#Ashley Gold

[warningsine]

[choerrypies]

We're short, so we don't know that you're bald.

[fathercharlesoffdensen]

Girls5eva dropped in on my recent CZG mood-boarding sesh(eseses) and brought their BPE along for the ride!

[garadinervi]

Champagne Confetti, Champagne Confetti, 2023, Limited Edition 150-gram Red Splatter vinyl in a gatefold jacket + Digital Album [Photo: Sharolyn B. Hagen]

Aby Wolf: vocals Eric Mayson: piano, vocals Joey Van Phillips: drums, percussion Heather Barringer: marimba, percussion Eri Isomura: vibraphone, percussion Sara Pajunen: violin Laura Harada: violin Michelle Kinney: cello Nicholas Gaudette: double bass (on recording) Cameron Kinghorn: vocals, trumpet Jacob Mullis: vocals Ashley Gold: vocals

Album cover photo: Sharolyn B. Hagen

[postguiltypleasures]

My peak TV Journey: *Girls5Eva*

I am generally pretty strict with myself about trying to finish tv series  before starting new ones, but I made an exception for Girls5Eva. I had been meaning to try since it debuted. It was exactly as delightful as I hoped it would be. I immediately loved all four leads in the show. It is sort of n the trend of revisiting female celebrities treatment in the early 2000s. But the show’s story is also about now. It’s about the revisiting of the 2000s that we’re doing now, and it is also about how the streaming boom is one of many things that destroyed the mainstream as it existed then, creating new niches and making it harder to gain momentum. Given that, it is appropriate that it was created for Peacock, cancelled after two seasons, then renewed by Netflix before the strikes delayed it indefinitely. Will there be more? I have no idea, but, I’m glad that the two seasons of it do exist.

Watching this reigniting my enthusiasm for Sara Bareilles, which had waned after being disappointed by her 2013 album, The Blessed Unrest. (I have since re-listened, it’s too long but mostly fine. Also between that album and watching this show I saw her on Broadway as The Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods and she was great.) She’s hilarious here, as Dawn, the aspiring song writer who has been doing odd jobs in family businesses since the group’s original end. The groups aspiring song writer, some of he best moments come with singing songs that will never work. Dawn is also the only happily married member of the group and the relationship with her husband and son is delightful. Her husband, Scott, played by Daniel Breaker, is a middle school guidance counsellor. Far out enough from show business to be grounding, but also crazy in his own way. The second season ends with Dawn realizing that she’s pregnant with her second child and trying to figure out how to balance that and her firstborn with the band’s attempt at touring. There are jokes about her being a female Ted Lasso, leaving her child at home while she’s away for her career. (The final season of Ted Lasso proved to be very conscious of this aspect of the set up.) The end with an attempt at a mini tour was a good way next steps for her. 

Busy Phillips played Summer, the member of the band who was also a member of Christian purity cult who starts the series with a learned passivity, and a lot of enthusiasm. This feels like semi-subverting her character type in other shows from Freaks and Geeks to Cougar Town where she is the more sexually experienced than significant characters she’s paired up with and generally pretty aggressive, where she's the opposite here. But these type’s have to exist together. The types also are bonded through loud taste in fashion and very limited experience, making them ignorant of a lot of common knowledge, but experts on some esoterica. At the start of the series she is unhappily married to Kev, who is the same cult and as she, and is a deeply closeted homosexual. He’s played by Andrew Rannells in a way that you can understand why their marriage only worked as long as it did because they lived apart most of the time. It’s sad and funny. Summer does get to grow. Her excitement about learning how to make a salad was adorable. Her pain on realizing that her parents didn’t live up to the celibacy standards they had for her was poignant and funny. I still smile thinking of the time she explains that since separating from Kev she’s joined “Christian Kringle” a dating app for Christians who love Santa. 

I feel new to Paula Pell as a performer. Looking at her IMDB page I can see that she has had small roles in things I have seen, but I don’t really remember her. She plays Gloria, the only member of the group who has successfully pursued an alternate career since the band’s end. There are some good jokes about her continuing to work as a dentist while the group tries the relaunch.  Pell is the oldest of the actors and in the flashbacks and archive footage her character is played by Erika Henningsen. Henningsen’s role is mostly to show how repressed Gloria was then, as an in the closet lesbian.  She doesn’t really stand on her own, which does work towards Gloria’s present day neurosis. In the time between Girls5Eva’s first go round and the present Gloria’s been married and divorced to a woman named Caroline. Caroline is both the only woman she has been with and not good for her. (She’s also played by Paula Pell’s real life wife Janine Brito.) This puts Gloria in more or less the same boat as Summer and they have a great rapport. I also want to say that at the beginning of the second season Gloria has a fantasy musical number about being on Percocet while delaying knee surgery.  It was hilarious and I can’t find it online.

The supposed break-out star from the band Girls5Eva is Wickie, played by Renée Elise Goldsberry. Between the original run and the relaunch she creates the impression that she has an international star powered brand business. She doesn’t. But the show makes clear she’s the one who’s been pursuing a career in music the longest, including a stint on Star Search, and is the most enthusiastic about fame. She left the band first to pursue attempt at a solo career, which is best dramatized by a scene from an episode of Cribs. Despite not being in any high profile projects for decades, she in intensely aware of the possibility of fan interest, including with foot fetishists. Early on she moves in with Dawn and her family. She brings with her a see through piano, the last remaining thing from her failed shot at the A-List. She is a wonderfully awful houseguest, barely learning Dawn’s husband and son’s names. But she’s hilarious in her oblivious behavior and her passion for fame and music has an interesting frisson that is great for comedy. The diva faking it after her failed career wouldn’t be funny without these qualities. 

The fifth member of Girls5Eva is Ashley played by Ashley Park. At one point Wiki says Ashley was the only other member of the band she respected as a singer. Between iterations of the band she mysteriously died while taking part in a magic act involving an infinity pool. Or did she? At the end of the first season Gloria announces that she thinks Ashley faked her death. This leads her to suspecting a mysterious singer who always wears a bee keeping mask might be Ashley. While that turned out to be wrong, I hope it turns out Ashley’s not dead. 

The first season included some songs Girls5eva and their fictional contemporaries. They are wonderfully awful. Filled with poorly aged reference and regrettable world philosophies. The fact that we only hear a couple of bars from them is even funnier. But as Dawn and her bandmates take over the song writing, the songs get better. They still include some really goofy lyrics, but they work. It makes sense that they find an audience amongst their contemporaries.

[boomkitty86]

[clericofshadows]

NYX SHEPARD AND ASHLEY WILLIAMS MASS EFFECT 1 POST FIRST CITADEL VISIT

[tekehu]

[pocketgalaxies]

matt saying revivify requires 300 gold and everyone going are you wearing any jewelry? and ashley going "YES, YES!! ALL OF THE JEWELS."

[latenightdemo]

"...and some stories are meant to last."

"Looking for a grass more green, but all you ever found were weeds."

Ashley Kutcher

[starkwing-co]

Happy late Halloween!

Due to my horrible laziness I'm still in October...

So here's the art I did last year with all kid characters in WarioWare in cool and spoopy costumes! I guess there's no need to explain the ones I came up with on my own...

I simply ADORE the harsh lighting technique here! It makes everything pop and look haunted hehe >:3

[warningsine]

[choerrypies]

Say what you want to say, (not like that lyric in the Sara Bareilles song) but Yesternights is SO good

[fathercharlesoffdensen]

My MyHeritage subscription is currently expired; doing amateur genealogy research is one of my incredibly nerdy hobbies (hashtag autism, hashtag hyperfixation station), but so is (digital) scrapbooking - behold, Girls5Eva mood boards (made via Canva['s complementary educator account(s)])! The 'purple expensive' vibe was not 100% intentional, but there it is.

[hibiscusbabyboy]

"Colors fade from my memories and even though other faces

I forget"

[gemville]

Mint Green Tourmaline and 14k Yellow Gold Bubble Ring by Ashley Zhana

Photo Courtesy: Ashley Zhana

Source: jckonline.com