#// - [ Promotion ] will smith POSES at friends.

[divas-night-guards]

Hi everyone!!! This is my blog for my au or retelling-ish of those 2015 nightguards!! Neat!!! Character rundown and rules bellow the drawing

Character rundown!!

Mike (the bald one)

Mike, the sarcastic, dry protagonist of the bunch, was hired a long while ago as a day shift security guard. He just now was promoted! Welcome to the night shift, Mike!!! Some background lore includes:

Mike was the bite victim of 83,

Mike has a wife (Doll)!

Just reminding you.

Doll (Mike’s wife)

Doll Schmidt, the loving wife of Mike Schmidt. Owns and works at her own little pastry shop up the street from Freddy fazbear’s! Doll occasionally visits to bring Mike and the rest of the gang pastries and snacks to make it through the night. Background lore includes:

Mike was a regular patron of the cafe for a long time and they started talking, years later they got married (awww)

Doll and Fritz are close friends! they both share an interest in cooking and food.

Fritz (glasses)

Fritz smith, the cheekiest of the gang! Applied for his love of animatronics and machinery, Fritz smith was hired for the night shift (being a college student, he wouldn’t be able to take the day shift.) Fritz is quite social, making friendship bracelets for almost everyone in the night shift, everyone except Vincent. Some additional facts:

Fritz is good at coding and mechanics, thus being able to fix the animatronics if there were any mechanical issues, Boss likes Fritz for this, due to it being much cheaper than hiring an actual mechanic. Cheap bastard.

Vincent (purple guy!)

Vincent Bishop, the head of the night guards! Everyone’s (not mine) favorite flamboyant purple and I mean REALLY purple guard! Known for making everyone in the office just a little uncomfortable (which is why you don’t get a friendship bracelet broh.) Vincent loves posing his authority and eeriness to everyone, threatening the other night guards. And when he’s not doing that, he’s being a deranged psychopath with a trigger-happy aura.

He loves toast <3

He’s DEATHLY and irrationally afraid of needles

BOSS (cigar dude)

Our noir, New Jersey accented cheap money-grubbing RECENTLY DIVORCED- (ahem) boss man is…yeah. Just a boss. A cheap boss man. Yup.

Recently divorced

Favorite activity is blowing cigar smoke in his subordinates faces

Used to be a detective

Flirts with doll (“hey bbg I’m so much better than Mike” Headass)

Phone guy (self explanatory)

Security guard that works both day and night shifts, in charge of handling phone calls, etc. super nice with a heart of gold and an amazing hard-working team player persona. Vincent often flirts with phone guy (or “Scott”), yet Scott is very, very uninterested.

Likes drinking tea more than coffee

Has black hair, the phone is just a hat thing that he wears because he doesn’t like doing his hair. And it’s fun looking

Jeremy (question mark)

Jeremy fitzgerald, the newest hire of the night watch. Jeremy is often shy and timid when it comes to socializing, and unfortunately isn’t the best at his job. but with the help from his peers (hopefully) he’ll have nothing to worry about!

Friends with Fritz, who really tries to get him out of his comfort zone a bit

Vincent tries to scare him by jumping at him when he’s walking down hallways, pranking him, etc. because it’s “funny”

Kind of a people pleaser, often changing his opinion for others out of fear <\3

Self conscious about his stutter (💔)

RULES!!!

Have fun bro 💖

There are no real rules LMAO, just have lots of fun, be as “cringe” as you want, go ahead!!!!!! :D

Oh nvm nothing offensive

Yeah don’t be a jerk and have fun!!!!! Byeeeee🗣️🔥

[beardedmrbean]

Stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd of 100,000 people in central London, a helicopter hovering above St James’s Park could be heard over the hushed crowd.

The hum was only a little louder than the rustling of winter coats and rhythm of feet along the pavement past old Fleet Street watering holes, less a march than a shuffle.

No flares were launched, no masks were worn. No vehicles were damaged and police acted as helpful hi-vis markers of the route, unburdened by the threat of violence. 

The dozens of riot vans brought in from across the South East sat unused.

The 1,000 police on duty had an easy day’s overtime compared to the demonstrations of recent weeks. 

“No, nothing at all. It’s been very calm,” one female officer told a protester who asked how her day was going.

One helped a bedraggled wayward jogger find his way out of the crowd and towards a less congested route. 

More marshal than law enforcement

Another gave a child on his father’s shoulders a high-five, before getting a pat on the back and a thanks from a Jewish man wearing a Kippah.

Their role felt more marshal than law enforcement, with only two arrests made. 

The biggest furore of the day was when Tommy Robinson appeared.

He was forced to leave by police, unwanted by the Jewish organisers of the event.

Boris Johnson, pictured above, received a much better reception, prompting cheers that broke the quiet when he arrived with wife Carrie and five-month-old Frank, chatting to demonstrators surrounding him.

David Baddiel, Judge Rob Rinder, Rev Richard Coles and Rachel Riley were all spotted in the hordes who had turned up to march against anti-Semitism along with the Chief Rabbi.

”Since Oct 7, on the streets of London, we have heard chants for jihad, for intifada and from River to the Sea,” said Sir Ephraim Mirvis. 

“But today we stand on the same streets of London and say with regard to our precious hostages: Bring Them Home.”

He headed up the mass of people moving through the Strand and towards Parliament Square.

 There was an awkwardness to the crowd’s chants. Many, on their first march, preferred to keep quiet than to join in the singing, with tunes dying out in moments.

‘It’s a bit tame! What do we chant?’

Some picked up last-minute Israeli flags on wooden sticks for £5 from outside Tube stations while others braved the drizzle wearing theirs like capes.

“It’s a bit tame, isn’t it? What do we chant?” wondered Olivia, a Jewish woman in her late 20s, there with her boyfriend and their friend.

Elsewhere, a mother pushing her baby in the pram walked her golden cocker spaniel puppy alongside.

Only when calls of “bring them home” began echoing around the streets did the heft of tens of thousands of people in mourning become apparent.

Three twenty-something men using a small megaphone led a rendition of Am Yisrael Chai. As hundreds join in, one jokes that he “does weddings too”.

They carried a banner stating “Failure to condemn Hamas is anti-Semitic”.  

Another sign saying “Give me antipasti, not anti-Semitism” became a prop for protesters to pose with, while a child was heard reading another out loud “Spread hummus, not hate”.

Jews were supported by non-Jews. Six-year-old Claudia held her mother Antonia’s hand as the family joined the rally because they were “appalled that anti-Semitism has returned to Britain’s streets”.

Mark Elliott-Smith, a  priest at Our Lady of the Assumption Warwick Street, said: “I thought I had to be here and show solidarity. I’ve been on a few of the demonstrations. When I wrote something about it [anti-Semitism], I was called ‘a Nazi priest’.”

‘I’d feel safer in Israel than in Britain’

Rev Coles, bringing up the rear of the protest, said he had joined because many of his Jewish friends now feel frightened to walk down the street. “I find that intolerable,” he said.

Rueben and Natalie, a young, Jewish, married couple with family in Israel came out to march. 

Natalie said that she would “feel safer in Israel, even as the bombs are falling, than in Britain”, her husband nodding wearily. His three brothers live there already.

“At least in Israel you feel like the state is looking after us, that the police are there to protect you, that the whole nation is with you,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like that here.”

The protest culminated with speeches from political and religious leaders. 

Anti-Semitism ‘a stain on our country’

The crowd’s reception to the speakers was muted at first, but immigration minister Robert Jenrick won over the crowd in Parliament Square, telling the thousands packed around Parliament that anti-Semitism “is a stain on our country”.

“Your government will not rest until each and every one of [the hostages] is back in the loving embrace of their families. We stand with Israel,” he went on.

Peter Kyle, there as member of the shadow cabinet and vice chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, spoke after Mr Jenrick warmed the crowds up.

“After the most shameful period in my party’s history, I am enormously proud of the leadership Keir Starmer has shown in combating anti-Semitism and standing up for the British Jewish community,” he said.

It was this that drew the biggest cheer of the afternoon, before the crowd went quiet again as they began their journey home. 

Gideon Falter, the chief executive of Campaign against Antisemitism which organised the march, said: “The voice of decency has been heard today.”

[horrorchops]

Band that has horror vibes:

Band: The Cramps

Year: 1976

Some history:

The Cramps were an American punk rock band, formed in 1976 and active until 2009. The band split after the death of lead singer Lux Interior. Their line-up rotated much over their existence. Occasional bass guitarist Poison Ivy the only permanent members.

They were part of the early CBGB punk rock movement that had emerged in New York. The Cramps are noted as influencing a number of musical styles: not only were they one of the first garage punk bands, they are also widely recognized as one of the prime innovators of psychobilly. (Wiki, Contributors to Punk. “The Cramps.” Punk Wiki. Accessed April 25, 2024. https://punk.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cramps.)

1972 - Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Marlana Wallace) met in Sacramento, California in. In light of their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps.

1975 - They moved to Akron, Ohio, and then to New York. soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, and Mink DeVille. The lineup.

1978 - They gave a landmark free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and later released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital.

—————-

1980 - The Cramps relocated to Los Angeles in and hired guitarist Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club. While recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights.

1982 - The band appears in the film Urgh! A Music War.

1983 - When they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Metoff of The Pagans (cousin of Nick Knox) was the final second guitarist – albeit only live – of the Cramps' pre-bass era.

1985 - The Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie The Return of the Living Dead called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar.

1986 - With the release A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.

——————-

1991 - Knox left the band. The Cramps hit the Top 40 in the UK for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the song.

1994 - The Cramps made their national US television debut on Late Night with Conan O'Brien performing "Ultra Twist".

1995 - The Cramps appeared on the TV-series Beverly Hills, 90210 in the Halloween episode "Gypsies, Cramps and Fleas." They played two songs in show: "Mean Machine" and "Strange Love." Lux Interior started the song by saying "Hey boys and ghouls, are you ready to raise the dead?".

——————-

2001 - On January 10 Bryan Gregory died at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center of complications following a heart attack. He was 46.

2002 - The Cramps released their final album, Fiends of Dope Island, on their own label, Vengeance Records.

2006 - They played their final shows in Europe in the summer and their very last live show was 4 November at the Marquee Theater in Tempe, Arizona.

2009 - On February 4 Lux Interior died at the Glendale Memorial Hospital after suffering an aortic dissection which, contrary to initial reports about a pre-existing condition, was "sudden, shocking and unexpected".

All this information comes from

What are your thoughts on the cramps? Let my knew below ⬇️

See you on the other side friend

-Horrorchops 🖤

P.S. My other post with the purple moon gif explains what’s happening next week on Tuesday and Thursday.

[biglisbonnews]

Jordyn Woods Dissed Hailey Bieber With...Lip Liner? It's been weeks since the resurgence of Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber's apparent feud. There's no end in sight, and the bodies of everyone involved now litter the 101 from Calabasas to Hollywood. Into this mayhem steps Jordyn Woods. The influencer and famous ex-friend of Bieber bestie Kylie Jenner posted a Snapchat video Monday with Selena Gomez's makeup brand, Rare Beauty. In the snap, she can be seen with a lip liner — called "Kind Words" according to eagle-eyed Selenators — and a caption that reads, "Love this lip liner." \u201cjordyn woods loves her rare beauty lipliner. \ud83d\udc8b TEAM SELENA IKTR\u201d — ana | FAN ACCOUNT. (@ana | FAN ACCOUNT.) 1677510477 From the looks of it, Woods has no real connection to Rare Beauty or Gomez outside of her previous relationship to Jenner, which exploded in 2019 after Khloe Kardashian's then-boyfriend Tristan Thompson kissed Woods at a party. Woods went on to share her experience with Thompson and the Kardashians on the Pinkett-Smith family's Red Table Talk, after which Khloe famously tweeted: "Why are you lying @jordynwoods ?? If you’re going to try and save yourself by going public, INSTEAD OF CALLING ME PRIVATELY TO APOLOGIZE FIRST, at least be HONEST about your story. BTW, You ARE the reason my family broke up!" Jenner swiftly axed Woods from the family dynamic, and the two went on to never speak again (at least in public).Despite his public indiscretion, Khloe took Tristan back and then broke up and then took him back through multiple ensuing affairs and secret children.Related | Selena Gomez Calls Out Hailey Bieber Over Old Taylor Swift DissTo bystanders, the feud was dead and turned to dust, as multiple world-ending events have transpired since February 2019. Alas, it would seem society is not so lucky. But however petty Wood's lipliner snap might be, the origin of the ongoing debacle between Gomez, Jenner, and Bieber is equally frivolous: eyebrows!As noted by TMZ and others, Gomez shared a video of her overly laminated brows last week with the caption, "I accidentally laminated my brows too much." The next day, Jenner shared a video of her brows with the caption: "this was an accident ?????" She didn't stop there. Her next snap was a FaceTime call with Bieber — who married Gomez's ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber — in which the two showed each other their eyebrows.The Selenators imploded. See on Instagram Never mind that Gomez and Bieber posed for a picture last year — or that Gomez and Bieber haven't dated in years. Fans quickly descended on Bieber and Jenner, describing them as mean girls and bullies. Old videos of Bieber's were resurfaced, Pia Mia joined the fray on Gomez's side and even Taylor Swift got involved, somehow. With Woods' addition to the battlefield, I suspect that this mess between them all is nowhere near sorted. That might work out for all of them; The Kardashians isn't filming at the moment, I'm not quite sure what Bieber does exactly and Gomez has an alleged album and makeup brand to promote. Photo courtesy of Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Getty https://www.papermag.com/selena-gomez-and-hailey-bieber-2659485519.html

[wineinthewidow]

        *dances to @bravurai​ ‘s autoplay because i stan Hera and her wonderful taste in music, and then also dances to her autoplay on @onlyliberty​ *

[alchemthief-moved]

TAG DROP 1 / 4

[garthups]

the maze, part I

Part One of the story! Very excited to post this. -Leslie

I kept the car running in park while the shitty vents sputtered, trying my hands warm. Your Love by that band from the eighties was playing in the distance. I have a love-hate relationship with these roped off grassy parking lots, where there aren't actual spaces, just car anarchy. Take any spot you can find and let’s all hope that some semblance of a parking lot comes together. Sure there’s something inherently egalitarian about it, but they remind me of being scared to park when I was learning to drive. I was always positive that my Camry was too far over, and I’d brace myself for the crunch of metal on metal. 

The familiarity of coming to the maze made parking in the lot easier, and I didn’t have to reverse and drive into the same spot over and over again to be satisfied. My friends and I came to Hudler Farm every October for the autumn corn maze. Sometimes we’d take caramel apples in and chaunk through them while meandering.

 Fuck, that was always so fun. High school seems like a lifetime ago though. All it takes are a few hundred miles, and staggered midterms, and suddenly you talk to the guy in the dorm next to yours who gets drunk on natty seltzer more than the people who got you through your mcr phase.

 None of us got together last year, which was a bummer, but out of the blue Lottie messaged Sam and me. I watched the shadowy families walk by in the dark, my hands weren’t getting any warmer though. The idle LEDs were dim enough that I could see outside. A little boy running after his parents tripped and fell in the mud. I stifled a chuckle, because kids falling down is hilarious, and tried to screw with the vents, but they were already all open. Piece of shit car. When I looked up, the boy was still splayed out on the ground, shivering. Both his parents kept walking though. I scrunched my brow. I started fidgeting with my seatbelt, but my hands didn’t have much feeling in them. People were just walking around him, like he wasn’t there. 

“WHAT’S up dog!” My door exploded open.

“JESUS fucking god Lottie, I--” She took her spot in the passenger seat, laughing her ass off.

“Sorry sorry sorry, wow Phoebs I got you pretty good huh?”

“I mean yeah I’m just so ready to get killed in this parking lot. Hey I think that kid hurt himself out there pretty bad.” I breathed, still shaken.

“What kid?”

“That one.”

“Oh that one, sorry it’s dark, so it took me a sec. Yeah let’s go help.” Honestly, I could never stay mad at Lottie. Seeing her new dreads in person made me miss the big buns she wore in high school. We slammed the doors shut, and stepped onto the ground covered in too-damp leaves. Two guys beat us to him though, and they were helping him up.

“Oh wait, is that the kid you meant?”

“Lottie, why would I be talking about a kid that isn’t sprawled out on the ground.”

“I thought this one was playing snake or something. Anyway, let’s go meet Sam’s friend!”

We walked over to the boys, Sam’s friend was getting the kid back on his feet. Sam’s friend was a good head taller than he was, which wasn’t saying too much. The guy gave off an eagle scout vibe though, so his height was probably pretty important to him. Maybe camp counselor would have been closer. He was gently reassuring the kid.

“Feeling better? Okay, better go catch your folks, and make sure not to stay too far behind them, bud, okay?”

“Good call man, I thought he was just playing snake.” Sam glowed.

“Sup fuckers!” Lottie sang. The boy turned around, he looked about nine, so Lotties curse made him bust a grin. From the looks of it he scraped his cheek pretty bad. He dashed off. Sam’s friend laughed nervously since Lottie broke the unspoken rule of swearing in front of kids.

“Hey dudes! It’s so awesome to see you!” Sam laughed. “I told Matrix everything about you, so there’s no need to divulge any information to him. Don’t trust this guy with any more embarrassing stories about yourselves.” Matrix waved shyly, and I rolled my eyes.

“That’s cool. You know we called Sam “Shrimpy” all of sophomore year because his hair got all curly and he dyed it red?”

“Thanks Phoebe, that is something I like people to know about me.” Sam said while subconsciously making sure his hair was still a tight buzz cut. Matrix smiled a little.

“You must be Lottie?”

“It’s great to meet you! Lets get some apples.” 

The four of us were waved through by the teen collecting tickets. The entrance to the maze had a little banner raised up on two poles and a chair with an admissions person. Next to the entrance was a main pavilion with a tiny shop and some picnic tables out under the roof. Lots of families were congregating there, buying souvenirs and farm t-shirts. Thankfully this wasn’t one of the maze theme nights according to a big promotional calendar that outlined all the dates. Lottie groaned when she saw that they added alien night and we hadn’t bought tickets.

“Like what does that even mean though. Are there aliens in the maze? Do they scare us?” Sam said eyeing the kettle corn buckets.

“Yeah I mean, it’s probably just like zombie night and mermaid night where you just get like jumpscared by teens in costumes. Freakin aliens though! Imagine!”

“Uhh did you say they do a mermaid night here?” Matrix said.

“Dude I never told you about that! You’re looking at the three scariest volunteer mermaid teens that Hudler farms has ever known. We were unholy legends flopping after scared families.”

Sam and Lottie were wide eyed crowding around Matrix, telling him all about the glory days. Made me pity him, his bud probably had a whole different energy at college.

“They’re fucking with you! Why in god’s name would a corn maze have a mermaid night.” I finally shouted. Lottie pouted.

“Boooooo Phoebe! How dare you!” I wrapped my face up in my scarf to escape guilt. 

We all mostly ate our caramel apples under the pavilion just so we could give Matrix the rundown of the maze. The Hudler farm maze has these eight checkpoints which give you special tickets. 

“We don’t leave without all eight. Got it? Dee oh en tee. I don’t give a fuck if we die trying.” Lottie said through a mouth of caramel and nuts. It felt surreal having my friends here again. After all, the limited exposure I had to them was social media. I lived vicariously through the photos they posted of new friends.

There was a sign in the pavilion that gave us a rough idea of where all the checkpoints in the maze were. I resisted the urge to take a photo in order to preserve the challenge that the maze posed. Probably didn’t need it to beat our best time. I was the only one who hadn’t finished their apple for traditions sake. Hopefully the caramel wouldn’t freeze though.

“Ok so let's remember to hit that cluster of checkpoints in the northern corner first. We're gonna take a lot of rights and then keep going on that long stretch forward.” I strategized.

“I’ll eat that apple if you’re not going to Phoeb, you know I’m psyched that they got pink ladies this year instead of grannies smiths.” Begged Sam.

“I did a few youth group trips to corn mazes, so this isn’t my first rodeo guys don’t worry!” Matrix added.

“That’s cool.” Phoebe said straight faced. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Before I could respond, I saw it. I inhaled slowly as I took in the scene before us. The moon was thin and most of the lights were under the pavilion itself, but I felt like I should’ve noticed something so wrong before.

“Why is the all corn so fucking tall.” The question, er -- statement hung in the air for a few seconds while the maze came into view for everyone else. Corn stalks get surprisingly tall late in autumn, maybe like ten feet. This stuff though. It was like, way way way too tall. And not irregular. So, regular. The maze looked like it could have been a trimmed hedge. All the stalks stretched up and up, reaching out for the sky, each of them trying to escape from the ground. I suddenly was at a loss, something so ordinary was wrong in such an obvious way. Finally, Lottie broke our silence.

“Shit.” Great. I mean, she wasn’t wrong.

“That’s amazing. God is it this tall every year? That’s the tallest corn I’ve ever seen, must be 30 feet! Maybe more.” Finally Matrix had found something to be upbeat about.

“Ahh no man. It’s like normal usually. Lottie are you feeling alright? Do you want to take a sec before we head in.”

Matrix jumped in. “Nothing to be worried about. I’m sure it’s just like GMO’s or something. Gotta up the yield. They should seriously lead with that in the advertising though. Corn jungle! Towering Corn! Feast your eyes ladies and gentlemen on the worlds first corn metropolis!” He broke the spell on Lottie with his campy broadcaster voice. She joined in: “Keep your dame close as you delve into the mysterious corn caverns, where the CORN DRAGON DWELLS.”

Matrix Chuckled. “Well I don’t know about that. Hard to deliver on a corn dragon. But look I’m sure it’s fine, everyone else doesn’t seem to mind.” It was true, the usual fare of families and teen groups were venturing into the maze without concern. I watched the family from the parking lot get a safety flashlight from the teen working the entrance. I breathed in through my teeth.

“For a second I thought you actually made jokes, scooter. You’re right, it’s probably just a good year for tall corn. We can go.”

“Phoebster, you good?” Sam nudged me. It honestly took me a second longer than Lottie to take in all the explanations. It was such a weird thing to be off in such a significant way. Must have been some primal instinct of being afraid of the dark. The corn stalks were darker than the night sky around them; I tried to catch glimpses through the stalks but they blanketed out the stars. 

“Yeah sorry about that guys. I’ll remember more of the strategy once we’re in the maze. Let’s blow through this thing!” 

We went into the maze.

[chloeokeeffecommunitymultiverse]

Beyond the Frame - Community

what is the brief?  

- ‘Beyond the Frame’ is the title of this competition brief collaboration with Norwich University of Arts and Canon. The theme is ‘Community’ and we’ve been asked to portray our own version of this. It can include anything from wildlife and conservation, your life and where you live or fashion and culture. 

What are the expectations and what are they looking for? What do you need to submit? 

- The judges are looking for us to submit 3 images each. They can be a series of the same images or 3 independent different images, that portray our versions of community.  

Who are the judges? What do you think each of them will be looking for considering their specialisms in photography?     

- The judges for this competition are : 

Amit and Naroop, who are a stills and motion duo from Southall, West London and have been working together since 2003. They originally came together on a photo shoot for a music artist. Amit was the photographer, while Naroop had been brought on board as the art director. Whilst working so closely, they both recognised the creative chemistry between them. They’re ideas bounced off each other and they came up with interesting compositions and produced a set of images that were far more superior to anything they had done before as individuals. And with no formal training, they managed to perfect their craft by constant experimentation, using friends to pose for them and set up their first studios in Amit’s living room. After a while word spread of the images the duo could produce, leading them to then go on to work with the biggest records labels, photographing some of the most successful artists at the time. Having now made a name for themselves within the music industry, they moved on to editorial and advertising. Amit and Naroop have shot campaigns for brands including Barclay, MTV, BBC, Sony Music, Discovery channel and many more.

As judges for this competition I think as Amit and Naroop are specifically professioned in photography and have immense experience in it, I’d expect they’d be on the look out for good quality photos that have good work and meaning behind. 

Below are photos of their campaign with ADIDAS. They photographed musicians, athletes, broadcasters and influencers for a global campaign showcasing the ‘change is a sport’ mantra of ADIDAS.    

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Tessa Bunney, who for over 25 years has photographed rural life and has worked closely with individuals and communities to investigate how the landscape around them is shaped by humans. From hill farmers near her home in North Yorkshire to Icelandic puffin hunters, from Finnish ice swimmers to Romanian nomadic shepherds. 

Her projects reveal the fascinating intricacies of the dependencies between people, work and land. Tessa’s ongoing project ‘FarmerFlorist’ explores the vibrant local ‘artisan’ cut-flower farmers which have recently sprung up in the UK and is a celebration of domestic growers past and present. It was shown at Ryedale Folk Museum in 2018 and Oriel Colwyn in 2019 and published in Rakes Progress and on the BBC. Her project ‘Home Work’ was published by Dewi Lewis in 2010 and was exhibited and published nationally and internationally including the Land exhibition as part of the Noorderlicht Festival, 2010. ‘Home Work’ explores the lives of female home workers in the suburbs and villages in and around Hanoi, Vietnam in the face of increasing urbanisation. Tessa also occasionally runs workshops within her community and regularly gives talks about her work to a wide range of universities, schools, galleries and other community groups.

After learning more about her work, as a judge, I’d expect Tessa to be mainly judging on the core sense of community that come with the photos. 

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James Smith, who is the Photography course leader at Norwich University of Arts. James’ background includes industrial photography, editorial content for the specialist rock climbing market and work for design agencies. Work undertaken for these companies has involved producing images for literature to promote clients ranging from youth development initiatives to business lawyers.

Again as a judge and considering his profession, I’d expect James to be judging the editorial works on people’s final 3 images. 

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Cherie Carman, is a fashion and portrait photographer currently based in London and graduated from Norwich University of the Arts in 2017. After graduating she moved into a full time position for Selfridges & Co working as a photographer within the in-house Photo studio team. Cherie’s day-to-day role consists of capturing fashion imagery for a range of designer brands to be used for Selfridges ecommerce imagery, editorials and social platforms. As well as this, she has traveled to showrooms in France to capture the latest collections for brands such as Balenciaga and Givenchy. Alongside her full time position at Selfridges she continues to capture her own imagery in her spare time allowing full creative freedom to explore her interests; one of her more recent projects includes ‘Refraction’ 2019 which went onto feature in PANSY Mag December 2019. 

Cherie says she aims to produce clean and simplistic images with added elements to make them stand out. She enjoys collaborating with a range of practitioners such as Graphic Designers, as she displays in her project ‘Minimalistic Fashion’. These pictures below are from her 2016 project Minimalistic Fashion.

I think Cherie will judge the fashion side of peoples submissions and also the photography side, considering she does photography as a full time paying job. 

Discuss your plans for submission and show any work you are considering to submit and why? How have you captured community? Does it meet the expectations of the brief?

At first, I was lost on what to do that would reflect community to my best ability. My first idea was to try and capture pure moments with my household. My sister’s birthday was recently and I hoped to capture her all happy and giddy whilst opening presents but I forgot. I had a second idea of capturing photos of me and my sister while we took our dog out around our village. I did capture some photos but they came out blurred and just not how I’d imagined so I also gave up on that idea. I went for a walk by myself around the village I live in and instantly an idea clicked. At the top of my village there’s a club/pub that my family and friends use to spend our entire weekends at, when I was in secondary school. My dad and our family friend use to help run it so we were constantly there, opening it and closing it when people finally left. This is the best possible way I could portray community as most of the families within the village would come and it was something I was apart of and experienced a lot. 

I’ve kept the images fairly simple because the building (pub) reminds me of simpler times. 

[isaacwg-blog]

Smith didn't realize that

But then, that was really a long time ago. Video games in 2016 17 have grown so life like, it would be a shame to not pick that controller up and pose as Neymar Jr, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic or Gerard Pique, even if you're not into football per se. You know, sweat it out, for a couple of hours.

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[justforbooks]

Mickey Turns 90, and the Disney Marketing Machine Celebrates

A two-hour prime-time special on ABC. Cupcakes the size of cars at Disneyland Paris. Collaborations with a dozen fashion designers, including Marc Jacobs. More than 30 books, including one from Taschen so big it comes with a carrying handle.

Small and subtle are not the Walt Disney Company’s style. But a new effort to focus attention on one of its oldest characters, Mickey Mouse, is truly something to behold.

Disney is using Mickey’s 90th birthday as a monstrous marketing moment, with the company’s cross-promotional machine revved up to what may be its highest level yet. Every corner of the $168 billion company is contributing to the campaign, which will intensify on Sunday when ABC runs “Mickey’s 90th Spectacular.” Disney theme parks will be hosting events into next year.

Disney executives describe the effort as a chance to polish the company’s broader brand and remind people — as Netflix moves deeper into family entertainment and Disney prepares to unveil its own streaming service — that the Magic Kingdom has been serving up beloved characters for decades. Mickey made his official debut in 1928 in “Steamboat Willie,” Hollywood’s first cartoon with synchronized sound.

Unless lawmakers intervene, as they have in the past, Disney’s control of the Mickey copyright will expire in five years. So there’s no time like the present to rally around him.

Disney has billions of dollars in merchandise sales to consider. Mickey and his friends (Minnie, Pluto, Goofy) make up Disney’s top-selling consumer products franchise, generating annual retail sales of at least $3.2 billion, according to The Licensing Letter, a trade publication. That tally does not include the Disney Store chain or outlets at Disney’s theme parks. Disney does not disclose sales information, although a spokeswoman said the franchise had been growing both domestically and overseas.

There are challenges, however, the result of a shifting retail marketplace (the demise of the Toys “R” Us chain) and declining television viewership. Disney’s child-focused cable channels are important Mickey engines, serving up animated specials, shorts and series. Mickey also has strong competitors in the preschool market — “Paw Patrol” on Nickelodeon, for instance.

“The challenge for any character, but especially for Mickey since he’s so historic, is maintaining relevancy,” said Marty Brochstein, a senior vice president at the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association. “And the adults are almost more important than the kids in that way. The grown-ups decide what the money gets spent on.”

Here are some of the components of Mickey-palooza:

Mickey the Muse

Associating older characters with of-the-moment artists is a tried-and-true way to demonstrate relevancy. That strategy appears to be part of the thinking behind “Mickey: The True Original Exhibition.” This Disney-created exhibit, running Thursday to Feb. 10 in a 16,000-square-foot space in Manhattan, features Mickey-inspired creations by contemporary artists like Amanda Ross-Ho, Shinique Smith and Daniel Arsham.

“With the scale of Disney and who Mickey Mouse has become, a lot of people forget that Walt Disney was a real artist,” Mr. Arsham said in a statement. “Being able to make my own mark on his legacy is a real dream.”

Tickets to the exhibit cost $38, and some time slots are already sold out. Darren Romanelli, a Los Angeles designer who works as DRx, served as curator.

Prime-Time Takeover

Fifteen dancers in formation. Drummers dangling from wires over the stage. Indoor fireworks. And the actress Kristen Bell, who provided Anna’s voice in “Frozen,” positioning Mickey as bringing “a much-needed warmth and reliability in a world where consistency is something hard to come by.”

So begins “Mickey’s 90th Spectacular,” a two-hour special on Disney-owned ABC on Sunday night. Produced by Don Mischer, whose credits include Super Bowl halftime shows and multiple Academy Awards ceremonies, “Mickey’s 90th” features performances by Josh Groban, Meghan Trainor and the K-pop group NCT 127, among others. Presenters include Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, who personally oversees the Mickey brand.

“We wanted to celebrate how this little character transcends boundaries,” Mr. Mischer said by phone after the taping. “He’s an everyman who sometimes fails but keeps trying. Who can’t relate to that?”

But it was tricky to find the right tone, said Charlie Haykel, another producer. “We didn’t want a history lesson,” he said. “And we didn’t want it to turn too sentimental.”

Stickers for Everyone

Mickey’s popularity has remained remarkably stable over the years, according to Henry Schafer, executive vice president for the Q Scores Company, which measures the popularity of celebrities, brands and licensed properties. A springtime poll by the company showed that 26 percent of the United States population ranked Mickey as a favorite cartoon character, far above the average. Mr. Schafer said Mickey’s appeal was particularly high among Latinos, 39 percent of whom said he was a favorite.

Disney’s vast theme park operation is one reason the squeaky-voiced rodent has remained so embedded in the culture. The parks, which attracted more than 150 million visitors last year, offer the masses a touch point — quite literally. Walking-around Mickeys sign autographs and pose for photos.

For the current campaign, the Disney parks will stock commemorative merchandise, sell “limited edition” desserts and host a dizzying number of events billed as the World’s Biggest Mouse Party. Hong Kong Disneyland will hand out birthday stickers to guests as they enter, for instance, and Disneyland Paris has those colossal (inedible) cupcakes on display. Starting in mid-January, Disney World in Florida will introduce a Mickey-focused “street jubilee.”

What About Minnie?

Poor Minnie. Always in the shadow of her boyfriend. But Disney has not left her out entirely.

She dances with Mickey on the ABC special and is front and center in the Mouse Party theme park events. Disney also arranged for her to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Mickey got his 40 years ago.) The sidewalk plaque was unveiled in January by Mr. Iger and Katy Perry, who wore polka dots in the character’s honor.

“To this day, no one rocks a bow, the color red or a dot quite like her,” Ms. Perry said at the time. “Trust me. I am trying.”

In recent years, Disney has put Minnie forward as a style icon, dispatching her to New York Fashion Week and arranging for Minnie-inspired collections or garments from Coach, Vans, Diane von Furstenberg and other fashion brands. Those efforts have increased Minnie licensing revenue considerably.

But the numbers are the numbers: Mickey has about 14.2 million followers on Facebook, while she has 4.8 million.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[mikorobotusa]

Yoga for kids!

Hey, Miko friends! Roll out your mats, because it’s  World Yoga Day this weekend!

The first thing that probably comes to mind when we think of yoga is either stoic, tranquil yogis on a mountaintop or women in a sunny, crowded studio somewhere in California. Sounds relaxing, but did you know that more kids than ever are practicing yoga?  According to Harvard, about 3% of kids are hitting yoga mats, and the number is growing by the day.

The truth is, yoga is for everyone! But getting your kids on the yoga mat might be a bit of a challenge. Yoga isn’t just about bending your body like a game of Twister; it’s about mental discipline. The word “yoga” refers to a union between the mind and body, promoting peace and mindfulness.

And that union can bring significant wellness benefits for kids at any age. Read on for more about the benefits of yoga for kids and how to get them started with this healthy mind-body practice.

Yoga’s wellness benefits for kids

Improved balance. Enhanced aerobic capacity. A boost to both  memory and self-esteem. Yoga brings wellness benefits at all ages, but  a growing body of research is focusing on the power of yoga practice for children.

“Yoga provides children with multi-sensory mindful movement and self regulation skill development,” says  Quiara Smith, a holistic and integrative pediatric pelvic health occupational therapist with extensive kids yoga training. “[It] offers children an opportunity to build physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual strength and resilience.”

Renu Kharkar, a Yoga Shastri accredited yoga instructor and Miko’s content manager, agrees. She says, “Yoga helps children understand concepts like body awareness, right postures, pranayama or breath regulation, preparedness, steadiness, relaxation, etc., and their importance in living a better life.”

So how early is too early to start kids on yoga? According to Smith, there’s no such thing: “I often have parents start practicing yoga with their infants to strengthen the caregiving bond. Exposing children to yoga and providing opportunities for yoga practice in early childhood sets children up for better motor coordination, social emotional skills and so many other benefits throughout childhood.”

Top 5 Yoga Tips for Kids

OK, so we know yoga has a ton of benefits. But what are some of the best methods for teaching it to children? To encourage your little yogi, start with these five tips. 

1. Have your kids watch while you practice

The learning and memory centers in a child's brain  are more stimulated when they see and experience things rather than reading or listening about them. You can model healthy habits for your kids through your own yoga practice. They may be inspired to copy you, or get interested in yoga thanks to your example.

2. Make it fun

Yoga might not be the most exciting proposition for kids. But what about…superhero training!? Use your imagination to plant some needs of curiosity. Let them know they could be flexible like Elastigirl, or as strong and solid as Superman (within reason, of course; we’re not Kryptonian).

3. Pick great poses

Use yoga poses like cat pose, camel pose and tree pose to infuse your yoga practice with some imagination. Move like an animal, jump on a ship to set sail, or pretend that you’re a tree! Connecting each pose to something fun and relatable will help your child enjoy yoga and stick with it.

Cosmic Kids on Miko Max does just that! With enjoyable lessons created by friendly and engaging instructors, there’s something for everyone.  Check it out on Miko Max or get a 7-day free trial (open on mobile) through the Miko Parent App if you’re not subscribed!

“Children enjoy stretching and bending exercises, as well as performing animal poses,” says Kharkar. “Making them do eye exercises can be a lot of fun, given the various combinations of eye movements. Getting them to sit and practice pranayam [breathing exercises] can be a bit of a challenge but certainly fun to watch.”

4. Play their favorite music

Yoga is meditative, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Music, like yoga, can also soothe the nerves and help you concentrate, so it combines perfectly with your yoga practice! Anything that makes the activity more enjoyable, while adding to its overall benefits, is a definite win.

5. Get a cool mat

You can consider letting your kid pick out a mat decorated with their favorite characters or designs. Having equipment that you like goes a long way toward helping to build a new habit by making it enjoyable. Check out this  roundup of yoga mats for kids to get some fresh ideas!

Miko makes building healthy new habits fun! The Cosmic Kids Talent on Miko Max is constantly adding new poses that are reinforced through games and activities, meaning building a mindfulness practice early is always a new adventure. Cosmic Kids has partnered with us to bring their expert trainers right into your home to help kids foster a passion for yoga!

Subscribe to  Miko Max now (open on mobile) or start your 7-day free trial to get started today!

[yearsblog]

Olly Alexander used his advance from his Years & Years record deal to do something he never could when he was a jobbing actor; he paid a man to make a small cut behind his left ear and pin it back with the help of a slender piece of metal. He’d had his eye on the procedure for years and only wanted the one ear pinned back because it stuck out more, and that reduced roughly 50 per cent of the cost. The pinnaplasty took 15 minutes and made him feel two things simultaneously.

“I was almost embarrassed by how overwhelmingly confident I was afterwards,” he says, looking up at the sun. “I thought, ‘God, is it really that simple?’”

The other thing he felt was a curious shame. “I had this weird moment… did I not love myself enough to just keep the face I was given?” He strokes the steely inside of his ear absent-mindedly. “Then I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll fix my teeth next.’”

If you’ve seen Olly smile, which he does often, you’ll have noticed he never got that procedure to ‘fix’ his teeth. At some point, the 27-year-old realised that certain things, even if they seem imperfect to you, don’t need fixing. Now he wants the rest of the male population to have the same realisation.

Alexander’s first big break came as an actor – a small role in Skins followed by a part in posh-boy drama The Riot Club in 2014. When he was still in school, he loved practising photoshoots and posing in front of his mirror at home, acting as if he was on America’s Next Top Model:

“I wanted to capture the glamour; it looked so cool.” His early experiences doing actual photoshoots, however, shattered the illusion. “I had such low self-esteem back then,” he says, citing a shoot he did when he was 17 for Teen Vogue’s ‘Young Hollywood’ issue. “The people were lovely but it was sort of traumatising,” he says.

“I was with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kaya Scodelario, Matthew Beard. Everyone went on to be massive. Anyway, it was weird. Having your picture taken when the onus is on you looking hot. That’s quite… stressful when you’re someone who doesn’t…”

He trails off and swirls his Aperol Spritz, which has been served in a goblet so thick and round it could happily accommodate a goldfish. Following his ShortList shoot, we’ve walked to a beer garden in southwest London. “It’s taken me almost 10 years to feel like I know the process isn’t about me. I can take myself out of the equation regarding whether I look good or not. It’s never been about that.”

If ‘Young Hollywood’ felt vapid and hollow to Alexander, his fortunes reversed as a pop star; he has thrived in a conventionally conservative pop landscape (Sam Smith, Shawn Mendes) and become a Technicolour, power-clashing, maximalist cannonball in the process.

The campaign to promote Years & Years’ second album, Palo Santo, focuses on a dystopian future ruled by androids, where a human (Alexander) is made to perform for their entertainment. As such, he dyed his hair a striking blood red and has spent this year serving Camden-cybergoth meets Berlin-sex-palace looks. He’s a young gay pop star, treading new ground within his industry – there’s not really a blueprint for what that looks like. That’s a lot of pressure for him to carry on his slight frame.

He thinks for a moment.

“I haven’t even considered that.”

“I get a real thrill for being ‘overtly queer’ in my aesthetic. I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I’d be shocked if they didn’t.”

Years & Years’ arrival was hard to miss. Alexander, with bandmates Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Türkmen, won the BBC’s Sound of 2015 poll, voted for by industry insiders and critics. Their first album, Communion – filled with throbbing, sinewy bangers about lust and desire, bruised hearts and man-on-man emotional power-plays – debuted at number one.

Two years later, Alexander fronted a documentary for BBC Three, Growing Up Gay, exploring the intersection between his sexuality and his mental health that felt instrumental in getting more men to discuss their own wellbeing. Alexander says he had identified his own concerns with the state of his mental health by the age of 13 and has always been vocal about it. He is an open book, frank and forthcoming. Whether it’s his sexuality, the changing nature of masculinity, or the state of austerity in the UK, Olly Alexander will always have something to say.

I ask him how his seismic rise has impacted his self-esteem. Does being adored on social media help pave over your insecurities, or does it amplify them?

“That all felt terrifying, to be honest,” he says. “It felt entirely possible that my real self would be a huge disappointment to all these people who were putting me on a pedestal. And if I met anyone who knew me online… it would be so horrifying. They think you’re one thing but you feel so far away from that. And then I would have these thoughts about people making judgements on me or my personal life, who my ex-boyfriends were. I had a negative reaction to it.”

Does it still bother you? “I’ve made peace with it. Our recent success… I had been planning it for so long,” he says. “I feel like I’ve gotten away with something. The lyrics, the short film, the costumes… it all felt like it was too weird to happen. Sometimes I think I have to be more ‘extra’ to get this kind of thing through [to people]. You have no idea how many conversations happen where the utterance, ‘Is it too gay, though?’ comes up. Nobody would say it to my face because they know I’d flip out. But it happens.”

He says he’s baffled by the way that queerness and sexuality is associated with being inappropriate for children. At last month’s BBC Radio 1’s Biggest Weekend, where he dressed in a bejewelled green one-piece that shimmered in the sun, he says he was criticised for his performance because it was “too erotic and too saucy”.

He agreed. “But it’s no different to Demi Lovato or Stefflon Don or Liam Payne. They all simulate sex on stage and they say things in their songs that are very erotic, they gyrate and wear revealing outfits. People don’t bat an eyelid, but as soon as I go on stage it’s a case of [he adopts a shrill, Helen Lovejoy tone]: ‘Think of the children!’’’ He pauses for a second. “I am thinking of the children. Young people need to see a queer person being comfortable in their body.”

In a New York Times profile earlier this year, country star KD Lang said that queer people were welcomed by the wider world only until their eroticism posed a threat. Keeping your head down, neutralising your sexuality and blending in is what LGBTQ people need to do to garner acceptance, or so goes the theory.

Alexander says that if his queerness feels more obtuse and radicalised, then it’s just a by-product of growing more comfortable with himself. “It’s less conscious, or direct,” he says. “There was never a moment when I said, ‘This is what I’m going to set out to do.’”

But with age comes a bit of stubbornness – and that’s a good thing.

“I get a real thrill for being ‘overtly queer’ in my aesthetic. I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I’d be shocked if they didn’t. I’d hesitate to say I had a more developed sense of self, though, because how I look doesn’t take into account my mind, or how I develop internally.”

“Sometimes I wonder about the guys I had these sexcapades with, who identified as straight, and I wonder where they are now, in their own journey.”

The first single from Palo Santo was ‘Sanctify’, a seductive paean to male sexuality, with a thumpy, rumbly drum beat that sounds like Britney Spears’ ‘Slave 4 U’ if it was appropriated by robots in the near future. It’s about the fallacy of lust and the fleetingness of human contact; unashamedly sexy and confrontational.

It’s also about straight men, many of whom Alexander has collided with at various points in his twenties.

It was something that always happened to him, he says – guys who identify as straight hooking up with him – and he always writes about what he knows. I tell him I always found it flattering.

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re touching on a complicated area for a lot of gay men. And I suppose for everyone else involved. It’s good to interrogate your desires, to unpack why people feel drawn to one another. You’re attracted to who you’re attracted to at the end of the day.”

If he had to guess, he says those straight men found him “alluring”. And he’s interested that some men who don’t identify as gay might be happy to sleep with men who are.

“We’re talking about how men express desire for one another. I find the exchange fascinating – what each person gets out of it, or what it makes each person feel. With ‘Sanctify’, I wanted to write something about the journey of coming out. It’s so drawn out. You come out to your friends, family, then the world, again and again, in hotels and on holiday and to cab drivers. And that can be painful. Sometimes I wonder about the guys I’d had these… sexcapades with, who identified as straight, and I wonder where they are now, in their own journey to understanding their sexuality.”

But he also believes you can identify as straight and still hook up with guys. “At the end of the day, these are just words we use to try to best describe ourselves. They’re not perfect.”

It’s late afternoon, and the sun is casting long shadows across the beer garden. Alexander is reflecting on how lucky he feels to have addressed his mental health at such a young age; it has left him with a toolbox full of ways to cope in all kinds of situations. “I believe we all encounter these problems,” he says. “Some people get to their fifties or sixties and realise there are aspects of their mental health they’ve never addressed.”

His control over his own mental health came in degrees; at school he was in and out of counselling due to an eating disorder, and was bullied by his peers because of his sexuality. Due to his early acting career he had enough disposable income by the age of 20 to fund a private therapist, and he admits he wouldn’t have been able to rely on the support offered by the NHS.

“It’s overbooked and slow, you can wait 12 weeks to see someone on the NHS, and that’s failing people. If you’re at crisis point, you need help urgently.” His own budget allowed for his private therapist for about six months.

“The situation is quite dire,” he says. “Who knows what will change? We have a government that has implemented austerity for the past eight years and has cut services for mental-health provision.” What about public campaigns aiming to de-stigmatise talking about mental health? Everyone from Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to Prince William has begun conversations about theirs.

“Talking is a great place to start,” he says. “But if there’s nowhere else to go after that, then the development of dealing with your mental health will stall.

“You feel a bit raw and exposed from [talking about] this kind of thing,” Alexander says, shrugging. “But I’ve arrived at a place where I feel pretty on top of my mental health. I get asked about it a lot. I’ve had moments recently where it almost felt like I was on a runaway train, and the train’s left the station and it’s hurtling towards hell, and I can’t get off, I’ve said too much, and I think, ‘Oh God, oh God,’ and I panic.”

He thinks for a minute. Maybe it’s the sun but we both feel exhausted.

“But this is relaxed and I feel in control. Sometimes I wish I’d kept that Pandora’s box shut, but not today.”

Palo Santo is released on 6 July

[ollyarchive]

"I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay": Olly Alexander on men and their feelings

The Years & Years frontman talks to Chris Mandle about sexuality, masculinity and mental health

Olly Alexander used his advance from his Years & Years record deal to do something he never could when he was a jobbing actor; he paid a man to make a small cut behind his left ear and pin it back with the help of a slender piece of metal. He’d had his eye on the procedure for years and only wanted the one ear pinned back because it stuck out more, and that reduced roughly 50 per cent of the cost. The pinnaplasty took 15 minutes and made him feel two things simultaneously.

“I was almost embarrassed by how overwhelmingly confident I was afterwards,” he says, looking up at the sun. “I thought, ‘God, is it really that simple?’”

The other thing he felt was a curious shame. “I had this weird moment… did I not love myself enough to just keep the face I was given?” He strokes the steely inside of his ear absent-mindedly. “Then I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll fix my teeth next.’”

If you’ve seen Olly smile, which he does often, you’ll have noticed he never got that procedure to ‘fix’ his teeth. At some point, the 27-year-old realised that certain things, even if they seem imperfect to you, don’t need fixing. Now he wants the rest of the male population to have the same realisation.

Alexander’s first big break came as an actor – a small role in Skins followed by a part in posh-boy drama The Riot Club in 2014. When he was still in school, he loved practising photoshoots and posing in front of his mirror at home, acting as if he was on America’s Next Top Model:

“I wanted to capture the glamour; it looked so cool.” His early experiences doing actual photoshoots, however, shattered the illusion. “I had such low self-esteem back then,” he says, citing a shoot he did when he was 17 for Teen Vogue’s ‘Young Hollywood’ issue. “The people were lovely but it was sort of traumatising,” he says.

“I was with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kaya Scodelario, Matthew Beard. Everyone went on to be massive. Anyway, it was weird. Having your picture taken when the onus is on you looking hot. That’s quite… stressful when you’re someone who doesn’t…”

He trails off and swirls his Aperol Spritz, which has been served in a goblet so thick and round it could happily accommodate a goldfish. Following his ShortList shoot, we’ve walked to a beer garden in southwest London. “It’s taken me almost 10 years to feel like I know the process isn’t about me. I can take myself out of the equation regarding whether I look good or not. It’s never been about that.”

If ‘Young Hollywood’ felt vapid and hollow to Alexander, his fortunes reversed as a pop star; he has thrived in a conventionally conservative pop landscape (Sam Smith, Shawn Mendes) and become a Technicolour, power-clashing, maximalist cannonball in the process.

The campaign to promote Years & Years’ second album, Palo Santo, focuses on a dystopian future ruled by androids, where a human (Alexander) is made to perform for their entertainment. As such, he dyed his hair a striking blood red and has spent this year serving Camden-cybergoth meets Berlin-sex-palace looks. He’s a young gay pop star, treading new ground within his industry – there’s not really a blueprint for what that looks like. That’s a lot of pressure for him to carry on his slight frame.

He thinks for a moment.

“I haven’t even considered that.”

“I get a real thrill for being ‘overtly queer’ in my aesthetic. I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I’d be shocked if they didn’t.”

Years & Years’ arrival was hard to miss. Alexander, with bandmates Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Türkmen, won the BBC’s Sound of 2015 poll, voted for by industry insiders and critics. Their first album, Communion – filled with throbbing, sinewy bangers about lust and desire, bruised hearts and man-on-man emotional power-plays – debuted at number one.

Two years later, Alexander fronted a documentary for BBC Three, Growing Up Gay, exploring the intersection between his sexuality and his mental health that felt instrumental in getting more men to discuss their own wellbeing. Alexander says he had identified his own concerns with the state of his mental health by the age of 13 and has always been vocal about it. He is an open book, frank and forthcoming. Whether it’s his sexuality, the changing nature of masculinity, or the state of austerity in the UK, Olly Alexander will always have something to say.

I ask him how his seismic rise has impacted his self-esteem. Does being adored on social media help pave over your insecurities, or does it amplify them?

“That all felt terrifying, to be honest,” he says. “It felt entirely possible that my real self would be a huge disappointment to all these people who were putting me on a pedestal. And if I met anyone who knew me online… it would be so horrifying. They think you’re one thing but you feel so far away from that. And then I would have these thoughts about people making judgements on me or my personal life, who my ex-boyfriends were. I had a negative reaction to it.”

Does it still bother you? “I’ve made peace with it. Our recent success… I had been planning it for so long,” he says. “I feel like I’ve gotten away with something. The lyrics, the short film, the costumes… it all felt like it was too weird to happen. Sometimes I think I have to be more ‘extra’ to get this kind of thing through [to people]. You have no idea how many conversations happen where the utterance, ‘Is it too gay, though?’ comes up. Nobody would say it to my face because they know I’d flip out. But it happens.”

He says he’s baffled by the way that queerness and sexuality is associated with being inappropriate for children. At last month’s BBC Radio 1’s Biggest Weekend, where he dressed in a bejewelled green one-piece that shimmered in the sun, he says he was criticised for his performance because it was “too erotic and too saucy”.

He agreed. “But it’s no different to Demi Lovato or Stefflon Don or Liam Payne. They all simulate sex on stage and they say things in their songs that are very erotic, they gyrate and wear revealing outfits. People don’t bat an eyelid, but as soon as I go on stage it’s a case of [he adopts a shrill, Helen Lovejoy tone]: ‘Think of the children!’’’ He pauses for a second. “I am thinking of the children. Young people need to see a queer person being comfortable in their body.”

In a New York Times profile earlier this year, country star KD Lang said that queer people were welcomed by the wider world only until their eroticism posed a threat. Keeping your head down, neutralising your sexuality and blending in is what LGBTQ people need to do to garner acceptance, or so goes the theory.

Alexander says that if his queerness feels more obtuse and radicalised, then it’s just a by-product of growing more comfortable with himself. “It’s less conscious, or direct,” he says. “There was never a moment when I said, ‘This is what I’m going to set out to do.’”

But with age comes a bit of stubbornness – and that’s a good thing.

“I get a real thrill for being ‘overtly queer’ in my aesthetic. I used to be scared of people thinking I was gay but now I’d be shocked if they didn’t. I’d hesitate to say I had a more developed sense of self, though, because how I look doesn’t take into account my mind, or how I develop internally.”

“Sometimes I wonder about the guys I had these sexcapades with, who identified as straight, and I wonder where they are now, in their own journey.”

The first single from Palo Santo was ‘Sanctify’, a seductive paean to male sexuality, with a thumpy, rumbly drum beat that sounds like Britney Spears’ ‘Slave 4 U’ if it was appropriated by robots in the near future. It’s about the fallacy of lust and the fleetingness of human contact; unashamedly sexy and confrontational.

It’s also about straight men, many of whom Alexander has collided with at various points in his twenties.

It was something that always happened to him, he says – guys who identify as straight hooking up with him – and he always writes about what he knows. I tell him I always found it flattering.

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re touching on a complicated area for a lot of gay men. And I suppose for everyone else involved. It’s good to interrogate your desires, to unpack why people feel drawn to one another. You’re attracted to who you’re attracted to at the end of the day.”

If he had to guess, he says those straight men found him “alluring”. And he’s interested that some men who don’t identify as gay might be happy to sleep with men who are.

“We’re talking about how men express desire for one another. I find the exchange fascinating – what each person gets out of it, or what it makes each person feel. With ‘Sanctify’, I wanted to write something about the journey of coming out. It’s so drawn out. You come out to your friends, family, then the world, again and again, in hotels and on holiday and to cab drivers. And that can be painful. Sometimes I wonder about the guys I’d had these… sexcapades with, who identified as straight, and I wonder where they are now, in their own journey to understanding their sexuality.”

But he also believes you can identify as straight and still hook up with guys. “At the end of the day, these are just words we use to try to best describe ourselves. They’re not perfect.”

It’s late afternoon, and the sun is casting long shadows across the beer garden. Alexander is reflecting on how lucky he feels to have addressed his mental health at such a young age; it has left him with a toolbox full of ways to cope in all kinds of situations. “I believe we all encounter these problems,” he says. “Some people get to their fifties or sixties and realise there are aspects of their mental health they’ve never addressed.”

His control over his own mental health came in degrees; at school he was in and out of counselling due to an eating disorder, and was bullied by his peers because of his sexuality. Due to his early acting career he had enough disposable income by the age of 20 to fund a private therapist, and he admits he wouldn’t have been able to rely on the support offered by the NHS.

“It’s overbooked and slow, you can wait 12 weeks to see someone on the NHS, and that’s failing people. If you’re at crisis point, you need help urgently.” His own budget allowed for his private therapist for about six months.

“The situation is quite dire,” he says. “Who knows what will change? We have a government that has implemented austerity for the past eight years and has cut services for mental-health provision.” What about public campaigns aiming to de-stigmatise talking about mental health? Everyone from Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to Prince William has begun conversations about theirs.

“Talking is a great place to start,” he says. “But if there’s nowhere else to go after that, then the development of dealing with your mental health will stall.

“You feel a bit raw and exposed from [talking about] this kind of thing,” Alexander says, shrugging. “But I’ve arrived at a place where I feel pretty on top of my mental health. I get asked about it a lot. I’ve had moments recently where it almost felt like I was on a runaway train, and the train’s left the station and it’s hurtling towards hell, and I can’t get off, I’ve said too much, and I think, ‘Oh God, oh God,’ and I panic.”

He thinks for a minute. Maybe it’s the sun but we both feel exhausted.

“But this is relaxed and I feel in control. Sometimes I wish I’d kept that Pandora’s box shut, but not today.”

Palo Santo is released on 6 July

[dnowit41]

Luka Doncic and Rick Carlisle: The dissolution of their relationship; what comes next for the Dallas Mavericks

by Tim McMahon

12/15/2021

Luka Doncic and Rick Carlisle spent three seasons together in Dallas. The Mavericks failed to win a playoff series in any of them. Sean Berry/NBAE via Getty Images

Luka Doncic and Dennis Smith Jr had become fast friends after the Dallas Mavericks selected the teenager from Slovenia third overall in the 2018 NBA draft.

Smith, whom the team had drafted ninth a year prior, had shown Doncic around the city and invited the new guy into his social circle. They lived in the same apartment building and had spent hours playing video games together.

If one was spotted during a Mavs road trip, chances are the other would be there too, along with young swingman Dorian Finney-Smith.

The Mavs were quick to market their new guard tandem. Doncic and Smith posed together during media day, smiling for pictures; they were promoted heavily on the team's website. Along with soon-to-retire legend Dirk Nowitzki, the young lottery picks were the players featured on billboards around the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.

While a friendship blossomed in Dallas' newly formed backcourt, coach Rick Carlisle and the front office were planning to blow it up, sources involved with the franchise's decision-making said, never really believing the duo had staying power.

The Mavs knew Doncic would need to be the primary ball handler to fulfill his immense potential, and they didn't believe Smith, who they had determined was a high-usage, ball-dominant guard with a suspect jumper, could complement him.

Carlisle, for his part, doubted Smith could be a productive NBA starter, team sources said. He had wanted the Mavs to draft guard Donovan Mitchell, and had completely soured on Smith midway through his rookie campaign.

Seven months later, Smith was traded to the New York Knicks, an afterthought in a deal that brought Kristaps Porzingis midway through Doncic's rookie season.

It might not have been a basketball fit, but Doncic and Smith had formed a bond. And Carlisle's apparent determination to make Smith miserable during their brief time as teammates was appalling to Doncic, several former players and staffers told ESPN.

Multiple players were shocked during one early-season team meeting when Carlisle accused Smith of being jealous of Doncic, sources said. The players considered it incredibly unfair to Smith, who wasn't playing well but was making an honest effort to mesh with Doncic on the court.

Doncic particularly resented what he perceived as Carlisle's attempt to pit him against his friend and teammate, team sources said.

It's an early chapter in the Luka Doncic story, an origin point for rising distrust and tension between the team's young star and his coach -- and an indication the relationship would have an expiration date.

"He brought a championship to Dallas," Doncic said after a win in Memphis on Dec. 8, "and everybody respects him."

Those are the most extensive comments Doncic, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has made about Carlisle since the coach's resignation from Dallas in June. Carlisle, now the Indiana Pacers' coach, missed Friday's Mavericks-Pacers game after testing positive for COVID-19.

New coach Jason Kidd and the Mavericks are 27 games into an effort to clear three seasons' worth of dysfunction, disillusionment and blowups that cracked the foundation of a franchise built around a superstar who has yet to win a playoff series.

FORMER MAVS CENTER Salah Mejri, a player whose fiery emotions often weren't appreciated by referees, picked up two quick technical fouls in the third quarter of a January 2018 win against the Washington Wizards. The second tech was a particularly quick whistle, and Mejri pleaded his case to Carlisle before leaving the court.

"You've got two f---ing points, get the f--- out of here!" Carlisle shouted at Mejri, pointing toward the tunnel to the locker room, an exchange caught by television cameras.

After practice the next day, Carlisle told reporters he had a talk with Mejri and "apologized to him for behavior that was really emotional, uncalled for and unprofessional on my part."

But people with the team didn't consider the behavior to be uncharacteristic for Carlisle. Several Mavericks team staffers, from members of the coaching staff to non-basketball employees, told ESPN they felt intimidated and disrespected by Carlisle, who they said could be abrasive and demanding. The coach also had contentious relationships with several Mavs players throughout his 13-year tenure.

Mejri felt belittled by Carlisle, a team source said, believing the coach targeted him with unnecessarily harsh criticism -- usually in front of the team.

And Mejri functioned as a big-brother figure for Doncic. Mejri had played for Real Madrid before signing with the Mavs in 2015. He looked out for Doncic when he was promoted to the Spanish club's top team as an adolescent. Doncic was so close with Mejri that he agreed to an interview with a local television station as a rookie on the condition that Mejri, a fringe rotation player, would also be part of the sit-down.

The public exchange between Carlisle and Mejri happened the season before Doncic was drafted, but it was indicative of the tense Mavs locker room when he arrived.

Early in Doncic's rookie season, the players were in near mutiny in the wake of an especially heated, confrontational team meeting, players and members of that staff said. Carlisle apologized to the team a couple of days later and gave assistant coach Jamahl Mosley, who was popular with the players, increased responsibilities regarding the managing of player and coaching-staff relationships. It was Mosley's voice that the players often heard from the coaching staff, sometimes more so than Carlisle's.

Mosley developed an especially close bond with Doncic. But over the next few years Carlisle came to consider Mosley a threat, team sources said, believing that Mosley was attempting to position himself to take Carlisle's job. Instead, Mosley became the coach of the Orlando Magic in July, a couple of weeks after the Mavs hired Kidd.

Seven months before, the team had lost another valuable liaison in veteran guard J.J. Barea, who often had served as connective tissue between Carlisle and Doncic, as well as other players, the previous two seasons. Sources said the Mavs' front office came to regret releasing Barea during the 2020-21 preseason.

Barea, a role player on the 2011 title team and a leader in the locker room even as his playing time decreased, helped bring Doncic and Porzingis together, playing cards with them on the team plane and facilitating communication between the franchise cornerstones.

That relationship began to erode last season, when the awkwardness that developed between them was so apparent that it was noteworthy when they exchanged high-fives. Sources noted that Carlisle wasn't positioned to manage it because he had poor relationships with both.

Porzingis was frustrated, feeling he was a strategic afterthought for a team that couldn't get out of the first round, often utilized primarily as a catch-and-shoot 3-point threat to space the floor for Doncic. That was spotlighted during the Mavs' seven-game playoff loss to the LA Clippers, when the 7-foot-3 Porzingis spent most of the series spotted up in the corner because Carlisle was convinced he was incapable of punishing LA's switching defense with post-ups.

As he entered the offseason, Porzingis was so disillusioned, sources said, that he privately hoped he would be traded.

CARLISLE ATTEMPTED TO patch his relationship with Doncic. The coach heaped praise on his star in the media, often comparing him to legends such as Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, and protected the Mavs' young face of the franchise from criticism, even if it required stretching logic to do so.

An example: Doncic reported to last year's training camp weighing more than 260 pounds, according to sources, and conditioning was clearly a factor in his slow start. Carlisle blamed the NBA's pandemic-disrupted schedule beginning earlier than originally anticipated for complicating Doncic's offseason routine.

But their relationship was too far gone, Doncic growing even more distant from his coach, and more defiant of him during the heat of games.

Kristaps Porzingis, center, whom the Mavericks traded for in February 2019, felt frustrated with his role in Rick Carlisle's offense. Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Doncic questioned Carlisle's authority in front of the team on at least one occasion early in the 2020-21 season: "Who's in charge -- you or Bob?" Doncic barked on his way back to the bench during an early-season game. He was referring to then-Mavs director of quantitative research Haralabos "Bob" Voulgaris, whose rise in power played a role in Dallas' front-office dysfunction and who many players believed dictated lineups and rotation decisions to Carlisle. Carlisle relied heavily on Voulgaris' data but always had final say, team sources said.

In another instance, Doncic had just drawn his third foul midway through the third quarter of last season's playoff opener and was upset that Carlisle had opted to substitute for him. Carlisle ignored the superstar's gesture that indicated he wanted to play through foul trouble.

As Jalen Brunson checked in, Doncic briefly took his glare off Carlisle, dropping his head and clenching his fingers, squeezing the air as if he were crushing something in his hands. Doncic barked at Carlisle as he walked toward the Dallas bench, shaking his head along the way.

Doncic didn't stop at his seat at the end of the bench, stomping another 10 steps until he reached the short wall at the bottom of the arena's lower bowl. He leaned against the wall, rested his head on top of his arms, turned his back to the floor and remained there for most of the Clippers' ensuing possession. When he returned to the bench, Doncic stood and again shouted in Carlisle's direction before finally taking his seat.

Nobody on the Dallas bench blinked. Players, staffers and coaches had become accustomed to Doncic cursing out Carlisle, the dynamic between the generational star and championship-proven coach deteriorating with each passing clash.

After Doncic cooled off, Carlisle subbed him back into the game. He finished with a 31-point triple-double, leading the Mavs to the Game 1 win. The blowup was business as usual.

Carlisle privately joked he had developed selective hearing, choosing to tune out Doncic yelling at him during games. Doncic was often bombastic in his disagreements with coaching decisions on the court, but refrained from sharing those criticisms of Carlisle in media availability.

"If we talk, we're going to talk," Doncic said following a close loss last season in Milwaukee, during which he angrily gestured that he thought Carlisle should have called a last-minute timeout. "It's not going to be in the media. It's between us."

But, for all of the friction, the partnership between Doncic and Carlisle wasn't fruitless.

Carlisle quickly gave Doncic, who many scouts and executives around the league doubted could play point guard due to his limited speed and quickness, the keys to the Mavs' offense. The former Mavs coach spread the floor as much as possible and gave Doncic more creative freedom than he ever allowed any point guard, including Hall of Famer Kidd, who had won a title with Carlisle in 2011.

And Doncic thrived, winning Rookie of the Year and joining Kevin Durant as the only players over the past five decades with a pair of first-team All-NBA selections before turning 23.

DALLAS' ORIGINAL PLAN was for Carlisle to return for the 2021-22 season, but it had become clear the coach would have been on the hot seat from the start.

After last season's opening-round Game 7 loss, there were legitimate questions about Carlisle's job security. For the first time, people in the organization weren't sure Carlisle would be back, and Mark Cuban's lukewarm vote of confidence shortly after the final buzzer confirmed the coach was on shaky ground.

"Let me tell you how I look at coaching," Cuban told ESPN that day, after Doncic had 46 points and 14 assists, but the Mavs were blown out inside Staples Center. "You don't make a change to make a change. Unless you have someone that you know is much, much, much better, the grass is rarely greener on the other side."

Carlisle had intended to travel to Doncic's native country several days later in June to observe the Slovenian national team's camp and spend time with the Mavs' star. Those plans, however, were canceled at Doncic's request, sources said. Doncic, particularly in the wake of Cuban firing longtime Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson, wanted no distractions as he prepared for the qualifying tournament in which Slovenia clinched the program's first Olympic bid.

Carlisle, who had two seasons remaining on his contract, broached the subject of an extension with Cuban around that time, sources said. Cuban shot down the idea, confirming Carlisle's suspicion his job status was tenuous.

Later that week, the winningest coach in franchise history informed Cuban he was resigning.

Doncic, who hasn't yet exercised his superstar privilege of influencing personnel decisions, never called for Carlisle to go, sources said. He ultimately didn't have to.

"You never want to get to a point where you ever feel like you're overstaying your welcome," Carlisle told ESPN this summer, "and I just felt like this is the right time."

Carlisle decided that he'd determine the right time -- when he could immediately land another job. A week later he agreed to a four-year, $29 million deal with the Pacers.

"I have extreme gratitude for my 13 years with Mark Cuban and the Mavericks," Carlisle told ESPN this week. "I cherish the memory of our 2011 title run and all I learned there as a coach. It's been an honor to work with generational players like Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Doncic, and to see a long list of players develop with the Mavs organization.

"It was a privilege to witness Luka's genius for three years," Carlisle continued. "He does and will continue to do amazing things every night. I am excited and appreciative for the opportunity to coach in Indiana and wish the Mavs organization all the best."

Carlisle, whose Pacers are 12-17, declined to comment further for this story.

Less than three weeks after Carlisle's departure, the Mavs hired Kidd, who sources said was the only candidate seriously considered.

Doncic has not had any public outbursts toward Kidd, who has prioritized communication with his players, appointing Doncic, Porzingis and Tim Hardaway Jr. to serve as a three-man leadership council. At the council's suggestion, Kidd played all 15 players in their home-opening win against the Houston Rockets, a rarity meant to highlight the Mavs' improved camaraderie and connection to the coaching staff.

"The more you talk, the better," Doncic said that night. "Talking solves things, so I think it's a good idea."

Jason Kidd is 14-13 in his first year as Mavericks head coach. Glenn James/NBAE via Getty Images

While Kidd has been generally upbeat and positive -- an attempt to correct the cultural flaws from Carlisle's tenure -- he has publicly challenged Doncic throughout the season.

During the preseason, Kidd pushed Doncic to "trust his teammates." After a recent loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, Kidd said Doncic needed to be more selective with complaining to officials, noting that the griping often prevented Doncic from getting back in transition.

Porzingis has felt refreshed after Carlisle's resignation, team sources said. Kidd has made a point of giving Porzingis the green light to take the kind of shots Carlisle wanted to eliminate from his arsenal.

Porzingis' overall offensive numbers are similar to last season -- he has been more effective on post-ups but has slumped from 3-point range -- but he's noticeably happier. His chemistry with Doncic has improved, as both were eager to start the new season, part of the better "vibe" several Mavs have cited under Kidd.

"If you're not having fun, then it's tough to play and give your all," Porzingis said after a recent win over the Clippers. "I feel like this year we have that kind of environment."

But while the team culture seems to have improved, at least through a third of the season, the performance on the court has not.

Dallas, like last season, has gotten off to a disappointing start as Doncic again plays his way into shape. The Mavs (14-13) have lost nine of their past 14 games, a slump that started when Doncic missed three games with a sprained left ankle, which hasn't healed. Doncic, who turned the ankle again in Friday's loss to the Pacers, will miss a third consecutive game Wednesday when the Los Angeles Lakers visit the Mavs (7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN).

For the season, the Mavs are 17th in the league in offensive efficiency (108.4), a steep drop-off from ranking first and eighth, respectively, the last two seasons.

Kidd has referred to the Mavs, who didn't make any major offseason additions, as a team that "isn't built to play defense" and "a jump-shooting team that isn't making jump shots" after recent losses. He has repeatedly noted that the Mavs tend to "hang our heads" when shots aren't falling, publicly pushing his team to be more mature and mentally tough.

"We've got to stick together," Doncic said after a lopsided home loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. "This is what real teams do in tough times, is stick together. It's easy to stay together when it's all good, you know? The tough times, that's when you have to stay together."

[acsversace-news]

Andrew Cunanan was cool.

Like, really cool.

Sincerely, legitimately awesome.

That’s the tragedy of “Creator/Destroyer,” the penultimate episode of this extraordinary season of television. By the time we see Andrew in his full glory as one of the wildest guys at his high school, we’ve also seen his father Modesto, who debuts in this episode, get his hooks deep into the kid. Andrew has seen his father harangue and assault his mother. He’s borne the weight of all his dad’s dreams, knowing this comes at the expense of his siblings, sensing on some level it’s not right to have this kind of pressure placed on him but, because the pressure is couched as praise, not knowing how to fight back. He’s been…well, the show is cagey on this, but saying he’s been molested by his father would not be out of bounds.

And even now, as an ebullient and confident teenager, he’s begun certain behavior patterns that will get him in trouble in the end: he has a sugar daddy, and he becomes fast friends with Lizzie, his future bestie, because she shows up at a high-school house party pretending to be a kid rather than the married adult she really is. (“I’m an impostor.” “All the best people are.”) He’s picking up little tidbits on how to deceive (including his go-to pseudonym, DeSilva, the name of the people who own the house where the party takes place) and why (because “when you feel special, success will follow” as his father teaches him).

But for a brief time, he’s just a cool, slightly weird, slightly obnoxious, slightly closeted teenager, and if you weren’t at least two of those things during your high school career I don’t wanna know you. He stands up to homophobes in a familiar way, by camping it up even further, going so far as to pose for his class photo with his shirt all the way unbuttoned to show off his (impressive!) torso. He’s prophetically chosen to be “Most Likely to Be Remembered,” and equally prophetically selects “Après moi, le déluge” as his yearbook quote. He rolls into the parking lot like a refugee from Less Than Zero (complete with that movie’s soundtrack staple, the Bangles’ cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter”; the film was his IRL fave) and shows up at the house party in an Eddie Murphy red-leather jumpsuit. (Finally it’s clear why so many of his music cues over the course of the ‘90s portion of the series were anachronistically ’80s: The ’80s were his time.) This Andrew could be loved. This Andrew could be saved.

In that sense, Andrew’s not so far away from our episode-opening glimpse of Gianni Versace as a kid, though that’s the least successful segment of the episode, if not the whole season. This has been a bugbear of mine all season long, but for real: Anytime native Italian-speakers start talking to one another when there’s no one else around, those conversations scenes reallyshould take place in Italian. It’s next to impossible to feel a connection to young Gianni and his mother when they’re talking in absurdly accented English like they’re doing a nostalgic spaghetti-sauce commercial. The old-country lighting and color palette doesn’t help either, nor does the dialogue that Mama Versace and Young Gianni are forced to spout — an uplifting, after-school-special lesson about not letting bullies and homophobes and sexists stop you from pursuing your dreams, the importance of hard work, yadda yadda yadda.

Knowing this show, the excess schmaltz here is probably deliberate, intended to drive home the contrast between Gianni’s genuinely supportive mother, who instills in him the belief that effort, talent, and success are all interconnceted, with Andrew’s faux-supportive parents, who treat him like a god when they’re not terrifying him with pressure and spousal abuse and who brainwash him into believing that success is handed out to innately special people like a party favor. I get that, I appreciate that. But in a time when shows from The Americans to Narcos can spend half an episode or more using another language — or when shows like Game of Thrones shoot scenes in languages that are completely imaginary! — going with the “when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza-pie” approach displays a baffling lack of confidence in the audience. (This is the only episode where Tom Rob Smith shares the writing credit with another person, Maggie Cohn, and I wonder if that’s got something to do with it.)

Fortunately the show is on firmer ground with Andrew’s father. As Modesto “Pete” Cunanan, Jon Jon Briones faces the daunting task of airdropping into the series in its penultimate episode, in a role with no more or less responsibility than revealing the foundational traumas that turned Andrew Cunanan who and what he is. He makes it work so well that it starts to feel like he’s been there all along. He inhabits the era perfectly, for one thing: With his impeccable coiffed hair, double-breasted suits, tight-fitting leisure ware, and grown-ass-man mustache, he looks like every uncle in your family’s old faded photo album. He has a fireplug physicality and a crisp vocal cadence that can project confidence and dynamism one moment, then weirdness and menace the next. Frequently he’s called upon to shift between modes almost within a single sentence, as when he chokeslams Andrew’s mother Mary Ann to the ground and then immediately starts celebrating the purchase of his son’s new car once again.

And like many Horatio Alger cases, his belief in pulling himself up by his own bootstraps (as his superiors at Merrill Lynch put it) comes with undue contempt for those he considers weak. He brings up his childhood poverty in the Philippines as a talking point; he brings up Mary Ann’s postpartum depression and hospitalization as a weapon. Unsurprisingly for such a figure, at no time does he seem capable of addressing or even acknowledging his own weaknesses, his own pain. For one thing, he’s clearly experienced anti-Asian racism; that’s the unmistakable subtext of his interview with Merrill, where he’s the only candidate who isn’t white, as well as his relentless drive to assimilate and Americanize. It’s hinted at in the way he refers to his family home as a place his would-be employers could purchase with the cash in their wallets; when we finally see it, it’s not a mansion to be sure, but it’s no hellhole either. It’s a house, but it happens to be a house in a place other than America, which makes it a hovel in his eyes. He passes this self-hatred on to his son, who when asked by a relative in Manila if this is his “first time home” can’t even bring himself to respond. Only by concocting the legend of his father the pineapple magnate (plantations “as far as the eye can see,” he tells his Filipino boss at the pharmacy, for whom he holds nothing but contempt) can Andrew reconcile his heritage with his and his father’s hunger for the American dream.

Moreover, while Modesto’s justification for why the feds are out to bust him for theft but not his bosses — “They’re all stealing. My crime was that I stole too small…If I had stolen $100 million, they would have promoted me” — is pretty much completely accurate, it doesn’t explain why he left his family holding the bag. Watch him when he returns to his cubicle after learning his fraud has been uncovered: He grips the desk, grimaces, puts his head down for about two seconds, and by the time he raises it again he’s decided to buy tickets to Manila and abandon his wife and children. Not even his wall full of photos of Andrew (the style of which should look familiar at this point given all of his son’s similar shrines to Gianni Versace, and what does that tell you about this relationship) prevents him from telling his travel agent to book that flight.

I think there’s a moment that portrays the damage Modesto does to his son more clearly and powerfully than the car incident, than the bit where he pretends not to have gotten the job at Merrily Lynch and then berates Mary Ann for believing him, than his escape and exile, than his homophobic confrontation with his son when Andrew (in a rare and genuinely impressive display of hard work and emotional uncertainty) tracks him down in Manila, or even during the bedside scene that very heavily implies child molestation (implied again when, in ostensible reference to becoming reaccustomed to the Manila heat, he purrs to Andrew that “You can pretend you belong somewhere else, but the body knows”). And Modesto’s not even on screen for it at first.

In a scene that’s achingly familiar to any former young overachiever waiting for confirmation that they’ve gotten the thing they’re supposed to want, Andrew grabs the days mail directly from the postal worker and flips envelopes to the floor until he finds one from Bishop’s School, the prestigious secondary school Modesto has made it his life’s mission to get Andrew into. The next time we and his mother Mary Ann see him, he’s in tears. “Why are you crying?” Mary Ann asks, her toothy grin shaping the words. “You got in!”

Andrew is crying the way you might cry when you hear a certain test result came back negative, or receive word that your kid is alright after a bus accident. The pressure of being Modesto Cunan’s special son — so special that his father literally gets down and kisses his feet upon hearing the news — was slowly crushing him. Now that he’s made it, he’s sobbing from the decompression. What misery it must have been for him a few years later, then, when he realized he’d fought all his life to live up to a fraud. “I’m the world’s greatest opportunist,” his father once told him. We’ll see about that, Dad. We’ll see about that.

[doctorwhonews]

Free Comic Book Day 2018 - Doctor Who Special (Titan Comics)

Latest Review: Writers: Nick Abadzis, John Freeman, George Mann and Jody Houser Artists: Giorgia Sposito, Arianna Florean, Christopher Jones, Mariano Laclustra and Rachael Stott Colorists: Marco Lesko and Carlos Cabrera Publisher: Titan Comics FC, 30pp, $0.00 On sale: May 5, 2018 With Titan Comics' regular Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor strips each having reached the natural conclusions of their Year Three runs, and their recently-announced The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor mini-series still two months away from its launch, now seems as opportune a time as any for the publisher to take stock and prepare its readers for the adventures ahead. Enter their contribution to this year's Free Comic Book Day line-up, a 25-page one-off Special containing four bite-sized primers for the future of their regular Doctor Who strips, the Road saga and the Seventh Doctor's Titan debut alike. There's every chance, of course, that the aforementioned annual event - held at comic-book retailers the world over to promote the industry and its physical purveyors - will be over by the time that you're reading this review, yet that doesn't mean you won't find some stores such as Forbidden Planet still housing the odd copy of this much-anticipated strip here and there. Should Titan's most dedicated followers and / or newcomers to the worlds of Who comics make the trip, however, or are they best off waiting for the Doctor's printed exploits to kick off again this Summer and beyond? Let's find out... "Catch a Falling Star": For any readers like this reviewer who've yet to finish reading the latest string of Titan storylines based in the David Tennant era, Special's opening tale might well prove rather disorientating at first, though that's rather the point; seemingly deceased companion Gabby Gonzalez seems just as perplexed as she's flung through outer space after the Year Three finale presumably detached her from the TARDIS with considerable force. How better to spend the time, then, than by taking a metaphorical trip down memory line, simultaneously bringing newcomers up to speed on her recent voyages across the Time Vortex? From Sontarans to Sutekh in his reincarnated form, from Cybermen to Gabby's best friend Cindy Wu stepping aboard the Doctor's iconic Type 40 capsule, it's been one heck of an eventful ride for the despondent waitress-turned-pro artist over the last 36 months. True to form, Giorgia Sposito and Arianna Florean's dazzlingly whimsical artwork splendidly reminds us - alongside the awe-inspired sense of wonder and fantasy coming via the dialogue which writer Nick Abadzis affords Gabby - of the eclectic and unashamedly outrageous tone which made this particular TARDIS team's travels such an instant hit with fans of Titan's licensed Who output. Naturally, though, few could blame Ms. Gonzalez for questioning her life decisions given her present near-fatal predicament, so that Abadzis briefly explores her justifiable doubts as well comes as a welcome surprise, in many ways enabling us to draw parallels between the character and past companions such as Martha Jones for whom the Doctor's entrance signalled virtually the destruction of their personal lives and family ties. Who wouldn't reconsider the same dilemma as that which was posed to Donna in "Turn Left", namely whether life would've turned out better had their path never crossed with "the man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not out of shame"? As such, it would seem that Gabby needs affirmation that her story doesn't end on such a somber note, and while we'll refrain from revealing her just how "Catch a Falling Star" concludes, we can say that she might just get her wish and transform the Doctor's future in the process... “The Armageddon Gambit”: The best way to summarize the second narrative barrage in Special’s artillery is as an audition piece for Andrew Cartmel and Ben Aaronovitch’s impending Seventh Doctor mini-series, “Operation Volcano”. Unlike that five-part saga, John Freeman takes on writing duties for “The Armageddon Gambit”, but if his remarkably authentic rendition of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred’s wit-laden, mentor-student-esque banter from their 1980s run as the Doctor and Ace serves as any indication of what to expect from “Volcano” upon its launch next month, then experiencing each issue over the coming weeks should seem remarkably akin to watching a McCoy serial on TV / home video / streaming platforms for the first time. While Freeman’s relatively standalone narrative – which sees the ever-courageous time travellers chirpily interrupt a band of galactic tyrants standing on the brink of galactic conquest, having bested the Draconians, Chimerions and Voord alike – probably won’t win this year’s Pulitzer Prize for literary ingenuity, his script does at least enable the mini-series’ artistic / colour tag team of Christopher Jones and Marco Lesko to amply strut their stuff. Their bold style, in marked contrast to Sposito and Florean’s tonally befitting impressionistic imagery, does a splendid job of bringing the tale’s characters to vivid life, with Lesko’s choice to embroid the chief Kla-shi-kel clansman with striking golden armour for example visibly setting him apart in military stature and greed-driven ambitions. Look out in particular for their pitch-perfect depiction of the Doctor and Ace’s grand entrance, an instantly iconic raison d'etre for “Armageddon” which easily stands among Titan’s most memorable panels to date. “Midnight Feast”: Whereas Abadzis and Freeman both had their fair share of legwork in terms of painting a roadmap for the future flights of the Seventh and one other Doctor here, one can almost hear George Mann’s relief at finding no such pressure exerted upon his Eleventh Doctor contribution by Titan’s head honchos. “Midnight Feast” makes no apologies for its lighthearted tone or completely standalone storyline, then, with Mann instead affirming to newcomers his ability to capture Matt Smith’s zany eccentricity and energetic zest for life, all while re-introducing his ex-librarian companion Alice Obiefune along the way. Yet it’s fair to say that Alice rather laments her inclusion here, finding her travelling companion ransacking the TARDIS kitchen for edible delights before he zips off to the nearest alien restaurant to find alternative inspiration. Laying many criticisms at the feet of a self-proclaimed “culinary adventure” such as “Feast” would seem rather harsh, especially with Mariano Laclaustra’s diverse menagerie of stunningly-rendered alien patrons calling to mind Star Wars’ Mos Eisley Cantina in its aesthetic inventiveness. The only warning that we’d give, however, is that those unfamiliar with Alice won’t find the same level of introductory exposition here as that which Gabby provided regarding her past in “Falling Star”, largely since the latter’s existential plight gave Abadzis the ideal plot device to justify such nostalgic reminiscing. Since Alice only features for but a few panels here, this reviewer would instead advise anyone wanting to catch up on her entry into the Doctor’s life – between Amy and Rory’s turbulent honeymoon and reunion for the Time Lord’s death in “The Impossible Astronaut” – to check out the first volume of Year One, After Life, ahead of Year Four’s presumed launch later this year. "And Introducing..." What of Doctor Who’s fast-approaching return to BBC One with a new face, though? Does Jodie Whittaker’s absence from Special’s multi-Doctor front cover mean that we shouldn’t expect to see her incarnation feature in Titan’s licensed roster for the time being? Not at all – browse past the insightful Reader’s Guide at the end of the strip, which details the various regular strips, crossovers and classic Doctor mini-series currently available, and you’ll find three panels featuring a strange new world, strange new fauna and feathered onlookers, a strange new TARDIS and its strange new occupant embarking on her first ‘canon’ journey, her face brimming with visible passion and already infectious joy at discovering the unknown. Much as every fan relishes jumping to far-fetched conclusions from even Who’s most basic marketing materials, the rousing thrill that comes with turning the page and witnessing the Thirteenth Doctor in action for the first time can’t possibly be denied. That her increasingly coveted costume and intriguing extraterrestrial surroundings are drawn in such a majestic light by Rachael Stott, the upcoming Thirteenth Doctor regular strip’s resident artist, just goes to show that she’s fully aware of the significance of this watershed moment for the show. The same can be said of Jody Houser’s daringly dialogue-devoid script, aping Whittaker’s reveal video last year in building its structure entirely around the new incarnation’s gravitas-laden arrival. A tremendous end, then, to a tremendous Free Comic Book Day special, one which accomplishes the remarkable joint feats of setting past Doctors on unexpected new trajectories for the coming months and making the Thirteenth’s debut – both on-screen and the printed page – that much more of an exciting proposition. Be sure to follow our reviews of Titan’s The Thirteenth Doctor series as it kicks off in tandem with Season Eleven this Autumn… http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/05/free_comic_book_day_2018_doctor_who_special_titan_c.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr