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winterscaptain · 4 years

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intellectual guesswork.

Aaron Hotchner x Gender Neutral Reader

a/n: another ajf update that requires absolutely no context to enjoy! i love you all so much. send some extra love to your favorite writers this week :)

one quick thing - if you’re on my taglist, please consider dropping a reply or a reblog! i love to see what you all think, and it encourages me to keep going :) it’s also getting a bit long, and i want to make sure my mutuals and people who engage are seeing everything - tumblr sometimes has a hard time with a lot of mentions.

words: 1.6k warnings: none!

summary: “ignorance of the law excuses no man - from practicing it.” - addison mizner. au!may 2008

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | ajf faq | taglist | what do you want to see next? edited: january 12th, 2021

You all settle into one row. Aaron’s on the end beside you, looking very sharp in a crisp black suit, his favorite Rolex, and a settled kind of confidence you’ve only seen in him a few times. It’s like he’s in his natural habitat.

Aaron’s record as a federal prosecutor speaks for itself, of course, but you’ve never seen him in action. As often as they can, the bureau’s leadership sends him in as an expert witness. This time, the case happens to be one of yours. The judge hasn’t required a sequestration for Aaron, so you get the treat of sitting together in the courtroom.

He’s scoffed and mumbled snide remarks under his breath all morning. You’re just itching to see him get up on the stand and give this joker an education.

Emily leans over, whispering in your ear. “I promise you’ve never seen anything like this before. Hotch is going to rip this clown to shreds.”

You stifle a laugh and look over at Aaron. He heard her. Leaning toward you, he murmurs, “All my JD does is collect dust. When I use it, I’d like to enjoy it.”

“Your Honor, the prosecution would like to call our expert witness, Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, to the stand.”

He takes a breath and rises, buttoning his suit jacket and crossing the courtroom. His presence commands respect and everyone in the courtroom seems to shrink before him.

The prosecution’s questions go over smoothly, and the defense attorney stands with an unreasonable amount of confidence.

Emily leans over. “He thinks he can get Hotch with at least one of these questions, and he might. But just watch.”

You nod, taking everything in.

“So you’ve stated that it was your profile of the killer that led you and the police to my clients door that night.”

“Behavioral analysis was a factor in our investigation, yes.”

Without hesitation, the attorney follows up. “And was behavioral analysis also a factor in the Olympic Park bombings case in Atlanta?”

“Yes, it was.” Aaron’s eyes and tone never waver, no hint of arrogance or cheek.

“And was that suspect you identified,” the attorney asks, far too aggressively, “Richard Jewell, ever convicted of the bombings?”

The prosecution objects, and you watch Aaron. Every part of him observes the proceedings with an outwardly detached interest, but his eyes are alive - strategizing and anticipating. It’s like you can see the wheels turning as the lawyers bicker.

The judge ends the squabble. “I’ll allow it.”

Aaron, now with permission, answers simply, “No, he was not convicted.”

“Because he was innocent. Your profile led you to the wrong man.”

Oh, give me a break. It takes everything in you not to scoff and you can feel Emily’s eye roll.

“Jewell was not the perpetrator, but if you look at the real Olympic Park Bomber, Eric Rudolph, you’ll see that our profile was dead-on.”

Dead-on indeed, Aaron.

“Well, how about we look at the Baton Rouge Killer? Your unit said that he was white and living in the city. He was Black and from the suburbs.”

Aaron’s eyes narrow and you feel Spencer shift beside you. Emily shakes her head. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “He always recovers, never in the way you’d expect.”

“How do you know?”

Emily’s face pulls into a little smile. “I’ve read the transcripts. Hotch is terribly clever.”

“You said that Dennis Rader, the B.T.K. Killer,” the attorney continues, “was divorced and impotent. He turned out to be married with two kids.”

JJ huffs, and you hear her whisper to Spencer, “Can we quit with the sermon?”

His lips turn up. “Just wait.”

Dave leans over and stares them down over Derek. Stop talking.

All of you look down at your hands like chastised children, but your gaze floats back to Aaron right away.

The prosecution objects again, this time on the grounds of preaching. The judge forces a question, and the attorney turns back on Aaron.

“Having been wrong on those cases, isn’t it possible that you were wrong about Brian Matloff?”

“No.” Your chest squeezes. He’s completely firm in his denial.

How does he do that?

“Fact is,” the attorney continues like Aaron didn’t speak at all, “behavioral analysis is really just intellectual guesswork. You probably couldn’t tell me the color of my socks with any greater accuracy than a carnival psychic.”

“Objection!”

Her outburst is unnecessary. Aaron has a plan. His eyes track to you as if to check in. Are you paying attention?

If you weren’t watching before, you’re certainly watching now. Always.

“Withdrawn.”

“Charcoal grey.” His flat assertion makes you gasp and you immediately cover your mouth with your hand to stifle the sound.

The attorney turns around. “Well, look at that,” he exposes his socks to the court, and they are, in fact, charcoal grey. “He got one right.”

Aaron’s not finished. “You match them to the color of your suit to appear taller. You also wear lifts and you’ve had the soles of your shoes replaced. One might think you’re frugal, but in fact, you’re having financial difficulties.”

You do your best to school your expression and remove your hand from your mouth. Checking down the row, you see six smirks watching the witness box.

“You wear a fake Rolex…”

And you’d know.

“...because you pawned the real one to pay your debts. My guess would be to a bookie.”

Is he smiling?

“I took this case pro bono.” There’s tension in Mr. Charcoal Grey’s voice. You can hear it behind the false confidence and it pulls a smile from you. “I am one of the most successful criminal attorneys in the state.”

Hotch continues, completely bypassing him. “Your vice is horses.” There’s definitely a little smile on his face now. “Your Blackberry’s been buzzing on the table every twenty minutes, which happens to be the average time between posts from Colonial Downs. You’re getting race results.” Your smile gets wider, and Emily grabs your hand.

“Just watch.”

“And every time you do, it affects your mood in court, and you’re not having a very good day.” There’s something that looks almost like concern on Aaron’s face, but you know it’s nothing if not facetious. He’s ripping this poor man to shreds without changing a single thing about his presentation.

I love -

Don’t finish that thought.

Why not?

Remember how he’s freshly divorced?

I know, but have you seen him?

“That’s because you pick horses the same way you practice law -”

You lean forward and Emily follows, her thumbnail between her teeth.

The final blow.

“- by always taking the long shot.”

If this was any other setting, you’re sure the entire team would be on their feet, shouting and jeering. But alas, you’re in court, so you settle for a wide smile and a suppressed laugh. Amused brown eyes meet yours from across the room and you shake your head just the tiniest bit. I can’t believe you.

His lips twitch.

“Well, you spin a very good yarn, Agent, but as usual, you’ve proven nothing.” He’s just trying to recover something, anything left of his dignity. He fails, miserably.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Aaron says, his eyebrows raised just a little, “the results from the fifth race should be coming through any minute.”

Just then, his Blackberry buzzes on the defense table. “Why don’t you tell us if your luck has changed?”

You raise your hands to your face to cool the rising heat in your cheeks.

“Your honor, this is - “

The judge takes matters into his own hands. “What do you want me to do? Either show us your Blackberry or cut him loose, counselor.”

Hotch and the defense attorney share a loaded look. It’s a battle of wills.

Aaron wins.

“Nothing further.”

+++

When you all leave the courthouse, you practically latch onto Aaron’s arm, completely floored.

“How did you do that?”

He laughs and Derek jumps up beside him, shaking his shoulders. “Come on, Hotch. That was incredible.”

“Why have a law degree if you aren’t going to use it?”

+++

He offers you a ride home later that evening and you take him up on it. You’re both still in the car, idling in front of your house.

“That really was impressive today,” you admit, your eyes on your hands.

You can feel his soft smile rather than see it. “Thanks. I know it didn’t quite go the way we wanted as far as the case itself, but there’s more to come.”

“It’s never as bad as it looks in the first couple of days.”

“Exactly.” He sighs. “Thanks again for being there today. It’s…” his lips twist as he thinks, “nice to have the team around.”

You reach out, squeezing his forearm before immediately letting him go. “Of course. We’ll always be there for you. Plus, there’s nothing better than watching you tear blowhard lawyers to shreds in a court of law.”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly how it went.”

“You’re kidding!” You laugh. “That’s just what happened. The man left without half his soul! You absolutely tore it from his body.”

The pair of you quiet, and you move to get out of the car. He stops you with a hand over yours as you unclip your seatbelt. “Really. Thanks for being there today.”

“I can’t emphasize this enough - it was my pleasure.”

Enough of a pleasure as it was, his smile in the dark of the car is the best part of your day.

+++

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#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner #hotch x reader #hotch #aaron hotchner imagine #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds #tali writes fanfiction #tali talks cm #a joyful future #a joyful future fanfic

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jessejostark · 4 years

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10 Questions w/ Jesse Jo Stark About Cool Parents, the Awesomeness of Cher + Still Believing in Rock & Roll

Other than maybe Sean Lennon and Jakob Dylan, Jesse Jo Stark grew up with surely the most inspirational people a future musician could possibly hope for. Indeed, her parents Richard Stark and Laurie Lynn Stark are the founders of rock & roll jewelry studio-turned-empire Chrome Hearts—whose clientele includes the likes of Bono, Elton John and Slash. And her Godmother is none other than the goddess of stage, screen and song Cher, who has been a continuing influence on her very talented niece.

Not just that, but she was sort of mentored from the start of her music career by Sex Pistol Steve Jones, who hosts the now legendary radio show Jonesy’s Jukebox in Los Angeles, where Jesse Jo also resides. And most recently, she appeared in the video for Brit punker YUNGBLUD’s new single “Strawberry Lipstick,” while corona had stranded him in LA.

But for all they may have rubbed off on her, the young Ms. Stark makes music that surely comes from somewhere deep within herself. Each song seems a little piece of her that she allows out into the world, revealing the inner intensity and intimacy that belie a very public persona.

Her previous single, a cover of John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” was a languid, fuzzed-out country gem of a ballad. But new track “Tangerine” is a mini-masterpiece of sorts, exhibiting her ease with crossing genres and weaving them seamlessly together. The twangy guitars are back, but there’s a little Beatles, a little widescreen Britpop, and just a hint of retro Cali dreaming as well. With its lush strings, and Stark’s haunted voice so full of longing, it vividly evokes so many life memories of love’s powerful pull.

For the video, she reached out to fans to create their own vision for the visual accompaniment to the song, and they were then edited together—a way of crossing the quarantine divide via the power of art. She describes it thusly:

“What I’ve missed most in this new way of livin’ has been the live shows and hanging out with everyone every night. So along with the ‘Tangerine’ track release, we thought it would be super sweet to get everyone involved in the video, so it’s almost like we’re all having this one big party together, no matter where we are in the world, physically we are together in heart. i’ve been at home watching everyone’s videos in full tears with the biggest smile wrapped around my face. everyone’s creativity and love for this song has been overwhelming. It makes my heart beat knowing that they can take away a little piece of ‘Tangerine’ and make it their own. it’s fucking beautiful. it’s art.”

We hit Jesse Jo with ten questions about all of the above, and as it turned out, even her answers were uniquely stylish.

youtube

Your influences are distinctly 1960s + ’70s. Do you feel a bit out of place in the current musical zeitgeist of hip-hop preeminence and so much over-glossed pop? my influences are not only 60’s and 70’s

and the thing about the current state of music right now is that there is nothing out of place. hip hop artists pull samples from old soul, country, and r&b records and it’s all turning into a place you can do anything you want. the only thing that pisses me off is when people chase chart positions by making the same shit over and over.

there is a difference between being out of place and making a place for yourself. so to answer. no i do not feel out of place. i feel like i’m right where i should be

What was some of the music you grew up listening to? my dad was always my go-to with music. he always played the clash, merle, john lennon, brian eno, david bowie on the way to school. with the occasional britney n christina.

i remember this one time,i think i was about 7 years old, he picked me up at my friend sasha’s house and i was throwing a fit because i didn’t want to leave. as we pulled out of the drive way he turned on “should i stay or should i go” by the clash. i had never heard it before. he looked at me and smiled and i felt my bad mood melt away. i remember thinking, as i tried my best to keep scowling at him, “i wanna make something this cool” . n i’m still tryin

What was it like growing up with rocker parents? Did that imprint on your personal aesthetic? are they rocker !? i mean i know they are pretty damn cool. everything about them has left a huge beautiful mark all over me. they are my favorite legends and they inspire me completely and truly .

On “Tangerine,” one can detect references to the The Beatles, Oasis, Patsy Cline, Mazzy Star…what has been your musical state of mind of late? what a major line up i wanna go to that show.

my musical state of mind has been to make more.

Image by Laurie Lynn Stark

Your music is very raw and seemingly unfussed over. Does inspiration find you in a mostly spontaneous fashion? oh it’s fussed . i am fussy . music for me is never just one thing. sometimes a song comes easy like it was layin on my night stand when i woke up. other times i feel like i have to cut my body open, drown in my tears and claw at the floor just to get one word out. inspiration is endless when you show up for it.

How did you come to work with YUNGBLUD? he called me n asked for me to be in his video . he said there’d be lips n latex. and so…

Cher is your godmother – has she been a mentor and influence? in every single way. i am in awe of her.

As opposed to those with batteries of stylists, you seem to really own your sense of style. Who are your fashion inspirations? my brother n sister, the cramps, cher, audrey hepburn, hands, animal print, love n london. i want to dress up like my favorite singers voices.

just like in every medium, i have people i’ve worked with forever. they’re my family. we understand each other. challenge each other and force each other to be brutally honest in the things we make.

i also love fresh eyes and ears and people that find new ways to look at the same things.

Is a full Jesse Jo Stark album on the horizon? it is n soon

Rock & roll as we know it seems to be on life support. What do you think is left for it? only if you aren’t lookin. there are so many insane bands in the world. some of my favorite bands now are kids my age. it isn’t dead. you just gotta find it.

#jesse jo stark #blackbook media #interview #2020

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paint-pilot · 4 years

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shit it’s been a second, guess it’s time to update again

edit: holy christ this is long, i’m gonna readmore it. tl:dr tyler has many badweird feelings but is getting through it. fun body changes, including hair growth and an unexpectedly nice voice. surgery and legal matters are Annoying. tw for menstruation

it is truly bizarre to think that i’ll have been five months on t in a little under two weeks. another month after that and it’s half a year. it’s uhh...weird. quarantine has just made this all feel weird. it’s like i fast-forwarded through this whole journey i was supposed to go on i guess? like i got randomly torn out of my life one day in march with no warning and then just as suddenly got spat out in august with a new life - new name, new face, new major, new identity - and no transitional period whatsoever. my classmates, my professors, my students, they all have only known me as tyler. and only ever will know me as tyler. and that’s great! it’s great, and i’m truly just blown away by how markedly easy it’s been and how weirdly good my timing was in transitioning. but it almost feels like i’m still a ways behind everyone else, i guess. i’ve spent so much of my life hiding, and lying through my teeth, and covering my ass every second of every day to protect myself, and i don’t have to do that anymore but the instinct is 100% still there and that honestly doesn’t feel good. of course i’m not making any of it up - i’m happier now than i’ve ever been, and i know i’m making the right choice - but it still persistently keeps feeling that way.

it’s just difficult, i think, to balance wanting to be read as male (and, to a large extent, wanting to keep my transness hidden both for safety reasons and so people don’t start treating me differently) and finding it difficult to hide this truly massive life change that, like, four people are really seeing anything of. and y’all, i guess, lol. it’s one thing to talk about all this in therapy, but it’s another entirely to just be able to share it with strangers and not worry about it being weird.

i was writing this with the intent of it being a mostly happy update but i guess there is some negativity boiling up so. gotta be honest, i guess? there’s a lot of fun trauma stuff i’ve been going through lately that i won’t get into but it’s culminated with this bullshit in this really fun way where my mom gets upset because i get kind of uncomfortable when she shows me childhood photos or tells stories about me as a little kid and then i just break down for reasons i really can’t discern. i’m going to try and articulate this, and who knows how messy it’s going to get, so i apologize if it gets kind of incoherent from here on out. as far as i can tell the root thing that she really gets upset about is that i’ve “thrown away” my whole previous identity. like, not a direct quote, but “you can’t just pretend [deadname] never existed. because she did, for a long time.” and...sure, i guess. i know this has been hard on my mom. i know she was raised in a conservative family, and while she has worked hard to adopt an accepting and open mindset she still doesn’t 100% grasp all of it and will make mistakes. i’ve made my peace with that. and yet. it’s not so much, really, that i was this other person and then became tyler, y’know? tyler did not appear suddenly two years ago where she once stood. tyler put on a mask, even before he knew he was tyler, because tyler was scared and ashamed but people seemed to like her and, for a time, she was an easy person to be. and i hated her. that is so fucking scary for me to say, and i’m not sure i’ve admitted that until literally right this second, but i did. not because she was a bad person. because she had a voice and a face and a body that i hated. because people saw her and assumed they knew me. because even she had many faces, because there was no real base or identity to her, just traits designed to paint a pretty picture and make people like her. because i knew, when i finally threw her away, people would miss her. compare me to her. expect me to be like her.

so i don’t know. i don’t have a satisfying way to wrap this up, because i honestly don’t know how to face this because i know it is absolutely not just the trans thing that created this situation. i’m kinda warring with myself, because i do kinda want to go back through this blog and delete photos of myself with long hair and whatever (because jesus, i’ve had this thing since i was like 14) but i genuinely don’t know if that’s healthy. i know i’m going back on my bullshit, fretting this way and that over whether something is “healthy” as though that’s an objective term without considering what’s going to make me happy, but honestly? i don’t know anymore. i keep sensing the mental block - the swathes of my childhood that i cannot recall, just vague, constant unease - and i don’t really know if i want to dig into all of that and learn what lies underneath because i’m sort of afraid of it. like i said, i’m happy now, happier than i’ve ever been, and i’d sort of like to just leave it like that. but i guess the length and tone of this post might argue otherwise.

anyways. anyways. enough mental health therapy, more actual hormone therapy updates since that’s what this goddamn thing is supposed to be i think? i’m finally starting to grow some noticeable hairs - my chin hair is coming back after my mom made me shave it before i left for school lol, as are a handful of mustache/lower lip/sideburn hairs. i keep feeling phantom bugs on my legs/feet and i’ve only just now recognized that that’s just leg hairs brushing against places i’m not used to. my appetite has picked up like absolute hell again, too, so i don’t know if i’m just having a metabolic spurt or what. also, i’ve started bruising more? idk what the hell that’s about - i fucking never bruise unless i’ve been hit Hard, and i kind of assumed testosterone would make you less likely to bruise, but then that’s probably just not related to the hormones at all. i was gonna put this in the tags but seeing as this post is already so long i might as well put a readmore and just put this here lol: my period is late, like, four days late, which is exceedingly unusual for me and might mean i’m finally done. or almost done. fingers crossed.

my voice has started to settle, it seems like. i popped out an e2 yesterday, which is Sick, but i’m not as focused on that anymore as i am on the actual quality of my tone. which is...good? i’m not just a baritone, i’m kind of a good one, at least it seems like. i’m really working right now on just getting familiar with my instrument - i’m second-guessing my pitch sensitivity a lot, but i think i really just need to drill and practice until everything starts feeling like second nature again. but since the musical didn’t happen for me, my coach wants to enter me in a classical solo competition next spring. so...no more retirement from competitive singing. i’m back! and thank god, because i’m starting to go crazy without being in musical work lol.

jesus fuck, i have a lot to say. i should probably split this into two posts but i don’t care. i am frustrated; i tried to get an appointment with a pro bono legal program for a name change, but it happened today and i wasn’t invited so apparently i’m on my own. and i’m frustrated. i’m trying to look at internships and shit for next summer, but i kind of can’t apply right now because my legal name and sex don’t line up with my presentation, and i don’t really know how easy it is to get away with that in this day and age and especially in my field. genuinely, if anyone has any advice, i’d appreciate it. i don’t know how long this will take, i don’t know what the requirements are, i don’t know if i’m better off just applying now and hoping they don’t eliminate me before ever getting me an interview. and, of course, i’m working on getting consultations for top surgery, but i keep catching myself procrastinating that. which seems weird, but listen. i’ve said it before but i have to emphasize, i am capital-t Terrified of getting this surgery. i know i need to, i know it will make things better for me, i know now is the time, i know i hate binding and can’t really get away with not doing so, but jesus fuck i am so frightened of anesthesia it’s not even funny. but i guess i’m mostly just calling myself out here and telling myself to quit being a big baby, schedule the thing, and give myself a few months to prepare.

anyway. that’s all i have to say. i’d apologize for ranting, but honestly...i dunno. i know at the start of all this a handful of you requested these updates, and i have to imagine it’s because at least some of you are transitioning, are thinking of doing so, or know someone who is or will be soon. and i just hope someone out there can at least relate, because there honestly just aren’t a lot of comparable life changes out there. or maybe this is just therapeutic for me, that’s fine too.

i have two midterms next week i should be studying for. i should do that.

#t.txt #not horses #the puberty diaries #menstruation mention

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florrickandassociates · 4 years

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TGF Thoughts: 4x05-- The Gang Goes to War

under the cut

This episode starts with Caleb and I don’t totally hate it. This means the writers are doing a good job with him so far. I’m surprised I feel that way considering I loathe the plot he’s here for.

This is the first case heavy episode in ages and I have more thoughts on the fact that somehow the space from 6x19 has become military court than I do on the case. As always, that’s not to say it’s bad (tbh, this case was the exact right blend of simple and captivating it reminded me of old school TGW). It’s just to say I have literally nothing to add.

Lucca’s off to visit Bianca. She is still extremely uncomfortable with very wealthy people.

Oh, a mention of babysitting! Kind of sad I’m surprised.

I forgot to mention that this ep is on the shorter side, almost network length. Woo!

Lucca describes her life as “I have a toddler. I’m trying to make partner.” Remember how last season either Lucca or Rosalyn (or MAIA hhahahahhahahaahahhahaahahahhahahahaahahhaahhaah) were going to be made partner and that plot just vanished?

Lucca says that of work, family, fitness, friends, and sleep, the three she’s chosen are work, family, and sleep. I believe it. Though we’ve seen Lucca exercise probably more than most TGF characters? But that was before she had a baby.

If you leave your phone on while you’re on a plane and someone places a voice call would your phone actually ring?

Marissa TOTALLY has a crush on Caleb.

Oh, a Francesca mention AND a mention of Lucca and Marissa being friends?! The continuity fairy likes me today!!!!!!!!

Caleb threatens to quit (I think he knows he wouldn’t be taken up on that offer) unless Mr. Firth lets him take a month for this case. Come on, Caleb. This is TV lawyering. This case will take two costume changes and you know it! Months are a thing for real lawyers.

Diane and Adrian aren’t in their offices, so when Firth finds a partner to assist on the military case (I do not understand why this is a thing he is doing in the first place, but alright), it’s Liz. How conveniently awkward!

(Adrian just isn’t in this episode-- he is apparently at a conference in New York-- and Diane is barely in it, and I’m fine with that. LET LIZ AND LUCCA SHINE!)

(Liz and Lucca are my faves, if that wasn’t obvious.)

Awkward awkward awkward, fucking your boss is very awkward. I hate everything about this plot in theory and yet somehow like Liz, Caleb, and maybe even the idea of Liz and Caleb, but every time I think about the boss/employee dynamic my only thought is: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liz’s divorce! Continuity fairy has blessed me again!

I do really like Caleb.

I somehow almost turned that last thought into a rant about Maia and I’m not gonna do that to y’all in this Maia-free season.

Rich people are getting away with more shit in Julius’s court. He’s resigned to it, until he meets his alter-ego from the play again. I get that they want to use this device to show why he’d change his mind so suddenly but omfg please don’t remind me of the last episode.

My first thought was “maybe that long ass episode was even longer and this is a cut scene” but Julius seems to be wearing a different tie in this scene than he was before. Oof.

JUDGE KUHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love Judge Kuhn. I think I said this last week but it isn’t often we get truly good, considered characters who want the best and actually take fair steps to see it happen. Judge Kuhn is great.

And so is the actress playing her. Her expression as the seat shrinks-- which is some Kingsian bullshit-- makes the joke work.

This episode relies a lot on that device Jane the Virgin loved where back to back scenes will be linked by a theme or a word. In this case, Julius and Liz/Caleb are both dealing with continuances. Yay for structure, even a simple case related structure!

“A sofa would have blown up here”... I can’t, y’all. “A conference table would have blown up here”. Is this a joke about coronavirus or a real need for more graphics or both? I lean towards it being a joke, but before I say that lemme play these credits side by side with last week’s…

Okay so there are differences. Last week there was an aerial view of a wine bottle exploding while this week there’s a second one in the background. They replaced an exploding coffee set with the sofa text. There are some other differences too. But not enough to convince me they didn’t have footage they could have used. So I think it’s a joke.

Welcome back, season two Diane. I missed you, ya weirdo!

(But like actually Diane is staring out the window at a bird, not doing anything or responding to questions. Why so weird?!)

Now that Diane isn’t hunting down answers on 618, she has “nothing to do.” Oh, suddenly no one in the world is in need of pro-bono assistance? Sure!

Continuity on the SWATting, too!

AND A WILL REFERENCE.This episode may be nothing special but it sure is endearing.

Diane explains that Judge Kuhn is tough but fair and Will ended up liking her. That’s a pretty good summary.

Diane spots the woman who she dreamed was Weinstein’s lawyer in a meeting, drawing dots. Guess that’s one of the drawbacks of having windows everywhere. She chases her up the stairs to STRL and asks if they know each other because, and I quote, “I had a dream and you were in it. You were Weinstein’s lawyer.” HOW FUCKING WEIRD ARE YOU TRYING TO BE, DIANE? Are you microdosing again?! (This feels so season two.)

Props to this lady (do we know her name? Has it been said on the show) for taking that weird-ass comment in stride and joking she probably didn’t do very well. She needs a favor-- she has a case in front of Judge Cain and wants Diane to sit with her.

Diane asks about the dots. Apparently this lady draws-- and counts!-- dots. Hundreds of thousands of them. During meetings. Because it’s calming and nothing matters. See?! Season two!

Lucca does get a little bit of work to do on vacation-- Bianca wants to buy the resort.

Case stuff happens.

Someone explain to me what the fuck this bright neon lighting in the office late at night is all about. Why is it so bright?! Why do the colors change!? Am I just supposed to accept this?! I suppose it’s no weirder than a woman who draws dots instead of taking notes-- and admits to it-- but WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

I know there is supposed to be some sort of parallel between the case having an element about disobeying your superior and the Liz/Caleb dynamic, but as you will recall, I hate everything about the boss/employee plot AND find it incredibly boring so if you would like to see analysis of that parallel… I’m not your gal.

Oh look I can see the office bathroom of Willicia sexytimes in Liz’s office

My god this lighting is distracting.

It sounds to me like Caleb is in the legal field for idealistic reasons. I can’t get a sense of if wanting the country to stay the same is liberal or conservative or admirable or misguided but it’s definitely something. (I have a feeling he means “stay the same” as in “return to 2016” though.)

Since she has not been in the military, Liz worries out loud that she hasn’t lived much of a life. This leads to flirting and intimacy and another hookup. Bleh.

Creeper from Kurt’s office comes to visit Julius and compliments him while basically telling him to keep quiet and be corrupt. He promises Julius the chance to move up the ladder and implies Julius should rule in favor of some rich donor.

Julius, who, like all characters on this show and maybe just people in general, does NOT like being told what to do, promptly does the opposite. And he feels really, really, really good about doing the right thing.

Case stuff happens.

Lucca now gets invited to play poker with a bunch of millionaires and celebrities. Lucca is highly uncomfortable. The names of the celebs are bleeped which is… not as clever as I think it was meant to be.

Also I’d be uncomfortable in this situation too. I’m just ready for this plotline to go somewhere beyond “Lucca is uncomfortable with rich people”.

Recapping goes fast when most of the show is case stuff.

In another throwback, Diane (lit by the weird lighting) is watching what looks like a parody of SNL allowing 45 to host? Or maybe it’s just some unfunny bit that goes on too long? Odd target for a parody at this point in time.

Whatever the point, it prompts Diane to start drawing dots of her own.

Lucca’s luck at the poker game is fantastic. Bianca encourages Lucca to keep her winnings-- she wouldn’t give back a stuffed animal or goldfish won with someone else’s money at a carnival, would she?

Case stuff, now involving 45, happens. This is a missing season two episode, I swear.

Wow lol those establishing shots and stock footage do NOT convince me that Lucca lives in Chicago. Nor do they convince me that anyone involved with the show has visited Chicago.

Case stuff happens!

Another Lucca and Marissa scene! Lucca asks what to do about her poker winnings. Marissa says Lucca should keep the money because Bianca doesn’t need it-- get Bianca a gift if she feels guilty.

Diane sits next to the seemingly nameless lawyer and they compare their dots. Unfortunately for Diane, the case she’s decided to sit in on as a favor? It’s another case in front of Julius, and it also gets 618’d. How convenient for the plot! When Julius doesn’t go for it, Diane is intrigued and reenergized. She boldly goes to Julius’s chambers to suggest trading info about 618.

No matter how many times I write “618” in the context of Memo 618 I still think 618 = Loser Edit.

Case stuff happens! It’s good for Caleb and Liz!

MALCOLM GETS MENTIONED BY NAME! CONTINUITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Caleb and Liz continue the tradition of using meals as code for sex and now I have to watch them kiss. Pass.

Lucca gets Bianca a gift of a goldfish and a giant stuffed bear (a reference to their earlier convo about carnivals). Cute, but I still don’t quite get where this plot is going.

There’s a “Skye and Moon” logo on the plane. I wonder if that is the name of Bianca’s cosmetics empire.

Oh, it’s over. This episode was perfectly fine. Nothing challenging, nothing innovative, but a solid and enjoyable outing closer in length to the average TGW ep than the average TGF one. After last week’s long-ass episode, this is really all I wanted/needed.

#tgfthoughts #the good fight

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noona-clock · 5 years

Text

Which One? Ji Soo - Part 3

Genre: Coffee Shop!AU

Pairing: Ji Soo x You

Warnings: None

Prologue, Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, Epilogue | Words: 2,568

As you followed Ji Soo up to the front door of the shop, you saw him put his phone to his ear. And then you heard him say, “Jordan, hey, are you super busy right now?”

How did one just... become friends with a mechanic? Because that was one of the most useful jobs in the entire world, and you were fairly sure your life would be a lot easier if you knew someone who worked with cars. It would definitely be a lot less stressful, and less stress most certainly equated to more happiness.

Your best friend was a botanist. What could Jane ever do for you? Make sure you didn’t kill your plants?

Wow.

You were about to get out your phone and send Jane a text, asking her why she wasn’t a mechanic, but you had arrived at the front door. Ji Soo was currently standing and holding it open for you. And still talking on the phone.

“Yeah, probably just a battery issue,” he murmured, nodding at you as you walked past him. “Do you have some time this morning?”

The shop was far emptier now than it had been last night, and Joo Hyuk greeted you with a small smile as he stood -- alone -- at the register.

You waved at him shyly, waiting for Ji Soo to get off the phone and fill you in on what was happening.

“Yeah,” Ji soo said as he strode over toward the counter. “Okay, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. See you then.”

You raised your eyebrows expectantly as he hung up the phone, but instead of telling you what his friend had said, Ji Soo pointed at you.

“Green tea latte,” he stated. And then he turned to Joo Hyuk. “Don’t ring it up.”

“Wh --” you began, stepping toward the register.

“Don’t fight it,” Ji Soo told you.

He grabbed a clean mug and as he started making your latte, you could’ve sworn you saw him discreetly elbow Joo Hyuk...

And you would’ve thought it was just your imagination, but Joo Hyuk murmured an ‘excuse me’ not even two seconds later and left the register.

If you were Jane, you would think Ji Soo had told him to leave on purpose so he could be alone with you.

And if you were Jane, you would walk up to the counter and lean against it so the two of you could talk more easily.

So... you swallowed your fear and anxiety and did just that.

“Thank you,” you said as you rested your elbows on the smooth, granite surface.

“You haven’t even tried the latte yet,” he chuckled.

“No, for the mechanic thing,” you smiled.

“Oh, right! He’s on his way now, it shouldn’t take long.” He only glanced at you as he spoke, focusing more on making your latte - for which you were very grateful. You wouldn’t want him to burn himself as he steamed the milk, and you certainly wouldn’t want a less than stellar drink. Especially since it would be the first caffeine fix you had today!

But also lowkey because Ji Soo had said the latte he made you was guaranteed to be more delicious than the one Joo Hyuk had made you yesterday, and you just wanted that to be true.

It only took a couple of minutes to prepare the drink, but Ji Soo insisted on serving it to you in an actual seat. You were not a paying customer this morning, but you were still a customer.

“And since this is your second time visiting, you’re officially a valued customer.”

You held back an impressed grin as best as you could, though you did lift up one hand and bring it up to your chest thoughtfully.

Even though you weren’t with Jane, you chose to sit in the same seat as last time. It had been extremely comfortable, and you were just a creature of habit -- remember? Routine makes you feel more like a human.

And as soon as you took a sip of the smooth, creamy, slightly bitter green tea latte, you felt even more like a human.

Just as you’d secretly hoped, Ji Soo sat down in the chair Jane had occupied yesterday evening, his eyebrows raised expectantly as he awaited your verdict on the drink.

After glancing around and seeing that Joo Hyuk was in the back wiping down a table, you leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “It’s better than last night’s.”

Ji Soo smirked, looking extremely proud of himself (but also amused and thankful you were playing along).

As you continued to sip, Ji Soo cleared his throat gently and tilted his head somewhat curiously. “Can I ask you a question?”

You nodded.

“What’s your Instagram handle?”

You almost spit out the sip of latte you’d taken, a bubble of laughter rising in your throat. Once you’d managed to swallow down your drink, you told him and watched as he typed it into his phone.

Unsurprisingly, you were quite proud of your feed. You were a professional photographer, and you had a natural knack for design and making things look cohesive -- at least on the internet. But you were still nervous about what Ji Soo would think.

Almost instantly, though, his eyebrows rose. His lips pursed, making it very clear he was impressed. He looked up at you not even a minute later and nodded slowly. “Damn. You’re good.”

“Thank you,” you replied with a bashful smile.

His eyes flew back to his phone screen, and you saw his thumb scrolling up and down, clicking here and there.

When your phone lit up with a notification that you had a new follower, Ji Soo moved to slide his phone back in his pocket. “Can I ask you another question?”

Again, you nodded.

“Would you be willing to help with an Instagram for the shop? You’re probably super expen --”

“Of course,” you answered, grinning openly.

Rather than accept your acceptance right away, Ji Soo furrowed his brow and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Now, I don’t -- we can’t afford to pay you right now --”

“That’s fine,” you assured him.

“But we can give you free drinks for two months? Three, maybe?”

“No, you don’t need to,” you countered. “I will gladly provide my photography and Instagram services pro bono.”

Ji Soo shook his head firmly. “Free drinks for four months, then.”

“Okay, fine, three months,” you replied quickly.

“Perfect,” Ji Soo grinned. “I will leave all the planning and the schedule and everything up to you. You know what you’re doing, you know how busy you are and all that.”

“Well, I have some free time tomorrow afternoon and this weekend. If you let me know when you guys aren’t super busy, we can plan out what kind of theme you want and I can take some pictures and show you how to edit them,” you offered.

Ji Soo’s grin widened, his eyes flashing with excitement and spurring your heart into a fast-paced dance.

“Yeah?” he asked. “That would be awesome. You sure you want to spend your weekend working, though? I mean, you don’t have plans with Jane or, like, your boyfriend or something?”

“No,” you answered with a shake of your head. “I don’t have a boyfriend, remember?”

Jane had made it embarrassingly obvious yesterday evening.

“Yeah, I remember. I just wanted to make sure,” Ji Soo chuckled.

You almost asked why he wanted to make sure, but the bell over the door jingled suddenly and both of your gazes instinctively flew to see who had just entered the shop.

It turned out to be a guy you’d never seen before, but Ji Soo almost immediately called out to him and stood up.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” he greeted, reaching his hand out and initiating the typical Bro Handshake.

Ah, this must be the mechanic.

You gulped the last of your latte, taking your empty mug up to the counter and setting it down before stepping up next to Ji Soo.

“You must be the unfortunate car owner,” the guy said with a friendly smirk.

“That’s me,” you confirmed, nodding. You held out your hand for a normal handshake and introduced yourself.

“Jordan,” he replied. “Nice to meet you. I’ll just go take a quick look and come back to let you know my initial thoughts. Is that okay?”

“Yes, of course.” You hurried back to your chair, fishing your keys out of your bag and bringing them back to him.

Jordan thanked you, assuring you he would be right back, and he would not steal your car.

“Yeah, he stopped doing that years ago,” Ji Soo added as his friend headed back out the door to the parking lot.

A soft chuckle escaped your lips, but as you watched Jordan stride over to your car, you couldn’t help but be just a little anxious.

And, apparently, it showed on your face because Ji Soo nudged you gently with his elbow. “What’s up?”

“What if something’s really wrong?” you asked, keeping your eyes on your car.

“Well, first of all,” he began, keeping his tone casual. “I don’t think anything is really wrong. It’s probably just the battery.”

He was most likely right, but you were still slightly worried.

“Second of all, if something is really wrong, Jordan can fix it. He’s a car genius, he can fix anything. And I can force him to give you a discount.”

Your brow furrowed, and you turned to look up at him. “Oh, no, you don’t have to --”

“I can’t pay you for the whole Instagram thing, so I can at least help you out with your car.”

“You’ve already helped me more than enough with my car,” you pointed out.

Ji Soo just shrugged, a hint of a smile hiding on his lips as he turned and headed back to the counter.

You were extremely tempted to ask why he wanted to help you so much, but you refrained. You had just met the guy yesterday, so there was absolutely no need to go there right now. He was probably just a helpful guy!

So you decided to bring up work, instead. You followed him over to the counter, leaning against it, as you had earlier, while Ji Soo washed out your mug. “While we’re waiting, we can talk about your Instagram feed. If you want to.”

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” he replied, his back to you as he rinsed out the mug in the sink.

“What kind of theme were you thinking? Any specific coloring? Layout?” you asked.

Ji Soo was quiet for a few moments, washing the mug in silence.

You waited patiently, and when he finally set the clean mug down and turned to face you, he simply laughed.

“I have no clue,” he admitted. “I just want to be active and really interact with people.”

“Okay, so leave the theming to me, and I’ll leave the interacting to you,” you grinned. “Do you know what kind of pictures you want on there?”

“Now, that, I do know,” he answered, pointing at you. “I want mostly pictures of our menu, but also pictures of the shop and maybe some customers if they’re okay with it.”

You didn’t reply right away because you were waiting for him to continue. He hadn’t mentioned the one thing you, as a customer, would want to see on the shop’s Instagram feed.

But after several moments, it was clear he wasn’t going to say it.

So you would.

“What about pictures of you guys?” you asked with raised eyebrows.

“Us?”

“Uh... yeah. People will definitely want to see pictures of the two of you.”

If you weren’t mistaken, a somewhat bashful look came across Ji Soo’s features. Which was extremely surprising.

Ji Soo?

Bashful?

You didn’t know him that well, but even so, it was hard to imagine him ever feeling shy.

“I mean, sure,” he answered with a little shrug, his cheeks just barely tinged with pink. “I’ll do it as long as Joo Hyuk does.”

You were honestly almost about to ask why he was being so coy about it, but the door to the shop opened yet again.

It was actually a customer this time, but Jordan was right behind her, so you stepped away from the counter to go meet him.

“It was just the battery,” he told you, much to your relief. “I went ahead and jumped it. It’s still running, so if you wanna go on out there...”

You darted over to your chair, grabbing your bag and heading back over to the door.

“Thank you so much,” you said quietly to Jordan as you stood in the doorway. Before you left, you glanced back at Ji Soo... but he was too busy ringing up the customer to notice you were leaving.

But what else could you do? Your car was out in the parking lot, running; you couldn’t just stay in here. You had to go out and drive it around so the battery could charge, and then you had some work to do back home...

It really wasn’t that bad because you weren’t sure you could even classify Ji Soo as a friend yet, but still.

You would send him a quick apology text later and hope he didn’t tease you about it.

Since you needed to drive your car around some, you decided to run a few errands. You filled up your tank, you went to the grocery store, and you took a nice drive around town to just... enjoy the scenery.

You arrived back at your place around 10, and by the time you got some of your work done for the day (you were currently working on designing a website for a custom merch store), it was kind of almost lunchtime.

You hadn’t contacted Ji Soo at all... but he hadn’t contacted you either.

Which was understandable since he was working, of course.

But you were still pretty nervous as you typed out a message to him.

You weren’t sure why you were expecting a reply back immediately because surely the shop experienced a mid-day rush... but with each passing minute, you got more and more anxious that Ji Soo was upset with you for not saying good-bye.

You busied yourself by getting a pre-lunch snack, telling yourself over and over it meant absolutely nothing that he wasn’t replying back.

When you heard a text message notification go off right before 11:30, though, you couldn’t help but let out a huge sigh of relief.

Oh, thank god. He wasn’t mad at you!

And now that you were in the clear, you could relax and... To be honest, you kind of felt like some playful teasing.

So, in the span of less than an hour, you went from being extremely nervous and anxious that Ji Soo was mad at you for leaving without saying anything... to being extremely excited and anxious about this whole Instagram meeting you were having tomorrow.

Yes, you were excited because you just loved photography and the idea of planning a whole new Instagram profile was super intriguing.

But... you were also definitely excited to spend more time with Ji Soo. And it had been a long, long time since you’d been excited to spend time with a guy.

Part 4

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texastheband · 5 years

Text

Texas: Is not from Texas; Has never been there; Has a terrific debut LP

By Kim Reed Taken from "Pulse !", the US Tower Records magazine, September 1989 Transcription by Sophie van Rooijen

Texas is a band of multiple ironies. It takes its name from a state with powerful images and traditions, yet it hails from Glasgow, Scotland. Its members are barely out of their teens, yet the band sounds like it's been playing for years. And its debut LP – Southside – offers ample proof that Texas is gonna be around for a long time. Sydney's winter sun slips under the Harbour Bridge as Texas – a talented group from the unlikely locale of Scotland that has released one of the most stunning debut LPs in recent memory – enters the Sebel Townhouse for its last interview of the day. Post-concert parties are frequent in the cozy bar of the Sebel, where the walls (decorated with hundreds of glossy eight-by-tens) have absorbed many a tale. Lead singer Sharleen Spiteri and guitarist Ally McErlaine retire to one of the adjacent alcoves. Both members are eager to talk, despite the fact that they've probably relayed the basic history of the band to the press over and over ad nauseum since Mercury/PolyGram released its first single, "I Don't Want a Lover," earlier this year. The album, Southside, followed on its heels. “We toured the U.K. extensively before the album came out,” Spiteri begins. “When it was released there it entered the charts at number three and then went straight to gold. Even the record company was surprised because they really hadn't done anything or pulled all of the strings.” In fact, not only did Phonogram (the U.K. parent company of the band's label, Mercury) take a conservative approach in promoting Texas, it was downright blasé about the band since it was signed three years ago. Which is not to say that the label was unsupportive; on more than one occasion Texas got itself in a sticky situation and the record company came to its rescue. Three years ago, Spiteri was on her way to international status as a hairdresser when a friend told her about a band that his friend was putting together. He convinced her to take her guitar down and play a few songs with him. The result was an invitation to form a band. Despite McErlaine's affinity for Cooder's fretwork, the Texans are adamant that the name for their group evolved after they had developed their unique brand of contemporary blues. “We saw the movie 'Paris, Texas,'” explains Spiteri patiently, “and we just liked everything about it. We liked the soundtrack, too, but everything in the film is just so open. And, in turn, we feel that our music is very open and sparse.” Apparently, the name didn't evoke the wrath many had predicted when Texas started taking off, and it has been the freshness of McErlaine's playing and the natural power and control of Spiteri's singing that has been attracting all the attention. “Johnny and I got together and wrote a few songs,” says Spiteri, referring to bass player John McElhorne, “and then sent them off to various record companies. Within weeks Phonogram signed us up without ever seeing us play !” It's a story that every frustrated musician cringes upon hearing, but the fantasy sequence stops there. “Only a couple weeks after we signed I got a call from Chic producer Bernard Edwards telling me that he'd heard our tape and he wanted us to go to L.A. to record,” she explains, “but he had a lot of personal problems, and after a month we ended up scrapping everything and going home.” “It was a great learning experience for me because it was the first time I had worked with a producer,” she continues. “Things just didn't work out, though, and I guess I discovered that everybody isn't nice.” When Spiteri and McElhorne returned to Glasgow, their hometown, they concentrated on getting the band together, and that's when guitar-mad McErlaine was enlisted to join Texas. He had a reputation for skipping school in order to stay home and practice the licks of his idols, players like Keith Richards and Ry Cooder. “The band had lost a lot of money trying to record in the States,” says McErlaine, taking up the story of how Texas floundered before hitting paydirt. “When I joined the band we tried a few other producers in Glasgow in order to do it as cheaply as we could, but things weren't working out, and so we scrapped them, and there was more debt.” Eventually Texas connected with producer Tim Palmer, who has worked with Robert Plant (Now and Zen), the Mission, Mighty Lemon Drops and David Bowie's Tin Machine. His enthusiasm for the band's material and his easygoing manner endeared Palmer to the band, and he's already been enlisted to produce the next album. The other two members brought experience into the studio – McElhone had worked with Altered Images and Hipsway; drummer Stuart Kerr had been with the group Love and Money. With Spiteri and McErlaine, they were able to maintain the sound they'd developed, which was not dramatically altered by Palmer in the studio. “What Tim really did for us was give us confidence,” says McErlaine, while ordering some potent Red Back beer. “We just wanted to make an album that we wanted to hear.” “The album is really one long story about our lives in the past three and a half years,” says Spiteri. “We really put our necks on the line for this record and we fought for everything.” “People told us that 'I Don't Want a Lover' was too long because it was over four minutes, but we refused to let them edit it,” adds McErlaine. “They told us that radio wouldn't play it, but we said that if radio liked the song, they'd take it no matter what.” The band's insistence paid off, as “I Don't Want a Lover” can be heard on a majority of the globe's seven continents these days. “Lover” – with its atmospheric slide guitar runs knifing through a (now standard) modern MTV-pop synth/guitar/walloping drums rhythm track, over which Spiteri's husky contralto lays down the law – is, like the remainder of Southside, uncommonly confident for such a young band. You know how some records just sound like smash hits, even on the first listen? Southside sounds massive, with at least three other potential chartbusters – “Tell Me Why,” “Everyday Now” and “Thrill Has Gone” – lurking in the album's grooves. Texas' sound is a unique reflection of the music that has been imported to Scotland via radio, TV, records and tapes. And by the friends of Texas who sought out the rock, pop, soul and blues of North America on their trips overseas. “My dad was in the navy and went to San Francisco during the flower power days and brought back all these records,” says Spiteri, laughing. “'These Boots Were Made for Walking' by Nancy Sinatra was one of the first records I can remember listening to. But my dad's also a big Stones fan, and he even gets into Beatles vs. Stones arguments with people!” Spiteri cites Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline and Sarah Vaughn as her biggest influences; she also admits that critics who compare her to former Lone Justice singer Maria McKee aren't far off. McErlaine doesn't hesitate when naming London Calling by the Clash as his first album purchase. The names of guitarists Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, The Edge and Peter Buck also creep into his conversation, and it isn't hard to see what other albums and tapes he checked out in order to forge his slide guitar style. Radio is definitely not an influence on Scots who wish to discover the talents of artists outside the mainstream. “Radio stations in Britain are so conservative,” Spiteri moans. “It's all monopolized by the government, and Radio One seems to have a playlist of about 20 records. That's all you hear.” Spiteri and McErlaine like to reflect on the quick rise of Texas and with it the newfound freedom of leaving your past behind, not always a pleasant thing when you're used to a close group of family and friends. “It's very weird traveling to different countries,” says McErlaine. “You know how it is when you go home at night and you feel very comfortable? Well, now we don't have that security.” “Plus, when you go on the road,” adds Spiteri, “you become like a little family. You try to stay in touch with reality, but you can understand how some people lose it after so many years.” “But when you go back to Glasgow it brings you right down again,” says McErlaine. “Like, my dad's unemployed and I feel very lucky to be doing this. You know, my friends won't even tell me that they have a copy of our album! Sometimes we'll go to friends' houses and you'll hear our album blaring out from the living room, but as soon as you arrive at the door, it's off.” The down-to-earth attitude that Spiteri and McErlaine have toward their music (and the music business) is not as unique as it is refreshing. “Sometimes it's hard to believe that we're in a real band,” says McErlaine. “It's like when we were in Ireland for some Irish music awards,” Spiteri says. “We were just standing there watching everybody when they started saying 'U2 are here! U2 are here!' Suddenly somebody tapped Johnny on the shoulder and there's Bono and The Edge standing there! Bono says, 'I just wanted to tell you that I really like your record.' I think my jaw dropped wide open and we didn't stop smiling all night.” “We know that they're real people like us,” says McErlaine, “but we've grown up loving their music and still respect them. Now we're in the situation where we can talk to these people. Like when we met Robert Plant when we were doing the album. He had that voice that you've heard a million times on record !” Not all their meetings are as pleasant, however. “Sometimes we'll be taping a TV show or something and I'll say something to one of the other bands there, “Spiteri says, “and they'll just ignore you. Some people really do have problems. “We always think that civility costs nothing,” she continues. “You're nobody special if you are in a band; it's just a job.” Unlike most professions, however, musicians are fair game for the media. As the band is finding out, music journalists have incompetents in their ranks like everybody else. “We had one reviewer at our gigs who wrote that he didn't like the way our guitarist was standing!” Spiteri recalls. “And we think to ourselves, 'This is supposed to be a music paper?' The article went on to say nothing about the music or the songs we wrote, but at the end he wrote, 'Texas are a very good band.'” Live performance is the band's current focus, and it puts the group in a put-up-or-shut-up situation with the press and punters alike. Spiteri agrees that Texas' material like “Thrill Has Gone,” “Tell Me Why,” “Future is Promises” and the band favorite “Fight the Feeling,” is much harder to play live now than it was before going into the studio. The precision that Palmer helped the band achieve has a sharper edge than its previous rehearsal halls of Glasgow sound. The material on Southside, even after a few listens, is so sophisticated and mature that virtually anyone hearing the album will swear that the band must be longtime veterans of the music business. The album's 10 tracks (the compact disc contains the bonus track “Faith”) contain music so rich and full that it's leaving journalists scrambling for yet another way to say “brilliant”. Texas' material is completely original – with obvious influences by Cooder, Richard et al. in the guitar department – and the sound is not only a surprising hybrid, but one that's decidedly non-Celtic. Simple Minds, Big Country, Aztec Camera and newer outfits like Gun and Slide have nothing on these guys. The band is already responding to the pressure that comes with this type of recognition. “We know that there is a lot expected of us for the second album,” says Spiteri, “but we won't go into the studio until next year because we don't want to get off tour and go in tired and bored. This is very important to us, and we're not going to rush into anything.” “We recorded Southside in two and a half months,” McErlaine adds. “So we know that we don't need a year in the studio. But, we want to do it right.” Doing it right means heading back to the States for a tour of the clubs in August and September before returning to Europe for another sweep across venues teeming with an ever-growing number of Texas converts. The band has chosen to play the smaller clubs in preference to supporting a major artist in a stadium tour, and this game plan may just work. Countrymen Simple Minds did three pub tours of Australia before cracking it overseas. Now it's up to the denizens of the U.S. to decide whether to embrace a Scottish band, bold enough to name itself Texas, that has made the rootiest, most American-sounding record of the year. The welcome mat, unused as of late, is all theirs.

#article #Southside #SharleenSpiteri #Sharleen Spiteri #Sharleen #Spiteri #Texas #TexasBand #Texas Band #TexasTheBand #Texas The Band

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rosegardentwilight · 5 years

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A Moment in Time

Adrien's jaw dropped from slight bewilderment at why such a gorgeous girl would randomly sit down at his table and start talking away. The only problem? His name wasn't Adam.

AU- Alya sets Marinette up on a blind date with a guy named Adam, but after a phone incident and the time change, she ends up crashing at a different table thinking it's her date.

Chapter 1/1 ( for now? Read the Author’s Note at the end)

A.n.- Two one-shots in one day, what? ( If you haven't read Birds of a Feather and you like Nathalie's character then go read it ). I've actually been working on this story on and off since last week? Finally finished and posting today because tomorrow is daylight savings time so it seemed fitting. ( Although this takes place in the spring time change). Make sure you read the end author's note if you want to see more of this story after reading it, it's very important. Other than that not much for you, this is AU, no superpowers but I do find a way to incorporate our two favorite Kwamis ( just not this chapter).

Edit*- This story was inspired by a movie called An Hour Behind. And although inspired, it will have several major changes from the movie.

2. You all rock. Will definitely expand this story. Heard you loud and clear I’ll figure plot lines for this tomorrow.

"Come on Marinette, it's one date," Marinette couldn't help but roll her eyes at her friend's excessive begging and slid a new batch of cakes in the oven. "I didn't even pick him this time, he's Nino's old college friend. What's the worst that could happen?" Alya continued as she swiped a chocolate chip cookie from the display.

"My best friend eats all my product, and then I won't have any left for paying customers," Marinette shot a look at her best friend who responded with a sheepish smile.

"If you bring some of your cookies to your date with Adam, you'll bag him for sure."

"How many people do you know that bring baked goods on a blind date Alya?" Her best friend's intentions were pure, Alya only wanted to see her happy, but a blind date- that was a disaster waiting to happen.

"You're showing all of your assets to prove you are the whole package." Marinette couldn't hold back a snort filled laugh.

"I'm starting to wonder what you think will happen on this date."

"You'll love him Marinette, he's a lawyer, but he handles most of the pro bono cases in his firm. He's a cat person; which I know is in the plus column for you. He's drop dead gorgeous and has the greenest eyes."

"I hope those weren't Nino's exact words because otherwise you two have other things to discuss," Marinette teased.

"Please, just one date. You know I only want you to be happy, and you can't say you had the best love life over the past couple years; between Kim, Nathan"-

"I get it," Marinette snapped. She knew exactly how those dates went, no need to rub salt in the wound.

"Marinette, I'm convinced you try and find something wrong with every person interested in you."

"I've been busy with the bakery, opening a second store is within my grasp. I can't give up now."

"No one is saying give up. It's one date tomorrow night," her best friend offered.

"You're not going to give up on this, are you?"

"I learned my stubbornness from one of my best friends." Alya beamed in response.

"Fine. One date, but in the morning. That way I can route back to the bakery if things don't go well and bake a couple of batches and not waste the day."

"You won't regret this!" Alya threw her arm around in a tight hug. "I'm going to go tell Nino to set it up and have the details for you tonight. Promise me you won't be late. We both know how you are in the mornings. Don't forget to change your clock tonight." She called over her shoulder as the last reminder. Marinette rolled her eyes once more, Alya was as subtle as a truck. As much as she appreciated it, the level of faith in her was almost insulting. Her phone would automatically switch to the new time, there wasn't any need to adjust anything. The oven's timer caught her attention, and she rushed so her cakes wouldn't burn.

Nerves kicked in as she realized what she's done. What was she thinking to agree to a blind date? The regular dates that she set up ended with disaster.

She only made it through one date with Kim. He tried to carry the conversation the best he could, but with her limited knowledge of sports, the topics circled back around to himself. Marinette always wanted to look on the bright side, so even though she wouldn't go on another date, at least she learned more about him.

Nathanaël lasted to date number 5. They enjoyed each other's company, but things became stagnant when he confessed that seeing an old flame caused previous feelings to bubble up again. Marinette appreciated his honesty, but it was clear that he wanted to try again. She couldn't stand in the way of that.

Marinette applied some strawberry frosting to the cooled lemon cake and cut herself a small slice. The flavors melded together on her tongue, a hopeful reminder of what spring could be once the cold weather melted. But despite how it tasted, it still lacked whatever she was looking for to submit for the contest. Frustration groaned inside her, but at least she was another step closer. Her eyes ticked to the clock on the wall; 9:30 pm. She could easily make another batch, especially without Alya distracting her. She pulled out the ingredients needed once more, one more attempt couldn't hurt.

By the time Marinette stumble through her apartment door exhaustion had inched its way to every part of her body. She was lucky to remember to turn the oven off before she left her bakery because she created four more batches before giving up for the evening. An unread message from Alya kept lighting up her phone, no doubt the information to the blind date she had agreed to in a temporary moment of insanity.

Ayla: Tomorrow, at the Hollybelly 5 at 9 am. He's going to wear a light blue scarf. If you need moral support, I'm only a phone call away. Knock him dead!

Suddenly this idea seemed even more insane, but to avoid her best friend's nagging at her for the next month straight; she decided to follow through with her word. She set her alarm for 8:30 to give herself enough time to prepare in the morning. She became acutely aware of how the sweet scent stuck to her skin, as tired as she was, the shower called to her.

She let out a gasp as she stepped into the wall of warm water and the relaxation it provided. Four more batches of "almost there" was the product of her night along with a messy kitchen she had to clean before she came home. It wouldn't have been fair to leave that to the staff when she had been the one to cause the mess in the first place. Her fingers itched to run through her hair, and she released a long exhale. This contest was of vital importance if she desired to open a second store, a dream of hers since her parents put her in charge of the original. She had sacrificed so much to oversee the store and she wanted to do was to make her parents proud.

The shower ended quicker than she would like, but she could barely keep her eyes open. She grabbed a glass of water on the way to bed in case she woke up in the middle of the night. Sleep slowly caused her eyelids to grow heavy, not allowing her thoughts to wander far. Marinette adjusted her arm under the pillow and contorted it until comfortable. The act of her shifting her body caused another pillow to knock some items on the nightstand, including the cup of water. It tipped, and the water contents spilled all over her phone; not that Marinette noticed because sleep already claimed her.

8:45 am

The hostess turned wearing a dazzling smile when she heard the bell above the door ring. "Good Morning, do you have reservations?"

"Yes, last name Chapin, Adam." He returned the smile before loosening the light blue scarf Alya told him to wear. Excitement stirred in his stomach, Alya had raved non-stop about her friend, and by the sounds of it, she was exactly the type of women he was looking for. He hadn't necessarily thought he would stoop to a blind date to find love, but he trusted Nino and therefore, Alya.

Adam followed a waitress to his table and took his seat and glanced at his watch. He was always early to everything in his life, to be late screamed distasteful and unprofessional; both words he couldn't associate with in his profession. He hoped that Marinette didn't keep him waiting for long.

9:30 am

Adam had heard of being a little late, but this boarded on ridiculous. The waitressed eyed him like an injured puppy when she brought him a drink after twenty minutes. He could feel people staring at him, but he kept his gaze locked to his phone. Thankfully work kept him preoccupied, but 45 minutes had elapsed since he arrived. His fingers dialed Marinette's number which Alya had provided but met a voicemail.

Her eye burst open as light burst through the room. Why did it feel so late, why didn't her phone's alarm go off? A quick glance told her all she needed to know. A spilled cup with no liquid in it whatsoever, and a phone whose screen would not lite up no matter what she did to it. Marinette cursed under her breath as she shoved the blankets off her bed and made a mad dash for the kitchen. 8:30 am. She wouldn't be skinned alive by Alya after all. She jolted back to the room and grabbed a pink dress off its hanger and threw it on. Not wanting to deal with the hassle of styling her hair, a messy bun offered her the solution that she craved. There was no need to eat breakfast at the apartment since they had a morning date, so that left brushing her teeth and applying just enough makeup to be presentable on a date. She didn't want to scare the poor guy off before anything before giving him a chance.

9:45 am

He waited long enough. Every second he waited for her, it drew attention to the face he was still alone after an hour. Everyone paying attention to their surroundings knew that he had been stood up. He wished that Marinette at least had the decency to inform him that she changed her mind, but out of the worst possible scenarios, this one seemed less cruel. Whenever he looked back on this failure of a date, he wouldn't be plagued with one-sided feeling but instead the what-ifs of what could have been. He slid payment for his drink on the table and stood up. The office wouldn't mind a couple extra hours especially with the huge case he was working on.

Marinette rushed down the street, the restaurant was only a couple blocks further, and she would make it on time. She hated being late, a probably she usually dealt with due to exhaustion with the bakery. Luck could be the only word to describe how she woke up in time. With no phone, it wasn't like she could call anyone, it would take days before she could find the time to go get a replacement. But with the little distance, she had left to cover, her bad luck with being late would end today.

10:00 am

She stumbled through the door only two minutes late, a new personal record for her. The hostess didn't seem that impressed with her "graceful" entrance.

"May I help you?" She asked, but Marinette could sense the smallest sense of annoyance in her voice.

"I-" A light blush dusted her cheeks as she realized she forgot to ask Adam's last name. "I'm meeting someone." She allowed her eyes to wander over the hostess' shoulder until they landed on a blonde sitting at the table and around his neck …was a blue scarf. Her breath hitched as she watched his piercing green eyes study the menu. Alya wasn't kidding, he could charm her in a courtroom anytime. "He's right over there." She rushed past the hostess not wanting to keep Adam waiting any longer than necessary. "Hi, I'm Marinette," she introduced herself wrapping her coat around the chair. It was a good thing that she gripped the chair the second his green eyes jumped up to meet her all feeling gave out in her leg. She would have to thank Alya for setting her up with the more gorgeous man she ever met.

"Um, hi," he replied. Either she caught him off guard, or he didn't have a way with words, neither was a deal breaker. This was a blind date, he had to be just as nervous as she was.

"Adam, I'm sorry I'm a couple minutes late, my phone got fried last night." The explanation sounded lamer coming out of her mouth, but she couldn't backpedal now, that would only creep him out. She needed to stand her ground and resist the word vomit of oversharing. "But none of that matters because you're still here." A man like him could have any girl that he wanted, and yet he stayed despite her lateness, maybe they could make it to date number two after all. "Have you ordered yet?" She asked looking over the menu for the first time she got there.

"Not yet." She cocked her head to the side and tried to focus on what food they had to offer. Not a lot had been said and this already beat out her date with Kim.

"Everything looks so good, what do you recommend?" Adam had picked a restaurant she had never been to before, but he must have liked it enough to recommend it.

"I usually get an omelet," he replied. Marinette fought the blush forming on her cheeks as he gave her a once-over glance before his gaze returned to the menu.

Adrien's jaw dropped from slight bewilderment at why such a gorgeous girl would randomly sit down at his table and start talking away. She approached as if she knew him but called him Adam; she seemed so warm and personal he didn't want to correct her and risk her leaving. He would correct her eventually, or she would figure out that he wasn't this Adam character and the natural course would have its way.

She motioned towards the waiter and started to order without a care in the world. His father had wanted him to visit that afternoon, no doubt his latest attempt to convince him to leave his current job and join him in the fashion industry. An hour or two with this beautiful mystery girl in front of him wouldn't be the end of the world.

"Adam?" At her second call, Adrien realized that she called him- or rather, thought she had. "Are you okay?" The way she was so concerned for his well-being spread warmth through every limb on his body.

"Yeah," his lips pushed back into a smile reflecting the emotions flowing through him. "Everything is perfect."

AN- So. Here's the deal. Right now, this is only a one-shot, but you can change that if you want. I have so many miraculous story idea that I can't expand on every one shot in my head, but I am willing to do it on the stories that you all are interested in. If you want more, like, reblog, comment, dm me, whatever you want to do and let me know. Here's what to expect if this story to continue, the rest of the Adrienette date, Marinette finding out that Adrien is not Adam (and will actually meet Adam). More backstory of the characters in this world and Adrien shamelessly pursuing Marinette in like 10 chapters of fluff. Sound good? Leave a comment. Otherwise, you can enjoy the potential story in your imagination. Let me know.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculousladybug #miraculousfanfic #miraculousladybugfanfiction #adrienette #adrien x marinette #adrien agreste #marinette dupen-chang #latetodateau

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ayearofpike · 5 years

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The 2010s reprints, all at once

So if Simon & Schuster is going back to the well for Pike’s vampire books, what’s stopping them from bringing back other stories from their one-time best-selling young adult author? Form factor, perhaps. It’s the twenty-first century now, and no self-respecting teen would be caught dead reading a pocket-sized paperback. We need something big and beefy to show that we’re Serious About Literature even as we read about murderous insane girls. Fortunately, he’s written more than a couple continuations that will link together into a handy packaged bind-up. But a lot of these books were originally written twenty years ago or more, when the absence of technology and communications wasn’t something that needed to be addressed to explain why these bastards weren’t better informed. Indeed, new audiences (the ones we in education call “digital natives”) might not even understand the characters’ rationales for action without being able to step back in time and forget what they take for granted.

Is it worth rereading these new editions? How different are they from the originals? Lucky for you, I’ve decided to find out.

Remember Me

Compiles Remember Me, The Return, and The Last Story Simon Pulse, 2010 789 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-0596-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Re 2010 OCLC: 646299604 Released July 6, 2010 (per B&N)

Since this was the magical bestseller that made Pike who he was in the first place, it shouldn’t be too surprising that not much is changed or updated in this edition. Still, the very nature of the YA market having morphed into the vehicle that allows these stories to be reprinted throws a pretty massive wrinkle (like, even worse than the fact she’s publishing under her white name) into Shari’s expectation that her mom will never read Remember Me. Come on, dude — I guarantee she already read about the vampires.

The only changes I found through all three stories were giving Lenny the Latino gangbanger a CD player rather than a cassette (because 2010), saving the final story on a jump drive rather than a floppy disk (again, 2010), and swapping Shari’s green pants for blue jeans (I guess to match the outfit Jean is wearing when she falls off the balcony?). One thing that hasn’t changed: Third Book Whitewashin’ Shari is still an asshole. You’re lucky I’m so determined to be thorough, otherwise I would have never reread this shit.

To Die For

Compiles Slumber Party and Weekend Point, 2010 408 pages ISBN 978-0-545-26432-1 LOC: not listed OCLC: 679759450 Released September 1, 2010 (per B&N)

Little weirdness here, as this is a Scholastic joint rather than Simon & Schuster, but the covers are all coordinated, down to the typeface. Not sure whether the two houses worked together to try to sell their books (at Pike’s agent’s suggestion?) or whether Point saw an opportunity to mine some back catalog and tried to copy the existing presentation as close as possible.

The oldest viable stories (read: not Cheerleaders) must have some major rewrites pending for a modern audience, you’d think, but it’s not that drastic. The main complication would be these kids being able to reach someone outside the immediate group and report problems, so Pike quickly writes around that with a single line in each story establishing the locale as beyond cell service. They also both turn emergency CB radios into walkie-talkies, which isn’t even close to the same thing. It’s a little hinky at times, especially in accepting that Lara Johnson has packed an alarm clock instead of a phone, but it does the job.

Most of the rest of the changes hinge on contemporary references. Slumber Party loses its Richard-Pryor-lighting-himself-aflame-while-freebasing joke, but keeps the kids watching Dr. Zhivago at the first fateful party. Weekend has to adjust a lot more — party music is no longer on record, David Bowie becomes Bono (replacing a ten-year-old reference in 1985 with a ten-year-old reference in 2010), Angie’s Datsun is now a Camry, and song leaders are finally just cheerleaders. At times, he’s just wiped out a reference altogether: gone are Pat Benatar, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, Fonzie, Michael Jackson, and most tragically the Carpenters, which undoes a joke at Sol’s expense and removes any understandable sense from the passage they once were in. Oh well. At least he spelled “gringo” correctly in this edition.

Until the End

Compiles the Final Friends trilogy (The Party, The Dance, and The Graduation) Simon Pulse, 2011 846 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-2252-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Unt 2011 OCLC: 693810612 Released August 30, 2011 (per B&N)

I’ll be honest: I’m not sure what this compilation is doing here. Did anybody clamor at the bit for Final Friends even back in the day? I mean, there must have been some demand to let our boy write a trilogy, but even as a teenager I saw the problems embedded in this tale. Simple time-shifting adjustments weren’t gonna fix those. And this is the beefiest book of the lot, maybe to appeal to young readers who like the huge format and want to show off how much they can read. (I had it in the waiting room of my kid’s doctor this week and another dad said it was the biggest book he’d ever seen.) It’s a lot to plow through for the sake of completeness. Still, we’re committed, right?

I got like 200 pages in and did not see a single change — not even in the computer lab where Bubba is “hacking” into the district grade data bank — which made me worried I was going to just be rereading the same stories over again. And 650 pages later, GUESS WHAT. Literally the only difference is that Jessica, in bemoaning her travails with Bill, says she was “trying to seduce a gay guy” instead of merely “a gay.” Like, even the part about it taking all day to transfer 40 megabytes via modem and filling up a school computer’s hard drive is still there. This was NOT done for new fans. But reading it so fast and soon and smushed together did help me realize that The Rock does indeed have a given name. (I’ll save you the research time: Theodore Gordon.)

Bound to You

Compiles Spellbound and See You Later Simon Pulse, 2012 490 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-5971-7 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bo 2012 OCLC: 777602521 Released August 7, 2012 (per B&N)

Maybe this is the only bind-up where the two stories could have been anything. (The Point book: those were his only two under Scholastic, so it makes sense.) There’s a back catalog of literally two dozen books not otherwise committed that they could compile. So why these two together? OK, sure, we’re four years away from the phrase “sexy lizard teens” entering the lexicon, but for sure Scavenger Hunt is better paired with Spellbound than a story about nuclear war survivors time traveling out of regret. See You Later seems like a really obtuse deep cut to me, but if he was committed to it why not pair it with The Midnight Club, which is similarly about love lost to inevitable death? I don’t really see the connection, and am too lazy to do any rationale research. But I’m not actually mad at the books — they’ve shown as two of my favorites in this reread.

Spellbound, being the oldest of the S&S catalog, does need a little reworking, particularly in the racist elements of an African shaman going to a podunk Old West high school. Pike didn’t take them all out, of course, because we have to know what a dick the boyfriend is by his connection of the dude to savage cavemen. However, the lack of cell phones is very glaring in the bits where they’re trying to find the brother/potential murder victim, and Cindy has to sit around the hospital waiting to be paged. In 2012 it’s inconceivable that high school kids wouldn’t have SOMETHING. You tried to reach the brother at his house, at his friend’s, at his girlfriend’s ... did you call him directly? Such a simple fix: “He’s not answering his cell.” It probably would have made the unease even stronger.

See You Later, hinging as it does on the main character understanding a video game, has its own needs for updating, and does it better than the Final Friends remake. Still, it’s a little slapdash. Becky works in an electronics store instead of a record store, but do these places even sell physical media computer games anymore? Even six years ago that shit was all download-only. And Ray STILL works in a bookstore ... do those still exist? Mervyn’s definitely doesn’t; they went bankrupt in 2008. As for the game itself, it requires 12 gigs of RAM rather than the paltry megabyte, which is what my newish machine runs six years later. (At the time I had ... two gigs?) Also, in the original Mark asked who won the 2010 World Series, which isn’t the future anymore in 2012 ... but it’s weird that he’s now asking about 2020, just eight years off rather than twenty. Most unsettling, though, is how the tenor of international violence rhetoric still rings true for the setting of this story, even though we’re not worried about Communists anymore. The Cold War is long over, but we’ve swung through tolerance and hope and are right back on fear.

Chain Letter

Compiles Chain Letter and The Ancient Evil Simon Pulse, 2013 456 pages ISBN 978-1-4424-7215-0 LOC: PZ7.P626 Ch 2013 OCLC: 852941511 Released July 23, 2013 (per B&N)

Chain Letter was also not originally published by S&S, so it’s interesting that they’ve gotten the rights to print it in this volume. (Though they were compiled in the UK in 1994, so maybe it wasn’t too hard.) By now, though, it feels like they’re reaching, as the teen fiction world shifts yet again to futuristic dystopias and Pike doesn’t really have anything like that. Thirst was on its way out too; the fifth book appeared just before this, and we’ll note that even though Pike didn’t finish the story the sixth has yet to emerge. Curse you, unpredictable teen girls!

Not too much is different from the original editions here. Obviously Pike was throwing in his timely references that had to be cut for understandability (Nastassja Kinski?), but by Chain Letter 2 he’d learned to rein that in. Also, there’s a moment in the first one where Alison yells “Hate you!” at the attacking Caretaker, which always struck me as awkward. This version changes it to “Screw you!” which makes me think Pike originally wrote it as “Fuck you!” and had to bowdlerize for YA. Of course they have to throw some shade at snail mail, too, since that’s how the letters arrive in the first place.

But the main differences are cassette recorders and phones. Obviously the kids aren’t going to tote around a whole bunch of old-school tools when we are now six years into the smartphone era. There’s some nice cleaning up in The Ancient Evil, writing around the idea that people need to (or even CAN) look numbers up in the phone book, but in lots of cases it just makes things awkward. Like, why is Joan going after the driving controls to turn the incriminating recording off if it’s on Kipp’s phone in the backseat? Why do Alison and Brenda have to sit around the kitchen waiting for a return call? Why is Kipp waiting until he gets home to check his voicemail? Did he seriously leave his phone in his room while he ran to the store and left a seven-year-old sister alone at the house? It just makes less and less sense.

You might have seen somewhere online a mention of another compilation, collecting Last Act and Master of Murder. This book does not actually exist. The ISBN and OCLC numbers associated with the title both lead to a British printing of the second half of Final Friends, by Hodder Publishing. I emailed the house just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and they responded that they’ve never printed these two stories together. There’s no record of it anywhere else, certainly not on Simon & Schuster’s Pike page, and reviews I’ve found where people have attempted to buy this collection attest to the fact that they’ve actually received a copy of Final Friends Part 2 But Not Book 2 Even Though the Second Half of Book 2 Is In It.

There also used to be another one named on Wikipedia called Time of Death, which was supposed to compile Bury Me Deep and Chain Letter, but why the hell would they do that when Chain Letter has its own sequel already? There’s not any verifiable record of such a book anywhere online, not even a flawed cross-listing like the first.

So fuhgeddaboudit. I’m done reading compilations.

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wewalkadifferentpath · 6 years

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20 Day Shadowhunters Countdown Gratitude List!

So, as some of you know by now, I’ve decided to do a gratitude countdown for the upcoming premiere. Thank you to all the wonderful creators who share this fandom space with me! xx I’m counting down the days until the S3 premiere by 5′s. This week, on t-minus 5 days and counting (also ?!? I didn’t think we’d all make it this far tbh), is 5 of my favourite SH fanvids ever, in no particular order*:

Confession: I have no idea how to tag people from their youtube accounts. If you have a better system please let me know but in the meantime I’m gonna kindly suggest that if you follow one of these links, you consider giving a thumbs up or whatever youtube etiquette is if you’re familiar with it bc I’m not lol)

1. Thank Magnus Bane by TanaYuriasama2 this video is the best thing I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes ever, and that’s all I really have to say about it 2. Shadowhunters | They are family by MarieCyrielle my heart just aches in the best way every time I watch this (and it’s definitely been more than once!). Such a lovely concept and so well done! This pretty much includes all the characters that were mains or frequent on the show at the time. 3. jace herondale | elastic heart by sanpé if you hate d*m’s face like most of us do but can’t separate it from Jace’s character, maybe not a great route, but this is the video that’s basically kept me feeling things for this boy and it’s just SUPER well done and emotional 4. Alec & Magnus & Camille || Alec is my future by Ocearielle idk how people find such amazing/clever songs, and this is such an interesting look at how Camille may have affected Magnus as an individual and as part of Malec 5. Malec & Jalec & Saphael - I'll do you pro bono - CRACK by Nerjaveika I just now noticed this calls it “J*lec” in the title so that’s a little sketch but this video is super funny and catchy and very well edited, and I’ve always admired the talent it takes to make something like this

Usual reminder that this is not an exhaustive list, these are just some of the ones I’ve watched many times and hold in fond regard. I love all of your hard work so so much and my life wouldn’t be the same without you folks creating things that wouldn’t have been there otherwise! <3 As always, if you have any specific requests for certain types of art/fanfic/videos/ etc., please feel free to send me an ask, I have folders overflowing with gratitude people’s works so hmu :) Happy hiatus waiting! xx *(if you want yours taken off of the list please let me know and I’ll do so asap).

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athousandheartsattack · 6 years

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I started paying real attention to music in 1989. I was at summer camp and I taped two U2 albums, War and Unforgettable Fire, on someone’s boombox that had two cassette players so you could make tape copies (also, later on that same summer, I bought The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, my first purchased cassette). I was 14 years old. I listened to Unforgettable Fire a lot, War not so much (I got into that album much later) but at the time I gravitated towards The Cure more. It isn’t until Achtung Baby (an album that, over 25 years later, still gets tons of play in my home) that I fell in love. Every U2 album released since then has, on first listen, been a letdown. They’ll never make Achtung Baby again. It is a messy, beautiful, dark, noisy masterpiece. Let’s do the post AB rundown: Zooropa has a few classics but also has many (too many) throwaway tracks. Pop is admirable in its bold attempt at, basically, anti-pop pop, but I still can’t make up my mind about whether or not it’s any good (I like it, though I spent years unable to stand it). All That You Can’t Leave Behind was well received because it basically wasn’t Pop, but it’s a bland album that has very few keepers (I’m a guy who cannot stand Elevation, but there’s no denying Beautiful Day is great). How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is a great late U2 offering (what a great album title!) and while it’s uneven – especially in the back half – it has some truly amazing songs and renewed my faith that the band was capable of greatness. Then they release No Line On The Horizon, which is their worst album by a mile. It opens AMAZINGLY well, the first few moments of the title track are a burst of great, noisy guitar and really dynamic singing and everything works so goddamn well and then they shit the bed with a chorus that stops the momentum of the song dead. The album never recuperates. It has songs that range from “it’s ok, I guess” to “awful”. I love this band, but there you have it. Here’s the funny thing, though: that album is bookended by the release of two U2 classic singles: Window In The Sky, a fantastic single released in 2006 that was never on any album, and the powerful Invisible, released in 2014 as a single and later showing up as a hidden song on the deluxe edition of their next album, Songs Of Innocence. Again, both of these tracks are top of the shelve U2. Just when you think that’s it, they’re out of ideas; they give you a nugget of gold to prove you wrong. This brings us to Songs Of Innocence, and album best described as fine. It has some good songs, no classics, and a few throwaways on the b side. So the post Achtung Baby U2 is a band that is easy to love (they keep coming up with great singles) and easy to be let down by (other than Atomic Bomb – which comes closest to being a fully great album - most of those albums are good to great EPs padded up to long players with a handful of disposable tracks…)

And this all leads us to Songs Of Experience, their best, most even album since Achtung Baby. Not as good as AB, but what a relief to hear a U2 album with no skippable tracks. Not a one. The quality varies, they’re not all classics, but there’s nothing on here that makes me ashamed of liking that band (I’m looking at you, Stand Up Comedy). So let’s have at it, shall we?

It’s earnest. I think that’s what I like the most about it. It wears it all on its sleeve. It’s fragile and vulnerable and scared and angry and in love and thankful and happy and romantic and loving. So it’s cheesy. It’s corny. Three songs have the word “love” in the title. There’s a lot of talk about the power of love all over these songs. To me that’s a good thing. I like cheesy, my friends know this. Show me a teen movie third act victorious prom scene and I will cry, guaranteed. So I’m fine with someone one belting out that Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way. You, however, might not be. This is my review. Go be cynical somewhere else.

Another thing that will maybe put some people off is how clean and safe the album is. This is a white glove album. Nothing here will upset anyone. U2 have done stuff in the past that, umm, flustered some folks (I won’t get into any of that here, this is about the music) so I think they had a very strong desire to please. That being said, this is superb, efficient song writing. So let’s talk about the songs. All of them. Yes, this will be that type of review.

The album opener is called Love Is All We Have Left. It’s great. It reminds me of Unforgettable Fire era U2, more specifically its B side. It’s a subdued, short song (under three minutes) with no drums and no guitar (unless it’s heavily filtered and I didn’t recognize it as such). Just strings, voice and studio fidgiting. It’s lovely and earnest and full of grace. Maybe it’s cheesy. It’s a fantastic start to the album. It also has the only weird, out of left feel move on the entire album: on the second verse the voice is auto-tuned. I love it. It feels a little like Bon-Iver, maybe. It works, and when the voice returns to swoon us into its chorus, it’s all the more effective. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea, though.

That is followed by Lights Of Home, which is kind of part Rolling Stones, part White Stripes, with a great gospel bridge at the end. Simple chords with no showy effects. I think it would have fit nicely on Rattle And Hum, an album I really like. The Haim sisters are on this track. I really like the gospel bit.

You’re The Best Thing About me is the weakest song on the album, but it has such a great, catchy and infectious chorus that I can’t skip it. I’m just not crazy about how it starts, but I like everything after those first 30 seconds. There’s a lovely bit of The Edge singing (who, by the way, does stellar backing vocal almost throughout the album) towards the end, something about someone needing to be loved quietly, which I think is beautiful.

Get Out Of Your Own Way is stadium-sized U2. A big, Beautiful Day-style anthem full of hooks that, like some other songs on this album, could be faulted with trying a little too hard, but I like that. It’s better than not trying at all (and in U2’s defence it has never felt, in 40+ years of making music, like they didn’t care about the music they are making. These guys try, like, all the damn time). That song ends (and the next one starts) with a powerful guest spot by Kendrik Lamar. I’m just mentioning this. Maybe you like him? He’s there.

American Soul is GREAT. I loooove how that song starts: Kendrik Lamar says what he has to say and then some big, fat, dirty chords are banged out of a guitar, it feels like White Stripes again, with the drum pounding in time. Just two chords. Bam-Bam. Then silence. Then two more. BAM-BAM. Then two more again. Then the song takes off. An angry, anti-Trump, pro-refugee, pro America (the inspiring, idea of America, not the travesty of that dream that’s on the news every fucking day). That song is the first of two songs that borrow from Songs Of Innocence. In this case the chorus is taken straight from a bridge in the song Volcano. It is used better here, in a song that is better than Volcano. This happens again on the album closer, we’ll get to that in a bit.

Summer Of Love is a great little diddy, with a beautiful vocal melody and simple chords stripped once again of the big fat pedals effects that The Edge is normally so fond of. The song is great, it never goes for epicness, it never tries to be more than what it is. Just a lovely little song. Well written, everyone in the band understanding where this thing needs to go (this is true of the entire album: it is played by a band whose members are all on the same page about tone and feeling and purpose, it shows). I have a criticism, though. In the middle of the song there is a switch. It’s good. The guitar becomes a bit distorted (just a bit, calm down) and the vocals become more dramatic for a bit and then the song returns to its status quo in a formidable bit of manoeuvering and strings come in and it’s all good, but that initial switch is a bit weird. It feels like another song was tacked onto the one you’re listening to. It’s a rushed bit of mixing. But that doesn’t kill the song, it’s just a transition that maybe could’ve been smoother. Or maybe that’s how they want this to sound, who am I to judge?

Red Flag day is one of the stand-out tracks from the album (certainly from the A side – the B-side of this album is unbelievably strong). This song sounds like War-era U2. It feels rebellious and youthful. The guitar and bass hooks are so fucking good. Very propulsive. Again, very simple chords, very little effects. Just good song writing.

I love the next song so much, but some people won’t stomach it I think. It’s called The Showman (Little More Better) and it sounds like early Beatles. For real. It’s a light, insanely catchy little pop gem that hasn’t failed to put a smile on my face since my first listen. Maybe U2 aren’t supposed to do Beatles-type songs, but here I am, glad that they did.

The Little Things That Give You Away is a highlight for me. It could fit on Achtung Baby (after So Cruel or something). It starts off slow and builds up to one of the most classic, chill-inducing U2 moments on the album. It starts like something on Unforgettable Fire, with vague (but beautiful) echo-y guitar melodies that support the gorgeous vocal work. The chorus is achingly melancholic, and the final bridge builds and builds until you realize your feet aren’t touching the ground anymore. Definitely a keeper.

Landlady is a love letter from Bono to his wife. It has a classic U2-sounding guitar, think Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree, a lovely vocal melody, and a lot of respect, love and gratitude. It’s another one that doesn’t strive for big anthemic swells of melody, it is content to just be as beautiful as possible. What is interesting is that they could have easily made that song bigger, the final third begs to escalate, but the restraint is more powerful.

The Blackout is another rocker like American Soul. It is very much Adam Clayton’s song (the bass is so good). It has a good sing-along chorus but everytime you get back to the verse the song shines more. It’s fist-pumping, feet-stomping rock and roll. They have been trying to write that song for a long time, it seems (what with the Vertigos, the Get On Your Boots and so on) and here it feels like they know what they have is special.

Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way, the penultimate song on the record, will test you. It is really, sublimely cheesy. I like it a lot. I find that there is something defiant in being so boldly hopeful in these difficult times, to place all you have on the unstoppable, all-consuming urgency of love. The song is filled with gorgeous melodies, but there is, in particular, a chant that happens towards the end of the song that is so joyful, so buoyantly optimistic in the face of adversity, that it lifts the entire thing a mile into the sky. This is, once again, really big U2.

The album closes with 13 (There Is A Light). This is the second song to borrow from Songs Of Innocence, this time they re-purpose the entire chorus of Song For Someone, and once again I believe the end result is more powerful. This song mirrors the tone of the album opener. It is more atmospheric, with Bono quietly crooning to a slow subtle emotional build that pays off in beauty but not flamboyance. The song never gets big, it gets softly magnificent. Its restraint is resplendent. It’s a perfect way to end the album.

#U2 #songs of experience #Review #Music

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thunderoad · 7 years

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Hi! I see everyone talking about Niall writing with Don but he's not using the song, or something along those lines, but I can't find the exact quote or interview. Would you be able to point me in the right direction? Also you write so beautifully! I wondered if you had an opinion on: the sound of harmonicas, the aesthetic of the Slow Hands lyric video and what do you think of Niall's love of sorry guys?

howdy!! so with regards to your first question, i actually am not sure? i found this twitter thread of clips from the Q&A from today’s secret show in singapore, which is where i’m assuming the don was comments came from. there were also quotes posted from this article, but it doesn’t mention anything about don, so if anybody has the link to that, or anything, please lmk!! i’ve read the quotes too but i’m really interested in the way niall says it, lol. (EDIT it was from 1directsg’s insta live which idk how to save but i can confirm the accuracy of all the quotes sorry)

also, thank you!! two of my fav bands are u2 and bruce springsteen, and the harmonica plays a pretty big factor in some of my fav songs by them (that whole the joshua tree-rattle and hum story arc!! THE RIVER INTRO), so i’ve always been a big, big fan of the idea of niall incorporating that instrument into his repertoire and his music and ideally maybe someday his live sets. it’s one of my favorite instruments; i love how portable it is, and how many different sounds and moods and tones it can convey with nothing more than the player’s breath.

‘course, wind instruments do work that way, but there’s something about the tone of the harmonica and its history that really gets me going, you know? like, here’s elton john and stevie wonder demonstrating masterful harmonica incorporation, the avett bros playing in the wizard of oz dress, and of course there’s bob dylan’s harmonica-playing. i’m not exactly of the opinion that he’s the best musician ever, but i do think he’s an absolute poet with his lyrics, and i love the way he uses the harmonica to make the caesura between verses in ‘blowin’ in the wind’ to give the lyrics time to resonate.

i’ve always really loved bono’s and bruce’s use of the harmonica, though, because of the way it sets a scene. i grew up in texas so i’ve listened to a lot of country music, so maybe partly it’s that lingering noise association, but it never fails during ‘running to stand still’ that bono conjures the imagery of a barren place, an open road, a plaintive wail..same with ‘the river,’ it just SOUNDS like an empty riverbank to me. in lit water tends to be cleansing and purifying but there’s something quietly unsettling about bruce’s study of what happens when you come out of the water and have to face the real-life repercussions of your actions in that song.

SOO, u can imagine my UTTER DELIGHT when niall was photographed playing the harmonica in australia on the last tour (maybe my fav niall pis ever? i love them so much @niallerby made me a niall playing harmonica icon #iconic) and then ACTUALLY PLAYED IT for the instant song challenge thing . . i was Very Delighted.

i’d love for the harmonica to make a triumphant return, especially among this folk rock-influenced set like the lumineers and vance joy. it has such a rich, storied sound and it’s so versatile and, to get a little schlocky, it reminds me of home.

also, i don’t think i can adequately express my love for the ‘slow hands’ lyric vid aesthetic (although i’ve tried). i think it was arguably the best music video they could’ve done for that song! their other options would probably to have been making something that followed the song’s content quite closely, or something maybe ~metaphorical. instead, we got a super cute behind the scenes video that pulls the curtain back on the music a little bit and brings to focus how much fun it is and how much the people who perform it enjoy doing it!! and i sort of feel that in that way, they convey the spirit of the song so well; it’s a sultry song, but particularly in a fun way, and the lyric vid was so demonstrative of that!

#ALSO WHAT IS SORRY MEN #anon

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networkingdefinition · 4 years

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• A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. – Alan Parker • A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake. – Alfred Hitchcock • A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together. – Louis C. K. • A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there. – Tom Stoppard • A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object. – Richard Schickel • All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. 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Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid of feeling uncomfortable or awkward. Step-out and make it happen. – Bob Proctor • Dude, I didn’t say Jude Law can’t act. I didn’t say Jude Law was in bad movies. I just said he’s in every movie. – Chris Rock • Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs. – Lynda Obst • ‘Election’ is a movie I’d give a leg to cross the director’s name out and put mine in. – Jason Reitman • Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone – big actor or not. Whether they’re big movie stars or not doesn’t really matter. – Diane Kruger • Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel. – Emir Kusturica • Every time you make a movie it’s an adventure. – Shia LaBeouf • Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. 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When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck. – Penelope Spheeris • Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie. – Al Pacino • Give me B movies or give me death! – Clive Barker • Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. – Pauline Kael • great villains make great movies. – Staton Rabin • Hollywood’s old trick: repeat a successful formula until it dies. – Gloria Swanson • ‘Home Alone’ was a movie, not an alibi. – Jerry Orbach • I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. – Meryl Streep • I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead. – Michael Caine • I can direct breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I take pride in my kitchen, but I’m not going to direct a movie. – Julia Roberts • I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff. – Anthony Hopkins • I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book. – Robert Redford • I don’t think London has been given enough credit in a lot of the movies that we make here. – Mel Smith • I don’t think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. 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Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels. – Mithun Chakraborty • If movies are causing moral decay, then crime ought to be going up, but crime is going down. – Jack Valenti • If somebody for some reason, for music or for movie, becomes famous, it’s because they have something, something special. – Roberto Cavalli • If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them. – Dario Argento • If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don’t go back to the past. It’s only a ghost; it’s unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness. – Nhat Hanh • If you’re a movie actor, you’re on your own – you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. – Michael Caine • I’m doing ‘Les Miserables,’ the movie. I’ve done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I’ve been like, ‘Come on, let’s do a movie/musical.’ – Hugh Jackman • I’m interested in doing movies I wouldn’t normally be interested in doing. – Eric Stoltz • I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here – Kishore Kumar • I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. – Will Rogers • I’m not saying I’m a writer, but I’ve been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie. – Benicio Del Toro • I’m not surprised that Spielberg was able to capture the heroism of Schindler; so many of his movies are about the better part of mankind. – Gene Siskel • I’m terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. – Oliver Stone • In every movie I do have a dialogue. – Jackie Chan • In the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things–love, fashion shows, and revolution. – Jeanine Basinger • It (his contract) has options through the year 2020 or until the last Rocky movie is made. – Dan Quisenberry • It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that – like that first book of Dante’s Comedy – they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us – we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. – Barbara Deming • It’s just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics – characters and great writing. – Clive Owen • It’s something that was very interesting to me to be a part of and all of them again because of the relationship. 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It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage. – Steve Sabol • Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn’t a hit, you shouldn’t view it as a mistake. – Ang Lee • Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you. – Michael Caine • Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good. – Akira Kurosawa • Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover. – Gene Tierney • Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down – there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. – Dan Simmons • Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. – Yahoo Serious • Movies are the art form most like man’s imagination. – Francis Ford Coppola • Movies are very subjective. – Jeff Bridges • Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due … and we wonder why we’re a debtor nation! – Molly Haskell • Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood. – Walt Disney • movies have mirrored our moods and myths since the century began. They have taken on some of the work of religion. – Jennifer Stone • Movies have now reached the same stage as sex – it’s all technique and no feeling. – Penelope Gilliatt • Movies make you immortal and ageless. – Kristin Scott Thomas • Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life. – Chris Rock • My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it’s incredibly romantic. – Christina Ricci • My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one. – Lynda Obst • My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave. – Burt Reynolds • Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie? – Sophia Bush • No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. – Frank Capra • oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy – Frank O’Hara • On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing. – Michael Stipe • One cannot overstate the potential for hysteria on a movie set. Everyone always acts as if making the movie is as important as eradicating malaria. – Delia Ephron • One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. – Jane Campion • People go to movies or listen to music because they want to be inspired. – Daphne Zuniga • People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. – Amanda Bynes • People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape. – Neil LaBute • Quite often – a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too. – John Malkovich • Really, it’s the director’s job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel. – Jason Reitman • Revealing yourself, physically or emotionally, to cast and crew is frequently uncomfortable. But it is essential if you want to to tell the truth. I felt more at ease being bold with some than I did with others. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked with Randy Harrison as Justin Taylor. We share enough taste in music and art to have had a real camaraderie, and luckily that evolved into a deep friendship. – Gale Harold • So yes, I hope to act in other people’s movies, big and small, because that’s how I make my living, really. – Stanley Tucci • So, I installed a CCTV system to tape what’s going on inside my mind.

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

The CCTV technology used is the SSM-X45. Whose initials stand for: Sit down, Shut up and Meditate (X45 is just to sound more hi-tech) – Marcelo Goianira • Some men have a silly theory about beautiful women – that somewhere along the line they’ll turn into a monster. That movie gave them a chance to watch it happen. – Salma Hayek • Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie. – Jackie Chan • Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it’s not all that important to me anymore. – Dennis Quaid • South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, ‘kiss-kiss’ and ‘bang-bang. – Hortense Powdermaker • Stars don’t make movies. Movies make stars. – Darryl F. Zanuck • The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. – Twyla Tharp • The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses. – Bruce Sterling • The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’ – Michael Caine • The fact is, when I wrote ‘Juno’ – and I think this is part of its charm and appeal – I didn’t know how to write a movie. And I also had no idea it was going to get made! – Diablo Cody • The great thing about the movies … is-you’re giving people little … tiny pieces of time … that they never forget. – James Stewart • The interesting thing about a movie is the movie. – Christian Bale • The movie business is a big gamble. – Jackie Chan • The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people. – Irving Thalberg • The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. ‘Larry Crowne’ creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. – Julia Roberts • The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configurations and structure. – Marshall McLuhan • The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself. – Will Rogers • The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one. – Elvis Presley • The reason I took Early Edition – besides the fact that I liked it – was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It’s a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies. – Fisher Stevens • The shooting of the movie is the truth part and the editing of the movie is the lying part, the deceit part – Paul Hirsch • The sorrow of not being movie stars overwhelms millions. – Mason Cooley • The Super Bowl is like a movie, and the quarterback is the leading man. – Leigh Steinberg • The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. – Alex Winter • The truth is that everyone pays attention to who’s number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. – Tom Hanks • There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s. – Al Pacino • There’s an electrical thing about movies. – Oliver Stone • These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school. – Barry Sonnenfeld • To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it’s for them. – Michel Hazanavicius • To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. – Quentin Tarantino • Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will. – Steven Soderbergh • We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies. – Walt Disney • We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who’s watching my movie. – Donald Glover • What I’ve learned is that life is too short and movies are too long. – Denis Leary • When I do a political movie, I do a political movie. – Antonio Banderas • When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – S. E. Hinton • When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere. – Henry Rollins • Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed. – Steven Spielberg • White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I’ve never heard a black person say, ‘We’re going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here – have a nice day!’ – Michael Moore • with all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business? – Lynda Obst • Writing a book is like masturbation, and making a movie is like an orgy. – Clive Barker • You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. – David Niven • You just have to realize that Jet Li is a movie star. He’s great at what he does, but if he stepped into our world he wouldn’t last long. – Chuck Liddell • You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, ‘Don’t go in that door!’ because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends. – Marco Rubio • You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to. – Philip Seymour Hoffman

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equitiesstocks · 4 years

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Movie Quotes

Official Website: Movie Quotes

Thousands of hours of drama, confusion, discussion, huge special effects and futuristic scenarios. Also a lot of chatter, drama and suspense.

Is like to go to the movies for free, every day.

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theattainer · 5 years

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How the Modern Man Should Dress, According to 6 Professional “Wardrobe Fixers”

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http://theattainer.com/how-the-modern-man-should-dress-according-to-6-professional-wardrobe-fixers/

How the Modern Man Should Dress, According to 6 Professional “Wardrobe Fixers”

A-list celebrities have stylists who dress them for everything from film premieres to their walks from the car to the airport terminal (yes, really). But who can civilian men of means turn to for their own personal clothing conundrums? A new breed of “wardrobe fixer” has arisen in recent years to hack the closets of financiers, tech moguls, entertainment executives and other elites.

Today, thanks to social media, C-suite execs who once went incognito are expected to be public-facing representatives of their companies, which means having plenty of judgmental eyeballs sizing up not only their business acumen but also their sartorial choices.

In other words, ill-fitting clothing and square-toed shoes are no longer acceptable. To make matters more confusing, the days of the suit as a trusty go-to are over—the nebulous term “business casual” rules the day, leaving many brilliant minds scratching their heads when it comes to dressing their bodies. So Robb Reportasked a few of the country’s leading style advisors to weigh in on how a man of accomplishment should dress in today’s world. Here’s what we discovered.

Victoria Hitchcock

Victoria Hitchcock Style, San Francisco and the Bay Area

Years in the Business: 25

Services: “Excavation,” or editing a closet; “Rejuvenation,” which is focused on building a wardrobe from the ground up; and “Lifestyle Optimization,” a full style upgrade.

Fee: $2,000 to $25,000

What makes you successful at your job?

“I don’t work with people’s posses,” says Hitchcock, who insists on dealing directly with clients. “I’m not a ‘yes’ person. I’m here to help you show your authentic self.”

What is the number-one mistake that men make?

“Getting bedazzled by brand name or price tag; these measures do not necessarily equate to quality. Also, men’s shirt lengths are always off. The cuff is too long, or on short-sleeve shirts it’s almost to the elbow. Some guys are still wearing a polo too wide, almost like a golf shirt.”

Loro Piana’s Stafford jacket. ($5,995)

What’s the most common advice you give your clients?

“I ask people, ‘Why are you looking to upgrade? Are you going through a midlife crisis? Is it because you’re single and you want to step it up? Is it because you work with people who all look a little cooler?’ Figure that out. And no matter what you buy, make sure it’s comfortable and functional.”

What does every guy need in his closet?

“A cashmere version of a car coat or a peacoat, something soft and elegant—think Giorgio Armani, Loro Piana. Also, a leather jacket—every guy wants one. Everybody should have a really crisp, white shirt with a great collar that’s fitted, trim, in good-quality cotton.” As for shoes, she suggests a Chelsea boot. “Saint Laurent’s have been iconic since the ’50s.”

Saint Laurent’s iconic Chelsea boot. ($945)

What are items that men in Silicon Valley, in particular, need in their closet?

“Hoka Bondi shoes: They are really cool but may be fashion-forward for some people. They’re insanely comfortable, like walking on a cloud of air. Plus, they add an inch or two in height!” Other stylish but subtler items Hitchcock recommends are sneakers from Maison Margiela, Lanvin or Golden Goose; Frame denim jeans; a Moncler puffer jacket and a Maurizio Baldassari vest.

Andrew Weitz

The Weitz Effect, Los Angeles

Years in the Business: Officially five; pro bono, more than a decade

Services: Everything from a one-off “getting started” program for those who’d like “a taste of the services” to an annual retainer program.

Fee: $500 and up

You were a Hollywood talent manager and an agent at William Morris Endeavor; how did you get started in fashion?

“I was always known as the best-dressed agent, and it was because I wanted a competitive edge.” Clients and colleagues took note, and a new career was born. “It’s about standing out in the right way, minding your details, and appearing smart and in control of yourself. You’re branding yourself.”

Giorgio Armani’s double-breasted blazer in checkered serge. ($3,095)

What is the number-one mistake that men make?

“Old shoes that are worn out, or square-toed shoes. I see a lot of ill-fitting blazers that don’t sit on the shoulders right or are a little too long. Men who wear jackets from their suits as blazers, which is a no-no. Tailoring is the most common problem. People think the bigger the clothes you wear, the more you’ll hide your flaws, and that’s not the case.” The right tailor, Weitz notes, can elevate an item from looking off-the-rack to made-to-measure.

Tom Ford slim-fit white jeans. ($650)

What’s your favorite example of how fashion helped change a client’s life?

“I had a guy whose wife thought he was having an affair because he looked so good, yet she was also more attracted to him than she ever had been. And a month after working with this one executive, who was a messy guy but good at what he did, his ROI [return on investment] was 20 percent higher.”

Bill Bolling

Sales Associate, Boyds, Philadelphia

Years in the Business: 40

Services: Personal shopping services at home; in-house tailoring.

Fee: Complimentary

Is there a piece of advice you give to every client that seems to work?

“Buy clothing that you’re not only physically comfortable in but mentally comfortable in as well. I don’t recommend wearing something that’s not a reflection of you or your personality just because someone else is wearing it.”

A classic dark Ermenegildo Zegna suit. (2,895)

What are the key pieces you think every man should have in his closet?

“My top five go-to items include a dark suit—I prefer charcoal; a solid-colored blazer or patterned sport coat; a pair of dark slacks; beige or white linen pants; and a nice jacket—three-quarter length, long enough to cover a suit. I like Zegna’s full line; it’s a brand that is classic in its appeal but with a modern touch. I also like Scuderi, a private label that we carry. It’s high-quality at a reasonable price point.”

A deconstructed Brunello Cucinelli jacket. ($2,995)

What do a lot of men need in their wardrobes but don’t already have?

“Most men—especially younger guys— tend to not own outerwear. They think coats are worn strictly to avoid being cold. But in a professional environment, a coat is a ‘finishing garment.’ To me, this reflects someone’s thought process in business.”

Faran Sheikh

Style Advisor, Wilkes Bashford, Palo Alto

Years in the Business: 18

Services: Personal shopping, in-house tailoring.

Fee: Complimentary

How do you start to make over a man’s closet?

“I say, ‘Let’s fit one shirt, let’s fit one jacket, one suit, the pants. Let’s make sure everything fits perfectly.’ They always want it fast, but I work with Kiton, and I have to tell them, ‘We don’t rush. This is a handmade garment.’ You need to make sure everything’s right, first.”

Versatile five-pocket trousers from Kiton. (1,095)

What do you order?

“Navy suit, blue suit, gray suit. White shirts. Kiton has seasonal fabrics that I use to make them suits and jackets for going out and having fun. Then I build out the looks from there. If a man doesn’t need a suit for work, I’ll give him five-pocket pants and put them with a nice sweater—a nice V-neck or crewneck. And a beautiful, elegant loafer.”

Do guys in Silicon Valley wear sneakers?

“If my clients do, they have to be really dark and understated—navy, gray, black, like barely black. No color, though, not even white. For running, yes, but not every day.”

Brunello Cucinelli dark sneakers. ($795)

What’s your best piece of advice for men?

“I have to see the person, to see what size he is. If he’s a big guy, it’s one thing, and if he’s small, it’s different. I like to see the character of the man, what job he has. What is his social life like? I need to know what color his hair is, what color his eyes are, his skin tone. That’s how I pick the best colors for him. Everything is connected to the client’s personality.”

Bob Mitchell

Co-CEO, Mitchell Stores, Westport, Connecticut (and Eight Other Locations on Both Coasts)

Years in the Business: 28

Services: The store, family owned since 1958, offers house calls and will send over selections from your favorite brands or host VIPs before or after store hours.

Fee: Complimentary

Is there a big trend you’ve noticed lately?

“We are selling a lot of sneakers, but in the $300 to $3,000 range. Guys wear them with everything from jeans to suits. Something sleek from Lanvin or Cucinelli.”

Sneakers from To Boot New York. ($350)

Is there some piece of advice you find yourself giving over and over?

“Fit is the most important thing to looking current. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there, like bigger guys thinking they can’t wear skinny pants, but they actually look better. Or we get guys who buy skinny pants, but they still want to buy a coat that’s really long, and it looks ill-proportioned.”

What should every man have that he doesn’t already own?

“You know the five-pocket jean style? We’re selling a lot of wool dress pants in the five-pocket style. I’m wearing a Cucinelli one today; Zegna does one. Also, very soft sport coats that feel like you’re wearing nothing. It’s an element of being dressed up but in a casual way. Don’t be afraid to buy something timeless and high-quality. Another thing on my list every man needs is a piece of Loro Piana outerwear. Our number-one coat for five years is a three-quarter-length waterproof navy cashmere. When people first see [the price, $4,595] they’re like, ‘Man, this is crazy.’ It’s an investment piece! You’re going to wear it 100 times more than anything else in your closet.”

Loro Piana outerwear. ($5,145)

Is there a common mistake you come across?

“Length of pants. As the bottom of pants has gotten narrower, it should be shorter, or it just stacks on itself.”

Taff Bakali

Gentleman’s Personal Shopper, Stanley Korshak, Dallas

Years in the Business: 25

Services: House calls, doing closet assessments and sometimes bringing in a tailor to give items that extra little tweak.

Fee: Complimentary

What does every man need in his closet?

“A navy blue suit, and a charcoal one is a plus. A beautiful lightweight cashmere blazer you can wear all year round. A selection of white shirts—I have 20 or 30, because anytime I don’t have time to think about what I want to wear, that’s where I go. I love Kiton, but it’s an exclusive brand for a certain client.”

A Kiton formal jacket. ($9,995)

Any advice for guys when they’re shopping?

“Bring your wife along, if you have one. I love to have wives’ opinions: If she says it’s beautiful, boom, it’s a done deal.”

Is there a must-have for guys in Dallas to wear?

“Honestly, it’s a blue blazer—from the new kid who just graduated to the guy who’s running a hedge fund. What matters is the quality of the blazer, though. You can have it in vicuña, but that can be as much as $25,000. I’ve noticed that people have been buying jackets in the color Bordeaux. The problem is that once you wear it one or two times, it’s been seen. You have to put it away for a little while.”

Marol white shirt. ($850)

What’s the biggest change you’ve noticed in men’s tastes over your career?

“There was a time when no guy would touch a flat-front pant; now 90 percent of our store—all of our pants, really—are flat-front. And guys want tapered pants. When I started at Ralph Lauren, people wanted them bigger and fuller. And everyone wants to wear sneakers now. Cucinelli makes a cool one. Keep in mind they’re like $950, and customers will say, ‘Wow, that’s expensive,’ but they wear them almost every day.”

What do you think?

#All #Style

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