#Hometown Restoration of San Francisco | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

canmom · 3 years

Text

oBservations oF aMerica part 3: sAn fRancisco bAy aRea eDition

previously: one, two

I’ve come to the end of my third week in america!! and holy fuck damn was it an eventful one 😵‍💫 the three of us drove approximately four hundred miles from where I’m staying in Orange to stay with some polycule members in the extremely tech-industry satellite city of of Cupertino, and then drove down the freeway each day to visit various wonderful friends in Oakland.

but we’ll get to that in a minute! before that, I got to experience a spectacle I have heard much about: the bizarre extrusion of the great egregore that is American christmas lights.

mogs’s mum drove us down to Huntington Beach, her hometown, otherwise known for its serious neo-nazi problem. much of this town was artificial islands reclaimed from the sea, and many of them seriously commit to the game of christmas oneupmanship: you thought that grinch movie was kidding? here’s a few of the better photos i managed to get:

four snowmen, chosen at random, decapitated and impaled on spikes as an example to the rest after a recent escape attempt.

along with the usual library of christmas-related images such as snowmen, santas, reindeers, candy sticks, candles and of course the tree itself, largely abstracted to a cone - not to mention in some cases totally fake artificial snow that appears to be a kind of thick cotton wool - Disney characters made a few appearances. curiously, the Grinch featured in many of them: a character whose whole arc is that he is opposed to the holiday but eventually learns to appreciate it.

we headed a little inland, and observed the rich yacht-owning people in their giant houses by the river, whose light displays started to take on more of a nationalist character:

of particular note was the house with a scrolling digital christmas tree, with such slogans as “American Dream Rock The Harbour” (which appeared to be the theme of this competition), “Keep Christ in Christmas”, the thin blue line flag, “USA USA”, “God Bless America”, “Thank you first responders”, and just so we know who conveyed these sentiments, “Merry Christmas from the Jurggensons”. I couldn’t capture the colours very well on my phone, but in case you also wish to experience this psychic assault, here you go:

youtube

It really amazes me that the phrase ‘American Dream’ still has any non-ironic currency in 2021. Since coming here... the amount of overt commitment to the country’s supposed ideological project honestly kind of scares me.

So, what exactly is this “Christ Mass”? Once upon a time in my own country it was more of a riot of drunkenness and wild partying, a christianised iteration of prior traditions of e.g. saturnalia, presided over by someone called the Lord of Misrule. This was the reason that, in the time of Cromwell, it was banned by the ruthless puritan parliamentarian government in the UK during their brief period in power (see Animation Night 49 for more on Cromwell... ok there are much better sources out there, I just think that’s a funny thing to say.) Here’s an interesting line from Wikipedia:

Protests followed as pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans.[42]

The festival was restored, but in a strained way, once the Royalists returned to power. It would not take its modern form for a long time.

The American iteration of the festival was initially very controversial. Enthusiasm varied depending on the denominations of the settlers:

In Colonial America, the Pilgrims of New England shared radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas.[85] The Plymouth Pilgrims put their loathing for the day into practice in 1620 when they spent their first Christmas Day in the New World working – thus demonstrating their complete contempt for the day.[85] Non-Puritans in New England deplored the loss of the holidays enjoyed by the laboring classes in England.[108] Christmas observance was outlawed in Boston in 1659.[85] The ban by the Puritans was revoked in 1681 by English governor Edmund Andros, however it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.[109]

At the same time, Christian residents of Virginia and New York observed the holiday freely. Pennsylvania German Settlers, pre-eminently the Moravian settlers of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Lititz in Pennsylvania and the Wachovia Settlements in North Carolina, were enthusiastic celebrators of Christmas. The Moravians in Bethlehem had the first Christmas trees in America as well as the first Nativity Scenes.[110] Christmas fell out of favor in the United States after the American Revolution, when it was considered an English custom.[111]George Washington attacked Hessian (German) mercenaries on the day after Christmas during the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776, Christmas being much more popular in Germany than in America at this time.

Many of the traditions, particularly the use of a decorated conifer, come from Germany, although there remains a massive amount of international variation.

The rise of anything recognisable as the modern "christmas” only came as late as the 19th century, shaped in large part by Charles fucking Dickens.

Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered festival of generosity, linking "worship and feasting, within a context of social reconciliation."[115] Superimposing his humanitarian vision of the holiday, in what has been termed "Carol Philosophy",[116] Dickens influenced many aspects of Christmas that are celebrated today in Western culture, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit.[117] A prominent phrase from the tale, "Merry Christmas", was popularized following the appearance of the story.[118] This coincided with the appearance of the Oxford Movement and the growth of Anglo-Catholicism, which led a revival in traditional rituals and religious observances.[119]

Dickens’s vision is already pretty suffocatingly ｒｅｐｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｖｅｆｕｔｕｒｉｓｍ, but it wouldn’t take long for the other dimension of the festival to develop: buying more shit. This ‘conflict’ between the two poles of the festival was already extant as early as the 19th century:

In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem A Visit From St. Nicholas (popularly known by its first line: Twas the Night Before Christmas).[127] The poem helped popularize the tradition of exchanging gifts, and seasonal Christmas shopping began to assume economic importance.[128] This also started the cultural conflict between the holiday's spiritual significance and its associated commercialism that some see as corrupting the holiday. In her 1850 book The First Christmas in New England, Harriet Beecher Stowe includes a character who complains that the true meaning of Christmas was lost in a shopping spree.[129]

It proved a productive conflict, and before long even the notoriously austere Presbyterians were throwing open their doors to the new festival. The final elements of the mix came in the early 20th century with the increasingly iconic figure of ‘Santa Claus’. Despite a popular urban legend, Coca-Cola did not invent the red and white costume for the character, but their adverts in the 30s did a lot to popularise him.

In the later parts of the 20th century, the significance of Christmas as a sort of psychic weapon became increasingly established. The Soviet Union sought to suppress the holiday once again as an artefact of religiosity associated with the power base of the Orthodox Church. The Nazis meanwhile kept the holiday, but attempted to replace the Christian themes with glorification of the Nazi state. Meanwhile, the Americans held fast to their de facto state religion, especially as mass production made the exchange of expensive gifts increasingly viable for poorer families. At some point it was taken up by the American culture war: the Christian right wing objected to attempts to recognise other winter holidays (e.g. the fairly minor Jewish holiday of Hanukkah) and started performing especially in-your-face christmasiness mixed, as we see, with overt nationalism.

After our unsuccessful attempt to find the Chuck Jones Centre for Creativity, Bug introduced me to the Dead Kennedys song California Über Alles, which is unreasonably catchy for a song about fascism. Since then, the number of times it has seemed pertinent on this trip are... striking lmao. (Though tbf more in the like hyper-sanitised streets of SF and especially Cupertino than this particular side the beast.)

Having observed this side of the American culture war, we got into our hired car and set off for the Bay Area. Because of various factors, we weren’t able to follow our original plan of driving up the coast, and most of the journeys took place in the dark. However, this still gave some interesting sights! For example whatever the fuck this building is:

Mogs thought it might be a prison, but if it is, I have been unable to confirm. It’s somewhere visible from one of the freeways leading out of LA.

There was also a shopping centre modelled after a Babylonian fort, with a further christmasy twist:

LA traffic really is as bad as all that, but so honestly is SF traffic. Not just the traffic jams, either. Despite, or indeed perhaps because, of roads that are five or six lanes wide in places, and as many as two or three even in inner city residential areas, we saw all sorts of reckless near death merges, pieces of car wreckage just left on the side of the road, and at least once drove past a crashed car in the process of being towed. It’s not like cars aren’t dangerous in the UK but sheesh lmao.

A very large number of the billboards overlooking the freeways advertised legal services specialising in accidents, usually with a big colourful photo of the leader of the law firm to help establish their charisma. The legal services seemed to reach for a much broader set of signifiers than the ones back home, apparently hoping to draw people in with the idea of a friendly lawyer who shares your values rather than a vision of an old austere law firm that is more popular over here.

The two major types of road we encountered were highways and freeways, loosely analogous I think to the UK’s ‘A roads’ (which Wikipedia translates to ‘main roads’, i.e. ‘trunk roads’) and motorways (‘controlled access highways’) respectively.

The major differences with back home are... let’s see. Especially in LA, the freeways tend to have incredibly high stacked intersections with ribbons of road going every which way, access to the freeway tends to be modulated by a traffic light, there tends to be a special lane designated for high occupancy vehicles (I asked how this is enforced and apparently the cops will drive up and down checking you; in SF we saw a sign which had some device for estimating the number of travellers in a vehicle and shaming you if it was low), and the number of lanes tends to be very high.

The road surface often seemed pretty weathered; apparently refurbishment of a road tends to be a low priority for the government unless a politician wants to apply a little nepotism and benefit a local contractor. Signs offered you the chance to ‘adopt’ part of the freeway, which I presume means sponsoring its maintenance. In the Bay Area, we drove along a section of freeway apparently sponsored by Tesla, near their factory.

Another difference is that while the UK has ‘service stations’, which are typically very modern buildings containing a public toilet, a whsmith’s with snacks, books and travel pillows etc., and a variety of fast food chains, the US has ‘truck stops’ which primarily cater to the trucking industry. Which means the products they tend to carry are fascinating. The snacks are almost all based on some combination of corn or meat (which I suppose is also in a sense, processed corn), but they also have large displays of knives, and all sorts of random americana odds and ends, like expensive alcohol, football team mascot figurines, and even fucking mall katanas.

Here are some signs you can stick on your truck, whose themes are fairly straightforwardly “nationalism” and “masculinity”. (Apologies for the quality of the photo). You can also buy a small toy truck for your big real truck.

Apparently there is a sport of taking a truck and driving it through mud. In California, however, it rains only rarely and there is very little mud, but people nevertheless buy the kinds of trucks you would use for this sport, since I guess they are especially big, powerful and masculine.

Cupertino on the other hand felt strangely familiar: the same kind of nondescript sterile tech architecture you can find just about anywhere in the world. It helped I suppose that the climate was noticeably cooler and there was a lot more greenery. I even saw an American squirrel, who appeared very similar to a British squirrel:

But there was also this weird seed pod thing, which looks like a ‘cosmic horror’ videogame enemy (cw trypophobia):

Seriously, what is that?

The American enthusiasm for pipes poking out of the ground to present a valve, and then going straight back down, was in evidence here was much as in Orange:

Our hosts were a tech worker trans girl couple, one of whom was a computer science prodigy in the process of leaving Amazon to work for Google. They were very sweet, and I had some fun conversations about graphics with them, and I while they certainly aren’t exactly comfortable with the electric panopticon and ludicrous amounts of money that they were given compared to any of us, but the gulf in our circumstances was... very apparent. Their flat, in a gated building complete with a garbage chute down into the garage because god forbid you have to take the bins out, was full of high tech toys: stacks of games consoles (two different Nintendo Switches), high end gaming PCs and laptops, a 3D printer, a VR headset, random circuit boards... the only thing that was missing from the picture was a drone.

They also had the Google home assistant running, which they primarily used as a cooking timer. I was able to discern:

asking Google where Larry Page sits on the list of billionaires returns a correct answer, returned from Wikipedia

asking Google to open the pod bay doors gives the kind of canned response you would expect

Google doesn’t hear you half the time if you try to address it from the other side of the room

Google does have an ability to recognise the voice of individual speakers, if they’ve been programmed in; a question like ‘who am I?’ will get different results depending who asks

asking Google to help your host with the programming problem she’s having at Amazon causes your host to very anxiously rush to turn Google off

It was fascinating to see behind the curtain at Amazon. Apparently they do not treat even their tech workers especially well outside of the ludicrous salary, and people constantly rotate in and out of the company on about a nine month cycle. My host complained that she had received almost no training and, when she couldn’t solve a problem with the resources available, had never been told how to escalate. The work seemed designed to create anxiety from what I could tell.

One upside of this situation was that I got to play Half Life Alyx for the first time! Modern VR systems have come on a loooong way since the last time I got to try it, though they’re still a little jank. Now all the tracking is performed by cameras on board the headset, and it is still startlingly responsive: standing still the sense of immersion in a 3D space is completely convincing, to the point that you can quite easily lose track of your location in the real world.

Inevitably, the illusion breaks down a bit with the need to play a game where you move through a large 3D space while standing still. I tried the more motion sickness inducing mode of Alyx where you can use the hand controllers to walk around smoothly like an FPS, but in retrospect I would have been wiser to follow the recommendation to use the warping mode. Alyx is full of little physics scenes you can interact with, and compared to prior iterations of the Source engine, they look extremely convincing up close. There are many cute little interactables like a whiteboard you can erase, and a pen you can use to write on a window - surprisingly, the lack of haptic feedback didn’t present much of an impediment. Overall, the experience of the best of VR was not so profound that I’m going to rush out and buy a VR headset right away though!

The day after we arrived we drove down to Oakland. I admit from this point on the post is less ‘nosy anthropological observations’ and more ‘look at my holiday photos’ so please, if you wish, duck out now!

...still here? bless you.

On the way I got to see some beautiful clouds over the mountains over the not especially beautiful wall of the freeway:

We also got to see some ‘angel graffiti’, so-called because of the extreme risk of death associated with it. Some of it, like one that was on the underside of a freeway, I don’t even know how people managed. Unfortunately this is the only photo I managed to get:

Apparently Ralor and Wasmo are two celebrated graffiti artists in the area, whose work is acknowledged on places like r/bombing. I struggle to imagine how they managed to pull this one off safely - did they attach climbing equipment to the top of the bridge, or just have extremely good grip strength?

This part of Oakland felt considerably more alive than cupertino, with some cool graffiti on various surfaces, and a nice set of hills and varied house shapes in contrast to the sterile regularity of the silicon overlords. Here, for example, it seems two people are having a kind of graffiti battle on the side of a building, going over each others’ tags:

We parked just as the sun was setting, creating some beautiful light conditions:

My friend was also staying with a tech tran of her own, this one with an interest in refurbishing old computer hardware like early Apple computers. I won’t post pictures of me with my friend on here out of respect for privacy, but it was incredibly cool to meet her irl and catch up on various times and have long overdue hugs; later we all played ‘Tetris Attack’, which is a Yoshi-from-Mario themed reskin of Panel-de-Pon, a matching game where you send blocks over to the other player. Mogs is startlingly good at it, as was my friend’s partner, and they had a very intense few matches that reminded me a little of watching the really advanced Tetris players at GDQ.

The next day, I returned to a different part of Oakland for a big gathering of various friends, among them one who I have wanted to meet for... possibly more than a decade at this point?? I was super nervous going out there that I would do something to damage the friendship, and inevitably I needn’t have been: we had a really delightful walk around the area, on a beautifully misty day where it had just rained, bringing out all the colours and smells. Here are a bunch of photos, I was very taken with all the trees and steep slopes:

^ me experiencing the overwhelming warmth of friendship or something, seriously I was on such a social high the whole time T_T

^ a view out into the misty city below and distant hills

^ unfortunately, the residents of the trees have been driven out of their tiny little houses by an invasive species of car.

^ inevitably there were some Mormons around the place. they are apparently, at least, apparently not as prone to proselytising as their fellows elsewhere.

^ weird little cardboard cow?

^ it is not clear if this plastic bag got caught in the tree in the wind, or if it was ruptured by the tree growing out of it. A sad end for this majestic species in any case. We may hope it had a long life roaming the seas and plains of America.

^ this witch has been buried in a shallow grave. Another anonymous victim of The War.

^ some pretty trees!

^ A stand of eucalyptus trees with lovely peeling bark and a fascinating smell.

^ this fence seems to be a tagging spot!

^ a little pipe with various interesting bits of rubbish by the Walgreens (grocery store/pharmacy chain).

^ not everything was familiar! This palm tree was so tall I could only photograph it in panorama mode. Like other trees, it also had a tiny door.

Anyway, I noticed two major features while walking around this part of Oakland. One was that the political signalling was very different: nearly every house had a Black Lives Matter sign outside of it. The other was the very paranoid sense of security: nearly every house had a little placard warning would-be intruders that they are protected by this or that security system (and would, presumably, summon the police in the event of an attempted burglary). Put side by side this felt almost too much of a syndecdoche for lib hypocrisy! I saw very few people out and about (Americans, by and large, seem to prefer driving even very short distances) so I can’t comment on the demographics of the area, but I would be shocked if it wasn’t disproportionately white.

We returned to my friends’ house, which is lovely, very light and built into the side of the hill like most of the others in the area, and @iggnsthe made good on her promise to introduce me to weed. (I waited that long because she was tremendously excited.) For various dumb reasons, I never previously took the opportunity to try weed or p much any other drug, but I really could not have asked for a better person to show me how to do it. Watching her meticulously clean the vaporiser before she let me take some was a really great way of creating anticipation; I hope the experience of seeing ‘high Bryn’ was also entertaining for everyone else present ><

While I was high, we watched the J-horror movie Organ, a beautifully moody gory movie about an organ trafficking gang directed by Kei Fujiwara, who had previously acted in Tetsuo; while I can’t say I was in a great state to follow the plot, I certainly enjoyed the imagery...

I stayed over with her that night, and tried another variety of weed in the form of a turkish delight with weed in it. Both experiences were really good I feel like: I don’t really know what I was so afraid of with drugs before... ok that’s not true, I do. basically SJ fear of acting evilly crossed with lesswrong fear of not being able to control ‘irrationality’. shockingly, no sort of monstrous behaviour emerged from high!Bryn and we had a really good night, during which we watched this really cool old OVA about a vampire girl who hunts various supernatural creatures. I already miss everyone there a lot... I don’t know when I will be able to visit America again, but I really hope I can find a way to make it soon.

Anyway, a couple of the others present were busy on a creative project I’m not sure I’m clear to talk about, so I will leave that mysterious. Time did not permit me to help out, but I’m very excited for it from every little detail I heard!

That afternoon, I set out on foot to visit @birlinterrupted who was, bizarrely, just twenty minutes away! On the way, the sun was just starting to set, creating this gorgeous lighting effect where it was just catching the tops of the trees.

Continuing the theme of paranoia, check out this neighbourhood watch sign. ᴡᴇ ɪᴍᴍᴇᴅɪᴀᴛᴇʟʏ ʀᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ ᴀʟʟ sᴜsᴘɪᴄɪᴏᴜs ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠɪᴛɪᴇs ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴀᴋʟᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴏʟɪᴄᴇ ᴅᴇᴘᴀʀᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ. WE LOOK OUT FOR EACH OTHER!

And here’s a bridge extolling the important value of D FFERENCE:

It was fantastic meeting Amy and her wife D, who until now I had only heard tell of through medium of text post. We had a great long rambling conversation about the US justice system, films and (especially once Mogs and Bug arrived) the current contortions of the sexual imaginary and femboys and such, to the point that I wish I’d been able to take notes lmao. Anyway I discovered that Amy had a tiny chihuahua, who has gone blind with age, and has now become the most sweet quivering vulnerable creature I’d ever seen.

The next day the time had come to leave Cupertino, but on the way we passed through San Francisco proper, giving me a chance to visit the employer who has been paying my wages for the last ~two and a half years and probably will for a fair while yet until I make a name for myself in animation and art. It was good to meet them and establish that I do, in fact, have a physical existence: one of the engineers was present from Sweden who is probably one of the tallest people I’ve ever seen. It was reassuring to know they seem to think well of me and hear just how much of a good impression I apparently made in my original interview. They gave me a jumper to take home which is so warm and soft that I have been wearing it despite the discomfort of having their brand across my chest lmao.

On the way in to San Francisco, we saw various sights which means, once again, image dump time:

^ the wall of the highway meant it was very difficult to see the gorgeous hills and lakes around us...

^ arriving in the outskirts of the city, seeing the skyline

^ the American grid system means that if you look down a road it stretches a very, very long way.

^ America does in fact have trains, if not perhaps very many of them, and I know train fans will want to see this. It also has trams.

^ under a suspension bridge

San Francisco, it turns out, has another suspension bridge in addition to the famous Golden Gate bridge, the Bay Bridge connecting the main city to Oakland. We would later drive over it on our way out of the city, though the darkness and high walls on the lower deck precluded good photos.

^ me outside the offices of my employer

^ the sun sets and things start to go a little bit Koyaanisqatsi around here. It took us an incredibly long time to actually get out of San Francisco, so we didn’t get to see the sun set over the coast. I think we’ll still find an opportunity though!

Part of the City Hall; apologies again for the poor photo, the car was moving and it was already quite dark. Americans like their civic architecture big and looming. Which, to be fair, the British also like to do.

Blade Runner and the like weren’t exaggerating all that much (I expect I’ll say that even more when I go into LA proper). I think this city would be incredibly cool to visit with a nice DSLR and plenty of time to line up cool shots. I do not however have a nice DSLR or much of the skill to use it!

Anyway, a couple of days ago, we got home, I finally got a chance to draw again, and now at last found time to create this post.

I definitely want to dig into the history of San Francisco and Los Angeles at some point: find out exactly which people were displaced by the arrival of European settlers (presumably first Spanish ones given the place names?) and how the cities evolved to become first major trade centres (OK, that one’s fairly obvious) and later, the home of the tech industry that now rules our lives. But this post is already very long, so I’ll dig into that another time.

My last week here we’re planning to hit various museums, among them the ‘Museum of Jurassic Technology’ which sounds quite fascinating, a kind of Victorian style cabinet of curiosities? We’ll also definitely make it to an beach at least once, since I did bring my swimming costume all the way out here.

Anyway. America is a very fucked up country but some incredible people live here. I’m definitely going to miss this place.

#canmom's american adventure

29 notes · View notes

kathrynalicemc · 3 years

Text

Harry Potter Golden Era MC Profile

Identity

Name: Mariko Krei

Gender: Female

Age: 16 (year 6)

Birth Date: April 2nd, 1980

Species: Human

Blood Status: Half Blood

Sexuality: Lesbian

Ethnicity: Japanese/Caucasian mix

Nationality: Japanese, American, British

Residence: Cambridge, England

The Mage

Wand: Beech wood, Phoenix feather core

“The true match for a beech wand will be, if young, wise beyond his or her years, and if full-grown, rich in understanding and experience. Beech wands perform very weakly for the narrow-minded and intolerant. Such wizards and witches, having obtained a beech wand without having been suitably matched (yet coveting this most desirable, richly hued and highly prized wand wood), have often presented themselves at the homes of learned wandmakers such as myself, demanding to know the reason for their handsome wand’s lack of power. When properly matched, the beech wand is capable of a subtlety and artistry rarely seen in any other wood, hence its lustrous reputation.”

Animagus: None

Misc Magical Abilities: Talented in wandless magic

Boggart Form: Being all alone without a family

Riddikulus Form: All her family and friends suddenly jumping out from hiding places and yelling surprise

Amortentia: Tea, parchment, rain, cherry blossoms, a perfume that seems familiar that she can’t place

Patronus: Red Crowned Crane

Patronus Memory: Walking down a street in Japan as a child with her father as cherry blossom petals fall all around her, with vague blurry shapes of two other people nearby

Mirror of Erised: A hazy silhouette of what looks like a woman and a teenage boy who she doesn’t recognize

Specialized/Favourite Spells: She loves practicing wandless magic in combination with her martial arts skills. Specifically using wingardium leviosa to make leaves and flowers float in the air. She does it as a sort of meditation

Appearance

Faceclaim: Sakura Heffron

Game Appearance: N/A

Height: 5’9”

Physique: Tall, athletic, graceful

Eye Colour: Brown

Hair Colour: Black

Skin Tone: Pale

Body Modifications: She has freckles mainly on her nose and a few on her cheeks.

Scarring: N/A

Inventory: Some Japanese ink brushes she uses instead of quills, her wand, keys to her 1966 Arcadian Blue Mustang (when old enough), a tiny cherry blossom branch encased in resin she can’t remember when she got, biker jacket

Allegiances

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Mahoutokoro House (if she went): Shunrai

Affiliations/Organizations:

Hogwarts

Dumbledore’s Army

Professions: unsure yet

Hogwarts Information

Quidditch: Keeper

Extra Curricular: Chess club, Frog choir, Martial Arts

Favourite Professors: Flitwick, Mcgonagall

Least Favourite Professors: Snape obv

Relationships

Father: Dorian Aloysius Krei

Fc: Robert Downey Junior

-Half Blood wizard

-Works as a Chemistry professor at various Muggle Universities

-Has taught in Japan, San Francisco, England

-A huge nerd

-Kind and goofy

-Supportive of his daughter

Mother: Ume Nakai

Fc: -

-Pureblood

-House: Seiran

-Works as a Samurai/Hit Witch for the Japan Ministry

-Uses magic and martial arts to track down and handle dangerous dark arts users

-Upholds the Japan Ministries Codes: Don’t use dark arts, don’t break the statute of secrecy

-Very skilled in martial arts

-Protective of her family

Brother: Jomei Nakai

Fc: -

-House: Yosamu

-Older than Mariko by 10 years

-Decides to join his mother as a Samurai/Hit Wizard when he graduates Mahoutokoro

-Gentle and intelligent

-Good at reading others emotions

-Looks after his mother because he knows she misses her husband and daughter

-Good magic dueler

Love Interest: Luna Lovegood

Dormmates: Padma Patil, Sue Li, Cho Chang

Pets: A bowtruckle she found in a tree by the lake. She named it Kijin meaning tree spirit

Closest Canon Friends: Luna, Ginny, Hermione, Neville, Fred & George

Closest MC Friends: Lara Fairbourne, Mal Ridley, Aimee Alice

Background/History

Dorian Krei got a job as a Chemistry professor at Tohoku University after graduating from Ilvermorny. He was interested in alchemy but wanted more knowledge so he decided to get a Muggle job and education. Living in Japan he eventually met Ume Nakai and after a few years they got married and had Jomei. Ume was the Japanese equivalent of a Hit Witch. Her job was dangerous and their family was usually at risk from vengeful dark wizards. They decided it was best to not have any more kids. However, 10 years later they accidentally had Mariko.

Disaster struck when Mariko was 6. In the middle of the night a Dark Wizard that Ume had arrested broke out of prison and into their house. He tried to kill the family but Ume and Jomei fought him off, being forced to kill him in front of Mariko and Dorian. Afraid it would happen again, Ume tells Dorian to take Mariko and move away to protect them as Dorian isn’t a fighter and Mariko is too young. Jomei refuses to leave his mom all alone and decides to become a Hit Wizard as he had just graduated from Mahoutokoro and was a very good fighter.

Mariko was too young to understand and was very upset when told she had to leave with her dad so Ume obliviated her memories of herself and her brother. Dorian was against this and tried to argue but Ume said it would help protect her. Dorian moved back to his hometown San Francisco and transferred to the University there. He raised his daughter as if her mom had died when she was a baby. He despised lying to her but knew she was happy and healthy. Before Mariko turned 11, Dorian got a job offer at Cambridge and they moved to England. Mariko started school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1991, the same year as Harry Potter.

Personality

-She’s very kind and warm to people

-Curious of the world around her

-Intelligent and seeks to learn new things but doesn’t like to show her intelligence off

-Helps others

-Will fight for her freedom to choose and have control of her own life

-Admires her father but doesn’t want to take over his business

-Won’t be told how to be or what to like

-Loves excitement and adventure which can get her in trouble

-Feels like she needs to keep her dad happy because he’s sometimes quiet and sad

-Active and trains her body as well as her mind

Misc

-Mariko means “truth”

-Mariko names her bowtruckle Kijin. Ki means “tree” and Jin means “spirit”

-She’s born in April when cherry blossoms bloom

-She was brought up bilingual and knows both English and Japanese

-Mariko can see thestrals and it scares and intrigues her because it means she has seen death she doesn’t remember

-She doesn’t know that Dorian and Ume keep in contact with letters

-She will eventually run into her mom and brother during the Battle of Hogwarts and have her memory restored

-Dorian and Mariko use Dorians last name while Ume and Jomei use Umes last name

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #hpge #golden era oc #harry potter golden era #golden era ocs #mariko krei #dorian krei #ume nakai #jomei nakai

26 notes · View notes

luz1abhumbbotongfrancisco · 3 years

Photo

The pictures above are documented in chronological order (aside from the title photo). I. A documentation in photograph of 5 paintings by the Filipino painter Botong Francisco with proper labeling and citation(s) according to the Harvard citation format and 2) a formal description of each of the 5 selected paintings. To describe, emphasize the beauty of the work(s).

1. Bayanihan

(Pinoy Art Hub, 2018)

Bayanihan by Carlos “Botong” Francisco exemplifies one of the famous cultures in the Philippines which is Bayanihan that has a root word of “Bayani” which simply means “Hero”. With this, this painting shows a hero to one another. During early times, people would carry houses to change places to relocate a neighbor because of a natural calamity or simply to move places. According to Pinoy Art Hub (2018), this is done by gathering enough people from the same neighborhood to carry a Bahay Kubo or a nipa hut.

Aside from this, they place bamboo poles lengthwise in order to carry the house and whoever helped during the process is called to be heroes to the society. This painting conveyed vivid colors to portray the colorful life and culture that the Philippines has. Emphasizing the size of Bahay Kubo lets the viewers know how hard it is for the people to carry. To show that there is Bayanihan, the painting shows numerous people that helped and to shows a neighborhood helping one another.

________________________________________________________________

2. Katipunan

(Deroca, 2015)

Katipunan by Carlos “Botong” Francisco exemplifies a historic revolutionary in the Philippines. As seen in the painting, it is Andres Bonifacio and his KKK members going into the revolution with the KKK flag. There are also women in the upper left corner that shows them treating their husbands from the revolution. Andres Bonifacio was holding an itak or a small sword and a gun on the other hand. While the other man was holding their choice of weapon.

There is a fire above the painting that shows the fiery revolution against the Spaniards. This painting shows an asymmetrical balance because Andres Bonifacio was only one emphasized and the other men were as almost the size of Andres Bonifacio to show who were the main people during the revolution. Aside from this, when you look at the painting the color of the KKK flag can be easily be spotted because of the darkness of the color red. This shows also a value of variety with its overlapping of objects and sizing.

________________________________________________________________

3. The Martyrdom of Rizal

(Fabros, 2014)

The Martyrdom of Rizal Mural, completed in 1960, is one of Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco's most well-known works. He was proclaimed the Philippine National Artist for Visual Arts in 1973. Francisco is best known for his monumental murals portraying historical events in the Philippines. The mural portrays the execution of Philippine national hero Dr. Jose Rizal on December 30, 1896, at Bagong Bayan (now Rizal Park). Fort Santiago commissioned the mural as part of the Rizal Shrine. Rizal's death was a momentous date in our nation as it culminated nationalism and some kind of social change or redemption in our societies as a community.

Jose Rizal's final moments before his execution are depicted in the painting in five (5) significant images: (1) The Trial of Rizal (2) Rizal's Last Farewell (also depicted in Rody Herrera's oil on canvas painting "Huling Paalam," which was awarded First Place in the Jose Rizal Centennial Painting Competition in 1961). (3) Rizal composed the farewell poem Mi Ultimo Adios (My Last Farewell) Rizal's Last Walk and Rizal's Execution in Bagumbayan are two of his most famous works.

________________________________________________________________

4. Magpupukot

(Pinoyartshub, 2018)

"Magpupukot,” which basically means to "Pulling in the Net," is one of Botong's most well-known works. The scene depicted in the painting shows a group of fishermen practically casting and dragging their nets in while sailing inside a small wooden kayak boat, obviously taking the opportunity to haul in the day's catch. As a result, it was thought to be inspired by his hometown of Angono, Rizal, where a fishing village was located near their home. Botong's favorite subjects to paint were the lives of the fisheries sector. The Filipino people's deeply held values and rituals have become a medium for him, allowing him to use his unique style to create new imagery.

This fascination with history piqued his interest in learning more about the Filipino past, which provided him with useful information. Warm tones are used in the drawing, giving it a pleasing saturation. His visual enactments honor his culture's creative origins, and his photographs are inspired by the Filipino people's zealous commitment and vibrant colors. _______________________________________________________________

5. The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines

(TravelswithCherie, 2018)

The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines is a set of four oil paintings on canvas commissioned for the main entrance hall of the Philippine General Hospital in Manila by Philippine National Artist Carlos V. Francisco in 1953. (Barns, 2016). The artworks were in "serious decay" at the turn of the century due to heat, humidity, dirt, dust, smoke, insect stains, grime, termites, and an oxidized synthetic resin used in an earlier restoration due to their location. These canvases have been restored three times, the most recent in 2006, with funding provided by the US Department of State's Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. The paintings were loaned to the National Museum of the Philippines by PGH and the University of the Philippines in 2010, so they could be exhibited in a stable manner and properly preserved.

Predicated on our analysis, the first painting portrays a pre-colonial Philippines babaylan (female shaman) leading a healing ceremony with her hands raised. The villagers are assembled all around the sick man, led by their chief, and a fire is lit for the pig's sacrificial offering (lower right corner in foreground). The arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines is depicted in the second painting, which features two monks. They are the painting's key figures. The third painting depicts a scene from the American Period in which two men hide under a plant to avoid being inoculated, while a group of men in the foreground gather dead rodents after fumigation. The fourth painting depicts the defining features of modern medicine, such as surgery, radiation, laboratory research, medical equipment, and hospitals. Botong uses common elements like flora and clouds to link the four tables. _______________________________________________________________ Source(s): Barns, J., (2016). Carlos V. Francisco's The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines: Renegotiating decisions and collaborations in conservation. Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10344233.2016.1206297?journalCode=ybac20 [Accessed April 29, 2021].

Deroca, F. (2015). Individual Activity #3. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@franzderoca/bonifacio-mural-by-carlos-v-francisco-8d6abe07c510 [Accessed 19 Apr. 2021].

Fabros, D., (2014). Martyrdom of Rizal Mural - Philippine Folklife Museum Foundation: San Francisco, Ca. Philippine Folklife Museum Foundation | San Francisco, Ca. Available at: https://philippinefolklifemuseum.org/exhibit-rizal-martyrdom-botong-francisco/ [Accessed April 29, 2021].

Pinoy Art Hub. (2018). BAYANIHAN by Carlos “Botong” Francisco. [online] Available at: https://httppinoyartshub.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/bayanihan-by-carlos-botong-francisco/ [Accessed 19 Apr. 2021].

Pinoy Art Hub, (2018). Magpupukot by Carlos V. Francisco. Available at: https://httppinoyartshub.wordpress.com/2018/01/12/magpupukot-by-carlos-v-francisco/ [Accessed April 29, 2021].

TravelswithCherie, (2018). The Art of Carlos Botong Francisco - Progress of Medicine in the Philippines. Available at: https://www.travelswithcharie.com/2018/07/the-art-of-carlos-botong-francisco.html [Accessed April 29, 2021].

9 notes · View notes

architectnews · 4 years

Text

Straus House, Santa Barbara

Straus House, Santa Barbara Architecture, Californian Luxury Villa, American Images

Straus House in Santa Barbara

Feb 25, 2021

Straus House

Wallace Neff – Hollywood’s Original Architect To the Stars!

Source: TopTenRealEstateDeals.com

One of the first architects for the Hollywood stars was Wallace Neff, who designed a number of Southern California’s most important homes including the Pickfair estate for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, the Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston of the 1920s. Pickfair was the first Beverly Hills celebrity mansion, the longtime hot spot for Hollywood’s movers and shakers, had the first residential swimming pool in Los Angeles, and was compared to the White House by Life magazine.

Although Pickfair was demolished in 1990, Neff had a long home-designing career from the 1920s until his death in 1982. He is often credited with creating the California style of homes with vaulted ceilings, courtyards, lush landscapes and lots of glass. Neff was a favorite of celebrities who bought his homes including Charlie Chaplin, Darryl Zanuck, Bob Newhart, Madonna and Diane Keaton.

One of his later designs was the Straus House built in 1970 for Macy’s department store heir Robert Straus. Restored, expanded, and modernized over a 10-year period, the Straus House is now for sale. Previously priced at $32.75 million in 2017, the listing agency has not yet publicized the new price, it is only available by request.

Eye catching with a black circular driveway paired against the stark white of the building, the Straus House is located in the small and highly regarded equestrian-and-seaside community of Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara County’s Montecito neighborhood.

Behind the stylized wrought-iron gates that open to a courtyard, the hacienda-style house spans 14,000 square feet in an “H” floor plan on one floor and big ocean views. The center section is a massive gathering room with a vaulted ceiling of floor-to-ceiling glass facing the Pacific with the Neff-designed raised fireplace.

There are five bedrooms and five baths divided between the two wings, a completely refurbished chef’s kitchen, a dining room with ocean views, theater, wine cellar, and a den with fireplace. One of the home’s most interesting features is the guest house that is under the back lawn’s first level, which leaves the view completely unobstructed. Many homeowners in Hope Ranch are horse owners who enjoy its 27 miles of riding trails.

Mr. Strauss had previously been living in a home in Bel Air that Neff designed in the 1920s, and they liked it so much that they hired him for their Montecito home. Almost 50 years later, the current owner worked closely with the Santa Barbara historical committee on all aspects of preserving the integrity of the design and inspiration of Neff’s work while simultaneously creating an estate of comfort and luxury.

Montecito, sometimes referred to as “Beverly Hills North,” has surged in both price and popularity in recent years, the hometown for big stars including Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres. With its mild climate, world-class beaches and natural beauty stretching from the ocean to the mountains, Montecito has been a popular backdrop for the movie industry with over 1,000 movies filmed there since the early 1900s. According to local real estate agents, Montecito home prices have more than doubled in the last few years.

The listing agents are Weston Littlefield, Dalton Gomez, and Aaron Kirman of the Aaron Kirman Group at Compass.

Source: www.hoperanchhouse.com

Photography: Juwan Li

Straus House, Santa Barbara information / images received 250221

Location: Santa Barbara, California, USA

California Residences

Contemporary California Houses

Modern-Day Ranch House North California

Wildlife House in Portola Valley, California

HillSide House in California, Mill Valley Design: Zack de Vito Architecture photo : Bruce Damonte, Bruce Damonte Photography HillSide House in Mill Valley

Big Ranch Road Retreat in the Napa Valley Design: WDA (William Duff Architects) photograph © Matthew Millman Photography Napa Valley Barn Renewal

Los Altos Hills II House, CA Design: Feldman Architecture photograph : John Linden Los Altos Hills II House in California

Los Angeles Houses

Los Angeles Architecture

Los Angeles Architecture News

Los Angeles Architecture Tours by e-architect

San Francisco Architectural Designs – chronological list

Frank Lloyd Wright : main page with key buildings + images

American Architecture

American Architects

Modern Houses

Website: Santa Barbara

Comments / photos for the Straus House, Santa Barbara page welcome

Website: Santa Barbara, CA, USA

The post Straus House, Santa Barbara appeared first on e-architect.

#e-architect

1 note · View note

gagosiangallery · 5 years

Text

Giuseppe Penone at Fort Mason, San Francisco

October 8, 2019

GIUSEPPE PENONE Fort Mason October 24, 2019–October 25, 2020 Great Meadow, Upper Fort Mason, San Francisco __________ The bifurcations of the trees that appear so intimately human to us . . . The bifurcations of the fingers, by their movement through space, form the branches, the roots, and by the succession of actions in the same points, construct the branches and trunk of the plant. The woodland landscape is the action of sculpture. —Giuseppe Penone Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy have partnered with Gagosian to present a yearlong outdoor installation by Giuseppe Penone through the Art in the Parks program. Fort Mason is a historic site within Golden Gate National Recreation Area where hundreds of trees were planted by the military between fifty and one hundred years ago. The National Park Service (NPS) stewards the site’s cultural landscape. Bringing art into the context of our national parks not only allows us to share these spectacular and inspirational works with park visitors; Giuseppe Penone at Fort Mason invites us to take a closer look at our parks’ relationship with nature through the site’s history and at the ongoing stewardship of preservation and conservation. —Charles Strickfaden, Chief of Communications, Golden Gate National Recreation Area From his earliest site-specific sculptures made in the forests around his hometown in Piedmont, Italy, Penone has adapted elements from the natural world, exploring the deep evolutionary interdependence between sculpture and nature across geological time. The dramatic installation in the Great Meadow at Fort Mason is Penone’s first public work on the West Coast. In Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) (2004), large river stones nestle in the high branches of a bronze sculpture cast from a tree, as if weighing down the natural reach of the tree towards the light. The tree stands tall and straight; its narrow silhouette supporting the stones high into the air suggests a force resisting the planetary burden of gravity. A second cast bronze tree, La logica del vegetale (The Logic of the Vegetal) (2012), lies on its side, its gnarled root system fully exposed. Five living saplings native to California (valley oak, coast live oak, bigleaf maple, and two California bay laurels) will be planted at the tips of the sculpture’s bare branches, allowing exuberant growth to sprout up around their bronze counterpart. The mission of Art in the Parks is to provide programs that are transformative, unexpected, and inspirational. We’re delighted that Giuseppe Penone’s work will be on public display at Fort Mason and related works are being exhibited this fall at Gagosian downtown. Our hope is that these concurrent exhibits further illuminate how Golden Gate National Recreation Area serves as a backdrop to all kinds of beauty and meaningful visitor experiences. —Kate Bickert, Senior Director, Parks Conservancy

The areas protected by the National Park Service have long provided inspiration for artists; in return, the park sites have used art to deepen the public’s enjoyment, appreciation, and understanding of these precious natural resources. Thus Penone’s compelling sculptural investigation of the perpetual give-and-take between humans and nature offers a poetic analogy to the evolution of the park itself. Giuseppe Penone was born in 1947 in Garessio, Italy, and currently lives and works in Paris and Turin, Italy. His career began in the 1960s with the Arte Povera movement in his native Italy. This radical group of artists employed “poor,” unconventional elements and raw materials to question cultural assumptions and evoke a preindustrial age, critiquing dehumanizing systems of industrialization and mechanization, as well as contemporaneous art movements. Penone’s earliest works made in the forests around his hometown in Piedmont marked the beginning of an enduring fascination with the arboreal realm that is still prevalent in his work today. Collections include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Exhibitions include Musée des Arts Contemporains du Grand-Hornu, Belgium (2010); Drawings and Sculptures, De Pont Museum, Netherlands (2010); 22 Opere a Versailles, Château de Versailles, France (2013); Ideas of Stone (Idee di Pietra), Madison Square Park, New York (2013–14); Being the River, Repeating the Forest, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2015); Anafora, Reggia di Venaria Reale, Italy (2016); and Matrice / Matrix, Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Rome (2017). In 2017, Germination, Penone’s permanent, site-specific installation for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, was presented at the inauguration of the museum. Penone has received numerous accolades, including the Praemium Imperiale, Japan Arts Association (2014). About Gagosian Larry Gagosian opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 1980, expanding his reach to New York five years later. Since then, Gagosian has evolved into a global network of seventeen exhibition spaces in North America, Europe, and Asia. In addition to its vibrant contemporary art program featuring leading international artists, Gagosian also presents unparalleled historical exhibitions, including a series of groundbreaking, popular surveys on the art of Pablo Picasso. The gallery publishes scholarly exhibition catalogues, artist monographs, catalogues raisonnés, and the Gagosian Quarterly, an innovative and engaging magazine on the gallery’s art and artists as well as related topics in contemporary art. About Art in the Parks Giuseppe Penone at Fort Mason is a presentation of Art in the Parks—a cooperative effort of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Presidio Trust, and the Headlands Center for the Arts—and Gagosian. The mission of Art in the Parks is to provide programs that introduce visitors to creative experiences that are transformative, unexpected, and inspirational. Recent programming such as @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Big Blue Whale at Crissy Field, and PianFrancisco at Fort Point helps visitors connect with the history and stories of national parks. Learn more at parksconservancy.org/art. About the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is the nonprofit membership organization that supports the Golden Gate National Parks. Since 1981, the Parks Conservancy has provided over $550 million in aid for transformations, habitat restorations, research and conservation, volunteer and youth engagement, and interpretive and educational programs. Learn more at parksconservancy.org. About Golden Gate National Recreation Area Golden Gate National Recreation Area, situated in and around San Francisco, is the most visited park site in the National Park Service, hosting more than 15 million visitors in 2018. A diverse park with abundant recreational opportunities, as well as natural, cultural, and scenic resources, it encompasses more than 82,000 acres across three counties. The park also administers two other NPS areas: Fort Point National Historic Site, a Civil War–era fortress built on the northernmost point of land in San Francisco, and Muir Woods National Monument, which comprises an impressive stand of old-growth coastal redwoods in Marin County. For more information, visit nps.gov/goga. _____ Giuseppe Penone, Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone), 2004, bronze and river stones, 40 feet 11 3/8 inches × 17 feet 10 1/4 inches × 17 feet 1 1/8 inches (12.5 × 5.4 × 5.2 m), installation view, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis, 2008 © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Archivio Penone

#Penone SF #Giuseppe Penone #Gagosian

23 notes · View notes

resilientsovl · 5 years

Photo

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: samuel william winchester. PRONUNCIATION: pronounced how it’s spelled. MEANING: so from the hebrew name שְׁמוּאֵל, it means god has heard, or name of god. it’s a little ironic considering sam is lucifer, god’s fallen son’s, true vessel. REASONING: sam was named after his maternal grandfather, samuel campbell. NICKNAME(S): sam, sammy, little winchester, moose, 738273 other height related nicknames. PREFERRED NAME(S): sam. BIRTH DATE: may 2, 1983. AGE: honestly he’s not sure. he’s died 3-4 times, been the vessel for demons and archangels which probably stalled his physical aging too. i say he’s probably biologically somewhere around 35, even though he’s technically 47ish. ZODIAC: taurus. GENDER: cismale. PRONOUNS: he/him. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: heteroromantic. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual. ( he can appreciate that men are attractive, has probably even slept with a couple, but has no desire to be in romantic, serious, relationships with men. ) NATIONALITY: american. ETHNICITY: wonderbread white. CURRENT LOCATION: san francisco, ca. LIVING CONDITIONS: a crappy two bedroom apartment he rents by the month. it’s small, not in a great neighborhood, but it does the trick. TITLE(S): n/a.

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE: lawrence, kansas. HOMETOWN: technically lawrence kansas, but they moved around frequently. SOCIAL CLASS: blue collar. EDUCATION LEVEL: undergraduate degree from stanford. FATHER: john winchester. MOTHER: mary winchester ( neé campbell ). SIBLING(S): dean winchester, adam milligan ( half ). BIRTH ORDER: dean, sam, adam. CHILDREN: jack kline ( adopted / unofficially ) PET(S): n/a. OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: bobby singer, pseudo uncle. castiel, pseudo brother / brother-in-law. SIGNIFICANT OTHER: natasha herrera, wife. ( separated ) PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS: jessica moore, amelia richardson, meg, sarah blake, ruby, a few one night stands, amy pond ( first kiss ), etc. ARRESTS?: a few, yes. PRISON TIME?: minimal, seen in folsom prison blues.

OCCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: credit card scams, illegal activity. SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: n/a. TERTIARY SOURCE(S) OF INCOME: hunting, but it pays for shit. APPROXIMATE AMOUNT PER YEAR: unknown. CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: this is never the job he wanted. so no, definitely not. PAST JOB(S): student. SPENDING HABITS: extremely frugal, only on necessities. MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: john winchester’s journal.

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: peak physical condition, human, in-shape. OFFENSE: extremely skilled with weapons and hand to hand. DEFENSE: extremely skilled with lethal and non-lethal defensive moves. SPEED: faster than average. INTELLIGENCE: educated and above average. ACCURACY: above average. AGILITY: above average. STAMINA: above average. TEAMWORK: below average. he doesn’t work well with people he doesn’t know or trust. it takes time to develop a bond / ease of working with others. TALENTS: computer skills, digesting information, critical thinking skills. SHORTCOMINGS: stubborn, naive, reckless, deep psychological trauma, suicidal ideation, a nice grabbag of issues. LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: latin, english, probably a bunch of other old, dead, languages that might come in handy. he probably also took spanish in school. DRIVE?: yes. JUMP-STAR A CAR?: yes. CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: yes. RIDE A BICYCLE?: yes. SWIM?: yes. PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: no. PLAY CHESS?: yes. BRAID HAIR?: no. TIE A TIE?: yes. PICK A LOCK?: yes.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM: jared padalecki. EYE COLOR: hazel. HAIR COLOR: brown. HAIR TYPE/STYLE: long and flowing. GLASSES/CONTACTS?: n/a. DOMINANT HAND: right. HEIGHT: 6′4 WEIGHT: 220 ish lbs. BUILD: slender but muscular. EXERCISE HABITS: rigorous. he jogs in the mornings, does sit ups / pull ups at night, and lifts weights during the day in between cases. he stays in shape. SKIN TONE: tanned. TATTOOS: anti-possession tattoo over his heart. it was carved out in 2026 but the scar has been tattooed over, replacing the original. PEIRCINGS: none. MARKS/SCARS: he’s died and come back so many times, it’s hard to say what’s still there and what’s gone. he does still have the bullet wound from where he shot chuck though. it never healed. NOTABLE FEATURES: nose, hair. USUAL EXPRESSION: smirk of disbelief, concern. CLOTHING STYLE: lumberjack lesbian. JEWELRY: he wears a chain with his wedding ring around his neck, the one he never got to put on for real. ALLERGIES: none. BODY TEMPERATURE: normal. DIET: not great. hence the need to work out. PHYSICAL AILMENTS: general fatigue from a rigorously active lifestyle.

PSYCHOLOGY

JUNG TYPE: INFJ JUNG SUBTYPE: Introvert(47%) iNtuitive (34%) Feeling(31%) Judging(38%) You have moderate preference of Introversion over Extraversion (47%) You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (34%) You have moderate preference of Feeling over Thinking (31%) You have moderate preference of Judging over Perceiving (38%) ENNEAGRAM TYPE: the reformer or the challenger. MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good. TEMPERAMENT: melancholic. ELEMENT: taurus are usually earth elements, but i think air suits sam better. PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE: logical-mathematical, probably. APPROXIMATE IQ: unknown. we know he scored a 174 on the LSAT, which is incredible, but that doesn’t always translate over to IQ. i would say he’s got a pretty high IQ even if he lacks a few common sense points. MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: undiagnosed depression, anxiety, PTSD, imposter syndrome, and survivor’s guilt — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. don’t ask me to psychoanalyze the winchesters, it’ll break us all. SOCIABILITY: he doesn’t seek it out but he can keep up with the joneses. EMOTIONAL STABILITY: not good. he has exhibited severe signs of codependency, suicidal ideation, lack of regard for his own life, and believe that he’s cursed. the boy is a mess. OBSESSION(S): vengeance after significant loss, saving people ( even if it’s from themselves ), trying to make up for all of the blood on his hands. PHOBIA(S): clowns. not a fan. ADDICTION(S): demon blood ( previously ) DRUG USE: no. ALCOHOL USE: recreationally. PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: can be, yes.

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE: casual. ACCENT: american. nothing specific. QUIRKS: chewing on pen caps, tapping to songs on the radio against the steering wheel with his fingers. HOBBIES: reading, researching, pool, morning crosswords. HABITS: stress pacing, irritability under extreme pressure. NERVOUS TICKS: jaw clench, nostrils flaring, hands curled into fists. DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: vengeance, restoring order / protecting people, survival. FEARS: losing the people he loves, hurting innocents, isolation. POSITIVE TRAITS: dependable, loyal, protective, determined, strong, honest, vulnerable. NEGATIVE TRAITS: impulsive, reckless, guilt-stricken, naive, obtuse, too trusting. SENSE OF HUMOR: dry, sarcastic. DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: no. CATCHPHRASE(S): damnit, dean. jerk / bitch.

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: long drives. ANIMAL: hedgehogs. BEVERAGE: monster energy drinks. BOOK: probably the classics, or something by neil gaiman. CELEBRITY: he doesn’t have one. COLOR: blue. DESIGNER: doesn’t have one. FOOD: philly cheesesteak. maybe mashed potatoes, if not the cheesesteak. FLOWER: sunflowers. GEM: none. HOLIDAY: none. MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: car. MOVIE: mallrats. MUSICAL ARTIST: none. he’ll just listen to whatever they have in the car, or is on the radio. before i think he was probably into top 40, maybe even classic rock as much as he complained about it. QUOTE/SAYING: none. SCENERY: autumn leaves falling from trees. SCENT: linen. SPORT: none. he doesn’t care. SPORTS TEAM: see above. TELEVISION SHOW: none. he probably only watches soap operas every now and then again. he doesn’t watch anything he would have to invest time and energy in. maybe pawnstars, or mythbusters. WEATHER: drizzle. VACATION DESTINATION: somewhere warm, tropic, and free of monsters.

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: to have a normal life. he knows he’ll never get it, has come to terms with the fact that he was never going to be normal. GREATEST FEAR: ending up alone, watching everyone he loves die. MOST AT EASE WHEN: around the people he loves. LEAST AT EASE WHEN: on a hunt that’s starting to go awry. WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: turning into a monster — the very thing he’s dedicated his life to hunting, or becoming evil. being forced into killing his own brother, or someone he loves like family, would also make the list. BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: in a really soft way, i want to say it’s becoming a pseudo dad to jack. it might not have been what he saw for himself, or how he imagined being a dad, but he loves the kid. if not that, maybe stopping the apocalypse. not that it lasted for very long. BIGGEST REGRET: not telling jessica the truth. he will always believe he got her killed. that guilt will set with him until the day he dies. MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: too many to count. BIGGEST SECRET: he remembers a lot of what the demon did when it possessed him in 2026. he fought with everything he had, but every time he broke through they pushed him back down. TOP PRIORITIES: figuring out what comes next, i suppose.

#meta.

2 notes · View notes

rwise · 6 years

Text

Levi’s is restoring its iconic power by using storytelling to put it back in the heart of pop culture all over the world

A brand that begins with a legendary story

In the midst of the California gold rush Levi Strauss had the idea that the sure money was not in panning for gold but in selling stuff to the men combing the hills and rivers in search of fortune and fame, specifically with well-made trousers in heavy canvas. One thing about those gold seekers, they didn’t have time for anything that wasn’t hunting for gold. They slept just long enough to stay alert, ate hurriedly and sorely resented any interruption to their work schedule - including having to repair a rip in their trousers. So Strauss had a simple idea: put copper rivets in the corners of the pockets, making them virtually indestructible. Miners paid top dollar for these sturdy, riveted denim trousers and the Levi Strauss brand of blue jeans was born. They didn’t just corner the market. They created it - out of whole cloth. Their trousers, overalls and lined coats became a staple of outdoor and frontier life.

One thing leads to the next...

More than 150 years later, denim now accounted for about 7% of all apparel sales and Levi-Strauss was no longer the only brand on the market but had done well to evolve with times and was a $4 billion global business, headquartered still in San Francisco, where it had all started. Typically the company had been run by lifers, but sometimes the leadership slots would be given over to outside “garmentos,” people who specialized in fashion, mass apparel and retail. The business was stagnant but the company’s board knew they had a powerful brand on their hands. So they tapped into the talent pool of the world’s historically greatest consumer brand builder and hired P&G veteran Chip Bergh to run the company. Chip insisted that the company have a clear brand strategy and a sound business plan. With his new head of brands, Jean Sey, they hired hot agency Wieden+Kennedy (who had birthed Nike) and when the crash of 2008 hit, W+K gave them “Go Forth,” a campaign that seemed more like “Occupy Wall Street” than true Levi’s. It didn’t do much for the brand and it didn’t have global appeal. What to do?

...and then comes back to the power of stories

It wasn’t until Chip meet James Curleigh that he finally grasped what the brand was all about and saw how to apply a great insight to a growth momentum strategy. Jim had reengineered the Salomon brand of skis by making the company stop thinking “ski equipment” market share and focus instead on their “share of mountain.” Salomon set its sights on mountain sports all year long: not just the downhill skiing but the cross country, the hiking, the climbing, the trekking. Salomon became a vibrant mountain sport company for which Adidas eventually paid $1 billion. Similarly, Levi’s would start thinking not share of jeans, but share of closet, which is why today, Levis Strauss & Co includes the Dockers and Denizen brands. But what were the jeans about? For they were the icon, the glue that holds the company together. Jim persuaded Chip that it was all about stories…

The story of people finding their true selves

Chip created a job for Jim, Brand President. Jim had the company look at the social and cultural history that surrounded jeans. After the miners, blue jeans were adopted by cowboys, who, as Marlboro would celebrate 75 years later, were living symbols of rugged independence. Then the bikers. Then the “rebels without a cause.” Then hippies. Then hipsters. Then start-ups. What did all of these cultural iconic lifestyles have in common? A desire to be true to themselves and a readiness to seize the day, trust their instincts, take action…to really be alive. They were all people who wanted their life to be a story, not a routine, not a calculation. In order for the brand to be ready for the next great generation of story seekers, it would have to think of itself as 150-year-old start up. It would have to live its own brand. And, slowly but surely, they began to realize that their new global brand idea would be: Live In Levi’s. They fired W+K and brought back FCB who had given them a soulful campaign years earlier, “the 501 Blues.” What would they do now with “Live in Levis”? And what kind of results could it deliver?

The purpose comes from the personality

The way Levi’s has executed the next chapter in its story is grounded in its brand personality and values. The brand purpose, finding your truest self, is deeply implicit in them. The brand personality is effortless cool. The brand values are authentic self-expression. The emotional benefit is feeling fully alive. So the key for the brand has been to trigger the telling of stories. Its reach and resonance would come from amplifying those stories around the world in all kinds of different cultures.

To trigger stories, you have to know your own

Levi’s found an amazing way to tell the story of its own authenticity and legendary past. It wouldn’t be fussy or boring. And it would trigger sales. They created a new line of clothing called “Authorized Vintage.” Levis takes vintage stock and reclaims it as theirs: inspected, cleaned, certified: lovingly prepared for a second life. This taps into the Millennial’s love of vintage clothing while at the same time taking Levi’s historical creds and turning them into a saleable product. Everybody wins.

True influencers are born storytellers

Levi’s isn’t interested in glossy Instagram “influencers” who are living advertising campaigns pretending to be your celebrity friend while adding you to the eyeballs they sell to their advertisers. Instead Levi’s, in concert with AKQA sought out people like music producer Caroline de Maigret, who have cool stories to tell, involving Levi’s most iconic mark, the 501s and who would be interested in talking about them in a global campaign called “We are 501.” (Link)

In the UK, supporting music - where new stories are being born

In the UK, Levi’s got behind music as a way of telling stories, creating culture, giving people something so powerful to believe in, so they can change their lives. They partnered up with music hero Skepta and created a youth music facility in Skepta’s hometown, Tottenham North London.

In Pakistan, Levi’s boldly backs the return of live music

There is something special and life-changing about live music. You’re there, under the spell of the musician, your life energy focuses into a beam and suddenly your craziest dreams and ambitions turn into something you’re really going to do. In that spirit, in 2017, Levi’s became a major backer for the return of the live Indie music scene in Pakistan, rebounding from Islamist harassment.

In India, Levi’s gives voice to women who want to shape their world

With 7 out of 10 women in India feeling that they don’t “measure up” to expectations concerning their appearance, and in a culture that pressures them with messages about how an Indian woman is supposed to look, Levis used its brand to become a projection of her most confident self, of, indeed, how she “shapes her world.” With social influencers that included a transgender model, a cancer survivor and a rape victim, the brand sharply contrasted itself with Indian stereotypes and, with zero paid media, obtained 10 million unique views in 2017 and a 22% sales increase in the Levis 300 “Shaping Series.” (Link)

In China, 2.6 million self-created ads in 2 weeks

Today’s 20-something style seekers in China had mostly tuned out Levi’s even though it had painstakingly built excellent mass distribution. Why not let this new generation make their own statement with the brand? Levi’s put together a platform on WeChat where they could select from different Levi’s and insert themselves into a fashion statement complete with their selection from a music library on TenCent QQ put together by Levi’s with a nod to its own values as a brand. The click-through on this was 50% higher than anything they had ever done. It generated 2.6 million co-created ads in just two weeks. It increased e-commerce sales 45% and total sales 15%.

In Malaysia, Levi’s redefines Chinese New Year

The fact is, Chinese New Year can be oppressive. Everyone feels obligated to send out a cavalcade of messages, head back home for the family reunions, get inspected by Grandma, eat traditional dishes…what if you’re young and cool and living in KL? Levi’s stepped forward with a cultural meme of #NewYearMyWay.

Bringing it all together, “Live in Circles” hits home

That moment when you’re in a club or at a really great party and you overcome your fear and you step into the middle of the floor and you get your groove on and everybody eggs you on and suddenly you feel free and loved…that’s what Levi’s celebrated in Live In Circles. Like Smirnoff, it connected with the Millennial’s love of living in a diverse and inclusive world where everyone comes together but remains exactly who they are. Inspiring and joyful, “Circles” hit YouTube’s top ten most watched commercials in 2017 with 22 million views and counting.

It’s working

Jim Curleigh joined Levi’s in 2014. “Live in Levis” kicked off in 2015. The campaign has gone glocal for two years now. More will be revealed later. But in 2017, Levi’s had its best year in over ten years. There’s something going on in this 150-year-old start-up that looks promising indeed. With the simplest of integration, an anthem – Live in Levi’s – and a clear grasp of the power of its brand personality and values, Levi’s is executing around the world with an astonishing mix of story-telling, product innovation, activation, co-creation and culture-specific messaging that shows just how much local can go into glocal.

#levi's

2 notes · View notes

grantmkemp · 4 years

Photo

Myra Albert Wiggins (1869–1956) was an American painter and pictorial photographer who became a member of the important early 20th century Photo-Secession movement.

The Photo-Secession was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general and photographic pictorialism in particular. A group of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day in the early 20th century, held the then controversial viewpoint that what was significant about a photograph was not what was in front of the camera but the manipulation of the image by the artist/photographer to achieve his or her subjective vision. The movement helped to raise standards and awareness of art photography.

Myra Jane Albert, was born on December 15, 1869 in Salem, Oregon. She was the second of four children born to John Henry Albert and Mary Elizabeth Holman. Her father worked his way from being a bookkeeper in a local linseed oil company to becoming president of the Capital National Bank in Salem.

She showed natural artistic talent at an early age, and she would spend hours drawing and painting both in her home and in the fields around Salem. Her parents encouraged her talent both because she was very good and because a cultural background in the arts was expected for upper class women of the time.

Like many progressive women of the late 19th century, Myra was sent to New York City for her higher education. She studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1891 to 1894, where she took classes from William Merritt Chase and John Twachtman. Chase in particular influenced her thinking about art, and when she brought her photographs for him to view he would sometimes write comments on the back of them. She immortalized Chase in a famous 1891 photograph of the artist teaching at the league, surrounded by his female students. While she was studying in New York, she would return to Salem during the summers, and in the summer of 1892, she announced her engagement to Fred Wiggins. When she returned to New York that fall, she became one of the first female members of the New York Camera Club. She used the club's darkroom facilities, and it was here that she met Joseph Keiley, an influential photographer, writer, and close friend of Alfred Stieglitz.

In 1900, Wiggins was given first of two one-woman exhibitions of her photography at the Chicago Art Institute. She had already met and corresponded with the most important photographer of the time, Alfred Stieglitz, and in 1903 he admitted her as a member in the newly formed Photo-Secession.

In 1906, she was included in the invitational exhibit "The Work of Women Photographers of America" at the Camera Club of Hartford, Connecticut. Wiggins was one of 26 women who were presented in the show. Later that year two of her photographs were included in the annual members exhibit at Stieglitz's Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in New York.

By 1907, Fred Wiggins wanted to enter the plant nursery business and he moved his family to Toppenish in central Washington. Fred started the Washington Nursery Company, and Wiggins tried to help her husband financially by opening an art studio and school. Her new hometown area was much more rural and undeveloped than Salem, and much of the countryside around the town was dry and dusty. The dust caused health problems for Wiggins, and it was several years before she could produce a regular income from her painting.

Wiggins continued to photograph as much as her health allowed, and she exhibited again at the Little Galleries in New York and at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in San Francisco. Fellow Photo-Secessionist Anne Brigman commented on Wiggins' photos in the latter show, saying she "invariably infuses her work with an atmosphere of tender sadness."

Over the next decade Wiggins' photos were shown in many important exhibitions, including the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in New York City (1909), the Annual Pictorial Photography Invitation in Seattle, Washington (1910) and the landmark International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography (1910) at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Encouraged by the interest in her work by other photographers in Seattle, Wiggins started to spend more time in that city.

From the mid-1910s to the late 1920s, she alternated between helping her husband with his business and taking her photographs to Seattle when there was enough money to go. During this time she also developed an interest in lecturing about her work, other photographers and about art in general. In 1928, the Seattle Fine Arts Society gave Wiggins her last one-woman photography exhibit.

In 1930, Wiggins co-founded the Women Painters of Washington, one of the state's oldest existing arts organizations. By the time she turned 86 in 1955, she had completed 114 paintings. She continued to paint for many years and was recognized for her artistry through many retrospective exhibits. On January 13, 1956, Wiggins died of a stroke. She was actively painting up until the time of her death. Her husband died in an accident four months later.

These are my colourised versions of "Along the Cliff" taken c.1903, and a Self Portrait, c.1900

Restoring Your Past … Website

Restoring Your Past … on Facebook

#photographer #arrtist #Victorian #Edwardian #American #Pictorial #photo-secession #vintage #history #colourised #colorized #Photo Colourisation #photo colorization

0 notes

sylviajackson5 · 4 years

Text

Tree Service Company Rochester Ny

Contents

Tree removal service company.

Current hot industry

$500 million project

Top rochester tree

Greater rochester area

Mar 13, 2018 … Rochester's Premier tree removal service company. Known for quality jobs at fair prices, J.M. Tree Service has two I.S.A. certified arborists to …

Tree Removal Costs Rochester Ny Expert Tree Service is the leading company in tree removal, pruning, and stump grinding in Rochester and Monroe County, NY! READ MORE ABOUT US Tree removal in Rochester is often necessary to remove dead or damaged trees, or just to free up some additional space for other things. Tree removal can be expensive and dangerous,

Best Tree Services in Rochester, NY – Chris's Affordable Tree Service, JM Tree … Tree Expert Company, Birchcrest Tree & Landscape, High Falls Tree Service, …

In the current hot industry market, third-party construction and program management firms also are finding new momentum. While some clients are choosing to bring project management in-house, many …

Providing expert residential and commercial tree and lawn care services in Rochester, New York and the surrounding communities since 1880.

Your Rochester, New York Davey Tree Office. Your local Davey arborists can help with all your tree care needs. Our ISA Certified Arborists offer professional tree service for tree removal, tree pruning, tree health and lawn care throughout Rochester, New York and surrounding areas.

Tree houses and other unconventional lodgings … Now RXR is shopping its plan to New York, San Francisco and a half-dozen other U.S. cities, seeking a site for a roughly 0 million project …

Small Tree Removal Rochester Ny Results 1 – 24 of 24 … Hire the Best Tree Services in Rochester, NY on HomeAdvisor. We Have 649 Homeowner Reviews of top rochester tree Services. D and D … Roof Inspections Can Help You Avoid Expensive Repairs The roof of your home is important to keep you, your family, and belongings safe. To get

Results 1 – 23 of 23 … Show More Show Less. Services Offered. Tree Stump Removal – For Business, Tree Stump Removal.

Tree Care Company Rochester Ny The Learning Tree Child Care Center currently has openings in our Infant Room (6 wks to 24 mo), Toddler Room (24 mo to 36 mo) and Pre-K Room (36 mo to 5 yrs). Our program provides age-appropriate … Your Rochester, New York Davey Tree Office . Your local davey arborists can help with all your

Whether you are a business owner or a home owner, we can help you. Best Tree Service in Rochester NY. We offer a great deal …

Tree Trimming Companies Rochester Ny When you’re ready to have a tree on your property come down, it’s time to call an arborist. The national average price range for tree-trimming costs is $270-$450. Tree removal costs can vary based on the height, diameter, location and health of the tree, and on whether you want to remove the stump. Tree trimming

Xerox Corp., Bausch & Lomb, Inc., Paychex Inc., Frontier Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., and … (Western New York’s only women’s professional football) are cheered on by their enthusiastic hometown fans.

Read real reviews and see ratings for Rochester, NY Tree Services near you to help … Business Description: Locally owned and operated tree service business.

William David Walker, 83, of Myerstown, died Saturday, March 14, 2020 at WellSpan Good Samaritan Hospital, Lebanon. He was the husband of Ellen M. (Matthews) Walker. They recently celebrated their …

In 1956 and for 24 years she worked for R.T. French Company as consumer services manager in Rochester, NY. Her work consisted … To plant a tree in memory of Rita Fitzgerald as a living tribute …

Tree Services. Serving Rochester and the Surrounding Area. " was so impressed with their knowledge & professionalism! Tree Services. Serving Rochester and the Surrounding Area. ", and the stump was ground up in less than half a day. The whole team was courteous and professional and…

Monster Tree Service of Rochester. Had wanted to get this work done for years, but everyone else we spoke to quoted us the work with a crane Business Description: Serving the Eastside of Rochester NY, Dobbertin Landscape & Snowplowing provides customers with top quality landscaping and snow…

Lewis Tree Service offers comprehensive vegetation management, utility line clearance and storm restoration services to investor-owned utilities, electric coops and municipalities nationwide.

Following three years of service as an officer in the United … as Director of Residence Halls at the University of Rochester, New York. Following his retirement in 1988, he relocated to …

Serving the greater rochester area for more than 15 years. Bringing our top-notch equipment and unparalleled experience in tree removal all over Monroe County. As well as being known for our superb performance in the field, with safety and peace of mind for our customers…

Rochester, NY 14611. From Business: Davey Tree Service: We offer professional tree services by ISA certified arborists. Some of our main tree services From Business: Arbor Tree Experts, Inc., is an owner-operated company that has been serving the tree care needs of the greater Rochester…

The post Tree Service Company Rochester Ny appeared first on Rochester Tree Service Pros.

source https://rochestertreeservicepros.com/tree-service-company-rochester-ny/ from Rochester Tree Service Pros https://rochestertreeservicepros.blogspot.com/2020/04/tree-service-company-rochester-ny.html

0 notes

junker-town · 5 years

Text

The 6 best NFL destinations for free agent Tom Brady

Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

It’s gonna be the Patriots, but here are the teams that will at least be in the running for Tom Brady.

Tom Brady has been a New England Patriot for the past 20 years. He may not stick around for a 21st.

The two-time MVP and six-time Super Bowl champion is set to hit free agency for the first time in his career. That means he could be the most sought-after player in the league, even if the Patriots are willing to throw upwards of $30 million annually to keep him in Foxborough.

If 2019 is any indication, 2020 Brady will be a slightly above-average passer who mostly avoids risks, beats the teams he’s supposed to, and wins games with a heavy assist from his defense. There’s a chance that could change with a better supporting cast. There’s a similar chance that, at age 43, his inevitable decline is finally upon him.

He’s made it clear there’s gas left in his tank, though. And it’s possible he spends 2020 somewhere other than New England. The Raiders are reportedly planning a dogged pursuit, and they may not even be a top-seven destination for his services.

So which teams could provide the softest landing spot? Let’s look at the early standouts, broken down by best fits for Touchdown Tom.

The best fit for Brady’s passing game (and Chris Ballard’s revenge): Indianapolis Colts

It’s not a perfect fit, but it makes some sense.

The Colts could give Brady an offensive line Pro Football Focus ranked third-best in the NFL. Jack Doyle won’t be confused for Rob Gronkowski, but he’s a Pro Bowl tight end with a 73.4 career catch percentage. Nyheim Hines, electric as a punt returner, has 107 catches in his two seasons as a situational back. When Brady looks to air it out, he’ll have T.Y. Hilton as his top option.

This would all be a delightful turn of events for Indianapolis general manager Chris Ballard. Back in February 2018, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels agreed to become head coach of the Colts. But before he could sign that deal — and, famously, after the Colts had tweeted it out — McDaniels reneged on his agreement and decided to keep his old job in New England.

Convincing Brady to finish out his career wearing Peyton Manning’s old shoulder stripes would be a pretty good heckle on New England. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, either.

Indianapolis may be in the market for a quarterback. Jacoby Brissett struggled late in the season after suffering a knee injury in Week 8. That turned a 5-2 start into a 7-9 finish and a spot outside the playoffs.

Bringing Brady to the AFC South would also unite him with his former backups in Brissett and Brian Hoyer. The Colts have a limited receiving corps, but also have more than $86 million in salary cap space to spend this offseason. They could throw money at A.J. Green to join Hilton in an all-initials receiving corps or use their solid draft position to take a crack at one of the deepest influxes of wideout talent in years.

If Ballard wants to make Brady a priority, there’s a lot he could offer.

Chance it happens: 1/10

Indianapolis Colts QB Brady seems like the fastest way to piss off two different fanbases. It also sounds like a credible threat to force the Patriots into investing heavily in their veteran quarterback and his wide receivers and tight ends this spring.

The best team that can give him big-play wideouts: Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Brady still wants to throw deep balls. The question is, should he? He’s only completed 37 percent of passes of at least 20+ yards over the last three seasons. While some of those incompletions can be explained away by an underwhelming receiving corps, the truth is that Brady misses a lot of deep throws.

He probably wouldn’t have anyone like Randy Moss or Gronkowski if he returned to the Patriots, but there’s one QB-needy team that can bolster him with a top wideout tandem. The Buccaneers are currently in the market for a quarterback with Jameis Winston set to hit free agency. A move to Tampa would pair Brady with field stretcher Mike Evans and budding star Chris Godwin, whose 1,333 receiving yards were third-most in the NFL in 2019.

These dynamos could help fill in the gap between any waning accuracy and Brady’s traditionally solid numbers. Instead of putting a ball in a tight window for Gronkowski to innately snatch, he could turn to the 6’5 Evans, who is similarly masterful at using his size and length to shield the ball from defensive backs. If he needs a sure-handed target at the sticks on third down, he’d have Godwin, who dropped just one of the 88 catchable passes thrown his way.

The Buccaneers operate behind an explosive passing game and a head coach (Bruce Arians) known for getting the most out of his quarterbacks. Brady would provide Tampa Bay with a prolific, if diminished, passer who can show what the Bucs are capable of behind a quarterback who doesn’t turn the ball over twice per game.

Chance it happens: 2/10

Brady would get two good receivers and a coach who could help restore his brilliance in Tampa. He’d also have a defense that ranked 29th in points allowed thanks to an awful turnover differential but fifth in Football Outsiders’ defensive efficiency metric. Factor in nearly $85 million in cap space this offseason and there’s a lot to like from Brady’s vantage point. As far as suitors go, though, the Bucs may not measure up.

The best team to offer him something he truly hasn’t had: Carolina Panthers

David Tepper assumed ownership of the Panthers in 2018 and oversaw a quiet transition ... until 2019. That’s when he fired longtime head coach Ron Rivera, released veteran tight end Greg Olsen, and threw oodles of money at college sideline standouts Matt Rhule and Joe Brady.

Tepper’s next splash could be to hire a man whose work he knows well. As a native of Pittsburgh and former minority owner of the Steelers, Tepper’s seen the Patriots end his hometown team’s postseason hopes in the AFC title game three separate times. Transplanting Brady from New England to Carolina would be his biggest move yet.

The main factor that could swing Brady south — besides a big chunk of cash made possible by the $20 million in salary cap savings the Panthers would gain by releasing Cam Newton — would be Christian McCaffrey. The All-Pro runner/receiver would be the most complete tailback Brady’s ever played with in his 20+ years in the NFL.

McCaffrey is James White and an upgraded rookie-year Sony Michel all in one. Having him on the field for all three downs would create a new level of flexibility to the QB’s playbook, and his play-action passing would branch out into more options than ever before.

Chance it happens: 2/10

The Panthers’ offensive line and its 8.4 percent sack rate aren’t exactly conducive to a 43-year-old quarterback. Carolina would have to make other upgrades to make Charlotte one of Brady’s preferred destinations.

The best place to take one more swipe at Philip Rivers’ legacy: Los Angeles Chargers

Rivers saw his season end thanks to Brady’s Patriots three times in his 16 seasons. He and the Chargers parted ways before the 17th.

Brady could take the reins for a team just one year removed from a 12-win season. He’d have one of the league’s top receiving backs should the club retain restricted free agent Austin Ekeler, as well as a dynamite deep threat in Keenan Allen. The Chargers could also use the franchise tag to keep tight end Hunter Henry in town to be Gronk Lite for the quadragenarian QB. While Los Angeles’ offensive line hasn’t earned much hype, it allowed Rivers — a player roughly as mobile as Brady — to be sacked on just 5.4 percent of his dropbacks in 2019.

A move across the AFC wouldn’t just give the Chargers a headliner to open their new, shared stadium in LA. It would also bring Brady back to his California roots. He grew up in San Mateo, some 360 miles north of Los Angeles, but Hollywood could make a lot of sense for the world’s most recognizable football player, his supermodel wife, and the children he threw into a Facebook reality show in 2018.

Actually, you know what? Hold that thought.

Chance it happens: 3/10

This feels less dirty than seeing Brady in a Colts helmet, but the Chargers’ limited defense and recent failures could be a problem.

The best hometown option: San Francisco 49ers

If general manager John Lynch thinks he’s seen the best of Jimmy Garoppolo already, he can trade away his quarterback while eating just $4.2 million in dead cap space this offseason. That would clear more than $22 million in room to bring Brady to the franchise he grew up cheering for. Want to get weird? THIS would be weird.

And probably pretty stupid from the Niners.

Chance it happens: 0.25/10

Garoppolo was 10 minutes away from a Super Bowl MVP. Brady is no guaranteed upgrade at age 43. This would be one hell of a swing from Lynch, who has mostly made the right moves after graduating to the Niners’ front office in 2017. There’s almost no way this happens, but dear god, imagine if it did.

The best fit because, come on, what are we even doing here?: New England Patriots

The storybook ending is for Bill Belichick and Brady to go out together, holding ring-clad hands (metaphorically) and turning into the sunset. That’s always been the plan.

If New England is willing to pay, free agency should just be a formality for Brady — a brief Rumspringa before returning to his hardworking, strawberry-free roots. Here’s what the Patriots can offer him:

his best shot at winning a Super Bowl in 2021

the best head coach in the game

an offensive line that’s allowed him to be sacked only 49 times the past two seasons (36 games, including the playoffs) — and one that should get center David Andrews back in the lineup after missing all of 2019 due to blood clots

the league’s top defense, even if several key pieces (Kyle Van Noy, Devin McCourty, etc.) are set to be free agents

the chance to finish out his career having played for only one NFL franchise.

Re-signing Brady may make it difficult to carve out the room needed to get receiver and tight end help, but that group could be improved with the growth of 2019 first-round pick N’Keal Harry and midseason addition Mohamed Sanu’s increased familiarity with the Patriot offense. But Brady returning to New England might not be such a sure thing after all. A couple reports from Feb. 27 suggested that him going elsewhere seems a bit more likely. Via Pats Pulpit:

First, ESPN’s Jeff Darlington said that he “would be stunned if Tom Brady went back to New England” during an appearance on his network’s show Get Up. A short time later, the Boston Herald’s Karen Guregian added that the Patriots and Brady’s camp have not yet been in contact and that the odds of a contract extension materializing are “‘not looking good,’ according to a person with knowledge of the situation.”

Still, there’s a long way to go with these negotiations, so it’s probably best to take that with a grain of salt. Even if there are still plenty of questions to answer in New England, there’s a lot the Pats have going for them that other teams do not.

Chance it happens: 8/10

There’s only one place Brady belongs, and it’s in the warm, Twisted Tea-smelling bosom of screaming Boston fans.

0 notes

vinylbay777 · 5 years

Text

Music Film Events Coming to Theaters in 2019

Limited film engagements seem like all the rage right now. The latest band bringing their music to the big screen is INXS, who announced Wednesday (10/16) that their documentary ‘Mystify: Michael Hutchence’ will be coming to theaters for one night only on January 7. The film centers on frontman Hutchence in an attempt to get to know the singer through interviews and “new revelations.” Hutchence passed away in 1997 at the age of 37.

As stated, there are a lot of one-night-only music film experiences coming to theaters within the next few months. These upcoming films vary between concert experiences and documentaries and run the gambit of genres from rock and metal to K-Pop and R&B.

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, is taking a look at some of the films headed to theaters this year. Here are eight to keep an eye out for.

1. INXS: ‘Mystify’ won’t be the first special event INXS is doing this year. On December 9, the band will be bringing ‘INXS: Live Baby Live,’ a concert film shot during their 1991 Wembley Stadium concert, back to the big screen. The film has been restored and includes an extra performance that was left out of the original.

2. Metallica: In September, Metallica played two special shows with the San Francisco Symphony to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their historic ‘S&M’ concerts. Dubbed ‘S&M2,’ a film version combining the two performances followed, hitting theaters on October 9. The film became one of the highest-grossing global cinema rock events ever, taking in $5.5 million from more than 3700 showings worldwide. Due to popular demand, the film will be coming back to theaters for one more night on October 30.

3. Lionel Richie: In 2015, R&B legend Lionel Richie headlined the famed Glastonbury festival during its coveted Sunday teatime slot. ‘Lionel Richie at Glastonbury’ captures that performance for the world to see. Accompanying the film will be a special introductory feature called ‘Road to Glastonbury’ with commentary from Richie, as well as concert and documentary footage. The event takes place November 19. Tickets go on sale Friday.

4. BTS: Arguably the biggest group to come out of the recent K-Pop explosion, BTS has had special concert film screenings in the past. But those pale in comparison to what they have in store for October 27. ‘BTS World Tour ‘Love Yourself: Speak Yourself’ [The Final]’ finds the group simulcasting the final show of their ‘Speak Yourself’ tour to theaters across the US just hours after it ends in Seoul, South Korea. Theaters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Japan and South Korea get one step better, the actual livestream of the event as it happens.

5. Bruce Springsteen: Even though Bruce Springsteen has decided not to tour behind his latest album, ‘Western Stars,’ that doesn’t mean fans won’t be able to hear the new songs live. For ‘Western Stars’ (the film), Springsteen decided film himself in a nearly 100-year-old barn with a 30-piece orchestra playing the album front to back. Interspersed with the performance is archival footage from throughout his career and new interviews with The Boss. Fans will have two opportunities to see the film in theaters, October 19 and October 23.

6. John Fogerty: John Fogerty has been traversing North America on his “My 50 Year Trip” tour this year, celebrating a half-century since playing the iconic Woodstock Festival. The former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman will be bringing the tour to the big screen on November 11 with concert film ‘John Fogerty – 50 Year Trip: Live at Red Rocks,’ which captures his June 20th performance at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado.

7. Lynyrd Skynyrd: Over the last year-and-a-half, Lynyrd Skynyrd has been crossing the globe on their ‘Last of the Street Survivors’ farewell tour, celebrating a more than four decade career on the road. Following its conclusion this weekend, the band will be bringing the tour to the big screen on November 7. The film captures the band’s September 2, 2018 hometown show in Jacksonville, Florida, what was originally supposed to be the final night of the tour.

8. Neil Young: Last week, Neil Young announced the release date of a documentary called ‘Mountaintop,’ which chronicles the making of this upcoming album ‘Colorado’ with Crazy Horse, their first collaboration in seven years. The film hits theaters for one night only on October 22, just days before the release of ‘Colorado.’ This won’t be the last you hear of Young in the movie department, as the singer has 14 more in the works.

Over the next few months, a lot of top artists are headed to the big screen for once-in-a-lifetime film events. Whether it’s BTS’ livestreamed concert or Neil Young’s album documentary, there are some special music experiences waiting for you at the movie theater this fall. Keep an eye out for the events above and let us know which concert films you’re excited to see on the big screen.

---

Find music from these film-worthy artists and more at Vinyl Bay 777. As Long Island’s top new independent record shop, we have thousands of titles to choose from in a range of genres to suit the tastes of most music fans. Browse our wide selection of new and used vinyl records, CD, cassettes, music DVDs, memorabilia and more in store at our Plainview location or online at vinylbay777.com. With more titles being added to our selection all the time, you never know what you might find at Vinyl Bay 777.

#music #film #concert film #music documentaries #events

0 notes