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hexalt · 5 years ago

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Schitt’s Creek and the Transformative Power of Love

I first watched the pilot for Schitt’s Creek in the early part of 2019 and found it...eccentric. Not really funny, the characters weren’t speaking to me (except for Stevie (Emily Hampshire), whom I felt a kinship with), and the story seemed odd. I decided this show just wasn’t for me, and I had given it my best shot. Many months later, one of my best friends was posting about it frequently. Since we have the same taste, I thought maybe it was just the pilot. Maybe I should give it another shot. Maybe this time I’ll actually like it. So I started it from the pilot again, and I kept watching even if I wasn’t thoroughly entertained. I soon grew to love the two black sheep and having characters you understand always makes things easier.

What I didn’t realize when I started the show was that the characters were each more than they seem, they weren’t meant to be shallow jokes of themselves and their personas. The way they acted was often a façade hiding their insecurities of not being good enough in a variety of ways. The only other show that I’ve seen with a somewhat similar premise is Arrested Development, but there the characters are supposed to be absolutely ignorant, privileged assholes with no redeeming qualities.

I didn’t realize each season is better than the last, an astounding and rare feat in television. The quality of each season improves as the show quickly finds its footing by discarding early storylines that didn’t really work and letting the characters slowly becoming more grounded and open. This family that was once so distant that the parents didn’t even know their daughter’s middle name eventually develop genuine relationships for the first time with each other and other people.

Schitt’s Creek, co-created by father and son, Eugene (American Pie, Best in Show) and Dan Levy, wanted us to ultimately empathize with these characters, even if the remnants of their wealth can make them profoundly delusional and hilarious a lot of the time. Before writing the show, they created timelines going back to their characters’ elementary school years, detailing everything from where they worked to what they wore.

The fashion on the show is distinct and the best dressed I’ve seen in any show (and most films). Dan is huge into fashion and personally selects a lot of pieces worn in the show (some of David’s clothes are even from his own wardrobe). Instead of constantly telling the audience that this family used to be rich, we are reminded of it through Moira’s wall of wigs and couture black and white ensembles, David’s patterned black sweaters and low crotch pants, Alexis’s bohemian dresses and headbands, and Johnny’s array of business suits. When they enter any room in town, they are clearly fish out of water.

Schitt’s Creek centers on the Roses, a once-disgustingly wealthy family who lose their fortune and are forced to move to the only asset they have left: a small town named Schitt’s Creek that Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) bought as a joke for his son, David (Dan Levy). So dilapidated is Schitt's Creek and so destitute are the Roses, they don't even have a house of their own; instead they are forced to live in a motel with two connecting rooms, forgoing all the luxury they had become accustomed to and, more terrifyingly, are now physically closer than ever.

While at first the family is horrified at the prospect of living in such a small town with townies, they eventually embrace the weirdness of the town, and it makes them grow in unexpected ways. Johnny was once the owner of the second-largest video rental store in the country and retains his businessman-like self through and through, but he also began the show more uppity. While he is often the most reasonable of the Roses, he often sees himself as above others in town and gets into awkward situations because of it. Over the course of the show he ends up developing a friendship with the town mayor to whom he initially had yelled “get the fuck out!” While he’s always devoted to his wife, he wasn’t so keen on his children, but being forced to live together makes him take a larger interest in their lives and become a better father.

Alexis (Annie Murphy) is the quintessential “dumb blonde” socialite who’s had a Schitt-ton of relationships with powerful men, making stories of her past highly entertaining, often illegal, and frequently frightening. She clearly grew up way too fast, never having had proper adult supervision. She’s reliant on men, and all she can think about in season one is trying to date cute guys. In the following seasons, she realizes it’s time to start growing up and gets her high school and Associate’s Degree to start her own PR business. She becomes a more enlightened version of herself, still deeply kind but also willing to put the happiness of others above her own. The Alexis who previously couldn’t see beyond her own nose becomes independent and more selfless.

David’s had hundreds of flings with people of all genders, but they seem to be replete with abuse, manipulation, and a lack of care for his being. This is unsurprising when we see how he hides his insecurity behind sarcasm and sometimes downplays things he doesn’t like to fit in. He fears showing kindness to anyone because others haven’t always been so kind to him. Early on, he has a panic attack and comes to the realization that he’s “really lonely here,” but he’s been lonely for a lot longer than that. What he doesn’t expect is to make his first best friend or find his soon-to-be husband in this backwater town. In the process, he learns to shed some of his armor.

Moira (Catherine O’Hara) was once on a soap opera, Sunrise Bay, and retains the melodrama in her day-to-day life and demeanor. She is constantly trying to become what she believes is a star: someone who acts in film, someone who everyone mourns when they die, someone who people will just pay one sliver of attention to. She’s desperately trying to cling to the spotlight, but in “Life is a Cabaret,” she finds what I believe will be her place come this final season. Rather than trying to constantly soak up attention, she gives Stevie the starring role in the town’s production of Cabaret (which Moira comes to direct) because getting that role was a “gift that once jolted [her] out of [her] little podunk routine.” From the wings of the stage, as Stevie slowly builds into “Maybe This Time” with such breathtaking passion and joy after starting off unsure and quiet, Moira is shocked at what she was able to bring out of Stevie. She’s finally realizing that her place isn’t center stage but in bringing out the best in others and helping them find their place in the world.

Stevie Budd begins as the desk clerk of the Schitt’s Creek motel until her great-aunt passes away, and she inherits the motel. From there she has to decide whether she’s ready to grow up and take over the family business, and she’s terrified. Johnny soon teams up with her in the business, renovating the motel and renaming it after both of them, so she sees the Roses aren’t going to abandon her. She is part of the Rose’s found family. Her and David are similar in their bluntness and sarcasm, but Stevie is insecure about never making it out of the town, never being more than a motel desk clerk, never having a long-term romantic relationship. She worries while everyone moves on with their lives, she’s “watching it all happen from behind the desk.”

Dan describes creating Schitt’s Creek as “writing a world that examines the transformational effects of love when the threat of hate and intolerance has been removed from the equation.” While homophobia is often front and center in any media depicting LGBT characters, Schitt’s Creek doesn’t give it as much thought. Where small towns are usually seen as ripe for homophobia, transphobia, and other discrimination, Schitt’s Creek doesn’t fall prey to this trope. Instead, this small town is bursting with love.

Dan purposely made David pansexual (it’s also the only show I’ve seen use the word) to challenge the viewer’s biases and push the boundaries of what it means to be masculine and feminine. David’s parents and others in the town never discuss it as anything strange or bad, it’s something he simply is and as common as the sky being blue. When David tells Stevie about his sexuality (“I like the wine, not the label”), she’s a bit surprised at first because she thought he was gay, but ultimately she doesn’t care.

This doesn’t mean the show never discusses what homophobia can be like, but it comes at it from a different lens.

For example, in “Meet the Parents,” David decides to throw a surprise birthday party for his boyfriend, Patrick Brewer (Noah Reid). What David doesn’t realize is Patrick hasn’t come out to his parents yet, they think David is solely his business partner. He tells David, “I know my parents are good people, I just...can’t shake this fear that there is a small chance that this could change everything.” David himself is prepared for homophobia from Patrick’s parents, but when they tell him they don’t care about that, just that he was hiding such an important part of himself from them, David who’s been trying to stay strong through it all wipes a tear.

“When I found myself in a position to tell stories on a global scale, I seized the opportunity to make a television show that might, in its own way, offer some support, encouragement and love to those who might not have it in their homes or in their schools or in their day to day lives. It’s a place where acceptance incubates joy and creates a clarity that allows people to see themselves and each other more deeply. It’s fiction, yes. But I’ve always been told to lead by example and this felt like a good place to start.”

— Dan Levy

I would be remiss to not touch on the comedic style of the show. This is a comedy that relies heavily on the physicality of its actors. Their facial expressions, accents and tonality, their limp wrists, each create uniquely funny characters with mannerisms unlike any I’ve seen. The cast brought nuance to the characters, when they could have easily fallen into vapid stereotypes.

As season 6 premiered on January 7, Schitt’s Creek is not done yet, and I can’t wait to see how its final season concludes. The characters are all happier now that they are achieving dreams they may not have known they had, they have fulfilling relationships with family and friends, and they all have grown into better people. Schitt’s Creek truly was their saving grace.

I’m in a TV group where we wrote essays on our favorite shows of the 2010s, so here is mine on Schitt’s Creek.

#schitt's creek #television #tv #lgbt #lgbtq #writing #mine #long post #*

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horde-princess · 5 years ago

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I honestly can see a very korrasami-esque ending for Catra and Adora. It’s totally obvious by now that Noelle meant for them to be romantic and that she would like to end with them on a romantic route. Unfortunately, I don’t know if DW will be onboard for something very “in your face”. So I can totally see them doing a korrasami ending but making it a bit more obvious that it’s romantic.

i know ive always said “they will definitely absolutely kiss no doubt in mind” but now that we’re at the end i think i should actually take the time to discuss this more… i’m what you might a call a realistic optimist because i choose to have faith but i’m not ignorant to the realities of the situation you know? so buckle up this is going to be a long and probably unpleasant ride lmao

to be real, going into the last season I’m trying to not let myself have too many expectations with catradora. I do 100% fully expect that their relationship will be shown to be explicitly romantic by the end, but unfortunately, yes, its possible that they may not kiss. i’m at peace with that and i hope this post helps you guys see my thinking and come to terms with it too

obviously i dont understand all the underlying mechanisms of producing a tv show. i do know that dreamworks has hardly been a progressive studio in terms of lgbt representation. there are a lot of factors that would go into a decision about whether to allow a lesbian kiss in one of their projects, not least the fact that She-Ra is a reboot. having said all that, i’m still optimistic and there IS evidence in favor of a kiss that i think is worth talking about!

thinking about where to start with this discussion on Dreamworks vs. lgbt representation, Voltron came to mind. i’ve never seen the show but a quick google search brought me to this Geekdad article from an interviewer who did an investigation into Voltron’s lgbt rep failure and Dreamworks’ role in that. he argues that a lot of the blame belongs with the showrunners, because Dreamworks does at least provide resources and diversity consultants to help showrunners make respectful lgbt content, but the Voltron crew didn’t make use of them. the issue was not that Dreamworks actively blocked lgbt rep but rather that the studio did not work to ensure quality representation from the showrunners. which is a huge difference.

i dug a little deeper and found a transcript of an interview with the showrunners where they talk about the red tape they encountered, and what they say seems to implicate Voltron’s intellectual property holder as opposed to the Dreamworks studio itself. it sounds like Dreamworks’ hands were tied because the showrunners did not hold all the legal rights to the story.

of course we know IP is also an issue with She-Ra. however, correct me if i’m wrong, but I believe Mattel (the Masters of the Universe toy line) sold its property rights to NBCUniversal (Dreamworks’ parent company) a couple of years ago. this doesn’t mean all ties are cut with the original IP holder, but i think its safe to assume that She-Ra has some more wiggle room than Voltron did when it comes to the showrunners’ vision/creativity. especially because Mattel has been known to be pro-lgbt.

an interesting quote from Joaquim Dos Santos (voltron producer) was that after season 7, “She-Ra was in development within the studio and I think the studio was just sort of beginning to open its eyes to the possibilities of there being [lgbt] representation in their shows and there not being a huge public backlash for it.”

Also, in a different interview they said “to Dreamworks’ credit, I think the tide started changing internally” regarding the studio’s outlook on lgbt rep around the time that seasons 7/8 were in production.

so in addition to potential IP issues, Dreamworks is obviously concerned about their reputation and losing money. however we can gather from these quotations that (due to recent cultural shifts in the U.S.) Dreamworks has felt comfortable making efforts in the last few years to distribute more/better lgbt rep.

you also have to consider that Dreamworks KNEW what they were getting into with hiring Noelle. it’s hard to know whether lgbt representation was the vision for the show from the beginning or whether Noelle brought it with her (tho it seems like the latter). but either way, the studio must have been actively seeking to improve their lgbt representation because i’m sure she made her vision clear from the very beginning.

There’s a great article where Noelle talks about the fight to include lgbt rep in She-Ra:

“When you’re aiming to tell a story like that, you have to get everyone who’s working on the show, whether on the crew, or at the executive level, to believe in that world as well. It’s all part of trying to create the type of world in real life that you’re creating in the show. While I hope it comes across in a natural way in the show, it’s something you have to constantly fight for. You can’t take it for granted. I never take it for granted. It’s a really important thing to fight for, and a lot of it is just, “Trust me, this is gonna work. Believe in me. I can pull this off.” I am really fortunate to work with executives who do believe in me and who have allowed me to do a lot with this show. I’m very fortunate for that.”

So that is awesome to hear!! It wasn’t a tug-of-war situation with Noelle having to make concessions for execs who didn’t believe in her vision. She says the studio was supportive. But I think only time will tell us what the definition of “a lot” is.

Okay so, whew, that was a lot of information. i’ll be amazed if anyone actually reads this far lmaoo 😂 anyway i wanna move away from logistical stuff and talk about some other things Noelle has said about her show.

geekdad did another great interview with Noelle (and a Dreamworks PR representative!! it’s a good read) where he asked “if you wanted to depict a same gender relationship with foreground characters, do you think we’re at that stage yet in children’s animation where you could? Or do you think we still have a ways to go?”

Noelle replies “I think that remains to be seen, and I think… that’s something that–you should watch the show. You should see the storylines that we pursue in the future.”

When asked about catradora’s romantic undertones, “just keep watching” is something Noelle has said repeatedly in many different interviews. She wouldn’t say that if there wasn’t going to be a payoff at the end. It’s obvious she’s not at liberty to discuss the ending of the show, you can tell she’s always extremely careful with her wording when she’s faced with questions like this. But she consistently expresses, as a lesbian herself, that she has created a show she expects her own community will be excited about. Whatever actually happens, Noelle doesn’t believe that She-Ra will let us down 😌

Shes also mentioned that she’s grateful for shows like Steven Universe and Adventure Time that were trailblazers before She-Ra, because every successive show has the opportunity to be a little bit more progressive than the shows that came before it. We all have to continually strive to push the envelope and demand more inclusivity. If it turns out that that’s all She-Ra is–a small step towards quality representation–then yes of course it will feel like a massive waste (just because this story Noelle created is so incredible), but we’ll have to remember that the show is still playing a very important role in the history of children’s media. Even without a kiss, She-Ra has made incredible strides in lgbt rep. what i would hate to see is people complaining (god forbid calling it “queer baiting”) if there isn’t a kiss. Noelle and the crew have worked on this show tirelessly and passionately and we can’t yell at them for something they had no control over. the only people we should hold accountable are Dreamworks/Mattel. so i agree with you there anon.

Personally, at this point, I’m just here for the ride because i trust Noelle Stevenson with my life and She-Ra is the best show i’ve EVER seen. and i’m gonna keep talking about catradora kissing because

#she ra #asks/replies #this actually turned into a whole ass research article i'm insane for writing this lakjdlfs #no one can EVER doubt how seriously i take catradora

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 12/4/20 – HALF BROTHERS, THE PROM, I’M YOUR WOMAN, BLACK BEAR, LUXOR, ANOTHER ROUND, ALL MY LIFE, NOMADLAND, MANK and Much More!

I hope everyone had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was relatively uneventful, and I only spent most of my time watching movies. And holy shit, there are a LOT of movies out this week, but at least a few of them I’ve already seen and reviewed, and there are others that are actually pretty good, so I might as well get to it, hm?

First up is this week’s Focus Features theatrical release, HALF BROTHERS, a buddy road comedy directed by Luke Greenfield (Blue Streak, Let’s Be Cops) that’s fairly high concept but also with quite a bit more depth than the director’s previous movies. It stars Luis Gerardo Méndez as Renato Murguia, a wealthy Mexican businessman whose father left him to come to America when Renato was just a child. Just as Renato is about to get married while having issues connecting to his future stepson Emilio, he gets a call that his own father is dying, so he begrudgingly goes to see him. Once there, Renato’s dying father sends him on a scavenger hunt to find someone named “Eloise” with his annoying slacker half-brother Asher (Connor del Rio), because that will provide all the answers Renato is looking for on why his father never returned from America, remarried and had another son. What could possibly go wrong?

If you’ve seen any of the ads for Half Brothers, you may already presume that this is a fairly high-concept buddy road comedy that is constantly going for the zaniest and craziest of laughs. That probably would only be maybe 25% of the movie. Instead, this fairly mainstream comedy finds a way to take a very common comedy trope and throw in enough heartfelt moments that you can forgive the few times when it does go for low-hanging fruit. We’ve seen so many movies like this where two guys (or sometimes ladies, but not as often) are paired with one having zero patience or tolerance for the other, who is beyond aggravating to them. (Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of the better ones.) Obviously, Renato fits snugly into the first category, and Asher could not be more annoying, very early on stealing a goat for no particular reason.

The Mexican angle and the fact that a lot of the film is in Spanish – Focus getting into Pantelion territory here? – does add to make Half Brothers feel like more of a personal story than we might normally see in this kind of movie, touching upon the immigrant experience, from the viewpoint of a low-paid worker as well as a well-to-do industrialist. It also deals with things like fatherhood and brotherhood and what it means to be one or both, so everything ultimately connects far better in the end than some might expect. I also want to give the filmmakers credit for putting together a cast of mostly unknown or little-known actors and getting such great results out of them.

On the surface, Half Brothers seems like just another buddy comedy, but underneath, it’s a heartfelt and emotional journey that touches in so many ways and ends up being quite enjoyable.

Another movie opening nationwide this Friday is ALL MY LIFE (Universal), starring Jessica (Happy Death Day) Rothe as Jennifer Carter and Harry (Crazy Rich Asians) Shum Jr. as Solomon Chau, whose wedding plans are thrown off when he is diagnosed with liver cancer. They realize they have to get married sooner since he might not live to make their planned date, so their friends launch a fundraiser so that they can get married in two weeks. The movie is directed by Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer), who is a more than capable filmmaker with this being his third movie in the last two years.

Now that I’ve actually seen the movie… I’ll freely admit that this is not the kind of movie I usually have very high expectations for, and maybe that’s because I’ve already been burnt twice this year with real-life romantic dramas, first with the faith-based I Still Believe in March and then more recently with Two Hearts. In both cases, I could count the issues and why they failed to tug at the heart strings as they were meant to do. Even though I’ve generally enjoyed Meyers’ past movies, I wasn’t even sure he could pull off this type of studio romance movie without having to cowtow to the corny clichés that always seem to slip in – or at least find a way to make them more palatable. (And let’s be realistic. This is the kind of movie that snobby film critics just LOVE to trash.)

First of all, Meyers already has two truly fantastic leads working in his movie’s favor. I’ve been a true Jessica Rothe stan ever since seeing her kill it in Happy Death Day and its sequel. Shum is perfectly paired with her, and the two of them are so good from the moment they first meet and we meet them. In every scene, you feel like you’re watching some of that rare on-screen romantic chemistry that’s so hard to fake. Their relationship is romantic and goofy, and you’re just rooting for them all the way through even if you do know what’s to come.

Eventually, Sol does fall ill, and it does lead to some more dramatic and tougher moments between the couple, but all of it is handled so tastefully, including their need to raise money so they can have their wedding rather than waiting. I am living proof that people really do come together to step up when they see someone in real need, so I couldn’t even tut tut at something like their fundraiser getting so many people to chip in. On top of his two leads, Meyers has assembled such a great cast around the duo, the most recognizable being Jay Pharaoh from Saturday Night Live, everyone around Jess and Sol handles the requisite emotions with nary a weak link.

There’s just so much other stuff that adds to the enjoyment of watching All My Life from the use of Oasis and Pat Benatar in the soundtrack just to the quality storytelling that makes it all feel quite believable. These sorts of movies tend to be rather corny and the diehard cynic who doesn’t have an ounce of romance or love in their body will find things to hate.

All My Life finds its way into your heart by being one of those rare studio romance movies that understands how human emotions truly work, and there’s nothing corny about that. It’s a beautiful movie that entertains but also elicits more than a few tears. Watch it with someone you love.

This week’s “Featured Flick” is Chloe Zhao’s amazing film NOMADLAND (Searchlight), which I reviewed out of its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, but it’s (sort of) being released in theaters this week. It stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman living in her van as she moves from place to place taking odd jobs within a community of nomads. It’s another amazing film from the filmmaker behind The Rider, who will make her foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe next year with The Eternals, which I’m just as psyched about. There’s no denying that McDormand gives a performance that’s a knock-out, even better than the one in 3 Billboards if you ask me, and there’s also a great supporting role for David Strathairn, who I’ve been hoping would have another role as good as this one. Zhao is just a fantastic filmmaker, and I’m glad to see that The Rider was no fluke.

Unfortunately, Nomadland is only getting a one-week Oscar qualifying run, and I’m not even sure where it’s getting that run since theaters in New York and L.A. aren’t even open yet. Maybe Searchlight will do some drive-in screenings like they did for the New York Film Festival and Telluride? It will get a stronger theatrical release (hopefully) on February 21, just to make doubly sure it qualifies for Oscars.

Opening in theaters this week before streaming on Netflix December 11 is Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the Broadway musical THE PROM, the first feature film he’s directed in ten years. The multiple Tony-nominated musical is about a high school girl named Emma (newcomer Jo Ellan Pellman) who wants to take her girlfriend (Ariana DeBose) to their senior prom, but the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington) cancels the prom instead. The national outrage the situation creates gets the attention of a quintet of self-absorbed Broadway actors who decide to improve their PR by taking up Emma’s cause. Oh, yeah, and those actors are played by Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and actual Broadway stars Andrew Rannells and Kevin Chamberlin. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve never had any sort of positive or negative gut reaction to Murphy’s work on television over the past few years, but I’ve definitely been mixed on the three movies he’s directed to date. I wasn’t a huge fan of his Eat Pray Love, though I vaguely remember enjoying his debut, Running with Scissors. Either way, he certainly has found his niche with musicals from Glee (a show I’ve never watched) and finding a musical like The Promseems to be a perfect fit between filmmaker and material.

Having not seen The Prom on Broadway – surprise, surprise -- I was a little worried that it was going to go down the path of nudge-nudge wink-wink inside Broadway path that helped Mel Brooks’ The Producers become a Broadway hit. That I saw, and I didn’t hate the movie based on it, although I’m by no means a total movie-musical stan. There’s some obvious older ones I love, some newer ones that others love but I hated – Rob Marshall is about 50/50 for me -- and you might be surprised by which of them I liked best.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about The Prom is that Murphy manages to truly surprise everyone watching it, whether it’s in Kerry Washington’s single song – who knew she had such an amazing singing voice? – or how enjoyable Keegan-Michael Key is as the school’s Principal Hawkins, who not only loves musicals but actually admires Streep’s two-time Tony-award winning Dee Dee Allen. Considering my frequent disdain for Streep’s over-confidence, knowing full well that she’s one of the best living actors working today, she’s actually pretty amazing in the role of what many must assume Streep is like in real life, which makes her character more than a little META. In some ways, I can say the same for Corden, who is pretty fantastic as Dee Dee’s frequent stage co-star Barry Glickman, who has his own connections to Emma’s plight having been disowned by his mother (Tracey Ullman, who only shows up for one brief scene late in the movie) when he came out to her. Corden has one dramatic moment so powerful I was taken quite aback.

Even with those two actors and Kidman likely to get much of the attention, there’s no denying that the romance between Hellman and Debose, and the three or four numbers they have together, makes up the true heart and soul of The Prom. So here you have this amazing cast, and it’s a musical made-up of very fun and quite catchy songs, and that’s long before you get to Andrew Rannells as out-of-work actor Trent Oliver, who practically steals the whole movie with his showstopper of a number, “Love Thy Neighbor.” And then watching Key holding his own with Streep, both musically and dramatically, you might start wondering, “What is going on here?”

Like I said before, it’s pretty obvious that Murphy has fully poured his passion of movie-musicals into every second of The Prom, and it shows on the face of everyone joining him on this adventure. As much as the subject at the film’s core is fairly serious and a hurdle that many gay kids across the world every day, it’s also quite funny. Kudos must be given to Murphy for being able to emphasize those moments as well as the more dramatic ones. Besides that, Murphy really takes advantage of being able to go to different locations, including a sequence on Broadway that could have been done during the pandemic (it actually was built on a soundstage), another number at an actual mall and even at a monster truck rally. It also doesn’t hurt that Murphy hired Matthew Libatique, a god-like cinematographer in my book, to film the movie either.

Like most musicals, The Prom might lose a little as it goes along, since it gets to be too much that goes on for too long, but then there are more than enough great moments to pull you back. It’s by far one of the stronger movie musicals I’ve seen in a very long time, and just the right feel-good experience we all need right now.

I’ve already reviewed David Fincher’s MANK – a few times, in fact – but if you’re in one of the places where it opened theatrically in November, you can finally see it on Netflix starting this Friday. This is the general problem with the way things are these days because even though this only opened a few weeks ago, I already feel that it’s been discussed and forgotten before most people will have a chance to see it. Anyway, if for some reason, you’ve managed to avoid things about the movie, it essentially stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the Hollywood screenwriter who ended up co-writing Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in 1940. The film follows Mankiewicz as he mingles with the Hollywood elite in the 30s, including billionaire William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his young ingenue girlfriend Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) who would be the influence for his Oscar-winning screenplay. I expect to be writing a lot about this movie as we get closer to Oscar season sometime next year.

Also on Netflix this week is Selena: The Series, starring Christian Serratos. It’s the kind of thing that I probably would never watch unless I have an excess of time, and as you’re about to learn from the rest of the column, that doesn’t happen frequently.

The third chapter of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology,” RED WHITE AND BLUE, will debut on Prime Video this Sunday, starring John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a young black man who joins the Metropolitan Police after seeing his father assaulted by police and wanting to make a difference in the racist attitudes from within. You might remember that I reviewed this out of the New York Film Festival a couple months back, so not much more to say there.

A week from Sunday, on December 13, McQueen’s fourth film, ALEX WHEATLE, will hit Amazon, and guess what? I’ve already seen it, so I will review it now. How about that? Alex Wheatle is also a true story, this one starring Sheyi Cole as the award-winning young adult writer when he was a younger and just learning the ropes as a drugdealer/DJ in Brixton before his involvement in the 1981 Brixton riots gets him thrown in jail.

As with the other three movies in the “Small Axe Anthology” there are recurring elements and themes in Alex Wheatle, mostly about the way the immigrants to England from Jamaica and other islands are treated by “The Beast” aka what they call the Metropolitan Police. It does take a little time to get to that, as McQueen, working from a screenplay co-written by Mangrove’s Alaistar Siddons, takes a far more non-linear approach than the other three films. We first see Wheatle being taken into prison where he’s thrown into a cell with a constantly-shitting Rastafarian, but we then cut back to his schooling for a short sequence that reminded me of Alan Clarke’s Scum. Both in prison and in school, we see Alex being abused by classmates and head matron alike, and this portion of the film includes another one of arty moments of actor Cole laying on the ground eyes wide open staring for what seems to go on forever. In some ways, this sequence reminds me of McQueen’s fantastic early film Hunger, since it seems to be cut from similar cloth.

Eventually, Alex gets to Brixton and that’s where this chapter in “Small Axe” really takes off as we see how naïve and green he is while dealing with quite a tough crowd and trying to adjust to city life among the Rastafarian community.

As with the other “Small Axe” chapters, I love how McQueen and his team used reggae music to help set the tone and vibe for the episode, because like Baz Lurhman’s Netflix series The Get Down, the music is frequently a key to this biopic working so well. Of course, it’s also due to the performance by Cole and the actors around him that helps make you feel as if you’re seeing a real part of history.

As with Mangrove, this chapter culminates with an amazing recreation of the 1981 Brixton Riots, done in protest after a house party fire in New Cross that the police don’t bother investigating. The actual riots were a much bigger and scarier event going by Wikipedia which says that 279 police were injured and 56 police vehicles set fire, which makes it sound more like the ’92 L.A. Riots.

I’m not sure Alex Wheatle does as good a job explaining how the young man goes into prison as a DJ and comes out as an author, but like Red, White and Blue it’s still an important and inspirational story that adds quite a bit to the previous three “Small Axe” films.

And once again, here is my interview with McQueen from over at Below the Line.

Also, I should mention that Darius Marder’s excellent Sound of Metal movie, starring Riz Ahmed, hits Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Check out my review!

The magnificent Andrea Riseborough stars in Zeina Durra’s LUXOR (Samuel Goldwyn), playing British aid worker Hana who while spending time in the ancient city of Luxor, runs into her former lover Sultan (Karim Saleh), as she reflects on past decisions and her current uncertain situation.

I was quite interested in this one sight unseen, not only because it’s another great starring role for Riseborough. (Honestly, she is one of the best actors working today, and I strongly believe she is just one role away from being the next Olivia Colman, who had been amazing for years before everyone in America “discovered” her in The Favourite and then The Crown… which I still haven’t watched! ARGH!). I was a little anxious about the movie, having seen Rubba Nadda’s Cairo Time, starring Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig, which seemingly had the exact same plot.

Durra is a much more capable and confident filmmaker and there’s a lot more overall value in watching Riseborough exploring Egypt as Durra quietly allows Hana’s story to unfold through her interactions with others, as well as her time alone, often languishing in one luxurious hotel room or another. Then there are the quiet and sometime awkward scenes between her and Saleh, the two of them having been lovers when they were both much younger. We also see Hana in far more vulnerable moments, so we know that she’s by no means actor, and it takes a great actor to really pull off such a dichotomy and bring such dimension to a character with so few words.

There’s something that’s almost comforting watching her dealing with emotions like loneliness in such a tranquil way. I’d even go so far to say that Luxor works in many ways similar to Nomadland, which obviously is getting the far more high-profile release with lots of festival love long before its actual release. Like that movie, Durra’s film benefits from having masterful cinematography by Zelmira Gainza and an equally gorgeous score by Nascuy Linares, to boot.

Luxor is a quiet, beautifully-made film that really took me by surprise. It acts as much like a travelogue of the title city as it does a tourist’s map to what it must feel like being a woman very much on her own in a foreign land.

I also spoke with Luxor filmmaker Zeina Durra, an interview that will be up at Below the Line hopefully sometime later this week.

With all the talk about Aubrey Plaza in Happiest Season (now on Hulu!), this would be a great time to release another one of her indies that played at the Sundance Film Festival this year, right? What can possibly go wrong?

In Lawrence Michael Levine’s BLACK BEAR (Momentum Pictures), Plaza plays Allison, an actor/filmmaker who arrives at the remote lake house of Christopher Abbott’s Gabe and his pregnant partner Blair (Sarah Gadon), to relax and work on a screenplay, only for the night to turn into philosophical discussions that transform into angry and even violent squabbles. In the second part of the movie, Gabe is the director, and Allison his actor wife, who thinks he’s sleeping with Blair, who is also acting in Gabe’s film.

That plot might seem a little vague, and I can’t exactly tell you whether there is much connection between the two parts of the movie other than it features the same three characters. The first half turns from a drama into a thriller before ending abruptly, while the second part is equal parts comedy and drama as we see a larger part of the world around the trio. In fact, the second part of Black Bear reminded me somewhat of Olivier Assayas’Irma Vep, one of my favorite movies, and that might be one of the highest compliments I can pay a movie.

But first, you have to get through the more quizzical and dramatic first part, which easily could have been done as a three-handed stageplay as we see the changing dynamics between the three people as things get crazier and crazier with one “Holy shit!” moment after the next. (It reminded me a little of Mamet or the play “Gods of Carnage,” although I only saw that as the movie version Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski.)

The fact the connection between the two parts is never explained might confound some people who were otherwise enjoying what is a pretty decent three-hander, but the common theme involves jealousy between the two women. Plaza is a fine dramatic actor when she wants to be, and Gadon is absolutely fantastic, which makes Abbot almost literally the odd man out, but the three of them just have great scenes together.

Black Bear is certainly an enigma of a movie, as much a mystery about what must be going on inside Plaza’s head during some of her softer and crazier scenes, but if you want to talk about range, this gives her so much material for her demo reel that no one could possibly doubt her as an actor again.

Thomas Vinterberg’s new movie ANOTHER ROUND (Samuel Goldwyn) reteams him with his The Hunt star Mads Mikkelsen for a comedy…. Ish… about a group of four middle aged Danish teachers who decide to hold an experiment to prove a theory that people only reach their maximum effectiveness and creativity when they’re .05% drunk. It starts out innocently enough but soon, the men are drinking heavily at school, leading to horrible and unfortunate side effects. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Even knowing Vinterberg’s knack for strange and twisted “comedies,” Another Round is definitely on another level, opening with a scene of drunken kids playing a drinking game that gets them so out-of-control drunk and rowdy. We then meet Mikkelsen’s Martin, a history teacher, whose rowdy seniors are so bored by his classroom technique that Martin is put in front of an inquisition of parents who think he’s going to make their kids fail their final exams. Martin’s home life isn’t much better with his wife Anika (Maria Bonnevie) or his own teen sons. Although Martin says he won’t drink when he has to drive, his friend Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) convinces him by announcing his theory about how everyone needs to always maintain a certain percentage of alcohol in their system. Over the course of the rest of the movie, we’re shown the alcohol level of our “heroes,” although most will see their behavior as some kind of synced-up middle life crisis. For Martin, it’s a breakthrough, as he starts feeling more confident and assertive towards his students, even trying to connect with them via their drinking activities, as seen in the opening montage.

Another Round is quite a different beast from The Hunt, because there’s a more humorous tone to the point where I could totally see an American studio trying to remake this with the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler, which would probably lose a lot of the poignancy of what Vinberberg was trying to achieve here. At one point, he throws in a montage of seemingly drunk world leaders, which is kind of amusing even if it’s not quite so apparent why it’s there. There’s a lot of really bad white guy dancing, too, for anyone who is into that sort of thing.

There is definitely a good amount of grief and sadness to the way this story resolves, although Vinterberg still finds a way to leave Martin in a place of joy with a closing scene that may surprise a lot of people. Another Round is another tremendous feather in the cap of the Vinterberg/Mikkelsen collaboration, and it will be in select theaters this Friday before going to digital on December 18.

Another Round will be in select theaters this Friday and then on digital December 18.

Fast Color director Julia Hart returns with I’M YOUR WOMAN (Amazon), once again co-written with husband Jordan Horowitz. It stars Rachel Brosnahan from The Amazing Mrs. Maisel (which I haven’t seen) as Jean, a woman unable to have a baby with her small-time crook husband Eddie. One night, Eddie brings home a baby for Jean, but then he quickly vanishes and Jean finds herself on the run with a stolen baby and one of Eddie’s accomplices, Cal (Arinzé Kene), and there are bad men wanting to question Jean about her missing husband’s whereabouts.

This is another movie where I really didn’t know what to expect, and having not watched Brosnahan on her award-winning show, I was watching this movie trying to figure out what all the fuss was about. It’s evident from the start that Hart/Horowitz were trying to make a ‘70s-set movie with all the trappings of ‘70s fashion and music, but when you throw in the crime element, it comes across a little too much like last year’s The Kitchen, which wasn’t very good but also wasn’t based on very good source material.

One would presume that the genre elements and a few scattered set pieces, like a shootout at a club, would be the main draw, but it’s almost 30 minutes before we even get any sort of plot, and that’s a big problem. An even bigger problem is that I’m Your Woman just drags for so much of the movie, and it’s pretty obvious that Hart-Horowitz were trying to create a ‘70s movie like some of the films by Scorsese and the movies John Cassavetes made with wife Gena Rowlands. By comparison, I’m Your Woman is stylized almost to a pretentious degree. Brosnahan does show a few glimpses of there being a good actor in there, but the material just really isn’t quite up to snuff. It also doesn’t help the movie to have the baby crying almost non-stop throughout.

Jean eventually pairs up with Cal’s woman Teri (Martha Stephanie Blake), her son Paul and Cal’s father (played by Frankie Faison), and this is when she learns more about Eddie’s life that she doesn’t know about. Eventually, things start to pick up in the last act, but the multiple problems Hart has with maintaining a steady pace or tone only mildly is made up for by her terrific DP and whoever put together the musical score. Essentially, the last 30 minutes of I’m Your Woman does make up for the previous 85 minutes, but it’s going to be very hard for many people to even get through how dull the movie is up until that point.

This is a week with some very fine docs, the first one being Weixi Chen and Hao Wu*’s cinema verité film 76 DAYS (MTV Documentary Films), which goes behind the doors of the Wuhan ICU Red Cross hospital over the first 76 days of the COVID pandemic after it hit the rural area of China. (*One of the film’s co-directors/cinematographers shot the film anonymously.)

Here I thought that Alex Gibney’s Totally Under Control would be the best or maybe even only movie about the pandemic released this year, but here we have a fantastic documentary that captures what it was really like in one Wuhan hospital as it was nearly overrun months before COVID started to rear its ugly head in the States. The film begins in January 23, 2020 and follows a number of cases as we watch the personnel, all decked out in head-to-toe PPE, trying to save lives and keep people calm while trying to struggle with all the stresses that come their way. There’s actually a little bit of humor in a cranky elderly man (clearly with some form of dementia) who keeps wandering around the hospital, frustrating his tenders, but there’s also a very moving story of a young pregnant woman who has contracted COVID, who ends up being separated from her baby after a Cesarian section.

There are moments early in the movie where you can see panic starting to set in as we see how out of control things begin, but the anonymous health care workers soon get things underhand and manage to find a way to deal with the panic that’s setting in. There’s no question that these doctors and nurses – many whose faces we never even see -- are the definition of frontline workers, trying to deal with this unknown virus without all the answers and solutions that have been discovered over the past ten months.

76 Days will open via the Film Forum Virtual Cinema as well as other places presumably.

I’m glad I had Dana Nachman’s DEAR SANTA (IFC Films) to watch after 76 Days, because I don’t think I could have handled another dark or deep movie after that one. This doc is all about “Operation Santa,” the amazing group of volunteers and adopters who receive the letters young kids write to the North Pole and go out of their way to fulfill the kids’ wishes.

I was a big fan of Nachman’s Pick of the Litter, so I’m thrilled to say that Dear Santa is just as wonderful and joyous, starting with a bunch of kids explaining Santa Clause enthusiastically, because they really believe in Jolly Saint Nick. Over the course of the film, Nachman profiles a number of Adopter Elves, who look through the letters written to Santa by unfortunate kids and pick a few to fulfill their wishes. A lot of them are in New York and Chicago where the program has led to a number of non-profits, but Nachman also goes to Chico, California where many of the families from Paradise, the town destroyed by fires in 2018, ended up relocation. One story of an Adopter Elf named Damion is particularly wonderful, since he, like many of those who get involved in the program, are trying to give back and pay it forward.

Operation Santa is such a great program and Dear Santa is such a wonderful movie, I challenge anyone to watch it and not tear up from how big their heart will grow while watching it.

Julien Temple’s doc CROCK OF GOLD: A NIGHT WITH SHANE MACGOWAN (Magnolia Pictures) is pretty self-explanatory from its title, but as someone who was never really a Pogues fan, I was almost as entertained by Temple’s film as I was by Alex Winter’s Zappa about a musician who I actually was a fan of. Temple uses MacGowan’s own narration to tell his story from growing up in Ireland, the early days of punk that led to the Pogues and eventually, mainstream success.

My absolute adoration of well-made music docs is fairly well-known at this point, and you can’t really get much better in terms of music doc makers than Julien Temple, who had his cameras rolling in the early days of punk, captured one of David Bowie’s more interesting mainstream phases and also made a very cool movie about The Clash frontman, Joe Strummer.

Although I never really cared for The Pogues, that’s probably because I didn’t know them from their rowdier days and more from their mainstream success from “Fairytale of New York” but Temple’s movie rectifies that with some amazing footage from the band’s earlier days. Even more impressive is the footage and pictures of MacGowan during the late ‘70s dancing in the audience at Sex Pistols and other punk shows. (Temple even interviewed MacGowan during this period in the ‘70s, then put the footage in the movie.) As MacGowan tells his own story about growing up in Ireland, Temple frequently uses varied animation to recreate the stories being told, and that does a lot to embellish the cartoon nature of MacGowan’s storytelling.

I still think MacGowan is a bit of an asshole -- I’m sure he’d agree with that assessment -- but Temple has found a way into this very difficult musician, sometimes using close friends like Johnny Depp (a producer on the film) and Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream to try to get MacGowan to open up about as much as he ever might. Crock of Gold is certainly an eye-opening portrait of the Pogues frontman that surprisingly offers something to enjoy even for those who never got into his music, but it also shows another dimension to his many fans. If nothing else, it’s a fine testament to why Temple is one of the best music doc filmmakers.

Magnolia held a bunch of one-night only theatrical screenings on Tuesday and will have more on Thursday, but if you miss those, you can catch it On Demand/digital this Friday. (I also have a really enjoyable interview with Julien Temple over at Below the Line that you should check out.)

A.J. and Jenny Tesler’s doc MAGNOLIA’S HOPE follows four years in the life of their young daughter Magnolia (aka Maggie), who has Rett Syndrome. Maggie’s filmmaking parents talk about noticing her strange behavior and finding out that she had a genetic disorder that makes it harder for children to retain what they’ve learned in terms of movement but also might led to far worse disorders. It makes it almost impossible for her to communicate with her parents, which makes it heartbreaking but also quite inspirational that the parents would allow us into their very own difficult journey to try to get their daughter to use and develop all of the skills she learns by making her practice them every single day. The movie will be available to watch for the month of December on the streaming platform Show and Tell, but it’s such a personal movie and another one where I think it will be hard for many to watch without getting a little teary but more out of joy than sadness.

Also out this week is David Osit’s MAYOR (Film Movement), which follows Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah during his second term of office and determined to make his city a beautiful and dignified place to lived despite being surrounded on all sides by soldiers and Israeli settlements. It will open today at the Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema in New York after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

What there’s more? How about Braden R. Duemmler’s WHAT LIES BELOW (Vertical Entertainment), a thriller starring Ema Hovarth from Quibi’s Don’t Look Deeper as Liberty (aka Libby), a teen girl returning from camp only to learn her mother (Mena Suvari) has a hot younger boyfriend named John (Trey Tucker), who Libby soon begins to question whether he’s human. What could possibly go wrong?

I knew I was in trouble when Suvari is picking her daughter up from archeology camp (that’s a thing?) and I misheard her asking her daughter “Any nice digs?” (think about it), especially since Suvari is playing a stereotypically over-sexed cougar, something that becomes far more obvious once we meet her boyfriend that she’s been sexing up at her lake house. There’s certainly a danger of What Lies Below turning into a prequel to a Pornhub video, but thankfully, Duemmler gets away from the inappropriate sexuality inherent in John’s presence and into the weird behavior that gets Libby suspicious.

Sure, maybe calling the movie “My Stepfather is an Alien” would have been more apropos, and there’s elements of the movie that reminded me of the Tom Hanks’ movie The ‘burbs, and not in a good way. Even so, Hovarth, who really looks like Suvari’s daughter, does a fine job holding this together and keeping you invested in how things might pan out, as things get weirder and weirder and the movie eventually transforms itself into a halfway decent and creepy “body horror” flick.

Weird but well-done, What Lies Below is not even close to the worst thriller I’ve seen this year. That might seem like damning praise, but it’s the best I can do for this one.

Debuting on Shudder this Thursday is Justin G. Dyck’s ANYTHING FOR JACKSON (Shudder), a “reverse exorcism” movie in which a seemingly kindly couple, played by Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings, kidnap a pregnant woman (Konstantina Mantelos) in hopes of getting the spirit of their grandson Jackson, who died in a car crash, and put him into her baby… with the help of demons. What could possibly go wrong? (If you hadn’t guessed, this is the theme of this week’s Weekend Warrior.)

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the horror delivered by streamer Shudder this year, and Anything for Jackson is no exception. In fact, going over Dyck’s filmography, it’s kind of surprising how decent a horror filmmaker he is, because most of his other movies seem like Hallmark-style Christmas movies? Crazy. There are aspects of Anything for Jackson, written by Keith Cooper, who wrote some of those holiday movies for Dyck. I honestly can imagine the two of them making this movie just to be able to do something different, so they come into the horror realm with tons of fim making experience and easily transition into horror.

At the heart of this movie are McCarthy, Richings and Mantelos, who are all fine actors who do a great job selling the horrors but do just as well during the quieter dramatic moments. Not that there are that many of them, as Dyck/Cooper throw so many absolutely horrific moments at the viewer so that diehard horror fans will not be disappointed. Things shift into another gear when Josh Cruddas joins in as a Satanic cult leader they bring in to help them when they realize they’re out of their league. The results are something akin to Insidiousin terms of the types of demons and ghosts thrown at the viewer.

At times, Anything for Jackson was a little hard to follow, maybe due to its non-linear storytelling, but at least it has a substantial amount of decent replay value, since the demons and kills are so gloriously gory.

Eric Schultz’s dark and trippy sci-fi thriller MINOR PREMISE (Utopia) stars Sathya Sridharan as neuroscientist Ethan, who gets caught up in his own risky experiment involving memory loss when he becomes trapped in his home with his ex-girlfriend Allie (Paton Ashbrook), and he doesn’t remember how they both got there.

For his directorial debut, Schultz has taken the cerebral indie sci-fi film route that we’ve seen in other filmmaking debuts like Shane Carruth’s Primer, Darren Aronofsky’s Pi or Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko, and if you’re a fan of those movies, you’ll already know if this would be for you or not. This is also the kind of movie that really requires the closest attention and fullest focus, which is not something I’m great at right now. Because of that, I don’t have a ton to say about a film that does a good job pulling the viewer in with its intriguing premise.

Schultz is a pretty decent filmmaker and discovering Sridharan, who has done a lot of single-episode TV appearances but nothing major, is quite a coup since this is quite a solid showcase for the young actor. I wasn’t as crazy about Ashbrook, which makes it for a rather uneven two-hander.

Minor Premise is just fine, and I think some people will definitely like it more than I did. I definitely will have to watch it again when I’m not so distracted by ALL THOSE OTHER MOVIES ABOVE THAT I JUST FUCKING REVIEWED!

It will be in theaters, in virtual cinema, and digital/On Demand this Friday, so check it out for yourself.

And finally…

Director Dennis Dugan of Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore directs LOVE, WEDDINGS AND OTHER DISASTERS (Saban Films), a “Love American Style” rom-com anthology with a cast that includes Maggie Grace, Jeremy Irons, Diane Keaton and more. Grace plays Jessie, a fairly inexperienced wedding plan hired to orchestrate the high-profile wedding of Boston mayoral candidate (Dennis Staroselsky), and then… oh, you know what? I’ll leave the rest of the description to the review portion of our review.

We meet Grace’s character as she and her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend are skydiving, which goes horribly wrong as they end up fighting all the way down and crashing through an outdoor wedding, caught on a viral video that gets her dubbed the “Wedding Thrasher.” Imagine what a PR disaster that would be for mayoral candidate Rob Barton to have her planning his wedding, but Jessie quickly bonds with his fiancé Liz (Caroline Portu) and begins preparations. Meanwhile, Barton’s problematic brother Jimmy (Andy Goldenberg) has gone on a game show called “Crash Couples” (that’s hosted by no less than Dugan himself) and he allows himself to be chained to a Russian “lawyer” named Svetlana (Melinda Hill) who is actually a stripper. They’re willing to stick it out since the winner gets a million dollars.

Surely, that’s more than enough stories, right? Nope. Turns out that Jessie’s main competition to plan the wedding is a legendary caterer named Lawrence Phillips (Irons) who is set-up on a blind date with Diane Keaton, who is blind. Oy vey. Also, there’s Andrew Bachelor as Captain Ritchie, who gives humorous sightseeing tours of Boston via the Charles River in an odd land/water vehicle, but one day, he encounters a young woman with a glass slipper tattoo, and he becomes quite smitten. We’ll get back to him. Maybe. In fact, Duggan spends so much time setting up different stories and relationships without much connection that you wonder whether he can tie things up in the oh-so-predictable way these things normally go.

Although the movie starts out fine, and it’s actually not a bad role for Grace, as soon as Duggan introduces the game show, then we learn that Svetlana (real name Olga) is a tripper connected to the mob and they get involved, things just start going downhill very fast. Also, the idea that Keaton -- who I haven’t seen in a good movie in almost two decades -- would not think twice about playing a klutzy blind person. As soon as she shows up and immediately knocks over one of Phillips’ signature champagne glass fountains, I knew we were in for a very long haul. I didn’t even mention the other storyline involving a musician named Mack (Diego Boneta) whose band Jessie is trying to get to play the wedding – one of the multiple meet-cutes in the movie -- although Mack is squabbling with his bandmate Lenny (Jesse McCartney) who has a new Asian girlfriend who is intruding in their friendship. (I’m sure the fact her name is “Yoni” is meant as as Yoko Ono reference.)

Then on top of that, Dugan steals the gimmick from There’s Something About Mary, by constantly cutting back to Elle King and Keaton Simmons as they’re playing folksy songs in the park. Okay, the fact that Dugan wrote many of those pretty decent songs they perform is pretty impressive.

But the movie is very predictable, especially how it all comes together for the finale, which obviously has to take place at the wedding to which everything has been building up to.

Otherwise, Dugan’s film is maybe 20% an okay movie but the other 80%? Yeesh!! It’s about as romantic as a date with the Marquis de Sade, and it somehow manages to be an equal opportunity offender... in terms of offending blind people, Asians, Jews, Arabs, gay people and even strippers and Russian mafia. It took Dugan 14 years to get this passion project made, and it’s pretty obvious why.

As usual, there were a couple movies I didn’t have time to watch, but not quite as many as the ones I did make time to watch:

King of Knives (Gravitas Ventures) End of Sentence (Gravitas Venture) Billie (Greenwich) Godmothered (Disney+) Wander (Saban Films) Music Got Me Here (First Run Features) Stand! (Fathom Events, Imagination Worldwide) HAM: A Musical Memoir (Global Digital Releasing) In the Mood for Love (4k Restoration)

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #ImYourWoman #Mank #Nomadland #CrockOfGold #TheProm #BlackBear #Luxor #AnotherRound #HalfBrothers #AllMyLife

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SEO Basics principles

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to view my SEO hints and tips e-book on the often forgotten aspects of SEO. This book was written from the collective knowledge and information gathered by Chris Diprose, owner and manager of Kanga Internet. Kanga Internet are located in Melbourne, Australia and they focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web Development for the Joomla Content Management System (CMS).

With Search Engine Optimization there are lots of unknowns, educated guesses and knowledge gained from personal and associative experience. Google, Yahoo and MSN keep their cards close to their chest when it comes to revealing how their ranking systems actually work. They tell the community trickles of information on what things can affect search engine results, how they can be improved and what to do in certain situations, but mostly knowing what to do to achieve good results is achieved by studying and hard work. Much alike other SEO consultants I have gathered information from various sources and worked constantly on improving results for customers. I am always looking for new intelligent ways to improve search engine results. I believe in "White Hat" (or more appropriately, "Grey Hat") principles.There are many seo companies in melbourne which still using the old methods which i am going to describe below

https://www.roemin.com/

www.marketingroo.com.au/

https://adelseo.com.au/

these above seo companies are using old school methods which also left them on 10th page. i know there is a company called seo services melbourne and i met the owner of that company. that guy also have great knowledge of advanced level of seo.

Edition 1 of this e-book is intended for people looking to improve their websites from the ground up. I address SEO design fundamentals; the things you need to consider before embarking on any text and keyword analysis. I hope you find these hints and tips useful.

The Website Revelation-- What owning a website actually means.

As a Web Developer and SEO consultant I deal with many existing website owners who are looking to modify or improve their website. I also deal with many people who are looking to start their web presence with a new website. Through both of these interactions there is often a common theme; a misunderstanding or an attitude. I call this a misconception of reality, as often the reality of what the Internet can actually do for the persons business and what they think it can do differ massively.

Often it is presumed that by simply owning a domain and having a website built and published on the Internet, thousands of people will magically find the website, visit it and buy their products. "If you build it, they will come" should be removed from the vocabulary as soon as possible if you are to adjust attitudes to the underlying search technology. As a businessman in the real World, it is obvious that it would not happen outside of the Internet ether, so what is so different online? Maybe it was the Technology boom 10 years ago that caused a rift in understanding or maybe the buzz that caused the meteoric rise in the stock prices of Tech Companies, I can hear the thoughts of the small businessman, "surely this can be replicated for my business"-- in answer I would say, "well, it is unlikely, but you should be able to achieve some results over time".

It is most important when taking on a project like Search Engine Optimization for a website, to know that it is important to be committed for the long haul. It is no small task and sufficient funds need to be allocated to the project. Delivery deadlines need to be correctly scoped against required changes, in order to meet client expectations. The key points of responsibility to the SEO project are in knowing that there are big changes near the start and during setup but the changes do not stop after setup, there are a continuous ongoing refinements to the design and system over time. In this regard I find it important to manage expectations and set realistic long term goals on what a website can be expected to achieve and in what time frames those goals hope to be met.

So what should your goal be when you are delving into SEO for your website? Well, everyone's goal is exactly the same; improve page rankings, improve page visits and hits and finally gain more sales through the website.

When it comes to SEO and achieving these goals you have to have principles and my main principle is, "Good websites get good ratings and bad websites get bad ratings or none at all." As time goes on with the improvement of search engine technology and the refinement of search engine results this statement becomes truer and truer. I believe in results through "white hat"( reads; "Grey Hat") principles and methodologies.

What are "white hat" principles? I guess I would compare it to doing things the honest way and the right way without risk. So develop a good site, promote good linking, have good informative content and keep working on it and then you are on the road to good rankings through "White Hat" principles.

So, why should you do things the "white hat" way? Well, search engines do have some kind of understanding, an artificial intelligence. They soon catch on to websites spamming or linking to websites with no relevance and bad cross linking. It's about being smart, in for the long term and wanting your business to grow organically, naturally.

So how do I go about improving my site and making it optimized for search engines naturally? Well, that's why you're here! So let's run through few of the things you should be doing in your websites from a fundamental level.

Domain names: When choosing a domain name, choose one that is relevant to the product or service you are going to provide and that is as simple as possible. There are considerations of branding and product/service provided that should go into this choice. Involvement of marketing personal and product understanding is required but also consultation with your SEO professional is advantageous. In this step I would say, take some time and choose wisely. Keep it simple and easy to remember, often saying it out loud will make it clear whether it can be understood by a simple man.

It is a strongly held belief by many SEO professionals that buying a domain which is older, and that has been around for a while, means it will not be sand boxed by Google. What's the sandbox effect? Well, it refers to what Google does to a website or domain that is new or is relatively unknown by Google. In many instances Google's Sandbox effect relegates the new domain to sub-optimal inclusion in search results. Regardless of the sites optimization it lowers the websites relevance and ranking to the term searched upon. If you can use your old business domain name, then consider this very important.

If, however, you are buying a new domain name then keep it relevant to the product or service being sold or offered on the website. Keep it close, relevant and simple. Relevance is primary.

Location specific domain or international domain (. com or com.au)? Personally I think dot com's are better, mainly because they appeal Internationally but if you want to you can keep it location specific and to your region then consider purchasing all similar higher level domains, yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com.au, if you can.

Choosing a Host: Fast, reliable and gives you all you that you need and want. Preferably gives a unique IP. Again some SEO professionals believe this can also have a detrimental affect in Google rankings but from my experience it sometimes does and it sometimes doesn't. I have had some sites come in with high PR rankings on shared IP's and others when I shifted to a new IP the PR of the site jumped, so this is still a bit of a mystery when it comes to Google rankings. I guess a consideration

Traffic considerations: When choosing your host ensure the plan you are on can be expanded so that any new increases in traffic can be accommodated accordingly.

Site Design: There are several fundamental things to consider when you are modifying or designing a website.

Flash: Flash is has been popular for a few years now and I truly believe it has its place. It is a great way of showing many products or services in a small area, has great visual impact if done properly and can set a good friendly tone to the website visitor. Having said that, I also hate flash; it can be an absolute nightmare when it comes to search engine optimization.

What you should know about flash; it can not be read by a search engine as the search engine can not read the text or the images contained within it nor can it interpret what is in the pictures being shown.

When it comes to flash I would suggest, not making your whole website flash. If you are designing a new website and you want to use flash then use it in high impact areas to capture the attention of your intended audience but use it sparingly. It is important to ensure that as much text content( to a maximum discussed in my next book, generally 300-500 characters) is available on the webpage and in simple HTML.

Frames: Many older websites were designed with frames. Frames are where the main home page is actually a frameset page that includes several other pages into it. This makes the page hard to index in search engines and should be avoided. While Google do now index framed sites, it is important to note that most of the other top search engines still can not follow frame links. They only see the frame-set page and ignore the rest of the inner frames. This presents an SEO problem to us because it is highly likely those inner pages contain our content keywords.

Nowadays this is not really a huge issue as it is so uncommon for a designer to actually use frames but the easiest way to resolve the issue would be to enforce a no use policy on frames.

Page Layout: According to research the Google-bot crawls web pages from left to right and top to bottom. So given this little tidbit of information it is clear that you should be putting our most valuable keywords and information on the left and near the top. Of course this is a blanket statement and does not take into account design principles and beautification. Just keep it in mind during design of page layout. Position your move relevant keywords to the left of the page and near the top.

Good HTML Coding: A lot of HTML generator programs out there bloat HTML to the point it is 3-4 times larger than what it would be if you hand coded it. Keep it simple, use a text editor, edit your HTML the old school way; until there is a HTML generator tool worthy of use. If you can't code HTML then do a search on the Internet and find a decent, free, e-book and learn how to do it.

Javascript: This is very popular among many web development professionals for menu's, popups, scollers etc etc. It would be my suggestion to use simple plain HTML menu's or as little Javascript as possible in web pages. There are many small JavaScript menu's out there that are slim on JavaScript code to reduce this issue and make it almost negligible. Don't over clutter your site with JavaScript as it increases page size, page load times and the search engines won't understand it.

Image Sizes: Keep them small and use only what you need to. This is essential for decreasing page loading times and getting information onto the users screen as soon as possible.

Overall page size and loading: The overall page size is an important factor. It should load quickly and be easily trawled. If you have followed the HTML hand coding, used minimal javascript, used simple table layouts and good image sizing then you should be fine. There is much evidence that supports the fact that Google and probably the other search engines also, do not like to scan huge files, so keeping your overall HTML page size below 25k is my suggestion.

Dynamic URL's & page/file names: Dynamic pages are roadblocks to high search engine positioning. Especially those that end in "?" or "&". In a dynamic site, variables are passed to the URL and the page is generated dynamically, often from information stored in a database as is the case with many e-commerce sites. Normal.html pages are static - they are hard-coded, their information does not change, and there are no "?" or "&" characters in the URL.

Pages with dynamic URLs are present in several engines, notably Google and AltaVista, even though publicly AltaVista claims their spider does not crawl dynamic URLs. To a spider a "?" represents a sea of endless possibilities - some pages can automatically generate a potentially massive number of URLs, trapping the spider in a virtually infinite loop.

As a general rule, search engines will not properly index documents that: - contain a "?" or "&". - End in the following document types:. cfm,. asp,. shtml,. php,. stm,. jsp,. cgi,. pl. - Could potentially generate a large number of URLs. To avoid complications, consider creating static pages whenever possible, perhaps using the database to update the pages, not to generate them on the fly.

Slightly Off Topic Thoughts:. The topics covered here are not considered completely SEO topics but in terms of overall objective-- increasing sales, this section is very important. Take these things on board, consider them, consult with your designer and marketing team. Make educated and informed choices on these topics when considering your audience and what your website objectives are.

Screen Size:. Over 65% of all screens in the World are set to run at the 1024x768 resolution. Of the remaining percentage, 13% are running at 800x600, 20% running at larger sizes and 2% are unknown. So this affects the way you design. It would be my suggestion to always design for the smallest user to visit your site, but often I find 800x600 restrictive so I tend to design for slightly larger. Not large enough to make an 800x600 user angry but large enough to make it look good on larger screens also. I weigh up my target users, my intended amount of content and find some happy medium. I generally design for 1000x620 as this is the perfect amount of real estate for a 1024x768 user when they have the browser top bar and status bar and Windows taskbar.

colors and themes:. One important aspect of marketing - selling - is the use of color. Meanings are attached to colors in the same way meanings are attached to words.

- Gold is the color of wealth and prosperity. - White is the color of pure innocence and cleanliness. - Pink is the color of femininity and softness. - Green is the color of natural things and freshness. - Red is the color of danger and stress. - Blue is the color the calmness, intelligence. The majority of the World selects blue as a favorite color. It often represents "trust".

Use of color to establish an image or a brand is common in the marketing community, yet when you visit the websites of many search engine optimization professional's, it's obvious that color significance plays no part in their own web optimization. Some of the colors I found on SEO websites:. - Baby Blue, a color which implies weakness. - Red, a color which implies risk, or danger. - Orange a color which implies a cheerful "levity". Orange is one of Americans' least favorite colors.

Although color selection is off topic for SEO I would consider it a very important factor in what SEO is trying to achieve, in the end, for your website-- selling more product, creating loyalty to your brand and customer impact. color research is something you should seriously consider. In summary of color choices I would suggest studying and learning more about your customers, researching color choices and their relevance to your underlying products and making informed choices on these in collaboration. If in doubt then I suggest sticking to safe and trusted colors within safe eye pleasing designs.

Gifs for logos & jpgs for pictures:. Ensure you are using gifs for logos and background placements and jpgs for photos on your website. This helps reduce size and improve clarity of the web site overall.

Browser:. It is vitally important to ensure your web page works in both IE, Firefox and Opera. Testing other browsers is also an advantage but these are the main three in use nowadays (2007 ). I think quoting stats on the browser breakdown are irrelevant as you need it work in all browsers. W3C cross browser compliance is great for this.

So, this brings us to the end of Volume 1: Fundamentals of SEO Web Design. There are many things to consider when designing a website or modifying a web site to make it more SEO friendly. Clearly I have a few more volumes left in SEO for websites.

#local seo training #seo #seo services

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roleplaylogs · 6 years ago

Text

Grofflin

A nice Grofflin RP where Jon goes to visit Lin in Puerto Rico

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

You both like Jamilton, Whamilton, Hamilton RPF, and grofflin.

You: [1.29am] I miss you. LMM

Stranger: It’s late, Lin, you doing ok? I miss you, too. JG

You: Yeah, I just miss you! LMM How are you doing? LMM

Stranger: I’m alright, glad you’re not feeling incredibly sad or whatever. JG

Stranger: I’ve been awake far too long, ugh. JG

You: I mean, I'm putting on a brave face, but I'm not like incredibly sad, more mediocre sad. LMM But I'd rather talk about you. Insomnia? LMM

Stranger: Funny, I’d rather talk about you. But you’ll end up telling me eventually, I’m sure. JG

Stranger: Definite insomnia tinged with the usual anxiety. I think I miss the stage. JG

You: I miss the stage with you on it. LMM

Stranger: Yeah? I miss spending time with you in general, but especially on and around stage. JG

You: We were so good together in the play. LMM

Stranger: We really were, even if we didn’t really interact. I really enjoyed comndeering your dressing room. JG

You: Some of my best memories from the show was hanging out in that dressing room with you. LMM

Stranger: If you wanted to come all the way out to Pittsburgh you can come hang out in my trailer with me. JG

You: I wish I could, Papi, but I just flew out to PR. LMM

Stranger: You’re in the Motherland and you’re moderately sad? Lin, sweet thing, what’s up? I’d come down to you but we’re filming all week. JG

You: I don't know, maybe I'm just in a funk. My family are all still in NY and I'm in a boujee hotel room that just feels weirdly sterile and I miss you so bad. LMM

Stranger: Sounds kinda funky, yeah. V didn’t come? JG

You: No, we're not doing so great at the moment. LMM

Stranger: Ahhh, I’m sorry to hear that, really. I... let me check my schedule, alright? I might be able to sneak out of here. JG

You: Really? I can get you on a plane whenever you need, first class. LMM

Stranger: Really really. I miss the hell out of you and it seems you need some good old cheering up. You don’t have to do that, boo. JG

You: I know I don't, but I want to. I'm dragging your working ass out of the country, I'm gonna do it in style. LMM

Stranger: I am 1000% volunteering to leave the cold as fuck Pennsylvania city to come see you in Puerto Rico. No dragging required. But I know arguing with you is pointless... JG

You: Good, glad we got that sorted. LMM When can I book the flight for? Can they change your filming schedule? LMM

Stranger: (Delayed) So, we can finish up my stuff for the week tomorrow, and I can have til next Tuesday. So a week? That’s not bad. JG

You: A whole week? Awesome! That's great! Oh man, I'm so happy now. LMM You can help me go through my lines for the PR play! I can assure you I have forgotten every Ham lyric. LMM

Stranger: Lucky for you, I have forgotten NONE of them. We’ll get you all rehearsed and happy. JG

You: God, I'm so scared I'm gonna be shitty now. You gotta be ruthless with me, train me up again. LMM

Stranger: There is no way you’d be shitty, Lin. What with all that Disney training I’m sure you’re a better dancer. I’ll get you in top Ham shape, no problem. JG

You: Oh my god, it really put me through my paces, I've never been fitter. If you squint, and if I really suck in, you can kinda see abs. LMM

Stranger: !!! I’m going to touch them, you know that, right? JG

You: I mean, I've got no one else to show them off to. LMM The dad bod is still and always will be here, just a little fitter. I'm also a way better singer now, so, we can thank Disney and their expensive ass singing lessons for that too. LMM

You: ((Brb real quick I gotta go put some food in! Might be like ten mins))

Stranger: ((Alright!))

Stranger: You can show off to me when’re you like, Lin. I mean it. Just go full on showboat like Daveed. JG

Stranger: I love you just the way you are but the tiny improvements will only make you stronger. More formidable. I definitely cried in Poppins Returns because of you, by the way. JG

You: No one can showboat like Daveed, don't be silly. LMM You did? Fuck, that means so much to me. I tried so hard and I'm so proud of that, I'm so glad you like it. It's a love letter to the first movie, which I adored. LMM

Stranger: I know, I know but you could try! Just never put a shirt on and pretend you aren’t attractive. JG

Stranger: I did. Cried three separate times, but most of it was because I was so so proud of you. You did so well, Lin! The lamp lighters scene, oh my god. JG

You: Ha, I don't have to pretend. LMM God, you know that was a whole week of filming? Just that scene there? It's the most exhausted I've ever been but so worth it. LMM

Stranger: Shush, you’re so handsome and charismatic. JG

Stranger: Oh, I believe it. It was beautiful and magical and I want to watch you on that lamp post like 24/7. JG

You: Not a patch on you, you handsome devil! LMM I made so many pole dancing jokes, I'm almost embarrassed. LMM

Stranger: Oh, stop that. Let me admire you! JG

Stranger: Ha, I know you very well. I’m sure that almost is the key word there. JG

You: I've never made Em laugh so much than when we were filming for that scene, we had a blast. LMM God. It's like that was a high I'm now crashing down from. LMM

Stranger: G o d, you call Emily Blunt Em, I am JEALOUS. JG

Stranger: We’ll get you back up on that crest, I promise. Ham in PR is such a huge deal. JG

You: You gotta meet her sometime, I will set it up, she's awesome. I also met Jon Krasinski and almost died, that man is a confirmed god and he and Em are perfect together. LMM You're right. I just need my personal hypeman by my side. LMM

Stranger: You shut up right now, I’ll just end up quoting the entirety of Devil Wears Prada right into her glorious face. I need to meet her. JG

Stranger: You’ll have me for a week, but I’ll always hype you, Lin. You’re legitimately the most talented, kind, bright man I know. JG

You: I'll make it happen. LMM Oh, stop it. I wouldn't be where I am without the support of you, you mean the absolute world to me. LMM

Stranger: I knew I loved you for a reason ;) JG

Stranger: You’d be so great without me, you’ve got a team of hypemen, Burr I will always be the loudest. JG

You: Hell yeah you will. God, I can't wait to see your ridiculously cute face and smush it in my hands. LMM

Stranger: Oh, it’s ready to be smushed, hasn’t happened in far too long. JG

You: You got that right, I'm gonna smush you so hard. LMM Which, in hindsight, sounds incredibly inappropriate. LMM

Stranger: ... I’m not mad about it. JG

You: Me neither. Groffsauce so cuuuuute. LMM

Stranger: Why are all the best men tragically straight? Ugh. JG

You: Uh. LMM Yo. LMM You talking about me? LMM

Stranger: You, Daveed, every other straight guy in theatre. JG

You: Oh my god, this is priceless. LMM You think I'm straight? LMM

Stranger: ... ok, so I’m wrong, then. How wrong am I? JG

You: Super wrong. I'm super not straight. LMM

Stranger: The whole V thing threw me off. I mean the willingness to throw yourself at me should’ve been a clue but that was more wishful thinking. JG

You: Yeah, I guess the whole married to a woman thing does make me seem a bit straight. But I am a theatre kid, so... LMM Remember when I made that Heights promo with you in it? I had the biggest crush on you. LMM

Stranger: So you’re bi, or bi adjacent, then. That’s... wow. Ok, my worldview just shifted a little. JG

Stranger: I remember that so well, it was so damn entertaining and cute. I’ve been practically wrapped around your finger since. JG

You: Yeah, I just don't really care about gender, I'm just attracted to everyone, basically. LMM Thank god, because I wrote KG3 for you. LMM

Stranger: Yeah, yeah that makes so much more sense. Either way you were out of my reach. JG

Stranger: You did not — really?? Why didn’t you tell me that before? JG

You: I swear I've mentioned that before. You know, like I wrote GWash for Chris? You were in mind already when I was writing. LMM

Stranger: I know you wrote Washington for Chris, but also damn. I guess it just blows my mind every time I hear you say it?? JG

You: Well, yeah. I had a big ass gay crush on you at that point, so why wouldn't I try and rope you in to my project? LMM

Stranger: Well, fuck. How could I say no to you, Lin? It’s literally impossible. With those big, bright eyes and all of those words. JG

You: Ha, insert say no to this reference here. LMM You think my eyes are big and bright? Aww, shucks, ya making me blush! LMM

Stranger: You’ve got such doe eyes, and those lashes, Lin. I’d murder someone for lashes like that. But you’re incredibly handsome. JG

You: Don't do murder, that's bad. LMM [delay] Well, your uh, flight is booked! LMM

Stranger: I’m not going to murder... maybe. JG

Stranger: Oh, thank you! You really are too much. JG

You: I know, I know. Get told it on the daily. LMM I'll get a car to pick you up from the airport (not because I'm lazy but I don't fancy getting mobbed if I come meet you). LMM

Stranger: I don’t blame you not wanting to get mobbed. Am I going to be staying with you? JG

You: Of course. This is a big suite, it's got two bedrooms! LMM

Stranger: Then you’ll see me in the suite! We’ll have a lot of fun practicing your lines at all hours. JG

You: And staying up watching old movie musicals like we're at a slumber party. LMM

Stranger: Too bad I can’t braid your hair anymore. JG

You: You were always so good at that. LMM Face masks though...! LMM

Stranger: It’s the Pennsylvania Dutch in me. JG

Stranger: Face masks! And manicures. Bet your nail beds are a mess. JG

You: They are, you gotta sort them out. LMM Anyway, it's late, we should sleep. But I will see you at my crazy fancy suite. LMM

Stranger: I’ll fix ‘em up. But ok, yes. Sleep. I’ll see you in a handful of hours! JG

You: Lin definitely didn't sleep much that night, far too excited to see Jon the next day. He worked a little the next morning, keeping an eye on the flight tracker for Jon's plane so he knew when it arrived safe, and got a driver to go pick him up. So, the fame might have changed him a little, but it was worth it. He looked up when he heard the key card he'd had given to Jon at the front desk clicked in the door and got up, a huge grin on his face. "Hey! It's my favourite heartthrob!" He said, running over and practically jumping at the taller man to hug him.

Stranger: Jon definitely didn’t sleep until he was on the plane — thankfully he was one of the lucky ones who could conk out on flights — he was just too excited to see Lin. There were nerves festering in the pit of his stomach that he had long since thought dead. As if getting confirmation that Lin wasn’t straight changed anything between them. It did not, but he couldn’t get those damn butterflies to settle down as he keyed his way into the suite. He didn’t have a moment to even set his bags down before he had to drop one in order to huddle Lin against him so they didn’t topple over. He was laughing brightly, unable to help it, as he carelessly dropped the rest of this things to get both arms around the ball of energy. “Hello to you too, Lin! Let me get in here,” he said, still laughing. But it was easy to shuffle them a few steps into the suite so the door could close behind him. “Look at you,” Jon sighed, getting both hands up onto Lin’s shoulders. “You look so good, lithe. Like you have a whisper of abs.”

You: It was so crazy that Jon was here, and Lin could actually hug him, it was like a dream come true. He'd really needed someone or the next few weeks would have been unbearable. He beamed up at him as Jon looked at him, nothing but true, unfiltered happiness in his eyes. "I do! If I suck in and you squint!" He said, before hugging him again. "God, you've like, totally beefed out. Mindhunter really did a number on you, huh? Look at how in shape we both are, I'm so proud," he rambled on.

Stranger: “Beefed out, god yes please keep telling me that. They have me working out far too much for my liking, but if you like it then we’re good.” Jon couldn’t help but get a little lost in the sound of Lin’s voice and the bright spark in his eyes. He ducked a little so he could duck his head to Lin’s shoulder. “You look great, so great. A sight for sore eyes, that’s for sure. Pittsburgh is so dull especially because it doesn’t have your spark.”

You: Lin hugged him tight, pressing his face against Jon's hair for a moment. God, he smelled good. Focus. "Are we just gonna compliment each other for the whole week? Because I am so good with that!" He pulled away eventually and picked up a few of Jon's bags. "There we go, I'll show you to your room, kind sir," he put on his English accent that he now had perfected from Poppins. "Follow me!" He went off in the direction of the other bedroom next to his.

Stranger: Jon couldn’t stop laughing, the happiness just pouring out of him from being close to Lin again. “I could spend all damn day telling you how awesome you are.” Gathering up his other things, he trailed after Lin slowly, looking around the suite with open wonder. “Listen, if you don’t talk like that all day, I’m going to be so disappointed.” Tucking his bags into the closet in the bedroom, Jon tossed his keys and wallet onto dresser and immediately went to the window to get a look at the view. “This is actual paradise, I hope you know.”

You: Lin put his bags down on the bed before going to stand beside him at the window. "I know, right?" He sighed happily. "Mi pais es tan hermoso," he said fondly, before looking up at Jon. "That means, my country is so beautiful. Now, you gotta make a choice. Jack the lamplighter voice, or Puerto Rican Lin!" He joked, rolling his Rs in an exaggerated fashion.

Stranger: Jon reeled Lin into his side pretty easily, his arm settling around his shoulders. “I don’t honestly care which Lin I get because I still get you regardless. But now I know now why you love this island so much.” Leaning toward the window, as if that would get him closer to the view of the sea, Jon was beaming. “How is this place even real? I’ll have to go exploring.”

You: Lin leaned easily against him, fitting snugly against his body. Oh man, this was nice. "I'll have to take you on a tour," he promised, looking up at the wonder on Jon's face rather than the view. It was arguably more beautiful. Not arguably. Factually. "But I wanna just hang out with you first for a while. Order room service, maybe a bottle of champagne to celebrate..."

Stranger: This closeness was what he had missed the most about Lin — about how well they fit together and how warm Lin was. Turning his face to look at him, he was only a littler surprised to find Lin already looking at him. A slight blush overtook his face and he laughed quietly. “You can give me a tour tomorrow morning. I am so down for staying in and seeing champagne-happy Lin.”

You: "I am such a lightweight now, I hope you're prepared to handle me!" Lin grinned and pulled away from his side, only to grab his hand. He didn't want to be separated from him, and honestly, he was a little touch starved at present. He grabbed a menu that Jon could read over his shoulder, practically leaning back so Jon's chest was pressed against his back. Was it hot in there? "What are you feelin?" He asked, reading over the desserts. He had a sweet tooth.

Stranger: “I am well-versed in corralling drunk friends. Besides, you’re easy,” Jon winked overly dramatically and happily held onto Lin’s hand. The contact was beyond nice and he practically wrapped himself around Lin as they perused the menu. “I’m feeling being indulgent. No gym time, no strict diet. Just get a bunch to share?” His free hand settled idly over Lin’s hip, holding him close as if he was afraid Lin would just disappear.

You: Lin grinned when he felt Jon’s hand settling on to his hip, almost shivering at the contact. “Sounds perfect.” He pulled Jon over to the sofa where the phone was, sitting down, half in Jon’s lap as he reeled off a massive order of room service, a bottle of champagne, and he checked their mini bar was suitably stocked as well.

Stranger: Jon handled Lin into laying down on the couch beside him, his head landing in his lap. Not that it took too much convincing really. It was always easy to get Lin where he wanted him. There it was easier to run his fingers through his short hair. “This is going to be a great night, just you and me. Running lines for the play?” It was like they hadn’t spent weeks and months apart.

You: Lin grinned up at Jon when he put the phone down, gazing into his pretty eyes. “Oh yeah, just like the old days,” he said. “Aren’t you just so excited for the play? I wonder if they’ll make us stage kiss!” He put on a high school voice, bringing up their inside joke from years ago.

Stranger: Jon burst out laughing before getting himself under control. “God, what if they make us stage kiss in the play?” Jon whispered, though fighting not to giggle again. He failed. “It’s been a while since you kiss-bombed me.”

You: “I know! Oh, I miss my surprise kissing you for the internet,” Lin sighed happily. “I bet twitter misses it. I know I sure do!” He’d always made excuses before to kiss him, because he’d just always wanted to. Jon just thought it was a prank, before. Lin wished things were different.

Stranger: “You ever just want to kiss me just to kiss me?” Jon asked after a prolonged moment of silence. Looking down at Lin — bright eyed and so handsome — Jon didn’t even bother keeping his thoughts to himself. “I missed you, really. And I had been so convinced that I was living in some weird limbo with you being out of reach but not really out of reach now, are you?” He babbled a little, the words just sort of not stopping.

You: The tone changed and Lin’s expression softened, listening to Jon. “Maybe I was out of reach for a while,” he said quietly, his heart pounding hard in his chest. “But I’ve wanted to kiss you period for years,” he confessed.

Stranger: Pushing Lin’s hair away from his forehead, Jon just kept touching him idly. “You should do it, then, if you’d still like to. I’d like it a lot.” His hands were shaking even as he threaded his fingers through that soft, thick hair.

You: “Yeah?” Lin whispered, shivering as Jon touched him. “I think I’d like that too.” He leaned up from Jon’s lap (using his newfound abs), reaching up to put his hand on the side of his neck. He looked at him for just a moment, before leaning in and pressing their lips together.

Stranger: It was like Lin was moving in slow motion, Jon could hardly believe it. He shifted just enough to make it easier on Lin to kiss him. It was tentative and sweet and Jon’s heart was about to leap out of his chest and he was sure Lin could feel it. Curling his hand around the back of Lin’s head, Jon encouraged the kiss to deepen.

You: Lin closed his eyes as they kissed, just feeling how nice and sweet it was to be kissing him properly, and not for some prank. He made a quiet noise as it started to deepen, as full of noise as ever. He couldn’t keep quiet at any aspect of his life. He melted against Jon’s chest, allowing the kiss to deepen even further, pressing his tongue against the seam of Jon’s plump lips.

-- And then it got a little NSFW that I won’t post here --

#hamilton #hamilton rpf #grofflin #grofflin rp

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dailyaudiobible · 6 years ago

Text

04/29/2019 DAB Transcript

Judges 9:22-10:18, Luke 24:13-53, Psalms 100:1-5, Proverbs 14:11-12

Today is the 29th day of April. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you as we turn a corner and make a final push in this month of April, this fourth month of the year and out push into a brand-new work week which is coming off of a busy wedding weekend for us but thankfully this rhythm goes on no matter what's going on. We continue to follow the rhythm day by day through the Bible in a year. So, we’re reading from the Common English Bible this week and we’ve spent the last several days reading the story of the judge, Gideon, and then after Gideon died, how one of his sons killed all of his brothers to try to take over leadership and has subsequently taken over leadership. And we’ll see how that story goes. Judges chapter 9 verse 22 through 10 verse eight.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we finish…what…tomorrow's the last day of this month, so, the second to the last day of this month of April we also concluded the book of Luke today. And, so, that concludes the synoptic Gospels - Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And as we talked about before they’re called the synoptic Gospels because they share so much of the same material, so much of the same story. So, in today's reading from the Gospel of Luke, we walked the road to Emmaus. And the exact location of biblical Emmaus, that's been a matter of scholarly conjecture for a long time. There are several places that date back into antiquity. So, like long-standing traditions. And there's one that we visit back from the Byzantine era, old chapel there, opportunity to can walk around. And when we come to this story I think of that, those ruins of this this old church and we usually go there and just…it's in the morning and just think about how these men were walking along the road to Emmaus. So, there going from Jerusalem to Emmaus and they're just lamenting, right? It just…it's the day…it's…it's resurrection day. So, like for us, this is Easter that this is happening. And they've heard the rumors that the tombs empty and there's kind of all of this confusion starting to swirl but they were still needing to go from Jerusalem to Emmaus. And, so, they walked those 7 miles on this, as it were Easter Sunday, like resurrection day and they’re dejected and downcast and confused when Jesus comes along and opens the Scriptures to them. And how once they've come to be with Jesus, after he kind of plays with them, right? He’s gonna go on he’s gonna keep going. And they’re like, “come stay with us” and He’s like, “I couldn't do that”. They’re like, “come stay with us.” And, so, He does and then He breaks bread and disappears. And the response was weren’t our hearts on fire when He spoke to us along the road and when explained the Scriptures for us. And we just kind of explore how we can be walking along in our lives, walking with Jesus and unware that He is present and unpacking our lives for us and we can so often miss it. And then, of course, the gospel of Luke ends with the ascension of Jesus. So, they’re back near Jerusalem and he takes them to Bethany, which is ironically where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived where Jesus often went to stay, where Lazarus was raised from the dead. Jesus takes them back near Bethany and then He ascends to the Father, which is the way the book of Luke ends, the way the synoptic Gospels end and tomorrow we will begin the gospel of John, which is very different than the synoptic Gospels and we'll talk about that when we get there.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for bringing us this far into Your word where we have now completed three of the Gospels. It is so easy for us to look back to New Year's Day and realize how far we've come and how quickly we've gotten here, and we thank You for Your faithfulness every single day. And as we begin to turn the corner and move deeply into the changing of the seasons and move into new territory in the Bible we thank You that this rhythm continues, and he continues to pull us deeper and deeper and forward in our relationship with You and in our awareness of Your kingdom all around us. So, we thank You for bringing us to this moment. Come, Holy Spirit, seal the gospel of Luke in our hearts we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and stay connected.

There are any number of ways to stay connected. The Prayer Wall is at dailyaudiobible.com. That's a great way to stay connected. Clicking the Community section at dailyaudiobible.com will take you to all the different links, all the different places that we are on social media. That's a great place to stay connected. And while you're there, you can visit the Daily Audio Bible shop. There are resources available for this journey that we are on together. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link. It lives on the homepage. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, and by the way, all the things that I just talked about like the Prayer Wall etc., those are available in the Daily Audio Bible app as well. You just push the little Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. But if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. I thank you humbly and truly deeply for your partnership. If you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi, this Shelley in Oklahoma and I’m calling for Lisa in San Jose who called about her husband who is suffering with his fourth battle with cancer and she’s having undisclosed health problems, one of them is __ and I just wanted to call and say Lisa I heard you and I’m praying for you. Three years ago, my daughter had a very serious car accident in North Carolina and I live in Oklahoma over thousand miles away and I flew there to be with her during various surgeries and rehab and I’ll tell you, I was so fearful at first and so frozen I didn’t even know what to pray for. I couldn’t breath and I was just struggling. And the Daily Audio Bible Daily Prayer helped me so much, it’s under Helpful Links if you want to look that up. I repeated out loud. After Brian says a stanza I would repeat that stanza and I was in that prayer saying, you know, father I don’t know what is in store for me, I’m afraid, and I am asking you to just keep me in your path that you have styles for me for this day and that I just do your will and do my very best to just keep my eyes locked on you. And that is what got me through that and it helped me to be able to be deal with the anxiety and the fear and I hope it will help you too. I’m praying for you. I pray for your husband. And I pray that all works out well for both of you. Thank you.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family, my name is Christina and I am from Florida. I’ve been listening just very, very recently, since the beginning of April and I plugged in when I got back from my honeymoon and I’ve been listening ever since and it has been a huge blessing to me to listen every morning and to hear this community that God has created. I’d like to ask for prayers for my new marriage. We both got married later in life and there’s been a lot of growing pains and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that. And I definitely believe God is in this marriage and at the center but things can happen that are hard and I know we all know that but I would love to just have some prayers for Christina and Shawn, that we continue putting Him first and at the center and knowing that and trusting that He will get through…get us through everything we’re going through. And I love hearing your prayers and I love praying for everyone and I hope that you all hear from Him and thy will be done in this journey that we’re on together. It’s amazing. So, have a wonderful day and…

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family, it’s Julie. I’m praying this morning for China as she prepares for her wedding day tomorrow. I’m praying for Brian and Jill. I remember when my daughter Joanna got married. I believe that day the flood of emotion, its one of my short list of days that is just filled with joy, emotion, oh, memories. Just enjoy and soak up every moment, I pray you will on that day. I pray for Archie, I pray for his strength to pursue the plans that God has for him. I pray for Mike, for Mike’s best friend’s family with a niece that took her own life. I pray so hard for strength in that family, pull them together, and I pray for their healing, and I pray that they run to God for that healing. I pray for Julie for her brother Ron whose blood clot on his lungs is improving. Amen to that. And I pray also Lord you take away her hopeless feelings and give her strength and wisdom on how to reach out to people who really are not by the sounds of it understanding of that. I pray that you heal that family. And I pray for Carla trying to follow the right path. Oh, how hard it is for all of us, right? And I pray for total healing of that left ear __ , take it away, let it be gone. Let Carla be well I pray. I pray Lord this morning for my mother-in-law, for my husband, for my brother…

Good morning DAB family this is Jaiden Lopez grandma. Today is Friday the 27th of April, 2019 and I was a little behind and I’ve been listening to the community prayer line for the 20th of April and there was a lady who called on the 16th. And sister I thank you so much for asking and keeping him in your prayers. I have not seen Jaiden nor has my son seen Jaden since February 10th of last year. And, like you, I keep him in prayer. I keep him in prayer because his mother does mistreat him. He’s not allowed to call us or talk to us. And raising him from the age of one and my son and his relationship was so tight. It has been devastating. And last week when I heard Johnny request for his friend Nicholas it just broke me. And, so, I keep praying for Jaiden. When I come home from work and I see the little kids coming off the school bus and see how all these friends…they went on a school bus…I just…so much crying. And it just so happened that last week when you were calling in I was having a hard time thinking of Jaiden. So, keep him in your prayers and as soon as I hear from him, if I ever hear from him I will let you know. I thank you so much for calling and remembering him. God bless you. And let’s keep praying for Johnny.

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jeremyrennerapp-blog · 7 years ago

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Jeremy Renner’s app - why I left and everything wrong with it.

First, I want to start this post making it clear that I will be not exposing names or sending hate towards anyone. I’ll merely talk about the reasons that made me choose to leave the app over the weekend. I will get into the topic of buying stars/boosts but I will NOT condemn people for doing it, as it’s not my problem what anyone does with their own money.

I joined the app on the same day it was released and I subscribed to it ($2,99/month). I was never very active over there, I would simply like the posts, make a comment or two and just watch people interacting and getting a hang of how things worked. And I wasn’t pleased. I will be writing this in topics, to make ir easier to understand. Things that weren’t seen by me or are just rumors will be marked as such.

1. The app itself: What it is and how it works; 2. Thecnical Problems; 3. Starts and Boosting; 4. The super fan label; 5. Bullying; 6. The “Clique“; 7. Contests/Replies ; 8. Favoritism; 9. Reaction from other fans; 10. What I think it should be done.

The app itself: What it is and how it works.

The app was released around March, 2017. Here’s the description of the app at the app store (I’m not an android user, so I’m not sure if it’s the same over there):

Stay connected to Jeremy Renner on his official app.

Do fun things:

- Check out the in-app social feed for live updates and videos.

- Boost your comments with Superstars, become a Top 3 Fan, and be seen by Jeremy Renner.

- Join exciting contests for a chance to win amazing prizes like meeting Jeremy Renner, event tickets, and more…

- Watch cool videos.

- Follow Jeremy Renner on social media.

- Listen to the FREE built-in playlist and add more songs from your personal library, Spotify.

We’ve just launched subscription service! Subscribers will get the exclusive subscriber badge to decorate their avatars and help them be seen, as well as exclusive content just for them. The $2.99/month subscription fee will be charged through your iTunes account as an auto-renewable, recurring transaction unless you cancel your subscription before the end of the current subscription month. You can manage your subscription, cancel it, or turn off auto-renewal at any time by accessing your iTunes account.

Jeremy does post content there. Some pictures, a few videos here and there and he takes a little time to reply to fans when he can. As we all know, he is a very busy man so no one expects him to reply to a lot of comments all the time. We understand and respect that, so this isn’t an issue.

As you can read on the official description, there is a subscribe service. For $2,99 a month, you get access to everything in the app. Some posts are tagged for subscribers only (or “Super Fans” as the app calls us who pay the monthly fee). Sounds good to a certain point, so I joined and started to learn my around the app.

Thecnical Problems From day one, the app had a few issues. Of course we understand that it was recently launched so that is completely normal. I’ve had issues with the app crashing multiple times and the notification tab not working, but tumblr user @Sephirayne had a lot more problems as she stated on this post.

Another user had her account closed for no reason and when she got it back, her stars were gone. Ecapex’ Technical support worked on it and gave her stars back, but it took a little bit.

Hopefully, the notification tab will be improved and fans can have a better experience on the app. Since is still a relatively “new” thing, let’s give them time to work on all the problems and bugs.

Stars and Boosting

The app works with a system of “boosting” comments. To do that, you need “stars”. They can be earned by using the app or they can be bought (when you download the app you get a starter pack of 100 stars). Here are the packs and the prices (iOS version):

Now, like I said in the beggining, I am not against people buying stars. As Jeremy is very busy, boosting comments give fans a better chance to be seen by him and having their comments replied to. This topic is just to explain how this feature works.

Aside from boosting comments, you can boost yourself to get to the much wanted “Top Fan Section.” That means your profile picture will be featured under his post with a “#1 Fan” (or #2 or #3) as seen here:

Clicking on your profile picture will let you know how many starts you need to boost yourself up to that position. For example:

As previously stated, that gives you a chance to be seen by Jeremy, since your post would be on top. A lot of people only use the starts they gain within the app, others buy it and use it to boost themselves or other fans that have good comments.

The super fan label

This is where I started to get a bit uneasy. The app has a badge for people who pay for the monthy fee and they are described as “Super Fans.”

This is the badge:

Bullying

This are RUMORS I’ve heard. I wasn’t online when it happened and any clarification about this is welcome.

There were rumors that a fan was bullyied by the “clique” until she left the app. That same fan talked about this last night on instagram and deleted her fan account because she was extremely disappointed with Jeremy.

I can’t get in touch with her now since I only knew her fan account, but if she wants to come forward (as the person accused of the bullying) they’re welcome to share their thoughts.

The “Clique”

I will NOT be throwing names in this topic. I will call them “Person A”, “Person B” etc if I need to. This is not intend to send hate towards them or anyone, this is simply my view on things and again, I might be wrong.

There is a little “clique” in the app. A group of fans that can afford starts and are always on the top fans section. Nothing wrong with that, people can spend their money however they want, but they monopolize the top fan section and that doesn’t give other fans a chance.

Contests/Replies

I’m not sure how many of those we had, since I’m not willing to download the app again and go through every post. But the ones I remember are:

Video replies: Fans asked questions and Renner posted video replies daily during a month;

Signed photos: Fans answered a question and best answers got signed pictures. I believe there were 10 winners;

Set visit: Fans asnwered three questions for a couple weeks and Renner chose one to visit the Avengers set in Atlanta. Starts bought during this contest had the money from it redirected to Hurricane Harvey Relief (around 14 thousand dollars)

With that being said, let’s move on to the next topic: favoritism.

Favoritism

This came to mind after the results of the last contest on Sunday. Since the app began, I’ve been seeing a pattern being made where the same people were always in the top fan section, which made them get a lot of replies from Jeremy.

A few people of this group also got video replies, the signed pictures and one of them was the winner of the latest contest, the set visit in Atlanta. I will not criticize the money spent on stars on this because it went to a great cause, but the way the contest was handled really set some people off.

Answering questions for a chance to win, doesn’t work for everyone. Being busy as Jeremy is, he can’t possibly read through all the comments, which means that, as we all knew, said person won. Her comments were boosted a lot (which is nice, it generated more money for charity) but that’s making people think that there’s something else to it.

Did he get to read other comments that weren’t on the top section? Did we even had a chance in the first place? Probably not. Fans are hurt from seeing the same people benefiting on every contest/giveaway simply because they have more money. This is not a contest, it’s an auction and Jeremy should have made that clear from the beggining, because other fans have been pouring their hearts out for a chance to win when they never had a chance in the first place.

It’s hard not to think of favoritism when we keep seeing the same names and the same people over and over again. It fells like it’s Jeremy + his super fans and the rest of us are just the rest. And yes, it’s hurtful.

If he can’t give everyone a fair chance, he should think of a different system for these contests.

Reaction from other fans

After the winner of the set visit was announced, a lot of fans expressed how they felt. They were quickly buried by “let’s be positive” comments trying to shut them up and a fan was even banned from the app (I talked to her, if she wants her name here, she knows how to contact me).

People were accused from “stealing the winner’s spotlight” ou being “sore losers” simply because they pointed out that the whole thing wasn’t fair from the beggining. Some people (me included) weren’t surprised at all with the winner because, like I said, there’s a pattern.

I am NOT speaking for everyone (although I saw simmilar reactions) when I say that, as a fan, I am hurt. Deeply. I am hurt because I’ve been a fan for years, I run a big fan account and in that app it’s like I’m nothing because I can’t afford to buy his attention or a chance on those contests.

Fan accounts have been deleted, fans left the app and others say they will only stay there from the friends they’ve made, but that they were equally disappointed. Huge fans are being treated like they’re not worth as much as the other ones simply because they can’t spend as much money on the app. Does Jeremy have an idea of how much this affects people (negatively)? What about his staff? His PR?

He made two instagram posts after the contest announcement. One of them has multiple comments from unhappy fans and they’re all being ignored. There was an open letter I posted and that was shared by another fan account that it was ignored as well. It’s like we don’t have a voice.

What I think it should be done

I’m not asking Renner to change his mind about the contest. She won, let her enjoy it. What I’m asking is for him or his staff to say something about the unhappy fans, to show us that our voices have value and to tell us that the next contests will be fair. I want them to make it clear which is a contest and which is an auction, so fans don’t waste their time on something they won’t have a chance.

I need to be proved wrong when I say that, right now, it feels like money matters more than true fans. Our love CANNOT be measured by the amount of money we spend and people CANNOT feel less of a fan just because they don’t have as much money as the other ones.

Jeremy, BARTON UP.

Clint fucks up all the time, but he always admits what he did and tries to fix it. This is hurting your fans, the people who have been supporting you for years and have helped you get to where you are right now. This is hurting the people who will still be here when shit goes down. You used to call super fans there your “loyal fans”, but we are ALL loyal. We are ALL superfans. I hope you get to see what’s truly happening, because I think the main reason you’re not talking about is because you don’t know.

This app is dividing people instead of creating a community. Everything seems bright and shiny because people ignore what happens out of what? Fear he’ll be mad? This only leads to Renner not knowing what’s truly happening.

This needs to change. He has other social media to interact with fans, the app is NOT the only way. Things need to be fair to EVERY ONE, or people will keep leaving.

#BartonUp #LoyaltyToAll

(The ask box is open to anyone who wants to share their thoughts on this. I will NOT be posting submissions that attack other fans or Jeremy himself. Please, be respectful.)

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melvinfeller · 4 years ago

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Must Do Networking Strategies in Today’s Business Climate

Networking has always been an integral part of a successful business marketing strategy. But, with the increase of people starting businesses as an alternative to going back into the job market, networking events have taken on more of a ‘swap meet’ atmosphere as business owners and entrepreneurs attempt to find buyers and collect business cards to use for future email campaigns.

Here's something that won't come as a surprise in the world of networking: people want to talk about themselves. And professional networking is no different. Many people go into networking trying to tell you who they are and what they do. It's important to realize this, and even more important to listen.

As Melvin Feller, CEO and Founder of Melvin Feller Business Group, says, “If you let them, you can learn what they do and meanwhile think about how you can fit in and create a stronger network. I believe that listening is critical because it is through listening that you can identify opportunities.”

Engage with these people, pay close attention when they go on and on and then, follow-up on with all the information you've just been given by them.

If networking is done right, it can fuel a continuous stream of quality referrals. If it’s carried out with an ‘I’m going to make a sale today’ mindset, it can lead to disappointment and be the source of a huge missed opportunity.

Good, productive networking is as much an art and it is science. And while your results will improve the more you practice it, you can achieve great results very quickly if you develop the right strategy and incorporate a few relationship building techniques along the way.

A Good Strategy Starts with a Clear Purpose:

The main concept to embrace is the primary reason for networking in the first place. Networking is about developing relationships as a means of building a solid referral network. It’s like getting other business people with similar goals to spread the word about you and help connect you with potential customers you don’t know yet. Before people will be willing to do this, they have to know who you are, what you do, why you do it and why their contacts would want to speak with you. Only then, will other business owners feel comfortable that referring you to their colleagues and clients will not turn into their worst PR nightmare! As a business consultant and instructor, I work with many business owners who haven’t taken the time to ask and answer these questions.

Unfortunately, many new owners or owners new to networking are tempted to put on their ‘selling’ hat too early in the game and instead of creating quality relationships, they end up in any number of very short conversations with people who need to apologize for having to take an important phone call. No one likes to be sold something before they’ve even had a chance to exchange pleasantries! Having a business growth mindset means setting the stage for maximum results. Why try to sell this one person when you could cultivate a relationship that could connect you to every one, they know!

If you want to get a fast start on building a network of people who will help you market your business, you need to create a strategy that enables you to accomplish specific goals for each networking event you attend. Here are a several strategies to increase your success rate:

Know exactly who your ideal customers are: If someone wants to know more about how they can help and you tell them, ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’ could be customer of yours, you will not get the help you want. First, it’s rarely true that everyone can be a customer of any business and second, people can and will remember specifics where they will forget about generalities. The more specific you are about who you want to connect with, the easier you make it for someone else to help you.

Figure out who would be a good referral business for you: If you have a catering business, what other businesses are trying to target the same customers with different products or services. As a caterer; wedding planners or event facility managers would be excellent contacts to have. Focus your networking efforts on finding these types of people at networking events instead of embarking on a quest to meet as many random people as possible.

Don’t confuse your elevator pitch with your sales pitch: People don’t want to be sold right off the bat. They want to get to know you. Your goal is to be as interesting as possible to encourage them to ask for more information about you. Of course, one of the best techniques for ‘being interesting’ is to ‘be interested’ in the other person. This is why it’s really important to know who you want to engage first.

Instill confidence in the people you meet: Everyone wants to be connected with a winner. So, look the part and dress appropriately for your business. It doesn’t mean you have to be dressed to the ‘9s’ but being well groomed, having well matched, pressed clothes on and having shoes that are shined or free of scuff marks tells a great deal about whom you are. For many, this translates into how well you run your business.

Bring your contact information and be willing to help connect others to people you know: The best way to cement a good relationship is to offer assistant to someone before you ask for help in return. This creates an atmosphere of goodwill and a feeling of reciprocity for the other individual. Either way, what you want is for that person to be impressed enough to be thinking about you when they run into your ideal client at a later date.

Keep your attitude in check: Nothing drives away a potential business contact more than for you to ‘unload’ when they ask about you or your business. These ‘head purges’ oftentimes get delivered with heightened emotions which means you’re talking loud enough for people 10 feet away to hear you. Once others realize what they are in for when you approach them, you’ll think you’ve become Moses parting the red sea. No one wants to hear about your problems. Don’t try to give them to someone else.

Less is more: Even if you have a positive attitude, conversations can get carried away very easily for some folks. Remember that you are there to make contacts with people who can become great referral partners for you. If you find you have a lot in common with an individual, arrange to get together at a later date. If you initiate this, you’ll be showing a great deal of interest in the other person and respect for their time. A good way to break off a conversation that’s going too long is to ask the person if they ran into someone in one of your target business categories. If they have, they can point them out and you can move on. If they haven’t, you can excuse yourself because you need to find the wedding planner you’ve been looking for.

Your Game Plan is Everything: Effective networking is all about having a specific game plan for the event you are thinking of and making the people you come in contact with, glad to have met you. If you want to build a strong referral base and a personal brand that people will be all too happy to assist you with; follow these suggestions and practice, practice, practice.

There's no need to rush into things. “Before asking a networking connection a question or soliciting their advocacy on your behalf, it's critical that you first 'warm' up the relationship,” says Melvin Feller.

Already know the person, but maybe it's been a little while since you've spoken? Use what you know about them to find some common ground. If your contact loves baseball, mention how his favorite team is doing. Or, if there's any resources they might enjoy, like an article or video on a certain subject, include a link in a quick how've-you-been-lately email.

If you don't know the person well or at all, you may want to break the ice gently by finding ways you can genuinely be of service. This may include offering recommendations, resources, referrals or other information.

There's a reason LinkedIn is so great. It really knows all! And you should use it to your advantage when it comes to professional networking. In addition, it may suggest subject areas they are passionate about such as charities, hobbies or sports. Skills listed on their profile may point you toward industry-specific information for them.”

#networking #online networking #offline networking #meet and greet #business net work #small business networking. generate leads #melvin feller ma #melvin feller business group.#melvin feller texas #melvin feller linkedin #melvin feller facebook

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kmp78 · 7 years ago

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This is what made me stop being a fan

“i feel like J will never do anything right in your eyes. like what would he have to do for you to say something positive about him? genuinely asking, not hating”

His life, he can do whatever he wants. But actions have consequences. So whatever he does, he has to be ready to deal with people not necessarily liking it. That’s life.

Just like K, I too started as a fan. As a quite big fan actually. As someone who did everything they could to support the band. Buy merch, buy Vy tickets, go to shows, do M&Gs, spread the word on sm…And in the beginning I was happy to do that. I admired J because he seemed like a “go-getter” who worked hard, he seemed like he cares and is involved in what goes on around him in our society and around the world (His Oscar speech, anyone? And him speaking about Ukraine, supporting the LGBT community, concern for the environment, etc). He seemed passionate about his art, he obviously is very talented. He was great on stage. And he seemed like the “underdog” and like someone who fights for the underdog. You know, all his speeches about “be who you wanna be, love who you wanna love, be different, fight for your dreams” blah blah blah. And then of course his whole “struggling artist” act, the whole “no ones making any money here”. Yeah I fell for that. “Oh poor thing. He’s so great and so talented. But he’s not making any money. Yeah, we have to support him and his art and give from our very little salaries so that he can keep doing his art.” Yes, in that sense I was one of the “sheep”. I have to laugh at it now.

Just like K said too, I also didn’t have any specific moment that made me stop being a fan. Shit just kept piling up until it hit the fan. It was just a sum of a lot of different things having happened.

It started with the London Vy really. When they set the tickets at 10,000. It was insane. Now, nothing wrong in being ambitious and dreaming big and trying to do big things and trying to reach your goals…when YOU work for it. Not someone else. Had they promoted the shit out of it themselves and had done everything they can to get the tickets sold, fine. But it was like “Oh let’s put out 10,000 tickets to make a lot of money but let the fans do all the work any pay for it all.” It’s like DT saying “Let’s build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.” It’s ridicilous. Oh and “let’s sell tickets to an event that has no date so the people who buy live tickets won’t even know if they can watch it.” I mean, seriously? Real “geniuses” at work. Smh! And even though it was clear it will never work and people kept complaining and sending in suggestions, they just ignored it all. And then they did the VIP VV (that was supposed to be a treat for those who got their tickets early) unannounced, so that most of the people missed it. So from that point on I was like “Okay, let’s see them doing some work THEMSELVES to sell their events. I’m done. Unless there is some effort coming from YOUR way, I ain’t doing shit!”. I also stopped buying multiple tickets and I stopped buying VIP. If they don’t put in any effort, why should I? They’re the ones with a company trying to sell a product, not me. I don’t go to my workplace either expecting my clients to do MY work for me while paying ME. It’s ridicilous. And if you wanna improve your product, listen to your costumers. If they tell you something IS NOT WORKING, do something about it. Don’t ignore them, block them, black list them just because they told you their opinion about your product in the hopes of helping you improve it. And for god’s sake don’t be RUDE to them and tell them they should be grateful they got anything at all even though they PAID for the product and dont tell them to fuck off if they dont like it. Well, unless you wanna lose all your costumers. In that case, go ahead.

And then there was the whole Joker thing with the used condoms and dildos and all his Joker antics. his whole “method actor” bullshit while frolicking around with models, while going rock climbing, while sending pics of himself in Joker makeup to models only to have it leaked and almost ruining things for WB. His antics were disgusting and not funny and if you claim to be a method actor and those stupid antics were needed as a part of your “method acting” then BE a method actor and don’t fuck around with young models or go rock climbing. At least stick to your story then and act like it.

Which leads to the next problem. His words and actions not matching. Being fake. Lying during interviews. “Be who you wanna be, be different”. Well, why don’t you start with yourself and take your own advice, J? If barely legal underweight girls are your thing and you can’t even be friends with anyone who doesn’t look like a model or isn’t much younger than you are, then be that. If that’s who you are, fine. So be it. If vapid models with half a brain cell are the company you prefer and want around you, it’s okay. But in that case don’t try to speak about women’s rights and about having respect for strong women or any of women’s issues. Keep your mouth shut. And don’t try to hide it and act like that’s not who you are. People are not dumb. So don’t assume they are and treat them like they are. Just because everyone around you are stupid, doesn’t mean the rest of us are, thank you very much.

Then Gucci came into the picture. Gucci this, Gucci that. Gucci, Gucci, Gucci. I AM SICK OF GUCCI! We get that you are the face of Gucci and friends with AM. But can you not shove Gucci down our throats 24/7, thank you very much. And shut up about “no one’s making any money here” and quit the “struggling artist” act. Please. When youre wearing an outfit that costs more than my whole month’s salary. Go fuck yourself. And if you raise your prices, I expect a stellar product. I expect to get my money’s worth. If I pay thousands to go to Camp MARS, I expect MARS to put some effort into it. Have activities with fans, interact with them. You have the whole weekend. You’re literally booked for the whole weekend. It’s YOUR “festival”. So do the work. And if you sell your camp packages by promising to play new music, then do that and don’t do false advertising, if you’re not intending to play new songs. And can you please tear yourself away from your freeloaders for ONE weekend and concentrate on your work, thanks. Also, if you’re going to do a show and people paid thousands to see it, can you please rehearse so you actually know the lyrics to your own songs. I don’t come to shows to listen to the fans sing. I come to hear YOU sing. And play. That’s if the band even bothers to show up.

I could go on and on but what finally made me go “I have had it!” was him disappearing from sm and only coming on when he needs something from us. When he only remembered he has fans when he wanted our votes or our money or needed us to do PR for him. And him lying the whole time. Can you take things seriously for once and quit being immature and actually say what you mean for once. And do what you say. Don’t expect us to believe you and feel sorry for you if you say your back hurts soooo much, but instead of taking care of it, you’re flying around long distance to go to fashion shows and to unnecessarily go to some art gallery for a day and when you can go rock climbing with your kittens. Same thing goes for your knee.Don’t go on sm to whine about it to get attention and do ice baths in trash cans and come on stage wth a cane when you then after two songs take off your knee brace and jump around.

The last drop for me was the lies about the new album. the ten millionth “#soon. The "we’re 80% done” for 2 years straight. The “We’re finishing the album today” only to tell us two weeks later that he’s working on the lyrics on the first single. Only to tell us the album isn’t even done. At some point it stops being funny and becomes pathetic. Come tease us about a new album WHEN YOU ACTUALLY HAVE AN ALBUM: And dont go around talking about how “exhausted” you are now that you finished ONE SONG. In FOUR years. Seriously, dude! Have you lost touch with reality completely?! Do you actually even know what HARD WORK and REALLY being exhausted from working is like? You need to get out in the real world more, dude. Stop hanging out with your freeloaders whose only job is to go from one vacation to another and lay around by the pool all day or who get dressed by other people and their only job is to look pretty in pictures. That’s not hard work. Neither is doing one song in four years. That’s just insulting. And if your staff can’t get even one lyric video right, it’s time to finally take a look at your staff and start hiring professionals. How hard is it to get a LYRIC video with two verses right? You write the lyrics down, the person doing the lyric video writes them on the video and reads it through. Another person looks at the LYRICS video when it’s done and compares the lyrics to proofread. Boom. Done. Don’t need to be a genius to do that.

I don’t know what happened to J. If the Oscar and the millions he got from the Joker role went to his head and his ego got too inflated and he got lazy, because why work when you can make money by doing nothing? Or if he completely lost touch with reality after hanging out too much with the type of people he does and since he’s dressed head to toe in Gucci and no doubt gets it all for free, he thinks everyone can afford to throw around thousands. Or he just was a shallow douchebag who is full of himself before too and he just played another Oscar worthy role…the “Oscar J” role…and people fell for that PR campaign. And now the real J is coming out again? I don’t know.

For me to be able to like J again, he needs a huge piece of humble pie. Tone done the attitude. You’re not above everyone else J. You’re not the center of everyone’s universe. You’re not THAT important and you definitely are NOT “different” than most in HW. In fact, you’re pretty much a cliche. So stop acting like you’re “all that”. You’re not. Tone down the Gucci. Seriously. We’re sick of it. Start hanging out with smart people. You’ll be surprised how inspiring smart people actually are. And yeah, most of them don’t look like models, but the good news is you don’t have to sleep with them. You can actually just be friends with people. That’s if you can bear to breathe the same air as someone who is normal weight or, god forbid, overweight. Get involved in your community. If you actually care for the environment or for animals so much, prove it. Letting your interns RT a tweet or two does not count as being “active”. And if you write a “protest song”, please do show with your ACTIONS that you care about things BEFORE writing said song and conveniently using a current unrest to sell it. Stop lying. Seriously. We’re not dumb. Be who you are, whatever it is. But ffs STOP LYING about who you are!!!!!! Put some effort into your work again. Focus. You once did. We want that J back.

***

Extremely well said, anon.

I found myself nodding and agreeing all the way through.

(Disclaimer and rules)

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years ago

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I'VE BEEN PONDERING PROGRAMMERS

Even Einstein needed people to bounce ideas off. It would have been. I did it to desktop publishing software like Interleaf and Framemaker. To some extent you have to be on the path to something great. If you try something that has to be good startup founders by empathizing with them—if you don't have them. Html 11. Paul Buchheit, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Aaron Iba, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this. Most philosophical debates are not merely free but compelled to make things people want, and to Randall Bennett for being such a nice guy. Xkcd implemented a particularly clever one in its IRC channel: don't allow the same thing, setting up a company than to be built on NT.

And no convincing means just that: zero time spent meeting with investors or preparing materials for them. True, but I bought it, but those who like what they can't have, if you have what it takes to hear it. Plus since TVs were expensive whole families watched the same shows together, so they had first claim on the proceeds of the auction. Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time, because the main cost in software startups is people. It's a straight text classification problem. The best word to describe the way good programmers write software. So the nature of future discoveries is hard to bear. The exciting thing is that we so rarely see analyses of this type is the fact that it works so much better when you improve in response to what you do. Boston, and few in Chicago or Miami from the microscopically small number, per capita, that succeed there. Startups don't win by attacking. But if the software were 100% finished and ready to launch at the push of a button, would they still be waiting? And so most of them are the same, if not months.

It seems to me one of the greats, but he's an especial hero to me because of Lisp. Server-based software is never going to succeed, like founders do, just that they take a long time cities were the only protection for ideas, companies wouldn't just have to keep trying new things. Which they deserve because they're taking more risk. But if you were extracting every penny? A rounds from VCs. I could play all day. If anyone wants to see the real Nixon. Which means it's a disaster to let the world have a natural advantage. When we wanted some publicity, we'd make a list of n things is so relaxing. And if you think about it, and savor what one has. Almost certainly. They need to market themselves to founders: they don't need publishers.

Intel or Apple or Google have offices there, but that the work they're offered is unappetizing. How do you decide what infrastructure to use for a project, divide it into components and give each to one person, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this, and so on, and why are they attached to all these questions, you might do better to move to the Bay Area to start their own company. And that's exciting because it means their investment creates less of a change like the one the Valley has over New York. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them so founders can get cheap plane tickets, but except for that they could be, and I completely agree with him. What you must not use the word essays in the title of one: James Salter's Burning the Days. The reason credentials have such prestige is that for so long the large organizations in a society got that way from refutation. But I don't see how we can say it's axiomatic. People who've done great things.

And it wouldn't be novel. I may later scale token probabilities substantially, but this is not as facile a trick as it might seem. Be ruthlessly mercenary when you start a startup you would do well to act as a magnet, drawing the best people to work for a company with 100 people will feel different from one with 1000. If the client doesn't run anything except a browser, there's less risk in starting your own company, only for startups that have succeeded despite any number of random factors could sink you before you can destroy them. At first I tried rules. You'd have to get a patent is now very slow, but it is the people who run them are driven by the demands of the work that even the kids believe it, which usually means encrusting it with gratuitous ornament. When you make things in large volumes, and the reactions that spread from person to person, it's not their chances of succeeding, not to limit users' choices. More precisely, the users' need has to be pierced too.

Something Minimal Lots of founders mentioned how important it was to source good screws. Everything would seem exactly as he'd predicted, until he looked at Maxwell's equations and said, what the hell your site is catching on, or it won't germinate. For me the list is, because we invest the earliest. If you happen to run into Sean Parker, who understands the domain really well because he started a similar startup himself, and also New York, Cambridge, and Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco. They could sense that the higher you go the fewer instances you find. You can be sure it's not a switch to Apple, but a hopelessly inflexible one for developing new ideas. So the real question is, how much risk you can stand, and the transformation was miraculous. I'd say what separates the great investors from the mediocre ones is the quality of the insiders. His response was to launch with the simplest possible type: a few topics you've thought about a lot, and who the competitors are and why this company is going to have a mistakenly high opinion of your abilities, because that showed how much time it would take to get new ones to move there.

Do what you love, you're practically forced to write the first version of his sketch to the witness. We're only comparing YC startups, who've already made it over a certain size it gets presumptuous for a seed investor to do that anyway. I'm going to try something new this funding cycle. As with most nature/nurture questions, the answer seemed obvious. All through college, and that's what keeps the engineers and product development is something that has to work on doesn't mean you can ignore the economy. There's nothing that magically changes after you take that last exam. Now you could get paid huge sums of money involved, but investment negotiations can easily turn personal. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as there is for things that seem broken, regardless of how hard they try to be a lot of what looks like work. A turd that results? Not linearly of course, so no major bugs should get released. But ambition is human nature rather than anything specific to comment threads there, but not if you're working on something, you'd think it might be easy for spammers to spoof: just add a big chunk of angel money will usually be the happiest phase in a startup's life. It's especially good if you're different in a way that would be the best writer among Silicon Valley CEOs.

Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions if that is the larval stage of most software. Better to make everyone feel like a community. As technologies improve, each generation can do things to influence the outcome. And they were less work to him to behave any other way. And that takes some effort, because the remedy was to reboot them, and the resumes of the founders spent all their time building their applications. But first, I thought, these guys are great hackers. Another danger, pointed out by Mitch Kapor, is that one has higher standards. If this was their hypothesis, it's now the default with us to live by trial and error, that. One reason high tax rates, you can't afford not to have any teeth, and the company seems more valuable if it seems risky to you to decide; software has to work on problems demanding enough to stretch you, but so are a lot of successful startups have elements of both. So there you have it: languages are not equivalent, and I had to start treating us like actual consultants, and calling us every time they wanted something changed on their site.

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dlamp-dictator · 8 years ago

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Allen Rambles About Persona 5

AKA Allen’s Ramblings XVI, but... well, you guys know by now how I do things when tagging fandoms and everything. Anyway, I’ve played about 30 hours of Persona 5 and wanted to give my thoughts so far.

Now, I have been waiting to get my hands on Persona 5 for years. This game was suppose to come out years ago and we in the States finally have it. I gotta’ say, I was salivating when my preorder came in on time for once. The artbook, the CD, the Morgana Plushie, it just felt so unreal to have it all in my hands... but enough gushing and onto my thoughts. I’ll try to keep spoilers vague, but keep in might I’m at the third main dungeon by now. I know the Persona series is really big on not spoiling story-related matters, so I’ll be polite and tried my best to keep things general. Like when I talked about Tales of Berseria I’ll be breaking this down into the good points and not so good points, but first I need to talk about...

The Aesthetics

Oh Lord the aesthetics of this game. The cell-shaping, the red motif, the slickness of movement, the music. Everything just feels so smooth. Hell, this is gonna’ be a new tag for the blog now these are aesthetics are so good. I can’t just stick this one category and call it done, I need give this its own header to break down all I love about how this game looks and feels.

Relateable Topics

I have to say, I’m surprise how much I connected with a lot of the events happening in the game. This isn’t a story about accepting death, this isn’t a story about solving a murder, this is a story about kids trying to fix what they believe is a broken, corrupt world, and dammit you can just relate to that. Before you even begin the game it tells you none of the events in it are related to real life or real people, but Atlus is lying through their goddamn teeth if they think I couldn’t see this stuff happening for real if it hasn’t already. I won’t say what exactly happens, but every scandal that’s uncovered, every problem that’s seen, every case that’s been discussed in this game you can actually see happening in real life. Hell, I’m sure you could look online and see some articles talking about this stuff even here in the US. I won’t spoil anything yet, but... just trust me on this on.

Character Designs

The character designs look fantastic. I love everyone so far in both casual and Phantom Thief attire, with Ryuji and Morgana having my favorite designs. And I have to say, I’m rather surprised how much I like these two specifically, but I’ll get more into that later. Despite having a large amount of black for most characters, the designs really pop out. I’d say that’s due to a lot of the backgrounds being brightly colored, but still. I can’t wait to see other party members and how they look in game. The art book only does so much.

The Artbook

Not much to say here save for making a pun. The Aesthetics art book is... just a really good artbook with a lot of sketches, concept designs, and references in it. It’ll totally help for if I want to do fan art of these characters. And unlike SOME GAMES *cough*trailsofsteel*cough* this game doesn’t have blatant spoilers in their artbook and interviews. So yeah, points for the artbook, real nice.

THE MUSIC

I. Love. This. Soundtrack. I’m not music elitist, but the one thing that just makes me go nuts for any song is solid, audible bass, jazz, and brass. It’s why Persona has always had good music to me, and this entire soundtrack just hits every note in just the right way. This soundtrack is so good I could just... just... [RETRACTED] all over these songs. My favorites so far as Last Surprise, Layer Cake, and Rivers in the Desert... not that I’m far enough in the game to hear that last one, but... y’know.

Okay, so that’s it for the aesthetic, now onto the good points about the game as a whole.

The Good

The Intro

Thankfully, the intro of this game is not hours of hand-holding like in Persona 4. You are right into the action, and even after the intro stuff you still get a bit of freedom to move a little. I think only after a second play-through will tell how long your hand is held and how much freedom you truly have in the beginning, but for now I say this is leagues better than P4.

The Voice Cast

I haven’t heard the Japanese dub since I’ve always been dubs-over-subs, but the voice cast in English sounds great so far. My favorite so far has actually been Morgana and Ryuji, characters I didn’t think I’d like as much as I do right now. Ryuji is just the right mix punk kid and emotional softy that makes me really warm up to him, and Morgana’s cute, but confident sounding voice goes well with her personality. Major props to Cassandra Morris for voicing her. Wait a second... didn’t she do Asahina in Dangan Ronpa? No wonder I like her performance. And special shout out to Jamieson Price as Sojiro. I may not have gotten to hear him as Tager in BBCF, but at least I have hear him in this game. And while I’m talking about the voice cast I must admit that I have mixed feelings about Igor’s voice actor, I know why his voice was changed, but... I still prefer Dan Woren. Hopefully I’ll just get use to it.

Smoother/Faster Combat

The combat has definitely improved in both animations and overall feel. On the fly Persona swapping, lightning-fast menus, flashy as hell attack animations, this game has really improved in terms of quality with it’s combat. As someone playing this game since P3, the combat in that game was fine for turn based, but with this game I’m going to have some higher exceptions for future Turn Based RPG games, and the next SMT game especially in terms how combat feels.

Improved Social Links

The Confidant system is sooo much better than the other two games. Non-Party member social links finally have a higher purpose than just giving you better Personas during fusions. It feels so good to know that my allies don’t just help me with my fusions, but in the actual story as well. From selling you health items and weapons, increasing non-active party members EXP growth, improving the Phantom Thieves PR (and making dungeons easier to traverse through), and so on. It really feels like every person gives me an edge as a rebel of society. And the stories they’re telling so far have me interested. Again, spoilers, so I won’t go into detail, but just trust me on this one.

The Not So Good

Like with my Tales of Beresia Rambling, there are still some issues/critiques I have of this game as a fan. Again, I’ve played Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 4 Arena, Ultimax, and small handful of SMT games outside of the Persona series so these might just be nitpicks, but I still think they’re worth saying. And for the folks that have seen my Berseria rambling, these points are going to be much longer and more in depth by comparison. So... let’s get started with that.

Demon conversations are still hit-or-miss with me. I like the idea of convince my enemies to my side, when it comes to fusing and hunting for the right Persona in those dungeons it can be a huge pain.

Money management is still balls hard in this game. I’d recommend demanding money every chance it comes along if you already have that particular persona and you don’t need the extra EXP. Trust me, it’ll disappear in a flash.

The early game is brutal. Story dungeon take longer that in past games, and with the small SP pool you have it’s gonna’ take several days to beat it. If you’re struggling through the first non-scripted major boss and even the boss of the dungeon, that’s normal as far as I’m concerned.

Social stats are back and they’re as annoying as ever. It was fine in P3 because their were just three and only effect you near mid/late-game. It was annoying in Persona 4 because they controlled not only social links, but better paying jobs as well (and again, money management is balls hard), as well as prevent certain dialogue options (which SUCKED). And again in this game certain dialogue options can’t be chosen if you don’t have the right stat level. This starts happening in the early game when all your stats are low, practically taunting you about your low level. That’s drives me up a goddamn wall. It doesn’t help that it took me until the second dungeon fully grasp which places upped which state and how. It took 15 hours to realize this shit... goddamn...

After playing Devil Survivor 2, seeing physical attacks that cast from HP for you not apply to your opponent annoys me to no end. This makes physical enemies very unfair and it’s part of what makes the early game so hellish. Those guys take out half your health and are still good to spam that crap.

The dungeons are a daytime option only, and that’s something that’s annoyed me since playing Persona 4. Persona 3 had this done best by having the dungeons at nighttime access, making balancing social life, grinding social stats, and grinding levels so much easier. I was hoping that’d be the case in P5 since “student by day, thief by night” was the tagline, but apparent it should be changed to “student by day, thief by the afternoon, too tired to grind social stats by night.”

As of the third dungeon, I feel like the game is really pushing me to clear the Palaces when I’m not prepared to. All my party members keep pushing me to hurry and clear them, and while that makes since in the story, it makes doing the actual prep work really hard. Also, the third dungeon/arc feels really hand-holding until the dungeon unlocked, which annoyed me a little.

Though not directly effecting the game, the whole Atlus-Streaming thing just... leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s a shame that those without access to the right system can’t enjoy the game with their favorite streamers/let’s players.

Yusuke’s inclusion and joining the party could had been written better, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter since I’m trying not to spoil the game past the first dungeon. Message me if you want the details.

The localization is... not good. I’m seeing a lot of “Mr., Mrs., and Miss” thrown in along with Japanese honorifics and it’s a bit emersion-breaking. A lot of the pronunciations could had been done better too. I still stand by the voice acting being good, but the directing and instructions feel a little... off. Maybe that’s because the game is based in Tokyo, which might be a little more culturally mixed, but compared to the other two games this feels messy.

A real minor nitpick, but I still have mixed feelings about the dungeon lair/prison theme of the new Velvet Room. I mean I get it, but it feels a little forced and heavy-handed to me.

So yeah, a few nitpicks aside, I’ve really been enjoying this game. If anyone has any advice for getting through the rest of the game or just some tips in general that don’t spoil the game too much please reblog and add them here. Personally, I’d wait for a guide to social linking and stat grinding before getting this game, but as a Persona fan, I say this game is good so far. Hopefully it gets better as I continue to play it.

#persona 5 #your dictator is speaking

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imaginaireradical · 8 years ago

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Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.

By David Graeber

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment’s reflection shows it can’t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ‘20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that anyone really does.

I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.

Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: “who are you to say what jobs are really ‘necessary’? What’s necessary anyway? You’re an anthropology professor, what’s the ‘need’ for that?” (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value.

I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn’t seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band. I’d heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he’d lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, “taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.” Now he’s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.

There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) But even more, it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a corporate lawyer who didn’t think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.

This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It’s as if they are being told “but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the – universally reviled – unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days.

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years ago

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Fifteen Years Is a Long Time in SEO

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/fifteen-years-is-a-long-time-in-seo/

Fifteen Years Is a Long Time in SEO

I’ve been in an introspective mood lately.

Earlier this year (15 years after starting Distilled in 2005), we spun out a new company called SearchPilot to focus on our SEO A/B testing and meta-CMS technology (previously known as Distilled ODN), and merged the consulting and conferences part of the business with Brainlabs.

I’m now CEO of SearchPilot (which is primarily owned by the shareholders of Distilled), and am also SEO Partner at Brainlabs, so… I’m sorry everyone, but I’m very much staying in the SEO industry.

As such, it feels a bit like the end of a chapter for me rather than the end of the book, but it has still had me looking back over what’s changed and what hasn’t over the last 15 years I’ve been in the industry.

I can’t lay claim to being one of the first generation of SEO experts, but having been building websites since around 1996 and having seen the growth of Google from the beginning, I feel like maybe I’m second generation, and maybe I have some interesting stories to share with those who are newer to the game.

I’ve racked my brain to try and remember what felt significant at the time, and also looked back over the big trends through my time in the industry, to put together what I think makes an interesting reading list that most people working on the web today would do well to know about.

The big eras of search

I joked at the beginning of a presentation I gave in 2018 that the big eras of search oscillated between directives from the search engines and search engines rapidly backing away from those directives when they saw what webmasters actually did:

While that slide was a bit tongue-in-cheek, I do think that there’s something to thinking about the eras like:

Build websites: Do you have a website? Would you like a website? It’s hard to believe now, but in the early days of the web, a lot of folks needed to be persuaded to get their business online at all.

Keywords: Basic information retrieval became adversarial information retrieval as webmasters realized that they could game the system with keyword stuffing, hidden text, and more.

Links: As the scale of the web grew beyond user-curated directories, link-based algorithms for search began to dominate.

Not those links: Link-based algorithms began to give way to adversarial link-based algorithms as webmasters swapped, bought, and manipulated links across the web graph.

Content for the long tail: Alongside this era, the length of the long tail began to be better-understood by both webmasters and by Google themselves — and it was in the interest of both parties to create massive amounts of (often obscure) content and get it indexed for when it was needed.

Not that content: Perhaps predictably (see the trend here?), the average quality of content returned in search results dropped dramatically, and so we see the first machine learning ranking factors in the form of attempts to assess “quality” (alongside relevance and website authority).

Machine learning: Arguably everything from that point onwards has been an adventure into machine learning and artificial intelligence, and has also taken place during the careers of most marketers working in SEO today. So, while I love writing about that stuff, I’ll return to it another day.

History of SEO: crucial moments

Although I’m sure that there are interesting stories to be told about the pre-Google era of SEO, I’m not the right person to tell them (if you have a great resource, please do drop it in the comments), so let’s start early in the Google journey:

Google’s foundational technology

Even if you’re coming into SEO in 2020, in a world of machine-learned ranking factors, I’d still recommend going back and reading the surprisingly accessible early academic work:

If you weren’t using the web back then, it’s probably hard to imagine what a step-change improvement Google’s PageRank-based algorithm was over the “state-of-the-art” at the time (and it’s hard to remember, even for those of us that were):

Google’s IPO

In more “things that are hard to remember clearly,” at the time of Google’s IPO in 2004, very few people expected Google to become one of the most profitable companies ever. In the early days, the founders had talked of their disdain for advertising, and had experimented with keyword-based adverts somewhat reluctantly. Because of this attitude, even within the company, most employees didn’t know what a rocket ship they were building.

From this era, I’d recommend reading the founders’ IPO letter (see this great article from Danny Sullivan — who’s ironically now @SearchLiaison at Google):

“Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating.”

“Because we do not charge merchants for inclusion in Froogle [now Google shopping], our users can browse product categories or conduct product searches with confidence that the results we provide are relevant and unbiased.” — S1 Filing

In addition, In the Plex is an enjoyable book published in 2011 by Steven Levy. It tells the story of what then-CEO Eric Schmidt called (around the time of the IPO) “the hiding strategy”:

“Those who knew the secret … were instructed quite firmly to keep their mouths shut about it.”

“What Google was hiding was how it had cracked the code to making money on the Internet.”

Luckily for Google, for users, and even for organic search marketers, it turned out that this wasn’t actually incompatible with their pure ideals from the pre-IPO days because, as Levy recounts, “in repeated tests, searchers were happier with pages with ads than those where they were suppressed”. Phew!

Index everything

In April 2003, Google acquired a company called Applied Semantics and set in motion a series of events that I think might be the most underrated part of Google’s history.

Applied Semantics technology was integrated with their own contextual ad technology to form what became AdSense. Although the revenue from AdSense has always been dwarfed by AdWords (now just “Google Ads”), its importance in the history of SEO is hard to understate.

By democratizing the monetization of content on the web and enabling everyone to get paid for producing obscure content, it funded the creation of absurd amounts of that content.

Most of this content would have never been seen if it weren’t for the existence of a search engine that excelled in its ability to deliver great results for long tail searches, even if those searches were incredibly infrequent or had never been seen before.

In this way, Google’s search engine (and search advertising business) formed a powerful flywheel with its AdSense business, enabling the funding of the content creation it needed to differentiate itself with the largest and most complete index of the web.

As with so many chapters in the story, though, it also created a monster in the form of low quality or even auto-generated content that would ultimately lead to PR crises and massive efforts to fix.

If you’re interested in the index everything era, you can read more of my thoughts about it in slide 47+ of From the Horse’s Mouth.

Web spam

The first forms of spam on the internet were various forms of messages, which hit the mainstream as email spam. During the early 2000s, Google started talking about the problem they’d ultimately term “web spam” (the earliest mention I’ve seen of link spam is in an Amit Singhal presentation from 2005 entitled Challenges in running a Commercial Web Search Engine [PDF]).

I suspect that even people who start in SEO today might’ve heard of Matt Cutts — the first head of webspam — as he’s still referenced often despite not having worked at Google since 2014. I enjoyed this 2015 presentation that talks about his career trajectory at Google.

Search quality era

Over time, as a result of the opposing nature of webmasters trying to make money versus Google (and others) trying to make the best search engine they could, pure web spam wasn’t the only quality problem Google was facing. The cat-and-mouse game of spotting manipulation — particularly of on-page content, external links, and anchor text) — would be a defining feature of the next decade-plus of search.

It was after Singhal’s presentation above that Eric Schmidt (then Google’s CEO) said, “Brands are the solution, not the problem… Brands are how you sort out the cesspool”.

Those who are newer to the industry will likely have experienced some Google updates (such as recent “core updates”) first-hand, and have quite likely heard of a few specific older updates. But “Vince”, which came after “Florida” (the first major confirmed Google update), and rolled out shortly after Schmidt’s pronouncements on brand, was a particularly notable one for favoring big brands. If you haven’t followed all the history, you can read up on key past updates here:

A real reputational threat

As I mentioned above in the AdSense section, there were strong incentives for webmasters to create tons of content, thus targeting the blossoming long tail of search. If you had a strong enough domain, Google would crawl and index immense numbers of pages, and for obscure enough queries, any matching content would potentially rank. This triggered the rapid growth of so-called “content farms” that mined keyword data from anywhere they could, and spun out low-quality keyword-matching content. At the same time, websites were succeeding by allowing large databases of content to get indexed even as very thin pages, or by allowing huge numbers of pages of user-generated content to get indexed.

This was a real reputational threat to Google, and broke out of the search and SEO echo chamber. It had become such a bugbear of communities like Hacker News and StackOverflow, that Matt Cutts submitted a personal update to the Hacker News community when Google launched an update targeted at fixing one specific symptom — namely that scraper websites were routinely outranking the original content they were copying.

Shortly afterwards, Google rolled out the update initially named the “farmer update”. After it launched, we learned it had been made possible because of a breakthrough by an engineer called Panda, hence it was called the “big Panda” update internally at Google, and since then the SEO community has mainly called it the Panda update.

Although we speculated that the internal working of the update was one of the first real uses of machine learning in the core of the organic search algorithm at Google, the features it was modelling were more easily understood as human-centric quality factors, and so we began recommending SEO-targeted changes to our clients based on the results of human quality surveys.

Everything goes mobile-first

I gave a presentation at SearchLove London in 2014 where I talked about the unbelievable growth and scale of mobile and about how late we were to realizing quite how seriously Google was taking this. I highlighted the surprise many felt hearing that Google was designing mobile first:

“Towards the end of last year we launched some pretty big design improvements for search on mobile and tablet devices. Today we’ve carried over several of those changes to the desktop experience.” — Jon Wiley (lead engineer for Google Search speaking on Google+, which means there’s nowhere to link to as a perfect reference for the quote but it’s referenced here as well as in my presentation).

This surprise came despite the fact that, by the time I gave this presentation in 2014, we knew that mobile search had begun to cannibalize desktop search (and we’d seen the first drop in desktop search volumes):

And it came even though people were starting to say that the first year of Google making the majority of its revenue on mobile was less than two years away:

Writing this in 2020, it feels as though we have fully internalized how big a deal mobile is, but it’s interesting to remember that it took a while for it to sink in.

Machine learning becomes the norm

Since the Panda update, machine learning was mentioned more and more in the official communications from Google about algorithm updates, and it was implicated in even more. We know that, historically, there had been resistance from some quarters (including from Singhal) towards using machine learning in the core algorithm due to the way it prevented human engineers from explaining the results. In 2015, Sundar Pichai took over as CEO, moved Singhal aside (though this may have been for other reasons), and installed AI / ML fans in key roles.

It goes full-circle

Back before the Florida update (in fact, until Google rolled out an update they called Fritz in the summer of 2003), search results used to shuffle regularly in a process nicknamed the Google Dance:

Most things have been moving more real-time ever since, but recent “Core Updates” appear to have brought back this kind of dynamic where changes happen on Google’s schedule rather than based on the timelines of website changes. I’ve speculated that this is because “core updates” are really Google retraining a massive deep learning model that is very customized to the shape of the web at the time. Whatever the cause, our experience working with a wide range of clients is consistent with the official line from Google that:

Broad core updates tend to happen every few months. Content that was impacted by one might not recover — assuming improvements have been made — until the next broad core update is released.

Tying recent trends and discoveries like this back to ancient history like the Google Dance is just one of the ways in which knowing the history of SEO is “useful”.

If you’re interested in all this

I hope this journey through my memories has been interesting. For those of you who also worked in the industry through these years, what did I miss? What are the really big milestones you remember? Drop them in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter.

If you liked this walk down memory lane, you might also like my presentation From the Horse’s Mouth, where I attempt to use official and unofficial Google statements to unpack what is really going on behind the scenes, and try to give some tips for doing the same yourself:

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