#although the franchise relocating would be interesting

[onmytape]

poor keller 😬

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #1: Avengers Assemble!

September, 1984

WHO will answer Hawkeye’s call to join the new team?

I assume Mockingbird? I see her silhouette in the cover box and the assumption was that she and Clint were a package deal? I don’t know what it’s being played like its not a given.

Some good or at least interesting options here for the second team.

Red Wolf, Iron Man, Puck, I thiiiiink Crystal?, Doc Sampson, Mockingbird, Cyclops, Black Widow, Wonder Man, Tigra, Quicksilver, Hercules, Ant-Man, Namor, and the Shroud.

A lot of interesting options. I really want it to be Cyclops and I know its not going to be Cyclops.

STOP TEASING ME WITH AVENGERS CYCLOPS IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GIVE IT TO ME!

Also, this issue #1 of West Coast Avengers. Or at least the first issue #1. The team is introduced in a four issue miniseries before getting an ongoing - and a second issue #1 - about a year later.

This will be moderately confusing for my numbering but I’m brave enough to barrel on through anyway.

Last time in Avengers: Vision became the chairman of the Avengers and announced that due to the threat of the Dire Wraiths, the Avengers would be opening up a West Coast team led by newly married Hawkeye. In one page reminders of the subplot in various issues, Hawkeye and Mockingbird arrived in Los Angeles, went real estate shopping, and set up a new HQ in a nice compound that used to belong to an actress.

The team is only missing one thing.

A team.

Maybe it’s just me but I’d think that you’d get the team sorted out before you spent who knows how much renovating a compound up to the level required for a superhero team.

It’s going to be really embarrassing if you open a new Avengers team and nobody comes.

(Vision agrees and has taken the liberty of reaching out to several likely candidates.)

Mockingbird confirms that Hawkeye has invited her onto the team but she’s not even sure she’s Avengers material, she doesn’t even have powers.

Hawkeye: “Neither does Captain America! Neither do I! If I can be an Avenger -- !”

Mockingbird: “Anyone can, right?”

Hawkeye: “And people wonder why you took the code-name Mockingbird!”

Haha! I do like their chemistry!

He does clarify that its totally not just because she’s married to him (although I would point out that he kept trying to get Black Widow on the team based on them dating) but that she’s totally earned it! She has years of experience as a SHIELD agent!

Hawkeye calls Vision to let him know that the place is all set up and Vision lets him know about the reaching out to several likely candidates biz.

BOOM SCENE TRANSITION TO DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO at the office of private investigator Jessica Drew.

Because, yeah, Jessica Drew did the PI thing as an ex-superhero way before Jessica Jones. And Jessica Jones is probably Drew with some of the serial numbers scratched off.

ANYWAY, she’s talking to hardboiled Tigra, who helped her on the Enselmo case.

Jessica Drew: “I still laugh when I think about the way you ran our pigeon up and down Telegraph Hill!”

Tigra: “That was the best part of the case! After all... bringing pigeons to ground is second nature to a lady who’s half-cat!”

Jessica tries to offer Tigra a job (since this is before the internet and Tigra can’t find a lot of modeling jobs for models covered with fur) but Jessica’s secretary interrupts with a call for Tigra.

The call sounds ominous from Jess only hearing half of it but I’m 99.9% sure its Vision offering Tigra a spot on the West Coast Avengers.

Read Tigra’s replies with that context and you’ll laugh.

Tigra tells Jess that she’s got to book it to LA for business that she has to settle on her own but they’ll talk about Jess’ offer later.

Tigra: “Don’t worry, I’m a big girl... I can make my own mistakes!”

I feel like a little bit of clarification would have gone a long way here, Tigra.

Because Jessica assumes that Tigra is in trouble and decides to call someone to tail (ha) Tigra.

Meanwhile, a car chase in the Mojave Desert.

To cut to the car chase, this is a movie set filming a stunt spectacular car chase scene for what I’m pretty sure is James Bond.

Pyrotechnics are easy if you don’t stress blowing up the stuntman.

Because he’s near invulnerable.

The stuntman (Simon Williams, Wonder Man) does need to have buckets of water thrown on him to cool him off after being in an explosion but he’s otherwise fine.

Cool that Wonder Man found an acting job he can handle. He seems pretty thrilled with it.

One of the staff on set tells Simon that his trailer is buzzing and he realizes its his Avengers transceiver.

He receives his offer from Vision (although apparently a much more vague one than Tigra) and flies off after making sure he has no more stunts scheduled for the day.

An hour later and hundreds of miles elsewhere, Iron Man (the James Rhodes version) is flying around, minding his own business, thinking about how cool it is to have relocated to California to help Tony Stark open a new business, admiring the Standord University Linear Accelerator Center.

Just as he’s thinking that he hopes that Tony isn’t in a hurry to being Iron Man since he’s gotten used to it, Vision cuts in on the secret Iron Man radio frequency to call him in to the meeting.

Iron Man arrives twenty minutes later at the West Avengers compound on the Palos Verdes Peninsula bluffs and paraphrased does an impressed whistle at what a nice place it is.

Iron Man: “Some spread! This looks like the kinda place Tony would’ve hung out... before he lost Stark International! The best part of being his pilot in those days was ferrying him to spots like this! Who’d have thought I’d ever be invited on my own? Then again, who’d have thought little Jimmy Rhodes would grow up to be Iron Man?!”

Future knowledge bums me out a little with this. This is spoilers for a year from now and several issues from now but in the time gap between the West Coast Avengers limited series and the ongoing, Tony does take over being Iron Man again. I hope you enjoy all this while it lasts, Rhodey. And hey, War Machine is only like eight years away!

Tigra arrives and starts acting familiar with Iron Man because she thinks she knows its Tony and they were teammates for a bit.

She ditches the briefly identity obscuring trenchcoat and hat because dammit she has a year round fur coat and its hot in California!

She also might be flirting, although hopefully not as bad as she’ll get later in the ongoing. Spoilers for a year and several issues for now but it is a bafflingly bad subplot that Tigra gets given.

The other reason I bring it up is that this is the exact situation that led Rhodey to quit the Avengers when he became Iron Man. He felt it would be awkward interacting with people who already knew Iron Man well.

I guess he’s more comfortable with it now.

The West Coast Avengers roster that we already know about are all people who either quit the Avengers or don’t feel like they’d be a good fit. Which is just a great start so I’m interested to see if we’ll get justifications for why they’d sign up the minute a franchise opens.

Hawkeye takes Tigra and Iron Man off on a tour while a mysterious shrouded figure watches.

The tour concludes without us seeing the tour, boo. But it comes up that neither Iron Man or Tigra know why they’re here.

Iron Man was just told he was needed but didn’t get any more details. We know that Wonder Man got the same vagueness. And Tigra was just offered a $1000 dollar stipend to fly out to LA and see if she could “help the Avengers out!”

So Hawkeye gives them the sales pitch.

That Captain America made it a rule that except in emergencies, the Avengers’ roster would be limited to six members. But Vision decided that they need more than six Avengers but wanted to keep the team from becoming unwieldy so told Hawkeye to set up an expansion team: the West Coast Avengers!

It’ll basically be the same thing as the original Avengers in terms of by-laws and rights and privileges and both groups will be affiliated but the West Coast Avengers will be running their own show west of the Rockies.

If everyone here agrees to sign up, that’ll make a team of five with a sixth spot to fill.

But Tigra objects that she left the original team because she felt out of her depth and why would that be different here?

Ah, now there it is.

Justify it, Hawkeye.

Except he doesn’t because the intruder alarm goes off.

The intruder alarm all the way in the first basement level, which means their intruder has already penetrated deep into the compound and bypassed a lot of the security systems.

Hawkeye is sure that the intruder is actually a highly organized commando raid and he’s instantly proven wrong with an infrared scan shows just one guy.

Womp womp.

Hawkeye is also sure that however this just one guy got as far as he did, the security system in the next area will totally--

Womp womp.

Hawkeye is fed up at this point and seals off the security levels, forcing the dude back through the domestic areas. He then orders Iron Man, Tigra, and Mockingbird to split up to cover more ground that way and surround the intruder.

Not having much better to do, they do, but everyone has some misgivings in their thinky thoughts.

Iron Man: Hawk sounds like he really gets into giving orders. I don’t know if I like that.

Tigra: I must be some sort of masochist to get involved with Avengers again! They always seem to know what they’re doing... not like me! What am I doing here? What am I trying to prove?

Hawkeye: Should I let the others catch our intruder... or rush in and collar him myself? How would Cap handle this?

Mockingbird: Poor Hawk... He wants so much to be a good leader! I know he can do it, but I wish he wouldn’t try quite so hard! In a way, though, it’s funny... His first act as leader was having the team split up!

Mockingbird is the first to run into the intruder, suddenly being enveloped in a cloud of darkness. She can’t see anything but hears someone moving and launches one of her staves from her spring-loaded sleeve launcher.

Its a near miss, breaking a lamp instead of the intruder, who turns out to be Shroud. Y’know, that friend of Jessica Drew’s we met in that two-parter about saving Jessica Drew’s ghost?

Shroud realizes how skilled Mockingbird is and that he might have trouble if he takes her lightly so he goes right for the Vulcan neck pinch, knocking out Mockingbird. But she hits Shroud in the stomach guts with her second stave as she’s passing out.

Hawkeye then shows up, concerned that he hasn’t run into Mockingbird yet and drawn to the cloud of darkness, except not the Final Fantasy villain.

He shoots a light arrow, except not the Legend of Zelda powerup, into the cloud to no real effect so shrugs and shoots a sonic arrow instead.

Shroud flees the area and Hawkeye finds Mockingbird who tells him to shut up with the EEEEE arrow.

Hawkeye: “Where’d our man go?”

Mockingbird: “How should I know? It was dark!”

Hah.

The cloud of darkness passes through the area of the mansion/compound that Tigra is in and she recognizes it as Shroud’s darkness. She calls out to him but he doesn’t hear her because he’s in another wing about to be tackled by Iron Man who can see Shroud with his in-helmet radar.

Controlling darkness is all well and good until technology.

Ain’t it said, Rumia?

Shroud is also blind so all he knows is that an armored man is lunging at him until Iron Man calls him a fool for trespassing on Avengers turf.

And that’s when he realizes that he done goofed.

Hmm. What is that symbol on Shroud’s hood, anyway? It looks kinda like Aku.

Shroud manages to escape Iron Man’s grasp, sacrificing some of his neat cape. Although, it tears into an even cooler look so is it really a sacrifice?

He decides that he’s just going to get out of here.

Shroud: Have to get undercover and think out my next move. I don’t want to fight Avengers! That could become a life’s work -- and I have better things to do!

I can’t decide whether he means that he’d be at it all day or that this misunderstanding fight would lead him down an unwilling path of villainy as some third-string grudge holder.

Probably the former?

Anyway, Shroud is just leaping over the balcony when Wonder Man finally arrives and spots him. And unfortunately for Shroud’s ribs, he has been cultivating a reputation as a crimelord so Wonder Man flies in and tackles him into a tree.

Womp womp, except for Shroud this time.

Tigra shows up and jumps on Wonder Man from forty feet away to stop him from hurting Shroud any further, explaining that he’s her friend.

Shroud: “I’m certainly glad I’m not an enemy... I’d hate to think how I’d be treated then!”

Hah.

Later, in the medical room, I guess, Mockingbird applies bandages to Shroud’s ribs except on the outside of his costume. Does... does that do anything? Obviously not for open wounds. But for bruised bones, I guess the point is compression. But it feels less than ideal because he’d have to take off the bandages to take off his shirt. Just feels better to apply the bandages under the clothes, MOCKINGBIRD.

What makes it weirder is that we see him a couple panels later pulling his shirt down over the bandages. Which makes me think Mockingbird bandaged him on top of his costume and he had to pull his costume top out from under them and pull it down. He didn’t just stop her because that would be rude?

Shroud explains that Jessica Drew asked him to keep an eye on Tigra because of how the phone call made her act all weird. He followed Tigra from the airport to here and ran into a gaggle of superheroes. 

In the meantime, Hawkeye has verified Shroud with a report Captain America filed on him so Hawkeye believes he’s a good guy now.

Wonder Man and Iron Man apologize for going in swinging and Tigra for not just telling Jessica what the call was about. But Shroud tells them no permanent harm done.

Hawkeye decides to offer Shroud the last spot on the team (assuming that everyone already invited is going to choose to stay).

Hawkeye: “That trick you do with the dark is one slick little number... and anyone who can hold his own against us as long as you did obviously has what it takes in the skill department. Besides, what you did reminds me a little of how I introduced myself to the Avengers -- I broke in, too! Come on... What do you say?”

Shroud say... no.

He’s honored and a couple years earlier he would have jumped at the chance. But Wonder Man’s assumption didn’t come from nowhere. Shroud has been spending the last many months building up his outlaw rep so he can take down gangs from the inside.

Like the Green Hornet, I guess?

But since it’d be hard to be an Avenger West Coast AND keep up the fake outlaw thing, Shroud has to turn them down.

Shroud then pulls his cloud of darkness disappearing trick and nopes out.

With all that tied up, Wonder Man asks whats the big thing that Vision called him out for, leading an exasperated Hawkeye to start his West Coast Avengers sales pitch from the top.

Mockingbird: “That’s the spirit, fearless leader! Just remember, it can only get better from here!”

Hah.

So, that was the first issue of West Coast Avengers.

And there’s still no West Coast Avengers team.

Tigra and Iron Man still have reservations about the idea. Wonder Man has no idea why he’s there.

Its an interesting decision to hit the ground walking with this team. But it makes sense. The initial plan wasn’t for the West Coast Avengers to get an ongoing. This limited series was supposed to establish the concept, give a few Avengers affiliated characters something to be doing off-panel, and be able to be pulled in for crossovers and guest appearances as needed.

So the book can focus more on Hawkeye’s trials in actually getting this team going. He’s finally gotten to be a leader of the Avengers like he’s always wanted and now has to deal with all the frustration that Captain America or Hank Pym had with him, and then some.

Still, funny that the West Coast Avengers’ first adventure has them not only not a team yet but spending their time beating up a friend due to mistaken identity.

Will they get their act together by the next issue? Only time will tell. I tell a lie because Chronos never spoils stories. Only me will tell or maybe the Internet.

Follow @essential-avengers​ for the rest of the West Coast Avengers limited series. And for eventual bafflement when they get an ongoing. Also, like and reblog.

[stingslikeabee]

Melissa’s AU verses (including other Final Fantasy franchise entries)

Hi guys! So I thought I would make this post in light of a few recent blogs from other fandoms I’ve followed and in the hopes of giving my mutuals a quick reference guide for these AU verses I’ve established over the last months. The complete list can be found at my verse page - the most used ones are also in my google docs for mobile users.

At any rate, I’ve compiled below the more useful ones. :) Please click on their titles for more detailed information (if necessary!).

FFXV AU: this is mainly an AU for XV muses where Melissa (instead going by her original name of ‘Lilian’) is a Galahd refugee who relocated to Lestallum when the Wall was reduced to protect the Crown City only. When she got older, she eventually became the owner of a local restaurant, and acts as a tipster, too. She has no love for the Lucian royal family given her origins, but by no means support Niflheim’s claims either.

FFXII AU: in this FF entry, ‘Melissa’ is the alias she adopts to pose as a famous Bhujerban dancer, hoping to earn a place among the Archadian elite as an ‘exotic’ attraction - but in truth, she is working as a spy for the Marquis of Ondore and the Resistance after having her family killed by the Empire and feeding them intelligence obtained directly from the imperial capital’s heart. Any similarities with Mata Hari are 100% on purpose.

Yakuza AU: the Yakuza AU heavily borrows from Yuki’s storyline from Yakuza 0 to Kiwami 2 - Melissa (her real name this time around) is a foreign woman who remained in Japan after her family left and found employment as a hostess, being successful enough to eventually take the next step and retiring to become a manager herself. The ‘Honey Bee Inn’ is her club, and although she frequently worked and still receives Yakuza patriarchs in her establishment, the degree of involvement with the local mafia will depend on the actual thread/other muse. Can be used for other franchises which are merely set in Japan.

Alice in Borderland AU: a spin-off from the Yakuza verse, where Melissa is unlucky enough to land in the alternate version of Tokyo filled with deadly games. Still a hostess at the time this happened, she originally struggled with the first few games until she found the Beach - and some support in the figure of the Hatter, once a famous figure of the same hostessing/nightlife business. Melissa ended up taking a semi-official role at the resort under the scenes, providing customer service to the ‘guests’ - as well as making alliances with the people who can offset her weaknesses. 

Killer Queen - modern AU: this AU was made to accommodate mostly modern day-based franchises - rather than a brothel owner, Melissa (and this is her real name) is the owner of the Killer Queen bar, where she’s an informant of sorts to the highest bidder. Her morals are much looser and although she’s fundamentally good at her core, she doesn’t lose any sleep over the fact she might be helping criminals and outlaws with her business. She can handle her own in a fight and is more of a badass than in most of her verses.

House of Flowers - modern AU: another modern-based AU for other franchises - but this retains some of the plot elements of her original role as a former prostitute turned brothel owner - but rather than managing a physical place, Melissa (once more her alias) has set up a network of elite call girls, with loyal and wealthy clients who are very fond of the privacy and high quality services she provides as the manager/agent of her ‘flower’ girls. If you think this verse is borrowing elements from ‘The Secret Diary of a Call Girl’ - you are correct!

Feel free to hit me up and plot anything - it doesn’t matter whether or not we are already writing or the verse we’re currently using - I love expanding to new medias, so don’t be shy to say hello if anything sounds interesting to you!

Muah! :* Mari.

[revchainsaw]

Buffy: the Vampire Slayer (1997)

Season 1

Hello and Welcome back my creepy congregation! We will be taking todays service from the Big Screen into your living room for our first Personal Devotional. That's Right! We're reviewing full seasons of television series now and what better way to bring the spirit of the genre film to the idiots lantern that with the 90s Television sensation and all around love letter to the horror genre, Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

The Message

Regardless of how one may feel about Mr. Whedon we can't deny how much we love Buffy Summers and the Kids who live and die in Sunnydale! Season one of Buffy was a spin off/reboot of the earlier film and an attempt by Whedon to course correct the franchise by breathing a little charm and attention into the subject matter.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 1) focuses on Buffy Summers, a not so typical California high school student who, due to the events of the movie, has been relocated to Sunnydale High. Buffy is not just a cute, athletic, teenage girl looking to enjoy the prime of her life, though she is those things, she is also the Slayer, an anointed warrior who has been reincarnated throughout the generations to protect our vulnerable weak human world from the forces of evil; particularly Vampires. Buffy is a sort of supernatural Captain America, that is a peak human being, but instead of Nazi Science she was born with her powers.

Joining Buffy are; High School outcasts Willow and Xander (a nerd and a nice guy respectively), The ridiculously sexy librarian Rupert Giles (her mentor, guardian, high school librarian, and all around precious papa bear), Jenny Calendar (a technopagan computer teacher armed with all the mystery an ignorant 90s boomer could attribute to the internet), Angel (Spoiler: He's a Vampire, but he's a good guy. A hunky, broody, good guy vampire love interest), and her loving but entirely oblivious mother. The Scoobies as they have come to be called aid Buffy in her quest to protect Sunnydale from Dark Forces.

And Speaking of those Dark Forces, they are primarily vampires, led by the Master; an ancient vampire who resembles to some degree Nosferatu and a Bat, a look that Guillermo Del Toro would later perfect in his own series the Strain. The Master seeks to fulfill an ancient prophecy that would open the Hellmouth (a portal to hell, exactly what it sounds like) and free him in order that he and his kind should conquer the world.

The first season is fairly short consisting of the following adventures.

1. Welcome to the Hellmouth - Buffy moves to Sunnydale seeking to leave her Vampire ways behind, but the vampires just won't let her catch a break.

2. The Harvest - Vampire Shenanigans continues. Buffy learns of the Master.

3. Witch - A fellow Cheerleader is possessed by her witchy mom.

4. Teachers Pet - Buffy vs Giant Mantis

5. Never Kill a Boy on the First Date - Buffy vs the Anointed One (Not Really)

6. The Pack - Buffy vs Hyena Possessed High School Bullies

7. Angel - Buffy vs Angel but actually Darla

8. I, Robot ... you, Jane - Buffy vs Internet Demon

9. The Puppet Show - Buffy and Sid the Dummy vs Organ Harvesting Demon

10. Nightmares - Buffy has bad dreams

11. Out of Mind, Out of Sight - Buffy vs Invisible Nerd

12. Prophecy Girl - Buffy vs The Master (also Buffy Dies)

Overall the short season, while not allowing for too much world building, kept the show to a format that allowed very little filler. So although we mostly only get vampires as villains, we don't have enough time to really be bored of it. Some of the shows dynamics and cultural concerns definitely date the series but overall Season 1 of Buffy is definitely not a difficult watch, and can be enjoyed over and over again.

Let's get to the Benediction:

Best Character: Slay Girl, Slay!

As far as season one goes the titular Buffy Summers is the best character. Sarah Michelle Gellar is absolutely charismatic in the lead role and though at times she may seem selfish or reckless it makes perfect sense for the character. The character is allowed to be weak, to be selfish, and to be unlikeable. She avoids the foibles of a Luke Skywalker or a Harry Potter. She joins the ranks of primary protagonists who are not constantly outshined by their supporting cast. I believe when Buffy is sad, I believe when she throws a punch, I believe she struggles with her destiny. The only thing I don't believe is how ditsy she let's on.

Best Actor: Head's Up!

Anthony Stewart Head. Head as Giles is just fantastic. His balance of frustration with Buffy and genuinely parental concern is heartwarming and absolutely makes Giles one of the warmest father figures in television history.

Best Episode: A 'Master'ful Finale

It all builds up to Prophecy Girl and for good reason. Television shows often have mini-finale's at the end of their first seasons because the teams behind the series are not sure they will have a chance to tell more of their story. For that reason you can see just the first season of most television series and feel like you've heard the whole deal. I wish this habit was kept up in other seasons as we wouldn't still be wondering what the hell happened to Joel at the end of the Santa Clarita Diet. Buffy is no exception to this phenomenon and therefor attempted to tie up much of it's narrative in Prophecy Girl. While that often means big bads will be dispatched, I think it's a small price to pay for not winding up in a cliff hanger. Buffy and Giles just shine in this episode, Angel is given a more heroic role, Willow finally values herself as she should and Xander stops being a fucking horrible human being for once. This episode really satisfies in all areas.

Best Villain: Sweet, Sweetheart Killer

It's such a shame that Darla was killed so early on in the franchise. She is such a great presence on the screen that she overshadows all the villains that play alongside her, even the Master. I would have loved to have seen an alternate season where she offs the old coot and assumes the role of big bad much like Spike does in Season 2. Lucky for everyone that Darla is featured throughout the show in flashbacks and I hear she is even resurrected in Angel. Also, for Scott Pilgrim fans I feel like she and Envy Adams are very much sympatico. Maybe if they reboot Buffy all my dreams will come true.

I'd also like to take this time to recommend the song Angels and Darlas by Say Hi! It's pretty good.

Best Monster Design: Internet Troll!

While I can't speak for where the money in Season 1 of Buffy went, I can say that at least some decent cash was spent on both the forms of Moloch the Corruptor from the Episode "I, Robot ... You, Jane". Moloch was pretty wicked looking as a machine toward the end of the episode, he looked like a Mortal Kombat villain, but it's the green scales and ram horns the actor is sporting at the beginning of the episode that really catches the eye. In fact, I'm feeling compelled to hunt down any Moloch the Corruptor merch that may be out there on the internet. It's certainly no mystery why the demon's face is featured prominently in the theme song. It just looks great! Good job to the make up department there.

Most WTF moment: "Pack"s a Punch on Principle

While not the greatest episode in season one "the Pack" is certainly worth the watch if for no other reason than the horror is kicked up when a group of high school students under the influence of a malevolent Hyena God, decide that the School Mascot is not enough to satisfy their bloodlust turn on the principal, and yes, THEY EAT HIM. I remember being completely caught of guard the first time I saw that scene, and it kickstarted the running gag of Sunnydale high principles meeting their demise in horrific ways.

Worst Character: No More Mr. Nice Guy

When I was in college I often felt bad for Xander. The funny guy who just had no luck with women. He was sarcastic but had a big heart, and used a horny gimmick to mask his loneliness, or so I thought. But now I am older, I am wiser, I have known the touch of another human being and I have to say that Xander Harris is a really scummy fellow. I don't remember thinking so poorly and I wonder if the character develops a more nuanced view of women as the show goes on. As it stands there's barely a point in the series that Xander does not view the female cast as objects for him to enjoy or be embittered towards for one reason or another. It's not charming, it's foul. Xander Harris of season one is absolutely a terrorist attack waiting to happen, if Buffy had happened today it would be much more concerning to see someone so embittered, horny, and entitled to womens time and energy as Xander Harris. Dude is one step away from pulling an Elliot Rogers. Calm down buddy and maybe actually listen to a woman and you may find you aren't as much of a 'nice guy' as you think.

Worst Episode(s): If you're not first ...

It's a toss up on this one. Season One of Buffy is actually so short and concise that the 'Monster of the Week' episodes will have to be up for grabs as the worst episode by default, but even they are pretty watchable and don't warrant the vitriol a "worst" dub usually entails. I'd say there is not a worst episode of season one, just some episodes that aren't as good as the rest. In that vain, take your pick from "Witch", "Out of Mind, Out of Sight", or "The Puppet Show". However, I'd be doing a disservice to those episodes not to mention that each one of them takes what could just be a basic Buffy Vs (insert Villain), and does something unique and interesting with the idea. The villain of "Witch" actually turns out to be a has been cheerleader actually possessing the body of her innocent daughter to relive her glory years, The Invisible Girl is actually the victim of social cruelty, her peers disinterest in her manifesting in her condition becoming quite literal and she is picked up by the military in the end, then the Puppet show, well, it's just about the stupidest most absurd thing that could possibly happen and it's completely unafraid of that fact.

Summary:

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Season 1) is not the most groundbreaking TV, but it is absolutely evident why the show was such a phenomenon. Season 1 is particularly rewatchable. It does not demand too much investment or attention, but it will get it from you, especially on a first viewing. It's not afraid to take itself absolutely seriously or to plant it's tongue firmly in it's cheeks. It is to a degree a product of it's time, but in many other aspects feels timeless.

Overall Grade: B

[lostanarchymagazine]

American Flagg! is an American comic book series created by writer-artist Howard Chaykin, published by First Comics from 1983 to 1989. A science fiction series and political satire, it was set in the U.S., particularly Chicago, Illinois, in the early 2030s. Writers besides Chaykin included Steven Grant, J.M. DeMatteis, Alan Moore and John Francis Moore.

American Flagg, which ran 50 issues (October 1983 – March 1988), was one of the first titles to be published by First Comics, an early alternative press comics company founded in Evanston, Illinoisin 1983. Unusually for the time, the company offered its freelance writers and artists creator rights, including ownership of their creations. Regardless, writer-artist Howard Chaykin, then living in New York City, felt trepidation when First Comics approached him to do a project. He recalled in 2010,

My concern had all and everything to do with the fact that this was a brand new company, located in [a suburb of] Chicago. I'd always worked for companies I'd visited and had day-to-day-dealings with. [But] they talked about a financial plan that would make it possible for me to get out from under the debt I had accrued working for [publisher] Byron Preiss [illustrating early graphic novels]. It was encouraging, so I went home and concocted a scenario, a pitch document, and that was it.

Chaykin devised a series set in 2031, a high-tech but spiritually empty, consumerist world in which the American government has relocated to Mars, leaving what remains of the U.S. to be governed by the all-encompassing corporation known as the Plex. The series star is Reuben Flagg, a former TV star drafted into the Plexus Rangers and posted as a deputy in Chicago, Illinois.

The first 12 issues, running through cover-date September 1984, consisted of four interlocking, three-issue story arcs. Chaykin recalled his difficulty in producing 28 pages of art and script monthly. "I was still a smoker and a drinker at the time. And [the output was such that] I'd never done anything like that before, and it was insane. It just devoured my life [and] I had no assistants. I didn't know how to work with an assistant at that point, and it was a very difficult process. ... I was trying to do a fairly high-quality product and I didn't want to slough it off."

Chaykin made wide use of Craftint Duoshade illustration boards for American Flagg!, which in the period before computers, enabled him to add shaded textures to the finished art.Ken Bruzenak's lettering and logowork also won notice, as it was integral to American Flagg's futuristic, trademark-littered ambiance.

American Flagg's first dozen issues form one complete story that has influenced comic creators including Brian Michael Bendis and Warren Ellis. The comic made a huge splash at the 1984 Eagle Awards, the United Kingdom's pre-eminent comics awards. Chaykin and American Flagg! were nominated for ten awards, eventually winning seven. American Flagg! also won the 1983 Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Comic Book and tied for the 1983 CBG Award for Favorite Character (Reuben Flagg).

After issue #12, Chaykin continued the series while also working on such other projects as his revamp of The Shadow for DC Comics and the graphic novel Time2, based on characters introduced in a one-off American Flagg! special in 1986. During this time, Alan Moore wrote a back-up story that ran several issues and concluded in an issue-length story.

Eventually, Chaykin left, to be replaced on a regular basis by first Steven Grant then J.M. DeMatteis. Grant left after only seven issues due to creative friction with the series's new artist, Mark Badger. According to Grant, he had wanted to continue doing stories in the same style that Chaykin had established, while Badger wanted to take the series in new directions. Chaykin returned for a brief run to wrap up storylines before the first volume ended in March 1988. The title was relaunched a few months later as Howard Chaykin's Amerikan Flagg!. This run saw Chaykin return to write the first issue before handing over to John Francis Moore, with Mike Vosburg and Richard Ory penciling and inking the interior art, but the franchise failed to recapture its early success and was canceled after 12 issues.

The story takes place in the year 2031, after a series of worldwide crises called the Year of the Domino (1996) has forced the U.S. government and the heads of major corporations to relocate to Hammarskjold Center, on Mars ("temporarily, of course"). In the wake of the American government leaving the planet and the Soviet Union collapsing from Islamic insurrections, there was a power shift throughout the world, with Brazilian Union of the Americas and the Pan-African League becoming the new superpowers on Earth.

However, the exiled American government, its corporate backers, and a group of technicians in the defected Soviet lunar colony of Gagaringrad form the Plex: a giant, interplanetary union of corporate and government concerns that conduct commerce and govern the United States from its capital on Mars. Many population centers are grouped around massive, fortified arcologies called Plexmalls and the law is enforced by the Plexus Rangers, the absentee Plex's Earthside militia.

The Plex has formed the Tricentennial Recovery Committee, to get America "back on track for '76", but the TRC is in reality a plan to sell the United States off to the new superpowers and to leech off the remaining inhabitants before gaining true self-sufficiency. As a result, the Plex has outlawed non-combat related education, organized sports such as basketball and personal aircraft, restricted media to only one outlet, the Plex itself (although it has multiple channels), and advocates and glorifies the use of political violence amongst independent policlubs by providing money and firearms for its hit TV show Firefight All Night LIVE!, and covertly sterilizes the population by using a combination contraceptive and antibiotic called Mañanacillin to reduce the population.

This all changes when former television star Reuben Flagg is drafted and transferred to Chicago's Plexmall to replace the local Ranger Hilton "Hammerhead" Krieger's fallen partner. He witnesses widespread graft and corruption throughout the Plexmall, but also a series of subliminal messages implanted in a television show that are causing outbreaks of gang violence. After he uses his emergency powers to interrupt the broadcast, he not only ends the violence, but also brings forth a series of events that causes the Plex to send in covert agents, the death of Hilton, and the unveiling of Q-USA, a secret TV station owned and operated by Krieger that opens Flagg's eyes to the nature of the Plex.

As the series progressed, Chaykin took less and less of a direct role in scripting and plotting the stories out, and by the third year of its run, he really had nothing to do with the book other than cover art. Stories began to violate the rules that Chaykin had explicitly stated in the writer's bible for the series (for instance, California was said to have slid into the Pacific Ocean, but in the final year of the book, California was merely shown to have been abandoned for reasons that were vague at best), and characterizations began to drift considerably as well. (Among other things, Flagg abandoned his interest in 1930s jazz, and was frequently shown listening to late-1960s rock, as well as becoming more of a traditional stern-jawed good-guy hero). After trying and failing several times to shore up declining interests, First Comics decided to lure Chaykin back into the writer's seat. "American Flagg!" wrapped up its principal storyline with issue #50. By this time, Reuben Flagg had traveled to Mars, overthrown the Plex, and become President of the United States. He then decided to separate Illinois from the United States and run it as his own personal fiefdom. All issues of this series took place in the year 2031.

The next year, the comic was re-launched under the name Howard Chaykin's Amerikan Flagg! (The "K" and a reversed "r" were to reflect the fact that most of this series took place in Russia) and picked up from where the earlier book had left off (in 2032). There is some difference of opinion as to whether this new book was intended to be a limited run, or open-ended as is the norm with comics. In either case, it ended after twelve issues. The final issue ends with a photo album of the Flagg's future domestic life, with lots of kids, a screaming shrew of a wife, and a balding, overweight Flagg.

Characters

Reuben Flagg, born in 2000 at Hammarskjold Center, Mars, to Axel and Rebecca Flagg, was a stand-up comic and popular television star of the show Mark Thrust, Sexus Ranger. After he was made superfluous by CGI technology, he joined the Plexus Rangers and emigrated to Earth, being stationed in the Chicago Plexmall. Flagg is Jewish, and his parents' "undesirably bohemian" attitudes have given him an idealistic view of the United States that runs contrary to the Plex. He has a desire to set things right again, and through inheriting Q-USA, begins to set on that path.

Raul the cat, an intelligent, talking orange tabby housecat. With the exception of his intelligence and his ability to speak (an ability whose origin is never explained), he appears to be otherwise a normal house pet. However, he has a customized set of cybernetic gloves, designed by Mandy Krieger, that give him opposable thumbs.

Hilton "Hammerhead" Krieger, was Flagg's superior at the Chicago Plexmall. A co-founder of the Genetic Warlords motorcycle gang along with  Charles Blitz, but after his 13th arrest, the Plex drafts him because of his criminal experience. Intending to take advantage of the fledgling organization, he meets his future wife Peggy and stays with the Rangers. He does not trust anyone, not C.K., the mayor, not his wife Peg, not his daughter Mandy, and, while a Plexus Ranger, he especially does not trust the Plex. He runs an underground television station called Q-USA that broadcasts illegal sports, pornography, and pre-collapse movies and television shows. He is killed by a Plex secret agent, and  his cat Raul gives Flagg the keys to the station.  He also leaves behind a video explaining to his "heir" the truth of the Plex and the rules he wishes his successor to follow.

Amanda "Mandy" Krieger, daughter of Hilton, she is the air traffic controller for O'Hare Chicago Plexport. However, since the O'Hare Plexport only receives two flights a week, Mandy spends her time tinkering with electronics or getting into mischief. She later becomes a deputy to Flagg.

Jules "Deathwish" Folquet, captain of the Skokie Skullcrushers basketball team. Despite his punk appearance, his hulking size and the extreme nature of the sport he plays, Jules is quite intelligent. He is referred to as the "king of the two finger lobotomy." He first teams with Flagg to resolve a hostage crisis, but later forms the Video Rangers auxiliaries, and then becomes a Ranger deputy. He also later hosts a talk show with Raul called the "Him and It Show". In the second series, he renounces his violent ways, and, through a remarkable series of events, becomes Pope.

Charles Keenan Blitz, also known as The Honorable C.K. Blitz, a co-founder of the Genetic Warlords along with Hilton Krieger, also ended up getting drafted into the Plexus Rangers, but ended up leaving to become mayor of Chicago. Blitz has his hand in every deal, regardless of how illegal it may be; is extremely wealthy and corrupt; and has killed political opponents. As a side venture, he runs the Skokie Skullcrushers blackmarket basketball team. He is usually flanked by his two robot bodyguards, Bert and Ernie, named after "a private joke no one under 40 understands". He has had affairs with Mandy Krieger and with Peggy Krieger, while Hilton was fighting a brushfire war in Carracas, which lead to her being kicked out by Hilton and giving birth to...

Medea Blitz, the offspring of C.K. and Peggy. Early in the series, Medea is a wild child and hangs out with Cyril Farid-Khan, gang leader of current Genetic Warlords. She has a secret affair with Hilton Krieger, but after his murder, is considered a suspect and is involved in a traffic accident, which causes her to miscarry Krieger's child. In order to clean up her act, C.K. Blitz has her join the Plexus Rangers to straighten her out. As the series progresses, Medea is shown to become more and more accepting of the Rangers and becomes a decent team player in Flagg's group.

Sam Luis Obispo also known as Ned Beaumont, also known as Tom Slick. A hustler Reuben meets in Havana while escorting the Skokie Skullcrushers, he later partners with Flagg for most of his time in South America. He has an affair with the wealthy daughter of the Brazilian ambassador, which causes all sorts of problems for Flagg and himself.

William Windsor-Jones, but his best friends just call him Bill. Bill is the youngest member of the Witnesses, a gang of octogenarian rebels. He helps Flagg out from time to time, giving him intelligence and technical support. He later has become a newscaster for Q-USA.  Bill is Prince William, and the rightful heir to the now-abolished British throne.

Luther Ironheart, a robotic Plexus Ranger with a head that consisted of a holographic projection. Assigned to be Reuben Flagg's partner on patrol. While not very bright, he exhibited superhuman strength and agility.

[libertasrpg]

We welcome Perrie Van Winkel to the city. She’s 22 years old and is an ice skater and physiotherapist. Perrie is often mistaken for Skyler Samuels. She’s open.

→ Background Information

Perrie was a very inquisitive child. She would always pick things up that she found out and about and bring them home, often calling them her ‘found things.’ Perhaps her favourite thing was fixing them up. As she grew up however, she had less and less time to do this as her mother forced her into ice skating classes. Perrie loved her mother of course and did enjoy the sport so went along with it. Before too long she was playing in regional and national competitions. There was talk of her joining an Olympic team but unfortunately Perrie lacked the competitive trait to make it. She was far too kind and wasn’t anywhere near ruthless enough.

→ Relocation Explanation

Growing up, Perrie only had her mother. It wasn’t until she turned 18 that her mom explained that she was born from an affair. Perrie’s father had been on a work trip away when he met her mother and their hooked up. Unfortunately he already had a pregnant wife back home - Which is why she hadn’t come on the trip. Some time went by and while Perrie grew to not care about her father, she grew more and more interested in her long lost sister. So she made some calls and found out that she had a half sister called Bryoni, in a new city called Libertas.

→ Living Situation

It’s thanks to the money from ice skating that Perrie was able to afford a place by herself. It’s not huge - Only a small apartment. But it’s hers and that’s what she likes. Despite living alone, she’s rarely actually alone though. Perrie is always inviting people over for a cup of green tea. There’s nothing she loves more than learning about peoples life stories. This works perfectly with the fact that comfort is the main aim for her home. Perrie has blankets a plenty, it’s always warm, and she picks the softest furnishings she possibly can. Her aim when decorating was to create a space where people felt like they could completely take a break from the outside world and feel safe.

→ Her Personality

Perrie is incredibly smart and always intrigued by new things. She ended up training as a physiotherapist because she had one while training as an ice skater and found what they did astounding. If she can try something out and master it, she will. While she can often get caught up in the fun of things, Perrie is generally incredibly mature. She’s calm and collected, and is good at managing difficult situations. When it comes to decision making on small things though, Perrie is useless. She’d much rather let someone else decide.

→ Her Qualities

Adventurous, caring, warm

Clumsy, naive, passive

→ Her Relationships

Moira Glissa & Spike Armstrong (Best friends): Perrie met Moira and Spike through Cole. They’re friends of his who came to meet him after training once, and then Cole introduced Perrie to them. Now, Perrie couldn’t imagine her life without them. They both have their own very different personalities but she adores them both so much. They are who Perrie goes to about everything now. She’s even started to get them both onto the ice themselves, which is something Cole is excited about too.

Cole Sled (Skating partner & friend): Although she works a full-time job now, Perrie couldn’t have ice skating not be part of her life still. So she started going to training sessions occasionally at a local ice rink. This was how she met Cole. They were partnered up as soon as they started to learn couple’s routines. Perrie was nervous at first but couldn’t be more thankful for having Cole in her life now.

Terence Curie (Acquaintance): She may be a well trained ice skater but that doesn’t mean slip ups never happen. Perrie ended up in hospital once for a slightly busted wrist and it was here she met Terence. Perrie was worried about healing and whether she’d have to take a break from skating. Terence listened fully to her and helped her as best as he could. Thankfully, she healed pretty quickly and was able to manage the pain easily thanks to Terence’s help and understanding.

→ Possible Connections

Bryoni Tinker (Half-sister): Bryoni is the main reason why Perrie is here in the first place but she’s still scared to meet her. Perrie has no idea how the woman will react. So she’s holding off actually finding her for now, but she is keeping an eye and ear out to see if anyone she meets knows her.

Sol Eun-ha (Acquaintance): Swimming is a great way to heal from any injuries so Perrie often takes classes to work on that skill. She’s a sportsperson after all and loves mastering anything she can. Han is a really nice and caring teacher. Perrie couldn’t appreciate her patience more. They don’t have a bunch of informal chats but the few they have done have been really lovely and make Perrie know she can trust Han.

Vidia Anluan (Acquintance): Before Perrie picked up ice skating again, she knew she’d need some physical training. So she booked up an instructor by  the name of Vidia. Perrie could tell easily early on that Vidia didn’t like her, but honestly as long as they respected each other when it came to actual training, that was all that was important.

→ Faceclaim Change:

Allowed | Not allowed | POC must | Discuss with admin

Suggestions: TBA

Perrie is based on Periwinkle the frost-talent fairy from the Tinker Bell franchise.

[jdmainman123]

So what happened I'm on a one-on-one basis with Todd obviously he's the failed franchise owner of a church

And I am bar rescue

I am kitchen nightmare s

IT'S LIKE I'VE BEEN SICKEN TO STAND NEXT TO TOM REMEMBER WITH MIKE WHITE MIKE and Dave

The problem is if he's around me I'm giving him a dollar and a girl every time the satellite puts my face on his face

And my worst nightmare was a white skin man telling Todd that he's the boy who owns all the girls I need you to stand around him so you can inherit all his girls AND NOT JUST WITH A FAILED MAN AND I REMEMBER THIS LUNATIC THE SON OF A PASTOR Son of a preacher Man remember the song. To use God once again and his name starts with the T IT JUST SEEMS LIKE THE SPECIAL INTEREST I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY A PRIVATE CULT I'm just giving you a level of the mental retardation I have to deal with a tougher guy black skin and me being sickened to let him walk around the street with me like Jeffrey

Yeah just earlier today all the blackskin them were on the plane saying yeah we're going to kill him here and high-fiving white skin men and a calling the plane an accident and then calling the pilot and accident

Yeah Las Vegas is where I wiped the city with your men's blood by saying I killed him and he pointed at me with a girl in front of him and I said that can't be true because I'm leaving and I left

SO NOW I'M STUCK HERE IT BEING GUARDED IT'S ALMOST LIKE I'M IN A JAIL CELL AND I'M JUST WAITING TO SAY THE WRONG THING AND HAVE THIS GUSRD

And a corny and the irony of this thing is he wants which member of gold someone supposed to kill me will this failed homosexual wanted to step in and say no no let me do it SO NOW GOD'S GOING TO KILL ME

And I told you what we did to this pastor on my beach when I was fully aware what was happening every corner I saw his fat ass we caught him from chess to waistline IT WOULD BE THE DEFORMED REGENERATE WHITE SKIN MASTERS FAVORITE BOY THAT TOOK THE LIKELINESS INTO THE RELIGION AND OPENED UP HIS OWN CHURCH and in being traffic can understand how you guys think baby killing and after visiting a few of your cities it seems like your satellite maker is the only city who agrees with killing babies

SO NOW SATELLITE PROTECTION IS ON AND FULL ALTHOUGH THEY'RE PROTECTING WHITE MIKE'S NAME AND I DON'T AGREE WITH IT yeah the latins in Spanish are still protecting their their Mike name

And I have to deal with this rogue f****** lunatic is suicidal n***** for satellite protection AND THE PROBLEM IS THEY HAVE THEY WOULD HAVE FALLEN TO GOLD SUN DIARRHEA'S HIS SISTER CAN B****** HIM and they actually think that they're better fighters than whiteskin men they actually think the 1 lb turd ruled work it's probably the only reason why I'm here under integration they didn't want to let it go they couldn't let it go

Remember our white Todd was the demonstration for skinny white skin men and boys that you guys didn't want me to see remember how they tried to keep the white hair white girl sexy away from me and then I ended up killing my entire black skin team of guards following me and being relocated with her army of black skin men

So because of the 1 lb turd this n***** follows me everywhere now AND I'M BEING MADE SICKER TO CHALLENGE MY ROCKING TURDS and thankfully this whole jerk off scheme and challenging me for my drink will be useless here because nobody's going to read your report a favor for a friend of my father's

And I wrote Jason's program very specifically and when I got out I rewrote it and it's definition was needs EVERYTHING YOU NEED IS RIGHT HERE IN THE CITY BUT IF YOU NEED ANOTHER SATELLITE MAKER CITY THEN YOU'RE NOT A REAL SATELLITE MAKER FAMILY

[annychristine831]

Changes That Madden Needs to Make to Fix its Franchise Mode

#FixMaddenFranchise has been trending since last week on Twitter and for the last several years in the fans’ minds. The NFL is the most popular sporting league in America, and people take anything to do with the prestigious association, very seriously. So, it isn’t surprising when amidst a global pandemic, racially unstable society, and the highest unemployment rate in ‘forever,’ we are concerned about fixing a video game.

Dark jokes apart, it is high time that the makers of this game take things seriously. After 2013, and fans concur on this, the game has been a below-average effort on the developers’ part. It is like they wait until the very last day to work on it and then do the most basic job possible to clear sales and increase profits. Although, it might be becoming counter-intuitive since the rebellion has started among fans, and they aren’t happy at all.

A “new version” is out, and fans aren’t buying it!

Okay, we might ‘buy’ the game because we love to hate it, but we aren’t buying the whole “new version” part. The improvements and updates are nothing but patch fixes and would have quickly been done to Madden’20 itself. The sales that are happening are because of the other modes such as Madden Ultimate Team and Knockout superstar. But the bread and butter of Madden is its franchise mode. And the makers couldn’t stand a chance at success from here on now if they do not lend an ear to the fans.

Making Madden a money-making machine

There’s so much focus on Online mode and not so much on the offline one because the makers can make money from microtransactions in the online mode. The franchise mode, which fans adore, has remained untouched in seven years, and it’s time to make significant amendments. So while the people don’t mind anybody profiting, they want to pay for a product that they deserve.

Here are some changes that EA Sports should look into, to make Madden a better place for everyone:

Give us back the Training camp

In 2004, a minicamp mode was released¬— drills as per the player’s position to improve them as they head into the regular season. Training camp provided for a fun way to prepare your players for the regular season, where an unready body costs teams. Fans stayed up all night to get gold in these drills, but after 2013, we never saw the exercises again. We have to have something like a training camp to get out ahead in the season. Currently, there are only four-pre-season games, which everybody simulates. So, a training camp will be a welcome addition.

Revamp the drafting & scouting

Scouting and Drafting are crucial areas for football, which affect the whole season. Since the name of the mode is ‘franchise mode,’ we ought to have some semblance of being able to build one up correctly. In the current drafting situation, it is either round one or bust. Fans are tired of complaining about this and not getting anywhere with it. The rest of the rounds don’t carry any surprises or respectable talent, which does nothing but create an unrealistic vibe for the game. Since the NFL is famous for having gems come out from the later rounds like Cowboys QB Dak Prescott (Round 4) or the GOAT Tom Brady (Round 6). The drafting process has remained unchanged in almost ten years, and there’s just no way it hasn’t reached EA Sports yet.

Where’s the depth, EA?

MLB, NFL, and NBA are the top three sports leagues. And in real life, the NFL is at the top in all aspects of the country. But virtually, the amount of success enjoyed by NFL’s virtual counterpart stands nowhere close. The versions of Madden released after 2013 don’t seem like the work of a behemoth company like EA. The player’s information, news updates, and locker room chatter all play a role in building and succeeding as a franchise. And Madden doesn’t give us anything properly. No proper scouting, no in-depth player analysis, and you aren’t even privy to the national news (only the local ones).

Customize everything!

If you look at the franchise mode of NBA2K, Madden’s foremost foe, you’ll find everything you want Madden to be. The draft classes date back to the 1960s (when the NBA wasn’t even that great), so you can re-play history. They create expanded records and track everything. You can trade draft picks from the past five years on your team for additional transfer cache, there’s in-depth scouting, and even the off-season has been made attractive.

And we haven’t even discussed customization yet. NBA2K allows you to create a fully customizable team. You can move them anywhere and have a mascot with the name of your choice. While Madden has relocation too, but it is restrictive, and you can’t even name your team or select a city of your choice (you’ve to choose from the list). Even MLB has gotten this feature in their game.

But Madden wasn’t always this disappointing; long-term fans remember how amazing the gameplay and player analysis used to be. There were national news reports and detailed player profiles. Maybe, they just got lazy and stopped brainstorming for new ideas. It is time to get back on the drawing board EA.

I’m Anny. I’m a social media manager living in USA. I am a fan of technology, design, and music. I’m also interested in fitness and movies. visit our Business Directory page. you can attend my event with a click on the button above.

Source: Changes That Madden Needs to Make to Fix its Franchise Mode

[jokermatt]

Vworp! Vworp? Click-bait of course – we all know the Doctor Who experience will never end! Still though, in one corner of Cardiff Bay, it has.

The BBC’s Doctor Who Experience closed this weekend, ending the fourth permanent, but significant exhibition in the world’s longest running science fiction show’s history. A permanent exhibit to the corporation’s premier franchise that’s suddenly become a whole lot ephemeral. But just as its creation was made possible by the show’s huge resurgence in the middle of last decade, as much as the rise of ‘experience’ entertainment, its demise doesn’t signal the end of Doctor Who‘s so-far 54-year journey.

There’s no doubt that Doctor’s Who‘s lost some of the sheen it recovered 12 years ago, just as it waxed and waned over the 26 years of its original run. After its 2005 return, kids were talking about that weekend’s show on the bus to school on a Monday morning, for the first time in decades. Those kids of 9 or 10 are now 21 and 22. Times change, even for an ever-changing show like Doctor Who. Audiences change along with their Doctors. And so do Doctor Who exhibitions.

The Past

The first permanent exhibition to Doctor Who was set up at the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, the stately Longleat. Alongside the growing safari. It set the standard walk-through of costumes, props and exhibit cards that were as close to an immersion that young and old fans could get, whilst ocassionally hosting some events, like the 20th anniversary party in 1983. Longleat was big on those big anniversaries, running from 1973 until 2003, and was my first visit to a Whobition – a word I will never use again.

Like Behind the Sofa at London’s defunct Museum of Moving Image, which I visited during thatsame mid-1990s period, my strongest memories remain, in no particular order, Daleks and the blister packed Dapol models in the shop afterwards. Count them down: Seventh Doctor, Tetrap, Mel… It’s worth noting that my few brushes with Doctor Who as a child it bloody petrified me. Being scared is a great thing. My first memory – although it may appeal to some fans – is Colin Baker land-drowning at the cliffhanger of the penultimate episode of The Trial of  Time Lord. I grew up on the coast, but not near hand quick-hand-sand.

Along the South Coast, Brighton’s Palace Pier (the only one left, horizontal) hosted a small, but prestigious and official exhibition in 2005. The lean years of the show’s prolonged hiatus between 1989 and 2005 had been partially bridged by Longleat and the resurgent Blackpool exhibition. originally open as a permanent installation from 1974 to 1985, that Golden Mile exhibition folded in 1985 not for a regeneration but a “re-evalutation”, coincidentally during the show’s 18-month mid-80s hiatus. Its second life ran from 2004 to just before the show’s anniversary in 2009 – but I never made it to either incarnation.

Back to Dapol, the factory that gave us those distinctive 1980s action action figures, enabling children everywhere to recreate Time and the Rani,  hosted is own exhibition, Dapol Dr Who Experience, between 1994 and 2003 in Llangollen. I never made it to that either, although the figures persist.

In 2008, with the show at peak Tennant and its fourth television series since returning, a well put together show was hosted at Earls Court Exhibition Centre for just under a year. Never intended as permanent, coincidentally that ended in the year of Specials – a hiatus by any other name.

Then in 2011, London Olympia2 hosted the brand new Experience, a new interactive development of the old props and history format. It ran for one year, before relocating to Cardiff to replace the semi-permanent Doctor Who Exhibition Cardiff that at the capital’s Red Dragon Centre that ran between 2005 and 2011. The London Experience was a whole different level. While it ended with a comprehensive tour of props, costumes and merchandise, the main draw was the interactive storyline that dragged willing family groups through a ready-made storyline, combining pre-recorded film with the Doctor himself, animated sets, classic monsters and a ground-breaking 3d segment that recalled early IMAX trips to that new dimension.

Of course, it was all helped by marvelous zeitgeist. It opened in the prime of the new series’ first reboot, with the arrival of the Eleventh Doctor, tying directly into storylines set out by the show’s fifth series and picking up from the three-dimensional vortex promos that accompanied that new era. But as well-knitted into the fabric of the show as it was, enhancing the immersion, it was always going to be the dating element. As the ‘cracks in time’device that effectively brought us into the show collapsed into a tangle of on-screen plotting over inconsistently broadcast series, it became a piece of historical interest far more quickly than the old exhibits ever had. As with many of the new era exhibitions, items would arrive as series were made, disappearing as they were recalled. it was a natural rhythm, when the series ran consistently.

In summer 2012 the Experience opened in Cardiff Bay, in a new 3,000 sq m building at Porth Teigr, handily near to the BBC’s Roath Lock studios, where Doctor Who is produced, aiding the ins and outs of props. Expected to attract up to 250,000 visitors a year, it was hailed as a further coup for the Cardiff Bay development and a further boost for the clocal economy delivered by temporal rift. I visited that incarnation of the Experience once at its opening in London, then in Cardiff, accompanied by, after a rain-soaked run, a trip around the TARDIS studio itself.

And then last month I took a trip to Cardiff for one final, sign-off visit to the Experience.

The Present

With the arrival of the Twelfth Doctor, the dated crack in time plot was deemed just that bit too passé. That earlier trip had served up some nice moments in its guided urgency, not least a trip into the off-screen Dalek civil war which went just a little way to explain the quick repealling of the multi-coloured New Paradigm Daleks in the show. As of 2014, a new storyline written by Joe Lidster brought things up to the Twelfth Doctor, making use of some sets – anachronistically the early Eleventh Doctor TARDIS remained – and twisting the scripted journey, spattered with some great scripting, but lacking the buzz of the television linked original, into a new shape.

As fun as it was – if you ever think it isn’t amazing, picture that desolate ’90s hole when the show’s fire was tended by a mere few thousand fans – there remains something wonderfully BBC about it all. The concept, not as strong in the Capaldi era as the former Smith Experience, was a little tattered around the edges come the end, the staff almost imperceptibly haggard. Camera phones are forbidden on the journey, but there was surely a day when enforcing that rule fell into the concept.

the Experience should haev soared to the end, but that seldom happens in Who. Like the show itself, 12 years on from its glorious resurgence. A trail traipsing between Angels lacked bite, the visit to the underside of the TARDIS was missing some sparkle (really, because it recalls the awful Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS). There was nothing to match the Dalek fighting in the first, but the pepper pots gave it a go, as we sought suspiciously kryptonion shards that could sort the merry temporal mess out. Perhaps the highlight lay in the past. While the 3d finale wasn’t as captivating and centre-stage as the previous version, it ended on Totter’s Lane, where the story began. There it broke through into the exhibition, with the TARDIS set and production notes of 1963, brought to screen for the 50th anniversary with An Adventure in Time and Space.

As Steven Moffat always propounds, a little too much, Doctor Who‘s a show about change. And time for change it is. So the Experience ends with its second and final Doctor. Concept experiences remain strong, perhaps stronger now than when it opened – certainly in London. In Cardiff, although filled by the promotion surrounding its final summer, its shelf-life is apparent. A root around the Experience merchandise shop, highlighted it. Pride of place fell to the new Mr Men tie-in range, but everything else felt flat and familiar. It’s a luxury for the brand, where every T-shirt, DVD and mug once gleamed new.

The trick remains in the exhibition that follows the tour, wonderful, expansive and still continually updating, it’s a far cry from the crawl past zygons and krynoids at Longleat or through Cassandra on Brighton Pier. The fad for the Experience is likely to stick and develop. Doctor Who and BBC Worldwide will return to the theme. But as contrary and awkward as the show it celebrates, it’s the exhibition that retains the ageless class. And unlike the walkthrough, it’s a photographers’ dream. I’ll miss these unscripted trips tothe past. Until the next time. The next Experience.

The Gallery

Out of the Vault

Ring upgrade

Bakers hands

Angel Power

Mummy shake

Morbius claw

Cyber heads

Cyber legion

War Doctor TARDIS

Console

Clara memorial

Recreating The Leisure Hive

Sleepy

Hanging Silents

Mr Sweet

Classic Daleks

Classic Daleks

New Paradigm Daleks

Bloody Monks

New Mondas

Emperor Davros

New Davros

Season 18 Console

Facing the Raven

Special Weapons

Exterminate?

Blue cat future

Console

Blue doors

Console room mood

HDoctor Who Experience – hello Menoptera!ello Menoptera!

Invasion of Earth

The Beginning

The News 23 November 1963

Out of the Vault

Ring upgrade

Bakers hands

Angel Power

Mummy shake

Morbius claw

Cyber heads

Cyber legion

War Doctor TARDIS

Console

Clara memorial

Recreating The Leisure Hive

Sleepy

Hanging Silents

Mr Sweet

Classic Daleks

Classic Daleks

New Paradigm Daleks

Bloody Monks

New Mondas

Emperor Davros

New Davros

Season 18 Console

Facing the Raven

Special Weapons

Exterminate?

Blue cat future

Console

Blue doors

Console room mood

HDoctor Who Experience – hello Menoptera!ello Menoptera!

Invasion of Earth

The Beginning

The News 23 November 1963

Doctor Who: End of the Experience Vworp! Vworp? Click-bait of course - we all know the Doctor Who experience will never end! Still though, in one corner of Cardiff Bay, it has.

[andrewuttaro]

Alternative History: The Rhinos made it to Major League Soccer!

I used to have a blog called Rhinos Outsider. This post is meant to be a more fun one harkening back to those days… earlier this year. Back then I wrote these pointed think pieces on the Rhinos past, present and future. I beat the MLS Push phase of the club’s history into the ground including a whole blog post asking if the Rhinos should even want MLS anymore. If you want that material feel free to go back and read it, once I get the blog in order again they should be easier to find. This post will only be like those in format. Part of the fun of those posts were that they involved some speculation and deep thinking about this club. As I try to be a more cerebral blogger these days I thought some good old speculation would be a fun break.

What if the Rochester Rhinos made Major League Soccer? What if the big 2000s MLS push that bankrupt the club’s original owners was somehow successful? I’ll be taking some creative liberties and changing history to imagine how it might have happened. I know it didn’t and this is not me continuing to beat the dead horse. No, as you read on you’ll see why this is not a frantic love letter to this country’s top-flight. In fact, this piece maybe a cautionary tale about how MLS has grown and does business. What could have actually happened if a few things were different? Maybe not as much as we think. I’ll change some turning points in the real story and once we diverge to Rochester reaching Major League Soccer I’m going to go off to the races! It’s speculation of course but its also supposed to be a little fun if you know the real story… or if you just know Major League Soccer.

With no further ado, let’s get to the fun!

Where it all went wrong…

The stadium building delay still happens. PAETEC Park is still funded with a large aid package from New York State and the original owners still go financially insolvent, it just plays out differently. First things first, that fateful night when Don Garber and the Major League Soccer bigwigs demanded a full payment of the expansion fee goes differently. Our OG owners don’t get cold feet: they take out yet another loan, this time from a different bank, and pay them their money. That decisive night goes Rochester’s way instead. That payment turned out to be everything the league needed! Even after the 2006 opening of PAETEC Park went just as haphazardly as it did in our timeline MLS and the National Federation granted the organization a three-year waiver period from the stadium standards they were not yet up to.

The first of those waiver years in Major League Soccer is the 2007 season. From the very get go it is clear all is not well in Rochester. After a very underwhelming MLS season the team does not even come close to the playoffs: the first time the team misses’ their league’s playoffs in club history. The Rhinos also suffer their worst loss in club history losing a spectacular 9-0 decision to New England Revolution. Off field things are worse as the contractors the club enlists to upgrade the new stadium to MLS standards suddenly pull out of the job the week of Halloween. The issue peaks the League Office’s interest and an internal investigation reveals the Rhinos owners are in deep debt overborrowing from three different banks. The scandal embarrasses MLS and Rochester. The club’s owners file for bankruptcy a year earlier than our timeline and the league takes over the team on December 1st, 2007.

With the embarrassment of the league contracting two Florida teams in recent memory Don Garber and MLS resolve to find an owner even after the initial search proves very difficult. Eventually the league turns ownership over to trusted ally Philip Anschutz, a founder of the league with ownership stakes in several teams. Seeking the stability of the league he insists on only holding onto the franchise until its two remaining years of the waiver period is over after the 2009 season. He helps pay for the necessary stadium upgrades and enlists the help of the City of Rochester in finding a new owner in a revamped 2008 owners search. Local grocery store magnate Danny Wegman buys the Rochester Rhinos that year after much insistence from Major League Soccer. Wegman’s purchase corresponds pleasantly with the Rhinos clinching their first MLS Playoff appearance with a comeback victory over downstate rival New York Red Bulls on September 28th, 2008. For a brief moment at the end of the 2008 season it looks like all maybe well with Rochester Rhinos SC.

The Dream Dies

While the Wegman Era starts out with a bang, it trails off from there. The Rochester Rhinos are eliminated in the 2008 Conference Semifinals by Houston Dynamo and fail to qualify for the playoffs in the following season in 2009. By 2012 Major League Soccer is fully in its 2.0 stage; downtown Soccer specific stadiums are the impetus along with spending on foreign talent. The Wegman family becomes notoriously cheap with spending and refuses to take an active role in the franchise as the years go on. Wegman infamously states at an industry conference that the supermarket chain’s expansion into the south is being slowed by “some god-forsaken kickball team”. Wegman’s frustration may have arisen from construction costs. Although his investment allowed the downtown stadium to get up to MLS standards by the end of 2009, by summer 2011 the Rhinos stadium is still undergoing piecemeal projects that needlessly frustrate match attendees.

For the third straight year attendance declines. Average attendance at Rhinos games falls to 10,000 in 2011 before almost cutting in half in 2012 to 5,560. After a local petition to change the team’s name to Rochester Lancers led by local pizza magnate Soccer Sam Fantauzzo fails he exclaims the club is not the same one that won the Open Cup in 1999. Fantauzzo starts a budget team in the amateur ranks by the name Rochester Lancers. The club’s first game in the summer of 2013 draws 3000 fans and turns into a protest of the Rhinos after the conclusion of the match. Meanwhile season ticket holders and box seat purchases at Wegmans Soccer Stadium hit an all-time low and general attendance collapses to a 3200 average in 2013.

For a brief time in the Fall of 2013 there is speculation the owners of the Buffalo Sabres, Terry and Kim Pegula, have interest in buying the MLS organization. While sources deny the rumors it gets out they considered it if they could move the team to Buffalo. Apparently Don Garber was ready to finalize the deal before the Pegulas got distracted by the opportunity to buy the NFL Buffalo Bills. MLS wanted to move the club and switch owners but had no good pretext to do so beyond attendance numbers. Then they got their way. The Wegman family’s growing disinterest in owning the team leads them to default on the lease agreement with the City of Rochester. Knowing the owners do in fact have the money to pay, Rochester moves on MLS in a lawsuit. The suit is settled out of court, but the MLS removes the Wegmans from ownership of the team five years to the day they took over. The league rallies interested ownership groups in other cities and manages to move the club to St. Louis just ahead of the 2014 season.

The City of Rochester is relieved at the departure of the troubled franchise while supporters cry foul. The NPSL Rochester Lancers move into the downtown soccer stadium which is now renamed Salvatore’s Pizza Stadium. After the 2014 NPSL season concludes Sam Fantauzzo announces his club will move to the USL PDL in 2015. After the Lancer’s 2015 season in the PDL the City of Rochester takes over full control of the stadium and kicks the PDL squad out. Ironically, the Rochester Lancers fold after failing to secure another home field due to a perceived connection to the MLS Rhinos. After three years abandoned by the City, the downtown soccer stadium burns to the ground in June 2018 after a mysterious explosion. After gunning for MLS for most of a decade, the Rochester Rhinos are gone from Rochester after only six seasons in that top-flight.

Conclusion

Ha Ha: the first priority here is to laugh. If you’re an avid follower of MLS expansion or lower league soccer you may find some humor in parts of this… or not, I’m no comedian. So why did I write such a nasty alternative history if I am supposedly a Rochester Rhinos supporter? Part of why the Rhinos went downhill in our timeline was the result of a hasty buildup in the MLS push. The financial reality of MLS in the 2000s means that push would only have continued after making the league. Moreover, after David Beckham arrived MLS changed. MLS changed even more as Portland, Seattle and similarly transformative clubs entered the league with plans to make money by actually winning. Rochester, a City still rebounding from decades of diaspora, would simply not have survived in Major League Soccer.

I feel like I should say sorry but no, I’m not sorry. Why our timeline’s Rochester Rhinos are in the situation they are right now has less to do with MLS and more to do with Rochester itself. Sometimes the dreams we think we need are the poison pill that fate saves us from. I truly believe the Rhinos would’ve floundered in MLS and would’ve been a relocation candidate from the word go. In our timeline we have stadium truthers who tell you how they called into sports radio in 2004 warning about the stadium as if that’s not the most obvious flex ever. In the alternative timeline we have St. Louis Soccer fans in Rochester boycotting Wegmans supermarkets because they’re too thick to see the bigger picture.

Soccer in America is still a “pick your poison” affair. If you go with lower league/non-league soccer you have short ass amateur seasons. You go USL, you have all the academy players and none of the prestige. You go MLS… while then you better be a top 50 City population wise with a pretty attentive sugar daddy. I don’t want my team to be on hiatus, and they may only just barely exist now, but they’re here. That’s what I have that alternative history MLS Rochester Rhinos fans don’t have: a club to support in 2019. Well… sorta.

Thanks for reading.

[valentinahart]

August 2011

In a July 28 interview with Deadline.com, Ryan Murphy spoke of the Glee cast controversy (that he started with his July 13 interview in The Hollywood Reporter) by talking about the discussions that had been occurring with Chris, Lea, and Cory about a potential spin off for their characters.  The actors are under a seven-year contract that can only be discontinued legally from the network’s side, so a spin-off would be a way for their characters to continue to be connected to the network and to Glee but allow them to move on to something new that would allow for character, and actor, growth and development. Ryan asserted all three were essentially on board, although some of them had some “caveats” or concerns about things being discussed.  One of the caveats named was a concern about relocating to New York City and being away from California. On July 29, TV Guide ran an article that acknowledges Chris Colfer was concerned about relocating in New York, being hesitant to leave Hollywood since his film career is getting started. “However, with his Hollywood film career taking off … Chris admitted to some hesitation about relocating across the country should a spin-off take shape. ‘That would require me to move to New York,” he said, quickly adding, “but I don’t think I could say no.’” What the article beneath the cut does not clarify is whether Chris thought he couldn’t say no because he was so excited about the prospect of a spin-off or because he is under contract to 20th Century Fox TV and Glee and therefore could not refuse without breaking his contract. The July 29 article reads to me as primarily being a PR move from Chris’s people to refute Ryan Murphy’s comments in his Deadline.com July 28 interview .  There, Ryan characterizes actors’ possible statements that “‘I found out that I was fired off the show from Twitter” as being “uncool” and suggests that the media storm that erupted in the wake of all of the controversies has caused them to drop the idea of a spin-off for now. Note that Chris did say he learned of the news contained in Ryan’s July 13 THR interview—that Kurt, Finn, and Rachel would be graduating and would not be on Glee at all in Season 4—from Twitter.  Chris never said that he found out he was “fired” on Twitter, nor did the interviewers talking to him in myriad interviews use the word “fired.” Lea did not say in her tweets that she had been fired; all she said was that the characters were indeed graduating and it was part of a plan, and she hasn’t commented on any of this since.  Cory didn’t say anything, and still hasn’t; his publicist has only said that he’s on vacation and not available for comment. Later media stories covering the news started to use the term fired, suggesting both Chris and Lea were claiming they’d been fired and learned about it from Twitter.  When Ryan states in the interview that the media blew it out of control, the interviewer says “I don’t think that’s fair about the media. These kids said things.”  Ryan then asserts that maybe the kids said things, but that the spin became that the three were being oppressed and manipulated by the evil show runners, and that he, as well as Lea, Cory, and Chris know that that isn’t true. And to be fair to the actors and to Ryan, what “these kids” said, and what Ryan said, was never “we’re fired” or “they’re fired”; all any of them acknowledged was that the 3 characters would be graduating in Season Three and that the three characters would not be appearing on Glee in Season Four.  The media drew what was an entirely logical inference lacking further information and ran with it, but “these kids” and Ryan didn’t say what they were reported to have said. Ryan’s Deadline.com interview comes across somewhat as a PR response, one that came, four hours later, in reaction to a July 28 article on The Daily Beast.com. The Daily Beast article stated the network’s perspective on the controversy.  It blamed Ryan for going overboard and speaking out of turn in saying the three cast members wouldn’t be back at all in Season 4, thus leaving the impression that they were being cut from the Glee franchise entirely. It’s possible that Ryan may have made the original statement about Lea, Chris, and Cory not returning to Glee at all in Season 4 to provoke exactly the type of fan reaction that occurred (outrage) in order to show the network how popular a spin-off show would be, thus making them more likely to agree to go forward with it, but things snowballed and got out of control fast.  On the other hand, he may have given the “half story” about no Season on Glee for Cory, Lea, and Chris merely to maintain buzz about Glee which, as he and the network point out, is a part of his job. The network has acknowledged that they were interested in exploring the possibility of a spin-off for the three characters, but said a deal was far from being completed; Ryan explains that they were working to pitch a full concept for a spin-off, but still needed to get all of the prospective cast members in the same “creative space” regarding it. The official word about a spin-off, as of this moment, is that everything concerning that even as a possibility is now on hold and won’t be talked about until April. I’ve gotta go make some more popcorn before the next act of the ongoing drama appears on my computer screen.  See the full article, after more thoughts about this latest shot fired in the Great Glee Cast Controversy of the Summer 2011 Hiatus, after the cut, along with links to videos of Chris’s Emmy interviews in which reporters keep asking him questions about the casting news.  I’ve also included transcripts of the portions relating the to glee casting stuff at the very bottom. (continued at link)

[rickhorrow]

10 TO WATCH : MAYOR’S EDITION 52719

RICK HORROW’S TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF MAY 27, 2019 : MAYOR’S EDITION 

with Jacob Aere

1. The Big Ten conference recorded nearly $759 million in revenue for the 2018 financial year. This figure represents a year-on-year revenue increase of 48% for the Big Ten and exceeds any comparable annual figure amongst its NCAA rivals. A major factor is this boosted revenue is Big Ten’s new television rights deals which resulted in payments of around $54 million to the 12 longest-standing schools of the conference’s 14 teams. Maryland and Rutgers received smaller revenue share amounts but this was topped up with loans from Big Ten against future revenue shares. Compared to other NCAA athletic conferences, the Big Ten is way ahead in terms of revenue. The SEC reported revenues of around $660 million for 2018, with an average of $43.7 million afforded to each of its 13 member schools. The Big 12’s revenues didn’t even reach half the value that the Big Ten generated, with the conference securing $374 million for 2018. TV rights remain king, as shown by the Big 10 data and the recent announcement that Conference USA has made a 4-year deal with the NFL Network for a 10-game package of C-USA football games.

2. Indy 500 has a new broadcast partner: NBC. Viewership for the crown jewel of American racing events has been on a steady decline since 2015, but all of that may change with a new partnership. All IndyCar broadcasts will now be shown on NBC networks and will cover the racing series with improved marketing and a bigger approach to race-day coverage. According to Indianapolis Business Journal, the network has run dozens of IndyCar ads since March — many for the Indy 500 – and TV ratings have been up. IndyCar ads have been running during other major sporting events such as the Kentucky derby and the NHL Playoffs with a new approach to grab some more casual viewers. Thank to the new partnership, viewership is up 21% for the first four races. Under NBC’s contract, eight IndyCar races will be on broadcast TV this season, up from five last year on ABC. Indy has started to also market to a younger demographic as the sport owns one of the oldest audiences across all major us-sports; to date, its has been paying dividends.

3. The 2019 NBA playoffs have been lacking in action and ratings. According to The Atlantic, this year’s playoffs started on April 13 and won’t end until sometime in June making it roughly as long as Major League Baseball and the National Football League's playoffs, COMBINED. Through the first two weeks of the 2019 postseason, the rating numbers were down by 18 percent. One reason for the decline is the absence of now Laker, Lebron James, who missed the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. However, the boost of second round ratings, which were the highest TV numbers since 2012, indicate that fans are still compelled to tune in to more competitive matchups. Another issue with extended playoffs is the stress and fatigue it puts on the players: the Golden State Warriors won their last series against the Portland Trail Blazers without Kevin Durant due to injury. Although adding extra games may draw in more money for the league, the long term effects of losing fans to “boring” playoffs may seriously hurt. The NBA may need to start looking into reverting to the previous 5 game format for first round basketball playoffs to help quell the extensive playoffs or potentially give a bye-round to the top ranked teams in each division.

4. The Blues win the West to create a rematch 49 years in the making for the NHL. The St. Louis Blues are marching into the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in decades and have revived expectations for the team in the midwest. The Blues were one of the bottom teams in the NHL as of January 3 and now they are in the Stanley Cup Finals. According to The Star, the turnaround came after Craig Berube replaced Mike Yeo as coach in November and Binnington took over as the starting goaltender in January. St. Louis has went 0-12 in its three previous Stanley Cup appearances. The last time these two teams met in the Stanley Cup, the Blues dropped the series 0-4 with an enshired goal from a flying Bobby Orr that is still one of the greatest hockey pictures of all time. The Bruins are the likely favorite to win the cup after having come in second overall in the regular season. The St. Louis Blues are the oldest active team to never have a Stanley Cup win and in a year where the improbable has happened for a last place team entering 2019, a win against the Bruins could seal one of the greatest turnarounds of all time.

5. NBA Playoffs help to display big tech and provide a glimpse into the future of sports in Seattle. Seattle is getting an NHL franchise and a high-tech arena in 2021. According to GeekWire, tech executives from companies based in the Pacific Northwest have been attending private VIP events for potential season ticket holders. Meanwhile, during Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals at Oracle Arena, Google displayed its voice assistant to help “turn down the lights,” play music, and provide stats for the Golden State Warriors. After the game, all 19,596 fans walked away with a free Google Home Mini device. At $1 million, it was hailed as “the largest and most valuable giveaway of a Google product at a live sporting event in history.” Silicon Valley plays a big role in the Warriors’ success as players like Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Jonas Jerebko all noted the region’s forward thinking as a partial reason they chose to play with the team; they all have investments in a range of tech ventures. Looking at the success of the Warriors, the new NHL team in Seattle would provide an opportunity for the region’s tech companies, like Amazon and Microsoft, to further plunge into sports.

6. The NFL draft is headed to Cleveland in 2021 and Kansas City in 2023. In conjunction with the relocation of the Oakland Raiders and opening of their new stadium, the 2020 draft was awarded to Las Vega. Now, the Browns will be celebrating their 75th anniversary with the draft events taking place around FirstEnergy Stadium in 2021. According to ESPN, the Kansas City Chiefs plan to host the draft near Union Station and the National World War I Museum and Memorial for their draft in 2023. Since last holding the draft in the traditional New York location in 2014, the NFL has taken the event on the road to five different cities. The league still has not moved on bids for the 2022 draft, saying about 20 cities are interested in hosting that year. This year’s draft in Nashville, Tennessee had more than 600,000 people attend over the three days which marks a dramatic increase from 250,000 in Arlington the year prior.

7. NASCAR acquires ISC for $2B with a dozen more tracks. NASCAR announced the $2 billion purchase of International Speedway Corp. which will give it control of key racetracks and set itself up for sweeping changes that could save America’s popular racing series which has been in decline for several years. This deal should close by year’s end. ISC is one of two major facilities companies that host NASCAR races, along with Speedway Motorsports Inc. According to AP News, NASCAR gaining control of a dozen tracks would seemingly make it easier for the racing league to alter its schedule, including the possibility of hosting fewer events in order to maximize its profit. The parent company of Speedway Motorsports made an offer last month to acquire all its outstanding common stock, which would privatize SMI and make it better positioned for an anticipated NASCAR overhaul. Many big sponsors have left NASCAR in recent years — Cup Series title sponsor Monster Energy is in the final year of its deal — and television ratings hit all-time lows at 26 events last season. Because NASCAR is a private company it won't have to publicly report attendance revenue and other financials allowing the company more leeway in their attempt to rebuild the iconic racing series.

8. OTT platform FuboTV and FanDuel form a sports wagering partnership in New Jersey. According to Deadline, the deal makes FanDuel the exclusive sportsbook, online casino, exclusive advertiser, and horse racing and daily fantasy sports partner of the live TV streaming service. It will also expand FuboTV’s sports offering for consumers when FanDuel’s betting data is integrated on the Fubo platform. Initially, odds and other gambling information will only be added to the mix in New Jersey, though general sports data will be integrated more broadly afterward. Additionally the TVG and TVG2 horse racing networks affiliated with FanDuel will be available to Fubo subscribers nationwide, joining the 90-plus channels in the $55-a-month base package. TVG2 will be on the Sports Plus tier, which brings more than 20 additional channels for an extra $9 a month. This is huge as it is the first real push for a OTT sports platform to incorporate sports wagering into its properties and could open the floodgates for others to follow suit.

9. CC Sabathia’s charity softball game brings together stars in New York. Aaron Judge, Michael Strahan and other notables like Didi Gregorius, Tino Martinez, Action Bronson, Tiki Barber, Johnny Damon, and Aroldis Chapman joined in for CC Sabathia’s second annual charity softball game hosted in the Bronx. According to Feeling the Vibe, team Michael Strahan took on Team CC Sabathia and came out victors by a score of 8-2 with all proceeds being sent to the PitCChIn Foundation led by CC and his wife Amber and the New York Yankees Foundation. The Sabathia’s charity runs multiple initiatives that span baseball clinics, delivering backpacks to kids in need and renovating baseball fields. On the other hand, the Yankees Foundation has done everything from helping a teacher in need of supplies, to refurbishing a neighborhood sports facility, giving $500,000 for Hurricane Sandy relief, or providing assistance in Haiti and Japan. CC Sabathia is a veteran presence on a now young and injured Yankees roster and his leadership is felt both during and outside of game time.

10. Nike is launching an official guide to sustainability for brands. Nike recently partnered with Central Saint Martins to create a manual for designers that lays out the principles for materials that can be indefinitely recycled called circular design. The company has also has researched case studies from companies that have done groundbreaking work on these fronts including Patagonia, Outerknown, For Days, and Eileen Fisher. According to Fast Company, Nike’s guide is deliberately formatted as a kind of textbook. It lays out 10 principles that take you through the life of a product, including elements like picking low-impact materials, designing with recyclability in mind, minimizing waste in manufacturing, prolonging the lifetime of a product through repair and durable construction, and using more thoughtful packaging. Nike is dropping this guide during the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, an annual gathering organized by the sustainability-minded Global Fashion Agenda. Although none of these steps are revolutionary to eco-friendly practices on their own, this outlines a plan for fit a comprehensive eco-friendly system which could potentially change the norm of the fashion and sports industries.

[theenetflixnerd]

I shall RISE at DAWN to wage the WAR for the PLANET OF THE APES!!

First off I’ma start by admitting that these films are completely and utterly out of my usual choice of entertainment .... (Hence why it has taken me 6 years to actually watch them! Yes - that’s right I only watched them ALL for the very first time this week!) .... and boy have I been missing out!! 

The hype around the latest release in this incredible series (WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017) roused my interest and by chance I came across a marathon of the previous two films (RISE (2011) and DAWN (2014) ) and thought “Why not?” ... I honestly think it took all of the first 15 minutes of RISE for baby chimpanzee Caesar to completely steal my heart! I was instantly cooing and in love with this adorable little cutie. I was immediately hooked and couldn’t wait to continue the rest of the series to follow the unfolding of Caesar’s beautiful story.

How would I describe this franchise in three words? MIND-BLOWING , HEARTWARMING and beautifully TOUCHING! (Ok, ok it’s more than three- but even these don’t really do it justice!)

Now’s where I leave my “SPOILERS AHEAD” warning as I proceed dissect the franchise. So please - if you haven’t watched these films - don’t ruin their genius for yourself - go and watch them PRONTO!! ... You’re welcome.

Of course, Caesar (my personal ‘monkey of the movie’ in RISE) is no ordinary Chimpanzee. Scientist, Will (James Franco), is experimenting with a cure for Alzheimers to help his father, which they’re testing on chimps (one part of the movie which is 100% against my personal ethics! I am an animal lover through and through and can’t stand lab-held animals, zoos, or circuses!) ... one of their test subjects, Bright Eyes, starts going a little crazy and beserk which leads to her ultimate demise, and while clearing out the lab - having had their funding suspended - they discover it wasn’t the drugs that had made her vicious, but she was protecting her new born baby (Caesar).  Will takes the cute baby chimp in to raise it himself, and steals some of the drugs to test on his Alzheimer suffering father. It’s promptly discerned that the ALZ-112 drug was passed on from Bright Eyes to Caesar as he shows signs of hyper-intelligence from just a few days of age.  For five years they live a happy life together as Caesar continues to grow into a strong, healthy, intelligent ape with the loving care of Will and his Ill father. (The drugs worked to help his father get better, but only temporarily before the deterioration continued at a rapid rate)

While trying to protect his deteriorating owner, Caesar get’s a little violent, and is taken to be locked up until court orders deem him safe to return. This is a major turning point for Caesar - as it is the first time he comes face to face with the fact that not all humans are good - and the ‘mistrust’ seed is initially planted.

Caesar at first struggles to fit in with the other apes. He misses his home. There is a heart-wrenching scene in his lock-up where he finds a piece of chalk and draws the attic window from Will’s house on his cell-wall. Queue my tears. Ahw. He’s adorable! Rocket (another Chimp), the strongest ape in the lock up, fights for dominance but Caesar soon makes friends with ex-circus Orangutan, Maurice, who is also able to communicate by sign-language. (Which Caesar had learned from Will). The longer Caesar is left in lock up the more his mis-trust grows and he realises - HE IS APE - he doesn’t feel that he belongs with the humans - he uses his smarts to assert his dominance over Rocket - break out of his lock up and steal the ALZ-113 (new development of ALZ-112) from Will’s house, to smarten up his new found friends and lead the revolution! The apes overthrow the lock-up security and lead a rampage of destruction on the golden gate bridge.

The apes find their refuge, and place to build their home in a beautiful forest / wild-park near the bridge, and when Will asks Caesar to come home , the two part tearfully as Caesar tells him CAESAR IS HOME. Ugly crying again. Whoops.

This is only the beginning and things get even better in the second instalment (and my favourite) of the series (DAWN). [Side note: I’m actually kinda glad I could just binge them all now and not have to wait for 3 years to continue the story!). My personal ‘monkey of the movie’ for ‘Dawn’ has to go to Koba, a bonobo , yes he is the evil villain, but he is fantastically written, and has some incredible scenes in this film. More on that in a sec.

Dawn takes place 10 years after the end of RISE, and by now the chimps have built their own beautiful colony in their forest, Caesar is leading the Ape community with pride along side his family of his wife, Cornelia, and son, Blue Eyes (I love how this has a connection to his mother, Bright Eyes).The ape colony also contains the symbol of Caesars ‘attic window’ etched into surrounding rocks in various places, which I think is a beautiful and heart-warming tie-in to RISE.  It comes to light the the release of the ‘ALZ’ drugs during the fight have affected the human population adversely and many have died - up till now the survivors and apes have been getting along peacefully, but it’s ruined by a breach of trust which starts when humans venture into the ‘Apes’ home territory and shoot at Rocket’s son, Ash. Caesar has experienced the ‘goodness’ of humans, and does not want to risk his Apes in a war against the human race, Rocket, Maurice and most of the others stand loyally by their leader,  Koba however , having spent his life being poked and prodded in laboratories, cannot bring himself to let go of his hatred and distrust for humans. He goes a bit rogue, and in one of the most entertaining film scenes ever, tricks two dumb humans by some silly entertaining antics, before ultimately killing them and stealing their guns.

In the meantime, Caesar and one of the ‘good’ humans, Malcolm have come to an arrangement to benefit both the humans and the apes , and they achieve their desired goals, the humans getting their electricity fixed and Caesar’s sick wife (having just given birth to a second son) getting the medical attention she needs to get better. As the peace is aheived, Koba arrives, silently carrying his stolen weapon, and shoots Caesar (from afar) to raise distrust of humans within the tribe and Ceasar ‘dead’ the apes now start following Koba into war against the humans! Koba locks up Caesar’s faithful follwers (Rocket, Maurice and Luca) and Blue Eyes starts to realise Koba is not to be trusted, who also kills his best friend, Ash who refused to kill a human.

Malcolm and his family find the badly wounded Caesar still alive and take him to his original ‘home’ - Will’s house, with the attic window - to help him heal up. While stealing Medical supplies to help Caesar, Malcom runs into Blue-Eyes and tells him his father is alive. Blue-Eyes goes to see his father, and Caesar tells him it was not humans, but Koba who shot him. They devise a plan to save the locked up Rocket and Maurice and ultimately kill of the evil Koba ... but sadly, the war is just beginning.

This brings us to WAR, and another time jump (I can’t remember if it specified exactly how big the time jump was, and although Caesar’s youngest doesn’t seem to be too much bigger, Caesar himself appears to be getting on in years). The war is still raging on and it’s sad to see the hurt, loss and destruction. Caesar’s little family is adorable as ever! and he continues to try to lead the Apes with minimum violence against the relentless human troops. Rocket and Blue-Eyes return to give news of having found a new safe haven for the apes to relocate their ‘colony’ - they begin preparations to leave - but Caesar feels it’s bit soon - that night ends in utter tragedy - as due to a betrayal, soldiers infiltrate the Ape’s territory and a major , although completely unnecessary cause of more ugly crying, Caesar’s wife, Cornelia and Blue-Eyes are killed. ( Yes, I’m a basket-case, don’t judge me. Humans are awful!! #teamape ).

 Caesar’s hatred now sets in as he sends his colony off to safety and proceeds on his mission of revenge against the Colonel (played by Woody Harrelson, who I have to say, I really admire as an actor, even if I hate his character in the movie).  This leads into one of the most touching scenes in the movie where Rocket, Luca and Maurice follow him and refuse to let him go it alone. Luca’s role: to protect Caesar, and keep him alive, Rocket, because he knows what it’s like to lose a son, and Maurice to make sure that Caesar returns to lead his colony. This little display of animal’s loyalty just touches my heart to much, it’s a quality I so dearly admire and really wish humans were better at it. It had me tearing up (again) with pride and awe. #SQUADGOALS

They discover a mute girl, who Maurice decides to ‘adopt’ as his own (good old, sweet heart Maurice) and later come across a hermit chimp, who used to live in the zoo, and due to his dealing with humans, calls himself ‘Bad Ape’ ... how cute and sad it that? He’s seriously so ugly looking, yet adorable at the same time.

They soon discover the ‘border’ where the soldier have captured the ape colony and are using them to work without food and water. Caesar is capture, and Luca dies in a rescue attempt. (so much death!) ... The colonel and Caesar have words, and it is brought to light that the Colonel fears the disease which is slowly making human intelligence regress, and thus the spread of ‘mute’ people, as they no long have full capacity of brain functionality. He (colonel) had killed his own son due to this.

The little mute girl, Nova, gives Caesar some food and water while he is captured, and to save her from being caught, Rocket comes to the rescue and allows himself to be captured as a diversion. Rocket was my personal ‘monkey of the movie’ in this third and final instalment of the series. His loyalty, strength and good heart are overwhelmingly touching! Together him and Caesar along with external help of ‘Bad Ape’ and ‘Maurice’ devise a plan to break the apes out.

A war begins, as other troops come to kill the Colonel (because of his willingness to kill sick humans)... but turns out he himself got the disease, Caesar doesn’t go through with killing him, seeing he can’t speak, but leaves the gun for the Colonel to kill himself. 

After an intense escape, surviving being shot by an arrow and a massive avalanche , Caesar leads his tribe to their new home, and dies a peaceful death alongside his close friend and advisor, Maurice. . . and damn, them tears are back again.

THANK YOU to the INCREDIBLE Team(S) who put these MINDBLOWINGLY BRILLIANT films together!! I’m sad they’re over but I’ve enjoyed every moment. The character development was OUTSTANDING! And I loved the realism of CAESARS heroic story - the hero can’t always survive! 

[creativedestructioncityofsa-blog]

Interview Questions Naomi Kuo

Interviewer Amadou Barry: What were the main reasons that motivated you to go to the city of San Juan?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: I was invited by my professor, Gregory Sholette, whose work I respect, so I wanted to learn from him through joining him on research for this project. I also was interested to know more of the interconnectedness between Puerto Ricans in New York and Puerto Rico itself as a way to understand more minority communities in NYC.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: How were your first few days upon arrival in the city of Porto Rico San Juan?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: Busy! We got right into a busy schedule of meeting people like Carmen from University of PR and other organizations. The first few days were more introductory with UPR, with us introducing ourselves and some faculty introducing themselves to us. We also discovered that the city was overall recovering from the hurricane, but a bit unevenly. Some things were still in disrepair, like the streetlights.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: What type of activities did the community or you participate in throughout your time in San Juan?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: We visited many individuals and groups that Greg, Rafael and Carmen were connected to. Sometimes we got to observe community events, like the opening of an abandoned public school to a local group, or a party for a few established artists based in old San Juan. Other times we simply got a look into various work spaces and talked with organizers, like at Casa Taft, or people repurposing abandoned spaces for co-opts and urban gardens.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: Could you tell me and emphasize more on about cantera peninsula?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: The area of Cantera Peninsula that we visited had public housing as well as somewhat precariously built private housing. There was a community center that had government offices where people talked to us about a decades long project to give people titles to the land their houses were built on while trying to relocate people who had built in flood zones. The area is historically where people from rural areas moved and built shanty towns close to the urban area of San Juan. The government official who took us on a walk for a few blocks seemed to have a good relationship with all the neighbors, but many people seemed to be just hanging out around their homes, even in the middle of the day, suggesting unemployment. He talked about the resiliency of the resident-built houses - while often overcrowded and humble, withstood the storm because of a more traditional architectural know-how.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: What were the different types of environmental exposures, dangers was the habitants exposed and experience in their community due the effect of the hurricane?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: Lack of water, food and energy energy when it’s a tropical island with plenty of rain and potential solar energy frustrated many of the young people who organized squatter movements. Also buildings that have long been abandoned or not properly repaired made the built environment more vulnerable to hurricanes. The plants were almost completely stripped of their leaves from the wind, and the coqui (native frog) population suffered also. So there’s disruption in the ecosystem.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: How are the families and the students dealing with current issues?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: Everyone is affected, although those living in San Juan and the middle class are perhaps not as badly affected. University students were very busy with their schoolwork since they were put on an alternate, more condensed schedule to make up for lost time. Also the drain of people away from PR and to the states I think affects community cohesion. There’s general trauma and anxiety from surviving such a huge natural disaster, combined with the territory’s economic and political state.

Interviewer Amadou Barry:  What were the approaches did “Fema” take as an organization for the city of San Juan?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: I’m not knowledgeable to speak to that in depth, though we did see blue tarps on roofs still. We didn’t interact with any FEMA representatives.

Interviewer Amadou Barry:  How would you describe the meaning behind the art of the community members of San Juan?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: It didn’t seem like there was one cohesive art community in San Juan. There were young artists who either were in the street art scene or else kind of did their own thing and picked up gigs for bands or local restaurants (in Santurce). Santurce is apparently a contested neighborhood that is both an up-and-coming site of speculative development, and a cultural hub. There is the art school in Old San Juan, and Contrafuerta, a sort of residential art gallery passions project of one of the professors there. Older artists seem to want to hold on to Old San Juan as a center of culture even if it has probably become a place mostly for tourists and foreign investment. There are many art-minded young people, and many collective squatting efforts are centered on or have major artistic components to them. So there’s different meanings, but art seems to be a way to express resistance and resilience

Interviewer Amadou Barry: What were the community reactions after the effects of the hurricane?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: Many young people are becoming radicalized, pushing more for self-sufficiency, if not independence. especially within the university. they see cracks in PR’s relationship to the US, both from the conditions that made the hurricane’s effects worse, and from US response afterwards. Others just want to take care of their communities and use abandoned spaces as centers for service provision that the government has withdrawn. In contrast, some push for more legal systematic change or are more vocally critical.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: How would you describe San Juan before or after the hurricane what were the major different after retuning few years later?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: This was my first time to PR.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: Can you tell me more about “El Homiguero”?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: We were introduced to El Homiguero through one of the students we met at UPR. It was run by some young people who looked like they were in their early, mid twenties. It was a multistory former office building that was missing some outer walls but was still structurally sound. Someone with time and resources (or through a collective pooling of these from the group) fixed up the place, installed water collection and solar panel. There was a little library of radical texts and upstairs, I believe it was a taekwondo studio and people were giving instruction on how to mix herbs or do something with essential oils (something of that nature). Again, mostly young people participating. They were generous to show us around and talked about how they wanted to provide for their neighbours, so I think they do not want to reach only other young people, but that was their main audience at that point.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: Why are there so many high school closures in San Juan?

PR is in debt and as a result, the government cut the budget to many social services. Also, many people moved away, but apparently some closures happened before that, incentivizing people to move away.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: How are the families being affected due to the closure of the schools in the area?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: Not sure. The group occupying the abandoned school is providing art programming. So presumably people are concerned about keeping their Morales high, staying together, and maintaining their culture and identity.

Interviewer Amadou Barry: What is the resilient planning that is being put in place by the local council or the government to recover from this disaster?

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: Not sure. People did not seem very optimistic about the government’s actions or ability to really take care of their community - hence these do it yourself initiatives

Interviewer Amadou Barry: What are the next steps, goals from the government, communities, foreign AIDS for the country and the city of San Juan?  

Interviewee Naomi Kuo: The government seems to be prioritizing attracting foreign and stateside investment to PR to rise up the economy that way. We saw many common US franchise establishments there, and we heard that Californian bitcoin people were trying very hard to set up a utopia there. So rather than giving tax breaks or otherwise incentivizing Puerto Ricans to start businesses or otherwise revitalize the economy, that opportunity is being given to others who may not have the local people’s interests in mind. I personally think the US needs to decolonize PR and work with local government and organizations to help it develop a more balanced economy where there is less dependent on imports for basic needs and more sensitive to the natural potential of the island.

[vsplusonline]

Winner of the Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur of Kerala Award for 2020, Sheila James introduced bespoke clothes in Thiruvananthapuram

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/winner-of-the-outstanding-woman-entrepreneur-of-kerala-award-for-2020-sheila-james-introduced-bespoke-clothes-in-thiruvananthapuram/

Winner of the Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur of Kerala Award for 2020, Sheila James introduced bespoke clothes in Thiruvananthapuram

“At a function I saw an acquaintance wearing a beautiful peach crepe sari with exquisite motifs in grey. She had it accessioned with grey pearls and looked elegant and stylish. I was pleased to see that such brilliant handwork was still in vogue and wondered how much she had spent on her sari. When I complimented her, she told me that she had bought the sari from my boutique some 22 years ago!” recalls Sheila James with a big smile on her face.

The first to set up a designer boutique, Body Tunes, in the city in 1988, Sheila recalls how there was hardly anyone who encouraged her when she decided to open shop. Sheila’s Body Tunes made designer clothes accessible to all those with an eye for fashion and the wherewithal to buy bespoke saris and dresses.

“I find it hard to believe that I started my business without a capital investment to speak of. It was my passion for design and colours that helped me make a mark as a designer,” muses Sheila, one of three winners of the Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur of Kerala Award for 2020.

Accent on handlooms

“Right from the beginning my choice was handlooms and handworked saris. It was intuitive and not driven by any sense of business acumen. I can confidently say that I popularised handworked raw silks, tussars, Kanchi cottons and handlooms.”

Initially, she had a space opposite her house in PTP Nagar where 10 families, all experts in Ari work, were accommodated. Over the years, Sheila has relocated them back to their home town and now has craftsmen all over the country doing specialised work for her.

Eventually, when the business outgrew the tiny space in Sasthamangalam, she moved to her present location in Statue and named it Czarina. “My daughter Shalini James, a designer and founder of Kochi-based Mantra, came up with the name ‘Czarina’. ‘The princess within you’ is the tagline of the boutique. We believe that there is a princess in every woman and we cater to her with the best from all over the country,” explains Sheila.

She laughs when she remembers travelling to Benares, Kolkata and Jaipur on her own to source weaves, meet craftspersons and locate sellers. “It was the late eighties. No net, no mobile phones and no connections in the fashion world. All I had were some friends and some contacts given to me by my workers. I was literally discovering India’s rich diversity of weaves and textiles. My family would have been aghast if they had known I was travelling on my own during those trips,” she recounts.

That experience has stood her in good stead and today Sheila and Shalini travel together to select material and weaves for their boutiques. “Shalini is a trained designer and so I turn to her to learn about materials and technique while my contacts and experience have helped her in sourcing exactly what she wants,” she explains with a smile.

Sitting pretty in a sari her boutique, the self-taught designer says she never thought she was setting out on a new adventure when as a young mother of three, she got a tailor to run up a few salwar sets on a sewing machine she had at her home in Kilpauk, Chennai.

“My youngest daughter had turned four and I had a little time for my own. Since I had always been fond of designing my clothes, I decided to make a few for me. I liked what I had done and showed it to a person who used to manage actor Sarada’s boutique, Panjali, in Chennai. She complimented me on my work and told me to leave them behind. I remember how happy I was when I was told they had been sold,” recalls Sheila.

Buoyed by that initial success, she employed more tailors, turned the garage of her house into a workspace and got down to work. Body Tunes, her outlet in Chennai, became popular with Malayalis and she also held a couple of exhibitions in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuam.

Eventually, she decided to open an outlet in the city. Her father, the late Baby John, asked her if she wanted some help. “And I wondered aloud if Mammootty could come for the inauguration. My father did succeed in that and I remember how the entire Vellayambalam-Sasthamangalam was packed with people waiting to see the actor,” she laughs.

Happy customers

As congratulatory messages and calls keep interrupting the conversation, Sheila says that she does not measure her success in number of outlets or celebrities wearing her clothes. Her happiness is in her loyal customers who have grown up with her boutique. Although she had franchises in Kochi, Kottayam and Kozhikode, she says she closed them down when she found that she was unable to give those outlets personal attention.

Today, as boutiques spring up in every nook and corner of the city, Sheila has a word of advice for young entrepreneurs, “Start small and stay grounded. Be realistic and, I feel, it is best to use your own money to begin with so that the fear of repayment of loans will not hamper the pleasure of doing something that you enjoy. And, of course, give the best to your customer.”

You have reached your limit for free articles this month.

Register to The Hindu for free and get unlimited access for 30 days.

Subscription Benefits Include

Today’s Paper

Find mobile-friendly version of articles from the day’s newspaper in one easy-to-read list.

Unlimited Access

Enjoy reading as many articles as you wish without any limitations.

Personalised recommendations

A select list of articles that match your interests and tastes.

Faster pages

Move smoothly between articles as our pages load instantly.

Dashboard

A one-stop-shop for seeing the latest updates, and managing your preferences.

Briefing

We brief you on the latest and most important developments, three times a day.

Not convinced? Know why you should pay for news.

*Our Digital Subscription plans do not currently include the e-paper ,crossword, iPhone, iPad mobile applications and print. Our plans enhance your reading experience.

Source link

[mikemortgage]

Why Canada — the rightful home of hockey — may never be home to another NHL franchise

John Graham is a race car driver, hockey promoter and believer in improbable dreams, an optimism he applied to his role as the point man for a group of prominent though unnamed Saskatoon businessmen who approached the NHL in 2012 with a pitch to buy the money-bleeding, league-owned Phoenix Coyotes and move them to the Prairies.

Saskatchewan at the time was booming, its economy growing by 2.9% a year, good enough to be second only to Alberta nationally. Saskatoon had grown into a city of 230,000 from less than 200,000 at the turn of the millennium, and was adding more bodies and jobs year over year, a prosperous run propelled by a robust oil sector, strength in potash and uranium mining, and the traditional farming and manufacturing sectors. Unemployment was low and the city’s NHL aspirations high, especially given that Saskatoon had already hosted several successful NHL exhibition games, and also had a 15,200-seat arena, government support and proof of concept in the nearby Winnipeg Jets — formerly the Atlanta Thrashers — that relocating to a small Canadian market could actually be a win for everybody.

Naturally, Don Cherry waded in, devoting a Coach’s Corner segment one Saturday to trumpeting Saskatoon’s NHL worthiness, and assuring Canadians of something they all surely knew: “They are hockey people,” he said. “They will sell out in 15 minutes.”

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly even met with Graham and the Saskatoon group, meetings that produced more meetings, talks that, while cordial, weren’t enough to dislodge the Coyotes from Phoenix, where the franchise remains — a money loser still, albeit under new ownership and with a new name, the Arizona Coyotes.

Chasing cold cash: How icebergs became the field of dreams for believers and schemers

The island Canada forgot: On Campobello, citizens are left exiles in their own land

The small towns that refuse to die: Schemes to woo new blood about more than just staying alive

“Business and life goes in cycles,” Graham says, looking back on those heady Saskatoon days. “For sure, when we thought there was an opportunity to go after Phoenix, Saskatchewan was on an economic high, potash was hot, oil exports were strong. It was the right window for us. Had the team gone in there, I think it would have mirrored Winnipeg’s success. We had everything lined up, but …”

It didn’t happen, not for Saskatoon, and not, more recently, for Quebec City, a locale twice spurned by the NHL in a three-year span in favour of expanding to Las Vegas and now Seattle. The NHL’s repeated snubbing of Canadian markets doesn’t seem just, morally, and it doesn’t seem to jibe with free market economic theory.

Canadians are NHL hungry. There is consumer demand for the product and corporate support, with a demonstrated belief among the business community that being associated with the league isn’t merely a branding exercise, but vital to a brand’s identity. Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Ford of Canada, Rogers, Bell, Bank of Nova Scotia, Kraft — and more — have a piece of the NHL action. BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. together own the majority of the Toronto Maple Leafs, in addition to Rogers controlling most of the league’s Canadian broadcasting rights. But in a proven though underserved national market, the NHL appears to be doing everything it possibly can to avoid putting in an eighth franchise.

It can be easy, even comforting, to conclude that the problem must be them: them being the league, its American-sunbelt-loving-New-York-City-headquartered commissioner, Gary Bettman, and the majority of American owners behind him, hell bent on propping up marginal franchises in Florida, Arizona and the Carolinas, while forgoing slam dunk propositions such as the Nordiques 2.0.

Much less appetizing to consider is the alternative, which is that the problem is us: our population, 75-cent dollar, relative lack of billionaire would-be hockey team owners, corporate parochialism and collective inability to grasp, or rather fully admit, that Canada, although the rightful home of hockey, may never be home to another NHL franchise.

Richard Peddie, former president and chief executive officer of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Ltd., says the financial prospects of an eighth Canadian NHL franchise aren’t great.

To understand why not, it helps to do the math, and who better to run the numbers than Richard Peddie, the former CEO and president of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment Ltd., and an executive often accused of monetizing every nook of Toronto’s Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena) during his 13 years at the top. “Looking at it, the financials aren’t great,” he says of the prospects for an eighth Canadian NHL franchise. “It is a thin investment, there is not a lot of earnings in it, and you need a rich person.”

Imagine, as per Seattle, that an expansion team costs around US$650 million. If you are not Quebec City, a new arena would need to be built, costing another $200 million, give or take, assuming the new owner convinces taxpayers to pick up a chunk of the tab. Now, almost a billion dollars later — huzzah — you have yourself an NHL franchise earning, in a good year, about US$25 million before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization or, in other words, close to a zero-per-cent annual return on a huge investment.

Hence the need for a rich person, a billionaire at minimum, which in Canada limits the pool to about 100 potential buyers, seven of which — the Molsons, David Thomson, Larry Tanenbaum, the Rogers, Daryl Katz, Francesco Aquilini, Murray Edwards and Eugene Melnyk — already own, directly or indirectly through companies, at least a part of the seven existing Canadian franchises.

Winnipeg Jets co-owner David Thomson watches his team take on the Anaheim Ducks in the second period of NHL playoff action at MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Man., in 2015.

Thomson, the richest Canadian around, and Mark Chipman in 2011 paid US$170 million for the Thrashers and the right to move the team to Winnipeg. At the time, it was a boondoggle of a price for a terrible franchise with no discernible fan base in a non-traditional hockey market, and an ownership group that was slinging lawsuits at one another after losing millions for years. But Thomson was the right billionaire at the right time in the right place, willing to pay whatever the asking price was for what today amounts to a civic good-works project, with more or less break-even financials, though the Jets are now valued at US$415 million, according to Forbes.

The MTS Centre during the Winnipeg Jets and Montreal Canadiens NHL game on October 9, 2011 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The game is Winnipeg’s first NHL regular season game in 15 years.

Peddie concludes his lesson by adding that, with nominal annual returns, a hypothetical owner entering the NHL game is presumably doing so with two aims in mind: winning a Stanley Cup while betting the asset appreciates in value so that it pays off if he or she decides to sell. Of course, the buy-and-hold-and-eventually-sell sports ownership model starts to look pretty dicey when the price tag up front is a billion dollars and when a hypothetical team is located in a secondary Canadian market, such as Saskatoon or Quebec City.

Yet no matter how bad the math looks, or how far the loonie dips, this is still Canada and fans will pay to watch a team (think, Edmonton) loaded with talent repeatedly fall short of expectations and fail to make the playoffs. It is the kind of loyalty (lunacy?) that doesn’t exist in, say, Arizona, Florida or Carolina — or Ottawa, for that matter — suggesting that Quebec City should hold some allure as a potential destination for an NHL franchise. Right?

A Winnipeg Jets fan looks for tickets for the Jets inaugural game against the Montreal Canadiens at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Oct. 9, 2011.

We put the question to Bill Daly, Bettman’s second-in-command. “I’m not prepared to say that Quebec is not a viable market for a future NHL franchise,” he says via email. “And I’m not prepared to say that future opportunities will not present themselves. Every situation is fact- and circumstance-specific, and I would certainly not rule out the possibility of facts and circumstances aligning in the future so as to create a new opportunity.”

In other words: Quebec City is neither on nor definitively off the table, and remains a Plan B (or C or D) with a fully paid-for, publicly-funded arena, a rivalry with Montreal waiting to be resumed and an eager fan base itching to buy tickets, sweaters and overpriced pints at concession stands.

Daly goes on to say that “further expansion” was not a priority at the moment, though he allowed that as long as there is a demand and “assuming that further expansion is ultimately perceived to benefit the league as a whole, it will be duly considered and may well happen.”

Expansion, of course, is one way to get a team. The other is a relocation scenario, where a U.S.-based dumpster-fire of a hockey situation reaches Atlanta Thrashers-sized proportions, and the team/league cries uncle and heads north. Cast against this scenario is Bettman, a man who hates to admit failure, and rightly so, because failing is bad for business. If teams are seen as portable and relocation is always viewed as an option, there is little incentive for fans, so the argument goes, to invest — practically, financially and emotionally — in a franchise that might be gone tomorrow. At the same time, if the NHL hopes to grow its overall fan base and tap into previously untapped corporate dollars, it needs to expand into markets where new hockey converts might be, not where the fans already are (Quebec, Saskatoon, Anytown Canada).

The NHL’s existing strategy might even be paying off, depending on one’s perspective. Auston Matthews, Maple Leafs star and a former No. 1 overall NHL pick, grew up in the Phoenix suburbs as a Coyotes fan; the Arizona State University men’s hockey team in nearby Tempe has emerged as a U.S. college hockey power; and youth hockey enrolment in the state has quadrupled since the Coyotes arrived in 1996. Hockey has a toehold in Arizona, like it or not. Equally evident is that the Coyotes continue to lose gobs of money, reportedly close to US$20 million a year.

The red ink didn’t bother Daryl Jones. As a kid in Alberta, Jones grew up worshipping Oilers great Paul Coffey, and eventually left home to play hockey at Yale University, before graduating into the world of high finance. In 2013, he and a bunch of other rich Albertans bought the sad-sack Coyotes from the NHL for US$170 million. “We thought, No. 1, that NHL franchise values would go up, and that has largely proven to be true,” Jones says from Connecticut, where he now lives. “It would also enable us to make money when we sold out — the rising tide of franchise values.”

Jones and his partners learned some valuable lessons about hockey in the desert during nearly four years as NHL owners, chiefly: the Coyotes have a loyal fan base; the team’s arena couldn’t be located in a worse spot in terms of fans accessing it for weeknight games; financial losses are hard to stem; and Bettman is sticking by Arizona — at least for now. Their bet on increasing franchise values, meanwhile, paid off. They essentially doubled an initial US$45-million equity investment, selling to U.S. hedge fund manager, and now lone Coyotes owner, Andrew Barroway in 2017. (Barroway is shopping for new partners, and has valued the Coyotes at US$500 million).

Jones now owns a piece of a junior team in Dubuque, Iowa. He believes that Quebec City could work as an NHL market, but that the determining factor for the league forever hinges upon one crucial element. “They look at it as, What is the best business proposition for us?” he says. “I don’t think it has anything to do with whether it is a Canadian or an American team.” In other words, it’s all about the money.

Canadian franchises generate revenues in Canadian dollars, while paying players in U.S. funds. Add in U.S. travel expenses, and the cost of operating minor league franchises, typically based in the U.S., and the pressure exerted on a Canadian franchise’s financial well-being by a weakened dollar is significant. Canadian teams can hedge, buying up greenbacks when the loonie is strong and spending them in times when it’s not. But hedging also costs money, and it involves risk. The NHL salary cap has taken some of the bite out of currency fluctuations, as has league-wide revenue sharing, but there is no absolute cure for it, nor will there ever be.

Take, as an example, Dustin Byfuglien, a linchpin of the Winnipeg defence, a fan favourite with a US$8-million-per-season contract whose true cost to the Jets when counted in Canadian currency is $10.5 million. Winnipeg’s total salary expenditure for 2018-19, before player bonuses, is US$71.8 million, or about $94 million Canadian — and that’s operating with a dollar worth about 76 cents U.S. The lower the dollar dips, the worse the math looks. Remember: it was a 65-cent dollar and ballooning player salaries in the mid-’90s that chased the Quebec City Nordiques to Denver — to be recast as the Colorado Avalanche — and the Jets (version 1.0) to Phoenix.

Patrick Roy holds the Stanley Cup aloft after the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1993.

More disheartening than the dollar is the competition Quebec City has faced in recent expansion wars. Las Vegas is an entertainment mecca and sports gambling hub, while metropolitan Seattle is home to 3.8 million souls and several Fortune 500 company headquarters, including Microsoft Corp., Starbucks Corp., Costco Wholesale Corp., Nordstrom Inc. and a little company called Amazon.com Inc. Quebec City is chiefly home to a provincial government and a pension fund investor.

“If you compare, for example, the opportunity in Seattle versus Quebec City, it is a no-brainer,” says Peddie, the former MLSE boss. “When you start comparing Seattle to other Canadian markets, like a Saskatoon, it doesn’t even warrant a conversation. Out of all the NHL owners, maybe a couple have been to Quebec City, because it is such a charming, European kind of place, but for sure none of them have ever been to Saskatoon, or a lot of other Canadian markets.”

Peddie was approached, post-MLSE career, by a private group looking to examine the possibility of Toronto being home to another NHL team, a big what-if requiring an ownership group with a monopoly agreeing to waive its monopoly. The working assumption was that the alliance between Bell and Rogers would eventually fracture, forcing one of them out of the Leafs’ ownership group. Peddie, in crunching numbers, had the Leafs and the expansion team both playing out of Scotiabank Arena, a model that could work financially, he says, but, in talking to his connections, it fell apart, because both Bell and Rogers were only interested in owning the Leafs.

But as bleak as the odds might appear for Canada landing another team, appearances aren’t always everything. Mark Chipman, the Jets chief executive who hooked Thomson on the idea of the NHL returning to Winnipeg, first approached Bettman about it in 1999. Chipman did everything right thereafter, keeping mostly out of the media spotlight almost until the day the NHL officially announced the league was coming to Winnipeg, by way of Atlanta. Something that looked like it would never happen suddenly did. The lesson? Be patient, very patient, and keep things quiet, since the NHL won’t allow itself to get pushed in directions it doesn’t want to go. (Remember: Jim Balsillie and the Hamilton Blackberries).

Perhaps that’s why a curious silence has descended over the Nordiques 2.0 camp ever since Seattle was awarded its franchise in December. Billionaire Pierre Karl Peladeau and his media company, Quebecor Inc., are the money behind Quebec City’s expansion bid. Peladeau did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story. Mayor Regis Labeaume, a champion of the city’s NHL ambitions, who pushed for the publicly-funded arena to get built and initially wooed Peladeau to the cause, also declined. Their silence could indicate surrender, or it could signal they’re taking a page from Chipman’s playbook.

  A young hockey fan cheers on the Calgary Flames before they take on the Edmonton Oilers in NHL hockey at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary April 6.

Which brings us back to the beginning, and the one thing Canada will always have going for it, the thing that makes this market critical to the NHL’s overall welfare, and the notion of landing an eighth franchise before Wayne Gretzky turns 100 plausible: Canadians love hockey, and care about their home teams, even when they are lousy, and even when doing so runs contrary to common sense.

Fans like Dan Mason, a sports professor at the University of Alberta and in some ways your typical Edmonton Oilers follower, though more casual than crazy. He still watches the team on TV — despite all the reasons not to — and catches a game or two a year at Rogers Place. Mason says that in the days of yore, NHL expansion teams set the baseline minimum value for all the teams, a model that worked when applied, for example, to the US$45-million fee San Jose’s ownership group paid for the Sharks in 1991.

Lately, however, expansion fees — US$500 million in Vegas, US$650 million in Seattle — reflect the value of a team in a given market. That’s not just the professor’s opinion it is the NHL’s official position. The Leafs aren’t worth US$1.45 billion if they are in Winnipeg, and a money pit of an NHL franchise — Forbes values the Coyotes at US$290 million — might not cost Quebec City more than it can afford.

Meantime, while it varies from team to team, ticket sales, game-day concessions, foam fingers, hats, sweaters and ice cream bars — all the money people who actually attend the games shell out — still represent about 50% of a given franchise’s revenue intake. Canadians still go to games. Canadian fans still drive revenues.

Loving hockey almost too much has not landed the country an eighth NHL franchise, or, for that matter, a Stanley Cup champion since 1993, but it is one reason not to completely abandon hope. “We are probably not likely to see a Canadian market get an NHL expansion franchise. It will be a Houston, or another market like that,” Mason says. “But if you see a franchise that continues to be in trouble, you can’t tell me that Quebec City is a worse market than Florida — even with a 60-cent dollar.”

• Email: joconnor@nationalpost.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2UxlYQh via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage