#actually i just zoomed in and it says 1996 ?!?!?!??!?@?!?@?@?@?

[jessiesjaded]

Everyone come get a pikelet 😇💗

[samobservessonic]

Why do you want to read Sonic the Comic?

The short answer is because it was my intro to the Sonic series as a whole, but I haven’t reread most of it since I was a kid. But I’ll go into a little more detail about that below the readmore, as well as outlining what I will and won’t be reading for this blog

Sonic the Comic issue #80 rewired my brain and changed my life

Now, the first issue of StC that I bought as a kid was #80. I should add a disclaimer here that there was a kid I knew back then who recommended me the comics - she had issues #78 and #79, so I probably at least glimpsed those as well. But #80 was the first issue that I had for myself (and I still have my copy!), so that’s the one that gave me my first impression of Sonic

I’m sure StC fans will know why this issue was a big one and even Sonic fans who have a casual familiarity with StC will probably see Super Sonic on the cover and guess that a lot of stuff happens in this issue… and you’d be right! I’ll save the review for when I actually get to this issue in my reread, but the basic premise is that Sonic goes to visit his friend Porker Lewis on the Floating Island (later known as Angel Island in the games), where the chaos emeralds and master emerald are kept suspended above a giant… hole thing that holds their power (kid me didn’t ask questions, adult me still doesn’t). Sonic fell in this hole and got a full whack of their power, turning him into the evil Super Sonic who’s hellbent on destroying the last person who’d been on Sonic’s mind, who happened to be Amy Rose

The story ends on this cliffhanger and I can pin-point this single image as the reason I got into Sonic in the first place

…Like, look at this!! The art is so cool! What’s going to happen to Amy Rose? Why has Sonic turned into a crazy powerful being who wants to kill her? I have to know more! I have to get the next issue and maybe devote my entire life to this series! Like, Super Sonic looks so powerful and Tails looks terrified of him! But Amy still looks quite calm and collected. Maybe she’s only just noticed Super Sonic zooming into the scene or maybe she’s just composed enough to not be as fearful of him as Tails is. Obviously, even without knowing anything about the series, I could tell that Amy is Sonic’s friend and I want her to be okay. But something about seeing her reaction in this panel made it seem like the “Next Issue: Amy vs Super Sonic!” advertised at the bottom of this page wouldn’t be as one-sided as some might expect it would be And that’s how, on (roughly) 21st June 1996, an 8-year-old who’d just spent their £1.20 pocket-money had their socks blown off by a Sonic comic (Out of curiosity, I looked up where Archie Sonic was at around this time and it was… issue #37! The Knuckles spin-off comics would also be released the month after this. But I wouldn’t know about the existence of either of these until later)

Now, 80 issues into an on-going series is obviously a late point to hop on, but I can honestly say that it never hindered me reading the comics as a kid. Every two weeks I’d get to see Sonic and his friends have adventures and sometimes they’d mention established lore that I might not have known, but it was easy just to write that off as something from an earlier issue and carry on Also, after a certain point, StC started to reprint older stories. Which was both a blessing and a curse, because on one hand it meant that I could catch up with older stories I hadn’t read before, but on the other hand it deprived the issues of newer stories, until the comic would eventually become entirely reprints from issue #185. Even so, I can confidently say that there are probably stories in the first 79 issues of the series that I’ve never read, so I’m looking forward to getting to those on my read-through So, will you stop reading at issue #184? While I intend to read from #1-184, the reprints issues do feature new covers from Richard Elson

Many of which show newer takes on earlier stories, featuring the green-eyed Sonic of the modern era. So while it’s far away now, I’ll most-likely do a post about these covers to conclude my read-through. Although man, looking at #185’s cover in particular puts me right back into being there as a kid, expecting to see new stories, only to open the comic and get entirely reprints…

Will you be reading the non-Sonic stories?

Early on in its run, StC featured stories from other SEGA titles of the time, before committing to being entirely about Sonic. While not to diminish the merits of these stories, I just don’t have the same familiarity with most of their source material that I do for Sonic, so I won’t be reading them. The exceptions being probably the Ecco stories (because I did play Ecco as a kid) and Decap Attack, because Decap Attack was still running after I started reading the comic and I remember enjoying it. But I won’t be blogging about either of these in the same way that I will be the Sonic comics themselves, so you won’t have to skim past posts about loads of other series to get to the Sonic stuff

What about the Sonic spin-offs?

I will absolutely be reading these once I find or make a good reading-order that slots them into their proper place. The above summer ‘96 special was also one of my first StC issues and I remember it fondly

What about the Captain Plunder stories?

Yep! Captain Plunder exists in Sonic’s universe and I enjoyed his standalone stories as a kid, so I’ll be including him in my reread Anything else?

For a time, StC included game reviews and ofc they also had a fanmail and fan art section, like Archie and IDW. For the most part, I’ll only be including small bits of these that I find interesting or relevant, but I won’t be talking about them wholesale. Though I’m sure that a Sonic comic’s reviews of Sonic games will be worth a look at

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #673

Top Ten Beautiful South Songs

Another pretty simple one this week. I’m ranking my favourite songs by The Beautiful South. Why? Well, because I like them, that’s why.

I do kinda struggle to write about music the way I can write about, say, movies, because music has always just been background to me, whereas film and stuff I’ve followed. I know the difference between a track and a zoom, but sometimes the words escape me when describing songs. However, the Beautiful South has moved and delighted me for about thirty years now – maybe even longer, because I do remember back when Paul Heaton was in the Housemartins. But they possess a mix of lyricism, working-class grit, earnestness, and humour that feels not only quintessentially British but also very specifically Northern. They – and let’s be honest, when I say “they” I really mean “Paul Heaton”, because whilst I do not want to diminish the endeavours of everyone else in this band, he’s been the constant and also the main creative poohbah across, well, sort of three bands now I guess – craft beautiful ballads of loss and hope, with the most exquisite lyrics, but also manage to be wildly entertaining most of the time (Artificial Flowers is a hell of a downer, though).

As is often the case with music, it’s the lyrics that really get me. Heaton is a fabulous lyricist, and is songs would rank really highly if I ever did a Top Ten Lyrics of All Time post. Often there’s a sense of tragedy, or at least melancholy, to his words; you’ll see this in the likes of Alone. But there’s also tremendous love and heart, which is shot through with a dose of realism; everything from Prettiest Eyes to I’ll Sail This Ship Alone shows this. And then, on top of it all, there’s humour; whether it’s bawdy (Perfect 10) or dark (Old Red Eyes is Back), it’s prevalent throughout. And it’s this mix that I adore in all their work. And like I said before, it just feels so delightfully Northern.

Anyway that’s enough preamble. Let’s get to the words with numbers in front of them.

Prettiest Eyes (1994): a beautiful and tender song about love and romance, told from the point of view of an older couple. It’s rare that a love story of any kind celebrates long-lasting love over the passion of new romance, but the tender and sexy reminiscing, combined with the humorous gags about crow’s feet, make this a gorgeous ballad.

A Little Time (1990): on the flipside, a song about failed love; chronicling the exploits of a horrid cheating little bugger and his suffering partner. The selfish depiction of the adulterous man – wanting to have his cake and eat it – feels depressingly true; but the joy of the thing is the glorious rise to power of the spurned woman. It’s a thrilling and somewhat amusing end to a song rife with emotion.

Alone (1996): talking about dark, this is a pean to wasted life; a sad but somehow also romantic song about crippling loneliness and regret. Heaton’s voice is especially gravelly, suggesting a misspent life of cigarettes and alcohol. But circling back to the lyrics, this song contains one of my favourites of all time: “Hearts built like reservoirs, words built like dams / Thoughts built like juggernauts, our actions built like prams.” Blimey.

Song for Whoever (1989): thankfully we can get a bit more humorous now, with this early and very funny hit for the band. Unpicking and satirising the way songwriters (and any writer, I guess, now I come to think about it) can use their lives, and the lives of those closest to them, as raw material for creation. And, of course, amidst that potentially serious morass, we have Heaton hilariously listing tons of women’s names and thanking them for their tears. Lol.

Don’t Marry Her (1996): a song that manages to be very funny but also rather poignant and sad. Yes, it’s funny how Jacqui Abbott contrasts the thought of a passionate affair with domesticity; yes, it’s hilarious how she swears. But this contrast actually speaks to a greater sadness, a more profound emotion; despite the talk of Sandra Bullocks, it’s a powerful song.

Perfect 10 (1998): a bit like Don’t Marry Her, this is on one hand a rather funny song but also speaks to a greater truth. It’s simultaneously a love letter to imperfection and the sort of passion that persists in long-running relationships. And, look, the lyrics are hilarious.

Just a Few Things That I Ain’t (1989): again we have a very funny song with a deeper and more melancholy meaning. The long, delightfully jaunty list Heaton gives – comparing himself unfavourably to Bono and Sting, talking about being insulted by teachers – is great on one level, but also speaks to the sorts of insecurities instilled in the working classes by those in power.

One Last Love Song (1994): a tender and emotive ballad that also pokes fun at tender and emotive ballads and those who sing them; like many of Heaton’s songs, it’s amusing and emotive at the same time. There’s a tenderness to it – I love the line “farewell my sweet Northern Rose” – but also a self-deprecating tone that’s fantastic.

I’ll Sail This Ship Alone (1989): there’s a beautiful contrast between the rather upbeat, almost jaunty tone, and the lyrics, which are bitingly sad. The notion of carrying on after heartbreak is an optimistic one, but the repeated refrain of sending love letters that are burnt speaks to a tragic desperation that undercuts the optimism.

Old Red Eyes is Back (1991): rather than a sweet song with hidden depths or humour, this is a broadly funny song that’s got deeper sadness and darkness. It’s a tale of a an old drunk and the misery in his life, but sung in such a way as to seem amusing or endearing. The tragic end – “Old Red he died / And every single landlord in the district cried” – is also told in hilarious fashion, but again we have those undercurrents.

Y’know, almost all of these songs I could have just written “it’s really funny but also really sad and musically it’s beautiful”. Would have saved me time.

Also, I'm pretty sure the gif is actually the Housemartins? It's literally the only thing I found on Tumblr that had Paul Heaton on it. You'd think someone would have made a gif of, like, the Little Time video or something.

[tearsinthemist]

Library  search

okayto

I’m still mad about this because it happens frequently. Students at all levels of education need library and research instruction–they should get it before graduating high school, they should be getting it in several different classes in college, and there should be something in grad school–seriously, there are people in my master’s program who don’t know anything besides Google.

And don’t say “they should have learned in [previous level of university education].” Do you think every person continues education within a few years of their first degree? THEY DON’T. Even if they did get a then-good introduction to research, you think nothing changed between 2008 and 2018? How about the doctoral student I met today whose last degree–and last experience with academic libraries–was in 1996? How about the guy in my master’s cohort who got his bachelor’s degree in 1987?

Because look. See that very specific topic the student wanted? There may or may not be actual scholarly articles about it. But here are a few things you can do:

First, zoom out. Start broad. Pick a few phrases or keywords, like “tech companies” and “culture.” See what comes up.

Actually, back up. First, does your library’s website search include articles, or do you have to go into a database? My library’s website searches some of our 200+ databases, but not all. And you’ll need to find (in advance search or adjustable limiters that pop up after your initial search) how to limit your search to scholarly and/or peer-reviewed articles.

What other keywords are related or relevant? For the search above, you could use a combination of “silicon valley,” “company/ies” or “organization/s,” “sharing,” “collaborative,” “workplace culture,” “social culture,” “organizational culture,” and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

Did you find something that looks promising? Great! What kind of subjects/keywords are attached (usually to the abstract, sometimes in the description section of the online listing)? Those can give you more ideas of what to search. Does it cite any articles? Look at those! Some databases (ilu ProQuest) will also show you a selection of related/similar articles.

If you’re researching a very specific topic, you may not find any/many articles specifically about your subject. You may, for example, have to make do with some articles about west-coast tech companies’ work cultures, and different articles about creating sharing/collaborative environments.

That said, this student did the right thing: they tried what they knew to do, and then reached out for help.

thebraveandthebroiled

Goddammit there is so much information and so many way to access it that it burns my biscuits when we don’t give students the tools they need to succeed at this. Hell yeah all y’all above!

And here’s what I’ve got to add:  

Ask a Librarian

Seriously guys librarians are here to help. We would love to help you find the right resource for your particular informational need and we’ve been trained to do so as efficiently and effectively as possible. Nowadays you don’t even have to go to the library in person as many libraries offer online chat services as well as the option to contact via email. Further, and I think very importantly we are dedicated to our patrons rights to privacy. To quote the American Library Association the “rights of privacy are necessary for intellectual freedom and are fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship.”  

Search the Stacks

This is one of my favorite ways  to immerse myself in an area of study. While a good subject or keyword search will lead you to some good results sometimes is just as fruitful to go the library and plunk yourself down in section and browse all the books in a topic area. Libraries will label the (book)stacks based on whichever classification system they use and you can use the links below to figure out which area of the stacks you’ll want to look through.

Dewey: used in public libraries

LOC /Library of Congress: classification system used in university libraries

Online Books

Some websites like gutenberg project are dedicated to making public domain books accessible to the public. Using the search term public domain books is a good way to go about looking for more sources of them. Open sourced is another good term to use when trying to find freely accessible books online and that’s not just limited to fiction books but textbooks are also offered by various sites.

Project Gutenberg is an online archive of tens of thousands of  books that have enter the public domain that can be freely accessed.

Openstax is one website that provides access to Higher Ed and AP open sourced textbooks.

Libguides and Pathfinders

As stated above librarians are in the business of connecting people to resources. If we can’t do so in person then we also do so by creating guides that can be found and used when we aren’t around. These guides are filled with search terms, books, articles, reviews, lists, links, and anything else we think would be helpful for patrons trying to explore a particular topic area. 

Pathfinder is a particular term used for these guides. Libguides is a particular platform which to host these guides. Using either word at the end of your search terms online will bring up guides that have been created in that particular subject area. Or you can explore libguides directly with your search terms to find what guides librarians across the country have created.

Note: Using pathfinder in your search terms may pull up resources about Paizo Publishing’s same titled tabletop RPG series and while dragons are cool you can modify your search to library pathfinder to exclude these resources.

Other than using a search engine or libguides directly I find a great many pathfinders on university library sites. Usually what I do is find a university’s library webpage, find their pathfinder/research guides/guides section, and then browse through their lists of guides. These are generally organized by field of study so just pick the one you are interested in and look through the resources they have listed.

Some of the resources will be accessible for anyone while some might be locked for students of the particular university.  If the article, book, or resource is locked by a school portal you can either search for it online outside of the university portal or you can go to your own university/public library to see if they have access to the resource there. Even if they don’t have it currently in their collection libraries are often connected with other branches and may be able to request an interlibrary loan of what you need.

Online Reference Resources

Sometimes the problem isn’t finding information but finding good information. Below are two sites that I use regularly to help me with this issue when searching online for resources.

The Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association gives a list of the best free reference sites on the internet

The Ipl2 is a good authoritative source to find general information on a variety of topics. Even though the website is no longer updating there are still a plethora of subject guides that can be explored.

Open Sourced Journals and Articles

Just as there are open sourced books and textbooks so too are there open sourced journals and articles available. Again  you can add the term open sourced when searching for these resources.

DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals and you can search through here to find both articles and journals freely available to access.

Journal Article Tips

Finally whenever I’m searching through journal articles there are a few things I always like to keep in mind.

Build context. Once you find an article that is relevant to your search you can do this by exploring the citations. Both those that the article you are using references in its bibliography and those that reference the article itself. 

Every database is going to do this differently but generally with a few clicks you can find out who has cited an article that you have read. If nothing else try popping the title of your article into google scholar and you’ll see a blue ‘Cited by’ below the description. Also in some cases you can click on the author directly in a database to see what else they have written in the subject. Totally ask your librarian for help navigating the particular database you are using again they will be stoked to do so. 

Building this context of literature by finding and reading these extra articles is important to building a critical understanding of your topic and will allow you to build the best possible defense of your arguments. This will also allow you to see if the article you’ve initially selected is in itself a viable position or if it is an outlier of its field.

If you can try and find reviews of literature articles and special issue/special topic editions of journals. These are your best friends in the resource world as these types of articles and journals compile a great deal of information on particular topic in a tiny space. They are immensely helpful in building context in an area of thought and useful to finding out what to read further to be informed in an area of study. Add those words to your search terms to see if you can get some useful resources.

38,917 notes Jun 20th, 2023

This is why classes need library instruction

Student: I can’t find any scholarly articles on this subject!

Me: Okay, what’s the subject?

Student: Creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies.

Me: Alright, and what/where have you tried searching?

Student: I searched “creating a culture of sharing in west-coast technological companies” on the library website!

Me:

[eternalstargazer]

Upon doing some digging, I want to point out that I think the following image that's being shared on various websites and social media sites is potentially misleading.

I should've checked it myself first, and before I go any further, I want to apologize.

If you go to bandai's Japanese website: https://www.bandai.co.jp/candy/pokemonkids/

You'll see that the Ash/Goh portion of the image is actually part of the website header (if that's the correct term, it may not be), and not directly connected with the S/V merch. The S/V merch is part of a carousel/slider.

People are screencapping the slider when it's on the S/V merch and because Goh is viewable at the top, are connecting the two and treating that as some sort of confirmation. But...

See how these other slides paint a different picture? No S/V Pokémon, but Ash/Goh are still in the image... because the Ash/Goh figures aren't directly connected to the new line of merch.

Zoom out on the page and you can see all three slides:

I want Goh to remain a part of the anime and anyone that has talked to me or has looked at even just a dozen or so of my blog posts knows I love the character. I'm not looking for reasons to argue he won't return.

But I'm not going to pass off something potentially disingenuous as possible confirmation. The image being spread is possibly misleading, although I can't say for a fact it is because I don't know Japanese, and the translators I use aren't perfect.

As of right now, it's important to remember we do not know anything about the S/V anime, or even if there will be a S/V anime. Goh isn't confirmed to be returning, or leaving, so please be careful when viewing websites, forums, and social media, because what's being said/shared may not give the whole picture, or even be accurate in the slightest.

Once again, I apologize for this post and will be editing it to include a link to this one. As I said, I should've done my own checking rather than simply going along with what others were saying and posting.

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in May

Sadly, I kind of skipped writing a post for April. It was a mad month with so much going on: lots of emails sent and lots of stress. I started a new job so I’m getting to grips with that... and even then, I still watched a bunch of movies. But this is about what I watched in May and, yeah… still a bunch. So if you’re looking to get into some other movies - possibly some you’ve thought about watching but didn’t know what they were like, or maybe like the look of something you’ve never heard of - then this may help! So here’s every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of May 2021 Tenet (2020) - 8/10 This was my third time watching Christopher Nolan’s most Christopher Nolan movie ever and it makes no sense but I still love it. The spectacle of it all is truly like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had also watched it four days prior to this watch also, only this time I had enabled audio description for the visually impaired, thinking it would make it funny… It didn’t.

Nomadland (2020) - 6/10 Chloé Zhao’s new movie got a lot of awards attention. Everyone was hyped for this and when it got put out on Disney+ I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. Seeing these real nomads certainly gave the film an authenticity, along with McDormand’s ever-praisable acting. But generally I found it quite underwhelming and lacking a lot in its pacing. Nomadland surely has its moments of captivating cinematography and enticing commentary on the culture of these people, but it felt like it went on forever without any kind of forward direction or goal. The Prince of Egypt (1998) - 6/10 I reviewed this on my podcast, The Sunday Movie Marathon. For what it is, it’s pretty fun but nowhere near as good as some of the best DreamWorks movies.

Chinatown (1974) - 8/10 What a fantastic and wonderfully unpredictable mystery crime film! I regret to say I’ve not seen many Jack Nicholson performances but he steals the show. Despite Polanski’s infamy, it’d be a lie to claim this wasn’t truly masterful. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - 8/10 Admittedly I was half asleep as I curled up on the sofa to watch this again on a whim. I watched this with someone who demanded the dubbed version over the subtitled version and while I objected heavily, I knew I’d seen the movie before so it didn’t matter too much. That person also fell asleep about 20 minutes in, so how pointless an argument it was. Howl’s Moving Castle boasts superb animation, the likes of which I’ve only come to expect of Miyazaki. The story is so unique and the colours are absolutely gorgeous. This may not be my favourite from the legendary director but there’s no denying its splendour.

Bāhubali: The Beginning (2015) - 3/10 The next morning I watched some absolute trash. This crazy, over the top Indian movie is hilarious and I could perhaps recommend it if it weren’t so long. That being said, Bāhubali was not a dumpster fire; it has a lot of good-looking visual effects and it’s easy to see the ambition for this epic story, it just doesn’t come together. There’s fun to be had with how the main character is basically the strongest man in the world and yet still comes across as just a lucky dumbass, along with all the dancing that makes no sense but is still entertaining to watch. Seven Samurai (1954) - 10/10 If it wasn’t obvious already, Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, so more thoughts can be found there. Red Road (2006) - 6/10 Another recommendation on episode 30 of the podcast. Red Road really captures the authentic British working class experience. Before Sunrise (1995) - 10/10 One of the best romances put to film. The first in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is undoubtedly my favourite, despite its counterparts being almost equally as good. It tells the story of a young couple travelling through Europe, who happen to meet on a train and spend the day together. It is gloriously shot on location in Vienna and features some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve ever seen put to film. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Tokyo Story (1953) - 9/10 This Japanese classic - along with being visually and sonically masterful - is a lot about appreciating the people in your life and taking the time to show them that you love them. It’s about knowing it’s never too late to rekindle old relationships if you truly want to, which is something I’ve been able to relate to in recent years. It broke my heart in two. Tokyo Story will make you want to call your mother. Before Sunset (2004) - 10/10 Almost a decade after Sunrise, Sunset carries a sombre yet relieving feeling. Again, the performances from Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke take me away, evoking nostalgic feelings as they stroll through the contemporary Parisian streets. There is no regret in me for buying the Criterion blu-ray boxset for this trilogy. Before Midnight (2013) - 10/10 Here, Linklater cements this trilogy as one of the best in film history. It’s certainly not the ending I expected, yet it’s an ending I appreciate endlessly. Because it doesn’t really end. Midnight shows the troubling times of a strained relationship; one that has endured so long and despite initially feeling almost dreamlike in how idealistically that first encounter was portrayed, the cracks appear as the film forces you to come to terms with the fact that fairy-tale romances just don’t exist. Relationships require effort and sacrifice and sometimes the ones that truly work are those that endure through all the rough patches to emerge stronger. The Holy Mountain (1973) - 10/10 Jodorowsky’s masterpiece is absolute insanity. I talked more about it on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10 Another watch for Grand Budapest because I bought the Criterion blu-ray. As unalterably perfect as ever. Blue Jay (2016) - 6/10 Rather good up to a point. My co-hosts and I did not agree on how good this movie was, which is a discussion you can listen to on my podcast. Shadow and Bone: The Afterparty (2021) - 3/10 For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed the first season of Shadow and Bone, which is why I wanted to see what ‘The Afterparty’ was about. This could have been a lot better and much less annoying if all those terrible comedians weren’t hosting and telling bad jokes. I don’t want to see Fortune Feimster attempt to tell a joke about oiling her body as the cast of the show sit awkwardly in their homes over Zoom. If it had simply been a half hour, 45 minute chat with the cast and crew about how they made the show and their thoughts on it, a lot of embarrassment and time-wasting could have been spared. Wadjda (2012) - 6/10 Another recommendation discussed at length on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Wadjda was pretty interesting from a cultural perspective but largely familiar in terms of story structure.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) - 2/10 A truly terrible movie with maybe one or two scenes that stop it from being a complete catastrophe. Tom Green tried to create something that almost holds a middle finger to everyone who watches it and to some that could be a fun experience, but to me it just came across as utterly irritating. It’s simply a bunch of scenes threaded together with an incredibly loose plot. He wears the skin of a dead deer, smacks a disabled woman over and over again on the legs to turn her on, and he swings a newborn baby around a hospital room by its umbilical cord (that part was actually pretty funny). I cannot believe I watched this again, although I think I repressed a lot of it since having seen it for the first time around five years ago. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - (2011) I have to say, these movies seem to get better with each instalment. They’re still not very good though. That being said, I’m amazed at how many times I’ve watched each of the Twilight movies at this point. This time around, I watched Breaking Dawn - Part 1 with a YMS commentary track on YouTube and that made the experience a lot more entertaining. Otherwise, this film is super dumb but pretty entertaining. I would recommend watching these movies with friends. Solaris (1972) - 8/10 Andrei Tarkovsky’s grand sci-fi epic about the emotional crises of a crew on the space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris is much as strange and creepy as you might expect from the master Russian auter. I had wanted to watch this for a while so I bought the Criterion blu-ray and it’s just stunning. It’s clear to see the 2001: A Space Odyssey inspiration but Solaris is quite a different beast entirely. Jaws (1975) - 4/10 I really tried to get into this classic movie, but Jaws exhibits basically everything I don’t like about Steven Spielberg’s directing. For sure, the effects are crazily good but the story itself is poorly handled and largely uninteresting. It was just a massive slog to get through.

Darkman (1990) - 6/10 Sam Raimi’s superhero movie is so much fun, albeit massively stupid. Further discussion on Darkman can be found on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995) - 1/10 Abysmal. I forgot the movie as I watched it. This was part of a marathon my friends and I did for episode 32 of our podcast. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) - 1/10 Perhaps this trilogy is not so great after all. Only marginally better than Darkman II but still pretty terrible. More thoughts on episode 32 of my podcast. F For Fake (1973) - 8/10 Rewatching this proved to be a worthwhile decision. Albeit slightly boring, there’s no denying how crazy the story of this documentary about art forgers is. The standout however, is the director himself. Orson Welles makes a lot of this film about himself and how hot his girlfriend is and it is hilarious.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) - 4/10 More style over substance, Sony’s new animated adventure wants so much to be in trend with the current internet culture but it simply doesn’t understand what it’s emulating. There’s a nyan cat reference, for crying out loud. For every joke that works, there are about ten more that do not and were it not for the wonderful animation, it simply wouldn’t be getting so much praise. Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10 The first movie I’ve seen in a cinema since 2020 and damn it was good to be back! I’ve already reviewed Taxi Driver in my March wrap-up but seeing it in the cinema was a real treat. Irreversible (2002) - 8/10 One of the most viscerally horrendous experiences I’ve ever had while watching a movie. I cannot believe a friend of mine gave me the DVD to watch. More thoughts on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Don’t watch it with the family. The Golden Compass (2007) - 1/10 I had no recollection of this being as bad as it is. The Golden Compass is the definition of a factory mandated movie. Nothing it does on its own is worth any kind of merit. I would say, if you wanted an experience like what this tries to communicate, a better option by far is the BBC series, His Dark Materials. More of my thoughts can be found in the review I wrote on Letterboxd.

Antichrist (2009) - 8/10 Lars von Trier is nothing if not provocative and I can understand why someone would not like Antichrist, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. After watching it, I wrote a slightly disjointed summary of my interpretations of this highly metaphorical movie in the group chat, so fair warning for a bit of spoilers and graphic descriptions: It's like, the patriarchy, man! Oppression! Men are the rational thinkers with big brains and the women just cry and be emotional. So she's seen as crazy when she's smashing his cock and driving a drill through his leg to keep him weighted down. Like, how does he like it, ya know? So then she mutilates herself like she did with him and now they're both wounded, but the animals crowd around her (and the crow that he couldn't kill because it's Mother nature, not Father nature, duh). Then he kills her, even though she could've killed him loads of times but didn't. So it's like "haha big win for the man who was subjected to such horrific torture. Victory!" And then all the women with no faces come out of the woods because it's like a constant cycle. Manchester By The Sea (2016) - 6/10 Great performances in this super sad movie. I can’t say I got too much out of it though. Roar (1981) - 9/10 Watching Roar again was still as terrifying an experience as the first time. If you want to watch something that’s loose on plot with poor acting but with real big cats getting in the way of production and physically attacking people, look no further. This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen because it’s all basically real. Cannot recommend it enough. Eyes Without A Face (1960) - 8/10 I’m glad I checked this old French movie out again. There’s a lot to marvel at in so many aspects, what with the premise itself - a mad surgeon taking the faces from unsuspecting women and transplanting them onto another - being incredibly unique for the time. Short, sweet and entertaining!

Se7en (1995) - 10/10 The first in a David Fincher marathon we did for The Sunday Movie Marathon, episode 33. Zodiac (2007) - 10/10 Second in the marathon, as it was getting late, we decided to watch half that evening and the last half on the following evening. Zodiac is a brilliant movie and you can hear more of my thoughts on the podcast (though I apologise; my audio is not the best in this episode). Gone Girl (2014) - 10/10 My favourite Fincher movie. More insights into this masterpiece in episode 33 of the podcast. Friends: The Reunion (2021) - 6/10 It was heartwarming to see the old actors for this great show together again. I talked about the Friends reunion film at length in episode 33 of my podcast.

Wolfwalkers (2020) - 10/10 I reviewed this in an earlier post but would like to reiterate just how wonderful Wolfwalkers is. If you get the chance, please see it in the cinema. I couldn’t stop crying from how beautiful it was. Raya and The Last Dragon (2021) - 6/10 After watching Wolfwalkers, I decided I didn’t want to go home. So I had lunch in town and booked a ticket for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon. A child was coughing directly behind me the entire time. Again, I reviewed this in an earlier post but generally it was decent but I have so many problems with the execution. The Princess Bride (1987) - 9/10 Clearly I underrated this the last time I watched it. The Princess Bride is warm and hilarious with some delightfully memorable characters. A real classic!

The Invisible Kid (1988) - 1/10 About as good as you’d expect a movie with that name to be, The Invisible Kid was a pick for The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, the discussion for which you can listen to in episode 34. Babel (2006) - 9/10 The same night that I watched The Invisible Kid, I watched a masterful and dour drama from the director of Birdman and The Revenant. Babel calls back to an earlier movie of Iñárritu’s, called Amores Perros and as I was informed while we watched this for the podcast, it turns out Babel is part of a trilogy alongside the aforementioned film. More thoughts in episode 34 of the podcast. Snake Eyes (1998) - 1/10 After feeling thoroughly emotionally wiped out after Babel, we immediately watched another recommendation for the podcast: Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage. This was a truly underwhelming experience and for more of a breakdown into what makes this movie so bad, you can listen to us talk about it on the podcast.

[kingofthehilltoday]

King of the hill review s1e1 "Pilot"

(I'm gonna start watching koth and typing these out season by season, depending on my work schedule/metnal healt will depend on how often I put them out, with the occasional single episode ones like this one which I've already typed up so much for. A lot of people seemed to like just the Meer idea of this so im gonna finish this one and post it)

We're introduced to the main characters surrounding a truck with the hood up. The first lines of dialogue they have in the series is their iconique "yep" "yep" "yep" "mhm" followed by a short silence (aside from the alcohol consumption).

Bill is the one to break the silence and demonstrates his understanding of automobile engines.

He is followed by Dale who demonstrates himself as an idiot. "Ford stands for: Fix It Again Tony."

Boomhauer, who without subtitles i wouldn't have been able to understand, also demonstrates he understands automobiles.

Hank who does not have the courtesy of subtitles does not understand what Boomhauer says and brushes him off and instead dribbles on about George Bush in Japan? This establishes his conservativeness/dumbness (if there's that much of a difference between the two.)

Hank grabs more beer and Dale breaks off into asking about a new episode of Seinfeld dating the beginning of the show.

Boomhauer immediately starts squaking about it.

This episode of Koth aired January 12 1997, although it doesn't seem to take place in a winter month. Most likely a spring one. I want to say the episode that Boomhauer is talking about is The Wig Master (April 4, 1996) as it is an episode that features Kramer and Kramer is the subject of Boomhauers tangent.

Boomhauer ends his giggling with "Just a show about nothin." And the theme song begins to play. A good introduction into what King of the Hill is about, and so far a great way to start the show off.

Theme song ends and Hank enters Bobby's room, despite Bobby telling him he wouldn't like it Hank decides to listen to Bobby's music to find: he doesn't like it. Admittedly because it isn't music (which Hank claims to like new generation music) but because instead it's just a fart? Bobby for some reason just listens to farts.... I guess this does establish that the boy ain't right....

Hank leaves Bobby's room telling him to get ready for the game, which Bobby is clearly already dressed for?

Luanne shows she hasn't learned how to lock the bathroom door when Hank busts in to a fully toweled Luanne. He still avoids looking at her the entire time after the initial door opening. Luanne gives slight exposition by explaining her parents are currently fighting, giving her a reason to be in the Hill House.

Hank, Bobby, and Peggy pile into a car and head to the game. Peggy tells Bobby to do his best and Hank insists he should give it 110% instead of 100%. They then keep suggest 1% higher until Peggy says 13 is an unlucky number. The driving scene ends with Hank miffed saying "just give it 112%."

At the game Bobby shows his inability to play baseball and Hank shows how overzealous he is about getting Bobby to play. Bobby gets hit with a ball when he's not paying attention giving set up for future events within the episode.

Hank Hill stops at the Mega Lo Mart for WD-40. Its not that important that I mention the WD-40. I just like the way he says Dubya Dee Fordy.

Two gossips see Hank interact with Buckley (who doesn't seem to recognize Hank, let alone where he even is in the store) along with Bobby who has a black eye following close behind him.

As Hank gets more and more frustrated with Buckley, Bobby begins swinging a cardboard tube around like a baseball bat. The gossips see Hank with his temper and wonder if he gave Bobby the black eye (theyre voiced by Nancy and Peggy without changing the voices even a little bit). Bobby swings the bat a little too close to some cans and knocks them over prompting Hank to scream YOU'RE FIRED (???? who gave Hank the authority???) at Buckley when he tells Hank that he'll have to pay for the damages.

The two gossips' words spread around and eventually get to the erroneously named Arlen County Child Protective Services (I suppose Heimlich County hasn't been established yet). And we're introduced to Anthony Page whos proportions make him look like he's in the wrong cartoon.

We cut back to hank and friends and Dale goes on his rant about Glo-Bal warming. He says we'll grow oranges in Alaska. Hank calls him a giblet head and tells Dale he'll hold him personally responsible if Texas gets any hotter in the summer. His anger is further pushed by a thumping noise.

Which we see is Bobby playing ball in the house while watching TV. He accidentally smacks his mother in the face with it when she pauses to lament about a man on TV who had botched surgery.

Bobby is once again throwing the ball in the house, enter the social worker, and Hank fixing his truck. The sound distracts Dale from pointing the flashlight correctly which then causes Hank to screw up and the hood of his car to fall on him and Dale runs off instead.

"Hank is as gentle as a lamb," says Peggy followed by Hank barging in, grabbing the baseball and throwing it screaming, "STOP BOUNCING THAT BALL!" Note: the ball zoomed past Mr. Page and into the street making a glass shattering noise. What glass he could have shattered at that angle I'm not quite sure of.

After Tony insinuates the bruise on Peggy's head was caused by the same ball they told him hit Bobby in the eye, he asks if Bobby is their only child. Peggy manages to tell this random dude about Hank's narrow urethra and Hank gets loud.

Our Italian alien looking friend tells Hank "Loud is not Allowed." This sets Hank off on a rant about how he works for a living as opposed to writing down nonsense. This is the first mention of Hank's job selling Propane and Propane Accessories.

Hank's face turns visibly red as talks about his tax dollars going to fund... CPS? I understand that twig boy is very much not doing any actual investigation and is completely biased but... come on now Hank? Chuld protective services?? Anyways Hank asks for some B.C. Headache Powder and a glass of water. He then proceeds to yell at Anthony again and threatens him to get out before he gives HIM a black eye. Not the best choice of words there Hank. Also both of these rants are set to the National Anthem for some reason.

Our self proclaimed hero of this story then goes on to interview neighbors about Hank. Starting with Dale who is interrupted by Nancy leaving to get a headache treatment from John Redcorn. "You've been going to that healer for 12 years and you still get headaches every night." Imagine getting dicked down roughly 4380 days in a row.

After Nancy leaves it goes back to our city slicker asking if Hank has ever hit his child which Dale explains that Bobby is his pride and joy because of his Narrow Urethra. Very interesting world where Dale knows Hank has a narrow urethra but not that his own wife is cheating on him. Joseph is introduced and the paper white boy does a double take as he's the spitting image of John Redcorn.

Boomhauer has mistaken the defunct social worker as??? Someone whos there to do something about a barking dog? Once again if not for the subtitles I'd be lost on what he's saying but what the hell is he talking about. Our pencil pusher backs away slowly.

Bobby and Joseph are trying to get pebbles into the exhaust of the truck in the next scene, impressively they make a few shots. Joseph asks to reassure that Hank does not in fact hit him and Bobby confirms that Hank is all Bark and proceeds to mock the propane salesman. Joseph proceeds to try and while he's making fake threats in Hank's voice our Valiant Savior overhears and somehow mistakes his voice to actually be Hank's....

Cut to the actual Hank and he's found Luanne's panties. They're very cute pink ones. Peggy calls Luanne in to Hank's protests and she comes in crying and expositions about her mother attempting to stab her father with a fork then being sent to jail. She says her trailer was tipped over but does not elaborate as to how. Although she does say it will be on a TV show! Kind of wish theyd make an episode out of that alone.

Hank assures Luanne as best he can and lets her know she can stay with them until her mom comes home. Hank offers to let her use power tools to style a wig that was also damaged in the process of the trailer being flipped over. This immediately calms Ms. Platter.

A doorbell is heard and the Hills (minus Luanne) answer the door to find Our Holy King making his return to try to get our Poor Abused Child to come outside and go live with a family in North Arlen (not even gonna try to find somewhere in a different town??) Hank tries to offer him Luanne instead. The social worker makes an effort to try to get Bobby to come with him but Bobby clearly doesn't care or want to go. Hank chases him away and even hits his car, Ladybird making her first appearance running with him and barking at Anthony.

Mr. Page is confronted by his boss about not having found any actual abuse but recommending state custody. He called the entire neighborhood redneck city to a man with a strong country accent, bruh. The boss asks him if he talked to the little league coach, WHICH THE BOSS KNOWS BY NAME (Harvey) and our Los Angeles boy is sweatin fierce.

Cut back to Hank and Peggy with their ears covered they come outside to BOBBY WITH A STOP SIGN HE CUT DOWN USING A DRILL THAT HE'S HITTING WITH A HAMMER??? How did he get a Fucking Stop Sign??? Hank immediately yells at Bobby about this and Bobby calmly states back that Hank can't yell at him or the state will take him away. This frustrates Hank but he does his best not to outburst again after Bobby picks up the stop sign and runs away dragging it behind him.

Once inside the house Bobby answers a call from CPS, they inform him the case has been dropped and our boy from L.A. will be heading back home. He chooses not to tell his parents instead opting to tell them it was a wrong number. After this scene the stop sign is never seen again 😔.

Hank apparently makes bacon and mayo sandwiches. Hold the bacon grease. No wait he adds the bacon grease back. Luanne comes into the kitchen and demonstrates that she knows more about cars than any of the guys as she has fixed his truck's problem: a clogged fuel line.

We cut to Hank outside the garage asking Bobby to plug in a power tool in the garage, Robert (with Joseph in tow) agrees and does so but also grabs the opener and starts opening and closing the door on his father. Hank begins to yell again and Bobby reminds him that it isn't proper adult-child conversation. Hank settles down a bit and through gritted teeth asks Bobby to return it to factory setting of down and walks away. Joseph is very pleased by this.

We then see a montage of similar things happening in succession. Bobby knocking a fence down with a bat, dressing ladybird up and taking pics of her on his mower, and finally spraying Hank with a hose. As he does this the Anthony's ex boss comes over and knocks on the door.

We cut over to Bobby in his bed making sound effects. He is informed by Peggy that the man came over and told them the investigation was off. Bobby says he likes his father better this way he can "make him love me even when I screw up" and Peggy asks if he really thinks that.

Peggy is shown going into the bedroom (not really sure if this is their bedroom... there is a picture of cotton on the wall [pre shin loss] and it doesn't look like their bedroom in future episodes) and she insists Hank vocally tell Bobby that he loves him. Hank explains that he can't do that "you know how I was raised" followed by a flashback of a young Hank and a shinless Cotton telling Hank not to cry about his knee scrape.

Hank heads out to the porch to talk to Bobby who is sitting on lawn furniture. And Hank stumbles over words trying to explain to Bobby that he cares for him. Bobby doesn't understand and Hank makes some weird voice cracking sound. "You.... family." Hank then, after little bit more stumbling, manages to blurt out "ILoveYouNoMatterWhatYouDo." And then offers food.

Bobby asks if he's not a disappointment and Hank assures him that he's proud of him and cares for him. He then play fights with Bobby and the city boy sees it and proclaims he was right but is cut off by another passenger and says "never mind." And the episode fades to black. Cue theme song.

The quoted line at the end of the episode is blank. This episode predates that tradition apparently.

Okay so now for some more of my own thoughts

I joked around a lot but I do see where the social worker is coming from on some level. He believed he was investigating a case of abuse. He just wasn't very smart about it. He really should have talked to the coach immediately after hearing about the baseball incident. Or literally anyone that could have been at the game that day. That's all it would have taken and he would have still have had a job. But it's a good thing he doesn't anymore because his own negligence could have separated a family.

I won't claim they're the most functional family. But if the most Hank does (up until this point, not gonna count that awful smoking ep just yet) is simply yell at Bobby then they're a much better family than I had growing up. Does Hank need to work on his anger issues? From this episode alone I'd say a solid Yes. He was a dick to a store employee which is very much not a cool thing to do. There was some justification in being angry at Bobby, I mean the kid tortured him at the end there, but he should have sought a better release than the one he had.

Overall I'd say this is a really good episode to start the series on, it's entertaining and funny and properly builds up the world.

[fuckyeahstephensondheim]

Rick Pender knows his Sondheim from A to Z

If the word “encyclopedia” conjures for you a 26-volume compendium of information ranging from history to science and beyond, you may find the notion of a Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia perplexing. But if you have ever looked at a bookshelf full of book after book about (and occasionally by) the premiere musical theatre composer-lyricist of our era and wished all that information could be synthesized and indexed in one place, maybe the idea of a Sondheim encyclopedia will start to make a little more sense to you. It did to Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, an independent publisher that’s made encyclopedias such as this one of their calling cards, offering tomes on everyone from Marie Curie to Akira Kurasowa. Several years ago, they approached Rick Pender, longtime managing editor of the gone but never forgotten Sondheim Review and now, after years of research, writing, and pandemic-related delays, the The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is finally hitting shelves. I sat down with Rick (via Zoom) to chat about this unique, massive project.

FYSS: I want to really focus on the new book, but we should start with your history with Sondheim and The Sondheim Review. How did you become so enmeshed in this work?

RP: As a teenager, the first LP that I bought was the soundtrack from West Side Story, and I didn't have any clue about who much of anybody was, particularly not Stephen Sondheim. But I loved the lyrics for the songs, especially “Something’s Coming” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” These are just fabulous lyrics.

Then, of course, in the ‘70s it was hard as time went by not to have some awareness of Sondheim. I saw a wonderful production of Night Music in northeast Ohio, and I again just thought these lyrics are incredible, and I love the music from that particular show. Fast forward a little further in the late ‘80s, I was laid up with some surgery and I knew I was going to be bedridden for a week or two anyway, so I went to the public library and grabbed up a handful of CDs, and in that batch was A Collector's Sondheim, the three-disc set of stuff up through about 1985, and I must have listened to that a hundred times, I swear, because it had material on it that I didn't know anything about like Evening Primrose or Stavisky. So that really opened my eyes.

Later, my son had moved to Chicago. He's a scenic carpenter and a union stagehand. He worked at the Goodman Theatre, and I went to see a production when they were still performing in a theater space at the Art Institute of Chicago, and they had a gift shop there. And lo and behold in the rack I saw a copy of a magazine called The Sondheim Review! I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to subscribe to this! This would have been about 1996, probably, so I subscribed and enjoyed it immediately. A quarterly magazine about just about Stephen Sondheim struck me as kind of amazing.

In 1997-98 the Cincinnati Playhouse did a production of Sweeney Todd in which Pamela Myers, all grown up, played Mrs. Lovett, and so I wrote to the editor of the magazine and said, “Would you like me to review this?” That started me down a path for a couple of years of making fairly regular contributions to the magazine. Then in 2004 that editor retired, and I was asked to become the managing editor, which I did from 2004 to 2016. It went off the rails for some business reasons, but it lasted for 22 years which I think is pretty remarkable.

I tried to sustain it in an alternative form with a website called Everything Sondheim. We put stuff up online for about 18 months, and we published three print issues that look very much like The Sondheim Review, but we were not able to sustain it beyond that.

FYSS: How did the Encyclopedia project originate?

RP: The publisher asked me to write an encyclopedia about Stephen Sondheim! I envisioned that I would be sort of the general editor who coordinated a bunch of writers to put this together, but they said no, we're thinking of you as being the sole author. They had done a couple of other encyclopedias particularly of film directors, and those were all done by one person, so they sent me a contract asking me to generate 300,000 words for this book, and after I regained consciousness, I said all right, I'll give it a try.

It took me about two years – most of 2018 and ‘19 – to generate that content. I sent it off in the fall of ‘19, and then, well, the world stopped because of the pandemic. It was supposed to come out April a year ago, and they had just furloughed a bunch of their editors and everything stalled. But now it's coming out mid-April 2021.

FYSS: What was the research and writing process like?

RP: This project came about in part because the publisher initially approached another writer, Mark Horowitz, who's at the Library of Congress and who had done a Sondheim book of Sondheim on Music. Mark and I had become quite close because he wrote a number of wonderful features about different Sondheim songs for The Sondheim Review. When I heard that that he had put my name out there, I went back to him after I had agreed to do this and said, Mark, could we use some of that material that you wrote for the magazine about those songs? And he said, sure do with them whatever you wish. And I was glad he said that, because they were really long pieces, and I've reduced each of them to about 1500-2000 words, which I thought was probably about the maximum length that people would really want to read in a reference volume.

But other than that, I generated everything else myself. I relied upon plenty of material within the 22 years of back issues of The Sondheim Review. Another great resource was Sondheim's own lyric studies, the two-volume set which provides so much information about the production of shows and that sort of thing.

Of the 131 entries I wrote for this, 18 of them are lengthy pieces about each of the original productions, so again Sondheim's books were certainly useful for that, and other books like Ted Chapin's book about Follies.

I also spent some time in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress, and Mark loaned me a quite a bit of material that he had collected – not archival material but scrapbooks of clippings that he put into ring binders of stuff about Sondheim's shows.

I came back to Cincinnati with about four or five cartons of materials, and I could really dig through that stuff as I was working on these. And then I have, as I'm sure you and lots of other Sondheim fans have, a bookcase with a shelf or two of Sondheim books, and those were all things that I relied upon, too.

I actually generated a list with lots and lots of topics, probably over 200, and I knew that was going to be more than I could do. Eventually, some things were consolidated, like an actor who perhaps performed in just one Sondheim show wasn't going to get a biographical entry, but I would talk about them in the particular show that they were involved in. So, I was able to collapse some of those kinds of things. But as I said, I did end up with 131 entries in the publication, and it turned out to be 636 pages, so that's a big fat reference book.

FYSS: Who is the intended audience for a work like this? RP: The book is really intended to be a reference volume more than a coffee-table book. It does have photography in it, but it's black and white and more meant to be illustrative than to wallow in the glories of Sondheim. There is an extensive bibliography in it, and all the material is really thoroughly sourced so people can find ways to dig into more.

FYSS: Sometimes memories diverge or change over time. Did you come across any contradictions in your research, and how did you resolve them?

RP: I can't say that I can recall anything like that. I relied very heavily on Sondheim's recollections in Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat because he's got a memory like a steel trap. Once in a while I would email him with a question and get very quick response on things. I really used him as my touchstone for making sure of that kind of thing.

I also found that Secrest’s biography was very thoroughly researched, and I could rely on that. But I can't say that I found a lot of discrepancy, and some of those kinds of things were a little too much inside baseball for me to be including in the encyclopedia.

FYSS: For figures with long and broad histories, how did you decide what to include? George Abbott, for example, is the first entry in the book and he worked for nine decades! How important was writing about an individual as they relate to Sondheim vs. who they were more generally?

RP: To use George Abbott as an example, I would say that the first things that I did was to go back to the lyric studies and to the Secrest biography and just look up references to Abbott. I mean, it was George Abbott who said that he wanted more hummable songs from Sondheim, so you know that was certainly an anecdote that was worth including because, of course you know, it becomes a little bit of the lyric in Merrily We Roll Along. 

So you know, I would look for those kinds of things, but I also wanted to put Sondheim in context because Abbott was well into his career when he finally directed Forum which, since it was Sondheim's first show as a composer and a lyricist, is significant. That was very much the focus of that entry, but I wanted to lay a foundation in talking about Abbott, about all the things that he had done before that. I mean, he was sort of the Hal Prince of his era in in terms of his engagement in so many different kinds of things – writing plays, directing musicals, doctoring shows, all of that.

FYSS: Did any entries stick out to you as being the hardest to write?

I think the most complicated one to write about probably was Bounce/Road Show because it's got a complicated history, and Sondheim has so much to say about it. And because it's not a show that people know so much about, I wanted to treat it appropriately, but not as expansively as all of that background material might have suggested. So I kind of had to weave my way through that one. It also was a little tough to write about, because how do you write a synopsis of a show that has had several incarnations quite different from one another, and musical material that has changed from one to the other? With shows like that, I particularly tried to resort to the licensed versions of the shows. 

FYSS: I haven't had a chance to read the book cover-to-cover yet, but I did read the Follies and the Into the Woods entries to try to get a sense of how you covered individual shows, and both of those are shows that had significant revisions at different times. And I thought you made it very clear what they were and also where to go for a reader who wants to learn more.

RP: Let me say one other thing this is not directly on this topic, but it sort of relates, and that is that in writing an encyclopedia, I didn't want to overlay a lot of my very individual opinions about things, but with each of the show entries I tried to review the critical comments that were made about the show in its original form, perhaps with significant revivals and that sort of thing, and then to source those remarks from critics at those various points in time. And of course, my own objectivity (or lack thereof) had something to do with what I was selecting, but I thought that was a good way to represent the range of opinion without having to make it all my own opinion.

FYSS: Did you feel any responsibility with regards to canonization when you made choices about what to include or exclude? What made the First National Tour of Into the Woods more significant than the Fiasco production, for example? Why do Side by Side by Sondheim & Sondheim on Sondheim get individual entries, but Putting It Together is relegated to the omnibus entry on revues?

RP: I guess that now you are lifting the curtain on some of my own subjectivity with that question. I tried to identify things that were particularly significant. I mean with the revues for instance, several of those shows – you know, particularly Side by Side by Sondheim, the very early ones – they were the ones I think that elevated him in people’s awareness. So, I think that to me was part of what drove that. And then shows that that were early touring productions struck me as being things that maybe needed a little bit more coverage. I think the Fiasco production was a really interesting one, but with the more recent productions of shows I just felt like there's no end to it if I begin to include a lot of that sort of thing.

FYSS: I mean it's so subjective. I'm not the kind of person who clutches my pearls and screams oh my goodness, how could you not talk about this or that. But I was surprised to see in your Follies entry that the Paper Mill Playhouse album was not listed among the recordings, for example. I imagine that once this book hits shelves you're going to be bombarded with people asking about their pet favorites.

RP: Oh, I'm sure, and maybe that will be a reason to do a second edition, which I’m totally ready to do.

The Sondheim Encyclopedia hits bookstore shelves April 15. It’s available wherever you buy books, but Rick has provided a special discount code for readers of Fuck Yeah Stephen Sondheim to receive 30% off when you order directly from the publisher. To order, visit www.rowman.com, call 800-462-6420, and use code RLFANDF30.

Celebrate the launch of The Sondheim Encyclopedia with a free, live online event featuring Rick Pender in conversation with Broadway Nation’s David Armstrong Friday, April 16 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern. More information and register here.

[majingojira]

Brief Review of Every Dinosaur/Prehistoric Documentary/Educational Short I’ve ever seen (1923-1996).

And thanks to a certain project, I’ve seen a LOT! 

Evolution (1923) - This is the oldest of the bunch, a silent film.  Mostly it uses modern animals to represent ancient forms, with a few statues and brief animated bits to fill things out. The only real highlight?  Seeing where some of the “film real” segment from Gigantis the Fire Monster comes from! 

Monsters from the Past (1923) - A short documentary with original stop motion (this was pre-The Lost World, so that’s to be expected).  Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and Brontosaurus are the key creatures. Included as an extra on the second DVD release of The Lost World. 

Prehistoric Animals (1938) - Reuses footage from The Lost World (1925) for its prehistoric segments. This will not be the last time it happens. 

Prehistoric Times: The World Before Man (1952) - This thing is so quintessentially 1950s, it’s highly riff-able.  It uses a mix of paintings, sculptures and some live animals to represent prehistoric life.  

A World Is Born (1955) - Ya know what Fantasia needed?  Overbearing Narration! That’s it.  That’s what this documentary is.  I saw this thing rebroadcast in the 90s on the Disney Channel, believe it or not. 

The Animal World (1956) - Ray Harryhausen.  Willis O’Brian. Their stop motion segment is the ONLY notable part of this documentary.  This is also the only part that has seen some release in modern times, as a bonus feature on the DVD of The Black Scorpion.  

Prehistoric Animals of the Tar Pits (1956) - Black and white, but also quintessentially 50s and riff-able.  Aside from the bones, it shows some wooden models to represent the animals. 

Journey into Time (1960) - Fantasia this is not, but it TRIES to be.  Lord it tries.  Or, rather, there’s a Fantasia-adjacent thing elsewhere which does the same thing.  Has some unique choices for animals to represent, including showing Permian forms like Scutusaurus and Inostrancevia. 

Dem Dry Bones: Archaeology, Paleontology, Identification, and Preservation (1966) - This was a lucky find, it was on Youtube for half a second.  And not worth digging out, really.  Stuffy, dry, and mildly condescending.  It was still interesting looking at the dinosaur hall of the Smithsonian back in the 1950s. 

Dinosaurs - The Terrible Lizard (1970) - The stop motion here is pretty neat, if slow and plodding, it’s refreshing after all this crap. The puppets for many of these would later be re-used for The Land of the Lost.  Including Grumpy, Alice, and Spot. 

NOVA: The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1977) - Robert Bakker’s first appearance in a documentary.  HE HAS SUCH LONG HAIR!  Not bad, a little dry, with National Geographic titles.  It reminds me of 1990s documentaries, just so show how long it’s taken for various ideas to filter down.  Currently, it’s available on Archive.org. 

Dinosaurs: A First Film (1978) - The art style for this half-animated 70s abomination makes identifying various prehistoric animals almost impossible.  Almost painful to sit through. Stops with the Dinosaurs. 

Dinosaurs: The Age of the Terrible Lizards (1978) - Similar to the above, but available from Rifftrax, so much more watchable.  Also, it’s actually animated!

Dinosaur (1980) - Wil Vinton Claymation with Dinosaurs.  A few edits of this exist, the latter works a bit better, but the original is interesting to track down. Most of the edits are audio only, so you aren’t missing anything.  The dinosaur sin this are top notch for color and design.  They even have Corythosaurus and Tyrannosaurus not dragging their tails! 

Cosmos (1980) - the animated segment covering Evolution is still wonderful if only for the narration from Carl Sagan. 

The Age of Mammals (1981) - A follow up of sorts to Dinosaurs: The Age of Reptiles.  Decent stop motion if a little slow.  Decent variety for the time. 

64,000,000 Years Ago (1981) - A solid stop motion short film.  Still worth checking out for stop motion fans.  Available on Youtube legally! 

Dinosaurs: Fun, Facts, and Fantasy (1981) - Nostalgic for some, but aimed at a rather young audience.  Some interesting stop motion bits in here too... if awkward in that way British stop motion can be outside Aardman Studios. 

Reading Rainbow “Digging up Dinosaurs” (1983) - Definitely nostalgic for me.  Besides, it’s Reading Rainbow!  And opens with a clip from One Million Years B.C.!  What’s not to love?

Prehistoric Beast (1984) - One of the best stop motion shorts on this list.  Included because it INSPIRED a documentary from it.  Phil Tippett firing on all cylinders.  Well worth watching.  And he uploaded it on Youtube himself! 

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (1985), More Dinosaurs (1985), Son of Dinosaur (1988),  Prehistoric World (1993) - Gary Owens and Eric Boardman have a series of documentaries on dinosaurs and prehistoric life.  The presenters are what really make these work. Colorful, fun, and yes, silly, these still hold a nostalgic gleam for people like me.  The last one has Dougal Dixon talk about his After Man speculations.  Fun times. 

Dinosaur! (1985) - Hosted by Christopher Reeve, this is one of the best documentaries of its time.  Reeves loved dinosaurs and was happy to work on this project with Phil Tippet behind the animation.  Covers a lot in its hour long format, and well worth watching.  Do you know how good this special was?  When Reeve died in 2004, the Discovery Channel (or similar station) re-aired this thing as a tribute.  It holds up that well! 

Tell Me Why: Pre-Historic Animals, Reptiles and Amphibians (1986) - This is something I had when I was a little kid.  Dry, straight forward, a “Video Babysitter” at it’s best. It consists of a narrator while looking at pictures of the Invicta Dinosaur Toys that were also on the poster. 

Dinosaurs! A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time (1987) - Wil Vinton’s Dinosaurs! tied with a short setup/framing device with the kid from the Wonder Years involving a low-animation music video (this was the MTV age) and a guide through art from various dinosaur books from the 1950s through the 1980s.  Rather meh, but Wil Vinton is why we are here.  This was the only way to get Wil Vinton’s short back in the day, and is the version of the short shown in Museums like The Academy of Natural Sciences.  

Digging Dinosaurs (PBS-WHYY) (1988) - Something I managed to record of TV back in the day, though not much of it, about the uncovering and preparation of Avaceratops. Bone Dry. 

Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up (1988) - A VHS version of the picture book, with narration and the whole spiel.  Actually not to bad for what it is, but it is what it is.  The art for that book is rather wonderful. 

Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (1988) - David.  Attenburrough. Need I say more?  Not one of his best, but still wonderful. Hard to track down.  

Dinosaurs (1989) - From the Smithsonian Institute, one of the video followups sold in various museums (I have one from the Royal Tyrell, but haven’t been able to track it down).  Not great, but I’ve seen worse. 

Infinite Voyage: The Great Dinosaur Hunt (1989) - A rather dry documentary, but one I find extremely relaxing and calming.  Very nostalgic for me.  But still dry. 

Vestie Video Sitter: Dinosaurs (1989) - This is for babies. It hurt to watch. 

In November, 1990, Jurassic Park (novel) was released, and thus began the great shift. 

In Search of the Dragon: The Great Dinosaur Hunt of the Century (1991) - a.k.a. The Dinosaur Project, The Great Dinosaur Hunt, The Hunt for China’s Dinosaurs.  Edited into a 1 hour NOVA special from a nearly two hour documentary, all about the joint Canadian/Chinese Gobi Desert Expedition in the 1980s that gave us Mamenchisaurus among many other species.  With another stop in the Arctic for good measure.  Some good stop motion and pencil animation for Troodon round this one out. 

A&E’s Dinosuar! (1991) - There’s so many things named “Dinosaur” that I have to specify.  Hosted by Walter Cronkite, this is rather dry, but still entertaining documentary series has some nightmare-fuel puppet-work.  The ‘sad’ music gets caught in my head sometimes when I think about it.  It is 4 episodes long.  “The Tale of a Tooth”, “The Tale of a Bone”, “The Tale of an Egg”, and “The Tale of a Feather”

T. Rex: Exposed (1991) - a Nova Documentary on T. Rex.  Not too bad overall, focusing on the Wrankle Rex unearthing. Parts of it are available on Youtube, but not all of it.  

The Case of the Flying Dinosaur (1991) - the third in the “NOVA” 91 trilogy, this covers the bird-dinosaur connection as it was still contentious at the time. 

PBS’ The Dinosaurs! (1992) - A gold standard for documentaries on dinosaurs. The hand drawn animation with colored pencil style still hold up today. The narrator has a bit of an accent and pronounces “Dinosaur” oddly, but that is the only complaint I can really give. It has 4 episodes: “The Monsters Emerge”, “Flesh on the Bones”, “The Nature of the Beast”, “Death of the Dinosaurs.”

Muttaburrasaurus: Life in Gondwana (1993) - A half-hour short about dinosuars and mesozoic life in Australia. Solid stop motion animation. Australian Accents makes it fun to listen too.

NOVA: The Real Jurassic Park (1993) - Jeff Goldblum narrates this bit of scientists going on about “But what if we really did it?” Quite fun, lotta fun details the movies and even the books didn’t get into. My favorite bit had Robert Bakker talking to a game keeper at the Rockefeller Refuge in a Louisiana Cypress Swamp about what could happen if they kept a few dinosaur there (Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, and T. Rex).  Namely, he talks about housing ‘about a thousand” Edmontosaurs on the 86K acre facility, with 2 or 3 mated pairs of Rexes.  It’s fun getting numbers like that. 

Bill Nye the Science Guy “Dinosaurs” (1993) - BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL!  Not a bad kids entry for documentaries. Available from Netflix. 

Paleoworld (1994-1997) - Running originally for 4 years, and being revamps once along the way, this rather dry, “Zoom in on paleoart” style of documentary was a good holdover for bigger things, and covered some pretty niche topics.  Much of the later version has been uploaded to youtube. 

Dinosaur Digs: A Fossil Finders Tour (1994), Dinosaurs: Next Exit (1994) - These films hurt me.  They hurt me so much.  I’ve seen some painful things, but these are hour long tour advertisements for road trips with annoyingly earworms.  Available on youtube, but I ain’t linking anything! 

Eyewitness: Dinosaur (1994) - Not a bad documentary, but I still hold a grudge on it for replacing Wil Vinton’s work at my local museum! Still, it is narrated by Martin Sheen. The clip selection is wide and varied, but we’re still getting The Lost World (1925) footage. 

Planet of Life (1995) - This documentary series is rather dry, but boasts some interesting coverage of topics.  Though some of it’s conclusions regarding dinosaurs are... not great.  Still, the episode “Ancient Oceans” is a favorite of mine. 

Once Upon Australia (1995) - The bests stop motion documentary on Australia’s prehistory. Has some humor to is, and Australian fauna that it does cover is solid.  Though finding out how one of the animals is spelled, ( Ngapakaldia) drove me nuts for literally decades. 

Dinosaurs: Myths and Reality (1995) - Like a little more polished episode of Paleoworld, with a lighter-voiced narration, this covers common myths about dinosaurs. Overall, a Meh.  But it has a LOT of movie clips. Which makes sense given it was funded by the Disney Channel! 

The Ultimate Guide: T. Rex (1995) - The Ultimate Guide series of docs were overall rather solid, as was the Tyrannosaurus one.  Stop Motion animation along with puppets and some minor CG help round out the normal talking heads and skeleton mounts.  Along with a solid narrator, it has a real mood to it.  

The Magic School Bus “The Busasaurus” (1995) - The original Magic School Bus was a solid series, and their episode on Dinosaurs bucks trends even the reboot didn’t cover.  The core thrust here wasn’t just dinosaur information, but the idea that Dinosaurs were not Monsters, but animals.  And they conveyed it in a unique way.  

I may do more of these mini-reviews, but there are a LOT of documentaries post The Lost World: Jurassic Park that don’t have as much easy access.  Like, I’ve seen them, but digging out links/citing places to watch them is a lot harder. 

[oneweekoneband]

I’m slightly nauseous already with knowing I’m going to say this, but what does “self-awareness”  even mean? In modern parlance, as a descriptive phrase, as a comment on art? I’m asking in earnest, like, I’ve been Googling lately, which for me is basically on par with doctoral study in terms of academic rigor. The self is king, anyway, tyrant, so where is the line of distinction between material that intentionally is nodding at some truth about the artist’s life and what’s just, like, all the rest of the regular navel-gazing bullshit. I mean, I’m all self, I am guilty here. I can’t get it out of my poems or even make it more quiet. This is the tenth time I’ve invoked “I” in the space of six sentences. Processing art has always necessitated a certain amount of grappling with the creator, but the busywork of it lately grows more and more tedious. Joy drains out of my body parsing marks left behind not just in stylistic tendencies and themes, but in literal, intentional tags like graffiti on a water tower. This feels an age old and moth-holed complaint, dull, and I am no historian, or really a serious thinker of any kind. I’ve now complained at some length about self-referential art, but didn’t I love how Martin Scorsese nodded to the famous Goodfellas Copacabana tracking shot with the opening frames of last year’s The Irishman? Didn’t I find that terribly fun and sort of sweet? So there’s distinctions. I’m only saying I don’t know with certainty what they even are. I’m unreliable, and someone smarter than me has likely already solved my quandary about why self-knowledge often transforms into overly precious self-reflexivity in such a way that the knowledge is diminished and obscured, leaving only cutesy Easter eggs behind. Postmodernism has birthed a moralizing culture where art exists to be termed either “self-aware Good” or “self-aware Bad”.  Self-referentiality in media is so commonplace, so much the standard, that what was once credited as metatextual inventiveness often feels lazy now. In 1996, Scream was revitalizing a genre. Today, two thirds of all horror movies spend half their running time making sure that you know that they know they’re a horror movie, which is fine, I guess, except sometimes you just wanna watch someone get butchered with an axe in peace. 

This is all to say that in 2020 Taylor Swift looked long and hard upon her image in the reflecting pool of her heart and has written yet another song about Gone Girl.

“mirrorball” is a very good piece of Gone Girl —feels insane to tell anyone reading a post on a blog what Gone Girl is but, you know, the extremely popular 2012 novel about a woman who pretends to have been murdered and frames her husband for it, and subsequently the 2014 film adaption where you kinda see Ben Affleck’s dick for a second—fanfiction. It would be a fine song, a good song, really, even if it weren’t that, if it were just something normal and not unhinged written by a chill person who behaves in a regular way, but we need to acknowledge the facts for what they are. When Taylor Swift watched Rosamund Pike toss her freshly self-bobbed hair out of her face and hiss, “You think you’d be happy with some nice Midwestern girl? No way, baby. I’m it!” her brain lit up like a Christmas tree, and she’s never been the same. If you Google “taylor swift gone girl” there waiting for you will be a medium sized lake’s worth of articles speculating about how Gone Girl influenced and is referenced in past Swift singles “Blank Space” and “Look What You Made Me Do”. This is not new behavior, and if anything it’s getting a bit troubling to think that it’s been this long since Taylor’s read another book. Still, while the prior offerings were a fair attempt at this particular feat of depravity, “mirrorball” has brought Taylor’s Amy Elliott Dunne deification to stunning new heights. And most importantly, Taylor has done a service to every person alive with more than six brain cells and a Internet connection by putting an end to the “Cool Girl” discourse once and for all. By the power invested in “mirrorball”, it is hereby decreed that the Cool Girl speech from Gone Girl is neither feminist or antifeminist, not ironic nor aspirational. No. It’s something much better than all that. It’s a threat. I ! Can ! Change ! Everything ! About ! Me ! To ! Fit ! In !

Gone Girl (2012) by Gillian Flynn

“mirrorball” (2020) by Taylor Swift

When the twinkly musical stylings of Jack Antonoff, a man I distinctly distrust, but for no one specific reason, whirl to life at the beginning of this song I feel instantly entranced, blurry-brained and pleasure-pickled like an infant beneath a light-up crib mobile or, I guess, myself in the old times, the outside times, three tequila sodas deep under the disco lights at The Short Stop. Under a mirrorball in my head. I know very little about music, as a craft, and I really don’t care to know more. I’m happy in a world of pure, dumb sensation. I’m not even sure what kind of instruments are making these jangly little sounds. I just like it. I am vibing. We may not ever be able to behave badly in a club again, but I can sway to my stupid Taylor Swift-and-the-brother-of-the-lady-who-makes-like-those-sweatshirts-with-little-sayings-or-like-vulvas-which-famous-white-women-wear-on-instagram-you-know-what-I-mean song, pressing up onto my tiptoes on the linoleum tile of our kitchen floor and can feel for a second or two something approaching bliss. “mirrorball” is a lush sound bath that I like a lot and then also it’s about being all things to all people, chameleoning at a second’s notice, doing Oscar worthy work on every Zoom call, performing the you who is good, performing the you who is funny, performing the you who draws a liter of your own blood and throws it around the kitchen then cleans it up badly all to get your husband sent to jail for sleeping with a college student... Too much talk about making and unmaking of the self is way too, like, 2012 Tumblr for me now, and I start hearing the word “praxis” ring threateningly in my head, but I’m not yet so evolved that I don’t feel a pull. Musings on the disorganized self—on how we are new all the time, and not just because of all the fresh skin coming up under the dead, personhood in the end so frighteningly flexible—are always going to compel me, I’m afraid, but that goes double for musings on the disorganized self which posit that Taylor Swift still thinks Amy Dunne made some points.

Because on “mirrorball” Taylor is for once not hamfistedly addressing some “hater”, in the quiet and the lack of embarrassing martyrdom it actually offers an interesting answer to the complaint that Taylor is insufficiently self-aware. This criticism emerges often in tandem with claiming to have discovered some crack in the chassis of Swift’s public self, revealing the sweetness to be insincere. My instinct is to dismiss this more or less out of hand as just a mutation of the school of thought that presumes all work by women must be autobiography. And, regardless, it is made altogether laughable by the fact that anyone actually paying attention has known since at least Speak Now, a delightful record populated by the most appalling, horrible characters imaginable, and all of them written by a twenty year old Taylor Swift, that this woman is a pure weirdo. To accuse Taylor Swift of lacking in self-awareness is a reductive misunderstanding, I think, of artifice. Being a fake bitch takes work. Which is to say, if we agree that her public self is a calculated performance—eliding the fact that all public selves are a performance to avoid getting too in the weeds yadda yadda— why, then, should it be presumed that performance is rooted in ignorance? Would it not make more sense that, in fact, someone able to contort themselves so ably into various shapes for public consumption would have a certain understanding of the basic materials they’re working with and concealing? Taylor Swift, in a decade and a half of fame, has presented herself from inside a number of distinct packages. The gangly teenager draped in long curls like climbing wisteria who wrote lyrics down her arms in glitter paint gave way to red lipstick, a Diet Coke campaign, and bad dancing at awards shows. There was the period where she was surrounded constantly by a gaggle of models, then suddenly wasn’t anymore, and that rough interlude with the bleached hair. The whole Polaroid thing. Last year she boldly revealed she’s a democrat. Now it’s the end of the world and she’s got frizzy bangs and flannels and muted little piano songs. Perhaps this endless shape-shifting contradicts or undermines, for some, the pose of tender authenticity which has remained static through each phase, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been doing it all on purpose the entire time. I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try...

In the Disney+ documentary—which, in order to watch, I had to grudgingly give the vile mouse seven dollars, because the login information that I’d begged off of my little sister didn’t work and I was too embarrassed to bring it up a second time—Taylor referred to “mirrorball” as the first time on the album where she explicitly addressed the pandemic, referring to the lyrics that start, “And they called off the circus, Burned the disco down,” and end with “I’m still on that tightrope, I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me,” which actually did made me laugh, feeling sort of warmly foolish and a little fond, because it never would have occurred to me that she was trying to be literal there. I suppose we really do all contain multitudes. Hate that.

[dailyaudiobible]

01/12/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 26:17-27:46, Matthew 9:1-17, Psalms 10:16-18, Proverbs 3:9-10

Today is the 12th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is great to be here with you today…today as we continue our journey forward in and through the…the first month of this year, the month of January. And we are…we’re well on our way. And, so, as is our custom day by day step-by-step, we enter into a rhythm that allows us to come around this Global Campfire as a community and hear the Scriptures spoken over us, and give some things to think about and meditate upon and to know that we’re not alone in this endeavor no matter what time you might be listening to Daily Audio Bible no matter what time you click play somebody else in the world is also there. There's never a time when this isn’t…when this isn’t just going out into the world. And, so, that is a beautiful thing to know. We’re not in this together and we’re pushing into this second week approaching in a few days the center of the first month. And we are on a journey and we’re not alone and that is a beautiful thing. So, let's dive in and take that next step. We…we’re reading about Jacob and Esau yesterday and sort of the conniving of a birthright away from the firstborn son Esau that was given to Jacob and…well… we’ll continue that story. Genesis chapter 26 verse 17 through 27 verse 46. And we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week.

Commentary:

Okay. Once again, the book of Proverbs, the voice of wisdom is speaking to us and we can hear these phrases and these stanzas of wisdom and take them to hearty, actually pay close close attention to what's being said and promised, or just kinda let it go by us and “yeah yeah yeah, I kinda know that. I know I should honor the Lord with my wealth. Like I’ve been told that all along.” And yeah, we probably have. But there's more to this story. “Honor the Lord with your wealth and the best part of everything you produce.” In other words, your best…your best goes to God and in exchange he will fill your barns with grain and your vats will overflow with good wine. And we may be like, “well…I don't need a barn of grain.” If you were in the time that these words…that these words are being spoken that would be a promise that you're going to be okay, that your needs will not only be met but you will have a surplus and you will be able to use that surplus wisely to not only care for and preserve your own family, but to care for and preserve others. So what God is essentially telling us, what wisdom is speaking to us is of our utter dependence upon God. What we may be able to accumulate in this life on our own without God, the Bible will tell us over and over things like “that will be moth-eaten, that will be destroyed, that will disappear like a vapor.” But walking with God the most-high, who owns the earth, like created the earth has a claim to the planet as well as the universe and all of its resources. Like we have all these boundary lines for our planets. And God permits all of this is if we have ownership, but this is God's world, He made it, He owns it. So, certainly he can get us the resources that we need if we trust in Him by giving our best first. And again we can just look at wisdom here and the voice of wisdom and we could say, “I don't believe that” and not try, not even…not even make an attempt to see if it's real or we can listen to the voice of wisdom and watch it play out in our lives.

And then we zoom back to where we began today in the book of Genesis and we traveled along with Isaac and him having to move around and find a settled place where he could be with his family. And then we watched the animosity grow between Jacob and Esau. And we are at the point now where Jacob has finagled the birthright and the blessing of the firstborn for himself. And Esau is obviously furious, so furious that he's consoling himself by making plans to kill his brother. And, so, Rebekah, Jacob's mother, wants Jacob to flee back to her family, back to her brother and his name is Laban. And we met Laban. Remember when the servant of Abraham went to find Rebekah and when he put the nose ring and the bracelets on her, and she went home. It was Laban who came to see the servant and make the inquiries. So, Rebekah is telling her son Jacob, “go back to my brother Laban” and that's what he's going to do. And we are also starting to get a small sense of geography. Some places are being named. And again, you know, you read the place names or even the people names in the Bible and it's…there so unfamiliar to the culture that we live in and we just kind of glaze over it all. We don't have a map. We don't know the geography. We don't know where things are. And, so, we just imagine in our minds but we’re beginning to hear of places, places like Beersheba, the well of the oath. That's an important place that actually until this very day still exists, and it will become the southern border of a future nation of Israel - from Dan to Beersheba. So, we’re starting to get a sense that Beersheba’s here in the South. And it is. It's right on…right on the edge of the desert. These places exist. You can see many of the places that we’re gonna visit in the Bible in a resource that we…that we worked on for five years. It's called Promised Land and it’s in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. We’ll send you some…a couple of DVDs but we’ll also give you the digital version of it right on the spot. And basically, what it is is over 70 different locations that are biblical verified archaeological locations that…that major things happen in in the Bible, like Beersheba. That's one of them. And, so, you can see these places, not just in a static kind of one-dimensional photograph, but actually filmed where you can kinda get a sense of the scope and the space all around it. More like a 360 kind of view of what the place looks like today and that the place existed and has stories that have been told for thousands of years from that place. So, there is a resource in the Daily Audio Bible shop that can take this journey even deeper and give you a visual of many of the places that we are reading about and will read about in the Bible. So, check that out.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for all of the different nuances and all of the different complexions, all of the different angles that it comes to us in, whether that be a narrative story or whether that be in spoken wisdom unfiltered into our lives or whether that be in stanzas of adoration and worship in the Psalms. All of the issues of life begin to emerge as we immerse ourselves in the Bible. And, so, we open ourselves and say, Holy Spirit come plant the words in our lives that we might yield the fruit of the Holy Spirit in…in our lives and that it may be visible transformation to those around us we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, it’s where you find what's going on around here.

And, yeah, the Daily Audio Bible Shop, we were just talking about this. This is where you can find resources like the Promised Land films and take your journey as deep as you want to go and as wide as you want to go. But dive in. The Bible is also intriguing and so powerful in our lives if we hadn't noticed that already. The Bible’s been speaking volumes to us right out of the gate and it doesn't stop it just continues to speak all the way through the year. And, so, often it speaks things that we need right when we need them. And that has just so profoundly beautiful to watch, just to watch God work through it in us so that we’re hearing things when we need to hear them and they’re changing us. So, check out the resources in the Daily Audio Bible Shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage and grateful, humbly grateful for everyone who has clicked that link. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that's your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button up at the top and share from there, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DAB family God bless you all. Jeff Scepter, a longtime listener but your wife is a newbie and she just completed I think you said her first year or something like that. I am praying for the wisdom of the Lord to be upon her in the name of Jesus and I’m believing in the name of Jesus that she is going to thrive in this community as you have been. Praise you Jesus. And welcome, welcome, welcome to your wife in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah Lita. Grace filled DeCastro you’re returning to work as a teaching assistant. I am praying for you sister in the name of Jesus for you and those around you. I am praying for the children in the name of Jesus. Hope from the Heartland you first called in to share you know how much you enjoyed doing Instacart and listening to the Christmas party and then your following message was about losing your mom. I am so so sorry. I am praying for the peace of God to be upon you all. I am praying for that comforter to just cover you in His love in the name of Jesus. Airport Missionary you called in sharing your gratitude and how thankful you are in regard to the job that had been prayed for for you and how interesting the experience has been. And I am praying with you sister I am praying for you and I am praying for all those lives that you are touching along the way. Zinab from London God bless you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I can just say welcome. You know, the DAB community has been amazing in my life and I know it will be for yours and your double DABber. Hooray. Yay! God bless you. Esther from Orlando. I love you all.

Hey DAB family this is Tiffany in New Mexico. I wanted to call in because yesterday I was sick. I’m actually still a little sick but after spending half the morning just laying in bed watching Hallmark movies it suddenly dawned on me that I could be better spending my time getting on the app and going to the Prayer Wall and praying for people. And I know that Brian mentions it quite frequently, but I just wanted to remind you guys that there are so many prayer needs on the Prayer Wall. And it’s…it’s the people that may be afraid to actually call in with a prayer request or some people just need more immediate prayer. So, I just wanted to encourage each of you that if you just have a couple minutes each day to go on to the Prayer Wall and just meet some of these prayer needs because that’s what we are, where a family that prays for one another. So, anyway it blessed my…the rest of my day yesterday being sick in bed and I just thought I might remind you guys that it could also be a blessing for you as well. So, anyway. Love you all. Take care. Bye.

Happy new year Brian and fellow DABbers and I’m so deeply invested in this community that I am now a triple DABber. The saying goes that the third time is a charm and I was definitely charmed by little Ezekiel at DABK. Oh, my word Zeke is a wonder kid I tell you. It warms my heart to hear him read in such pureness and innocence and he is so eager to read the Bible. The interaction with his mom is just adorable. Good job Brian and Jill. God bless you. Okay a big shout out to those who continue to pray for our children and grandchildren, especially Duane who has been so consistent over the years. Know that I pray for your voice too. And Rose, I love your prayers. I offer up a yes and amen for all the prayers that come in for kids and grandkids. Okay, the Christmas party was off the chart. Like Cherry I enjoyed the party with an active imagination sitting by the campfire throwing on the log here and there and partying without even having to practice social distancing. How about that? One last thing before I run out of time. Mike, that was a beautiful statement you made to Brian and I join thoughts with you to continue praying that the Lord will protect him from burnout. When you mentioned that he’s always here for the community I thought of the…the post man, the postman slogan which says rain sleet or snow nothing stops this man of God. And Brian you are very much appreciated and loved. Well, I gotta go running out of time. So, Charm DABber out. Peace on.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible community this is Diane Olive Braun, and I am an encourager, just one of many, many, many, many. So, I so love this community and I’m gathering around the campfire and putting my logs on warming my hands and my heart. Oh, today I listened to the January 7th 2021. O, what can I say? What can I say? Forgiveness. Oh, thank you Brian, thank you Jill, thank you Ezekiel. Oh Ezekiel, breathing in and say Jesus forgives me. Breathe out all this junk. I just…I’m so sorry. I’ve been so touchy, fretful, resentful. I’ve been so offended. When someone offends me, I get so angry. Jesus says take no offense. And Abraham and Sarah, they were so quick to obey. I’ve been slow to obey. I’m gonna delight myself in…

Hello, I’m Metoo and I’m coming from India, a small place named New Bombay. This is the very first time that I’m listening to the Daily Audio Bible and this has been seven days now and I’m listening to Brian and it has been very encouraging. And also, has been guiding me as well. I look forward to complete the…the whole Bible and towards the end of the year and I look forward and believe that there will be a lot of books and the words from God from the Lord that will guide us each day. This has been a really good seven days and I look forward to hearing each and every session of the Daily Audio Bible. Thank you so much. God bless you all for doing such a great job. God bless you all with wisdom and I thank you…

Hi DAB family this is Lisa from Missouri. I’m calling in because two years ago today I started listening to the DAB. I accidentally came across the app, downloaded it and started listening. I caught up for the six days that I missed. Listening to the DAB and listening to Brian and listening to the prayers of the community and the encouragement and the stories that the DAB community has shared has played a huge part in what God has done in my life over the last two years, how God has transformed my heart and transformed me from the inside out. I re-dedicated my heart can’t May…in May of 2019. I grew up in a Christian home. I went to church. I was saved at a young age but because…but I did stray from that for some years and…but God drew me back and I just want to thank Brian. Thank you Brian for your faithfulness to us, for teaching us and showing us who God really is and how much he loves us. If you’re new to this community and you just started listening, hang in there. Keep listening. God will move in your life. He will open your heart and you will receive so much from him. Hang in there. Keep listening. God bless everyone. Have a…

[weeklyhumorist]

Hi, I’m the Toilet in the Back of Your Mirror Selfie—You Can See Me, Right?

Um…hey. You just blew ass in me 5 minutes ago, and now you’re documenting your post-poop physique with me hanging out right in the background? I get it, we all feel a lot lighter after dumping a fat load. You look good. But it seems a little…it just all seems a little too fresh. The Squatty Potty is still in position. The bowl of potpourri on top of me is nearly wilting and crying out for help. If the Internet could capture the smell of a photo at time of taking, everyone would be in for a real treat. So, is my presence really even needed here?

  I guess I’m just missing the point of taking a mirror picture in 2021. You have a front-facing camera. If you absolutely needed a full-body pic (I get it, I like to show off my full tank every once in a while too), you have a full-length mirror in your room. Your cute room, where there’s sexier background items like your unmade bed, your chaise lounge with all your dirty clothes thrown on it, your dying plants. It screams sex appeal! So what possessed you to take a photo in the little girls’ room where you have your grossest, most intimate moments? Like, you just popped a zit and I can still see the pus splattered on the mirror. Someone (God knows it wasn’t you) just flossed and all the food particles are in the sink. It’s gross, dude. And all of that is showing up on camera and now floating around the Internet thanks to your choices.

  And if you’re gonna include me in your photo, you didn’t have to post such a bad one of me. I know you look really cute and everything, and it’s your post so of course you chose the best one of you, but…seriously, I look like crap. For one, my seat is up, so everything is on display. If you zoom in really close, you can see a shit stain in my bowl. I guess that’s more of a reflection of you than me, but still. The bottom line is, you can see literally everything. Had I known that today was Picture Day in the bathroom, I would have gussied up a bit. In fact, I’ve had my eye on this very nice and tasteful beige carpet seat cover that’s 20% off featured in the May 1996 issues of the JCPenney’s catalogue. You should know this, considering I’ve had the page dog-eared for the last 24 years. But once people started reading the back of shampoo bottles and now their smartphones, they stopped caring about what “I” was interested in. And now you’re acting like we’re all buddy-buddy, posting pictures of us together? Honestly, I’m calling bullshit.

  I understand that we’re all looking for a form of escapism right now, and of course we’re looking back and getting nostalgic. Back in our peaks, you could whip out a peace sign and take a picture with the flash on from your digital camera in the same amount of time I could flush down the hardest, large morning log without any clogs. Shit, those were the days, weren’t they? Now, you’re using Snapchat filters to erase your acne scars rather than your acne, while I require the assistance of a plunger every other go. I guess what I’m trying to say is…this all just seems very 2007. A lot of things have changed. I mean, I have a bidet attachment now. We’ve all gotten a little older, haven’t you?

  …But, if I’m going to be in the picture anyway, at least angle it a little better so you can get a better view of my tank. Also, flip my toilet paper roll to go over and instead of under—I don’t know what monster is in charge of that. And clean your mirror, like I said your zit pus stain is clear as day and is covering up my flusher handle. On second thought, do you think I should actually keep my lid up, or keep it PG and put it down? I don’t want to look like I flush for just anyone. And don’t forget to blur out my bidet attachment, I don’t want its picture floating around on the internet for those perverts to use. Oh, and don’t forget to tag me!

  Hi, I’m the Toilet in the Back of Your Mirror Selfie—You Can See Me, Right? was originally published on Weekly Humorist

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: What the Boba Fett Disney+ Series Could Be About

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Boba Fett has long been one of the most iconic and controversial characters in Star Wars. Thanks to a killer character design that launched a thousand cosplays, Boba Fett has long outlived the importance of his role–and unceremonious apparent death–in the Original Trilogy. But as most Star Wars fans know, those films are rarely the be all and end all of a Star Wars character’s story.

The Legends continuity of Expanded Universe books and comics spent a lot of time exploring Boba Fett’s later adventures after Return of the Jedi, and while those stories are no longer canon, it’s clear that Disney has long wanted to follow suit on screen — originally with a live-action movie and now with The Mandalorian. But it seems the infamous bounty hunter’s return won’t just be contained to one popular Disney+ series.

Deadline reports that there may also be a Boba Fett spin-off series in the works for the streaming service. You might be wondering just what that might look like. Well, we have some theories.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

How Did Boba Get Out of that Sarlacc Pit? 

Ever since Boba Fett revealed himself in the final seconds of The Mandalorian‘s “The Passenger,” fans have been wondering just what he’s doing on the show. Played by Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett and the clone troopers in the Prequel Trilogy, Boba Fett only appears briefly, watching from a cliff as Din Djarin and the Child zoom through the Tatooine desert, a permanent scowl on his scarred face.

It’s impossible to tell from this scene what exactly his motivations are at this point. We know The Mandalorian takes place five years after Boba Fett took a dive into the sarlacc pit, which probably means he’s been roaming the desert for quite a while since his escape. Why hasn’t he gotten his armor back after all of this time? And how did he escape the Great Pit of Carkoon in the first place? The Legends continuity endeavored to answer the latter question and it could possibly hint at the way Disney will approach the subject.

Boba Fett first escaped the sarlacc pit in the 1991 comic book event Dark Empire by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy. It’s revealed in the book that the bounty hunter’s armor protected him from the beast’s digestive system long enough for him to fight his way out. In the 1996 short story collection Tales From Jabba’s Palace, J.D. Montgomery penned a story about that very same escape. “A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett“ is a far-out story that reveals the bounty hunter was able to establish a telepathic connection with the sarlacc’s consciousness and use concussion grenades to blow up the monster’s insides. Then the 1998 novel The Mandalorian Armor by K.W. Jeter explored the direct aftermath of his escape, revealing that it was rival bounty hunter Dengar who found the half-dead Boba Fett in the desert and nursed him back to health.

In the past, Disney has canonized elements of the Legends continuity when they fit the modern timeline (see: Grand Admiral Thrawn), so it’s not too far-fetched to say we could see a version of the aforementioned stories at the start of a Boba Fett spin-off. For example, we’d love to see the show’s creative team adapt Montgomery’s completely unconventional take on the sarlacc escape. Imagine this as your pilot episode: the fierce bounty hunter suspended from the walls of the sarlacc’s intestines while in constant telepathic conversation with the creature that is currently digesting him. Sounds pretty cool, interestingly gross, and a big statement for a first episode. Plus, you’d finally get to see Boba Fett actually blow stuff up, something he didn’t have time to do in the movies that made him famous.

Mrs. Boba Fett & Boba Fett Jr. 

Seeing as in the Original Trilogy he was a true loner who was only really connected to Han Solo, Jabba the Hutt, and Darth Vader, it seems like there aren’t many people left in the saga who’d even remember who Boba Fett was, let alone welcome him back. But if Legends is any indication, it’s possible Boba actually has a family to turn to.

Published in the Legends comic Star Wars Tales #7, the story “Outbid But Never Outgunned“ follows Boba on a mission. But when he comes across Kiffar bounty hunter Sintas Vel, a dual blaster-wielding badass that he simply calls “Sin,” the shape of the tale changes. In a big final act reveal, we learn that the pair were once romantically involved and even had a child together. 

Read more

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There’s no reason Boba’s family couldn’t be reimagined for the new spin-off series. Maybe we could learn about a family Boba sired and loved after he escaped the pit? This would explain why the bounty hunter hasn’t left Tatooine after all of these years. Or this could be a story about the bounty hunter attempting to reconnect with his loved ones after his escape. There’s plenty to draw from in the stories that followed Tales #7, including one of my favorite tidbits–that Sintas was frozen in carbonite for almost 40 years and forgotten in the belongings of a space criminal. She was eventually saved by her granddaughter Mirta Gev decades after being imprisoned, so basically there are generations of incredible Fett women who could offer up a new perspective on this line of bounty hunters. 

Could Fett be looking for his family in the spin-off series? Maybe that’s what has put him on the path of Din Djarin? Or could Din’s hunt for fellow Mandalorians lead him to Sintas Vel or perhaps her daughter with Boba, Ailyn? Introducing Boba’s daughter would be a really cool twist, and while it’s unlikely we’ll see the characters directly adapted, many current Star Wars characters are heavily inspired by their Legends counterparts. We only need to look at how similar Ben Solo is to Jacen Solo, Han and Leia’s son in the old continuity, to see how easily Disney could do the same with Boba’s story. 

To the Sand or to the Stars? 

The lone wolf nature of the bounty hunter life means that Boba’s story will likely pick up at least some of the Western and Samurai-inspired storytelling we’ve seen done so well in The Mandalorian. After all, these influences are especially connected to Boba’s origin: George Lucas based the anti-hero on Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name. But if we look at the Legends stories in which Boba featured heavily, there’s also another rather exciting stylistic route that the series could go. 

Many of these Legends stories leaned into the sci-fi space operas–like Dune–that inspired the films. Space royalty, glittering intergalactic cities, intricate politics; basically that good pulpy science fantasy that would set the tone of a Boba show apart from The Mandalorian. With Mando already doing a great job at a Lone Wolf and Cub-inspired Samurai Western, maybe Boba Fett will be featured in more of a pure sci-fi adventure filled with nefarious alien princes, strange creatures, and exotic locales. 

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The other option is of course to focus on Boba’s career. The Mandalorian is very much a story about a reluctant hero and his beautiful adopted alien son going on a journey of self-discovery, which means there’s still space (heh heh) for a more procedural look at bounty hunting. Star Wars has a long tradition of playing with genre and tone, so it’s possible the spinoff will focus on the assassin/spy element of Boba’s character. A crime or target of the week would be a simple way to give fans the badass Boba Fett that they’ve always wanted to see on the screen. 

Of course, I still dream of an animated Boba Fett series, leaning into the Moebius-inspired 2D aesthetic of his first appearance in the much maligned Star Wars Holiday Special. For now, though, whichever route the creative team takes, it’s clear fans are thirsty for a proper Boba-centric story, especially one that will stay in canon for the foreseeable future.

The post Star Wars: What the Boba Fett Disney+ Series Could Be About appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Joe Biden currently has a robust lead in polls. If the election were held today, he might even win in a landslide, carrying not only traditional swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania but potentially adding new states such as Georgia and Texas to the Democratic coalition.

But the election is not being held today. While the polls have been stable so far this year, it’s still only August. The debates and the conventions have yet to occur. Biden only named his running mate yesterday. And the campaign is being conducted amidst a pandemic the likes of which the United States has not seen in more than 100 years, which is also causing an unprecedented and volatile economy.

Nor has it been that uncommon, historically, for polls to shift fairly radically from mid-August until Election Day. Furthermore, there are some reasons to think the election will tighten, and President Trump is likely to have an advantage in a close election because of the Electoral College.

That, in a nutshell, is why the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecast, which we launched today, still has Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, despite his current deficit in the polls. This is considerably higher than some other forecasts, which put Trump’s chances at around 10 percent. Biden’s chances are 71 percent in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, conversely.14

If these numbers give you a sense of deja vu, it may be because they’re very similar to our final forecast in 2016 … when Trump also had a 29 percent chance of winning! (And Hillary Clinton had a 71 percent chance.) So if you’re not taking a 29 percent chance as a serious possibility, I’m not sure there’s much we can say at this point, although there’s a Zoom poker game that I’d be happy to invite you to.

One last parallel to 2016 — when some models gave Clinton as high as a 99 percent chance of winning — is that FiveThirtyEight’s forecast tends to be more conservative than others. (For a more complete description of our model, including how it is handling some complications related to COVID-19, please see our methodology guide.)

With that said, one shouldn’t get too carried away with the comparisons to four years ago. In 2016, the reason Trump had a pretty decent chance in our final forecast was mostly just because the polls were fairly close (despite the media narrative to the contrary), close enough that even a modest-sized polling error in the right group of states could be enough to give Trump a victory in the Electoral College.

The uncertainty in our current 2020 forecast, conversely, stems mostly from the fact that there’s still a long way to go until the election. Take what happens if we lie to our model and tell it that the election is going to be held today. It spits out that Biden has a 93 percent chance of winning. In other words, a Trump victory would require a much bigger polling error than what we saw in 2016.

Let’s briefly expand on the points I made above.

Biden’s lead is pretty impressive

In this article — partly as a corrective against what I see as overconfident assessments elsewhere — I’m mostly focused on the reasons why Trump’s chances are higher than they might appear. But we should be clear: Trump’s current position in the polls is poor.

Biden is currently ahead in our polling averages in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio and in the second congressional district in Nebraska — all places that Clinton lost in 2016. If he won those states (and held the other states Clinton won), that would be enough to give him 352 electoral votes. He’s also within roughly 1 percentage point of Trump in Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Maine’s second congressional district. If he won those, too, he’d be up to a whopping 412 electoral votes.

It’s important to remember that the uncertainty in our forecast runs in both directions. There’s the chance that Trump could come back — but there’s also the chance that things could get really out of hand for him. Our model thinks there’s a 19 percent chance that Biden will win Alaska, for example, and a 13 percent chance that he will win South Carolina. The model also gives Biden a 30 percent chance of a double-digit win in the popular vote, which would be the first time that happened since 1984.

But there are downside scenarios for Biden.

Polls often change substantially between now and November

Every day, my colleague Nathaniel Rakich tweets out a list of what our national polling average would have looked like at this stage in past campaigns. And it can be a pretty wild ride. Here is Tuesday’s version, for instance.

The @FiveThirtyEight nat'l polling average with 84 days until E-Day:

2020: Biden+8.3 2016: Clinton+6.6 2012: Obama+0.5 2008: Obama+2.6 2004: Kerry+2.5 2000: Bush+10.0 1996: Clinton+11.3 1992: Clinton+20.1 1988: Dukakis+5.6 1984: Reagan+16.0 1980: Reagan+22.1 1976: Carter+26.6

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) August 11, 2020

Three of the candidates leading in national polls at this point — Michael Dukakis in 1988, George W. Bush in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004 — did not actually win the popular vote. Bush blew a 10-point lead, in fact, which is larger than Biden’s current advantage. (Luckily for Bush, he won the Electoral College.) In other cases, the polls at this point “called” the winner correctly, but the margins were way off. Jimmy Carter eventually beat Gerald Ford by just 2.1 percentage points — not the 26.6-point lead he had at this point in the campaign. Bill Clinton won by 5.6 points — not 20.1 points. And Barack Obama won a considerably more commanding victory in 2008 than polls at this point projected.

Now, there are some mitigating factors here. Some of these polls were taken at the height of a candidate’s convention bounce, although there are ways to try to correct for those. And in general, polls have become less volatile over time, probably because increased polarization means there are fewer swing voters than there once were. The polls have been particularly stable so far this year, in fact.

But while there are some factors that reduce uncertainty, there are other factors that increase it.

COVID-19 is a big reason to avoid feeling overly confident about the outcome

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 150,000 fatalities and has upended pretty much every American’s life, and Trump’s approval ratings for his handling of it have been awful.

But to the extent this is an election about COVID-19, there’s the possibility that the situation could improve between now and November. Cases have recently begun to come down after an early-summer spike, and recent economic data has shown improvement there, too. There’s also the possibility that a vaccine could be approved — or rushed out — by November, though it’s highly unlikely it could be widely distributed by then.

How to account for this? No, we aren’t building a COVID-19 projection model. (It’s really hard.) But we have built an “uncertainty index” that essentially governs the margin of error in our forecast. It contains eight components, two of which are very high because of COVID-19. Specifically, these are the high volatility in recent economic data, and the volume of major news events, as measured by the number of full-width New York Times headlines. There’s more news this year — not just about COVID-19, but the protests around police brutality, Trump’s impeachment earlier this year, etc. — than in any recent election campaign.

We also expect turnout to be harder to predict this year based on primary elections held during the pandemic that had highly variable turnout — which, in turn, could lead to more polling error. So even if the polls don’t change that much between now and November, that could create some additional uncertainty on Election Day. See the methodology guide for more on how we handle COVID-19.

But the other components of the uncertainty index are low, pointing toward a stable campaign. For instance, polarization is high, poll movement so far has been limited, and there aren’t that many undecided voters; the index accounts for all of those things.

In fact, the uncertainty index points toward the overall uncertainty going into November being about average relative to past presidential campaigns. So our model isn’t necessarily saying that things are going to get crazy, although they could. But it’s also saying you shouldn’t necessarily expect highly stable campaigns like 2012 to be the new normal in the time of COVID-19. (And keep in mind that 2016 was a pretty volatile campaign, too, even without COVID-19.) Empirically, the polls can move quite a bit from August to November, more than you might expect intuitively!

There are some sources of uncertainty that the model doesn’t account for, however. We assume that there are reasonable efforts to allow eligible citizens to vote and to count all legal ballots, and that electors are awarded to the popular-vote winner in each state. The model also does not account for the possibility of extraconstitutional shenanigans by Trump or by anyone else, such as trying to prevent mail ballots from being counted.

It’s hard to know what the “fundamentals” say

I’ve long been critical of models that use economic “fundamentals” to try to predict election results, mostly because — although they claim to be highly precise — they haven’t actually been very good at predicting the outcome of an election where they don’t already know the results.

And those models are especially likely to have problems this year because of highly variable economic data. One model based on second quarter GDP projects Trump to win -453 (negative 453!) electoral votes, for example. But if you built a model based on third-quarter GDP, which is expected to be highly positive, it might predict a Trump landslide.

This isn’t to say that we don’t employ a fundamentals forecast of our own. We do, but it’s much less confident than others, and it receives relatively little weight in the overall forecast. It also isn’t currently that bad for Trump. In fact, it essentially predicts the popular vote to be roughly tied. Why?

Although three of the economic factors we use in the model (jobs, spending, manufacturing) have been terrible, a fourth component (income) has been very strong because of government subsidies in the form of the CARES Act, though that could change if stimulus payments lapse. The fifth and sixth components, inflation and the stock market, have also been reasonably favorable.

Most of the variables that declined are now improving, and are expected to continue to improve. (Our model projects what the economy will look like by November rather than relying on current data.)

High polarization potentially blunts the impact of a poor economy.

Trump is an elected incumbent, and elected incumbents are usually favored for reelection.

We extended our analysis back to elections since 1880 (!) to expand the sample size, and found the relationship between the economy and the election likely isn’t as strong as other models claim, anyway.

In other words, our forecast thinks it’s far from obvious that the economy will doom Trump, especially if he can tell a story of recovery by November. Indeed, Trump’s approval ratings on the economy are still fairly good, so our model seems to be doing a reasonably good job of capturing how voters actually feel about the economy.

Another way to look at it is that our model is just saying that, in a highly polarized environment, the race is more likely than not to tighten in the stretch run. Empirically, large leads like the one Biden has now tend to dissipate to some degree by Election Day. And if the race does tighten…

Trump appears to have an Electoral College advantage again

Our model says there’s an 81 percent chance that Biden wins the popular vote — compared to his 71 percent chance in the Electoral College. That means there’s about a 10 percent chance that Trump again wins the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. (Conversely, the model puts the chance that Biden wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote at only around 1 in 750.)

That reflects the fact that the tipping-point state — the state that would provide the decisive 270th electoral vote — is somewhat to the right of the national popular vote. More specifically, our projection as of Tuesday had Biden winning the popular vote by 6.3 percentage points nationally, but winning the tipping-point state, Wisconsin, by a smaller margin, 4.5 percentage points:

The Electoral College could once again help Trump

Forecasted vote margin in battleground states and lean relative to the nation, from FiveThirtyEight’s presidential forecast as of Aug. 11

State forecasted vote margin Lean relative to nation New Mexico D+11.8 D+5.5 Virginia D+10.6 D+4.3 Colorado D+9.2 D+2.9 Maine statwide D+8.2 D+1.9 Michigan D+6.9 D+0.6 New Hampshire D+6.4 D+0.1 National D+6.3 EVEN Nevada D+6.2 R+0.1 Minnesota D+4.7 R+1.6 Pennsylvania D+4.7 R+1.6 Wisconsin* D+4.5 R+1.8 Florida D+3.2 R+3.1 Nebraska 2nd District D+0.9 R+5.4 Arizona D+0.8 R+5.5 North Carolina D+0.3 R+6.0 Ohio R+1.0 R+7.3 Georgia R+2.8 R+9.1 Maine 2nd District R+3.9 R+10.2 Iowa R+4.3 R+10.6 Texas R+4.4 R+10.7

* Wisconsin is the tipping-point state as of Aug. 11.

That 1.8-point gap is actually smaller than what Clinton experienced in 2016, when there was about a 3-point gap between her losing margin in Wisconsin (which was also the tipping-point state in 2016) and her winning margin in the national popular vote. This analysis is a simplification, too. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the outlook, so the tipping-point state could easily turn out to be Florida or Pennsylvania or something more unexpected like North Carolina.

Still, as a rough rule-of-thumb, perhaps you can subtract 2 points from Biden’s current lead in national polls to get a sense for what his standing in the tipping point states looks like. Add it all up, and you can start to see why the model is being fairly cautious. Biden’s current roughly 8-point lead in national polls is really more like a 6-point lead in the tipping point states. And 6-point leads in August are historically not very safe. That margin is perhaps more likely than not to tighten and at the very least, there’s a fair amount of uncertainty about what COVID-19 and the rest the world will look like by November.

Biden is in a reasonably strong position: Having a 70-ish percent chance of beating an incumbent in early August before any conventions or debates is far better than the position that most challengers find themselves in. And his chances will improve in our model if he maintains his current lead. But for the time being, the data does not justify substantially more confidence than that.

[prorevenge]

High School Teacher bullied my dad, also bullied me, and in response, we nuke her.

XXL story, TL;DR at the end.

The town where this happened is a small one, and the school that I went to is a 70 year old school. My granddad and my dad are also alumni of this school. Let me just start off by saying this that the alumni of this school are really successful, and the school has had a long history of being very charitable and also offer amazing retirement benefits to teachers depending on how long they’ve worked here. My great granddad donated some of his property to the school when it was being constructed, and he was an advisor and a part of the school board in his time. The school was an all boys school up to 1996, when they had their first Co-Ed class, and is a full Co-Ed now. The school also has all classes, from kindergarten to high school, split in two buildings, the first one houses Kindergarten to Fifth grade, and the other has the classrooms for Sixth grade to Twelfth grade.

Part 1: Teacher vs Dad - The Incident

Said teacher (we’re gonna call her MD) was my dad’s Math teacher when he started High School. She was a young woman just finishing her teaching degree, and was a masters in math and Chemistry. At that point, she was the most qualified teacher the school had.

Unfortunately, MD was also a nasty person. She walked into the class and the students were expected to be sitting in ‘ready mode’ - backs straight, legs together, and hands on the laps, with only the needed textbook and a pencil to take notes on the margins. The class was expected to greet her with a ‘Good Morning/Afternoon’ when she walked in, and she assigned tons of weekend homework. She would simply stop teaching for the entire hour long class if one person spoke without having asked to speak. You couldn’t drink water without her permission, couldn’t go to the restroom unless she finally saw your raised hand and asked you to speak.

There were multiple cases of people complaining against that, but with her being the most qualified teacher there, the school board didn’t take action. Instead, they supported her by saying that this would help discipline the students.

But this is not even the beginning of it. Her exams were incredibly hard, and with the classes being full of teenage boys, they would talk and even one of them doing so would cause her to stop teaching, and not teach until the next class. She would then lecture on a different topic, completely skipping that part of Chemistry. Suffice to say, before the finals, the entire class was in a panicked state, trying to self study enough to at least pass the class.

My dad ended up getting 41%. Our education system said you failed the class if you had under 40%, so he was relieved that he passed. But when he went through his answer sheet, my dad noticed that his totaling was incorrect, and that he in fact had a 49 on that test. He raised his hand, and after about 5 minutes or so of him just sitting in his seat, calmly, with his hand raised, he was called on and MD asked what the problem was.

Dad told her that there was a totaling mistake in the final, and that he actually had a 49. This somehow offended her. Instead of calling him forth and checking his paper, MD decided that it was simply impossible for her, a Masters in Math, to make a mistake in something as simple as addition. She waved him off, and my dad was shocked. But she just calmly turned to the next person with a question.

My dad, on the other hand was not happy. He walked up from his seat, which was basically considered a crime in her class, and put the paper on MD’s desk, and started totaling his points loudly. MD incredulously watched him do that, and was at a loss for words. Though when he was done totaling, you could see her face was flushed and she was furious. She looked furiously from the paper to my dad, and then back to the paper, and the suddenly, a cruel smile appeared on her face.

MD: “Oh okay, I see the mistake. But that is no excuse for this behavior. This awards a subtraction of ten points from your final.”

The class that was amazed at the first sentence went back to having grim looks. And my dad stood there, jaw dropped, that he now had 39 points, and had failed this class.

Instead of responding and making this situation worse, he simply took his final, packed his backpack and left the classroom.

He went and spoke to his granddad, who was on the school board. But he said he couldn’t do anything since grades were completely in the hands of the teacher concerned. My dad took his loss, and decided that revenge was not worth the trouble, and switched classes. He dropped Chem and took up Econ, and that was the last interaction he ever had with this teacher.

Part 2: Teacher vs My Brother and I

My younger brother(B) is two years younger to me, and so, when I was in freshman year, starting high school, my younger brother was in seventh grade. We had an auditorium under construction, and the library was newly renovated, so a teacher was assigned to chaperone the younger class students at the library. My younger brother’s class, unfortunately had MD as their chaperone. My dad had specifically instructed me to be very careful around MD, and I was on the lookout, but my younger brother had no idea just who he was dealing with.

Before summer, our library allows students to take any two books of their choice, for the break. So, when my brother walked past MD to the librarian, and was stopped by MD, he was really confused. He had an Enid Blyton book and a copy of Backyard Science Experiments. Both my younger brother and I are really good at science related topics, and he had been waiting for summer break to do some cool science experiments at home with me.

MD: “Wait a minute, what book do you have there, B?’

B: “A story book and a Backyard Science Book ma’am.”

MD: “What are you going to do with that Backyard Science book! (Turning to the other library staff) I taught his father. No brains in there. You would have no idea what to do with this book. Leave it for someone who does.”

And with that, she snatched the book from his hands, and walked away, the library staff giving awkward laughs behind her.

When he came looking for me, crying, I was furious. I was a really popular guy at school. I won quizzes and debates, and represented the school in national competitions. My friends and I literally had an entire showcase of trophies at school, with our names embossed on it, and most teachers loved us. Man, the Vice Principal of the school and our group were on first name basis! (He chaperoned us on all the competitions we represented the school in).

But when he told me what had happened, I was dumbfounded. I had no idea how to react, but for the moment, I went to the library and got another copy of the Backyard Science book to console my brother. But then, we were out for summer vacation, and I didn’t think too much of it.

<Side note: In the summer, we attended a science summit, and my school friends and I won prizes for having the most efficient hydraulic-gear based pulley system, and the second fastest chemical fuel race boat. This was before I ever took a high school Chemistry or Physics course. This was announced in the school assembly the first day after summer break.>

When we came back for fall, I had a chem class with MD, the first day of school. This was also right after the assembly, where my group was given the award. So we go to the Chem lab, and MD is on the Lab Instructors desk setting up an experiment designed to liberate hydrochloric acid fumes in a gas flask. Some moments pass by, and we could see that some mistake had been done, and there was no reaction in the mixture (turns out the Zinc granules were impure and rusted). But MD somehow got the idea that turning on the Bunsen burner on full blast would help the experiment. After collecting the gas for about 3 minutes, which is 2 and a half minutes too long, since hydrochloric acid fumes are toxic if inhaled, she is satisfied. She then pulls up the flask to show the class how we do experiments.

Cherry on the icing, is when she opens the flask and brings it uncomfortably close to the girl beside me.

MD: “Does it smell pungent?”

The girl awkwardly smells it and jerks away. To someone who has no clue, that would be a plausible confirmation, but I knew that it was complete horse sh*t. I could see that the girl knew about pungent fumes and cringed away on reflex, and not because it was actually pungent.

I don’t know why I did it, but at that moment, I snorted. Loudly.

MD instantly zooms in on me. Walking toward me with her face contorting into an ugly expression, she goes, “something funny you’d care to share with us?’

I knew I messed up. But I was also angry. This person in front of me had bullied my younger brother, and my dad. I remembered that, and suddenly, all my verbal censors were shut down.

Me: “You and I both know that she didn’t smell anything pungent. That experiment you just did was a failure.”

MD: “Oh! You think you know more than me? (Turning to class) He knows more than me. You know what, I’ll step down. Why don’t you teach the class professor NicholasFiend.”

Me: “Oh absolutely.” To the absolute shock of everyone watching, I walk up to the podium, and while maintaining eye contact with MD, “First thing to remember class! Turn to experiment 1 of your lab textbook. Read the warnings. The gas is pungent, and poiso...”

MD: “HOW DARE YOU! Has no one taught you manners! This is no roadside shack, and you would do well to remember that. Else you’re gonna have a couple broken bones.” (This was in a different language, but if you want the exact translations, it was, ‘I’ll break your limbs and feed them to you’)

She is absolutely furious. Grabs me by the hand and proceeds to drag me to the Principal’s office. On the way there, we cross the Vice Principal’s office, and he sees MD dragging me away, and runs out .

VP: “What is going on here!”

Before I can say anything, MD starts ranting to him about how disrespectful and unacceptable my class behavior is, and is heaving by the end of her spiel. The VP gives me a searching look, and then responds with a, “Go back to class MD, I’ll deal with him.”

We head back to his office, and he offers me a seat, and a glass of water.

VP: “What actually happened in class, NicholasFiend?” He asks with a sigh.

I tell him exactly what happened. Once he hears my side of the story, he looks at me incredulously asks me if I really went to the podium and started lecturing the class.

I look up, and see the gobsmacked look on the VP’s normally reserved face. (Imagine someone who looks like a male Minerva McGonagall being completely shocked) I couldn’t stop myself. It started with a snigger, which turned into full blown laughter. I laughed till my stomach hurt and my eyes teared up. To my surprise, VP was also smiling widely at that.

He shook his head, and that reserved expression was back.

VP: “I know that what happened there had you concerned for class safety but that is no reason for such disruptive behavior. Aside from that, I’m personally going to investigate what happened in that class, and if MD is found to be intentionally forcing students to inhale harmful chemicals, she will be sacked immediately. Oh and you’re supposed to hand over a written apology to MD about this behavior. Now get moving.”

I sighed, and headed back to class. And I really thought that I had ended MD’s career.

Oh how wrong I was. She changed the story so it looked like she had purposely done the experiment wrong and was about to reprimand that girl for inhaling what could have been a harmful chemical. MD pulled one on me and had me look like I was just an insolent child who thought that he knew everything be reading a chapter of the book. And here, I stopped myself. This event was me just going in head on with the teacher who had been in the school for longer than 35 years.

Part 3: Pro Revenge Mode

Now I knew that to help my brother, I needed to get rid of her. My dad knew about what happened in school, and he wanted me to not engage MD. He said it was not worth it. But by now I was in the game. She had played her card. It was my turn now. I don’t know what made it so that she had such a problem with my dad and my younger brother. They were quiet and hard working students. I felt she had something against our family, and I was convinced that my younger brother would have to deal with the problem if I somehow messed up and got expelled or made a worse enemy out of MD.

This was war, and I had a new plan. I started to act really sheepish around her, and made it a point to stay back after class, and ask her questions in the most polite way possible. I was the kid who was guilty of not understanding the plans of elders. I portrayed myself as an amazing student who MD had succeeded in humbling. I slowly, but surely made my way into the category best described by the term ‘boot licker’. It hurt me inside to do it, but what I had planned, if this went well made me light headed with anticipation. I was in it to win it. I conceded defeat in a fight to win the war.

Two years later, I am in Junior year. My younger brother just started high school, and he was taking the Chem class with MD. I was the highest scorer in Chem, and was a pet to MD. She had started to like the NicholasFiend I had portrayed, and made me the Lab Assistant for that year. Two of my best friends knew what I had planned. Everyone else in class hated me for being the teachers’ pet and getting straight A’s when the next highest grade was a B-. Everything was going according to plan.

On the first day of class, I replaced her stool (one of the three legged ones) with a broken stool. This was supposed to be the first in a series of pranks that would hit her that day. She came to class and went to take her seat, and boy she fell.

Well, she somehow hit her hand on the wall and cried out. Yup that must have hurt. But she was definitely overweight. And it couldn’t be traced back to me. I smiled on the inside, as I rushed to her and helped her back up. I ran and fetched her another chair, while inside, the freshmen were trying their best not to laugh. When I got back from the room that had extra stools, I walked in to the sight of her screaming like a banshee. But what got me furious was that she was screaming at my younger brother.

Apparently, she had said something like, “Stupid stools and stupid Lab Assistant fools.” To which my brother had responded with, “It’s not my brothers’ fault you’re too heavy for the stool.” Though I loved him for it, he really needed to learn where to come to my aid. But then, I didn’t do much, and just replaced the chair silently, while silently trying to communicate to my brother to calm down.

Nothing else of concern happened that day, till the time when school was over, and the teachers were heading back. Stage 2 was in motion. We heard a loud bang, and immediately, the large crowd of students nearby all headed towards the teachers’ car parking lot.

We saw MD’s car smoking and her exhaust blown right off. Keep in mind it was an older car, and we had decided to block off the exhaust with clay, that had hardened over the course of six hours on a sunny day. Well, that car had to be towed, and she went home with some other students that day.

She didn’t show up to school for 2 days after that, but she did show up to school on the third day, which was a half school day, because our country celebrates Teachers day. It is tradition that students go to their teachers, current and old, and wish them the best, give them cards, gifts, etc. This was by far the most ambitious prank pulled in the school that I know of. The two days she was absent, we went around telling people to not visit her on children’s day. It helped a lot that my friends and I were some of the most popular people in school, and with the other ‘cool guys and girls’ agreeing to that, we spread the word and got confirmation that no one from the entire class in my year was going to go to her to wish her on Teachers’ day.

But the what actually happened was something no one could have expected. I guess it could have been because we acted so fanatical about it, that our classmates spread the word to all their friends and no one, not a single person in High School, went to her on Teachers’ day.

It was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment I have ever had. She had made this situation for herself. By being the nastiest person I’ve ever seen, it was no surprise that people were fine with doing this to her.

For the first time in 70 years, in our school, a teacher had not had a single well wisher on Teachers day.

Well things are never perfect, and as it so happened, word of what had conspired got to her. The next day, I had just set up the lab. The freshmen were getting settled in, and here comes MD, anger radiating from her in waves. She walks up to me, and I get the hardest slap I have ever gotten in my life, right across my face.

I’d hate to admit it, but that left a blue mark on my cheek, and my nose and lip bleeding. My younger brother, who saw that happening ran towards me, but my shock slowly subsided and I smiled a bloody smile that probably scared him. I told him to go get the Vice Principal.

Twenty minutes later, I was in the school emergency room, with a nurse wiping my lip and me holding a cloth to my nose. The Vice Principal comes in with the Principal and two cops in tow, and they inform me that my parents have been informed, and ask me if I would like to talk about it now or when my parents are here.

I say that I can answer their questions as soon as my lip is bandaged.

So I tell them about the cases of bullying against my brother and I, and also tell them that she is a really incompetent teacher. I tell the principal that he could check the school average in science subjects. And sure as I guessed, in the average scores in the National Exams, we had Physics and Biology come in at 92 and 90, with Chemistry at a surprising 79. Topping that off with assault charges, and she lost her license to teach, two years before she retired, and with that, lost amazing retirement benefits that the school offered. Her car also had no insurance. Huh.

That is not all though. One could ask what would be worse? Well, consider this. The fall she had off the stool, had her go to the hospital for an X-ray of her wrist and hip, that she suspected might have broken. Well, the wrist sure had a hairline fracture. The hip was fine. But well, the X-ray showed another thing.

I don’t think it is normal for anyone to laugh when someone is diagnosed with Stage III cancer. But I did.

Also, I later met with her only living family member. Her nephew, who had long cut all contact with her, but had been contacted by the police and the hospital. That’s where I found out the truth. Well I could never have guessed what I found out there. MD’s mom was my great granddad’s niece. Through my great granddad’s younger brother, who had stolen money from the family, and tried to kill my great granddad. Well, he was disowned. Good sh*t. And no one knew this entire time! Well, not that anyone would care. Happy that the nasty woman is out of our lives. For good this time. Apparently she died last year, with no one by her side.

TL;DR: Nasty teacher failed my dad for no reason. When my brother and I were in school, he got bullied by her. I made her regret it. Got her teaching license revoked, retirement benefits taken, destroyed her car, fractured her wrist, and she ended up getting diagnosed with cancer. Turned out to be a family member from a line disowned long ago for attempted murder, and she died alone.

(source) story by (/u/NicholasFiend)

[thinkingaboutyoungroyals]

The Perfect Moment (Chapter 2)

Summary: When Cyrus is assigned to create a modern re-telling of “Romeo and Juliet” for English class, he decides to produce a movie. His stars, however, may pose some trouble. Will he finish his movie on time?

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Thank you!

Chapter 1

The last bell rung, signaling the end of the day. Students filed out of their classrooms and to their lockers, grabbing their things, and heading out for the day. Soon, only a few remained for their after-school activities and clubs.

The building was practically empty when Cyrus made his way to the school gym, arms full with two camera bags.

“Thank you again for helping me out,” he said to the boy walking beside him.

T.J. flashed him a smile, not even breaking a sweat as he carried the two heavy tripod bags on each of his shoulders.

“No problem, Underdog. I’m happy to help.”

“So, Buffy said she’s already gathered her team at the gym,” Cyrus continued.

“My boys are there, too. They’re helping set up the way your instructions said.”

Cyrus beamed. “You’re a lifesaver!”

T.J. shrugged. “I try.”

They walked in comfortable silence for a moment.

Cyrus had brought his own cameras from home and the Film Club had kindly allowed him to borrow some spare tripods. But they were too heavy so he had initially enlisted help from Buffy. To his surprise, it was T.J. who showed up outside the Film Club’s room. Apparently, Buffy was busy directing everyone to set up in the gym, where they were filming the first scene, so he figured he would go and help Cyrus with the equipment.

“So… how did you come up with this thing?” T.J. suddenly asked. “Two basketball rivals turned lovers? Doesn’t sound like something you would write.”

Cyrus chuckled and shrugged. “Believe me, it wasn’t easy. I had a lot of ideas but most were sadly not realistic in terms of getting it done on time. So, I just thought about other modern interpretations. Like ‘West Side Story’ and the 1996 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Gosh, he’s so handsome,” he couldn’t help but add.  

Beside him, T.J. chuckled. “I guess if you’re into the blonde pretty boy types. Hey, that sounds like me!”

He wiggled his eyebrows at him, making Cyrus nudge him playfully with an elbow.

“You’re so weird!” he exclaimed, trying to control his ensuing blush.

“Just stating facts, Underdog.”

They had known each other for almost a year now and Cyrus had gotten used to T.J.’s teasing that was sometimes borderline flirting. Cyrus only had one other male friend and that was Jonah. Sure, he and Jonah often affectionately teased each other, but T.J. took his to a whole different level. Cyrus wasn't sure if that was how actual male friends acted around each other, but he didn't mind. He liked T.J. (In more ways than just platonic, but he chose to not dwell too much on his feelings this time, lest he got hurt again. That was just the reality for him.)

Cyrus shook his head. “Anyway, moving on. I came up with the idea when I saw the boys’ basketball team banner next to the girls’. You and Buffy seriously need to tone down on the competition. It shows, you know.”

T.J. grinned. “My poster was that cool, huh? I had to up my game because Driscoll made hers so huge last time that you couldn’t even see ours!”

“And this is why you and Buffy are perfect for the roles!”

At that, T.J. cutely wrinkled his nose. “Except for the love part.” He shuddered, exaggeratedly.

Cyrus shook his head again, amused.

They continued on their way to the gym, filling the silence with small talk about their day. When they arrived, they were greeted with the hustle and bustle of preparations for the shoot.

Andi was on the bleachers, helping a few of Buffy’s teammates with their makeup. Buffy was with Jonah, practicing her lines. Some of T.J.’s teammates were idling around, either reading the script or practicing their acting. All of them were already dressed in their team uniforms, like Cyrus requested.

He was impressed with the professionalism. Either they really loved the idea of being in a movie or getting ten bucks was quite enticing. No matter the reason, he had a lot of work to do!

First, with T.J.’s help, he set up the cameras. One was for a wide shot and the second for close-ups. Ideally, they would use multiple cameras from various angles but he had to work with what he could with the limited time and equipment. Jonah had worked the camera for him before, so he wasn’t too worried, but just in case, he would put him in charge of wide shots and Cyrus himself would take care of close-ups.

Then, he sent T.J. off to change into his uniform before approaching Buffy to quickly go over the script with her again. Then, he grabbed Jonah, explaining what he needed him to do (mostly just stand there by the camera and make sure it was recording). Then, he spoke to the two students who volunteered to play the teams’ Captains and go over their scenes (it was their chance to “boss” their actual Captains around for a few scenes, so they were quite appealing roles).

When T.J. came back, all dressed and ready, Cyrus called to gather everyone.

“First, I just want to say thank you to all of you who came out to help me today,” he began, offering them all smiles. “I’m sure the ten bucks I offered had something to do with your participation, but I appreciate it nonetheless.”

He successfully made them laugh for a beat or two.

Satisfied, he continued, “Second, I’ve given everyone a copy of the script but things may still change in the next couple of days so I’ll keep everyone updated on the Facebook group but I’m hoping I wouldn’t have to change anything major. I’ve scheduled most of everyone’s scenes, except for a couple of T.J. and Buffy’s, to be after school, but if you can’t make it, please let me know in advance, my number is on the script. And last, if I get an A on this project, I’ll treat everyone to baby taters and milkshakes at The Spoon!”

At that, everyone let out a cheer. It was a last-minute addition, but Cyrus figured it was best to get them all motivated to help him make this his best project ever!

After the talk, he gave them five minutes to go over the script again and prepare for the scene.

They all scattered. T.J. led his team to one side of the gym, probably for a pep talk, and Buffy did the same for hers.

Meanwhile, Cyrus stood by the cameras, giving himself a moment to take several deep breaths. He was excited and nervous at the same time and his anxiety was slowly creeping in.

“I can do this,” he whispered to himself, trying to calm his anxious heart. “I got this.”

“Hey.”

He turned to see Andi walking up to him, smile on her face.

“I finished with the girls’ makeup and I made sure all the basketballs have air,” she said to him.

“Thank you,” he replied, gratefully.

She scrunched her brows. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. First day filming jitters and all.” He swallowed. “I haven’t made anything in a long time and… I guess I’m a little nervous.”

His pixie-haired friend stepped forward and offered him a hug. “Everything will be okay,” she calmly reassured him. “Besides, it’s Buffy and T.J. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Don’t say that! You’ll jinx it!”

Nothing good ever comes out of “What’s the worst that can happen?”!

“Oh. Sorry.” She looked genuinely apologetic but patted his shoulder, nonetheless. “Don’t worry too much, okay? Just do what you gotta do. You got this.”

The talk helped as Cyrus felt his heart calm down a bit. After one last comforting hug, Andi left him to check on Buffy.

Five minutes passed in a blur and soon, he was calling for quiet on the set.

In this first scene, the boys’ and girls’ basketball teams booked the gym for practice at the same time. The Captains have a brief altercation, fighting for use of the place until Quinn (played by the lovely Buffy) suggests sharing the gym. This pique the interest of Logan (played by the handsome T.J.), who agrees. The two teams decide to split the gym in half, boys on one side and girls on the other.

Shooting this scene went remarkably well. The two students playing the Captains only messed up their lines twice, but Cyrus allowed the slight deviation from the script. And he needed shots of them just playing so not much acting was involved there. (And if Cyrus took a couple of extra close-up shots of T.J. shooting basket after basket, well, that was just for B-roll purposes.)

After that, it was time to film the scene where Logan and Quinn officially talk for the first time and fall in love at first sight but are cruelly torn apart by their respective Captains.

Cyrus carefully watched his camera, zooming in on the basketball that bounced by Buffy’s feet. He took a quick glance at Jonah’s camera, making sure his friend was zooming in on the shot of Buffy picking up the basketball and walking towards the center of the gym where T.J. waited by the line that split the court.

“Here,” she said, handing T.J. the ball.

T.J. took it. “Thanks.”

“Cut!” Cyrus called out.

The two athletes turned to him.

“T.J., you were supposed to put your hand over hers when she gives you the ball!”

“Oh. Right. Sorry."

Cyrus offered him a smile. “It’s okay! Let’s do it one more time from the walk!”

They re-did the scene.

Buffy walked up to T.J. with the ball and handed it over. T.J. placed his hands over hers…and Buffy flinched and dropped the ball.

“Cut! Buffy, what was that?”

“His hands are cold!” she complained.

“Well, excuse me for being a human being!” T.J. retorted.

Oh, god, Cyrus was starting to get a headache. “Guys, please! One more time!”

They shot the scene a third time.

T.J. ended up laughing out loud when Buffy made a face at their hands touching.

Sighing, Cyrus yelled “Cut! Everyone, take five!”

He paused his camera before walking up to his two lead actors.

“Guys, you’re supposed to fall in love at first sight in this scene,” he explained, as calmly as he could.

“Sorry, but I can’t act like I’m in love with his face when I don’t like his face,” Buffy said.

“Ditto,” T.J. agreed.

Cyrus sighed. “Here. Let me show you.” He gestured for Buffy to move so he could stand in her place and took the ball from T.J. “So, Buffy, you hand him the ball.” He demonstrated. “Now, T.J., put your hands over mine.”

T.J. obediently followed.

Wow, his hands really were cold. And he was shaking.

“Dude, just relax,” he said to the athlete, chuckling a little. He felt T.J. calm down. “Now, do it like your hands are interlocking with mine.”

T.J. adjusted his fingers.

“Good. Now, after you thank her, look into her eyes because you just fell in love.”

Getting into the role of Quinn (to demonstate to Buffy, of course!), Cyrus looked up to meet T.J.’s gaze.

The taller boy’s eyes softened as he smiled down at him.

All of a sudden, time stopped. The background noises seemed to fade away. And Cyrus’ heart did a little flip as the blood rushed to his face.

That was exactly the look he needed, the emotion he wanted to convey to his audience. It was a look that made hearts flutter and legs feel like jelly. A look that you couldn't tear your eyes away from.

Shaking his head to free himself from the spell, Cyrus nodded in approval. “Y-Yeah, like that.” He cleared his throat. “Do exactly that, okay?”

“Okay,” T.J. replied, softly.

Smiling, Cyrus gently removed his hands from T.J. and handed the ball back to Buffy.

“U-Um… Uh… T-Three minutes!” he called out as he turned on his heels to walk back to his camera.

“Keep it together, Cyrus,” he scolded himself.

His face felt hot. He needed water.

..........................

T.J. was aware of the goofy grin on his face. He made Cyrus all flustered. He was so cute.

“Earth to Kippen! You still alive in there?”

His eye twitched in annoyance as he turned his attention back to the girl he was meant to be sending heart eyes to.

“What?”

She flashed him a strange look before sighing and shaking his head.

“Nothing. Can we please do this scene right and get it over with? I really don't want to hold your hand for any more than five seconds.”

T.J. snorted. “And you think I want to? Have you even read the rest of the script? We’re supposed to hold hands a bunch of times!”

Buffy’s eyes widened. “Y-You mean… I-I-I have to…”

He lamented that fact too. “Afraid so, Driscoll.”

Looking like she wanted to throw up, Buffy turned on her heels and jogged towards where Cyrus was standing by the cameras, talking to Jonah as he pointed at things on the script.

T.J. watched, head cocked to the side at Buffy starting to argue something with Cyrus. She was probably protesting the number of hand-holding.

He wasn’t exactly thrilled about it either but he knew what he signed up for when Cyrus explained his script. Besides, he was doing it for him. He just wanted to help his friend…who may or may not be more than a friend to him.

But, no one knew that. No, T.J. preferred to keep this knowledge to himself, for now. But, he did hope that doing this project would help him and Cyrus get closer. They already had a moment when he held Cyrus’ hand over the basketball, their eyes meeting, and Cyrus blushing all cutely. So worth the few scenes he was going to be doing with Buffy.

And by the time this project ended, maybe… just maybe… T.J. would finally have the guts to ask Cyrus out.

“Okay, everyone! Back to your places! T.J. and Buffy, again, please!”

But, first, he had to get through this nauseating scene with Driscoll.

..........................

“That’s a wrap for today! Thank you, everyone! I’ll see you all tomorrow!”

Cyrus maintained his smile and wave as the students filed out of the gym, one-by-one. Soon, only him, Andi, Jonah, Buffy, and T.J. were left.

Sighing, he allowed his fatigue to catch up with him as he laid on the floor.

“Can I do this for 7 more days?” he asked himself out loud.

Andi and Buffy crouched down on either side of his head.

“Awww, Cy, you did great today,” Andi complimented.

“Yep, and we are very proud,” Buffy added.

Cyrus smiled and sat up. “I appreciate that.”

The girls patted him on the arm before getting up to go and pack their things.

“Hey, CyGuy.” Jonah came up to him. “I packed the cameras for you. Mind if I head out?”

He nodded. “Sure. Thanks again, JB.”

Jonah offered him a fist bump, which Cyrus returned, and the dimpled boy headed off, giving the girls and T.J. a quick wave.

Speaking of T.J., he crouched down on the floor facing Cyrus.

“That was kinda fun, Underdog,” he said, grinning. “Well, except for the part where Driscoll tried to murder me with a basketball.”

“I told you, Kippen, it was an accident!”

“That’s what all murderers say!”

“What kind of murderers have you been interacting with?!”

The back and forth was adorably hilarious. Cyrus burst out laughing.

“Why can’t either of you show this kind of chemistry when the cameras are rolling?” he asked in between giggles.

T.J. wrinkled his nose. “Eew.”

“Gross!” Buffy looked at Cyrus in horror. “Don’t even, Cy. Just… don’t.” She grabbed her bag. “I’m gonna go change. You coming to The Spoon with us after?”

He shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. You guys go ahead! Thanks, again!”

The two girls headed out, the gym doors closing behind them.

Cyrus turned to T.J. “I think she's still bummed that I didn't manage to get Marty."

"I'll bet. She looked like she wanted to tear my head off just for holding her hand." T.J. chuckled. "Anyway, you need help with anything else here? I don’t mind.”

Cyrus looked past towards the equipment. Those tripods did not look fun to carry all by himself.

“I do need to return those tripods to the Film Club’s room but you know how heavy they are."

T.J. grinned. “Give me 5 minutes to change and I’ll be right out.”

With that, he got up and jogged towards the gym doors to the locker rooms.

Meanwhile, Cyrus grabbed his copy of the script and began to flip through it.

Buffy had come up to him earlier, begging him to change some of the hand-holding scenes to… not hand holding. She really did NOT want to hold hands with T.J. He was glad he thought not to add a kiss scene or she would have an aneurysm. But, there was a hand-kiss scene. He should probably change that. He was leaving the hug, though, that was important.

Grabbing a pen from his pocket, he began making changes. Line-through some dialogue. Scratching out whole scenes and making notes to write new ones. Adding new dialogue.

His creative juices were flowing. Cyrus was on a roll.

“Someone’s busy.”

He looked up to see T.J., all dressed in regular clothes. The taller boy plopped down on the floor and crossed his legs.

“Buffy asked me to make a few changes.” Cyrus showed him the current page, filled from top to bottom with ink marks.

T.J. chuckled. “The hand-holding scenes?"

Cyrus sighed. “Yeah.”

T.J. suddenly looked guilty. “Sorry. I know we’re supposed to act like we like each other but… Well… It’s not like I hate Buffy, I don’t. But… you know… It’s kinda hard to act like you like someone in a romantic way… when you don’t.”

“That’s why it’s called acting, T.J.,” Cyrus teased but with no malice. “But, it’s okay. I know that romantic chemistry is kind of too much to ask when you and Buffy are often at odds with each other.” He hesitated before asking, “Do you… want to back out?”

“No!” T.J. replied, quickly.

“I mean, it’s only day one, I can try to find someone else-.”

“It’s fine, really!” T.J. kept insisting. “I’ll do better on the rest, I promise! I won’t mess this up for you! And I’ll make sure it will be the best project this school has ever seen!”

He looked so passionate and determined that Cyrus had to smile. He really was such a sweet guy.

“Thank you.” Cyrus looked back down at his script. “I don’t mind changing some of the scenes to make you and Buffy more comfortable. But…I would definitely appreciate it if you could work on looking at Buffy like you’re in love with her."

“I can do that. I’ll act really hard!” Even as he said it, he still flinched.

Cyrus chuckled. “Can I offer you an acting tip?”

T.J. shrugged. “Sure.”

Cyrus placed the script aside and looked at him, seriously. “Have you ever had a crush?”

His question made T.J. look like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide and cheeks red. “U-Um… what does that have to do with acting?”

“Just answer the question, T.J.”

The other boy appeared to hesitate before replying, “Yeah. I do.”

His voice was soft and affectionate. What a lucky girl.

Cyrus felt his chest twitch, but he chose to ignore it.

“Well, when you do your scenes with Buffy,” he continued. “Pretend that she’s your crush and you’re saying all these things to her and looking at her like she’s the most wonderful person in the world.”

Cyrus paused. T.J. was looking at him the same way he was earlier when he was demonstrating the scene with the basketball.

A soft gaze accompanied with sparkling eyes.

“J-Just like that,” Cyrus managed.

T.J. blinked. “Like what?”

Chuckling, Cyrus pointed at his face. “Like what you’re doing now. Are you imagining your crush?”

To his amusement, T.J. turned red in embarrassment and looked away. “Um… Uh… I’ll definitely do that next time,” he said.

Cyrus grinned. “It would definitely help.”

Deciding not to tease the jock anymore, he picked up his script and stood up.

“We should drop off the tripods and head home.”

T.J. followed suit. “You sure? We can stay if you want to keep writing. I don’t have anywhere to be.”

Cyrus walked up to the equipment and picked up the camera bags. ���Thanks but I think I’ll just finish up at home. Besides, you already missed tutoring for me.”

T.J. grabbed the tripod bags and placed them on his shoulders. “It’s fine. My tutor says I’ve been doing pretty okay so far. I can afford to miss this week’s for you.”

Together, they headed out of the gym.

Looking up at him, Cyrus flashed a smile and fluttered his lashes. “My hero.”

That last bit must have caught him off-guard because the athlete with boundless confidence T.J. tripped on his own shoes.

Cyrus tried to hold back his laugh but couldn’t stop his grin. “You okay there, basketball guy?”

T.J. cleared his throat, trying to look calm and collected like he didn’t just almost face plant on the floor.

“I’m fine. All good.”

Shaking his head, Cyrus nudged his arm with an elbow. T.J. nudged back. Cyrus did it again. And T.J. retaliated.

Their trip to the Film Club’s room ended with a race, one that Cyrus actually won because, according to T.J., the tripods were heavy and weighed him down.

But, Cyrus still counted it as a win in his book.

Tag list:

@lemon-boy-tj @homosexualearthworm @disastrxlogy @new-to-the-phandom @tyrusgoingfast