#first off: why WAS leon able to hear michael. second: there is no way that's just going to happen once for no reason | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hlupdate · 3 years

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Louis Tomlinson started the year releasing his debut album Walls and ended it with one of the best selling live streams of 2020, Louis Tomlinson Live from London.

Louis Tomlinson Live from London became promoter Veeps biggest selling show of the year. Louis’s fans crashed the website with their furious desire to see him live. For many fans, this would be the first time they would have the chance to do so. As we write this, Louis’s live stream has so far made in access of a $1 million for some very worthwhile organisations and causes and his own touring crew.

He has also released merch to mark the very special live stream. Again 100% of the profits went to his own tour crew and the organisations detailed above.

Louis Tomlinson Live from London was the first time fans got to hear his album Walls in its entirety, live. He didn’t disappoint. The setlist was fantastic. Walls tracks, with a sprinkling of some One Direction classics, a cover and a brand new song. He gave those watching a complete show.

Opening with Just Hold On, his first solo single which was a collaboration with Steve Aoki.He made it pure Louis and gave it a rocky edge. It was a strong and purposeful opening that set the tone for the rest of his jam-packed set. Next came We Made It, the first track to be taken off Walls and one that’s really special to witness Louis singing live, as he truly has made it!

It was swiftly followed by Don’t Let It Break Your Heart, an uplifting and heartfelt track. Then came the first of three nods to Louis’s time in One Direction. Drag Me Down was the first track to be released by the band after Zayn Malik left and was from their fifth studio album Made in the AM, which was One Direction’s final album before they went on a nice long break. Louis’s take on the track breathed new life into the classic, fans waited with bated breath to see if we would the infamous high notes in the original or if he’d have changed the arrangement. He did the high notes and smashed them.

Smashing it was something Louis did throughout the set, his voice has improved hugely as solo artist, it makes us quite sad to think that while in the band, his voice was often looked over when it’s so powerful and unique and some of his 1D bandmates have often commented they find Louis parts the hardest to sing when they cover the bands songs because of his vast vocal range. A range that was sadly not utilised to it’s full potential within the band. But now as a solo artist his voice is the best we’ve ever heard it.

After a quick and extremely clever interlude where Louis changed sets, he sang Two of Us accompanied by a string quartet. Two of Us is usually a highly emotive song anyway, but backed by a string quartet and Louis’s vocals which just ooze emotion, it hit harder and was an extremely powerful moment.

Habit and Too Young came next, both firm fan favourites. Then there was another stunning interlude by the string quartet before Louis sang Perfect Now and another 1D classic Through The Dark from the band’s third album Midnight Memories. He then followed up withFearless.

New song Copy of A Copy of A Copy came next, Louis has been open that while he’s not been able to tour this year as planned because of covid he’s begun working on his second album. While we know the album is in very early stages, if Copy of A Copy of A Copy is any indication of the lyrical style and sound he’s playing around with at the moment for the album, we know it will be a huge hit. The song is one which like many of his songs holds universal appeal as it’s personable but wholly relatable to the listener.

Defenceless was next followed by a cover of Kings of Leon’s Beautiful War, a song which suited Louis’s voice perfectly and makes us yearn for him to write and/or collab with the group in the future.

The final 1D nod came in the form of Little Black Dress, a song which has become a firm staple in Louis setlist and one that always goes down well.

Title track Walls provided us with a moment to reflect on what Louis and his team have achieved with the Louis Tomlinson Live from London Livestream. Uniting fans and giving them the opportunity to experience a full Louis Tomlinson gig from the comfort and safety of their homes. To raising funds for the live event and touring professionals who make shows like this possible.

Only The Brave was such a special moment that made us quite emotional as it’s a track that resonates with so many and one that always hits hard because of raw emotion Louis exudes in his vocal delivery of the track.

Louis ended his set with Kill My Mind a firm fan favourite, that I know we love singing along to and is such a fun and energetic track and always a welcome addition to his setlist.

Louis Tomlinson Live from London was a proper gig, fans were given the full Louis Tomlinson experience. From his band which features Michael Blackwell on guitars and backing vocals, Steve Durham on the drums (he is also the musical director for Louis and his band), Matt Dinnadge on the bass, Isaac Anderson on guitar and backing vocals and Zak Craner on the keys.

To the string quartet, the film crew which included Charlie Lightening who directed and conceptualised the show, Dan Lightening, Director of Photography, Joshua Hailing, photographer. And the crew which included Mark Brightman, Dan Ein, Krupa and Steve Weall and many other talented live music and touring professionals, all helped to make the show possible. Highlighting just why we need to support those who work in the industry so we can all when it’s safe to do so, see our faves live.

Louis Tomlinson Live from London was not only a pinnacle moment in Louis career where he performed Walls live in its entirety for the first time and showed himself as not just the guy from ‘that one band’, but a seasoned performer who knows how to put on a show that lets the music do the talking. He gave many fans the once in a lifetime chance to see their fave sing in a full gig with staging, set design and lighting, it truly brought home just how important tour and live event crew is in your faves being able to tour the world. For your fave to get on stage they need a small army of people all contributing to get there. The live stream showed exactly that. Music brings people together and connects us all. We need live music and we need the people who help to make it happen.

To Louis, his band, the tour and film crews, the team at Veeps and Louis’s own personal team…. everyone who helped contribute to the show in any way. Thank you. Thank you for giving fans an experience they will treasure and never forget and reminding us all the importance of seeing music performed live.

#louis tomlinson #articles #lt livestream #131220

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letterboxd · 3 years

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Beautiful Day: The Don Hertzfeldt Q&A.

In which the singular creator of It’s Such a Beautiful Day and the World of Tomorrow trilogy answers 57 questions put to him by the Letterboxd community, about death, gills, snacks, back flips, the best time of day to watch a movie, and the sick pleasure of emotionally destroying people.

Since his first animated outings in the 1990s, filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt has had a way of staring deeply into humanity’s soul via a humble stick figure, and his skill at blending existential questions with situational humor breeds intense reactions. To browse Letterboxd reviews of Hertzfeldt’s animated works is to meet film lovers at a rare, collective gathering point: heaping great piles of love for films that do “the exact opposite of helping with depression”.

There’s something optimistically anti-feel-good in Hertzfeldt’s works; a bleak view of the future, and a frank appreciation of death’s inevitability, that makes viewers urgently want to fix the way they’re living right now. “I’ve built a lot of my life philosophy on the messages of this film,” writes Misty, of his acclaimed It’s Such a Beautiful Day. “It has kicked my ass completely,” writes Dirk of the first, Oscar-nominated World of Tomorrow instalment, “making me angry at myself for letting trivial stuff take over things I love and making me happy I have so very, very much in my life to enjoy and be grateful for.”

The filmmaker’s magic lies as much in the process as the content: “Hertzfeldt is able to make every moment count,” writes Artpig, of the second WoT instalment, The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts, “every line of dialogue, every moment of silence, every note of music, every line of animation.” The World of Tomorrow films, says animation expert Toussaint Egan in our Letterboxd Show animation episode, are “some of the best science fiction films, period”.

And his timing. Oh, his timing. Just as the northern hemisphere days were turning cold, and the drawn-out misery of the pandemic was really taking hold all over again, Hertzfeldt tweeted:

WORLD OF TOMORROW EPISODE THREE everywhere october 9 5pm est 🚀

— don hertzfeldt (@donhertzfeldt)

October 8, 2020

And like that, World of Tomorrow Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime was ours, an overnight gift to the quarantined and bereaved-weary, on Vimeo for all to rent or own. The gifts, they keep coming: a master list of movies that have their fingerprints on the World of Tomorrow universe, and now, in recognition of our community’s love for his films—and in his signature lower-case—the answers to questions asked in an exclusive Letterboxd Q&A.

To make things easier for Don, we grouped similar questions (and have noted which members asked what). Read on for more than you ever thought you might get to know about Hertzfeldt’s process, brain, heart and influences.

Filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt.

From “holograms that yell at you!” to the stunning colors, textures and folds of the blue mountains, to attributes David progressively deletes to make room for memories, would you please give us an insight into World of Tomorrow Three’s world-building process? —Letterboxd in the grand scheme of the series, episodes one and two still felt like baby steps to me. episode three was my first chance to really start blowing things up and exploring this universe. when i’m writing, i don’t want to worry about going over the top or think about structure or meaning or really much of anything yet. writing is playtime, it should be fun and messy. i want to go over the top. there is no top. i don’t want to start thinking too much until i’m rewriting and sorting through it all. thinking too much too soon can get in the way, like being too aware of when you’re trying to fall asleep. when you write a diary entry or a text to a friend, there’s no self-consciousness or creative blocks, you just write. it’s casual and fluid and automatic. but if you’re asked to write a term paper or a screenplay, suddenly all those lights turn off. it can be paralyzing. it’s hard to get to that place of truly not caring what anyone thinks and approach all forms of writing just as freely as writing those immediate thoughts in your diary. but that’s what i try to do.

When you start writing a new piece, do you usually start with a plot idea, a thematic idea, one uniform philosophical notion, or a little bit of each? —Kodiak J. Sanders, Trenz, Mr. Tables i don’t think i ever write in a straight line. i’ll jot down a hundred stray ideas over time, and one day i’ll sit down and see what connections might be made out of them. i really want this scene to be in the movie, so how do i get there? this is a good line, how can i get a character to say it? so the actual story usually only starts to reveal itself when i sit down to logic all these bits and pieces out. hey, in order to connect this strange idea to that strange idea, suddenly there is a very interesting third scene.

I’m astounded by how much the animation and the visuals improve with each instalment of World of Tomorrow. What have you done differently for each one? —Aske Lund, Cringetacular the characters needed to physically perform a lot more in episodes two and three so there were more demands put on the animation. when emily 4 dances or david staggers up a mountain, those sorts of scenes were animated in “ones”, which means doing 24 drawings per second versus my usual twelve. it’s still all 2D hand animation, just more of a classic disney approach that gives the movement a smoother look and a little more room for nuance. and obviously it takes a lot more work. but i hesitate to call such things improvements because i’m not sure i like the idea of different techniques being thought of as good or bad. it’s just another way of doing things. it really depends, sometimes super limited animation can be more effective.

Likewise, Part Three’s sound design is incredible. What conditions did you create it in, and what are all those sounds, and how do you have such an incredible command of the cut-to-silence trick?! —Letterboxd thanks, the sound design is always my favorite thing to do. other than julia’s lines, it’s easy to forget that all the animation starts with dead silence. obviously there’s no sound coming from a live-action set. so adding sound and music to everything, usually pretty late in production, is when all the stuff i’ve been working on suddenly starts to feel like an actual movie. this is not a future that works very well—particularly david’s, which predates everything else we’ve seen so far by a century or two—so you’re hearing a lot of creaky old hard drives booting up, electric distortions, and bent circuits from broken toys.

Emily and Emily Prime in a still from ‘World of Tomorrow’ (2015).

World of Tomorrow used to fill me with existential dread, but now with the current state of the world it’s become more and more comforting in a strange way. Do you feel that at all as you make new episodes? —mariano gg i wish that were possible but when i’m making something i’m usually so close to it i’m unable to see anything but all the things i need to fix.

Can you talk a little bit about sourcing the photo-realistic images for the backgrounds in Part Three? —Jack Moulton most of the environments were 2D images i built in photoshop, usually starting from close-up photos of different textures (like sandstone), all sort of reshaped and puzzle-pieced into something new. an easy to see example was david’s cockpit, which was cobbled together from all sorts of different old aircraft engine and machine parts. the trick in building and lighting these locations was always figuring out where the line was drawn in making these places realistic, but not too realistic for minimal characters to inhabit. i kept landing on a sort of painterly looking middle ground.

If the cloning process in World of Tomorrow existed right now, would you go through that process and create clones of yourself to prolong your life? —tim probably not, that process doesn’t seem to work so well.

If you were put into the world you’ve created, would you buy gills? —Lauren Torres i tend to avoid putting my head under because i almost always get water in my ears so i guess i wouldn’t need them. gills also seem like they’d be a real nuisance to keep clean.

What does love mean, and why do your characters go through so much effort to find it? —Andrew Michalko oh man.

In this year of years, what do you hope people will understand about death and its inevitability (or is it all there on the screen, and if so, that’s okay too)? —Letterboxd understanding death and its inevitability is maybe the most valuable thing a person can do for themselves.

Was the absence of Emily Prime in Part Three a practical decision [Don’s then-four-year-old niece Winona provided Emily’s voice] or an intentional departure from the first two films? —Michael it was both. i couldn’t find a way to fit her in naturally and i also felt like the series needed to start growing in other directions and not rest on the past. episode two had also been really difficult to write, it was so reliant on winona’s recordings, and it felt like the dam was really broken when i was finally able to write without any restrictions this time.

In a series like World of Tomorrow, where you headed in a direction that is a lot more plot-driven than your previous work, how far in advance do you plan? Did you always know this was in David’s past, or are these stories told one at a time? —Ryan Welch, Kodiak J. Sanders, julius, Alex Leon i could tell early on that this wasn’t a story like it’s such a beautiful day with a clear beginning, middle and end, but a much wilder thing that could continue to grow. the openness of it is still what makes it so interesting to me. i have all sorts of notes for the next episodes but if i already knew what would happen in episode nine i think that would take a lot of the air out of the tires and i’d start to feel like i was just connecting the boring dots. while writing, i’ve also had to be aware that there someday might be an episode nine so i can’t go wrecking the timelines before i get there.

What were the rocks and the gas pump that Emily fell in love with meant to represent? —Ekaneff she was learning how to love, and like all of us, in her youth she gravitated to a bunch of individuals that were wrong for her.

Aside from the ability to release more frequently, is there something about the episodic structure that you prefer/appreciate, as opposed to creating one larger feature-length film? —SiddFinch1 there’s just more freedom. the traditional running time of a feature film, 90 to 120 minutes, is a totally arbitrary number.

Have you ever considered writing a World of Tomorrow book or graphic novel? —Jay Smith the earliest ideas for world of tomorrow were sloshing around in a graphic novel called the end of the world that came out in 2013. but i don’t have any talent or much confidence in making another book like that. it’s a different world. when i look at someone like chris ware and then look at something like the end of the world, it’s like, “wow, baby made a mess”.

A page from Don Hertzfeldt’s graphic novel, ‘The End of the World’ (2013).

What attracted you to the unique style [of minimalist stick figures]? Is there a sense of intimacy that you feel you can achieve with this simplicity? —Evan Whitford when i was little, before i wanted to make movies i wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist. i think my drawings today might have more in common with newspaper comics than the sort of characters you usually see in animation. comic-strip panels were always composed in a very reserved way because they were generally intended to be skimmed. you needed to be able to read the strip in five seconds so you could be off to read the sports pages and obituaries. the comics pages were also under constant size and space restrictions. so they were minimal by design and the artists reduced their characters to only their most essential parts. there was no room for fussing. charles schulz said “i only draw what’s necessary”. and that’s actually incredibly hard to do. you’re accomplishing so much more with so much less.

i’ve also found that if there’s a scene that’s not playing right and bothering me, most of the time it’s because my composition was too cluttered. i almost always find myself removing things from the frame and trying to pare it down to only what’s necessary. very rarely do i ever think ‘i need to add more stuff in here’. because this shot is only five seconds long and i want you to be looking over here when this moment happens and this character says something, and if you’re distracted by this other flickering junk i put in the corner it’s going to throw everything off.

Animation-aside, which creative medium do you resonate with the most? —Bronkdan music.

How much did you pull from real-life experiences to make It’s Such A Beautiful Day, if any? What research did you conduct into memory? —Gunnar Sizemore, David Sigura, Micah Smith whenever i got a little stuck writing it’s such a beautiful day, i’d go back and reread my journal and pull more things out of it. dreams, conversations, small scenes. reading the journal now, it seems like i stole something from it every few pages. i also heavily researched neurological problems. it’s never said in the movie what exactly’s going on with bill, but i needed there to be a real diagnosis to base the medical writing on. so all the things he’s going through are real treatments or symptoms based on an actual condition. i didn’t want to ever come out and say, “he’s got terminal brain clouds”, or whatever in the movie, because then it becomes a “brain-cloud movie”, and that’s too easy for the audience to compartmentalize and distance themselves from… “brain clouds are so rare, that will never happen to me”. but not being told exactly what’s wrong with bill might help make the story more relatable and universal.

In what ways have you kept your mind fresh creatively? How do you keep yourself from slipping into complacency? —Watchmoviez, Drew’s reviews most creative blocks or stagnation come from anxiety, second-guessing and doubt. over the years i’ve learned to just sort of calm down and trust myself more. it’s like the old aesop fable: when you stop thrashing around in the water, the water becomes clearer and you can see more. if a scene isn’t working right, i can more easily chill out about it these days and trust that i’ll eventually figure it out—because i’ve figured these sorts of things out a hundred times before and i know by now that i’m not the sort of person who’s just going to allow a scene that isn’t working to remain in the movie. there’s a little more panic about that sort of thing when you’re young: “oh no, the movie sucks right now, will it always suck?!” i’ve reached the point where i know that i will not let it suck. and that sort of thinking allows all the movie gears to turn more easily.

Do you have a specific thematic, emotional or other miscellaneous motive in mind when including classical music pieces? —James Y. Lee when i’m listening to music and suddenly the right piece arrives, it’s usually blindingly obvious to me: there’s just no doubt this needs to be in the movie somehow. it’s like the idea has always existed and i’ve just finally uncovered it. it’s the same with writing. when the right thing floats along, it is striking and obvious and into the pile of notes it goes.

How much of your animation style lends itself to experimentation, such as discovering new tricks and pretty shots, that is then discarded if you learn it doesn’t work as intended? —Adam, Jacob i think i’m always experimenting. i figure if it doesn’t work, at least i’ve learned something.

What is the strangest compliment or critique you’ve gotten personally or of your work? —Elliot Taylor i’ve always remembered this one. i am so proud of you came out a couple years after everything will be ok. it was a continuation of that story, so it was basically the first time i had ever made a sequel. and everything will be ok had done really well when it came out. it won sundance and got all these great reviews. so i am so proud of you comes out and i remember reading this review that says, “everything will be ok was probably my favorite animated short of all time. it honestly changed my life. it was funny, sad, beautiful and just so wonderful. everything will be ok, boy did i love it. incredible. two thumbs up. truly, best thing ever. wow. so, unfortunately, its sequel, i am so proud of you, just feels like more of the same.”

A still image from ‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’ (2012).

Are there any pieces of fiction that have influenced your work that we probably wouldn’t think of? —Gyani Wasp, Mikolaj Perzyna, Aaron McMillan, Harrison, Axel, Cringetacular, The25centman, Hunter Guidry one thing that pops to mind is the phantom tollbooth. my favorite children’s books were the ones with all the fun metaphors and clever wordplay. when i was plotting out episode two i wanted to lean into that, where visiting different sections of emily’s brain would be like milo visiting the land of math, the land of letters, the land of sound, with different looks and logic to it. so we had the bog of realism, glimmers of hope, broken memories, the logic center, and all the stuff in triangle land and square land. i guess that’s a lot but i wish there had been a bit more.

How did your friends and family respond to the “my anus is bleeding” part of Rejected? —Alex Tatterson they were pretty used to me by then.

Do you know of the work of David Firth, the internet animator? His work is also surreal and has dark humor, but more sinister than whimsical. Would you ever consider making an animation in the realm of horror in future? —KEVIИ HДWKIИS i’m afraid i don’t know him. i’d love to make a horror movie. from a certain point of view though maybe it could be argued that most everything i’ve made is a sort of horror movie?

My first tattoo is of Billy from Billy’s Balloon hanging from his ankle and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. How do you feel about people having your work tattooed and do you have any ink from other creatives that have meant something to you? —Elias it really fucking enrages me when people get my stuff tattooed on them. no just kidding. mostly i feel embarrassed but i’m glad you haven’t changed your mind about it yet. sometimes i wonder how many people have.

Have you ever thought about directing live action? —Abeer, Noah Thompson yes.

Is there an update on your feature film Antarctica? —Rylan California it’s one of many things swirling around.

Will you do a remake of Robocop and why not next year? —Simon no, because robocop is already sort of perfect.

Do you ever see yourself directing a large studio film? Or working with a large team to make something with a higher budget, maybe through a crowd-funded project? Or do you just strongly prefer working on your own? —Vteyshev, Monotone Duck sure. i’ve never preferred working on my own at all. it was usually just the only way to ever get anything made. i haven’t had the funding to pay a big crew, or really much of a crew at all. there’s the old saying: you can make something good, you can make it fast, and you can make it cheap, but you can only pick two. if you make it good and fast it won’t be cheap, if you make it cheap and fast it won’t be good, etc. so my only route in hoping to make something good and cheap has been to totally forget about making it fast.

What did you find digital animation added or took away from your work, and what did those changes do for your storytelling? Will you continue using the digital medium when/if you decide to move on from the World of Tomorrow project? —Alec Lai, Slipkornbizkit, Aldo digital just sped everything up. it’s still one person drawing everything, so we need to remember that speed is relative here, but i felt like i went from riding a bicycle to driving a car. there are many pleasant, wonderful things about riding a bicycle but you’re not going to get anywhere very quickly. and i’m not in my 20s anymore, in fact my 20s and 30s were mostly entirely devoured by making movies in what was maybe the slowest way possible. so these days i am appreciating the speed of digital.

If you could have a conversation with any filmmaker, dead or alive, who would it be and why? —ToBeHonest, Cringetacular if i could resurrect one of my heroes from the dead i think i would feel terrible wasting his time forcing him to have a conversation with me. he might also just sit there, covered with graveyard dirt, screaming in horror.

What is the best time of day to watch a movie? —Sammy night. i always feel a little nuts coming out of a movie and the sun is still up.

What’s your all-time favorite science-fiction film, and why? —Letterboxd 2001. because come on.

What is your favorite of Julia Potts’ films, and why? —Letterboxd i like the one with the severed foot.

Are there any animated films that you felt had a profound impact on you as a child? —Sprizzle probably fantasia. and ray harryhausen stuff. whenever there was a sunday-afternoon movie on TV, my brother and i learned that if in the opening titles there was a credit for “special effects” we should keep watching because we might eventually see something cool.

Which one of your movies is your personal favorite? —Jakob Böwer, RodrigoJerez i don’t know. sometimes it’s the newest one because it’s usually the one with the most experience behind it and therefore feels like it has the fewest mistakes. but then over time i realize they’re all riddled with mistakes. of the it’s such a beautiful day pieces, i think my favorite has always been i am so proud of you. and then i’ll see reviews that say “clearly the second chapter is the weakest one”, and i’ll think, man you guys don’t know what you’re talking about.

One of Don’s layout sketches for ‘I Am So Proud of You’ (2008).

What’s your favorite Pixar film? —Jordan inside out.

What film would you want to be the last one you watch before you die? —Gavin honestly if i’m in the process of dying i hope i won’t be watching movies at all.

Do you have faith in humanity? —Connor Kriechbaum not often.

What is something that worries you about where humankind is headed? —Felix_Bouchard social media.

What is the most valuable thing you have ever lost? How often do you think about it? —Siminup well now i’m getting sad.

Can you do a back flip, mister Don? —Doug maybe with the help of a catapult.

What is your take on the after life? What do you think happens to us when we die? —Luisdecoss i guess that it’s probably a lot like our memory of what the year 1823 was like.

Do you want anything from McDonald’s? —Andrew Rhyne only if i’m in an airport and desperate.

What’s your favorite meal or snack? —Pfitzerone, Evan lately in quarantine i’ve been discovering this particular breakfast burrito.

How’s your quarantine life, Don? —Ivan Arcena it’s okay thanks. eating lots of breakfast burritos.

Hi! I can’t believe you’re going to read this. I am currently filled with an unparalleled amount of joy, wow. This is a long shot but here I go. I’m 17 and your (self-proclaimed) biggest fan. I’ve seen It's Such a Beautiful Day eight times now and every single time I pick up on more details. I’ve watched a few of your interviews and in the AFS one about Rejected you said that the louder you play a movie, the funnier it is. On my seventh watch of It’s Such a Beautiful Day I hooked my laptop up to three huge speakers and I must say—you were so, so right. I made a video essay about the movie. Lol, I’m not sure if this will get to you but Michael Jordan once said something about missing shots or not taking shots or maybe about tequila, I am unsure but I know it was important. Thanks MJ. Not you, Mr Jackson. I’m sorry Ms. Jackson…

I actually do have a question, sorry about the rambling. Every single time I watch the guy at the payphone flip his pencil and go “fantastic, fantastic” I cry. And I think what really does it for me is that “we’ll finally have our day”. Earlier in the movie, Bill’s co-worker talks about how all of time is happening at once. So what I constantly ask myself is if the guy at the payphone is simultaneously having his day and waiting for it. And I’m no longer speaking to that one specific example or even to the movie as a whole but I guess I’m wondering if the idea of all events happening at once comforts you?

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut writes: “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” When I read this I immediately thought about your movie. I think the idea of all of time happening at once makes all of life feel less important but more special. You know? Anyway, I suppose I’d just like to know what inspired the lines about time in the office scene. This isn’t much of a question, more an incoherent ramble but thank you so, so much for all you’ve done. I feel so incredibly inspired and so deeply moved by your work and I know that so many people in this comment section and around the world would agree. I can’t believe I’ve been given the opportunity to ask something. It really is such a beautiful day. :) —Eli Osei (co-signed by Vooder) that old guy at the payphone was someone i saw at the laundromat once and he borrowed my pencil and the whole thing just played out like in the movie. i just thought it was such a perfect little scene that i’d just witnessed. anyway, the idea of time being a landscape and everything taking place “at once” just came straight out of a science magazine. i don’t know how, but apparently it’s been more or less proven to be true? we perceive time in one direction, but the past and the future are always all around us. think of it as though we’re driving our car through a landscape. even though the mountains we saw ten minutes ago are behind us now, it doesn’t mean those mountains have ceased to exist. they’ve only ceased to exist from our point of view. we’ve only just driven past them. the mountains, like your childhood, are still going on back there. anyway, i had never heard of that before and thought it needed to be in a movie.

A still from ‘World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts’ (2017).

Are you a fan of Kurt Vonnegut by any chance? It may be coincidental, but I love how you both utilize science-fiction settings and concepts like being “unstuck from time/memory” to explore the human condition. I feel his writing and your animation are both capable of making me laugh wholeheartedly one minute and weeping genuine, sorrowful tears the next. —Vooder i’m embarrassed to say i’ve never read him and i’m told on a regular basis that i should. that all started after i am so proud of you came out with those discussions about time being a landscape. but i almost only ever read non-fiction. it’s a long story. but now i’m almost afraid to ever read vonnegut after all these years of build-up.

Hey Don, this is really cool. I don’t have as much of a question, more of a comment. It’s Such A Beautiful Day has gotten me through a lot of hard times, being in middle school sucks, I think everyone knows that: and your movie has made life just a wee bit better for me. It also gave me the inspiration and motivation to finish my first feature! Thanks lots. Love from Indiana —Blood Mountain: Experimental Cinema <3 hey thank you. yeah middle school was pretty much the deepest pit of hell. there’s this old saying, “if you find yourself in hell, keep going”. and i’ve never understood that saying. “keep going”, because, i guess, you can always just go deeper into hell?

Hi! Has the vitreous humour in your eyes started to deteriorate and have you experienced floaters within your eyeballs? If not, that’s okay. Just remember it’s part of life, so don’t get scared when it happens! Just keep moving on! But if you do have them, follow-up question: Do you think it’s funny that the body of vitreous fluid that allows your sight to be clear is called the vitreous humour, and when it detaches it’s anything but humorous? I find that pretty humorous myself, in, like, an ironic way. —Clbert1 i actually blew a blood vessel in my eye a couple weeks ago and the whole thing turned bright blood red. it didn’t hurt or anything, i just walked into the room all disgusting and my girlfriend was like, “what the fuck?!” and then the next day i had further weird eye problems. i just went to the eye doctor yesterday. i think i will be fine but i was thinking, wouldn’t it be like the most heavy metal thing ever for my biography if i just suddenly went BLIND? “and then in 2020, HE WENT BLIND.”

Will Intro ever be released to the general public outside of theater screenings? —Melissa okay yes you’ve talked me into it. on that note, i noticed that the poster of intro used on letterboxd is a weird fake and i’m not sure where it came from. someone just used a picture from rejected. if fake posters are to be made i would prefer it if they used a picture from raiders of the lost ark or something.

Do you have plans to combine the World of Tomorrow shorts into one feature-length film à la It’s Such a Beautiful Day? —David Sigura, Sam Stewart, An_Person no, it’s going to be much longer than a feature-length.

Will we ever get a ‘Hertzfeldt 4K Collection’? Or at least a Blu-ray with It’s Such a Beautiful Day and all episodes of World of Tomorrow? —Teebin, HippityHoppity there is actually already a blu-ray for it’s such a beautiful day. up next we’ll do some sort of world of tomorrow blu-ray of the first three episodes. but 4k is too many k’s. you don’t need that many k’s.

Would you ever consider comprising an OST album of all the songs you used and mixed from your films? —PhiloDemon i don’t think so. i read that for many years cat stevens resisted releasing his original songs from harold and maude on any records because he thought they were more special if you could only ever hear them in the movie. i like that.

Do you get a sick kind of pleasure from emotionally destroying people with your movies? —MaxT26 yep.

What’s been your ongoing experience of the outpouring of joy and love of your work? —Henry gratitude. how sad for me if, after all this work, nobody was watching at all.

Related content

Don’s invaluable Twitter thread about “old-school animation camera stuff”

A Few of the Fingerprints on the World of Tomorrow Universe: a list of influences curated for Letterboxd by Don Hertzfeldt

Modest Heroes: the Letterboxd Showdown for indie animation

The Drawn Cinema: Analena’s list of rough animation, pencil textures, watercolor effects, dynamic brushes and other poetic artistry.

Beloved Indie Animation: a list by Gui

Animated Sci-Fi and Fantasy: an extensive list by Stonefolk

‘World of Tomorrow Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime’ is available now through Bitter Films on Vimeo.

#don hertfeldt #world of tomorrow #it's such a beautiful day #animation #hand-drawn #hand drawn animation #2d animation #animated film #animated short #emily prime #david prime #science fiction #sci fi animation #animated sci fi #letterboxd

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huahsu · 4 years

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YEAR OF THE BUTTERFLY

previous years: A SONG THAT DEGRADES EACH TIME YOU PLAY IT :: 2018 A CHURCH AND JOHN LENNON’S “IMAGINE” :: 2017 SIKH DEVOTIONAL MUSIC :: 2016 SPOOKY BLACK :: 2015 this year: I’ve spent the past few months working on a book that I’ve always wanted to write but never figured I’d make the time for. At a really basic level, it’s about listening to music with friends. A couple weeks ago, I devoted a few days to reading a stack of books and articles about the emotional experience of music. They were written by philosophers, critics, cognitive scientists, historians. I took from them two overarching questions. First, what does it mean to assign a piece of music a feeling, like “happy” or “sad?” Is the song itself “sad,” or does it just model a kind of sadness proximate to how we feel? What elements of a song do this? The fraying of a voice? Minor keys? Tempo? Is it all a trick of memory? None of the answers really satisfied me, since music is such an intimate thing. A song makes us feel a way for reasons that are often either blindingly obvious or remote and mysterious. An expert can tell you that humans are wired to feel joy when a certain configuration of notes are struck in tandem, but maybe it just reminds you of looking at the front door.

The other question was whether music itself facilitates any unique emotional possibilities--a mode of feeling that we can’t get anywhere else. Music doesn’t mimic the real world, it doesn’t make arguments. One writer suggested that the thrill of music was its capacity to remind you, foremost, that music can thrill you. In essence, each time we hear something new and feel something, we are being reminded of all the times we’ve felt this way before. We’re living in the echo of a former enchantment. Maybe you’ll hear it again, process it, assign it a genre or context, and the mystique evaporates. But music is one of those things that doesn’t happen on our time. We don’t stand in front of it and train our gaze on this quadrant or that. We don’t flip back to make sure we didn’t miss something. You can’t slow it down as it is happening, you merely let it happen.

In the spring, the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan showed “The Moon Represents My Heart,” an exhibition I worked on with MOCA’s curators, Herb and Andrew. The basic idea was to look at all the ways music had enriched immigrant life, from early opera troupes touring America’s Chinatowns to karaoke bars, church choirs, and after-school violin lessons, fifties doo-wop trios to garage punks and self-taught dance music producers. There’s no legible tradition of Chinese American music so we just wanted to present it as a textured and everyday thing--the experience of the fan could be as legitimate as that of a Mando-pop superstar. While working on the show, people would often ask me for a playlist, but I didn’t really have any to share. It wasn’t really about the music itself, which could sound derivative or amateur to some. It was about the fact that they sought to express themselves through music, in contexts that made them outliers and oddballs. I came to love all the music in our show because of that second-hand thrill--that sense that these moments had been deeply meaningful to everyone in the room.

You can hear it in the voice of Stephen Cheng, who ended up being the show’s most memorable star. He put out a rocksteady gem in the sixties and then spent the next decade in New York trying to get the Dragon Seeds, his Chinese “folk-rock” band, off the ground. Cheng died years ago, but Andrew found his children, who brought some reels of unreleased music to the museum. I remember staring at them, wondering what was on them. It was a kind of anticipation and wonder that I often miss, when the operative feeling I associate with music-listening on the internet is the frenzy of opening and closing windows, clicking links, proving my humanity to a captcha.

Stephen’s singing wasn’t great, but it was perfect. His version of “Yesterday,” all warbly and over-the-top, has now supplanted the original for me. Somehow, we played some of Stephen’s songs on the radio, including one about butterflies and love. Somehow, one of the people listening was a butterfly expert, and he was about to marry another butterfly expert. Who knew such a song was possible, the groom-to-be told me. Stephen was too obscure to be properly forgotten. Or maybe his song was just dormant all these years. It awaited just the right listener, and now, over forty years later, he would get his propers, sandwiched somewhere between the vows and Kool and the Gang, a couple minutes of people scratching their heads, searching for the right smile, saying Can you believe this? to one another.

### TEENAGE DREAM

Warren Defever/His Name is Alive, All the Mirrors in the House

EXCELLENT USE OF “P.S.K.” Kindness feat. Robyn, “Warning” EXCELLENT USE OF A TELEPHONE Mavi, “Guernica” TECHNICALLY 2018, BUT TAIWAN’S ANSWER TO COIL, JOY DIVISION, ETC SEN, “The Cicada” SAME (2018) BUT TAIWANESE DREAMBOAT VIBES Linion, “Can’t Find” ANOTHER, KINDA BILLY BRAGG-Y Wayne’s So Sad, “Wanderer’s Guide to Taipei” SUMMER IN TAIWAN, AND SO I BOUGHT A LOT OF CDs, INCLUDING THE LIMITED EDITION SIGNED 9M88 DEBUT 9m88, “Love Rain” THEY ARE VERY INTO THE “FUTURE SOUL” THING Andrea, “You Better Kiss Me” THIS GUY HAS THE SAME NAME AS MY COUSIN Yo Lee demos LOTS OF BACKPACKS Hsien, Lately AMAZED TO SEE LIM GIONG REISSUES THERE, THIS IS THE DANCE ALBUM HE RECORDED IN 1994 IN THE UK BEFORE BRINGING RAVE CULTURE BACK TO TAIWAN Lim Giong, Entertainment World (IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH LIM GIONG, THIS IS THE GREATEST SONG EVER Lim Giong, “A Pure Person) AND HERE’S 9m88 COVERING “PLASTIC LOVE” 9m88, “Plastic Love” AIR SUPPLYERS Oso Leone, Gallery Love Sunset Rollercoaster, Vanilla Villa I ENJOYED THIS WHEN IT CAME OUT BUT HONESTLY FORGOT IT CAME OUT THIS YEAR, OR THAT I ENJOYED, BUT FOR THE LONGEST TIME MY “2019″ EMAIL DRAFT JUST READ “CHIEF KEEF HNIA KAIL MALONE (sic)” Chief Keef and Zaytoven, GloToven

ANOTHER DEVASTATING DUO Pink Siifu and Akai Solo, Black Sand

MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY Kali Malone, The Sacrificial Code Clarice Jensen, Drone Studies I AM A SLOW WALKER, BUT I NEVER WALK BACKWARDS Michael Vincent Waller, Moments ana roxane - ~~~ A THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT Caleb Giles, Under the Shade Medhane, Own Pace WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR Angel Bat Dawid, The Oracle Art Ensemble of Chicago, We are on the Edge READ JOSEPH JARMAN Joseph Jarman, Black Case I and II RESPECT YOURSELF Helado Negro, This is How You Smile Deb Never, “Swimming” LET’S DO IT AGAIN Tommy Holohan & Casper Hastings- RVE001 Eris Drew, Raving Disco Breaks LET’S DO IT AGAIN AGAIN, BUT SMEARED Burial, Tunes 2011-2019 OR PERHAPS YOU WERE THERE Callisto, Guidance is Eternal, Part I PERHAPS YOU WERE THERE FOR MICROHOUSE AND PEAK MEGO AND BLOGS Barker, Debiasing AT A WAREHOUSE PARTY, ABLE TO HEAR TOO MANY FLOORS, ROOMS, SOUNDS AT ONCE, IN A GOOD WAY Dies Smely, “Neptune Rises” AT A WAREHOUSE PARTY, BUT THINKING ABOUT PLUNDER, THE TRAIL OF TEARS, THE SANCTITY OF EARTH Kelman Duran, 13 Month A KIND OF BLUE Steve Hiett, Down on the Road by the Beach POSSIBLY MY MOST PLAYED ALBUM, 2019 Galcher Lustwerk, Information R.I.P. PRINCE, FOREVER AND ALWAYS Serpente, Parada Moodymann, Sinner Nelson Bandela, Purprain THE OPPOSITE OF “I AM A GOD” Nelson Bandela - “i'm mortal” YOU GOT ME Shane Eagle feat. Santi and Bas, “Vanya” HARD TO BELIEVE JAZMINE SULLIVAN REMAINS SO OVERLOOKED Kindness feat Jazmine Sullivan, “Hard to Believe” WATCH FOR THE HOOK Quando Rondo, “Gun Powder”

ANTE UP Polo G feat Lil Tjay, “Pop Out” “PANTS GON BE SAGGIN TIL I’M FORTY” Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, “Thuggin”

“WHY THEY LET THE TERMINATOR WIN THE ELECTION?” Sault, “Why Why Why Why Why”

HOLLOW BONES Showbiz and Milano, “Guillotine” LADI LUV, “GOOD TO THE LAST DUB” City Girls, “Act Up” MONEY BOSS PLAYERS Benny the Butcher feat 38 Spesh and Jadakiss, “Sunday School” Roc Marciano, “Richard Gear” WARP 30 (1989-2019) Droop-E, “The Droop-E Way” INTERSTELLAR SPACE, PROBABLY KILLER LIVE Blacks’ Myths, Blacks Myths II ALICE NEVER WENT ANYWHERE Sam Wilkes, “Sivaya” Alice Coltrane, Live at the Berkeley Community Theater 1972 RIYL: LYRICHORD, EFFECTS PEDALS Seungmin Cha, Nuunmuun RIYL: EFFICIENCY, INTERLUDES Solange, “Binz” “WHO HERE IS STILL LISTENING TO JOHNNY MAY CASH’S “DRUGS” IN 2019?” Playboi Carti, “Molly” “MOLLY” CZ Wang and Neo Image, “Just Off Wave”

YOU’VE SUBSCRIBED TO “UK STREETSOUL YOUTUBE PLAYLIST” Apiento feat Harriet Brown, “Down That Road” WHERE WERE U IN 2092? Jai Paul, “He”

LIL B, INNIT Voldy Moyo, Paper World SCREAMADELICA Vampire Weekend, “Harmony Hall” Humeysha, Nusrat on the Beach FOLKTRONICA Aldous Harding, “The Barrel” TOO PURE Springfields, Singles 1986-1991 MY AQUARIUM Rod Modell, Captagon ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE Vagabon, Vagabon 4-TRACK TWEE BEDROOM COVERS OF BLINK-182′S DUDE RANCH Colleen Green, Blink-182′s “Dude Ranch” as Played by Colleen Green

KINDA AS THOUGH A PART OF MY 2016-19 LP PURCHASES FORMED THEIR OWN BANDS Anunaku, Whities 024 75 Dollar Bill, I Was Real Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, Mandatory Reality

JUST 30 OR SO GECS Cool Fang, Sparring I’M A DEADHEAD BUT FOR STANDING ON THE CORNER SOTC Art Ensemble, SOTC Double Bass Ensemble * Merciful Allah Black Hole Theater * 4/24/19 SOTC Art Ensemble, Variation 9 * Merciful Allah Black Hole Theater * 4/27/19

SONG OF THE SPRING, SUMMER, WINTER, YEAR, STILL UNDEFEATED

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mandssisters · 5 years

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Where to begin! It’s Sunday morning in Auckland I made a school girl error not to cancel a “uk” alarm so I’m up and around at 7am after a late night and full on day of festival fun! Still it would be rude to sleep when the sun is shining and there is much touristing that needs doing, but a “review” must be where it all begins today.

GOTR Auckland. Community, we meet a lovely couple whilst waiting yesterday Naya and Gonzalo Bascur. Originally from Chile but living and working in North Auckland for the last 6 years. With a 2.5hr drive and 2 hr flight under their belt to get here. Welcome Gonzalo to the group!

I’m loving the life here. New Zealander’s are so relaxed this is reflected in the non queue until 60 mins before doors, we can all learn a lot from this attitude.

The stage was set up with an ego ramp, the age old dilemma of where to stand runs through your mind.

5pm Ben appeared on stage to introduce the first act Holly from Tiny Ruins, Ben sporting a new green trouser and white t shirt combo (Newly purchased we wondered due to #luggagegate?). He carries it off with great style and swagger.

The crowd are so relaxed, most remain seated on the grass, enjoying the sun, food and drink whilst Holly and the next act Angie McMahon (first time in New Zealand) performance. Talking of food, (Nando’s at this GOTR!) Gonzalo very kindly wandered the site to get us some chips, only to discover that he had lost his wallet by his return. Within minutes a phone call from someone onsite reunited him with his wallet, would this happen in the UK? I’m impressed.

We got chatting with one of the paps, who turned out to be from READING (UK) He moved over 8 years ago and has made NZ his home. He gave us some great beach tips.... black sand and great waves on this beach, peace tranquility on that one, shame I can’t remember any of the names! He was very sweet and helpful.

It felt like a GOTR home coming for Michael Kiwanuka, he was on the bill at the first stopover in Huddersfield back in 2012, and again in the fields of Avalon Glastonbury. He has a great laid back style that suited the western springs ethos.

Leon Bridges clearly has a big fan base, the crowd got really packed for his performance, Leon was sporting a black fur hat on such a “cold” day! This is the second time I’ve seen him, I thought he had a different sound this time more R’n’B vs his 50’s style smooth swagger from Latitude I got use to the change by the fifth song and thought he did a great set, he and his backing singers made good use of the ego ramp.

Mumford time! The crew were busy during the day laying carpet and prepping the ego ramp. Kit was now being set up for 42 as an opener.... worth the 30,000 mile trip alone!

As the sunset in Auckland on walked the chaps. Bens green trousers now supported by a matching jacket and baseball cap, who knew Ben was a Masters golf pro. 😇

Wow! Gotta love 42. Marcus placed mid way on the ramp smashing the life out of the drums, this is always a pleasure to see and hear. He clearly loves it too. The band joined him at the end of the ramp for LLM and Babel can’t deny I was a little gutted to only see the back of them for Babel.

There was something extra special about Guiding Light it really pulled on my emotions.

Marcus has a lot of banter. Wise words about loving New Zealand and not overdoing the high spirited ways! I don’t think he took his own advice the night before! Slightly jaded! And let’s embrace and never forget the song stopping during The Cave. As Marcus pointed out people were still riding the scream fun fair ride, with the classic line of “this ones a hit”. Yeah that’s right leave them hanging at the top mother fuckers! Ben laughing and all members barely able to carry on the song where they left off.

Can’t #believe that Darkness Visible didn’t follow picture you! One word WHY? They added in if I say, I think, during the encore vs Beloved which was dropped.

Roll away, I thought I might have had to dial 112 as Ben did a new jump move from Marcus’s amp down three steps to the ramp, with only the one twisted ankle enroute! It was a brave move which he was lucky to get away with! 🤣

Ditmas was a classic and a first as Marcus failed to return to the stage after the song finished. Ben put out a public broadcasting announcement for the safe return of their friend Marcus. All was well and as it turns out Marcus had a crafty puff on someone’s cigarette whilst making his way back!

It was as a great show and the band clearly love stopovers and New Zealand. The only disappointment was no collaborations.... still you can’t have everything. Or sometimes even a kettle in the states it would appear (do you see what I did there.... cross posting!) I mean what is a kitchen without a kettle! 🤣🤣🤣

#mumford and sons #mumford & sons #mumfordandsons #ben lovett #marcus mumford #winston marshall #ted dwane #sotr #gotr

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bastardnev · 6 years

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That Guy Next Door

im finally fuckin posting this dad au fic im losing it, i meant to post this earlier but tumblr kept glitching so!!! here it is!!

anyways as i’ve said a few times already, this fic will be updating on a weekly basis, which means that there’s gonna be one new chapter every friday until all of them have been uploaded. i hope you all enjoy this fic as much as i enjoyed writing it!!

link to ao3

tagging: @tylerblacks @joonhobi @rivela @aliciasfox @sailor-slam-dunk @kidvoodoo @smolsammich @simulated-heat @douglas-leon-michael (lemme kno if you wanna be added to my tag list!!)

Chapters: 1/16 Fandom: World Wrestling Entertainment, Professional Wrestling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Mustafa Ali/Pac | Adrian Neville, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added Characters: Mustafa Ali, Pac | Adrian Neville, Wade Barrett, Original Child Character(s), Other Character Tags to Be Added Additional Tags: Rating will go up, wink wonk, Parenthood, Single Parents, Post-Divorce, Alternate Universe - Parents, god for a sec i didn't think there was a parent au tag on here and i was gonna be so confused, First Meetings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added Summary:

"yo" "do me a favor when you get home" "i can see there’s someone new moving in next door" "introduce all of us to him plz n thx"

Single parent Neville was convinced that he would never find love again following his divorce. Little did he realize just how much these four texts from Wade would change his life.

The more that time passed, the more it seemed like Neville was never going to be able to escape this stupid little office.

He was never going to get away from his desk. From his computer. From his phone that never seemed to want to stop ringing for thirty goddamn seconds. From the sounds of his co-workers typing away on their own keyboards. From his boss who almost always seemed to have some new, pointless assignment for him to complete whenever he passed by his cubicle. Such were the woes of working for such a big company…

He told himself that this job was only temporary. Every day he would remind himself that he was only going to be there until he was back on his feet following his divorce. As difficult as this was, it wasn’t going to last forever.

But then a time where he was financially secure enough to start looking for a different job arose, and Neville didn’t jump on the opportunity to leave. He had wanted to stick around for awhile longer to make sure he had completed everything, so that the poor bastard who took this secretary -- no, administrative assistant -- position after him wouldn’t be swamped with missed deadlines and unfinished projects. He didn’t mind staying for a few more days.

Those days turned to weeks. Those weeks turned to months. Those months turned to years.

It had been almost three fucking years since he had the chance to quit, and yet there Neville was, still typing out emails and arranging appointments for higher-ups who couldn’t give any less of a shit about him if they tried.

Sometimes he would stop while in the middle of working, staring intently at his mouse cursor, debating just walking out and leaving this hell behind and never looking back. No one appreciated him. It would make more sense to go elsewhere, wouldn’t it? Where he wouldn’t have to work unnecessarily long hours just to earn a decent pay? Where a boss would actually seem grateful for the work that he puts in?

It was as he would have these thoughts, however, that he would catch sight of the pictures resting next to his computer monitor -- those of two little girls, smiling at the camera and looking so full of life.

His little girls.

The older one was Jennifer, though she was only ever called that when she was in serious trouble (which wasn’t often, now that Neville thought about it) -- otherwise, she was simply known as Jen. She was definitely more like her mother, from having the same light brown hair to the same headstrong personality. Though she was only nine, she was incredibly independent -- almost too independent, however, as she was often too stubborn to ask for help when she was in tough situations.

Then there was Daisy -- ‘Daddy’s favorite,’ as she claimed whenever Neville would do something nice for her (even if he had also done the same thing for Jen). She was six, and even at such a young age she was already showing signs of being just like her father. That is to say, she was becoming a bit of a smartass. True to the little sibling stereotype, she essentially lived to spite Jen, always making sure to say whatever it was she least wanted to hear just so that she could appreciate her over-the-top reactions.

These two lovely children were depending on him. Neville couldn’t quit and risk losing out on money when he knows that they’re counting on him to take care of them.

With that thought in mind, he continued typing.

If he was lucky, then Neville’s drive from the office back to his home was relatively short, the traffic scarce despite it technically being rush hour.

Unfortunately, that day was not his lucky day.

Despite never actually having met the driver of the minivan that he was stuck behind, Neville felt like he was deeply familiar with their personal life, considering the amount of bullshit on the back of it. There was a stick figure family decal on the back window -- a father, a mother, two little boys, and one little girl. Down on the bumper there were multiple stickers proudly announcing to the world that there were two honors students in the family. What about the third kid? Neville found himself thinking, fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. Are they not good enough for a sticker?

His phone vibrated in the cup holder next to him, and he glanced down at it for a moment before focusing back on the road, pulling up a little once the traffic started to move. He heard the phone vibrate a second time. A third time. By the time the fourth vibration occurred, Neville looked back down at the device and took it in his hands, wondering just what in the hell was so urgent that it required sending that many messages.

Then again, considering that the only person who ever texted him nowadays was Wade, there was no way it was actually anything of substance.

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: yo

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: do me a favor when you get home

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: i can see there’s someone new moving in next door

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: introduce all of us to him plz n thx

Typical. Wade was once again trying to get Neville to do something for him. It seemed like all that Wade had done since moving into the downstairs apartment in Neville’s house was try to butter him up for something. That man truly has not changed since college…

Though Neville ribbed Wade for his tactics, even going as far as to jokingly refer to him as a freeloader in his phone, the truth was that he didn't have any negative feelings towards him at all. In fact, he was actually incredibly grateful for him. Wade had been employed when he moved into Neville’s home after his divorce, but he’d been laid off not too long after, and he’d had no success finding a job ever since. It seemed like every time things were looking up for him and he might have found something other than the occasional odd job, the position was always given to someone else, and as such he was never able to pay his share of that month’s rent.

He was always willing to babysit whenever Neville needed him to, however -- which was fairly often, seeing as his job sometimes required that he stay late at the office. Had it not been for him, Neville would have had to worry about paying a sitter on top of all of the bills and everything else. Difficult as things may be, he was glad to have a close friend like Wade.

Someone actually bought that house, though? Neville thought. It’s been on the market for ages. He could only vaguely remember the small family that used to live there before they abruptly moved because of the father’s job. Though the last thing that Neville wanted to do was give Wade what he wanted, he had to admit that he was just as curious as he was about this new neighbor…

Me: And why should I do that? Can’t you go over there yourself?

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: your texting while you’re supposed to be driving??

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: dangerous

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: tsk tsk

Me: *you’re

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: SHUT UP

Me: Also I’m in traffic, asshole. Now tell me why you can’t do it yourself?

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: because i just woke up from a nap and have a killer headache and am in no mood to actually socialize

Me: What makes you think I’M in the mood to socialize? I just had a long day at work.

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: because you’re the cuter one between the two of us and it would be better if he saw your pretty face instead of mine

Wade “Freeloader” Barrett: you could win over anyone with those eyes of yours

It was at that moment that Neville placed his phone back down in the cup holder -- partially because the traffic was beginning to move and he needed to start driving again, though mainly because he’d read enough. Wade always tried to compliment him whenever he was too lazy to do something for himself, and Neville was ashamed to admit that this strategy worked more often than not.

This time was going to be different, however. After a long day of typing away at his desk and going straight into bumper-to-bumper traffic, it was going to take a lot more than some sweet talking to get him to introduce himself to a total stranger.

Neville finally pulled into his driveway about fifteen minutes later, turning the car off and leaning back against the seat with a sigh. Somewhere along the way it had started raining, the droplets of rain tapping rhythmically against the windshield. He loved the rain -- that is, when he didn’t actually have to go walking through it. It was a short walk from the car to the front door. Even so, he was not looking forward to getting wet…

As he gathered his bearings, he took a quick look out of the passenger side window, and he noticed that there was a light on inside of the house next door, and there was an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. So Wade was telling the truth when he said that there was a new neighbor. Wonder what their story is.

The neighborhood that Neville lived in wasn’t bad by any means, but he didn’t think that it was an area that anybody would want to willingly move into. Most of the residents tended to keep to themselves, the extent of their interactions with one another being a quick ‘hello’ and nothing more. Wouldn’t someone looking for a place to start their new life look for someplace more interesting? Whoever this new person was must have had no other options.

...Then again, it wasn’t like Neville really cared about what this new person thought. He had more important things to worry about then whatever was going on in their mind.

Neville resigned himself to his damp fate and exited the car, making sure to lock it before trekking through the rain and up the front stops until he reached the door. Despite it being closed, he could hear what sounded like a commotion inside -- just what he needed after the day he’d had. What are they fighting over now ? He clicked his tongue and opened the door, bracing himself for whatever the latest controversy was.

“Jen, you said yourself that you didn’t care if she ate your leftovers or not.” The first voice that Neville heard was that of Wade, who was clearly trying to mediate an argument between the two girls, standing in front of Jen while Daisy hid behind his back.

“I said I didn’t want them! I never said she could have them!” Jen had her arms crossed.

“I never ate them, though!” Daisy peeked out from behind Wade, clutching his shirt, dark brown curls falling over her face. “I swear! Why would I want something that you touched?”

“Uh… Hello?” Neville decided to speak up, prompting the three of them to look over in his direction.

“Daddy!!” Daisy let go of Wade and went charging towards him, now opting to hide behind him instead (and prompting a “What, am I not a good enough shield for you?” from Wade). “Jen’s bullying me again!”

“I am not!” Jen insisted. “She’s the one that did something wrong! She ate my food!”

Of all the ridiculous arguments that these two could have had, they had to have one over chicken tenders? Were fights over toys going out of style? “Okay, listen,” Neville started. “Jen, you did say that you didn’t mind if someone else ate them. And Daisy, you shouldn’t insinuate that anything your sister touches is dirty.”

Daisy blinked at him. Neville couldn’t imagine why she looked so confused, seeing as he made a perfectly good point.

“Nev,” Wade said. “She’s six. I don’t think she knows what ‘insinuate’ means.”

“Right… Okay, how about this -- don’t say that anything she touches is dirty. There, is that better?”

Daisy nodded this time. Neville knew her too well, though. It may appear as if she understood, but in reality she was plotting her next move. Chances are she had plenty more insults ready to unleash the moment that Neville’s back was turned.

Jen made a disgusted sound and stormed into the hallway, bounding up the stairs towards her room. Now that her enemy had disappeared, Daisy deemed it safe enough to emerge from hiding, heading towards the kitchen. Neville pushed his glasses up his nose as he watched her go. “How did that argument even start, anyway?” He asked.

“Hell if I know.” Wade shrugged. “I was minding my own business when Daisy came running in here claiming that Jen was going to kill her. Again.”

“Did she even eat the leftovers?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Then who…” He squinted at Wade. “ You ate them, didn’t you?”

“...Maybe…”

“Of course you did.” Neville sat down on the couch, rubbing at his temples.

“What, did you expect me to speak up? Angry Jen isn’t fun to deal with. The last thing I wanted was to be on the receiving end of her wrath. She clearly got that gene from you.”

“Ha ha, very funny.”

Wade took a seat next to him. “Enough about that, though. What happened with the new guy next door?”

“I didn’t talk to him.”

“What?” He looked disappointed. “Not even after I asked you so nicely?”

“Trying to get me to do something for you by buttering me up isn’t always going to work, Wade. I told you that I had a long day today and I wasn’t up for introductions. I’ll get around to it when I’m not exhausted.”

Wade huffed, propping his feet up on the coffee table (and having them shoved off by Neville a few seconds later). “All I’m trying to do is help you get back out there…”

Neville looked at him, eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, did I say that out loud? Oops.” Wade was acting as if that were an accident, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he’d clearly meant for Neville to hear him.

“What do you mean that you’re trying to help me ‘get back out there’?”

“Well, y’know…” Wade began to play with his nails, avoiding Neville’s gaze. “I thought you and the cute new guy next door might want to chat for awhile, maybe hang out sometime, that’s all.”

“You-- Wait, you actually want me to date this guy? This guy who I’ve never even met? Are you kidding me?” Neville had learned so much about Wade in the years that they’d known each other, but never once had he shown any interest in trying to play matchmaker. “Why do you want this so badly?”

“I just thought it would be nice! I know you’ve been lonely lately--”

“And just how would you know that?”

“Nev, I’ve been your friend since college. I’ve been living with you ever since you and Marina split. The last few years have been rough for you romance-wise, and it’s obvious that it’s taken a toll on you.”

Neville swallowed at the mention of his wife’s name. “How do you know ?” He repeated, growing a little impatient.

“I feel like I hardly ever see you smile anymore,” Wade continued. “It’s not that you never smile, it’s just… genuinely happy smiles are pretty rare for you these days. I thought that maybe finding you a nice guy to hang out with would help lift your spirits a bit -- and who knows, something great could come out of this. You should give him a chance.”

Neville knew that he was probably being rude, but he still rolled his eyes, shaking his head and once again pushing his glasses up his nose. He knew that Wade didn’t mean any harm. He was one of the few truly good people that Neville knew, and he would never do anything to hurt him.

This, on the other hand, while it didn’t hurt him by any means, was on a whole different level. “Wade, listen… I understand that you’re just trying to help,” Neville started. “I appreciate that you’re looking out for me. But I know I’ve told you before that I’m not interested in finding a partner at the moment. I have a family to support, and I don’t have time to be fooling around with romance right now.”

“Okay…” Wade’s shoulders drooped. “Sorry if it seemed like I was forcing you into something that you didn’t want.”

“No need to apologize.” Neville stood up from the couch, stretching. “I gotta go get changed. These clothes are so damn uncomfortable.”

“It’s times like these where I’m almost glad I don’t work,” Wade commented, watching Neville as he made to leave the room. “Otherwise I’d have to wear stuff like that .”

“I envy you, I won’t lie.”

Neville arrived at the top of the steps and started to make his way down the hallway. He briefly stopped in front of the door to the girls’ room, knowing that Jen was most likely still stewing inside. He knew that she would get over it eventually, but it still bothered him knowing that she was angry with the wrong person. Maybe once she calms down we can tell her… Though Wade will probably be scared shitless while we do it.

He continued down the hall and made it to his own room, taking off his jacket and tossing it onto the bed. He was about to start undoing the buttons on his shirt when he noticed that the window was open, and he let out a little annoyed noise. Great, now the floor is wet…

It was when he went over to close it that he once again caught sight of the house next door -- in particular, his eye was drawn to the window. He could see that there was someone moving around inside, but he was only able to see his back. There he is, the man of my dreams… or so I’ve been told.

Neville wasn’t in the mood to be accused of being a creeper, so he quickly shut the window and closed the blinds, resuming his undressing. Whoever the hell this new guy was, he wasn’t interested in watching what he assumed were his dinner preparations (nor was he willing to strip right where he could see it).

For all the complaints that Neville had about his job, there was one thing about it that he did like -- the fact that he was able to work from home on Fridays.

He was set up at the kitchen table, lazily scrolling through the emails that were gradually piling up in his inbox. Most of them didn’t even concern him -- in the beginning they were about figuring out what time would work best for everyone for the next meeting, now most of them were people debating which day of the week would be better between Monday and Tuesday. I’m stuck in that office anyway regardless of the day, so what does it even matter? Neville thought to himself, taking a sip from his coffee mug as he went to work deleting some of the messages.

“What a sight to behold.” Neville looked up from the screen and found that Wade had entered the room. “You’re still sitting here working and drinking from that ‘World’s Okayest Dad’ mug. Don’t you think you should give yourself a break?”

“I already took my break earlier,” Neville replied just as he heard another chime ring out from his laptop -- the meeting would officially be on Monday, despite numerous complaints. Incoming shitstorm.

“Take another one. What’s stopping you? It’s not like anyone can tell that you’re not working.”

“They’ll tell when I’m not responding to any of their emails.”

“So if you don’t respond immediately after they send it to you then they’ll know that you’re slacking off? Sounds rough. Glad I’m not working there.”

“You’re not working, period .”

“Exactly, and who would want to with those regulations?” Wade went to the fridge and dug around inside until he came back with a bottle of water, unscrewing the cap and taking a sip. “Hey, where are the girls? I haven’t seen them all afternoon.”

“Outside in the yard.” Neville nodded his head in the direction of the back door. “I’m surprised they’ve been playing for so long without getting into a fight.” Right as Neville finished saying that, he heard a thud and the unmistakable sound of Daisy yelling “Ow!” “Ah, I see I spoke too soon.”

A few moments later, both girls stumbled into the kitchen through the back door. “Daddy, Daisy threw the ball over the fence again,” Jen complained, elbowing her sister in the side.

“Ow-- It wasn’t my fault! She was the one who threw it.”

“You said you were ready for me to throw it!”

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes you did! Daddy, didn’t you hear her say she was ready? She’s lying again--”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” Neville interrupted her before she could say anything more, and he pushed back his chair. “You two head back outside and wait in the yard. I’ll go get the ball for you.”

Jen and Daisy looked at each other before they both walked back outside, the two of them getting into a brief scuffle in the doorway since they couldn’t decide which of the two of them got to go through first (Jen ultimately won by reminding Daisy of who the older sibling was). Neville pinched the bridge of his nose once they were gone, letting out a sigh. “What am I going to do with them…”

“Well, you can start by getting their ball,” Wade said.

Neville made a little frustrated noise and stood up, though it was as he was about to leave that he noticed the cocky smirk on Wade’s face. “What’s up with you?”

“Nev, how did you get the ball the last time they threw it over the fence?” he asked, leaning back against the counter.

“Uh… I went into the yard and got it?”

“You realize you can’t do that anymore, right? Since there’s now someone living there. That’s trespassing.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you’re going to have to get the new neighbor’s permission to go back there and get it. You two are finally going to meet.”

“Oh God, are you still on this?” Neville huffed. “I told you that I’m not interested in being in a relationship right now. Let it go .”

“I never said you had to date him. Just that you’re gonna be meeting for the first time.”

“Maybe so, but I know you’re thinking it.” He waggled his finger at him. “And let me tell you this: I’m going to go next door, ask for the ball back, and then come right back here. No bullshit, no stopping inside for coffee or whatever, no nothing . You got that?”

“Whatever you say, mate.” Wade still didn’t look entirely convinced, but he didn’t press the issue any further and left the kitchen, leaving Neville all by himself.

What a pain in the ass… Neville shook his head as he watched Wade retreat downstairs. He waited until he was gone before exiting into the hallway and walking towards the front door.

The moment that the early-August heat hit his face, Neville immediately regretting going outside. God, how have those kids been playing out here for all this time? He despised the thought of meeting his new neighbor while drenched in sweat, so he decided to stop wasting time and briskly started the trek over to the house next door.

“It won’t take him much longer, calm down!” Neville could hear the faint sound of Jen reprimanding her sister from his own yard.

“We’ve been waiting foreverrrrr…” Naturally, the next voice he heard was that of Daisy.

Five minutes. It’s been five minutes since they asked. At most.

Neville looked up at the house that was now in front of him, and he marched up to the door with authority, determined not to let Wade’s nonsense get in the way of what he came here to do. He didn’t come here to flirt or do anything of that nature -- he was not going to let the wannabe matchmaker that lived in his basement cloud his judgement.

He rang the doorbell and took a step back, crossing his arms and waiting for some sort of response. He could still hear the sounds of Daisy and Jen bickering from the yard. He debated taking out his phone and asking Wade to keep an eye on them, but it was right as he reached for his pocket that the door opened.

“Hi, I’m—” Neville stopped himself once he got a good look at the man now standing in the doorway, his mouth hanging open slightly.

“Um… How can I help you?” The man asked, brown eyes narrowed in confusion, like he couldn’t figure out why this stranger was gaping at him on his doorstep. It was those same eyes that Neville found himself suddenly lost in, momentarily forgetting just why the hell he was there in the first place. That’s a good question -- how can you help me?

Neville cleared his throat, shaking his head and snapping himself out of his trance. “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you, but my kids accidentally threw their ball over your fence. I was wondering if we could get it back.”

“Oh, that’s what that was?” He smiled. “I heard yelling coming from next door and was wondering what had happened.”

“Ah, well, you know how little girls can be sometimes…”

“Trust me, I do. I work with them. I can toss the ball back over for ‘em.”

“Thank you.” Neville returned his smile. “Again, sorry to trouble you. I know you’re still busy unpacking.” Neville could see the moving boxes that were sitting in the hallway. “Don’t mean to interrupt.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not a problem at all. Hey, what’s your name, by the way? I’m Mustafa.”

“Mustafa…” Neville repeated. It was a nice name. “I’m Adrian.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Adrian.” There was that infectious smile again. Neville found himself quite liking how his name sounded coming from his mouth -- and he normally hated his first name. “You’re the first person around here that I’ve actually spoken to, you know that?”

“That doesn’t shock me.” He frowned. “The people around here aren’t exactly the nicest. They don’t really do things like greeting new neighbors.”

“That’s a shame… But at least I have one nice neighbor in you . That makes up for it.” Mustafa shot him a wink. “I should probably go get the ball now -- I’ll catch you later, okay?”

“Okay! I’ll, uh… see you around.”

With that, Mustafa shut the door, and Neville let out a breath that he didn’t even realize that he was holding. Finally, it was over . He had done what needed to be done, and now he could go back home and rub it in Wade’s face.

I didn’t linger at all. Neville thought with a sense of triumph as he went down to the sidewalk. Wade was so sure that I was going to fall head over heels for him within thirty seconds of knowing him. Not even close.

…Still, Neville thought it was a bit strange how he had acted when Mustafa first opened the door. Everything about their conversation was normal with the exception of the beginning. Neville had been completely entranced by him, especially those eyes … What was that all about?

Neville’s moment of contemplation didn’t last very long, as he was interrupted by the gleeful sounds of his daughters, whose ball had just been returned to them. He was overthinking things, as usual. He only felt this way because Wade planted the seeds in his mind.

This was nothing to dwell on.

#mustafa ali #neville #adrian neville #wwe fanfiction #mustafa x neville #jess.txt #i sincerely apologize if you're on mobile rn and can't see the read more because this is a Long Chapter #dad au

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lokirupaul · 3 years

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Lokiru Paul : Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year

He got famous playing a certain kind of funny guy on SNL, but when Jason Sudeikis invented Ted Lasso, the sensitive soccer coach with the earnest mustache, the actor found a different gear—and a surprise hit. Now, ahead of the show’s second season, Sudeikis discusses his wild ride of a year and how he’s learning to pay closer attention to what the universe is telling him.

BY ZACH BARON, GQ

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HILL & AUBREY

July 13, 2021

Shirt, $188, and tie (worn at waist), $125, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

On the day that he wrapped shooting on the second season of Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis sat in his trailer in West London and drank a beer and exhaled a little, and then he went to the pitch they film on for the show—Nelson Road Stadium, the characters call it—for one last game of football with his cast and crew. There's this thing called the crossbar challenge, which figures briefly in a midseason Ted Lasso episode: You kick a ball and try to hit not the goal but the crossbar above the goal, which is only four or five inches from top to bottom. And so Sudeikis arrived and, because he can't help himself, started trying to hit the crossbar.

Jason Sudeikis covers the August 2021 issue of GQ. To get a copy, subscribe to GQ.

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Confidence is a funny thing. Sudeikis has been riffing on it, in one way or another, for his whole professional life—particularly the comedy of unearned confidence, which he is well suited, physically, to convey. Sudeikis is acutely aware of “the vessel that my soul is currently, you know, occupying”—six feet one, good hair, strong jaw. He's a former college point guard. On Saturday Night Live, where most of us saw him for the first time, he had a specialty in playing jocular blowhards and loud, self-impressed white men, a specialty he took to Hollywood, in films like Horrible Bosses and Sleeping With Other People. He became so adept at playing those types of characters, Sudeikis said, that at some point he realized he'd have to make an effort to do something different. “It's up to me to not just play an a-hole in every movie,” he said. In conversation he is digressive, occasionally melancholy, prone to long anecdotes and sometimes even actual parables—closer, in other words, to Ted Lasso, the gentle, philosophical football coach he co-created, than any of the preening jerks he used to be known for. But he can definitely kick a soccer ball pretty good.

So he's up there trying to hit the crossbar, and he's got a crowd of actors and crew members gathering around him now, betting on whether he can hit it. And he's getting the ball in the air, mostly, but not quite on the four-to-five-inch strip of metal he needs to hit, and the stakes are escalating (“I bet he can get it in three.” “I bet he can get it in five”), and after he misses the first five tries, Toheeb Jimoh, the actor who plays Sam Obisanya on the show, says, “I think he can get it in 10.” Then Sudeikis proceeds to miss the next four attempts. But, he told me later, “there was no part of me that was like, ‘I'm not gonna hit one of these. I'm not not gonna hit one of these.’ ”

Like I said, confidence is a funny thing. You have to somehow believe that the worst outcome simply won't happen. Sometimes you have to do that while knowing for a fact that the worst outcome is happening, all the time. “It's a very interesting space to live in, where you're living in the questions and the universe is slipping you answers,” Sudeikis said. “And are you—are any of us—open enough, able enough, curious enough to hear them when they arrive?” This sounds oblique, I guess, but I can attest, after spending some time talking to Sudeikis, that everything is a little oblique for him right now. He had the same pandemic year we all had, and in the middle of that, he had Ted Lasso turn into a massive, unexpected hit, and in the middle of that, his split from his partner and the mother of his two children, Olivia Wilde, became public in a way that from a great distance seemed not entirely dissimilar to something that happens to the character he plays on the show that everyone was suddenly watching. “Personal stuff, professional stuff, I mean, it's all…that Venn diagram for me is very”—here he held up two hands to form one circle—“you know?”

Shirt, $195, by Sid Mashburn. T-shirt, $195, by Ralph Lauren. Vintage pants from The Vintage Showroom. Belt, $2,500, by The Row. His own sneakers by Nike x Tom Sachs. Socks, $18 for three pairs, by Nike. Pendant necklaces, $2,100 (tag), and $3,000 (bar), by Tiffany & Co. Jacket (on bench), $498, by Todd Snyder.

Anyway, Sudeikis hit the crossbar on the 10th try. “It's a tremendous sound,” he said of that moment when the ball connects with the frame of the goal. He'd done what he knew he would do. Everyone on the pitch was cheering like they'd won something. It was, for lack of a better way of describing it, a very Ted Lasso moment—a small victory, a crooked poster in a locker room that says Believe. “There's a great Michael J. Fox quote,” Sudeikis told me later, trying to explain the particular brand of wary optimism that he carries around with him, and that he ended up making a show about: “ ‘Don't assume the worst thing's going to happen, because on the off chance it does, you'll have lived through it twice.’ So…why not do the inverse?”

Watch Now:

10 Things Jason Sudeikis Can’t Live Without

Ted Lasso. Man—what an unlikely story. The character was initially dreamed up to serve a very different purpose. Sudeikis first played him in 2013, in a promo for NBC, which had recently acquired the television rights to the Premier League and was trying to inspire American interest in English football. The promo was the length and shape of an SNL sketch and featured a straightforward conceit: A hayseed football (our football) coach is hired as the football (their football) coach of a beloved English club, to teach a game he neither knows nor understands in a place he neither knows nor understands. The joke was simple and boiled down to the central fact that Ted Lasso was an amiable buffoon in short shorts.

But Sudeikis tries to listen to the universe, even in unlikely circumstances, and for whatever reason the character stuck around in his head. So, in time, Sudeikis developed and pitched a series with the same setup—Ted, in England, far from his family, a stranger in a strange land learning a strange game—that Apple eventually bought. But when we next saw Ted Lasso, he had changed. He wasn't loud or obnoxious anymore; he was simply…human. He was a man in the midst of a divorce who missed his son in America. The new version of Ted Lasso was still funny, but now in an earned kind of way, where the jokes he told and the jokes made at his expense spoke to the quality of the man. He had become an encourager, someone who thrills to the talents and dreams of others. He was still ignorant at times, but now he was curious too.

In fact, this is close to something Ted says, by way of Walt Whitman, in one of the first season's most memorable episodes: Be curious, not judgmental. I will confess I get a little emotional every time I watch the scene in which he says this, which uses a game of darts in a pub as an excuse to both stage a philosophical discussion about how to treat other people and to re-create the climactic moment of every sports movie you've ever seen. It's a somewhat strange experience, being moved to tears by a guy with a bushy cartoon mustache and an arsenal of capital-J jokes (“You beating yourself up is like Woody Allen playing the clarinet: I don't want to hear it”), talking about humanity and how we all might get better at it. But that's kind of what the experience of watching the show is. It's about something that almost nothing is about, which is: decency.

In the pilot episode, someone asks Ted if he believes in ghosts, and he says he does, “But more importantly, I think they need to believe in themselves.” That folksy, relentless positivity defines the character and is perhaps one of the reasons Ted Lasso resonated with so many people over the past year. It was late summer, it was fall, it was in the teeth of widespread quarantine and stay-at-home orders. People were inside watching stuff. Here was a guy who confronted hardship, who suffered heartbreak, who couldn't go home. And who, somehow, found his way through all that. Someone not unlike Sudeikis himself.

“If you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Sudeikis likes to say, in homage to his background in competitive sports, that there's no defense in the arts. “The only things you're competing against, I believe, are apathy, cynicism, and ego,” he said. This is a philosophy of Sudeikis's that predates Ted Lasso by many years, though you wouldn't necessarily have known it until recently. He grew up outside Kansas City, in Overland Park, Kansas, a “full jock with thespian tendencies,” as he once described himself. His uncle is George Wendt, who played Norm on Cheers. “He made finding a career in the arts, in acting or whatever, seem plausible,” Sudeikis said. But mostly he was drawn to the camaraderie of athletics. When Sudeikis first tried his hand at professional improv, in the mid-'90s, it was through something called ComedySportz, a national chain with a fake competition angle, teams in sports uniforms, and a referee. Brendan Hunt, who co-created and costars on Ted Lasso, initially met Sudeikis in Chicago, he told me. Sudeikis had traveled the eight hours up from Kansas City to do a show: “Suddenly there's a beat-up Volvo station wagon, like an '83, and this is '97, I think, and these two guys get out, all bleary-eyed, and wearily change into their baseball pants. And one of them was Jason.”

Sudeikis had gone to community college on a basketball scholarship but failed to keep up his grades, and he eventually left school to pursue comedy. For a while, he said, his sincere aspiration was to become a member of the Blue Man Group. He got close. “They flew me out to New York,” he said. “That was August of 2001, right before 9/11. And I got to see myself bald and blue.” (In the end, he wasn't a good enough drummer.) By that time, he was living in Las Vegas with his then partner, Kay Cannon, doing sketch comedy at the newly formed Second City chapter there. “Ego,” Sudeikis told me about this time, “that gets beaten out of you, doing eight shows a week.”

Eventually he was invited to audition for Saturday Night Live. “I didn't want to work on SNL,” Sudeikis said—he'd convinced himself that there were purer and less corporate paths to take. “At a certain point in your comedy journey, you have to look at it as like McDonald's,” he said. “You have to be like: ‘No. Never.’ ” Then he got the call. “It was like having a crush on the prettiest girl at school and being like, ‘She seems like a jerk.’ And it's like, ‘Oh, really? 'Cause she said she liked you.’ ‘She what?!’ ”

Suit, $4,860, by Tom Ford. Vintage t-shirt from The Vintage Showroom. Suspenders, stylist’s own. Shoes, $1,535, by John Lobb.

Sudeikis auditioned, of course, and was hired, in 2003—but as a writer: “It was like winning a gold medal in the thing you've never even trained for. You just happen to be good at the triple jump, and you really love the long jump.” He wrote for a couple of seasons, but he was unhappy—Cannon was still in Las Vegas, and Sudeikis missed performing. Finally he went to Lorne Michaels, to ask for a job as a member of the cast. “He had the best line. I go, ‘I had to give up two things I love the most to take this writing job: performing and living with my wife.’ And on a dime, he just goes, ‘Well, if you had to choose one…’ ”

At Saturday Night Live, Sudeikis often channeled the same level of cheerful optimism and forthright morality that he'd later bring to Ted Lasso, but audiences didn't necessarily notice it at the time. One of Sudeikis's most famous and beloved early sketches on SNL as a performer is 2005's “Two A-holes Buying a Christmas Tree”—Kristen Wiig and Sudeikis, chewing gum, oblivious to their surroundings, terrorizing Jack Black at a Christmas tree stand. It's a joke about a very familiar form of contemporary rudeness; it's also a riff on a certain kind of man who speaks for the woman next to him, whether she wants him to or not. And people laughed and moved on to the next bit, but to this day Sudeikis can tell you about all the ideas that were running through his head when he created the sketch with Wiig. “That scene was all about my belief that we were losing touch with manners,” he told me. “And yet it's also about love, because he loves her, and that's why he interprets everything for her—she never talks directly to the person.” But, he said, sighing, “once you start explaining a joke or something like that, it ceases to be funny.”

Sudeikis brought this type of attention and care to the movies he began acting in too, like the workplace comedy Horrible Bosses, even if it was lost on most of those who watched them. “That movie, Horrible Bosses, is riddled with optimism,” he said. “The rhythms of that movie, of what Jason Bateman and Charlie Day and I are doing, are deeply rooted in Ted Lasso too. But people don't want those answers. They want to hear the three of us cut up and joke around.”

So that's what Sudeikis did. He got used to a certain gap between his intention and how it was understood. During his time at SNL, his marriage fell apart. “You're going through something emotionally and personally, or even professionally if that's affecting you personally, and then you're dressed up like George Bush and you're live on television for eight minutes. You feel like a crazy person. You feel absolutely crazy. You're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're just like, ‘Who am I? What is this? Holy hell.’ ”

For a time he became a tabloid fixture. He remembers “navigating my first sort of public relationship, with January Jones, which was like learning by fire. What is the term? Trial by fire.” In a 2010 GQ article, when confronted with a question about rumors that he was dating Jennifer Aniston, he sarcastically responded that she should be so lucky. “And obviously I'm fucking joking, you know?” Sudeikis said. But back then, he treated interviews like improv—Yes, and—and that could create misunderstandings. Asked once on a podcast about what people tended to get wrong about him, Sudeikis responded, “That I was in a fraternity—or maybe that I would be.”

To that point, Hunt told me, “He's much less the assumed fraternity guy than you'd think.” But Hunt said he also understood where the impression came from: “I don't know where he learned it necessarily, whether it was from his parents, or his basketball coaches, but he exudes an easygoing confidence. And it's easy to hang with a guy like that. But some people are also like, ‘Fuck that guy,’ intrinsically.”

Shirt, $188, and ties (worn at waist), $125 each, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore. Shoes, $782, by Alden. Socks, $15, by Smart Turnout. Watch, $10,200, by Cartier.

When he won the Golden Globe, Sudeikis gave a dazed speech while wearing a hoodie, sparking glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” he said.

Shortly after Sudeikis and Wilde got together, near the end of his SNL run (he left the show in 2013), Wilde made a joke during a monologue that she read at a cabaret club about the two of them having sex “like Kenyan marathon runners,” and Sudeikis spent years answering questions about the joke. “The frustrating thing about that is that Olivia said that in a performance setting,” Sudeikis said. “It wasn't like she just was saying it glibly in an interview.” He described the experience of growing into celebrity, and confronting other people's misperceptions of him, as a disorienting one. “You're just being tossed into the situation and then trying to figure it out,” he said. The picture of him that was circulating wasn't exactly the one that he had of himself. But he didn't fight it, either. “You come to be thoughtful about it,” he said. “But also try to stay open to it. I don't ever want to be cynical.”

So he tried to stay open. But it wasn't until Ted Lasso that people really saw the side of him that comported with the way he saw himself. Last year, as it became clear that the show was a hit, he found himself answering, over and over, some version of the same question. The question would vary in its specifics, but the gist of it was always: How much do you and this character actually have in common? Sudeikis told me that over time, in response to people wondering about his exact relationship to Ted, he developed a few different evasive explanations. Ted, Sudeikis would say, was a little like Jason Sudeikis, but after two pints on an empty stomach. He was Sudeikis hanging on the side of a buddy's boat. He was Sudeikis, but on mushrooms. Sometimes, in more honest moments, he would say that Ted is the best version of himself. This, after all, is how art works: If it was just you, then it wouldn't really need to be art in the first place. And so Sudeikis learned to separate himself from Ted, to fudge the distance between art and artist.

Except, he said, after a while, every time he tried to wave off Ted, fellow castmates or old friends of his would correct him to say: “No.” They'd say: “No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.” It's not you on mushrooms, it's not you hanging off a boat, it's just…you. One of Sudeikis's friends, Marcus Mumford, who composed the music for the show, told me, “He is quite like Ted in lots of ways. He has a sort of burning optimism, but also a vulnerability, about him that I really admire.”

Hearing people say this, over and over again, Sudeikis said, “brought me to a very emotional space where, you know, a healthy dose of self-love was allowed to expand through my being and made me…” He trailed off for a moment. “When they're like, ‘No, that is you. That is you. That's not the best version of you.’ That's a very lovely thing to hear. I wish it on everybody who gets the opportunity to be or do anything in life and have someone have the chance to say, ‘Hey, that's you. That's you.’ ”

And if he's being honest, that's the way he feels about it too. “It's the closest thing I have to a tattoo,” Sudeikis said about Ted Lasso. “It's the most personal thing I've ever made.”

Sweater, $398, and shirt, $95, by Polo Ralph Lauren. Pants, $255, by Aimé Leon Dore.

On the first Saturday in June, Sudeikis flew with his children, Otis and Daisy, from London to New York, where he owns a house in Brooklyn. “Brooklyn is home,” he told me simply. While filming the first season of Ted Lasso, he'd had the house renovated—there was black mold to get rid of and other changes to make. “So Olivia and the kids had to rent a lovely apartment in Brooklyn Heights. But it's not home. It's someone else's home.” Saturday was the first time Sudeikis and his children had set foot in their own place in two years. “The kids darted in,” he said. “Last time Daisy was in that house, she slept in a crib. So now she has a new big bed. It was hilarious. I walked up there after like 15 minutes and both rooms were a mess.”

He and Wilde, he said, no longer share the house. They split up, according to Sudeikis, “in November 2020.” The end of their relationship was chronicled in a painful, public way in the tabloids after photos of Wilde holding hands with Harry Styles surfaced in January, setting off a flurry of conflicting timelines and explanations. Sudeikis said that even he didn't have total clarity about the end of the relationship just yet. “I'll have a better understanding of why in a year,” he said, “and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it'll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.” Right now he was just trying to figure out what he was supposed to take away, about himself, from what had happened. “That's an experience that you either learn from or make excuses about,” he said. “You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it.”

In the first season of Ted Lasso, the comic premise of the show is revealed to be a tragic one: Ted is in England, far from home, doing something he doesn't know how to do and probably shouldn't be doing at all, in order to give his failing marriage space to survive. When the character's wife and son visit, in the show's fifth episode, his wife tells him, “Every day I wake up hoping that I'll feel the way I felt in the beginning. But maybe that's just what marriage is, right?” It's a wrenching moment that also gives new meaning to the show: Ted Lasso's heart is big, but it can also be broken as violently and as easily as anyone else's. By the end of the season, Lasso is divorced and renegotiating his relationships with his now ex-wife and son.

The first season of Ted Lasso had already been written—had already aired—by the time Sudeikis found himself living some aspects of it in real life. “And yet one has nothing to do with the other,” Sudeikis told me. “That's the crazy thing. Everything that happened in season one was based on everything that happened prior to season one. Like, a lot of it three years prior. You know what I mean? The story's bigger than that, I hope. And anything I've gone through, other people have gone through. That's one of the nice things, right? So it's humbling in that way.”

And in fact, the seeds of Ted's heartbreak, Sudeikis said, went all the way back to a dinner he had with Wilde around 2015, during which she first encouraged him to explore whether Ted Lasso could be more than just a bit on NBC. “It was there, the night at dinner, when Olivia was like, ‘You should do it as a show,’ ” he said. They got to talking about it. Sudeikis asked why Ted Lasso would move in the first place, to coach a team he had no real reason to coach: “ ‘Okay, but why would he take this job? Why would a guy at this age take this job to leave? Maybe he's having marital strife. Maybe things aren't good back home, so he needs space.’ And I just riffed it at dinner in 2015 or whenever, late 2014. But it had to be that way. That's what the show is about.”

I said to Sudeikis that I thought that while it was common for artists to put a lot of their lives into their art, it was less common that they end up living aspects of the art in their lives, after the fact.

“I wonder if that's true,” he replied. “I mean, isn't that just a little bit of what Oprah was telling us for years and years? You know, manifestation? Power of thought? That's The Secret in reverse, you know?”

But…if we're being honest, is that a thing you wanted to manifest?

“No. No. But, again, it isn't that. It wasn't that. And again, that's just me knowing the details of it. Like, that's just me knowing where it comes from, where any of it comes from.”

But he acknowledged it had been a hard year. Not necessarily a bad one, but a hard one. “I think it was really neat,” he said. “I think if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an Avenger. I personally have chosen to land like an Avenger.”

Is that easier said than done? To land like an Avenger?

“I don't know. It's just how I landed. It doesn't mean when you blast back up you're not going to run into a bunch of shit and have to, you know, fight things to get back to the heights that you were at, but I'd take that over 412 bones anytime.”

He paused, then continued: “But there is power in creating 412 bones! Because we all know that a bone, up to a certain age, when it heals, it heals stronger. So, I mean, it's not to knock anybody that doesn't land like an Avenger. Because there's strength in that too.”

Shirt, $228, by Todd Snyder. Shorts, $480, by Bode. Watch, $6,300, by Cartier.

In February, Sudeikis attended the Golden Globes, which were being held remotely on Zoom. He had his misgivings about the event—the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes on the awards, had been in the news for a series of unflattering revelations about its organization, and also the show was taking place in the middle of the night in London. Tom Ford had sent over a suit for Sudeikis to wear, and he tried it on, in his flat in Notting Hill, but he felt ridiculous, there in the middle of the night, and so changed out of it and into a tie-dyed hoodie made by his sister's clothing company. “I wore that hoodie because I didn't wanna fucking wear the fucking top half of a Tom Ford suit,” he said. “I love Tom Ford suits. But it felt weird as shit.”

“With kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’… All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it!”

The rest of this story you know: Sudeikis ended up winning best actor for Ted Lasso and gave a dazed acceptance speech while wearing the hoodie, and this in turn sparked glee and speculation about his mental and physical states. For the record, “I was neither high nor heartbroken,” Sudeikis said. It was just late at night and he didn't want to wear a suit. “So yeah, off it came and it was like, ‘This is how I feel. I believe in moving forward.’ ”

Lately, Sudeikis told me, he had been trying to pay more attention to how he actually felt about any given thing, to all the various signs and omens that present themselves to a person during the course of living their life. Even in his past, he said, there were moments that were obvious in retrospect, in terms of what the universe was trying to tell him, messages he missed entirely at the time. In Vegas, where he was living with Cannon before Saturday Night Live, he developed alopecia and his hair stopped growing, and he didn't know why. And then, at the end of his 30s, “during the nine months before Otis was born and the nine months after he was born,” Sudeikis developed extremely painful sciatica. “I went and got an MRI and was like, ‘Oh, yeah, the jelly doughnut in my L4, L5, is squirting out and touching a nerve.’ ” But why? When he had his second child, this didn't happen at all. So: why?

“I mean, since last November,” Sudeikis said, “the joke that feels more like a parable to me is a guy is sitting at home watching TV and the news breaks in to say flash flood warning. About an hour later he goes outside on his porch and he sees that the whole street is flooded.” You've probably heard the rest of this joke before: While the guy is praying to God for some kind of help, a truck, a boat, and a chopper come by, offering aid, which the guy turns down. God'll provide, he says. Sudeikis finished the joke: “Two hours after that, he's in heaven. He's dead. He says, ‘God, what's up, man? You didn't help me.’ God goes, ‘What do you mean, man? I sent you a pickup truck, I sent you a speedboat, I sent you a helicopter.’ ” So, Sudeikis said, “you can't tell me that hair falling out of my head wasn't—I don't know if it was the speedboat or the pickup truck or the helicopter, but yeah, man, it all comes home to roost. What you resist persists.”

He went on. “That's why I had sciatica,” he said. “That's the speedboat. That was like: ‘Hey, you gotta take a look at your stuff.’ ”

And this is another way that Sudeikis and Ted Lasso are alike, because both are always learning and relearning this lesson, which is: Be curious. Both are philosophical men whose philosophies basically boil down to trying to live as decent a life as is possible. Not just for the sake of it but because to be curious—to find out something new about yourself or someone else—is to be empowered. “I don't know if you remember G.I. Joe growing up,” Sudeikis said, “but they would always end it with a little saying: ‘Oh, now I know.’ ‘Don't put a fork in the outlet.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you could get hurt.’ ‘Oh, now I know.’ And then somebody would say, ‘And knowing is half the battle.’ And I agree with that—with kids, knowing is half the battle. But adulthood is doing something about it. That's the other half. ‘I'm bad with names.’ ‘I'm always late.’ Oh! Well, knowing is half the battle. All right, so win the fucking battle by doing something about it! Get better at names. Show up five minutes early, make it a point to do it. So, I'm still learning these things. But hopefully I've got plenty of time to do something about it.”

Sudeikis smiled a little wearily: “I mean, at the end of that joke, the guy still got to go to heaven, you know?”

Zach Baron is GQ's senior staff writer.

A version of this story originally appeared in the August 2021 issue with the title "Jason Sudeikis Paints His Masterpiece."

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Photographs by Hill & Aubrey

Styled by Michael Darlington

Grooming by Nicky Austin

Tailoring by Nafisa Tosh

Set design by Hella Keck

Produced by Ragi Dholakia Productions

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sbknews · 6 years

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New Post has been published on Superbike News

New Post has been published on http://superbike-news.co.uk/wordpress/monster-weekend-for-josh-brookes-as-he-is-crowned-king-of-brands/

Monster weekend for Josh Brookes as he is crowned King of Brands

Josh Brookes conquered the opposition at Brands Hatch to score his first Bennetts British Superbike Championship win of 2018 and then make it a double to celebrate the Yamaha R1 20th Anniversary in style with the McAMS Yamaha team and bolster his title aspirations.

Brookes had been charging throughout the weekend and in the opening race he launched off the line to hit the front of the pack ahead of Glenn Irwin and Tarran Mackenzie. Instantly Brookes and Irwin were dicing for the leading position but by the start of the second lap the Be Wiser Ducati rider had the edge.

Christian Iddon was moving through the order and soon the freight train of riders at the front had turned into Brookes, Irwin, Iddon, Leon Haslam and Mackenzie. Iddon had moved into second with a move at Druids on lap four.

Irwin was instantly on the attack and reclaimed the position from his Tyco BMW rival. Dan Linfoot’s tough weekend continued as the Honda Racing rider crashed out at Westfield on the sixth lap and he was forced to sit out race two with a suspected fractured scaphoid.

At the front the lead group of five started to edge ahead of the chasing pack with Brookes holding off Glenn Irwin, Iddon, Mackenzie and Haslam. The second McAMS Yamaha was on a charge as Mackenzie moved up the order and into third, but it was a disaster for the Superbike rookie as he crashed out on the penultimate lap from a potential first Bennetts BSB podium finish.

Irwin was pushing to attack for the lead on the final lap but it wasn’t enough and Brookes had a 0.227s edge at the finish line with Haslam promoted to third after Mackenzie’s crash. Dixon had carved his way back up the order to snatch fourth place from Iddon on the final lap with Peter Hickman able to hold off the challenge from Richard Cooper in seventh place.

Knockhill double podium finisher Danny Buchan was eighth ahead of Andrew Irwin and Michael Laverty who completed the top ten.

In race two Brookes again fired off the line into the lead ahead of Glenn Irwin and Cooper who had a storming start to move into third in front of Haslam, Buchan and Dixon. But then there was disaster for Cooper though as he crashed out unhurt at Paddock Hill Bend.

Dixon though had moved into fifth place, making a decisive move down the inside at Druids to grab the position. At the front the leading trio began to break the chasing pack with Brookes, Glenn Irwin and Haslam holding a small advantage over Dixon, Iddon who had moved up the order, and Mackenzie.

Irwin was trying to make a last lap attack, but Brookes had the advantage and held him off to the line by just 0.090s to bag another five Podium Points for his championship challenge with Haslam holding on to the final podium position for JG Speedfit Kawasaki.

Dixon had been under threat from Mackenzie but the RAF Regular & Reserves Kawasaki rider managed to hold him off in the closing stages of the race with Iddon scoring sixth place for the Tyco BMW team.

Tommy Bridewell had an impressive performance to finish seventh and give the Moto Rapido Ducati team their best result of the season on his debut weekend, passing Buchan on the final lap. James Ellison and Hickman completed the top ten.

Bennetts British Superbike Championship, Brands Hatch, Race 1 result:

Josh Brookes (McAMS Yamaha)

Glenn Irwin (Be Wiser Ducati) +0.227s

Leon Haslam (JG Speedfit Kawasaki) +3.114s

Jake Dixon (RAF Regular & Reserves Kawasaki) +7.937s

Christian Iddon (Tyco BMW) +8.830s

Peter Hickman (Smiths Racing BMW) +13.285s

Richard Cooper (Buildbase Suzuki) +14.192s

Danny Buchan (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) +14.591s

Andrew Irwin (Be Wiser Ducati) +16.673s

Michael Laverty (Tyco BMW) +16.862s

Bennetts British Superbike Championship, Brands Hatch, Race 2 result:

Josh Brookes (McAMS Yamaha)

Glenn Irwin (Be Wiser Ducati) +0.090s

Leon Haslam (JG Speedfit Kawasaki) +5.658s

Jake Dixon (RAF Regular & Reserves Kawasaki) +6.419s

Tarran Mackenzie (McAMS Yamaha) +7.684s

Christian Iddon (Tyco BMW) +11.436s

Tommy Bridewell (Moto Rapido Ducati) +14.916s

Danny Buchan (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) +15.110s

James Ellison (Anvil Hire TAG Yamaha) +15.230s

Peter Hickman (Smiths Racing BMW) +20.891s

Bennetts British Superbike Championship standings after Brands Hatch:

Leon Haslam (JG Speedfit Kawasaki) 242

Jake Dixon (RAF Regular & Reserves Kawasaki) 162

Glenn Irwin (Be Wiser Ducati) 145

Josh Brookes (McAMS Yamaha) 130

Bradley Ray (Buildbase Suzuki) 115

Danny Buchan (FS-3 Racing Kawasaki) 111

The seventh round of the 2018 Bennetts British Superbike Championship take place at Thruxton on August 3./4/5. For more information visit www.britishsuperbike.com

Josh Brookes (McAMS Yamaha) Double race winner “It’s a fantastic timing to get the double for Yamaha on the 20th Anniversary of the R1. It’s a perfect gift for them and it was their birthday a couple of weeks ago so I’m sure this will go down well!

“Those opening laps were quite fun for me in race one. This year has been quite frustrating on the track for me not able to reach my potential and the opening lap but today I felt good and we were making passes so I thought ‘why not, we’ll show our hand and see what we can do’.

“As you’re leading the way it feels like you’ve got to find where the limit is. I tried to keep the lead and I felt comfortable for most of the race. Then I made a mistake in turn one and lost the front a little bit as I turned in, then I went wide onto the dusty surface and started to lose the front again and I put my head down and then got better focus and the end of the race was a lot stronger for me.

“I listened to what Glenn said in the post-race interview in race one and I looked where I needed to improve for the second one. Obviously leading most of race one I didn’t see anyone else’s speed or strategy or the way their bike works.

“I knew there were areas that I needed to improve if I was going to keep him behind in race two so I set about trying to not make no mistake and push hard. There was a point where I was starting to edge a gap and then towards the end of the race I started to lose rear grip; it’s natural pushing that sort of pace.

“We were pushing fast lap times all the way through the race. When you are doing that something’s got to be getting worn, either you or the tyre or both, so last two even maybe three laps I was like ‘oh I’m in trouble here’.

“I didn’t have the drive I needed to continue that pace. But fortunately having that tiny gap that I had was enough to keep it right. I came into the last turn and I could hear the thump of the Ducati right behind me but I wasn’t ready to give it up after leading the whole way!

#Bennetts #BrandsHatch #britishsuperbike #GlennIrwin #JoshBrookes

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itsnelkabelka · 6 years

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Speech: Minister Mark Field's speech at the Wildlife Crime Reception, House of Commons

Introduction

Good afternoon and thank you to Zac Goldsmith for hosting us, and to International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) for giving me the opportunity to engage with you today.

As we all know, the spectre of wildlife poaching has been with us for decades – I remember hearing about the imminent danger to elephant and rhino populations almost 4 decades ago when I was still at school.

Effect of internet on IWT

What has really changed things and accelerated the urgency of the issue in recent years is the internet. Criminal networks caught on pretty quickly that they could harness the internet to create a marketplace that is not simply local or regional. It is global.

It means that the scale of the illegal trade in wildlife has really taken off. This criminality is now thought to be worth up to £17 billion a year. To give you an illustration of the scale of the slaughter – in just 7 years from 2007 to 2014, Savannah elephant populations are thought to have declined by almost a third.

That sad statistic alone equates to around 144,000 elephants – if they stood trunk to tail they would stretch from here to John O Groats! Or was it Land’s End? Well, either way I think you get the point!. It is not just elephants - the illegal wildlife trade is decimating a huge range of species, from the pangolin, killed for medicine and food, to the gentle Sumatran orangutan, of which there are now fewer than 8,000 now left.

Baby orangutan are trapped to be kept as pets. Tragically, for each and every animal reaching market, as many as 5 other die in transit. These crimes not only threaten irreplaceable wildlife with extinction. They not only leave countries and communities bereft of the iconic animals that help define them, and that could sustain livelihoods long into the future.

This illegal trade also fuels, and is fuelled by, corruption. So these criminals are also undermining sustainable development, good governance and the rule of law. This is why it is so vital that we put a stop to the illegal wildlife trade, and close down the online marketplaces for illegal wildlife products.

UK action

This government is playing a leading role at home and on the international stage. Today, my colleague the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, is introducing the Ivory Bill in the House of Commons – an important step in highlighting the UK’s rejection of this horrible trade.

International action

We are also taking the fight to the poachers and traffickers. Over these past 4 years, the UK government has committed £26 million to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. The British military have provided tracker training for park rangers in key African states, and we have funded the expansion of INTERPOL’s operations to track and intercept shipments of illegal wildlife products, including ivory and rhino horn.

The only way to really shut down illegal wildlife trade for good is for countries to work together, so we are also strengthening international partnerships.

IWT conference

In 2014 we hosted the ground-breaking London conference that was praised as a turning point in global co-operation in this field. It secured ambitious agreements from more than 40 governments to take urgent, coordinated action.

To build on all this recent progress we are bringing the conference back to London this October. Please be assured we have even higher ambitions this time.

We will focus on 3 primary objectives:

first – treating the illegal wildlife trade as a serious organised crime

second – building coalitions of allies who share our aims

finally – closing markets for illegal products

Closing online space

As the Adessium report makes clear: we urgently need to close down online marketplaces for illegal wildlife products. I commend IFAW, WWF and TRAFFIC for the progress they made bringing together an alliance of online companies in March to commit to an 80% reduction in the online sale of illegal wildlife products by 2020.

It is encouraging that over 20 companies, including big names like Ebay, Pinterest, Facebook and Microsoft have already signed up. I hope more will do so, and that this global initiative leads to the end of illegal wildlife sales online.

Innovations

I believe strongly that by working together, and by using the latest technology, we can – and we must – turn the tide on the illegal wildlife trade. Innovations like the ivory fingerprinting kit developed by Dr Leon Barron of King’s College London, and Mark Moseley of the Metropolitan Police, will make a huge difference.

With this new technology, enforcement agencies will be able to capture better quality fingerprints from ivory and catch more of the culprits.

I congratulate Leon and Mark, both of whom are here today, on their innovation, and I am delighted to be able to announce that thanks to a generous donation from IFAW, we will be handing out kits to every country that attends the illegal wildlife trade conference in October.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, imagination, collaboration and commitment like this will help us stop the traffickers. It will not be quick or easy, but we have a range of committed individuals, organisations and governments alongside us.

Our October conference is a great chance to bolster our forces. I look forward to working with you in the lead up to it and beyond. There is no time to lose. Let’s work together to stamp out this miserable, criminal trade.

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#IFTTT #Announcements on GOV.UK

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daleisgreat · 6 years

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Roseanne - Season 9

-It took a little over a year since I started, but here I am covering the ninth and final season of the original run of Roseanne! I am still bamboozled that in the middle of doing this I found out the show was returning, and that I was able to catch up in time just a couple months before Roseanne returns to ABC on March 27. Click here to catch up on my entries covering all the prior seasons. -I knew going into this season that I heard a lot over the years that the ‘lottery-winning’ season was the only bad season of the show and that I should have avoided it all together. Season eight had a huge cliffhanger where Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Dan (John Goodman) got into a huge dispute involving all kinds of broken furniture that implied their marriage was on the brink of collapse. In what was mostly a good season premiere the two overcome their huge fight and got back together by the end of the episode. However, in the closing credits scene of that episode the Connors find out they won the lottery, which is the catalyst for the worst season of the series.

-The next several episodes are absolute train wrecks! The Connors travel overseas to wine and dine with their newfound wealth in a series of gimmick episodes that I despised so much over the last couple seasons. Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) dates a detestable European prince, there is an awful wild west train heist episode, another that satires Rosemary’s Baby, an episode where Roseanne and Jackie spend at the spa that is easily the worst episode in the entire series, and a couple of episodes where they try and fit in with the wealthy and elite with their lottery winnings. This whole string of episodes is cringe-inducing throughout and saying it was a chore to get through these is a severe understatement. It got to the point I had to watch this stretch of episodes at 1.5x speed to gradually ease the pain. -The Connors winning the lottery kind of negates the need for a job roll call since they now are filthy rich. A couple early episodes of the season take place at the Lunchbox diner before Roseanne and Jackie ultimately decide to sell their shares to Nancy (Sandra Bernhard) and Leon (Martin Mull). As a tribute to the Lunchbox, last weekend I was playing Scattegories and we rolled the letter ‘L’ and one of the categories was ‘sandwich’ so I felt it would have been a sin not to list ‘Loose-Meat’ as my sandwich of choice! Here’s hoping The Lunchbox returns in season 10! -Darlene’s (Sara Gilbert) college situation in Chicago is never really addressed at all this season since she and David (Johnny Galecki) are expecting their child. While the Connors are overseas, their house gets renovated with decorations more fitting of their new tax bracket. It is kind of a downer actually watching this much-relatable blue-collar family transform their home into everything that went against the show’s theme all these years.

-I got the vibe the producers felt they went off the rails a bit too far nearly halfway into the season and thankfully dialed back the hokey episodes, and by the halfway point in the season them winning the lottery is almost an afterthought. Roseanne and Dan getting into another huge fight at this point in the season is when this season kind of gets somewhat back on track. -Roseanne’s yearly Halloween special this season is easily their worst as it was the aforementioned Rosemary’s Baby knockoff that did not pan out. The Thanksgiving episode was a riot though as they have the trademark family fight at the dinner table where Bev (Estelle Parsons) comes out of the closet. Readers of these blogs will recall how bummed I am that Fred (Michael ‘O Keefe) was no longer part of the show, but I was a little relieved to see Jackie and Roseanne at least address his absence during the Christmas special stating that he found a new lady. -Also around the halfway point of the season DJ (Michael Fishman) is given a few new takes on his character when he is revealed to be into filmmaking and a big time movie buff. He also gets his first girlfriend in the series and the two seem to hit it off by the end of the season. Good on the writers for finally giving DJ some depth….halfway into the very last season.

-Last season saw Lecy Goransen return as Becky after a few years off, but with Sarah Chalke subbing in for a few episodes as a nice gesture for her filling in for a few years. I have no idea why, but Lecy did not stick with the show for its final season so they had Chalke return again to play Becky throughout the entire season. I feel awful though because Becky is very much a background character this season even moreso compared to the previous few seasons. Becky is only in about half the episodes this season, and she only has a couple lines an episode she appears in as she is never really in a featured arc throughout the season. Becky essentially is receiving the Meg treatment on Family Guy. Her husband Mark (Glenn Quinn) is again a more featured presence throughout this season, and like the past few years is played up for comic relief throughout the season. On the season finale the two do reveal they are expecting their first kid however. -I think I may have only addressed Roseanne’s grandma Mary (Shelley Winters), only once or twice before. Nana Mary appears only once or twice a season on average, kind of like Rose on Lost. Whenever she was on, it felt like a truly special episode where the writers made sure her appearance mattered. I was surprised they kept her character alive all these years to the point they kind of 4th-wall jest about how she is still alive. She has a great final episode in the 9th season where Mary and Bev bury the hatchet after all their years of differences. According to her Wiki, she guest-ed on a total of 10 episodes throughout her run. Winters eventually passed in 2006. Speaking of passing, I was saddened to see in my research for the show’s relaunch to find out that Glenn Quinn passed away in 2002 from a drug overdose. I saw that Mark will be re-casted for the return, but bummed to see I went this long without seeing the news.

-Even though a good chunk of this season is awful, it has one of my favorite episodes where Darlene delivers her kid two months early. Nearly everyone on the cast steps up to deliver a strong performance in this dire time for the family, with an especially powerful scene with Mark, Dan and David that I instantly re-watched a few times. Another fun episode is when Jackie and Mark get involved at the matches at a local wrestling show. It was at this point for the last several episodes of Roseanne where it is brought back down to Earth with back-to-basics storytelling and I nearly forgot they won the lottery. -Let us touch on the controversial last episode, beware of ending spoilers in this paragraph. Darlene and David are getting setup at Roseanne’s for the interim until their kid is in full health. All the cast has an individual one-on-one with the newborn, Harris in an interesting final moment for each character. Then in an ode to the show’s opening theme where we see the cast gathering around the table for dinner all these seasons we see almost the entire cast gathering around the supper table for Chinese. Earlier in the episode DJ is moved to the basement and he references to Roseanne how they used that room for Roseanne’s writing room way back in season two.

Roseanne then goes in a voiceover during this dinner table scene saying how she has been writing ever since Dan had his heart attack and passed away the previous season. She reveals that she has been trying to cope with his death by rewriting history and essentially the final season of the show was all in Roseanne’s head. She reveals one-by-one the true fate of each cast member with Dan being dead for over a year since his heart attack, Jackie and not her mom actually being gay, and Darlene and Becky swapping spouses. It is truly a bizarre ending and definitely threw me for a loop. I was relieved to hear that ABC is pretending that final voiceover twist reveal from Roseanne never happened and that Dan will be there in full form for the re-launch in March. -There are two bonus interviews with Roseanne Barr touching on her overall thoughts with the series and final episode. Even though the extras have been minimal to none in all prior Roseanne DVD sets I am surprised they did not interview a few other cast members for a more comprehensive final set of interviews, but I guess this is better than nothing. There is no question, the 9th and final season of Roseanne is easily the worst. Most of the first half of the season is unbelievably hard to watch, and there are a few scattered weak episodes in the second half as well. That twist ending certainly did not help either, but at least there are a few really strong episodes buried in the trenches that made it marginally worthwhile to stick with it all the way through.

-Even though this is the only season of the show I recommend to avoid, that does not take away the fact that I rank Roseanne right up there with Seinfeld as my two all-time favorite sitcoms. If I were to cherry pick the best three seasons of the show to watch, I would recommend seasons three, four and six. By season three the entire cast was clicking and Roseanne finally hit her groove with working in the mall café and having a great supporting cast with Crystal and Bonnie to bounce off of and that chemistry carried over throughout season four as well. Season six was a great redemption season for the series by bringing Becky and Mark back into the mix and David and Fred injecting new life and perfectly blending into the regular cast. Seasons two, seven and eight are also strong seasons but having some minor hiccups from me ranking them in the same company as seasons three, four and six. Seasons one, five and nine are the weakest seasons with only season nine being the only one I recommend to avoid all together. It took about half the first season for the cast to find their groove and to finally start evolving into the characters we got to love. Season five hit a major lull after Becky and Mark left a couple episodes in and it was not until towards the end of that season that Roseanne finally started to recover from it and you can already tell from this blog why you should avoid season nine.

This was a blast reliving Roseanne for the past year. Thank you all for sticking with me throughout it, and have to re-enforce that I am flabbergasted that the show was announced to return in the middle of going through all these seasons so I am taking credit for these blogs inspiring ABC to bring Roseanne back! Rest assured, I will most likely dedicate a separate future blog covering the new season of Roseanne instead of lumping it in with all the other TV shows in my annual TV season recaps you can find in the links below. So please come back and join me in a few months for my thoughts on season 10 of America’s favorite dysfunctional family! Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Angry Videogame Nerd Volumes 7-9 Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld Final Season Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television

#tv/web series #roseanne #roseanne barr #John Goodman #lecy goranson #Sarah Chalke #sara gilbert #michael fishman #Laurie Metcalf #sandra bernhard #Martin Mull #shelley winters #Estelle Parsons

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

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Steven Caulker:’ I’ve sat here for years hating myself … This year was almost the end’

The QPR defender talks powerfully about his strives with mental illness, his addictions to gamble and drinking and why “he il be” thankful still to be alive

Steven Caulker has a fable to tell and, as hard as it is to hear, it is best plainly to listen. His stream of consciousness veers from scoring on his England debut less than five years ago and the excite at potential being realised to the frightening mental health issues a matter that have almost terminated it all in the period since. A actor who, from the outside, emerged consecrated with endowment and opportunity speaks of frantic nervousnes and self-loathing.

He entertained killing himself in his darkest instants with his path one of self-destruction. Endeavors at escapism rate him hundreds of thousands of pounds, compensations frittered away in casinoes. Then came the drinking is targeted at numbing the sting. The 25 -year-old notes himself recalling the times spent in custody watching CCTV footage of his misdemeanours, his lawyer at his slope, and not recognising the infamous being on the screen.

Football is still coming to terms with mental illness and Caulker, an international and a last-place linger remember at Queens Park Rangers of financially misguided dates as a Premier League club, has been an easy target. He is not was striving to make excuses or acquire sympathy. These are details he knows unpleasant to narrate. Ive sat here for years hating myself and never understand why it is I couldnt only be like everybody else, he says. This time was almost the end. I seemed for large spans there was no light-footed at the end of the passageway. And yet “hes not” residence a gambling since December, or stroked alcohol since early March. The healing process that can rehabilitate him to the top level is well under way, with this interview, one he attempted out, potentially another step on the road to recovery.

A little under a year ago Caulker had spoken to the Guardian about a life-changing week spent in Sierra Leone, of humbling yet invigorating benevolence work with ActionAid that had rendered him with a sense of view. He returned to be galvanised under Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink at Loftus Road and, having invested the previous season on loan at Southampton and Liverpool unfulfilling stints which fuelled his latent dangers was ready to give his all. Early season recitals against Leeds and Cardiff indicated confidence had been rebuilt, reward for a summer of incessant fitness work.

The trigger that they are able to mail him spiralling to rock bottom would be injury. He snapped his groin at Barnsley and played in pain for weeks, dreading a incantation back in rehabilitation, before succumbing to an accompanied hip objection. I owed it to QPR to try, he says, but I was naive thinking I could still perform with the weeping. He has not played since last-place October, with the period celebrated by personal ferment and, simply of late, resurgence. Talking publicly, he advocated, may place younger participates towards seeking assist if they find themselves trampling the same itinerary, or knowing the same gumption of desertion, in a merciless industry. The real hope is the activity, as gallant as it is, may eventually prove more cathartic for Caulker himself.

He recognises his football ability as a gift but likewise a swear. It took him from Sunday League at 15 into the Premier League four years later, to the 2012 Olympics with Great Britain and into Roy Hodgsons England side for a friendly in Sweden later that year. His talent has persuaded some of the most respected directors he is worth engaging. Yet, while he could still get away with it on the pitch, he lived in denial. It was more than six years into his busines before he admitted he necessitated assist. You always think you can rein it back in again and the money plies a inaccurate sense of security. But at Southampton I realised, mentally, I was extend. I wasnt playing, my job was going nowhere and I had to reach out to someone. Medical doctors there tried to help me but others were just telling me got to go on the tone and express myself.

There was no understanding as to what was happening in my leader. I know theyd returned me in to do a job and they werent there to be babysitters. Just like at QPR, I needed to justify the money they were paying me but I was in a state and, at some place, there has to be a duty of care. Football does not deal well with mental illness. Maybe its changing but the support mechanisms are so often not there. Ive spoken to so many actors who have been told to go to the Sporting Chance clinic and theyve accepted because they know, if they take time off, theyll “losing ones” neighbourhood in the team. Someone gradations in and does well, so youre departed. That dissuades parties from getting improve. You feel obliged to get on with things.

I would urge cubs to speak to the PFA, to speak to their director, and not be scared about being stopped if they are experiencing like I did. Be brave enough to say you need improve before its too late. The feeling Id ever involved something to take the edge off. Football was my flee as a kid but that changed when I was chucked into the first team as a adolescent and abruptly football came with distres. My behavior of to address it, even in the early stages of my career, was gambling. Im an addict. Im addicted to triumphing, which people say is a positive in football but certainly not when it extends to gambling. I was addicted to trying to beat the system, because you reassure yourself there is a plan to it and you can beat it. You can never get your brain around why you arent.

Steven Caulker, here celebrating after scoring on his England debut in 2012, says his football ability is a gift but too a affliction. Photograph: Michael Regan/ Getty Images

He has played 123 ages in the Premier League and for eight teams with the same, horribly familiar hertz of insecurity and self-destruction seeking him to each. There is always a catalyst to the nosedive. The sleepless darkness, sat up till 5am replaying every bad decision Ive ever became in my life, perturbing what will be next Tottenham moved me to Bristol City on loan at 18 and they set me in a flat in the city centre surrounded by nightclubs, two casinos opposite, the various kinds of coin Id never seen in my life, and no counseling whatsoever. I was plucked formerly by a member of staff and told Id been recognized in the casino at 3am but their posture was: What you do in your free time is your business. Just dont gave it affect your acts out on the pitch.

At Swansea a year later it was an injury which created it all to the surface, and Spurs communicated me to Boasting Chance to sort myself out while I was recovering from my knee but I wasnt ready. I hadnt experienced enough agony to form me want to stop. I was gambling heavily when I went back to Tottenham, biding up to crazy hours of the darknes in casinos. I guess never feeling good enough played a big part in that. I never appeared I was on the same degree as any of the first-teamers but a big win in the casino and fund in my back pocket might change that. Being stopped sounds me even more because football was what I had relied on to make me feel better. So then the gambling was every single day. The pain of forgetting all my fund, combined with the pity and guilt, ingest away at me. So Id drink myself into oblivion so I wouldnt have to feel anything. I was numb but I was out of control.

The chairman, Daniel Levy, eventually attempted him out on a post-season trip-up to the Bahamas. He just said: The room you act is phenomenal. You either sort yourself out or lead but I can assure you, if you leave, youll be going down , not up. I was young, stupid. I took it as a challenge, a chance to prove him wrong. I was so immature. So I went to Cardiff and, for six months, everything was amazing. I was chieftain, the manager, Malky Mackay, knew I had some issues but offered to be there for me. I experienced wanted, so there was no gambling , no heavy binges but the second largest he was sacked, all the beasts came back. Thats all it took. Even before we played the next game, Id persuasion myself good-for-nothing would be the same. Thats the kind of cataclysmic envisioning Ive had to address.

Steven Caulker, here playing for Tottenham against Arsenal in 2010, says he made a big mistake leaving Spurs. Photo: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

I pointed up at QPR that summertime, 2014, trying to hold it together, but the prompt there came in the second largest recreation when we were pummelled 4-0 at Tottenham. That detecting coming off the tone at White Hart Lane, knowing marriage been humiliated and that Levy was sitting up in the stand thinking: I told you so There was no disclaiming it any more. Id made a big mistake leaving Spurs. I should have stayed and sorted myself out. I required the ground to swallow me up. It just pounded in my psyche: dejection, unhappines, bitternes. From that instant I was run, even if I never wanted to accept it, and there is nothing that intensified. Id go for days without sleeping. I dont known better I endured it. That time was an absolute nightmare.

It was a vicious circle. Wed lose at the weekend and the love would get at me, and Id be interrupting. I really wanted to help us get results but we werent good enough and Id walk away taking responsibility in my head for the whole crews flunks. I couldnt sleep, are concerned about what had happened. The only comfort I acquired was in booze. It would silence the tones of indecision and self-hate, temporarily regardless, but Id be too intoxicated to go into teach, and the blackouts Id have no remember of anything. It could be Monday and Id have no remembrance of what had happened since Saturday night. Id wake up, roll over and look at my phone, and thered be texts from people saying: Did you really do this last-place darknes? The director want to talk to you. It was petrifying because I didnt know what had happened.

There were occasions where reference is would wake up in a police cell. He pouts when asked how often he has been arrested, upset to admit the above figures, but the drunk and disorderly offences would flare up from London to Southampton to Merseyside. Sometimes Id be sat there with law enforcement agencies and my solicitor, watching the CCTV footage of what Id done, and I didnt recognise myself. I couldnt conceive the person or persons I was. Its so hard to accept I could be like that. In Liverpool I was waking up in the middle of the nighttime throwing up, people were blackmailing me, association proprietors and bouncers: Offer money or well sell this story on you. And I had no meaning what Id even done on those blackouts. I eventually told the sorority I couldnt function and needed to go back into rehab.

Things might have improved last-place season under Hasselbaink had the hip hurt, diagnosed as a week-long edition that became a complaint which induced five different diagnosis , not interpret him powerless is again. Id expensed the organization 8m, was one of the top earners and one of the few left from the Premier League, and beings had no explanation why I wasnt acting. Why I was absent. It ended up as my toughest year ever. I couldnt learn. My girlfriend lost her mother and was grieving while living with someone struggling with craving. My son, who lives with his mother in Somerset, is still in academy so Id go months without recognizing him. He had always been my safe place. There was no release.

QPR and my agent tried to push me towards Lokomotiv Moscow in January, saying it would be a fresh start. Portion of me contemplated the money they were offering could solve all my difficulties but why would being on my own out in Russia help? I had no feeling how to separate the cycle and is available on Moscow while still disabled only appeared a recipe for disaster. The director, Ian Holloway, was actually tell people to stand. Id been in his office close to rips, so he said: How anyone could feel sending you there would be a good theme is beyond me. You need to get yourself right. I realized him for that but, for the sorority, I can see why it was appealing to be shot of me but I was in no fit district to move and eventually pulled the plug on it.

Id had one last-place gamble and lost a blaze of a lot of money in December. A last blowout. It was at that point I lastly countenanced I could not win; that there was no quick fix , no more fantasizing I could save the world through one good nighttime on the roulette wheel. It was all a fantasize that took me away from having to feel anything. I entertained suicide a lot in that stage. A dark era. Everything Id gone through in football, where had it taken me? All the remorse, the shame, the shame, the public humiliation in the working paper and for what? I could cling to my son, to what Id done in Africa, or the dimensions Id bought their own families, but Id blown everything else. I calculate Ive lost 70% what Ive payed. When “were losing” that amount of money, the guilt thats so many lives you could have changed. There was no flee , no way out, other than to leave.

Steven Caulker says: In Liverpool I was waking up in the middle of the darknes throwing up, parties were extorting me, club owneds and bouncers. Picture: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

But, in the moments of clarity, I knew I couldnt do that because of my son. I havent gambled since but the drink crowded the void for a while. I was frightened and didnt feel like there was anywhere else to transform. Rehab didnt production before so why would it work now? I stupidly took convenience in the alcohol but it objective up deepening the depression. It was relentless from every slant. Until 12 March. Thats the day I lost my “drivers licence”. Thats when I realised my life had now become unmanageable.

Caulker was ordered to pay 12,755 in penalties and costs at Slough magistrates court at the end of March and was banned from driving for 18 months, having refused to blow into a breathalyser after police were called to a parking lot near Windsor Castle. I knew I was over the limit, I knew Id get the ban but I didnt want to tell my parents Id fucked up again. What if I had driven the car out of the car park and killed someone? No, that was it. Ive been up before a adjudicate four or five times. No more second probabilities. Its a incarcerate sentence next. I was still injured and unable to play, so I signed off sick. I went to see a specialist who diagnosed me with depression and nervousnes. He prescribed me medication and we put together a design where I would take some time away to sort myself out.

He and his lover travelled to Africa and India, is contributing to orphanages, homeless shelters and academies where the bear was exposed and obvious. He has attended countless Gamblers Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous gathers, and has reached out to support works in video games such as Clarke Carlisle for advice. He has not touched alcohol since his arrest in March. He takes medication, a feeling stabiliser is striving to match my high-priceds and lows, and address that substance inequality which draws my practices so cataclysmic, twice a day. Golf is a new, most constructive vice.

People say Ive done all this because Ive had too much money shed at me but I know teenagers without a penny who have the same addictive characters as me. Whether I played football or not I would still be suffering from this illness, precisely without the public pressure and mortification. Addiction does not care. I am a man of extremes. Parties dont find me doing the additional training, feeing right, going to the reserve every night to get fit, were represented at the anonymous convenes, doing the donation make. That is still me. That is who I am. But I get fucked by these other demons and I desperately necessary something in the middle. I feel like Im getting there now, that things have finally changed.

Im doing interesting thing merely to prompt me to stay on track. I could be relying on taxis to get me everywhere while Im banned but Im exploiting public transport. Im living in one of the owneds I own in Feltham, back where I grew up, to stir me recollect how hard I had to work to get out of here aged 15. Its a remember that, if I continue to unravel, I wont improve my statu again. Money considers the fissures. It can be evil. It prolongs the agony.

QPRs musicians reported for pre-season last-place Friday but Caulker, who has one year to run on his contract and has been improving all summertime with the former conference player Drewe Broughton at Goals centre in Hayes, had been signed off until July. Life at the golf-club had degenerated into an incessant flow of internal disciplinary hearings and, despite Holloway having become clear his desire to retain the centre-halfs business, his future will not is currently under Loftus Road. What happens next is all a bit perplexed, all a bit uncertain, he says. The manager has texted me several times offering his support and “says hes” misses me at the club but my brand-new representative has been informed by the owners Im not welcome back.

For too long Ive disliked everything about myself and I needed to learn to affection myself again. I miss video games like crazy. I dont detect as if Ive experienced playing football since Cardiff. I dont want to type my identify into Google and just see a roster of humbling narrations. I want people to remember I am a footballer who was good enough to represent his country at 20 and still has 10 years left in the game. At 40% of my ability, I was playing at the highest level. Now I feel good mentally and I want the chance to show people, including my son, what I am absolutely capable of. Wherever the opportunity starts, Im exactly appreciative still to be alive.

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

In Australia, the crisis support assistance Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

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quynhchan · 7 years

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hay

When Mily Balakïrev composed his oriental fantasy Islamey in 1869, it was declared by many to be unplayable. Still, after its premiere by Nikolai Rubinstein, many tried... Alexander Scriabin even crippled his right hand in a fanatical attempt to master it (meaning we have Balakïrev to thank for Scriabin’s switching to composition). Today, Islamey is standard fare at piano competitions, and concert pianists play it faster, louder and cleaner than ever before. And there are more of them out there – a surfeit of fleet-fingered virtuosi, churned out every year by conservatoriums from Beijing to Belfast. But if everyone can play Islamey, what are the pianistic heights to which musicians must aspire? Clearly, it’s not just a matter of technique. That is why we set out in search of pianists who have set the standard with performances that are not only technically, but also musically, exceptional. Rather than choose our favourites, we asked more than 100 leading pianists to name the pianist who has inspired them most. As the answers flowed in, ten masters of the instrument emerged. But one legendary musician outstripped all others (by a healthy margin). If the piano is the king of instruments, this pianist is the king of kings. But who is he? 10. ARTUR SCHNABEL (1882-1951) Who was he? An Austrian pianist who specialised in core German composers and made the first complete recording of the Beethoven sonatas. What makes him great? A commitment to plumbing the intellectual and spiritual depths of a work, while eschewing displays of technical bravura. Essential recordings BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas Nos 1-32 (Complete) EMI 7637652 SCHUBERT 4 Impromptus, D899; 4 Impromptus, D935; Allegretto in C minor, D915 EMI 5868332 Jonathan Biss On Schnabel’s living sound “If I was asked which pianist I loved the most, I’d never be able to answer -– too many possibilities! But if it’s a question of who has inspired me, that’s easy: Artur Schnabel. My first exposure to his recordings of the Beethoven Sonatas came in my early teens, and quickly led to an obsession with those works which I expect to last for the rest of my life. I could not understand how he could convey so much meaning – spirituality, even – between two notes, or how he managed to produce from this instrument of keys and hammers a sound which was so buoyant, resistant to gravity, alive. Those two aims – to make a sound that lives, and to find music not only in the notes, but around them – are still primary for me, nearly two decades later. When I went to study with Leon Fleisher, I was touched to hear him speak of Schnabel, his own teacher, with the same kind of awe. Fleisher’s own ideas about music are compelling, and he is matchlessly eloquent in expressing them, but it was often that he would simply tell us what Schnabel had told him about this piece or that, in a tone of voice which suggested that there was no greater authority. I like to think I may have learned something through this lineage, and each and every day I try to bring to my music something of the devotion, understanding and, above all, love, which emanates from every note the man played.” Also chosen by András Schiff, Ronald Brautigam, Garrick Ohlsson… 9. Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991) Who was he? A German pianist who focused on the greats of German music and played concerts well into his eighties. What makes him great? Rhythmic inventiveness and a talent for bringing out the lyricism, charm and spontaneity in music, particularly in intimate pieces or passages. Essential recordings LISZT From Années de Pèlerinage: Sposalizio; Il penseroso, Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa; Sonetto 47 del Petrarca; Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, Sonetto 123 del Petrarca. Gondoliera, S162 No 1 (from Venezia e Napoli). Two Legendes for piano, S175 DG 4779374 BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas Nos 8 in C minor, Op 13 Pathétique; 14 in C sharp minor, Op 27 No 2 Moonlight; 21 in C major, Op 53 Waldstein; 23 in F minor, Op 57 Appassionata DG 4474042 Cyprien Latsaris On Kempff in concert “I first heard Kempff live in Paris when I was about 13 years old and then I bought some Beethoven and Brahms recordings of his. He did not have the greatest pianistic technique, but he was very special. He created some sublime, divine musical moments that transported us towards the heavens. I am sure he would have been just as successful in concert today, because the most important factor for a musician is to have a very special personality, and he had that characteristic. He has also influenced what I do at the piano by getting me to put myself in a second state, a spiritual state, before playing. There are so many recordings of his that I treasure, as Kempff excels in Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert and Bach. But, in particular, I would name the Klavierstücke of Brahms, the Beethoven middle sonatas and Concertos Nos 2 & 4, the Bach transcriptions, and the Schubert Klavierstücke.” Also chosen by Michael Endres, David Fray, Eldar Nebolsin 8. Alfred Brendel (born 1931) Who is he? An Austrian pianist and teacher now based in London, who has recorded four complete sets of the Beethoven sonatas. What makes him great? Rigorous adherence to the score without ever sounding dry or academic, and a knack for finding unexpected moments of humour, particularly in Classical repertoire. Essential recordings BEETHOVEN The Five Piano Concertos Vienna Philharmonic/Rattle Philips 4627812 SCHUBERT Complete impromptus Philips 4560612 Paul Lewis On studying with Brendel “I had lessons with Alfred Brendel in the 1990s, and he has been a great inspiration. He would talk about music and I would think, “Yeah, that really makes sense”. And then he would sit down and demonstrate things, and that’s when the light bulb really went off. The first time I met him was when I was 20 at the Guildhall School of Music. I remember feeling very nervous and intimidated. Seeing the silhouette of the glasses and the hair coming through the hall, I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, it’s him!’ I played a Haydn sonata for him and it was clear from the very start that he was interested only in the music. That’s all that matters. You may feel worried about yourself but that’s not the important thing because he’s not the least bit worried about anything but what you’re playing. That tallied with the impression I’d had of him before I met him, from his concerts and recordings – that of an incredibly serious-minded musician. It was a great inspiration and privilege to work with him over those years.” Also chosen by Steven Osborne, Imogen Cooper, Till Fellner… 7. Glenn Gould (1932-1982) Who was he? A highly eccentric Canadian pianist who, after a stellar concert career, shunned the stage at the age of 31 to focus on recordings and experimental projects. What makes him great? A prodigious ability to sculpt the multiple lines of polyphonic music, such as Bach’s, with unsurpassed clarity. And a seeming incapacity for technical error. Essential recordings BACH Goldberg Variations, BWV988 (1981 recording) Sony 88697148532 BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2 Sony SM2K52600, Sony SM2K52603 BACH, MOZART, SWEELINCK Schoenberg Salzburg Recital (1959) Sony SMK53474 Pascal Rogé On Gould the recreator “I first heard Gould play rather late, since in my youth at the Paris Conservatory he was completely unknown. None of my colleagues or teachers ever mentioned his name – until in 1966 I met Bruno Monsaingeon, who revealed Gould to me and the French audience through his marvellous documentaries. It is hard to say what makes Gould’s playing so special, since everything in his playing is special. One can mention the touch, the phrasing, the articulation… But most important is the conception, the architecture, the personal and ‘creative’ approach to every single piece he plays. He is a creator, much more than an interpreter: each time you hear a piece played by Gould, you discover the piece for the first time. I always refer to his line: ‘If you are not convinced you can play a piece in a completely new and unique way, don’t play it.’ It’s an extreme affirmation, but so full of truth! A case in point is his two recordings of the Goldberg Variations, an example of Gould’s genius in even being able to ‘re-create’ himself. They are both masterpieces, and his legacy for all musicians of the world. I am always blown away when pianists dare play (or even touch) this piece after Gould. Are they totally unconscious or utterly pretentious? In Bach he is completely unmatched. In fact, I am unable to hear, accept or conceive any other interpretation of Bach than his. I’d like to say he has been an influence on me, but no one is deranged enough to try and imitate Gould’s playing! Still, I remember when I recorded for French TV the complete First Book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. It was a project conceived for him by Monsaingeon, but Gould died before he could film it… And I was the one chosen to ‘replace’ him. Can you imagine the pressure? I think the legacy of Gould for any artist is ‘the freedom of creation’ towards any composer, but at the same time respecting the logic of the music and the spirit of the composer – a very challenging equation!” Also chosen by Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fazil Say, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet 6. Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) Who was he? A French pianist and professor at the Conservatoire de Paris. He was called a “poet of the piano” for his mastery of the lyrical works of Chopin, Schumann and Debussy, producing landmark recordings, and meticulous editions, of their music. What makes him great? A highly personal, subjective style that favours intuition and feeling over precise technique, resulting in performances of lush, transcendent musicality. Essential recordings CHOPIN 24 Preludes, Op 28; Prelude Op 45 in C sharp minor No 25; Prelude Op 28 No 15 in D flat major Raindrop; Berceuse in D flat major, Op 57; Tarantella in A flat major, Op 43; Impromptus Nos 1-4 EMI 3615412 CHOPIN, SCHUMANN Chopin: Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, Op 35 Marche funèbre; Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op 15; The Prophet Bird Op 82 No 7; Carnaval Op 9 Naxos Historical Great Pianists 8.111327 FRANCK, RAVEL, SAINT-SAËNS Franck: Symphonic Variations for Piano & Orchestra, M46; Ravel: Piano Concerto in D major (for the left hand); Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No 4 in C minor, Op 44; Étude en forme de valse, Op 52 No 6 Naxos Historical Great Pianists 8110613 Stephen Hough On Cortot’s individuality “Cortot is sometimes remembered as the pianist who played lots of wrong notes. This is unfair – not just because he had a dazzling finger technique, but because he never allowed striving for accuracy to distract him from the bigger picture. His mistakes can sometimes be heard even in the first notes of pieces, but I find these fallible moments endearing: the pianist is consumed by spiritual inspiration and oblivious of the physical risks involved. Cortot was a great virtuoso, conscious of the power to excite and thrill that Romantic piano music has, but you never feel manipulated in his musical company. You feel that even his most extravagant interpretative choices come from complete inner honesty; he is not sitting in a spotlight forcing you to look at him, but rather holding a torch, leading you forward to enlightenment. I never tire of hearing his recordings, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann from the 1920s and ’30s. His combination of utter interpretative freedom (sometimes with a touch of eccentricity) and penetrating insight into the composer’s wishes is unique, in my view. There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality, and there are others who uncover the written score for us with insight and reverence – but there are few who can do both. Cortot had a vision which saw beyond the academic or the theatrical to some wider horizon of creativity from whence the composers themselves might well have drawn inspiration.” Also chosen by Alfred Brendel, Benjamin Grosvenor, Stanislav Ioudenitch… Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 201 5. Emil Gilels (1916-1985) Who was he? An Odessa-born pianist who moved to Moscow in 1935, becoming, along with Richter, the leading Soviet pianist of his day. He and violinist David Oistrakh were among the first Soviet musicians allowed to concertise in the West. What makes him great? His “golden” sound – an ability to execute the most taxing passages without compromising his burnished tone or depth of feeling. Essential recordings BRAHMS Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15; Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat major, Op 83; Fantasies (7 piano pieces), Op 116 Berliner Philharmoniker/Jochum DG Originals 4474462 LISZT, SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in B minor, S178; Piano Sonata No 17 in D major, D850 Sony 88697858242 BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No 28 in A major, Op 101; Piano Sonata No 29 in B flat major, Op 106 Hammerklavier DG Originals 4636392 Cédric Tiberghie On the grandeur of Gilels “Gilels has this mixture of fantastic tone quality and an ability to make everything seem simple when you listen to him. Even when he plays a simple Bach prelude, or the Bach-Siloti Prelude in B minor, you think it’s simple to play, but then you buy the music and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is impossible!’ I first heard Gilels when I was eight or nine – his recording of the Brahms Second Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. I wasn’t aware it was Gilels – or even a Brahms concerto – just one of my dad’s huge collection of cassette tapes. But it was my favourite music, and still today I think it’s one of the most beautiful recordings ever made of a piano concerto. The quality of tone and line, the inspiration and the beauty of the sound – everything is so perfect. It’s actually quite intimidating when you have to play the concerto yourself. He plays the first movement so slowly, and you think, OK, I’m going to do the same – which is a big mistake because he’s Gilels and you’re not. You need that golden sound Gilels possessed – more than anyone in history – as well as a clear idea of the structure and direction; and for this you need a lifetime of experience. Also, if I compare my hand to his, his was probably twice as heavy as mine. It’s like Oistrakh on the violin, there’s that question of flesh, pure matter creating the sound. If you have extremely thin hands, the quality of tone will probably be clearer than Gilels’. So I don’t try to imitate an artist like him, but I try to keep in my head the grandeur of what he does. It’s something I always try to find, not artificially, but perhaps just to feel. So he’s a model for me in that respect.” Also chosen by Alice Sara Ott, Olli Mustonen, Lars Vogt… 4. Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982) Who was he? A Polish pianist who left Europe after WWI, settling in the US. What makes him great? His interpretations of the music of Chopin, to which he brought a glowing tone and endless variety of phrasing. Essential recordings CHOPIN Nocturnes Nos 1-19 Sony 88697690412 LIVE AT MOSCOW GREAT HALL DVD Medici Arts 3078548 CHOPIN, BRAHMS Chopin: Piano Concerto No 2 in F minor, B43 Op 21; Brahms: Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat major, Op 83 Altara 1021 Roger Woodward on sharing the legacy of Rubinstein “When I was studying at the Chopin National Academy in Warsaw, our class sometimes met Professor Drzewiecki’s illustrious friends, one of whom was Arthur Rubinstein. He played for us and some students had the privilege of playing for him. Everybody in the class knew his recordings, as they were the classical Chopin interpretations that Drzewiecki had taught us. Grace, poise and thorough research were the hallmarks of his art, one that showed mastery but also enormous modesty and, contrary to what some ‘authorities’ had to say, a flawless technique. Rubinstein’s critics, and there were many, tended to forget how thorough he was in researching the repertoire he played. Where others posed and only pretended they had researched their subject, Rubinstein’s performances reeked of integrity. The earliest of Rubinstein’s three complete Mazurka recordings provided a high point for us in our study of Chopin, although for me it was his performances of the Nocturnes that provided the key to all other Chopin. I remain eternally grateful to Rubinstein for his recordings and what he had to say about them. Rubinstein was not blessed with the sheer virtuosity of Rachmaninov or Horowitz, but he developed a mastery of legato cantabile and tempo rubato second to none. This is evident in such miraculous pre-war ‘live’ performances as his historic recording of the Chopin Piano Concertos with Sir John Barbirolli, although his performances of the same with Witold Rowicki were even more beautiful – completely unforgettable. I will never forget his kindness and generosity to our class, and his charm, modesty and scrupulous research. Although I remain a student all my life and continue to listen to his many wonderful recordings, I consider myself fortunate to share such rich experiences with my own students.” Also chosen by Simon Trpceski, Jayson Gillham, Margaret Fingerhut 3. Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) Who was he? A Russian pianist of German descent who became the USSR’s pre-eminent musician. What makes him great? Rock-solid technique combined with an astonishing variety of sound. Essential recordings THE SOFIA RECITAL Philips 464734 REDISCOVERED: CARNEGIE HALL RECITAL RCA Red Seal 09026 63844-2 PROKOFIEV Piano Sonata No 2 & 9; Visions fugitives Nos 6, 18 Melodiya MELCD1001677 Barry Douglas On the intensity of Richter “I heard Richter play many times in England, France and America and what I loved about him was that he was able to make the piano sound not like a piano – it sounded like an orchestra or sometimes like a choir. Also, anything he did at the instrument always seemed totally right. It didn’t seem like his ideas; it seemed like the only way to do it. Every artist should aim, if they’re serious, to remove themselves from the equation and go to the heart or the essence of the music. Very few artists can do that, but for Richter it was totally natural. He was also a very serious musician: after concerts he’d often decide he needed to practise, and would go home and practise for another two hours. He also insisted that each recital program contain at least one new piece. So his repertoire was vast. I don’t think his studio recordings were that successful: they didn’t really represent him. It’s the live recordings which are amazing. Everyone talks about the Sofia recital from 1958 where he plays Liszt’s Feux Follets and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Still, his recordings of the Beethoven sonatas are also second-to-none, not to mention the Russian repertoire – the little pieces of Tchaikovsky – and Prokofiev, who wrote his Seventh Sonata for him. When I was at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1984 he sent messages to me through others saying how fantastic he thought I was, which was very sweet. I wish I’d had a chance to get to know him better. I will always look up to Richter. A performing artist mustn’t copy, but you can be inspired by the essence of what someone stood for, and that’s what I do with him. I know very deep inside myself I’m trying to grasp what Richter had, which is an amazing, fiery, burning intensity of passion for music – that’s what came across when he played. He was absolutely obsessed, and possessed, by music.” Also chosen by: Howard Shelley, Anna Goldsworthy, Piotr Anderszewski... 2. Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) Who was he? A Russian-born pianist who left for the West at age 21, where he was described as a “tornado unleashed from the steppes”. Most famous for his performances of Romantic piano repertoire and, surprisingly, Scarlatti, he returned to Russia for a triumphant farewell recital in 1986. What makes him great? Sparkling virtuosity and extraordinary use of tone colour, combined with a talent for thrilling his audience, creating a furore at his live recitals. Essential recordings SCARLATTI Horowitz plays Scarlatti Sony 88697806402 LISZT, CHOPIN, SCHUMANN The London recordings 1932-1936 Archipel Records ARPCD0246 HOROWITZ IN MOSCOW DVD Sony SVD64545 Ingolf Wunder On the god-like gifts of Horowitz “Horowitz combined high-class pianism with a unique taste in music and interpretation. What made him unique was his ability to chisel his feelings and moods out of the structures and harmonic material of the score. I think I first heard Horowitz when I was 14. I was just astonished by his tone and the variety of colours he could produce. And he always played as his hand was built, never betraying his taste and his view of music. He was always himself, and everything he touched became his own. His playing is never mediocre, it either works or it doesn’t. But if it does work, it’s simply god-like – incomparable with anything you’ve ever heard. In a way, Horowitz is the product of a time that produced so many great pianists. I believe the way of thinking and our life has changed since then. Now musicians can go on the Internet and hear almost every recording of any piece; back then they were forced to think for themselves. Small things were given greater importance because it wasn’t possible to go anywhere instantly. It was not necessarily about who can play the fastest or any other competitive aspect, it was more about the music. There are still a few musicians that are like Horowitz and those old greats, and that’s the school we ought to come back to.” Also chosen by: Freddy Kempf, Gerard Willems, Konstantin Scherbakov 1. Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) Who was he? A pianist and composer born in Russia, who graduated from the Moscow Conservatorium in the same class as composer Alexander Scriabin. Among his compositions is the Piano Concerto No 2, often voted the most popular piece of classical music of all time. He left Russia in 1917, embarking on a career as a touring pianist in order to support himself and his family. He became a US citizen shortly before his death. What makes him great? An almost superhumanly clean finger technique, which allowed him to maintain clarity even in the knottiest passages. This was partly due to his famously large hands, able to span 12 inches, or a 13th (C1 to A2) on the piano. He also had a beautifully singing tone, likened to that of violinist Fritz Kreisler, permitting him to wring infinite sweetness from a melody. Essential recordings CHOPIN•SCHUMANN Piano Sonata No 2; Ballade No 3, Carnaval Naxos Historical Great Pianists 8.112020 RACHMANINOV Concertos Nos 1-4; Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini RCA 09026616582 BEETHOVEN, GRIEG, SCHUBERT Violin Sonata No 8 in G major, Op 30 No 3; Violin Sonata No 3 in C minor, Op 45; Grand Duo for Violin and Piano in A Major, D574; Fritz Kreisler v Naxos Historical Great Pianists 8.110968 Leslie Howard on the greatest pianist ever to make a record “What’s remarkable about Rachmaninov’s playing is how honest it is. Nothing gets between his playing and his idea of why the piece of music was worth recording. His playing is never cluttered, it’s never fussy and there’s a complete absence of cheap tricks – quite unusual for the time he was recording. I think he’s the greatest pianist of his age and I’m sure he’s the best pianist who ever made a record. Of course, his technique is extraordinary, but the gift of all good technique is that you’re not aware of it when you’re listening to it. If you hear him play Si oiseau j’étais by Henselt, for instance, it sounds like the most charming salon piece. But if you’ve ever sat down to play it, you’ll know perfectly well it’s an absolute terror. Rachmaninov also has a way of dealing with rhythm which makes him instantly recognisable. Sometimes he does it by playing a rhythm that’s not exactly what’s in the score, but it comes out sounding like what should have been in the score. Take his recording with Fritz Kreisler of the Opus 30 No 3 Sonata of Beethoven, for example. You hear every single note and every single note is as important as every other, which is how Beethoven ought to be played, but seldom is. Being a composer, Rachmaninov also possessed a formidable musical mind. He dissected every piece before he put his hands on the keyboard. And he could do that because his compositional skills were so refined. I sometimes think when he plays his own music he’s less careful – almost as if he doesn’t quite think there should be so much fuss made about him. But when you hear how utterly unsloppy, in the emotional sense, his playing of his own music is, it discourages pianists from wallowing in it, as so many of them do. Then, if you want romantic playing he can do that too, and again I think of one of the recordings with Kreisler of the Grieg Sonata No 3. The second movement is heartrendingly marvellous and the way he plays the tune is completely different from the way Kreisler plays it. It makes the piece sound more eventful than it actually is – it’s a cracker of a recording! There’s a reason why Rachmaninov didn’t record more, and that’s because of the strained relations he had with the people at the Victor Talking Machine Company, who thought he was getting too much money for his recordings, and who turned down many of the things he offered to record. For instance, he was going to give a free recording of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, as long as they would let him record his orchestral Symphonic Dances, and they refused the offer. The reason why the recording we do have of him playing his Third Concerto is, to many ears, a bit inadequate is because he had to go back and record the first side again four months later. He put cuts in it at the last moment because the producer Charles Connell gave him grief, saying he couldn’t play the piano and couldn’t compose either. In short he made the whole thing deeply unpleasant for Rachmaninov. So we’ve got this Mr Connell to thank for not having the Liszt Sonata, the Hammerklavier Sonata, the Waldstein Sonata, and the Chopin B minor Sonata. Of the recordings we do have, it’s very difficult to choose a favourite, but I absolutely love his recording of Schumann’s Carnaval. I think that’s perfect piano-playing from start to finish.” Also chosen by Stephen Kovacevich, Denis Matsuev, Alexey Yemtsov... Why are there so Many great Russian Pianists? “From the 19th Century there has been very systematic children’s musical education in Russia, which started back with the foundation of the Moscow Imperial Conservatory. Rachmaninov came to study there at the age of 14. He lived at the home of Nikolai Zverev, who had created a boarding school for young students, who were required to practise six hours per day, apart from their school study. [Other boarders with Zverev were Scriabin and Siloti]. That school transformed into the Central Music School in the Soviet era, and the system expanded throughout the country. Today in Russia there is serious musical education for kids starting from when they’re big enough to reach the keys. Vladimir Ashkenazy, Grigory Sokolov and Mikhail Pletnev are products of this rather strict Soviet school. So children study for seven or eight years at a special music school, then at 15 they go to music college for three years. And that’s all before they enrol in the Conservatorium. So if a kid is talented, by the age of 16 they can play basically everything. That means when Russian students come to the Conservatory, they are already professional pianists. They have almost no technical boundaries to overcome, and can just focus on becoming an artist. So it’s not like just having piano lessons with a teacher – it’s systematic and totally free musical education. Geniuses are born everywhere, but only in Russia are they nurtured in this way.” Elena Kuznetsova Dean of piano, Moscow Conservator - See more at: http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/features/greatest-10-pianists-all-time#sthash.IghNbRez.dpuf

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stoweboyd · 7 years

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2017-02-22 - Digest

[I was experimenting with forms leading to what is now the Work Futures Weekly, I guess.]

ON THE FUTURE OF WORK

Paul Mason, Automation may mean a post-work society but we shouldn’t be afraid

A low-work society is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing rewards via work.

I am sympathetic to Mason’s perspectives, but not convinced that our conventional economy can be coaxed into a soft landing.

The Heroic Future by Alex Steffen

Alex Steffen is raising funds for The Heroic Future on Kickstarter! A live documentary series about reimagining the world of tomorrow, in order to rebuild the world today.

ON ADVERTISING

Ben Thompson, The Reality of Missing Out

Digital advertising is becoming a rather simple proposition: Facebook, Google, or don’t bother.

[…]

I have been arguing for a while that in the aggregate the tech sector is fine, and the state of advertising-based services is a perfect example of what I mean: taken as a basket the six companies in this article (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Yelp) are up 19% over the last year, even though the latter four companies are down a collective 53%; the fact that Google and Facebook are up a combined 31% more than makes up for it.

This makes sense: while advertising as a whole is a zero-sum game, there is a secular shift from not just print but also radio and TV to digital, which is why this basket of digital advertising companies is up. Digital, though, is subject to the effects of Aggregation Theory, a key component of which is winner-take-all dynamics, and Facebook and Google are indeed taking it all.

We are seeing winner-takes-all in a number of other sectors: it’s a central outcome of a platform economy.

On Time

Adam Taylor, The radical plan to destroy time zones

Are time zones inherently flawed? That’s what Steve Hanke and Dick Henry think.

A few years back Hanke, a prominent economist with Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow with the CATO Institute think tank, and Henry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, teamed up to propose a new calendar designed to fix the inefficiencies of the current one. The plan was dubbed the “Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar.” Last month, after reading a WorldViews story about Pyongyang time, Hanke reached out to us to detail another idea that he and Henry had devised to fix the chaos caused by time zones.

The plan was strikingly simple. Rather than try to regulate a variety of time zones all around the world, we should instead opt for something far easier: Let’s destroy all these time zones and instead stick with one big “Universal Time.”

This is something like Swatch’s ‘Beat Time’ which was a universal single time zone based on 1000 ‘beats’ per day. The Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar doensn’t through the second, minute, and hour out the window, though. Just time zones.I think my proposal — Boydian Time — is way better. 13 months of 28 days each, with special days — not in any week or month — for New Years and Leap Day. PS — And no time zones.

ON THE POSTNORMAL

Ricardo de Queral, Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap”

An inspiration for Spain’s May 15 movement, the sociologist is skeptical about chances for change:

Zygmunt Bauman: We could describe what is going on at the moment as a crisis of democracy, the collapse of trust: the belief that our leaders are not just corrupt or stupid, but inept. Action requires power, to be able to do things, and we need politics, which is the ability to decide what needs to be done. But that marriage between power and politics in the hands of the nation state has ended. Power has been globalized, but politics is as local as before. Politics has had its hands cut off. People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.

[…]

Today, every society is just a collection of diasporas.

Bauman continues to astonish.

ON ANTHROPOLOGY

MIchael Gazzaniga, On the Road to Humankind With Leon Festinger

It is the more primitive inventiveness of humans — technology and its role as the engine that powered humankind to dazzling heights of accomplishment — that pushed the slow grind of advancement into the fast lane of evolution. And Leon [Festinger, of the ‘cognitive dissonance’ fame], being a social psychologist at his core, began to see how technology could be used to control human life. Technologies are not only physical things. They can be social forces as well, like philosophical or religious beliefs.

[…]

Yet when Yuval Harari is talking about gaining control of people by the use of fictions, he is talking about the kinds of abstractions and ideas everybody can understand — money, religion, politics and preferences, the kinds of things an interpreter is at work on all day long. As the novelist captures the personal, the historian captures the social story within which most of us are embedded and uniquely thrive. It is the inventive interpretive mind first applying itself to our personal life and then to our social existence that is our core skill. Once humankind realized it possessed this technology, we seized on it to thrive in and control our niche on earth.

The most potent read of the week, partially because Festinger sounds like such a character, but mostly because of its reference to Yuval Harari’s work, from which I found this [emphasis mine]:

We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate ﬂexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always ﬁnd that it is based on some ﬁction like the nation, like money, like human rights. These are all things that do not exist objectively, but they exist only in the stories that we tell and that we spread around. This is something very unique to us, perhaps the most unique feature of our species. — Yuval Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

ON POLITICS

Jill Filipovic, Why Sexism at the Office Makes Women Love Hillary Clinton

As a young lawyer, one of the first things I noticed about department meetings at my law firm was not just the dearth of female partners, but that one of the few female partners always seemed to be in charge of ordering lunch. I listened as some of my male colleagues opined on the need to marry a woman who would stay home with the children — that wasn’t sexist, they insisted, because it wasn’t that they thought only women should stay home; it was just that somebody had to, and the years in which they planned on having children would be crucial ones for their own careers.

I saw that the older white, male partners who mentored the younger white, male associates were able to work long days and excel professionally precisely because their stay-at-home wives took care of everything else; I saw that virtually none of the female partners had a similar setup.

In jobs that followed, managers would remark that they wanted “more women” and proceed to reject qualified candidates. (Similar dynamics took place with minority candidates.) There were always reasons — not the right cultural fit, not the right experience, a phenomenon of unintentional sexism now well documented in controlled studies. I watched as men with little or irrelevant experience were hired and promoted, because they had such great ideas, or they fit in better. “We want a woman,” the conclusion seemed to be, “just not this woman.”

Watching a primary election in which an eminently qualified woman long assumed to be a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination faces a serious challenge from an older white guy with exciting ideas, many women my age and older hear something familiar, and personal, in the now-common refrain about Hillary Clinton: “I want a woman president, just not this woman president.”

Any candidate would be smart to call up Filipovic and have a long talk.

THIS WEEK’S POETRY

A new addition to the digest.

Leslie B. Neustadt, How To Plunge Into The Abyss The darkness is hard to explore. Await calm seas to shed light on the hidden world of strange life forms. Dress warmly and communicate with your mother ship. Take a shape that resists the crushing pressure. Slip between the waves in a vertical torpedo. Don’t stir up so much ooze you can’t see. Kiss the bottom and rise quickly.

#paul mason #the future of work #leslie neustadt #jill filipovic #michael gazzaniga #leon festinger #ricardo de queral #zygmunt bauman #hillary clinton #adam taylor #time zones #ben thompson

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

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Steven Caulker:’ I’ve sat here for years hating myself … This year was almost the end’

The QPR defender talks powerfully about his strives with mental illness, his addictions to gamble and drinking and why “he il be” thankful still to be alive

Steven Caulker, here celebrating after scoring on his England debut in 2012, says his football ability is a gift but too a affliction. Photograph: Michael Regan/ Getty Images

Steven Caulker, here playing for Tottenham against Arsenal in 2010, says he made a big mistake leaving Spurs. Photo: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

Steven Caulker says: In Liverpool I was waking up in the middle of the darknes throwing up, parties were extorting me, club owneds and bouncers. Picture: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

In Australia, the crisis support assistance Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

The post Steven Caulker:’ I’ve sat here for years hating myself … This year was almost the end’ appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

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Steven Caulker:’ I’ve sat here for years hating myself … This year was almost the end’

The QPR defender talks powerfully about his strives with mental illness, his addictions to gamble and drinking and why “he il be” thankful still to be alive

Steven Caulker, here celebrating after scoring on his England debut in 2012, says his football ability is a gift but too a affliction. Photograph: Michael Regan/ Getty Images

Steven Caulker, here playing for Tottenham against Arsenal in 2010, says he made a big mistake leaving Spurs. Photo: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

Steven Caulker says: In Liverpool I was waking up in the middle of the darknes throwing up, parties were extorting me, club owneds and bouncers. Picture: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

In Australia, the crisis support assistance Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

The post Steven Caulker:’ I’ve sat here for years hating myself … This year was almost the end’ appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2wBPG5y via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

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