#I have a lot of sketches that are 60-70% ready

[wishfulsketching]

s2 dads with their weapons...kinda. Do Lark and Sparrow still have their gloves? idk

[read-write-thrive]

part 1 (both girls in their full outfits) ; part 2 (Edwina in several other outfits/sketches) ; part 3 (the companion to this piece aka Edwina getting ready :)

part 4 of my fem!payneland fanart series!!!! as I talked about with the poll, I have quite a few variations of this piece as I couldn’t make up my mind on a few of the elements, but I listened to your feedback and have included them all here !! the winner of the poll is above the cut with the rest of the variations below to hopefully make this not take up too much of your dash lol

lmk what you think - especially people who voted on the poll!! I’ve also included my thought process below the cut since I know y’all are interested :)

- first and foremost: I have absolutely no idea what order someone would get ready in with all these outfit components, so if you’re sitting here like “why is her makeup done when she has to pull a shirt over her head?” or something like that: you’re probably correct but my getting ready process is always chaos and there aren’t exactly articles on this sort of thing

- along with that: her straightening her hair is probably not accurate to how hair works but again I’ve got v little experience to pull from and trying to find a proper reference was a pain in the ass

yes her bra is fully rendered and then got covered up by her arm. I'm still mad that I did that to myself but I like the pose too much to change it so oh well

- (onto actual historical stuff!!)

- her hair is being straightened here despite straight not being in style during this era for several reasons:

1. I based her hair (and a lot of her style, as per part 1) on Rhoda Dakar of the band The Bodysnatchers, which was an all-female band that was part of the ska revival in the late 70s/early 80s. Rhoda Dakar in particular is a British artist (who’s still making music!) with an English mother and Jamaican father—so not only was she one of the only women of color I could find as part of this subgenre/in ths era/with plenty of photo references, but considering Jayden Revri is Jamaican and English (alongside Indian) himself I thought it was fitting! Her Bodysnatchers look is also much more femme leaning than the rest of the band, as well as her hair styled in a way that suggests straightening, so I carried that over to Charlotte here as well.

2. On a related note, there is a clear historical and modern difference in hairstyles worn/made popular/deemed fashionable by non-white versus white individuals and I thought it only appropriate to acknowledge that in my design of her. I even went so far as to research how her mom’s hair may have been styled since I assume that’s who would’ve been teaching her how to care for her hair in the first place. With that, I looked at popular Indian hair trends from the 60s (figuring that’s when Charlotte’s mom could’ve still been in India and following those trends) which also involved a preference for straight/wavy hair, with soft fringe made popular by Sadhana and the styles ranging from long and luscious to styled up into a very 60s beehive. Charlotte could easily also rock a beehive, especially since the 60s revival was a part of the ska revival movement and Dakar herself styled her hair as such, but I figured Charlotte is a little too much of a rebellious teenager to go for a look she’s seen her mom wear!

- her makeup is based off of the different members of The Bodysnatchers as well as other punk/ska fans at the time. The look usually required more blush that what I gave her here, but I wanted to make sure the eyes were the feature (since Charles wears eyeliner himself) and then the lips being any less just looked weird to me. Also, Dakar doesn't seem to wear the same heavy blush that the other members do, which could be a stylistic choice but could also be the potential lack of blush shades that would work well on her skin tone, so I went that route for Charlotte here

- her underwear is all based off of meticulous searching of historical advertisements, though I will admit the sources are (presumably) American since I couldn't find British equivalents (I'm hoping the styles were similar enough...) in particular:

1. Her bra is based off of: Playtex’s New Made for Me, Playtex’s Right For Me, and Playtex’s Thank Goodness It Fits (which are seriously the names of these as per the ads—how creative /s)

2. Her panties (or pants or underwear or whatever term you want to use) are based off of: Sears Best’s Nylon tricot panties, Sears Very Impressive Panties Nylon panties, and JCPenny’s eiderlon fashion panties

3. (In the below variations) Her pantyhose are theoretically based on L’eggs and Spirit by Stevens’s Slim & Slender pantyhose. But, honestly, they’re mostly based on my own experience wearing hose bc almost none of the ads showed how the gusset of the pantyhose actually looked so I needed to fill in the gaps (one of the many reasons I’m still unhappy with them—plus the wrinkles would not look right no matter what I did !!)

4. Her socks are called slouch socks! I don’t have a specific brand for them but the style was all the rage in the 80s-90s (and I want to own some so bad ngl)

- the hair straightener is just a blob based on the reference photo since trying to research historical hair tools was beyond me at the time apparently, but the style of outlet/plug is accurate to Britain in 1989 so there’s that at least (I have no idea why my brain works like this)

- since I talked about it in the poll I feel like I should address it here: technically having a bush was well out of fashion by 1989 due to the grooming boom and new types of hair removal popular throughout the 80s and 90s. However, she’s wearing multiple layers over it and is technically a teenager (in an abusive household and a catholic all-girls school, at that) so I kept going back and forth on it. It won the poll so it’s in the main post, but you’ll see in the below variations that I really went back and forth on it. that being said I do think it’s interesting given her nylon pants being semi-sheer besides at the gusset, so I’m not mad at it. plus I figured she was definitely shaving her legs/underarms, so maybe that balances it out ?

and finally here’s the other seven variations of this piece :) lmk what you think!!

[darlingpwease]

You drew a cat and a puppy?? :OO

-panna cotta

I can't help but brag!!!

yes!!! the last work about aki contains a cat that went through a lot of metamorphoses before it became like this, because a) I couldn't draw it for a long time and b) then I couldn't choose how it would look for a long time!!!

yes, maybe it's not very pretty, and I mean it's ugly, but I didn't learn to write in order to be able to draw, okay??? not everyone should be such multi-talented people as shokan, someone should be mediocre!!! /hj /pos

from left to right!!! that's what the cat looked like!!! I think I have even very first sketches... but I won't show them </333

how it should have looked instead of a cat; I thought that just a cat was boring, but then I couldn't decide and for a long time changed the cat with letters and inserted the cat into the letters. I just wanted it to be beautiful, but it wasn't beautiful!!!

(the name changed at the end of the work altogether, yes. I realized that the meaning is in the routine & the home environment, not just in the home.)

the final version!!! I gave up the name altogether and left the cat. initially, the cat was supposed to be in the third version (with a house inside), but then I decided that it looked a little strange and just left the cat. "why the cat"? I do not know; perhaps I associated him with a cat.

your idea contains a puppy!!! I decided to abandon the name as a separation of parts and drew exclusively for your work so that you could divide the ideas into three parts without aesthetic dissonance. you will see it today or tomorrow, 60-70% is already ready; the last part of the second and third parts are left <3 so you will see this poor creature very soon /hj

[davidmann95]

So... Morrison’s 10 part interview on All-Star Superman, along with all other older Newsarama articles, just seem to have ceased to exist. One does not simply live without having those interviews available to reread... Can I find them anywhere else?

Rejoice! I finally borrowed a computer I could put my flash drive into, and emailed myself my copy of the Morrison interview. Here it is below the cut, copied and pasted direct from the source way back when, available again at last:

Three years, 12 issues, Eisners and countless accolades later, All Star Superman is finally finished. The out-of-continuity look at Superman’s struggle with his inevitable death was widely embraced by fans and pros as one of the best stories to feature the Man of Steel, and was a showcase for the talents of the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant.

Now, Newsarama is proud to present an exclusive look back with Morrison at the series that took Superman to, pun intended, new heights. We had a lot of questions about the series...and Morrison delivered with an in-depth look into the themes, characters and ideas throughout the 12 issues. In fact, there was so much that we’re running this as an unprecedented 10-part series over the next two weeks – sort of an unofficial All Star Superman companion. It’s everything about All Star Superman you ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

And of course there’s plenty of SPOILERS, so back away if you haven’t read the entire series.

Newsarama: Grant, tell us a little about the origin of the project.

Grant Morrison: Some of it has its roots in the DC One Million project from 1999. So much so, that some readers have come to consider this a prequel to DC One Million, which is fine if it shifts a few more copies! I’ve tried to give my own DC books an overarching continuity intended to make them all read as a more coherent body of work when I’m done.

Luthor’s “enlightenment” – when he peaks on super–senses and sees the world as it appears through Superman’s eyes – was an element I’d included in the Superman Now pitch I prepared along with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid back in 1999. There were one or two of ideas of mine that I wanted to preserve from Superman Now and Luthor’s heart–stopping moment of understanding was a favorite part of the original ending for that story, so I decided to use it again here.

My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the “shamanic” meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.

I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to “reboot” Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short...

Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did...in the persona and voice of Superman!

We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.

My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.

I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman, whose name I didn’t save but who has entered into my own personal mythology (a picture has from that time has survived showing me and Mark Waid posing alongside this guy and a couple of young readers dressed as Superboy and Supergirl – it’s in the “Gallery” section at my website for anybody who can be bothered looking. This is the guy who lit the fuse that led to All Star Superman).

After the 1999 pitch was rejected, I didn’t expect to be doing any further work on Superman but sometime in 2002, while I was going into my last year on New X–Men, Dan DiDio called and asked if I wanted to come back to DC to work on a Superman book with Jim Lee.

Jim was flexing his artistic muscles again to great effect, and he wanted to do 12 issues on Superman to complement the work he was doing with Jeph Loeb on “Batman: Hush.” At the time, I wasn’t able to make my own commitments dovetail with Jim’s availability, but by then I’d become obsessed with the idea of doing a big Superman story and I’d already started working out the details.

Jim, of course, went on to do his 12 Superman issues as “For Tomorrow” with Brian Azzarello, so I found myself looking for an artist for what was rapidly turning into my own Man of Steel magnum opus, and I already knew the book had to be drawn by my friend and collaborator, Frank Quitely.

We were already talking about We3 and Superman seemed like a good meaty project to get our teeth into when that was done. I completely scaled up my expectations of what might be possible once Frank was on board and decided to make this thing as ambitious as possible.

Usually, I prefer to write poppy, throwaway “live performance” type superhero books, but this time, I felt compelled to make something for the ages – a big definitive statement about superheroes and life and all that, not only drawn by my favorite artist but starring the first and greatest superhero of them all.

The fact that it could be a non–continuity recreation made the idea even more attractive and more achievable. I also felt ready for it, in a way I don’t think I would have been in 1999; I finally felt “grown–up” enough to do Superman justice.

I plotted the whole story in 2002 and drew tiny colored sketches for all 12 covers. The entire book was very tightly constructed before we started – except that I’d left the ending open for the inevitable better and more focused ideas I knew would arise as the project grew into its own shape...and I left an empty space for issue 10. That one was intended from the start to be the single issue of the 12–issue run that would condense and amplify the themes of all the others. #10 was set aside to be the one–off story that would sum up anything anyone needed to know about Superman in 22 pages.

Not quite as concise an origin as Superman’s, but that’s how we got started.

NRAMA: When you were devising the series, what challenges did you have in building up this version of the Superman universe?

GM: I couldn’t say there were any particular challenges. It was fun. Nobody was telling me what I could or couldn’t do with the characters. I didn’t have to worry about upsetting continuity or annoying people who care about stuff like that.

I don’t have a lot of old comics, so my knowledge of Superman was based on memory, some tattered “70s books from the remains of my teenage collection, a bunch of DC “Best Of...” reprint editions and two brilliant little handbooks – “Superman in Action Comics” Volumes 1 and 2 – which reprint every single Action Comics cover from 1938 to 1988.

I read various accounts of Superman’s creation and development as a brand. I read every Superman story and watched every Superman movie I could lay my hands on, from the Golden Age to the present day. From the Socialist scrapper Superman of the Depression years, through the Super–Cop of the 40s, the mythic Hyper–Dad of the 50s and 60s, the questioning, liberal Superman of the early 70s, the bland “superhero” of the late 70s, the confident yuppie of the 80s, the over–compensating Chippendale Superman of the 90s etc. I read takes on Superman by Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Alan Moore, Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko and many others.

I looked at the Fleischer cartoons, the Chris Reeve movies and the animated series, and read Alvin Schwartz’s (he wrote the first ever Bizarro story among many others) fascinating book – “An Unlikely Prophet” – where he talks about his notion of Superman as a tulpa, (a Tibetan word for a living thought form which has an independent existence beyond its creator) and claims he actually met the Man of Steel in the back of a taxi.

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential “Superman–ness” that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star’s tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He’s Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles.

Newsarama: Grant, what are some of your favorite moments from the 12 issues?

Grant Morrison: The first shot of Superman flying over the sun. The Cosmic Anvil. Samson and Atlas. The kiss on the moon. The first three pages of the Olsen story which, I think, add up to the best character intro I’ve ever written.

Everything Lex Luthor says in issue #5. Everything Clark does. The whole says/does Luthor/Superman dynamic as played out through Frank Quitely’s absolute mastery and understanding of how space, movement and expression combine to tell a story.

Superboy and his dog on the moon – that perfect teenage moment of infinite possibility, introspection and hope for the future. He’s every young man on the verge of adulthood, Krypto is every dog with his boy (it seemed a shame to us that Krypto’s most memorable moment prior to this was his death scene in “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow.” Quitely’s scampering, leaping, eager and alive little creature is how I’d prefer to imagine Krypto the Superdog and conjures finer and more subtle emotions).

Bizarro–Home, with all of Earth’s continental and ocean shapes but reversed. The page with the first appearance of Zibarro that Frank has designed so the eye is pulled down in a swirling motion into the drain at the heart of the image, to make us feel that we’re being flushed in a cloacal spiral down into a nihilistic, existential sink. Frank gave me that page as a gift, and it became weirdly emblematic of a strange, dark time in both our lives.

The story with Bar–El and Lilo has a genuine chill off ammonia and antiseptic off it, which makes it my least favorite issue of the series, although I know a lot of people who love it. It’s about dying relatives, obligations, the overlit overheated corridors between terminal wards, the thin metallic odors of chemicals, bad food and fear. Preparation for the Phantom Zone.

Superman hugging the poor, hopeless girl on the roof and telling us all we’re stronger than we think we are.

Joe Shuster drawing us all into the story forever and never–ending.

Nasthalthia Luthor. Frank and Jamie’s final tour of the Fortress, referencing every previous issue on the way, in two pages.

All of issue #10 (there’s a single typo in there where the time on the last page was screwed up – but when we fix that detail for the trade I’ll be able to regard this as the most perfectly composed superhero story I’ve ever written).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother, more seamless collaborative process.

NRAMA: The story is very complete unto itself, but are there any new or classic characters you’d like to explore further? If so, which ones and why?

GM: I’d happily write more Atlas and Samson. I really like Krull, the Dino–Czar’s wayward son, and his Stalinist underground empire of “Subterranosauri.” I could write a Superman Squad comic forever. I’d love to write the “Son of Superman” sequel about Lois and Clark’s super test tube baby.

But...I think All Star is already complete, without sequels. You read that last issue and it works because you know you’re never going to see All Star Superman again. You’ll be able to pick up Superman books, but they won’t be about this guy and they won’t feel the same. He really is going away. Our Superman is actually “dying” in that sense, and that adds the whole series a deeper poignancy.

NRAMA: Aside from the Bizarro League, you never really introduce other DC superheroes into the story. Why did you make this choice?

GM: I wanted the story to be about the mythic Superman at the end of his time. It’s clear from the references that he has or more likely has had a few super–powered allies, but that they’re no longer around or relevant any more.

For the context of this story I wanted the super–friends to be peripheral, like they were in the old comics. The Flash? Green Lantern? They represent Superman’s “old army buddies,” or your dad’s school friends. Guys you’ve sort of heard of, who used to be more important in the old man’s life than they are now.

NRAMA: Some readers were confused as to how the “Twelve Labors” broke down, though others have pointed out that Superman’s actions are more reflective of the Stations of the Cross (I note there’s a “Station Café” in the background of issue #12). Could you break down the Twelve Labors, or, if the cross theory is true, how the storyline reflects the Stations?

GM: The 12 Labors of Superman were never intended as an isomorphic mapping onto the 12 Labors of Hercules, or for that matter, the specific Stations of the Cross, of which there are 14, I believe. I didn’t even want to do one Labor per issue, so it deliberately breaks down quite erratically through the series for reasons I’ll go into (later).

Yes, there are correspondences, but that’s mostly because we tried to create for our Superman the contemporary “superhero” version of an archetypal solar hero journey, which naturally echoes numerous myths, legends and religious parables.

At the same time, we didn’t want to do an update or a direct copy of any myth you’d seen before, so it won’t work if you try to find one specific mythological or religious “plan” to hang the series on; James Joyce’s honorable and heroic refutation of the rule aside, there’s nothing more dead and dull than an attempt to retell the Odyssey or the Norse sagas scene by scene, but in a modern and/or superhero setting.

For future historians and mythologizers, however, the 12 Labors of Superman may be enumerated as follows:

1. Superman saves the first manned mission to the sun.
2. Superman brews the Super–Elixir.
3. Superman answers the Unanswerable Question.
4. Superman chains the Chronovore. 
5. Superman saves Earth from Bizarro–Home.
6. Superman returns from the Underverse.
7. Superman creates Life.
8. Superman liberates Kandor/cures cancer.
9. Superman defeats Solaris.
10. Superman conquers Death.
11. Superman builds an artificial Heart for the Sun.
12.Superman leaves the recipe/formula to make Superman 2.

And one final feat, which typically no–one really notices, is that Lex Luthor delivers his own version of the unified field haiku – explaining the underlying principles of the universe in fourteen syllables – which the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. G–Type philosopher from issue 4 had dedicated his entire life to composing!

You may notice also that the Labors take place over a year – with the solar hero’s descent into the darkness and cold of the Underverse occurring at midwinter/Christmas time (that’s also the only point in the story where we ever see Metropolis at night).

It can also be seen as the sun’s journey over the course of a day – we open in blazing sunshine but halfway through the book, at the end of issue #5, in fact, the solar hero dips below the horizon and begins the night–journey through the hours of darkness and death, before his triumphant resurrection at dawn. That’s why issue 5 ends with the boat to the Underworld and 6 begins with the moon. Clark Kent is crossing the threshold into the subconscious world of memory, shadows, death and deep emotions.

Although they can often have bizarre resonances, specific elements, like the Station Café, are usually put there by Frank Quitely, and are not necessarily secret Dan Brown–style keys to unlocking the mysteries. I think there might be a Station Café opposite the studio where Frank Quitely works and the “SAPIEN” sign on another storefront is a reference to Frank’s studio mate, Dave Sapien. At least he’s not filling the background with dirty words like he used to, given any opportunity

NRAMA: For that matter, do the Twelve Labors matter at all? They seem so purposely ill–defined. They seem more like misdirection or a MacGuffin than anything that needs to be clearly delineated.

GM: They matter, of course, but the 12 Labors idea is there to show that, as with all myth, the systematic ordering of current events into stories, tales, or legends occurs after the fact.

I’m trying to suggest that only in the future will these particular 12 feats, out of all the others ever, be mythologized as 12 Labors. I suppose I was trying to say something about how people impose meaning upon events in retrospect, and that’s how myth is born. It’s hindsight that provides narrative, structure, meaning and significance to the simple unfolding of events. It’s the backward glance that adds all the capital letters to the list above.

Even Superman isn”t sure how many Labors he’s performed when we see him mulling it over in issue 10. 
When you watched it happening, it seemed to be Superman just doing his thing. In the future it’s become THE 12 LABORS OF SUPERMAN!

NRAMA: And on a completely ridiculous note: All–Star Superman is perhaps the most difficult–to–abbreviate comic title since Preacher: Tall in the Saddle. Did you realize this going in?

GM: Going into what? Going into ASS itself? In the sense of how did I feel as I slowly entered ASS for the first time?

It never crossed my mind...

Newsarama: I’d like to know a little more about Leo Quintum and his role in the story. He seems like a bit of an outgrowth of the likes of Project Cadmus and Emil Hamilton, but in a more fantastical, Willy Wonka sense.

Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.

I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.

Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.

Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.

What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.

And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.

In one way, Quintum could be seen to represent the creative team, simultaneously re–empowering a pure myth with the honest fire of Art...while at the same time shooting a jolt of juice through a concept that sells more “S” logo underpants and towels than it does comic books. All tastes catered!

I have to say that the Willy Wonka thing never crossed my mind until I saw people online make the comparison, which seems quite obvious now. Quintum dresses how I would dress if I was the world’s coolest super–scientist. What’s up with that?

NRAMA: Was Zibarro inspired by the Bizarro World story where the Bizarro–Neanderthal becomes this unappreciated Casanova–type?

GM: Don’t know that one, but it sounds like a scenario I could definitely endorse!

Zibarro started out as a daft name sicked–up by my subconscious mind, which flowered within moments into the must–write idea of an Imperfect Bizarro. What would an imperfect version of an already imperfect being be like?

Zibarro.

NRAMA: I’d like to know more about Zibarro – what’s the significance of his chronicling Bizarro World through poetry?

GM: It’s up to you. I see Zibarro partly as the sensitive teenager inside us all. He’s moody, horribly self–aware and uncomfortable, yet filled with thoughts of omnipotence and agency. He’s the absolute center of his tiny, disorganized universe. He’s playing the role of sensitive, empathic poet but at the same time, he’s completely self–absorbed.

When he says to Superman “Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so different. So unique. So unlike everyone else?” he doesn’t even wait for Superman’s reply. He doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but his own, ultimately.

NRAMA: The character is very close to Superman, so what does it say that a nonpowered version on a savage world would focus his energy through that medium? Also, does Zibarro’s existence show how Superman is able to elevate even the backwards Bizarros through his very nature?

GM: All of the above. And maybe he writes his totally subjective poetry as a reflection of Clark Kent’s objective reporter role. The suppressed, lyrical, wounded side of Superman perhaps? The Super–Morrissey? Bizarro With The Thorn In His Side?

But he’s also Bizarro–Home’s “mistake” (or so it seems to him, even though he’s as natural an expression of the place as any of the other Bizarro creatures who grow like mold across the surface of their living planet). He feels excluded, a despised outsider, and yet that position is what defines his cherished self–image. He expresses himself through poetry because to him the regular Bizarro language is barbaric, barely articulate and guttural. And they all think he’s talking crap anyway.

It seemed to make sense that an interesting opposite of Bizarro speech might be flowery “woe is me” school Poetry Society odes to the sunset in a misunderstood heart. He’s still a Bizarro though, which makes him ineffectual. His tragedy is that he knows he’s fated to be useless and pointless but craves so much more.

NRAMA: Zibarro also represents a recurrent theme in the story, of Superman constantly facing alternate versions of himself – Bar–El, Samson and Atlas, the Superman Squad, even Luthor by the end. Notably, Hercules is absent, though Superman’s doing his Twelve Labors. With the mythological adventurers in particular, was this designed to equate Superman with their legend, to show how his character is greater than theirs, or both?

GM: In a way, I suppose. He did arm–wrestle them both, proving once and for all Superman’s stronger than anybody! And remember, these characters, along with Hercules, used to appear regularly in Superman books as his rivals. I thought they made better rivals than, say, Majestic or Ultraman because people who don’t read comics have heard of Hercules, Samson and Atlas and understand what they represent.

For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground.

Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon (the original panel description was of something more like the famous shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf from “From Here To Eternity.” Frank’s final choice of composition is much more classically pulp–romantic and iconic than my down and dirty rumble in the moondirt would have been, I’m glad to say).

Newsarama: Tell us about some of the thinking behind the new antagonists you created for this series (at least the ones you want to talk about...): First up: Krull and the Subterranosaurs...

Grant Morrison: We wanted to create some throwaway new characters which would be designed to look as if they were convincing long–term elements of the Superman legend.

We were trying to create a few foes who had a classic feel and a solid backstory that could be explored again or in depth. Even if we never went back to these characters, we wanted them to seem rich enough to carry their own stories.

With Krull, we figured a superhuman character like Superman can always use a powerful “sub–human” opponent: a beast, a monster, a savage with the power to destroy civilization. For years I’ve had the idea that the familiar “gray aliens” might “actually” be evolved biped dinosaur descendants, the offspring of smart–thinking lizards which made their way to the warm regions at the Earth’s core.

I imagined these brutes developing their own technology, their own civilization, and then finally coming to the surface to declare bloody war on the mammalian usurpers! It seemed like we could develop this idea into the Krull backstory and suggest a whole epic conflict in a few panels.

Dom Regan, the Glasgow artist and DC colorist, saw the original green skin Jamie Grant had done for Krull, and suggested we make him red instead. Jamie reset his color filters and that was the moment Krull suddenly looked like a real Superman foe.

The red skin marked him out as unique, different and dangerous, even among his own species. It had echoes of Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur that played right into the heart of the concept. A good design became a great design and the whole story of who Krull was – his twisted relationship with his father the Dino–Czar, his monstrous ambitions – came together in that first picture.

The society was fleshed out in the script even though we see only one panel of it – a gloomy, heavy, “Soviet” underworld of walled iron cities, cold blood and deadly intrigue. War–Barges that could sail on the oceans of heated steam at the center of the Earth. A Stalinist authoritarian lizard world where missing person cases were being taken to work and die as slaves in hellish underworld conditions.

NRAMA: Mechano–Man?

GM: An attempt to pre–imagine a classic, archetypal Superman foe, which started with another simple premise – how about a giant robot villain? But not just any giant robot – this is a rampaging machine with a raging little man inside.

Giving him a bitter, angry, scrawny loser as a pilot turned Mechano–Man into a much more extreme and pathological expression of the Man of Steel/Mild–Mannered Reporter dynamic, and added a few interesting layers onto an 8–panel appearance.

NRAMA: The Chronovore – a very disturbing creation, that one.

GM: The Chronovore was mentioned in passing in DC 1,000,000 and would have been the monster in my aborted Hypercrisis series idea. It took a long time to get the right design for the beast because it’s meant to be a 5–D being that we only ever see in 4–D sections. It had to work as a convincing representation of something much bigger that we’re seeing only where it interpenetrates our 4–D space-time continuum.

Imagine you’re walking along with a song in your teenage heart, then suddenly the Chronovore appears, takes bite out of your life, and you arrive at your girlfriend’s house aged 76, clutching a cell phone and a wilted bouquet.

NRAMA: One more obscure run that I was happy to see referenced in this was the use of Nasty from the old Mike Sekowsky Supergirl stories. What made you want to use this character?

GM: I remembered her from the old comics, and felt her fashion–y look could be updated very easily into the kind of fetish club thing I’ve always been partial to.

She seemed a cool and sexy addition to the Luthor plot. The set–up, where Lex has a fairly normal sister who hates how her wayward brother is such a bad influence on her brilliant daughter, is explosive with character potential.

They need to bring Nasty back to mainstream continuity. Geoff! They all want it and you know you never let them down!

NRAMA: Speaking of Mike Sekowsky, I’m curious about his influence on your work. I have an odd fascination with all the ideas and stories he was tossing around in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Jason’s Quest, Manhunter 2070, the I–Ching tales – and many of the characters he worked on, from the B”Wana Beast to the Inferior Five to Yankee Doodle (in Doom Patrol), have shown up in your work. The Bizarro Zoo in issue #10 is even slightly reminiscent of the Beast’s merged animals.

GM: Those were all comics that were around when I was a normal kid, prior to the obsessive collecting fan phase of my isolated teenage years. They clearly inspired me in some way, as you say, but certainly not consciously. I’d never have considered myself a particular fan of Mike Sekowsky’s work, but as you say, I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into the DC Universe work I’ve done. Hmm. Interesting.

While I’m at it, I should also say something about Samson and Atlas, halfway between old characters and new.

Samson, Atlas and Hercules were classical mainstays of old Superman covers, tangling with Superman in all those Silver Age stories that happened before he learned from his friends at Marvel that it was possible to fight other superheroes for fun and profit, so I decided to completely “re–vamp” the characters in the manner of superhero franchises. Marvel has the definitive Hercules for me, so I left him out of the mix and concentrated on Atlas and Samson.

Atlas was re–imagined as a mighty but restless and reckless young prince of the New Mythos – a society of mega–beings playing out their archetypal dramas between New Elysium and Hadia, with ordinary people caught in the middle – and Superman.

Essentially good–hearted, Atlas would have been the newbie in a “team” with Skyfather Xaoz!, Heroina, Marzak and the others. He has a bullish, adolescent approach to life. He drinks and plunges himself into ill–advised adventures to ease his naturally gloomy “weighed down by the world” temperament.

You can see it all now. The backstory suggested an unseen, Empyrean New Gods–type series from a parallel universe. What if, when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in 1971, he’d followed up his sci–fi Viking Gods saga at Marvel, with a dimension–spanning epic rooted in Greek mythology? New Gods meets Eternals drawn by Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson? That was Atlas.

Samson, I decided would be a callback to the British newspaper strip “Garth.” Although you may already be imagining a daily strip about the exploits of time–tossed The Boys writer, Garth Ennis, it was actually about a blonde Adonis type who bounced around the ages having mildly horny, racy adventures.

(Go look him up then return the wiser before reading on, so I don’t have to explain anymore about this bastard – he’s often described as “the British Superman,” but oh...my arse! I hated meathead, personality–singularity Garth...but we all grew up with his meandering, inexplicable yet incredibly–drawn adventures and some of it was quite good when you were a little lad because he was always shagging ON PANEL with the likes of a bare–breasted cave girl or gauze–draped Helen of Troy.

(Unlike Superman, you see, the top British strongman liked to get naked. Lots naked. Naked in every time period he could get naked in, which was all of them thanks to the miracle of his bullshit powers.

(Imagine Doctor Who buff, dumb and naked all the time – Russell, I’ve had an idea!!!! – and that’s Garth in a nutshell.

(Sorry, I know I’m going on and the average attention span of anyone reading stuff on the Internet amounts to no more than a few paragraphs, but basically, Garth was always getting naked. In public, in family newspapers. Bollock naked. Let’s face it, patriotic Americans, have you ever seen Superman’s arse?

Newsarama Note: Well, there was Baby Kal-El in the 1978 film...

(Brits, hands up who still remember the man, and have you ever not seen Garth’s arse? Do you not, in fact, have a very clear image of it in your head, as drawn by Martin Asbury perhaps? In mine, Garth’s pulling aside a flimsy curtain to gaze at the pyramids with Cleopatra buck naked in foreground ogling his rock hard glutes...).

Anyway, Samson, I decided, was the Hebrew version of Garth and he would have his own mad comic that was like an American version of Garth. I saw the Bible hero plucked from the desert sands by time–travelling buffoons in search of a savior. Introduced to all the worst aspects of future culture and, using his stolen, erratic Chrono–Mobile, Samson became a time–(and space) traveling Soldier of Fortune, writing wrongs, humping princesses, accumulating and losing treasure etc. Like a science fiction Conan. Meets Garth.

Fortunately, you’ll never see any of these men ever again.

Newsarama: How have your perceptions of Superman and his supporting characters evolved since the Superman 2000 pitch you did with Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer? The Superman notions seem almost identical, but Luthor is very different here than in that pitch, and so is Clark Kent. Did you use some aspects of your original pitch, or have you just changed his mind on how to portray these characters since?

Grant Morrison: A little of both. I wanted to approach All Star Superman as something new, but there were a couple of specific aspects from the Superman 2000 pitch (as I mentioned earlier, it was actually called Superman Now, at least in my notebooks, which is where the bulk of the material came from) that I felt were definitely worth keeping and exploring.

I can’t remember much about Luthor from Superman Now, except for the ending. By the time I got to All Star Superman, I’d developed a few new insights into Luthor’s character that seemed to flesh him out more. Luthor’s really human and charismatic and hateful all the same time. He’s the brilliant, deluded egotist in all of us. The key for me was the idea that he draws his eyebrows on. The weird vanity of that told me everything I needed to know about Luthor.

I thought the real key to him was the fact that, brilliant as he is, Luthor is nowhere near as brilliant as he wants to be or thinks he is. For Luthor, no praise, no success, no achievement is ever enough, because there’s a big hungry hole in his soul. His need for acknowledgement and validation is superhuman in scale. Superman needs no thanks; he does what he does because he’s made that way. Luthor constantly rails against his own sense of failure and inadequacy...and Superman’s to blame, of course.

I’ve recently been re–thinking Luthor again for a different project, and there’s always a new aspect of the character to unearth and develop.

NRAMA: This story makes Superman and Lois’ relationship seem much more romantic and epic than usual, but this one also makes Superman more of the pursuer. Lois seems like more of an equal, but also more wary of his affections, particularly in the black–and–white sequence in issue #2.

She becomes this great beacon of support for him over the course of the series, but there is a sense that she’s a bit jaded from years of trickery and uncomfortable with letting him in now that he’s being honest. How, overall, do you see the relationship between Superman and Lois?

GM: The black-and-white panels shows Lois paranoid and under the influence of an alien chemical, but yes, she’s articulating many of her very real concerns in that scene.

I wanted her to finally respond to all those years of being tricked and duped and led to believe Superman and Clark Kent were two different people. I wanted her to get her revenge by finally refusing to accept the truth.

It also exposed that brilliant central paradox in the Superman/Lois relationship. The perfect man who never tells a lie has to lie to the woman he loves to keep her safe. And he lives with that every day. It’s that little human kink that really drives their relationship.

NRAMA: Jimmy Olsen is extremely cool in this series – it’s the old “Mr. Action” idea taken to a new level. It’s often easy to write Jimmy as a victim or sycophant, but in this series, he comes off as someone worthy of being “Superman’s Pal” – he implicitly trusts Superman, and will take any risk to get his story. Do you see this version of Jimmy as sort of a natural evolution of the version often seen in the comics?

GM: It was a total rethink based on the aspects of Olsen I liked, and playing down the whole wet–behind–the–ears “cub reporter” thing. I borrowed a little from the “Mr. Action” idea of a more daredevil, pro–active Jimmy, added a little bit of Nathan Barley, some Abercrombie & Fitch style, a bit of Tintin, and a cool Quitely haircut.

Jimmy was renowned for his “disguises” and bizarre transformations (my favorite is the transvestite Olsen epic “Miss Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #95, which gets a nod on the first page of our Jimmy story we did), so I wanted to take that aspect of his appeal and make it part of his job.

I don’t like victim Jimmy or dumb Jimmy, because those takes on the character don’t make any sense in their context. It seemed more interesting see what a young man would be like who could convincingly be Superman’s “pal.” Someone whose company a Superman might actually enjoy. That meant making Jimmy a much bigger character: swaggering but ingenuous. Innocent yet worldly. Enthusiastic but not stupid.

My favorite Jimmy moment is in issue #7 when he comes up with the way to defeat the Bizarro invasion by using the seas of the Bizarro planet itself as giant mirrors to reflect toxic – to Bizarros – sunlight onto the night side of the Earth. He knows Superman can actually take crazy lateral thinking like this and put it into practice.

NRAMA: Perry White has a few small–but–key scenes, particularly his address to his staff in issue #1 and standing up to Luthor in issue #12. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this character.

GM: As with the others, my feelings are there on the page. Perry is Clark’s boss and need only be that and not much more to play his role perfectly well within the stories. He’s a good reminder that Superman has a job and a boss, unlike that good–for–nothing work-shy bastard Batman. Perry’s another of the series’ older male role models of integrity and steadfastness, like Pa Kent.

NRAMA: There’s a sense in the Daily Planet scenes and with Lois’s spotlight issues that everyone knows Clark is Superman, but they play along to humor him. The Clark disguise comes off as very obvious in this story. Do you feel that the Planet staff knows the truth, or are just in a very deep case of denial, like Lex?

GM: If I had to say for sure, I think Jimmy Olsen worked it out a long time ago, and simply presumes that if Superman has a good reason for what he’s doing, that’s good enough for Jimmy.

Lois has guessed, but refuses to acknowledge it because it exposes her darkest flaw – she could never love Clark Kent the way she loves Superman.

NRAMA: Also, the Planet staff seems awfully nonchalant at Luthor’s threats. Are they simply used to being attacked by now?

GM: Yes. They’re a tough group. They also know that Superman makes a point of looking out for them, so they naturally try to keep Luthor talking. They know he loves to talk about himself and about Superman. In that scene, he’s almost forgotten he even has powers, he’s so busy arguing and making points. He keeps doing ordinary things instead of extraordinary things.

NRAMA: The running gag of Clark subtly using his powers to protect unknowing people is well done, but I have to admit I was confused by the sequence near the end of issue #1. Was that an el–train, and if so, why was it so close to the ground?

GM: It’s a MagLev hover–train. Look again, and you’ll see it’s not supported by anything. Hover–trains help ease congestion in busy city streets! Metropolis is the City of Tomorrow, after all.

NRAMA: And there’s the death of Pa Kent. Why do you feel it’s particularly important to have Pa and not both of the Kents pass away?

GM: I imagined they had both passed away fairly early in Superman’s career, but Ma went a few years after Pa. Also, because the book was about men or man, it seemed important to stress the father/son relationships. That circle of life, the king is dead, long live the king thing that Superman is ultimately too big and too timeless to succumb to.

NRAMA: There is a real touch of Elliott S! Maggin’s novels in your depiction of Luthor – someone who is just so obsessive–compulsive about showing up Superman that he accomplishes nothing in his own life. He comes across as a showman, from his rehearsed speech in issue #1 to his garish costume in the last two issues, and it becomes painfully apparent that he wants to usurp Superman because he just can’t be happy with himself. What defeats him is actually a beautiful gift, getting to see the world as Superman does, and finally understanding his enemy.

That’s all a lead–in to: What previous stories that defined Luthor for you, and how did you define his character? What appeals to you about writing him?

GM: The Marks Waid and Millar were big fans of the Maggin books, and may have persuaded me to read at least the first one but I’m ashamed to say can’t remember anything about it, other than the vague recollection of a very humane, humanist take on Superman that seemed in general accord with the pacifist, hedonistic, between–the–wars spirit of the ‘90s when I read it. It was the ‘90s; I had other things on my mind and in my mind.

I like Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman?” from Superman #247, which ultimately poses questions traditional superhero comic books are not equipped to answer and is one of the first paving stones in the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Watchmen and beyond, to The Authority, The Ultimates etc. Everyone still awake, still reading this, should make themselves familiar with “Must There Be A Superman?” – it’s a milestone in the development of the superhero concept.

However, the story that most defines Luthor for me turns out to be, as usual, a Len Wein piece with Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson– Superman #248. This blew me away when I was a kid. Lex Luthor cares about humanity? He’s sorry we all got blown up? The villain loves us too? It’s only Superman he really hates? Genius. Big, cool adult stuff.

The divine Len makes Lex almost too human, but it was amazing to see this kind of depth in a character I’d taken for granted as a music hall villain.

I also love the brutish Satanic, Crowley–esque, Golden Age Luthor in the brilliant “Powerstone” Action Comics #47 (the opening of All Star #11 is a shameless lift from “Powerstone”, as I soon realised when I went back to look. Blame my...er...photographic memory...cough).

And I like the Silver Age Luthor who only hates Superman because he thinks it’s Superboy’s fault he went bald. That was the most genuinely human motivation for Luthor’s career of villainy of all; it was Superman’s fault he went bald! I can get behind that.

In the Silver Age, baldness, like obesity, old age and poverty, was seen quite rightly as a crippling disease and a challenge which Superman and his supporting cast would be compelled to overcome at every opportunity! Suburban “50s America versus Communist degeneracy? You tell me.

I like elements of the Marv Wolfman/John Byrne ultra–cruel and rapacious businessman, although he somewhat lacks the human dimension (ultimately there’s something brilliant about Luthor being a failed inventor, a product of Smallville/Dullsville – the genius who went unnoticed in his lifetime, and resorted to death robots in chilly basements and cellars. Luthor as geek versus world). I thought Alan Moore’s ruthlessly self–assured “consultant” Luthor in Swamp Thing was an inspired take on the character as was Mark Waid’s rage–driven prodigy from Birthright.

I tried to fold them all into one portrayal. I see him as a very human character – Superman is us at our best, Luthor is us when we’re being mean, vindictive, petty, deluded and angry. Among other things. It’s like a bipolar manic/depressive personality – with optimistic, loving Superman smiling at one end of the scale and paranoid, petty Luthor cringing on the other.

I think any writer of Superman has to love these two enemies equally. We have to recognize them both as potentials within ourselves. I think it’s important to find yourself agreeing with Luthor a bit about Superman’s “smug superiority” – we all of us, except for Superman, know what it’s like to have mean–spirited thoughts like that about someone else’s happiness. It’s essential to find yourself rooting for Lex, at least a little bit, when he goes up against a man–god armed only with his bloody–minded arrogance and cleverness.

Even if you just wish you could just give him a hug and help him channel his energies in the right direction, Luthor speaks for something in all of us, I like to think.

However he’s played, Luthor is the male power fantasy gone wrong and turned sour. You’ve got everything you want but it’s not enough because someone has more, someone is better, someone is cleverer or more handsome.

 Newsarama: Grant, a recurring theme throughout the book is the effect of small kindness – how even the likes of Steve Lombard are capable of decency. And Superman gets the key to saving himself by doing something that any human being could do, offering sympathy to a person about to end it all.

Grant Morrison: Completely...the person you help today could be the person who saves your life tomorrow.

NRAMA: The character actions that make the biggest difference, from Zibarro’s sacrifice to Pa’s influence on Superman, are really things that any normal, non-powered person could do if they embrace the best part of their humanity. The last page of issue #12 teases the idea that Superman’s powers could be given to all mankind, but it seems as though the greatest gift he has given them is his humanity. How do you view Superman’s fate in the context of where humanity could go as a species?

GM: I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. It’s really simple. We can continue to tell ourselves and our children that the species we belong to is a crawling, diseased, viral cancer smear, only fit for extinction, and let’s see where that leads us.

We can continue to project our self-loathing and narcissistic terror of personal mortality onto our culture, our civilization, our planet, until we wreck the promise of the world for future generations in a fit of sheer self-induced panic...

...or we can own up to the scientific fact that we are all physically connected as parts of a single giant organism, imagine better ways to live and grow...and then put them into practice. We can stop pissing about, start building starships, and get on with the business of being adults.

The ’Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.

The key theme of the ‘Dark Age’ of comics was loss and recovery of wonder - McGregor’s Killraven trawling through the apocalyptic wreckage of culture in his search for poetry, meaning and fellowship, Captain Mantra, amnesiac in Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be. Ha hah ha.

 Newsarama: The structure of the 12 issues involves both Superman’s 12 labors and his impending death. Do you feel the threat of his demise brings out the best in Superman’s already–high character, or did you intend it more as a window for the audience to understand how he sees the world?

Grant Morrison: In trying to do the “big,” ultimate Superman story, we wanted to hit on all the major beats that define the character – the “death of Superman” story has been told again and again and had to be incorporated into any definitive take. Superman’s death and rebirth fit the sun god myth we were establishing, and, as you say, it added a very terminal ticking clock to the story.

NRAMA: When we talked earlier this year, we discussed the neurotic quality of the Silver Age stories. Looking at the series as a whole, you consistently invert this formula. Superman is faced with all these crises that could be seen as personifying his neuroses, but for the most part he handles them with a level head and comes across as being very at peace with himself. You talked about your discussion with an in–character Superman fan at a convention years ago, but I am curious as to how you determined Superman’s mindset.

GM: I felt we had to live up to the big ideas behind Superman. I don’t take my daft job lightly. It’s all I’ve got.

As the project got going, I wasn’t thinking about Silver Ages or Dark Ages or anything about the comics I’d read, so much as the big shared idea of “Superman” and that “S” logo I see on T–shirts everywhere I go, on girls and boys. That communal Superman. I wanted us to get the precise energy of Platonic Superman down on the page.

The “S” hieroglyph, the super–sigil, stands for the very best kind of man we can imagine, so the subject dictated the methodical, perfectionist approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I keep this aspect of my job fresh for myself by changing my writing style to suit the project, the character or the artist.

With something like Batman R.I.P., I’m aiming for a frenzied Goth Pulp-Noir; punk-psych, expressionist shadows and jagged nightmare scene shifts, inspired by Batman’s roots and by the snapping, fluttering of his uncanny cape. Final Crisis was written, with the Norse Ragnarok and Biblical Revelations in mind, as a story about events more than characters. A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.

The subject matter drives the execution. And then, of course, the artists add their own vision and nuance. With All Star Superman, “Frank” and I were able to spend a lot of time together talking it through, and we agreed it had to be about grids, structure, storybook panel layouts, an elegance of form, a clarity of delivery. “Classical” in every sense of the word. The medium, the message, the story, the character, all working together as one simple equation.

Frank Quitely, a Glasgow Art School boy, completely understood without much explanation, the deep structural underpinnings of the series and how to embody them in his layouts. There’s a scene in issue # 8, set on the Bizarro world, where we see Le Roj handing Superman his rocket plans. Look at the arrangement of the figures of Zibarro, Le Roj, Superman and Bizaro–Superman and you’ll see one attempt to make us of Renaissance compositions.

The sense of sunlit Zen calm we tried to get into All Star is how I imagine it might feel to think the way Superman thinks all the time - a thought process that is direct, clean, precise, mathematical, ordered. A mind capable of fantastical imagination but grounded in the everyday of his farm upbringing with nice decent folks. Rich with humour and tears and deep human significance, yet tuned to a higher key. We tried to hum along for a little while, that’s all.

In honor of the character’s primal position in the development of the superhero narrative, I hoped we could create an “ultimate” hero story, starring the ultimate superhero.

Basically, I suppose I felt Superman deserved the utmost application of our craft and intelligence in order to truly do him justice.

Otherwise, I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t watched my big, brilliant dad decline into incoherence and death. I couldn’t have written it if I’d never had my heart broken, or mended. I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t known what it felt like to be idolized, misunderstood, hated for no clear reason, loved for all my faults, forgotten, remembered...

Writing All Star Superman was, in retrospect, also a way of keeping my mind in the clean sunshine while plumbing the murkiest depths of the imagination with that old pair of c****s Darkseid and Doctor Hurt. Good riddance.

 Newsarama: This is touched on in other questions, but how much of the Silver/Bronze Age backstory matters here? What do you see as Superman's life prior to All-Star Superman? (What was going on with this Superman while the Byrne revamp took hold?)

Grant Morrison: When I introduced the series in an interview online, I suggested that All Star Superman could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne‘s New Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?

This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended All Star Superman as a direct continuation of the Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘Age’ specific.

I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. All Star isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.

All Star Superman is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.

Which is to say, we wanted our Superman story be about life, not about comics or superheroes, current events or politics. It’s about how it feels, specifically to be a man...in our dreams! Hopefully that means our 12 issues are also capable of wide interpretation.

So as much as we may have used a few recognizable Silver Age elements like Van-Zee and Sylv(i)a and the Bottle City of Kandor, the ensemble Daily Planet cast embodies all the generations of Superman. Perry White is from 1940, Steve Lombard is from the Schwartz-era ‘70s, Ron Troupe - the only black man in Metropolis - appeared in 1991. Cat Grant is from 1987 and so on.

P.R.O.J.E.C.T. refers back to Jack Kirby’s DNA Project from his ‘70s Jimmy Olsen stories, as well as to The Cadmus Project from ’90s Superboy and Superman stories. Doomsday is ‘90s. Kal Kent, Solaris and the Infant Universe of Qwewq all come from my own work on Superman in the same decade. Pa Kent’s heart attack is from ‘Superman the Movie‘. We didn’t use Brainiac because he’d been the big bad in Earth 2 but if we had, we’d have used Brainiac’s Kryptonian origin from the animated series and so on.

I also used quite a few elements of John Byrne’s approach. Byrne made a lot of good decisions when he rebooted the whole franchise in 1986 and I wanted to incorporate as much as I could of those too.

Our Superman in All Star was never Superboy, for instance. All Star Superman landed on Earth as a normal, if slightly stronger and fitter infant, and only began to manifest powers in adolescence when he’d finally soaked up enough yellow solar radiation to trigger his metamorphosis.

The Byrne logic seemed to me a better way to explain how his powers had developed across the decades, from the skyscraper leaps of the early days to the speed-of-light space flight of the high Silver Age. And more importantly, it made the Superman myth more poignant - the story of a farm boy who turned into an alien as he reached adolescence. I felt that was something that really enriched Superman. He grew away from his home, his family, his adopted species as he became Superman. His teenage years are a record of his transformation from normal boy to super-being.

As you say, there are more than just Silver Age influences in the book. Basically we tried to create a perfect synthesis of every Superman era. So much so, that it should just be taken as representative of an ‘age’ all its own.

In the end, however, I do think that the Silver Age type stories, with their focus on human problems and foibles, have a much wider appeal than a lot of the work which followed. They’re more like fables or folk tales than the later ‘comic book superhero’ stories of Superman when he became just another colorful costume in the crowd...and perhaps that’s why All Star seemed to resemble those books more than it does a typical modern Marvel or DC comic. It was our intention to present a more universal, mainstream Superman.

NRAMA: In your depiction of Krypton and the Kryptonians, you show the complexity of Superman’s relationship between humanity and Earth even further. Krypton has that scientific paradise quality to it, but the Kryptonians are also portrayed as slightly aloof and detached, even Jor-El. But from Bar-El to the people of Kandor, they’re touched by Superman’s goodness. What do you see as the fundamental difference between Kryptonians and Earthlings, and how has Superman’s character been shaped by each?

GM: My version of Krypton was, again, synthesized from a number of different approaches over the decades. 
In mythic terms, if Superman is the story of a young king, found and raised by common people, then Krypton is the far distant kingdom he lost. It’s the secret bloodline, the aristocratic heritage that makes him special, and a hero. At the same time, Krypton is something that must be left behind for Superman to become who he is - i.e. one of us. Krypton gives him his scientific clarity of mind, Earth makes his heart blaze.

I liked the very early Jerry Siegel descriptions where Krypton is a planet of advanced supermen and women (I already played with that a little in Marvel Boy where Noh-Varr was written to be the Marvel Superboy basically). To that, I added the rich, science fiction detailing of the Silver Age Krypton stories and the slightly detached coolness that characterized John Byrne’s Krypton, which I re-interpreted through the lens of Dzogchen Buddhist thought, probably the most pragmatic, chilly and rational philosophic system on the planet and the closest, I felt, to how Kryptonians might see things.

We also took some time to redesign the crazy, multicolored Kryptonian flag (you can see our version in Kandor in issue #10). The flag, as originally imagined, seemed like the last thing Kryptonians would endorse, so we took the multicolored-rays-around-a-circle design and recreated it - the central circle is now red, representing Krypton’s star, Rao, while the rays, rather than arbitrary colors, become representations of the spectrum of visible light pouring from Rao into the inky black of space. In this way, the flag, that bizarre emblem of nationalism becomes a scientific hieroglyph.

Showing Krypton and Kryptonians was also important as a way of stressing why Superman wears that costume and why it makes absolute sense that he looks the way he does. I don’t see the red and blue suit as a flag or as rewoven baby blankets. There’s no need for Superman to dress the way he does but it made sense to think of his outfit as his ‘national costume‘.

The way I see it, the standard superhero outfit, the familiar Superman suit with the pants on the outside, is what everyone wore on Krypton, give or take a few fashion accessories like hoods and headbands, chest crests and variant colors. In fact, all other superheroes are just copying the fashions on Krypton, lost planet of the super-people.

Superman wears his ’action-suit’ the way a patriotic Scotsman would wear a kilt. It’s a sign of his pride in his alien heritage.

 Newsarama: Although All–Star Superman ties in with DC One Million, you style of writing has changed dramatically since then.  How do you feel about One Million now?

Grant Morrison: I just read it again and liked it a lot. Comics were definitely happier, breezier and more confident in their own strengths before Hollywood and the Internet turned the business of writing superhero stories into the production of low budget storyboards or, worse, into conformist, fruitless attempts to impress or entertain a small group of people who appear to hate comics and their creators.

NRAMA: Obviously, this book is the most explicit SF–Christ story since Behold the Man, only...happy.  Superman/Christ parallels have existed for decades, but this story makes it absolutely explicit, from laying his hands on the sick and dying to...well, most of issue #12.  You’ve dealt with Christ themes before, particularly in The Mystery Play, but outside of the comics, how do you see Superman as a Christ figure for the “real” world?

GM: The “Superman as Christ” thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.

When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?

The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone. This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.

It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements that have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman. I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.

NRAMA: Continuing the religious themes, in issue #10, you have Superman literally giving birth to himself, both philosophically and as a character – a nice little meta–moment showing how Superman inspires a world where he is only fiction.  How did that idea come about?

GM: It came from the challenge we’d set ourselves: as I said, issue #10 had been left as a blank space into which the single most coherent condensation of all our ideas about Superman were destined to fit.

I wanted to do a “day in the life” story. So much of All Star had been about this threat to Superman himself, so we wanted to show him going about a typical day saving people and doing good.

Then came the title “Neverending,” which comes from the opening announcement – “Faster than a speeding bullet!...” of the Superman radio show from 1940, and seemed to me to be as good a title for a Superman story as any I could think of. It seemed to distil everything about Superman’s battle and his legend into a single word. And the story structure itself was designed to loop endlessly, so it went well with that.

 On top of that went the idea of the Last Will and Testament of Superman. A dying god writing his will seemed like an interesting structure to use. Then came the idea to fit all of human history into that single 24 hours. And then to show the development of the Superman idea through human culture from the earliest Australian Aboriginal notions of super–beings ‘descended” from the sky, through the complex philosophical system of Hinduism, onto the Renaissance concept of the ideal man, via the refinements of Nietzche and finally, down to that smiling, hopeful Joe Shuster sketch; the final embodiment of humanity’s glorious, uplifting notion of the superman become reduced to a drawing, a story for kids, a worthless comic book.

And also what that could mean in a holographic fractal universe, where the smallest part contains and reflects the whole.

Of course the next panel in that sequence is happening in the real world and would show you, the reader, sitting with the latest Superman issue in your hands, deep within the Infant Universe of Qwewq in the Fortress of Solitude, today, wherever you are. In “Neverending,” the reader becomes wrapped in a self–referential loop of story and reality. If you actually, seriously think about what is happening at this point in the story, if you meditate upon the curious entanglement of the real and the fictional, you will become enlightened in this life apparently. According to some texts.

NRAMA: On a personal level, you’ve explored all types of religions and philosophies in your work.  What is your take on religion and how it influences humanity, and the Christian take on Jesus Christ in particular?

GM: I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars.  At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.

Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.

Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic ‘divinity” at work.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf: just close your eyes and say hello. “God” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).

This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists...but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of 4 cannot do but children of 6 can.

Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it. 
This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.”  However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.

Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics. Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.

Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.

As Peter Barnes wrote in “The Ruling Class”, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”

 Newsarama: When we spoke earlier this year, you talked about some of your ideas for future All Star stories. Are you moving forward on those, or have you started working on different ideas since then?

Grant Morrison: I haven’t had time to think about them for a while. I did have the stories worked out, and I’d like to do more, but right now it feels like Frank and Jamie and I have said all there is to be said. I don’t know if I’m ready to do All Star Superman with anyone else right now. I have other plans.

NRAMA: You end the book with Superman having uplifted humanity – having inspired them through his sacrifice and great deeds, and with the potential to pass his powers on to humanity still there. Do you plan to explore this concept further, or would you prefer to leave it open–ended?

GM: I may go back to the Son of Superman in some way. At the same time, it’s best left open–ended. I like the idea that Superman gets to have his cake and eat it; he becomes golden and mythical and lives forever as a dream. Yet, he also is able to sire a child who will carry his legacy into the future. He kicks ass in both the spiritual and the temporal spheres!

 NRAMA: The notion of transcendence – always a big part of your work. But the debate about All Star Superman is whether or not it "transcends its genre." Superman becomes transcendent within the series itself, and inspires the beings on Qwewq, but does the work aspire to more than that? Is it simply the greatest version of a Superman story, and that’s enough?

GM: That would certainly be enough if it were true.

It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

It’s a big old Paul Bunyan style mythologizing of human - and in particular male - experience. In that sense I’d like to think All Star Superman does transcend genre in that it’s intended to be read on its own terms and needs absolutely no understanding of genre conventions or history around it to grasp what’s going on.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent, ‘Zibarro’ crap. That’s what my Final Crisis series is about too.

NRAMA (aka Tim Callahan): Continuing with the theme of transcendence: The words "ineffectual" and "surrender" are repeated throughout the book. Discuss.

GM: Discuss yourself, Callahan! I know you have the facilities and I should think it’s all rather obvious. 


NRAMA: What was the inspiration for the image of Superman in the sun at the end? (I confess this question comes as the result of much unsuccessful Googling)

GM: I didn’t have any specific reference in mind - just that one we‘ve all sort of got in our heads. I drew the figure as a sketch, intended to be reminiscent of William Blake’s cosmic figures, Russian Constructivist Soviet Socialist Worker type posters, and Leonardo’s ‘Proportions of the Human Figure‘. The position of the legs hints at the Buddhist swastika, the clockwise sun symbol. It was to me, the essence of that working class superheroic ideal I mentioned, condensed into a final image of mythic Superman, - our eternal, internal, guiding, selfless, tireless, loving superstar. The daft All Star Superman title of the comic is literalized in this last picture. It’s the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the Enlightenment project - an image of genius, toil, and our need to make things, to fashion art and artifacts, as a form of superhuman, divine imitation.

It was Superman as this fusion of Renaissance/Enlightenment ideas about Man and Cosmos, an impossible union of Blake and Newton. A Pop Art ‘Vitruvian Man‘. The inspiration for the first letter of the new future alphabet!

As you can see, we spent a lot of time thinking about all this and purifying it down to our own version of the gold. I’m glad it’s over.

NRAMA: Finally: What, above all else, would you like people to take away from All Star Superman?

GM: That we spent a lot of time thinking about this!

No. What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that?

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colorist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.

My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honoring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.

[worldcakecakecake]

Feliciano and the King of Hearts

Chosen by the gods as the Queen of Hearts from the moment of birth,  we follow Feliciano’s story as he grows into royal life, learns to rule,  go against age old customs, and his relationship with his husband to  be, the King of Hearts.

Chapter 1 I  Chapter 2 I Chapter 3 I Chapter 4 I Chapter 5 I Chapter 6I Chapter 7 I Chapter 8 IChapter 9I Chapter 10I Chapter 11I Chapter 12 I Chapter 13 I Chapter 14 I Chapter 15 I Chapter 16 I Chapter 17 I Chapter 18 I Chapter 19I Chapter 20 I Chapter 21 I Chapter 22 I Chapter 23 I Chapter 24 I Chapter 25 I Chapter 26 I Chapter 27 I Chapter 28I Chapter 29 I Chapter 30 I Chapter 31 I Chapter 32 I Chapter 33 I Chapter 34 I Chapter 35 I Chapter 36 I Chapter 37I chapter 38 I Chapter 39 I Chapter 40 I Chapter 41 I Chapter 42 I Chapter 43 I Chapter 44 I Chapter 45 I Chapter 46I Chapter 47 I Chapter 48 I Chapter 49 I Chapter 50 I Chapter 51 I Chapter 52 I Chapter 53 I Chapter 54 I Chapter 55 I Chapter 56 I Chapter 57 I Chapter 58 I Chapter 59 I Chapter 60I Chapter 61 I Chapter 62 I Chapter 63 I Chapter 64  I Chapter 65 I Chapter 66 I Chapter 67 I Chapter 68  I Chapter 69 I Chapter 70 I Chapter 71 I Chapter 72 I Chapter 73 I Chapter 74 I Chapter 75 I Chapter 76

                                                   Chapter 77

Timoteo had passed on to the third realm, one evening while they were enjoying from some homemade gelato from Galdi. The angels didn’t have to explain anything, with their approach, both just knew. Timoteo tearfully had to say his goodbye, and Feliciano gave him a tightening hug, wishing him the best journey, comfort with the Aces and a good cycle into reincarnation. Timoteo hoped that he could find the four stances, that he could have the universal alignment, save Ludwig and their world.

 He was taken into the most darkened path that day…and Feliciano hasn’t seen him since. New people came, others continued to leave on, yet Feliciano didn’t find another person with who he could share a good connection as he did with Timoteo.

 He spent his times lonely, thinking and plotting. In one part, it was thinking words for what the four stances could be. He took to writing them on a hidden wall, carved with the little magic he had allowed himself to use. He had a hundred and fifty written, reading them over and over, trying to find the proper pair to the kingdoms.

 In another part, it was wondering how he could get Ludwig back. Yes, he knew where was…but he didn’t know how to get him out from there. The only way he could think of…had the chance of destroying him as well.

 Then…the point and focus of everything…how was he going to use all of this to defeat Khaos.

 He would groan and lay his head in defeat every night, more dejected each time he returned to the Galdi household. He had a corner there to himself, to try and pretend rest, sometimes sketch or wonder on answers. It was also the same place of reunion and planning, always someone there to plan the next event. He didn’t mind it, it actually helped to ease him if his mind was in too much turmoil, the speech always enough to lull him to sleep.

 For the weeks that passed, that was his routine. This night in particular, he arrived to three ladies chatting joyously over the table. They were too festive, smiling and laughing in a way that Feliciano just couldn’t ignore. He let the smiles spread to him too as he tried to peek over, Giulia covering the parchment before Feliciano could read out something definitely.

 “What are you doing?” She asked playfully.

 “The real question is,” here Feliciano took a chair to join them in their sitting, “what are you three doing?”

 Giulia sighed as the other two gave approval to let him know. “You do sleep here, so we can’t really hide anything well.”

 “Not to mention you always get loud.”

 The other chuckled while Giulia glared. “Very well, your majesty. We are making preparation for this month’s square festival!”

 “Already? It’s only been-”

 “In a couple of days…it will actually be a month since the last one,” one reminded.

 “Only…a couple of days…” Feliciano was startled, silenced into realizing how much time had passed…his time in the second realm almost over. The stress was evident, the girls having to speak on to keep Feliciano from succumbing to it.

 “You know…this is a pretty private and very tight group…the island just doesn’t let anybody work on the preparations,” one smug, earning just the right playfulness to arise in Feliciano.

 “Really?”

 “Yep! Not even…Queens of Hearts or…whatever!”

 “You three have been here pretty much the same time as I have. What deeds have you done to be granted such tittles?” Feliciano chuckled.

 “Bossiness, surely,” one admitted, Giulia gasping in insult, earning large laughs in the room.

 “Feliciano, we’re only messing around. Come, sit with us, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of great ideas to add.”

 Feliciano sighed…debating if to indeed give to this while he had a wall he was carving that needed more words…a space that needed more thought…all while a ravaging war was taking apart his world. He shouldn’t indulge…he should be…but this was a chance to be creative, a moment of his past, to do well and grant these people a day of joy…for many their last before they pass on…including his own. He was persuaded for happiness, taking a pen, and looking through the list, adding or adjusting, chatting along with the ladies like the worst turmoil wasn’t happening.

 So focused he was…sometimes he would forget to go to the wall, all those thoughts on stressful words vanishing in his excitement for feast. He joyed in these coming days, trying fabrics of heavenly approach, foods of the delicacy of his old world and company of gold. It was like this world had become his, under this spell that made him forget all, dancing and laughing all the excessiveness he couldn’t on those last months of sorrow. And oh what a feast, what playful aura that made him even join the children in running all across the square, being part of that very image of dream that had welcomed him the first time he came here. Many toasted and danced, congratulating Feliciano on his part of the celebration. Truly a pride that reigned him as he ran and skipped all throughout with all the splendor of his people. Nothing could extinguish this, nothing could-

 “My sun, my moon, my land, my love…”

 The tune disturbed all, the melancholy of a woman reigning strong despite the felicity in this square.

 “Wha-what?” Feliciano awoke along with what felt like a strong hit on the head. But in his awakening, he could only focus on where this song was coming from. No one seemed disturbed, they all went along in their enjoyment.

 “…the sky has all fallen…”

 There it was again, no one heard it, no one reacted, only he startled and searched for anyone in the crowd who could be shouting it.

 “…the kingdom weeps their king’s farewell…”

 He had to look for it, he had to know where it was coming from, what it was, who it could be. What if they had answers? What if they could say more to the meaning of this song that had haunted him for so long without explanation or story? What if it was Augusta? Romulus? No matter, he settled off, in confusion to the children, halting their game wandering where the Queen was going, deep in the streets of their town, away from this jubilation.

 “…and a queen breaks at her lover’s parting again…”

 It yet continued to sing seeming to come from every corner, but no matter how quick Feliciano tried to reach it, it was gone, back to trying to reach its distance, ever moving and evasive.

 “…but in your defend, all will join and fight for our future…”

 Feliciano was growing out of breath, he was frustrating and ready to shout out. “Where are you…where are you?” He ended up whispering to himself as he rounded another empty corner. Nothing yet showed itself, but he knew the coming lines to be the last, to be the end.

 “…so the heavens will bless in your rest our perfect peace…”

 “No…” and just like that, the melody was gone, as if it was never there, the silence he met at this edge of the island haunting. Feliciano wanted to burst in this miss…what he thought a closeness to an answer…an answer…oh no, the answer! He groaned realizing the wasted time, reminded of a mission that he laid forgotten, forcing his hand unto his eyes to somehow keep the tears that wanted to flood.

 How could he just let it all fall? Go on and ignore that his world needed him.

 Something, something, there had to be something he could do quick, in whatever time was left, in whatever- someone was coming. Out from the distance…small, no details to be clear yet, a very entrance like the one he had made when he first arrived. He had thought only one…but then he saw a second, a third, a fourth…many…many began to come forward.

 “What…” he whispered to no one but himself…trying to make sense, wondering who they could be and what was their meaning. Feliciano walked slightly forward, standing on the waters as they walked toward, Feliciano distinguishing their realm gifted wear, Heartian, Italian…they were all passing spirits, newly arrived here. There were countless, spreading across like something large had been spilled over, even the sailors and rowers finding difficulty to move between them. They were all lost, wondering, trembling, some held hands, some comforted and felt in that welcoming bliss, others only decided to follow the person who was most ahead, a woman who had been transfixed by the form of the island, her pace quickening the more details she noticed. And then…there was the Heartian Queen, standing singularly, present and still as the majesty of a fresco in a church. That was the pulse that rushed her forward, ignorant to all as she stood before him, trying to believe him there, baffled, stuttering, yet her entire being showcasing questions.

 “Sua Maestà,” in the end was the only thing she could say, trembling and eyes watered…betrayed.

 Feliciano took her hands, comforting and trying to instill the trust she had lost and the welcome he could give. They stood in silence together, for Feliciano had no words, and the ones he had were nothing worth of an apology that she could forgive.

 He decided on asking, bracing for the blame, but an answer he needed. “What is going on? Why are so many of you here? What has happened?” Despite so many, Feliciano told them in ease, careful, his hold still as dear as he awaited.

 The woman breathed, remembering with pain to then answer: “Destro is in Italy.”

 Feliciano startled and trembled, a suddenness that could have dropped him to the floor if it wasn’t for the hold the woman kept. He was shivered with a cutting pain, as if the reckoning told in those simple words was scratching on his skin.

 “What…? No! Last time I was there, he was…he was still in Clubs, only reaching the Heartian border…the defend should have been good…he shouldn’t have reached Italy…he shouldn’t have-”

 “But he has!” She ended up shouting. “Your majesty…you have been gone for more than a month and in that time Destro has swarmed the entire southern Hearts Kingdom. Greece, Iberia, Croatia and Turkey are all gone! Italy was well on its way to join the rest. They’re evacuating people to Scandinavia in the hopes it can remain the last stronghold…but it has not been quick enough…” she gazed to all there…those who didn’t have time…didn’t have the right defend or the soldiers weren’t enough. “I know there has been calls to evacuate Germany…for when Italy falls…”

 “…he’ll be in Germany…he’ll reach Berlin…”

 “In a matter of days!”

 Heavy breathing, a storming realization, turning away to handle these strong words of his world, his home, his kingdom, his cities, dead or on the verge of dying. More the weight of his duty pressed on, blaming, shouting at his incapability of avoiding this. His province, his people, dying, and soon his family and even his body in the castle will be ready to be engulfed in true finality.

  All, no matter how far the threat still remained, could feel the rumble, hear the screeches and even smell the smoke that was coming to their reach.

 “Everyone out?” Lukas asked who the inhabitants of this beautiful red building had been. Bricks of old, red flowers coating well its gorgeous façade…it hurt to know that soon it will be gone.

 “Yes, that’s all,” a man came to take the lantern Lukas offered, one infused with strong protective spells that would cover the group he was granted.

 “You may follow the rest. Keep with everyone, stay with a hold on your loved ones and chosen belongings. You will leave the city walking but transport might come to those who are sick and weakened. Keep faith! Scandinavia will be the refuge we need,” Lukas repeated once again…and once again the people only responded with a darkened nod, turning, dejected, looking more like they were walking to an end than actual safety. They began to join with other groups, each shinning with their own red lantern, the only color…everything else just seemed to blacken and grey with the miss of its people leaving, left to the demise of  the wrath of a monster.

 “All this street is empty,” Tino announced, hurrying to Lukas’s side.

 “How is João dealing with the roundabout of Prenzlauer?”

 “There’s still three buildings with inhabitants deciding what they should bring with them, even with the insistence. Not to mention they are running out of lanterns.”

 “I’ll let Abasi know we need his people to make more. You go and help João. We’ll see what we can do about Mitte afterwards.” And they rushed off between the large masses of movement, with carriages, others crying and refusing, and the bright red lights.

 Up from the heights of the castle, Renata and Arthur looked as a plentitude headed off through the northern route, between hills away to the safety they hoped Scandinavia could remain. The red lights alighted them, a shield they hoped was enough to stand and protect them all. They could see only small parts of the city remained and how they hoped they hurried.

 There was a far-off blow, a large cloud arising to the sky, mixed with red, flashes of white, and then a shriek that had Arthur and Renata leaning down and covering their ears. From the smoke, they could see but a small image, still vanquishing the outskirts of the city, but the fact that they could now see Destro from the comfort of the castle was provoking and fearing.

 “Ready to start formation!” Herakles came hollering, heavy breaths and panic clear. Renata would never get over the new scars of war on him, so much petrified shout in the expression she had met and knew as calm and comforting.

 “Then go and start!” Arthur shouted, exasperated, shaking and surely ready to fall apart if it wasn’t for the fact that he was being counted on as a big part of the formation. They all began to leave, joining Herakles in his hurriedness.

 “Has Augustino been taken out of the castle?”

 “I’m sorry to inform that he is still here,” Herakles refused to look back, focused on getting them through the halls.

 “What? He should already be out of the city!”

 “He denies everything. He has shouted, cried, even began hitting some of the caretakers. Right now, he refuses to leave Antonio and Lovino’s side.”

 “They can’t accept to leave him here!”

 “But they had made their decision.”

 “No! Absolutely not!”

 “They’re-!” By now Herakles turned to this distant aunt of his, Renata seeing now clearer than ever the reddened veins in his eyes, seeming to pierce at his sight. “-they’re…still hoping Feliciano can come through.” There was a tremor, the castle shaking, some stone cracking and dust falling upon them, but yet they continued this exchange as if nothing, standing and menacing. “Feliciano is supposed to be entering the third realm today and tomorrow we have to awaken him, with or without the power of the alignment. No matter what happens, tomorrow is the decisive point that will tell us if we will all survive or die. No matter what, Antonio and Lovino had come to the decision that they will remain and face whatever happens with their son in their arms…better here than dying somewhere he doesn’t recognize or without his family.” And Herakles was off before Renata gave more to the discussion…to the realization that this was the reality, this was the last resort, the last place.

 She gazed down to her hand still glowing pink, now cracking more in age as it was hitting its toll. Oh…how she hoped Feliciano had found something…that he could come be their savior tomorrow at the evening that was planned to arise him.

 She couldn’t stand there longer…she had her place in the formation and she had to hurry to it, as everyone around her did.

 Soldiers, from all over the kingdom, even others, kept a standing outside the castle, gaze focused and ready to inflict at the first spot of Destro. Many already had their weapons up, some already had magic blazing in their hands and others practiced commands. The interior of the castle was propped with all kinds of defenses, having no other choice but to have offered servants aiding in the guardship and defense. They too, had old weapons pointed, had to practice spells they never thought they would one day use and many of the household leaders were practicing their shouts in harsh war command.

 Renata reached the pool, the royals and other chosen servants as well with their own positioning and weapons.

 The last stance, the last wall before Feliciano, still suspended in the water, the body beginning to look cold, colors vanishing.

 “Renata, you stay at the very back with your family!” Wang Yao shouted, all moving aside to give her place. It was with her husband, her son, his husband, and her little Augustino, well cradled in all their holds, scared, trembling and crying, but despite this, despite the bruises, the scars, the traumas, the three older men kept their own tightening on their weapons, knowing that if they were to go, they were to go with a try in fight. Renata found her place in the huddle, holding them all dear as if they were to say goodbye now.

 “Remember to keep faith still! We have a day! We have to believe Feliciano can come tomorrow with exactly what we need!” Kandake reminded to all in a chant, yet coated in fear as they moved back, as if Destro was in the very castle finding his way between to reach right to them. It seemed like it was the actuality with this new shake the ground took. Yet no messenger came as it was meant to be planned. They still had a chance to keep their ground, together and strong.

  The stances… the stances… he had to know the stances now! What if he wrote all the words somehow? What if he brought them with him? Maybe he could convince…something or someone in the third or fourth realm. Perhaps reading them all aloud, shouting, tearing, crying…it was when he noticed he was heaving and shaking to this new group that came.

 “Sua Maestà,” one tried to reach and comfort.

 “I have to…I have to…” his mind still went on in a reverie, stuck in the need and desperation. It was with the touch of this nearing man that he was made aware of his standing and who stood by him.

 No…despite everything he had to help these people, he had to get them settled. If there was something he could do, if he was abled, he could push through, he could go on with his duty even at the worst heaviness.

 “Please, all of you, follow me. You are now in a safe place. There is currently a feast that I’m sure all would love for your part in it. Come, come with me!” He hurried, keeping himself kind and offering, one all could follow, fall finally into the ease and beauty of this place, more so as they traversed these enchanting alleys, reaching the alight of the square and what it was offering. It could have been a joy, could have been the welcome that all there knew they had to give to all the new that came…but then after one, came two, came four, came six, that alley Feliciano came from bursting with a large array of people that easily soured and planted worry in all. Nevertheless, many came to offer their welcome, but also to ask, to fret, the square in the end turning to a place of worry and agitations.

 “Feliciano, what’s going on?” Giulia came, demanding and shocked.

 “Destro was in Italy.”

 “What?!” She already settled in the hysteria of all, some who heard in the surrounding joining her as well in the disarray.

 Feliciano shushed and tried to soothe her to even breathing, “we can’t let ourselves panic now. Focus on helping others calm, answer their questions to the best of your ability and help them settle like is the norm!”

 She managed to find her peace, nodding, and already settling on what she considered the command of a queen. It was enough now to keep everything at bay, all distracted in the conversation to really notice how Feliciano was slowly moving away. He had some time, he had some peace and loneliness, he could head that instant, memorize all the words, find a way to write, find a way, find a way- what was supposed to be his leap was cut by the large presence of an angel.

 “Oh! You’re here! Good! These people need a lot of help to settle. Please, more angels must come and-”

 “I’m not here for them.”

 Feliciano dropped.

 “You shouldn’t worry, my brethren will come to do their part, but my own…is to take you to the next step. Please…come with me.”

 And like this his time was cut short…he was to say goodbye, he was supposed to go to the last steps of this process and yet he felt empty, incapable to face the reserve, still with questions and wonderings on how exactly he could obtain this. For a moment he wondered on fighting. He still possessed power, he was an Ace, Augusta’s chosen, he could… he stared to the potence of this angel, tall, shinning, armored and with a spear that could well stand at any fight. These angels were chosen to keep well a balance in death that Feliciano knew, by nature, he had to head to…as his grandmother created. With a nod, trying to calm whatever anguishes boiled in him, he decided to follow.

 As all others, Feliciano was brought to one of the many alleys, moving on and on in its depths like this was but any other stroll he had taken to think of words for stances. The angel at one point moved behind him, and Feliciano, still confused by where he should go, settled on only moving forward unless the angel spoke a word. On and on everything moved around him, but no difference, no portal, no transport to the next realm.

 “The third realm is only a hall, shaped by the magic that lays between all worlds. Once there, you should focus on only moving ahead, no matter what occurs around you.”

 “What…what happens?” Feliciano thought he could ask.

 “You transform. You take an image granted by the Aces, for what is to be your spirit and soul in the heavens. It is granted in attacks that might seem like they are to hurt you, but they are indeed only changing you. Do not worry, no matter how harsh or intimidating it seems, it is not meant to cause any harm.” Silence befell, still the same walls and canal at his side. “Your only there a matter of minutes, alone, and on your own you find the entrance into the fourth realm.”

 “How long am I there then?”

 “It is different for everybody. In your case, I assume not long, perhaps only a day or even a couple of hours. If you are meant to return to the living world…you can’t pass the gates to the heavens. If you do, the connection to your body is severed and you can never return.”

 The street began to get as grim as the words, Feliciano shivering.

 The angel’s step suddenly halted, Feliciano’s own stopping in question. The angel then pointed to the canal, which began to ripple and produce an image downward. It darkened, away from the aquamarine waters Feliciano had gotten to know in his stay. It was a tunnel, under the water with a pathway that Feliciano didn’t know if he could walk upon. The angel motioned for him to step forward, commanding and defending so he wouldn’t try any escape. Feliciano was obedient, nodding and beginning a hesitant step into the canal, his feet sinking into the water, but not as deep as shown.

 The ground came to him like a ramp, leading him deeper into this darkened tunnel that slowly enveloped him unto the next stage.

[icanetwork-customer-acquisition]

Easy Remodeling Ideas for Your Home

The key is to prepare the project out in advance, employ the ideal individuals, allocate the suitable quantity of time, and make provisions for delays. Try not to make the completion date correspond with your birthday or anniversary.

Don't enforce a time span on yourself or your professional that will develop stress. At the same time, get a clear understanding of for how long the task will most likely take, and when it will start. If it's a three month task and the work won't start until November, your house will not be all set for a New Year's Celebration, unless you're commemorating Chinese New Year ... This is a surprisingly common issue - how much time the homeowner thinks a project will take and that actual work time needed.

There are no Specialist Fairies (and I refer here to the wonderful ones! Ha, ha, ha!) who can slip in the middle of the night and have the job done by the morning, although that would be good! (I'm guessing that there 'd be some truly loud dance music, anyhow, which would just keep you awake ...!) Have your Specialist include a likely time span with the quote.

Have a clear concept of what you desire prior to your contractor comes over. You don't need to sketch out the modifications, however you should have the ability to inform him or her what changes you wish to see. Lots of excellent contractors will have done so lots of reno’s that they will right away understand what requires to be done, the approximate cost and time-frame. When a specialist informs you that 'the little bathroom' will cost about $3,000.00, do not think that your task will covertly just cost about $20.00, possibly a little less ... then be shocked and dismayed when your costs can be found in at ...$ 3,000.00. You 'd be surprised how many individuals have ideas like that. Try not to fall under this trap, or to believe that any modifications you make once the task has actually begun won't affect the price or the amount of time of a job. Always get written quotes for any work you are having done, that way you'll both be clear about the expectations for the job.

If you're actually stuck attempting to figure out how to enhance an area in your home, think about hiring a Designer. They can work within your budget plan, however if your budget plan is actually tight, it's most likely much better to spend the consultation fee on new drapes or a toilet ... If choice making is a problem location for you, and you're able to give up control, then a designer might be the clear option.

Is there a quick repair?

If you aren't dealing with structural changes or a complete transformation, then think about a coat of paint, new flooring, new baseboards, and/or brand-new window treatments. You might desire to up-date your bathroom or kitchen with new floor covering. An actually nice toss carpet can alter the appearance of a space and add new life to an old carpet.

Sometimes an easy change like up-dating your hardware (the knobs in your kitchen - no, not your other half's pals! You may be able to paint your cabinets if you don't desire to change it. They will offer you with a computer printout of what your completed kitchen will look like, if you set up to meet with a Kitchen area Designer and draw one out together.

If you have an old brick fireplace that you do not care for any longer, or want to offer it a fresh appearance, consider painting it. This is not a crime ... painted brick looks excellent!

You can also put a marble tile (slate works well, too) around the fireplace. Utilize the proper tile adhesive (ask at the store) and select a great grout.

You can in fact buy a Fireplace Surround pre-made, or you can construct your own Mantel with Crown Molding and some good lumber. You may want to bring in some aid for this. While you're looking at the Fireplace Mantels, have a look at the cool 'Fireplace Over-mantels'-- they're beautiful! You can have mirror custom cut to fit in the center and make your home look fabulous, beloved!

Altering the lighting can develop a whole brand-new look in your home. Changing the light switches and switch plates can make a huge difference, too. Ha, ha, ha!

Doors have a big effect on how a home looks. Painting old wooden doors (the ones from the 60's and 70's) can add brand-new life to them. Modification the hardware while you're at it, and you'll have a great brand-new door! Switching to French Doors (the ones with the glass inserts) can add extra light to a space. You can get the glass with various looks, if privacy is an issue. If your spending plan will enable, consider altering all the doors to the new white colonial style - that looks nice in just about every house. They're clean and cool, and will illuminate a hallway.

Replacing your front door can provide the house a real increase and probably include a bit of safety, too, because numerous of the new doors are made of steel. If you are attempting to make the task as easy as possible, think about using Rosettes for the corners, then all the cuts will be straight ones.

Altering out the Garage Doors in an Older Home to Update the Exterior look of your house is a great concept. Changing out the Garage Doors can develop an incredible new look for your home.

I'm putting one in the new home, it's so cool! It looks like a fridge-- some the same height and practically the very same size, and some a little much shorter. Anyway, it conserves 'losing' all those products at the bottom of a routine freezer that you can't keep in mind and discover a couple of years later ... Likewise, there are some truly neat brand-new little appliances that will include more performance to your kitchen.

If you have a small space with a closet (front entry, bed room), consider altering the routine doors to mirrored doors. That actually opens a room and supplies more light, quickly.

You can make them out of Crown Molding if you like the wood appearance, or you can develop them out of plywood, cover with cotton batting, then material to fit your space, and staple them at the back. The fairly new wrought iron curtain rods with all the cool accessories are truly appealing, too. Tie-backs can make a real distinction, too, so have a wee look at them.

Furnishings plays a crucial function in the appearance of your home. There are some gorgeous slip covers offered, if you don't want to replace your additional comfy stuff! You might attempt your hand at reupholstering your furnishings. It's not as hard as it looks, however it does take time and ability, but if you're a ready participant and plan it carefully, it ought to work out all. Get a staple weapon to make the job a little simpler.

Maybe you're in the market for a new head board? Turn it on its' side to create the look you're after.

If you 'd like a softer headboard, try covering a sheet of plywood with a reasonable little cushioning, then cover with product and staple. If it's big enough, you may be able to simply sit it behind the head of the bed, or you can attach it to the frame.

Release your old ideas about painting wooden furniture - it can actually bring it into today (particularly if it's that truly dark wood so preferred in the 70's ...). If you are painting a hutch, keep in mind to paint the interior to keep it looking light. Adding additional lighting is easy with the brand-new 'stick on lights' available at regular retail outlets. Smear Vaseline on the windows of the unit before you paint it to make clean up faster and much easier.

You can replace the hardware, too, or paint that, also. If you truly wish to be daring, you could tile the top of your dressers and end tables with a great marble or ceramic tile.

New Bedding can actually alter the feel of a bedroom. Attempt adding a Duvet Cover over an old comforter for a different appearance. You can get matching Pillow Cases, too, that'll really complete the look.

Mentioning Tiling, if your Kitchen Countertop has seen much better days, you might wish to think about tiling it. This is really a surprisingly low-cost venture, especially if you can do it yourself. Numerous arborite counter tops have a little 'lip' at the outer edge, which you will most likely need to plane down to produce a smooth and square surface area in preparation for the tile. You can also get rid of the old countertop and replace it with 3/4 plywood (have it specially cut to fit), then tile on that. There are numerous gorgeous tiles to choose from, that the possibilities are limitless. Take a look at all the different sizes of tile, too. Individuals typically think about the small tiles, or the 4" tiles, for a Countertop, but you can go much bigger. The tile we picked for our next kitchen (you can enjoy this process by clicking on the Tiling box) is a 13" X 13" Green Marble Ceramic Tile - beautiful. Real marble tile is great, too. There is an unique grout to utilize for counter tops, so make certain to inform your merchant what your job is. Using a thin grout line will make a genuine difference.

Many people have successfully painted their tile. The bath tub can be painted, too - there's a service that specializes in this, so inspect your regional papers. Changing the counter top, sink, toilet, tub or fixtures will actually enhance the look of the bathroom.

Shelving can make a remarkable distinction in the feel of you home if space is a concern. Examine your closets to see if there's an area at the extremely leading where a rack might be added. Can you develop racks into your Kitchen to make more space for canned products?

A truly basic way to alter the appearance and feel of your house is to reorganize the furniture. Sounds painfully easy, but it can breathe new life into a space.

Significant Remodellings

Ha, ha, ha! If you race through a task, you'll have lots and lots of time afterward to look at all the mistakes. If you have the Walls and the Floors on the same list, do the walls first - it'll be less stressful when the paint splashes!

If it's a substantial remodeling task, think about how you will handle all the mess. Do you have another place where you can live throughout the restorations? How about a little area of the house that you can keep as a sanctuary? Give this some major thought prior to starting. It can be surprising how challenging life can be during a reno project. If you happen to have an RV, this is most likely a good time to 'camp out', if only for a little break from the mayhem.

[storytimejustice]

Astrid Toft

1.How do they present themselves to others?

She’s a brave woman that doesn’t need anyone and only cares for herself.

2.Do they like animals?

Of course!

3.How do they dress?

Fairly normal with jeans and a t-shirt. She never had a need for anything too out there.

4.How many languages do they know?

She only knows English which is the language spoken across the world

5.How big is their family?

She’s alone. Her technical parents were turned into Celestials upon their death and she was taken away from her birth parents. She has her technically twin sister but doesn’t count her.

6.What is their purpose in the story?

A main character. A lightning mage with her goal of destroying Rixheia.

7.Do they know how to fight?

She was born ready to fight with a blade but is learning with other weapons.

8.What is their back story?

When Scarlett and Asmund were dying they fused their magics and their magic weapons and twenty years later they formed and became Astrid and Anastasia. Born to a peasant family Rixheia sensed her power and separated her from her parents and placed her in charge of a weapons factory.

9.Why is their name, their name?

I wanted to name my flour child a really pretty name and I chose Astrid for the bigger flour bag.  

10.Do they have any nicknames?

Nope

11.Do they have a romantic interest?

Nope

12.How do they cope with struggles?

Force their way through them.

13.Do they have anyone they can lean on?

Herself.

14.How do they react to someone dying?

Depends on who it is but normally doesn’t feel too much about it.

15.Can you name 5 personality traits they have?

Brave

Ignorant

Isolated

Smart

Rebel

16.How did they become a character?

We had a flour baby assignment for school and I wanted to make characters based off them.

17.Do they get along with others?

Depends but not normally.

18.What flaws do they have?

So many trust issues.

19.How do they influence the story?

She’s a main character she is the story.

20.What do they look like?

Shoulder-length red hair, green eyes, hardly any freckles for a ginger

21.What are their hobbies?

She’s good with her hands, inventing and creating stuff.

22.How do they react to people telling them they are wrong?

Prove herself to be correct.

 23.Do they like children?

She had to work over them for years so she tolerates them.

24.How do they react to being around wild animals?

She’ll scare them before they scare her.

25.If they were given the task to prank someone, who would it be, what would they do, and would the prank work?

She would prank Anastasia with something that would temporarily mess up her outfit for the day and it would go through flawlessly.

26.Do they have any survival skills?

She knows how to start a fire and hunt for a meal but not too great at building a shelter.

27.Are they more book smart or street smart?

Street smart

28.How do they get out of a difficult situation?

Fight her way out

29.Do they use their body, mind, personality, or force to get what they want?

Mind first and if that doesn’t work force normally will. Although normally she doesn’t want much.

30.What music do they enjoy?

She doesn’t really have any taste for music because of where she grew up. She loves the sounds of machines at work though.

31.How do they overcome obstacles?

If she can’t get around it she’ll go through.

32.When faced with a difficult decision do they get stronger or break?

Stronger

33.Do they have any special powers?

Lightning magic and a natural ability to wield a blade.

34.How do they change throughout the story?

She does become far more trusting and more powerful as her link to Anastasia grows.

35.Do they have any friends? If so, are they close knit?

She doesn’t really have friends. The people who consider her a friend when she finally claims them as a part of her life she claims them as family.

36.How is their family life?

What family life OOF

37.Are they likable?

Depends if you like a hot-headed, strong, independent woman. But Anastasia enjoys having her around.

38.Are they the hero, or anti-hero?

Hero

39.Do they make questionable choices?

Who doesn’t?

40.How do they become who they are?

Beginning of the story she’s completely out of trust and has pure hatred for the gods because of Rixheia taking over the world and separating her from her parents.

End of the story she still is hesitant on trusting people but she’s definitely grown to give people chances and her vendetta is gone as they successfully defeated Rixheia.

41.How was their childhood?

Rough. She was put into a factory after being taken from her parents and soon took charge over it.

42.Are they close with anyone who is going to screw them over?

Yeah and that’s how more trust issues come into play.

43.How do they adapt to different situations? Do they adapt at all?

She makes most difficult situations morph and adapt to her.

44.How do they speak? Examples - Are they soft spoken, hot headed, vulgar

She’s very stubborn and gets aggressive easily.

45.Are they opposed to violence?

Nope

46.When is their birthday?

February 18th

47.Are they quick to judge?

Very much so

48.Do they have anything they are trying to hide from others?

Weakness

49.Do they act different around different people?

Nope, she’s very straightforward

50.Do they enjoy the arts?

She likes drawing her own sketches for inventions and everything.

51.Do they like science?

Yes!

52.Are they more emotional or logical?

While being hard-headed and aggressive she does tend to hide her emotions and use her mind first.

53.How do they deal with their emotions?

A steel vault shall do

54.How do they cope with sadness?

A STEEL VAULT SHALL DO

55.What is something they care about?

Elkmire

56.Would they die for anyone/anything?

Only if it meant she took Rixheia down with her.

57.What do they do when they are happy?

Joke around, practice sword fighting, talk with her rebellion family.

58.How would they come across to other characters? Examples - Messy, lazy, childish, caring, etc.

Stubborn and aggressive

59.Do they have a phrase they use over and over?

Nah

60.In a crowded room are they in the corners, sides, or in the middle?

Definitely all around. Mingling with everyone trying to slyly draw information from everyone.

61.Are they comfortable being in a crowded room?

Depends if she has enough room to draw a blade.

62.What is their sexuality?

Asexual but romantically interested in girls.

63.Have they ever harmed anyone and regretted it? Verbally or physically?

Yes a couple of times

64.Do they like to dance?

Hah

65.How do they get around their environment? Examples - Horses, bike, vehicles

Since Rixheia yeeted Elkmire back into ancient times they use aurora-wolf drawn carriages. That’s only them though most people are pulled by horses. Some by humans that can transform.

66.What is their pet peeve(s)?

Morning people, nosy people, EVILLLLLLLLL, sick people that still wish to be around civilization

67.Do they have a disability?

Nope

68.How do they react to getting flowers?

Very flustered. Acts like she doesn’t want them but once the gifter is gone makes sure they go into a pretty vase and get taken care of.

69.Would they ever wear a flower crown?

Depends who asks her to and it wouldn’t be for long.

70.Do they like themselves?

She wishes she had more meat on her bones and that she had an easier time trusting people but outside of that, yeah.

71.Who do they dislike?

The gods

72.When do they realize their true potential?

Right before the final fight against Rixheia after the ball.

73.Do they have any markings on their body?

She has some burns on her hands from years of metalwork and some scars from when she screwed up on the job.

74.Have they ever been abused

Yes she has.

75.What is their biggest fear?

Failing herself and the kingdom

76.What are their goals?

To free the world from Rixheia’s hold

77.How do they go about achieving their goals?

Doing anything she possible can as long as she keeps her morals in line

78.Do they have a fight or flight response?

Full fight response. You sneak up on her you’ll wind up with something broken, stabbed, or sliced off.

79.Is there someone in their life that they care about more than themselves?

In the end her rebellion family.

80.How would they fair in the zombie apocalypse?

Pretty excellent even if she didn’t have her lightning magic and just had her natural sword fighting ability

81.Do they have any tattoos? If so, are they significant?

Before the ball she has a dagger enchanted along with a sheath for it and when she has it on her thigh it turns into a tattoo of a dagger and she just has to hold her hand next to it and the blade will fall into her hand and the sheath will appear when she wants to place it back along with celestial tattoos she shares with Anastasia.

82.Are they good at mental math?

Fairly decent at it but not the best considering she never went to school

83.Do they get along with others?

Depends. Are they snobbish?

84.Are they lazy?

You call her lazy and she will literally make a sword specially to slice you apart

85.Are they self motivated?

Yeah 

86.How do they cope with anger?

Practicing fighting. Lots and lots of practice. Or going on a mission.

87.Have they ever been in a situation where they were helpless?

Being trapped as a child slave at a weapons factory definitely makes this a yes

88.Are they organized or messy?

Organized

89.Can they remember a lot of information at once?

She remembers all

90.What is their occupation?

Rebel

Blacksmith

91.Do other characters respect your OC, if so, is it out of fear? Or do they respect your OC because they like them?

Depends on the person but most out of fear

92.If they were given minutes to live, what would they do? Who would they want to see and say?

She would want to see Rixheia and get at least a few shots in before she died. If it’s after that then probably Anastasia and Nova and just thank them for everything.

93.How do they deal with stress?

Oh boy she loves SWORD FIGHTING

94.Do they have a more submissive or dominant personality type?

Dominant

95.Do they have a pet?

I mean the rebels have Saros Anastasia’s ice serpent and the aurora wolves along with a few horses.

96.Do they have a stash of weapons?

YES

97.Where do they live? Who do they live with?

A little cottage outside of Castle Elkmire’s walls in between it and Emera in the end with Anastasia

98.How do they calm themselves down?

She punches out her anger

99.Are they co-dependent?

Completely independent

100.Are they a day, or night person?

Midday to night

[videoranch]

The View from the Side of the Stage

Words and photos by Melodie Akers

Embarking on a 12-date tour seemed like the last thing Nez should have done a month ago. Before the New York show on September 20, I told him how proud I was of him. I had feared he would either decide to go home after three dates or complete the tour without the energy to play or sing his best. The Mike & Micky Show had been far from fun; apart from the shows -- which were incredible -- it had been full of sleepless nights on a shaky tour bus and empty-stomached afternoons in emergency rooms, clutching my copy of Science & Health, while Nez joked with the nurses. I dreaded a repeat of that awful month.

The September FNBR tour had all the opportunities to be grueling. It kicked off with three dates in a row, and there was another block of three in the middle. Days off were singular and rare. Despite having little time for rest, Nez organized his team and resources so that he made it through the journey feeling better by the end than at the beginning.

Nez has been expressing a desire for a jet since before the January tour. In late August, he decided it would be a perfect “ambulance” to shuttle him through the tour. At first it didn’t work how he intended. The driver who was taking us to the airport -- or FBO as I learned to call it -- would be late, or Jonathan and Susan wouldn’t be ready to leave so Nez and I were sitting in the car alone. Or the plane would not be ready, or worse -- broken. The food provided by the jet company turned out to not be up to Nez’s standard. By the time we left Texas, Dan, our tour manager, and I figured out how to use the jet to its full benefit. I started having the jet bring in outside catering from Jewish delis or we’d have a runner grab Popeye’s during the show. Dan started ordering the car earlier, so it was ready and waiting for luggage while Nez fulfilled his Meet & Greet duties. I worked out an organization system of Nez’s luggage that allowed me to pack up quickly and easily after the shows -- something I had finally worked out after struggling all through the Mike & Micky Show. Nez instructed me to call the pilots once we were rolling, providing them our ETA so our plane would be ready and waiting just like the car had been. Once we got it down to this science, a quick flight -- usually less than an hour -- and we’d be touched down with full bellies and headed to the hotel, tucked in bed by 2am.

Jet rides were a welcome time to decompress after the hard work of shows. We’d laugh while discussing the show’s high points and how it was developing. Nez always polled us on what was his funniest joke of the night. As fans have pointed out, no show was the same; Nez did this intentionally. He didn’t wear his hat on stage in Virginia because he had started to feel like it was a cliche! His between-song-banter appeared in the moment each night, and he adjusted the set list as the tour progressed. After the first shows, he cut four songs, then added them back in and even introduced Marie’s Theme as he visibly gained strength and confidence with each performance. His ability to continuously spontaneously create not only reflected his live career as a whole, but showed his developing connection with the Redux band’s interpretation of his work. We listened to a lot of his early ‘70s albums in Sparky just before leaving for rehearsals -- and our listening sessions brought forward some of the ideas he thought were unexpressed in January. Last month, rather than simply “play the album”, he introduced Redux to new ideas and then expressed them onstage. Many of those ideas appeared first within the safety and comfort of the jet.

This was my third tour working as Nez’s handler. “Handler” essentially means I am responsible for getting Nez where he needs to be when he needs to be there with all of his luggage, prepare his costume, make sure he has clean underwear, gets enough rest, and eats at meal times. Nez has told me repeatedly that it is not my job to make sure he is happy, but I still try my best to achieve that, too. In addition to handler, during the tour I kept my positions as his assistant, running his social media, and sending these newsletters. I tried to share shows from the side of the stage through Facebook Live, but many comments from fans complained about the sound. The sound of a show changes depending on where you are stood. From the side of the stage, all you’re hearing is the musician’s monitors and a little bleed of the “front of house mix” -- what the crowd hears. Therefore, stage left was heavily Christian and stage right was heavily Alex and Pete; neither are a great place to hear Nez’s vocal. Nez became frustrated with me because I didn’t have much to say after shows. Even though I stood there waiting to be needed while broadcasting live, I couldn’t hear the real show. For several shows, I stubbornly refused to move from my spot out of fear of not being there when he needed me.

During the Mike & Micky Show, I stood by in case Nez needed more water, a towel, someone to hold his guitar, someone to unlock his iPad… whatever. Every show was a struggle the second he stepped off stage -- and I was half of the team there to hold him up. Dan and I supported him until he’d walk back on stage and perform beautifully. His abilities in June were incredible and confusing to me. However, a wise man once wrote: The devil has no access to the singing man.

The end of the first show in Houston was a massive achievement: It proved he could do the show, which was the principal concern on my mind. As his healing became more apparent, I felt more confident that it was not irresponsible to abandon my side of stage post. I started to complete my packing in the dressing room during the show while enjoying the front of house mix through the venue’s playback pumped into the room, and once I even had the guts to leave the venue to grab Popeye’s for the jet. By New York, I completed my packing backstage then sat in the audience most of the show and was able to give Nez a full review afterwards without neglecting any of my handling responsibilities.

The key elements of a hotel while handling a principal on tour are: blackout shades so he can sleep late, edible room service meals, and close proximity to Starbucks. Our hotel in Dallas had a Starbucks inside but it was closed -- the disappointment took away from Nez’s room having an actual breakfast nook. Nashville’s blackout shades were the best of the tour, even though the room was otherwise unremarkable, making it a standout; Susan called it “womblike”. Nez’s favorite hotel of the tour was the Peninsula in Chicago. When we walked into his room, he announced he was moving. Everything was high-tech: the TV remote was an iPad and even the light switches were touchscreen. But the room’s tech did not take away from its design’s classic beauty achieved through golden accents, dark wood, and deep navy bedding -- like sleeping in the night sky. And they somehow avoided the hotel restaurant curse by having wonderful meals.

The most bizarre hotel was in Detroit. Nez and I are 95% sure it was haunted. Nez’s room had a ballroom with a grand piano. Okay, not exactly -- but it had a mostly empty room bigger than my apartment with a grand piano in the corner. I asked him if he could play piano. “No, why do you ask?” “I’ve seen pictures of you sitting at pianos.” “Oh yeah, I can sit at pianos.” The entire suite (ballroom, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, vanity room, walk-in closet, and bathroom) was 60% empty -- its rooms’ sizes dwarfing their furniture. The bathroom and its vanity room were green marble blocks. Nez said the place was a perfect analogy for the automotive industry of a century ago -- uselessly ginormous. It was also filled with the craziest art -- including a piece in the lobby that made me ask Nez, “Why do they have a painting of Kate Bush?” The green marble vanity and bathroom still backdrop my nightmares.

Recently a friend asked me what touring is like because she is writing a novel about a touring band in the ‘60s. I responded with Nez’s first lesson: laundry and food. Those are the hardest things. I have no concept of how they pulled it off in the ‘60s, though, because they didn’t have Google Maps or Uber. Google Maps is my answer to everything on the road: finding laundromats who do fluff-and-fold, finding the nearest Starbucks, finding restaurants, finding a manicurist two hours before the show, etc.. The main function I wish Google Maps had was a sketch-meter. The number of times I’ve chosen a laundromat that’s 10 minutes away because of its high Google rating to find out that it’s in a “bad” part of town upon arrival... I was grateful to always have an Uber driver there with me, at least.

Uber is the best and worst part of touring in 2018. Depending on the town, it takes either 2 minutes or 20 for your driver to arrive -- and that is usually a good indicator of the arriving driver’s helpfulness. As an introvert, by the end of the tour I dreaded running errands, because being trapped in a car with a stranger whom I felt I was inconveniencing in some insane way took a special toll on my mental energy. But in comparison to ordering black cars and limos, Uber makes transporting a rock star beyond simple -- until you consider seatbelts. Seatbelts in stranger’s cars are somehow always hidden. Nez is terrible about wearing his seatbelt anyway, so I’ve taken to pouncing on him the second he sits down in any vehicle to make sure he is buckled in. I’ve asked him how he survived being a race car driver when he struggles to put on his seatbelt; he has no answer.

I half-joke with Nez that he only tours the east coast to have lobster. After seven shows of only talking about lobster, he finally got his cherished crustacean at lunch in Boston before the Somerville show. That was also my first lobster; Nez says west coast lobsters aren’t real lobster. It was delicious; I fully understand his quest now. We also had the best fried chicken in Nashville, while Nez made up songs at the table like, “Why am I standing in the garage? I know I came in here for something important,” after I shared his habit of making up incredible songs on afternoon drives to Jonathan and Susan. But the best aspect of meals on the road was our company and official tour drink. Most dinners were spent with Jonathan, Susan, and Hennessy sidecars -- Nez’s favorite cocktail! It started during rehearsals at our hotel in Burbank, and continued through the last shows on the east coast. We had a slight hiccup in Nashville when we got into a battle with our waitress as to whether it was salt or sugar on the rim of our glasses, and thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere in a Chicago restaurant where our table was INSIDE a train car. These evenings were one of the first things Nez and I chased down upon returning home… but were disappointed to discover that Jonathan and Susan’s laughter could not be conjured by the sidecars alone.

Restaurants are usually the closest Nez and I got to sightseeing while on the road. Our tunnel of hotel-car-venue-car-plane-car-hotel didn’t offer much light. Most of my “days off” (HA!!) were spent running errands while Nez recuperated (i.e. slept and watched MSNBC in his hotel room). While returning to the hotel from the laundromat in Nashville, I was grateful my Uber driver took a wrong turn: I got to see 6th St from the backseat after Nez had broken his promise to take me the night before. He came through for me in Boston, though. Despite the rain, he felt well enough to happily venture out in an Uber so he could show me the Mother Church. Disappointingly the church was closed due to construction -- and the visit took an incredible turn away from my expectations into modern art. Nez led me into the Mapparium at the Mary Baker Eddy Library, a three-story stained glass globe created just before the Second World War. We stood and pointed out cities and countries to each other -- Rio, Australia, Carmel. Given the state of politics, it was comforting to stand surrounded by an illuminated world. As proven through this tour, art is healing.

[1358456]

Gold Version Joy Run

Something that I wanted to do. Just like Yellow version, I will not restrict myself whatsoever. Which means... bring on the shenanigans.

Also, very important for me! This is the VERY FIRST TIME I actually do a full Gold version run with all the glitches at my disposal! So this is a new experience!

Let’s dance.

Right off the bat, a little f*ckery. Hey there, Silver boy. My croc is bigger than yours. ... What? Temporarily named as “Leviathan” since... well, let’s just say that the early Korean version of a certain scripture translated “Leviathan” as an alligator/crocodile. ... Gators don’t breathe flames from the mouth.

Critical Pokemon captured! Huhuhahahaha! Oh, Hoppip gets THREE moves at level 5, and one of them is Splash?! Ohohoho!

Once again, Silver boy, my croc is bigger than yours.

Splash in the third slot, eh?

Sorcery! Huhuhahahaha! Nickname: Apocalypse.

Here’s a little... side-product. ... Now that is a hell of a Rattata. No Rattata in existence can possibly have almost 400 HP at level 100, let alone level 69.

Or have that much Def, Sp. Atk, and Sp. Def. ... Or that low of an Atk. ... Dude. This guy can take hits and nothing else.

Turns out, you don’t even need a Graveler to whip Whitney’s ass. Geodude is fine. “Whits Bane”. As in, “Whitney’s Bane”. ... This was its literally only purpose.

So... this guy here... was a Quilava. Its data got corrupted during the demon magic bullsh*t, and it became an unstable Rattata. Which, when “stabilized”, became a level 1 Jigglypuff with Pokerus. ... Yep. I just force-spawned Pokerus. Because why not.

They are... parasites. Tiny little life forms stuck on the Pokemon. ... That’s nasty, dude.

The sorcery continues! Rock Smash in 3rd slot. Nickname: Leviathan. The true one. Behold the leviathan, monster of the sea! Its strong scales are its pride!

... Apparently this run’s ID gives me Smog and Fire Spin. Because those two moves were on all five Pokemon that I used this glitch to hatch. ... Which means this Lugia here is 2/5.

Nidorino! ... A Normal type Nidorino. ... ?????

“You could never catch a legendary Pokemon anyway.” ... You were literally just whipped by two of them. You blind f*ck.

Turns out, Morty is insanely easy if you... you know. Mewtwo doesn’t get Psychic until level 66, but... it gets Confusion at level 1.

Chuck’s Poliwrath was blasted so hard, its sprite died. RIP. Also proof that this was the result of shenanigans. Not only do I have a Lugia that’s level 24 (when the lowest you can get is 40 in Silver), but... Aeroblast. Aeroblast is only available in Silver version, since Lugia gets it at level 1, and then learns a new move every 11x level (11, 22, 33, 44, etc). So at level 40, it has Aeroblast, Safeguard, Gust, and Recover. In the wild, a level 44 one would’ve erased Aeroblast for Hydro Pump. So in Gold version, the level 70 Lugia does not have Aeroblast. In Crystal, the level... 60? Lugia does not have Aeroblast. And there is no such thing as a move re-learner in GSC. ... Similarly, Gold is the only version where you can get Sacred Fire. ... Which means, poor Crystal version. Doesn’t get sh*t.

Speaking of Sacred Fire... Shenanigans! Whirlpool in the 3rd slot. Nickname: Phoenix. 3/5.

Somehow, this doesn’t feel fair. Lance in the Pokemon League. Getting one-shotted. Hmm...

Well, that’s the Pokemon League down. EASY! But this time, I’m going all the way. Kanto!

Hey, this is the guy that kills your game. Talk to that thing and then open the Coin Case and then your game gets f*cked. Something like that.

Hmm... Kanto, huh? Then I get access to Grimer, and therefore Acid Armor... Hmm...

Huhuhuhahaha! Acid Armor in 3rd slot. Nickname: Doomguard. Apparently you can’t use numbers, so... I couldn’t name it as “135″. Boo. Ehn. It’s not shiny, so... 4/5.

“This Gym is great! Only girls are allowed here!” ... Yeah, maybe that line is better deleted in HGSS. ... The HGSS line makes no damn sense. Just deleting this guy would’ve been better.

... Were you... having a date right in front of someone else’s house? ... What is wrong with you?

Oh you poor, sad little man. Living in a cave, since Cinnabar Island burned down. Volcano eruption. Well, at least in HGSS, you modified the sh*t out of the cave floor in Seafoam Islands. In here, you’re literally just a dude sitting in a cave all by yourself.

Janine. You sad f*ck. What is this? Level 36?! The weakest Kanto leader by far. Even weaker than a Johto leader. That’s just... pitiful.

Oh, I remember this. The trainer house? Oh, I spent a lot of time here back in actual Gold version, trying to get Metronome to get Transform so I could Transform into the Smeargle with Sketch, so that the Mewtwo would get Sacred Fire. And I succeeded... twice, since I accidentally deleted Thunderbolt, so I had to do this glitch again, but for Thunderbolt.

Johto Leaders must be pretty pathetic because I beat them? You f*ck. Here you are, sitting all by yourself in a Gym clearly made of Lego, and you’re calling the Johto Leaders pathetic?

Well, now that I annihilated this f*ck with Mewtwo (for a specific reason), I now have access to Mt. Silver, and thus, my 5th and last addition to my team. Oh, SNEASEL!!!

Final shenanigans. Beat Up in 3rd slot. Nickname: Temporus. 5/5. It ain’t a Dragon, but hey. Time thingy. And so my team is ready. Level 59 Mew, 56 Mewtwo, 55 Lugia, 55 Ho-oh, 55 Celebi. Time to take on Red with his level 70+ team.

Oh yeah. GSC Mt. Silver requires Flash. ... Flash is for sissies?!

... Wow. Can’t see sh*t except for an item that’s... ... How would you even see that?!

So... Flash is necessary. Cool. Adding in a level 5 Togepi with Flash. The team is ready.

Mt. Silver. So... here is a “hidden” path that leads to a cave with literally nothing in it. ... Like, what the f*ck was the point of this?

And another hidden path to another hidden cave with literally nothing in it. ... WHY?! Were there supposed to be some cool hidden sh*t here that got canned at the last moment?!

... So, that’s how pitiful Pikachu is. Level 81, got outrun by a level 59 Mew (base 90 vs. base 100), and one-shotted by Earthquake. ... See, this is why I can the Pikachu as soon as possible in Yellow version for a Mew. Pikachu ain’t my starter. MEW is my starter!

And ANNIHILATED! You poor sap. I have a bunch of Pokemon 20 levels lower, and yet... EASY. Why? Because Legendaries have much higher stats than other Pokemon. And in RGBY GSC, every stat gets “EVed”. ... PKRS also helps out greatly. In short, all my Pokemon are better by far. ... Which is why I restrict myself to non-Legendaries only in other normal runs. It just ain’t fair otherwise.

Now that I finished the game, I guess I’ll go to the one thing I always found super cool and very f*cking meaningless. Edit the time to be Monday, and make a beeline for Mt. Moon!

... F*ck. I forgot about this encounter. Way to ruin it, dude. It’s a huge step down from facing Red to facing you. Boo. ... Also, now you f*cking notice? You weak pathetic f*ck. Dude, you don’t need love to raise Pokemon. You’ve been using violence, and you’ve been mislead that you need love and affection. ... Dude, you need knowledge. Violence can only come properly afterwards. ... This is a reference to the elder’s questions in Crystal and HGSS Dragon’s Den. “What do you need to raise Pokemon? Love, violence, or knowledge?”

The Clefairy dance in Mt. Moon Square! Only on Mondays at night. This is still in HGSS, I think. The Clefairy dance and... leaves you a Moon Stone before running off, which means the Moon Stone is the only evolution stone you can get infinite amount of times. The others, you get like... two. Fire/Water/Leaf/Thunder Stones require you to be in Kanto for some f*cked up reason!

Now then, Gold version joy run is over. Lots of shenanigans happened. And here is my final team:

Caught Snorlax with a duplicated Master Ball, removed the Leftovers, duplicated that 5 times so all 5 of my Pokemon can have one. Constant HP regeneration for Pokemon with PKRS boosted stat experience, and with base HP stats of 100, 100, 106, 106, 106? That’s pretty freaking cheap, man.

Psychic: Level 40, but... who has the time for that? Duplicated TM 29: Psychic 4 times, so... yay. Shadow Ball: TM 30, again duplicated. Earthquake: TM 26, duplicated. Ice Punch, TM 33. Purchased in Goldenrod! Yay for not having to use the duplication glitch!

... And PP maxed for the PP 10 or lower moves using the duplicated PP Ups.

I ain’t waiting for level 66 for Mewtwo to get Psychic. Duplicated TM!

Psychic, Earthquake, and Shadow Ball. ... Just like Mew. And Ho-oh. DUPLICATION! But look. When there’s one...

There’s the other. With a symmetrical moveset.

... Celebi doesn’t learn Psychic by itself. ... TM. Also doesn’t get Giga Drain by itself. ... TM (duplicated). Shadow Ball? Also TM. And since Celebi’s movepool is as shallow as Keldeo’s, I let it keep Leech Seed. And with Leech Seed and Leftovers, Celebi here was able to easily annihilate Red’s Snorlax despite its Amnesia. EASY!

And there you have it! An easy-ass annihilation of Gold version. ... All you have to do f*ck up the game. At one point, the Dex said that I owned 39 Pokemon. But the Dex only showed me the “owned” icons for 19. Which means, I apparently owned 20 Pokemon that I never saw. ... Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Poor game. But at least “POOKYPOOKY” didn’t appear this time.

[blogsmith57]

Movies Ansd Tv With Pina Colada Song

Movies And Tv With Pina Colada Song Rupert Holmes

Pina Colada Song Wikipedia

Escape The Pina Colada Song Video

Two Pina Coladas Song

Pina Colada Song Video

Janet learns the lyrics to the Pina Colada song. Janet learns the lyrics to the Pina Colada song. On the movie the sweetest thing who sings the pina colada song its a womens group?

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

***

At least in retrospect, the ’70s must have been the wildest, most motley, most all-over-the-place decade in the history of popular music. Some genuine musical revolutions either started in the ’70s or matured during the decade: Hip-hop, punk, disco, funk, prog. But if you look at the ’70s through the lens of the pop charts, as this column does, you see excitement and tedium locked in a constant struggle for dominance throughout the decade, with novelty sneaking around the outside and getting some jabs in.

So really, the ’70s ended the only way they possibly could’ve done: With a badly-sung, infernally catchy soft-rock ditty, an infidelity-themed story-song that ends in an O. Henry twist. Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” has popped up on movie and TV-show soundtracks countless times in the past four decades; it has earned its place within our shared consciousness. And yet I can’t imagine ever being in a situation where I would actively seek the song out, where I would want to hear it. But then, I was three months old when the thing hit #1. Maybe I’m not supposed to know what motherfuckers were thinking.

Rupert Holmes, the man who wrote and produced “Escape” and who thus owns the chart transition from ’70s to ’80s, had been part of the pop-music dream factory for a decade when he got to #1. Holmes was born in the UK, the son of an American Army officer and an English woman. He spent the early years of his childhood in the English village of Northwich and the later years in the New York suburb of Nanuet. Holmes’ parents were both musicians, and Holmes went to the Manhattan School Of Music on a clarinet scholarship. Pretty soon after he finished school, he went to work as a pop-music professional.

Holmes was working as an arranger in the late ’60s when he joined the Cuff Links, an anonymous bubblegum group that also featured Ron Dante, the lead singer of the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar.” When the Cuff Links broke up, Holmes recorded a song called “Jennifer Tomkins.” The single, released under the name Street People, peaked at #36. In 1971, Holmes wrote a cannibalism-themed joint called “Timothy” for the Pennsylvania band the Buoys, and that one peaked at #17. Holmes also wrote ad jingles and scored a little-seen 1970 Western called Five Savage Men. He was in the game.

Holmes released Widescreen, his solo debut, in 1974. Before 1979’s Partners In Crime, the breakout album that gave us “Escape,” Holmes knocked out four solo LPs. None of them sold, but those records helped Holmes build a name for himself as a writer of funny, irony-infused story-songs. Barbra Streisand was a fan, and Holmes wrote songs for her and for the absurdly popular soundtrack for the 1976 film A Star Is Born. Holmes didn’t score a charting single of his own until 1978’s “Let’s Get Crazy Tonight,” which peaked at #72. Private Stock, the label that released “Let’s Get Crazy Tonight,” went out of business when the song was still on the charts.

Holmes got the idea for “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” one night when he was flipping through The Village Voice, the newspaper that once employed me. (“Escape” is the second #1 hit built around classified ads; it arrived eight years after the Honey Cone’s “Want Ads.”) Inspired, Holmes hatched the narrative of a bored couple who, while attempting to cheat on each other, accidentally go out on a blind date with each other. As originally written, the chorus started with the line “if you like Humphrey Bogart.” While he was getting ready to record it, though, Holmes decided that his own songs had too many references to older movies, and to Bogart in particular. He changed “Humphrey Bogart” to “piña coladas” at the last possible minute simply because he didn’t want to let down any of the real Rupert Holmes heads out there.

If you stop to think about “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” for even a second, it’s a pretty nasty little song. The very first line is this: “I was tired of my lady/ We’d been together too long.” The song’s narrator is unhappy with relationship, but he doesn’t do anything to end it. Instead, he sneaks around behind his girlfriend’s back, falling for a sentence in a classified ad. The person described in that ad seems hopelessly basic. Likes: Fruity mixed drinks, rain, champagne, beach fucking. Dislikes: Yoga, health food. But apparently the guy is basic, too, since a few lines of small-print newsprint text are all he needs to ditch his relationship. He takes out his own ad, responding to the first, and he includes grandiose verbiage about planning an “escape.”

He does not successfully execute that escape. It turns out that the girl who took out that classified ad is his own girlfriend, who is just as bored with the relationship as he is. They meet up at an Irish pub and instantly figure out exactly what just happened. The song presents this ending as a happy surprise. In interviews years later, Holmes says that the guy was supposed to be an asshole, and a passive one. The girl, who is also attempting to cheat, was at least the one with the wherewithal to instigate the whole episode. Holmes was hoping that they’d both realize how much they had in common, that they’d recommit themselves to each other. This seems unlikely.

Movies And Tv With Pina Colada Song Rupert Holmes

I have questions. For instance: Where does this couple go from here? They both know that they can’t trust each other. They also know that they don’t really know each other. They’ve got all these completely elementary preferences that they haven’t communicated. After that initial rush of recognition, how does the rest of this relationship look? How long do they stay together? How are they not incredibly pissed off at one another from the moment they spy each other across the bar? How are they not, at the same time, both consumed with guilt upon getting caught? I don’t like this couple’s chances.

I don’t know if this is a good story, but it’s good storytelling. I don’t much like the characters or where they end up, but Holmes sketches out the whole narrative in a few quick words, never losing sight of his own melody. This doesn’t change the reality that the actual music behind this story is exactly the kind of wack-ass soft-rock pablum that I cannot stand. It’s got an awkward, clumpy beat that Holmes recorded with two drummers. (Holmes co-produced it, and he says that the studio band played sloppily that day, so he used the 16 bars he liked the best and looped them.) There’s watery piano. There’s a processed-to-death guitar lead. There’s a groove that can’t stop tripping over itself. And then there are those vocals.

Holmes isn’t a bad vocalist, exactly. He a classic ’70s singer-songwriter guy, a conversational speak-singer. But man, I do not like what happens when he cranks that voice up and hits the hook on “Escape.” The hook is, to be fair, instantly memorable. But this is not always a good thing. Holmes hits that upper register, and I just wish I was someplace else. I don’t even know how people functioned when this thing was all over the radio.

Holmes managed one more big hit after “Escape (The Piña Colada Song).” “Him,” the single’s follow-up, was another story-song. This time, Holmes sang from the perspective of a guy who figures out that his girlfriend is cheating. “Him” peaked at #6. (It’s a 4.) Holmes kept putting out albums into the ’90s, but none of them hit. He also went back to writing songs for other people. “You Got It All,” a ballad that Holmes wrote for the teenage Tongan-American Minneapolis-based Mormon family band the Jets, peaked at #3 in 1986. (It’s a 6.) Britney Spears, an artist who will eventually appear in this column, covered it on her debut album. Get ready to be incredibly depressed: Holmes wrote the song for his 10-year-old daughter. Before the song took off, she died of an undetected brain tumor.

I don’t know how you bounce back from something like that, but Holmes did. After “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” Holmes has had more success as a storyteller than as a musician. In 1985, Holmes wrote The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, a Broadway musical based on an unfinished Charles Dickens novel. It won five Tonys, including two for Holmes. Since then, Holmes has written more than a dozen plays, many of them hits. He also created Remember WENN, a drama that ran for three season on AMC in the late ’90s, and he wrote all 56 of its episodes. He’s published a few books, too. The man can write, and the best thing about “Escape” is that you can tell that right away.

But Holmes is a whole lot more famous for “Escape” than for anything else he’s ever done in his life. He’s pretty funny when he talks about it, too. In a 2003 Songfacts interview, Holmes said this:

I have a feeling that if I saved an entire orphanage from a fire and carried the last child out on my shoulders, as I stood there charred and smoking, they’d say, “Aren’t you the guy who wrote ‘The Piña Colada Song?'”

Perhaps Rupert Holmes would like to escape “The Piña Colada Song.” So would I.

Pina Colada Song Wikipedia

BONUS BEATS: Here’s the scene from a 1999 episode of The Simpsons — the same storied episode that predicted the Trump presidency — where the not-aging-well future version of Bart sings a parody of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” during his sister’s presidential addresss:

BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the weirdly extremely memorable “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” needle-drop from the 2001 film Shrek:

BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s Kanye West, noted fan of the aforementioned Shrek scene, quoting “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” on “White Dress,” a song that he contributed to the soundtrack of the 2012 RZA-directed kung fu movie The Man With The Iron Fists:

(Kanye West will eventually appear in this column.)

BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the scene from 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy — which, like The Man With The Iron Fists, stars Dave Bautista — where Chris Pratt steals his Walkman back from the space-prison guard who is enjoying “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”:

BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the great scene from a 2016 Better Call Saul episode where Bob Odenkirk sings a few bars of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and spouts some fake biographical facts about Rupert Holmes:

more from The Number Ones

Raised in Hawaii Jack Johnson was the son of a famed surfer and even tried to have a go of his own on the waves. Unfortunately an accident that involved teeth being knocked out and stitches being required kind of halted that dream as he was sidelined from surfing for a while. It wasn’t too long after that however that his musical talents started to become his thing and picked up a guitar and started strumming out a few songs that he’d thought up. He did this throughout college, joining a band and jamming as they performed here and there during their time together. Johnson’s big break came in 2000 however when he not only produced the soundtracks for a couple of films but he tried his hand at making them as well. You could easily say this man is quite talented but it might still be an understatement.

Here are a few of his songs as used in TV and movies.

5. Glee – Bubbletoes

Glee is one of those shows you either liked or didn’t think about. It wasn’t even a matter of not liking if it you didn’t watch it, as the energy and verve of the show was enough to make it interesting. But if you weren’t into the whole song and dance routine then chances are you wouldn’t dislike it but just wouldn’t watch it since the whole idea of not liking the show seemed kind of petty since it was so upbeat a lot of the time, or at least seemed like it. In many way Glee kind of took a lot of people back to their experiences in high school since there are quite a few people that can remember being in similar clubs.

Escape The Pina Colada Song Video

4. Sense8 – The Sharing Song

This show is something else and it was one of Netflix’s top prospects when it first came out. The ability to connect with people miles away due to a special quality that links them all, and the knowledge and skills that can be shared via that link is pretty cool, but it could cause some serious problems as well. You can’t help but think that some of the people that are connected would embrace this after a period of confusion, but others would seek to block it out since this is the kind of thing that humans would rarely ever be able to get used to since it’s not considered natural or normal.

3. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – Escape (The Pina Colada Song)

Two Pina Coladas Song

Walter Mitty is a man that no one seems to take seriously since he’s kind of a nobody when the film starts, though he’s far more important than many people would care to realize. Working at Time magazine where he’s been for so long he’s been taken for granted and treated like a shadow on the wall since he’s a very quiet and unassuming person. But when an important negative for the last issue of Time goes missing he has to go and track it down by tracking down the photographer. In the end however he finds that it was with him the whole time, he just didn’t know where to look. The adventure he takes though is what was truly important as it finally got him to open up to the world.

2. Curious George – Upside Down

Several generations have grown up with Curious George since in truth he’s been around for a very long time. As a children’s story he’s one of the most classic tales out there and is the kind of story that you’d want your kid to watch since it’s a very touching and educational show that offers a lot of fun and engaging activity that kids will want to emulate. Sure George gets himself into trouble now and again, but that’s the beauty of the design. Kids can learn how they can get themselves out of trouble as well since George is all about having fun but he’s also about problem-solving. This is just a great show for kids and a bit of nostalgia for adults.

1. Jack Johnson – Middle Man

For all his talent and all his skill at music Jack Johnson is still a very diverse man since he’s not only a musician, but a father, a husband, and an environmentalist that spends a lot of his time balancing his life out between the different roles he’s given himself to play. So far in life it seems like he’s done just fine and has kept everything as it should be. He’s a very open person about his life in music, but keeps a lid on the private lives of his kids and family, which seems like one of the best ideas since quite honestly it’s no one else’s business. He’s definitely a family man and someone that cares a lot about what he does.

Pina Colada Song Video

Usually that’s the kind of person that knows just what they want and how to make it happen.

[because-its-important]

2017: a year of courage 🦄

If 2016 was a year of opening doors, 2017 was a year of walking through them. This year demanded a lot of courage.

First, the fun things!

Programming.

I’ve been talking about this quite a bit already, so I don’t want to linger too much. This was my first year working as a programmer (heyo) and I learned a whole lot very, very quickly. Building a data-heavy webapp for bar associations and their member lawyers from scratch is no joke! I’m also real proud to be capping the year off in the midst of a batch at Recurse Center. About a year ago I kept thinking about how good it would feel to be “ready” for something like RC, and it does, it feels good.

“what are u doing rn?” selfie circa mid May.

Zines and indie book sellers.

I encountered a lot of zines this year, exponentially more than all the years of my life prior. I went to a zine reading, multiple zine fairs (including one I volunteered at), I assembled a zine at the Bushwick Print Lab, I brought friends to Quimby’s. And, ofc, I bought a bunch too.

I purchased all the zines above at Pete’s Mini Zine Fest.  From top left to bottom right, they include: a parody science zine about “fracking”; a zine about a woman’s experiences riding the subway when she was pregnant; a zine about the history of animals that have been sent to space; a holographic bookmark that isn’t a zine but reminded me of a femme version of the robot in FLCL; a zine someone made about remembering her recently deceased father and how they’d go mushroom hunting; an art zine full of sketches of demons. I also asked every artist to sign the copy I bought, because I am a huge dork. 🤓

A beautiful zine I found in the library at the Recurse Center. Zines are everywhere! Keep an eye out. 👀

I also spent a lot of time browsing and buying books (often used, sometimes not) from independent bookstores and sellers. I picked up books from BookPeople in Austin, from the Oakland Book Festival, from a library sale in Syracuse, from Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights 1, from Autumn Leaves in Ithaca, from the Verso loft in DUMBO, from Borderlands in the Mission, from Powell’s in Portland. I even scored Invisible Cities and Frankenstein from a stack left outside my neighborhood coffee shop.

These were all purchased for like $3 from a library sale held in the garage of a old fire station in Syracuse, NY. Includes: a book about stream of consciousness novels; a book about how to make poisons written by this dude; a book of poetry about the devil. Must’ve been a real moody day.

Interference Archive and Church Night.

I visited a lot of new places in 2017, so I wanna talk about two places that I found myself coming back to again and again.

I first visited Interference Archive or went to events where they tabled roughly a dozen or so times this year. I remember spending snowy days in winter doing a bit of cataloging for a big archive they’d received of counter culture newspapers from the 70s. I participated in two reading groups hosted by IA, one on different social movements from the 60s to today and another on race and mass incarceration following The New Jim Crow2. Interference Archives annual block party was also killer, with free screen printing, radical button-making, a used book sale 😏, free tamales served out of a trash bag (they were so good!!), and a live Yiddish queer punk band.

I blew up and tied these balloons for IA’s block party all by myself! Very important work! 

One of the issues of The Berkeley Barb that I cataloged. I also cataloged about half of The Black Panther newspapers in their collection. You can check out Interference Archive’s catalog here.

I also went to church service four times! 😋 Church Night is a comedy show that features three standup sets, a burlesque show, and a 90s rock sing-a-long, all rolled up into a evangelical sketch. Each service is also topped off by a real-ass sermon, with positive messages that have made me cry multiple times. It is a really perverse good time and the folks who run it are extremely friendly and hardworking. They travel to Brooklyn every couple months or so and are based in Washington DC, so if you near live in either of those areas, I fucken implore you to check them out.

Another great service at Church Night!

Puppet shows and films.

I attended two puppet shows this year, which is two more than any year in adult memory and certainly two more than I could have expected! The first puppet show played after a few live bands on a rooftop in Bushwick on a hot summer night - I drank cold canned beer and graciously accepted when some generous stranger passed around a bowl.

The second puppet show was a performance at a banging housewarming party in a living room in Bed Stuy, and a friend was one of the central performers. At one point during the show an iMac in the living room fell four feet to the hardwood floor below and the audience - a room full of friends and friendly faces - gasped. THE SPECTRE OF FAILURE!3 I thought very loudly in my head while my face contorted into rapt, waiting concern. Of course the show Went On, the moment of danger transformed, transcended. Holy shit! This is real! This is real life! I thought over a swelling-swooning heart, and it set the tone for the best night of my year.

I managed to catch a bunch of rad shorts including the IFC’s showing of Academy Award-nominated animated shorts, Rooftop Films’ non-animated “uncanny” shorts as well as their animation block party, and a round of alternative horror shorts presented by the Bushwick Film Festival. Respectively, my favorite shorts from each of these collections were: Blind Vaysha, about a girl with an eye that sees the past and an eye that sees the future4, See A Dog, Hear A Dog which explores how we train non-humans (particularly 🐶 and 🤖) to respond to us as if they understand us, My Man (octopus) about the stickiness of a toxic relationship (or, from the same night, Pittari, about a v cute demon), and GREAT CHOICE, which is a hilarious horror short about being stuck in an infinitely looping Olive Garden commercial from the 90s.

If you enjoy films and live experiences generally, I can’t recommend Rooftop Films enough. They’re a long-running NYC nonprofit that supports diverse, independent filmmaking and their summer series is truly unique and wonderful; each screening is hosted in a dope outdoor location in NYC and is preceded by a musical act fit to the theme of the film. I saw films on the roof of the Old American Can Factory and backlit by the eponymous sunset of Sunset Park. The ticket-price also includes an open bar after each screening, and you can chat with the folks who worked on the films. These are the kind of events that make living in a city so special, so take a friend, take two, and go!

It was a chilly the night at the Old American Can Factory where we saw Rat Film, a documentary about Baltimore told through the measures taken to control the rat population. Eugene (left) is wearing a towel I bought in LA. Bailey (right) is wearing a NASA sweatshirt.

Big music, living room music, radio music, discos Good and Bad.

Unlike last year, I didn’t go to any music festivals, but I did hit up a couple biggish shows. I saw Chastity Belt at Williamsburg Hall of Music (what a great venue 💚) and Yaeji at Elsewhere.

In a surprise display of social aptitude and luck, I managed to pull together folks from no less than four disparate friend groups to go see Chastity Belt with me in June.

I’ve been getting good at identifying proper communal experiences and boy, AcouticQ really hits the nail on the head. It’s such a friendly, intimate setting that you can’t help but wonder, is this not the perfect what to share tunes about heartache and triumph? If that compelling to you and you’re a good person who enjoys folky music and supporting queer artists, starting following AcoustiQ and hit up one of their events! Bring snacks, bring booze, bring a cash donation. 💵

I saw Julia Weldon first at AcoustiQ in September…

…and then again in November at PIANOS. 😊🎸

I started listened to radio programs - I think perhaps when looking for tunes for my daily bike commute? Anyway, I found myself tuning in pretty regularly to Radio Free Brooklyn. Bushwick Garage is probably my most listened to station, and I haven’t really tried any of the more talk show stuff. I suspect there’s something for everyone, especially if you live in NYC. You can check out their schedule here, though I’ve been relying on their Mixcloud channel for the most part.

Continued to do a fair bit of dancing in 2017 and saw a few new-to-me venues. I’ve decided that I really hate most any dance club on a Friday or Saturday past midnight; the situation nearly always devolves into Basic Dance Beat while straights get sloppy all over the place. There is nothing more distracting and vibe-killing than pretending not to notice some baseball cap bro who keeps desperately dancing at you in a crowded space, especially when you know he’s “working up the courage” to say something that will inevitably be heinously stupid. Like, I did not come here to build empathy for mediocre dudes hoping to ~get lucky~ at the club, I came here to dance myself clean!!! 😤

So when I tell you that I’ve had nothing but positive, glowing experiences the last two times I’ve been to weekend events at Magick City, let me tell you, this is high praise! What a great DIY music venue. The first event I went to there was a record listening party, where a roomful of people laid on blanket on the floor and quietly listened to an album - had a break to talk about it, pee, get another beer - and then listened to another. The second event was a set by these folks in a thick fog with a great light show and yet room to dance and breathe! The drinks were cheap and there was a whole table of delicious free snacks that had been prepared onsite.

Look at this rad setup by Drippy Eye Projections!

A communal fifth of whiskey left in the bathroom at Magick City. Just in case you needed a lil, y’know? What a phenomenal discotheque!🕺✨

Biking.

Through 2017, biking has been my main form of commuting. I spent winter and spring using Citibike5 until finally buying my own in early June. Deciding to own a bike for the first time in the city, let alone picking what to buy, was a pretty challenging experience. I went with a lightweight matte-black hybrid with an internal hub for its 3 gears. 

My bb is decked out with cleated neon-chartreuse pedals, green and yellow spoke beads (not pictured), and a purple-teal bluetooth speaker. 💜💚

And a word, if we might, about my speaker: this speaker is tough as shit! I’ve dropped it off my bike multiple times, and once I looked back only to watch it get run over by a car, twice. It’s also survived rain, sailing, and being dumped roughly into airport bins.6

I have plenty more to say about biking, but to cut to the chase: biking is clearly a superior mode of urban transit if you are able-bodied, have the nerves to deal with cars, and don’t mind arriving at your destination kinda gross. In the last 18 months or so I’ve gone from someone who Never Goes Out to someone who Goes Out More Than Your Average Bear and I’m prepared to credit biking as a major enabler. If you want to learn more about your city, see your friends more often, and make new ones - start biking!

This is a video I shot while riding my bike home from a 4th of July party. I nearly got nailed with a Roman Candle, lol.

Traveling.

I also did a greater-than-expected bit of traveling again this year, again all within the United States. I went to Austin in April, visited Oakland and Berkeley for the first time in May, visited both Ithaca and Vermont for the first times in July, drove to Kentucky to see the TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE with my cousin in August, drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles for Indiecade in October, and capped off with a half-work half-play visit to Portland, OR in November. I suspect this isn’t a sustainable amount of traveling, but it’s incredibly hard to regret - especially when it allows you to see friends who live far away or experience unique bonding moments with friends who live nearby - so who knows what next year will look like.

One of the most special places I’ve been this year was Lothlorien, a student coop at Berkeley where a friend lived in undergrad. It was an inspiring intentional community - so much art on the walls, a tree house with a perfect view of the sunset, a dream library. So magical! 💖

The cabin trip in Vermont was also really special. We did so many appropriate summer camp activities, like sailing, tubing, visiting cows, taking walks under a sky full of stars, building a blanket fort, putting together puzzles, and playing with fire.

We made this at the beginning of the day and boy oh boy did it come in handy for organizing ourselves! And gee, look at how well hydrated we were. 💦🌈💦

Now, the less easy stuff.

Sex.

One of my goals this year was to “learn more about sex.”

me: when you said we were going to be learning about sex, i didn’t realize there’d be so much reading involved, i thought it might be less of a mental and more of a physical edu- also me: lol don’t front

When I first cracked open Bataille’s Erotism: Death and Sensuality, I remember being absolutely floored by how much it was not whatever I had expected it to be - and that that was a helpful starting place. Erotism is an examination of the function of taboos and their sites of transgression, how the act of transgressing is subject to its own social rules and tends to be ritualized7, and how as conscious mortal beings we’re compelled towards moments of transgression because they seem to imitate what we imagine the great continuity of death feels like without having to, y’know, die. I liked his analysis of de Sade’s writing and the irony of sadism - that the promise of transgression is greater self-awareness, but the violence it requires necessarily also erodes that same awareness. I both appreciate and am wary of how aggressively Bataille dislocates sex from a bodily endeavor to a psychological compulsion. He had also some real undercooked shit say about women and was clearly terrified of sex, so I’m kinda disinclined to treat his opinions as functionally valuable to lived experience.

The Persistent Desire, on the other hand, was easily the most personally important book I read this year. It’s an anthology of generations of lesbian femme-butch relationships, told through stories from women’s lives, interviews with queer scholars, and some extremely hot sex poems. My primary inner-dialogue with gender has been “ugh” and “this shit again” and “if I pitch my voice and play Nice Girl this unbearable interaction will be over faster.” I had never spent so much concentrated time thinking about the performance of gendered sexuality in queer relationships, and wow, I have been missing out on some much better thoughts!

Like, Q: Does gender performance ever feel sexy to me, not just hostile? Under what circumstances? A: Yes, but generally only so long as a) the performance is fluid, eg. you’re the boy, I’m the girl, now you’re the girl, now we’re both boys, and b) power, however gendered, doesn’t rest in one place for too long. Gender is fun to play with as long as it feels like playing, where the heteronormative script is really only referenced insofar as it’s being subverted, shredded up by contact with a reality that unequivocally de-legitimizes it.

Like, Q: how much better would my life be if I approached sexual relationships from a place of radical honesty and expected the same from my partners? A: PROBABLY A LOT.

Like, Q: how do I make space in my life to form romantic-sexual relationships with people who aren’t cishet dudes? A: idk bitch, but you’re apparently a pro at lifestyle changes! Keep going to queer events, keep reading, keep processing. I believe in you.

This is a cute fire safety map at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which I visited for the first time on a very wet snowy day in November. The archives had been mentioned frequently in The Persistent Desire and I was so excited to find that they were still around (44 years!), located in Brooklyn, and having an annual book sale.

Depression, denial, and death.

At one point this year I remember having an entirely normal hang out with my sister and partner in our Bed-Stuy apartment. I turned to the both of them and said, “You know, I think I might be real sad. I think I might depressed.” I wasn’t worried when I said it, though I do remember the words feeling strange. My sister and my partner of 7 years looked at each other, something like ‘Uh, do you want to take this one?’ or ‘Does she really not know?’ and eventually someone said, “Yeah, Nicole, that sounds right.”

If you had told me last year that I’d be spending so much time with Freud and Camus I would have rolled my eyes very, very exaggeratedly.

The most frightening thing about mental unwellness, imo, is that a good personal quality which is otherwise healthy and worth cherishing can become catastrophically distorted. So, say, an extremely deep capacity for enduring pain and discomfort, especially in service of others, becomes proving your worth by how much you’re willing to suffer, how much energy you’re willing to give away without expecting reciprocation. Worse still, let’s say, is being trapped in a cycle of denial about your own nature.

Denial takes lazy, irrational, harmful patterns of thought and elevates them to Gospel. You can’t be a generous and giving person because you can so clearly recall all the moments when you could have given more. You can’t be getting taken advantage of because you obviously would not abide exploitation in your presence. A friend wouldn’t repeatedly use you, to your loss and their gain, so that’s impossible by definition. If what you’re doing was really that painful and exhausting, you would have stopped already. _If you were depressed, you’d know it._8

I took this photo in Austin on a night when I was feeling decidedly not good at all. In fact, I was feeling so not good and so ashamed of not feeling good that I went out and bought The Myth of Sisyphus.

Last month the opiate epidemic rose up and swallowed my estranged uncle. Though we weren’t personally close, I’d spent my childhood within a ten minute walk from his house and had lots of memories of him. Death leaves a vacuum, always. It’s also an effective invitation to re-examine your life and the people in it. My uncle was provided with endless love and support from his family - and yet. Self-delusion sure is captivating.9

This was a year where I decided that I valued truth over self-delusion, and more importantly, a year where I affirmed that decision with concerted effort. It is extraordinarily challenging to reckon with the blind-spots in your perception of reality, especially whenever those blind-spots were constructed By You to cope with past pain and avoid it again in the future. Maybe everyone doesn’t need to do this? Maybe most people live comfortably with the given state of their ego? But internal delusions are a barrier to conscious clarity, and to the extent that living consciously feels the most like Actually Living and not Waiting To Die, I am determined to clean that shit up.

Lessons, imperatives!

So it’s late afternoon on Dec 31st and if this is going to be a 2017 recap, I’m really coming down to the wire. Here are the most important lessons I learned this year.

I luv this demon, because they sure got the right idea. ❤️🖤 

AESTHETICS MATTER.

I’ve often caught myself feeling bad for identifying with a community or culture that I didn’t feel like I’d “earned” my place at yet. This happened with biking, it happened with programming, it happened in queer spaces. imo, the best way to handle impostor syndrome is to kill it where it sleeps. I sure am! I am a devious impostor! Let’s see how far I can get before someone reveals me, exiles me! Turns out you can get all the way to Being The Thing, especially if your intentions are true. Your attraction to the thing is the first signal of your belonging, so get busy belonging!

LOVE THYSELF, AND GET GOOD AT IT.

Most of the psychological friction I’ve come up against in my search for The Truth Please has been caused by a very stubborn refusal to see and accurately assess my own self-worth. Very classic, very boring. I have only just begun to internalize what it might mean to love myself, to care for myself with even a little of the generosity and kindness and specificity that I happily devote to other people. The psychic backbending I’ve had to do to accomplish this goes something like, what if we loved ourselves the way we wished someone else would, like, idk, as a joke or something? Wouldn’t that be funny, at least? 🙃

That worked pretty well, but when it didn’t, I used brute willpower: hating yourself is a coward’s game, and whatever I may be able to lie to myself about, I will not pretend that I’m a coward.

Ultimately, though, the best way to learn how to love yourself is to watch how your friends do it and to actively resist the urge to interrupt them.

SPEAK, BITCH 🗯

Earlier this year I was walking with a friend, and I was very ashamed of myself when I told her I was thinking about writing something. I immediately walked it back, waffled, recoiled from myself. She was bewildered. “You should! I feel like you have things to say!” My reaction to this was sharp, panicked fear.

Because she was right. Because self-articulation and knowledge-sharing are fundamental human endeavors and if I think I’m somehow exempt from that, that I somehow uniquely Haven’t Got Anything Worth Saying, then that is delusion. Because if the real thing holding me back is a fear that my skill won’t measure up to the things I want to express, then the brave and honest thing to do is to try anyway.

So when I went to Recurse Center, I started this blog. I named it Because Its Important just so that every time I started doubting myself and asking “Why oh why am I doing this?” I would have the answer right there. 🐙

👋 Thank you for reading! Here is a silly-glasses bathroom selfie.

I read Donna Haraway’s CYBORG MANIFESTO for an outdoor discussion group at Unnameable books this summer. It is so amazing. I could only barely keep pace with it and I can’t wait to read it again after some time. ↩︎

I consistently arrived late, but bearing coffee by way of apology. ☕️🙏 ↩︎

I read Theatre of the Unimpressed, a book recommended to me by a friend after we saw an indie play earlier this year. The book talks a lot about what makes theater captivating, about the necessity of the possibility of failure, about the tendency for people to see see one boring-ass play and decide that they Just Aren’t Into Theater. The play we saw together wasn’t memorable, save for the fact that it was performed in a loft that hosts semi-regular makeout parties, which I’ve attended on half a dozen occasions. They are largely terrible. ↩︎

In one of the scenes Vaysha is courted by suitors, but they appear as child in one eye and an old man in the other. Fucking chilling. ↩︎

I remember a conversation earlier this year where a guy said that he “couldn’t imagine what it takes” to ride a heavy Citibike over a bridge in NYC. “Willpower, mostly” I replied. He ignored me, repeated himself: “Gee, but I just don’t get it!” If someone doesn’t want to understand, they don’t want to understand. ↩︎

You can buy one here. ↩︎

In fact, a taboo ain’t even a taboo if it can’t be transgressed! ↩︎

A possibly less upsetting example of a denial! In September I was walking to brunch with my sister and her boyfriend the morning after a party at my bff's apartment. "Nicole, you really brought the party!" He said to me. My immediate emotional response was anger at how 100% wrong he was. The night before I had brought glowsticks, mini shark toys, and a Gingerhead House kit to the party. I was going to a party that night for which I'd purchased a tank of helium and large tropical balloons. But my desire to argue, my certainty that He Had Erred was complete. I've very rarely experienced moments where my subjective experience is so strongly misaligned with objective reality, but now that I'm in the business of noticing this crap, it happens pretty regularly whenever anyone says anything nice about me, to me. ↩︎

Drugs, too. ↩︎

[bites-kms]

Chicago, that toddlin' town

I guess very deep inside I love it: I always end up visiting freezing places in December for a quick holiday before the actual big holidays. First it was Russia, then Finland, London and now Chicago. I must definitely have a fetich with the cold, because it’s really unbearable with -18C, and yet, here I am. 

Chicago is cold, yes. But it’s wonderful as well. I can’t wait to come back during summer time. If I find it gorgeous already, I can’t imagine then. Winter isn’t that bad either: all the beautiful places you want to go, see and know are actually empty, picture-perfect awaiting for you and your enjoyment. Some rooftops get cold very easily but, there are other closed ones, surrounded by glass, already ready to fight the winter back, gifting you a beautiful sight of Chicago lights within the comfort of AC. 

You breath and eat its culture. People are polite. The American flavor is present in every corner. It’s hard to describe a particular neighborhood or place; instead, you just have to wing it to discover it. If, as per my point of view, New York City is the heart of the US (at least on the East Coast), where the culture beat and rhythm is determined, Chicago must definitely be its lungs: the air is fresher, the city is cleaner, more tidy yet exciting, smaller but rich, more elegant and better taken care of, making sure the blood stream fluids hassle-free in this living being that is America. I mean, it’s called the Windy City for a reason!

A mix of Sydney, San Francisco, Singapore and Sweden (all of them with S - such a weird coincidence) with a dash of Toronto and Austin, this is a perfect merge of everything. What Yangon is to SEA, I believe Chicago is to North America’s East Coast.  

Downtown Chicago, The Loop & River North, the main stuff. 

Michigan St. is one of the city’s main arteries, it’s fully decorated, with its fancy boutiques, stores and hotels, charming the riverwalk and its surroundings. The sharp cold, the one that makes you feel like you are about to lose your fingers in any sudden bump or gentle touch, paints the city with a crisp white - still figuring out whether it actually came from my frozen watery eyes or the snow itself. Regardless, it’s indeed a charming Winter Wonderland.   

Arriving from O’hare to any part of town is quite easy thanks to the CTA. I went off on Washington stop and walked a few blocks reaching my friend Gabe’s house by New East Park. A compulsory stop at Millennium Park, with a visit to the wrongly named “bean” (it’s actually named Cloud), the Art Institute of Chicago - awarded the best Museum in the World by Trip Advisor until 2018 for four years in a row - is a must. But what is even more important is to try Chicago’s pizza emblem: the stuffed pizza pie at Giordano’s. It has multiple locations, -the original one being at River North- and its menu is full of the good stuff. We went to the one by the Bean instead, and be prepared: it’s a lot of food and it will take at least 45 mins to reach your table. So don’t get fooled, try to hold on and avoid ordering appetizers, don’t be like us, if not you’ll get super full before the main food star. It’s rich and full-filling, the doe is fantastic, it honors the actual “pie” name it stands for, the sauce is delicious and the stuffing reminded me of the pizza rellena my Nona used to make, although with a complete different taste (ours was way better, coz it had bacon, anchovies and eggs). 

After an evident food comma, be prepared to check out a wonderful sunset at London House, a hotel & rooftop bar strategically located on the intersection of Michigan St. and the Riverwalk, where you can be mesmerized by Chicago’s skyline. If you are visiting in winter, remember to drop by early (sunset in December happens approximately around 4:30pm), and if you are checking it out during summer nights, be ready for some music and fun until late. 

A great winter alternative is The Signature Room & Lounge - a closed yet wonderful restaurant, located on the 95th and 96th floor of one of Chicago’s tallest building. A reminiscence of  the Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo and a flashback to Charlotte’s wondering sights at the massive windows in Lost in Translation happens when you first face those monumental glasses, while being charmed by Chicago’s lights and movement. From 5 to 7 there’s a very convenient happy hour, so be mindful to check it out: Prosecco for me, Old Fashion for Gabe. Another incredible talk for our memories. 

Right next to it, you can find The Drake Hotel, now owned by Hilton, also known as the place where Al Capone lived here in Chicago. 

When it comes to dinner, man, you’re in a pickle! Chicago is known for its food scene and for a reason. It’s foodie’s heaven. Thankfully, talking with locals, residents and cross-checking with blogs and seasonal magazines, I can undoubtedly say that The Purple Pig is the place to go. Mediterranean cuisine with a twist, with a wonderful collection of wines and charcuterie. We shared three delicious dishes: whipped feta with honey and sweet heirloom tomatoes, butternut squash with peanut butter and adobo, to finally wrap it up with an exquisite Spanish grilled octopus with potatoes and pesto greens, which made us end up with no extra room for dessert - my friend Belu would be so disappointed on me. 

Right across the street, you can take some pictures at the Intercontinental Hotel, which hosts Michael Jordan Steakhouse (not a biggie, but it’s kind of funny that this legend, Mike 23, has a restaurant on his own). Wrap up your night with some blues. Walk down the area to find your favorite bar, hopefully one with no or little cover fee. We went to Blue Chicago ($10 bucks), grab a IPA Goose Island beer (the local brew) and enjoy some tunes. It was really amazing - I could listen to this music all day long. 

Up North: Old Town, Wicker Park & Longan Park, the cool stuff. 

Head up to Old Town, near Lincoln Park. Take the brown line (if you manage to activate your CTA card, it’s not an easy task if you don’t have a US phone number) and travel 4 long stops. This neighborhood holds St Michael’s Church, one of only seven buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Start your tour over there, and check out the beautiful architecture that surrounds it. It’s an extremely weird merge of modern and old buildings and styles, with some very well preserved gems. Same happens downtown. I guess that after the fire, the city really focused on keeping its charm as untouched as possible. And damn they are doing a great of a job at it! 

Up there, one of the main roads - which is also a National highway - is North Wells Street (IL-64 Route, oh well hello New York’s BQE deja vu!) and check out Second City, an iconic Comedy Club and Theater in the US - thanks Juan for the tip!-. It started as a small cabaret theater nearly 60 years ago and has since become the world’s premier name in improv-based sketch comedy and education. Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Bill Murray and Mike Myers are just some of the name-dropping figures that appear as their alumni. 

Right in front of it, there’s Foxtrot Cafe, a wonderful and warm place where to have breakfast. It’s iconic spicy chicken biscuit is a must, and you can pair it with the coffee of your choice. Almond cap for me. After some needed calories to fight the -8C temperature, I headed east to Wicker Park. 

What a wonderful place. It’s dodgy, ruined down and hipster-looking. It is truly fantastic. The best of British’s Shoreditch with the untapped, gritted vibe of Brooklyn’s Bushwick or Flatbush, with the crazy look of Seattle’s Pike/Pine-Capitol’s Hill. This is where High Fidelity (2000s, John Cusack in a record store movie) was shot. Gentrification is the hype word you’ll hear, but still, Wicker Park remains a vibrant hub of culture and commerce in Chicago, riddled with boutiques, restaurants, cocktail bars, concerts venues and condos. It’s main area is located around the six corners of Milwaukee, North and Damen Avenues.

Starting from Milwaukee Ave. South, make a compulsory stop by Myopic Books, a nerdy paradise for all second-hand book fans. Continue your literally hunt down by Milwaukee Av and rejoice at Volume’s Book, get the warm hot cocoa you were craving for while writing your travel blog post about Chicago or read a new book instead. For a more funky venue, walk down a few more steps to find The Wormhole, Chicago’s most visited coffee shop. 

The Wormhole is a place very hard to define, so I will just say that is an '80s-themed rustic coffee shop, complete with a DeLorean, pouring locally roasted coffee. It’s a fun place with great music and even better wifi. It’s easily and strategically located before arriving to some of greatest stores by Milwaukee Ave. Make some time to check out all the fantastic the second hand, vintage and thrift shops like Kokoroko, Free People, & or if you prefer, stop by Reckless Records for some great music discounts.

Make yourself some time to check it by night as well, you can have fun at Emporium, the great arcade place or even have a drink or two at Davenport’s, the great piano bar and cabaret. 

The best place - and most iconic one - to have a cozy, all-time-classic lunch is Dove’s Lunchonette, inspired in old ‘60s and ‘70s Chicago’s soul and blues. It’s really fantastic. Becky (almost certain that was her name) is the great waitress that will recommend you all the goodness available in the menu and refill your coffee or tea, always with her laugh and great vibe. Make sure to appreciate the tunes and the environment, it’s a great memory from this city. A delicious poblano pepper filled with chicken and cheese, deep fried in delicious crumbles, topping a side of mexican rice with house, home-made spicy sauce. Yummy. 

Continue your exploration heading towards Logan Place, where more cool stores like tattoo parlors and skate stores are located. Don’t miss out on the street art scene and the 606, the Chicago’s Highline. Make a stop at the “Greetings from Chicago” mural and don’t hesitate to refuel at Colectivo Coffee, a great place where co-working and coffee brewery merges. 

Going West: Fulton Market, Greek Town and West Loop

This is THE place to eat. All of Chicago’s top restaurants are here, even the ones that have their venues by the riverwalk, they know they need to be here as well. We tried out luck at Au Cheval, named the best burger in America for a while, but it comes with a cost: an hour and a half waiting queue. Instead of getting our burger treat, with it’s typical knife on top, resembling some kind of conquest your stomach is about to achieve and colonize, we decided to give Green Street Smoked Meats a chance. This is one of Gabe’s favorite spots in Fulton Market, and it’s a nice and fancier Texas Smokehouse. Communal, big tables, great music and vibe, where to find delicious BBQ, even better brisket which we tried to tuned down with healthier sides such as yummy broccoli salad as well as the traditional pickle cabbage one, are there to ignite your night. 

The Green Door Tavern is an awesome tip my parents gave me. Apparently, it was vox populi back in the ‘20s that the establishments that had a green door, hosted a speakeasy inside and did not respect the prohibition rules of no-alcohol. So, let’s party like it’s 1921 and enjoy a drink or two in here! Once you enter, it just look like a regular, sports and antique bar, where memorabilia and Irish Pub look-and-feel rules the place. Yet, do not despair: head to the back, go down the stairs and before reaching the bathroom, try to listen to the music. A wall, a tricky one, hidden behind a books and ornaments shelf, you shall find Heaven’s door. A funky, old school, hour-o-clock-show bar, where to enjoy strong cocktails, and around the clock shows. Music, magic or, it’s signature event: burlesque. After choosing your drink from a very unique tarot-card-like menu, indulge yourself in the ‘20s era with the surprise show and the old-school videos played on the stage curtains. It’s a fantastic experience!

Visit the Hoxton hotel (always beautiful, never disappointing according to my experiences in Brooklyn, Paris and now Chicago) and head up to it’s rooftop restaurant Cabra - a Peruvian fusion delight. Great for brunch or lunch, we indulged on it’s sample menu and enjoyed some fresh guac and chips, a pulled pork belly sandwich, a tuna tiradito, goat empanadas and some delicious mango and chocolate dessert. It was a perfect Thursday food-comma. 

Before leaving Fulton Market, walk around and visit the brand new Time’s Out Market. Contrary to the Hoxton experience, Time’s Out is a great content platform with great venues around the world. Although, no market is as nice and as delicious as the Lisbon one. It was the first Time’s Out market they launched, and although I’ve visited some others like New York’s or Chicago’s, they do not manage to create the same vibe and atmosphere you can find in Lisbon. Chicago’s one is nice and you can find top names such as The Purple Pig and so on, but maybe you wanna give some of the surrounding restaurants a try before choosing Time’s Out Market. 

Wrap it up by Navy Pier & a bis on the Riverwalk 

While my stayed in the Windy City was coming to an end, I went to the Navy Pier for sunset to be wonder by the Michigan Lake and its view. We also walked down again the main road and visited The Protein Bar, a healthy venue were wraps and juices are top notch and you with your purchase you contribute to a local start-up. You can also check out a top view of the Bean and the Millennial park at Cindy’s, the rooftop of Chicago’s Athletic Association. Visit the Public Library and imagine yourself studying at the same booths or with the same texts Obama once did. Have a coffee by the Theater District at Goddess and the Baker. 

Head to Nonnina for some yummy Italian and even better service. We had some wine, pasta and salmon to celebrate my last night in the city. Call it a day by visiting another Varela’s Family recommendation and favorite: The Redhead Piano Bar. This energetic, fun and light-hearted venue is a fantastic spot where to drink your sorrows away, sing your heart out and laugh as hard as you can. The talented crew at the piano and mic will sing your requests for tips and will cheer and entertain your night with fine tunes, Chicago’s stories and public interaction that will certainly lift any night and place a unique bow on your unique Chicago Farewell. 

4 days in Chicago is not enough, specially if the cold forces you to be inside. I guess the same applies in summer: it wont be enough either due to the outdoor activities the city will offer.  Next time I will drive a little bit uptown heading to Superdawn, the traditional and well known Chicago sausage drive thru. I would also love to visit Manny’s Place, a traditional deli that’s been around for quite a while now, as well as to Kingston Mines, the traditional blues bar near Lincoln Park and Zoo -which we did actually go but too early for a show- as well as another fun and very hard to find ( I need to research a little bit more) tiki-bar speakeasy called three dots and a dash. Chicago, you’ve been awesome - I’ll be back!

[monsterflavoredcondoms]

w.e

1. What is you middle//full name? Sabrina Ines Rivera 2. How old are you? 17 3. What is your birthday? may 24 1999 4. What is your zodiac sign? gemini 5. What is your favorite color? pink 6. What’s your lucky number? never had one , maybe 6 7. Do you have any pets? 2 cats and a dog , yellow cat mac , black cat jen, chihuahua dog coco 8. Where are you from? born and raised in puerto rico for 7 years , then mostly here in florida 9. How tall are you? 5.1 10. What shoe size are you? womans 6.5 i think 11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? like 10 but i only wear like 2 maybe 4 out of all of them 12. What was your last dream about? i dont know but i had a dream when i was 4-5 and then again at 10 about this little purple alien w green dots and its only as big as my hand and it would take me into its little door and i was turn as small as the alien and the place looked like new york but like underground 13. What talents do you have? double jointed in 4 of my fingures 14. Are you psychic in any way? no , but if i say "it wont happen" a lot of times , then it does happen , or like the opposite , so since nothing wants to go my way i just ask for the opposite 15. Favorite song? brenna from a victim a target 16. Favorite movie? idk , just listen is like an unknown movie but its so good and so emotional that i kind of love it 17. Who would be your ideal partner? someone who thinks about my feelings before their own and is cute and clingy as all hell 18. Do you want children? FUCK NO , dont even joke like that 19. Do you want a church wedding? hell no 20. Are you religious? athiest 21. Have you ever been to the hospital? many times , i had asthma till i was 3 , i fell from moms bed when i was three , i had an ear infection when i was three , threatened to kill my self when i was 12 , my sistick (its a ball that forms in the bladder while the menstrual cycle is on) poped when i was 14 and happens now every 3-9 months but now i mostly dont go to the hospital , good shit is i dont get pains now 22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? nope 23. Have you ever met any celebrities? no-.- 24. Baths or showers? showers , but kinda equally love em 25. What color socks are you wearing? grey w pancakes on them 26. Have you ever been famous? lol no 27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? lol no , maybe on youtube , but 28. What type of music do you like? anything hut country and shit rap , like meditating or heavy metal or xxxtentation 29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? no , but i jumped in the pool w my bra and panty on once 30. How many pillows do you sleep with? two but my head lays on one 31. What position do you usually sleep in? stomach down 32. How big is your house? medium , not rlly big 33. What do you typically have for breakfast? jenny creig 34. Have you ever fired a gun? no 35. Have you ever tried archery? yes , when i berally remembered anything 36. Favorite clean word? beautiful 37. Favorite swear word? cunt 38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? 32 hours , crazy shit , i did an all nighter , pretended to get up early and went to therapy later and went places , got home at 6 pm 39. Do you have any scars? on my fore head , when i fell off moms bed when i was like 3-4 40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? no , idk 41. Are you a good liar? nope 42. Are you a good judge of character? nope 43. Can you do any other accents other than your own? not rlly , if i try 44. Do you have a strong accent? no , my mom does tho , i dont have an accent on either spanish nor english 45. What is your favorite accent? british 46. What is your personality type? interested 47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing? a dress in the back of my closet in which i got so that i can be brights made in my cousins wedding 48. Can you curl your tongue? no.. idk 49. Are you an innie or an outie? belly button? outie 50. Left or right handed? right 51. Are you scared of spiders? terrified 52. Favorite food? fuck idk , food , mac and cheese 53. Favorite foreign food? zorrullos , its hispanic 54. Are you a clean or messy person? messy , we aint talking soccer here 55. Most used phrased? go to sleep 56. Most used word? um 57. How long does it take for you to get ready? 5 mins or less , unless a bitch pisses me off , then imma be cute/hot as hell for a bitch to be jealous 58. Do you have much of an ego? i dont think so 59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? suck 😉 60. Do you talk to yourself? always 61. Do you sing to yourself? no 62. Are you a good singer? lmaoo.... no 63. Biggest Fear? spiders 64. Are you a gossip? only to my closest friend possible , probably gossip bout trump lol 65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? hunger games probably 66. Do you like long or short hair? buzz cut 67. Can you name all 50 states of America? lol no 68. Favorite school subject? lunch 69. Extrovert or Introvert? both , like extrovert w people but alone i hate everyone lol 70. Have you ever been scuba diving? no , went zip-lining tho 71. What makes you nervous? everything , walking up to friends , talking to adults , starting conversations , walking places by my self 72. Are you scared of the dark? no , not at my house , in the streets a little 73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? almost not , if they talking shit they aint suppose to , then a bitch gotta stand up 74. Are you ticklish? fuck you 75. Have you ever started a rumor? no 76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? no , dont recall 77. Have you ever drank underage? lol yes 78. Have you ever done drugs? 420 bro 79. Who was your first real crush? kindergarten a little boy , we ended up dating untill i never saw him again 80. How many piercings do you have? one on each ear 81. Can you roll your Rs?“ yes , hispanic mami 82. How fast can you type? fast asf boi , when im mad 83. How fast can you run? slow 84. What color is your hair? blond , naturally dark brown tho 85. What color is your eyes? hazel, they've been orang yellowish for a while tho 86. What are you allergic to? donald trump 87. Do you keep a journal? yea but its like a sketch book , i draw my feelings if im mad 88. What do your parents do? sit behind a desk and then come home to complain about work 89. Do you like your age? eh , prefer 21 for all the good reasons 90. What makes you angry? my father 91. Do you like your own name? no , i prefer stella or steven 92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? dren, steven , rose , their birthstone 93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child? a human who will choose their gender when they're older 94. What are your strengths? fangirling over steven universe , kindof good at math , like good at adding subtracting and multi 95. What are your weaknesses? socializations , situations in which i have to argue 96. How did you get your name? the nurse asked and mom was like "idk" and the nurse was like , this book says sabrina , and mom was like "ok" 97. Were your ancestors royalty? lmfaooo... no , i have a italian ancestor , explains my love over pasta 98. Color of your room? white but i have like 20 posters and drawings and painted handprints and shelfs and a portrait in marilynn monroe , also stickers and trash 99. Color of your bedspread? red 100. Make up your own question if u can meet anyone , who would it be? rebecca sugar the creator of steven universe , and i mean like , meet her and hang w her for like a day , i hope she's nice , i hear she's nice , but people always tell me , some idols turn out to be assholes

[watchilove]

  The M.A.D.Gallery introduces “Rides of the Wild,” a collection of eight works by Frédéric Müller, a young and talented Swiss artist with an extraordinarily creative mind. In this series, Müller brings his imagination to life, using his expertise in 3D art to morph classic cars into complementary transport for animals of the wild including a lion, a hippo, and an alligator. There’s even a ride for a panda!

An Aston Martin transforms into a hippopotamus while a Ford truck turns into a lion…these images have our minds shifting gears. “I want to create pieces that viewers can lose themselves in, look at for longer than just a couple seconds, and jump-start their own imaginations,” Müller explained. “I am always looking to create something that is a bit special, that hasn’t been thought of before, or that has a special vibe to it.”

Here at the M.A.D.Gallery, we are both thrilled to present Müller’s playful compilation of clever 3D images and slightly obsessed with letting our imaginations run wild with potential storylines. “We always try to incorporate something that makes us, and hopefully those who discover our pieces, smile. Frédéric Müller’s work does exactly that!” Max Büsser, founder of MB&F and the M.A.D.Gallery, enthuses. “Not only is his work impressive and based on vintage cars, a theme close to my heart, but it recaptures a sense of whimsical and childhood that we need to hold on to.”

Rides of the Wild

A fast ride, a classy classic or a powerful pickup truck drive these animated beasts into a new habitat as Müller discovers his version of the ideal relationship between car and animal. By outfitting each “character” with personality traits, he transforms each being and conveyance using a variety of subtle accessories and shapes.

The sweeping, steel grey curves of an Aston Martin DB5 from 1963 perfectly pair with the voluptuous silhouette of a hippopotamus. Enhancing the semblance is a pair of “ears” ideally placed on the roof of the vehicle and a license plate personalized with ‘H1PP0’. Clients can choose between a print showing a straight-on view of the hippo-inspired Aston Martin or a scene portraying a suited-up hippo heading from his car into the office.

H1PP0 01

H1PP0 02

Ready for adventure? A lion behind the wheel of a transformed Ford F-250 with a pop-up camper in tow is just the thing. This heavy-duty pickup truck from 1967 fittingly takes on the feline features of a lion with a grill fashioned as a lion’s nose, a cab embellished with “ears,” and fur-coloured paint. Müller, a perfectionist when it comes to details, adorns the front of the truck with ‘ROAR’ across the hood (instead of ‘FORD’) and completes the license plate with ‘L10N’.

L10N 01

L10N 02

At the other end of the horsepower spectrum, a 1977 Fiat 600S playfully doubles as a panda bear with black and white features including a nose on the grill and ears peeking out from under the luggage rack. In Müller’s second panda-themed artwork, a globetrotting bear couple embark on a road trip; a fun detail is the luggage exploding with bamboo. Appearing lost, the driver holds a map while staring at illegible road signs. For added detail, the license plate is customized with ‘P4ND4’.

P4ND4 01

P4ND4 02

An alligator behind the wheel of a 1968 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray races around a corner at breakneck speed: the thrill-seeking reptile harmonizes with its powerful machine sporting an elongated frontend (similar to an alligator snout) and pointy teeth positioned alongside the personalized ‘G4T0R’ plate on the grill. The deep emerald colour of the classic car coordinates with the creature hanging out the window having the time of his life.

G4T0R 01

G4T0R 02

Each customized ride has a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) sticker thoughtfully placed on the window to remind us of the vulnerable status of these wild animals.

Two images are available for each of the four hybrid cars in either a frontend view or a coordinated setting with an animal driver. Each of the images is printed on fine paper, framed in white matte aluminium and protected by a two-millimetre-thick glass cover. Each motif is available in two sizes, 128 x 90 cm and 70 x 50 cm with white margin (image 114 x 76 cm and 60 x 40 cm), limited to eight prints and one artist edition per size. And for those desiring to have all eight prints, 18 collector boxes of 51 x 41 cm prints with white margin will also be available (image 45 x 30 cm).

Creation Process

Müller draws inspiration from everyday items and situations when creating his unique computer-generated imagery (CGI). In particular, this series came to life when a hippopotamus lamp in a second-hand store caught his eye. “The shape of the lamp looked like the front hood of a classic car,” Müller described. “I thought to myself: what if a car actually looked like a hippo? Most of my work begins with that simple question: what if? These two words are amazingly powerful in kicking off your imagination as they force you to think out of the norm.”

https://vimeo.com/315889060

The hippo-esque Aston Martin continued to develop a unique personality and storyline in his mind, eventually unfolding into a series of four classic cars digitally morphed into wild animals with correlating characters.

Regarding the creation process, once the concepts are complete the next step in the digital imaging process is to design and build a 3D model of the cars using computer animation and modelling software. When modelling is completed, the 3D models are textured and shaded (defining their material properties), composited in the final scene by setting the camera angle, and the “lighting” arranged. The image is then test-rendered multiple times to fine tune the materials and lighting setup in order to achieve a photorealistic rendering. The final steps, including colour grading and contrast, take place in Adobe Photoshop. Working in a 10,500-pixel format allows the finest of details to shine through, from the fur on the animals and dust on the wheels to squashed mosquitos on the windshield.

The process is not at all smoothly linear, each step requires several testing phases to produce the finished image Müller envisions. It takes lots of time to integrate the countless details: the “Rides of the Wild” series took nearly three years to complete from start to finish.

3D-Preview / Test lighting / Final Image

Completed 3D-Model

Grooming the Panda’s Fur

Preview Rendering for Lighting Setup

About the Artist

“First and foremost, it’s about fun! Having fun and conveying fun,” Müller excitedly says as he describes his approach to art. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and product design from the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Switzerland, Müller was fascinated by the creative work behind shaping objects that surround us in our daily lives. After working as a designer, he discovered a passion that was not in product design but in using photography, computer-generated imagery (CGI), and 3D-visualisation techniques to make imaginative ideas become visual. “Bringing concepts or products to life by showing them in photorealistic images, putting them into context, and telling stories of where and how the products would be of use in real life,” Müller explains.

A move to Amsterdam for a role as a 3D artist at a leading CGI production company came in 2013, providing a great experience and a mentor who brought out the best in him. Müller started publishing his work online, which resulted in positive attention and even magazine features. Gaining traction, his images were displayed next to the work of admired artists. Müller moved back to Switzerland to develop this opportunity, securing freelance projects for clients in the advertising industry while also developing his own projects.

Today Müller’s studio time is split between a converted firefighter’s van and an office in Switzerland. “Being able to work remotely and getting out of the regular working environment is quite a boost for creative input,” he describes his time in his “Atelier on Wheels,” which runs on a large solar-powered battery. A substantial part of this series – research, development of the concept, sketching, and modelling of the cars – was created during adventurous road trips through Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France.

Take a close look at the G4T0R and P4ND4 background: the sky and horizon line in the perspective images came from photographs captured by Müller while on the road. The largest resolution part of the work – including detailing, building of the CGI environments, and especially the rendering – were executed at the workspace in Switzerland, where he has more computing power.

The future is bright for this young digital artist who is dedicated to provoking feelings – especially happy ones – in those who observe his work. “To have viewers stop for a second and consider; what if this actually was real? To make people react, smile, laugh, reflect, and consider things from a different perspective. I loved (and still do love) the fact that you can express your creativity/ideas with little to no budget, except the time and effort you are willing to put into it,” Müller said.

For more information please visit the M.A.D.Gallery at Rue Verdaine 11, 1204 Geneva, Switzerland (+41 22 508 10 38), the Website or request info info@madgallery.ch

The M.A.D.Gallery introduces “Rides of the Wild” by Swiss Digital Artist Frédéric Müller The M.A.D.Gallery introduces “Rides of the Wild,” a collection of eight works by Frédéric Müller, a young and talented Swiss artist with an extraordinarily creative mind.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/alan-yang-is-keeping-it-weird-with-his-new-amazon-series-forever/

Alan Yang Is Keeping It Weird with His New Amazon Series Forever

Alan Yang on the set of Forever with Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen.

By Colleen Hayes, courtesy Amazon Prime Video

If you were to picture a successful screenwriter and director’s house in the Hollywood Hills, you’d probably imagine something like Alan Yang’s place. Perched in a cul-de-sac at the top of a steep winding street, the mid-century modern home hovers above the city, a wall of windows framing a glimmering view. When I arrive to meet the co-creator of Master of None and the forthcoming Amazon series Forever on a warm July evening, a cluster of people dressed like gaudy refugees from a 1980s Sunset Strip hair-metal band stand outside a house a few doors down from his place, planning their party route for the night and living out their L.A. dream.

Yang’s own Hollywood fantasy seems to involve hard work, high-powered meetings, and flights between New York, Taiwan, and Los Angeles as he plots ever more ambitious idiosyncratic projects. Earlier that day, he’d met with executives to discuss Tigertail, the multi-generational Asian-American feature film starring John Cho, inspired by his own family saga, which he is writing and directing for Netflix. He is also in the early stages of producing Little America, an anthology series about immigrants for Apple, which will be written by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon.

Right now, though, there’s Forever, the uncanny dramedy Yang co-created with Matt Hubbard that drops on Amazon Prime on September 14. Starring Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, Forever takes the idea of marital commitment to wild, existential extremes.

Yang got his big TV break when Michael Schur and Greg Daniels hired him for the writing staff of Parks and Recreation. He had met Schur—virtually—through a baseball blog called Fire Joe Morgan that both men obsessively contributed to. (“It was legitimately crazy,” Yang said. “We would write 15,000-word screeds for no money!”)

After absorbing the show’s sweet vibe and character-based humor for six seasons, Yang and Parks and Rec pal Aziz Ansari decided to create their own series, Master of None, based on their friendship and “the fact that we like to eat food together”—which is, Yang hastens to add, “not the worst way to start a working relationship.” They wrote a pilot and sold it to Netflix, whose scripted slate was still in its infancy. But when Parks and Rec got picked up for a final season, they put their own project on hold, giving them time to think about creating something more original with Master of None.

At one point, Yang said he and Ansari were holed up in New York, trying to write, and feeling increasingly frustrated. “I told him, ‘My dad grew up basically in a tiny village in Taiwan. He had a pet chicken and he had to kill it because he didn’t have enough food to eat. So whatever happens, it’s all gravy because here we are in a hotel room talking about that television show we get to make.’” Ansari exclaimed, “That is way more interesting than any of the stuff that happens to us!” The duo decided to “make episodes about other people’s points of views,” including one threaded with flashbacks to the immigrant experiences of Ramesh and Peter, the dads of Ansari and Yang’s fictional alter-egos, who share some of their stories over dinner at a restaurant.

Yang is telling me this over dinner at Majordomo, David Chang’s buzzy, senses-overloading Korean fusion palace on the outskirts of downtown L.A. The chef (who has his own TV show, Ugly Delicious) is a friend of Yang’s, something immediately clear from the way they enthusiastically bro-hug, and accentuated throughout the night, as a string of amazing but unordered dishes arrives at our table—special treatment that starts to feel like a delicious stamina test.“You’re ready, you’re ready!” Yang coaxes me encouragingly at one point, as the waiter whisks away several half-eaten plates, filling the cleared space with a glistening serving of pork belly.

Food played a huge part in Master of None, as did the hyphenated-consciousness of Asian-Americans. At the 2016 Emmys, accepting the prize for outstanding-series comedy writing along with Ansari, Yang noted, “There are 17 million Asian-Americans in this country, and there are 17 million Italian-Americans. They have The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Sopranos . . . we got [Sixteen Candles character] Long Duk Dong. We’ve got a long way to go.”

Yang seems to be doing his part to fill that chasm. He describes Little America as, “like Black Mirror, but instead of being super-dark sci-fi stories, it is immigrant stories,” while his family saga, Tigertail, jumps between current day New York and Taiwan in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. “Even three years ago, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible,” he said of writing and directing the latter. “But now, I think, generally, things are changing—not only for me, but for everybody.” It doesn’t hurt that the movie now follows in the wake of Crazy Rich Asians, which domestically grossed $34 million in the first five days of its release.

“I’m excited to try to make a movie where there are three-dimensional, smart, funny, interesting, hopefully compelling characters, who happen to be Asian,” Yang continued. “My favorite stuff, no matter what the genre, is character-driven stories [and] specific details that animate that character’s point of view. So their background matters sometimes, and what they look like matters, and where they came from matters.”

Yang came from Riverside, California, the child of immigrant parents. A self-described “tiny Asian kid in big glasses,” he said he avoided getting bullied by being one of the fastest runners on the playground. He showed me an Instagram post from Bobby Hundreds, a streetwear designer and former schoolmate, who wrote that Yang “was the kid my parents were constantly comparing me to. ‘Why can’t you be more like Alan?!’ He was the smartest kid by a mile, never got into trouble, and got accepted to Harvard. But the annoying part was that he was actually really COOL. Like, he played in a band and stuff. So, I couldn’t even hate on stupid Alan Yang.”

At Harvard, Yang studied biology because his parents had instilled in him the idea that science and math were a safe zone for people of color. “When things are subjective, that’s when things get taken away from you,” he said. “If you are an immigrant and you write an essay, a teacher who may not have the same perspective as you might dock your grade,” whereas, “if you get all the answers right on the math test, you got them right, they can’t take that away from you.” Yet Yang gravitated toward the arts—playing around Boston in a group called Model Kit, dating a girl in a band, and writing for the Harvard Lampoon. He says with a grin, “I wanted to hang out with smart people and creative people.”

Pursuing that path led ultimately to his current life, where he gets to collaborate on projects with people like Nanjiani and Gordon, and invent a black version of Friends for Jay-Z’s “Moonlight” video. The experience surrounding the making of the extended video—which stars Issa Rae, Lakeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Jerrod Carmichael, and Tessa Thompson—felt like “a dream,” said Yang. “Like I was sleepwalking.”

Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph in a scene from Forever.

Colleen Hayes

And then there’s Forever, his new Amazon show starring Armisen and Rudolph, a dramedy so unusual in tone and structure that it presents considerable problems for a journalist faced with trying to describe it without spoilers. It is a story about a suburban neighborhood, an ordinary couple, marital malaise, and also . . . it’s not.

“Alan was talking about a lot of the creative freedoms he had enjoyed making Master of None,” Rudolph recalled by phone of their first meeting to discuss a possible collaboration.

“I was most interested in having them play more grounded characters, and play more naturalistic scenes,” Yang said. “That’s my taste generally. I know that they’re such skilled sketch performers but I just felt like they could do sort of gentler, quieter stuff.” He tapped his friend and former Parks and Rec cohort Hubbard to partner with him. The duo, said Rudolph, “had such a great take on the life of a relationship,” and developed roles that would allow her and Armisen to stretch beyond the kind of broad characters they inhabited on S.N.L.

In Forever, Armisen and Rudolph play June and Oscar, a long-married couple in suburban Riverside, Yang’s hometown. They adore each other, but there is always the sneaking sensation, as Yang put it, of, “Is that all there is?” The answer in Forever is a surprising mix of yes and no, as the series repeatedly pulls the narrative rug out from under its characters and its viewers. Among the disruptive elements in the series is Catherine Keener as a rebellious, charismatic neighbor who inflames June’s sense of frustration and longing.

“There’s some crazy shit that happens,” Yang said, emitting a laugh that actually sounds like a distinct ha-ha-ha. He emphasized that he wanted to unravel the traditional half-hour comedy series structure and to keep “the isolation and the loneliness of domesticity . . . somewhat tethered to the reality that people go through, to still be relatable.” After apologizing for name-checking so many “pretentious-ass films that people will hate me for mentioning,” Yang cited David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Tim Burton, and Krzysztof Kieślowski as some of the directors that inspired elements of Forever.

“He definitely goes there with his references,” Rudolph said affectionately. “Sometimes I just say, ‘Yeah!’ because I don’t know what Eastern Bloc filmmaker he is talking about!”

As for the future, Yang said he doesn’t know if there will be a third season of Master of None, but it’s not impossible. (“Aziz and I are always talking,” he wrote via e-mail.) And Yang is leaving the door open for another season of Forever, if this series about married life and existential turmoil can find its audience. He knows that it is “a weird show”—and a slow-building one that goes against Amazon’s current mission of creating noisy, Game of Thrones-scale hits.

But then with so many networks and platforms competing for attention, it’s actually the perfect time “to make something that is interesting and bold and new and audacious,” Yang argued. “In this environment, why make a show that seems like every other show?”

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Joy PressJoy Press is a T.V. Correspondent for Vanity Fair. Her book, Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television, was released in February.

Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/alan-yang-discusses-his-new-amazon-series-forever-and-possible-plans-for-master-of-none-season-three

[lolsexonthebeach]

My girlfriend wanted me to do these and also I really wanted to do these

1. Coffee or tea?

Usually coffee, but I won’t say no to green tea. Like, ever.

2. Black and white or color?

Used to be black and white but I’m starting to like colors again. Oh my god, I sound like a really cringy goth kid.

3. Drawings or paintings?

Drawings. I loved whenever my girlfriend would sketch things on our coffee dates.

4. Dresses or skirts?

Dresses. Love love love when @organiclavender wears dresses :)

5. Books or movies?

Honestly, books more recently. I haven’t seen a good movie in awhile.

6. Pepsi or Coke?

Pepsi, I drank enough coke as a child to make a 500lb McDonald’s frequenter gasp.

7. Chinese or Italian?

This is a very evil question. I guess Chinese, I feel like it’s easier to find a hole-in-the-wall place serving bomb Chinese than it is to find a decent Italian restaurant that sells something other than Spaghetti and one meatball.

8. Early bird or night owl?

Is it possible to be both? Kinda like waking up early now, but I love midnight silence.

9. Chocolate or vanilla?

That’s racist.

10. Introvert or extrovert?

I am an introvert that pretends to be extroverted so he can pet people’s cats and play their musical instruments

11. Hugs or kisses?

Kisses. Always kisses.

12. Hunting or fishing?

This is probably a typical answer, but I really don’t like the idea of murdering something helpless for fun (Even though I fucking love guns lmao). Fishing is probably not much less cruel, but it’s so relaxing, man. 

13. Winter or summer?

Well, summer rhymes with bummer. 

Nah. Love the cold.

14. Spring or fall?

Fall. Such a spooky season.

15. Rural or urban?

It really depends on where lol. I love getting lost in the woods, but there’s no Wi-Fi out there lmao

16. PC or Mac?

Macs are literally overpriced Linux computers that take everything good about Linux and throw it the fuck away.

17. Tan or pale?

Pale <3

18. Cake or pie?

I will eat the FUCK out of some pecan pie.

19. Ice cream or yogurt?

I’m not an annoying hipster that lies about enjoying fermented milk so iced cream for me

20. Ketchup or mustard?

Ketchup, but mustard is growing on me lately. Like, go get some spicy brown mustard from Walmart and put that shit on a sandwich with pepper jack and roast beef and tell me there’s not a God.

21. Sweet pickles or dill pickles?

Sweet pickles are the 2nd most disgusting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. The first is my brother’s penis. What was weirder was finding out that he wasn’t really my brother.

22. Comedy or mystery?

I feel like most comedies these days are different iterations of “WEIRD SEX SCENES AND AFFAIRS AND ALSO HERE’S SOME BOOBS” so mystery

23. Boots or sandals?

Well, if Doc Marten made some flippy flops... Nah, boots.

24. Silver or gold?

Silver. Looks way classier to me for some reason.

25. Pop or Rock?

DEATH METAL

26. Dancing or singing?

I can’t do either, I’m a white boy.

27. Checkers or chess?

My girlfriend will attest to the fact that I used to literally stay awake for hours playing chess on my phone

28. Board games or video games?

I love the videa.

29. Wine or beer?

I am answering this question with a hangover. Please die.

30. Freckles or dimples?

Both will equally melt my heart.

31. Honey mustard or BBQ sauce?

I live in Texas, so BBQ sawz

32. Body weight exercises or lifting weights?

Weights. I notice better results doing shit with dumbbells and stuff than I do just doing pushups and shit.

33. Baseball or basketball?

I refer you to the answer of question 26.

34. Crossword puzzles or sudokus?

Do I look like a 40 year old wife that likes to disturb her husband’s peace in the morning

35. Facial hair or clean shaven?

I assume this is asking about on other people, but facial hair if I’m trying to go to a bar and I don’t feel like getting carded, clean shaven if I want some love from @organiclavender

36. Crushed ice or cubed ice?

Ice^3

37. Skiing or snowboarding?

Snowboarding. 

38. Smile or game face?

I usually try to smile but apparently I have resting bitch face a lot

39. Bracelet or necklace?

I’ll rock both, yo.

40. Fruit or vegetables?

Both, my girlfriend has been forcing me to eat healthier and omg I’m actually starting to like things that aren’t baked in an asbestos lined oven with ingredients grown from failed cloning experiments and formaldehyde

41. Sausage or bacon?

Bausage.

42. Scrambled or fried?

This is a tough one. As long as there’s a shit ton of cheese somewhere in there, I’ll eat either.

43. Dark chocolate or white chocolate?

Darkolate.

44. Tattoos or piercings?

Have both, want more of both. I seriously miss my nose ring.

45. Antique or brand new?

Antique, but my girlfriend is scared of old things because she won’t stop watching Paranormal Survivor.

46. Dress up or dress down?

I have no idea what this means. I clearly am not the target demographic of this questionnaire.

47. Cowboys or aliens?

I was going to say both, but then I remembered it’s that kind of thinking that made Cowboys and Aliens with Daniel CRAYGE happen.

48. Cats or dogs?

I love woofers but I absolutely adore cats.

49. Pancakes or waffles?

Fucking WAFFLES.

50. Bond or Bourne?

I’ve been a Bond fan since I was old enough to be sentient

51. Sci-Fi or fantasy?

Both. Massive Sci-Fi fan but I love anything to do with fantasy things.

52. Numbers or letters?

Symbols!

53. Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?

LORD OF THE POTTER

54. Fair or theme park?

I love fairs. There’s always a hint of “holy shit I might die” that just adds to the rickety experience of riding a roller coaster set up in literally a day.

55. Money or fame?

Money. I’d much rather buy people shit than sign autographs.

56. Washing dishes or doing laundry?

Neither. Shit is so lame. Hate both equally.

57. Snakes or sharks?

Sneks r cool

58. Orange juice or apple juice?

Apple Juice. I’ve been craving some since I woke up.

59. Sunrise or sunset?

Sunset.

60. Slacker or over-achiever?

I have bursts of both, which likely means I have some kind of serious mental disorder

:D

61. Pen or pencil?

Pens. There’s a weird quality to ink that I’ve always loved.

62. Peanut butter or jelly?

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who ate straight jelly lmao

63. Grammys or Oscars?

Do I look like a bored, lonely housewife?

64. Detailed or abstract?

Both. Absolutely both.

65. Multiple choice questions or essay questions?

When I didn’t entirely hate school, I loved essay questions. Multiple choice is now my favorite.

66. Adventurous or cautious?

Literally both.

67. Saver or spender?

I’m both lol. Sometimes I won’t spend a dime and then other times I’ll buy some fucking copper silverware on amazon because “It looks cool”.

68. Glasses or contacts?

Depends on the person. I think my girlfriend looks adorable in hers, I can’t seem to have them without shattering them.

69. Laptop or desktop?

Desktop.

70. Classic or modern?

Classic.

71. Personal chef or personal fitness trainer?

I would literally kill for someone to get me off of my ass and into a gym more often.

72. Internet or cell phone?

I feel like those two are synonymous now.

73. Call or text?

If it’s my girlfriend, call. If it’s literally anyone else, text.

74. Curly hair or straight hair?

I think girls with curly hair are the absolute cutest thing ever.

75. Shower in the morning or shower in the evening?

Evening showers make me happy.

76. Spicy or mild?

I will forever shovel spicy things in my mouth until my stomach screams at me and I need to throw up on the poor waitress asking me if I’m okay.

77. Marvel or DC?

I am weirdly not into comics.

78. Paying a mortgage or paying rent?

Dude, if I could afford a house in any possible way, there’s no way in hell I would ever live in an apartment again.

79. Sky dive or bungee jump?

I really wanna sky dive. Loved bungee jumping.

80. Oreos or Chips Ahoy?

WHAT IF THEY MADE BOTH 

81. Jello or pudding?

Pudding

82. Truth or dare?

You’re not even trying anymore.

83. Roller coaster or Ferris wheel?

Roller coaster!

84. Leather or denim?

I rock both yo.

85. Stripes or solids?

SOLIDS

86. Bagels or muffins?

Bagels, omfg. I’m like craving a garlic and poppy seed bagel right now. Wiff some creme chez.

87. Whole wheat or white?

My girlfriend hates me so I’m not allowed to eat white bread anymore.

88. Beads or pearls?

ANAL BEADS

89. Hardwood or carpet?

Hardwood. I finally moved into an apartment with wood floors and omg it’s so nice. Only thing that sucks is when it’s cold you mos def need socks.

90. Bright colors or neutral tones?

Neutral. I like colors too, I’m just a weird goth boy.

91. Be older than you are or younger than you are?

Older, with a job that doesn’t suck. I wanna be out of college.

92. Raisins or nuts?

Raisins are gross. I love cashews tho

93. Picnic or nice restaurant?

Nice restaurant. One of my favorite dates with my girlfriend is finding cool nice places to grab some food at :)

94. Black leather or brown leather?

Black ‘till I die.

95. Long hair or short hair?

Both. I’m not picky :)

96. “Ready, aim, fire” or “Ready, fire, aim”?

I’m imaging the second choice is what half of the dudes at the range I used to go to into Austin took.

97. Fiction or non-fiction?

Fiction. Non-Fiction is boring.

98. Smoking or non-smoking?

I’m not allowed to smoke anymore.

:’(

99. Think before you talk or talk before you think?

I definitely do both.

100. Asking questions or answering questions?

Both yo!