#cred to that 70's show

[viscerally-aesthetic]

divider creds; @cafekitsune

‘If I could run across the beach into my own arms, I would.’

Jackie Burkhart | That 70’s Show

[izzzuku]

Minho: Help me with this crossword puzzle, I need a six letter word for “disappointment”

Newt: Thomas

Minho: *gasps* It fits

Thomas: Hey!

[theyreonlynoodlesmike]

as the lord & saviour of tommy slater nation (i owe u my life for all the content u’ve come out with) could i request one of those a-z nsfw memes with his character? even if that’s not really ur thing & u end up not doing it, thank u so much for everything else u’ve done !!!!!

This template was made by @the-coldest-goodbye so all creds to them!! These are just my own personal thoughts about Tommy :))

Tommy Slater NSFW Alphabet

Warnings: 18+, nsfw, discussions of sex, mentioning of golden showers, mention of cnc, mention of humiliation, mention of body worship

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

The type to cuddle for awhile and then help you clean up, maybe the two of you even take a shower together :)

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His arms <3 a lot of his shirt sleeves are cut off so he can show them off. Tommy's a total ass man, definitely the type to try to cop a feel whenever he can

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Likes to cum inside, but he's a good boy that wraps it up (wear protection!!)

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Tommy keeps porno mags under his mattress, but he hides them really well and no one would suspect him

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Total virgin :) but don't worry, he learns quickly

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

He likes missionary (don't hate!!) He likes being able to look into his lovers eyes and kiss them as much as he wants

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Tommy is usually pretty serious about it, but if something funny happens then something funny happens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the type to laugh if you two accidentally bump heads or something

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Has a nice patch of hair because it's the 70s

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Tries to do his absolute best to make it romantic, but without the cheesiness. Is more into just long, slow kisses, slow touches, and eyecontact more than buying rose petals and candles (but, if you want rose petals and candles then he will get them)

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Every morning, if not also at night. Tommy got all the way to being a virgin in his college years, so he needs some relief

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Body Worship - likes to take his time and just kiss wherever he can

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

His bed, your bed, a closet, the outhouse,,,,really, he's not picky

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Anything can get him going, but especially kissing him. If you kiss him for just a little too long, Tommy's thoughts are gonna go elsewhere

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Golden showers, cnc, humiliation- I hc Tommy as pretty vanilla so there's actually a lot he wouldn't do

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

no preference, not super skilled but he's a good listener so he learns quickly

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Starts off slow and loving and probably picks up the pace to help the both of you meet your end

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Tommy will never say no to a quickie

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

He'll experiment if you want to, but he's not one to take risks himself

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Probably won't last super long when you first start dating, but he builds up his stamina. Goes for about 2-3 rounds max, but Tommy is definitely the type to just have you lay back and let him give you head

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Doesn't own any toys, but he's not against them if you like them

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Loves to tease, but loves to please. All you gotta do is ask and he'll cut it out

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Moderate loudness, isn't screaming but he's not silent either - let's his partner know he's enjoying himself

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Low-key the type to only want to have sex with someone he's in a relationship with/someone he loves <3

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Thick and long, easily 7-8 inches, and cut cause, again, it's the 70s

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Pretty high, but he does his best to keep it in his pants

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Won't fall asleep right away because he's too busy talking to you, but he'll probably fall asleep after you get cleaned up

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Erroneous Gratitude

A Homeless Veteran Speaks

Stephen Jay Morris

10/30/2021

©Scientific Morality

He sleeps in a tent with an American flag draped over it, like the coffin of a dead soldier. His tent is situated in front of a Veterans’ hospital, somewhere in West Los Angeles, California. At his age, this an advantageous location in the off chance he should suffer a stroke or heart attack. He is in his late 70’s; he served in Vietnam. His sweat-soaked face is smeared with dust and there are bacciferous patches on his cheeks. He looks like a soldier in the midst of battle. And he is: A battle for survival.

The only unsoiled part of his body are his lucid blues eyes. They are like beams of light. He tells his interviewer: “I am roughing it in my own civilized country. The only time they care about me is when they have me put on my dress uniform and stand next to a Republican who’s running for office, so he can show off his patriotic cred. Back in the old days, these rich clowns got their golden child out of the draft with some high-priced lawyer. Me? I couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes, so I volunteered for the Vietnam war so I could have a place to sleep and food to eat. All these clowns use me for a patriotic prop. Fuck them to hell!”

He is an old man, but he doesn’t walk around with baubles of medals on his chest, suffering from false valor. He is hurting from American neglect. The greatest country in the world has turned its back on him.

Suddenly, a car passes by, its horn honking. A female shouts from the of passenger side window, “Thank you for your service!”

The homeless vet yells back, “Fuck you! I should have had joined the Viet Cong!!” He looks at the interviewer with an angry expression on his face. “All these right wing shit heads with their fake patriotism! I would love to shoot them with a Chinese AK-47! When I was in Nam, I fought with a comrade who almost got killed. After he left the Army, he joined ‘Vietnam Veterans Against The War.’ After that, he joined the Communist Workers Party. In 1976, he went to Hanoi to apologize to the Vietnamese people. I got his Decoration of Forgiveness from the government of Vietnam.” He took it out of his pocket. It was inscribed in Vietnamese. He continued, “In ‘79, he went to protest against racism and a carload of Klansmen shot him dead. I miss him so much!”

When I finished watching the interview, I questioned his words. Was this man suffering from mental illness? Was he just confabulating? That would be the job of a medical professional to determine. I sat on my couch and started to think about Ron Kovic, the famous war hero who came to my high school in 1970 and gave a moving speech about his experience in Vietnam. After that, I never thought of war in glorious terms again. I’ve since watched all sorts of YouTube videos on the subject, but this interview with the Vietnam vet really got to me.

Now, these Right wing yahoos want a civil war. Okay, you testosterone fueled rednecks! You think that war is the panacea for stopping tyranny? That illusion will stop when the enemy shoots off your balls and you walk around sounding like a seven-year-old girl. The biggest enemy of the USA is not Communism or Islamic terrorism. It is fake “patriots” living in an 18th Century fantasy while wearing Tricomb hats and shooting Muskets.

Stop it! This is reality!

[vinylfromthevault]

Death Valley Girls “Breakthrough” b/w “Rock ‘N’ Roll/EGA” 2020. Suicide Squeeze Records, limited edition black and purple split vinyl. The latest release from the “California doom boogie” garage rock band who blew us away last summer when we saw them at Romanus Fest in Indianapolis. Death Valley Girls are a group of hard-rocking women (and one dude) with punk/grudge cred (founder/drummer Patty Schemel was in Hole; the dude is her brother Larry on guitar) that play with 60′s pop, proto-punk, metal and gothy horror vibes to make some killer music (their 2018 LP Darkness Rains was one of my favorite albums of the year). “Breakthrough” is a funky track with a 70′s hard rock vibe; it is a cover of Atomic Rooster (1971), though the band discovered the track through a rendition by Nigerian outfit The Funkees (info via Suicide Squeeze). “Rock ‘N’ Roll/EGA” is another cover (by Daniel Johnston, 1994, who Death Valley Girls briefly backed) that brings the grungy loud-quiet-loud structure to a whole other level: 60′s harmony stark n’ sweet punctuated by crashing guitar and drum metal density. 

Here’s a photo from the show we saw at Square Cat Vinyl in August ‘19: vocalist/organist Bonnie Bloomgarden, bassist Rachel Orosco and drummer Patty Schemel. 

[moulinrougefanfanfans]

Moulin Rouge for VOGUE!

(These are the HQ Photo Versions!)

Moulin Rouge!’s Broadway cast, photographed at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. Sittings Editors: Hamish Bowles, Alexandra Cronan. Produced by 360pm. Set Design: CJ Dockery at Mary Howard Studio; Costume Designer: Catherine Zuber; Choreographer: Sonya Tayeh

Photographed by Baz Luhrmann, Vogue, July 2019

July 2019 Vogue (Online)

BAZ LUHRMANN WAS BORN to reinvent the movie musical for a new generation—which is exactly what he did in 2001 with Moulin Rouge!, his deliriously romantic mash-up, set in 1890s Paris, of La Bohème, La Traviata, and the Orpheus myth, with a soundtrack that exploded with modern-day pop songs, lavish Technicolor sets and costumes (by his wife, Catherine Martin), and a hyperkinetic cinematic style that drew on MGM musicals, MTV videos, and Bollywood spectaculars. The motto of this blatantly artificial world, served with a knowing wink (which nevertheless swept us up in its very real, very breathless emotions), could be borrowed from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “Enough! Or too much.”

In his own way, the brilliant theater director Alex Timbers—whose work includes Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Here Lies Love, and, most recently, Beetlejuice—was born to reinvent Moulin Rouge! for the stage, as another generation of New York audiences will discover when his electrifying, eye-popping, and blissfully over-the-top adaptation of Luhrmann’s masterpiece opens on Broadway, after a smash run in Boston, this month.

“I’ve spent my life taking classics and interpreting them in radical ways,” Luhrmann says, “so how could I not applaud someone taking a work of mine and interpreting it in a radical way? You have to interpret things for the time and place you’re in. In the end, it’s still a tragic opera, but Alex applies himself to it in such a dexterous way that there’s irony and fun and music and emotion.”

Luhrmann grew up in Herons Creek, a tiny, remote Australian town with a total of seven houses in it, where, he says, “if you didn’t have a good imagination and an ability to create worlds in your mind, you were lost.” Fortunately his family, which ran a gas station and a pig farm, also ran the local movie theater and had a black-and-white TV set (which showed exactly one channel), and Luhrmann devoured a steady diet of old movies, including musicals, with which he fell in love. His mother was a ballroom-dance instructor who started giving him lessons early, and his father insisted that Luhrmann and his siblings study painting and music. Before long he was staging little shows, performing magic tricks, making films with his father’s 8-millimeter camera, and acting in school plays.

Apparently it was the ideal upbringing to produce an artist of dazzling originality, one with a singular, idiosyncratic vision and an expansive playing field: film, theater, opera, commercials, music videos, pop songs. After the success of his first two films, Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet—both of which had healthy doses of movie-musical DNA encoded into their cinematic language—Luhrmann wanted to take on the genre itself. He and his co-writer, Craig Pearce, set their film in Belle Epoque Paris, in and around the legendary Moulin Rouge nightclub, telling a tragic love story straight out of verismo opera with the Orpheus legend—a young poet and musician travels to the underworld in search of his dead love, Eurydice, and is reunited with her only to lose her again, emerging forever changed—as its mythical underpinning.

But Luhrmann also had what he calls a “preposterous conceit” that allowed his Orpheus—a Bohemian poet named Christian, played by Ewan McGregor—to metaphorically enchant the very rocks and stones to follow him because of his voice: “When our poet opens his mouth, ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ comes out of it,” he says. “Whether you like The Sound of Music or not, it’s a giant hit that’s got artistic cred—so it’s a funny, concise way of saying ‘The guy has magic.’” Preposterous or not, the conceit turned the love story between McGregor’s Christian and Nicole Kidman’s doomed Satine, a nightclub star and courtesan, into a pop fantasia, giving the music its audience had grown up with—from “Your Song” to “Lady Marmalade”—an operatic grandeur.

Luhrmann had long wanted to bring Moulin Rouge! to the stage but felt that he wasn’t the right person for the job—he worried that he was too close to the material and might be overprotective of it. Enter Alex Timbers, 40, a downtown wunderkind who has brought the cheeky, postmodern spirit of his theater company Les Freres Corbusier to Broadway and shares with Luhrmann a restlessly playful and inventive mise-en-scène. “When I saw Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, I could tell that his aesthetic and the way he told a story—very high-energy, very theatrical, ironic but also moving—had a certain kinship with mine,” Luhrmann says. “And after I met him, I knew that he would have his own interpretation but also understand the language of the film.”

The biggest challenge Timbers and his team faced was how to bring the film’s hypercinematic exuberance alive on a stage. “We had to create a visceral and kinetic excitement using an entirely theatrical vocabulary,” Timbers says. “We don’t have any of those virtuosic techniques like close-ups and Steadicam and music video–style editing, but you want the show to be able to leap over the footlights—emotionally, but also as a spectacle. So we use a lot of techniques to do that.”

Do they ever. From the moment you enter the theater, it’s clear that Timbers has realized his mandate to make the show—which he’s been working on for the past six years—“360.” It’s as if you’ve walked into the Moulin Rouge itself, courtesy of the gorgeously overwhelming set (by Derek McLane) that greets you: There are hearts within hearts, chandeliers, the stage flanked by a windmill on one side and an elephant on the other. Then out come the corset-clad boys and girls of the night (who come in all colors, shapes, and sizes) and the fashionable members of the Parisian demimonde in Catherine Zuber’s fabulous costumes. The next thing you know, “Four Bad Ass Chicks from the Moulin Rouge,” as the script identifies them—propelled onstage by Sonya Tayeh’s wildly exuberant choreography—are belting “Hey sista, go sista, soul sista, flow sista,” and we’re off to the races. “I wanted to build this exotic, intoxicating world that felt beautiful and dangerous and gritty and sexy,” Timbers says. “It felt really important for the sets and the costumes to use period elements, and for us to be ruthless about that, but to put them in a form that feels contemporary and surprising.”

The seven-time Tony-winning costume designer Zuber (The King and I, My Fair Lady) has done that and then some, tipping her hat to Catherine Martin’s designs for the film without imitating them. She’s even managed to design Belle Epoque finery that allows the dancers the freedom of movement to execute Tayeh’s propulsive choreography. Zuber is also a master of using costumes to reveal character and situation, as with the ornate gown she designed for Satine after she becomes the Duke’s courtesan and enters his glittering world. Inspired by designs from John Galliano’s 2006 couture collection, it features a bodice that looks like a cage and three rows of lacing down the back. “It’s almost like she’s a prisoner,” Zuber says.

Playing Satine this time around is Karen Olivo (West Side Story, Hamilton), who brings very different qualities to the role than Kidman, both physical (Olivo is a woman of color) and temperamental (desperate, determined, and down-to-earth, as opposed to ethereal). Aaron Tveit (Next to Normal, Catch Me if You Can), meanwhile, sings like a dream and brings the requisite dewy idealism to the naive Christian, but with a hint of something edgier.

The story is very much the same as the film’s: Satine is the star attraction at the Moulin Rouge, owned by the rapacious Harold Zidler (Danny Burstein), who is in financial hot water and in danger of losing the club. Christian and Satine meet and fall head over heels, but she has been promised by Zidler to the villainous Duke (Tam Mutu), who can give her the bejeweled life she’s always dreamed of, forcing her to choose between that and true love. Meanwhile, Christian and his pals Santiago and Toulouse-Lautrec (Ricky Rojas and Sahr Ngaujah) are writing a show, bankrolled by the Duke, that is meant to save the Moulin Rouge from going under. Then, of course, Satine has this persistent cough and . . . well, you know.

The big difference in terms of the storytelling is that book writer John Logan (Red) has fleshed out and deepened the characters and the relationships between them. “We looked at the major characters, asked what their backstories were, and tried to figure out how grounded they could possibly be in psychological realism and yet still be heightened in that way that musical theater demands,” Logan says. “How did Satine get to be this sparkling diamond—and what’s the price she’s paid along the way?”

But the boldest change—and in many ways the heart of the show—is in the new songs, which give Moulin Rouge! fresh emotional resonance (and whip the crowd into a frenzy). Along with the familiar Bowie, Madonna, and Elton John tunes, expect to hear from the likes of Outkast, Sia, Beyoncé, Fun, Adele, and Lorde, to name but a few (there are more than 70 songs in the show). To curate Moulin Rouge!’s dizzying playlist, Timbers, Logan, and music director/genius Justin Levine holed up in a Times Square hotel room with a digital keyboard, dredged up their musical memories, and took note of what worked. Their taste is impeccable, whether using a song for its sheer exuberance, as with a rousing version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” or to reveal a character’s inner desires, as Satine does with Katy Perry’s “Firework.”

Logan has been blown away to see how powerfully audiences have connected with the show—and the songs. “I went to a wedding recently, and when the dancing started, I heard half our score being played, which was wild,” he says. “And when you see audience members respond to the songs—‘They’re using thatsong? Oh, my God! No way!’—you can feel how excited they are. It’s an experience I’ve never had before. It’s magic.”

[daggerzine]

You Gotta Lose? Hell, Some Of Us Ain’t Dead Yet by Mary Leary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0fz3FVBlOE

NRBQ has done so many amazing songs. I never thought much about “Roll Call,” from Tiddlywinks - for one thing, it has a lighter, almost Billy Joel sound that’s more about latter day Terry Adams style than what I think of as the classic Q. Yet just as Adams’ work has grown on me, this track has made its way into my consciousness. The lyrics speak to me more in 2020 than they did when Tiddlywinks was released in 1980, before the D.C.-area music scene had lost Robert Goldstein (Urban Verbs), Kevin MacDonald (brilliant visual artist and scene stalwart who helped me design and layout [The] Infiltrator), Danny Gatton disciple/guitar maverick Evan Johns, bassist Michael Maye from the original H-Bombs, Rick Dreyfuss (Half Japanese/Chumps/Shakemore), Libby Hatch and Michael Mariotte  (Tru Fax and the Insaniacs), Sally Be/Berg - REM/Egoslavia/SHE/Robert Palmer), Nurses member Marc Halpern (heroin, 1982), Lorenzo (Pee- Wee) Jones (Tiny Desk Unit) and hybrid rocker Jim Altman (HIV, 1990s).  Goldstein, Dreyfuss, Maye and MacDonald succumbed to cancer, while Evan Johns’ deterioration followed years of touring, hard drinking and pushing himself past the limit.

(Top to bottom: Tommy Keene, Kevin MacDonald, Susan Mumford)

Those named above have been joined by Tommy Keene (the Rage/the Razz/solo/Paul Westerberg/Matthew Sweet - cardiac arrest at the age of 59; 2017), TDU’s Susan Mumford (cancer, 2018), David Byers (Psychotics/H.R./Bad Brains), and Skip Groff (Yesterday and Today/ Limp Records/Dischord - seizure, 2019).  This is just an imperfect/incomplete naming of D.C.-area losses - I’m sure journalists from other cities could make lists. A horde of New Wave and early alternative musicians have died within the past few years. Whether through the stress of hard living/poverty, substance abuse, cancer or Covid-19, we’re seeing artists pass much earlier than I, anyway, expected them to.

(Top to bottom: Fred "Freak” Smith, Michael Maye with Evan Johns, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs)

We’re already past the loss of all the original Ramones. All the Cramps less Poison Ivy. Joe Strummer. Robert Quine. Hilly Kristal. Lou Reed. As of July, 2020, since 2018 we’ve also lost Andy Gill, Ivan Kral, Genesis P-Orridge, Adam Schlesinger, Danny Mihm, Ric Ocasek, Daniel Johnston, Kim Shattuck, Lorna Doom, Mark Hollis, Keith Flint, Ranking Roger, Mark E. Smith, Glenn Branca, Randy Rampage, Hardy Fox, Pete Shelley, Matthew Seligman, Bill Rieflin, Dave Greenfield, Florian Schneider,  Ian Dury, Benjamin Orr, Kirsty McColl and David Roback.

(Top to bottom: Sally Be/Berg, Ranking Roger, Danny Mihm)

Talking about the deaths of talented, gifted creatives is a helluva way to start a column. But here we are. Older performers don’t always get the attention afforded newer, so the rest of this piece shares and celebrates artists from the original New Wave/punk scenes who are still around and active. Many are from the D.C.-area cornucopia I know best, while others have just come to my attention, or seem especially noteworthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MED9_XK_JVQ

The Zeros’ Javier Escovedo has been steadily emitting tasty Americana-ish rock while occasionally dropping some Zeros sturm-’n’-drang - most recently with Munster Records single “In The Spotlight” and a track on Burger Records’ Quarantunes compilation. Quarantunes is a seven-album affair featuring 140 alternative/punk performers old and new, all of whom wrote songs between March-April 2020. A cursory listen to Volume 2 reveals the recorded version of a good night at a very wild bar, with Zeros still handily kicking ass of all ages.

https://velvetmonkeys.bandcamp.com/album/legacy-of-success?fbclid=IwAR0lJyS0YDE4e3o7LJiITEtw1lhBWMkUX47Vuag1Lf9fs2QozJJKD1lwkes

Velvet Monkeys/B.A.L.L. player and Sonic Youth/Teenage Fanclub producer Don Fleming reports, “We’ve put out new tracks ‘Theories of Rummanetics’ and ‘Legacy of Success.’ Jay has written a few ‘modules’ and Malcolm and I are having fun doing the music,” adding, “I play some electric six string on the new Rob Moss album - it’s fun to be on, with lots of guitar slingers from the DC daze.”

Yup, Rob Moss of Skin-Tight Skin has solicited contributions from Fleming and from Marshall Keith (Slickee Boys), along with a pile of talent including Stuart Casson (Psychotics/Dove/Meatmen), Franz Stahl (Foo Fighters/Scream), Billy Loosigian (Nervous Eaters, the Boom-Boom Band), Nels Cline (Wilco) and Saul Koll (the guy who made guitars for Henry Kaiser and Lee Ranaldo). The set is called We’ve Come Back To Rock ‘n’ Roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdIB8a_0Q4c

Chumps/Workdogs/Jam Messengers player Rob Kennedy apparently has too much energy to throw in the towel - he’s kept recording, performing and making various sorts of lo-fi, DIY mischief that never loses that fresh, ‘70s feeling. Jam Messengers released Night And Day on vinyl in 2017. One of my fave Kennedy tracks, “A Low Down Dirty Shame” speaks to this moment as well as any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-CRBEGVLE4

Former Tiny Desk Unit/Fuji’s Navy/Rhoda & the Bad Seeds members Bob Boilen, Kevin Lay, Michael Barron and Bob Harvey have released a new Danger Painters joint, Thank Speak Love This Record. Lay joked, “I have a voice made for Morse Code” before revealing his recent work with Rhoda and the Bad Seeds material, released June 30 as Live at Nightclub 9:30. Boilen continues to introduce artists both vital and obscure via Tiny Desk Concerts and All Songs Considered/NPR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQ1GajwfB0

I’ve seen David Arnson play recently and can attest to his proclivity for unfettered growth via Insect Surfers, the instrumental group that originally had some trouble establishing cred. with younger D.C. punks. The Surfers’ most recent release was Living Fossils (2019). Arnson celebrated the band’s 40 years of existence with a European tour in 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SkIuWIZVkM

Jad Fair says, “Half Japanese will have a new album released in November on Fire Records.” Jad’s art was recently featured at the Hiromart Gallery/Tokyo, while David has created a Facebook page where fans can pick up his colorful images for, well, mere bags o’ shells, as far as we can see -  https://www.facebook.com/David-Fair-Painting-107055447700859/

Despite health issues for several members, Bad Brains has collaborated with Element to make BB themed skate wear https://www.elementbrand.com/mens-collection-bad-brains/ and added some killer live tracks to its YouTube channel.  

Former WGTB programmers John Paige and Steve Lorber have been presenting Rock Continuum on WOWD-LP FM 94.3 since 2017.

Mike Stax continues to give excellent motivation for hunting down a pair of Beatle boots - Munster released the Loons’ 7” EP, A Dream In Jade Green, last year. The latest issue of Ugly Things, said by Stax to be heavily focused on the Pretty Things’ Phil May, was reported in early July to be nearing publication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6jSc7gEAv0

Razz (the) Documentary will tell the story of how an uncommonly combustible rock band - especially with the Bill Craig/Abaad Behram line-up - helped spread the Flamin’ Groovies gospel while throwing down oddly compelling originals and taking the two-guitar thing up several notches - the producers are purportedly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Whether anyone can ever recreate the experience of being in an altered state via obsessive, sometimes conversational repetition of certain chords, anchored by Ted Nicely rethinking just what can be done with a bass guitar, given girth by Doug Tull’s intuitive drumming; with Mike Reidy the heat-seeking missile somewhere near the center... well, I doubt it. ‘Cause at this point you’re feeling no pain and it’s not about drinking; there is no room for anything but water - the beer will be knocked over when you’re this busy matching David Arnson’s other-side-of-the-front-line’s leaps into joydum while PCP’d out yahoos from the sticks learn the hard way that hugging Marshall amps can lead to lifelong repercussions. There (in case nothing I want to say about [the] Razz makes it into the film) - I’ve said it.

Discussions among old friends have confirmed that I’m not alone in being happily surprised at this development - we never expected our actions - which led to the hardcore explosion that’s received a lot more attention... would ever make it into any history book. Yet coverage of many of the D.C.-area musicians featured in this piece also comes with Punk The Capitol, A History of D.C. Punk and Hardcore, 1976-1983. Spring 2021 is the projected date for streaming/DVD release.

Ivan Julian came back from a scary 2015 bout with cancer to do a show in New York in 2016. The cancer has returned. Friends have organized a GoFundMe to raise money for surgery and basic needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDB_3by-xkI

The Shakemore fest also refuses to fade, promising “eight hours of streaming steaming video” on August 1. Sounds will be provided by R. Stevie Moore, Velvet Monkeys, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, Half Japanese, Johnny Spampinato, Weird Paul and the Chumps, among many, many others.

Despite having played at CBGB and other alternative venues in 1979, at the height of the New Wave, Gary Wilson’s work is so distinctive, he’s rarely been included with any musical genre other than the oft-vague “experimental” category. Folks were too unmoored by his visceral performances to get behind him. Wilson’s 14th album, Tormented, was released by Cleopatra in February.

Paul Collins recently published a book that he wrote with Chuck Nolan; I Don’t Fit In: My Wild Ride Through the Punk and Power Pop Trenches with the Nerves and the Beat (Hozac Books).

As “Heath,” Michael Layne Heath, a journalist who contributed to (the) Infiltrator and many other ‘zines, published My Week Beats Your Year: Encounters with Lou Reed in May (Hat & Beard Press).

In April, X released its first album in 35 years; Alphabetland.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1I-laItPI

As exciting for me as any of the above is Richard Hell with the Heartbreakers’ 2019 release of Yonkers Demo 1976. Hell’s “You Gotta Lose” is one of my picks for best punk/new wave singles of all time. The Heartbreakers version is, predictably, messier than the Robert Quine guitar-spiked classic. Its more excessive charms are growing on me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48QnsysCN_A

This piece could go on and on - compiling it has been exhausting. The best part has been the response to my social media call for any info I didn’t have re: the D.C.-centric scene I left for New York in 1983. Musicians anxious to keep their compadres’ names alive have hammered that post with 138 comments to date. Urban Verbs percussionist Danny Frankel, who’s played with a colorful spread of artists including Beck, Marianne Faithful, Lou Reed, John Cale and k.d. Lang, made a point of being sure I knew about the passing of Marc Halpern, a source of obvious pain. People were worried I wouldn’t mention John Stabb (Government Issue - 2016), rockabilly player Billy Hancock (2018), Fred “Freak” Smith (Strange Boutique/Beefeater - murdered in Los Angeles, 2017), John Hansen (Slickee Boys - 2010), record store owner/Wasp Records starter/music supporter Bill Asp, Jimmy Barnett of The Killer Bees, and David Byers.

One of the hardest for me to write about is Chris Morse, whose 1984 passing from a drug overdose wrenched so many - I managed to get an obituary into, I think, The New York Rocker (that physical trek was part of a long-ago blur; a very hot day of traipsing over steaming concrete in a narrow-skirted dress to deliver the copy). Chris popped up in my dreams for years - one “visitation” pushed me to write a poem about it in the ‘90s. Morse, who played in Rhoda & The Bad Seeds and worked as a doorman at The Pyramid after moving to NYC in the early ‘80s, was on one of the Urban Verbs’ early flyers. I’m on another.

(Top to bottom: Me in an early Verbs flyer/photo shot at the Atlantis; Chris Morse on another Verbs flyer)

I ended up getting so burnt out on the responsibility of populating this sad roll call, I’ve started a memorial page for them all on Facebook. The nature of truly alternative music is such that many of its lights still fail to fill the pages of major publications. Many of these lights gave a great deal of their lives, if not everything, for the art they believed in. It’s good to remember them, and those heady early days. It’s good to enjoy what we still can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA3IfK76mmI

[allhighqualitywatches-blog]

Bluetooth Watch

You realize you're getting old when something regardless you possess becomes "retro." Worse yet when your children get back home with one reasoning they've quite recently discovered something truly cool and new.

The Casio Digital Watch was extremely popular when I was youthful. More than that it was bleeding edge innovation and sort of room age. At the point when Christmas and birthday celebrations returned around in the 1970's we as a whole needed a casio individual mini-computer, (the size of a soft cover book) or somewhat later on, a definitive. A casiotronic console.

I can recollect being extremely desirous of my uncle who wore the main computerized watch I at any point saw path, thinking back to the 70's, finished with show calender. I currently realize that it more likely than not been a Casiotron which was the absolute first Digital watch at any point made.

Come the mid 80's advanced watches were increasingly moderate and appealing and I truly needed one. At the point when I turned 21, Bluetooth Watch it was disillusioning to wind up with a conventional gold arm ornament women Bulova.

The pattern for electronic face advanced showcase watches has gone back and forth during my lifetime however for reasons unknown I never discarded the one I at last got myself. A Casio Digital watch with a major square face and multi show of day, date and time, which has been consigned to the rear of my old adornments box for around 20 years.

At the point when my child came over wearing one which was actually the equivalent and gladly demonstrating it off I was astounded. Obviously the Casio Digital Watch is looked for after and has road cred. Obviously not having any desire to appear as though I wasn't incline spotter, I got mine out and said I'd been keeping it to leave to him in my will. He took it promptly for his better half - duh!

Regardless of jokes, they state everything old is new again and more established Casio Digital Watches are collectible with most pre 1990 Casio's viewed as vintage watches ( I surmise that makes me a collectible). Casio made imaginative, modest and fascinating items which pushed the limits. The market for these other (here and there insane) contraptions -, for example, the cigarette lighter mini-computer is in it's initial days so they're still generally simple to discover.

The cast off nature of numerous Casio items has made a worthwhile market, as despite the fact that a huge number of Casio Digital Watches and other advanced items were sold not many remain. Which is incredible news for maturing authorities!

Casio was a seed bed of mechanical developments, and on the off chance that you can discover a portion of these more established and rarer idea things in working condition then you may have the beginning of a worthwhile assortment. The more established Casio items were made in Japan, and are profoundly alluring. Each watch had a model and module number and the spot of production can be found by following these. Casio gathering is as yet a generally new leisure activity so get to those vehicle boot deals and bounce in while regardless you get the opportunity. How frequently have you wanted that you had the foreknowledge to begin gathering something while it was still effectively found at confuse deals? Here's your opportunity. Do some schoolwork and check a portion of the gatherings, for example, the advanced watch discussion for more data.

In the event that you're keen on starting an assortment, at that point investigate the Casio G Shock or G Force models. Especially the Limited Edition models.

Casio's piece of the pie drooped for some time as the computerized watches declined in prominence. They returned into the market furiously in the mid 1990's the point at which they took on Timex in the games watch showcase with the refreshed and increasingly upmarket Masters Casio G Force and G Shock models.

The sun powered controlled G Force had been around since 1985 when it's generally costly titanium back with hard core delicate overlay intended for jumpers was nicknamed the Frogman. The inventive structure which was mud safe came to be known as the Mudman. "Man" in the title of G Force models has been utilized for a long time.

G Force as the years progressed:

* Antman, current -

* Fisherman, current -

* Frogman, current(2008) GW-225E.

* Seaman, ebb and flow

* Gaussman, current -

* Gulfman, current(2007) G-9100, GW-9100 and GW-9125C.

* Lungman, current -

* Mudman, current(2007) G-9000, GW-9000 and GW-9025C.

* Riseman, current (2008) GW-9200.

* Wademan, current -

Casio Digital Watch Master of G models (over) all utilization a steel case secured by a thick neoprene or polyurethane bezel. All, aside from the first 1985 "Frogmen" highlight Casio's lit up show enabling them to be perused at profundities. All models are water impervious to 200metres, and are a superb scuba plunging watch.

The G Force Casio Digital Watch models have become a favored watch for jumpers and mariners and as of late have hit the road showcase with an astounding new publicizing effort focused on the young and mid 20's. Casio upgraded the line for surfers, skaters and break artists truly pushing the indestructibility of the watch.

The new plans included brilliant hues and macho Velcro groups to give them road bid. The new publicizing efforts utilized hip bounce stars to advance the brand. The costs expanded thus did deals. What comes around goes around and all of a sudden the children need a Casio Digital Watch for their birthday or Christmas once more. Go figure.

Irene Walters is a long separation sprinter and watch lover with interests in sports memorabilia and watch gathering.

Contact Us

All High Quality Watches

Official Site: https://allhighqualitywatches.com/

[tabloidtoc]

Hollywood Reporter, September 25

Since I don’t have any tabloids  to add today, I’m going to add the Hollywood Reporter. I’ll do this when I run dry of tabloids. If you’d like me to add HR more often, let me know :) 

Keep in mind HR is an over-sized magazine, so some scans will be cut off. If you’d like something scanned that I cut off, again let me know

Lastly, there are a lot of ads in HR, especially For Your Consideration and Congratulations ads. Let me know if you’d like me to keep an eye out for ads for someone or something you’re interested in

Cover: Fall Style Glam Squads -- Hairstylist Bryce Scarlett, Margot Robbie and makeup artist Pati Dubroff 

Page 10: Contents, Cynthia Erivo

Page 12: Contents 

Page 23:  The Report -- How sky-high can massive TV library deals fly?, Heat Index -- Lizzo

Page 24: Who wants to buy DirecTV at a deep discount? 

Page 26: Why Disney quietly launched streaming in the Netherlands, Theaters’ latest cash grab: ads after trailers 

Page 28: Emmys shocks, surprises and that big ratings stumble, who won big and who won big on TV, Emmy Heat Index -- Phoebe Waller-Bridge, HBO, Amazon, Ozark, Jesse Armstrong, Variety categories, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the women of Game of Thrones, Fox Entertainment 

Page 32: Box Office, Broadcast TV, Cable TV, Billboard Hot 100, Billboard 200 

Page 34: 7 Days of Deals -- Margaret Nagle, Penelope Ann Miller, Mia Kirshner, Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman, Bruce Holsinger, Greg Berlanti, Jessica Queller, Robert Rovner, Melissa Korn, Jennifer Levitz, D.V. DeVincentis, Ali Krug, Patrick Chu, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Dean DeBlois, Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds will star in a musical reimagining of A Christmas Carol, Joaquin Phoenix, Big Deal Exclusive -- Billy Joel’s music will be a scripted “arc-thology” called Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Hot New Books with Hollywood Appeal -- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Raven Lane by Amber Cowie

Page 35: Rita Wilson, Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver, Gideon Adlon and Lovie Simone and Zoey Luna, Mayim Bialik and Jim Parsons, Ryan Seacrest, Jared Padalecki will star in a Walker Texas Ranger reboot, Stephen Falk, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, Dan Levy, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Nahnatchka Khan, Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook, Queen Latifah, Kendrick Lamar, Rep Sheet -- Cecily Strong, Chance the Rapper, Jason Bell, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Kevin Nash AKA Diesel, Next Big Thing -- Barbie Ferreira

Page 39: About Town -- Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC 

Page 40: AllBright pitches women a diverse membership and professional cred to stand out amid multiplying options -- Jameela Jamil, Olivia Wilde, The Bungalows’ bar to entry -- Taylor Swift and Emma Stone, Eddie Redmayne

Page 41: Soho Warehouse, Cory Booker Q&A -- he’s a big fan of Supernatural 

Page 46: Yes, I Did Say That -- Bob Iger, Reed Hastings, Renee Zellweger, Thomas Lennon, Mike Schur, Mike Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Demi Moore, Flashback -- Julian Fellowes in 2018 

Page 48: Rambling Reporter -- Robert Osborne, Billy Porter, Laverne Cox, Ricky Martin, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Padma Lakshmi, Shoshana Bean, Constance Wu, Hudson Yang, Charlotte Kirk, Kevin Tsujihara, Neil Marshall, Sylvester Stallone, Peter Bradshaw, Power Dining -- Issa Rae, Larry David, Helen Hunt, Jamie Foxx, Brian Grazer, Alicia Vikander brunching at Brentwood Country Mart’s Farmshop, Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Charlie Hunnam, Julie Bowen, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian 

Page 50: Hitched, Hatched, Hired 

Page 53: Emmy Awards -- Phoebe Waller-Bridge 

Page 54: Best Dressed -- Emilia Clarke, Rachel Brosnahan

Page 55: Mandy Moore, Naomi Watts, Michelle Williams 

Page 56: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Gwyneth Paltrow

Page 57: Julia Garner, Billy Porter, Sophie Turner, Kristen Bell 

Page 58: On the Carpet and Inside the Parties -- Jared Harris and Craig Mazin, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and boyfriend Martin McDonagh, Peter Roth with wife Andrea and Ann Sarnoff and husband Richard, Ted Sarandos and Jason Bateman, Billy Porter, Michelle Williams and John Landgraf, George R.R. Martin 

Page 59: Ava DuVernay and Ethan Herisse and Asante Blackk and Jane Rosenthal, Bob Greenblatt and Stephen Loguidice, Rachel Brosnahan, Joey King and Patricia Arquette, RuPaul, Jodie Comer 

Page 60: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Anna Chlumsky, Peter Dinklage and David Benioff, Eugene Levy and Deborah Devine and Ben Stiller, Charlie Collier, Jeremy Strong and Jesse Armstong and Casey Bloys, Sophie Turner and Nina West, Lena Waithe and Ben Whishaw and Latesha Gillespie and Charlie Barnett 

Page 61: Kelly Kahl and Thom Sherman and their wives, Jeff Bezos and Bethenny Frankel, Norman Lear and Karey Burke, Jharrel Jerome and Korey Wise, Zendaya, Jeff Shell and daughter Anna, Rambling Reporter Emmy Edition -- Ted Sarandos, Jharrel Jerome, Korey Wise, Game of Thrones cast

Page 62: Regina King, Tony Shaloub and Alex Borstein, Robin Wright, Iain Glen and Kit Harington, Jaboukie Young-White, Seth MacFarlane, Adam Devine, Samantha Bee 

Page 64: THR and SAG-AFTRA Nominees Night -- Sterling K. Brown and Mandy Moore and Susan Kelechi Watson and Chris Sullivan, Michael K. Williams, Clea Duvall and Natasha Lyonne, Anthony Carrigan and Jared Harris and wife Allegra Riggio, Jennifer Salke and Bert Salke and Pearlena Igbokwe, Chris Silbermann, Lea Michele, Jeremy Gold and Marci Wiseman and Craig Erwich, Sarah Snook and Nicholas Braun, Aaron Paul and Joey King, David Nevins and Matthew Belloni and Josh Sapan 

Page 66: The Business -- Bill Damaschke 

Page 68: Digital -- Gamer’s Plight -- retire at 25? 

Page 70: TV -- Shane Gillis, SNL and the art of the post-racist-rant apology 

Page 72: Are Hollywood “Loan-outs” done for? 

Page 76: How to throw a viewing party for your own show, Power Shopping -- Cardi B., Ryan Murphy, Larry David, Cameron Diaz, Mark Wahlberg, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kristen Stewart, Kate Hudson, Style News and Notes -- Teressa Foglia, Gerard Butler, Owen Wilson, John Mayer, Will Smith

Page 78: Becoming Judy -- designers Jany Temime and Jeremy Woodhead transformed Renee Zellweger into Judy Garland 

Page 82: Glam Squads -- Zendaya 

Page 83: Zendaya with makeup artist Sheika Daley and hairstylist Ursula Stephen 

Page 85: Margot Robbie with Bryce Scarlett and Pati Dubroff, Zazie Beetz, Rachel Brosnahan 

Page 86: Cynthia Erivo with makeup artist Terrell Mullin and hairstylist Coree Moreno 

Page 87: Emilia Clarke, Cynthia Erivo, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, Brie Larson 

Page 88: Jennifer Lopez, Lupita Nyong’o

Page 89: Rachel Brosnahan with hairstylist Owen Gould and makeup artist Lisa Aharon, Florence Pugh, Margot Robbie 

Page 90: BTS Emmys -- Michelle Williams’ winning glam slam 

Page 91 -- Saoirse Ronan, Hailee Steinfeld, Charlize Theron, Zendaya 

Page 92: Comedy’s Civil War -- Shane Gillis’ SNL firing has exposed a growing rift in the stand-up world over what’s legitimate envelope-pushing and what’s just plain racist 

Page 94: Reviews -- The Politician 

Page 95: Fall TV Roundup, THR’s Social Climbers -- Actors -- Cole Sprouse, Tracee Ellis Ross, Unscripted TV -- American Ninja Warriors, TV Personalities -- James Corden 

Page 97: Backlot -- Elizabeth Banks on fighting to direct and her picks for president, Film Row gives assistants face time with top execs 

Page 98: A new film takes the case of Eric Garner -- who was killed by NYPD officers in 2014 -- to court 

Page 100: Armando Iannucci embraces his softer side for a timely David Copperfield starring Dev Patel 

Page 102: Has Korean filmmaking become a victim of its own success? 

Page 104: 90 Years of THR -- In the early 1960s Marilyn Monroe’s hairstylist was ‘God’

[traktivist]

Thanks again to @brianpuspos for coming thru to TRAKTIVIST Radio this past week! This show is now available on Spotify Podcasts & Apple Podcasts ! www.traktivist.com/info BRIAN PUSPOS is an internationally recognized artist, choreographer, and fashion trendsetter! Originally from Houston, Texas, he has gained a massive following of 554k subscribers on YouTube, accumulating almost 70 million views! Through his undeniably catchy, honest, and vulnerable music that’s mixture of R&B + Pop, he has garnered over 5 million streams on Spotify with features on 88Rising, VIBE, LA Times, NYLON, FuseTV, etc., reaching No. 24 on Billboard R&B Charts & No. 2 on iTunes R&B charts! We focus on the musical aspect of his journey and the significant influence 90’s R&B played into his artistry. Brian gives insight on how he carefully handled the addition of music to his professional repertoire with great care, hard work, and respect to other artists. We explore the inspiration behind his most recent track “Smile”. Lastly, we learn about the fascinating story behind his new clothing line Vanguard Originals, recently selected and rocked by Billie Eilish! Plus we play our featured #TrackoftheWeek “Fake High” by @jessicalouisemusic Photos cred: @photo_song11 Be sure to follow our playlist on Spotify for TRAKTIVIST RADIO which features the music from this Show 048 w/ BRIAN PUSPOS! The playlist updates after every show. Search “traktivist radio” on Spotify. TRAKTIVIST RADIO is the only weekly, global music show featuring music by Asian Americans + Global Asian! This show is exclusively on @DashRadio (10 million+ subscribers worldwide) through the #Discover” station (2 million+ monthly listeners). . . . . . . . . . . . . #BrianPuspos #Singer #Songwriter #SingerSongwriter #rnb #rnbsinger #rnbmusic #rnbartist #rnblovers #rnbsoul #rnbvibes #Filipino #Filipinos #FilipinoAmericans #FilipinoAmerican #dancer #choreographer #choreography #asianamerican #asianamericans #representation #traktivist #DashRadio #diversity #FilipinoMusicMovement #JessicaLouise (at Dash Radio) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0JW1NCDaP7/?igshid=suyvh6ee565k

[marcjampole]

Mainstream news media created the conditions in which a bottom-feeder like Trump could thrive by focusing on celebrity culture to encourage conspicuous consumption

AARP the Magazine is thus a small part of the giant propaganda machine that created the celebrity culture that created Donald Trump. It took from the first stirrings of consumer culture in the 1890’s until the 21st century for the focus on celebrity to pollute our marketplace of ideas enough for a toxic algae boom like Donald Trump to emerge (with apologies to algae blooms worldwide!). But unlike cleaning up the environment, saving our political discourse is conceptually easy—all the news media has to do is dedicate more of its feature coverage to those whose accomplishments can’t be measured by money made or spent, and cease to cover every issue like a reality show featuring celebrities. Not one big action, but a bunch of little actions are needed to stem the tide of celebrity culture. AARP could do its part by working into the mix a healthy share of scientists, historians, civic leaders, activists and literary figures into Big5-Oh and other parts of the magazine.

Those seeking to put the Trump phenomenon in a broader context will usually point out that his rhetoric and actions typically stay within the margins of 21st century Republican thought, especially as it concerns taxes, regulation, healthcare insurance, women’s health issues and white supremacy. Sometimes Trump has extended those margins with more outrageous versions of standard Republican fare. Others label Trumpism as the American version of the movement throughout the West to embrace ultranationalist, anti-immigration autocrats.

As insightful as these analyses are, they miss Trump’s cultural significance. Not only does Trump represent the bitterly racist and classist endgame of Ronald Reagan’s “politics of selfishness,” he also is the apotheosis of our cultural decline into celebrity-fueled consumerism. Remember that in the real world, Trump was a terrible and unethical businessperson who drove companies into bankruptcy six times; had at least a dozen failed business ventures based on his most valuable asset, his brand name; lost money for virtually all his investors; often lied to banks and governmental agencies; and has been sued by literally thousands of people for nonpayment or breach of contract. 

But while Trumpty-Dumpty was engaging in a one-man business wrecking crew he managed to get his name in the newspaper for his conspicuous consumption, his attendance at celebrity parties and his various marriage and romances. His television show was a hit, which reaped him even more publicity. But make no mistake about it, before he started his run for political office by promoting the vicious, racially tinged lie that Obama hails from Kenya, the public recognized Trump primarily for the attributes he shared with the British royal family, the Kardashians, Gosselins, Robertsons, the housewives of New Jersey, Atlanta, South Beach and elsewhere, Duane Chapman, Betheny Frankel, Paris Hilton and the rest of the self-centered lot of rich and famous folk known only for being rich and famous and spending obnoxious sums of money.

Trump’s celebrity status always hinted at his master-of-the-universe skills in business and “The Apprentice” never missed an opportunity to reinforce that false myth. Thus, whereas the business world recognized Donald Trump as the ultimate loser, celebrity culture glorified him as one of the greatest business geniuses in human history. It was this public perception of Trump—completely opposite of reality—that gave him the street cred he needed to attract unsophisticated voters. Trump is completely a creation of celebrity culture.

When we consider the general intellectual, moral and cultural climate of an era—the Zeitgeist, which in German means the “spirit of the age”—we often focus on defining events such as presidential assassinations, Woodstock, the moon landing, 9/11, the election of the first non-white president. But a Zeitgeist comprises thousands upon thousands of specific events, trends and personal choices. 

Which brings us—finally—to the subject of this article, AARP the Magazine, the semi-monthly slick magazine of the American Association of Retired People (AARP). The magazine usually uses celebrities and celebrity culture to give tips on personal finances, health, careers, relationships, retirement and lifestyle to its members, people over the age of 50. Because AARP membership rolls is so enormous, I have no doubt that AARP is one of the four or five most well-read periodicals in the United States.

Now AARP the organization must have many qualms about Trump and Trumpism. Trump has already rolled back consumer protections that prevent seniors from being taken advantage of by both big businesses and small-time con artists. Trump is vowing to dedicate his second term to cutting Social Security and Medicare, two programs of utmost importance to the well-being of AARP’s members. The leadership of AARP certainly understands that Trump’s cruelly aggressive effort to end immigration from non-European countries is the main cause for the growing shortages of the home care workers so vital to many if not most people in their final years. They must also realize that a tariff war affects people on fixed incomes the most.

What AARP leaders—of the organization and magazine—show no signs of understanding is that they played a role in creating the monster. The focus of AARP the Magazine and the other AARP member publication on promoting celebrity culture helped to create the playing field that Trump dominates—that shadow land of aspirations for attention and materialism in which all emotional values reduce to buying and consumption and our heroes have either done nothing to deserve their renown or have worked in the mass entertainment industries of TV, movies, sports and pop music.  

As an example of how celebrity culture permeates and controls the aspirational messages of AARP the Magazine, let’s turn to the feature on the last page of every issue, something called “Big5-Oh”: Big5-Oh always has a paragraph story with photos of a famous person who is turning 50 sometime during the two months covered by the issue. The bottom third of the page consists of one-sentence vignettes with head-and-shoulder photos of famous people turning 50, 60, 70 and 80. The copy typically describes something the famous person is doing that demonstrates she or he is continuing to thrive and do great things despite advancing age.

I’ve seen Big5-Oh in every issue of AARP I have ever read, and I have perused each issue for about 18 years. And in every issue, the famous people mentioned are virtually all celebrities, by which I mean actors, pop musicians, sports stars and those known only for being known like the Kardashians and Snooki. Only quite rarely a film director, popular writer or scientist sneaks in.

The latest issue, covering August and September 2019 exemplifies the celebrity-driven approach that hammers home the idea that only celebrities matter (since it’s only their birthdays and ages that are seemed worth memorializing). The featured person turning 50 is Tyler Perry, an actor and writer-director. The smaller features include four actor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jason Alexander, Richard Gere and Lilly Tomlin, plus the athlete Magic Johnson and the rock star Bruce Springsteen.

Not one scientist, not one historian or sociologist. Not one civic leader, politician, physician, novelist, poet or classical or jazz musician. No astronaut, architect or engineer. I did a little cursory research to come up with a reconceived Big5-Oh for August and September 2019: The big feature, always about someone turning 50, could be the chess player Ben Finegold, the best-selling but much scandalized popular writer James Frey or the filmmaker Noah Baumbach. That’s pretty much a wash with Tyler Perry. If I were editor of this feature, I would probably still pick Tyler Perry over this competition. 

But when we get to people who turned 60 and 70 during these months, you realize how much celebrity culture guided the editor’s choice of subjects: ignored are the designer Michael Kors, the current governor of Virginia Ralph Northam, the distinguished Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, the even more distinguished journalist James Fallows, the important literary novelists Jane Smiley, Martin Amis and Jonathan Franzen, the leader of the Irish Green Party, astronaut Scott Altman and Beverly Barnes, the first woman to captain a Boeing 747. All these people are non-celebrities and all have made more significant and lasting contributions to America than the people the column’s editor selected, with the possible exception of Magic Johnson and Bruce Springsteen. 

What’s more significant, though, is including some of these people instead of all celebrities would make an important message about what we value in our society. It would say that we honor the intellectual contributions of our writers, scientists, knowledge professionals and civic leaders. The fact that AARP always selects celebrities for Big5-Oh and tends to build other stories and features around celebrities makes the opposite message about value—that all that matters is the gossip surrounding celebrities and the promotion of celebrity culture.  

Now AARP shares the blame for our culture’s emphasis on shallow consumerism and superficial celebrities with many of our cultural organizations and educational institutions. For example, the political reporting of the mainstream media reduces all political discourse to celebrity terms—name-calling, who is feuding with whom, who’s winning in the polls, the skeleton-closet scandals of the candidates’ families, which celebrities love and hate them, zingers and misstatements, the candidates’ theme songs and other main themes of celebrity culture. Notice that Trump is as much a master in these endeavors as he is an inexperienced and ignorant buffoon in matters related to governance such as policy, history, the inner workings of the government and the scientific research informing governmental decisions. Note, too, that based on how much ink and space is given to endorsements by the media, in the hierarchy of value, celebrities rate above elected officials who rate above unions, business and scientific organizations and luminaries in fields other than entertainment. 

[orokinarchives]

Nightwave Series 1: The Wolf of Saturn Six

(Wolf of Saturn Six hype image)

27 February 2019 – 19 May 2019

Series episodes

(Episode 1, 27 Feb 2019, Week 1) Nora Night: "It's a bad moon, Dreamers. Can you feel it? Hm. From my perch, at Nightwave, I listen at the windows of the wealthy and well-to-do. Ever heard of Saturn Six? News to me, too. Turns out, the Grineer have a max-pen floating some six leagues deep in the gas. No one knew about it… 'cause no one ever busted out. Until now, right? Some Grineer meathead they started calling 'the Wolf'. On account of him taking up howlin' at night. Decrypts say he was a model prisoner, doing the time. Fabbin' bombs with the rest of his con brothers. Apple of the Warden's eye, even. But something cracked, and now he's out there on the loose… the so-called Wolf of Saturn Six."

(Episode 2, 13 Mar 2019, Week 3) Nora Night: "It's late. You still with me, Dreamers? Soon we'll see the sun curve over the Venusian sky. A hot blue taste. What's keeping you up? For me, it's the gap-waves, all abuzz with the doings of a certain big, bad Wolf. Why didn't he run? Why didn't he hit that Solar Rail as far as it would take him? Instead, he's stalking those soul-bare, money-huggers 'round Jupiter. My birds are sayin' the Corpus net got flipped. A System-wide message from the Wolf: DELIVER GHARN. Where'd a meathead learn a trick like that? And who's Gharn? Baby, you can guess… he's the Warden of Saturn Six. A big man, too well-dressed for his station, too well-fed for his rank. And he's in the solar wind too…. Think he knows how the Wolf came to howlin'?"

(Episode 3, 27 Mar 2019, Week 5) Nora Night: "An ice-night in Neptune, Dreamers. Hm. Hold yours close and true, and hey… if you're between stops… Nora knows that mood. But our Wolf… he's not alone tonight. Add this with me: the howler breaks out of Saturn Six. But get this… the howling doesn't stop… someone else takes to singing that cruel song. The Wolf knows why, and it called him back to the scene of the crime. Warden Gharn's little side business. Hm. Sellin' Grineer lemons for a Corpus squeeze. So freedom's got no hold on the Wolf, does it? No. It's the sisters and brothers from the joint that matter to him… the pack. We both know what happens next… when a Wolf finds its pack… they hunt."

(Episode 4, 10 Apr 2019, Week 7) Nora Night: "The message read: GHARN IS YOURS. An anonymous gift, hm. I know what this looks like. But the Wolf's too cold for revenge. The Grineer appoint Wardens for life. The Wolf had no choice but to shorten the term. Not payback, just 'never again'. But it was too easy. Days like these, an easy meal means you're taking someone's bait. Alad V's. The Devil in a Corpus cloak. Got the Wolf in an all-new prison, baby. Only this one's not made of bars, it's made of chemicals… hmmm… guess we all know someone like that. The whole lot has been transformed into these 'Amalgam Dogs'… his words. Hybridised, juiced on some Sentient strain. No nice way to put it. I think the pack is coming after you, Dreamers."

(Episode 5, 24 Apr 2019, Week 9) Nora Night: "Passing by that Mercury Junction… shimmering hot, tonight. Word on the grid is the Devil's got his due… hm. Should have known. We saw the signs, didn't we? Sure. The Wolf got tough… tougher. But more than that, the Wolf got smart. Got a pack together. Worked the Corpus crypto. He's his own man now. Leavin' no more tracks. Is this the end? Dreamers, I hope so… but if I were you, I'd keep an ear out… 'cause one of these days you just might hear that howl come 'round your shoulder. This is Nora Night, signing off. Stay deadly, Dreamers."

Capturing Saturn Six fugitives

During The Wolf of Saturn Six, the Tenno could periodically find Saturn Six fugitives in their missions, in groups of three. Defeating them and capturing them would yield Nightwave Standing.

(upon capturing a group of Saturn Six fugitives) Nora Night: "If there's one thing I've learned, Dreamers, it's this: just when you think you've had it all, seen it all, done it all… there's always more."

(upon capturing a group of Saturn Six fugitives) Nora Night: "Life is a cornucopia, friends. A movable feast. An act of guts and trust. Take it when and where you find it."

(upon capturing a group of Saturn Six fugitives) Nora Night: "Does your backbrain feel that reptile tickle of reward? Do you see that bobbing light ahead, floating through the marsh of what is to come, promising you more and more and more? Do follow, Dreamers, into that sweet black tomorrow."

Tactical Alerts

On 10 May 2019 (Friday, Week 11), two Tactical Alerts appeared on Saturn. Both Alerts were identical, differing only in the level of enemies (20-30 vs 50-70). Each Alert involved the Tenno infiltrating a Grineer Galleon filled with Saturn Six fugitives and killing the Wolf. The Alerts could only be accessed by Tenno who had achieved Rank 5 in Nightwave. After completing the first Tactical Alert, the Tenno would receive an inbox message from Nora Night containing 10 Nitain extract.

Inbox message: THE WOLF OF SATURN SIX: New Day's Sun

Dreamer, you're shining all over that bad moon like you were the new day's sun. Shining so bright, I bet you got that Wolf wishin' he was back down in Saturn Six.

But I'll keep watching, 'cause the Wolf's still howling, and I can tell you're about to lay down some hard grooves.

Here's a little something to keep you moving. Courtesy of Nightwave.

After completing the second Tactical Alert, the Tenno would receive another inbox message from Nora Night containing a Rifle Riven mod and a Stratos Emblem.

Inbox message: THE WOLF OF SATURN SIX: Hear that?

You hear that, Dreamer? Silence. No Wolf, no howl. And no doubt in my mind that it's all thanks to you.

Nora knows nothing ever stays quiet, so here's a little something for when the silence breaks.

Until next time, keep you ear to the Nightwave, Dreamer.

These two Tactical Alerts could be replayed until 13 May 2019 in order to obtain all the components of the Wolf Sledge weapon, which dropped from the Wolf. The higher-level Alert featured an increased drop rate for these components (70% vs 35%).

Nightwave Series 1: The Wolf of Saturn Six ended on 19 May 2019, at the end of Week 12. After it ended, the Wolf no longer spawned in missions, unless lured out by Wolf Beacons, purchasable through Nora Night's Cred Shop starting in Nightwave Series 2.

[Navigation: Hub → Dialogue → Nora Night → The Wolf of Saturn Six]

[oosteven-universe]

Bronze Age Boogie #02

Bronze Age Boogie #02 Ahoy Comics 2019 Written by Stuart Moore Illustrated by Alberto Ponticelli Coloured by Giulia Brusco Lettered by Rob Steen     PREVIOUSLY…     1975 B.C. Young Brita Constantina, daughter of a barbarian king, watches in horror as Martians invade the site of a battle against wizards. But Brita is quickly whisked away through time…    1975 A.D. …to the site of another Martian invasion…in an Age Undreamed Of! To her, anyway     Well they say there is no rest for the wicked right and I guess you could consider Brita wicked then because she’s out of the fire and right back into the fire again. Right into the battle by Lynda Darrk. I have to say I love the 70’s aside from being when it began and wearing those funky bell-bottom suits with platform shoes and it’s very blaxploitation film genre with the slang to go with it. This is what Lynda reminds me of a mixture of Wonder Woman and Foxy Brown. It is so much freakin fun and this is why I think that Ahoy now firmly sits in my top choices of comic book companies.     So the way that Brita and Lynda meet is interesting but meeting Jackson Li now that is something else altogether and yet another 70’s staple era genre favourite as well. He’s the complicated one that to be honest I wasn’t really expecting to see and I like that Stuart is mixing up gender rolls in ways that you don’t expect to see. This is the kind of thing that you notice but don’t think twice about, it’s low key and with the way it’s all written feels as natural as can be. After all what we learn troubles him well it’s a common ailment among men. Still the leader of this pack surely does know how to take charge and bring them all together.     The way that this is structured is fantastic and hoe the overall ebb & flow of information and action are woven together is why he’s such a great writer. The man has street cred like no ones business after all. There is a lot of crazy stuff going on here and this Martian Invasion going on so that the incredulous seems entirely credible. While I don’t agree with one thing that happens it surely does make for awkwardly great moment before this segment ends. The man knows what he is doing with that’s for damn sure.     The interiors here are really rather nice. I love how the linework is utilised to bring the characters to life. How we see Lynda’s top or vest has those faux fur shoulders it all just has this hugely weird appeal to it. Though I am more surprised by the fact that Brita’s look is so contemporary instead of feeling as if she stepped out of the dark ages. Then there’s the machinery aspect of the Martian suits and the creativity and imagination needed to bring those to life as well.     While I am a big fan of seeing backgrounds utilised as often as possible there are times I let that slide and there are a number of times here I can do just that, not all mind you. The best scene however is page 12 if you want my opinion. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective show a stellar eye for storytelling. The colour work here is really as well. The shading, shadow and even the colour gradation that comes out of the way light sources are utilised are done extremely well. I mean from page 16 on wow.     After the shocking events that close out the now we go back to seeing how the palace is being attacked by the Martians and the wizards chanting something and again two cliffhangers one issue this is some whacked out stuff and I gotta say I can’t get enough of it! The strength of storytelling here through the story & plot development, pacing and characterisation alongside the quality of these interiors, oh Ahoy Captain permission to come aboard?

[merciattire-blog]

My Top 12 Thrift Finds and How I Style Them

Welcome back, readers! This week, I will indulge in writing about one of my most loved hobbies: thrifting. Not only am I a sucker for affordable clothing (college budgets, right?), but I also love bringing worn pieces back to life. Plus, it’s a much more sustainable option than purchasing clothing brand new.

Now, if you haven’t tried it, I certainly recommend a trip to your local thrift store. You never know what you may find. As a matter of fact, these items are some of my most worn pieces from my closet! That being said, my goal here is to show that you don’t always have to spend tons of money in order to find pieces you’ll love. Furthermore, I hope this will encourage you to give thrifting a try. So, let’s get into it!

Now, there’s a reason why this item is first on the list. This is, by far, the most worn jacket I own. Ever since I found this gem last year, I’ve looked for every reason possible to wear it.

How I Style it:

Black on black on black—literally my style in a nutshell. If you’ve seen me in real life, there’s about an 80% chance I was wearing this outfit. By throwing on a white graphic tee, the contrast makes this look really “pop”. Of course, I chose to add some leather booties to match the lettering on this jacket and the Harley vibes.

This is definitely the priciest item on the list. However, it is important to consider the brand and condition. Plus, how often do you find a pink leather jacket?

How I Style it:

To align with the feminine hue of the jacket, I layered it over a sheer blush blouse and added some pumps. With the addition of jeans, this look is not too casual, yet not too fancy. Score!

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking—no, I did not steal this coat from the local flea market. Actually, as my boyfriend and I were driving home one day, we saw some signs that said “Free Sale”. (If that isn’t an oxymoron, I don’t know what is.) Naturally, we decided to check it out. Low and behold, the signs were true and there was a whole building of free stuff! Who doesn’t love free stuff? So, long story long, I saw this jacket and fell in love.

How I Style it:

This is literally the perfect fall coat; it’s so cozy! Therefore, I layered it over a chunky knit sweater for extra warmth. With some green jeggings and taupe booties, this fall palette-inspired look is good to go.

Okay, how sweet is this shirt? I saw this at the local flea market and I just had to have it. However, it took me a year or so to put it to use.

How I Style it:

Obviously, my inspiration for this look is Sandy from Grease. After trying on this piece with several outfits throughout the years, an all-black outfit does it justice. I added in a statement double-sided belt to break up this monochromatic look.

When this shirt shrunk after a few washes, my brother-in-law was sending it on its way to Goodwill. (So, in a way, that’s kind of thrifting, right?) Anyways, I got my hands on it first and have cherished it ever since.

How I Style it:

This gem makes up yet another one of my go-to outfits. A tip when it comes to oversized t-shirts: never underestimate the power of tucking or tying a knot to keep it snug. Rolling the sleeves helps, too. With some leather accessories, this simple tee is instantly stylish!

When thrifting, I never fail to do a thorough search for band tees. Why? 1. Music from the 70’s-80’s is the best and 2. they make for a totally rockin’ outfit. Therefore, my closet contains around 10 vintage band tees. (Sadly, I have yet to get a vintage Eagles tee, but then again, who would ever give THAT up?)

How I Style it:

Here we go again—the good ‘ol knot and sleeve roll to the rescue. If I didn’t do this, I would be wearing a dress because this shirt otherwise reaches my knees. With some distressed jeans and Vans, this tee looks right at home. A baseball cap doesn’t hurt either.

Okay, this shirt was just too rare (and cheap) not to purchase. I mean, La Crosse Oktoberfest, baby! I have no idea what year this is from, but judging from the cut and condition, I’d definitely categorize it under “vintage”.

How I Style it:

Due to the shortness of this shirt, I tucked it into some high-rise jeans. Furthermore, what says “fall” more than a good pair of comfy combat boots? To finish off this look, I threw on a belt to tie into the brown autumn footwear.

Here’s another one of my favorite thrifted pieces. I’m pretty sure this sweater wasn’t always supposed to be cropped, but hey, those are totally in now! Also, I recently found out Zara has been around since 1975. Who knew?

How I Style it:

Another signature Paige look: black and white. With this simple contrasting base, I added in a maroon belt for an unexpected twist. This base also gives the gold accents of the accessories their chance to shine!

Usually, I’m not one who wears floral, but when I saw this dress… all bets were off. I had finally found the perfect summer sundress!

How I Style it:

For this ensemble, I planned around the accent colors in the dress itself. Some candy pink heels and a light blush purse effortlessly complete this romantic look.

With the 90’s slip dress and velvet trends coming back into style, I couldn’t NOT purchase this dress. I literally found exactly what I was looking for with this one. It was an incredibly lucky find!

How I Style it:

I went for a wearable, casual look for this piece. The t-shirt-under-a-slip-dress certainly roots back to this popular 90’s trend. However, this dress also looks amazing with some black opaque tights and pumps (another popular 90’s look) to serve as a great New Year’s dress.

When I came across this dress, I was searching for a trending color that was a little out of my comfort zone: mustard orange. Needless to say, I found what I was looking for. Plus, it was only 7 bucks!

How I Style it:

Being that this is an autumn-colored long sleeve dress, I went for a cold-friendly outfit. These suede thigh-high boots are just the answer! Thus, my Thanksgiving of 2017 attire was born.

I’m not going to lie: shoes are a toughie in the thrifting world. The odds of finding footwear that is in your size AND in good condition are slim. Needless to say, these boots are precious to me.

How I Style it:

With statement boots like these, I tend to keep the rest of my outfit more laid-back. These square toe boots give off a strong 70’s vibe. That being said, I styled them with a white embroidered off-the-shoulder top to complete this natural look.

So, there you go. My favorite thrifted finds! I will end with some tips I’ve accumulated throughout the years.

Top 5 Thrift Tips:

· Visit Often – I am, hands down, THE pickiest shopper when it comes to clothes. Therefore, I must make a disclaimer that, more often than not, you are going to walk out of the thrift shop empty-handed. It happens! I have been thrifting for about 5 years now and I only have about 15 thrifted items. So, my point here it that it takes time. However, keep in mind that the turnaround rates of these shops are typically pretty high. So, visit often and don’t give up!

· Look for Trends – One main thing that actually turned me on to thrifting is the prevalence of bounce-back trends. Sure, you could buy a vintage-inspired Tommy Hilfiger tee at Urban Outfitters for $50, or you could find an ACTUAL 90’s Tommy tee at Goodwill for $5. Bam! You’re instantly trendy. See what I mean here?

· Try it on – This is a given. One of the things I like to do is to picture in my mind the various ways I could style a certain piece. If you can’t think of any reason as to why you would ever wear it, then it’s probably not ever going to get worn.

· Keep Your Standards – So, you find an “okay” looking shirt. You typically wouldn’t buy it, but its only 3 bucks! Impulse purchase made. Let me tell you now that it probably isn’t worth it. This is a mistake I made in my first few thrifting trips and I never ended up wearing the clothes. My point here is that, no matter how awesome the price, don’t buy something you don’t love.

· Switch it up – Sure, you may feel the need to limit yourself to women’s size medium, but you might be missing out! Take my Harley Davidson jacket, for instance. This was found in the men’s section, size large, as were my Hard Rock Café and AC/DC shirts. My point here is that there may be potential in other sections that you shouldn’t overlook.

Photo cred: My sister, Tiffiny—I definitely owe you a free night of babysitting.

Thanks for reading! What’s your favorite look? Also, are you a fan of thrifting? I’d love to hear in the comments below!

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll of the week

Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan and Phil Scott should get T-shirts made up. In the first quarter of 2018, according to Morning Consult, they were the first-, second- and fourth-most-popular governors in America.1 And that’s despite sharing one surprising commonality: They are Republicans in three of the country’s bluest states. If they were a band, they’d be called Maroon Three — red castaways enisled in a sea of blue.

This week, Morning Consult released their updated ranking of America’s most popular governors, and, like last quarter again, Baker and Hogan topped the list. A full 69 percent of voters in Massachusetts — whose FiveThirtyEight partisan lean2 is 24 points more Democratic-leaning than the nation at large — approved of the job Baker was doing, while only 17 percent disapproved. The story was almost exactly the same in Maryland, another D+24 state: Hogan received a 68 percent approval rating and a 17 percent disapproval rating.

But Scott might get voted off the island. While he had a 65-21 approval-disapproval rating among Vermonters in the first quarter, he has fallen to 47 percent approval, 42 percent disapproval in this week’s findings, tarnishing his both-sides-of-the-street cred. The likeliest reason for the plummet in his popularity is a landmark gun-control law he signed in April amid protests in this historically gun-friendly state.

The new numbers cast doubt on the widely held assumption that Scott will cruise to re-election in 2018. But if he is indeed in danger, it may be in the Aug. 14 GOP primary rather than the general election. That’s because his popularity has eroded dramatically among Vermont’s Republicans, dropping by 26 points since last quarter. According to Morning Consult, Scott amazingly now has a higher approval rating among Democrats (who approve of him 61 percent to 31 percent) than Republicans (who disapprove 56 percent to 41 percent). If he survives his primary challenge from a pro-gun business owner, Scott still starts in a good position to win the votes of the state’s many Democrats.

And he’s not alone in his cross-party appeal. Baker is about equally popular among Democrats (who approve of him 70 percent to 17 percent) and Republicans (who approve 69 percent to 20 percent). Hogan can’t boast the same, but I imagine he’s still pretty happy with his support across the political spectrum: 62 percent of Democrats approve of his performance vs. 23 percent who disapprove. Republicans approve of him 82 percent to 10 percent.

Those numbers sound impressive — and they are — but they’re not as unusual as you might think. Support for governors frequently defies partisanship, at least if you define “partisanship” by people’s presidential preferences. Gubernatorial elections have gotten more nationalized in recent decades, but many voters still see state and federal elections as fundamentally different ballgames. There is basically no correlation between each governor’s net approval rating3 in the latest Morning Consult poll and his or her state’s partisan lean. Some governors are right in line with the partisanship of their states, such as Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee (a +18 net approval rating in D+13 Washington). But others have brands that distinguish them from their parties and make them way more popular (or unpopular) than partisanship alone would predict.

We can quantify each governor’s “Popularity Above Replacement Governor” (or PARG) by measuring the distance between their net approval rating and their state’s partisan lean. By this measurement, Scott is still doing pretty well. He’s 31 points more popular than a generic Republican “should” be in Vermont, good for the seventh-highest score in the country.

Introducing ‘Popularity Above Replacement Governor’

Governors’ net approval rating relative to the partisan lean* of their state

Governor State Name Party Net Approval State Partisan Lean PARG Massachusetts Baker R +52 D+24 +76 Maryland Hogan R +51 D+24 +75 Montana Bullock D +20 R+21 +41 Nevada Sandoval R +37 D+1 +38 New Hampshire Sununu R +39 R+1 +38 Louisiana Edwards D +14 R+22 +36 Vermont P. Scott R +5 D+26 +31 North Carolina Cooper D +22 R+6 +28 Georgia Deal R +31 R+8 +23 Colorado Hickenlooper D +23 D+2 +21 Alabama Ivey R +50 R+29 +21 Virginia Northam D +21 D+2 +19 Texas Abbott R +30 R+13 +17 Florida R. Scott R +19 R+3 +16 Minnesota Dayton D +16 D+1 +15 Delaware Carney D +24 D+11 +13 Mississippi Bryant R +30 R+19 +11 Indiana Holcomb R +29 R+19 +10 Pennsylvania Wolf D +7 R+2 +9 South Dakota Daugaard R +37 R+29 +8 Ohio Kasich R +15 R+8 +7 Washington Inslee D +18 D+13 +5 South Carolina McMaster R +20 R+16 +4 Tennessee Haslam R +30 R+27 +3 Arkansas Hutchinson R +31 R+29 +2 Utah Herbert R +29 R+28 +1 New Jersey Murphy D +11 D+12 -1 Missouri Parson R +18 R+19 -1 Kansas Colyer R +18 R+23 -5 Oregon K. Brown D +3 D+9 -6 Iowa Reynolds R +1 R+8 -7 North Dakota Burgum R +27 R+34 -7 Wisconsin S. Walker R -8 R+1 -9 Arizona Ducey R -2 R+7 -9 Maine LePage R -14 D+4 -10 Nebraska Ricketts R +16 R+27 -11 New York Cuomo D +9 D+21 -12 New Mexico Martinez R -19 D+6 -13 Michigan Snyder R -15 EVEN -15 Wyoming Mead R +32 R+47 -15 Rhode Island Raimondo D -2 D+16 -18 Illinois Rauner R -33 D+14 -19 Idaho Otter R +12 R+34 -22 California J. Brown D +2 D+26 -24 Hawaii Ige D -7 D+32 -39 West Virginia Justice R -4 R+41 -45 Kentucky Bevin R -28 R+31 -59 Connecticut Malloy D -50 D+12 -62 Oklahoma Fallin R -55 R+38 -93

Note: A Democratic governor with a net approval of +2 in an R+7 state has a PARG of +9 (2+7 = 9). If the same state had a Republican governor with the same approval rating, the PARG would be -5 (2-7= -5). Alaska’s Bill Walker was omitted from this list because he’s an independent.

*A state’s partisan lean is the average difference between how the district voted and how the country voted overall in the last two presidential elections, with 2016 weighted 75 percent and 2012 weighted 25 percent.

Sources: Morning Consult, Daily Kos Elections

It’s not surprising that the two governors with the highest PARG are also the two most popular governors overall. Think about it: If a governor appeals only to their own party, there’s a ceiling on how popular they can become. (Even the most lopsided state in the 2016 election, Wyoming, gave only 68 percent of its votes to President Trump.) To break through that barrier, you need to have crossover appeal. When you’re a Republican in a dark-red state, there’s no real incentive to build on that base — you’re going to win your next election anyway. But Republicans in blue states (and Democrats in red states) are forced to win over voters on the other side. Otherwise, they can’t get elected. As long as those voters continue to approve of their actions in office, the sky’s the limit for these governors’ approval ratings.

Other polling nuggets

An NBC News/Marist poll that was making the rounds Wednesday included some stunning numbers from a trio of Midwestern states. When asked whether Trump deserves re-election, Michigan voters said 62 percent to 28 percent that someone else should be given a chance. Minnesota voters agreed 60 percent to 30 percent, as did Wisconsin voters, 63 percent to 31 percent. The problem, though, with these types of polls is that a presidential election is a choice, not a referendum. It’s easy for voters to hear a question like that and measure up Trump against their ideal candidate. But the Democrats’ 2020 nominee won’t be every voter’s ideal candidate, and Trump won’t lose these states by 30-plus points, either.

Americans are split on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 40 percent of voters said the Senate should confirm him, while 41 percent said it should not. Eighty percent of Republicans but only 11 percent of Democrats said Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki this month, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll; 50 percent disapprove. That’s in line with the Quinnipiac poll, which found 27 percent said the summit was a success, while 52 percent said it was a failure.

33 percent of Americans said they think the FBI is “biased against the Trump administration,” as opposed to “just trying to do their job,” according to a Marist poll. That’s up from 23 percent in February.

A poll from the Pew Research Center found a decline in the FBI’s favorability from 71 percent in September 2016 to 65 percent now. That may not seem like much of a change, but the topline numbers mask a growing partisan divide.

A Monmouth University poll shows that Democrat Conor Lamb has a double-digit lead on Republican Keith Rothfus in Pennsylvania’s 17th District. The district was newly drawn from bits of other districts by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, making this the only House race that pits incumbents against each other.

A YouGov poll found that 49 percent of Americans said they believe it is either “definitely” or “probably” true that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election. That includes 42 percent of Democrats as well as 59 percent of Republicans.

In addition to the governors survey, Morning Consult also released job approval numbers for every member of the Senate. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders had the highest approval rating, while Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell had the highest disapproval rating.

70 percent of Americans said in a YouGov poll that, of the five senses, they would miss sight the most if they lost it; 7 percent said they would miss hearing the most, 5 percent said taste, 3 percent said touch, and 2 percent said smell.

48 percent of registered voters said in a Morning Consult poll that the label “milk” should not be used to market non-dairy beverages; 23 percent said the label should be used. That comes after the head of the FDA suggested last week that non-dairy products may not meet the FDA’s official definition of milk, noting that “an almond doesn’t lactate.”

Trump approval

This week, Trump’s net approval rating sits at -11.7 percentage points, according to our tracker: 41.3 percent approve of his job performance and 53 percent disapprove. Last week, the spread was a bit smaller, at -11.0 points (a 41.8 percent approval rating compared with a 52.8 percent disapproval rating). He was slightly more popular a month ago, when his net approval rating was -9.5 points. Back then, 42.2 percent approved and 51.7 percent disapproved of his performance.

Generic ballot

According to FiveThirtyEight’s model of generic congressional ballot polling, 48.1 percent of voters prefer Democrats and 39.9 percent prefer Republicans. That 8.2-point margin has reverted to the mean a bit from Democrats’ unusually wide 9.3-point lead (Democrats 48.7 percent, Republicans 39.4 percent) last week, but it’s definitely much better for them than the 5.7-point lead (Democrats 46.4 percent, Republicans 40.7 percent) they held this time last month.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2018 midterms.

[katurdayss]

It’s Friday, which means episode 2 of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And yes, I am going blind react/ word vomit my reaction below the break again so consider this your SPOILER WARNING.

Are Sam and Bucky gonna finally meet up? Is someone gonna punch fake Captain America in his face? Is the government gonna get called out for stealing the shield from the museum and giving it to another white dude after Steve Rogers clearly gave it to Sam Wilson? I’ma say no, cuz Marvel sucks at addressing society issues in their media. Which is weird because if you listen to some of those 90′s disney song lyrics you’re like damn disney kinda hit the nail on the head but maybe thats because Alan Menken was in charge of like every soundtrack.

I digress! Onward to the episode!

Sometime later.....

Overall review. YAY BANTER. Also I really like seeing more of the day to day vibes of the world. Feels a little bit lived in maybe a little grime-y. Like a warn in pair of jeans that could use a wash. Kinda getting sanitized The Boys vibes a little but it is Disney. This world feels way more disillusioned that anything I’ve really seen from the Avengers world yet. Which makes sense given who Bucky is and the aftermath of ‘The Blip’ (stupid name, I like The Snap better). I also like that therapy plays a role. I don’t know if its portrayed well, but at least it gets people talking about feelings. Men talking about feelings. Let’s normalize that shit please and thank you.

WHHHAATTT is this 90′s ‘Previously on’ recap!? Holy shit, your first episode was all set up. nothing really happened Disney, I don’t need a recap. shit.

Is it me or is this sound horrible and muted?

OOOOO, slowly descending zipper....my first thought is Bucky Barnes + the sexy but knowing disney its probs like a bag or something

flight suit? who is this guy and why is he fondling lockers? OH its Faker McFakerson. Fuck this guy dude. ARE YOU SERIOUS? He has a black supporting best friend? Could this scream rip off any more? UGH

“You can’t just punch your way out of problems” LOL Steve Rogers got in FIGHTS IN BACK ALLYWAYS. Like punching your way out of problems is a corner stone of Captain American. He’s mister “I can do this all day”. 

Hey it was a bag. Nailed it. Also thats a stupid ugly suit, so there Fake Captain America.

Wait so he just signed a toy. Is he signing Captain America? or like his name? why would anyone want this weird dude’s name and what if the signatures don’t match Steve’s handwriting, doesn’t that devalue the signature? Oh he took the mask off, that like, answers all my questions.

NOOOOOOO BUCKY you look devastated dearheart. Get this man a couch and a hug. 

also that apartment is hella empty 

OOO confrontation. ouch. 

lol, in 1937 when it first came out. Bucky pulling out the hipster creds. Bucky looks so tired and annoyed.

That line has annoyed me SO MUCH since the trailers. I have a bunch of people who call me a nickname because we’re CLOSE. They’ve earned that nickname. Its a sign of intimacy for me, and I’d feel violated af if someone I was only kinda friends with just assumed they could call me my nickname.

Bucky doesn’t need a parachute?! DUDE he just pulled Steve! You can’t just rip the arm of a jacket with a human hand, thats not how that works.

Yikes, ouch. how is he relatively okay? like a serum only does so much.

man has been a p.o.w for 70 years and has a metric fuck ton of trauma, maybe don’t mess with him sam.

YAASSSSS, buddy cop vibessssss.

THE FUCK WAS THAT RUNNING?!?!?! Could steve do that? did he get a booster shot in wakanda or something? wat. even.

how did the truck in back not notice?

WHAT THE FUCK DOES EVERYONE GET SERUM NOW? WHAT.

yay fake captain america showed up -_- 

his friend has a matching uniform? what is this x-men?

aww Bucky shield interaction! so nonchalant too!

How did you think this would go John? cuz I mean, look at who you’re talking too. read the room...well road.

LOL the staring! I feel like thats gonna be like a 3rd character.

Uhhhh something is wrong here. Well shit thats not good.

Bucky is angry and yet so done with everyone. It also looks like he’s wearing his dog tags?

Who...? HOW DOES NO ONE RECOGNIZE BUCKY. 

So wrap a history already fraught with medical experimentation with super soldier experimentation and add some racism. Oh boy.

Well Bucky got arrested. Because of therapy. Wow.

LOL. Litteral LOL. Look I don’t know if she’s a good therapist but this scene is FUNNY. GOD, I love this buddy cop banter.

Bucky, baby, muffin, darlin’. Steve wasn’t wrong about you. *where the fuck are the tissues*

How the fuck do they know they’ve been found? what tech are they using that the governments don’t have?

ZEMO! DANIEL BRÜHL!