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theliterateape · 3 years ago

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We Killed Jason Todd

By Matt Markman

In 1988 my friends and I killed a kid.

He was just a boy really. We had help it wasn’t just me and my pals. there were adults involved, lots of them. I mean we were young we were just thirteen and really couldn’t comprehend the ramification of our actions, the adults knew what they were doing. I’m painting it to sound way more sinister than it was, and in today’s society, wouldn’t trend on Twitter but maybe in the ’80s, it was probably considered quite ominous.

To set your mind at ease, it was Jason Todd. You know, Batman's sidekick, The Boy Wonder, Robin—well, the second Robin anyways. And I helped kill him.

I was big into comic books but my favorite was, The Dark Knight, The Caped Crusader, The Batman… He donned the best costume, he had all the money and was the most intelligent of all the superheroes. That last trait right there, the fact that he was considered a superhero and he had no actual super powers made him cooler than the other side of the pillow. You know how The Big Bang Theory has convinced the world it’s an Emmy-winning sitcom worth watching? I think it’s the fact that Batman was someone any one of us could actually be. Sure we needed to start with a base coat of genius followed by a splash of handsome billionaire playboy then train overseas in martial arts for several years, but if you had those things you, too, could be a vigilante. You ask me today and I'd stand by the fact that Batman would beat Superman in a fight, say ten out of ten times. This is not debatable because super beings from another planet are not real.

My favorite thing about Batman, though, is his ability to balance out good and evil. He spawned one of the greatest comic book villains and fictional characters ever created, The Joker. They have tried and tried again but in my opinion never got close to the Clown Prince of Crime—maybe Negan from The Walking Dead, he's pretty ruthless. The Joker is what would happen if a stand-up comedian became a criminal mastermind, so basically the plot of the 2019 film Joker.

My love for Joker made sense because growing up I was always more into the bad guys than the good guys. Watching and playing with G.I.Joe, I was always on the side of Cobra Commander, the twins Tomax and Xamot, and Zartan because they were always more glamorous and eye-catching than the boring ass Joes. Just once, I’d like that “knowing is half the battle” part at the end of the cartoon to have been Storm Shadow giving us kids a tip on how to fuck up Shipwreck and his stupid Parrot. Megatron, Skeletor, Shredder, Mumm-ra…

The list goes on, but the antagonists always resonated with me. they had a much better and more intriguing agenda than the good guys did. I know that wasn't the purpose, we were supposed to cheer on the good guys, like the idea of saving the world and all, but the mayhem… It’s like Alfred Pennyworth said, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” It’s odd because the bad guys in my life were real, the bullies and I didn't like them at all. They tormented me daily unprovoked because I was short and had big ears. Perhaps my love for the dark side stemmed for my desire to be on that side because in real life there was no Superman swooping in to rescue me from the clutches of Lex Luthor.

There were two sides, and good had a lack of champions looking out for the weaker, smaller good guys. The bad guys in my neighborhood, well, they were real and never really foiled and more importantly, they always got the girl in the end. Fuck the good guys!

My admiration for evildoers achieving their agenda was tested in 1988, Batman was running a four-part series called A Death in the Family. It was your typical Batman arc. Somehow, The Joker was going to get the upper hand on The World’s Greatest Detective only to be bested in the end by Batman. But this time, the third comic decided to do something nobody had never seen in the industry. The writers were going to give the fans the opportunity to decide where they were going to go with the story, only it was an option between two different roads, one quite unconventional. Apparently a few years earlier, one of the writers, Dennis O'Neil, had seen a sketch they did on SNL where Eddie Murphy held up a Lobster—Larry the Lobster—and was asking viewers to decide whether Larry was boiled and eaten or was to be set free. The choices were offered in the form of two phone numbers both costing fifty cents a call. One number was a vote for him to be freed and the other number was a vote for Larry to be murdered, smothered in butter, and devoured by Axel Foley. Ultimately, after nearly 500,000 calls, the people voted for Larry the lovable lobster to be pardoned with a 12,000 call margin. The popularity of this bit intrigued O'Neil and A few years later he decided to implement it in his Death in The Family storyline.

In the third book, The Joker had taken Batman's sidekick, the Boy Wonder, hostage. He’d beaten him bloody with a crowbar leaving a cliffhanger to be wrapped up in the fourth book. The last page of the comic was full page and at the top read in true ’80s Do the Right Thing fashion: “Robin will die because The Joker wants revenge, but you can prevent it with a telephone call!” They even phrased it to steer you down the hero’s path, like you can literally be Batman with one phone call. Underneath the imploring verbiage were two numbers, dial one number; The Joker fails and Robin lives, Batman would once somehow saves the day. However, call this other number and The Joker succeeds and Robin dies. Gruesomely.

Wow! They were going to let the fans decide the fate of Robin, really this was one of my earliest introductions to a reality voting competition type show. In my opinion, it was a bad idea. Robin was always the worst. Go back and read through an adventure or two involving Jason Todd and tell me he wasn't always whiney and bellyaching. He was never going to be iconic or cool like Bruce Wayne or even his predecessor Dick Grayson—the first Robin. See, Dick got pissed off, decided he was tired of being in Batman's shadow, ditched the Robin costume, threw on a black blue and gold costume, moved to another city and became Nightwing. Dick was a go getter, ambitious. Grayson’s Robin was a winner, Todd's Robin was an irritating little bitch; he was not an innocent lobster.

I went to my mother and asked if I could make a call that was going to cost just fifty cents and I would pay her back or she could just take it out of my allowance. She wanted to know what it was for and mostly wanted to confirm it wasn't for an adult sex line, which costs more than fifty cents a minute, but that’s a different story. It was nothing as tawdry as phontercourse, I just wanted to help murder an annoying teenage sidekick. My mother response was “Oh, yeah, that’s fine.”

I think after it was exposed that it wasn't phone sex anything else I said went in one ear and out the other, surely she didn't think I was actually voting for a plucky comic book sidepiece to be murdered by The Joker. So that’s what I did. I cast my vote along with a majority of DC comic book fans that shared my detest for the boy wonder. Ten thousand votes were recorded with a narrow margin going to Robin dying. I think the writers never suspected that fans would go that route.

O’Neal himself voted for Robin’s stay of execution. A man of his word, Batman issue #429 was released and Robin was killed by The Joker in an explosion and we were to blame for it. Sad to say but you give a bunch of comic book nerds the power I think it would go bad every time. That day we were all proud to be The Joker's henchmen. I felt like a soldier at the end of Star Wars cheering madly while The Joker received his metal shouting, “I helped that happen!”

So many shows these days embrace our fascination with the anti-hero with the success of The Sopranos, The Shield, Breaking Bad, hell Narcos had me rooting for Pablo Escobar—Pablo fucking Escobar. I wouldn't say I was a bad person growing up. Quite the contrary, I was a shy nerd with no power to do anything but pick my books up after they were smacked to the ground. What I’m saying is don't give me the power to make important life or death decisions with your franchise because myself and the other dorks will have the bodies of Orko, Snarf, and Jimmy Olson lying in a shallow grave, just tell me what number to dial… or text.

Matt started performing standup comedy in 2004 in Las Vegas and is now a regular at every major comedy club on the Las Vegas strip. He released his first comedy album in 2016 titled Uncut available on iTunes. More about Matt and his upcoming appearances can be found on MattMarkman.com.

#Matt Markman #Matt Markman Comedian #Matt Markman Comedian Las Vegas #Las Vegas Comedians #G.I. Joe #Skeletor #Joker #Batman #Joker kills Robin #Jason Todd

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tblpress · 4 years ago

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The day before James Spader won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alan Shore, the morally dubious lawyer on “The Practice,” the actor was at the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA, admiring the statues -- especially the female forms. “Look at the beautiful curve of her back, right at the base of her spine,” he said, noticing a dancer at the top of Robert Graham’s “Dance Columns.” “It’s the most perfect curve in nature.” Then Spader felt a breeze and started ambling in the other direction. “I just want to walk into it,” he explained. “Oh, my God, that is nice.”

The sculpture garden, a favorite hideaway of Spader’s, brought out in him a charming mix of formality and earthiness. When Gaston Lachaise’s bronze powerhouse “Standing Woman” caught his eye, the memories rushed out. “My sons, when they were growing up, always enjoyed her rather ample” -- here he used a word not proper for this newspaper but that means “derriere” -- “and her rather ample breasts,” he said. The boys, Sebastian, now 15, and Ellijah, 12, would come here with their scooters. “So you come around,” Spader explained, “and lo and behold, you have that beautiful” -- that word again -- “over there. You can hardly resist scootering by and giving her a poke. She has nice calves too. She’s ample everywhere. She’s spectacular.”

James Spader, network TV star: To anyone familiar with the 44-year-old actor and his work, it sounds almost absurd. With the outre air of highbrow naughtiness and deep but slightly distracted intelligence he’s been known for since his 1989 big-screen breakthrough in “sex, lies, and videotape,” Spader could hardly have cooked up a more improbable career move. And yet starting tonight on “Boston Legal,” the new David E. Kelley show spun off from “The Practice,” TV viewers will get a weekly taste of the actor who has specialized in finding an endearing human side to wealthy school bullies, creepy cocaine dealers and sensuous sadomasochists.

Spader headed toward a section of the UCLA campus blanketed by California sycamores that he and his sons, he said, often climb and swing from. “See that?” he asked, pushing a branch down. “This is a perfect perching spot. I’d do it more aggressively, but there’s people around and it makes them nervous.”

Making people nervous is, of course, a Spader trademark.

“When we first went to the network about James, they shrieked in horror,” Kelley said. “James Spader is not a network face. They didn’t think he was the kind of persona American audiences would want to welcome into the living room on a weekly basis. But once we began to focus on him, he was the only choice. What James does so well is there’s a nucleus to this character that is humane and decent. He manages to let that nucleus shine through even when he’s committing egregious, contemptible acts. You don’t know if you like him or not, but you can’t wait to see him next.”

Kelley hired Spader to play the brilliant agitator whose dirty ways forced the firm of Young, Frutt and Berluti on “The Practice” to close its doors last year, after ABC slashed the show’s budget, forcing Kelley to fire half his cast. Spader, whose most recent television appearance had been a guest spot on “Seinfeld” in 1997, was supposed to play Alan Shore only long enough to shake things up.

“The goal in the beginning was to bring new life to the show, and the luxury we had as storytellers was that we didn’t have to protect the character for the sake of a long series run,” Kelley said. “You can only do so many things with a character that are overtly unlikable and still keep him redeeming and a character that people want to tune into and cheer for. Since we didn’t have that burden, we could swing away with him.”

The high-end firm of Crane, Poole and Schmidt might prove a better fit for Shore, who will be surrounded by other conniving legal eagles, including William Shatner as his boss, Denny Crane, and colleagues played by a cast including Rhona Mitra, Lake Bell, Monica Potter and Mark Valley. Alan Shore, Kelley promised, will “defy this law firm as he defies the conventions of regular characters on television.”

“When we watch James, there’s a lot of unknown complicated stuff in his mind, but we don’t know what that stuff is,” said Steve Shainberg, who directed Spader in “Secretary” (2002). “There’s something very unusual about him we can’t put our finger on, but that makes it more intriguing and exciting -- God help us.”

Yet for all the unpredictability that comes across on screen, Spader’s “Boston Legal” co-stars described him as meticulous, exact and particular on set.

“He’s always looking for the truth of the moment, and he gets fidgety when it’s not there,” said Shatner, who won a guest actor Emmy for his portrayal of Crane on “The Practice.” “He becomes as recalcitrant as a donkey until he can find the right way to deliver a line. He never says a word that doesn’t seem to come from the organic character. That’s because James himself is a little weird. But we love him for it.”

The Un-Brat Pack career

Two days after Spader nabbed the top acting award for a drama series, beating out television heavy hitters James Gandolfini, Martin Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia, he was on the “Boston Legal” set at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Three episodes of the show were being shot simultaneously, and he had found no time yet to contemplate his win. The Emmy, he said, was tucked away in a corner full of boxes as Spader, who recently separated from his wife, Victoria, waited to move into a new house.

“I was surprised at how quickly I lost the feeling of stunned confusion and ignorant bliss and how quickly it turned into work and pragmatism,” Spader said. “The award doesn’t mean anything to me -- and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. I just haven’t had time to go there yet. Even when my older son called to congratulate me, we moved rather swiftly on to the subject of an upcoming concert” -- the Pixies at the Greek Theatre -- “and the best way to score tickets, which is a much more constructive conversation for us.”

Like other actors who started taking shape in the ‘80s, Spader could easily have cultivated a Brat Pack aura. Instead, he went for a more original brand of alienation, playing seemingly WASPY characters with a devious air and an anti-WASPY erotic charge to them. The roles he took in movies such as “White Palace” (1990), “The Music of Chance” (1993), “Stargate” (1994) and “Crash” (1996) didn’t always hit big but always set him apart -- none more so than “Secretary,” in which Spader played E. Edward Grey, a lawyer who draws his self-mutilating young secretary into a joyful S&M; relationship.

“James is very formal and specific and respectful,” said Maggie Gyllenhaal, his costar. “I remember when we shot a five-page scene in which Mr. Grey asks me not to cut myself anymore, James noticed and responded to everything I did: every breath I took, every shift of my gaze, every movement of my hand. His work is very specific.”

And that, according to Camryn Manheim, who starred on “The Practice” for eight years, can be intimidating. “After you saw ‘Secretary,’ wouldn’t you be scared to go on a date with him?” Manheim said, laughing.

“I was scared of him,” she added. “He’s weird and strange and eccentric, and I mean a lot of that in the very best way. He plays all of these sexually charged characters. He looks at you too hard, like he’s got your number. But behind all of that, he’s a very simple man who is very thoughtful and insightful about the world and humanity.”

Confronted with the praise of his colleagues, Spader took a deep breath and looked skeptical. “Maybe this thing they are describing is just obsessive-compulsive. It just seems to be what the job is, to just try and get the right intention of whatever ... you’re saying. Who is to say if whether what you end up tumbling toward is the right place when you’re standing on your feet in the middle of it? I’ve had a lot of fun acting, and that’s been the only reason to continue doing it.”

Spader, who dropped out of the 11th grade to pursue acting in New York, attributes his interest in acting to the love of storytelling he inherited from his family. The son of teachers Todd and Jean Spader, the actor grew up with two sisters on the campus of Phillips Academy, a fancy Massachusetts prep school. “My father was an English teacher and he taught literature and poetry, and my parents would read aloud and my grandparents read aloud,” Spader said. “My grandfather would write stories and we would make up little plays to read and perform during the holidays. There was always a tremendous amount of humor in all the households I spent time in.”

But there were other reasons for wanting to become an actor. “I started doing theater when I started thinking of nothing but girls,” he said. “I can’t imagine that the two don’t relate. I don’t mean to be glib. In sports and in many other areas, girls and boys are separated. But in theater, you’re all mixed in together. How can it get any better than that?”

Being an actor, for Spader, has never been about celebrity. The press tent for interviews with winners at the Emmys came as a surprise and an “indignity,” he said jokingly. When someone at the Governors Ball on Emmy night remarked how rare it is that Spader has succeeded at being famous and simultaneously living a private life, the actor was incredulous.

“I don’t try to be mysterious,” Spader explained later. “I just protect my private life very carefully. I don’t go out a great deal. To see and be seen I could care less about. I don’t go to see movies at big premieres. If I go out, I go to a quiet place for a meal or I might go to listen to live music with a whole lot of people who are more interested in listening to the music than who is sitting next to them at the show.”

His new TV world

Spader may be on his way to television stardom, but he has never followed a television show from beginning to end -- the way he hopes viewers of “Boston Legal” will.

“That’s something I had no concept of,” Spader said. “Working on the show, I was experiencing the same anticipation for what was going to happen from week to week as the people who were watching it. When you do a film, you know what is going to happen to your character from start to finish. I knew very little about Alan Shore at the end of last season, and I still don’t. I like that constant shift because what I like the most about all of this is the telling of the story.”

What he likes the least is the fuss. He refused to hire a stylist for Emmy night, picking out his tuxedo and shoes himself. He did not prepare a speech. When his name was announced, Spader charmed the crowd by complimenting the women in the room: “You’ve all made wonderful choices in shoes and dresses tonight, and you all look absolutely beautiful.”

“I realized I was going to have to put together some sentences quickly and I wasn’t going to be yet another person to make a music joke,” Spader said. “It worked so well when the gentleman from ‘Arrested Development’ made the singing reference, but I knew that that couldn’t be used again, and certainly not by me. I really don’t have any idea what ... I was saying. Certainly, during the course of the four hours that I was there I had spent enough time admiring women’s shoes and dresses and how well they filled them.”

But as offhand as he may be about that trophy, it’s fitting somehow that Spader will be in the rare position of starting his new gig already having won an Emmy for the role. To his surprise as much as anyone’s, the TV gods have smiled on him. “Does anybody have any illusions about the fact that the Emmys come at the beginning of the television season? The timing seems precise to me,” he said. “And I think it’s grand.”

#james spader #interview #2004 #james spader quote #la times #boston legal #the practice #alan shore #james spader press #link #article

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sharperthewriter · 6 years ago

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14th Annual Kim Possible Fannies Awards - Final Round of Voting

Hello and good evening to everyone in the Kimmunity.

Now that the first round of voting has come to a close, I am happy to tell you that we have approached the final round of voting. This is going to decide the winner of each of the 29 categories

Now, before the voting can commence, I need to go over a few house rules with y'all on this very important round of voting.

Rule #1) You can pick any category you desire, but you only get one choice per category. No more than that. Authors may vote on their own stories up to 5 categories.

Rule #2) You cannot split your votes.

Rule #3) You can submit your vote in either one of two approved methods

A) You can submit the form by PM to the Kimmunity Fannies fanfiction account (if you have an FFnet account) The link is here: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2622561/KP-Fannie-Committee

B) You can submit the form by an email to the Kimmunity Fannies Yahoo email account. The email address is [email protected].

You cannot, however, do both. It will screw up the system.

Rule #4) You have to submit your vote by June 14th at 11:59 PM (Central US TIME). No votes will be accepted after this date.

Rule 5) You have to put your normal screen name (be it Tumblr, Twitter, DA, FFnet, the active KP forums, or Instagram) under your vote so that it'll tell me who has voted.

Rule #6) And this is the most important rule of all -- You CANNOT share your vote on any social media site (be it Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Facetime, Kik...etc.). The Final Vote Round of the KP Fannies has been private in the past and we, as members of the Council, want to retain it as such as part of our tradition in this fandom.

Rule #7) In the event that a tie emerges in a category, it will go into a runoff to determine a winner. And if still tied, the Sharper Eye test will come into play. (i.e. the story with the most faves and follows will win out in the end.)

With all the house rules in play, may the best author win.

EDIT 1: Had to put in the actual email address to submit votes. :P

Below is the nominees list:

1) Best KP Style Name

Rebecca Starlet (Nacos and a Movie) - StW

Geneous - (Dynamic Reversal) - Emperor of Dreams

Otto Bahn & Lynn Accuarate (What's the Alma Mater) - MrDrP

BattleSkarr & S'ordcClash (All Things Probable) - Slyrr

2) Best Original Character

Anna Stoppable - This Is Our Year: Sightseeing - F86Sabre53

Otto Bahn & Lynn Accurate (What's the Alma Mater) - MrDrP

Rebecca Starlet - (Nacos and a Movie) - STW

Emmie & Jennie Gold - Possibles Pure Love Road -kmtdiccion

Cappuchino - RJ & Martin - Emersonian

Rhino - I'm Scared Too - Magic Flying Spud

3) Best Minor Character

Monique - That's So Monique - NeoTyson

Tara - The Mad Scientists Assistant - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Bonnie, Monique, Camille, Tara, & Junior - Nacos and a Movie - STW

Bates - A Servants Loyalty- Daccu65

Connie & Lonnie Rockwaller - Fun with Con and Lon - Icarus the Foxkidd

Monique - Center Will Not Hold ... Or Will It - SimplyShelbs16

4) Best Villain

Bonnie, Camille & Junior - Nacos and a Movie - STW

Monkey Fist - (RJ & Martin) Emersonian

Dementor - Sophmore Slump - SimplyShelbs16

KP, Drakken and Shego - I'm Scared Too - Magic Flying Spud

Gemini - This Is Our Year: Postgraduation - F86Sabre53

DNAmy - Sheryl - GerbilHunter

5) Best Songfic

The 12 Days of a Possible Family Christmas - STW

KP Never Lets It Go to Her Heart - Ozzy-Zike Fan 10.57

6) Best AU Story

STD 2018 Feels - Jimmy1201

S Plus D Equals K - Neo the Saiyan Angel

The New Fearless Ferrett - Neotyson

KP: Gifted - LJ58

Two Tickets For Murder - eoraptor

A Journey Through Time - DisneyChannelLover

7) Best Crossover-Fusion

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion (fusion)

Sky Blue, Ocean Blue - purplegirl761 (Steven Universe)

Turbo a KPPR Story - brycewade1013 (Power Rangers)

A CO N*** Mole Rat in the Schnee Mansion - daccu65 (RWBY)

KP: A Tale of Promethus - LJ58 (KP/Frankenstein Fusion)

The Grim Adventures of Kim and Ron - shadowwriter329 (Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy)

8) Best Alt-Other Canon Pairing

Bonnie & Junior - Nacos and a Movie - STW

Ron & Tara - Today My Life Begins - kmtdiccion

Bonnie & Shego - MrDrP - Picture This

Bonnie & Tim - MasterDuelistMichael - The Tweeb and the Queen B

Bonnie & Ron - Honey Pot - Mr Aanonymous

Ron & Shego - Your Loss is My Gain - Kixen

9) Best Kigo

Canadian Wedding - Von Uriken

I Forget - obscurebeing

Through the Timestream -RedWolfBlack

KP: A Blonde Moment - eoraptor

Acid Rain - VoltageStone

Morning Conversations - FeudorLaurent

10) Best Drakgo

Assorted Ficlets - purplegirl761

Expiration, Pudding and Plums - Imyoshi

S Plus D Equals K - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Unlike the Others - nobody3456

Evil Family - MaRci3o9

11) Best Kim/Ron

Last Dance- Whitem

Nacos and a Movie - STW

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion

Lesson One - Eoraptor

Eternal - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Could It Be - Shasta627

12) Best Comedy

Nacos and a Movie - STW

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion

Midsummer Nightmare - SimplyShelbs16

The Mad Scientists Assistant - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Ron at the Symphony - Mahler Avatar

Picture This - MrDrP

13) Best Romance

Last Dance- Whitem

Nacos and a Movie - STW

Turkey Day - Neo the Saiyan Angel

This is Our Year: Sightseeing - F86Sabre53

Could It Be - Shasta 627

When the Ball Drops - GerbilHunter

14) Best Friendship

It Came with the Lanyards - SimplyShelbs16

Check the Name - Magic Flying Spud

Assorted Ficlets - purplegirl761

The Mad Scientists Assistant - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Just Like Old Times - nobody3456

The Tweeb and the Queen B - MasterDuelistMichael

15) Best Action-Adventure

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion

Lesson One - eoraptor

I'm Scared too - Magic Flying Spud

MMP Twist: Exchange - Czech8

The New Fearless Ferrett - Neotyson

This is Our Year: College - F86Sabre53

16) Best Drama

Awkweird- SimplyShelbs16

Dead Man Switch - Sentinel103

KP: Gifted - LJ58

The Line - Icarus the Foxkidd

Standards - eoraptor

Eternal - Neo the Saiyan Angel

17) Most Unlikely-Unique

Coffee Shop Nights - Magic Flying Spud

Two Diverged Into One - DisneyChannelLover

Too Close for Comfort - James SunderlandsPillow

S D Equals K - Neo the saiyan Angel.

Groundhog Daze - Mahler Avatar

KP: Gifted - LJ58

18) Best One-Shot

Lesson One - eoraptor

Check the Name - Magic Flying Spud

Turkey Day - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Ron at the Symphony - Mahler Avatar

Could It Be - Shasta627

Christmas Surprises - F86Sabre53

19) Best Novel-Sized Story

Nacos and a Movie - STW

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion

STD 2018 Feels - Jimmy1201

RJ & Martin - Emersonian

KP: Gifted - LJ58

I'm Scared Too - Magic Flying Spud

20) Best Short Story

Awkweird - SimplyShelbs16

The Initiative and Other Interruptions - Jimmy1201

Motherhood - Taurusdoodles99

The Adventures of Anna Stoppable: Trip to Japan- F86Sabre53

The Tweeb and the Queen B - MasterDuelistMichael

Reunion: Memories & Resolution - Nathaniel E. Kenway

21) Best Series

Center Will Not Hold Series - SimplyShelbs16

Blonde Moment Series - Eoraptor

S Plus D Equakls K Series - Neo the Saiyan Angel

Where the Wind Blows Series - LJ58

This Is Our Year Series - F86Sabre53

I Let Her Lie Series - Nathaniel E. Kenway

22) Best M-Rated Story

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion

STD 2018 Feels - Jimmy1201

My Kind of Hero - DismalOrc29177

An Average Day - Neo the Saiyan Angel

My RonRon Time - NeoTyson

KP: Impossible Journey- LJ58

23) Best New Author

SimplyShelbs16

DisneyChannelLover

nobody3456

reapergrimm

F86Sabre53

IcarustheFoxkidd

24) Best Single Line

Nacos and a Movie - (Chapter 26: The Fight: Round 2)

"Shego's battlesuit, meet Kim Possible! Kim Possible, meet Shego's Battlesuit!"

Drakken presented Team Possible with a nasty surprise (Shego's Battlesuit made exactly from the specs of Kim's Battlesuit) and said suit was presented dramatically (i.e. a thunderstorm).

Sky Blue Ocean Blue (purplegirl761) Single lines:

"Don't say that!" Drakken hollers. "You think there isn't a part of me that wants that more than I care to admit? You think there isn't a part of me that would still love to do exactly that? Well, there is! And every time I listen to that part of me, horrible things happen to me and the rest of the world! Ruin! Chaos! Tragedy! Mutant termites! Despair! Fast food restaurants warped beyond recognition! Screaming people! Brainwashed people! People tortured – forced to sit on ice cubes until their rears freeze!"

-from the latest chapter of Sky Blue, Ocean Blue

Last Dance - Whitem: "The two were now standing in the middle of the room, enveloped in silence, and Kim noticed that Ron was floating away from her.

"Please Ron… don't go!" A frail hand reached out to the man she had loved for her entire life. "I… I want to go with you."

Ron's slowly fading form smiled as he answered. "I'm sorry Kim, but you can't. It's not your time. You still have a few more good years left. I waited for you during my lifetime, and I can wait for you in eternity. I love you KP."

Lesson One - Eoraptor Best line: "KP, Ninja school? Sounds cool, but so totally not for me. I spent my first day tangled in, or out of, my own clothes; couldn't eat a meal for like a week, and almost wrecked the joint with a magical sumo stomp. And on top of all that? No fast food!"

"But then I realized — I'll never defeat you. You're smarter than me — than most people — and boy do you know how to win a fight. You see Kimberly Ann," Drakken lectured. "What started all of this was one little thought: If I can't take over the world, maybe she can." - I'm Scared Too

(Magic Flying Spud)

arandomshipper - KP The Princess Bride -

From behind her she heard the sound of many swords being drawn. She sighed. "You reeeeeaaaally don't wanna do this, boys."

"We have our orders."

"If you were ordered to jump off a cliff, would you do that, too? This isn't any different, when it comes down to it, except this way will be more painful."

Butterfly's Wings by Vyrkerion again

-- build up to line: [I could paraphrase a more succinct explanation, but eh it's just a nomination] His skin was pale, and somewhat translucent revealing embedded circuitry and mechanical bits hidden below the surface. Even still then the faintest hints of where freckles used to be dotted across his cheeks. His eyes were a soft brown punctuated with a brilliant glowing red emitting from the depths of his pupils. Most of his head was burnt and scarred, the remnants of the machines fusing with his body, but patches of dusty blonde hair could still be seen sticking out from his scalp.

Kim choked, "Oh… Oh god… no. NO." And with that, Kosch the Killer released his grip on Kim Possible's throat and sent the girl plummeting.As she fell, she could see Kosch mutter something and in her last moments of conscious barely lip-read the words:

-- the actual line I'm nominating:

Die. Kay. Pee.

Die KP.

25) CPNeb Kimmunity Award

SimplyShelby16, Magic Flying Spud, Jerridian, Tennente, Legionniare24601, and Neo the Saiyan Angel.

26) Kimmunity Achievement Award

Whitem, MrDrP, Neo the Saiyan Angel, Jimmy1201, Mahler Avatar, Molloy

27) Best Reviewer

Invader Johnny, MrDrP, Mindless Violence Fan, Jimmy1201, Neotyson, Uberscribber.

28) Best Story of 2018

Nacos and a Movie- STW

Possibles Pure Love Road - kmtdiccion

I'm Scared Too - Magic Flying Spud

KP: Gifted - LJ58

This is Our Year: Sightseeing - F86Sabre53

Step Up - Icarus the Foxkidd

Another Kind of Drama- Novashiro

Honey Pot - Mr. Aanonymous

29) Best Writer of 2018

STW, Kmtdiccion, Eoraptor, SimplyShelbs16, MagicFlyingSpud, Neo the Saiyan Angel, IcarustheFoxkidd, Jimmy1201.

#kim possible #fannies awards #voting #14KPFA

15 notes · View notes

jjaywmac · 5 years ago

Text

Sound familiar. August 2016. “Over the age of 60. Underlying health condition (heart problems. Pneumonia in the lungs. ICU. Insulator. Unexpectedly.” That is exactly what happened to Steve 4 years ago. Was it a virus before its time? I will never know. The doctors cured the pneumonia. He died of heart failure. It was fast. Like today. That should want you to stay home! And keep your loved ones at home! It does me. I remember only too well.

SO, how do I start with a clean slate of this? By introducing you to some books I think you may enjoy reading during this down time.

SO, I am spending today, a (férié) in France (the day after Easter is always celebrated as a holiday) by staying inside and writing a lot. Sorry. But, I cannot stop thinking about what happened to him as I read the news and all of the descriptions of what to expect. Plus, in my head, I am processing a Lot of new ideas that have come to me over the weekend. My “clean slate”/ “eternal NOW” frame of mind is running wild with new ideas of how to spend this unusual time in Paris. I have ideas for new books that excite me. I have projects that need to be completed. I have courses I want to take, places I want to walk, pictures I want to take, sites I want to develop. There is never a dull moment around here. My mind keeps me busy.

I want to spend time with my “new present”. So here is a fresh look at something that means a lot to me. What?? I have in my safe keeping, several books that I want to bring to your attention in this new day!!! OK. So a tad of past. Don’t worry. I will try to make it interesting and worth your time.

It all started on September 20, 2011. I was (for 20 years) an Entertainment Attorney (and an Employment Law Litigator) in Los Angeles, California USA. In early September 2011, I was invited by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) to be the legal representative by on a panel for the members – an E-publishing Panel. The Panel sought to empower writers to create new opportunities for work in film, television, new media, and transmedia. Since WGA did not cover book publication regardless of format, it was thought that e-publishing could be a stepping stone towards potential work on Guild-covered adaptations. So, on September 20, I joined other Panel members Lee Goldberg (The Glades), Derek Haas (Wanted), and Alexandra Sokoloff (author, Book of Shadows, and Mark Coker (Smashwords) on a panel. Our task was to discuss the latest ebook/self and indie-publishing developments. WOW, what a lineup! I got very excited. Needless to say, it was a power-packed evening with the Writer Members and members doing most of the talking. The evening flew by with everyone sharing information, questions, and answers.

The next day I said to my husband Steve Orlandella, “You need to write a book”. He said, “What? A book? I have nothing to say.” I laughed. Steve ALWAYS had something to say. So did I. I needed to write a book. And, we did.

Steve wrote eight books before he died in 2016. I have written seven (7) and am still writing every day. But, this post is about Steve and his books.

He had specific things he liked – history, cheesecake, sex, trivia, condiments (of every kind), Castle (TV show), the Titanic, and baseball. Not necessarily in that order. So, he wrote about things he liked. Now, to be honest, he was not a great American writer. He just wrote about topics he enjoyed. I was glad to see him happy. He loved working. Retirement was not his cup of tea. And, he loved writing. He created two characters he liked. And, he would spend all day creating their “banter”. I would often hear his chuckling to himself. That would be when he would come up with something he thought was particularly clever. He started out with a collection of his writings on Facebook. All of that was new at that time, and his posts were funny and interesting. When it was published, he was thrilled. He would read it over and over. Amazed and proud of himself for actually publishing a book!

Next, he tackled baseball. He was an Emmy-winning Live Sports producer for Hockey and Baseball. 9 seasons for the Dodgers. Personal friend of Vin Scully. He KNEW his baseball. Then, he wrote “his masterpiece”, a wonderful book about the Titanic. He poured his soul into this book. His love, his heart, his skill, his all. He could not believe it when he held that book in his hands. He read and reread and reread it.

It was then that he thought that he had no more to write. I did not want to see him depressed because he was happy when he had a book in progress. So, I suggested he create a detective and do mysteries – novels. After thinking about it a LONNNNNGGGGGG time, he came up with an idea. He really loved the television show “Castle”. He loved their “banter”. He would create a sexy couple – an ex-baseball player (a private investigator – Vic Landell) and hot babe attorney/news anchor (The Redhead). They would solve crimes in Sarasota, Florida (his favorite location in the world). That was how it started. It evolved from there.

So, I am going to introduce you to his books. I am not presenting them in the order they were written. I am doing this my way. Novels, first. I am suggesting you try them. they are light reading and enjoyable. And, I think the reader can experience the fun Steve was having with the dialogue and spending time with his characters. He loved Tina Louis and Dusty Springfield. Plus, he had some favorite News Anchors. So, bear with him as he enjoys his “babes” with their high heels. Short skirts and all. Red hair, long legs. A fun guy. We laughed a lot. And, I miss him. This post is dedicated to Steve Orlandella. This one’s for him. Now, the books – during this pandemic!

The first Vic Landell mystery was BURDEN OF PROOF.

1) BURDEN OF PROOF is set in and around Sarasota Florida. It is dedicated my sister, Patricia Jewell Prince, “My Sister-in-Law Patricia, Lover of Mysteries.”

Steve begins each mystery: What’s in a Name? “My father was born Vito Anthony Orlandella, and he didn’t much care for his name. “Vito” was all right, and in fact, he named his principal business The Vito Fruit Company – although throughout Boston he was often referred to as “Vic.” No real problem with the benign Anthony, it was the last name he saw as problematic. His one foray into show business as a record producer was done under the name “Tony Vito.” I’m not certain, but I believe he thought that Orlandella was too long and clumsy for a billboard. He had another name ready but never got the chance to use it. A clever anagram made by dropping the first two and the last letters of his name. Add to that, the remnants of his first name. Thus, was born “Vic Landell.” When it came time to name my pitcher-turned-detective, the choice was an easy one. Call it homage to my father.”

Next, CAPITOL MURDER.

2) CAPITOL MURDER is dedicated to “Her Royal Blondness [HRB], Long may she Reign”. It is set in and around Washington, D.C.

“What’s in a Name? The heroine of this series is Marcia Glenn. The name is borrowed from my first childhood crush – a sixth-grade, blonde goddess. For two years I pined for her from, to paraphrase Hammerstein, ‘across a crowded schoolroom.’ My passion held in check only by the fact that she didn’t know I was alive. Her sights were set on another classmate, a surfer boy wannabe with flaxen air. Sure, just plunge a knife in my heart. The irony of all this is rooted in the fact that he seemed to have absolutely no interest in her. Funny the things you remember. How this preteen vixen has now morphed into a six-foot, Titian-tressed femme fatale is a story for another time.”

3) MARATHON MURDERS.

MARATHON MURDERS is dedicated to “Dash, Winner & Still Champion”, and located in Boston.

“What’s in a Name? He was born on a farm in Maryland. He served his country in the First World War and became ill with the Spanish flu and later contracted Tuberculosis – spending most of his time in the Army as a patient in a Washington Hospital. As a result of his illness he could not live full-time with his wife and two daughters and the marriage fell apart. He was a firm believer in the notion that you write about what you know. And since he was an alcoholic, his two most famous characters were as well. He devoted much of the rest of his life to unpopular causes. He wore his country’s uniform again in the Second World War. His reward? After the war he was investigated by Congress and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee about his own life but refused to cooperate with the committee. As a result – he was blacklisted. He was sixty-six when lung cancer took his life. In his obituary, The New York Times said of him, ‘the dean of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction.’ For any fan of mysteries his name is said with a smile. For someone like me, who would love to be just a poor copy of the original, it is said with reverence.”

4) DANCE WITH DEATH. (Steve’s Favorite – he wanted me to read him passages from this one when he was in the hospital)

DANCE WITH DEATH is dedicated “To my Second Parents Rose & Gerry”. It is set in Los Angeles, California.

“What’s in a Name? She was born Marcia Colleen Glenn – her first name from the Latin, meaning ‘dedicated to Mars.’ Mars is the red planet – there is your first clue. It also means proud or warlike – that’s your second clue. Her middle name was chosen by her father to emphasize the family’s Gaelic heritage. By the age of five, her sister Katelyn was calling her ‘The Marce.’ To this day, if she likes you, call her Marce. If she doesn’t much care for you, it’s Marcia. If she flat hates your guts – it’s Ms. Glenn. Fair warning, if you call her Marsha, brother, you are just asking for trouble. When she was seventeen and turned from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, the boys in her high school started referring to her as ‘the looker.’ The lawyers at the firm where she did her internship called her ‘the stunner.’ That’s also what the crew at WWSB calls her – along with ‘the goddess.’ To the boys in Idaho Falls, she was ‘the long drink of water.’ When she knocked out a would-be assailant with one right hand, the name ‘slugger’ entered the lexicon. There are others, like ‘supermodel’ and ‘deadeye.’ But if you’ve killed someone, she’s the ‘red menace.’ And finally, to her smitten boyfriend, she is occasionally ‘Titian’ -the shade of her glorious red hair. She will also answer to ‘Irish,’ and for him only, ‘Honey,’ along with his favorite, ‘Baby.’ But, first and foremost she is always and forever – ‘the redhead.'”

5) MIDTOWN MAYHEM, dedicated “For the amazing Kris Jones”, and set in NYC. (He did not know this would be his last one.)

“What’s in a Name? It was my high-school baseball coach who first hung the nickname on me. Of the nine pitchers on his staff, eight were right-handed. When asked who the starting pitcher against Syracuse would be, he replied, “Let’s send out the lefty.” The name stuck throughout college, the minors, and my first six years in the majors. It became problematic for me when I was traded to Philadelphia – for you see, they already had a “Lefty.” He was born Steven Norman Carlton. He made his debut with the Cardinals in 1965. He was a tall, imposing man blessed with a hard fastball and nasty slider. He was soon known as an intimidating and dominating pitcher. Following a protracted salary dispute, St. Louis Cardinals owner Gussie Busch ordered Carlton traded. Eventually, he was dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies before the ‘72 season for a pitcher named Rick Wise. In time, it would be recognized as one of the most lopsided deals in baseball history. Carlton hit his stride with the Phillies. How good was he? In 1972, the down-trodden Phils won a total of 59 games – 27 of them by Carlton. That won him his first of four Cy Young Awards. He finished with 322 wins and was a consensus first ballot Hall of Famer. The day before a start, the scoreboard in Veterans Stadium would list tomorrow’s starting pitcher – Lefty. Need more? There’s a statue of him in front of Citizens Bank Park. How was I supposed to compete with all that? I could not. Since Carlton is six-foot four and your humble servant is a paltry six-foot one the players started to refer to me as Little Lefty. The day my career ended, I went back to being plain old Lefty.”

6) CASINO KILLER (Steve was writing this one when he died.)

Forty-six pages are in the can. It was to be dedicated to “John & Gloria Cataldo, Once and Forever”. It was to be set in and around Nice, France.

“What’s in a Name? It is the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea in the southeast corner of France, beneath of the base of the French Alps. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from the Italian border in the east to Saint-Tropez, Hyères, Toulon, or Cassis in the west. The area is a Department of the French Government – Alpes-Maritimes. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. As the French might refer to it – beau ravage – beautiful shoreline. It began as a winter health resort for the British upper class at the end of the 18th century. With the arrival of the railway in the mid-19th century, it became the playground and vacation spot of British, Russian, and other aristocrats, including Queen Victoria. It was the English who coined the phrase, the French Riviera. After World War II, the south of France became a popular tourist destination and convention site. The area went off the charts in the 1950s when a beautiful girl from Philadelphia moved into the Royal palace of the one and only principality. Millionaires and celebrities built homes there and routinely spent their summers. The region has one more name. In 1887, a French author named Stéphen Liégeard published a book about the coastline. So taken was he by the color of the Mediterranean, he used the words Azure Coast in the title – in French that translates as Côte d’Azur.”

Steves first book is delightful – STEVESPEAK – 3 YEARS ON FACEBOOK.

STEVESPEAK is one of my favorites for spending time with him and getting to know him better. Plus, it is dedicated to me: “To Janet, The wind beneath my wings, And the power behind my throne.”

In his Prologue, he writes: “I’m not sure how I got on Facebook. Most likely it was word of mouth. Like many of you I started small, but as my list of friends grew, so did my activity. A funny thing happened along the way, I found my voice. Along with connecting with friends, I had the chance to be critical, historical, passionate, and I hope, funny. This book traces almost 3 years on Facebook, and is designed to give my fellow “Facebookers,” An idea of what other people are saying. For what it’s worth, you will learn some things about me. My love for baseball, my interest in “The Titanic,” my passion for my hometown, Boston.

“Stevespeak” was coined by my wife, who insists I have my own language. Well that’s probably not true, but there are some words that are uniquely mine. For instance, only in my world is there a planet “Smecktar.” Those pimples on your shoulder blades are “bacne,” and “Xerocracy” is government by photocopy. If something is dead, it’s “kersfuncken.” “Inuendo” is Italian for colonoscopy.

That said, there are some things you need to know in order to navigate your way through this book. There are many references to something called “HRB.” “HRB” is “Her Royal Blondness.” That would be my wife. She is an attorney and is sometimes referred to as the “blonde barrister.” Her maiden name is Janet Jewell. Christine became Kris and is my sister. “Tori” and “Icto” are other names for our friend Victoria Lucas. Tori’s sister is Lil, and sometimes, Liz. The “Knife” is Joe Klinger. “Fabulous 52” was the old Saturday night movie series on CBS in Los Angeles. I stole it, (I mean, researched it) and it became the “Fabulous 42.” Most of the rest is self-explanatory.”

Steve’s Masterpiece – TITANIC.

TITANIC was his lifetime achievement, the one he held close to his heart. He dedicated it to his mother. He wrote, “To my Mother Therese, The Real Historian in The Family.”

“In the fall of 1960, I was a ten-year-old, growing up in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Even then I was sarcastic, opinionated, and well on my way to becoming obnoxious. The phrase most often used was, ‘A little too smart for his own good.’ Perhaps. Duplicit in all this were my parents who spoiled me rotten. One of my numerous privileges was permission to stay up late on Saturday night…very late.

Toward the end of the 1950s, television in Los Angeles was in a state of flux. The Country’s number three [now number two] market had seven stations, a wealth of airtime, and a dearth of programming. The three network affiliates and the four independents turned to motion pictures to fill the void so much so that one station, Channel 9, ran the same movie every night for a week. Hey, I love Jimmy Cagney, but how many times can you watch ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’? The stations also had the nasty habit of cutting the films to pieces, the classic case being Channel 7, the ABC affiliate who filled their 3:30-5pm slots by slicing and dicing 2-hour movies down to 67 minutes. They came close to cutting Ingrid Bergman out of ‘Casablanca.’ Channel 2, the CBS Affiliate, had no such problem. [They had ‘Lucy’; they had ‘Jackie Gleason’.] ‘The Fabulous 52’ was reserved for Saturday night at 11:30pm, and, since the only things that followed the movie were the National Anthem and a test pattern, they ran uncut. The station held the rights to a package of relatively recent films from 20th Century Fox.

One Saturday afternoon, my dad announced, ‘Titanic is on tonight.’ I had no idea who or what was ‘Titanic’, but we gathered in the family room at 11:30. For the next two hours, I sat transfixed, mesmerized by what we were seeing. If you are scoring at home, it was the 1953 version with Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb and a young Robert Wagner. They had me.

In 1964, I came across a copy of A Night to Remember, Walter Lord’s seminal work on the events of April 14-15, 1912, and the following year, I saw the movie made [in England, 1958] from Lord’s book. It was a film made by people who wanted to get it right. This film was the game changer.

The Fox movie opens with a page of text proclaiming that all the facts in the film were taken right from the United States Senate and British Board of Trade Inquiries. Really? Even then, Fox knew how to ‘play fast and loose with the truth.’ As good as their movie was – and it was good, it paled before the Brit’s film. Fifteen hundred people did not all stand together, sing ‘Nearer My God To Thee’, and meekly sink into the North Atlantic. They fought and struggled until their last breath, trying not to freeze or drown in the unforgiving sea. Madeleine Astor wasn’t an elegant matron. She was in fact a pregnant teenager. That was it. ‘Game On!’

I absorbed every book I could find, any TV program I could watch, and every newspaper on microfilm, along with help from the Titanic Historical Society. Add that to my natural affinity for ships, and an ‘obsession’ was born. For some, it’s The Civil War; for others, it’s the Kennedy Assassination; for me, it is The Royal Mail Steamship Titanic.

Part of the obsession stems from the fact that no event in history is so loaded with conjecture, myths, and downright lies, some of which are ‘beauties.’ One example: A young David Sarnoff [co-founder of RCA] became famous telling the world how he was the first to pick-up the Titanic’s distress call in the station on the roof of Wanamaker’s Department Store and how he remained at the key all Sunday night and well into the next day. Great story? Absolutely. Truthful story? Absolutely not. Wanamaker’s was closed on Sunday, and even when the store was open, Sarnoff was the office manager. Three other employees of The Marconi Company stood the watch.

Fox reloaded and fired again in 1997. This time, they tried it with a seemingly unlimited budget and an amateur historian calling the shots. Movie making? Unmatched. Story telling? Not so much. History? Nonexistent. There is a word for what you wind up with when you invent the leading characters. Fiction. Now, nobody loves Kate Winslet ‘in flagrante delicto’ more than I do, but the truth is better. Thus, ”Jack Dawson’ and ‘Rose DeWitt’ join ‘Julia Sturges’ and ‘Lady Marjory Bellamy’ as mythical creatures on a real ship.

And, since you’re making stuff up, how about a little character assassination? The 1997 film depicted First Officer William Murdoch taking but ultimately rejecting a bribe from make-believe villain ‘Caledon Hockley.’ Murdoch was also shown shooting two passengers dead after he presumed, they intended to storm one of the remaining lifeboats. He then saluted Chief Officer Henry Wilde and committed suicide with a revolver. None of this ever happened. After the picture’s director [name withheld] refused to take out the bogus scenes, studio executives flew to Murdoch’s hometown to issue his relatives an apology. As for the movie, if you are looking for an accurate depiction of events – keep looking. Put another way, there was a ship called Titanic, and it sank. After that, you’re on your own.

The Civil War is far and away the all-time champion of most books. [One of Titanic’s passengers wrote ‘The Truth about Chickamauga.’] Second? The runner-up is World War II. Third? The correct guess is the Titanic. So, what is my mission statement? What else? Write yet another book. Tell her story, once again. This time come armed with all I know and have learned in the wake of Doctor Robert Ballard’s stunning discovery of the wreck in 1985. I will attempt to detail what is correct and dispel, whenever possible, what is not.

I spent my career working in television, the first seven years producing TV News. What did I learn? I learned skepticism tinged with a bit of cynicism, and it has served me well. So, I will do your bidding. On your behalf, I will be skeptical, factual, analytical, and when required, cynical. There is one thing I cannot be, dispassionate. I will stipulate to a love of all ships – but Her most of all. By now, you may be asking yourself, ‘Why so many pictures?’ I confess that, too, is the TV producer in me. You always try to put a face with a story. Plus, there is always the possibility that you can’t recognize Turbinia.

If I am standing at all, it is on the shoulders of some truly great authors. I have read, re-read, and re-re-read their work over the years and have researched – borrowed – from them all. To the best of my ability, everything in this book is true. I believe in the concept that, if the Lord wanted us to remain silent, he wouldn’t have given us [brackets]. So, on occasion, you’ll see a comment from yours truly. [I’ll be that most irritating of shipmates – the loud, opinionated one.]

The longest section of the book concerns the area around the Boat Deck between midnight and 2:20am. If it seems long [it’s real time] and overly detailed, I apologize, but to me, this is the heart of the narrative. Hundreds of little dramas played out on a sloping deck in the middle of a freezing ocean. Loved ones were torn apart, and families were destroyed. And with it came the sub-plots. Some got in lifeboats, and some did not. Some were allowed in the boats, and some were not. All of this begs the question, why? Regardless, these are their stories, and on their behalf, I make no apologies. I have tried to keep the technological parts under control and not drown my readers in facts and figures. But the brains and skill that created the Olympic-class liners are very much a part of this story.

Allow me just a couple of more thoughts before we proceed. There is one sentence that is common to virtually every book written about the RMS Titanic. ‘It had been a mild winter in the Arctic.’ It had, indeed. Ice that had been forming since well before the dawn of man was now at last free. Unfettered, it could leave Greenland and move into the Labrador Current and begin its journey south toward the shipping lanes. The ice was no different than previous years, only this year, there would be more than usual, much more. There were small pieces of ice, what sailors called ‘growlers.’ There were large sections known as ‘sheet ice,’ and larger still, ‘pack ice.’ In between were hundreds of what every seaman feared most, what the Norsemen referred to as ‘mountains of ice.’ Icebergs.

If you’re familiar with the advertising business, you probably know about the concepts of ‘marketing research’ and ‘brand recognition.’ Countless studies have been commissioned to find out what people can identify and what they like. The results are often quite surprising. For example, inquiries have determined that far more people [around the world] can recognize the ‘Cavallino Rampante’ [in English, ‘The Prancing Horse’ aka the ‘Ferrari’ logo] than can recognize ‘Shell’ or ‘Coca-Cola.’ Then there is my favorite. For decades, focus groups, when asked to identify the most famous ship in the world, gave the traditional answer, ‘Noah’s Ark’. No more. The runaway number one is now ‘Titanic’. That’s ‘brand recognition.’

There is no way to tell the whole story in this little book, yet I will do my best. Call me crazy [you wouldn’t be the first] and maybe a little arrogant [see previous], but I feel it’s my duty to help set the record straight for fifteen hundred souls who went to a cold, watery grave that night. Time to depart. ‘All ashore that’s goin’ ashore!'”

THE GAME

THE GAME is dedicated, “To My Father, for that rainy day at Fenway and A thousand games of ‘catch’”. Steve was passionate about baseball. He knew baseball in-and-out. He was the expert’s expert. He would say, “I know what I like.” Well, I’m here to tell you that he “liked”, [see also, “was passionate about”] the Red Sox, Boston, the Patriots, the Celtics, Lotus cars, Ferraris, meatballs, pasta of any kind, pundits, condiments, the Titanic, HRB, his family, and Vin Scully – not necessarily in that order.

He writes in THE GAME Foreword: “The History books tell us that the first professional baseball game was held on May 4, 1869, as the Cincinnati Red Stockings ‘eked’ out a 45-9 win. No doubt, the first baseball story was told on May 5, 1969. No sport – not basketball, not football, not hockey – has the oral tradition of the national pastime. And, like any good oral tradition, it has been passed from generation to generation. Baseball stories in one form or another are as much a part of our game as the infield fly and the rosin bag. In this book, they come in all sizes and shapes – short stories, essays, expressions, rules, jokes, and slang, to name just a few.

The first ‘Baseball Balladeer’ in my life was one Vincent Edward Scully, known to three generations of fans as ‘Vin.’ For baseball-ignorant Southern Californians, he was a Godsend. Far more than their voice, he was their teacher. At that point, the game that had been thousands of miles away was as close as your transistor radio or the ‘am’ in your car. He gave Los Angeles the who, what, when, where, and most importantly, the why. He studied at the foot of the master Red Barber and is acknowledged as the best in the business. I know this how? He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame 43 years ago! For nine years, I was lucky enough to be his producer. I called him ‘The Doctor’ for his PhD in baseball. Try explaining the balk rule to the man who taught you half of what you know about the game.

When I began covering the Angels, I got to know Emil Joseph ‘Buzzie’ Bavasi. If you looked up ‘character’ in the dictionary, it would say, ‘see Buzzie.’ In the ‘40s, he was Branch Rickey’s top lieutenant and had a hand in breaking Baseball’s color line as well as dealing with Vero Beach in the acquisition of Dodgertown. He became General Manager and earned a reputation as a shrewd and tough negotiator. Buzzie loved to tell the story about contract haggling with a certain player [still alive, so no names]. He had a fake contract with a very low salary created for the team’s best player. He left it on his desk and excused himself for a moment, convinced that the player would take a peak. Needless to say, that when he returned, the negotiations ended quickly and in Buzzie’s favor. He had been schooled in [and ultimately taught] the Branch Rickey way of playing the game [stressing fundamentals, nurturing talent, and the importance of a strong farm system]. In the years we worked together, I never once overheard a conversation when he wasn’t at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a story or anecdote. He lived for baseball and lived to talk about it.

In 1985, I began working with Bob Starr. Bob, or as we called him, ‘Bobo’, was the broadcaster’s broadcaster. He could do play-by-play for anything – baseball, football, your kid’s hopscotch game, anything. Bobo was a graduate of the KMOX School of Broadcasting. The famed St. Louis radio station produced Harry Caray, Jack and Joe Buck, Buddy Blattner, Joe Garagiola, and Bob Costas, among others. He had that smooth, Midwestern style, and on the air, you’d swear he was talking just to you. I once shared a golf cart with him for a round – four hours well-spent looking for my ball [as usual] and listening. He loved to tell stories, some on himself. While playing 18 holes on an off day, Bob had a heart attack. Upon arrival at the hospital, the doctors asked if he were in pain. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘in my backside.’ Mystified, the doctors went over the test results. A physical examination revealed that the patient still had his pants on. The source of the pain was two Titleists in his back pocket. How we miss Bobo.

The average baseball fan may not recognize the name Jack Lang, but every player knew him and loved it when he called. Jack was for twenty years the executive secretary of The Baseball Writers of America, and if he telephoned you, it meant that you just won the Cy Young Award, the Most Valuable Player Award, the Rookie-of-the-Year, or had hit the ‘Baseball Lottery,’ induction into the Hall of Fame. His vocation was sportswriter [a New York beat writer], and for forty years, he was one of the best. I met Jack in 1987. We had been hired by Victor Temkin to do sports licensing for MCA/Universal. It was there I discovered his sense of humor, his humanity, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the game. We would speak on the phone almost every day for an hour. Five minutes would be devoted to business, the remaining fifty-five given over to ‘talkin’ baseball.’ I firmly believe that I could have put the phone on speaker, turned on a tape recorder, left the room, and returned thirty minutes later to find another chapter for this book. In 1997, we took a production crew to his home for an interview. It was the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s entry into the major leagues, and who better to discuss it than the man who covered it. Jack lived in the little village of Ft. Salonga on the North Coast of Long Island, [Vin used to refer to him as ‘the Squire of Ft. Salonga’] in a modest house with an office on the side. The office contained a desk, two chairs, and enough baseball memorabilia to open a museum. [The whole place could have been shipped, as is, to Cooperstown.]

Buzzie, Bobo, and the Squire are gone, and, believe me, this book would have been easier to write if they were still here. We still have Vinnie [long may he reign]. If there is such a thing as a sub-dedication, this is for them. They and countless others had a hand in writing this book. I have tried to fashion a work with something for everyone, from the hard-core fan to the young people just learning about the game. In so doing, I’ve run the gamut all the way from baseball history to baseball jokes. I hope you enjoy it and hope it adds to your love for ‘the game’.”

On amazon.com and smashwords.

Best, Jay

A CLEAN SLATE – BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS Sound familiar. August 2016. "Over the age of 60. Underlying health condition (heart problems. Pneumonia in the lungs.

#life #observations

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kateofthecanals · 7 years ago

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For The (Not)Watch: Episode 7.3

The Queen’s Nap Time

Guys, remember after Season 5 ended, all the showpologists came out in full force to declare S5 superior to Feastdance because those 2 books are too “slow” and “boring” and “nothing happens”? Remember how they thought S5 was better because there was less talkie-talkie and more stabby-stabby? Remember?

It’s okay, I’m sure they conveniently don’t either...

The opening scene of this episode is TWENTY. MINUTES. LONG. Sure, it’s Jon & Davos’s (miraculous) touch-down in Dragonstone, culminating in a reunion between Jon & Tyrion and the much-anticipated first meeting between Jon and Dany but HOLY SHIT WAS IT DULL. So Jon & Davos pull up in their row boat and are greeted by Missandei, who has a certain extra pep in her step today ifyaknowhatimean. Davos immediately begins hitting on her but she swervin’ cuz she spoken for, old man!! She also tells J & D and their soldiers to wipe their feet on the mat and drop their weapons at the door, like this is Vaes Dothrak 2.0 (because that worked out so well last time, eh?). The Northern party is escorted by a band of busted-wig Dothraki and make their way up the Great Wall of Dragonstone. Every. Fucking. Step. Jon and Tyrion’s first convo is literally about Sandra and whether or not she “misses” Tyrion [eyeroll]. Jon’s like ummm awkwaaaarrrrd before Tyrion proclaims it “a sham marriage, and never consummated”. Jon’s like “T.M.I., bro“ and then Tyrion’s like, “well ANYWAY, she’s a lot smarter than she lets on” (correction: a lot smarter than the writers let on, thankyouverymuch), to which Jon replies, “She’s starting to let on.” HAHAHAHAHAHA shut up. They continue to make lame small talk until even Drogon is like “OH MY GOD ENOUGH” and swoops down upon them and they all hit the deck. Actually, this moment came immediately after Jon declared “I’m not a Stark” because D&D think they’re clever. Jon is proper SHOOK at seeing dragons for the first time, and honestly it’s the most emotion we’ve seen from him in like 3-4 seasons.

“Hold me closer, tiny Lannistaaahhhh...”

Up above some perch overlooking the walkway, Mel is looking all wistful as she watches Jon and Davos make their approach and then Varys, who looks like he’s been over-hitting the self-tanner, creeps up behind her and asks why she isn’t down there to greet Jon too, and she says, “I’ve done my part. I’ve brought Ice and Fire together.” (Again, D&D soooo clevah!) Mel declares she’s retiring from the king-advisin’ game but Varys ain’t buying it. She admits she and Jon & Davos aren’t on speaking terms because of “mistakes” she made and is fixing to bugger off to Volantis. Varys is like I’LL HELP YOU PACK, but she’s like pump the brakes, I’ll be back later cuz I have a date with death in Westeros AND SO DO YOOOOUUU! Well needless to say, that wiped the bronzer right off Varys’s face.

We finally get to the Stone Throne Zone™ where Missandei spends 8 minutes rattling off Dany’s titles, and Davos is like “uhhhhh, this is Jon Snow, he likes pancakes!” or whatever, and when Dany calls him “my lord” Davos is like “EXCUSE YOU, HE IS KING IN THE NORTH, SHOW SOME RESPECT” and Dany decides to give us a history lesson about Torrhen Stark (AKA D&D’s attempt at trying to convince us they did some actual research lolololol) and how he totally gave it up to Aegon the Conqueror and is looking at Jon like

She also has to ask Tyrion what big words mean because of course she does, and Jon’s just like, sorry, I ain’t about that bending-the-knee life and reminds her that her father murdered his grandfather and uncle AND OMIGOD CAN’T YOU JUST SEE HOW THEY’RE FALLING IN LOVE, YOU GUYS??? She apologizes for her dad being a douche but still insists he bow down and she’ll make him Warden of the North instead and they can all be friendsies. Jon’s like, cool story, but nah, and insists that Dany needs his help. She’s like “bitch where?” and Davos steps in to say that they coulda stormed King’s Landing if they wanted to (snicker), and Jon asks Dany why SHE hasn’t done that yet. A VERY GOOD QUESTION THAT I WANTED TO HEAR HER ANSWER TO but oops, nevermind, Jon went ahead and answered it for her; in fact, he must have watched last week’s episode because he seemed to know her whole (dumb) plan! Jon finally gets around to mentioning the Army of the Dead and the Night King and everyone’s just rolling their eyes. Dany then spends another 5 minutes (woodenly) monologuing about her life story. Her whole point being that... actually, I’m not sure, she was pretty much just rambling, but I’m sure D&D thought it was super profound. They find themselves at an impasse, so Davos decides it’s a good time to start rattling off Jon’s resume, but when he gets to the part about the stabby-deathy-wakey, Jon’s like

WHY, tho?? Even Mel stopped just short last episode of mentioning that Jon’s a reanimated corpse. I don’t understand why this is such a mystery...

Jon still refuses to bend the knee, and Dany declares him a rebel, but then Varys comes in and whispers in her ear and suddenly she’s like, “SO, my peeps will show you to your rooms, take a load off, enjoy some room service, ring the bell if you need anything!” As she begins to walk away, Jon asks, “Am I your prisoner?” To which she replies, “Not yet.” [CUE PORN MUSIC]

Jon and Davos leave, and Varys tells Dany about how the ships sailing back south to Dorne were ambushed by Euron Two-Hands and how errybody was either killed or captured.

CUT TO Theon being dragged out of the water by some Ironborn who ask him if Yara is dead or not, and he says he tried to save her, and Yoda Harlaw is like “there is no try!” and they all leave him in a heap on the poop deck.

Meanwhile, in King’s Landing, all those smallfolk who should be in open rebellion over the usurper queen who murdered they queen they actually loved along with half the city and their religious center are gleefully applauding Euron Both-Eyes as he parades how own niece plus Ellaria and Tyene through the streets on leashes.

So yeah, Pause. Can we talk for a second about how the smallfolk are portrayed on this show? Last week, Olenna gave a speech about how the smallfolk (or, the ��mob”, as they are referred to this week) are just a bunch of morons who will basically just go along with whatever you tell them, and this episode proved that statement to be correct. Showing us, once again, how there are literally NO CONSEQUENCES to anything on this show. Remember in Season 2 when the smallfolk rioted just cuz Joffrey wouldn’t give them any bread? Cersei committed an act of ACTUAL TERRORISM, and she’s being cheered in the streets now.

Anyway, Euron is prancing through the streets like a rock star, panties flying at his face, and he says he’s getting a boner and calls Theon a “twat” (I didn’t need to mention this is a D&D-written episode, right?). He rides into the throne room to respectful applause and Ellaria pees a little when she sees Gregor -- because remember EVERYONE KNOWS IT’S GREGOR. Euron presents Ellaria & Tyene as the “gift” for Cersei and she’s like “awwww and I didn’t get you anything... and I won’t until the war is over.” Euron and Jaime then have another shade-off, where Euron is bragging about how the mob loves him, and Jaime reminding him that this same mob spat at Cersei not long ago.... WHAT BRAINLESS SHEEP, AMIRITE?!? Euron then asks Jaime’s advice on how Cersei likes it in the sack, and whether or not she likes “a finger in the bum?” EMMYS ARE ALREADY IN THE MAIL, FELLAS!

Next we have another interminably long scene in a dungeon that’s so clearly an attempt at awards-baiting for Lena and Indira, where Cersei just starts monologuing at Ellaria about murdering Myrcella (apparently we care about our kids again today) and taunts her about Gregor, who is standing just off to the side, killing Oberyn. VERY LONG STORY short, Cersei ends up poisoning Tyene in the same manner that Ellaria did Myrcella and then leaves them there so Ellaria can watch Tyene die. I guess. It was dumb.

So, for those (not) keeping score, one episode after D&D pat themselves on the back for having 4 Strong Women™ in one scene together talking politics, 3 of those women have been imprisoned and/or murdered, by another woman. #FEMINIST

After this, Cersei makes a b-line for Jaime and immediately gives him a blowjob and I’m just like OH NO is Jaime’s dick gonna fall off now???

The wake up the next morning in blissful afterglow because character development is for sissies, when there’s a knock on the door. 40-something Cersei hops out of bed with her still-nubile 20-something bod to answer (yes, it was clearly the same body double from the WoS, because an aging woman’s body has no place on this show except for laughs or shock value). Jaime’s like “no, nobody can see us together!” and she’s like “meh nbd.” She opens the door to some Mya Stone-looking babe -- who is rocking the same hairstyle as her, and no I don’t think that was supposed to be a coincidence? -- who tells her that Tycho Nestoris is in the hizzy.

Tycho congratulates her(??) for blowing up the sept, but she insists it was an accident... even though fucking HOT PIE knows she did it. Anyway, lots more talkie-talkie about she’s in hella debt and Iron Bank wants to invest in a “winner” and Cersei throwing some shade about the Iron Bank suffering because Dany put the kibosh on the slave trade and hold on a minute Braavos is the only Free City that does NOT have slaves??? Uggghhhh... Anyway, she says that the Iron Bank should invest in her because slaves and dragons can’t pay their debts. Okay, whatever...

Back on sunny Dragonstone, we reach peak-meta as Tyrion approaches Jon on a cliffside and says that he (Jon) looks way better than him (Tyrion) while brooding. [cue ALL the eye-rolling] Tyrion’s all bummed out because he didn’t foresee the Greyjoy attack, and the pained look on his face and in his voice seems to be channeling D&D as they have to admit that their golden boy is actually fallible! Jon’s whining about how Dany took his ship and no one believes his story about the walkers, but Tyrion says he believes him. Jon just wants to go back home, and Tyrion actually says, “It’s hard to believe you became King In The North by giving up that easily”, and even Jon has to look into the camera like he’s on “The Office”. Blah blah blah, talk talk talk, then FINALLY Jon comes out with the dragonglass pitch, which Tyrion delivers to Dany. He also quotes himself from the previous scene, saying “a wise man once said” but Dany totally calls him out on it... which would be awesome if SHE WASN’T ALWAYS QUOTING HIM HERSELF. Tyrion’s like, look, just give him the dragonglass and let him be on his way. Dany brings up what Davos said about Jon taking a knife to the heart and wonders what the heck it meant, and Tyrion’s just like “ahhhh those kooky Northerners!”

Skip to later and Jon and Dany having a heart-to-heart outside and she tells him he can have all the dragonglass he wants but won’t answer him when he asks if she believes him about the Night King.

Up in Winterfell, Sandra is taking charge, y’all! She’s struttin’ around the grounds with her posse LF, Bronze Yohn, and Maester Whatshisname and is not happy with the amount of food stores because, as she points out, all the armies in the North will eventually end up at Winterfell (oh REALLY??) when winter comes and they need to be prepared for that, so she proposes “borrowing” grain stores from all the other keeps in the North for the duration of winter and they can have back whatever’s left when winter is over. Then she passes the smith and is like “PUT SOME LEATHER ON THOSE DANG BREASTPLATES YOU AMATEURS!” Bronze Yohn and Maester peel off but LF is still sticking to her like glue, telling her that “command suits you.” He then goes into what seems like another version of the “chaos is a laddah!!” speech except even less sensical. Like seriously, what even the hell? “Fight the battles with your mind! Everything you’ve seen before you will see again!”

Just then, someone comes up behind Sandra (who is absolutely RAPT by LF’s speech, mind you) and tells her there’s someone at the gate. I won’t lie, my stomach did a flip -- could it be?? Is it?? Will they??

Ahhhhhh no, of course not. It’s just Bran, who has apparently been watching the episode too because he looks bored as fuuuuuck. He’s just like “oh hi.” Sandra bursts into tears and hugs him, and he just sits there, emotionless. So, somewhere between the Wall and Winterfell, his personality became as paralyzed as his legs...

So the two of them are chilling in the godswood where Sandra (correctly) points out that Bran is actually the true heir to Winterfell. Bran’s like, “nah, that ain’t for me. I’m the Three-Eyed Raven!” and Sandra’s like “I don’t know what that means”. He tries to explain (badly) and Sandra’s all “uhhhhh kaaayyy?”

Then Bran goes into full Creep Mode and begins to recount her wedding in the godswood to Ramsay, which he refers to as “beautiful”. At which point she’s just like

So that shot of Sandra from the trailer where she’s exiting the godswood on the verge of tears is actually because she’s been triggered by her own damn brother reminding her of her marriage to a rapist and calling it “beautiful”. ANOTHER GREAT STARK REUNION, GUYS!!

Also... Bran KNEW ABOUT HER MARRIAGE TO RAMSAY THE WHOLE TIME?? And he never mentioned it to anyone?? Bloodraven? Meera? Hodor?? Like, “oh shit, my sister has been through some nonsense, I wish I was there to help her or something!” Just... nothing???

Anyway, Sandra almost got to have a reaction to her trauma as if it still matters or something, QUICK, CUTAWAY TO ANOTHER SCENE!!

Ahhhh, Jorah’s raw, scaly flesh, perfect! So, long story short, the procedure totally worked, Jorah is no worse for wear other than just a bad sunburn, and Sam can add “totally cured Westerosi AIDS” to his list of things to brag about. Jorah skips off to go find his Kuhleeeezy again, and literally there was no point to this storyline whatsoever. Jorah is fine, he learned absolutely nothing, and even Sam didn’t even get like a promotion or a raise or anything. Just a pat on the back from the now-bearded Archmaester Slughorn and alls well that ends well!

Back on Dragonstone, Dany wants to attack Euron’s fleet on her dragons but she gets talked out of it. The comes a whirlwind montage of the Unsullied attacking Casterly Rock, which they are able to do successfully because of Tyrion’s knowledge of the sewers. But OOPS here comes the Ironborn fleet! Grey Worm has a concern...

Meanwhile, the rest of the Lannister forces are storming... Highgarden? Freaking Horn Hill looked better than Highgarden, wtf? Anyway, apparently Jaime and the Lannister army sieges and takes HG off-camera in less than a minute, because we needed to spend that time on pointless, redundant dialogue in the first-half of the episode. So Jaime finds Olenna in her chambers, and Olenna’s like “you’re cool with your queen being a total tyrant then, huh?” And Jaime ACTUALLY says that once the war is over, it won’t matter HOW she got there. Uhhhhhhh okay, bro! Sadly, he’s right, though, because literally nothing matters on this show anymore. He offers her some poison in her wine and she’s like

And before she peaces out, she tells Jaime to tell Cersei that she’s the one who killed Joffrey. BUUURRRRN!

Now, I’m not sure if that was supposed to be a revelation for the audience or just for Jaime... because I feel like even the most casual GoT fan already knew this?

Also -- DID JAIME AND OLENNA JUST HAVE THE SCENE THAT SHOULD’VE HAPPENED BETWEEN JAIME AND TYRION AT THE END OF SEASON 4???

Also also, it begs the question -- who DID Jaime think killed Joffrey?? Obviously not Tyrion... and likely not Sansa either. Was this ever even addressed?? I can’t recall.

ANYWAY, I’m too bored to care. Amazing how these episodes just get worse and worse in a season that was supposed to have “fixed” the pacing issues lmao.

And btw, when I said that Sandor would not be seen again for the next 3 to 4 episodes after the premiere, I was only half-joking.... buuuut that seems to be entirely the case after all. Sigh...

#got #got shit #got spoilers #got season 7 #got episode 7.3 #the queen's justice #for the (not)watch

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soulful-ofevans · 8 years ago

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Just A Fan P.3 - Chris Evans Fanfic

Pt. 1 // Pt. 2

warnings: none, just FLUFF.

words: 3k (IK it’s A LOT OKAY?!)

summary: You play a legendary heroine from Marvel. Teaming up with some of the world’s greatest superheroes. Chris is infatuated with you, admiring your multitude of roles. The whole cast, today at this panel saw the perfect opportunity to surprise the crowd and Chris with his Hollywood crush.

Previously... “Is she here? Do you… are you insinuating, sorry guys! I’m…just like perspiring, just thinking of this clip.” The audience gave a loud “Aw!” to Chris’ infatuation with the idea that she was actually in the building. ---

How was Chris suppose to know you were just going to pop out of curtains?! Walking across the stage to an empty chair that had been placed on the end near Anthony and Joe while the lights were out. Your walk was so laid back and carefree. Your smile was so warm and friendly to the crowd of almost a thousand adoring fans. Yet, you composition gave off this vibe that you knew them all. Your demeanor to everyone was both soft and influential.

Looking like a goddess in heels, when you waltzed right past him, Chris wished he knew how much of a dope he had looked like during that moment.

When you appeared in the spotlight, his face was caught by the cameras from fans. Those bright rosy cheeks coming close to a blazing fire when the sweet scent of your perfume lingered near him from when you passed him on stage. Those bold base notes from your perfume left a trail that Chris desperately wanted to just get up and follow.

Wild roses, fruity bergamot mixed with the sandalwood from a Santalum tree.

He drank in your figure, probably looking like a creep to the audience. Chris didn’t care, you were a dream to be seen. Your smile, so wide and bright as you laughed at whatever the commentator had asked or stated as you sat down. Chris saw the mouths of fans moving rapidly, but he couldn’t hear anything. The world’s noise was blocked out by the sound of your voice, up and close. The sound of his heart pumping at the twice the speed, which mixture in with your laugh that echoed in his brain.

Then he had to go and fuck it all up.

If Chris had only realized that he still had the damn microphone held up to his lips, he wouldn’t have gotten his whole damn foot stuck in his mouth.

Just two words.

Two words which would become the number one hashtag twitter in just an hour. Two words that caused Tumblr to make a galore of gifs from videos catching him, soon to be, iconic phrase.

“Holy shit...”

“Oh damn! Chris Evans just had a stroke! Seb call a bus ‘cause Evans needs to be defibrillated!” The audience gasped but then broke into laughter, seeing this as some ‘joke’ or ‘prank’ that had been planned all along.

Chris thanked the God’s above for Anthony Mackie, who knew how to get the awkward moments turned into hilarious ones.

This was no joke to Chris, though. His dream of meeting you, talking to you, worshiping you, was thrown in the trash with those two damn words...

‘Oh god, what did I just fucking do?’ Chris scolded himself internally, trying to bury the embarrassment.

Did anyone expect that from a film-franchise icon like Chris Evans? No. That was why it was so easy for you to just laugh it off, trying to avoid the embarrassment from a joke you obviously had missed. You’d already gotten seated in your chair, legs all proper and microphone turned on when the low-toned mumbling from a man came out the speakers.

“Holy shit...”

Your jaw dropped, forming an oval. Whipping your head towards the culprit of the mumbled words. The cast had gone silent now, whispering to each other about something you were missing, again.

Your eyes finally landed on the one and only, Chris Evans. You knew that voice anywhere. Especially when it came out of the speakers, whispering two words so softly it almost took your breath away...

He was just staring at you, like no one else in the world mattered, except you. Confusion was clearly showing on your face because Chris quickly gathered himself together and snapped himself away from your eyes staring at him, bewildered.

“Evans you gotta keep the geek inside ya, Bud! We can’t stop this press conference while you go take a breather backstage!” The audience laughed along with Jeremy. He was referring to the moment before you walked out onto the stage probably. You hadn’t been able to hear the interview at all, so you had no knowledge of anything except the three, very confusing minutes you had been on stage for.

“Let’s get the ball rolling! We have a question for our lovely surprise guest, Y/N! But...obviously, I need to talk about the elephant in the room,”

“Chris’s inability to breath right now?” Sebastian interrupted. The crowd laughed and you couldn’t help but giggle behind your hand as you saw Evans go from a subtle pink to a crimson red.

To be honest, he was so cute being all flustered like that. You could feel the fluttering in your heart when you saw Chris’s nervous face.

“Seb, stahp! Look, I’m just a huge, HUGE fan of yours, Y/N. Sorry!” Chris spoke, leaning forward to find you on the end. Smiling, he waved down to you as the room laughed at his admission of fangirling. The fans must’ve loved it because their screams had doubled in volume ever since he dropped the Holy bomb on you.

You waved back and shook your head, brushing off his apology like it was nothing. They didn’t give you an Oscar for nothing... “It’s okay!” You laughed towards Chris, giving him a warm smile. “I love your work as well Before We Go was beautifully shot and you were spectacular in it.”

Chris tensed up at the thought of you seeing something so personal as his directing debut. For some reason, Chris knew you weren’t bullshitting him. He saw it in your crinkled eyed smile and relaxed posture. He lost all the oxygen in his blood when he realized that you actually loved his work.

You, an Academy Award winner, Four Time Golden Globe Winner, Three-Time Emmy Winner... loved his work.

“Thank you, so much! My god, I can feel myself like blushing, I’m sorry, I’m ruining this whole press conference with my fan...boying?” Chuckling, you shook your head at him.

“Nah, bro. You didn’t ruin it. You made it fun, cause now imma be watchin’ you to see when you starin’ at Y/N. I got you, baby. I got you...” Anthony sent a wink your way, tipping back his head and giving you a sloppy smirk. You just leaned back into your seat, laughing loudly with everyone around you. Even Chris laughed along, secretly prayed inside his heart that the twenty-second conversation you just had with him wouldn’t be the last.

“Okay! They have announced the start of shooting, finally! For Red Heart’s stand alone film, ‘Red Heart: Beginning The Revolution’ !”

The crowd let out a massive roar of applause and excitement. Even Chris, Sebastian, RDJ, Elizabeth, Paul, Tom, Anthony, and Samuel L. Jackson were clapping.

A smile you couldn’t contain for the life of you formed on your lips. Your dimples popped out of your flushed cheeks as they all continuously praised you. You... a small town girl, with a big dream and only her own self to believe in the dreams she had planned for the future. You look in the mirror sometimes and see that girl, she’s just a teenager all alone. No one to talk to except the thin air. No one to sing with except the artists on the radio. You wished that the little girl was smiling back at you, but she never smiled around people back then. She just wanted to live her own life and not be stuck in this day-to-day life that was never meant for her.

That girl is from fifteen years ago, now look you. 32, and already on a director’s minds as they craft films. This really was what living your dream is like... Just utter astonishment for the applause you only heard in your mind.

You had gotten your Masters in Fine Arts seven years ago. You’d two movies during the senior year of college and passing with flying colors. A degree and a chance in acting were your dreams when you were younger. You had surpassed both of those now, and new things for your future came into the light. You wanted to direct, write, and create stories!

Sure, you had internal tantrums and some nights where you talked to your coffee pot in a British accent to amuse yourself while working on some late essays or project, due in four hours. But you ended up with a degree to do the one thing you loved the most, storytelling.

“I think it’s safe to say you’ve started shooting?”

The commentator pointed towards your head that was now the iconic vibrant purple hair.

“Yeah, we began just three days ago. So... almost done!” Your tense body relaxed when you heard the crowd laugh at your soft joke. You weren’t doing so bad!

“Now, you play this new generation character called Red Heart, obviously, but it’s not really so all that new because you’ve been a part of this Marvel revolution from the very start. You starred alongside Robert in Iron Man,”

The crowd erupted in applause and you felt a firm grip on your shoulder. Turning around you saw one of your mentor’s, RDJ, giving you a deep hearted look with a slight grin on his face.

“Then you went on to become a recurring character in the television area of Marvel... how has it been, being this character, for so long. Doing all these films and shows, how has, being Persephone, changed you? If it has in any way?”

"Playing a character for so long takes you into this different state of mind. You aren't the same person anymore because for the better half of a year, eight years straight, you are playing this other human to whom you have to attach yourself with, find out why they are the way they are. You need to represent that person, because of the weight of millions upon millions of fans wishes and opinions, now lie on your shoulders."

"Preach it, girl!" You laughed at Mackie's comment. He was on the other side of the stage so you could barely catch a glimpse of him smirking at his own witty comment.

"I'm just very very passionate about my girl Persey. Sorry, Anthony!" You heard him just chuckle into the microphone and let the commentator carry on.

Even though you were joking with Mackie, you weren’t lying when you said you were passionate about Persey. Because you were, you fucking loved being Persey, and honestly, you owed it all to the MCU fans ho had been pushing Marvel so long to bring your character to life.

They campaigned the shit out of getting Persephone to become a member of the Avengers when they were filming, Age of Ultron. All were extremely disappointed when you were nowhere to be found.

After almost nine years of being in this Universe of Villians and Heroes, you were finally getting a stand-alone film. It was everything you dreamed it to be. You worked with the writers Olivia Perrin and Matthias Fletcher, on making sure Persephone’s warrior spirit and fearless embodiment wasn’t taken away by a love story. Of course, there’s always a love story written in, and Persey’s was the Winter Soldier. Her long gone love who taught her how to live off just a quarter and a box of cereal for months. They loved each other deeply in a small stint of her infiltration of HYDRA. She was the only agent who could ever get past them, of course hiding with a disguise. There she was ordered to find Bucky, and get him out of there, alive. Red Heart fought till she couldn’t anymore in the bloodiest battle HYDRA ever faced on their own. They went searching for her, and so she moved around a lot. Henceforth, meeting these strange, irregular humans like Jessica, Matt Murdock, Iron Fist too. You were caught in the line of fire with Tony Stark when he was sent to test missiles in the middle east. He presumed you were dead when he awoke and they said you had no purpose left. He didn’t know you’d escaped, somehow hiding with a family of six for months until you could promise them safety and shelter while you went and dealt with the aftermath of SHIELD’s destruction. Your story line worked in with so many people, they wanted to make sure the story focused on Red Heart, not the Avengers.

So they started from her beginning in Brooklyn, NY. Telling about how she came about, and how she turned a terrible situation into an empowering one The director Susan Berry, and the executive producers Vanessa, Molly, Oliver, Dan, and Amy, all talked to you about the way she was to be perceived on camera, and how her personality and lifestyle will be played out.

It was one year of shooting, after three years of writing, re-writing, and then finally reconstructing the story of Red Heart. It was so highly anticipated that it led you to become a part of the secret credit scene with Sebastian.

It had been three months since they wrapped when you got a call from Seb. He told you the plans of this surprising scene and you couldn’t say no to him. He’d been a friend for so long after you two both were in The Education of Charlie Banks. Then you just stayed in touch, now look where you both ended up!

You finished a two season-long appearance on Daredevil, also having a much more prominent co-star role in Jessica Jones too. Finally, Red Heart was ready to become a part of the broken down team. Because that was her specialty.

Fixing someones unfixable problems.

"They called me the “tie” of Marvel because Red Heart really just is the bowtie on the Christmas present that is Marvel. She is the only character who has jumped movies to screen to movies again. Kevin Feige was so sweet in making sure that I was a part of every meeting for each movie and show, so... I'm a secret agent spy of Marvel, really. I know all secrets. I am only here today because I will have to take down anyone who dares to share anything!"

The audience laughed along with you. The panel was going so much better than you'd thought it would. Maybe it was your anxiety that got you into tears last night at the petrifying fear of being booed once you walked out on stage. Or falling on stage when walking to your seat. Or looking like you were a greaseball, with a face so shiny they could only see light reflecting off your panicked face.

All of that fear disappeared when you set foot on that stage. The cast was beaming at you, smiling and clapping as you made your way to your seat. Although, one smile, in particular, caught your eye.

The Captains. He wasn't just beaming and clapping, he was radiating a light that you'd never felt someone give off before. It was like he was trying to talk to you through his eyes when they had connected with yours. Just for those few split seconds, you felt time freeze. Your cheeks became flushed with the air suddenly feeling hundred times hotter than it had been only a moment ago. Your body was weighed down with this unbearable gravitational pull. You couldn't stop looking at him. Every time you could catch a glimpse of him, you would. He was breathtaking. Not just in his looks, but in his smile. It was just... so loving. Loving of anything he was smiling at, he radiated love.

A love you felt addicted to after two minutes of meeting him.

Chris had fallen in love from the moment he laid eyes on your faded purple hair. The hair that brought out your deep brown eyes and plump lashes. Your smile was ten times brighter than the light that was beating down on Chris right now.

Snapping out of your own tunnel-vision, you looked towards the voice and smiled, trying to dive back into the whole reason you were up on this stage with the 15 actors who had made this movie.

“Well, we don’t to be asked the age old question; Who would you want to appear in Infinity Wars, for Evans.”

Chris felt a huge grin become plastered on his face when he saw you were trying to hide the blush that had flooded your cheeks when he complimented you. You couldn’t help it! It didn’t matter whether the person was a fan or a handsome stranger, the blood just rushed straight to your cheeks causing them to turn pink.

“Thank you... I, uh... um, thanks. Yeah, it’s just really crazy to be on this panel with these lovely human beings! To be talking to a room of people who care about what I have to say... it may not seem like it when you look from the outside, but sometimes this job is lonely. You feel like your alone in this world, or that the fans didn’t like what your last project was, etc. It’s really surreal to then come on stage and get the reality of your situation shoved in your face. It’s a humbling experience, I’ll say. I’ve never been to a con, both Wizard, and Comic-Con, and not have a damn good time with these beautiful people!” You felt the room clap with hoots and hollers from your speech.

The crowd gave you a sweet awe. You barely saw their faces but from the ones you saw, they were all happy faces. Which made your day all worth it.

The one happy face that really made your day what the sandy haired blonde all the way down the line, who you knew was smiling like a fool while looking at you.

That didn’t bother you in any way. You loved his eyes on you, and you couldn’t wait until the panel was over and the comic-con was finished, so you could properly talk to the blue-eyed man, who sat all the way down on the end.

Still smiling in your direction, like a fool who found his gold.

What do you want to see happen when they finally get to really introduce themselves to each other? Let me know!

a/n: It’s been so long...whoops! Writer’s block got me good. I hope this chapter is okay. I didn’t want to make the story cheesy or predictable. Guess we’ll have to see if I did my job or not! Enjoy my loves - R .xx

*btw, PM me or send me an ask on whether you’d like to be tagged in this fanfic or not!*

tag list: @ateliefloresdaprimavera / @thaniya82 / @giftofdreams / @chrisevans-imagines / @chrisevans-sexualfrustrations / @just-call-me-mrs-captain / @purplekitten30 / @tranquilsouls-riotousthoughts / @buckywthbarnes / @james-romanoff / @teacoffeebooks / @boredoutofmymindstuff / @iamimanim / @oneshots-imagines-and-that / @neonwolf2020 / @toc1985 / @mculove1 / @ptprocrastination / @evansscruff / @jamesgiuseppe / @boston-boy-evans / @writingcreatingstorytelling / @username-evie / @imaginingbucky / @boredoutofmymindstuff / @shamvictoria11 / @raveviolet / @i-am-cass-1 / @tranquilsouls-riotousthoughts / @myluvislikewow / @nalatheshadequeen / @not-your-cup-of-joe / @musiccoffebook / @nea90sweetie / @jinxx-ed13 / @j-jewel-l / @ethereal-beaut-y / @jemjemiansworld / @hiddenavengers / @itsteph13 / @rachael-othman / @abigrumple / @jasli123 / @jamesboobchananbarnes / @emmucz / @happelu970 / @amandulie / @bisexualbuddhist / @imaginesofdreams / @stylesnbarnes / @bsicthought / @captainmqmeep / @marrish-af / @100acresofwood / @missmotherhen / @science-of-deduction-sh / @sireanscall / @crapythings / @batmanbreeann / @amyyleblanc1999 / @coldeath / @hhedegard / @happelu970 / @hollycornish / @justanneforyou / @ramiramblings / @training-wolves / @dracodormiensnunquamtitillandush / @oneshots-imagines-and-that / @coldplaylover17-blog / @amandulie

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kadobeclothing · 5 years ago

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The Best Super Bowl Ads of All Time

The next Super Bowl is coming. And as we get closer to the big game, Americans aren’t just looking forward to the football — they’re also excited to see what the nation’s big-budget brands will come up with for this year’s ads. Because Super Bowl ads are so high-budget and infamous, many companies go to great lengths to keep them secret before they air. Some companies even add to the suspense of their ads by releasing teaser ads for their ads. (How meta.)

To give you an idea of how mysterious, and exciting these teasers are, here’s an example of one from Doritos, which features “Old Town Road” rapper, Lil Nas X:

But teasers aren’t the only thing we can watch to prepare for the marketing marvels we might see on Sunday. To amp you up for this year’s “Ad Bowl,” I’ve collected some the best ads from the last decade and before. Be sure to check back, as we’ll continue to add to this list as new teasers are released. Without further ado, please enjoy these attention grabbing and sometimes award-winning ads. The Best Super Bowl Ads from the Past Decade 1. “Joust” – HBO and Budweiser (2019) Prior to the 2019 Super Bowl, Budweiser launched a funny series of ads that followed a medieval kingdom where the king and townspeople would cheer, “Dilly Dilly!” when offered the beer. The series also featured a hero called the Bud Knight. In some advertisements, he would ride in on his horse and fight in battles clad in armor covered in Budweiser logos. At the beginning of Budweiser’s 2019 Super Bowl ad, you see a handful of happy medieval characters waiting excitedly for the Bud Knight to arrive at a jousting match As the Bud Knight heroically rides his horse on screen, the audience cheers, “Dilly Dilly!” as the competition begins. But. things get grim quickly. Shocking, the Bud Knight loses and is knocked off his horse by the opponent. As the tall, masked opponent walks up to the knight, most Game of Thrones fans will begin to recognize him Gregor Clegane, a.k.a. “The Mountain” — one of the show’s most monstrous villains. As Clegane towers over the Bud Knight, it becomes apparent — especially to GoT fans — that the ad is mimicking a dramatic death scene from the HBO series where The Mountain physically squished another heroic figure with his bare hands. Clegane dramatically, but comedically, reaches down to grab the Knight with both hands. As townspeople react over-dramatically to what’s going on, it’s apparent that Clegane’s killed yet another knight by squishing him off screen.

Suddenly, the Game of Thrones theme music begins to play as a dragon flies over Clegane and takes him down with a blow of fire. As the dragon escapes into clouds and smoke, the music gets louder as the show’s logo and air date appears instead of a Budweiser logo. In a sense, Game of Thrones and HBO hijacked and destroyed the Budweiser ad series. This ad is hilarious as it comedically mimics an incredibly intense and notable scene from Game of Thrones. More interestingly, it surprises audiences who are just expecting it to be a standard Budweiser ad. This is a great example of how one ad combined cross promotion with a memorable storyline. The ad, produced by Droga5 and Wieden+Kennedy, was so humorous and clever that it even won the 2019 Super Clio, a Clio Award for Super Bowl ad participants. 2. “We All Win” – Microsoft (2019) After it came to Microsoft’s attention that people with missing limbs or limited mobility were having trouble holding and pressing buttons on video game controllers, the tech company developed an adaptive controller with touch pads rather than buttons. After the controller’s launch, Microsoft highlighted this story of how they solved for the customer in a 2019 Super Bowl ad titled, “We All Win.”

n the Gold Clio-winning campaign, Microsoft interviewed children with mobility issues and missing limbs about why they loved video games, but how they still faced difficulties with game controllers due to their disabilities. Many of the children and parents featured in the ad explain that gaming helps them connect with friends in ways that they might not be able to otherwise. However, because of the current line of controllers, they have difficulty playing or competing in many games. “I never thought it was unfair. I just thought ‘Hey, this is the way it is and it’s not going to change,” says one boy. After demonstrating the problem with game controllers, the ad shows the children using Microsoft’s new adaptive video game controller as they explain how it makes gaming easier and more accessible for them. For example, one girl excitedly says, “I can hit the buttons just as fast as they can,” while a boy exclaims, “Now everyone can play!” “‘We All Win’ hit all the marks in terms of emotion, starting a dialogue, and fun. It wasn’t an ad about disabilities, it was about kids wanting to play video games,” says Dmitry Shamis, Senior Director of Creative. “I loved it back in February and still love it now.” Not only does “We All Win” tug on your heartstrings, but it also encourages solving for the customer and accessibility by explaining how Microsoft took the time to develop a product that fixed a major problem faced by a unique group of customers. This ad makes you believe that Microsoft genuinely cares about its customers and will make extra efforts to ensure that everyone has a great experience with its products. You can read more about this particular campaign and get inspired by a few more empowering ads in this blog post on inclusive marketing. 3. “It’s a Tide Ad” – Tide (2018) Another Super Clio winner was, “It’s a Tide Ad,” created by the clothing detergent company, Tide, as well as the agency Saatchi & Saatchi New York. In 2017 and 2018, Tide released a number of commercials with storylines that had nothing to do with Tide, except for the actors’ noticeably clean clothes. When viewers were at the edge of their seats, someone in the ad would say, “It’s just another Tide ad.” Then, they’d see the Tide logo and text that said, “If it’s clean, it’s Tide.” This campaign started with a long Super Bowl ad, which also received an Emmy nomination. In the ad, Stranger Things’ David Harbour shows up in several common ad scenes, including in the bathroom with a buff deodorant model, driving a sports car, and laughing on the couch with a fake family. As he appears into each commercial, he explains that all of them have one thing in common: clean clothes that were washed by Tide detergent. In the end, he says, “So, does this make every Super Bowl commercial a Tide ad? I think it does.”

Since Tide has one job of keeping clothes clean, they show off the brand’s strength in multiple versatile and silly scenarios. Humor like this can also be a great way to make a simple product more memorable. If you go to the store to get detergent shortly after seeing this commercial, Tide might be the first thing to pop into your head because of the ridiculous ads. 4. “Band of Brands” – Newcastle (2015) What do you do when you can’t afford a Super Bowl ad? Cross-promote with other brands who will pay for it. That’s what Newcastle, a popular beer company, did back in 2015. Prior to the 2015 Super Bowl, Newcastle launched a call to action video where Parks and Recreation actress Aubrey Plaza encouraged brands to pool their money for one big ad. Because Super Bowl ads that year were well over $4.7 million — not including production — a number of big and small brands reached out to Newcastle to join in for a chance to be featured — even for just a few seconds — in the ad The one-minute ad is filled with product placements as it tells the story of a couple that’s sharing Newcastle beers together to celebrate moving into a new home. As they walk through their new house, you can see brand logos hung on the walls like paintings, family photos, or decorations. As they unpack the boxes, they not-so-subtly talk about all the appliances they have while holding them up to the camera. Aside from the obvious visual product placements, they also work brands into their conversations. For example, at one point, the man tells his girlfriend that he can’t believe they’re moving in together after “meeting on Match.com.” Although the ad starts off with more clever obvious product placements, it gets funnier as the couple starts pointing out every single product they have in their house as quickly as possible.

This ad is an incredibly clever example of a brand that took product placement and co-marketing to the extreme, while benefiting from a virtually free Super Bowl commercial. 5. “Keep Your Hands Off My Doritos” – Doritos (2010) “Keep Your Hands Off My Doritos” hilariously tells the story of an overconfident man meeting his love interests son for the first time. In the ad, the man walks into his date’s home with flowers and sits with her child as the mother gets ready. When she leaves the living room, the man is seen noticeably checking her out. He sits down with swag as he starts talking to her infant son. Without thinking to ask the child if he can have one of his Doritos, he grabs a chip. The boy immediately and loudly slaps him, stares him down in the most intimidating way a child can, and angrily exclaims, “Keep your hands off of my momma. Keep your hands off of my Doritos!” The overconfident boyfriend ends the commercial cowering in fear as the screen fades. As the logo appears, you hear the boy’s mother ask, “Are you playing nice?”

This ad was so funny that it’s still seared into many of our minds. Even though it launched nearly a decade ago, I still tell friends to “keep their hands off my Doritos” when they grab one of mine without asking. Although it’s only 30 seconds, the ad is hilarious, relatable, a little bit shocking, and heartwarming, which makes it so memorable. The Best Super Bowl Ads Before 2010 6. “Wassup” – Budweiser (1999) If you grew up in the late ’90s or early 2000s, you might have a memory of kids at your school yelling the word “WASSUP?” to each other. I know I do. If not, you’ve probably seen the Budweiser ad that the now outdated greeting comes from:

In the ad, a man answers the phone while watching a big game. His friend on the other line asks, “Wassup?” The man on the couch says, “Nothing. Just watchin’ the game and drinkin’ a Bud.” The conversation escalates when the man’s roommate unexpectedly walks in and yells, “WASSSSUPPPPP?!” In true 1990s fashion, the roommate rushes to pick up the other house phone to join the conversation. The three men then just start yelling, “Wassup!” in louder and more bizarre ways until they suddenly get quiet. One of the friends then asks, “So, wassup?” The two others on the phone again say, “Nothing. Just watchin’ the game and drinkin’ a Bud.” Then, everyone says, “True.” This video might seem like a waste of millions of dollars on a Super Bowl slot, but it definitely wasn’t. As a viewer and consumer, all you need to know when watching is that the three friends are all watching the game and drinking Budweiser. The “Wassup?” marathon was essentially a tool meant to make the commercial funny and memorable. Based on the fact that, “Wassup” was still getting referenced in the second half of the 2010s, it’s easy to see that this ad was a success. 7. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” – Pepsi (1996) This old Pepsi commercial highlights the consequences of what could happen if you “cheat” on your company’s brand. The short and sweet ad simply shows fake security footage of a Coca-Cola delivery employee placing Coca-Cola cans in a store refrigerator to the Hank Williams Sr. song, “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Things get interesting when the delivery man looks to make sure no one’s watching and then opens the fridge with Pepsi in it. Suddenly, the shelves in the fridge collapse as all of the Pepsi cans noticeably barrel out of the fridge and on to the floor. The ad makes a short and simple point: Even Coca-Cola employees love Pepsi:

8. “1984” – Apple (1984) At the dawn of 1984, Apple leveraged the George Orwell classic,”1984,” in an award-winning Super Bowl campaign. The 1948 George Orwell novel, followed a 1984 dystopian society where everyone dressed the same and conformed to the same leader, views, and ideologies. As an innovative company, Apple has always tried to be “different” from competitors. The tech giant’s approach to Super Bowl advertising stood by this same mission even back in 1983. The Super Bowl ad brings the conformist community in 1984 to life as you see men marching in straight lines towards a room where their leader is on a giant screen, telling them, “We are one people, with one whim, one resolve, and one cause.” At the climax of the commercial, a woman with a hammer and colorful clothing starts running towards the screen. She launches her hammer into the screen as it explodes.

A narrator concludes, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” Not only did the ad, directed by Ridley Scott, highlight a well-known book. But it was boldly symbolic of early tensions and monopolies in Silicon Valley. At the time, Apple was considered a young, disruptive company while IBM was the only tech giant in the PC industry. Tech journalists and innovators in Silicon Valley often thought about IBM as a soulless corporation. In this ad, Apple explains why innovation, disruption, and tech unique tech underdogs would destroy monopolies of the future. It also reiterated and enforced the brand’s positioning as a company that wanted to make products that would allow people to embrace their unique qualities and skills. This is a strategy that they’ve continued to use in their campaigns today. 9. “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” – Coca-Cola (1971) On the hills of Italy in 1970, Coca-Cola pulled together a group of young adults from a number of countries and filmed them sing a jingle called, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” This resulted in one of the most notable ads from Coca-Cola, let alone a popular ad from the 1971 Super Bowl:

This commercial is a great form of early inclusive marketing as it shows that everyone has something in common, despite the fact that we all come from different or diverse backgrounds. In particular, this ad shows that millions of people from all around the world can agree on the fact that they enjoy Coca-Cola. Not only does it embrace the beauty of diversity and world peace, but it also highlights the international popularity of the soda beverage. Super Bowl Ad Takeaways Even if you’re a small business marketer. you can learn from these ads for your own video or content marketing strategies. Here are a few things that many of these ads have in common. Emotion: Whether they leave you feeling happy, sad, or optimistic, most of these ads drew your attention with a topic and storyline that built emotion. Pop Culture: As you saw with Budweiser, HBO, Newcastle, and Apple, some of the most memorable ads acknowledged notable pop culture or literature and weaved a memorable story around them. Relatability: Emotional ads don’t often work without relatability. Many of these ads do an excellent job of putting you into their protagonist’s shoes. Whether you’re seeing children able to access gaming in a Microsoft ad, or laughing at the child who’s protective of his mother in the Doritos ad, you identify with the characters or people featured on a deeper level. For more examples of big brand ads you can learn from, check out these rosters of Emmy nominees, Clio Award winners, and our marketers favorite campaigns of 2019.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in January 2015. It was updated for comprehensiveness and freshness in 2019.

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njawaidofficial · 7 years ago

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18 People Who Probably Shouldn't Be Allowed To Meet Celebrities

https://styleveryday.com/2018/03/08/18-people-who-probably-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-meet-celebrities/

18 People Who Probably Shouldn't Be Allowed To Meet Celebrities

“Trying to disentangle my candy from an Emmy award winner’s arm hair was decidedly not a highlight for me.”

1. “I saw Nick Jonas and his girlfriend at the time, Olivia Culpo, on the streets of New York City and went to get a picture with them. I had no clue a paparazzo was filming across the street, so it was interesting when I came home to find the moment my skirt blew up from the subway grate was on YouTube. Now 160,000 people have seen my ass… Thank God I was wearing boy shorts that day.” – hayleyrae

2. “Gary Sinise does a lot of work with the USO and can often be found traveling the world visiting various military bases around the world, meeting the troops and performing with his band. He came to our base in Naples, Italy for July 4th, 2003. I was hammered thanks to the free-flowing margarita machines, and when our group got our turn to meet him and take pictures, I greeted him by hollering, ‘LIEUTENANT DAN, YOU GOT NEW LEGS!’ He must have heard this a bajillion times by now, so he was not amused, but tolerated it until I crowded in a little too closely for the picture and forgot about the sticky AF Ring Pop that was on my hand. It promptly adhered itself to his arm hair. Trying to disentangle my candy from an Emmy award winner’s arm hair was decidedly not a highlight for me.” – Sandra Navi Young, Facebook

3. “When I was about 10, I had the chance to meet President Obama through my dad’s work (he works at the air force base). When I met him, the first and only thing I said was, ‘That tie doesn’t look good with your grey hair.’ He laughed and tousled my hair, but I still think about it to this day.” – cassiej48d97d62b

NBC / giphy.com

4. “On Christmas Eve one year, Paul Rudd came into the store where I worked for a gift card. Desperate for something clever to say to him, I said, ‘Has anyone ever told you you look like David Schwimmer?'” – alih41dd2a5e5

5. “I went to the gym one day after work. The place was basically deserted, and I was excited because I really wanted to de-stress without feeling self-conscious. About five steps outside the locker room, I see Joe Keery from Stranger Things. I LOVE that show, and I loved him in it, but something about seeing him standing there in workout gear checking his smartphone kind of broke my brain. I forgot his name, his character’s name, my name, and how to walk and talk. Instead of saying something, I stopped dead in my tracks and kind of…yelped? I was so mortified, and of course because the gym was empty there was nowhere to hide. I kept running into him – by the water fountain! By the treadmills! I was so self-conscious I left after about half an hour, and frantically texted my best friend the whole way home. We agreed it was one of my more awkward moments.” – Emily Mason, Facebook

6. “I was working at swanky hotel and restaurant and Hugh Jackman had been staying there with his family for a few weeks filming a movie. I’d just pulled a 12-hour shift so my mind was mush, and I ended up serving him at a table. I went to pour him some water automatically, but forgot I hadn’t asked him if he wanted any and tried to stop myself. My tired mind had already started the process of pouring. I basically poured a bottle all over his leg, where his phone was sitting, while asking, ‘Did you want water?’ He was such a damn nice guy that he just looked up at me and said, ‘I usually prefer it in my glass.'” – charlies46d587761

ABC / giphy.com

7. “The company I work for has a lot of actors coming in on a daily basis, and Steve Buscemi was scheduled to come in one day. At the time I was drawing a blank trying to conjure a mental image of him because for some reason I tend to get him, Willem Dafoe, and Christopher Walken mixed up. I had Google Image searched him, gotten up, and was getting water or something, when I saw the receptionist leading him right past my computer. Of course, he glanced at the screen full of pictures of his face.” – zombie93

8. “My best friend and I went to Tampa Bay Comic Con in 2014 just to meet Evan Peters. When it was my turn for a photo I asked him to do the prom pose with me, and he put his arms around my chest and hugged me from behind. He definitely should’ve put his arms around my waist, but I guess he didn’t know that, so for a moment in time, I spaced out, forgot Evan was a major celebrity and readjusted his hands, not realising they were pretty much touching my boobs. If that wasn’t bad enough, I got a text message from my mother right before the photo was taken while Evan was hugging me from behind. He jumped a little, laughed and said, ‘Oh! Uhh I think you got a text!’ My phone was in my back pocket and it had vibrated on his crotch when the text came in!” – sarcasticsierra

9. “I attended a taping of Mike and Molly, and after filming, we got to meet the cast. When it came to meeting Melissa McCarthy, I told her that I identified with the characters she portrays and ‘it’s coming out of me like lava’. What I didn’t follow up to say was that I laughed the hardest at that scene in particular. She was repulsed and said, ‘That doesn’t sound pleasant.'” – kimberlyd4f5b81ae2

Warner Bros. Television / giphy.com

10. “I was at a Miranda Sings show a couple of summers ago with my mom, my sister, my sister’s best friend, and her mom. We were waiting in line to go in and we saw a bunch of girls taking a picture with a tall, attractive man. My sister’s friend’s mom informed me that they were taking a picture with Liam Hemsworth. I had no clue what Liam looked like, I just knew he was famous and wanted to get a good Instagram, so I chased him into the lobby and took a very awkward picture with him. I used my default celebrity meeting line, telling him that I loved his work. He looked confused, but thanked me, and we moved on. It was only after I posted the photo on Instagram that I realised how weird this was. What would Liam Hemsworth be doing at a Miranda Sings show? Why was he walking in with a random blonde girl and not Miley Cyrus? Apparently, other people shared my confusion, because some girl commented on my photo to inform me that I had in fact met Robert Graham from The Bachelor.” – caylai2

11. “One time my friend and I were on the subway and a guy came on and sat down next to us. I told my friend that I thought it was Ansel Elgort, but she wasn’t sure, so when it got to our stop I said to him, ‘Has anyone told you that you look like Ansel Elgort?’ He responded, ‘Yeah I get that a lot.’ As I got off the train I heard someone else say to him, ‘Is that because you are Ansel Elgort?’ He chuckled and said yes. Cue facepalm.” – jblass

12. “My friend invited me to go meet the original cast of Hamilton in New York City. We were admitted directly on to the stage in the theatre, and immediately we saw a man in a ponytail, centre stage, talking to at least 10 people. We walked over, and my friend is basically tripping over herself, stuttering words of admiration about the man. In my head, I’m like, ‘Why is she being so weird? Who is this guy?’ He was so warm and sweet. He introduced himself as Lin, and my friend is literally ready to pee herself. Instead of telling him my name, I asked him where Leslie Odom Jr was. It wasn’t until 20 minutes later that I realised I shrugged off a conversation with one of the most prominent playwrights in modern history, Lin-Manuel Miranda.” – cpacheco

ABC / giphy.com

13. “My husband and I had the lucky opportunity to go to a food and wine weekend at a luxury glamping resort in Montana. Laura Prepon from Orange Is The New Black was there as well. My husband indulged too heavily in the wine part of the weekend, and proceeded to spill her own drink on her.” – kelseyu4da6cfd12

14. “A couple of years ago, I met Michelle Williams (the actress, not one third of Destiny’s Child) after seeing her star in Cabaret on Broadway. I made sure to head to the stage door to meet her, and while she was graciously signing my playbill, I was mesmerised by her legit, make up-free glow. I just stared at her, dazed, and said, ‘I. Love. Your. Skin.’ It was totally creepy. I felt like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.” – natalieh49b5c843e

15. “I saw Emma Watson at the Beverly Hilton the day before the SAG Awards about five years ago. I smiled at her politely without realising who it was, then made a sort of squealing sound when it clicked and instinctively began to follow her and her friend throughout the hotel. I spent the next 45 minutes peeking into hotel room windows to see if I could find them and get proof that I’d met her. I was eventually escorted off the premises.” – phoebeg4870dc518

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16. “I was picking up takeout from a place in the Pacific Palisades with my friend and I accidentally opened a door into a man’s face. I immediately apologised, he shrugged it off, and my friend and I got into our car. The first thing she said was, ‘Dude, that was Ben Affleck.’ Apparently I slammed a door into Ben Affleck’s face. Not my finest moment.” – victorias4e1b807b6

17. “I met Peter Dinklage at a brewery in Asheville when he was filming Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I got up the courage to talk to him and he was so nice! He made some comment about being there with Daniel Day Lewis, and gestured to the person to his right. It clearly wasn’t Daniel Day Lewis, so I kind of laughed and continued taking a selfie of the two of us. It wasn’t until I saw the two later that I realised it was Sam Rockwell. My boyfriend, who was with me, brings up the fact that we dissed Sam Rockwell at least once a week.” – Megan Williams, Facebook

HBO

18. “I brushed shoulders with The Edge and immediately vomited.” – annet4c7172ded

Note: Some submissions may have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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ethanalter · 7 years ago

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Emmys: An oral history of Murphy Brown's 'Birth 101'

Candice Bergen as Murphy Brown in “Birth 101,” the Season 4 finale of ‘Murphy Brown’

If you need a poster child for how an episode of television can alternately entertain, educate, and enrage, look no further than Murphy Brown‘s fourth season finale, “Birth 101.” Premiering 25 years ago, the episode capped a storyline that had actually begun in the previous season’s finale, when the titular FYI newswoman, played by Candice Bergen, discovered she was pregnant after a brief tryst with her ex-husband (Robin Thomas). Season 4 opened with the 42-year-old Murphy deciding to keep the baby, and — in an early example of serialized sitcom storytelling — the story of her pregnancy was told over the subsequent 26-episode run, culminating in the birth of Avery Brown on May 18, 1992, which also happened to be Murphy Brown creator Diane English’s birthday.

Little did Avery, or for that matter English herself, suspect that they were about to receive an entirely unwelcome birthday present. On May 19, the day after the finale aired, then-Vice President Dan Quayle took the stage at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco and delivered a family values-centric campaign speech that called out the show, and the character, by name. “It doesn’t help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly-paid professional women, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.” That verbal volley launched a storm of controversy that followed the show all through the summer and up to its Season 5 premiere, which blurred the line between reality and fiction by having Murphy directly address Quayle’s comments in the world of the show.

Although “Birth 101” became a controversial episode in the political world, within the television industry, there was no question which side the majority of individuals were on. Already a much-honored show — with three consecutive Emmy nominations, and one prior win for Outstanding Comedy Series — Murphy Brown‘s fourth season received nine nominations at the 1992 Emmy Awards. And “Birth 101” specifically secured nods, and eventual wins, for Bergen and the episode’s director, Barnet Kellman, who had directed every episode for the show’s first three seasons, and returned to helm the Season 4 finale. Meanwhile, the show itself received its second statue for Outstanding Comedy Series, a victory that functioned as a direct refutation of Quayle’s criticisms.

On the 25th anniversary of those Emmy victories, we spoke with the four primary creative forces behind “Birth 101” about the process of bringing the episode, and Avery Brown, into the world, and what it was like having their TV family suddenly placed under a public microscope.

The Winners Diane English (Creator/Executive Producer) Won: Outstanding Comedy Series Nominated: Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series

Candice Bergen (Murphy Brown) Won: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Korby Siamis (Writer/Consulting Producer) Won: Outstanding Comedy Series Nominated: Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series

Barnet Kellman (Director) Won: Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series

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Planned Parenthood Like any couple thinking about starting a family, the Murphy Brown creative team didn’t make the decision to add a new baby to their brood lightly. Since the show’s first season in 1989, the character of Murphy Brown stood almost alone on the television sitcom landscape as a professional woman happily committed to her career rather than a man or a child, thus endearing her to millions of women who had made a similar choice in their own lives. Her pregnancy, combined with her decision to keep the baby, stood to radically change the premise of the show. But both English and Bergen — who had her own daughter relatively late in life at age 39 — felt it was a risk that the series, and the character, needed to take.

Diane English: We came up with the idea [of the pregnancy] to give Murphy the biggest challenge that she had ever really faced. She had faced down a lot of difficult interviews and work situations, and she was tough as nails, but she couldn’t even keep a plant alive, nor a pet! She didn’t have a boyfriend, and she was married for less time than Hanukkah. So that’s what we decided to do, and Candice thought it was a really good idea. That gave us a big arc for the whole fourth season, which was something we had not done before.

Korby Siamis: It provided a nice overlay for the season, because not every episode was about [her pregnancy], but it impacted every episode. I had been pregnant and had my first child the season before that, so it was very personal to get to use things that I had gone through and apply them to Murphy. The Lamaze class experience gave us a story about what it felt like to be pregnant [Episode 23: “He-Ho, He-Ho, It’s Off to Lamaze We Go”].

Barnet Kellman: Diane always knew where she was going with the season, and she would see what she thought had to happen to this woman. Don’t forget she was following a very clear playbook, which was her personal experience as a woman of her generation. She felt a tremendous obligation to tell the truth about the experience of a highly-professional, highly-motivated, highly-intelligent, highly-ambitious woman in middle age. So we were telling Diane’s truth, and Candice’s as well, because Candice had a young child during this period of time. Waiting as long as she did to have her one and only child [made her] an incredibly devoted and hands-on mother. She wasn’t raising her daughter by herself, but her husband, Louis [Malle], had a very active film career in France, while Candice had an active television and film career in L.A. So they were pretty far apart, and she took on a lot of responsibility.

Siamis: Diane and I definitely went back and forth about the gender of Murphy’s baby. Ultimately I thought that a girl was the obvious choice, and that a boy would throw her. We gave her what we felt was the more challenging gender for the character. [The baby’s sex was revealed in Episode 10, “Inside Murphy Brown.”]

English: Being a new mom was going to be challenging enough, and to have all the boy stuff going on put another layer onto it that we thought would be really interesting. She always assumed she was having a girl because she was such a feminist, and it was kind of a shock that it was a boy. That gave us a lot of good material for the season.

Candice Bergen: I remember that Diane and I went horseback riding in Griffith Park to discuss certain plot lines, and she told me that she thought it should be a boy and that he should be named Avery after her mother. I thought it was brilliant. And of course, the actor who played Murphy’s son later on was a wonderful actor. [Haley Joel Osment played Avery in the show’s final season.]

Siamis: We weren’t sure how people would react to the morality of her being pregnant as a single woman, and there wasn’t much criticism [about that]. But working women and single women who weren’t going to have children felt a little betrayed that this strong career woman had to have a child to be complete. I felt bad about that.

Bergen: We knew we were walking into a minefield, and, of course, we did! We wanted to present her dilemma and represent both sides; not anything as sharp as pro life [vs. pro choice], but to present both choices. The right was always so quick to attack us, and I don’t think they ever gave us credit for Murphy making the favored choice, which was to have the baby. I think it was good; the pregnancy and then Murphy having a child, which every show dreads frankly, because it’s very hard to accommodate a child in a comedy show.

Kellman: Candi and I both had little kids at the time, and we talked about parenting those first few years on a daily basis. I remember coming to work one day, and there had been news of some tragedy about a child being killed. Candi and I talked about how when you have a young child, you literally feel so vulnerable, because if that ever happened to you, you can’t imagine how you would go on. We were ambitious, professional people who had lived quite a long time before having a kid, so this was a new feeling that we were kind of discovering.

‘Murphy Brown’ creator Diane English in 2017 (Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images)

English: I had no children, so I had to rely on Korby and Candice for their expertise in terms of their experience in the hospital and actually giving birth. One thing that I was really adamant about was that it was not going to be a sitcom birth. We really wanted her to be sweaty and angry, which in a comedy normally you wouldn’t see. Wacky was never our thing, so we really concentrated that final episode — which was called “Birth 101” because it was our 101st episode — in the hospital.

Siamis: Diane and I talked out the story, and then I took a pass and she took a pass and we had our final draft. It was the easiest thing I’ve every written. The writing staff added some great lines, and we had to make some cuts because we were always too long, but it did not change that much from the first draft that she and I did.

English: We came up with this great device of Frank making a documentary to show Murphy’s child later in life. That gave us the opportunity to have all our characters talk about their experience during her experience. Warren Beatty’s Reds was the inspiration for that; he had put real people who participated in the Russian Revolution on camera. A lot of people do it now, but that’s not really something you’d seen before.

Kellman: I didn’t intend to stay with any TV show, but I had done the pilot for Murphy Brown, and it was truly one of the greatest creative experiences I ever had. So I stayed with the show on the most provisional basis for the next three years, because the scripts I was reading on a weekly basis were better than the movie scripts I was reading. Finally, I found a film project that I liked and took off the fourth season to make the movie Straight Talk with Dolly Parton and James Woods. But Diane always wanted me to come back and do “Birth 101,” which was a great honor and privilege, and spoke volumes to the trust she placed in me.

‘Birth 101’ director Barnet Kellman in 2017 (Photo by Tasia Wells/Getty Images)

English: We didn’t think about [hiring a female director]. It wasn’t a very discussed issue at that time. Barnet did the pilot, and “Birth 101” was going to be my last episode, so it seemed fitting. He was a big part of our family, so it seemed right to have him come and do this very pivotal episode, which he really wanted to do. If we were doing this all over again, we would absolutely try to have as many women directors as possible. There’s certainly a lot more in the talent pool than there were then.

The Birthing Room These days it’s common for shows to shoot pivotal episodes in secrecy, lest any spoilers leak out ahead of the premiere. That wasn’t the case with “Birth 101,” which was shot like an ordinary episode of Murphy Brown before a live studio audience one evening in the early spring of 1992. English’s looming departure, combined with Avery Brown’s arrival, made for an atmosphere suffused with anticipation and also a touch of sadness. By the end of the taping, the show’s future would look very, very different.

Siamis: The day before my son was born, Diane gave me a baby shower at her house and my water started leaking. Nobody there knew, because I didn’t even know! I didn’t know enough to know what was going on until the next day. So we decided that Murphy’s water would break on air live, and that’s how the episode started.

Murphy’s water breaks during a live airing of ‘FYI’ in “Birth 101.” (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

Kellman: I knew the tempo of a live TV set, and FYI was supposed to be a live TV show, so I had worked really hard to integrate that [during the first three seasons]. I bent a lot of rules to hire actual video camera operators as actors, so they were actually operating the video cameras. Every now and then, I would grab an actor and teach them how to do it, and then they became recurring characters. Let me put it this way: we did not ask carefully about union jurisdictions on any of this stuff! But that was extremely important in the opening scene of “Birth 101,” because Murphy’s water breaks live on air during a show, and I wanted the whole production of the show to be going on. Ritch Brinkley, the gigantic cameraman with the beard, was an extra that I had brought on as a cameraman. We threw him a line and liked his look, and over the course of those first three seasons, Diane started developing the idea that he had a crush on Murphy. It became a running joke that pays off when he tells her he wants to deliver her baby and goes, “I’ll need the toolbox from my truck!”

English: One of my favorite scenes that we ever did is when all the characters are in the birthing room, and Jim Dial [Charles Kimbrough] says, “She’s going to blow!” He’s looking at this monitor and sees she’s going to have this huge contraction. And then Murphy just grabs Miles [Grant Shaud] and Frank [Joe Regalbuto] by the neck. Candice did not hold back, and that was the great thing about her as an actress is that she relished those moments. Being one of the world’s most beautiful women, she didn’t need to be that funny, but she loved the ability to do that physical humor and she threw herself into it.

Kellman: I had started the “Punch & Judy” routine from the pilot, with people literally hitting and grabbing each other. It was the kind of physical comedy and low comedy that I loved in the midst of everything else, and it’s part of the brother and sister aspect of working together. The fundamental conceit [of the episode] is that Murphy thinks there’s nothing to this, and she’s got it all figured out. Then all of a sudden her body goes crazy! It starts with everybody hitting Miles, and builds to Murphy grabbing Miles and Frank, who can’t possibly understand what she’s going through.

Bergen: I’m just glad that I didn’t give anyone a concussion! We would always do blocking, but in the moment it gets much fuller. They were always ready. I’m glad that Diane made room for those big sort of bawdy moments, like when Murphy thinks she’s giving birth in the hall and Miles dives underneath to catch the baby. I remember there was sort of a heightened energy on the shoot night. There was an excitement about introducing this huge arrival into the show, so it was somewhat more electric than usual.

Murphy endures labor while her painter/Lamaze coach, Eldin ( Robert Pastorelli), looks on in “Birth 101” (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

Siamis: People were just howling. It was so fun to watch. The more they laugh, the more we had to cut out of an episode because we had to get to time, but that’s the excitement of a live audience. And we had a cast that played off the live audience so well. One of my favorite jokes that I’ve ever written is, “Oh god, my body’s making milk. It’s like one day discovering you can get bacon out of your elbow.” I thought about that when I was first nursing my son, and it became a line in the episode. I think we had to use the third take, because the laugh for that joke went on for so long!

Kellman: For the last scene [with the baby], Murphy started out holding a doll in her hand. At a certain point, I probably faked that something went wrong in order to create a huddle with all the cameramen that would block the audience’s view. Then we brought out a real baby, and it’s a real surprise for the audience. But don’t forget, we only had the baby for less than 15 minutes. And there were undoubtedly two babies in case one of them went south on us.

Bergen: We looked at the baby as a live grenade; I think anybody that works with babies does that. We took it down several notches, because we didn’t want to startle it. It’s harder to be funny around a baby, because you’re editing yourself all the time, and also waiting for the baby to explode. But this baby was very good.

English: The babies were twins, and the first baby made it into the final version. The first baby was so calm, so we never had to use the second baby. It was very emotional for everybody. The audience was really loving the episode, and when it was time for the baby to be put into Murphy’s arms, we asked the audience to be extremely quiet and the baby totally cooperated. It was probably just gas, but it looked like the baby smiled at a certain point when Candice started singing “Natural Woman.”

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Siamis: It’s funny because before the episode, Candice said to me, “You got to give me some pointers because I had a C-section.” I told her, “Well, Candice, I had a C-section too, so we’re in trouble here!” But she didn’t need pointers, and she came up with the ending of singing “Natural Woman” to the baby. The baby squeaked at all the right times, and cooperated wonderfully. At the very last moment, she looks into the camera, and just talking about it now brings tears to my eyes. It was so emotional. That look that Candice gave was just… I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so moving.

Bergen: My only suggestion was that she sing “Natural Woman.” I think Diane was going to write something for Murphy to say when she’s holding the baby, and I think that was one of the few times I ever made a suggestion in terms of the writing. So I sang “Natural Woman,” which went back to the pilot episode. The first time I was too emotional, so I think we re-shot that scene three times. Usually it was two.

Kellman: We shot that with a handheld film camera that was playing Frank’s video camera. When Candi starts singing, the baby starts to move and reach for her. You could just see Candi going, “I got a real baby here.” She was a mom, after all, and responded very instinctively. But also as an actress, she played the surprise of seeing the baby wake up. It’s a very real moment that we got on camera.

English: Candice was such a good mom. She knew how to hold a baby. Babies pick up those vibes, so she was really good with it. I think the baby felt really comfortable and safe. The audience was just weeping. Plus, I was standing behind the cameras, and it was my last episode, so it was emotional on many levels all the way around. After the shoot, Candice arranged to have a huge going-away party with a Mexican theme to it, because she loves Mexican food. She had a piano in there, and we sang show tunes. It went on for quite a long time!

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The Morning After Thanks to public missteps like the “potatoe” incident, Dan Quayle had been an easy target for jokes since he joined the George H.W. Bush ticket in 1988. And Murphy Brown took particular glee in cracking wise about the Veep, regularly slipping gags at his expense into the show. Whether or not Quayle was watching the show, he almost certainly paid attention to those frequent slights. With expert timing, the Vice President — who was gearing up for the 1992 campaign — waited until the day after “Birth 101” aired to go on the offensive. It wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the way that First Lady Barbara Bush attacked The Simpsons two years prior, but Quayle’s comments were more aggressive in their condemnation of what was first and foremost intended to be an entertaining, and fictional, television show.

Siamis: It’s funny, I pulled out the first draft of the “Birth 101” script just to look at it, and I had my handwritten notes in the margins. I had written a Dan Quayle joke that we cut out; it was about Pat Buchanan buying him a high chair or something like that. And in the margin next to this joke, I had written, “Will this still mean anything in May?” I guess I thought at the time that Dan Quayle would be forgotten.

English: We had done a Dan Quayle joke every episode. It was a mandate in our writers’ room to do a Dan Quayle joke, and obviously it got right under his skin. This was such a big cultural event that Murphy Brown had had a baby, and the nation watched this episode. He did not apparently see it, but he seized on it as a way of speaking about what he perceived to be the crumbling of Western Civilization when single women are choosing to have children out of wedlock.

Bergen: I saw the front page of The New York Times, and Murphy was holding the baby above the fold. Then it all started and really didn’t stop until the election. Quayle was fairly savvy; there were just op-ed pieces and little news pieces that ran along with the campaign. And then the Clinton campaign adopted family values as a campaign platform, so it was like, “Really?” I was just overwhelmed by the amount of attention. People started calling me and saying, “Aren’t you going to make a comment?” And I said, “Nope. I am staying out of this one.” And I never did make a comment about it.

English: We were inundated with phone calls from every news outlet wanting a reaction. Dan Rather wanted me to open the evening news with him, and 60 Minutes wanted to invite Dan Quayle and myself on to debate each other. It was insane. I got very concerned about being put in the middle of what was a very contentious election year. So I called [former CBS president] Howard Stringer and said, “What should I do?” He said, “Well, why don’t you just make one statement, we’ll put it out over the wire, and then don’t say anything else. Don’t get drawn into this because it’s not going to be good for you.” That’s what we did. As soon as I put the statement out that seemed to catch fire, and then we just let everybody else jump into the debate and stepped back.

Kellman: It was unbelievably strange to suddenly be national news, and to see all of this reality blurring. The strange thing is that was part of the premise of the show; Diane’s a big news junkie and a serious political thinker, and she was always critiquing it in a gentle way, saying that news and entertainment should not be blurred. Then Dan Quayle blurred the whole thing by taking sitcom critique and making it into news. It was just a surreal moment for all of us.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle on the campaign trail in 1992 (Photo: Scott A. Miller/ZUMA Wire/ZUMAPRESS.com/Alamy Live News)

Siamis: I’ll tell you a theory I’m ready to die for: here’s a guy whose feelings got hurt, and he saw a way to get even. To me, it’s that simple. It’s not a big political thing; we’re all kindergartners inside. I’m so glad it was then and not now; it would be very different with Facebook and Twitter.

English: The whole summer that followed was a lot of outcry from people who were trying to redefine what a family is, and how that particular Republican platform seemed very exclusive instead of inclusive. The debate became much bigger than single mothers. It was a perfect storm of a societal and cultural conversation just intersecting with a television show.

Kellman: Diane really had her finger on the moment. Dan Quayle was right there to play along, and yes, of course, the industry was ready to applaud her and stand together on this. No question about it. It definitely put the wind behind our sails.

Bergen: To take on top comedy writers is fairly suicidal. And, it became such a media firestorm that when the show came back in September, it started at No. 2 or No. 1, and we held there for a while. So we really have him to thank, and I’ve never met Dan Quayle!

English: He was pointing at the L.A. riots and decaying morals, and he used Murphy as an example. He chose her not just as a revenge ploy, but also because it would have hit home for a lot of people who all had watched that episode. But it backfired, and they lost the election.

Emmy Night, 1992 The Murphy Brown team had already been staples at the Emmy Awards for three years running, with the show winning Outstanding Comedy Series for its sophomore season and Bergen taking home the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series statue in 1989 and 1990. But the Dan Quayle-instigated controversy gave the show fresh awards life, and both Bergen and English used their time at the podium to address the Vice President. Bergen started her speech by saying, “I’d like to thank the vice president,” before getting in a dig by crediting her writers for writing great words, “and spelling them correctly.” English was even more direct, saying, “I would also like to thank in particular all the single parents out there who, either by choice or by necessity, are raising their kids alone. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not a family… As Murphy herself said: ‘I couldn’t possibly do a worse job raising my kid alone than the Reagans did with theirs.”

English: I didn’t think about my speech as much as I should have. You get swept up in the moment, and it’s a pretty heady moment. Plus, we had been through a whole summer of being pummeled. I said something about the Reagan family that I probably shouldn’t have. I was quoting a line from one of our episodes, and I think it really upset Mrs. Reagan. That would be a good do-over for me. I think we had already said whatever we were going to say in the episode, and then everybody else had their say all summer.

Bergen: A friend of mine had helped me write my acceptance speech, if I had to give one. The Vice President I took care of at the beginning. I mostly wanted to acknowledge the writers of the show. I never got used to winning; I was always overwhelmed and just really beyond grateful to win. The response to Murphy was always so positive that it was just you tried to hang on to the train and not fall off, because you just got swept up in the energy and the success of the show.

Kellman: I was thrilled and shocked the first time I was nominated for the pilot. I had been nominated every year since then, so this was the fourth time, consecutively. For my first nomination [in 1989], I was sitting in the aisle, and right before your award comes up, a cameraman comes and kneels right in the aisle and puts a camera in your face. He asked me, “Are you Barnet Kellman?” I go “Yeah,” and so he frames the shot. Then they said, “The winner is Peter Baldwin,” and he ran away and never even said goodbye. That happened three years in a row! I was a pro by this point, so when they actually announced my name it was an amazing thing. I remember stammering my gratitude to Diane and Candice, and the whole gang. I left the political stuff to the other two.

Siamis: Both times we won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy, I was pregnant. I always apologized to people that we only wanted two kids, because it was like the lucky charm! The first time, it was like a dream. I grew up watching the Emmys, and here I was getting one. I was so focused on taking that in, that I almost couldn’t take it in. The second time, I was a bit more relaxed. I was there with my husband, my sister, and my brother-in-law, and it was great to share it with them.

Kellman: There’s nothing more gratifying than to get that kind of respect from the people all over the industry and at all levels in the industry. We touched a nerve and there’s nothing really better than that. My family was on the East Coast at that particular moment, so Candice was my date. Then, I got on a plane and went back to Chicago [to continue filming Straight Talk], and got kissed by Dolly Parton. So it was a hell of a weekend!

Siamis: The next day we were back on set doing the fifth season, and Steve Peterman and Gary Dontzig were the executive producers because Diane had left. Steve said, “It’s fantastic to win, but the next day you still have a show to put on. You’re back to the real world grind.” You have to put it in perspective. For example, the sixth season is one of my favorites, and we weren’t even nominated that year. So you put in perspective all the subjectiveness [of awards]. Even after that, you’re still like, “I’ve got an Emmy. I’ve got two!” It’s fun.

Candice Bergen in 2017 (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Turner)

Growing Pains Murphy Brown continued for six more seasons after “Birth 101,” during which time Avery grew up even as other cast members, and writers, came and went. In some ways, though, the episode was as much a series finale as the actual series finale, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” which aired exactly six years later on May 18, 1998 and was once again written by English and directed by Kellman. For those making the series, as well as those watching at home, it was obvious that the show was never quite the same as it had been prior to Avery’s arrival. Even so, the image of Murphy singing “Natural Woman” to her baby remains, perhaps, the show’s most iconic moment, and “Birth 101” is forever enshrined in TV history because of the public debate it continues to inspire. Over the years, for example, various articles have argued the dubious premise that Dan Quayle had been right all along.

English: [Those articles] really angered me because people forgot that when Quayle made his speech, he called it just another lifestyle choice. He hadn’t watched the season, so he hadn’t seen the episode where she agonized over this choice, and the fact that the actual father had chosen not to be a part of the child’s life. She was left with the decision: should I end this pregnancy or should I go forward? It was not just another lifestyle choice. It was a huge life decision involving many lives. There was no time when we ever portrayed fathers as not being important at all, but that’s the way it got twisted. Certainly Murphy felt that fathers were extremely important because she enlisted the aid of all the trusted males in her life to help her. Dan Quayle was right about what, you know? I wasn’t really sure; sometimes you just have to shut up, so I didn’t really respond.

Bergen: I know that “Birth 101” was many peoples’ favorite episode, and I love it very much myself. Not having Diane writing the show [in Season 5] was a big change. We continued to do very well, and had excellent writers, but she was the birth mother. We tried to keep the character intact, but to lose the voice of Diane was difficult.

Siamis: Back then, you couldn’t keep a staff together like you can now. People would only stay two years and then get huge development deals. When Diane left, I wasn’t quite ready to leave. I felt like I wasn’t the birth mother, but I was the adoptive mother. When a friend said, “Where’s your heart? Where do you want to be?” I replied, “I want to be on Murphy still.” So I did two more seasons, and then I retired to be a stay-at-home mom. [Siamis later came out of retirement to be a consulting producer on the hit ABC series The Middle, which is currently entering its final season.]

Kellman: Here Diane was riding a successful franchise with the successful premise of an ambitious, talented woman making it in a man’s world, and she had the courage to bet the farm and roll the dice on putting the character on the horns of a dilemma. Could a woman manage all of these things? At that point, people thought, “Okay, the news says a woman can have a career. But can she have a career and a baby?” Nobody was confident about that answer, including Diane. The point was that this was territory that needed to be explored.

English: It’s a real risk when you change the molecular structure of something that’s working really well. Murphy was the ultimate single woman, and then to make her into a mom, there are all kinds of minefields you have to avoid. Then I left, and I left it to my brilliant writing staff, and it was a really tough thing to juggle. Because I never had children, I probably had an idea in my head of how she would be this unconventional mom, but everyone on the writing staff had just had babies, so I think there was a different mindset there. No doubt about it, it was tough, and I think a lot of our fans felt somewhat betrayed that she was a mom now. They had loved the fact that she had not adhered to any of the norms in society for what women are supposed to do. Our ratings really started to fall after that, too.

Then, for the series finale, we were pressed into doing it as an hour-long episode, and we were asked to load it up with as many guest stars as possible because we were a 10-year-old series and weren’t the No. 1-rated show anymore. I kind of resisted it; I felt like it should have been the usual format that people were used to, but we did it and we certainly pulled in the guest stars. We had Julia Roberts, we had George Clooney, and we finally got Mike Wallace to come on! Finales are notoriously difficult to write. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld were writing the Seinfeld finale at the same time that I was writing mine. We would pass each other on the lot and shake our heads and go, “It’s really horrible.”

Bergen: The last season of the show, when Murphy had breast cancer, was very moving. Young women would come up to me saying they watched Murphy Brown with their moms, and clearly in some cases, they had lost their moms [to breast cancer]. It was clearly something that had been comforting them during the horrible process of that happening.

English: I think “Birth 101” is our most memorable episode. It’s probably one of, if not the best, episode we ever did. I don’t personally hear from single mothers about it, but there’s been so much written about it that I think it changed the perception of single moms. Certainly there was a lot of blowback from people who thought, “Oh, this is going to be a bad example to young girls.” But that wasn’t our audience. Our audience was not teenage girls, and Murphy was an established women in her early 40s with a big income and a big circle of helping friends. It was kind of a different situation.

Siamis: I always look at it like I was not in the first wave, but maybe the second wave of female writers. As a young girl growing up, you’d see credits on TV shows and it would be like, “Maybe I could do that.” If anything, Murphy Brown was an example of how women could create shows, write shows, star in shows, and be the central character of a show. Twenty-five years later it’s like, “Shouldn’t there be more of that?” The statistics of women in the Writers Guild and of women directors is not what it should be percentage-wise. Strong female character leads maybe isn’t where it should be, but at least we put this show out there to say, “You can strive for this.”

Bergen: Every now and then, someone also tells me, “I’m a journalist because of Murphy.” I never had a character like Murphy in my life, but I always felt that it would have been a wonderful influence and inspiration to have that kind of person who just threw herself into life and didn’t care what people thought. I think many women must have decided to try journalism and television journalism because of it.

The first season of Murphy Brown is available on DVD. Seasons 2-10 are currently unavailable on DVD or streaming services.

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