#comes from an actual real life anecdote about the venue

[seaofreverie]

There should be a Don't Let's Start: A Podcast About They Might Be Giants but for Sparks

[liugeaux]

Thoughts on Strike Force Five

I've always had a respect for late-night talk shows. They're a staple of American culture and are synonymous with classic television. Almost vaudevillian, they're a manicured window into the world of entertainment that for generations has reflected the pulse of the nation.

With the writers' strike lasting all summer, the 5 big late-night hosts, Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, and Oliver jumped on Zoom and made a podcast to support their unemployed staff. It was a noble gesture, whose only flaw was arriving 3 months too late.

They took turns hosting an hour-long podcast where they chatted about their experiences as talk show hosts, how their shows are similar yet differ both in front and behind the cameras, their respective career routes that led them to late night, and even some fun personal life anecdotes.

The stories and convos were fun, hilarious, and often fascinating, but the real meat of the cast was getting to hear their banter. 5 professional funny dudes, gently ribbing each other while clearly maintaining a healthy friendship. The show revealed a lot about each host. Everything from their ability to tell an unscripted story to how quick they are on their feet. Each host has their own strengths and as morbid as this sounds, getting them on a cast together was a unique venue in which to size them up.

Here's what I learned about each host after listening to all 12 episodes of Strike Force Five (insert thunderclap). We'll sort these by Late Night tenure.

Jimmy Kimmel (2003-present: Jimmy Kimmel Live!)

Oddly enough, Kimmel has been on the air longer than any of his peers and despite being the least naturally funny of the group, seems like the most driven. Not to say that Kimmel isn't funny, he's just not comedian-funny. He is great at long-form jokes, and situational pranks, and some of his more absurd stunts border on artistic brilliance. Kimmel is undoubtedly a good hang. He comes from a more awkwardly offensive time, and in this unscripted show you could, at times, hear him wanting to drift towards Man Show style humor. To his credit, he never strayed too far from his Disney-approved late-night persona, which at this point might actually just be his natural self. He's an idea man, and the bigger the idea, the more he wants to do it. He was apparently the brains and engine behind Strike Force Five and those traits track through his surprisingly long and often bizarre career.

Stephen Colbert (2004-2014: The Colbert Report, 2015-present: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)

As the oldest host on the cast, Colbert emerged from the Second City Chicago improv scene and found a home in the John Stewart stable of comedy writers. His journey to network television was weird, primarily because before taking his job at CBS he was famous for reporting news as a fictionalized version of himself on the Colbert Report. On Strike Force Five, Colbert was very much the elder statesman. His storytelling style was a noticeably slower template, leading to his tales being a bit long-winded and meander-y. In another setting that would be fine, but alongside his late-night peers, the difference was much more obvious. Part of this might also be a by-product of his Southern upbringing, but for what it's worth, as of 2023, I think The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is the best "traditional" late-night show on TV. Colbert feels like a writer's comedian, he has a brilliant delivery when given a script and, if needed, he can seamlessly fall back on his improv training.

Jimmy Fallon (2009-2014: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 2014-present, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon)

The most aloof member of the Strive Force is easily Jimmy Fallon. I've long thought of Fallon as the accidental lottery winner of the Leno vs. Conan late-night war of 2010. He was a no-brainer to replace Conan on Late Night, but once Leno's original successor was out of the picture, the big-boy-job of the coveted Tonight Show fell into his lap in 2014. He's turned it into the most modern late-night show with his higher-concept, Youtube-friendly, celebrity bits. Jimmy's energy is what the Tonight Show needs, but when placed among his peers, Fallon seems outclassed. He's inherently more charming than the rest of the Strike Force, and pretty fast on his feet, but for long stretches of the podcast, it almost seemed like he was either on-mute or not paying attention. Maybe he was waiting for his opening and just more polite than the others, but his soft-spoken demeanor got bulldozed through much of the series. With that being said, his willingness to play the buffoon might have turned him into the star of Strike Force Five. The infamous episode 5, in which Fallon created a match-game style quiz for the hosts and their spouses quickly devolved into a confusing train wreck that only got funnier as it spiraled into chaos. The potential for antics like this became one of the reasons to check out the show. Fallon leaning into his sheep-ish oaf routine had him emerging as the comedic battery of many of the episodes. He seems like the kind of comic that can show up half-prepared and still crush a room, just because his quick wit and charm do most of the heavy lifting. The most disappointing thing about Fallon's presence on the podcast was a complete lack of acknowledgment of the Rolling Stone article scandal, which was published a mere week after Strike Force Five's debut.

Seth Meyers (2014-present: Late Night with Seth Meyers)

Meyers is secretly the funniest member of the Strike Force Five. While his career may not be as prestigious as his podcast-mates, (this was hilariously made clear as the crew discussed the sad t-shirt rack of Late Night shirts in the NBC studio store at 30 Rock), Meyers is the most accomplished stand-up comedian of the bunch and that can't be ignored. He's the fastest with a joke, the funniest with that joke, and can craft a long-form story from his life with a careful-comedic-nuance I've never heard from any of the others. His version of Late Night strays from what Letterman, Conan, and Fallon did by being more of a Weekend Update or The Daily Show-style news desk show, but he's comfortable with that format and it works for his humor. A lot of Strike Force Five was 5 funny dudes fighting for air time, and while Kimmel and Colbert did the most talking, Meyer's joke-per-minute rate was off the charts compared to the two more talkative hosts. Like one of his predecessors, Conan, Seth Meyers does not get enough credit for the quality of his work and like Conan, he will likely get screwed out of The Tonight Show job. Conan's was a true screw job, but Seth's will more-than-likely be an age hurdle. Meyers is the same age as Fallon and both of them got their current shows around the age of 40. If Fallon hosts The Tonight Show for 25 years (which is reasonable, Leno finally left the show when he was 64) both him and Meyers will be 65. I don't see NBC giving their premiere late-night franchise to a 65-year-old Meyers. Note: Watch Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby on Netflix and you will understand my love for his stand-up.

John Oliver (2014-present: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)

Like Colbert, John Oliver comes from Jon Stewert's stable of Daily Show correspondents. He's carved out a unique place in the Sunday night landscape, where his often outlandish and troll-like dark humor has thrived. He's my personal favorite of the bunch, and his show is the most likely to teach you something genuinely valuable. He's the only non-American-born host on Strike Force Five and the only host without a nightly show. His inclusion is curious, yet welcomed. Juxtaposed with his Strike Force peers, Oliver's bitingly dark wit and chaos-favoring humor stands out. No one enjoyed Fallon's Match-Game going up in flames as much as John Oliver and he seems to genuinely gain his life force from getting under the skin of the subjects on his show. On the podcast, Oliver was one of the more quiet hosts, and that led to his presence feeling more like a courtesy than an obligation. In my mind, I can hear him saying in his most polite British voice, "Oh, I'm aware that I don't exactly belong here, but I'm appreciative of the opportunity." Like Colbert's Southern roots, maybe John's just too British to dominate time on a podcast with so many white American hosts. Oliver is a great stand-up comic too. Like Meyers, if his TV career ended tomorrow, he could easily fall back on his remarkable stand-up talents and find excellent work for the rest of his life. John Oliver is a gem that I think would be dullened by a nightly show, and as a huge fan of both him and his show, I'm super grateful he was asked to be a part of the podcast. Hearing him hold his own with the more mainstream late-night stars was wonderful.

As a whole, the show was really fun. It's a snapshot of a moment in time that will never be captured again. Imagine if, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Tom Snyder, Jay Leno, and Dennis Miller had a radio show in 1997. What would that have sounded like? What would we have learned from it? It's just fascinating. I guess I need to mention the John Stewart and David Letterman episodes of Strike Force Five. It was great getting two legends of the format in on the conversation, but I don't know if it was necessary. Note: Letterman is super old now, but he's still sharp as a tack and maybe the best to ever do the late-night job.

One of the elephants in the room on Strike Force Five is the distinctive lack of any representation of people of color. As it stands, I'm not aware of any current major shows hosted by people of color. Both the Late Late Show and Daily Show's desks are currently vacant with the former likely to not be filled at all. The all-white Strike Force Five panel might just be a by-product of who is still watching these shows. It's probably middle-aged white people who are irreversibly accustomed to watching late-night television, and as the format dies, they will go down with the ship. In turn, the risk-averse networks stick with the white male hosts to not scare their tiny remaining audience away. It's not just, but sadly it's probably true.

Network talk shows might be a dying genre, but while they cling to relevance, Strike Force Five could go down as an important moment in the history of late-night television and I'm thrilled to have been here to experience it in real-time.

[scripttorture]

What would you expect from the public, including minors, when torturing someone in public is done, especially when it's a public spectacle and people actually come to watch. Is liking to watch torture a thing in this case? My story is a medieval/steampunk fantasy by the way.

Well Anon, this does still happen today. It happens in the country I grew up in and consider my home. So… my first suggestion is to throw out the implication that this is a weird historical thing the world doesn’t have to deal with any more. Because it is still very real. And if you get any kind of success with your story there’s a good chance some of your readers will have experience with this.

 It’s also significantly more complicated then ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ so let’s unpack this a bit.

 I’ve never actually seen anyone maimed or executed. But as a kid of around 9-10 I knew kids my age who had. We used it as a sort of… pissing contest basically. Kids would brag about it to show how hard they were, in the same way we’d stuff chilis into our mouths and see who could last longest.

 It’s one of those bizarre kinds of ritualised self-harm that you end up performing in order to cope with awful things.

 Because witnessing this kind of stuff is harmful, to adults and children. It can leave people traumatised and displaying some of the symptoms I write about here.

 But, however old the characters, if they grew up somewhere where this is the norm then I absolutely guarantee they understand showing opposition is dangerous. They know their responses to these displays of brutality and power are used as a proxy for their loyalty and worthiness by the state.

 And boy if you are in any way outside the norm, if you are queer or the ‘wrong’ ethnic group or faith, then the pressure to conform here is so much more intense.

 I lived in Saudi, my home town is Dhahran. My parents are from opposite ends of Europe and they tried to raise me Christian. I still spent a lot of my teenage years unpacking stuff I’d absorbed about public executions, amputations, whippings etc.

 From the kids I knew growing up (anecdotal evidence no matter how empassioned) I’d say the ‘normal’ responses to witnessing this kind of state violence are varied. Kids would get nightmares, start showing signs of mild anxiety disorders or depression. They’d become moody, angry and generally unhappy. Which they’d sometimes take out on other people.

 But I can’t remember anyone ever explicitly linking it to what they witnessed. They’d try to hide this stuff. Some of them would double down on justifications for state violence (seemed pretty common.) They would, above all, deny there was a problem.

 Because admitting to mental illness made you ‘weak’ and admitting to doubts about state violence made you a ‘traitor’. Which is a pretty risky thing to label yourself (even by implication) when you live in a state that publicly mutilates and murders people. (Note the author’s bias as a committed pacifist may be showing.)

 As you may have noticed Anon, I still carry a significant amount of anger on this particular subject. This bottled vitriole is not directed at you or your story idea but at the states and politicians who make sure this brutality continues. It’s about the fact that I can remember a nine year old girl matter of factly talking about beheading at a birthday party.

 Stepping back from the personal side of things for a moment we know from studies of PTSD and trauma survivors generally that witnessing violence can lead to lasting psychological symptoms. Including PTSD.

 PTSD specifically is more likely when an individual is directly effected (ie physically hurt). But repeated exposure to traumatic events, including witnessing violence, makes the manifestation of long term symptoms more likely.

 So a character that has seen dozens of these attacks is more likely to develop a long term mental health problem then a character who has seen only one. Regardless of age.

 We can’t predict which individual symptoms an individual witness will develop or indeed when a witness might develop them. We just don’t know enough about how these things happen yet.

 Having said that, the possible symptoms for witnesses are pretty much identical to the possible symptoms for torture survivors (link above.) I’d advise against using chronic pain for witnesses unless you have a clear idea of an underlying cause; it seems (anecdotally) to be more common in people who directly experienced violence.

 If you decide to use insomnia there’s a masterpost on sleep deprivation here.

 For mental health problems like depression, anxiety etc remember there are physical symptoms as well as symptoms related to mood. Characters who are trying to deny they have a mental health problem might focus overly on physical symptoms. Depression can cause nausea, vomiting and tiredness/lack of energy which might be mistaken for disease. Anxiety can cause chest pain and shakes.

 Circling back let’s talk about some of the phrasing in this question for a moment. Because ‘choose to watch’ misunderstands the way states use these public displays of violence.

 Attendance and witnessing of public executions and torture is often enforced. Sometimes overtly and sometimes more tacitly. Because the point of these displays is to hammer home the power of the state. That doesn’t work if people can easily choose not to go.

 Here’s an example of what that overt and tacit enforcement looked like back home.

 Tacit enforcement came from the timing and placement of executions and amputations. They took place on weekends, when almost everyone was off work. They were carried out in major towns and cities, where the population density was higher. The venue was typically on a main thoroughfare close to important sites. Which ensured a high volume of people would be in the area when the execution took place, whether there was due to be an execution or not.

 So picture the town or city this is taking place in, in your story. When are the public holidays? Where are the markets? Where are the most popular religious venues? At what time will the most people be in these areas?

 All of that will tell you where an execution or public torture is likely to take place. Because if you set this shit up in eye sight of the place most people buy food, at the time when the most people are out, you get witnesses.

 Whether they want to be witnesses or not.

 Overt enforcement, on the low end of the scale, means having officials among the crowd pushing people towards the scaffold. At home this seemed to be targetted towards children and people who were judged as ‘other’. Different races to the majority, people who might have been read as a different religion, people who might have been read as queer etc.

 This is because the message is ‘This could be you.’

 I know practices in other countries have sometimes gone beyond this. Police or armed officials will sometimes go out and gather a crowd of witnesses by just… approaching people on the street and demanding they attend.

 This approach requires quite a bit of man power and is not practical or necessary in every setting. In most cases setting things up in the right place and time is enough to ensure a large number of witnesses.

 What I’m trying to illustrate here is that a lot of people will see this stuff without having made a conscious choice to do so.

 And making a conscious choice to see it… well it does say something about the character but not in the way you’re thinking.

 Because these displays are all about the power of the state. Witnessing them, responding to them is performance and it’s a performance of state loyalty. You can’t expect someone to give their true opinion on public displays of violence when criticism or voicing ‘dislike’ could lead to them being targets of violence.

 Basically if you’ve got characters going to see this stuff regularly then it’s worth asking why they feel the need to display their loyalty in this way. Sometimes it’s because they really really believe in the state. But often… they’re compensating for something.

 Wrapping up I think it’s important to note there’s often a difference between what people say about this stuff versus what they actually feel. And that’s because these things are explicitly political and explicitly about the power a state has over it’s subjects.

 The way individuals respond to these things in public and what they say about them in public effects how they are treated. Sometimes it comes with obvious legal sanctions. Even if it doesn’t… these displays are entirely about reminding people the state can kill them.

 And it doesn’t actually discourage crime or civil disobedience but it does create a climate of fear and hostility which permeates daily life.

 Think about why the state is insecure about their power. Think about how your characters live with that background radiation and whether it feeds into cultural ideas around things like martyrdom or nobility of suffering.

 Remember that there is a difference between public and private life. Existing in these kinds of brutal states often means having quite a sharp distinction between them. This can create very strong bonds to those the characters trust. It can also create a big difference between private and public personas.

 If you’re writing a world where public torture and executions are happening there’s more going on then just individual character’s reactions. You are saying something about the world, the ruling class and the politics of the area.

 Take the time make sure you know what you want to say.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[scriptlgbt]

I’ve asked this elsewhere, but I want to cover all my bases: Me and another blogger are in the process of writing a story, and one of the main male characters has flashbacks from a recent abusive relationship, which was with another man. Is there any way we can show this without negatively stereotyping all gay relationships? As a note: all but one of the main characters are on the LGBTQ spectrum, and there is a canonical gay relationship that’s the complete opposite of the one I described above.

TW: Intimate partner violence, details relating to it.

This will be under a cut, because my response will involve more details, including describing specific real-life dynamics and experiences related to this.

I would appreciate if this specific post were NOT reblogged, to help protect the safety of those whose stories go into this response.

These are some general things that characterize the way I think about it, and issues I've faced with it that you may want to consider.

It's extremely difficult to come forward about abuse within the community. With some people, they may come forward to police. With people in the communities I'm part of, we have a sort of whisper network. Things like just normal word of mouth, talking with friends, but also private Facebook groups and things like that.

We are significantly more likely to take people for their word on these experiences, because we, more often than the periallocishet community, know what it's like to survive horrific abuses and not be believed. The issue with this, is that abusers who are in our communities and immersed in them, know these dynamics, and some find manipulative means of flipping the script and making their victims out to be abusers.

I have an anecdote from a friend (shared with permission, read over and fact-checked) on this sort of thing. (Put in an indent so folks can skip past it.)

My friend was in an intimate partnership with another queer person and there was a lot of abuse in that relationship. There were witnesses to this abuse (mainly two, also queer -- a roommate and a friend who visited for a little bit, but didn't know a lot of people locally in the community), and things related to it that were easily logged. Things like posts online, texts, social media messages.

Both my friend and their abuser had pretty heavy mental illness, and there were some other factors that made it hard to immediately recognize the relationship as abusive, like boundary communication being assumed to be a language barrier. (Although "no" was the same word in both my friend and their then-partner's native language, these things can feel easy to dismiss when you're right in them.)

A common thing the abuser did was react extremely poorly to boundaries being made. Sometimes my friend would be having a particularly hard time trying to get boundaries communicated to land, so they would eventually decide it was easier to part ways and have time to themself. Trying to make boundaries big enough for their partner to see was basically what this tactic was, and it didn't bode well for them. Because the partner would basically shut down mentally and be a suicide risk (not explicitly threatening, but repeating past patterns of behaviour for this sort of thing) for the next while, sometimes being unresponsive to texts and so on over the course of days. My friend would have no way to check in on them and felt coerced into taking back the boundary (they didn't, and it probably wouldn't have done anything anyway).

I think a lot of people of privilege tend to do things like call cops for "wellness checks" for this kind of thing. This is something a lot of marginalized people can't safely do, for one, and for another, it's not a thing anyone with any morals at all should be doing, anyway. IMO. Both my friend and their then-partner/abuser both had trauma related to the police, especially surrounding mental health. It just wasn't an option. (I wish I could link a transcript if one existed - but I rec looking up the You're Wrong About podcast episode for Kitty Genovese for this. It's graphic, but it does talk about how Kitty Genovese being a lesbian, and there being other gay neighbours in the witnesses, that plays into why people "didn't call the police" --- the police also later used her identity to claim that being a lesbian puts you more at risk for being murdered by a serial killer or whatever.)

Anyway. When my friend finally got out of the shitty relationship, the ex would make up lists of things that they had done to my friend, only, they claimed that my friend did that to them. For a long time, even up to 6 years after the fact, they would stalk my friend and get in contact with people that they interacted with to claim that my friend had done these things. There was one point my friend was convinced into not actually coming forward about anything anymore because their abuser had made a bullshit promise that they would stop spreading lies if only my friend never came forward. It was really gross. It didn't matter in the end that my friend kept a file filled with screenshots from all the sockpuppet accounts and IP addresses matching, it didn't matter that they had texts threatening my friend's pet. Because the abuser "came forward" first, grooming character witnesses.

My friend was further alienated and would find themselves blocked on social media and kicked out of spaces they needed as a survivor of intimate partner violence.

The moral of the story is not that we should *not* immediately believe survivors. We should believe survivors.

But:

- There is a difference between justice, and punishment.

- Transformative Justice, Restorative Justice, and similar, are things that we need to invest in setting up procedure for as communities. Community desire for justice requires actual justice, not just skipping straight to what is sentencing-adjacent. Carceral “solutions” do not actually uproot the sources of injustice nor do they commit to doing anything to facilitate healing in people harmed.

- People are not things to throw away easily, and we need to actually make efforts to understand the needs of survivors.

I may try and fill in an example of how TJ or RJ can happen later, but I advise doing research for this on your own. There is a police abolitionism textbook I’m forgetting the name of which provides examples of how people use community-based solutions for conflict outside of the justice system.

I do need to note that this isn’t a venue for this topic to be explored well. I just wanted to give a glimpse into how these things have come into communities that I am in and alternatives to the justice system, especially as people who are often targeted by police.

- mod nat

[evolsinner]

⊱┊19

“um..twen~twenty~five.”

fuck. what the fuck! i tried to make it as close to sir’s age as possible, but 25 is the first number that pops into my head!

“twenty~five?” the mother repeats with somewhat surprise. “my boy’s what? twel..” she does the math in her head, “thirteen years older than you?”

actually 20, but 13’s fine too.

i’m obviously getting agitated by the tone in her voice and i guess my lovely date notices this because he places his hand on my thigh. it’s not like i was gonna say or do anything, lol. wait, maybe i was… damn, he knows me more than i know myself.

“mum,” sir speaks up, “don’t make it such a big deal.”

“oh, no, no, no, just making small talk, luv. that’s all,” she backpaddles.

“well, then, let’s talk about you guys,” mr killian retorts. “how’s life treating ya, dad?”

“well, son, business is business as per usual,” he replies. “revenue is good. great, actually. still would have been nice to have you back, though.”

“nah, dad, i reckon that ship has already sailed.”

“‘sailed?’, haha haha,” the father laughs mockingly. “well, if it weren’t for me, son, you wouldn’t be able to afford that bottle of champagne you just ordered.”

“you and i both know i worked my ass off at that company of yours,” sir hits back. “i earned it, dad. all of it.”

“boys, behave now, speaking of company, we have company,” the mother nods at me, her trying to be nice isn’t working.

sir sighs, “fine, tell me, how’s life back home, hm?”

whilst they proceed chit~chatting about their lives and jobs, my date proceeds to do something else under the table. something sinful.

hell naw, not in front of his parents. i won’t be able to control myself! what is he thinking?! just nope. not happening.

i grab his hand and place it on his own thigh. he scoffs arrogantly at my disapproval. which results in the parents’ voices fading and intense frowns replacing their expressions.

“oh, no, no,” sir quickly readdresses them. “i wasn’t..that wasn’t..it wasn’t what it looked like. it wasn’t directed at you guys taking that sick dog you ran over to the vet. i definitely wasn’t laughing. forgive me, how is it..she, i mean? is she doing well now?”    

lmao, he’s messing up so bad, it’s hilarious.

after regaining the flow of the conversation pre quick, he latches onto my femur once more, but this time the grip is unyielding. again, i put my fingers between his knuckles to get his leech of a grip off of me. only he hardens it, forcing a pleasurable sensation to trickle up and around my pelvis.

i inhale a long breath of oxygen, so long that the parents pause and wait stiffly for my exhale.

meanwhile, mr killian casually takes a sip from his drink like he’s so interested in what his mum has got to say. his mouth curves into a devilish grin, finding the fact that i can’t express my pleasure openly hella entertaining. this piece of shit!

he softens his hold...

okay, good, great, amazing!

then, he smoothly glides his hand up.

fuck.

i quickly lock my legs together like a venus flytrap.

sir puts his mouth next to my ear, “spread your legs, rosé.”

his voice. that tone. it has the capacity to liquefy the adamantine jewel necklace around my neck. liquefy or maybe tighten it to the point where i am choking by the hands of crystals and a voice too concupiscent for my threshold. slightly, i loosen my legs. not enough. barely enough. i’m fucked. that’s just all there is to it. i am fucked.

“wider,” he whispers in that velvety tone.

i do so an inch more, my face heating up as if i just opened an oven door.

“don’t make a sound,” his libidinous warning just an earshot away from his parents.

how in the hell can they not hear?

his fingers reach the waistband of my panties. this cannot be happening right now. don’t do it. don’t you dare. do not..ohh..damn.. he slides his fingers diagonally under the elastic.

fuck x2.

“so how did you two come to meet?” the mum finds a way to direct the convo back at us, or to me, specifically speaking.

with them talking about the vet earlier, i blurt out, “hospital.”

why am i like this?!!!!!

mr killian’s wayward hand halts and i don’t know if i’m pleased or disappointed.

“yeah, well,” i put more confidence in my voice. i’ll just have to make an elaborate story up. i should be good at this. “i was there with my family. my little brother broke his arm so we were getting an x~ray done.”

“oh, is he doing okay?” they both fake sympathise.

mr killian’s fingers catch rhythm again and i try to finish my fabrication off as quickly as possible so that he doesn’t make me fucking orgasm in the middle of it!

“no, yeah, he’s..he’s perfectly healed now.”

sir’s fingers on their way to their destination brush against my shaved extremities and the strip of hair in the centre. i am stock~still, captivated, embarrassed, red hot frozen. red hot frozen? yeah, fucking red hot frozen!! so are the parents with this storytelling of mine.

my breathing slows as i know what’s about to happen in just a matter of seconds.

“i went to get a snack from the indoor vending machine when~”

without a warning, he inserts a finger right into my vajayjay and i stop talking midsentence. my back is as straight as an iron board. sir shifts his sit a little closer to me so that he can get his finger in the deepest that he can. i clench around him so damn hard as a sign for him to get it the hell out of me, but all he does is clear his throat.

he

clears

his

throat.

that’s all!

“well,” the mother arches a demanding overtweezed eyebrow, “what happened after?”

“babe, you okay?” sir asks me ever so boldly; i could detect the libido hidden in his tone a mile away. “you were getting to the best part.”

“sorry, one moment,” i give the folks a pursed smile before facing my date and pulling him down by the tie to hiss, “fucking quit it right now!”

he finds it amusing.

brah, this bitch.

“not in front of your parents…!”

“did i have a say with that bj at work?” is the only thing he says and brings his head back up to eye level with his parents. “anyways, where were we? after paying, her food got stuck and that’s when i saw her,” he finishes off for me.

so this is what it’s about? to have a one up on the other? to level out the playing field?! i am going to deck him so fucking hard when we get back home!!

“she told me ‘don’t bother, it’s a money~hungry machine that exploits from vulnerable people’,” he continues passionately like it truly happened.

the father cackles.

“so i asked rosé which one she was going for and i paid for the same one which helped push her one out along with mine.”

the father takes the chance to add a little anecdote of his own. this gives sir time to concentrate on his avocation.

he pumps a finger in and out of me. i can feel myself getting wetter and wetter with each pump. i try extremely, terribly hard to maintain a straight face; it’s taking every muscle in my face to do so. i lowkey don’t want him to stop and i’m highkey having trouble remaining casual about it.

“s~sir, please stop,” i croak out.

“‘stop’ what?” he murmurs cockily, curling his finger inside me just to further taunt me. “i don’t see anything happening,” he gestures over the table with his other hand. “do you?”

arghhhhhhhh!!!!!

just when i thought i could manage it, he finds a second pair for his index finger by inserting his middle finger in. he scissors me, pumping in and out more vigorously now to tease the real thing.

he leans into me and whispers, “i want to fuck you so bad on this table right now.”

my eyes pop wide open, “sir...”

“shhh, sweetheart, or i’ll put in a third digit,” he threatens.

his voice stimulates me, his foreshadowing, his fingers and i just cannot keep up with this god slash satan of a man any longer! so forgive me when my control is deteriorating in keeping the extreme ecstasy at bay. my face is getting sweaty and i’m becoming sloppy.

accidentally, i release a deep moan like i just ate the most satisfying cake on planet earth.

fucking.

kill.

me.

now.

sir’s racy fingers become frozen inside of me. he drops his fork and it clanks on the plate. he facepalms so that he can hide his face from his parents’ view. omg, why is he the one embarrassed?! the father chokes on his food, hitting his chest mildly, and the mother immediately stops chewing.

“a~are you okay, dear?” the mum asks unsurely. she needs closure, needs something to rid her of what the both of them do not want to bring their minds to.

“yeah, yeah! stomach pains, aha,” i say with an ‘oh it’s nothing’ giggle.

she doesn’t pressure me on it, instead, “adorable, isn’t it?” she asks the hubby. “except why were you in the hospital, isaac? were you all well?”

dessert is served and sir gradually removes his sticky fingers out of me.

thank the saviour above!

“i was well. my class had an excursion there and i was supervising them,” he replies.

“what does an english literature class have to do with a hospital?” she needles him.

“many things, mum, many things,” he utters, slightly irritated. “perhaps if you took up extra english literature classes, you’d know.”

“isaac!” the father snaps, his accent with the pronunciation of his son’s name ‘i~zack’ makes it sound so very profound. “that is in no way to speak to your mother like that!”

“you’re right,” mr killian puts up no fight and dips two fingers, the fingers into the chocolate sauce poured around the panna cotta. “that was wrong of me. i apologise.”

i watch him bring the chocolate coated fingers inside his mouth before slowly pulling them out as all the sauce smoothly slides off.

i’m pretty sure my man, j.c, has left heaven himself.

“this is delicious,” he tells the waitress above, conceited and all. “what’s in here again?”

[wrightiverse]

Chrysanthemums

When he was drunk and maudlin, Bill Close had a phrase he used to explain why he’d never become a star: timing is everything. If he hadn’t done a certain audition right before lunch, when people were hungry and distracted. If he’d been playing the night the agent was in the bar, instead of at home babysitting. If he’d been five minutes earlier here, two hours later there, a few seconds in either direction, he’d have the life he was actually supposed to have. Bad timing. Good timing. Didn’t quite pull off the timing. Timing is everything. Glenn buys all that as a kid, but he eventually realizes that Bill only had it half right. It’s not just the bad stuff that comes down to being in the right place at the right moment. Sometimes, everything aligns to give you much more than you deserve. (Posted this on AO3 originally but we’re all in sad Close boys hours this week anyway so I may as well bring it over here. Full version below cut has references to a car accident, pregnancy, and a certain canonical death that I’m sure you can guess. It was also written before we realized that Wrightiverse Nick was trans but fuck it, why go back and have Glenn and Morgan misgender baby Nick when I don’t have to. Nick is much younger when Morgan passes in this than in the show’s canon now but canon is optional, free your mind.) 

When he was drunk and maudlin, Bill Close had a phrase he used to explain why he’d never become a star: timing is everything. If he hadn’t done a certain audition right before lunch, when people were hungry and distracted. If he’d been playing the night the agent was in the bar, instead of at home babysitting. If he’d been five minutes earlier here, two hours later there, a few seconds in either direction, he’d have the life he was actually supposed to have. Bad timing. Good timing. Didn’t quite pull off the timing. Timing is everything. Glenn buys all that as a kid, but he eventually realizes that Bill only had it half right. It’s not just the bad stuff that comes down to being in the right place at the right moment. Sometimes, everything aligns to give you much more than you deserve. *** It’s not exactly a fairytale love story. They literally meet in a dumpster.

It’s been most of a year since he told his parents to go shove their advice and their money up their respective asses, three months since the semester ended and he lost access to the dorm room and meal plan, a week since he ran out of cash, and at least 24 hours since he ate anything. Couch-surfing is keeping a roof over his head, and his friends are generous with food and booze and weed when they have any to spare, but that only goes so far. One year of college courses under his belt, no idea how to make a resume, no work history even if he did, no permanent address. The job offers aren’t exactly flooding in.

But to hell with it, Glenn Close isn’t gonna just lay down and die. He’s already cased a bakery a few blocks away and he knows they usually throw out the stuff too stale to sell around 11 p.m. He’d hoped not to have to use that info, but whatever. Someday this will make a great anecdote for his episode of Behind The Music.

Glenn hovers across the street until he sees a silhouetted figure toss a bag into the dumpster in the alley, then casually strolls over once the figure goes back inside. The sides of the dumpster are taller and have fewer handholds than he’d pictured, but he drags over some pallets and manages to climb in. It’s half empty and the bag has landed right on top, safe from the nasty trash juices that are soaking the cuffs of his jeans.

The first thing he sees when he tears the bag open is a plain bagel, and the first bite he takes is so good that he almost passes out. He’s so busy wolfing it down that he doesn’t notice the approaching steps from outside until another bag of trash flies over the top of the dumpster and bounces off his head.  

“Watch it,” he says reflexively. Then he freezes, not even chewing as he strains to listen for movement outside. Nothing. Maybe they just tossed the bag and walked back inside. He might get away with this.

“Yo, Templeton,” a voice says from outside the dumpster. “You gonna quit pretending you’re not in there, or should I close the lid?”

Glenn considers his options for a moment, but now that he comes to think of it… “Yeah, I’m realizing I don’t have anything to stand on in here. Little help?”

That’s the first time he hears her laugh. Even knowing he was the butt of the joke, he wants to hear it again. He gets his chance seconds later, when her head pops above the wall of the dumpster.

“Would you look at that? Somebody threw away a perfectly good dumbass.” Then that laugh rings out for the second time

Even his innate panache can’t overcome being hungry, chest-high in trash bags, and covered with flour. He’s humbled, and she’s amused, and that somehow turns into a connection that surprises both of them with how deep it gets and how fast.

If Glenn meets her at any other moment than that, he blows it by trying to be cool and charming. He lucked out. It’s perfect timing.

Morgan’s too good for him on any level you can name. Too cool for him, too smart, too tough, too beautiful. A better musician than him, both with the actual music and the business side. She’s the one who teaches him how to scrounge and hustle, how to read a contract’s fine print and argue with a booking agent who doesn’t want to pay up. Sometimes it feels like every other living soul on earth is elbow-to-elbow with them, fighting for the same scraps that they are, but it’s clear that Morgan’s the one in a million who’s going to make it. And he’s along for the ride, feeling like the luckiest son of a bitch alive every single damn day.    ***

***

Seven years hearing her laugh every day. Seven years getting to be the one who makes her laugh, sometimes even on purpose.

“I think we should get married,” he says one day, and she laughs in his face.

“You still think it’s more legit if the government knows about it, huh?” But she softens, because she knows what he’s actually trying to say, because of course she does. “I get it, baby. This is the real deal. In sickness and health, for better or for worse, and so forth. I’m not signing any paperwork, but you know we throw a good party. Let’s just do the fun parts. You down?”

It’s a very good party, and afterward she calls him “my husband” and they make plans to get rings. Later, if she’s tipsy and feels like teasing him, she calls him “my first husband,” and she laughs. Then she squeezes his face in her hands and gives him a kiss to make sure he understands that she’s only joking. He always knows she’s joking. He always lets her kiss him anyway.

***

Morgan spends a few days thinking she’s got food poisoning before realizing a stowaway has outwitted their precautions. Glenn’s always counted that as very good timing by Nicholas -  if that tricky little bastard shows up any earlier than he does, there’s no way Glenn even considers becoming a parent. But once they decide to go for it, it’s more fun than they’d have ever imagined. They build a lot of castles in the air together while they’re waiting to meet Nick. Glenn says he wants enough kids for a Partridge Family style band, and Morgan agrees as long as nobody plays the tambourine.

They discuss it endlessly, but finally decide a percussionist is the first priority. The closer the due date gets, the more it seems like their new bandmate agrees. Morgan grabs Glenn’s hand and puts it on her belly so he can feel the urgent kicks. “Check out this sick drum solo.”

Nick inherits his parents’ knack for knowing how to make an entrance. He’s so fashionably late that Morgan decides they should just party without him. It’s like ditching the friend who’s taking too long to get ready, except for the part where they can’t actually leave him behind. She and Glenn hit up their favorite venue that very night. The music thumps through their bodies like a pulse. The energy of the crowd makes them forget how long they’ve been waiting. And if anybody has any concerns about seeing a ridiculously pregnant woman dancing her heart out until her hair sticks to her face with sweat, they’re smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

Fear of missing out is apparently hardwired, and Nick graciously deigns to join them a few days later. Everything changes. Three a.m. feels a lot different when you know you’ll be awake again at 4:30, and 5, and probably 7, and maybe 8 for good measure, and…

“This new guy can’t hang,” Morgan mutters. She’s standing beside the bed, Nick tucked against her shoulder, patting his back and swaying. Glenn’s sitting up in bed, trying to stay awake out of solidarity, losing the battle.

“New guy is a lightweight,” he says. “And he’s pretty nasty. That dude does not know what a toilet is for.”

“Come on, man, get it together,” Morgan says softly to the fussing figure in her arms. “We can’t take you anywhere.” Baby Nick finally burps and spits up a little onto Morgan’s shirt. A few additional angry hiccups are all he can manage before he falls asleep.

“Did you hear that?” Morgan murmurs as she lowers him into the crib. “He said he was gonna fight me. Slow your roll, new guy, you aren’t ready for this heat.”

She collapses back onto the bed next to Glenn. “I’m bluffing. He’s kicking my ass.”

“Me too,” Glenn says, “but at least we outnumber him.” ***

***

Not long after Nick’s second birthday, Morgan notices that she’s a couple of days late. It’s not a big deal, it usually doesn’t mean anything. Glenn makes a joke about the Close Family Quartet, and Morgan says she’ll grab a test when she gets groceries that weekend. But whether their lead guitarist was about to debut or still waiting in the wings, she made an amateur mistake and left things a little too late. The band broke up first. That’s show business for you.

People always want to know what happened. Glenn never gets into details. They must make up their own pictures in their head: a rain-slick curve taken too fast, a semi truck jack-knifing across the highway. It makes more sense for something like that to happen when you already know you’re in danger.

It’s the middle of the day. He’s going maybe five over the speed limit, keeping pace with traffic. He’s not high or drunk or tired or even distracted. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A dog runs into the road, someone swerves to miss it, someone else tries to get out of their way. Barely a fender-bender, except that their car gets just enough of a push to end up in the intersection.

Early on, he thinks a lot about how a few seconds here and there could change things.

The dog runs into the street a little later, and then the oncoming traffic isn't trying to beat a yellow light.

The dog runs into the street a little earlier, and they drive home with a scraped bumper.

But that’s Bill’s half-assed way of thinking about it, and Glenn knows better. It’s true, it could have been different. It could have been much worse.

He drives a split second slower, and the other car meets theirs with a direct hit, crumpling the back seat as well as the front with far more force than Nick’s booster seat can deflect.

He drives a split second faster, and the clipped bumper spins them into the next lane, and he never makes it to the hospital at all, and Nick doesn’t have anybody left.

Glenn knows now what his dad was talking about in those grumbling laments. It’s like trying to put together two tracks that are just slightly out of sync. Where do you snip out a piece to make things fit right again? What if you’re already balanced on that tipping point with the fewest misfortunes and the most lucky breaks? What happens if you start messing with that?

He can’t second-guess. It happened the way it happened, and he’s still here, and Nick’s still here, so he still has a job to do. He’s going to be there for Nick the whole way, along for the ride, feeling like the luckiest son of a bitch alive because he gets to be here at all. It could have gone another way. Timing is everything.

[thotyssey]

On Point With: Queen Robert

Hilarious, oddball antics and high-meets-low-meets-intergalactic fashions do away with the need for some funny-punny drag name for this performer. Whether she’s interjecting with a slaying quip while screening a classic film, or giving you the whole Big Ang Experience in a high stakes lip sync battle, or just being funny and fierce, this queen is giving you life. God Save Queen Robert!

Thotyssey: Greetings, Queen! How is Pride Week treating you so far?

Queen Robert: Hello! Thank you! I've been looking forward to gabbing with you. Pride has been good to me so far! It's been chaotic, but extremely gratifying, and we're only half way through! I also started bartending at the Rosemont this month, so even when I'm not out in drag I'm still out on the scene. It's an exhausting month for anyone working in nightlife.

Wow, that is a lot of nightlife. You must never see the sun!

I actually sat out at the Christopher Pier a couple of days ago while on my way back from a costume fitting. I looked like a vampire amongst all those honey-glazed hunks. I definitely prefer the light of the moon.

It's much more flattering, for sure. So speaking of the Rosemont, you just guest performed for Lucy Ball's show there last week.

I adore Lucy. She's a total weirdo. Her transformations set her apart from anyone working in Brooklyn. Did you see her Lambchop and Cryptkeeper? Incredible. Patti Spliff, another genius, was also performing that night. The three of us each have monthly Tuesday parties at The Rosemont, so it was fun to get together for a show. I did Donna Summer, farted on a cake and then pressed my face into it....because...drag.

You should do kids' parties! 

So, how did this all begin... where's your hometown, and what were you into growing up?

I'm from a small town not worth mentioning, in south central New Jersey. New York was always just on the horizon, like the Emerald City in Oz. I often wonder how this all began myself. There's a few memories that come right to the surface: my first wig, a green one from Universal Studios Orlando at age 5; my first two concerts at 7, Cher and Bette Midler; religiously renting The Rocky Horror Picture Show on VHS from blockbuster at 9; my mom playing Queen's Greatest Hits in the kitchen and telling me that Freddie Mercury was the coolest man who ever lived.

I always went big for Halloween--really big, I'm talking prosthetics by third grade and gender play by sixth. Then I got into theater, film, and eventually ended up in Manhattan for college, where I was able to release all of my passions without the constraints of small town life. 

Growing up, I was into everything spooky and queer that defied the norm. It wasn't a conscious rejection of heteronormativity, it was simply who I was from the very beginning. Anyone who thinks I'm new to this type of lifestyle and culture is in denial of my entire existence.

So movies were always there! Besides Rocky Horror, what are some other favorites?

Creature features will always have a special place in my heart. I find them to be a metaphor for anyone who has ever felt they had something to hide about themselves. American Werewolf in London, The Fly, Carrie, Gremlins, anything from the minds of Stephen King, John Carpenter, and John Waters. Oh, and the Chucky franchise has always been a favorite of mine. I have all the dolls.

Did you see that Carrie remake, like, 5 years ago? It was dumb. Well, there are two remakes: an early 2000's TV movie, the 2013 Julianne Moore remake, and a 90's sequel to the original. All have their charm, but the best part of each incarnation is surely the role of Margaret White, Carrie's psycho momma. Gays really seem to relate to that film, and the character Carrie. I know I did. She's the ultimate outcast who gets the greatest revenge on her abusers. My first drag performance in Brooklyn was actually a parody of Carrie, where I played both mother and daughter, appropriately set to the music of Madonna and Britney. Metropolitan [Bar] wasn't thrilled with the blood, though.

Was drag just the best venue for you to explore these aesthetics and interests, or was there something else about it that strongly appealed to you?

I moved to NYC to pursue a career in film, and while on that journey came to desperately miss performing. So, yes, drag was the best way to jump back in the performance ring while combining politics, pop culture, and aesthetics. It was hard at first to build an audience for my film work before drag. Now I'm in this creative community where anything is possible, and I can get back behind the camera and generate content that has an audience. Drag is a powerful platform, and I'm excited to see what other avenues it may lead me down.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with! Why don’t you have a wackier drag name than “Queen Robert?” I mean, it is kind of funny in a minimalist sorta way.

I get that all the time! I have a whole list of wacky drag names, and I'd love to utilize them for some more character driven work / alter egos (Gaggatha Christie is my evil twin; I keep her locked up, though).

My drag, isn't necessarily female impersonation, I have a beard, I don't wear a bra, I'm never out here trying to be "fish." I'm a camp queen, so my personality is wacky enough. I never liked my name Robert, until one day I threw "Queen" in front of it and I was like, "oh yeah, that's better!” I'm a butch queen; I embrace my femininity and masculinity. Robert is a very masculine name... but honey, I'm a damn queen! Drag for me hasn't been about inventing a new personality and a new name; it's about being my ultimate creative self.

Also, there's so many repeat names in the drag business, it's annoying to constantly have to clarify which artist you're talking about depending on first or last name. I'm the only Queen Robert: unless you wanna try to compare my name to Bob the Drag Queen--but that would be silly, her real name is Caldwell!

So, how did you begin hosting “Screen Queen” at the Rosemont?

Troy at the Rosemont took interest in my pop culture numbers and said he had a monthly slot available. Being a film buff, I naturally turned the night into a celebration of local queer filmmakers and popular movies in the LGBT community.

What’s your personal strategy of “screen queening,” particularly with the classics? Do you share anecdotes during the movie, do you wait til it’s over, or do you just let it speak for itself?

It's a fun night! I show the film early, chime in from time to time with fun anecdotes or conversation with the audience about their experiences with the film. Then we jump into shows inspired by the film. This month was Pink Flamingos, and this got filthy! Lee VaLone was licking shoes. Pepto Dismal shit eggs on a hot plate. Misty Menthol puked on Coma White. People were actually gagging. Divine would have been proud. Next month is the much more family friendly Mamma Mia.

Yikes, I can’t wait for you to do Showgirls! What have been some of the films that affected you as far as those made by local filmmakers that you’ve screened?

Joe Sulsenti's Fishy was a highlight. It's an animation starring Amanda Lepore. There's so many talented artists that I've been able to screen, I love them all. Sweaty Eddie, Chris of Hur, Amber Alert, Marcel Saleta, Miwa Sakulrat, Chris Crompton. Everybody has such a unique voice and style. It's wonderful hearing their process.

Werk! So I was in the house for the last session of the Lady Liberty drag competition at the Ace Hotel a few months ago. It was a “Snatch Game” celebrity impersonation edition, and you appeared as a clean-shaven Big Ang with ginormous bazooms! It was a hilarious and affectionate portrayal, and it got you in the top two. What made you decide to enter that completion as her? My lesbian bestie Daniella in New Jersey and I would religiously watch Mob Wives and Big Ang together. I regret so deeply I didn't go to her bar in Staten Island, The Drunken Monkey, to meet her before she passed. She's one of my spirit animals (her and Kathy Bates). Everyone said I shouldn't do her for “Snatch Game” because of Pearl's portrayal on Drag Race. But, I have been impersonating her in some sense for years, so I felt it was necessary. And I know her family saw my portrayal and they said she would have loved it. Party everyday, because you never know when you're gonna go!

Lady Liberty returns for a Pride edition this Friday to the Ace Hotel, and you’re gonna be back there too! How do you think it’s gonna go!? I think that they are expecting to get another "Big Ang" moment, and that's simply not what I have cooking. They'll be getting something uniquely me. I hope it goes well!

I bet it will! 

And looking a little bit ahead, you'll be at Bizarre on post-Pride Tuesday for a special edition of Lee Valone's BEEF, with a bunch of cool people like The Brides of Burlesque, Pierretta Viktori, Devo Monique and Viktor Devonne. Have you turned it on that stage before?

I love performing at Bizarre! They really have a proper stage, which does help heighten numbers. BEEF Show is a damn riot, always diverse, always entertaining, and I'm thrilled to join this month's cast.

June 28th, you'll be throwing your wig into the June installment of the Mx Mont Rose comedy queen pageant at the Rosemont! That's gonna be quite a lineup. No spoilers, but did you know what you wanted to do immediately for that one?

Comedy is hard. There's a fine line to walk. People are very sensitive. One safe bet is to make fun of yourself. I'm hoping to give you something like the result of Joan Rivers topping Robin Williams after a drunken night at The Rosemont.

That’s all any of us want! Good luck! Anything else coming up to mention?

There's always something. Tuesday, July 3rd at The Rosemont, Screen Queen: MAMMA MIA featuring my sisters Chutney Spears, Tiffany Jones Sterling, Flower Tortilla, and Jessica Rose. [And I’m doing] FAILURE, July 5th at Bizarre.

But what's really exciting is the music video I'm directing for Crystal Mesh this summer. I'll give you a hint... there's gonna be lots of chlorine and cum.

Gag! One last question: what advice do you have for new NYC Pride-goers this week?

More glitter. Less clothes. Stay hydrated. Tip your performers AND bartenders! Have fun and be safe! Oh... and be sure your Pride merch benefits the community or a cause, and not some capitalist corporation that doesn't truly support the LGBT community!

The Queen has spoken! Thank you!

Queen Robert hosts “Screen Queen” every first Thursday at the Rosemont (10pm). Check Thotyssey’s calendar for all her scheduled gigs, and follow the Queen on Facebook and Instagram.

On Point Archives

[globalmediaindustries]

Sabaton: The Battle of Identity

Music has always been subject to technological change. When around 1860 the first recording of a music piece was made, it forced music to become a dual-efficient commodity: now both live and recorded music could be sold. With the invention of respectively the vinyl, the cassette and the CD, recorded music became a mass product. These two faces of music, live and recorded, were the two most defining and the most accessible ways of getting to know the musician that you love. Identification with the musician was done via the music itself and the relation was otherwise formed by interviews done by the mass media. The musician could still sustain their artistic lives with this double income.

However, the rising popularity of the internet in the last decade of the twentieth century changed everything. The possibility of endless digitally copying music pushed the musical container into an artificial state and became superfluous. This change introduced the decline of the recording as a source of income. Firstly, the illegal pirating of music killed one of the two revenue streams. The rise of streaming services thereafter compensated this fall-back, but did that too little. Nowadays, recorded music isn’t a huge source of income anymore and musicians are predominantly relying on the commission earned by performing. This last development forced the musician to expand their horizons beyond music. Recorded music is nothing more than a sales pitch for the musicians live shows nowadays. This is where they get their true revenue. To quote musicologist Keith Negus once this matter: Music is a means to another end rather than an end in itself.

In the modern digital age, the musician is relying more and more upon forming an (group)identity. The record companies are now commoditizing an identity via music. Nevertheless, this evolution isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the industry. With the help of the internet, getting close to an artist has never been so effortless. The proliferating use of social media actualizes a closer bond between the musician and their audience. This blog post will focus on a sense of identity contrived by working with YouTube as a storyboard, explaining notes of the artist on their songs and crafts, obtaining both a better connection with existing fans and building bridges to a broader audience with the help of the algorithms of the video service. The case study in this blogpost is built around Swedish metal band Sabaton, highly successful on musical platforms like Spotify, as well as on Youtube as historical storytellers. With this transcendence of the traditional borders of the media, they could be a blueprint for the future of interaction with the musician’s audience.

Through their music, Sabaton aims to tell the stories of historic battles, events, wars and soldiers. Because they do this through the perspective of the people they are singing about, soldiers during WW1 for example, there is very little historical reflections on the subject matter. Because of this, and the subject matter itself, they had to defend themselves from accusations of nazism and rightwing sympathies. Although we will not focus on that, we wanted to mention it, because Sabaton does deal with very sensitive subjects in a way that does not appeal to everyone. For this blog post, however, let us move past this controversy and look at their content and music without moral or ethical judgement, but purely as a case study for the use of YouTube; because Sabaton uses YouTube in a very interesting way.

First of all, they have two channels: one is their regular music channel, the other is The Sabaton History Channel. On that channel they dive deeper into the subject matter of their music, explaining the history behind it as well as some anecdotes about the creation of the song. This ‘show’ is hosted by Indy Neidell, a veteran of historical YouTube channels. The entire channel is a collaboration between TimeGhost, Neidell’s main channel, and Sabaton.

Through this collaboration, the music of Sabaton gets introduced to a whole new audience. An audience that might not be familiar with metal music, but who are interested enough in history to watch Neidell’s other channels, mainly the TimeGhost and World War Two channels. I say that because of how YouTube’s algorithm works: these channels are all linked as ‘Featured Channels’, a list of channels that the original channel wants to highlight. In a few videos of the World War Two channel, Neidell mentions his work for Sabaton History and implores viewers to go and watch that too. For these new viewers the band Sabaton is rooted in historical content, perhaps more than metal music. 

Broadening the audience is not the only thing that the band gets out of their interaction with Youtube, although it is the most interesting. They also have another way to connect to their existing fans, to earn more money through YouTube and Patreon, a crowdfunding platform built to provide artists a stable income. This comes back to something that Negus wrote: “Yet, as the few, ever more oligopolistic, major corporations began to reposition themselves as music companies (seeking profits from multiple rights rather than dwindling income from record sales)”. The use of YouTube can be viewed as one way to supplement the dwindling income from record sales. 

Through the multiple YouTube channels Sabaton has, in theory, they have a global reach. This is hard to investigate since public statistics do not show the background of the viewers, but the comments on the videos can say a lot. One example, the official video for Bismarck, mostly has comments in English, but there are quite some comments using the Cyrillic alphabet. Even though the song is named after a German World War II battleship, it is not weird that most comments are in English, as that is the lingua franca on YouTube. But all of these Cyrillic comments date from two weeks ago or even later, while the video was posted in April 2019, and most of the comments seem to date from then. This could be because a year the Russian band Radio Tapok covered the Sabaton song Attack of the Dead Men, a song about a battle between Russian and German soldiers in Poland, and they also performed it together in May. Apparently, this attracted Russian-speaking fans to the Swedish band, fans they would not otherwise have attracted. The Russian video for this song has next to no English comments, and the English version has a relatively small amount of Russian comments, showing that the glocalised music might be spreading globally, but the audiences have not fully merged yet.

It seems that songs about battles or people from a certain country attract viewers from that same country. In the comments for many of these videos, you can find people praising their national heroes or lamenting that they do not receive enough attention worldwide or even in their home countries. This is visible in the Sabaton History video on war hero Leslie “Bull” Allen. I did not have to watch the video to find out Bull Allen’s nationality, as I could figure it out from the many comments starting with “As an Australian”. Looking at their tour dates, you can also see that they mainly tour the US and Europe, especially western and northern Europe, and these venues are rather large.  Recently, Russia and other countries where Russian is also spoken have also been included in the tour locations. As their last album is solely about the First World War, it is unsurprising that countries that the Great War was fought in and remember it every year are also the countries that the tour was planned in.  The only real outlier is the US, since they did not include other nations that sent soldiers to die on the fronts of the First World War.  

Sabaton has worked very hard to become known for their niche of historical metal music. This identity resonates with a large audience, and their online presence and the topics they discuss seem to be attracting new audiences with every new location they sing about in their songs, and especially when they talk about in their history videos. It is noteworthy that many of the commenters on their YouTube videos seem to be from the country they are discussing in the video, suggesting that their audience is not as global as they might have hoped. This online audience does seem to translate into real life concert attendees, as they are currently focussing on the areas which are featured on their albums. This can be seen as a smart marketing strategy and an easy way to find a niche in a large genre, or as underutilisation of metal music’s demographic. Though Sabaton might not be the only one to blame, as algorithms on platforms such as YouTube try to only suggest videos that they think the user will surely love, so it is not too remarkable that their videos seem to garner most fans in areas that they directly reference in their music. So if they wish to expand their audience, they will have to expand their song topics. With this they could be a prime example of how musicians should interact with their audience in the digital era.

Sources

Cayari, Christopher, ‘’Connecting music education and virtual performance practices from YouTube’’, Music Education Research (2017) 1-17.

Gronow, Pekka, "The Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium", Popular Music, Vol. 3 (Cambridge 1983) 53–75.

Hargreaves. Miell & Macdonald, ‘’What are musical identities, and why are they important.’’, in: Macdonald,  Musical Identities (Oxford 2002) 1-18.

Negus, Keith, ‘’From creator to data: the post-record music industry and the digital conglomerates Media’’, Culture & Society 2019, Vol. 41(3) (London 2019) 367– 384.

Rogers, Jim, The death & life of the music industry in the digital age (New York 2013).

Sabaton, https://www.sabaton.net/news/tour-shows/the-great-tour-is-coming-to-europe-early-2020/

Sabaton look back on Nazi Controversy: Sabaton News. Anti-Music https://www.antimusic.com/news/16/August/ts18Sabaton_Look_Back_On_Nazi_Controversy.shtml

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Sims 4 #1

The Sims was never really a franchise I cared much for. They had some good city builders but Cities: Skylines dethroned them as the go-to. I remember watching my brother play the older Sims games and I never liked the idea of playing through the nuances of taking a piss and eating breakfast. I still don’t, so it should be no surprise that the first mod I got was the cheat console that allowed me to basically hack in a couple of those traits where my sims don’t need to sleep, eat, etc. Those are rewards that are typically only acquired when you grind through a few aspiration things, and a fair bit of them to boot. I didn’t take them all. My characters still need to take a piss and sometimes it’s prudent to have them sleep to shake off some negative emotions. So it’s not like I’m not doing any of the survival bits at all - I just got irritated by how quickly it was drained. In some of my early hours of gameplay I wrestled with 2-3 things hitting the red at the same time so my ladies would flail around doing normal survival stuff before leaving for work. Basically, I would only have a few minutes of actual, interesting gameplay. Which to me is typically exploring, meeting new people, grinding up skills, shopping, and with a certain mod... A whole lotta fuckin’.

That was quickly a second mod I got, and discovered I needed to also download a bunch of animation packs so my girls would do more than fondle each other in bed (and literally nothing else). That probably comprises most of my mods, as there’s not much in the way of creator content that I care about. Some neat clothing, but nothing I can’t absolutely live without. Instead, I went on a sort of brief spending spree to get a few of the DLC’s but right now they’re at full price, no sales, so I need to resist the urge to just drop another 200$ and call it a full game. I really need to wait for a sale. Because y’see, the creator gallery is invaluable to me. I can’t really figure out how to build pretty houses on my own, I can only modify what other people give me. However, so much of the good shit is locked behind an alert that says “This uses assets from the following packs: ALMOST ALL OF THEM”. Or rather, all the ones that add building pieces. So eventually I want most, if not all of them, in my possession. So as the lifestyle simulator thing goes, I’ve had a lot of fun recreating characters from my various stories and lore, as sort of alternative versions of themselves. I started with my usual go to but then imported Kiur Kenneth at one point, my Death Knight from WoW. She was a good experiment to have the “Erratic” trait, which suited her.

I later evolved into having actual original characters. Some of their names I don’t fully remember, but the kissing ladies above are original concepts. The gothy, dark skinned babe is Dana I think. A stay at home nerd of sorts, in theory she is living rent free because the girl she’s kidding is a secret agent that apparently gets paid very well. Kind of how I justified cheating in all the money so I can have them live wherever I want. I also tossed up a sort of thrown-together vampire trio. Was fiddling with the nudism thing that the sex mod comes with but I found that it doesn’t carry over when you’re not actively playing them. Every time I visit them, or get visited by them, they’re always wearing their standard stuff. Either way, once I got a few poly-lady households going, I finally settled down my gameplay enough to have a solo Trans girl whom is... basically me, and it’s scratched a fantasy that I’ve never been able to acquire in other games.

I sadly don’t have a frontal shot of her yet except for two things. One, just showing off how a bunch of gnomes really fucked my home up for a whole day.

Second, making out with one of many potential suitors, I’m not even sure which one I want her to properly date yet. The glory that is polyamory helps with this decision, of course.

Other than vampires and magic not being real (that I am yet aware of), this playthrough is basically me. I don’t know where exactly I’d get the 20000$ to have my own starter home at only 400$ rent, but this girl is basically living my life that I wish I could. Thanks to an intersex setting, she still has her penis just as I may in some years when life actually allows me to begin my transition. It’s let to some very fun encounters, and I can appreciate that I barely have to push the sex thing at all. I’m propositioned by the other characters most of the time when my girl is just on her computer programming games. 

I wish I could show some of the actual nudity involved, because it’s fairly impressive for a six year old game and the animators can really make the simplistic skeletons dance in their favor. Sadly, Tumblr has lost its titties so I’ll need to find a different venue for that. I leave this post with one anecdote that I can’t stop giggling about. The sex mod adds peeping toms and tinas, thankfully I mostly just get the tinas (whom are incredibly hard to woo, most conversations put her in the negatives). Well, they do age and die apparently as an elder variant caught the above gal going at it with a different vampire. They had her fun, and she had her fun at the window and then went and dropped dead in the snow. Death came and claimed her, and I have a screenshot of it because it’s so goddamn funny. I made her tombstone read: “Died as she lived. Flickin’ dat bean”.

[haulix]

Overcoming mental blocks in art and business

Anyone trying to make a living with their creativity, from music to marketing, will tell you there are few times in life more frustrating than those moments when you feel as if your inspiration has run dry. You know the feeling. It’s usually something that hits you settle into work on your passion project at night, or perhaps just after you have arrived at the office, and try as you might to get something meaningful accomplished you pretty much just spin your wheels until you feel comfortable excusing yourself in order to spend the rest of the day in a ball of self-loathing introversion on your living room floor, praying to any deity willing to listen that you have enough episode of The West Wing left to avoid you work for one more day. We’ve all been there, or at least those of us who have been working long enough to burn through the first 50 or 100 ideas that we had, and if you feel you’ve yet to reach that point then trust me - It’s on the horizon.

We don’t bring up those uncomfortable times in order to scare. Sd face the same thing on a fairly regular basis, and we like to refer to it as what author Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance.” That is, a universal force that works against human creativity on a daily basis. We all face it in our own ways, much like we all fight our own battles most the world never knows of. There are a million anecdotes and essays on overcoming Resistance, and we’ve offered several here on this blog. Whether or not it works for you can only be learned through application. Yes, good old fashioned trial and error.

The next time you’re confronted with a creative roadblock in your professional life, take time away from your forced search for inspiration and try losing yourself in an alternate path. Develop an alternative path for yourself, your music, your agency, your label, or that secret side business you always hope to one day attempt. These adventures can sometimes be the source of new real life paths, such is the case with many so-called ‘side projects’ in music. Artists from various genres take a break from their day-to-day career to pursue other creative avenues just like anyone else, and sometimes their efforts lead to new financial avenues that certainly don’t hurt their bottom line.

Developing alternative paths to success for yourself can allow your mind to relax and consider options you might not have been able to adequately access when attempting to force creativity. Let’s explore a few examples to better illustrate this point:

Musicians -

Let’s say you’re the lead guitarist and songwriter for an aspiring rock band. Your first demo went over well with local audiences, and the second was good enough to help you secure a few opening slots on national tours when they roll through your region’s bigger venues. You may have even been able to tour, albeit without the benefits of a bus or guaranteed sell out crowds. Still, you’re making progress and you can feel your dreams of stardom starting to come together.

As you find yourself beginning to thinking about your third release, which would probably be your first full length, you discover you have hit a creative wall. Writing riffs and lyrics was never something you found all the difficult before, but for whatever reason everything you’re coming up with at this current point in time is clearly not good enough to help you get you ahead.

To clear your head and relax your thoughts it might be wise to consider an alternative career in, say, top 40 radio pop. Ask yourself, “What would it take to make it in pop music today?” Think about the songs and artists topping the charts, the themes found in their music, and what it is about tracks like Bieber’s “What Do You Mean” or The Weeknd’s “I Can’t Feel My Face” that keeps people reaching for the repeat button again and again. Some answers will come fast, but others will take time. Think about what these artists do that you do not and ask yourself whether or not their approach to marketing or songwriting could aide your personal efforts. Heck, you may even try penning a song or two. Why not? Trial and error is part of any healthy exploration.

By the time you realize how lost in your pretend career you’ve become enough time should have passed for you to return to your real work with clear eyes and an open mind. Remember the things you learned about yourself and your peers during your brainstorming session and use it to influence your future work.

Industry professionals (label owners, site editors, publicists) -

Maybe you’re a label owner, struggling to keep your costs low while hustling around the clock to not only bring attention to the talent on your roster, but also to sell records. The grind required to keep a small business afloat, let alone build a new music empire, can be devastating on the mind of a creative person. One the one hand, your spirit and soul desire constant exercise and exploration. On the other hand, you need to find what works for your business and stick with it.

On those days when you cannot seem to focus on emails, accounting, marketing, or anything in between, it might be best to allow yourself to unwind with by exploring an alternate professional path. Just like the example for musicians above, you should stay within the realm of what you do (aka - running/building a business), but what it is your fake company does is entirely up to you.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say your secret wish is to start a subscription box company that offers consumers the chance to receive 1 new album in the mail each month, along with an explanation for the record’s selection. The first thing you need for this business is a name. You decide ‘New Music Monthly’ is a good name and from there set to outlining what would be needed in order to get your business off the ground. You need a web host, a logo, and a cost estimate sheet. You know boxes can be bought in bulk, but you will have to contact the labels/artists you wish to work with in order to know if they would be willing to offer you a discount in order for buying X amount of records. You also need startup cash, which can be earned through launching pre-orders for your first box.

After the basic business details are ironed out, you should then turn your focus to understanding the type of customer who would want this product. Assume that your first few music shipments will be products from your own label, then outline what kind of music fan would be interested in whatever release you might choose. Be specific. Narrow down your fans to a specific age group (teens, young adults, adults 25-35, 35+, senior citizens, etc). Do (or did) these people go to secondary school? Do they attend a lot of concerts?

Once you figure this out you can begin to brainstorming how to accomplish the difficult task of targeting these consumers. Do they frequent Facebook? Twitter? Would placement in a magazine be a wise choice? Depending on which method of outreach you choose, how much will it cost? Can you advertise this way regularly, or do you only have the budget for a single campaign? Again, be specific.

Once you iron out your faux business plan you will not only have a potential new path to financial success, but you will have inadvertently developed marketing tools that could also be used for the real problems facing your actual business. The target market for your faux company will likely be the same, or close to the same, as your actual business. The plans you made to reach those made up customers can be applied in one way or another to the customers you are hoping to reach in with your label. You will have more or less done the work you needed to do in a way that tricked your mind into doing work it might not have wanted to do otherwise.

—

There are a million potential paths through life available to all of us, but far too few ever make much, if any, effort to explore their options. We would never advise you to abandon your dream(s), but we do believe that exploring alternative career paths can lead to success in your current field. What matters most is that you keep an open mind and try as much as you are able without jeopardizing your current professional/financial situation. You can use the examples laid out in the post to get you started, but don’t hesitate to make up your own adventure whenever time allows.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Finding New Neighbors at the Movies: The Ebert Fellows on Ebertfest 2019

Editor’s note:  Last week, the 2018-19 University of Illinois College of Media Roger Ebert Fellows, Curtis Cook, Pari Apostolakos and Eunice Alpasan, covered their first full Ebertfest experience at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign, Ill. Here are their impressions, from “Amazing Grace” to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and beyond.

CURTIS COOK

An hour before the first screening of Ebertfest 2019, “Amazing Grace” – a long-lost concert film charting the creation of Aretha Franklin’s eponymous 1972 gospel album – longtime festival director Nate Kohn addressed a crowd of festival guests and participants Wednesday in Urbana, Ill., at the home of University of Illinois president Tim Killeen.

Like Roger Ebert himself, Kohn was raised locally, and he noted that one of his favorite activities of the annual April film festival was observing the change of the city, year to year.

Like the city, Ebertfest is an evolving beast. Under the tutelage of Chaz Ebert, Roger’s widow, for the past six years, the festival continues to tinker with its formula. With one foot firmly planted in the festival’s initial focus on overlooked films, the other foot – guided by Chaz’s emphasis on empathy, kindness and compassion – has branched out further, this year focusing heavily on the passage of time.

Throughout the 21 years of the festival’s operation, one of the few constants, alongside Nate and Chaz, has been Champaign’s Virginia Theatre. For anyone who has been to Ebertfest, they know the venue as a bit of an anomaly in its surrounding city. The Virginia features Corinthian-style columns adorned in cerulean hues and gold leaf, where the green and gold of the proscenium complement deep crimson curtains, and rows of red diamond-checked velvet seats and hundreds of feet of ornate trim occupy the auditorium.

This conveys an elegance glaringly absent from modern theaters. But there’s a more down-home flourish out front: a bronze statue of Ebert, seated in a movie theater seat, giving his signature ‘thumbs up’.

From the opening screening of “Amazing Grace,” which was followed by an onstage concert from the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir of Champaign-Urbana, to the show-stealing duo of Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly who spoke after Thursday night’s screening of “Bound,” to several screenings projected in 35mm film – a rarity in 2019 – the Virginia was packed with entertainment for film lovers of all kinds.

A Saturday highlight, director Morgan Neville’s enormously popular Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” came with the presentation of the Ebertfest Humanitarian Award. Neville was the third in the festival’s history to receive the honor.

The film itself is a perfectly nuanced character study of a TV celebrity famous for his compassion and empathy around the world. Neville’s documentary looks beyond the surface of Rogers’ small-screen persona and examines how his kindness manifested itself on a daily basis.

“The question is not ‘What would Mr. Rogers do today?’” remarked Neville in a post-screening talk. “The question is: ‘What are YOU going to do today?’”

The festival named after Ebert means a lot to me personally. Growing up in Urbana, attending Ebert’s high school and then the university where he first made his name, it’s natural to sense his shadow looming over other people’s lives, especially film lovers. Until this year, my only interaction with the festival was a one-movie taste of the 2017 festival: Park Chan-Wook’s “The Handmaiden.”

Visiting the festival this year in full was an eye-opener to say the least. In 2005, Ebert famously declared film to be “a machine that generates empathy.” This festival captures that sentiment perfectly.

To watch hundreds of patrons interacting with each other throughout the week, mingling along the streets of Champaign, walking around West Side Park on a blustery weekday afternoon, perusing records at Exile on Main Street just a few blocks away – all of it was rewarding.

Hearing people converse in the lobby of the theatre, under the marquee, even in the bathroom, after screenings gave the sense that people here were not just paying to see a movie, but deeply invested in what they saw. As one guest put it: “It’s nice to go to a festival where people actually care about movies.”

Even in the short time that the festival runs, the openness and kindness of everyone involved is so inviting that one can’t help but feel the warmth of the community at their feet when they step under the Virginia’s laurel green marquee. For 98 years, the Virginia Theater has stood tall, a local relic amid that ever-evolving cityscape. And with the recent addition of several new luxury high-rises in a downtown area under perpetual renovation, that cityscape continues to evolve.

Whatever the future brings, Ebertfest and its longtime home serve as a testament to longevity and to cultivating a sense of community beyond proximity. In coming years, in this great era of local change, the Virginia’s presence – along with its long-running festival tenant – will be even more appreciated.

PARI APOSTOLAKOS

Ebertfest 2019 was a true learning experience for me, but not in the way I expected.

For example, Alan Elliott, producer of the Aretha Franklin concert documentary “Amazing Grace,” revealed details in Wednesday’s pre-screening discussion not just about the film, but about his life, right down to the story of his family adopting a friend of Elliott’s named Benny. The real-life scenario, improbably enough, went on to inspire the ‘90s TV sitcom “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Elliott received confirmation on that anecdote, from another Ebertfest guest, actress Gina Gershon, Elliott’s cousin. She was there in the Virginia Theatre Wednesday, and from her seat she shouted out: “It’s true!”

Gershon and her “Bound” costar, Jennifer Tilly, delivered one the most entertaining post-screening discussions of the festival after the Thursday night showing of “Bound.” Their chemistry on-screen 23 years ago translated to the 2019 stage with ease.  I wanted to befriend both of them instantly. Between takes of their hot-and-heavy love scenes in “Bound,” they recalled, they’d eat donuts and discuss the shoe sale at Barney’s.

Even more intriguing were one-on-one discussions with festival attendees like Rita Coburn Whack, co-director of the Maya Angelou documentary “And Still I Rise” who strongly recommended I watch “The Crown” on Netflix (apparently Princess Margaret is a mess). On a brief stroll over to the “Bound” screening, Coburn Whack told me she thought Angelou would’ve been a fierce advocate of the #MeToo movement if she had lived to see it. It’s unfortunate the world will never see what that movement might’ve sparked in Angelou’s writing.

If Ebertfest were structured like most festivals, that brief encounter might never have happened. Since only one film is screened at a time, with all attendees watching the same thing at the same time, Ebertfest sparks conversation amongst the festivalgoers. May that aspect of it never change.

Following Saturday’s screening of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Chaz Ebert took the stage in tears, overcome with emotion as she remembered her late husband, whom she described as her own Fred Rogers. “Neighbor” director Morgan Neville took time afterwards to tell the Ebert Fellows a bit more about the film. One of the best moments in the documentary, 1960s archival footage of Rogers convincing, patiently, Sen. John O. Pastore to continue funding national public television, has a larger story behind it.

Neville told us his that his research revealed Pastore did not have much of a childhood of his own. Growing up during the Great Depression, he was put to work in a factory at an extremely young age. Something happened when Rogers candidly shared with Pastore the compassionate message he was sending to children in his television program. Neville speculated that it must’ve touched the inner child of this senator who grew up too fast.

Mr. Rogers was a true embodiment of empathy. It’s that quality that has grown into a central theme of Ebertfest. “If somebody is disabled or of a different race or ethnicity or religion or what have you, kids are just kids,“ Neville said. “Most of the differences we have in our world are taught. And not always for the better.”

EUNICE ALPASAN

After the Saturday screening of Morgan Neville’s 2018 documentary of the life of Fred Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, Ebertfest co-founder and host Chaz Ebert came on stage in tears, mirroring the emotional state of many audience members.

“I had my own Mr. Rogers,” she said of her late husband, Roger, “someone who was so kind, so compassionate. Nobody's perfect — we know that — but the depth of Roger’s compassion and goodness was astounding. It was amazing to be able to peer into somebody's else soul and see how much they cared about other people, and to see the things that they wanted to change to bring goodness into the world.”

Attending the 21st edition of Ebertfest reminded all of us of Roger Ebert’s legacy. Despite his passing, his spirit permeated the four-day film festival and could be found in the people in attendance who knew him, as well as the movies shown on the big screen of the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign.

Filmmakers, critics, actors, musicians and movie distributors came from across the country to take part in Ebertfest, a festival that’s unlike any other. Empathy, forgiveness and compassion were major recurring themes found throughout this year’s work. Movies like “Rachel Getting Married” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” stood out for the way they helped fulfill a heartfelt collective yearning. It was personally very much needed.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” tells the story behind the children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and the story of the man whom filmmaker Neville reveals as being more than just a two-dimensional character.

“One of the big questions of this film was — it’s in fact, the fundamental question that I got when making the film – ‘Is he really that guy? Is he really who he seems?’ That’s the most common question I got,” Neville said. “And the answer is, he’s even better.”

Even if you’re too young to have watched “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” the film still finds a way to connect with audiences unfamiliar with the subject. The film doesn’t portray him as a saint, which Mr. Rogers’ widow was insistent on when speaking with Neville about the film.

The kindness of Fred Rogers was refreshing and therapeutic to see on the big screen. But we also saw the vulnerability and internal struggles he faced and shared with the world.

“When I saw this movie in the theater,” Chaz Ebert said Saturday, “it was the men in the audience who were crying. I was asking someone, ‘Why do you think that is?’ And they said, “It’s so much more difficult for men to be able to tell someone that he needs them, to tell them that they love him or that they’re accepted. Or that they’re just fine just the way they are.”

Director Jonathan Demme’s 2008 drama “Rachel Getting Married” starring Anne Hathaway screened two days earlier, on Thursday. The film follows the character of Kym, released from drug rehab so she can attend the wedding of her older sister, played by Rosemarie DeWitt.

Kym finds herself in a tug of war with her family, and screenwriter Jenny Lumet delves into the complicated nature of families. In one sequence, a dishwasher-organizing competition sprouts out of lighthearted fun between Kym’s father, played by Bill Irwin, and Rachel’s fiance, played by Tunde Adebimpe. The scene takes a sudden, stark, poignant turn that sucked all the air out of the room on screen – and out of the Virginia Theatre auditorium.

Another Thursday screening, Jean Epstein’s 1923 French silent film “The Faithful Heart,” made my list of Ebertfest favorites, as well as one of my favorite movie-watching experiences, period. The screening featured a live musical performance of the Alloy Orchestra. As someone who doesn’t often run into the opportunity to watch silent films, I found my jaw dropping thanks to the stunningly restored visuals combined with the seamless music performed live. The Alloy Orchestra included instruments like junk percussion, accordion, clarinet and synths.

The intense close-ups revealed the deathly glisten of the character’s eyes and the detailed texture of their skin. The cinematography was shockingly detailed, even psychedelic with the use of quick cuts, kaleidoscopic and distorted camera shots. The ambiguous ending to this melodramatic love story added a layer of depth that was unexpected and thought-provoking.

Ebertfest recognizes a variety of films differing in genre, time period and representation. I hope in years to come, the festival’s breadth becomes more clearly reflected in who attends the festival. More community members and students of different ages and backgrounds should take the chance to attend.

As a College of Media Roger Ebert Fellow, and first-year college student, it’s incredibly humbling to attend a film festival whose co-founder, Chaz Ebert, provided me this opportunity. To be surrounded by people who do so much to champion filmmaking makes for a celebration of the movies, and stories, we all share.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2GiLLlf

[thegloober]

Dear wedding vendors: photographers don’t owe you images

On episode 65 of The Secret Life of Weddings Podcast (listen on iTunes, Spotify) we chat about a major hot topic amongst wedding photographers these days. We get a little heated, and felt it was important enough to write here as well. There is something happening making wedding photographers very angry. Most photographers are afraid to say anything because we never want to be seen as difficult or egotistical, but it has become such an issue that private Facebook groups of photographers are exploding with frustrations. We’ve all had enough. It’s with tired hearts and 10 years of giving away our work for free that we say this to you:

Dear wedding planners, florists, venues, DJs, limo companies, make-up artists, hair stylists, dress shops, decor designers, cake artists, officiants, musicians, etc. Here is the hard truth:

WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS DO NOT OWE YOU IMAGES.

Just stop #WeddingVendorEntitlement

… this hashtag was inspired by an on-going issue and we as members of the wedding photography community have decided finally speak out.

The sense of entitlement that has been expressed across the wedding scene is in a word – appalling. The attitude of wedding vendors has spiralled out of control and images are too often demanded instead of respectfully requested. Is money offered for the photographer’s time spent preparing and sending these images? No. Is a photo credit offered or given? Maybe. Will that photo credit feed our families? Absolutely not. What are the odds we will receive a new wedding client referral from said vendor? In spite of the best intentions – extremely low.

Therefore we are standing up to join the ranks of the frustrated wedding photographers in hopes that this is not only seen but heard … and heard LOUD!

Long gone are the days of “please”, “thank you” and any respect or any kind gesture to obtain images for use, whether it be a florist, DJ, venue, planner, etc. Instead of “When you have time, may I please use some of your images in my portfolio? I will be sure to link back to your website & provide photo credit” we hear “So how do I get these photos?” Even more rare is an offer of payment to use our work for their own company’s advertising.

A personal anecdote for you from our lives: A popular Toronto wedding venue once approached Lisa asking for a photograph to print in a full page Wedluxe advertisement. She was young but knew at the very least she should receive printed credit on the image and some money, and if the company wanted to remove the credit entirely, she should be paid more. This venue makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in revenue and was easily paying thousands of dollars for this upcoming print ad that repeats monthly in Wedluxe. Lisa quoted usage of her image (dependent on the client’s sign-off first) at $250 with print credit and $500 without the credit. The venue said they had been “burned” by a photographer in the past and therefore were hesitant to offer any sort of credit or payment. She never heard from them again and they are still running the same print ad as years ago. That about summarizes the amount of respect photographers get, even from very financially massive businesses.

“We don’t pay for image usage, that’s not how this works.”

Often these vendors even assume they can pay thousands of dollars for print ads and simply “get the high resolution file” they “need” and don’t expect to pay us for our intellectual property, OR get the sign off from the client who paid them for their work in the first place! Our mutual client may not even be cool with us sending you these photos they paid for of their private event to promote YOUR business. Photographers cover this privately with the client in our contracts, but that photo release doesn’t extend to other vendors.

If it takes so much time then ask for payment, you say? Guess what? We have.

Way too often photographers have heard the reply “We don’t pay for image usage, that’s not how this works.” This is now what we are faced with when we “mistakenly” think we should be financially compensated for our work. Too often photographers spend the time to give other wedding professionals free images and receive nothing in return. No new client referrals. No money. Shockingly, no written credit (if we’re lucky maybe we can get a TAG on Instagram that nobody will SEE unless they tap the photo!) It’s just awful and we are sick of it.

If you’re a wedding vendor reading this – be honest with yourself. Have you treated a photographer with respect and kindness throughout the whole pre-during-post wedding process? Or did you only come up to me at the end of the reception, after not saying a word to me all day, and ask me for free promotional content for your business?

Wedding photographers have been left wondering when courtesy for fellow vendors went completely out the window. When did sharing our work go from a kind favour between wedding vendor friends (or “friendors” as we often call each other) in exchange for promised photo credits (despite a 99% chance of no new business for us) – to instead becoming a default expectation? Taking advantage of photographers’ work has become a wedding industry standard and it’s not okay.

Business gurus often say “If you don’t value yourself and your work, how can you expect others to?” Yet when we DO value ourselves and say we are uncomfortable with the expectation of free images (of our clients’ likenesses no less) we are met with confused faces and snarky remarks about how the industry does not run this way and about how this photographer and that photographer “always sends us photos.” It’s time to recognize that the industry has changed for the worse. There is no longer kindness and courtesy – there is only expectation of free photography for your business. That arrangement is simply unfair to hardworking photographers. We – along with our work – becomes devalued by the sharing of images with fellow vendors without any compensation for our time or talent.

If you’re a vendor who is guilty of only befriending the photographer when it’s time to ‘get images’ – perhaps we can be seen as a valuable part of the industry instead of your personal portfolio builder. Photographers are there for the client. We are there to build OUR portfolios. We are not there to build your brand and get you more business and therefore money in your pocket.

So, let’s put it this way:

Would you would be willing to work 25+ hours per year for free?

No? Because this is what you’re asking us to do every time you as how you can “get the images” for your own advertising. You are literally making money off our work. Not only that, it actually takes a lot more time than you probably realize to edit and make galleries for vendors so they can have free images for their portfolio, advertising & social media posts. Yet we are regularly expected to do this for about 3-6 separate vendors, every single wedding, every year, no questions asked. It takes so much time to select photos, edit, re-size, watermark and publish these galleries for every vendor, not to mention throwing in free commercial usage.

We get it – you didn’t mean to be rude, right?

You just figured since the work is already done, why can’t you just have copies of the images, right? Well it’s not that simple, as outlined above. It’s also simply not fair.

So instead, how can we actively work to change the industry’s attitude toward images for portfolio usage?

It comes down to The Golden Rule: Treat others how you want to be treated. It’s kindergarten, people. If you begin to treat photographers as people and friends and not simply free content machines, you might be pleasantly surprised at what we will gladly share with the sweetheart friendors in our lives. We won’t just do that – we will also be happy to cross-tag you in OUR social media posts because guess what? Photographers are almost always booked long before florists, dress shops, officiants, videographers, DJs, wedding planners & more. If your photographer has a follower who sees your business mentioned, there’s an even higher chance you’ll get business from that. So there’s simply more value in being kind, offering compensation to photographers when reaching out, and maintaining a valuable friendship with us. It’s so much better than ignoring us all day and then cornering us and your first words in my tired face after a full wedding day are basically “so how can I get something from you for free?’

… and to those vendors who are not the majority, we thank you.

We love those vendors who befriend us in a real way and help us to produce the best work we can on the wedding day. You were the one to respectfully ask if it would be possible to please have a quote on licensing the use of our images for your portfolio after they were delivered to the client. WE LOVE YOU. And ironically many photographers will probably end up sharing their images with fellow small business owners in exchange for credit. This isn’t wrong, but it’s a PERSONAL business decision of the photographer, and NOT INDUSTRY STANDARD, because to be honest, that’s complete bullshit.

Want to help be an active participant in ending #WeddingVendorEntitlement?

Step 1. Offer to pay to use our images. It immediately shows the photographer that you respect our work and our time.

Step 2. Ensure our mutual client is comfortable with your intended usage. Some people may not want their images made public. This can often be the case with sensitive professions such as law enforcement.

Step 3. Never ask our mutual client for the files. Going around the photographer to obtain photographs to use is wrong – and illegal! We own the copyright to our images, not the client. You are not allowed to use our images without our express permission.

If a photographer decides share their images with you, here are some thoughtful ways to say thank you:

A heartfelt note of thanks. Do you know how often we have prepared and delivered free images, as requested, to vendors and they NEVER EVEN REPLY?

Send a thank you card with a gift card or drop off a bottle of wine. Show your appreciation in some way.

Offer compensation when you ask for our photographs. You could offer money or even an offer of a floral arrangement from a decor company, or help with a future event from a wedding planner. There are so many ways to trade a skill. What would you like to trade us for our expertise, time and finished photographs?

Actively send us referrals & add us to your preferred vendors list! This is huge! It’s an easy way to show photographers you appreciate and respect us and hope to repay us with actual new business. Unless you’re a venue or a wedding planner, unfortunately having us on a referral list isn’t super effective in actually generating new business for wedding photographers because we are usually booked very early in the wedding planning process, but we appreciate the effort! It shows us respect and that you want to have an on-going vendor friendship with us.

Hire the photographer for your own personal upcoming event / family portrait / baby portraits.

To photographers – if you are actively receiving new business from a vendor, then great. Keep doing what works for you. This blog post is for those of us longtime photographers who aren’t having this result. This post is also for any new wedding photographers who are looking to break into the industry. This is your reminder to value your work and above all, value your time. Time is priceless so be careful who you work for and what you’re actually getting in exchange for that time and effort. Receiving Instagram tags isn’t worth time you could be building your portfolio or spending time with your family.

Don’t forget – photo credits don’t pay the bills.

About the Authors

Lisa Mark and Rebecca Lozer are wedding photographers and co-hosts of Secret Life of Weddings podcast. Check out more of their work on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and their YouTube channel.

If you’d like to hear more on this topic, make sure to listen to Lisa and Rebecca’s podcast, episode 65 here. This article was also published here and shared with permission.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/dear-wedding-vendors-photographers-dont-owe-you-images/

[gaiatheorist]

Plastic straws, and platitudes.

I should be breathing an enormous sigh of relief, having the tribunal panel’s decision that I qualify for a three year period of having an ‘official’ disability on paper. It’s me, though, I’m caught up in a turmoil-Tsunami about what could go wrong next. Not the physical fact that my eyes have been consistently ‘bad’ for four days now, and the third aneurysm is sitting in the part of my brain that controls the blood supply to my retinas, that’s too obvious. I’ll have a scan in September, hopefully I won’t go completely and permanently blind before that. What I’m over-processing is the fact that DWP can still attempt to block or delay the legal overturn of their original ‘decision’, that I’m not-disabled-enough to qualify for support.

DWP’s ‘decision’ wasn’t really a decision at all, it was a copy-pasted nightmare of jumbled-assumptions, in the hope that I’d go “Oh, well, that’s that, I’d better just get on with it on my own.” Like I did the first time, I’ve found my original eloquent-articulate self-doubt post on one of the forums I used at the time of the first application, and, ‘reading for content’, I was a plastic straw person at that point. Not to be confused with a ‘strawman’, like, say “People faking disability to claim benefits.” 

The plastic straw people have been out in force since the government had the bright idea of ‘banning’ single-use plastic straws, in a vain attempt to be seen to be doing something positive, in amongst all the negative, and all the nothing they’re currently doing. Straw-splainers are very fond of the phrase “Can’t you just...?”, because ‘just’ is a very tiny word to them; I can’t ‘just’ do a lot of things, ‘just’ is not a small consideration for me. Plastic straws are not an issue for me, but there’s another wave of insidious not-disabled-enough rhetoric bubbling up amongst sections of the non-disabled public, just what I don’t need after horrible years and a few very stressful months of evidencing that I am disabled-enough. 

Before the brain haemorrhage, I still had a plethora of medical issues, I used to joke that I did my Christmas shopping on the NHS direct website, but I could mostly ‘pass’ for whatever-normal-is. I could ‘just’ say “Can I move seats, I can’t sit in this light?” or “Will you help me with this, please? My left hand has reduced function.” I could ‘just’ keep my office blinds closed to reduce the risk of losing working hours to photo-sensitive hemiplegic migraine, and patiently re-close them every time some other person came in and trilled “Oooh, I don’t know how you see anything in here!” I could ‘just’ wear extra layers of clothing, to ease the impacts of the Raynaud’s and Arthritis, I could ‘just’ say “No, thank you.” to foods that I knew would flare my stomach issues up. I could ‘just’ keep going through the sporadic stretches of poor mental health. That perseverance and pragmatism is hard-wired, even when I really, REALLY want to give up, I don’t, which has put me in mind of Venus DeMileage’s utterly beautiful book ‘The Avenue of Regrettable Farewells: A Tale Untold In The Telling’, but I mustn’t get sidetracked. I was a plastic straw person. I ‘could’ function, despite my veritable telephone-directory of underlying ailments, so I couldn’t see why other people couldn’t. (Another side-rabbit-hole I mustn’t go down is how consistent with Autism some of my beliefs and behaviours are.)

I know what the plastic straw people are doing, because, to a lesser degree, I used to be one of them. Some of them ‘see no ships’ from where they are, and some of them think that a stiff upper lip is a panacea. Some of them, however, are insensitively deluded that everyone has the same level of functionality that they do. The dismissive “Can’t you just...?” crew, lacking in the empathetic department. *I* can do all manner of things that ‘most’ people can’t, but, after the initial tut-and-head-shake that Brenda from accounts can’t un-jam the printer, or Doris can’t lift a five-litre water bottle, or Bob doesn’t know how to gut a fish, I don’t spend hours me-splaining, I ask if they want help. (Part of my undoing was seeing ‘help’ as a four-letter-word, most people learned to be cagey-cautious around offering to do things ‘for’ me. That tenacity was do-able before the brain injuries, less-so afterwards, but the pattern was embedded.) 

What I’m seeing creeping through my internet window on the world is an increase in the not-disabled-enough nonsense, and I know that some of ‘us’, with less-visible disabilities are catching the sharp side of it. Personally, I’ve modified most of my behaviours and activities to ensure that my disability has as little impact on others as possible. I just don’t like inconveniencing people, so anything I ‘need’ to do is done early in the day, while I’m more lucid, and less fatigued. The dread-of-being-caught creeps in here, because I ‘can’ sometimes walk to Tesco, and manage a basket around the shop without incident. Only ever during the early part of the day, and certainly not every week. Process that, plastic straw people, sometimes I’m not physically capable of ‘popping into Tesco for milk.’ (There’s a 25-page document I didn’t present at my tribunal, detailing all the things I could remember having difficulties with, and how I adapted to avoid risk to self or others, I just chose ‘popping to the supermarket for milk’ as an ‘everyday’ example.) Yes, Janet, you DID see me in Tesco three weeks last Tuesday, and no, that doesn’t mean I’m fully functional, and a benefit fraudster. 

In the same way as I ‘can’ do what I need to to survive, thousands, if not millions of other people in the UK are adapting to their limitations, at variable levels of cost to themselves. I don’t drive, so I haven’t been tutted at for parking in a disabled bay, and I consciously try to avoid the need to use public toilets, so I don’t have an argument with any randoms that “That toilet is for disabled people.” I don’t need to use plastic straws to drink, so I haven’t had to justify to anyone why their ‘just’ alternative wouldn’t be viable. ‘Had to’ is my issue, I don’t ‘have to’ explain myself to anyone, BUT I deliberately go out of my way to avoid situations where people might think they were owed justification of why I appear to have stopped to tie the laces on slip-on shoes. (It’s vertigo, I’d had instances of it before the aneurysm ruptured, it’s always there now, at a background level, sometimes it peaks, and I feel like I’m going to fall over, ‘tying my shoes’ puts me closer to the ground when I do actually wobble, and I’ll always make every effort to ‘get out of the way’ when I do squat down.) 

The platitudes. Gods save me from the in-laws, who are due to pick up my son this afternoon. To their minds, I’m ‘better’, in part because I’ve minimised my difficulties for so long, and in part because I avoid them like the plague. They don’t see me shambling about the place half-blind, because I deliberately sit down when they arrive. (In my alcove ‘office’, so they can’t try to touch me.) They don’t believe in mental illness, and they’re ancient, so they know a LOT of people with disabilities and health conditions that they class as ‘worse’ than the level of superficial functionality they see in me. I didn’t have to have speech therapy, like uncle Roger did after his stroke. I don’t have visible scars from cancer surgery like two of my ex brothers-in-law. I don’t have a blue badge in my car. I don’t answer the door to them in food-stained pyjamas, so I’m “Looking well!”

They, and other older people, LOVE to talk about other people’s infirmities, but, with my adaptations that don’t include plastic straws, I appear functional for the narrow windows they see me in, so it’s platitudes-ahoy. “It could have been worse, lass.” “You’re lucky, lass.” I have to be very cautious with that one, because the father-in-law’s first wife died as a result of a brain haemorrhage. That cagey-caution led to one of my dodgy coping strategies, the practice of telling people I was ‘fine’ when they asked, because I simply couldn’t tolerate the platitudes that would pour out of them if I said anything else. Everybody seemed to have a next-door-neighbour’s distant cousin three-times-removed who’d had brain surgery, or a stroke, and were ‘so brave’ about it, putting the increasingly-automatic adaptations I was making just to exist into perspective. I rarely mention in ‘real life’ that I have a constant background headache, that most of the time I feel as if the room is spinning around me, or that I have roaming blind-spots that frequently join up, leaving me ‘legally blind.’ There’s a massive catalogue of constant and fluctuating symptoms that come with my damaged brain that I just don’t mention, because the emotional/psychological side of the brain injuries have reduced my capacity to deal with platitudes. 

Yes, it could have been worse, and yes, it’s lovely that your next door neighbour’s sister-uncle had a stroke, and learned to ride a unicycle afterwards, but it’s not particularly relevant to me, is it? It’s not even just lay-people and random acquaintances, it’s medical-people, too, I wanted to bite my counsellor’s nose off every time he said “Some people wouldn’t have been resilient enough to come through that!”, and every time my (lovely) GP starts one of his rambling “Some people...” anecdotes, it’s really hard not to look at my watch. Even the neuro-psychologist did it, and I’m sure she wasn’t prepared for my ‘Good enough ISN’T enough’ response.

I know it’s social conditioning, that, faced with an unpalatable truth, the vast majority of people will default to ‘look on the bright side’ and ‘it could have been worse’ responses, before starting with the unsolicited advice. For me, no amount of mindfulness, or yoga, or fish-oil, or ANYTHING is going to undo the fact that I have brain damage. My son ‘gets it’, and will occasionally joke “Have you tried just NOT having brain damage?” when he catches me doing something more-odd-than-usual. I am relatively functional for a smaller part of the day than a fully-able person, and I’m only able to sustain that window of functionality through masses of exhausting adaptations. Have I tried not-adapting, to extend my lucid window? No, I haven’t, because the adaptations are what keep me more-safe. Without always knowing where the next thing I can grab, or lean on is, I fall over a lot. Without having sufficient notice to plan any journey, my anxieties about the potential difficulties I could have tip me into a what-if loop that makes me physically ill. There are multiple tedious adaptations to every aspect of my life now, and plastic straw people don’t see what I can’t do. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this any more, I’m in limbo with the disability benefit and the unemployment benefit, and I’m scheduled to meet my work-coach AND be re-assessed by the mental health team next week. The work-coach will give me ‘chin up’ platitudes, and the mental health team will be baffled that I know what I’m doing wrong, but don’t seem able to stop it. What I’m doing wrong is trying to survive as a disabled person in a very able-focused world. The disability and unemployment processes in the UK are hideous, skewed-snapshots of whether I can hold a pen and such, rather than whether I’d be able to hold a pen all day without sticking it up my nose when the cognitive fatigue kicks in. The plastic straws that the government want to ‘take’ are the visible tip of the iceberg, the underlying part being the insidious restructure of support and benefit systems, that the people who don’t need plastic straws aren’t aware of. They’re aware of the bluff and bluster about ‘making work pay’, and ‘more rigorous testing to reduce fraud’, and, of course, they’ve all seen the newspaper reports and TV programmes about benefit cheats. The disabled aren’t just disadvantaged, we’re virtually demonized, then damned if we do/don’t. This ignorant backlash against something as seemingly innocuous as plastic straws is a ripple in a stream that was already turbulent, it’s spreading, while-ever fully able people feel they’re entitled to judge, question, and make assumption about the abilities of people with disabilities.   

To some people, it’s ‘just’ a plastic straw, and, for some of those people a platitude about their great-uncle Bulgaria who lost both legs, and then crawled a marathon is meant to either motivate or shame the disabled person who still has both legs. We’re not looking at life from the same angle, it’s not fair to assume that because ‘you’ can perform action-x, everyone can, that’s how children think, not adults. (With the exception of adults with disabilities consistent with Autism...) It’s not ‘just’ a straw, for some people this guilty-until-proven-innocent society we’re becoming will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.    

[dancewithmeplano]

Dance to the Music of Time

There’s been a lot going on. Leaving the Bad Plus is the largest shift, but various other kind of career and conceptual themes also have been undergoing transformation. I also just turned 45, ” which could be believed midpoint of this journey.

It really all does seem curved. Themes re-occur. The last month nearly felt like a trip of yesteryear.

—

Sarah and I visited Daniel Pinkwater. There is a meme inquiring, “What four pictures are you?” I really don’t have four pictures, but I really do have the collected works of Daniel Pinkwater. Alan Mendelsohn, Boy From Mars; The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death; Lizard Music — these 3 novels “are me”

Sarah stated, let’s give Pinkwater a monster. That monster charge me a small fortune in Tokyo, but she had been right. It had been the great present, a perfect trade.

On the drive we listened to Pinkwater music books in the car. Amazing! I only learned that Mr. Pinkwater himself reads his own books and you can purchase them on iTunes. They are now an essential part of my travel catalog.

—

Rufus Reid turned in the Pat Zimmerli Clockworks concert at Merkin Hall. Rufus is a consecrated jazz bassist, but for me he had been also an important teacher. One afternoon at Banff in 1990, students and faculty were sitting around the coffee shop and Miles Davis’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” came on as background music. Rufus Reid staged together with Coltrane’s solo note for note. I had been impressed and impressed. To understand to perform, was I really going to have to sing Coltrane solos also? That seemed hard — too difficult! It took me decades and some further strict instruction from Lee Konitz, however, in the long run I decided that Reid was perfect. I can not sing any Coltrane yet, but I can sing a lot of Lester Young and Charlie Parker.

Photo by Vinnie Sperrazza

Seeing Reid brought back that memory and from this time next year I guarantee to have the ability to sing Coltrane’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “All of You” from ‘Round About Midnight.

—

I added ” You” to the heap because Billy Hart told me:

The first time I fell in love with John Coltrane was that his solo on ” You” from Miles’ ‘Round Midnight. I have talked to Gary Bartz about this, and he felt exactly the same way–which this solo made us Coltrane fans, forever.

Billy Hart is my most important teacher and we have worked together for over twenty decades. However, I hadn’t ever played with Buster Williams and Billy Hart collectively, despite Buster and Billy being universally considered one of the wonderful bass/drum mixes.

It finally occurred on Tuesday, quartet together with Billy Harper. Everybody agreed that it was incredible to listen to the beat played with that bassist with that drummer.

Billy Hart, Lenny White, Buster Williams

Lenny White was there. He plays with Buster all the time — they have become a traditional contemporary rhythm section — but I think he wished to find a flavor of that other thing Mchezaji has with Jabali. In the dressing room I had been as silent as possible while I listened to them tell stories.

Billy Hart talked about studying Afro Cuban songs from Lenny White! They were playing with Pharoah Sanders. Neither was playing with drum group, they were on cowbells and claves. Afterwards Billy whined to Lenny about how Lenny appeared so much better and Lenny said that he was actually checking out authentic Afro Cuban songs. This anecdote describes in a flash Lenny White was able to walk into and power a lot of the best fusion recordings: The deep background for its “new” method of dealing with the eighth circa 1970 was African American procedures from tens of thousands of years back. Of course.

—

Patrick Zimmerli’s Clockworks  together with Chris Tordini, John Hollenbeck, and me personally is out, and so is — finally — Shores Against Silence, the recording with Kevin Hays, Larry Grenadier, and Tom Rainey from 1991. I had been at that recording session, and discovered “The Paw” for the very first time in the studio. Pat provides me a particular mention in the liner notes to Shores Against Silence, which I think is only fair, as I’ve been telling people that this is an amazing album since…well I figure since 1991.

Vinnie Sperrazza is getting to be a major new collaborator. At the Clockworks position that he appeared in the score and stated, “I can hear Pat had been an effect on you” Without a doubt — Pat will always be a monument in my own entire life, which is elaborated further in our interview.

Vinnie took the photograph of me and Rufus Reid collectively afterwards telling me of a period he played with James Williams and Rufus Reid in Knickerbocker’s. Yeah, Vinnie’s my type of cat, with a swinging cymbal beat that undulates inside the music. We’re working collectively in Pepperland, the extravagant revue created by Mark Morris for the Mark Morris Dance Group.

—

It is just wonderful to be back together with Mark Morris back again. For five years that I had been his musical manager. I watched the dance shows every night, then following the series went to Mark’s hotel room and listened to Handel and Partch. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson would attend rehearsal; I played with Schumann with Yo-Yo Ma. It had been around me to attract conductors in line about tempi and singers around diction.

Pepperland is the Beatles as viewed though the prism of classical music and it really works. It’s been really amazing to expose Vinnie and other buddies Jacob Garchik, Sam Newsome, and Rob Schwimmer to the magic of Morris. In addition, it is just incredible to leave the Bad Plus and also be instantly involved in another hit project.

—

Concerto to Scale reflects Morris, Zimmerli, Jabali, and everything else that I love. It surely reflects Pinkwater. Program notes:

My very first piece for orchestra is blatantly modest in measurement, or “to scale” While composing, I re-read a number of my favourite books from when I was a young adult and tried to catch that kind of joyful emotion. The work is devoted to John Bloomfield.

Allegro. Sonata form in C major with tons of scales. My left hand and the bass drum soloist are the rhythm section offering syncopations in conversation with the orchestra’s standard chain material.

Andante. A 19th-centutry nocturne air meets modern polyrhythms. That is a stunning elaboration of a piece originally written for Mark Turner called “We Come In the Future.”

Rondo. The rate mark is, “Misfit Rag.” Ragtime is how American composers traditionally insert a touch of jazz on the concert stage, and who am I to disagree? The orchestra gets a chance to improvise along with the pianist and percussionist enjoy a double cadenza.

I didn’t really have to re-read Pinkwater for the Concerto — I have these publications memorized — but that I did examine The Toothpaste Millionaire from Jean Merrill (1972) and Alvin’s Secret Code by Clifford B. Hicks (1963). These two are undisputed classics and remain in print. Interestingly, both will also be on race relations, a simple fact I had completely forgotten. They are white writers referring to the midwest in the 1960s, therefore perhaps not every authorial decision will beyond muster now, but they had been in there, trying to swing. They had been about my two favourite novels when I was ten or eleven. I had good taste!

The review by Seth Colter Walls was satisfying (Amanda Ameer said I look just like  Schroeder in the picture, which is ideal) and I have been astonished just how much I enjoy listening to the cassette.

(if you would like to listen to the rough mix of this premiere or examine the score, sign up for Floyd Camembert Reports.)

Between Pepperland and the Concerto, it’s beginning to feel as though my future will involve extended composition.

—

Composition might be part of this future, but additionally, I will always be a jazz pianist who enjoys to play with clubs. Starting tomorrow I am on an extensive UK tour together with Martin Speake.

20/4 Sheffield Jazz Crookes Social Club http://www.sheffieldjazz.org.uk/ 21/4 Brighton Verdict https://verdictjazz.co.uk/ 22/4 Colchester Arts Centre https://www.colchesterartscentre.com/ 23 Cheltenham Jazz http://www.cheltenhamjazz.co.uk/ 24/4 London Pizza Express https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com/venues/soho-jazz-club 25/4London Pizza Express https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com/venues/soho-jazz-club 26/4 St George’s Bristol https://www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk/ 27/4 Reading Progress Theatre http://www.jazzinreading.com/ 29/4 Cinnamon Club Manchester http://www.thecinnamonclub.net/ 1/5 Hastings http://jazzhastings.co.uk/ 3/5 Cambridge https://www.cambridgejazz.org/index.php?name=home 4/5 Poole Lighthouse https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk/

Go to Martin’s FB site to get more.

Martin and I go back to Banff in 1990. It was a hell of a lineup there: Faculty included Rufus Reid, Marvin Smitty Smith, Stanley Cowell, Kevin Eubanks, Kenny Wheeler. Abraham Adzenyah taught dance from Ghana — I suppose the very first time I danced with a woman was in that course. (Currently this post is becoming overly personal.) Steve Coleman was the artistic manager.

The students were also amazing. Tony Malaby, Seamus Blake, Ralph Alessi, George Colligan, John Stetch, Andy Milne — Jeez, I know I am forgetting some others that are now renowned…

Particularly important to my artistic growth were Benoît Delbecq and Steve Argüelles, that went on for a real force collectively and big influence. With Noël Akchoté they turned into The Recyclers and released Rhymes in 1994. You want to understand something that I checked out? Rhymes was some thing that I checked out, especially the monitor “Suguxhama” from  Argüelles and Django Bates.

(Later, motivated by David King and Craig Taborn, I’d listen to all the fantabulous Django Bates records together with Martin France on drums. It turns out that France is going to be on several gigs of this Martin Speake tour. Wow! I’m going to have to play with Martin France for the very first time.)

At Banff 2 duo connections had notable resonance. The fantastic Jill Seifers (a wonderful vocalist who ended up dying far too young) and that I did a set in the little Banff club which I listened to repeatedly. Along with Martin Speake and that I created a recording which was enormous fun, he is splendid lyrical participant that sees it from all the angles.

At the Vortex gig earlier this year, Martin told the audience that after we met with Banff, I delivered him (by post from Menomonie, Wisconsin to London, England) a tape of Ornette Coleman’s then-scarce Science Fiction accompanied by a note on Doctor Who stationery. Yes It really does all seem curved. Themes re-occur. I openly admit I can’t wait to get Jodie Whittaker.

—

Writer with George Colligan.

Writer with Benoît Delbecq.

Writer with Django Bates.

Stanley Cowell plays “Carolina Shout” in my James P. Johnson event.

The post <p>Dance to the Music of Time</p> appeared first on dance withme plano.

from dance withme plano http://www.dancewithmeplano.com/dance-to-the-music-of-time/

[untilthefoglifts-blog]

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' Creators Talk Long-Term Plan, Amazon Turnover and More 'Gilmore Girls'

Almost a year after the launch of Netflix's Gilmore Girls revival, series creators-writers-directors-producers Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino are back with a new original series. Like Gilmore (and the beloved Bunheads), the husband-and-wife team have again crafted a light, quick-witted hourlong show centered on a fast-talking, whip-smart female protagonist. However, that's where the comparisons end.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, premiering Nov. 29 on Amazon, is set in 1958 in New York City, a few hundred miles from the confines of Stars Hollow. The series centers on Miriam "Midge" Maisel (House of Cards' Rachel Brosnahan), a married mother of two whose life is turned upside down when her husband leaves her and she suddenly discovers a hidden talent for stand-up comedy. As she navigates her suddenly tumultuous personal life, Midge also navigates her way through the stand-up comedy world, a path that will ultimately take her to Johnny Carson's couch.

Maisel marks just the beginning of the Palladinos' relationship with Amazon. The series earned a rare two-season pickup in April and the duo signed an overall deal there in September. The latter comes in the midst of major turnover at Amazon, which saw top-level execs, including studio chief Roy Price and head of comedy and drama Joe Lewis, exit under less-than-ideal circumstances as the studio sets its sights on finding the next Game of Thrones.

Ahead of the series premiere, THR spoke with the braintrusts behind Maisel about going back in time, their experience thus far at Amazon, the "tough" process to find their lead and, of course, the prospect of more Gilmore Girls.

How did the idea for the show come about?

Amy Sherman-Palladino: My father was a stand-up comic so I grew up with a lot of comics sitting around our backyard eating deli and talking about the Catskills and talking about Greenwich Village and touring and sharing anecdotes and trying to make each other laugh. So that premise just stuck in my weird DNA.

Dan Palladino: And all those guys of her father's age were all starting out in the late '50s.

Sherman-Palladino: I think it scared me perhaps in an advantageous way. When I was talking to Amazon about doing something with them, I thought that would be a good venue to do on Amazon: a woman in the late '50s who gets sucked into that world and suddenly finds a voice and a talent and ambition that she had never known was there. And we could shoot it in New York so I could live in New York and wake up in New York and live in New York and work in New York.

This is your first period project. Most of the other things you've worked on are set in the present so what were the biggest challenges that came with that?

Palladino: It seemed like the perfect time to place her because there was a real sea change coming in comedy with Lenny Bruce and people like that that were not telling pre-written stand-up jokes. They were sometimes discussing things just off the tops of their heads.

Sherman-Palladino: A lot of stream of consciousness.

Palladino: Or they were talking about current events, which was edgier at the time. Those guys, Lenny Bruce especially, led to George Carlin and Joan Rivers and they led to Sarah Silverman and Jerry Seinfeld and all of that crew so it just seemed like an interesting time for her to dive in. She doesn't look like a woman who would go into comedy. We explore how people react to how she looks and her pursuing comedy at that time in other episodes. It just felt like the perfect year to start following a woman just boldly going into this really, really impossible business.

Sherman-Palladino: Plus, we wanted to do something with some scope. We wanted to do something that had a lot of visual places to explore and 1958 New York, especially re-creating that in modern New York, is both tragically impossible and hard, and very rewarding and exciting. We have this unbelievable crew of people working with us who have made it possible so it just felt like let's go for something that has a great visual theme to it also.

What drew you to Amazon? How did those conversations begin about working with them on something?

Sherman-Palladino: We had a really great relationship with Netflix on the Gilmore movies and we were pretty decided at that moment that the streaming world was our new permanent home forever if we ever worked again. Just because they were people that spoke our language. I sat down with [Amazon Studios head of current hour] Marc Resteghini, and he just was a guy who listened and understood and they felt like a company that was looking to do different stories. When I first was at Warner Bros. when dinosaurs were on the Earth and pitched Gilmore, The WB [the network that evolved into The CW] prided themselves as being the network that encouraged voices because they had Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams. Sitting with the Amazon guys felt like even a broader version of that. They want those different experiences and those different characters and those different voices out there and they felt like people that would not be terrified of us and find us annoying problem children, but actually find our independent style a little delightful. So far, they are either lying or they actually do find us delightful. Either way, I'll take it. I don't need honesty, I just need to do my thing.

What were the specific points that made streaming so compelling as compared to cable or pay cable or broadcast?

Palladino: The main thing is once you got away from, especially the four-network model and even the cable model, there's just room for a lot of different kinds of characters, a lot of different kinds of voices. We've been in this business a long time. When we started at broadcast networks, you pitch a strong woman character and you see men in the room get very nervous about a strong woman character because often they worry that if the woman is strong, she's not going to be likable. Now you pitch a Midge Maisel, there's no nervousness, there's no question about that. That's actually a pretty big sea change. It's fantastic that that's happened. That's a result of having so many outlets that there's a less uniform business model sort of guiding everybody in their choices. Because that's how you end up with the same cop show, the same medical show over and over and over and over again.

Sherman-Palladino: The other thing about Amazon and Netflix and streaming services is because they want everybody there, they want everybody at the table, they are going to be open to a lot more. You go to some places and they say, "This is what we do. We are this so it has to fit it into our tiny little hole." There is no tiny little hole at Amazon or Netflix, the sky's the limit. That's really important when you're people like us who have very strong opinions about your work and what you want to do and aren't interested in having to explain why you made those music choices. There's a trust level in terms of who you are and your body of work that you don't get at a network. They simply don't have the trust that you're not going to completely screw 'em over and waste their money. For some reason, there's no trust. It doesn't matter who you are or what your background is. You're all the same, you're all failures until you've proved differently as far as they're concerned.

Amazon had so much trust in you they gave the show a rare two-season pickup. How did that impact you in terms of writing and planning for the show's long-term future?

Palladino: It really helped us because we could tell specific crew because we were trying to get the best crew available.

Sherman-Palladino: You got a job next year, kid!

Palladino: It didn't affect the longer-term plan because if you go into any series, we're big believers that you should be able to see years down the line and a lot of writers actually don't do that. They come up with thoughts and they actually don't know what's coming.

Given how the serialized the show is and you actually put in the series descriptor, this show is going to show her from discovering her talent to Johnny Carson's couch, how long do you see the show running?

Sherman-Palladino: Thirty-five years.

Palladino: And when we say Johnny Carson's couch, we mean the couch on set. With everything going on right now, we have to be clear.

Sherman-Palladino: In this day and age, it can mean something else completely.

Palladino: It's the one on his set that's on camera. We're not hiding the fact that this is going to be a journey of success. It's the journey that we think is going to be interesting for the audience.

Sherman-Palladino: But her personal journey is really what the show is about and so it's not really a spoiler to say, "Oh, by the way she's going to be famous or she's going to be successful." This show is really about how her shifting dynamic affects her family, her husband. It's really about all of those personal dynamics.

Do you have a number of seasons plotted out?

Sherman-Palladino: I think we know what our trajectory is for the first four to five seasons. And then I just want to see if I’m still breathing at that point. If I am, then we’ll continue or Dan and his new wife will continue!

So much of this series hinges on the title role. How did you find your Mrs. Maisel? How long was that search and what did that entail?

Sherman-Palladino: It entailed a lot of really good actresses coming in and reading for it, which we are very grateful for. It was tough. It was a lot. It's a tough part. And the toughest thing was we knew we were probably going to have to get an actress who was not a comic, which is what we got, and whose comedy had to be story so that they would have something to latch onto because comedy is its own animal. Great comics, they take years and years and years to hone that persona and those jokes and the timing and we wanted to be able to show the audience in the pilot when Midge goes up on stage that she has the potential of being something really great. We didn't want to just tell the audience that, we wanted them to see it. We needed to find that one-in-a-million girl. Rachel came in and we had been told by our L.A. casting director, Jeanie Bacharach, there's nothing on paper that says that she could remotely do that because she was mostly drama but she just felt like Rachel was special enough that she would be able to be our girl. She came in and she read and we worked with her and we talked and by the time that she left, it was very apparent that she was it. She came, she saw, she conquered.

When you were meeting with these actresses, did you actually have them read jokes or do stand-up to see how they would be in that context?

Sherman-Palladino: We had them do the stand-up scene.

Palladino: Every actress came in and every actress was off-book. They had memorized the scene and they came in to do the stand-up and it was me yelling, like the audience would, back to them and kind of applauding and trying to give them energy. It was really tough.

Sherman-Palladino: It was very grueling for Dan. It was exhausting.

Palladino: It was terrible. You should do a whole separate article on how grueling the process was for me. But really, they just came in and did it and it's a high-wire act to do that in a casting session. Rachel knew how to approach it from a character's point even though she was never dumb enough to try stand-up.

You signed an overall deal with Amazon, but before that there was speculation about more installments of Gilmore Girls given its success on Netflix. Right now, where do you stand on the future of Gilmore Girls and your interest in doing more episodes?

Sherman-Palladino: We've got the Gilmore clause, we've carved it out. (Laughs.) The thing about Gilmore Girls is, it's an amorphous thing. The reason that it happened the first time is because we all went to that Austin [ATX] Festival and we all sat together and there was an open bar and we were all sitting there saying, "It feels good now, let's do it now." I think it would have to be a similar situation. There would have to be an open bar and we would have to have the right story and the right format and it would have to be a time where the girls and us all felt like, 'Yeah, let's dive in again.' There's nothing being planned right now but it's open if the muse strikes.

There's recently been a lot of executive changes at Amazon. Now that you have an overall deal, how concerned are you about going forward at the studio? How are you feeling about Amazon given those recent exits?

Sherman-Palladino: Our guys at Amazon are Marc Resteghini and Ken Lipman, and they're still there. They're good guys. Our people have been very constant.

Palladino: What’s kind of cool about how our brief time so far has been at Amazon is, at this point, we're kind of like independent filmmakers or independent TV makers on our own. They know that the deal is: here's what we're going to try to do. Let us do it to the best of our ability, meaning like don't throw a lot of different things at us. Take it or leave it as is, and let us do our thing and they were amazing on that with Maisel. We gave them what we promised…

Sherman-Palladino: …And they did what they promised.

Palladino: We're still independent producers within the Amazon realm and we're happy there because we need cameras, we need financing, we need an office, we need a home, and they're happily providing all of that. It's been good and we're looking forward to a really great relationship with them. Learn To Ask Questions For Girls.

[connorrenwick]

1 Shop, 2 Owners, 60+ Independent Designers: fruitsuper’s JOIN Shop in Seattle

Seattle-based fruitsuper is no stranger here on Design Milk as we love them for their modern spin on everyday items (which they’ve shown as part of our Milk Stand in the past). The duo behind fruitsuper, Sallyann Corn and Joe Kent, founded their studio in 2008 and nine years later, we’re excited that they’ve opened up their first brick and mortar location. JOIN Shop now lives in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood and carries an incredible selection from the JOIN Design Collective, a community of more than 60 independent designers and makers in Seattle.

Sallyann and Joe juggle multiple hats as they designed, own, operate, curate and manage the JOIN Shop, and that’s in addition to their roles as designers! Their goal with the new store is to showcase American-made objects that celebrate design, craftsmanship, community and the stories behind the objects. The shop carries homewares, stationery, jewelry and gifts – all hand-selected personally by Sallyann and Joe – and will also serve as a venue for trunk shows, launch parties and workshop events. To put it lightly, the duo have their hands full! We got the chance to chat with them about their new role as shop-owners and some of the awesome items they carry in store. Spoiler alert: read on to find out what exciting news they have coming down the line…

Why did you pick this storefront?

In a way, it picked us! South Lake Union is currently one of the fastest transitioning neighborhoods in Seattle. Our building is located in the midst of a rapidly developing residential and commercial area. The building development company knew the rich history of JOIN Design and wanted to fill the ground level spaces with local businesses. They felt a brick and mortar manifestation of our Collective could really add unique character to this burgeoning neighborhood.

Where did you get the name for the store?

The name Join Shop (or Shop Join) is an extension of the nearly 10-year old JOIN Design Collective, a group of like-minded, independent studios that share the same values. We wanted the name to be simple, playful, and immediately understandable.

Has it changed much since it opened? How?

Yes! When we opened the Shop in April we featured nearly 30 independent makers, artists, and designers. Since we’ve opened, we have now grown to proudly feature works from over 60 studios. Having this brick and mortar location continues to expand our creative community and provide a new platform for featuring small and upcoming design studios, something that has always been at the core of JOIN’s mission.

What’s one of the challenges you have with the business?

One of the core values of the collective and our studio has always been working with studios and makers that produce in the USA. As an extension of both, we knew that the shop had to exclusively feature American made wares. As we started to round out the curation of the shop we realized we faced a few tricky challenges in finding the right merchandise that would fit all of our criteria. Objects that are well made, from independent studios, made domestically, well priced, and high design. It was more challenging than we first realized but has proved to be a challenge worth taking on! It’s forced us to find new makers and studios and product collections made domestically.

Another challenge we’ve discovered (in our city and neighborhood especially) is emphasizing to our audience the importance of supporting a brick and mortar retailer. Competing with online shopping has been an interesting but rewarding challenge. It’s forced us to be creative in our storytelling, our events, our outreach and our in store experience. We put heavy emphasis on telling the amazing stories of each of the objects in our collection.

What other stores have you worked in before opening this one?

Over the last decade, we’ve hosted pop-ups in various cities across the country (Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and more). We’ve had amazing opportunities to curate, collaborate, and partner with the SF MOMA store, Poketo, studio e gallery, and Foundry Vineyards to name a few. After so many pop-ups and temporary events over the past decade, it’s amazing to have this permanent platform!

What’s your favorite item in the store right now? 

Currently, we’re really loving some of the items with rich backstories, such as the hand-carved wooden chopsticks from HANK by Henry or the leather Cord Keepers from Mavro/Tawny. Throughout the shop, we try and balance handcrafted without being crafty: quality-made objects that show the hand of the maker that are skillfully made with lasting materials, and most importantly, contain rich anecdotes as beautiful as the objects themselves.

What is this season’s theme?

We’re inspired by the authentic experience of the farmers market and have worked to create a similar in-store experience. Creating a maker-to-object experience, similar to farm-to-table. Connecting customers to the makers, the stories, and the process behind the objects in our shop. Each Saturday since we opened, we’ve featured one of our #JOINshopMakers via Instagram. Sharing their studio origin stories, their process, and what inspires them—giving insights into how and why these objects came to be. We’re so inspired by the stories behind the creative process and the objects we surround ourselves with on a daily basis and love having the opportunity to share them!

Are you carrying any new products and/or undiscovered gems you’re particularly excited about?

Absolutely! One of our favorite features in the shop is our gallery wall. We carry limited-edition and exclusive prints from amazing designers such as Gabriel Stromberg (who worked with Civilization to design our Shop branding), Brian Farrell, Apartment on Belmont and Honey & Bloom. Our selection of prints range in scale, printing method, style and price range. An artist print is such an accessible and introductory way to start bringing art into your home.

What’s been a consistent best seller?

We’ve noticed that the playful, functional, and colorful continue to resonate with our customers. Our biggest sellers have been the fun trio of Anywhere Vases by fruitsuper and stationery from Apartment on Belmont. A set of Anywhere Vases makes a perfect gift (especially when paired with a bouquet from our shop neighbors at Verde & Co) and the illustrations for the cards and prints from Apartment on Belmont are so sweet and lovely they’re irresistible.

Does the store have its own line?

Not technically, but since our store is owned and operated by us, the shop serves as a headquarters that also features our full product line. In addition, the Join Shop features a wide-selection from some of the anchor and founding studios of JOIN such as Grain, Melanie Abrantes, Pigeon Toe, and History+Industry.

Any special events/exhibits/pop ups/collaborations coming up?

Since we opened, we have tried to host at least one event per month. Whether it’s workshops like spoon carving or watercolors, Meet the Makers, trunk shows, product launch parties or collaborations with fellow businesses and makers, the events serve as a wonderful way to further bridge our creative communities. This holiday season we’ll be hosting multiple events connecting our customers and makers with festive cheer!

Do you have anything from the store in your own home? 

Yes! People often ask us how we have found the makers we carry and what our process is for curating the shop. We are extremely fortunate to have so many dear friends that are talented, passionate, who also happen to make beautiful objects! The shop is both a representation of what we have in our own home, and the amazing, creative friends we surround ourselves with.

What’s next for you and your store?

We’ve just had the amazing opportunity to open a second shop location in Walla Walla, WA as an amazing partnership with Foundry Vineyards. Our new location is located within a Winery Tasting Room and Gallery space, the perfect pairing of Art+Wine+Design. We love dreaming big, and are currently scheming on our next potential collaborations, events, and locations.

What’s one lesson you’ve learned since opening your store?

We’ve remembered the amazing feeling of actually connecting with customers. Making real-life connections and hearing feedback and stories has been so refreshing: as owners of our own design studio, being Managing Members of JOIN Design and now store owners, it’s easy to get lost in our daily to-do lists, caught up in digital connections and sometimes forget why we’re working so hard in the first place. Creating and curating objects for people to discover and treasure is the most delightfully satisfying feeling.

If you could give one piece of advice to someone who wants to follow a similar path to yours, what would it be?

Have a strong mission statement that can serve as your anchor. The day-to-day tasks for maintaining and operating a shop can be overwhelming and it’s easy to lose track of your core values along the way. Before we opened, we tasked ourselves to write a manifesto for our shop. Since the first day we opened we’ve got it proudly displayed on one of our walls to remind us on a daily basis why we’re doing what we’re doing: “We are a community of designers, makers, and artists. We believe in creating objects with stories, getting our hands dirty, and taking pride in what we make. Join Shop supports small studios that proudly make their wares in the USA.

Want to visit JOIN Shop? Head to 400 Fairview Ave N, Suite 102 Seattle, WA 98109.

Photos by Krista Welch.

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