#ben wilkins

[jetslay]

RETURN OF SUPERMAN 30TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1

Written by DAN JURGENS, LOUISE SIMONSON, JERRY ORDWAY, and KARL KESEL Art by TRAVIS MOORE, DAN JURGENS, BRETT BREEDING, JON BOGDANOVE, BUTCH GUICE, TOM GRUMMETT, and DOUG HAZLEWOOD Cover by DAN JURGENS Variant covers by JOHN GIANG, DAVE WILKINS, FRANCIS MANAPUL, and BEN OLIVER 1:25 variant cover by BRAD WALKER 1:50 variant cover by JON BOGDANOVE Foil variant cover by DAN JURGENS ($10.99 US) $9.99 US | 80 pages | Prestige | (all covers card stock) ON SALE 10/31/23

Superman returns! After the tragic events of more than 30 years ago, when Superman met his end at the hands of Doomsday, Metropolis mourned the loss of their greatest hero and soon turned their attention to the search for his successor. Four Supermen rose to the challenge: Superboy, Steel, Eradicator, and Cyborg Superman. Each with their own strengths and weaknesses, they fought in honor of the original Man of Steel. Little did they know, his return was just around the corner! To celebrate the Reign of the Supermen and Return of Superman, DC has brought back the original creative teams for new stories set in the wake of Superman’s death. It all begins with new Daily Planet editor-in-chief Lois Lane discovering Perry White’s journals from the time and the secrets he kept as he searched for who could be the next Superman. What could this discovery mean for our present? Find out in this special that’s sure to be a classic in the future!

[themattress]

Ever just have these sudden thoughts?

[fauxfickle]

We now return with your regularly scheduled and all too familiar feeling of malaise and the search for "The Great All American Pizza Show!"

So it's been a little under a month since my last post and I've been skimming through commercial compilations from the LA area. I've found some cool YT channels that archive old ads from that area but I obviously don't have anything to show for it. The ads are either too early or too late to be part of this campaign which is a bit frustrating. Something I neglected to mention last time was that I was also looking through Colossal Pictures demo reels to see if they had a snippet of the animated commercial but of course, there's nothing. There seems to be a cutoff point in the early 80s as most demos only show things from that far back. I was able to find some obscure, silent, avant garde, sci-fi film possibly connected to Colossal but I don't think that'll help me much.

Colossal had some sort of "meet the crew" type video where all the employees said they're names but only their first name so I can't really track them down or anything. I'll keep looking, I didn't look all too hard as I was kinda at my wits end at that time looking through ad comps for hours.

I took a bit of a break for a while before reading through the old Pizza Times newsletters from Dec 79 - May 80. The May 1980 newsletter had some cool info about commercials and news features filmed at the various stores. Some of these aren't technically part of TGAAPS campaign but ehhhhhh I don't really care. They're part of early PTT history and I wanna see them damnit!

Let's go through these starting with Citrus Heights. The Citrus Heights section is loaded with info regarding lost media, 3 in fact! Sacramento's Channel 40 (KTXL), which has since been bought out by FOX in the mid 80s, did a Newsplus at 10 feature on the cyberamic systems at the new store during it's opening week. If we consult the ever so useful Chuck-E-Pedia, we can find that this feature would have been shot and most likely aired on Christmas week of 1979. A perfect pin point set of dates to look through! Next, Chuck was seen in the lead up to the United Cerebral Palsy Telethon which also gives us some idea of where to look. Finally, a TV commercial was filmed, possibly with TGAAPS slogan. Bob Wilkins' ad agency produced it but I couldn't find ANYTHING regarding this company. It's mentioned on his wikipedia but not named, and a even his own website doesn't mention anything about it. It's surprising that someone who seems like a local celeb in there area could have an ad agency that goes almost entirely undocumented.

Next, we move to Sparks, Nevada. Channel 2 (KTVN) filmed a feature on the store for the PM Magazine. The store was visited by reporter Keith Hirshland. Now I'm actually pretty sure I've found this dude! I found a local online article talking about him and the timeline works perfectly. Assuming this was filmed in early 1980, Keith would of been still fresh out of college with a degree in journalism and around 23. He also says he grew up running down the halls of the KTVN office. As a little aside, I'd just like to say don't bother this man or anyone/company mentioned in any of my posts. The last thing we need is to scare off these people.

This last little piece of lost media probably has the best chances of being found out of all the rest. Ben Wattenberg's 1980, from what I can find, is a dry, uninteresting TV news segment hosted by an equally dry and uninteresting host, the neo-conservative Ben Wattenberg. Ben Wattenberg's 1980 itself seems to be almost entirely lost media as only a few stills, episode descriptions, and TV listings exist online. However, this show was on PBS which no doubt has it somewhere in it's archive. What's better is that that there not only an exact date of when the episode will air, but also the name of the episode itself! One user on taptalk was able to find a TV listing which unfortunately doesn't lead anywhere and isn't archive on the WayBack machine. Luckily people actually said the name of the supposed episode which would of been "Silicon Valley: The New Entrepreneurs". We can also find evidence of it in a newspaper from that June 15th.

I sent e-mails to KTXL-40 and PBS on 2/24, so far no responses. I'll wait a little longer and in the mean time look for more leads and contacts. As I said before, don't bother these people/companies. I don't want them to be swamped with calls and e-mails and clam up on us. Bye for now!

[punk-63]

[smashpages]

Bunn + Schoening continue the story of cult leader Bingo Wilkin this spring

‘The Cult of That Wilkin Boy: Initiation’ will arrive in stores in April.

[vicontheinternet]

Will vandom 🤝 Gwen Tennyson

🤝 Powerful baddies with pink powers 🤝

Samantha Wilkins

[all-seeing-ifer]

Buffyverse Characters Tournament: Round 1 Part 1

[graphicpolicy]

The Triptych of Terror comes to The Last Comic Book on the Left

The Triptych of Terror comes to The Last Comic Book on the Left #comics #comicbooks #graphicnovel

The fevered minds behind The Last Podcast on the Left, Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, and Ben Kissel, have once more joined unholy forces with Z2 Comics for a third tome in the The Last Comic Book on the Left series. Overflowing with stories equally heretic and hilarious, this new anthology has ensnared a new batch of writers and artists to conjure more macabre and profane sequential art inspired…

[jazzdailyblog]

"Down Home" by Sam Jones: A Hard-Bop Masterpiece Unveiled

Introduction: Sam Jones, a name synonymous with impeccable bass lines and soulful performances, is often celebrated for his work as a sideman in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. However, his contributions as a leader have left an indelible mark on the jazz world, particularly with his 1962 album, “Down Home.” This album, recorded and released on the Riverside label, showcases Jones not only as a…

[lyledebeast]

Sex and The Patriot Canon

For having inspired so many sexy fanfics, The Patriot is a deeply unsexy film in most respects. The only characters who canonically fuck are the parents of the children sacrificed to "the cause." Sex is extremely utilitarian in this film; any romance scene in which one of the participants sighs and says "very well" in a tone of abject resignation is going nowhere very steamy fast.

This has been an inspiration rather than an obstacle to the numerous fanfic writers for whom Colonel Tavington not fucking is unconscionable. But it's been interesting to see how often complaints about Tavington's characterization in fic comes from people who write or prefer to read stories where he has sex, often involving hard kinks, with women. I read these complaints and have to wonder, what character do they think he's out of? The film's Tavington does not so much as look at or speak to a single woman in the whole run time. The Patriot is an extremely male-centric story, but it is not set at sea. Tavington has access to women; he just doesn't appear to have any interest in them.

The only time we see him in the same frame as a woman is right after the militia blows up a ship a few yards away from Middleton Place, and both he and the women in front of him are preoccupied with that! In contrast, we do see both of Tavington's captains, Bordon and Wilkins, chatting with women at the same party and seeming to enjoy themselves. But, as we see in other scenes, Tavington is a bit awkward with even his male peers in celebratory settings. How is his conduct different with Patriot women?

It isn't. He addresses a crowd that includes women, but when Anne Howard shouts at him he does not even acknowledge her presence. The people he tortures for information are both men, at least one is a deserter from the militia. It would have been very easy to include a scene of Tavington sexually menacing a militiaman's wife--he and his men burn eight of their houses--but we don't see that. When Wilkins tells him Ben Martin would send his children to stay with his sister-in-law, Tavington has zero curiosity about this woman. Every time the opportunity for Tavington to interact with a Patriot woman presents itself, he interacts with a man or boy instead.

A fic in which Tavington has sex with a woman, brutally or otherwise, is already making a pretty significant departure from canon regardless of what else is going on. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! Most fic is canon-divergent in one way or another. If a fic is going to just regurgitate canon in different words, what is the point? But an interpretation of a character in fanfic doesn't become a standard for how authentic that character is in other fics just because it is popular. Maybe those who voice these complaints have something other than Tavington's sexuality in mind, like his voice or his personality: things that could remain canon-complaint even as he does any number of things he doesn't get to do in his far too brief screentime. But for someone who clearly enjoys one kind of canon-divergence to describe other divergences as "out of character" seems a little hypocritical, or at least lacking in self-awareness.

[peonyblossom]

Ships I'll Write For

for reference :)

Pixelberry

All of Us

Alex x m!MC (Dexter Del Rossi)

Tess x f!MC (Jo Moreno)

Alpha

m!Channing Lowe x m!MC (Kalani Mochizuki)

America's Most Eligible

Carson Stewart x f!MC (Juliet James)

Blades of Light and Shadow

Nia Ellarious x f!human!MC (Iris of Riverbend)

Valax x f!human!MC (Iris of Riverbend)

Mal Volari x Tyril Starfury

Mal Volari x Tyril Starfury x m!elf!MC (Hades Nightbloom)

Bloodbound

Adrian Raines x Gaius Augustine

Dirty Little Secrets

m!Carpenter (Emmett King) x m!MC (Brooklyn Peters)

High School Story

Wes Porter x Ezra Mitchell

Payton Saunders x f!MC (Lola Williams)

Michael Harrison x nb!MC (Jamie Baxter)

Mia Warren x Katherine

Ajay Bhandari x m!MC (Matty Wright)

Hollywood U

Thomas Hunt x f/nb!MC (Jackie Winters)

Hot Couture

Marco Di Vincenzo x f!MC (Analise Moore)

Immortal Desires

m!Cas x m!Gabe x nb!MC (Reese O'Malley)

Lewyn Junius x m!OC (Jude Junius)

It Lives Anthology

Noah Marshall x m!MC (Harry Spear)

Noah Marshall x Connor Green

Noah Marshall x m!MC (Devon Yasuda)

Connor Green x m!MC (Jesse Harrison)

Ava Cunningham x f!MC (Raven Adams)

Stacy Green x f!MC (Ivy Lovelace)

Imogen Wescott x f!MC (Fiona Vance)

Tom Sato x m!MC (River Vance)

Danni Asturias x f!MC (Merliah Vance)

Abel Flint x nb!MC (Ollie Bridgers)

Lincoln Aquino x nb!MC (Keagan Burke)

Amalia de León x nb!MC (Lottie Hamilton)

Jocelyn Wu x f!MC (Eleanor Wilkins) (slowburn)

Matthias McQuoid x m!OC (Ezra Wilkins)

Jocelyn Wu x nb!MC (Benni Locke) (fwb)

Laws of Attraction

Gabe Ricci x Aislinn Tanaka x nb!MC (Sav Zarza)

Murder at Homecoming

Donovan Navarro x nb!MC (Jupiter Stone)

Open Heart

Ethan Ramsey x m!MC (Sydney Valentine)

Ethan Ramsey x Tobias Carrick

Aurora Emery x Sienna Trinh

Queen B

Zoey Wade x f!MC (Quinn Hughes)

Ian Kingsley x f!MC (Quinn Hughes)

Untameable Anthology

m!Kit Jackson x m!MC (Jules Rojas)

Mandy Martinez x Ryder Wilson x m!MC (Barrett Kemp)

Gravity Falls

Stan Pines x Reader

Stan Pines x nb!OC (JD Willows)

Ford Pines x Fiddleford McGucket

Grey's Anatomy/Station 19

Mark Sloan x Jackson Avery x Lexi Grey

Mark Sloan x Jackson Avery

Meredith Grey x Derek Shepherd

Meredith Grey x Andy Herrera

Victoria Hughes x Lucas Ripley

Izzie Stevens x Denny Duquette

Ben Warren x Miranda Bailey

Cristina Yang x Teddy Altman

Maya Bishop x Carina DeLuca

[littlequeenies]

Mary Werbelow biography part 1 (part 2)

Early years and relationship with Jim Morrison

Mary Werbelow was born in July 1944 and she came from a very strict Catholic family.

[Mary when she was 12 years old. Ebay]

In Summer 1962 she was just finishing her junior year at Clearwater High, when Mary and best friend Mary Wilkin spread their beach blanket near Pier 60, she was 17, and met Jim Morrison, who had been sent here by his father, then a Navy captain, after he blew off his high school graduation ceremony in Virginia. He had just finished the year at St. Petersburg Junior College and lived with his grandparents.

Mary was on the high school homecoming court. Her friends did cotillion dances at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel, hit Brown Brothers dairy store for burgers and malts, and shopped Mertz's records for Ben E. King, Del Shannon and Elvis Presley.

Jim read his poetry at the avant-garde Beaux Arts coffeehouse in Pinellas Park and visited St. Pete's only live burlesque show, at the Sun Art Theater on Ninth Street.

Friends who thought they knew Mary couldn't fathom why she would want to hang out with Jim Morrison. What they didn't know was how out of place Mary felt in her social circle. Jim talked like no one she had met. "We connected on a level where speaking was almost unnecessary. We'd look at each other and know what we were thinking." He recited long poems from memory.

[L-R: Andy - Jim's younger brother - Mary and Jim pictured in Summer 1962. The Doors by The Doors & Ben Fong Torres]

She liked her alone time, in her bedroom, dancing and drawing. Jim liked his alone time, in his bedroom, reading. They skipped dances and football games and hung out, at her house or at his grandparents' house.

When Jim drove, Mary kept a notebook at the ready. "Write this!" he'd say, dictating an observation. Or he'd pull over and scribble himself. "He was a genius," Mary says. "He was incredible."

Mary says he rarely drank in her presence. "It was out of respect for me. We were in love, and he didn't want to do things that I didn't like."

At fall, Jim transferred to Florida State. Most weekends, rain or shine, he hitchhiked back to Clearwater, 230 miles down U.S. 19. Most days in between, letters postmarked Tallahassee arrived at the Werbelow mailbox on Nursery Road.

Mary's father intercepted one, read the page about sex and never got to the part that made clear Jim was writing about a class. Furious at her father's snooping, she burned all Jim's letters, a move she came to regret, deeply.

At Jim's direction, she wrote once a week and included the number of a public telephone in Clearwater and a time he should call. On his end, Jim would put in a dime for the first two minutes. They would talk for hours. On her end, Mary would loiter by the phone at the appointed hour.

[Mary early modelling shots, 1963. Ebay, tumblr ank links below]

On March 30, 1963 the Jaycees called to recruit Mary for the Miss Clearwater competition, Mary's mother answered the phone."Oh, yeah," she said, as Mary recalled "she'll be happy to do it." although Mary herself would have declined.

The third and final night of competition, more than 1,000 people packed Clearwater Municipal Auditorium. Five finalists matched "beauty, personality and poise." Mary was looking good, not that Jim was thrilled. If she won, it was on to Miss Florida. Mary performed body twirls. She did the bossa nova. Time for her big question: "If your husband grew a beard, what would you do?" she answered: "I'd let him grow it. Whether he would kiss me or not would be another matter."

She got first runner-up.

As Mary's father banned Jim from the Werbelow house, she followed him to Tallahassee for a semester, although her parents objected. in 1964, When he started film school at UCLA and Mary announced she was following him to Los Angeles, her parents were devastated.

Mary says Jim asked her to wear "something floaty" when she arrived in Los Angeles. "He wanted me to look like an angel coming off the plane." Instead, she drove out a week early and surprised him.

Together again, in an exciting, intimidating city, they kept separate apartments. By November 1964 Mary got her first real job, in the office of a hospital X-ray department. Later, she donned a fringe skirt and boots as a go-go dancer at Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip although Jim didn't like the idea. Later that month, she went to Celebrate Thanksgiving with Jim and his parents.

[Mary as a go-go dancer at Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip, 1964. Ebay]

Jim studied film. At the end of the year, a handful from among hundreds of student films were selected for public showing. Jim's was not among them. Shortly after, Mary says, he told her he was humiliated, considered his formal education over and needed to forget everything. He built a fire in his back yard and incinerated many of his precious Florida notebooks.

Mary says he started doubting her commitment. "You're going to leave me," he would tell her. "No, I'm not. How can you say that? I'm in love with you."

After one fight, Jim went out with another woman. He wasn't home the next morning. Mary went to the woman's house, but she said Jim wasn't there. Mary called: "Come out wherever you are!" Jim slinked forward, a hand towel around him. Mary bolted and, in a blur, hit the woman's fence as she sped off. "That was the beginning of the end."

He was drinking hard and taking psychedelic drugs. The darkness she had always seen seemed to be overtaking him, and she didn't want to watch him explore his self-destructive bent. And she felt he had swallowed her identity. Whatever he liked, she liked. "I had to go out and see what parts of that were me. I just knew I had to be away from him. I needed to be by myself, to find my own identity."

She enrolled in art school. The day Jim helped her move to a new apartment, she told him she needed a break. "He clammed up after that. I really hurt him. It hurts me to say that. I really hurt him."

They split up in the summer of 1965.

A few months later, Jim got together with a film school buddy, Ray Manzarek, who says he wanted to combine his keyboards with Jim's poetry. They started the band that became the Doors. "He didn't sit around and sing," Mary says, laughing. "Jim, no, he was a poet. He wrote poetry."

By phone from his home in Northern California, Manzarek says all the guys in film school were in love with Mary. She was gorgeous, and sweet on top of that. "She was Jim's first love. She held a deep place in his soul."

[Ray, Mary and Jim in a film from 1964/early 1965 when Ray & Jim were students at UCLA, from thedoorsareopened tiktok]

The Doors' 11-minute ballad The End, Manzarek says, originally was "a short goodbye love song to Mary." Doors drummer John Densmore stated: "Jim wrote The Crystal Ship for Mary Werbelow, a girlfriend with whom he was breaking up. . . . The song was a goodbye love song."

Jim Morrison took up with other women, notably with longtime companion Pam, but Mary says she and Jim kept up with each other. She says she was his anchor to the times before things got crazy. "I'd see him when he really needed to talk to someone."

She thought they were too young. She worried they might grow apart. She needed more time to explore her own identity, so by late 1968 to early-mid 1969, Mary moved to India to study meditation, while there, she wrote several letters to her parents. She never saw Jim again.

[several Mary's letters and photos from her early life, notice the rare photo she took of Jim when they were together. Ebay]

Sources:

Mary & Jim to the End

Romantic Relationships, Jim Morrison's girlfriends

Door's Jim Morrison girlfriend Mary Werbelow dead at 79

Ebay, very special thanks to S who shared all the links at Pam Courson facebook page !!

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

Unsung Heroes: Meat Lady

Welcome to Unsung Heroes, a mini-series celebrating the minor & supporting characters in the National Treasure universe.

First up is, of course, Meat Lady. Officially credited as "Butcher Lady," Meat Lady is, arguably, the true national treasure.

Played by the inimitable Sharon Wilkins, Meat Lady steals the show for the the entire exchange that she's in.

When Abigail is separated from Riley in Reading Terminal Market, she escapes from Shaw but jumping behind a butcher's counter. And the attendant of that counter is...well, supportive, but not impressed.

I think this scene works for two reasons.

The reasons ↓

The first is Meat Lady herself. Wilkins give a fantastically deadpan performance as a character who is basically a turbo Riley.

Hear me out.

Riley is the universally beloved main character in National Treasure, sand I think a lot of that has to do with his everyman persona. While all this crazy, outlandish shit is happening he's just like...wtf. why??

He's bringing a lot of this energy to the story.

And I would argue that Meat Lady brings a condensed dose of that same energy. She is just so done with whatever is going on here.

And yet, like Riley, she is actually quite supportive of the heistin' huntin' characters.

MEAT LADY I see why you left him.

Enough said.

The second reason is because the tension is actually really high. As much as this scene is both a physical and comedic rest from the chase sequence, it also underscores exactly how much danger our heroes are in without including any violence.

Something about how intense and heavily armed Shaw seems from Abigail's place behind the case, and how strongly she reacts to seeing the gun he has holstered, really emphasizes how much danger she and the rest of Team Treasure are in.

Like, we're not really expecting Ben to get shot when he's running through the graveyard. We've seen movies.

But this? This scene makes it clear that Shaw is absolutely willing to kill Abigail and anybody else who gets in his way, all without him picking up the gun.

But we're here to talk about Meat Lady.

Nothing close to this scene exists in the 2003 script, by the way. That Philadelphia chase sequence is an action-heavy car chase featuring a Corvette, a horse, and a Declaration stored carefully in the cleavage.

Abigail is briefly kidnapped by Ian in that version, but I love this quiet moment so, so much more.

What happened to her?

I like to think that first she saw coverage of the treasure on the news and was like, well I'll be damned.

And I like to think that Abigail tracked her down to thank her for quite possibly saving her life. They went out for coffee, Abigail told the full story of the treasure hunt and the chase, and Meat Lady shared more about herself.

Abigail would want to invest in whatever Meat Lady's passion is. Maybe it's private school for her kids, buying the butcher's stall, franchising, going back to school, whatever. I'm sure there would be some social two stepping involved to find an arrangement that worked for both parties, but imo Meat Lady is deserving of a bit of that finders' fee. She saved Abigail's bacon.

Yes, I've been waiting all article to use that joke.

Here's to Meat Lady, who looked Shaw in the face and said, 'bitch.'

[lurkingshan]

SHIPPER TAG GAME

Tagged by @negrowhat to give away all my fandom secrets. I came up in the US, so most of these will be Western shows. Also be aware that I'm old and been around in fandoms for decades, some of you youths might not even recognize these ships.

1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care anymore?

Felicity and Noel. I was very into them (and very anti-Ben) when I was first watching this show at the tender age of 14, but then I rewatched it as an adult, realized Noel was a classic Nice Guy with some clear warning flags, and settled into Team Ben.

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

Hmm maybe Elizabeth Wakefield and Todd Wilkins? I think I started reading Sweet Valley High at, like, age 8. For TV, I was a sitcom kid and I was obsessed with Dwayne Wayne and his flip-up glasses as a child. I loved him and Whitley. Damn now I want to rewatch.

3. Your first fanfic belonged to which couple?

The first I read? I am pretty sure the honor goes to Buffy and Spike.

They were the first ship I remember having that classic fanfic brainrot combo of 1) captivating me entirely with their dynamic and 2) canon leaving me unsatisfied. I lost months of my life over at Elysian Fields.

In terms of the first fanfic I wrote, the honor goes to Ian and Mickey.

I was big into Shameless for its first four seasons. But then the show went way off the rails, the fandom went with it, and I quit watching and scrubbed all my fandom activity off the internet.

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw a fanart over?

I honestly have no idea. Probably something Buffy, I was doing a lot of internet dwelling for that show.

5. Did you ever get into ship discourse?

Getting into discourse is my whole entire thing LOL. I have survived many, many ship wars and let me tell ya you haven't seen unhinged until you've been knee deep in the tags in a long-term fandom with multiple ships for the protagonist. One of the things I love about BL and nearly all Asian dramas is that we go into every show knowing who the main pairing is, so we don't have to fight about ships.

6. Did you used to have any no-otp or have it currently?

Hmm I was a big Buffy/Angel anti and that was before Spuffy was even a twinkle in my eye. I never liked that man in a romance until he got hooked up with Cordelia in his own show (but then they ruined it ugh). I was also very anti-Harry/Hermione back in the OG HP days (let characters have meaningful platonic relationships!).

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

I've been on a Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian kick of late.

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

OTPs are eternal! Like I said above, since I mostly watch Asian drama now, they're baked in. My fav of my current watches is Ten and Prem.

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

YES I AM STILL MAD ABOUT ROBIN AND BARNEY.

You show me two characters who are clearly uniquely compatible, you give me a brief taste of their extremely fun and non-traditional relationship, and then you break them up and stick her with the milquetoast Nice Guy protagonist in a total betrayal of your entire narrative premise? Fuck off forever, HIMYM, I will see you in hell.

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

Hmm nothing comes to mind. If I decided to hate a pair in the past I am pretty likely to still be hating.

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, was considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

I would like to see you try to cancel me!! I'll echo Eboni here and say Brian and Justin, though of course there were people who hated them because of the age gap back in ye olden times, too. Fandom spaces are mostly women and women in queer fandom spaces often struggle to account for the totally different culture and power dynamics between m/m pairings.

12. What was your favorite crack ship?

I don't really do crack ships, I am a canon pairing girlie.

13. Who is the couple you read more fanfics of?

I don't know who the ultimate winner is, but I think it's probably a neck and neck competition between Spuffy and Wangxian as my most read pairing.

14. What most of your ships usually have in common?

There's actually a lot of variety in them in terms of personalities, appearance, and tropes. I think what makes me really click into a ship is the feeling that the two people are uniquely suited to each other and well matched to go through life together.

15. What do you absolutely hate in a ship?

When I don't believe they can actually make it.

Tagging @my-rose-tinted-glasses @twig-tea @imminentinertia @shortpplfedup @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @littleragondin.

[betterthanapokeintheeye]

The End is just the start of a new adventure

Jason Anthony (as he was back then) started Discworld Monthly back in 1997, the first issue was created on Terry Pratchett's birthday that year.

Terry gave his permission for Jason to create and write Discworld Monthly on the basis it sounded like perfectly normal fan activity to him.

We got invites to launch parties, birthday parties, book proofs used to drop in the door, and the phone would occasionally ring and it would be Terry wanting to know something. In emails Terry used to inform us and berate us in equal measure BUT he always appreciated that we didn't expect anything of him and thus Discworld Monthly was always treated kindly by him.

When Terry died, we managed the outpouring of grief from the fandom, spoke his name and gave our time to the mass of journalists who wanted someone to talk about Terry. We did this to keep those same journalists from Rob Wilkin's and Rhianna Pratchett's doors. Circling the wagons as one might say to allow them time to grieve. Protect them we did and protect them we still do.

However, we always wondered how much longer we could keep producing a monthly newsletter. Would there be enough news for us to carry on?

We managed to continue for 7+1 years. It hasn't been easy.

As it turned out, whilst there is news, sharing the news has become problematic. The internet, whilst wonderful, is also a myriad of trip hazards. We've had our wrists slapped more than once because we posted information that was under embargo, which we wouldn't have published if we had known it was! Our sources have always been from the publishing industry websites - if they don't state information is under embargo, how does anyone know?

We also came under fire from the fandom itself because someone decided they didn't like us. In our opinion Trolls should not stay under bridges, but they should at least be fought when they try to take your head off.

We've had good times though. The memories of the good stuff will always outweigh the bad. The friendships created in 26 years will endure.

Terry Pratchett once said "Discworld Monthly, Better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick"

Which is true although sometimes we think being poked in the eye with a blunt stick would have hurt us less.

It is time for a change. A big change.

Discworld Monthly is no more. 26 years of newsletters is a huge achievement and as a fan run entity, self funded and self written, we can hold our heads high and proud.

THANK YOU for all your support over the last 26 years.  To all those who wrote articles, readers letters, every email, every comment meant the world to us.  We hope you continue to support us. 

So what is next ?

We decided to broaden our horizons, and do what we did for Terry, but for more authors. We will remain a fan-run entity, but we will use our 26 years of experience to get news out about our other favourite authors alongside the news about Terry's works.

It will always be about fantasy books and it will be a little more ... wild shall we say?

We are sure you have already guessed the name of our new news site.

But just in case..

Drum roll please....

May we present..

Better than a Poke in the Eye, a fan-run news site about your favourite bunch of comic fantasy authors.

What does this mean? It means we will continue to produce the news about our favourite authors' works but we are not constrained to JUST Terry Pratchett. We can share our love and passion for Jasper Fforde, Ben Aaronovitch, Robert Rankin and more.. We can shout out how much we love TANK GIRL and other comic fantasy literature.

It means we can do MORE...

The rebranding will take a few weeks. We will archive the Discworld Monthly issues but it means you will still be able to read back issues. Our social channels will all be converted to our new name and we will still be at events shouting not just Terry's name but others too.

Excited? You bet we are!

[fauxfickle]

Another month, another info dump of things you already know, or the search for "The Great All-American Pizza Show!"

Last time, we talked about the Citrus Heights commercial produced by Bob Wilkins Advertising Inc and it's potential showing at the Orinda Theatre. The bad news is that I don't know anyone from CA and I don't have anywhere near a big enough platform to spread the word. Was it there? Was it not? We'll never know! Good thing is that the Psychotronix Film Festival is putting on another show in May at Foothill College, also in CA.

But on to other news! I finally got a response from PBS about Ben Wattenberg's segment on PTT. They said they didn't have it so yeah...

I've been looking around for Ben Wattenberg's 1980 and PM Magazine listings on Ebay, hoping for maybe a DVD copy or something but nothing comes up. These aren't really my top priority since they aren't part of TGAAPS but it helps me from burning out looking at a million commercials

Let's move onto the real meat and potatoes, the ads themselves. Starting with the Citrus Heights commercial, I've been doing research on Bob Wilkins' ad company and you'd be surprised how scarce info is on it. His obituary states that he made ads not only for PTT, but Lay-Z-Boy as well. This newspaper from 1981 says that his agency makes over $1M annually and was doing "amazingly well" which makes it all the more stranger that there's so little documentation of it. I also found a house in Oakland, that was used by the company at some point. I won't link the house, the company is so far removed from it and I don't want the people living there to be bothered. Something funny I found while looking on other search engines for traces of BW's agency is that Bing's AI assistant literally uses my post as a source. It's surreal seeing the info I wrote be regurgitated back at me by an AI. Weird...

Now the animated ad! I'll admit, I've been slacking a bit when it comes to looking for this ad, however I found 3 people on Linkedin that worked for Colossal Pictures during the late 70s. Also found out that Adam Savage from Myth Busters worked for (C)P at some point. Hmm, having your company initials be CP wasn't the smartest move in hindsight. Maybe that's why they added the parenthesis.

Something that wasn't found by me :( was a storyboard for one of the live action commercials. From what I've heard, it was posted in the showbizpizza.com discord server and spread from there. In the bottom left it says UBC which I can't really link to anything. I thought maybe it could be a production company, or an acronym, but I've got nothing. Maybe it just says Inc. Bottom right isn't much better, it's completely illegible and the first page of the storyboard is in even worse quality. An exciting find for sure, but not one that really helps me.

Or so I thought! In the end card it says (location tag), not just "Kooser and Blossom Hill". Unlike the radio ad, nothing in here denotes any sort of specific location like having a certain guest star or cabaret act. Sure it uses the Winchester bots, Kooser bots, and Mopsey sisters but people aren't really going to pay attention to whether the backup singers are mops or crows and they probably wouldn't even notice the small diffences between the portrait bots and a cyberamic in a 60 second ad.

Here's my big theory though. Oh yeah, we're getting conspiratorial! Someone asked me about that forum post I discovered that mention a PTT jingle from 1978 - 1980. Way back in my first post, I found that this person was most likely from the Detroit area, and probably didn't see the ads that I thought at the time were only in the Bay Area and aired during early 1980. I thought that because the ads ended around spring and the first store to open in MI was around November, this person was simply misremembering the "Smile America" ads from 1982. It's been a few months, and in that time I've learned probably more than any sane person should know about this campaign, and while looking at the store lists on the Cheese-e-pedia after that person mention the post, I realized something that made me feel like a complete idiot. The first PTT to open in MI was in Westland. I looked up where that was, and low and behold, Westland is A SUBURB OF DETROIT. I felt so stupid but also really happy that this tiny detail actually meant something. My theory is that maybe, just maybe, one of, if not a few of these ads were aired outside CA with the location tags edited for each store. PTT has done that before, so I feel it's not totally out of the picture for them to have done it few years earlier. If this is true, then it expands this search from just CA to Nevada, Utah, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina, and of course, Michigan.

I still want to keep most my searching in the Bay area, but I think this could lead to exciting things. Or I could be delusional, who knows? Until next time!