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servin-up-surveys · 2 years

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survey #020

(so i have barely been conscious today and I am too tired to even try to think of lyrics to put here so fuck it, this is from waaaay earlier this morning)

What is a topic you are uncomfortable with discussing with most people? My writing/RP, 120%. You are fucking LUCKY if you know about that shit. The people who know about it probably barely surpasses being able to count on one hand, if you count my past therapists. What is something you dislike about the dating world? I mean to be totally real, I don't have a lot of experience with it. I've never really dated around; I've only had three even remotely serious partners, and I had a long history with two; the other was, I will always say, like magic with how quick we connected and fell for each other. I felt very strongly for all of them, and each relationship was different. Jason and Sara failed for unique reasons, so it's really impossible to bunch them together into a shared lesson I learned from them or something. Is there a habit you’re currently trying to kick? ACTUALLY I literally decided today (or maybe yesterday?) that I want to stop peeling/picking at my nails. It's just not pretty to look at and I will do almost anything to boost my self esteem rn ok Have you ever dated someone with very different sexual tastes than you? No. Well I mean, not that I KNOW of. I've only gotten sexual with two partners. Has anyone ever been extremely jealous of you? Do you know why? I almost laughed, and then I remembered well actually, yes. Before Jason, Juan was very openly trying to date me, and his ex (I... think????? what the hell was their relationship???? fuck buddies????? bro idk) Rachel knew and was NOT fucking happy and basically harrassed me. I am FULL aware she friended me on FB to watch if anything happened between Juan and me, and boy when that relationship status changed to "taken" (for less than a day), she was on my ASS. Literally snatched my arm in the lunch room to claim she and Juan had ~gotten busy~ like two days prior or whatever, maybe even the night before. I later learned (from her) that she'd nearly punched me in the face. SO I broke up with Juan because of a mix of believing her (I absolutely do not now, in retrospect), knowing he had a rep, but also because I was NOT getting into that shit. THEN Jason comes along, and guess who I discover his serious ex was while on our first date outside Sonic? Rachel. BOY LET ME TELL YOU it was the biggest "are you actually fucking serious" moment of my LIFE like I went FULL SILENT and had to take a minute lmfao, and then Rachel hated me times like ten because she and Jason had remained friends on social media until our relationship became posted there and she had shit to say and Jason was hearing none of it. Fast-forward to now. Rachel is a FB friend again and she's been happily with my old school bud for many years and are engaged. Hell, I'd go eagerly to her damn wedding if I was invited. People. Change. She is great and I love seeing her post life update stuff. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. What is the most meaningful gift you’ve ever given? Honestly, probably mine and Jason's first anniversary gift: a hand-made book of pictures and such of us and well over a hundred (maybe even 200+, idr how far I got) reasons I loved him. I worked very, very hard on it for a long time and even after what happened between us, I hope he has it to remember. If memories of me make him happy at all. Which I would understand if they didn't. What was the angriest your parents ever were at you? I don't know about my dad, but two instances come to mind for Mom: when I briefly ran away from home as a kid or when I texted her back "fuck you" for being extremely insensitive. That ride home was NOT FUN. It might actually be the fight where she tried kicking me out of the car, I can't remember. Do you feel as though someone "won" in your last break-up? No; I don't believe either "lost," either, though. We just simply weren't good for each other romantically. What ever happened to the first person you ever loved? I don't know. It's a painful and scary thing to not know, but I will say it again and again and again: it's better we don't have contact. I mean I THINK Jason's brother or brother's wife is on Mom's Facebook (it's how she learned about his mom) so she'd probably learn if something truly horrible happened to Jason, but. What is the biggest difference between you and your best friend? Girt is WAY more hardworking and determined than I am. That man will bash his head against a fuckin wall til it gave way. What is something most people are turned on by but you’re not? Porn. Like I just DO NOT wanna see two random people get busy. Has anyone in your life changed drastically (for better or worse) since you met them? How? My dad, for one. Rachel, from earlier. Myself. I don't feel like explaining. Is there anything you wish you had done with a current/previous significant other? Uh, sometimes I wish I hadn't been abstinent and fully "known" Jason for lack of not knowing how to put it BUT when I consider the realism of just how fucking head over heels as well as just stupid I was, I would NOT be surprised if I had winded up a teen mom, because I was also pro-life then. THAT woulda been a goddamn hellfest. What song reminds you of good times from high school? Don't even try to convince me otherwise, "All Signs Point to Lauderdale" by AD2R is THE High School Vibe. Like the lyrics aren't very positive but idc man it makes me Remember and feel old. Do you own any jewelry made out of shells? No. Have you ever made your own website? Multiple times. Do you like men who have a sensitive side? I personally do. Have you talked to your special someone today? Yeah, we talk every day. Have you ever tried to get someone into a certain band/artist? Yeah, and it worked. *finger guns* Have you ever carved you and someone else's initials into a tree? I have not. Do you like Dairy Queen? Yep. Have you ever used glitter as one of your makeup items? Oh yes, silver glitter was literally The Thing that was dabbed onto your eyelids for dance recitals, lol. Have you ever owned what would be considered a "farm animal?" No. Does listening to music while you work help you? It very much depends on what I'm doing. Are you normally the one who initiates a kiss? Eh, it can really go either way. FIRST kiss, I dunno. For like Girt and me where it's very normal I'd say he prooobably does it more, but there's definitely not a strong leaning. Is there a song in a different language that you can sing? Well, probably. I know I can kinda sing SOME parts of Rammstein's songs okay, but factually, no matter how long I studied it and have heard it over the years, I *speak* it so rarely that I'm DEFINITELY not experienced with SINGING it. I've also noticed that I overthink the FUCK outta German pronunciations and then butcher it when I try, lmao. What was the most expensive thing someone bought you? That would either be Jason buying me a really nice gaming laptop or probably some other electronic device from my parents, idk. Do you have any currency that’s not your native country’s? No. Have you ever tried to write something humorous on a test for bonus points? No. How do you feel about bands that use pyrotechnics in live concerts? WHALE insane pyrotechnics are literally's Rammstein's Thing so I have to be in wild support, lol. But for real, be careful w/ that shit. Don't James Hetfield yourself. The person who last spoke to you in person, what is their name? Donna. The person who last texted you, tell me their name? His real name is Donald. What was your favorite class to take in school? Of all classes I've ever taken at any education level, Art and German. Would you ever consider joining the Navy? Even if I didn't have mental health issues that stop me from being accepted in any military branch, I wouldn't. Have you seen the movie Inception? I haven't. Have you ever dated someone with red hair? No. Do you know the first word you spoke as a child? Yes, "Dada." The last person you kissed, have you held their hand? Yeah, a lot. I love holding his because he has Big Man Hands and mine are all small and dainty and it is Best Feeling. Are you any good at video games? Well, I was. I don't play them NEARLY enough now to have the same kind of quick reflexes and everything. Has an ex ever liked you when you were long over them? I mean, I suppose it's possible, but not that I know of. Fred - annoying or funny? OH MY GOD I forgot about that mfer. I liked him. I know. My little sister and I watched him. Oh god. Have you ever ordered something from a different country? Yes. Do you own any Tupac albums? Honestly, I can't even name one of his songs, so... Who last grabbed your butt? WOW I actually don't know the last time that did happen. An old friend and I used to spank each other all the time in just a purely playful way, but she never actually *grabbed* me, THEN it woulda been weird. HOW DO I NOT REMEMBER IF MY CURRENT PARTNER HAS DONE THIS????? bro this body ain't 26, my knees and brain say other shit. Do you sleep in a bra? HAIL no please don't do this to urself Has your ex ever gone out with someone close to you? No. Has anyone close to you ever been suicidal? Yes. What are you listening to at this moment? "Blood, Milk And Sky" by White Zombie. Who was the last person in your bedroom, besides you? My mom. Are you friends with someone who’s autistic? I am CERTAIN there are more people than just her that I'm just not aware of, but my niece is autistic and she is certainly my friend. <3 Do you ever have movie nights with your significant other? Nah, we actually don't watch movies much. We watch TV shows a lot together, though. Who was the last person to call you fat, if anyone at all? Well, me. Besides me, no one else that I recall has ever directly called me that except some mean kids when *I* was a kid (a swing broke while I was on it and apparently that only happens when you're fat and not because the playset is old and well-loved). Doctors have made me aware that I am and all, but not by calling me that, you know? What color skin does the last person you danced with have? She's Caucasian, pale. Are you afraid of being kidnapped if you go outside at night time? Well, that's one reason. I just don't trust people. The best field trip you’ve ever been on; where was it to anyway? So two are tied, tbh. I'll go with the one that happened first, 4th grade: a trip to Beaufort, NC, to the island there that is full of wild horses. Yes, seriously. And we almost didn't go; it was actually the back-up plan to go to that island instead of one I can't remember with a lighthouse. The ocean was very aggressive that day with a storm, and the site of the lighthouse was simply too dangerous to get to by the boat, so plans changed to go to the horse one, which was closer. It is amazing how immaculate my memory is of that place, primarily the back side of it where I wandered around the beach collecting sea shells. The ocean was fuck-ing BEAUTIFUL with the fierce waves and the stormy sky and just oh my god I would kill to go again. The very next school year is funnily enough the one that ties it: a trip to the Asheboro Zoo. This one is simpler to explain with that I simply love (good) zoos and it is so far the only occasion in my entire life I saw meerkats (they got rid of them for some reason I don't recall). I spent my ENTIRE disposable camera shots on these fuckers lmfao. Have you ever wanted to be in a band? What position exactly? HA a bitch wanted to be an electric guitarist, but never to a very serious degree. When did you last spend the night at someone’s house? Uhhhhh... wow, have I done that since going to Sara's???? I don't think I have. Do you find any of your friends’ parents creepy or really mean? Oh my GOD okay we're not friends anymore of course but Colleen's father-in-law gave me the CREEPIEST motherfuckin vibes and I do not miss seeing him. Do you like pickles? I love pickles. Which two bands would you love to see playing on tour together? Ozzy and Metallica. Mom and I wouldn't make it out of that concert alive. Do you watch The Walking Dead? No, but I have avidly watched let's plays of every season of the game, and I played S1 myself as well. That game makes me CRYYYYYYYYYY buddy like I think every season got me, the first one of course more than any other. Would you want your child to go to the school you are going/went to? If I had kids, I would 100% want them to go to my elementary school because they were fan-fucking-tastic and very loved, but I'm not overly attached to any other schools I attended. Hell, quite frankly, I probably WOULDN'T want them to go to my high school because I wouldn't want to go there for anything. Though I guess it would be pretty fuckin cute for my kid to walk down the same halls that their dad and I talked in and stuff. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW but imagine them sitting at the same lunch table seats Girt and I first talked at SCREAMS When is the last time you slow danced with someone? <3 ugh Do you have a celebrity crush? GOD I have fucking three serious ones, please extract my heart from this wretched body Do you think corset piercings are disgusting!? Now look I LOVE piercings and all, but those gross me out and seem extremely dangerous. Your body, get whatever the hell sorta piercing you want, but you sure won't see me with those.

#survey #surveys #random surveys #random questions

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boredout305 · 4 years

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Baron of Love: Moral Giant

A chapter preview from Ross Johnson’s upcoming memoir on Spacecase Records. Out late September 2020.

Chapter 20: FROM PERFORMANCE ART TO INDIE LABEL BAND

It had to happen, I guess, after our first self-released EP on Tav’s Frenzi label made its way across the pond to the attention of Rough Trade Records’ label head, Geoff Travis. I declined a weekend of gigs in NYC (Will Rigby of the dB’s filled in on drums) during the summer of 1980 and Travis happened to be there and offered the band a chance to record a single and LP. I’ve told this story often enough, but not to echo John Lydon too loudly, once the record companies show up, everything changes. Not always for the worse but usually. We went from a word-of-mouth cult band to a cult band with a tentative record deal. We got quite a bit of press attention and started to acquire a reputation as a shambolic live act who made the early Replacements sound like a tight bar band with a programmed set. The change had already been occurring internally before Geoff Travis showed up with the disappearance or dismissal of trumpet player Rick Ivy and synth players, Eric Hill and Vincent Wrenn. Ron Miller, a classically trained double bass player who played with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, was brought into the band. We were very aware that we were being promoted and identified with the Cramps and the Gun Club as well as the burgeoning psychobilly scene in Britain. Ron was a great bass player, but I rarely heard his standup bass even though his amp was usually placed next to my drum kit. Standup basses with contact pickups were no match for our onstage sonic firestorm volume. He sounded great on the Burns’ debut LP, Behind the Magnolia Curtain, which I did not play on because I was fired from the group at the time. I’m on record as saying how Chilton’s drumming made that a much better recording than if I had played on it. Jim Sclavunos from Manhattan started touring with the Panther Burns because I declined most of the road work offered to the band then. He simplified arrangements on a lot of songs and an EP was done for Debbie Harry and Chris Stein’s major label-backed vanity imprint, Animal Records.

At that time in the early 1980s I started playing with a number of local acts and also one from Baton Rouge, OFB/Our Favorite Band, who later did an LP for Big Time, a label distributed by RCA in the States. I started to enjoy playing with other people who had an interest in playing rawer music, but I was still desperate to play and record with Tav and the Burns whenever they might require my services. I might have been a founding member with a contract stating so, but I was just a fill-in place keeper in the group from 1981 on. That’s how I felt anyway. By 1984 the Panther Burns were without a record label. I’m not certain, but on a weeklong tour of California in 1983 (which I did play on) there were rumors of meetings with SST and Ralph Records, both labels I thought rather well-suited to record and promote the band. Maybe I am making this up; you’d have to ask Tav whether those meetings occurred and how they might have gone. Whatever happened, we came back from that tour without a record label. Hard to tour without a label: that old familiar equation. However, in 1984 the late Patrick Mathé of Paris-based New Rose Records offered to release an EP of the Burns. That was when we started working almost exclusively at Sam Phillips Recording Studio with Roland Janes engineering and Chilton producing.

We tried to make records that sounded like music, a real radical turn for us, given our identity as a noise band who relied strongly on feedback. So we did record after record at Phillips using this approach with zero feedback and I have to admit that I am ashamed of almost all of them. Trying to make mainstream records that could be played on radio (but never were) seemed a less than worthy task for the Panther Burns. I kept my mouth shut about this for the most part because my identity was tied up in playing live and recording with them even if I found the recorded results shameful and dull. Still, I enjoyed the first European tour in 1987 greatly (I declined subsequent ones due to work and financial commitments). Transforming from aural assault to bar band was not why I wanted to start playing with Tav’s group. I didn’t know that he was soon to leave Memphis for a place he could pursue his identity as an artiste. When he left I was completely lost as to what to do, musically speaking.

#ross johnson #pantherburns

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mrbellamy-sir · 5 years

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MeseMoa. - The self-proclaimed idols who began by taking a joke too far are now heading for the Pacifico stage

This is an interview from 14th June 2019. Here’s the original link for the Japanese and the photo gallery.

I’ve done my best to translate it but I’m just a beginner so there are some parts that might not be entirely accurate. Thanks also to @namfonrainwater for the help.

MeseMoa. is a 9 member boys group that was formed when they uploaded a Morning Musume. dance cover video to a video sharing site in 2012. After that video was showered in attention, receiving over 1 million views, in 2013 they took on their former name Musumen. and changed their musical activities into those of a self-produced, "self-proclaimed idol group". In the 7 years since then, they've sold out Tokyo's Nakano Sunplaza, undertaken the 47 prefecture nationwide tour 'Thanks!' in 2016, had great success with their 2018 nationwide tour 'Maze No.9', and are steadily making progress.

Here at Music Natalie we interviewed 8 of them, with Nibansenji absent due to illness. Of course we discussed how the group came to be, as well as the characteristics and selling points of the team, and their excitement towards their solo concert at Pacifico Yokohama in August, which will be their largest capacity concert yet. The conversation that unfolded revealed how friendly their relationship is.

Interviewer: Kawakura Yukiko

Photography: Emi

The last dregs of pulp after everything else has been squeezed out

· Thank you for agreeing to your first appearance in Music Natalie!

Nichan & Tomitake: We're really glad to be here! *claps*

Aoi: Some of us have been interviewed as part of Musumen.'s sub-group TrafficLight., but this is our first time as MeseMoa. (You can read the TrafficLight. interview here (in Japanese))

· You have had a long career so far, but could you introduce the group for our readers who don't yet know you…?

Everyone: *waving their hands* It's not really a career!!

Nozakibento: We just spent a long time being unknown.

Nokkuso: It really is just that we have a long history of activities.

· Is that so. *Laughs* First of all, could you tell us how the group came to be?

Shirofuku: I had already been doing dance covers as a hobby, and it was a dance to Morning Musume., a group that I'm a fan of, which became the group's beginning. I wanted to gather a group of people in the same number as Morning Musume.'s members, and the people I spoke to out of the dancers I knew became the current members of our group. When we posted the video, the response was much bigger than expected. We received comments from general viewers as usual, but also from Morning Musume.'s producer Tsunku ♂, and we were invited to perform at various dance events. From there we decided not to limit ourselves to dance overs, but also to release original songs. We steadily continued our live activities as "self-proclaimed idols", and in 2015 we achieved our greatest wish of performing at Nakano Sunplaza. In May this year we celebrated the 7th anniversary of the group's formation, and are now rushing into our 8th year.

· You evolved from a cover dance group to "self-proclaimed idols" and have spent 7 whole years together.

Shirofuku: That's right. But to be honest, we're just a group of people with no talent. You could say we're like the last dregs of pulp that remain after everything else has been squeezed out……

Everyone: Ahahaha

Kimagure Prince: We didn't have to take auditions or anything, we just began because we were friends with each other.

Shirofuku: It feels like we're a group of amateurs who used the 'self-produced' label to our advantage and somehow managed to come this far.

It began with a dance event in Tokyo

· Did you know each other well before the group's formation?

Aoi: Kind of. We kept in touch with each other individually over the internet, and sometimes we performed at the same cover dance events so met each other there.

Kimagure Prince: Even if we didn't speak much, we would watch each other's videos so we generally knew what kind of style each person danced in.

Shirofuku: One thing I'd like to say is that I wasn't the only one that choose the group members. I know the first person I asked about it was Aoi…

Nichan & Nokkuso: We're pretty sure we were invited by Gerutan!

Forgeru: When I heard from Shirofuku that he was forming a group, he asked me if I knew anyone who'd like to join, so I said I'd find some people for him and asked a few people in my circle of friends. At the time, Shirofuku said something like, "I can't find people because I have no friends." *laughs*

Shirofuku: Ahahahaha

Kimagure Prince: We were all living in different areas, but we had a plan for how to gather as a group. Around the day we decided to shoot the Morning Musume. cover video, there was a big dance event in Tokyo at which most of the members were performing. The timing was really lucky because everyone was able to meet up.

Nokkuso: In a way it's like we chose the group members based on who was available on that day, right?

Shirofuku: I guess so. *Laughs*

Nokkuso: That's why Tomitan wasn't a 1st generation member, because he lived in Hokkaido and couldn't come to the event.

Tomitake: I'm the only 2nd generation member. I was already friends with everyone, so I just inserted myself into the group at a later date.

Everything we do comes from taking our jokes too far

· Looking back on MeseMoa.'s history, please tell us the most impressive events and turning points.

Shirofuku: When we first released an original song after doing dance covers, there were no other groups doing the same thing. But now there are a lot of people who began original music activities by posting on video sharing sites…

Aoi: At the time you could count them all on one hand.

Nichan: Our discussion about holding solo events after that left a big impression in my mind.

Tomitake: I remember everyone saying, "Will people actually come to see us!?"

Nichan: The members had appeared at various big events many times, but it's a different story when it comes to solo events.

Forgeru: We'd never heard of any group that had been created on a video sharing website go on to hold independent events.

Shirofuku: That's true. But perhaps we attempted that challenge specifically because nobody else around us was trying it. Now I'm really glad we made that decision. After that we stacked up live activities like our 47 prefecture tour in earnest, and events like taking an audition to appear at a big festival are pretty memorable. We participated in the 'Deren no!? Summer Sonic!? 2013' Audition to see if we could perform at Summer Sonic, which had its ups and downs…

· Summer Sonic is generally more of a band-oriented festival, isn't it?

Shirofuku: It is, but we did our best to dance and give out an idol aura, and we performed on the stage in the special 2013 section. There were various comments regarding the participation of what began as a cover group, but perhaps some people learnt about us through this experience.

Kimagure Prince: Participating in the 'Stairway to M-Sta Ultra Audition' in 2017 was also memorable. Our activities are usually focussed around the internet, but we also felt strongly that we wanted to appear on TV.

Nozakibento: It resulted in an overwhelming defeat, but somehow we were able to get to the final shortlist. The support from all the fans was very encouraging.

Tomitake: If we're thinking about turning points, it's got to be our Nakano Sunplaza performance. The first time we held a concert there in 2015 and performed on the stage where no-one thought we'd be able to stand became a source of confidence for all of us. We were also so proud to perform to a sold-out crowd.

Aoi: At first we only mentioned Nakano Sunplaza as a joke, because it's the holy land of Hello! Project.

Tomitake: We messed around saying how much we'd love to go there.

Nichan: You say that, but doesn't everything we do come from taking our jokes too far? "Let's release our own single" or "Let's hold a concert and a cheki-kai", they were all jokes. *Laughs*

Nozakibento: At least they were at first.

Nichan: Once we'd decided to do something then we talked about it seriously, but our first steps all began in jest.

· But you've managed to make all those things happen properly, right?

Nichan: *with wide eyes* Yes…you're right!!

All: Wahahahaha

Aoi: That's how the results turn out, I guess. *laughs*

Nichan: A fortunate conclusion indeed.

An irregular collection of people - in a good way

· At the 2015 Nakano Sunplaza performance, you announced that you would quit the jobs you'd individually been working alongside your idol activities - whether an office worker, a nursery school teacher or anything else - and devote yourselves to being idols. You had to make preparations for this decision, but how did that come to be?

Shirofuku: We often couldn't get our schedules to match up and were usually affected by time restrictions. We also felt like we should treat the group in a more professional way for the sake of those who supported us, so we talked it out over and over and decided to focus on this one activity.

Tomitake: We also asked the fans how they felt about it at our Nakano Sunplaza concert, like "What if we decided to make this our jobs?" There were certainly some people who liked the fact were just doing it for fun and not taking it too seriously.

Shirofuku: We too were hesitating until the very last minute.

Aoi: But thanks to that decision, the number of times we could gather as a group increased noticeably. Our practice sessions became much more efficient.

Shirofuku: There have been a lot of advantages to that decision. On the other hand, while we were doing our activities just as a hobby many things were forgiven, but now that level of indulgence no longer applies. Since we said we would make being an idol into our jobs, we felt an increasing sense of responsibility to show something suitable.

· By being determined and placing your bets on these activities, did the group's teamwork grow stronger?

Kimagure Prince: We're originally very close friends, but I think our teamwork grows stronger every day. Each member of MeseMoa. has things that he's very good at and things that he's not so good at, but I think that humanity aspect is part of our charm. In a good way MeseMoa. is an irregular collection of people, created by each of us showing off our specialist areas.

Tomitake: Speaking of our relationship like that, we're basically just like a family. Maybe we have a common destiny?

Nokkuso: In the dressing room we're always super noisy!

Shirofuku: You can even hear the members' laughter from the toilets on the other side of the building.

Tomitake: This is probably our worst aspect, but we still can't shake the feeling that we're amateurs, so we struggle when we have to be strict. Also, we keep repeating the same jokes as so many years before and laughing at them, even from 7 years ago.

Nichan: We're like a bunch of terribly forgetful grandpas. *Laughs* At any rate, we get along well, and I think that feeling is best conveyed during our concerts.

Tomitake: We might not be very good at singing or dancing, nor are we particularly handsome, but our MCs are definitely funny!

Nozakibento: However, deep down we're all serious about this, so it's not like we let each other be idle and take it easy just because we're friends. I think our team is brought together in a positive atmosphere by wanting to work hard and produce something great.

A certain company refused to sign all 9 of us

· What are the selling points of MeseMoa. that make you different from other boys' groups?

Aoi: From the start we weren't affiliated with any companies, but made good use of the internet as a self-produced group. Just 2 years ago we finally created our own company (DD).

Shirofuku: Our former member represents the company as its president.

Kimagure Prince: Perhaps it's because we aren't part of a major company that we're able to freely do what we want to. That's become our character. But that's just based on my impressions of major companies. *laughs*

Forgeru: We heard this from a staff member who's been with us since our formation, but they asked if we could all be signed onto a certain company and were rejected. Apparently they said that all 9 of us would be too much…

Nichan: In short, we couldn't join. *Laughs*

All: Wahahahaha

Tomitake: But that might have been for the best. Because we did everything by ourselves, we were able to stay motivated.

Shirofuku: It was normal for us to think and act by ourselves, and maybe we wouldn't have been able to come this far if we hadn't done that. I guess this is a big difference from other groups.

Nichan: Also, I think we've been able to continue together for so long for the same reason that a family stays together. To put it simply, we all love each other, and we can keep going because we're all here for each other.

Tomitake: Nokkun has always said that if anyone else quits, then he'll quit too.

Nokkuso: If we're not together as a group of 9 then there's no meaning to it.

Shirofuku: But if Nozaki-san quit…?

Nokkuso: Then I'd keep going!

Nozakibento: *interrupts* Why just me?!

All: Wahahahaha

Nichan: Here's a typical pattern. *Laughs* This is what we meant when we said earlier that we keep laughing at the same jokes. We'll always laugh at this kind of thing.

Where are you supposed to buy our CDs?

· One thing we'd like to ask about is the fact that, even though you're self-produced and mostly focussed on online activities, your number of fans is still growing. What's your key to success?

Tomitake: Actually, it's because we can only actually meet in person. As we said before, we don't appear on TV very often, and the members usually do online broadcasts on an individual basis. The only times we really all meet together are for concerts and other events. I guess everyone is looking for the fun and the explosive power that comes when all 9 of us gather.

Shirofuku: One of the reasons is perhaps that we started doing lots of free lives last year. Although they're technically release events, they're easy for people to take part in if they're coming for the first time, and also easy for fans to invite other people they know.

Nokkuso: It's also easier for us to visit some regions for a free live than to travel for a tour.

Nozakibento: If you talk to people who've become fans recently, many of them say that the first time they saw us perform was at a free live.

Nichan: We were the ones who said we wanted to hold free lives. We wanted to increase the chances for various people to come and see us without difficulty. When we held an event at Ikebukuro Sunshine City in May, it seems we were the first artists to perform there without having our CDs in major circulation. That's a great honour.

Tomitake: But because they're not in circulation, our music isn't available in CD shops. People often ask us where they're supposed to buy it. *laughs*

Nozakibento: And yet we're always asking people to buy our CDs. If you do want to buy something, please get it at an event or use the mail order system on our official site!

Kimagure Prince: Once we advertised the group using bus wrapping, but it had a confusing warning saying, 'The CD will not be sold in CD shops. Please search 'MeseMoa.' online for details.'' *Laughs*

Tomitake: Perhaps the key to attracting fans is to come up with new things every day to make sure people don't get bored.

Forgeru: At the very least we make sure to post on social media.

Tomitake: We also stay a step ahead of everyone else by doing all the things they won't do…that's what we've always done from the beginning. Maybe that's because we don't have a particular concept. Since we don't have to rigidly stick to any one setup, we can try out various things, so I think that's one of our assets. We take each piece of music and discuss it, like, "Next time let's make a school theme," or "This time let's become office workers."

Forgeru: It feels like a Lucky Dip saying, "Try me!!"

Kimagure Prince: Each time we're dyed in a variety of different musical concepts.

We're confident that we'll definitely make Pacifico a huge success

· Speaking of your recent live activities, during this May's long Golden Week you appeared on the live stage at 'NikuFes', the food event that specialises in meat.

Nichan: That's right. We've been allowed to perform at NikuFes many times throughout the years, but the atmosphere of this year's performance was just like a music festival, which really surprised me.

Tomitake: The enthusiasm from the audience was amazing. We always get nervous when we perform in a place away from our typical locations like that, but there were more first-timers who stopped to watch us than I'd thought. From the stage we could see people having fun. I'm glad that the number of people who watch us and think we look interesting is growing.

Forgeru: Some of the fans also brought their friends and family along, so it really felt like our circle has expanded.

Shirofuku: The first time we appeared at NikuFes, we went around handing out flyers in person. But this year so many people came to the meet-and-greet session that we wouldn't even have had time for that kind of thing. That was surprising. Talking of concerts, we're currently doing a hall tour 'Ch8 ~Channel 8~', but last time we did a hall tour was the 'We changed our name from Musumen.' tour, for which we couldn't sell out all the seats. Thankfully this time we've had lots of applications for tickets. I keep wondering when we became this kind of group. We're very grateful, but it also feels kind of strange.

· It seems your next goal is to perform at Nippon Budokan, but you will conclude your current nationwide tour 'Ch8 ~Channel 8~', which began at the end of May, by performing at Kanagawa's Pacifico Yokohama on 4th August. Pacifico Yokohama is also a big venue, so are you feeling excited for it?

Kimagure Prince: When we were aiming for Nakano Sunplaza we did our best and achieved that dream. Next is Pacifico Yokohama, which is about twice the capacity of Nakano, and those tickets are now sold out. We have no idea what the view will be like, but now that we've been doing this for 7 years, we're confident that we'll definitely make Pacifico a huge success. In the past we wouldn't have been able to say that.

Shirofuku: We've put a lot of effort into the staging of this tour, so for those who are used to seeing us in a live house it might be like seeing a fresh MeseMoa., with the videos and the stage set.

Aoi: Up until now we've basically had no stage sets, but this time we have stairs etc., so we can also change the way we choose to stage our songs. The tour title is 'Ch8 ~Channel 8~' because we're using TV channels as the concept.

Kimagure Prince: Sometimes we parody existing TV shows, or make up our own variety shows.

Aoi: That's also typical NicoNicoDouga. *Laughs*

Kimagure Prince: For sure. I hope lots of people come to see it.

Nichan: Even if people have never seen us before, it's OK for them to come and see any of these shows. There's no connections to previous tours or anything like that, so you can just come on a whim and have fun. Each performance is like a one-shot manga.

Tomitake: There's nothing at all that would make it difficult for new fans to come along.

Kimagure Prince: This time the first part of our performance is more like a talk show, and the second part is the live concert. So people who are more interested in our personalities and character might come to the first part, and those who want to see us dancing might come to the second part.

Shirofuku: We'd be really glad if people came to see us wherever in the country we're performing, not just to Pacifico.

Nokkuso: There are also exclusive projects that change every day so you can only see them at a particular location, plus we're planning to hold free lives on the days before and after our concerts in nearby locations.

Aoi: If you're interested, you should check out our YouTube channel in advance and watch various videos so you can have more fun.

All: We'll be waiting for you!

#mesemoa #musumen #translation #interview #jpop #idol #japan #music natalie

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a-toast-to-my-real-friends · 5 years

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LOVER RANKINGS

Alright, y’all may or may not know, I’m a Taylor Swift fan. Chad Willard posted his Rankings and Reasons for her newest album, Lover, and it inspired me to do the same. So, for the two of you who care about my personal Taylor opinions: here they are.

I haven’t sat with Lover long enough yet to really figure out where I am with it. Speak Now is my peak Taylor Swift album. I love the honesty and vulnerability on all those songs. My emotions oftentimes seem overwhelming, irrational, and illogical, and I feel like a crazy person because I tell myself, “Johnathan, you shouldn’t feel this way, so and so hasn’t done anything wrong, if anybody knew you were THIS upset about THIS situation, they’d all laugh and tell you to relax and calm down and that you were acting crazy.” And oh buddy, if I weren’t acting crazy before, best believe I’d act crazy after.

Speak Now makes me feel like it’s OK to be overwhelmed by my feelings, and Taylor does such a great job of saying exactly how I feel.

So I say all that to say, I’ll probably compare every Taylor album to Speak Now. Does Lover make me feel the same way Speak Now does? Yes and no.

I like Lover a lot. To be fair, I have listened more to the first half than the last, only because by the time I get to “Death By a Thousand Cuts” I want to go back and listen to “I Forgot that You Existed” again. I’m going to agree with what Chad said that Hannah said: “our enjoyment of her songs oftentimes stems from where our current relationship status is.” I’m so happy that Taylor is in such a healthy, great place emotionally, and that she’s so deeply in love – and the songs she’s made are SO GOOD; but I think I’m having a difficult time enjoying them the way I would if I were in a solid, committed, tried and true relationship. I listen to “I think he knows” and “Paper Rings” and “Lover” and instead of being all glowy and glittery I just feel – sad, I guess. Which maybe explains why I like Speak Now so much, because a lot of those are sad and Overwhelmingly Emotional.

Anyway, TO THE RANKINGS!

18: False God. I just think it’s sonically boring. It’s not fun to sing along to, and the lyrics don’t do enough for me to raise it any higher. I’m gonna give it a little bit longer, maybe it’ll eventually grow on me, but it’s dangerously close to becoming a skip.

17: Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince. I’m going to get dragged for this, but it’s got the same chord progression as “So it Goes” from REPUTATION, and tbh, that one is a skip for me too. Maybe I’m not deep enough or politically educated enough to see all the brilliance behind it, but I’ll give it points for the line “It’s you and me, that’s my whole world,” though.

16: It’s Nice To Have a Friend: Meh. This just seems like a list of unrelated things she’s done with Joe. Again, maybe I’m not deep enough to understand the brilliance, but what is she trying to say? And the song is so repetitive, it doesn’t keep my interest. All this snow, ya know?

15: The Man. It’s a fun song, good beats, fun to sing along to. But as a white male, the content is unrelatable to me. Which is the point, I suppose. The song isn’t meant for me. I appreciate it, for sure, and I think it’s important, but I just don’t feel the way she feels, so it’s just strange to sing along to it. I don’t wonder if I’d get there faster if I was a man, because I am a man.

14: Soon You’ll Get Better. OK, I LOVE this song, to be clear. It’s so sad, so relatable, so pretty to listen to. Hello Dixie Chicks, glad to have you back. I cried the first time I heard it, because I’ve followed along with her mom’s struggle with cancer, and I’ve two really close friends who have lost parents recently to sickness, and the thought of them feeling this way just breaks my heart. The only reason it’s so low on my list is because I like the other songs so much. Here’s where it starts to get difficult for me.

13: London Boy. This one is a lot of fun, it’s fun to sing along to, and I like the fast rappy bridge. Gotta work on getting those lyrics down. I also like the small details about the steps that we all take in relationships, specifically meeting all of his best mates and listening to his stories from uni.

12: ME!. Brendon Urie come through with those vocals. I think I’m a little biased towards this one, just because of the video, and the excitement that always surrounds a new Taylor era. It was the first thing we saw post REPUTATION era, snakes into butterflies, all the bright colors in the video, the peppy catchy chorus. I also strongly relate to “I know that I’m a handful baby…but I promise that nobody’s gonna love you like me.”

11: Daylight. Highly relatable content here. I always say Taylor knows exactly where I am and what I’m going through. Speak Now, I was living in New York, struggling in every aspect, and spent a lot of that era feeling pretty lonely and crazy, broken, losing friends and missing them but not knowing how to say any of that to them. Red was a carry-over. 1989 I had moved to Orlando, was living in the Wolf Den with a bunch of doods that I loved, everything felt neon and electric and exciting. Reputation I had been kicked out of my house and betrayed and felt very snake like, unforgiving, and hard-hearted. And February of this year, I moved into a house I had found, picked amazing people to move in with, and felt in control of my life again. And if you happen to follow Taylor culture, that’s the same month she posted the picture with the seven palm trees to her instagam, which kicked off the whole Lover era. I say all that to say, it was time for me to step into the daylight and let it all go. To be defined by the things that I love, not the things I hate, or haunt me in the middle of the night. I only want to see daylight and think of that that special person, you know?

10: Afterglow. Hello Speak Now. It’s all me, in my head. I’m the one that burned us down, but it’s not what I meant. I don’t want to do this to you, and I don’t want to lose this with you. It’s the perfect example, IMHO, of unconditional love. Here’s all my crazy. Here’s all my insecurities. They’re going to rear their ugly head, will you please love me even with those? Here’s what I need from you in those moments of temporary emotional insanity: Tell me that you're still mine, tell me that we'll be just fine, even when I lose my mind. Tell me that I'm all you want even when I break your heart. And when you do that, I’ll say “I’m sorry that I hurt you.” What a beautiful picture of loving and being loved in return.

9: You Need To Calm Down. I dunno how closely y’all follow my antics on Facebook, but when this video dropped, I casually posted it because I liked the message. As a believer in Christ, I feel the Christian community has done a HORRIFIC job of loving the LBGTQ community, and my simple post BLEW UP, proving my point. Sidebar, I also link the first listen of this song to being in Toy Story Land with Topher, Jessica, and Leslie, huddling around my phone under the giant Christmas lights for our second dive into New Taylor.

8: Paper Rings. Ok now it’s starting to get super hard narrowing it down. We’ve entered my True Jams™ section. The only reason this is at the bottom of my True Jams™ section is because I ain’t in love like this, so where I want to feel like glitter is exploding inside of me, I just feel like dried glue the glitter was meant to stick to. I love how deeply personal it is, I love the specificity, and the song is a BOP. Standout lyrics: “I’m with you even if it makes me blue,” and “I want your complications too, I want your dreary Mondays…”

7: I Think He Knows. A Bop. Fun. Sexy. Coy and flirtatious, while also owning her power. The rappy bits. I’ve never felt a longing for somebody’s body just by the way they hold a cold glass, but boy, does this song make me want to. What specifics, what detail. Also – “I want you, bless my soul.” HONESTLY. BLESS IT LORD.

6: The Archer. Giving me those Speak Now vibes. All my heroes die alone – I jumped from the train, I ride off alone. The LONGING. The wanting to be wanted. Knowing you’re good enough, knowing you have a lot to offer – but also knowing that it’s so much that maybe nobody can handle it all. I’ve got so much to offer, who could ever leave me? I’m too much to handle – god, who could put up with all of it?

5: Cornelia Street. My God can I relate to this. I’m ALWAYS looking for the ending, for someone I love to tell me they’re leaving because being with me is too much. I always prepare for the worst case scenario. And only recently have I started to believe that maybe the worst case won’t always happen? Maybe somebody will stay? But man, my natural impulse, my knee-jerk reaction, will always be to get as far away from any and all memories of the good times. I don’t want to be reminded of the beauty and joy and greatness because it will just keep reminding me that I don’t have it anymore, and there’s nothing I could do to get it back.

4: Death by a Thousand Cuts. Ahhh, yesss, Taylor. Speak to me of being left and of the heartbreak that brings. Also, make it a bop. I constantly find myself looking through the boarded up windows of past relationships, and I see the chandelier still flickering and see all the beautiful moments, though they may have lost the radiance they once had. Saying goodbye is the worst, endings are the worst, new beginnings mean something else ended stale. Also being given up like I was a bad drug – reminds me of a line from “Better Man”: “You pushed my love away like it was some kind of loaded gun.” Pure Taylor and I’m here for it.

3: I Forgot that You Existed. On repeat. Will dance and sing to this endlessly. Also always here for a good snarky twist of the kinfe.

2: Lover. Again, the longing. The vulnerability. Asking the questions that are scary to ask, that people would think you are insane for asking someone. Loving somebody so much that you put everything else aside, and all you want is to ask, “Can I go where you go?” Clingy. Needy. Co-dependent. As brave as it would be to ask a question like that, the fear of being seen as any of these things will keep most from doing it. Which probably hinders more than it helps, because if somebody loves us, truly loves us, we should be able to ask that without any fear of anyone or anything. But I’ll sing it and pretend.

1: Cruel Summer. SO. SINGABLE. I love the chorus. It gets stuck in my head. I love the lyrics. The frailty. A relationship that started as friends with benefits, her saying “it’s cool, no rules,” when secretly she’s falling in love and fears saying it, because she thinks it’d be the worst thing he’s ever heard. Yeah, OK, please stop reading my diary, girl. But the best part is, IMHO, he feels the same way about her, and also has feared speaking up, which is why he’s grinning like a devil, because he’s so happy because he feels the same way. 10/10 cant’ stop listening.

And there you have it, folks. Time may change my rankings, relationships may change my rankings, but from where I sit, 10 days in, these are my thoughts. If you made it this far, I’d love to know what you think of the album, and your rankings!!! As if I’ll ever pass up a chance to talk about/listen to someone talking about Taylor Swift. Sound off!

#TAYLOR SWIFT #lover #swiftes #swifty #taylurking

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calliecat93 · 6 years

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Callie Reviews: TMNT 2012 Season One (Part Three)

(Part One) (Part Two)

Here is where we look at the season as a whole. For this, I will be looking at four things: Animation, Voice Acting, Characters (Heroes, Villains), and Story. I’ll be going more into depths about some stuff I skimmed over here as well. So lets dig in!

Animation

This is the Turtles first CGI show... okay yeah the 2007 movie was CGI, but that was a movie. When I first heard this, I was reluctant as I felt like 2D was becoming more and more of a lost out. But the CGI was really good! Mind you it looks a tad bit dated now as every season they pushed more and more to improve it. But still, it’s very well done. I can’t recall any point where I thought it looked bad or cringy...aside form when they wanted you to cringe anyways. What helps is that the show does add in some 2D elements, There’s the comic-style flashbacks of course, but even past that. They use these anime-like quirks like the sweatdrop, blushing, wide blank eyes when reacting in shock, vein burst when a character is angry, all these tiny little things that give it a more cartoony feel. I can’t recall any other Nickelodeon CGI shows that were doing this prior, so it helped it stand out among the other shows.

Another plus side? The character designs. Aside from a few background characters they re-colored, none of the important characters look the same. Like I know that some don’t like April’s design, but at least they gave her and Karai their own distinct character designs. Then there are the Turtles. Something I don’t like about the upcoming show is how much.. accessorizing they add in to make the Turtles look distinctive. 2k12 kept it very simple. Different heights, eye color, shade of green, and of course body build. For example Donnie, the genius who is mroe invested with machines than training, is both the tallest and most slender. Raph, the strongest, is the most buff and Mikey, the youngest, has larger eyes and freckles to show his child-like nature.And even with Raph,a ll four boys have kind of high school athlete-like builds. Nothing over the top like say... the Michael Bay films. Basically, I can believe that these guys can do the ninja-like agility more than I can with the overly buff, giant versions that have been used.

When ti comes to the mutants, the animators get creative. There are so many unique mutant sin the show. Snakeweed, Spyder Bytez, Dogpound, Fishface, Splinter, Leatherhead, all the mutants have their own unique design that work for them. They also know when to get creepy, like with the mish-mash... thing... from The Alien Agenda. That was disturbing as heck, and it’s not even the creepiest one they come up with! Oh just wait for next season, haha... but yeah, mutant designs are great!

Now the settings are kinda... meh. I mean The Lair is cool, but it’s mostly just either the the Lair, the New York landscape, Shredder’s lair, or an empty warehouse most of the time. It’s nothing really... creative I guess is the right word. We also don’t explore new York much, mainly settling on skyscrapers as the setting. It’s understandable why since New York is the setting, but still it juts gets kind of boring after awhile. But for what it’s worth, they do try to do creative stuff when they can like in Baxter’s Gambit with the black and white screens.

And of course, there is the fight choreography. As I said before, it’s fantastic. All the fights in the series are fluid, well-paced, and fun to watch. If I had to give some examples off the top of my head, there’s New Friend, Old Enemy when the Turtles rise form the water. The mix of black and red is absolutely perfect. There’s the first fight against Shredder in The Gauntlet which despite the boys getting constantly knocked down by Shredder, they give it everything they have. It looks freakin’ badass. Then there is any Splinter fight scene. There’s not many, only about three in this season (It Came From the Depths, I, Monster, The Showdown two-parter) but they are excellent. I said that the Splinter vs Shredder fight was the best and nothing after ever topped it, right?

So yeah, if I was going to rate the animation on a 1-5 scale...

Rating: 4.5

Voice Acting

The series was voice directed by veteran Andrea Romano, so you know that the performances are gonna be solid. As far as casting goes, they got in a LOT of big names both in the voice acting industry and out. There’s of course Greg Cipes (Mikey), Mae Whitman (April), Nolan North (The Kraang), Kevin Michael Richardson (Shredder), Phil Lamar (Stockman), Clancy Brown (Dogpound) and of course Rob Paulsen (Donnie). Rob’s casting was actually a pretty big deal as along with being a veteran with nearly 30 years of experience, he was also the voice of Raph in the original 80′s show. So getting him back even as a different Turtle? Yeah... that’s pretty big!

Then you have more well-known on-screen actors, like Sean Astin (Raph) and Kelly Hu (Karai). Now they both actually have very solid VA-ing careers and still do voice work to this day, but if you’re say... a Lord of the Rings fan and known Sean only for that, this may entice you. The newcomers to voice acting are Jason Biggs (Leo), Christian Lanz (Fishface) and Hoon Lee (Splinter). There’s also guest actors like Jeffrey Combs (The Rat King) and Roseanne Barr (Kraang Prime), so a solid mix of professional voice actors and a few newcomers. The result?

The voice acting is fantastic. Like even as the show goes on and you see more and more mixed reception, the acting is NEVER one of the things you see go down. If anything, it is one aspect that continues to improve episode by episode. All four Turtle actors do an amazing job conveying their characters, able to go from comedic to dramatic in a split second. I’d say that out of everyone, Hoon Lee impressed me the most since he’s the only one aside from Biggs (and... e’ll talk more about him next season) I hadn’t heard of. And he gave a very solid performance. Everyone did. Even for just minor characters like Pulverizer (Roger Craig Smith... yes Pulverizer is Sonic the Hedgehog) or some of the villains like Snake (Danny Jacob who voices King Julian outside the Madacgascar films) or Spyder Byte (Lewis Black), they convey their characters perfectly. Like Black’s character is a rude slob you want to punch, and he does such a great job in making you feel that way!

So yeah, you got a strong cast, a veteran voice director, and a crazy group of characters for them to voice. All of them nail it. And just wait, this is only the S1 cast. Wait until you see who they bring in for future seasons!

Rating: 5

Characters

As I said in Part One, this is the best part of the show. I know a lot of people who fell off TMNT as it went on, but still kept interest because of the characters. To me, this is always the most important part of storytelling. Yes having a good story itself is important, but a good story will be nothing without likeable characters to move it. A cliched story may be annoying, but if the characters are likeable and strongly written, people are usually more forgiving because they care about the cast. This show is no different. To this day, the thing that kept me attracted to the show was the Turtles, April, and Splinter and what they’d get into next. All of them have strong personalities that get you to care about them, or at least see where they’re coming from. I could gush about each of them one by one... so on we go!

Lets start with Mikey because he is the least developed this season... and most of the show sadly. I’d even say that his focus episodes dropped massively in quality after this season as he was forced mroe and mroe into the comedy relief/designated victim/little brother role. It’s a shame too because this season did an excellent job in balancing out both the comedy relief and the more innocent side of the character. Mikey is the most naive of the brothers and the least serious among them. It’s not to say that he can’t take situations seriously, it’s just that he’s more easy-going and fun-seeking than the other three. His biggest problem is his inability to focus and goof around, which has caused several instances of accidentally setting off alarms.

While not the best of the four, Mikey is a talented ninja and the best at going off just raw talent. He doesn’t think through fighting moves, he can just go with the flow and be perfectly fine. His strongest skill hpwever is his empathy and desire to make friends. While this has backfired on him before, like in New Friend, Old Enemy, where Bradford used and then kidnapped him for a trap, Mikey is incredibly non-judgemental and open-minded. It’s why he could befriend Leatherhead so easily in It Came From the Depths. He saw that the Kraang were attacking him and decided to simply talk to him like he would anyone else, even pointing out that maybe LH only acts like a monster because that’s how he was treated for so long. Mikey may not be book smart, but he’s very emotionally smart. As I said, Mikey’s character sadly devolves into annoying comedy relief as it goes, but for this season he had a strong start. No meaningful development aside form slow progression on paying attention (Parasitica being the final payoff... also if you’re afraid of wasps then avoid that one), but his character is strong enough to carry him through.

Raph is the brawler of the group and the quickest to anger. Hie’s the strongest fighter and incredibly confident... unless he has to deal with bugs. His biggest flaws are his both his anger and his jealous towards Leo. The first half of the season has Raph frequently back-talks and argue with Leo all because he got made the leader over him. For example, in Never Say Xever he is unhappy with Leo using mercy because bad guys don’t deserve it. Leo does eventually use the more Raph-like approach when kidnapping Bradford... and it fails miserably. What saves them? Leo’s act of mercy causing the Purple Dragon to repay the favor sand saving their shells. While he does slowly get a better grip on his temper once Splinter tells him of how dangerous it can be (Turtle Temper), it takes until New Girl in Town for him to overcome his jealousy once and for all. It’s very well done too by having Leo finally get fed up and give Raph what he wanted. Ultimately Raph can’t handle the pressure once things get rough and comes to understand both what Leo deals with essentially every day and how his own actions made it worst.

After that, Raph becomes the perfect example of a follower. While he’s still question Leo, he has good reasons for it, like everything involving Karai for instance. But he actively looks out for him more and stops mocking him outside just brotherly messing around. And even during that point, while Raph could be an insensitive jerk, he does love his family and will make amends when he goes too far. When he mocked Mikey wanting friends in New Friend, Old Enemy, at the end he comforted him after the fallout with Bradford and assured him that he’s a good person. When he mocked Donnie’s crush in Operation: Break-Out and led to Donnie going on a mission solo, Raph was worried about him, realized that he way too harsh, and tried to make amends by giving Donnie all the credit once back home. While Raph doesn’t conquer his temper completely, over the season he does get a better grip on it, can admit when he goes to far, became overall nicer, and by the end is a much better person. It was good stuff!

Donnie is probably the most... divisive of the four. Not because he’s badly written per say. He’s intelligent, but also high-strung and prone to stress. He’s not a bad ninja, but because of his focus on machinery, he’s the least skilled. The two episodes that focus on this are Metalhead and Monkey Brains. Metalhead has an admittedly meh plot where he gets sick of his bo staff and therefore creates the robot Metalhead to act as his weapon. The ‘meh’ plot is IDT it addresses the message of ‘the weapon doesn't make you a good fighter, you do’ very well, ut still Monkey Brains does a much better job, demonstrating Donnie’s tendency to over-think everything and how that is detrimental in a fight. By the climax, he’s able to get himself to rely on his instincts against a mind-reading villain (we’ll get to him later) and kick his ass.

Then there’s The Pulverizer episodes, which are the most interesting but sadly don’t go anywhere after this season. It has Donnie accept Pulverizer as an apprentice of sort, mainly so the kid can have some form of self-defense if he’s going to put himself into danger. It’s ultimately ineffective, but mainly because of Pulverizer wanting to rush and not listening properly. The most important part though is Splinter telling Donnie that by doing this, anything that happens involving him after will be his responsibility. Which we see in The Pulverizer Returns where Pulverizer decides ot let the Foot mutate him to gain awesome mutant powers. Donnie tries to save him, but sadly he fails and Pulverier.. it’s not pretty. While Donnie does still save him after, he’s left with the guilt of ultimately failing his student. I’ll go into mroe about how horribly the writers wasted this next season, but here? It was interesting to give Donnie this plot since you’d expect t to go to say... Leo. I think it really worked for what it was worth and let us see a side of Donnie outside just being the smart one.

So with that said, why is he divisive? Well... it’s because another major part of his character is his crush on April. He doe snot... manage it well, to say the least. He is rather, well... stupid and kinda creepy with it. But I do want to point this out. Yes, it is annoying but I think there’s a good reason for it: he’s an awkward teenager. Yeah him asking her to feel his goosebumps (Metalhead), accidentally calling her ‘his April (The Gauntlet), accidentally saying awkward things when she acknowledges him (pick any episode) are incredibly facepalm worthy at best. And yeah, they should have done better setup than have him just find her pretty when seeing her once. However he does genuinely care about her and int he premiere, he was driven more because he saw an innocent girl scared and was unable to help than his newfound crush. The feelings are genuine and Donnie being awkward about is because... well, Donnie is awkward in general and he does slowly improve. Honestly I’ll have mroe to discuss about this next season cause haha... boy is THAT a clusterfuck. But ultimately while Donnie can be annoying, overall it’s pretty bearable and he has plenty of positive traits to balance it out.

Finally, we get Leo. He’s the group leader, but unlike the past series where he pretty much grew up with that role, here he gets the role halfway through the first episode. He starts as a goody-two-shoes with a mischievous side who had a very basic view of leadership. He see sit as a position of authority, greatness, and unstoppable. That’s not to say that he doesn’t take the role seriously, he does. He devises plans, does his best to keep his brothers focused, and frequently asks Splinter for advice on how to best do things. But he also frequently uses cheesy one-liners and does his best to be as over the top with his heroics as possible, thinking it’s cool when it isn’t. It gives Leo a more naive feel to him, someone who is serious but also is still a teenaged kid who has a lot of learning to do.

The pressures of leadership are Leo’s primary focus as a character. While he has some doubts, the biggest blow to his confident comes in The Gauntlet after there massive defeat against Shredder. The following episode has him unsure of if he can properly lead the team and feeling guilty when things go wrong. But the ultimate meltdown comes in New Girl in Town where Raph finally pushes him too hard and he quits. He’s realized at this point that leadership is not like it is on TV. it’s unforgiving, stressful, and you’re gonna be the one facing the consequences when things go wrong. His difficulty dealing with this is what attracts him to Karai. She’s fun, does whatever she wants, and doesn’t care about the rules. She offers him a form of freedom that he hasn’t had before. It’s why he tries to get her to change sides, he doesn’t want her to be an enemy. Unfortunately things end badly between them this season, but you can see where Leo is coming form no matter how naive he was about it.

Leo evolved a lot over the season. He went from a naive teenager who quoted old TV episodes to a serious, determined leader who was willing to do whatever it took to get his team through. He never quit being optimistic and he does still have his stress with leadership later down the road. But the season is about him easing not the role an understanding the weight of that role. It’s very easy to feel bad for Leo because he tries incredibly hard, but he doesn’t receive a lot of gratitude or payoff, and he just has to accept that. By the finale, he’s willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure both success and his family's safety... something that becomes a bit of an issue in later seasons (looking at you Space Arc). I’d say that because we got to see Leo actually having to come to terms with the role, it makes this imo the best version of the character. We actually have to see him accept the role and how he hate show it limits his free time, something IDT the past versions really did. And all while having this dorky, idealistic side that keeps him likable and all the mroe relateable. Overall, I’d say that the leader in blue was handeled very well here!

April is my favorite character in the show, but her writing this season has some issues. Now as a character herself, she’s perfectly fine. She’s an independent sixteen year old and incredibly proactive. Whenever she finds info on the Kraang or about her dad, she looks into it. When everyone is ready to quit in Panic in the Sewers, she’s the only one who actively tries to do something and get everyone else to not give up. When Splinter offers to train her, she accepts it and we see bits and pieces of her progressing. But it’s done realistically as demonstrated in Karai’s Vendetta where it’s very clear that April is nowhere near her level. But it also demonstrates her determination and how she never gives up, getting back up after every blow and at east trying to put up a fight. While she’s forced to sit most things out and does on occasion get kidnapped, she still tries to be an asset and does very well as an intel gatherer. She’s also incredibly stubborn and can get in over her head without thinking things through, like in Metalhead and the finale episodes. But ultimately her proactiveness and need to take action are her strongest traits and what makes her a useful ally.

The issues with April are in the writing of the plot. I already mentioned how the early episodes could have done mroe in having her ease into the group. There’s also after Karai’s Vendetta where despite living with the guys, we don’t see her until the penultimate episode. We see her express hating it in that episode, but we don’t get to explore the fallout of her losing her normal life. In fact we...d on’t see April’s life outside Turtle stuff until next season, and even then not by much. Now of course the show is about the Turtles and you gotta keep the focus on them, but still we get a bunch of ‘show, don’t tell’ problems with April. We’re told things like she’s living with her aunt, but we never see them interact. Hell, IDT April’s aunt is ever mentioned outside the pilot. We also find out that April is the Kraang’s target... and we never see how she feels about it. If she’s scared, if she’s worried. We can assume that she has some stress about it, as indicated when she vents in Karai’s Vendetta, but little to no showcase of how she feels about it. Mind you we don’t with the Turtles either, but still. Still, overall April is a solid character imo.

That brings us to Master Splinter, the best written character by far. Splinter is the perfect balance of a mentor and a father. He’s firm, strict, and not afraid to dish out punishment when it’s necessary. But he’s also gentle, patient, knows how to give his sons proper guidance, and when to let them figure things out for themselves. He’s also snarky as Hell, so it’s good that he has a sense of humor. He’s also a flawed person. He lost his wife and daughter because of hat is essentially a sibling rivalry that went WAAAY too far and his own inability to control himself worsened things. He lost his family and then his humanity, ending his life as Hamato Yoshi. Since then, he’s hidden int he sewers and tried to focus his energy on raising and protecting his sons. It makes letting them go topside difficult, as it is for any parent whose children are growing up. He can make mistakes, like letting his fear control him and press his sons far too hard in Panic in the Sewers, but he can admit those mistakes.

Splintr’s largest plot in the season, outside mentoring the boys and April, is accepting his mutant status and overcoming his fears. Many epsiodes such as the premiere, Turtle Temper, Monkey Brains, Panic in the Sewers and the finale show how much pain the rat master carries and while he’s move don to a new life, it still haunts him. The episode that best displays this however is a filler episode called I, Monster. In it we get this version of the Rat King, the mind reading villain from Monkey Brains, who uses his power to swarm New York. When he senses Splinter, he proceeds to try and brainwash him too. The episode does an amazing job at showcasing all of Splinter’s fears. The boys outgrowing him, his past tragedies, ending up alone, and the Rat King slowly uses all of it to break him down. Splinter fights back, but the thought of the boys moving on without him is ultimately what defeats him until the boys remind him of who he is. He is Hamato Yoshi, Master Splinter, but most of all their father. They need him and always will. Which lets Splinter overcome the mind control and essentially Airbend Rat King through a wall. It was awesome~

Despite that episode being filler, it’s one of the season's best. It is a strong character exploration piece about a father who has gone through Hell and is faced with the fear of his kids not needing him. It is very relatable and makes Splinter all the mroe sympathetic. And we see Splinter truly embody who he is now when faced with the Shredder again and upon learning that his daughter had survived. He went into full rat mode and gave Shredder the beating that we all wanted. And the season ends on a perfect lead in for the next one. Splinter now knows that Karai is his daughter while she was raised to hate him. It’s any parent’s worst nightmare. He now has to deal with that revelation as well as how he’s going to break it to his students. Splinter has some solid growth int he season, something that a lot of mentor figures in cartoons don’t get, and it’s done perfectly. He has his flaws, but is still a strong father figure to his sons. Add that to Hoon Lee’s absolute perfect performance and you have what is in my opinion the best incarnation of Master Splinter in any TMNT series.

While the main cast is strong, the supporting cast and villains are... not so much. There isn’t really a supporting cast honestly. The best we have is Leatherhead, who is awesome. He’s a damaged character. One treated like a monster and tortured for who knows how long. It left him damaged and prone to trauma-induced outbursts. But he is a good person who knows that what happened to him was wrong and can be quite sweet when given the chance. He didn’t have to save humanity, especially since most would scream and run if they saw him, but he didn’t want anyone else to endure what he did. It’s best exemplified with his sacrifice in TCRI, going back to Dimension X and knowing fully well what’ll await him there. But he does so to save his friends and give them the chance to save the Earth. LH is freakin’ badass and I love him!

The villains though are... kinda boring. Most of the mutants, while the designs are cool, are incredibly one-note. Not all of them, like the Rat King is so dramatic and twisted and his VA does such a great job with the delivery that you both love him and want to strangle him. But others like Snakeweed or Spyder Bytez are just... well, evil for the heck of it. The Kraang are the worst though since at least the mutants are only in like one or two episodes. The Kraang are annoying as HELL. They can be dangerous but the redundant speech pattern and all fo them having essentially the same personality (aka none) is so... boring. Min you in Season 4 we kind of get an explanation to why, but it doesn't change how grating they can get. That being said in large groups they can be dangerous and with things like the Technodrome, they’re not to be taken lightly. Still, GAH I HATE THEM!!!

The Foot are somewhat better. Stockman is pathetic and remains pathetic throughout the entire series. Bradford is a pompous asshole. Xever is a little more interesting in that he kidn of was forced to work for Shredder or go to jail... but sadly after that reveal, he reverts to typical henchman status sadly. Shredder is the Big Bad and a no-nonsense leader. He has no empathy and is more than willing to inflict physical violence on his troops if they fail him. He even threatens to harm Karai, his daughter (kinda...) if she questions him. He is a very single minded perosn, his only goal beign to kill Splinter and his students by any means necessary. Hell. he only starts caring about the Kraang when he realizes that they can advance his goal, but has zero issues letting humanity fall to them. Oh, and there’s his glee when Karai tries to kill Splinter. WOrst? THis isn’t even the worst that he does int he show. Oh just wait for next season. JUST WAIT. Otherwise though, while a powerful fighter, he just mopes in his throne for most of the season, but Richardson’s badass voice acting was nice to hear.

The most interesting villain by far is Karai, and Thank God for it. While Leo is a good-good, Karai is a bad girl. She’s laid-back, does what she wants her way, and doesn’t play by the rules. She’s introduced as a competent fighter, but unlike the other Foot she’s more interesting in talking to the Turtles than killing them. I think she did become genuinely fond of Leo, but ultimately she’s going to be loyal to what she thinks is her family. She also started off realizing that there were bugger problems, like the Kraang, that required more attention over the vendetta until the Turtles betrayed her. Then she pretty much went ‘screw it’ and decided to go with the vendetta, which only got worst when she met Splinter for the first time. Still, ti was nice to have someone actually question Shredder and try to be sensible. She’s definite the most well-written of the villains, and the revelation about her being Splinter’s daughter means that there is MUCH more to come for her. Like I said, just wait for Season 2!

Okay, this section was a LOOOT longer than I thought. So I’ll just finish by saying that the villains aren't all that interesting, but the main characters are very well written. They have strong personalities, plenty of room for growth, and their interactions always gel really well. Very well done!

Rating: 4.5

Story

The main plot threads are the Turtles against the Foot, and the Turtles feud against the Kraang. All with some subplots, like Pulverizer and the mutant of the week stuff, and filler episodes thrown in. I say that the plots are handled very well. For example well go with... say two or three Kraang-centric episodes. Then we may or may not get a filler episode before shifting over to the Foot Clan for awhile. It never felt like we got smothered with one faction over the other, which is good. The plots also slowly intertwined and it felt like they came together at just the right time during the last six or so episodes. Hence hwy the finale worked so well, giving some kind of payoff on both ends.

Many of the episodes were very basic and outright bizarre. Like Cockroach Terminator having a mutant cockroach tr to murder Raph... it’s kinda gross, but entertaining! Every episode normally has at least something small that’ll carry over as the story goes along. For example, Donnie built Metalhead in... well, Metalhead and brought him back in the finale, plus it helped him learn mroe about Kraang tech. In Baxter’s Gambit, April finally gets her own weapon and she attempts to use it in Karai’s Vendetta. The episodes all play a part, even if just minor, in the larger narrative and I feel some of the later seasons kind of slacked on that. This season had a perfect balance.

That’s not to say that it was perfect. Like at the end of TCRI, we find out that April is the Kraang’s true target which makes us wonder why... and the next episode is about Raph’s fear of bugs! So TCRI was episode 17, we don’t even mention this fact again until Karai’s Vendetta, which is episode 21. Five episodes later, and even then we get one tiny hint (April doesn't get damaged by mutagen-laced water) and... that’s it. The.show has a bit of an issue with not exploring fallout, which is weird because Panic in the Sewers did and id it excellently. Maybe it’s because they have to make episodes to sell toys, IDK. It doesn't do too much damage, but it makes it feel like they both wasted character opportunities and like there’s something missing. But at the very least the episodes remain entertaining, so there’s that.

Rating: 4

Final Thoughts

You know what I like about this series and why I ran it above the other ones? Well it does something that I feel that the previous incarnations lacked: The Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles felt like teenagers. They felt like a bunch of kids truly entering the world for the first time. They screw up, they have problems to overcome, and they don’t always learn it immideatly. Like their cockiness is a frequent pain in the shell for example. But the reason that I like pretty much all of the episodes aside form Episode 11 is because it feels like we’re watching a group of kids truly starting to grow up and learn about how rough life can be. How they have to change, how they have to fix their mistakes, and just become better people. As a nineteen year old who was just staring to figure my life out, when I started the show, that drew me in. I related to these characters so much. I felt like I was growing with them and coming to understand who I was due to it.

It felt really nostalgic to go back over this season. Imo, it still holds up big time. It’s funny, action-heavy, well animated, and the characters are just as enjoyable as I remember. Would I call this the best season? Hmm... maybe. I still have three more to look over. But it was a really fun ride and it got TMNT 2012 off on the right track. Can they stay on it during Season 2? Come back next week, and we shall see!

#tmnt #2k12 #tmnt 2012 #callie reviews

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hellsbellssinclub · 6 years

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Across the Stars. Part 28

Part 1/ Part 2/ Part 3/ Part 4/ Part 5/ Part 6/ Part 7/ Part 8/ Part 9/ Part 10/ Part 11/ Part 12/ Part 13/ Part 14/ Part 15/ Part 16/ Part 17/ Part 18/ Part 19/ Part 20/ Part 21/ Part 22/Part 23/ Part 24/ Part 25 / Part 26/ Part 27/ Part 28/ Ao3

Only a handful more chapters to go friends!

Obi-Wan prepares to go back to the Jedi Order.

The library in the T.A.R.D.I.S, Obi-Wan decided, was the single most greatest thing in the whole universe.

After his exhausting talk with The Doctor, the Time Lord had taken him to the library and let him loose in the ever expanding, endless room. There were books on everything all sorted and piled up in their own unique way. Obi-Wan found books from when the Jedi Order was first found to books about the make up of the sonic screwdriver and how to make one.

Carrying a pile of books larger than his head, Obi-Wan stumbled over to one of the chairs in the room and sat himself down with a huff and a grin. There was so much to read here in the library and he could not wait to dive into it all. Picking up the book on the sonic screwdriver, Obi-Wan let himself get lost within the wonders of the written word.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been engrossed with the book but when Donna gently patted his shoulder and smiled down at him, Obi-Wan guessed it must have been a few hours.

“Have a good nap, Obi-Wan?” Donna asked, pushing back his hair. Obi-Wan grinned up at her.

“I did, thank you! What about you? The Doctor said you had your own nap.”

The red haired woman nodded. “It was pretty good. There is nothing like a good nap after some excitement. Now, what are you reading?” She asked as she sat down on his arm chair.

Obi-Wan immediately began to talk about the book and how it talked about how the sonic screwdriver was made and where it came from and not once did he feel like Donna was not interested in what he was saying or that she was just humouring him. She asked questions and let him ramble happily.

It was fun, talking to someone about what he had learnt and having his thoughts heard. Normally, only his friends would indulge him when he rambled on about something that had caught his interest but Donna and The Doctor were both happy to hear him talk and really did seem engaged with what he was saying.

“That is a really interesting book, Obi-Wan. But, it is almost time for dinner. We have landed next to a small space diner and are ordering some take out. Come on, put a book mark in that book and let’s get you fed.” Donna grinned, clapping him on his sore shoulders.

Obi-Wan grinned up at the older woman as his stomach growled at the mention of food. He guessed he had been sitting and reading for a while now. “Food sounds great!” He placed a small book mark into the book (though he wasn’t sure where the book mark came from seeing as it was not there before) and stood up from the chair.

“Come on, come on! Let’s go and wrangle The Doctor so we can feed all of us.” Donna laughed, gently herding Obi-Wan out of the library. The thought of food and eating with his two new guardians brought a large smile to Obi-Wan’s face.

He might still be exhausted from everything that had had happened in the last few days but Obi-Wan felt more at peace with himself and the universe around him than he had in years. With The Doctor and Donna here beside him, Obi-Wan was sure that everything was only going to get better from here on out.

Six Months Later

“Are you certain you want to do this Obi-Wan?” The Doctor asked, placing his hands-on Obi-Wan shoulders and looking down into his eyes. “You are welcome here. There is no time limit at all for how long you can or can’t stay.”

Obi-Wan smiled softly up at the man who had become like a father to him in the last six months they had been traveling together. Placing his own hands on top of the older man’s, Obi-Wan shook his head. “I need to go back, Doctor. The Force is calling me and it is time.”

“This is a time machine! You don’t have to go right now!” Donna waved her hand at the large green column behind them. There was a small desperate look on her face, one that had been appearing more and more once Obi-Wan had stated that it was time for him to go back to the Jedi Order. Obi-Wan smiled at her and shook his head sadly.

“I know that I could stay for longer but the Force cannot be ignored.” Obi-Wan looked at the two people who for the last six months had been his closest friends and his guardians. They had protected him, clothed him and fed him without a single thought and they had taken him into their arms and had treated him like family.

He was going to miss them. More than he wanted to admit.

“And besides, it isn’t like you guys can’t visit me at all. You have a T.A.R.D.I.S. You can always find me wherever you are in the universe at whatever time. I will always answer for you.” Obi-Wan pulled back from The Doctor and grasped his hands. “These last six months have been the best of my life, and I would not change them for the universe itself. But it is time for me to go.”

“Oh, Obi-Wan.” The Doctor sighed, shoulders sagging as he pulled Obi-Wan into a tight hug. “I am going to really, really miss you.” The Time Lord whispered into his hair. “You are always welcome back here. Always.”

Obi-Wan held onto the older man tightly, not really wanting to let go and leave the safety and familial love that he had found here in the T.A.R.D.I.S with The Doctor and Donna and whoever else joined them on their adventure of the week. He had seen so many worlds, so many tragedies and joys and so, so many new things and he honestly just wanted to spend the rest of his life here.

Here with the man who loved and cared more than any being in the universe. Who saved countless lives because he could and who always delivered a kind but stern justice to everyone. The Doctor, for the past six months had been there for Obi-Wan. The Time Lord had been his mentor, his father and his friend and had never once judged Obi-Wan or got angry at the endless questions that Obi-Wan had.

And here with Donna, the loud woman with the kindest heart and strongest mind Obi-Wan had ever seen. Donna, who was loud and brass and who always offered a hand of friendship to those around her had been his mother, his best friend and his foundation for the past six months. So many times, he had woken up to nightmares from what they had encountered through their travels but each and every time Donna was there with gentle hands and a soft voice, calming him down from the terrors that plagued his mind.

He did not want to go back to the Temple, not really. There was so much that was just wrong with the Order and how it worked and if he had not travelled with The Doctor and seen the universe outside of the views of the Republic and Order he would never had known it to be so. But the Force was insistent that he returned and since he had spent those several weeks at the Holy City in Jedha with the Guardians, Obi-Wan knew he should not ignore what the Force was telling him.

And there were many wrongs he needed to right within the Order and many things that would need to be done. Like setting the record straight with Bruck Chan and speaking to his Masters and friends whom he had left behind. Throughout his travels with The Doctor and Donna, Obi-Wan had found out some very troubling news about the Jedi and he knew that the information he had obtained needed to be shared with his fellow Jedi before it was too late.

As soon as he pulled away from The Doctor, Donna was there, sweeping him into a crushing and warm hug that left him wanting to cry. Donna was pouring all her love and friendship into the hug and the Force was singing around them with how strongly she felt. He was going to miss this. Miss Donna and how loudly and purely she felt. He was going to miss the cool, calmness that The Doctor projected whenever he thought that Obi-Wan needed a break and the overwhelming love and friendship that just poured out of the two of them whenever Obi-Wan was around.

It will not be easy to let this go. To leave the comfort and love that came with being in the bright blue box that travelled throughout all of time and space. But Obi-Wan knew that this was not going to be goodbye forever. He would see The Doctor and Donna time and time again throughout his whole life and they would always be watching over him, because they cared and loved him as he loved and cared for them.

Going back will be hard but knowing somewhere out in the stars that The Doctor and Donna were out there, in the endless void in space and time, made him feel like he would never be truly alone again.

#Across the Stars #hellsbells wrote something!!!#Obi-Wan Kenobi #the 10th doctor #Donna Noble #doctor who #star wars #doctor who fanfiction #Star Wars fanfic

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Zappa Director Alex Winter Talks Preserving The Mothers’ Inventions

https://ift.tt/397hxl6

Zappa is an intimate look into the innovative life and eclectic works of Frank Zappa, the composer. The Beatles, Brian Wilson, and Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd pushed boundaries of what rock could do in the mid-1960s, but Zappa ignored any preconceived compositional restraint. He mixed rock with classical, jazz with chamber, and twelve-tone with Spike Jones. From his 1966 proto-punk, garage band debut, Freak Out, through the immediate experimental turns he took on Lumpy Gravy, We’re Only In it for the Money, and continuing through his career, Zappa’s music sounds unlike any other sonic unit.

Not only was Zappa a unique composer and bandleader, he was a ground-breaking film director, an innovative theatrical presence, and a voice of rebellion in worlds beyond music and the arts. His politics were far ahead of their time, and his critiques of society resonate strongly to this day. A vast majority of Americans know Zappa best because of his censorship battle with the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), and the documentary censors nothing.

Zappa is not only the definitive documentary, but the only feature doc ever made on the pioneering founder of the Mothers of Invention with the Zappa family seal of approval. Not only did the family give director Alex Winter, best known as Bill from the Bill & Ted movies, permission to use the music and footage, they let him ransack the vaults. What he found there was a buried treasure in need of excavation.

Zappa’s storage area contained reels of unreleased music, archived appearances, home movies and hours of never-before-heard interviews, which allowed Winter to let Frank tell most of the stories himself. But first he had to save the vault material, which was disintegrating before his very eyes. He put together a crowdfunding campaign and raised over a million dollars to preserve the tapes.

Winter has been in entertainment all his life. He worked as a child actor in the mid-1970s, had co-starring roles in long-running Broadway productions like The King and I, Peter Pan, and The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, as a teenager, and studied filmmaking from behind the scenes at NYU film school. Besides the Bill & Ted films, he also had memorable roles in the vampire classic Lost Boys and cult favorite Freaked, which he co-directed. Winter also directed the criminally under-seen 1999 suspense thriller Fever. The bulk of Winter’s work has been on hard hitting and revelatory documentaries, like Downloaded (2002), Deep Web (2015), and The Panama Papers (2018).

Zappa is just as revelatory, but a lot more fun and you can dance to it. That is, if you can dance to what the London Symphony Orchestra called “irrational” time signatures. Towards the end of the film, Zappa shows exactly that. Alex Winter spoke with Den of Geek about Frank Zappa, as a musician, artist and subject.

Do you think Frank could have written the song to unite the world in Bill & Ted Face the Music, or would he have chosen to score the collapse of time and space or would he have made a double album?

Yeah, he would have told us to get lost and made like a quadruple album. No, I don’t. I think that he was so, in such a lovely way, so contrary that I don’t think he would have wanted to feel like he had that kind of pressure on him.

I read that you spent your Kickstarter money to preserve the material in his vaults. First, I want to say thanks for that and was there anything that actually was lost to the damage?

Yeah, a few things were lost. It was mostly the stuff that’s most sensitive like old film audio, like the audio track itself, the magnetic audio track was very fragile, we lost some of those. Some of that stuff was gone when we got to it and then some stuff really had like one run through a machine left before it was gone, so we were using extremely sensitive machines that had Sprocket LIS systems for digitizing and preserving that media. So, it was in various states. Some of the video was quite brittle. Some of that was gone but we got most of it and we got a lot of it. So that was good.

Besides the music, were there any unreleased films in the vaults?

Like full movies? No. We know what Frank made. I was able to preserve the negatives for Baby Snakes. We did include that in what we were preserving, so we found that there and we preserved it. So that’s nice and safe, that made me happy. But there weren’t full feature movies. There was a lot of Bruce Bickford Claymation that had never been used in anything that we found, a lot of which we put in the doc because it’s so good. And there were a lot of films, home films and there’s vast quantities of him just with a video or a film camera wandering around the house or around backstage or whatever, and that informed a lot of what we use. A lot of the stuff that we were using, he shot himself or just somebody who was in his house with him.

I love the editing, the scene with Frank playing with Moon Unit with the music behind it, was that something that you put together or was that something that was already edited in the vaults?

No. That was something that Mike Nichols put together, the editor. Mike really cut most of the media. We were even re-cutting Frank’s film media. We were really looking to tell a story and convey the narrative first and foremost, more than just presenting the stuff that Zappa had done. So, what we did was we started the film with things like the home monster movies that he made and the way he re-cut his mom and dad’s wedding footage. But we used that as a jumping off point for ourselves to start creating our own edits that made it, that felt like Frank’s world, but it was really just us.

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Your documentary gets into how his music was criticized for being impersonal. I personally think some of his most beautiful lyrics come out in his guitar, but do you think his humor desensitized critics?

I think his humor put off some people, I don’t think he was particularly worried about that. I think that for me, coming up with Zappa when I got Zappa, part of that “get” was realizing that he wasn’t a rock and roll musician who made rock songs with funny lyrics. He was an avant-garde composer who used humor, like an instrument. Like using percussion or any other piece of your orchestra. It was something that he did to elicit a certain effect with the music itself. And once I kind of clicked in my head, I really got for myself, I don’t mean this needs to be for everyone because it’s personal, but it was an entry point for all of his music once that I grasped that idea.

In some of your other films you’ve tackled some very heavy topics. What draws you to the subjects? And how long have you been thinking about doing Frank?

Well, we started putting a sizzle reel short together, Glen Zipper my producer and I, after coming off of Deep Web, the tech doc we made about the dark net and federal criminal trial of Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road black market. And I’d been very embedded in that story for a few years and I was ready to do something that wasn’t tech oriented and wasn’t quite so bleak. Glen and I were wondering why no one had tackled Zappa’s story. It seemed like it was such a perfect story for a documentary, given that he’s a big popular cultural figure, but also as a person who had so many different facets to his nature, which makes for a very good doc subject. So, that was about six years ago and we started putting something together, and then I pitched it to Gail and then the ball very slowly started to roll.

You submitted an audition film to the Zappa family, what was the short film like and how was the initial reaction?

It was very much like this to be honest with you, Mike Nichols cut that as well, and we were interested in conveying Frank’s emotional inner life, and not just the kind of pop B reverent story about the Zap that we felt people either already knew, or wasn’t really truly that representative of who he was. So we created it, it was very short, it was almost like a mood piece. But it did convey the idea of telling a story mostly with archival and Zappa’s voice that leaned on his emotional, inner narrative and not so much on being a music legacy doc.

Your film shows him as a hero, both politically and artistically. How much did you know going in?

I knew quite a bit of what made me want to do it. I knew all the primary biographical details of his life. There was an enormous amount I didn’t know, and there was an enormous amount I discovered making the film, but I certainly knew the bulk of the landmark periods of his life. And then once we started the preservation project and I was able to really spend time listening to Frank talk, because there was so much media down there that had never been heard, that was just him speaking candidly to either other journalists or to friends, and this was stuff that wasn’t public. It gave me a window into his thinking that I didn’t have before, and that guided me tremendously.

I loved Ruth Underwood’s story about dropping out Juilliard after seeing the Mothers at the Garrick Theater. Has she ever played the triangle since?

It’s a good question. I honestly don’t know, my guess is not.

Do you think Frank’s PMRC activisms sidetracked some music he might’ve been making?

No, I don’t. I think that he was in a period of reflection at that time. He never stopped making music during that time. He kept cranking. He was cranking away all through that period. He also began to work on the Synclavier and had an enormous output of music with a Synclavier during that whole period as well. So there wasn’t ever really a period where Frank wasn’t making music, and the political commitment that he had to cultural and political issues, I think really helped him, given how bleak the state of the country was and the state of the arts in the country was. So rather than just sit on his hands and moan, he just got active.

You covered pretty much every era of his career, but what is your favorite period and why?

Well, my favorite of Zappa’s early albums is Hot Rats, so that period is my favorite period, though I equally love the orchestral music that he made, and I love the Ensemble Modern period as well. Which shows you that I liked him at both ends of his career. I don’t leave out the middle, but both of those eras moved me and I listened to them equally. If someone put a gun to my head and said, “You get to jump in a time machine and go visit Frank at any given point, where would you go?” I would go to the Garrick Theater.

I came up doing theater in New York. And I’m very inspired by the fact that he wasn’t taking off in LA the way he wanted to, and rather than change his sound or capitulate to some popular movement, he just left and further investigated his own artistic voice. I have huge respect for that, and I would have loved to have been around when he was just throwing spaghetti at the wall artistically day after day at the Garrick.

Do you think that he was inspired by the movements in NYC theater?

That question I do know. Funnily enough, that’s one of the first things I asked Gail. When I first started talking to Gail in 2015, and we were just riffing and I was just trying to probe her brain to get a better sense of Frank, I was convinced by what I knew of the Garrick, that Frank was plugged into all the incredibly avant-garde and cutting edge theatrical movements of that time, which were so flourishing in Berlin, London, and New York, especially. And I said, given how theatrical his music always was, and his performances always were, surely he was inspired by this. And she said, “No.” As far as she knew, he had no interest in theater at all, and had no knowledge of any of the innovations or any of the people who were spearheading theater at that time. Which I thought was somewhat surprising, but apparently this was just his thing.

I’m sure you’ve seen Brian De Palma’s Hi Mom!, which had a scene of confrontational theater. When I think about Frank bringing the Marines onstage to dismember a doll, it seemed like one was feeding into each other.

Completely. I’m very versed in that world and it’s a big part of what I care about, and also the work that Dario Fo was doing in Italy at that time was really powerful. A lot of antiwar and protest art, but really not politics. Art was before politics in terms of the way that the theater was constructed. And that’s what seems similar to me about Frank, there were a lot of political undertones, but the art was first. And I was surprised that he wasn’t plugged into that, because they were literally running on parallel tracks at that time.

I know that your parents were dancers and Frank made music that was very hard to dance to.

And hard to edit. You try editing to that, with the rhythm changing as constantly as it does in such intense ways. It’s tough.

Actually that’s what I want to ask, you’re also a musician, do you map out rhythms, do you count out things and try to chart them in your head as you’re listening?

Mm-hmm, I do sometimes, but with some artists like Zappa or Coltrane I really don’t. I just go with the flow because the flow is so specific and untethered to formal music. So I don’t with them, but I do sometimes. Sure.

What other rock documentary makers were you looking at when you were making this?

I was most inspired even not making a music doc. I’ve been very inspired by the photography and the film work of Robert Frank. This movie was very inspired by Cocksucker Blues. There are techniques that we were doing and ideas that I had that were pretty much just lifted straight out of that movie without being overtly plagiaristic. That’s probably my biggest influence in terms of something if I had to point to, but obviously Pennebaker’s work and the Maysles and all of that. And I also have great respect for the work of Brett Morgan, he’s done amazing things, I thought Montage of Heck was phenomenal and really did an amazing job of looking at the interior life of someone who’s also quite detached. So that was helpful.

Steve Vai talks about how Zappa pushed musicians and the other musicians said being in his band was like going back to school. What did you learn in your craft from making this?

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You learn a lot by being in the presence of genius like this. So I learned on an abstract level, I was inspired. I really respected the way he pulled from different genres and still made work that was his own. I was inspired to keep going, and it’s frowned upon to play in different media in our culture. People want to put you in a box, and I’ve never wanted to do that. I’ve acted and I’ve made films and I’ve made narratives and I’ve made shorts and I’ve directed all different kinds of stuff. And I would like to continue to explore like that and Zappa, he gives you the inspiration to feel valid in that way.

Magnolia Pictures will release Zappa on November 27.

The post Zappa Director Alex Winter Talks Preserving The Mothers’ Inventions appeared first on Den of Geek.

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renaroo · 7 years

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Lost but Not Lonesome

Disclaimer: Transformers, Beast Wars, and related properties belong to Hasbro Warnings: Canon-typical language and violence, References to autism and ableism Rating: T Pairing: AirazorxTransmutate Prompt: ( @vo-kopen ) Just for the sake of asking, and feel free to reject this, but maybe a sequel to the Beast Wars stories I commissioned, taking place in a version of Beast Machines? Prompt - Tigatron is still missing along with Rampage's Spark and other members of the team, and Airazor has been trying to distract herself from mourning by teaching Trans-Mutate Chirolingual (Cybertron sign language by hand holding) During a session Trans-Mutate signs a very intimate phrase, and Airazor is unsure of how she feels.

A/N: Thank you for such an interesting prompt!

For those unfamiliar, I have written two fics for this same series based in a Beast Wars AU already that developed a what-if for Airazor and Transmutate’s friendship in an alternate canon. So I’m going to build somewhat off of those for this fill.

Returning home was not supposed to mean such sparkbreak.

There was a part of Airazor, a bitter part down to her core, that was beginning to wonder what she and the others had done over the years to deserve their constant misfortune. To deserve every hitch in their path.

What she did to deserve losing her sparkmate.

Of course, it was unfair that she viewed it all with such limited vision. Improper, really, considering that her vision had always been her most pointed gift. But at the end of the day, it was difficult for her to see past the veneer of mourning she had veiling her.

Never before would Airazor have believed that seeing Silverbolt and Blackarachnia could fill her frame with such jealousy.

Why did they get to survive together, where she still did not know where her dearest Tigatron ended up?

She had done something truly unfair that her spark was being eternally punished for, she was sure of it.

Curled up into herself, still getting used to the transmetal body she had been molded into after their crash landing, Airazor was left to her usual queries. Where was Tigatron? Was his spark still beating? Was he where the other missing Maximals were? Was he missing her with the same amount of pain in his spark she felt?

Would he still love her despite her feathers and softness being transformed to be more machine than beast? He had felt so strongly about the importance of Beastmodes and nature.

Could he still see beauty in the way she was now?

Curling into herself tighter on her perch, Airazor hid her all-seeing optics into her knees and cycled them off tiredly.

Her depression and anguish were beyond exhausting.

But before she could fully get her rest, she heard the loud ad familiar approach of Optimus Primal.

While she considered feigning recharge, Airazor knew that the only instinct in her that was still honed pointedly beyond longing for her spark-of-sparks, was her duties as a Maximal soldier. She looked up, optics cycling back on before she slowly got to her feet in her leader’s presence.

“Hello, Sir,” she said with true lackluster. “Is there something you need me to do?”

She hoped he would see her exhaustion and anguish and leave her be, leave her to mourn more.

But again, Airazor proved to be eternally cursed.

"I know things are difficult for the Maximals right now,” he understated. “No more so than for you, I’m sure.”

Airazor lowered her head and squeezed her eyes closed. By the Pits, she loved Optimus like a father but he was increasingly bad at making her feel better in these most dire situations.

“But Transmutate is... crying,” Primal continued, and by the hesitation he gave and the expression he wore on his face, Airazor knew that he was not meaning any normal cry or anguish but the reverberating, dangerous sonics which Transmutate was capable of producing. “And the rest of our abilities to communicate with her are proving... woefully ineffective.”

Scowling slightly, Airazor looked meaningfully toward Optimus. “None of you have effectively communicated to Transmutate. None of you other than Silvebolt an myself have gotten to an understanding with her.”

He did not back down from her rebukes, accepting them all and standing his ground. Airazor found herself marveling at the mech she already respected so much.

“You are right,” he said. “And that has been a mistake, a mistake that was excused repeatedly by myself and others as a less important issue to be addressed at later times that never came. We did not see the value of the effort and time which you and Silverbolt have managed.”

It was certainly a comment that took Airazor a moment to fully process. She lowered her head, somewhat bashfully. “That means a lot, Sir. Thank you.”

“I’m glad it does,” he explained. “Because I want you to take things to the next level and try to expand Transmutate’s capacity for communicating with the rest of our team -- her team. There are too few of us left now for us to not work to use what is best for each and every one of us.”

Confused, Airazor folded her arms. “I agree that it sounds like a good idea, sir, but... I’m curious about where exactly we are supposed to get there. Transmutate still has trouble communicating a lot of her feelings, and she’s very... kinetic in addressing people she’s comfortable with.” Subconsciously, Airazor reached for her wings, feeling the transmetal sleekness rather than the soft billows of feathers she loved. “She associates feathers with safety... acceptance. Love. And, unfortunately, on top of everything else we’ve lost, Silverbolt and I have lost the ability to give her that small comfort.”

Optimus Primal looked almost disappointed in her. “It’s not like you to give up so easily, Airazor.”

Airazor hugged herself. “Guess it was more than my feathers that changed after all of this, Big Bot,” she replied sadly.

“All the same, you’re my mech for the job,” he assured her. “You’ve proven your relationship with Transmutate, you’ve proven your patience, and most importantly, you were the one that discovered that she prefers kinetic interactions.”

“Yes?” Airazor asked, tilting her helm.

“So I think the logical step is for us all to facilitate her preference,” Optimus explained. “You should give her lessons in Chirolinguistics.”

At first, Airazor was just processing the suggestion, then her optics widened. “That’s... genius, Optimus! You’e wonderful for coming up with that! Thank you!”

“I probably would have been able to think of it sooner if I had been listening to you from the beginning, Airazor,” Optimus said humbly. “I trust you to take care of this.”

“Sir, yessir,” Airazor answered with a salute.

Chirolinguistics as at least as old, if not older, than spoken Cybertonian. It was meant to surpass dialects, class, and rankings.

A language of intimacy, between friends and colleagues and more -- it was a language that was perfect for Transmutate.

Transmutate, much like the rest of them, had received unexpected augmentation and upgrades when they transitioned from hyperspace and eventually crashed and lost much of their crew. Her body was more complete than it had been on the ancient earth, more coherent in its connections, though whether or not she had altmode this time around was still questionable.

Fortunately, she had much more dextrous hands than she had had while they had been on earth, and that was making the chirolinguistics lessons move along much better.

“That’s right,” Airazor said warmly as Transmutate answered a question that had been asked in chirolinguistics. “You’re doing so well, Transmutate! Honestly I’m horrified we never considered this approach with you before.” She paused, a frown tugging at her face. “Well, I’m horrified that I never considered trying other ways to communicate with you before. I suppose I was... I was almost satisfied that you could talk to me, and I hadn’t made enough considerations for how you or the rest of the team were supposed to talk together.” She looked up sorrowfully at her friend. “I hope you can forgive me for being so shortsighted. I won’t let it happen again.”

In response, Transmutate smiled and ran a finger across Airazor’s knuckles. It was untranslatable to spoken language, but Airazor recognized it for its warmth and generosity.

Forgiveness.

“Alright then,” Airazor said, with a small, breathless laugh. “Let’s move on to the next lesson, alright? Now, this is a greeting -- the shorter it is the less intimate it is. A lot like most conversations in chirolinguistics. Dragging sensation and touch is a sign of familiarity, friendship. And the slower it is, the more you mean to convey the importance of the relationship to you.” She then made a quick few pecks of her fingers, fast and rapid, enough that it alarmed Transmutate and she pulled away. “Sorry, I was just hoping to show you what it feels like to go too fast -- that’s rude.”

Nodding in agreement, Transmutate looked far from pleased. “Rude,” she echoed.

“For someone you think of as a deep, close friend, you use much longer strokes,” Airazor explained. “Like you and I, we’re each other’s best friends. We’re all each other has.” The entire time she was speaking, Airazor traced into Transmutate’s palms, running against the crevices, dragging into the curves and circling around her servos. “There are few people you would spend that much time speaking with, but I definitely think you and I qualify.”

“Oh,” Transmutate answered. She repeated the pattern but at first her movement was so slow, Airazor believed her to be hesitating. Transmutate drug her fingers, pressing deep and meaningfully into each stroke against Airazor’s palm.

It was long, sensual, and by the end, the words took on a different meaning than what Airazor had written into Transmutate’s palms.

They were a confession, and Airazor felt her faceplate heat up.

“T-Transmutate,” she said, flustered. When the other looked at her in slight concern, Airazor assured herself it was an error. That Transmutate’s speed was simply out of slowness to catch on. “It’s... I think you should practice that again.”

A knowing smile curved onto Transmutate’s face and she started to trace the words into Airazor’s palms once more.

Somehow, Transmutate found a way to go slower. Airazor closed her eyes and allowed her breathing to match the sensual drag and drop of Transmutate’s words. She felt nothing but the chirolinguistics against her hands, slow and budding with tension.

Before the final words could be spelled out, Airazor stopped Transmutate breathlessly, lacing their fingers together and squeezing Transmutate’s hands back.

Her wings flailed behind her, fanning air her way as Airazor tilted her head forward, only for her forehead to be met with Transmutate’s.

Airazor was so surprised, so speechless.

Shaking her head, Airazor tried to look into Transmutate’s eyes but she couldn’t bring herself to part their foreheads. “Do you know what you meant when you did that?” she asked softly.

Slowly, Transmutate spelled out yes into Airazor’s palms.

Since losing Tigatron, since losing herself, Airazor had forgotten what it felt like to have such openly spoken love shown her way. She didn’t know how to feel, only how to spell it back into Transmutate’s hands.

They had loved and truly lost, but together, Airazor felt for the first time in her broken spark, they could maybe love again.

#writing #tf fic #femslash february #Airazor #Transmutate #Optimus Primal

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davidaolson · 5 years

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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. ~Edward Abbey

I hesitate quoting Messr Abbey in an essay on Sedona. It feels like another act evoking the reeking, bitter stench of betrayal to South Utah. I need to remember, Cactus Ed was a capital ‘P’ Prophet speaking in defense of all Wilderness for wilderness sake, not just the bottom third of one Western State and, I guess, that makes quoting him appropriate to this occasion. In hindsight, it is also apropos for the hikes over the next three days were crooked and winding and hundreds of feet dropping dangerous and we experienced some amazing views particularly while resting in a crotch at the top of Cathedral Rock.

Unfortunately, this was Spring Break so the lonesome component was mostly missing. Not lonesome as in longing for company. Lonesome as in the solitude from which one can enter the serenity necessary for the soul to become whole.

The Information Man

Rather than jump right into a dawn hike, I’m an early bird married to a night owl, my wife convinced me we should visit the information booth at the bottom of the road leading to our hotel. Her travel instincts are top notch so I tend to bow to her acumen. We had to pass that way anyway as it is the only way to get anywhere from our hotel. First, we loaded up on water bottles and trail snacks at the CVS across the street. There was no way I was going to get caught out again on a hike without water and eats.

The information man recommended numerous potential hikes including Cathedral Rock. He also cast the very bright lure of a ‘free’ scenic helicopter ride valued at $200. Once the hook was set, we were gaffed by the requirement to spend a couple of hours at a timeshare presentation. These were events my dad milked for free goodies. To date, I had avoided the trap. But the promise of a helicopter ride over red rock mesas at sunset was too sweet to forego. The fifteen minutes in the air was worth the two-hour sinking of our time.

Cibola Pass / Soldiers Pass / Brins Mesa

By the time we had eaten breakfast, loaded up on trail necessities, talked to the info man, and reached the Cibola Pass trailhead (recommended by Info Man. The other trailhead tends to be very crowded making it near impossible to park) it was closing in on noon. Normally, that’s a bad time to kickoff a Southwest, desert hike. It was in the lowish 60s so from a temperature standpoint, it was perfect. For great, magic hour photos, we were half a day too late.

Cibola Pass

We parked at the Brin’s Mesa trailhead at the end of Jordan’s road. These lots require a $5 fee paid at a kiosk, money earmarked for trail upkeep. We easily found the trail by the rustic sign with coloration putting it in relative harmony with the country. The thick gauge steel was built to withstand major, physical abuse.

Cibola Pass is a short six-tenths of a mile stroll rising 135′ at the peak then dropping down 119′ where it connected to the more popular Soldier’s Pass trail. In the guidebooks, Cibola is given about as much respect as a bastard, red-headed stepchild. After all the trails we walked and the rock mammoths climbed, Cibola ended up being my absolute favorite of the lot. It is in a designated wilderness area, the Coconino National Forest, which means the trail is off-limits to mountain bikes, horses, and motorized vehicles.

The temperature dropped noticeably the moment we left the sunny lot and dipped into the shaded trail. At the same time, I was hit by a coursing wave of nostalgia knocking me back on my heals, a nostalgia stoking my base impulses. The fresh juniper scent, the contrast of primary burnt red against secondary dark green, the stillness and quiet allowing me to feel my soul…for a few minutes…until it was all shattered like a Trump promise by a person almost as boorish as El Presidente.

A guy on the first red crest we approached was laugh yapping loudly on his cell phone telling whoever was on the other end about the amazing signal in the back of beyond. Yap, yap, yap, and more yappity yap. Argh! His wife was standing nearby smiling at him. Why was she not condemning his selfish behavior? It was as obnoxious as running a circular saw during the blessing of the sacraments at a Catholic mass. The intricate wilderness is sacred beyond the simplicity of the most elaborate man-made structure deserving even more respect than we save for religious temples. Worship should be expressed in the god designed not the human-built.

Chillin’ at Cibola Pass

I jumped from serene to redlined agitation in zero point zero time. I wish the national forest also banned talking on mobile phones except for extreme emergencies. We moved off the trail creating our own side pathway by scrambled over rocks and around the fauna until the couple was far out of our earshot and we could proceed in peacefulness.

Cibola is home to some amazing fauna, from ancient juniper to fleshy prickly pear and century plants, none of which were in the fast growth blooming stage. We came across one century plant drained of life-giving chlorophyll. Did it live to be a ripe old 100 and erect the giant cream tipped phallus or did it fall limp before shooting its load? There was also pothole filled with dead snow but strangely devoid of animals partaking of the desert sacrament.

Escaping the phone troll found us creating a makeshift trail opening to a vista revealing the grandness of sheer, red rock walls, vista similar to those I adore around Moab. I stood in awe of their majesty. Most of my pictures on the four-hour hike were taken in this one short stretch of heaven. It was beautiful, untainted by other people, filled with mesmerizing silence. I could have spent the entire day in abiding in the energy. I’m not talking the mythical vortex energy but the energy of untrammeled nature. The aura of Cibola strongly alluded to god. The one shortcoming, it lacked the twisted manifestations of gods mind revealed in the bizarre rock formations so evident in Canyonlands or Bryce or Arches. I’m more comfortable with a twisted god than I am with a boring linear god.

Cibola touched an itch that needed to be scratched. I’ve been trying to return to Moab for three years but the timing never panned out. This short trail scratched the itch deeply, satisfyingly, but not completely. I would need to return here at least once more before the trip was over and I needed to return alone. I was unsure of how I would make it happen. But it HAD to happen.

Dead Snow

Prickly Pear

Dead Century Plant

Vintage

Beautiful Scener

Obligatory Posing

In the Arms of A Dead Tree

Strange Hashes

Bark

Denuded?

Soldier’s Pass

Cibola connected to Soldier’s Pass and the next leg of our hike. Soldier’s pass climbs 200 feet over 1.8 miles with most elevation gain in the final quarter mile. Soldier’s Pass is rated higher as a great hike than Cibola. I could not disagree more. Cibola packed more punch as far as scenic ambiance than the 3 times as long Soldier’s Pass.

Soldier’s is a backcountry highway. We encountered a jeep by a massive sinkhole along with a throng of visitors…well….a throng for a backcountry site. There were quite a few mountain bikers for whom we had to stand aside so they could pass. Personally, I love mountain biking and would never begrudge their rights to ride. From a hiker’s perspective, they destroy the solitude like a jet flying high overhead shatters silence. But then so do loud hikers.

Seven Sacred Pools

The Seven Sacred Pools is listed as a highlight of the trail system. It’s a series of seven sequential carved into the sandstone. Water spills from one to the next on the way to the creek below. The flow between the pools was little more than a trickle.

Typically, in desert conditions, water is an element to be celebrated, a god bestowing life on any being partaking of the elixir. My overall impression was Meh! I found little with which to be impressed. Or there have been other factors inhibiting my ability to appreciate the natural phenomenon.

It may have been the incessantly loud woman with the strong New York accent who seemed to talk for the sake of talking, one of those people uncomfortable with silence because, in quiet, they are forced to experience their inner being. It may have been the nonstop human traffic polluting the tranquility.

Had we been alone, or there been only like-minded people exercising sonic discretion, I could see it being a positive experience. I would have climbed up onto the large rock beneath a brilliant juniper adjacent to the creek and listened. Listened to the wind flowing through the trees, the trickle of water jumping from pool to pool, watching for animals approaching carefully to slake their thirsts. I would have left an offering of nuts and seeds on top of the rock for the local critters and birds whose lives are adversely affected by visiting humans.

I don’t mind meeting the occasional people hiking as long as they understand the sacredness of the open spaces. Most do. Hikers are almost universally people who walk with light footsteps so as to disturb neither animals or fellow hikers. It is those who are obnoxiously loud and treat the outdoors as a local park that I prefer to avoid. The obnoxious American tourist is still alive and thriving and more dangerous to the human condition than hungry bears.

The dream of an enjoyable seven sacred pools was shattered by the nightmare reality. There was so much tension building up in my spirit within moments of arriving, I felt driven to bounce to anywhere else in the trail system. It was a godsend that just past the seven pools the number of people dropped precipitously and we could entertain the illusion of backcountry hiking solitude allowing space for my spirit to return to the rhythm of a meandering walk, like a slow river, in the wilderness. But, the trail was soon to be a steep ascent so, as a flowing river, I had to put forth significant effort to overcome gravity and ascend to Brin’s Mesa. At the top, I wondered, where will the water fall?

Brin’s Mesa

Arriving at the Brin’s Mesa trail intersection, I realized my original goal for this particular hike would never be achieved. A big reason I wanted to take this loop was for an entire day meandering without time worries and for the maps showing a spur to a natural arch existing between the seven pools and Brin’s Mesa intersection. I planned to lay beneath the arch admiring the handiwork of wind and water. We never found a marker for the spur trail. The arch visit did not materialize.

About the same time, an earworm crawled out of my subconscious surfacing in my conscious. Time. Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future. We had to finish the hike with enough time to eat before our helicopter ride. The plan to linger, to move at a glacial pace in rhythm with geologic time was supplanted to one of time management. I prefer vacations unbounded by time constraints. But, there are so many places to see and so little time to explore.

Retirement is not a big deal for me. I enjoy my work, look forward to Mondays…most of the time. This, however, was a point I longed to be retired, without time commitments at the other end of the wire. I would have returned to this trail the next day or the day after or a future day when the trails were free of spring breakers and hiking would be with a sense of solitude, a portal to the spiritual and connection with goddess Earth where I could layabout for hours grappling with myself or, like Jacob, wrestle with god for control of the universe.

Brin’s Mesa began with a stretch in the sun. The weather was relatively cool and low humidity making the hike pleasant. We met a few hikers with their dogs in tow. Well, not in tow, the dog’s were pulling the people along. They seemed to relish hiking as much as their human companions.

Halfway across the Mesa, we took a side diversion to bag a summit. Well, a tall rock mound requiring minor free climbing skills. It overlooked the valley we traversed. I envisioned myself the second to last red headed condor in existence surveying my domain seeking a mate or a meal, bumping into a hot condor babe while our heads were buried in the fetid corpse of a rotting cow experiencing love at first bite.

But Condor doesn’t have a red head, you say? Some are tinged with a pink-orange but not red. I am my own Condor…or…maybe Turkey Vulture…no…I’m Condor with a great wingspan casting terrifying shadows o’er the land when soaring close to Sister Sun. Given a choice, I would have stayed perched atop the summit until I became a god claiming all I can imagine for my kingdom. But, earworm kept nagging me, time was not on our side nor was the solitude necessary to transform into a deity.

Brin’s is a high Mesa. Our car was parked in a valley. Elevation was the name of the game. The outward dropped over 330 feet in less than half a mile. We carefully navigated the steep declines grateful not to be hiking in mud season. The severe angles would have found us falling on our asses repeatedly.

The final mile was uneventful, a slowly descending walk on a wide path beneath a canopy of trees. We didn’t see any barefoot ninja wannabees carrying swords. For bits, my wife and I walked silent hand in silent hand marveling at our good fortune to be in Sedona occasionally commenting on the beauty. This stretch was sufficiently different from my beloved that I didn’t experience lust…although I did experience a raging hardon to stick myself deep into Cibola Pass again and again. My wife must have noticed the lustful look flashing across my face.

“Are you enjoying Sedona?” my wife asked. “Ya…but…I feel like I’m cheating on Moab?” What does that mean?” “Moab is where I first fell in love with Redrock. It is a place I can see living my last days and will hopefully be interred for eternity, interred without a casket so nature can recycle me, maybe a vulture will carry my soul heavenward while coyotes grind my bones to dust. Being here, enjoying red Sedona, feels a bit like I’m cheating on my real love like I’m having an extra-terrestrial affair.” “A what?” “An extra-terrestrial affair. I feel like I’m cheating on my earth soulmate for a semi-attractive floozy!” “Isn’t an affair supposed to be exciting?” “Sedona is enjoyable but being here, enjoying the red rock here comes with an undergirding sense of betrayal. I can’t stomach betrayal…either betraying or being betrayed. It fucks with my sense of self.” “And you feel you are cheating on Moab?” “I know it sounds crazy.” “It sure does.” “I have a deep sense of guilt gnawing at my sense of right and wrong. I feel…corrupt, dirty.” “But it’s only land. It’s not like betraying people” “It’s the land and what the land represents. My first time in Moab was like coming home though I’d never been there before. It changed my sense of reality both internal and external. It’s hard to explain. Whenever I’m out of sorts, going through a rough patch, Moab is where I go for healing. It is my center, the locus of my being. She has never failed me. Not once.” “I guess if you feel this guilty about land, you would never cheat on me.” “True data, baby. True dat.”

We finished the hike in silence. Me trying to reconcile irrational feelings of earth betrayal and wondering how I would get back to Cibola, alone, and test my blood. Her, I’m sure, wondering what the hell goes on inside my mind.

The Helicopter

After another ridiculously expensive meal with mediocre food, it seems all food in Sedona is overpriced except for the tasty organic Thai Spices restaurant we ate at twice. The first time it was no waiting. The second there was a longish wait so we took our food to go. One of our breakfasts set us back $50 for nothing special, typical eggs, links, potatoes, pancakes. We lunched on two pops, a foot long sub, and a 6-inch sub for which we were gouged for $35. I can see paying a premium for quality food but these were kinda meh, not nearly as good as Subway which tastes better by virtue of being half the price. Before the chopper flight, we had so-so burgers at a very slow serving Bar & grill. On the plus side, the fires were crispy. My recommendation for Sedona either eat at the Thai place or make your own food. It will save a ton of money. After the burgers, we moseyed on up to the airport for our helicopter ride.

Our hotel wasn’t terribly far from the airport. Still, we took the car. The long hikes left a lingering dull ache in my knees. There was more hiking on the horizon thus the car.

Before boarding, everyone weighs in then are arranged to balance the load. I was lucky to be chosen for the co-pilot seat giving me a wide and distant view. The three behind were forced into a more limited perspective. The fifteen-minute ride, normally $100 per person, was way too short especially that time includes the takeoff and landing along with approaches. There was probably 10 minutes, maybe less, to actually view the spectacular landscape. Not nearly enough to absorb the majesty. I was glad we chose to fly late in the evening. The colors were warming up increasing the beauty in the eye of this beholder. It’s really difficult to describe the experience so the pictures must suffice.

Co-Pilot

Helicopter Scenery

Cathedral Rock from Helicopter

Helicopter Scenery

To be continued…

Adultery in Sedona, Part 2 May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. ~Edward Abbey…

#Sedona

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themousai · 6 years

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Q+A: Geoff Ong

You’re just about to release your new single - tell us about what inspired it, and how would you convince someone who’s never heard your music to give it a listen? So I wrote this song about that moment when you realise that someone who you used to know is now a stranger again - kinda like a full circle thing I guess. I think for some people they realise that it's happening gradually, but for me it happened really suddenly and I was like 'woah' and normally when I'm like 'woah' it means I should write a song.

My whole thing with making music is that I want to be a pop star for dorks. I love the sounds and all the ear candy in pop music (as in like the cool hooks and sonic elements, not candy that comes from ears bc that tastes really bad I've tried it) and I love that it's kinda like a superhero movie in that it can provide us with some escapism.

But for me I never felt like I could really relate to the people who were performing it - it doesn't feel real. I think a lot of pop can feel slick and manufactured and cynical. I want to make pop music which is the opposite of that - relatable, intimate, and earnest.

You’ve been making music for a few years now, tell us about one of your favourite memories from your musical journey? Oh man, SO many to choose from! One of my favourite memories would be when I was playing a small showcase at SXSW in 2015 and this really drunk guy who I had never met came up to me after my set and told me that he loved me, like REALLY loved me, not just as a musician, but me as a person, and that he wanted me to be happy. I remember it strongly because it was very funny but also just a really sweet moment of drunken human connection amongst the madness of SXSW where everyone is a musician doing the 'networking' thing and trying to figure out what you can do for them.

What can we expect next from you? Mmm honestly I don't really know at this point. After 'Don't Know You No More' comes out I feel like I need to take a break from releasing stuff. It's only been 2 singles but I'm already starting to feel a bit burnt out on the whole release and promo cycle! So much admin. So many lists. So many SPREADSHEETS omg.

So I think I'm going to just try and write heaps for the next couple of months. I have a whole bunch of new sounds that I really want to start exploring! Then maybe early next year I'll start thinking about an EP or album.

If you could start one silly rumour about yourself - what would it be? I have 7 stomachs like a cow and because of this I can eat rocks like a cow.

Lastly - convince us to come to your next show in 3 words. I'll eat rocks onstage

Quick Fire

1. The one song I wish I wrote is... I really can't answer this question so I'm gonna go with Darude Sandstorm final answer.

2. Three things I can’t live without are... Human connection, the freedom to be creative, and, honestly, the internet.

3. If I could only play music in one genre for the rest of my life it would be... Interpretive Free-Jazz-Influenced Grindcore (pls don't hold me to this)

4. Three adjectives that describe my life are... Musical, varied, and fortunate.

5. If I held a world record it would be for... Only partially eating my snacks (this one is for Julia and Yona)

6. My first memory of loving music is... Learning how to play 'What's My Age Again' by Blink-182 on guitar and thinking I was the coolest kid in the world.

7. The song of mine that I am the most proud of is… 'How Long, Boston'. I feel like it takes me back to a very specific time in my life, but somehow also remains applicable to me wherever I am.

8. One band I could listen to on repeat forever is… Again I really can't answer this question so I'm gonna go with Darude Sandstorm final answer.

9. The ideal environment for me to create music in is… Depends! If I'm writing on my own I like to feel cozy and warm. If I'm jamming, I like to be around musicians who create an environment where it feels safe and non-judgy for everyone to take creative risks.

10. If I could have any two bands open for me they would be… Mmm I have a hard time imagining this one in my head because I feel like I'm not ready to have anyone like 'open' for me yet? I would love to write a song with Phoebe Bridgers. And take stage performance lessons from Bruno Mars. Or just have everyone who I've ever played music with be on a stage together simultaneously.

#geoff ong #nz music #hailtree #auckland #interviews #popstar #pop music #pop #catchy #boston #america

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amongushq · 7 years

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Welcome to Among Us, TILLY! HAZEL LEVESQUE ( with the faceclaim of JESSICA SULA ) has found shelter in CAMP JUPITER, where we hope SHE will fit in nicely. Please make sure to check the “after applying” section of our navigation here!

Hazel could be a challenging character to tackle: she has grown up and evolved so much throughout the books, it might be difficult to know what direction to take her next. Here we are presented with a Hazel who's more mature, while still keeping this freshness about her that made her so likeable in canon. The strength she built along the way remains as well, giving us a well-rounded, in-character Hazel with added depth and challenges. This app allows us to see her in a different light, and we very much like what we see !

AND YOU ARE…?

What is your full name, and when were you born?

Hazel was fidgeting. She wasn’t a fidgety person, truly, but the entire reason for this interview was unknown to her, which made her very uncomfortable. Brushing a strand of hair out of her face, Hazel soon started to feel like the interviewer was trying to make her feel annoyed or unwelcome with the first question already, but she wouldn’t let them. “My name is Hazel Levesque. You might have heard of me? I’m not sure how much of camp gossip you follow. I was born on December 17th, 1928. I’m twenty years old.” When the interviewer looked at her rather shocked, she simply nodded, after which she looked down at her hands, which momentarily stopped fidgeting with the hem of her camp shirt. They weren’t out to get her. They really didn’t know. But Hazel didn’t elaborate: it had been a long day and she was a little tired.

Have you been claimed, or do you belong to a legacy? If yes, state your godly parent / heritage.

Everyone, and she meant everyone, even the kids in New Rome, knew about her heritage. Hazel didn’t keep it a secret, but she wasn’t proud of it either. “My father is Pluto. From this I gather you really don’t know about what happened - which is fine!” She felt a little rude, so she recoiled quickly. “It’s fine, I don’t expect everyone to keep up with everything. A lot has happened!” She let a seemingly nervous little giggle escape her lips: the previous questions made her anxious, but she wasn’t okay with them judging her like this. She decided to be polite, and nothing more. “I spend a lot of time working on… well, working with, rather, the Labyrinth, since I can sense most of the tunnels and passageways. So that’s where you’ll find me most of the time.” She subtly slipped in this line to make the interviewer aware of her abilities underground, really, should they decide to do something stupid, while still keeping all the other Pluto-related things and Hecate’s blessing hidden. The element of surprise could work in her favor.

Where are you currently based? Are you attending a Camp (Half-Blood / Jupiter), or are you living full-time in New Athens / New Rome? Is it a combination of both?

Perhaps they got the hint, or perhaps this was standard procedure, but Hazel was just glad they asked questions she could answer without too much trouble now. “I’m still the centurion in the fifth cohort, so I spend most of my time at Camp Jupiter. I’m in my eighth year of service right now, so when those are done, I’m… allowed to start a life in New Rome. I’m not sure I want that, though. Frank will probably still be praetor for his own final year of service, and I don’t want to force him to travel between New Rome and Camp Jupiter more than he already does. I’m very loyal to the legion,” this was said with a glare towards her conversational partner, “so it only makes sense that I serve as long as I can.”

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? ( If you’re applying for a canon character, are you diverging from book-canon? If so, how?)

The order of the questions was a little random, but Hazel didn’t feel like making a snarky comment, so she kept her cool and just told them what they wanted to know. Seeing as they didn’t know ( or pretended not to know? Hazel wasn’t sure ) about the war or her general life, that was what she would discuss. She wasn’t ashamed. “Like I said, I was born in 1928, which you seemed surprised about, so I’ll talk about that a little bit. I come from a mixed batch of ancestors, there’s definitely Chinese and European people in my family tree, but my mother cut herself off from her family, so I don’t know anything about them. She’s is Trinidadian, but she moved to New Orleans when she was very young. She fell in love with Pluto, whom she summoned through Hecate. He granted her a wish, which she made filled with greed. I was cursed for a while, but not anymore.” Her fidgeting returned. She felt like she was revealing too much, but they did ask for things about herself, and this was who she was. A product of so many things and circumstances it simply felt right to describe them. “I was born in New Orleans but we moved to Alaska for… different reasons.” Despite many, many years passing since the events, this wound was too fresh to calmly talk about. Even just thinking about it, Hazel felt guilt bubbling up in her stomach, so those stories were better left untouched. The rest was alright, though. “I die-,” she swallowed thickly, having no idea how the interviewer would take it. She had only been assured of the confidentiality of the interview, not about the interviewer’s discretion. This made her shut up.

“I’m guessing you want more general stuff. I like horseback riding, I spend a lot of time near the stables. Arion is a free spirit, and I would never put him in the stables, but he comes ‘round every once in awhile for treats.” Hazel smiled fondly as she thought of the creature running wild like he wanted, creating sonic booms or whatever he enjoyed. The fact that he ate gold was their little secret.

What were you doing prior to The Recall?

Hazel didn’t want to be here anymore, she had more important things to do ( train, check on the cohort, talk to Frank about pressing matters, see if Nico had arrived yet and if he brought River this time, things like that ) so she stopped blabbering on and on. Her answers would be concise from now on. “I was being a decent legionnaire and centurion, training hard and resolving issues effectively.” Hazel crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair ever so slightly. “Speaking of which, are we done here, now? I have my duties.”

SHOWTIME!

“No, sweetie, don’t cry. It’ll be alright, you’ll see!” Hazel’s newest recruit, a scrawny legacy of Ceres, had scraped his arm falling off one of the smaller horses used in training. He tried to keep his tears to himself, like a good Roman, but Hazel could see it was hard for him, so she sank to her knees to get face to face with him. “The secret to riding a horse, is that the horse has to trust you.” She gently took his hand, and squeezed it to reassure him. Once he opened it, she placed a little sugar cube inside. “Now, hold your hand out to her.” He did, and Hazel clicked her tongue to call the horse back. The mare was hesitant, but the gorgeous creature did return to them. The boy held out his hand, and the horse gently nibbled the cube off of it. “See! You don’t scare her, and you’re not scared of her, right?” He gave a shake of his head. “All you have to now is get back on the horse and go again.” She helped him up, and was about to ask if they should send for a medic first for his knee, when the legacy got on the horse by himself, gently patting her side. Hazel’s chest swelled up with pride. The boy would make a fine legionnaire once he proved himself with his act of bravery. She had a feeling it wouldn’t take too long. He didn’t have good connections, but she would gladly take him for the Fifth. Once the horses were put back in their stables and the recruits ran to the barracks to change for their next activity, Hazel went the other way, to the fort on the fields of Mars, where she could overlook the entire city without being seen.

That morning had looked much different. Sure, it had started off normally. Nice, even. Maybe even perfect. Breakfast in the mess hall with her cohort and Frank, who still hung out with his friends whenever he found time his praetor duties, and someone sassed Octavian, who threw his fist down on the table and blabbered about his ancestry. It had been funny, and the entire ordeal had been eventful and good, just the way Hazel liked it. It seemed like the spirits who served her food always gave her slightly bigger portions than the rest ever since the war, which she was fine with. The food was delicious and she had been the tiniest bit underweight straight after the war. The fauns also left her alone more often than not. Perhaps it was because she had always tried her best to be kind to them, or perhaps they respected or feared her now. Either way, Hazel was satisfied.

But then after breakfast and the first round of training, Reyna had called for a senate meeting with all the senators and centurions, and she had not looked happy. The satisfactory feeling Hazel had had before had faded as soon as she’d seen the look on Reyna’s face, immediately sensing something was wrong. Once the meeting had started, the praetor had looked around the room with a look that screamed concern. “My fellow campers…” Reyna always went straight to business; she never beat around the bush. “Today, we have an important order from Lord Jupiter himself.” Hazel straightened her back automatically. You did not mess with gods, she knew that more than anyone, and especially not the King of the Heavens himself. After a quick glance at Frank, who nodded at her in acknowledgement, she focused her attention on Reyna again in polite silence. “The mortal world is aware of our existence. A mole among us has released footage of one of our campers to which they have responded very strongly. The President -” five of the ten Senators let our groans, others laughed, but Hazel was terrified. She couldn’t respond. “As I was saying, the President ordered a manhunt for us. We’re in grave danger, and so Lord Jupiter made a decree of his own. It comes down to the following facts…”

It was two hours later before Hazel and the other centurions were released. The Senators, and Reyna and Frank ( to whom she didn’t get to say goodbye ) still had important matters to discuss, and the centurions needed to update their legionnaires on what had gone down in the two hours that had passed. Hazel and Dakota only exchanged looks before knowing who would speak. Hazel stood on a table, which felt barbaric, but otherwise the whispers would never have quieted down. “Legionnaires of Cohort Five!” she shouted in her most authoritative voice, until everyone was silent, after which she repeated Reyna’s instructions. Some campers were upset, some of them were angry and others were unsure, but Hazel didn’t have the time or opportunity to sort out her own emotions.

On the fort, she could. Of course, she felt trapped by the decision. That was the one thing she was sure of before. But then again, had she ever had plans to get out in the mortal world again, when Camp Jupiter and New Rome offered her safety and comfort? After Gaea’s war, Hazel had been sure she would never set foot outside again, but all she’d wanted to do lately was go on another quest. It had been dangerous and there had been the constant threat of dying (again), but she had felt like she did things that mattered, like training new recruits. The afternoon sun was warming her skin comfortably, momentarily making her worries and conflicting emotions. That, and the voice that came from behind her. ”Hey, sis,” it sounded, instantly bringing a smile to her face. “Nico!” she sighed happily, whirling around to hug her brother tightly. “I missed you.” Her smile quickly faded, though, seeing the look on Nico’s face. “You heard the news too, right?” The look in his eyes said everything Hazel needed to know, so she asked no further questions and just nuzzled her nose into his neck. “We’ll be alright. It’s going to be fine, this won’t last forever. They can’t keep us here forever.”

A little while had passed since the Recall, and people were already getting restless. Hazel believed her own statement less and less and felt worse and worse about telling such lies to her legionnaires. But she had to stay positive for them: if their own centurion didn’t believe they could win a war they hadn’t even begun fighting, then why should they? So Hazel kept their spirits high. Talked courage into their hearts and answered any questions they had. She made sure to check on the Labyrinth and its progress often, she helped in the building process, and she only voiced her concerns to Nico, Frank and the other members of the group that had been through many of her experiences with her. But only Nico truly understood what it was like to be an outsider in their own camp, to be disgusted and also respected at the same time, even after so many years since their heroic adventures. The others were all hailed as heroes, but Nico and Hazel would always remain the children of the Underworld, it seemed. Never fully trusted.

#accepted #hazel levesque #pjo rp #percy jackson rp #greek mythos rp

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