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tcm · 4 years ago

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Joan Crawford and The Man of a Thousand Faces By Jessica Pickens

Joan Crawford was one of Hollywood’s top stars, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946. But she credited growing as an actress to an actor who has been forgotten by many: Lon Chaney. Dubbed “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” Chaney was known for transforming physically for many different roles, often donning makeup or costumes that were painful in order to get the right look. “He will do anything, and permit almost anything to be done to him, for the sake of his pictures,” said director and frequent collaborator Tod Browning.

Chaney transformed into Quasimodo for THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (’23), the acid-burned PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (’25), a sharp-toothed vampire in LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (‘27) and an armless circus worker in THE UNKNOWN (’27). It was the latter that Crawford, then early in her acting career, worked with Chaney in. “Mr. Chaney was known as a generous man to young actors. He certainly was to me,” Crawford is quoted as saying by biographer Charlotte Chandler.

In THE UNKNOWN, Chaney and Crawford are circus performers. Chaney is Alonzo the Armless, a knife thrower, and Crawford is Nanon, his assistant during the act and the daughter of the circus’s owner. Due to having been groped and harassed by men, Nanon does not want to be touched by men and has a fear of their arms and hands. Because of this, she feels safe around Alonzo but rebukes the advances of Malabar, the circus strongman, who is in love with her. However, Alonzo has a secret … he actually does have arms but is hiding from the police, so he transformed himself into an armless performer to change his identity. To keep Nanon, Alonzo takes drastic and horrifying measures.

By 1927, Chaney was one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s top stars and Crawford was a “little contract player,” as she called herself. But as Chaney had done with other young actors — like Loretta Young — he helped Crawford and she cited him for the rest of her career as someone who influenced her career. “With him I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera and acting,” Crawford said. “Until then I had been conscious only of myself. Lon Chaney was my introduction to acting.”

When they first met, Crawford said Chaney greeted her like a long-lost daughter and treated her like she was the star of the picture. But once he had his costume and make-up on, he became that character. “He had such a friendly, charming manner, except when he was getting into costume and putting on his makeup,” Crawford told Chandler. “He did this in his dressing room for a couple of hours before we started shooting. Then, he became Alonzo. That is when you had to be careful.”

THE UNKNOWN was directed by Tod Browning, who was known for his eerie films with a seedy atmosphere, like WEST OF ZANZIBAR (’28) or FREAKS (’32). Working together several times, THE UNKNOWN is considered Chaney and Browning’s best collaboration … and also their most bizarre and unnerving, according to Chaney’s biographer Michael Bliss. With most of their films, the plot idea started with a situation or a character type. Then the script was built around that idea. In the case of THE UNKNOWN, it was starting with a scenario of an armless man.

In many of his films, Browning’s depictions of people with disabilities are negative; often linked to crime or something horrific. THE UNKNOWN is no exception. In the film, Chaney’s Alonzo is pretending to be disabled to hide from the law for a crime he committed. Because he can be identified by a double thumb, he uses a corset and layered clothing to strap his arms to his body. Even while hiding out, he continues to commit crimes and murder. Alonzo also lusts for Nanon, and the young girl becomes an obsession. And while Nanon cares for Alonzo, she doesn’t consider him as a romantic partner.

As the armless man, Chaney’s character uses his feet for ordinary tasks, like smoking and strumming a guitar. Crawford said that Chaney had to learn how to hold a cigarette with his toes. Other actions were performed by a double. Paul Desmuke (or Dismuki) was a real-life armless circus performer who performed the knife throwing and other action in scenes.

Tod Browning tried to place his characters in believable surroundings, rather than putting his characters in supernatural or storybook settings, like Frankenstein’s monster or the Mummy. “The thing you have to be most careful of in a mystery story is not let it verge on the comic. If a thing is too gruesome and too horrible, it gets beyond the limits of the average imagination the audience laughs. It may sound incongruous, but mystery must be plausible,” Browning said.

The film was met with favorable reviews, but also astonished audiences and reviewers. “It is gruesome and at times shocking, and the principal character deteriorates from a more or less sympathetic individual to an arch-fiend,” said the June 13, 1927, review in the New York Times. The New York Times also compared the story to a mixture of “Balzac and Guy de Maupassant with a faint suggestion of O. Henry plus Mr. Browning's colorful side-show background.”

Even 93 years after its release, THE UNKNOWN confuses and shocks audiences. Many continue to call it one of the strangest film plots, according to the Museum of Moving Image. Even the British Film Institute calls the film “Out-there stuff.” Rest assured, at one point in the film your jaw will drop during THE UNKNOWN. And oddly mixed into this sadist tale, is the story of the budding career of Joan Crawford.

#Lon Chaney #Joan Crawford #horror #Tod Browning #circus #TCM #Turner Classic Movies #Jessica Pickens #silent film #old hollywood

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that-shamrock-vibe · 6 years ago

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Movie Review: Dumbo (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the day after the movie is first released in the U.K, so if you haven’t yet seen the movie, go and see it and then read on.

General Reaction:

/I have fallen in love with Tim Burton’s take on Dumbo, the character not the movie. He is so adorable in places just so full of innocence that it is impossible not to fall in love with him by the end of the movie. The movie is a slow-burn I think depending on your level of enjoyment of the 1941 animated movie as well as your willingness to believe in the Disney magic. I always at least a toe in the pool of Disney magic with any Disney movie I see and that 1% of pure belief actually thought Dumbo was real.

Now when it comes to the movie as a whole, I had a good time. Just like I would if I went to the circus or an amusement park in real life, I enjoyed the spectacle and the wonder what the movie offered me. However, the fact the original animated movie is just 64 minutes whereas this 2019 version is 112 minutes did flare up red lights for me as I didn’t know how exactly they were going to add pretty much an hour of extra content to a movie that pretty much drags as it is from what I remember.

I haven’t seen the original animated movie for about 15 years if not more, but by memory the movie was “A stork brings baby Dumbo to his mother who is part of a travelling circus but he has big ears so everyone sees him as a freak and dress him up as a clown-act. He befriends a mouse who gets him drunk and he sees pink elephants, they both discover he can fly with a feather after meeting a quartet of racially-stereotypical crows who help him reunite with his mother...end of movie”. This was definitely a more fleshed-out and, in my opinion, more adult adaptation while still maintaining Disney’s family-friendly nature.

Focusing on more human characters than just the one ringmaster when you haven’t got that first-hand perspective of talking animals is definitely the right decision, and fortunately they did not pull focus from the start that is Dumbo himself. However, all the main human characters were rather compelling and charming in their own way and all of them simply aided to making Dumbo that much more adorable and cute.

When you hear Tim Burton is directing a movie, you are looking for the wonder, the macabre and the unique Burtonisms that brought us Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter....in the first Alice movie. However, for the first half of this movie I was not seeing what I was expecting from him, until Dumbo’s first circus performance where we and he see the acts before he goes on...including Burton’s reimagining of the pink elephants. With the original Dumbo had Dumbo drink and see them, I was slightly Burton was going to make a live-action baby elephant drink, fortunately thought it was merely part of the circus performance with pink elephant bubbles that somehow came to life, believe in the Disney magic!

The scene that had me on the edge of my seat was the clown scene when Dumbo was trapped on that ledge with the fire and I was holding my breath so worried for him. When a movie can make me care that much about a CGI elephant it’s something special.

Also, it is slightly concerning that the villain of the movie is essentially Corporate America, in the shape of Michael Keaton. If there were villains in the original I feel it was simply humanity in general whereas here they showed the good, the bad and the corrupted sides of humanity and that, to me, is a lot more realistic and better storytelling.

But when you consider that Keaton’s amusement park “Dremland” is very similar to the theme parks of today and this inspires Danny DeVito’s ringmaster of the circus character to make his circus more family and animal friendly whih also seems to be a very early version of DisneyWorld is either Disney commenting on themselves or on theme parks in general.

Cast:

Aside from the animals, you had many supporting human characters both in the Medici Bros. Circus and Keaton’s business associates. Front and centre is Colin Farrell who is surprisingly a WWI soldier who lost an arm during the war, this was a surprise because it was never revealed in the trailers and the only shots we see of him are most likely with the prosthetic he has. I thought the loss of his wife wasn’t as heavily felt in the movie but his for for his kids was.

The kids were okay, I am not seeing anything great here but I never really see anything great from kids in Disney movies usually, with the exception of Mowgli in The Jungle Book.

Eva Green was fabulous in this movie, I have not yet seen her star power fully shine yet because I am still seeing Helena Bonham-Carter-lite probably because Burton seems to be turning her into that. I thought the French “Queen of the Skies” they created for her was very well used in the context of the movie, the only thing I believe will hurt the character, and Eva Green, is the fact that we have very recently seen a flying trapeze lady with Zendaya’s character in The Greatest Showman and while Colin Farrell’s Holt and Zac Efron’s Phillip Carlyle are different characters, both fill that kind of middle-management/underling in their respective circuses and while Holt and Colette never explicitly have a romance in this movie it does just draw comparisons.

Danny DeVito as a circus ringmaster calls back to his turn as The Penguin in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns because Cobblepot there led a circus troupe although slightly more demonic than this group. Also, from when we first meet Medici, I had so many callbacks to his other Disney role as Philoctites in Hercules with his talk about “Rule number 1″.

As I said Michael Keaton is the villain and reasonable as a villain, although I do feel it draws more on campy than threatening at times. There are a couple of moments when he enters a room and almost sing-speaks to the point where I thought he was going to burst into song, being a Disney movie. But fortunately the only song in this movie is Baby, Mine and not sung by him.

The actual troupe are great diverse characters, however much like Shazam! it does seem to be where the diversity is.as the main cast are all Caucasian. The snake charmer, the strongman and the mermaid are the three that stand out and surprisingly the mermaid is Rae from My Mad Fat Diary. Interesting to see how far people come. She was very wooden, particularly during the song, but she was passable. I particularly loved the elephant breakout plan at the end of the movie as it felt like they all used the strengths that made them circus performers in the first place.

Going Forward:

Because Disney does only really seem to be wanting to be showing updated versions of these animated classics, I don’t see this movie going anywhere after the conclusion of the film. But honestly, that scene where Dumbo and his mother are freed from the amusement park and find safe haven in India along with a herd of their kind was beautiful and seeing Dumbo flying around the grove was the moment where I welled up because it was just so perfect an ending.

However, if they wanted to somehow attempt to link up these live-action movies, they could have had an adult Mowgli appear looking over the grove or seeing Dumbo fly by. I know it may never happen but it would have been exciting, even as a mid-post-credits scene.

Recommendation:

I had a lovely time watching this movie, I never felt bored or like I wasted my time. I would gladly see it again and do remember most of the key moments. If you are someone who wants to believe in the Disney magic then you will see it here, if you are someone who wants an updated version of the animated movie then you will have that. If you just want a great family-friendly movie then you will definitely have that. Just go and have a great time.

Overall I rate the movie a 7/10, it’s a good live-action adaptation ahead of Cinderella and Oz but below Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. Somewhere on par with Maleficent and 101 Dalmatians. I enjoyed myself and I am glad I saw it.

So that’s my review of Dumbo, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Disney Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

#dumbo #disney #tim burton #dumbo 1941 #dumbo 2019 #colin farrell #eva green #danny devito #michael keaton

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Why chiseled boxers lose, and flabby boxers win

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Why chiseled boxers lose, and flabby boxers win.

It was a meeting of two diametric body types: the impeccably chiseled vs. the swollen flab of the aesthetically aloof. An experiment to determine what a real fighter should look like.

There was James Toney, the short guy who’d eaten his way out of the 160-pound division up to a rotund 217 pounds. Once referred to by HBO broadcaster Jim Lampley as a “fat tub of goo,” Toney’s body was soft, with a paunch that peeked over his trunks, and a waistline that threatened to jailbreak his butt crack from his ever-lowering shorts. By conventional standards, he didn’t look like much of a fighter.

And there was Evander Holyfield, the heavyweight division’s elder statesman who, at 41, was still a physical marvel. As he grew older and bigger, his neck got shorter and thicker, slowly consumed by sloping trapezius muscles. His shoulders became cannonballs and his weightlifter chest deepened and expanded like armour. He resembled the marble statues of ancient Greece, or perhaps more notably, the copiously oiled bodybuilder bulk of Rocky Balboa.

Holyfield had also begun his career as a much smaller man. Unlike Toney, he worked up to the heavyweight ranks seeking greater glory and fortune. To help, Holyfield’s manager, Lou Duva, sought out Tim Hallmark, a fitness guru who would forge Holyfield’s body into what some purists considered a gaudy display of the human form.

Hallmark was first hired to help Holyfield prepare for cruiserweight champ Dwight Muhammed Qawi. After Holyfield won, Hallmark was asked to make the 190-pound fighter a heavyweight.

“I said ‘yeah, but what do you mean by heavyweight?’” Hallmark said.

“We want him big,” was the answer.

“They called it the Omega Project,” Hallmark recalled. “And they wanted him to get up to like 220.”

Hallmark cautioned them: any unneeded muscle would sap much-needed energy. As the boxing truism goes, punchers are born, not made. Extra weight only offers a marginal increase in power, if any.

Holyfield packed on 12 pounds in 1988, and continued to grow until he had heaped more than 25 onto his lean frame. When he met Toney in 2003, he weighed 219 pounds. Rumors swirled that Holyfield used steroids to help him gain weight. Those suspicions reignited when Holyfield’s name surfaced during two steroid investigations of pharmacies in 2007. Holyfield denied the allegations.

His conspicuous physique fascinated commentators, including Lampley, whose stentorian proclamations would bolster the legend of Holyfield’s fitness.

“Conventional wisdom is that Evander Holyfield is the best trained, best conditioned heavyweight in the sport and maybe in the history of the sport,” he exclaimed during Holyfield’s bout with Bert Cooper.

Holyfield acquired praise through years of grueling fights, including the 15-round battle of attrition with Qawi. But some ring observers saw a man who was naturally 190 pounds being weighed down by muscle, killing his stamina. Holyfield won fights with intellect and mental toughness more than lung capacity. He’d collected an array of barfighter techniques, hitting opponents below the belt or raking their noses and cheeks with his elbow. And he regularly employed the clinch, leading with his head as he went to hug his opponent.

Holyfield had effectively learned to stall, frustrate and catch breathers for himself. After eating too many of Holyfield’s headbutts in their first fight, Mike Tyson infamously bit a chunk out of Holyfield’s ear.

Toney was different. At 5’9, he was almost five inches shorter than Holyfield, his muscles lost islands in a rising sea. His bulky shimmer evoked none of the menace of pop-culture badasses. Even his nickname, “Lights Out,” might be mistaken for the final line of a children’s story.

When the pair met in Las Vegas, boxing’s glittering capital, Toney had just survived a punishing fight with Vassily Jirov, taking nearly 250 punches on his way to narrow victory. Jirov, known for fighting German shepherds in a closed hallway during his amateur days, was famously dedicated to his training. Toney outlasted him, knocking “The Tiger” down late in a split-decision win.

Both Holyfield and Toney were considered outstanding fighters, but Holyfield had the better earnings and reputation after knocking out the palpably violent Tyson and nearly beating champion Lennox Lewis. Holyfield would bring his own brand of relentlessness, fans thought, along with what some called world-class conditioning. Toney, conversely, was known as a hard partier who loved cheeseburgers and preferred sparring over other kinds of training.

Perhaps more than their resumes, the fighters were compared by their waistlines.

“The bottom line is, what kind of shape is James Toney in?” Showtime commentator Steve Albert observed. “We’ll soon find out.”

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Little time elapsed in the fight before the outcome was certain. Toney’s waist didn’t matter. His boxing was economy of movement, his torso swiveling to offer him vast counterpunching options. His defense followed the shoulder roll tradition of the old days. Whenever Holyfield tried to punch Toney, the slickster used a suite of defensive maneuvers to create odd angles.

Nine rounds later, Holyfield’s corner threw in the towel.

Both men carried substantial extra weight into the ring, but it was the fat man who breathed easy. And yet, the fight did little to deter a movement across boxing towards bigger, more sculpted fighters. Big men with big muscles, like Michael Grant, had already been established as standards in the prize ring. Tyson came out of prison and quickly acquired a six-pack, and Lewis’ chest and arms grew throughout his career.

Holyfield, after all, was old for a prizefighter, and had suffered from high-profile health problems for years. And Toney had already distinguished himself as one of the finest technical boxers of his day. The outcome was unexpected by the sports books, but understandable.

While old-school trainers felt they had established their version of a good fighter’s body, Hallmark and celebrity trainers like Mackie Shilstone successfully led an insurgent school of thought among the sport’s age-old ideas. More conditioning coaches would follow, like Alex Ariza in the camp of Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao.

Though the fight’s outcome was conclusive, fans still debate what an ideal fighter’s body should look like, to the chagrin of the sport’s oldest experts.

Boxing’s roots reach all the way back to 1800s England, with influences from the ancient Greek martial art of pankration. The toughest fighters were immortalized in statues or mosaics, often with idealized musculature: big arms, huge chest and sprawling veins.

But weightlifting in boxing was far from becoming as rigorous as it is today. Bob Fitzimmons, one of the sport’s biggest stars until he retired in 1914, was renowned for his strength and power and won a heavyweight championship at only 167 pounds. He advocated running for seven or eight miles every day. And while he believed in training with dumbbells and a weighted bat, he never grew bulky.

Running has been a cornerstone of boxing training since then, along with jumping rope. Generally speaking, heavyweights of yesteryear had shredded, fit physiques, but lacked the same raw size as the Holyfield era.

Primo Carnera was the first blockbuster attraction to awe audiences with sheer mass. He was a circus strongman appropriately called the “Ambling Alp,” often weighing in at 275 pounds at a time when many heavyweights didn’t even crack 200. He collected a string of knockouts in the 1930s, with headlines to match. When Earnie Schaaf died shortly after losing to Carnera, the big Italian earned a dangerous reputation. But many thought that Schaaf’s earlier beating from Max Baer’s historically dangerous right hand was the real culprit.

Boxing lore alleges most of Carnera’s fights were fixed in his favor, and by the time Carnera challenged Baer, he was no longer considered invincible. In that fight, Carnera absorbed frightening punishment from Baer and was knocked down at least half a dozen times, showing little more than oafish technique and incredible heart.

Fat boxers could also grab headlines, but with skill. Even those men, like the infamous Tony Galento, were still partly viewed as sideshows.

Galento, a beer-guzzling New Jersey heavyweight who once fought an octopus, had skill and a left hook to be feared. He stood 5’8, and was 230 pounds of pasta and meatballs. Once, Galento was anointed “the bum of the month” and offered a chance to fight Joe Lewis. He was ultimately knocked out in four rounds, but not before he dropped Lewis with that sneaky left hook, proving that corpulence doesn’t negate good technique.

But the best fighters had both fitness and skill. During boxing’s golden age, championship fighters typically eschewed weightlifting. Jack Dempsey, for example, was known for speed and devastating power, and stayed in shape by jumping rope, chopping wood and swinging a sledgehammer.

Boxers also fought more often. The all-time great “Sugar” Ray Robinson went 11-0 when he first won the middleweight title in 1951, and sometimes fought more than 20 times in a year. The extra activity forced fighters to stay close to their fighting weight between bouts, the matches themselves giving them exercise that could never be properly replicated in training. Conversely, champions today usually fight two or three times a year at most. Floyd Mayweather was famously inactive while earning some of the highest paydays in the history of the sport.

Conditioning is to be able to do in the 12th and 11th what you did in the first with the same kind of snap and energy. You can go 12 rounds and loaf the last four.” - Trainer Abel Sanchez

Trainers agree that weightlifting surfaced within boxing in the 80s and 90s, partly as a way for fighters to move up to higher divisions where they might earn more lucrative fights.

Long-time trainer Abel Sanchez, most noted for his successful stewardship of Gennadiy Golovkin, has long maintained training methods consistent with the old ways. His stable is limited to eight or nine fighters at any time, and he doesn’t consult with strength and conditioning coaches or sports psychologists. His operation is just him, making his fighters do distance runs twice a week, and sprints three times a week.

“Weights have always been something that most fighters didn’t want to mess with because they thought it tightened them up,” he said.

Golovkin, a knockout artist known for his ability to surge late in fights, was long counted among the world’s best fighters.

“To me conditioning is not the ability to go 12 rounds,” Sanchez said. “Anybody can go 12 rounds. Conditioning is to be able to do in the 12th and 11th what you did in the first with the same kind of snap and energy. You can go 12 rounds and loaf the last four.”

Trainer Jeff Fenech became another old-guard boxing trainer after a fighting career distinguished by his conditioning and toughness. He fought at a blistering pace, regularly breaking his hands. Now, he preaches short, intense workouts. In his day, he ran three miles daily at a 15-minute pace, rested, then trained just an hour in the afternoon.

Good trainers tailor their methods for the fighter. Noted stamina freak Johnny Tapia, for example, didn’t believe in running, and instead jumped rope at least an hour a day, sometimes two. But all trainers and conditioning coaches agree that too much muscle is never good, and that no strength training can substantially increase punching power. Artificially going up in weight can lead to disaster.

“It’s a matter of physical structure. Ken Norton was really muscular but he had the build for it, he had long muscle instead of short, thick muscles,” Hall of Fame trainer Jesse Reid said.

“I think it’s a mistake when they start fooling around with steroids or they get these strength and conditioning coaches that think bodybuilding is going to work.”

Reid, and others see bulky chest and leg muscles as more cosmetic than functional. With no weight limit, heavyweights are free to indulge in culinary temptations in ways smaller fighters cannot. Fighters controlled by weight classes have to closely manage their bodies before every fight. Heavyweights can pack on all the size they like, sometimes against the better judgment of their handlers.

“A guy like George Foreman did a lot of natural training,” Reid said. “He got more relaxed with his body and he started pulling cars and lifting tires and built a lot of natural strength that way. He relaxed more with his body instead of being so tight and so muscular. When he was young he was a massive muscle man.”

Late in his career, Foreman built a persona around his added fat in his late career for marketing purposes. He’d jog while eating donuts in TV commercials, and once taunted trainer Teddy Atlas to “get me a sandwich.”

Foreman, known for devastating power and composure, was good at pacing himself, even as he fattened up. He went 31-3 in his second boxing stint after a 10-year hiatus. And while many of those early opponents were soft-touches to re-establish a famous name, Foreman’s ability to remain calm and manage his work rate carried him even against top young fighters. His mobility declined, but he compensated with a high ring IQ that grew with age. Most importantly, he maintained his one-shot knockout power, which gave him a chance to win fights even if he got behind. In 1994, Foreman reclaimed a version of the heavyweight title against the young, much more svelte Michael Moorer.

“On the club level I’ve seen many sloppy bodies beat up on body beautiful over the years,” PBC matchmaker Whit Haydon said. “I’ve seen many guys who looked like they just got out of a mariachi band beat up on a guy who looks like he just got out of Gold’s Gym. Especially heavyweights.”

Too often, heavyweights ruin what had been fine-tuned machines in pursuit of a bigger purse.

“They might have had whippy power when they first turned pro and then it looks like they’re pushing out their punches and a little bit more robotic,” Haydon said. “They lose that loose flow they had when they were younger.”

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In the days since Holyfield became a jacked Adonis, fighters have only continued to get bigger. On June 1, 2019, boxing got another high-profile bout of fat man vs. brawn, a modern-day pugilistic Aesop’s fable.

Heavyweight king Anthony Joshua had ruled the heavyweight division, beating quality competition in almost every championship defense. The undefeated fighter was even more muscular than Holyfield had ever been, somehow stacking bulk on an already huge 6’6 frame.

He’d planned to fight Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller in 2019, a 315-pound unproven boxer not known for his punching power. After Miller tested positive for illicit performance-enhancing drugs three times, he was bounced from the fight. After several emergency inquiries, promoters found a replacement fighter of almost equal girth: 268-pound Andy Ruiz. He wasn’t the typical soft-touch replacement. Ruiz had developed a reputation as a smart, tough fighter whose quaking midsection belied his blurring hand speed.

While both men were natural heavyweights, unlike Holyfield and Toney, both carried extra pounds into their fight at Madison Square Garden. Fans foresaw a bloodbath that favored the British star. Experts, however, knew Ruiz would be a handful.

Joshua came out with relentless aggression. He knocked down Ruiz in the third round and, sensing an early victory, pressed the action. But Ruiz’s hand speed advantage came into play. He exploited Joshua’s recklessness and returned the knockdown with a devastating punch, catching Joshua behind the ear and wreaking havoc on his equilibrium. Ruiz scored another knockdown that same round before finishing the fight in the seventh.

Fans marveled at the surprise victory. How could a fat guy known for eating a Snickers bar before each fight beat a man with muscles out of a Marvel comic?

“When you have more muscle, you better believe you have to condition that muscle,” said Larry Wade, the conditioning coach for top fighters like Badou Jack. “Then a guy like Andy Ruiz is so big, why didn’t he get tired? He’s fat, but you don’t have a bunch of muscle to pump oxygen to.”

Commentators and pundits echoed Wade’s diagnosis. Joshua responded by changing his training. In the rematch six months later, Joshua weighed in 10 pounds lighter at 237 pounds, his waist noticeably less musclebound. Ruiz, on the other hand, told the media that Joshua “was made for me,” and shot up to 283.

Caution and lateral movement were Joshua’s keys to victory; his lighter weight allowing him to attack, in and out, numerous times without getting tired. The bout was yet another reminder that there’s a wrong kind of muscle.

Ruiz was derided for the loss. Many critics loudly wondered if the extra weight prevented him from cutting off the ring. But Ruiz hadn’t gassed out, in spite of his size.

Commentary before and after both bouts was driven more by the fighters’ body shapes than their fighting form. Joshua drew fans awed by his impressive size. Ruiz did the same, while others found solidarity in his everyman diet. But the fights offered no conclusive evidence of what a real fighter should look like. They only showcased the importance of good mobility and conditioning.

Like the statues of antiquity, fighters will forever be judged by their musculature. But though society may favor a chiseled specimen, history has shown there will always be a place for a fat man, waiting to creep up on the unsuspecting, deriding public and become the new heavyweight king.

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shieldedsouls · 5 years ago

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FILE: DUM DUM DUGAN

basics

name: timothy aloysius cadwallader dugan nicknames: dum dum, dugan, strongman, atlas dugan, dob: 11 april 1912 height: 6′5 ( 1.95 m ) weight: 272 lbs hair color: red eye color: blue faceclaim: neal mcdonough

personal

occupation: farmer boxer circus strongman army sergeant, howling commando || verse dependent residence: || verse dependent sexual orientation: bisexual, closeted. preference for women. romantic orientation: biromantic religion: catholic gender: male Birth Date: 11 april 1912 Birth Place: Boston, MA, USA First Word(s): ‘ Mamma ’ Dominant Hand: Ambidextrous Astrological Sign: aries | the ram

family

parents: alis alice anne dugan nee meredith and roy august dugan siblings: nine significant other: lydia dali || time/verse dependent children: eleanor grace dolly dugan

timeline

Master timeline can be found here

influenced by the MCU timeline until around AOU, with occasional added elements from 616-Earth. Details will be addressed in headcanon and verse posts, but here is a basic timeline breakdown:

10 march 1911, oldest brother matthew patrick gerald dugan born

11 april 1912, born in boston, massachusetts to roy august dugan and alis alice anne dugan nee meredith

5 february 1913, brother thomas gideon dugan born

29 october 1914, brother robert cadogan dugan born

17 september 1915, twin brothers john emrys dugan and nicolas glynn dugan born

26 september 1919, sister dorothea marion dugan born

31 july 1920, sister vivian mae dugan born

5 june 1921, brother michael gwylim dugan born

late june-august 1921, alice anne catches an unidentified bug and is bedridden until nearly september, never fully recovers

8 june 1923, youngest sister elaine lee dugan born

22 april 1927, alice anne passes [ headcanon coming in separate post ]

after the funeral, all the children unanimously run away together

summer 1927, joins rydal stryker’s circus.

11 november 1936, daughter eleanor grace dolly dugan born.

early summer 1943, enlists in american army.

1943, captured by hydra at azzano

november, rescued by a super serum’d steve rogers

by 1 december, officially part of the howling commandos

through to march 1945, continues to serve in the war to it’s end

june 1945, sees peggy carter off as she’s shipped back to london

1946, meets with peg, jack thompson, and fellow ssr agents to track leviathan activity

continues working post-war europe to february 1947, where he returns to the states and the circus to be with his family again

early spring 1948, settles by woodbridge, virginia with lydia and ellie

15 march 1951, lydia passes from complications with a bad case of pneumonia

summer 1952, marries peggy carter

Semi canon-compliant, certainly headcanon-heavy. Lots of wiggle room for plotting, but the main points are here, to be either expanded by future headcanons, or tangentially relevant for plotting.

#( about: dugan )#( muse masterlist )#DO NOT REBLOG

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mhuntington7 · 7 years ago

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ROBBIE AND THE TINY SIDE SHOW - Robbie Huntington explores the miniature Side Show on display with the Circus Exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. A tiny Strongman, a little Bearded Lady, an itsy-bitsy Lizard Man, a minuscule Elephant Boy and other Astonishing Wonders and Unfortunate Freaks of Nature were there to behold! All in pocket-sized form for Your Amusement! Robbie thought it was cool (and he REALLY wanted to play with them)! Photo by Michael Huntington - June, 2017. @Huntington_Strange_Travels #MichaelHuntington #StrangeTravels #HuntingtonFamily #HuntingtonAdventures #HuntingtonBoys #MiniatureSideshow #MiniCircusSideshow #CircusExhibit #MuseumOfScienceAndIndustry #MSI #MSIChicago #ChicagoIllinois (at Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago)

#michaelhuntington #miniaturesideshow #museumofscienceandindustry #huntingtonadventures #chicagoillinois #huntingtonfamily #circusexhibit #msichicago #msi #minicircussideshow #strangetravels #huntingtonboys

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bargainmatinee · 6 years ago

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Dumbo

2019.17

Can we all just pause for a minute and look at the career of director Tim Burton? This man has bought us some unbelievable films over the years, including "Batman," "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure," "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," and "Mars Attacks!" What a spectacular resume. Unfortunately, the most recent of that stacked lineup came out in 1996, well over 20 years ago. Since then, Burton has helmed "Planet of the Apes," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Alice in Wonderland," "Dark Shadows," and "Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children." Fuck. The past two decades worth of his output runs the gamut from boring to unspeakably bad to insulting.

So why did I think "Dumbo" would be any different from the other later-stage Burton flicks? Hope, I guess. The knowledge of knowing what the man is capable of. I'm clinging on to something that I fear just isn't there anymore. Or maybe I'm just an asshole. I don't know. The point is..."Dumbo" is dreadful. Unimaginative and soulless. Colin Farrell is sleepwalking through a part that he probably shouldn't have gotten to begin with. It's not his fault, though. Everyone here is equally lame, hobbled by a terrible script with paper-thin characters and some truly awful dialogue. We're introduced to a cast of characters at the circus and don't spend any time getting to know them, and then at the end of the movie when some of the performers undergo some transformations that are (I guess?) supposed to make us happy for them, we don't care because the movie never told us anything about them. There's a strongman who uses clearly fake dumbbells to fool the crowd into thinking he has superhuman strength, but it's revealed later that he actually DOES have superhuman strength so...why the fuck was he using plastic weights?

Meanwhile, none of what I've said so far addresses the elephant in the room (see what I did there???). So to get to it...I don't even care anymore. Honestly. How many scenes do we need to see of people gasping in wonder at a flying baby elephant? It happens so many times it's tiresome, and it wasn't even a wondrous moment the first time it happens, never mind the 10th. Oh, and you want to know why there's nothing magical about the first time Dumbo flies? Because whoever was responsible for casting the two kids for this movie needs to never be allowed to cast another film again. I swear to Christ these kids were robots. No emotion, no changes in facial expression, and it sounded like they were reading the words off cue cards like it was the first time they've ever seen them. A FUCKING BABY ELEPHANT WITH GIANT EARS TAKES OFF INTO THE SKY IN FRONT OF THESE KIDS AND THEY SIT THERE WITH BLANK LOOKS ON THEIR FACES LIKE THEY'RE WATCHING ANTIQUES ROADSHOW. Dead in the eyes. Where's the glimmer of youth? The excitement? I don't know, but I bet I looked exactly like those kids while I watched this trainwreck unfold in front of me.

Here's all you need to know, and it sums this movie up perfectly. Remember Michael Buffer, the "Let's get ready to rumbleeeeee" guy? He shows up here as a ringmaster and as soon as he walked onscreen my stomach dropped because I knew what was coming. I shit you not, he actually grabs a microphone and bellows "Let's get ready for Dumboooo!" Fuck this movie.

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ao3feed-larry · 4 years ago

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Divine Intervention

by Icantswim

Harry had always wanted to run away and join the circus

Words: 2545, Chapters: 2/?, Language: English

Fandoms: One Direction (Band), 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Underage

Categories: M/M

Characters: Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Michael Clifford, Calum Hood, Ashton Irwin, Luke Hemmings, Billie Eilish, Lizzo (Musician), Bebe Rexha, James Corden, Simon Cowell

Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik/Liam Payne, Michael Clifford/Calum Hood, Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - 1930s, unfortunately, simon is the ring leader, but Duke Hood is there, Louis the trick rider, Harry the vender, Niall the clown, Liam the strongman, Zayn the sword swallower, Micheal the clown, Calum the dog trainer?, Ashton the elephant whisperer, I bet that will never be used as a tag again, luke the trapeze artist, Billie the trapeze artist, Luke and Billie are twins, just because I said so, lizzo the fortune teller, bebe the sharpshooter, Running Away, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Period-Typical Racism, simon is a dick, per usual, louis is the main attraction, larry stylinson - Freeform, Slow Burn, inspired by water for the elephants, inspired by Toby Tyler or 10 weeks with a circus, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

via AO3 works tagged 'Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson' https://ift.tt/2R4MyiW

#author #larry stylinson #larry fic #ao3 feed larry #Divine Intervention #<p>by <a rel= href="/users/Ic

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stairnaheireann · 2 years ago

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#OTD in 1972 – The Irish Tourist Board pulls off a major coup getting Boxing Legend Muhammad Ali to promote Ireland.

“Impossible is not a fact.” –Muhammad Ali Killorglin-born circus strongman and publican, Michael “Butty” Sugrue, put up £300,000 and persuaded Muhammad Ali to make his first visit to Ireland to fight against Alvin Lewis in Croke Park on 19 July 1972. Ali went to Ireland with an entourage on 11 July 1972 to spend time training for the fight. While there, he was interviewed for RTÉ Television by…

View On WordPress

#Boxing #Cathal O&039;Shannon #Co. Clare #Croke Park #Dublin #Eddie Keher #Ennis #Irish Tourist Board #Michael "Butty" Sugrue #Muhammad Ali #RTÉ

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philippmichelreichold · 6 months ago

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on The Song of the Whistling Crab by Michael McGlade

The Song of the Whistling Crab by Michael McGlade in kaleidotrope is a tale of a man (Cú) and his hermit crab. The man’s a hermit as well, so it works well for them. The crab whistles. Remember that.

They met after the man’s wife (Saoirse) ran off with a circus strongman and the man ran after her. Then he heard the song of the crab. A fair trade, a hermit crab for a hermit’s wife. They, man and crab, were soul mates, and the crab’s whistled song– mesmerizing.

One day the strongman and the hermit’s wife come for the crab, to take it back. And thereby hangs the tale of the man and the whistling crab.

“Cú” means “hound” in Irish. “Saoirse” means “freedom”. So it goes the freedom-seeking wife is at first hounded by the husband. The strongman with whom the wife seeks freedom sounds like a hero from epic poetry, mighty-thewed. The crab’s name is– Jules Verne.

This all sounds symbolic, like “The Yellow Wallpaper”, only with a crab who whistles a song about the sea. The sea is ever-calling, and the crab hears/whistles the song all the time. One day he’d like to return to the sea. It is a science fictional crab, to be sure. The song of Jules Verne would be science fiction, so perhaps the tale is about the transformative power of science fiction.

References

"The Song of the Whistling Crab by Michael McGlade." Philipp Michel Reichold. MAR 17TH, 2017

The Song of the Whistling Crab

#sciencefiction #review

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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Unhappy with Their 2016 Coronation, the Democrats Start a 2020 Circus

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/unhappy-with-their-2016-coronation-the-democrats-start-a-2020-circus/

Unhappy with Their 2016 Coronation, the Democrats Start a 2020 Circus

MIAMI—Marianne Williamson narrowed her eyes and gazed into my soul, channeling some of the same telekinetic lifeforce she’d used minutes earlier to cast a spell on Donald Trump in her closing statement of Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate. Inside a sweaty spin room, with swarms of reporters enfolding Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand, the author and self-help spiritualist drifted through the madness with a mien of Zen-like satisfaction. It was only when I asked her a question—what does she say to people who don’t think she belonged on that debate stage?—that Williamson’s sorcerous intensity returned.

“This is a democracy, that’s what I say to them,” she replied, her hypnotic voice anchored by an accent perfected at Rick’s Café. “There’s this political class, and media class, that thinks they get to tell people who becomes president. This is what’s wrong with America. We don’t do aristocracy here. We do democracy.”

Story Continued Below

For better and worse.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was served the Democratic presidential nomination on a silver platter. With a monopoly on the left’s biggest donors and top strategists, with the implicit backing of the incumbent president, with the consensus support of the party’s most prominent officials, and with only four challengers standing in her way—the most viable of whom had spent the past quarter-century wandering the halls of Congress alone muttering under his breath—Clinton couldn’t lose. The ascendant talents on the left knew better than to interfere. She had already been denied her turn once before; daring to disrupt the party’s line of succession would be career suicide.

This coronation yielded one of the weakest general-election nominees in modern American history—someone disliked and distrusted by more than half of the electorate, someone guided by a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of urgency, someone incapable of mobilizing the party’s base to defeat the most polarizing and unpopular Republican nominee in our lifetimes.

Democrats don’t have to worry about another coronation. Instead, with two dozen candidates battling for the right to challenge Trump next November, they are dealing with the opposite problem: a circus.

Three days after the maelstrom in Miami, top Democratic officials insist there’s no sense of panic. They say everything is under control. They tell anyone who will listen that by virtue of the rules and debate qualification requirements they’ve implemented, this mammoth primary field will soon shrink in half, which should limit the internecine destruction and hasten the selection of a standard-bearer. But based on conversations with candidates and campaign operatives, it might be too late for that. The unifying objective of defeating Trump in 2020 likely won’t be sufficient to ward off what everyone now believes will be a long, divisive primary.

First impressions are everything in politics. And it was understood by those candidates and campaign officials departing Miami that what America was introduced to this week—more than a year before the Democrats will choose their nominee at the 2020 convention—was a party searching not only for a leader but for an identity, for a vision, for a coherent argument about how voters would benefit from a change in leadership.

“I don’t think there’s a sense among the American people of what the national Democratic Party stands for. And I think there’s actuallymoreconfusion about that now,” Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator and presidential candidate, told me after participating in Thursday night’s forum.

Some confusion is inevitable when 20 candidates, many of them unfamiliar to a national audience, are allotted five to seven minutes to explain why they are qualified to lead the free world. Yet the perception in the eyes of the political class—and the feeling on the ground was something closer to chaos.

With a record number of viewers tuning in between the two nights, a record number of candidates talked over one another, contorted themselves ideologically, evaded straightforward questions and traded insults both implicit and explicit. With such a splayed primary field, some of this is to be expected: Debates are imperative to exposing the fault lines within the Democratic coalition, to refining and forging the left’s governing philosophy through the fires of competition. A measured clash of ideas and worldviews is healthy for a party seeking a return to power.

What’snothealthy for a party is when the frontrunner, a white man, is waylaid by the ferociously talented up-and-comer, a black woman, who prefaces her attack: “I do not believe you are a racist…” What’snothealthy for a party is when a smug, self-impressed congressman with no business being on the stage flails wildly with juvenile sound bites. What’snothealthy for a party is when a successful red-state governor and a decorated war hero-turned-congressman are forced to watch from home as an oracular mystic with no experience in policymaking lectures her opponents on the folly of having actual “plans” to govern the country.

Granted, these lowlights and many others came during the second debate. Just 22 hours before it commenced, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez sounded relieved at how relatively painless the first contest had been.

“We talked about the issues. We didn’t talk about hand size,” Perez told me after the end of the Wednesday night debate. (Perez was grinning in reference to the 2016 Republican debate in which Donald Trump, responding to Marco Rubio’s vulgar euphemism, assured viewers of his plentiful genitalia.) “The Republican candidates were only concerned about how they could put a knife in their opponent’s back,” Perez added. “We had spirited discussions. We had some disagreements, but they were all about the merits and the issues. They weren’t, ‘Not only are you wrong, but your mother wears army boots.’”

Even in that first debate of this week’s campaign-opening doubleheader, however, there was no shortage of skirmishes that felt deeply personal, opening wounds that won’t easily scab over in the campaign ahead.

History will remember Harris confronting Biden on Thursday, the testier of the two debates, in a moment that dominated news coverage and could well come to inform one or both of their campaign trajectories.

But even on Wednesday, there was Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, a clash of the congressional back-benchers, feuding over the use of American military force abroad. Gabbard, an Iraq veteran, won the round on points by correcting Ryan’s assertion that the Taliban attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001. This so visibly irked Ryan that he fumed to reporters afterward, “I personally don’t need to be lectured by somebody who’s dining with a dictator who gassed kids,” a reference to the congresswoman’s rapport with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.

There was Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor once considered the party’s brightest rising star, aiming to recapture mojo stolen by Beto O’Rourke. Unleashing on his unsuspecting fellow Texan, Castro repeatedly told O’Rourke to “do your homework” on the issue of immigration law, criticizing him for failing to back a sweeping change that would decriminalize border crossings. It was a stinging rebuke that punctuated O’Rourke’s dismal night and gave Castro’s camp their biggest boost of the campaign.

And there was Eric Swalwell, the catchphrase-happy California congressman, cynically scolding Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for not firing his police chief after a black man’s killing at the hands of a white officer. Buttigieg responded with a cold stare, crystallizing all the campaigns’ feelings about Swalwell, for whom indiscriminate attacks seem to be a strategic cornerstone.

The significance in these events was not merely what was said in the moment, but what is now assured in the future.

Upcoming debates will almost certainly feature discussion of Gabbard’s shadowy connections to Syria, and more broadly, of the party’s ambiguous post-Obama foreign policy doctrine. There will be greater pressure to conform to Castro’s argument on decriminalizing border crossings, a position that animates the progressive base but may well alienate moderates and independents. The whispers of Buttigieg’s struggle with black voters will surely intensify, and his opponents are already scheming of ways to use one of his debate responses—“I couldn’t get it done”—against him.

This is to say nothing of the other minefields that await: opposition-research files presented on live television, litmus-test questions on issues such as abortion and guns, not to mention the ideological pressure placed on the field by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, neither of whom were seriously tested in the first set of debates but whose ambitious big-government proposals are driving the party’s agenda and putting more moderate candidates in a bind.

As for Biden, regardless of whether his poll numbers plummet or hold steady in the weeks ahead, one thing was obvious in Thursday’s aftermath: blood in the water. You could hear it in the voices of rival campaign officials, whispering of how they knew the frontrunner was fundamentally vulnerable due to his detachment from today’s party. You could see it on the faces of Biden’s own allies, who struggled to defend his showing.

“What I saw was a person who listened to Kamala Harris’s pain,” Cedric Richmond, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and one of Biden’s highest-profile surrogates, said after the debate ended. Referring to the busing controversy, Richmond added, “All of that was out there when the first African-American president of the United States decided to pick Joe Biden as his running mate, and he had the vice president’s back every day of the week. So, I’m not sure that voters are going back 40 years to judge positions.”

They don’t have to. What the maiden debates of the 2020 election cycle demonstrated above all else is the acceleration of change inside the Democratic Party—not just since Biden came to Congress in 1973, but since he became vice president in 2009.

Ten years ago this September, Barack Obama convened a joint session of Congress to reset the narrative of his health-care reform push and dispel some of the more sinister myths surrounding it. One particular point of emphasis for Obama: The Affordable Care Act would not cover undocumented immigrants.

On Thursday, every one of the 10 candidates on stage—Biden included—said their government plans would do exactly that.

The front-runner has cloaked himself in the 44th president’s legacy, invoking “the Obama-Biden administration” as a shield to deflect all manner of criticism. And yet, parts of that legacy—from enshrining the Hyde Amendment, to deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants, to aggressively carrying out drone strikes overseas, to sanctioning deep cuts in government spending—are suddenly and fatally out of step with the modern left. This crop of Democrats won’t hesitate to score points at the previous administration’s expense, as evidenced by Harris’s censure of Obama’s deportation policies. And the gravitational pull of the party’s base will continue to threaten the long-term viability of top contenders, as evidenced by the continuing talk of eliminating private insurance and Harris’s own shaky explanations of whether she supports doing so.

For months, Democratic officials have expressed confidence that their party would avoid the reality TV-inspired meltdown that was the 2016 Republican primary. After all, the star of that show is the common enemy of everyone seeking the Democratic nomination.

Miami was not a promising start. With so many candidates, with so little fear of the frontrunner, with so much pressure on the bottom three-quarters of the field to turn in campaign-prolonging performances, nothing could keep a lid on the emotions and ambitions at work. It’s irresistible to compare the enormous fields of 2016 and 2020. But the fact is, when Republicans gathered for their first debate in August 2015, Trump had already surged to the top of the field. He held the pole position for the duration of the race, despite so much talk of volatility in the primary electorate, because he relentlessly stayed on the offensive, never absorbing a blow without throwing two counter-punches in return.

Leaving Miami, it was apparent to Democrats that they have a very different race on their hands—and a very different frontrunner. Biden’s team talks openly about a strategy of disengagement, an approach that sounds reasonable but in fact puts the entire party at risk. The danger Democrats face is not that a talented field of candidates will be systematically wiped out by a dominant political force. The danger is that there is no dominant political force; that at this intersection of ideological drift and generational discontent and institutional disruption, an obtrusively large collection of candidates will be emboldened to keep fighting not just for their candidacies but for their conception of liberalism itself, feeding the perception of a party in turmoil and easing the president’s fight for reelection.

In the spin room after Wednesday night’s debate, a blur of heat and bright lights and body odor, John Delaney, the Maryland congressman, was red in the face explaining that none of the voters he talks with care about impeaching Trump. A few feet away, Bill DeBlasio, the New York City mayor, whacked the “moderate folks” like Delaney for not understanding where the base is, promising “a fight for the soul of the party.” Just over his shoulder, Washington Governor Jay Inslee slammed the complacency of his fellow Democrats on the issue of climate change, decrying “the tyranny of the fossil fuel industry” over both political parties.

Joaquin Castro, the congressman and twin brother to Julián, stood off to the side observing the mayhem. Just as he was explaining how “at least 20” reporters had mistaken him for his brother that night, the two of us were nearly stampeded underneath a mob of reporters encircling Elizabeth Warren.

“Man,” he said, looking warily from side to side. “This is surreal.”

#Circus #Foreign #Politics #start

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sunflowerfinch · 6 years ago

Note

Traveling Circus AU! Geoff is the ring leader. Jack is the animal caretaker and in charge of tent setup. (And balloon animal maker, seeing happy kids is worth the time it took to learn.) Michael is the fire breather/daredevil. Trevor, Fredo, Gavin, Ray, and Lil J are acrobats. Lil J also has a strongman act with Ryan. (Ryan has three acts, barefaced as a strongman, masked as a knife thrower, and painted face as a clown (also doubling as a spotter/emergency first aid for the acrobats))

oh my god i need more of this

#id read a fic for this !!!#headcanons #aus #Anonymous

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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Obituary: Sir Bruce Forsyth – BBC News

Image caption He made his stage debut aged just 14 as Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom

Veteran entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth had a career spanning eight decades, in which he went from struggling variety performer to Saturday night TV stardom.

On the way, he became one of the most recognisable entertainers in the business, driven by what appeared to be inexhaustible energy.

He became synonymous with the plethora of game shows that seemed to dominate television light entertainment in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, although he often felt he had become typecast as the genial quizmaster.

And at an age when most performers would have put their feet up, his career enjoyed a huge revival with the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing.

Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson was born in Edmonton, north London, on 22 February 1928.

His father owned a local garage and both his parents were Salvation Army members who sang and played music at home.

Image copyright Rex Features

Image caption Beat the Clock was just one of many games he hosted

The young Bruce was a direct descendant of William Forsyth, a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society, whose name was given to the plant forsythia.

His interest in showbusiness was kindled at the age of eight and he was reportedly found tap-dancing on the flat roof after watching his first Fred Astaire film.

“As soon as I got home from school,” he recalled, “I’d take up the carpet, because there was lino underneath, and start tapping away.”

He made his stage debut at the age of 14 as Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom, appearing bottom of the bill at the Theatre Royal, Bilston.

Live entertainment was a way of escaping the pressures and dangers of wartime Britain, and there was a huge demand for acts, no matter how bad they were.

Many years later he explained his motivation on a BBC chat show. “I wanted to be famous and buy my mum a fur coat.”

Famous Forsyth catchphrases

“I’m in charge.”

“All right, my loves?”

“Good game, good game!”

“Nice to see you, to see you nice.”

“Give us a twirl!”

“Cuddly toy, cuddly toy!”

“OK, dollies do your dealing.”

“You get nothing for a pair!”

“What do points make?”

“Didn’t he/she do well?”

“You’re my favourite.”

“Keeeeep dancing!”

But there was to be no fast track to success. For the next 16 years he performed in church halls and theatres across the country, sleeping in train luggage racks and waiting for the big break.

It came in 1958, at a time when he had been unemployed for more than three months and was seriously considering giving up on showbusiness.

He was asked to present Sunday Night at the London Palladium, a televised variety show, made by Lord Grade’s ATV company for the ITV network.

He’d finally found the fame he had always craved, appearing not in front of a couple of hundred people in a theatre, but the more than 10 million who regularly tuned in to the show.

“The pubs would empty when it came on,” he told an interviewer. “We would get calls saying: ‘Can’t you start it later?'”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption At one point, he was Britain’s highest-paid entertainer

Originally booked for two weeks, he stayed five years, by which time he was Britain’s highest-paid entertainer, earning 1,000 a week (18,700 in today’s money).

But he continued touring with his variety show and the strain of combining this with his Palladium appearances took a toll on his private life.

He divorced his first wife, Penny Calvert, a dancer he’d met in the theatre, and she wrote an account of her husband’s perpetual absence, called Darling, Your Dinner’s in the Dustbin.

A popular element in his Palladium show was a feature called Beat the Clock, in which contestants, egged on by Forsyth, had to complete quirky tasks as a huge clock ticked down.

Sir Bruce Forsyth dies aged 89

Life in pictures

Lord Grade recalls ‘a very special man’

Stars remember Brucie

The segment gave a hint of his future television role and he went on to host some of the most popular television game shows of the 1970s and 80s.

With his catchphrases of “Nice to see you, to see you nice” and “Didn’t he do well?” he reigned supreme at the helm of the BBC’s Generation Game for six years from 1971, and again at the beginning of the 1990s.

At its peak, the programme attracted 20 million viewers, who tuned in to watch Forsyth seemingly having more fun than the competitors, enthusing over the mundane prizes on the conveyor belt.

The presenter argued with his BBC managers about the show’s early evening timeslot but he eventually accepted his role as the “warm-up man” for Saturday night television.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The Beatles were among the stars he introduced at the London Palladium

His co-host on the show, Anthea Redfern, was each week encouraged to “give us a twirl”. The couple married in 1973 but divorced six years later.

It was on the Generation Game that he introduced his famous “thinker” pose, appearing in silhouette at the beginning of each show.

The idea came from the classic circus strongman pose, something he’d perfected during his days in variety.

He repeated his success on ITV’s Play Your Cards Right, where the audience joined in the cries of “higher” or “lower” as the contestants tried to guess the value of a series of playing cards.

Changing tastes

Michael Grade said of him: “He knows how to get laughs out of people but it’s never cruel and he leaves their dignity intact.”

In 1995, a year after his final Generation Game appearance, he received a lifetime achievement award for variety at the British Comedy Awards and began hosting ITV’s The Price is Right.

The entertainer was, by this time, a Rolls-Royce-driving multimillionaire and married since 1983 to Wilnelia Merced, a former Miss World.

He later claimed that he regretted becoming so associated with game shows and wished he’d done more variety work on TV.

Image caption Forsyth with Anthea Redfern on the Generation Game

Play Your Cards Right was axed in 1999 and, with changing tastes in entertainment, his TV career began to slide.

He returned to the theatre – but experienced an unexpected revival after his wife watched an edition of the satirical quiz, Have I Got News For You, and suggested he could present the programme.

After calling show regular Paul Merton, he landed the gig and offered to be “a little bit deadpan”.

“But the team said, ‘No, be Bruce Forsyth,'” he said.

He used the occasion to parody some of his old game shows, much to the ill-disguised disgust of team captain Ian Hislop.

But the appearance led to Forsyth, an accomplished tap dancer, being offered the job of hosting Strictly Come Dancing, which began a year later.

Viewed with scepticism when it launched, the celebrity dance show became one of the most-watched programmes on TV by the time it reached its fifth series in 2007.

He brought his own brand of avuncular good humour to the proceedings – reassuring many of the contestants with the phrase “you’re my favourites”.

Image caption He parodied some of his old game shows on Have I Got News For You

“His particular character and personality went a long way to making the show what it is,” said former contestant Ann Widdecombe.

But the presenter once revealed that Strictly “was never the show that I thought it would be”.

“I thought it’d be a comedy show – me getting among the contestants and showing them how to dance, and them all falling over,” he told ITV’s This Morning. “It was a different show.”

After missing a handful of episodes because of illness, he decided to “step down from the rigours” of presenting Strictly in 2014.

Golfing passion

“But I’m not retiring,” he insisted. “That’s the last thing in the world I want to do. This isn’t Brucie walking into the sunset.”

He continued to host the Christmas and charity editions of Strictly until 2014 – all of which were taped, as opposed to live broadcasts.

Away from entertainment, Forsyth’s biggest passion was golf and he took part in many pro-celebrity tournaments.

His house was next to the course at Wentworth, where he played with many of the world’s best players, practising in the bunker in his own back garden.

Image caption He presented Strictly Come Dancing with Tess Daly

During his career, Forsyth’s multiple talents and years of application sparked an enduring appeal.

In 2011 he was knighted after years of campaigning by his fans and a parliamentary Early Day Motion signed by 73 MPs.

But he suffered from ill health towards the end of his life, and in 2016 his wife revealed he still had “a bit of a problem moving”, following major surgery a year earlier.

Sir Bruce was one of the last entertainers from the tradition of music hall to be working on British television.

In many ways his act barely changed. The same corny gags, the same toothy smile and, above all, the same manic enthusiasm.

“On stage I think I’m 35,” he once said. “Working takes over my whole body and I become a younger man – that’s why I won’t stop.”

He will be particularly remembered for his ability to transform run-of-the-mill party games into glorious moments of mayhem that enthralled contestants and audiences alike.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram at bbcnewsents, or if you have a story suggestion email [email protected].