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venus-says · 4 years ago

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Healin’ Good Precure Episodes 31-35

The anti-vax go crazy at the sight of the new Healin' Good power-up weapon.

I honestly don't know how to start this post, I think I never actually knew how to do these ever since I began this thing, but anyway back for more Precure! It only took me five weeks to get back this time, hooray!

You know, I wish I was more happy and excited to be back, but being frank, I'm not really? Part of it is because I feel like I lost the touch for writing, but the biggest reason is that I will be kinda negative about the things I have to say and I've been trying to stay away from negativity, especially now that my cat is sick, and I didn't want to be a source for negativity. But it's already December, I've neglected this blog a lot already and I feel bad for it so I decided to do something about it.

But to be honest, those weren't the only reasons why it took me a month to be back... I've actually been avoiding watching Precure. Well, I've been avoiding watching most of the things I write about because I've overdone it at the beginning of the year, and burn out hit me seriously, but from everything Healin' Good is what I've been avoiding the most. I know it doesn't seem like it, considering the last 3 posts I've made in the past 4 months (wow) were of Precure, but I've been watching the other shows here and there, I've just been sitting on a huge pile of drafts in my Evernote because I can't put my thoughts on those shows in a cohesive way for some reason, but when it comes to Precure, while it's easier for me to write about, I didn't feel compelled to get back and watch this show.

Every time I would sit down to watch a Precure episode at the same time I would open YouTube and Twitch in the hopes of something else I was more interested in would be there in my subscription box so I could avoid watching Healin' Good. And it's not like I think the show is utterly bad or isn't even like I don't have a good time when I actually sit down to watch the show, I just... lost interest. I think ever since Earth's debut my interest in the show has been decreasing more and more, and I don't know how to pinpoint if it's actually a problem with the show or if it's just me and the headspace I've been in ever since the pandemic hit Brazil. Yes, the story had plot points that I didn't like and the flaws of the show have been more apparent in my eyes with each time I watch it, but at the same time sitting down to watch one episode isn't an excruciating experience (especially when i'm not live-tweeting, istg i don't know why I ever thought that would be a good idea), I just don't feel attached to these characters as much as I did before and I'm not engaged in seeing what their story will become in the future.

With that being said, I think you all are already prepared for a post that won't be very positive so I guess it's time to put my personal rambling aside and talk about what y'all came here for, episodes 31 to 35 of Healin' Good Precure.

When I left in the last post I know I've said the cliffhanger of Episode 30 was a good one, and well... Episode 31 used its boots to step on my fingers and made me fell from that cliff. I forgot that since we were ending in that action the next episode would begin with the Cures being defeated, the major portion of the episode would be for dealing with the tension, and the new power-up would come at the climax. And that was exactly what happened, except that there was no tension at all and the power-up didn't feel like a cathartic experience just a Deus Ex Machina. The episode was very anticlimactic and just very uninteresting as a whole and once again, I know I'm going to be very repetitive here, it all comes down to the villains.

Everything that is depending on the villains' side to make me feel something 9 times out of 10 won't make me feel anything because of how boring they are. They made such a big deal about the villains evolving after using the Mega Parts, but it feels like anything changed. Shindoine is still just "the girl", Guwaiaru is still just the dumb strong guy, and the so-called power we're supposed to see from these new forms don't really make much of a difference since these two never get into actual fights with the cures, only the MOTW do. Daruizen is the only one they make stuff with, but it's more because they're really desperate to make him and Nodoka to be deeply connected and so they'll mold his character and personality to forcefully match him with whatever Nodoka's problem will be in that episode, if they need him to be the bored one he'll be, if they need him to be the curious type running experiments he'll be that, if they want him to be a selfish lone wolf they'll make him be. And that's just boring, at this point this villainous team and a cardboard cut-out are basically the same thing.

While also speaking about this "evolution" from the villains, you would think the new human-powered Giga Byogen would bring something new to the table, but no. It's just the exact same thing as before just with a bigger range for creating infections and a slightly higher defense stat. They aren't used in creative ways neither proposes a different treat that the other Mega Byogens did, proof of that is that in Episode 35 instead of a Giga they bring back a Mega just to show how irrelevant they are. They're also different from other monsters who draw their power from humans like a Nottrigger, or a Desertrian, or a Zetsuborg, where in most of the cases the summoning of the monster would be relevant for "solving the problem" afflicting either the victim of the week or the people around them. The teacher being affected didn't make his son appreciate the father more than he did before because that wasn't his conflict, Nodoka's doctor didn't have a revelation about his talents for medicine and Nodoka also didn't get anything new that she hadn't already learned before in the episode, neither did Chiyuu and her rival, you could completely delete the fight and that episode would've reached the same conclusion. Heck, the victim of episode 32 had only TWO appearances before he was turned into a monster, I doubt he was on screen for more than a minute, and they didn't need Touji to be there protecting the dog in the middle of the fight BECAUSE CHIYUU WAS ALREADY AWARE THAT HE'S A BRAVE HARD-WORKING KID BEFORE. These monsters are completely irrelevant and they don't add anything else to the show, and that's just really sad.

Back to Episode 31, let's talk about this power-up, shall we? Being straight to the point, I don't like it, both in the visual and narrative aspects. I visually like them even less now that we already know how the movie power-up looks and how much those forms are way more interesting than just a bigger hair and bigger skirts with a set of wings in the back that you could find in a Halloween costume sale. But who cares about how they look when this power, that is the manifestation of the the four cures combined powers together with their respective healing animals, comes out of nowhere without anything specific happening for them to trigger the appearance of the Healin' Good Arrow and the Special Healin' Good Bottle. Guess is needless to say that the Special Healin' Good Style doesn't feel special at all, it's like it only exists just to sell toys. Well, it's not like everything in this franchise is just to sell toys, but they usually know how to merge this with the story of the show and this didn't happen here. Also, for Christ's sake, this is the second year in a row where the name for the group powered-up attack is just the name of the series being used in the more boring way possible, where has their creativity gone to? The only good thing I have to say about this is that it gave us the healing animals doing some sort of rhythmic gymnastics and Pegitan twirling in that is prime content.

Overall complaints done, let's move one. (these will be quicker)

Episode 32, at first I thought I wouldn't like this one because they brought back this weird rivalry Pegitan has with Chiyuu's brother that doesn't have much of a reason for existing, but it was actually pretty sweet and heartwarming seeing Pegitan leave behind that and showing that he actually cares a lot about Touji, this silly rivalry is just his silly way of showing it (Showing it to who? I don't know, since no one but Pegitan and the audience seems to be aware of this, but shhh). This episode also made me like Touji, before he was just a background character to me and I didn't care much for him, but now I see him as more of a character of his own and not just Chiyuu's brother.

Episode 33 was my least favorite of the bunch because it connects to what to me is the worst plot point of the show: Nodoka's illness being a magic thing. If this had never been a thing, I'd be completely here for this episode. Nodoka's Doctor leaving his job because he felt powerless regarding Nodoka's disease and that being what drives him to go overseas to start doing medical research?? That seems great, and Nodoka feeling guilty for him leaving, while in actuality she's his inspiration is actually pretty emotional. But to me, it all just loses a lot of its importance because Nodoka was never sick after all, and unless this dude discovers on his own about the Byogens he pretty much went through all of this emotional trauma because and for nothing, it all becomes sad when you remember this aspect of it.

Episode 34 was going very well to me up until it's last moments where instead of sticking with a somewhat unique perspective on how to do a story like this they just throw it all through the window and instead of making Chiyuu and Tsubasa friendly rivalry exist outside the world of competitive sports they make Chiyuu change her mind and decide to pursue the World Tournament because you obviously can't have other interests and want to pursue different things when you're out of school, you gotta do that all your life, no other option allowed. This got me so disappointed, y'all have no idea.

Last but not least, Episode 35 which was my favorite, probably because it felt completely disconnected from the rest of the show and I could freely enjoy it in a separate pocket dimension without thinking about the rest. But regardless this was just a very fun and over-the-top episode that wasn't concerned about anything else other than just being fun, and that was exactly what I've been needing. Also, volleyball and beach volley is just cool as heck and seeing that incorporated in the fight of the episode was just fun as hell and a good change of pace. Akane sure is proud.

And that does it for now. Much like at the beginning, I also don't know how to close this one, especially after writing all those bad things and the fact that I'm not that excited for what's to come next. Well, let me know how you feel about all this, I don't know when I'll be back with another post but I promise I'll at least reply to any comment I receive. Without much else to say I'll leave you all with my usual sign-off. Stay healthy, stay safe, never stop resisting, thank you so much for reading, and until the next time. Healin' Goodbye~

#Healin' Good Precure #precure

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jq37 · 6 years ago

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well. that was it.

**spoilers for prompocalypse part 2**

Y'all this is it. The end-end. The last recap, at least for Fantasy High.

I honestly could have gotten this up yesterday but I wanted to give myself a hot sec before it was really over.

But, no way out but through. Let’s get to it.

We start back up right where we left off with no break in between. Cast still freaking, Brennan still gaping.

“What the Fuck.” –Brennan 2019

Anyway, Kristen once again appears in corn heaven and she’s very not chill about it. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. On the plus side, she runs into Doreen in heaven who is young and hot again (which I’m sure Fig would appreciate knowing) and also apologizes for her traumatizing speech to Adaine during her death.

Helio playing beer pong. I wonder if that was always a facet of his personality or if Brennan just decided to yes-and all of Ally’s suggestions of him being a frat bro.

The angels being like, “Please be nice to God. He’s our dad,” was kinda adorable.

“Why are you dressed like a weird stripper?”/“It’s too hot in here. He’s the sun!”

So while the gang has been living out Breakfast Club + Stranger Things, Aguefort has been Weekend and Bernie’s-ing Heaven apparently. I want to say wild, but tbh that’s pretty on brand for him. The wild part is that he was able to knock out GOD. Like, how even?

Aguefort tells Kristen that Sol is one god of many and she says, “Cool, I always thought that,” as if this is new information but, living in a D&D world, shouldn’t she definitively know that already? Like, the gods in fantasy worlds are pretty blatant about letting their presence be known and there are clerics/paladins who aren’t Heleoic but still have powers.

OK I have a bone to pick with Ms. Kristen Applebees. You get a chance to talk to the primordial source of all divine power and magic and you (1) ask who you’re allowed to bone and (2) create a TERRIBLE god. Just truly TRASH. She created a reaction gif god. It’s not even a physical representation of the concept. Like, I thought she meant something like Yass from Wreck it Ralph 2 but no. Just a literal Yes! Like, you can trash talk Helio when you come up with something better, girl. Also, wild that you can just…walk into a room and do that. Like you have to knock out Sol first but still. Wild.

“You’ve created a new deity and already you’re fed up with it. I would say that’s par for the course.”

I low key thought Kristen was going to get the option to deify herself. I think because I had just rewatched The Gamers: Dorkness Rising and that figures in to the plot. But, thinking about it, she wouldn’t have gone for that I don’t think.

Aguefort flipping out at Kristen saying that friendship is the greatest magic of all, and rightfully so. That’s BS.

Since when does Kristen have dog tags?

Anyway, as we all suspected, the chronomancy line from episode 1 wasn’t a random line of dialogue, it was a chekhov’s gun.

I mentioned this in an earlier post. Brennan didn’t seem too concerned that the party was wiping and I think this is why. I think he had two paths for this fight to take. In one, Riz successfully rolled for police and like 6 helpful NPCs plus his mom show up. That’s enough to beat the dragon without dying and Aguefort shows up having Die Hard-ed his way out of heaven. In the other, Kristen dies, goes to heaven, and basically that same series of events happens. Chronomancy saves the day. I think he was shocked because the roll dovetailed so perfectly with the story beat.

“Is Arthur Aguefort black? Hell yes. My brotha.” Gonna be honest, I basically had that same reaction when they showed his character portrait in ep 1.

Kristen and Arthur jump back into the battle and Arthur gets possessed by Mr. Gibbons. I guess he’s just been hanging around as a ghost this whole time? Because this seems to lend credence to the theory that that’s who possessed Fig in the arcade but didn’t we see him go to the afterlife (which, I have a question about that too later). But I feel like that must have been Brennan’s way of sidelining him for the fight so they didn’t have like a level 20 wizard making it too easy.

“Oh, and Jawbone!” Murph loses it.

Jawbone stuck in Goldenhoard’s mouth like that meme of the dog smiling, stuck in a fence.

Gorthalax is like, “I don’t feel great sleeping next to this dude.” Fig meanwhile is all, “I wanna sleep between his legs.” She says this at least twice.

So everyone just have a freaking picnic and takes a nap in the middle of this fight. Can’t say I saw that coming exactly.

Fabian tries to stab Dayne, who is already dead, during the time stop.

“What the fuck do they teach you at this school?”

“Are you talking about the time thing or–”/“Yeah Gorgug! The time thing!.”

“We’re gonna kill this motherfucker, sweetie.”

I love Sklonda so much.

Jawbone is a salad guy.

OK so I know people were shipping Sklonda and Gilear and it was like, “But how would that work with the height difference?” so Brennan, the absolute madman, decides to pair her with the GIANT DEMON???

Adaine about Gilear: Cucked again.

Everyone treating the DRAGON like a JUNGLE GYM.

“It’s basically Jeb Bush’s Campaign.” Ally, with the fury of 1000 suns: EXCUSE ME?

“I bless, [Riz], your mom, and [Fabian.] Are you the only ones with vendettas?”

“I think we’re all pretty blessed.” Gorgug/Zac is so good.

Adaine, who has all the wisdom and intelligence points of the entire party at the moment: You need to stay safe because the reason that we died is that you died.

The shot that shows everyone on the giant dragon and then the foreground fuzzes out and shows Adaine a safe distance away in the background is hilarious.

Ice guitar pick. Sweet.

Yeah, Siobhan really shoulda got healing potions out of her jacket, not the freaking wand. Hilarious. The only thing helpful about that was it hinted he was vulnerable to frost damage which they could have guessed.

I wonder what Brennan had in his notes about the freaking city in Adaine’s jacket. It’s wild they weren’t more curious about that.

I low key loved Emily buffing Murph the whole fight.

“Hell yes Sklonda!”

Ragh: Giving a gay pride speech./Adaine, who doesn’t want to get knocked out again: STAB HIM IN THE DICK DUDE.

And, speaking of, OWWW.

Fig shapeshifting to Dayne. The hell Emily!

And another eye gouging.

Fabian is incapable of doing a single thing without doing some ridiculous parkour stunt first.

Kristen,not twenty minutes after Riz said it would be crazy to go inside the dragon: Can I climb inside the dragon’s mouth? (Adaine: KRISTEN!)

Gorgug saving Skonda and Riz going, “Thanks for saving my mom!” from across the room.

Brennan is narrating the epic final battle and what cool thing everyone is doing and Kristen is just being digested.

Riz was my second choice for the coup de grace until it turned out that Kal ate his dad and then he was my first choice. Riz!!!!

What a badass moment for him. The image of him casting a shadow on the wall is super dope.

Everyone flipping off Kal as he dies.

Riz and Sklonda are making dragon casserole bay-bee!

MURPH FAILS WITH BARDIC INSPIRATION AND BLESS AT A 12 DC.

Aguefort. What a chaos monster.

“I fucked that bird! It is my paramour!”

Hold up, hold up, hold up. Did Kristen’s freaking Yes god kick Sol out of his own freaking heaven? WHAT?

I love that what Adaine got out of this experience was, “Wait, so my powers are bullshit?”

“Everything in this world is bullshit, Ms. Abernant.” Preach.

“So is the sun just a yes now?”/“Maybe.”

Literally 6 cop NPCs. Like they all seem like they’re morons but I’m sure it would have helped!

“Fuck it dude, it’s worth asking.”

“Are you my dad?”/“I was about to ask you the very same thing.”/“What?”

“TAKE HIS EYE. CUT OUT HIS EYE. YOU WANT ME TO BITE IT OUT FOR YOU?”

Brennan really likes the word bud.

Freak the fuck out all the time and just fuck things up.

They got their ice cream later! And Adaine says thank you to Basrar, even though he’s not even there.

Adaine as the 7 freed maidens (way to go Sandra-Lynn) are re-killing Goldenhoard: Us and them are the only good students.

Gorgug’s nat20! What a WILD time for the dice to give that to him.

“You gotta ask. I ask everyone if they’re my dad.”

Gorgug’s dad (Gorbag) has just as low an intelligence score as his son. It’s hilarious but also sweet.

THE VULTURE

I thought that Digby and WIlma just found Gorgug in the woods? Maybe I’m not remembering right. I would guess that was their version of the stork story but they straight up told him what docking was so…

“Do any other federal agents want to step to Arthur Aguefort on the grounds of his school?”

The Aguefort way!

I wonder what Sam has to say about her former BFF selling her out like that and also getting murdered.

It seems like Gorgug was put on the guest list for hell by accident (his relieved reaction was adorable) but I thought that was orc heaven?

Interesting Gorthalax still has pull in hell when he’s a high school coach now.

BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL

How did he watch the fight? Do they have pay per view in hell?

“I doubt Cathilda will end up here.”

Bill is just such a maniac. I love him so much. I wanna say I can’t believe that killing the devil dril tweet was serious but I can. It’s Bill.

Bill and Fabian having a casual convo in HELL.

Oh my God, Fabian’s mom stabbed Bill’s eye out and he proposed on the spot. No wonder Fabian is so into Aelwen. It’s in his DNA.

What a dope ship.

I can’t believe Emily tricked me into thinking that her end speech wasn’t in service to some nonsense. She held it together for so long but I should have known bc it’s EMILY.

“Young lady, I have no idea who that is and I’m telling you right now yes. I will make whoever that person is vice principal.”

Adaine: Uhhhh….we should find Zayn.

Aww, Zayn’s parents were also terrible elves.

Unwanted Wingwoman Kristen Applebees

lol at Adaine casting Ray of Sickness on everyone suggesting she date ghost Zayne. Great callbacks to the early eps all around.

Don’t @ me, but Adaine w/ a ghost boyfriend who also had terrible elf parents might be kinda sick.

“Tomorrow, we’re gonna start training you on how to actually swordfight.” Uhhh, I kinda love Fabian’s mom now?

She literally hasn’t been sober in 15 years. Icon.

“I didn’t know you spoke Tornado.”

Siobhan’s late season tendency to just flip things/people off is hilarious.

Wild that Adaine’s parents just legit DITCHED her that hard and she was like, f ‘em. Clean break.

“She’s helping me spread something.”

Gorgug has so many friends now!!!!!

Lol, Fabian’s whole journey has just been about becoming captain of the Owlbears.

Riz got his PI License.

Lou and Fabian immediately being so mad at the idea of his mom (Hallariel?) getting with Gilear. Emily/Fig having an equal but opposite reaction.

“Mama, I will kill this man.”/“I’ll kill you first, it’s not up to you.”

Sandra-Lynn gets with Jawbone. Did Brennan just roll to pair up everyone?

Also, the group is almost all related or quasi-related now. Gorthalax got with Sklonda which makes Fig and Riz sorta siblings. Gilear got with Hallariel making Fig and Fabian sorta siblings. Jawbone sorta adopted Adaine and he got with Sandra-Lynn, again making Adaine kinda siblings with Fig. Plus Fig claimed Gorgug as a sibling a lot of eps ago and if Kristen sticks with Tracker then she’ll marry into this mess. Crazy!

Fabian totally dipping on the sequel hook because he’s gonna be busy trying to break Aelwen out of jail.

I’ve been keeping up with the fanart but there was some in here I hadn’t seen and it was super dope!

I’m so glad we had the after epilogue-epilogue. It was a very nice send-off.

Adaine using her oracle authority to get Zayn back into school! She’s so good.

Lol and she helped Basrar so he can grant other wishes. I love that this is the NPC that she decided she was going all in for.

Riz and Adaine join AV club! Idk why I love that detail.

Riz cutting off Adaine’s very good question about her jacket w/ his PI talk.

“They’re our rivals.”/“Into it.”

“Is ‘The Ball’ not your real name?” I love Fabian so much.

Zac doing Gorgug’s excited crack-y teenage voice when he’s just concentrating on that and not playing the game is so adorable. He’s just so sweet and enthusiastic and a good kid.

“Guess that tin flower worked, huh?” I cry.

I love that Gorgug’s happy ending is basically just that he has friends now. And that’s literally all he wanted starting out.

“FIG! GO TO BARD CLASS!”

Aww, Ragh and Gorgug are friends now.

I knew it! I at some point pitched the idea of Ragh ending up with one of the AV guys so he would be w/ someone who had enough intelligence to keep him from dying and I’m 90% sure it’s somewhere on my blog but I can’t be bothered to find it right now. But anyway, he’s in the lgbt club w/ Ragh and Kristen so it’s def a possibility!

“My bitch sister? Don’t you fucking dare.” (lol, if that happens then the group will be even more related)

Fabian considering recruiting the Cubbys for his rescue attempt of Aelwen.

“Gilear!” I love that Fig loves Gilear now but still calls him by his first name.

And that was Fantasy High!

I have at least two more posts in the hopper: And epilogue retrospective type deal and also the official JQ37 ranking of all the adults in Fantasy High.

Thanks for sticking with me this far you guys. I can’t draw to save my life and I don’t really do fic so this is the one little way I can contribute to this thing I love so much.

It’s been real and I’ll see you all soon for an epilogue because, no surprise, I have more things to say.

#fantasy high #asks #anon #Anonymous

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attract-mode-collective · 7 years ago

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Scorpion Vs. Elon Musk’s Mom: FIGHT

Yes, that is indeed Elon Musk’s mother up there. And no, I do not have a bigger sized version of the pic. Guess we could always ask captain-price-official if one does exist.

Or perhaps make your own? Here’s Elon’s mum by herself (and in higher res)...

And with that, it’s time to see what else I tweeted during the first half of March! So, sticking with fighting games: which Street Fighter character does lighting better? Ryu, via the animated movie (via settei)...

… Or Bison, via the live action flick (via toghomevideo)...

I absolutely love win quotes from rom hacks (via bison2winquote)...

I have a massive backlog of games, yet Tekken 7 just shot straight to the top of the list, thanks to the knowledge that you can accurately recreate Dynamite Headdy characters (via mysterious0bob)...

This Hatsune Miku X Space Channel 5 figure is v. nice (via nendoroidoftheday)...

A friendly reminder to everyone that A. I'm a massive fan of Seaman & B. my birthday is about a month away (via nutastic)...

This scene at the beach with a Figma of Link, from A Link Between Worlds, feels more like Link's Awakening than anything else (via vyntic)...

Toys and models are no longer just for reenacting memorable in-game moments, they can also reproduce famous IRL events that surrounded the games themselves (via 8bitcentral)...

So what's the going rate for ET for the Atari 2600 that was supposedly dug up in for that so-called documentary, Atari: Game Over? Which I recently re-watched and still can't believe people think is real. At any rate, am assuming the autograph from Howard Scott Warshaw gives it some actual value (via it8bit)...

And what's the going rate for Chinese Famiclone karaoke carts, primarily one with Jackie Chan on the label. Am also wondering if it's cuz his songs are included... you are aware of his successful career in music as well, right? (via ulan-bator)...

Been struggling to come up with a zinger for the past 10 minutes, but ain't nuthin gonna beat "Welcome to the Velvet Room y'all!" (via jatayu)...

To be filed under: it's funny cuz it's true (via doctorbutler)...

So the weather has been awful around these parts, lots of rain & snow, which gets in the way of imagining a giant tetromino in the sky (via uvula.jp)...

When playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, please keep in mind that somewhere out there, despite being out of view, is the ghost of Luigi floating through vast stretches of empty space, with zero destination or purpose (via suppermariobroth)...

Speaking of Luigi, and Supper Mario Broth; they’ve taken the adventures he talks about in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and illustrated them in the form of a comic that closely adheres to the style of the game...

Also a friendly reminder of that rift between Mario & Luigi for a few years (they'd eventually make up & resume doing games together, as everyone knows) after Mario discovered his brother being all friendly with the enemy in Super Mario World (via peazy86)...

Yet another obscure Mario factoid: the move he uses to defeat Bowser in Super Mario 64 originates from an old furikake commercial that predates the game by about a decade (via suppermariobroth)...

Yet another random gif of Mario from the 80s, this one from a video guide from Super Mario Bros; I miss the days in which his look was not yet standardized (via suppermariobroth)...

And here we have a completely unlicensed Dr. Mario, unless Nintendo gave him the OK to brush up on his doctoring skills by assuming an alias at a family clinic in Houston TX (via suppermariobroth)...

It's funny how, when it comes to obscure Mario games, everyone brings up Mario Is Missing or Hotel Mario, but what about Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up? (via kazucrash)...

Mario gets his own breakfast cereal.

Luigi? Booze. (via @carolynmichelle)

A question that I posed on MAR10Day (via retrogamerblog)...

It's not Super Mario Bros, but simply…. Bros (via therubberfruit)...

I've never wanted something "bootleg" to be official as much as as this Dark Souls fan art. And if the actual game somehow looked like this, that would be... gladly welcomed (via gamefreaksnz)

Oh God, Nier is amazing and all, but I would SO be down for a yelling & screaming match with Yoko Taro on this point (via @Avisch_)...

Behold my fave Twitter thread in recent memory: "You see, that was taken from Africa, but it belonged to the Keyblade Masters. Imma take it off your hands for ya."

"Nah, It was taken by British soldiers in Africa but it's actually from Gaia. A sword far heavier than any sword has rights to be, yet a true 1st Class will wield it with ease. Don't trip, I'm gonna take it off your hands for you."

"Nah, It was taken by British soldiers in Africa but it's actually from Hyrule. Originally crafted by the goddess Hylia herself. Only a true hero that is pure of heart and strong of body is capable of wielding the sacred blade. Don't trip, I'm gonna take it off your hands for you."

Naturally the star of Home Alone 1 & Home Alone 2 has both a NES Classic and Famicom Mini, like all Hollywood bigwigs (via @SimonParkin)...

While discussing Ready Player One with a colleague, was reminded of the dude who was so inspired by the book that he turned his apartment into an arcade (and then his fiancé broke up with him; via nydailynews.com)...

Recently there was some kind of event at Sega HQ, I think? Details are basically nonexistent due to the language barrier, but far as I can gather, 16 super fans were invited to come by & party (via @SEGA_OFFICIAL)...

... If you check out #セガ公式アカウントオフ会 you'll see numerous pics from the get-together, though the one thing that stands out is the assortment of Sega hardware (via @KK__Cy)...

... MIA, cuz no variants were on display, is my fave alt ver. of the Mega Drive: the Wondermega. But @yu100s took one of his own… with the ugly ass US Sonic 1 NOT FOR RESALE cart inserted, Jesus fucking Christ...

The Sega logo in katakana looks pretty hawt (via @Exciteless)...

... Yet the Sega logo in Arabic which is official, is even hawter (via boingboing.net)...

Please enjoy your daily recommended dosage of an erotic hospital-management sim (via @topherflorence)...

youtube

NCSX makes the fidget spinner comparison, though the fidget cube seems a bit more appropriate; behold the fidget game controller...

Toy Fair recently took place, and naturally I took tons of pictures. You can find all of them on my personal Instagram, though a few are worth re-posting here. Like the latest in NECA's line of classic movie characters, as they appeared in video game adaptations...

Though in the case of their take on the Alien vs. Predator arcade game, they even included Capcom's original characters...

Unpainted, pre-production figures from Reflection's upcoming Ghost 'N Goblins line, sporting the oh-so popular Kenner-eqsue retro look...

Pint-sized arcade cabs, available this fall for $400. They’ll come unassembled, though dead simple to put together; the construction of the assembled mini cab was surprisingly sturdy, plus the screen wasn't bad (contrary to the picture that my iPhone's camera paints). Though the controls were shit; no word on whether the parts can be swapped or not...

Was delighted to not not only see Cuphead merch at Toy Fair, but more than just one instance (though this was the only time I was allowed to take a picture)...

Came across a producer of infant goods that had a selection of Super Mario baby bibs...

I asked the rep if this was their first foray into video games and the answer was "Yes." And when asked who's been mostly buying them, was told "Video game collectors, who don't even have children… it's so bizarre!!!"

Sticking with bibs, here's a set that tied to Dragon Quest (via miki800.com)...

... I asked on Twitter what they said and @alexfkraus was kind enough to provide translations, here and here.

Was so inspired by @MinusWorld listing which characters he'd like to see in the next Super Smash Bros that I decided to cite a few of my own:

- Mona from WarioWare - Nester from Nintendo Power’s Howard & Nester comics - Link from that Japanese A Link To The Past commercial - A deck of Hanafuda cards

... BTW, had no idea Ollie also mentioned a Hanafuda; I only saw his initial four, initially! Anyhow, my second round of choices:

- Ashley from Another Code - The "who are you running from?" guy in the Game Boy Camera - Lucas from The Wizard - The 4WD from Stunt Race FX (since Fighters Megamix with the Daytona USA 2 car clearly ain't ever happening)

I alas forgot to include BoxBoy, much like how I got these Uniqlo shirts when they were on sale last year (via minusworld.co.uk)...

Here we have my fave reaction on Tumblr to the Nintendo Direct with the Smash 5 reveal, if only for the punchline (via mendelpalace)...

And here we have my fave reaction on Twitter (via @redford)...

This one is also great because wrestling (via @SteveYurko)...

Speaking of wrestling, remember that time Tazz, while commentating for Smackdown, was also playing a game of Final Fantasy X-2… or so he thought? (via defjamvendetta)

"hey quick question whoever's developing the wwe games now: what the fuck"

"It helps him eat small fish"

"better question: why isn't this an option in every game ever"

"FAIR POINT" (via snoozlebee)

Whereas most publishers in Japan, during the 80s & 90s, had festivals (or carnivals) centered around shmups, Asmik's was based on women's wrestling (via oldgamemags)...

It's not for a video game, though the illustration is by someone who has been involved in a few; it's by Satoshi Yoshioka, of Snatcher and Policenauts fame (via videogamesdensetsu)...

It's not for a video game that actually exists, but is instead a completely fictional instructional manual, one that makes you wish it was real (via tomeccles)...

Just when you think you've seen every ultra, wacky & obscure video game box art there is to see out there (via @CoolBoxArt)...

I have a serious soft sport for the usage of video game imagery among early 80s musicians (via siryl)...

... What the final product looks like BTW/FYI...

A. so there's a VR version of Fruit Ninja, did not know that, & B. if you like watching people play it (for whatever reason), yet wish you could actually see a person swinging a sword and not just some abstract swiping motions… here ya go (via prostheticknowledge)...

Playing games in VR is so 2017… Handling your collection of games in VR? Now THAT is very 2018 (via mendelpalace)...

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Lots of friends are playing the new DBZ fighting game, though I'll give it a shot once it hits the arcades and is also in a cab like this (via @Fotosdecomics)...

I absolutely need to get my hands on this S.H. Figuarts Shinya Arino (via tinycartridge)...

Available right now, some Altered Beast, Bare Knuckles, and Rent-a-Hero resin kits (via miki800.com)...

Cursed? More like blessed amirite (via @Pretzel_Pup)...

I know Yoji Shinkawa is best buds with Hideo Kojima, but would he be open to doing another gig at Konami? Cuz him art directing a reboot of Twin Bee would kinda be the best (via @SESKOU)...

There's money on the table with this Metroid X Pepsi mash-up, am confident of this (via ryangilleece)...

Cuz even someone like Samus Aran needs a good stretch every once in a while (via jon-bliss)...

And this third piece of Metroid fan art in a row is very much related to Metroid 3, aka Super Metroid (even though it technically depicts the ending to Metroid 2; via mmillus)...

Awakening indeed (via brookietf)...

For those who have asked, yes, I have seen the hack that connects the Switch to an itty-bitty black & white TV...

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Though I'm only really interested in tiny b&w CRT TVs if I can play Duck Hunt on them (via arcade-crusade)...

I not only dig teeny-tiny displays for light gun games, but also for driving games as well (perhaps some of you might remember the following from this)...

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Back to tube displays; seeing Zelda on a CRT also reminded me of how Dark Souls look on a CRT, aka CRT Souls or 480i Souls (which again I'm hoping regular readers of the blog remember, especially since the original post has fallen victim to a Tumblr bug)...

"while playing king's field just now i died in the magic cave of fire and when i warped back there were beautiful graphical glitches everywhere" (via mendelpalace)...

Some landscapes, filled with beauty and mystery and terror, are accidental (see: the graphical glitches from before)… whereas others are completely deliberate, as in the case of Atlantia (via obscurevideogames)...

Once again, I REALLY need to figure out a way to play some PC88 games (via obscurevideogames)...

Here we have a semi-common Space Invaders sighting for the time, in an episode of Battle Fever J, one of the earliest Super Sentai shows (via himitsusentaiblog)...

And here we have a rare Game Gear sighting, in old OVA anime, Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. Hell, it’s a rare Game Gear in anything sighting; the only other example that comes to mind is Rumble In The Bronx (via @TheOtaking)...

And an equally rare Sonic on the runway sighting (via kotaku.com)...

I normally watch a video in its entirety before making a recommendation. Yet when it came to this overview of Last Bronx's legacy in Japan (and lack thereof in the West), hearing the main theme to Beat Takeshi's Violent Cop near the 3 min mark was all I needed (have since watched the whole thing, and as expected, it's another awesome Kim Justice production)...

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And finally, a friend notes: "subzero's right arm is real close to trump's spinal column

just sayin" (via @jbillinson)...

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alphacrone · 7 years ago

Text

country singer bitty accidentally writes a hit about nhl player jack

Based on this post about the inspiration for Dolly Parton’s Jolene, which is somehow even gayer than the song itself. Bless you, Dolly.

It had started out so innocently.

Bitty had been tired after hours of this meet n’ greet, and when that tall drink of water walked up to get his autograph, Bitty couldn’t help the words that tumbled out of his mouth.

“Gosh, well aren’t you the most handsome fella I’ve ever seen,” he said, reached for the outstretched CD--CD! Who even bought CDs anymore?--and readied his Sharpie. “What’s your name, hun?”

“Uh, Jack,” the man said, pretty eyes going wide. If he’d been more awake, Bitty might’ve felt bad for making a fan uncomfortable. But if this Jack really were a fan, then he certainly wouldn’t have a problem with another man complimenting him. And besides, he was handsome, with his wide shoulders and high cheekbones and eyes as blue as the summer sky.

“Jack,” Bitty repeated, signing the CD with little flourish. “Jack. That’s a nice name. Jack. Jack. That sounds like it should be a song, like a good, ol’ fashioned folk song or something. Blue-eyed Jack. Jack with the blue eyes.” He chuckled at his own Beyoncé joke, fatigue weighing heavily on his shoulders. “Here you go,” he said, handing Jack the autographed CD case and smiling widely at him. “Have a great day, Blue-Eyed Jack.”

“Thanks,” Jack said, giving him a shy grin. “You, too.”

Bitty sighed as he turned and left, watching a little too intently as he walked away. So it wasn’t just his face that was beautiful. Bitty would leave that out of the song.

The next fan stepped up, a preteen girl with a bad case of brace-face, and Bitty greeted her with a tired smile, all thought of Jack gone from his mind.

Despite his fatigue, Bitty couldn’t sleep that night. He rarely could on roadies. It wasn’t the proximity to his band that was the problem--Bitty found the sounds of Chowder snoring to be comforting--but more the act of travelling that made Bitty antsy. He kept a small, potted fern next to his bed, hoping that it would make him feel rooted, but it rarely worked. With a sigh, Bitty pulled out his phone and scrolled through Instagram, hoping the ridiculous myriad of selfies from his guitarist, Ransom, would lull him to sleep.

When he enlarged the first photo on Ransom’s page, however, Bitty nearly dropped his phone. There, squeezed between Ransom and Chowder, was Blue-Eyed Jack. He looked even more handsome in this photo, eyes brought out by whatever filter Ransom had used. Met this mofo today, the caption read. #gofalcs #providencefalconers #zimmboni #bittyandthebiscuits

“Falconers,” Bitty murmured to himself. That was the hockey team his band loved, the one whose games he watched from time-to-time. The only player he could name was Alexei Mashkov, however, because of the shrine to him the boys had built over Ransom’s bunk. He wondered if Blue-Eyed Jack was one of Mashkov’s teammates.

Jack, Bitty thought, closing his eyes against the glare of the phone. Blue-Eyed Jack, don’t walk away. Blue-Eyed Jack, I’m here to stay. Lovely boy, can’t you see? Blue-Eyed Jack, come back to me.

“Oh.” Bitty sat up straight, smacking his head against the bunk. “OW.”

“Mmgh-” The bed above him rustled as Ransom woke. “You okay, Bits?”

“Hit my head,” Bitty whispered. “Thought of a song.”

“Cool,” Ransom muttered, clearly still mostly asleep. “Have fun.”

Bitty didn’t respond; he’d already pulled open his Google Docs app and was jotting down everything he could think of, brain whirring away, jumbled up with thoughts of pretty eyes and shy smiles.

Bitty and Ransom wrote the song in a week. By the time their roadie was over and they were back in L.A., the entire band knew Blue-Eyed Jack and their manager, Lardo, got them into the recording studio as soon as she could.

The song was a bigger hit than Bitty ever could’ve imagined. Though he was out--and one of the first publicly gay country singers to not be dropped by his label--Bitty rarely sung directly about men and being attracted to them. It seemed risky, in the past; fans might not care what he did in his personal life, but that was a far cry from listening to two minute and forty-three seconds of a man loving other men.

Blue-Eyed Jack met plenty of resistance, of course, but the support was what totally overwhelmed Bitty. He cried every day that the song stayed at the top of the charts, and was met with merciless chirping from his bandmates. At the end of the day, though, they’d all pull him into a big group hug and let him cry with happiness.

“Dolly Parton’s been tweeting about you,” Ransom said one day, a few weeks after the single had been released. “Dude, I think she wants to duet with you. Dude. Dude.”

“I think I’ve died,” Bitty said, flopping back dramatically on the couch, head landing in Ransom’s lap. “Am I dead? I feel dead.”

Ransom looked up from his phone. “Very possible. Let’s write a song about it for the CD.”

And, yes, their label was now working towards a brand-new album, to feature and be named after Blue-Eyed Jack.

“M-kay,” Bitty hummed, closing his eyes as he thought about a fun twist on death for the next song. The support of fans has slain me dead, tell Dolly to sing at my funeral-

“How’d you even come up with Blue?” Ransom asked, tossing his notebook onto the coffee table. “It’s simple but, like, genius.”

“Oh, ha,” Bitty said, rubbing at his eyes. “You remember that stop in Boston? Where we met with fans for hours before the concert? I met the most beautiful man in the world, there, named Jack, and I was so tired I told him I’d write a song about him, he was just so pretty.”

“El-oh-el, Bits,” Ransom said with a snort. “He was really that pretty?”

“You should know,” Bitty retorted. “You met him, too. On your Insta.”

“Wait…” Ransom scrolled through his phone again, brow furrowing. “Are you talking about Jack Zimmermann?”

“He’s in the pic with you and Chowder,” Bitty said with a shrug. “Hashtags about the Falcs.”

“JACK FUCKING ZIMMERMANN?” Ransom lept up from the couch, hands in the air. “BLUE-EYED JACK IS ABOUT THE LEAD SCORER IN THE FUCKING NHL? THE FIRST PLAYER TO OPENLY DATE A MAN? BITTY, WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

Bitty sat up, a little taken aback. “He’s gay?”

“Not the point, Bits,” Ransom hissed, grabbing Bitty’s shoulders. “He’s Bad Bob’s son. He’s magical.”

Bitty shrugged, wondering if Chowder and Dex would have the same reaction. “He’s also very pretty.”

“I’m tweeting about this,” Ransom said, scurrying to the door. “I’m tweeting this. This is epic. This is- I don’t even know what this is.” “Rans!” Bitty lept up, chasing him out of the room. “What’re you doing? Stop that!”

Bitty felt his phone buzz, knowing it was a Twitter notification without having to look.

Justin Oluransi @canadianbiscuit

Apparently @omgittybitty wrote Blue-Eyed Jack about @jlzimmermann1 and didn’t realize it???? EVERYONE SHAME BITTY W ME #shame

“You’re such a dick!” Bitty shouted as Ransom high-tailed it up the stairs to Dex’s and Chowder’s bedrooms. “I swear to Jesus I’m gonna replace you! Just you watch, you traitor!”

All he got in response was Ransom’s laughter and indignant shrieks from Dex and Chowder in response to the tweet. Bitty sighed and stalked off to the kitchen to bake, knowing already that he would be donating the pies that came out of this to the lovely couple nextdoor.

The tweet went viral.

Ransom was banned from pie for weeks.

They ended up on the east coast again to promote the new album before its release. Bitty had eventually forgiven Ransom, and the hockey community as a whole seemed to find the event more funny than offensive. The Falcs had replied to the tweet excitedly and Alexei Mashkov had followed them all on various social media platforms -- as did his teammates Birkholtz, Nurse, and Knight -- much to the excitement of the band.

Bitty told the story over and over again in different interviews that week as they bounced around TV studios, radio shows, and promotional events. He was starting to grow tired of talking about Jack Zimmermann--there were several songs on the album he was really excited about, but no one cared about that when they could chirp Bitty for his crush on a stupid hockey player.

They had a night off after an event in Boston, and Bitty was looking forward to finding some nice restaurant and turning in early, but the boys kidnapped him and pulled him into an Uber before he could protest.

“We’ve got plans, Bits,” Ransom said, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “You’re gonna love ‘em. Promise.”

“You’re still on thin ice, Justin,” Bitty sniped. “Watch yourself.”

The boys and Lardo just laughed and they rode away from the city, through some truly impressive traffic, until they hit 95. Then they were cruising, making smalltalk with the driver and chirping each other like little kids.

It wasn’t until Bitty noticed the signs on the side of the road that he realized just where they were heading. “Providence?” He asked, eyes narrowing. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“No joke,” Chowder said simply. “They’re playing the Flyers tonight. We’ve got tickets!”

“Really great tickets,” Dex added. “Lardo got in contact with their PR people-”

“Who’ve been loving the publicity from Rans’ tweet,” Lardo added.

“-and they sent us seats right up on the glass. It’s gonna be wicked ‘swawesome.”

‘Ugh, I hate you all,” Bitty said, crossing his arms. “The internet’s gonna eat this up and make my life miserable.” “Yep!” Ransom agreed. “Also, we’ve got passes to meet the team after.”

“Driver,” Bitty said, leaning over the console. “Driver please unlock the door and let me throw myself from the vehicle, thank you.”

Sadly, the driver just laughed, and Bitty resigned himself to his fate.

Admittedly, the game was great. Even if the announcer did introduce Zimmermann as “Our very own Blue-Eyed Jack,” much to Bitty’s chagrin. But now, as they waited in a back room to meet the team, Bitty wondered if he still had time to escape. Ransom’s arm around his shoulder was tighter than he’d like, and meant running probably wouldn’t be an option.

“Holy crap, dudes!”

A very large man--Birkholtz--burst into the room, grinning at them all. “If it isn’t the band that made Zimmer-dick legendary!”

“That’s us!” Ransom said cheerfully. Bitty fought the urge to hide his face in his hands.

Behind Birkholtz came Nurse, Knight, and Mashkov, all greeting them exuberantly. Mashkov pulled Bitty into a tight hug, lifting him straight off his feet.

“Jay-Zed’s on his way,” Knight said easily, shaking hands with Lardo and Dex. “He’s been itchin’ meet you guys again since the song came out.”

“Oh, Lord,” Bitty whispered. “So he doesn’t hate it?”

Knight and Nurse exchanged an incredulous look. “Hate it? Dude,” Nurse laughed. “He loves it.”

“Oh.” Bitty felt his cheeks flush. “Well. That’s good.”

“You guys wanna get drinks once Zimmboni gets here?” Mashkov asked.

“Yes!” Ransom and Chowder shouted at the same time. Dex shrugged and nodded, trying to look cool. Bitty just sighed.

“What about me?”

Bitty felt his heart skip a beat. There, in the doorway, stood Jack Zimmermann, his eyes as blue as ever and his cheeks pink from the game. Lord, if Bitty hadn’t already written a song dedicated to this man’s beauty, he’d be writing one right now.

“Oh,” Jack said, a small smile blooming on his face. “Hi, again.”

“Hi,” Bitty said, forgetting basic human language as he drank in the sight of post-game Jack, freshly showered and glowing.

“Alright, we’ll meet you guys at the exit,” Birkholtz said, ushering the others from the room. “Have fun, use protec-”

He was cut off by Knight, who all but shoved him out the door, winking at Jack.

Then they were alone and Bitty thought he might pass out.

“So, um.” Bitty scratched at his neck. “I hear you like the song?”

Jack nodded, eyes cast down at his shoes. “I do. A lot. You really...wrote it about me?”

Bitty nodded quickly, not trusting his voice. Jack looked pleased, and the light of it in his eyes made them look even bluer and prettier.

“The guys mentioned getting drinks right now,” Jack said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “But, uh, I could really go for some food right now. Euh, dinner. With you? Tonight? Now?”

Bitty chewed on his bottom lip, nodding with every word Jack added. “I’d like that,” he said.

“Great.” Jack just smiled at him for a moment, then seemed to remember he needed to say something else. “I know a great Italian place not far from my apartment…”

Bitty felt his body burning at the implication, and nodded again. “That sounds perfect.”

“Perfect,” Jack repeated, and he held out his hand. Bitty took it and let Jack lead him from the room. They were almost at the parking garage where Jack’s car was kept when Jack paused with a wicked grin and asked, “So, you really think my face is that pretty, eh?”

Bitty pouted. “You keep up that chirping and you’re eating alone, mister. Teasing’s reserved for the third date.”

Jack laughed and kept walking, squeezing Bitty’s hand. “Guess I’ll have to wait until then.”

Bitty nodded, unable to hide his smile. “Guess you will.”

[READ PART 2]

[My writing tag]

[OMGCP Country Singer AU]

[My online novel, The Discourt Knife]

#zimbits #zimbits fanfiction #omgcp fic #anna writes things #check please!#otp: hit me like a ray of sun #au #musician au #(ok but you know the fans things bitty and rans are boning)#(they're SO HANDSY and their tumblr stalkers are OBSESSED WITH IT)#omgcp country singer au

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polyamradiotranscripts · 7 years ago

Text

Ep. 2 Q&A #1

PolyAM Radio EP.2 Q&A #1

[Begin Transcript]

[Sophie]: Hello everybody and welcome to polyam radio the best show on the internet about polyamory that weird relationship thing you do with lots of other people

["Crazy little thing called love" by Queen plays]

[Sophie]: Hello everybody, welcome, my name is Sophie Last-name-redacted'

[Mara]: and I'm Mara Fake-last-name

[Sophie]: This is the second episode of our podcast about polyamory polyam radio

[Mara]: just to remind you again of our pronouns I'm Mara, uh here's my voice and I use they them their pronouns

[Sophie]: I'm Sophie I use she her her's, this episode is gonna be a little bit different than our previous one we're trying out something new, most of our episodes will be like last episode so if you listened to the first episode and you really loved it, don't worry that's how most of them are gonna be, us talking about a topic and trying to give our perspective trying to give some good advice this episode however is something that we wanted to try for a while basically the idea behind it is that we take questions that y'all have sent us and do our best to give you some advice

[Mara]: or, try

[Sophie]: yeah or try, ya know we're uh, I wanna make one thing clear quick, we're speaking from our own perspective here, we are speaking from our experience I don't want to set this up as something that's going to be well ya know I heard ya know Miss Last-name-redacted and Mx. Fake-last-name talking about this and they told me to do it and my whole life came tubmling down and I'm blaming you now, this is now something that if you think something we say isn't going to work for you or is a bad idea you should not do it then, every situation with relationships has a lot of nuance to it, every situation has it's own, ya know, people involved and different things about it so, I don't want to say our advice should never be taken because, we're going to be doing our best to give good advice

[Mara]: but we're not experts

[Sophie]: and our advice should never be taken blindly, that's the main thing that I want to go here and if you take our advice and the situation ends poorly, I'm really sorry that that happened, but I want to make clear that this is your disclaimer that is on you that is not on us, we are doing our best to take this seriously and ya know hopefully you never need advice hopefully everything is always hunky dory, most people don't get through life that way, so we are going to, uh, as you may have guessed just from the fact that our podcast is so new, we don't have a ton of people who have sent in questions so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take the people that have sent in questions, if you're lookin' to send in questions you can send them to our twitter which is @PolyAM_radio and you can tweet at us, or if you have a problem that is longer than a hundred and forty characters you can email us at our email which is, uh I sound like Perd Haply at our email which is

[Mara]: an email

[Sophie]: an email that I'm going to give to you, right now [email protected] and you can explain your situation fully there, we have a habit of changing people's names and everything and especially not giving out last names so

[Mara]: if you couldn't tell

[Sophie]: yeah if you couldn't tell, all those people CCAP-ing me, uh, to find out what kind of person they were listening to googling last-name-redacted, I'm sure you'd find a lot of interesting things if you googled last-name-redacted just for your saftey and ours we think it's best ya know we're talking about unconventional relationship styles here, not everybody is out to everybody they meet and we don't like to force people out of the closet so you can give us your last name, that's not realy information we want or need, and we won't share it, if you want your first name changed too, that's fine just tell us and we wil change your first name and no one will ever know that it's not you, we also might come up with a fun name for your question like beguiled in brooklyn or something like that because that's generally how advice shows in radio works basically what I have here is a couple questions that were sent in to our email and then a couple questions that I went on yahoo answers and found that people were talking about polyamory uh yahoo answers is the worst platform in the world

[Mara]: it is trash pit it is the arm pit of the internet

[Sophie]: yeah it's the armpit of the world but I was inspired by the Mcelroy brothers and their wonderfully horrible, well their podcast is wonderful the medium they use to do it a lot of times is yahoo answers which is terrible, and I think they would agree with me when I say that but basically we wanted to see what people were talking about on the internet and give our perspective on it, so we're going to hop right into it, first one is yahoo answers user ficus, who asks, isn't polyamory kind of awkward, You might be fine with meeting your wife's boyfriend and the three of you having a coffee together but at a certain point they will gaze into each other's eyes and a sort of intimacy will pass between them and you'll know you're witnessing an intimacy that you cannot be a part of and yet that's your wife, how can you be locked out of a deep part of her emotional experience like that, it's between her and him, you can't share it and indeed you wouldn't want to because you don't wanna get all up close and personal with him the nature of- the nature of romance is to be private, none of her other relationships are like that, she's close to her father, but you can be privy to that emotional experience, she shares here feelings about her family with you quite freely, you're not locked out of that deep part of her soul, her familial closeness isn't private but what she shares with her boyfriend is quite private and her dating him means shes not sharing as much of herself with you and again that's yahoo answers user ficus

[Mara]: I um, my my initial reaction to this is are you sure you didn't go to like literotica.com and like find a cuckholding fantasy story because like holy shit dude that's what this sounds like

[Sophie]: why, are, are you getting hot and bothered? cuz we can go

[Mara]: oh yes, oh baby oh ahh no I thi-

[Sophie]: suprise this just turned into a porn podcast

[Mara]: I, just, [emphatically] at a certain point they will gaze into eachothers eyes and a sort of intimacy will pass between them and you'll know you're witnessing an intimacy that you cannot be a part of and yet, that's your wife

[Sophie]: yeah it does sound, fairly dramatized

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: it's really interesting because, uh I think that, ya know there's a couple big problems here that I want to point out one, and and ya know or I should say there's a couple big things because not all of these are neccecarily problems especially the first one I'm gonna say which is that the author of this, uh, yahoo answer user ficus is obviously a straight male and a straight cis male at that and a lot of times what we see which straight white- well I shouldn't assume white, I'm just so used to saying the phrase straight white men like all in one but a lot of times with straigh cis men what we see if very uncomfortable with intimacy and very uncomfortable especially with intimacy around other men, typically you don't run into a lot of straight cis guys who are like, oh yeah I'm fine being close with other men I'll hug it out or whatever, I'll give 'em a kiss on the cheek but ya know that doesn't mean anything ya know like you don't see that much so there's a fear here as far as ,ya know, being intimate with another man I think, and even by proxy ya know which is is said by well you wouldn't want to be intimate with them so we're not dealing with a triad situation we're dealing with a V where two people are both dating the same person and not dating each other

[Mara]: and some people call that a hinge too we are a hinge

[Sophie]: oh yeah, I've never heard that before that's good but so

[Mara]: close that hinge, make it a triad [laughs]

[Sophie]: well ,ya know, you don't have to but

[Mara]: no, no you don't

[Sophie]: it can be a whole lot of fun sometimes, we have a lot of fun in some triads we're a part of, also I think that the nature of romance is to be private I consider that ya know my romances and whatnot I don't know if i would, I don't know if private's the right word for them because to me private is like you're closing the door and you're not letting anyone else see in, to me the word for romance is personal

[Mara]: yeah

[Sophie]: in that it is something that is near and dear to my heart it's something that matters to me a lot and that,ya know, I wouldn't neccecarily want to just invite the whole world in but it's not neccecarily something that I wanna keep everyone out of and everybody's different,ya know, some people are more insecure and uh some people have a very good reason to be insecure especially if you got trauma or something like that I don't want to set up the the notion that being insecure is this inherently,ya know, that you're flawed because you're insecure uh that's not true at all but there's an insecurity about intimacy in romance here that I think is an issue that needs to be addressed too, and then also what I found qutie interesting about this is the very last clause of the sentence of the last sentence, which is, her dating him means shes not sharing as much of herself with you

[Mara]: oh I know that's just ugh

[Sophie]: yeah well we talk about, there's this theory about love that your love is a pie and that, or a pizza or anything

[Mara]: which like, delicious

[Sophie]: yeah delicious ooey gooey love

[Mara]: mhmmmmmm

[Sophie]: that just came out of the oven,ya know, when you put your love in an oven and they come out all gooey

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: and they stick to the bottom of the pan and you're like oh I should have sprayed my love with pam before I slid them in the hot space

[Mara]: should've greased them up

[Sophie]: yeah should a greased them up and lubed it all good but the nice thing is now the house smells like your partner who is just having a nice good good sauna experience

[Mara]: apparently

[Sophie]: yeah ostensibley at three hundred and fifty degrees

[Mara]: nice and crispy

[Sophie]: yeah, yeah, anyways love is not a pie love is a christmas gift you can give as many christmas gifts as you want as many christmas gifts as you have money to give uh and your christmas gifts you can only give as many as, or birthday gits at different times of the year or however you want to say it, I like christmas gifts uh holiday season gifts whatever you want to say, ya know, I can give as many gifts as I have resources to afford and the fact that I gave a, two people a gift I gave one person a watch and I gave one person a blanket doesn't mean that the value of that watch or blanket has diminished because I gave something to someone else each gift is unique, each gift is personal, and each gift is beautiful and love is a gift and it's a bottomless resource uh as long as you have, ya know, how do you want to say, spoons just to have relationships which in in this in this analogy would be money ya know to purchase the gifts or we were gonna talk about giving several hats or blankets or scarves as long as you have yarn to knit them or something like that you can keep giving gifts until you're out of yarn

[Mara]: well and I think this is an extrordinarily narrow view of uh what polyamory is like this is a very, I don't know if yahoo answers user ficus is in a polyamorous relationship and this is why they were prompted to uh ask this question but it's very much this, ya know, and it's just it's uh your wife, and she has a boyfriend and and and its, ya know, just that and I think that's that's just kind of a narrow view and a narrow way of looking at it because, that's not, in my experience what polyamory is, I mean there are people that do that but like Sophie has her partners I have my partners and we have partners that we share mutually between us just cuz like we we have similar taste in people that's who we've become after six-ish years together uh

[Sophie]: yeah my parents taught me to share my toys so

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: eventually we'll have to do an episode on BSDM to make that comment relevant

[Mara]: yeah right, I think we, we could probably skip that [laughs] but, ya know, I just it's between her and him you can't share in it it's like and why why not why don't you want to, I think there's so much like fear it's, ya know, the question is, isn't polyamory kind of awkward and like, I'm reading this question and I don't see like wow, this would be an awkward situation like I'm reading, this is a fear and insecurity, ya know, and what i- what is that dumb thing that middle schooler's like to say it's only awkward if you make it awkward uh [laughs]

[Sophie]: I guess I don't really have my finger on the pulse of what middle schooler's are saying

[Mara]: oh I don't know my friends and I always said that, I don't know maybe they say something different now-a-days

[Sophie]: it sounds like you were a super gay middle schooler

[Mara]: oh yeah, oh yeah very very repressed gay, that's a different story [laughs] I just I think like this really like there's this narrative of like, love is possesion in our society, there's this idea that if you love a person you never let them go and just kinda like this gross like this is mine, not like it's like this is ours it's this is mine and like a person isn't a possesion

[Sophie]: Yeah, yeah you can't own a person in any sense of it, your relationship with them doesn't mean you own them any more than you own your best friend they're not, yours they're not something that sits on the shelf until you're ready to play with them I really like that you brought that up because actually if you do like a close read of this, ya know, it's it's all talking about your wife and isn't it and actually like I tried to do a decent reading of it and everything but a lot of times, ya know, there's some parts in here where the words are capitalized and everything and uh, ya know, it's that emotional experience that your wife is having and you're locked out of that deep part of her soul and ya know it's, it's, it's rediculous

[Mara]: well and I wonder if this person feels this way about their wife's friends are are you locked out of that deep part of her soul, no, no it's just because like you feel that a relationship is a possesion and not like kinda like a little baby flower that like you're taking care of you have to like nurture relationships you have to put time and energy into it but that's not like your flower that's a flower, that's there and it's and important aspect of your life like I'm not gonna pretend that my relationships aren't important aspects of my life they really are

[Sophie]: yeah I think that there's a big part of this question that is very, when I say self-centered I don't even mean it as a derrogatory thing I think it's self focused it is a looking at the potential of your wife to have a relationship as to how it would affect you and not as to how it would affect her the reality of the situation is not to say that your feelings don't matter or shouldn't be taken into consideration or listened to but her other relationships don't actually affect you in really any way unless you get butt hurt about it

[Mara]: well unless there is some hurtful shit going on because sometimes

[Sophie]: different, different conversation though

[Mara]: yes

[Sophie]: that's a conversation about abuse and toxicity ya know this is a question about uh

[Mara]: new relationships even existing

[Sophie]: yeah exactly yeah this is a question about how can you not feel awkward of the fact that this partner that you have ownership of because there's a commitment and commitment equals ownership ostensibley how can it not be awkward to then share that possesion, and I think that that really breaks the question down in its biggest part I think that a lot of times when we talk about the institution of marriage there's a connotation of ownership uh both literally over history and and uh kind of, ya know, just uh, or I should say a just de facto more recently you know this idea that you're you're giving yourself to this person and everthing and the reality of the situation is that this relationship is something that you both are picking up together and lifting up over your heads and, ya know, working together to keep it in the air it is not an embodiment of either of you and if one of you at some point decides to set it down it is over but as long as both of you are interested and invested it'll keep, ya know, being held up in the air and it'll be good that doesn't mean that you have ownership over your, ya know, holding uh table up in the air buddy moving on to the next question yahoo answers user rico asks, why do people consider polyamory bad or wrong what is wrong with having multiple people in a consenting and loving relationships note, polyamory not polygamy and then there's an update, why do we as a culture, veiw polyamory as bad or wrong, ya know I think that we're not really gonna answer the original uh question here which is why do people consider polyamory bad or wrong which is they're dumb or they're close minded or rather they're stupid or they're close minded, rather what I wanna talk about is why do we as a culture view polyamory as bad or wrong and I feel like this is a very quick answer and I feel like what we were just talking about before leads into it very well, our culture, and you can tell me if you disagree with this although I don't think you do, our culture views love as ownership and possesion and if you love someone, like you said, you never let them go

[Mara]: mhmmmmmm

[Sophie]: and you're always holding on to them and they're yours and you're theirs we literally talk about romance as being possesion and we look at jelousy and possesiveness as things that are natural and even kind of positive because even though yeah they have bad effects

[Mara]: well he wouldn't be so angry if he didn't love you [laughs]

[Sophie]: yeah it goes back to the whole pulling on your pig tails cuz he likes you thing it's really ridiculous and also we view it as something that is natural because oh well of course he's jelous that you're sleeping with someone else you're supposed to be just his or whatever, ya know, and it just gets to, ya know, when you try to look at love through the perspective as I mentioned before as giving a gift, I think that most of these I don't know a single objection to polyamory that when you say, ya know, love is a gift and me giving it to someone else and me giving it to many people does't dimish the fact that I've given it to you I really don't know a single relationship and jelousy based argument about polyamory that hol- stands up to that I just don't

[Mara]: yeah no what it kinda comes down to is morality versus ethics, ya know morality is a very like religiously based kind of idea of what you're supposed to do and how you can have sex and who you can have sex with and what you can eat and all other sorts of things there are a lot of aspects of morality but I think a lot of the prominent uh religions in our society have these ideas about like about who you can and can't have sex with or relationships with or any of those sorts of things it's ya know and even if you don't neccecarily belong to those religions this is still the dominant ideology this is still what a lot of people around you believe even if you're not conciously choosing to like take part in that morality like you can still sub-conciously have similar ideals

[Sophie]: yeah absolutely, even if it's something that you are very conciously choosing to disagree with like we are, the reality is it's the world you live in and a lot of the people around you do think that so it's hard to not let it affect how you go through the world

[Mara]: alright let's move on to the next question yahoo answers user purple pants girl asks how do I bring up polyamory to my boyfriend for my boyfriend this is his first serious relationship don't worry we're not like sixteen or something and I wanna bring up the idea of a polyamorous relationship but I don't think that would be something that he would be interested in, it's just the thing is I wouldn't even know where to start that conversation does anyone have any ideas

[Sophie]: so with this one I think that the first thing we need to address is that you are definitley sixteen or something

[Mara]: right, like we wouldn't have thought that 'till you said it

[Sophie]: yeah, ya know, I think, ya know, if there's any teenagers out there listening to this uh who were going through the explicit tag because we do ocassionally swear and unfortunately I have to put us there but if there's any of you that were looking for something in the explicit tag and you're just a baby queer and everything here's a little advice when you tell people in their twenties and thirties and fourties that this is your first serious relationship they automatically assume that you're like twenty-one twenty-two that you haven't had a very commited relationship yet and that you are now working towards ending up in a place where I think a lot of people that, uh, although certainly not all people in our culture want to end up which is, ya know, commitment and and and the things that that entails, no one assumes that you're sixteen because serious relationship means a very different thing to a sixteen year old than it does to anyone else, ya know, the reality of the situation is you are not actually capable of having a truly serious relationship at sixteen because serious relationships end up in things like, ya know, potentially moving in together or getting a pet together like serious relationships not always and they don't have to but a lot of times end up in those things and you're not even at an age where you have the autonomy to do that so we weren't even worried about it 'till you brought it up purple pants girl

[Mara]: so I think I'd like to break down this question into a couple of different parts because there's there's a lot going on here so the first big thing that sticks out to me besides, ya know, don't worry we're not like sixteen or something which Sophie addressed uh I wanna bring up the idea of a polyamorous relationship but I don't think that would be something that he would be interested in is this, is this it's come up in conversation before, are you making the assumption that since polyamory isn't the default and since monogamy is the default that, uh, he wouldn't be interested like I think you're kind of making a realy big assumption in your relationship and I think this is such a a serious relationship, ya know, this is something that you would have discussed at least a little bit

[Sophie]: yeah at the sam t-, yeah I I agree you don't neccecarily want to assume that your partner isn't going to be interested in this I think that's always the perception though and I don't think that this asker is wrong for maybe assuming that because I think a lot of people aren't really super interested in polyamory again because of the things we talked about they don't want to give up their idea of love as possesion, so let's, let's assume that because she said she doesn't think that that would be something that he would be interested in let's assume that they haven't talked with it so far and that she's working of the premise uh, ya know, cuz we can't give advice to, ya know, oh shit it's Dave well yeah I know Dave and he's

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: and he's been cheated on in the past so ya know there's gonna be that whole aspect like we don't know who this is so let's just assume that she doesn't know for sure and she's working off the assumption that because lots of people in our society view polyamory as a bad thing he wouldn't be interested in it how do you bring up a polyamory to a new partner cuz for me it's of then the firs-, whenever I start flirting with someone or whatever, it's usually one of the first things that I bring up it's like oh I've got other partners and I've got a fiancee and, ya know, I have a lizard

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: who is my child and, ya know, there's uh, it's not something that doesn't come up it' a lot like being trans for me it's something that I feel compelled to mention early on because I don't wanna have this moment, so I guess for me, my best advice for anyone listening, don't get yourself into this situation bring it up early on, uh, but, if you do find yourself in this situation how do you bring it up

[Mara]: well and that's interesting cuz I don't think it's actually a position I personally have ever been in, I've never not been in a relationship and had to, or like not been in a previous relationship before starting a new one so I don't neccecarily know if I can answer this one uh where it's like oh by the way dropping this pretty big bombshell on you about my identity I'm polyamorous, most of the people I'm with know that because I've been with Sophie forever and I probably met them through Sophie if we're being entirely honest [laughs] I'm kinda like a spone, I just hook my way into other people's relationships and it's just cuz I'm not a very outgoing person

[Sophie]: I uh, there's been multiple, there's been multiple occasions where Mara has been talking to me about people that they are now currently with

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: and have said, ya know, oh I realy like them or whatever and I say really, ya know, and and they're like well don't you think like don't you think they're cute or don't you think this or that and I'll be like yeah I think they're cute yeah sure but I didn't know you did because they keep it very under wraps

[Mara]: I play it close to the chest

[Sophie]: yeah yeah literally there's been several occasions where within two hours I go up to that person and say just so ya know Mara [clicks tounge] thinks you're real cute

[Mara]: and then I die of embarassment and tell Sophie that I'm leaving her [laughs]

[Sophie]: yeah, it happens ever time but with every single one of those people, you're now with them and they thought it was really cute and endearing that you were so shy and also keep in mind we've been together for, ya know before you fucking tweet at me and things like that we've been together almost six years, I wouldn't do it if it was something if it was a situation where I knew it wasn't gonna be okay like, ya know, this isn't like a breach of consent here like fuckin put away your ipads and shit

[Mara]: [laughs] I mean I'm not sure

[Sophie]: to me, how I would choose to answer that question I think or rather how I would choose to bring it up would I think the very first thing I would do would be to bring up a love triangle that everyone hates

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: and I'm just going to bring up the most famous love triangle, ya know, in popular media over the last ten years which I feel is Twilight I wanna preface this with the fact that my knowledge about Twilight is entirely tangential I know as much about it as your dad does

[Mara]:[laughs] I uh, I don't know I avidly read them in middle school but that's cuz I wasn't allowed to

[Sophie]: did you really

[Mara]: yeah

[Sophie]: oh, um, I never really read them uh I think I, I think I saw one of the movies but at the time I was more interested in the cis girl I was at the movies with than the movie itself so

[Mara]: that was kina your deal in high school

[Sophie]: yeah uh, that was

[Mara]: we went to see the, ah shit, hunger games together like the first movie and like you didn't watch the movie at all, uh [laughs]

[Sophie]: I, yeah guilty um but so basically I would say hey [unintelligable] find a way to bring up Twilight or something like that and just say like wasn't that just lazy writing with the love triangle

[Mara]: how do you bring up Twilight to a friend or loved one [laughs]

[Sophie]: or any, fuck, if you're, if you're watching uh

[Mara]: hey, remember this piece of trash in our in our pop culture

[Sophie]: um, what you have to do is you have to go get a napkin out of the trash and say look at this trash and hand it to them and they'll be like why are you having me look at this trash and you say cuz I'm going to have you look at another piece of trash and then bring out the Twilight movies

[Mara]: I I feel like Twilight is that thing that we just don't [whispering] talk about anymore

[Sophie]: let's get off Twilight

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: there's a movie called book of life that's very good and one of our Twitter uh one of our twitter followers kenway lights tweeted at me about it and said that um as far as famous monogamy fails, which is something we were talking about on twitter recently, basically the idea was name interactions in movies and situations in movies where there's like a weird love triangle thing going on and your favorite example of how it could be solved by polyamory and basically in this movie there are two boys and there's a girl and basically there's like the entity of life and the entity of death and basically they place bets on which one will be able to woo this litte girl, that's my memory of the movie if I'm wrong don't tweet at me it's irrelevant, it'a a very good movie you should go watch it, it doesn't matter in this moment you can bring up movies like that and just say, ya know what would have really messed up that whole bet what if she would have just dated both of them

[Mara]: [gasps]

[Sophie]: like what if she just would have

[Mara]: [whispering] scandelous

[Sophie]: dated both of them, and, ya know, and and they'll be like well that would be cheating or whatever and it's like oh but what if they were okay with it and what if they were all oh ya know okay with that and everything and, ya know, that's this thing, it's called polyamory have you heard of it, and that's a good way to bring it up and then be like I am polyamorous I like to have commited relationships with many people and that's a thing about me that I feel like you should know about and then I would segue immidiately, don't give them time to start to get defensive don't give them time to uh start to bombard you with questions yet immidiately bring up the love it like a gift thing immidiately bring that up and say, ya know, love isn't like a pizza where there's a finite number of slices and if you're really hungry you can have more than a piece or two and some people eat the whole pizza because they're really hungry but then there's none left for anybody else, that's not how it is, love is like a christmas gift you can give as many of them away as you want and the fact that you gave someone one doesn't, ya know, erode the fact that you gave a bigger one to someone else or something like that people are thankful for the gifts they have and that's just generally how this works, that's how I would handle it and then field the stupid questions that are not the best

[Mara]: and inevitably going to happen

[Sophie]: yeah it's inevitable, it's something that this person doesn't know about

[Mara]: this next question is from a listener, sexless in seattle, and it's about feeling left out of sex my partner and I are both polyamorous and we both have other partners lately he has been having sex with his other partner in excess which leaves him disinterested in being physical with me he's not someone who really has sex more than once a day so just having sex anyways isn't really an option, I know he doesn't owe me sex but given that we have historically had a sexual relationship before this change and there was no conversation about wanting to distance ourselves from sex with each other it's left me feeling unwanted what should I do [pause] talk to your partner [laughs]

[Sophie]: yeah, I would definitley talk to your partner about this there's always the chance that they won't be receptive but that is the first thing that you should try at least and

[Mara]: I mean straight up if you just say to your partner hey I'm feeling kind of unwanted like nobody wants to make their partner feel unwanted right

[Sophie]: yeah absolutely, ya know, we wanna preface some of this with just mentioning sex isn't neccecarily part of a healthy relationship and it shouldn't be the litmus test for if a relationship is good, ya know, obviously there are people who are asexual and are on that spectrum including things like demi-sexual gray-sexual stuff like that uh and there are people who aren't asexual who just aren't in the mood to have sex with you in particular and that's totally fine your partner doesn't owe you sex, that having been said, if you're in a relationship where something new that your partner is doing is making you feel unwanted thats a tricky situation too, so the first thing I would say I would agree with Mara, definitley talk to your partner, what should this person do if they have tried that or if they've talked to their partner and their partner is less than receptive about that

[Mara]: I mean I think this is kinda one of the awesome things about polyamory is outsourcing, uh ya know I don't think this is neccecarily a situation that could be fixed by that though cuz it sounds like it's about being with like this specific partner

[Sophie]: yeah for sure, do you wanna define outsourcing just in ca-

[Mara]: sure, ya, so outsourcing is I mean it's a lot what it sounds like like when a when a company is outsourcing jobs, they're going where they can get cheaper labor right, uh this is not about cheaper labor [laughs]

[Sophie]: could be, could be

[Mara]: this is um, for example, ya know, you might have a partner that doesn't enjoy sex you might just have like an emotional relationship with a person, but you might have another partner who really really really enjoys sex, and you might really really enjoy sex and you don't wanna not be with that partner that doesn't wanna have sex but like it's somebody else that you are able to kind of, ya know, have sex with and that's a brief, brief brief summary of what outsourcing is there can be all sorts of things that that looks like

[Sophie]: yeah absolutely and I think it would be good for us to do a full episode on outsourcing at some point

[Mara]: and I'm positive we will, you've shown me that you have plans for it

[Sophie]: [laughs]

[Mara]: but this doesn't realy seem like a situation where outsourcing would neccecarily fix things, I think like if this is specifically about your partner and you wanting more attention from your partner like I truly think that like talking to him should fix this like thats-

[Sophie]: yeah I agree this is a talking question, um, to me at least yeah this is a or pardon me not a talking question, this is an attention question, this is a question about a type of neglect, and again not neglect in the sense of you're not talking to me and you should talk to people you're in a relationship with this is not something that's owed but it is someth that, ya know, is being witheld

[Mara]: it's like cuddling

[Sophie]: yeah exactly

[Mara]: if you put this in terms of cuddling and, ya know, your partner hasn't been cuddling you lately and you've wanted to be cuddles that' that's that's kind of the same thing umm

[Sophie]: well and I think that the reality of the situation is is your partner I don't know how long this has been going on it just says lately, I believe, but depending on how long this is going on, this might not be something your partner is even aware of, there was a time where I really wasn't having much sex with you

[Mara]: mhmmmmmm

[Sophie]: or really anyone else, I was completely disinterested in sex and a lot of that had to do with medication I was on at the time and it was really fucking me up but it was also hurting some of my relationships because it was a change my partners had noticed, I am a person who enjoys sex, I like having sex uh and I enjoy what I th-, ya know, uh enjoy having healthy sexual relationships with people but so when the floor fell out of that because of some new anti-depressants I was on that really affected my partners and it made them feel like oh like suddenly she's not interested in me so this might be something where your partner is not exactly aware that he's doing, um, if he is aware that he's doing it

[Mara]: then that's shitty

[Sophie]: then that's shitty yeah if he's aware that he's giving you like less or [unintelligable] if he's aware that he's treating you like you're lesser than this other partner or if this is a constant problem where yeah this is the first time this has happened with sex but he always treats my like I'm less with this, like I'm less than this person or than theese people or whatever if you're being treated like the bottom of the totem pole in any regard and it's consistent and you've tried talking about it, might be time to end the relationship that is neglect that is something that if people are not willing to make moves to change what they're doing and their behavior that's something that you shouln't really have to go through and deal with and it's not normal

[Mara]: yeah no, and and and ideally your partner will change cause cause like I said earlier nobody wants to make their partner feel like they're disinterested

[Sophie]: or provide an explanation at least and say ah I'm sorry this is why this is happening and whatnot, and there has to be some change though the change has to be in what your understanding of your relationship is going to be or in your partner's behavior or something but if you're just expected to soldier on when you're feeling left out and neglected

[Mara]: that's shitty

[Sophie]: yeah yeah that's not good that's not a healthy at that point and it's really hard to hear but if this is a consistent problem then it's not a healthy relationship because you're just being deliberatly left out and, ya know, you're not a toy that someone, I I think I said this before you're not a toy that someone can just pick up and put on a shelf and take down whenever they wanna play with you, if you have casual relationships that's fine casual relationships there's nothing wrong with that what so ever where both people are, ya know, uh I'm not super invested in this and when I have time it's gonna be fun and when neither of us have time hey that's fine we've got that understanding but if you're very invested in a relationship and your partner isn't very invested in that relationship

[Mara]: you're gonna wanna get outa there

[Sophie]: yeah that's not a good fit like I'm not even gonna say that that person is inherently toxic maybe you're just not a good fit and that's really really hard to hear and I'm sorry but

[Mara]: but it happens

[Sophie]: yeah it happens all the time, so, ya know, keep in mind I'm not saying go end the relationship it's over, I'm saying talk, talk talk talk and if this is a consistent problem if you already tried that if nothing's changing then maybe try to find some people who value you a little bit more and recognize how awesome you are cause I'm sure you're super awesome

[Mara]: well and and I think too um often times we get up, we get kinda caught up in the idea that like a relationship is sucessful only if it doesn't end which is kind of bullshit like you can have a sucessful relationship that, that just ends, cuz it wasn't working like that's that's fine, ya know, there's nothing wrong with with ending a relationship

[Sophie]: yeah ending a relationship isn't a personal failure for you it just means that maybe it wasn't a great fit

[Mara]: yeah, alright so the final question is a listener question by worried in Washington and they are concerned about manipulation, recently there was a person who I was very into who was in a toxic relationship I didn't realize it when I firt met them but as we got to know each other it became evident that while they were polyam, their partner was on the controling side this partner demanded to know where they were, was monopolizing their time, and was making them feel bad about persuing a new relationship as we got closer and closer they eventually began discusing some of this with me and I told them that my honest opinion was that the relationship didn't sound too healthy, several days later I was informed that they had ended the relationship I was not trying to be manipulative but while I feel it may have been for the best in the long run they and I are now hurtling towards being in a relationship and I can't help but feel that I have exerted a lot of influence over my new beloved very early in the relationship, I don't want to be manipulative and I don't want there to be feelins of resentment later on I'm worried that someday the perception might be that I pushed them to end that relationship for my own gain in an effort to get closer to my new partner, help, should I talk to them about it, and if so, how

[Sophie]: so this is tricky and as someone who is mentally ill and uhh specifically I have borderline personality disorder, this is something that is near and dear to my heart I I am frequently worried about being manipulative because according to the DSM, ya know, the the and psychiatrists and everthing according to them that's something I'm very good at uh not from personal experience that's just something that ostensibley people like me are very good at, we're good at telling people what they wanna hear which is very, uh, that's hard to navigate as someone who has been the victim of abuse many times in her life it's not easy to hear that you could be capable of doing that to someone again or ever that you have done that to people, so, this is something that this is a question that I've gotten many times in the past, before we started this and when it was sent in I figured we really should cover it because it's something that I've dealt with too, ya know, often times with new relationships often times people are positive influences on us and they encourage us to make positive changes in our lives which is all good, except for the fact that this is early on in a new relationship and it can start to feel like you're exerting some control over them even when that's not at all what you intended to do and it can feel very uncomfortable especially if they have a toxic friend or a toxic partner or something like that

[Mara]: well and I I think what's really important to keep in mind as somebody who has been worried about being manipulative before like oh did did I end that relationship umm you're you're completely in the right like you are within your rights to say to somebody hey your relationship doesn't seem healthy to me that's what good people do right like we tell our friends and our loved ones hey I'm I'm worried that you're in a bad situation that that's not manipulative, ya know, so I just want to reasure this listener like no you're not being manipulative for letting somebody know they're in a bad situation

[Sophie]: or anyone with a story similar to this like I said I have been through this many times with myself and others

[Mara]: well and I uh, ya know, if if your partner did think that, I really hope they wouldn't honestly it sounds very much like it was their choice to break of this partner, err to break off this relationship with their partner it doesn't sound like you were like this is a bad situation you need to end this relationship you just you can you expressed concern so

[Sophie]: yeah this is very different from a situation where you came in and said this is toxic it needs to go

[Mara]: and and I don't think anybody could really like umm think that, like hopefully, ideally I umm, yeah I don't know if you should neccecarily talk to your partner about it, cuz that's that's the big question

[Sophie]: I'm gonna make uh like a Staples Easy Button and it's gonna be a talk to me button and or a talk to them button rather and honestly I'm just gonna I'm gonna record all our voices and it's gonna be like three two one

[Sophie]: [Mara]: Talk to them!

[Sophie]: yeah thank you

[Mara]: [laughs]

[Sophie]: I'm gonna use that recording, like for real always talk to your partner always always always talk to your partner about things if it goes bad it's because your partner's a shithead like I can't think of anything or I mean like som- sometimes a trauma comes up and things like that like I don't wanna be like, like there's valid reasons why people might react poorly to stuff but by in large talking it out is always going to have a more positive impact than not talking it out, so there's that, but also this is a situation where I think that if you don't address this now it's going to fester inside of you speaking from experience it's going to, you are going to feel worse about this three months from now than you do now if you don't talk about it

[Mara]: exactly and the worst thing that happens is you've clarified with your partner a little bit that like they were sure that they wanted to end that relationship

[Sophie]: yeah there's no universe in which your partner says, oh but I did that for you they're gonna be like no like if they think it was a positive thing they're gonna be like sweetie you were the straw that broke the camel's back the writing was on the wall with this friend or this partner or this job that I left or whatever I should have done that a while back and that was a positive thing and you were just one of many people er or that were telling me to leave or maybe you were the only person who had the guts to tell them hey this isn't healthy you should probably leave, this is something that honestly I think that if you tell them about it there's no if, ya know, if they are a good influence on your life they're probably going to be really understanding and they're going to be like no no, ya know, that's not what happened and if anything you're going to, ya know, they might be having some concerns too and you might put them at ease just with being

[Mara]: open and honest

[Sophie]: yeah open and honest about it, ya know, they might have been sitting there worried like oh maybe this, ya know, maybe this partner is worried I'm being a little bit co-dependent on them because they came in and now I made this decision to lea- again this could be a friend this could be a partner a job whatever, to leave this thing and they might be worried that I'm like latching onto them now uh through a power vacuum or somet- or not a power vacuum but like a uh a commitment vacuum or something like that and that'll put their mind at ease that, ya know, that's not what you're thinking and you're not trying to be controlling and that wasn't, ya know, you were just giving your honest opinion

[Mara]: right

[Sophie]: theese are all good things that you did, and you shouldn't have to feel bad about them this feeling shouldn't just fester inside of you should be able to move on and have a great time with your healthy new relationship

[Mara]: ya gotta commmuunicate

[Sophie]: yeah gotta commmuunicate

[Mara]: [laughs] alright well that looks like that is all we have for this time

[Sophie]: yep that's all the questions we have, please send us more questions if you enjoyed this episode we will do more like it let us know on twitter that would be at PolyAM_Radio, a capital P and then a capital AM underscore capital R radio if you wanna send us love letters or hate mail you can also email us and get more than a hundred and forty characters out of it that's at polyamradio all unders- or all lowercase

[Mara]: no underscore

[Sophie]: yeah no underscore all lowercase and that is at gmail dot com we hope to hear from you soon and the next episode will drop pretty much as soon as I finish it so thanks for listening and as always remember don't date your best friend's dad

[Sophie]: [Mara]: and don't date your dad's best friend

[Sophie]: see ya next time folks

["Good old fashioned lover boy" by Queen plays]

[Announcer]: This show was part of the trans podcaster visibility initiative

[End transcript]

#polyam radio #polyamory #transcript #ep2 #queer #trans #lgbt #relationships

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bohnesarmy-blog · 7 years ago

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BOHNES | EUPH.

Tell us about Bohnes. How did it come about?

I was in a band called The Cab, and it was kind of coming to an end. Mentally, I knew that I was ready for the next step. I started the band when I was 14. And so when you’re 14, what you want to do, and what everyone else in the band wants to do changes dramatically when you’re 24 years old. Think about how much you grow from when you’re 14 and 24. Exponential. It’s crazy.

Like two completely different people.

Exactly. There were guys in the band that didn’t like being in a band, that wanted to get “real” jobs and guys who gained confidence to do their own solo thing. It was one of those things where The Cab was almost like college. I learned so much, and I met so many amazing people, and we had the greatest fans in the entire world. Probably a highlight of being in The Cab was just meeting all of the fans and hearing their stories. I hit this point in my life where The Cab was going to, at least temporarily, be finished. And I had no idea what to do. I was completely like “Well, shit.” Do I go get a real job? Do I start another band? Go solo? And it was really important to me to not have the new project called “Alexander DeLeon” because I didn’t want anyone to think I felt like my name was bigger than the band. It had nothing to do with “Oh, you guys, my brand is bigger than the band and I am big enough to where I’m going to do my own thing.”

You didn’t want to pull a Justin.

Well… hey. Justin can do no wrong. But totally, that’s not what it was. I was going in a different direction and try something new. To be honest, the two years between the band and Bohnes were pretty brutal. Fun, but I really had to figure myself out. I was drinking every night, partying, and enjoying not being in a van or tour bus. That’s where I was from 17 years old for about 7 years, touring 11 months out of the year. I had lost girlfriends because I just wasn’t home, fell out of touch with a lot of my family.

So, I went to Paris and started traveling the world to kind of figure out what I wanted to do and figure myself out. When I was in the Catacombs underground, where there are millions of bones, I’m gonna call myself Bohnes.

How’d you get started in music? Before The Cab days, take me back to the beginning.

My mom could not hit a note if she tried. You could give her a million dollars and she wouldn’t be able to sing in tune. But my dad was a professional singer. And his mom, my grandmother was a singer who was pretty famous in Mexico, she sang mariachi. It was kind of in my blood. When I was a little boy, I wanted to either be Batman or a professional basketball player…

I mean, duh.

Yeah, I mean Batman/Bruce Wayne and on a basketball team. All my friends got tall and I stayed short, so I was like well… I have to adjust my goals.

So… Batman it is.

Exactly (laughs). When I was in high school, I was actually the opposite of what I am now. I studied really hard, all my friends would party on the weekends and I would not because I played sports and got really good grades, I wouldn’t drink. Late high school, everyone would go to the desert, do bonfires and drink beer. I’d have basketball games or exams and when I was bored I just bought a guitar and would write songs at night.

I would have dinner, do my homework and then from about 11pm to 6am I’d write songs. Then at 6am, I’d hop into the shower, go to school and everyone else would be groggy and still waking up but I’d be fresh and awake. Then when school was over, at basketball practice, I’d crash and go nocturnal. So I always enjoyed writing at night because there’s no distractions, no texts, my mom’s not yelling at me.

For those who haven’t heard “Six Feet Under” yet, how would you describe it? I blasted everything you have on Spotify and I’m loving “Witchcraft” and “Six Feet Under” so far.

“Witchcraft” is a Frank Sinatra cover, which I love it because my dad used to sing it to me as a kid. I think I have four songs up on Spotify and three of them are demos I had put up about a year and a half ago. I put one tweet out, no videos, no press, I just wanted people to know that I was doing something else, but I wrote those songs really fast. So “Six Feet Under” is probably the first song that I actually consider Bohnes. This is what it’s going to sound like, this is what it is.

People that listen to the whole album, like my friends and some fans, who I’ve shown the entirety of the new album, everyone says that it sounds like if Justin Timberlake started a heavy rock band like Rage Against the Machine. There’s a lot of heavy guitar riffs, there’s definitely darker elements on the album, but the vocals are super pop. So instead of hearing synth lines, there’s heavy guitar. My background is listening to Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, NSYNC, so the harmonies on “Six Feet Under,” if I could show you the vocals without any music, the chorus sounds like a five-part harmony.

You worked with some talented people on the track. How was it working with Matt Johnson (Matt & Kim) & Bryan Sammis (The Neighbourhood, Olivver The Kid)?

Bryan was in a band called The Neighbourhood and I was a big fan, so he left, probably for the same reason. I don’t think there was any crazy animosity and did Olivver The Kid and La Bouquet. So I did “Six Feet Under” with him and the next single with Matt. Matt’s interesting because he’s in an indie rock band but also loves hip hop. So I wanted to challenge myself and work with people– Like for The Cab, I worked with Bruno Mars and pop writers who did Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez songs, so for this project, because it’s more rock n’ roll, I want to work with people who were in rock bands. Because my vocals are so pop, I need people to just dirty them up a bit and bring them back down because it’s just so poppy.

youtube

Tell about the music video. What inspired it?

The music video for “Six Feet Under” was shot in Nara, Japan, which before Tokyo, was the capital of Japan. I think the theme park was built in the late 60s or 70s and the owners and builders originally wanted to create a DisneyLand and Disney said no, but Walt said he’d help. When you’re in this park, there’s Main Street, there’s a mountain that looks like the Matterhorn in Disneyland LA, there’s a castle and everything’s in a circle around the castle… It’s pretty dead on. I remember going online and going down the rabbit hole, which is the Internet, and found “the coolest abandoned places.” And #1 on all these lists was this abandoned theme park.

I flew all the way there, I didn’t have access. It was illegal to get into. And because I didn’t want people to catch me, I stayed 2-3 miles away and brought only two videographers, one was a girl who could be a videographer and an actress, and my friend Justin Clough, who was the main director. We stayed in a hotel and at like 3am, we put all the camera gear, got flash lights and had to walk 3 miles down a highway. If you call a cab, Japan’s such a respectful country that the cab drivers will call the authorities and be like “Just so you know, I just dropped these kids off at an abandoned theme park and they’re probably up to no good.”

Dude, we walked 3 miles and the scary thing was that it was still dark when we got to the park, we had to wait for the sun to come out to film. We hid in a haunted house until the sun came up then we ran around and filmed. There were also security guards, so whenever we saw one, we had to break into a building and hide. We broke into the haunted house, an arcade, hid in bushes by a rollercoaster. We couldn’t talk either. Imagine filming a video without being able to talk and only whispering or using hand motions. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. It was insane. That probably would’ve cost half a million dollars to do.

What do the skull masks represent?

Ironically enough, we filmed the video before we had the song. I watched the video on repeat and kind of got lyrical and musical ideas together from the video. It was almost like scoring a short film with a pop song. It was challenge. It pushed me to think in a different way. It was a completely different thought process.

The masks represent that Bohnes isn’t just me, it’s a thought process and a universe that I built. Anyone could be Bohnes, and underneath man, woman, gay, straight, doesn’t matter where you’re from, your sexual orientation or the color of your skin, underneath it all, you’re bones. The masks represented that we’re the same and anyone could wear that mask and we’re all people: we all live, die, fall in love, lose, fail. That’s who we are at our core, and again not to be morbid, when you die, everything disappears and your bones are left to tell your stories.

What can fans expect from your upcoming album? Does it follow any recurring theme or concept?

It’ll be out early next year. Yes, it’s as close to a concept album without it being a concept album. One of the reasons the project is called Bohnes is because it was at a point in my life, where it really hit me. Life and death really hit me. Death is actually this incredibly beautiful thing because it forces you to live. If we all lived forever, there would be unlimited amount of time and we wouldn’t catapult ourselves into adventures because we could do it later. Life is short, so it makes us want to travel the world, fall in love, and do these things. I guess the entirety of the album is based around time and life and death.

My favorite song on the album is a song called “Coffins” and it’s a love song and the main lyric in the chorus us “If you walk out the door, know that I will too, I hope they build coffins for two.” It’s kinda realizing that one day, you will die but being okay with it knowing you have someone you’re walking life with that’ll go with you.

Any plans to tour soon?

I think I need to get music out so there’s more content and for people to understand what the Bohnes world is. But, definitely I would love to tour. If enough people like the music, I’ll be touring endlessly again.

To what extent, if any, does your personal style and look reflect your music or your new persona as Bohnes?

I think rock n’ roll my entire life has affected how I dressed. I found this picture a few days ago I had like spiked hair that was pink tips, I think I’d buy those studded bracelets from Hot Topic. Growing up, I went through every phase of rock n’ roll. I went from listening to the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles to listening to AFI, The Refused, Rancid, Alkaline Trio that went into Blink 182, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco. The first rock band I ever heard was Queen.

My dad raised me on listening to Freddie Mercury. I think that’s also been a big inspiration to the project because if you listen to a Queen album, you can have “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” which sounds like an Elvis song, and “Another One Bites The Dust” which is a funk song, “Tie Your Mother Down” which is rock n’ roll and then “Bohemian Rhapsody” which is an opera. I loved that they could have so many genres on one album, but when Freddie sang, you knew it was one album. And Justin Timberlake does the same thing, “Drink Your Way” a country song, “Senorita” a Spanish-flavor song, “Rock Your Body” which is a Michael Jackson-Prince sounding song. I love that their voices tie everything together. I always try to keep that in mind. Don’t let the music put you in a corner.

I have a song that sounds like an acoustic James Taylor song, but on the same album that’s like incredibly heavy like Rage Against the Machine and somehow they’re tied together with my voice and the lyrics.

We saw you went to Burning Man on Instagram! How was it? That’s definitely on our check list of many festivals to go to.

Burning Man was Mars. It was one of the craziest things I’ve ever been to. It really makes you believe in people again. In this world, you watch the news and it’s crazy. It’s tragedy after tragedy. Going to Burning Man, where my phones just didn’t work so I put them away, you’re in the middle of nowhere. You just meet people, and you’re not talking about pop culture, or anything but what you’re feeling and what inspires and motivates you and there’s just something super magical about meeting people who aren’t on their phones.

Sometimes I just need to throw my phone across the room and just be like “Ok, that’s enough.”

Especially these days with the news, I would go on Twitter if it was just my friends, but seeing what’s going on in the world.

I feel like between the weather and the politics, I feel like everything that’s going wrong is just telling us that we fucked up.

Totally. There were, what, four major hurricanes in a month? On top of all the shit that humans are doing? I’m from Las Vegas so it’s been a rough week for me with what happened there. You almost become desensitized to a lot of it. Vegas was a wake up call for me because it was my hometown. Sandy Hook hit me real hard, because those are kids. I lost my mind when that happened. I couldn’t comprehend. I think Sandy Hook woke everyone up, and you thought there would be change and they didn’t. But Vegas was my hometown and my city, and I have friends who got shot, and my mom had tickets to the concert and I called her and she wasn’t answering her phone. Your mind goes places. Luckily she didn’t go to the concert.

All you can do in these circumstances is, you can’t let them win. You can’t stop going to music festivals, you can’t give up on people, because as soon as that happens, they’ve won. If anything, I’m going to go to more music festivals and love even more and put out even more music. I put out a song today called “702” which is an acoustic song that speaks directly about the Vegas events. I was crying so hard the night before because I thought my mom was there, that my voice on the demos was really scratchy. I put that song out and, if you’re reading this, it’ll be on Spotify and iTunes and everything that I make will go to the victims of the families and you can also donate here.

youtube

If you had the ultimate celebrity power, what would be on your tour rider?

I would put a basketball court in my house… which I’m working on doing, it’s a pipe dream. If I had Jay-Z money, I would buy a house in about 20 major cities and they wouldn’t be extravagant, it wouldn’t be over the top. Super modest houses, 2-3 bedrooms in all my favorite cities. Rome, Tokyo, New York, Nashville, Kawaii, cottage in Iceland. Just places I could stay and to encourage my friends and family to travel more and be like “don’t pay for hotels, just stay at my place and go see the world.” For everyone that I love, I just go say, “get the hell out and go see the world.” Buy little houses and apartments, no mansions just little spots.

Where has been your favorite travel destination so far? Why?

From my last year in The Cab to now, I think I traveled to about 65 countries. Can I give you 5?

Iceland: You can drive around the entire country in 5-7 days and you can see beaches, glaciers, waterfalls, icebergs, volcanoes, auroras, anything you can think of, Iceland has it.

Rome, Italy

Tokyo, Japan

Nashville, TN

Kawaii, Hawaii: For some reason it doesn’t get as much respect as Maui or Honolulu, it’s gorgeous. It’s like Bora Bora Jr. and only 6 hours away from LA, it’s incredible. It’s extremely cheaper than Bora Bora and not a 26 hour flight (laughs).

What was your last Google search?

Can I look? (laughs) “Misdemeanor trespassing consequences Alabama” because I’m filming an acoustic performance in abandoned buildings in Alabama and I’m thinking there was a 50/50 chance I’ll go to jail or get slapped with a misdemeanor and just in case it happens, I wanted to prepare myself and know my rights.

Photographer: Laura Ersoy Interviewer: Laura Ersoy. Magazine website: http://www.euphoriazine.com/ Magazine instagram: https://www.instagram.com/euphoriazine/

#bohnes #interview #euphoriazine #laura ersoy #alexander deleon

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salmankhanholics · 8 years ago

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★ INTERVIEW: Salman Khan On Ghosts Of His Past, Attempts Of Image Rehabilitation, And Why Critics Don't Matter !

In an exclusive interview, Khan opens up like never before.

15/06/2017 | Ankur Pathak

It's no secret that Salman Khan has a rather whimsical equation with the press. Whenever I have seen him at events and press conferences, the actor either appears distracted and zoned out or the opposite: funny, attentive, and in the mood to have a baller time.

On Wednesday evening at Bandra's Taj Lands End, Salman is busy gorging on keema pao, straight from the containers of the buffet spread. At the same time, he's also talking to a journalist, calling Pritam, the music composer, 'lethargic and lazy.'

While I worry he'll be his usual inattentive self, Salman, dressed in a black tee and a black denim, takes a smoke break. His film, Tubelight, is days away from release and the pressure is palpable. Khan's eyes look droopy, his gait, tired. He is not only acting in the film but also producing and distributing it.

After waiting for over two hours (that'd come at the cost of standing up a date), Khan sits with me for a chat. Excerpts:

Kabir Khan's Tubelight once again portrays you as a sincere, innocuous, do-gooder who's just too nice to do any wrong -- a trend that started with Bajrangi Bhaijaan and was seen in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo too. What draws you to these characters?

Like you said, the niceness of it. But with Tubelight, my agenda is different -- after the film, I want brothers, who may not have spoken to one another in months and years, to call each other up and forget the differences, if they had any. I want them to be so emotionally overcome that they just let past differences aside and say, "Hey man, let's party." Many times, in our families, we end up cutting ourselves away from our siblings. Sometimes the issues are trivial, sometimes serious. But why let it affect you? I hope Tubelight can achieve that. It touches on those emotions. This film is beautifully shot. It's also styled very well by Lepakshi Ellawadi, who did Sultan and is doing Tiger Zinda Hai.

But Salman, do you actually believe films can end family feuds and change people's lives?

Absolutely. I've seen films that have changed my life. And trust me, if a film can change me, out of all people, a film can change anyone. It is the only medium that has such a huge influence on your psyche. When you sit in that dark room and see a character, you are also internally absorbing its ideas and traits.

When you see nobility being projected by a hero, you are inspired to emulate it. This is one of the reasons why I haven't ever played a negative character. Negativity in a character doesn't impress me. Say if you have a character who earns a living through corrupt means, man, that puts me off. I will never play a dark character. Underdogs impress me. Those who make it against all odds impress me. I want to tell their stories.

But doesn't that limit you as an actor? A lot of great performances in cinema have come from actors who've played dark, twisted, villainous roles.

Well, I don't know. From the stuff I do, a Dabangg is a character that is sort of, somewhere-in-between. His intentions are good, actions aren't all that good. So you try and balance that off. My next, Tiger Zinda Hai, also veers in the grey area. I am also doing a crazy dance film. So while I do wanna portray characters which are inherently nice, I don't want them to be one-dimensional. It has to have style and swag and some depth.

While your popularity in the country is undeniably huge, I believe there is a certain section in the audience who aren't your fans and perhaps, they'll never be. While some don't want to be seen endorsing your brand of cinema, some will find hard to appreciate even a good film only because you are in it. A lot, I think, has to do with the notoriety of your past.

Well, I don't know. I move around and meet all sorts of people but funnily, I have never been told that. Neither have I noticed that. But if you say so, all I can say is that I will probably have to work that much harder to win them over. I know it won't happen overnight but I can only hope that some day they'll warm up to me as an artist.

Do you feel you are unfairly judged by your critics?

I genuinely, honestly don't care. I believe that they've no right to take anybody's hard work down. The fans will decide that, in any case. The box-office will prove it one way or the other. What have you done to earn the right to rip a film apart? On Day 1 of the release, you write some rubbish crap. It destroys films and a lot of hard work that went behind making it. With me, of course, it doesn't make any difference. And I think they know it all too well. My films are critic-proof. I am telling them now: go give my film minus 100 stars, why just zero. Let's see how that pans out. My fans will anyway watch my film and that's my reward. It only makes them look like a bunch of idiots.

My films are critic-proof. I am telling them now: go give my film minus 100 stars, why just zero. Let's see how that pans out. My fans will anyway watch my film and that's my reward. It only makes them look like a bunch of idiots.

I am pretty sure that our critics aren't under the delusion that they can influence the market of a Salman Khan film. What I want to know is -- what is your analysis? Why do you think they are so insanely crazy about Salman? I cannot even send a negative tweet about you without getting massively trolled by this insane sub-culture of bhaifans.

I don't know. Maybe they think I'm one of them. Maybe they think I am just a regular dude who's chill and approachable and has no airs of being a superstar. And I have remained like that right from the start. I lived in Indore in a boarding school until the age of 16. That really grounded me. I hung around on the streets, went to the farms. There's nothing fancy about my life. I like cycling around the city, I hop into an auto-rickshaw now and then. I don't drive a big car -- I hate big cars. Maybe that, along with the kind of films I do, make them think I'm, I don't know, accessible in a way?

I don't drive a big car -- I hate big cars.

Perhaps. It's hard to decode stardom.

It is. I just think I am a guy who lucked out. Mostly because of the family I was born in. I am immensely fortunate to have the kind of family and friends and the fans I have. Some people come to me and tell me that their children are yet to talk but if they see a Salman Khan song, they jump, react, laugh. They can recall me by my name. Earlier it used to be Prem and Chulbul but now it's Salman.

I don't get it. There are children and youngsters who idolize you and have deified you. They look up to you, want to emulate you, carry your style. But I believe you're obviously a very flawed person to idolize. You've had some very serious court cases against you. Why should anybody just forget and forgive and move on to your next blockbuster?

Everybody has a past. Does that make you a bad person for life? In my case, there is deliberate malice. When people go after you for something you have not done, it's bad. Next thing you know you are running around courts and people are judging you.

For 20 years. 20 years is a long time, man. It's a lot of years. It takes a toll on you and your family. The financial toll on our family because of the cases has been huge.

When I was a nobody I had nothing. (Pauses) When I become somebody, I got the magistrate court. When I become slightly bigger, I got the High Court, then. And now when I am in this position, I have the Supreme Court.

Well, something awful did happen. It's not going to leave you.

It will leave me. It's God's way of anchoring me down. If these things didn't happen, I would have lost the plot by now. That's how I see it. It's my journey and whatever it takes, I will go through it. Thankfully, I have family and friends who've stood by me and pointed out whatever happened wasn't correct.

How do you deal with these ghosts of the past, Salman?

I don't have any ghosts. These ghosts have been created by people who are running businesses on them. There are so many incidents like mine that happened and nobody ever talks about them. Whenever there's a hit-and-run that happens anywhere, they drag me into it all over again. I mean, what the hell, come on, man. How much will you go on and on...

Whenever there's a hit-and-run that happens anywhere, they drag me into it all over again.

That's because some do think you got away with it quite easily.

...well, the High Court looked into it and they came up with a verdict which says that nothing of that sort ever happened. Ye sab galat hi hai. The courts said it. But what about the 20 years? What about it? Mere toh wo gaye na? And there's nothing to compensate for that. Nothing at all. And during all this, when I am seen doing a comedy show, or romancing beautiful women, or just laughing, they go like, "Look at this brat. He doesn't care. He is indifferent to what happened." And I am like, dude. It's my bloody job. I have to do it no matter what. I have to do it to sustain myself and pay my lawyers. If I don't do it, where is the money going to come from?

The idea still lingers around that you got away with it because you are a powerful movie star.

Which is not at all true. It's not true. It's all nautanki (mischief). Even now there are 5 out of job people who'll show up on television to debate my case. Some for, some against. It's ridiculous. None of them would have happened if I wasn't a star. None of it.

There's an argument that your Being Human charitable trust has been cleverly designed to rehabilitate your image. That, along with your Mr. Good Boy roles, carves a certain perspective that glosses over your moral transgressions.

Do you have any idea of the amount of work we do at Being Human? We do s***loads of work on a daily basis. I haven't even put my name there, man. It's Being Human. I am not even on the Board or any of the trustees. The idea is that years from now, people should forget who even started the foundation. You have no idea, man. Do one thing: Come and live my life for one day.

(Gets up and walks away)

Huffington Post India

#salman khan #tubelight interview #interview #text interview #tubelight promotion #huffington post india #tubelight #salmankhanfilms #skf #kabir khan's next 2

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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What Bernie Supporters Think of the Term ‘Bernie Bro’

Over the last few weeks, it's become clear that Bernie Sanders could actually become president. The Vermont senator is polling very close to Joe Biden in Iowa, has a large lead over everyone in the latest California poll, and seems likely to do very well in New Hampshire. The prospect of Sanders winning the nomination has the finance world freaking out—there are already reports of stocks falling as he climbs the polls—and has inspired a backlash from his many detractors. Centrist pundits have declared him to be unelectable, and his former competitor Hillary Clinton has denounced not just Sanders but the entire "culture around him," which she recently described to the Hollywood Reporter:

It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it.

The "Bernie Bro" stereotype isn't new, of course, but the notion that Sanders supporters are different from other Democratic voters, and even dangerous in some way, seems poised to dominate the never-ending debate over the 2020 primary. It scored a major piece of ink on Monday, when the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined, "Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army." It describes a passionate fan base who donates their money and time to their candidate, but also sometimes attacks opponents with insults and even threats.

"When Mr. Sanders’s supporters swarm someone online, they often find multiple access points to that person’s life, compiling what can amount to investigative dossiers," the Times wrote. "They will attack all public social media accounts, posting personal insults that might flow in by the hundreds."

If you’ve ever posted anything slightly critical of Sanders, this sort of dogpiling may sound familiar. (Full disclosure: I'm a Sanders supporter who yes, spends a fair amount of time online.) Interviews with dozens of Sanders backers find them admitting that the "internet army" can at times be vicious—a reality that many leftists themselves bemoan. But they also see the Bernie Bro narrative as an invention of the media and the Democratic establishment.

Standard-issue online sparring is often conflated with threats, and Sanders supporters feel frustrated they are so often associated with the worst behavior of their fellow travelers. "Most Bernie supporters online tend to be young, somewhat irony-poisoned, and angry. I'm including myself in this group," Joe Conley, a 33-year-old Sanders supporter, told me over email. He pointed out that there’s an "irony gap" between Bernie supporters and people on the receiving end of their ire. While tweeting a photograph of a pig with shit on its balls might be a standard-issue troll for a member of left Twitter, it’s perceived as online harassment from people who aren’t acquainted with this language of certain subcultures. At the end of the day, every political tribe has its toxic streak, so why do "Bernie Bros" get singled out?

Even as a self-identified Bernie Bro, I’ve gotten a fair amount of grief from leftist dudes on the internet. But I’ve received an equal heaping of hate from women who supported Clinton, anti-semitic Trump trolls, and beyond. Though fewer in number than Sanders supporters, Andrew Yang backers can be just as fiery online—notably, there are a significant number of irony-drenched #YangGang members from 4chan and other Trump-adjacent corners of the internet. Tulsi Gabbard, another Democrat with fringe appeal, has an intense fan base that contains members of the far right. In general, the culture around political celebrities has become more like regular celebrity stan culture, meaning fans feel intense emotions and share them online, and campaigns have little control over those feelings. (Sanders’s popularity is forever intertwined with his online army, but his campaign does not promote cyberbullying or misogyny—as the Times story noted, the Sanders campaign has publicly condemned bullying. That hasn't stopped it.)

One Bernie supporter sent me a dossier of all the abuse Bernie supporters receive from "loyalist Democrats" and "Donut Twitter." (Anti-Bernie liberals sometimes use a donut emoji in their Twitter names. It's a long story.) This collection of screenshots is really ugly, with people tweeting things like "I’m rooting for Bernie supporters' death," and "anyone that fucking supports Bernie Ratfucker Sanders is a piece of shit." There is also a glut of disgusting, unquotable, racist and misogynistic insults that have been hurled at Nina Turner, a Black woman who has worked with Sanders for years and co-chairs his 2020 campaign. (VICE was unable to confirm the authenticity of all of the screenshots and is not linking to the file, but did verify that many of the abusive tweets were real.) The fact is, the internet is a cruel place for everyone, regardless of who you’re voting for in 2020.

"I really think we are no more mean or aggressive than any other group of people," said Peter Graham, a 28-year-old who works for Disney and is voting for Bernie. "[It’s that] Bernie has younger supporters that are very online, [they] are probably better versed in sardonic Twitter dialogue, and there's more of them."

The stereotype of a nasty online leftist bro—unmistakably masculine, usually sneering—predates that election season. In 2008, the feminist writer Rebecca Traister (then a Clinton supporter) published an op-ed on Salon, bemoaning the rise of the "Obama boys." Young women who backed Clinton, she wrote, told her "about the sexism they felt coming from their brothers and husbands and friends and boyfriends [and] described the suspicion that their politically progressive partners were actually uncomfortable with powerful women."

Leftists have accused the mainstream media of using this stereotype as a club to beat Sanders with. "The ‘Bernie Bro' narrative by pro-Clinton journalists has been a potent political tactic," Glenn Greenwald wrote on The Intercept in 2016, calling it "a journalistic disgrace." And the idea that the democratic socialist's base is largely male is arguably just straight-up false: Polls have shown that Sanders supporters are diverse across racial and gender lines, with young women making up a larger proportion of his support than young men.

Yet the narrative has remained pervasive, likely because there are plenty of genuinely nasty Bernie supporters lurking online, and more recently, because Sanders has achieved frontrunner status. Since his rise in the polls, Bernie has received a deluge of negative press from mainstream publications. "This isn’t about Sanders supporters being uniquely toxic. It’s about Sanders leading in Iowa and New Hampshire and leading a genuinely diverse working class movement," one Bernie supporter tweeted in response to the New York Times article. "Elite liberals fear and despise the working class. That’s the reality."

"This is ruling class propaganda," another remarked. "And rather than keeping Bernie above the fray, the campaign's scolding of supporters was used to validate their false narrative of abusive Berners, as I feared it would be. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So don't."

Peter Daou, a former Hillary aide turned Bernie diehard, expressed dismay about the Bernie Bro stereotype over the phone. He said that he and his wife, Leela, now "receive the same type of personal attacks" as he did in 2016, when he was loudly supporting Clinton online. "People are using the term ‘Bernie Bro’ in a targeted way,” he said. "It’s a toxic narrative, leftover from 2016. The idea of these raging white males online that all support Bernie is the establishment’s way of trying to torpedo Bernie’s campaign."

Jovan Prunty, a 31-year-old who works in construction, also takes offense at the Bernie Bro narrative. "As a Black man I think this term erases me and all his other women and POC supporters," he said.

Sanders supporters generally agree that there are toxic leftist men whose behavior is out of bounds. But they insist that those people are a minority. Jaya Sundaresh, a writer for the socialist publication Current Affairs, voiced that sentiment on her Twitter in a post that garnered 15,000 likes: "I'm just going to say it: the Bernie Bro stereotype might be bullshit, but there's a variety of irony-poisoned shithead leftist dudes who have caused nothing but pain for myself and my female comrades." Over the phone Sundaresh was careful to emphasize that even though shitty men do exist on the left, the phenomenon is not specific to one edge of the ideological spectrum. "I’ve been swarmed by Pete Buttigieg supporters," she said. "I’ve also had good conversations with them."

Small, persistent jabs from Bernie supporters are unsurprisingly hurtful to people who support other candidates. Zandy Hartig, a Los Angeles-based actress, who backs Elizabeth Warren, tweeted on Wednesday, "It sucks that I feel I can’t tweet about my favorite candidate. my friends are respectful when they argue with me, but random people will jump all over me. It’s not their candidate’s fault, but it scares me nonetheless. And maybe that’s the point." Unkindness ensued, with Bernie supporters informing her that Warren does, in fact, suck, and imploring her to "calm down."

"I don’t think it’s Bernie fault," Hartig emphasized to me over the phone. "But I don't want to comment [anything pro-Warren] because when I have, people come down really hard on me and I almost feel like going private." (Her Twitter is currently private).

"During the 2016 election, I really didn’t think there was such a thing as a 'Bernie Bro,'" Hartig continued. "But this time, we’ve got a woman running who is much more progressive [than Hillary]… I’m starting to think it has a lot to do with misogyny."

The nastiness of online political culture has resulted in a gap between those like Hartig, who feel attacked by swarms of online Bernie heads, and Sanders supporters who complain that they are being unfairly stereotyped. Misogyny exists in every corner of the internet, they say. So why are we mostly talking about Bernie Sanders? "You’re gonna tarnish an entire movement as 'bros'?" Daou said. "[It] erases all the women, the women of color. There’s an ageist, a sexist, and a racist component when you generalize a diverse movement under the term 'Bro.'"

What Bernie Supporters Think of the Term ‘Bernie Bro’ syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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yolo-hebe · 6 years ago

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Kindness is always fashionable...

Kindness is Always Fashionable

I forwarded the very first blog of mine to my friends, ex- colleagues, the business acquaintance and even tweeted the link. Few of them read it, surprisingly few of them came forward for discussion. My friend called me and said, I read the blog, what is it all about? Why waste your time doing this? You have just started your own brand, focus on it. I listened to him carefully and completely. I waited for him to finish. Slowly and firmly, I thanked him for the concern and for the love he expressed towards me and business. I continued to say, Dude how did you establish that writing a blog is a waste of time? Why there should be a commercial aspect in everything I do? He replied politely and his reasons were as strong as he is. I said I agree with you, please listen to me. There is a commercial aspect, besides writing a blog helps me to relive or to recollect some of the most beautiful experiences of my life. But, that was not the content written on your blog, it was about some American he interfered.

Yes, it was about an extraordinary individual who dreamt of living his life fully and what he achieved. Further, I added, sometimes teaching/sharing is the best way to remember what you have learned and to understand how well you have learned. He was calm so I continued, imagine yourself a painter or sculptor who creates something on his own, you will be as close as possible to the object you create. But to see how it came out you have to go back few steps or pull yourself back and check while creating you have to be as close as possible but to verify you have to move out and check. Even if you want to draw a simple straight line you have to do that. That is how I see this. I want to write about things I have experienced, learned and this helps to question myself had I learned it properly? Am I following it? I want to continue to stay in the stream to move ahead.

I didn’t check by asking him, whether he took all the point or not. But he said Good luck!

The same day evening one of my business associate (Mr. Kumar) came to my office, we were discussing the business for a while. Surprisingly he switched the topic towards the end, was it the only guy inspired you? his tone was so intense. I was perplexed at first then understood the words “guy inspired you”, Oh! he is talking about the Blog. I replied No, there are more people. That intense intrigued me for further discussion. So I asked him how was the blog? He replied, yeah OK. Honestly, I was not surprised by the answer I knew it was below average. But his eyes were sparkling, I understood, he is about to say something. All I have to do is make him understand that he is sharing something with a sensible guy so that he feels comfortable and speaks. Kumar, the intention was to share something good, the content should make me and the readers think about Living means a lot. Living means not being rich, or being celebrated or successful, these are the byproducts of being honest to their life in every possible way. There is no single way of living and I’m not endorsing any particular way of living. All I’m concerned is, living every possible way, if you know it already, great! be an example. If you don’t know, find out, get inspired and start living your life the way you wanted to live.

After a few minutes, he shared this, There is no simple or great inspiration. Inspiration is a great phenomenon, getting inspired by something or someone makes you realize who you really are. You don’t need a life story to get inspired, even a simple event or gesture will do. One day I went to a restaurant near to my office, I go there every weekend, even now.

Since I go there regularly, I knew the people who are working there, so what I do is, check who is serving and get seated. There was one particular guy, very short, pale and heavy. I never have seen him smile, always shout at the customer if they questioned him, fights with the fellow workers, even shouts at the guy sitting in the cash counter, the kind of guy never spares anyone. So I consciously avoided him every time, in fact, I choose the place where I don’t see him at all. On that particular day, it was heavily crowded, so I was asked to occupy the table right at the entrance, the pale guy was serving the very next table, same story he was in full form.

Few minutes, a new group occupied that table. The bearer came and asked what they would like to have? in his typical attitude. There was this guy, a young chap, tall, lean, simply dressed, looked at the bearer and he smiled at him. Bearer did not like it, not even a bit, he raised his voice and asked the same question? I was expecting the visitor to shout at him back. Surprisingly, he looked at the bearer in his eyes smiled again and asked the bearer have you had your food brother? Bearer got furious, you came to the hotel, so eat, don’t waste my time, order what you want to eat. The tall guy said, OK brother. What is today ‘s special item? No specials. Only routines are available and if you order it will take 20 minutes. The tall guy ordered “idly”- easiest to prepare. Next? asked the bearer, let me have the idly first, smiled the visitor. All this time the tall guy smiled and kept the eye contact. Bearer left, in a couple minutes the tall guy moved away. Since there was no drama I started focusing on my plate, I was expecting that these youngsters will get infuriated and fight with the bearer, someone has to teach him a lesson on behavior.

I never noticed when he came back, but the bearer made his presence in his usual manner. The group got what they have ordered, “Idly” came after 20 minutes, but it was not hot or warm. That made them angry. The tall guy asked his friends to be quiet and said he will handle it. He smiled at the server and asked after 20 minutes you give me this brother? I’m not preparing anything, I m just serving the food available in the kitchen, if you want to complain please go ahead and talk to the manager, replied the bearer.

Without saying anything more, the tall guy ordered 4 more plates please, this time it was much better in terms of serving time, again he ordered two more plates, sooner than the previous one, one more plate please, the quickest of all. Anything more, the bearer asked. Give me a bill as hot as the idly you served, brother. Without saying anything the bearer brought the bill and the tall guy asked his friends to leave first, he stood and took his wallet out, firmly looked at the bill and the bearer, bearer was not looking at him, looking at the kitchen. The visitor looked where the bearer was looking at? What sir? Asked the bearer.

With a smile the tall guy said loud and clear, brother! you served us a good food, it would be great if it was slightly warm. But still, it was good. You are the face of the hotel, I don’t know who and how many are preparing the food and who is running this place. We see you. What and how you offer your service tells about the rest of the people involved in this. You are important and thanks for the food and your wonderful service. Have food brother, he added with kind. He took the money out of his wallet said, Please do keep the change and left. Bearer was looking at the guy’s back for a few seconds, must have thought what to say or what is he?. The bearer was shocked, so was i.

This event made me think a lot, the visitor never changed from his true belief, he stood firm as what he is? he was very clear, he did not buy anything other than the food offered by the bearer. We are all good in deep down, we tend to react to situations rather than expressing ourselves. The visitor never got agitated, he was very sure that he is a lovable and caring person and no one can make him upset. He was extending his arm to a guy who was disrespecting him, annoying him. Despite all, he praised the bearer for whatever little good he offered. Surely the visitor taught me and the bearer something, never ever change yourself from being good as you are under any circumstances, always smile and express love, never break a relationship, feel and realize your importance…. after this incident I have not seen the bearer shout at anybody. calm and quiet. I’m sure he will start smile and serve.

This guy, whom I have not seen him in my life inspired me so much, he taught me how to be composed and be strong to my true nature. Now I stopped shouting at the loved ones, stopped shouting at unknown people, instead I express care, give them their time to be good. I'm not changing myself, that inspiration helped to identify myself and taught me to be strong at it.

I looked at him and said, Kumar, I'm going to write this in my blog. This will be my second blog.

Getting inspired is no shame, if someone or something inspires you there is a connection, embrace it. Live it.

Get Inspired : Live

YOLO

live

www.yolo-hebe.com

#yolo-hebe

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years ago

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There Were Zero Things Better This Week Than 20-Year-Old Ronald Acuña's Majestic Homers

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/there-were-zero-things-better-this-week-than-20-year-old-ronald-acunas-majestic-homers/

There Were Zero Things Better This Week Than 20-Year-Old Ronald Acuña's Majestic Homers

Welcome to Good Stuff, HuffPost’s weekly recommendation series devoted to the least bad things on and off the internet.

To try to enjoy baseball today is to face a constant barrage of reminders ― from baseball’s brass, from baseball’s press, from baseball fans and people who very much want you to know that they are not baseball fans ― that there is something existentially wrong with America’s pastime. It is boring and dated and not worth watching. But every now and then, someone like Ronald Acuña comes along to remind you that baseball is, in fact, good.

Acuña, a 20-year-old Atlanta Braves rookie, has been one of the most exciting young players in baseball this year. But his true breakthrough came only this week, when Acuña opened each of Atlanta’s first three games against the Miami Marlins with home runs. Two of them came Monday, when Acuña opened both games of a doubleheader with home runs. Then he woke up Tuesday and decided to do it again.

They were majestic shots, all of them, each leaving the yard faster, higher and harder than the one before it, and it was a record-breaking streak: The Venezuelan is the youngest player to hit leadoff bombs in three straight games, the youngest to hit homers in five straight games since 1908, the youngest this and the youngest that in all sorts of categories now. Tuesday night, he added another one, a three-run shot that sealed another Braves win.

He’s the new face of the franchise in Atlanta, but, along with players like Washington’s Juan Soto, he’s also one of the new, fresh faces of baseball as a whole. And he plays the game with the sort of electric exuberance sports should elicit from all of us, even if we aren’t all blessed with the talent that allows us to express that joy through towering home runs, diving catches and stolen bases.

Baseball being baseball, that meant someone was going to take exception to his skill or his sheer funness or something. On Wednesday night, Marlins pitcher José Ureña decided there was no longer any point in trying to get Acuña out (a feat the Marlins had mostly failed to accomplish all week) and instead launched a 97 mile-per-hour fastball at the kid’s elbow. It was a cowardly play that drove Acuña from the game and could have ended his (and Atlanta’s) season, and Ureña was roundly criticized for the pitch. Still, his decision was also baseball’s most easily fixable problem illustrated. This game has, for whatever reason, a deep-rooted tendency for someone in or adjacent to it ― a pitcher, a columnist, even the commissioner ― to spend their time trying to convince everyone that the thing they like is actually bad.

Acuña, at least, won’t stand for it. On Thursday, he texted Atlanta’s manager to say he was ready to play, because even when baseball tries its hardest to be bad, people like Ronald Acuña are here to remind us that it’s not. ― Travis Waldron

“On the Road… In Trump Country”

Why are Americans so polarized? What really happened in the 2016 election? I’m leaving my liberal bubble to get some answers. pic.twitter.com/OClhEqRseC

— Jesse Brenneman (@Jesse_Brenneman) August 8, 2018

There was nothing better than radio producer Jesse Brenneman — formerly of WNYC — tweeting a video series about reaching across political and socioeconomic lines, “On the Road… In Trump Country.”

It’s a hilarious series of tweets in which Brenneman pokes fun at all the reporters who parachuted into “Trump Country” after the president was elected. There are a lot of garbage news reports that treat any locale outside of a metropolitan city as a peculiarity to be investigated for a few days and then left behind. Brenneman does exactly that, mostly without leaving his car, and the results are amazing. Read the entire thread. ― Andy Campbell

The First Movie In 25 Years To Feature An All-Asian Cast

This one may be obvious, but it has to be said: “Crazy Rich Asians” is a goddamn delight. This movie has it all: Really hot people! Stunning locales! Delicious-looking food porn! Red-carpet-worthy costumes! Extravagance that would be nauseating in real life but is super fun on screen! A biting joke about JFK airport! Awkwafina!

Also, it’s the first movie in 25 years (since “The Joy Luck Club”) that features an all-Asian cast and puts an Asian-American story at its center. So, seriously, go fill those theaters. ― Emma Gray

“Drowning” by A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Orchestral Version

🔥🔥🔥🔥 RT @soscrub_: A Boogie performing Drowning w/ a live orchestra 😳 pic.twitter.com/mxD17oAK3l

— Rory (@thisisrory) August 15, 2018

Bruh, this is majestic as fuck. The original song — “Drowning” by A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie — is amazing in its own right, but hearing it slowed down, without the Auto-Tune, without Kodak Black and with an accompanying orchestra??? Biiiiiiiitch. I wanna shout. I wanna nod my head. I wanna crump. I wanna get active.

There’s something cathartic about hearing a trap beat glide over the graceful medley of cellos, pianos and violins. The song feels fleshed out, as if the more classical instruments have lifted it to be all it can be, all it was meant to be.

And to hear A Boogie rap “Bust down, bust down, bust down, bust down, bust down, bitch I’m drownin’” while that violin whines in the back??? This rendition of the song deserves a Grammy, OK? ― Julia Craven

A Bubble Man

I love New York so much. pic.twitter.com/Qb4TSnknpR

— Alexander Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) August 15, 2018

Union Square is an egalitarian island in a sea of opulence, corporate chains and pied-à-terres owned by ultrarich foreigners and trust-fund schmucks who think Brooklyn is “too far.” The 6½-acre park, plaza and subway hub of Lower Manhattan serves as the venue for an affordable farmers market four days a week. On the other days, it’s a draw for street performers. Which brings me to the Bubble Man.

I don’t know the Bubble Man’s name, but he’s been a fixture in Union Square for over a decade. He shows up, usually on the west side of the park, with buckets of soapy water and a wand made of two broom-length sticks. Then he just produces bubbles endlessly while kids squeal and chase after them, trying to pop the shimmering little orbs before they float down and burst on the concrete.

When I left work Tuesday, I was exhausted. For some unclear reason, I woke up with my insecurities and feelings of inadequacy on full blast. To boot, my checking account suffered a stinging blow that morning when a handful of different travel and life expenses unexpectedly hit all at once. All I wanted was to go home to my apartment in Queens and curl up until I mustered the appetite to eat leftovers.

As I walked through the park to catch the N train home, the glint of bubbles caught my eye. I noticed a crowd gathered, so I walked over before descending into the subway. The kids were ecstatic, exhaling a chorus of “whoas,” “wows,” and “awesomes” as they scurried around in pursuit of bubbles. Parents and onlookers from all different backgrounds watched, phones out, capturing videos and photos. It was such a raw, uplifting moment, and a wonderful reminder that this city’s real wealth is in its public spaces. ― Alexander Kaufman

The Great Mayonnaise Debate

Last weekend, Sandy Hingston published a piece in Philadelphia magazine titled “How Millennials Killed Mayonnaise,” a 2,300-word diatribe apparently inspired by a few people not eating her potato salad at Fourth of July barbecues anymore.

The slightly tongue-in-cheek piece offered no real evidence that millennials had actually killed America’s most popular condiment (at least as of 2014), save for her wicked young daughter, a women’s and gender studies major who “naturally” “loathes mayonnaise” (by comparison, Jake, the “practical” and “good son,” loves Sandy’s macaroni salad, thank you very much).

And so it was that Hingston set off a predictably fierce and inarguably trivial internet debate about (A) if mayonnaise is good and (B) whether millennials killed it. The entire situation was wholly idiotic. It lasted way too long, and I loved every second of it. The episode reminded me of a simpler time on the internet, when my days and nights weren’t filled with thoughts of Nazis, incels, Russian bots and Roger Stone. And so I say: Bring back the asinine internet debates of yesteryear! I’ll watch people debate literally anything dumb. Ketchup? Sure. Avocados? Fine, whatever. You want to debate laundry detergent. I’ll debate laundry detergent. Please, I need this. I need this so bad. Help me. Please. And for the record, mayonnaise is bad. ― Maxwell Strachan

Pop’s New Pansexual Anthem

British-Japanese pop princess Rina Sawayama released her new single, “Cherry,” this week, a bubbly pop bop in which she gushes over a new crush who is… dun dun dun… a girl!

“Down the subway, you looked my way / With your girl gaze, with your girl gaze / That was the day everything changed / Now it’s something else.”

Sawayama, who identifies as pansexual, explores the electric experience of desiring a woman and letting the feeling fully flood the body ― even though she’s dating a dude. The song uproots the “girl meets boy” pop music standard, navigating Sawayama’s unfixed sexual preferences with nuance and playful levity. In “Cherry,” Sawayama confronts the contradictions that accompany fluid sexuality: can she authentically identify as queer while being in a heterosexual relationship? (Yes.) The question probes far deeper than Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.”

Like the 2017 album “RINA,” “Cherry” invokes sounds popularized in the late ’90s and early 2000s pop by femme-forward artists like Willa Ford and Danity Kane. Sawayama, however, sharpens their sugary recipes by granting the genre a gravitas long denied to it. As a result, her jams feel both nostalgic and cutting edge, combining the sweetness of Mandy Moore’s “Candy” with the visionary mastery of Janelle Monae.

Along with possessing me to dance with a force best described as supernatural, Sawayama’s music illuminates potential for a future in which mainstream music can encapsulate experiences as niche and complex as any other “highbrow” art form. As Sawayama told Broadly: “I think it’s possible to queer the world with pop music.” ― Priscilla Frank

This Book Has Everything: Spore-Infected Zombies, A Mediocre Photo Blog, Critique Of Capitalism

Amazon

Spore-infected zombies, a mediocre New York photography blog, critiques of capitalism, a residential shopping mall and a spot of doomed romance: Ling Ma’s debut novel, Severance, has everything I want in a work of fiction.

Severance follows Candace Chen, an aimless twentysomething who has an uninspiring office job in New York, overseeing the production of Bibles. She has vague artistic aspirations and a dreamy writer boyfriend of five years. As the book begins, her boyfriend decides to leave New York for the cheaper and more artistically inspiring pastures of, well, anywhere else. Meanwhile, a fungal infection has erupted in China, and it soon spreads throughout the world. There’s no treatment; the infection kills those it affects, but often after a long spell of zombie-like existence.

Candace, left behind by her boyfriend and alone in the world (her parents, who immigrated from China when she was a young girl, are dead), stays in New York City as it empties of living residents, documenting its decay on her blog. Finally, she flees the city with a small band of survivors who make their way to a shelter owned by the group’s de facto leader.

Interwoven are flashbacks exploring Candace’s childhood, her immigrant experience, her family and her early years in New York, piecing together a novel that’s zombie apocalypse meets immigrant narrative meets office satire.

This book is hauntingly beautiful, it’s thrillingly plotted and it offered me a bit of escapism, the comforting thought that American civilization could be brought to an end by something I’ve completely forgotten to worry about since November 2016: a massive pandemic. ― Claire Fallon

‘Spotlight,’ Which Deserves A Spot In The Pantheon Of Classic Journalism Movies

This week’s shocking grand jury report detailing sexual abuse by hundreds of Catholic priests in Pennsylvania credited the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s 2002 investigation, which first exposed the institutional cover-up of serial sexual abuse involving Boston priests. The reporters’ work was later dramatized in the brilliant movie “Spotlight” — which, luckily, is available on Netflix. Nearly three years after its release, I can confidently say that it’s just as good as (and maybe even better than) “All the President’s Men,” and it deserves a spot in the pantheon of classic journalism movies.

While it miraculously won the Oscar for best picture in 2015, it also should have won awards for its meticulous craft, from its seamless editing to subtle camera work. The technical elements in understated movies rarely get the recognition that they deserve, precisely because they are so understated (i.e. no explosions and car chases). Journalism is not an inherently cinematic profession: It’s mostly people staring at computers, talking on the phone, reading through documents, etc. But “Spotlight” manages to make these mundane, procedural tasks look riveting. Case in point: One of its most suspenseful scenes involves an Excel spreadsheet. An Excel spreadsheet! ― Marina Fang

Aretha, Remembered

As we remember the one and only Aretha Franklin, so many iconic performances come to mind. “Divas Live.” Obama’s inauguration. That Carole King tribute at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors. But one TV appearance of hers needs to be watched again and again, if only to stare at Cissy Houston providing backup vocals in the background.

That’s right: In 2014, Aretha sang a cover of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” blended with a rendition of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” and Cissy, an accomplished performer herself, appeared to forget all the words as one of the backup singers. It’s so entertaining and funny, and it will bring you some joy as we face the sad loss of the Queen of Soul. ― Leigh Blickley

Glenn Close In “The Wife”

Graeme Hunter Pictures, Sunnybank Cottages

If you want to see an actor at work — really at work — look for the moments without any dialogue. For the most gifted performers, that’s when the magic happens. Nicole Kidman at the opera house in “Birth.” Jodie Foster darting through Buffalo Bill’s house in “The Silence of the Lambs.” And, now, Glenn Close standing idly by her husband (Jonathan Pryce) as fans extol his fraudulent career in “The Wife,” a Meg Wolitzer adaptation opening this weekend.

In one of the best performances of her career, Close plays the spouse of a novelist who’s just been feted with the Nobel Prize — for the books she ghostwrote. Over the course of 100 minutes, she finds it increasingly tough to quiet the resentment that’s finally bubbling up inside of her. The movie springs to life not in the couple’s verbal tiffs but in the subtle character work Close does when the camera is stationed on her face, telegraphing the conflict she’s long masked. It’s an actress at her finest. ― Matthew Jacobs

A Nice Memory

Read last week’s Good Stuff.

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g-castel · 8 years ago

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My Top 10 Albums of 2016

I've been wanting to post this since January 1st lol, but I never got around to it haha. I need to be better about blogging. Well, I figured that since we are halfway through 2017 it would be good to share, once again, my top 10 albums of the year (last year). I've been doing this annually for a while now and it's been fun for me. Take a read if you'd like!

Top 10 + Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions

-Signs of Light (Head and the Heart)

-24K Magic (Bruno Mars)

-A Seat at the Table (Solange Knowles)

-WALLS (Kings of Leon)

-The Hamilton Mixtape (Various Artists)

-The Life of Pablo (Kanye West)

-Coming Home (Leon Bridges)

-Views (Drake)

-This is Acting (Sia)

-There’s A Lot Going On (Vic Mensa)

-22, A Million (Bon Iver)

-Telluric (Matt Corby)

-Wild World (Bastille)

-Bobby Tarantino (Logic)

-Oh My My (OneRepublic)

-Stranger Things, Vol. 1 (Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein)

Passion, Pain, and Demon Slayin’ (Kid Cudi)

A Moonshaped Pool (Radiohead)

Farewell, Starlite (Francis and the Lights)

Starboy (The Weeknd)

Sunlit Youth (The Local Natives)

indicates nearly making my list haha

Top 10

10. Home of the Strange

Young the Giant

The third studio album for Young the Giant, Home of the Strange, to me has pushed the band to become one that I will continue to listen to for the rest of my life. They are able to create a good range of styles. I think HOTS is able to listened to in so many different settings.

This California band has focused on the phenomenon of the diversity in ethnicity that the band possesses. The lead singer being, Indian-American, and other members being from across the globe plays a part in the album’s theme and dynamic.

I was super happy with songs like “Something to Believe In” (which sounds so perfect for a live performance) and “Titus Was Born”. If you are about to take a listen to Young the Giant for your first times, start from their first pieces of art and move towards their latest piece of art and you will see a fitting a beautiful revolution.

Also, go ahead and head to their Youtube channel where they post the “In the Open” videos that are stripped versions of their music and it’s record so raw and simple. Those videos have inspired me to do video work for music as well!

9. The Colour in Anything

James Blake

The music in James Blake’s album, just like before, is the some of the most unique current music. I have not found other songs out there that sound anything like his other than Bon Iver and Radiohead’s music this year.

So, so, so weird. if you’re gonna go listen this, because I said I like it, please be warned, it doesn’t mean you will, like you might hate it actually, and that’s okay. We tend to adhere to sounds that’s familiar and that coincides with our minds. This album, if you haven’t been a listener of James Blake’s previous works, will not do that for you. There are some odd sounds, weird time signatures changes, and he sings once again with beast vocoder vocals! Sometimes there are some horror silences behind nasally high frequency vocals.

It sounds like I am somewhat shoving you away from listening to this. However, do not get me wrong, I love The Colour in Anything!

Favorite Songs:

Meet You In the Maze

Points.

The random interruptions of repeated lyrics into silence are interesting and I think they reflect perhaps the character of Blake or the anybody out there who shares the stories and feelings written in his lyrics. They’re brash and the noises are loud. & I DIG it.

8. Georgica Pond

Johnnyswim

Johnnyswim. The (Latin) American folk soul pop-duo have returned this year with a banger of an album. I think personally that this is the best work that they have done. This couple are two incredibly talented musicians and they’re chemistry in and out of the booth is something like the dynamic of a Shaq and Kobe.

“The longer you’re out on the road, it gets nicer to have [Abner Ramirez] there. Because he’s the closest thing to home I have,” Johnnyswim’s Amanda Sudano says. “Home is where he is.”

I watched the videos that they shared on Youtube giving commentary on a couple of the songs that were a part of the album. They talked about the process in the studio and the inspirations behind songs like “Drunks” and “Touching Heaven”. One thing I picked up from what they attempt to maintain is the loyalty to the authenticity of the craft.

This was an album that I listened continuously for maybe three straight weeks. I went through phases were song after song became my new favorite. That happens a lot of times when the record is good from start to finish.

I want to be friends with them, simple as that.

#goals

7. THREE

Phantogram

I was introduced to them years ago by my brother, who I could honestly give credit to for a lot of the music I listen to now. This album, THREE, yes, in all caps, was music that I had no clue they had in them.

I definitely used a few tracks on this album for workouts. This is the album that this year I felt comfortable bumpin with both my more conserved buddies and also with some of my hood friends. After Phantogram released some music with as Big Grams in the past, you can surely feel the influence of Big Boi, a former member of the hip hop legendary group, OutKast. The 808s on songs like “You’re Mine” and “Cruel World” are so fulfilling.

One song from this album you’ve probably heard if you haven’t heard of any of the songs on the list is the song “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” They collaborated with other people to produce such a fire beat. The lyrics are weird and polarizing but that’s what’s great about it

On release day, I went through the entire record as I usually do with music and immediately sent Phantogram a fan girl tweet. I just had to tell them that they nailed this one and it is probably their best work yet.

6. Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight

Travis Scott

S’il vous plais. Those in favor of auto-tune, or at least okay with listening to it and not being baffled by the off-the-(traditional hip-hop)-wall that it is, take your time to listen to a few tracks of this album by the G.O.O.D. Music prodigy, Travis Scott.

I just know in 2017, this man Travis is going to blow UP! I do not know in what way, whether it’s with his music, or with his involvement with big name fashion clothing lines, he will find his way into having you know his name. It’s just the loud and abrasive nature that he possesses.

Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight to me was like a real intro to the world, though it isn’t his first album. When Ye signed him, he was doing a bunch of writing and waiting his turn to get on the map. Kanye finally did what he does best and gave him more pushes and connections. I’ve never seen someone with so much energy. Hip hop gone be alright.

Usually, I listen to albums from front to back, but I know that’s not how everyone does it. So, if you do not have much time and want to take a peek of the record, check out these three, “goosebumps, through the late night, and way back”.

5. The Human Condition

Jon Bellion

Mr. Jon Bellion, out of New York, is the next Chad Hugo, No I.D., and Timberland, all put together, who also sings and raps on the music he produces. Riding that “come up wave”, he will be a name that pretty soon will have a bigger font size on next summer’s festival lineups, guaranteed.

This early 20s MC, is just a pure talent to say the least, and outside his talent, is seemingly a phenomenal character. He has worked so hard to make it to where he is in his music career, but has managed to stay as humble as he was when he was making beats in his college dorm room. The Human Condition was crafted and along with Bellion is the band, A Beautiful Mind, who were all buddies who have all committed to sticking together if one of them made it big in the industry which is such a noble thing to see. They have a natural chemistry.

Bellion says a lot of the people who inspired his sounds were the Neptunes, Kanye, and derivation.

So I can’t write this without giving one person credit for introducing me to him. My roommate Jeff did everything he could that season to make sure the whole world new about Jon Bellion. He played songs from previous EPs to prepare for the album release over and over. While he showered, I could here the songs including the pre-release singles. We ended up seeing Bellion live…twice actually.

I’m excited for his future, collaborations, and ideas he execute to change the way people see music. He’s got that much potential in my opinion. The dude is straight out of New York. If you haven’t heard the album yet, let me just tell you it is very evident. Jon Bellion is a multitalented artist. He’s got his hands on everything, being well-versed with the keys, vocals, and he’s got some bars too. He’ll break it down with the MPC pad too like his idol Kanye. Even on stage during his tour, homie would bring the pad to center stage and loop up the layers of his songs and the sing over the top of it brilliantly.

Bellion’s, like many of us, is also a closet nerd and loves cartoons and animation. One of his big dreams, which he might as well soon see come into fruition is to work with Pixar on scoring a film. I hope this happens! He’s a dreamer, he’s got a newfound faith, and has got a colossal muse. This artist is someone who is just peeking his head out of his egg and we have no idea what he will do once he starts flying.

4. 4 Your Eyez Only

J. Cole

This album is the cure.

Mr. Jermaine Cole. He is such an people’s person. I liked the fact that after he finished touring for 2014 Forest Hills Drive, he said “I’m out.” He had a withdrawal from the public eye. Just wanting to have a normal human experience here in America, he laid low, didn’t really share much on social media and rode his bike around the city. It gave him a fresh mind to intake life and be creative, especially in a tough all-around year like 2016. Seeing artists do that is a breath of fresh air to me. Fame is just something he doesn’t care about.

In the album, there’s a few times Cole rhymes from different perspectives apart from himself. What we have here is a real lyricist, and wordsmith. He chops up words perfectly to make them fit meter after meter. I honestly think he’s getting better and apart from Kendrick, no one out there is stopping him from being the most influential lyricist in urban culture. His mass appeal comes naturally, though he does not care about it or give into it.

Ed Sheeran said in an interview recently on the Breakfast Club that in the likes of the hip hop genre, right now he is really liking this J.Cole album. Reason why I say this is cause, Ed, too took a page from this book and, took a year off from music and celebrity living and just vacationed and traveled.

You can feel it in these songs. The calmness in the beats. There is something retro about the drums, the flows are mellow, and the vibes make me want to go for a soothing walk with headphones, or take a subway into a city like NY. I don’t know if any of that makes sense, but once you listen to a song like “Ville Mentality”, you’ll know.

3. We Got it From Here…Thank You 4 your service

A Tribe Called Quest

They’re Back! Mr. Abstract, Phife the Five Footer, Ali! The return of the historic and legendary hip hop group, the pioneers for all current rappers today, the one, the only, TRIBE CALLED QUEST.

Here is Phife Dawg. The Five Foot Assassin is what he used to go by. He founded this group back with Q-Tip I believe when they were in high school. Hip Hop was already on the rise and established, but it had no real characters that were unique and funky. Them comes along these gentlemen along with other members of the Native Tongues who brought a energy to the hip hop scene that was crazy and untouched. They weren’t talking about money and drinking. It was all conscious writing and fun creativity. This band is why I am a hip hop fan today.

Tribe to me is like the mantle of the earth if Hip Hop was looked at as the planet. And the core would be jazz. We hear it in all of their records, and after the band split in 1998 and after 18 years…it took the death of co-Founder Phife, for the men to get into a studio and make some powerful music for the people, for themselves, and for their lost brother, Phife.

I think it takes bravery to return. They’re a bunch of old men. They know there’s a new audience of hip hop lovers out there who don’t even know them. They know that a lot of people aren’t really gonna feel their music and rhythm. So, I commend their boldness in return and with their humility in asking a great conglomerate of artists from Jack White to Talib Kweli to help join them create their final album to send strong messages on things as simple as how it is to be a black man in America.

This band has left an impeccable legacy and imprint on hip hop music forever.

2. i like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful, yet so unaware

The 1975

You’re probably like.

Wait, what…huh?!?

And I’m sorry to put them so high, but I am not at the same time. I keep finding myself DRAWN to each and every track on this record. For a sophomore album, they definitely found the best way to expand but at the same time stay inside the realm that they created for the fans that is kind of the this imaginary “1975” world.

Kickstarting with a perfect “first single” in Love Me, to being the iliwysfyasbysu era was a pretty cool statement made because we just knew that they were bursting forth with a different brand. You’ll know what I mean if you go ahead and watch the music video. Musically, they’re was some experiments and that is always fun for me to hear. I wish I could know the terminology for what is being used to make that sort of grungy, wavy, synthy guitar sound to start and end the song, but it’s sexy and reminds me for some reason of Halloween?

Matty said that their London shows this year in the O2 were the biggest shows they did and since Vevo put on a sweet video production for it up on Youtube, I had to lay down and watch the hour-long concert. shows.

I found myself listening to the record over and over. Music doesn’t just make it into my top three just that. I really have got to like it. And I enjoy the music, simple as that. All visuals for the album certain vibe. They made a change to their brand and new look to their socials, beginning with a complete 180 of all their black and white monochrome look. It was hit with a hard flavor of flamboyant, loud, pink. That’s right, pink.

(Which, quick input, 2016 was the year of pink. Big year for pink)

Previously, on their first studio album, though they’ve been doing music for over a decade, the artwork of the album, singles, and live show light show were all bright whites and black contrasts.

Then at the end of May, we were introduced to the regeneration of the young (not-so-young) band, the 1975.

The lyrics, on almost every song, so vulnerable and loud, are what mostly impresses me about the record. Matty writes about a lot of things he deals and is trying to make sense of in morality, psychology, drugs, religion and love. Though the song titles are not as obviously direct with the messages like the first album, this album hit at so many questions that we as humans ask, or should ask.

Matty Healy’s intellect kills me. I would definitely put him in my top ten with musicians I would desire to have one or two tea time conversations with. I feel like there would be things we could teach each other. Just listening to what he has to say in interviews became quite a hobby of mine, especially the interviews where he was sober. He has interesting things to input about, love, politics, Jesus, and whatever makes the world go round. I found every lyric and every emotion put into the musically was very intentional.

They have definitely built an experience surrounding what is deemed, the 1975. It’s their own world. Everything about it. The social mediums. The twisted yet attractive persona of the lead. The sounds of the guitar that you hear in “She’s American”. It’s not much different than what you hear in “Settle Down” or even “Chocolate”. My point is, you know you’re entering the 1975, when you enter the 1975; it’s distinct.

There’s something special about that.

These are my lads.

my pics from the show*

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Processed with VSCO

1. Coloring Book

Chance the Rapper

Mixtape? Album? Whatever you call it, this body of work takes the crown for me of this year’s best musical work. Gospel and hip hop are the largest influences in my musical upbringing so, for others, this was just a good album. For me, however, this hit me in my heart strings, where my hair rises, and the bumps on my skin appear. The horns and the choir vocals are what told me that I was home.

The evolution of this young Chicago artist is major as I’ve been following Chancellor since 2013 to who he’s become today as a Grammy-nominated star. When he jump started his musical career with his 10 Day mixtape, he was just a shorty making beats in his city, snatching stages at the open mics. He released his first song on Soundcloud in 2011. The 2013 XXL freshmen article is where I realized this man was gonna blow up one day. He and his overalls, nose piercing, and whippersnapper attitude is what drew me. He was put on by Gambino, when he asked Chance to go on tour with him when Gambino had nothing but Royalty and was working on Because of the Internet.

Back then, lil Chano was a little more immature, a high school dreamer who opted out on college and grew on his experimentation of drugs. So many things has changed in a matter of three years lemme tell you.

He and his girl now have a DAUGHTER. Which he just recently is letting the world get to know through his social media platforms. “My daughter look just like Sia, yah can’t see her.” He and his friends who have been working on music producing and writing for other artist called “The Social Experiment” compiled an album for free called SURF, which ended up being a top three album for me last year if you read blog post last year. Finally, he’s cut down on the trippy drugs; he used to think that they would be his thing and something to be known for, but realized it was not something of value to him anymore. The growth mostly is shown in the music by far.

After the mixtape dropped and while Chano and his gang went of tour, they announced the Magnificent Coloring Day Festival, a festival in Chicago to end the tour. It was a day where he invited many of his musical friends, including Francis and the Lights, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Skrillex, Chicago’s own Common, Lil Uzi Vert, and his mentor Kanye West. He had the city of Chicago ‘doing front-flips’!

Undoubtedly, it can be said at least in hip hop, that the is his year. It’s definitely Chance the Rapper’s season in hip hop as much as it can be denied. Last year was Drake season, this year is Chance’s season, maybe next year is someone else’s. Chano had one of the HOTTEST VERSES ON arguably biggest song in hip hop in 2016, Ultralight Beam. He helped heavily on Hamilton mixtape. He has sold out stadiums, became the first independent artist to do Saturday Night Live, performed at ESPYS for the late Muhammad Ali, and got the Grammys to open up categories for non-selling, stream only artists. 2016, as you can see below, was his year.

I’ll get to the main reason why Chance is my guy later, for right now let’s quickly talk about the music. Diversity in his features is what I thought was cool with him at first. In ’13, he spit a verse on James Blake’s, “Life ‘Round Here” and I was like, shoot this new cat messes with people like James Blake AND Action Bronson?!? I need hop on this train before it’s too crowded. Chancellor, along with his brother and other Chicago rappers, has a way with the way he says his words. Poetically he makes them fit into patterns of time rhythms that sets a unique flow almost every time. But there’s also a slight Chicago twang to his voice, especially when he was younger.

One thing I respect is that, this man was blowing up while still being flat out broke in relation to how big of a name he was becoming. He was only making his cash off of merchandise and touring, and doing features I guess. I mean maybe not anymore, I’m sure he’s well off, but it was just cool to see that someone could continue independence and be like, nah it’s really not about the money, Imma give this here music for free.

The Social Experiment.

These guys right here are the Social Experiment. #SoX

They stuck it out with along with Chance, not as a surrounding band, but as a group with equal say into decisions. Head by Nico Segal on the left aka Donnie Trumpet, they made music for the people and were a collection of songwriters for man artists out there and did it for fun. They are now the band of friends that Chance plays, and probably will always play with on tour.

Aint that something! :’)

He’s Happier. It’s evident. If you listened the drug-influenced, young whippersnapper Chance the Rapper was during 10 Day, and his Acid Rap era, and dug deep into the reasonings for his anxiety and hurt in his young life, you’d see a difference in who we’re being blessed with today. He, growing up in Chicago, has seen lots of violence including the murder of one of his friends. Chance has rededicated his life to the Lord and has changed abundantly. It’s so obvious in his tone and poise nowadays. He’s still fun and buck, but man Chano is a transformed person.

So one of the real reasons I love this dude is his social involvement. Time and time again you’ll read that he has had a upbringing with educators and strong women in his life. His father worked in politics and was part of being running the campaign for Barak Obama to get into the presidential office. So, Chance learned a thing or too about how to meet peoples’ needs. He has donated and promoted giving warm, thick coats to the homeless during the winter through an organization in Detroit. These coats turn into a sleeping bag so it is designed especially for those who have no homes. He speaks up against violence like we all do, however, I love seeing someone with a platform like his, give a nonviolent voice of reason. In his community, the city of Chicago, Chance also hosts an open mic night every month called, Open Mike, which is near and dear to him because that’s how he began and how he realized he wanted to pursue music. He wants to give other young kids to opportunity to dream as well.

Anyways, that’s all.

I realized I’ve talked about him for a while now…I’ve tried to be very unpretentious over the year with Coloring Book…but personal blog so.

Anticipating Albums

Colony House

John Mayer

Lorde

Drake

Ed Sheeran

Lupe Fiasco

Paramore

Snubs (the eh’s)

Joanne (Gaga)

Lemonade (Beyonce)

ANTI (Riri)

Awaken, My Love (Bino)

JEFFREY (Thug)

matty and chancellor.

bye.

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samanthasroberts · 8 years ago

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A Definitive Ranking of the Best Hair in the Star Wars Universe

With each new Star Wars movie, fans wait to see how their favorite characters, new and old, will be styled. And, with some of the most iconic and influential hairstyles in pop-culture history, the franchise has a high bar to clear when it comes to its characters tresses. Because as Yoda says, “Hairdo. Or do not hairdo. There is no try.”

But how do the buns, braids, blowouts, helmet hair, and headdresses in a galaxy far, far away rank when pitted against each other? We have your definitive, character-by-character guide to the best and worst looks from Naboo to Starkiller Base. Coif it up!

Note: We concerned ourselves with hair, and hair only. That means no heads that are shaped like hair (looking at you, Bib Fortuna).

Best Hair

Alamy

1. Leia Leia is a basic choice to top our list, but no hair in the history of film is as iconic as the stylethat spawned millions of parodies, Halloween costumes, ill-advised earmufffs, and people who think its hilarious to hold up cinnamon buns next to their faces. George Lucas has said that the revolutionaries of Pancho Villa were the inspiration for the buns, but others have pointed out that the look more closely resembles the Fallera hairdo from Spain or the Hopi “squash blossom” buns.

Regardless,Leia doesn’tget nearly enough credit for her other styles: Her Hoth crown braid, Bespin look with the braided loops, and her coiled twisted braid situation from the final scene of the original trilogy (dubbed “the hot plate special” by the crew). Props for being the only woman in history to make hair jewelry look cool when hanging out with a giant slug gangster and kudos to her chic, but no-fuss updo in The Force Awakens. Because when youre busy running the rebel uprising and chasing after your good-for-nothing, rogue-ass son, theres no damn time to mess with your hair. We salute you and your fabulous tresses, General Organa.

Alamy

2. Padme Yasss, Queen of Naboo! One of the only good things about the prequels is Padmes sense of fashion, ranging from her iconic wedding dress to her ombre, goddess-style flowing gown. But the real showstopper is her hairfrom gravity-defying updos and bejeweled headbands straight out of a Coachella fever-dream to headdresses that would even put Sarah Jessica Parker at the Met to shame.

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3. Kylo Ren Ah, the mane that inspired a whirlwind of tweets and such think pieces as Why Is Kylo Rens Hair So Shiny and Voluminous? An Investigation. With hisfollicularlyblessed lineage, it only makes sense that he never suffers from helmet hair, even after a long day of stomping around with stormtroopers, attacking villages, and interrogating rebels. The hair game is strong with this family.

His hair is, of course, a throwback to the longer hairdo sported by his role model and grandfather, Anakin, while Anakin was being lured to the Dark Side (well get to that soon). Like Samson, do the men in their family derive dark energy from their locks? And, if thats the case, why is Anakin-as-Vader bald? Maybe thats the real answer to why Ren’s hair is so big: Its full of secrets. Hair secrets.

Alamy

4. Rey Nicknamed “Three Knobs” on set, this updo looks cute from the front with early-aughts-inspired sidepieces and wispies. From the side or back, though, things get questionable. Why three buns? Whats so wrong with one? Rey doesn’t seem super concerned with fashion, so were left to believe that its a utility thing. Still, we’re game for this look because, well, they’rein space. Things are allowed to get a little weird.

Also, a million points for her goddamn eyebrows. Dont tell us that she hasnt gotten her hands on some wax while scavenging on Jakku because we will call you a liar.

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5. Dorme Only in Star Wars could a style this outrageous look fit into the background. Padme’s handmaiden rocks a kawaii-as-hell hair bow that puts even Girls’ Shoshanna to shame. “Hair bows” (as in bows styled with actual human hair, not cute cloth bows with a clip) are a very real, and wonderfully strange, thing. But we’re pretty sure its impossible to make one IRL with this much volume using only natural hair. Please, though, someone make a tutorial to prove us wrong.

Alamy

6. Poe Dameron Poe has some luscious, swept back locks that pair well with his clean-shaven face. Like Kylo Ren, he somehow manages to avoid helmet head. This is very excellent hair. It’s amazing he doesn’t have a line of people from across the galaxy lined up to run their fingers through it.

Alamy

7. Lando Calrissian Lando might bethe first majorblack character in the Star Wars universe, but we have to assess some minor demerits forrockinga perm. But well cut him some slack because if “hair” includes facial hair, he takes the cake with his groovy-ass ’70s mustache. This look transcended Billy Dee Williams role in Star Wars. Not only was it an essential component of his signature confidence and swagger, but we maintain that it’s the reason that Williams became the spokesperson for Colt 45 beer. Were you hiring him or the ‘stache, Colt? Be honest.

Jonathan Olley

8. Jyn Erso We call this look The Bridesmaid. Its nothing as revolutionary as Jyn herself in Rogue One, but its certainly very pretty and easy for fans to replicate with side bangs, face-framing pieces, and a little bun at the nape of her neck.

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9. Mon Mothma Caroline Blakiston once said she opted to use her own mid-length red pixie cut for her role as Mon Mothma, and were glad she did. This look, while later co-opted by Justin Bieber, became an essential ’80s style.

Alamy

10. Bodhi Rook This undercut/ponytail combination is very Burning Man. Its a little dirty, but also kind of sexy in a yoga-teacher way. Conclusion: He can rook our bodhis anytime.

Alamy

11. Finn Finn’s fashion is best defined by the on-trend Resistance fighter jacket gifted to him by Poe. His hair, thougha classic cut we call the Your Always Grumpy Unclehas never been on trend. Never ever. But Boyega fans can take heart: His hair as seen in the Pacific Rim 2 set photos is extra :fire emoji:.

Alamy

12. Han Solo Though Han is a total babe, his hair is a little fluffy and we cant stand a middle part. What else do you expect from a stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerfherder? Still, he’s got a good head of hair and we can’t knock those retro sideburns. We also like his conservative, tapered cut in Force Awakensa solid look for an older Han.

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13. Luke Skywalker Baby Skywalker starts out with a retro ’70s feathered mop. A little dated now, but very “of his time.” When we meet back up with him in Force Awakens, he has transitioned to a scruffy hair/beard combo. Very old-school Jedi. Though, dear hipsters, the next time you think that this is a cute look, think of the fact that the make-up and hair folks working on the film thought this would be the best way to show that someone was literally cloistered away on a fucking island for decades.

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14. Sabe Her style makes for a crazy-couture, runway-ready look. Its not easy imitating the queen, especially when that means you have to wear giant hair croissants on the side of your head. (What is up with these people and hair that resembles pastries?) Kudos to her for rocking it.

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15. Chewbacca One of the few characters who is literally covered in hair from head to toe, his routine includes a complex combination of hair oil, holding spray, careful shampooing, a special hairbrush to comb out the snarls on his butt, and wand-created curls. Seriously.

Chewie is at his best when his locks are wind-swept and looks significantly creepy when his hair is brushed smooth. Whats with the volume? Is his forehead just super long or is he wearing a Bump It? We advocate for him getting a Border Terrier-style trim. Google it and you will agree.

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16. Anakin Skywalker This one is tricky. Anakin has, at points, both very good hair AND the definitive worst hair in the galaxy. Lets start with 20-something Anakin’s wind-blown surfer hair, a look thats later copped by his psycho grandson, Kylo Ren. Carefree! Classic! Two thumbs up! On the other hand, young Anakin has a freakin’ rat-tail. You say Padawan braid, we say rat-tail, and it doesnt matter because, when it comes down to it, we can all agree that its gross. We cant decide if he looks like he just walked out of a Hot Topic with bad rubber bracelets and a t-shirt from a band hes never actually heard or if hes a recent escapee from a hippie commune. Just: nope, nope, nope.

The “Really? You Could Do Better” List

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Obi-Wan Kenobi Specifically, young Kenobi played by Ewan McGregor. Rock me, Sexy Jesus?

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Qui-Gon Jinn The half-up, half-down look needs to crawl back to the ’90s and die there. In recent years, some millennial celebrities (ahem, Ariana Grande) have tried to make this a thing again. We maintain that encouraging anyone to wear this look is straight-up irresponsible.

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Ewoks They need a trip to the groomer. Maybe a nice puppy cut blowout like a Shih Tzu? We say yes.

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Yoda Real talk: Yoda needs to own his hair loss and go bald. If you want to feel truly creeped out, look up Yaddle, another member of Yodas species, and imagine how your favorite pint-sized, green Jedi might have looked in his younger days.

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Queen Jamillia Girl, you look like a sunflower.

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Salacious Crumb Zero points to theweird dude who you might recognize from hanging out withJabba the Hutt. He could use a shoulder waxing and some kind of hat to cover those little tufts on his head.

The Wild Card

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Captain Phasma We have no idea what she looks like under the helmet. Will actress Gwendoline Christie keep her carefree, battle-ready, Brienne-of-Tarth messy chop? Or will she revert back to the real-life long blonde locks that she sported pre-Game of Thrones? Or maybe shes got something wacky going on under there that we havent even thought up yet. The options are literally endless.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/05/27/a-definitive-ranking-of-the-best-hair-in-the-star-wars-universe/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/a-definitive-ranking-of-the-best-hair-in-the-star-wars-universe/

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