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thestalkerbunny · 2 years

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More Shadow Oaks content? More Shadow Oaks Content. Meet the Brimstone Clan, the oldest and redneck clan of tieflings in Shadow Oak (as well as meet Celeste's Vampire Sire.) Granted this is only 1/4th of the actual clan. The actual full family is much much bigger.

Gunter Hedwig is a Drow who fell into the trap that was opium dens during the 1800s. He literally wasted away and died in one and resurrected as a vampire without even noticing for a while. (since he thought being pale and hungry and uncomfortable was just his natural default state.)Thanks to his high tolerance to drugs-he basically traveled the lands seeking a bigger and better high. Around the time of the 80s or so he bit Celeste; although neither of them seem to be able to remember this happening-they just know now they're both vampires and the fun can never end. Eventually they seem to had gotten separated and Celeste was found by her current keeper, Brone, face down in her own pool of blood and vomit. She was legally removed from the care of Gunter because of his neglect of her and himself and will be permitted to see her again if he cleans up his act. He also does not remember this court hearing and does often see her regardless. He lurks out in Warm Waters-Shadow Oak's superior sister city- and deals drugs out of the clubs there, which is were Celeste gets most of hers. he is tragically not that bright and drugs do not help that fact. He's often addled out of his mind and hardly recognizes people, he hardly recognizes Celeste half the time if it weren't for her very loud voice and pink outfit.

Old Man Jeb Brimstone

The Grandfather of the Brimstone Clan, He's the oldest member next to his wife who is older than him by 5 years. A crotchety old koot, he's the embodiment of 'get off my property you damn kids' and 'I remember when you could go to the county fair on only a quarter'. He can hardly hear, his entire existence is apparently a spit in the eye of the god of death as he's survived numerous near fatal events and is starting to go a bit blind in one eye. Brimstone youth have to do a mandatory check in on him daily to make sure he's alive and something didn't fall on him again. Old Man Brimstone manages the junkyard of the town-local lore goes he built the junkyard on top of a Hell Gate-a naturally occurring portal in the world that infernal creatures can pass thru-so true evil cannot escape and spends his free time shooting infernal imps with a sawed off shot gun. Only that's rumor, he just may be an extreme hoarder who managed to movie his weird junk fixation to a property that isn't his house. That rumor is fueled however by the presence of his guard dog, Girl Dog, a massive Hell hound that patrols the grounds day and night.

Mary Brimstone

The original Brimstone Matriarch, Jeb ended up taking her last name considering how she was the one in the family had the land and money and titles. Just as grumpy and confused about everything as Jeb is, Mary is a bit more of a home body-only leaving to go down into the hollow outside the trailer park they all reside in to visit her still. She is a good cook and prides herself on being able to make a meal out of anything that's laying around and insists on a MANDATORY Sunday Family dinner of the entire clan once a month. A family that eats together is stronger together. Most of the family tries to keep her and Jeb in the dark about things like two of the grandchildren being gay and one of her sons contemplating marrying his fey coworker out of fear of how these two old fashioned grumpy grandparents would react. Plot twist, Jeb doesn't care and Mary probably already knows. Her hobbies are hitting people with a wooden spoon and hollering. The children may have a taste of the moonshine when they turn 18, as is tradition, to make sure they KNOW what good liquor tastes like.

Tief and Tire-Autobody and Repair Garage

Ottoman 'Auto Otto' Brimstone is the owner of the Tief and Tire garage and the oldest of the Brimstone brothers. He has a love of everything mechanical and is the kind of friendly old mechanic who will give you a discount just because 'we're neighbors, neighbors don't gotta pay 500 bucks for a new part that I can find and fix in the junkyard for free' The type of guy unafraid to help a stranger fix a flat tire or give 'em a tow back to town when their car is totaled in a ditch. He's the kind of dad who doesn't exactly always understands what his kinds are talking about and struggles to keep up with their lives since they seem to go much faster than he does-but he often supports them even if he doesn't know what the fuck is going on.

Diana is Otto's wife and doesn't really have much going on. Her idea of a good time is sipping fruity beers, feeding her numerous chickens little tiny pancakes and reading trash romance novels. She is often concerned for her kids, but supportive in her own way. She's a bit intimidated by her mother in law and for the right reasons and struggles to try and make her proud with her cooking. She specializes in chicken and dumplings (do not tell her chickens)

Angelo Brimstone is the older employee of the garage, he has a love of cars and things that go fast and is happiest when it comes to fixing and restoring things. He claims that bringing the beauty in something old and unloved back to the surface is very cathartic. He lacks a bit of school smarts but still plans to go thru with his final year to get a proper Class based education. He's divided between Barbarian and Artificer. He belongs to the Brimstone Clan-the biggest tiefling family in Shadow Oaks as well as the oldest. He often is a bit forgetful that friendly gestures he gives to strangers can seem sexual-resulting him being the targeted fantasies of individuals in his age category.

Amelia Brimstone is the younger sister of Angelo who also works at the garage. She prefers specializing in fixing the bodies of vehicles and paint jobs, although there's not much demand for car modifications so she ends up pulling dents out of cars most of the time much to her chagrin as her creativity is squandered. She's often very protective of her 'himbo' of a brother because people seem to want to take advantage of his amicable easy go along personality. Amelia herself is a lesbian, if the mullet, the tattoo on the side of her head, her 'I <3 Womans' sticker on the back of motorbike wasn't telling enough-She is still hopeful although she's probably going to want to look outside of Shadow Oaks-where everyone is in everyone's business.

Fiend and Fey-Attorneys at Law

The finest Lawyers Shadow Oaks can offer. Which often isn't saying a whole lot because everything from Shadow Oaks seems to produce everything made by the lowest bidder-but for once, these two are the people you want in your corner in the court room. Nobody can find a loop hole for you faster than Fiend and Fey-the finest of negotiators and deal makers the both of them. If they can't get you out of jail, they can at least get a ankle tracker on you for the next half year and a house arrest with a community service and mandatory theraphy vist bargin deal.

Rusalika GoodForest-or Rusa-is the fey of the team. A pixie of very small size (and even smaller enlarged sized) Her entire personality is best summed up as Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. Ever an optimist and a fan of cute outfits, the color pink and good skin and hair care, Rusa is very smart despite the 'dumb fairy blonde' assumptions make about her. In the Feywilds, a blue antennead pixie is regarded as someone who would 'make a good spouse'-which is the polite translation to common. Rusa is an unofficial member of the Brimstone clan and often comes to their Sunday family dinners and plays with the younger Brimstones as she is roughly the same size as them. Rusalika lives in a tree in Eidlewood's backyard.

Eidlewood 'Iddy' Brimstone is the fiend of the team. Belonging to the Brimstone Tiefling Family-one of the oldest and most redneck group of people living in Shadow Oaks since the 1920s, he seems to be one of the more accomplished of the Brimstones. He's often cited by his 'feral hick' relatives to get them out of ridiculous jail allegations, which he often assists in getting them out. Eidlewood is very level headed and clinical when it comes to his work. He's very unafraid to tell clients that they will most likely go to jail for their crimes and they will probably be shived in a lunchroom power move to assert dominance by lower ranking prisoners. But he will do his absolute best for you in the court room to get you the least damning sentence possible if you are as guilty as the court finds.

He is unfortunately very much in love with Rusalika and is embarrassed at his hesitance regarding his relationship with her because marriage to a Fey is basically handing a big part of your identity over to them and basically relinquishing a lot of yourself personally for the sake of this union and he doesn't think he could make that level of a sacrifice and thinking about it for too long scares him. Also he uh. Probably should make her his GIRLFRIEND first. Or let her know he likes her that way.

#TSB Draws #Shadow Oaks #Tieflings #Tief #Vampire #Drow #Monsters #The Brimstone Clan #Angelo Brimstone #Otto Brimstone #Diana Brimstone #Mary Brimstone #Old Man Brimstone #Eidlewood Brimstone #Rusalika Goodforest #Pixie #Fairy #fey #demon

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tarontherocketman · 4 years

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Mr Madden | Madderton Teacher AU | Chapter 3

TW: MENTION OF SUICIDE NEAR THE END OF THE CHAPTER

It was Friday at last, the week was almost over, and the day started off the same as every other day this week did:

“Mr Madden.”

“Mr Egerton.” The pair smirked at each other as Taron slipped through the partly open door of Rich’s classroom with a mug of coffee in each hand, setting one down on Rich’s desk on the mug coaster that he had brought in from home; a black round coaster with a big golden ‘R’ for Richard. Taron liked that Rich had brought in his own coaster to use, it was one of the many personal touches in his classroom, something Taron had never thought to do in his own.

“I love all your little bits of personal stuff around your desk,” he observed, looking around as he pulled up a chair, leaning over to see the computer screen and resting his chin on Rich’s shoulder. This was something that had become a daily happening out of the blue the morning after their drink at the bar. Neither of them really knew what it meant at this point, their friendship just escalated into a new comfort zone all of a sudden. However, they silently agreed not to overthink it yet, they were both just enjoying having a new best friend.

“You should get some bits for your classroom, you don’t have anything personal in there,” Rich suggested.

“I know, never really thought about it, it’s just a workplace to me.”

“That’s the thing though, we spend so much of our time at work I like making it homely you know?” Rich pondered, looking around at his things trying to think of ideas for Taron’s classroom.

“You’re right Rich, well hey it’s the weekend tomorrow let's go shopping you can help me choose some stuff for my classroom!” Taron declared, to which Rich immediately nodded enthusiastically.

“You are so on! I love doing things like that,” Rich gushed. Taron raised an eyebrow, pulling his chin away from Rich’s shoulder to look at him.

“What? Shopping for homeware and office supplies? Jeez this is why you,” he put his index finger on Rich’s chest, “are older than me,” he teased, scampering up from his chair to run to the other side of the classroom before Rich could attempt to playfully whack him in the arm.

“Three years! Only three years!” Rich pouted, trying not to break into a smile.

“I was only two months away from being a 90s kid you know,” Taron declared proudly, straightening his tie with fake arrogance.

“So close, yet so far, you’re still an 80s kid pal,” Rich laughed, patting Taron’s seat to indicate him to come back. Taron scurried back and barely managed to sit down before Rich got that playful whack on Taron’s arm.

“THAT was for calling me old!” he huffed.

“Ow, calm down Grandpa!” Taron snickered.

“You little shit!” Rich cried before the pair burst into laughter, Taron habitually gripping on to Rich’s forearm as they laughed.

At this moment a tall, sour-faced looking woman walked past the door to the classroom, her hair tied in a neat bun and a school logo lanyard and staff badge round her neck. She peered through the window in the door, narrowing her eyes at the over friendly pair of male teachers. Rich noticed her in his peripheral vision and jerked away from Taron, mumbling a quiet ‘shit’.

“Rich? What’s wrong?” Taron asked, whipping his head around to see what Rich was looking at. “What was it?”

“Uh, Mrs Reynolds just saw us through the window…” Rich mumbled.

“It’s alright she won’t make a fuss of it, we weren’t doing anything, just a bit of fun. Right?” Taron asked nervously, reading Rich’s worried facial expression.

“T, she’s one of the Religious Studies teacher, her classroom his two doors down from here. I know RS teachers and religious people in general don’t all share the same opinion, but I’ve sat in the staff room with her and I happen know exactly what her thoughts on homosexuals are.”

“Ah,” Taron whispered, nodding slowly.

“Yep,” Rich said bluntly.

“Well, she doesn’t know either of us are gay, AND we weren’t even doing anything wrong, so she’s got nothing on us!” Taron assured his best friend, putting his hand on Rich’s leg who pushed his hand off harshly.

“Maybe not yet but she’ll be watching us now! I thought this was exactly what you didn’t want to happen here?” Rich snapped, making Taron flinch slightly from seeing a new emotion in Rich that he hadn’t yet been introduced to.

“I didn’t!” Taron defended, “but- but I suppose it feels different since I met you!”

“Well I’ve only been here a week Taron, and I really don’t want to fuck up another job thank you very much,” Rich hissed, turning back to his computer screen abruptly.

“Another?” Taron asked quickly, now distracted from the original argument.

“Just…pretend I never said that,” Rich murmured, “I need to finish this presentation.” Taron opened and closed his mouth a few times, deciding whether or not to say anything that could potentially make things worse considering he had obviously just hit a nerve. He decided on just leaving it and walking out the classroom quietly. Rich stubbornly kept his gaze fixated on the computer until Taron had left the classroom, making sure he had definitely gone before putting his head in his hands and groaning to himself.

__________________________________________________

The day eventually drew to an end, consisting of some awkward glancing and looking away happening between Taron and Rich when they would inevitably pass each other in the hallway. They had both spent break times in their own classrooms to avoid conversation, not even 100% why they were mad at each other but sticking to it anyway.

“Alright guys I’ll see you next week,” Taron concluded, indicating to his class that they were free to go, which definitely made everyone very happy knowing that they were free for 2 whole days.

“Sir?” a small voice appeared behind Taron.

“Yes, Ella?” he asked, not turning around from his computer.

“You didn’t say have a good weekend, you always say have a good weekend, what’s wrong?” Ella quizzed, surprising Taron with her intuitiveness.

“Someone’s observant,” Taron mused as he swivelled his chair around to face the blonde-haired teenager. Ella just shrugged casually.

“I pick up on these things,” she smiled, her energy rubbing off on Taron, softening him a bit after a rough day. “What’s on your mind?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, just an argument with a friend,” Taron chuckled, almost laughing at his own stupidity in the whole situation, forgetting more and more as the day went on why he was even being so stubborn about talking to Rich.

“Mr Madden?” Ella asked nonchalantly. Taron blinked slowly.

“How’d you…?”

“I told you I pick up on things! I don’t have any friends so I have more time to watch what goes on around me,” Ella admitted, not sure whether to feel proud of her observation skills or embarrassed that she just flat out casually told her Drama teacher that she doesn’t have any friends.

“Hmm you’re even smarter than I thought you were,” Taron grinned, “but yes, Mr Madden.”

“Well, I dunno what you had an argument about but just talk to him about it, you’re gonna have to eventually, no point avoiding it for longer than needed,” Ella said, folding her arms, “trust me, I’ve been there,” she said sadly.

“Yeah, you’re right Ella, thanks.”

“I know,” she shrugged. “Anyway, I need to get the bus before it leaves, see you next week Sir.”

“Alright have a good weekend Ella,” Taron called as she began to speed walk out of the classroom.

“You too!” she called back as she disappeared down the tiny hall and out of the drama block door. Taron sat at his desk in bemusement that a 14 year old had given him better advice than he had given himself, deciding to hurriedly gather all of his stuff together and stride over to Rich’s classroom to talk to him, feeling a little nervous after an entire day of avoiding him. He approached the classroom gingerly, psyching himself up as he walked the hallway before taking a breath and swinging open the door.

“Rich I’m really sorry,” he whimpered, cringing at his own failure to maintain his composure.

“I- Taron!” Rich hissed quietly, nodding to the wide open doorway that Taron was stood in.

“Oh yeah, sorry,” Taron apologised quickly, hopping in the room and letting the door close behind him before starting again.

“I’m sorry I didn’t take things seriously earlier Rich, or, you know- just now,” he chuckled awkwardly.

“No I’m sorry, T, I really overreacted,” Rich said as he softened up.

“No you were right, we need to be more careful, which is why you’re going to come to my house later so we can spend quality time together without prying eyes!” Taron declared confidently.

“Am I now?” Rich asked with a smirk.

“Yep, 7pm, I’ll message you my address,” Taron stated.

“Sounds good to me,” Rich smiled as Taron turned on his heel and walked out of the classroom as confidently as he had walked in, not disappearing for even 10 seconds before poking his head back round through the still open door.

“Oh yeah and we’re going to order pizza, forgot that part of my speech,” Taron confessed, ruining the grand exit he had initially planned.

“Speech?” Rich laughed, “alright Obama. I’ll see you later,” he shook his head fondly at his best friend’s solid attempt at being charming.

_____________________________________________________

Taron jumped up from the sofa excitedly upon hearing the knock on his apartment door, smoothing out his t-shirt even though it wasn’t actually creased and attempting to check his own breath by breathing into his hand and smelling it, realising it didn’t work and settling on just opening the door without fussing around any further.

“Hey Ri- oh,” he laughed nervously as the open door revealed his neighbour from across the hall.

“Hey Taron, uh, the delivery guy gave me your package to look after when you weren’t in earlier.”

“Ah lovely, thanks Jerry,” he took the package, closing the door with one last polite smile to his neighbour.

Typical, he thought to himself, that would only happen to him. Another knock on the door caused him to discard the package on the dining table before he could start opening it. He pulled the door open carefully, not wanting to get too excited this time.

“Oh good it’s you this time,” he smiled, opening the door fully to let his best friend in.

“You what?” Rich queried, looking puzzled at Taron having no previous context for why Taron would say that.

“Never mind, come in!” he gestured to the sofa that wasn’t too far from the door, heading to the kitchen that was a part of the open plan floor.

“Can I get you a drink?” he offered politely, opening the cupboard to grab two glasses in advance.

“Sure, what have you got?” Rich asked.

“Well good sir it depends whether you’re in the mood for something sophisticated like a scotch,” he began pompously, “or just…a glass of lemonade,” he finished casually.

“Taron,” Rich paused, “I’m Scottish, what do you think the answer is?”

“One scotch coming up,” Taron said assuredly as he poured the drink, Richard replied with a single, proud nod.

“Here,” Taron said, placing the drinks on the coffee table in front of them.

“Thanks,” Rich replied as he leaned over to grab the drink and take a sip. Taron slumped down next to him on the sofa and sighed a long sigh of relief that the week was over.

“Yeah, I’m glad it’s the weekend too,” Rich agreed, feeling Taron’s sigh as if it was his own.

“Yeah, been quite a week,” Taron noted.

“It has indeed.”

“How was your first week as a teacher then?” Taron asked.

“Better than I expected, I was worried that the students would all find my classes boring and I wouldn’t make any friends. Turns out they like me, they like my teaching, and I did make friends. In fact I made a best friend,” Rich said as he looked into Taron’s kind eyes.

“Aww, Rich! Well that’s good to hear.”

“How was your week?” Rich asked in return.

“Eh,” Taron shrugged, “just another week, nothing special happened really,” Taron pondered, looking forward because he knew if he made eye contact with Rich he would start laughing.

“Oi!” Rich laughed, folding his arms and looking away in a fake huff.

“Joking!” Taron chirped, turning back around and wrapping both arms round Rich, reaching around his shoulders. Rich reciprocated by placing his hands on Taron’s arms. Taron rested his head on Rich’s shoulder, who rested his head against Taron’s head, deciding this was how they would stay now for a bit. Rich habitually rubbed his right thumb on the bit of Taron’s arm that his right hand was placed on.

“Did you want to talk about earlier?” Taron asked cautiously.

“What? The argument, or why I fucked up my last job?” Rich mused.

“I was going to let you decide that.”

“Honestly I don’t really want to talk about either right now, let’s just enjoy the moment. I’ll tell you about the job another time though because I can tell you’re curious.”

“Yeah I am a bit,” Taron admitted, “wait, did you just call this a moment? Are we having a moment?” he teased.

“Mm maybe,” Rich breathed, lifting his head to look at Taron, who looked straight back into Rich’s bright blue eyes, scooting closer to him. Both of their breathing quickened in anticipation as Taron pulled his arms away and placed his hands on either side of Rich’s face, rubbing his thumbs over his cheek bones before pulling him in. He could smell the scotch on Rich’s breath as their lips brushed against each other for a moment before Rich got impatient and reached around the back of Taron’s neck, pulling him in so their lips meet properly. Taron moved his hands to wrap around Rich’s torso, working them up and down his back. The sunset made the last bit of sun for the day shine perfectly through the crack in the curtains, hitting them both perfectly as they shared this moment for a while longer.

“Wow,” Taron breathed heavily as he pulled away gently.

“Yeah,” Rich breathe-laughed. “I only met you a week ago,” he teased, imitating what Taron had said at the bar at the start of the week.

“And what an amazing week it’s been,” Taron imitated back, copying Rich’s response.

“Indeed it has! You hungry?”

“Oh god yes, pizza?” Taron said excitedly.

“Fuck yes.”

________________________________________________________

The weekend had passed by in what felt like an hour, and there they were again. Monday morning, the worst day of the week because everyone in the school- teachers and students alike- know it’s only the beginning of a potentially long, hard week. The day started the same as any other, which always consisted of:

“Mr Madden.”

“Mr Egerton.”

Followed by a coffee and catch up, except today it was in Taron’s classroom to admire the new bits and bobs Rich had helped him choose out on the weekend. There was a black mug coaster with a golden T on the desk to match Rich’s, one of those light-boxes that you can organise the letters on to write a message, which Rich had spelled out “Mr Egerton” on, there was a new 2020 desk calendar that Rich had convinced Taron to get done at a personalised calendar shop in the mall with one of his favourite plays on each month, a notebook with the letter ’T’ on the front, and a matching ’T’ pen pot too.

Rich journeyed to his classroom a few minutes before the bell was due to ring, at which point students began to file into Taron’s classroom, he wrote the date and learning objective on the board as the class took their time to settle, before sitting at his desk to call out the register, going name by name with a ‘here sir’ mumbled in reply after each name by the relevant student.

“Ella,” he called, getting no response. The entire atmosphere in the room changed, bringing a grossly enhanced meaning to ‘elephant in the room’.

“What?” Taron quizzed, looking around and his class, getting nothing back.

“Guys?” he asked, starting to get antsy, “anyone?”

“Didn’t you hear?” one of the girls in his class spoke up.

“Hear what?” Taron began to panic, thinking about how he was the first in the staff room when he got him and Rich’s coffee so he hadn’t actually seen any other teachers yet. No one in the class dared to speak a word, all looking down uncomfortably at their desks.

“Taron!” Rich burst in the room and exclaimed, but then coughing awkwardly and correcting himself to “Mr Egerton.”

“Um, Rich what’s going on?” Taron whispered so the students wouldn’t hear him, failing miserably considering you could hear a pin drop in the room at that moment, he ushered Rich out of the classroom and pulled the door shut behind them.

“I’m sorry I only just found out when I put the mugs back in the staff room just now I came straight back,” Rich said, out of breath from jogging back to Taron’s classroom, trying to make it before class started.

“What is it?!” Taron persisted, urging Rich to hurry up and spit it out.

“Ella overdosed last night.”

Taron’s eyes went wide, tears beginning to form that he tried to desperately blink away.

“-what?” he squeaked, his voice barely making a sound.

“She’s alive,” Rich assured, placing his hands on Taron’s shoulders.

“Is she going to be okay?” Taron whispered.

“I- I don’t know, T, we can only hope for now, I’m sorry,” he admitted, pulling Taron into a tight hug, letting the now silently sobbing man bury his face into his chest.

“I should have done more,” he mumbled into Rich’s shirt.

“Don’t say that-”

“No,” Taron cut Rich off, “this is the part of being a teacher I never wanted to experience, she trusted me and I didn’t do enough to protect her I should have looked more into it and talked to the head teacher or her parents or, I don’t know,” he rambled, “I spoke to her on Friday at the end of class and she could tell I was upset about our argument and cheered me up but I didn’t bother asking how she had been doing and-”

“T, you’re her teacher not her Dad, she’s not your responsibility,” Rich persuaded.

“She is when she’s at school Rich! Part of being a teacher is keeping them safe and I failed.”

“I know, I know,” Richard soothed “but she did this outside of school, at home, not at school, you can’t blame yourself for this, please stop blaming yourself,” Rich rubbed Taron’s back, trying to calm him down knowing that he has to go back in that classroom and teach sooner or later. He pulled away from Taron, drying his damp cheeks with his sleeves. “Look, go clean yourself up, I’ll watch your class for a minute I’ve got a free period ok?”

“Thanks, Rich,” Taron smiled weakly, patting Rich on the shoulder and walking off to the bathroom to clean up. Staring at himself in the mirror thinking about how after such a lovely weekend, this is how Monday morning starts. He knew for certain that it was going to be a long week ahead.

__________________________________________________

Ahhhh hi! I was SO nervous to post this but here it is, I decided I’d try out a few things in this chapter to see how you guys react to it which is why it’s quite long, just to make sure my writing is going in the right direction you know? Anyway if it’s more cute Madderton moments you’re waiting for I can tell you now that’s coming in the next chapter; now that I’ve done my drama/romance/angst experiment heh, so yeah I really hope you lot like it <3

Tag list: @taron-eggmcmuffin @coffeetalkbaby @nataschalenasblog

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Super Bowl 2020 Commercials: Funeral for Mr. Peanut, Tears for Google

An audience expected to be around 100 million. Big companies paying as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds of advertising time. In addition to deciding the National Football League champion, the Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year for TV commercials.For the most part, the commercials have were light and bright.Blasts From the PastNostalgia was an early theme, with companies marketing their products with ads that showed love for the ’80s and ’90s.Cheetos had the rapper MC Hammer and his zoot-suit-inspired pants in an ad that aimed to popularize the word Cheetle, Frito-Lay’s term for the orange dust the snack leaves in its wake.Squarespace sent Winona Ryder, the Gen X star who has made a comeback thanks to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” to Winona, Minn., where she was born. Bill Murray, with a sidekick from the rodent family, relived the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” for Jeep, and Mountain Dew Zero riffed on the 1980 film “The Shining” with an assist from the “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston.A commercial for Avocados From Mexico features Molly Ringwald, the star of “Pretty in Pink” and other ’80s comedies.The nostalgia mixed with sentimentality. And three simple commercials seemed to have left the deepest impression on viewers.A spot from Google — about the 85-year-old grandfather of a Google employee searching for ways to remember his partner, Loretta — inspired a flood of “I’m not crying, you’re crying” social media posts. New York Life Insurance explored various forms of love using several real couples and relatives, without a celebrity in sight. WeatherTech’s commercial focused on the chief executive’s golden retriever, Scout, and the doctors who saved him from cancer.A Stunt Ad Lights Up Social MediaAfter much hype in recent days, Planters ran a commercial showing the funeral of its mascot, the monocled creature Mr. Peanut. Other brand avatars were at the grave site, including the Kool-Aid Man and Mr. Clean. After the Kool Aid creature shed a tear, something sprouted in the dirt. And then a baby version of Mr. Peanut sprang to life, squeaking like a dolphin, saying, “Just kidding, I’m back,” and asking for a monocle. The reaction on social media was not kind.The unusual Planters campaign, which involved the character dying in a car crash, was put on pause last week, after Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. In recent days, its parent company, Kraft Heinz, swapped the position of a Heinz ad with the Planters ad, putting footage of Mr. Peanut’s funeral before a halftime show that was scheduled to include a tribute to Mr. Bryant.The Streamers Are HereThe New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady spent this Super Bowl as a Hulu spokesman, saying in a commercial for the streaming service that “it’s time to say goodbye to TV as you know it” before slyly adding, “but me, I’m not going anywhere.”An ad from the short-form streaming service Quibi, featuring bank robbers who pause to watch a quick show on their phone screens, made one thing clear: how to pronounce “Quibi.” (It’s kwi-bee, not kwee-bee.) A spot from Amazon Prime Video is expected late in the game.Unity Amid DiversityIn other Super Bowl ads, Verizon, Sabra and other companies are emphasizing — and celebrating — what Americans have in common beneath their differences. Don’t we all complain about the same things? Don’t we all defy cultural stereotypes? And don’t we all love hummus?Those are some of the messages that figure in the sunny portrait of a nation that will emerge from the more than 80 commercials scheduled to appear during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast.“We’re at a moment in the country where it’s important that we all contribute to things that unite as opposed to things that separate,” said Diego Scotti, the chief marketing officer of Verizon. “It’s a sensitive point — we’re a big company and we have many, many customers, and our intention is in no way, shape or form to have a political message.”To fill advertising slots costing as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds — a high — New York Life Insurance and Snickers were among the brands with big-budget commercials showing a wide variety of Americans embracing their differences.Sabra cast two former contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, making it possibly the first Super Bowl commercial to feature drag queens. One Million Moms, a conservative activist group that recently pushed the Hallmark Channel to pull ads featuring brides kissing each other, circulated a petition demanding that the Sabra spot be removed, to no avail.Companies are also slipping into other companies’ commercials. Pringles paired up with the animated Adult Swim series “Rick and Morty” for an ad filled with horrifying child robots. Tide, which overran the Super Bowl 2018 with crossover commercials, teamed this year with Bud Light and the Fox show “The Masked Singer.” Pop-Tarts, which featured the flowing hair of Jonathan Van Ness of “Queer Eye” in its commercial, called out Hyundai’s Boston-accented spot “Smaht Pahk” by posting on Twitter: “Pahp-Tahts.”Politics Crashes the TV PartyThe first of two 30-second ads from President Trump’s campaign, which together cost more than $11 million, aired at 6:55 p.m. in the first commercial break after kickoff. The spot focused on Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence in federal prison on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering when her case was brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by Kim Kardashian West, the reality television star. Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence in 2018.It was the first Super Bowl to feature national ads from two presidential candidates, and the political tone of the ads has stood out in a broadcast filled with companies trying to avoid sensitive topics the day before the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.Just before the second half kickoff, the billionaire presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg presented an ad about gun control that featured Calandrian Simpson-Kemp, whose football-loving son died in a shooting in 2013. Mr. Bloomberg has swarmed the Democratic field with more than $275 million in advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. But this is not his first foray into the Super Bowl while talking about gun laws — he did the same in a 2012 ad with Thomas M. Menino, who was then the mayor of Boston.The Jay-Z InfluenceAnother exception to the escapist fare is a spot on police shootings. Surprisingly, it comes from an organization that has shied away from the issue: the National Football League. The spot shows the retired 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin reflecting on the 2015 death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer, and it includes a dramatic re-enactment of the killing.The commercial promotes the N.F.L.’s Inspire Change initiative, a social outreach program that the league has put together with Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. Colin Kaepernick — Mr. Boldin’s onetime 49ers teammate — set off an uproar a year after the killing by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. The N.F.L. struggled with its response for years.More PositivityBut the great majority of Super Bowl LIV spots are jaunty and optimistic. TurboTax has a commercial involving people of many races, genders, ages and walks of life dancing to a bounce-inflected earworm of a jingle, “All People Are Tax People.”The mood continues a trend toward tonally light commercials that became pronounced in 2018. In 2017, the first year of President Trump’s administration, Budweiser and Coca-Cola, among other brands, touched on immigration, equal rights and fair pay.A Bud Light Seltzer commercial posited that the brain of Post Malone — the pop star and songwriter known for melding disparate musical styles — is operated by a diverse group of technicians in a control room who all bear his distinctive tattoos. Martin Scorsese, who is nominated for an Oscar this year for “The Irishman,” was also involved in a Super Bowl commercial, but not behind the camera. Instead, he appeared in an ad-from Coca-Cola, waiting anxiously at a party for Jonah Hill, whom he had directed in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to muster enough energy to join him. Mr. Hill, who was cast first, suggested Mr. Scorsese when the company asked him to recommend someone to play the out-of-place friend.Space RaceWhile many ads looked to the past for inspiration, Turkish Airlines and others were fixated on the cosmos. Olay alludes to the first all-female spacewalk last year in an ad featuring Lilly Singh and Busy Philipps with the retired astronaut Nicole Stott. A spot from the home carbonation company SodaStream, which includes a cameo by Bill Nye, showed astronauts finding water on Mars. And Walmart crammed references to “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Mars Attacks!,” “Men in Black” and “Arrival” into its commercial.Tech FirstsFacebook’s first Super Bowl ad is expected to pair Chris Rock with the “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone. Microsoft’s ad features Katie Sowers, the San Francisco 49ers assistant coach who will be the first woman and openly gay person to help lead a team to the big game. Other tech ads included Amazon’s commercial with the ubiquitous pitchwoman Ellen DeGeneres. Read the full article

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garden-ghoul · 7 years

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Well it’s time for Aldarion and Erendis

“the mariner’s rewife song”

this story starts out with a guy I vaguely remember, named meneldur. no, wait, maybe that meneldur was the FATHER of elendil, not the son of elendil, because the other elendil was definitely like the 23rd king of numenor and this guy is the 4th king... needless to say, I’m starting this one off strong by getting pissed off at mr johnald rolkien again.

well meneldur is special, because he Hates Doing Anything and also instead of being gay for the sea like the rest of the edain he is instead gay for the sky. it also says his wife was a woman of great beauty, which I am getting really tired of. I’m not sure we’ve had really ANY women who were not of great beauty. I love women as much as you, johnald, but where are the ugly women? who are still cool and awesome? did you HAVE to make, for instance, morwen beautiful? anyway aldarion the titular is one of meneldur’s sons. he also has the tar- prefix, which I think is like... specifically to differentiate Dunedain We Like from The Bad Ones (eg ar-pharazon has lost his T by being wicked).

aldarion is a really cute kid. he has a great relationship with his grandpa, the captain of the king’s ships, and he learns to sail really early so that “before he was full grown he could captain a ship of many men.” so far he is kind of a prototypical numenorean. oh and his other name is anardil, and his grandpa calls him anardilya, that’s the cutest thing. it sounds like a russian diminutive. dilya and granpa set out for middle earth, a great sailing adventure! dilya’s dad is filled with Prophetic Foreboding, but he can’t say no to those puppydog eyes, so off they go!

in summary, the one thing dilya cannot do is stop adventuring. he MUST sail. he MUST befriend all the elves on middle earth. after his dad becomes king, he MUST start a Venturers’ Guild and build a beautiful houseboat so he can always live on the water. this really feels like a Boys Club Story from like the 40s. so dilya goes about, sailing, tending the forest so they’ll always have more timber, and when he turns 100 his dad wants to proclaim him the official heir. here we also meet erendis, who is beautiful in a totally different way than numenoreans because she’s of the house of beor. I am SO SICK of beautiful women. sigh. well, erendis gets a crush on aldarion because he is hot and presumably buff from all the sailing he does. but he’s never around the castle or whatever they have in numenor, because he’s in the forest trying really hard not to think about sailing. it doesn’t work! he starts preparing to leave on a seven year voyage, like, immediately afterward.

his dad is angry. his parents start trying to set him up with erendis, because she already likes him and he’s got to marry SOMEONE. and maybe if he falls in love he’ll stop sailing so damn much?? well, he does, kinda! after king meneldur refuses to give his blessing to dilya’s departing ship, erendis sneaks the queen’s blessing to him, and he’s like, wow she’s so nice! and he brings her back a diamond from his journey. “you shouldn’t throw around nice gifts unless you’re going to MARRY SOMEONE,” says the king. “okay fuck you I’m never giving her a gift again,” says dilya. nevertheless, the next time he illegally sets sail erendis brings him another blessing.

while he’s gone, meneldur bans sailing, basically, and especially cutting down trees for new ships. when dilya comes back he is furious!! he was really good at forest husbandry!! he was a super responsible shipwright!! I’m never coming back here, dad!! this time he gets no blessing at ALL, and he’s away for fourteen years, during which time his ships and the port he founded get beat all to hell by ill fortune. because meneldur wouldn’t bless him. erendis moves back to another part of the island because she thinks he is dead. ALSO in his absence people have been using trees super irresponsibly! I love the emphasis here on responsible forestry.

while surveying the forest, he meets erendis and suddenly realizes how much he missed her. they immediately go to ask her father if they can get married, but she is filled with foreboding. the responsible forestry fixation is revealed as a metaphor! erendis is afraid that if she marries anardil she will always be competing for his attention with the sea. it says she loves the forests way more than the sea, and now I get what the setup is: you need land with trees on it, and farms and stuff, to support going to sea. if it’s true that mariners will always return to the sea, it’s equally true that they must always return to port. presumably, if they get married, he will take really good care of her like she is a forest, but she will still be sad that she doesn’t get to see him often. I can’t help but compare these two to elwing and earendil, who had to sail together to be happy and successful. I’m just saying, erendis. maybe learn to sail. get brawny and chill on the sea with your soon-to-be husband.

no, it turns out she Hates The Sea. she goes sailing with dilya and despises it; in return she asks him to hang out in the pastures with her. she accuses him of chopping down lots of trees to make boats, which is fair, and he tells her to name any tree she really loves, and he won’t chop it down. “I love ALL of them,” she says. “every tree on numenor is my personal friend.”

he says nothing to this, and apparently that did NOT mean he promised not to chop down any trees. after the get engaged, the venturers’ guild starts bugging aldarion to chop down more trees to build more boats, and also give them money to sail further. I love this passage where he’s riding out to visit erendis in the westlands and inadvertently gets too close to the sea--

Then suddenly the sea-longing took him as though a great hand had been laid on his throat, and his heart hammered, and his breath was stopped.

this is how I feel about the sea too... meneldur says “please, son, get married!!” but

“It has come upon me again, Atarinya. Eighteen years is a long fast. I can scarce lie still in a bed, or hold myself upon a horse, and the hard ground of stone wounds my feet.”

he’s like a selkie or something. I love this crap boy. he visits erendis and is like “hey want to go sailing with me?”

“I thought you came to talk about our wedding :( ” she says. “also if I sail out of sight of land I will Die. the sea Hates me.” it’s not really clear if she’s phobic or if she’s actually cursed (there is very little difference in my experience). but she can see he’s dying too, from seagayness (a serious sickness!) so she tells him to go and sail. this time he’s away for six years, and everything on middle earth has started to suck in the 19 years since he last visited. his port was destroyed and everyone hates numenoreans, for some reason. but he comes back, and they get married! I want to sleuth out how old she is by now... let’s see... um, she’s at least 80. they met in year 800 of the second age, and now they’re getting married in year 870. so clearly the house of beor doesn’t have ENTIRELY standard human longevity... and yet they’re still worried about erendis dying! (from the appendix: turns out she was 101 when they got married. HM.)

some eldar come to the wedding and give some Parable Presents. they give a white tree to aldarion; “it must have great wood!” he says. “we don’t know,” say the eldar reprovingly. “nobody has ever cut one of these down. they’re too beautiful.” they give a pair of magnetic birds to erendis; “how shall I keep them?” she asks. “let them fly free,” say the eldar. “they’ll always come back to you anyway, they love you.”

they have a daughter a few years later, named ancalime. I think this is the one gogol told me is an awful baby. just after she turns four, dilya goes sailing again. take your daughter with you!! be a good dad!! share your passion with your kids!! well, maybe when she’s older. the image of baby teen ancalime learning to sail with her dad is so precious. except it would make her mom really sad ::( erendis is already sad, actually. she is SO fed up with men right now. she takes ancalime to dwell in sheepland and creates a Magical Foreboding that makes men not want to come to her house. so ancalime never meets any. in most fairy tales, this kind of thing backfires and she falls in love with the first man she meets. but the first man she meets is a 6-year-old kid who offers her some bread because she’s too skinny, so maybe there’s hope.

dilya has been away for 5 years by the time he comes back, despite the fact that he promised he would only be gone for two. nobody is there to greet him at the quay. he goes to his house in the capital and finds it locked and empty. he hears from his father that she went to live in emerie, so he rides there and gets a very cold welcome. “I can see that I don’t have a wife any more,” he says. erendis replies, “well you don’t have a daughter either I GUESS.” the next day he meets ancalime, who is grumpy at having to wake up early and has no clue who he is. he addresses her very charmingly as “lady ancalime,” and then rides off for some kind of errand. erendis gnashes her teeth in vexation, because anardil is being a REAL ASSHOLE to her.

aldarion goes to a party for one of his shipmates’ homecoming; everyone there is happy and his wife and son love him. aldarion is Bitter.

an interlude: meneldur reads the letter his son brought from gil-galad. the letter reads, “your son is a great guy! if possible, please send soldiers for when sauron inevitably attacks us. yrs, gg.”

now back to aldarion! he is still Bitter. he is SO BITTER that he has his house demolished and cuts down all the trees except the white tree, which he names after his daughter. he stares at it and then casually says something that probably links their fates together forever. “I will call you also Ancalimë. May you and she stand so in long life, unbent by wind or will, and unclipped!” a little while later meneldur declares that anardil is going to be king now, so he invites his family for the coronation. scepteration, whatever. erendis declines to come because she hates him, but she lets ancalime come.

UNFORTUNATELY the story is unfinished and fragmented, so we don’t get to hear how that went. we hear that dilya set off almost immediately after being scepterated, and had a fairly bad time in middle earth. we also hear that ancalime has much the same relationship with court that her father does with the sea; she goes there for long periods and peacocks around and has fun, and then flees back to emerie to recover from overstimulation. she thinks BOTH her parents are right to hate the other and hates the concept of marriage.

“Men would be craftsmen and loremasters and heroes all at once;” says Erendis to her daughter. “And women to them are but fires on the hearth - for others to tend, until they are tired of play in the evening. All things were made for their service: hills are for quarries, river to furnish water or to turn wheels, trees for boards, women for their body's need, or if fair to adorn their table and hearth... Anger they show only when they become aware, suddenly, that there are other wills in the world beside their own.

“Thus it is, Ancalimë, and we cannot alter it. For men fashioned Númenor: men, those heroes of old that they sing of - of their women we hear less, save that they wept when their men were slain. Númenor was to be a rest after war. But if they weary of rest and the plays of peace, soon they will go back to their great play, manslaying and war. Thus it is; and we are set here among them. But we need not assent. If we love Númenor also, let us enjoy it before they ruin it. We also are daughters of the great, and we have wills and courage of our own. Therefore do not bend, Ancalimë. Once bend a little, and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, though it blow away all your leaves.”

ANCALIME IS MY FAVORITE TREE. She is determined to be a powerful queen and do Whatever She Wants. “She was clever, and malicious, and saw promise of sport as the prize for which her mother and her father did battle.” oh no. my dear girl. they aren’t doing this for FUN they are doing it so that NO-ONE WILL EVER HAVE FUN AGAIN.

There’s a bunch of low-resolution stuff about the shenanigans Ancalime got into as the king’s heir. she ends up marrying a rather disingenuous shepherd guy to spite her cousin so he won’t ever get to be king, but she doesn’t like being married, as she predicted. she also forbids everyone who works for her from getting married, but her husband arranges a spite party where they’ll all get married and invites her, just to be a dick. her family hates and fears her until she dies, I guess? DEMOTED from favorite tree status. favorite tree is now hirilorn again.

when erendis gets old she wants to see aldarion again, but he’s out voyaging, obviously. she “dies in the water.” probably from the Curse. there’s also a tonnnn of footnotes that I’m not going to read. there we have it! everyone was miserable, and then they died! the moral of the story is, don’t marry someone if you are constantly going to be mad at them for doing what they love.

#heart heavy was going to be my pick for ancalime song but you know what?#she doesn't deserve a nice song.#silm

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mastcomm · 4 years

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Super Bowl 2020 Commercials: Funeral for Mr. Peanut, Tears for Google

For the most part, the commercials have were light and bright.

Blasts From the Past

Nostalgia was an early theme, with companies marketing their products with ads that showed love for the ’80s and ’90s.

Cheetos had the rapper MC Hammer and his zoot-suit-inspired pants in an ad that aimed to popularize the word Cheetle, Frito-Lay’s term for the orange dust the snack leaves in its wake.

Squarespace sent Winona Ryder, the Gen X star who has made a comeback thanks to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” to Winona, Minn., where she was born. Bill Murray, with a sidekick from the rodent family, relived the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day” for Jeep, and Mountain Dew Zero riffed on the 1980 film “The Shining” with an assist from the “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston.

A commercial for Avocados From Mexico features Molly Ringwald, the star of “Pretty in Pink” and other ’80s comedies.

The nostalgia mixed with sentimentality. And three simple commercials seemed to have left the deepest impression on viewers.

A spot from Google — about the 85-year-old grandfather of a Google employee searching for ways to remember his partner, Loretta — inspired a flood of “I’m not crying, you’re crying” social media posts. New York Life Insurance explored various forms of love using several real couples and relatives, without a celebrity in sight. WeatherTech’s commercial focused on the chief executive’s golden retriever, Scout, and the doctors who saved him from cancer.

A Stunt Ad Lights Up Social Media

After much hype in recent days, Planters ran a commercial showing the funeral of its mascot, the monocled creature Mr. Peanut. Other brand avatars were at the grave site, including the Kool-Aid Man and Mr. Clean. After the Kool Aid creature shed a tear, something sprouted in the dirt. And then a baby version of Mr. Peanut sprang to life, squeaking like a dolphin, saying, “Just kidding, I’m back,” and asking for a monocle. The reaction on social media was not kind.

The unusual Planters campaign, which involved the character dying in a car crash, was put on pause last week, after Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. In recent days, its parent company, Kraft Heinz, swapped the position of a Heinz ad with the Planters ad, putting footage of Mr. Peanut’s funeral before a halftime show that was scheduled to include a tribute to Mr. Bryant.

The Streamers Are Here

The New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady spent this Super Bowl as a Hulu spokesman, saying in a commercial for the streaming service that “it’s time to say goodbye to TV as you know it” before slyly adding, “but me, I’m not going anywhere.”

An ad from the short-form streaming service Quibi, featuring bank robbers who pause to watch a quick show on their phone screens, made one thing clear: how to pronounce “Quibi.” (It’s kwi-bee, not kwee-bee.) A spot from Amazon Prime Video is expected late in the game.

Unity Amid Diversity

In other Super Bowl ads, Verizon, Sabra and other companies are emphasizing — and celebrating — what Americans have in common beneath their differences. Don’t we all complain about the same things? Don’t we all defy cultural stereotypes? And don’t we all love hummus?

Those are some of the messages that figure in the sunny portrait of a nation that will emerge from the more than 80 commercials scheduled to appear during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast.

“We’re at a moment in the country where it’s important that we all contribute to things that unite as opposed to things that separate,” said Diego Scotti, the chief marketing officer of Verizon. “It’s a sensitive point — we’re a big company and we have many, many customers, and our intention is in no way, shape or form to have a political message.”

To fill advertising slots costing as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds — a high — New York Life Insurance and Snickers were among the brands with big-budget commercials showing a wide variety of Americans embracing their differences.

Sabra cast two former contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, making it possibly the first Super Bowl commercial to feature drag queens. One Million Moms, a conservative activist group that recently pushed the Hallmark Channel to pull ads featuring brides kissing each other, circulated a petition demanding that the Sabra spot be removed, to no avail.

Companies are also slipping into other companies’ commercials. Pringles paired up with the animated Adult Swim series “Rick and Morty” for an ad filled with horrifying child robots. Tide, which overran the Super Bowl 2018 with crossover commercials, teamed this year with Bud Light and the Fox show “The Masked Singer.” Pop-Tarts, which featured the flowing hair of Jonathan Van Ness of “Queer Eye” in its commercial, called out Hyundai’s Boston-accented spot “Smaht Pahk” by posting on Twitter: “Pahp-Tahts.”

Politics Crashes the TV Party

The first of two 30-second ads from President Trump’s campaign, which together cost more than $11 million, aired at 6:55 p.m. in the first commercial break after kickoff. The spot focused on Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence in federal prison on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering when her case was brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by Kim Kardashian West, the reality television star. Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence in 2018.

It was the first Super Bowl to feature national ads from two presidential candidates, and the political tone of the ads has stood out in a broadcast filled with companies trying to avoid sensitive topics the day before the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.

Just before the second half kickoff, the billionaire presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg presented an ad about gun control that featured Calandrian Simpson-Kemp, whose football-loving son died in a shooting in 2013. Mr. Bloomberg has swarmed the Democratic field with more than $275 million in advertising, according to the ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics. But this is not his first foray into the Super Bowl while talking about gun laws — he did the same in a 2012 ad with Thomas M. Menino, who was then the mayor of Boston.

The Jay-Z Influence

Another exception to the escapist fare is a spot on police shootings. Surprisingly, it comes from an organization that has shied away from the issue: the National Football League. The spot shows the retired 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin reflecting on the 2015 death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer, and it includes a dramatic re-enactment of the killing.

The commercial promotes the N.F.L.’s Inspire Change initiative, a social outreach program that the league has put together with Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. Colin Kaepernick — Mr. Boldin’s onetime 49ers teammate — set off an uproar a year after the killing by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. The N.F.L. struggled with its response for years.

More Positivity

But the great majority of Super Bowl LIV spots are jaunty and optimistic. TurboTax has a commercial involving people of many races, genders, ages and walks of life dancing to a bounce-inflected earworm of a jingle, “All People Are Tax People.”

The mood continues a trend toward tonally light commercials that became pronounced in 2018. In 2017, the first year of President Trump’s administration, Budweiser and Coca-Cola, among other brands, touched on immigration, equal rights and fair pay.

A Bud Light Seltzer commercial posited that the brain of Post Malone — the pop star and songwriter known for melding disparate musical styles — is operated by a diverse group of technicians in a control room who all bear his distinctive tattoos.

Martin Scorsese, who is nominated for an Oscar this year for “The Irishman,” was also involved in a Super Bowl commercial, but not behind the camera. Instead, he appeared in an ad-from Coca-Cola, waiting anxiously at a party for Jonah Hill, whom he had directed in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” to muster enough energy to join him. Mr. Hill, who was cast first, suggested Mr. Scorsese when the company asked him to recommend someone to play the out-of-place friend.

Space Race

While many ads looked to the past for inspiration, Turkish Airlines and others were fixated on the cosmos. Olay alludes to the first all-female spacewalk last year in an ad featuring Lilly Singh and Busy Philipps with the retired astronaut Nicole Stott. A spot from the home carbonation company SodaStream, which includes a cameo by Bill Nye, showed astronauts finding water on Mars. And Walmart crammed references to “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Mars Attacks!,” “Men in Black” and “Arrival” into its commercial.

Tech Firsts

Facebook’s first Super Bowl ad is expected to pair Chris Rock with the “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone. Microsoft’s ad features Katie Sowers, the San Francisco 49ers assistant coach who will be the first woman and openly gay person to help lead a team to the big game. Other tech ads included Amazon’s commercial with the ubiquitous pitchwoman Ellen DeGeneres.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Art F City: The Last Day of Disco; DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know If You Belong

“DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know If You Belong” installation view. All images courtesy Wickerham & Lomax

Wickerham & Lomax: DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know if You Belong The Former Everyman Theater 1723 N. Charles St, Baltimore MD March 31 – April 28 Closing reception 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Presented by Light City and the Station North Arts & Entertainment District

I have a soft spot for any exhibition that’s promoted with coasters left in gay dive bars.

In this case, coasters featuring local personalities Elon Battle and Keenon Brice, painted silver, posing in fashion-editorial-like tableaus advertise: DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know If You Belong. They lead visitors to an abandoned theater, where collaborators Wickerham & Lomax have staged an installation inspired by an even more abandoned nightclub. The space is dominated by industrial-looking contraptions that hang larger-than-life prints from the coaster photoshoot, loosely framed by three even larger projection screens. They’re printed on plexiglass, overlapping with transparent silhouettes evocative of 70s Blaxploitation posters. Theatrical lighting streaks across the floor, like disco lights fallen from the ceiling, occasionally casting faint projections of the dancing figures on the black walls, giving the impression of an archaic iPod commercial. Only visible up close, tiny blocks of poetry are printed into the negative space.

I’ve visited Wickerham & Lomax’s ambitious installation more times than I can count. But it didn’t occur to me why the space feels so uncomfortable until I attended a discussion between the artists and the philosopher Luce Delire, who bluntly stated that her first reaction to the work was disappointment: “When I first came in I was expecting something celebratory.” Instead, an almost sullen, eerie vibe hangs over the work.

The installation feels a bit like a funeral for a queer time traveller, glamorous but sad. It’s not what one would picture as existing in the realm of “community arts”—the project was commissioned through Neighborhood Lights, the community-focused satellite programming of the Light City festival. And Wickerham & Lomax are even less likely to be described as “community artists”. Their rabbit hole of multimedia work—full of allusions to past projects, inside jokes, and everything from pop references to critical theory—isn’t always “accessible”, even to many in the arts. But the one constant with Wickerham & Lomax’s work is surprise. I’ve known the two for years (full disclosure: they rent their studio space from me, and we’re good friends) but despite this familiarity, their work is seldom what I expect. How does one evaluate a show that seems, on some level, to be about the futility of its own nostalgia?

I’m not sure I can. Most of the work is polished and beautiful. Parts of a documentary-style video feel important as a piece of untold oral history. But as a whole, I can’t place exactly why I like the exhibition or why it simultaneously leaves me feeling unfulfilled. I suspect that feeling of unfulfillment is deliberate. They’re not trying to give us a simulacrum of fun. In one video, “Wormholes Robert + Allen”, a couple sits at home, surrounded by moving boxes. They’re debating going out dancing, and talk about the impending death of one man’s estranged father. It’s hard to watch, and feels almost like a home movie not intended to be seen by others. It’s not readily apparent how the piece relates to the rest of a show about an abandoned disco. It ends with them dancing alone at home. It’s aesthetically incongruous, but speaks to notions of loss and placelessness.

DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know if You Belong, which closes tonight in Baltimore’s former Everyman Theater, is the result of a months-long research project. The pair were partnered with the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood Station North, which until about a decade ago was known as Charles North and was a center of the city’s LGBTQ Black community. At the heart of the neighborhood, a block away from the theater, stands O’Dell’s, a disco that operated from 1976 to 1992. Since closing, it’s sat vacant and fallen into disrepair (it was recently purchased by a developer with plans for coworking space). DUOX4Odell’s is less about resurrecting the club for one last wild night, and more about admitting that task is impossible—through interviews with former patrons that inform meandering collaborations with their peers.

For anyone who came of age gay and/or weird in Baltimore in the past few decades, O’Dell’s holds a special allure. It’s a place of not-so-distant mythology. A discotheque with a curious facade, it’s felt like a mysterious ruin from a bygone civilization since the 1990s. My eccentric former landlord used to regale us with unsolicited stories of drug-fuelled nights there with drag icon Divine. The old drunks at gay dive bars tell kids-these-days about the better fashion of yesteryear. Countless art students have broken into its abandoned dancefloor for midnight photoshoots. But for those who wistfully remember the club’s heyday in the late 70s and early 80s, there’s a sharp thorn of sadness in the side of all that glamour.

vimeo

Wormholes Odell’s from duox on Vimeo.

The more documentary-style “Wormhole O’Dells” begins with the building’s current owner leading the camera through the gloomy, dilapidated former dancefloor, excitedly talking about the flexibility afforded by column-free floors. It transitions to interviews with former regulars, such as Chuckie Dennis, who explains “Going to O’dells in those days gave us a sense of identity… O’dells brought glamour to Baltimore.” The oral histories, many of which focus on the rituals of dressing up for nightlife, are intercut with snippets of disco and poetry by Janea Kelly and Malcolm Lomax. It seems every humorous anecdote is balanced by a sentiment of loss or regret.

“The doors trembled, quaked not knowing that music had a grudge against exclusion. That music would pass through the membrane, inciting and inspiring. That music would be a contagion if caught, turns bodies into brick and mortar – turns gentrification into a common cold. Lump of flesh not just corpse and cadaver but sentient forms that knew love and its expression. Let me fall somewhere between two pillars and let them catch me, and I’ll be burning wounds to prevent infection. They, in not knowing me, ripped my innards out – a horror, gore, zombie fuck. A string of one-night stands going from one owner to the next. Causing whole communities to look like shells or fallen soldiers in war-torn Baltimore, fixated only on keeping composure. Can there be a process, a practice, a poetics to knowing [remove the word “that” here] the pulse of city as body and buildings as organ? Would our steps to render them living make us better care for them”

-From ODELL’S FLESHY EDIFICE (SPACE)

It’s hard at first to see the connection with the other two videos. In “Wormholes Antiques,” frequent Wickerham & Lomax collaborators Blairè Leòn and Kentrell Searles search a cluttered antique store for a gift for Blairè’s love interest, an older man. The two exchange quips with each other and the store’s proprietor, who warns them that used objects carry with them the memories of previous owners. It feels a bit like a caveat for the gentrifiers circling Baltimore’s historic building stock—perhaps all the “character” and curb appeal that old buildings possess might include the ghosts of former occupants. The video ends with Blairè walking away holding a vase stuffed with peacock feathers, a motif that recurs throughout the videos and photo installations.

But one question from the video, directed at the camera by the antique store owner, sticks with me the most: “So you guys come around, prying into other people’s lives… why are you so curious about back histories? Are you storytellers? Old World gossips? New World liars?”

This perhaps gets to the root of the exhibition’s (seemingly deliberate) awkwardness. Wickerham & Lomax made it clear they don’t want to recreate the experience of the club, or delve too deeply into nostalgia. And they certainly don’t want to tell someone else’s story. The installation feels instead like a reflection on the O’Dell’s-shaped-hole in their own lives, or the idea of loss at its most obtuse. It touches on the disruptive nature of gentrification in queer and Black communities, but explores the feeling through extended metaphors more often than direct political finger wagging. Kimi Hanauer, Program Director for Station North introduced the work as “a positive interruption to some of the changes that are happening in the city.”

Daniel Wickerham, in their discussion with Luce Delire, described the frustrations of working with someone else’s histories: “How inefficient is it to ask someone to give you their memories? Its failure of being so boring. I wanted to ask ‘remember better! Remember differently… just make it up!’ I want to be dazzled.” But also the problems of using those memories for entertainment: “It’s about negotiating responsibility… are we allowed to access the space we’re working through?”

You’ll Know if You Belong references O’Dell’s signature catchphrase, and it’s evident that here no one belongs anymore. Malcolm Lomax explained that the installation was conceived shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, in the midst of a years-long trend of gay bars shuttering. The story of O’Dell’s regulars, for all its specificity, became a starting point to describe queer placelessness and loss in more abstract terms. Referencing the numerous allusions to absent bodies (the silhouettes, shots of empty spaces) he summarized the project as “Eulogizing. It’s about the way we frame absence… at one point in a poem I ask ‘am I a church housing my own funeral?’ It’s about these empty spaces in Baltimore where we’re still negotiating their uses.”

The more I return to the space, attempting to center my thoughts about the show, I find myself gravitating to Lomax’s poetry. Interspersed throughout the video works or printed on the sculptural image/objects, it remains one of the most salient components of the show:

“The way tears cause avalanches Is the way orgasms cause earthquakes, But my body is still a stranger to this Earth. And because this planet is dying, an ad is placed: Kinky club seeks asylum on another planet.”

–From Monuments & Moments: AM I OLD? (TIME)

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