#also respecting that Michael and Zach do most of the voices!!!

[langdxn]

devotion | fire and reign!michael x fem!reader

SUMMARY: It’s the first Cooperative meeting and Michael gets familiar with one delegate.

WARNINGS: Domesticated fluff, anxiety, a bit of comedy, severely shameless smut, vaginal sex, vaginal stimulation, Barry Manilow.

WORD COUNT: 2.9k (sorry I got really carried away with this one. I haven’t proofread it yet so apologies in advance!)

Striding into the Cooperative meeting hall with all the arrogance he could muster, Michael wrung his red leather-clad hands together, his gaze lingering on the streams of expressionless masks lining the conference table. Every face was obscured, a last-ditch attempt at anonymity for the first time in their charmed, infamous lives.

Their grasp at obscurity was futile. He’d seen the seating plan ahead of schedule. He knew he was to speak two feet away from Bill Clinton, that some kid called PewDiePie was perched halfway down the table, that Jeff Bezos sent his apologies for his absence mere minutes ago, that Julie Andrews requested a seat at the last minute and paid in cash.

The Antichrist shouldn’t suffer stage fright, but Michael hadn’t often addressed a number of people at once, least of all the most financially powerful mortal figureheads in the world. He meticulously prepared his speech the night before, scrawling the highlights on a scrap of paper he stuffed down his left glove, small enough to look inconspicuous when he retrieved it yet large enough to not lose it on the journey to the conference hall.

As his expensive leather boots clacked to the head of the table, Michael swallowed hard and forced his focus on Ms Mead’s advice - find a spot at the far end of the room to concentrate on and talk to it. He chose the far right corner of the seemingly endless table, an anonymous pair of black gloved hands that rested studiously on the glass table.

“Esteemed members of the Cooperative,” he announced, swinging his hands behind his back to clasp them together. The less they saw how they were shaking in their crimson incarcerations, the better.

“World leaders, tech giants, media moguls, cultural influencers,” he proclaimed, catching his breath, “and Mrs Langdon.”

His gaze hardened on the gloved hands in the far corner. The black-clothed figure leaned forward in its seat, revealing a golden face creating a stark contrast with the sea of masks. Cascading y/h/c curls framed the feminine face, mysteriously sparkling black lipstick and deep eyeliner outlining fierce y/e/c eyes. A revealing black dress draped over her figure, her chest pouring out of its low neckline.

A knowing smirk caught the corner of Michael’s lips as he nodded in recognition. He balled his leathered hands into fists and landed them authoritatively on the table’s edge.

“The rumours you’ve heard are true: my name is Michael Langdon and I am the Antichrist.”

———

“You know you don’t have to wear a mask, honey,” Michael comforted you as he leaned his elbows on the kitchen island, planting his chin on one balled fist. You glanced over your shoulder at him as you carefully flipped an omelette in the pan.

“I know baby, but it’s the first one and I want to make a good impression,” you giggled. “After all, they’re the ones who sold their souls already. Mine’s still up for sale.”

Michael snickered under his breath, standing straight and gliding his way over to you, snaking his arms around your waist and squeezing gently, relishing the embrace.

“Is that so?” He breathed into the nape of your neck, dropping a loving kiss where his words ghosted so sensitively that goosebumps haunted your skin. You jerked the pan over to a nearby plate, tipping the omelette out and returning the pan to a cool hob ring.

“But should I wear makeup underneath? What’s the dress code for this sort of thing?” You tugged at the collar of the baggy black shirt draped over your frame — Michael’s from last night, how he adored seeing you shuffling around the kitchen the next morning wearing his discarded shirt after your night between the sheets.

“Darling, you could wear a garbage bag and I’d still be the happiest man alive to introduce you as my new wife,” butterflies flitted between both your stomachs as he called you that word you’d waited so impatiently to hear  drip from his tongue.

“I also take it I’m not sitting next to you?” You enquired half-heartedly, knowing any distance between you pained you both no matter how formal the situation. Recalling the times you sat beside each other for dinner at Madelyn’s house, how Michael’s hands charted their course towards your inner thighs before starters even hit the plate.

“So who am I going to be rubbing shoulders with tonight, Boy Wonder?” You ducked into his embrace as his breaths laced your neck with shivers.

“Let me see,” he pondered, as if conjuring the seating plan in his mind. He settled for retrieving a document from the pocket of his velour jacket and pulling it in front of you. Scanning the plan from over your shoulder with a hum under his breath, he nodded towards the red marker pointing to your seat in the farthest corner.

“That’ll be Zach Braff on your left, so no getting any ideas,” he squeezed your hips in jest, “and David Hasselhoff at the head of the table in front of you.”

“Really? You’re trusting me to sit facing The Hoff? Oh honey, your trust is severely misplaced,” you cracked, gripping onto his remaining hand that rested on your hip.

“Oh I’m sorry my darling, would you prefer Barry Manilow on the left?” He tickled you gently, tossing the sheet of paper into the air and watching it cascade to the tiled floor beneath you. “How on earth do you know all these people anyway? They’re all just names to me.”

“That may be because I didn’t age a decade overnight, Mr Langdon,” you joked, “I grew up on pop culture, that’s all. You were born after all these people became popular.”

“I also didn’t run a globally successful Tumblr which single-handedly forced the entire internet to stop talking in peaches and cucumbers—“

“Eggplants, Michael, they’re eggplants,” you giggled heartily into your hand to stifle a full-scale laughing fit. “Did the Antichrist just admit he married me for my influence?”

Michael scoffed, landing a sweet peck of agreement into your neck.

“Speaking of influencers, exactly how much power do you have in choosing new Cooperative delegates?”

“Providing they’ve sold their souls to my father already, it’s an open court. Who do you have in mind, baby?” He cooed into your ear.

“I think it would serve us well to save Benedict Cumberbatch. Hell hath no fury like Cumberbitches when they find out Sherlock was exterminated by the Apocalypse.” You turned to face Michael with eyebrows raised, proffering the omelette plate before him.

“I’ll take your word for it, Mrs Langdon. Anybody else?”

———

Michael had barely got to the crux of his introduction to the Cooperative before disembodied voices grew concerned. Each member wore a voice manipulator built into their identity masks, a second, painfully virtual line of defence that reminded you of Robocop having a domestic. It wasn’t until you could hear their discordant mechanical voices over your husband’s that you focused back into the room.

“What about my wife?”

                     “What happens if the Outposts are overrun?”

“Will I get to see my kids again?”

                 “What if the missiles don’t kill everybody?”

“When will it be safe to walk around on the surface again?”

        “Will we die down there?”

                   “What’s your backup plan?”

Michael was nervous, almost obsessively wringing his palms in an effort to disguise the shaking that had consumed him. He was drowning in a blur of desperate, panicked queries firing from all angles — for the first time in your relationship, he looked lost. Powerless. Terrified. Aimless syllables tumbled off his tongue as he tried to regain composure.

He couldn’t lose them. Not yet.

The sudden, ominous clink of your stilettos across the polished floor immediately silenced the cacophony. You strode elegantly and purposefully toward the head of the table, relishing every second of precious silence from the present number as you made your way to your husband’s side.

“What my beloved husband is attempting to articulate is that our repopulation plan is foolproof,” you ran your hand across the top of Michael’s leather coat, resting on his left side and gently leaning on him as if the angel arriving on his shoulder to save the day.

“We’ve eliminated all possibilities of unsatisfactory reproduction for the new world. We’ve limited the number of British survivors in order to reduce the risk of poor dental health — no offence Mr Cumberbatch, wherever you may be seated,” you searched in vain across the faceless entities lining the table in the hope any glimpse of body language could give your chosen one away.

“Your families will be as safe as we can possibly keep them, with the help of your investments and the security you use on a daily basis above the surface.”

Your vision darted pointedly to the far left corner of the table.

"Mr Smith, you and your wife will be situated in Outpost 4 while Jayden and Willow will reside in Outposts 1 and 2 respectively. That way, if any Outposts are compromised, we won’t have an overpopulation of Fresh Princes of Bel Air.”

A collective yet nonetheless strained chuckle filled the air.

“As for your safety against the rabid cannibals that the rest of the human race will no doubt be reduced to, that all depends on how much you’re willing to contribute to the cause. I’ll hand you back into the capable hands of Mr Langdon.”

Michael turned to you with a smile of relief and appreciation, you let loose a casual wink of reassurance before stepping back to return the floor to him.

Michael breathed in sharply and assumed his power stance, crimson leather palms pressed flat on the gleaming table, focus now fixed on the masked figure at the opposite end of the room.

“Turn to page six, section one - Outpost Construction."

———

“I don’t know what I would’ve done without you back there,” Michael sighed through both his hands, wearily wiping down his face in an attempt to erase the last few hours from his memory.

You pushed aside Michael’s hastily discarded red gloves and draping leather jacket, some desk lamps and leftover instruction manuals on the table to perch on the edge, drawing Michael between your legs by the waistband of his coat.

“You did just fine without me, my love,” you cupped his face in your hands, his angelic curls tumbling around his countenance as you planted a loving kiss on his full, if slightly bitten lips. He drew you in even closer, his kiss deeper than the azure blue of his eyes he had now clenched firmly shut.

If there was one thing you knew Michael loved more than anything, it was kissing you. When you handed each other washed dishes after dinner, when you waited impatiently in the queue at the grocery store, when you finally found something decent to watch on TV. He adored locking his lips against yours at any possible opportunity, crashing teeth and dancing tongues. He worshipped the power he had over you when you were compelled to close your eyes to kiss him, the freedom he could use to surprise you while you so innocently shut out the rest of the universe.

“How can I ever repay you, Mrs Langdon?” He breathed into your mouth as he towered over you, one hand roaming your hair and the other ghosting on top of your knee.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way, Mr Langdon,” you charmed, kissing him again as deeply as possible. This time Michael refused to separate from you, maintaining the searing connection between your lips.

Hitching your black silk dress up your thighs agonisingly slowly, Michael opened one eye to savour every centimetre of your legs revealing before him with subtle gasps catching on the tip of his tongue against yours. As the hem reached your hips and exposed your core, Michael moaned greedily in your mouth.

“No panties?” he hummed as your teeth clashed, “no wonder you were so fucking sassy earlier.”

Meeting no obstruction, his soft fingertips wasted no time in trailing between your thighs and finding their home pressed gently onto your clit. As soon as his skin made contact, your hips bucked and you felt a stream of your arousal escape your folds.

Michael could smell it before he felt it. His fingers coursed down to collect the precious droplets, raising his digits to your conjoined mouths so you could both taste you.

“You’re so fucking wet for me baby,” he cooed down your throat, his lust-blown voice reduced to a husky croon. You opened your eyes to meet his for a brief moment but your gaze was met not by his cerulean tones, instead his irises were pitch black, seductively demonic and terrifyingly sinister at the same time. Avoiding their scorching stare, you closed your eyes to kiss him again.

Michael’s hand returned between your thighs and deftly slipped a soft finger through your folds, eliciting a gentle moan from the back of your throat. Returning his fingertip to your entrance, another digit joined it and coursed inside you, curling against your walls to make your hips follow their lead.

Michael grunted into your mouth as he retrieved his fingers, jealous of the warm arousal his fingers witnessed. Tracing his tongue across your teeth, you whimpered at the loss of his touch but replaced by the rustle of Michael setting himself free from his dress pants. You trailed a hand down his chest, making light work of his shirt buttons. Before you could reach his waistband, you felt the head of his cock tracing the outline of your folds, begging for permission to enter.

“Is this okay?” He asked politely as your teeth crashed together. His reconnection with the new Ms Mead skilfully reminded him of the basic courtesies he lost sight of on his sojourn, a time he never seemed comfortable to talk about with you. A time he would rather forget.

You hummed in agreement against his lips and hooked your legs around his waist, gently nudging him closer as his cock stretched your entrance. Slowly, carefully, respectfully.

Your moans drew out longer as he took his time pouring every inch of him inside you. He craved your response when he entered you, he thrived on the ecstasy your husband gave you.

Bottoming out in one smooth thrust, his hands shot up to the back of your neck to prize you from his lips. As you opened your eyes, you met his black pupils as they shot you a determined, ecstatic glare.

“Sell your soul to my father, please. We can live forever, together,” his syllables dragged as he thrust slowly into you.

You needed no persuasion, your mind was made up on the day you married the Antichrist, the only delay was the plans for the apocalypse had taken over. However, you weren’t prepared to let him think he won you over that easily, especially while his cock was urging at the entrance of your cervix.

“What is it with you and deep conversations while you’re balls deep inside me?” You quirked an eyebrow and he forced an aggressive thrust in response. Your back arched suddenly and your eyes retreated into the back of your head, the fast motion driving you closer to your orgasm than you expected so soon.

Protectively wrapping your arms around him and lightly digging your nails into his back, you pretended to need more time to think on his proposition but another sharp snap of his hips broke your facade.

“You realise I won’t let you cum until you agree, don’t you, my darling?” He raised his hand to your throat with a gentle yet purposeful squeeze on your airways while slowly pulling his cock back out of you until just the tip rested in your entrance. He knew from extensive experience that you couldn’t say no when he teased you like this.

“Fuck—ugh fuck, okay I will, now please Michael,” you pleaded weakly, trying to pull him back inside you but he placed a forceful palm on your chest in resistance.

“Say the words honey, say the words.” His black hole stare burned through your eyes into your soul as you rolled your eyes.

“Fine. Michael Langdon, I will sell my soul to Satan,” you breathed emphatically, digging your nails into his back harder.

Your eyes trailed down between your legs to make sure he kept his end of the deal. Sure enough, he poured every inch back inside your folds, meeting your wetness inside with a greedy moan escaping his lips. Gone was his sensual tempo, overtaken by a furious thrust that made his cock twitch as it explored inside you.

“Good girl,” he cooed into your open mouth while you caved into the burning inside you as he pounded you, the familiar dynamite that only Michael knew how to ignite.

“Cum for me, baby.”

Your back gave way and dropped you flat on your spine against the polished table, writhing and squirming as your release took hold of you. All your involuntary friction led Michael to pursue his own orgasm as his frenetic thrusts plowed into you, his tip crashing against your cervix with every motion.

Between both of your frantic moans and laboured breaths, a throat cleared uncomfortably behind you. 

Michael froze to the spot while you jerked back and strained to see through the stars dancing across your vision.

“Mr Manilow? You’re still in here?”

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 14x13 “Lebanon” (300th episode)

in which i compare this episode to pumpkin soup, because I’m craving more Cas

03:30pm

all righty, thing is still downloading, and there’s a 720p version queued up so that’ll be downloaded by the time i’ve watched half. i have snacks, i’m gonna half close my blinds so i can see, but I DON’T HAVE HEADPHONES AGAIN which is the worst. why do headphones break so easily, that’s what i want to know. (just gotta pray there’s a good sound quality i guess. my laptop speakers suck)

...2 minutes left on the download c’moooooon

-

03:35

OKAY DONE!!!!

-

03:36

“dad’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days”

i don’t know if it’s dean’s little baby voice (HE’S MY AGE CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? I CAN’T) or the laptop speakers or the video sound quality, but dean sounds like a kid in a 1980s disney cartoon, with that vintage prickle in my ears and i love it

-

03:38

okay look it’s super hot 'cause it’s summer, and my fan is on, and there’s cicadas... i think i gotta shut the window and turn the fan off aND SLOWLY ROAST IN HERE BECAUSE I CAN’T HEAR THIS PROPERLY

i’m 9 seconds into the recap u_u

it’s gonna be one of those days i guess

-

03:41

is that the monkey again?

yeah it’s the monkey again

-

03:45

dead black guy already????????????????????

really?????

-

03:46

are those kids meant to look like the kids from stranger things? because they kind of do. and the movie theatre as well

-

03:47

cas is in this episode, right??

if he isn’t i’m gonna scream

misha had a tv guide cover so maybe

-

03:39

every single one of these kids is cute and i’m offended

“weird sidekick with the trenchcoat” i am further offended, but also smiling

-

03:50

SHE GAY

SHE VERY GAY

-

the plaid though. she’s a dean mirror 100%

edit: i did doubt this for a second but nope, i was completely right

i mean, she drives the car as well

-

03:52

tHE IMPALA JUST SCOOTED OFF THE SCREEN AND I ALMOST CHOKED OH MY GOD that was hilarious

-

03:54

dean doing the puppy eyes is 

a) cute

b) FUCKING TERRIFYING BECAUSE THIS POOR WOMAN’S TRYING TO PROTECT AN UNDERAGE GIRL AND IT SHOULD NOT BE THAT EASY

-

03:57

the hand that popped out of the smoky cigar box

SUPER COOL AND SUPER CREEPY EW

-

03:59

dean: “this is like the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to you. ‘cause you love serial killers but you hate clowns”

ahahhahaha

-

04:02

sam: “are you sure you don’t wanna call mom, or wait for cas”

YES PLEASE DO BOTH OF THOSE THINGS ;A;

-

“michael out of my head”

HAVE YOU NEVER PAID ATTENTION TO ALL THE WISHES THAT GO WRONG??? YOU GOTTA BE MORE SPECIFIC DUDE. TAKING MICHAEL OUT YOUR HEAD JUST TAKES HIM OUT, YOU GOTTA KILL HIM TOO DAMMIT

-

04:05

john: “now you live in a secret bunker with an angel and lucifer’s kid”

he took that surprisingly well

 a little too well

probably part of dean’s wish that he takes it well

-

04:08

OH BOY

the face he made when he saw mary sdjgfd

-

04:09

ahahah dean and sam awkwardly leaving while their parents make out

dean kinda looked like he was gonna stay, lil bean

-

04:11

the fact dean was so adamant that he said he wanted michael out of his head, but then is now defending the fact he wished for his dad back instead

says a lot about what dean says he wants =/= what dean actually wants

-

04:13

john is much sweeter and more understanding than anyone remembers him (at least than i remember him, or could infer from all the stories about him)

i really do think dean brought him back nicer

-

04:15

i love seeing sam have emotions, it’s so refreshing

-

sam kinda looked like he panicked when john touched him aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

-

04:17

there’s a sign for “castle storage” in the background and i think about that sometimes. hill of a forty dogs or something??? i forget, it was so long ago

-

ALSO WHERE’S CAS

also switching to 720p now

never mind switching back, the sound was better on the lower quality video u_u

-

04:22

oh no, nobody knows them

IS CAS NOT GONNA KNOW THEM

OH NO

-

04:23

this universe-sam: *kinda smug* “god bless kale, am i right?”

I CRINGED SO HARD

-

04:25

OH BOY IT’S HAPPENING

(well SOMETHING IS HAPPENING)

-

04:26

zachariah: “c’mon, constantine”

cas: “i don’t understand that reference”

zach: “you wouldn’t”

i kinda missed this cas though. like. i’m not even mad

ONE PROBLEM: HE’S PROBABLY NOT HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE WITH DEAN

-

04:28

life goal of mine: have a sign like that in my house as decor

-

04:29

THE BACKWARDS TIE

-

04:35

okay first off i got so involved watching cas beat dean up (again) and dean being unable to stop him (D: D: D:) (kind of expected dean to croak “i love you” but um no....... that didn’t happen)

and then mary’s egg timer went off 

and it reminded me i’m hungry again so brb

well actually i’m not hungry..... but my body is shutting down because i need fat and magnesium to function which means i need to eat or else i can’t see, but same difference

-

04:43pm

okay i’m back

-

04:45

DEAN FINALLY HEARING HIS DADDY SAY HE’S PROUD OF HIM

-

04:46

john: “i thought you’d get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family”

dean: “i have a family”

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

]]]]]] I REALLY FUCKING WANT JOHN TO MEET CAS [[[[[[[

-

04:48

THERE’S SALAD ON THE PLATES HALLELUJAH

-

04:49

sam: “did you see them, at dinner, the way they looked at each other, they seemed happy”

and then there’s the way max looked at the girl she was crushing on

AND THEN THERE’S THE WAY DEAN LOOKS AT CAS LET’S GET SOME OF THAT IN HERE PLEEEEEASE

-

04:51

it stresses me out when people wash dishes but only rinse using the dirty water not fresh tap water

-

04:53

they’re about to send john back, he’s holding mary’s hand

all the rainbows behind dean’s head

betcha he’s thinkin about cas

-

04:56

john: “i love you both, so much”

dean...................

-

“i love you too”

OH MY HEART

he says it ......he never used to say it to anyone

-

04:59

YEEEEE

BUT ALSO THIS ONLY LASTED 0.5 SECONDS WHY

but also???????

TALL GUY = SAM

PLAID GIRL = DEAN

COAT GIRL = CAS

IS ANYONE ELSE GETTING THIS

WHY DIDN’T THIS SHOT LAST LONGER SO PEOPLE WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE WITHOUT PAUSING

CURSE YOU EDITORS

-

05:02

so....... that end scene where john’s like “i’m on my way back, i’ll see you soon”

was that meant to be in the past, 2003 era? the flip phone would say so, but his visible age kind of confuses matters

i mean i get that it’s hard to make someone look 16 years younger

but still

unsure about that

-

05:04

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm it’s over

i dunno

that was definitely a special and important episode, and i appreciated seeing this side of john, this is gonna make it way easier to write fanfic of him without the story ending up as a trauma survival fic

but

i was kind of underwhelmed

things i rEALLY REALLY WANTED that didn’t happen:

john actually reacting to dean saying they made friends with an angel (and a werewolf, a vampire, demons, etc etc)

john meeting cas

cas being part of that family meal (i get that the point was he was 2003!cas and not there, but still)

jack being in this even a little bit??

and as the story went on and reached the end, what it really lacked, for me, was a comparison where we can then see how john/mary & max/her crush = dean/cas...........and that just didn’t happen

i think it just ended too soon, really

and there was a lot more they could’ve done with the altered timeline, could’ve brought a whooooooooole lot back from past seasons and just made it a smorgasbord of nostalgia

i get that it was focused solely on john, which gave it an emotional core, so there’s not actually a problem there, i loved that

but it felt kind of dull and slow and....... soupy..........?

(i just mean. the emotional feeling in my brain as i think about it. feels like soup. specifically pumpkin soup. warm and spicy and goopy and nutritious but ultimately not very filling)

then again, if the pacing had been sped up, i would’ve complained it was too rushed. so there’s no winning, it was probably fine ?

i think my favourite part was the kids. i loved the kids. i love the lil gay romance going there. i loved the fact it was a destiel/team free will parallel (even if that part of it was OVER SO DAMN QUICKLY MOST PEOPLE MISSED IT). i loved the kid in the hat, he reminded me a lot of the actor thomas brodie-sangster, and also johnathan byers from “stranger things”

also enjoyed sam vs. the serial killer clown, and that whole aspect of hunting that we haven’t seen in a while, felt very nostalgic

also enjoyed 2003!cas, but was both distressed and frustrated by him fighting dean and then NOT GETTING ANY CLOSURE ON THAT WHATSOEVER. the point was to make dean and sam realise they really needed to send john back, so essentially, in some respect, they did choose cas being their friend over john being around, but that part of the overall problem was never mentioned at all, cas wasn’t mentioned at all after the fight

i’m just looking forward to coda fics that start where this episode leaves off, and dean talks to cas, because i am craving that SO FUCKING BADLY i can’t even express. like. it’s becoming maddening. i just. want. them. to have. a conversation

and the black guy dying at the start?? and the other black kid running away from the ghost and never being seen again? and besides the unnamed diner guy offering info on skip day, being the ONLY PEOPLE OF COLOUR IN THE ENTIRE STORY??? NOT COOL, not a fan >:{ (still better than it used to be, but soooooooooo many white people. so many. so. many)

anyway. um

so that wasn’t my favourite episode, but not because it was bad, but because it didn’t live up to expectations. i tried not to have any expectations (i really tried) but there were just... basic things this episode needed that i felt it was lacking (*cough* cas *cough*), and i can’t really shake that feeling

HOWEVER, having seen 2003!cas be the thoughtless drone that he was, i can appreciate just HOW MUCH character development has happened while he’s been around, which.... i suppose, is a sort of nod to his entire existence ???

anyway, 9/10, and a big ol shrug

but yeah. seeing john be kind and understanding was amazing (and completely changes how i’m gonna write him in my fics in the future, since he’s probably gonna be in the fic instead of just mentioned) and having him say he’s proud of dean and he loves him was just a super nice treat c:

sam being emotional is the best, too. sam confronting his feelings 10/10

i just. i want aaaaaall of this. but with cas. i really want that. so goddamn much. ;~;

[popcorn-for-dinner]

Wakanda Forever: Finding Black Pride in Kings and Teenage Girls

“You don’t know what you were missing, till you have it”

There’s a particular scene in Wonder Woman that often gets referenced when the film is being discussed; the “No Man’s Land” scene. I had the pleasure of watching Wonder Woman alone (yeah, come at me) and at the time of watching, I had no reason to believe that this would become an iconic scene. To me, it was just another good action set piece. Granted, one that I applauded (metaphorically, of course. I’m not trying to validate those stereotypes), but still, just a well-done sequence.

I would soon come to realise the power of subjectivity.

In various discussions since leaving that theatre, I have listened to countless women, both in my real life and online, talk about the effect that the scene had on them. Their experiences of joy, pride and childlike glee, with many being brought to tears.

I am under no illusion that its star (Gal Gadot) and director (Patty Jenkins) were both aware of the importance of the scene they were constructing and the need for such a scene in this movie in today’s world. I quickly realised that this scene wasn’t (primarily) directed at me. Sure, I could appreciate it from a story or technical point-of-view, but it could never get me in my feels the way it did my female counterparts. Where I saw another hero blocking bullets, they saw a woman standing, against and for men, for what she knew was right. The largely underrepresented female, superhero-watching audience was finally seeing a woman exhibit such heroics on the big screen.

“Those who complain about representation, are the ones who’ve always been represented”.

Like most sane people, I love Will Smith. I grew up on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns, then came the Men in Blacks, Hitch, Hancock, I, Robot etc. He was a movie star, he did it all: action, drama, comedy, sci-fi. To me, he was the movie star. I would go on to, harshly, learn that he wasn’t the norm, but the exception.

I was now seeing the ubiquity of white movie and tv stars, I now noticed that beyond the handful of black movie stars, people with my skin colour were criminally underrepresented. This was weird because I was living in a country (Nigeria) where everyone had my skin colour. So, to a young boy who was falling in love with the arts, the idea quickly became, only white people get that shot and maybe a handful of Black Americans, but even then, they definitely still gotta tell the white man’s story.

Which brings us to 2018. A year in which I get to see an African King and a black teenage girl save the world. An African King and a Black Teenage Girl! Many have criticised the hype for Black Panther, with some stating that the importance of the movie is being overstated by its fans. “Y'all acting like this movie gonna solve racism”.

I do not think the importance of these movies can be overstated.

Black Panther is a big budget superhero film that focuses on an African nation, its king and citizens. It features an impressive, predominantly black (and beautiful) cast. This cast not only boasts talented actors with strong African backgrounds (Lupita Nyong'o, Daniel Kaluuya and Danai Gurira) but it also includes actors based in Africa, not least of whom is the South African legend, John Kani. Twenty years ago, a convergence of all these factors would have seemed nearly impossible.

A Wrinkle in Time, in its own right, conquers its own fair share of impossibilities. In keeping with a career that continually breaks new ground while affecting change, Ava DuVernay now brings a sci-fi, Disney, epic with a brown skinned girl as its heroine. Who would have thought? Even in a world where Katniss Everdeen and Hermione Granger became household names and shot their respective actresses to bona-fide movie star status, such a movie still seemed impossible.

Ava DuVernay has not shied away from the fact that this is new ground for everyone. I’ll admit that I am not familiar with the original 1963 novel and its ensuing legacy (it wasn’t high on our literary lists in Nigeria). But boy am I excited. In creating this film that will inevitably be a sea change moment, Miss DuVernay has surrounded herself with notable producers (Catherine Hand and Tendo Nagenda), the writer and co-director of Frozen, Jennifer Lee and a cast that includes Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Pena and Oprah Winfrey (playing an all-knowing being, because, duh) along with Chris Pine and Zach Galifianakis rounding out the cast.

As mentioned earlier, A Wrinkle in Time’s heroine is a brown skinned teenage girl. However, this was not always the case. In the original novel, Meg Murry is white. Here she is portrayed by newcomer Storm Reid. Miss DuVernay has continually referenced her desire to create new worlds and how, expectedly, these worlds would be different from what her white and male counterparts would envision. The effect such inclusion could possibly have cannot be overstated.

Really, is that not what we hope for? What we all want? That inclusivity. A world in which a young girl can look at a big budget Disney movie poster and see herself as the heroine.  A world in which we get Angela Bassett finally playing a queen. Where young brown and black skinned girls, and maybe just as importantly young boys, can see that girls can save the world too.  The same world where the great Forrest Whittaker admits to carrying out extensive research on the Yorubas in order to bring authenticity to his role. This world only has positives. It provides filmmakers with more diverse voices, from different backgrounds, the opportunity to share their visions. All sorts of stories are told in this world and everyone gets to be represented. Such inclusion can only lead to better, well-informed stories and more opportunities for people too often left in the fringes.

In their introductory scene from Captain America: Civil War, King T’Chaka (John Kani) and his son, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) speak “isiXhosa” (A South African language). This was not originally in the script, it was an input from John Kani. This input led to a scene in a Hollywood film in which two actors are speaking isiXhosa and neither of them is a warlord nor an internet scammer. It might not seem like much, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s huge.

It just goes to show that the inclusion of diverse voices behind and in front of the camera bleeds its benefits in such subtle and wide-ranging ways. Some of these benefits may not be visible to the lay man but they mean the world to those marginalized groups.

At the premiere of Black Panther, John Kani gushed about the “seriousness” of the movie and why he wanted to show Africa and its denizens in a different light. To deal with the myth that “if the white colonialists did not land in Africa, we’ll still be walking in skins…”. Frankly, that’s a cause we can all rally behind.

Now, no one is saying that things are automatically fixed or that change has happened, we are definitely still some ways off but it’s a hell of time to be alive. What we need to then do, is not falter but use these burgeoning changes as catalysts for a much larger attack on the status quo.

While the eventual quality of both Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time is not the driving force of this article, I would be remiss if I did not mention that in the hands of Ryan Coogler and Ava Duvernay, I feel little reason to fret about the outcome. They are two filmmakers that made instant splashes with their unique visions in Fruitvale Station and Creed (Coogler) and Selma and 13th (DuVernay). I’m not sure I trust any two people to better understand the importance of the positions they have been placed in and the need for success.  They are not only capable of delivering the goods, they are more than deserving of the opportunity. They, it seems, live their lives by that mantra that we, as minorities have stuck in our psyche.

Would it be a stretch to draw a line between the release and adoration of Wonder Woman and the rise of female empowerment (#MeToo, Time’s Up) in 2017? Probably. Could I make the argument to you after some shots of Vodka? Most likely. The point is that change starts from all sorts of weird places and all we can do is hope. Hope that the change is not stifled by its location but given the space and support to grow. So yes, I’ll be with my tickets opening weekends of Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time hoping that this is the beginning of some form of change in Hollywood that would hopefully grow and spread to the larger world.

Bankole Imoukhuede

[celmation-gibson]

Well, It's Time I started these 'Best of' Reviews for what Animated thing had Happened this Year, and Now I'm ready for it, and for me, I think that 2017 was a great Year for Cartoons on TV (and one on the Net), and here are my Reviews on why.

Ben 10(2016 series) – Although the Show was Made and Released in 2016 at other Foreign territories, It finally got a Release in the US in 2017. And some Folks might say that some reboots aren’t very too Bright (and I would agree on TTG and/or PPG 2016), But I find this to be a Nerve Calming excitement, some of the Character Designs/Re-Designing look Cute & Likable to Me. And the One Thing that gets me Fired up for this Series is that some Artists I know worked on this Program, like Mr. Ryan Krammer(Uncle Grandpa, & SpongeBob's 'Food Con Castaways' episode), Ms. Monica Ray(Harvey Beaks, Magic Children Doing Things) as Storyboard Artists & additional Writers& Mr. Colin Heck(Legend of Korra, Harvey Beaks) as Supervising Director. And It was Wonderful to hear Ms. Jessica DiCicco(Lynn & Lucy Loud) voicing a Different-looking FrightWig, who the Character was previously voiced by Cree Summer in the Original Series. But believe me, I remember seeing the Original Ben 10 series along with Alien Force, but didn’t quite go thru the Rest of the Series until the Reboot came. Even the Original villains of this Show look so Cute (except for Billy Billions), which that Cuteness also goes to the re-Designing of the other Villains from the Original ‘Ben 10’ series, and the More appearance I’ve ever seen from a Villain is Steam Smythe (voiced by Roger Craig Smith of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ & ‘Regular Show’).

Billy Dilley’s Super-Duper Subterranean Summer – Quite an Interesting Show, and I bet many people thought that the Program reminded them of ‘Uncle Grandpa’, so Keep in Mind, Most of the Artists & Writers who worked on this Series previously worked on ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ & ‘Uncle Grandpa’. Even the Show’s Creator Mr. Aaron Springer voicing Billy almost sounds like Paul Rugg of 'Freakazoid', 'Pig, Goat, Banana, Cricket', & 'Secret Mountain Fort Awesome'.

Samurai Jack(Season 5) - I truly Enjoyed watching 'Samurai Jack' when I was Young, this Program along with 'Courage the Cowardly Dog', 'Juniper Lee', & 'Chowder' are Probably the only Good Old Cartoon Network Programs that I give Full Circle to in my Childhood. After the "Jack and the Baby" episode, the show went into a Deep Cliffhanger, and I truly Sympathize the Great Hero Jack for it, But Twelve Years Later, a New Season had Finally cometh, with the Show's Original Creator Mr. Genndy Tartakovsky coming to Ex. Produced the series after some Great Work back at Sony Pictures Animation(Hotel Transylvania films, & that Popeye Test Footage). And Instead of the Program being a-little Lighthearted like the Past Seasons with just Slime, Oil & Robotic Guts, and Major Boo-boos, the New Season 5 now airing on Adult Swim has moved to a Darker Tone, which I like as much as 'Return to Oz', 'Over the Garden wall', & 'the Black Cauldron', with some major Blood, Profanity, and some Grown-Up jokes put into it. And it was a Surprised to see some Old Characters that I recognize to make some Cameos in that one episode(or few), such as the Woolies, Demongo, and the Ravers, the Robots and their Robo-Samurai, and the "Jump Good" Monkey man & his Tribe. And some Fresh New Voices came in by Surprise, such as Mr. Chris Parnell & Keegan Michael Key in some Episodes. And I was Lucky to film the Final Confrontation between Jack & Aku during the Premiere of the Series Finale for Instagram. And did I nearly weep during the Part that Now that Aku is Gone, Ashi will Never be Born in the Future(because of the Space Timing Continuum), and I got to say, Ashi was a Cute Character that I truly Sympathize because of her Dark Past & People Torturing her back then, and I like her Voice Actress, the Legendary Ms. Tara Strong (Powerpuff Girls, My Little Pony, Ben 10, & Chowder). And even since Aku's Original voice actor Mr. Mako passed away back then, I say that Mr. Greg Baldwin really did a Good Job impersonating Mako voicing Aku, just like he did with Iroh of 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' & 'Legend of Korra', almost sounded like If Mako aged Puberty. I would say I'm Gonna Miss this Show, just like how I'll miss Chowder, Regular Show, and soon Uncle Grandpa.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Battle for Mewni /SvtFoE Season 3– To come Clear, I only watched the First Four Stories of that TV Movie Special, from “Return to Mewni” to “Marco and the King”, Because during the Further Episodes there was an Artist whose Career I clearly dislike, Tyler Chen of ‘Clarence’, ‘Fish Hooks’, ‘Pickle & Peanut’ & the Overrated Bravest Warriors minisode “drama Bug”, and that’s why I never made it to the Ending point, But I do read Perfectly that Star won the Battle against the Vile Toffee, and she got her Wand Redesigned. But what I can tell you that one of my Favorite Episodes from that so Far is “Moon the Undaunted”, and I gotta say that Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness is one of my Most Favorite Characters from the show so far. As for the Rest of Season 3 so Far, I’ve only watched Episodes that are NNOT directed by Chen, cuz remember when I said I don’t like his Career, but my Most Favorite Episodes out of Season 3 so Far is ‘Stranger Danger’, ‘Lint Catcher’, & ‘Trial by Squire’. Also, Despite having appeared in the 2016 episode "Page Turner", I like Hekapoo's appearance in the 2017 episode "Running with Scissors", which is One of my Most Favorite Episodes of Season 2.

The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos - I really Enjoyed this Half-Hour Special of ‘the Loud House’, the New Characters there seemed Likable/Lovable unlike the Unlikable/Hate-able ones in Royal Woods where some Folks aren’t that Disgusting as Hell(Funny Business, Cereal Offender), and It’s also a Good Episode where no Sister Siblings were Complete & Utter jerks(Sleuth or Consequences, a Novel Idea), Even what surprised me Completely is that this was the First Thing in a Kids’ Cartoon to showcase a person with Down-Syndrome, and believe me, I felt Really Disappointed on how they were Portrayed in Adult Cartoons, Mostly *COUGH*Family guy*COUGH*. But in a Kids Cartoon, they were Treated Properly with Good Respect. And the Character Rosa reminds me of Mrs. Claus/Mama from Rankin/Bass’ ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ for some Wacky Reason, “Eat, eat, EAT”. And I still Love the RonnieColn Fandom Completely, that one LH Episode “Back Out There” almost Ruined some Things, and that Led me to have Mixed to Negative Feelings for Lincoln’s Friends Clyde, Rusty, Liam, Zach. So I would say that ‘the Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos’ is a Fun-Filled Episode that I could watch Multiple Times, It’s got Cute & Funny moments, some Heart-Warming Drama, and some Great Entertainment when the Alley Cats run amuck in the Casagrande apartment.

OK K.O! Let’s be Heroes – This Show has become a Great New addition to the Grand CN, It was created by Mr. @ianjq, who was previous storyboard supervisor & storyboard revisionist of ‘Adventure Time’, Writer & Story Artist for ‘Secret Mountain Fort Awesome’, voice of Wallow of ‘Bravest Warriors’, & developer, co-executive producer, supervising director, storyline writer & storyboard artist for ‘Steven Universe’, and I really like him Voicing Rad & other Characters such as Darrell & Crinkly Wrinkly in the K.O. program. It was based off a short Pilot episode ‘Lakewood Plaza Turbo’ back in 2013, in that Great Year of Discoveries along with other pilots for ‘Steven Universe’, ‘Over the Garden Wall’,  & ‘Clarence’, and that was a Time when I was also Fascinated with Disney’s Nine old Men and their Work/Book ‘the Illusion of Life’, and watching that Awesome Documentary on Cartoon Network’s ‘Next Generation of Animation’, I will always accept New Cartoon Network shows like ‘Adventure Time’, ‘Regular Show’, ‘Uncle Grandpa’, ‘Over the Garden Wall’, ‘Steven Universe’, & ‘We Bare Bears’ into the Cartoon Society. But as for ‘OK K.O.’ , the seems pretty Wonderful, It has a Blend of 1970’s Obscure Anime looks into the Western Animation looks, and How they have some Classical Cartooning Principles(Funny Cartoon Noises, Jokes & Gags) into the Modern Day Greatness. Even some of the characters seemed likable, Mostly on either Lord Boxman(voiced by the Great Jim Cummings), some of the Villainess Characters that the Heroes might met(Professor Venomous, Cosma, & Mr. Cardsley), and even some of the Main Good Characters, especially the Ones I also Sympathize like K.O., Rad, Enid, Dendy, Carol, & Mr. Gar, and I gotta say that Character Crinkly Wrinkly is the Funniest character that I’ve ever seen. I think it was Good that I first get to watch the Series when It was On-Demand before it aired on actual TV, but I have yet to see it’s 2013 Pilot episode along with the Rests that Aired on 2013, But I do know that it had a Mobile Game back then (though I did not Download it or played it) and a Series of Shorts by other Animation Studios, but I haven’t watch them because I am Never a huge fan of SCIENCE SARU and I’m Not too certain about Studio Yotta. But I gotta say also, This Show is a Fanstastic Experience on the Grand CN, Filled with Precious Heart-Warming episodes with Good Life Lessons like How to handle your own Duties as an Employer or how Great your Boss can be (‘Legends of Mr. Gar’), or If you Try not to Spoil your life by being a Self-Proclaimed Selfish ‘Cool Kid’ like Brat, you should have a More Focused Future ahead of you, even without going to Jail (‘We’ve Got Pests’), and the Show had some Crazy Developments such as Enid & Rad used to being a Couple (‘Second First Date’), and Enid being a Witch and being in a Family of Halloween-Themed Characters (‘Parents Day’). Plus the shows got a Good crew, Like the Program's Supervising Director Toby Jones, who Previously worked on 'Regular Show', and one of the Show's Story folks Dave Tennant, previously does some Stories for Pete Browngardt Cartoons, Which I think makes it Better for Me.

Pickle Rick – Why not, It’s “PICKLE RIIIICK!!!!”, I thought I would pass on this, But eventually won my Heart, don’t ask why, but Things just happen like that.

The Summoning - I just Discovered this while browsing on the internet probably from Fan-Art on DA, and I watched it on Youtube, and I gotta say, this Cartoon is Really Cute, Funny, & Creepy at the same time. The Main Characters seemed Lovable, and I mean Claire & Edgar, the Bunny Character is hugely Funny in a way, Though I feel Terribly Bad for the characters accidentally eating some things like Eating some Dandruff from a Big Head Island which Claire thought it was Dirt, and Eating Poop which Edgar thought it was Chocolate. But to make Matters Better for the Cartoon, Celmation Hero Ms. Natasha Allegri(Bee & Puppycat, Fionna & Cake) worked on the short as Director, Story Artist, & Character Designer, WHAT A HERO!!! And the Animations/Celmation was done by Digital eMation inc., the Celmation Team behind ‘Ok K.O. Let’s be Heroes!’ & the Season 5 of ‘Samurai Jack’.

The Movies of 2017 & Probably some on Video Games should be made soon.

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/klaus-review-netflixs-first-animated-movie-has-its-heart-in-the-right-place/

Klaus Review: Netflix’s First Animated Movie Has Its Heart in the Right Place

As Netflix has gotten bigger, it has — somewhat naturally — made bigger bets. It forked over upwards of $300 million (about Rs. 2,150 crores) to produce Martin Scorsese and Michael Bay’s latest movies, the mob drama The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, and the action thriller 6 Underground, led by Ryan Reynolds. And it’s said to be spending $200 million (about Rs. 1,434 crores) on Red Notice alone, an action flick that stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Reynolds. But these bets are risky too. All these films are not based on existing intellectual properties, which is scary for traditional Hollywood studios reliant on theatrical earnings. And as part of taking on projects that others in Hollywood refused to bet on, Netflix has gotten its first animated feature: Klaus.

For one, Klaus has been made in the old ways of traditional hand-drawn 2D animation, which fell out of favour in the early 2000s as computer animation took over. But thanks to animator and debutante director Sergio Pablos — best known as the creator of Despicable Me — who makes use of modern touches such as volumetric lighting, Klaus can easily be mistaken for computer animation, something Pablos knows too well. That means most viewers will overlook the painstaking work that went into it, which doesn’t get much traction anyway in a world now run by Pixar and DreamWorks. Rather interestingly, Pablos said the sticking point for Hollywood studios wasn’t Klaus‘ animation style, but the focus of its story: Christmas.

As you have likely surmised from the film’s title already, Klaus involves the legendary figure of Santa Claus. In fact, this is supposed to be an origin story. Every part of the Santa Claus mythos is given a backstory in Klaus, from how children came to write letters to Santa and why the presents go through the chimney, from how reindeer came to pull his sleigh and why they are imagined with the ability of flight, to how Santa got his red-and-white attire and how those who help him make toys came to be. Some of the “answers” are delightful executions of physical comedy, while others reaffirm the Netflix film’s inherent belief in the power of kindness. Or as its characters say: “A true act of goodwill always sparks another.”

Klaus begins by introducing us to a spoiled young man named Jesper Johanssen (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), who’s lazing away his life at the Royal Postal Academy, run by his dad the Postmaster General (Sam McMurray). But he’s in for a rude awakening. With his father wanting to make a man out of his son, Jesper is dispatched to the frigid, remote island of Smeerensburg, somewhere above the Arctic Circle. There, he must set up a postal office and stamp 6,000 letters in the first year if he doesn’t want to be cut off from the family fortune he’s been living off. It’s clear that Jesper has never had to work a day in his life, and making matters worse, he has no clue that Smeerensburg is an exceptionally harsh posting.

You see, there exists a generations-old feud between the isle’s two factions, the Krum and the Ellingboe, led by a matriarch (Joan Cusack) and a patriarch (Will Sasso), respectively. That means the kids don’t go to school, where the only teacher Alva (Rashida Jones) has turned into a fishmonger to make enough money to leave. And for Jesper, that means the townsfolk have no interest in sending letters to one another, given half of them despise the other half. The newly-minted mailman comes close to giving up until he accidentally leaves a child’s drawing at the doorstep of a well-built, white-bearded woodsman named Klaus (J.K. Simmons), who has a huge collection of hand-crafted toys. Klaus recruits Jesper to help him deliver a toy to said kid, and Jesper realises there’s a business in getting toys to kids.

Pablos proves himself to be quite adept as a first-time director, as he brings in elements from other genres to punch up what is a family comedy at the heart of it. The introduction to the horrid town of Smeerensburg feels like it’s been lifted off a horror or Western movie, with the monochrome visage of its cityscape, the looming dread of its seeming emptiness, or the psychopathic tendencies of its young inhabitants. In a later montage, Klaus presents Jesper as a drug pusher, a visual motif clearly meant for the adults among the viewers. There’s plenty of comedy for the Netflix film’s target audience (kids) as well, with a collection of sight gags and slapstick humour, which is offset by sarcastic quips and self-aware, darkly comedic lines of dialogue elsewhere.

Alva in Klaus Photo Credit: Netflix

But the writing — from newcomers Jim Mahoney, Zach Lewis, and Pablos — is weaker in terms of characters and story. Alva is largely present in Klaus to tell Jesper what a good job he’s done and then end up as his love interest, even though the film bothers to present no evidence of their connection whatsoever. And in likely not wanting to upset anyone, Klaus ends up keeping things simple and reaffirms the existing legend of Santa Claus. It does have one interesting thing to say about Christmas. Klaus subverts the message that gift-giving began as a wholly altruistic exercise, by noting that most humans only ever do things out of self-interest. It’s funny that something as wholesome as Santa Claus could be borne out of that.

But Klaus also shows that children’s acts, even when driven by greed, can set an example for adults. For the obliviousness that stems through their innocence overlooks grudges and in turn, undoes the mistakes of the past. Or in other words: “A true act of goodwill always sparks another.”

Klaus is out now on Netflix worldwide. A Hindi-language dub is available as well.

[lockcup5-blog]

The Linc - Eagles listed among teams that could potentially trade for Jadeveon Clowney

Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links ...

Five potential trade partners for the Texans if they move Jadeveon Clowney - The Athletic The chances that the Eagles will land Clowney are very low, but they’re not zero. The big issue that the Eagles — and many other teams — face would be finding the money to sign Clowney to a lucrative extension. That’s an especially tall task in Philadelphia, where the team is going to be building around a high-priced quarterback pretty soon in Carson Wentz. That said, Howie Roseman is not afraid to take big swings. And he views the defensive line as a premium position. Clowney would be a disruptive player who could line up in multiple spots in the Eagles’ scheme. That he’s only 26 has to be appealing to Roseman. A core up front of Fletcher Cox, Derek Barnett and Clowney would create issues for opposing offenses for years to come. If this were a year or two ago, and the Eagles had Wentz on his rookie contract, I could see Roseman making an aggressive push for Clowney. Now? The Eagles will likely kick around the idea internally and might even call. But given what it will take in terms of draft pick compensation and financial commitment, a deal seems highly unlikely. — Sheil Kapadia

The Mack Hollins mystery - BGN Hopefully we’ll see Hollins back out on the field sooner than later. If he can build on the potential he showed as a rookie, I think he can be a solid contributor for this team. It’s just hard to tell how realistic that is at this point. Even if Hollins does return soon, it’s fair to wonder how much his absence has stunted the 25-year-old’s development. (Not to mention going from No. 10 to No. 16 is a bad sign in terms of #JerseyNumberAnalytics.)

Organized Team Activities Progress Report - BGN Radio Michael Kist and Brandon Lee Gowton go over all the happenings from the Eagles’ Organized Team Activities! Wentz, Goedert, a new starter at RG(?), the defensive back configuration and much much more all discussed on this loaded show! Presented by SB Nation and Bleeding Green Nation.

Wentz Lives! - Iggles Blitz It is good to hear Rasul Douglas carried over the momentum from January to the OTAs. He finished the season strong. It sounds like he is ready to really compete for playing time. Interesting that Avonte Maddox was at CB. The Eagles need to find a home for him and let him develop. Maddox is a talented player. You want him on the field.

Carson Wentz brings energy to Eagles practice, along with hope that history won’t repeat itself - CBS Sports Wentz looked spry and agile as he booted out to his right and delivered powerful passes to the sideline off his signature hop-step. He unleashed some perfect deep fades in one-on-one will drills. Things were not nearly as smooth in seven-on-seven and full team drills – “X’s and O’s-wise, things weren’t perfect,” he conceded – though that’s not what this return was really about. This was about just being able to do the same things that all of his healthy teammates could, with no restrictions.

Eagles rookie JJ Arcega-Whiteside and his guardian angels - ESPN When the camera cut to Stanford Cardinal wide receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside during the 2019 NFL draft, he was sitting on the couch hip-to-hip with his mother, Valorie, in their South Carolina home, friends and family all around them. Valorie intended to burst off the couch and break into a celebratory dance when her boy was selected. But when the call came from the Philadelphia Eagles in the second round that Friday night in April, JJ unexpectedly broke down -- so his mom did, too. ”There’s been a few times I’ve seen JJ cry. That was when my mom died, when I found out I had cancer, and one other time -- he had a little brother that passed during childbirth,” Valorie said. “That’s the three times in my life that I have seen him cry. So when he got emotional and cried, my happy celebration turned ... I just went from laughing and screaming to crying right there with him. ”It was a feeling of so many emotions all at once. How can you be happy and crying and ecstatic and nostalgic and all of these things all at the same time? That’s what it was like, just a big kaleidoscope of emotions.”

Fired-up Tim Jernigan brimming with confidence, motivation and swagger - NBCSP “You gotta listen to what I just said,” Jernigan said, pointing out how obvious it was to him. “It speaks for itself, bro. You’ll see the difference in September then. Ask any coach in here, ask any player in here, what Timmy Jernigan look like? I ain’t gotta brag on myself, I ain’t gotta talk on myself. Ask them. I ain’t gotta say one word. It’s on.” Even when he’s getting ticked off by questions, there’s just something about Jernigan’s energy, his swagger, that separates him. It’s something the Eagles feel when they’re on the field too. It’s why late last season, defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz stressed how important Jernigan was to the spirit of their defense.

While cast in Aaron Donald’s shadow, Fletcher Cox will go down as one of the best to ever do it - PFF Among the 125 interior defensive linemen with 500 or more pass-rush snaps since 2015, Donald ranks first in pass-rush grade (95.9), total pressures (375) and pass-rush win percentage (22.1%). Cox ranks second behind Donald in all three metrics. And the trend continues, as Donald led all at his position in pass-rush grade in each of the past four seasons (2015-18). Cox ranked second two of the years (2017 & 2018) and third in another (2015). The five best single-season pass-rush win rates in the PFF era (2006-18) all belong to Donald and Cox. Donald owns the three best (2016, 2017 &2018) and the fifth-best (2015), while Cox owns the fourth-best (2018).

In Year 2, Dallas Goedert is poised for a season to remember - PE.com “You have to get used to the speed of things, for sure,” Goedert said. “It takes some time. As soon as you get here, you’re on the move. It’s tough to catch up sometimes. But if you keep your head down and keep grinding, understanding that it’s your job now, things slow down. I feel like it’s all slowed down for me. I can go out there and just play football and not think. That makes me a better football player. I’m pretty happy with where I’m at, continuing to work, continuing to enjoy this.”

Eagles tight end Zach Ertz ready to build on his record-breaking season - Daily News “On paper, we’ve got an explosive, explosive offense,’’ Ertz said Tuesday after the Eagles finished the first of their 10 spring OTA practice sessions at the NovaCare Complex. “We just have to fine-tune everything and be on point. ”Bringing in a guy like Jordan Howard is going to help us immensely. A guy that you can give the ball to behind five really good offensive linemen and say, ‘Go to work.’ “And DeSean coming back is going to be big for us. He’s just so fast. The first play of the Tampa Bay game last year, he goes 70 yards [for a touchdown] on us. We haven’t had that since he left, honestly. [Jeremy] Maclin had it a little bit. But D-Jac is just another animal.’’ The addition of Jackson is intriguing in two respects. He not only gives quarterback Carson Wentz the most dangerous vertical threat he’s ever had, but Jackson’s speed also should open things up underneath for Ertz and the Eagles’ other two tight ends, Dallas Goedert and Richard Rodgers.

Mike Freeman’s 10-Point Stance: Russell Wilson Is Exactly What the NFL Needs Now - B/R Philadelphia defensive lineman Chris Long retired this past week. Though he’ll be remembered as a talented player who helped the Eagles win their first Super Bowl, his impact has gone far beyond the field. When Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee to protest social justice issues, it set off a chain of events that impacted the sport, and society, forever. One of the more striking aspects of the protests, even after Kaepernick was no longer on the field, was the small number of white players who joined their teammates. Long proudly joined those players voicing their concerns over social injustice. He also funded scholarships in his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, in hopes of promoting educational equity and opportunity. I cannot emphasize enough how much a number of black players appreciated Long’s actions. Long will be missed. Not just for his good play but also for what he meant to black players during one of the most important times in league history.

Brandon Lee Gowton Talks Eagles - 94WIP From Bleeding Green Nation, Brandon Lee Gowton calls in to talk Eagles’ OTAs and Carson Wentz.

Falcons DE Steven Means will miss 2019 season with torn Achilles - The Falcoholic It’s hard, hard news for Means, a journeyman who found a home in Atlanta and was being primed for a bigger role in the team’s defensive end rotation. He signed a one-year extension in February and was one of the team’s only moves at the position this offseason. The move puts Atlanta in a bit of a bind. Means projected to be a key player in the team’s base defense, a role he grew into in 2018. Right now, the Falcons don’t have ton of depth at the position, and his loss puts the onus on rookie edge John Cominsky to play a bigger role in the rotation. Cominsky came into the University of Charleston as a quarterback, and needs development as an NFL defensive end.

Looks like things are on track for Cowboys to make Ezekiel Elliott highest-paid RB in NFL history - Blogging The Boys Pelissero notes that Elliott’s camp and the Cowboys have been in communication despite ongoing contract talks between the team and representatives for Prescott and Cooper. He also mentions that it seems like everyone involved feels that Zeke will soon be the highest-paid running back in NFL history. Read it again. The highest-paid running back in NFL history. Of course, the barometer for running back salary in the NFL is Todd Gurley of the Los Angeles Rams. He got his long-term extension after his third year (that’s where Zeke is now) last offseason, a huge contract to the tune of four years for $60M. [BLG Note: Good luck, Dallas.]

The 2019 NFL Contract-Year All-Stars - The Ringer Players like Bobby Wagner, Michael Thomas, Dak Prescott, and A.J. Green have contract negotiations on the horizon. If they go into the season on the last year of their deals, their performances could make or break their bank account next offseason.

Why I’m glad the NFL didn’t change its ‘unfair’ overtime system - SB Nation Retired NFL lineman Geoff Schwartz gives his thoughts about the current OT system, the potential PI replay tweaks, and the elimination of certain drills.

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Source: https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2019/5/23/18636908/eagles-news-philadelphia-teams-could-potentially-trade-jadeveon-clowney-nfl-rumors-texans-pass-rush

[mediabasedlife]

A Quick Look At: Batman - Return of the Caped Crusaders and The Lego Batman Movie

Even the most casual of media purveyor probably knows who Batman is. The DC Comics Icon first appeared in Detective Comics #27, released back in 1939. Call him what you will; The Caped Crusader, the world's greatest detective, the dark knight, Batman has had many faces across his lengthy run of comic books, television shows, and movies. His first silver screen appearance was back in 1966, in which he was portrayed by none other than the late Adam West. The show, running from '66 to '68, featured not only West's Batman, but also Burt Ward as Robin, Caesar Romero as the Joker, Julie Newmar as Catwoman, and so on. It was a far more jovial spin on Batman than in recent days, with a healthy dosage of gallantry, witty banter, and a colorful assortment of ne'er-do-wells to challenge the dynamic duo at every turn with a lengthy list of capers. The show was, at its core, fun. Yet, like all good things, it eventually came to an end.

Fast forward 48 years, however, and fans were treated to the nostalgia-fueled blast from the past; Batman - Return of the Caped Crusaders. A direct to video animated spectacle, Return of the Caped Crusaders released roughly a year ago in August of 2016. It featured not only the return of West as the titular Caped Crusader but also saw Burt Ward and Julie Newmar returning to voice Robin and Catwoman respectively. It plays like a love letter to fans of the classic television show, holding up many of the values the old show instilled; humor, daring escapades, and above all, an ever-present sense of fun. Harkening back to the campy stories of old, this film sees the Dynamic Duo once again pitted against their greatest foes; The Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman as they attempt a myriad of schemes involving a devious drug known as "batnip" and a scientific marvel in the form of a replication ray, all culminating into a shocking (yet hilarious) twist that I won't spoil here. The animation is top notch, carrying the feel of the classic show's cinematography shot for shot as it rolls through its runtime, and the voice work is equally exemplary. West, Ward, and Newmar returned to their roles with noticeable confidence and ease, while the rest of the cast provide fresh, yet appropriate takes that pay homage to the original television actors. Return of the Caped Crusaders is short of cinema standards, running a mere 78 minutes from start to finish. Despite its length, however, the movie feels feature length, culminating in a wholly satisfying experience overall.

This would not be the only newly released family focused appearance of the Dark Knight, however. Less than a year later, Cinemas were graced with a feature-length Batman film in the form of The Lego Batman Movie, a pseudo-sequel to the critically acclaimed Lego Movie. As the title of the movie implies, it takes place entirely in the lego world, but despite its brick-centric style, remains a Batman film through and through. This appearance sees Batman (Will Arnett) squaring off against an extensive list of baddies, pulling villains from not only the DC universe but several other Lego-licenced properties as well, in a bid for Gotham City all conjured up by Batman's greatest nemesis; The Joker (Zach Galifianakis). Batman is joined on his quest by his adopted son Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), ever faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth (Ralph Fiennes), and Gotham's new Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson).

Much like The Lego Movie before it, The Lego Batman Movie is beautifully rendered in CG, creating a style that despite being computer generated looks strikingly lifelike, appearing almost stop-motion in its cinematography; this movie looks like it was built from the ground up, brick by brick, not rendered on a screen. It looks amazing to watch, which complements the fact that this movie is inherently amazing. While this is inherently a film for all ages, The Lego Batman movie still manages to appeal to older Batman fans, with superb scripting filled with on-point jokes and countless references to preceding Batman media, all of which inciting at least a chuckle from the viewers at every instance. All of these perfectly serve the story, which sees an excessively edgy loner Batman taking on an extensive list of baddies led by none other than his arch-nemesis, The Joker. His crusade against evil sees him reluctantly teaming up with Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson/Robin, culminating in a fully formed Bat Family that teaches the Dark Knight that he doesn't always have to go it alone. Long story short, this movie is great, and much like Return of the Caped Crusaders, it serves as a hilariously stark contrast to the dark and brooding Batman films that have made up the breadth of The Dark Knight's appearances as of late.

[50books50movies]

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017), Logan (2017), and The Fate of the Furious (2017)

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I’m at an age where many of my friends have become or will become parents. Since I was the first person in my peer circle to become a father, they sometimes turned to me to ask what advice, practical or philosophical, I could give about becoming a parent. By this point, I’ve refined my patter to a performance. I will consistently tell my friends, “Don’t have kids.” Either that draws them in further to inevitably ask why, or they take the words on the superficial level and move on with the conversation. If they ask why I, a father of a delightful kid, would say that, I ask if they want the practical or the philosophical reasons. The practical reasons are simple: having a child is a major financial commitment, a guarantee that you will never have a sound night of sleep ever again (and not just because an infant’s needs will interrupt your sleep), and a turning point in the relationship that you and your partner have. You and your partner’s relationship may not survive; the roles that you and you partner played in the relationship before you became parents will not be the roles that you will play after. The philosophical reasons are based in pessimism: if we accept that any actions that lead to the suffering of others is immoral, then having a child is an immoral act because human sentience means that we all live in constant pain born from a terror of knowing that our lives are finite. We are always dying. We die every second. In response to the absurd notion that we are born only so we can live to know that we will die, the most common options are: commit suicide, embrace the absurdity of life, or to recognize how absurd life is and rebel. How could you then morally justify creating life? 

What could have been in the creative air to inspire three major blockbuster films (The LEGO Batman Movie, Logan, and The Fate of the Furious) from three different distributors (Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Universal Pictures, respectively) to tackle the ideas of family unity and fatherhood in three different ways? (And it’s noted that these three films offer their takes on fatherhood specifically, not parenthood.) I suppose it’s natural that someone will explore the paradoxical idea that characters like Batman and Wolverine, who are so often defined as loners who don’t believe that they deserve human connections to other people would actually have many relationships that form an extended family with characters who choose to be with them. In other words, you could imagine Batman, Wolverine, and Dominic Toretto each saluting their respective families with their beverages of choice. 

Colorful and bombastic, The LEGO Batman Movie contextualizes the characters around Batman as his extended family. From Alfred the patriarch (voice by Ralph Fiennes) to Batman (Will Arnett) to Batman’s adopted son, Robin (Michael Cera), to Batman’s co-dependent nemesis, the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), to Batman and Joker’s extended work friends and acquaintances like Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate), Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), and Clayface, the many bonds that Batman has with the world around him are highlighted in bright neon explosions. As Batman’s surrogate father and like a father who worries about his kid’s ability to make the right kind of friends at school or meet the right partner, Alfred worries about his charge’s ability to form social bonds that will sustain Batman if he were to ever die. 

The film’s inciting incident is Batman breaking the Joker’s heart by telling him that he means nothing to him; the movie ends with a play on romantic comedy beats by climaxing with Batman and the Joker telling each other that they hate each other. It’s the psychosexual dynamic between the two that Frank Miller famously explored in The Dark Knight Returns and Scott Snyder years later in “Death of the Family” sanitized for the elementary school set. 

The cinematic versions of Batman always come around to embrace the idea that Batman isn’t the loner that he thinks he is. He travels with gods like Superman and Wonder Woman. In The LEGO Batman Movie, he craves the attention from his peers in the Justice League so badly that he has to put up a front to pretend that he doesn’t want it when he doesn’t get it. In other films, he actually founds the Justice League.

He’s also a father figure, whether in the figurative sense (Batman’s vigilantism gives birth to a more demented class of villains, and his rogues slowly transition from mobsters to supervillains) in a more literal sense (Batman becomes the guardian to the various Robins over the years and the central figure in a cohort of vigilantes, from the Huntress to Spoiler to Red Hood to Batwoman to Batwing). Michael Cera’s performance as Robin in The LEGO Batman Movie makes the character guileless and eager to please than normal to contrast with the bravado that Will Arnett infuses into his Batman. 

Like his bald counterpart in The LEGO Batman Movie (coincidentally portrayed by Ralph, another Englishman, Fiennes), Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier is concerned that Logan (Hugh Jackman) will lose his chance to reforge a connection to the wider world around him in Logan. Bitter, broken-hearted, and betrayed by his body, Xavier insists to Logan that there is still time for him to reconnect with the world after the rest of the X-Men were killed when Logan meets Laura (Dafne Keen). Logan, Laura, and Charles’s adventure across America remind Logan what a warm household full of affection, as the X-Mansion might have been once, looks like compared to the dusty and solitary existence he, Caliban (Stephen Merchant), and Charles lived in Mexico as he tried to raise enough money to go somewhere so he and Charles can die in peace. As Logan undergoes this journey and reforges connections, he travels from a dusty broken down industrial plant to a neon-bathed city to a corn farm and back to nature, his soul undergoing a revival even as his body continues its breakdown. 

Both Logan and Batman begin their films as reluctant fathers, each haunted by loss and unable to figure out the hedgehog’s dilemma. Both are convinced that their lonely lives are the only ways that they can pass their days. Both are pushed by their surrogate father figures to bond with children who unexpectedly enter their lives. And both try to demonstrate their acceptance of the responsibility of fatherhood through sacrifice. Logan overdoses on a drug in order to protect Laura and her friends from a physical avatar of his wild past, while Batman volunteers to return to the Phantom Zone to honor the agreement he made with the Phantom Zone’s keeper that allowed him to return to save his fledgling family. 

There’s a thrill to seeing Logan cut a bloody swath across the screen, but the film’s melancholy gives it a bitter taste. The shock of Logan cutting off an arm from a man who was trying to steal the tires from his rented limousine is undercut by how hard it was for the legendary Wolverine to fend off those four men. The excitement of Logan bearing his claws at Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and the Reavers is undermined by how ineffectual Logan is against them. You might be surprised that Logan is casually murdering Reavers who were trying to capture Xavier, but the surprise is subverted by the realization that the Reavers were completely defenseless and neutralized by Xavier’s psychic seizure. Logan facing down goons to help Will Munson (Eriq La Salle), a farmer that he helped on his journey, but his violence against the Reavers and the goons only brings more violence upon the Munsons, which leaves them all dead. In the climax, Logan is temporarily restored to his former vitality due to a healing serum, but by the end of that burst of violence, Logan can barely stand. Violence in Logan is a bittersweet fruit.

Every time Logan fights the Reavers, they come back with more and stronger soldiers. When he faces them in Mexico, the Reavers have heavily armed Mexican police officers riding in SUVs. By the time that he faces them in North Dakota, the Reavers have armored trucks, jeeps with mounted machine guns, and a young feral clone of Logan. Nonetheless, Logan can’t help but feel fatherly pride during the climactic fight against the Reavers. Laura had already saved him once after he collapsed on the side of a highway by getting him medical attention. But he becomes proud of her when she fights to defend her friends against the Reavers, and they coordinate their attacks. They bond through violence because, as Xavier said, they’re very alike.  

The price of violence makes explicit the idea that becoming a parent raises the stakes. One might be tempted to quit an unsatisfactory, unfulfilling, underpaying job, but the income or health insurance from that job might be the only thing that protects your family from deprivation. One might be tempted to lash out at the world or to go it alone, but that might be the selfish thing to do. 

James Mangold, the director of Logan and one of the screenwriters, along with Scott Frank and Michael Green, unintentionally struck political relevance in the current political climate. The film’s development began in 2013, and the screenplay was complete by early 2016, around the same time that Donald Trump was campaigning for President of the United States on a platform of xenophobia and racism. In the film’s opening scenes, we see Logan chauffering four young white men past a Mexico-US border checkpoint. They’re standing through the limo’s sunroof, chanting “USA!” at the immigrants waiting to pass the border. By March 2017, President Trump’s administration is floating trial balloons to test the idea of separating women and children who are caught crossing the Mexico-US border together. Laura and her friends are Mexican children whose humanity has been denied by a corporation so they can be experimented upon and trained to be weapons. As Donald Pierce references repeatedly throughout Logan, Laura and her friends are commodities, patented intellectual properties of the company that employs him. Whereas other X-Men stories would be metaphors about how the Other is demonized, here the Other is completely dehumanized. Principal photography for Logan ended in August 2016, but the idea that Laura and her friends are not seeking refuge in the United States because the United States is not a hospitable place for children born from Mexican mothers and the image that they are running toward the Canadian border to seek asylum make for accidentally potent juxtaposition.

While The LEGO Batman Movie and Logan present their protagonists in trigenerational families, The Fate of the Furious presents two different types of families. There’s the circle of friends that become a family that Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) often toasts with a bottle of Corona. Then, there’s also the son that he and Elena (Elsa Pataky) created during their relationship when he thought that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) was dead. Dominic accepts fatherhood without reservation and is willing to betray his la familia in order to protect his biological family until he can find a way to save his son from Cipher (Charlize Theron, mostly underutilized in the film), a legendary cyberterrorist who is blackmailing Dominic to steal an EMP device, a Russian nuclear football, and a Russian nuclear submarine for her.  

There is, of course, another father in la familia who is noticeably absent. Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), Mia Toretto, and their son are written out of the film with a line delivered by Letty to explain that they cannot contact Brian for his help in subduing Dominic and capture Cipher. Within the context of the film, this allows Brian and Mia to raise their child in peace, though I cannot imagine that they would feel much peace watching news reports of the theft of an EMP device in Germany, the assault on a Russian defense minister in New York City, or the chaos in New York when la familia attempted to take Dominic down. Outside of that context, this allows Walker, a father himself, to live on through his character.

With Brian removed, The Fate of the Furious screenwriter has to pile the human pathos on to Dominic, Letty, and Elena, and the film creaks and moans under the pressure. Making Dominic a father certainly raises the stakes for him, and the film is focused only on what becoming a father would mean to Dominic. Unfortunately, the film again can only define Dominic’s fatherhood by his sacrifice of his honor and his betrayal of his familia; the film is completely uninterested in Elena’s experience or perspective as the child’s mother. Because the existence of Dominic and Elena’s son is a shock revelation, there’s no time for them to form a connection or for the viewer to form a connection to them. We feel sympathy for Dominic in theory (one can only imagine the horror of someone holding your child hostage and leveraging them to make you commit crimes and betray your loved ones), but the film tries to split our focus by making us feel the pain from Letty’s perspective as the loved one who is abandoned for unexplained reasons. It’s an attempt to give Dominic a shade of humanity, but it’s done only in abstract.

By comparison, we have a better sense of the surrogate paternal relationship between Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and his trainee, Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) or between Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and his daughter, Samantha (Eden Estrella). Hobbs is a devoted father to Samantha and a committed coach to her soccer team; the cinematic appeal of their relationship lies in Johnson’s charm and their characters’ shared history, which dates back to Furious 7. Even the Nobodies evoke a more real emotional reaction than Dominic and his son because we see how they interact with each other and how Mr. Nobody tries to teach Little Nobody the tricks of the trade. 

Without the human connection, the spectacle of The Fate of the Furious felt hollow. I should have been wowed by remotely controlled cars barreling through New York City’s streets and raining from parking lots in skyscrapers, but I was bored. I should have been impressed when Dominic and company were racing across ice away from a nuclear submarine, but I was bored and almost nodding off. While the stakes for Dominic as a character were raised with his son’s introduction, the movie itself felt rote, from Cipher’s poorly outlined motivations to a moment that upends the importance of family that is the core of the franchise.

Dominic pays tribute to the bond between his peers that form la familia. However, there is dissonance in the way that Letty, Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) seemed to have no objection to Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) joining the team. Shaw murdered Han Lue/Han Seoul-Oh and attempted to kill Dominic, Mia, Brian, and Mia and Brian’s son in Furious 7. Even though Dominic was desperate, contacting Deckard’s mother (Helen Mirren) in order to convince her to persuade Deckard and Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who has his own disagreeable history with Dominic and company, to save Dominic’s son seemed to betray Han’s memory and to put aside the threats that were made to his family.  

The LEGO Batman Movie, Logan, and The Fate of the Furious presented their respective protagonists in non-traditional families. Batman adopts Robin, and they form a trigenerational family with Alfred. Logan becomes Laura’s de facto guardian, and they form a trigenerational family with Xavier. Dominic, Letty, and Dominic’s biological son form a blended family. Indeed, the only traditional nuclear families that we see in these films are the Waynes, which is broken when Batman’s parents are murdered, and the Munsons in Logan. 

You could strain to draw a connection between how casually the Munsons are killed to how dystopian the world in Logan is, but the Munsons’ deaths feel almost cruel. From the moment that Logan stops the truck to help them wrangle their horses, the audience begins to wait for the Munsons to die. It gives the otherwise tranquil scenes of Logan, Xavier, and Laura observing what a normal family looks like as they dine together suspenseful tension. Their deaths for doing nothing more than extending hospitality to Logan, Xavier, and Laura felt like a manipulative exercise in cynicism and nihilism. They’re collateral damage in Logan’s violence trap, and the viewer empathizes with Will Munson when he pulls the trigger on Logan after they’ve incapacitated X-24, the younger, feral clone of Logan that was sent to subdue and capture Laura. With his dying breath, Will doesn’t distinguish between X-24 and Logan because they are both monsters that trampled the Munsons’ lives. That the gun’s chamber was empty only emphasizes that violence, even in the cynical world of Logan, isn’t a solution.

Finally, if we accept the notion that becoming a parent is one of the few rites of passage into adulthood left in today’s America, then the other side of that passage is observing your own parents’ decline and eventual death. In Logan, Charles Xavier is suffering Alzheimer’s disease, and Logan and Caliban are Xavier’s sole caregivers. When Xavier doesn’t recognize Logan, he is afraid of him because, to Xavier, Logan is the person who drugs him into unconsciousness. When Xavier is awake and lucid enough to recognize Logan, he berates him for being a disappointment. Xavier’s seizures cause Logan physical pain, and his words cause Logan emotional pain. Xavier is angry at himself and Logan because he needs Logan’s help with something as fundamental as using the bathroom; Logan is resentful for Xavier’s role in the Westchester incident, the physical and emotional pain that Xavier causes him, and the fact that he has to take care of his father figure in his decline. 

It was curious to me that three different and big budget films released within two months of each other wove in different ideas about fatherhood into their tales. Each film tried to examine its respective protagonist through the lens of fatherhood and came away with slightly different conclusions. Batman, for as much as he describes himself to be a loner, is character with myriad connections. Logan, another self-professed loner, can’t help but to connect to his daughter when they both do what they do best, even though what they do isn’t very nice and could trap them in cycles of violence. Dominic, a man who talks constantly about his familia, showed that his biological family is ultimately more important to him than the friends and peers around him. 

[mixtapekings]

Listen Review of Run The Jewels’ ‘RTJ4’ Album by djbooth.net

“…a shotgun blast to the face.”

Run The Jewels thrives on the spirit of rebellion. The duo, consisting of Atlanta rapper Killer Mike and New York rapper/producer El-P, has grown from indie one-off to one of the most impressive second winds in rap history. Their music finds the middle ground between cartoonish purist rap thrills and anarchic grit. At their very best, Mike and El-P will have you ready to burn everything in sight.

While RTJ’s music has always maintained an anti-establishment bent, the aggression on their 2016 album Run the Jewels 3, in particular, was channeled through the prism of revolt. In the wake of the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and the election of the 45th President of the United States, RTJ’s lawless spirit made them, however unintentionally, uniquely suited to address a world coming apart at the seams.

In the face of Armageddon, RTJ’s message hit differently. Four years later, with another wave of protests taking place in response to Black death looming large over the world, Run the Jewels are offering their fourth album, aptly titled RTJ4. 

The public needs music directly speaking to the times. Mike and El’s timing is perfect; the stakes have never been higher. Let’s see if the Jewel Runners are up to the challenge.

In usual 1-Listen fashion, the rules are the same: no rewinds, pauses, or skips—a straight shot through followed by my gut reactions. Let’s ride.

1. “Yankee & The Brave (ep. 4)���

Killer Mike opening with DaBaby speed. Man, these drums are THUMPING. “I’mma terrorize the actors playing like they want some drama.” No holds barred. Mike and El-P play rap hot potato like no other. El is floating. “I’m ready to mob on all these charlatans.” The beat sounds like a John Carpenter score stripped for parts and hooked to some boomers. “I can’t let the pig take me, I got too much pride / I meant it when I said it, never take me alive.” This exact energy is what I was hoping for. Revolt music right off rip. No brakes, all nitrous. “Yankee & The Brave” is how you open an album.

2. “Ooh LA LA” feat. Greg Nice & DJ Premier

Did El-P source his drums from fucking mortars? These boys are monstrous. El’s beats are big enough to walk through. I don’t like this hook. Greg Nice’s voice is grating. “When we usher in chaos, remember we did it smiling.” They may be smiling, but Mike and El sound pissed. “Ooh LA LA” isn’t playful music; it’s angry. This song doesn’t leave me shaking the way “Yankee & The Brave” did, but it’s still a nice jolt of catharsis. Premier scratches are always a plus. I’m glad he’s still so revered by rappers across generations.

3. “Out of Sight” feat. 2 Chainz

El-P made a beat out of jumping vocal cuts that would sound at home on a post-apocalyptic workout tape. He never fails to impress. I love hearing references to Public Enemy’s “My Uzi Weighs A Ton.” Mike and El are trading off lines. “I’m only doing what I want by hocking loogies at the swine.” I see why they wanted to push this project up two days. Forget “F*ck The Police,” this is FUCK THE FUCKING COPS. Mike caught a CRAZY flow and held onto it forever. The energy is stabbing me in the chest. If you’ve ever downed a bag of Pop Rocks with nails inside, then, and only then, will you understand the power of “Out Of Sight.” Here comes 2 Chainz. One mention of growing up in poverty, but the rest of his verse is just soulless flexing. It’s not 2 Chainz’ fault, but I’m not tryna hear his verse right now.

4. “Holy Calamafuck”

A reggae sample to start things off. And everything just devolved into a 404 error. The beat is actively falling apart. A line about jacking Supreme jackets and calling out hypebeasts. Are those record scratches or Windows 95 program glitches? I can’t keep my head straight. A line about drones and time elves. “Every other goddamn year I’m brand new / It’s been 20-plus years, you think that’s a clue?” TALK YOUR SHIT, EL. Since the Def Jux days. Mike and El stood the test of time, gotta respect it. These two were born to rap together. “PTSD, streets did the damage.” Mike is pouring his heart out. If the streets run red with blood, “Holy Calamafuck” will be the soundtrack.

5. “Goonies vs. E.T.”

These drums and synths were sourced from space. Mike and El are rapping for their lives. “Goonies vs. E.T.” is pure fucking chaos. How did they keep their heads together recording over this beat? E.T.’s healing touch couldn’t help them. The hook’s not doing much for me—it feels like dead space—but the beat is breathing. Man, this shit is manic. I’m on a sugar high. “The revolution is televised and digitized.” All facts. Mike has one of the most potent rap voices. I can’t see his face, but I know there’s fire in his eyes. “This is people with an attitude in Beverly Hills.” Making people uncomfortable is progress.

6. “Walking In The Snow”

A nice crunchy guitar riff to incite more chaos. The beat just cracked open, and now it sounds like a fucking Tesla coil. I feel more compelled to type the word “fuck” than I ever have during a review. “All oppression’s borne of lies.” El has been talking that talk all across this shit. El sounds like a preacher. “Just got done walking in the snow / Goddamn that muhfucka cold.” Who’s rapping on the hook? OH SHIT, IT’S GANGSTA BOO. Nice surprise. OG needs more love. “Every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free.” Mike is laying everything out. “I can’t breathe.” That line really hurt. “The most you get is a Twitter rant and called a tragedy.” He’s just talking at this point. Brutal. I know he was fighting back the tears rapping this one. The beat is mutating like crazy. I can’t keep up—breathless rap music at its finest. I love love LOVE this song, holy shit.

7. “Ju$t” feat. Zach De La Rocha & Pharrell Williams

It’s the famous four-count! Pharrell must’ve had a hand in production along with El-P. Pharrell’s voice doesn’t fit into the cracks of this hook; it’s distracting. “Look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar.” Mike is doing call-and-response with himself. He’s talking about corporations co-opting marijuana and pedophiles in high places. “Confuscious say you’d better thug out.” That got me. El has a thing for turning voices into drum patterns. These beats are fun but they will also turn around and rip your throat out if you try them. Here comes Mr. Rage himself, Zach De La Rocha. His voice cuts through everything. I love how analog his voice sounds. He sounds fired up. I’ll take another Rage Against the Machine album, please. Without Pharrell, “Ju$t” would be close to perfect.

8. “Never Look Back”

A little techno bounce to start “Never Look Back.” All I can see in my head is Tron light cycles burning digitized vapors. Was that a Pop Smoke bar? His death still hurts. Mike and El managing to rap about current events and not sound lame is amazing. No other rapper their age could pull off a TikTok bar. Mike is rapping about his mother. Did she pass? Man, that’s heavy. So that’s why it’s called “Never Look Back.” “All that matter is gratitude. Gratitude is everything.” Who’s speaking right now? Can’t make it out. El is talking about how he never saw class or race as a child. Mike follows with, “Never look back, you’ll only be bitter / If you get bitter, you’ll never get better.” They’re confronting demons. RTJ4 feels as immediate and punchy as Mike and El’s respective solo work. Ending with a ticking timer, always coming through with the relief.

9. “The Ground Below”

Is this nu-metal I’m hearing? These guitars and smashing drums are super silly, even by RTJ standards. They rapping, though. “Screaming fuck the world and you can drink what’s coming from my urethra.” El always knows how to rap familiar shit differently. “Not saying it’s a conspiracy but you’re all against me.” Funny. A weird melange of sounds and images, and I’m not sure what to make of it. The raps are crazy, and the beat is kinda growing on me. Easy to believe them saying, “The money never meant much” when they’ve been giving out their albums for free since 2013.

10. “Pulling The Pin” feat. Josh Homme & Mavis Staples

Okay, last two tracks. If you’re gonna name a track “Pulling The Pin,” there’d better be an explosion. Ominous marching and some warbled vocals. “These old foxes got a lot of plots to outfox us.” El hit that Aesop Rock flow real quick. Those chorus vocals are ghostly. Josh Homme is a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Shout out Queens of The Stone Age. “Every cage built needs an occupant.” Is that Mavis Staples? It is! Her vocals are so rich. Staples finding space in this interstellar mayhem is wild. Mavis is my favorite feature so far. There’s much less frivolous shit-talking this time, especially from Mike. “Kicking and screaming while watching the demons collecting the gold and the diamond residuals.” Career-best rapping from Mike. More Mavis, thank God. “There’s a grenade in my heart.”

11. “A Few Words for The Firing Squad (Radiation)”

RTJ4 has been a ride. Ending with the firing squad can’t be a good sign. El starts with a short tribute to his wife. Touching. Mike back to rapping about asking his mom to cling to life. His kids, his wife, and his craft have made him a better man. These are death-bed confessions set to music. Mike and El must be rapping blindfolded, standing in front of the wall and the firing squad. Heartbreaking. “Last word to the firing squad was ‘Fuck you, too.’” Kicking and screaming. It sounds like we’re going out with a big instrumental explosion—saxophone, brass, and reverbed synths and choirs. This is BIG.

Where do Mike and El find the energy to keep expanding their sound like this?

Oh, we’re not done yet.

A narrator is laying down the story of two rebels forced together by the odds. They’re still running with this Yankee & The Brave angle. It’s playing like an end credits song. So… The whole thing’s been a TV show? I’ll admit, this takes away some from the immediacy of Mike and El’s message.

Final (First Listen) Thoughts On Run the Jewels’ RTJ4:

Run the Jewels dropping their fourth album in the middle of a global pandemic and a nationwide uprising is perfect.

The duo crafted a potent mix of braggadocio and political and personal reflection set to beats made for video game boss battles. Both Mike and El deliver career-best work behind the mic, and El-P’s production has only grown more expansive.

Golden-era boom-bap (“Out of Sight,” “Holy Calamafuck”), and murky synth-scapes (“Never Look Back”) are flayed and split open to create digitized warzones. They’re as frantic and restless as the rappers pushing them to their limits.

From beginning to end, RTJ4 is a shotgun blast to the face; an album to turn up to 11 while the precincts burn. Pent-up emotions shoot through every bar, every beat, and every second of breathing room. The anti-police sentiment couldn’t be more timely.

The only time the momentum drags on RTJ4 is when other voices cram into the frame. Several features are either inappropriate (2 Chainz on “Out of Sight”) or distracting (Pharrell on “Ju$t”).

Unintentionally, the running motif of the Yankee & The Brave TV show stifles some of the immediacy from Mike and El’s best verses to date. Maybe the TV show angle will age better in a world where the president didn’t just declare war on his fellow citizens.

Minor missteps aside, Mike and EL understand the stakes at hand. RTJ4 mixes the punchy and the profoundly personal with cartoonish zeal, EPMD by way of Adult Swim’s Superjail! 

Politically and musically, Run the Jewels are done asking for favors. RTJ4 is five-finger discount rap at its finest.

from Listen Review of Run The Jewels’ ‘RTJ4’ Album by djbooth.net

[connorrenwick]

Friday Five with Mike Szivos of SOFTlab

Michael Szivos is the head of SOFTlab, a studio based in New York City that operates at the intersection of architecture, art, video, and interactive design. SOFTlab approaches projects by examining local conditions and often becoming an extension of something inapparent that already exists on site. Their projects are more or less open ended, allowing visitors to create their own interpretations and memories of each place. The lines between design and production become blurry through SOFTlab’s interest in both vernacular and advanced digital craft. The studio has produced a wide range of design projects and collaborated with various artists, designers, publications and institutions including MoMA, IBM, Adobe, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Hall of Science, Eyebeam, New Museum, 3M, Vice Media, Intel, The New York Times, Van Alen Institute, EPFL, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University. Today Szivos shares a few of his favorites in this week’s Friday Five.

Archizoom, No Stop City, 1970

1. Speculation I always try to remind myself that design isn’t just a means to develop a product, ad, building, etc. but that it can lead to work whose goal is to foster a discussion or even act as a form of protest. Typically we design things we like, but some of the most evocative speculative architecture was a form of propaganda or even protest, a way of showing that where we might be headed culturally and socially is not fixed. This blurry line between intention, commentary, and imagination of the work of people like archizoom, superstudio, and archigram is a constant reminder for me that the work we produce can be just as much a question as it is an answer.

Zach Lieberman, Daily code sketches

2. Practice I had an architecture professor who would produce three 3-inch by 3-inch collages every morning. He would make them with any materials at hand and he may miss a day here and there, but it was something he easily did as part of his daily routine. His reasoning was that you can’t make yourself have a good idea, but you can practice being creative and he found this simple routine helped him generate ideas. Zach Lieberman’s daily coding sketches is another great example. These examples show that by not treating every act of design as a arduous and sacred act allows for experimentation, failure, and invention. They are also a reminder to me that design can and should be practiced by anyone and that design isn’t a romantic idea about the pursuit of critical genesis.

Jim Jarmusch, Stranger Than Paradise, 1984

3. Long Jump Shots Jim Jarmusch’s jump cuts subtly make you aware of your participation in his films. Through the simple device of an extended black cut between scenes he invites your mind to wonder what will happen next. He may give hints to you by connecting scenes with an amazing musical score or an actor looking out of frame and then surprise you with something unexpected. This idea is something we are constantly referencing when we produce our work. We always remind ourselves that our work should not allow the audience to be passive and that a certain degree of “blank” space or open ended-ness allows that audience to enter a project more as authors of experience rather than simply spectators.

Massie Surratt and David Franck, HyperFUNctionalism Pratt Institute School of Architecture 2018

4. Students A big part of my design life is teaching. The vitality of students and their thirst to question what is possible is really inspiring. While I have many colleagues and friends who do amazing work, for the most part we have developed our own practices and place in the world as designers. To see a student take in a world of creative history and begin to develop their own interests, opinions and voice is really exciting. It is simply amazing to be a part of conversations with someone about their work as they begin to understand they can have agency in the world around them through a design agenda that is their own.

Dieter Rams \\\ photo by Gary Hustwit

5. Details “Good design is honest. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.” To me, these are the most important of Dieter Rams ten design principles. While I think ideas are extremely important, I think they often get clouded by other intentions as a project is executed. If an idea is good enough, I think it can be expressed in a clear and honest way. People often tell others how good their ideas are, but the best way in my opinion to explain an idea is for someone to simply show you. The power of Rams work is that everything is considered. It simply isn’t up for grabs that he isn’t committed to expressing his ideas honestly.  I not only have a huge respect for that, but it is something I aspire to.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/24/friday-five-with-mike-szivos-of-softlab/

[ellenlucasonlinedatingblog]

Hey, Hey, it's Chanté, the new curator for Sexuality in Color!

Hey! I'm Chanté Thurmond, and I'm the new curator of the Sexuality in Color blog, as well as Scarleteen's Growth and Advancement Advisor. Before I share a quote that's been in my heart lately, and a shortlist of a few exceptional PoC who consistently add value to the culture and to their respective communities, I want to share a brief backstory about my journey to Scarleteen.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I had the great fortune of meeting (and befriending) the infamous Heather Corinna, Scarleteen's founder, at an annual Teenwise conference in the Twin Cities. We became instant pals -- the two of us bonded over our shared passion and commitment to working in partnership with young people. We shared a belief that youth and emerging adults have the power to tap into their collective genius (whenever they want) and they, not adults, are the gurus of their own bodies, minds and hearts. And eventually we discovered that despite our superficial differences (like our age, race, ethnicity or zip codes), Heather and I share similar stories of origin -- we are both the firstborn child to young parents. Throughout the years, we've also come to realize that while our stories seem to have run parallel at multiple times, there are points of divergence (like our gender identities, our sexualities, our values or adopted philosophies). Either way, our respective paths have unfolded to complex intersectional identities that we inherited from our diverse, immigrant families and environments.

I think it's super important to recognize that we're all living intersectionally. Whether we name it or not, we each bring some kind of bias, privilege or cultural lens to the conversations and relationships we have -- be it IRL or virtually. So, while Sexuality in Color is curated by me -- a proud person of color (PoC) -- I won't ever claim to speak on behalf of ALL PoC. My experience is simply one of many.

Our histories never unfold in isolation. We cannot truly tell what we consider to be our own histories without knowing the other stories. And often we discover that those other stories are actually our own stories. - Angela Davis

More and more, I'm reminded just how intersectional we all are, even among biological siblings who've lived with the same parents in the same house. For instance, what is offensive to me as a Black Latinx, cisgender millennial woman may not be so for my younger sister, who identifies the exact same way. Whenever we do have differences of opinions, I don't find it productive to debate how or why. I've come to feel it's much more helpful if we simply acknowledge and accept that while we're the same, we're extremely different and it's perfectly okay.

Anyway, here's the shit I really need to talk about: lately, I've been post-traumatically triggered by violent images and language hijacking my social media channels, group chats, radio and television. Most recently, and so sadly, this has come from so many things I've seen on #BlackTwitter. The back and forth banter within our tribe has been going from zero to 100, real quick. It's been everything from: R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, relentless anti-abortion trolls, stonings in Brunei and the pervasive misogyny from Silicon Valley to DC.

The one that really broke my spirit is the tragic murder of Nipsey Hussle. Every time I think about the love and loss his partner, Lauren London, is living through, I experience a profound spiritual heaviness. Maybe it's because I sincerely appreciated their positive display of Black love and excellence. Maybe it's because Nip strongly resembles my partner, or because I know deep down inside this hit way too close to home. Gun violence is a pervasive public health issue within our community that cannot be ignored, one of many on the long list of traumas that we as people of color suffer.

Whenever I find myself feeling sad, lost or disconnected from my culture, I do a little life hack that I want to share. I've created several curated lists of folks who share my values or who are adding something positive to the culture. When Twitter and Instagram feel like much too much, I immediately go to my short list of inclusionary voices.

Here are six gems I want to shout out for being strong, vibrant voices who consistently show-up and add value to the collective community. Thank you in advance for being great examples of how to effectively use your influence and position of power to clap back and reclaim our power as PoC. I see you and I appreciate you.

Short List of Sexuality In Color Badasses You Should Know

Erica Hart - Queer, Poly, Sex Educator who is  a proud cancer survivor. Unapologetic Black Activist (on and offline) who calls a spade a spade.

Twitter: @iHartEricka

Website: www.ihartericka.com

Zach Stafford - Young, Black Unicorn on the fast track to owning the LGBTQ media & tech star space! Currently EIC of The Advocate; Previously Chief Content Officer of Grindr.

Twitter: @ZachStafford

Annie Segarra (aka Annie Elainey) - Queer, Disability Advocate and Latinx who is the definition of intersectionality! And don't forget successful YouTube content creator and artist!

Twitter: @annielainey

Blair Imani - Black, Queer and Muslim Activist turned Author. Maybe you've heard of her, maybe you haven't?! If you're looking for a young, inspiring PoC who can make you laugh, cry or march, click here!

Twitter: @BlairImani

C. Riley Snorton - Black, Queer, Transgender Author and Professor (English and Gender and Sexuality Studies) at the University of Chicago

Books: Black On Both Sides (2017) and Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (2014)

Twitter: @Crileysnorton

Britteney Black Rose Kapri - Chicago-based Author and teaching artist for Young Chicago Authors. Her bio on her website is probably the best I've seen yet: Pro Black. Pro Queer. Pro Hoe. | I write shit. I talk shit. I teach shit. (I'm jealous af of that copy!!)

Book: Black Queer Hoe (2018)

Twitter: @BlkRseKapri 

From my heart to yours; thank you.

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[buddyrabrahams]

Each NBA team’s most important player

The mother of all NBA seasons is nearing. So as you finalize your League Pass subscriptions, complete your fantasy drafts, and prepare the guacamole for your watch parties, take some time to ponder the true meaning of the season — specifically, the benevolent stars who make such a joyous holiday possible with their prodigious athletic talents.

Here I present, each NBA team’s most important player heading into 2017-18:

Atlanta Hawks — Dennis Schroder, PG

“All my friends are dead,” said Schroder in his best Lil Uzi Vert voice as he gazed upon his roster following the respective exits of his last remaining All-Star teammates in Paul Millsap and Dwight Howard this summer. Yes, the Hawks are now as thin as a toothpick, and the incentive for them to “Do Badly for Bagley” or “Make The Fans Puka for Luka” will be enormous. But somebody has to lead this JV squad, and their resident German is as good of an option as any. Perhaps we will see Dennis the Menace gun for 20 and 10. Maybe he develops some nice pick-and-roll chemistry with new additions Dewayne Dedmon and rookie John Collins. Perhaps he finally bleaches his entire head blonde. Anything to give this team a modicum of watchability this season.

Boston Celtics — Kyrie Irving

After selling an arm, a leg, and a hip for him this summer, the Celtics will hope that Irving’s performance in his first season with them does not fall flat. The outside noise in Uncle Drew’s ear will be deafening — mockery of his decision to ditch LeBron James and go off in search of his own empire, jeers at the perceived stagnation of his playmaking skills, pervasive meme treatments of his unorthodox views on astronomy. But Irving is here for one reason and one reason only: to ball out. And that’s what he’s gonna do. Just remember kids, there’s no such thing as distractions when you’re very much woke. [mic drop]

Brooklyn Nets — D’Angelo Russell, PG/SG

If the Nets were a Harry Potter novel, Russell would definitely be the Golden Snitch. Banished from the Magic Kingdom in Los Angeles, the former No. 2 overall pick now finds himself in a situation where he could easily go 20-5-5 this season. Playing next to Jeremy Lin gives Russell the dynamic offensive threat and extra penetrator/creator that he has lacked in the backcourt to this point of his career, and there’s little doubt that D-Lo will be serving as Kenny Atkinson’s go-to scorer as well. His halfcourt skills are divine, his court vision is superb, and his opportunity is now limitless. [points to solid water in veins]

Charlotte Hornets — Kemba Walker, PG

Nicolas Batum is down for the count, so that leaves Walker as the Charlotte Tune Squad’s only true playmaker for now. Fear not though, for this 6-foot-1 slayer of giants is certainly up for the task.

Walker was in peak form last season with 23.2 points a game on 44.4 percent shooting and 39.9 percent from deep (all career-bests). Whether he’s bullying your ankles or stepping back and splashing from outer space, Kardiac Kemba is the Hornets’ cash cow (which is somewhat ironic given that his four-year, $48 million deal marks one of the best bargains in the league today), and he is definitely here to stay.

Chicago Bulls — Zach LaVine, PG/SG

Congrats to LaVine for narrowly beating out the lesser Lopez brother, Michael Porter Jr., and Fred Hoiberg’s polo shirt. A cornerstone of the franchise-resetting Jimmy Butler trade, the two-time Dunk Contest champ is all Bulls fans really have to be excited about in a clear rebuilding year. Even so, LaVine is coming off an ACL tear and might be out a few more months. So the worst-case scenario is that the Bulls are a flaming tire fire, and the best-case scenario is that the Bulls are a flaming tire fire interspersed with some LaVine rim-rockers towards the latter part of the year. Make Chicago basketball fun again.

Cleveland Cavaliers — LeBron James, SF/PF

14 years and over 50,000 minutes later, and The King’s Court remains in session. That troublemaking court jester Kyrie Irving is now exiled, his best knight Dwyane Wade has returned to his side to put the shine back in his crown, and his new cast of noblemen (Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Derrick Rose, and more) are pleasing. The reviled Golden State empire is a mighty rival indeed. But King James, now aged 32 but with all his physical faculties still intact, will rise from his throne once more and lay down his scepter in preparation for battle. And I fear for all who are forced to stand in his midst.

Dallas Mavericks — Dennis Smith Jr., PG

The Mavs are near-unanimously seen as a non-playoff team in the demonic West, and that likely won’t change no matter how many 20-point games Harrison Barnes drops or how many heartwarming moments our beloved Dirk Nowitzki graces us with. As such, the name of the game for them will be player development and the excitement factor. Enter DSJ and that batty athleticism. The NC State product is one of the rare rookies (ultra-rare when you consider head coach Rick Carlisle’s track record) with the opportunity to start and make an impact right away. Smith Jr. will touch the moon and walk amongst the comets this season, and we will all be better people because of it.

Denver Nuggets — Nikola Jokic, C

Jokic exists in the space where basketball and romanticism intersect. Every post-up is a dance recital, every delivery to a cutter is a precise work of art, and every fast break is a case study in musical theory. Now paired with a like-minded frontcourt partner in Paul Millsap, the Serbian big man has a strong chance to build on his 2016-17 averages (16.7/9.8/4.9) and become the suave slaughterer he was always meant to be. Don’t rain on my parade with cries about his defense, for this is a celebration: a celebration of the man who is making slow and unathletic fashionable again, Mr. Nikola “Big Honey” Jokic.

Detroit Pistons — Andre Drummond, C

Drummond probably came along a dozen or so years too early for his own good. The reality is that a big man stiff who has zero range, possesses limited ability to either protect the basket or switch onto opposing ball-handlers, and shoots like Sheldon Cooper from the free throw line has minimal value in the modern NBA game. But here’s the good news: Drummond is still just 24 years old and his rebound-gorging, rim-assaulting ways at least give him a decent floor as a starting center. With another year of maturity, he will look to become less of an enigma and more of the basketball bully he was born to be.

Golden State Warriors — Draymond Green, PF/C

[jumps into vat of liquid introgen due to the smoldering heat of the take] Truth be told though, this might not even be that bold of an opinion, as Green is legitimately indispensable to everything the Dubs do. Lose one of Stephen Curry or Kevin Durant, and they still have one transcendent bucket-getter who can punch you right out of the scoreboard. Lose one of Curry or Klay Thompson, and they are still capable of raining human suffering on you from long-range. Lose one of Thompson or Durant, and they can still lean on the 3-and-D attributes of the other. But lose Green? Their best distributor, best screen-and-roll player, best team defender, and emotional leader all wrapped up in one? Not great, Bob. Yes, Green is the most vital part of what’s arguably the greatest team in hardwood history, and you gotta get a kick out of that.

Houston Rockets — Chris Paul, PG

James Harden already knows Houston’s personnel and head coach Mike D’Antoni’s offense as well as the back of his beard, which leaves the majority of the adjusting in this relationship to be done by the newcomer Paul. CP3’s methodical, walk-the-ball-up style is in direct incongruence with the up-tempo principles that D’Antoni preaches (and to an extent, Harden’s own ball-dominating tendencies), so a middle ground will definitely need to be reached. Still, with his defensive activity, his subtle strokes of pick-and-roll genius, and yes, his leadership, Paul should provide a hard-hitting yin to Harden’s yang as the Rockets vie for the title of best non-Warriors team in the West.

Indiana Pacers — Myles Turner, PF/C

With Paul George peacing out of Indiana, the springy 21-year-old suddenly has the opportunity to be the biggest Turner on this side of Desiigner. While he could still use some improvement when it comes to rebounding and overall consistency, Turner otherwise has an ideal skillset for a young centerpiece to build a team around. Step 1: manufacture an elite defense using Turner’s shot-blocking and mobility. Step 2: construct a top-tier offense centered on his versatile scoring arsenal. Step 3: profit. OK, maybe it won’t be quite that easy, but it should still be a pleasure to watch Turner raise Hickory Hell in 2017-18.

Los Angeles Clippers — Blake Griffin, PF/C

“The Blake Griffin Show” is not only my favorite new primetime television series of the fall, it’s also the new reality for the Clippers in the aftermath of Chris Paul going ciao. The usual health disclaimers are inescapable with Griffin, whose availability could be the difference between 47 wins and the playoffs or 37 wins and the lottery. But for all you beleaguered point-forward enthusiasts, have I got a new god for you. Should I be institutionalized for believing Griffin has a chance to go LeBron Lite this season with a stat line somewhere in the range of 22-8-7? Probably. But what stands in the ex-top pick’s way in his debut season as Lob City’s sole breadwinner is neither talent nor circumstance: it’s his own body. Are you the gambling type, Clipper fans?

Los Angeles Lakers — Lonzo Ball, PG

It’s time to find out what Big Ballers are really made of. The eldest Ball bro may seem more like a reality star than a professional hooper and his signature shoe may be priced like it’s made of diamonds and caviar. But look beyond the funky jumpshot and the constant negative LaVar covfefe, and you will find a truly special talent. May his passing be so contagious that Adam Silver has to call in the CDC. May the conventions of the sport be turned further on their heads with each full-court outlet pass from his angelic triple-B fingertips. And may the Showtime Lakers bend at the knee and make way for a superior new brand of basketball: The ZoTime Lakers. Tell the haters to stay in their lanes.

Memphis Grizzlies — Mike Conley, PG, Memphis Grizzlies

It’s a point guard-driven league, and by golly, if the Grizzlies are paying Conley over $30 million a year, he darn well better be driving. Fortunately, that the dynamic southpaw did in 2016-17, doing whatever the exact opposite of the big contract blues is by putting forth a career-best year in production. Memphis seems to be going nowhere fast, especially with the untimely (or depending on your perspective, overdue) demise of Grit-N-Grind. But at least we’ll still have Conley getting us lost in the sauce with his two-way exploits.

Miami Heat — Hassan Whiteside, C

Goran Dragic’s nightly 0-to-100 act is enticing, as is the glow of that beachfront property on Waiters Island. But Whiteside’s areas of expertise remain the most irreplaceable on the Heat as he continues to prove his worth as their highest-paid player. The 2K rating has been up for awhile now, the block parties remain the most lit, and the midrange jumpers off glass are a quality wrinkle to what many once believed was a strictly one-dimensional offensive game. Now the focus for Young Whiteside should be on how to effectively match up against stretch-fives a la Kevin Love and Al Horford while still asserting his birthright over the painted area. Open up my eager eyes.

Milwaukee Bucks — Giannis Antetokounmpo, PG/SG/SF

My large, basketball-playing son is here to turn every day into Freaky Friday, bless his heart. Few superlatives could articulate the season Antetokounmpo put together in 2016-17. Embodying the spirit of Oprah Winfrey herself, he pointed at each of his major statistical categories and shouted, “YOU’RE GETTING A CAREER-HIGH! AND YOU’RE GETTING A CAREER-HIGH!” When the dust settled, Antetokounmpo finished with 22.9/8.8/5.4/1.6/1.9 and dragged a Bucks team that missed an entire season combined between Khris Middleton and Jabari Parker to the 6-seed. He’s a monstrosity no matter what end of the floor he’s on, and if he ever starts hitting his jumper with any consistency (which we’re already seeing glimpses of), not to be overly dramatic or anything, but we’re probably all dead. O Giannis, my Giannis.

Minnesota Timberwolves — Karl-Anthony Towns

There’s a reason why our young three-named emperor recently topped the 2017-18 NBA GM survey of which player they would most like to start a team with. True, he may still be a net liability as a defender. But 25.1 points per game on 54.2 percent from the field and 36.7 percent from three is special for any player, much less a 21-year-old pupper. Towns is equal parts physical and finesse, and while the buckets of St. Jimmy Butler and the all-around vigor of the newly-extended Andrew Wiggins will be key for the Wolves, what will truly bring the Western Conference to its knees is when KAT gets its tongue.

New Orleans Pelicans — Anthony Davis, PF/C

I’ve run out of clever eyebrow-related puns, so let’s just look at Davis for what he really is: the biggest walking mismatch in the league today. His trusty 18-footer makes him a tougher cover than a Giannis Antetokounmpo, his 6-foot-11 frame and his 8-foot wingspan make him a more unique hell than any shorter player, and graceful strides make him harder to guard going to the hoop than a Karl-Anthony Towns or a DeAndre Jordan. Now that Davis has hopefully gotten over his growing pains with fellow All-NBA big and ex-Kentucky Wildcat DeMarcus Cousins, the 30-point-per-game mark, the Defensive Player of the Year Award, who knows, maybe even Most Valuable Player honors are all hypothetically within the reach of his octopus-like grasp.

New York Knicks — Kristaps Porzingis, PF/C

Au revoir to the Melodrama at long merciful last. With Carmelo Anthony finally making like an egg and beating it, ’tis a new day for the Knickerbockers. And who better to lead them into their next chapter than Mr. Three Six Latvia? Sure, Porzingis will have some help from a Suicide Squad of sorts: Tim Hardaway’s overpaid son, rookie guard Frank last-name-pronunciation-unknown, and of course Woke Michael Beasley. But the people are finally getting what they want: a 7-foot-3 fairy-tale creature finally getting his moment as the focal point of an offense. All rise for the honorable Porzingod.

Oklahoma City Thunder — Russell Westbrook, PG

I don’t know about you, but I’m still out of breath from the rampage that was the Brodie’s 2016-17 season. His breakup with Kevin Durant left Westbrook free to release his earthly tether and spread his wings to live a war-hungry life among the dragons. Now, an MVP award, a scoring title, and basically every triple-double in NBA history later, Westbrook’s short-lived but nevertheless unforgettable solo career is over, and a new superteam has arisen before him. The equally stunning acquisitions of Paul George and Carmelo Anthony pose as many chemistry concerns as they do title upside, and now the onus in on Westbrook to be the gracious host who welcomes them into his house.

Orlando Magic — Aaron Gordon, PF

The poster child for the #NotMySmallForward movement that I just started literally five seconds ago, Gordon has nowhere to go but up this season. The talented 22-year-old endured a bitter 2016-17 campaign that saw him forced out of position in Orlando’s sardine-like frontcourt and left with an egg on his face after his dud of Dunk Contest follow-up act in what was an overall discouraging year for his growth as a player. But Serge Ibaka and Jeff Green have since gone bye-bye (albeit with rookie big man Jonathan Isaac saying hello), leaving Gordon to (hopefully) see more minutes in his natural habitat as a multi-position defensive padlock and energetic north-south presence from the power forward spot. Don’t blow this for us, Frank Vogel. Not again.

Philadelphia 76ers — Joel Embiid, C

“Live by the Process, die by the Process” -Matthew 26:52. With Philly committing a full five-year, $148 million max extension (albeit with some injury protections) to Embiid after just 31 career games, they are not just taking a leap but an entire skydive-out-of-a-C-182-aircraft of faith. The Cameroonian is well-worth the dice roll though — when he’s on the court, Embiid is a conqueror of galaxies who dominates every aspect of the game from paint to paint and often extends his reign of terror to the three-point line as well. To put it simply, Embiid’s health will be the singular defining factor for the Sixers’ trajectory as a team these next several years. No pressure, bro.

Phoenix Suns — Devin Booker, SG

Fact: Devin Booker scored 70 points in a game last season. Also fact: Michael Jordan’s single-game career-high was a mere 69. I don’t know about you, but I personally require no further convincing that Booker is the greatest basketball player of all-time. In all honesty though, it’s absurd how many different ways the Kentucky product can score the ball, and he’s still not even old enough to get into the club yet. Booker will stunt on you running the high screen or coming off it, and while the crux of his development needs to come on the defensive end, Phoenix has found their meal ticket for the next decade-plus.

Portland Trail Blazers — Damian Lillard, PG

Fresh off the hottest album drop in the history of either hip or hop, what exactly can we expect from Dame D.O.L.L.A. as we enter into a new season? Well, he went 27-5-6 last year and missed out on every major accolade before getting swept in the first round, so he probably has an entire bag of potato chips on his shoulder at this point. But Angry Lillard remains best Lillard, and thus, here’s looking forward to another year of him firing cannonballs from the three-point arc and delivering an assortment of inside-out dribbles to leave your knee ligaments in the abyss. From (number) zero to hero indeed.

Sacramento Kings — Buddy Hield, SG

No, this is not Vivek Ranadive’s alt-account. But as the Kings search for a new savior in their first full season post-Boogie Cousins, the smart money is on His Majesty Prince Buddy ascending to the throne. Hield is thoroughly marvelous at scoring and attacking off the dribble, and the 15.1 points per game he scored as a rookie after being traded to Sacramento provided a momentary glimpse into his offensive upside. And as we enter into the new NBA season, I’d like to propose a toast to the best basketball-playing Buddy since Air Bud himself.

San Antonio Spurs — Kawhi Leonard, SF

Not since the 2001 Sixers have we seen a team rely so heavily on a head of cornrows. With everybody on the Spurs aging and LaMarcus Aldridge getting some major style points for his Houdini act, Leonard in all of his stoicism may be the only thing preventing San Antonio from descending into a state of uncharacteristic chaos. There remains no better player alive if you need a stop on one end and a score on the other end, and as he looks for his third straight 60-plus-win season as the lead singer of the Spurs, expect Leonard’s stone-faced and iron-fisted rule to be front and center in the West once again.

Toronto Raptors — DeMar DeRozan, SG

“I’m just like DeRozan, if I shoot it, it goes in.” While that lyric might not be entirely statistically accurate (DeRozan’s career FG percentage is 44.6, so odds are if he shoots it, it probably won’t go in), his importance to the Raptors is no less. Though he took Toronto the bank over the summer, Kyle Lowry will turn 32 this season. Thus, the burden could increasingly lie on DeRozan to do most of the heavy lifting on offense.

After finishing fifth in the league last year with a personal-best 27.3 points per game, he is clearly fit for the job. But efficiency will always be an issue for No. 10, and it’s probably time to give up on the dream of him ever developing a reliable three-point jumper. So at the end of the day, if Toronto has any further growth to make with this current core, it will almost certainly have to come from DeRozan’s end of the equation.

Utah Jazz — Rudy Gobert, C

Raise thy hand if thou art ready for Rudy Gobert to go St. Anger on the National Basketball Association. Gordon Hayward is no more, but fear not Jazz fans, for The Stifle Tower remains to defend your honor, both literally and figuratively. There’s still a lot to like in Utah this year with Gobert set to catch lobs from fellow Euro stud Ricky Rubio as he and the rest of the team sop up the shot attempts that Hayward leaves behind. Meanwhile, the defense he anchors could potentially prove even more suffocating with the arrivals of rock-solid one-on-one stoppers like Thabo Sefolosha and Jonas Jerebko. Yep, this season especially, this Rudy should be anything but regular-sized.

Washington Wizards — John Wall, PG

With the vivid image of Wall catching the Holy Spirit and sinking a game-winning three in front of his home crowd in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semis still crisp in the minds of many, he enters 2017-18 with a lot more work ahead. It will be tough for Optimus Dime to build on a season where he flirted with a 23-11 line while playing in 77+ games for the fourth straight year and finishing top-ten in the NBA in usage. But he is embarking on the fabled age-27 season and will be running it back in a feeble conference with virtually his entire supporting cast still intact. All in all, it’s just another brick in the Wall.

from Larry Brown Sports http://ift.tt/2xCvia3

[njawaidofficial]

NFL Players, Celebrities Hammer Donald Trump for Comments on Anthem Protests

http://styleveryday.com/2017/09/23/nfl-players-celebrities-hammer-donald-trump-for-comments-on-anthem-protests/

NFL Players, Celebrities Hammer Donald Trump for Comments on Anthem Protests

10:36 AM PDT 9/23/2017 by Ryan Parker

“It’s really sad man … our president is a asshole,” said LeSean McCoy of the Buffalo Bills.

NFL players on Saturday ripped into Donald Trump for comments he made that those who sit during the national anthem should be fired. 

The president made the comments Friday night at a rally for Alabama Republican Senate candidate Luther Strange, saying in part “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired. He’s fired!”

Commissioner Roger Goodell on Saturday morning said in a statement that Trump’s remarks showed a lack of respect for the game and players. The players’ union also criticized Trump for the remarks. 

Players took matters into their own hands, laying into Trump via social media. 

“The behavior of the President is unacceptable and needs to be addressed. If you do not Condemn this divisive Rhetoric you are Condoning it!!” said Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks. 

“It’s really sad man … our president is a asshole,” said LeSean McCoy of the Buffalo Bills. 

“Does anyone tell trump to stick to politics, like they tell us to stick to sports? Smh,” said Eric Ebron of the Detroit Lions. 

Now long after, the hashtag #TakeAKnee was Twitter’s top trend. 

The story was the top headline for most news outlets and after a while, celebrities began to weigh in on the issue.

“He’s not declaring war on NFL and NBA. Owners are his donors. He’s declaring way against black people with opinions,” Ava DuVernay tweeted. 

To #TakeAKnee, it’s not to dishonor fallen US vets. What service member gave up life so that cops could kill innocent Americans with impunity?” Jeffrey Wright tweeted. 

“We’re not on the plantation anymore Chump. There will be no “buck breaking” out here. Fingers on the hand form a fist. #TakeAKnee ‘til free,” Jesse Williams tweeted. 

The showdown may lead even more players to protest via gestures on the field, which would put the league and the broadcasters that show games in an awkward position.

Last season, free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the first to sit out the national anthem in protest of the treatment of African Americans in America, especially at the hands of police officers. Since then, numerous other players have protested in similar fashion.

While some were said to be interested, no team picked up Kaepernick’s contact this season, which some NFL insiders said may be due to his actions.

Around 11:30 a.m., Trump doubled-down on his comments.

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!” Trump tweeted. 

See a collection of player and celebrity tweets to Trump below:  

The behavior of the President is unacceptable and needs to be addressed. If you do not Condemn this divisive Rhetoric you are Condoning it!!

— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) September 23, 2017

It’s really sad man … our president is a asshole

— Lesean McCoy (@CutonDime25) September 23, 2017

Trump stay in ur place… football have nothing to do wit u smh

— Zach Brown (@ZachBrown_55) September 23, 2017

Where was Trumps “son of a bitch” comments when the racists gathered in Charlottesville?! He spoke about them in a respectable way smh

— Jermon Bushrod (@j_bushrod7475) September 23, 2017

cloth has more value than people. apparently. https://t.co/PZjeRA9861

— feeno (@ArianFoster) September 23, 2017

Continue to use your voices and your platforms for racial equality and to stop injustices in our communities. This is bigger than us!!!

— Michael Thomas (@Michael31Thomas) September 23, 2017

Does anyone tell trump to stick to politics, like they tell us to stick to sports? Smh.

— Eric Ebron (@Ebron85) September 23, 2017

Sources: Bills locker room has been so emotional about Trump comments that team made plans to address topic during a team meeting tonight.

— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) September 23, 2017

If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017

…our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017

He’s not declaring war on NFL and NBA. Owners are his donors. He’s declaring way against black people with opinions. https://t.co/lnEIKs1e9I

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) September 23, 2017

To #TakeAKnee, it’s not to dishonor fallen US vets. What service member gave up life so that cops cld kill innocent Americans with impunity?

— Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) September 23, 2017

We’re not on the plantation anymore Chump. There will be no “buck breaking” out here. Fingers on the hand form a fist. #TakeAKnee ‘til free.

— jesse Williams. (@iJesseWilliams) September 23, 2017

Updates:

Sept. 23, 1:20 p.m.: Updated with celebrity reaction. 

Sept. 23, 11:30 a.m.: Updated with new comments from Trump.

  #Anthem #Celebrities #Comments #Donald #Hammer #NFL #Players #Protests #Trump

[throughdigitaleyes]

Day Three of Newport Folk is Full of Surprises

After the unbearable heat that Friday brought us and the unrelenting wind on Saturday, we were due for a perfect day. Well, Newport Folk Festival got that perfect day on Sunday, at least in terms of weather. Everything else was a bit of a mixed bag full of miscalculations, forgettable sets (and some fantastic ones) and some epic (and some not so epic) surprises. Here’s what the folk found themselves facing last Sunday.

Museum Stage

After opening my day with the choirs, I decided pop into the Museum Stage to check out Kim & Reggie Harris. Their powerful voices and astounding passion filled the room and left a lasting impression. Shortly after that, while over at the Fort Stage, I was informed that the one and only Nick Offerman would be doing a surprise pop-up set. The result was four songs, lots of laughs and a whole ton of respect and heart. Offerman could clearly feel the heft of the position he was in, and because of his approach and delivery, he managed to deliver what I’m willing to call my favorite set of the entire weekend. After his set, I only made it back to the Museum to catch a bit of Olivia Chaney closing out the weekend’s ‘For Pete’s Sake’ series. She impressed the day before during her set with Offa Rex, but here she simply took my breath away.

Harbor Stage

Sunday was far and away the worst day for the Harbor Stage, opening with a light sing-along set from Choir! Choir! Choir! but mostly bringing us the forgettable (Pinegrove and John Paul White) and odd (C.W. Stoneking and Suzanne Vega). Thankfully, wedged right in the middle of it all, was the weekend’s ‘Unannounced’ set, which found the tent and areas nearby packed with fans. The set turned out to be a rousing dance-along party from Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, complete with Rateliff and guests Preservation Hall Jazz Band marching through the crowd throughout the finale.

Quad Stage

The Berklee Gospel & Roots Choir did a fine job opening up the stage, but it was the incredible Margaret Glaspy and Dr. Dog that made the journey in to the Quad worth it (both Steelism and Whitney showed promise but were quickly forgotten). Glaspy’s incredible songwriting played perfectly to the crowd, while Dr. Dog got the tent rockin’ in a way that felt like a house party rather than a music festival. American Acoustic was sadly missed.

Fort Stage

I wasn’t really awake until the Preservation Hall Jazz Band took to the Fort Stage. They effortlessly made the fort feel like Fat Tuesday on Bourbon Street, and kept me dancing along through the whole set. Following them was one of the ‘Only at Newport’ sets, Chuck!, a celebration of the music of the one and only Chuck Berry. Here’s where the aforementioned miscalculation comes into play. Everything about this set was just off; the band, The Texas Gentlemen and the leading man, Charlie Sexton, never managed to play any of the songs as fast (or as raw) as they’re meant to be played, the guests seemed either overwhelmed (Shakey Graves) or uninterested (Jim James, who basically just read the lyrics off his phone), or (as was the case with Son Little) never even made it to the stage. The heart of the project was in the right place, but the execution felt haphazard and left me wanting (a lot) more.  The other ‘Only at Newport’ set of the day was Speak Out, a phenomenal set which found a My Morning Jacket/The Decemberists backing band and special guests tackling famous and timely protest songs. The problem here was the mystery behind the set leading to wild rumors and initial disappointment when the biggest special guests (aside from artists who were already all over the festival throughout the weekend, such as Jim James, Nick Offerman, Shakey Graves and The Lone Bellow’s Zach Williams) wound up being Margo Price and Lucius. But all in all the set turned out to be a great one, packing eleven one-of-a-kind musical moments into 55-minutes. In between Chuck! and Speak Out were two incredible sets by Michael Kiwanuka and Rhiannon Giddens, both of which I unfortunately caught far too little of. Closing out the festival was John Prine, who not only sounded really good, but also made fantastic use of his special guests (especially Margo Price, who joined him for ‘In Spite of Ourselves’), and pulled off the single most show-stopping moment of the weekend when he invited Roger Waters out for ‘Hello in There’.

At the end of the day, it was a wholly satisfying close to the 2017 Newport Folk Festival, even if it fell shy of being an incredible one. Hopefully next year they save all the mystery for the Roger Waters moments.

Check out My Coverage of Day One HERE, and Day Two HERE.

CLICK HERE for More Photos from Day Three of the 2017 Newport Folk Festival.

Photos ©Timothy Patrick Boyer, 2017.

[officialotakudome]

New Post has been published on Otaku Dome | The Latest News In Anime, Manga, Gaming, And More

New Post has been published on http://otakudome.com/the-lego-batman-movie-blu-ray-review/

The LEGO Batman Movie Blu-Ray Review

Batman is back in a new heartfelt LEGO film. Featuring a ton of characters from both Batman lore as well as WB’s entire IP catalog, The LEGO Batman Movie is a fun take on a beloved franchise that has a mind of its own.

The LEGO Batman Movie is a 2017 animated action-comedy film, it is produced by DC Entertainment & Warner Animation Group, it is currently available on Digital, DVD, and Blu-Ray.

Dick Grayson (Michael Cera) & Bruce Wayne (Will Arnett).

WB continues its successful LEGO film franchise with a LEGO adaptation of Batman, a character previously featured in The LEGO Movie. Will Arnett returns to voice the Caped Crusader, along with Michael Cera, Ralph Fiennes, Rosario Dawson, Zach Galifianakis, and Jenny Slate debut as Dick Grayson, Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, The Joker, and Harley Quinn respectively. In the film, Bruce Wayne believes that he’s the baddest, most respected hero on the planet, but he soon starts to suffer from loneliness, and after unintentionally adopting Dick, his life begins to spiral in a new direction towards familyhood.

The Joker (Zack Galifianakis) as he appears in the film.

THE GOOD: As previously mentioned, I feel I should once again stat that The LEGO Batman Movie, while based on the property, has no direct ties to any Batman arcs or continuities, so fans of the franchise should definitely watch with an open mind (seeing as this is a LEGO movie that should be a given). While on the surface The LEGO Batman Movie will seem like a simple kids film, it actually has a lot of heart and references that will put a smile on long time Batman fans faces. There’s also some genuine comedy and fantastic voice performances from the all star cast. Arnett really runs with the “comedic Batman” role, while Cera and Galifianakis also do great jobs with their respective characters.

Batman & Robin LEGOlized together.

THE BAD: The film can be a little bit too fast paced, but it never really misses a beat or suffers because of it, but younger audiences might be a tad lost with so much happening in one scene after another.

A huge roster of characters fit into a single world.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: The LEGO Batman Movie is a fantastic entry in the long list of films attached to the Batman franchise. Original, funny, and full of references galore Batman fans of all ages will have an enjoyable time with this hard to hate film. Otaku Dome gives The LEGO Batman Movie a 90 out of 100.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust, Volume 3, No. 8

Photo of the Como Mamas by Zach Smith

This week’s collection of short reviews spans the sacred and the profane, from gospel to sleazeball r ‘n r.  It includes two Armenian singers (one current, one historic), a wild marimba, a batch of Haggard covers and a collection of 15 compositions for solo bass.  This week’s contributors include Justin Cober-Lake, Ben Donnelly, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Derek Taylor, Mason Jones and Jason Bivins.

The Como Mamas — Move Upstairs (Daptone)

The Como Mamas — the trio of Ester Mae Wilbourn, Della Daniels, and Angelia Taylor — come from a deep gospel tradition. Their career might be marked by their appearance on Daptone's Como Now compilation from a decade ago, but they've been singing together since forever, and their harmonies and locked-in vocals show it. For Move Upstairs, they're backed by a group a Daptone musicians called (for this gospel disc) the Glorifiers Band. Tight as always, the musicians stay out of the way, letting the powerful singers drive the record, but they add a necessary element. The Como Mamas might have stretch back to pure gospel, but while you'll catch a few songs connected to Dorothy Love Coates and the like, Move Upstairs is more a funk/soul album. Sonically, the group has more to do with, say, Sharon Jones than the Soul Stirrers. It works, sounding fresh and traditional at the same time. With an impeccable track list led by “99 and a Half Won't Do” and “I Can't Thank Him Enough” and a potent, updated sound, the Como Mamas sound like church energized, funk redeemed, or the meeting place of both.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Banana – Live (Leaving Records)

LIVE by BANANA

Marimba and vibraphone are unruly things to arrange, so bright and chiming, they can make a tune turn queasy, like strobe lights left on too long. In rock, from Zappa to Cate Le Bon, they're a signifier for things are getting odd.  Composer and producer Josiah Steinbrick keeps vibes under control, both literally and figuratively, with these four creations performed by LA art rock regulars, including members of Warpaint and Le Bon herself. Vibraphones are the lead, but reeds and woodwinds also accompany guitar, bass and keys.  Locked in 4/4 time, these instrumentals cycle like Glass, but the woodwinds provide a resistance to the percussion that remind me of the sweetly unnerving quality Henry Cow's Lindsay Cooper brought to the world. The second track, "B," winds an oboe through gamelan chiming, an exercise in hypnosis until the key changes unexpectedly and a George Harrison slide guitar starts to weep. The last one has piano chords stepping out into the ocean, deeper and deeper while the reeds swell like breeze, more minimal than the minimalism that came before it. Yet there's momentum throughout this, with the tracks detaching from time, rolling and shifting until you can't see the shoreline and are lost in the waves.

Ben Donnelly

 Abdou El Omari—Nuits De Printemps LP (Radio Martiko)

Abdou El Omari, we hardly knew you, and more’s the pity. The Moroccan keyboardist recorded one album and five singles in the mid-1970s, then disappeared from the world of recorded music until a recent reissue campaign yielded three similarly packaged LPs. The third, Nuits De Printemps, suggests that El Omari was on a roll when he ran out of studio access. Where the first LP focused on psychedelic Farfisa forays and the second his talents as an arranger and accompanist, this one is about instrumental experimentation. El Omari plays most of the lead lines on a synthesizer, which amplifies his music’s otherworldliness. One suspects that he was relatively new to the instrument, since he switches off to Farfisa whenever he needs to get nimble. The settings for his keyboard melodies are a mélange of au courant funk licks and more traditional hand percussion patterns. There’s no evidence that he was running out of gas, and one wonders what he might have done had he kept recording.

Bill Meyer 

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy — Best Troubadour (Drag City)

Best Troubador by Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Will Oldham has long admired Merle Haggard, not so much the ubiquitous 1960s stuff, but the later, more lived in material from the 1980s on. He had convened a band for an all-Haggard show in 2015 and was already considering a tribute album when Haggard died in 2016. This album, like What the Brothers Sang, 2013 Everly covers album with Dawn McCarthy, eschews hits (“Muskogee”) for more obscure territory, breathing warm, unassuming life into modestly arranged originals. Oldham’s voice is a good deal more cracked and weathered than commercial country ever allowed Haggard to be, and the settings tend towards the naturalistic (the album was recorded live to two track in Oldham’s home), so the covers sound a good bit less polished than the originals. But there’s a lovely, light filled lilt in cuts like “If I Could Only Fly” where Drew Miller’s sax weaves around artfully plucked banjo or in the slow, swampy interplay between Nuala Kennedy’s flute, wheezing accordion and that same banjo in “Pray.”  “Haggard (Like I’ve Never Been Before)” swaggers and slinks bluesily, although in a homespun, acoustic kind of way, while the story song “Leonard” (about troubled hit maker Tommy Collins) frolics light-heartedly – that flute again – around a narrative of heartbreak. Even diehard Haggard fans may have forgotten about some of these songs, resurrected lovingly but not worshipfully by a crack band of indie folk players.

Jennifer Kelly

 Michael Pisaro — Resting in a Fold of the Fog (Potlatch)

Composer Pisaro is often associated with pieces that play with duration, instrumental aggregation or paring down and the exploration of tone. Those preoccupations are certainly audible on these two pieces, performed by Pisaro (here on laptop), guitarist Didier Anschour, and percussionist Stéphane Garin. “Grounded Cloud” sounds as impossible as its title, not just an evocative image but maybe also a statement of compositional intent. For quite a spell, various elements emerge almost imperceptibly, and seemingly spread apart: a high tone, a low thrum, then a minor detonation. But steadily, they come to sound as if they’re circling a common object. Lapping waves, big resonances and gusts of wind move through these recurrent events, which grower denser and more tense until they coalesce and the cloud opens for rainfall. Even better is the latest in Pisaro’s “Hearing Metal” series. “Hearing Metal 4 (Birds in Space)” opens with an extended meditation on a brilliantine single tone. Patiently over nearly 25 minutes, they conjure an absolutely riveting oscillation and overtone fantasy (and kudos to Garin for his tonal and timbral versatility in joining the singing tones). As notes pull in different directions, things get occasionally ragged and almost overdriven, and there’s even what’s basically a more staccato phase. But the music is drawn to convergence once more, ultimately returning to a thick hive buzzing and powerful single notes. Another enchanting document from Pisarao.

Jason Bivins

 Don Messina — Dedicated To… (Cadence Jazz Records)

An erstwhile sideman to Tristano-influenced pianist Sal Mosca, Don Messina seems amicably resigned to the reality that he will never achieve anything resembling household recognition as a master of the bull fiddle. That relative obscurity translates to a probable reason why his instrument is listed in parentheticals after his name both on cover and spine of Dedicated To… a disc of 15 pieces for solo bass. Some of the honorees are obvious. Oscar Pettiford, Sonny Dallas and Red Mitchell each receive richly-textured remembrances that reference the respective idiosyncrasies of their playing styles. Others like “Uncle Vinnie” and “Michael: The Odyssey” are harder to pin down (Burke and Scoppettuolo, respectively) by name, but prove equally effective at elucidating individual technical traits inherent to their subjects. Messina also serves as recording engineer, a role that’s a bit erratic in the program’s opening minutes, but smoother sailing as the disc progresses. Reliable throughout is the bassist’s supply of talent as he puts his strings through a rigorous set of paces and covers a gamut of stylistic bases.

Derek Taylor  

 Low Cut Connie — Dirty Pictures (Part 1) (Contender)

If you want to be reductive enough, you can just about trace a history of rock 'n' roll through Low Cut Connie's albums, digging up some Sun Records on Call Me Sylvia and touching on some classic R&B for Hi Honey, all built on Adam Weiner's boogie piano. New release Dirty Pictures (Part 1) gets swampier in its rock, and the Rolling Stones make their first appearance. For all of Weiner and company's thrill in old-time r'n'r, they're still inimitable, throwing in theatrical touches along with their general sense of abandon.  

Weiner's always sounded at home among the marginalized — the outcasts, the transgressives, the drunks. There's an edge now. “Death and Destruction” captures the current state of the world, and resists it by turning it into two and a half minutes of rock. The darkness still creeps in, maybe influenced by the political climate as well as the death of some musical icons. The band's live version of “Suffragette City” stuns, but it's Prince's “Controversy” that appears on the album, a fitting revelation of that artist's influence on Weiner's music (and not just his attitude). Tracks like “Angela” and “Montreal” show Weiner as a wry outsider, aware of the consequences of this entropic life. “Forever” is a farewell from a spotlight on a stage. But Low Cut Connie hasn't become maudlin or heavy. “Revolution Rock 'n' Roll” and “Dirty Water” provide rally cries from nowhere. The best way to fight the darkness is by standing on a piano bench, and Weiner doesn't sound ready to sit down any time soon.  

Justin Cober-Lake

 Luis Lopes/Fred Lonberg-Holm — The Pineapple Circumstance (Creative Sources Recordings)

 The pineapple is a symbol of hospitality, so perhaps this record is the product of some act of welcoming? Whatever the circumstance, Portuguese guitarist Luis Lopes and American cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm sound free of inhibition on this set of scrappy duets. Scrappy as in pugilistic — both players go at it from the get-go, slinging looped raygun blasts, shortwave static blasts and the occasional bent note or blasted chord that lets slip for a second that stringed instruments are involved. And scrappy as in repurposed metal — this stuff sounds like it is being hammered into shape, contorted into some new shape. But that welcoming fruit contradicts the impression that this music was born of conflict. No, this is a collegial comparison of coarse textures. Handle with care.  

Bill Meyer

 Zabelle Panosian — I Am Servant of Your Voice (Canary Records) 

I Am Servant of Your Voice: April-May, 1917 by Zabelle Panosian

Panosian came to America as a child, before tragedy was fully unleashed upon Armenians a hundred years ago, but as the notes to this release suggest, it's hard not to hear the violence weighing upon her as she recorded for the Armenian community in Boston. The music of the Caucasus works from a baseline of lament, but there's an extra creak of sadness to these six songs, even with the whispers-from-beyond feel that characterizes digitized 78s. Some of her melodic lines end with a Near East quaver, while other swoop like the light opera of the Anglophone world at the time. But these recordings feel caught between many worlds — sweatshop vaudeville and the folk of a vanished village, concert hall formality and memorial service elegy. There are two recordings of two of the songs, a testament to her popularity within a close-knit American subculture. The second take of "Groung", a song that truly claws at the heart, is dotted with the chirp of birds. "Groung" is Armenian for crane, but these chirps are more like sparrows on a windowsill. They do not lift the mood, rather they emphasize the inconsolable cry of Zabelle. Even under the blanket of pocked shellac and a century's passing her voice couldn't be more clear.

Ben Donnelly

 Pact Infernal — Infernality (Horo)

Following a pair of darkly rhythmic EPs, Pact Infernal release their first full-length, and with titles like "Initiation,” "Meditations,” "Talismans" and "Transmutation" it's fair to say they're perhaps giving away the plot ahead of time. While the concept may be overly obvious — yes, it's dark and murky and ritualistic and rhythmic — the album does deliver the goods. If you picture a marriage of Muslimgauze and Akkord, you'll arrive pretty close to Pact Infernal's sound here: a blend of intricate percussion, pulsing low end and horror movie cellar aesthetics. At times, it's almost too reminiscent of the late Muslimgauze, but the cavernous reverb and decidedly more shadowy hisses and bass tremors push it into a somewhat different realm. There's a lot of this style making its way around these days, but Pact Infernal have a good handle on it and Infernality is a solid offering on the doomy sacrificial altar.

Mason Jones

 Clara de Asís/Bruno Duplant—L’inertie (Marginal Frequency)

The cassette format begets humility, and there’s nothing bigheaded in the way that Clara de Asís and Bruno Duplant present their music. They might even be pulling our legs a bit; the album’s title L’inertie translates as Inertia, and its side-long pieces are named “La Paresse” (“Laziness”) and “La Lenteur” (“Slowness”).  But there’s nothing tossed-off about the patience and close listening that went into making this music. It is, essentially, a pair of drones built from de Asís’ continuous guitar sounds and Duplant’s organ chords. But within each apparently monolithic sound is a world of change; it’s just enacted, in the tradition of Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock, in slow motion. Listen close and the drone splits into hums, whistles, and a subsonic presence that’ll make you think that someone has hidden a black hole in your boombox. Splendid stuff.  

Bill Meyer  

 Shamir — Hope (self-released)

Shamir's debut tracks were shiny electro r'n'b, edging close to indie with their lack of guile but backed with a sharp voice and persona that felt ready for the wide success, the kind occasionally visited upon eccentrics with a unique delivery and good pop instincts. For whatever reason, Ratchet didn't take off like it could have. The follow-up suggests there was a lot of strain behind the glow of "In For the Kill" and "Call it Off." Heck, those titles seem more tense in retrospect. Hope dispenses with r'n'b entirely. This is a hastily created collection of lo-fi guitar with bedroom overdubs. Arguably, r'n'b isn't quite entirely gone. "Like A Bird" retains the structure of Shamir’s previous work with beatbox loop, synth pads and careful belting. The result is stark, but wildly different than most low fi starkness, 'cause his voice has so much panache. "One More Time Won't Kill You" bunches up fuzzed notes-from-the-underground guitar and clumsy drum throb into a cruel and glorious mess of emotions. Shamir heard his vocal delivery compared to Juliana Hatfield and pieced together a Blake Babies cover, demonstrating the sort of crash-course in history that music streaming makes possible. This record brims with freedom, and consequently loses shape at moments when it's poised to really transcend. But who cares? It's pretty clear this guy is going to transcend soon enough. Hope melts down prior expectations and molds them into shapes that make Shamir even more of a standout. 

Ben Donnelly

 Bedouine — Bedouine (Spacebomb)

Azniv Korkejian sings effortlessly, in a soft, unaffected tone embellished with only the most modest jazzy flourishes. She sounds — no shade intended — a good bit like Karen Carpenter, although, perhaps a Karen Carpenter unobserved and free to sing as she pleased. And indeed, though, Korkejian’s background reads like a game of Risk (Armenian by ethnicity, raised in Syria, Saudi Arabia and the American south), it is her current sojourn in California that shows most in this debut. Give her a time machine, and she’d slip very comfortably into a sunny, sophisticated Laurel Canyon circa the early 1970s. Accompanied mostly by acoustic guitar, occasionally with swaths of string or brass, she manages to keep her songs pure and unfiltered, as if she were performing them in the chair across the room. And yet, though there’s a laid-back air, Korkejian never slouches. Even her spoke-sung intervals sound resonant and melodic; in a trill or jazzy slide, she turns casually arresting. You have to be confident to be this unassuming — and indeed it takes a certain amount of reverse chutzpah to name the lead-off track of your debut “Nice and Quiet” — but there’s something strong and self-assured in Korkejian’s reserve. Don’t expect to be grabbed but rather gradually subdued by charm.

Jennifer Kelly