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ducktracy · 4 years

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160. porky’s duck hunt (1937)

release date: april 17th, 1937

series: looney tunes

director: tex avery

starring: mel blanc (porky, daffy), billy bletcher (drunken fish, the guy from upstairs), the sportsmen quartet (singing fish)

disney has steamboat willie. warner bros has porky’s duck hunt (or, actually porky’s hare hunt/a wild hare, your pick). the moment we’ve all been waiting for... the fated day is here at last: the world is introduced to the enigma that is daffy duck. if you somehow have been living under a rock for the past 6 months and don’t know, or if you’re just a well meaning passerby who i needlessly insulted for my own failed attempt at comical grandeur and for that i really am sorry, daffy’s my favorite looney tunes character (porky a close second) and one of my favorite cartoon characters of all time, if not favorite. i know my icon is pretty subtle in conveying that. anyway, yes! daffy makes his debut here, as does mel blanc voicing porky. with joe dougherty gone, mel has gotten his feet increasingly wet in cartoons, and now he has his big break, voicing the stuttering pig (and others) all the way until his death in 1989. and, as we saw in picador porky, porky is considerably slimmer here, a model which would be picked up by ub iwerks and bob clampett. frank tashlin would eventually slim porky down as well, the last one to do so.

while daffy is a tex avery creation, he only has 3 tex cartoons total. he’s unnamed in this cartoon (model sheets label him as “that crazy darn fool duck”), earning his title in his second entry, tex’s daffy duck and egghead. bob clampett would seemingly “adopt” daffy from tex, pinning him as porky’s sidekick. while clampett carried on tex’s vision of daffy’s daffiness, he also calmed him down as well. by 1938, daffy wasn’t a caricature of himself anymore. maybe not the most sane (is he ever?), but he was capable of coherent thought and conversation. in this cartoon, daffy is just a heckling little pest (though he fulfills that role quite often). porky and his dog rin chin chin embark on a good ol’ duck hunt, but daffy has other plans—saving his own skin.

the introduction of the cartoon is deceitfully mild. you go in thinking it’s just another porky pig cartoon, how cute, maybe a few polite laughs. a great way to lure the audience in for what’s ahead. the cartoon’s theme, “a hunting we will go”, scores the opening pan of duck hunting essentials: a book on how to hunt ducks, a “sure fire” shotgun, one “wear-well” hunting suit, duck decoys, and shotgun shells. some nice multi-plane camera work as we settle in on the happy hunter: a triumphant porky poses in front of his mirror, donning his hunting garb and shotgun, obviously pleased with himself, fancying himself as some sort of revolutionary soldier.

eager to get a move on, porky practices his aim, aiming straight at his napping dog (this time named rin-chin-chin. porky will have many a dog with many interesting names. i think “black fury” is my favorite for how metal it sounds.) the terrified pooch wakes from his nap and yelps, seeking refuge in a cabinet. carl stalling’s musical touch accents the anxious blinks of the dog very nicely.

finally, we hear mel blanc’s first ever lines for porky as he laughs it off. mel’s stuttering is especially profuse in this cartoon, still testing the waters with his new character. “d-d-d-d-d-do-do-don-do-don’t worry, it’s n-n-n--ne-ne-n-no-n-no-not l-l-l-lo-loaded. eh-w-we-w-watch!”

and, because porky says it’s not loaded, the gun is absolutely loaded. he fires a big, gaping hole right in his ceiling. i love the slow, creeping realization that porky has as he finally registers what just happened. lots of gears turning in his head, some great acting. maybe this is just the Mel Blanc Effect, but porky seems to have the most personality in this cartoon yet. this scene also blew my mind when i first watched it: this was one of the first porky cartoons i checked out, maybe the second one after porky’s romance. i’m not too sure how i stumbled upon it (i think i was curious about daffy’s origins or something), but the musical timing just astounded me. there are 8 beats in the music, and 8 angry knocks on the door in conjunction with the music. succinct musical timing was still pretty foreign to me, and this scene REALLY heightened my appreciation for the 30s cartoons, especially the music. the music is such a pivotal factor in my enjoyment of these cartoons, and carl stalling is in top shape with this one.

chuck jones animates the next scene as porky asks “who’s there?” billy bletcher’s grow grovels behind the door. “it’s the guy from upstairs!” ever good natured, porky opens the door, receiving a big fat punch to the face. the payoff is great as we see the peeved neighbor turn around, a giant hole in the right buttcheek of his pants, revealing his underwear beneath. great, drawn out timing.

tex deceives us with his tranquility of the early morning as we approach the fated duck pond, a sweeping, beautifully painted pan of the surroundings, accented by “william tell overture”. hang onto the peace and quiet, because it’s about to dissipate. porky shushes his dog, uttering the future wisdom of elmer fudd (but with a different speech impediment) as he whispers “shhh... shhhh! b-be-buh-be quiet. buh-be v-ve-very, v-v-ve-v-ve-very, v-v-v-v-ve-ve-very, ca-ca-ca-c-ca-ca-c-q-qu-qu-quiet.”

right on cue, porky’s prayers are answered as the telltale quack of a duck rings from above. one of my favorite gags of tex’s, relying wholeheartedly on deceitful timing as the duck floats on ahead. porky aims his gun, alone with only his dog, his target, and his thoughts...

when suddenly, an explosive cacophony of noise cracks through the entire pond as a gaggle of hunters pop up from their respective hiding places, firing mercilessly at the duck. so mercilessly, in fact, that porky has to dive to the ground to save himself. perhaps even better than the sudden eruption of action is the peace that comes after it: the duck flies along out of the gun smoke, completely unscathed. the hunters yell “AW, SHUCKS!” in conjunction with the mocking underscore of a hunting we will go. to quote daffy, very ingenious!

an appropriate score of “i only have eyes for you” as we hone in on a dim-witted cross eyed hunter (in the same vein as the cross eyed hitchhiker in porky the wrestler), who spots the duck in the air. the hunter aims his double barrel shotgun, but because he’s doomed to a life of loony hi-jinks thanks to his character design, he misses with both shots from each barrel, or so we think. tex takes quite a drastic turn out of left field as we see that the hunter HAS struck a target: two of them. two planes spiral towards the ground in black smoke, their pilots jumping out with the aid of their parachutes. a nonsensical gag that has little to do with the plot, but is hilariously unprecedented.

more chuck jones animation as we spot our chipper hunter placing his duck decoys in the water. with that, we are met with stardom, folks. porky turns away, just in time for daffy to fly down and land among the decoys, unidentifiable. half of daffy’s dialogue is limited to quacks and duck noises in this cartoon, which makes it all the more entertaining in my opinion. it’s so funny seeing daffy act like an actual duck. out of all the prototypes of say porky (if there is a porky prototype... i guess the entire dougherty era?) and bugs, daffy acts the most like his assigned animal species out of any of them. daffy quacks, causing porky to turn around. all he sees is a sea of decoys. porky reaches for his gun, another quack. yet the decoys are still there, no duck in (presumed) sight. a befuddled porky scratches his head before hatching an idea, winking at the audience in reassurance.

to hunt the duck, you must become the duck. carl stalling’s music score is lovely, nice and quaint and homely as porky ties a duck decoy around his head. he slowly submerges himself into the water, creeping across the pond, gun in hand. on the surface, it just looks like a regular, unblinking, plastic duck swimming. in all my viewings of this cartoon, i only JUST caught the trash littering the floor of the pond: what a great detail! it certainly adds a nice dose of sardonic humor.

porky’s genius plan works in his favor as he slowly rises in front of daffy, effectively startling the duck as he points his rifle. daffy prepares for his fate, or lack thereof, shutting his eyes and closing his ears, but all that’s expelled out of the gun is a gush of water. while porky investigates his gun, daffy uses this as an opportunity to fly away, perching himself on top of a floating alcohol barrel a ways away from the potential crime scene. just as he thinks he’s outsmarted the idiot pig, a gunshot to the barrel below him proves daffy wrong. daffy flies into the air in an angry quacking fit, while we have some rather sloppy animation of the exposed alcohol spilling into the lake, the barrel sinking.

and, because why else? a few fish come across the alcohol. they swim into the barrel sober, and emerge hiccuping and inebriated. did you know that if a fish gets drunk, it can breathe and walk on land? a fitting, tipsy accompaniment of “when my dreamboat comes home” scores the fish giggling and helping each other into a spare rowboat lying on shore.

then comes a beautiful, drunken rendition of “on moonlight bay” sung by the drunken fish. the song would be used in many a looney tunes cartoon, whether it be underscores or full on song numbers (while he doesn’t sing here, daffy does sing a duet with porky of the song in chuck jones’ my favorite duck. seemingly sober, of course). billy bletcher voices the lone fish slurring “now don’t you ever go away!”, the fish staring right at the camera in the same manner as the drunks from picador porky. i believe this is also chuck jones animation. it checks out his rule of animating drunks and closeups! the song is just lovely, as is the banjo accompaniment. certainly worthy of a listen.

what other way to top off such a great moment than a ben hardaway level pun of porky muttering “there’s something fishy about that.” i digress, i enjoy the pun (i love my puns) and his animation is super appealing and cute. porky’s frustration melts as he hears the all too familiar call of a duck. cautiously does he pull apart the reeds that blocks him and his duck foe, attempting to get a good look...

and daffy retaliates by biting porky square in the snout. the daffy nose bite gag would be a running gag with him, long after the tex avery daffy days. what’s not to love? porky doesn’t appreciate the gag nearly as much as i do. instead, he reaches for his rifle, fires, and actually gets a shot in. daffy’s lifeless body flops into the water. oh joy, oh rapture! porky’s hard work has finally paid off.

porky is completely overjoyed, now an excited, stuttering mess. “i ge-ge-ge-gu-guh-guh-got ‘im! i ge-ge-ge-gu-guh-guh-got ‘im! eh-g-g-go-go ge-get the-the-the duck, rin-ch-chin-chin!” bobe cannon animates this great bait and switch of a gag as the dog dives into the water, tackling daffy’s body and swimming back underwater, now just a black blob. we finally think that porky has emerged victoriously, the music crescendoing in triumphant anticipation, when DAFFY emerges from the water, haughtily tossing the unconscious body of the dog on the shore in a huff. what a great gag! and a side note: i didn’t mention it before, but this is bobe cannon’s first animation credit. he’s a WONDERFUL animator who’d work for bob clampett and later chuck jones, responsible for so many great smears in the dover boys. however, he wasn’t too proud of his past. he got in full swing with the UPA craze, and because of its heavy focus on design, he viewed his past works at warner bros as inferior. his animation is terrific! one of his trademarks, at least in the B&W clampett cartoons, is having a character talk without animating the lipsync. you’ll notice this often with daffy especially, like in this scene here. a wonderful animator is he!

speaking of bob(e)s, bob clampett animates the next iconic scene that would shape the entirety of daffy’s character for decades to come. in perhaps one of the strongest fourth wall breaks yet to come from a looney tunes cartoon, porky pulls out a script from the recesses of his hunting suit and flips through it calculatingly. finally, he just lets the talking get to the bottom of the conundrum. “hey, that wasn’t in the script!” daffy laughs in a lispless, hayseed guffaw. his first words are “don’t let it worry ya, skipper. i’m just a crazy, darn fool duck!” and, with that, daffy makes his iconic exit, HOOHOO!ing into the horizon as he does his signature stan laurel hop and hugh herbert laugh, cartwheeling and ankle clicking and bounding into the horizon.

on animating this scene, clampett says: “tex told me, ‘make him exit funny.’ i asked, ‘can i do anything i want?’ and he said ‘yes—anything.’ so i had daffy cross his eyes, do a stan laurel jump, and then do cartwheels, and do a ballet pirouette, and bounce on his head, and so forth. now, at that time, audiences weren't accustomed to seeing a cartoon character do these things. and so, when it hit the theaters it was like an explosion. people would leave the theaters talking about this daffy duck.” well, he was certainly right about the scene making an impact: here we are dissecting it today! while daffy’s personality turned in favor of the greedy, miserly type chuck jones and friz freleng gave him in the 50s, bob mckimson would still occasionally cling to daffy’s HOOHOO! exits and ways, even into the 60s. quite the important scene!

the scene after is rather meaningless and random, inserted possibly to fill up time or just as a declaration for tex’s love of gags, yet it amuses me nonetheless. tex works his sign gag magic as we spot a long, stringy fish making its way through the pond, an offscreen hand holding a sign that reads THIS IS AN ELECTRIC EEL, FOLKS. confirming our suspicions, the eel jolts with electricity, turning into a literal lightning bolt, a physical metaphor for its deadly touch. daffy spots the eel, completely unaware of its caveat. the animation and acting for daffy is very nice—the way he hides behind a log to “sneak” up on it, peering his little head out to get a good look. the duck strikes, swallowing the eel in one big gulp, swallowing and gleaming at the camera with his best “ain’t i a stinker?” grin. as he carries on his duck duties, swimming away contentedly, he receives a startling jolt of electricity from the eel inside him. the gag itself is a homage to the same gag in tex’s porky the rain-maker. once calm and content, daffy now skitters across the pond in a fit of terrified quacking, receiving jolts of electricity all the way. the gag has no relevance to the plot really—it just fades out and that’s the end of it, but i enjoy it regardless.

elsewhere, a different plight on a different character: hunger. porky sits in his boat, rifle in hand, waiting for his next fateful visitor to fly across, but the giant sandwich perched next to him is all too tantalizing. he licks his lips in anticipation—surely a quick lunch break can’t hurt if nobody’s coming to be shot, right? interesting to note that the past two cartoons to feature porky as a glutton have been tex avery cartoons—gold diggers of ‘49 and the blow out.

unable to stand it, porky reaches for his sandwich, discarding his rifle for the time being. just as he reaches for his lunch, a gaggle of ducks land right on the boat, quacking at him mockingly. the animation of porky scrambling to reach his gun is great. he doesn’t just reach for it, he swats around aimlessly for a few beats, trying to collect himself. i love how he looks in this cartoon, too. very cute and very appealing. porky finally grabs the gun, preparing to shoot, but all the ducks have flown away. oh well. porky goes back to his lunch, and his visitors fly back down again. in the midst of his scramble, porky grabs the gun the wrong way, nearly killing himself as he shoots the rowboat instead, collapsing into the water. all hopes of a delicious sandwich lunch is gone.

no matter! a random caricature of comedian joe penner is hiding in the pond to bring solace to porky, holding out a duck and giving his garbled catchphrase of “you wanna buy a duck?” something tells me that porky isn’t too enthused.

fade out and in to porky’s trusting hunting dog rin-chin-chin signaling for his master to come over quietly. porky marches out of the pond, swapping his duck decoy for his hunting cap and seeing what the matter is. i’m wondering if this scene was swapped around last minute, or maybe to indicate the passing of time (and more failures), seeing as porky didn’t have his duck decoy hat on in the last scene. nevertheless, magically changing hats aren’t on the top of porky’s mind: daffy swimming tantalizingly right in front of him is.

porky prepares to fire, and daffy once more anticipates his doom... but all he receives is a series of malfunctioning clicks. today is not porky’s day. however, daffy is pleased. so pleased that he marches onshore to HELP a very irate porky, furiously clicking his gun to no avail. i love how porky looks in this scene. very cute. daffy shakes his head and tuts in disapproval. in a great moment of half baked camaraderie, daffy haughtily reaches his hands out, signaling for porky to give him the gun. porky obliges hesitantly, observing as daffy clicks the gun once and fires. a success. daffy’s expression of disapproving indifference is the cherry on top of the entire gag.

with the duty done, daffy returns the gun to porky, who scratches his head in befuddlement. and, as if we could possibly forget, daffy guffaws his short lived catchphrase: “huh-huh, it’s me again.” the timing is lovely: avery could have opted to make daffy preface the interaction by saying “it’s me again”, but waited until the last possible moment to let the absurdity sit on. the line serves as a segue for daffy to make his heel clicking exit in a chorus of HOOHOO!s, once more bounding away from porky.

porky’s determined to get that damn duck if it’s the last thing he does. while daffy flies off, porky fires rapidly. in a homage to the previous airplane gag where the pilots were shot down, porky fires so quickly that he ends up decimating the ground beneath him, digging himself into a physical (and metaphorical) hole with each shot. a few overhead quacks, and porky pulls himself up from his homemade trench.

the V of ducks (or geese?) floating so tantalizingly above porky is like pure gold. figuring his gun wouldn’t be much use as of right now, porky opts to use a duck call instead. he gives it a hearty blow. the duck call is certainly convincing, but hardly in the way porky wanted it to be. the reeds and marshland around him is shot to pieces, the crowd of hunters from earlier mistaking porky for a duck instead. porky shields himself as the fire eventually stops. his happy-go-lucky attitude from the exposition is completely gone now as we spot a rare (for this time, anyway) display of over-boiling emotions. beyond frustrated, porky slams the duck call to the ground in defiance. physics defies his defying, and the duck call bounces right into his dog’s throat.

rin-chin-chin hiccups, and a duck call is emitted instead. porky and his dog ogle at each other, fearing what this could possibly mean. without any more hesitation, they both flop to the ground, taking cover. surprisingly, gunshots are sparse. that doesn’t stop porky from fashioning his own white flag to indicate his surrender. and, in an act of averyism, the gunshots pour in once porky raises his white flag. the animation of porky flopping around helplessly is very nice and rubbery—he’s like a rag doll.

duck season is completely out of the question: it’s pig season now. porky and rin-chin-chin run for the (beautifully painted) rural hills, both trying to dodge the flurry of bullets that follow. it’s like a war zone! finally, they both make it out alive... but miserable in the process. they both sulk as the woefully trudge back home, porky shooting furious glares at his hiccuping/quacking dog, who stares back at him in remorse. the mood is drastically different from the one we saw at the beginning.

finally, porky is in the comfort of his own home, free to mope and sulk as much as he pleases. just as he’s about to get his wallowing on, a cruelly familiar noise sounds out the window. seeing as it was the last cartoon released, it’s only fitting for “she was an acrobat’s daughter” to underscore the gang of ducks outside porky’s house, mockingly frolicking and playing, just waiting to be pierced full of holes.

we get our first porky stutter switch gag as he repeatedly attempts to fire, but to no avail. he’s pissed now. “d-duh-d-d-duh-du-duh-doggone it! nuh-nuh-nn-n-no more bu-buh-buh-b-bu-bu-bul-bull-bulle-buh—eh-shells!” but, as they say, luck favors the prepared, and porky was certainly prepared in the beginning. bad luck strikes porky once more as he tosses his gun away in a huff. in fact, there WAS at least one more bu-buh-b-buh-bul-bulle—shell in the gun. the gun fires, creating a giant hole in porky’s ceiling, parallel to the beginning.

a continuity error all in the name of a gag as we hear angry pounding on the door. porky opens the door and gets another punch to the snout from the same guy before, now marching upstairs with TWO holes in the back of his pants. a funny gag for sure, but the fact that he’s marching upstairs when just previously we saw the outside of porky’s house, ducks flying in his yard, raises a bit of a question. iris out.

but that’s not all, folks! the end of this cartoon has a special visitor: instead of the script writing “that’s all, folks!”, we instead have daffy zooming and zipping around on the lettering, HOOHOO!ing all the way, waving goodbye at his audience.

if you somehow managed to get to the end of this, congrats! what a monumental cartoon. this is not, by any means, the best daffy cartoon ever to exist. it’s a bit rough in some spots, and after the novelty wears off it isn’t as extraordinarily hilarious as it would have been in 1937. but that’s not to say this isn’t one of my favorite cartoons of all time: it absolutely is, despite its flaws. i love this cartoon to death. there’s so much happening! daffy’s first appearance, mel’s first time as porky. so anti-disney of an approach that it would truly shape the rest of the cartoons we’ll be seeing. without this cartoon, who knows if we’d have porky’s hare hunt? and without porky’s hare hunt, who knows if we’d have a wild hare? bugs owes daffy a thank you for his existence. i think this really is one of the most important cartoons in the entirety of looney tunes, moreso than a wild hare. the chances of a wild hare existing without porky’s duck hunt is pretty slim. tex would have no wabbit to rechristen and shape into the bugs we know and love today, because chances are there wouldn’t be a prototype bugs. not that porky hunting cartoons are the end all be all of animation, but they did play a part in spawning some of the most iconic characters in animation history.

as wild as this cartoon is, it’s strangely comforting at the same time. carl stalling’s musical score is out of this world on this one. the wild, zany moments are much more exciting than the exposition, but the exposition is very endearing and perhaps even a little sentimental, at least in my eyes. and, fun fact, there was actually a picture book adaptation made from this cartoon, so i suppose that adds to my view of its sentimentality. it feels like one, big, twisted norman rockwell painting to me. i’m always put in a good mood when watching this cartoon, because i don’t care about the continuity errors or animation errors or what have you. it’s just plain FUN. and again, you have to put yourself in the mindset of a 1937 moviegoer. this cartoon may seem like nothing in comparison to the mayhem we’ve seen in future cartoons, but as of april 17th, 1937, it was an absolute game changer. people had never seen this before. so, thanks to the direction of tex, this cartoon has shaped what looney tunes is today. i love this cartoon, and i’d urge you to watch it anytime, but its historical significance is another pivotal reason why you should watch it, at least once. GO WATCH IT!!!! watch history unfold before your very eyes! you have no reason not to. go do it!!

link!

#lt #porky’s duck hunt #reviews #looney tunes #long post #avery #whew... we did it fellas

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newmusickarl · 3 years

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2021 already seems to be picking up right where 2020 left off, with some absolutely fantastic new music flying straight out of the gates this January. Here’s what’s worth your time from the past week:

Album & EP Recommendations

Album of the Week - Spare Ribs by Sleaford Mods

There is arguably no act more productive in the music business than Nottingham-based duo Sleaford Mods. For social commentary wordsmith Jason Williamson and beat-extraordinaire Andrew Fearn, Spare Ribs marks their eleventh studio album, and their fourth in just six years. You’d think with a turnaround time like that the duo may be running out of ideas, but in fact its quite the opposite – Spare Ribs might just be their best record to date.

Recorded during a three-week period during lockdowns here in the UK, Spare Ribs unsurprisingly sees the Mods observe and take stock of the current state of Britain, as it lies in turmoil amidst the ongoing global pandemic. Never one to shy away from making a political statement and offer a voice to the voiceless, Spare Ribs sees Williamson fully put the Tory government to rights with his razor-sharp tongue and unique wordplay. Opener A New Brick sees Williamson proclaim that “we’re all so Tory-tired” before launching into the bass-driven, Dominic Cummings takedown track, Shortcummings, making it clear early doors that the Mods are out for blood. This is then accentuated on the record’s excellent title track, which Williamson has explained comes from “the idea of the amount of people that died from the first wave of coronavirus; human lives are always expendable to the elites… We’re in a constant state of being spare ribs.”

However outside of the urgent lyricism, this record simply has several of the Mods’ best tracks of their career so far. There’s the darkly comic look at council estate living on Mork N Mindy and album highlight Nudge It, which sees Williamson pointing the barrel squarely at virtue signallers and fake people pretending to care. Both tracks also see Williamson joined by female vocalists, Tor Maries aka Billy Nomates and Amy Taylor from Australian-outfit Amyl The Sniffers, who both add a refreshing new dynamic to the Mods’ signature sound.

All in all, this is up there with the Mods’ best work, with Williamson’s witty but honest look at Tory Britain arriving at the timeliest of moments as we remain trapped in another lockdown. It’s obviously far too early to call this one an Album of the Year contender, but right now it is the most essential listen you’ll find this week.

DEMIDEVIL by Ashnikko

Also worth checking out this week is the debut mixtape from American singer-songwriter and rapper Ashnikko. Bold, brash and a whole lot of fun, Ashnikko’s fusion of pop, punk and hip-hop is refreshing to hear, with DEMIDEVIL also featuring some choice samples from the likes of Kelis and Avril Lavigne, as well as an incredible collaboration with Grimes for the album’s highlight, Cry. The mixtape also climaxes (ahem, not sorry) in the wonderfully titled Clitoris! The Musical, which is both outrageous and hilarious in equal measure.

SUCKAPUNCH by You Me At Six

Elsewhere, British rockers You Me At Six released their seventh studio album SUCKAPUNCH, which is a solid front-to-back listen that also sees the quintet experiment outside their comfort zone slightly with more electronic production on a few tracks. That said, it is the stunning, heartfelt rock ballad Glasgow that offers the album’s highlight.

So No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way by The Xcerts

And finally on the Albums & EPs side this week is the new EP of cover tracks from Scottish rockers The Xcerts. It’s never easy covering iconic songs from the likes of The Cure, The Ramones, Avril Lavigne and, ahem, Starship, but here The Xcerts present these tracks like you’ve never heard them before. Here, The Xcerts deliver the opposite of what you are expecting, turning these songs into gorgeous, restrained acoustic numbers. This is exactly how cover songs should be done, taking the original and crafting something else entirely unique – stunning.

Tracks of the Week

Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo

One track that I missed from last week’s roundup but like many others have not stopped playing this week, Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo is undoubtedly the biggest song of the year so far. A career-making debut single, Olivia bares her soul with a tale of heartbreak that anyone can relate to, with the emotional heft of the words powerfully propelled by her stunning vocal performance. Offering shades of Lorde and Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo has immediately made herself one to watch this year thanks to this incredible song.

Dead Butterflies by Architects

Debuted at their triumphant livestreamed show from the Royal Albert Hall at the back end of last year, Dead Butterflies immediately stood out as Architects’ next big soaring anthem. Now released as the studio cut, the track is even more glorious than I remember, lifted by some stirring strings, jubilant horns and some pitch perfect production. Roll on the album release!

All of Me by Maximo Park

And finally, Newcastle indie legends released the best teaser track to date for their forthcoming album, Nature Always Wins, in the form of All of Me. Featuring an infectious chorus, a gleeful melody and a flying little keyboard riff, this is a track to remind the world why they fell in love with Maximo Park in the first place.

#new music #best new music #sleaford mods #jason williamson #andrew fearn #nudge it #amy taylor #amyl & the sniffers #spare ribs #ashnikko #demidevil #suckapunch #you me at six #the xcerts #olivia rodrigo #drivers license #maximo park #architects

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smoothshift · 5 years

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I spent 3 days with a 2019 C63 AMG Here's the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly! via /r/cars

I spent 3 days with a 2019 C63 AMG Here's the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

It was a pretty fun three days and all that I can say is that its a car where what's good is very good, what's bad is annoying, and what's ugly ruins the whole experience.

The car was a 2019 C63 AMG in a stunning green colour with a sticker price just shy of $85,000 and 1800 miles. I was given the car to demo by a very good friend of mine that operates a rather large MB dealer.

So, first, the car has a lot to like--the Good.

It's no surprise how well the car drove. It steered precisely, went like a scalded dog, clicked off up shifts and downshifts like a race car, and stopped on a dime. It also had a very surprisingly compliant ride--every now and then it almost makes one forget that its a hot-rod at heart. The Burmeister sound system added to the fun of it. The seats were comfortable and yet supportive in a sort of hugging manner. The interior is beautiful to look at and there were more tech features, including the very cool AMG Dynamic screens, then you could shake a stick at. Finally, the car is simply stunning to look at with a sweet looking design with a real elegance to it.

The green colour is perhaps one of my favorites. It was the kind of green that really hits the spot, dark enough to be black looking at times but bright and yet deep in the sunlight. I wish more cars came in such an awesome colour.

When it comes to the good, the car delivers where you expect it. There isn't much else than can be said. A car like this doesn't become a market stalwart without getting a lot right.

The bad left me perplexed and scratching my head a little bit.

That steering? That very sweet driving steering is done through an absolutely terrible steering wheel. The great looking flat bottomed steering wheel is simply stunning to behold but its a nightmare to use. Its dripping in a million buttons to control everything--and then some. Particularly noteworthy are the two strange buttons on each side that you sort of wave your finger over. If the finger sliding volume slider in a Cadillac was bad then this is worse. It is a smallish "button" but it rarely actually worked and when it did it the results it produced were infuriating. Too much pressure to one side would sent the infotainment system into a new set of menus or submenus when all you wanted to do was change the track. Oh, and the center "cap" holding the iconic MB emblem was misaligned in this particular car so a roughly 1/8th of an inch gap existed between the faux aluminum trim and the textured plastic of the cap--an odd gaff. So the steering wheel is annoying but then again you can always just choose not to touch any of the buttons and drive the car like you stole it and believe me the car responds by seriously quickening your pulse.

How about that scalded dog part? What else would you expect but a car with blistering power? How about a real scream? Yea, it actually lacked that. The sound of the V8, while great at low RPMs with a deep burble, actually managed to disappoint some. It was never quite as loud or obnoxious as you wanted it to be. And, going back to the steering wheel, can be controlled via a very cool thumb button on the bottom left of the inside of the wheel. That was a nice design. What wasn't nice was the fact that the button is astoundingly brittle feeling with the button screaming out with creaks and pops loud enough for a passenger to ask what the creaking and popping was over hearing the exhaust get louder. But, you can simply not touch that button and use the spare control around the center control wheel--which I would suggest. With that in mind, you can stick with just the good by doing that and blowing the doors off slower traffic.

Few things give you more of a feeling of an excitement than when the C63 stampedes towards the redline and then slams, in a good way, into the next gear with an assertive thud. The transmission is always responsive, no matter what driving mode you are in. It's always doing exactly what you want it to. That is, unless you are shifting using the paddles. Let's face it, little good is coming from that steering wheel. The aggressiveness of the shifts drops off noticeably when you take control yourself. Also, the sooner MB moves away from the odd little column shifter the better. It works and once the 10 second learning curve is conquered you will never mess up again. But, its just out of place in that car--but that's admittedly personal so your mileage may vary. Flatten your right foot and let the car do the work and you won't care though.

The brakes are strong, like you would expect. They need to be because you'll find yourself hurtling past the speed limit on every open road and so repeatedly bringing you back down to reasonable speeds requires serious hardware. The bad, the first movement of the peddle does nothing. For a performance car with the chops of the C63 its a bit weird to modulate your brake pedal like that. The first bit of travel will result in absolutely no change in velocity. So, just hit them a little harder and you'll be fine.

The Burmeister sound system most certainly falls into the Good category. Its powerful, clear, and envelopes the driver. Not much better praise can be heaped on a sound system than to say that it contributes to quickening ones pulse and the Burmeister certainly did that. But, it isn't all sunshines and rainbows. The MB spin wheel control system is not simple to use and the various controls awkward instead of intuitive. Imagine that all you want to do is turn up the volume, as I said before the less you use the steering wheel the better, so you find the little roller on the passenger side of the main control and you spin. It does nothing. So, you spin some more. It still does nothing so you spin a little more and suddenly that fantastic Burmeister system is blasting your passengers. The system has this purposeful delayed response that makes volume imprecise to operate and in a car as point and shoot as the C63 is its rather stupid. So, after you struggle to adjust your volume you are then met with menu upon menu and a burning hot wheel with a pad on top and the ultra luxurious feel of harsh plastic. I can't bring myself to say anything nice about the system, other than the display is beautiful. Its just an annoying system with too much going on. Again though, just turn it all off and drive like the wind and you really won't care.

Oh those wonderful seats! Not only are they extremely attractive but good lord are they comfortable. They're comfortable in a way that would take you the whole lease term of a Lincoln to get right on those perfect position seats. They hug you but without ovvrgripping, like in an Alfa. So what's bad? They supposedly have a cooled function but regardless of the setting you'll never feel anything. And, no matter how fit one may be the high, and quite loving, bolsters will make it impossible for you to make a graceful exit out of your car. Still, who really cares? I know that speaking for me I can just turn up the rather fantastic A/C or simply keep my right foot down and the sound of the V8 will keep me from ever realizing that the cooled seats are a waste or that you can never look cool crawling out of a car.

Much has been said of the beautiful MB interior design. There is an undoubtedly elegant look to everything. The flowing console with its slight taper and the eye popping speaker grilles all give a wonderful look to it all. Its the first thing just about everybody says when getting in--its beautiful. The bad part is the longer you stay in it the more oddities you start to notice. There are plenty of things that just shouldn't be in a car that expensive. That's not always a problem, but it is when that's mostly what your passenger looks at. The dash in front of the passenger is the same here as it is in the base model--no changes. And, the more you look the more of this you start to find. The beautiful grey looking wood is really plastic, or if it isn't its missing a damn good opportunity because it fools nobody. Finally, the more you look around the more you start to notice things--big and small. The "cap" in the middle of the steering wheel mentioned earlier is just the start. There were quite a few misaligned panels, particularly obvious are those around the wood looking material flowing down the center console and from there the work in and around the A/C vents where the cutting looks like it was done more in Hungary than Germany. Black plastic looks good in no vehicle and the same is true here. Still, all can be forgiven with just a couple minutes of angry driving.

So there is some bad, and some of it is pretty bad, but there isn't anything that can't be forgiven by anybody who appreciates the car for what it is, a German hot-rod to blast up and down the road. But, then there is the ugly--a catastrophic breakdown.

We all know that the days of rock-solid buy-it-for-life Benz quality waived bye-bye sometime ago but for the most part modern cars, no matter where they are from, just don't leave people on the side of the road. Well, this one did. On a simple cruise over to a local Friday night football game the car came up short on 4th down. Upon arriving at a red-light the car shut off and didn't come back. An epic number of warning lights flashed across the beautiful gauges warning of all manner of catastrophe. It wouldn't start again. A call to MB resulted in the arrival of a truck to take the vehicle back to the dealership but even that was made difficult by the fact that the car would not go into neutral to be pushed out of the road or pulled onto the truck. Yup, that means that my family and I had to get out of the car and go across the street and leave the car, with flasher on, in the middle of traffic for the 2 hours it took for MB to get somebody to the vehicle. Pushing it was not an option. That's ugly.

But, good Lord did those sweeping lines and beautiful green paint look good as we sat there watching the emergency lights flash.

The unplanned breakdown also means that unlike after my Lincoln Navigator review I never got a chance to get any good photographs of the car which is disappointing because I really wanted to share how gorgeous the green was. The world needs many, many, more green cars.

Putting the breakdown aside, there is a lot to love about the car. The car oozes appeal. I had a great time driving it and enjoyed my time with it. But, I couldn't help be just a little disappointed as a whole. That isn't to say it isn't a great car, because it really is, but its still a flawed car and some people are going to find those flaws pushing them into alternatives, like a BMW or an Alfa--I know that's where I'd be. It looks good, drives well, and sounds better than most and that's pretty high praise.

#reddit #autonews #auto #cars

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anotheruserwithnoname · 6 years

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Non-tag tag game....

I was “non-tagged” by @oswincoleman who had been given a series of questions to answer and ended with a “free ball” rather than tagging anyone specific...

Rules: “Answer the questions and tag blogs you want to get to know better” Nickname: In real life it tends to be variants of “Hey, You” but online the one I use around my fanfic is The Saddleman (named for Bill Haley’s group before they became the Comets). Zodiac: Taurus. Appropriate as people often think I’m full of bull. Height: I like rounding up to 5′10 Time: 12:30 a.m. Favorite Band: Bill Haley and His Comets Song stuck in my head: Dream Lover by Bobby Darin (was playing at the Las Vegas airport just before boarding my flight back home this afternoon) Last movie I saw: I can’t recall the last one I watched on video, but the last one I went to in the theatre was Avengers: Infinity War.

Last thing I Googled: How to change the odometer on a 2018 Chevy Cruze from kilometres to miles. Done as a favour to the car rental place in Las Vegas; apparently the previous renter of said Cruze was from Canada or Europe and changed it to read kilometres and they couldn’t figure out how to switch it back! Other blogs: Just this one. That I’ll admit to. (No, seriously, just this one.) Do I get asks: Sometimes I get straight asks. Many of the “asks” I get are either correcting me on something (which is fair and appreciated), or complaining about me not writing about certain topics (which is not). Why did I choose this username: I got annoyed trying to come up with a name that hadn’t been taken. When I set up this blog in the spring of 2016 I hadn’t yet settled on “The Saddleman” for my fan fic nom de plume and other options I wanted were taken. So I went with “Another User with No Name” to spoof the fact many of us use pseudonyms rather than our real name. I considered trying to change my username but it’s more trouble than its worth and I think “The Saddleman” is already taken by an equine supplies store somewhere. Following: 31. In July 2017 I was following about 85 blogs but that was becoming unwieldy, so I trimmed that number down. Average amount of sleep: This week, maybe 4 (see reference to Las Vegas, above). Usually about 6. If I sleep too much more than that I tend to wake up with a headache. Lucky number: 23 What I’m wearing: I’ll spare you the mental image. (See “Time”, above)

Dream job: I’d love to make a living writing fiction. Dream trip: New York City or Egypt’s pyramids Favorite food: Peanut butter and jam sandwiches Play any instruments? I used to plonk around on the ukulele. Eye color: Blue Hair color: Brown Describe myself with aesthetics: I identify with this guy

Languages I speak: English Most iconic song: Rock Around the Clock Random fact: Early in his acting career, Harrison Ford also worked as a carpenter and one of his contracts was to build a recording studio for iconic musician Sergio Mendes.

... Oh, you mean a random fact about me? I once had a story published in Readers Digest.

Last book I read: The Last Colony (book 3 of the Old Man’s War series) by John Scalzi.

Last show I watched: I actually don’t tend to watch a lot of TV these days, and I almost never binge (not enough time or patience). But I did make an exception about 4 months ago for the much-better-than-people-remember 1977 TV series based on Logan’s Run. I do have a list of shows coming up in the next few weeks I plan to watch though, including the new seasons of Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl, the new Short Treks Star Trek spinoff, and definitely Jenna Coleman’s The Cry.

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do this.

#personal #tag game

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ayellowbirds · 6 years

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Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 14: "Go Away Ghost Ship"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 14)

AKA "An Improbably High Number of Chef Disguises For an Episode About Pirates"

The episode begins with a foggy night at sea; a sailor aboard a large vessel catches sight of something strange through the mists. A tattered-looking ship from the age of sail? Flying the Jolly Roger?

Sure, that’s a rational conclusion. The view does indeed switch to the deck of the “ghost” ship, revealing a cock-eyed ginger buccaneer laughing madly... and then the view fades to a malt shop as the music goes from menacing to mellow.

I’ll note that his is at least the third time we’ve seen that hot rod parked next to the Mystery Machine at a malt shop. Who does it belong to? What’s their story? We may never know.

Inside the shop is an almost 1:1 reproduction of the newspaper-reading scene from episode 3, down to the pink drink with extra straws. The news this time? One “C.L. Magnus”, a shipping magnate, claims that the recent rash of disappearances of oceangoing vessels are caused by the revenge-seeking ghost of Redbeard. Shaggy hopes his “super duper sandwich” isn’t a target, a reasonable fear since it’s about as big as an oil tanker.

With Scooby’s assistance, Shaggy ties a string around his sandwich, compressing it from a height that reached from his waist to his shoulder, to a fruitcake-dense sandwich of more normative volume.

He doesn’t notice that Scooby is still holding one end of the string, however, and when he closes his eyes in anticipation, Scooby gives it a yank and opens wide, downing the entire thing in one go. “Ree-lishus!” Scooby chortles to himself, while Shaggy is left confused and hungry. Man’s best friend.

The rest of the gang do not pay attention. They are used to the boy and his dog with their bottomless appetites. They do not look directly at it, and late at night, it will keep them from sleep.

Velma and Daphne seem oddly sympathetic to the plight of Mr. Magnus the Magnate, with Velma calling him “poor” and mentioning that he’s going out of business, while Daphne calls him a “nice man”. Fred suggests they help solve the mystery, and leads the gang to Magnus’s luxury penthouse apartment.

The gang act as if they somehow know of Magnus, and that it’s perfectly reasonable that they could show up unannounced and offer their assistance free of charge. Magnus’s butler is not having any of that.

“Not to be disturbed”, he intones in a voice rendered by John Stephenson as a riff on a Boris Karloff performance. If Magnus is not to be disturbed, mister, you’re setting a bad precedent.

The gang decide to sneak in, convinced Magnus will accept their help if they can just talk to him, and they dress up as “room service”.

There’s a few obvious problems with this, aside from an attempt at unlawful intrusion into someone’s home. For starters, the butler has just seen them, and yet Velma and Shaggy do not adopt more of a disguise than throwing on aprons and hats. Second, it’s an apartment building, not a hotel. Apartments tend not to have room service.

Third, as the butler notes when they push past him, it’s 11:00 PM. No wonder Magnus wanted to be left alone! When the gang wind up tumbling into a pile of teenagers and a Great Dane and are forced to explain themselves, the scene transitions to Magnus relating how his ancestors were responsible for ending the original threat of Redbeard, and that the pirate is now seeking revenge. As he relates this, Scooby notices his butler watching from behind a curtain....

The butler is so obviously telegraphed as the culprit, that it’s obviously not him, but there’s ultimately no resolution to this bit—a comic book adaptation made him out to be a spy from an insurance company, leading me to wonder if that had been part of this episode left out of the final production.

The gang take a motorboat out in the middle of the night, having drawn conclusions about the scheduling of Redbeard’s attacks that apparently completely elude the Coast Guard and other authorities. They spot a “mysterious’ fog bank, moving ahead of the real targeted freighter and playing a decoy foghorn to try to lure out the pirate ship. Shaggy observes the fog is thick enough to cut it with a knife, and Scooby...

I can excuse the fog-cutting as a cartoon gag but Scooby where the jinkies did you get that knife? Has Scooby just had a knife on him this whole time?

The gang has little in the way of foresight when it comes to villains actually planning violence, and the ghost ship appears on a collision course prepared to ram their tiny boat. When Shaggy tries to put the outboard motor into “double full-speed reverse”, it tears a chunk of the boat off as it zooms away on its own, and their little boat is struck, cutting it in half!

That one-word response from Fred is his single best line in the series so far.

Split up in the most literal and forceful manner possible, Shaggy and Scooby squeeze in through a porthole while Fred, Daphne, and Velma climb the side of the boat, all seemingly unnoticed by the pirates. Each team seeks both the others... as well as some clues. Scooby and Shaggy run into Redbeard himself, who gives chase and menaces them with a flying sword.

It’s the specifics that make Shaggy such an icon of cowardice. The audience can’t be left to assume that this is a friendly ghost sword, wielding by some cavalier Casper. Stuck between a ghost and a sharp place, the boys are forced to plead for their lives as Redbeard and his “ghost” crew bear down on them.

Meanwhile, the other three members of the gang wander around the unrealistically massive interior of the ghost ship, wondering about its emptiness. They catch sight of Redbeard walking around and laughing, but quickly lose sight of him while sneaking about, leaving the viewer unclear on the timing of this scene. Is it while Shaggy and Scooby are being chased? Before, or after?

It doesn’t matter to the writers, because it’s clue time!

Before it can be explained to the viewer that dry ice (AKA frozen CO2) is notable for rapidly sublimating into a misty-looking vapor even at temperatures well below the freezing point of water, and that it does so especially dramatically when exposed to liquid water, the trio are locked in the room by Redbeard.

A scene transition back to Shaggy and Scooby shows that Redbeard is also standing over them, who observes that he’d spare their lives if they were “good for anything”. Shaggy says they’re good cooks, which seems to confuse Scooby as much as it does the viewer, but the threat of losing their heads motivates him to go along with it.

Oh, and Shaggy finds another use for his chef getup from when they tried to break into C.L. Magnus’s apartment, which i guess he’s just been... carrying around? Deciding that they need to make a stew that a ghost will enjoy, Scooby and Shaggy mix in chains (for rattling), ash from the fireplace, cobwebs, and on Scooby’s suggestion, an enormous bar of soap.

Shaggy, you’re a track athlete. This is how you get a fungal infection.

Alternatively, he means he hardly ever uses it as an ingredient, which is almost worse, because it implies that sometimes Norville “Shaggy” Roberts does use bar soap as an ingredient.

Redbeard has some doubts about their creation, and insists that they eat it. After some hasty mouthfuls, Shaggy hiccups out some bubbles, and Redbeard simply sits and watches as Shaggy suggests to Scooby that they “bubble our way out of here!”, turning to face the ghost pirate and spewing a screen of soap bubbles at him.

As the chase scenes continue amidst things like Shaggy utilizing his vocal talents and shadow puppetry to convince Redbeard’s goons that their captain is pointing them in a different direction, and falling overboard in a basin—forcing Shaggy and Scooby to hand-paddle after the ghost ship’s wake—the pirate vessel pulls into a skull-shaped cave in the middle of a rocky cove.

You know, i feel like Hanna-Barbera cartoons ill-prepared me for the utter lack of skeletal rock formations in real life. If i ever want to live on a mountain shaped like the yawning maw of an angry skull, i’m probably going to have to make it myself.

Fred identifies this as “a secret cove on Skull Island”, but i feel like, you know, someone ought to have noticed the enormous sea cave formed by the skull-shaped part of a place known as Skull Island. Unless Skull Island has lots of skulls. Maybe it does!

There’s a brief and confusing gag where Scooby notices their paddling after the ghost ship has attracted a shark, which—oh, wait. It’s just a dorsal fin, which Scooby realizes when he lifts it out of the water to inspect it. Just a dorsal fin, skimming the ocean surface and following them around.

What.

The gang reunite in the caves, and Fred realize that the folded paper hat Shaggy has been wearing since casting Redbeard’s shadow was made from a ship’s manifest, indicating the contents and value of C.L. Magnus’s cargo freighter... that is, the one that sails tomorrow, rather than the one that they were attempting to raid that night. As the gang gather more clues that the ghost pirate is no ghost at all, they find a treasure chest with a talking pirate skull inside that pops out and demands “the password, you swabs!” via a miniaturized microphone and speaker hidden in its jaw.

The gang try several piratical passwords, but it’s Shaggy’s suggestion that works:

This is the weirdest callback to a previous episode. Beyond the secret passage that opens in the wall, the gang find countless crates and barrels of stolen cargo, and the ghost pirate crew, flying sword included. The resulting chase leads to the gang hiding among the cargo, where Scooby and Shaggy discover...

An entire shipment of Scooby Snacks, further solidifying that this is just a known product, something on the market that has Scooby’s own name on it. Emboldened by biscuits, the antics kick into high gear, with things like a battle of sword vs. liverwurst sausage, toilet plungers fired from longbows, and Shaggy tickling Redbeard with an electric eggbeater that has a pistol grip for no good reason, before fleeing on an “automatic pogo stick” that is clearly a jackhammer, as Shaggy and Scooby only realize after it already starts up, taking them on a ride that winds up going up onto the ceiling and directly over Redbeard. As the resulting chaos sends Scooby, Shaggy, and the villains crashing into a pile of tires, the chase ends, and the villain is revealed as...

Shaggy is shocked that it wasn’t the butler, and the Coast Guard rep who has joined the gang on the deck of the ghost pirate ship (which, one must assume, they commandeered and piloted back out to open waters on their own) clearly wants to see Magnus’s two companions unmasked, as well, asking about their identities.

Daphne doesn’t care who they are. Well, as long as their names aren’t Merle and Taako.

The plan is explained, including the dancing sword being “operated by wires”, and the bit about the dry ice, which Velma says “everybody knows”, though the Coast Guard guy has clearly never heard of it. Scooby demonstrates, stirring up an impenetrably thick fog, which he cuts through once again with his mysterious knife.

Only this time, he cuts a giant doughnut shape in the fog, grabs it with his paws, and takes a bite out of the fog-nut, proceeding to chew and swallow.

The visual of Scooby treating a cloud of carbon dioxide vapor like it was solid matter and joyfully eating it has haunted me for decades. Dear Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, you tormented my childhood with this bit. This joke stole my innocence.

Zoinks darn you, Scooby-Doo!

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

#scooby doo #KRAOSD

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melonmaru · 7 years

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Studio 6 - Statements

Contextual Statement

Most of the board games are designed for long-term usage. They can be used multiple times after bought. Also, there are many different genres and rules to fit them in different time, place and mood. This project, Ponto, tried a different way to approach the usage. It is not a one-off game but can be enjoyed lightly like eating a snack. And, it does not stay as a toy, and percolated through to the public and their daily life to extend the area of ‘play’. The meaning of ‘extend the area of ‘play’ is increasing the popularity of the board game, so people may have less interest in board games can enjoy the games. The McDonald’s Monopoly event is a good example. The Monopoly is called as a family board game, but the actual use of the game is set on groups of people who are interested in it. However, using board games in the marketing increases the sale. Moreover, the Monopoly event increases the public interest of board game and that affects on people’s diet. So, the Monopoly event extends the popularity of the board game to the public. Of course, McDonald has a higher awareness because of its name value. So, the influence of the popularity is strong compared to my project. It is one of the reasons that I choose the vending machine as the medium to communicate with the public. It is popular, convenience and easy to maintain compared to a shop and it helps to increase the public contact. Also, the vending machines coincide to the purpose of the project because the items selling in vending machines are mostly the daily essentials and foods such as snacks and beverages.

Japan has about 5.52 million vending machines in the country. They sell snacks and beverages as New Zealand Vending machines do. However, those 1.52 million vending machines are not filled with the food and beverages only, but they are selling umbrellas, books, neckties and rice and they also sell insurances through the vending machines either. When the number and types of vending machines increase, people do not need to face each other to buy a thing. Then, the communication between people decreases and it can cause the reduction of the sociality and lose the connection between communities. There is a problem already in the communications in the physical community. The increase of digital-based social media and the wide use of smartphone caused the social communication lean to the digital medium. The developed technology linked people who are not in the same place, but it disconnected the communication between people just next to us. So, Ponto tried to rebuild the physical community by using the existing technique, the board game.

The purpose of the project is to build a physical community and the place, playtime and the targets are important because the place will group the people and people will be linked by sharing the each other’s time. So, I could not say that my project is for anyone in any place. Because it is too broad and I needed a threshold point to reduce the production process and time. As the threshold, I decided the train passengers as the target user. The reasons are; First, the number of the trains station and the route of train rail is fixed and the travel time is steady compared to other transports and they helped me a lot to set the average play time. Second, the number of passengers that a train can carry at once is higher than other transports. The Higher number of passengers means there is a higher potential for the usage. In fact, the number of train passengers was increased. From the article of Our Auckland published on 6 April said that 19 million passengers made trips for the year to date by train and it is an annual increase of 19.4 percent. (OurAuckland, 2017) This statistical data shows the number of target users will be increased and the potential of the usage even higher than now.

The play time is also affected from the train passengers. A report of ‘The use of travel time by rail passengers in Great Britain’ said that train passengers are spending their travel times on;

· sleeping/snoozing;

· reading for leisure;

· working/studying (reading/writing/typing/thinking);

· talking to other passengers;

· window gazing/people watching;

· listening to music/radio;

· text messages/phone calls - work;

· text messages/phone calls - personal;

· eating/drinking;

· entertaining children;

· playing games (electronic or otherwise);

· being bored;

· being anxious about the journey (e.g. delays or where to get off);

· planning onward or return journey; and

· other.

The most important point on above list is the ‘window gazing and people watching’. In the report, the window gazing rated higher in people who journey of less than 15 minutes duration and they suggested that is a possible travel duration threshold below for doing something else. So, the play time of each game is less than 15 minutes because people may not get interested in anything else if they have something to do, and the threshold of the spare time is 15 minutes as the report.

Now a day, smartphones are using widely for killing time and my project may not be able to bring a big change to the world. However, I believe Ponto can build a different type of community compare to the online community. And the board game is not an electric and electronics fixed technology, so the project tries to escape from the ‘electronics jail’. Ponto has a vending machine to connect the board games and users, an Arduino is used in the vending machine and I coded the Arduino. However, the key item of this project is the board game. So, analysing the board game component and finding methods of building a community using a board game was the main research area. Extension of these, the emotions related to the components of the board game was very interesting and it will be a good future research area.

Conceptual Statement

Ponto is a socially engaging board game to support users to build a physical community and it can be bought from a vending machine. The game is constituted of 3 different component. Each package contains one component of the game, not a whole game, so the user must find the other user who has a package of another component. It is a very inconvenience process. However, it is needed process because the purpose of the game is rebuilding a physical community. And this process will pursuit the new way of the community by meet, talk and play the game with others.

Each package contains one of dices, cards or tokens and up to 7 different games can be built by the pairing the packages. There is a short storyline to increase the relation between packages. The storyline is;

There are 3 little aliens living in a vending machine, and they are named as Rockie, Scizzy and Palate. Rockie loves cookies, Scizzy loves fizzy drinks and palate loves chocolates. When they fight, Rockie wins to Sizzy, but he cannot win to Palate. Scizzy always loses to Rockie, but always win to Palate.

These characters came out from Rock-Paper-Scissors game. The story affects to the rules of the games.

The main target is the train passengers but it can be anyone who can access to the vending machine. The game is designed for playing during the travel time so it can be used as a travel game too.

A board game is a basic format of the social game that makes people face to each other, talk and enjoy. It is different to the online which has anonymity. So, their words, acts and emotion of a person is delivered to the opponent directly. It makes people take care of themselves and it helps to develop their sociality. While playing this board game, people in different religions, cultures, ages, genders group up with one common factor, ‘play’. And it can be a new culture and new community can be built within this new fresh culture.

Ponto in technical side tried to focus on breaking down the board game to its components and reflected each property of them.

Dice: Emotions delivered from rolling a dice such as tension, hope and so on.

Card: inference and prediction skills to win the game.

Token: A technique to get the advantage of the game.

There are only 3 components now, but the extension is possible and same components can be redesigned to a different rule. Now, only 3 games are ready to play, and all others are still under development. Each package of Ponto is the only half of a board game. It is nearly impossible to play with one package, and if it is possible to play with one package, players cannot enjoy much as the set. And, the game attaches the user to the community since the user starts looking for other users.

The main item of the project is the board game, but the vending machine is also iconic in this project. It is a bridge between the users and the board games because they only can get the games from the vending machine. The vending machine also reflects the ‘fast, easy and convenience’. The time taken on designing board games took so long, so I was planned to skip the vending machine production. However, the board game became more complex, so it stayed as a concept with few demos. Then, I built the vending machine to reflect that the start point of the project is the vending machine.

I am thinking of 2 different future developments. One uses existing Social Networking Services to find the opponents and they will build a new fused community of the digital and real world. It will extend the physical community to the digital world and also works on the opposite way. So, the advantage of both types of the community will be reflected in one combined community. The other method is using the board game as a new advertisement medium. Like the McDonald’s Monopoly event, uses their own story with own models and build small board games and sell them in the real vending machine or use as a promotional material for the higher benefit. Or, combine the real food as board game components or use the package of the item as a board game, so it can build a community of ‘eat, enjoy and share’.

I learnt a really important point from this project. The idea of the initial project was a consumable board game, but it is developed to a social development tool now. And it also reflects the problems and became provided a solution. I did not think about this at the beginning, but it is developed well over the researches and developments. This project tells me how the research and developments are important.

References

OurAuckland. (2017). Record numbers of passengers using trains. [online] Available at: http://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/news/2017/04/record-numbers-of-passengers-using-trains/.

Lyons, G., Jain, J. and Holley, D. (n.d.) The use of travel time by rail passengers in Great Britain. Under revision for publication in Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice.

#pontowk13 #pontowk12 #statements

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thesoujishow · 4 years

Conversation

S01E02 - Raimei Tsubusu

[vaporwave lo-fi song]

Souji: Testing? Hello?

Raimei: WUUUUSSSSHHGFGSHSHSHSHSHSHSHS...SSHAAAAAAAA....

Souji: Ok. There we go.

[INTRO - glitchy transition music]

Souji: Hello, and welcome to the Souji Show. I'm Souji and this is a show where I talk about anything I want. 'Cause this is my show, and not yours.

Souji: This episode is sponsored by WcDonalds! WcDonald’s wants to remind you that the most important meal of the day is breakfast. [ominously] So why would you let a morning go by without staring deeply into the mirror until you no longer recognize the face staring back at you – mimicking your every gesture, mocking your every movement?

Souji: [confused + ominous] How else will you get the energy you need for a full day’s work or recreation if you aren’t silently screaming into the visage of a person who gives you such uneasy spirit, such unshakable terror, a queasy feeling every time you make the connection between what that thing is and what you are becoming? What you have become? Where does the void end? Where do you end? When do you end? What time is it now? You’ve been crying, but for how long?

Souji: [cheerful] WcDonald’s! I’m lovin’ it.

[MAIN - glitchy transition music]

Souji: For this very special episode, we have an extra special guest. You may know her as the Violet Vendetta or the captain of the baseball clan. Everyone, give it up for Raimei Tsubusu! You look fantastic today, can you tell our listeners what you're wearing?

Raimei: My sincere apologies for the white noise that was the sound of a closing inter-dimensional portal.

Raimei: It's good to be here. And a great sacrifice on your part, Souji. Not a lot of men would have the guts to expose themselves to this level of danger. As for my attire, these are unique garbs crafted by the Lunarian Moon People, forged in the pits of the thirty-second moon crater. They have plus fifty resilience to all forms of stabbing, cutting and elemental weapons, and the shirt comes with the added benefit of granting me the unique ability: Instantaneous Gangstah Charm. With this ability, I can instantaneously cast any Gokudō spell written within the Book of Yamaguchi.

Souji: Gokudō, that's a synonym for the yakuza, right?

Raimei: Yes, it is. It means the Extreme Path, the hidden school of mysticism I and others subscribe to—one of the five routes to enlightenment, alongside the Mafioso talent tree, and Mexican Cartel Member.

Raimei: In terms of appearance, I had the most excellent designers from Gucci collaborate with the moon people to compress it all down into a pair of pearl white trousers, a tuxedo jacket, white dress shirt, and leather shoes. The Gucci Glasses of Information allow me to see in infra-red and night vision, and I've also got a watch made of platinum that tells me the timezones of all the countries on the world, the moon people's time cycle, and of course, it also dual functions as a holographic mind reader.

Raimei: Some people believe Prada is better. They are wrong.

Souji: I'm more of a thrift store kinda guy, but to each their own. I'll have to get some tips from the Lunarian Moon People on how they make clothes. Most of my clothes are custom made for my Quirk to work on them so I like to sew them myself. Does your inter-dimensional portal go to the moon as well?

Raimei: I lived in this dimension for almost three hundred years before I finally managed to make my first slip into the dream-zone, and that was nearly one hundred years ago. It isn't precisely possible to take a direct, inter-dimensional portal to the moon itself. But it is possible to reach the mirror version of it in the ninth dimension. In that dimension, the moon's where the earth is. So that solves a lot of things. Has to do with the Lunarian's Mystic Mirror view. As you probably already know, portals like these are dependent on reflections. So their mirrors make that impossible by reflecting everything back onto the earth. That's why the moon looks white. It's actually a verdant landscape, filled with grass and trees and everything. But it seems like a rock because we're just looking at a dull reflection of our own planet.

Souji: That's a very unique way to look at the moon. Shoutout to the huge unknown object that smacked the shit out of the Earth billions of years ago and gave us the moon. The sun is cool but that was the real MVP.

Souji: I gotta say, you do look very gangstah. Not to mention a holographic mind reader? Quick, what am I thinking of right now? [laugh]

Raimei: I'm... not sure if that would be appropriate for me to say. Last time I mind read a guy... didn't end well. Besides, this holographic watch would also immediately turn it into a visualization, which can be very embarrassing. So I'll spare you that. But maybe I'll show you a glimpse of my power at the end of this podcast. Sounds good?

Souji: Sounds good. Guess the listeners will just have to stay tuned and find out. Tell me Raimei, how does a multi-dimensional creature end up in Kyoranki Academy? What motivates you to become a hero?

Raimei: That's a good one. There are several reasons. I've lived for about four hundred years in total, so technically speaking, there's no reason for me to go to school. But you might've noticed that there's an expansive underground movement hidden beneath the shadows... the recent events were just one example of that. The CIA, FBI, Interpol, Europol, they're all part of it in some way, preparing for the inevitable Todeskrieg Event. All the major crime groups are getting ready for that, so we are too.

Raimei: On a different level, related to my current incarnation, I'm not unfamiliar with thrift stores either. My dad works long hours... so I want to find a way to help him. I don't know, it's not really black or white. But why Kyoranki Academy? It's one of the best schools in the country. A lot of my middle school friends didn't even get to go to high school. So I consider myself very privileged. I think that alone is motivation enough to be here.

Souji: I get what you mean about helping your family. I think that's a noble cause, Raimei. I grew up poor and mum and dad were mostly out making ends meet. The money's still my number one motivator but it makes me happy knowing that I'll make the city a little bit better for everyone living in it.

Souji: I'm excited that we finally get to go on missions. It makes you think how much far we’ve come. It’s been a crazy year and now we’re actually doing our part to be heroes. I don’t know about you but I’m excited to take down my first villain.

Raimei: I'm concerned people are going to be misinterpreting their roles in this entire thing. Based on what you said earlier, you're from a poor neighbourhood as well, right? So you know what it's like on the streets. What I'm just concerned by is that a lot of the people in our class, like, ... I watch them. I see that the majority don't have that. They don't have any street smarts, they don't know what it's like to be in that situation, to be poor... to be under the influence of junkies across the street. Yea, we've been trained, but I'm unconvinced that we've been prepared to deal with those situations.

Raimei: I think we can take down villains, sure. And there might even be a few out there we could stop. But I'm not excited about running into one; nothing is exciting about meeting someone that potentially wants to kill you. And I'm not sure we're helping the city by pushing our authority down people's throats, especially by a bunch of teenagers that have been told this is their big shot at heroism. Your local twelve-year-old marijuana seller doesn't need juvie, they need role models; good, role models that can inspire them—structural improvements to their lives, like decent food.

Raimei: You know how crazy it is that I can buy five fast-food hamburgers for the price of one piece of supermarket vegetable? If people wanna help the neighbourhood; go help out at a shelter—a soup kitchen. Hand out food; give your homeless newspaper salesman some cash to get him through the day. Japanese society is harsh, man. The second you fall out of the boat, your chances are pretty much zero. Everyone despises you. Your family ousts you. It's not fun. I know it, I've seen it in friends; how they're getting torn apart just because they're like, half-Chinese or something.

Raimei: I hope our peers just remember that when they're going out. If you're going in there guns blazing, you're just going to hurt more people than you'll save.

Souji: I get what you mean. I grew up in the middle of downtown Osaka, nothing but skyscrapers. Our high rise apartment was small, but it kept us safe from the streets. The news spoke of heroes that roamed the streets, shutting down crime wherever they went. People spoke of bright, shining icons in colourful suits, flashing cheesy grins at the camera. But only a few came to ours.

Souji: Growing up in the poor meant that at a young age, I was very cognizant of how the money would and could limit me and my life as I attempted to get to the place where I am supposed to be. Most people our age will never know about ketchup sandwiches, adding water to milk or to an empty shampoo bottle to get more shampoo. Hand-me-downs clothes, books, toys. Having a ‘candle day’ because the lights don’t work. [chuckle]

Souji: When I say to people I know downtown Osaka like it's the back of my hand, I really do mean it. I know which places to avoid during certain times of the day. You had to be street smart to survive, those are the rules of the game.

Raimei: Mhm, mhm. That's what I'm saying. I'm from the outskirts of Airin-chiku, so it's pretty much the same issue.

Souji: It's easy to get caught up in the title. A hero. Believe me, I'll admit that fame is enticing but at the end of the day, we're here to protect the whole city. Trust is a fragile thing. I think most of us in Kyoranki know that because of what happened. Villains and heroes are two sides of the same coin. We're both them in nature. Both are corrupted by the noble illusion of spreading ideas and helping others who on the 'good' side defined by them respectively. It's always been the human struggle in defining 'help' more importantly 'the others'. I don't know if I'm making sense but that's how I feel. [chuckle]

Raimei: And there's a couple of areas in between that too, mind. Not everyone's a bad guy, and not everyone's a good guy like the heroes that just pander for attention or the bad guys that are in it to support their families financially.

Souji: This Todeskrieg Event sounds interesting, what's going to happen?

Raimei: The Egyptian Pyramids. The moon landings. Global warming. Why did they happen? Did they happen? Or were these just small glimpses out of a much larger conspiracy? Why dedicate millions, tens of millions of dollars only to put a guy on the moon?

Raimei: The various gangs around the world know the answer. At least, the established ones. It's all a part of this cybernetic A.I that has kept us trapped in a virtual reality dimension, Souji. You think all of this is real, but like, do we have any proof? How can we reliably say that this isn't just...computer generated?

Souji: I'm a big arcade, video game fan so this is right up my alley. I had the same hunch as you, Raimei. The truth is that there’s much we simply don’t understand about our reality, and I think it’s more likely than not that we are in some kind of a simulated universe. Now, it’s a much more sophisticated video game than the games we produce, just like today World of Warcraft and Fortnite is way more sophisticated than Pac-Man or Space Invaders. If we develop the ability to produce even one simulated reality, we will almost certainly produce more than one.

Raimei: That's what confuses people. They think I'm going on about some sort of magical thing. But magic and science are one and the same, magic's just another way of trying to add rationality to it. And that's part of the Todeskrieg event. It's French for "Totem Pole Disaster"... it's written about in various religions. Some call it the Apocalypse, others Ragnarok ... basically the end of the world. When the simulation will be using too much data for the computer to handle.

Souji: Maybe we're just figment of imaginations and our creators are just forcing their every whim to us for fun. They're our writers, and we are their characters. Maybe they're just a bunch of roleplayers in a Discord server together? Do you hear that creator? I'm The Glitch now, a bug in your system. A disruption to the simulation.

Raimei: Based on archaeological data, humans, in our current shape and form... have existed for about two-hundred thousand years. Now, of course, imagine you're a person living in those sorts of environments. Yes, you'll be stuck most of the day, collecting food and whatever. But do you think those people were dumber than us? Of course not! They might've not had the schooling, but they had the same type of brain.

Raimei: Now, imagine that sort of situation. Okay, so, the first generation of Humans... they got it hard. The second one does as well. The third generation, well, it's a bit easier. And the fourth one... we're talking about everything within the span of a hundred years, considering people lived shorter lives.

Raimei: Now multiply that by a hundred. One hundred thousand years and they're trying to convince us that people only invented farming techniques twelve thousand years ago? It doesn't make sense. You can't convince me, people, before that time didn't... invent something. Didn't create something. Didn't create a civilization. Imagine, with our technology, with our A.I systems, our virtual reality capacities... I mean, if you're into gaming, look at the last fifty years.

Raimei: Now multiply that by four. Imagine just how bizarre that technology would be. Already, we've got games that are borderline lifelike. So how can we know that this isn't just.. some giant simulation? We can't. And we have to look at the empirical, most logical type of data. There's more evidence to suggest all of this is just a program than there is evidence to the contrary. But scientists aren't willing to recognize that.

Souji: I know! I can't believe no one is talking about this. Paranormal events like hauntings or alien encounters can be glitches in the simulation. Stuff like the Mandela Effect is supposedly proof that whoever is in charge of our simulation is changing the past. And don't get me started on Quirks! Superpowers born from radiation. You’re not going to get proof that we’re not in a simulation, because any evidence that we get could be simulated. If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules of our universe seem completely rigid and mathematical.

Souji: We’ve spent billions sending probes through outer space and should probably have found evidence of extraterrestrials by now, right? Not so fast: Aliens would likely be far more technologically advanced than we are, the thinking goes, so the fact that we haven’t located them suggests we live in a simulation they’ve figured out how to escape from. Or maybe the computer we’re in only has enough RAM to simulate one planetary civilization at a time?

Raimei: That's what we've been preparing for. The drug trade, the crime cartels, it all has to do with that.

[ASK SOUJI - glitchy transition music]

Souji: Now, let's shine the spotlight back towards the main focus of his podcast... me! Now, Raimei, it's your turn to ask me questions. C'mon, don't be shy, ask anything you'd like.

Raimei: are you sure you want to give me that sort of power? Because if I get to ask anything I like... First up, what's the deal with you and Ken? I don't want to pry into your love life, but you two looked very cosy in that meeting room.

Souji: Me and Ken? Love life? Oh, umm. I mean, umm. No, we aren't. You know. Together like that. [stammering]

Souji: We're just rivals! Yes, rivals. We started talking over the summer and we got closer during the campfire trip. Bunk buddies. Yeah, that. No love life here.

Raimei: Uh-huh. ... Bunk buddies. Well, if that's the official answer...

Souji: ...yes! Bunk buddies. That's the official answer.

Raimei: And I guess, another question is... why did you start this podcast? I'm not exactly famous or especially well-liked around the school, so I'm wondering why you're inviting someone like me to do this sort of thing.

Souji: I started this podcast because of Starlight. He's my favourite hero as you can probably tell. I always watched his talk show growing up, and it was what inspired me to enrol in Kyoranki in the first place. So this podcast is me passing it forward. I want to inspire other kids just like what Starlight did to me. One interview at the time.

Raimei: That's good. That you got a role model to follow, I mean... that you know what you want to do, and who ya wish to emulate. It's the same thing with the guys I mentioned earlier. ... Don't have plushies of them though, unfortunately.

Souji: You say the weirdest stuff in our group chat and I like it! You're interesting, zany and fun. You have a unique point of view, and having you in my show is an honour in it of itself.

Raimei: And I appreciate that about inviting me on your show I mean. Glad I could mention those frustrations I've been holding up. Don't have to go out of your way for me though, I'm okay with sticking to my own little bubble. That's just the life of a made-man. Forever in the shadows.

[Qs from the GC - glitchy transition music]

Souji: Let's move on to our audience questions! These were submitted by our classmates in our group chat. Ready?

Raimei: Yea, audience questions. I'm honestly surprised anyone finds me interesting enough to ask questions, but okay, let's go

Souji: Chia wants to know who are the special people in your life? What's something you're proud of and embarrassed by?

Raimei: Special people, huh? Well, I've got my dad. My mom ran out on us when I was little, so it has always been us versus the world. I've been going to a gym now for about... five years? And the people there are my role models, I guess. They inspired me to get into sports, like boxing. One in particular... the guy's a genuine sumo wrestler. But of the old generation? But yea, those guys have made a significant impact on me.

Souji: Haruto asks, why is your skin purple? Likewise, Ao inquires, do you know the girl who turned into a blueberry in Wonka's factory?

Raimei: As for my skin colour, ... I guess I've gotten a bit desensitized to questions like that. It's a skin mutation on my mother's side, supposedly to do with Quirks. I don't know, I always find it a bit weird to talk about. That nickname they gave me too, it's like calling someone with a darker skin pigmentation the "Black Vendetta". I mean, not that I mind. Asking about the pigmentation's no problem because it's odd. I'm just saying, it feels a bit shitty to compare me with some fucking Willy Wonka scene when like six months ago a kid got bullied out of school because people kept comparing him to a video game character; so, uh, Ao, you're cool. No hard feelings. I'm just going to subtly compare you to a fucking Star Wars Droid if you try that shit again.

Souji: Ken wants to know what you think of the recent baseball team tryout. And to that I say: we have a baseball team? Can I also try out just to beat that monkey boy?

Raimei: Yea, we got a baseball team! I mean, we got teams for nearly every popular sport, right? It's a prestigious school, after all. But we're doing our best to try for the nationals. And you're welcome to join up if you want, we can definitely use a few more clan members. As for our most recent try-out... that all depends on whether he joins up or not.

Souji: Kotoe inquires, do you play the bass?

Raimei: I don't play the bass or any other instrument.

Souji: And finally, Fumi wants to know your favourite genre of book.

Raimei: My favourite genre of books is crime novels.

[ENDING - glitchy transition music]

Souji: Well, we're nearing the end of our show, Raimei, is there anything you'd like to remind our audience, maybe plug whenever they can find you online? Maybe some tips on how to prepare for the Todeskrieg Event?

Raimei: I had an excellent time Souji. Thanks for inviting me. As for preparations, the people can make for the Todeskrieg Event, consider this a bit of an unofficial announcement; we are in fact a highly secretive group. But we, that being me and a few other highly skilled individuals steeped knee-deep in the criminal underground, decided to create a sparring group a few months ago. A fighting ring, as it were.

Raimei: There's no real focus on anything other than fighting a lot, gaining that sort of experience. I don't really bother with rankings or who's best or whatever either, I mean, my choice to just not participate in that tournament should prove of that. So there's no ego thing going on. Whether ya win or lose, it's all good. It's like a clan...But our meetings are sorta irregular, so you can still be part of another, like how I'm still in the baseball clan.

Raimei: As for the best way to contact me, all the usual underground channels work.

Souji: You've been pretty cool to talk to, so before you leave, I have a special surprise just for you. But don't forget, you promised to show me a glimpse of your power.

Raimei: And I did promise to show you a sample of my hidden, mystical power, didn't I? Alright- I'll try and make sure to contain it so that we don't blow up this entire office.

[sounds of moving chairs]

[sound of an 80s disco beat from silly cartoons transformation scenes]

Raimei: Ultra-Mobster, transformation! Percentage; three hundred!

Raimei: Yamaguchi-Gumi spell; Fifty-Five! Gokudō code, page three. Entering heat mode. Specialized skill; DISROBE.

[sounds of thunder]

Raimei: Looks like I got a new favourite shirt. Thanks, Glitch.

Souji: What a way to end the show! [applause]

Souji: Well listeners, if the world does turn out to be just a simulation, remember to make the most of it. Make a point of seeing some good in every day. Drop your resentments. We all have them. Make every day count. The end of the world is coming but until then, to keep up with the show follow me @thesoujishow, and to support my small clothing business, follow @glitchgear on all social media platforms. Once again, this has been Raimei Tsubusu and Souji Yoshihiro, and you’ve been listening to the Souji Show! A show where I talk about anything I want. 'Cause this is my show, and not yours. Until next time. Insert catchphrase here.

[vaporwave lo-fi song]

[EXTRAS - glitchy transition music]

Souji: If you listen to this podcast, chances are you go to Kyoranki Academy. Kido Kotoe is looking for a bass player for her band. So if any of you are interested, please contact her at [Kotoe's school email].

0 notes

jenniferasberryus · 4 years

Text

Why Sonic Is the Perfect Mascot for Gen Z

Ever since the film based on the Genesis’ Sonic games got regenerated for Gen Zs, it’s got me thinking: “Gen Z’s” sounds a lot like “Genesis.” But, beyond that, it’s got me thinking about the ever-improving system we have in place for marketing nostalgia to Millenials, while also trying to convince new clusters of Gen Z kids to embrace these characters and franchises as their own.

Marvel comics became the MCU, the Star Wars continue unabated, and everyone’s so aware that we’re living in recycled times that... that’s all I’m really going to say about it. What’s interesting to me is just how perfect Sonic the Hedgehog is as a vehicle for this kind of weaponized nostalgia, and how he’s served as a measure of our relationship to coolness for three generations now.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=sonic-the-hedgehog-a-visual-history-of-segas-mascot&captions=true"]

Obviously, by casting Jim Carrey in a wacky role and re-doing the CG to make Sonic look more like his classic self, the filmmakers aren’t shying away from appealing to fond Millenial memories (you know, for money!). But Sonic remains primarily a kids’ movie, and thinking about the ways that today’s young people may relate to the blue blur made me realize that Sonic said a lot more about the Millennial generation than we realized - whether he intended to or not - and he sheds light on some of the things that connect us across time, no matter our generation...except for the Boomers, who I guess we all hate now? Is that the meme? Regardless, to understand why Sonic is the fuzzy multi-generational mirror that he is, we’re going to need...

A Bit of a History Lesson

To be clear, I’m considering a Baby Boomer someone born between 1950 and 1965, a Gen X-er someone born between ‘65 and ‘80, a Millenial someone born between ‘80 and ‘95 (prime Sonic age), and a Gen Z-er anyone born after 1995.

When Sonic was initially released in 1991, I was six years old, and “being cool” was super important both to myself and all of my peers (except for the kid who brought a gavel to school every day). What I think younger folks today might not understand is that this quest for coolness was not about authenticity, individuality, or any kind of meta-awareness of our identities. We weren’t “cool,” we were Cool™, and Coolness™ was defined by brands, something most of us didn’t grow up with the media-savvy to question. It was about being in a minority product vertical: skateboarding, black clothes, skitchin’, rap and/or punk rock on MTV, and unironically spelling the word “extreme” with a capital X.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=9-corporate-ad-games-that-didnt-suck&captions=true"]

Speaking of irony, I’d argue that the ’90s were the decade where Detached Irony was born, grew up, got perfected as chronicled in the 1995 Alanis Morisette song “Ironic,” and, in a sense, died. Irony is a toy we make memes with nowadays, but it used to be what we used to identify ourselves as - we were misfits who were “over it,” and therefore cooler than you. You were Coke, we were Pepsi. Flash forward twenty years and I’d call myself more of a Blueberry Acai caffeine-free Diet Coke guy; my point being that identity issues have gotten more complex over the years. And Sonic has all of that wrapped up in his fur. Needles? His…hedgehog...texture.

The ’90s were a gaming landscape dominated by Mario: a fat, middle-aged human who focuses primarily on jumping. This made Sonic feel like pure, uncut, corporate-designed cool in a way that immediately juiced the X-centers of my brain. If you were a Sega kid, you felt indie, edgy, a little more Pitchfork than your Nintendo playmates. Sonic focused on going fast, his head had Liberty Spikes, and he was such a crude, rude, awesome dude that if you stopped playing for a few seconds he’d look right into camera and give you the stink eye for wasting his time.

Amazingly, none of that seemed corny to us at the time. Sonic’s Cool was genuine and accepted by his fans with a naivete born of the mono-media culture of the ’70s and ’80s, and which has been slowly decaying ever since Fonzie jumped the shark. These days it’s almost been completely dispelled as the internet and other technologies drive us to be more aware of the systems around us from a younger and younger age.

Considering that, it’s no coincidence that the 90’s saw the ascendance of grunge music, pop-punk, an explosion in goth culture, the advent of “The Gritty Reboot,” and popular films with nihilism as a central theme. As a culture, we became obsessed with the “fakeness” of all the sheeple around us — irony became a way to interact with the broader world, and a signature part of the Gen X and Millenial attitude. Suddenly we were only interested in bands that hadn’t “sold out” yet, and anyone who didn’t think everything sucked was probably a phony.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2015/10/14/history-of-awesome-1998"]

In that environment, Sonic’s cool started to taste a little Chemical Zone-ey, a little factory-produced. Although the fact that his transition to 3-D graphics was far less graceful than Mario’s was definitely a factor, as a pop-cultural icon Sonic had to shift gears, too. The first Sonic TV show, essentially a kid’s comedy, was canceled and replaced with a much more action-packed and serious take on the Battle for Mobius (if you didn’t know, Sonic’s from a planet called Mobius in the year 3235, but it’s best not to question it).

During the same period, Sonic stopped moving merch, and Sega announced their retirement from the console wars. Which finally brings us to Gen Z, the generation that’s proud to be themselves and frankly doesn’t give a f**k what you think about it.

Sonic & Gen Z (or... Zennials or… Whatever You/They Want to Call Your/Themselves)

These days, truly being yourself, unique, authentic… just you, is huge business. Youtube and Twitch are filled with child billionaires who lean into their personality quirks and are loved specifically for that reason. Also some racism. But the bigger point is, in the new normal, ironic detachment isn’t nearly as valuable. It’s actually cooler, these days, to be into something than to be over something. Young people feel more empowered to simply like what they like, which makes it an ideal time for Sonic to re-enter the fray.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/11/12/sonic-the-hedgehog-old-and-new-design-comparison"]

None of this is to say the movie will definitely do well (or even be good), but as a Sonic fan for life, it’s been interesting to watch him go from cool, to corporatized and “fake”, to “kinda corny and silly and… still fake, but that’s what’s funny about it.” The whole debacle with the initial CG Sonic reveal speaks to that...the filmmakers tried to make Sonic “realistic” and the internet said, “No you idiots, he’s a cartoon rascal that thinks he’s too cool for school, just let him be that!”

Gen Z is the first generation of humans to have grown up fully immersed in a digitally-enhanced society. Everyone is able to indulge their interests and hobbies much more thoroughly now, which has resulted in a galaxy of fragmented fan-bases and communal identities that make the “Are you a Sega person or a Nintendo person?” question seems quaint by comparison.

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/03/01/why-are-there-no-good-video-game-movies"]

Nowadays, someone isn’t just a Nintendo or Sega player - they’re an anime cosplayer with an interest in tabletop gaming, or a maker of pixel-beats who crochets Star Wars scarves on Etsy in their spare time. The pop culture landscape is richer. Case in point: there were 130 more movies released in the US in 2018 than in 2017, and the number of scripted TV series’ have increased by 85% since 2011. In such a dynamic environment, generalizations are tough to make, but there is a lot of statistical data on Gen Z folks -- mostly marketing data about buying trends, because Capitalsim™ -- that I think bodes well for the possibility of a Sonic Renaissance.

Environmental Consciousness

Gen Z kids are more concerned about pollution, sustainability, and conservancy than any previous generation. Sonic the Hedgehog’s arch-nemesis is a boomer in a non-self-driving vehicle who’s here to automate all the flowers and animals and build a giant factory.

Fiscal Responsibility

Gen Z-ers are notoriously thrifty, more likely to work a series of freelance jobs or change careers frequently, and always looking for bargains or a place to live that they can actually afford. Sonic the Hedgehog hoards gold rings and emeralds and is in danger of being gentrified out of his neighborhood.

Cord-Cutters

Gen Z is the generation that “cut the cable,” and consumes most of their content on their mobiles, seeing screens as essentially interchangeable and TV as outdated. Sonic destroys hundreds of old-fashioned TVs every game and is mobility incarnate.

Data Protection

Gen Z places less emphasis on the importance of personal privacy. Sonic wears gloves and shoes but no pants.

Ethically-Sourced…Chili Dogs?

Gen Z is consuming far less meat than previous generations. Sonic loves chili dogs, which is a tube of several kinds of meat with ground-up meat on top. Okay, that one doesn’t work. Um...

Blue Hair

I’ve been seeing lots of kids with blue hair lately? What’s up with that?

Let’s see, how can I sound older than I already do? Oh! Bidets? No thank you! What’s all this fuss lately about bidets and bidet seat add-ons? I’ll stick to good old-fashioned American-made two-ply, thank you very much! Now, in my day, we had the Virtual Boy, and he was my best friend and oh my, the times we’d have…

[poilib element="accentDivider"]

Editor’s Note: Michael just kept typing out SNES titles until he got sleepy. We put a blanket over him to make sure he didn’t get cold.

What’s your take on Sonic these days? Corporate Shill or Moderately Funny In Sort of a Kitschy Way Corporate Shill? Let us know in the comments, or to really see how far the internet has fallen, check out what happens when you put the creepy old CG sonic’s teeth on other game characters.

from IGN Video Games https://www.ign.com/articles/2020/01/09/why-sonic-is-the-perfect-mascot-for-gen-z via IFTTT from The Fax Fox https://thefaxfox.blogspot.com/2020/01/why-sonic-is-perfect-mascot-for-gen-z.html

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nickelsonbnirmakbf32insuran-blog · 5 years

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jeep wrangler insurance 16 year old

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurancereviewsite.xyz

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jeep wrangler insurance 16 year old

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jeep wrangler insurance 16 year old

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punalavaflow · 6 years

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Some Kalapana-area residents choose to stay until ‘mandatory’ evacuation ordered

KALAPANA — The postman doesn’t come around here anymore and neither do the garbage trucks.

For those who live from Opihikao to Kalapana and have chosen to stay, isolation due to the ongoing lower Puna eruption remains a possibility if lava severs Highway 130, already compromised by steaming ground cracks. But it’s also one that is slowly becoming reality through the loss of services and many of their neighbors who have left for safer ground or cleaner air.

Yet few of these die-hards, a mix of Native Hawaiians with ancestral ties to the area and mainland transplants who admire their resilience to a changing landscape, seemed terribly worried Friday.

“Where am I going to go?” asked a resident of Kalapana Seaview Estates who gave his name as “Tilo.”

“Anywhere you go on the mainland there are hazards we all live with,” he added. “It’s a matter of managing them.”

It’s not clear how many people still reside here. More than 3,000 lived from Kapoho to Kalapana before the eruption, a number that includes Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens, the epicenter of the eruption on Kilauea’s East Rift Zone. About 2,000 have been displaced from those subdivisions since the first fissure opened May 3.

Civil Defense officials have warned that those on the west side of the flow could become isolated, and lava already has covered Highway 137 along the coast, leaving Highway 130 as the only escape route, at least for now.

Hawaii County Civil Defense Administrator Talmadge Magno said he expects some will want to stay and officials haven’t forced anyone to leave, even in “mandatory” evacuation areas.

State and federal officials also are planning to reopen Chain of Craters Road, partially covered by lava rock to the west, only for evacuations.

Metal plates cover Highway 130 where cracks formed weeks ago along the rift zone.

Aaron Mitchell, a Puna resident who lost his home in Lanipuna Gardens but rents a place near Kehena for the time being, a mile or more from the ocean entry, now drives that fairly regularly. Only residents are allowed through a checkpoint manned by county police and the Hawaii National Guard.

He rolls up his windows and turns on the air conditioning as he drives over the plates at a brisk 55 mph so he doesn’t inhale any volcanic gas or get stuck at the wrong place at the wrong time. Plate temperatures have reached up to 130 degrees due to magma flowing underground.

Wendy Stovall, a U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist, said in an email Saturday that there haven’t been any detectable levels of hydrogen sulfide being emitted from those cracks, though heat from the ground might be causing vegetation to release carbonyl sulfide, which drivers could smell. The presence of hydrogen sulfide could indicate magma is moving up through the water table.

Mitchell said he and his wife love Puna and don’t want to leave yet. Most of their important belongings, at least those they were able to retrieve before abandoning their home, are in storage, and much of their time is spent preparing their insurance claim.

“It’s a strange holding pattern,” he said.

If they have to leave again, Mitchell, 42, said they can do it quickly.

“We’re experts at bugging out now,” he added.

Tilo, a water catchment repairman, said he has backup electricity and enough water in his catchment tank to last another 1 1/2 months.

He disconnected his water tank from the rooftop to keep out “Pele’s hair” and other contaminates tossed in the air from the entry of lava into the ocean a couple of miles down the coast. That keeps it safe, but also limits his water supply.

Some days the air quality can be poor for this community located downwind from the eruption site, and he noted he wore a mask for six hours one day because he could smell gas.

Tilo estimated 90 percent of residents of the subdivision, the largest in the area and built on top of a 1955 lava flow, have left.

He said he would leave if an evacuation became mandatory and would expect the large grass area at the makai side of the subdivision would be a good place for a helicopter to land.

Two U.S. Marine Corps helicopters are stationed at Hilo International Airport until Monday, along with a crew of 17 Marines, in case of evacuations.

Their mission could be extended, according to Maj. Jeff Hickman of the Hawaii National Guard, who said there are other helicopters, including three HH-60 Pave Hawks, that are available in Hilo.

Mitchell stopped his truck Friday to speak with two National Guard soldiers who were driving on Highway 137 in what appeared to be a rented Jeep with a gas detector on the hood.

They told him that one helicopter landing site would be south of Kehena Beach. He said he feels a lot more safe knowing they are patrolling the area and taking gas readings.

Mitchell shares the road with few people these days as the area feels more and more like a ghost town.

He points to the tree tunnels that remain where branches stretch over the coastal road and wanders if they will soon be gone.

Alongside the highway, known by some as “Red Road,” vacation rentals sit empty and some half-built homes are abandoned.

He still takes time to stop his truck to pick up a garbage lid blowing across the road, worried it will fall into the ocean, and gives a hitchhiker a ride to Kehena Beach, which is now often empty.

“Everyone is sticking together,” he said. “It makes you think we can get through this.”

Mitchell hopes to return to Lanipuna to build but expects that nearly every building there is gone.

“I’m still moving through the grieving process,” he said.

In Kalapana Seaview, Matthew Jamison was sitting on the grassy area watching the waves break on the rocky shoreline and patches of blue sky overhead. To the east, he could see a white plume from the ocean entry rise into the air.

He said air quality is best down there where the winds are strong.

“It’s the nature of the environment,” said Jamison, 62, regarding the eruption. He said he could always use an airlift if life there became too dangerous.

“You got to live through this,” the 25-year resident added. “I came here to live.

“I’m missing a leg but you don’t see me panicking.”

Not everyone there is a resident.

Jennie Theriault was walking with her young daughter around the entrance to the subdivision.

She said she is from Connecticut and was visiting in-laws who live in the neighborhood and were renewing their wedding vows. Theriault said they would be there for two weeks and it’s their first day.

“Absolutely not,” she said, when asked if she was worried. “If they stay, why not?”

“We’re all Army so I’m sure we have something,” Theriault said, regarding masks.

Kalapana residents have already lost a lot because of the volcano. In the 1980s and early ’90s, flows from the Pu‘u ‘O‘o vent destroyed several hundred homes and iconic black sand beaches.

A woman who gave her name as auntie Tootsie Peleiholani said she lost her home to lava in 1990. But she doesn’t blame Pele, the volcano goddess, which she said is undoing decades of poor land use decisions and overbuilding of vacation homes.

“It’s no longer about real estate and subdivisions,” Peleiholani said. “It’s about community and ohana.”

One property that was spared when much of Kalapana was inundated belonged to Robert Pookapu “Uncle Robert” Keliihoomalu Sr., who died in 2015. Uncle’s Awa Club, built at that site, has long been a popular gathering spot, and is a refuge for those who have stayed behind.

But the supplies aren’t from the county, state or Red Cross, which is managing evacuation shelters in Pahoa and Keaau.

Peleiholani pointed to packages of bottled water she said were donated by Puuhonua o Puna, a grassroots group formed by Puna resident Ikaika Marzo and others to provide aid.

She scolded a reporter for coming down there without bringing any supplies and expressed frustration about the National Guard and county officials showing up empty-handed.

“When you come to Kalapana, bring something,” she said.

Peleiholani said between 30 and 50 people will show up at night for food and camaraderie.

“I tell them to practice aloha,” she said. “This is your time.

“That’s what Pele is really about. She’s just rearranging the map.”

As for herself, Peleiholani said she doesn’t plan to leave and criticized officials because she doesn’t think they are asking enough about what they need down there to keep going.

“We don’t need militia,” she said, referring to the National Guard.

“We’ve done it before. That’s why Hawaiians survive.

“We’ll leave in our time in our own way.”

Email Tom Callis at [email protected].

The post Some Kalapana-area residents choose to stay until ‘mandatory’ evacuation ordered appeared first on Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

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lifeonashelf · 6 years

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CARS, THE

I don’t mean to be crass… (granted, I know an introductory repudiation like that will immediately lead you to assume that the ensuing statement is, indeed, going to be crass, and will probably cause you to brace yourself for a statement far more crass than the one I’m actually going to make—especially given this lengthy parenthetical, which is likely only serving to compound your trepidation about the prospective crassness of my forthcoming statement, because surely when you see such an interminable block of text following a declaration like “I don’t mean to be crass” you’re bound to suppose that the statement I’m cautioning must not only be crass, but so reprehensibly crass that it warrants a sprawling disclaimer before it can even be tendered—although your concerns will be mostly unfounded because the statement I’m eventually going to make, after I finish fucking with you via this gratuitous insert, isn’t really as crass as you’re undoubtedly expecting it to be; I didn’t write an additional 200-plus words after announcing “I don’t mean to be crass” because I have any earnest intention of being crass, I did it because: a) I’m an ass, and b) I’m misguided enough to suppose this might be amusing in some way, when in fact the negligible comedic value of this passage is roughly equivalent to the relative crassness of the statement that will follow it, as you’ll find out right now…)

Actually, at this point, it would probably be prudent for me to start my sentence over again so that it bears some resemblance to a coherent thought.

So, to reiterate, I don’t mean to be crass… (although, it now dawns on me that perhaps devoting this exorbitant amount of text to introducing my statement may actually enhance its crassness, since the statement in question is one that potentially could be considered marginally crass by certain audiences, and the flippant manner in which I’m addressing its potential crassness perhaps could be viewed as offensive by those audiences if they presume that my insouciant tangents here are demonstrative of an insensitivity to the possibility that some people might find the statement crass—which, consequently, might lead folks who wouldn’t customarily deem the statement in and of itself as crass to instead deem my exposition of the statement crass—and this means: a) I may be inadvertently rendering the statement crass when it was actually reasonably benign to begin with, and b) at this point, I’ve probably pissed off just about everyone reading this, and I haven’t even made the statement yet—although I suspect that most of the people I’ve displeased thus far are more upset that I’ve wasted several minutes of their time on these ridiculous asides than they are about either the potential crassness of the statement I have not yet made or my perceived arrogant indifference to the potential crassness of that statement).

Anyway, I don’t mean to be crass… but the first thing I think of when I listen to The Cars is Phoebe Cates’s breasts.

I’m not necessarily ashamed to admit this, though I am acutely aware that revealing this tinge of alpha-“BOOBIES!”-maleness in myself doesn’t bask me in the most flattering light. In my defense, I’m reasonably certain that most heterosexual males who have seen Fast Times At Ridgemont High have spent a lot more time thinking about Phoebe Cates’s breasts than I do (I don’t listen to The Cars very often). I am simultaneously aware that reducing a band’s entire existence to a singular film sequence in which a mere snippet of one of their songs appears is awfully reductive of their legacy, particularly when the band in question certainly merits a far more substantial appreciation. However, since I have been mercilessly honest throughout this exercise, I would be remiss in my methodology if I wasn’t forthcoming about my inescapable mental link between The Cars and the mammary magnificence of the lovely Phoebe Cates.

Rest assured, I have no desire to herein objectify Mrs. Cates-Kline (she married Kevin Kline in 1989, which rhymes). For the record, I would like to clarify that I find her far more appealing in Gremlins, a film in which she eschews demonstrating advanced oral sex techniques on carrots to instead deliver a super-gnarly monologue about discovering her father’s decomposing corpse in the family chimney after he breaks his neck while trying to impersonate Santa Claus. Based on the five or so additional movies of hers I’ve seen, I think she was a perfectly excellent actress and I’m duly curious why she opted not to sustain that burgeoning career. Sincerely, I have the utmost respect for Phoebe Cates-Kline, and if she’s reading this I hope that message will come through loud and clear. Still, as I sit here listening the The Cars’ self-titled debut, I can’t help but evoke her iconic pool-side disrobing in Fast Times; “Living in Stereo” is so firmly intertwined with that specific sequence in the pop-cultural consciousness that there’s simply no escaping the association—much like it’s impossible to listen to “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” without clips from The Breakfast Club running through your head, or to hear “Goodbye Horses” without recalling Ted Levine’s tucked-penis shimmy in Silence of the Lambs. And this interference is proving to be detrimental to my process, since I’d rather not make my ability to readily visualize Cates’s areolas every time I hear the opening riff of “Living in Stereo” the ultimate focus of this essay. I’m only mentioning this telekinetic linkage up front in the spirit of getting it out of the way so I can write something more thoughtful about The Cars—which I’m sure Phoebe Cates, Ric Ocasek, Kevin Kline, and the seven other people reading this would greatly prefer.

Actually, come to think of it, I suppose I could have skipped that entire introduction. I’m just now realizing I have a personal connection with The Cars which handily surpasses my limited fandom for an ‘80s teen comedy that I recently watched for the first time since I was an actual teenager and didn’t find all that extraordinary upon revisiting (the scene where “Living In Stereo” plays was still pretty amazing, though). My band Happyending used to cover a Cars number—“Just What I Needed”—so I’ve actually played that tune on my guitar more times than I’ve played it in my CD player; since this is a designation I can only apply to a small handful of songs, that correlation is surely more exclusive and well-suited for our purposes here. I’m fairly positive Phoebe Cates never attended any of our gigs, so her presence in this essay is arguably extraneous (also, it seems downright bizarre to me that I’ve referenced Gremlins, of all films, two entries in a row; I honestly have no fucking idea what’s going on with this piece right now). I probably should have just led with the Happyending thing and spared us all from the previous six paragraphs entirely, so do me a favor and don’t read any of the stuff you just read.

Anyway, welcome to this installment of Life on a Shelf. It’s about The Cars.

“Just What I Needed” was an incredibly fun song to jam. Since we didn’t have a keyboard player to tackle the melody, Happyending’s version emphasized the tune’s power-chord bedrock and our arrangement sprawled out in the middle before eventually culminating in a cacophonous blast-beat meltdown which bore no resemblance to anything in Ric Ocasek’s original composition—essentially, we sullied the track’s pure pop perfection to suit our own purposes. Nevertheless, our rendition rawked and we always got an enthusiastic response whenever we slotted it into our setlists, so we sullied it often and with gleeful abandon.

Ultimately, we could have probably tackled any cut off the band’s self-titled LP and made a decent go of it, simply because the source material is so dynamite. The Cars’ eponymous introduction is one of the most exceptional and self-assured debut albums in the rock canon, a cohesive and nearly flawless set of songs that establishes a fertile and wholly original musical language in less than forty minutes. I would place the circa-1978 Cars in that rarified class of bands who sounded like no one but themselves, and though they would promptly inspire countless lesser New Wave outfits, none of their imitators fully cracked Ric Ocasek’s code and very few managed to scrape together anything even remotely as hooky or indelible as the choicest morsels on The Cars.

Perhaps the most exceptional heritage of the band’s inaugural opus is that it still sounds futuristic three-and-a-half decades after it was released (“I’m In Touch With Your World”, in particular, is so spacey and bizarre that it seems totally plausible Ocasek recorded the track on another planet), no lean feat considering how manifestly dated the bulk of the synth-rock which arrived in its wake sounds today. “Just What I Needed” is arguably the album’s centerpiece—and it’s certainly catchy as a motherfucker—yet it isn’t even one of my personal top-three tracks on the disc (we ended up covering it mostly because I figured out the chords by accident). My favorite song remains “Moving in Stereo”, for reasons that have nothing to do with Phoebe Cates (okay, maybe a little) and everything to do with the indisputable fact that “Moving in Stereo” just plain fucking rules.

On a collection loaded with shindig-ready anthems—a motif announced by the disc’s opening statement, “Good Times Roll”—“Moving in Stereo” stands out like an alluring black-clad femme fatale brooding in the corner smoking clove cigarettes and quoting Nietzsche while she dispassionately surveys the revelers on the dance floor. If I was at a party and the host put on The Cars, I would immediately like this host at least 70% more than I did when I arrived—and if I spotted a girl across the room singing along with “Moving in Stereo” I would immediately march over there and propose to her on the spot (okay… I know this is a completely ridiculous notion; I don’t go to parties). “Moving” is the song on the album The Cars which sounds the least like the band The Cars, yet conversely demonstrates the breadth of their creativity, offering a grim counterpoint to bouncy numbers like “Don’t Cha Stop” and augmenting the somber undercurrent which runs through several cuts whose buoyant instrumental backdrops cunningly mask their lyrical proclamations that the good times don’t always roll.

Witness my second-favorite song on the disc, “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight”, in which Ric Ocasek bluntly tells his gal that she can “hurt,” “use,” “mock,” and “abuse” him, but “[he] don’t care” because he’d be far more distraught if she left him. All things considered, that’s a pretty fucked up scenario. Though probably not quite as fucked up as the one outlined in “My Best Friend’s Girl”—a chronicle of the bro-code’s most grievous violation: “my best friend’s girlfriend / she used to be mine.” “Bye Bye Love” (probably my third-favorite song, if you’re keeping score at home) sort of speaks for itself, and even the otherwise jaunty “Just What I Needed” takes a disquieting turn when Ocasek eventually confesses that “I needed someone to bleed.” And then the album’s moody closer “All Mixed Up” comes along to decisively end the party with the knife-in-the-guts couplet: “I wait for her forever / she never does arrive.”

Perhaps the only failing of The Cars is that it serves up such an impeccable distillation of everything I enjoy about the band it shares its title with that until I reached this point in our tome, it was the sole offering of theirs I felt compelled to own. Although, I finally opted to bolster my discography with 1979’s Candy-O and their 1984 set Heartbeat City a few days ago to foster a more comprehensive representation in these pages (though I willfully neglected Shake it Up because the title track kind of annoys me). The results of my supplementary reconnaissance are as follows:

Candy-O has plenty of inspired moments, but much of the material the band cooked up for their sequel audibly labors under the onus of the dreaded sophomore slump. A few of the tracks sound like throwaways from the first album, others come across as vague sketches of songs that weren’t quite ready to be recorded, and a couple are so blatantly derivative of the highpoints of The Cars that they become essentially pointless. Granted, opener “Let’s Go” is easily on par with the group’s best work, and the following number (“Since I Held You”) is cagily excellent as well. But the discerning listener can plainly hear The Cars running out of gas as the record motors on (trust me, I know how obvious and dad-jokey the employment of automobile puns is in this case… but I haven’t used a single one until now, so please park your criticisms). By the next track—“It’s All I Can Do”—the band is clearly spinning its wheels (shit, car pun; that one was an accident; shit, “accident” could be considered a car pun too) and that tire-d (okay, I did that one on purpose) cookie-cutter composition finds the band idling (yeah, that one was on purpose too), marking the first point in their catalog where The Cars stall (I should probably put the brakes on this lame device now, huh?).

Though the funky title track perks up the affair a bit and “Night Spots” is likewise wholly decent, the second half of Candy-O is bogged down by a succession of tepid retreads (I swear I didn’t mean to include another reference to tires there) and the album fails to really take off again (okay, that was a plane pun, which is just confusing). The disc’s nadir “Lust for Kicks” is banal enough to qualify as certifiably crappy, shackled as it is by a dopey melody that would sound more at home pealing from the loudspeaker of a trolling ice cream truck. Like most Part-Twos, the fundamental fault with Candy-O is that it’s simply nowhere near as strong as its predecessor (overall, it’s only slightly better than Gremlins 2: The New Batch), even if its sturdiest moments demonstrate that The Cars still had enough of a pulse to be interesting.

Speaking of pulses, I’m listening to Heartbeat City right now… and I’m regretting that pun already. I’m also regrettably ascertaining that the spark of timelessness which characterized the band’s early work faded rather quickly for them—despite being released only six years after their debut, City contains very few of the former’s charms and resonates as an album which could have ONLY been made in 1984. This is mostly due to the flaccid production of “Mutt” Lange, whose abiding steadfastness to characterless grandiloquence later transformed Def Leppard from marginally-ballsy hard rockers into scrubbed-shiny arena darlings whose songs all sounded like jingles for shampoo commercials. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that the a cappella refrain which introduces the opening track “Hello Again” evokes Joe Elliot more than it evokes Ric Ocasek—actually, several of the tunes on City could have easily appeared on Hysteria with minimal tweaking, which perhaps says volumes more about the uniform soullessness of Lange’s twiddling than it does about either The Cars or Def Leppard.

Though Heartbeat City spawned two of Ocasek’s biggest singles—“You Might Think” and “Drive”—it’s a fairly pedestrian offering on the whole, and a far cry from the not-then distant age when The Cars managed to build full suites of great cuts around their radio anthems. “Magic” resonates like it was specifically written to accompany the pivotal montage scene in a direct-to-VHS Jon Cryer romantic comedy, “I Refuse” is so anodyne that it could have been a Kajagoogoo b-side, and even the solid mega-hit “You Might Think” is essentially a reductive re-write of “Just What I Needed”. “Stranger Eyes” boasts some of the dark promise of “Living in Stereo” and makes good use of its sturdy Tom Petty-esque guitar lick, but the track’s momentum is woefully hamstrung by Lange’s saccharine sheen, which neuters David Robinson’s propulsive stick-work to such a degree that the drum tracks sound like the percussion presets on a $7.99 Radio Shack keyboard. “Drive” is assuredly the best tune in the bunch, yet even that apex ends up being more perplexing than effective since the lone resemblance it bears to the band’s other work is that it appears on a record by the band The Cars.

Sadly, while my ardor for the group’s first LP remains stalwart, my investigation of their subsequent offerings is only serving to reveal that I don’t love The Cars nearly as much as I love The Cars. I might have been better off sticking with that solitary disc in my library (though you would have missed out on all those genius vehicular bon mots I threw at you a few paragraphs back)—as things stand, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be cueing up Candy-O or Heartbeat City in its place next time I’m in the mood to immerse myself in Ric Ocasek’s stellar song-craft or envision the nipples of retired ‘80s actresses.

We won’t get a Hollywood Ending to this piece, I’m afraid. As we roll the credits here, our protagonist (or maybe I’m the antagonist of this opus—I’m never quite sure) still hasn’t met his Nietzsche-citing clove smoker, and now he’s dispirited to discover that he doesn’t adore the band he’s writing about as completely as he thought he did.

Plus, Kevin Kline probably wants to punch me in the face now. Just what I needed.

I know what you’re thinking… A song-title gag is about the laziest way I could wrap this thing up, even more unimaginative than settling for another witless car pun, right?

Whatever. Boobies.

August 1, 2015

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itsinstantcherryblossombouq-blog · 6 years

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Effortless Methods To Conserve Money When Buying Online

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Acapulco Is Now Mexico’s Murder Capital

By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2017

ACAPULCO, Mexico--From the crescent bay and swaying palms, the taxi drivers of Acapulco need just 10 minutes to reach this other, plundered world.

Here, in a neighborhood called Renacimiento, a pharmacy is smeared with gang graffiti. Market stalls are charred by fire. Taco stands and dentists’ offices, hair salons and auto-body workshops--all stand empty behind roll-down metal gates.

On Friday afternoons, however, the parking lot at the Oxxo convenience store in this brutalized barrio buzzes to life. Dozens of taxi drivers pull up. It’s time to pay the boys.

When the three young gunmen drive up in a white Nissan Tsuru, Armando, a 55-year-old cabbie, scribbles his four-digit taxi number on a scrap of paper, folds it around a 100-peso note and slips it into their black plastic bag. This is his weekly payment to Acapulco’s criminal underworld--about $5, or roughly half what he earns in a day.

“They have the power,” said Armando, who identified himself only by his first name because he feared reprisal. “They can do whatever they want.”

For each of the past five years, Acapulco has been the deadliest city in Mexico, in a marathon of murder that has hollowed out the hillside neighborhoods and sprawling colonias that tourists rarely visit. And yet, the term “drug war” only barely describes what is going on here.

The dominant drug cartel in Acapulco and the state of Guerrero broke up a decade ago. The criminals now in charge resemble neighborhood gangs--with names like 221 or Los Locos. An estimated 20 or more of these groups operate in Acapulco, intermixed with representatives from larger drug cartels who contract them for jobs. The gang members are young men who often become specialists--extortionists, kidnappers, car thieves, assassins--and prey on a largely defenseless population.

“They kill barbers, tailors, mechanics, tinsmiths, taxi drivers,” said Joaquin Badillo, who runs a private security company in the city. “This has turned into a monster with 100 heads.”

Mexico is halfway through what may become the bloodiest year in its recent history, with more than 12,000 murders in the first six months of 2017. June was the deadliest month in the past two decades of consistent Mexican government statistics.

There are many theories on why violence, which dropped for two years after the 2012 election of President Enrique Peña Nieto, has roared back: competition for the domain of captured kingpins; the breakdown of secret agreements between criminals and politicians; a judicial reform requiring more evidence to lock up suspected lawbreakers; the growing American demand for heroin, meth and synthetic opiates. Whatever the primary cause, the result has been terrifying--a disintegration of order across growing swaths of this country.

In Acapulco, the faded playground of Hollywood stars, where the Kennedys honeymooned and John Wayne basked in the clifftop breeze, drugs are no longer even the main story. This is a place awash in crime of all stripes, where criminals no longer have to hide.

When Evaristo opened his restaurant along Acapulco’s seaside strip 15 years ago, drugs were plentiful, and that was just fine with him. Acapulco has always been a party town, and became a transit point for U.S.-bound Colombian cocaine and the opium poppy that bloomed along with marijuana in the state’s highlands. The dominant traffickers were the Beltran Leyva brothers of the Sinaloa Cartel.

“What the Beltran Leyvas were doing was selling drugs,” said Evaristo, who identified himself only by his first name, for fear of reprisal. “But they left us alone.”

For Evaristo, and many other Acapulco residents, the city’s descent into lawlessness began with the events at La Garita. A brazen January 2006 shootout in that central neighborhood left flaming vehicles and bodies in the street and became part of the city’s lore, as much as the iconic cliff divers and the Hollywood stars who once passed through town.

That gun battle also made one thing clear: National-level cartels were active in Acapulco--in this case the Sinaloa cartel, allied with the Beltran Leyvas, and the expansionist Zetas. And they were willing to use tremendous violence against each other.

“That’s when all this began,” Evaristo recalled.

Over the next decade, as then-President Felipe Calderón declared war on organized crime, Mexican security forces and their U.S. allies picked off cartel bosses and kingpins, splintering their organizations.

In Acapulco, the result has become a kaleidoscope of feuding criminals. After the killing of a powerful Beltran Leyva brother in 2009, rival factions emerged, with names like the Independent Cartel of Acapulco, the South Pacific Cartel and La Barredora. Contenders joined the fray from ascendant heroin-trafficking groups and crime organizations from other cities.

With the loss of all-powerful cartel bosses who had tightly controlled their criminal empires, drug gangs moved increasingly into other crimes, such as kidnapping and extortion.

Some 2,000 businesses have closed in the past few years, according to trade associations, driven away by crime and a withering economy. The bulk of the devastation has come in the poorer, inland neighborhoods, but the tourist strip has not been spared. Gone are Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe, along with famed local spots such as El Alebrije nightclub and Plaza Las Peroglas, a shopping mall. An accountant whose clients included restaurant owners, doctors, and mechanics said that about 70 percent of them had closed their businesses in the past year due to extortion.

“Today, in Acapulco, this problem has given us mass psychosis,” said Alejandro Martinez Sidney, president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism in Guerrero, which represents more than 8,000 businesses. “We are frozen, waiting for someone to come and demand our money.”

Last September, five gunmen walked into Evaristo’s restaurant, asking for the phone number of the owner. After he said he wouldn’t pay extortion, the men returned and put their guns to the heads of the staff, saying they would burn down the restaurant with everyone inside it, the restaurant owner recalled.

Since then, Evaristo has paid 40,000 pesos per month (about $2,200).

He has cut back on advertising and maintenance to cover the payments. Two of his private security guards were riddled with bullets from a passing car one night in May and survived the attack. If this keeps up, he will close down.

“My life is at risk,” Evaristo said.

Mexico’s crime gangs have not just proliferated, they behave differently than in past decades. Cartels were once based on family ties and known for maintaining strict hierarchies that rewarded members’ loyalty with promotion through the ranks.

The newer generations of criminal gangs operate more like a “wheel network,” a web of contacts who ally at times but also work independently, said Cecilia Farfán, a scholar at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomy de Mexico, or ITAM, who specializes in organized crime and is doing research in Acapulco.

If these quasi-independent cells get disrupted, the larger network can still function, and “the intelligence that a cell can provide to law enforcement or rival organizations is limited,” Farfán wrote in her recently completed dissertation.

Criminals have begun to show less allegiance to a single organization--acting more like freelance subcontractors.

“They hire you for your expertise; they’re not going to develop you as a human resource,” Farfán said about how street-level criminals are used. “They’re not investing in you, and you’re not invested in them, either.”

The victims of Acapulco’s violence come in many forms: those caught in feuds between criminal bands; businessmen who don’t pay extortion; those who cross the invisible boundaries between drug gang territory. The situation has become so confused--with criminals staking out overlapping domains--that residents often complain about being forced to pay off two or three different groups. People die from mistaken identity or as bystanders.

On one recent night, an overflow crowd waited silently on sidewalk benches outside an Acapulco funeral parlor. Gerardo Flores Camarena, 57, a hotel bartender, couldn’t stay seated. He paced back and forth in anguish as he spoke into his cellphone.

“The killers thought they were from another group,” he told a relative. “They got confused. Can you imagine: confused.”

The day before, his brother, Ricardo, 42, an ambulance driver, and Gerardo’s two teenage grandsons had been found in the trunk of their Nissan Sentra. They had suffered a type of torture known as the “tourniquet”: wires cinched around their necks to the point of suffocation.

A note left with the bodies said this is what happens to car thieves. But the Nissan had belonged to the family.

“We feel powerless against what is happening in this city,” Flores said.

When Mayor Evodio Velázquez Aguirre took office in October 2015, he said, the municipal police force was “totally out of control.”

Half the 1,500 officers had failed federal vetting and background checks. The police had spent much of 2014 on strike to protest salaries and benefits, leaving state and federal forces in charge.

The mayor said that his administration has provided the police with life insurance, housing, new cameras and vehicles. There is also a new, separate tourist police force with jaunty uniforms to attend to travelers.

“Acapulco is on its feet,” the mayor said in an interview.

But last year, there were 918 killings in the city of 700,000, the most murders of any Mexican city for the fifth straight year. During the first half of this year, the government numbers track slightly lower--412 compared with 466 in the same period in 2016--although the local El Sur newspaper lists 466 murders for the most recent period.

Admiral Juan Guillermo Fierro Rocha, the commander in Acapulco for the Mexican navy, which has a critical role fighting cartels, told El Sur this month that criminals are lashing out because they are “cornered,” and that he expects a decrease soon.

But Mexican authorities have failed for years to halt Acapulco’s slide.

Some 5,000 security forces are in Acapulco, and the coastal sliver of hotels and restaurants brims with federal and state police, soldiers, marines and municipal forces. This attention to the tourist strip, however, leaves the vast majority of the city exposed, residents say.

Mexican police have been hobbled by corruption for decades, and Acapulco has been no exception. Alfredo Álvarez Valenzuela, who oversaw the Acapulco police for five months until May 2014, told the Mexican newspaper Reforma last year: “The municipal police don’t work for organized crime; the municipal police are organized crime.”

But the problem goes beyond corruption. Mexican municipal police traditionally have had little training, low pay, poor equipment and little capacity to do investigations. Federal police and the army often lack street-level knowledge of cities and their crime gangs.

Juan Salgado, an expert on police reform at CIDE, a Mexican research center, said that police are reluctant to visit some neighborhoods in Acapulco because they are outgunned and frightened.

“I’m not sure if crime would increase if the whole municipal police department in Acapulco disappeared,” Salgado said. “They are so inefficient in stopping crime I don’t think it would make a huge difference.”

Meanwhile, many people refuse to press charges out of concern the information will leak back to their tormentors. That makes investigating crimes all the more difficult.

On a recent afternoon, a man wearing a cowboy hat and carrying an assault rifle stood in plain sight on the main boulevard in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood, five miles from Acapulco Bay.

At his feet on the pavement lay another young man, barefoot and curled in the fetal position, his hair matted with blood. The man with the assault rifle kicked him repeatedly and savagely, then walked calmly back to his white pickup truck. A federal police truck rolled past, but it didn’t stop.

Taxi drivers operate at the intersection of Acapulco’s troubles: They have a shrinking number of tourists as clients, and navigate more dangerous streets. Some have become part of the crime world themselves, working as gang spotters (voluntarily or under duress), or moving drugs or weapons in their cars. When a rival gang tries to take over a neighborhood, its members often kill taxi drivers “in an effort to blind the established organization,” Chris Kyle, an anthropologist and expert on Guerrero based at the University of Alabama, wrote in an affidavit for an Acapulco taxi driver applying for asylum in the United States.

More than 130 taxi drivers were slain in Acapulco last year, making them about eight times more likely to get murdered than the average city resident.

Teens with guns often commandeer taxis in Renacimiento for hours or days. They burn taxis to enforce their warnings. Guillermo Perez, 40, a taxi driver, putters around the neighborhood in a 1995 Volkswagen Beetle, its windshield cracked and upholstery ripped out, leaving his newer car hidden at home. He no longer picks up strangers, driving only clients he knows.

“People are terrified,” he said.

Years ago, ferrying around tourists used to be enjoyable, he said, even lucrative work--$100 for a day shift, more at night.

“It was so different: It was Acapulco,” he said. “People were out in the streets. We all lived from tourism.”

The wealthy can leave or build homes with elaborate security systems, but the poor are exposed. And so Perez, like many of the 20,000 taxi drivers in Acapulco, pays his weekly fee for protection, even though he receives none.

“If 100 pesos a week is what it costs to stay alive,” he said, “I’ll pay.”

#Mexico #Acapulco violence #Mexico drug violence

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grandcanyonadvisors · 7 years

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Your Guide to Visiting the Grand Canyon for Spring Break

Spring break is right around the corner! Whether you’re planning a college getaway or a family vacation with your kids, the Southwest is the perfect place to escape from the blustery winds and frigid temperatures many face every winter.

Las Vegas is a common starting point for the well-travelled Grand Canyon-Bryce Canyon-Zion Park loop. This loop is a popular route for Southwest roadtrippers, but if a single week isn’t enough time for you hit all three locations, Las Vegas is a perfect home base for exploring a number of iconic Southwest landmarks, like the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, the Hoover Dam, and Red Rock Canyon.

If you only have a day to visit the Grand Canyon, there are a number of guided tour options from Las Vegas that will easily fit into your busy schedule. Day trips to the South and West Rims by helicopter, airplane, and bus (or all three!) are the perfect choice for busy travellers hoping to check out other Southwest hotspots.

Why Should You Visit the Grand Canyon over Spring Break?

School may be out, but the learning never stops at the Grand Canyon – even over spring break! The Grand Canyon offers many educational opportunities, with ranger demonstrations and visitor centers chock full of interesting facts about the history, geology, and wildlife of the region.

Here are a two more reasons why you should consider visiting the Grand Canyon over spring break:

The temperatures are cooler. Summertime temperatures can be quite warm, so if you’re not a big fan of sun and heat, spring break may offer some welcome relief. Average daytime temperatures range between 55 and 65 degrees. Spring break brings an influx of visitors, but overall, the Grand Canyon is significantly less crowded in February and March than in the summertime.

There are also tons of fun activities to do with your friends or family, such as:

Exploring the Rim and the Grand Canyon Village. Hiking the Rim trail or venturing below the Rim. Fly to the Canyon floor in a helicopter. Check out our helicopter tours. Cruise down the Colorado River. It’s usually cool on the river at this time of year, so make sure to bring warm clothes. Take a look at our boat tours. Become a Junior Ranger. Learn more about the Junior Ranger program. Walk 70 feet out from the edge of the West Rim on the Grand Canyon Skywalk. Check out the Hualapai Ranch on the West Rim.

What to Expect at the Grand Canyon on Spring Break

Knowing what to expect when you visit a new location can help you plan what to pack and how to schedule your time.

Crowds

While the Grand Canyon won’t be as busy over spring break as it is during the peak summer season, you should still expect some crowds. Long lines at entrance stations and shuttle bus stops are common. Parking may also be limited, so you may prefer to take a guided tour. Viewpoints may also be crowded, especially at sunset.

Weather

The weather on the Rim can be unpredictable in the early spring. Be prepared for sudden weather changes by wearing sturdy shoes with good tread, and by packing a jacket and a few pieces of warmer clothing, especially if you’re planning to stay till the sun sets.

5 Tips for Visiting the Grand Canyon on Spring Break

Keep these tips in mind to make sure your Grand Canyon adventure goes off without a hitch:

Be prepared for snow! Because of the season and the Grand Canyon’s higher elevation, there’s a chance it might be snowy. Don’t worry about the snow ruining your #CanyonSelfie – a snow-covered Canyon is just as beautiful!

Pack a hat, sunscreen, and lots of water. It’ll still be sunny during the day, but it gets cool at night, and because the climate is drier, you’ll dehydrate quicker than you might expect. Bring binoculars, sunscreen, spare batteries for your camera. Consider carrying a backpack instead of purse – it’ll hold more, it’s more comfortable, and your hands will be free to snap as many photos as you like. Make sure you come home with beautiful shots with our photography tips. Don’t feed the wildlife! Squirrel bites are one of the most common injuries sustained at the Grand Canyon. Discover 6 cool creatures to look for when you visit. Restaurants will be packed and lines will be long. Save some time and money by bringing your own snacks. Make sure you don’t forget anything with our free printable packing list!

It’s a little late to book accommodation (hotels can book up to a year in advance), but many guided tours can be booked as soon as the day before you wish to visit. However, if you’re driving yourself to the Grand Canyon, follow these tips:

Stop at the Hoover Dam along the way. It’s a great way to break up the long drive from Las Vegas. Discover 7 more reasons why you should visit the Hoover Dam. Plan to arrive at the Grand Canyon early so you can take full advantage of your time on the Rim. If you plan on visiting other National Parks, considering purchasing a Parks Pass so you can access every park for a single fee. The Cameron Trading Post, which is just a few miles outside the Grand Canyon National park, has a fantastic restaurant where you can try local specialties such as Navajo tacos and deep-fried sopapillas with honey or powdered sugar.

Not sure whether to drive yourself to the Grand Canyon or take a guided tour? We can help you decide – read our post on driving yourself versus taking a guided tour.

Bring On Spring

Whether you’re just starting to plan your spring break vacation or if you’re seeking advice for how to make sure your Southwest adventure goes smoothly, we’ve got you covered!

Take a look at our most popular guided Grand Canyon day tours:

Grand Canyon South Rim Bus Tour

Marvel at the South Rim’s breathtaking views on our most popular guided and narrated luxury bus tour to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim National Park! Your journey begins with pick up from the hotel before traveling through Las Vegas & Boulder City, Nevada. RESERVE NOW

Grand Canyon West Rim Deluxe Bus Tour with Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Skywalk

Enjoy your trip to the Grand Canyon on a large luxury motorcoach, complete with a drive over the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge before arriving at the stunning West Rim! Skywalk available for an additional fee. RESERVE NOW

Grand Canyon Helicopter Floor Landing with Limousine Upgrade

Travel to and from your helicopter in a luxury limousine before you land on the Canyon floor and at an exclusive private ramada overlooking the Colorado River. Your return flight includes a cruise over the Las Vegas strip. RESERVE NOW

Featured image source: Grand Canyon National Park via Flickr.

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