#I’m a theatre major we’d get along like a house on fire

[disappointingcabbage]

Copper sexy

This was proposed by @laurenthemself (who I can't seem to tag) so you can thank them for the idea. Feel free to defend your choice in the notes!

[prorevenge]

Don't screw with the crew!

Back in the early 90s, I got a gig working as a front-of-house sound engineer on a major 10-day music and arts festival in London’s Docklands with some fifteen stages dotted all around the waterfront. All of the crew working the stages were either experienced theatre techs, and/or had loads of experience working major outside events, which is the reason we were hired. As an aside, this festival was to celebrate the culmination of a massive investment in the redevelopment of this area of East London, itself the former site of one of the largest dock complexes in the world.

I was tasked with running FOH sound on one of the largest stages. Normally, events like this are loads of fun to work but within two days it became apparent that the organisers had 1), no idea of how to run major outside events and 2), had not the faintest idea of how to book acts and schedule same. In particular, we also had to contend with some woman from Docklands' middle management team who had been given the job of "overseeing" our particular stage, a person who not only had rapidly proved to be totally ignorant of any aspect of managing outside events, but also someone for whom the word "entitled" had been invented.

Our stage was licensed to run events from midday until 10:00pm but we rarely had a full day’s-worth of events for punters to enjoy, due to the aforementioned incompetence with booking. Still, not our problem—we'll just work with what’s given us.

On the Thursday, we had scheduled an evening of old-time Victorian music hall which featured, as a special guest, a very famous film and TV actress. Her performance rider required a grand piano. For some unfathomable reason (and again due to the incompetence of the organisers), the piano—a full-size Yamaha concert grand—arrived from the hire company on the Tuesday. This was a remarkably stupid idea for any number of reasons: due to operational considerations, we had to store the piano in the backstage area where it spent two days suffering in the heat of the day despite our best efforts to shield it.

As any piano technician/tuner will tell you, this is An Extremely Bad Idea, especially with an instrument worth close to £100,000. Almost as bad was the fact that our area was little more than a roughly-graded building site: the ground was covered in hard-core rubble fragments around the size of hen’s eggs (very uncomfortable to walk around on, even with proper work boots), which also kicked up loads of dust and other detritus—not the sort of crap you want floating about gumming up the works of a very expensive concert grand!

Now let me properly set the scene: it’s mid-summer, very hot, and our venue is a large circus-style tent with around 800-seat capacity. The cast of the show, along with our august star, were due to turn up at around 1:00pm to conduct a production rehearsal so we could sort out sound and lighting cues for the show.

The main cast duly turn up on time, and we start sorting out their technical requirements (pretty simple and nothing that we’re not used to). At about 1:30pm, our star turns up sporting dark glasses and an immaculate couture. As anyone who’s worked in this industry knows, the initial interaction with a major A-list star vis-à-vis their technical requirements can go one of two ways: full-monty diva, or let’s go with what we have.

Her first demand was that the piano be dropped off the front of the stage so that she could maintain an eye-line whilst standing right downstage, both with her pianist and with the audience. The stage was about 4.5 feet above ground level and would have required at least eight burly lads to safely shift a full-size concert grand off the deck. Also not a good idea since it had been tuned that morning and moving it would have almost certainly caused the tuning to go out of whack.

I delicately pointed out that doing so would be in direct violation of both health and safety, and fire regulations—as per our written policy—as it would have put the piano in both the fire lane and close to one of the primary emergency exits from the venue. Thinking rapidly, I then suggested that we place the piano as far downstage as physically possible, and that she page herself three or four feet upstage so that she could still glance over and take cues from her MD whilst still “taking in” the audience.

The tension was palpable: after a few seconds consideration she replied, “No problem, I can work with that.” Phew!! No sooner than this crisis had been averted than the Docklands rep rocked up. I remind you, gentle reader, that this person had absolutely zero knowledge about how to run an outside event.

She had also been a major thorn in our side for the previous week, trying to micro-manage proceedings in the venue in order to big herself up in front of her bosses: we, of course, completely ignored her “suggestions” but in such a way as made her think she was in charge—trust me, she wasn’t! She had also been inexcusably rude to virtually every single member of the crew from Day One, and had over the days previous reduced several of them to tears. Production crews don’t take kindly to our own being treated in such a cavalier fashion, and while we’re generally fairly thick-skinned, there comes point where we want to get our own back. Believe me, after a week of constant abuse, we were coming up with creative ways of disposing of the body.

Although we didn’t realise I at the time, our saviour was at hand…but I digress…

Obviously star-struck, she announced in gushing tones that she would be taking personal charge of our star’s every need and that we were not to concern ourselves with that aspect: indeed, we were to “keep our place” as we were only the hired help. Our stage manager, who was at that time sweeping the stage, bridled at the suggestion and made as if to use his broom to beat the brains out of this woman. I had to step in front of him as unobtrusively as possible and stop him from burying the woman right there and then—“she ain’t worth it, mate.”

She then swanned off, leaving our star slack-jawed in amazement. She then turned to me and said, “Is that fucking woman for real?” I replied: “Darling, you have NO idea!”, at which point she laughed uproariously. I gave our star a brief summary of the previous few days' farrago and instantly, she became one of us and from then on we were all on first-name terms.

We then ran a full tech rehearsal from 3:00pm to 5:00pm, sorted out all our cues and then repaired to the beer tent with the cast for a spot of late lunch and a drink or two.

The show was scheduled to kick off at 7:30pm. At around 6:00pm, The Harridan reappeared to overlook the situation. She noticed that we had all the sides of the tent raised in order to get some air flowing through—remember it’s mid-summer and it’s currently low to mid 80s. She then demanded that all of the tent flaps be lowered because she wanted a more “theatre” atmosphere and the light spilling through the side walls would spoil the effect. Despite pointing out that dropping the tent sides would significantly raise the temperature in the venue, she demanded the sides be dropped, so despite our earnest advice to the contrary, we reluctantly complied.

At around 7:00pm, we saw eight 50-seat coaches arrive. To our amazement, out from the coaches came an entire flotilla of old-age pensioners, many on Zimmer frames, who proceeded to shuffle their way into the tent across the hard-core rubble underfoot. We discovered later that the organisers had forgotten to advertise the event anywhere (seriously??) and in desperation, had gone around to all the local Darby & Joan clubs a couple of days before handing out free tickets and laying on transport in order to have an audience.

So now we have 400-odd OAPs frantically fanning themselves with anything to hand as the temperature climbs ever higher. We start the show: everything’s going fine but the mercury in the thermometer I have strapped to the FOH rack is slowly going up and up: it’s so hot up at the sound desk that I’m down to my shorts!

By the end of Act 1, the temperature has gotten up to around 94°F and one could clearly see the old dears are in a bit of distress. Naturally, the organisers had neglected to provide water for the public, and judging by the horrified expressions of the two St John’s Ambulance first-aiders stationed either side of the stage, things were about to get a lot worse. I climbed off the tower, found the rigging crew and ordered the sides of the tent raised. No sooner had I done so than “our friend” standing nearby demanded that the sides stay down because "she was in charge" and "...her instructions were to be followed absolutely, no questions!"

It was at this juncture that diplomacy went completely out of the window. I informed her in no uncertain terms (and employing a fair amount of Anglo-Saxon vernacular) that it was in fact the crew who had the responsibility of ensuring the health and safety of all the people in the venue, not her, and that we have the legal authority to enact ANY procedure that we see fit at ANY time to ensure the safety and well-being of everyone present. I then informed her that I was now exercising my authority under The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 to remediate the situation, and that if she made one single attempt to circumvent that authority, I would have her ejected from the venue without hesitation. She then got in my face and screamed, “I’M IN CHARGE!”. No strike one, no strike two, instant strike three!

I glanced over at two of our security crew who had been hovering in the background with huge shit-eating grins on their faces, who then stepped up either side of her. Defeated, but complaining like a banshee with a terminal case of haemorrhoids, she was escorted off the premises in short order.

By the time Act 2 kicked off, we’d gotten the temperature down to a more manageable low 70ºF, much to the appreciation of our audience, and the rest of the show went off without a hitch.

After the show, cast and crew—including our august star—repaired to the bar for a well-earned drink. Moments later, you-know-who appeared and in imperious tones informed us that our star was to be the guest of honour at a VIP reception for the various Docklands' bigwigs. With a tinge of regret for having our fun curtailed prematurely, we said our goodbyes to our star.

Now it gets interesting!

Not ten minutes later, she storms back into the beer tent with a face like absolute thunder. Taken somewhat aback by her reappearance, we enquired as to why she had returned.

“That fucking woman! She drags me off to this so-called ‘VIP party’: I get there and all that’s there are two fucking plates of curled-up ham sandwiches and two fucking boxes of cheap wine from Sainsburys! How the holy fuck did she get this job?

“I gave her a right bloody earful and came back here because I’d much rather drink with you guys!”

At which point she calls the barman over and orders a round for the entire crew. We spend the rest of the evening chatting away like old friends: she regaled us with stories of her life, and she was gracious enough to listen to some of ours. Despite us trying to buy her a drink, she refused point-blank and picked up the entire bar tab for the rest of the evening on the basis that “…you’ve had to put up with that fucking evil bitch all week: the least I can do get you folks a drink!”

All good things must come to an end and at the end of the evening, her chauffeur turns up to take her home. She embraces all of us as old friends: she hugs me, plants a big kiss on my lips and thanks me, whereupon I comment, “you have just fulfilled a boyhood dream!” Again, that uproarious laugh! She looks at me and says, “Don’t let that fucking bitch get you down! Leave it to me…”

I later discovered through the back-channels some weeks later that our bête-noir had been fired from her five-figure job for her monstrous screw-up, primarily because our star’s agent had ripped the organisers a new one in very short order; you do NOT fuck with someone of our star’s track record without there being consequences. So, although we were not directly responsible for The Harridan’s demise, we were gratified to have someone of our star’s calibre standing up for us.

Revenge is a dish best served cold!

Edit: corrected °C for °F.

(source) story by (/u/GhostOfSorabji)

[jakey-beefed-it]

Weird dreams

The first one was a bizarre combination of an alternate Superman 3 and my friends and I playing an RPG. In that I was Superman, and they were basically themselves but with super powers, but every now and then we’d sort of pause the universe to describe or explain something we were doing. So it was like a really immersive tabletop game where we were like... fully imagining ourselves as our characters. 

Anyhow the plot (such as it was- you know, dream) was that I was sort of flyin’ around for the fuck of it (as one does when one is Superman), flew over the ocean, found an island I didn’t know about that was seriously pretty and had some dormant volcanoes, some jungle, and a couple cities. So I flew down to the cities to be like ‘yo whaddup’ and the locals filled me in about their island. At some point I wanted to get something to eat but for some reason nothing was open but this like... fancy club of some sort. So I went in there and it was some sort of organized crime front. Somehow they got me to leave and I called in my friends. So we were hanging around outside discussing how best to get a warrant or something (?) while wealthy/powerful people sauntered on in behind velvet ropes lookin’ smug. Then I realized that my friend Jon wasn’t standing there talking to us anymore, but he was dressed in a vaguely ridiculous/tacky like... 40s noir outfit as imagined by Prince or something. Purple pinstripes kind of thing. And he walked in with a smug-ass look on his face while Brian (my other friend) and I looked on like w...t...f... and then there was a huge commotion inside when he like, bowled over a fuckton of shit with superstrength (remember, both my friends were also generic superheroes for some reason). 

So Brian and I and a bunch of superhero NPCs who I wasn’t really paying much attention to all rushed in. The front was some kind of bookstore? Like it really reminded me of a Barnes and Noble. Anyhow there were a bunch of baddies with fucking tommy guns so I knocked over some shelves on them, like ya do. We then busted up the top-end meeting which was like seriously skeezy. We were trying to sort out who was involved in the criminal activity and who was wrong place/wrong time and who was potentially a victim. 

Jump to my friends and I sitting around in like... a burrito shop, still as our superhero characters, still on the island, but plainly metagaming talking about the plot. I said something like “This is better than I remembered it. I wonder when Richard Pryor is gonna show up” because as i mentioned this was somehow my dreaming brain’s revised Superman 3. And then Jon goes “Wasn’t there some kind of huge green laser thing?” Wha-

Huge green laser evaporates the burrito shop and probably kills like a lot of people. It’s been fired from some sort of huge fucking airplane that has VTOL capabilities. By the time we react and go after it it’s already swung around for another attack run, then taken off really fast. Jon and I can fly (I’m Superman; not sure why he could fly tbh) but Brian’s stuck on the ground so he’s yelling at us to go and pursue it without him; there’s no time to lose. Only neither Jon nor I can fly fast enough to catch it before it gets to the airport (why it needed to stop at the airport I do not know) then taken off again headed for presumably Metropolis. Large Unnamed US City at any rate. There’s no way we’re going to be able to catch it before it kills like a ton of people and I’m really upset. I keep pushing myself to fly faster and faster and it’s really difficult (apparently even as Superman I can’t give myself a break) and painful but people are depending on me and I’m Superman god damn it so eventually I break the sound barrier (sad, right? Like Clark can’t do that in his sleep?) and it is excruciating but I get moving a lot faster. Meanwhile I’m having out-of-character thoughts about how much more interesting it is now that Superman is less powerful. :p

No ending to that one because, you know, dreams. 

The second one was a weird hodgepodge of ideas, too, but more mundane. I was living with my family in some kind of Alternate Washington State that was more mountainous and remote than our actual town is (which is small, but right smack off the interstate between two big cities). I saw what at first I thought was a mushroom cloud rising in the distance but it never ‘mushroomed’. Instead it began moving and growing taller and broader toward the top- fuckin’ tornado forming from the ground up (at least visibly). It went by entirely too close, was terrifying. Then there were a bunch more of them- like all over. My sister and I tried to take one car and flee (such a bad idea but dream Jake didn’t fuckin know that apparently) while mom took the other, but in trying to get out of town we ran into a tunnel that had been blocked by a sideways van. Cait was driving for some reason so I’m shrieking for her to stop and she barely does in time. We switch seats because she’s not comfortable backing up down the narrow causeway leading to the tunnel. Fair nuff. Mom shows up and we regroup at a diner in town.

Outside the diner is a frail old woman who has become lost/confused from all the tornadoes. I mean, fair. So we take her into the diner and buy her some food and she kinda babbles about a movie she was in a long time ago. She’s a bit daft but also sweet and we try to make sure she’s cool. We don’t know where to take her/where she needs to be.

We meet this kinda strange couple at the diner and become friends somehow. They know the old lady and agree to take her back to their house so she’ll have someone watching over her. Meanwhile the wife is like ‘i want some kind of fish and the only fish they have here is not what i want’ so i tell the husband that there’s a large swedish population in town (?!) and he could totally surprise her with like lutefisk or some shit. He thinks this is a great idea.

Turns out there’s going to be a fancy showing of some noir movie that was filmed in the town like 70 years ago at a local theatre, and the director is going to be there (somehow he’s only like fifty?!) and all the townsfolk are gonna dress up all nice and go. So we bring the old lady who it turns out was a major supporting role and she’s just over the moon about all the attention and reliving the old glory or w/e. We’re happy for her. Meanwhile this priest comes along and hears her singing and is like ‘are you in this movie, young lady?’ and she gushes on and on about how yeah she is and the director cast her when he came to the town to film on location etc etc and I’m side-eying this priest because even subconscious Jake knows that Priests are Nefarious and Not to be Trusted, apparently. 

No ending there either. Not sure why I had such vivid and odd dreams. Maybe because I slept so fuckin much I finally managed REM sleep.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[cwdcshows]

Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Five

Alright, let's get this over with.  As if I'm not in a bad enough mood watching this shit after the last episode, now Dish has to be fucking stupid; so that when I cue up Part Five, now all of a sudden my DVR controls won't respond properly.  If I try to hit pause, it skips forward; and if I try to skip back, it fucking skips forward and it's doing that with all of my programs - not on any other tvs in the fucking house, mind you, just mine.  So now I gotta bring this up using the fucking CW seed or whatever their streaming option using Roku is. And is if to answer why it urks me to have to go so round about to watch the last installment, apart from just regularly being disappointed in Dish; it's being stuck watching stupid ass commercials and the first one up is some asshole dancing in a sprinkler so he can take selfies of himself..... Fucking Dish...

Well, Kara got lucky that she didn't accidentally blow her sister's head off... Yeah, of fucking course Lex is getting the Nobel peace prize in whatever fucking Back-To-The-Future-II-esque nightmare this new earth is going to turn out to be that the heroes now have to fix.   Someone going back and get the fucking sports almanac from Lex and fix this shit. Huh, I honestly had my doubts that they'd actually have the balls the merge all of the earths into one; and of course with a nearly full episodes ahead, that may not stay way, but it still raises an interesting prospect that I had pretty much discounted. A Commercial Aside - I think the Liberty Mutual commercial with the who keeps flubbing his lines has finally broken me... it's just so stupid, and yet, having done community theatre and some voice work, I've had more than my share of moments where I can't get the right fucking words out of my mouth; and between him wanting to enter from the water and saying "Libtery Biberty".... I give up... Oh, yeah, "Nash" Wells is supposed to be part of this; and its at this point that I think the writers just remembered this as well.... Why the hell is J'Onn communicating with Sara and Ray telepathically in the bar?  It seems more conspicuous that they seem to be answering questions no one else heard him ask; and when he uses his power his eyes turn red.  But more importantly, he didn't say anything that didn't need to kept quiet. What memories did J'Onn give everybody exactly?  I mean, surely he didn't have some sort of cloud back-up for everyone's individual memory; so a lot of what he's passed along to them would be from his perspective, right? You know, J'Onn helping bring the major players back up to speed is one thing; there's arguably nothing wrong with that, but the way he's going about it is kind of questionable.  I mean, he's going into other people minds and monkeying around; and the blunt way he gave Caitlin's memories back struck me is kind of creepy.  Like, under any other circumstance, that wouldn't be cool to just walk and, boom, here's some thoughts and memories you didn't have before, including ones that make you hate this guy you were treating a second ago.  Hope that's cool, but you can definitely trust that everything I just implanted in your brain is fine and on the up and up. Don't get me wrong, it's a shortcut to give back the necessary characters the knowledge they need to have; because they couldn't be bothered to actually have them present at the logical point in the story where they would have gotten to keep their memories organically.  So instead we're just going to do a deus ex machina to reset everyone's memories to where they need to be; and we're going to do that as quickly and with as little thought as possible, because we had five fucking episodes to tell this story and we're terrible at our job.... Wait a second....God dammit, wait just one fucking minute...God dammit.... now there's only one earth and one version of all or most of these characters.....so now the one and only fucking Wells is Nash God damn fucking Wells????  God damn it! This is even more of a reason why, if they were going to make a Wells Pariah, which I will admit is a generally cool concept if they had bothered to actually fucking use either Wells or Pariah; then they should have made it Harry Wells from Earth 2, so that we'd have already had some history and established background for the characters and also so that when the dust settles, assuming this whole one earth dynamic sticks, that the one Harrison Wells that remains is the Harrison Wells that should get to remain.  The one anyone actually fucking cares about and has actual history on the show. And what about that history?  How do they explain the clusterfuck that is Harris Wells/Harry Wells/HG Wells/Sherloq Wells and now "Nash" Wells?  Is it just going to be one going with a split fucking personality?  How about the Wells who was actually indigenous to Earth 1 and killed by Thawne?  He just gets supplanted by Nash, because Nash just happened to be around during the Crisis? Sigh......I know this is technically the "Legends" installment of the crossover, but.....augh...did they have to drag fucking Beebo into this.....? You know what, fuck it, bring on the Beebo!  For that matter, I want them to find a real, living fucking alien or demon creature that the Beebo doll turns out to have been modeled on; he's not malevolent or anything, more like a baby Yoda or Gizmo who starts traveling with the Legends.  He can be Mick's pal or something. "Is this seriously happening right now?" Hey, that's my line, stay in your lane Diggle. Okay, just how powerful is Mick's fire gun?  Because anything shooting out a beam of fire that's like two city blocks long and does significant damage to something as big as a giant ass Beebo, is pretty much going to just disintegrate anything else of average size or closer proximity.  Does he have a "Stay Puff Marshmallow Man" setting? "Hey, Kate's here too!" Way to blurt out the secret identity of one of the other masked heroes, Kara.... How do they have time for this?  Not only this C-line story bullshit, how the fuck did Sara have time to change and get out into the field with Barry?  I mean, I get him going to get her, but what, did he dress her too?  Because that's just weird. I'd have laughed my ass off if the Mick of New Earth was a teetotaler. So 30 minutes in and they've finally teed up the climax of the Anti-Monitor res-surging and whatever they're going to try and do to stop him.  Yeah, they definitely knew what they were doing when they were pacing this shit out..... I guess they got tired of shelling out money for bad Martian Manhunter CGI and decided to go with practical effects for his suit at least.  Still don't know why they don't bother trying to do make-up for his martian appearance. Okay, couple of things - first, the Anti-Monitor's an idiot for not just mowing down the capes while they were speechifying.  Second, bullets?  We're going to stop this universal threat who has his own personal force field.... with bullets...Sure..... And third, "For Oliver"? ....I....... No.  Just no.  I get the sentiment you're going for and it just doesn't work for me; especially since I have little faith that this is actually the last we've seen of him.  Not to mention that I'm not sure half the people there even know Oliver well enough to really give a shit, even if he did sacrifice himself to reboot time.  It'd be like someone shouting, "For Mike!" "Yeah, for Mi...wait, who the fuck is Mike?" Thank God it wasn't Nightwing who sacrificed himself for the universe; it'd be a little more awkward if all the heroes charged yelling, "For Dick!" Well guys, I guess you know what you need to do....

It's really too bad they don't know any other speedsters that could help out; or you know, other heroes of any kind.  Like a guy who knows actual magic or a guy who can turn into steel.... Man, by the way Ray, Ryan and Wells reacted, you'd think Barry was some sort of screw who was likely to..... yeah, I'm kind of surprised he didn't accidentally press the button and shrink himself into oblivion..... What the fuck was up with the overly dramatic music underscoring Supergirl's super-slow flying towards the Anti-Monitor?  Were we supposed to think she was about to sacrifice herself to save Superman?  Was she not aware of the plan they were about to attempt?  Was Ray's arrival meant to be this event's "On your left" moment? What would have been better is if there had been a situation where it was clear that what Kara was about to attempt in order to save her cousin could be fatal and right before she makes contact, Routh-Superman swoops in joins her, either helping her double the blow, thus, somehow reducing the potential injury by spreading it out; or taking her place to save her and the other Superman, even at the possible expense of himself. And of course it fucking works on the first try, no hitches; they come up with this last ditch plan to stop this veritable god and it just fucking works..... Oh yeah, I forgot about Lyla... what the fuck, so they're not even going to bother picking up the story thread of the Anti-Monitor somehow possessing her and using her to kill the Monitor? Well shit, they brought back "baby" Sara.  And somehow JJ's still there too.  Are they twins?  Because unless they're twins, this isn't really baby Sara at whatever age she'd be now; it's some other kid they conceived and happened to name Sara. Can I just say, as an older brother I can almost guarentee JJ didn't actually want his sister to come play with him.  I mean, it's not impossible that this coincides with the five minutes a week that twp siblings that age will to share and not get into a fight over both wanting to use burnt sienna at the same time, but the odds of those five minutes being consecutive are astronomical. Wait, how does Superman not know he has two sons?  He wasn't at the dawn of time (for some asinine reason).  Or, I'm guessing, this was just contrived dialog to reveal yet another change that instead of Superman having just one kid he now has two; and we're supposed to think that he had to ask to clarify what Lois meant by "the boys" because that's also his nickname for her boobs? Honestly, they dicked us around too much with Oliver's fate for me to care or believe he's actually dead; no matter what they show us, regardless of any world wide moment of silence or whatever they're doing.  There's still two whole episodes of Arrow left of that series and we're to believe that Stephen Amell doesn't appear in either of them?   And if they're going to try and make it seem like he's gone and not have him appear at all in the next Arrow episode and then hold out for one last goodbye with him appearing at the very end, probably with fucking Felicity, it's too late; they've tried to milk this twice already and both times have fallen flat and a third times is definitely not going to land.  I don't care if he lives or dies anymore; I think it's stupid to kill him off and they've lost all credibility that I just can't believe any claims of him truly being dead at this point. O......kay....... So the multiverse was reborn, yet for some reason, some of the Earths got merged, but not all of them.  So what's on Earth 38?  Or whatever Earths Black Lightning or Nash Wells were originally from?   Hmm, I get the whole Justice League tableau they're going for, but there's just something that looks silly about these guys just....really enjoying their office chairs; and in the middle of a run down hanger, no less - it lacks an iconic look and looks more slapped together. And I get the Superfriends Easter egg at the end, but seriously, this abandoned Star Labs research facility that "no one knows about", what, had an alien monkey or whatever sitting in a crate with a single banana for however long the last time anybody stopped by? What’s with the the lack of mention of Mia, William and Connor in this final installment. What the fuck happened to them? I kind of get the idea that with the rebooted history, and Crisis being undone, they wouldn't have been brought to the past in the first place, but that just seems to make a lot of their arc pointless. And it seemed to be setting up the whole Green Arrow and the Canaries thing, setting it in the present and Oliver giving Mia her own suit. All of which is pointless if it's been undone and they have to go to the trouble of setting that all up some other way. God, this crossover sucked

[aion-rsa]

Host Explained: How it was Made, Easter Eggs and all Your Questions Answered

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Massive spoilers for Shudder original HOST to follow.

Productions are shut down, movie theatres are barely open, we’re fast running out of new things to watch. Then Rob Savage and his talented team of mates make Host in 12 weeks and all bets are off. 

This is the new horror phenomenon from Shudder, a film based entirely around a Zoom call where a group of friends do an online seance and accidentally invite something terrifying into their houses. It runs at a brief 56 minutes but manages to pack that runtime with character development, humour and proper pee-your-pants scares. And don’t just expect creepy things in the background – by the final act, which Savage refers to as “the freak out”, the movie employs full on stunt work, prosthetics and major shocks, all of which were done socially distanced. It really is an extraordinary piece of work which has unsurprisingly taken horror audiences by storm.

It’s also a film full of hints, easter eggs, references and ambiguities. We sat with Savage – via Zoom, of course – for an incredibly spoilery breakdown of Host and how it was made.

It’s been over a week now since Host was released – how has this time been? It must be weird launching your film on lockdown?

Rob Savage: It’s really weird. And it’s really weird because I made the movie basically sitting around in my flat, in my dressing gown. And we released the movie with me sitting around in my flat and in my dressing gown. And the response has happened with me… sat in my dressing gown. So it doesn’t quite feel real. I know everyone says that, but because there hasn’t been a premiere, there hasn’t been some sort of big launch where you can see 100 faces smiling back at you, it kind of just feels like I’m basically just sitting on my laptop like everyone has been for the past six months. So there’s a weird disconnect to the whole thing, but it’s obviously lovely. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that it exploded beyond just the horror community because we made it for horror fans. We wanted to get it out on Shudder and we wanted to give horror fans something fun to watch while they were locked down. But it’s lovely that it’s entered the mainstream a little bit.

I understand this was a project commissioned by Shudder?

RS: Yeah. We had a few people bidding on it. I made a stupid prank video that went a little bit viral and off the back of that, we had a few different companies come to us and this was at the height of lockdown. This was right in the peak and nobody could make anything, everyone was totally grounded.

So are we talking about May, April?

RS: Yeah. God, time has lost all meaning. But I guess it was May, maybe end of April. We had all of these different companies come to us. But that approach was much more typical to a larger production. They were saying, “We want to get this out really fast. We’ll try and get it out in six months.” And it’s like, “No, no, no, no, this needs to be in a matter of weeks. This needs to be something that mirrors back what’s going on right now and what people are living through right now.”

Shudder totally got on board with that. And we basically didn’t have a script. We didn’t really have a concept beyond a bunch of friends doing an online seance. Something scary is going to happen, we’ll figure it out, and you’ve just got to trust us. And to their credit, they came on board and they left us to figure it out.

Haley Bishop in her stunt gear

It’s microbudget but one of the things I loved about it is that it doesn’t look like that. I expected creepy things in the background but then towards the end, there’s actual proper stunt work, which is amazing. I’d like to hear a bit about the decision to do that?

RS: One of the reasons we wanted to go so big at the end is because we knew that people would have very low expectations going in. On paper, it sounds really shit, “Zoom, horror movie.” If I was to read that headline, I’d be like, “Fuck off.” And the fact that we made it under lockdown conditions, I think is always going to be at the forefront of people’s minds. One thing you’re always looking to do when you’re making a movie, especially a horror movie, is to make the audience feel that they’re without a roadmap, that they don’t know what the next turn is going to be. From the beginning, when we blocked it out, we separated it into three acts.

The first act was the seance. The second act was the haunting. And the third act was the freak out. We really wanted it to feel like by about half an hour in, the audience felt like they knew all our tricks. Then we wanted to show them something that was like, “No, you haven’t seen anything yet.” We really wanted to push that final act and make it a roller coaster. 

How did you do those big stunt set pieces – how much VFX was used?

RS: With the stunts there’s obviously VFX clean up and stuff, but it’s all pretty much what you see is what we did. So Teddy really got his face set on fire. Jinny really got picked up in the air and thrown into the swimming pool. Everything is 95% done in-camera with a little VFX cleanup to help it out. We started out by writing a list of all the cool things that we could do because of the people we know, the friends that we’ve worked with in the industry.

We had this amazing moment at the very beginning of the process where we were talking about the fact that we have to shoot it remotely as being this big, negative that we are having to constantly fight against. And then, we had this revelatory moment where we’re like, “Oh, but actually it means that we can work with anyone because anyone who’s got an internet connection can suddenly be on our crew.” So we wrote a big list of people who we knew who were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. We had pyrotechnic experts. There’s an amazing house full of stunt performers who live with a stunt coordinator, which means that legally, without breaking lockdown, we could do all these amazing stunts. Teddy, as well as being an amazing actor, is also a fully qualified stunt performer who’s done burn work before, so we could get him on board and we could set his face on fire.

It was really out of necessity that we came up with all these ideas. Then, we retrofitted the scare scenes to what we knew we could achieve.

Pool levitation rig

That’s brilliant. So the scene with Jinny over the pool, how did that work?  How was she lifted? 

RS: She’s on a wire, it picks her up. She chokes in midair and then there’s a remote control, like quick release, that lets her go, drops her into the water.

The picnic table at Emma’s death scene was obviously a real picnic table. It’s not a real Emma, though?

RS: Yes, that’s the same. That’s actually Jinny doing that fall. Jinny’s a qualified stunt person as well. We got those both on the same night, she went through a table and then she got hoisted in the air and dropped in a swimming pool. The way that we did that, it was actually the same system. So she was on a rope that dropped her down onto the table from this massive height and just stopped her. Just bungeed her a few inches off the ground. Even though she breaks the table which we loosened like in the old kung fu movies, we weakened it at all the important bits so it broke. She landed with that heavy kind of thump, but she didn’t actually go with all her weight and we didn’t actually break her neck.

That’s incredible.

RS: It was all done with the same rig on the same night. That bit of Emma’s garden is actually – if you were to pan the camera a meter over to the side, you’d see the swimming pool because we shot that in the same location.

James Swanton is your demon….

RS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He filmed all those bits at his parents’ house. 

I was wondering if he was ever in the same room as anyone… 

RS: No, a lot of the stunts and the scares, it’s just hidden cuts. You go from Teddy’s house and he’s got the torch and the torch dips off-screen for a moment. So you’ve got a black screen and then the torch comes up and suddenly you’re in James Swanton’s house and it’s his mum shooting as he walks up the stairs and we see his face jumping out between the banisters. So it’s all just really lo-fi, little techniques like that. One of the biggest effects moments I guess is the moment where you see James, the demon, underneath Teddy’s pool table because we actually shot that against a green screen in James’s house and added him in to Teddy’s pool table. I think there’s the most VFX going on in that shot. The rest of them are pretty much all done in location.

You also worked with Dan Martin on prosthetics, but remotely, how did that work?

RS: He was great. I’ve worked with Dan a bunch of times and he was one of the first people on our list of awesome people who could probably do something cool for us. I messaged him and we figured that the best way probably was to send little prosthetic pieces to Caroline along with a kind of tutorial video, that Dan very kindly made, explaining how to attach it. So Caroline had a few test pieces that she applied first using this video. Then she had the real pieces that she applied on the day. So Dan basically just came on a Zoom call and took her through inch by inch how to apply the makeup, how to blend it in, how much blood to apply, where to apply it. 

Actor Caroline Ward does SFX prep with SFX Artist Dan Martin, Director Rob Savage and Producer Douglas Cox

We had Caroline with a little cushion just out of sight so she didn’t completely brain herself on the laptop. She’d start with a little bit of blood running from her nose and she’d wack her head a couple of times. Then Dan would say, “Great, let’s do a broken nose now.” Then we’d add a little bit, and we’d crack her nose. Then she’d slam a couple more times and slowly we’d build it up until her face was all torn to shreds. Caroline was loving it. All the blood is basically corn syrup. So she was high as a kite by the end of it.

The whole Zoom background is brilliant because it does work like that, of course. You’ll come in and out of shot depending on where you’re sitting.

RS: Yeah. It’s a distance thing. That was one of the first scares we came up with that we wanted somebody to fly through the kind of threshold of the fake Zoom background. Again, that was just her. We set up her camera on her bed, covered her face in blood, and just had her “Superman” at the camera a bunch of times. Then, we stitched it together in VFX.

There are lots of moments and Easter eggs and things off-screen that people have alluded to. And certainly, I think I’ve seen you or possibly Jed [Shepard] allude to something that happens in the first three minutes?

RS: Yeah. So there’s something, I don’t want to spoil it totally… You should be looking around the moment where Jemma first joins, there’s a little… it’s less of a scare, it’s not a demon sighting or anything like that, but it’s a little clue as to what’s really going on. Yeah, that’s what I’ll say. 

Post-seance, there’re a lot of moments where we’ve got scary things happening in the background or the demon lurking, which is little-blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments where James will pop up. But really the first half, we basically give the audience everything they need to decipher what happens next. In the first five minutes, there’s clues to where the demon comes from, how everyone’s going to die, how the demon’s going to get summoned. Every single time we introduce a character, they’ve got a little clue as to what their fate’s going to be.

One of the big questions is about Seylan and what actually happens to her. There’s a key moment where something comes out of the corner just before she is cut off – to me it looks like something jumping out but it’s a very quick moment. What should we take from this?

RS: The idea is, it’s something bursting out. It’s something bursting out and knocking things flying in that moment. I know what I think when I’m watching it, but there’s no real right answer. In one take I got her to play it one way, and in another take I got her to play it another. But this idea of whether it’s actually Seylan who’s on the phone when they call… Our Terminator 2 moment.

What’s on the screen is a mixture of those two different takes. One where I got it to play it very much from the point of view of she has become the host of something and she’s possessed by something and she’s giving them the wrong information – because if you look at it, it’s only after they reengage with the spirit in the house, and they ask for further communication, that the shit really starts going down and they to get picked off. So Seylan doesn’t really do a whole heap of good there, which there’s a reading of that she’s helping the demon along.

Was the ambiguity important to you?

RS: With a lot of this, the creepiness is in the not knowing. It’s not like we filmed it and had a definitive answer in mind, but we filmed it knowing that we wanted to create a sense of ambiguity there because that’s what keeps you up at night.

Jemma Moore in Host

Jemma’s story, although she says it’s not true is weirdly specific. And then there’s all this hanging iconography, Jinny’s neck, and the noose in Teddy’s place…

RS: Exactly. When me and Jemma were working on how that scene would go, she actually made the decision to base the memory on somebody from her real life, who is still alive, but that’s why there’s that kind of weird specificity to it. And I mean, the way that we always thought about it is that it’s a ‘tulpa’ movie. 

A tulpa is a ghost or a demon that is summoned by groupthink. So the idea is that if you’re all imagining the same person in your mind, they can manifest, even though they were never really alive and they were never really dead. The idea is that Jemma, by creating so vividly this person, that all of the group see in their head while they’re in this kind of weirdly connected state, allows the demon to come through and the demon starts to manifest using these images that Jemma has evoked. It’s kind of the demon’s way of mocking them or kind of toying with them. As the movie goes through, you start to see more and more of the demon in its real form. It becomes less Jack and more demonic. And then, the final shot, you see frames of a transformation happening where the recognizable figure of Jack starts to turn into something a bit more uncanny and demonic.

So in that sense, when Seylan explains the rules and she talks about how it’s a mask then everybody sees it and thinks of it in that way. And then, of course, we have mask iconography.

RS: Yeah. It’s all about that idea of groupthink. They’re in a collective nightmare by that point. The more that they lean into that, the more it starts to manifest.

Was that consciously  a reference point or an allegory for what’s going on in the world?

RS: No, not really. We were really keen to not make it a pandemic movie. It’s a lockdown movie, not a pandemic movie. It’s really about the specifics of being isolated and going stir-crazy and the appearance of being connected, but actually being isolated. That was the main thing we wanted to tap into is it can feel like you’re hanging out in a group and your friends are there, but ultimately you’re on your own. And that’s the horror that we wanted to play out when things start happening, they’re all going through their own individual nightmares and everyone else is just a passenger.

The girls were friends already, right?

RS: We’re all just really good friends. They’re the same people who are in the initial prank video that I did. We were pretty much just hanging out on Zoom anyway, doing Zoom happy hours. And we just basically started pressing record and went from there.

There’s so much brilliant character development done without exposition, which is just really clever. How tightly scripted was it, and how much were they allowed to play?

RS: We gave them parameters for those early scenes. But there was never a conventional script. We had a 10-page outline with certain beats that they needed to hit. I spoke to all the different actors individually and talked about what they might want to bring to the table. I gave them sample lines of dialog that they could play around with, but we never did a full scripted rehearsal.

A lot of the actors didn’t know certain topics that were going to get brought up. It was more just prompts that I knew would be fun. So like the astral plane drinking game, that’s a line in the outline, but I didn’t know how they’d implement that and I didn’t tell Seylan that they were going to start drinking on the word astral plane. So the way that it came up felt kind of very natural and the way that the girls all kind of eyeball each other whenever the word is said is really fun. That’s all just happening for real.

You have mentioned that at points you’re referencing and homaging other movies – obviously there’s quite a bit of Paranormal Activity, what else can we look out for?

RS: Yeah. There’s a lot of Paranormal Activity, and I’m a big found footage guy and I love Paranormal Activity and all of those. Even though we made this in quite a condensed time period, there’s actually a lot more time you get to spend on these kinds of things when you’re filming remotely because you’re not waiting around for the lights to be set up or hair and makeup or any of these things. It means you can really tinker and you can put in these kinds of Easter eggy things, which we had a lot of fun with. I mean, there’s some really big obvious homages, like the final scene with the camera flash is on one end of the scale, we’re referencing the first Saw movie. On a slightly more highbrow end of the scale, we’re referencing Wait Until Dark, which is a movie we love.

The bit with Emma throwing the sheet over the ghost is us giving a nod – it’s sort of the first Conjuring movie, but that wasn’t actually what we had in mind. It was this movie called Satan’s Slaves, which is great. It’s on Shudder. It’s an Indonesian horror movie by this filmmaker, Joko Anwar. It’s really scary. He’s basically the next James Wan. And there’s a great fucking scare with a bed sheet, we were homaging that. Another movie that I love that I wanted to get a reference in for was Alice, Sweet Alice, which is a slasher movie from the ’70s. The mask that floats on the dispossessed demon is a direct reference to Alice, Sweet Alice. The participant ID is the date that Ghostwatch was released, which is a big reference.

Then, the password is DMK, which is from the movie Night of the Comet, which is a movie we love as well. Lake Mungo is a big one that we referenced. The Polaroid picture with the glimpse of Jack was a reference… or not reference, but just we wanted to kind of evoke that same creepiness of that kind of fuzzy, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing, kind of quality that Lake Mungo evokes.

So the obvious question is what’s next? What can we be looking out for? Are you likely to make anything else in lockdown?

RS: Oh, yeah definitely. Because of the success of Host, there’s been a huge interest in doing more. We’ve got lots of ideas that I don’t think people are going to quite expect. The last thing we want to do is try and just repeat Host because it’s such a specific thing, and we did it without any intention of it blowing up like this. So I think if we came at it now with all this expectation, I think it would probably just suck. So we’ve got a really fucking cool follow-up that we want to do that’s in a similar space. That’s going to really take people by surprise.

If Shudder wants us to, we’ve got plenty more of these ideas. And I want to keep making stuff until the world reopens again. It’s so much fun being able to make it… It’s a much more creative process than doing the normal film or TV series, doing it this way in such a condensed time. You can spend years and years developing something that never goes anywhere, but to have a movie conceived and out there in 12 weeks is a dream. So I’d love to do more of them.

Host is available to watch on Shudder now.

The post Host Explained: How it was Made, Easter Eggs and all Your Questions Answered appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[drtanstravels]

In my last post we had been traveling around the Cappadocia region of Turkey, looking at old volcanic rock formations, exploring caves and underground cities, but missing out on the chance to go hot-air ballooning. Now we were going to wrap up our Turkish holiday by venturing around Izmir Province, an area surrounded by the Aegean Sea in the country’s west. Bear in mind that these events occured more than two months ago, thus I can’t really remember much from the trip anymore, however, from looking at our travel itinerary, going through the photos we took, and consulting Wikipedia as always, I should be able to put together a reasonably coherent account of this final leg of our adventure, but it won’t really be as much of a personal recollection. Again, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of pictures!

Thursday, September 27, 2018 We had flown in from Kayseri to the city of Izmir, the capital of Izmir Province, the previous night and it was quite late by the time we got to our hotel in the resort town of Kuşadası, just enough time to grab a bite to eat and a drink or two before we had to hit the hay in preparation for the following day, which was rather packed.

First on the agenda that morning was a trip to Ephesus, also commonly referred to as Ephesos or Efes, where we would be spending several hours walking in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Marcus Cicero, and the Apostles Paul and John among others. Again, I’m not a religious person, but this could make for an interesting morning. Our guide was waiting for us at the hotel at 9:30 that morning and before long we were in Ephesus:

Ephesos was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, three kilometres southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of the former Arzawan capital by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. During the Classical Greek era it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.

The city was famed for the nearby Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Among many other monumental buildings are the Library of Celsus, and a theatre capable of holding 25,000 spectators.

Ephesos was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John may have been written here. The city was the site of several 5th-century Christian Councils.

The city was destroyed by the Goths in 263, and although rebuilt, the city’s importance as a commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. It was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD.

As like our time in Istanbul, we had a personal guide whose name neither of us can remember, however, he was an absolute wealth of knowledge on what we were seeing, to the point where there was simply too much information to take in. The first site we would be visiting in Ephesus would be the House of the Virgin Mary, both a Catholic and Muslim shrine:

The house was discovered in the 19th century by following the descriptions in the reported visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824), a Roman Catholic nun and visionary, which were published as a book by Clemens Brentano after her death. While the Catholic Church has never pronounced in favour or against the authenticity of the house, it nevertheless has maintained a steady flow of pilgrimage since its discovery. Anne Catherine Emmerich was Beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 3, 2004.

Catholic pilgrims visit the house based on the belief that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken to this stone house by Saint John and lived there for the remainder of her earthly life.

The shrine has merited several papal Apostolic Blessings and visits from several popes, the earliest pilgrimage coming from Pope Leo XIII in 1896, and the most recent in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.

I find it more than a little ironic that this post is 666 words long at the end of that Wikipedia extract. Anyway, the House of the Virgin Mary now serves as a chapel and the site has a “wishing wall” where pilgrims to the house tie pieces of fabric. Also nearby is a well that is believed to have magical healing and fertility properties. I don’t believe in this type of nonsense, but I could always do with some healing to many parts of my body, however, I wasn’t willing to risk it just in case the believers are correct, because then there’s that whole ‘fertility’ thing. I’ll take occasional illness and pain over being a parent any day. I also found it a little strange that there is a recreation of the birth of Christ in the manger at the house when this is not where he is believed to have been born, but where his mother spent her latter years. It’s kind of similar to putting your mother in a retirement home in the UK and installing a catwalk in the home after her death, complete with a statue of her as a 20-year old, posing out, because she was a fashion model in Italy in her earlier years. It doesn’t really make sense if that part of her life never occurred in that particular location, let alone country. Nevertheless, let’s take a look around, although photos weren’t permitted inside:

On the grounds

Anna out the front of Mary’s joint

The side of the house

The health and fertility well

The wishing wall

Kind of missed the point

After we finished looking around the House of the Virgin Mary we then went and walked around the streets and ruins, particularly those on the way to Harbour Street, the main hub of ancient Ephesus. Due to a combination of ancient and subsequent deforestation, overgrazing by herds of goats, erosion, and soil degradation, Harbour Street is now 3-4 km (1.8-2.5 miles) away from the coastline, the muddy remains of the ancient harbour still visible. Walking along the streets gives one a decent idea of the original beauty of the city:

Starting our walk toward the town

In typical Greek style, there are a ton of columns

A closeup

An excavation site near one of the ancient streets

Anna getting a bit ahead of me

Ruins near an aqueduct

Part of the Temple of Domitian

The carvings up close

More of the Temple of Domitian

This area of the temple is still being excavated

Carving of Nike, Goddess of Victory

Possibly a well

Another great statue

Anna in the remains of an ancient arch

The Heracles Gate

Looking down the street toward the Library of Celsus

Even cats like the sculptures

Another ruined temple

Temple of Hadrian

The engravings around the top of the Temple of Hadrian

If the ruins show the original splendour of the streets, then the remains of frescoes and terrace houses offer a look into how the wealthy lived during Roman times. Sure, we saw the mosaics and frescoes of houses and churches in Cappadocia in my previous post, but during the Roman period, Ephesus was the place to be. In 27 BC, the city became the capital of proconsular Asia, entering an era of prosperity and becoming both the seat of the governor and a major centre of commerce, second in both importance and size only to Rome so the truly wealthy wanted to live a life of luxury and style. These photos from an excavation site, some of which has been restored, some not, show how that was done:

We still had a couple more impressive sites to see in Ephesus, the first being the Library of Celsus:

The Library of Celsus is an ancient Roman building in Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Selçuk, Turkey. It was built in honour of the Roman Senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, completed between circa 114–117 A.D. by Celsus’ son, Gaius Julius Aquila (consul, 110 AD). The library was “one of the most impressive buildings in the Roman Empire” and built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a mausoleum for Celsus, who is buried in a crypt beneath the library in a decorated marble sarcophagus. The Library of Celsus was the “third-largest library in the ancient world” behind both Alexandria and Pergamum.

The interior of the library was destroyed, supposedly by an earthquake in 262 A.D., (though other evidence points to a fire during a Gothic invasion in that same year) and the façade by another earthquake in the tenth or eleventh century A.D. It lay in ruins for centuries, until the façade was re-erected (anastylosis) by archaeologists between 1970 and 1978.

We weren’t going to get to see Celsus’ marble sarcophagus, but we weren’t left disappointed with what we did witness:

The facade from a distance

Looking through the arches to the right of the facade

Sophia, the personification of wisdom

Arete, the personification of virtue

Ennoia, the personification of intelligence

Episteme, the personification of knowledge

Looking at the ceiling

Ancient engravings

Had to get one shot of me, I guess

The final tourist attraction we’d be visiting in Ephesus was the Great Theatre. According to the details on a sign at the site, “The Great Theatre goes back to a preceding structure of the Hellenistic period (3rd-1st century BC). In the Roman period there was an extensive rebuilding under the Emperors Domitian (AD 81-96) and Trajan (AD 98-117) with at first a two-, later three-storeyed impressive façade. In addition to the theatre performances, assemblies also took place there; in the later imperial period, gladiatorial contests are also attested. Before the 7th century the Theatre was incorporated into the Byzantine city walls.”

I could post a ton of pictures that I took at the Great Theatre, but you really only need to see one, this panoramic shot I got of the stage from the top row of accessible seats:

After all of that walking around Ephesus in the morning it was finally time for lunch… Or so we thought, but first we would be stopping by a shop owned by a friend of a friend of our guide, as is often the case, this time a leather goods one. Anna and myself were ushered into a private room with a catwalk and soon we were treated to a leather fashion show before being taken into the store. It was kind of difficult to not laugh while the models were strutting because the whole situation was not only absurd and completely unexpected, but also because it wasn’t applicable to us; we live in Singapore, an equatorial country with no seasons besides the monsoon. The temperature on an average day in Singapore is usually between 31-33°C (89-91.5°F), a particularly cool night getting down to around 25°C (77°F), and the average annual humidity is 83.4%, sometimes reaching 100% when it is raining. Wearing leather pants in those conditions would chafe the entire lower half of your body raw after about two minutes, and during a thunderstorm it already feels like you’re trapped in a sauna while people urinate on you so I don’t think a leather raincoat is the solution. Anyway, I bought a much-needed new wallet from the store and then we had lunch before hitting up our next site for the day, the Temple of Artemis:

The Temple of Artemis or Artemision, also known less precisely as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to an ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis. It was located in Ephesus (near the modern town of Selçuk in present-day Turkey). It was completely rebuilt three times, and in its final form was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. By 401 AD it had been ruined or destroyed. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain at the site.

The earliest version of the temple (a temenos) antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, and dates to the Bronze Age. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed it to the Amazons. In the 7th century BC, it was destroyed by a flood. Its reconstruction, in more grandiose form, began around 550 BC, under the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. The project was funded by Croesus of Lydia, and took 10 years to complete. This version of the temple was destroyed in 356 BC by Herostratus in an act of arson. The next, greatest and last form of the temple, funded by the Ephesians themselves, is described in Antipater of Sidon’s list of the world’s Seven Wonders:

‘I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, “Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.”‘

Well, the Temple of Artemis may not be quite so brilliant today as it was 2,500 years ago, but it was still worth a look. Here’s how the site where the temple once stood, including the tomb of John the Apostle, the roped off square with the four pillars, appears today (plus a shot of our spontaneous, private, leather fashion parade):

The tomb of John the Apostle

Our day of visiting ruins may have come to an end, but we weren’t done with exploring, not by a long shot. We were going to be spending the night in Kuşadası again and this time we had plenty of time to look around. Also, I had to seek out an item; since I was in Turkey, I had decided that I wanted to buy a fez, but I wanted a proper one, not some Turkish souvenir fez that says ‘I ♥ Turkey’ or something similar that I had really only seen thus far. If you are unsure what a fez is, it is one of those short, cylindrical, peakless, felt hats that are usually red with a tassel hanging down the side as sometimes worn by Grandpa Simpson and always worn by Tommy Cooper, incidentally one of the only comedians to ever die on live television (I’m not kidding, only click that link if you’re prepared to see a clip of a man having a heart attack in front of an audience who continued to laugh, thinking it was part of the show). We wandered around Kuşadası for a few hours, absolutely gobsmacked by the insane array of counterfeit goods openly available, as well as the terrible, terrible haircuts you could get in this beautiful seaside town. I found my fez, we found a bar for a few beers, and then when it was time we found a place for dinner and another bar to settle down in for the night. A look around Kuşadası:

A shop selling genuine fake watches

Why would you do this to your child?

Walking toward Kaleiçi Mosque

Another example of awful hair desing

Some of the blue houses in an area that spans all of the colours of the rainbow

We had to try many times to get a photo of me in my new fez without cracking up laughing

A statue of what looks like Bill Murray and a pal emptying out a fishing net in front of our bar

Friday, September 28, 2018 Our final day in Turkey was upon us so we had to make it count, however, it wouldn’t be quite as packed as our previous days in Turkey because we had to catch a flight back to Istanbul at 7:30pm. There was going to be a lot of driving involved in the day’s activities so we hit the road and eventually stopped in at a kind of roadside diner-type thing that also sold some weird souvenirs, including the aforementioned ‘I ♥ Turkey’ fez, and feasted on what essentially amounted to Turkish truck-stop food before eventually landing at Laodicea on the Lycus:

Laodicea on the Lycus was an ancient city built on the river Lycus (Çürüksu). It was located in the Hellenistic regions of Caria and Lydia, which later became the Roman Province of Phrygia Pacatiana. It is now situated near the modern city of Denizli. In 2013 the archaeological site was inscribed in the Tentative list of World Heritage Sites in Turkey.

It contained one of the Seven churches of Asia mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

Well, if this joint contains a church from the only remotely interesting book of the Bible, yes, the one about the end of the world, then this could be pretty cool. But what is still there now? More ruins, of course!:

The existing remains attest to its former greatness. The ruins near Denizli (Denisli) are well preserved and as of 2012 are being substantially renovated. Its many buildings include a stadium, baths, temples, a gymnasium, theatres, and a bouleuterion (Senate House). On the eastern side, the line of the ancient wall may be distinctly traced, with the remains of the Ephesus gate; there are streets traversing the town, flanked by colonnades and numerous pedestals. North of the town, towards the Lycus, are many sarcophagi, with their covers lying near them, partly imbedded in the ground, and all having been long since rifled.

Particularly interesting are the remains of an aqueduct starting several kilometres away at the Baspinar spring in Denizli, and possibly having another more distant source. Unusually, to cross the valley to the south of Laodicea, instead of the usual open channel carried above the level of the city on lofty arches as was the usual practice of the Romans, an inverted siphon was employed consisting of a double pressurised pipeline, descending into the valley and back up to the city. The low arches supporting the siphon commence near the summit of a low hill to the south where the header tank was located, and thence continue to the first terminal distribution tank (castellum aquae) at the edge of the hill of the city, whose remains are visible to the east of the stadium and South Baths complex. The water was heavily charged with calcareous matter, as several of the arches are covered with a thick incrustation where leaks occurred at later times. The siphon consisted of large carved stone pipes; some of these also are much incrusted, and some completely choked up. The terminal tank has many clay pipes of various diameters for water distribution on the north, east and south sides which, because of the choking by sinter, were replaced in time. To the west of the terminal is a small fountain next to the vaulted gate. The aqueduct appears to have been destroyed by an earthquake, as the remaining arches lean bodily on one side, without being much broken. A second distribution terminal and sedimentation tank is visible 400 metres (1,300 ft) north of the first, to which it was connected via another siphon of travertine blocks, and this one is bigger and supplied most of the city.

The stadium, which is in a good state of preservation, is near the southern extremity of the city. The seats are arranged along two sides of a narrow valley, which appears to have been taken advantage of for this purpose, and to have been closed up at both ends. Towards the west are considerable remains of a subterranean passage, by which chariots and horses were admitted into the arena, with a long inscription over the entrance. The city ruins bear the stamp of Roman extravagance and luxury, rather than of the stern and massive solidity of the Greeks. Strabo attributes the celebrity of the place to the fertility of the soil and the wealth of some of its inhabitants: amongst whom Hiero, having adorned the city with many beautiful buildings, bequeathed to it more than 2000 talents at his death.

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s take a look around this apocalyptic pile of stones and rubble, as well as some of the stranger souvenirs from our truck-stop. As we had to take in so much information when getting shown around, I can’t remember what any of it is now, but the above information might be able to help you piece it together:

No idea what’s going on here

What better way to prove you’ve been to Turkey than a plate written in Chinese?

The Smurfs must be from Baltimore

Walking into Laodicea

Most of these outdoor shots are from what is referred to as Temple ‘A’

This piece is under a glass floor

The Church of Laodikeia

Inside the remains of the church

Pooping here would be my worst nightmare

How they used to go about their “business”

Our final stop on our epic trek around Turkey was going to be another UNESCO World Heritage site, Pamukkale, in order to unwind and take in some natural beauty before we leave the country:

Pamukkale, meaning “cotton castle” in Turkish, is a natural site in Denizli in southwestern Turkey. The area is famous for a carbonate mineral left by the flowing water. It is located in Turkey’s Inner Aegean region, in the River Menderes valley, which has a temperate climate for most of the year.

The ancient Greco-Roman city of Hierapolis was built on top of the white “castle” which is in total about 2,700 metres (8,860 ft) long, 600 m (1,970 ft) wide and 160 m (525 ft) high. It can be seen from the hills on the opposite side of the valley in the town of Denizli, 20 km away.

Known as Pamukkale (Cotton Castle) or ancient Hierapolis (Holy City), this area has been drawing the weary to its thermal springs since the time of Classical antiquity. The Turkish name refers to the surface of the shimmering, snow-white limestone, shaped over millennia by calcium-rich springs. Dripping slowly down the vast mountainside, mineral-rich waters foam and collect in terraces, spilling over cascades of stalactites into milky pools below. Legend has it that the formations are solidified cotton (the area’s principal crop) that giants left out to dry.

Tourism is and has been a major industry in the area for thousands of years, due to the attraction of the thermal pools. As recently as the mid-20th century, hotels were built over the ruins of Hierapolis, causing considerable damage. An approach road was built from the valley over the terraces, and motor bikes were allowed to go up and down the slopes. When the area was declared a World Heritage Site, the hotels were demolished and the road removed and replaced with artificial pools.

Overshadowed by natural wonder, Pamukkale’s well-preserved Roman ruins and museum have been remarkably underestimated and unadvertised; tourist brochures over the past 20 years have mainly featured photos of people bathing in the calcium pools. Aside from a small footpath running up the mountain face, the terraces are all currently off-limits, having suffered erosion and water pollution at the feet of tourists.

After our hectic travel schedule over the previous few weeks that had left us beyond a little stressed and jet-lagged, not to mention the crazy amount of walking and hiking we had done on little sleep while in Turkey, it was hard to imagine a better location to wind this trip up than a hot spring. We weren’t going in for a dip, it was just an extremely beautiful, naturally calm environment to hang out in and unwind, walk around and take in the serenity, and then sit back and have a cup of coffee while playing with the particularly clean and friendly puppies that are in the area, which is exactly what we did. Naturally, it all started with some ruins, this time of Hierapolis, and then it was time for the relaxing to begin:

Some ruins of Hierapolis

A bit of a mineral buildup

More ruins

I’m calling B.S. on pretty much all of this

Some of the pools are crystal clear

The colours of water in different basins are breathtaking

Looking around Pamukkale

The calcite-laden waters

The view back the other way

And now looking down

From another angle

A section of palm trees

Most would probably assume this is a photograph of people trekking through snow

That sign probably isn’t necessary

Anna playing with some local puppies

This one decided to eat her dress

My turn now

The sight-seeing part of our trip was now officially over. We would be transferred to Denizli airport and take a 7:30pm flight to Istanbul, arriving at around 8:30. Our flight out of Istanbul was leaving at about 3:00am so we had a room booked in the airport hotel to shower and relax in before taking our early flight back to Singapore.

Turkey was incredible, far different to anything we had expected and it is amazing to think that if we had come only a decade earlier, many of the sites we explored wouldn’t have even been excavated or rebuilt yet. I also doubt we would’ve enjoyed our time in Turkey as much as we did on this trip if we had to do everything in a large tour group. I’m not trying to sound like an entitled prick, I’m just simply not a people-person. The last time we were part of a tour group was when we were in Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands earlier this year and Anna and her friends knew almost immediately that there would be at least one person on each leg of the trip that would get on my nerves in a big way and they weren’t wrong. Large groups of people always irritate me, whether it be personal traits, habits, or just waiting around all day for them to get in the perfect pose for photos such as these that I snapped over the course of our Turkish trip, pictures that need to be taken, checked, and taken again to make sure they’re just right:

Don’t get me wrong, I take a lot of photos when we travel, but it’s more about capturing the moment, not holding up large groups of people because Anna’s hair wasn’t straight. It turns out that it doesn’t just bug me, the tour guides hate it too! In fact, one of our guides said that if they were able to create a photoshop patch that automatically removes Chinese tour groups from the background of your photos, that particular guide would be able to retire a rich and happy man. It wasn’t because of the fact they were Chinese, it was simply due to their habit of holding everyone up or getting in their way by taking pictures. Anna thought this was hilarious until I pointed out that it would also remove her from our pictures as well. That’s why I definitely consider ourselves lucky to now be able to do things privately at our own pace, without delaying anyone else or waiting for them either, and that is what made this trip truly brilliant.

Apologies again for making this more of a History lesson than a personal account, I’d just like to close with a big thank you to our tour guides and we may have to come back again to do the hot-air ballooning, hopefully on enough sleep. I’d also like to add that, in keeping with a recent trend beginning back in May that has plagued pretty much all of our recent international trips, with disasters or tragedies occurring while we were in, or immediately after we left Hawaii, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and China, Turkey didn’t escape unscathed. On this occasion, there was a hurricane warning in Turkey the day we were to depart and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by his own government just two days after we left.

Let’s hope nothing bad happens in South Korea as a result of us visiting Seoul next week.

The final leg of our tour of Turkey, exploring Izmir Province In my last post we had been traveling around the Cappadocia region of Turkey, looking at old volcanic rock formations, exploring caves and underground cities, but missing out on the chance to go hot-air ballooning.

[soundcheckentertainment]

It was a Monday night in Ottawa and all through the city not a creature was stirring…except for a sold out crowd at the Algonquin Commons Theatre who packed the house for our favourite Canadian Kid, Brett Kissel and his Ice, Snow and 30 Below tour.

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

There’s no question that country music fans in Ottawa love Brett Kissel. I think it’s safe to say that Brett Kissel loves Ottawa too as he’s performed in Ottawa more often than most other Canadian country artists, 3 times in as many months including ringing in the New Year on the steps of Parliament Hill.

I’ve had the pleasure of covering a lot of shows at the beautiful Algonquin Commons Theatre over the last several years but I can’t recall a single show that got as loud as the crowd did last night for Brett. That sold out crowd was hungry for country music and that’s exactly what they got.

Country music tours have been following a bit of a “lather, rinse, repeat” theme over the last several years. Where the same headliners tour with a similar rotation of opening acts, Canadian country music has been no exception to this. When Brett first announced this tour many of us were expecting one of his Invictus Mates or Warner label mates to join him on his tour much like in the past. But Brett had other plans and we, for one, couldn’t be happier. Emerging artists are the lifeblood for any musical genre and for an artist of Brett’s calibre to open up his national tour to some of Ontario’s rising stars was extremely generous.

Abby Stewart

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

The night started out with a performance by a young lady we’ve been talking about for a number of years now, Abby Stewart. Hailing from Kingston, Ontario Abby is loaded with so much talent it’s a treat to watch her hone her skills show after show. Every time I see her perform she moves the bar just a little bit higher.

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Last night Ottawa was in for a special treat as Abby was joined by her good friend, Beamer Wigley, for a few songs. Beamer flew in from Calgary especially for the show after having spent Sunday at the Alberta Country Music Awards, where his single “Meteorite” was nominated for Song of the Year. Beamer treated the crowd to a performance of his latest single “Boombox” before the duo, who has been busy of the last few months writing together in Nashville, performed a few songs together. The closed out their set with a chillingly tight performance of Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson’s hit “Don’t You Wanna Stay”.  Take my word for it and keep your eye on these two because in the coming years you’ll be hearing their name’s a lot more often…count on it.

Brett Kissel

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel hit the stage next and didn’t miss a beat kicking the show off with the first single off of ‘Pick Me Up’ “Airwaves”. The fuse was lit and the crowd was on fire. Every Brett Kissel show is a special event for the audience, something has to be said about the special bond he has with his fans. It goes without saying that most artists love their fans but Brett shares a deeper connection with his and I believe that’s part of what makes his performances so magical.

Tough People Do and I Didn’t Fall in Love with Your Hair

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Like most country music shows there was also a lot of deep emotion packed into last night’s performance. Brett lost his grandparents in 2011 to a two-vehicle crash in Alberta as they were enroute to watch him perform. Everything about this event speaks to the character of Brett Kissel, who kept a scheduled performance 2 nights after the accident but ended up having to cancel halfway through telling the crowd that his heart was willing, but his body just couldn’t do it. The event led Brett to write and dedicate the song “Tough People Do” for his grandparents.  It was the first of two very emotional moments throughout the night that strengthen the bond between Brett and his fans, no doubt that Brett leans on his fans for strength in tough times and his fans draw strength from Brett to deal with their own tough times.

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

The second of the two emotional moments came with Brett’s performance of his single “I Didn’t Fall in Love with Your Hair”. The song rings true for anyone with a loved one battling cancer and it’s clear that it has become an anthem for the philanthropic side of Brett who spoke highly of his support for the Canadian Cancer Society during our interview earlier in the day. The song is from the perspective of the partner of someone battling this horrible disease which, as Brett says, has touched far too many of us. The eyes welled up with tears and the room lit up with cell phone lights as Ottawa joined in chorus to sing this incredible song.

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett wasn’t going to let the night end on a sombre note as he quickly picked up the pace and brought the party back by paying tribute to some legends. First he started with one of his idols Johnny Cash for which he went into the crowd and stood on a railing and sang “Ring of Fire” before returning to the stage for John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” and then capping it off with Garth Brooks’ “Baton Rouge” (“Baton Rouge”, incidentally is one of three songs Brett picked when answering a fan question asking which three songs Brett would chose if he could only sing 3 songs for the rest of his life.)

What would a Brett Kissel show in Ottawa be without a visit from his friend and fellow member of Invictus Entertainment Jordan McIntosh? Jordan was in the building and joined Brett to perform “Raise Your Glass”. As the night wound down Brett ended the show, or did he, the way it all began…with “Started with A Song”.  But the crowd had other plans and they let him know to the extent that, I’m certain, a poor student in a residence nearby was having issues studying because of all the racket coming from the Theatre.

Brett and his band returned to the stage and delivered exactly what the crowd wanted….3, 2, 1! It was the perfect note to end the night on because I can assure you that I, as well as everyone in that sold out theatre, will be counting down the hours until we get to see Brett Kissel again! Something tells me he’ll be back in Ottawa again very soon, would love to see Brett on a stage at RBC Bluesfest this summer which has already seen performances by Tim Hicks and Dallas Smith.

Brett hits Sherbrooke, Quebec tonight for his only stop in La belle province. Local boy,  Jon MacAulay, will be joining Brett tonight. Jon is a guitarist/singer from the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. His repertoire combines elements of folk, blues, and jazz. Visit his website to learn more: www.jonmacaulaymusic.com

Following Quebec Brett jets off to Nova Scotia for 4 nights before heading slightly west for 2 shows in New Brunswick and then back east to wrap up his tour in beautiful Prince Edward Island.

Brett has taken the time to build a roster of emerging artists that he would like to introduce to his fans so we’d like to take a moment and introduce them to you. Rounding out Brett’s east coast dates are:

Chelsea Atkinson January 26, 2017 Astor Theatre Liverpool, NS

Chelsea is a 16 year old singer/songwriter from Nova Scotia. Check out her Facebook or Twitter profiles to watch this emerging artist get the opportunity of a lifetime, to open for Brett Kissel

Amanda Riley January 27, 2017 Mermaid Imperial PA Centre Windsor, NS

Riley hails from Chester, Nova Scotia where she is known as “the little girl with the big voice”. She gained nationwide popularity as a finalist on CMT’s “Big In A Small Town”, and has shared the stage with Aaron Pritchett, Charlie Major, Deric Ruttan and Dean Brody. She was recognized as one of Ole’s top 8 singer/songwriters during CCMA week in Halifax in September 2015. She also had the privilege to open the MDM Recordings Showcase during CCMA week and has been a featured artist on George Canyon’s ‘ Down East Country’ radio and television program several times.  www.amandarileymusic.com

Bailey MacKinnon January 28, 2017 Glasgow Square Theatre New Glasgow, NS & January 29, 2017 Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre Port Hawkesbury, NS

Follow Bailey and her journey on Twitter

Tyler Deveau February 1, 2017 Capitol Theatre Moncton, NB & February 2, 2017 Fredericton Playhouse Fredericton, NB

By the age of two St. George New Brunswick’s Tyler Deveau was singing along to George Strait on the radio. After winning Country 94’s annual talent search in 2013 in Saint John, he is now laying the groundwork to make his dream of being a professional country music artist come true.

This win gave him the resources and opportunities to pursue his music career further, allowing him to fly to Nashville to meet with a top label A and R manager and well as co-write with top songwriters in the business, which have had songs cut by Luke Bryan, Toby Keith, Dustin Lynch, and Cole Swindell. tylerdeveau.com

Trinity Bradshaw February 3, 2017 Harbourfront Theatre Summerside, PE & February 4, 2017 King’s Playhouse Georgetown, PE

Trinity should be no stranger to our readers. Trinity Bradshaw became the youngest winner of the Summerside Festival Talent Search in PEI and performed twice at the East Coast Music Awards before moving to Calgary in 2010 where she soon won SUGAR CRISP ‘s national songwriting contest, and the Amp Radio Rock Star contest. She was Alberta’s 2014 representative in the CCMA Spotlight contest, and Winner of the 2014 Boots & Hearts Canadian Emerging Artist Showcase. www.trinitybradshaw.com

Naturally for more details on Brett Kissel and to follow his own journey and see what he’ll follow up his current tour with visit him at www.brettkissel.com

Special thanks to Warner Music Canada for inviting my boys to join me at the show, without a doubt it’ll be something they won’t forget for a very long time.

All photos by Scott Martin Visuals for Sound Check Entertainment

More photos

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Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Abby Stewart at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Brett Kissel at Algonquin Commons – photo credit to Scott Martin Visuals

Ottawa gets loud as Brett Kissel brings Ice Snow and 30 Below to Algonquin It was a Monday night in Ottawa and all through the city not a creature was stirring...except for a sold out crowd at the Algonquin Commons Theatre who packed the house for our favourite Canadian Kid, Brett Kissel and his Ice, Snow and 30 Below tour.