#Molly Stevens

[americanahighways]

Song Premiere: Molly Stevens "Bird Dogs and Babies"

Song Premiere: Molly Stevens "Bird Dogs and Babies" @mollystevensmusic @americanahighways #americanamusic #birddogsandbabies #adriveouttothelake #newmusic2024

Molly Stevens – “Bird Dogs and Babies” Americana Highways brings you this premiere of Molly Stevens’ song “Bird Dogs and Babies” from her forthcoming EP A Drive Out to the Lake, which is set to be released on June 7.  A Drive Out to the Lake was produced by Mary Bragg; mixed and mastered by Jon Estes (Dolly Parton, Kacey Musgraves). “Bird Dogs and Babies” is Molly Stevens on vocals; Jordan…

[binsofchaos]

Roy Finamore

https://www.stainedpagenews.com/p/remembering-editor-and-author-roy

Howdy cookbook fans!

Earlier this month, cookbook editor, author, co-author, and food and prop stylist Roy Finamore died at the age of 70. Finamore was prolific and accomplished: the list of cookbook authors he worked with includes Martha Stewart, Diana Kennedy, Jean Anderson, Anne Willan, Lee Bailey, Carole Walter, Tom Colicchio, Bobby Flay, Gale Gand, Jacques Pépin, Marcus Samuelsson, and Rick Moonen. He was responsible for acquiring Ina Garten’s first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa, a book that changed cookbook publishing forever. He also authored several books of his own, including 2006’s James Beard Award-winning Tasty: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day.

Last week, cookbook author and Finamore collaborator Molly Stevens (All About Braising) reached out to make sure I had heard the news. When I offered to run a few remembrances from his friends, little did I know I’d soon have an inbox full of memories a few days later! I am running them below; if you knew Roy and would like to share some memories, I’m opening up comments to everyone on this post.

Roy was, without exception, one of the most creative and brilliant individuals I’ve ever worked with, much less had the good fortune to call a friend. Beyond his massive intellect, Roy was a gifted and intuitive cook with boundless curiosity around ingredients, flavors, and techniques. I believe he was happiest in the kitchen, especially cooking for those he loved. Over the past 25 years, Roy and I spent untold hours cooking together, and in between those times, we’d call, text, and email to scheme and laugh about cooking, work, and life. Roy was my favorite kitchen companion and always the first person I turned to for advice.

—Molly Stevens, cookbook author.

I don’t know how long Roy worked at Clarkson Potter but I first worked for him on a book by Lee Bailey with Ella Brennan called New Orleans in about 1991.

Lee Bailey, Lee Klein and I comprised a team that would invade various grand Garden District homes for a day. It was real location shooting, using the homeowner’s china and flatware. While the Lees set up their tablescapes, I photographed discreet snippets and interior details. The intention was to convey a hint of some longed-for mysterious South without revealing whole rooms. We were careful not to create a catalog wish list of art and furniture for those with thieving in mind.

At lunchtime food would arrive from one of three Brennan restaurants: Commander’s Palace, Mr. B’s, or The Palace Cafe. Then it became all hands on deck, as nothing would work right in a cookbook if the food didn’t. It was a good system made pleasant with competent people.

Publishers find it risky to hand out money in lump sums and photographers need it when they need it so I do recall a prickly phone call or two to Roy about these matters. Never about editing or cropping or any other visual nuts and bolts that you might expect. Through all of it Roy and I still had not met.

That book was successful enough that a year or so later we embarked on a second project called Long Weekends. Our locations were all over the country from Dorset, Vermont to Orcas Island, Washington. It was the same M.O., but this time we added chef James Lartin as chief cook and bottle washer. Still the un-met Roy was left pulling puppet strings from his office in New York.

Lee Bailey went on to do other books with other teams. I didn’t think of myself as exclusively a food photographer. I’d done books on Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg that were more architecture and interiors. I was working a lot for House & Garden doing fine gardens. If you work for “shelter” magazines you end up photographing whatever they put in front of you. But to stay in the swim you need to schmooze with editors. I’d been in Mississippi for ten years and it was time for some visits.

In 1997 I got myself a decent suit and did some rounds. Roy was one of the first I saw. Office buildings in New York can be a bit mind numbing (to the freelancer) and Clarkson Potter was no exception. Traveling the hall, most glass cage offices had the photos of kids and grandkids that you would expect, but then you’re at Roy’s door and in a different world. My memory is telling me there were even voodoo dolls with pins in them. It was all very civil but he didn’t have anything going on and I’m sure he was wondering who this guy in a suit across from him really was.

A year later Roy called and he had a book to do with Anne Willan at Château du Feÿ in Burgundy where she lived and ran a cooking school called La Varenne. The warren—as in rabbits. It had to start in 2 weeks on July 14th with the celebration of Bastille day. Would I be interested?

Thus began nearly two years of shuttling back and forth to Burgundy and the little estate surrounding the 17th century Chateau du Fey. Anne’s book From My Château Kitchen was as much a personal memoir as a cookbook. An Englishwoman’s transformation to being head of her own French cooking school in Paris to moving down the line into Dukes of Burgundy slow food territory. Right to the agrarian source of the food itself and along with it some of the more fanciful aspects of country life.

The château was set up with the center hall as communal (living, dining, and small kitchen), with the right wing as the school with industrial kitchen—with lots of rooms upstairs, and the left wing as Anne and her husband Mark’s quarters, a business office area, a phenomenal culinary library and more bedrooms. The surrounding courtyards and walled vegetable and fruit gardens and pigeonniers were functioning more or less as when built in about 1620. It was in many ways ideal for an extended house party, and that’s what we turned it into.

Roy was there for most of it, and he was very hands on this time. It was his baby and he had done his homework and was not just there for a mini vacation. He and Anne more or less invented the book as we were shooting over several seasons. Molly Stevens, then jack of all food trades—now well-established cookbook author and jill of all food trades—was there as Anne ’s right hand in all that you need a main droite for. Roy’s friend Marian Young, who had her own literary agency, came from New York and charmed us all. Randall Price, chef, writer, actor in PBS style travelogues kept the school in shape when not in session; regaled with his not always tall tales. Even my father George came one evening from Paris on the train and fit right in. There were numbers of interns who rotated in and out and participated in the work and the play.

We worked all day shooting dishes with the chateau as a backdrop or out into Burgundy proper at a Chablis winery, at the cornichon man’s farm, at a jam maker’s up in the Morvan, in a catacomb root cellar under a 13th century cathedral, or at an artisanal cheesemakers sterilized “lab” with the curds and the herds.

Supper time started with some libation and then we usually ate what had been photographed during the day or something being tested for the next day. Any given meal found 10 or 12 of us in lively conversation. Mark was an economist so he filled us in on the EU and the euro which were about to happen. How would I know which king was which without seeing them on banknotes, I wondered. There was internet but no twitter or smart phones so we were not buried in our devices. We pretty much enjoyed each other and everyone pitched in for dishes and cleanup. You were given your own napkin and ring for the duration. If du Feÿ was Showboat then we were one big happy family.

In the early 2000’s a woman from Memphis named Ellen Rolfes, whom I had only known socially, contacted me about a cookbook called Occasions to Savor for the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Delta Sigma Theta was formed in 1913 at Howard University and currently has over 350,000 initiated members. Tempted by this (and spurred on by having 3 kids in private school), I called Roy. His tenure at Clarkson Potter was over so he was available. We needed to do it in sorority members houses around Washington, DC. so he found a local chef and we all met at Union Station for the first time.

I stayed in the attic room of photographer/sculptor Bill and Sandy Christenbury’s house on McComb Street. Roy stayed on a friend’s couch. Roy, a city kid, didn’t or wouldn’t drive so every day I had to go pick him up in my van. The van had a faulty sensor in the automatic transmission that prevented moving from third to fourth gear every third try. Not the best for Beltway driving, but it held lots of trays of food. It all started as a bit of a comedy of errors with two crazy white boys helming a cookbook for the most serious of black sororities which claim as one of several nicknames “Devastating Divas”.

In the end not so devastating once our team cohered and the mission became clear. Any pro will tell you that if you sign on, you do your damnedest to make it work. Everybody brings something. Despite his iconoclasm Roy was always serious about work.

A coda to my working life with Roy came on a one day project—again produced by avowed Elvis nut Ellen Rolfes in Memphis: Graceland’s Table. It was a book of recipes from Elvis fans—end of story. As ideas for a book go, it was nothing if not commercial. One featured dish was a coconut-encrusted chicken submitted by a thirteen year old. Graceland is a justly famous but oddly un-grand, suburban colonial with Southern columns slapped on as a porte-cochere. It is open every day of the year but for Tuesdays in January. Nevertheless, I tapped Roy, who corralled Molly Stevens, and we picked a day and went. And did it. In one day.

The Rendezvous BBQ where we repaired to lick our wounds at the end of that day was the last place I saw Roy until he debuted his own cookbook, Tasty, in 2006 at L&M restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi, an hour plus from me in Sumner. It was a big splash made more fun for knowing most of the guests. Roy was all over signing and schmoozing. He was having whirling dervish kind of fun.

Then this winter some of our same friends at that event told me of Roy in hospice in Brooklyn. I had to go to New York to photograph my third version of the 42nd street panorama. With that project in the can we traipsed out to say goodbye. His room reminded me of his office back at Clarkson Potter. He owned the place— with games and newspapers and magazines strewn about, but of course also now the tubes and wires. We talked a bit of old times but you can’t get too deep in 15 minutes. We traded Instagram pics of our grandchild and his grandnephews and grandnieces, who will never know him.

He was so proud of his new blue hair, saying: “At last I’m an old blue-haired lady”. I had to fight like hell with myself not to take a picture.

—Langdon Clay, photographer.

Roy was one of the best editors I ever worked with, and that is saying a great deal.

—Anne Willan, cookbook author and cooking instructor.

Among the great cookbook editors of our time, Roy Finamore was unique. A James Beard Award-winning author in this own right, he was also a versatile collaborator who captured the voices of chefs as diverse as seafood expert Rick Moonen, Harlem restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson, and pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, cooking alongside them and then streamlining their recipes to make them friendly to the home cook. As if that wasn’t enough, he was a talented prop stylist who made the food of Jacques Pépin, pastry chef Gale Gand, and even Elvis Presley look timelessly beautiful. In all these roles, Roy had a consistent approach. He was first and foremost an artist.

So it was fitting that in the pandemic lockdown, he taught himself weaving and turned out artisan napkins and placemats. He was still working his loom from his hospice bed a few days before he died.

A long-time editor at Clarkson Potter, Roy brought his visual talents to the books of Lee Bailey, Martha Stewart, and Anne Willan. He had a nose for talent. His most notable find: he acquired and launched a book by a then little-known Long Island caterer. The Barefoot Contessa began with a tiny print run and went on to become a runaway New York Times bestseller, a perennial classic with millions of copies in print. Ina Garten remains the top-selling cookbook author in the country.

Roy became the impresario of every photo shoot he worked on because he understood all aspects of food and cookbooks. He could size up in an instant exactly how long a recipe would take, which dishes would wilt when they sat and which could hold, and how long it would take to get the photo right, from which he could calculate the order that the dishes should be made.

When we discussed the photography for his book One Potato, Two Potato (coauthored with Molly Stevens), for which he chose both the designer and the photographer, he told me he planned to put the vichyssoise in a white bowl against a creamy background

Wouldn’t it look better against something more colorful? It would not, he informed me derisively. The photo, still surpassingly elegant twenty-two years after it was published, became the cover.

His culinary apprenticeship took place beside his Italian grandmother, an exacting cook, beginning when he was about four. From her, he inherited an approach summed up in the introduction to Tasty: “Good, simple food is meant to be shared and enjoyed. Cook often.” That outlook, and the memorable dishes within, earned him a James Beard Award in General Cookbooks, the most competitive category, where Tasty triumphed over hundreds of other titles.

He was a craftsman in the kitchen, neatly squaring pastry off with his hands before rolling it out, nimbly pleating Chinese dumplings, jury-rigging a steamer for crabs from what we had on hand. He would arrive at Christmas bearing all manner of jarred and bottled treats he had made over the summer: sour cherries in rum, silky tomato passata, a phenomenal Worcestershire sauce. Then he would inhabit the kitchen for the next week, turning out three superb yet simple meals a day. Nothing made him happier than when people loved his food.

As a writer, he had a light touch on the page and a direct, knowing voice. Reading his recipes, you feel him looking over your shoulder, issuing injunctions, cajoling, correcting. He didn’t suffer fools. An editorial query reflecting inattention and a lack of rigor would be met with a stinging rebuke.

When he sent me the manuscript for Tasty, he enclosed a note. “I wrote a book. I hope you like it.”

I did.

—Rux Martin, cookbook editor.

[awakefor48hours]

I just want to know how much these audiences overlap

Please consider reblogging for a larger sample size.

*If you don't know what qualifies as "watching" (ie you're not done or have given up on the show), if you've watched season 1 to completion, then consider it as you’ve watched it.

Edit/clarification: If your definition of "watching" doesn't align with mine, that's fine. Use your own definition if you want, the definition I added was just for the people who I knew were going to comment under this with "OP, define 'watch'"

[derekfoxwit]

How Animation Discourse Can Feel At Times: The Complete Collection

[ordinaryschmuck]

I love that The Ghost and Molly McGee's forced cancellation isn't just frustrating to fans of the show but to people in the animation industry as well. They're just as sick as we are about how much studios disrespect animation. They keep looking for the next Spongebob, Simspons, or goodness forbid Family Guy, but instead having faith in the creators and their content, they just...wait. They wait to make a profit and do the bare minimum to market their shows and make them available.

Let's look at Gravity Falls for example. I remember that when Gravity Falls was still airing, you would be able to find out a new episode was coming out based on coming across a commercial by random chance or by the people working the show promoting it online. Add that with the fact that it was on a different channel that required you paying MORE for your cable to get it. It WAS available through Disney Channel, a channel more available at a cheaper price, but the entire of Season Two got moved to the more expensive Disney XD, where Disney shows go to die, because...REASONS. With no warning or announcement. I think I found out about Gravity Falls moving to Disney XD because the trailer played during a commercial break. And that's just the START the show's problems. Mixed in with poor marketing, the show would have a crazy inconsistent schedule, where we'd have four episodes a week, a few months of NOTHING, a few more episodes a week, nothing for a few months, a random episode playing between that nothingness with next to no promotion, and all of that happening to the rest of the show until it finally died a slow death with its series finale where four episodes got stretched out for six months. That...is NOT okay. And it doesn't stop with Gravity Falls.

Steven Universe, OK KO, Ducktales 2017, Amphibia, The Owl House, and now Ghost and Molly McGee are all shows that had similar and sometimes WORSE treatments as Gravity Falls did, where the networks gave next to NO marketing, the creators had to promote their own shows themselves, and the airing schedules were so inconsistent with wildly long hiatuses that only the most dedicated fans were willing to keep watching. General audiences (mainly kids) weren't willing to keep up with shows that had ongoing stories if the episodes stories kept being too spaced apart and never had reruns as frequent as other shows like Teen Titans Go or Big City Greens (Or whatever's constantly on network TV nowadays. I don't know. I mostly watch shit on streaming).

The people of the animation industry is catching onto all of these tricks, and they're getting sick of it. They're getting sick of inconsistent schedules. They're getting sick of trying to bend over backwards in every possible way to make the show they wanted. By either making serialized content as episodic as possible so the network could air it more or by condensing their stories as much as they can, already expecting that forced cancellation to happen sooner than later. And in some cases, they don't even get the luxury of being told their show is ending. Did you know that Inside Job and Paranormal Park both had seasons that were already in development before Netflix pulled the plug shortly after releasing new episodes of their shows? Did you know that The Ghost and Molly McGee was already working on a Season Three before Disney shut that down so they had to force out a series finale that would still be good despite the cancellation? Because it's true. It's ALWAYS true. Creators want to make MORE, but the studios won't let them because they didn't profit off of it. Except they WOULD HAVE if they treated it better.

I want kids to grow up with characters that stick around through their childhood, just like I did with mine. I want kids to have their own Ed, Edd n Eddy, Codename: Kids Next Door, Phineas and Ferb, or Kim Possible. I want kids to watch shows that last more than two-three seasons, stick around for years, and leave an impact as if they have all the time in the world because to them, it feels like they do. I want kids to have a show that ends on a high note because the creators wanted it and not because the networks demanded it. But the unfortunate thing is that it doesn't seem possible nowadays. Because if a mostly episodic show like The Ghost and Molly McGee fails, despite being charming and inoffensive and something most kids will love, the what hope IS left.

[guardianjameslight]

"Lamest", and it's some of the most popular, loved, and demanded shows that people still talk about.

[ilanprofile]

ILAN_PROFILE'S FANTASY / MYSTERY CARTOON GUIDE

Looking for Cartoons to Watch? Need a Guide for Animated Shows? Are you a Beginner or a Pro in watching TV shows? THIS ARE ALL THE MYSTERY / FANTASY CARTOONS I RECOMMEND!

About Each Section:

WATCH THIS: Shows I think are a MUST Watch for anybody getting into cartoons

NEW CARTOONS: Ongoing shows premiered in the past 2-3 years

STILL RELEVANT: Older shows / Already finished shows that still get a lot of attention nowdays

BONUS MENTIONS: Other Shows I havent watched that much of or arent as widely known as the others above

STORYDRIVEN: Fully serialized shows with lot of conitnuity

SEMI-EPISODIC: Shows with an ongoing story but also have self contained arcs

EPISODIC: Shows with minimal continuity, you can watch basically any episode

DISCLAIMER: I tried to limit myself to only 1-2 shows of each IP, UNLESS each of them feels too different from one or another (Like The Looney Tunes Show vs the classic Looney Tunes Cartoons) or you need to watch all shows together to get the full narrative (Ben 10 -> Alien Force -> Ultimate Alien -> Omniverse)

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

I just remembered when the 11th Doctor regeneration episode aired, I posted a pic of my "survival kit", which included a knife that I wrote 'moffat' on in ketchup, and honestly? that was really fucking funny of me lmao

[whothehellisrosee]

Wait,

HOW has it already been 7 years since season 4?

HOW?

[supermellon64]

Redrew that one scene from SU. They are in a part of Lori's bubble thats used to spy on the outside world or something.

[nerdycartoongal]

It’s so crazy how a lot of cartoon fan theories turn out to be true!!

[atomicpirateperson]

i call this one the "mega hell teenager" /j

they would almost never talk, but like, if you asked them "is water wet" they would defuse immediately from the internal conflict

[picturejasper20]

Huge fan of the ¨antagonist/semi antagonist becomes the kid protagonist's uncle/aunt while getting redeemed- in path to redemption¨ dynamic

[stevie-vee]

Now that The Ghost and Molly McGee is over, it really feels like the end of a small little era for me. This show and the other ones that surrounded it represent a time when I was truly into everything (animated wise) that was airing in one place. Something I haven't really felt in years when it comes to TV. As someone who was still paying attention to cable, watching these shows right next to each other was something I looked forward to, even to the point where I would get up early just to watch them live. One of my highlights of 2020 might be those summer nights where Greens, Amphibia, and Owl House aired new eps back to back. Although Greens seems to be far from over, something about these four shows getting to exist at the same time felt really special to me. Molly McGee was a cartoon that truly stood out to me for its fun spirit and heart, I'm glad to have been "enhappified" by its presence from start to finish.

I'm gonna miss this silly little show.

[mikyapixie]

💙💜💚💙💜💚💙💜💚

[aniketsanimationblog]

Can we just give a Round of Applause to Michaela Dietz for her Outstanding Voice Performance as Maj'el in Star Trek: Prodigy S2? Because, she nailed it as a Vulcan not showing any kind of Subtle Emotions or Expressions whatsoever in her voice to actually sound like a Vulcan would do.

Also, Michaela Dietz has also voiced Amethyst in Cartoon Network series - Steven Universe, Vee in Disney Channel Series - The Owl House, Darryl McGee in The Ghost and Molly McGee, Ariel and Tilly in Nickelodeon Series - Middlemost Post and Wallace in Baby Shark's Big Show.