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ducktracy · 4 years ago

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187. daffy duck & egghead (1938)

release date: january 1st, 1938

series: merrie melodies

director: tex avery

starring: mel blanc (daffy, turtle, duck), danny webb (egghead)

starting off the new year with a bang—the first cartoon of 1938 is one of my favorites! two tex avery creations, daffy and egghead, make their second appearances paired together.

both characters have gotten a makeover, though egghead’s is more drastic: he now has hair and talks in a dopey drawl courtesy of danny webb. daffy, on the other hand, now has blue irises and a matching ring around his neck—this design would be exclusive to this short only. but, it IS the first cartoon to pen him as daffy duck! he’d appear in a number of looney tunes shorts with porky as the year would go on.

like so many other “hunter vs prey” shorts, egghead is determined to hunt daffy. daffy, however, is prepared to do everything in his power to make egghead miserable.

ben hardaway, who would have been directing his own cartoons at the time of this cartoon’s release, is the writer, and it shows throughout. ben is notable for his more hayseed sense of humor, relying on puns so corny you’ll be flossing your teeth for a week to remove the kernels. his punny touch is noticeable right at the start, with daffy and egghead bursting out of literal nutshells in an odd little introductory sequence. irv spence does some nice animation here: daffy shakes his fists in the glory, soon to be interrupted by the fire of egghead’s gun. egghead chases after a HOOHOOing daffy, the smoke from the gun spelling out to the audience “DUCK SEASON STARTS TODAY”.

the scene is odd, but more so out of uniqueness rather than perplexity. one wonders how tex really would have prefaced the cartoon if he were paired with another writer instead.

in a tradition that would carry out into tex’s MGM days, one of our first impressions of the short is a facetious disclaimer:

a sense of tranquility is established through a soft, sweeping rendition of “morning song” from the william tell overture. various gorgeously painted backgrounds fade into each other to convey the passage of time and rise of the sun, each background absolutely stunning in its own right. in a tex avery cartoon, such peace and harmony can only mean one thing: chaos is soon to follow.

our eponymous hunter creeps onto the screen, remarking aloud on the eerie stillness of his surroundings. “i wonder if there are any more hunters out here this morning.” right on cue, a swarm of hunters pop out of the reeds, reciting a popular catchphrase from the ken murray show reused in many a ‘30s WB cartoon: “whoooooooooa, yeaaaaah!”

the sound of quacks ring out from the recesses of the reeds, turning egghead on the alert. just as he prepares to hunt his prey, a signature avery gag of epic proportions interrupts the scene... literally.

tedd pierce’s silhouette darkens the screen as he makes his way to his movie seat--a latecomer. egghead spots him and urges him to sit down and not scare away his prey. the latecomer does so, only to rise up again and change seats. our frustrated sportsman urges the silhouette to sit down again, which he does so. the silhouette never utters a word, and that’s the best part. the matter of fact delivery of the gag, the control of it all is what makes the gag so funny. such even temperament from the silhouette juxtaposes starkly with the wild nature of avery cartoons. the normal is now the ridiculous.

when the silhouette snoops around for a better seat once more, egghead loses all patience and fires his gun straight at the silhouette. tedd pierce’s theatrics are hilarious--he twirls around, clutching his heart, hamming up his injury to the last drop. the anticipatory drum-roll as egghead looks on brings the entire act together. finally, pierce collapses, much to the contentment of egghead. he merely rubs the dust off his hands in a job well done and continues where he left off.

cartoon characters shooting audience members isn’t an alien move in warner bros. cartoons (bugs in rhapsody rabbit, daffy in the ducksters), yet the inclusion of the silhouette and its subsequent dramatics brings a new level of inclusion with the audience. imagine what an uproar this would get in a packed house! it’s a great way to break the barrier between cartoon characters and the audience. WB did a great job of making the audience feel included. hell, a majority of daffy’s character throughout the ‘40s hinges on this! but that’s an analysis for another time.

speaking of daffy, he’s the perpetrator of those quacking sounds in the reeds. egghead parts the plants to see if his prey is still there. he is—daffy gives him a viscious bite on egghead’s bulbous nose before going back into hiding.

“that duck’s craaaa-zy!” daffy pops his head out of the reeds again, shrieking a reply of “you tellin’ me? WOO WOO WOOHOO!”

daffy’s voice is significantly more shrill than his dopey guffaws in porky’s duck hunt. in fact, it’s so shrill that this could easily be considered one of his most annoying cartoons. though his 100% screwy, totally out of his mind personality isn’t my favorite personality for him, it’s still pretty damn great! so if you like obnoxious daffy (like me), this is a short for you. if you can’t stand him being a lunatic, stay away!

with that, daffy takes an exit, whooping and shrieking all the way in a direct throwback to his ecstatic exit in porky’s duck hunt. this is a game-changer for the merrie melodies series—the screwy, lunatic antics were typically reserved for the black and white looney tunes shorts. and here we have daffy, splitting the ears of his patrons and being a royal nuisance in the more expensive, esteemed merrie melodies, typically reserved for song and dance numbers! this ain’t your mother’s merry melody.

when daffy takes refuge within a cluster of reeds positioned in the middle of the lake, egghead uses this as an opportunity to lure out his prey with a decoy. specifically, ONE LOVE-LURE DUCK DECOY.

egghead sends the obnoxiously feminine duck decoy out into the water, quacking in time to the beat of stalling’s “the lady in red” underscore. the decoy disappears into the reeds, and there’s a pause.

a flurry of aggravated, warbled quacking cues us in that daffy is pissed off. the action is all hidden behind the plants, leaving details of their altercation is up to the audience’s interpretation. what we do see is daffy’s physical anger: he pops out of the water at the bank of the lake, throwing the decoy down at egghead’s feet. a makeshift sign cleverly held up by a cattail echoes a beloved catchphrase from the radio show fibber mcgee and molly:

bubbles rippling on the surface indicate daffy’s presence. he pokes his head out to heave a teasing quack at the befuddled hunter before dipping back down again, prompting egghead to stick his rifle in the lake. cue a tried and true gag that was likely much funnier then than now: the ol’ tie-the-gun-into-a-bow trick.

the next gag is one that tex avery would refurbish in his MGM debut, the early bird dood it!: egghead physically lifts the lake up like a blanket, where daffy appears just in time to give his nose another honk for good measure. cue crazed laughter and intricate water aerobics. daffy halts, addressing the audience directly with a flimsy reassurance: “i’m not crazy, i just don’t give a darn!”

irv spence takes the next showdown between hunter and duck. look at how much more appealing egghead is in his hands! egghead leans down to retrieve his gun he tosses aside, when daffy zooms into frame and fights him for it. daffy’s consistent smile as he and egghead battle for dominance, both trying to reach higher and higher on the gun, is hysterical—he’s absolutely getting a kick out of egghead’s frustration. though it was clear he was reveling in porky’s own anger in porky’s duck hunt, here his enjoyment is much more blatant. he loves being a pest.

daffy slides the rifle beneath his legs and out of sight, bopping egghead on the fist and causing him to slug a haymaker against his own head. signature irv spence grawlixes add a nice level of two dimensional graphic design, like something straight from a comic.

out of nowhere, a random turtle disrupts the altercation. the turtle is a parody of parkykarkus from the chase & sanborn hour, speaking in a thick accent and slightly butchered grammar. he opts to settle daffy and egghead’s fight once and for all, posing as a referee. “just a minute, chums. just a minute!” he supplies the two with pistols, both fitted for their respective sizes. to daffy, “turn around.” to egghead: “now you turn around.”

i love how daffy’s curiosity with the turtle’s interruption is noticeable. so noticeable, in fact, that the turtle grows hostile, getting up in his face and shouting “KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES BUSINESS, AIN’T IT!” it’s rare to see daffy lacking control of the situation, even this early on.

the two put their backs together per the turtle’s command, walking ten paces backwards in time to the turtle’s countdown. just as the turtle reaches ten, daffy jumps behind egghead, who fires. a potentially gruesome conclusion is avoided as the bullet hits the turtle’s chest instead, causing his head to rocket upward, hit a branch, and shrink back into his shell. in a hardawayian touch, daffy hands egghead a cigar, walking off screen, satisfied.

random as the scene is (hardaway’s influence seems to be particularly strong throughout this whole middle section), irv spence’s timing and appealing animation makes up for it. the switch to another animator entails an inevitable downgrade in draftsmanship.

after egghead realizes he’s been duped, he retrieves his rifle and prepares to shoot daffy. though initially startled, daffy thinks on his feet, and eagerly places an apple on his head for egghead to aim at instead. stalling’s fitting accompaniment of “william tell overture” raises in key each time egghead fires (and subsequently misses), a pattern that sounds almost identical to scott bradley’s scores under the direction of tex at MGM.

egghead shoots a tree, the lake, a barn, and even straight past daffy, who grows increasingly irritated at the hunter’s incompetence, moving closer to him with each effort. hardaway’s influence is strong with the next gag, matched with tex’s fast pace to prevent it from overstaying its welcome: daffy thrusts pencils, sunglasses, and a sign that says BLIND on it before turning to the audience and tssking. “too bad. too bad!” harsh indeed. i imagine this gag would have been prolonged had hardaway directed this cartoon or wrote it under another director.

if anything, this cartoon certainly displays the importance of the relationship between director and writer. writers have a much bigger influence on the cartoon than one might believe! there’s a reason as to why chuck jones and mike maltese are touted around as a dynamic duo. i wouldn’t call hardaway a bad writer by any means, but his influence is certainly potent. tex is a strong director, and thankfully he could cushion the blows of hardaway’s corniness as much as he could, but it’s also evident that certain decisions were made that tex wouldn’t have made in other circumstances.

decisions such as daffy singing an entire ode to his lunacy as the cartoon’s song number. this is definitely a hardawayian insert--a prototype, hayseed, screwball bugs bunny sings his own nutty anthem in hardaway’s hare-um scare-um just a year later. full song numbers have been making their way out the door in avery’s cartoons, and by either this year or next they’d be absent in total from the merrie melodies series. it’s unlike avery to write a whole song about characters explaining their nuttiness.

that is why i have qualms with the scene. at his zenith, daffy never attempts to explain or justify his screwiness. even in the mid-’40s, when he’s able to think and speak coherently and isn’t a mere caricature of his name, he showed no self awareness for his condition. the “look at me, ain’t i a crazy one?” jokes with him were out the door by 1939. half the fun with him is how unaware he is of his daffiness--he lives in it constantly, always zipping from emotional extremes, but never stops to tell the audience just how crazy and fun he is. here, his self-awareness seems ingenuine and prideful. daffy is my favorite character for his humanity and relatability (even--if not more so--when he’s a total loon). here, he lacks that dynamism. he’s merely a stock reflection of his namesake.

with that said, daffy’s rendition of “the merry go round broke down” is my favorite merrie melody song number, period. i’m certainly biased due to my undying affinity with daffy, but irv spence’s animation is genuinely fun to watch, and mel blanc does a wonderful performance. i know all of the words by heart! essentially, daffy’s justification for his daffiness is because the dizzy pace of the merry go round went to his head and made him nuts. while this sense of bragging is relatively out of character for him, it makes for a contagiously fun song, and also, this is his second film ever. they still had much to explore.

the scene concludes with daffy shaking hands with his reflection in the water and diving back in. fade out and in to egghead, still furiously attempting to pursue his prey. cue a fun little avery gag where our hunter nonchalantly opens the reeds he’s hiding behind like a pair of blinds. daffy’s carefree quacking and swimming in the lake almost seems to mock him. in a gag that would be reused in avery’s lucky ducky over at MGM to a greater extent, daffy puts on a mask to scare away the oncoming bullets. indeed, the bullets retreat into egghead’s gun, prompting befuddled stares at both the gun and the audience.

daffy engages in another round of spastic water aerobics, HOOHOOing all the way. he only pauses to cling to a cattail, echoing an averyian daffy catchphrase that he would also shriek in daffy duck in hollywood, “ain’t i some cutie? ahah! i think i’ll do it again! HAHAHA!”

a nice, jazzy score of “bob white (whatcha gonna swing tonight?)” accompanies yet another endeavor by egghead. he’s either stupidly bold or boldly stupid to keep up such a tiring charade--or both! egghead loads a pair of gloves tied to a string into the barrel of the rifle, cleverly using a cattail as a bore brush. and, despite the absurdity of his makeshift fishing pole, it works: one gloved hand grabs daffy by the neck, the other konking him on the head and knocking him unconscious. egghead reels in his prize, dumping daffy into a net and letting out a handful of gleeful “WHOOPEE!”s.

avery’s timing is succinct--immediately after egghead snags his duck, the sound of a siren drowns out his celebration. a duck nearly identical to daffy approaches the scene in an “asylum ambulance”. “gee, t’anks a lot for catchin’ dis goof!” duck confiscates his fellow duck comrade. the decision to turn the conversation confidential, complete with the lowering of the voice and shifty-eyed glances is great. “y’know, we been after dis guy for months!”

despite everything that egghead has endured, he seems genuinely shocked at the duck’s claim that daffy is “100% nuts”. “oh YEAH?” he echoes, daring to believe it. duck nods. “yeeeeah!” with that, he gives egghead a honk right on the nose.

daffy, completely unscathed, wastes little time in joining the festivities as both ducks beat the tar out of egghead from both ends, literally kicking him in the arse and honking him on the nose. both ducks head to the lake, HOOHOOing in shrill unison as they bound off into the horizon. egghead only has one more option... to join them. thus, we iris out on our brave hunter HOOHOOing into the horizon himself.

as i said at the beginning of this review, this cartoon is one of my favorites--for this era, anyway. despite its imperfections, it’s still a rather fun and rousing cartoon. it’s exciting to see daffy becoming more recognizable, in terms of voice, demeanor, and appearance. the same can be said for egghead as well, though i doubt anyone has the same attachment to him as they do other characters. i certainly don’t.

admittedly, porky’s duck hunt is a more solid cartoon. this cartoon feels much more like a string of gags than anything, though i suppose that could be said for many a tex avery cartoon. he wasn’t known for his moving stories. hardaway’s corny, hayseed sense of humor serves as the biggest detriment to the cartoon, but luckily tex is a strong enough director to try and work around those weaknesses as best he could. and even though i disagree with the reasoning behind the song number, the song number will always be my favorite merry melody song.

i didn’t mention the backgrounds very often, but they’re STELLAR. the colorful, whimsical palette brings a lot of energy and vitality to the table. if you were to describe the cartoon in one word, “energetic” would certainly be it.

so, with that said, go watch it! this is a really fun cartoon that serves as an interesting look into early daffy’s character, obnoxious as he may be.

link!

#lt #daffy duck and egghead #looney tunes #reviews #avery #long post

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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For @imashittalkingmushroom who requested some Tim content. Excerpt from one of the seemingly endless WIPs I toil away at in my downtime because me pace myself, in this economy, hah. This one’s called “The Vienna Game” and is Batfam ensemble versus a new rising threat, which Tim has a revelation about here. This part is just a rough draft for the moment, but you get the idea.

THE VIENNA GAME

Chapter Five: Pawn Storm

Barely five minutes after Tim’s head hit his pillow, he sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering in his throat.

“They’re all connected,” he said, wide-eyed to an empty room. The lack of a response bequeathed by his surroundings was a bit, well, lacking, so he leaped to his feet and raced down to the hall to the Batcave’s nearest access point.

“They’re all connected,” he shouted again as he took the rough-hewn stone stairs three at a time. His words bounced and rattled off the walls of the cave, winging upwards into its darkest recesses and rousing the bats from their nests overhead. They scattered in every direction, deeper into the darkness, as they reacted to his urgency and intensity with shrieking complaints.

If only his actual family could be similarly moved. But no, they had to suck instead.

“Whozit whatzit howzit?” Dick swiveled in his chair, just enough to shoot the younger boy a quizzical eyebrow but not enough to necessitate removing his feet from next to the Batcomputer’s keyboard, where Bruce was currently drilling holes into them with a patented (and thus wholly ineffective) Batglare.

“What is it Lassie? Did Timmy fall down the well again? One bark for yes, two for no,” Jason said brightly. He bent at the waist and braced his hands on his thighs as though actually talking to a dog; it had the unfortunate side-effect of making his stupid brother a stupid firmly planted rock that did little more than shift the merest micro-meter when Tim rolled his eyes and brusquely shouldered past him.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. I’m Timmy,” he said irritably. Too late he realized the trap he’d blearily wandered into as his jackass brother practically cackled with glee. Tim reddened and quickened his pace to the Batcomputer. “Oh shut up.”

Jason swivelled, but whatever his intended follow-up, he abruptly cut off as an apple core arced out of the shadows and bounced off his head. The second eldest pivoted sharply once more and scowled in the direction it’d come from as Tim absently took note of the several other apple cores scattered around Jason’s feet.

“Would you stop that?”

Cassandra, target of his ire, merely contemplated him for a beat before shaking her head.

“No thank you,” she politely declined, and she bit into a fresh apple with a loud crunch.

“You will be cleaning those up, not Alfred,” their father said, wearily enough Tim got the sense this had been going on for quite some time. His sister just shrugged.

“Worth it.”

Bruce exercised the better part of valor and shifted his attention back to Tim. “And didn’t you say you were going to bed?”

“I did say that,” Tim said agreeably as he barreled forth unto the Batcomputer. He batted (hah - oh no, the sleep deprivation was real) Dick’s feet aside and rebutted Dick’s injurious expression with an apologetic one of his own; apparently appeased, Dick just lithely shrugged and lifted his linked legs straight off the desk’s surface and then just never stopped. Instead he kept lifting his legs up, up and away until he’d transitioned into a perfect handstand on the seat of the chair, which he then transitioned out of by gracefully flipping over the chair’s back and onto his feet. Because see, Tim’s eldest brother’s middle name was not in fact ‘John,’ it was ‘Just That Extra.’

“I even did that,” Tim continued as he set his fingers to dancing swiftly across the keyboard. “But then I realized something.”

“You look ridiculous when you pop your collar,” Steph said knowingly.

“What? No. Wait, when have I ever done that?”

“Umm, the last time you were drunk, duh.”

Tim paused just long enough to shoot his ex an absolutely baffled look, over where she was lounging bonelessly next to Cass.

“When was I drunk?”

Steph tilted her head to the side and squinted in thought. “Drunk, concussed....whatever. It was definitely one of those two. I have pictures. They’re not good.”

Perhaps sensing his impending spontaneous combustion, Bruce interceded, raising a hand to quiet the perpetual storm of sibling (and Steph) nonsense.

“What’s this about, Tim?”

“Our newest Rogue, the one we just finally caught last week,” Tim reported, turning his attention back to the Dance of the Keystrokes. “We have a problem.”

Their father frowned. “Desperado? What’s the problem?”

“His name,” Tim said grimly. He finished pulling up the string of files he’d only minutes ago linked together in his own mind. Flashing into existence on the wall to wall screens before them were all the notes the various members of their family had compiled on the new villain in town, as well as a number of other files for a good dozen or so other relatively new or unknown villains scattered across the globe, with these latter documents pulled from the digital archives of various superhero teams and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Blitz, a speedster located in Southern California, their indistinct form pixelated and blurred virtue of the crackling halo of electrical energy they seemed to wear like a cloak of St. Elmo’s Fire.

A Filipino man and woman purported to be fraternal twins operating out of a number of hotspots throughout Southeast Asia, with a combined name whose translation from Tagalog roughly amounted to ‘Double Check.’

A young brunette woman seemingly barely out of her teens, with eyes hidden behind an overly large pair of sunglasses, linked to a series of crimes in Argentina and Chile and allegedly going by the name ‘Swindle.’

A black man in his mid to late twenties, moving across the Iberian peninsula, with no reported name given, just a strange adherence to a symbol that appeared to be of a windmill, of all things, and that had local press dubbing him ‘Don Quixote.’

King March, a white man in his late forties to early fifties, with black hair and greying temples and a stern but smug disposition in all the files Interpol had compiled on him due to his frequent appearances as a person of interest throughout Eastern Europe.

A short, acrobatic Latino teleporter who offered up only the name ‘Castle’ in his sporadic run-ins with various hero organizations across the globe.

Tempo, suspected to originally hail from Sri Lanka, and last sighted in Hong Kong of all places...and by no means the only one of this assortment of individuals engaged in criminal enterprises in a city known for its Batman Inc presence.

Undermine, a masked man so far content to operate just out of Australia.

Flag Fall, another masked individual largely spotted in the Southeastern U.S.

An unseen person or persons known only by a calling card left in various Saharan regions, identifying them as someone named ‘Tabia.’

And lastly, a mature black woman out of the UK, sporting a wry, enigmatic smile in the only known picture of her, alongside her alleged pseudonym: Zugzwang.

“It was pretty much total coincidence I put it together,” Tim said as his family gathered more closely behind him to survey the assembled files over his shoulder. “I’d come across most these files over the past couple months, just in passing, as I like to familiarize myself with the various players in most Batman Inc. operating cities, and I was just reading this last file before bed, just to kinda wind down, y’know....”

“That sentence makes me so sad I don’t even have the heart to make fun of you,” Jason interrupted. He frowned. “Wait, that implies I have a heart. Hang on, that doesn’t sound right. And is this, what, sympathy I’m feeling right now? Eww, that is not the emotion I ordered. Take it back.”

Tim glared at him briefly, and then foraged on. “Anyway, as I was saying, I happened to be reading this last file before bed, and her name stuck out for me and from there I just started connecting some dots. See, alone, none of these names stand out as particularly significant, but put them together, and what happens?”

“They all have multiple meanings,” Damian said, scowling at the screens with focused intensity. “Mostly innocuous, but they’re also all....hmm. Chess terminology.”

Tim nodded enthusiastically. “Bingo! Ten points to Stabby Smurf.”

He bent over the keyboard again and started pulling up various video files, catching sight of reflections out of the corner of his eye as he did so. Duke seemed to be mouthing “Stabby Smurf” with a kind of horrified awe and Damian himself seemed unable to decide if he was offended or not. Whoops, that part hadn’t been meant to come out aloud. Tim coughed to cover a grimace slash smirk and hastened back to his point.

“For instance, based on geographical location alone, Flag Fall seems to be an obvious reference to an actual flag, but the term also refers to timed chess matches, when a given player has run out of time to make a move. Swindle isn’t just a term for cheating or fraud, but in chess, refers to when a losing player tricks their opponent into falling for a decoy move that ends the game in a draw instead of a loss. King march is a term for when you advance your king up the board, tempo is a single turn or move, a double check is when two different pieces put an opponent’s king in check simultaneously, and undermining is when you capture a defensive piece of your opponent’s and leave their king undefended.”

He stopped for a breath and Damian quickly stepped into the breach and picked up where he left off, seamlessly following the train of thought. “And Tabia comes from the Arabic for ‘essence,’ but in chess is a key point, specifically a point of departure from which you can perform any number of signature moves. The windmill symbol utilized by this individual in Spain and its surrounding regions most likely then does not reference Don Quixote, but rather a looped series of moves, usually brought upon by a rook and a bishop, which forces an opponent’s king to ‘windmill’ back and forth between just two or three squares in order to keep out of check.”

“And then Blitz of course refers to a specific opening gambit, that can bring about checkmate in four moves or less,” Tim resumed. “And while Castle has so far been assumed to be nothing more than a surname according to various heroes who have encountered him, largely no doubt due to the fact that he doesn’t affect any kind of costume or disguise, when you consider that pretty much all his demonstrations of teleportation utilize a kind of ‘switching’ of two persons’ relative placement in space/time, either as a signature or an actual staple of his power, its far more likely his name is a reference to ‘castling.’ Which of course then just brings us back to Zugzwang, which is a German term that loosely translates to ‘compulsion to move’ and specifically denotes any scenario in chess in which a player has no choice but to move, even though all moves available to them are inevitably going to worsen their position.”

They all took a minute to absorb that then, speed-reading their way through the various files with all the quickness that made it an actual possibility one or more of them might someday make it all the way through a read-through of the entire Wayne Manor Library, even taking into account the minimal time any of them allotted to the having of actual ‘hobbies.’

It was Cass who found something new to seize upon next, though she never once flicked her eyes away from where they tracked the movements of one videoed individual to the next, screen by screen.

“It’s not just the names,” she reported, scrutinizing each figure intently. “They move alike. When they fight. Its not a lot. But enough that they probably trained together, or at least shared a teacher.”

Tim nodded again. “I thought so too, but I wasn’t sure. I don’t have your eye for that, but it seemed like they might.”

“Reeet, record scratch,” Steph jumped in then. “Not to be all ‘talk nerdy to me, baby,’ since we don’t do that any more and whoops, totally forgot for a second that your dad is legit standing right here, wow, awkwaaaaaard, but for those of us still waiting to buy a vowel, why is this a problem with that Desperado dude specifically?”

“Because we’ve been operating off of the assumption that he chose his name as a more obvious reference to simply being some kind of outlaw,” Bruce said. “But in terms of chess specifically, a desperado piece is any piece that is trapped or in danger, and then sacrifices itself to achieve some kind of maximum damage or compensation that greatly outweighs the loss of itself.”

Steph nodded and pursed her lips. “Cool, cool. Okay so first off, let me just say how glad I am that it was you in specific that decided to follow up on that. Definitely the best of all timelines there, like just so, so absolutely stellar, that. It in no way compounded the awkwardness of the moment or contributed to my pending death by mortification. Secondly, oh, like. Yikes, so that’s not great, huh.”

“No, its not,” Bruce said seriously, with only the barest of twitches in the proximity of those things other people use to smile, aka lips. “If all of this turns out to bear fruit, as I suspect it will, the relative ease with which this Desperado was captured is nothing short of ominous. But luckily, we now have a chance to get ahead of whatever else might be in the works there. Excellent work, Tim.”

Tim squirmed, digging deep into the well of his bodily mastery and various techniques for exerting mind over matter. Don’t blush, don’t blush, you’re a super cool crime-fighting dude, not a total dweeb. “Like I said, it was mostly just dumb luck.”

“Hey now, none of that, Baby Bird,” Dick said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You still had to spot the pattern and connect the dots no matter how circumstantial you feel happening across the first dot was. That’s all you, kiddo.”

“Dick, I’m almost eighteen,” Tim whined. Ugh, his brother was the worst. He was going to be calling him Baby Bird when he was eighty at this point. And there went all his attempts at bodily mastery. Insult was added to injury when he stumbled to the side, then, though that had more to do with Jason hip-checking him out of the way so he could take over at the Batcomputer’s keyboard.

“Hey! What the hell was that for, Jay?”

“Umm, saving your ass, duh,” his other older brother said. Tim narrowed his eyes.

“That tracks how, exactly?”

“You were well on your way to immolation by way of embarrassment thanks to all the attention, so I’m stealing your thunder, double duh. Like I said, saving your ass. You’re welcome,” Jason said distractedly, busy with whatever else he was doing aside from being King of the Assholes.

Correction. That brother was the worst.

“Gee, thanks ever so much,” Tim intoned acidly.

“Don’t mention it, brat.”

Tim was still working on a return volley when Jason found whatever it was he was looking for and called up some more files onscreen.

“Okay, so check it out. Remember back in March, when we caught wind of some ‘new talent’ looking to establish a foothold in the local underground, and once we routed them, the only head honcho we could seemingly trace all of that back to was someone we assumed to be named Cassie or Cassandra based on what little we could decrypt of her communications? So now I’m thinking what if we filled in the gaps there wrong, and her name actually was Caissa?”

Tim looked around, but the name didn’t seem to be ringing any bells for anyone else either.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Who the hell is Caissa?”

“The fictional regurgitation of some plagiaristic hack from two hundred years ago.”

“Jason,” Bruce sighed. Jason rolled his eyes.

“Fine, whatever. So there’s this poem by this untalented dumbass named William Jones back in the 1700s, about a made-up Greek goddess of chess, named Caissa. But really, its just a rip-off of a much older poem from the 1500s by an Italian dude named Hieronymus Vida, in which the character of Caissa was originally named Scacchia. So I mean, I’m just saying, if this chick was going by the name Scacchia, I would have pegged what that was a reference to right away, because like, I have taste and so I’m way more familiar with the original version than the ode of a derivative hack. But I guess you just can’t count on bad guys to default to the superior take,” he lamented with a mournful sigh.

“But wait, aren’t you a bad guy?” Duke inquired, all bright eyes and fake innocence. Jason shot him A Look.

“Not this week, duh. Keep up.”

“Oh, sorry, my bad. I forgot to look at the calendar again.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jason said magnaminously. “Anyway, might just be a hunch, but worth looking into, I’d say. If her name really was actually Caissa, this Desperado could be working for her, and he might actually just be Round Two.”

Cass nodded. “Makes sense. Also restores my good name. Thanks little brother.”

“Any time, little sister. This mean you’ll stop throwing shit at me now?”

“Nope.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Keeps me up at night.”

“You’re nocturnal, you bipedal asshat.”

Cass just smirked some more and sashayed away. Then flipped into a handstand and started walking away on her hands because clearly, she’d been spending too much time with Dick.

Which reminded him - Tim turned his attention back to his oldest brother, mortification forgotten or at least put on hold for the moment.

“Hey, so, a lot of the files noted that several of these people are likely polyglots,” Tim said. “Since Cass thinks they have some kind of shared combat instruction in their background, I’m thinking there’s a chance we could get a better idea of what regions they all might have been in, in order to get that shared instruction, if we could isolate what languages or dialects or even accents they might have in common, y’know? You’ve got the best ear for languages, what do you think?”

Dick nodded thoughtfully as he perused several of the files. “Its a good idea. I’ll get into it. First though, I’ve gotta make a few calls.”

Their father shot him an appraising glance. “Harper?” He asked.

Dick nodded again. “Yeah, Roy, but also Helena and Tiger. Can’t hurt to have all three of them read in on this. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and where there’s chess, there’s bound to be Checkmate. I’d find it way too big a coincidence if there’s not a connection there somewhere, and if there is one to be found, I’d say those three are our best chance of finding it.”

Bruce made a sour face. Dick arched a challenging eyebrow. Bruce sighed.

“I’m not disagreeing, I just don’t like it.”

Dick laughed. “Well, you don’t like anything, so really we’re all just in awe of your dedication to your Brand, Pops.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and sighed again, before turning his attention back to Tim. “As for you, I think you’ve contributed enough for one night, don’t you? Why don’t you get back to what you were doing before this....what was that again....oh right, getting some sleep?”

Tim made a face of his own. He was way too keyed up now - again - still - to go back to bed now. And again, must he reiterate, he was almost eighteen, helloooooo.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“Oh good, I’m so glad that’s what’s catching on as the family motto.”

“Don’t see you going to bed,” Tim sulked in a most mature fashion. The absolute height of maturity. Nay, the apogee, the zenith, we’re talking orbital here.

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne,” Jason interrupted in a thunderous facsimile of their father’s impressive baritone. “This is a Do As I Say, Not As I Do household!”

“This from the son who makes an art form out of never doing either,” Bruce said dryly.

Jason shrugged and buffed his nails against his chest, blithely unconcerned. “I go my own way. Its part of my charm.”

“Oh cool,” Duke cut in excitedly. “Are we playing that game again where we just make up our own definitions that have nothing to do with the actual words we say?”

Jason gasped and pressed his palm flat over his heart. “Et tu, Daisy Dukes?”

Duke nodded gravely. “Et mi, Sweeney Todd.”

“Boys,” Bruce said wearily.

Both stopped and shot him expectant looks.

“What?”

“I actually have no idea, to be honest. It just feels like one of those things I should attempt to say periodically. Never mind. Carry on.”

Jason snorted and rolled his eyes at Duke as the two of them wandered off towards the opposite end of the cave. “As if we were ever going to do otherwise. He’s so weird sometimes, I swear.”

Duke hummed in agreement. “I think its on account of him being an ancient eldritch being.”

“I’m only forty-two,” Bruce called after them, aggrieved. They ignored him.

“Did you know, he was actually there to witness the actual dawn of time,” Jason said. “And yet, wake him up before noon and its like you’ve committed murder. And I would know. I’ve actually murdered people.”

“That’s true, you have.”

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darquedeath4444 · 6 years ago

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First Time to See the World

Chapter FOURTEEN

Sasuke and Sakura met up with Naruto at the entrance of where the third part of the Chunin exams were to be held. The blond greeted them enthusiastically and instantly began rambling about what he had been doing the past month as they made their way towards the stands. He was accompanied by a white haired man, who was Jiraiya, a guy Sakura recognized as the Toad Sannin.

Sakura recognized the chakra signature that had entered the stands a while after they had sat down, and from the way the chakra signature was approaching them, she knew that Kimimaro had sensed her too.

She raised a hand in greeting when Kimimaro appeared. Naruto and Sasuke turned to see who she was waving at.

Naruto jumped to his feet. "You! You're that weirdo creepy stalker dude that came to Sakura-chan's hospital room everyday!"

Sasuke sighed and dragged the blond back by his collar. Both Sakura and Kimimaro ignored the blond as they greeted each other.

"What do you think?" Kimimaro asked.

Sakura knew what he meant. She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. "My opponent is the Hyuuga," she said. "I've done research about all the possible opponents I might have to fight. The bone structure of the Kaguya is not known to anyone. No one knows its exact arrangements. The lack of knowledge will be an advantage, though I don't know exactly how much they can see with their Kekkei Genkai. The Shikotsumyaku will defend me against most of their chakra techniques, but it will be damaging if I receive a direct Juken strike."

Kimimaro nodded in agreement. "I think you'll do fine," he told her.

Sakura's face melted into a small smile. "Yeah." Kimimaro turned around and walked off again. Sakura looked behind him and saw Kabuto and Orochimaru making their way towards the Hokage's seating area.

"Who was that?" Naruto asked.

Sakura turned to him, a frown on her face. "My teacher, my friends, and my only surviving clan mate."

Naruto's face darkened at that. "Oh, sorry."

Sakura waved him off. "It's okay."

Sasuke broke the awkward silence that threatened to settle around them by nudging the blond. "You're first, Dobe."

Naruto nodded. "I'm gonna win, ttebayo!" He declared. "And then we can all become Chunin!"

On cue, Genma stepped forward. "Namikaze Naruto VS Aburame Shino,” he announced.

Sakua turned towards the battlefield as Naruto made his way down. While she only knew the blond as a teammate, she knew him well enough to know that he was actually pretty skilled. If she had to bet money on one of the fighters, it would on the Hokage’s son. She glanced to the side and saw Sasuke smirking as well. He didn't show it, but she was sure he was confident in their teammate’s victory as well.

The Aburame calmly made his way down into the field while Naruto just jumped over the balcony. Sakura quickly analyzed the two sides.

Shino's bugs could absorb chakra at an amazing, dangerous rate. He probably would have won against any opponent who underestimated him. It was probably just misfortune that he was paired up against Naruto, who had chakra that could burn.

Sakura knew this, and she watched with a unsure smile on her lips.

This was the chakra, the fire that had killed the freedom of her only family back then. However, it was also the fire that had knocked both her and Haku out of a land of despair.

The battle felt surprisingly anticlimactic, though Naruto’s revelation of his plan made it slightly less dull as Shino watched in confusion, not knowing why his bugs were falling to the ground on by one.

Kushina was smirking proudly in the stands, and it was probably her that taught him to use his chakra to guard against the Aburame techniques.

Naruto seemed to know the real purpose of the exams, which was basically to show off that one was Chunin material. He summoned enough Shadow Clones to fill the whole entire battle field then explained the nature of his chakra and was announced victor after his opponent gracefully accepted defeat.

The blond reappeared in the stands by his teammates, a grin on his face.

"Not bad." Sasuke admitted.

Sakura nodded and passed the blond compliments of her own, However, her eyes were fixed on the board, already knowing who was next.

"Kaguya Sakura VS Hyuuga Neji." Genma called.

She stood up.

Naruto grinned and patted her on the back. "Go Sakura-chan!"

"Win,” Sasuke told her simply.

Kakashi ruffled her hair for a second before gently pushing her in the direction of the stairs, where Kimimaro was waiting for her. Sakura stalked away from her team, trying to shake off the warm, unfamiliar feeling within her chest.

Kimimaro placed a hand on her shoulder. "Try to hold it in," he told her gently. "But if it escalates, I'll stop you."

Sakura nodded gratefully."Thank you."

Kimimaro nodded. "Save the dances until they are absolutely necessary," he paused. "The Shikotsumyaku is the most superior form of Taijutsu. The Hyuuga may claim that spot for their Juken, but that is only with the aid of their Byakugan. Even then, the bones of us Kaguya can be reinforced by chakra. Not even the gentle fist can penetrate out several layers of defense that easily."

Sakura nodded, and Kimimaro drew back. "Good luck."

Sakura channeled the blood lust she felt bubbling within her into her smirk. "I don't need luck." She saw something swirl within Kimimaro's eyes too, and knew that he was already as deep in the sea of chaos as she was. She then turned and jumped off the balcony landing in a neat crouch. Neji was already waiting for her, but she took her time getting into position.

Once he looked at both sides, Genma started the match.

Hyuuga Neji was a well known prodigy of the Hyuuga branch family.

There were rumors that he may be picked to be the next heir of the Hyuuga clan. After all, his father was the younger twin brother of the current Hyuuga head. It was possible, especially due to his skills.

Neji nodded curtly before he shot forward for the first move.

Sakura dodged the first blow and jumped back to avoid the next. She blocked the next with her arm in order to see the damage it dealt. She felt her reinforced bones strain under the attack but the chakra didn't get past her defense.

She kicked out to make the Hyuuga draw back and they both gave each other an once over.

With her medical ninjutsu and knowledge, she would be able to unblock any blocked tenketsu. However, it would probably cost her chakra, and even if she did win, using up all her chakra in the first match would mean her loss anyways.

Then again, holding back too much would cost her. Close combat was a specialty to both sides, but that also gave Sakura an advantage. Growing up with Zabuza and Haku, she had picked up an impressive amount of long range backup skills as well.

The Silent Killing would probably not help here, for it was close to impossible to sneak up on a Hyuuga, due to those creepy white eyes, which left her with long range attacks that were visible, but wasn't easy to dodge.

She kept a careful eye on her opponent and reached into her pouch, pulling out a scroll.

She was confident in her speed. She would have to be, for she had had to match Haku.

She shifted the Kubikiribocho strapped to her back, so that it was easier to reach the handle, knowing that with the blade, the longer reach would give her an advantage.

This time, she moved in first. She ran her chakra through the whole entire scroll before she threw it into the air. There was a puff of smoke, before two barrels appeared in front of her.

Neji narrowed his eyes, no doubt able to see inside.

Sakura kicked the barrels towards him. Neji easily dodged them, and the containers made hard contact with the wall behind him, making the water within pour out.

Neji tensed, no doubt having remembered that she had used the same puddle of water in her fight against Sasuke during the preliminaries.

Still, even if he could see it, it would be no good if he couldn't dodge it.

Suiton: Mizu bunshin no jutsu! Five water clones appeared from puddles.

Neji lowered into the gentle fist stance. "Clones are no use. I can see which is the real one," Sakura ignored him. She knew that anyways. Her clones ran at Neji, who took no time in getting rid of them. The clones collapsed into water at his feet.

Suiton: Suidan no jutsu! Sakura took a deep breath, and breathed out the water in her stomach at the slightly wet prodigy, who flew to the side to dodge it. Sakura threw a kunai then substituted with it mid air, so that she was behind him.

Tenshi Sendan! The bullets made of her bones drilled towards Neji. The Hyuuga whirled around mid air and pulled out a kunai, knocking the projectiles aside. Sakura pushed him back with her drilling bone technique and senbon.

The moment Neji had stepped into the biggest body of water, a water clone popped up. Sakura used this split second advantage to fly through a set of hand signs, then clapped her hands together.

"Suiton: Suiro no jutsu!"

A split second later, Neji was floating within a sphere of water. Air bubbles escaped Neji's mouth in his moment of surprise. Sakura watched him struggle around for a while, before she reached over her shoulder with her free right arm to reach for the Kubikiribocho, before a thought stopped her.

She rolled her neck, hoping that this known prodigy really was a prodigy.

It had been some time since she had had some fun.

Chapter FIFTEEN>

<Chapter THIRTEEN

Chapter List

#First time to see the world #naruto fanfiction #sakura #sasuke #naruto #kimimaro #neji #chunin exams

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upalldown · 3 years ago

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Tyler, The Creator - Call Me If You Get Lost

Seventh album from the Los Angeles-based Odd Future rapper featuring guest appearances from 42 Dugg, Ty Dolla Sign, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Lil Wayne and Pharrell Williams

7/13

In the 2000s, mixtapes became the most effective and popular medium for aspiring rappers to build fanbases, seduce critics, and serve as commercial proof-of-concept to major labels. Even established rappers used the format to work out new ideas or to circumvent those labels entirely. As file sharing turned what was once a regional enterprise into a global one, rappers who would have previously given a song here and there to the DJs who issued compilation-style mixtapes began headlining their own. And so instead of cutting a hundred demos that might never be heard, or rapping a capella to starchy executives in boardrooms, many artists who broke during the W. Bush years did so by jacking industry beats and rapping underneath those DJs’ excited yelps, their formative work rewound and doubled back until it settled in your brain just so.

When digital streaming platforms made it easy to profit off of online-only releases, provided the artist or label owns the rights to what’s uploaded, “mixtape” became a nominal term used cynically to signal which rap records were meant to be taken more seriously than others. (Think of how many times you’ve seen advertising for an artist’s “debut album” only to think, “Don’t they have three albums already?”) Call Me If You Get Lost—which is either Tyler, the Creator’s sixth or seventh album, depending on whether or not you count 2009’s Bastard—argues for the mixtape not as a tidy bit of careerist maneuvering, but as an aesthetic tradition. It’s an inspired choice, nostalgic but irreverent, and suited perfectly to his strengths: It grants him the freedom to play with tone, to write personally or use his gravelly voice as texture, to treat the harshest raps and the most delicate hooks as mad experiments gone wrong.

Call Me is hosted by DJ Drama, the animated Philly native whose Gangsta Grillz series includes some of the most essential rap records of the century so far. There are times when the album evokes the grittiest of those tapes—its single reimagines a Gravediggaz song—but it breaks up the heavier cuts with shards of bright pop. (At times Call Me recalls In My Mind: The Prequel, the 2006 Gangsta Grillz tape by Tyler’s hero, Pharrell.) Drama is at his comedic best, goading on verses or underlining Tyler’s monologues about jet-setting (“A young lady just fed me French vanilla ice cream!”). He’s irresistible even when he’s fucking up the album’s title, as he does on the excellent “Hot Wind Blows,” which reunites him with Lil Wayne.

While DJ Drama’s presence is indispensable, it is not the only thing that recalls those old .zip files. Of Call Me’s 16 songs, only five make it to the three-minute mark—and that includes the two marathon affairs, ��Wilshire” and “Sweet/I Thought You Wanted to Dance,” which run eight and a half and 10 minutes, respectively. Even within those shorter records are sharp breaks and jagged connections: see the way both “Corso” and “Lemonhead” open with menace before moving to more Technicolor sounds, or the way “Massa” inverts that progression, seeming at first to be brighter only to quickly get dulled out again. When Tyler’s old Odd Future comrade Domo Genesis rappels into “Manifesto,” he does so under cover of a drastic beat switch that throws the song into chaos.

The Gangsta Grillz conceit allows Tyler some latitude to meander—the platonic-ideal mixtape includes freestyles, original songs, radio singles, snippets of unreleased material—but he gives Call Me enough motifs that they eventually fuse into a spine. There are near-constant references to travel (the smartest of these is the beginning of “Massa,” where he cuts off an earnest-seeming monologue about his passport mid-sentence, as if he knows how it sounds) and to Rolls Royces: the way the new models’ doors open; the fact that Tyler now owns a pair; the detailing on their ceilings and the cookie crumbs he litters on their floors; the fact that their signature umbrellas are superfluous in Los Angeles. He returns to both these things the way rappers might circle back to an anchor word or phrase while freestyling. This has an intoxicating effect: Over the course of Call Me, it becomes unclear whether these material flexes are his focus, and the more wrenching personal revelations bleed in and take over, or if it’s the other way around. It’s probably a little of both.

As for the personal: Those bloodlettings come in a couple of different forms. There is “Manifesto,” where he meditates on the impact of his past shock-rap provocations and vents about the way he scans to both Black and white audiences; there is his revelation, on “Massa,” that his mother was living in a shelter when his breakout 2011 single “Yonkers” dropped. But the matter he dedicates the most time to is (what sounds like) a single fractured affair between himself and a friend’s lover. This is rendered in prosaic detail on the sprawling and anxious “Wilshire”: one minute he coolly concludes that the affair is worth ruining a friendship over, the next he finds the idea unthinkable. He is deeply, passionately in love, then nervously analytical. It has already inspired swaths of gossip and speculation as to the identity of the woman (and, consequently, the friend). But you picture Tyler alone in a hotel room somewhere, refreshing his phone, hoping it will inspire a single email.

There are plenty of moments on Call Me If You Get Lost that are playful, sometimes joyous. “Wusyaname,” which makes smart use of YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Ty Dolla $ign, is a sweaty flip of H-Town’s “Back Seat (Wit No Sheets)”; the anecdote about Tyler’s mother is paid off with her own, almost unbelievably colorful monologue. Yet even these have a pall cast over them. In the middle of “Massa,” Tyler raps in a low register and a deliberate flow: “Everyone I ever loved had to be loved in the shadows.” This maps onto the affair from “Wilshire,” and maybe onto his past relationships with men, but it is tragic—the notion that a feeling so pure could be swallowed by the secrecy it requires. At moments like this, Tyler seems uniquely in touch with himself, ready to be naked on record. But later in the same verse, he raps about being so paranoid he has to sleep with a gun—now in a voice so affected it’s unclear whether it’s a cry for help, a joke, or both. These things do not move linearly; the willingness to be sincere does not mean it’s easy to do so. If Tyler feels his true life happens in the shadows and crevices—the gaps between what everyone else is meant to see—it’s only appropriate he revived a mixtape format that pushes once-hidden ideas and asides to the center of the frame.

youtube

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tyler-the-creator-call-me-if-you-get-lost/

#tyler the creator #call me if you get lost

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acsversace-news · 7 years ago

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There’s a moment early on in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story that, perhaps more than any other, sticks with you long after the image fades. Andrew Cunanan (a remarkable, terrifying Darren Criss), who we’ve already seen kill Gianni Versace, stands in the bathroom of a rundown motel room that he occasionally shares with his friend and potential partner Ronnie Holston (Max Greenfield). He stares at his reflection in the mirror. His face doesn’t move. He betrays no sign of any emotion. Then, he picks up a roll of duct tape, peels the tape back, and begins wrapping it around his head. The motion continues, the signature sound of the strong adhesive an eerie soundtrack to the nonsensical actions. Before long he’s covered his face and head, with just enough room to breathe.

It’s a quietly chilling scene made all the more tense when Andrew plays it off like nothing to Ronnie, but it’s also an insight into one of the show’s more intriguing thematic explorations: the violence of capitalism and its effect on our identity. In the early episodes especially, the show seems to revel in the lavishness of its setting while contrasting that sense of fullness with Andrew’s persistent change in identity. The very first scene of the premiere sees the camera moving from the expanse of the ocean to the expanse of Gianni Versace’s mansion, both settings turbulent, overwhelming, and unpredictable in their own ways. Ryan Murphy directs the opening sequence in a way that immediately situates us in this world of opulence. We take in the clouds painted on the bedroom ceiling, a verisimilitude of the outdoors, and the first of many images that look to replicate an authentic experience.

Through the halls of the mansion we go, our eyes unable to keep up with everything in our path: chandeliers, priceless art, silk pajamas, and balconies with an ocean view. This is the life we are meant to envy, the American Dream come true. Murphy, for the most part, films the scene with a bird’s-eye view, as if we’re outsiders that long to be given access to these gilded halls. Immediately the show is drawing a visual connection between violence and materialism. The episode cuts from Andrew angrily screaming in the tempestuous ocean to Gianni, surrounded by servants, enjoying a lavish breakfast inside the sunlit concourse of his home. More viscerally, there’s the image of Andrew pulling The Man Who Was Vogue, a book about the rise of Condé Nast and his influence on cultural gatekeeping and style, out of his backpack, followed immediately by a gun. Violence follows materialism is the suggestion, one that pops up again and again throughout the season.

It’d be slightly preposterous to argue that The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is some sort of remarkable Marxist critique of capitalism and material wealth, but as the episodes unfold it’s hard to ignore that the show is teasing out an intriguing connection between Andrew Cunanan’s ability to shift his personality at will and our own willingness to adopt certain roles in a very public way, spurred on by a culture obsessed with social media and its consumerist tendencies. Coursing through the show is a critique of our consumerist culture; despite being set the in the late ’90s out of necessity to the true crime, this is a show that’s very much aware of the plague of tastemaking and performative consumption and sharing that defines so much of our lives today. But what’s more scathing is how the show uses Andrew Cunanan as a stand-in for the anxiety and personal oppression that comes with such a culture. His need to be anything and everything to the people around him is not just a sign of his psychopathic tendencies, but a result of the pressures of a capitalist system that continually tells us we’re not doing good enough, that who we are is a failure, and that buying more things is the only way to establish a true, stable, respected identity.

Cunanan—it’s important to note that throughout this piece any mention or analysis of Andrew Cunanan is referring to the character within this show, and not the real man he’s based on—is an enigma similar to Patrick Bateman, a character from a more problematic work that, nonetheless, still draws a connection between Bateman’s bloody outbursts and his need to conform to an ever-shifting set of ideals about what it means to be respected, glorified, and envied. There’s a reason the business-card scene in Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of American Psycho stands out so vividly within the film; because it provides terrifying insight into Patrick’s mind-set that the violent acts simply don’t. We need that context of Patrick’s insecurity to understand the violence.

Assassination wants us to understand Andrew in a similar way. He’s a man with no single identity—Andrew’s sexuality is a major component of his complex identity within the show, and Paste’s Matt Brennan wrote a stirring piece about it—but rather a collection of signifiers meant to convey worldliness, taste, and stature. When he first meets Gianni in a club, he regales him with stories about his lavish lifestyle and impeccable taste. Only later do we, and Gianni, realize that it’s all a fabrication, an attempt to convey a certain social standing that he’s been unable to achieve.

This is the anxiety and alienation that capitalism thrives on. It’s a system that creates and then benefits from identity crisis. Alienation is a term in Marxist theory with many different meanings that, when taken together, give us a broader understanding of a feeling that’s often difficult to define. As David Harvey lays out in Seventeen Contradictions And The End Of Capitalism, one such definition is alienation as a “passive psychological term” that means to “become isolated and estranged from some valued connectivity.” The result of that alienation is “to be angry and hostile at feeling oppressed, deprived or dispossessed and to act out that anger and hostility, lashing out sometimes without any clear definitive reason or rational target.” Andrew cannot fill that void inside of him, the one created by a system that tells you that you alone aren’t good enough. When a man in a dance club asks Andrew what he does, he responds thusly: “I’m a serial killer, I’m a banker, I’m a stockbroker, a paperback writer, I’m a cop, I’m a naval officer,” and more, listing off one profession after another. He’s everything and nothing all at once, driving home the idea that under capitalism there is no true identity, only a series of labels that oppress us.

The question is, then, are we all as psychopathic as Andrew Cunanan? Certainly most of us aren’t murderers, but Assassination does seem to suggest that Andrew’s troubling need to be everything all at once is not too far removed from our own need to belong, a feeling amplified in our current culture of constant sharing and liking. We curate our lives, and more importantly our social media timelines, in much the same way Andrew curates his behavior and personality. Andrew literally puts on a costume, another man’s suit and his expensive watch, to attend the opera. He can’t imagine doing anything else. He tells outlandish stories about fictional past boyfriends; one in particular would drive him around in his Rolls-Royce and also snagged Andrew a job building sets for Titanic. These are small violences, little bits of untruth that erode the social fabric and Andrew’s own understanding of himself. Are we doing the same? Are we allowing Instagram influencers, native advertising, and increasingly “hip and socially aware” brands to make us feel like shit just so we’ll buy the thing they’re shilling that supposedly won’t make us feel that way?

Assassination, in at least some way, wants us to ask those questions. It’s not the larger thematic thrust of the season, but it is an intriguing and unavoidable presence. The series asks us to question our own search for identity through material means by showing not only how Andrew is affected by alienation, but also how those around him struggle within a capitalist system. The Miglins are the best example. They are the epitome of the American Dream under capitalism. At a fundraiser gala, Lee gives a speech that evokes the classic “bootstraps” story of his success, and his wife has no trouble building a line of perfume to sell on TV. Everything is picture perfect.

That is, until you dig deeper. At home, Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light in a devastating performance) takes off her makeup, a maudlin look on her face. The mask necessitated by the public gala has been removed, and her sorrow is now visible. Similarly, Lee Miglin can’t be his true self, a gay man in a world that would financially and socially punish him for his sexuality. He wishes he could just “roam among them,” a beautiful statement about wanting to live free of restriction and punishment for who he is. But capitalism has a set of rules and an oppressive structure that must be abided by, and anything outside of that is pushed aside. So, this isn’t just about Andrew, but rather all of us, and the way we’re forced to imitate ways of life rather than living the way we truly want to.

I wish there were a hopeful message to end on, something in the show that points the way forward to a place where we can know one another’s intentions and understand our own, free from the forces of capitalism. But if anything, the world portrayed in The Assassination Of Gianni Versace, in all its gold-plated, vacuum-sealed glory, has only gotten worse. We’ve become more convinced that we can buy something in order to be something. We’ve become chameleons of emotion, projecting our grief, joy, and anxiety to our followers without any check on our authenticity. Like Andrew, we can wear any mask we want.

As chilling as the duct-tape scene is, the most telling moment when it comes to the performative nature of Andrew Cunanan, and thus ourselves, is when Andrew sees the news’ first piece about the killing of Gianni Versace. His face is blank for a moment before he’s overcome with grief. He looks on the verge of weeping, all before the hint of a smile creeps in and the episode cuts to commercial. An imitation of emotion, literally mimicking the public grief of the woman in front of him, as convincing as the real thing. It’s a moment with implications that the show explores throughout the season, which is that Andrew, and everyone else, is a product of a system that grinds us down, asks us to perform emotions and wants, and then shames us for failure. “It was all a lie, an act,” says David, one of Andrew’s victims, moments before he gets a bullet in the back. The violence of capitalism breeds an identity crisis, and a subsequent emptiness and isolation, that can lead to physical violence. We’re all at risk, refusing to challenge the rules and upend the system. We have more in common with Andrew Cunanan than any of us would like to admit.

#acs versace #av club #review #article #acs spoilers #february 2018

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pokemaniacal · 7 years ago

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Poplio, Brionne and Primarina

Time for Alola starter number 3: the Water-types, Poplio, Brionne and Primarina. I have something of a history of being distressingly lukewarm on Water-type starters, whom I’ve often put in the “fine” basket with little further comment, and for a while it looked like Poplio was going to go the same way, if not worse. I know I’m not the only one who was less than enthusiastic about Alola’s Water-type starter initially. After all, we’re onto our fourth pinniped Pokémon now (that’s seal, sea lion and walrus Pokémon, for the uncultured masses), they’re all Water-types, and this is even the second starter among them. But even Poplio has design elements that show a different direction to Dewgong, Walrein and Samurott, which only continue to diverge through evolution, and this has turned out to be one of those Pokémon that feels weird to me at first, but makes more sense the longer I keep looking at it.

Poplio, Brionne and Primarina, above everything else, are performers. They progress through different performing arts as they evolve, which can give the design a sort of patchwork feel when you look at it from certain angles, especially the middle stage. On the other hand, the progression from frivolous clownishness to “high” art, along with the fact that all three forms are appropriate to seal Pokémon in different ways, helps tie it together. Poplio is a typical performing seal who entertains crowds with ball and balloon tricks, with the twist that her powers let her create bubbles of water where a real performing seal would use a rubber ball. As Brionne, she picks up a sort of “tutu” and becomes a dancer, though she doesn’t lose her clown nose, which… y’know, ballet clowns are totally a thing, right?

…okay, I googled it and I’m just not even going to question this stuff anymore.

Primarina takes the final step on this “career” to become an opera singer, who controls her bubble attacks with her voice. Balloons and bubbles, to dance, to opera feels a bit pasted together at first, but I’m beginning to warm to it; Poplio’s tricks are exactly the kind of thing we expect from a performing seal, and seals undeniably have the grace (in the water, anyway) to be appropriate as inspiration for a dancing Pokémon, while Primarina’s songs have a more indirect link that we’ll get to later. The three stages are also tied together by their shared attitudes to life and their respective arts. As performers, these Pokémon emphasise looking and sounding perfect for their adoring public. We’re told that Brionne will never let herself appear sad in front of anyone but a trusted trainer, maintaining a happy pop idol persona at all times regardless of her true feelings, while Primarina is, well, a prima donna. According to the Pokédex, Primarina’s trainer “must prioritise the daily maintenance of its throat at all costs,” presumably by taking pains not to overwork her voice, and… I don’t know, maybe using some kind of throat spray to relax the vocal cords? It’s a line that paints a picture of a very demanding, high-maintenance Pokémon, much like a pop idol or a famous opera singer. In fairness to Primarina, her song is what controls her Water-type techniques, so if she sings herself hoarse, it’ll all be over before the proverbial fat lady gets to her first note. As with whales, their songs are shared amongst their social groups so that different colonies have different musical traditions, like different human languages or cultures – a core part of their identity. It’s not really clear what all these different kinds of performances are actually for, though we could imagine (as with most animal traits that seem manifestly impractical) that they originally formed part of mating displays, and have now been adapted to new purposes with Poplio’s integration into human society. I’m writing this from Sydney, Australia, where I’m applying for a Greek visa (don’t ask), and just yesterday saw some sea lions perform with their keepers at Taronga Zoo. There’s something almost doglike about their playfulness, intelligence, and willingness to take commands (which sort of makes sense, since pinnipeds are related to dogs). What’s really striking, though, is how much they seem to revel in the attention of spectators – I imagine this is more a product of their upbringing and training than anything innate to the animals themselves, but still something that Primarina captures and exaggerates in quite an interesting way.

Primarina’s magical song also has a hint of the siren or mermaid – alluring creatures whose beauty, enchanting voice, or both (accounts vary as to whether they are really attractive or simply possess enthralling magic) can bewitch sailors into veering off course and wrecking their ships on jagged rocks. The sirens of Greek mythology originally seem to have been birdlike in Greek art, but subsequent ages have morphed them so that they often appear more like mermaids today, and they give their name to the order of marine mammals that includes manatees and dugongs, the sirenians (as well as, for that matter, Primarina in Japanese – Ashirene). Now, Primarina is obviously much more seal or sea lion than dugong, but on the other hand, Dewgong (or Jugon, in Japanese) makes it quite clear that Game Freak’s designers have never really known what a dugong actually is, so I’m not going to lose too much sleep over that one. Besides, seals have their own mythological link to mermaids, sirens and the like via the selkie, a Celtic water spirit who can shed her seal form to become a beautiful woman, and will be forced to stay with any man lucky enough to find her skin before she puts it back on and returns to the sea (because, you know, what better foundation is there for a relationship than stealing someone’s skin so you can hold them against their will?). Primarina’s sort of a kid-friendly version of all this, with neither seduction nor abduction coming into it, but bears a distinctive mermaid-like tail and feminine-coded characteristics. And of course I keep calling Primarina “she ” even though the Poplio line, like all starters, have a 7:1 male-female ratio in the games. Maybe we should think of her as a drag queen – after all, if nothing else, it would fit the theme of performance (not to mention sassy prima donna personalities)…

Turning now to her gameplay characteristics, Primarina’s Water/Fairy type combination invites comparison to Azumarill, but with a look at her stats it’s clear she’s trying to do something quite different. Primarina has one of the most skewed stat lines of all the starter Pokémon (who are typically very rounded), with the highest special attack and special defence of the lot, and tied with Incineroar, Swampert and Empoleon for second-lowest speed (after Torterra). She’s much too slow to sweep a team on her own, but can help wear down your opponents to clear the way for another member of her team. Her Moonblast can blow massive holes in just about anything that doesn’t resist Fairy attacks (and not much does), and her Water attacks, Surf, Scald, Hydro Pump and Sparkling Aria (more on which later) will hammer almost anything else. You’re sort of almost fine with just two attacks, but Primarina has a surprisingly thin support movepool, so most likely you’ll end up loading a couple of coverage moves onto her. Ice Beam and Psychic are both viable choices for the Grass/Poison Pokémon that resist both of her main attacks (Psychic is probably to be preferred because it hits Water/Poison as well), while Energy Ball gives her a nasty sting for rival Water-types. Shadow Ball is also there, but isn’t conspicuously great against anything that Primarina needs to watch out for, unless for some reason you’re particularly worried about Shedinja, who is immune to all of Primarina’s other attacks.

Primarina’s support movepool, again, is surprisingly lacklustre, and you don’t want her massive special attack stat to sit gathering dust, so she lends herself more to being a blasty tank than a supporty one. If you want to fit some utility into her moveset though (and you probably can, if she’s not using a Choice item; she’s got pretty fantastic baseline neutral type coverage from Moonblast and Water attacks), Reflect can shore up her poor physical defence, or Light Screen can push her special defence to ridiculous levels. Encore is cute, but better on a fast Pokémon, Sing is garbage and always has been, and Perish Song is wonderful thematically but just doesn’t work without a trapping move or ability. She also gets Misty Terrain, which is worth noting purely because it’s still a fairly exclusive move; only a dozen Pokémon can learn it. It’s not a great field condition because its benefits are almost wholly defensive, and its dampening effect on Dragon attacks doesn’t help the Fairy Pokémon who actually learn it, since they’re immune to Dragon attacks anyway. Moreover, if you do want Misty Terrain, you’re almost certainly better off using Tapu Fini, who is the same type, gets Misty Terrain as a passive ability, and has better stats for a support role anyway. Probably the most conspicuous absence is that Primarina has no healing aside from Rest (well… I mean… and Aqua Ring… I guess…), which again makes her very much a blasty tank. She can take most special attacks all right (physical ones are another matter, but fortunately her weaknesses are to types with few powerful physical attacks), but she can’t recover from them, so play her cautiously and try to avoid taking unnecessary damage.

Like most Alolan Pokémon, Primarina has a signature move: Sparkling Aria. This is a Water-type special attack, as powerful as Surf and with the same range in a double battle. There are basically two differences, both of them fairly subtle and one of them a little bit useless. First: Sparkling Aria is a sonic attack, which means that it bypasses Substitutes (neat, since Primarina is otherwise the type of Pokémon to get screwed pretty hard by Substitute) and is blocked by the Soundproof ability (potentially useful if you pair Primarina with a Soundproof partner in doubles). Second: for some reason, Sparkling Aria cures burns. Not Primarina’s burns, but the target’s burns. There are occasions when you might want to heal an opponent’s burn, because a couple of abilities trigger while a target is burned, but if that’s actually important to a Pokémon’s strategy it’ll probably carry a Flame Orb, which will immediately inflict another burn at the end of the turn. In doubles you can use it to cure your partner’s burn… at the cost of hitting them with a strong Water attack from Primarina’s impressive special attack score. “Well,” you might be thinking, “at least I can use it to cure burns on allies with Soundproof or Water Absorb,” but no, that would clearly be much too useful; if you’re immune to Sparkling Aria’s damage, you don’t get the healing either. I don’t quite understand what this is for; the upside and the downside are both so tiny that they shouldn’t really influence the choice of Sparkling Aria vs. Surf, Scald or Hydro Pump, so all it really does is force me to waste time evalu-

…

…well played, Game Freak. Well played.

Liquid Voice, Primarina’s hidden ability, is just as weirdly specific. It turns all of her sound moves into Water moves, which… well, might be useful for a Pokémon that didn’t already get Sparkling Aria. I guess a Water-type Hyper Voice is nice in doubles because it doesn’t damage your partner – but if you go that way, you’ll miss out on Sparkling Aria’s totally sweet burn healing effect!

I can’t tell whether I’m being sarcastic anymore; it’s time to stop.

Overall, I’m fairly happy with this one. Poplio, Brionne and Primarina have flaws. I think Brionne could have used some more work to make the transition from Poplio’s playfulness to Primarina’s stately elegance a little smoother; there’s elements of the design, like the ‘tutu’ and weird bubble-string ears, that don’t seem to go anywhere. On the mechanics side, that signature move and hidden ability seem more like they’re here for the sake of giving Primarina something nominally unique than because the designers actually had an interesting role in mind for either of them (having said that, I’m glad Sparkling Aria exists, because it’s thematically important; I just wish it posed more interesting trade-offs, and weren’t somewhat redundant with Liquid Voice). But honestly, most of that is fairly minor quibbling. I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with any of them, even if Poplio did seem a little on the derpy side at first, and they take some characteristic of real sea lions in an interesting direction while distinguishing themselves from previous Pokémon of the same kind. So yeah. Good job, Poplio.

#pokemon #alola pokedex #poplio #brionne #primarina #watertypes #fairytypes #starters #alola

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furederiko · 7 years ago

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Don't let your shame messes around with the game! The 34th episode of Kyuranger reminds us that no matter how, why, or for what purpose we were born, it does NOT define who we are now...

- Hmmm... there's no intro narration again. Since it's already two episodes in a row, should we assume that this is the new norm? I guess so... - Our story immediately begins with a surprise revelation from our two Vice-Shoguns. Kukuruga confirms that Professor Anton's laboratory... is where they received 'upgrades' too! Recall how the two and Tecchu looked different in the past? Could it be... these Vice-Shoguns are in fact mechanical beings, then? That would explain why they can't seem to die. - This also brings a new theory to mind: could Anton has been faking his death all these time? As pointed out later, the professor had many cyborg enhancements, allowing him the ability to live for more than 300 years. Do you get where I'm leading with this? Anton could very well be... the true face of Don Armage!!! - Let's put that speculation aside for now, and get back to the recap-view. Akyanba decides to activate Champ, who is being kept inactive inside the lab. But is this our very own Champ? The answer to that doesn't take long. While several members stay behind on Battle Orion Ship (Raptor is piloting, Balance reenters Naga's brain using the modified Microscopium Kyu Globe to dig memory about Armage's exact location, while Xiao is... basically dumbfounded by this newfound shrinking ability), the away team encounters not just one, but TWO incarnations of Champ! Bullseye. - The one working with Kukuruga might look like Champ, but when he injures Hammy and Spada without hesitation, it's clear something is amiss. The second one might be proclaiming himself as Yagyu Jubeef. But he's not fooling anyone, not the audience, not even the Kyurangers. LOL. Jubeef is no doubt the genuine Taurus Black, who is merely masquerading behind a fancy luchador mask and silly accessories! Fun fact: Over-Time translates this masked character as Yagyu Jubeef, but the actual Japanese naming is 'Yagyuu Jubee'. Not confirmed, but it might be: 1) a wordplay to the word 'Wagyuu' that refers to a particular variety of japanese cow, popular for its high-priced meat. 2) a nod to a feudal figure Yagyuu Juubei, a name more popularly known as a samurai character from the fighting game series "Samurai Spirits". One interesting bit is also lost in the fansub. Namely the way Jubeef keeps on stuttering whenever he's trying to utter the word 'I'. He generally uses the informal japanese word 'Boku', but somehow always stumbles into saying 'Wagahai', which is obviously Champ's signature manner of speech. It might seem pointless, but it's exactly a hillarious minor detail that gives away Jubeef's true identity. LOL. - Let me take that back. Jubeef DOES succeed in fooling one Kyuranger. Garu the group's simpleton! LOL. Clearly Stinger doesn't buy Jubeef's words either, but it seems he's playing along and acting coy. What for? To find out WHY 'Jubeef' has to go all the trouble of acting this way, instead of just... you know, comes back to the team as his true persona. - His personal reason is... moving, to say the least. Champ discovered in the past, that Anton created him for Jark Matter's evil purpose. That other 'Evil-Champ' is the Bovine All Purpose Weapon Unit-00 ('Ushikai Hanyou Hakai Heiki ZERO-gou' in Japanese), the evil prototype model for his design. And his tendency to occasionally go berserk or out of control (which might be unlocked during that devastating showdown with Scorpio) serves as the proof. Simply put, it's a dilemmatic existential crisis to someone who as long as he has lived believe that he's a righteous robot created for justice. That's why Champ couldn't face the Kyurangers, feeling that he deserves no place to uphold justice with them, and went into hiding. All due to this dark 'lineage'. - Both he and Stinger knew about this fact, because Scorpio has told them before. But at the time, Scorpio's words was too ambiguous to believe, so they didn't really believe him. It's official now, the duo shares a similar 'bad blood' situation. Allowing Stinger to return Champ's own words about not doing everything alone. This is also where Garu nicely comes along. Despite being clueless about Jubeef's identity (even Kotarou calls him dumb LOL), Garu believes that Champ's justice is real, and wants him to rely on them as his friends. Harkening back to their short off-screen bonding moment (took them long enough to FINALLY share the spotlight in this episode's ending dance). Way to go, Garu! - And it... works. 'Jubeef' unveils his not-really--a secret, as the team's final lost member officially returns home to "bear with his shame" with them. Oow... there goes that cool luchador mask! A shame really, because I actually like that better than Champ's actual gigantic head. - It's plain hillarious that both Garu and Champ himself are taken aback with the fact that everyone else already knows. Two of a kind, huh? It's also a heartwarming moment to see Lupus Blue kicking Taurus Black out of his sudden berserk in battle. His signature kind of tough love that he gave to Lucky before. Champ has both Stinger and Garu watching his back now! Both in battle, and in keeping his 'running wild' condition a secret... Fun fact: we finally get to see Ursa Minor Skyblue and Taurus Black perform their signature "Polaris Impact" and "Aldebaran Impact" in battle. Leo Red Orion also steals the scene by using a popular trope in Japanese anime shows: overloading an enemy with infinite power. A major disadvantage for antagonist who can absorb attacks, right? - While Team 2-Reds&Blues deals with Unit-00 and Kukuruga, Xiao forms Ryutei-Oh with Hammy and Spada to deal with the two giant Consumarz. We get a first look of Battle Orion Ship's Voyager Launching Sequence here. Of course, the highlight of this giant battle is when all four Kyuranger robots enters the scene, and Orion Battler actually proposes to use him as the finisher. A truly smart reason for giving the robot sentience! "Ultimate Galaxy! Orion Big Bang Cannon!" genuinely looks impressive. The team does not have a combined human-size cannon like previous Sentai teams, so this works as a great homage to that standard in a relatively new way. Trivia: I used the word 'relatively new' because well... it's not entirely new. The 'giant mecha turning into a massive cannon' is a concept used by "Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger" with their DekaWing Cannon before (which by the way, was also used by Ryutei-Oh in that Space Squad crossover episode! Nice, huh?). It goes even way back with the case of Tetra Boy's Tetra Buster mode in "Choujin Sentai Jetman". - Naga sneezes Balance out of his body, as the two have discovered the exact location of Don Armage's base: Planet Southern Cross of the Crux System. Will they obtain the truth of his immortality there? Let's just wait and see...

Overall: Kyuranger has returned into a complete unit! That was FAST, eh? Similar to Raptor's case, this show reminded us once again that even a robot has a heart of justice. In this case, big but softie Champ received his very own long-awaited focus episode (which might not be the final closure to his personal arc with Prof. Anton). It also put Garu, considered by many among the generally 'underdeveloped' character, into the spotlight. Not only the wolf-man worked exceptionally well as a comic relief throughout, but he was given a powerful moment and speech, that cemented his place as the heart of the group. It was however, not a perfect episode. The handling of Champ's return, albeit heartwarming and moving, did feel a bit sloppy for my taste. Unlike the neat approach the show applied to Xiao, it was implied that during the previous 33 episodes, two Champs were both 'active' within the same timeline. A minor detail that could be problematic to the whole plot once you stop and think about it. It's an issue the show actually could've gotten away with, by simply having Champ putting himself on 'hibernate' mode during the long 300 years (considering he's a robot that runs by Operating System). Sure, it would feel redundant, but at least it would avoid nitpickers like yours truly to start 'questioning' stuffs. LOL. Overall though, I highly appreciated how the episode weaved intricate details from past episodes into one, while sending off a strong thoughtful message of self-acceptance to its audience. For that part, well done! Next week: Hammy Idol Debut feat. Hoshi Minato... PS: According to recent rumor, the next Super Sentai series is expected to start airing on February 11th, 2018. Since two additional breaks have already been scheduled, this partially confirms that Kyuranger will have a total of 48 episodes. Dang it, here I thought moving the broadcast schedule to 09:30 means there will be no breaks. I guess the annoying thing is inevitable, huh? Anyway, this means the show is still 14 episodes away. I wonder what it has in store for us in the final quarter then? Hmmm....

Episode 34 Score: 7,9 out of 10

Visit THIS LINK to view a continuously updated listing of the Kyutama / Kyu Globes. Last Updated: October 17th, 2017 - Version 3.02. (WARNING: It might contain spoilers for future episodes)

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

#tokusatsu #SuperSentai #kyuranger #uchu sentai kyuranger #uchuu sentai kyuranger #review #melancholymoments #friendship

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noplanwithavan · 7 years ago

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THE AGE OF INDEPENDENCE

Our time in Greece has come to an end. We’re in Albania now, and it’s quite clearly not Greece. We realised we didn’t know anything about this country, nor anyone who had been. Now I know why. The only bonus so far has been the cherries. You pay the same per kilo (£1.50) as you’d get for 100g back home. We are probably 10 years too late in coming here. Fresh from the grip of communism, the “Albanian Riviera” along the western coastline was undoubtedly something to behold. Aside from the odd bunker, I imagine it’s was virgin land, unspoiled, undeveloped. Now it is a homage to concrete. And no in an interesting way either - not the communist brutalist architecture Marcus was hoping to see. If there isn’t an uninspired high-rise hotel already, they’re sure planning to put one there. The entire place feels like a building site. You can’t escape the ceaseless scraping sound of diggers building their way towards progress, or some hellish vision of it. The beaches are largely inaccessible unless you are staying at a resort. Unable to camp as we’d like, we’ve given in and booked into a hotel. At £40 a night, at least luxury comes cheap here. It makes me realise just how special Greece was, a country full of surprises, because:

1. I hadn’t expected it to be so much fun, immersing ourselves in the cradle of civilisation. But I’ve always had a theatrical bent, and walking in the footsteps of the heroic age proved irresistible. All those stories, it’s hard not to get carried away! 2. Who knew Dill was so delicious? Back home, this green feathery friend is rarely used except as a light delicate herb to compliment fish. But here, it’s ubiquitous. You find it in salads, grilled vegetables, on just about everything. And it’s REALLY good, bringing such a fresh tasting light zing. We should use it more. 3. I hadn’t realised it was so mountainous. Greece is marketed to the UK as a place to go for island hopping and lounging by a pebble-dashed turquoise sea. But there’s so much more. Ancient cities, alongside fantastic rivers, gorges and mountains. Many are unspoiled, and relatively undiscovered on the tourist trail. 4. It feels as if we’ve passed a maturity milestone. What I hadn’t been paying attention to as we travelled back in time, way-marked by the signature Doric, Ionian and Corinthian pillars, was the mini epoch my own family was entering. Maybe it’s the developmental leaps between 5 and 6 years of age. Yet suddenly the girls seem so grown up. Within weeks of each other, the baby front teeth have all come tumbling down, the old succumbing to the promise of the new. With ragged ruinous smiles, the Age of Independence has crept up on us.

This last month has seen all our birthdays now completed. In April we spent mine in Kardamili. A magical spot where you can bathe in the sea and stare down the long lens of the Viros Gorge at snow-covered Mount Taygetos. I told the girls for my birthday I really wanted to go trekking up into the Gorge. I’m not sure they actually like trekking that much, but they like everything associated with it. Elsie can be persuaded to do just about anything if it involves a backpack into which she can cram snacks. And Lulu is highly motivated by the prospect of cooking on a trangia. So, we packed some food to nibble and more to cook and set off along the ancient kaldermini (cobbled footpath) that led ever upward, decked by wildflowers and statuesque cypress trees. It’s not an exaggeration to say there’s a story under every rock in Greece. Passing the tombs of the Dioscuri (the Gemini Twins), stories about Castor and Pollux somehow gave way into tales of ancient Sparta, and before we knew it we’d arrived at Agia Sofia, a promontory overlooking the gorge, with fantastic views down to the tie-died turquoise waters below.

Clocking that the girls now have some serious walking credits under their belt, we decide to push it a little further. That mountain we spied at the end of the gorge, Mount Taygetos, was a sacred spiritual place to the ancient Greeks. A church now stands at its peak, 2,400 m high. Marcus is itching to climb it. While scanning a noticeboard for a route to the peak, he spots a mountain refuge halfway up. The kernel of an idea begins to take root, supplanting his original intention to march off on his own for 5 hours of uninterrupted peace and quiet. Perhaps he can take us all halfway, and then set out for the final ascent alone. He doesn’t have crampons, and is warned by the few hikers we meet he won’t make it up without these.

After seeking and receiving firm assurances from Elsie and Lulu, we email “Kanel Trekking” and book in for a night in the refuge. No going back now. This will be the hike of their lives - 8km up a mountain. Lulu’s happy as long as the trangia comes along to fry up haloumi en route, and Elsie’s determined not to pass up the opportunity to sally forth with a suitably equipped backpack. The day’s lesson is orienteering, getting the girls to look out for the way-markers and decide which direction to go at any junction. It’s a steep but lovely climb, through pine forests sprinkled with crocuses, and snatched glimpses of the last snow clinging to a triangular peak. But any dreams of mountain solitude are soon drowned out. For our companions talk incessantly, a continuous rattle, moving jaggedly from one question to another while the first has barely formed in the air. We’ve run out of children’s books to read them now, moving onto adult fiction instead. They love a detective story about a policeman in India who’s trying to solve a murder case while simultaneously bringing about the downfall of a notorious crime boss. Fascinated by the intricacies of the plot, we spend several kilometres predicting what will happen next and why certain characters behave as they do. It’s hard going towards the end, plenty of stumbles and trips, but out of sheer bloody-mindedness Elsie astounds all expectations by keeping her backpack on the entire day. It’s only after we arrive towards nightfall at our mountain cabin, that she lets me inspect its contents. Inside are a scarf, 2 books and a torch. Surprisingly the last item is actually useful, as our cabin is so perfectly rustic and wild there’s no electricity. It’s exactly the kind of place where you could imagine finding Heidi. Even down to our host - an old man called George, who could easily pass for Heidi’s kindly grandfather. He was fantastic with the kids. Hailing every effort with a hearty “Bravo!’, he recruited them to gather kindling, light the fire and the oil lamps, before setting about mending Lulu’s shoe, which had disintegrated under the pressure of the hike. She was smitten, following George everywhere, sneaking into the kitchen to help him prepare food, even trying to whistle along the same way he did. That night he played us his Bouzouki (a Greek Lute) as they danced by the fireside. The culmination of it all - to be somewhere so magical, so different, and to feel so proud of the girls for climbing what would have been unimaginable just 6 months ago - made it one of our most memorable experiences so far. The next morning we wave goodbye to Daddy, warning him not to put himself at risk for the sake of glory. I’m expecting he’ll be gone for hours, but by mid-afternoon he’s back.

“Didn’t need crampons in the end,” he says confidently, showing us a video he took of himself at the peak. It clearly places him completely alone, picking his way over a snow-covered ridge with a steep drop either side.

There followed a culture clash - as I landed straight from our mountain retreat back to London for another whistle-stop UK tour. 2017 must be an auspicious year for love. The wedding bells were ringing again. This time my old university pal, Hannah Hewetson, was getting married and wanted me to deliver a speech with my partner in crime Natalie Hill. It was a day to revel, and one to catch up with many familiar faces. Everyone asked about our travels, and wanted to know how we did it, what it was like. Did the school mind? How do you teach them? Some were quite shocked to discover that Elsie and Lulu hardly have any toys to play with. I can see how to some this may feel like a form of child neglect or even cruelty. But the truth is, that is honestly one of the things they have never complained about. With the Spring temperature in the mid to late 20’s everyday, we are outside most of the time. And everywhere becomes a playground. When you strip back entertainment on tap, you really see their imaginations working hard. Elsie is a big fan of hauling everything out of the van and creating “sets” for her shows. A tree stump can be Rappunzel’s tower and keep her entertained for hours as she hauls things up and down on rope. They paint faces on pebbles to take part as extra “characters” in their performances. I’ve seen them loading the Calpol dispensing syringes up from a stream to use as water pistols, and plastic bags billowing out behind them are “parachutes”. They have become masters at the card game UNO. When my sunglasses broke and I had to buy more, Elsie said,

“Can I just check i can see a reflection in them?” “Why?” I asked. “Because otherwise I won’t be able to see your cards when we’re playing Bingo!” (for some reason she refuses to call it UNO).

Lulu loves to help cook, especially if it involves knives or foraging (the latest being elderflowers to make into cordial). The knife-obsession sounds a bit worrying, but she really has a flair for chopping and dicing. And she practices whenever she can, whittling away on any bit of wood she can find. We bought her a pen knife just to stop her going through our kitchen drawers. But perhaps the best example came one night when they each picked up a rock and studied it. Elsie declared her half broken brick was an “ant ferry”, Lulu said hers was a helicopter. To be honest neither had a particular resemblance, so it was already quite a stretch of the imagination. After a few minutes Lulu dropped her rock and it smashed. She began to protest, but on bending down to pick it up she held it’s new jagged outline to the moonlight, a slow smile transforming her frown. “Now it’s a wolf face, look!” she said. “And if I turn it around, it’s a foxy!”

From the Peloponnese we move on to the fortified town of Nafplio, then on a cultural tour de force. Taking in the ancient city of Mycennae, with its links to the Trojan War, Perseus, and the pursuits of super-strength Hercules. For a city that once ruled the Hellenic world, and inspired countless legends, it’s amazing how small it is. I guess there just weren’t that many people 3,000 years ago. The girls love the tragic tale of King Agamemnon’s betrayal, but it is the tombs which leave the greatest mark. Below the city a giant, underground cavern shaped like a beehive inspires them to test out the strength of their echoes, and they begin giving impromptu oratories which Marcus captures on video. Next comes Epidavros, with it’s incredible amphitheatre - an awe-inspiring testament to human endeavour. We take it turns standing on the central stone circle and calling out to see if you can hear all the way from the cheap seats at the back (you can). The acoustics make your voice resound, and it’s an incredible feeling. Overcoming inhibitions before strangers I proclaim and project like a true thespian. Well, if not here, then where better?

A stop in Delphi is a must - given it’s the name of our niece. It’s setting is as beautiful as the 8 year-old girl herself. Built on the hill-side of the mountains of Parnassos, you ascend through a series of terraces - once avenues decked with monuments, votive offerings and statues to commemorate Ancient Greek city states. People came to hear the prophecies of the Oracle, but in so coming brought with them information about the state of affairs back at home. Gradually Delphi rose to become a microcosm of information - about who had what, who needed what, who was up, who was down. A kind of ancient Google. Far easier for an Oracle to make predictions when armed with such knowledge.

When you see the plinths and traces of writing, you get a sense of what a showcase it once would have been. Still to some, ruin-fatigue can settle in. We overheard one couple arguing. The man was enraptured, pointing out every minute detail. His face crumpling with disappointment at the realisation his information had failed to hit the mark with his companion. Some accusations followed, then I heard the woman say,

“I didn’t say I DIDN’T want to see it. I just don’t want to look at any more walls.”

We judged the girls had probably had enough culture by this point too. In truth they were more interested in the variety of bugs and the tortoises you spot at frequent intervals, rather than the Temple of Apollo. It was time for action. All those stadiums attest to the fact the Greeks understood about the importance of physical exercise, and so did we.

If there are two places I would recommend visiting in Greece for sheer natural beauty and a place to run free, it is in the North where we next headed. First to the Springs of Acheron River. An idyllic spot where the rocks are bone-white and the water crystal clean. By night the place lit up with pinpricks of green and yellow light - intermittent fairy lights pulsing in the bushes. Fireflies! The girls are in their element, dashing about trying to catch the tiny moving targets. Elsie swipes 3 and holds out her hand, saying, ”I’ve caught a disco!”

The water was cold so we donned our wetsuits and went tramping up stream, through a canyon where you half-waded, half-swam in parts. We would fill up our water bottles each day from a spot up-river, and watch the few listless guides, hanging around with no tourists yet to offer their outdoor adventures. Bored, they gave the girls a free ride on a zip wire just for the sheer need to see someone using it. We repaid their kindness by agreeing to go horse-riding. Marcus demurred, so it was just me and the girls. Our guide was a bit short on English, but after a few minutes pulled me aside and said,

“I think you are experienced. After I take you off on my own.” I think he was just mistaken but I didn’t have the heart to admit it.

It felt a bit remiss, dropping the girls off and telling them to wait for their dad who’d gone walkabout, while I rode off into the blue yonder with a man on horseback. He started showboating, riding with just one hand and urging the horses on into a canter then gallop. It’s the most I can do to cling on for dear life, grit my teeth and hope it ends soon. Horse-riding, like Motor bike riding, is an activity Greeks don’t consider requires much in the way of health and safety. At first I thought the very many strange little church-like houses dotted along the roadside were mail boxes. Turns out they are shrines to someone who’s either died or had a near miss in a roadside collision. Despite this very tangible and visible reminder to the contrary, nobody seems to think motorbikes or horses are best ridden with a helmet. By now, woefully out of control, I put this point to my guide.

“No, helmets are not necessary if you are a good rider,” he tells me.

“I do have them though - you know, just for the tourists.” What the hell does he think I am? Some weird hybrid free-loading campervanning nomad who doesn’t fulfil this criteria?

Still intact we crept closer to Albanian border via the Vikos Gorge in the Zagori region. At 1km from top to bottom it’s said to be the deepest in the world. Photos do not do it justice, you just can’t gauge the scale. Stopping at a viewing point in Oxia, Marcus gets twitchy, his fear of heights kicking in as you stare down into an abyss. The girls spend days making elaborate cards for Marcus’s birthday, and we decide to treat ourselves by checking in to the Primoula Guesthouse, a luxury hotel. Elsie’s beside herself, jabbering away, clowning around. They enjoy the large movie selection on offer, while we rate the outdoor spa complete with hot-tub and mountain view. It’s amazing how much you appreciate a soak in the bath when you haven’t had one for 8 months. Exploring the area, we make the most of what’s on offer, hiking through the gorge and taking the girls for their first taste of white water rafting. I love seeing their faces when we do these things, beside themselves with excitement, unsure of whether the instructor is joking or not when he tells them to push any crocodiles they see away with their paddles.

I’m having to hold on to these signs of gullibility, for they seem to be fading fast. Lulu caught me out one day when she quizzed me about how many syllables were in the word “pistol”.

“Two, I said.” “What’s the first one?” she asked. “Pis”, I answered to gales of laughter. “Ha!ha! I made you say the rude word for wee!”

Yet interspersed with the clear evidence of change - the gradual improvement at taking responsibility for themselves, helping with the chores - there are still plenty of gaps. Most days they still forget to put their pants on. And when Elsie enters one of her hyper moods, LuLu rolls her eyes and says, “Oh no. I think she’s got fur ball diaorrhoea again.” That’s one phrase I’m in no hurry to correct.

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/a-returning-steve-carell-helms-a-sluggish-saturday-night-live/

A returning Steve Carell helms a sluggish Saturday Night Live

Steve CarellScreenshot: Saturday Night Live

“Our lives are short and love is rare, now we do the turkey dance.”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [comedy, drama, now comedy again?] star!”

The big news that all the kids will be buzzing about is that rumored reboot of The Office that some people apparently really want and tonight’s host Steve Carell says wouldn’t work anyway, for some reasons having to do with “today’s climate.” In his opening monologue, Carell got the old “unexpected questions from the audience” treatment, as former The Office-mates Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms, and Jenna Fischer all stood up to urge their former TV boss to sign on so they can get paid, already. (Kenan wants it, too, responding to Carell asking if he’s Kenan or a “fake audience member” by telling Carell, “If I was acting, you would know.”) That was pretty much the only laugh in the bit, as Carell played straight man to the same-y jokes about how he’s being a dick (Fischer’s words), and how his actual wife and kids don’t really need him around as much as he thinks. He did tease the audience by inviting his Office pals up on stage to guarantee . . . that it would be a great show. (It wasn’t.)

The other joke hammered all week has been how Steve Carell is a big drama guy now, something the show didn’t so much refute as remind viewers of how funny Steve Carell would have been if he were given any decent sketches to act in. Woof, this was a congested wheeze of an episode, packed with sketch after sketch of unimaginative premises, indifferently executed. And that goes for Carell, too, frankly, who seemed listless and uncommitted most of the time. A couple of musical sketches offered him the chance to really belt out some silly material with the confident abandon he’s justifiably renowned for, but, in each, he matched the dullness of the writing in performance. In his third time hosting, Carell and SNL both seemed to be just running out the clock in what was the most deeply disappointing episode of a very uneven season so far.

Saturday Night LiveSeason 44

Weekend Update update

After last week’s news-grabbing, feel-good official apology for a nothing joke (to a newly elected congressman with some seriously questionable views himself), it’s like SNL decided to play defense this week. Or maybe play dead, hoping for the national, not-at-all-manufactured outrage cycle to die down through the upcoming off week. Che and Jost sped past some fairly innocuous political material (Che’s references to the brazen spree of criminal Republican voter suppression tactics aside) in favor of some lame Amazaon jokes. Jost mocking New Yorkers’ complaints about the new Queens Amazon HQ for bringing “25,000 jobs” takes the laziest laugh line from what is a complicated issue, something SNL has long been prone to, but that Jost and Che have occasionally risen above. This, coupled with the other big Amazon piece tonight (see below) smacks of the sort of corporate coziness that just makes SNL look bad, especially with the big news story of Amazon’s move taking place in the show’s backyard, and the attendant controversies.

Tossing to the big post-election satirical landscape, SNL scanned the trees and brought back—Bigfoot porn. The fact that newly elected Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman apparently is way into Bigfoot-themed erotica has predictably dominated media coverage of his campaign. And, sure, that’s some funny stuff right there. But he’s also been allegedly associated with some avowed white supremacists, which is both less funny and more relevant, satirically speaking. So trotting out Mikey Day to portray Riggleman nearly talking himself off to his own Sasquatch porn with some relatively graphic supposed excerpts and even more disturbing grunting noises is picking the lowest-hanging fruit of a satirical target and heavy-breathing on it. Again, if SNL is going to choose to do politics, then it’s going to be judged (by me, at least) on the choices it makes in how to approach the jokes. There are a myriad premises to be plucked from the recent midterm elections. That this was the best they got this week is embarrassing.

Kenan came on again as overbearing and hyperbolic NBA dad LaVar Ball, which is always pleasantly silly. Here, Kenan’s Ball maintained his self-promoting, reality-averse egomania, even as he slipped in the fact that Lakers star LeBron James supposedly has a restraining order against him (They have brunch, “always a respectable 500 feet away” from each other), and bragging about his younger sons’ dad-financed Latvian b-ball careers. (They feast on “the briniest cabbage this side of Bucharest!”) I love Kenan, and this is the sort of thing he’s wonderful at.

Best/worst sketch of the night

On a night like tonight, it’s a matter of picking out kernels (or “cornels”) of ideas or performances than whole decent sketches, of which none were in evidence. In what was a mostly disastrous ten-to-one (but one) sketch, astronauts having space Thanksgiving with their alien hosts ate screaming purple corn (or “kern”) on the cob. Complete with dropped props, a failed chroma key effect, Pete Davidson’s sped-up corn screams, flubbed lines, and either unwritten or abandoned ending, the debacle played like something infamously intransigent SNL legend Michael O’Donoghue might have written during his ill-fated 1981 head writing stint under Lorne Michaels’ replacement producer Dick Ebersol, when the show was alternately a vehicle for the notoriously uncompromising Mr. Mike’s bizarro visions or his legitimate attempt to turn the floundering post-Lorne enterprise into “a Viking death ship.”

There was a similarly dark, throwback vibe to the space station sketch, too, with Carell’s mission commander attempting to tell stilted astronaut jokes and fun facts to Skyped-in school kids, only for a malfunction to flood the camera feed with dead, frozen monkeys, a cat with its face sucked inside out, and, finally, Kate McKinnon’s very deceased cosmonaut floating rigidly outside the ISS’ bubble window. It didn’t all work—again, Carell never seemed filly into his third hosting gig. But there was some real effort in the physical acting of the bit—apart from the dead McKinnon, Carell, Leslie Jones, and Mikey Day did some fine fake floating, and SNL has room for some darkness in it. After we hear about the unfortunate fate of the poor station kitty, there’s a moment where the beast floats into view with its back to us before it—very slowly—rotates to show just what the vacuum of space can do to a cat-face. That, plus some rictus-frozen, space-suited monkey puppets felt energizingly transgressive, in a way that SNL could stand to risk more often.

The “Beauty School Drop Out” parody musical number had a scrap of a funny idea in that Carell’s apparently heavenly, permed guardian angel is actually teenager Aidy Bryant’s dad, interrupting her 1950s sleepover to croon to her high school dropout friend. The concept that Carell’s dad has been touring the country for six weeks with a carful of sexy backup singer-dancers busting into teenage girls bedrooms has a nice, loony energy to it, and Aidy’s horrified reactions are good. (“God, what a small man you are.”) Throughout the episode, there was a refreshing attempt at doing some self-contained, conceptual sketches, but this one just didn’t ever lift off.

The Thanksgiving song sketch should have worked better. It, too, took an odd little idea—dinner guests Carell and Cecily Strong maintain there’s a famous Thanksgiving rock song which they proceed to sing in all its specifically inappropriate, boner-shrinking glory—that has the potential to soar along with the musical conceit. But then it, too, just didn’t, as Carell’s seeming diffidence sapped the momentum. It’s not a total loss—the turn that no one actually knows Strong’s character goes from Carell’s conviction that she was some sort of spirit to the revelation that she’s stolen everyone’s car keys and stabbed Beck Bennett’s host is more ambitiously weird than expected. But this one should have been a show-stopper, with everyone eventually remembering the song’s lyrics about a pair of lovers, a shy penis, and a cameo-ing squirrel and joining in the song, so its just-okay aftertaste is a bummer.

Chris Redd and Pete Davidson’s pro-Ruth Bader Ginsburg rap is the sort of thing they (especially Redd) have done better before, with the paean to the ailing but hopefully indestructible Supreme Court justice never expanding appreciably past its premise. It gave Kate McKinnon a chance to wheel out her RBG for some of her signature gyrating as “the one lady holding the whole damn thing together,” but it’s unlikely to garner another musical SNL Emmy for Redd and company.

The RV sketch, in which Heidi Gardner’s wife unsuccessfully hides how miserable she is since husband Carell cashed out to make her live out his cross-country camper fantasy worked to the extent that it did because Gardner, once more, showed what a fine actress she is on SNL. The sketch had slack pacing, no ending, another blah turn by Carell as the clueless husband, and a very nervous-looking great dane. But it also had Gardner’s peerless squeaking, eyes-averted denial to power it, with her secretly stewing wife not complaining about having to ride in the back (the dog gets carsick), sleep sitting up at the camper’s cramped table, and being in charge of emptying the vehicle’s septic tank before she finally explodes.

By dint of it being the first sketch after the monologue, I’m disinclined to cut the clueless dad sketch much slack. Of all its worst instincts, Saturday Night Live’s need to over-explain a premise is more damaging than musical monologues, game- and talk show sketches, and recurring characters combined. Here, dad Carell’s 5 a.m. announcement that he’s taking his four kids to Disney World sees his progeny immediately asking “Oh my god, does he not know?,” “Oh no, is our dad dumb?,” and “How can we know all this and our dad has no idea?” to let us know that Carell’s dad character is dumb and doesn’t know stuff. (Namely that their mom/his wife is sleeping with his boss, has left and moved to Arizona, and two of the kids aren’t his.) Carell, coming out for his first character work of the night, tentatively sets up the sketch-deadening explanatory lines, which leave viewers asking exactly how slow SNL thinks we are.

“What do you call that act?” “The Californians!”—Recurring sketch report

LaVar Ball, Ingraham Angle. Speaking of . . .

“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report

We got another Ingraham Angle cold open tonight, with Kate McKinnon mugging it up as Fox News’ smirking white supremacist and, as she translates from Telemundo’s nickname for her, “La madre del diablo,” Laura Ingraham. McKinnon’s impression is more about pitch-perfect sneering contempt than vocal verisimilitude, but it’s still a decent vehicle to mock Ingraham’s ongoing campaign against facts, actual reporting, and anything darker than eggshell. Still, this showed the writing already letting the air out of the Alec Baldwin-replacing opening bit, as Ingraham’s breathless report on nonexistent Democratic voter fraud made eye-rolling jabs at Tyler Perry and Eddie Murphy showing up as Madea and the entire Klump family, respectively, to vote multiple times. The joke about Ingraham still scrambling for advertisers willing to sponsor someone who mocked school shooting survivors and, well, lots of other stuff is the sharpest weapon SNL wielded here, with Ingraham happily shilling for the likes of a bejeweled catheter (“Ouch.”), teeny, tiny turkeys (because you’ve alienated your entire family in time for Thanksgiving), and Volkswagen (“You know why.”) Cecily Strong made a welcome reappearance as Fox News legal shouter Jeanine Pirro. (“I hate them Laura!” “Who?” “Sorry, that’s my vocal warmup.”) And Alex Moffat continued the show’s questionable choice to portray Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg as being somewhere on the autism spectrum as the whole joke, although him finally blurting, “When I do bad things, I get money” at least addressed the most(?) recent Facebook disinformation scandal obliquely. It wasn’t outstanding, but if it keeps Baldwin’s dull and obvious Trump offscreen for another week, I’ll allow it.

Carell’s biggest showcase was in the filmed Amazon piece, where his bald-capped Jeff Bezos smugly outlined all the ways the online behemoth’s new ventures are in no way intended to merely troll Donald Trump. You know, even with drones topped with bad wigs (instead of shaving their heads “like a real man would”), new headquarters in Trump’s home town and Washington-area residence (and Florida resort vicinity), and the Bezos-owned Washington Post featuring stories like “Immigration Lawyers Suing for Apprentice tapes of Trump using the N-Word.” Carell digs in to the part more than anywhere else on the episode, serenely jabbing at Trump being approximately 100 times less wealthy than he is, or how Trump’s book is so heavy to ship because “it has four Chapter 11s.” (As the commercial chirpily concludes, “This has been a sick burn by Jeff Bezos.”) Fair enough stuff. But, as with Jost’s Update material, there’s a simplistic sameness to the joke here as—while Carell’s Bezos glides over the fact that his new HQs are pleasing everyone “except for the people who live there, and the people who live in all the places we didn’t choose”—the pandering Trump-burning here ignores the parallel dynamic of two rich assholes screwing with people’s lives for petty reasons. If people are going to clap at the idea of Bezos using the Post to attack Trump, it undermines the Post’s actual journalism as just the grimy sniping of one said asshole at another. The crowd erupted in groans at the joke that Amazon’s Arlington National Cemetery-adjacent HQ will allow the company to pay tribute to the nation’s war dead “even when it’s raining,” but, well, Trump made such jokes fair game recently. It’s just that satire works better (or at all) if it isn’t deliberately or through laziness ignoring the whole picture.

I am hip to the musics of today

Ella Mai has a pretty vibrato and some serviceable slow jams. Plus, she got to use the stage fog left over from Carell’s sleepover sketch for her second number.

Most/Least Valuable (Not Ready For Prime Time) Player

Seemingly not content to continue keeping Ego Nwodim on the bench, the episode actually reduced her in size, as she was one of the students in the ISS sketch, asking her question from a tiny box in the corner of the screen.

Nobody rose above this listless episode enough to warrant the top spot. Tough, but fair.

“What the hell is that thing?”—The Ten-To-Oneland Report

After the space corn fiasco (which, for or because of its faults, should have been the last sketch), the “GP Yass” commercial that actually ended the show fizzled out badly. The joke that you can set your default GPS voice to “drag entertainer” sort-of enchants car passengers Steve Carell and Heidi Gardner, who express enjoyment of the “sassy” directions and traffic warnings with a square deadpan that aims for . . . something? Honestly, it feels like a cut-for-time piece that was only plugged in because the actual ten-to-one sketch crapped out so badly. Directionless is as good a place to get off of this review as any.

Stray observations

In addition to being Mrs. Steve Carell/monologue prop (along with their kids), Nancy Carell (née Walls) was a cast member on SNL from 1995-1996. (Something her husband was not.) Kind of strange the show wouldn’t make mention/comedic use of that.

“You can’t dismiss that idea simply because it isn’t true and sounds insane.”

Gardner’s dog-hating mom, feigning love for the huge new pet crowding her out of the RV: “Did you know that a dog can punch you?”

Che, suspiciously eyeing the picture of a handful of smiling black men standing with Trump as he announces some suspiciously not-racist-seeming prison reform legislation, states that, whenever he sees such a gathering, he thinks, “Oh lord, how much they sell us for?”

We’re off next week, gang. See you back on December 1 for host Claire Foy, with musical guest and copy editor’s nightmare Anderson .Paak.

Source: https://tv.avclub.com/a-returning-steve-carell-helms-a-sluggish-saturday-nigh-1830519351

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yourpointsofreference · 7 years ago

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POR Reviews: Gottwood Festival 2017

After a long and scenic drive along the north wales coast towards the north-west tip of Anglesey, you arrive at what has to be one of the most remote yet stunningly beautiful locations the UK has to offer a festival site. Every year, a family farm opens up its doors to the Gottwood revellers, a fun & good willed bunch who pitch up every year in search of a weekend of bohemia, extravagant décor, and a bill packed with some of the most forward-thinking electronic music acts from around the globe.

It’s very apparent from the onset that this festival and their organisers place an open mind and a friendly atmosphere at the top of their agenda. From the minute you receive a wristband that reads ‘Gottwood Family’, you know everyone is invested in each other and there is very little to suggest otherwise. Even the security managed to make warnings to revelers sound friendly and charming.

Move D made a very sound point during his Q & A on Sunday afternoon concerning our rave and dance music culture, that it is often viewed as sitting on the wrong side of the law. This can be manifested by heavy handed and at times aggressive festival security, but it was a far stretch from that at Gottwood, the scene is set for a protected and welcoming environment for a looming weekend of music loving escapism.

As a festival of only 5000 attendees, it certainly has its perks. Firstly, the walk from the campsite is very short – no matter where you set up camp, it was no problem whatsoever to pop back and grab that ‘thing you needed’, without missing too much of the music. Secondly, it allowed the organisers to focus on quality and detail – a perfect example of this was the awe-striking light shows at each and every stage, carrying perfect motion, timing, blends of colours, and healthy doses of strobes coming from all angles.

As late arrivers on the Thursday, we were welcomed by strong sea winds and characteristic rain, but to our delight there were very short search queues (a theme of the whole festival) and easy entry into the site. It took no time to get set up and ready to go. Like eager school children, the lights and sounds just in touching distance of the other side of the woodland bordering the campsite, we made sure we were not hanging around the tents for long!

Our first night we spent our time exploring the location, checking out the décor, the stages, the scenery - it is quite a sight at night time. The crowds were predominantly fresh-faced students and twenty somethings dressed in an colourful assortment of charity shop rarities and throw-back fashion labels. Despite the weather, they carried the festival at a very high energy throughout its course, a priceless asset when you are approaching the end of your power come Sunday.

Throughout the years we have been to our fair share of festivals abroad and at home but were completely blown away by the visual aspects of Gottwood. The stunning attention to detail & effort in the production of Gottwood is one of the defining features and set the bar very high in the midst of other dance/electronic music festivals - it is obvious this is a festival designed to elevate and intensify the senses' reception of the music. This glorious production is further combined with truly intimate spaces, there is no main stage just a collection of 500 or so capacity stages meaning you are fully integrated into any space you are experiencing.

Of the bunch it was The Trigon stage, in its second year at the festival, that really stood out. A hay bailed walled garden surrounding a space with a terraced bar providing exceptional views over the crowd from the back. The genius of the stage was a giant wood-framed triangular DJ booth with a protruding prism structure, stretching over the crowds with a lighting rig running through it. The result was a stage with real energy and immersion, and creating a sense that each and every dancer was a participant in the performance. This coupled with high quality strobes lining the walls, made it one of the most absorbing & unique spaces we have had the pleasure to dance in.

It is unfair to simply highlight the Trigon stage however, with shout-outs to the amazing craft and dedication that went into the warping & imposing The Mother Owl, the serene lake-side setting of The Lawn, the seemingly constant party vibes pumping out of the Walled Garden and the transformation of the Tree House from a tame, muddy daytime clearing into a night-time other-worldly, trippy spectacle, with the crowd always in reaching distance of the DJs (Bradley Zero, Black Madonna & Helena Hauff to name a few).

Gottwood, now in it’s 7th year, has above all the other things been a festival that promotes, forward thinking, innovative & modern dance music in all it’s forms. Whilst you could argue the music certainly leans towards House & Disco there is everything on offer from UK Bass, Dubstep, Techno, Drum and Bass, Garage, every corner of the UK dance market is represented. It is testament to the festival that legends such as Move D keep coming back year on year - playing not one, but 2, 3 or maybe even four sets across the whole weekend.

Considering the variety of music the weekend has to offer, our experience was heavily biased towards House & Disco, with particularly impressive sets from Bradley Zero who played for a total of 6 hours on Sunday across two B2B sets. A live, groove-laden Ross From Friends set, featuring an incredibly enthusiastic bassist playing to a packed out crowd by the lake, loosening us into the Sunday evening frivolities. Antal laying down his signature Rush Hour sound, O’Flynn having the time of his life at the Lawn Stage and the ever reliable Move D showing us what he is all about. POR Favorites Ishmael Ensemble, Bastien Keb & Harvey Sutherland also made their mark with stunning live band performances during the day to nourish the hangovers.

With those noteworthy sets aside, there were some truly exceptional moments across the festival that need special mention:

Helena Hauff

Helena is a DJ that has been on the bucket list for some time now, and as part time techno fans we knew that she was the real deal - and she did not fail to deliver. As the build up grew throughout the weekend, and the thirst for something completely different intensified, we arrived at the Treehouse after a quick break at the campsite in prep for the night. Upon arrival, it was the first time that we had seen this stage in all its glory, and whilst the dancefloor was not at all crowded at first, it soon packed out upon her arrival.

The scenes during that set were utterly jaw-dropping, a combination of green lasers flooding the dancefloor, a stage that was completely transformed by the oceans of people arriving, and the winds that carried away Helena's hair whilst she DJ'd made you feel like she was physically driving the crowd at full throttle. This was electronic music in its purest form - audacious, bold, immersive, and spectacular. You could physically see fellow dancers being drained by the euphoric intensity before your eyes.

Move D (Disco Set)

On his last set of the weekend on Saturday day, there was definitely a feeling in the air that this was the moment many were all waiting for. We made sure we got there early to get a good spot, and thankfully we made it just in time. This was definitely a huge highlight for everyone in attendance - with his feel-good selecting, flawless mixing, and uber enthusiasm, Move D nailed this prominent slot. From well-known classics, to crate-dug gems, the crowd went absolutely wild for the entire time he span the records.

Gwen McCrae 'Keep the Fire Burning', Chemise 'She Can't Love you', and MFSB 'Love is the Message' all made the cut, but a particular highlight was Sister Sledge's 'Lost in Music'. All of these, key ingredients to a set that was sending revellers up the 4 metre walls to rip their tops off and go completely wild to the masses. Considering Move D has only more recently become known for his disco sets, this party was absolutely popping.

DJ Tennis

After only recently becoming a DJ Tennis fan, upon seeing his 3 hour closing set at the Trigon stage Friday night, I can safely say that I am a total convert. Arriving an hour late, (we had been catching Move D at Ricky’s Disco) during a torrential downpour that only got worse as time progressed the crowd was not totally sold on his selections at first with their dismay primarily focused on the drenching we were all receiving. One of best attributes of any good DJ is adaptability and knowing how to play to a certain crowd, that doesn’t mean crowd pleasing, but it is more an understanding of the atmosphere and mood, and catering selections to get the most from the crowd - DJ Tennis showcased exactly this. At around the halfway point he shifted his selections away from the darker side of the spectrum, and tapped into the lighter piano chords and synth notes, whilst keeping his foot firmly on his unique brand of techno. The shift resulted in the exact uplift the crowd needed, tracks like his finisher the incredible TB – Invitation to Love should point you in the direction to what I mean here.

With the rain consistent in its intensity, some patient and thoughtful mixing from Tennis took us up and down through the levels and the mind altering visuals (strobes in particular), this was a set of true quality and distinctiveness, I doubt I will experience something of this kind anytime time soon.

Banoffee Pies DJ’s

Anyone who visits POR regularly should know all about Banoffee Pies, a Bristol-based label showcasing some of the most eclectic and forward thinking music from Bristol & the UK. Over the past year or so they have been gaining more and more notoriety as DJs in their own right, being signed to TSA Artists and with appearances on shows such as Moxie's NTS show. These boys have shown they have what it takes to spin a few records and they certainly showed the crowd at Gottwood exactly the quality they have to offer.

Playing a 3 hour daytime slot at the Walled Garden at their own stage takeover on Sunday (they were essentially warm-up for Young Marco), it started as a very eclectic affair playing to handful of people, with selections pulled from the dark corners of their bags, they chose the likes of bhangra, afrobeat, jazz and more. It was on the arrival of a sudden downpour on an otherwise beautiful day, the Walled Garden suddenly became awash with festival goers looking for shelter from the rain - the boys then seized there chance and laid down a set of pure party starters much to the surprise and joy of the revelers in the tent. Going through the motions with garage, house and disco tracks, they showcased their true character as DJs. Todd Terje’s edit of ‘Stuck In Middle With You’ was a particularly special moment with rapturous cheering and applause at its halfway point. What I love the most about this duo is that they're the sort of DJs who don’t mind making mistakes, they take risks with their mixing, and change genre and tempo every few songs whilst projecting constant smiles, and playful interactions with the crowd, which really translates to the music.

Like all the best things, it was a set that took us completely by surprise and with these two behind the decks we all learnt a lesson to expect the unexpected!

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Overall, there's only one way to describe Gottwood: one of a kind.

Yes, there are many other boutique festivals around the UK, and yes, there are many smaller dance festivals, but what makes Gottwood stand out is its mystique, its beauty, its unpredictability, and its thriving party attitude.

With incredible line ups at every stage, and something for every dance music fan - this farm, for one weekend, becomes party heaven.

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