#I got thrown a million curveballs in the past two weeks

[a-dumb-sarcastic-bisexual]

These Clone Wars headcanons are long overdue

I saw someone say Anakin couldn’t have taught Ashoka everything cause that man’s stiff as a damn board and I laughed my ass off cause they were right but then it got me thinking that this would be a perfect moment for Ahsoka to teach Anakin something

So she gently persuades him and by that I mean she forces him to do some simple stretches in the morning nothing too bad just stuff you’d probably do before gym class and after a while it kinda becomes a pseudo-joined meditation for them

After a while when Anakin started becoming more comfortable with the stretches she started teaching him yoga which he quickly fell in love with cause he found it was one of the few things that calmed him down as traditional meditation should

When Ahsoka stopped being Anakin’s padawan in the cannon timeline or in my delusional timeline where they both left the order and everyone’s happy he had to find something else to call her and for the first couple of months he would always introduce her starting with “my”

The nicknames would usually fall into one of two categories the first being the unhinged nicknames like “my little hell-raiser” or “my little desert storm” and then there are the cute and sappy ones like “my little Soka” or his personal favorite “my little sister”

And with the last one people would ask “Oh is she adopted” and while Anakin could go the normal route and say yes he would instead go his route and look at the person like they’re crazy and say “No why do you ask?”

Which leads me to my next headcanon of you know when people say “If you spend enough time with something you’ll start to resemble it” Well that kinda happens with Obi-Wan Anakin and Ahsoka

In the beginning they all looked as different as a group could look but after a while people started to notice their eyes looked weirdly similar and they held themselves in the same way and their facial expressions mimicked each other and oh my force when did they start looking related?

And this works in their favor later on when they leave cause remember yall they all left and lived happily ever after… 

Anyway it works out for them cause when Anakin reiterates “No we’re all siblings” people don’t even think about it they just kinda accept it and move on cause the galaxies in shambles and weirder shit has happened

Even though Ahsoka blames Anakin for crashing everything he’s ever flown it doesn’t truly bother her the risky moves and “fancy flying” become predictable after a while and weirdly comforting 

It should concern her that barrel rolls and 90-degree drops are more soothing to her than a trained pilot who flies by the book cause yeah sure the flight is smooth but will the pilot make jokes while they’re being shot down

It is a truly hilarious show of fate that Anakin Skywalker got put in charge of the biggest adrenaline junkie this side of the galaxy and even though they both know this fact neither one of them will mention it 

Ahsoka’s just grateful to experience the feeling of a rollercoaster without ever being on one and Anakin’s grateful to finally find someone who just nags him when they freefall instead of screaming at the top of their lungs or puking when they land

Ahsoka will jokingly rat out Anakin to Obi-Wan when he picks on her it’s not uncommon for the older Jedi to hear things like “Master, Anakin keeps floating my sabers to the ceiling” or “Master, I can’t find my headwrap and Anakin’s hiding again can you help me look”

Just funny little tidbits throughout the day and sometimes council members will hear those anecdotes and for some reason they think “Oh she’s willing to rat him out for real” which has led to some council members asking her the bigger questions 

Like “Where was your master last night we tried hailing him but he didn’t answer?” and when Ahsoka responds with “Oh he’s been in his room all night tinkering with his arm” they correct her and say that the guards never reported him returning from a late-night excursion

She’ll come up with something like “Oh he left? Well I’m sorry masters I never saw him go and I could have sworn I heard him” which is a lie she told him to say hi to Padme as he left and the only thing she heard that night was her music 

But for some strange reason the council decides to believe her cause even though she’s Anakin’s padawan she has a strangely trustworthy face and has a wrap sheet of throwing him under the bus in the past 

Little do they know she wouldn’t sell him out for real and Anakin pays loyal people generously and by that I mean baked goods and boba and her favorite movie being played while they eat dinner

I don't know what it is about Anakin that gives me morning-person vibes but he just does now I’m not saying he’s like super bubbly in the morning but being up at five am when no one else is around just soothes him for some reason 

This however doesn’t stop him from staying up late to work on some projects or having a movie marathon with Ahsoka it just means those things are infrequent 

Obi-Wan and Ahsoka on the other hand feel like night owls to me the duo has so much going on throughout the day and while they’re both extroverts at heart nighttime is when they really unwind and get to relax 

All this to say it’s very funny imagining the normally broody Anakin smiling serenely at six in the morning barely needing a cup of caf while the normally happy duo of Ahsoka and Obi-Wan are reduced to grumbling grumpy messes that are death-gripping their cups of caf 

The Jedi don’t say “I love you” at least not in the normal way that everyone else does instead he makes snacks for his padawan while she frantically studies for a test that she forgot about or they say things like “Hey master I think I figured out why your prosthetic keeps locking up”  

Or one of them discovers his favorite tea in his cupboard after the younger two come back from a mission but he knows they were stationed three star systems away from where the tea is normally sold

Or the younger coming home from the same mission to find that all the chores they couldn’t do were taken care of 

You know the minuscule things that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at but to each other mean the world

[davidmariottecomics]

You Can Always Restart

Ahoy hoy!

I've mentioned a few times over the past couple of weeks (mostly in the "What I enjoyed" section) that I've been reading David M. Willis' Dumbing of Age. I'm all caught up on over a decade of webcomics! Woo! There are a lot of reasons that I like it. I find the characters compelling. I'm a big sucker for slice-of-life type stuff that occasionally gets spicy and that tracks multiple groups of folks all just kinda living their lives and the ways they intersect with comedic and dramatic effect. Lots of Beast Wars references and acknowledgement of how great IDW TF comics are (and the occasional nod to TMNT and Sonic and stuff too). A cartoonist with the initials DMW when I'm DWM. It's great! 

But now that I am somehow caught up, I've also decided to check out their earlier comics. I've just finished the original run of Roomies! now. Roomies is a proto-Dumbing of Age in a lot of ways and that's a big part of what has inspired this week's blog about revisiting and revising your old work. 

You Can (Always) Redo

Yes, that is a riff on the Rebuild of Evangelion titles which are also a pretty good example of what I'm talking about today. 

Sometimes, as a creator, you have a good idea. Sometimes, you have a great idea. And sometimes, you do not have the ability to properly execute your big idea. There are a million reasons for it, right?

Just to look at Evangelion. The original TV series, somewhat infamously, always had a very small staff working on it, was running up against tight deadlines the entire run of the production, had various curveballs thrown at it by both the creator and the studio that would significantly change the overall plot and focus of individual episodes while in production, and ends in a couple of really weird episodes that may or may not have had budget problems and/or time problems of being created in a major crunch. The last couple episodes weren't too well received, and so the ending got rewritten in a pair of films. And then a few years later, Hideaki Anno and Gainax decided to do the whole thing again over almost 15 years with the Rebuild movies.Plus manga and light novel adaptations/reimaginings. Plus this that and the other thing (not to mention Anno's Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider, which are a similar, but different thing).

All of these versions tackle the same basic material, but due to different sized budgets and teams and Anno's shifting interests and feelings as a person, they can get pretty different. One of the things I really like about it is seeing how each iteration and even just escalations within each version feel like they're usually trending toward something truer to who Anno is at the moment of creation (even if I think most of the endings are bad). 

If you have an idea you like, roll with it. Chances are, you've got something, otherwise why would you be interested in the first place. But in recognizing your limitations--be they budget or time or skill or editorial interference or whatever--know that you can also keep an idea in your back pocket to try it again, but better. 

The Walkyverse If you haven't taken the time to read all of Willis' webcomics, that's probably fine. They've been at it for like 25 years at this point, so it's a lot to catch up on. The long and short is there was an initial series: Roomies! about college roommates. That ended and some plotlines were refocused/retconned into a new series, It's Walky! That then spun-off into two other series: Joyce and Walky! and Shortpacked! And a ways into all of this, David looped back around to the initial concept of a story about college freshmen trying to acclimate to their new circumstances (and being semi-autobiographic, but now with the clarity of hindsight) and started Dumbing of Age. Most of the cast are folks from the various previous series, but reimagined and tweaked to fit the college plot. Some personality traits remain pretty true. Some ideas that just got touched on waaaaaaaay back in Roomies! are refined and actually executed deftly. 

There aren't a lot of ideas I had when I was young that I revisit and see if I can't make work better now with my expertise and skills, but there are definitely some things that I've poked at here and there. And for some of my more recent ideas, there've been lots of things I've revisited. Sometimes it's a concept that I feel like I'm getting to the 95 yard line on but can't quite get across to the goal, and so I see if I can't run a different play and break it. Sometimes it's a particular script that I look at and even if it is recent, I feel isn't terribly representative of how I write. But when I go through these things, I always try to make it a new doc so I can still go back to the old and see just how and what I've refined that might make it's way back or that might make itself into yet another revision. 

I think there's sometimes an assumption that live performance is the only medium in which you get a different variation of a work every time. But you can absolutely revisit your older comics works and ideas and find some new angle on them or reason to bring back something that never quite clicked when you did it in the past. 

Wrap It Up 

In some ways, you can even do this in licensed or corporate comics. Brian Cronin has a fun series over at CBR called Wrap it Up! Each entry looks at two comic series wherein the plotline of one series ultimately had to be resolved in another. I think the most recent--at time of writing--was about Adam Warlock's series getting canceled and some of those plots getting resolved in Hulk. I bring this up because while obviously starting from scratch is an option, sometimes you'll be given a chance to finish your story in another way: be it a different series or a one-shot or OGN. I've even occasionally seen stories more-or-less wrapped up across universes by using similar characters (I swear one of the Wrap it Ups is about a Namor story that gets "resolved" in Aquaman because it was easier to do a light retelling and then resolve the story there than it was to get new Namor stuff going at Marvel). 

A good idea shouldn't go to waste, and there's often going to be some way to circle back around to it. It's just a matter of keeping those ideas in sight so they don't get lost. 

And, as an extra little note: I have said before, when I'm scripting, I tend to practice bad habits. I do a lot of one-and-dones where I take a single pass and then have someone else read it and only make revisions after I've had someone else do a pass. I also do a lot of batch scripting with rewrites--which is where I will write say the first 5-10 pages of the script, leave it for a bit, plot out the back half, reread that first section and do my first round of rewrites, then finish the script having sometimes almost completely rewritten the first batch of pages. Unless something is actually egregious, I tend to believe you shouldn't revise until you've finished a draft and can see the thing in it's entirely. And, no, you probably shouldn't just get stuck revisiting and rewriting the same script or redrawing the same page again and again until you get it right. But maybe down the line, you'll get the chance to truly do it all over again, the way that reflects you now.  

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Craig of the Creek (Cartoon), Honkai Star Rail (Video game), My Adventures with Superman (Cartoon), The Broken Room by Peter Clines (Book), Crime Scene Kitchen (TV show), Dumbing of Age (Webcomic), Solve This Murder (Podcast), Cruel Summer (TV show), Praise Petey (Cartoon), The Loveliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen (Album), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Movie).

New Releases this week (8/2/2023): Nothing from me!

New Releases next week (8/9/2023): Nothing from me! Couple of slow weeks, but lots coming up the pipeline! 

Announcements:  I've mentioned it a couple of times, but I'm largely done with the con circuit for the year. There might be a thing in a couple of weeks, and if so, I'll be letting folks know ASAP! We're not going to be at Tucson Comic-Con this year. Love that show, but just didn't work out right. And at the moment of writing, I don't *think* I'll be at NYCC. 

This is kind of a soft announcement following them mentioning it on their Twitch stream, but Becca and I are working on a comic. We're co-plotting, I'm scripting, they're drawing, and their friend Duke who has lettered a bunch of their smutty stuff is on-board when we get to that part of things. If you're curious to learn more...

...Maybe join my Patreon! You get to see developmental stuff from this, and other work-in-progress projects. Plus this same blog, but without the part plugging my Patreon! And even more extra stuff! ORRRRR... join Becca's Patreon because they're also going to be sharing some of this comic developmental stuff! 

Pic of the Week: The neighbor's cat was chillin in our complex's courtyard and I managed to sneak some pets. The kitty is pretty nice, but often doesn't let people approach, so it was a nice treat. Or maybe it was the kitty's way of apologizing for frequently coming and hanging out on our landing and driving my cats wild. 

[your-dietician]

What college football coaches learned from the pandemic last year

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-football/what-college-football-coaches-learned-from-the-pandemic-last-year/

What college football coaches learned from the pandemic last year

WEST VIRGINIA COACH Neal Brown is hesitant when he says there are positive things to be gained from what he and his fellow coaches went through last season.

“Maybe ‘positives’ isn’t the right word,” he corrected himself.

Brown doesn’t want to paint a rosy picture of what was a frustrating situation for everyone involved. Talk to enough coaches and they’ll tell you how exhausting it was going through a pandemic, juggling safety and practice and those endless pages of protocols and, oh yeah, the games themselves.

They’re creatures of habit who thrive on structure and routine. But as North Carolina coach Mack Brown told his staff one day last year, “The only thing consistent is inconsistency.”

So, no, it wasn’t much fun, and there was very little in the moment that felt positive.

But the further away they get from what Neal Brown says was the most challenging experience for anyone in leadership, whether they were a coach, a CEO or a principal, the more there’s something to be gained from the experience.

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“I think there are opportunities that have come out of the adversity that we’ve been through,” he said.

Opportunities to rethink the way they practice and recruit. Opportunities to rethink the way they teach and communicate. Opportunities to not look away from social justice issues that for so long were ignored.

Like millions of Americans, Neal Brown has learned to embrace Zoom, which is why he was able to participate in this interview from his home one day last month.

That may not sound like much — it is the offseason, after all — but it runs contrary to an entire career of waking up early, going into the office for daily staff meetings, and since he was already there, staying a while even though there wasn’t much work to be done.

But on this day, he held the staff meeting virtually and drove his kids to school. Then, he returned home and spoke to a reporter from his own couch about coaching post-COVID-19 and how there’s a need for a better work-life balance in his profession, which for too long has embraced the lifestyle of the workaholic who sleeps in his office at nights.

After the call was over, his plan was to take the rest of the day off.

“There was no more, ‘This is the way we’ve always done it,'” Neal Brown said. “That’s probably the most growth that I made not only as being a head football coach but personally as well — adapting and embracing change.”

THERE WAS ONE curveball coaches were thrown that they all almost universally enjoyed and want to integrate moving forward.

The NCAA dubbed it “enhanced summer practice,” but what it boiled down to was a sort of pre-preseason practice to help players ease into more traditional training after so much time away because of COVID restrictions.

Similar to the NFL’s organized team activities, colleges were granted two extra weeks dedicated to weight training, conditioning, film review, walk-throughs and meetings. Players couldn’t wear helmets or pads during walk-throughs, but they could handle a football.

Alabama coach Nick Saban was a proponent of the plan, stressing how the practices would be non-contact and how they would provide more education, focusing on things like technique and fundamentals.

“It was awesome,” Georgia Tech coach Geoff Collins said.

Because of the limited contact and slow build-up, Collins said, “I thought we were fresher the early part of the season than we had been in the previous four years.”

Neal Brown has learned to embrace the benefits of Zoom meetings and working from home. Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire

Iowa State coach Matt Campbell felt the same way about the health benefits of the extended preseason, except he noticed a difference on the back end of the season. In an interview with The Athletic, Campbell said he saw better practices from his team late in the year and quicker recovery times.

The Cyclones finished the regular season as winners of five straight, reaching the Big 12 championship game for the first time in school history.

“I thought the week of preparation, going into our bowl game, was maybe the best practices we had all year,” he told the website. “We were able to continue to add fuel to the tank instead of extracting some of that fuel. When we needed it most, we were able to find it and use it.”

Stanford coach David Shaw, who is chair of the NCAA rules committee, said coaches are hoping to adopt the extra lead-in time on an annual basis.

While there wasn’t enough time to change the calendar this year, next year is a possibility.

First, Shaw said, they need to talk to medical professionals to see whether their hunch that it’s healthier for players is backed up by actual science. Second, there’s the coaches’ quality of life to consider, because it’d be taking away two weeks of vacation.

Time will tell whether everyone gets on board, but in the meantime, Neal Brown has a more radical approach he’s considering.

Last season, out of necessity in order to limit a teamwide outbreak and to make the most out of the limited time they had to prepare, he essentially split West Virginia’s roster down the middle. Instead of holding one practice and one set of meetings for players each day, the Mountaineers held two.

What it did was confront the fact that if there are 85 scholarship players on a team, not all 85 are at the same level of maturity or understanding. So teaching them all the same is going to inevitably leave some players bored and leave others behind.

It’s simple, Neal Brown said: “You don’t want to slow them down where you lose the fourth-year player just so the first-year player has a chance.”

By dividing the roster along the lines of experience and readiness to play, he provided more targeted coaching and, perhaps most importantly, more reps for everyone.

He hasn’t made a final decision on split practices in the future, but said, “There’s a thought that maybe that’s the best way moving forward.”

IT’S SURPRISING THAT the pairing of Zoom and recruiting didn’t happen sooner.

After all, the growth of recruiting departments in college football and video communication technology like Zoom and FaceTime have coincided over the past decade. But before the pandemic, there was very little integration on those two fronts.

Well, not anymore.

Virtual visits allow for recruits to experience places like Fayetteville, Arkansas, they might not have ever been able to go to. Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

What happened out of necessity during a year of no in-person recruiting — namely FaceTime calls and virtual campus visits over Zoom — is here to stay.

Instead of hoping for an unofficial visit to show off their programs, coaches are now able to make a more tangible first impression online, which could be a huge win for difficult-to-reach places like Arkansas and Stanford.

During the pandemic, Shaw said his staff got creative and learned how to “bottle” the Stanford experience. That meant virtually introducing prospects to their professors and students, and showing off the beauty of campus, along with its terrific weather.

“We can’t wait to get people on campus,” Shaw said, “but we have a good program now to show them as much of campus as possible — the people as well as the scenery — to entice them to come.”

While Arkansas coach Sam Pittman says there’s no substitute for in-person contact, the value of virtual visits makes too much sense to ignore.

It’s a matter of logistics. Because Fayetteville’s nearest major recruiting hubs — Atlanta, New Orleans and Dallas — are all at least a five-hour drive away, it’s difficult to get recruits to campus.

“Instead of saying, ‘This kid can’t make it to Junior Day,’ why don’t we take the Junior Day to him?” Pittman said. “I learned that and we may use that in the future.

“We may have a weekend totally committed only to Georgia or Florida or someplace where the kids can’t get here.”

Neal Brown, whose West Virginia campus is a hike for many of the country’s top prospects, said it’s a win three times over to go virtual in recruiting.

“Players save money getting to and from campus, and universities save money, and it’s a better life for an assistant coach,” he said.

Plus, it’s fewer nights on the road for everyone.

MACK BROWN FOUND himself pouting last year.

During the first wave of the coronavirus, when everyone was forced to leave campus and it looked like the football season might not happen, he wondered why he bothered to come out of retirement.

“Why am I doing this?” he thought. “I came back to be around players and try to help them and help younger coaches, and I can’t talk to anybody, I can’t see them, they can’t even come around. What are we doing?”

That’s when his wife, Sally, spoke up.

“[She] jumped on me and said, ‘You know what? There’s never been a more important time for leadership. You need to help people understand this. You need to help solve the problems. You’ve been around a long time, so you need to figure it out,'” he recalled.

“And at that point I kind of woke up and said, ‘All right, I got it.'”

He had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

That meant acknowledging what he didn’t know, whether it was about the pandemic or the social justice issues playing out in Raleigh and cities across the U.S.

At 69 years old, Mack Brown confronted some harsh realities.

Mack Brown told his staff one day last year, “The only thing consistent is inconsistency.” Grant Halverson/Getty Images

For so long, he saw the locker room as a place free from racism. But then he heard the pain in his players’ voices as they discussed the murder of George Floyd. And then he found out that two of his coaches — one white and one black — hadn’t spoken in days.

“That really bothered me,” he said. “I could tell there was pressure, there was tension.”

Rather than sidestepping it, they confronted it head-on as a team.

“We talked hard,” Mack Brown said.

And he also listened. A lot of what was said surprised him.

He kept hearing about white privilege, which he took to mean that he had money and a good life. So he asked his players questions about it and began to understand.

“I’m white privilege,” he realized. “I don’t feel race. I don’t see it. I don’t get stopped going home. I don’t get shot in the back.”

Talking it through brought them closer together, and it led to conversations about mental health, drugs and homelessness.

“I’m not sure it wasn’t the closest team I’ve ever been around,” he said.

Kentucky’s Mark Stoops was one of many coaches across college football who walked arm-in-arm with his players last summer to protest police violence against people of color.

But just because the protests have subsided doesn’t mean the issues have.

“I’ve learned that we need to continue to not let this matter go away,” Stoops said. “We have to continue to address it. We have to continue to work at it. We have to continue to do our part to be part of the solution to grow closer together, and keep that at the forefront of our program through communication and education.”

BAYLOR’S DAVE ARANDA says he saw the worst in a lot of people and the best in others.

He doesn’t name names, nor does he cite specific issues. He doesn’t want to be polarizing. But the last year revealed a lot to him.

He referenced the TV show “Ted Lasso” and a scene in which the lead character, a soccer coach, is playing darts in a pub and quotes Walt Whitman: “Be curious, not judgmental.”

“Keeping that approach all the way through COVID when there’s really good and really bad things happening and you’re seeing bad parts of people, I think is the key,” Aranda said. “When you come out on the other side of it, there’s an opportunity to blossom.”

But to blossom into what?

Whether it’s a global pandemic or a life event, Eli Drinkwitz sees a need for coaches to be more amenable. AP Photo/L.G. Patterson

Aranda sees a shift taking place in college football in which the old-school ways of coaching are fading.

“I’m not saying we’re it,” Aranda said, “but I do sense that along with the NIL and all of it, the birth of a modern coach — of someone that [deals with] social justice issues, race and inequality, the transfer portal, social media, mental health. It’s self-talk, positive talk, negative talk. It’s perfectionism. It’s bullying. It’s parents and expectations. It’s all of it.”

Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz talked about that trend toward a more holistic approach as well.

This generation of athletes is so flexible and adaptable, he said, and coaches are generally more rigid and routine-oriented.

There’s a fine line, of course, but whether it’s a pandemic or a life event, Drinkwitz sees a need for coaches to be more amenable.

He brought up Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address and the idea of striving to become a more perfect union. That notion of striving — admitting you’re not there, but you’re working toward it — is where he finds meaning.

It’s about listening and learning and working together.

“I’ve learned there’s a lot more capacity to do things than I ever thought possible if you take it one step at a time,” he said. “Then, before you know it, you get somewhere. You don’t look at the totality of the task, you take it one step at a time and put one foot in front of the other.

“And that’s really what we were trying to do the whole time — keep moving forward and try to make a positive impact, whether it was the pandemic or social justice, whether it was our football team trying to improve and establish our identity, every day let’s take a little step forward.”

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[onestowatch]

Zella Day Has Arrived, Renewed [Q&A]

Photos: Neil Krug 

Zella Day’s 2015 debut album ​Kicker​ presented to the world an unapologetic, charismatic woman raised in the mountains of Pinetop, Arizona. The album garnered over 200 million streams and propelled the young songstress to national acclaim. Coming off of appearances at Coachella and Lollapalooza and a tour with Fitz and the Tantrums, Day seemed poised to take the charts by storm.

However, the next four years saw virtual radio silence from the indie pop savant. Following her departure from Hollywood Records, the Los Angeles-based artist took the following years to recoup. While listeners waited patiently for a follow-up to ​Kicker​, Day continued making occasional appearances in music, releasing a few singles and appearing on Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! Tour.

Now, Zella Day is back with her first original material in nearly half a decade and a five-song EP slated for August of 2020. I had the pleasure of catching up with her over the phone to chat about quarantine, old photos, and her upcoming EP, ​Where Does The Devil Hide​.

Ones To Watch: What are you doing in quarantine?

Zella Day: The first month of quarantine, me, my friends, and family seemed to have a similar energy level, where you just were tired and weren’t motivated to do much, because all the information coming out was so scary, and it felt like it was time to hide. I’m not really inspired by hiding and fear and hiding because of fear. The past couple weeks, I’ve started to take deep breaths, clear out my space, open up the windows, walk my dog, come home, pour myself a glass of wine, and sit with my guitar. I’m getting back to myself, but that was a curveball. I gave myself a pass to relax for a second.

You’ve said before that you’re a homebody, but it’s different when it’s imposed on you.

Yeah, where you feel like you’re restricted. I wanna ​choose​ to be a homebody. 

I personally am such a huge fan of ​Kicker​, I listened to it when I was 15.

That’s something that’s been such an interesting realization, that people that were listening to ​Kicker​ four years ago have grown up, and they’re in college, or turning 30. We’ve all grown up together, it’s profound.

What’s it like for you to see your update accounts and fan accounts on social media?

I don’t like to call my audience “fans.” To me, people who listen to my music have similar tastes to me, and I’d probably like to be friends with a lot of them (laughter). Fan accounts are funny, though. Sometimes, I’ll look up the fan account @zelladaykicker, and I will go back in time to find photos that I’ve lost, that I don’t have on my camera roll or my Instagram, but I really wanna look at the memories. @zelladaykicker has got me covered.

It’s like your personal Google Photos.

(laughter) It’s like, thank you so much for documenting it and being my library.

Speaking of old photos, tell me about the cover photo for your “z as she is” playlist.

I was about nine. That photo was taken of me in my kitchen in Pinetop, Arizona. I was apparently very ahead of my time. Born in ‘95, I didn’t quite get to live out the fantasy of being a ‘90s kid. I was an infant. That’s me trying to bring it back around with my metallic jacket, my little sunglasses, and my little hot pink bandana tied around my head. My mom took one look at me and said, “Wow, Zella, you’re really feeling yourself.” It’s one of my favorite photos, because my mom was making fun of me a little bit, but I was unapologetically wearing that outfit.

Was there ever a point when music wasn’t the endgame?

Music has always been an extension of who I am. Sometimes it feels like a gift, other times it feels like a burden. It’s my sole purpose. There’s been moments in the past three years where my career got a little rock, and a little unclear. I really had to come to terms with the fact that music is what I’m gonna continue to do, whether it’s smooth sailing or not. Letting go of music completely has never been an option, just more of a navigation of life and figuring out how to stay as close to music as possible.

Going into the music industry and moving to California, were there any expectations that you had to reevaluate once you were in the thick of it?

I was so young when I moved to California, I was two months shy of my 17th birthday. I signed a record deal when I was 18, and that was my first introduction into the industry. I didn’t have a chance to connect with my peers as much, as I was thrown into this machine. Not in a derogatory sense, more so with the record-making process being much more formal than just falling into a community of kids my age making music because it’s fun. It was still fun for me, but it was a very different experience. I don’t think I necessarily had an expectation. I learned what I needed and wanted the longer I was in the industry and the more I was learning about myself and my process.

I feel like people don’t think about the whole process of putting out an album, it’s a lot.

You have to be everything these days. You have to be a photographer, music video director, good at public speaking, fantastic at putting together an outfit.

Your cover of “You Sexy Thing” is so anthemic and fun to listen to. What prompted you to choose that as your big comeback single?

It was a lot of different conversations being had at the time of what the appropriate first release for me was gonna be. The head of marketing at my label suggested a cover, and at first I rejected the idea, because I hadn’t released original music in so long, that it felt important to me to share what I had been working on and share original material. I then realized that I haven’t engaged with my audience for a long time with music, and as much as I have been on my journey, nobody is a part of that with me. So, I was sitting on my mom’s couch in Long Beach with my friend Ellie May, and I was practicing a Roy Orbison cover. If you’ve ever tried to sing a Roy Orbison cover, it’s the most challenging thing. It just wasn’t working. 

Me and Ellie started talking about some of our favorite disco songs, and we were talking about songs that have been resurrected and recycled because they are just that good, and “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate was brought up. I laughed and thought how funny it would be if she and I did an acoustic, serious folk cover of it. It didn’t end up being the style we did it in, but it was born there.  

“You Sexy Thing” just felt like a celebration of sorts, reopening myself to the world with a song I could be expressive with and not think too heavily about what I was saying, so I could just re-engage with everyone in an upbeat and charismatic way.

I know Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys produced ​Where Does The Devil Hide​. How did you guys end up working together and what is that creative process like?

Speaking of expectations, I had no expectation of getting a response back from Dan Auerbach when I put out a request to work with him. My manager at the time had a relationship with people in Nashville that knew Dan and they passed along the message that it was a dream of mine to work with him. He and I met three years ago. I took a trip to Nashville, went by his studio and met him, took a tour of Easy Eye, and we liked each other enough to pursue a collaboration. We scheduled four days in the studio, and our goal was to write, complete, and record five songs in four days, which is exactly what we did. Everything was made in under a week, with the exception of some overdubs that were added at a later time. 

There really is a spirit of spontaneity of the EP that is so exciting. Working with Dan was eye-opening, watching him move swiftly, really lean into his instincts and ride the wave of inspiration. There’s just a level of talent in that studio with him and the musicians he chose to play on the record. They all know exactly what to do. So for me, walking in, it was definitely a challenge, a good push for me to step outside my comfort zone as somebody who came from the pop world, a more micromanaged state. I was really grateful for all those years that I’ve spent writing, recording, and playing shows, because any time before the time that I met Dan would have been too premature.

What about ​Where Does The Devil Hide​ are you most excited for your audience to see?

Each song is so different from the next, that’s what I’m most excited for people to see and hear. My songwriting style and vocal range, there’s so much put into the EP. It’s an emergence of my evolution and my arrival as an artist.

Last question: who are your Ones To Watch?

Does it have to be music? What do you think?

Anything you want. The world is your oyster.

(laughter) Right now during this heavy political time, I’ve been watching my friend Nahko And Medicine For The People doing great talks with everybody from holistic healers to gardeners to authors. It’s been really great to watch his conversations. And my sister, Mia Kerr, is one to watch. She is training to become a writer for film and television. It’s been amazing to watch her process, and when this is all over, she’s gonna be someone who is coming up.

[poetspade45-blog]

Weekly Rumours – Free Agent Frenzy Edition

I had high hopes for the NHL Draft and I was extremely disappointed. Every year I buy into the hype and hope that we’ll see a flurry of activity and this year was more boring than ever. But, with the salary cap being finalized and lower than expected, we might see some interesting moves once free agency draws closer.

The Oilers are being connected to a few different names and given their cap situation, there is a world of possibilities. Let’s dig into a few rumours.

I’m going to be referencing Elliotte Friedman a lot in this week’s blog since his final “31 Thoughts” dropped yesterday. He mentioned the Oilers in connection to both Petr Mrazek and Mike Smith, which is hardly a surprise.

For me, those two options would reflect just how much the Oilers are willing to spend on a goaltender. If they go with Mrazek, then they’re likely looking at a $3 million cap hit on a deal that spans at least three seasons. If it’s Mike Smith, I think you’re looking more at a one year deal worth about $2 million, which is exactly what Brian Elliott got from the Flyers yesterday.

Friedman also hit us with a bit of a curveball, connecting the Oilers to Semyon Varlamov. He added that Varlamov will be an expensive option, I would imagine that he gets at least $4.5 million, and that likely takes the Oilers out of it unless they find a way to free up money. If they shed Kris Russell without taking back a really bad contract, Varlamov could be in the picture. 

Clearing out Russell or maybe even an extra $2 million could lead to Holland having some extra flexibility when it comes to adding a forward as well.

Friedman and Pierre LeBrun have connected the Oilers to a whole flurry of depth wingers.

Obviously, we know that they’re in on Bret Connolly since his agent confirmed to Reid Wilkins that there have been discussions between the two sides.

Agent Gerry Johannson confirms on @OilersNow that pending UFA Brett Connolly has spoken to the #Oilers.

— Reid Wilkins (@ReidWilkins) June 25, 2019

That would make sense. Connolly is coming off of a good season where he spent most of the time playing with Lars Eller. If he was thrown next to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, I think he could continue being a 20-25 goal guy for the next few seasons. For the cost, I don’t think we’ll see it get to $4 million, something around $3.5 over four years seems realistic to me.

LeBrun also said that the Oilers have reached out to Gustav Nyquist’s camp to see if there would be interest. Nyquist is a consistent 20 goal, 40 point player and considering his past with Ken Holland and the Wings, it’s easy to see why this would be a fit. Similar to Semyon Varlamov, I think he might be too expensive. If the Oilers rid themselves of $4 million in cap space, then they may be able to afford a Varlamov/Nyquist combo instead of a Smith/Connolly combo, but it would still be tight.

There’s also the middle tier of options for the Oilers which includes Joonas Donskoi, Brandon Tanev, and Alex Chiasson. All three bring something different to the table but I really like Tanev. He scored 14 goals last season, which 13 of them coming at even strength, and he can play both wings. I can’t imagine he’d cost more than $2 million.

There are also a few lower tier options. Daniel Carr spent this past season with the Chicago Wolves, the Golden Knights AHL affiliate, and racked up 72 points in 51 games. He was also named the AHL’s MVP for the season. He’s a Sherwood Park product, so I would imagine he’d be interested in coming to Edmonton. As for a cost, it won’t be more than $1 million. He would be a good bet.

Brandon Pirri is another former Golden Knight who the Oilers might have an interest in. When he’s in the NHL, he scores goals. In 259 career games, he has 79 goals. That’s an average of 25 goals every 82 games. His skating and consistency are issues and the Oilers need guys who can move and put up goals on a consistent basis. Pirri should be cheap as well, but I think I might prefer Daniel Carr. I would expect the Oilers to make calls to both of these players though.

Friedman also hit us with a bit of a curveball, mentioning the Oilers and Jason Zucker in the same breathe. I love Zucker as a player. He’s a guy who can step into any lineup and score at least 20 goals. He’s got lots of skill, but his $5.5 million cap hit leads me to believe he isn’t a realistic option for the Oilers. The asking price would probably include Ryan Nugent-Hopkins as well, which is not something I’d consider. If a package of futures and a cap dump would interest the Wild, then I’d do it, but I think Paul Fenton wants to get that team into the playoffs next season.

Friedman also added in that the Oilers are still looking to move on from Jesse Puljujarvi and his preference would be to leave Canada. Friedman mentioned the Carolina Hurricanes, Boston Bruins, and Tampa Bay Lightning as possible suitors.

The idea of trading with Tampa entices me. If the Oilers want a third line centre, maybe Cedric Paquette could be had? You’re losing the upside of Puljujarvi, but Paquette is a competent NHLer.

With the Canes, the name Julien Gauthier has been mentioned but I don’t think he’d ever be more than a fourth line winger, if that.

For the Bruins, I was trying to see where they have some depth. At centre, they have Krejci, Bergeron, Coyle, and Kuraly. Would they be tempted to move 24-year-old Karson Kuhlman? For right-shot defensemen, they have Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo, and Kevan Miller. I wonder if the Oilers could pry Connor Clifton out of Boston.

I’m obviously just spitballing here.

I think the return in any Puljujarvi deal is going to be disappointing, but if the Oilers think they can get a young player, with some NHL experience, that they like from another organization who isn’t getting an opportunity, they should jump at it.

After having such a blast over the past two years, we absolutely knew that we were going to organize another golf tourney for the summer and, after a few months of planning, we’re psyched to finally be able to launch our third annual golf tournament.

When – August 29th, 2019 (Thursday)

Where – Cougar Creek Golf Resort

How much – $1000/team or get in on the $900 Early Bird price until July 10th

Teams – Groups of Four (4)

How – Book your team here

As always, a portion of all proceeds from your ticket purchase will be donated directly to a local charity. This time we’ve partnered up with the Gregor Foundation to make sure that our kids are at their most handsome.

Source: https://oilersnation.com/2019/06/27/edmonton-oilers-weekly-rumours-free-agent-frenzy-edition/

[double-birds-blog]

Shut Up About Carlos Martínez’s Temperament

By Chase Woodruff

Six weeks ago, Carlos Martínez took the mound at Yankee Stadium and just didn’t have it. In the first inning, thanks in large part to a sinker that was going all over the place, he threw 36 pitches, walking four and allowing a run on a wild pitch. Then he dug in and battled, overcoming his lack of command to put up four scoreless innings while walking a total of eight batters and striking out eleven. He worked around a costly Jose Martínez error at first base in the third and escaped a bases-loaded jam to end the fifth. The offense gave him no run support at all, managing just two hits through the first six innings, and then Mike Matheny inexplicably sent him back out for the bottom of the sixth on 106 pitches; gassed, he recorded only one out and allowed two more runs before Matheny finally gave him the hook.

It was an exasperating, heroic, absurd solo performance from one of the team’s best players, who seemed to put a struggling ballclub on his back and carry it as far as he possibly could. Broadcasters have a whole set of trusty clichés to describe an outing like this. You’re not always going to have your best stuff, they’ll say. It’s about grinding it out, and knowing how to adapt, and doing your best to give the team a chance to win. That’s what separates good pitchers from great ones.

But those aren’t the clichés that the Fox Sports Midwest broadcast team reached for that day. “Sometimes you watch Martínez,” said longtime play-by-play announcer Dan McLaughlin, “and he’s very animated on the mound. You’re not seeing that at all here today.”

“It’s an interesting point,” said his partner, Tim McCarver. “When he’s animated, he’s more effective. He’s happier. That’s his…feeling.”

At 25 years old, Carlos Martínez is the ace of the Cardinals’ staff. Since he became a permanent member of the starting rotation at the beginning of the 2015 season, only Matt Carpenter has provided more value to the club, according to fWAR. He has been a consistent and reliable presence at the top of the rotation, posting a FIP over 4.00 in only two of the fourteen regular-season months he’s pitched in (one of which was the very first). He has overcome the tragic death of his close friend Oscar Taveras and done extensive work to help those living in poverty in his native Dominican Republic. Over the offseason, he and the Cardinals agreed to a $51 million extension that cemented him as a core component of the organization’s future and will likely keep him in the Birds on the Bat through the 2023 season.

Despite all this, Martínez has never managed to escape a particular frame that the team’s broadcasters, most notably those at FSM, are determined to impose on him: constant evaluation of his temperament, his emotional state, his mannerisms and behavior. Halfway through 2015, Bernie Miklasz criticized this tendency to treat Martínez like “some sort of hyperactive, temperamental, overgrown toddler,” and nearly two years later, nothing has changed. Carlos is a grown-ass adult and the team’s best pitcher, and yet when he’s on the mound, talk of mechanics and pitch selection and opponents’ talent and simple bad luck all take a backseat to reductive, paternalistic attempts at amateur psychoanalysis.

McLaughlin, later in the Yankees game: “You don’t know what’s going [on] inside the head of Carlos Martínez, but we’ve seen him throw a lot, seen him pitch with the animated way that he goes about it. You hate to say a guy is disinterested, because you don’t know.”

McCarver: “I think pensive is the word that could be used. You don’t want to see Martínez lethargic in any way.”

In his next start, on the road in Milwaukee, Martínez had another rough first inning, allowing a one-out, three-run homer to Travis Shaw, then issuing two walks before finally retiring the Brewers’ eighth-place hitter. On the call was FSM analyst Al Hrabosky, who has spent years critiquing Martínez’s displays of emotion despite his own well-documented history of embarrassing on-field lunacy. Faced with a player who was now doing the opposite, Hrabosky was eager to jump on the new narrative.

“One thing I noticed in that [Yankees] start,” he told McLaughlin before Martínez had thrown his first pitch, “is, you know, we’ve always tried to say he’s got to calm down a little bit, not be so animated—I thought he was too calm.” After the first-inning home run, he continued: “I think what you said, ‘disinterested,’ is a pretty accurate description of what we’re seeing from Martínez. And that’s disturbing.”

Then, once again, Martínez put his early struggles behind him. As he retired his tenth batter in a row to end the fourth inning, McLaughlin sounded mildly impressed: “He’s starting to get locked in.”

It was a highly revealing sequence of events and commentary. Here are some images of a “disturbingly” “disinterested” Carlos Martínez:

And here are some images of a “locked-in” Carlos Martínez:

Having trouble noticing a difference? That’s okay, here, maybe putting them side-by-side will help:

Two innings in the same game, from the same pitcher, with the same demeanor. The only difference is that he had good results in one and bad results in the other, and the crew at Fox Sports Midwest—and consequently many Cardinals fans—is seemingly incapable of ascribing bad results by Martínez to anything other than a lack of mental fortitude.

So deeply ingrained is this tendency that even a relatively new broadcaster like Jim Edmonds has quickly fallen into the pattern. In Martínez’s most recent start, another strong performance at Coors Field, he allowed a run on a Charlie Blackmon triple in the third inning. It was the first run of the game, on a quintessential Coors extra-base hit by one of the hottest hitters in the majors, but Edmonds didn’t hesitate about where to place the blame. “The concentration level,” he said. “[Martínez is] cruising along, and all of a sudden loses a little bit of concentration out on the mound, and you look up and it’s one-nothing. … I think when he starts cruising, he gets a little lazy, a little lackadaisical, and then all of a sudden, bam, he’s down by a run.”

Let’s face it: there is an unavoidable racial dimension to how we evaluate and discuss different players. Empirical studies have repeatedly proven that subconscious racial bias affects the way broadcasters and sportswriters characterize athletes; white players are disproportionately described as having positive mental attributes (intelligence, hustle, etc.) that allow them to overachieve and outperform their physical shortcomings, while nonwhite players are disproportionately described as having mental deficiencies (poor temperament, lack of focus, etc.) that get in the way of their natural athletic ability. As I’ve tried to make clear when writing about these issues in the past, to acknowledge this undeniable pattern in the way players of different races are talked about is not to slander any particular broadcaster as racist—but that shouldn’t be where the conversation ends.

In the case of Carlos Martínez, it’s possible that the constant talk of his supposed mental shortcomings has less to do with received cultural stereotypes about hot-blooded or lazy Latinos than a simple communication issue. Martínez wouldn’t have gotten to where he is today if he didn’t have the baseball IQ and work ethic to rival any other Cardinals starter, but while broadcasters and reporters can talk at length and in great detail with Adam Wainwright about his curveball grip or with Michael Wacha about the kinetic chain, the language barrier makes such conversations with Martínez much more difficult. Color commentary abhors a vacuum, so in place of a nuanced look at strategy or mechanics, fans are treated to simplistic judgments about emotions and temperament.

Regardless of why it’s the case, Danny Mac and his various partners in the booth—every single one of whom, let’s note briefly, is white—need to find some better ways of talking about Martínez. He’s not a kid anymore, not even by baseball standards, and it’s well past time for broadcasters to stop treating him like one, and start treating him like what he is: the team’s best, toughest, most dependable starting pitcher.