#Samantha Phillips

[magazinewankersworld]

Samantha Phillips

Born in February 1966 in Savage, Maryland, USA, Samantha started her modeling career in the mid 1980's for various mainstream fashion houses. She also appeared in various B-movie titles including Phantasm II, Love Potion and Deceit during this time. Her first nude appearance was as Pet of the Month in the June 1993 issue of Penthouse, which was photographed by Suze Randall. Afterwards she became an in demand video vixen, and appeared in music videos for artists such as Iron Maiden, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Van Halen, and Mötley Crüe. While she did get a bit part in Weekend at Bernie's II, the rest of her filmography up to the 2000's almost entirely comprises of B-movies and nude exploitation direct video films. Apart from her Penthouse pictorial, she has only done a handful of nude photo shoots, mostly in the late 1990's for adult websites. While she made appearances in two Penthouse video releases, she also appeared in two adult films in the late 1990's, but only nude. In the 2000's, she moved into a more mainstream career including hosting a national broadcast morning talk show called Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and the reality TV series Xtreme Fakeovers. In the late 2000's she hosted a relationships advice program on a popular internet radio station.

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Dallas Connection (1994)

The Dallas Connection is hilariously inept. In many ways, it’s got everything you want out of a "so bad it's good" action film. The performances are awful, with the title of “least convincing” constantly moving from one actor to the next. The plot is simplistic, bordering on idiotic, making it easy to follow even if you’re spending more time shouting insults at the screen than paying attention to what’s going on. The script contains gems like “I’d like to suck the polish off your toes” to keep you laughing. There aren’t a lot of action scenes but when bullets are exchanged, they usually result in some unconvincing dummies blowing up. Most important of all, it takes itself completely seriously, with several final act twists proving that some of the “mistakes” we saw previously were actually intentional. Only one thing prevents me from wholeheartedly recommending it to everyone. What is it? Read on.

A trio of beautiful assassins - Black Widow (Julie Strain), Cobra (Julie K. Smith) and Scorpion (Wendy Hamilton) - eliminate three of the four scientists involved in the creation of an advanced satellite system. To ensure Antonio Morales (Rodrigo Obregón) doesn’t fall prey to the same fate, special agents Chris Cannon (Bruce Penhall), Mark Austin (Mark Barriere), Samantha Maxx (Samantha Phillips) and Nicholas Lang (Roland Marcus) are sent to protect him.

Though the plot is easily summarized, it’s made to seem needlessly complicated. This is because of some equation that was split up among the scientists and then converted into microchips that need to be brought together so the satellite can be activated by a meteor shower. This will allow whoever uses it to detect any weapon on earth, anywhere - even underground. Huh? What? It makes no sense but doesn’t matter. The point is, we have a bunch of male scientists with something the evil people want. How do you get a man to hand over something useful? By seducing them, or blowing them up. Enter the trio of female assassins, all of whom are played by Playboy playmates. Like I always say, if you can’t be good, be sleazy and this movie takes that mantra to heart. Unnecessary shower scenes, prolonged sex scenes, a trip to a strip club and loads of inappropriate outfits make this the kind of movie that would be watched over and over by teenage boys late at night. It’s not quite as bad as Skyscraper, but it’s close. The most hilarious R-rated moment has to be a sequence set in a fancy restaurant. Mr. Morales begins fantasizing about what his bodyguard would look like in lingerie so of course we see Samantha Philips out of her clothes. They had to find some way to get it done… beyond the sex scene she had earlier.

While this obsession with the female body is hilarious and pleasing to anyone who might enjoy the female form… it might also be the one thing that won’t make The Dallas Connection fun for every crowd - especially if your group contains couples. Reportedly, Bruce Penhall’s wife was pretty upset by his enthusiasm in the hot tub scene. It’s easy to see why.

The ladies were cast primarily for their ability to dazzle audiences with their shirts off but the male characters aren't exactly Shakespearean all-stars either. One-liners that should have you cheering will instead make you groan, important dialogue is thoroughly unconvincing (and contains grammatical errors at least once) and everyone comes off as an idiot. It certainly doesn’t help that the story is full of inconsistent behavior - even if you take the twists at the end into consideration. You can spot a boom mike in the upper left corner of an early scene and the story will have you scratching your head. You’d think with the villains’ team being primarily composed of three “strong” women that Samantha would be the big hero at the end. She’s the only one that can’t be seduced, she’s the one that gets closest to Morales, and as the only woman on the team, she stands out. Except she’s a terrible agent. One punch and she’s down for the count - hardly a badass. You might say I was expecting too much but some of the reveals at the end are proper "Oh!" moments that force you to pause and think. Not much, but for a movie of this level, that counts for a lot.

Ultimately, The Dallas Connection is light on the action but makes up for it with the gratuitous nudity. At first, you'll say “Alright, I see what you did there” but it’s expected out of a film like this one. It’s what the poster is promising, after all. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. time the film finds a way to get the women out of their clothes are so absurd you'll be howling. Once in a while, it also switches things up with some bad performances, unconvincing dummies, lousy dialogue, and nonsensical writing. From my research, it sounds like this is par for the course for director Christian Drew Sidaris. If that's the case, I’m looking forward to seeing more. (March 26, 2022)

[dark-ethereal-visions]

Samantha Phillips turns 59 today on February 25, 2025. She was born in 1966.

You might not know her name but you know her work!

[moondust-artz]

Doodles

[eretzyisrael]

by Melanie Phillips

But on June 4, the Famine Review Committee published a report in which it rejected the FEWS NET analysis as not “plausible” and said it could not endorse its famine projection.

The committee said there was a lack of reliable evidence about the number of trucks entering Gaza and the level of humanitarian assistance that was arriving and being distributed around its various areas.

In order to compensate for these gaps in the data, it said, FEWS NET had relied on “multiple layers of assumptions and inference” about food availability and access as well as nutritional status and mortality, and had made “deliberate choices over assumptions, without the necessary supporting evidence”.

Such assumptions, said the committee, had ignored or underestimated the value of both commercial sources of food and certain forms of humanitarian aid.

Although this didn’t alter the fact that Gaza was experiencing “extreme human suffering” and that urgent measures were needed to boost humanitarian supplies, the committee concluded that flows of aid and the availability of food had increased significantly in March and April and “that nearly 100 percent of daily kilocalorie requirements were available for the estimated population of 300,000 people in April, even using conservative calculations”.

In other words, the committee reversed its own dire predictions and damned the famine early warning network for excluding evidence that gave the lie to its anti-Israel narrative. The categorical declarations of imminent famine being caused by wicked, heartless, war-criminal Israel just weren’t true.

It’s worth remembering that USAID, the parent body of FEWS NET, is run by Samantha Power, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration.

In 2002, Power suggested in a “thought experiment” that America might have to invade Israel to prevent an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. She also suggested that the only people who might be alienated by this would be American Jews, who she said exercised tremendous political and financial power over America.

Other research has also exploded the “Gaza famine” claims. At Columbia University, two professors have said the evidence shows that sufficient amounts of food are being supplied to Gaza.

They told The Jerusalem Post that it was “a myth that Israel is responsible for famine in Gaza” and suggested that the International Criminal Court and UN had joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war”.

Yet there are no signs that these rebuttals of the “Gaza famine” claim are having any effect on the Israel-bashing crowd. A few days ago, The New York Times was still referring to “starving civilians” and blaming deaths from malnutrition on “restrictions on aid and commercial goods entering Gaza”.

BBC News reported this week that “warnings of famine are looming once again in northern Gaza,” broadcasting distressing footage of infants said to be suffering from dehydration and malnutrition caused by restrictions on aid at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.

Other than Fox News, it seems that no mainstream media outlet has reported the Famine Review Committee’s findings that the claim of famine in Gaza cannot be justified. Nor have the anti-Israel humanitarian organisations, although the World Health Organisation’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has now subtly adjusted his rhetoric by talking about “famine-like conditions”.

Famine is not the only anti-Israel falsehood whose debunking has been ignored. The mainstream media and humanitarian crowd are still using the Hamas figure of 37,000-plus civilians killed in Gaza, despite the fact that the UN itself revised its own casualty totals sharply downwards after it emerged that some of the claimed deaths had been drawn from media sources and were fabricated.

Some outlets such as The New York Times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Time magazine are still claiming that the International Court of Justice said the Palestinians in Gaza faced a “plausible risk of genocide” even though the court said no such thing. As the ICJ President Joan Donoghue herself said, the court decided “that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide. … It didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible”.

[queen-daya]

Carwheeler + SG1 Aesthetic

[loisfreakinglane]

TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES // 2.12 “Alpine Fields”

[sailor-rose-princess]

My collection of dolls so far. I think now I have enough to call a collection, my childhood self would be so happy lol. And I won't be stopping there!

(from left to right, Cyborg Noodle, aka Cy, Celestina Damon, Colleen (still thinking of a last name), Kami Thomas (and mini Samantha), Ellie Fitzel, Lindsey Bergman, and Samantha Parkington)

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

From Lynette Noni's post:

I’m finally beginning to catch up on everything from the last few weeks, so here’s some fun pics from @supanovaexpo Gold Coast and Melbourne last month! I had the best time hanging with amazing authors @freyamarske, @trnapper, @longlukearnold, @say_shannon, and @gracechanwrites (plus @jameslindsayauthor and @marclindsayauthor) over the two weekends! And it was beyond incredible to see so many readers and talk about books! 😍

Huge thanks as always to the phenomenal Supanova staff and volunteers who go over and above to make the event/s magical (especially the literary manager @pagsbelfield, and of course the fab PAs like Teela and Kyle (among others!) who took such great care of us all). I wish I could thank everyone involved in making the event/s so special, but instead, I’ll just say I adore you all - and of course a MASSIVE thank you to all the readers who came out to see me/us! All the feels!! ❤️

Bonus from her instagram stories:

[ag-celestina-gorillaz]

I took all these cute pictures for my dolls, but this post is serious. Tw for genocide/hate crime mention.

Today April 8th, I braided all my dolls hair (as well as my own) in honor of Cole Brings Plenty. Cole was a Lakota actor who was found murdered with his hair cut. Rising Hearts has asked that everyone, indigenous or not, wear braids to honor him and remember those that have suffered the same. I even put in small braids for the dolls that have short hair.

If you can't braid your hair, then share posts of others!

Now is also a good time to share some support to indigenous charities, if you're able

https://www.risinghearts.org/

https://landback.org/

https://mmiwusa.org/

https://narf.org/

https://ndncollective.org/

https://www.niwrc.org/

[alintalzin]

My Spotify playlist for Copper in the Ground, my espionage portal fantasy wip.

[doodling-doodle]

A Modern Great War (PT. 16)

The war was never-ending.

They just kept fighting. But Alex was happy to fight now. His precious Kyle was okay.

Now they just had to end this, once and for all. Kill Kortifex, get home...

It didn't go as planned...

The war hadn't stopped. They hadn't stopped fighting. Kortifex’s power was strongest in the Dark Aether. 

But so was Kyle's and Maxis'.

And Alex kept looking back up at him, making sure he was still okay, still fighting. 

But it seemed like the Blood Rite would never end.

"When will you just give up?!" Kyle yelled

"When you die, red blood."

"Ha! Good luck! You're not an Archon anymore, once you're out of strength, you're a goner!"

Alex smiled at that, taking the small chance he had to get a few shots landed on Kortifex. Which gave Kyle a chance to get a little extra damage on him.

"Yes! Get him, Kyle!" Graves yelled.

"You can't defeat me, red bloods!!"

"Fucking watch us. We did it once before, we will do it again."

He watched as Kyle took control of most of the hoard, bringing down one of the sacrifice towers. It was the last one.

"No! You won't do this!"

"Yes, we will!" Price yelled.

"You can't win, Kortifex. You were always meant to lose." Kyle yelled, "and we will defeat you again in the place you lost years ago."

"Not only that." Maxis said, "But you're already losing!"

Both Maxis and Kyle managed to get Kortifex down, and held him down.

"All stations, Bravo 2-6, guns on Kortifex, we're trapping him." Kyle said.

They all went over to the edge of the cliffs they were on, aiming at Kortifex while Maxis took two Artifacts out of her pack.

A mirror and a orb with symbols.

"The Mirror Relect and Summoning Key?" Kyle asked Maxis

"Need him gone for good this time. With these, that can happen. And the Dark Aether will close. Trap him in his Artifact, trap his soul in the Summoning Key, put it in the Dark Aether, destroy it." She responded 

He nodded, still trying to hold him down.

She placed the mirror down, and he screamed in anguish as it trapped him in his Artifact. Then she immediately used the Summoning Key to trap him in a place he couldn't get out without help this time.

“Vercanna, help us out a little.” Kyle said.

“Good work, seedling. You’ve done it. You stopped him. Again.” she opened the portal for him to throw the Summoning Key in the deep parts of the Dark Aether.

“Good work, baby…” Alex said, standing up, smiling.

But then it really hit him.

He hadn’t been truly close enough to him to touch him for a month. He had barely heard his voice. Seen his face. In a month. And it had been nearly a year for Kyle.

He suddenly just wanted to run up to him, hug him, kiss him, tell him he loved him, he was proud of him.

So he did.

He threw his gun down, running down the cliff to run up to his precious boyfriend- his Kyle.

“Kyle!”

He turned, looking upset, but Alex scooped him up in his arms, holding him tight, kissing his cheek lightly a few times.

“I love you- Kyle, I love you so much. I’m so proud of you- you saved us… you saved us all. I missed you so much.”

Kyle froze up, and Alex put him down, seeing him looking up at him in shock. But his eyes were a dark purple. Which were beautiful on him, though he hoped the brown would come back.

“You… your not upset?” Kyle asked, “I… i lied. I left without warning. I…”

“No. I could never be upset with you. You did what you had to do. And you saved us with it.”

Kyle smiled a little, melting into Alex’s touch on his cheek.

“I love you, okay? Kyle, I love you…”

“I love you too… please, I’m so sorry…”

“No, my love, don’t be… you did nothing wrong.” he gently kissed his forehead, still holding him to his chest.  

“I’ll open a portal, seedling. Get you all back home before we close the Dark Aether.”

“I won’t hear you guys anymore?”

“Unless it opens back up. But it's better this way. No mortal should ever have to go through this again.”

The portal opened up, and they quickly went back through it to the base.

Alex kept Kyle close, refusing to let go, while Maxis stayed behind to close the Dark Aether.

They went back to their room after getting the others out of the bunker and getting Rose, who was ecstatic to see them.

They relaxed for a while, just cuddling in bed before Kyle flinched.

“Baby?”

“It’s Maxis…” He mumbled, “Wait, what?!”

“Kyle?!”

“She… Fuck, the Aetherim, it’s… what’s going to happen…?”

Alex panicked pulling back to hold Kyle’s face.

“I’ll… Since I’m not an Agarthen, but still not fully human anymore, like the Aetherim going into my system was hell, it all leaving at once will be worse.”

He panicked more. “What will happen?!”

“The… the days that you woke me up when I was exhausted were the days that it was at its worse. I’m sure that it’ll be even worse then that.”

Alex nodded, “I’ll be right here.”

Kyle nodded, “Thanks, Maxis… And the rest of you guys.” he smiled after a few seconds.

Then his eyes glowed that same dark purple, and he lightly gasped.

Alex pulled him up, trying to see what was going on.

But he went limp in his arms…

---

@lvndr-swtr

[quotesfrommyreading]

Europa is enveloped in a thick coat of water ice. (Some other moons in our solar system have ice made of methane and nitrogen—the cosmos is a weird place.) The criss-crossing lines visible in the new pictures are actually cracks and fissures in that frozen exterior. Scientists suspect that they’re caused by the stretching and squashing that Europa experiences as it orbits giant Jupiter. The moon’s terrain is sprinkled with chemical compounds such as sodium chloride and magnesium sulfate—more commonly known to Earthlings as table salt and Epsom salt—and they could indicate briny waters below.

Scientists got their best evidence that a Europan ocean might exist two decades ago, when that earlier NASA spacecraft detected a magnetic connection between Europa and Jupiter that could easily be explained by the presence of a salty, global sea. This deep into the solar system, Europa’s underground ocean wouldn’t feel the warmth of the sun; it would stay liquid because of Jupiter’s gravitational tugging. In recent years, telescopes have detected signs of plumes of water vapor spewing out of the cracks and into space. Scientists believe that Europa’s ocean could be as old as the moon itself, about 4 billion years or so, which would give life plenty of time and a stable environment in which to evolve, Phillips said.

The data suggest that Europa has a rocky mantle—the layer between the moon’s crust and core—and when rock and water come together, magical things can happen: Chemical interactions between them are known to produce hydrogen-rich materials for tiny creatures to metabolize. “On our own planet, hydrothermal systems at the seafloor provide energy for communities of microorganisms,” Samantha Trumbo, a planetary scientist at Cornell who studies icy ocean worlds like Europa, told me.

The upcoming NASA mission, named Clipper—a nod to the speedy, lightweight vessels favored by 19th-century merchants—will study nearly every bit of the Europan surface. If it gets lucky, the spacecraft could fly through some plume particles, take a sip, and analyze the contents. Alyssa Rhoden, a planetary geophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute who studies Europa, is most excited about a Clipper instrument designed to detect warmer-than-usual spots on the moon’s surface. “When you look at Europa’s surface, you can see a lot of pits where the surface seems to have dropped down a little bit, places where the surface has been disrupted,” Rhoden told me. “We think that that’s happening from heating coming from below.” That signature could simply indicate the presence of melted bits of ice near the frigid crust—or it could mean a roiling sea has floated toward the surface, perhaps bringing any tiny inhabitants with it.

The Clipper mission is not meant to find definitive proof that life exists on Europa, only explore whether the moon has the right conditions and chemistry to make life possible. Evidence of life will require more missions, guided by Clipper’s data, that could land on the Europan surface and drill into the ice. NASA is also searching for life elsewhere in the solar system, notably on Mars, where a rover is collecting samples from a dried-up river delta. But Europa is a more tantalizing target, and so are the other ocean moons sprinkled across the solar system, such as Enceladus and Titan, which orbit Saturn, and Triton, around Neptune. The Mars mission is designed to search for signs of fossilized life that existed several billion years ago, when water once flowed on the planet. “It’s quite possible that Mars could have had life in the past, in a warmer-weather era, and it’s possible that there are subsurface pockets on Mars that could have remnants of this living biosphere,” Phillips said. “But on somewhere like Europa, life could exist there now.”

And what might humanity, by way of carefully engineered machines, find on Europa, once we’ve figured out which melty bits to inspect? “I would love for there to be Europan whales swimming around in that ocean,” Phillips said with a laugh. But alien life, if it exists, is likely to be small and simple. Energy sources are limited in the Europan depths, and scientists don’t think the environment can support the development of more complex organisms, Phillips said. Still, even the discovery of a single microbe would mark an explosive event in human history. It would mean that life had managed to spring up in two different places around the same star—in a universe absolutely brimming with stars. If it happened more than once here, in our own solar system, it’s likely happened elsewhere in the cosmos, around someone else’s sun. This is why scientists are so eager to catch a glimpse of Europa, and prepare as much as they can for the exploration to come. “We all want it to be water,” Rhoden said. “We all want it to be a cool plumbing system in the shell with lots of activity, and someday we’ll get down there and find little Europan sea urchins clinging to the bottom of the ice.”

  —  There’s Hope for Life on Europa, a Distant Moon

[psychedslash]

I read (and finished) 84 books this year, including 20 audiobooks. 6 were rereads and are not in this tier list.

And here's just a quick tier list of my six rereads.

Next, here are the three books I'm currently reading (technically, haven't touched The Witching Hour in a couple months now).

The City of Brass is a bit of a let down after loving Amina al-Sirafi so much but that's my fault for not looking it up at all (I didn't know it was a YA thing, y'see) but I'm not hating it. Taking me a while to get through though (which is a problem because I also have the second one out from the library. At least the library does charge a late fee anymore.). I'd say it enroute for a low 3 stars rating so far.

A Memory Called Empire I'm pretty early in yet (~100 pages/4-5 chapters?) but I'm digging it so far. I was a little worried when I noticed a glossary and pronunciation guide at the back, but I haven't needed it so far. It's feeling like a good 3.5 stars unless something changes wildly.

The Witching Hour, meanwhile, I'm having a miserable time with. I read it through in high school and remember liking it just fine, but this time...hoo boy. She wrote hundreds of years of history for the Mayfair family for what should have been her own personal series bible but then just ... stuffed it into the middle of the book. Can really tell this was Rice's first book where she told her editors to fuck off, I guess. (At least I think it is.) I'm not going to DNF it, but only because I'm trying to do a full series reread of the Vampire Chronicles books (including the new-er 3 Lestat books that I've never read) which the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy unfortunately crosses over with a few times, so I'm stuck with it. I probably would have given it a 3-3.5 stars rating twenty years ago, but I'm going to be generous and give it 2 stars right now.

Finally, uh, only 6 of these books were actually from 2024, so here's my Top 6 2024 Books!

1. The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

2. Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire

3. A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

4. The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

5. Potions & Perils by Reck Well

6. A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

[sinceileftyoublog]

Dean & Britta & Sonic Boom: Goodwill to All

Photo by Samantha Tyson

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When I logged on to Zoom to speak with Britta Phillips and Peter Kember (aka Sonic Boom), it felt like I was a fly on the wall witnessing some old friends spending a holiday together, shooting the shit and reminiscing. Kember, calling from Portugal, complimented Phillips' pajamas. Phillips, speaking from a friend's home in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, recalled the various times in the Aughts she and her husband (and longtime bandmate) Dean Wareham encountered Kember, both in their then home of New York city and on tour with Luna. Kember fondly remembered when Wareham and Phillips let him stay at their NYC apartment and he accidentally put a hole through the top of their TV. (It's a long story.) Among the laughs, fittingly, we were speaking about A Peace of Us (Carpark), a new album of Christmas and holiday songs credited to Dean & Britta & Sonic Boom. The record is comprised of songs new and old, covers learned over the years, as part of the trio's pandemic-era Christmas special, and more recently. What all the tunes share is not necessarily that they're about Christmas but reflect a sense of togetherness.

The very first song on A Peace of Us has more precedent with Dean & Britta's back catalog than with Christmas: Purple Mountains' "Snow Is Falling in Manhattan". Indeed, it's not the first time Wareham and Phillips have covered David Berman; their debut album L'Avventura sports a faithful rendition of Silver Jews' "Random Rules". This time around, Dean & Britta turn "Snow Is Falling" into a holiday song via Wareham's usual wiry guitar drums and Phillips' pattering percussion and whispered vocal harmonies. Kember adds sleigh bells to round out the wintry sound as Wareham sings Berman's lines about taking in old friends, sheltering them from the bluster. The opening track sets up A Peace of Us as an album about empathy and selflessness. Wareham again leads on Eddy Arnold's "Christmas Can't Be Far Away", atop a waltz instrumental rife with arpeggio synths and Kember's baritone vocal harmonies. Their two voices together elevate the song's themes of neighborly cheer even from the landlord who's presumably come to collect the rent check. Elsewhere, Dean & Britta add their unmistakable sound to classic pacifist Christmas songs, like John & Yoko/The Plastic Ono Band's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over), and pro labor heartbreakers such as Merle Haggard's "If We Make It Through December". The latter, especially, showcases the the three musicians here in sync, Phillips on lead vocals and an almost hip-hop like synth, Kember's reverb emphasizing the song's stark loneliness, Wareham's twangy guitars taking it back to its country roots.

Ultimately, throughout our conversation, Kember and Phillips emphasized that nobody in the trio is especially religious or views Christmas as a religious holiday, at least in the ritualistic sense. If anything, they connect with the idea of social conscience, included in but certainly not unique to Christianity. "Essentially, one of our tiny hopes is, through its title and subject matter, [the record] will make people think about something they might be able to do for others at Christmas," said Kember. "It doesn't have to be handing out food to the homeless. It can be all different ways: finding a suitable charity. There are children out there that don't get toys at Christmas without charities. I think we all feel that if Christmas is for anyone, it's for children. It's a magical time for them." His words give a weight to a song like Willie Nelson's "Pretty Paper", a duet between Kember and Phillips where their vocals intertwine with thumping synth bass. You may think wrapping paper is a material good, but there's something otherworldly about its patterns, akin to the psychedelia of the song. Same goes for their treatment of Roger Miller's "Old Toy Trains", which shimmers like a sunny winter day, Wareham's vocals over chintzy, warbling textures. You can place yourself in the headspace of a kid, delirious at the wonder of their new toy.

Perhaps the best thing about A Peace of Us, though, is that it's a record you can put on if you're simply a fan of Dean & Britta and/or Sonic Boom, even if you aren't partial to Christmas music. "Between us, we have a lot of different fans and friends who were fans initially," Kember said. "It's nice to be able to connect with people through music...Doing it at Christmas is a particularly nice thing." "It's especially familial," added Phillips. I felt that warm connection during an online conversation, and I can't wait to feel it again whenever I press play on the record. Below, read our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Did you always know you wanted to make a record together?

Britta Phillips: Yeah, it started about 20 years ago. I don't remember where the idea even came from, but Pete, you had suggested [we cover The Wailers'] "She's Coming Home", which I sang as, "He's Coming Home", and at some point, we decided we should do a Christmas album. It took about 20 years.

Peter Kember: We had done a bunch of Christmas singles. We like the idea of Christmas as a time when people are together, when people tend to forgive and forget, peace on earth, goodwill to all. There are loads of key Christmas songs: "Old Toy Trains", that Dean & Britta did, "She's Coming Home". These are really nice songs. It's something we all experienced regardless of our faith or lack thereof. It's a bit like the pandemic, where everyone is on the same fucking page. They might not all be reading the script the same way, but everyone's at least in the same atmosphere. We love that, and we love doing stuff together.

BP: That's true. We hadn't thought about, these days, everybody's in their own internet life, but the holiday season is something everybody comes back for.

PK: The connected world we're in now, I personally think it's one of the worst things that ever happened to culture and music. Interesting or good bands...got thin as soon as everybody had an iPhone in their pocket. Being a little bored, not able to just scroll and flick and search, is what we need for people to have great bands again. It can be sad this Christmas, because I'm sure loads of families will sit around looking at their fucking phones. I see people come here, to one of the most beautiful places in Europe, and there are families sitting around the dinner table looking at their phones. It's very sad for me.

SILY: And people might be getting new phones for Christmas.

PK: [laughs]

SILY: On Eddy Arnold's "Christmas Can't Be Far Away", there's that line about how even the landlord said hi to the narrator around holiday time. It's always been one of the most hopeful Christmas songs because it suggests that no matter your religious beliefs, around that time, even the most apathetic or adversarial of us can forget our status for a minute.

PK: That's very much what the record's about for us. Peace on earth, goodwill to all...I don't think there will be peace on earth in my lifetime. There will always be war over some crazy land grabs. So I think it was nice when we decided that [peace] would be the emphasis we would put on it. People [can] think of it as a holiday record, but [it's also] about us being peaceful and finding resolutions other than war, fighting, or arguing.

SILY: Do either of you tend to listen to a lot of Christmas music around the holidays?

BP: It's hard to avoid. I don't like to start so early. After Thanksgiving is reasonable. I really hate most Christmas songs. I like Duke Ellington's The Nutcracker Suite. There's some good [Christmas] reggae.

PK: I'm much more about a few days of playing stuff, but there are some really nice records out there. There's a really nice Atlantic soul Christmas record with Otis [Redding] and [Carla] Thomas singing together. That's a really sweet song, "New Year's Resolution". It's nice to have a little bit of the vibe. I'm a sucker for sleigh bells. A lot of Christmas songs have sleigh bells in them. I try to get sleigh bells into as many things as I can these days, Christmas or not. They're really vibey.

Low's Christmas album is great. There are some really cool Christmas records that don't follow the norms. The first I knew a lot of the songs [on A Peace of Us] was when Dean & Britta approached me about being involved in the record. They sent me one of the songs, and I thought it was really cool. It wasn't just, "Hey, it's Christmas, guys!" It really covers the gamut of emotions. Christmas can be a tough time for some people, and I think it was nice to see that reflected in the songs. "Pretty Paper" is a good example, as is ["Snow Is Falling in Manhattan"]. "If We Make It Through December" is a great example of that. I really like the mix of songs. I like that Dean sang in German on a couple songs as well. I guess people don't know that "Silent Night" is a German song. We got a review where the writer talked about it being a strange language choice. [laughs]

BP: I learned that song in fifth grade in German.

SILY: Did everyone know German?

BP: Dean speaks German.

SILY: I agree with you that my favorite Christmas songs or albums have that contrast, where there's not just a vibe to them, but they have side-by-side moods that are, on paper, contradictory. On this record, when you have not just sleigh bells but synths and atmospheric noise, it slows down the positivity and adds emotional complexity. Were you trying to do that with the arrangements and instrumentation?

BP: I think we are just naturally geared towards something that isn't just peppy.

PK: Christmas is associated with snow, especially in the States. Snow has a distinct acoustic quality. When you go out in the world, and it's covered in snow, it and the cold air dampens and changes the way sound is transmitted. I think it really lends itself to the atmospherics of reverb. Luckily, again, we all really like reverb. [laughs] It was a good chance to let the reverb ring, slightly muffled effects. Like sleigh bells, something about [reverb] is Christmassy. The king of reverb, Phil Spector, does the sleigh bells mixed high on A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector.

SILY: What was the version of "Little Altar Boy" you heard first?

PK: I'm a big fan of The Fleetwoods, and I have a bunch of their CDs. I love their voices, two girls and a guy. [Their version] came up on [YouTube], and I thought, "Damn, this is a really awesome song." I suggested to Dean & Britta that it was a cool Christmas song. I love the treatment they did of it. It has a dark spin. The low bass synths Britta did put a menace to the track. Dean said the guy who wrote that song changed the name of it because of connotations [with the Catholic church.] I think it's edgy to have [the original title] on a Christmas record. It's a nice contrast.

BP: I love that song. I had not heard it before Pete suggested it. The chord changes go from really dark chords to a major, bright chorus or bridge.

SILY: Were there any songs that you recorded for this album but didn't include, or Christmas songs you one day want to cover?

BP: We put everything on that we recorded. But we have a long list. We've been collecting Christmas songs for a long time. There are always more.

PK: There was one song left off that maybe could have been on. We did a version of my song "Things Like This (A Little Bit Deeper)", which I redid as, "I Wish It Was Like Christmas Every Day". In the studio, I was listening to it, and thought I should do two versions of the chorus. Later on, when it came towards Christmas, I thought, "Oh yeah, let's get Dean and Britta to sing on it." I guess that was in 2020.

BP: Oh yeah. We should have put that one on!

SILY: Have you ever thought about writing original Christmas songs?

BP: We've thought about it. There were a couple demos. We didn't really try. There are just so many good songs that people have never heard. Lyrics are tricky. Maybe some day.

SILY: Including the Purple Mountains track is neat because even though that song was not originally contextualized as a Christmas song, it contains a lot of the same themes as Christmas music, and it turned out to be tragically, eerily prescient to the point where it could become a retrospective Christmas classic. Are there other songs you feel that way about, where you don't think of it as a Christmas song but you associate it with the holiday?

BP: "Snow" is a Randy Newman song, but I knew the Claudine Longet version. There are a lot of snow songs, not exactly Christmas songs, but holiday songs.

PK: Dean, when in Galaxie 500, also did one of my favorite songs ever, which I started to know through the Galaxie version, which is Yoko Ono's "Listen, the Snow Is Falling". I think it's without a doubt my favorite thing Yoko Ono ever did. It's unlike anything else she did because they were working with Phil Spector. If I think about it, that might be a little bit where I went with trying to do reverb and sleigh bells on this. It has a big slice of what Phil Spector brought to that song.

SILY: Can you tell me about the cover art?

PK: The cover is by an old friend of mine, Marco Papiro. He did Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, he did Reset, he's done a number of sleeves for me. He's a unique guy. His day job is doing pharmaceutical packaging, where you're not allowed to influence the purchaser besides the color of the pill. When he comes to do things with me, or in this case with us, I usually throw some ideas at him, and he doesn't do anything with those ideas [laughs]. He always bases it on text. He always creates his own typeface for it. He's got a really great visual sense. What he did for this wasn't his first idea, and that's often the way with him. He'll do stuff, it'll be cool, and he'll knock it out of the park with something else. When we saw it, we all felt the same way, that it was really awesome. Subtly using the peace sign within the matrix pattern, and the way he curled our names. I think we're all very happy with it.

BP: In the beginning, I think you suggested something like wrapping paper, and it has a little bit of that.

PK: For sure. He's a musician as well, and plays violin, primarily electronically, and ["Pretty Paper"] might have jived with him particularly. He's a fan of Dean & Britta anyway.

SILY: Have you considered playing these songs live together?

PK: It was too late this year. It's one of those records--I may be wrong, and I'd like to be wrong--but I don't think you could play it in August. It would have to be in December. It's something we may look at for next year.

[rbolick]

Books On Books Collection - Warren Lehrer