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chiseler · 3 years

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Hero of Our Nation

I first encountered Roger Ramjet on a Chicago public access station in 1983. It was part of an early morning show apparently aimed at stoner insomniacs. The show came on at five and also included episodes of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, that awful Beatles cartoon, and a weather report clarified by some appropriate pop song (“Here Comes the Sun” or “Here Comes the Rain Again”). I was usually up and around that early for some godforsaken reason, and originally started watching on account of Lancelot Link. Always did love that Lancelot Link. But Roger Ramjet was, well, let’s just say it was a revelation.

Roger Ramjet, “ that All-American good guy and devil may care flying fool” (as he compulsively introduces himself) was a none too bright and none too coordinated drug-dependent space age superhero in an ongoing battle against the assorted forces of evil (or more specifically, N.A.S.T.Y.) to preserve the American Way of Life. He was square-jawed, straight-laced, straight-faced, and True Blue if little else, so hyper-patriotic that nearly every time his name is spoken aloud an American flag, a bald eagle, or a rotating ring of stars appears on the screen. After catching one or two episodes, I forgot all about Lancelot Link.

The show was easy to overlook, especially when squeezed between the Beatles and some secret agent chimps with a psychedelic band. The episodes were only five minutes long (maybe seven with the abrasive theme song filling out the opening and closing credits), and were so crudely drawn and animated it might at a glance seem like something a couple of junior high school kids threw together in their basement one weekend. The shows were so primitive they hardly bothered with niceties like “backgrounds” satisfied instead to settle for rudimentary suggestions of a setting. But the writing was so sharp and the voice talent so good what it really felt like, if you paid attention, was a spoof of a ‘40s radio serial like Sky King or Gangbusters, complete with a soap opera organ and illustrated by a handful of jerky drawings scratched out by someone’s kid. People who thought Jay Ward’s Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right were crude when compared with the output from Disney or Warner Brothers had no idea what “crude” meant.

Looking at it today what it reminds me of more than anything are the paper cutout animations of the earliest episodes of South Park, before they upgraded to Flash. Along with the lo-fi stylistics, the humor was clearly aimed at an adult audience while pretending otherwise. You may not find any child molestation jokes or crass religious cracks in Roger Ramjet, but for 1965 the lightning-fast humor was pretty hepcat and sophisticated, with undisguised satirical references to the Cold War, Central American turmoil, and the Vietnam War (“Hey kids, this is Roger Ramjet,” demanding that you stay tuned to this station to see my next adventure,” Roger announces in his commanding superhero baritone. “Or I’ll see to it that all you little rascals are drafted.”) . Mixed in with the topical jokes we also get some highly unlikely name drops, from Noel Coward and Henry Cabot Lodge to James Joyce and bawdy nightclub performer Rusty Warren, as well as film parodies and literary nods to the likes of Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye. It’s also a little less than what you might call racially sensitive by modern standards (consider Mexican revolutionaries The Enchilada Brothers, Beef and Chicken).

While a lot of the more timely jokes might be lost in the murk of the over 50 years since it first aired, there’s plenty of rapid-fire absurdity that’s timeless, from the misspelled title cards punctuating the narration to the self-consciously dumb coked-up adventures.

Bullwinkle aired from ‘61 to ‘64. Roger Ramjet came along a year later and Jay Ward’s influence is undeniable. The difference was Roger Ramjet crammed the equivalent number of bad jokes, references, and plot twists of a typical 8-part Bullwinkle serial into each five-minute episode, both mirroring the rapid-fire screwball dialogue of the ‘30s and the frenetic quick-cut comedy to come along a year or two later in shows like The Monkees and Laugh-In.

The episodes were produced with essentially no budget and were cranked out very quickly by a small team of writers, voiceover artists and animators with solid day jobs in radio and TV. They were all seasoned pros, some dating back to the days of classic radio, who worked on the show after hours as a way of letting off a little steam and tossing around a few cynical, subversive cultural jabs their day jobs wouldn’t allow. The show was created originally by animator Fred Crippen (who went on to work on some pretty dreadful crap like the Extreme Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Ken Snyder, an ad exec who moved over into producing cartoons. They brought in a remarkable team of voice talent and comedy writers, including Gene Moss (the voice of Smokey the Bear) Jim Thurmam (who did a lot of kids shows including Sesame Street), Dick Beals (the original voice of Gumby), and the great Gary Owens, a drive-time deejay in LA who would get national recognition soon enough as the on-screen announcer for Laugh-In. Although they would all get specific credits in the end (Crippen as director, Moss as a writer) it was a communal effort, in which everyone contributed to the writing, and everyone, even the executive producer, did a few of the voices. Apart from the regular crew, careful listeners might also catch a few uncredited guest appearances by some surprisingly big names (I’m told Sinatra and Dean Martin appear in an episode, but I’m still looking for that one). Owens was the star, though, as his ability to read the most ridiculous lines in a dramatic deadpan made him the perfect Roger Ramjet. Together they made 156 episodes (about 150 still exist), which were sold directly into syndication in ‘65 as half hour shows, each containing three unconnected adventures. I can’t say as I’m exactly sure who they thought their target audience was at the time, except maybe each other.

Much like William Conrad in Bullwinkle, each show opened with our narrator, Steve Allen alum Dave Ketchum, setting the mood and the scene (“In today’s depressing episode,” he’d begin with dramatic enthusiasm, or maybe it was an “existentialist episode,” “phlegmatic episode,” “rickety episode,” “hairy episode,” or “ethnic episode”). Then we’re out of the gate at a breakneck pace, with a flurry of gags coming from every direction. “Ramjet rode into Boot Hill,” we’re told, “where the men were men and the women were men, which can get pretty old after awhile.”

While none of the shows are connected, there are a few recurring characters and locations worth remembering: Roger hails from Lompoc, an actual California town (“where nothing ever happens, and seldom does”) and takes his orders from General G.I. Brassbottom, a no nonsense military man who “hadn’t had an original idea since he was a civilian.” He’s also assisted by Yank, Doodle, Dan, and Dee, the unusually chubby kids who make up the American Eagle squadron. Like Roger, all the members of the squadron wear their white jumpsuits and flight helmets at all times (Roger even wears his helmet on dates), and in true superhero sidekick fashion, their primary job is to get Roger out of scrapes and make sure his drugs are handy.

That’s one little detail more than a few casual viewers have taken umbrage with. Roger, see, is a pretty hapless character most of the time, but he repeatedly saves the world thanks to a little help from his Proton Energy Pills (PEP), which take five seconds to kick in, then give him the strength of 20 A-Bombs for 20 seconds. Modern viewers seem a little uncomfortable with the idea of a superhero gulping amphetamines in order to function, but all I can say is, well, it was a different time, and hey, it worked for Roger and Elvis both.

The proton energy pills come in handy when dealing with his arch-nemesis Noodles Romanoff, the short, trench coat and fedora wearing head of N.A.S.T.Y. (the National Association of Spies, Traitors, and Yahoos). Romanoff may not have a Natasha, but he does have a gang of cronies and thugs who all mumble in unison (save for one, who can’t seem to get the rhythm).

Along with Romanoff and his gang, Roger also has to contend with some lanky alien robots, the Solenoids (voiced by executive priducer Ken Snyder), and their repeated efforts to invade the planet in assorted ridiculous ways (in one episode, they begin kidnapping all the Miss America contestants, who “were disappearing faster than co-eds at a Dartmouth weekend.”)

When not saving the world, Roger found himself competing with the smarmy hotshot test pilot Lance Crossfire (who sounds an awful lot like burt Lancaster) for the affections of Lotta Love, the fickle Southern belle with a taste for the finer things in life.

Then there are the adventures themselves. Some seem standard superhero fare, but only to a point. Earth is besieged by flying saucer attacks (sort of). Roger’s hometown is terrorized by a werewolf (sort of). Roger plays tennis with a kangaroo, or becomes the first man to surf in space, or, in a personal favorite, attempts to stop the flow of bootleg comic books into America’s drug stores.

Actually, there’s an interesting moment in that one that revealed just how subtle you could be even with animation this unsophisticated. Okay, so Noodles Romanoff, see, is replacing real comics in drug store racks with bootlegs in which popular superheroes are humiliated, all in an effort to destroy the morale of America’s children. After Brassbottom shows Roger a few examples (the issues include “Superman Gets Beat Up by a Chicken!” and “Ratman Stubs His Toe!”) he explains that if this sort of thing continues, “America’s kids won’t have anyone to look up to except YOU, Ramjet.” Then, for just an instant in that crude and jerky style, Roger cuts his eyes toward the camera, revealing in that moment everything we needed to know, namely that it’s what he’s always wanted.

Thirty years on and that still sticks with me.

In the end, though, the characters and storylines are secondary at best In Roger Ramjet. At heart it’s a matter of trying to keep up with all the lightning-quick jokes and wordplay, the non-sequiturs and references. In the five minute span of one cowboy-themed episode I counted nods to at least seven classic Western films, from High Noon to She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and I suspect I missed a few. It really is such a dizzying blur of dialogue and bad puns and cultural references, sometimes, christ, even just references to old jokes that take the form of bad puns (“Waiter, there’s a spy in my soup” or “how many angels can swim in the head of a beer?”), that absurd as it all is, repeated viewings are a necessity to catch everything. It’s a bit like having the complete contents of an issue of MAD magazine jammed onto a single page. It can make your head hurt after a while, but it’s worth it. Whether the density and the pace make it better or worse for stoner viewing is something, I guess, each stoner will need to answer for him or herself. Lots of bright colors, though.

In 1965 there was nothing new about making cartoons with adult sensibilities in mind. Betty Boop and Bugs Bunny were made to be shown as short subjects to largely adult audiences. Jay Ward’s cartoons a few decades down the line were near-revolutionary for smuggling hip, subversive political humor into what had become an exclusively child-friendly format. What made Roger Ramjet so radical was it’s blend of ‘30s radio style with mid-’60s cynicism, as well as its foreshadowing of our shrinking attention spans, a hyper-condensed proton pill of comedy and commentary disguised as just another dumb, low-rent superhero cartoon. Although it’s barely remembered today, its influence is still evident in most any subversive animated show you can name, even if they’ve slowed things down a bit.

by Jim Knipfel

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mst3kproject · 4 years

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The Star Wars Holiday Special

Happy Holidays, MSTies! Your present is Episodes that Never Were are back! Remember last year, when I said Elves was so bad I wished I’d watched the Star Wars Holiday Special instead? Let’s find out what those words taste like.

The galaxy may be in the midst of a rebellion, but Chewbacca promised his family he will be back for Life Day, and god damn it, he’s gonna get there! He and Han Solo dodge Imperial forces and asteroid fields on the way, but the real danger may be waiting for them at home, as Stormtroopers do a treehouse-to-treehouse search for rebel sympathizers. It won’t be much of a holiday if Chewie arrives home only to be immediately arrested!

That sounds exciting, doesn’t it? It even sounds like it could be made to mean something. There is perhaps a point here about inter-ethnic empathy – Life Day may be a Wookiee holiday, but Chewbacca’s alien friends still know how important it is to him and they’re gonna help him keep his promise. We could also compare it to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. In that movie, the Martians want to celebrate Christmas but aren’t particularly interested in what it means. They get all their information about it from pirated television and from children who don’t understand anything much more than ‘free stuff’. We didn’t give Christmas to them, they literally stole it by kidnapping Santa. In the Holiday Special, the Wookiees are sharing their cultural traditions with outsiders who have become part of their family – Leia’s speech at the ends notes the humans’ respect for this.

But none of that’s relevant, because this is just a bad 70’s variety hour in a Star Wars costume. We don’t get to see claustrophobic scenes of our brave heroes hiding from the Storm Troopers. We don’t get sweeping space battles or bickering robots or weird new planets… we don’t get anything we go to see Star Wars for. Instead, we mostly watch the Wookiees sitting around their house passing the time as they wait helplessly for Chewbacca to get home. This could have been neat in itself if Wookiees had an interesting culture, but they live in a Mod 70’s Treehouse and seem to spend most of their time watching television. The brief opening sequence, in which Solo and Chewie outrun their pursuers in the Millennium Falcon, is just a tantalizing offer of chocolate on the tip of a giant turd.

The actual point of the show, as far as the people who produced it were concerned, was the various little musical numbers and comedy sequences along the way, some of which are more Star Wars-themed than others. Most of these are presented as one or other of the characters watching them on some form of television, which often doesn’t make any sense. The sequences themselves are usually not very well-presented and a lot of them are just downright boring, so let’s go through them one by one. Top up your eggnog, folks. We may be here a while.

Our first setpiece is a holographic circus featuring jugglers and acrobats, which the adults use to distract Lumpy so he’ll stop bothering them – like parents at the mall letting their kids watch Paw Patrol on a tablet while they shop. When you see televised circus acts, they’re usually filmed up close and at interesting angles, to heighten the sense of danger, and give you a good look at what’s going on. The Star Wars Holiday Special presents it as tiny figures on a table, always shot from far away and looking down, which removes all the drama from the stunts. Lumpy enlarges a figure, but it’s only the ringmaster. The others remain tiny, all while this little Wookiee looms over them like a kaiju that will start stomping if it isn’t entertained.

Then we get Mark Hamill’s cameo (in which he looks weirdly like one of the puppets from Invaders from the Deep), followed by Malla’s attempt to cook Bantha Surprise by following the directions on a tv show. I’m not very interested in cooking shows anyway, but I have a hard time imagining anybody being interested in a fake cooking show featuring fictional ingredients from other planets. What we see on Malla’s screen comes across as a sort of parody, but not actually a funny one. I’m tempted to think Harvey Korman must have been making fun of some particular 70’s cooking show maven but I don’t begin to know who that might be.

The ‘humour’ of the sequence is supposed to come from Malla’s attempt to follow the directions even though the cook on the show has four arms and Malla only two. I could pull some commentary on ableism in cooking and cooking shows out of this, but it would be a stretch, and nobody on the writing end was thinking about it that hard. It’s just stupid, and so is Korman’s plastic wig. Malla eventually turns it off in frustration, long after we’re tired of listening to it.

By the way, if you’re wondering whose stupid idea it was to set the whole thing on Kashyyyk (or, as a guy in the Special calls it, Kazook) and not have any subtitles to the Wookiee’s dialogue? That was apparently 100% George Lucas. The actual script and everything was in the hands of the television producers, but Lucas would not budge on the premise being Wookiee-centric. At least he exorcised that particular demon here, instead of subjecting us to it on the big screen.

Anyway, next Art Carney drops by to deliver some Life Day presents, among which is the source of our next setpiece: a VR machine which reads Itchy’s mind to present a personalized fantasy! This takes the form of Diahann Carroll in a sparkly feather wig, singing a song and saying things like “I am your fantasy, experience me!” The song is okay, I guess, and Carroll has a lovely voice, but what we’re seeing is basically a boring music video. She’s just standing there on a glittery black background, and we can’t forget that she’s singing to a geriatric Wookiee who is doing the Wookiee equivalent of jacking off to this (emphasized by the appearance of literal little swimmers in part of the sequence!). The fact that it’s a personal fantasy plucked from his subconscious makes it feel like this was something we weren’t supposed to be privy to, like we’re looking through somebody else’s computer at his girlfriend’s nudes.

Princess Leia (also looking disturbingly puppet-like… are we sure the actual actors appeared in this, and not look-a-likes in heavy makeup?) and C3P0 get their cameo, and then there’s the single actually effective moment in the Special. This is when we think Han Solo and Chewie are about to arrive home, ending our torment a full hour early, but no, it’s the Storm Troopers! This bit isn’t fantastic, but it does work. Then, sadly, we’re on to the next variety act.

This is a holographic music video which Carney shows to the Imperial troops as a demonstration that the device he has brought Malla for Life Day is harmless. It’s Jefferson Starship moaning out a rock song, in which I can understand at best one word in three. The visuals are in intense soft-focus that’s probably supposed to be artsy. The costumes (what I can see of them) aren’t any more Star-Wars-y than anything else bands wore in the 70’s. And the song sounds like something you’d find in the ‘easy’ setting on Rock Band. Why does Black Helmet sit there and watch the whole thing when he’s supposed to be searching every house on Kashyyyk/Kazook for rebel sympathizers?

The version of the Special currently available on YouTube, which tragically lacks the commercials, has a lot of comments along the lines of this is what you hallucinate after buying Death Sticks from that guy on Coruscant.

To drive the point home, the next thing we see is Lumpy watching a cartoon about Han Solo and Chewbacca crash-landing on an ocean planet while searching for a mystical talisman that makes things invisible (I wish they hadn’t actually shown this object – then I could have made jokes about it being the One Ring). This sequence is generally regarded as the best thing in the Special, and it introduced Boba Fett and provided some characterization for him. It is definitely true that this is the only segment with a plot, and with its weird aliens and grubby outposts it feels a lot more like Star Wars than anything else going on here.

The main thing that keeps me from enjoying this segment is that it just looks weird. The animators use exaggerated squash-and-stretch on the droids, even more so than on the living characters, which makes them look like they’re made out of jell-o. Princess Leia looks like something out of a cheap 60’s manga and Luke like he was drawn by a twelve-year-old based on an action figure that wasn’t actually of Luke Skywalker. Luke has no pupils, which is very distressing, but not as distressing as when C3P0 blinks. Even worse, as far as I can tell Han Solo has no eyes at all.

The design of the alien planet in this sequence is pretty cool, though. It appears to be entirely covered in a kind of goopy ocean and the creatures that live in it are neat-looking, even if not terribly plausible. Animation is really a great medium for fantasy and science fiction, because it levels the playing field: we’re not thinking about the special effects because everything on screen looks equally unreal. This is something Disney, who used it to such beautiful effect in Lilo and Stitch, totally forgot at just about the same time as they acquired the rights to Star Wars. Oh, for what could have been.

I want to note here that the average review on this blog is about as long as what you’ve read so far. We’re only about two thirds of the way through the Special, though, and I can’t really divide a holiday review up into two weeks. Therefore, consider this your permission to take a break and go snag another latke or whatever you’re snacking on, and then we’ll continue.

There’s one fun bit of background social commentary in the animated sequence, too: the only way for humans to survive the virus is to hang them upside-down so their brains will get enough oxygen despite their weakened hearts. In the city there’s an advertisement for the cure – and the upside-down human pictured in the ad is, of course, a woman in her underwear. The image isn’t detailed and it’s not the focus of the shot, so I don’t think it’s an actual piece of gratuitous cheesecake. Apparently somebody at Nelvana Ltd was just salty about the advertising industry.

The self-contained story in the cartoon makes sense within itself. It justifies Fett’s fearsome reputation far better than anything in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, and the characters seem to be in-character even when they’re off-model. The problem is with it as a part of the framing story about the Imperial troops searching Chewbacca’s house! The Special is very explicit that this is not something that’s actually happening in the real world at the same time as the other events – it is a cartoon Lumpy is watching on TV. Why, in a galaxy controlled by the Empire, would there be cartoons using the real names of real rebel operatives and presenting them as the heroes? If nobody’s supposed to know Boba Fett is connected with the Empire, why does the show blow his cover?

More importantly, where can I get one of those awesome giant stuffed Banthas Lumpy has in his room? I don’t know if that’s a real toy that was available in the late 70’s, but Comic Images does make something similar and you can buy them at Wal-Mart or Toys R Us.

While cleaning up the mess the Stormtroopers made of his room, Lumpy watches an instructional video of how to put together some kind of radio. This features Harvey Korman as an android who keeps getting jammed. Like cooking shows, instructional videos aren’t very interesting unless you’re trying to follow the directions – since we can’t follow the directions, this one is pointless to begin with. The ‘joke’ is not funny, and lines like “every one of the ten thousand terminals on your circuit breaker module is a different colour” might be amusing when written down but they just don’t work when somebody says them aloud. Fortunately, it doesn’t last long.

Then we get on to what’s probably the second-best thing in the Special, the bit where we learn that the Mos Eisley cantina is owned by Bea Arthur. It would be easily the most expensive thing in the Special were it not made up of b-roll footage and re-used puppets from Episode IV. It’s also kind of got a plot, in that a guy with a baking soda volcano on top of his head (this is certainly an efficient way to get the alcohol directly to your brain) is trying to confess his love to Bea while she just wants to get on with running her business. Eventually he gets his heart broken and leaves, and then the Empire shuts the bar down, so Bea throws everybody out with a song.

I have to admit, in The Force Awakens when Han Solo mentioned a female friend who ran a ‘watering hole’… there was a moment there when I was half-expecting it to be Bea Arthur’s character. I’m relieved that it wasn’t, but also just the slightest bit disappointed. We had to wait for The Mandalorian to get a proper Holiday Special callback.

This bit almost had a chance to say something with its ‘thwarted romance’ plot. Usually such a thing in a tv show would get what the male character would consider a happy ending. He would prove to his love interest that being cared for is important, she would realize that love is better than money, and they would metaphorically ride off into the sunset. What it looks like we’re going to get here instead is something more like the episode of South Park where Butters fell in love with the Hooters waitress. Harvey Korman’s character (yes, he plays three different characters in this Special and this was apparently supposed to be a selling point) realizes his crush is based on a misunderstanding, and while it makes him sad, he’s not going to be an asshole about it.

Nor is Bea’s character vilified for rejecting him, which she does tactfully but firmly, as if she’s gone through this many times before. He’s just a minor annoyance in her day before she goes on to worry about bigger problems, like getting everybody to obey that Imperial curfew. Then, however, at the last second he pops up from behind the counter after everybody has left – and that’s where the segment ends. I think we’re supposed to assume they got together after all, but I kind of hope she just threw him out with the rest of them. No means no, damn it.

Bea Arthur’s Go Home Song is to the tune the Cantina Band was playing in Episode IV, so it pretty much goes without saying it’s the catchiest piece in the Special.

Then, finally, it’s time to celebrate Life Day! The Wookiees hold up some glowing Christmas balls, then dress in red robes and walk through outer space into a, uh, wormhole, I guess, that takes them to the base of the giant tree from Avatar. There it’s time for our final setpiece, the culmination of this whole ninety-minute ordeal… Princess Leia sings! The Life Day Carol is to the tune of the main Star Wars theme, and the lyrics sound like something from a generic Christmas album you get free if you buy three cards at Hallmark. Carrie Fisher is a decent singer but she looks like she’s as glad this is over as we are.

Much like Howard the Duck, The Star Wars Holiday Special is a production in which they made all the worst decisions they possibly could. Focusing on the Wookiees at home rather than following Han Solo and Chewbacca through the action killed the whole thing at the starting gate. Then that plot is nothing but a frame on which they can hang the various variety acts, and none of those are very good. It’s only towards the end of the sequence that what we’re seeing even has anything to do with Star Wars. Watching it is an ordeal on the order of an un-riffed Coleman Francis film. It’s so bad, it’s not even something people get together and watch like they do Manos or The Room.

So why do we still have it? The Holiday Special was only broadcast once, and was met by fathomless loathing from critics, Star Wars fans, and ordinary people alike. It has never been released in any other format (Andrew Borntreger of badmovies.org has a story about how Lucas had him thrown out of a Q&A panel for asking if it were getting a DVD release), so the fact that you can find it on YouTube today is down to some nameless hero who recorded it on their newfangled VCR back in 1978. That person then showed it to friends, apparently on the basis of oh my god, you guys, this is so bad, you have to see it, and then because misery loves company they copied it to show to their friends. What we have today is copies of copies of copies of copies, like fragments of Sappho only with VHS artefacts instead of holes in the papyrus (and without the artistic vision).

Humans like to preserve remarkable things. Sappho we’ve preserved because it’s remarkably good, but the Star Wars Holiday Special we preserve because it’s remarkably bad. Lucasfilm has tried very hard to stamp it out. George Lucas himself has said that if he could he would gather up every copy that exists and smash them with a sledgehammer… but we won’t let him do it. We keep copying the Special and passing it along, in a way that’s very familiar to MSTies in particular. We’re circulating the tapes! Why this tape in particular?

I don’t claim to know, but my working theory is that it keeps us humble. We are a species that can produce great things when we put our minds to it. We landed on the moon. We eradicated smallpox. We built the Taj Mahal and the Sagrada Familia. We wrote The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Einstein Field Equations and the aforementioned works of Sappho. But for all that, we are also capable of throwing the same kind of effort into creating utter disasters – and the Star Wars Holiday Special is the rare example of an unmitigated disaster that didn’t actually hurt anybody. It reminds us to take a step back and look at what we’re doing without getting too invested in it, but does so while being harmless and at times humorous.

Would I still rather watch this than Elves? You bet your shaggy Wookiee ass I would. The Star Wars Holiday Special may be longer, but it doesn’t leave nearly such a bad taste in my mouth.

I will leave you with this: the Special was, as I mentioned, only broadcast once, in 1978 – that means its signal is now forty-one light years from Earth and still going. There are several hundred stars within that bubble, around two dozen of which are known to have planets. Somewhere out there, aliens might be getting their first signal from humanity right now and it’s the Star Wars Holiday Special.

#mst3k #reviews #the star wars holiday special #episodes that never were #holiday reviews #70s

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ckret2 · 5 years

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anonymous asked: Oh, I've been craving some Ghidorah/Rodan-centric fics since leaving movie theatre!. I'm sorry I don't really have any solid idea, but I would love to read literally anything with them from you

I wrote a fic, put it in the answer to this ask, hit “post,” and the ask posted but all the text vanished. I edited the post, put the text back in, hit “save”, and all the text vanished again. So I guess I’m deleting the original post, taking a screenshot of the ask, and making a post this way. :/

I swear I’ve seen dozens of cracky posts about Ghidorah/Rodan being a thing but only ONE fic with them. Clearly, this needs to be fixed. And I got another anon request for Ghidorah/Rodan (or at least, one-sided Ghidorah/Rodan... or, 1/3-sided Ghidorah/Rodan) so you’ll probably be getting more from me soon. This fic is unedited because I literally just finished it.

As I was writing this fic I had an emotional crisis upon looking up Rodan’s character art and realizing he’s not actually red, he’s just lit by red lights in the promo posters.

Sept 4 edit: Now, at last, the fic is proofed!

I’m still accepting Ghidorah-centric fic prompts! This is no longer true. If you wanna see a prompt written tho, buy me a ko-fi. Three bucks a fic is a great deal.

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How Cute

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The red sprites of this world had always stood out to them in a way most of this alien world's other comparably-sized inhabitants had not—and this one, the only red sprite now awake, was no exception. He was the sole creature that wasn’t completely bizarre. His wings, his body, his legs, even his face, were all so near-to-normal, normal-adjacent.

His nearness to correctness, when they were so used to beasts that hardly resembled proper living creatures at all, only made his differences more pronounced, more uncomfortable—from the sharp tapering point of what should have been his snout to the strange way his wings seemed to curve without fingers. Even the way wind gushed beneath his wings, a burst of air that blew aside everything before him, seemed like a parody of the vortexes that they themselves stirred up, stretching from one horizon to the other.

So near-to-normal—but not quite. And the not quite made him seen even more alien than the creatures they had nothing in common with.

Even his war cry was hauntingly familiar—like an echo of cries they themselves might have made, long ago, in another alien atmosphere under another alien star. Before they had learned to sing.

As the red sprite burst through the storm, black with volcanic rock and edged red with dripping lava, cawing his war cry with hatred and defiance—like he thought he stood a chance against them!—they thought, condescendingly, how cute.

They wondered whether, with time, the red sprite could learn to sing like them too.

His talons and his beak were sharp. Sharp enough to dig between their scales, but not enough to rip through them—not enough to make them bleed. Their claws and teeth were sharper and stronger, and the red sprite cried in pain and dodged their attacks when they forced him to, but he never fled. He didn't try to escape. What spirit, this red sprite had. What fury, what determination, what wrath. Did his wrath burn him up from the inside, the way theirs did? Did he live to burn down worlds, too?

The rain sizzled on the smoking ends of his wings; his flame fluttered and flared. He grew darker the longer they fought, the glowing cracks in his wings losing their light. They knew that the red sprite nested in a volcano; could he not sustain his fire long without it? Even so, when they moved in for the kill—sank Second and Third's fangs into his wings him to pin them wide open, hovered First's face so close to his, their chest so near to his chest—he was still so warm.

So warm.

How many millennia had it been since they were warm? Not hot, not burning—but warm?

Gazing down at the red sprite's eyes, First were tempted to press their faces against him, to curl into the warmth together. Instead, he screamed forth their lightning, electrocuted the red sprite, and dropped him into the sea.

As he sank, with the churning water boiling around his dying flames—his bold resistance rendered futile—they thought, pityingly, how cute.

###

With nemesis re-dueled and dispatched, with wounds licked and Third repaired, with siren song sang and all the beasts of this world capable of hearing it now mindlessly dancing to their tune—they claimed the red sprite's nest as their own, claimed the red sprite's nest as their throne. They expected they could comfortably settle down while they waited for the world to burn down around them.

They did not expect to see the red sprite flying stiffly out of the ocean.

How? They had felt the air over the ocean change with that strange flash of light. The atmosphere itself had become alien to this world. It had killed all the nearby creatures, they were sure—they were nearly sure it had even killed their foul nemesis, the little king. It should have killed the red sprite as well, who was nowhere near as strong as the little king.

But it hadn't. How?

They were lightning; they breathed lightning when they sang, their scales flashed golden with electricity. The true "red sprite" for which they'd nicknamed this species was a distorted illusion of lightning, a red electric flash high in the sky above thunderstorms. They had named the red sprite's species after that phenomenon mockingly—he was an echo of themselves, a foreign phenomenon that superficially resembled them. Maybe the name was truer than they'd thought? Maybe the way that red sprites came from the same storms as lightning, he had come from the same source as them?

No. It was impossible. They didn't even remember what their home atmosphere smelled like, only barely remembered the color of their star; they remembered even the moon they'd been dragged to afterward far more clearly. Nothing else could have come to this world from there.

However, even considering the possibility shook them. They looked at the red sprite with new eyes as he landed before them.

And anyway, how had he survived the blast? When the greatest creature of this world could not and only they, not of this world, could?

They flexed their wings, readying themselves for another fight—they were, after all, sitting on the red sprite's nest. (It was so hot—they could feel it trying to melt their claws—but, they realized, although it felt hot, it didn't feel warm. Not like him.) However, as he drew near, he beat his wings to stop short of them. Stones and dust scattered along the sides of the volcano, but the wind didn't even stir in the caldera. He landed, spread his wings, and dipped his head low before them.

He wasn't here to fight. He was answering their siren song. Not as one being controlled by it. No, the command they'd given was to destroy, to mindlessly flatten the world in anger and fear—not to come bow to them. He was deferring to them not because he was compelled to, but because he was choosing to. He chose to follow them.

Why? Because they'd beaten him? Because they'd beaten the little king? Because—was it possible—he wanted to see them turn the world to ashes?

As the red sprite prostrated himself before their throne, head tilted sideways so he could look up at them—his eyes were the same bright gold as their scales—they thought, softly, how cute.

###

(Replies/reblogs are welcome! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of Ghidorah-centric and Rodorah fics, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.)

#ghidorah #king ghidorah #rodan #godzilla #kotm #fanfic #my writing #spoilers #anonymous #ask #(now edited!)

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grimelords · 5 years

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Hello I’ve finished my February playlist for you. There’s no timeline on these things anymore they just come out whenever they come out it seems. A good mix, and I’m sure there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ve never heard before that you’ll like.

Doncamatic (feat. Daley) - Gorillaz: This song is extremely traumatic for me because they released it after Plastic Beach as a standalone single and Damon Albarn said they had a whole other album worth of songs from the Plastic Beach sessions that they were thinking about releasing with Doncamatic as the lead single that just never materialised, and the idea of Plastic Beach 2 sitting on a hard drive while we get The Now Now (The Fall 2) instead is maddening.

Portait Of A Man (live) - Marlon Williams: I feel like I've used The Secret to bring this album into existence. It's exactly what I wanted from him - no studio artifice or weird genre pigeonholing and his huge voice on full display. It's incredible and long as hell and this is definitely the highlight.

Houdini Crush - Buke & Gase: I'm in love with the structure of this song. It takes SO long to get back to the chorus. It takes about three different sections in the middle and then finally gets back there and it's so satisfying because of it. You could edit this song into a tight indie pop piece but instead it has the space to go wild and jam and it's great.

AE_LIVE_KRAKOW_200914 - Autechre: Sorry but Autechre finally put all their live albums on spotify and they're very VERY good. Not the sort of thing that you want to listen to as part of a playlist exactly cause they go for an hour each but a very nice reminder nonetheless.

Sheet Metal Girl - Pig Destroyer: I think Pig Destroyer is one of the best band names I've ever heard. I found out later they meant pigs like cops which is still good but the idea of absolutely eviscerating a hog for no reason is very palpably metal. Just looked up the lyrics and this song seems to literally about having sex with a girl made out of sheet metal. Good!

Horizon - Aldous Harding: I absolutely love this song and the way she says 'babe' lights my brain up like a christmas tree. Every now and then I think about when you’ll die baaaaabe.

Born Slippy (Nux) - Underworld: There's a good bit on the Genius page for this song that says "Lots of 1990s acts helped popularize techno, but in Karl Hyde, Underworld had something that was the exclusive province of rock bands: a totally full-of-it frontman who sounded cool." and it's interesting that Underworld and The Prodigy are the biggest names to survive that time and still be at least slightly relevant now. No matter how much you put into your instrumentals nothing can really compare to just having an insane guy yell a bunch of garbage over it.

A Change Is Going To Come - Baby Huey & The Baby Sitters: This is like all good all normal and then he does that huge squeal at 2 minutes in and you're rocked to your core and then it only gets bigger and bigger and better from there. Also maybe one of the best mid song monologues I've ever heard.

No Signal (feat. Roy Woods) - 24hrs: The whole thing of emo rap mirroring mid 2000s emo is still so strange because it's not just the mindset and content being repurposed it's the literal melodic conventions. Change the instrumentation of this song and it's melodically just an emo song. Very strange, but this song is great regardless.

De Aqui No Sales - Cap.4: Disputa - Rosalia: Rosalia rocks and I only just found out El Guincho co-produced this album which is very exciting to me. I love the way this song feels like it never really gets to the big build up it's promising. It has a big intro for about half the song and then when it feels like it's about to blow up when the handclaps come in it just sits in that groove for a while and ends. I also feel like I should mention the video for this song because it's like the platonic ideal of a music video. It's got everything you could ask for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvGt2BcDl_g

Glass Jar - Gang Gang Dance: Here's how good brains are: I had a sudden urge to listen to this album the other day but couldn't remember what it was called or who it was by, only the album cover, but for some reason locked away in my brain was the fact that it was from 2011 so I just looked through Pitchfork's Best Of 2011 list until I recognised it. Incredible. Anyway I'm so glad I did because I ended up having a huge phase with this album. They walk the fine line of psychedelic jammy bands like this of taking up a lot of space with atmospherics but it never feeling like it's lost momentum. Even when this song takes fully half of its 11 minute runtime to properly get started it never feels like wasted time somehow, it's always moving somewhere.

Heavyweight - Infected Mushroom: It's unbelievable that this song's good because it absolutely shouldn't be. The unholy mix of goa trance and metal usually reserved for Command And Conquer soundtracks is so unbelievably naff that it's come all the way around again and I absolutely love it.

Black Static - Health: I'm still absolutely furious about Pitchfork giving this album a 3 and not particularly for the score but because it's some of the worst Pitchfork Writing I've seen in a quite a while. They tried to cancel them for calling the album Slaves Of Fear I think: "The “we,” it seems, refers to the slaves, the slaves of fear, and if I try any harder to connect the dual sensation of edginess and laziness with slavery, the all-American institution that killed and brutalized millions of people for hundreds of years, I am going to have to take a long walk into the sun." Not sure about that. Anyway this song's great sorry for talking about a review instead of the song!

Burn Bridges - The Grates: Twee pop is an underrated genre and The Grates are an underrated band because they brought so much attitude and power to it it's hardly twee at all. It's huge and it rocks!

Girlfriend (feat. Lil Mama) - Dr. Luke Mix - Avril Lavigne: Sorry for putting Dr Luke on your dash in 2019 but this is mostly for Lil Mama. Removing Avril's verses and replacing them with Lil Mama but keeping the chorus and big guitars makes it sound like a lost Girl Talk song and it's so, so much better than the original. There's also a good bit in this where she really puts a lot of emphasis on saying 'Jennifer Hudson' and the weird harmony vocals in the background mirror it which I like a lot.

Panic Switch - Silversun Pickups: It seems like Silversun Pickups had no lasting impact beyond being one hit wonders for Lazy Eye which is so strange to me because their first two albums were absolutely solid. This is also a good example of totally nonsense lyrics feeling like they have meaning because the melody it so good.

3 - Seekae: It's very strange now to think that Alex Cameron was in Seekae. But that's not important. What is important is how good this song is. In the extremely narrow genre of Mount Kimbie-ites +Dome really stood out to me as album from guys who really got it. It's extremely catchy music but it still sounds like nothing you've ever heard before which when you think about it sounds like it should be impossible.

Shooting Stars - Bag Raiders: Bag Raiders did a little Song Exploder thing for Triple J about this song a little while ago and pointed out something I'd never noticed before which is that this song has the extremely strange structure of 1 really long verse, breakdown, 1 really long chorus, end. Which is.... completely amazing. And also that this song blew up and charted higher than it ever had before via memes like 6 years after it came out is still bizarre. Remember when it was in the video for Swish Swish by Katy Perry? God I hope they got paid a million dollars for that.

Romantic Rights (Erol Alkan's Love From Below Re-Edit) - Death From Above 1979: Huge fan of this remix that seems to just drop the full song unedited right in the middle. The perfect way to remix an already great song - just make it longer.

Dwa Serduszka - Joanna Kulig: I saw Cold War and subsequently couldn't get this song out of my head. I loved that movie so much but I also extremely agreed when @cyborgbree said the ending was like a Simpsons parody or foreign movies.

Holes - Mercury Rev: This song gives me depression and makes me feel like I'm sorting through old records and merch from my old band that tried really hard but never got anywhere even though I've never even been in a band. That's the power of music!

It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus) - Arcade Fire: Reflektor is a great and underrated album and to this day I am still finding new things to love about it! Namely this song which I've never paid much attention to before but massively jumped out at me last time I listened. It's a 3 note riff but it's absolutely amazing.

Dance Your Life Away - Audiobooks: Huge fan of having the gall to name your band Audiobooks and a huge fan of this song! It sounds like if Life Without Buildings was a dance band, which is a theoretically perfect idea. It sounds like she's just making the words up on the spot and she probably is and it's absolutely great.

Everything (Deathless) - JW Ridley: I'm so glad that War On Drugs brought heartland rock back for the masses and finally gave us back extended guitar solos outside of a metal or prog context. It is so inspiring what you can do with two chords and a propulsive groove.

Unmarked Helicopters - Soul Coughing: Sorry for continually putting Soul Coughing in these playlists but check out how good this song they did for the X Files movie soundtrack was. 'check out this Soul Coughing song they did for the X Files movie soundtrack' is a very specific kind of 90s sentence. Anyway the 'black black black black and blacker' part with the distortion on the vocals is so good, love it lots.

Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair - Arctic Monkeys: I saw Arctic Monkeys a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing but also extra good because they played this song that I'd completely forgotten about and it went off. The Josh Homme produced Arctic Monkeys albums are very good because his fingerprints are all over them and they sound like Queens Of The Stone Age covers.

What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out? - Gang Of Youths: It's fucked up how good this song is. I listened to it the other day and was like 'what the fuck how come I never listened to Gang Of Youths second album that much? But then I kept going and realised it was 70 minutes long and had about five interlude tracks on it. I love Gang Of Youths but they need a producer that will yell at them until they make a 40 minute album. Fuck this song's good though. So good I'm mad I haven't seen it live yet.

Shark Smile - Big Thief: I don't even know the words to this song or what it's about but it makes me cry anyway. I'm very glad I found out about Big Thief this month, like two years after everyone else. Their description on Bandcamp says "Listening to Big Thief is like the feeling of looking at a dog and suddenly marvelling that it is like you but very not like you; when you are accustomed to looking at a dog and thinking 'dog', watching Big Thief is like forgetting the word 'dog' and looking at that naked animal and getting much closer to it and how different it is to you" which is a certainly a way to feel.

Inhaler - Foals: I don't know how I've avoided it but I've never really gotten much into Foals even though they have multiple songs that I really really love, this one being one of them. I think it's an amazing piece of recording simply for how huge it gets. This song swells to about ten times its original size as the chorus hits before totally deflating again. Also a huge fan of anyone that can make a Battles riff work in a conventional song like this does.

Red Bull & Hennessy - Jenny Lewis: Another fantastic song in the long pantheon of great songs about getting twisted and being horny. The isolated 'ohh' after 'all we've been through' feels like a real Shania Twain piece of production and I love it. Also the drums on this song are absolutely massive for some reason which is very cool.

listen here

#playlists

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Can No Time to Die Break the Final James Bond Movie Curse?

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Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond is coming to an end. This truth has been known ever since it was announced that Craig would reprise the role in No Time to Die, his fifth outing as 007. And yet, given the litany of delays that movie has endured largely due to the pandemic—remember when No Time to Die was slated for November 2019?—the reality of his leaving feels like it’s been almost taken for granted.

The curtain really is coming down this month for UK fans, and the No Time to Die marketing team is now making folks aware of that again with the recent viral clip of Craig’s teary eyed farewell speech from the day production wrapped on the Bond movie. After wearing Bond’s tuxedo for 15 years, Craig closes the book on a run that’s lasted longer than any other Bond actor’s, and with almost as many films as any thespian who’s ever called themselves James Bond. (Sean Connery still has six canonical James Bond movies under his belt, and Roger Moore holds the record with seven.)

So now that the movie is truly here, it’s worth wondering one of the quiet bits out loud: Will Craig do something almost no other Bond actor has done to date and finish his run on a high note? Because when you sit down and think about it, nearly every actor who’s ordered a shaken martini before him has signed off with the worst Bond movie of their tenure.

There are exceptions, of course: George Lazenby only played 007 once, and in a good movie too. But if one wanted to be glib, they could say On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) was then both his best and worst Bond entry. Beyond Lazenby’s solitary adventure, however, each Bond actor has ended on a sour note, which puts all the more pressure on No Time to Die to buck this trend…

Sean Connery Goes Bust in Diamonds Are Forever

This phenomenon began with the first and (in this writer’s opinion) best actor to ever purr, “The name’s Bond, James Bond.” As the man who helped invent much of the iconography we associate with the 007 character—imprinting a boyish insolence and brutal physicality to the role that author Ian Fleming arguably did not intend—Sean Connery played Bond in the character’s heyday. And unlike every actor who would follow (again excluding Lazenby), Connery got to enjoy the role at a time when Bond didn’t feel out of step with the zeitgeist and didn’t need to justify his existence. During the glory years of Bondmania, Connery and the producers were shaping pop culture instead of responding to it.

Yet that wasn’t quite true for the last time Connery put on the hairpiece. His initial run in the role included five back-to-back franchise classics in Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), and You Only Live Twice (1967). Admittedly, the first three of those movies have aged far better in the last 60 years than the final two, but all were well received in their moment and helped make an actor Fleming once described as “a ditch digger” into a global superstar who’d eventually be knighted by Her Majesty. Still, after five template-setting adventures, Connery was done—his frustrations over how he was paid for the movies didn’t help.

If Connery had ended his run with You Only Live Twice, his tenure would be seen as glittering as Goldfinger’s house paint. However, after Lazenby elected not to come back for a second outing as 007, and after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service closed out the 1960s as the lowest grossing Bond movie since Connery’s first two installments, producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman shipped a small fortune Connery’s way to convince him to return for Diamonds are Forever (1971), which I would charitably suggest is the worst Bond movie ever made.

To be sure, there are flashier targets that could hold that title, many of which do not include actors as generally beloved in the role as Connery. But Diamonds Are Forever featured a tired and bored looking performance from Connery, as well as a script and direction that retreated from the tragic cliffhanger ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in favor of something far more generic. Essentially a reworking of Connery’s previously most outrageous Bond films, Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever ups the camp factor as Bond again battles SPECTRE mastermind Blofeld (now played at his worst by Charles Gray). There’s some harebrained plot in which Blofeld is using South African diamonds to power a satellite’s laser that will lead to him holding the world’s nuclear arsenals hostage.

But really it’s just an excuse for Bond to go through the motions as he travels around Las Vegas and the larger American southwest. It then ends Connery’s run by letting 007 have a laugh as Blofeld, ostensibly the man who killed Bond’s wife (though she’s never mentioned in this film), gets away. James then kills two henchmen coded as gay with maximum homophobia while enjoying a cruise. It’s a film that already had one foot in the land of Austin Powers parody.

Technically, Connery would play Bond one more time in the non-Eon produced remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again (1983), but that’s not exactly a classic either…

Roger Moore’s Tired View to a Kill

There’s a lot that can be said about Roger Moore’s final 007 adventure, A View to a Kill (1985), but anything positive comes almost exclusively from the absolute banging Duran Duran song. That plus the movie’s less flattering qualities which appeal to connoisseurs of bad movie kitsch. Yes, Christopher Walken really does look high as a kite as he plays ‘80s yuppie supervillain Max Zorin, and Grace Jones as henchwoman May Day appears as though she’ll snap Moore in half.

But therein lies one of the film’s many problems: By the time Moore got to his seventh Bond movie, the actor was pushing 60 and looked it. By his own admission, he realized he stayed with the role too long when he met the mother of his leading lady, Tanya Roberts, and discovered she was younger than him. But the geriatric quality of Moore here is just one of a cacophony of woes, which when combined suggested that the series had become long in the tooth.

At his height of popularity, Moore had perfected his jovial gentleman charm offensives, playing a spy more inclined to disarm a situation with a well-placed punchline than a punch. This is exhibited in Moore’s best Bond adventure, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), a classic that plays as much like a romantic comedy as a typical 007 flick… even with the fate of the world hanging in the balance as a megalomaniac attempts to nuke the planet.

Movies

For Your Eyes Only Was Not Supposed to Star Roger Moore

By Don Kaye

Movies

Casino Royale and GoldenEye Director on What’s Next for James Bond

By Don Kaye

After that high bar though, much of the Moore era chased the campy thrills of that movie to far lesser results. The one exception is For Your Eyes Only (1981), an underrated gem in the series which for the most part resembles a genuine Cold War adventure with the occasional concession to Bond formulae. Following that picture, Moore considered hanging up the Walther PPK, but was persuaded to come back for Octopussy (1983) and then A View to a Kill.

It is arguable Moore made worse Bond movies than AVTAK. For sheer camp spectacle, nothing outdoes the outrageousness of Moonraker (1979), and we’d argue Octopussy is one of the more forgettable Bond movies ever made. Yet it is the haggard, over-the-hill quality which makes A View to a Kill come off as faintly desperate, and a little bit sad as the franchise again dregs up the plot of Goldfinger and attempts to redress it with a limited Hollywood understanding of 1980s Silicon Valley, plus more violence and sex. It seemed dated even in ’85. If the Bond franchise is a series of peaks and valleys, Moore ended his run close to sea level.

Timothy Dalton Goes After Scarface in License to Kill

Timothy Dalton is the Bond actor that time has been kindest too. While his aggressive and perpetually angry version of the character was somewhat rejected by late ‘80s audiences who still had Moore’s interpretation fresh in mind—plus the media fiasco of Pierce Brosnan being cast as Bond and then forced to drop out—Dalton’s popularity has grown among diehard fans who enjoyed his underplayed bluntness. It’s an interpretation that looks ahead of its time, too, given the eventual popularity of Craig’s take on the role.

All that being said, I would argue Dalton never starred in a great Bond movie. His first outing, The Living Daylights (1987), has its moments and is another one of the rare Bond films that feels like an actual espionage thriller, even as it lacks the tension of From Russia With Love or the charm and terrific climax of For Your Eyes Only. It was then followed up by License to Kill (1989), a Bond picture that in spite of online chatter to the contrary is not some lost hidden gem.

In truth, License to Kill is one of those middling type of Bond movies that jump on the pop culture bandwagons of their day. In the era of Moore, that meant some uncomfortably tone deaf riffs on Blaxploitation in Live and Let Die (1973) and aping Star Wars in Moonraker. With License to Kill, it meant Bond imitating popular television series Miami Vice and some of the harder edged action movies and crime thrillers of the 1980s, particularly Lethal Weapon (1987) and Scarface (1983). The problem, however, is that License to Kill is still a Bond movie produced by Cubby Broccoli, who’d been with the series since the beginning, and directed by John Glen, who’d helmed the last four Bond movies, including A View to a Kill.

Whereas the R-rated violence and traumatic cynicism of Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon felt startlingly edgy in the ‘80s, License to Kill looks a bit like the aging hipster who’s still trying to fit in at the nightclub. And seeing Bond go on a vendetta against a South American drug dealer right out of the Tony Montana playbook looked neutered when compared to the actual Tony Montana. Which is a shame, as Bond out on a personal mission of revenge seems like an appealing narrative prompt that the Bond franchise has never quite gotten right. Diamonds Are Forever ignored Bond’s need for retribution following the death of his wife Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Craig’s later rampage movie, Quantum of Solace (2008), squandered the potential left by Casino Royale’s tragic ending two years earlier. Instead Quantum also became distracted by the conventions of its decade, in this case by copying the Jason Bourne movies.

So we see Dalton’s grumpy 007 given a reason to really pout after Felix Leiter has his legs fed to sharks on his wedding night, and Bond then finds the bride murdered the next morning. It’s a grisly but potent setup. Hence the disappointment when you realize the most memorable thing about its third act is the bizarre cameo by Wayne Newton as an evil televangelist.

Pierce Brosnan’s Run Needed to Die Another Day

Probably the most notorious final Bond film is Pierce Brosnan’s swan song in Die Another Day (2002). Given the mostly deserved vitriol that movie now receives, it’s hard to remember it was the most successful Bond film ever when it came out (when left unadjusted for inflation). Big and gaudy, the critics mostly accepted it, and it was no deal breaker for Quentin Tarantino who dreamed of working with Brosnan as Bond afterward in a ‘60s-set Casino Royale movie that never materialized.

Of course after the post-40th anniversary haze faded away, fans were left with a pretty lousy flick, which looks all the stranger when you remember the first act is actually pretty solid. The movie starts with Bond double crossed and left to spend 18 months in a prisoner camp in North Korea. In this way, it was the first Bond movie to incorporate the opening title sequence into its narrative, with the naked silhouettes of women being delirious visions Bond has while being tortured. His subsequent escape as a shaggy caveman into Hong Kong high society and then doing Connery-esque low-fi spy work in Cuba is also energetic, frothy fun.

Few folks recall any of this though because the film nosedives into the realm of the wretched and the damned at about the halfway mark. Inexplicably, director Lee Tamahori and the producers decided to celebrate Bond’s 40th by emulating the worst excesses of the Moore years, and even the banality of Diamonds Are Forever’s plot with diamonds and space lasers. It’s just as bad the second time around, but in Die Another Day’s case this also means invisible cars and terrible early 2000s CGI effects as a cartoon version of Brosnan surfs on glaciers and digital waves.

It’s bad, and it undermines Brosnan’s overall tenure. While Brosnan only starred in one great Bond movie, GoldenEye (1995), we’d argue both Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World Is Not Enough (1999) are pretty good. The former has aged like wine with its evil news baron that’s obviously a caricature of Rupert Murdoch. To better launch his cable news network, the fiend even manufactures a global crisis that risks lives. Huh. The World Is Not Enough, meanwhile, has one of the best pre-titles action sequences in the whole franchise and one of its best villains. In fact, Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King remains the only female lead who’s also the main vaillain.

Movies

The November Man and Pierce Brosnan’s Anti-James Bond Roles

By David Crow

Movies

007: Ranking the 24 James Bond Villains From Best to Worst

By David Crow

Together, all three form a solid enough trilogy in which Brosnan plays a Bond forced to find his place in the changing, destabilized world of the 1990s. The Cold War is over, and the World on Terror is yet to come. In this strange, supposed “end of history” moment, Brosnan’s Bond spent three movies renegotiating the character’s place in a world of upheaval, oblivious to the horrors to come. So Bond faces the threats borne out of a destabilized eastern European bloc, and misleading mass media forces shaping the world for the worst, all of which now looks like prophecy.

While we wish Brosnan had a better fourth film to hang his hat on than Die Another Day, if he’d simply stopped at three, his little ‘90s-specific trilogy would look a lot better.

Can No Time to Die Break the Pattern?

In the end, we won’t know the answer to the above question until we see the movie, however there are many reasons to be hopeful. Unlike three of the four movies at the center of this article, No Time to Die is not a Bond film from a franchise veteran director, who might be happy to go through the usual paces. In fact, one of the most appealing things about Craig’s whole tenure in 007 is how much more willing producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are to take risks.

After Sam Mendes helmed the one-two punch of Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), to admittedly uneven results, Eon Productions is doubling down on auteur talent by tapping Cary Joji Fukunaga to direct Craig’s final Bond movie. A sometimes overlooked visualist, Fukunaga has style to spare in films like Jane Eyre (2011) and Beasts of No Nation (2015). But even more than his cinematic output, his standing as one of the first filmmakers to prove television can truly be a director’s medium in the first season of True Detective and Netflix’s Maniac suggests he can bring a renewed hunger to making a classic Bond epic that stands apart. The various No Time to Die trailers all seem to suggest this will be one of the chicest looking Bond movies to date.

Additionally, the film benefits from being the grand finale of Craig’s oeuvre. As really the first actor to have an evolving and complex continuity throughout his installments in the franchise, Craig has taken 007 on an emotional journey across the previous four movies. The quality of the films might vary, but Craig’s through-line has been consistently strong, and with No Time to Die the performer and filmmakers know they need to stick a landing that says something resounding about this version of the character. And lastly, the cast for this movie, from returning faces like Ralph Fiennes, Jeffrey Wright, and Léa Seydoux, to new ones, such as Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, and Rami Malek as a mysterious villain named Safin, suggests this might very well be the best ensemble ever brought together for a Bond movie.

So here’s to hoping Craig can beat the curse and shake things up one more time.

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one-true-houselight · 7 years

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Monday means Writing

This is an essay I wrote in response to the assignment ‘What is Theatre to you?” (Names taken out for privacy.”

What is Theatre? I sit in the laundry room of my dorm trying to write a paper about theatre that isn’t painful to read. I slowly go back in my memory; I stand in my workplace at 3am, trying to say goodbye to a second family. I cower on a staircase in the same place two years prior, frozen by fear. I explain to someone that I can, in fact, operate a drill. In fact, I do that at my high school for five years. Three years before that, I sing the only song I know on the karaoke machine from the expansion stage a long forgotten middle school parent built in our cafeteria. I learn to coil cables and test microphones as a excitable eight year old in my church. I finally shut up as an egotistical kid at the end of a drama camp in Hawai’i. These are the defining moments of what I have become, and what I’m still becoming, because of theatre. Theatre is my life. It has shown me my strength, it has taught me my limits. It has given me a reason to live, which I have needed. And these snapshots of my life scratch the surface of explaining how this art does that. I lived in Hawai’i for three and a half years. In that time, I learned how to ice skate, saw an erupting volcano, learned and promptly forgot bits and pieces of both Hawaiian and Japanese, and interacted extensively with a community theatre organization. That community theatre was called Honolulu Theater for Youth, or HTY for short. My family did everything from watching shows to attending workshops; from helping renovate their theater space to, and here the story really begins, signing me up for acting camps. Now, it would be easy to expect a story of me taking to it instantly, and finding a new passion in this wonderful thing called Show Business, capital S capital B. This is not one of those stories. I was a short six year old and a horrific diva. I wanted to control everything, I didn't want to play the games. I am grateful I am writing this paper because it is proof that those instructors were imbibed with the grace not to literally murder me. But then why do I even bring up this camp if it did nothing to interest me in theatre? Because it taught me something later down the road. We were doing a final ‘performance’ (read: played improv games) for the parents at the end of the camp, and one of the things we did was play a game called ‘statues’. This game involved staying quiet and still. We had played it many times over the duration of the camp, and it was the bane of my existence. But for this performance, I actually settled down and played. And I enjoyed it, amazingly enough. And though I cringe every time I look back at this time in my life, I can still see that the things I experienced with HTY have stayed with me through the years; I remember plays about the Korean War, about Hawaiian cultural legends who became my cultural legends. I saw my first parodies and satires here. And all this is why when I got back into theatre, I decided I want to eventually open my own community theater. I want to reach people through this art form I love the same way HTY reached me, and have reached thousands of other people. This wasn’t the spark, but it was the fire starter you put in to keep the fire burning once that spark does come along. After we moved to Virginia, we quickly found a nearby church that had fun music and nice people. I was eight, and though I liked church, I was usually pretty antsy. After a few weeks of watching the sound guy set up each week (we sat right in front of the choir area), he came up and asked if I wanted to help. I excitedly hopped up, and started learning stuff. I learned how the channel on the box the mic plugged into corresponded to the channel on the board, how to sound check (making many counting jokes in the process), and what all those darn knobs do on the board. I promptly forgot most of that last one, but the sound guy (whose name is Gerry) was always happy to explain. I got to take home a dead cable and practice coiling, which I enjoyed an inordinate amount. And I still do. This was my first experience in tech. And even though I retained at most 50% of the information, that means I retained 50% of the information about sound. It gave me confidence to go into other situations and say “Hey, I know sound basics”. It was an environment where it didn’t even occur to me that being a girl had anything to do with what I worked on. And I continued to help with sound at that church for over 10 years, even after I became part of the choir I so admired. Lessons I learned from that badly placed sound board still come back to me. I made friends with the adults that helped Gerry. It reminded me that small stuff like coiling a cable could be relaxing and even joyful. It acted as another fire starter for when theatre would become a part of my life. In sixth grade, I thought I was going to play soccer in the spring. So my dad, a track star back in the day, convinced me to try out for track in the fall. Shockingly enough, when I refused to run a mile and could barely breathe after the events I actually did attempt, I was cut from tryouts almost immediately. And I have never been more pleased with rejection in my life. After that, my mom convinced me to reluctantly try out for A Christmas Carol. Fast forward to that spring. After A Christmas Carol, I did Suessical Jr., which was wonderful. At the after cast-party, someone pulled out a karaoke machine, and I volunteered to go first. I got up there and started reading through the song list. And I knew none of them. Until I got to one a friend had introduced me to not four months prior; “Fireflies” by Owl City. I picked it, because I love that song, and started singing. A bunch of people who had become my friends over this show started clapping with beat, and sang all the responses. And in that moment, I knew that this is where I belonged. I had moved four times in my life, so I was used to things in life not lasting. But this was different. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be friends with all of them, I would be friends with some of them for a long time. And everything about theatre worked for me; the show, the performing, the jokes. It was an intersection of everything. It was here where I started to remember HTY, and see what I could do for people. And I have always remembered singing “Fireflies” with those people as the true spark of my love for theatre. I have been woodworking with my dad for many years. I helped build stuff for my sixth and seventh grade shows, as well as just around the house stuff. Lowes was a wonderful place for me. Still is, I suppose. I started going to set builds at my high school the spring before I started attending. And my skills definitely improved over the years, as skills are apt to do. And it was these set builds that helped me realize how much I enjoy tech. There was something about working for hours and creating something that sat with me for longer than acting ever did. But it also started showing me more important, concrete lessons. I learned to know my strengths, when it was good to learn, and when getting things done was more important. I learned when to insist I knew how to do something, and when to not fight that battle. Especially the latter. It’s hard, when you feel like any sign of weakness is a betrayal of yourself and your gender, to let it go when it isn't an issue. And I didn't learn it completely in any sense of the word. I still haven't completely learned it. But those Saturdays were where I learned a lot about myself and the people I was working with in high school. The summer of my junior year, I had accepted a job at my Tae Kwon Do place as a camp counselor for some ungodly reason. I was only scheduled to work the month of August, which is why when my dad asked if I want to do another camp in August I initially said no. He explained that a friend of his tagged him in a post from a local theater we had attended a couple of times. This theater, the Hylton Performing Arts Center, was starting up something called ‘Tech Boot Camp’; a week long thing where you were taught technical theater by the people who work there as technicians. And to sweeten the deal, after the camp you were allowed to volunteer at their shows. My parents finally convinced me to skip a week of work to do this, saying it would help with my goals and be a good experience. This right here is what English teachers call foreshadowing. But I’ll get to that later. Anyway, we start the first day on intros and lights. Which means going up to the fifth floor tech level and the follow spot booth. Fun Fact about Erika <last name>; I am afraid of heights. <Unparliamentary language deleted> terrified. So I hung back in the follow spot booth, and prayed fervently as we walked along. Then we got to another set of stairs. Another woman and I could not continue, so one of the counselors stays with us. Then everyone went downstairs, and I couldn't move. Eventually, the same counselor brought me down the elevator and calmed me down. Throughout the week, I pushed myself to confront the heights with help from all four counselors. By the end, even though it was one of the best experiences of my life, I was convinced I would not be invited back. But the main production person came and specifically said they wanted me back because I had been so engaged, and another person said that they too were scared of heights, and that it was ok. And this camp wasn’t where I learned any lessons, or where I found a new love or passion. Those came later. But it shows a starting point, and it is important to my journey in theatre to see this stop. A little over two years after that camp, I am a paid employee. Those four counselors, along with all the other HPAC production and other staff, are my best friends and a second family. I learned so many things, a mere fraction of which was stagehand related. I have conquered a list of anxieties and fears longer than a cue-to-cue rehearsal. These people helped me decide to seek help for my clinical anxiety, and did everything they could to help ever since then. No activity has helped me more with my self-confidence and esteem. No group of people has taught me more about friendship and family. This was the first place I wanted to go after I reported my parent’s abuse, and it was a haven whenever I needed it. I figured out a lot about myself, and it was (and is) where I could start rebuilding a person I could look at in the mirror. It showed me how much I fit into theatre, how I really could make it in this world. And now I have a gaggle of brothers and sisters who will always be there to lend advice, make a joke, or just listen. I could write pages about this, but I think it is summed up best by how we parted before I came to Tech. It’s 3am. I hug every single person as they walk out, sharing a quick whispered conversation. Until it is just me and the counselor who helped me at camp, the man who was the first to adopt me, who is one of the only ones who knows I might not be alive the next day, who knows everything about me like they all do. And we both stand there, trying not to cry. Tech theatre, like I mentioned above, is an almost magical intersection of many of my complexities. It requires a lot of movement, which is one of the ways I deal with my anxiety. It is ever-changing, and yet still has constants and rules and stuff I can organize. There is always new stuff to learn, and people who can and will teach it to me. It lets my strengths be used, and it lets my limits be set. I have learned to not be a diva, to find the little things I can do, to find families, to do what I can the best I can, and that there is nothing I can’t do if I want to do it. I feel that tech is the best way I have to help people, and I am thankful for all the experiences that have helped show me that. I am excited to keep learning. I am glad I have stayed alive, and theatre is a big reason that is the case. And now, as I sit in the lounge (the laundry long done), I hold back all the emotion from these recollections. I store it, and use it to fuel my journey into the unknown.

At the end I included a note about how I’m getting help for the mental health issues discussed here so I didn’t worry my professors.

#I write sometimes #essay #theatre #tech theatre #more about me #I highly doubt you want to but ok to reblog

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fountainpenguin · 7 years

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As a fan of Milo Murphy's Law, every mention of the Mikey/Amanda ship from Bunsen is a Beast is weirdly hilarious to me. Because Milo Murphy's Law's initial name was MIKEY Murphy's Law (meaning Milo's original name was Mikey), and the show has a character in it called Amanda Lopez, AND Milo and Amanda are getting Ship Teased a bit in the show. Imagine Milo still being called Mikey and still being ship teased with Amanda, and how much collision there'll be between the MML and BiaB fandoms.

Watching that show is definitely on my to-do list! I was a huge “Phineas and Ferb” fan growing up, and my brothers and sister and I used to RUSH to watch it all the time. I know the lyrics to all the Season 1 and 2 songs by heart, and maybe a few of the 3s, and my parents liked to watch with us too. It was a great show. Very pleasant memories.

I started losing interest when weeks to months would pass and only one ten-minute episode would air at a time (instead of pairs). Then there was the “Star Wars” parody (which rang to me as “We’re running out of ideas”). My sibs and I hadn’t seen any “Star Wars” back then, so we weren’t too interested. I think we hit a snag when we lost the channel too? Something like that?

It’s just… 100% not a show I would ever draw fanart or write ‘fics for. It was great fun to watch and I still quote some lines on a regular basis. The step-family dynamic was an interesting one that I didn’t appreciate enough at the time, but is really cool looking back on it! And of course Doofenshmirtz was always great fun.

But I never… connected with any of the characters. I think it had to do partly with Isabella’s introductory scene literally being heart eyes and romance. Even as a kid, I was too aro/ace for that, pfffffft. It SHOULDN’T, because there are other aspects to her character, but it REALLY bothered me that romance was her introduction, and it always has.

Phineas and Ferb’s building talents were so outrageous that I guess I didn’t relate to them either (even though I’m known to be a workaholic who churns things out at a decent pace). And Candace was a [boy-crazy] teen and I just a kid, Vanessa was a goth, and I never connected to either of them either.

Between all of these things, I wasn’t encouraged to seek the show out on Kiss and finish the last two seasons (although it’s marked in my bookmarks). So that’s why it’s not a fandom on this blog even though it was a good, cute, funny show and it does hold a dear, dear place in my heart. It’s just not…….. content-creating worthy to me the way, say, “Bunsen” is with its already-ridiculously well-fleshed characters (Sensitive psychology boy

Anyway, I know very little about “Milo”, but I know the two shows are made by the same creator(s?). I vaguely understand it references “Phineas and Ferb”, and possibly even takes place in Danville? Amanda was the name Candace desperately wanted to give her future daughter, but the screenshots I’ve seen of Amanda Lopez in “Milo” don’t match the Amanda I remember from the time-travel PnF episode.

I can only ease myself into one show at a time (Back in fall it was “Star vs. The Forces of Evil”, followed by “Danny Phantom” over Christmas break, and now it’s “Bunsen” because of the FOP crossover ep).

Kiss is down right now, but after I finish up “Phineas and Ferb” Seasons 3 and 4 (and more?), it’s the first show I wanna watch! Might even draw a little Milo because eyyy, cursed child! I guess we’ll see where inspiration takes me! And then I need to do “BeetleJuice” after that so I can read Bookworm’s DP/BJ crossover ‘fic, and I have “Randy Cunningham” marked here too because I never heard of that show growing up, and my friends recommended “Mighty Magiswords” and “Voltron”, hhhh……

Back to your original Ask, that would indeed cause quite a bit of confusion, yes. Especially because I think Butch Hartman would have desperately wanted to keep Mikey. His brother Mike said one time that Timmy was supposed to be named after him, but the two weren’t on the best of terms back then so it didn’t happen, and their younger brother won the right. I THINK I also read there that it was a running joke that everyone named Mike in FOP/DP/Tuff got horribly attacked by something, but I never noticed this myself, so I’d have to rewatch.

So my guess is that Butch would have been really sad if he had to change Mikey’s name (and he’d probably opt for changing Amanda’s instead/first).

Okay, I went back and found the article from Detroit News:

“While anybody named Mike used to get beat up in his brother’s shows, Mike says he has a good relationship with his brother and is honored to be a main character”.

Conclusion: That does sound indeed like it would cause a collision among fans of the shows, especially to fans of both! It’s funny to imagine, heh. Thanks for sharing that bit of trivia with me! “Milo” is definitely a cartoon I want to watch!

……… I need to draw the short-sleeved sweater vest children.

I need to draw them with Gary and Betty.

I need to draw this badly.

#asks #arendalphaeagle #Cursed cowlick child #Literally my first reaction to Mikey being canonically referred to as peppy was 'SWEATER VEST PEPPY FRIENDS!'#Much squealing ensued #Summer of invention show #Beasty such a beaut #99% true as far as we remember

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rawrmeansmemes · 7 years

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THE KEY OF AWESOME LYRICS

Send the word ‘AWESOME’ and I will generate a random lyric from a Key of Awesome parody video using this generator. 1-145

That guy sure was grumpy, but no one can touch me as long as I'm swaggy

Your daddy told me that he'd murder me but I'm sure he was bluffing

I'm hot shit, I'm way cool!

I'm the toughest dude, in my home-school.

Your daddy is whiney. His wiener is tiny. Is he right behind me? That was a joke

Its the future and everything is weird.

Check out this guy, hes got a metal beard.

I give good headache, I'll make you scream.

Is this reality or just a fever dream?

I like to jerk and twitch this is how I dance.

Sometimes we like to sing like we are underwataah.

And the Joker pulls crimes in such an orderly manner. He must write it down in an evil day planner

His henchmen are psycho and expendable yet somehow completely dependable

And I wont try to touch your boobies on the first date.

Ill take you out to Chuck E Cheese and then a Pixar movie

I drink Jager bombs and get destroyed and grind on guys who are unemployed.

I put gel in my hair til it's bullet proof

Wake up in the morning looking greener than Shrek

When I hang around my house I do it theatrically

Dont you know I hate it when you sneak up on me like that .I was just about to crack you in the head with this bat

So now Im gonna read a book and give you a dirty look

I like to dress up like a fabulous clown

Youre hot, but youre dumber than a shoe

First of all this song is not as good as Bad Romance and it's not even close to Poker face or Just Dance

Im made of cupcakes, ice cream, and flowers

Young girls are helpless to my dark powers

I got em drooling like golden retrievers

Hes worse than Backstreet Brothers on the Block.

This little motherfuckers gonna ruin my rep

A cloud pooped out a rainbow turd

I had a dream the other night that Elmo and I got in a fight

If you ain't rich, they're goin' nowhere near your wiener

Don't need brains if that ass is fine

I want to go ahead and apologize in advance for what is probably going to be an underwhelming experience for you.

F.Y.I. lately I haven't been able to have an orgasm without crying.

He's self conscious bout my man boobs and my hairy chest

He took off his shirt but he's still got a furry vest

And now you're freakin' cus your thinkin' what the hell have I gotten my self into

As you look in his eyes you will soon realize that you won't be coming too

I'm not afraid to piss and moan about my feelings and how I've grown

This towns a zit lets squeeze the puss don't look at us like we're disgust...ing

Can't read my tik tok bla bla face

I'm partying with nuns

I'm peein' in your yard

We just met, but I know you're my soul mate

I've got your name tattooed on my chest, neck, and face

Lets get hitched right away or at least pick a date. I've got next week open. When do you have open?

I tripped and fell on my ass and all the children laughed

Let me introduce you to the skanks and douche bags in the soul destroying line at the club

Guess what, we just banged in the elevator

These pants are too small. They're skin tight. They're squeezing my balls.

I've got them moves like grandpa

I've got them boobs like grandma

But like a bellboy I take care of your bags

I may be a duck, but I ain't no quack

You leave with a looking like the Bride of Frankenstein

I get more ass than a toilet seat

Cops let me sing in the fuckin' street

My life is an endless buffet of hoes

I been pimpin ever since my voice got low

I could be partying with hookers and blow

Hello Hello How do you make the phone call someone back?

And if they catch him he will surely be dismembered

Tonight for dinner we're splitting a candy bar

We are the seventh sign of the apocalypse

Me and my four friends all want you so desperately

I like the fact that we wear the same size Capri's

I made you poptarts with extra gravy

The doors are locked now. You can't escape me.

You're my one and only that's what my dog told me

Now lets sacrifice some chickens

Feel free to spank me

They tell me it's just a nerd show, but Dragons are real to me

Winter Is coming I'm not sure what that means but you can bet it's probably bad news

We’re impossibly cute

Damn this song is mad catchy

So I bought this hipster voodoo doll with a beard

I'm stabbing him right in his Gyllenballs

This'll be the last time that I call tonight

Like, we sort of did. My stuffed animals totally remember it.

Gonna get my eye brows threaded then then I'll get a funky skunky stripe put on my head

Oh Peeka-peeka-boo where did I come from?

You're not as cute as these other two.

I'm stroking on this wooden thing and trying to make a sound but I have no ability

It's really hard to concentrate while I'm counting sheeps

I like to place a popsicle between my 2 butt cheeks

Someone sound the trumpets now lets do some hey's and ho's

They way we play is pure and honest bordering on weird and Amish

It's my career I can do a shark jump

Hands in my pants cus I'm itchy there

Ain't never gonna marry Thor's brother now

Now I'm dating a french guy made outta french fries

I look just like tweety If he was slutty

It's my booty I can drag it on the rug

Just replaced breakfast with crack.

I spent the past several months hiding in my Gagarage

Now lets try on some bras with claws and balls

I was once full of shit now, I think shit is full of me.

I'm not allowed to move my lips Cus my singing face is really homely

Can't decide which boy I like--Gale is buff, and Peeta's nice

Don't which cute dude is cuter

I'm Catching Fire down below

Ew, I hate when people set me up with guys

But first I'll brush my teeth and gargle with this booze.

Do you mean going down on me, senor clean?

I just fell down, crashed through a winder!

This song is about objectifying women and selling products like Pitbull's Fried Chicken

Just stay put my butt will find your butt.

I'd kill and I'd steal and I'd cheat on my taxes and french kiss a frog for that boy

Baby you could be my locksmith cus having safe sex is what I'm all about

Here's my horny sadface

Just go home you sound like Gollum

My voice is a cross between a baby and Biggie and Bane

I would say that's accurate so you cant call me Titbull

If you break my heart, you'll end up in a shitty song

Gonna find him and squish his testicles

Cuz my bang bang boom clap Anaconda's gotta stay high

I'm like a little fancy baby or an alcoholic furby

But my wee wee got scared when you took off your clothes

I owe you a sexy explanation

I only sing about cocaine and sex

But I thought this haunted shit hole flat was a good place to meet to reopen every wound

Man, technology sucks!

I’ll just go yell outside!

You still can’t take a joke

Did I say Skanky? I meant to say swanky and super cute.

Now, I’m gonna miss the butt slapping party

It’s time to fuck off!

Roll the nostalgic clips from last week

No more sexy loitering

It’s part porn--part true detective intro

Just went blonde. They have more fun--I’ve been told.

Pillowfuck is what I do when she’s gone

It’s what happens to schmucks who fuck with me

I just flew in from hell because we’re besties

I like to go to the beach in full make up

Help me I’ve fallen and don’t want to get up

I am a floppy sex fish try to catch me, flop flop

I’m the winner of the touch myself contest

This doesn’t feel sexy if I’m being honest

Whacked him like Pacino then screamed ‘Hoo Ah”

I am Chewbacca

I’m playing Mothafuckin Star Wars

You tried to kill me. But, I didn’t die.

I just drank sixteen cups of coffee--need that toddler energy

#lyrics meme #ask meme #rp meme #rp memes #generator meme #pls dont send any into this blog

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theliterateape · 5 years

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Problematic Movies of the '80s | Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)

By Don Hall

I grew up loving science fiction. I was that sixth grader who read the Asimov entire Foundation trilogy in the fall. It’s likely I only understood 30 percent of it but I read it with gusto. I gravitated to Star Trek and was in the audience of the initial release of Star Wars 25 times (this being long before the joys of VHS tapes to capture films in the unending home viewing loop). Alien worlds, exploration, movies about astronauts and starships. I ate that shit up.

What drove me was the ideas. I loved the ideas. Which is why it is a bit distressing in the hindsight of 2018 that the only thing I can remember about 1988’s Earth Girls Are Easy is Geena Davis in a bikini.

By the time it came out, I was a senior in college, a blackout drunk and all the things we now revile in a collegiate aged white guy (minus the rich parents and rapey instincts), so I suppose I’m unsurprised that I only remember the hot chick in a movie featuring Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, Michael McKean and Damon Wayans.

I loved Davis in 1986’s The Fly (it always surprises me that movie never seems to make my Top 10 list despite how much I fucking loved it) and I crushed hard on her in Beetlejuice, so it seems natural that the draw for me was watching her parade around in the barest of clothing, but c’mon, right? I find myself bemused and slightly embarrassed that in my most physically viable years my choices were so directly motivated by my cock.

Earth Girls Are Easy Written by Julie Brown, Charlie Coffey, & Terrence E. McNally Directed by Julien Temple 1988

To describe Earth Girls Are Easy is difficult. Part MTV generation ‘80s fluff piece, part quasi-musical (I’d forgotten that part entirely), part romantic comedy, all pinks and light blues and yellows — this thing is like someone ate a Spencer’s Gifts, a Chess King and a Contempt store, drank a gallon of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, and threw it all up on Julie Brown’s chest.

Julie Brown, for those not in the know, started as a spoof musician, broke into film in Lily Tomlin’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) and hit with the debut of her first EP, a five-song album called Goddess in Progress. The album, parodies of popular ‘80s music combined with her valley girl personality, was quickly discovered by the Dr. Demento Show. The songs 'Cause I'm a Blonde and The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun were given radio airplay across the world. The latter was a spoof on stereotypical 1950s teen tragedy songs with cheerleaders' heads and pompoms being blown to pieces.

While starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum and the cast of In Living Color, this film is all Julie Brown. Channeling a healthy portion of John Waters for style, Brown’s script tells the tale of a manicurist (Davis) who discovers her doctor fiancé (Charles Rocket) is a cheating skeeve, destroys all his stuff and is sunning herself by his pool when horny, fuzzy aliens (Goldblum, Wayans and Carrey) crash land in said pool. Over the course of two days and one night, the aliens are completely shaved by Candy Pink (Brown), go clubbing, do a dance-off, fall in love, rob a convenience store, go to the beach on “Blonde’s Day,” escape being dissected, and fly away with Davis in tow.

There are several musical numbers (not enough for a full-blown musical) and the most popular and oft highlighted is Brown’s spoof piece Because I’m a Blonde.

I mean, this is a really dumb movie.

And, yes. Even 30 years later I found myself completely mesmerized by Davis in a bustier, in a pink bikini, in a midriff shirt, in ripped jeans. It should be noted that 30 years later I was equally mesmerized by super hot Jeff Goldblum in his waist-high billowing pants and no shirt. Quite frankly, these two onscreen are absolute magic. It’s no wonder they were married for a brief three years and it is in no small way that this extremely dumb movie is carried by their chemistry. Both unconventionally sexy, there’s just something hot about the two of them together.

Oh. There’s also McKean doing his level best playing a surfer burnout.

Problematic Moments & Themes

Yes, Wayans is black and is in the top-billed cast. He gets some goofy moments and his big showcase scene is a dance-off with another black actor vying for the affections of a black female actor. Not going for Roots here but at least there’s some color on the screen and nothing in this entire movie is racist or bigoted in any way. Which is refreshing for the 1980s at this point.

There’s a little bit of homophobic humor, primarily in the lispy accent suddenly adopted by a cop, but it skirts the line of offense in that the gayness of these two police officers is not made fun of, rather it exists as kind of a long gone conclusion.

If there is a series of problematic messages in this dorky vehicle, it’s that Valarie (Davis) is kind of perpetually dumb. She lives for a finance who treats her like shit and is willing to marry him despite his crap behavior. On top of that, she pretty much parades around throughout the film in “look at my hot, lean, tall body” while adopting the slightly stupid baby talk that Brown makes fun of in her Blonde video. She falls for the Goldblum alien only after he uses his psychedelic love touch on her (with her full consent but still kind of Cosby-esque, you know?). As a leading lady, there’s just not much going on in the brains/agency department.

A few years later, Davis took this same character and evolved into a bit more empowered feminist in Thelma & Louise, but they die in the end rather than get transported to another planet so maybe the messages are a tad mixed.

Overall though, aside from the fact that the only reason a 16-year-old boy would even bother to see it starts with a B, ends with an S and rhymes with boobs, the movie is more dumb than tainted by incorrect political platforming.

Did it Hold Up?

It’s fine. Not great, not terribly problematic. Fun in a “Oh my fucking christ — did we really dress like that?” sort of way.

Overall

Scale of 1 to 10 1 = Classic 10 = Burn all VHS copies of it

Earth Girls Are Easy gets a 7 (if only to witness the young, sexy Goldblum in full sexiness.)

Next Up: Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

#Problematic Movies of the ’80s #Earth Girls Are Easy

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thesnhuup · 5 years

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Pop Picks – December 4, 2018

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also reread books I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star. The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

Archive

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching. And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia. It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan. Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news.

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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elljayvee · 6 years

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First Lines Meme

RULES: List the first lines of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends.

@beatrice-otter tagged me! I tag: @basinke, @travellinglemonworkshop

1. The first time John brings Rosie by after Sherrinford, it's on her first birthday. 221B is still under renovation, but John's bedroom is finished; John's bedroom has a cot in it, squeezed next to John's old bed, the one he'd left behind when Sherlock was -- gone. (an infinite series of accidents; Sherlock/John, Sherlock)

2. Rosie turned one without her mother, with Molly and John singing to her in some kind of sick parody of happy families. After Rosie was tucked in her cot for an afternoon nap, John made tea, and he and Molly sat at his kitchen table, holding hands, letting the tea go cold. "She's a lovely child, John," Molly said. (Where are we now?, Sherlock gen)

3. In Lothlórien, Gimli took advantage of a quiet moment in their camp, when the Men were away on some errand, to unpack khî pack and sort through it, repairing anything broken. “What's that?" asked Frodo, pointing at khî funnel. Gimli hesitated, not sure how to describe what it was for without giving away that khi was not, as they all assumed, male-sexed. (From Sweet Fellowship Comes Nectar, Legolas/Gimli, LOTR)

4. Legolas sprawled on his back on a camp-bed, in the tent he shared with Gimli. He was more than a little drunk, and had been so since the war's end. The celebration at Cormallen had been followed by feasts and days upon days of wine and song, and he was fond of wine, but now he could sense a calm coming. "Next we shall go to the city, I suppose," he said to Gimli. (Numberless the ways, and imperceptible., Legolas/Gimli, LOTR)

5. The warm summer breeze curled through the Burrow, three days after Harry's nineteenth birthday. He ran one hand up Ginny's leg to her knee, and then lifted her foot to his shoulder. The sole was dirty; some hours ago Ginny had kicked off her shoes. He kissed the side of her foot and inhaled. He remembered Hermione talking about the smell of freshly mown grass the day Slughorn had Amortentia in the classroom, and wondered if it was a familial thing. Ginny smelled of grass, too, green summer grass under a scorching sun. (Flaming Aground (I’ve Said Too Much), Harry/Ginny, Harry Potter series)

6. Loki had converted a space near the quarters he shared with Thor for Sleipnir, and Thor found them both there one ship's-night. He wondered if he should ask what was being done with Sleipnir's manure, and opened his mouth only to have Loki interrupt before any sound issued forth. (Ship’s night, residential deck, third corridor, Thor:Ragnarok gen)

7. Gudrun and three other women set to work on a still in the ship’s galley. Gudrun has never built a still before, but she has operated one since she came of age, in her father’s distillery. She learned to repair them with her own hands, and building one is not so different. King Thor will approve, she is sure, both for the sedating qualities of drink and the disinfective properties of the alcohol. They have no soul-forge, no real healing facilities — nothing but the inadequate contents of the ship’s small infirmary. It is outfitted for the sorts of injuries one sustains in vigorous sexual activity, not in a world-destroying battle. First-aid supplies only go so far, with sword wounds and burns to the bone. (The Silent Man, Thor:Ragnarok gen)

8. An Alliance commander that Biggs didn't recognize stuck her head into the pilots' lounge. "Heard there was someone here from Tatooine?" (A Standard List of Questions, Star Wars gen)

9. "Poe. Look at me." (Commentfic: Shields, sort-of Poe/Luke, Star Wars)

10. Kylo Ren hung in the bacta tank, his hair drifting like snakes around his face; the breather a parody of his usual vocoder-mask. The medical droid wheeled up beside the tank and clicked to get Hux's attention. "He will awake in two minutes, General." Hux nodded an acknowledgement, studying the knitted scars over Ren's side, the muscles over the plane of his stomach. He did not let his hands curl into fists; anger at an unconscious man was pointless. (In Hand, Kylo Ren/General Hux, post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

What I learned: I like to pick up threads, loose ends, and I like to try to make sense of the (often nonsensical) canon that we have. The only outsider POV I use is Gudrun’s; it’s not a common technique for me, and when I use it, it is there for a very specific purpose. (I love reading outsider POV stories -- there’s lots of kinds of stories I don’t write but love to read, and that’s one of them.)

Most of the stories are couplets -- two stories in the same fandom, written close to the same time (1&2, 3&4, 6&7, 8&9). Flaming Aground is, as well, although the story I wrote at the same time is incomplete and unpublished, so that leaves In Hand as the only odd man out.

From the titles, I notice that I consider punctuation part of the title: Numberless has a period at the end, and that’s intentional and part of the title. It’s more obvious when there’s a different punctuation mark (Where are we now?) but it’s always intentional. I hadn’t realized that I do that.

I start almost all of these off with a sense of place (Shields is the only exception, and it was commentfic -- so less thought-through and deliberate than the others). It’s important to me to put characters in their environment, and the chosen environment can add a sense of intimacy or of distance. The difference between 221B in an infinite series of accidents (repetition of John’s ownership of the space increasing intimacy even though John does not live at 221B at the time) and the comfort/homey-ness of the Burrow in Flaming Aground (Harry and Ginny are comfortable enough to have romantic contact in her parents’ house) and the coldness and impersonal space of the medbay in In Hand is a big part of setting the story’s tone. infinite is ABOUT intimacy and its complications; Flaming Aground is about comfort and playfulness and communication, and In Hand is about angry people who wouldn’t know intimacy if it bit them.

I want to talk a little about the first two story couplets on the list, because I think the first lines tell you important things about the differences between the stories, and because the stories in these couplets are extremely closely related for stories that aren’t sequels to each other.

an infinite series of accidents and Where are we now? are both post-S4 Sherlock stories with an asexual Sherlock and a heterosexual John. They’re in nearby universes -- they even share some dialog in the early parts of the story — but infinite is a much more hopeful story overall. The creation of intimacy in the first paragraph tells you, right off the bat, where Sherlock (the POV character for the whole story) stands re: John, and it’s an unwavering thread through the whole: Sherlock wants him home, and doesn’t want him to leave, ever, and is hopeful that this can happen.

Where are we now? starts off in John’s home, without Sherlock there, and it’s sad and bitter. It is emphasizing disconnect, the death of Mary, and the way Sherlock isn’t as present in John’s life anymore. Molly’s presence is a lifeline, a way out, a marker that all is not lost. infinite isn’t a fluffy story -- I’m not interested in apologizing for John’s violence -- but it tackles the issues of the Sherlock-John relationship post-S4 from the point of view of healing and connection, rather than the point of view of fear and the struggle for self-control.

From Sweet Fellowship Comes Nectar and Numberless the ways, and imperceptible. are both Legolas/Gimli, and they both address cultural differences and the difficulty people can have communicating their needs and desires. At their hearts, they are both about being seen. Sweet Fellowship is about how people see you vs. how you see yourself, and about how people with a different vision of themselves navigate an unseeing world. Gimli’s cultural background provides khî with emotional armor, but khi also comes to recognize certain dangers and corrosive fears that come along with navigating the world of Men. The opening line tells you that Gimli’s sex is not male and that khi uses an unfamiliar pronoun with no translation into Westron/English, so it brings you into the cultural differences immediately and clearly.

Numberless is about learning to see yourself, when everyone else already sees you accurately. Legolas’s cultural background makes his journey more difficult, rather than offering him protection as Gimli’s did in Sweet Fellowship; he’s ancient and set in his ways, and isn’t expecting a radical emotional change in his life -- so he doesn’t recognize it when it happens. It opens with Legolas in close proximity to Gimli, and with indications of intimacy, but also with Legolas being drunk and somewhat careless of himself and of what’s going on around him. He spends a great deal of the story avoiding self-awareness in any way that doesn’t fit into his entrenched idea of himself, and that’s set up right from the start.

#meme #writing #my fic

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How President Trump Has Ruined Comedy

My name is Daniel O’Brien. I’ve had sex in over two different countries and engaged in some light, patriotic hand stuff in four. I used to write a weekly column for the comedy website Cracked Dot Com, and now I am its Creative Director of Video and Content Development, because ever since my boss left, there has been no one around to stop me from adding words to my title, which I do all the time and without warning.

On the day that I started writing this article, I count seven pieces of content on the front page of Cracked which are explicitly political, and two which directly mention President Trump in the title and feature him in the thumbnail. In 2017, under my leadership as the Creative Director of Video, Content Development, and Espionage, we launched two new shows to cover the current administration: the short-lived After The Trump and the still-living Some News. We have always (always) talked about politics on this site, but we did not have equivalent content during either the Obama or Bush administrations. That is definitely true. On that score, we have changed.

A lot of people say they appreciate the political coverage we’ve done, but a few have expressed that they’d rather we avoid politics, and have done so in tones ranging from politely respectful to … less so.

Twitter

Some people tweet or reach out to us to say “I miss when Cracked was just funny” or “I came here to get AWAY from politics” or “Bring back The Daily Nooner” or

“You should just stick to comedy.”

Here’s the thing: I completely agree with you.

I also wish I could just do stupid fucking jokes again. Honestly, I think I’m better at them than I am as a contributor to Some News or shrieking about voter fraud. As important as that topic is to me (very, please go to Let America Vote to learn how you can help), I’d much rather it be covered by someone smarter than me while I focus on what I’m better at (which would be, gun to my head, 1,500 words of dialog-driven nonsense starring a fictionalized version of myself who can’t spell and is also a war criminal).

And is that a surprise to you? Haven’t you followed me? Don’t you think I’d rather be talking about Spider-Man and my stupid, stupid dick? I would!

I don’t want to cover Hillary Rodham Clinton substantively; I want to make jokes like “The ‘Rodham’ in her name is short for “‘Rodney Hampton.'” That’s as political as I’d like to be, but the realities of our world make it sort of impossible to stay out of politics, so I bought her friggin’ book instead. A few years ago, you could ask me about comics. Today I’m ready to host a boring conference on What Happened, Giant Of The Senate, The Devil’s Bargain, and whatever that piece of shit Ben Sasse called his piece-of-shit book. And I hate that about me.

You have to understand something. When we accidentally gave a flailing, possum-faced, rotting egg the most important job in the world, the people at Cracked didn’t say, “Aha! Finally an opportunity for us to pivot away from nonfiction comedic list articles and strange personality-driven columns to focus on our true love: a thoroughly researched topical news show about Nazis, Antifa, the works of Jean Paul Sartre, and the troubling ways those three things intercept in our increasingly terrifying world. Haw!” I don’t want to do that. None of us want to do that. We want to walk around the office pronouncing it “Jean Paul Star Trek” and then write videos about a man who got confused and had sex with a pumpkin at an adult pumpkin-carving party, which isn’t even a thing that exists.

You’ve no doubt seen a similar call to keep politics out of sports over the last few weeks. An historically unprecedented amount of football players and (lol) owners are kneeling or engaging in some other kind of protest to oppose either the president generally or the shooting of unarmed black men by police. (It’s not super clear at this point. It certainly began with the latter and seems to be getting hijacked by the former.) “I support the idea of the protest, but keep your politics out of sports,” is a sentiment you’ve no doubt seen.

They want us to stick to jokes, and I would LOVE to stick to jokes. I don’t know any professional football players personally, but I bet they’d also prefer to just play football. I bet they also long for a time when their Sundays were spent running and hitting and throwing and catching as hard as they can without the added stress of figuring out where they fit into a national, historical movement. It would be easier for them if there was no politics in football, because before there were politics in football, they didn’t have to think about kneeling or not, and they didn’t have to deal with the booing if they did. But now they have to consider it. As Jason pointed out months ago, even keeping politics out of sports (or pop culture or writing) is itself a political move.

(Also, we should, uh, probably cancel football. Goddammit I hate my growing awareness and responsibility!)

Politics is everywhere and everything is political. Which sucks for me, because I’m an idiot. I’m not some politics guy, I’m Deany O’Beanz, Cracked.com’s Creative Director of Upside-Down Sex Stuff. Believe me, when Wendy’s unveiled their new Bacon Mozzarella Burger last year, I wanted to write a parody song of the opening number to Hamilton, changing the lyrics from “Alexander Hamilton” to “Mozzarella Hamburger,” but our president told us all to boycott Hamilton, so now even mentioning it feels like a political statement.

…

The two dolla’, flavor-hauler with fresh garlic/

is a steal, darlin’, they are for real chargin’/

a measly two dollas. I am a food scholar.

Believe me, this shit is Delicious Incarnate.

I mean, you get it, that’s airtight, you love it, this shit would have been glorious.

I miss doing pointless jokes like that. I would rather be writing columns about dumb internet stuff and other weird things that used to occupy my brain. I miss doing jokes making fun of bad websites. I would still be making fun of bad websites if we had a better president. Like John Mayer’s haunted fucking nightmare self-indulgent dream wall. Look at this child’s sandbox of a website:

John Mayer

If you move the cursor around, John Mayer’s stupid eyes follow you all over town.

Nice website, dickface. Does the strap around your stupid head featuring vaguely Native American imagery represent your plan to appropriate another culture with your music? Your album’s called Search For Everything. Do you actually find anything, or is it mostly going to be a bunch of songs about fucking on a Sunday or whatever and realizing for the first time at 23 years old that the girls you have sex with will eventually turn into the mothers you won’t? You’ve got a bunch of dumb spinny art on your website. You, uh … suck. Hahahahaha.

That was just off the top of my head. If this were three years ago, I’d have squeezed, no joke, 6,000 words out of this website. But things being what they are, I only went to this website after John Mayer posted a surprisingly cogent argument for gun control in the wake of the tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas a few weeks ago.

Uproxx

Dammit! That’s where I’m at! Global Source of Ridicule and Professional Annoying Guy at a Party John Mayer only made his way to my radar because he was talking about sensible gun control.

All I want to do is talk to you all about The Property Brothers, a show I’m obsessed with. For those who don’t know, Property Brothers is a reality show allegedly about identical twin brothers, but in actuality they’re clones of the same cursed person and the only difference is that one of them does magic but the show doesn’t mention it, and I guess they flip, fix, build, or sell houses, depending on their mood. (I say “mood” instead of “moods” because, like their heart and dreams, they both share one mood at all times.) It’s the most compelling and unsettling TV I’ve ever seen. I’ve been working on an unauthorized novel about being the Property Brother who “got out” of the family, but I had to put it on hold because I need to remember to call my representatives about either the newest needlessly cruel healthcare bill or insidious attempts at gerrymandering or whatever the fuck haunted puppet Jefferson Fucking Beauregard Fucking Sessions the Fucking Third is up to when I can’t see him — which is often, because he’s only allowed to come out when innocent people are asleep.

One time I showed Jeff Sessions a missing child’s picture on the back of a milk carton, and he said, “That doesn’t look like much of anything to me.” His favorite TV show is “the weather,” and his least-favorite cartoons are the ones where two different kinds of animals are friends. He eats applesauce for every meal, and every night before prayers, he doesn’t have sex with a glass of warm milk — he just puts his dick in it, leaves it there for a while, and hums a little song about bugs to himself.

One time I met Jeff Sessions at a party and said, “Why are you so racist and awful?” and he took one of his teeth out and put it in my palm and said “Shh,” and then winked like “I’ll never tell,” but legit he is the most dangerous person in America right now. Anyway, that tooth sprouted legs and sprinted to Charlottesville and Sessions is gunning for Nazi MVP and I hate that most of my time is spent tracking Sessions when I used to just do jokes about movies.

This is going to feel like an abrupt transition, but I promise it’s related. The new It is the biggest movie in the world right now, shattering records constantly, and I would love to talk about it. But do you want to know what my over-thought, Daniel O’Brien, Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder-esque observations are?

1. This movie resonated with so many people because the concept of an overtly, undeniably evil force emerging in a hugely visible way after being hitherto concealed right beneath an allegedly safe town’s surface for so long is striking a chord with a lot of people who are just waking up to the fact that the systemic and institutionalized issues of real racism which we thought we conquered a hundred times are still here, still strong, and still evil. We thought Derry was safe, but no, the monster was waiting in the shadows for the right time to pop out. We had civil rights and elected a black president, so we thought everything was cool … until actual Nazis who lived next door suddenly stopped being too ashamed to admit they were Nazis the whole time.

2. Pennywise is such an effective monster for a lot of modern Americans who can relate to the idea of an evil clown who only exists because (and indeed, gets stronger when) we give it attention.

I used to talk about how Luke Skywalker was probably a virgin. Are you fucking kidding me? I’m incapable of not finding parallels to our current political situation. Show me an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants from 2001 today, and I guarantee you I’ll find a link between Steve Bannon and Plankton, and what’s weirder is that I will completely believe it because I see politics everywhere now.

I want to spend too much time over-analyzing the latest Spider-Man movie, because as Cracked’s Creative Director of Video with a Minor in Spider-Man and a Concentration in International Hot-Tubbing, people expect me to have an informed take on all things Spider-Man. Instead I’ve spent six months researching the fucking Mercer family, a clown car cabal of rich maniacs who can singlehandedly control the results of an election and make the Koch Brothers seem tame by comparison. Please get excited about my next book, I Used To Make Jokes Until I Realized The Corrupt And Insane Mercer Family Will Buy Our Next Four Presidential Elections, due sometime in 20-never, because I’ll be too sad to write it.

I can’t stay out of politics, because politics is everywhere. When the president yells about Saturday Night Live, the NFL, the NBA, the Emmy Awards, Facebook, and a dozen other things in the same 30-day period, my even mentioning those things means whatever I’m talking about is political in some way.

At Cracked, we come into work every day to brainstorm ideas for content, and consistently the most important thing that’s happening in the world at any given time has been related to our president. I mean, there was one day a few months ago when a five-star idiot was like, “I bravely love my fucking big fat wife so much, you guys should give me a medal,” and we all had some tremendous apolitical fun with that for about 24 hours, but otherwise it’s been the Trump show, all day, every day.

(God, I miss that golden idiot who thought grabbing a big ass should make him mayor.)

I can’t keep politics out of my work on Cracked because I can’t keep it out of my own private life. When I visit my family, we’ll catch up and talk about recent movies we’ve seen, and eventually the conversation will end up like, “Yeah, work’s going great, I’ve been golfing more, I went to the Aquarium of the Pacific for the first time, the New York Football Giants are fucking garbage, it’s a shame about Puerto Rico, and did you hear what outrageous thing the president said about [X]?” If you’re catching up with your family, how do you NOT mention the most recent thing our president did?

Or I’ll be on a first date with someone, exchanging totally normal basic, casual first date conversation stuff (“Do you think Big Boi should be considered an elite rapper?” or “When was the first time in your life you interacted with someone of a different race from you?”), and without fail, one person will bring up the latest antics of our president. These are the kinds of conversations I have on a date with a new person:

Person: So what do you do in your free time?

Daniel: I like to run, I hang out with my dog, I read a bunch. But I guess most of my time is spent staring at Axios, Twitter, and The Week to stay up to date on our increasingly warlike tensions with North Korea.

Person: We can’t listen to “Rocket Man” anymore!

Daniel: I KNOW, HE TOOK IT FROM US!

Or:

Daniel: So, you like your job?

Person: I do. I like the people I work with, the hours are good, it’s challenging, the benefits are decent.

Daniel: …

Person: Of course, all of our benefits may change if this new GOP healthcare bill gets rammed through.

Daniel: Without a proper CBO score.

Person: Right.

Daniel: Do we know where the votes stand now?

Person: Paul is definitely a ‘No,’ we’re still waiting on Murkowski and Collins because they haven’t officially declared yet.

Daniel: It’s still too close.

Person: Pack of bastards.

Daniel: Pack of halfwit bastards.

Daniel O’Brien, Cracked’s Creative Director of Video and Slam Dunk Czar.

I know I’m more informed today than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and that’s probably good, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m so fucking bummed about the amount of senators I know the names of. Seven years ago, if someone asked me to name ten senators, I’d say, “Like, government senators or the old baseball team the Senators? Either way, I don’t know, maybe two? At any rate, I’m not going to answer your question because the series finale of Lost is about to air and it’s gonna be perfect, babyyyyy, gonna answer all of Deany’s questions, babyyyyyy! ‘California Gurls’! Angry Birds! It’s still okay to like Louis C.K.! ‘Magic’ feat. Weezer! it is two thousand teeeeeeeeeeen!”

The president wants us to boycott the NFL, the Golden State Warriors, most news, Facebook, SNL, the Emmys, uh … Puerto Rico, I guess. I can’t keep politics out of Cracked because I can’t keep it out of anything, and I don’t know how anyone does. If I showed up in a town and the mayor was like, “Oh, we don’t talk about politics here, we don’t even pay attention to it,” I’d think “Wow, you’re going to miss some pretty intense shit. One time at work I went to the bathroom for a full 20 minutes, and when I got back to my desk, Reince Priebus had resigned and Scaramucci’s wife had filed for divorce and Eric Trump’s pubes turned see-thru and we probably loosely declared war on someone.”

And again, I also wish I could go back to doing dumb jokes. And I’m not weaving in political stuff because I feel some journalistic obligation; I’m doing it because I don’t think it’s possible to talk about anything without the framework of politics. Or I guess I can talk about football through the framework of how we should stop watching it because of CTE? Would that be better? Like, it’s a bummer that Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a job while some barely sentient mannequin gets paid millions to throw for the Bears, but maybe it’s ultimately a good thing, because it lowers the chance that Kap will get the hot new murder brain damage that’s sweeping the sports nation? Is that … better?

Daniel O’Brien is Cracked’s Strongest Intern and the author of How to Fight Presidents and the children’s book adaptation, Your Presidential Fantasy Dream Team, both of which you can buy wherever you want. He also wasn’t lying about that Property Brothers book. He will be releasing it for free one chapter at a time and you can get it if you subscribe to his newsletter right here.

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