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royaidaydreams · 3 years ago

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FMA Roy and Riza Cosplay Tutorial 3/3

Here’s a write up/tutorial of my FMA Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye cosplays!

Part One Jacket Tutorial

Part Two Waistcape and Pants

Part Three Accessories: Gloves and Guns

I embroidered two pairs of Mustang’s gloves. The first pair on the left are thicker and came from a local military supply store. My husband bluffed a tad to an overly enthusiastic cashier that he bought these (and his boots) because he collects military gear. My husband does appreciate and occasionally collect old WWI/WWII items, but we 600% bought these for the purposes of cosplay. The second pair were ordered online and are much thinner, easier to wear. Pro tip: buy the thin cotton ones, especially for summer cons.

The stitching is red embroidery thread and a basic back stitch (super easy). I had never embroidered anything before, and yeah, it shows a little. By the second pair I was able to add more details like the top flame and the salamander. From a distance they look incredible.

I was shocked how many dudes at cons showed my husband their flame alchemy symbol tattoos. Wild.

Here’s one of the rare in progress photos.

Story time: I took this to work with me to finish it during a break. My boss saw it and kinda freaked out because they thought the symbol was satanic. I had to reassure them it was completely fictional. So yeah, that happened.

True to Riza’s nature, I can now whip out a backup pair of Mustang’s gloves if ever needed.

Sorry for the poor lighting. We ordered a state alchemist pocket watch. It clips to the belt and sits in a pocket of the pants. The color of it is black and darker than the silver we were expecting. Oh well. It’s still really nice.

Hawkeye’s sniper rifle!

This is the most fun, coolest prop by far. I’m not a fan of guns and real weapons by any means, but boy was this thing fun to play with. By the end of the con I could swing it off my shoulder into shooting position quite quickly. It’s a WWI-esque parade rifle we found on a military shop online. That means it is genuinely a prop and has no ability to fire real ammunition. It exists only to look pretty and that’s exactly why it’s perfect for cosplay.

In order to take it to a con we had to make it “safe” by designating it with an orange tip, especially because it is so realistic looking. I just stuck an orange nerf dart inside, haha. It fit perfectly. At a small con we went to I had to take the rifle through a weapons check where the trigger was zip tied and color-coded to be marked as safe. They were ... not thrilled at how realistic this rifle looked. The larger con we went to they waved us into the convention hall no weapons check, so your mileage may very when it comes to how strict cons are about prop weapons.

The scope was “donated” from one my brother-in-law’s bb guns. (My husband just straight up stole it because bro-in-law doesn’t use them anymore.) It’s not a real scope, it’s just plastic and doesn’t magnify.

I jury-rigged the band that attaches it to the gun. The scope had a small slot that allowed it to attach to the gun, but the slot was useless to attach it to this rifle. I cut it off with a knife (and nearly took off my fingernail in the process -- be careful with knives!) If you look closely you can see three grooves. I filled these by crazy gluing black paracord and that made the base flat and sturdy. The paracord was sewn onto a strip of thick black elastic (both from Wallmart) to give the elastic some flexibility so I can take the scope off to store it. Or let it get banged around in the car while traveling. The elastic sits snugly around the gun and holds the scope upright perfectly. It can’t come off the rifle unless I unscrew the shoulder strap. So I don’t have to worry about it falling off and being lost.

I know nothing about guns if that isn’t obvious. The metal part open with a spring, but it’s just wood inside. The trigger clicks when pulled. All of this is super fun to play with.

Riza’s handgun. Searching online I could not find a prop handgun that doesn’t look like a tiny neon orange water pistol. Like, at all. They just don’t sell realistic looking handguns in the US. (Probably for a good reason ...)

I gave up on the idea of having a handgun until I visited Central Asia and found this gem in a toy store. It’s diecast metal and super heavy. It’s just a toy, the barrel opens and spins, but there’s nothing in it. Unfortunately, because it’s metal it sets off metal detectors. And that’s how I almost got my husband arrested twice bringing it back to the US. (We left it in the toy box it came in when traveling, but still... pack your realistic looking prop weapons in your spouse’s luggage, on top because Central Asian airport security will open it.) Luckily, it already came with the orange safety tip.

One day I would like to make Riza’s belt holster she wears over her waist cape and stick this gun inside. It’ll look so good!

Boots. Roy’s came from the local military supply store. Riza’s came from Goodwill. Technically, Riza’s are more accurate to FMA because Amestris’ military boots are mid-calf length and do not have laces. Still, I would like to get matching real military boots if we keep wearing these costumes. Roy’s boots are far more comfortable for walking around a con all day.

Here’s Riza’s hair clip. It came from Wallmart or Wallgreens.

You can see I was able to style my hair in to include Riza’s recognizable hawk wings and tail. My hair is usually blonder and my bangs are shorter, like Riza’s. Due to the pandemic, having a baby, and literally traveling back to the US less than a week before this con, I wasn’t able to get my hair cut and dyed like it should have been. Forgive me for the inaccuracy!

Styling the hair is easy, even an unskilled novice like me can do it by myself. I used a regular ponytail and left the end sticking up instead of pulling it all the way through the hair-tie. The clip goes above the hair-tie and the tail is held up with hairspray because I don’t have anime hair physics.

Our masks were made specially for the 2021 con using leftover materials. This is why you always save extra fabric, folks! I just followed a mask pattern found online. I was super proud they matched our costumes. Lets be real, the Amestrian military would require matching regulation masks too. Can we get some fanart of Roy and Riza wearing facemasks? I really wish we were able to put the Amestrian dragon one side, but there wasn’t time. Maybe in the future.

We store the costumes in giant garment bags. One for Roy and one for Riza, they hold everything in one place. Using garment bags to contain everything in one place was the best cosplay advice I’ve ever found, so I’m spreading the word to you. Do it! You won’t be disappointed. The pockets on the outside hold the small items like the gloves, the hair clip, previous con badges, and handgun. Inside one hanger holds the jacket and another the waist cape. Pants sit folded at the bottom with the boots.

In the background you can see (airplane snack and) the pattern I used to measure Baby!Ed’s jacket. I just traced an existing piece of clothing. For the record, I chose not to include a hood on his jacket because it would have covered too much of the back due to baby’s proportions. Iron on adhesives created the Flamel symbol on Ed’s jacket.

The yarn wig is just a hat I knit with yarn added on top. Here’s the tutorial I used. The wig was super comfy and baby didn’t mind it at all. Pro tip for yarn wigs: add way more yarn to the front of the wig than you think you need. Because I created a braid I didn’t even need to put any extra yarn in the back where it all gathered.

If you can’t tell by now, I really love this cosplay. A lot of time, effort, and creativity went into making Roy, Riza, and baby!Ed’s costumes. They were the most technical cosplay I’ve made to date and a true labor of love. When the San Diego comic con comes back we’ll wear them there! I can’t wait!

#cosplay #FMA #riza hawkeye #roy mustang

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graveyarddirtseries · 4 years ago

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Graveyard Dirt & Salt

Chapter Nine

From out of the tall, un-managed grass of the laid waste cotton field they were riding in, a ghost, a sort of shadow rose up, then another and another. Three of them, blood on their faces from a fresh kill, eyes wide at the approach of another meal.

“You're gonna grow roots sitting there.”

For six days Annie had seated herself right in front of the wrought iron gate and stubbornly refused to move. For six days she screamed whenever someone would try to move her. Sure she came to eat when food was ready and certainly she made a trip to the hastily constructed privy when she had to and she slept in her bed, or rather laid there all night until her rage wore her out and she fell asleep.

But when she wasn't eating, shitting or sleeping, she was sitting in the same ass groove worn into the grass and sullenly staring out at the world beyond the gate.

Easing down beside her, the Lieutenant peered down the same worn cattle trail she was peering down and sighed.

“You know where Halloween pumpkins come from?” He asked the girl.

She seemed to ignore him.

“They used to be turnips, you know. Was a fellow named Stingy Jack, you know him?”

Again Annie seemed to ignore him.

“Well, anyways this man was a rotten sort, used to play all kinds of tricks and schemes, loved to drink. Anyways, one night Jack is at the bar, drinking and he runs out of money. Well, old Jack he wasn't ready to turn in, but at that moment the Devil comes by, checking up on the sinners at the bar and old Jack says to him 'I'd sell my soul for one last drink'.

The Devil thinks this is an easy one and turns himself into a sixpence – do you know what a sixpence is?”

Annie shrugged.

“It's like money from England...well, I think this story is Irish, but...do you know where Ireland is?”

Annie was still.

“Well, anyways, the Devil turns himself into a coin for Jack to buy his last drink with, but old Jack is a wily sort of old bugger, so he buys his drink and then steals back the Devil coin and shoves it into his wallet next to a silver cross he had been carrying, trapping the Devil in his wallet.

The Devil cried out 'let me out, let me out!' And Jack said he would if the Devil promised not to return to claim his soul for ten years.

Well, ten years pass and Jack is out walking on a dirt road one night and the Devil comes up to collect what's owed.

And old Jack says, 'I'll go, but first you have to get me an apple from that there tree'.

The Devil huffed and stomped his hoof, but figured it was easier that fighting old Jack, so he hops up into the tree to get Jack an apple.

As soon as the Devil is in that tree, Jack takes out his pocketknife and carves crosses all around the trunk of the tree, once more trapping the Devil.

'Let me down, let me down!' Shouts the Devil.

'I will, but you got to promise that you won't take my soul from me until I die of old age', says Jack.

The Devil, getting irritated at this point, huffs and agrees.

Well, some years later, old Stingy Jack dies and he gets to the gates of Heaven and Saint Peter says, 'no, can't come in, Jack. You were mean and drunk, and you cheated and you tricked people. You can't come in.'

So old Jack goes down to Hell to see if he can get in there. It's cold and lonely wandering the earth as a spirit and Hell is very warm.

Well, the Devil himself comes to the gates of Hell and he says 'no. I don't want you here, Jack. You're mean and spiteful and too tricky for even Hell.'

Old Stingy Jack considers this and finally asks the Devil, 'well, what do I do then?'

And the Devil says, 'you go back where you came from and you walk the earth'. And he throws an eternally burning ember from the fires of hell at Stingy Jack.

And old Jack he puts that ember in a hollowed out turnip he had in his pocket and he walked the earth. They say to this day old Jack is out there, tricky and sly, wandering the earth with his Jack O'Lantern.”

Annie sniffed to hide a small grin that was threatening to break on her face.

“Benny's like Jack,” she whispered.

“He sure is and he will always trick the Devil.”

Annie gazed back out at the cattle trail, her big, dark eyes taking in the world beyond the gate like a raven perched on the branch of a tree.

“When will this all be over?” She asked him.

The Lieutenant was startled. He thought maybe Annie knew that this was how things were now, but then again she was just a wee thing. Small and young.

“Oh, sweet pea, this is how things are now. There is no over.”

She was quiet, soaking in this information, before she said, “I just want to go home.”

“Where's home?” He asked.

Annie frowned, her face still.

Somewhere outside the wall a bobwhite warbled it's funny little shriek.

The child beside him stood up and took a small step towards the gate.

“I'd stay away from the gate, sweet pea,” the Lieutenant warned her, also getting to his feet.

Again the bobwhite shrieked and Annie hurried to the wrought iron, pressing herself against it to peer out. She tweeted back, a sweet little trill that the Lieutenant couldn't place.

From out of the bush lining the cattle trail, Benny emerged, still dressed in the cassock and grinning, hands up so Sister Dymphna on the wall wouldn't shoot him.

“Good morning,” he greeted casually.

“No shame in coming back defeated,” the Lieutenant teased cautiously, mildly panicked that the man had returned so quickly. Had he been forced to give up their position? Was he compromised?

“Hey, Cordelia,” Benny greeted the child at the gate, reaching through to tickle her cheek.

She pulled away quickly, angry at him for leaving her.

Catching Sister Dymphna who was descending from the wall to open the gate, the Lieutenant held her off from her task for a moment.

“Why are you back?” He asked the shorter man.

“Well, I scrubbed the mission, but...I brought gifts.” Benny explained.

“Guns?” The Lieutenant asked.

Benny grinned. “Sort of. Just...take it easy, okay?”

“Alright.”

“Okay, it's clear, come out!” Benny shouted over his shoulder.

The Lieutenant dropped his shoulder enough so he could slide his rifle off if he needed, as out of the woods came nine people, all of them with their hands up. He still instinctively dropped his shoulder further, preparing for trouble.

“Who are these people?” He hissed at Benny.

“They're friends.”

“You brought people back to the convent?!” The Lieutenant snarled. “You compro-”

“Calm down,” Benny said. “I wouldn't endanger Cordy. She's the only one I like. These people and us have one thing in common. We want this woman stealing group dead. Now let us in.”

The Lieutenant held Dymphna back again, putting her behind him, where Annie was being shoved too.

“I ran across them in the middle of gunning down a group of these men who were trying to steal a couple of their women,” Benny explained. “Let us in. Please? We need to talk.”

“They leave their weapons outside the gate.” The Lieutenant bartered.

“Sorry, but no.” One of them said. He had a voice like the thick black smoke of a forest fire, the kind with embers and a danger.

Studying his marine gear, the Lieutenant asked, “are you a fan or a real marine?”

“Corporal Angel Delgado, I was posted at HQ, I know of you, Lieutenant Vancoughnett.”

“Delgado?” The Lieutenant racked his brain, there were enough marines at HQ that he could only catch the taste at the tip of his tongue on who the man was.

“Hey, Cajun,” Benny said firmly. “Look at me.”

The Lieutenant looked over at the fancy man.

“Trust me, okay? You want these people inside.”

“It's not my convent,” he finally said.

“I'll get Mother Mena,” Dymphna offered, she tried to take Annie with her, but the girl collapsed on the ground in non-violent protest, becoming dead weight.

Benny chuckled. “I taught her that.”

The Lieutenant remained quiet, taking in everything he could of the group of people behind Benny. Delgado was a marine, so he assumed the woman to his right was as well. There three other women, four men. They didn't look very threatening, they looked tired and hungry and two of them had instruments strapped to their backs.

Mena sidled up beside him, as quiet as a kitty cat and eyed them for a moment, before saying, “welcome. You can come on in. But this is a place of peace, please be mindful of that. Dymphna, please get the gate.”

As the gate was opened, Benny strode inside, the others following him slowly. As they passed the Lieutenant, one of them, a young man with dark hair sort of puffed up his chest at him with a smug grin and kept walking. The two with the instruments brought up the rear, both of them tipping their hats to him politely.

The Lieutenant made sure the gate was locked and secured, and Dymphna was back on the wall, before he followed the group, heading for the church Annie sullenly walking beside him.

Inside the church, he took a seat in the back with Annie, feeling like it wasn't his rodeo anymore. The convent was Mena's, the group was Benny's, he was just muscle, he supposed.

Benny, ascending the pulpit, grinned down at the others. “Good morning,” he said like a priest preparing to begin his sermon, and as he was dressed, the Lieutenant almost could forget the purpose of them being there. “Alright, let's get into it. Abbess, I missed you. You look cute in that yellow blouse, did the Lieutenant find it for you?”

“The point, please, Mr. Malone?” She insisted.

“Long story short, these people are in need of shelter, a home. In return they've agreed to help us find these men who have been stealing women. And they've already given us a peace offering.”

“Which is?” The Lieutenant asked.

“We have a prisoner, tied up in an upstairs closet in the farmhouse nearby, he can give us what we need to get these men. The position of their camp.”

“Are you seriously having a fucking meeting without me?” Grayson burst into the church, along with several of the nuns.

“That was faster than I hoped,” Benny murmured. “Hey, Grayson, I see you're still alive.”

“Fuck you, Benny!” Grayson shouted, storming down the aisle.

As he passed by the young, dark haired man from the new group, the other young man reached out and grabbed Grayson by the back of his shirt, yanking him down hard and holding him there.

“Shut your face, you're in a church, dipshit,” the dark haired man ordered. “Go on, Father.”

Not quite liking this man pushing around Grayson, the Lieutenant stood up and moved to rescue the boy, taking him back to sit at his side.

“Go on, Benny,” he said.

“Well, that's pretty much it. We have a good chance to get back Haley, Laila, maybe any other woman who've been taken by these men and in exchange, the nuns get some company here at the convent. More guns, more people.”

“Less food,” Mena added calmly. When everyone turned to look at her, she stood up almost meekly and made her way to the pulpit, crossing herself quickly before Jesus, before moving to stand beside Benny. “Less space. I certainly hope your friends are willing to work.”

“We won't freeload,” Delgado assured her. “These walls look nice enough to keep us invested in the place.”

“I'm saying,” Mena continued, “we of course will provide shelter and aid, but if we want to winter in contentment, we'll need to bring back more food to supplement our garden and our coop.”

“If one of the new group can help me hunt,” the Lieutenant began, “we can dry some meat for the winter months.”

“Yo!” The dark haired young man said.

“You can't hunt, Kane!” The young man with the glasses who sat beside him said.

“Can you, Auggie? No? Then shut the fuck up.” Kane said.

“Greene and I can help hunt,” Delgado said.

“Well, protein is a good start, but we'll need vegetables, fruit. Our peach tree does what it can, but it won't see us all through the winter.”

“We can find farms that have trees and visit them come harvest time,” the Lieutenant offered. “And any canned food we come across will be brought back to the convent.”

“You sound like you're in, Cajun,” Benny said.

“I have to admit, I'm attracted to the idea of more capable guns around here, but...no offence, I know nothing of these new folk.”

“We know nothing of you either, Lieutenant,” Delgado said.

“Whatever happened to jarhead brotherhood?” Benny asked.

“Well,” Mena broke in. “If we can all manage to get along, then I have no problems with newcomers. But I have a few rules we need to keep to here. This is Holy Ground, my nuns won't be assaulted or have vulgar language or actions taken upon them. I won't expect you all to tend to mass, but you're welcome if you want. Please respect that this is a convent first and foremost.”

“Jesus,” one of the woman from the new group murmured.

“Guess that'll put a stop to your weekend catting, huh Saph?” Kane teased.

“Keep your head straight,” the woman named Saph warned him archly.

Mena waited for them to calm down, before saying, “well, if we can oblige each other's rules, then I don't see why we can't provide sanctuary. We'll celebrate our union tonight with a meet and greet of sorts.”

“A meet and greet?” Delgado asked, his tone was a little more accusatory. These new people were decidedly rougher around the edges than the Lieutenant and the nuns were, it was clear.

Mena sort of shifted nervously under his dark eyed gaze. “Uh...well, I don't...I'm not sure what to call it in the end of days. I'm sorry.”

“No, I – I wasn't being mocking, I'm sorry...we've been in a completely different land than you. It'll take a while to get civilized again.” Delgado said hurriedly, sounding almost embarrassed. “I think a small...thing might be good to mingle our group with yours. Get everyone accustomed to each other.”

Mena nodded. “Alright, then. Now, do any of you need medical treatment or...I see you're pregnant, darling. Do you need prenatal care?”

“I've got my vitamins,” the pregnant woman said. “Thank you.”

“Our people are in good shape, Medicine Man Jack keeps us running,” Delgado said. “We just need some sleep somewhere safe. And food would be wonderful. But don't think we're planning on just sitting around, we will work for that food. We'll chip in on chores.”

“You have a doctor among you?” Mena asked.

“Forensic Pathologist, actually, Jack was in the army as a surgeon too, so he's good at wear and tear fixes. Nothing major, so I hope no one needs brain surgery or open heart.”

“Maybe he wouldn't mind working with our Sisters Mary Monica and Mary Claire, they both have some nursing and hospice training, I'm sure they could benefit from more training.”

The man with the wide brimmed, black hat nodded his agreement. He wouldn't have been the one the Lieutenant would have guessed to be the doctor among the group. Especially with the banjo on his back and the almost Amish fashion he wore on his slender frame.

“Why don't you introduce yourselves, Corporal? So we know who we're bringing in to our flock?”

“Pfft,” Kane – the dark haired young man exhaled.

“We...uh...have pressing matters, another time maybe,” Benny interrupted, motioning to the Lieutenant to join them as he hopped down from the pulpit, heading for the door.

“I will not be blown off, Mr. Malone,” Mena argued, following him down the aisle, everyone, literally the entire two groups, following as well.

In the rush of the crowd, the Lieutenant scooped up Annie, who was still sulking, but allowed herself to be carried instead of getting crushed. He didn't like how fast it was all moving, not that he wasn't used to fast paced, only that he was still a little shaky on his trust with these new people.

Grabbing hold of Dymphna just outside, he eased Annie down and whispered, “keep your eye on these people while we're gone, yeah?”

She nodded.

“And tell the others to keep their weapons on them, they don't have to be menacing, just...cautious.”

Again she nodded. “Will we be okay?”

“I'm eighty percent.”

“Eighty percent yes or no?” She called after him as he hurried to catch up with Benny and Delgado at the gate.

He side eyed a few of Delgado's people, who were milling around awkwardly nearby, as he passed.

Mena joined them just as the Lieutenant did and the four of them stood for a moment at the gate.

“Where are you going?” Benny asked her.

“With you.”

“Not outside the walls, Sister.”

“It's Abbess, please? And I have just as much right to be in on all of this as you, since you decided to start playing fast and loose with our convent supplies. No offence,” she added to Delgado sweetly.

“A little taken, but I get the frustration.” He replied.

“No.” Benny insisted.

“I'm not even going to talk to you anymore,” Mena stated, frustrated.

“Get your weapon, yeah?” The Lieutenant told her. “We'll wait.”

Mena narrowed her eyes at him.

“I promise. We'll wait,” he assured her, grabbing Benny by the hem of his cassock.

As Mena scurried off, Benny yanked his cassock hem back and said, “she can't come. Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because I promised to let this asshole go if he told us everything, so we're going to just let him walk then shoot him dead.”

The Lieutenant glanced in Mena's direction. “Well, shit. We can't leave without her now, she'll kick us all out.”

“Why does she want to come anyways? Have you been letting these nuns loose?” Benny demanded.

“They're free to come and go as they like and...yeah a few of them have been coming with me on hunts and such, I thought it would be best to get them used to the outside world.” The Lieutenant said. “And what the fuck does it matter to you? They need to toughen up.”

Benny nodded angrily, agreeing with him, but clearly not liking it. “Fuck...shit. Yeah they do.”

“What do we do then?” Delgado asked.

The Lieutenant exhaled, he didn't know. This was Benny's fucking mess.

“Okay, we get the information from him, I walk off with him into the woods and strangle the fucker.” Benny said, removing his cassock, possibly to prevent anyone from catching him by the hem again.

“Or,” Delgado added calmly, “we just interrogate him in a room away from her. Shoot him and say he lunged us.”

“That's easier. That'll work.” Benny said, suddenly snapping at the Lieutenant. “Why are you looking at me with a face like a slapped ass?!”

“I'm not,” he argued lightly.

He was, but he wanted to argue a bit. It was an entirely different plan set in motion now. Not a bad plan, just an entirely different one. And, yeah, maybe he hated that it wasn't his plan. Maybe he was a little pissed that it was the fancy man who saved the day for once.

Instead, he turned to Delgado, who was gazing at him with calm, almost thoughtful brown eyes.

“Are your people gonna be okay here on their own?” He asked.

The Corporal nodded. “They're adults.”

“That pregnant one looks young,” the Lieutenant said.

“Hazel, yeah she's our youngest, sixteen. She's a good kid though, quiet and doesn't complain.”

“Who's the father?” The Lieutenant went on with his interrogation dressed up as concern.

Delgado eyed him calmly, before saying, “no one in our group, if that's what you're thinking.”

Mena returned, her giant kitchen knife in hand, empty rucksack on her back. “Ready,” she said.

“Stick close,” the Lieutenant said to her. “Remember what I told you.”

She nodded.

“It's kind of neat, we have three horses stashed in the barn to take back to the convent and everything,” Benny said as they entered a bedroom at the top of the stairs in the farmhouse.

“These men have hor-” The Lieutenant stopped short as a moan came from the closet.

All four of them stopped in their tracks and just stared at the white door.

The moan came again and it wasn't human. Still the four of them just sort of stared in disbelief at the door.

“Hey, dipshit!” Benny finally shouted at the door, kicking it lightly.

The door shuddered in response as the man on the other side threw himself at it, letting loose another familiar moan.

“Shit,” Benny swore, stepping back, circling in a quick pacing motion, before stopping.

Delgado placed his hand on his hip. “He's dead.”

“Fuck!” Benny swore louder.

The door rattled again.

“I knew we should have gotten the information out of him last night!” Benny yelled. “But you wanted to wait!” He pointed at Delgado. “Now that asshole is fucking undead from a stomach wound and we just lost our lead!”

The Corporal blinked at him. “You asked me to offer up my people to fight for you. I wasn't going to do so on blind faith. Sorry, Abbess,” he added kindly to Mena.

She reached out and touched his forearm warmly.

Kicking in the door, slamming it into the uggie on the other side, Benny leapt on top of it and beat it with his fist for a good long time, before pulling out his pistol and shooting him until the clip clicked empty.

Everyone was quiet, their ears ringing in the small room from the shots.

Mena, who had covered her ears at the sight of the gun, lower her hands and looked panicked at the Lieutenant.

“I'm sorry,” Benny apologized, standing up, much calmer than he had been, running a hand through his hair and putting the greasy strands back in place. “That was unfair of me to blame you, Corporal.”

“It's fine,” Delgado said. “But we'd better get moving, those shots will have gotten us some attention.”

“Let's the horses and get the fuck back,” Benny said softly, almost as though he were ashamed of himself or the situation.

The Lieutenant actually felt bad for the man. He was just after these men because they posed a threat to the survivors of the area, namely his nuns, but Benny had lost someone to them. Benny didn't seem the type to make honest-to-god connections with people, so it seemed like when he did, he was attached for life.

He clapped Benny on the back as they left the room, trying to comfort the poor man.

Benny was quiet, but didn't shove his comforting gesture away, just sort of slumped his way down the hall.

“Ever been on a horse, Abbess?” Delgado asked as they saddled the creatures as quickly as they could.

Mena shook her head. “No.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Guess we'll both learn something new today.”

“Cajun?” Benny asked. “You ride?”

“Never.”

“Fucking Cajuns,” Benny replied, swinging up onto his horse easily. “Just like riding a bike.”

“These bikes bite, don't they?” The Lieutenant asked, eyeing his horse warily.

Benny's horse whinnied and side stepped in agitation at the new, unfamiliar rider and Benny almost fell off.

Laughing, the Lieutenant attempted to copy Benny's movements up and into the saddle, adjusting himself down below to a comfortable position, before turning to offer a hand to Mena.

She was already being hefted onto Delgado's horse by the Corporal, sitting in front of him, holding the horn nervously. So he instead pulled Marie off his shoulder and holstered her into the fancy rifle holster attached to the saddlebag.

“Alright, little kick to get them going,” Benny instructed. “Pull this way to go this way, pull this way to go that way, pull both back to stop. If your horse gets spooked, it's probably because of a snake or the undead, hold on like hell and they'll get you away to safety, but they may buck and if that happens? Eight seconds.” He added with a grin at his own joke. “Yup!” He nudged his horse into a trot, out of the barn.

“Fucking Texian,” the Lieutenant cursed, nudging his own horse to follow.

“You know I used to be better at this,” Benny murmured as they rode, keeping to the woods, not deep enough to wear the horses out with rough terrain, but deep enough to avoid the living.

“Riding?” The Lieutenant asked.

“No, tactics. You retire from the army, you get fucking twenty pounds fatter, you sit at home, you watch daytime television, your mind rots and then this happens and you fucking fail at the only thing you were ever good at.”

“We all grow older, Mr. Malone,” Mena said softly. “You did what you could.”

Benny was sullen on his beautiful black and white paint.

“I don't know you well, Father,” Delgado said. “But...I wouldn't have done anything different from what you did.”

“Thanks strange marine,” Benny said almost sarcastically.

“Hey, Texian,” the Lieutenant offered, hoping to cheer up the poor little fancy man. “You got yourself a horse and...isn't that all a cowboy needs?”

“Fuck you, Cajun,” Benny murmured. It was without feeling and quite unlike him. “I'm out of bullets, I'm out of ideas. I don't know. Maybe it's time to die.”

It was a joke, but a dark one and no one else was laughing.

“How about one yeehaw while you're on that horse?” The Lieutenant kept pressing, knowing he was getting somewhere with the teasing.

Benny's eyes shone a little in amusement, though he still looked disappointed.

“Just a soft one? For me?” The Lieutenant went on.

“I'll give you a fucking yeehaw,” Benny grumbled. Turning to Mena, he said, “I have to admit, Abbess, I'm shocked at you. I thought you'd jump up my ass and stay there about that man back there.”

“About how you allowed him to die?” She inquired archly.

“So you are mad?” Benny asked with a small, almost proud smile.

“Mr. Malone,” she began in that way that the Lieutenant knew was her gearing up to scold. Both Benny and the Lieutenant also geared up, bracing for the blow, and even though he was new to their dynamic, even Delgado seemed to steel himself in preparation.

But she didn't follow it up with anything.

Abbess of the Veil of Tears of the Sacred Virgin Convent, Mother Mena, petite and polite, just sat on the horse in front of Delgado and gazed long and hard at the horizon before them.

The Lieutenant was peering at her from his own horse, and Benny dropped over his own saddle horn to peer past the Lieutenant to join in on the staring.

Both men exchanged a curious look at each other, before Benny prodded, “Abbess?”

“There's so much death and dying in this new land,” she began softly, all fire gone from her tone. “I can't bring myself to care much.”

There was a second, only a beat really, before Benny said, “well, now, that sounds like the tone of someone who's defeated!” His loud, overly friendly, almost mocking voice rang off of the surrounding hills and hit back at them hard. It was too plastic, too fake. Just like the Lieutenant, Benny didn't like to hear Mena sound so...apathetic and it must have chased his own defeated attitude off.

Yelling, scolding, even a sermon, was better than this apathy from Mena.

“Dead,” Delgado warned, just as his horse nickered uncomfortably, prancing closer to the Lieutenant's.

The smell was in the air, something rotten, something that wasn't just an old stump in the woods.

Slipping down from his horse, the Lieutenant tossed his reins at Benny and said, “get the others back to the convent. We need to protect the horses.”

Mena struggled against Delgado's arms, and hopped down too to join him.

He didn't have time to tell her to get back on the horse, just pulled her behind him.

She welded her knife though and while she obeyed his wordless order to get behind him, she peeked out from around him to keep an eye on the rapidly approaching dead.

Benny and Delgado were long gone and it was fine, the Lieutenant was used to this new land, but he didn't care for the fact that Mena had to hop down with him. She would be one distraction he didn't need.

But she was here and today seemed as good a day as any for her to learn the hard way about the dead.

Kicking the first one to reach them square in the chest, he sent it back into the others hard, the one at the back collapsing.

Among the snarls and almost hisses of the dead, he heard Mena gasp and chanced only a quick glance over his shoulder, to find the grass rustling to their right as well. More dead.

“Run,” he commanded her, killing one of the uggies that lunged at them with his own knife, before shoving her hard in the direction the grass wasn't rustling in.

She screamed as another of the dead came out of the grass, toppling her and sending them both into the grass to disappear.

With no option, as the uggies were at his heels, he swept into the area the two had tumbled and stomped hard on the uggie's head as it struggled to get to its feet beside Mena who was laying on the ground.

She leapt up and joined him in running towards the woods, but not before punching at one of the dead that had caught up with them. It sent it off course, but didn't topple it. They were so close to the trees, but he knew they wouldn't make it, the dead were already grasping at the backs of their shirts. Grabbing Mena by the upper arm hard, he shoved her ahead of him and stopped, allowing the five dead to topple him, letting his feast be the distraction she would need to escape.

He kicked and punched hard at the group, stuffing his marine issued boot into the mouth of one that was at his legs, preventing it from biting, trying to avoid being bitten by the others using his knife to block any mouth that was thrown at him. It was a battle he was losing fast, there were too many. One of the uggies dropped to the ground heavily beside him, then rapid gunfire and the rest were dropping fast. Scrambling back and away from the pile of dead, he looked himself over for a bite, the action happening too fast for him to notice anything.

Mena was at his side, helping him up, her knife black with the dead's blood.

“Come on,” she urged him, yanking him towards the woods.

Just inside the tree line Delgado had stationed himself up in a tree and was holding his hand down to them to help them up into the old oak. He was so fucking welcome into the group at that moment, hand held down to them, rifle in his other.

Mena first, the Lieutenant ensured that, pushing her up, before following.

“Did they get you?” Delgado asked.

Still looking over his arms, in the safety of the tree as more dead emerged from the grass to gather below, he shook his head. “I don't think so.” He checked and rechecked for a bite, hands shaking. It was close, too close. He had been so damned careful, but that was...it was too close.

“You're lucky you were heading for me,” Delgado murmured, between taking shots at the uggies. “You would have been dead.”

“Thanks,” the Lieutenant breathed. He assumed the man had jumped off his horse as well, sending Benny on to the convent. And he was fucking grateful for the other marine.

Sitting on a branch above them, Mena was quiet.

Reaching up, the Lieutenant tweaked at her booted foot, trying to put her at ease, comforting her the best he could.

“You okay?” He asked her between shots.

She nodded, wide eyes on the dead below them.

“It's okay,” he said. “There can't be that many, Delgado has the ammo to put them all down.” Unless there's more out there and they're all coming to the sound of the shots, he thought, but kept that to himself. It was only then that he realized he didn't have Marie on his back and remembered putting her on the fucking horse in the rifle holster.

Great place for her, you fucking couyon.

There was only five or so left, so he turned to Mena.

“Once these uggies are put down, we have to climb down and run like hell,” he ordered, feeling like the CO he was once more. “There could be more headed this way, we stay close together, we don't stop running until we hit the convent or some kind of shelter. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Yes?” He urged needing an auditory agreement that she understood his orders.

“Yes.”

Three more left and the Lieutenant tried hard to ignore the way his branch was cracking under his weight, only three more. It gave out at two left and despite him trying to grab another branch, he fell straight down with the branch, collapsing on one of the uggies below hard. So hard he heard the poor uggies ribs crunch. Delgado shot the last one as he stabbed the poor dead woman in the eye and put her out of her misery, before getting to his feet shakily. He was getting too old to fall out of fucking trees that was for damned sure, but he was grateful for the uggie that broke his fall.

Jumping down, Delgado gave them cover as the Lieutenant reached up and helped Mena down. Then the three of them ran as a unit, into the woods, away from the tree and the tall grass.

Keeping Mena in front of them always, the Lieutenant found Delgado keeping pace with her, hand holding her upper arm. The man had flawlessly moved into the proper position for protecting a civilian from gunfire and for a moment the Lieutenant was a marine again. It was nice to have that trained companion who knew how protocols worked.

They moved through the woods as fast and as carefully as they could, before they stumbled into the clearing where the lagoon for the convent was. They weren't far, but coming up the ass end.

At the sight of the wall, the Lieutenant actually exhaled the breath he had been holding and with Delgado's help, they boosted Mena up onto the wall first, before the Lieutenant stooped down for the other man.

Once all three were on the wall, they sat down and just took a moment.

He looked himself over once more, paranoid a little now that he had been bitten, but he saw nothing but scratches from the branches of the tree and a few dings from the fall. His ankle hurt a bit, but he would be back to one hundred percent in a few days.

“Any battle you can walk away from, huh?” He asked Delgado.

The other marine looked at him with his serious, dark eyes, before a small, almost bashful, dimpled smile spread over his face.

Giving one last, dramatic exhale, the Lieutenant hopped gingerly down from the wall and held his arms out for Mena, but again, Delgado had beaten him to her, easing her down, his hands holding hers, before he hopped down himself.

“You alright?” The Lieutenant asked Mena as they walked around the church.

She nodded, pale and drawn, but seemingly alright.

Grasping hold of his hand before they could emerge from the five foot space between the church and the east wall, she pulled him back into the shadows and peered up at him sombrely.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely, brown eyes so wide and so sweet as they gazed up at him. They were so dark and eternal in the shadows of the church that he swore he could see stars sparkling in them. “I'll never forget how you were prepared to die for me.”

Delgado, sensing he wasn't supposed to be there, just sort of slunk off, leaving them alone.

The Lieutenant didn't know why she was thanking him. He never understood the gratitude. He was trained to save lives, to protect, it wasn't just killing and war, though those were the unsavoury aspects of it. He was a marine, he joined to save lives. His life didn't matter, he wasn't a family man, he didn't have any reason to be alive other than protecting this convent and its people.

Mena, he supposed, more than any other. She was more important around here than him. She had nuns that needed her leadership.

Not good with serious talk, with real emotions, he chucked her playfully on the chin and said, “you did good out there, kid.”

“Lieutenant,” she began, but he was already heading out from behind the church.

Benny came up to them, smiling at first, before calming himself and saying, “gotta play hero, huh? That's gonna get you killed someday.”

“It was almost this day,” Mena stated.

“How's my horse, fancy man?” The Lieutenant inquired with a grin.

As they rounded the church, standing in front, heading for the gate, the Lieutenant noticed Delgado standing with his people in a tight circle, the survivors from his group having hardly moved from where they had been left.

Making a straight line for the new group, the Lieutenant found some nuns also heading in that direction, knowing they would get filled in there.

“So are we being asked to leave then?” One of Delgado's people asked.

“No,” Mena answered for the marine. “We aren't making anyone go anywhere. We still have the agreement than you'd help us in dealing with these men and to be honest I would never turn away anyone who needed shelter and safety here. I just ask that you pitch in with chores. Have you been offered tea or water?” She asked.

They nodded.

“Have you been fed?”

They shook their heads.

Mena frowned, but only offered the nuns with them a small, withering glare, before saying, “well, then let's go inside the cloister and get you something to eat. We can have an early lunch.”

“I'll have to skip hunting today,” the Lieutenant said. “Until the area is calmed down, somewhat. All the shooting and commotion probably scared away the game anyways.”

“Good,” she said. “You can work on digging us another privy hole.”

“Latrine duty, huh?” He asked with a small grin. “For saving your life?”

“For being reckless,” she replied coolly.

He nodded, properly stripped down. “Alright.”

“I can help with that,” Delgado said. “Jack, Billy? Let's get you working with the nursing nuns.”

“That would be Sisters Mary Monica and Mary Claire, they're in that building over there. It's the infirmary, but first your people eat.”

As Mena led the new people away, the Lieutenant watched their retreating backs, the gears in his mind already turning.

“Why's she's pissed at you?” Benny asked, coming to stand with him.

“I don't know,” he lied.

“Well, enjoy the doghouse, dipshit,” the shorter man scoffed, heading after the others.

“Why are you mad now?” He called out after him.

Benny turned in his tracks, walking backwards. “Because you didn't need to jump down from your fucking horse. We could have outrun the dead. You have a hero complex or a death wish. And you need to fix your shit!”

“So what? You wanted us to run the horses here and lead the dead to our door? Was that your plan?”

Benny turned around and scowled darkly, folding his arms. “Is this about me bringing these people here?”

“Look,” the Lieutenant began diplomatically. “We both fucked up today. Let's call it a scratch match.”

“We need to get our shit together,” Benny agreed.

Exhaling a sigh, the Lieutenant knew Benny might be right.

#graveyard dirt & salt series #novel #sorry it took me so long to update #thought no one was reading this anymore #shout out to #gothamsgaygirlgang

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shemakesmusic-uk · 4 years ago

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Music reconnected Trannilish and Ms. Boogie after life took the rappers in different directions. "We've been day zero sisters," says Trannilish (Lish for short). "Like way back before transitioning." In August, Lish hopped on Boogie's fiery track, ‘FEM QUEEN,’ and now Boogie's lending her signature purrr's to Lish's ‘Bounce,’ out now. "Collaborating with Trannilish has been the most fun part of my career, to be honest," adds Boogie — a strong statement, considering her own rolodex of underground hits. "We have a great time in the studio, and just let our hair down to create and feed off each other's vibes. "On ‘Bounce,’ Lish and Boogie offer up an absolutely menacing track with a hook that demands its own viral dance challenge. "I get the cash and then I bounce," Boogie raps, describing the song as a "celebration of everyone getting money." For Lish, ‘Bounce’ symbolizes "moving on" from anything that no longer fulfills you. This empowering message is laced with humor, featuring one choice lyric, "I'm swinging from his pubic hairs like Donkey Kong." According to Lish, "Making people laugh is super important to us." The ‘Bounce’ music video, brings their Jhevere Reynolds-produced track to life. Lish says the original plan was "to shoot a really big video, but then COVID started getting out of control." Instead, they came up with a virtual idea, depicting themselves as CGI video vixens driving convertibles and dancing together in sexy sports jerseys. Boogie says they reached out to Linya Lanvin and Jai Valentino, who helped bring their "'fem queen' Barbie dream house and basketball court to life." [via PAPER]

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We’ve been sleeping on Malyangapa/Barkindji artist Barkaa, but thanks to her new single ‘Groovy’, that’s absolutely changed. This one dropped at the end of December 2020, but came across our radar this week so it definitely had to be included thanks to its powerful message and just how fun it is to listen to. Out via Bad Apples, ‘Groovy’ is also dedicated to Barkaa‘s mother and sees Barkaa rap in both English and Barkindji. She’s one to watch, and we are now firmly on board! [via Purple Sneakers]

Haviah Mighty celebrates the power of being alone on ‘Antisocial’, her new song with Old Man Saxon. After dropping her debut album 13th Floor and winning Canada’s 2019 Polaris Prize — becoming both the first Black woman and first hip-hop artist to accomplish this feat — Ms. Mighty has seemingly found another gear. “This ain’t a twosome or a threesome or a foursome,” she sings, “This that I’m a do it on my motherfuckin’ lonesome.” The track, co-produced by Haviah Mighty and Devontée, starts with a scattered synth riff that suddenly pops into the groove when the beat drops. Old Man Saxon adds new textures to the song with a hickory-smoked flow. “Oh you rollin’ on your own that’s a big bet,” he raps, “You want me forever but I am more of a vignette.” In a statement, Mighty spoke about our “emotions of self-confidence,’ explaining, “I remember listening to the beat months ago, feeling really energized by the hard cuts and bouncy percussion. That energy within was bottled up as I sat on my bed, hanging out alone, socially distancing — something I spent a lot of time doing around the time I wrote this song. As I got comfortable and familiar with being alone, I focused on self-help and self-care. As someone who generally only felt comfortable on the go in the messy hustle and bustle that is life, this time of slowing down to better get to know me was important. This song focuses on those emotions of self-confidence that we feel inside, the desire to be alone, the desire to sit with one’s thoughts, and to validate oneself.” [via Consequence of Sound]

Alternative hip-hop artist and producer Amber Ryann’s latest release, ‘ALONE’ is an atmospheric listen merging rap, electronic, and R&B with an effortless pop style. The accompanying music video showcases the artist’s unique style with varying backdrops and movements. After releasing multiple singles last year, Ryann has surpassed a million streams collectively and plans to release more music monthly. ‘ALONE’ is a melting pot of sounds and synths. While Ryann delivers structured bars along with some vocalized verses, her style is reminiscent of '90s grunge. Her demeanor boasts a nonchalant confidence, unafraid to step outside of the box. The mellow trap beat starts off with heavy bass and ends with a softer melody. The rapper also begins with faster verses and slowly ends with a harmonized chorus, “I can’t be alone.” Ryann’s style is the definition of alternative hip hop. [via Earmilk]

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To kick off 2021, burgeoning Alabama rapper, Flo Milli returns with her new single ‘Roaring 20s.’ Produced by Kenny Beats and including a sample of ‘If I Were A Rich Man’ from the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Fiddler on the Roof, the single continues to show Flo’s boisterous personality. The song inspires the next wave of Flo Milli as she paves her own way, redefining this centuries’ 20’s and continuing with messages of female empowerment as heard in the song’s lyrics. On the release and this next phase, Flo Milli shares: “The ‘Roaring 20s’ was a period in history of dramatic social and political change. Last year I was able to break through during a very difficult time for not only our country but, the world. Born in 2000, and having my breakout year in 2020, I feel like I’m living in the new age of the ‘Roaring 20s’. One of the most familiar symbols of the ‘Roaring 20s’ was the birth of the new independent woman, known in those years as a flapper. A flapper is a young woman; unbothered by conventional standards of behavior. In addition to being more sexually free than previous generations, the women of the Roaring 20s had the bobbed hair, the short skirts, the drankin’, the smokin’, looks and participated in activities that were deemed ‘unladylike’. My lyrics, my style and my lifestyle all resonate with that freedom and I AM the ‘Roaring 20s’.”

#hip hop thursday #trannilish #ms. boogie #barkaa #haviah mighty #amber ryann #flo milli

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depechemodespiritera · 7 years ago

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Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan is having a wistful moment of gratitude, gazing out the picturesque window of his Beverly Hills hotel room at the sunshine that radiates like a golden blanket over steadily swaying palm trees and dreamy, magazine-ready homes in the hills beyond.

"L.A. has been there for us from day one, really," he says of his band's Angeleno fan base. "We were playing smaller places, but there was a cult aspect to the way people came to our shows and knew our music, before they even knew who the band was."

It's late April, and Gahan and his longtime partner in Depeche, Martin Gore, are doing interviews in their rooms at the Four Seasons as they gear up for a secret fan show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery's Masonic Lodge, a warm-up gig for an international tour in support of their latest album, Spirit. (The band's third member, Andy Fletcher, was not present.) Both speak enthusiastically about their love of L.A. and their fervent fan base here, which helped them sell out a record-breaking four nights at the Hollywood Bowl, something no other group has ever done.

Much has been made of L.A.'s Morrissey obsession, but it could be argued that Depeche Mode, who play those sold-out Bowl shows starting this week, enjoy an even more fanatical following here. There are club nights devoted to them and a popular DM convention held here every year, and the band's hits have never left rotation on L.A. radio, not just KROQ (where they got their first airplay) but mainstream pop stations as well.

Many Angelenos who came of age in the '80s and '90s feel a kinship with Depeche Mode and their songs' themes of sorrow and struggle, shameless romance and eternal outsider-dom. It's the same reason the goth scene is so popular here. Depeche Mode's music speaks to those of us who have always felt that the stereotypical image of sunny SoCal — wherein everyone is blond and beachy — is false and at odds with our true depth and dark proclivities. In an ironic way, dark music like Depeche's connects in L.A. more than anywhere else in the world. And you can dance to it.

Gore's ability to write emotive yet edgy songs with infectious hooks, and Gahan's visceral interpretations of them, have made them one of the most potent pairs in music. Personality-wise they could hardly be more different — Gahan the outgoing, dramatic frontman, Gore the quiet, sensitive songwriter. But they have much in common, too, including an obvious fondness for L.A. Gore lives with his wife and two baby daughters not far away in Santa Barbara. Gahan, who resides in New York, says his 18-year-old daughter, at the time of our interview, was considering attending USC. Still, their connection to L.A. runs even deeper than most people know.

Gore recalls the band being more of an underground phenomenon when they first came to L.A. during the "Just Can't Get Enough" era circa 1982, and how the crowds swelled when they returned around '85. "That was when it blew up," he says. "It seemed like alternative radio had taken hold of the country, but especially here in L.A. ... We went from playing small theaters to big ones, playing to 15,000 people. That was incredible for us at the time."

Gahan has a soft spot for early days, too, recalling the smaller shows when they were unknowns playing the Roxy and the now-shuttered Perkins Palace. He peers intently out his window once again, this time as if he's looking for something. "When I first came here, I was like, 'I wanna live here!'?" he says, pointing at the skyline.

In 1989, Gahan left his first wife and moved in with the band's PR director, Teresa Conroy, whom he later married. His second wife is a big link to Gahan's L.A. story, one that many fans don't know much about. (Full disclosure: I have been friends with Conroy since 2008, after I profiled her in L.A. Weekly's 2008 People issue. Gahan brought her up during our interview unprompted.) What little they do know has, for the most part, been negative, with stories painting her as the scapegoat for Gahan's well-documented drug problems. With our conversation spotlighting L.A. and its influence on the band, the frontman seems eager to set the record straight.

"I fell in love with her during tour," he says. "We just connected and at the end, I told my wife in England I was not coming back. ... I showed up on Teresa's doorstep on Sweetzer and Fountain Avenue with my little suitcase and said, 'Hey!'

"We ended up getting married. We lived near Santa Monica, in Nichols Canyon and Benedict Canyon for a while. We moved around, but what brought that all down for me was I just wanted ..."

He pauses for a long moment. "Substances?" I ask.

"Yes. That's what I liked to do most," he admits, "and it tore us apart, so that was the end of it. I moved to New York around '97 and changed my life. My behavior was not gonna change in L.A.

"Some of what people thought about her might have been my doing, just blabbing my mouth off. I realized after being clean 10 years later, it was like, wow ... at the time, as long as I had what I needed, I didn't give a fuck about anybody else. And I didn't think I was that person, but I was that person."

Gahan, now 55 and married to his third wife for 18 years, has been clean and sober for more than two decades. He looks healthy and trim in a black T-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, with hints of gray on his chin and temples. But back then, he nearly died a few times from heroin overdoses, once at the Sunset Marquis where the band rented a villa on a frequent basis. Today, however, he seems to associate L.A. and his second marriage not so much with his addiction but with inspiration.

"I haven't talked about it enough, but that time in L.A. was wonderful. The few years I did spend here when we were just hanging out and I didn't work for a couple of years, there were all these great bands playing, like Jane's Addiction, Guns N' Roses. Going to clubs like Cathouse. There was this great music coming out of L.A. There was an energy in some of the new music coming up that I was feeling and seeing here."

Gahan's personal style at the time was influenced by the L.A. rock scene (more tattoos, longer hair, leather), and he sought to steer Depeche's music that way, too. When he went back into the studio to make Songs of Faith and Devotion after 1990's Violator, the career-changing album that included worldwide hits "Personal Jesus," "Policy of Truth" and "Enjoy the Silence," Gahan says, "I was like, 'Guys, we've gotta change it up! This is just too clean, too neat!'?" But Gore and the rest of the band "didn't like at all where I was coming from."

Gore, the band's primary songwriter, was the more provocative dresser in Depeche's early days. He fancied lots of guyliner and became a fan of bondage getups — often purchased, he says, at Trashy Lingerie, not far from the Four Seasons. It gave the band an androgynous edge that "the girls seemed to like," and complemented Gore's sensitive lyrics and rhythm-driven compositions. Depeche were huge after Violator, so it's no surprise that Gore didn't want to change the winning formula, even if music in general was having a heavier moment.

Looking tan and content during our conversation (the bondage attire is long gone, replaced by a fitted black ensemble not unlike Gahan's), Gore, 56, concedes that letting go of creative control has always been something of a challenge. He describes how the early dynamics of the band evolved, putting him "behind the wheel" in terms of writing the songs and shaping the band's sound.

"When we first started we were 18 and 19, and the main driving force behind the band was Vince Clarke. He was the main songwriter, and we were just along for the ride, really," Gore says. "And then he announced to us that he was leaving before the first album was released. So because we were young and didn't really think too much about anything, we just booked some studio time and went in and carried on laying down with a three-piece, as you would at 19 and 20. We never expected it to be a huge commercial success, especially at the time. But then we grew up a little bit."

With Clarke moving on to other projects (notably Yazoo with Alison Moyet and Erasure with Andy Bell), Gore just naturally took the reins, and his talent for songwriting grew as he did. "By the time we got to the third album, we'd traveled the world quite a lot and seen a lot more," he says. "I started to get, not exactly dark by the third album [Construction Time Again], but a little bit more worldly, maybe."

Though Gahan felt like he "wanted to take it to another level," after his time in L.A. in the '90s, he didn't officially contribute to actual Depeche songwriting until 2005's Playing the Angel. It was all Gore until then. Still, the edgier aesthetics and more visceral performance style Gahan honed did steer the band into grittier territory, which fans (particularly female fans) found dramatic and sexy.

Both Gore and Gahan admit their relationship has had its tempestuous and trying moments over the years. But Gore says that after working on their latest, highly political album, Spirit, it's "as good as it's ever been."

For this tour and the Hollywood Bowl shows, Gore promises to take lead vocals on the tender numbers fans have come to expect from him, plus lots of groove-driven guitar work on songs both old and new. Depeche's massive catalog of memorable, emotionally charged music aside, their live show is why they continue to sell out stadiums at this point in their career.

I was lucky enough to attend both a rehearsal at SIR Studios in Hollywood before our interviews and the warm-up "secret" show at Hollywood Forever, and the band are as good as they've ever been onstage. With stellar production (including visuals by famed photographer and video director Anton Corbijn) and support from a solid backing band, Depeche Mode are almost certain to deliver the transcendent experience their fans expect. The Global Spirit Tour is aptly named, and Gore and Gahan hold nothing back, complementing each other in the kind of caustic yet comfortable way that only the most iconic duos do.

"Sometimes a band needs to have a bit of friction. ... The best stuff sometimes comes out of this need to be heard," Gahan explains. "Creatively we're old enough to realize that we respect each other's differences, and we know that we need each other. That's what Depeche Mode is. It's a weirdness between the two of us."

#i love them so much #depeche mode #spirit era #los angeles #hollywood bowl

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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Amidst Lockdown, students gear up for JEE/NEET with Prime Academy, a leading coaching institute - Times of India

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/amidst-lockdown-students-gear-up-for-jee-neet-with-prime-academy-a-leading-coaching-institute-times-of-india/

Amidst Lockdown, students gear up for JEE/NEET with Prime Academy, a leading coaching institute - Times of India

Getting into top institutions, like the IIT, AIIMS, NIT etc, is a cherished dream for most of the science students. Though this lockdown has announced doom for most of the sectors, it has helped sincere students significantly by giving them extra study hours. The students are able to practice more problems and spend extra time understanding the concepts in depth. Online classes for JEE / NEET have reached the study table of students, giving them multiple advantages by saving commuting time and energy.

If a student is aspiring to be a doctor, or an engineer, and has just appeared for his 10th board examinations, then it’s the best time to get into the groove and start preparations for competitive exams like JEE / NEET. Many top rankers start their preparation as early as 8th standard ! With a dedicated 6 hrs a day of study and right mentorship, this journey becomes very easy and fun filled if it is planned well. “Students should get a strong command over the basics and fundamental concepts of all the topics. Once they are thorough with the concepts, they should attempt the practice problems by setting a clock, which helps them strike the right balance between speed and accuracy.” said Lalit Kumar, an IIT Bombay graduate, CMD Prime Academy.

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“The difference between successful students and the not so successful ones is not the students’ lack of intelligence or talent, but the lack of determination and right mentorship. A strong team of permanent and consistent faculty & unmatched success ratio in JEE are the USP of Prime. That makes Prime Academy the best IIT coaching institute in Pune” said DC Pandey sir, the most renowned author for Physics across the country, who enrolled his own son in Prime Academy and took the charge as the mentor.

Click https://youtu.be/s-7NjEzZ5D4 for the important tips by physics maestro, DC Pandey sir.

Team Prime: United since ages

During lockdown, online education is the only option and it has made it very easy for a student to choose the right classes, even if they stay in far off locations. You are one click away from the demo lectures of virtual classrooms, wherein you will get first-hand experiences of quality education and which will help decide on the best coaching class for engineering and medical exams.

“My daughter Rhythem Sood has just finished her 10th board and has been attending online sessions by Prime Academy. Not only am I happy but I am surprised to see the comfort with which she solves even complex problems. She has also developed a keen interest in the subjects. As a parent I am doing my duty to enroll her with the best coaching class for IIT JEE and providing her all necessary resources. She also follows her teachers religiously and tries her best to make us all proud.” said the father of a 10th appeared student, whose elder son Swarit Sood was also a Prime Academy student and is now pursuing B.Tech from IIT Bombay.

Last year Mustafa Chasmai aced Pune by securing an All India Rank of 91 in IIT JEE Advanced. He was the only student from Pune to make it to the International Physics Olympiad camp in 2019. He shared many important tips and tricks which are very helpful for JEE/NEET aspirants. Click https://youtu.be/BmOxfPdyzWo to know about tips to crack IIT JEE. Few Q&A are as follows:

Q: What were the key points which helped you to crack IIT JEE by superseding 99.999% of the nation?

Mustafa: Early start was the key. Most of the maths/science topics of 11th /12th std are included in 9th std books. Instead of superficially finishing those topics, I joined the foundation course for class 9th and over there I was taught those topics in depth. Subsequently I could afford to solve higher level problems of physics/maths in 11th when most of my batch mates were trying to learn very basic concepts only. That gave me lots of time to practice and analyze many mock tests. All thanks to the plan chalked out by my father and Prime Academy’s teachers.

Q. Don’t you think that IIT JEE preparation in 9th std puts a child under lots of pressure.

M: It’s the other way round. When you start your IIT JEE preparation in the 9th standard, you get 4 years to prepare as compared to those who get just 2 years, by starting in the 11th std. In 9th/10th I didn’t have any pressure of scoring in competitive exams. I simply enjoyed the scientific details and logical reasoning behind every concept. If you get good and experienced teachers, then JEE preparation becomes very interesting and fun filled.

Q: Why did you choose Prime Academy, when there are many big institutes in Pune?

M: It’s a myth that a big coaching is a good coaching. For a student what matters is teachers. My brother had done 2-year coaching at Prime and gave me very strong and encouraging feedback about its IITian faculty team, which is with Prime since the last 10 years. Out of 238 students in my batch, more than 200 cleared JEE Mains and around 80 cleared JEE Advanced. I guess one should simply ignore marketing stunts of coaching institutes and rather focus only on faculty and success ratio.

Click https://youtu.be/xIoMUtRq8b4 to get important tips about “How to choose the best coaching class for JEE/NEET”

Siblings in Computer science at IIT are very rare, but students taught by Prime faculties have done it multiple times. Unique feat was achieved by Sachdeva brothers as both of these APS Pune kids graduated in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. Sushant Sachdeva helped Pune to shine on the world map by cracking All India Rank 1 in IIT JEE. He is the only student in the history of Pune to top the whole nation in the country’s most reputed exam! His younger brother, Prashant Sachdeva also followed in his footsteps by cracking AIR 75. “Prof. Lalit was one of the best teachers that I have studied under when preparing for IIT JEE. I am sure many others will benefit from his dedication towards students.” said Sushant Sachdeva, a recipient of the President gold medal in IIT Bombay. Check the testimonials of top ranks like AIR 1, 22, 37, 44, 71, 75, 91 etc https://primeacademypune.com/testimonials

After establishing deep roots in IIT JEE training, Prime started guiding students for NEET as well. Results were no different as right from the first batch students came up with flying colours even in NEET. https://bit.ly/timesofindia1 covered the story of hardworking NEET students. For its trailblazing contribution in education, Prime Academy was also awarded as the Best Tutorials in Western Maharashtra by Times group in 2019, this being the latest accolade in its long list of awards.

Prime Academy has been dealing with online lectures and video recordings since 2013 and that gives them an edge to cater students in this Lockdown through virtual classes. Click https://youtu.be/pN1-hyiO9AM to get a glimpse of lectures by Prime Academy faculty. “Post COVID19, we immediately switched to online lectures. Instead of conducting just one lecture a day, now we are involved with students almost for the whole day. Nowadays in the morning we share a 90 minutes video lecture, which is followed by a live (online) session of 2 hours. In-between students revise the topic and solve an assignment sheet. Students clarify their doubts through our online platforms. After every topic a unit test is conducted which is followed by an analysis to identify the scope of improvement.” said Lalit Kumar.

“Amidst lockdown parents are unable to visit the offices of the educational institutes. Neither are they confident in enrolling for a two year course, as they lack the much required confidence to join an unvisited organization, nor are we confident that students will be able to cope up with our lectures, without taking any well-invigilated entrance test. So we recommend students to attend a few lectures just as a demo, without doing any financial transaction. Once a comfort factor is developed from both sides, we offer them the admission” said Vivek Prakash, Head operations, Prime Academy. Prime Academy has launched a 45 days summer course, starting from 16 May. Many important and tricky topics would be covered in such a way that students even with average academic record will be able to crack tough problems of JEE / NEET standard. Students can enroll for this at a nominal cost. “These 45 days will tune their thought process with the requirements of competitive exams and education in general.” said Nishant Guurav, an IIT Kanpur graduate, Head Academics, Prime Academy. Click www.primeacademypune.com to register for a free lecture series at Prime Academy.

Once the lockdown is over, these online lectures will be converted into conventional offline classroom coaching. For those who can’t visit Pune, few of our online batches will continue even post lockdown. Leverage this lockdown to gain the edge!

Disclaimer: This article has been produced on behalf of Prime Academy by Mediawire team.

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twogargs · 7 years ago

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FLAME CON - The Review!

Jeremy Thew and Michael McAdam at Flame Con 2017!

Flame Con was held at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott in Brooklyn, NY on Aug 19 & 20, 2017.

WHAT. A. BLAST.

Being an LGBT-focussed comic con, Flame Con greeted me at the door with an immediate feeling of inclusivity, celebration and joy. The staff were all “superheroes”– they all had capes tied at the neck with velcro– meaning the capes could be shared with volunteers, making anyone associated with the con immediately visible and identifiable. Clever, fun and reassuring!

Steven, one of the people who directed us to the registration line had a rainbow beard. “Now I know I’m in the right place,” I said.

Billing itself as the “Largest LGBT Pop Culture Convention in New York”, it’s easy to believe– last year’s attendance boasted over 3, 400 people and this year was apparently larger, though no numbers were available at the time of this writing.

The greatest thing about this convention is also the most fundamental and basic: I never once had to explain myself, my comics, or the art prints at my table. Not once did someone flinch as they saw muscular men in speedos, or an A to Z of superhero groins. No one turned up their noses at Cyclops embracing Iceman, nor did they look uncertain as I described my LGBT superhero, Spectrum, or for that matter my tongue-in-cheek comic, Diaperman, where all the heroes and villains are fetishists. Heck, I didn’t even have to define “fetishist” to anyone.

In short: Everyone at Flame Con “got it.” All-inclusive. We Are Family. In The Club. That sort of thing. And the feeling– it’s amazing. It’s knowing you belong, knowing you’re doing something that appeals to people, hearing feedback on your work that’s very positive.

Speaking of which, I met gay comic icon Paul Charles, the Gay Comic Geek (Warning: Link NSFW) who read Spectrum and gave this amazing review!

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I would describe my convention experience as a success: I sold out of Spectrum, and my now-famous Superhero A to Z groin posters. Other popular prints were Hogwarts Swim Team, and Jeremy’s female Gambit. Our comic Twilight Detective Agency also sold well!

Too, there was a Saturday Night shindig at a local bbq joint/bar where Exhibitors got in free after 9:30; It was called Camp Fire and there was a themed comic-and-pop-culture drag show which was fabulous (but when they did the Bette Midler number from Hocus Pocus– “I Put A Spell On You”— I was having none of it! I have secretly choreographed that number in my own living room for years, and I was not gonna let someone else do it (so I quietly did it in the corner of the bar for an audience of one, as Jeremy found my antics amusing).

I got to meet Greg Fox of Kyle’s Bed and Breakfast, a fantastic series of excellent graphic novels about a gay B&B; he was our table neighbour. We traded graphic novels and I read his stuff on the plane ride home (review to follow at another time).

Challenges for this show were: Travel, primarily. Schlepping the con gear and merchandise across the US Border is ALWAYS tiresome, troublesome, and downright inconsistent. On this particular trip I was told I wasn’t allowed to transport merchandise by air, though by ground was fine. They let me through anyway, but it’s just another inconsistency in the grand world of US Customs.

The second was cost: New York City is a spendy, spendy place. The hotel convention rate was $300 US a night, which was just not in the budget for Jeremy and I. We ended up staying further away, still in Brooklyn but at a nice little pseudo-B&B slash hostel called “J-Stel.” Three floors, each floor had a shared bathroom; air conditioned rooms (thank God). I didn’t mind it; I’d stay there again.

Warning: DO NOT TAKE A CITY CAB FROM THE AIRPORT TO DOWNTOWN. I used Uber (which is always wonderful, I love Uber) and paid $40– Jeremy took a cab and paid $197.00. Almost two hundred dollars! DO. NOT. USE. CITY. CABS. Period.

The con was extremely well-run, and well-organized; check-in took us maybe five minutes and they had time slots prepared for those folks that needed to use the loading dock so as to avoid congestion. It was wonderful. Also, the staff were always checking on the vendors, seeing if we needed anything, being around and being visible.

And the music– god yes, the music. They played fun, light, pop music from the 70’s and 80’s in the dealer’s room with various famous gay anthems and fun songs, which really brightened the room– and had me dancing and singing all weekend. What a way to improve the mood and interest of the crowd and potential buyers! Anytime I can groove to the Go-Go’s is a happy time indeed.

I want to support this convention and return next year, as it attracted an excellent calibre of creators and fans; it will take some consideration though, as the travel and costs are prohibitive. Definitely will require consideration. However, if you can get to New York, you owe it to yourself to experience this joy!

Life’s a rainbow,

Michael

FLAME CON – The Review! was originally published on Two Gargoyles Comics

#canadian #comics #flamecon #gay #indie #indie comics #lgbt #superheroes #twogargs

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justonesongmore · 8 years ago

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XX. 1920

On Robot Rhythms, Comforting Tapestries, and Black women Saving Us All

1. Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds: “Crazy Blues”

Everything to this moment has been prologue: minstrelsy, marches, ragtime, dance crazes from South America or the Pacific, all has merely made straight the paths. Today the prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing. The record that shook the foundations of the earth, the record that won the first battle in a war most people didn’t yet know was happening, the record in the shadow of which all that has happened since still dwells. “Ain’t had nothing but bad news,” but the joy and energy and racket that propels her is a grand fuck-you to all false merchants of that news.

2. Al Jolson: “Swanee”

Another record important for different, and lesser, reasons. Where “Crazy Blues” is African-American musicians finally presenting their vernacular music unmediated by white caricature, “Swanee” is white (well, Jewish) Americans claiming a new and modern identity directly through the caricature of blacks. It’s a multigenerational caricature, as the 22-year-old composer (meet George Gershwin) quotes the original minstrel songwriter, and the performer, at his reckless height, has abandoned any pretense of imitation: his caricature, though performed in blackface, yowling cretinously for Mammy, is more self-parody than any other. The song’s melodic verve creates the future even as its lyrics plunder the past.

3. Baiano & Izaltina: “Cangerê”

As the Jazz Age begins, so too does the golden age of samba, with this slangy underground duet, the only known composition by Chico de Baiana, or the Bahia woman’s boy. “Cangerê,” said to be derived from an African language, is a specific ritual in the Afro-Brazilian Feitiço religion; the man and woman, arguing as usual in pop duets, threaten each other with the supernatural, while the samba rhythm works its own ineluctable magic on the listener. Two instrumental versions of the song were also cut in 1920, and the rhythmic power of the Banda da Casa Edison’s remains galvanizing.

4. Carlos Gardel: “Milonguita”

We have met many classic tango songs already, and will meet many more; but tango too is kicking into a new gear at the start of a new decade. “Milonguita,” by Argentine composer Enrique Delfino and Uruguayan lyricist Samuel Linnig, is one of the crown jewels of the Golden Age of Tango, never more exquisitely rendered than by Gardel’s burnished pipes. Full of the lunfardo slang that characterized the Buenos Aires underworld, it’s a portrait of a young woman driven to perdition by wine, men, and tango; her very name, “little-milonga,” refers to the dancehalls where the tango corrupted souls.

5. Mistinguett: “Mon homme”

Of the four canonical twentieth-century renditions of this song, the original is the least well-known; but Fanny Brice, Billie Holiday, and Édith Piaf sang other songs. The shining star of the Folies-Bergère between 1900 and 1930, Mistinguett sang many others too, but she may as well not have; this song, whether called “Mon homme” or “My Man,” has far superseded her own limited fame, and dragged her along rather cruelly in its wake. But pay attention to her studied lightness and flippancy, far from Brice’s and Piaf’s tragic posturing or Holiday’s bitter resignation: self-pity would be unfitting of her stardom.

6. Maurice Chevalier: “Oh! Maurice”

Mistinguett had been the toast of Paris since the Belle Époque; meanwhile, her nearest male equivalent, thirteen years her junior, was just rising to fame in 1920. (As though to exemplify the Parisian spirit, they had been lovers since 1911.) His first recorded hit, “Oh! Maurice” is an orgy of ribald egotism, a rhapsody on his masculine charms and the flutters into which he sends the female of the species. It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course, as all music-hall songs (of which it is a cousin) are; but it also owes its insouciant verve to the brio drifting from across the Atlantic.

7. Salvatore Papaccio: “Scettico Blues”

As does this. To be sure, it’s only called a blues because anything with even a slightly downbeat view of life was called a blues in 1920 (the copyright registration books were full to bursting of “blues”), but although structurally it’s what it sounds, a canzone napoletana, it’s also a witty, cynical plaint about the unfairness and falsity of life; and the see-sawing melody, though it doesn’t sound much like the blues strictly defined, owes more to ragtime-inflected American stage music than to traditional Italian bel canto. When pop singer Mina covered it in 1976, nostalgia couldn’t entirely obscure existentialism.

8. Lucille Hegamin & Harris’ Blues and Jazz Seven: “The Jazz Me Blues”

“Crazy Blues” had an immediate, electrifying effect on the recording industry; then as now, the most overwhelming flattery of success was imitation. It would take longer for authentic blues sensations, as measured by live performance in venues whites knew nothing of, to get on record, but refined generalist Black performers like Lucille Hegamin were pressed into immediate service to fill the obvious gap in the market. “Jazz Me Blues” was written by the young Black songwriter Tom Delaney, and its slangy but chaste evocation of the pleasures of the new groove under the sun is spun juicily in her mouth.

9. Bert Williams: “Unlucky Blues”

He was there at the beginning of the century, making outlandish grunts and twisting a love song into travesty; and he remains here at the century’s maturation, in some ways only catching up to where he was then. His voice is weathered with age and experience, the humorous glint in his eye undimmed but his face still poker-straight. Although the blues has now exploded into commercial popularity as feminine tragedy, his throaty plaintiveness looks forward to the masculine rural blues which will overshadow them. The song is Broadway pop, not blues, but his soul has always known the flatted fifth.

10. Nora Bayes: “The Broadway Blues”

It’s not often that I’ll privilege a recording by a white vaudevillian over a more famous one by an epochal Black act, but in this case the Sissle and Blake record is a bit too jaunty and careless, which only makes sense, as they didn’t write it. Bayes, a veteran Jewish coon singer, takes it at a drag, and is no longer burlesquing Blackness with weird hiccoughs, just singing, with the authority of age, a song about the pallor of the limelight. And with hindsight it’s hard to believe the aforementioned Gershwin kid didn’t have an ear on the orchestration.

11. Edith Day: “Alice Blue Gown”

The upheaval among the downmarket forms of musical entertainment, as authentic Black music begins to challenge the galumphing jeers of minstrelsy, did not necessarily have any immediate effect on the upmarket musical theater, which remained prissy, stodgy, and sentimental: but perhaps not quite unrecoverably foreign to us as it may sound today. “Alice Blue Gown” is meant to be wistful: in the show Irene, it is a song by a young woman nostalgic for her childhood dress of the shade named for President Roosevelt’s daughter. Chelsea Clinton would occupy the same cultural space today; and similar nostalgias are at work.

12. Paul Whiteman & His Ambassador Orchestra: “Whispering”

It is perhaps no accident that the “King of Jazz” cut his first record the same year that the real first jazz record was cut, and anyone curious about understanding the currents and cultures at work in the early 1920s would do well to study the sonic, rhythmic, tonal, and (yes) verbal discrepancies between “Crazy Blues” and “Whispering.” The Ambassador Orchestra is crisp, slick, not a hair out of place, not a glimpse of human feeling. Not only easy listening but Kraftwerk is predicted by their well-drilled rhythms; it is perhaps no accident either that Čapek’s robots emerged this year.

13. Ted Lewis Jazz Band: “When My Baby Smiles at Me”

While we’ve met Ted Lewis before, this more conventional dance-band number, with parts portioned out fairly among the band’s instrumentalists and his shabby-genteel crooning avant la lettre, was his first big hit, both on record and (helped by his star appearance at the Greenwich Village Follies of 1920) on sheet music. Compared to “O,” his klezmer-derived clarinet is more integrated into the tune’s jazz gestalt, and the way forward to Benny Goodman is clearly pointed; but there are still elements of ODJB-like novelty, as in the “I cry… I cry” refrain towards the end, squawked in parody by the band.

14. Ben Hokea Players: “Honolulu March”

A star instrumentalist, bandleader, and educator whose first records were also made in 1919, Ben Hokea was a Hawaiʻian-born guitarist who, on coming to the mainland, made his home base in Toronto, and his slack-key technique, more peppy and jazzy than dreamy and wistful, was instrumental in making hula music one of the everyday sounds of the 1920s, not just an exotica fad of the decade prior. The traditional song his band cuts here is taken at such a raggy, stuttering clip that the pedal steel swing of the Nashville-oriented decades to come is conjured by its streamlined, modern drive.

15. María Teresa Vera & Manuel Corona: “El yambú guaguancó”

Although we’ve heard from María Teresa Vera before, it was as a generalist singer covering a popular theater song; with this recording, she and her trova mentor, Manuel Corona, finally introduce the rumba proper (as distinct from the sones marketed as rhumbas in the 1930s) to recorded history. Yambú and guaguancó are both varieties of rumba, and the wordless chorus is characteristic of yambú. Vera’s verses are from the ancient storehouse of Cuban verse and symbol which, like blues verses, were mixed and matched to make up a song; but the insinuating rhythm, with its bell-clear clave, is what moves.

16. Zaki Murad: “Zuruni Kulli Sana Marra”

Because my focus has been (and will remain) primarily on Western music, I have paid scant attention to the deep wonders of Egyptian music, on record since before the century turned. Zaki Murad, of Jewish descent like many early Arabic-language recording stars, had been a successful recording artist since 1910, touring the Arabic-speaking world, and it is unjust that only this magnificent taqtuqa, “Visit Me Every Day,” by the legendary secular composer Sayyid Darwish (often considered the father of Egyptian popular music) represents him here. Do remember Murad’s last name, however; his daughter will join us later in the century.

17. Mishka Ziganoff: “Odessa Bulgar”

The Jewish diaspora, filtered through the sieve of immigration and collected in the tenements of New York, was always many peoples instead of one. Mishka Ziganoff was born in Odessa under the Russian Empire and emigrated to the US around the age of ten; his family settled in Brooklyn, and he became a virtuoso accordionist. His heritage was a jumble: he spoke Yiddish, but considered himself a Gypsy and communed as a Christian. In the ancient tradition of the musician as outsider, he managed to combine multiple interpretations of identity and home into a comforting tapestry, calling everyone to dance.

18. Abe Schwartz & Sylvia Schwartz: “National Hora Pt. 1”

Meanwhile, the most popular Jewish bandleader of the period, while cutting many lively freilach tunes that remain deathless today, paused to record something more quiet and perhaps personal: accompanied only by his daughter on piano, he fiddles a longing, keening improvisation in the “tzigane” (Roma) tradition, and wraps it up in what to Western European ears is an Irish jig. Klezmer scholars have declared this side a one-off, not a rendition of any familiar tune (Pt. 2 is better known as “Der Gasn Nigun”), and it’s impossible for me not to hear it as a thrilling expression of American pluralism.

19. Enrico Caruso: “I’ m’arricordo ’e Napule”

In a year, the Voice will be no more. This isn’t his last recording (that’s a selection from a Mass by Rossini), but it’s his last great canzone napoletana, a brand-new song of nostalgia and reverie about his hometown of Naples. More than anyone, he was the greatest star of the first age of recording, and as he dims, a new generation of stars is beginning to glow. Soon their brightness will eclipse his own; but few of them will retain anything like his name recognition over the years. A century later, and Caruso is still synonymous with beautiful singing.

20. Anita Patti Brown: “Villanelle”

The spectrum of authentic Black femininity which became, for the first time in recorded history, a live issue in 1920 ranged widely even then. The furthest away you could get, anyone would have said, from Mamie Smith’s vaudeville faux-lowdown, was the light classical canon; and here we find another Black woman. Her stage name is a double reference to Sissieretta Jones, her racial forebear in classical singing, nicknamed “the Black Patti” after Italian diva Adelina Patti; Anita Brown was called “the Bronze Tetrazzini” after Caruso’s duet partner. “Villanelle” was composed by Belgian miniaturist Eva Dell’Acqua in 1893, femininity in watercolors.

#1910s

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itsworn · 6 years ago

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1969 Dodge Charger R/T Revived After Near Disaster

It took Mark Stornant nearly 20 years to get his 1969 Charger R/T on the road—and just the blink of an eye for it to be wiped out almost entirely. In the fall of 2016, while Mark and his son Tyler were heading home on the last drive of the season, the beautiful R4 Bright Red Mopar was sideswiped by a pickup truck trying to overtake a slow-moving semi-truck on a narrow two-lane road. He crossed double yellow lines, putting the truck on the same parcel of pavement as the Charger.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the collision, but the driver’s side of Mark’s car looked much like the Charger in Bullitt after it rubbed sheetmetal with Steve McQueen’s Mustang and got smacked around by those roadside guardrails. The crash didn’t send Mark’s car careening into a gas station as in the movie, but plenty of damage was done, leaving him to nearly start over on car that had been a labor of love for his family.

It started back in 1992, when Mark bought it from the second owner. He paid $3,500 for the Charger, a real XS29L-code R/T with the A33 Track Pack, which included a 3.54-geard Dana 60 rear axle and Hemi four-speed transmission. The original owners were reportedly a pair of twins who used the Track Pack as intended on the dragstrip.

At some point the rear wheel studs sheared off on one of the axles with predictable results that included, among other things, body damage when the quarter-panel crashed onto the tarmac. And that was before the twins blew the original engine. The car was unceremoniously pushed into a carport and left exposed to the unforgiving Michigan climate for the next 13 years or so.

In that time a number of the original, hard-to-find front-end parts were stripped off the car. The second owner got the car running, replacing the original engine with a date-code-correct service replacement block and a mildly built short-block. He also replaced the front-end sheetmetal and added a 1968 Charger grille because used 1969 grilles were already in short supply in the 1980s and repros weren’t even a glint in OER’s eye.

“The guy ended up respraying the car red, but it was a quick-and-dirty job,” says Mark. “It was clear the replacement body panels were green because of the lousy or nonexistent prep work, and the quarter-panel damage was never addressed. They just sprayed over the dents.”

Not Bad for the Rust Belt

“It was a runner, but far from a driver,” says Mark. “But I’d loved 1969 Chargers since I was young, and I could see the potential in this one. The rust wasn’t as bad is it could have been for a Michigan car.”

For B-bodies of that vintage, anything less than complete, corrosion-induced structural collapse was not “that bad” in the Rust Belt. There were a couple of holes in the floorboard and some expected rust spots on exterior panels, but all those years spent in the carport absolutely dissolved the trunk floor.

Work and family obligations prevented Mark from diving into the restoration for the next seven years or so, but he used the time to accumulate as many parts as possible. The car was less than 30 years old at the time, so there were still some good used and even N.O.S. parts out there, including a pair of N.O.S. front fenders, an N.O.S. hood, and a good used grille.

Around 2000, work on the car commenced in a meaningful way, with friend Randy Oswald tackling the major bodywork, including hanging new quarter-panels, and John Schultz, who led the way on the mechanical side. A rotisserie was constructed for the unitized chassis, and the team did their best with early repro sheetmetal and making due with used or restored original parts when reproductions weren’t available.

“A lot of that early repopped sheetmetal wasn’t great,” says Mark. “The trunk floor panel, for example, didn’t have the drain holes stamped in it, so we had to do that and other things. That was just the state of the industry at the time.”

Mark had worked in a body shop before beginning a career with his regional water and light utility, and he took on the task of block-sanding and painting the car himself, while another friend, Doug Jones, helped revamp the black vinyl interior with new upholstery, a new headliner, and new carpet. Mark himself restored the instrument panel.

The car boasts a number of period day-two mods, including a vintage Stewart-Warner tachometer lashed to the steering column, the same kind Mopar legend Dick Landy used. Stornant’s wife, Lori, found it in a milk crate at a swap meet more than 20 years ago.

“I’d been looking for that very model myself for years,” says Mark. “And she pulled it out of the crate and simply said, ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’”

More apparent than the tach, which is wired into the dashboard to illuminate and dim with the gauges, are the vintage 15-inch Torq-Thrust wheels.

He says, “That was another thing I’d been looking for for a long time. I wanted the wider, 8.5-inch-wide rear wheels to fill out the fenders, and saw them on a 1964 Chrysler Newport, which was parked near a water-main break that was being repaired by my utility crew.”

Mark approached the owner later and purchased the wheels, then spent about 25 hours per rim to restore them. Up front, 15x7s roll on G70-15 Polyglas reproduction tires; in the rear, the coveted 15×8.5 wheels are wrapped in L60 rubber.

Mark also added a set of new, but period-correct, Gabriel HiJackers air shocks to ensure adequate quarter-panel clearance, giving the car the tough stance that was as popular on the boulevard in the 1970s as yellow slapper bars and snorkel hoodscoops.

And as was the case back then, the strong stance provides additional clearance for a deep-sump oil pan protruding beneath the K-member.

“It was on the car when I bought it, and I thought it was a great holdover from the era,” says Mark. “With the wheels, it just looks right.”

The stout short-block to which the oil pan is attached is filled with a forged crankshaft (undercut 0.010 inch), forged pistons bored 0.030 over, and a Comp Cams’ Purple Power PP292H hydraulic flat-tappet camshaft, with 0.509/0/509-inch lift, 292/299 degrees duration, and a tight 108 lobe separation angle that gives the RB big-block a head-turning lope.

The engine is finished off with an Edelbrock Torker II intake manifold and Edelbrock carb, TTI long-tube headers—although Mark admits a set of period, white Hooker headers would look better—and an electronic ignition conversion. An electronic distributor was also added to support the tach drive. Mark modified the pulley arrangement with a Hemi crank pulley and other minor changes that give the drive system a more uniform appearance.

He says, “Typically, it looks like something’s missing in the system when there’s no air conditioning or power steering, because there are pulley grooves with no belts. This arrangement makes the front of the engine look more complete.”

Seamless Repairs

The Charger finally hit the road again in 2010, and Mark and his family enjoyed it for the next six years, until that fateful day in November 2016.

“It was devastating,” he says. “We had spent so much time on the car and, just like that, it all changed.”

Fortunately, the car was properly insured. Hagerty, the underwriter, deemed the Charger repairable, per the policy’s Guaranteed Value coverage. It would pay up to 75 percent of the agreed value to make the car whole again. Mark’s next step was finding a shop to do the repairs.

The search led to Wing’s Auto Art in Ionia, Michigan, where Nyle Wing has specialized in muscle car restorations for the better part of three decades. He was initially cautious about the project, as such a job clashed with his shop’s standard process of complete, tear-down restos. He took the job, which involved replacing all the driver-side sheetmetal and painting only about half of the car. That meant the paint job would involve painstaking color-matching for a seamless blend.

“The result was nothing short of perfect,” says Mark. “It’s impossible to tell the car has been only partially repainted. The blending is completely invisible, and I couldn’t have been happier when I saw the car after it was completed.”

If the car were a Cougar, this is probably the place in the story where we’d make a joke about the cat having used up two of its nine lives. That wordplay doesn’t work so well with a Charger. We could also give a brief sermon about the importance of properly insuring your muscle car, but we’ll skip all that to focus on the fact that this vintage Charger R/T is back among the living and Mark is back behind the wheel.

Here’s to hoping that R4 Bright Red paint doesn’t need anything more than an occasional microfiber wipe-down from here on out.

At a Glance 1969 Charger R/T Owned by: Mark and Lori Stornant Restored by: Restored initially by the owner and Randy Oswald, John Schultz, and Doug Jones; collision repair by Wing’s Auto Art, Ionia, MI Engine: 440ci/375hp Magnum V-8 Transmission: New Process A-833 4-speed manual Rearend: Dana 60 with 3.54 gears and Sure Grip Interior: Black vinyl bucket seat with center console Wheels: 15×7 front, 15×8.5 rear American Racing Torq-Thrust Tires: G70-15 front, L60-15 rear Goodyear Polyglas reproduction Special parts: A33 Track Pack (Hemi 4-speed, Dana 60 with 3.54 gears, Hurst shifter, 7-blade cooling fan, 26-inch radiator with shroud), Edelbrock intake and carburetor, TTI headers

The 1968-1970 Charger’s distinctive “flying buttress” roof was reportedly a design compromise between a full fastback and a conventional rear window profile, allowing for less-expensive rear interior trim. The 1966-1967 Charger’s full fastback styling required more detailed and expensive interior treatment

Chrysler manufactured the RB-series big-block from 1959-1979, with all variants—383, 413, 426 and 440—sharing a 3.750-inch stroke. The 440 was introduced in 1966, and the 375hp Magnum version was standard on the 1969 Charger R/T.

Along with a lumpy Comp Cams Purple Power hydraulic camshaft, this restomod RB optimizes airflow with an Edelbrock Torker II aluminum manifold (stealthily painted engine color) and a contemporary Edelbrock carb.

According to the fender tag, the black vinyl interior (up-level SE models received leather seat inserts) was originally equipped with a Tick-Tock-Tac, but it wasn’t there when Mark Stornant purchased the car. That provided the perfect excuse for him to add a vintage Stewart-Warner tach to the steering column.

Offset Hurst shifters for Track Pack Chargers can be difficult to locate. This is an original. The iconic Pistol Grip shifter didn’t arrive until 1970.

Vintage Torq-Thrust wheels show red-painted 11-inch brake drums through the spokes. Disc brakes were optional on the R/T, and this car was ordered originally without them. Somewhat tall G70 front rubber helps give the car’s nose a little lift for adequate oil pan clearance.

Grim to Great

After the fall 2016 crash, the Charger entered Wing’s Auto Art in need of all new driver-side sheetmetal. The saving grace was that the accident didn’t injure anyone.

Along with outer sheetmetal, the inner rear wheelhouse needed to be replaced, too. The replacement sheetmetal all came from AMD via Roseville Moparts.

Only about half of the car was repainted, but the color blending by Wing’s Auto Art was superb. After the car was reassembled there was no trace that it ever had as much as a door ding, let alone the entire driver’s side replaced.

The post 1969 Dodge Charger R/T Revived After Near Disaster appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years ago

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Let's bring back the super weird 1990 Rock the Vote campaign

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We're just a month away from the midterm elections, so...where's Megadeth when you need them?

By now, you're probably familiar with Rock the Vote, a voter mobilization nonprofit started by Virgin Records executive in John Ayeroff in 1990. The campaign blew up when it partnered with MTV in advance of the 1990 midterm elections.

The nonprofit is as active as ever. Still, it's the 1990 campaign – featuring LA Gear, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Megadeth, and freaking Deee-Lite – that we need today.

SEE ALSO: How to register to vote in less than two minutes

In 1988, less than 40 percent of eligible 18-24 year olds voted. According to the Pew Research Center, just 20 percent of voters aged 18-24 vote in midterm elections nowadays. That's a marked decrease from 1964, where just over 50 percent of eligible voters in that demographic did.

These kids!

Ayeroff started Rock the Vote in 1990 to mobilize this population and, according to an MTV News report at the time, fight artistic censorship and "anti-rock politicians." Bless those innocent times.

The initial campaign didn't simply feature a ton of sexy celebrities. It was also deeply weird, kinda hot, subtly queer, and sometimes *gasp* funny.

Take the most famous advertisement to come out of the campaign, starring Madonna draped in an American flag next to two male models wearing stonewashed denim short shorts.

"If you don't vote, you're gonna get a spanking," the artist warns.

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I'm also a fan of Megadeth's staid approach:

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Lenny Kravitz, meanwhile, starred in his own delightfully melodramatic, sexy Rock The Vote ad. Voting, he contends, is a form of self-expression and a right – "It ain't illegal, yet."

Have you ever seen something so Generation X? It's so earnest and moody.

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Deee-Lite (of "Groove Is in the Heart" fame) made a similar pitch: Voting is self-expression for cool kids. The '90s were all about "self-expression," whatever that means.

(To watch the full ad, fast forward 34 seconds.)

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Democrats are going to need millennials to turn out in greater numbers than they have before if they have any chance of taking back the House this November. There are now dozens of Get Out The Vote campaigns out there, some of them led by Parkland student activists, and many with quirky, celebrity-led campaigns. Yet all could stand to benefit from the 1990 Rock the Vote angst aesthetic.

Look at Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers rocking the shirtless overalls lewk while mobilizing young people to vote. Kiedis had nipple power, man:

"What I consider the most beautiful and powerful ingredient in this democracy we call America is freedom," Kiedis says with the full emotional force of a college admissions essay.

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Come on. The early '90s were way cooler than we give them credit for. Watch this other Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock the Vote ad. It's way hotter than any cornball GOTV video Macklemore could come up with:

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There's really no explanation for this Michael Penn pitch (besides the conventional "school is conformist" take) but I love it:

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Ozzy Osbourne's ad follows a similar format, but with a more dire message: If young people don't vote, he warns, they won't be able to read "the books they want."

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Remember when American youth worried about things like "artistic censorship," and not the likelihood that World War III will break out after the president calls the leader of North Korea fat on Twitter? Oh, the good ol' days:

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It's not that Rock the Vote isn't doing great work now. Major celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Miley Cyrus have starred in ads for the campaign in the past few years, and in 2016 Rock the Vote even partnered with Tinder to produce "Swipe the Vote." Research has shown that young voter turnout improves in areas where the ads are shown.

I simply miss the original punk-lite spirit of early '90s Rock the Vote. We xennials know it was was a better time. Just compare President George Bush Sr. to President Donald Trump, or Madonna to Post Malone.

If only we had rocked the vote harder, we might not be where we are today.

WATCH: Amber Heard on the countless number of ways to help your community

#_author:Heather Dockray #_category:yct:001000002 #_uuid:005d1753-bc90-3482-9348-c8ef83c20605 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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fernando65g34037-blog · 7 years ago

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History, Area & Creation Of The National Monolith.

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johnaffeymuseum · 7 years ago

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From the JAM Archive...

In this series of posts, we present some of the unpublished materials which can be found in the John Affey Museum’s archive.

The fourth part of the Ascensorescetis Mss., click here for Part C.

Will it surprise you, beloved reader, that every week or two, as I go about my day, I stop entranced, and run my hand over the smooth flat surface of my desk? That I pause, and place my fountain pen with exaggerated carelessness on the edge? That I spend long minutes watching it do precisely nothing, its braided grey and green silk heartstring spooling away across the calm expanse, utterly unrequired? Perhaps it might shock you to enter my office, only to come upon me find me sprawled like a cat, cheek upon the burnished oak floorboards, patting them with my palm as though calming a horse? But surely, perceptive reader, it will not much astonish to learn that I cannot sleep but in a hammock? Some old salts can't give them up, after a life below decks. Does this not make me a mere creature of habit, like the whale? Eminently biddable, given the appropriate pressures are applied? Like many less advanced peoples, I am very partial to strong alcohol. I have but little self-control, though I keep this vice to myself, alone in my office. There is something of a craze for racial psychology currently sweeping the papers. How does my own race weigh on the scales, or rank in the measuring calipers? We have a good streak of independence, of that there can be little doubt. My people often travel alone upon the sea for hundreds of leagues, with naught but their own resources to rely upon. But is that independence merely casting in a more favourable light what is in reality brute stubbornness, as evinced to even the most basic physiognomic assessment by our markedly pointed chins?

I am fortunate enough to have on hand a copy of Vaught's utterly invaluable treatise on the subject of practical character reading; a fundamentally sound work, you will no doubt agree, for all that it lacks in subtlety. (And after all, what more can one reasonably expect of an American?) The Whale Riders... no, let us Latinize, for a more formal tone. The Ascensorescetis have the dubious merit of possessing the very model of Vaught's Selfish Ear (Page 62). That is, I have checked mine against the illustration, and barring a somewhat more distinct lobe, they are identical. That I am a selfish man, there is no doubt: I am one who has abandoned his home, his country and his family for purely personal gain. But what of the ears of that family, my clan? Were my ears atypical? I must confess, I have tried to recall the ears of my mother without success, and if I cannot recall her ears, upon which I must have gazed for hours as an infant strapped into my mother's parka, what good are my recollections, after all? I was at least not mercilessly mocked by my playmates for having pointed ears myself, as I was for so much else as a child. One assumes then that my ears were normal, or at least less abnormal than my other parts. Our smallish snub noses – I do remember that my nose was not unusual – most nearly fit Vaught's 'good and bad' (Page 80), upon which he sadly provides no further commentary. I confess, this ramble into science's demesne has all too quickly bewildered me. Any trained expert could tell across a crowded room that I don't have the requisite faculties, and that for all my native wit and parrot-like ear for language, I have not the true rational intelligence of the civilized Englishman.

I found Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen to be a fair master, and ever eager to learn new tricks for survival. I later discovered he had spent time with the King William Islanders, who call themselves the Netsilik, learning how to fashion good clothing from skins and work with dogs and sledges. It took him I think all of twenty four hours to become decided that the juncture of my cuffs with my mittens was superior to his own, and to order the adaptation of the gear of all his crew accordingly, though they were on their way out of the Antarctic by then, their mission accomplished. Amundsen was a ruthless pragmatist, utterly uninterested in propriety and convention, and I took to him immediately. In the interests of transparency, it must be said that I had never had a true father figure, and Amundsen was the very archetype. He taught me my first words of English, which I have always considered my father tongue. English has no time for the layered conditionals and hypothetical hedgings of my people's languages, which – as they know of no other – is simply called linkha, the double tongue. English, with its blunt utility and forthrightness, is nothing like the effete equivocating linkha. But at Framheim, his base camp in the Bay of Whales, we spoke almost exclusively Norwegian. The Norwegian for tongue is tunge, as I learned quickly, due to the frantic exclamations of Amundsen's men at the shape of mine. To put it plainly, my tongue is forked, as are all those of the high-caste members of my people. We are born with a pronounced hereditary groove in the centre line of the organ, and an indented tip. This is not itself a forked tongue, however: that oddity can only be produced by what will no doubt appear a most barbarous practice.

In infancy, the centre of the tongue is pierced and a bone spigot inserted, much as with the ear lobes of the female European infant, or the noses or lips of various savage peoples. Using sinew fishing line, the central section of the tongue is bound between the resulting hole and the tip, and this excruciatingly tight binding gradually separates the foremost part of the tongue into two independently mobile sections. This ghastly procedure is usually carried out while the infant is teething, and the same numbing jellyfish toxin we feed to our whales is used to reduce the pain. To those of you who balk at my description of this foreign practice, think only of circumcision, and you will begin to understand its significance to our culture. And unlike circumcision, nothing is removed. Rather, a faculty is added, which will astound all who have not witnessed it. The two forks of the tongue are independent, as I have stated, but they become also independently mobile, and with practice they can be dextrously employed to grasp and manipulate the most delicate of objects. Within the sensitive confines of the mouth, and paddling all the while, the Ascensorecete can, with pressed lips and a careful tongue, thread the eyelet of the most delicate fish-hook, and with nary a risk of losing it overboard. The forked tongue is used besides in the tying of certain knots, and can be of great value while dining, in the extraction of small fishbones. Certain of our lancets and awls would seem to be fashioned for use by elves, were it not known that they are excellently suited to the prehensile, bifurcated tongue.

At Framheim, however, the dire connotations of the forked tongue to the European became quickly apparent to me, though it took me several years to fully comprehend its origin. The snake, a most deadly animal in many parts of the world and widely feared even where it is harmless, possesses a forked tongue. The forked tongue is thus an attribute of evil, and of the epitome of evil, Satan the Enemy, Father of Lies. The symbolism partakes also of all that is two sided, split, and thus duplicitous. Add to that a sensuous, sibilant hissing, whispering of subterfuge, and the case is closed. I learned quickly to press the two halves of my riven organ together. Among the dour, righteous folk of this iron coastline I call my home, what consequences would follow the revelation that I have a forked tongue in my mouth do not bear thinking on. I may as well be outed for owning a pair of horns beneath my cap, or a pointed tail tucked into my longjohns.

As it was, there on the Antarctic ice, it was only Amundsen's inviolable authority and unconcealed disdain for all talk of luck and fate that saved me, I am certain. That, and the irrepressibly jubilant mood of the camp, for Amundsen had only recently returned from his triumphant assault on the South Pole, that most distant and inaccessible point so precious to the Occidental mind. The point where all meridians intersect, and which – though utterly desolate and devoid of life – pegs out the farthest corner of Civilization's rectilinear conquest of the globe. The squaring of the circle; the point where Euclid's straight and parallel lines inevitably meet. The success of this superhuman feat of derring-do, strategy and endurance – undertaken rather at the last minute in lieu of mastering the recently deflowered North Pole (and much to the disgust of a certain Captain Scott) – impelled the inhabitants of Framheim into the most expansively benevolent of moods. Much hearty backslapping, gay singing, and toasting with akavit were indulged in, and even I – a totally alien stranger who had stumbled alone out of the white wilderness mere days before – was invited to the party.

Hobart of 1912 was a town obsessed with the Antarctic, bravely re-making a name for itself in newspapers worldwide and proud of its eighteen years of self-governance. Captain Scott's Terra Nova had put in there to provision, and the bars were full of hopefuls looking to ship to the Great White South, or braggarts claiming that they had. It was a town of whalers and adventurers, at least in the streets around Franklin Wharf, though the whole place had a empty, faded feel just beneath the brash exterior. The great days of whaling – and the money that it brought – were over for Hobart, and everyone knew it. The Henry Jones IXL jam factory was the great hope now, though there is something comparatively less heroic about the manufacture of tinned goods, no matter how they or their manufacturers “excel”. But say what you like about tinned goods, they were certainly popular on Antarctic voyages. I myself was brought up on a diet of raw fish and seal meat, and tinned food is still a novelty to me these many years later. Amundsen got himself to the pole eating a goodly number of dogs, which have a distinct advantage over tins in that they'll carry themselves about for you before you eat them. To all things, as the Good Book says, there is a season.

I soon learned in Hobart that the best way to get drunk and learn a little English was to act as though you wanted to be left alone, at which point one or another young hopeful would try to engage you in conversation about exploration, whaling, and the seafaring life by plying you with spirits. I slept mostly on a little dinghy I patched up, as sleeping on the wharf made me feel seasick. I had the characteristic bow-legged sway of the mariner as I made my way about town, and learned that spending enough time on the sea automatically makes you part of a close-nit and violent family, who will enthusiastically do each other grievous bodily harm over the least imagined slight, but will never let one of their own go without food, booze, or a pinch of tobacco.

The drink was new to me, and for a while it was all I wanted. This marvellous fluid, that made you thirst the more you drank! I spent the nights singing at the top of my lungs with my new brothers, staggering from inn to inn, spewing up my guts over the wharves, and generally making a sorry exhibition of myself. The moment any lull appeared in the raucous wharfside merrymaking, my newest shipmates would entreat me to demonstrate my uncanny balancing abilities, which I had discovered shortly after I became able to walk in a straight line upon the land. Amongst my own kind I was a cripple, but here amongst these giant men I was an acrobat. I would stand upon a chair, and tilt the chair so that it would perch upon one leg, balancing knives upon my nose and indulging in other foolery until the room erupted in thunderous hollering, stamping and applause. I confess the first speech I learned among this unsavoury, rambunctious company was not the King's English as I write it now, and fully half of my early vocabulary is as unfit to set out on paper as it would be unintelligible to the decently educated reader.

Amundsen's party landed in March, 1912, and it was not until September of that year that I became sober, and then only because I washed up in a Christian hospice in a state of utter collapse. I had spent the winter months of June and July battling an endless bout of influenza, and was taken in by the Seamen's Mission on Harrington Street, quite at death's door. There I was taken on as the personal project of one of the chaplains, a grandson of the late Baptist Rev. Kerr Johnston. I have since realized that this adoption was a somewhat political anti-Calvinist finagle, to demonstrate the value of working for the salvation of the pagan soul. William Johnston taught me to read Scripture, and found me an able student of hermeneutics and exegesis, for I had been raised to perform a similar task on the heartstrings of my people, fishing within the stories’ deeper currents for flashes of meaning. Chaplain Johnston was himself an avid fisherman, and soon discovered in me the perfect companion, for I could paddle the whole day without tiring, and no land-born can match one of my people when it comes to reading the clouds, the waves, or the fish. As I regained my strength during the warmer months, we spent our days out on the water and our evenings in the study of the Bible. I was, I am sure, an infuriating but addicting pupil, as I remembered every detail, dedicated myself fully to my studies, but swallowed not one single word among the lot of it.

The story of Jonah spoke to me, as might be imagined. But to the good Chaplain's exasperation, it spoke to me not of God, but of the landlubber, as the seamen say. The certainties required by the land-born, which they cling to, instead of swimming. Their terror of being engulphed, their horror of immersion. It spoke also to their ignorance; which whale was this, if whale it was? And if that distinction were meaningless, then why distinguish between birds or beasts, or anything at all? It spoke too of hermeneutics, in which discipline the Chaplain attempted to school me, and of satire. For Jonah, the Dove, is satire; no true reader can deny it. The Book of the Dove is, in its forty-eight pithy verses, a scathing critique of the institution of prophets, and their purposes. And as to the various commentaries on Jonah, particularly that of John Calvin, in the Rev. John Owen's translation of 1847, printed in Edinburgh! For the Chaplain, as for Calvin, Jonah is valuable as an historical figure, the recipient of both the gift of prophecy and a miracle, and most importantly as a typological prefiguring of Christ Jesus. That volume, from the Calvin Translation Society, was given me as a parting gift when I sailed from Hobart for Scotland, and it sits before me now, on my great steel desk. It is a slim volume, with a beautifully debossed black binding, a fine gilt rendering of Calvin on the cover looking in silhouette, in his double-brimmed conical cap, not unlike one of my own people, a fact for any students of coincidence. We have such a conical cap, though the brim is a touch wider, and the fur-lined cone is stiff leather to ward off rain. The ear flaps are very like, though. The Hebrews, the true Hebrews, if such there were, I do not regard as land-born, for they are born to the desert, and follow the herds. Such a desert I have never seen, but it has been described to me by one who has, that the desert is to the sand dunes of the shore as the sea is to a river. An ocean of sand.

Calvin, in his scholar's cap, presumes a lot, it seems to me. His philosophy is that of a people who have settled, who live upon the land as a tick upon a sow, or a barnacle upon a whale. A people with a short memory, eager to deny change and movement. Calvin even presumes, repeatedly, to paraphrase YHWH himself, writing “as though he said”. He also presumes that YHWH is not to be trusted, that His motives are in fact to shame Israel, and nothing to do with the mysterious “wickedness” of the Ninevites. And moreover:

“We hence see that there is a twofold view of God, — as he sets himself forth in his word, — and as he is as to his hidden counsel. With regard to his secret counsel, I have already said that God is always like himself, and is subject to none of our feelings: but with regard to the teaching of his word, it is accommodated to our capacities. God is now angry with us, and then, as though he were pacified, he offers pardon, and is propitious to us. Such is the repentance of God.”

This from Lecture Seventy-Ninth. We are to believe that Calvin has access to God’s secret counsel, beyond God’s misleadingly worded Word, which is accommodated to our capacities – though not to Calvin’s, needless to say, which far surpasses not only that of all mankind, but particularly that of Jerome. Calvin’s poor Jerome, so “frivolous”, “foolish”, “puerile” and “dull”. A learned and laborious father of the Church, a blessed translator, one might imagine, were it not for this “wayward disposition” apparent everywhere, but nowhere more self-evident than in this: his ridiculous sympathy with Jonah’s rage at being thwarted, denied the eagerly awaited spectatorship of Nineveh’s apocalyptic destruction. The petulant rage of one who is forced to carry a prophecy of impending doom to the Ninevites, only to witness their eager repentant fasting, decked out as for a play in sackcloth and ashes, yea down to the last cow. Truly, the only thing worse than being a prophet to the ignorant and doomed heathen is being perfectly heeded, thus finding oneself the unwitting instrument of their salvation, just when you’d picked out the ideal spot from which to witness the final act. But enough of this dry-as-dust exegetical excursioning, which I have included merely as illustration of how infuriating and heretical a student I was then to Chaplain Johnston, and unfortunately and unrepentantly, do so remain.

But back to Etzequel, our hero. In a state of Nature, he had fulfilled the place set out for him. What could one read on his impassive face? Pride, of a sort. A defiant gull. Distain, or rather a watchful readiness to be displeased. The nurses I have seen about Edinburgh town with children perfectly turned out, and in that perfection barely satisfactory, the best being only just about enough. In the gazes of those nurses, the stern demanding look, I witness again Etzequel’s expression. Etzequel and Ilahahl, a seeming-two, joined nose to giant nose with braided sagas richer than a hundred tapestries, a hundred novels, at least to our poor nation’s estimate. I myself was such, once, it is said; a seeming-two. But though my own seeming-two, my twin, preceded my entrance into the world across the shore of our mother’s waters by a moment, she couldn’t make the cry of passage from the warm belly ocean into the stinging, frozen air. No wave of breath washed into her, I have heard the women say, with my bellystring wrapped about her throat.

Crouched in the qalbaminach, the great braid hanging from his nose, Etzequel grew fat as a leopard seal, and as ferocious. Calling in the erhunni to play for him his Great Sister’s songs, sending them away in sudden curt disgust, only to call for them again as they slept. And soon it was my turn, though my brother had not shown interest in sharing breath with me in seventeen dark winters. The call came, and I took care to dress as though about to leave on a spirit hunt. Clothed thus, shabby but bedecked, transparent in my shaman’s habit, I crouched before him in the bone and skin hut where I had slept so many times before. All was changed. His khulhuqqa had not begun to return to their family aminachi as the weaning of Ilahahl wound to a close. Instead, they sat in hunting kayaks, an open ring of eyes behind me on the sea. The harumman too remained bound to their new title, squatting shiftily in the low circumference of the floating house, ducking in and out on one errand or the next. I saw at once that I had misjudged my aim, as so often. In my cleverness, I had knotted myself. I had thought that, dressed to go on a voyage, I might be excused the sooner, more easily dismissed; a bird who circles now and then, otherworldly and of no consequence. Instead, I saw that Etzequel, though apparently in calm repose, was tossed by constant troubled motion beneath his skin, signed upon the surface by turbulent ripples. Forever out sporting against the waves, Etzequel had lived as his namesake the albatross: a being forever on the wing. Leashed here, over-fed and fussed over in forced ease, Etzequel was standing barely able to contain himself, itching for release. In my misjudgement, I had presented him with the very seeming of untrammelled flight and no-strings voyaging, which he would never more enjoy. I glimpsed the shark in his eyes, though it swam deep and he himself was perhaps too close to spy it beneath him, and I saw at once I was in peril of my life.

It was not for me to speak first, and this whale would be long in breaching. Etzequel would wait as long as breath held before spouting. And how should I comport myself? Patient comfort: no, for this was one fish Etzequel could never catch, and since all to him was besting or defeat, this would spur his anger all the more. Impatience too would rile him, signing disrespect. He wished to ease his suffering, as ever he had, by taking pleasure in the suffering of another. Etze had always been one of those who saw balance only within a small horizon. Very well. I sat proudly for a spell, crooked right hand open, ready to clasp his arm as though expecting a greeting of honoured brothers. Gradually, I allowed the pain in my spine, my shoulders, even my opened hand to build. An easy choice, for my body has an unlimited store of suffering prepared; I am one of those born aged already, with trembling knotted muscles and sore joints as though pre-worn by a life of hard use. Perhaps as others lie basking in the warm amniotic waters of the belly ocean, I had indeed been hard at work, hunting strange prey, or paddling leagues through the boundless red night, encountering the seal my namesake. Whether the case or no, the pain grew, unfeigned. My posture began to fail, spine slipping off true with skewed shudders, half-raised hand sagging slowly as I fought to keep my dignity. In flickers, my face betrayed my pain, my confusion, my increasingly exhausting struggles to maintain my straight and dignified seat. I began to sweat, small seal-like grunts escaped my nose and my pressed lips grew pale. And as my suffering increased, Etzequel grew calm. His eyes narrowed with pleasure, and he settled into his nest of white seal pup skins with a new-found ease.

As my neck began to spasm in earnest, and my hand dropped to my lap of its own accord, Etzequel signalled to one of the uneasy young men nearby, who left. Some time later, a time which had stretched into one long oar-stroke of howling muscles, each involuntary shudder wringing new stifled whimpers from my throat, I noticed Maraïal was rubbing fragrant white parmacetti oil into Etzequel’s powerful shoulders. She had begun her task with dignity and bemused pleasure at this uncharacteristic request, which then flowed into confusion and concern as Etzequel requested the oil now on his impressive chest, and now, reclining, further down his newly-padded abdomen. All had seen, to my braided shame and pride, how my eyes had followed Maraïal for the last three winters. Maraïal, plump and smiling, with oiled black hair and dextrous tongue, whose eyes saw deep beneath the surfaces of things. Maraïal, who looked to Bhi’iq, and he to her, with two squalling pups between them and – it was said – more on the way. Maraïal who had once, looking deeply into my eyes, taken both my hands in hers for just a moment and pressed them together.

As I began to twist and twitch, flopping then to my left side with arms wound up to my thin chest like flippers, a hoarse mewling high in my nose and salt in my eyes, I put off my skin like a cloak and stood back from it. I saw myself curled there like a shrimp on the woven leather, juddering, and with a thick cord of spittle hanging from my parted lips. I saw two women move to cradle me, and the smile that surfaced briefly on Etze’s lips.

Later after a long sleep I set out in my kayak, the Great Bright Mother drifting red between the ice floes on her daily migration around the upper ocean. One of Etzequel’s khulhuqqa set out after me. He was a young hunter, with little patience. I outpaced him easily with the seeming of that exaggeratedly slow, laborious passage he expected of a cripple. On his first look, I was dragging myself over the waves as clumsily as a seal over rough ice. On his next, I had disappeared utterly among the floes, without leaving him even a glimpse of my tail.

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