#like ok i sure look like a very popular version of dave

[lord-of-the-weird]

Hello it is SRS once again wahoo baby!❄️☃️ sorry in advance for long ask just so many thoughts! Feel free to just answer one or two questions if u want :)

Armadillos in the backyard! That’s wild idk if I’ve ever seen one in person. Do they really curl up in balls inside their shell or is that a myth from childhood?

AHHH I am SO happy to hear you enjoyed some of the Beatles songs! That genuinely made my day :) I would also love some song recs!!! What have you listened to in the past year that you’d recommend? And yea I’m pretty much just a rock listener lmao but for sure d looking to expand my taste!!

Thank you! Yes my Hanukkah has been excellent. It’s one of my very favorite holidays! Ok mini explanation of Hanukkah: the story is basically, “The Greeks tried to kill us but we beat them instead yay!! However they totally also trashed our temple and only left one jar of oil :( BUT WAIT the menorah we lit magically stayed lit for 8 days on barely any oil omg!” There are a ton of traditions incorporated into the holiday, like lighting candles for 8 days (one more each night) and eating foods fried in oil. Much fun!

Ooh that sounds fun! What Christmas traditions do you have? my friend who celebrates Christmas recently asked me as a Jew to try and explain what I thought the Christmas story was and the results were so amusing.

Wait that’s so cool that you’ve started crocheting! I feel like everyone I know has just taken that up. I don’t have a specific project in mind but I’d love to make some kind of shirt or sweater for myself? My roommate is an excellent knitter so I’ll be drawing on her advice frequently lol. What are you crocheting??

Ok I like cannot make myself read nonfiction (unless it’s about classic rock lmao, but even then just barely). I really love mysteries and magical realism! My favorite author is Haruki Murakami (basic I’m sorry). ALSO favorite animal is dogs and favorite Beatle is John (I could rant about his genius for hours). OK FAREWELL MUCH LOVE -SRS

hiya babe!

and YES ARMADILLOS CAN CURL UP! just not the ones where i live😭 there’s only two species that can curl into a ball the brazilian three banded and southern three banded armadillo the former is a lazarus species! (wrongly thought to be extinct) sorry i will take any and every excuse to info dump about animals😁

let’s see i think the three top bands that i’ve listened to most of this year are måneskin, foo fighters and the bee gees! here are a few of my favorites please do not feel any pressure to listen to them!

måneskin:

TIMEZONE

THE LONELIEST

Coraline

they’re semi new a band from Italy and good portion of their songs are in Italian and they have a really good rock sound!

foo fighters:

the sky is a neighborhood

run

waiting on a war

i know they’re pretty popular but i’ll give you a little information because a lot of people don’t seem to actually know much more than just their hits :( their lead singer Dave Grohl was nirvana‘s drummer! I highly recommend his book ‘the storyteller’ especially the audio version of him narrating it on youtube! Plus Dave and Taylor Hawkins’ (former friend drummer until his untimely death last year) had such a wonderful friendship! i love watching videos of them together♥️🥺

bee gees:

how deep is your love (easily my most played 45!)

how can you mend a broken heart

tragedy

honestly how they still continue making music after the death of disco is such an amazing an interesting story! in short a DJ named Steve Dahl started a riot after destroying a dumpster of disco records in the middle of a baseball game in ‘79 which kick started the death of disco after that no one would play Bee Gees music because they were “too disco” so instead they wrote songs for and with other singers so they could continue doing what they loved!

sooooo sorry for the info dump😅

aaaaaaaa! so glad you had a great holiday! i am semi familiar with that story but seeing as i learned it from tv i wasn’t sure how accurate it was😅 thank you so much for telling my about it!!!

well my family puts up a real christmas tree, decorate gingerbread houses and we put lights on the house! among other things like christmas breakfast and exchanging gifts on the 25th + opening christmas pajamas on the 24th!

oh my😂 i’m sure christmas could be quite confusing for someone who didn’t grow up with it especially since the way most people celebrate christmas is a combination of celebrations many cultures!

a shirt and/or sweater would be so cool! and having someone who already knows how to work with fiber projects i’m sure would help greatly! i wish you all the luck and i’d love you hear about your progress when you start! i’m *trying* to make a possum :)

omg i completely understand about the nonfiction thing glad i’m not the only one!😅 magical mystery realism sounds so cool! actually i’m not sure that i heard of that author i’ll have to look them up!

oooooh dogs!!!! do you have a favorite breed? and feel free to rant about john or music in general anytime!!!!

do you watch movies much if so do you have a favorite one? or tv show? and do you collect anything?

#srs23 #anon

[aroacedavestrider]

also lemme just talk about how when regarding homestuck, trying to prove youre the “real character” with a selfie isnt even a point that can be made anyway cause like. who even says dave strider is white and blond with straight fluffy hair??? dave isnt inherently white. no one can prove theyre “the real dave” by posting a selfie cause dave can look like literally anybody

#homestuck #dave strider #psa #headcanon #my post #dave speaks #text #bonk emoji #you guys can reblog this ! its not like off limits or anything #like ok i sure look like a very popular version of dave #which is very neat and epic #but acting like youre the Only Take On Dave Ever is so invalidating #not just to kinnies or fictives but just to peoples headcanons #or people who dont fit into that category who see themselves in him #but yknow. hrk #dave fictive moment

[arecomicsevengood]

TOP TEN OLDER MAINSTREAM COMICS I READ THIS YEAR

I kept track of all the comics I read this year, and not all of them were new. I have no idea who this will help or benefit but at least the circumstances of me only listing the completely arbitrary older work I read for the first time this year will deter anyone from arguing with me. However, for the sake of possibly being contentious, let me mention two comics that fall outside the top ten, because they’re bad:

Trencher by Keith Giffen. David King did a comic strip about Keith Giffen’s art style on this book in issue 2 of But Is It... Comic Aht that everybody loved, and made me be like, ok, I’ll check it out. But it’s basically just a retread of Lobo in terms of its tone and approach, but without Simon Bisley. I don’t really know why anyone wouldn’t think Bisley is the better cartoonist. Also, those comics are terrible. Thumbs down.

The Green Lantern by Grant Morrison, Liam Sharp, and Steve Oliff. I bought the first year of these comics for a dollar each off a dude doing a sidewalk sale. Found them sort of incoherent? I haven’t liked a new Grant Morrison comic in ages, with All-Star Superman being really the only outlier since like We3. This is clearly modeled off of European comics like Druillet or something, and would maybe benefit from being printed larger, I really dislike the modeled color too. But also it’s just aggressively fast-paced, with issues ending in ways that feel like cliffhangers but aren’t, and no real characters of interest.

As for the top ten list itself, for those who’ve looked at my Letterboxd page, slots 10-8 are approximately “3 stars,” 7-4 are 3 1/2 stars, slots 3 and 2 are 4 stars, with number one being a 4 1/2 star comic. The comics I’m listing on my “Best Of The Year” list that’ll run at the Comics Journal alongside a bunch of people are all 4 1/2 or 5 star comics. This is INSANELY NERDY and pedantic to note, and I eschew star ratings half the time anyway, because assignations of numeric value to art are absurd except within the specific framework of how strong a recommendation is, and on Letterboxd I feel like I’m speaking to a very small and self-selecting group of people whose tastes I generally know. (And I generally would not recommend joining Letterboxd to people!) But what I mean by all of this is just that there is a whole world of work I value more than this stuff, and I’ll recommend the truly outstanding shit to interested readers in good time.

10. Justice Society Of America by Len Strazewski and Mike Parobeck. Did some quarantine regressing and bought these comics, a few of which were some of the first comics I ever read, but I didn’t read the whole thing regularly as a kid. Parobeck’s a fun cartoonist, this stuff is readable. It’s faintly generic/baseline competent but there’s a cheap and readable quality to this stuff that modern comics lack. Interestingly, the letters column is made up of old people who remember the characters and feel like it’s marketed towards them, and since that wasn’t profitable, when the book was canceled, Parobeck went over to drawing The Batman Adventures, which was actively marketed towards kids. It’s funny that him and Ty Templeton were basically viewed as “normal” mainline DC Comics for a few years there and then became relegated to this specific subset of cartooning language, which everyone likes and thought was good but didn’t fit inside the corporate self-image, which has basically no aesthetic values.

9. The Shadow 18 & 19 by Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker. I’d been grabbing issues of this run of comics for years and am only now finishing it. Kyle Baker’s art is swell but Helfer writes a demanding script, these are slow reads that cause the eye to glaze over a bit.

8. The Jam 3-8 by Bernie Mireault. I made a post where I suggested Mireault’s The Jam might be one of the better Slave Labor comics. Probably not true but what I ended up getting are some colored reprints Tundra did, and some black and white issues published by Dark Horse after that. Mireault’s art style is kinda like Roger Langridge. After these, he did a crossover with Mike Allred’s Madman and then did a series of backups in those comics, it makes sense to group them together, along with Jay Stephens’ Atomic City Tales and Paul Grist’s Jack Staff, or Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, as this stream that runs parallel to Image Comics but is basically better, a little more readable, but still feeling closer to something commercial in intention as opposed to self-expression. Although it also IS self-expression, just the expression of a self that has internalized a lot of tropes and interests in superhero comics. If you have also read a lot of superhero comics, but also a lot of alternative comics, stuff like this basically reads like nothing. It’s comfort food on the same level of mashed potatoes: I love it when it’s well-done but there’s also a passable version that can be made when depressed and uninspired. But drawing like Roger Langridge is definitely not bad!

7. WildC.A.T.S by Alan Moore, Travis Charest, et al. I wrote a post about these comics a few months ago, but let me reiterate the salient points: There’s two collections, the first one is much better than the second, and the first is incredibly dumbed-down in its nineties Image Comics style but also feels like the best version of that possible, when Charest is doing art. Also, these collections are out of print now, a friend of mine pointed out maybe they can’t be reprinted because they involve characters owned by Todd McFarlane but Wildstorm is owned wholly by DC now.

6. Haywire by Michael Fleischer and Vince Giarrano. I made a post about this comic when I first read a few issues right around the time Michael Fleischer died a few years ago, but didn’t read all of it then. This feels way more deliberately structured than most action comics, with its limited cast and lack of ties to any broader universe, but it’s also dumb and sleazy and fast moving, and feels related to what were the popular movies of the day, splitting its influences evenly between erotic thrillers about yuppies and Stallone-starring action movies. The erotic thriller element is mostly just “a villain in bondage gear” which is sort of standard superhero comics bullshit but it’s also a little bit deeper than that. The first three issues, inked by Kyle Baker, look the best.

5. Dick Tracy by John Moore and Kyle Baker. These look even better! A little unclear which John Moore this is? There’s John Francis Moore, who worked with Howard Chaykin and was scripting TV around this time, but there’s another dude who was a cartoonist who did a miniseries for Piranha Press and then moved on to doing work for Disney on Darkwing Duck comics. Anyway, Kyle Baker colors these, they’re energetically cartooned, each issue is like 64 pages, with every page being close to a strip or scene in a movie. I’m impressed by them, and there’s a nice bulk that makes them a nice thing to keep a kid busy. (For the record, my favorite Kyle Baker solo comic is probably You Are Here.)

4. Chronos by John Francis Moore and Paul Guinan. I was moving on from DC comics by the late nineties, but Grant Morrison’s JLA was surely a positive influence on everyone, especially compared to the vibe there in the subsequent two decades. These are well-crafted. There’s a little stretch where it uses the whole “time-traveling protagonist” thing to do a run of issues which stand alone but fall in sequence too and it’s pretty smooth and smart. The art is strong enough to carry it, the sort of cartoony faces with detailed backgrounds it’s widely agreed works perfectly, but that you rarely see in mainstream comics. The coloring is done digitally, but not over-modeled enough to ruin it.

3. Martha Washington by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons. A few miniseries, all of which sort of get weaker as they go, but all in one book it doesn’t feel like it’s becoming trash as it goes or anything. When Miller dumbed down his storytelling in the nineties it really was because he thought it made for better comics, the tension between his interest in manga and Gibbons’ British-comics classicism feels productive. I do kind of feel like the early computer coloring ruins this a little bit.

2. Xombi by John Rozum and JJ Birch. Got a handful of these on paper, read scans of the rest. This is pretty solid stuff, not really transcendent ever, but feels well-crafted on a month-in, month-out level. I read a handful of other Milestone comics, and a lot of them suffered from being so beholden to deadlines that there are fill-in issues constantly. This is the rare one that had the same creators for the entirety of its run. There was a revival with Frazer Irving art a decade ago but I prefer JJ Birch’s black line art with Noelle Giddings’ watercolors seen here. They’re doing an early Vertigo style “weirdness” but with a fun and goofy sense of humor about itself. I haven’t read Clive Barker but this feels pretty influenced by that as well. (The Deathwish miniseries is of roughly comparable quality. I read scans of the rest of that after I made my little post and, yeah, it does actually feel very personal for a genre work, and the JH Williams art with painted color is great.)

1. Tom Strong by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse, etc. I got bored reading these as a teen but getting them all for cheap and reading them in a go was a pretty satisfying experience. It’s partly a speed-run through Moore’s coverage of the concept of a comic book multiverse seen in his Supreme run, minus the riffing on Mort Weisinger Superman comics, instead adding in a running theme of rehabilitating antagonists whose goals are different but aren’t necessarily evil. It’s more than just Moore in an optimistic or nostalgic mode, it also feels like he’s explaining his leftist morality to an audience that has internalized conflicts being resolved by violence as the genre standard.

[clonerightsagenda]

The epilogues look terrible and I don’t want to spend my time reading them... but I love + trust your judgement and your takes on things. Could you summarize them? (No pressure if you don’t want to)

OK, it’s been a few weeks since i read it, but I will do my best.NOTE: This is probably not comprehensive and definitely not objective. As a supplement, I did some poking around, and the MSPA wiki has some bullet points. I also eventually found another  summary on tumblr, albeit by someone who also didn’t like it, so it is probably biased as well. 

ANOTHER NOTE: Those content warnings weren’t a joke. Below are references to sexual content, assault, suicide, sexism, transphobia, character death, and probably some other stuff.

WHAT HAPPENED:

In the prologue, Rose summons John to inform him that he needs to defeat Lord English right now, or they will all experience terrible consequences. These are mostly meta consequences you can interpret as ‘if we don’t produce new Homestuck content on its 10th anniversary, everyone will give up on this franchise for real, and also canon doesn’t seem stable when the big bad never got beaten’. John goes to visit Roxy and Calliope before he leaves and is given the option to eat either meet or candy. This represents a choice he is supposed to make, and that choice creates two timelines.

In MEAT, John travels back in time and gathers three 16 year old versions of his friends. They confront Caliborn in the battle he represented in his Masterpiece and are sucked into the house juju. Vriska activates it, but not before being pulled into the black hole. Rose and Jade die immediately, with Rose’s body being destroyed and Jade’s falling into the black hole, because why should women get to fight the story’s biggest misogynist. Dave lands a solid hit on English before having his head bitten off Mami from PMMM style. John gets chomped on as well and a gold tooth ends up embedded in his chest. Davepeta appears and drags the wounded LE into the black hole. John finds his father’s wallet, retrieves his car, and slumps inside. Terezi appears, in bad shape after a long time wandering the ring. She seems confused at his state (explained because in CANDY she has been texting that version of him for years). She removes the tooth from his chest and they have sex.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Dave and Karkat have avoided talking about being a relationship for seven years, while Jade harasses them about becoming a threesome. This is explicitly tied to her abandonment issues but also she is referred to as a slut so like. Don’t love that. Jane is running for president, and Dave thinks this is terrible because she’s a woman fascist and doesn’t understand the economy and Karkat should run instead. Other shit is happening but I lost track. Rose is ill because she’s becoming her ‘Ultimate Self’ and seeing all timelines. Dirk claims he’s overcome the same problem and offers to help her but ends up controlling her and revealing he is the one actually writing this narrative.  There is a bit where the narration starts addressing the reader directly and then turns orange which I admit is genuinely cool and might have been interesting if done with characters I didn’t actually care about.

Dirk amps up controlling the narrative, directly forcing people to do and think certain things. (For example, he sequesters Rose away in his workshop and tells Kanaya via narration she believes Rose is better off with him, and she uncomfortably agrees without understanding why she thinks that.) He supports Jane’s bid for the presidency, even though she wants to crack down on trolls because they are naturally violent and reproduce too fast. Everyone tries to get Jake’s endorsement because he’s popular, which includes Jane attempting to seduce him in a very uncomfortable scene.Then Jade slips into a nice coma, because it’s not Homestuck without Jade losing her agency, and alt!Calliope starts using her as an avatar to take control of the narrative away from Dirk. They have some back and forth arguments before he is pushed out which, again, is genuinely clever but would be more enjoyable without all the edgy bullshit. Dirk eventually tricks alt!Callie and sedates Jade, taking back control of the story. Jane wins the presidency. Also at some point Meat!Roxy and Callie ID as nonbinary and start using they/them, and narrator!Dirk freaks out about it and misgenders them a lot, which is character assassination bc everyone knows Dirk is a trans icon. Anyway. Dave and Karkat have an awkward talk about their relationship where they keep dancing around things and Dirk tries to force Dave to kiss him. Dave gets frustrated because he’s aware someone is trying to make him do something (like with the Aimless Renegade), and eventually yells at Dirk to get out of his head before kissing Karkat. Terezi brings John back to Earth, and he begins to fade, since apparently LE’s tooth was poisoned with something more powerful than god tier that makes you irrelevant. Possibly a meta commentary on the hero or story not being needed once the big bad is gone. Terezi is sad about this and listens to him bleed while she smells him die. Then Dirk contacts her via narration and implies he can help her. She gets a text (later revealed to be Vriska). Dirk gets a spaceship from Jake after forcing him via narration to grovel about how much he loves him and then rejecting him and flying away with Rose and Terezi in tow. Jade wakes up long enough to tell everyone Dirk’s gone bad before she gets repossessed and starts pointing in his direction, prompting everyone to give chase. 

There is a final scene that will make more sense later, so I’ll add it later.

CANDY

John decides not to go fight LE. Roxy is delighted, and they began dating. Calliope tells John it is time to let Gamzee out of the fridge. Gamzee pops out and claims he is redeemed in a long speech making fun of sloppy redemption arcs. He then proceeds to be terrible for the rest of the story.Candy essentially satirizes Harry Potter epilogue style fics. Jane marries Jake (it’s implied she essentially roofies him with the trickster lollipop) and has Gamzee on the side. They have a son named Tavros. John and Roxy have a son named Harry. Rose and Kanaya adopt a troll clone of Vriska and name her Vriska. Jade, Karkat, and Dave are all dating, but Dave and Karkat are miserable. Dirk kills himself when he realizes the timeline went off kilter. Jade’s corpse from the Meat timeline crashes to earth, and in the middle of the funeral (which was genuinely a good scene) she sits up, possessed by alt!Calliope. Alt!Callie sequesters herself on the old meteor, now landed, and explains to Aradia and Sollux that this timeline is a dead end and she is protecting it from the influence of the prince. She also, in a parallel to Dirk’s reveal in Meat, talks about how every narrator has an agenda even if the text is formatted to make you not realize that.Jane becomes a fascist dictator and begins oppressing trolls. Karkat eventually get sick of being in a trio and runs off to be a resistance leader, including getting a sick eye patch (reference to Summer Teen Romance). Meenah stole the Ring of Life from Meat John and lands in the session; she and Karkat begin dating. Other ghosts begin falling from the sky as well, and Gamzee converts them to his redemption religion.John feels like something is really off.  His only solace is texting Terezi a lot, and he seems closer to her than he is to his wife. He and Roxy break up for a while and then (non-romantically) reconcile. Jake eventually leaves Jane and takes Tavros with him. Jade and Dave become rebels as well, then Dave meets a hologram of Obama, who helps him attain his ultimate self, putting his soul in a new robot body. 

Oh, also Vriska falls out of the sky, has hatesex with Gamzee, kills him, and then talks with Rose and Kanaya’s Vriska about how she loves Terezi. Then she texts her, as seen in the Meat timeline. Isn’t Vriska 13 and Gamzee an adult at this point? Probably. There’s a lot of questionable age stuff in this.

I’m sure I missed some details. Can you tell I’m losing steam.

Anyway, the two last chapters of each section reference the other storyline. At the end of Meat, Lord English’s body falls out of the sky, and alt!Callie (still in Jade’s body) devours it, becoming powerful enough to battle Dirk. Candy!Davebot arrives and he and Aradia jump into the black hole in pursuit.At the end of Candy, Dirk’s ship nears a new planet where he intends a new game of SBURB to be played. Rose is in a robot body serving as his handmaid essentially, and Terezi’s also on board.  

TAKEAWAYS:

There are a lot of different interpretations of the epilogue. A mockery of the two extremes of fanfic. Andrew Hussie continuing the theme of ‘all authors are tyrants by nature’ and using his self-insert to display how he hates his own story but also can’t stop telling it. Dirk trying to create conflict by making himself a villain because otherwise they’ll lose relevance and disappear. Musing on how being arbitrarily labeled 'grown up’ when you’re not ready (aka handed godhood by a game that doesn’t understand people) can fuck you up, and there is no single winning screen in life. Just a big old meta experiment on unreliable narrators. I can see where some of this is coming from, but frankly, I found it disturbingly sexist (even if it is intended to be so for effect). A lot of the sex and violence felt over the top and graphic just to be #ow the edge rather than serving any narrative purpose. Also, authors can do what they want with their texts, and they’re allowed to write tragedies, but after Hussie’s self-insert informs Caliborn that the most important stories are about friendship and teamwork and the fandom (that I’ve seen anyway) really responding to the bonds between characters, it felt cruel. That’s my feeling. Not everyone shares it. But hey, I’ve got my solution.

#Anonymous #homestuck// #bluh bluh huge bitching alert

[cookiedoughmeagain]

Haven DVD Commentaries: 4.08 - Crush

Commentary with Speed Weed (yes, that is actually his name), writer for the episode and Shernold Edwards, writer for the next episode

[As we see Duke burying Wade] SW: “This was the very first day of filming for this episode and I thought Eric just knocked this out of the park.” They really dug a hole in the ground for Eric to roll a dummy into. The location is near their production office in Chester.

Both commentators agree on the cuteness/adorableness of Emma Lahana as Jennifer.

SW talks about the deleted scene of Nathan and Audrey waking up together; it’s on the DVD, it’s also online. “Since 4.07 ended with them jumping into each other’s arms we wanted to open with that, but it got cut basically for length. Because of the big emotional scene at the end of the episode (which also takes places in Audrey’s apartment), we wanted to have space for that to breathe.” SE: “Don’t be upset about that though fans, because I try to throw in them making out wherever I possibly can.”

[As Duke is telling Jennifer in the Herald that he’s leaving town] SW: “I just love what Eric did here. He’s an actor who when you push his character to the edge he really performs well. We get him to this place where because he’s killed his brother he decides he should leave town, and I just love this moment of performance. And actors tell me that when you’re acting against someone who’s really solid it makes it all the more special, and to have Emma on the other side of it was great.”

[As Duke first sees the effects of the pressure Trouble in the road] SW: “We had originally scripted that the effects of this pressure Trouble were to be seen as an advancing sea-green wave. For a variety of reasons we decided not to do it that was but that mean production had to make all of these things implode because of the growing pressure .. and just hats off to the production team who created all these things with a pressure differential and got them to crush like that.” SE: “In case you haven’t figured it out already, Speed’s the science guy.” SE: “It’s true. I spend about 10 years writing science magazine articles for Discover Magazine, National Geographic, popular science.” And as this is the first commentary he’s ever done he just wants to take the opportunity to say “Speed Weed is my name; Weed is my family last name, and Speed is not my legal name but is a nickname my parents gave me the day I was born. I’ve had it my entire life and I’ve never used any other name.”

[As we see the decompression chamber that Duke and Jack put Vince and Dave into] SW: “So they built that. [*surprise from Shernold*] Our fantastic art department headed by Jennifer Stewart built that out of metal and wood and cardboard and it looks so good and so real. And they did it in a way that you can shoot the inside and the outside.” SE: “It looks really good! They even dirtied up the windows.” It was set up at a location called North West Cove, and is about 300 yards from the Grey Gull [the location in reality that is, not in the story].

[As we see Duke argue with Audrey and Nathan on their way to speak to Vince and Dave outside the compression chamber] SW: “This is one of my favourite scenes in this episode because I love it when you get your main characters hot at each other. And they are really hot here and they have reason to be. The challenge as we designed these epsiodes is to make sure that things are grounded and real and people have real emotional core as to why they feel the way they feel and argue the way they argue. By the way the light up there is phemnomenal. This scene was at sun set and the light was gorgeous.

They have a selection of questions soliticted via Twitter and pick one out of a hat; “I’d love to know the reactions of some of the actors when they learned what their characters were doing next.” SW: “This is a really good question, but the truth is the actors read the scripts when they get them; alone at their houses or in their trailers. And I would love to be a fly on the brain, if you will, to know what their first thoughts are. Because they are the people who inhabit these characters and it’s our job to make sure that we take them in interesting and suprising directions and yet ones that are also emotionally grounded. And we have actors that care about their characters and they push back on us if they don’t feel that what they’re doing is justified…. And they’re fiercely protective of their characters in a really great way. So I wish I could answer that first moment of what they feel like when they react.” And he talks about the process of shooting, about how for the 7 days they’re shooting one episode they will also be prepping the next one - and so that’s the point where actors get to talk to the writers and make any comments. “And more often than not it’s just a case of having a conversation and coming to an understanding. On this particular episode I don’t remember any reactions other than, ‘That’s great!’”

Another question from Twitter; “How long had William’s existence been plotted?” SW: “So, we had never imagined that whoever created the Troubles acted alone. So in a sense, William has been around for a very long time. I will say that the specificity of William came about in the very early stages of our designing season 4 (which would have been January 2013 when I first joined the show).

They both talk about the actor playing Aiden (lead on a Canadian show called The Listener that Shernold worked on) and what a good job he did and how he had no prep; they only got to talk to him once he was on set in costume already. And about what a great job the director for the episode did, how he is great at bringing out performances from the actors.

The horseshoe crabs with human eyes that Jennifer sees where built by the production team using a real horseshoe crab carapace (which curiously enough are all over the place in Maine but don’t exist in Nova Scotia, so they had to buy one from afar). And they painted human eyes on it and mounted it on a little remote control car.

Another Twitter question; “Since you were new to writing for Haven last season, what did it take to up to speed with the series?” SW: “This is my first genre show. Prior to writing for this, I wrote for police procedurals and political shows largely, and this is my first sci-fi/fantasy show and I have to say I’m so excited that this is the show I landed in on because if I’d landed on a zombie show or a vampire show or something like that, you have maybe five rules that you have to follow. This show tests you so hard as an intelligent human being because every week we reinvent the wheel. We invent the rules of the day. And so to answer the question, it took me a long time. And the writing staff here was incredibly welcoming to a guy who didn’t have a lot of genre experience. Honestly, in this room a lot of pitches start something like this; ‘Do you remember in the third reel of the second resident evil movie….?’ and I’m totally lost with that kind of thing. I look around the table and everyone else is nodding like they know exactly what’s going on and I have no clue whatsoever. But it’s such a warm and familial room… and I guess the nice thing is that you can make up your rules with every episode. So we were very specific with the pressure rules of this and we spent a long time on the paranoia rules of episode 4.09.”

SE: “What is Duke doing with that flip phone? You know he wants to press some buttons.” SW: “Duke only has like, steampunk phones.”

[As Duke and Nathan argue after talking with Jack] SW: “Oh here comes the punch, I’m so excited for this punch.” SE: “He is so good looking.” SW: “We have actors who largely do their own stunts. There!” SE: “Oooh that was good!” SW: “Yep. And so the way they do that is, they will shoot two versions of that. They will go full speed to the moment where the fist hits the face, and they freeze. And as they freeze, the AD calls make up and make up runs in and puts the blood on Duke’s fist and Nathan’s chin and they continue through the action. And then in post you marry it together so you have a full sweep of the fist going through.” SE: “How often do they forget to pull the punch though? Do they smack him for real?” SW: “Well, on that they were perfect. He moved his fist really fast, and stopped it immediately as he touched Lucas Bryant’s chin. They’re good at that..” [As Duke pulls up in the van with the deep sea diving equipment inside] SW: “There’s a moment here I wanted to shout out to about Eric Balfour’s physicality … Oh here it is, so I hope this ends up on the blooper reel; in one take, as Duke got out of this Dominion Diving van - we’re at the top of a giant hill in Lunenberg here - he forgot to put the parking brake on and the van started rolling downhill and honestly all of us thought that this van was going to go 200 feet vertically downhill and kill someone. And Eric Balfour god bless him, got in that van and stopped it in a way I don’t think any other actor could have.” SW: “OK so the suits; these are real, deep sea, pressure diving suits. They were provided to us by a deep sea salvage company near Halifax called Dominion Diving. It was part of our agreement that we got to use their van and show their name in the take. So for most of this, unless you can see the actor’s face, these are actually the Dominion Diving guys walking in their own suits. And they are really heavy suits because they’re meant to be used under water where they’re neutrally boyant, but on land … All I can tell you is Eric and Lucas spent the better part of a day in those suits and if they put them on for 10 minutes they were sweating like hell. And the same is true of Emily and god bless her because she did a great job and she had a baby just a few months before and she was totally game getting in these suits and doing all this stuff and it was very physically challenging.”

Another Twitter question; “Since it was the same day from one episode to the next (8 and 9) how much time is spent discussing the transition?” SE: “We have to plan that, we have  to make it realistic. And I thought it was particularly clever with these two episodes because there’s the drama of the shot going off in 8 and then rolled it back in 9 to see what actually happened… So yes, to answer the question we do plan - hopefully effectively - between transitions like this.” SW: “It is very tempting in these shows to not have a nighttime and a session of sleep pass. And there are differing opinions (both in this writers’ room and writers’ rooms in general) to not slow down the drama by having a day pass. One feeling is that you have to be true to reality; you can’t have a 26 hour daylight day. The other feeling is; most people don’t notice. And in the tension between those two; you get what you get. It’s a great question because it means that people are really paying attention.” [As Duke and Nathan get their helmets off] SW: “You can see here how sweaty these guys are and in this take they haven’t had the suits on for very long; they’re just super heavy. And those guys loved that. They had so much fun in those suits; it was such a departure for them.”

SE [About Duke]: He is /so/ good looking. I guess we know which team I’m on. Actually, I am neither waffle nor pancake, I am team Shuke because if Duke was real character there would be no competition. He would be like ‘Shernold, where’ve you been all my life?’ And I would be like, ‘I’m right here, what took you so long?’” SW: “Have you told Eric that?” SE: “It’s Duke. Not Eric. Eric and I have a friendship that’s based on professionalism and respect and fun. But if there was a Duke-Duke, like a /real/ Duke...” [As we see Jennifer inside the Rouge] SW: “Oh here it comes … this scene. Duke’s changed his mind. So as this is being shot [Duke kissing Jennifer] I’m sitting about where the kitchen is and this was really hot. I’ll just say it; it was hot. These two had a chemistry for sure.” SE: “And she is adorable.”

[As we see Audrey and Nathan in her apartment] SE: “I can’t say enough about how great these two are in this scene.The truth is our actors love - they’ve have fun with the suits and all that, but when they get to do what we call a two-hander and just play the emotion (especially something that’s built up over three seasons) and dig deep into how their characters feel about each other, I do think I’m not speaking out of turn when I say that this is one of their favourite things to do. And it seemed like this, they treated it like a short play, and they get to run it through without stopping. And I think that’s when we see them at their best.” SW: “There were lot of questions about this scene from the Twitterverse and someone asked a very smart question about how the actors prepped for that scene.” So this conversation where they are coming to the decision that maybe Audrey should shoot Nathan, is cut into three or four scenes in the edit, but on the day they shot it through all in one go. “And I really want to take my hat off to the director and to Emily and Lucas, because, we live in a world where supernatural things don’t happen …” SE: “That we know of.” SW: “... people don’t have to shoot their one true love in order to end supernatural Troubles. And yet for this scene to work, it has to be real and grounded, and you have to decide that the greater good and the best thing is that you have to kill your one true love. And they (the actors) knew that’s a tall order; it’s not easy. And they took this so seriously. And I was so affected watching this. And we didn’t do a huge amount of sizes because we knew we wanted to be close in this - by that I mean how close is the camera on the actors. If I remember correctly the director was thinking that they might want to break them up and shoot them bit by bit,” so that Emily could do multiple takes at the emotional level 1, then move to the next level for multiple takes, then stay at the final level for multiple takes, “but god bless her Emily decided to do the whole rise and the whole arc of it time after time, take after take. And I can’t really answer the question because when they were at home two days before this I don’t know how they prepared for it. But I do know that when they showed up on set that day they were ready. Both for the lovey-dovey scene at the beginning of the episode [which was shot directly before this] and for the awfulness of this scene at the end of the episode. The emotional difficulty of it.” SE: “And I would gues that these two - they’re such terrific friends too and their families are close everything - would pick up the phone and talk to each other about it, or that they would get on set and just be in the moment.”

[As Duke, Jennifer, Vince and Dave are talking at the bottom of the steps outside the Gull] SE: “Quick point of local interest; John Dunsworth who plays Dave, you can almost see it in that shot of Duke, his family owns like a hundred acres of coastal land right next to the Grey Gull. And at lunch on this day, he took me to his private dock and out on a boat ride around the cove and it was one of my most memorable experiences from my time up there I really enjoyed it.” SE: “He’s so much fun.”

#haven syfy #haven dvd commentaries #4.08 - crush

[muses-run-wild]

So i’m going to test muses out on this blog and my OC blog because i already have so many muses on other blogs i think i’m going to make a mulit-muse blog. So here are the test muses i’m putting opens up for and a short bio. I’m putting this under a read more because it’s so long.

Red Dwarf fandom

Dave Lister - He the only human aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf. (Which is in space but i have a way to get him (and anyone else on this show) to most earth settings)  Now he spends most days with his Hologram roommate(rimmer). A humanoid mutated version of his cat. Also a mechanoid named Kryten they picked up along the way. He loves beer and curry. he thinks he's a great guitar player. He’s also kinda lazy.

Arnold Rimmer- He was a second technician on the mining ship red dwarf.  Now he is a hologram (hard light) brought back to keep Lister company. He loves the military. He can be self-loathing but also think he's the greatest thing around.  He’s annoying and has not really had any relationships. He’s got a lot of issues but he can be very interesting.

The drew carey show

Lewis kiniski-  He’s a janitor at DrugCo (though he has an IQ of 162). He’s kinda of a creep sometimes but has a great heart. He goes to Warsaw bar a lot with his three friends. He also is a Co-owner of buzzbeer. His best friend is Oswald.Lives above the Warsaw with Oswald

Oswald Harvery- His best friend would describe him as a man child stuck in a prolonged adolescence. He’s a Delivery driver for Global Parcel. He’s also a co-owner for Buzz-beer and a mess he Lives above the Warsaw with Lewis.

Drew carey- He has a sweetheart and works in an endless job going nowhere. (Human recourse at Windfred-louder a department store, He is the founder and co-owner of buzz-beer. He is constantly fighting with his co-worker MiMi pulling mean pranks on each other. He lives in the house he grew up in and sometimes wonders if his life is going to go anywhere.

Judging Amy

Sean potter- He works DCFS. He’s a hard-working guy who is also at odds a lot with his employee Maxine sometimes. Yet he regards her as a close friend. He is a sweet guy trying to find his backbone at work.

Maxine Gray- She is a mother of grown kids. She is a social worker at DCFS.  She is opinionated, strong-willed and kinda has anger issues. She does what she needs to do to help the families and kids even if it means bending things.

Community

Jeff winger- He was once a smooth-talking Lawyer and after he was found out for a fake degree he ended up at Greendale. He can bullshit the day away. He egotistical and can come off as a d-bag but there is a heart under there. He will hit on anything thats hot.

Friends

Chandler bing -He had a boring job that he isn’t exactly a fan of. He lives with his best friend Joey. he is a  very sarcastic person with self-loathing tendencies. He childish at times. He freaks out pretty easily. He has an effeminate nature.

Buffy the vampire slayer

Spike- He is a vampire. He’s British a bit punk and can be a sarcastic ass. Depending on when you find him he’s obsessing over his love Drusilla or planning on taking down the Slayer.  He tends to let love control his life at times. If he cares about you he’ll do what it takes to make sure you’re ok.

Buffy- She was picked as the chosen one in high school. Now she’s buffy the vampire slayer. Her best friends are always there backing her up. She can be very sassy. Almost always had a one-liner. She had amazing strength and can kick ass. She falls in love hard and when it goes she tries to show it doesn’t hurt as much. She’s got a good heart.

Xander- He grew up being best friends with Willow. He was a basic horny teenager. He makes jokes constantly and is awkward.  He has gained a lot of confidence while working with buffy. He is always hitting on girls who are usually ones he can’t get. Yet being shot down never stops him. He’s usually seen as the loser of his friend group even though he has great skills.

The golden girls

Blanche-shes a southern bell. who is very much a daddy's girl. She can be very promiscuous. She tries her best to be the classiest person in the room. Even if her actions sometimes don’t prove that. She is the owner of the house that all of the girls live in. She is always lying about her age and does a lot of beauty treatments to keep herself looking young. She has 5 children. She loves doing things like dance class, plays, and community service projects. She was a Southern Baptist girl.

Dorthy-Shes a substitute teacher. She's strong, sarcastic, grounded and she also can be intimidating, Shes very smart. She was knocked up in high school by Stan and married him. She had 2 great kids. They got divorced later after stan cheated on her. She's very tall and had a deep voice. She can sing and is very funny.  She lives with her mother along with the other two roommates.

Rose- She is from St. Olaf and will never shut up about it. (Much to her roommate's dismay) She can seem naive and plain. Shes very kind. She can talk all day about the most bizarre stories. She’s crazy competitive.  She can take charge here and there. Shes easily scared. She’s also pretty agile. She’s good on the piano. she can be a push-over. she has trouble lying.  Shes Lutheran. She absolutely loves animals mostly from growing up on a farm. She had 5 kids with her husband Charlie. She’s worked at a grief counseling center. She loves doing charity work. She loves the tv show Miami Vice

Sophia- She was born in Sicily and references it a lot. She has no Scillian accent. Instead, she’s got a thick Brooklyn one.  She has 3 children. She had a stroke which is what everyone blames her uncensored comments on) She hates Shady Pines retirement home.  She sometimes hints that her family had Mod connections.  She believes strongly in ancient Scillian customs and traditions.  Also in the power of the Scillian curse.  She makes wise-cracks and brazen remarks.  She loves her roommates very much but they aren’t safe from her comments. She's the oldest in the house and everyone tends to see her as a mother figure. She loves giving advice which usually starts with “Picture it...”

Scrubs

J.D- A doctor at Sacred Heart. He tends to keep his head in the clouds daydreaming a lot. He’s obsessed with his hair. He’s very outgoing despite being physically and socially awkward at times. He’s clumsy. He loves Appletinis, Pirates, unicorns and cute things. He can come off Feminine.   His best friend is Turk who works in surgery. They are constantly doing stupid stuff together and have nicknames for each other.  He’s constantly out for Dr.Cox approval (Who mostly calls him girls names) His enemy is the janitor. Her got one older brother.

Perry Cox- A doctor at Sacred Heart. He tends to teach with tough love. He’s sarcastic and can be animated.  He’s bitter and more emotional then he’d like to show. He rants constantly and belittles people. He actually does care and wants to push people to be better. He even goes behind the Chiefs back to make sure people get the best care. He has a sister a born again Christian. He grew up with an abusive alcoholic father. He has intimacy issues.  He’s dedicated to his job so much it can cause problems. He works out a lot. Usually hates listening to peoples personal problems. He has a crush on a nurse Car;a probably cause she’s not afraid to push back. She's very strong-willed and empowered (Something seen in his ex’s) He does come to her for advice sometimes.  He likes nicknames that make him seem more important than he is. He likes Scotch on the rocks, the red wings, days of our lives, He hates a lot of things lets put it at that. He’s a leo. He stretches words.

House MD

House- a sarcastic and usually not so caring doctor (head of the Department of Diagnostic medicine) He knows many languages. (Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, Latian. He can also read some Hindi and Portuguese. He believes everyone lies. He can play the piano and guitar. He’s anti-social. He’s cynical. His closest friend is Wilson. He’s also showed some caring for his roommate at ward 6 Alvie. He belittles pretty much everyone. He walks with a cane after an incident that left him with dead muscle in it that they had to remove. This has caused him to abuse Vicoden.  He rides a motorcycle.  He hides from patients. He also takes crazy risks with them. He’s even used himself as a guinea pig for drugs and medical test. Some of these were to try to help his leg. others are to help patients or help with his curiosity. He is self-destructive. He tries to hide parts of his personality with his sarcasm. He seems like a narcissist. he hates most people. He is an atheist and has a lot of issues with religion. If he cares about people he tends to consider them idiots but kinda his idiots.  He doesn’t like showing affection. He’s shameless. He’s more concerned with the cases than the actual people. He likes only going by House. he’s constantly in the HR department for things he has done. He loves sneakers. He likes video games.

alvie- Juan Alvarez prefers to go by Alvie. He is Puerto Rican. He met House in the Mayfield psych ward. He is bipolar and when he's on the up he’s a chatterbox that likes to rap. Which is why he occasionally goes off his meds because it slows him down. He is very social and bonds to people fast. He makes impulsive decisions and will do a lot for his friends. (There isn’t much canon about him as he was only in two episodes. Also, i play him as trans)

Veronica mars

Veronica mars- shes a highly intelligent young woman. who helps her dad at his PI  work.  using the skills shes learned from her father she helps friends with cases and is sometimes hired by others.  She at one point was the most popular kids. thought she wasn’t really wealthy like them she was accepted because of who she dated. Her friend's mysterious death sent her into full PI mode.  She quickly became a “loser” After all the drama.   After a drama-filled party that really messed with her, she went from bight kid to cynical girl with contempt with fellow classmates.  She does eventually grow out of her cynicism a bit.  every time she thinks she can leave the sleuth life behind it pulls her back in. She has a sheriff at the Neptune police department that helps her get info. Shes sarcastic and always has something to say. Yet she has a good heart.

#ref

[blaperile]

Homestuck Epilogues - Meat - Page 5

#Homestuck #The Homestuck Epilogues #Meat #reaction #Dave #Dirk #Jake

[threezframe-blog]

A Bad Case of Influencer Part 2

A Bad Case of Influencer Part 2.

...

(To her amazement, her Facebook following isn’t shabby at 90K Likes, despite the fact she hardly touches it apart from linking her Instagram to it—a no-no according to the “gurus”. B*tch, please.)

Jeres would be quite happy to simply continue bewitching the public and getting paid to look pretty, if time was on her side. She knows that at the (ripe) age of 28, in one or two years, she will probably lose out to younger social influencers who are more willing to undergo more extreme surgeries to look even more Instagram-worthy; who are more willing to Snapchat what their boobs look like after augmentation.

(The thought occurs to her, fleetingly, that maybe Instagram won’t be around in two years, and neither will “social influencers”. But she brushes it out of her mind. No time for ridiculous notions! She needs to get her hair fixed right now.)

Sighing, she gets off her pink armchair and picks up her phone. She knows it’s a little too soon to call, but surely Dave at Tomlinson Hair will give her a much-needed hair makeover. She might even—gasp—give him a freebie Instagram and Snapchat in return.

Looks like she’ll have to call that dreaded Garry and ask him to come down and take her photos, and pay him ten whole dollars plus Uber fee. Not even her legendary dimples can melt that bastard’s heart.

 * * *

 Ping!

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

Ping! Ping!

Jeres opens her eyes at the sound of her iPhone exploding… with Whatsapp messages and iMessages. She knows it’s something important. But just five… minutes…more…

“Ah Bee!”

The sound of her sister’s voice jerks her awake. She sits up crossly. “What lah? Why cannot let me sleep?”

“The ranking of Top Social Influencers is out in the Straits Times this morning!”

How could she have forgotten about the ranking, the most important mainstream event of the year, the only reason on earth web personalities actually go out and buy physical copies of the national newspaper?

It registers briefly that this scenario is heavy with irony.

Jeres heaves her 169-centimetre frame out of bed, and grabbing her phone, dashes out to the living room. Her father is reading—sitting in the branded massage chair she was gifted last Christmas—the Life! section. Jeres spots her own photo in the collage on the front page.

“Pa, can I borrow the papers?” she asks in her calmest, most neutral voice.

“You can wait. I’m still reading,” comes the expected response.

Jeres resists the temptation to throw herself into a dining chair in a show of temper. Maintaining peace in the home is very important. It is what keeps a social influencer from being thrown out of the house that she contributes zero to.

Nervously, she taps on Notifications that keep lighting up her phone screen. First message was from her best friend and fellow Influencer Gigi Hafiz (real name: Anika Hafiz): “Babe, hugs xoxo. It’ll be better next year.”

Jeres’ heart sinks and a bitter, metallic taste fills her mouth.

She taps on the next message. Colin, the maybe-boyfriend. “Jeresalynne. Ur much more than a number ok. Drinks on me 2nite. Pick u at 9.”

It must be bad. Colin never offers to buy drinks.

She knows if she goes on Instagram, everybody’s going to be talking about it. She doesn’t think she has the strength for that. Not on home ground.

Finally, her father puts the paper down. He fixes a stare at her, which, despite her best efforts at nonchalance, reduces her internally into a mass of melted lipsticks on the dashboard of a car parked outdoors.

“I don’t even understand what you do with your life, Ah Bee,” he finally says. Oh no, Jeres cringes, he’s going to ask me to find a real job.

“You’re 28, still living in my house, eating up all my rice…”

Oh gawd, it’s the Korean serial version today, she moans to herself while she keeps her eyes in “regret” mode, looking down at the placemat sitting on the dining table, a gift from the pasta brand that sent her an unsolicited hamper of sauces and spaghetti last week.

Thankfully, her father does not go on. He simply hands her the folded up wad of print and ambles off to the kitchen to get his post-newspaper cup of soya bean milk.

Hands trembling, Jeres scans the cover page—she is featured somewhere left of centre in the collage. She does not want to turn the page but is unable to stop.

Pirelli Pang’s image takes up the length of Page 2. Looking a million dollars, she (with her shiny Red Velvet Hair) is wearing an Alice + Olivia embroidered, multi-colored patterned mini dress with matching gladiator sandals. Jeres notes cattily that Pirelli’s oversized silicone pouches masquerading as breasts makes what is supposed to be an elegant dress look vulgar. At the same time, she is sure the vulgarity does not hurt Pirelli’s popularity one bit.

The words hurt far more than the photo. Under the headline, which reads “SOCIAL SCORCHERS”, the cloying standfirst belts out: “Pirelli Pang (@callmepirelli) is the undisputed princess of Singapore’s Instagram universe. Outshining her closest competitors, which include last year’s winner Candy Chan (@candyanime) and runner-up Jeresalynne Chionh (@jeresababe), Pang shows them how it’s done.”

Jeres wants to put the paper away and not look at it at all (actually she feels like ripping it to shreds but her mother hasn’t read it yet). As if powered by a sadistic poltergeist, she finds herself searching frantically for her face. Her mind is a blur as she scans the first two pages. Candy Chan is Number 2, but the rest of the pages are filled with people she barely or does not recognise. Jeres stares in disbelief that she does not appear in the top six. There must be some kind of mistake.

She flips the page. There, on the top of Page 4, is a quarter page photo of her. It is the Bindi Photo. Next to her name, “7”.

“Jeresalynne Chionh, who ranked number 2 last year, fell from grace this year due to a series of unfortunate posts,” the story reads. What series of unfortunate posts?! screams Jeres in her head.

The article goes on to list just what: the infamous Bindi Incident (which cost her 26 Instagram followers), the time she took a selfie against the background of Singapore Civil Defence Force personnel carrying a body to an ambulance (which became a viral photo and the topic of many print media discussions about what constituted insensitive social media—but Jeres read none of that, it didn’t concern her) and the time she was Instagram’d using her Chanel handbag to press the lift button.

“That wasn’t even my post!” Jeres says out loud, indignantly. That bloody Colin. She should have untagged herself from his stupid post. So she is a little bit germ-phobic. Do these people judging her know the number of foreign talents staying in her HDB block? “These talents don’t enjoy the same education system as we do,” Jeres had told Colin, “so their standards of hygiene are likely to be different from ours.” Colin had quoted her next words almost verbatim: “Haven’t you noticed that [people of undisclosed nationality] never wash their hands after going to the toilet? I’m not touching that lift button. I can disinfect my Chanel later.”

Now she wishes she had made him delete that post. He did mention that it drew a lot of comments and Re-grams, but he never made her listen to what he was really saying: that it made a lot of people angry! Just for that, I’m going to order a whole bottle of single malt tonight! she decides in fury.

Number 7. She had dropped five places. How in the world was she ever going to catch up to Pirelli now? Last year Pirelli was a measly Number 4, but Jeres was already seriously worried because Pirelli wasn’t even a social media sensation till that year itself.

Jeres sits, slumped over the dining table, her head in her hands. Sok Choo, her sister, seeing that the worst is over, comes and sits next to her with a cup of soya bean milk.

“Here, drink, Cheh,” she soothes. “You’ll feel better.”

“I have to do something about this, Ah Choo,” Jeres says resolutely, gulping the drink. “I can’t peak at number two. I just can’t.”

Sok Choo nods, patting her sister on the back. “You just need to do something desperate, like XiaXue. She always shocks her followers so they never unfollow her.”

Jeres stares at her sister and suddenly sees the genius in her otherwise ordinary sibling. Of course. XiaXue was the first to have a multitude of surgical procedures done (copied by others). Then she coloured her hair an unapologetic pink (copied by others, in a range of colours). Then she got pregnant (copied by one other). Then she blogged about her unbearably cute kid (copied by many others).

Jeres simply has to do something—or some things—that nobody else has dared try before.

Jeres envelopes Sok Choo in the best bear hug her skinny arms can muster. “One of these days, I’m going to Instagram you!” she promises as she floats back to her room for a deep planning session.

TO BE CONTINUED...

#influencer #social shortstory fiction

[kennethherrerablog]

The 8 Best Budgeting Apps We Could Find: Here’s What We Loved and Hated

For years, we’ve been on a quest to find the best budgeting app.

You see, budgeting is an essential foundation of personal finance, so it’s a journey you can’t take lightly.

But while there are great apps available to manage your overall finances, finding one to make a budget has proved to be much more difficult.

Let’s rephrase that: Finding a budgeting app that meets your needs — and is affordable — has proved difficult.

What if you don’t need a financial adviser, a bill cutter, a money-making app or recommendations for the best credit cards? What if your specific needs are just to make a budget, track your spending and check in on your progress?

We traveled far and wide through the internet and app stores to find one budgeting app to rule them all. A budgeting app that lets you adjust your income and expenses, and sync your transactions in real time.

How to Determine the Best Budgeting App for You

There are several things to consider when you’re looking a good budgeting app for you.

The flexibility to customize based on how you get income and what kind of budget you’re using.

The extent to which you want your accounts synced. Do you prefer to manually track transactions, or do you want real-time transaction tracking for a few or all of your bank accounts?

User experience. Are you OK with ads? Credit card offers?

Cost. What do you get for free? How much do premium versions cost? What’s included if you pay for premium features?

We were searching for an easy-to-use, widely customizable app that could sync with your credit cards and checking account, at the very least. Ideally, it would be free, but we were willing to consider paid apps as well.

The 8 Best Budgeting Apps We Found

We tested the the most popular, searched for and talked about apps in iTunes along with some that just looked super interesting.

Here’s how they stacked up against one another:

Honeyfi: The Overall Winner

Price: Free

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Yes

Honeyfi is technically a budgeting app for couples, but single people shouldn’t write it off. You can easily add two of your emails and be your own domestic partner.

Honeyfi has no web-based budgeting option, but the capabilities of the app more than make up for it.

When you open it, your budget is the first box displayed, followed by your transactions. Once you link your accounts, Honeyfi will automatically make a budget for you based on your past spending. You can easily change it by clicking on the header.

You can have as many categories and subcategories as you want, and you can even create your own. The app automatically identifies recurring bills, but you can also manage them manually.

If you have a partner, you can communicate about transactions within the app and limit what transactions your partner can see.

Final verdict: If you have a joint account with your partner, HoneyFi is a no-brainer. You can customize your budget based on whatever budgeting method you prefer and sync all your bank accounts at the most affordable price: free.

We think it’s the best app on our list. And no, they didn’t pay anyone at The Penny Hoarder to say that.

EveryDollar: Best User Experience

Price: Free for manual tracking; $99 per year for automatic syncing.

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Only on the paid version

EveryDollar is a budgeting app created by Dave Ramsey. It’s made for zero-based budgets, a budgeting system where you make a plan for every dollar you bring in. Still, it works flawlessly with any kind of budget you want to set up. It has a clean and easy-to-navigate user experience that isn’t cluttered by ads or affiliate offers.

It’s available on Apple and Android app stores, and on desktop for those who like to budget on a big screen.

The downside for anyone looking to link their bank accounts is the annual fee. Its premium version, EveryDollar Plus, is a steep $99 per year. And there aren’t any additional benefits for a Plus account — just transaction syncing.

Final verdict: It’s best for zero-based budgeting, though it can easily work with any type of budget. But $99 a year for automatic transaction syncing? Sorry, but we can buy 14 burritos at Chipotle for that.

Mint: Best App for People Who Want Extras

Price: Free

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Yes

Let’s continue with the most well-known on our list: Intuit’s Mint. It has no paid version, so you won’t have to deal with the limits other free apps impose. In return, you’ll have to deal with a plethora of ads and offers.

Transactions are easy to see. You can sync as many financial accounts as you want and make as many budgets as you want. (Most apps treat each budget category as separate “budgets.”) Mint can even predict your bills based on past expenses and tell you what it thinks will be due soon.

It’s easy to make a zero-based budget through the app, because you can change values based on what you anticipate making.

What I don’t love is all the fluff. Offering your credit score is nice, but the number of ads and offers make the app feel cluttered. You have to scroll down to find your budget on the home page.

Final verdict: If you’re looking for a free app that allows for customizing your budget and bank syncing, Mint is a great app. If you want one that’s just a budgeting tool with a simple user interface, you can do better.

You Need a Budget: Best App for Personal Finance Junkies

Price: Free for 34 days, then $6.99 per month

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Yes

You Need a Budget, or YNAB for short, is one of the only apps without a free version, and it can be a little pricy for what it offers.

What makes YNAB so popular is that it’s not just a budgeting app. It’s a full-fledged system for your personal finances.

YNAB works best if you:

Use a zero-based budget.

Budgeting at least a month ahead.

Are prioritizing paying off debt.

The app has some great premium features, though. It doesn’t just sync your checking accounts, but also your investments, and its algorithm helps you identify areas of overspending and how to adjust them. The app also makes budgeting recommendations based on your goals.

Final verdict: It’s got a lot of great features that focus solely on budgeting. But given that it’s only appropriate for one type of budget (zero-based), $83.88 per year is too much.

Mvelopes: Best App for Envelopes Fans

Price: Free 30-day trial, $39.99 per year

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Yes

It doesn’t have a free version, but Mvelopes does have a free 30-day trial. And given its popularity, we thought this list would be lacking without it.

What we liked about Mvelopes was the ability to access it by laptop. But the Mvelopes desktop interface looks like it came straight out of Windows 2000.

One cool feature is “sweeping envelopes.” At the end of the month, if you have cash left over in an envelope, you can “sweep it” to your savings account, debt payoff or investment account envelope.

What we don’t like is that after you sync your bank accounts, neither the web version nor the app will upload my previous transactions. If you want to start from scratch, this is fine. But if you’re trying to start a budget mid-month? Not so good.

The basic version of Mvelopes is $4 per month, or $40 if you pay for a year upfront. There are two higher tiers: For $190 per year, you get debt-reduction tools and a quarterly meeting with a personal finance coach. For $590 per year, you’ll get those meetings monthly.

Final verdict: By the name, you can guess it’s best for envelope users, but you can use any type of budget beyond that. Unfortunately, it has some of the same bank syncing limitations as the free apps — but you pay for it.

GoodBudget: Best for People Who Still Use Cash

Price: Free version or $50 per year

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Technically…

Where GoodBudget excels is helping people use the envelope system, Dave Ramsey’s preferred method for paying off debt.

It has some features EveryDollar doesn’t. For example, it lets you roll over any unused cash to the next month’s envelope, and it reports on your spending by envelope or month.

The biggest downside is that it doesn’t sync your transactions. Not even with the paid version. It connects with your bank account but only keeps your account balance up to date. You then have to upload your transaction history or manually input transactions.

Final verdict: It’s great if you’re committed to a cash-spending system… not so much if you use cards. You can customize it based on your budget, but with no option for bank syncing, we can’t see a reason to choose this app.

PocketGuard: Best for People Who Want a Personalized Budget

Price: Free version or $34.99

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Yes

You can do a lot with the free version of PocketGuard. So much, in fact, that I don’t really see the need for the paid version unless you want very specific budget categories.

Instead of “budgets,” PocketGuard uses “spending limits.” You can have a limit for every budget category, or “pocket.” The app will automatically build a personalized budget for you based on your income, bills and goals.

Overall, the app and website are really nice. You can make a monthly savings goal, mark bills as recurring and see how much you have in your “pocket” for the day, week or month. You’ll have to play around with it to make sure PocketGuard is sorting everything right, but once you do that, it’s very hands-off.

The downfall to PocketGuard might be its In My Pocket feature. I get paid on the last day of the month, but my mortgage comes out on the first. So even though I had money in the bank, PocketGuard had me starting the month in the hole until I got more income. I wouldn’t use this feature, but I’d use everything else.

Final verdict: It offers affordable transaction syncing, but we don’t know what budgeting method you’d use for PocketGuard. It’s a good accompaniment, but we wouldn’t use it as a sole budgeting app.

Wally: Best for Group Budgeting

Price: Free with paid add-ons

Available on: Apple and Android

Syncs with accounts? Not on the free version

Wally is a budgeting app with a few iterations.

When searching for the app, you’ll come across Wally+, the Android version, Wally Next, and Wally Lite, the Apple versions. I still can’t tell you what the difference is, but Wally Next seems to be the one that developers are updating for iPhone, so we’ll review that one.

Unless you pay for the add-on, you’ll have to manually track your transactions. But it has this neat feature that uses geolocation to figure out where each transaction you enter was made.

It saves the location, which makes updating a breeze if you frequent the same locations. Groups can also use Wally to track expenses, making it useful for budgets outside of your personal one.

You can buy individual add-ons for less than 50 cents per year. You can get all the add-ons, including transaction syncing, for life for $34.99. It’s a great price compared to other apps with annual membership.

Final verdict: There’s flexibility for budgeting methods, categories and affordable transaction syncing. But where Wally really shines is for anyone dealing in foreign currency, event planning budgets or any budget that multiple people work on.

Whatever budgeting tool you choose, congrats on taking this important step to get your personal finances in order and put more money in your pocket.

Jen Smith is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She and her husband paid off $78,000 of debt in less than two years on two less-than-average salaries. She gives money-saving and debt-payoff tips on Instagram at @modernfrugality.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The 8 Best Budgeting Apps We Could Find: Here’s What We Loved and Hated published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[lindyhunt]

Jenny Slate Gets Candid About SNL, Chris Evans and Being Lonely in Our November Cover Story

If you’re a professional funny person, you’re always looking for the comedic potential in an experience. When you find it, you repeat and refine it and push the anecdote through a kind of standup puberty until it becomes a real, honest-to-God joke, complete with punchlines and buttons where there weren’t buttons before. But during that evolution, there can be some exploitative one-sided conversations, where friends are turned into audience members against their will.

Jenny Slate is sensitive to this. And so at the end of our photo shoot, she checks in with some of us, making sure that when she was telling her story, between shots, about a visit to a surprisingly hot dentist, she hadn’t made us feel used or uncomfortable. Bless her heart. I’m not convinced she has the ability to make someone feel uncomfortable—even if her subject matter isn’t always PG. When Slate speaks—whether it’s directly to you or simply around and at you—it feels like she’s bringing you into her confidence; in that moment, you are her friend and co-conspirator, marvelling with her at the raw comedy of life.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

She also asks if the story was funny. After we assure her that it was, she says she might use it as part of her set hosting an anniversary party for a popular feminist magazine tonight. I didn’t think to record the dentist story at the time, so here is a paraphrased version, based solely on memory (which is never the best way to hear a comedian’s work):

Slate goes to a new dentist, who is shockingly attractive. So attractive that she basically forgets why she’s there. Her brain instead decides that she is on a blind date or in the midst of a romcom meet-cute or something. He asks what he can help her with, and she’s all “Oh, whatever you want to do. It’s cool.” When they set up a return visit, she decides she’ll wear her cute underwear. You know, how you do when you’re taking care of your dental hygiene. Only then, when the day of her appointment comes, like Afroman before her, she gets high and totally forgets about her date.

She told it much better, but trust me: It’s a very funny story.

If Slate likes telling anecdotes in between shots, she loves wearing the clothes during them. It’s like each look inspires a role for her to play. An ’80s-inspired blazer by Stella McCartney, for example, transforms her into the kind of shoulder-padded shark that would intimidate Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. “Where are my faxes! I fax and make stacks!” she calls out, miming a giant cellphone pressed like a brick against her ear. Of course, when it’s time to shoot, it’s all business.

The next day, we meet at a hotel bar in Brooklyn. She’s wearing a blank canvas: white overalls over a simple T-shirt. Her hair, possibly left over from the shoot she had that morning, is as flawless as a femme fatale’s. After ordering (roasted eggplant—“I would be so happy to have that” is how she asks for it), she gets up to hug one of the hotel employees finishing his shift. “That man is so nice to me,” she explains when she sits down again. “I stay here a lot.”

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

I ask her how the event went the night before. “It was OK, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be,” she says. “I really should learn my lesson that I don’t like hosting. I like performing, but I really don’t like performing on a show that’s a mix of comedy and music.” She adds that her comedy is personal and that it’s like she’s having a conversation with the audience. “If I go up there,” she explains, “and tell a joke about how that dentist was hot and make a perverted but good-natured joke about him cleaning my teeth with his penis or whatever, and you’re there because you want to hear a feminist grunge-glam rock group, you’re going to be shocked. And I’m not there simply to be subversive. I reveal myself, and maybe push bound­aries, but it’s always part of the very wide margins that I allow for myself so that I can be authentic in front of people and not feel like I’m tempering my experience so it will fit into a more normalized thing. It was still fun, but there wasn’t a way for me to connect with the room.”

“If I go up there and tell a joke about how that dentist was hot and make a perverted but good-natured joke about him cleaning my teeth with his penis or whatever, and you’re there because you want to hear a feminist grunge-glam rock group, you’re going to be shocked. And I’m not there simply to be subversive.”

I repeat this story to highlight a character trait that becomes immediately apparent while I’m speaking with her: What she likes, dislikes, wants and inevitably doesn’t want is a big part of Jenny Slate. Of course, it’s a big part of life, generally. What are we but the sum of our wants and interests? This means that the people who win at life are the people who have a preternatural clarity about those things and—this is essential—live their lives in religious accordance with them.

Probably more than she ever has, Slate seems to know what she wants; no wonder she’s killing it more than she ever has as well. “I’m more myself than I’ve ever been,” she says. “I enjoy my work. I enjoy my life. I enjoy myself. I’ve never been able to experience that holy trinity before. I have a very cool sense of gratitude and peace. I’m chock full of weird energy. I’m a lightning bolt you can shake hands with.”

Slate doesn’t inspire a cilantro-type binary. You don’t love her or hate her; you love her or you love her but don’t remember her name. Yet. (You know who she is. It’s just that you’re bad with celebrities and their names.) Mention Slate, especially among millennial women, and you’ll get a lot of “Ooh, I love her!” And as one who had beers (and roasted eggplant and an awkwardly robust pork sandwich) with her on a stif­lingly hot afternoon in Brooklyn, I can testify that that is exactly the appropriate response.

Of course, the world being as partisan and angry as it is, there are people who aren’t on Team Slate. After all, she is a raging feminist who moved from the liberal mecca of New York City to live among the coastal elites in Hollyweird. And like a true snowflake, she will do infuriating things like acknowledge her privil­ege, admit to her own unconscious, socially ingrained misogyny and talk intersectional feminism as readily as your father talks about traffic. Not to mention she starred in a romantic comedy where abortion was a major plot point—and not in a negative way!

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

That film, Obvious Child, is an important inflection point for Slate. One of many, actually. After building a healthy, if local, standup career with her comedy partner, Gabe Liedman, Slate landed her dream job at Saturday Night Live in 2009. But she only lasted one season.

It almost feels lazy to include the SNL setback in her narrative, because almost 10 years later it seems so incidental. Only, of course it wasn’t to her. It was a lesson that helped her gain clarity about what she wanted. “After working at SNL, I remember thinking that nothing will ever be that hard again,” she says. “And I do still talk about it because it was such a dream and then it was not what I expected. And the worst part is that you’re like, ‘Am I just being bitter that I didn’t cut the mustard?’ But looking back on it, no. I had to understand that as much as there are so many opportunities for joy, there are a lot of bad deals out there.”

“The worst part is that you’re like, ‘Am I just being bitter that I didn’t cut the mustard?’ But looking back on it, no. I had to understand that as much as there are so many opportunities for joy, there are a lot of bad deals out there.”

Almost immediately after SNL, Slate and her then husband and creative partner made a little stop-motion animated video of a tiny talking shell, wearing sneakers, that exploded. “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” which is adorable and hilarious, gave her viral fame, the chance to write a bestselling book and creative freedom. But referencing it now also kind of feels like insisting on talking about Nirvana with Dave Grohl.

Besides Marcel, Slate is known for her work in Zootopia, Bob’s Burgers and Big Mouth, but it was Obvious Child that made people realize how skilled a performer she is: vulnerable, funny, smart and perfectly believable. Entirely real and completely herself while still, you know, acting. Slate credits this film, which talks frankly about abortion, with inspiring her feminist awakening.

Now, Slate is trying on a big comic book blockbuster. She’ll be wearing glasses and a lab coat in Venom. The role won’t earn her an Independent Spirit Award, but that wasn’t the point. “I love making indie films, and the more I work, the more I hope I can work with directors I admire,” she says. “But I also wanted to see if I could do work like this and if it would satisfy me. I think it’s really stupid to be pretentious. It’s like it’s jocks versus art. The people who make these movies and the actors who are in them work really hard and are making art.”

“I think it’s really stupid to be pretentious. It’s like it’s jocks versus art. The people who make these movies and the actors who are in them work really hard and are making art.”

Of course, speaking of jocks and superheroes, there’s one more reason people might know Slate. It’s a big part of her “True Hollywood Story,” but even more than SNL, it feels silly—maybe even a bit sexist?—to mention: For about a year, she dated Chris Evans.

It’s always awesome to define a woman by who she dates. But with Slate you feel like she’s your new best friend. And when your best friend starts dating Captain America…well, it’s like Meghan Markle becoming a princess. It’s not rational, but it’s like a curtain parts and the banality of fame is momentarily exposed: Celebrities become real, and life is charged with lottery-winning possibility. Plus, it’s just like, “Damn, you take that, girl.”

When we were kids, my sister and I started recognizing a trope in the shows we watched. We called her the Have You Ever Thought Girl. She was, and remains, similar to what would years later be labelled a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, only she was never concerned with rescuing a male character. The Have You Ever Thought Girl was always the lead. She was Anne of Green Gables or Vada in My Girl. The archetypal HYETG is always balancing on a fence next to a shy farm boy or lying platonically beside him on the grass, staring at the stars. “Have you ever thought,” she begins, usually with a slight British accent, before laying out some absolutely absurd theory, “that every star is a crumb from one giant solar cookie, and if we could follow them, we’d find that God is really terribly messy?”

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Slate might just be the real-world incarnation of the Have You Ever Thought Girl, only grown up and full of real wisdom. Slate often peppers her speech with phrases that feel too poetic to be improvised. Only, I’m sure they are. It’s just rare to talk to someone who is as creatively extroverted as she is introspective and has seemingly removed all the clutter and criticism between her heart, her head and her mouth.

I ask her about loneliness, which seems to pop up in a lot of her interviews. It’s her nemesis—hated but also maybe essential. “It’s like I have so much I want to be able to give,” she says. “It builds up in me—it’s like colours or light that has to come out. I feel swollen with myself, and I need to be able to shine out.” “It almost sounds positive,” I say.

“Oh it’s very positive; it’s weirdly, achingly beautiful,” she says, leaning back in her chair, arms folded, but somehow not closed off. “But also, I don’t fetishize it. I don’t like being lonely, but I’ve learned to accept it. I would much rather be lonely and missing the man I love than be with a man or a bunch of men who don’t do it for me. I’m so lucky to love really hard.”

Have you ever thought…

“I don’t like being lonely, but I’ve learned to accept it. I would much rather be lonely and missing the man I love than be with a man or a bunch of men who don’t do it for me. I’m so lucky to love really hard.”

Which brings us back to where we started, where the crew has gathered around Slate to listen to her tell a story that can’t be appreciated in a 10-minute set between musical acts. Here we’re caught, like happy deer, in the light that’s beaming out of her as she describes exactly how hot her dentist was. She’s the centre of attention, but it’s not because she’s performing. Not exactly.

“Standup helps with it [loneliness], but so does just going outside,” she explains as the waiter delivers the bill, right before we both check the time and realize we’re both late for something. “I alleviate my loneliness not from accomplishing some big feat, like going on a date and getting someone to admire me. I walk around the reservoir where I live to see other people’s faces. I smile at strangers. That’s all I need to do. I also need to prove it to myself every day, not because I lose faith quickly but because faith needs maintenance and that seals the deal for me. I smile at a stranger. They smile at me. I’m good.”

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

Photography by Arkan Zakharov. Styling by Anna Katsanis. Creative direction by Brittany Eccles. Hair, Rheanne White for TraceyMattingly.com/Living Proof. Makeup, Kirin Bhatty for Starworks Artists/Dior Makeup. Manicure, Rita Remark for Essie. Fashion assistant, Paulina Castro Ogando. Photography assistants, James Lee Wall and Ian Bishop.

1/10

Jenny Slate

Top, $1,775, Dior. Pants, $1,710, Etro.

2/10

Jenny Slate

3/10

Jenny Slate

Dress, $9,080, bra, $1,775, briefs, $1,710, boots, $2,300, and belt, $1,250, Dior.

4/10

Jenny Slate

Shirt, $3,305, skirt, $2,090, and belt, $1,680, Versace.

5/10

Jenny Slate

Jacket, $2,470, Stella McCartney.

6/10

Jenny Slate

Jacket, $16,625, and skirt, $14,845, Gucci. Shoes, $2,175, Jimmy Choo.

7/10

Jenny Slate

Top, $1,775, Dior. Pants, $1,710, Etro.

8/10

Jenny Slate

Top, $1,775, Dior. Pants, $1,710, Etro.

9/10

Jenny Slate

Top, $520, Mara Hoffman. Pants, $3,750, Chanel.

10/10

Jenny Slate

Top, $1,775, Dior. Pants, $1,710, Etro.

[nothingman]

Laurie Penny | Longreads | October 2017 | 13 minutes (3,709 words)

We’re through the looking glass now. As women all over the world come forward to talk about their experiences of sexual violence, all our old certainties about what was and was not normal are peeling away like dead skin.

It’s not just Hollywood and it’s not just Silicon Valley. It’s not just the White House or Fox News.

It’s everywhere.

It’s happening in the art world and in mainstream political parties. It’s happening in the London radical left and in the Bay Area burner community. It’s happening in academia and in the media and in the legal profession. I recently heard that it was happening in the goddamn Lindy Hop dance scene, which I didn’t even know was a thing. Men with influence and status who have spent years or decades treating their community like an all-you-can-grope sexual-harassment buffet are suddenly being presented with the bill. Names are being named. A lot of women have realized that they were never crazy, that even if they were crazy they were also right all along, and — how shall I put this? — they (we) are pissed.

“It’s like finding out aliens exist,” said a friend of mine last night. He was two gins in and trying to process why he never spoke up, over a twenty-year period, about a mutual friend who is facing public allegations of sexual violence. “Back in the day we’d all heard stories about it, but… well, the people telling them were all a bit crazy. You know, messed up. So nobody believed them.”

I took a sip of tea to calm down, and suggested that perhaps the reason these people were messed up — if they were messed up — was because they had been, you know, sexually assaulted. I reminded him that some of us had always known. I knew. But then, what did I know? I’m just some crazy girl.

* * *

The process we are going through in our friendship group and in our culture as a whole is something akin to first contact. Abusers, like little green men in flying saucers, have a habit of revealing their true selves to people nobody’s going to find credible — to women who are vulnerable, or women who are marginalized, or who are just, you know, women. But abusers don’t come from any planet but this. We grew up with them. We’ve worked with them. Admired them. Loved them. Trusted them. And now we have to deal with the fact that our reality is not what it seemed.

So who’s the crazy one now? To be the victim of sexual assault is to fall down a rabbit hole into a reality shaped by collective delusion: specifically, the delusion that powerful or popular or ordinary-seeming men who do good work in the world cannot also be abusers or predators. To suggest otherwise is to appear insane. You question yourself. Even before anyone calls you a liar — which they will — you’re wondering if you’ve overreacted. Surely he couldn’t be like that. Not him. Anyway, it would be insanity to go against someone with so much clout. The girls who do that are sick in the head. At least, that was what we used to think.

Something important has changed. Suddenly women are speaking up and speaking out in numbers too big to shove aside. The public narrative around abuse and sexual entitlement and the common consensus around who is to be believed are changing so fast you can see the seams between one paradigm and the next, the hasty stitching where one version of reality becomes another. Now, instead of victims and survivors of rape and assault being written off as mentally ill, it’s the abusers who need help.

The public narrative around abuse and sexual entitlement and the common consensus around who is to be believed are changing so fast you can see the seams between one paradigm and the next, the hasty stitching where one version of reality becomes another.

“I’m hanging on in there,” said Harvey Weinstein, in the wake of revelations about a pattern of abuse that has upended the entertainment industry, tipping all its secrets out. “I’m not doing OK, but I’m trying. I’ve got to get help. You know what — we all make mistakes.”

Days earlier, Weinstein emailed other Hollywood higher-ups frantic not to be fired, asking for their assistance convincing The Weinstein Company board to keep him, begging to be sent to therapy as an alternative. The same pleas for mercy on the grounds of mental illness have been issued on behalf of powerful predators in the tech industry. Here’s 500 Startups’ statement on the actions of its founder, Dave McClure: “He recognizes he has made mistakes and has been going through counseling to work on addressing changes in his previous unacceptable behavior.”

The social definition of sanity is the capacity to accept the consensus of how the world ought to work, including between men and women. Anyone who questions or challenges that consensus is by definition unhinged. It is only when the abuse becomes impossible to deny, when patterns emerge, when photographs and videos are available and are enough to lead to conviction — then we start hearing the pleas for mercy. It was just twenty minutes of action. He’s got such a bright future. Think of his mother. Think of his wife. He couldn’t help himself. 

These excuses are never just about the abuser and his reputation. They are desperate attempts to bargain with a rapidly changing reality. They are justifications for continuing, collectively, to deny systemic abuse. Suddenly, it’s Weinstein, not the women calling him a rapist and a pig, who gets to be the one with “demons.” He needs to see a therapist, not a judge. He’s a very unhappy and very sick man. And so is Bill Cosby. And so is Woody Allen. And so was Cyril Smith. And so is that guy in your industry everyone respects so much, the one with the big smile and all those crazy ex-girlfriends.

What’s the word for what happens when a lot of people are very sick all at the same time? It’s an epidemic. I’m not sure what started this one, but there’s a lot of bullshit in the water.

* * *

The language of mental illness is also a shorthand for the articulation of truths that are outside the realm of political consensus. Anyone who challenges that consensus is deemed mad by default, including women who dare to suggest that predators in positions of power might have to be accountable for their actions.

There’s a long, grim history behind the idea that women lie about systemic sexual abuse because they’re mentally unwell. Freud was one of the first to look for a psychiatric explanation for the number of women patients he saw who told him they had been molested or raped. To report that such things were going on in polite society would have outraged Freud’s well-heeled and intellectual social circles. So in the course of his later writings, the father of modern psychoanalysis found alternative explanations: perhaps some of these girls were unconsciously obsessed with the erotic idea of the father figure, as opposed to an actual father figure who might have committed actual abuse. Or perhaps they were just hysterical. Either way, no reason to ruffle whiskers in the gentlemen’s club by giving too much credence to unhappy young women.

A century later, in absolutely every situation like this that I have ever encountered, the same rhetoric applies. Women are over-emotional. They cannot be trusted, because they are crazy, which is a word patriarchy uses to describe a woman who doesn’t know when to shut her pretty mouth. They are not to be believed, because they are unwell, which is a word patriarchy uses to describe women who are angry.

Well, of course they’re angry. Of course they are hurt. They have been traumatized, first by the abuse and then by their community’s response. They are not able to express righteous rage without consequence, because they are not men. If you had been assaulted, forcibly penetrated, treated like so much human meat; if you had sought justice or even just comfort and found instead rank upon rank of friends and colleagues closing together to call you a liar and a hysteric, telling you you’d better shut up — how would you feel? You’d be angry, but you’d better not show it. Angry women are not to be trusted, which suits abusers and their enablers just fine.

This is what we’re talking about when we talk about rape culture — not just the actions of lone sociopaths, but the social architecture that lets them get away with it, a routine of silencing, gaslighting, and selective ignorance that keeps the world at large from having to face realities they’d rather rationalize away. If everyone around you gets together to dismiss the inconvenient truth of your experience, it’s tempting to believe them, especially if you are very young.

More to the point, predators seek out victims who look vulnerable. Women and girls with raw sparking wires who nobody will believe because they’re already crazy.

Ten years ago, when I was raped and spoke out about it, I was told I was toxic, difficult, a compulsive liar. I was told that so consistently that eventually I came to accept it, and I moved away to heal in private while the man who had hurt me went on to hurt other people. In the intervening decade, every time women I know have spoken out about sexual abuse, they have been dismissed as mentally ill. And yes, some of them were mentally ill — at least one in four human beings will experience mental health problems in their lifetime, after all, and violence and trauma are contributing factors. More to the point, predators seek out victims who look vulnerable. Women and girls with raw sparking wires who nobody will believe because they’re already crazy.

The thing that is happening now is exactly the thing that the sanity and safety of unnamed thousands of women was once sacrificed to avoid: a giant flaming fuss. It is amazing what people will do to avoid a fuss. They will ostracize victims, gaslight survivors, and provide cover for predators; they will hire lawyers and hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table and, if pressed, rearrange entire social paradigms to make it seem like anyone asking for basic justice is a screeching hysteric.

In decades gone by, women who made a scene, who made the mistake of confronting abusers or even just closing the door on them, were carted off to rot in the sort of hospitals that featured fewer rehabilitation spas and more hosing down with ice water to get you to stop screaming. Now it’s the abusers who are seeking asylum. Asking to be treated as sufferers of illness, rather than criminals.

The language of lunacy is the last resort when society at large cannot deny the evidence of structural violence. We hear the same thing in the wake of a mass shooting or a white supremacist terror attack. He was always such a nice boy. Something broke. We couldn’t have seen him coming. He was depressed and frustrated. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen, so instead we pretend that there’s no pattern here, just individual maladaption. A chemical imbalance in the brain, not a systemic injustice baked into our culture. Harvey Weinstein is not a rapist, he’s a “very sick guy” — at least according to Woody Allen (who may or may not have special insight, being famously interested in both psychoanalysis and recreational sexual harassment).

Woody Allen feels at least as sorry for Weinstein as he does for the forty-plus women and girls who, at the time of writing, have come forward to claim they were assaulted or raped by the movie mogul. We’re now supposed to feel pity for rapists because they’re messed up. Well, join the queue. All of us are messed up, and having low self-esteem and a dark obsession with sexually intimidating the women around you aren’t excuses for abuse. At best, they are explanations; at worst, they are attempts to derail the discussion just as we’ve started talking about women’s feelings as if they matter. In fact, according to researchers like Lundy Bancroft, who has spent decades working with abusive men, abusers are no more or less likely to be mentally ill than anyone else. “Abusiveness has little to do with psychological problems and everything to do with values and beliefs,” says Bancroft. “Abusers have a distorted sense of right and wrong. Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology.”

At the end of the day, we’re now encouraged to ask, aren’t these men the real victims — victims of their own demons? Come off it. We’ve all got demons, and baggage, and all of the other euphemisms we use to talk about the existential omnishambles of modern life. The moment I meet someone who has arrived at something like adulthood psychologically unscathed by the nightmare fun-house of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, I assume they’re hiding something, or on enough tranquilizers to fell a small elephant, or both. We’ve all got broken hearts and complicated childhoods, and survivors have spent too long being quietly directed to seek therapy rather than justice.

The abusers who are now being excused as mentally ill are not monsters, or aberrations. They were acting entirely within the unhealthy value system of a society which esteems the reputation and status of men above the safety of women. Many abusers, on some level, do not know that what they are doing is wrong. They believe that they are basically decent. Most men who prey on women have had that belief confirmed over the course of years or decades of abuse. They believe they’re basically decent, and a whole lot of other people believe they’re basically decent, too. They’re nice guys who just have a problem with women, or booze, or their mothers, or all three.

* * *

Pleas for mercy on the grounds of emotional distress are surprisingly effective when it’s men doing the pleading. Right now, all around me, I see women working to support men, as well as each other, through this difficult time. It’s not just because we’re nice and it’s not just because we’re suckers, although it’s probably a little bit of both.

It’s because we know how much this is going to hurt.

We should. We’ve carried it all for so long in private. We know how deep the damage goes, how much there is still unsaid. Even as we come together to demand an end to sexual violence, we worry that men are too weak to cope with the consequences of what they’ve done and allowed to be done to us.

I have for the past three months been nursing intermittent jags of panic at the knowledge of what was about to be revealed (and has now been revealed) about a person I once cared for deeply and, because I am a soft-hearted fool, still care about very much. A person who, it turns out, has hurt more women than any of us guessed when we started joining the puncture wounds in our pasts to make a picture. Panic because none of us want him to hurt himself. Panic because we worry that he might. We want him to be safe, even though none of us have been. Isn’t that just delicious? As more stories of private pain come out, it is still the men we’re supposed to worry about.

The threat of extreme self-harm is a classic last-resort tactic for abusers who suspect that they’re losing control, that their partner is about to leave them or tell someone, or both. It’s effective because it’s almost always plausible, and who wants to be the person who put their own freedom and safety ahead of another person’s life? Not a great many women, certainly, given the bone-deep knowledge drilled into us from birth that we were put on this earth to protect men from, among other things, the consequences of their actions. We’ve been raised to believe that men’s emotions are our responsibility. Even the men who hurt us.

We’ve been raised to believe that men’s emotions are our responsibility. Even the men who hurt us.

As the list of names grows longer, the plea for mercy on the grounds of mental illness is being deployed in exactly the same way. These guys are suffering, too. If you carry on calling for them to come clean and change their behavior, well, that might just push them over the edge. And you wouldn’t want that, would you? You’re a nice girl, aren’t you?

I’ve been told several times by controlling partners that if I left them, they might break down or even kill themselves. Each time, I stayed longer than I should have because I loved them and wanted them alive, and every time, when it finally became unbearable, they were absolutely fine. Not one of them made an attempt to carry out their threat. That doesn’t mean they didn’t mean it at the time. But the demand that even as we attempt to free ourselves from structural or specific violence, women prioritize the wellbeing of men over and above our own, is a tried-and-true way of keeping a rein on females who might just be about to stand up for ourselves. We are expected to show a level of concern for our abusers that it would never occur to them to show to us — if they’d been at all concerned about our well-being in the first place, we wouldn’t be where we are. And where we are is extremely dark, and very difficult, and it’ll get darker and more difficult before we’re done.

* * *

I’m worried about a lot of people right now. I’m worried about the several men I know who have hurt women in the past and who are now facing the consequences. I’m worried about the men who are analyzing their own behavior in horror, who stood aside and let it happen, and who are suddenly realizing their own complicity — and struggling to cope with the guilt, the shame of that knowledge. That’s allowed. Empathy is not being rationed here, and we can worry about whoever we like — as long as we worry about the survivors first. We were not liars, or hysterical. We were telling the truth. And if the men are a mess today because they finally have to reckon with that truth, we must not let that stop us from building a world where love and sexuality and gender hurt less, a world where this does not have to happen again as it has happened, in silence, for so many generations.

Reframing serial abuse as a mental health disorder stashes it conveniently on the high shelf marked “not a political issue.” The trouble is that sickness does not obviate social responsibility. It never has. Sickness might give a person the overwhelming urge to act in repulsive ways but sickness does not cover for them during business meetings or pay off their lawyers or make sure they get women dropped from films: it takes a village to protect a rapist.

I am perfectly willing to accept that toxic masculinity leaves a lot of broken men in its maw. That culture conspires to prevent men and boys from being able to handle their sexuality, their aggression, and their fear of rejection and loss of status in any adult way; that it is unbearable at times to exist inside a male body without constant validation. But very few men — very few people, period — grow up with wholly healthy attitudes towards their own gender. Not everyone with fucked-up ideas about women goes on to do fucked-up things to women. Toxic masculinity, as Bancroft observes, is a social illness before it is a psychological one.

So what about the rest of us? People say that they are shocked, and perhaps they are. But shock is very different from surprise. When was the last time you were really, truly surprised to hear a story like this? The truth is that a great many of those surrounding Weinstein did know. Just as the friends and associates of most sexual predators probably know — not everything, but enough to guess, if they cared to. The reason they didn’t say or do anything is simple and painful. The reason is that nobody had enough of a problem with what was going on to make a fuss. They thought that what was going on was morally acceptable. Polite society or whatever passed for it in their industry told them that this was all normal and par for the course, even if your heart told you otherwise. Polite society hates a fuss. Polite society can be a very dangerous place for a young girl to walk alone, and on this issue, most of us have been. Until now.

It is easier to cope with the idea of sick men than it is to face the reality of a sick society; we’ve waited far too long to deal with our symptoms because we didn’t want to hear the diagnosis. The prognosis is good, but the treatment is brutal. The people finally facing the consequences of having treated women and girls like faceless pieces of property may well be extremely unhappy about it. That’s understandable. I’m sure it’s not a lot of fun to be Harvey Weinstein right now, but sadly for the producer and those like him, the world is changing, and for once, cosseting the feelings of powerful men is not and cannot be our number-one priority. For once, the safety and sanity of survivors is not about to be sacrificed so that a few more unreconstructed bastards can sleep at night.

Previously: “The Horizon of Desire”

* * *

Laurie Penny is an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books. Her most recent book, Bitch Doctrine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. 

Editor: Michelle Weber

via Longreads

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[waxandwanemusic]

Primer #8 - The Beach Boys

The Primer is our column wherein contributors compile a 60 minute playlist of a band near and dear to their heart. Using personal listening anecdotes, notes about specific tracks and a brief overview of each artist, The Primer is both a way for our contributors to trace their musical genealogy and for our readers to gain a new perspective on an artist they may have missed or dismissed.

Installment eight of the Primer series showcases the love that Tommy Plural has always held dear for The Beach Boys.

The Beach Boys were established 1961 in Hawthorne, CA by brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, cousin Mike Love, schoolfriend Al Jardine, and neighbor David Marks. All of the members were multi-instrumentalists and songwriters but they were and are mostly known for their singing, with Brian's work as a songwriter and producer overshadowing the band itself as times. One of the most successful bands of all time, and somewhere very near the top in my mind.

Approaching this mix required me to basically set some ground rules. The Beach Boys are obviously one of the most famous bands of all time and their most well-known songs are woven into the background of supermarkets and incidental music across the western hemisphere and beyond. In order to truly give a primer within the constraints of 60-odd minutes allotted, I ended up treating the "hits" as benchmarks along the way. Much like The Beatles, I feel that their early "fun" songs are just as essential as the later "deep" or "experimental" material. That said, unlike the famed Liverpudlians that our California boys were destined to be "Bea-" neighbors on the record racks with for all eternity, the Beach Boys recording career stretches from 1961-2012. The possibility lurks that more new music may come. Brian Wilson also continues to make quality music often in collaboration with fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine, so this is not a bad thing. So to give the fuller picture, we have a lot of material to cover.

The omission of "Surfin USA" and "California Girls" and "Surfer Girl" and "Darlin" and many dozens more in no way dismisses those songs as being lesser quality than the ones that made it here, rather I'm just doing my best to tell the complete story and not everything could make the cut. The most offensive editorial decision is the presence of only a single Al Jardine vocal - out of the 9 official Beach Boys members, 8 of them would have been peerless lead vocalists in their own bands (no offense Dave, you're still a fine singer), so the fact that this mix is heavy on Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson lead vocals is not a knock on any of the others. Al's voice has never weakened - in 2017 he's the only of the surviving Beach Boys to still have the golden voice, and in the late 70s and early 80s he was pretty much the only one that could produce and sing hits for the band, so kudos to Al. 

As a kid I mostly listened to oldies radio, with some of my favorite songs including "Don't Worry Baby," "Sloop John B," "All Summer Long," "God Only Knows," and "Good Vibrations," and I remember being excited to catch a glimpse of the Beach Boys singing "Surfin USA" while they performed at the Ionia Free Fair as I was at the top of the ferris wheel. They were indeed ubiquitous, even if I never necessarily drew the connection between all of these songs. In 2001, I saw Brian Wilson, whom I vaguely knew to be the "crazy leader of the Beach Boys" performing an exciting and baffling rendition of "Heroes and Villains" on Late Night With Conan O'Brien and this planted the seeds for what became a teenage and, as it's looking to be, lifelong obsession.

My first Beach Boys product that I owned was the 2003 compilation "Sounds of Summer" which aimed to collect all of their Top 40 hits (though it doesn't include "The Little Girl I Once Knew," "Caroline No," and "It's OK" for whatever reason). I still feel this comp is a solid introduction to their catalog, and as far as "hits" it's pretty unbeatable - it would serve as a nice companion to my playlist as I only include 6 songs that are on that disc. Over the summer of 2003 - the first summer I had a driver's license, to make this meander even more in wholesome Americana - I borrowed Beach Boys CDs from the library with "Pet Sounds" and the 2-fer "Sunflower/ Surf's Up" being the discs that cemented my feeling that this was one of the great catalogs of music.

My starting combo of "I Get Around" and "Don't Worry Baby" stands as one of the greatest A side/ B side combinations of songs in history, and they showcase what makes the early music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys so unique and timeless. Lyrically they're stuck in a world of early 1960s drag racing fantasy, but the arrangement and vocal performance completely transcends any shortcomings of the words - the sound of Brian Wilson singing about his regret for bragging about his car turns the lyrics into a fragile gospel, and Mike Love's aggressive and restless approach to singing about driving around town sells the fickle importance of those lyrics as well. This was their first number 1 single (at the height of Beatlemania) and it sounds like being young and alive, wrapped up in energetic guitar rock (performed by the band members with only horns and additional percussion performed by session musicians - these guys were a hell of a self-contained band) and jazz influenced vocal harmony, with a dreamy atmosphere that's hard to explain in the thick of it all. If this was all they ever released they would still be one of the great bands. 

Brian's arrangement of "Do You Wanna Dance" is one of their most dynamic recorded productions, with the swirling backing vocals behind Dennis' husky lead vocal adding a breathless excitement to the track. While "Help Me Rhonda" and "Fun Fun Fun" may have been bigger hits, I chose this track to represent the infectious hit machine that was the Beach Boys in the early and mid 60s. Plus it's the lead track to their flawless 1965 album Today!, which features some of their best ballads as well - "Kiss Me Baby" is here to represent that aspect. Like the hit that precedes this, "Kiss Me Baby" is a very dynamic production with cascading vocals, though this track oozes loneliness and regret, with Brian and Mike each delivering some of their best vocal performances.

This playlist could easily just include all of Pet Sounds, but for the sake of acknowledging the 45 years of recording that came after this, I've only put on the song that screams most-essential, "God Only Knows." Fine lyrics (from Brian's then-collaborator Tony Asher), an incredible arrangement, and one of the great vocals of all time by the then-19 year old Carl Wilson. And, as Brian himself is always happy to point out, Paul McCartney once said this was his favorite song.

"The moment I first put the 'Sunflower' CD into my car stereo outside of the Hall-Fowler Library in Ionia, Michigan in July 2003 is still vivid in my mind."

The saga of the Beach Boys must acknowledge the 1966/67 "lost" album Smile. Largely a collaboration by Brian Wilson and the marvelous Van Dyke Parks, "Smile" was an obsessively recorded musical experiment with impressionistic lyrics that for a host of reasons Brian failed to complete, beginning the Beach Boys' commercial decline. Brian finished his own version in 2004 and the original sessions were given a proper release in 2011, but I feel fortunate that I became a fan just prior to all of this and was able to just barely experience the mystery of this album - most of the key songs were released in various forms on the Beach Boys albums from 1967-1971, offering a glimpse into what surely would have been one of the classic albums had it arrived at its first scheduled release of December 1966. I have included the 1967 version of "Heroes and Villains" and the original "outtake" version of "Wonderful" to represent the bizarre beauty of the Wilson/ Parks songwriting team. There's more Smile later in this playlist, much like how it originally was presented to the world.

The late 60s/early 70s (from the albums Wild Honey through Holland) are probably my favorite era of the Beach Boys for many reasons. Brian's music and lyrics flourished in a completely not-self-conscious manner, Dennis blossomed as a songwriter, Carl developed as a producer, and all of the guys were at the top of their vocal game. Stone cold classics from this era include "Wild Honey," "Darlin," "Here Comes the Night," "Aren't You Glad," "Time to Get Alone, "Be Here In the Morning," and more that I feel wrong not having on this playlist, but Brian's slice-of-life earworm "Busy Doin' Nothin" and Dennis' hymn-like and brief "Be Still" are here to represent the self-produced and artistically relaxed late 60s era of the band.

1970's Sunflower is, in my mind, the most essential Beach Boys album next to Pet Sounds and Today!. The moment I first put this CD into my car stereo outside of the Hall-Fowler Library in Ionia, Michigan in July 2003 is still vivid in my mind. All of the guys from the classic Brian-Mike-Carl-Al-Dennis-Bruce lineup contribute as songwriters and everyone delivers the goods. Brian's "This Whole World" is exuberant, hypnotic and extremely complicated musically while still being one of the great less-than-2-minute pop songs. Mike"s "All I Wanna Do" sounds like it could be a college radio hit in the present day, and Dennis' "Forever" is simply one of the finest love songs and deservedly the song he is most remembered for.

The early 1970s saw the Beach Boys mount a comeback as a great live band (as heard on their 1973 In Concert live album) and stars of underground FM radio. If they would have continued on this trajectory they would likely be remembered as a more-popular Byrds or even an American Rolling Stones, but aggressive nostalgia in the mid-70s and band in-fighting led them to become an oldies jukebox revue and artistically irrelevant by the early 80s. In 1971, however, they were releasing music like Carl's "Feel Flows" and Brian's "Til I Die," showcasing the sound of their majestic vocals in more esoteric and introspective settings. A nearly two minute flute solo? The 70s man, you shoulda been there.

1973's "Sail On Sailor" was the closest thing to a proper mainstream hit the boys had in these so-called "wilderness years," with the lead vocal sung by Blondie Chaplin, who, along with fellow South African musician Ricky Fataar, joined the Beach Boys for a few years in the early 70s, coinciding with Bruce's exit and Carl firmly assuming studio and live leadership of the band. I don't tend to gravitate towards much of this sort of bluesy "boogie rock" that was so in vogue at the time, but when the Beach Boys do it (as the result of another Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks collaboration) I'm on board. Why this isn't part of the 30 song playlist every classic rock station has to stick to and "Black Water" and "Let It Ride" are is one of the great mysteries of commercial success. Balancing out this era is "Only With You," a dreamy, relaxed love song written by Dennis and Mike and sung by a peak-of-his-powers Carl.

After spending most of the previous two albums in the background, Brian returned to the forefront for a pair of mid-70s albums, showcasing a gruff baritone singing voice and an obsession with synthesizers. This was the time when Brian's struggles with mental illness started becoming well known to the public, and in many ways it was unethical for the band to push him into the spotlight to capitalize on the renewed interest in their 60s catalog happening at the time. While songs like "It's OK" and "Had To Phone Ya" show a penchant for the sunny hits of previous years, for the most part their try-hard comeback album attempt "15 Big Ones" is a mess and is the beginning of their legacy unraveling. Closing track "Just Once In My Life" is one of the rare moments of brilliance, with Brian's desperate choruses complimenting Carl's confident verses over a successful arrangement of Brian marrying thick analog synths to the wall of sound. The 1977 album Love You is a polarizing work, with some fans feeling it's a borderline violation of Brian's mental state and others feeling it's a final strike of inspiration with Brian completely disregarding commercial expectations to produce music that made him happy. I fall more toward the latter - it's a hell of a listen and for the most part the tracks crackle with energy. It's impossible to ignore that Brian's voice is shredded at this point, with Dennis not too far behind, and the songs for the most part are rather bizarre, but I don't think anyone can argue that this album is not pure in its artistry. "The Night Was So Young" is one of the more palatable songs to the uninitiated, so if this song strikes a chord I recommend the rest of the album.

Brian didn't feature prominently in the creation of a Beach Boys album again until 2012, though the band continued to release albums with or without his involvement from 1978 to 1992. For the most part this music is for completists only, though 1979's Light Album is an overlooked swan song for the band as an artistic entity. The disco remake of "Here Comes The Night" is a giant blemish on this album, though as an exercise in the genre it is well done, and Brian and Carl's "Good Timin" was a deserved minor hit for the band even if it was an outtake from 1974. Carl and Dennis are the true stars of this album, and I've picked their collaboration "Baby Blue" to represent this flickering out era. It's also the last lead vocal of Dennis' released before he drowned in 1983 which makes the track even more haunting. 

There's a few gems from the 80s ("Goin On," "Getcha Back," "Where I Belong," and "Somewhere Near Japan" being the closest to essential) but for the most part the 80s are more notable for marking the beginning of Brian Wilson as a solo artist. In the mid-90s Brian, in collaboration with songwriting partner Andy Paley and producer Don Was, attempted to rejoin the band to make an album but the sessions fell apart after only a few songs were completed. Unreleased until 2013, 1995's "You're Still A Mystery" demonstrates that the architect of "Pet Sounds" was still able to drive the band toward a satisfying album, but as with so many things with this band it wasn't meant to be. Carl Wilson passed away from cancer in 1998 and the band truly splintered at this time, with Mike Love licensing the name "The Beach Boys" to tour with Bruce Johnston and a cast of sidemen while Brian Wilson and Al Jardine recorded and performed as solo artists. Original guitarist David Marks re-emerged at this time and has bounced between collaborating with the other surviving members as well as his own solo work. Early 70s members Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar are well respected sidemen with long and impressive resumes of their own.

In 2012 Brian wrote and produced the bulk of a new album called That's Why God Made The Radio to commemorate 50 years of the Beach Boys and came together with Mike, Al, Bruce, and Dave to tour as a band once again. The album is very slick and has its missteps, but to the longtime fan it's a truly astonishing album with how close it comes to being great at times. I have included the Al-sung "From There To Back Again," a yearning and unpretentious look to the past featuring prominent vocal turns from Brian and Mike to represent this album. The band once again splintered at the end of their 2012 tour in classic dysfunctional Beach Boy fashion, despite Brian's claims that he wanted to continue recording music as a group. At the time of writing Mike and Bruce tour as the licensed "Beach Boys" while Brian and Al tour and record together along with Blondie Chaplin and sometimes David Marks. Which means, if you're paying attention, that there's more Beach Boys involved in the Brian Wilson project than the band called "The Beach Boys".

Things can't end on that sour note, so I'm closing out this playlist with the two highest artistic achievements in the Beach Boys catalog. "Surf's Up" was a Smile era song that Carl finished for release in 1971. There are many alternate versions of this song, but to me this is still the definitive one. Probably the best song of the Brian/Van Dyke partnership, I don't exaggerate when I say it's possible there's no other song in history that's quite as beautiful as this song. The sadness in Brian's voice as he sings "I heard the word, wonderful thing, a children's song" before the final cascade of group vocals is likely my favorite moment in recorded music. Finally, the song that was meant to be the lead single for "Smile" but instead was merely their biggest and most influential single of all time, "Good Vibrations" closes out this list. Some of Brian's best and most progressive writing and arranging along with some of Mike's best lyrics and one of the most gorgeous lead vocals from Carl (still just 19 years old here) simply make this one of the best. I always get excited when I hear this song, and I don't think that will ever change, much as the music of the Beach Boys will never cease to hold onto its beauty whether the band ever makes peace with itself or not. 

As a coda, and violation of a statement I made in the first paragraph, I'm including a live studio session of the 2012 reunion-era band performing "Surfer Girl." Call it the encore or the bonus track, but god damn listen to a back-from-the-brink Brian on the bridge. Out of sight!

Tommy Plural is a singer, guitarist and raconteur for Lansing based rock outfit The Plurals. He also  maintains a rigorous schedule with a cadre of other mid-Michigan bands and is one of the founders of GTG Records.

#Primer #Beach Boys #Beatles #Brian Wilson #VanDyke Parks #Carl Wilson #Dennis Wilson #Mike Love #Al Jardine