The Shed’s Second Season

Claudia Rankine, “Help”

Arinzé Kene, “Misty”

Tomas Saraceno, “Particular Matter (s)”

Meet at the Shed, January 11,2020

A free, daylong, building-wide takeover with exhibitions, performances, food

Help March 10 – April 5,2020

An inquiry into white male privilege by Claudia Rankine

Tomás Saraceno: Particular Matter(s) May 6 – August 9, 2020;

A visual art installation that is intended to be neither seen nor heard, but felt.

Misty September 24 – October 24

Fusing live music, spoken word, and absurdist comedy, Misty is a journey through the dark alleyways of a city in flux and a genre-defying excavation of the pressures and expectations that come with being an artist in our time

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino

Live Nation Entertainment Inc.reached an agreement with the Justice Department to resolve government concerns that the company violated a 2010 antitrust settlement that allowed it to merge with Ticketmaster, according to the Wall Street Journal. Under the original agreement, known as a consent decree, the companies were allowed to combine but had to agree to conditions designed to help preserve competition in the live-events industry.

Dear Evan Hansen

Kerry Butler (Mrs. George), Erika Henningsen (Cady Heron)

Scene from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theater in London.

Isabelle McCalla and Caitlin Kinnunen as high school girlfriends in The Prom

(l-r) Nicholas L. Ashe, Jonathan Burke, J. Quinton Johnson, Jeremy Pope, Caleb Eberhardt, John Clay III, Gerald Caesar

The problem with teen musicals on Broadway by critic Christian Lewis in American Theatre Magazine.

When it comes to teenagers and Broadway, 2016’s Dear Evan Hansen changed the game. The Tony-winning Pasek and Paul musical was certainly not the first Broadway show about—or beloved by—teens. That credit might go to Spring Awakening (2006) or 13 (2008) or Runaways (1978), or much further back to Babes in Arms (1937), considered the first musical with an entire cast of teenage characters. In the wake of Dear Evan Hansen’s success, Broadway quickly saw a sweep of major productions with teenage protagonists: Mean Girls (2018), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2018), The Prom (2018), Choir Boy (2019), Be More Chill (2019), and the latest installation, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (2019).

….The genre deserves a larger critique, but not the one critics are making. Yes, Young Adult Theatre can seem angsty, the pop score/lyrics can feel basic and the plots contrived. But the central problem with Dear Evan Hansen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Be More Chill, and The Lightning Thief is that they’re all about straight, white, cisgender teenage boys. The supporting casts are often diverse, but the main characters don’t deviate from this norm. Not only are these protagonists about as privileged as they come; worse, each of these pieces is about its hero’s search for his identity. Compared to a person of color, a queer person, a transgender person (let alone any intersection of these), how much do Evan, Harry, Jeremy, or Percy have to figure out about themselves?….We need more shows like The Prom or Choir Boy:

The movie is a wreck, the musical is a joke. Why, then, will we always have ‘Cats’?

By Charles McNulty (who doesn’t really answer the question posed in the headline)

“Cats,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster spun from the light verse of T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” is a paradox and a puzzle illustrating the disconnect between theatrical success and respect. The fourth-longest-running show in Broadway history, it is the consummate tourist musical. (“Broadway’s first show for the tired Japanese businessman,” according to Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik’s indispensable “Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time.”)

Theater people resent “Cats” not just because it made Broadway uncool until “Hamilton” finally rescued it from the pop cultural stocks. What really infuriates buffs is that “Cats” ushered in an era of grandiose spectacle, the vacuous parade of shows from the 1980s and early ’90s that made it seem as if a musical had to have a helicopter or a crashing chandelier to be worth the rapidly rising ticket price.

Ed Harris and Kyle Scatliffe, center, in “To Kill A Mockingbird”

Q and A about To Kill A Mockingbird with Aaron Sorkin and Ed Harris, its new Atticus

Aaron Sorkin: How did Harper Lee get away with having a protagonist who doesn’t change? Because Atticus isn’t the protagonist in the book or the movie; Scout is—her flaw is that she’s young, and the change is that she loses some of her innocence. While I wanted to explore Scout, I absolutely wanted Atticus to be a traditional protagonist, so he needed to change and have a flaw … It turned out that Harper Lee had [already] given him one; it’s just that when we all learned the book, it was taught as a virtue. It’s that Atticus believes that goodness can be found in everyone….

Ed Harris: I love the film. I think Peck’s portrayal in terms of that story and that script is just indelible. There are little things that happen on the stage even now, just a head move or something, that feels like Gregory Peck! But the inner life of this man I’m playing is so different [from Peck’s character]. He’s trying to hold on to a belief that’s being eroded slowly but surely. It’s really interesting to play.

The Trojan Women’s Project at La MaMa: The artists discuss

youtube

I got asked for an end-of-the-decade quote on “emerging trends” and the editors rejected it, so here it is so that it doesn’t go to waste. Happy holidays! pic.twitter.com/b5YBglbJBL

— Young Jean Lee (@YoungJean_Lee) December 24, 2019

Best and Worst Theater of The Decade, and of 2019. See a show, live longer. #Stageworthy News of the Week Check out: Favorite stage performances in 2019. Top 10 Lists of Top 10 Theater in 2019.

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mysticdragon3md3 · 5 years

Text

MD3 watches Carole & Tuesday season 1 part 1

9:34 PM 9/1/2019 Carole and Tuesday ep1

Watch Shinichiro Watanabe and Studio Bones go fully into revolving a series around music.

I was going to say something about how this entire exposition dump is too blunt, that everything is falling into place too easily. But not only is it the natural thing for these 2 characters to do when they're introducting themselves to each other, but the tone of these scenes are really nice. Just the thing for someone who's been watching almost exclusively iyashikei for a while now.

I'm surprised they're using actual terms like "Google" and "INstagram". I wonder if there's a real Instagram account named "carole_and_tuesday". Well, if Netflix didn't, the fanbase will have.

I like that the episode begins with narration explaining that Carole and Tuesday will become famous musicians. Because if the tension of the episode/series is based on already knowing their ending of their story, then that means, it won't hurt me to have already seen some spoiler scenes from later in the series. ^-^

That ending theme really sounds like a Cyndi Lauper or at least a 1980's song, with all that synthesizer. Tuesday was talking about her earlier in the episode. Do I have to go research Lauper to understand future references?

9:59 PM 9/1/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep2.

Is there a setting on Netflix that automatically lets me always see the ending and opening credits? I just don't feel complete when those opening songs and ending themes get skipped. And often, I can't scramble for the remote in time to ensure I get to watch the credits. I'm pretty sure there's science behind the benefits of staying for credits and easing back into the next episode with an opening song. I mean, that whole Interest Curve theory works pretty well for overall plots, scenes, videogame rising tension, Star Wars, Haikyuu, etc. I need that cool-down after a story for an optimal experience. That's why I always stayed in movie theaters during credits, even before the MCU.

I forgot to note during ep1, but I like the future-ized version of vocal synthesizers liek Hatsune Miku, and there's this whole company that has had exclusively virtual/artifical singers for its entire successful history so far. Did that Tao guy mention the name of his company?

I also liked that Angela's mom is going to represent that Stage Mom archetype and how that's destructive and contributes to the cliche of "child actors" ending up badly. If we're going to have a series about the entertainment business, it's good to at least mention that.

Oh yeah...Did Carole's uni-wheel skateboard exist before the real life version that's been advertised on YouTube lately?

Something tells me Tao's business is going to be a better example of the highly manufactured music process, than Black Mirror's "Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too". These chats that Carole and Tuesday have, while her owl gets sleepy, are realy soothing. It's reminds me of iyashikei genre's tone. And Carole's seiyuu has a soothing voice that's also more interesting that just the typical bishoujo voice.

So the title is based on Bruce Springsteen's song.

Carole wants to try a grand piano, and I was thinking of those pianos inside shopping malls. But would malls even still exist in the future? LOL And why is there a piano in a place called "Mars Immigration Memorial Hall"? Sounds like a federal administrative building. ...Except for the "Memorial" part. Yeah, what would a building like that be for? Maybe a piano will make sense there when I see it.

DJ Ertegun is getting a pretty big introduction. Ok, I'm curious. Did he produce that talent show I've seen spoiler clips of?

I feel kind of bad for Carole's security guard friend, but I like that one of the people in charge of the venue is cool with them just using the piano. LOL

Did I mention yet that I really like the music in this series? The songs I've seen in spoiler clips, anyway.

LOL omg Roddy recorded them running from the security guard too. LOL ^o^!

omg and he totally uploaded it. LOL

I'd be funny if anyone, not just people with more computer experience, but I mean idiots like me, could so easily use facial recognition software, find someone's Instagram, and just use the geotagging to find anyone.

I know it's cliche for the has-been agent/manager/scout to find a new talent and it gets him out of his self-destructive patterns, but it's still nice. I'm glad to see Gus not drinking his liver to death and picking fights.

I really should stop after ep2, but I'm really curious to see how they'll deal with a manager out of no where.

10:43 PM 9/1/2019

Carole & tuesday ep3

Tuesday's brother sounds really familiar. I know that the bishonen/biseinen voice is a common archetype, but still. Is that Takahiro Sakarai? He voices Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. Or maybe...No. Not deep enough for Hikaru Midorikawa. That's just wishful thinking for my old favorite.

I feel bad for Tuesday's brother. I don't know how, but there's a sense that he feels bad about how their mom treats her. Maybe it's camera lingering on his reponses to her, like he's hesitating to go along with her commands. Maybe that kind of direction implies he questions her and is reluctant to follow. Well, if not, then that completely askewed fireplace behind him in this ep's early scene definitely is saying something.

It's really funny how this pizzeria scene used reading Wikipedia as not just exposition but showing everyone's funny reactions. Just like when people read a real Wiki! LOL I hope more movies do this kind of integration of believable internet use.

"Teen Vogue"?

It's funny now durian has become the popular flavor.

Is the currency "oolongs"? LOL That's really close to "woolongs" from Cowbow Bebop. I wonder why they didn't go ahead and use "woolongs" as a direct reference.

Ok. This laundromat scene and a random stranger getting involved in their unfinished song, is pretty endearing. ^____^

I just realized that everyone is walking around with these AI pets, like the All-Mates from Dramatical Murder.

It's the partially-shredded Banksy! LOL

I thought he expected them to do a nude drawing of him or something. Now does he think they're athletic trainers? ...Groupies. He thinks they're groupies. Ok. That was a lot of weird misdirect. But I guess that confusion is teh point of this scene. LOL

She's actually burning her sheet music?! I'm pretyt sure Ertegun was being metaphorical. So are they portraying Tuesday as the oblivous literal type? Or was she trying to activate the fire sprinklers to get back at his insults?

They're pretty lucky that everyone takes their shenanigans well.

This "running again" running gag is starting to grow on me.

So Ertegun mentioned, like Tao, that he also constructs his music from computer-analyzed trends. So is this the theme of this series? Music by computer calculations vs music by humans?

They're funny. ^____^ Turning back at Ertegun's house just to yell at him without him even hearing. I wonder if they're going to go the old fashioned route of gigs at bars, like Gus was talking about.

11:12 PM 9/1/2019

Maybe I can watch ep 4 without taking so many notes. I just want to watch it.

11:13 PM 9/1/2019

Carole & tuesday ep4

Good gobs, this series is much harder to stop watching than Violet Evergarden. Proably because Violet Evergarden was a cry fest and that's easier to drop. I can't do that much crying all the time! At least Carole & Tuesday is soothing and fun.

Roddy is still there. LOL

Isnt' there something wrong with it if it's only 19 oolongs?

Ziggy likes Tuesday now. ^u^

Ooh, poor Ziggy.

Heh. Maybe I don't actually want to stop writing reactions. ^^;;;

This whole episode is uneasy. You know they're not actually going to be able to make this crazy music video. That direction AI robot is going to turn out to be worthless. And in any case, a big action music video doesn't fit their type of songs. It's like going up the roller coaster, waiting for the fall, when you don't liek roller coasters! x~x! Ok. After this episode, I'll call this binge a night.

This montage of them trying on clothes woudl be a good music video for them.

I wonder why they didn't start with giving the robot budget restrictions or any kind of limitations first, before it told them what was possible.

I really like that Marie is just so casually asking these young people if they have boyfriends or girlfriends. You never see that in anime!!!!!!!!!!! ;u; It's usually a big deal and used for comedy because of the heteronormative expectations!!!!! but here, she's just being normal about it! ;U;!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy!!!!!!!!!

I don't collect Gunpla, but I call figure collection abuse! lol

Why is this robot talkign out loud to itself?

Dude, the bartender is super stressed, watching Gus and Marie. Do they have a history of big arguments that could wreck his bar? O_o???

Just say "congratulations" if you're going to burst in like that. LOL Takes the edge off your eavesdropping. LOL

"I hope you're happy this time." Awwwwwwwwwwwwww~ That's so sweet. ;u;

Who's that random dancer in the video? LOL

Wait a sec...The car was blown up?!?

Where is the AI scammer getting returned to?

Ok, that was funny at the end. Maybe I can stick around for another episode. ^^;

11:42 PM 9/1/2019

I'm going to switch to dub, so I can get some stuff done in these 20 minutes before 12am. o~o;

11:46 PM 9/1/2019

Carole & tuesday ep5

Wow. Roddy's dub actor is Michael Sinterniklaas? ...Or maybe Yuri Lowenthal? ...Hm... Then again, there are so many new dub actors that I often find myself confusing older A-listers I'm familiar with. ^^;

Wait. The dub Tao said "woolongs"! So it's a direct reference to Cowbow Bebop in the dub!

"You're not as cool as you used to be"? Really? *That* cliche? Listen, I've liked a lot of tropes used in this series so far, but that was mean and hackneyed.

Only 1 song? Good. They only have like 3 songs.

So the Martian environment caused Angela's mom to become androgenous? Is that why the media lost interest in her as a child actor, once she hit her 20's? It always creeps me out how when these child actors turn 18/legal, everyone give this sense like they're leering at him in anticipation. I guess once Angela's mom wasn't able to transition from child actress to "specifically-female sex pot" they gave up on her career. That's kind of weird, huh? When child actresses get old enough, as soon as they're legal, everyone expects them to sell sex with their image, even when they just _barely_ became old enough. I don't pay enough attention to non-geeky entertainment media, but are male child actors expected to become sex symbols as soon as they turn 18 too? That's kinda sad.

Well, Roddy explaining to Beth why likes their music, explains why he's sticking around.

How did Tuesday's luggage find her? ^.^

I like how cool Carole's landlord and Tuesday's brother are being about leaving them alone to continue pursuring music.

12:16 AM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep6

It's funny how they're all hanging out at Carole's place all the time now.

Well, that Skip guy was pretty cool.

Oh~ Skip was talking about Crystal forgetting the type of music she originally wanted to play. I thought he was talking about himself or something. First time I saw this clip of him talking to Crystal, he said "it's your song". I thought that meant he wrote it for her. But now hearing the same line dubbed, I finally understood it means that Cyrstal wrote this song and it was her original sound, that she's forgotten now that she plays music that sounds more like manufactured pop.

Is that why they call alcohol "liquid courage"? ^^;;;;;;;;;

Oh, they really did write a faster song just for this festival? No, wait. This is that laundromat song. ^_^

Wow. They're really throwing stuff at them while they play. I feel like I've seen this portrayed only once before in an idol series, but then it had that stereotypical "somoene stands up for the protagonists" moment. It's kind of refreshing for this more realistic portrayal, then the encouragement come in a more practical way.

Aw, Crystal is giving them a pep talk. There are so many nice mentor figures at this festival. ;u;

12:37 AM 9/2/2019

I should stop here and go to bed. ^^;

It occurrs to me that I keep expecting an episode preview, full of joke narration, like you usually hear after an ending theme. LOL I guess Netflix really does expect you to binge everything. ^^;;; No need for previews and omake, huh?

Ok. I'll save ep7 for tomrrow.

Good series. ^____^

5:03 PM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep7

I'm so glad all these video essays on YouTube have been teaching me to pay more attention. Or else I wouldn't have noticed how round-table Gus/Carole&Tuesday/Roddy are together, in contrast to Tao/Angela/Angela's mom.

Angela *better* have her own category. I can't imagine having American Idol and suddenly back-in-the-day Miley Cyrus show up as just a regular contestant. C'mon.

I know I sound like an old fogey, but I really like when modern media shows people streaming their life. Because it's actually happening, and there was such a long time when movies/shows would go to lengths to not show technology even when it's become a daily part of life, just for fear of free product placement. Seeing Pyotr streaming himself and everyone say he's "Instagram famous" may make this bit dated in 10-20 years, but I feel like it's a better representation of now, vs just avoiding portraying it all together.

Is that native Maritan at the auditions a reference to Space Channel 5? LOL Naw~ LOL

"I won't do things like that anymore. It happened because of the medicine's side effects. I'm stable now." Did this just get even darker than "stage mom" drama? o~o!

Ok. Physical abuse. As long as it doesn't go into incest sexual abuse territory, I think I can handle this character development.

Also, Angela's mom looks like she used to be her dad? That photo looked very male-presenting. I thought she was her mom, who just looked/sounded "manish" because of the androgenous effects of the Martian environment?

I really like how this whole cast works together. It's really sweet and warm. I know that this scene of Carole, Tuesday, and Gus running into Roddy are supposed to portray that but in a bittersweet way, like Tuesday is contemplating all of this warmth going away if her identity is discovered through the Mars Brightest audition, but let me just enjoy it as a "slice of life" moment for now. ^-^

Oh, Tuesday was sad about not knowing much about Carole's background. Wow, I feel like there was only 1 moment for that setup. I totally thought she was afraid of this found family of hers being taken away when her identity is revealed. Ah, well. Let's see where this goes.

Carole *is* cool and to be envied. ^_^

Time for a song! I thought that if Tuesday was going to keep feeling so sad, they'd have to vent it in a song. lol

I like how just random people get involved with Carole & Tuesday's lives. I just watched a spoiler clip of one of their future concerts and looking at the background "finger snappers" I thought they totally found those guys on the street and asked them to snap their fingers for their song. LOL But isnt' this guy teaching them special handshakes the same guy from the laundromat? o.o? That was funny. LOL

Ah, so this is about Tuesday learning to be "bold" like Carole.

Dog race betting!? ;o;

Ack. TV crews.

Oh, this is about Tuesday not needing the sunglasses anymore.

5:43 PM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep8

The heck? That's a lot of doing BEOFRE asking! Even if it's 2 seconds late, that's too late! o~o!

Cybelle is always liking their Instagram posts. lol I was just reading this [https://twitter.com/_le_hibou/status/1168178112007458818] "To people who follow artists: It may not be obvious but artists do notice followers who regularly interact or reply to their art!! I don’t always know the proper way to respond but I do know who all my “regulars” are if you will lol" Reminds me that I recently had someone who often likes my IG posts, come meet me in real life and have so many expectations...Now I keep worrying about having said all the wrong things, just being a disappointment, and not having helped enough. @_@;

That's mean, Gus. Don't just assume Angela is going to embarass herself. Even if we didn't have all these background scenes of her singing well, don't say junk like that. ~.~;

Ah, when death metal becomes the classical music of old fogeys... ^____^

"I feel like I've gained their approval to exist." Sheesh. To think someone ouwl dsay it so directly and so casually. o_O

When I first saw this YouTube clip of Pyotr performing I couldn't stop marvelling how this seems like it's completely hand-drawn. Remember when all the idols shows started to just CGI all the performances and it looked horrible. Like compare UtaPri's first season vs 3rd. Or the earlier Idolmasters vs the recent ones. It's amazing to me that anyone is fully hand-animating this anymore.

Ok. I'll admit. I've been watching "Bulldog Anthem" repeatedly even before starting to watch this series. I just like opera mixed with modern music, ok.

Was Gus the one squeezing his hand nervously when the announcer mentioned that Carole & Tuesday don't use AI to compose their songs?

I thought it was weird to choose between different music genres represented by each contestant. Like I love death metal, and fushion music, and pop is fun too. But I love that whole acoustic singer-songwriter genre. ^_________^

It's weird that they're judging OG Bulldog on his identity lies, vs his singing. Is that how these music audition songs go? I don't really watch those. I mean, it's off-putting after he called everyone in the audience/judges fake and made up so many outrageous things about his background, but his song was still nice.

But maybe that's the contrast represented between OG Bulldog vs Carole & Tuesday. Bulldog was building this whole identity/persona to sell along with his music. Whereas even the judge noted how Carole & Tuesday were presenting their music in and of itself alone. I guess that was the point.

Maybe it's been a long time since I watched battle anime or the martial arts genre, or Pokemon, but do rival always start introducing themselves to the protagonists by telling them they hate them? The latest rival I remember being really nasty about their introductions was Yuri Plizetsky from Yuri on Ice. I guess I'm too accustomed to the old fashioned formalities of martial arts anime, where you send a letter of challenge and formally show your opponent respect, even if it annoys you that they offer you genuine challenge. In fact, it's because martial artist characters usually recognize the importance of being challenged, that they revere their worthy opponents and recognizing someone as a "rival" was always a sacred thing. Even rival who hated each other like Ryouga and Ranma are still very respectful towards each other.

And talk about Shadow projecting. If anyone is the "amatures who get carried away with themselves" it's definitely Angela. I mean, she can sing, but everyone recognizes her as a model and is calling her a music amature.

6:25 PM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep9

Cybelle's really storng on the stalker vibes.

omg Did the guest judge just get killed?

Did Cybelle just bite Tuesday????? O~O!! This is getting into extra weird levels of stalker! ;o;

I'd feel kind of hyprocritical if I don't admit that Angela's songs are nice. Even though I said that OG Bulldog's background doesn't effect the quality of his song, knowing how nasty Angela has been for most of this series has infused watching her performances with bitterness. But her songs are nice, in and of themselves.

I'm glad Tuesday was able to reject Cybelle so soon. And I'm glad Cybelle lost, so her creepiness can exit the series sooner. But I'm afraid a violent stalker subplot is going to start. o~o!

6:49 PM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep10

Ertegund judging Carole & Tuesday. I should have seen that coming.

Is this what they call "emotional blackmail"? When someone threatens to suicide or hurt themselves if some girl doesn't like them? Notebook stuff?

So I didn't react much on ep10 because I was trying to multi-task. I even tried switching to dub. But I'm switching back to sub for ep11.

7:54 PM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep11.

I guess Angela is doing the sleuthing in the background for this ep.

These pre-song interviews are fine in fiction, but I can't believe if they do it right before in an actual show. Then again, reality TV really over-inflates drama where ever they can. ~.~;

I want to get an album of Carole & Tuesday and listen to it before I sleep. ^___^

Ertegun taking cheap shots. Tuesday DID preform.

I can't help but deflate the stakes in this Mars Brightest arc since Carole & Tuesday started so low, that any kind of exposure seems fine. And I like lower stakes for an iyashikei-like tone. Anyway, look how hyper stressed all the overly ambitious characters are, who absolutely have to win or lose everything. I'm fine with middle stakes.

I like that Catherine stated her judgement as "If you asked me who I'd want to hear again...". That's an interesting factor.

Again, I'm glad Carole & Tuesday keep running into people who are just cool with all the craziness that follows them. Pyotr could become a nice side character. And apparently, his stakes were also low enough that all he really wanted was some exposure. He's already IG famous anyway.

Are they really going to leave the crime pinned on Angela's poor manager?

So much for low stakes and low ambition.

At least this show always resolves its issues quickly. So far.

Blocking is really nice in this scene. Them sitting on opposite sides of this weird bench, really makes them seem far apart. Appropriate. Gotta remember this technique.

Dude, is Carole going to get a bad injury too? o_o

Oh, yeah, she still didn't give Teusday her birthday gift.

8:27 PM 9/2/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep12

Well, I'm looking forward to the last-minute escape in a week, to get to Mars Brightest.

Always running with Carole. LOL

"I should have brought her back no matter what she thought." Hang on, Gus. That should be "I should have tried to bring her back and ask her again what she thought."

I'm glad Tuesday's brother Spencer is cool.

Already sent the instruments to the venue? Gonna be cutting it close, huh? ^o^

That's packing a lot of "endearing backstory motivation" into one scene for a so-far less palatable character. I guess this really is the last episode of this season. Is there a 2nd season of Carole & Tuesday?

MOre cool random people they meet on the street. LOL

Oh wow. Angela's manager came back. Aw. Forgiveness is wholesome. ^______^

I'm glad they're not driven by ambition. That's fine for martial arts anime and battle anime, where winning represents something about honing your skill. But I think Carole & Tuesday are more about just having the chance to sing and enjoy music.

It's like, "You can have all the high-production concerts and collaborations with Ertegund. Carole & Tuesday are here to play good music."

Even got that jerk Ertegund to cry, huh? LOL

Wait a sec. Does Netflix USA not have season 2 up yet. Because I've seen clips on YouTube that weren't in this season. Wow. I heard about Netflix withholding episodes but this is just weird...Or maybe that was nother streaming service?

I guess that's it. I'll go re-watch the spoiler clips on YouTube then.

9:03 PM 9/2/2019

https://trinikid.com/carole-tuesday-plot-netflix-release-date-and-more

"Flying Dog" was involved with Carole & Tuesday?! They worked on my favorite Sengoku Basara 2009 series! *O*!

Ok. So season 1 was split into 2 parts. And these 12 eps I just watched were part 1 of season 1. And there's a part 2 of season 1 to come. And season 2 is teh one that's iffy about production.

9:08 PM 9/2/2019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_%26_Tuesday

Wait a sec. Ertegun is freaking Mamoru Miyano?! LOL!!!!!!!!!! Well, after Tamaki Suoh I'm convinced he does "over dramatic self-agrandizing" characters well. LOL Isn't the manager of Zombieland Saga like that too?

Roddy is freaking Miyu Irino?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *O* I guess he finished his hiatus abroad. O.o Wait! That means whenever there's a Ertegun/Roddy scene, it's Riku and Sora together again! LOL

Megumi Hayashibara is in this series too?!?! *u*

Oh, Watanabe is the supervising director with someone else doing the usual directing?

Looks like season 1 part 2 is still airing in Japan. Netlflix is probably going to wait until the season is done before they send it to Bang Zoom Entertainment for dubbing, AND THEN it'll be on Netflix.

#MD3 watches Carole and Tuesday #reactions

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howtothenow · 6 years

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Introverts, Instagram and the new curation culture

It may seem shallow to invest thought in people’s social media habits, especially when these apps can indeed breed superficiality. However, noticing the ways that particular types of people are behaving online may reveal things about the way our culture is evolving. i’ve considered the patterns of social media behaviour in young people and the curation-centric approach that I believe is characteristic of them.

First of all if you look at the Instagram profiles of current young people in their teens and early 20s and compare that to those of the same age group from 4 years ago, you may observe that the current youth are much more sophisticated in their visual expression. Part of this can be attributed to better editing opportunities and camera qualities but that’s not the fundamental factor at play. In my view, this is a meta-social phenomena rather than a purely technological one. We might then, examine how different people have adapted to the new social/technological environment. Perhaps we might consider this in terms of introversion and extraversion.

We have, in many ways, been developing into a personality-centric culture; where one of the most valuable aspects of a public Figure, wether they be a singer, an actor, an artist is their personality. Perhaps this is even the most valuable aspect. Take the success of Cardi B for example, who first found fame on Reality Show ‘Love and Hip Hop’, before the success of her single ‘Bodak Yellow’. it is clear that a large part of what people find alluring about Cardi B is her funny, slightly unpredictable personality; her interviews garner view counts that rival the performance of most people’s actual songs. This speaks of a change in marketing approach pioneered by Tyler, The Creator and his manager Christian Clancy, whereby you needn’t “market” an artist, but in the case of Tyler and the Odd Future’ Collective, simply “expose” them. This is an extravert suited approach and while it does still work for introverts, it doesn’t work nearly as well ( it may even arguably work in terms of success, but it’s often not too comfortable for the introverts themselves ). We live in an extroversion-centric culture anyway, where we value people who are “outgoing”, social and “well adjusted”. And for good reason too: We are social creatures who inevitably produce hierarchies (e.g a family, a friend group, a scene) which will often reward pro-social, open, people. Though perhaps the most fundamental ones, these are not the only hierarchies; Western Society is particularly extravert-centric, valuing the “heroic” “going and seeing” (or even better “seeing and doing” ) to the more introspective “sitting and thinking” approach more prevalent in Buddhist and Hindu cultures etc.

Going to back to Social Media, we might ask, where does this extraverted climate leave introverts? It’s clear that a thriving internet presence is (sometimes literally) a useful currency. We might observe introverts now being somewhat forced into incorporating a consumable outward expression of themselves into their lives or risk damaging their social standing. The introverted youth, less suited to the “exposing” approach, must utilise their reflecting abilities to develop a sophisticated visual identity, hence the rise of the word “aesthetic” being used to describe a certain approach to visual expression that is both coherent and pleasing. Here we arrive at Curation: Introverts must display expert curation skills, portraying indirectly a characterisation that’s less a reflection of who they are (in the outward sense) but more of how they see the world. To some extent this has always been the role of Artists: to help others to see things differently through an experience generated by their creative abilities. However, the crucial difference is that there is now a particular focus on curation rather than creation. Perhaps this is also reflective of the difficulty of success in a creative domain: You must be the best at what you do and do it at exactly the right time and have the means to get it to the right people and monetise it. Also remains the problem of being original but not too original as there would be no Market or opportunity for something so outside the status quo. Curation is slightly less risky, it’s taking things that already exist and presenting them in a unique combination, giving them new meaning and placing them within a larger context of association. It’s a good way for creative Introverts to communicate; i.e “Here’s some things I like, i’ve intuitively found their commonalities and am presenting that to you”. I don’t mean to devalue curation with this, after all, all creation is curation, though not all curation is necessarily creative.

People can use media like instagram to share their creative practices to great effect, but if they do, they better stick to doing that and better stick to one particular kind of expression lest they confuse their followers. People generally follow four main types of accounts: 1. their friends and family, 2. personalities, 3. Socialites and 4. Art-grams for people who “make stuff”, showcasing particular works operating within a well branded niche. However these categories do blur and Socialites can often double as friends or personalities. Somewhere in that intersection is the young introvert, probably going back and forth between posting carefully chosen snapshots of their lives and other’s content that they deem exquisite.

Above: Lorde’s newly cleared out, 3 post Instagram featuring: a message reading “trust me”, someone else’s artwork and a deliberately blurry photo of her performing.

New Zealand Pop-Artist extrodinaire, Lorde could be considered the Figure-Head for this behaviour; everything she has ever shared or expressed visually has been very particular and hyper-intentional. Her resume as an image maker (as well as musician) is an expert lesson in curation and there is a certain particular-ness, a focus on boldness and on capturing something “just so”, behind all of her visual presence. While being a creator herself, she came from a generational culture of budding introverted curators and is in many ways a prime example of this phenomena embodied. Now you may ask, but shouldn’t Lorde be in the category of “making stuff”? Well yes she is in that category, she’s also a celebrated personality (though she’s seemingly quite careful about what she makes available about her self), she also lives a life quite unlike most introverted young people and could be a socialite if she wanted to. However we can’t ignore the focus on bored suburban youth holding the truth, that characterised her early work and thrust her into the limelight. For musicians the model is particularly weird, especially for musicians who are also artists who wish to depict themselves in a particular way. They’re to be known for their skills, but also their personality, their status and their “message”. They also face the problem that what they do doesn’t translate so well to a platform like Instagram, where images and other videos may thrive. So it’s no doubt that someone who walks this line with poise would be celebrated. Again, perhaps the most important factor is how extraverted they are, for if they are out-going and loud then there’s their “image” right there, otherwise they must to turn to images instead. That said, music is basically one of the more extraverted art forms, at least when the musicians are being musicians and especially if they are also “performers” (though maybe only when they’re being performers). The quieter art forms, the literally quieter ones, lend themselves more easily to an introverted visual expression.

In a sense, the introverted curator has the most freedom to be off-brand or change brand; as long as there is a coherent sense of intentionality, there is scope for freedom. They are also free to touch a variety of subjects and media. As stated above, this type of expression transcends the main four categories, allowing them to show their social lives, things they like and things they’ve made and to some extent, even their personalities. in fact they are often applauded for this kind of variety, providing that they can do it in a way that’s coherent and meaningful. This task is no mean feat; it isn’t easy to take disparate phenomena, find their commonalities in subject and style and present those to others with some degree of assuredness.

All of this speaks of an emergent culture of refinement as well as the more general one of attempting to simplify our complex experience. Taste-making has always been at the heart of certain social circles, perhaps it’s just more visible now and perhaps for some, it’s more pressing than ever that they make it visible.

#article #essay #instagram #introversion #curation #lorde #aesthetic #social media #psycology #culture #visual communication

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larryland · 6 years

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SALEM, NY — Classic country tribute musicians, The Whiskey River Band, open Fort Salem Theater‘s Mainstage summer season with a concert on Saturday, June 16 at 7 PM.

On Saturday, June 23, at 8 PM and Sunday, June 24, at 2 PM, the Cabaret at Fort Salem Theater begins its summer of events with Couples: A Cabaret, featuring two married couples, Carmen Borgia and Alison Davy, who now live in Catskill after years of living in New York City, and Jay and Lynne Kerr, mom-and-pop owners of Fort Salem, who live in Hebron after years of living in New York City.

“Carmen and Alison left the city willingly, to find peace and joy in the country,” Mr. Kerr offered in a recent interview. “Lynne and I were drummed out.” “Drums. Always musical,” his wife, Lynne, retorts. “In fact, he was drummed out and I had to follow when our lease ran out.”

The two couples met when Ms. Davy and Mr. Kerr were cast last year in a production of Souvenir at Catskill’s Bridge Street Theater, which later played at The Fort. Davy portrayed the tone-deaf classical singer Florence Foster Jenkins and Kerr, her long suffering accompanist, Cosmé McMoon.

“We had fun,” he says. “You had fun,” offers Davy. She is corrected by her husband, Mr. Borgia. “They both had fun. I know. I had to watch each performance and a whole lot of rehearsals.” Borgia was sound engineer for both venues, and had to wire each actor for sound before they were fully costumed. In his musical life, Borgia is a songwriter whose instrument of choice is the ukulele. “Other than Don Ho, there wasn’t much competition,” he jokes, “and I’ve had pretty much a free ride since he died eleven years ago.”

Carmen Borgia and Alison Davy

Lynne and Jay Kerr

Couples: A Cabaret derives its driving energy from the clever attempts of carping between spouses and couples. When the performers are not trying to top one another, they display their considerable talents in song. Alison Davy loved musical theater in her early teens, but later pursued and achieved bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical music. She has sung at Lincoln Center, the White House, and extensively in Europe. In the cabaret, she will be singing an art song written for voice and piano, only with her husband’s uke accompaniment. Carmen Borgia sings a few classic uke songs (yes, there are some), and an original song for which he penned music and lyrics, “I Don’t Want to Make My Dreams Come True.”

“We just discovered that Carmen and I have a credit in common,” Lynne Kerr said. “We each appeared on The Uncle Floyd Show in our youth,” referring to comic Floyd Vivino’s cult classic cable show that ran locally in New Jersey and for a time nationally in syndication, which also featured Peter Tork (of The Monkees), Jan and Dean, Cyndi Lauper, and Bon Jovi. Mrs. Kerr’s credits range from Carnegie Hall (“I was in a huge group”) to Manhattan cabaret in such renowned venues as The Village Gate (“That I did solo”). “Though I’m usually booked in Salem singing songs my husband wrote, in the show he’s letting me sing some that people may have heard before.”

“OK, sure, but I thought that this was a great opportunity to present accomplished musicians performing material unfamiliar to them and their audiences,” Jay Kerr said. A musical theater writer, composer, and arranger, whose work has been represented on Broadway, on CD, and extensively at Fort Salem, he conceived a show where these two married couples actually can be six couples, by musically exchanging spouses and the males and females each being a couple as well. “It sounds naughtier than it is,” he says, “by design.” The men sing an Al Jolson song together, the gals sing two touching Broadway duets, Borgia and Mrs. Kerr sing classic bossa nova, and Davy and Mr. Kerr belt out a number written in 1927. “When Jay was a teenager,” notes the younger Ms. Davy, somewhat inaccurately.

Couples: A Cabaret, has limited seating, so reservations are strongly encouraged. The ticket price of $20 includes coffee and tea. More information is available on the theater’s website (fortsalemtheater.com) and tickets can be ordered by calling the theater box office at (518) 854-9200.

Whiskey River Band and Couples: A Cabaret Open Fort Salem Season SALEM, NY -- Classic country tribute musicians, The Whiskey River Band, open Fort Salem Theater…

#Alison Davy #Carmen Borgia #Couples: A Cabaret #Fort Salem Theater #Jay Kerr #Lynne Kerr #Salem NY #The Whiskey River Band

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studyingismyhobby-blog · 7 years

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Selena gomez porn video

Uncover Eight Easy Methods You Can Easily Contact Any Movie star Kris Aquino always includes the press each time one thing happens in her secret life. Dave Taylor has been on the Stuttering Foundation's checklist of Well-known Folks Who Stutter for a few years, but most likely few people know all of the unique accomplishments of this former hockey great who was born on December 4, 1955, in Levack, Ontario. She has obtained a Display Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Efficiency by a Female Actor in a Comedy Sequence nomination for her position as Annie Spadaro within the NBC sitcom Caroline within the City. The two finest (for in all probability each the actor and director) are the magnificently staged Rear Window (1954), with Stewart because the immobilised photographer who has a broken leg and witnesses a murder while wanting via his binoculars and the enigmatic and bleak thriller Vertigo (1958) in which he portrayed a neurotic detective who falls in love together with his good friend's wandering spouse whom he has to path. The World Conflict II veteran turned actor was identified for his portrayal of Dr Will 'Doc' Hayward in the cult '90s TELEVISION sequence, which was co-created by his son, Mark Frost. I actually don't know much else about this man however he is famous and doing well for himself after successful the highest prize on that TELEVISION present. A superb mix of occupations for the highest ten Davids with one athelete (Beckham), one speak present host (Letterman), two administrators (Slade and Lynch), two actors (Carradine and Hasselhoff), 4 musicians (Gilmour, Byrne, Cook dinner, and Bowie). Movie college students are all the time on the lookout for talented actors to look of their films. Wow this article is rich in high quality info and i actually just like the actors talked abut right here too. Even the fashion business has helped both actors and fashions to grow as they want fresh faces to promote their products and model them. Nicolas Cage was one of the best 90s motion heroes, and he did it so properly that on the time he was one of many highest earning actors in Hollywood, a simple indisputable fact that has modified nearly to the flip-side the place his profession today is concerned. Streep is no doubt the greatest actress still alive in Hollywood at the moment, a beacon of lasting hope for the now rising set of actresses that are now receiving the lead roles in movies, which has been a struggling subject for a while, as actresses should not all the time the primary alternative when it comes to the lead role. The Hollywood legend Harrison Ford was a struggling actor for many of his early adult life. Then the idea of becoming an actor grew to become more a actuality as he participated in school performs and found satisfaction in his performing capacity. She started her career as a dancer, showing in minor roles in Gothenburg opera as both dancer and actor. He's part of a manufacturing of William Shakespeare's most famous play by Britain's Globe Theatre firm which has already traveled to nations ranging from Rwanda to Antigua or Lithuania as part of a two yr-lengthy tour supposed to visit each nation on the planet. Extroverted teens usually engage in harmless celebrity-worship behaviors, corresponding to cutting photos out of magazines, researching famous individuals on TV or the Internet or reading biographies about their lives. Don & Phil Everly - Don Everly, (February 1, 1937-), Phil Everly (January 19, 1939-January 3 selena gomez porn video, 2014) - Brothers and high-promoting country influenced rock and roll performers. The rationale so many individuals have this outlook is as a result of there are such a lot of people who find themselves well-known in in the present day's world that haven't actually achieved something. Greater than something, Pattinson beats himself up over how many individuals dislike him just for being famous. After all if it is a well-known name-a movie star or a T.V. star, it is simple to get this job. My favorite Actor is Irish - Jonathan Rhys Meyers... He is my celebrity crush too - sooo dreamy! Craig Robinson - Humorist and actor from The Workplace, Pineapple Express and Scorching Tub Time Machine. Top 20 Famous Redheads in Historical past - A list of famous historic figures that all had crimson or ginger hair. Vanessa Williams is seen right here in her senior yr in 1981 at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, N.Y. Proper, Actor Vanessa Williams attend Horton Foote's a centesimal birthday celebration at Main Levels Rehearsal Studio, March 14, 2016 in New York. Today, Galecki is among the highest-paid actors on tv alongside his Massive Bang co-stars, who reportedly rake in $1 million per episode. They're out to find the following massive star and by attempting the Disney actor auditions you get the prospect on the stardom that you've always needed.

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swimintothesound · 7 years

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Pop Culture Cannibalism

One of the fondest memories of my childhood is a simple one. It’s not a surprise trip to Disneyland, or my first kiss, or the unboxing of a brand new video game console at Christmas. No, in fact, it’s more banal than almost anything you could ever imagine. In reality, one of the most saccharine and amber-coated memories of my pre-teens involved sitting in my family’s living room with my best friend on a lazy summer day watching VH1’s I Love The… Series. We sat there lethargically sprawled out on my family’s couch, pacified by the television as we killed an entire bag of those cheap grocery store fudge pops and gleefully watched early 2000’s actors, comedians, and musicians warmly reflect on the pop culture events of yesteryear.

It feels like such a small thing. It wasn’t a “big” event, there was no defining moment, and if you asked me, I probably couldn’t even remember which season of the show we were watching at the time. If you asked my friend, he probably wouldn’t even remember this happening in the first place. It’s lost to time, one of the dozens of other nameless summer days that we all happily wasted enjoying our reprieve from of middle school.

I remember this day because I remember the feeling. I remember appreciating it in the moment, and it’s something I think of often, especially during the summer. I spent the rest of that summer playing video games, running around with friends, and watching as much as of the “I Love The” series possibly could. Luckily my family had just set up our first DVR, so I was able to methodically record every episode of each season and watch them all sequentially.

It felt good. Actually, it felt incredible. It was like a self-imposed history lesson. I felt like I was doing homework that I actually enjoyed. In my mind, I this show was a comprehensive look at every year of pop culture before I was born. It was the first time I was ever “pop culture woke,” and I realized that a lot of important stuff happened before I was born. I made it my duty to study it. This was my first step toward becoming a pop culture historian.

A couple years later in 2008, I listened to my first podcast. That’s a topic deserving of its own post somewhere down the line (it’s something I’ve been working up to for years). But in 2011 that podcast spun-off into its own show and subsequent network: Laser Time. Laser Time is a topic-based podcast that covers the hyper-specific happenings of our pop-cultural landscape. The show has covered everything from bad Beatles covers, and dirty Christmas songs to surprisingly pervasive concepts like 80’s rap commercials and celebrity vanity projects. The network is also home to a comic book show, a video game podcast, a chronological exploration of The Simpsons, and much more.

Amongst the days and days worth of programming on the Laser Time Network, there is a slightly higher-concept show titled Thirty Twenty Ten. Thirty Twenty Ten is a “pop culture time machine” podcast that looks back at the music, movies, TV, and video games of this exact week 30, 20, and 10 years ago. It’s a blast to listen to, and it just recently clicked that I love this podcast for the same reason that I watched I Love The… series as a kid: it’s a fast-paced, unrelenting, and (relatively) comprehensive look back at our own pop culture history. It’s a carnivorous approach to media, one that doesn’t discriminate, and talks about these bits of the past with an absurd amount of reverence… well, as much reverence as you can have with a fart joke every episode.

I mean what other show would take the time to describe the beauty of the 1986 Transformers movie with an earnest and loving 30-minute discussion? And speaking of earnest, what podcast would care to break down the surprisingly-complicated history of Ernest P. Worrell? Hell, what other piece of media would jump from Predator, OK Computer, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and the finale of The Sopranos all within in the same episode?

Thirty Twenty Ten is a blitz of pop culture past. Like a train whizzing by at 50 miles an hour where each compartment is a great forgotten album or hilariously-shitty TV movie. The conflux of the host’s knowledge and anecdotes from the audience (like yours truly) combines into a beautiful listening experience that’s unlike anything else out on the digital airwaves right now.

When I sat down to start writing this it was a warm sunny summer afternoon that brought to mind that one day I spent with my friend watching low-budget VH1 programming. Now as the sun sets over the trees I’m grateful that I have a new weekly fix that emulates the same experience, improves upon it, and gives me a 90-minute trip down memory lane every week.

It’s a pop culture geek's dream.

We’re blessed to live in a world where we can find anything we want in an instant. From childhood recipes to old commercials, to half-remembered lyrics of some distant song. The thing is, most of us don’t take advantage of that resource because these memories aren’t on the forefront of our consciousness. Both I Love The… and Thirty Twenty Ten are great because they capitalize on this information in a way that nobody else is. They’re diving into the rich mine of our shared cultural touch points, and emerging with something from the listener’s own memory. Something that reflects who we are.

Over a decade ago VH1 programmed me to be an absolute dork of a pop culture sponge. Someone who collects, categorizes, and memorizes obsessively. Someone who values the history of art both high and low. It changed my life and made me into the person I am today.

And now Thirty Twenty Ten is reinforcing that. Giving me weekly satiation for my pop cultural hunger. And as my life becomes busier and busier, I can’t be that kid anymore. I can no longer be that middle schooler who spends an entire summer day sitting on his couch downing half a bag of fudgsicles. And as I’ve felt my post-college life whirring into place over the past year I’m grateful to have something like Thirty Twenty Ten there for me when I’m too busy or too tired to do it myself. It’s an absolute joy to have this program and its hosts in my life, and I hope that they continue the show until its logical conclusion. Podcasts have changed my life, and Thirty Twenty Ten is proof that this is all worth it.

#thirty twenty ten #podcast #i love the #vh1 #pop culture #time machine #laser time #simpsons #comic books #video games #art

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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Drew Barrymore ‘I don’t pretend to be perfect’

Drew Barrymore is back on our screens, this time as a flesh-eating estate agent. She tells Rebecca Nicholson about the endless ups and downs of her life from child star to teen rebel, and savvy producer to business woman and explains why shell fight to the death to be happy

Drew Barrymore walks into the hotel room in Berlin flanked by assistants, caked in heavy TV make-up and wrapped in a brown fluffy jacket that makes her look like a very glamorous teddy bear. Within seconds, the entourage has disappeared, shes wiped every last scrap of foundation from her face and shes rummaging around underneath her dress, a kind of earth mother hippy smock, regretting her decision to wear tights on this sub-freezing day. Why does anyone wear pantyhose? she exclaims, barefaced, faux-exasperated, shifting in her armchair, trying to get comfortable. Theyre so fucking sadistic! Theyre not even control pants, she says, conspiratorially, but Im forcing them to be.

For a lot of women, especially women who grew up between 1982 and the early 2000s, Barrymore is a particular kind of icon. Shes the accessible rebel we all wanted to be, or be friends with. Shes the child star of ET who hit the skids early and hard, and not only survived, but went on to be one of the most popular (and bankable) female stars of the past three decades. She appeared in, and often produced, the kinds of movies that are vital viewing for teenagers, from the trashy taboo-busting rebellion of Poison Ivy, to the triumphant high school romcom Never Been Kissed, to the moody angst of Donnie Darko. Plus, in her 20s, she seemed to hang out with the best bands, go to all the best parties and always looked like she was having the time of her life. She was the manic pixie dream girl before it became a tacky indie film stereotype. The memoir she wrote in 2015 is, appropriately, called Wildflower.

She looks genuinely pleased that she holds such a place in peoples minds, and decides that if people do like her, If anyone has any goodwill towards me, careful not to sound arrogant, its because she extends goodwill to other people. Not in an annoying way, but just, like, being in peoples fucking corners. Its this combination of soft and sharp, all wrapped up in that valley girl lilt, that has carried her through life. I want people to be happy, but I know happiness has to be fought for. Its a warrior trophy. Its not hippy, she insists. Im like, fight. Fight to the death to be happy, and dont kill anyone along the way.

Little riot grrrl: Drew Barrymore with Steven Spielberg at the age of five on the set of 1982s ET. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features

Were in Germany to talk about Santa Clarita Diet, the new Netflix series which has brought her back into the spotlight again at 41. Its a warm and occasionally gross 10-part comedy about Sheila and Joel, estate agents who have been together since their school days, and whose marriage is tested when the amiable Sheila develops a sudden taste for human flesh.

I stopped working to have my kids and take care of them and raise them, and so I was nervous about working again, she says. I was going through a dark time in my own life. And then I read it and I liked it. Now what am I supposed to do? I cant do this right now, its terrible timing, my whole life is falling apart. She ended up executive producing it as well as starring.

That her life was falling apart out of the spotlight was a new thing for Barrymore, who had played out most of her life in a very public sphere. No ones talking about my life. I mean, yes, I had a divorce, but even that was real quiet. She split up with actor Will Kopelman, the father of her two children, Olive, four, and Frankie, two, at the beginning of 2016, but recently posted an Instagram of him running the New York marathon; she was there, with their daughters, to support him. It was like, Oh, they didnt work out, I wonder why? Oh my God they seem like such good friends, and so amicable, I guess well stop giving a shit. I was so happy about that, she says, breezily.

Warm and occasionally gross: Barrymore in Santa Clarita Diet. Photograph: Erica Parise/Netflix

In the midst of her divorce, Santa Clarita Diet was a transformative experience. Ironically, it wasnt the worst timing. It was great. It was really happy. It was a good summer. My daughters and I got to go out to California and I got three days off a week. Just as becoming a proto-zombie saves Sheila from the numbing boredom of domestic life, Barrymore went through her own kind of rejuvenation. I feel like Sheila. I feel like maybe I was dead inside, she says cheerfully, blowing her nose. I dont know. I was in a place in my life where I had gained a lot of weight, and been in a place of fear and sadness, and I felt stuck. I dont think thats so much unlike the character.

Until she took time away from acting to have kids, Barrymore had never not worked. She began her career at 11 months in an advert for dog food, quickly becoming the main breadwinner for herself and her mother, Jaid, who raised her alone. Her father John Barrymore, of the Barrymore acting dynasty The great line of loonies from which I come, as she puts it wasnt around much. Her extraordinary youth was public and well-documented. Her breakout role in ET, at five years old, was followed by an outlandish few years of childhood boozing and drug-taking, rehab and institutions, and the sense that, at 14, she was washed up and her career was over.

But it wasnt. She moved into an apartment by herself, got a job in a coffee shop, learned how to do her own laundry and, eventually, clawed her way back into the business, defeating the curse of the child actor where so many others have been lost. She has said her 20s were a kind of delayed adolescence. Now, in her 40s, shes had a lifetimes worth of parties and experiences, and says she doesnt miss it at all. I dont feel like Im not at the centre of things. I dont worry about career stuff. I dont worry about who the hottest band is or that Im not at that show that night. I dont care if the latest trend is happening and its just passing me by.

Star quality: Barrymore with Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu in Charlies Angels. Photograph: Image Net

Her idea of a good time these days is taking the girls to Disney World, or setting up movie nights for the kids in my daughters class. I just watched Home Alone and all the moms and I were crying at the end. Oh my God, its so good! I appreciate it now much more than I did when I was younger.

Shes too classy to be drawn into any child actor comparisons it would be patronising, annoying, no thanks, she says, nicely but firmly but we talk more broadly about celebrity scandals. Everyone goes up and goes down. Thats life. Nobody wants all of it looked at and discussed. However, if you do put yourself out there, then you need to be prepared for that to be examined and you have to handle it to the best of your abilities. So for people who are like [she puts on a whiny voice]: Dont look at me you put yourself out there!

Is there any way to avoid being examined and discussed? Not in this day and age. You just try to manage things in the healthiest way you can. And by the way? You wont all the time. Youre gonna fuck up. So fuck up, then pick yourself back up. But just be nice and kind and humble and gracious and have a sense of humour. And dont pretend to be perfect.

Golden girl: winning a Golden Globe for Grey Gardens in 2010. Photograph: NBC/Getty Images

Barrymore dealt with her own initial fuck-ups in an incredible and startling memoir, Little Girl Lost, which she wryly calls, The mea culpa book I wrote when I was 14. She appeared on Oprah with her mother to promote it, to go over what went wrong. You can watch it on YouTube; shes 15 going on 35. Yet the book has a cult following, in part because it makes all the partying she did as a young child sound kind of adventurous. Yeah! Its like an 80s cult tragedy book, which is super cool and wrong and fun all at the same time. Its a little riot grrrl, you know?

Theres a chapter where Barrymore describes being hauled off to an institution at her mothers behest, and shes furious at the starstruck guards. God, youve just yanked me out of my house with cuffs on, I thought, and now youre asking me what it was like to meet ET. What jerks, she writes. Even at 14, she had a disdain for celebrity. Still do, she says, today.

We meet on the afternoon of Trumps inauguration. She plans to watch it later, as shes a total news junkie, but she doesnt particularly want to talk about what she thinks of him. Im not a painter and Im not a musician and I think people dont want to hear it from actors, she says. I read this op-ed in the New York Times that was saying, just do things quietly, in your art.

Slasher: Barrymore in Wes Cravens Scream, 1996. Photograph: Allstar

Barrymore is more about the practical. During her screen break, she wrote Wildflower, which became a New York Times bestseller, and shes built a sizeable business empire, including Barrymore wines, a production company, Flower Films, and beauty brand Flower Cosmetics. All of which channel some of that free-spirit warmth into profits reports suggest shes worth $125m. Theres a line in Santa Clarita Diet where Sheila announces: I sleep two hours a night. I get so much done! It struck me that for Barrymore, spinning so many plates, that might be funny. Actually, she says, it was originally written that Sheila would use her spare time to learn French. Me, in my real life, would spend time learning French. This woman literally has a ticking clock on her mortality. Shed be studying fucking Bruce Lee moves and learning to do shit. The line was changed at Barrymores request: instead of learning a language, Sheila would get the ability to parallel park in one move. Im, like, yes! Thats practical!

Its strange to see Barrymore, who seemed to be an eternal teenager, starring as the mother of a teenager in Santa Clarita Diet, partly because her fame is life-long, and you can see interviews with her at almost every age on YouTube. But, she says, she never watches them, never goes back. Hell no. The only thing I ever think when I see myself when Im younger, if Im on a talk show and Im stuck there having to watch clips, is that I was so much more brassy when I was young. Im like: Where do you get the balls, kid?

She says it as if those balls have disappeared with age. She claims shes much more polite now. Sarcastic, but polite. And worse still, she tries to say shes newly dull. In my life Im just so quiet and boring, she declares, not entirely convincingly. This is Drew Barrymore, after all, who talks with the hunger of someone who will always be on the lookout for something new, whether thats being a mother, a businesswoman, or playing a friendly estate agent who kills and eats bad people. I am pretty boring, she insists. I tell her I dont believe it. She smiles slyly, and leans in. Theres a rebel in her still. Im not sure I believe it either.

Santa Clarita Diet launches on Netflix on 3 February