#I think that too plays a role in making people consider the moors a proper character on its own

[longagoitwastuesday]

Hi, can i ask you why in your opinion some people consider the moors a proper character in wuthering heights? Do you think the story would have been so different if it had been set in a different location?

I've wanted to sit on this for a bit to see if I changed my opinion/reaction, because I thought of an answer instantly. I'm going to be sincere, what I thought was "because people have not read enough (good) books".

I'm not entirely sure why people consider the moors a proper character because I don't think it works as one at all. I imagine a big part of the reason why is the appeal of the aesthetic and how powerful an impact it has had culturally and even in general in the collective imaginary, but I don't think that's exclusively due to Wuthering Heights. Trying to dig more, I'd say it's because of the importance it has for the characters, emotionally, narratively and symbolically. And, digging even more, I imagine it's due to the metaphysical bond and even ontological identification between moors and characters some people read into it.

Most if not all of these characteristics are typical of significant settings in books, though. They don't necessarily confer the settings the title of "character". And, as much abstract personality as they may have, in my opinion the moors are lacking something to be comfortable calling them so. In Wuthering Heights I'd say the house itself, Wuthering Heights, feels more like a character to me than the moors. Still, I'd say even then there's a certain something missing.

As much character or importance in ambience setting Bly Manor has in The turn of the screw, I don't think one could freely say it's a character on itself; that's sort of the situation with the moors in Wuthering Heights, I think. In comparison, Comala in Pedro Páramo, Hill House in The haunting of Hill House, Macondo in One hundred years of solitude or Vetusta in La Regenta, to name a few, feel a lot more like characters. They are books in which the settings themselves feel fleshed out with care, thoroughly developed like a character, and they even read as having a certain will of their own, as actively participating in the narrative at times. The moors in Wuthering Heights don't work that way. And it's not a bad thing. They don't have to, that's not their role.

Now, on the question about whether I think the story would be so different if set in some other location... I think the answer is both yes and no? Of course the book would never have been exactly the same had it taken place somewhere else, and the heather and in general the description of wildlife and vegetation are symbolically meaningful. But also, I didn't have a clear image of what the moors were when I first read the book. I imagined something infertile, isolated and cold, but that's it, and it worked. I didn't know how the English moors were at all.

I do think the isolation aspect is necessary to make Wuthering Heights, and I'd say perhaps even the cold and generally bad weather, but it's also true in a similarish way Pedro Páramo works with a place that is very hot. Ultimately it's up to the writer, and it will work if it's well written and well waved alongside the other parts forming the book. Wuthering Heights was waved with the moors in mind specifically, and it works. Would the story in abstract be much different if set somewhere else? Not necessarily, probably not, but it wouldn't be exactly Wuthering Heights, just as it wouldn't be if one were to change any other of its characteristics.

[of-the-moors]

So I've been thinking about the whole Maleficent movie + sequel = 'feels like a trilogy but may never be because M:MOE was kind of a disappointment' thing.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed M:MOE from an entertainment perspective. It had some funny moments, and some touching moments, and Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer (which I always want to pronounce 'Per-FIFF-er' for shits and giggles) are an electric combination. Sam Riley, as usual, managed to convey more with eyebrow twitches and eye movements than his lines alone would suggest. Elle Fanning is once again a delight.

But.

BUT.

What the actual fuck was up with that storyline?

News just in: there's nothing wrong with a gentle fairytale. A movie doesn't HAVE to end with an epic MCU-inspired megabattle. Yawn. Been there, seen that.

So the first movie is character-driven. Maleficent is a sweet and innocent little soul, she's betrayed and violated by someone that she has chosen to trust, it fucks her up, she knee-jerk retaliates, feels vindicated, then over the course of the movie comes to realise that she may have gone overboard etc. By the end of the movie, she's not back as she was, but she's a better version of herself that she was sixteen years earlier.

She has agency. She makes her own choices. She is beholden to nobody, except on occasion, the moral questions of her servant (more on Diaval later).

Aurora doesn't really have much of a say in anything, other than her choice to go to the castle, but it could be argued that it wasn't so much her CHOICE as the curse playing out. Either way, it's not really relevant, as she's barely more than a child and doesn't know her arse from her elbow.

The end of the first movie wrapped everything up quite nicely, and a sequel wasn't strictly necessary.

The thing is, if you're going to make a sequel, you owe it to the original movie to not cock it up.

The tone just wasn't the same, for starters. It was very much a Mega Worldbuilding CGI Wank, as compared to the insular and gentler tone of the first film. I mean, Maleficent had a main cast of just seven people, and that includes Phillip who only had a handful of scenes. The cast of M:MOE blew WAY out. It changed the tone, and not for the better.

Why introduce the Dark Fey at all?

Are we seriously to believe that the entire population of Maleficent's race, less herself, have been living a hundred clicks off the coast of Ulstead all of this time, and yet they let Maleficent - who apparently is like their queen or something? - grow up an orphan in the Moors? Um, collecting her and taking her back to be with her own kind would have taken what, an hour?

If you're going to introduce a situation like that, at least have the decency to explain it and close the gaping plot hole. One line would have sufficed. "Your parents chose to leave the sanctuary. By the time we realised that they had been killed, it was too late to bring you back - too late to take you from the only home you had ever known. So we have watched over you instead, ever since."

Wow, and I'm not even a script writer.

And the war. I mean, really? Ingrith is a psychopath - a genocidal maniac, to use Angelina Jolie's words - and she wants to kill off the entire population of the Moors. Um, okay. I get the feeling that the Dark Fey retcon was conceived as a handy plot device to spawn a Big Battle Scene, and the implications of that were ill-considered.

At least they didn't go and pair Maleficent up with one of them. I know that there was implication with both Conall and Borra, but at least it wasn't overt. You can't have one who was burned by love to the degree that Maleficent was suddenly falling in love with a relative stranger in a matter of days; it's beyond out of character. So thanks, folks, for refraining from that particular trope.

Then there's Maleficent's agency. She was very much a reactive protagonist, and made very few decisions of her own will. Is she even still Maleficent?

There was so much wasted potential.

The first movie had a character who, through the actions of another, no longer believed in true love. By the end of the movie, she believed in true love in the sense of filial love. Romantic love, no, that was still tosh, but the love of a mother for a daughter? Oh yes, that existed.

The second movie SHOULD have expanded on this, using the wedding of Aurora and Phillip as the catalyst for further growth and acceptance on the part of Maleficent. The movie we got does, in a way, come to the same place - Maleficent accepts that romantic true love exists, albeit not for her - but it feels entirely secondary to the Great Big Battle. It was messy. So, so messy.

I almost feel as though we're owed a third movie, to right the wrongs of the second. To tie up the gaping plot holes which were introduced but never adequately explained - or even addressed! It's unlikely to happen, unfortunately, but we can only hope.

A third movie would need to complete Maleficent's arc, that's for sure. From not believing in love to believing in filial love, to believing in romantic love for others but not herself, the logical conclusion of that arc is for Maleficent to have a reason to believe in true love for herself again.

In the interests of interesting cinematic conflict and confusing our winged protagonist, two competing love interests would make for an interesting story. A parallel plot could bookend the plot of the first movie by recasting Maleficent in the role of protector - have Aurora's baby taken by an antagonist - ideally a magical one - and centre the story around recovering the child and defeating the evil whilst navigating matters of the heart.

Who would Maleficent be drawn to? A mysterious and volatile man of her own species, now that she knows that she's not the only one? Someone as exciting as herself? One whose wings match her own?

Or is love steadfast and loyal? Kind and devoted and dependable? Of course, I refer to Diaval, who is, in my mind, the only logical love interest for Maleficent, but she'd need some prodding to see that. He'd need to do something incredibly brave and she'd have to realise what losing him would really be like, that old chestnut. But really, he's the one. He's both her conscience and her constant, and his rationality and calm nature are a perfect foil for her impulsive hotheadedness. They're two halves of a whole, even without the romantic undertones.

(Let's not go into how Angelina Jolie and Sam Riley evidently agree with the above assessment of the Maleficent/Diaval relationship, based on interviews and the way in which each plays their character against the other. Or that Sam Riley is the unofficial official captain of the Good Ship Maleval. Someone should tell him. He needs a proper hat for it.)

I like the delicious synchronicity of Maleficent, burned by what she thought was true love, creating her actual true love in that darkest time of her life, and then not realising it for two decades. It has a certain perfection to it.

But hey, it isn't going to happen for much less than a miracle. Thank heavens for fanfiction, eh? Fixing the dodgy shit one fic at a time.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Rowan North

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Rowan North is the sort of villain where you forget his name halfway through typing a sentence about him. He is a villain so devoid of charm, personality, charisma, or anything resembling an interesting personality. And unlike the film, which probably could have been fixed with a better writer, a better director, and maybe a stronger cast, it’s really hard to see how Rowan North could possibly be improved whatsoever.

Actor: Rowan is portrayed by Neil Casey, a man who writes for SNL and Inside Amy Schumer and has had roles on such shows as Big Mouth. Considering his performance here, I think he should stick to writing. Rowan spends a lot of time possessing Chris Hemsworth, so we do get to see a more talented actor play the villain for a bit, but as you’ll see from what I describe below not even someone like Hemsworth could hope to save such a nothing character.

Motivation/Goals: Rowan has one of the most one-note characterizations of a villain possible: his whole life he was bullied, misunderstood, and treated like garbage by the people around him, no one understood him, so he’s going to end the world. That’s it. There’s not much meat to his goal, and frankly his motivations are just recycled elements from previous villains, particularly Gozer as seen with the body possessing that Gozer’s minion Zuul did and his big form change at the end of the film. Unlike Gozer however, when Rowan finally has power and takes a ridiculous form chosen by one of the dimwitted heroes, it is one that’s just a bit too jarring and stupid. You see, at the end of the film, Rowan becomes a giant kaiju version of the Ghostbuster’s logo ghost, rendered in the same mediocre CGI as the rest of the film’s ghosts. It’s quite frankly underwhelming, but then Rowan’s entire character is underwhelming.

Personality: Much like just about every single man Paul Feig has ever written, Rowan is an unpleasant, creepy, misogynistic jerk. It makes you wonder if maybe he was treated so poorly because he too was a jerk; he doesn’t exactly stand out among the other men in the movie who have any sort of screen presence, as they are all uniformly stupid or unpleasant. Rowan honestly feels like a knee-jerk preemptive “take that!” Paul Feig stuck in his movie at anyone that might dislike the film, which backfired and not just for the obvious reasons. Being a misogynistic jerk who wishes to bring about the apocalypse because he was mistreated is just not an interesting personality. You know what other villain had that personality?

Harry Potter in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And being Harry Potter as written by Alan Moore is not something anyone should want to even remotely resemble.

Final Fate: He gets shot in the groin by the new Ghostbusters, in what I can only imagine is a clumsy attempt at symbolism from Feig. Either that or it’s supposed to be a joke. After that he gets sucked into a big old portal.

Best Scene: I liked when shortly after appearing for any length of time in the film he commits suicide, because I thought that meant he would be out of the film. Sadly he not only stuck around, but he possessed Chris Hemsworth.

Best Quote: “You shoot like girls!” Not because it’s actually a good quote or anything, but because it showcases just how shallow and predictably written he is.

Final Thoughts & Score: Rowan is just truly a failure as an antagonist. There’s nothing memorable or notable about him; he doesn’t even stand out among the other side characters in the film because much like them he is just an unpleasant, unrepentant jerk. His most notable scene involved him, in Chris Hemsworth’s body, forcing a bunch of people to dance for his amusement… and this was cut from the movie proper and put in the credits. And even then, it is a mediocre scene from a villain with no clear direction.

I think the most unsurprising thing about Rowan is that he gets a 1/10. He really feels less like a fully-realized villain and more like an obnoxious, unflattering strawman representing Feig’s views of other men. I kind of wish this was just unfortunate subtext honestly, but considering this article he wrote as well as the fact that even in his better films like The Heat these sort of antagonistic misogynist characters are prevalent, I can’t help but feel like Feig just hates men. I’ve heard he was bullied by boys as a child and so this led to his modern feelings, but I couldn’t find a reliable source. If it is true, I really think he needs to stop shoehorning his biases into villains in his works, because it just comes off being really tacky and not fun to watch. No one wants to watch a character who exists solely so the director can vent his issues towards an entire gender try and destroy the world.

The sad thing is, it actually is possible to make a villain who is a misogynistic jerk and yet is entertaining to watch. Beauty & The Beast has Gaston, who completely fits that bill, and yet he’s still a fun villain that you want to see get knocked down a few pegs and be defeated. But I think the difference there is that Gaston feels like a character and not like someone with issues writing their bully into a story so that said bully can be beaten down by the heroes.

[the-desolated-quill]

Kingsman: The Golden Circle - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

Reviews for this have been all over the shop. Some love it, others hate it. Some found it to be as sharp and as witty as the first instalment, whereas others felt that the joke has gotten old by this point.

What did I think of Kingsman: The Golden Circle? Well I won’t deny I had a good time watching it. Is it as good as the first Kingsman? Certainly not. There are loads of problems with this, but compared to some of the other shit I’ve had to put up with this year, at least Kingsman 2 managed to hold my attention.

By far this film’s biggest strength lies with its main characters Eggsy, Harry and Merlin (yeah I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say Harry survived his gunshot to the head in the first movie. He’s on the bloody poster and everything). Taron Egerton, Colin Firth and Mark Strong give incredible performances and I love the journeys their characters go on. We see how Eggsy tries to balance home and work life, as well as reflect on his growth over the course of these two movies. We learn a great deal more about Harry this time around and explore some of the tragic underpinnings to his character. The explanation for how he survived is utterly convoluted and stupid, but enjoyably so, perfectly in keeping with the franchise’s tongue in cheek humour, and the relationship between him and Eggsy leads to some of the film’s most emotional moments. Merlin too is given more development as we learn just how much Kingsman means to him and the lengths he’ll go to to help his comrades. I’m really annoyed however that Roxy isn’t in this movie much and isn’t given the same development.

The action is as fast, stylised and hyper-violent as ever, although the threat and tension is undermined sadly by the fact that we now know death is just a minor inconvenience in this world. Also the over-reliance on CGI makes the whole thing look like a video game at times, but despite all of that it’s still fun to watch. That’s the thing about Kingsman. The whole thing is so incredibly bonkers and over the top that it’s hard not to derive some enjoyment from it.

The humour and writing is still pretty sharp overall, although lacking the same polish and attention to detail the first movie had. There are some scenes that don’t really go anywhere and there are certain aspects that could have used more development. The film continues to explore the series’ themes of privilege and elitism as well as continuing to take the piss out of the spy genre, but at times the movie feels more like a jumble of ideas rather than a coherent story. 

One thing I feel I should warn everyone about is that there is another controversial sex scene in the same vein as the anal sex gag from the first movie, only this one is even more explicit. Now to the film’s credit, this sex scene is not quite as glib as the anal sex gag. There is proper narrative context for it plus it does explore certain moral issues that most spy movies tend not to delve into, as well as addressing a certain hypocrisy when it comes to the way people view spy films (basically what I’m saying is James Bond would have done something similar to this, but nobody would have complained because it wouldn’t have been so explicit, and that’s the hypocrisy). That being said, like with the anal sex gag from the first film, the sex scene does cross the line between making fun of sexist tropes and reinforcing sexist tropes, it’s incredibly uncomfortable to watch due to the explicit nature of it and I actually would have preferred it if Matthew Vaughn cut it from the film entirely. I can see what he’s trying to do, but I wish he would stop. He’s clearly not very good at it.

I should also mention that the Swedish princess actually comes back for the sequel and is actually given more development this time around, so she’s an actual character now as opposed to just a sexist punchline. Not a very interesting character, granted. She’s the same concerned love interest we’ve seen in hundreds of other movies, but at least she’s more than just a prize for Eggsy to win at the end.

Another problem is the villain. While her evil scheme is really clever and interesting, Poppy herself is a bit lacklustre. Julianne Moore gives a great performance and is captivating to watch, and we do get the gist of what drives and motivates her character, but she doesn’t get nearly the same amount of screen time Samuel L Jackson got. With Richmond Valentine, we really got to know the nitty gritty of his character and what makes him tick. Poppy, on the other hand, barely gets a look in. We get a few character quirks here and there, but that’s about it.

And then there’s the Statesmen. While a funny idea, you could easily cut them out of the movie and it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference. Jeff Bridges and Channing Tatum are barely in this and we learn hardly anything about their characters. Pedro Pascal’s Whiskey gets the most screen time, but he desperately needs more development considering the role he plays in the film’s events. The only Statesman I gravitated toward in any way was Ginger, played by Halle Berry. While she doesn’t get much screen time neither, she’s the only one who seems to have a clear character and actually has an arc. If Matthew Vaughn is serious about this proposed Statesman spinoff film, I hope Ginger is the lead character.

So would I recommend paying money to watch this in a cinema? Well if you loved the first film, you’re probably going to like this. While Kingsman: The Golden Circle isn’t as good as its predecessor, it’s still a lot of fun despite its faults and there are quite a few moments of drama and real emotional pathos. Otherwise you’re better off waiting for this to come out on home media. Either way you won’t be completely disappointed, I assure you. This film may be a total shambles, but at least it’s an entertaining shambles.

[veronixmoore]

°☽ — hello little babes :’) it’s chelly again, or firstly, for those who i have yet to meet!! this is my second child veronica; i’m also lorenzo’s mother and i rlly rlly love my lil babies and i hope y’all will too. i’m 20 & from the EST, too!! i feel like that’s always important lmfao -- anywho! all of ronnie’s little tidbits and info are going to be under the cut, and if you wanna plot, PLEASE hmu !!! for either veronica, enzo if we haven’t, or both :’)

that’s not ASHLEY BENSON walking around?? nah, but VERONICA MOORE gets that all the time. SHE’S actually from LOS ANGELES, though they live in THE GASLAMP DISTRICT now.  you’ve probably heard that 23 year old CASHIER of SUN DIEGO being referred to as the ARTISAN of this place. you know, i always see them SURFING or blasting STUCK BY THE ACES on their lunch break..whatever.

TW: drugs TW: overdose TW: violence TW: death

"LOOK FOR ANSWERS, I NEVER USED TO WONDER WHY. SEARCH FOR LOVING, BUT THAT ALWAYS COMES IN TIME. MAKE IT LOOK EASY, WISH I DIDN’T HAVE TO TRY.”

+ 3 adventurous, spontaneous, resilient - 3 naive, reserved, tempestuous

So this is my lil baby Veronica aka Ronnie or Nica, she will respond to either or both honestly. Although most people who know her from surfing or through sport are going to call her Ronnie, and that’s got a funny little story behind it. When she was younger there weren’t a lot of girls competing in surfing competitions when the big swells were coming in, and all she wanted to do was compete. Whenever a girl would enter a competition, if they were even allowed, they were usually flagged and written off before even catching a wave. So Veronica would sign up with the name Ronnie Moore and she’d even go to her hairdresser and make sure her blonde locks were nice and short and always easy to conceal under a hat when she would go to the sign-up booths. No one ever really suspected her to be a girl, and even when she started placing in the competitions, she never revealed her true identity. It was easier not to and no one seemed to care until she started placing first and there were a few odd looks from fellow competitor parents when her supporters and surf instructors would scream out things like “That’s my girl!”. Once she couldn’t avoid the questions anymore and she hit puberty, she didn’t stop signing up as Ronnie, but she did start letting people know that yeah, she’s a young lady and she’s been kicking all the boys’ butts for years.

No one really seemed to care, least of all the friends that she had made surfing that already knew, and it ended up getting her serious recognition in the community. It wasn’t as if she was ever lying, of course. People just assumed with her looks, locks, and name that she wasn’t a girl, and she never objected until it became too hard to just let slide anymore.

So, yeah, for those she surfs with or knows her from the surf shop, she just goes by Ronnie and doesn’t think anything of it. For other people, she’ll introduce herself as whatever rolls off the tongue the easiest, and it’s never bothered her

As alluded to, she is a foster child but has since been officially adopted by two pretty loving parents. She was always in and out of the foster system; her birth parents were both drug addicts living in one of the poorest and roughest areas of south central LA. Veronica was so used to the flashing lights of police cars and sirens that she, even occasionally to this day, has a difficult time falling asleep without them. The cops were frequent visitors to her residence for a multitude of reasons like overdose, stabbings, the sound of gunshots, domestic abuse, some nights all of the above. The sight of a police officer was comforting to Veronica as it meant that she would spend a night at the station with someone who would actually feed her, comfort her, play with her. There were times where she would get placed into group homes until her birth parents were able to attend classes or rehab or spend fifteen days in jail until they could get their ‘little girl’ back. Being in group homes was worse to Veronica than being with her birth parents, but she would always suffer no matter where she was. The only thing that ever offered her some condolences was the surfing club that ran through her school.

She’d ride the bus for almost an hour with other kids her own age before being able to touch the sand with her toes and escape for a few hours. Her surf instructor, and the head of the local club, was a kindhearted and  beautiful woman who ended up fostering and later adopting Veronica. She was the one that helped Veronica learn how to surf, perfect her technique, pay for her, and enter her in competitions. She was her best role model and parental figure in her life

It was shortly after Veronica turned nine that her mother overdosed and flatlined, leaving her with only one legal guardian left in the world, and her father was never able to stay clean or attend the proper classes or actually give one shit about his daughter, so he was never able to gain legal access of Ronnie. It was an ongoing battle for almost a year until it was clear: Veronica would never be returned to her birth parent and that was when her surf instructor and her husband, Angela and Maxwell, decided to foster her. They had had their license for a few years, finding themselves fostering a few kids here and there, but they always had a feeling Veronica was going to be their daughter by the end of it all, and for all intents & purposes, she was and is.

She’s been through so much. Has seen so much. More than anyone should ever really have to, and there is so much that Veronica has repressed. Including the countless times her father would carry her in his arms while begging on the streets for someone to give them money, you know, ‘in order to support his daughter’, but really it was just to pay off debts and buy more drugs. Or when she would end up with her mother’s hand in hers, walking to the local clinic to participate in free needle exchanges only to then be dragged to a back alley where her mother would buy heroin off of some dealer.

Surfing, sport, athleticism ... that’s always been what Ronnie has had on her side. Has had to fall back on. Sadly for her, it’s never been intelligence as she has always wished it could be. When in school, everyone else seemed to much smarter and farther ahead, but Ronnie never had much of a chance. Her studies suffered, just like everything else in her life did, and she was never a real candidate to attend university. She knew this, of course. She knew she would never be able to compete with 4.0s, even average SAT scores, volunteer efforts. She was the volunteer effort, not so much the other way around. Now, she’s not an idiot, no, of course not. She’s a smart girl with so much experience, but she hasn’t had a lot of favors in life either. So college was never something she ever considered; she’s just been working in and out of surf shops and offering lessons, even heading tours and selling boards that she’s crafted herself on the side.

Angela’s recently suggested to her that she try getting her employer at the mall to give her just a couple of board spaces on display to showcase her artwork and crafting. She’s pretty handy with a saw and sander, and she’s been able to start forging her own boards and hand painting the most beautiful designs on it. Aside from surfing, art is the best thing she has in her life

So when she found out there was a spot that opened up at Sun Diego in the Fashion Valley mall, she had to apply for the job. Angela and Max had started a small college fund for Ronnie once they adopted her; it wasn’t much, but it was something, and they promised her that if she could find the job at the mall being promising, they would cover her rent in the Gaslamp District for as long as she was making it work until her boards made her rich and famous and then she could return the favor. The thought, the gesture, everything ... it brings tears to her eyes every time she thinks about it

There’s hope ... there’s a chance for a real future, and that’s not something Ronnie every thought she would be able to have in her entire life, let alone at such a young age being supported and loved by two, essentially, strangers. She’s grown to call Angela and Max her mother and father, as they legally and emotionally and physically are, but she also knows they will never erase her birth parents who did go through serious stints of trials and tribulations to try and be true parents. It’s difficult; a real sore spot for the blonde, but so much has been romanticized for her.

In her dreams, nightmares really, is when she is most often confronted with the horrors of her realities. But one reality that has seeped into her everyday life includes the drug dealer who knows who’s daughter she is; her father’s so, so in debt to this man and just as she’s starting to move on in her life, she gets torn right back down. He’s demanding she pay her father’s debt, a slew of promising threats and weapons targeted her with every meeting. Even for such a strong and resilient twenty three year old, it scares her to her core, and all because of someone she hasn’t even known of in over a decade.

as for wanted connections, i am working on her page tonight but !!!! i’m really and honestly open for anything, no matter how dramatic or seemingly ‘insignificant’ !! once i finish up her page though, it’ll look similarly to enzo’s if you need ideas :’)

[culturespy]

Saying goodbye to my hero, Sir Roger Moore. Baby, you were the best!

When I was 15 years old, I wanted to be Roger Moore.

If you saw my bedroom walls back then, you would know. Roger Moore found a place on all four of them. I broke out the Scotch tape to put up full-page magazine photos surrounded by Moonraker trading cards, and of course the Bond film posters. I had Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me to start with because those were the films that got me hooked on Roger Moore and James Bond. The For Your Eyes Only poster with those sexy legs came along after a while, and an Octopussy poster went up a few weeks before my high school graduation.

My mother called this the shrine, and she wasn’t far off. Roger Moore was my idol. My teenage life was measured in the two-year periods from one of his Bond films to the next. In between I got my chance to catch up with his two earlier films, Live and Led Die and The Man With the Golden Gun, when they appeared on the ABC Sunday Night Movie. Sure, I was also excited to see the Sean Connery movies for the first time, but completing my Roger Moore 007 experience was more important.

And, oh, that glorious week in the summer of 1980 when a double feature of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker played at Cinema 18! Cinema 18 was Erie’s sleaziest theater; it used to be a porno house. But not even a questionable cinema floor was going to stop me from seeing Spy on the big screen—the way it was meant to be seen!—for the first time.

Also to mark time between films, I scanned magazines for interviews with Roger Moore and the TV Guide listings for talk show appearances. When Roger was on the Merv Griffith or Mike Douglas shows, I sat in front of the television set with my tape recorder running. Every golden word had to be preserved.

It may sound shallow, but in a large part I am who I am today because I saw The Spy Who Loved Me when I was 13. I’ve written about that momentous first viewing before, but I should point out that Spy was not my first James Bond film. I had previously seen Dr. No, From Russia With Love and most of Goldfinger—the first three Bonds, all starring Sean Connery.

But even though I had seen the films I would later consider Connery’s best, I didn’t connect with him the way I connected with Roger Moore that first time I saw Spy Who Loved Me. So what was it that drew me to Rog? I think that extra bit of cockiness helped. Roger Moore exuded cool invincibility.

The scene that most struck me comes near the end, just as Bond arrives at the oceanic base of the evil Stromberg (Kurt Jurgens). Bond steps inside an elevator with a trap door in the floor. Bond doesn’t know about the trap door, but we the viewers do because Stromberg used it at the beginning of the movie to drop his double-crossing secretary into the shark tank below. The elevator doors close, and Stromberg hits the button to activate the trap door.

The first time I watched this, I was tense. “Oh no!” I thought. I expected Bond to plunge into the tank, where he would fight the shark. But the shark tank on Stromberg’s monitor remained Bond-free. Then the elevator pinged and the door opened and there, to Stromberg’s surprise and mine, was Bond, his feet straddling the trap door. “You were expecting me to drop in,” he drawled.

That was one of those corny lines that sounded so natural coming out of Roger Moore’s mouth. Moore would always undercut his own talent, saying that all he could do was quip and raise his eyebrows, but he made it seem so effortless. If you want proof it’s not easy to deliver a throwaway quip, watch the last two Pierce Brosnan Bond movies. (I don’t like being mean to Pierce, but he got stuck playing Moore half the time and Connery the other half, and the discomfort sometimes showed.)

What I grew to admire above all else about Roger Moore was that he was suave. I wanted to be suave. I wanted to charm ladies with that kind of a deep, smooth voice. I wanted to put on a tuxedo and saunter into a tony nightspot on the Cote D’Azure. I wanted to go to a Cordon Bleu restaurant and order red wine with anything but fish (OK, I did learn a thing or two from Connery.) I never got to do any of those things, but I did teach myself to raise my eyebrow RM style.

One of the benefits of being a Roger Moore fan in the early ‘80s was, thanks to the popularity of Spy and Moonraker, CBS started showing reruns of The Saint late nights during the week. This was my chance to get acquainted with Roger’s other signature role, and I grew to love Simon Templar nearly as much as James Bond and the works of Leslie Charteris soon joined those of Ian Fleming on my bookcase. However, because these episodes ran late on school nights, I tended to fall asleep in the last 15 minutes. I used to joke I had the endings to about a dozen Saint episodes locked in my subconscious. Several decades later I bought the DVD box set to finally learn how those episodes ended.

But it also wasn’t easy being a Roger Moore fan in those days, believe me. We had to contend with the older generation of 007 fans, the ones who condemned Roger Moore for committing the mortal sin of not being Sean Connery. The divide between Connery fans and Moore fans ran deep (nobody really talked much about George Lazenby back then). We Moore fans were constantly told we weren’t true Bond fans, as if we were less able to appreciate Ian Fleming’s novels because we came of age when Roger Moore was carrying the Walther PPK. The early James Bond fans clubs were run by people who hated Roger Moore and let us know it with every newsletter. The only book on the Bond films at the time, simply titled The James Bond Films, was written by a guy, John Brosnan, who also hated Roger Moore but had to grudgingly admit Spy was pretty damned good. 

Time and three subsequent Bond actors have made this issue largely irrelevant, but things were heated when I was young and I admit I still have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I probably don’t appreciate Sean Connery as much as I should because of it, but, truly, I don’t dislike any Bond actor. I appreciate what each of them has brought to the role. I just appreciate Roger Moore best.

When pushed hard enough, I would defend Moore’s Bond as more than a smooth quip machine. It would have been easier if Moore himself had been on my side. A master of self-deprecation, Moore would insist in interviews he never took Bond seriously. Asked how he made acting choices as 007, Moore would reply, “Sometimes I wear a white dinner jacket and sometimes I wear a black one.”

Despite his protestations, Roger Moore did take Bond seriously. He may be remembered for the grins and the one-liners, but he had his tough and poignant moments as well. Listen to calm, assured way he tells Melina, “We’re not dead yet,” before they are keel-hauled in For Your Eyes Only. Watch how he winces when Anya Amasova mentions his deceased wife in Spy. Look at the anger in his face when he discovers General Orlov’s plot to kill thousands with a nuclear blast in Octopussy. These aren’t the only moments. The insouciance Moore projected was what first attracted me to his 007, but on the proper occasion he knew how to make Bond human rather than superhuman.

This leads me to Roger’s greatest 007 moment. It’s one that, curiously, won’t make many of the tribute compilations you can find online these days. It is a moment when he is at once smooth and steely and I can’t imagine Connery playing it so well (sorry, chip on my shoulder). You’ll find it near the beginning of Octopussy—the film containing Moore’s best performance, if you ask me—as Bond first confronts the villain, Kamal Kahn (Louis Jourdan, a dark reflection of Moore’s elegance) at the backgammon table.

Bond’s sharp eyes have caught Kahn cheating with a pair of loaded dice that come up double six when needed. Bond takes the seat across from Kahn and raises the stakes by betting the film’s MacGuffin, the Faberge egg. If Bond rolls anything but a double six, he loses. Bond connives to take control of Kahn’s dice, gives his opponent a cold stare, rolls the dice and—still locking eyes with Kahn—declares, “Double sixes.”

When I first saw Octopussy my good friend and fellow Moore Bond fan Brian Sheridan was seated next to me. “Whoah!” Brian said under his breath, “He didn’t even look down!” We knew we had just seen Roger Moore put proof to an earlier theme song: Nobody does it better.

I went to college and my Roger Moore posters came with me. Dorm rooms need decorations too. A new poster went up as Roger departed Bond with A View to a Kill—one film too late, but we’ll leave it at that. Another fellow came along, and a poster declaring Timothy Dalton as “The Most Dangerous Bond. Ever.” appeared on my wall shortly before I graduated Marquette University.

Roger Moore was no longer James Bond, but I was still his fan. Apartment walls also could use a few movie posters, I found. The burgeoning home video industry meant I could watch his movies pretty much whenever I wanted.

At the urging of his friend Audrey Hepburn (my all-time favorite actress), Roger Moore became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and I found a new reason to admire him. He didn’t show up on the screen much anymore, but stories of his generosity continued.

When Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond movie, GoldenEye, was released in 1995 I was reading a magazine article about its production. One of the crew members interviewed for the story went off on an unexpected tangent. He said that the Bond film family, the regular crew that Cubby Broccoli had employed for decades, dearly missed Roger Moore. He treated everyone on set, from his co-stars to the grips, as mates and kept them all laughing. As improbable as it may sound, he said, a lot of the regulars would have loved to see Moore return as Bond.

Testimonials like that became common. It seemed no one who had ever worked with Roger Moore spoke an unkind word about him. Sometimes people would go out of their way to praise him. In a career retrospective for the AV Club, actress Nancy Allen started gushing—quite to her interviewer’s surprise—about working with Moore on a mostly forgotten TV movie called The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.

Although Moore was becoming more and more obscure on this side of the Atlantic, I could tell from press reports that the elder Moore was now regarded as a national treasure in the UK. After Desmond “Q” Llewellyn died in 1999, Roger gracefully stepped into the role of unofficial spokesman for the Bond franchise. When Roger became Sir Roger in 2003, I cheered.

In his later years, Sir Roger Moore became something of a magical person. Warmth and kindness and humor just seemed to flow from him. His tweets were hilarious, though he never missed an opportunity to raise consciousness about his beloved UNICEF. His speaking tours of the UK were interspersed with press reports of him grabbing a meal at a local restaurant, or even showing up at a pharmacy, and regaling everyone he met. It cheered my heart to see that my childhood hero was, by all accounts, simply a wonderful person.

In 2012, a dream came true for me. When Moore was promoting his latest book, Bond on Bond, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 007 films, I had the opportunity to interview him for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was just a phone interview, alas, but I still got to talk to my hero of 34 years. He was as warm and funny and gracious as I had hoped as we talked about kicking the car off the cliff in For Your Eyes Only and pulling pranks on Desmond Llewellyn. He broke my heart a bit when I asked about the Lotus Esprit from Spy Who Loved Me (still my dream car) and he said he didn’t like it. “My legs are too long.” Still, when I hung up the phone I was thrilled. It was one of the happiest days of my life. And when I concluded the conversation, I was careful to say, “Thank you for being my idol.”

Those words came back to me the morning of Tuesday, April 23. I had just arrived at the YMCA and wanted to take a quick look at Facebook before heading to my 8:15 aerobics class. Instead of the usual Snoopy cartoon, I got punched in the face by the first report of my hero’s death. I was angry at first. There were no other reports yet, so I assumed it was a hoax even though the source, the London Standard, sounded trustworthy enough. I went straight to Roger’s Twitter page, hoping to find a tweet saying, “Relax. I’m still alive.” Instead I found the statement from his children, and I knew it was real. My childhood hero was gone.

I didn’t make it to my aerobics class. I couldn’t look away from my phone as the tributes trickled in. I was grateful there was a box of Kleenex nearby in the lobby.

Several days have passed, and the Roger Moore tributes have continued. I was fortunate to participate in one on the Spybrary podcast. But of all the words said and written about Roger Moore since he passed, the ones that most struck me came from Ian Ogilvy, who succeeded Moore as Simon Templar in Return of the Saint. In a Facebook post, Ogilvy wrote: “If everybody could comport themselves in the style of Roger Moore, who was beloved by everybody and hated by none, the world would be a nicer place.”

When I was in high school, I imitated Roger Moore because he was suave. Now I plan to imitate him because he was good.

I am 51 years old, and I still want to be Roger Moore.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Alan Moore, Louis L’amour, Conan Pastiches, Robots

Super Heroes (BBC): Is it embarrassing for adults to like superheroes? According to Alan Moore – creator of the Watchmen series and widely considered one of the greatest comic book writers – it is. He says superheroes are perfectly fine for 12 or 13-year-olds but adults should think again. “I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying,” he says.

Folklore (The 13th Floor): The ancient lore of the indigenous peoples of North America are as varied and far-reaching as the continent itself, and unless you’re well-versed in native lore, you might not realize how many of those tales are populated by horrifying spirits, ghosts, witches, demons and monsters… and since we’re in the scare business, we’re going to share the most nightmarish ones with you.

Westerns (Crimereads): Some of the difficulties the fiction magazines were experiencing were due to a prewar invention: the paperback book. The Western “dime novels” and “railway novels” (so named because they were sold in train stations) of the nineteenth century were early experiments in this form. True success, however, had to wait until the 1930s, when a pair of innovations were introduced: an effective glue strip used to bind the book together and the adoption of a distribution model invented by magazine publishers.

Fiction (Goodman Games): What makes those stories pastiche instead of fanfic, I suppose, is that many of these writers were paid to write it and the result was distributed widely. You would assume that meant that the work was well-edited and had some kind of consistency, but a lot of people, me among them, would tell you you’re wrong.  Some writers don’t quite get the character, or want to change him, or don’t understand that he actually does change, age to age, and is capable of greater subtlety/humor/intellect than is popularly assumed (just as REH’s writing is more complex than popularly imagined).

Men’s Adventure Fiction (Paperback Warrior): “The idea that genre fiction is somehow inferior in quality to so-called mainstream fiction, and is not as literary, is artificial bull-puckey,” Hayes said. “Mainstream also is genre, psychological studies, social issues, etc. are all genres, and most of that is not as entertaining as other genres. Entertainment is the primary objective of all fiction, the other, lesser goal being enlightenment, which should never dominate the story. If you have a cause to espouse, the proper literary form is an essay or a non-fictional book.”

Pulp Magazines (Dark Worlds Quarterly): I’ve been spending a lot of time amongst the Pulps lately. And it begs the question: what is the appeal of these old, flaking, brown books? One thing strikes me immediately, the collector’s mania that says, “I want them all!” Since Pulp magazines are no longer produced it is a finite proposition to own a “complete Weird Tales” if not a cheap one. But this doesn’t explain everything. The idea of a rare magazine or comic sealed in plastic, unreadable, priced at, say, $1000.00, makes it no more interesting than a rare coin or a bearer bond.

SF RPG (Trollsmyth): Treasure is easy in fantasy realms. Usually, it’s great piles of gold coins, gleaming gems, and works of art. Back in the middle of the 20th century, when the future was nuclear, space powers feuded over fissionables the way 20th century powers fought over oil. Later, when the power of the future shifted from fission to fusion, He3 became the thing to fight over.

A. Merritt (DMR Books): What a difference a century makes, eh? A well-respected book reviewer for “The Newspaper of Record” published that glowing endorsement for the very first hardcover edition of A. Merritt’s The Moon Pool. As I’ve explained elsewhere, the book itself was a “fix-up” novel merging Merritt’s original novelette of “The Moon Pool” with the novella/short novel, “The Conquest of the Moon Pool”. Let’s see what else the reviewer has to say…

Pulp Fiction (Grey Dog Tales): This book opens with an excellent and very informative introduction by Garyn G. Roberts Ph.D., in which he gives a very detailed background of Farmer’s love for and relationship with Pulp fiction. Without wanting to repeat too much of the information in that introduction, it’s worth mentioning here that Greatheart Silver was Farmer’s homage to the great pulp heroes of the 1930s.

Gaming (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Long, long ago I heard rumor of them in the introduction of GURPS. Elements of Melee and Wizard are of course baked into the classic Second Edition GURPS Basic Set and first edition GURPS Fantasy. But strangely enough, the group of high school buddies that went hog wild playing Car Wars and Ogre and Illuminati somehow never went beyond doing anything else beyond creating a few 100 point characters with those gaming materials that were supposed to be Steve Jackson’s magnum opus and the ultimate testament to his design genius.

H. P. Lovecraft (Slashfilm): During an interview with Coming Soon, SpectreVision’s Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah revealed tentative plans for a Lovecraft trilogy, adding that Color Out of Space director Richard Stanely might be involved as well. Wood and Noah said that if there’s “enough of an appetite for these things, and we can keep them going and make at least three of them” because Lovecraft is “such an important voice in horror.”

Folklore (Blog That Time Forgot): Ah, that most feared & beloved of Scottish beasties, the Wild Haggis. Elusive yet ubiquitous, they’re rare enough to be seldom seen in the wild, yet populous enough to feed 5.4 million Scots every Burns’ Night. Some say they are small furry mammals, others that they are little birds with vestigial wings; some say their right (or left) legs are longer than the others to facilitate mountain navigation at the cost of reproductive opportunity, while others suppose that they have only three legs, or even no legs at all; there are those who compare their call with the drone of the bagpipes, and others who equate it with a whistly twittering.

Small Press (Rawle Nyanzi): There’s a particular short story magazine that chugs along like a little engine that could. In spite of financial challenges and some less-than-stellar sales figures, it keeps on keeping on through periodic crowdfunds and targeted marketing. I’m talking about Cirsova, the Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense, founded in 2016 by P. Alexander, a Twitter buddy of mine who did the interior formatting for both of my novels Sword & Flower and Shining Tomorrow.

RPG (Goodman Games): The third book in the Alphabet series is now ready for pre-order! The Cthulhu Alphabet is an organized book of madness that you can incorporate into any role-playing game, Dungeon Crawl Classics or otherwise! The Cthulhu Alphabet is a collection of random tables to inspire your role-playing game, structured around an abecedarian theme. If you are a player navigating an uncaring universe, a haunted setting, or a horror-filled dungeon, you will find new ideas for your character and adventures.

Tolkien (Tolkien and Fantasy): I’m using the term “Tolkienian resonances” in this post’s title to refer to some things that predate Tolkien’s own relevant works, but are certainly not influences. They could perhaps be called precursors, but that seems too expansive a term. In any case, a few of these works with such resonances are interesting, and I recount them here. First, there is the discovery by Mark Hooker of the poem “The Orc and His Globular Island.” Hooker wrote about it in the November 2019 issue of Beyond Bree. The poem is interesting not only for its use of the word orc, but for the orc’s similarities to Gollum in The Hobbit.

H. P. Lovecraft (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): Despite enjoying him as a good read, Lovecraft left Williams out of SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE, his monograph surveying the field, which he was expanding and revising at the time. Doubtless Williams did not make the final cut because Lovecraft had concluded that CW was really not a horror writer at all and also that only committed Xians wd fully appreciate these novels (Lovecraft himself was an atheist and nihilist).

Tarzan (DMR Books): As I stated this time last year, a significant portion of Tarzan fandom considers November 22 to be the ape-lord’s “real” birthday. That’s fine with me. It makes a perfectly good excuse to talk about my favorite works of Tarzanic art. I considered going through my faves in the order I first discovered them, but it was long enough ago—and much of it was in a fairly short span of time—that I decided to go chronologically as they were first published. Thus, the iconic cover for the first McClurg edition of Tarzan of the Apes has to start things out.

Pulp Art (Dark Worlds Quarterly): The first Pulp magazine to offer robot stories was not a purely Science Fiction mag but Weird Tales, which featured the first robotic brain, giant robots and robot despots in Edmond Hamilton’s “The Metal Giants” and Ray Cummings’ “The Robot God”.

Fiction (Don Herron): The other day Brian Leno mentioned that he’d heard good things about the novel Relic by Preston & Child — but even more specifically, he got the major tip-off from me.  I found the novel much, much better than the movie and could not believe that the movie cut out the role of Pendergast, an FBI guy who for all practical purposes may as well be Sherlock Holmes. My god, the best character. I could not believe it, and I still cannot believe it — who’d buy rights to The Hound of the Baskervilles and then delete Sherlock? What genius does that?

Ian Fleming (Mystery File): Thunderball was the eighth James Bond novel and followed a break after Goldfinger where the new James Bond had been a collection of short stories, For Your Eyes Only. In fact Thunderball was the result of the author’s dwindling enthusiasm for his creation after a series of bitter disappointments about Bond’s screen fortunes. A proposed Hitchcock film of From Russia With Love had fallen through (Hitchcock ended up doing North by Northwest instead), and while sales for the Bond novels had rocketed with Doctor No and Goldfinger, the television series pilot “Commander Jamaica” that fell through had become the plot of Doctor No.

Weapons (Pulp Rev): Swords are cool. That alone would be enough reason to include swords in fiction. And you can’t have a street samurai without a sword. But my preferred aesthetic, that of the military technothriller, demands greater justification than just ‘cool’. And for good reason: soldiers must justify every piece of gear they carry on a mission. Unnecessary gear just slows you down and takes up space.

Sensor Sweep: Alan Moore, Louis L’amour, Conan Pastiches, Robots published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[drtanstravels]

Anna and I came to a conclusion recently — She needs to relax more and take more holidays. Yes, we do go on a lot of trips and we have plenty coming up this year, but it is almost entirely for her work so she doesn’t really get to take a break. When we went to Thailand and a resort in Indonesia recently, she was a completely different person and got to unwind properly for the first time in about a year. We did go to Turkey late last year, but it was on the tail-end of a conference that Anna had put in a lot of work for, plus it was an extremely hectic trip anyway, hardly any time for relaxation. That’s why we decided to take part in the world’s largest annual human migration and get away at Chinese New Year this year; it’s a relatively quiet time for her at the Eye Centre as few people in Singapore want to have surgery done during this period and the timing of Chinese New Year meant that Monday, February fourth was a half-day public holiday, while the fifth and sixth were full days off. We wanted to go somewhere neither of us had been before and initially considered Taiwan, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to go there during Chinese New Year as everything would be closed and we kind of wanted to escape the stress of being in a Chinese environment during those celebrations, because constant drums, chanting, and fires aren’t conducive to a relaxing weekend. Instead, we opted for Sri Lanka, a place neither of us really knew a whole lot about. My knowledge of Sri Lanka was limited to what was shown when singer Kamahl did advertisements for teabags in Australia and the fact that their cricket team was abysmal when I was growing up. Well, here are the basics on Sri Lanka:

Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea. The island is historically and culturally intertwined with the Indian subcontinent, but is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo.

Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule as Ceylon. A nationalist political movement arose in the country in the early 20th century to obtain political independence, which was granted in 1948; the country became a republic and adopted its current name in 1972.

The island is home to many cultures, languages and ethnicities. The majority of the population is from the Sinhalese ethnicity, while a large minority of Tamils have also played an influential role in the island’s history. Moors, Burghers, Malays, Chinese, and the indigenous Vedda are also established groups on the island.

‘Colombo,’ not ‘Columbo’

Sounds like it could be an interesting place to spend a few days so the plan was to fly out on Friday evening and stay the night in Colombo, catch a train to Galle and spend Saturday and Sunday night in the Fort area there, meeting up with our Australian friends from Singapore, Tom Cargill and Leonie Brown, whom it happened would be in the same place at the same time, and then come back for a final night in Colombo before flying out very early Wednesday morning. There was, however, the issue that I had had an epileptic seizure a few days prior to leaving that would require me to get my head stitched up in hospital, but wasn’t expected to put our trip in any jeopardy. Let’s see if all went to plan.

Friday, February 1, 2019 Anna finished work early on Friday afternoon so we packed, took Kermit to the dog hotel, and then got a cab to the airport. Our flight was at 7:30pm and it would take three-and-a-half hours to touch down in Colombo, however, Sri Lanka is two-and-a-half hours behind Singapore so it was barely 9:00pm by the time we landed. Getting through immigration wasn’t too much of an issue, although I did get a few sideways glances from officers because of my rather impressive black eye, but we were soon through the gate and one thing became abundantly clear; A lot of people landing at Bandaranaike International Airport must purchase fridges on impulse! Sure, there was the regular duty free store selling alcohol, cigarettes, perfume, and the usual stuff that you encounter in any international airport, but this was surrounded by endless shops selling duty free white-goods — refrigerators, washers, dryers, ovens, vacuum cleaners, and everything else any complete home requires were all available and all tax-free at any of the countless electronics and homewares stores in the arrivals area. I think Harvey Norman may have to rethink their business model, I’m not kidding, there are tons of these stores so they must be selling something, take a look around for yourself:

Anna looking a little confused

Just a couple of the stores

Looking from the standard duty free section

Even more

We managed to resist the urge to pick up a reasonably priced chest freezer and walked down to the taxi rank. Initially we thought that maybe we should’ve requested a hotel transfer, but we had nothing to worry about, getting a taxi without getting ripped off wasn’t a problem as there was a fixed-priced taxi counter. Now onto our home for almost the next 24 hours, Colombo:

Colombo is the commercial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo metropolitan area has a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 in the city proper. It is the financial centre of the island and a popular tourist destination. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to the Greater Colombo area which includes Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, the legislative capital of Sri Lanka and Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia. Colombo is often referred to as the capital since Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is within the urban area of, and a suburb of, Colombo. It is also the administrative capital of the Western Province and the district capital of Colombo District. Colombo is a busy and vibrant place with a mixture of modern life and colonial buildings and ruins. It was the legislative capital of Sri Lanka until 1982.

Due to its large harbour and its strategic position along the East-West sea trade routes, Colombo was known to ancient traders 2,000 years ago. It was made the capital of the island when Sri Lanka was ceded to the British Empire in 1815, and its status as capital was retained when the nation became independent in 1948. In 1978, when administrative functions were moved to Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Colombo was designated as the commercial capital of Sri Lanka.

To make matters even better, we were staying at the legendary Galle Face Hotel. Just have a click around that website and you’ll see why we were excited to be staying there or if you’re too lazy, just read a portion of what Wikipedia has to say about our humble abode for the night:

The Galle Face Hotel, founded in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1864, is one of the oldest hotels east of Suez. It is listed as one of the “1000 Places to See Before You Die” in the book of the same name.

Celebrity guests include Mahatma Gandhi; the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin; John D. Rockefeller; former British Prime minister Edward Heath; Princess Alexandra of Denmark; Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru; Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India; journalist Eric Ellis and photographer Palani Mohan; future British RAF officer and MI6 agent F. W. Winterbotham; Prince Sadruddhin Aga Khan; then-Prince Hirohito of Japan; Roger Moore; Carrie Fisher; Richard Nixon, US President; Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma; Noël Coward, English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer; Josip Broz Tito, Marshal of Yugoslavia. In January 2018 Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex stayed at the hotel during their five day official visit.

I guess I can now name two hotels in which Richard Nixon has stayed. Anyway, once we had arrived we checked into our room and then went down to King of the Mambo, a Cuban-themed bar and restaurant within the hotel, right on the water. We pulled up a seat, ordered a couple of drinks and just started chatting while a Latin band played in the background when, before long, a couple on the next table, an Italian man and an Indian woman, must’ve overheard us say something about Singapore and asked if we were “Jacu’s friends.” It turned out that they both live in Singapore too and knew someone there whose friends were also traveling to Sri Lanka this weekend as well. We told them that we were from Singapore, but didn’t know a Jacu. I later had a look at Facebook and saw that there were comments on my friend’s page tagging me as traveling to Colombo, as well as another couple. This particular friend doesn’t use his real name on Facebook and I thought that maybe I had just forgotten his name as he is someone I only know from the pub so I showed his photo to the couple on the next table. “Yes, that’s Jacu!” they replied, so we settled in, ordered some food and got chatting with them. Not only did we have the mutual friend we knew of, but it turned out that the Indian girl, Adita, also went to university and is friends with one of Anna’s best friends, Roshini. To quote the comedian Steven Wright, “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.” Here’s a look around our room in the Galle Face Hotel and King of the Mambo that night, although we didn’t get one our new drinking buddies:

Looking toward our bed

looking away from it

toward our bathroom

Out our window

Getting a bit rough on the way to the bar

Part of the view of King of the Mambo from our table

Looking along the shore

Inside the bar

Another area

Part of the skyline in the background

Saturday, February 2, 2019 We were still operating on Singapore time so we were up pretty early by our holiday standards. One thing that we didn’t realise was that Sri Lankan National Day, or Independence Day, also happened to fall during our trip, being celebrated on the Monday so there were thousands of soldiers rehearsing for the National Day parade when we left the hotel in the morning. Our plan for Saturday was to catch a train down to Galle, however, first-class trains only departed at around 6:30am, which wasn’t an option for us. Instead, we could get an express train at 3:50pm, but we would only be able to get either second or third class tickets with unreserved seating. You’re probably thinking, “Oh, poor Tim and Anna, can’t get first class tickets, boo-hoo,” but anyone who has ever caught public transport anywhere on the Indian subcontinent would understand that even first class could be deceptive in definition, second class with unreserved seating could mean absolutely anything, and third class with unreserved seating may possibly resemble something like this:

Still, we had a few hours to kill so we hit the street, taking in some of the military rehearsals along the way. We began walking toward the centre of town along Colombo-Galle Main Rd. when we were almost immediately approached by a very well-dressed, albeit extremely sweaty, local man who burst into a power-walk to catch up to us. Sri Lanka is famous for its gemstones and this dodgy guy insisted on taking us to a gemstone museum and then a shop afterward. We’re used to dealing with scammers overseas so we made it clear that we weren’t interested and that’s when the bullshit began. “Today is National Day so nothing else will be open anyway, as you can see by the parade on the beach.” We explained to him that we were more than aware that National Day was on Monday, the shops were clearly open, and that the parade on the beach was a rehearsal, but he wasn’t deterred. “I work at your hotel, what sort of representative would I be if I didn’t show you the best of Colombo?” We then pointed out that it was one of his alleged coworkers that told us about the rehearsals and he wasn’t dressed like any of them, but still he insisted we see the gemstone museum, going on and on about it as we sped up, him struggling to keep pace. It was finally when he called over a tuk tuk for us and told the driver where to take us that we both finally snapped, telling him that we saw through his bullshit and that we were doing something somewhere else. He kept talking, but soon realised he wasn’t getting anywhere, muttered something under his breath, and walked away. We were expecting to meet hustlers like this after the time we’ve spent in India and the first person we encountered on the streets of Colombo was exactly that, but fortunately we wouldn’t meet too many more.

We continued exploring, but everyone we know that has been to Sri Lanka told us beforehand that there wasn’t a whole lot to do or see in Colombo, just tons of construction, and Galle was where the real action was. Still, we had a look around, grabbed a decent lunch, and then soon we had to head back to the hotel to grab our luggage in order to catch our train. A look around our hotel and the surrounding area of Colombo:

A panoramic view from our balcony

Inside the lobby of the Galle Face Hotel

Our doorman about to let us out

Looking across the road

The parade rehearsals from a distance

Part of the exterior of the Galle Face Hotel

Part of where we had spent the previous night

More of the parade action on the beach

The local police station

A building that seems to be missing a roof and some walls

One of many construction sites

A cool mural on a building on our way to lunch

These photos may not paint a particularly beautiful picture of Colombo, but it is really nice, just the area we stayed on that first night may have been a little less aesthetically pleasing. After lunch we walked back to the hotel, got our luggage and checked out, and then we were on our way to the train station. The train station wasn’t far away, but we had to get there about an hour early in order to get halfway-decent tickets for our two-and-a-half hour journey to Galle. Anna read online that if we wanted to get a seat on the train, it was best to go to the first station on the trainline, but the concierge at our hotel said it was too far out of the way and we only needed to go to the nearest station. We got our first tuk tuk in Sri Lanka, negotiated a decent price due to the fare metre still being sealed in its original packaging, and rode in our three-wheeled deathmobile, weaving recklessly through traffic, all the way to the station. Anyone that has ever ridden in a tuk tuk before knows that you never feel all that safe in one and that’s not including the time a tuk tuk driver in Pondicherry, India (the vehicle called an “auto” there) made a piss-poor attempt at kidnapping me! These things are completely unstable, you’re not secured into the vehicle in any way, the drivers just throw caution to the wind, and in some countries they’ll do anything to screw you over to make an extra buck or two. Only some of them in Sri Lanka have a fare metre, but they are never used so you just have to haggle first and fortunately we never had any drivers try to scam us. Tuk tuks are the cheapest, and sometimes only, option, but all the ones we encountered on this trip could be trusted. We soon arrived at the train station and I watched the bags while Anna bought our tickets and then we walked down to platform 5 where our train would eventually be arriving. We managed to get second class tickets with unreserved seating, which meant that the process for getting a seat was first in, first served when entering the carriage, however, our carriage would have ceiling fans. When we saw a train arriving on another platform, we realised exactly what this meant; the carriages in both classes were extremely crowded with people getting on and off while the train was still moving, others just hanging out of the doors as the only convenient place to stand in third class. After we saw this, I decided to ask someone on our platform where to board the second class carriage. I approached a friendly-looking young woman, only for her to let out a little scream and grab her handbag. Train stations around the globe are generally seedy areas so I guess when a female is approached by a rather large man with a black eye and facial stitches, she needs to be on her guard. I apologised, explained our situation, and she advised us to wait in the middle of the platform, as that is where the second class carriages would most likely be.

Our train soon arrived and we boarded, and although I wasn’t expecting complimentary champagne, we were also unable to get a seat despite how proactive we were, instead relegated to standing in the centre of the carriage, the end nearest to us only having two of the seven ceiling fans operating. Initially the carriage was overcrowded, people even sitting in the open doorway, legs hanging outside the train. There were handles hanging from bars from the ceiling, but it was easier for me to hold the bar, Anna grabbing a handle, and we were soon on our way. Sri Lanka is infinitely cleaner than India, but as we were departing we crossed a river that could almost be tasted as we passed, the horrendous stench of raw sewerage hanging in the air. None of the locals really reacted to fragrant aroma of human waste, but almost every foreigner on the train instantly gagged. I’ve also heard awful rumours about the toilets on trains in this part of the world, essentially just a seat with a hole that drops turds directly onto the tracks, the room ending up ankle deep in human waste. How much truth there is to those stories can really be neither confirmed nor denied for me, but we both decided it was best to clench for the next couple of hours and take in the scenery. Any photos from inside the train were captured as it was still moving, the view almost always obstructed by another passenger’s arm gripping a handle or pole:

In a tuk tuk en route to the station (note the sealed metre)

Looking down at Anna on our platform, early for our train

Inside the station

An earlier train that would resemble ours

Not sure what class this is, but it looks like it’s going to a concentration camp!

Our train has finally arrived

A gentle reminder not to rub your nuts on seated passengers

Looking one way up our carriage at a worried-looking European tourist

And we’re off!

The other way down our carriage

This guy sat like this for the bulk of the journey

Crossing the festering river

Some of the scenery out of the door was beautiful

Some not so much

Going behind some houses

Location, location, location

You also shouldn’t rub your nuts on standing passengers

Trying my best to blend in while onboard

That bar was a little dirty

Finally made it to our destination

Our ride only stopped four or five times en route to Galle, but for the last ten minutes or so enough people had exited the train so Anna could have a seat and I could sit on the table in front of her.

Me with some of our dinner

Once we arrived in Galle we took a tuk tuk to our hotel, The Bungalow in Galle Fort, and by that time it was already about 7:00pm so we decided to hit the town. The first plan of attack; get some hoppers. Hoppers are kind of like a bowl-shaped pancake made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk, generally eaten with curry and sambol. Not long after we had walked out the door and around the corner, we stumbled upon a small store simply called Hoppa so we pulled up a seat and ordered what we had come for. We got some egg hoppers and cheese hoppers, as well as some curried prawns and black curry pork and Anna later ordered some dessert hoppers that came with treacle. To be honest, I could happily eat hoppers for every meal daily, but I don’t know how my waistline would handle it. After dinner we walked down to the Old Dutch Hospital, one of the oldest buildings in Galle, dating back to the 17th century Dutch occupation of Sri Lanka when the building actually functioned as a hospital. Now it serves as a shopping and dining precinct so we sat down in a bar, ordered some drinks and a shisha, but it wasn’t going to be a long night as it turns out most, if not all, bars in this town shut at 11:00pm, even on a Saturday. Oh well, it had been a packed day so we really weren’t complaining.

This concludes the first part of our Sri Lankan adventure, stay tuned for the second half when we spend more time wandering around Galle and getting into a couple of weird situations before returning to Colombo again for a final night.

Chinese New Year in Sri Lanka, pt.1: Colombo to Galle Anna and I came to a conclusion recently -- She needs to relax more and take more holidays.

[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

EXCLUSIVE: Why Sterling K. Brown Is Keeping It All in Perspective

Sterling K. Brown isn’t used to being in demand.

“Busy. That’s the most apt description I can come up with, and busy is good,” Brown says of his life over the past whirlwind year and a half. The actor is speaking to ET by phone from a car on his way to the airport to catch a flight from New York City, where he’s just wrapped a photo shoot, to return to Vancouver set of the upcoming Predator reboot.

It’s been nearly a decade and a half, Brown says, “of showing up and saying your lines and then going on to the next project, hoping that one job moves into the next. But this has been a situation where people actually want to hear what I think. This is all still new.”

EMMYS 2017: The Standout Performances on TV

His Emmy-winning portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden on The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story anointed Brown as a standout actor, but it’s his deeply resonant performance as adopted son Randall Pearson on this TV season’s most popular new drama, NBC’s This Is Us, that’s catapulted his career into the stratosphere. Since production on the first season ended in February, Brown has taken full advantage of his sudden surge in Hollywood, booking high-profile films Black Panther, The Predator and Hotel Artemis, often flying back and forth across the country juggling his new jet-setting reality.

“It’s a wonderful position to be, in terms of people who are enthusiastic and wanting to work with you. For such a long time, you spend most of your time hoping and putting your best foot forward and maybe something will come along that will be a break. Now, I’ve had a couple of breaks,” the St. Louis native says, noting how dramatically different life is from the way it was before filming American Crime Story in 2015. “It’s night and day.”

Prior to the FX anthology true-crime series, Brown was perhaps best known for his starring role on Army Wives, which ran for seven seasons on Lifetime, and a long list of one-episode roles on everything from ER to The Good Wife. “It’s nice to be validated this way in this business because you hear no a lot. It’s nice to hear yes.”

Still, there’s an element of wanting more, of achieving the unfamiliar and reshaping the public’s perception of what he’s capable of in front of the camera that keeps him hungry. “What was so lovely about O.J. and This Is Us to a certain extent is that I got a chance to surprise people. And now that people know who I am a bit more, I still want to be able to do that.”

NBC

On This Is Us, he has done just that as Randall, a character that’s widely considered to be the show’s beating heart -- much of which is credited to Brown’s fearlessness in depicting a grown man unafraid to shed a tear or seek out a relationship with his birth father or struggle with his childhood anxiety. Ask Brown how much of Randall is deeply inherent in him and the answer isn’t surprising at all.

“Every character I play is me,” he says, explaining with a friendly charm that he “secretly has thousands of people that live inside of [him],” as he chuckles at the absurdity. “Different roles call for different aspects or different faces of Sterling to emerge. I think [Randall] is a better version of me. He may even be slightly goofier than me, even though I am pretty goofy myself. He’s definitely smarter than me. I don’t worry about the lines being blurred anymore. I just try to see what it is this character is asking of me right now, and then I go through my Rolodex of personalities that exists inside and see which one works best for the character.”

And so far, it’s working. Brown calls attention to “Memphis,” one of the most devastating episodes from the first season, in which Randall and his birth father, William (Ron Cephas Jones), embark on a father-son road trip, only for it to end in heartbreaking fashion when William dies from stage 4 cancer. It’s an episode that holds special meaning for Brown, who lost his own father when he was just 10 years old. “The feedback that I got from my family, they were all in tears,” he recalls, sharing that a producer told him it was “one of the most powerful hours of television he’d ever seen.”

“They knew what that episode was for me. I wasn’t able to say goodbye when I was 10 because I was too young to go to the hospital. It was an opportunity for me to get a do-over; Randall saying goodbye to William was [me] getting the chance to say goodbye to [my] dad.”

Equally striking is a scene in the penultimate episode, in which Kevin (Justin Hartley) abandons opening night of his play to come to the aid of his brother Randall, who is in the middle of an emotional breakdown. Brown calls that moment “one of the most exhausting scenes I’ve ever shot.” It was also one of the only times he questioned if he could accomplish what was asked of him. “We shot it over and over and over again until my eyeballs were bone dry,” he remembers, at one point telling director Ken Olin, “I don't know if I can do this anymore.”

“I felt a responsibility because of people in my family who have anxiety or different mental disorders, I’ve been witness to it, and it's important to put it out there in a way that releases the stigma of it. And the only way to do it is to go all the way through. The response from people who suffer from different social anxiety disorders was they felt represented and that made me feel it was all worth it.”

Not lost on him is the profound effect his character -- and on a much larger scale, the show -- has had on the viewing public. Much as “Memphis” served as personal therapy for Brown, he views each obstacle or triumph his character goes through in exactly the same way. “I get the chance to work out whatever things I'm working through and I get a chance to leave it at work,” he says. “I come home every night to my wife and kids and feel cleansed.”

The chance to make Emmy history could make it all worthwhile, too. If Brown is to win Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his work on This Is Us, he would be the first black actor in nearly 20 years to do so -- after Andre Braugher took home the trophy in 1998 for his role on Homicide: Life on the Street.

“When I hear somebody say it out loud like that, it’s very crazy,” Brown confesses, letting out a small laugh in disbelief, and joking that having attended Stanford “helps.” (Brown and Braugher are both graduates of the university.) “It’s surreal for me, too, because we all collectively, meaning the Pearson family -- Justin, myself, Chrissy [Metz], Milo [Ventimiglia] and Mandy [Moore] -- we take turns leading the show. To be singled out in that way, amongst who I consider to be one of the better ensembles on television, I’m honored.”

Though Brown has barely had time for a proper vacation or even a string of lazy Sundays, the actor is OK with going from This Is Us to Predator and eventually back to the NBC series, which will start production on season two in July. The actor also knows this -- the attention, the roles, the awards -- could all go away in a snap. Humbled by it all, Brown isn’t so much looking forward as he is trying to be appreciative of what’s happening in the present.

“It can go just as quickly,” Brown says, offering himself a slight warning: “Don't look too much toward the future. Don't look toward the past because right now is special.”

[stokan]

The Uber Oscars

Every year the Oscars hand out an award for Best Actor. But since they also hand out awards for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress they still leave the most fundamental question unsettled: who gave the year’s best acting performance.

Well (now that the dust has finally settled form this year’s crazy Oscars) I’m here to retroactively answer that question for every year dating back to 1990. Welcome to the Uber Oscars!

2016 Casey Affleck Emma Stone Mahershala Ali Viola Davis

If Viola Davis had competed in Best Actress, like she should have, she would have won it easily. I’m starting this exercise with a gimme putt.

2015 Leonardo DiCaprio Brie Larson Mark Rylance Alicia Vikander

Time changes how art is perceived, and this feels too recent to really have a clear perspective on it. I would wager that 5-10 years from now Brie Larson’s work will be considered the best of the bunch, but Leo so thoroughly dominated last year’s award season and his win loomed so large in the popular consciousness I gotta give him the nod here for now.

2014 Eddie Redmayne Julianne Moore JK Simmons Patricia Arquette

I remember being blown away by Julianne Moore in Still Alice, but the movie came out only three years ago and yet I barely remember a single thing about it. JK Simmons’ performance in Whiplash on the other hand, was instantly iconic to everyone who saw it and will define his entire career. So, sorry Julianne, but you’re lagging every so slightly.

2013 Matthew McConaughey Cate Blanchett Jared Leto Lupita Nyong’o

Screw your McConaisssance, this is Cate Blanchett all the way. Leo should have beaten McConaughey anyway, and then we could have had a real debate. Great year though overall.

2012 Daniel Day-Lewis Jennifer Lawrence Christoph Waltz Anne Hathaway

Another great year. Anne Hathaway is now officially underrated and Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most memorable winners of recent years. But one of my rules in life is that in an acting-related contest between anyone and Daniel Day-Lewis, the winner is always Daniel Day-Lewis.

2011 Jean Dujardin Meryl Streep Christopher Plummer Octavia Spencer

Uh, well someone has to win, so using the Daniel Day-Lewis Rules, this one goes to Meryl Streep, I guess? Says a lot about the 2012 Oscars that one of the hardest trivia questions in the world is “who won Best Actor six years ago”.

2010 Colin Firth Natalie Portman Christian Bale Melissa Leo

At the time it was probably Christian Bale. Now it’s probably Natalie Portman. But it’s close.

2009 Jeff Bridges Sandra Bullock Christoph Waltz Mo’Nique

I might be biased here, but I think Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds is an all-timer. If you wanted to talk me into Mo’Nique though I’d be willing to listen.

2008 Sean Penn Kate Winslet Heath Ledger Penelope Cruz

REALLY strong year. Any of the other three could have won most years. But Heath Ledger’s Joker is arguable the single best performance of the 2000s. It’s certainly the most iconic.

2007 Daniel Day-Lewis Marion Cotillard Javier Bardem Tilda Swinton

If Heath Ledger’s Joker isn't the best acting performance of the 2000s then Daniel Day-Lewis’s Daniel Plainview IS. So, sorry Javier Bardem, but you're gonna have to settle for being the strongest Uber-Oscars runner-up of them all. And Tilda Swinton, any day now feel free to give Cate Blanchett the Oscar you stole from her.

2006 Forrest Whitaker Helen Mirren Alan Arkin Jennifer Hudson

As much as I want to try and argue that it’s Jennifer Hudson, I think it’s pretty clearly actually Helen Mirren.

While we’re here, 2006 Best Supporting Actor is on the shortlist for weakest Oscar acting category of all time.

2005 Phillip Seymour Hoffman Reese Witherspoon George Clooney Rachel Weisz

Fun fact: Even George Clooney can’t totally remember what movie he won an Oscar for. Anyway, this was the easiest call on the whole board. Not so fun fact: this was the Crash year.

2004 Jamie Foxx Hillary Swank Morgan Freeman Cate Blanchett

Oh god…is it Jamie Foxx for Ray? It’s Jamie Foxx for Ray isn't it? UGH. I hate this game; why did I make it up?

2003 Sean Penn Charlize Theron Tim Robbins Renee Zellwegger

Why does it feel like Charlize Theron’s performance in Monster doesn't get its proper due? It’s profoundly great work and should be talked about way more. Is this how think pieces get started?

2002 Adrien Brody Nicole Kidman Chris Cooper Catherine Zeta-Jones

Can I pick none of the above?

2001 Denzel Washington Hallie Berry Jim Broadbent Jennifer Connelly

If you want to really get me talking, ask me about how Art Carney’s 1972 win for Harry and Tonto led to Denzel beating Russell Crowe out for this Oscar. I’m fun at parties.

2000 Russell Crowe Julia Roberts Benicio del Toro Marcia Gay Harden

If Kate Hudson hadn't been upset by Marcia Gay Harden I would have given this one to her. But you have to actually get the Oscar to be eligible for an Uber Oscar.

1999 Kevin Spacey Hilary Swank Michael Caine Angelina Jolie

Full disclosure: I’ve somehow actually never seen Boys Don't Cry. But Angelina Jolie is not only incredible in Girl Interrupted, it’s the performance that made her into a superstar. It’s impossible to overstate how famous Angelina Jolie was overnight in the wake of this Oscar win. That counts for something.

1998 Roberto Benigni Gwyneth Paltrow James Coburn Judy Dench

I’m a big Shakespeare in Love fan and defender and even I refuse to give this to Gwyneth Paltrow. Also, the only thing that has aged worse than Roberto Benigni’s win is this poster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/71st_Academy_Awards#/media/File:71st_Academy_Awards_poster.jpg

1997 Jack Nicholson Helen Hunt Robin Williams Kim Basinger

Would you like for me to quote the entirety of Good Will Hunting for you? Because I can. Have I mentioned yet that I’m fun at parties?

1996 Geoffrey Rush Francis McDormand Cuba Gooding Jr Juliette Binoche

This basically comes down to what you value more in a performance: craft or charisma. Although craft seems like the obvious answer, in this case Cuba Gooding Jr. basically invented an entirely new character archetype through sheer force of personality. So let’s call it a tie for now.

1995 Nicholas Cage Susan Sarandon Kevin Spacey Mira Sorvino

Yes that’s right kids, Nicholas Cage not only has a Best Actor Oscar but he’s actually one of the most deserving Oscars winners of the 1990s. The 90s were a weird time.

Speaking of which, here are actors who won Oscars at this Oscar ceremony for things other than acting: Mel Gibson, Emma Thompson and Christine Lahti. As I said, the 90s were weird.

1994 Tom Hanks Jessica Lange Martin Landau Dianne Wiest

Here’s the thing, this should be Martin Landau. He's incredible in Ed Wood. It’s one of the best supporting actor performances of all time and definitely one of the best overall performances of the decade. 1994 Best Supporting Actor is one of the strongest categories ever and he won it easily. But that said, no one is beating Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump. Is it great acting? I genuinely don’t know. But off the top of your head name 10 performances in the history of film that are definitely more iconic than Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump. I’m not saying I feel great about it, but for better or worse, right or wrong, this completely meaningless made-up award is his.

1993 Tom Hanks Holly Hunter Tommy Lee Jones Anna Paquin

Holly Hunter winning acting awards is so 90s. And I hear your arguments for Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, but so much of the esteem for that performance came from “straight man plays gay and has bravery to depict AIDS”. Nothing against Tom Hanks and the great work he does, but you don’t brownie points for that in 2017. Plus, although people sleep on it now, The Piano is actually STRAIGHT FIRE, SON!

1992 Al Pacino Emma Thompson Gene Hackman Marissa Tomei

I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to give this to Marissa Tomei. But I recognize that it actually belongs to Emma Thompson. However it definitely DOES NOT belong to Al Pacino. Scent of a Woman wasn't even his best Oscar nominated performance of 1992.

1991 Anthony Hopkins Jodie Foster Mercedes Ruehl Jack Palance

Hey, remember a few seconds ago when I asked if you came name a more iconic acting perforce than Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump? Well here’s your answer. This probably the Uber Oscar winner of the whole decade.

On an unrelated note, I kinda miss the days when people like Jack Palance, Marissa Tomei, and Dianne Wiest could win Oscars for comedic roles. #MakeOscarsGreatAgain

1990 Jeremy Irons Kathy Bates Whoopi Goldberg Joe Pesci

If Anthony Hopkins isn't the overall Uber Oscar winner for the 1990s then Joe Pesci is. In fact I extended this meaningless exercise all the way to 1990 just to include him. And now that I’ve reminded you of the greatness of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas we can finally draw this to a close. Congrats to all the fake winners on your fake awards!