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nightsidewrestling · 2 years ago

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D.U.D.E Bios: Nicole Lum

Damien's Final Queen Nicole Lum (2020)

Damian's beloved Nicole is the last woman he married and thus his longest marriage out of the three. Nicole attends every event alongside Damian and gladly accepts the publicity she gains from being married to a wrestler, she even calls herself 'Nikki Lucifarian, The Queen of Hell', despite the fact she isn't a wrestler.

"I'd be glad if the world knew me as the Queen of Hell."

Name

Full Legal Name: Nicole Evangeline Lum (Née Yap)

First Name: Nicole

Meaning: French feminine form of 'Nicholas', which is from the Greek name 'Nikolaos' meaning 'Victory of the people'. Derived from Greek 'Nike' meaning 'Victory' and 'Laos' meaning 'People'.

Pronunciation: ni-KOL

Origin: English, Dutch, German

Middle Name: Evangeline

Meaning: Means 'Good News' from Greek 'Eu' meaning 'Good' and 'Angelma' meaning 'News/Message'.

Pronunciation: i-VAN-je-leen, i-VAN-je-lien

Origin: English

Surname: Lum (Yap)

Meaning: From Old English 'Lum' meaning 'Pool' (Yap: From Middle Engish 'Yap' meaning 'Devious, Deceitful, Shrewd'.)

Pronunciation: LUH-mb (YAP)

Origin: English (English)

Alias: Nikki Lucifarian

Reason: Self-Given Alias

Nicknames: Nikki, Eva, Angel

Titles: Mrs, Ma'am

Characteristics

Age: 56

Gender: Female. She/Her Pronouns

Race: Human

Nationality: British

Ethnicity: White

Birth Date: February 17th 1964

Symbols: None

Sexuality: Straight

Religion: Christian

Native Language: English

Spoken Languages: English, French

Relationship Status: Married

Astrological Sign: Aquarius

Theme Song (Ringtone on Damian and Vi's Phones): Damian: 'Fallin'' - Alicia Keys. Vi: 'Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me) - Train

Voice Actor: Tilda Swinton

Geographical Characteristics

Birthplace: Bodmin, Cornwall, England

Current Location: On The Road / Asheville, North Carolina

Hometown: Bodmin, Cornwall, England

Appearance

Height: 5'6" / 167 cm

Weight: 150 lbs / 68 kg

Eye Colour: Blue

Hair Colour: Blonde

Hair Dye: None

Body Hair: N/A

Facial Hair: N/A

Tattoos: None

Piercings: Ear Lobe (both)

Scars: None

Health and Fitness

Allergies: None

Alcoholic, Smoker, Drug User: Social Drinker, Non-Smoker, Doesn't Use Drugs

Illnesses/Disorders: Lactose Intolerant

Medications: None

Any Specific Diet: Lactose-Free

Relationships

Allies: N/A

Enemies: N/A

Friends: Damian Lum

Colleagues: N/A

Rivals: N/A

Closest Confidant: Damian Lum

Mentor: N/A

Significant Other: Damian Lum (61, Husband)

Previous Partners: None of Note

Parents: William Yap (76, Father), Henrietta Yap (77, Mother, Née Rye)

Parents-In-Law: Adam Lum (81, Father-In-Law), Eve Lum (82, Mother-In-Law, Née Fry)

Siblings: Dream Ford (53, Sister, Née Yap), Cyril Yap (50, Brother), Bristol Gage (47, Sister, Née Yap)

Siblings-In-Law: Maximus Lum (58, Damian's Brother), Matilda Lum (59, Maximus' Wife, Née Ash), Arnold Lum (55, Damian's Brother), Solange Lum (56, Arnold's Wife, Née Fay), Xenophon Lum (52, Damian's Brother), Natalie Lum (53, Xenophon's Wife, Née Aue), Arlo Ford (54, Dream's Husband), Zona Yap (51, Cyril's Wife, Née Gill), Yahweh Gage (48, Bristol's Husband)

Nieces & Nephews: Laura Eld (38, Niece, Née Lum), Alvar Eld (39, Laura's Husband), Nicholas Lum (35, Nephew), Salome Lum (36, Nicholas' Wife, Née Good), Phoebe Paz (32, Niece, Née Lum), Epifanio Paz (33, Phoebe's Husband), Oswald Lum (29, Nephew), Tamara Lum (26, Niece), Lambert Lum (23, Nephew), Adelaide Lum (20, Niece), Lawrence Lum (17, Nephew), Natalie Lum (14, Niece), Edmund Lum (11, Nephew), Theodora Lum (8, Niece), Luitguard Lis (35, Niece, Nee Lum), Zenon Lis (36, Luitguard's Husband), Edith Moe (32, Niece, Née Lum), Trygve Moe (33, Edith's Husband), Ulrich Lum (29, Nephew), Armel Lum (26, Nephew), Chantal Lum (23, Niece), Otto Lum (20, Nephew), Avila Lum (17, Niece), Olaf Lum (14, Nephew), Bertha Lum (11, Niece), Wolfgang Lum (8, Nephew), Lucretia Lie (32, Niece, Née Lum), Trym Lie (33, Lucretia's Husband), Milititiades Lum (29, Nephew), Regula Lum (26, Niece), Metrophanes Lum (23, Nephew), Euphrasia Lum (20, Niece), Tychon Lum (17, Nephew), Eudocia Lum (14, Niece), Augustus Lum (11, Nephew), Iphigenia Lum (8, Niece), Xenon Ford (33, Nephew), Svea Ford (34, Xenon's Wife, Née Ek), Wren Ola (30, Niece, Née Ford), Iker Ola (31, Wren's Husband), Vincent Ford (27, Nephew), Treasure Ford (24, Niece), Stone Ford (21, Nephew), Rosalind Ford (18, Niece), Paxton Ford (15, Nephew), Orinthia Ford (12, Niece), Nevada Ford (9, Nephew), Modesty Fux (30, Niece, Neé Yap), Benno Fux (31, Modesty's Husband), Luke Yap (27, Nephew), Kiki Yap (24, Niece), Jesse Yap (21, Nephew), Ireland Yap (18, Niece), Henry Yap (15, Nephew), Gloria Yap (12, Niece), Forrest Yap (9, Nephew), Euphemia Gage (27, Niece), Dunstan Gage (24, Nephew), Crystal Gage (21, Niece), Byrne Gage (18, Nephew), Ayla Gage (15, Niece), Zuriel Gage (12, Nephew), Willow Gage (9, Niece)

Children: Viola Nye (41, Stepdaughter, Née Lum), Ulysses May (38, Stepson), Wanda Ott (35, Daughter, Née Lum), Tristan Lum (32, Son), Xavia Lum (29, Daughter), Sullivan Lum (26, Son), Yasmine Lum (23, Daughter), Roger Lum (20, Son), Zella Lum (17, Daughter)

Children-In-Law: Kestrel May (Ulysses' Wife, Née Coy), Quentin Nye (42, Viola's Husband), Heath Ott (36, Wanda's Husband), Gardenia Lum (33, Tristan's Wife, Née Day)

Grandkids: Adam Nye (21, Step-Grandson), Paulette Nye (18, Step-Granddaughter), Benjamin Nye (15, Step-Grandson), Olivia Nye (12, Step-Granddaughter), Charles Nye (9, Step-Grandson), Earl May (18, Step-Grandson), Jane May (15, Step-Granddaughter), Flint May (12, Step-Grandson), Imogen May (9, Step-Granddaughter), Magnolia Ott (15, Granddaughter), Laurence Ott (12, Grandson), Naomi Ott (9, Granddaughter), Daisy Lum (12, Granddaughter), Vance Lum (9, Grandson)

Great Grandkids: None

Wrestling

Billed From: N/A

Trainer: N/A

Managers: N/A

Wrestlers Managed: N/A

Debut: N/A

Debut Match: N/A

Retired: N/A

Retirement Match: N/A

Wrestling Style: N/A

Stables: N/A

Teams: N/A

Regular Moves: N/A

Finishers: N/A

Refers To Fans As: N/A

Extras

Backstory: Nicole met Damien when she was twenty, had a whirlwind romance with the man and was married with kids within a year. However, Nikki's family (especially the women) have a history of going blind by the time they're 40. Nicole's mother, grandmother, sisters and her daughters all have poor or no vision and Nicole's sight is considered a miracle to her parents and grandparents.

Trivia: None of Note

#D.U.D.E #original character #Lum #Yap #Family. Not a Wrestler

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gentlyepigrams · 3 months ago

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Maria Jacobini in Beatrice Cenci (1926) by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Ed. for Unica - Ciocolato Talmone al latte. Photo: Pittaluga Film. Maria Jacobini in Beatrice Cenci (Baldassarre Negroni, 1926). Among the Italian divas, Maria Jacobini (1892-1944) was an island of serenity, as Vittorio Martinelli expressed it, the personification of goodness, of simple love. Her weapon was her sweet and gracious smile. However, in some Italian and later German films, she could also play the vivacious lady, the femme fatale, the comedienne, the hysterical victim, and the suffering mother or wife. Maria Jacobini was born in Rome, Italy, in 1892. She was the sister of actress Diomira Jacobini. Their older sister Bianca had also started as an actress but had interrupted her career after four films. Maria studied at the Accademia di Arte Drammatica di S. Cecilia, where her teachers were Virginia Marini and Eduardo Boutet. She made her stage debut at the company of Cesare Dondini Jr., where she mainly played secondary parts. She was noticed by Ugo Falena, artistic director of the film company Film d'Arte Italiana. He offered her work in the silent cinema. Her first short films were Lucrezia Borgia/Lucretia Borgia (Ugo Falena, 1910) featuring diva Francesca Bertini, and Beatrice Cenci (Ugo Falena, 1910), but her first important role was in Cesare Borgia (Gerolamo Lo Savio, 1912) again starring Bertini. In 1912, Maria started to work at the Savoia company of Turin, as a seductive man-eater in short films like Pantera/Panther (1912), La zingara/The gypsy (Sandro Camasio, 1912), and L'onta nascosta/The hidden shame (1912). From 1913 on, she played her more dramatic roles as the lead in Giovanna d'Arco/Joan of Arc (Ubaldo Maria del Colle, 1913) and Ananke (Nino Oxilia, 1915) with Leda Gys and her sister Diomira Jacobini. Jacobini worked for pioneering film studios like Pasquali and Celio. Maria gave good performances in the melancholic Come le foglie/Like the Leaves (Gennaro Righelli, 1916) based on Giuseppe Giacosa's stage play, and in the touching Addio Giovinezza/Good-bye Youth (Augusto Genina, 1918). She made a series of films with director Gennaro Righelli such as Il viaggio/The Journey (1921), based on a novel by Luigi Pirandello, and Cainà - la figlia dell'isola/Cainà - the Daughter of the Island (1923), shot in Sardinia. After the First World War, the Italian film industry was in a deep crisis, and director Gennaro Righelli and his star Maria Jacobini decided to move to Germany. In Berlin, the new centre of the European film industry, Jacobini and Righelli were enlisted by producer Jakob Karoll and they founded a separate company called Maria Jacobini GmbH. Jacobini first starred in Bohème - Künstlerliebe/Bohème - Artists Love (Gennaro Righelli, 1923), playing the tormented and suffering Mimi. Her film partner was Wilhelm Dieterle, who would later become known as Hollywood director William Dieterle. She often performed in Righelli's German films and other directors' films. Jaap Speyer directed her in Bigamie/Bigamy (1927), Robert Dinesen in Ariadne im Hoppegarten (1928) with Alfred Abel, Richard Oswald in Villa Falconieri (1928) opposite Hans Stüwe, and by Fedor Ozep in the German-Russian coproduction Der lebende Leichnam/Zhivoy trup/The Living Corpse (1929), based on the play by Leo Tolstoy. These productions were shot all over Europe, and Jacobini even filmed in Africa for Die Frauengasse von Algier/The Street of Women of Algiers (Wolfgang Hoffmann-Harnisch, 1927) with Camilla Horn. In the second half of the 1920s, Maria Jacobini performed also in a few Italian films such as La bocca chiusa/Shut up(Guglielmo Zorzi, 1925) opposite Lido Manetti a.k.a. Arnold Kent and Carmen Boni, Beatrice Cenci (Baldassarre Negroni, 1926), and Il carnevale di Venezia/The carnival of Venice (Mario Almirante, 1928). In France, she did Maman Colibri/Mother Hummingbird (Julien Duvivier, 1929) with Franz Lederer. It was her final silent film. With the coming of the sound cinema, Jacobini's roles became marginal, though she continued to play in films until her death. In 1937 she became a teacher in acting at the new Roman film academy Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, where she gave lessons to new stars and actresses such as Alida Valli and Clara Calamai. Her final film was La donna della montagna/The Mountain Woman (Renato Castellani, 1943) with Marina Berti. aria Jacobini died a year later, in 1944 in Rome. She was 52. Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Caterina Cerra (Treccani - Italian), Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb. And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

#silent film #vintage illustration #women actors

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derangedrhythms · 3 years ago

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your poem and prose excerpts are a source of daily delight to me, especially your skill with the compilations of many different lines upon a shared theme. no hurry to get to this request but do you have any quotes that are about joyfully paying a high price for something without regret, or about wanting to be marred or scarred by something good or immense?

It makes me so happy to hear that, thank you!

"What interests me is living and dying for what one loves."

⁠— Albert Camus, from 'The Plague', tr. Stuart Gilbert

"To stay with you for one night I would throw away my whole life, sacrifice a hundred persons, […] be capable of anything."

— Anaïs Nin, from 'A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller 1932-1953'

"Tired of being a prude, I'd seek Satan's bed at midnight / and find refuge in the declivity of breaking laws. / I'd happily exchange the golden crown of divinity / for the dark, aching embrace of a sin."

— Forugh Farrokhzad, Osyan (Rebellion); from ‘Rebellious God’, tr. Sholeh Wolpé

"(Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?)"

— Roland Barthes, from ‘A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments’, tr. Richard Howard

"I’d let my house go up in flame for this fire."

— Louise Glück, Firstborn; from ‘Seconds’

“She does not see, she does not feel that she is preparing a poison that will be the undoing of me and of her—and with a carnal delight I gulp the cup she hands me for my destruction.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ tr. David Constantine

“The need to go astray, to be destroyed is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth…”

— Georges Bataille, from 'Guilty’, tr. Bruce Boone

"I want to give up my life, my home, my security, my writing, to live with him, to work for him, to be a prostitute for him, anything, even to be fatally hurt by him."

— Anaïs Nin, from 'Henry and June'

"It's sweet to destroy my mind / and go down / and wreck in this sea where I drown."

— Robert Lowell, Imitations; from ‘The Infinite’

"Hell,” I said, “I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?”

“Yes. I want to ruin you.”

“Good,” I said, “that’s what I want too."

— Ernest Hemingway, from 'A Farewell to Arms'

"Can we say that there are certain kinds of people who are drawn to fire? Looking for an inevitable result like a moth to a flame?"

— The Sopranos, from ‘Amour Fou’

"…but I would burn down everything to be with him again."

— Janet Fitch, from ‘The Revolution of Marina M.’

"To hell, to hell with balance! I break glasses; I want to burn, even if I break myself. I live only for ecstasy. Nothing else affects me. Small doses, moderate loves, all the demi-teintes— all these leave me cold."

— Anaïs Nin, from 'Incest: from 'A Journal of Love'

"A lover wants to die of his love / like a man with dropsy / who knows that water will kill him, / but he can’t deny his thirst."

— Rumi, Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing; from ‘That Quick’, tr. Coleman Barks

"She has the look of one who seeks / some greater and destroying passion:"

— Louise Glück, The House on Marshland; from ‘Abishag’

“On more than one occasion I have been ready to abandon my whole life for love. To alter everything that makes sense to me and to move into a different world where the only known will be the beloved.”

— Jeanette Winterson, from 'Sexing the Cherry’

"Fishermen know that the sea is perilous and the storm fearful, but have never thought the perils reason enough for deciding to take a stroll along the beach instead. They leave that sort of prudence to those who relish it. The storm may come and the night may fall, but which is worse, the danger or the fear of danger? I would sooner have the reality, the danger itself."

"…I have risked my life for my work, and it has cost me half my reason…"

— Vincent van Gogh, from 'The Letters of Vincent van Gogh', tr. Arnold Pomerans

"The moment Echo saw Narcissus / She was in love. She followed him / Like a starving wolf / Following a stag too strong to be tackled. / And like a cat in winter at a fire / She could not edge close enough / To what singed her, and would burn her."

— Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid; from 'Echo and Narcissus'

"…he ate my heart in half / and I was glad."

— Anne Sexton, The Book of Folly; from “The Death of the Fathers”

"To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird’s sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door. Yet there are moments when I could wish to be speared by a beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door, positively, once and for all."

— Virginia Woolf, from 'The Waves'

"…I desire the things which will destroy me in the end…"

— Sylvia Plath, from 'The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath'

"Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix."

— Karen Marie Moning, from 'Shadowfever'

"I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for."

— Madeline Miller, from 'Circe'

"...even in my sleep it tore every emotion out of me and told me one thing I could never have known or guessed so far: that not to give what I was dying to give him at whatever price was perhaps the greatest crime I might ever commit in my life."

— André Aciman, from 'Call Me By Your Name'

"What is wrong / with peace? I couldn’t say. / But, sweet ruin, I can hear you."

— Tony Hoagland, Sweet Ruin; from ‘Sweet Ruin’

#compilations #long post

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hub-4-hyperfixations · 3 years ago

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The Best VILLAINOUS FRIENDSHIPS, part 3

[in western animation]

1. Pinky & the Brain [Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain]

Pinky obviously cares a lot about Brain, viewing him as a true friend. Brain often gets annoyed with Pinky and harms him, but despite this, he does in fact care about him. When Pinky sold his soul to get Brain the world in "A Pinky And The Brain Halloween", Brain rescued him because he missed him and ruling the world was no fun without him. In the Christmas episode, Brain tears up when he finds out that Pinky wrote a letter to Santa asking for Brain to be given more respect.

2. Mister Smarty Smarts & Octocat [Spliced]

Mister Smarty Smarts and his minion Octocat are often annoyed and frustrated by each other, but they're there for each other when it counts, as shown in the ending of "Octocataclysm".

3. HIM & Mojo Jojo [The Powerpuff Girls]

It's easy to see how the villains get along with each other, since Mojo Jojo is Affably Evil, HIM is soft-spoken, and all that. This goes to the point where they're seen discussing Even Evil Has Standards together, being willing to stand together when they think that even villains like themselves had enough, and even opened a Beatles-themed band with each other.

4. Almighty Tallest Red & Almighty Tallest Purple [Invader Zim]

The Almighty Tallest are co-rulers who both function as The Caligula and enjoy every minute of it. They often bicker but seem very close, joking around about ways to hurt Zim and their mutual love of junk food.

5. Drakken & Shego [Kim Possible]

They have a very complicated version of this. Although Shego is technically a mercenary hired by Drakken to act as his Number Two, their relationship is less boss and minion and more Psychopathic Manchild and snarky nanny. Drakken is rather incompetent at everything except creating mad-science gadgets, and relies on Shego for things like opening a pickle jar.

Shego gets annoyed with her boss's idiocy and is prone to snarking at and insulting Drakken despite him being her employer, and isn't afraid to harm him, likely because she knows he needs her and won't fire her. Drakken himself is not above mind controlling Shego or replacing her with another sidekick. Despite all of their hurdles however, they continue to work together, and they have shown care for each other.

The two have saved each other on several occasions, and Drakken has stated that he considers Shego part of his "evil family". Whenever Shego is replaced, she feels jealous. Drakken has shown that he can be a Benevolent Boss at times, even paying for Shegos hotel during her Christmas vacation.

6. Bebop & Rocksteady [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)]

Whenever they are not doing work for the Shredder, they pass the time reading comics, watching cartoons, and playing video games together. They sometimes get along better than the turtles.

7. Wolfgang & Ludwig [Hey Arnold!]

Though they started off as enemies, "New Bully On the Block" ends with Wolfgang and Ludwig becoming friends with each other and bullying the fourth graders together.

8. Glowface & Lorenzo [The X's]

Glowface has a genuine friendship with his butler Lorenzo Suave. At the end of one episode, Glowface apologizes to Lorenzo for mistreating him earlier, and they share a touching moment.

#pinky and the brain #animaniacs #spliced #the powerpuff girls #invader zim #kim possible #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 1987 #hey arnold #the x's #villain friendship

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magicofsimplestories · 3 years ago

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Supernatural 2.0: #19 A new Job

[Back to Foreword and #1 Meet Kira or #18 Happily after]

Sam was a complete opposite of Dean. If the latter was an adventurous goofball with a passion for pies and burgers, the former was a mindful genius with piles and piles of books all around his small but stylish apartment in the renovated neighbourhood of Evergreen Harbor.

“Are you sure he’s your brother, Dean?” joked Kira studying Sam’s impressive library with amazement.

“Oh, come on, I do read”, grumbled Dean.

Over a glass of refreshing lemonade Sam shared with them the story he had been told by his neighbour, David Brewer, a building site worker.

“As part of the Green Revolution Plan of Evergreen Harbor, the authorities decided to make something useful out of the old building next to the stone quarry. The building has been abandoned for over a century, as the quarry is no longer profitable enough. They started renovations last week. According to David, on Tuesday they were working late. Adam was dealing with the old tubes when his colleagues heard him scream. He was already dead when they found him. The police classified the death as accidental. However, David claims he saw a shadow next to Adam’s body”

“Yeah, sounds like a ghost”, said Dean thoughtfully.

“Sounds indeed”, responded Kira. “Sam, have you ever heard the locals gossip that the quarry is haunted?”

“Never”, shook his head Sam. “On the contrary, the building was very much beloved by local teens who had parties there. Everyone used to get out of there safe and sound”

“This might mean that the quarry may have become haunted only with the launch of renovations”, noted Kira. “What do you know about these works?”

“Nothing special”, shrugged his shoulders Sam. “The mayor of Evergreen Harbor is a big fan of green transition. According to the local newspaper, she plans to demolish the old building and build a public pool there. David could tell you more about it, actually”

Kira smirked and turned to Dean.

“I think it’s high time to play feds”, she said with a conspiratorial smile.

She looked absolutely stunning in black. There was just one thing about her outfit that bothered Dean.

“Kira, are you sure about your shoes?” he asked looking at her high heels. “We might need to visit the quarry today”

“No worries about me”, she responded confidently. “I was a huge fan of heels in college. I know how to deal with them”

David and his wife Mila appeared to be a very talkative and friendly couple.

“I knew there was something wrong about Adam’s death”, exclaimed David. “Even though Adam was quite young, he was a professional. He couldn’t have messed up the cables, as the police claims. I checked the damn cables afterwards! They were perfectly fine. Something else killed Adam. I saw it with my own eyes!”

“What exactly did you see, Mr Brewer?” asked Dean.

“When I entered the room I saw a shadow over Adam’s body”, said David. “It was dusky there, but I swear it was a tall man in an old-style coat and a long hat. I screamed, the shadow turned around, looked at me and disappeared into the thin air! You might think I was drunk or whatever but I swear I was sober. We never drink at work”

“Has anyone else ever died on the site?” asked Kira.

David hesitated.

“I think, only the founder of the quarry, Arnold Grims”, he said finally.

Kira and Dean exchanged meaningful looks.

“But Grims died over a century ago”, added David thoughtfully. “The quarry building has always been a very calm place. My step-son, Wolfgang, always partied there with his friends and nothing bad ever happened. He’s at school now but when he’s back you can talk to him”

“We gladly will”, nodded Kira. “Thank you, Mr Brewer. There’s just one last question. Could you, please, tell us more about the renovation plan that the authorities had for the quarry site? Is it true the building was to be demolished?”

“Yes, it is”, nodded David. “The mayor wanted a pool there - the media reported it right. That’s exactly why we hired Adam: he was perfect with both cables and pipes. Just a day before his death he started digging up the old tubes”

They thanked the Brewers for cooperation and drove to the quarry.

Well, the quarry it was only according to papers. In fact it was a junkyard with piles of garbage, broken fridges, old bathtubs and rusty truck frames.

The inside of the building was no better: dusky rooms, old industrial appliances and disgustingly green oily puddles everywhere.

They found Adam’s place of death on the first floor. It was marked by a dry puddle of blood. A creepy black object of a strange shape was rising from the puddle.

“What the hell is this?” grumbled Dean approaching the object.

Kira gave the object a close look.

“I think it’s a mark of death”, she said thoughtfully. “Morgyn mentioned it once. A vengeful spirit leaves this mark after killing a human”

“So it is a ghost”, mumbled Dean looking around.

“A spirit”, insisted Kira. “There’s a difference”

“Is there?”

“A ghost is a soul that for some reason didn’t make its way to hell or heaven. Ghosts don’t lose their human appearance: the appearance is destroyed only during the soul’s transfer to the other world”, she explained patiently. “On the contrary, a spirit never has a human appearance, as it is a soul that was dragged from hell or heaven”

Dean’s expression darkened.

“Are you telling me we’re dealing with both a ghost and a spirit here?”

“Looks like”, she responded. “Moreover, there must be someone third…”

“… who dragged the spirit out of the other world”

“Exactly”

“I think we have to pay the local archive a visit tomorrow”, concluded Dean giving the creepy black object a last glance. “And now let’s get out of here. I don’t want to meet with spirits or ghosts unprepared”

On their exit from the site they were stopped by a smiley short-haired woman. She introduced herself as Bess, a local who “preferred the calm quarry surroundings for an evening jog”.

“Are you feds?” she asked with a simple smile. Neither Kira nor Dean managed to answer the question as Bess went on with her chitchat. “Oh my God, are you here because of Adam? Poor young man! He was such a nice plumber and electrician. I called him every time something went broken at my place. I still can’t believe he’s not with us anymore. Such a tragedy. The police said it was an accident. Were they wrong?”

She gave Kira a polite smile and pointed her witty brown eyes at Dean. He frowned.

“We’re in he middle of investigation, ma’am”, he responded dryly. “You will learn everything timely. Good night”

They met Sam for a drink at a local bar. Dean let Kira vividly retell Sam everything they’ve learnt so far. He himself was enjoying his beer in peace inserting a funny comment or two from time to time.

“And this Bess woman was too curious about Adam’s death”, added Kira.

“Oh, you met our local celebrity”, smiled Sam taking a sip from his glass.

“What is she famous for?” asked Kira.

“She owns the only packaging plant in the port”, explained Sam. “She’s super rich and super close with the mayor. She’s the biggest Green Plan supporter of all the local businessmen. She might be haughty but she surely has nothing to do with either the quarry or the supernatural”

“What makes you so sure of that? Did you have a chance to get to know her, brother?” chuckled Dean.

“Oh, shut up”, mumbled Sam. “She’s a trustee of the mayor. And the mayor is highly picky with the members of her team”

“Fine, I’ll take that for now”, giggled Dean.

Over a beer they chatted till midnight, with Dean and Kira telling about their Strangerville adventures and Sam sharing his university experience.

“She’s great, man”, Sam told Dean when Kira left them for a moment. “You look happy”

“I am happy, man”, smiled Dean in response. “Like I’ve never been. And you, is there anyone you’d like me to meet?”

Sam smiled.

“Be patient. All in good time”

“In good time” mimicked Dean. “All mysterious, young man, I see”

Sam smiled again.

“It’s so good to see you, Dean”

“It’s been a long time, Samy”

For the first time ever in Dean’s hunting experience, they didn’t stop at a motel. Upon Sam’s advice, they rented an apartment right in front of the quarry building.

Kira fell in love with its orange-yellow-grey design the moment she entered the apartment. And Dean simply couldn’t say no to her big beautiful inspired blue eyes.

He was holding her in his arms: she has already fallen asleep on his chest, as always. She was everything to him. She was his support, his light, his peace, his joy. It all felt just too good to be real. Was it real? He pulled her tighter. Of course, it was real.

If there’s God it should’ve been him who made our paths cross.

“I love you so much, baby”, he whispered closing his eyes.

[Read next: #20 Learning by doing]

#sims 4 #sims 4 supernatural #sims 4 evergreen harbor #sims 4 screenshots #sims 4 gamepley #sims 4 story #sims 4 pictures #simblr #ts4 simblr

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opera-ghosts · 3 years ago

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Else Gentner-Fischer (5 September 1883 – 26 April 1943) was a German operatic soprano. Although she appeared in operas internationally, her career was mainly centered at the Oper Frankfurt where she was a resident artist from 1907-1935. She excelled in the dramatic soprano repertoire, drawing particular acclaim for her portrayal of Wagnerian heroines. She studied singing at the Hoch Conservatory before making her professional opera debut in 1905 at the National Theatre Mannheim. She made her first appearance at that house in early 1907, and remained committed to that opera house until her retirement from the stage in 1935. Outside of Frankfurt, she appeared as a guest artist at the Berlin State Opera, the Liceu, the Teatro Colón, and the Teatro Real. She toured the United States in 1923-1924 with the German Opera Company and also toured with the Oper Frankfurt to the Netherlands in 1934.In her early career, Gentner-Fischer sang only smaller parts, but by 1910 she was performing leading roles in the soubrette and lyric soprano repertoire. She notably portrayed the role of Sophie in the Frankfurt premiere of Der Rosenkavalier in 1911. In 1914, she was one of the flower maidens in the Frankfurt premiere of Parsifal. She soon moved into heavier repertoire, excelling in parts like Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana, and the title roles in Aida, Carmen, and Tosca. As her career progressed, Wagnerian heroines increasingly became a more important part of her repertoire; including Brünnhilde in The Ring Cycle, Elsa in Lohengrin, and Isolde in Tristan und Isolde.In addition to performing works from the standard soprano repertoire, Gentner-Fischer also appeared in many productions by modern composers. In Frankfurt she notably created roles in the world premieres of Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen's Oberst Chabert (1912, the Countess), Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten (1918, Carlotta Nardi), Ernst Krenek's Der Sprung über den Schatten (1924), and Arnold Schoenberg's Von heute auf morgen (1930, the Wife). In 1923 she performed the role of Myrtocle in the United States premiere of Eugen d'Albert's Die toten Augen at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. In 1929 she sang the role of Emilia Marty in the German premiere of Leoš Janáček's The Makropulos Case. On 23 June 1935, Gentner-Fischer gave her final opera performance in the role of Isolde in Frankfurt.

Karl Friedrich Gentner (23 May 1876 – 13 September 1922) was a German operatic tenor. Gentner became a well-known opera singer. In 1905 he married the soprano Else Fischer (1883-1943), who was later known as Else Gentner-Fischer, one of the most important dramatic soprano in Germany. In 1906 the Frankfurt director Emil Claar appointed the singer couple to the Oper Frankfurt. While his wife remained employed there throughout her life, Gentner moved to the Deutsche Oper Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1914, where he was engaged until his death. After his death in Berlin at age 46, the singer's body was transferred to his birthplace and buried there in the family grave. The grave still exists today (as of 2012) at the main cemetery Frankenthal. At the premiere of Franz Schreker's opera Der ferne Klang, 1912 in Frankfurt, Gentner played and sang the leading role of Fritz.The Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky described Gentner as "a great talent".

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newagesispage · 3 years ago

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JULY 2021

THE RIB PAGE

*****

They are still uncovering statues on Easter Island.

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Everyone is talking about ‘Exterminate all the Brutes” from Raoul Peck.

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Vampire bats, prevalent in Latin America may be on the way to the U.S.

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What they call faith, I call strength.

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Criss angel will open CABLP, a restaurant in Overton, Nevada. The letters stand for breakfast, lunch and pizza and will include a free meal outreach program to help under privileged and pediatric cancer families.

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A fifth ocean in Antartica??** There have also found 4 new ocean species: Apolemia, Tegula Kusairo, Leptarma Biju and Duobrachium Sparksae.

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In China they have found a possible new species in a skull that is 140,000 years old.

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Why would Jeffrey Toobin be back at CNN?? Surely there are more young deserving talking heads around.

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The Keystone pipeline is dead.

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5,000 pounds of explosives were discovered in a home in South LA. LAPD seems to have detonated the fireworks in a truck right there in the neighborhood. They were too dangerous to transport but not enough to blow them up??? How stupid are these people??

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Days alert : So glad to see Clyde again even if it is only for a moment!! **BTW, I do not understand the Daytime Emmy noms this year as they relate to Days. I really was pulling for Victoria Koneful (Ciara) and she won but George DelHoya (Orpheus), Tamara Braun (Ava) and Cady McClain (Jennifer)??? I was shocked when Cady McClain won. I mean, she was so whiny. I question my own ability to judge a performance. In most categories, the winner was usually the one I thought was the worst option. I was happy for Max Gail and CBS Sunday Morning. Some performances were sure overlooked. What about James Read (Clyde), Paul Telfer (Xander), Bryan Dattilo (Lucas), Robert Scott Wilson (Ben), Daniel Kerr (Eli) and Lindsay Arnold (Allie) ?? As annoying as the Kristen character is and as long as it took me to get used to Stacy Haiduk in the role, she kicked ass this year. Did they even submit clips?? And, they are not often on but Tony and Anna forever!!!!!!** And how wonderful is it to see the Dimera boys all together and recounting the whole fam for the votes? **And one more thing, Days was not even nominated for writing while Bold and the Beautiful spends every other show with the Liam character standing in front of the fireplace making excuses for the same shit! Just push repeat, C,mon!!**Philip had a great line for Brady about following Kristen like a zombie.** Dis Eli really say, “Peacock and chill??’ Are these the things they will have to do to do to stay on the air? It took me right out of the show. It was the same day the ads for Days on Peacock started. OMG

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Texas Gov. Abbott vetoed a bill that would make it illegal to chain up dogs without water.**ATexas churches have lost their 501(c) (3) status because it actively ‘educates’ its members on electing specific Republican politicians. –Pete West* This should have been happening long ago. Many churches I know of do this and should not be allowed to have it both ways. #tax the church

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Ellen Burstyn, Jane Curtin, Loretta Devine, Christopher Lloyd, James Caan, French Stewart and Ann-Margaret in Queen Bees and directed by Michael Lembeck?? Yes please!!

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NY has suspended Giuliani’s law license.

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Miracle Workers: The Oregon Trail is coming to TBS, this will be season 3 in the series.

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What is this about Bowen Yang?? A podcast about a sperm bank heist?? Yeow!!

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David Geffen has given $150,000,000 to Yale drama school: Every student will be tuition- free in perpetuity.

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Allison Mack was sentenced to 3 years.

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The latest in sexual assault news: James Franco has agreed to 2.2 mil settlement in sexual misconduct case.** Kyle Massey was charged with immoral communication with a minor.**Bill Cosby is out and here are some reactions: A terrible wrong is being righted.: a miscarriage of justice is corrected. I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward.- Phylicia Rashad*I really don’t ever want to hear again as to why many survivors don’t report their rape or assault.- Charlotte Clymer* Women are showing great restraint in not burning everything to the ground right now and I don’t know how they do it.-Jeff Tiedrich

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Amazon is making a series of A League of Their Own with Nick Offerman as the coach.

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Does anyone else have family members that are rich, transient, know it all snobs??

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It looks like New York’s ranked choice voting is leaning toward Eric Adams for Mayor.

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Michigan republicans investigating voter fraud found 2 incidents. One is for a lady who voted by mail and then died, the other was confusion over a man who had the same name as his Father. That was it!

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Jamie Lee Curtis will get the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 78th Venice International Film Fest in September.

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Jerry Seinfeld will star in and direct ‘Unfrosted’ about Pop-Tarts.

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Why is Airbnb still listing properties in illegal settlements and outposts in Palestinian occupied territories? –James J. Zogby

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Merrick Garland has announced that the Justice department sued Georgia over the voting rights.

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The NFL says that it will halt the use of “race norming” which assumed black players started out with lower cognitive functioning in a $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims. The practice had made it harder for black players to qualify. –The Associated Press.

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Scary Clown 45 ended his ‘From the desk of Donald J. Trump’ blog after 29 days. Word is that he felt he was being mocked in the media.

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Religious leadership keeps engaging in partisan politics on behalf of politicians that are particularly unpopular with younger people and they wonder why younger people are disenchanted with the church. – Schooley ** Give young people credit as well for seeing through the hype and lies of these religious hypocrites who use God only as a weapon and a threat. –Larry Charles

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Amazon will stop drug testing for employment. Can every other company jump on this bandwagon? Let’s judge employees on the work they give.

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The Backstreet Boys and NSync are going to work together??!!

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Showtime is bringing back American Gigolo with Jon Bernthal.

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If Biden can carry out air strikes without proper authorization, the Senate can raise the minimum wage without the Parliamentarian. –Alexandra M. Hunt

Reality Winner is out!!

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Judy Woodruff has been given the Peabody award for journalistic integrity.

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Donald Glover is bringing us Hive. Malia Obama will be a writer.

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Nicholas Cage has married Riko Shibata.

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Catch and Kill: The podcast tapes, is here on HBO.

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Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening will star in Jerry and Marge go large.

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Amblin Partners and Netflix are partners.

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Fall 2022 will bring the Roybal School of film and television production for underserved communities. They are looking to help 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade students. Among others, the program was cofounded by George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Kerry Washington, Mindy Kaling and Eva Longoria.

*****

Will there be a Wedding Crashers2??

*****

The Mysterious Benedict Society stars Tony Hale.** I would love to see he and Danny Pudi in something together.

*****

Actor Stephen Amell from Arrow was removed from a plane after getting into it with his wife. A source said he was drunk and screaming. An official source said that they removed “an unruly customer.”** Andy Dick was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, allegedly assaulting his partner, Lucas with a metal chair.

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So.. Fox news was digitally altering the faces of people they did not care for??? Is there no end to their bullshit????

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Mark Ronson is set to marry Grace Gummer.

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Crime shows seem to be in the cycle of prisoners and the women who get a thrill from helping them escape.

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Wolfgang Van Halen has released a debut album: Mammoth

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Everyone seems to love Danny Trejo’s memoir and its honesty.

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David Spade will take over as host of Bachelor in Paradise.

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I am sickened when I see the first question that pops up on an online search is the net worth of a person. Oh this twisted world.

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Life is a short pause between 2 great mysteries. –Jung

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Prince Harry and Meghan had a daughter that they named Lilibet ‘Lili” Diana.

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Michael Flynn’s brother Charles (who withheld help from the capitol on Jan. 6), leads the U.S. Army Pacific and commands 90,000 troops.

*****

I am so excited to read ‘The Boys’ from Clint and Ron Howard, due out in October.

*****

Dave Chappelle closed out the Tribeca film fest with a surprise concert. This was the first in person film fest since Covid. Look for This time, this place which premiered there.

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Ron Wood will release the album Mr. Luck: A tribute to Jimmy Reed on Sept. 3

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Howard Stern signed a new $500 mil contract with Sirius XM. He is taking the whole summer off and many fans say they will cancel their subscription because they don’t want to pay for a summer of reruns.

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Acorn will bring Jane Seymour back to a series. Seymour will be co -executive produce on Harry Wild. Her character will be a retired University professor who loves her whiskey and solves crimes.

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Annie Murphy stasr in ‘Kevin can f*** himself about a sitcom wife which airs on AMC.

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I still do not understand why Rep. Mike Nearman hasn’t been arrested for letting insurrectionists into the Capitol.

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There is a wing shortage??

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The Pulitzer prizes have been announced. The list includes Ben Faub, Barry Blitt, Katori Hall, Emilio Morenatti, AP photographers Marcio Jose Sanchez, Alex Brandon, David Goldman, Julio Cortez, John Minchillo, Frank Franklin II, Ringo H.W. Chiu, Evan Vucci, Mike Stewart and Noah Berger. There was a special citation for Darnella Frazier who filmed the death of George Floyd.

*****

Conan’s last TBS guests were Martin Short, Jack Black, Bill Hader, Mila Kunis, Dana Carvey, Patton Oswalt and JB Smoove. There were some surprises. The big musical number never happened when Jack Black hurt himself. It was all funny and sweet but Conan never mentioned the band in the last show WTF????????????????????????????????????????? Music is so important to him and he does not thank the band? ** Colbert and Brian Stack gave Conan a cute send after4, 368 shows on CBS calling him a ‘Slenderman Ron Weasly’. Kimmel wished Conn well also.** Hope his HBO MAX variety show goes well.** BTW, the Duvall interview with Colbert was great to see but why does nobody ever mention ‘Get Low?’ What a performance!!

*****

Tattoos are on the rise.

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Fast food drive thru’s sometime close with fake excuses like the equipment is down or something because they don’t feel like working. Good people can’t find work and so many waste the opportunities they have. AAAAGHH!!

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Valerie Bertinelli and Demi Lovato will star in ‘Hungry’ on NBC.

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Hulu will bring us David E. Kelley’s Nine Perfect Strangers with Nicole Kidman, Michael Shannon, Regina Hall, Bobby Cannavale and Melissa McCarthy.

*****

R.I.P. Gavin Macleod, Frank Bonner, Joy Vogelsang, Benigno Aquino, Champ Biden, victims of the Miami building collapse, Robert Sacchi, Stuart Damon, Johnny Solinger and Clarence Williams III.

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chiseler · 5 years ago

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The Head -- It Just Won’t Stay Dead

In the early 1960s, the overwhelming majority of European horror films imported to the United States were either British or Italian, the British films being easily understood and the Italian ones frequently pretending to be of British origin. Examples of French horror were rare (odd for a country whose cinema was so rooted in the fantastique), reaching an early apex with Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960), which came to the US in a well-done English dub called The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus during the Halloween season of 1962.

Seldom paid much attention in retrospectives of this fertile period in continental horror cinema is a rare German example, Die Nackte und der Satan (“The Naked and the Devil,” 1959), which came to the US retitled The Head almost exactly one year before the arrival of the Franju masterpiece. Critics like to refer to The Head as “odd” and “atmospheric,” words that seem to disregard deeper consideration, never really coming to terms with it as anything but a sleazy shock trifle. However, it was in fact the product of a remarkable and rarely equaled concentration of accomplished patrimonies.

Consider this: The Head starred the great Swiss actor Michel Simon, renowned for his roles in Jean Renoir’s La Chienne and Boudu Saved From Drowning; it was directed by the Russian-born Victor Trivas, returning to his adopted homeland for the first time since directing Niemandsland (1932, aka No Man’s Land or Hell On Earth), a potent anti-war statement that was all but obliterated off the face of the earth by the Nazis when he fled the country, and who furthermore had written the story upon which Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) was based; it was photographed by Georg Krause, whose numerous international credits include Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957); its sets were designed by Hermann Warm, the genius responsible for such German Expressionist masterpieces as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921), as well as Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), and its score is a wild patchwork of library tracks by Willy Mattes, the Erwin Lehn Orchestra, and a group of avant garde musicians known as Lasry-Baschet, who would subsequently lend their eerie, ethereal music to Jean Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus (1960). If all this were not enough, The Head was also filmed at the Munich studios of Arnold Richter, the co-founder of the Arri Group, innovators of the famous Arriflex cameras and lenses.

Though made after the 1957 horror breakthroughs made in Britain and Italy (Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein, and I vampiri, co-directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava), The Head represented a virtual revolutionary act in postwar Germany, where horror was then considered a genre to avoid. The project was proposed to Trivas by a young film producer named Wolfgang C. Hartwig, head of Munich’s Rapid-Film, whose claim to fame was initiating a niche of exploitation cinema known as Sittenfilme – literally “moral movies” – which, like many American exploitation films of the 1930s, maintained a higher, judgmental moral tone while telling the stories of people who slipped into lives of vice (prostitution, blackmail, drug addiction), their sordid experiences always leading them to a happy or at least bittersweet outcome. Though it goes quite a bit further than either Britain or Italy had yet gone in terms of sexualizing horror, The Head nevertheless checked all the boxes required for Sittenfilme and was undertaken by Hartwig in early 1959 as Rapid-Film’s most prestigious production to date.

After the main titles are spelled out over an undulating nocturnal fog, the story begins with a lurker’s shadow passing along outside the gated property of Prof. Dr. Abel. With its round head and wide-brimmed hat, it looks like the planet Saturn from the neck up. When this marauder pauses to pay some gentle attention to a passing tortoise, we get our first look at the film’s real star - Horst Frank, just thirty at the time, his clammy asexual aura topped off with prematurely graying hair and large triangular eyebrows that seem carried over from the days of German Expressionism. More bizarre still, he later gives his name as Dr. Ood, whose explanation is still more bizarre: at the age of three months old, he was orphaned, the sole survivor of a cataclysmic shipwreck .

“That was the name of the wrecked ship,” he explains. “S.S. Ood.”

The ambiguous Ood takes cover as another late night visitor comes calling: a hunchbacked woman wearing a nurse’s habit as outsized as an oxygen tent. This is Sister Irene Sanders (the screen debut of Karin Kernke, later seen in the Edgar Wallace krimi The Terrible People, 1960). Though Irene cuts a figure as ambiguous and unusual as any Franju ever filmed, she owes her greatest debt to Jane Adams’ hunchbacked Nina in Erle C. Kenton’s House of Dracula (1945). As with Nina, Irene lives in the hope that her deformity can be eradicated by the skill of a brilliant surgeon.

When Irene leaves after meeting with Dr. Abel, Ood presents himself with the written recommendation of a colleague he previously, supposedly, assisted. A burly old walrus of a man, Abel (Michel Simon) already has two younger associates, Dr. Walter Burke (Kurt Müller-Graf, “a first class surgeon”) and the handsome, muscular Burt Jaeger (Helmut Schmid), who hasn’t been quite the same since an unexplained brain operation. Both associates share a creative streak; Burke is also “an excellent architect, [who] designed this house,” while Jaeger “designed my special operating table; it allows me to work without assistants.” (So why does he have two of them? With names that sound the same, no less!) Given the high caliber of Hermann Warm’s talent as a production designer, Burke and Burt together are every bit as skilled in architecture as was Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934). The main floor of Abel’s sprawling house is dominated by a vast spiral stairwell, striking low-backed furniture, a mobile of dancing palette shapes, and an overpowering wall reproducing Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virtuvian Man.” Down in the lab, Burt’s robotic surgical assistant looks as if it might have been conceived by the brain responsible for the Sadean mind control device in Jess Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965) - a film that, along with Franco’s earlier The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), seems considerably more indebted to Trivas on renewed acquaintance than to Franju. The film was shot in black-and-white and at no point inside Abel’s abode do the silvery, ivory surfaces admit even the possibility of pigment.

Adding to its effect, the music heard whenever the film cuts back to Abel’s place is anything but homey. It consists of a single, sustained electric keyboard chord played in a nightmarish loop that seems to chill and vibrate, its predictable arc punctuated now and again with icy spikes of cornet. Though I don’t recall reading any extensive discussion of the film’s music, The Head represents what is surely the most important advance in electronic music in the wake of Louis & Bebe Barron’s work on Forbidden Planet (1956). Though the film’s music credits list bandleader Willy Mattes, Jacques Lasry and the Edwin Lehr Orchestra with its music, the most important musical credit is displaced. Further down the screen is the unexplained “Sound Structure, Lasry-Baschet.”

Lasry-Baschet was a musical combination of two partnerships – that of brothers Francois and Bernard Baschet, and the husband-and-wife team of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry. The two brothers were musicians who played astonishing instruments of their own invention, like the Crystal Baschet (played with moistened fingers on glass rods), the Aluminum Piano, the Inflatable Guitar, the Rotating Whistler, and the Polytonal Percussion. The Lasry couple, originally a pianist and organist, began performing with the Baschets on their unique devices in the mid 1950s. Some of the music they produced during this period is collected on the albums Sonata Exotique (credited to Structures for Sound, covering the years 1957-1959) and Structures For Sound (credited to the Baschet Brothers alone, 1963), a vinyl release by the Museum of Modern Art. These and other recorded works can be found on YouTube, as well; they are deeply moving ambient journeys but I cannot say with certainty that they include any of the music from The Head. That said, the music they do collect is very much in its macabre character and would have also fit very well into Last Year At Marienbad (1961) or any of Franju’s remarkable films.

When Ood meets with Abel and expresses his keen interest in experimental research, the good doctor mentions that he has had success copying “the recent Russian surgery” that succeeded in keeping the severed head of a dog alive – however, his moral code prevents him from taking such experimentation still further. After leaving Abel, Ood finds his way to the Tam-Tam Club, a nightspot where a life-sized placard promotes the nightly performances of “Tam-Tam Super Sex Star Lilly.” This visit initiates a parallel storyline involving Lilly (Christiane Maybach), who supplements her striptease work as an artist’s model, and is the particular muse of the brooding Paul Lerner (Dieter Eppler), a man of only artistic ambition, much to the annoyance of his father, a prominent judge who wants him to study law. Maybach reportedly won her role the day before she began filming. According to news reports of the day, the actress originally cast – the voluptuous redhead Kai Fischer – had signed on to play the part, after which producer Hartwig decided she must also appear nude. Fisher sued Hartwig for breach of contract in March 1959 and he was sentenced to pay out a compensatory fee of DM 4,000 – in currency today, the equivalent of about $35,000. As it happens, Christiane Maybach doesn’t appear nude in the film’s final cut either.

The English version of The Head opens with a credit sequence played out over a shot of the full moon taken from near the climax of the picture. Unusually, the German Die Nackte und der Satan doesn’t present its title onscreen until Lilly is ready to go on. It’s superimposed with inverted commas on pleated velvet curtains that suddenly rise, revealing a stage adorned by a single suit of armor. Lilly dances out, stage right, garbed in a medieval conical hat, scarves, a bikini and a black mask, performing her dance of the seven veils around the impervious man of metal. She only strips down to her bikini but her dance ends with her in the arms of the armor we assumed empty, which tightly embraces her as its visor pops open, revealing a man’s face wearing skull makeup. Lilly screams, the lights go out, and the house goes wild with applause – a veritable blueprint for the striptease of Estella Blain’s Miss Death in Franco’s The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965).

The music heard during the film’s Tam-Tam Club sequences was recorded by the Erwin Lehn Orchestra, evidently with Jacques Lasry on piano, though its emphasis on brass is its outstanding characteristic. Erwin Lehn was a German jazz musician and composer who established the first German Big Band Orchestra for South German Radio. Brass was a major component of his sound – indeed, he made pop instrumental recordings credited to The Erwin Lehn Beat-Brass. You can find their album Beat Flames on YouTube, as well.

Backstage, the beautiful Lilly is a nagging brat, drinking and flirting with patrons while berating Paul’s lax ambitions on the side. Dieter Eppler, a frequent player in the Edgar Wallace krimis and also the lead bloodsucker in Roberto Mauri’s Italian Slaughter of the Vampires (1964), makes for inspired casting; he looks like a beefier, if less dynamic Kirk Douglas at a time when Vincente Minnelli’s Lust For Life (1956) would have still been in the minds of audiences.

Once Ood joins the payroll, Dr. Abel confesses that his heart is failing rapidly. The only means of saving himself and perpetuating his brilliant research is by doing the impossible – that is, transplanting the heart from a donor’s body into his own, which he insists is possible given his innovation of “Serum X.” What Abel could not foresee was that his own body would die during the procedure. Ood tells Burke that the only way to save Abel’s genius is to keep his head artificially alive, which his associate rejects uncatagorically, pushing Ood over the edge into murder. Then Ood proceeds with the operation, working solo with Jaeger’s robo-assistant passing along surgical tools as he needs them. When Abel revives, Ood breaks his news of the procedure gently by holding up a mirror and exclaiming that he’d had “one last chance – to perform the dog operation on your head!” Abel screams in revulsion of what he has become. The conciliatory Ood gently cautions him, “Too much emotion can be extremely dangerous now.”

The severed head apparatus is a simple yet ingenious effect, shot entirely in-camera and credited to Theo Nischwitz. It utilizes what is generally known as a Schufftan shot, a technique made famous by spfx shots achieved by Eugen Schufftan for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). Essentially, Michel Simon was seated behind a pane of mirrored glass with all the apparatus seen from his neck up. The silvering on the reverse portion of the mirror was scraped away, allowing the camera to see through to Simon and the apparatus while reflecting the apparatus arrayed below his neck, in position for the camera to capture its reflection simultaneously. In at least one promotional photo issued for the film, Simon’s shoulders can be transparently glimpsed where they should not be.

Irene returns to meet with Dr. Abel and is surprised to find new employee Ood now alone and ruling the roost. When he offers to perform her operation himself, she instinctively distrusts and fears him – but is reassured after hearing Abel’s disembodied voice on the house’s sophisticated intercom.

After the killing and burial of Burke, whose body Bert Jaeger later finds thanks to the barking of Dr. Abel’s kenneled hounds (a detail that one imagines inspired Franju’s use of a kennel in Eyes Without a Face), the film introduces the dull but nevertheless compulsory police investigation, headed by Paul Dahlke as Police Commissioner Sturm. Sagging interest is buoyed by a surprise twist: when Dr. Ood returns to the Tam-Tam Club and asks the perpetually pissy Lilly to dance, he refers to her in passing as “Stella,” prompting her to recognize him as “Dr. Brandt” (the scorecard now reads Burke, Bert and Brandt), who has inside knowledge pertaining to her poisoning of her husband! Given that his earlier writing projects include Orson Welles’ The Stranger and the bizarre Mexican-made Buster Keaton item Boom In the Moon (also 1946), in which an innocent shipwrecked sailor is rescued from his castaway existence only to find himself confused with a serial killer, Victor Trivas would seem partial to characters who live double lives.

Though Ood/Brandt’s aura is basically asexual through the first half of the film, the second half requires him to take an earthier interest in the female bodies finding their way into his hands. He takes the already tipsy Lilly/Stella home for a drink and some mischief.

“What’s in the glass?”

“Drink it and find out.”

“I hope it’s not poisoned.”

“That’s not my specialty, is it?”

Lilly/Stella becomes the necessary auto parts for Irene’s pending operation. In a nicely done montage, the film dissolves from Lilly’s unconscious body to a glint of light off the edge of Ood’s poised scalpel. It cuts to a curt zoom into Abel’s scream at being forced to watch a procedure he abhors, then a dissolve from his mouth to the spinning dials of a wall clock, followed by some time-lapse photography of cumulous clouds unfurling from an open sky, before Irene awakens in her recovery room with a decorative choker around her throat. She is able to gain her feet and covers her nude body in a sheet. She finds Ood lounging in Abel’s old office. He walks toward her as the sheet tumbles off her bare shoulders.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Well, I… I’ve a strange kind of feeling, as if my whole body were changed, as if my body didn’t want to do what I wished.”

Therefore, Ood has not only taken away her deformity but her responsibility for her actions, as well. Though she has never smoked before, she craves a cigarette. As Ood lights one for her, her wrap falls further, undraping her entire bare back and thus exposing a birthmark on her left shoulder blade that becomes an important plot point. Ood confesses she’s been unconscious for 117 days, during which time he has passed the time by performing numerous enhancing procedures on her inert body. When he compliments her superb figure, she self-consciously covers her legs and recoils from him.

“Why run from everything you desire?” he asks. “You can’t run from yourself.”

He draws Irene into a surprising deep kiss, which – to her own apparent horror - she returns. Ood then tries to take things further but she refuses. After a brief (and surprisingly curtailed) attempt at abduction, he releases Irene, who dresses in a black cocktail dress and heels left behind by Lilly and returns to the humble apartment she kept in her previous life, where a full-length mirror stands covered. In a scene considerably shortened by the US version, she rips the cover away in a movement evocative of a symbolic self-rape, and glories in her new reflection. The score turns torrid, brassy, and trashy as she admires her shapely terrain, fondling the curves of her breasts and hips in a prelude to a gratifying personal striptease. She then goes to her bed, where she tries on an old pair of slippers; she laughs and kicks them away, delighted at how small her feet now are. When she wakes the next morning, she finds a pamphlet for the Tam-Tam Club in Lilly’s old purse, which leads her body back to its former place of employ. When she arrives, another striptease artist is working onstage with a bed. This performance appears to burlesque Irene’s own motions from the night before; she kicks off one of her shoes as Irene had done.

From the moment she walks into the club, still wearing Lilly’s clinging black dress, Irene evokes a black widow, a kind of Alraune – the femme fatale of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ novel, filmed in 1930 with Brigitte Helm and in 1952 by Hildegarde Knef. Like Alraune, she’s the beautiful creation of a mad scientist’s laboratory, but unnatural. In this case, she’s not really a soulless artificial being out to destroy men; on the contrary, she is soulful, starving for some insight into who she is, what she is. In this way, she particularly foreshadows Christina, the schizophrenic subject of Baron Frankenstein’s “soul transplant” played by Susan Denberg in Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (1966).

She quickly attracts Paul’s artist’s eye, just as the now-topless dancer onstage swirls into a swoon on a prop bed – unconsciously mimicking Lilly at the only time she ever saw her, when Ood gave her a sneak peek at the unconscious woman on his living room couch. She asks about Lilly, whom Paul mentions has been dead now for three months, her body (in fact, Irene’s former body) found maimed beyond recognition on some railroad tracks. He asks her to dance, but Irene refuses, as she has never danced, never been asked to dance before. But he insists and they both discover that she can: “You must be a born dancer!”

Beautiful and irresponsible, she allows herself to follow Paul back to his studio, where drawings of Lilly are displayed. Paul asks to draw her, and when she turns her back to bare her shoulders, he recognizes Lilly’s beauty mark. She flees from the apartment and confronts the unflappable Ood.

“You must have grafted her skin on my body!”

In the movie’s most hilarious line, he fires back, “You have a poor imagination!”

She rejects his true account of the procedure and demands to see Dr. Abel, so Ood takes her down to the lab for a personal confirmation from the man himself. Ashamed to be seen this way, Abel pleads with Irene to disconnect him from the apparatus. She is driven away before she can accomplish this, and tries to shut away the horror of the truth that’s been revealed by losing herself in her new relationship with Paul – but the old question arises: Does he love her for her body or her mind? There seems to be one answer when he first kisses her, and another and his lips venture further down her front.

I should leave some things to be discovered by your own viewing of the film, but it demands to be mentioned that Irene – the triumphant climax of Ood’s genius, so to speak – actually survives at the end of the film to live happily ever after. Think about this. This is something that would have been considered unacceptable in any of Hammer’s Frankenstein films at the time – indeed, through the following decade. So, although Ood is ultimately destroyed (you’ll need to see it to find out how), the mad science he propounds is actually borne out. It’s left up to Paul and Irene, as they walk off together toward a new tomorrow, how they will manage to live with the fact that the two of them are in fact a ménage à trois. Will they keep the details of her existence a secret? Will medical science remain ignorant? Should they ever have any, what will they tell their kids?

The Head was hardly the first word on severed heads in horror entertainment. In his own admiring coverage of the film, Euro Gothic author Jonathan Rigby likens the film to the story of Rene Berton’s 1928 Grand Guignol play L’Homme qui à tue la mort (“The Man Who Killed Death”): “There, Professor Fargus revived the guillotined head of a supposed murderer and the prosecutor lost his mind when the head continued to plead his innocence.” Earlier such films would include Universal’s Inner Sanctum thriller Strange Confession (1945, in which a never-seen severed head is a main plot point), The Man Without a Body (1957) and The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), the latter two proving that the concept was actually trending at the time The Head was made. Also parenthetically relevant would be She Demons (1958), which involves the nasty experiments of a renegade Nazi scientist living on an uncharted tropical island, who removes the “beauty glands” of native girls to periodically restore his wife’s good looks. Though The Head wasn’t the first of its kind, many of the traits it introduced would surface in similar films that followed – not only in Franju’s Eyes Without A Face or Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orlof and The Diabolical Dr. Z, but also in Anton Giulio Majano’s Italian Atom Age Vampire (1960), Chano Urueta’s The Living Head (1963), and most conspicuously in Joseph Green’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, not released until 1962 though filmed in 1959, some six months after The Head.

It must be mentioned that the film’s unusual quality did not go unrecognized by its American distributor. Trans-Lux Distributing Corporation advertised the film that took a most unusual approach to selling a horror picture. The ads did not promise blood, or that your companion would jump into your lap, or shock after shock after shock. Instead, Trans-Lux promised that “At The Head of All Masterpieces of Horror [my italics] That You’ve Ever Seen… You Must Place… The Head.”

Of course it was an overstatement, but the size of its overstatement would seem to have narrowed appreciably with time.

So why has The Head, with its rich pooling of so much European talent, been so neglected?

A key reason may be that horror fans like their actors and directors to maintain a certain consistency, a certain fidelity to the genre. Horst Frank (who died in 1999) would appear in other horror films, but never again played a lead; he pursued his career as a character actor and singer, maintaining a career on the stage and keeping close to home, never making films off the continent or appearing in productions originating from England or America. After The Head, Victor Trivas made no more horror films. The other four features he made had been produced a quarter century earlier and the majority are impossible to see in English countries. Those who remembered him for Niemandsland would have considered The Head an embarrassment, an unfortunate last act. It wasn’t quite a last act, however. The following year, he returned to America, where he sold his final script to the Warner Bros. television series The Roaring 20s, starring Dorothy Provine. Though the show avoided fantasy subjects, it was a voodoo-themed episode entitled “The Fifth Pin,” directed by Robert Spaar and televised during the series’ first season on April 8, 1961. The guest stars included John Dehner, Rex Reason, Patricia O’Neal and, surprisingly, beloved Roger Corman repertory player Dick Miller. Trivas died in New York City in 1970, at the age of 73.

The English version of The Head is considered to be a public domain title and has been available from Alpha Video, Sinister Cinema and other PD sources. This version was modestly recut to create a new main title sequence and to remove certain erotic elements unwelcome to its target audience in 1961. Happily, a hybrid edition – which, in a fitting fate, grafts the English dub onto the original uncut version from Germany – was recently made available for viewing on YouTube.

In the immediate wake of The Head, producer Wolf C. Hartwig pushed another erotic horror film into production, Ein Töter hing in Netz (“A Corpse Hangs in the Web,” 1960). Scripted and directed by Fritz Böttger, the film (Böttger’s last as a director) was first released in America as It’s Hot In Paradise (1962), sold as a girlie picture with absolutely no indication of its horror content. It was later reissued in 1965 as Horrors of Spider Island (1965). Under any of its titles, the film is notably lacking all of the artistic and aesthetic pedigree that made its predecessor so special and, indeed, influential.

Sixty years further on, The Head warrants fuller recognition as a spearhead of that magic moment on the threshold of the 1960s when so-called “art cinema” began to be fused with so-called “trash cinema,” leading to a broader, wilder, more adult fantastique.

by Tim Lucas

[1] Victor Trivas’ Niemandsland may be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-4XhNMWoyw

[2] Rapid-Film’s later successes would include the German film that was subsequently converted into Francis Ford Coppola’s directorial debut (The Bellboy and the Playgirls, 1962), Ernst Hofbauer’s Schoolgirl Report film series (1970-80), and Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron (1977).

[3] You can see Lasry-Baschet perform and be interviewed in a French newsreel from January 1961 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awaFd6gArLg&t=46s.

[4] Well, as “recent” as 1940, when footage of a supposedly successful Soviet resuscitation of a dog’s severed head was included in the grisly 20m documentary Experiments In the Revival of Organisms. The operation was performed (and repeated) by Doctors Sergei Brukhonenko and Boris Levinskovsky, making use of their “autojektor,” an artificial heart/lung machine not unlike the contraption seen in The Head. A close look at Experiments reveals that it really shows nothing that could not have been faked through means of special effects. (When George Bernard Shaw learned of the Soviet experiment, he’s said to have remarked, “"I am tempted to have my own head cut off so that I can continue to dictate plays and books without being bothered by illness, without having to dress and undress, without having to eat, without having anything else to do other than to produce masterpieces of dramatic art and literature.") Experiments In The Revival of Organisms has been uploaded to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap1co5ZZHYE.

[5] Rigby, Jonathan. Euro Horror: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema (London: Signum Books, 2017), p. 79.

[6] Joseph Green also worked in motion picture distribution and later formed Joseph Green Pictures, which specialized in spicy imported pictures, some from Germany. It’s possible that he saw the Trivas picture when it was still seeking distribution in the States. When Ostalgica Film released The Head on DVD in Germany under its Belgian reissue title Des Satans nackte Sklavin (“The Devil’s Naked Slave”), the disc included The Brain That Wouldn’t Die as a bonus co-feature.

[7] A fine quality homemade experiment, it runs 91 minutes 47 seconds and can be found at: The Head (Die Nackte und der Satan) 1959 Sci-Fi / Horror HQ version!.

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dreamboundedstar · 5 years ago

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Debora’s Intro to “The Patakis” Universe

Debora is in the front is situating herself with her locker on her first day of high school as a sophomore. She's groaning at Wolfgang and Edmund being their usual selves and bothering poor Eugene. Before this instance, Debora was only vaguely aware of how these boys were after years of viewing the outside world behind curtained windows. She knew enough that these boys were bad news. So she's now cursing the educational authority that placed her near the most obnoxious, despicable boys of PS118. To add insult to injury, she is forced to here Edmund's insultingly dopey laugh anytime Wolfgang breathes. Debora really wishes she can be home-schooled again, and she hasn't even had her first class yet.

So, a week or two has passed (I don’t really have the timespan set in stone) since Debora has first come to the PS118 high school for the sophomore class. Debora’s grows more tired of the school due to her fellow classmates giving little to no care for her presence, except maybe very few offering to Debora come seat with them at their lunch table. Debora always politely declined however by making excuses that she likes to draw during lunch period and her elbows would just get in the way of everybody else’s space. She never let anybody see her sketchbook when they asked because she was very self-conscious of her work and feared people would think her art is bad, boring, or weird and by extension, her. This, in turn, gave her fellow sophomores the impression that she is just some emo, loner snob that thinks that she’s too good for anybody. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Even with her little excuses, one of the true reasons she declines the offer is her fear of the masses of teens into small tables. Well, maybe the tables were perfectly averaged size for a school, but to a person like Debora that doesn’t like random strangers accidentally rubbing on their shoulders with hers, they were small. Debora wasn’t germaphobic, what she did have was a weird feeling, creepy-crawly feeling anytime anybody that she wasn’t close to gave her any minor, safe, physical contact. Even with distant family members, she would always be extremely awkward giving physical affection. It always felt awkward to her and she didn’t like it. For Debora, it was just one of the “joys” of having ASD. Secondly, the background noises in the lunchroom freaked her out. Everything was so loud and so many voices to focus on that Debora can’t focus on her own thoughts. That's she prefers to be in a table with farthest from people as possible. She can't stand loud, crowded areas, so the idea being closer to the loud clutter of voices is torture to her and she would just want to shrink down into nonexistence. Lastly, her biggest worry is that nobody would even pay much mind to her anyway and the only reason they invited is to just cure some guilty conscience. Debora is not good at her words and is always somehow blocked by somebody else stealing her time to speak. Even in her own family, someone is always cutting her off when she tries to talk because she’s either too slow or not loud enough. So what is the point of even talking if nobody is even going to acknowledge your desire to finally speak?

Debora had to face facts that these people were in groups of their own and no one was going to leave their own group just to seat with one, quiet girl. It will always be to join their group, but they never consider that maybe they should just seat with her instead. No, that would be too much to ask for. Those teens have their place in this school; she was but a bee in a nest of wasps. What made this experience more unbearable was her locker being close to the juniors’ lockers and not just any juniors, the most obnoxious two of the bunch, Wolfgang and Edmund. It drove her crazy to hear these jerks harass freshmen and sophomores. They acted like poorly developed antagonists from a bombed, high school comedy. Unfortunately, Debora wasn’t the one exception to their jerky ways. While Wolfgang never tripped her with his leg… yet, he has however made her drop a tower of school books onto the floor. She thought that it was only to be annoying at first until she overheard one of the juniors; she couldn't tell it was either Wolfgang’s, Edmund’s, or some other male junior voice chortled and rudely commented of how her back end was flat as a pancake. She was embarrassed and confused because she wore a blouse that specifically covered that part, so how could they possibly tell. Beyond book dropping and rude comments, the one time that Wolfgang caused her to physically hurt was when he “accidentally” pushed Debora out of his way and onto her locker. The good news, her reflexes saved her from it being a worse impact. The bad news is that her upper arm fell onto her locker combination and she was very sensitive there due to low muscle tone from being a social shut-in for most of her life. She still has a tiny bruise from that moment. She tries to brush off that one moment because her younger sister always berated for being a baby when it came to receiving pain. She didn’t need that kind of mocking here too. She begins to wonder what even the point of coming here in the first place was. She remembers why she came here after seeing somebody carry a football. She needed closure with Arnold; it had been so long since she had seen the closest person that accepted her for who she is. She wanted to see him again one more time before her overprotective mother transfers her to a private school away from all the bad influences and secular lesson plans. The only reason she was even at this school in the first place because she begged her mother to go there at least until spring break to see Arnold for a while, then she can put her in the private, church school her mom did with her younger sister after the sibling complained about being homeschooled. Both her mother and Debora would much rather have had her homeschooled, but colleges around the area looked down on homeschooling. Debora had no choice but to go to a “real” school for her last three years. Arnold wasn’t even here, so she came to this school for nothing. All she can do now is wait until spring break for this Tartarus of school to be over. At least on the plus side, she can leave this school without care because she never formed a close friendship with anybody at the school. Nobody will miss her and she will miss nobody. She can leave knowing that she never made a difference in anybody's life at this school; to her, it is comforting as much as it is heartbreaking.

At her locker, Debora finally takes her head out of the clouds and notices something different about one of the banes of her existence. It appears Edmund has got himself a new haircut. It seems Edmund is also trying to not so subtly get Wolfgang to acknowledge this change. Even though Debora doesn’t like Edmund, she can admit to herself that the hairdo looks good on him. It definitely is an improvement compared to his bowl-cut hair. In her opinion, his original hairstyle made him look like a blonde chili pepper thanks to his centered cowlicks. Wolfgang finally acknowledges Edmund’s hair change, but of course, he had to be a jerk about it and ask Edmund if he wanted him to compliment about his makeup and the shoes he’s wearing now. Debora’s rolls her eyes at this. She’ll never understand why Edmund seeks this guy’s approval. Edmund doesn’t back down and makes his own snarky remark. This only makes Wolfgang angry and threatens to smack Edmund upside the head. Debora was used to hearing Wolfgang treating Edmund more like a dog than an actual friend. It made her sick. It made her think of terrible childhood memories she wishes she could forget. However, even after Wolfgang’s terrible display of friendship, nothing could prepare for what is about to happen to Edmund. Debora notices a female brunette with a blue bow on top of her head. Debora didn’t know the girl's name, but she knew that the girl usually walks with three other girls to class. One is a Hispanic with a pink bow in her hair, another is a blonde with a barrette in her hair, and the last one is an African American that likes to chew gum. For whatever reason, the brunette was walking alone and Edmund took that opportunity to try to talk to her. Debora doesn’t watch as the conversation happens, but she does hear Edmund for the first time sounding a little shy and vulnerable. Debora checks it off as him just being insecure around pretty girls because he’s usually cheerful and carefree around everybody else for the most part. Debora has seen a lot of shows and reads a lot of stories, so she was very much aware of what Edmund was trying to talk to the brunette about. Apparently, so did the brunette because before he could even ask “the question” she stopped Edmund him mid-sentence. The brunette’s tone sounded angry, but Debora looked in her locker pretending not to notice because it was none of her business. The brunette wants to make to it perfectly clear to Edmund that she is sick of those idiotic juniors making a pass at her, but he takes the cake. It seems that Edmund already attempted to talk to this brunette before got his new haircut. Now that she thinks about it, Debora does remember that Edmund did ask Wolfgang why he thought girls didn’t like him. Wolfgang being Wolfgang, he gave him the suggestion of changing his because he had his mom cut it for far too long instead of pointing out the real issues. For example, his assumption that he’s entitled to have a pretty girl like him just because he’s nice to her. At least, Debora assumes that’s what Edmund thinks likes that because she feels Wolfgang would think like that and Edmund has a tendency to mimic Wolfgang. So for a few seconds, she was on the brunette’s side because all women should be treated right without expecting compensation, not just the pretty ones you want to date. Unfortunately, the brunette girl decides to take all her frustrations out on Edmund and takes it too far. The now apparent, mean girl tells Edmund that no haircut in the world would get her to notice him. He could be lying face-first on the sidewalk and she still wouldn’t notice him. She ends her hate speech to Edmund telling him no matter what change you try to make about yourself you will still be the same dumb, annoying, ugly dog he has always been. The mean brunette leaves but not before the telling Edmund to get lost and calling him and elephant boy. Debora assumes that the girl called him that last name because of his ears, but she knew some of the contexts of who the real elephant man was, so to her that was needlessly cruel for the brunette to add on to her already cruel speech. Even Debora overhears Wolfgang tries to muster some sympathy after that mess Edmund went through. It clearly wasn’t helpful, but Wolfgang still tries to convince Edmund that watching him harass some sophomores would make him feel better. Debora felt really bad after overhearing all of that, so she decided to go to the bathroom to wash the awkward off of her.

The moment she turns her head however, her eyes meet an expression she was all too familiar with and yet it seems so foreign on Edmund. Debora moves her hand quickly to her mouth to cancel out the audio of her gasp as she views the sad look of rejection on Edmund’s face. She immediately looks back at her locker so Edmund wouldn’t notice that she was looking at him. No, this couldn’t be happening! Oh no, she couldn’t believe that she was feeling sympathy for Edmund! This is the same guy that she had to suffer through with that stupid laugh. He enjoyed causing problems just as much as Wolfgang; she has no reason in this forsaken school to feel bad for him! Even so, here she is comparing Edmund’s expression to a wounded puppy. Curse his stupid underbite for making a surprisingly convincing, puppy dog pout! So against her better judgment and all the cons outweighing the pros, she decides to follow her heart and try to cheer Edmund back up. Not in person, however, heavens no! She uses a page from her sketchbook and writes Edmund a letter, complimenting of his change in hairstyle. More than that, the letter is also to let Edmund know that appearance was never the problem. The problem was that he spends so much time in the shadow of somebody else that he lost his sense of individuality and self-worth. Before he could start a serious relationship with somebody he must first learn to love himself. Of course, Debora was aware that was easier said than done. So to start him off she listed some important, good qualities about him. Unfortunately, she didn’t know Edmund personally, so she had to guess his good qualities by finding the positive side of the things she couldn’t stand about Edmund. For example, even if she hated hearing his dopey laugh all the time, she could find that at least it shows that he has a cheerful personality. Secondly, even though she hated seeing him stick around a guy so abusive, at least it shows he is loyal to his friends. Lastly, even though she thought it was idiotic of Edmund to retort with snarky remarks when he should know by now it will only make Wolfgang want to hurt him, she finds that at least it shows that Edmund at least is willing to call people out on their bull, even if it gets him hurt. She ends the letter by saying to never forget he does have value and he shouldn’t listen to people that won’t even take the time to see beyond his outer appearance or persona.

She almost signs the letter with an anagram name she did for fun for the word, anonymous. The name is Sonya Muno, however, she realizes how terrible of an idea that is too late for she already signed it on the paper. To make matters worse, the school bell rings to tell all the students to get in their respective classrooms. In a rush, Debora scribbles on the anagram name as fast as possible, writes down the word, anonymous, shoves the letter into the little lines on top of the locker doors in order to get paper inside Edmund’s locker, and gets to class. Later on in the day, before Debora goes to her next class, she notices Edmund opening his locker and soon finds the letter she wrote. She goes to a corner of a room to hide from his view as he reads the note. Despite still not thinking Edmund is a good person and some small part of her still feeling he may not even deserve her letter of encouragement; She couldn’t help but feel warm, fuzzy, and accomplished when she saw that her stupid, little letter put a smile on that dopey face. It feels so satisfying to hear that she finally did something significant in somebody else’s life. Her being alive finally meant something to someone outside her immediate family, even if the person didn’t know it was her. She was okay with him never knowing, for she would be going to a religious, private school anyway after spring break and she didn’t want to form any close friendships at the school anyway. She was just happy she made someone else happy.

Unfortunately, that happiness died the next day after Debora overhears Edmund talk to Wolfgang with something about a “Sonya”. After she heard that name, she felt like her spirit escaped from her body. She must have not covered that stupid anagram well enough. Now he thinks some girl named Sonya that doesn’t even exist wrote him that note! So with that new knowledge being granted to her, she proceeds to bang her head on her locker door feeling like the biggest moron in the world. She should have never made that letter. She is in so much trouble!

This is just something I did before I went back to my fall semester. I wanted to expand upon my Hey Arnold fan character before time was up. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything for the main show at the moment. I hope to do so someday. I’ve been more focused on her teen version lately because she has more of a role in this spin-off series while she’s a one-off character in the main series. Anyway, I hope you like what I have to offer.

Credit:

Simone, Edmund, Eugene, and Wolfgang - Craig Bartlett

Debora and the art - Mine!

#hey arnold #hey arnold!#heyarnold #Debora #Edmund #Wolfgang #Simone #qilincrusader's art #my art #The Patakis

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nothingtoulouse-blog · 5 years ago

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Double Opera Night focuses on acrobatics and magic

I would be very interested in a review without giving away too much. I am very happy about the comeback and lt thearnold fans should add some action elements. To generate a new security code, please click on the image. 22 players have left VfB Stuttgart since summer 2019. We look at what the top 11 names can do with their new clubs. Where countless eighties remakes are being made, the originals come here again to show us where to go.

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The guest stars Willis and Schwarzenegger also come in at 55 and 63. All of them old-actioners not far from retirement age. iphone 11 bazooka phone case This is a key moment in Stallones latest shooting film "The Expendables", which comes to the cinema today. After spending the new year together in the gaming metropolis of Las Vegas, the two were first sighted several times in trendy restaurants in and around Los Angeles before a joint appointment in Graz, Austria, or a tweet with birthday greetings from Milligan added water to the mills of the already eager at that time Rumor mill was. Under the musical direction of Lukas Beikircher, Maria Kataeva makes her debut as "Das Kind" in "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges" and embarks on the amazing world of enchanted things with other ensemble members. You can also experience the choir of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and the Kinderchor am Rhein, performed by the Duisburg Philharmonic. The public can say goodbye to Lauda from eight to twelve o'clock. The Formula 1 legend is laid out in a closed coffin in the church. The old warhorses are still trying to do something in the action area, although I would only trust Jet Li and Mickey Rourke at Expendables, because they still looked fit and fresh. The Stuttgart institution had recently drawn attention to itself due to poor hygiene. The furniture and furnishings have now been auctioned off. The fact that Patrick Schwarzenegger has recently moved around the houses with Miley Cyrus is angry with his prominent parents. Ironically, the friends of Enfant terrible Miley also have concerns about the singer's new friend. To read all articles on our news portal, simply order one of our offers. French fashion designer Emanuel Ungaro passed away on December 21, 2019 at the age of 86. The actor Wolfgang Winkler died on December 7, 2019 at the age of 76. On his lovingly painted cartoons, the child Arnold, who grows up in poor conditions, has to make do with a wooden pacifier. With the dumbbells, the youth will soon be on you and you. In a pedestrian zone he asks for alms as a needy "strength student" - but when he shows off his body on the shores of California, his dream career begins. He died at the age of 82 on February 7, 2019. In order to optimize our website for you and to continuously improve it, we use cookies. By continuing to use the website, you consent to the use of cookies. Three years ago, Kilian Wenger was the 20-year-old wrestling king, he was not a top favorite, was able to compete from the second row unencumbered and realized the big coup. That reminded you of Ruedi Hunsperger. In 1966 they came straight from the recruit school and became king, although others were more of a favorite. Like Wenger, you had to go through it for a while after the great triumph. They come to the age where most soldiers etc. no longer go into combat missions.

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Apart from his cat Choupette, his great love was obviously only one person, namely Jacques de Bascher. Heidi Mohr was one of the most legendary national soccer players in Germany and was considered a real striker.

#enfant schwarzenegger

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shortmania · 5 years ago

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Hi Shortmania! I send this ask for character design reasons. Do you have any headcanon heights for any of the HA! characters at their "The Patakis" age? I don't need all of them. Just Arnold and Helga will do nicely as a starting point. You can google mrinitialman if you want to look for something to have a better visual representation of what you have in mind Thank you for taking the time to read this regardless.

Well, first of all, thank you for the neat new resource, whoa. That is super helpful and I will definitely be using that in the future.

As for my headcanons, I’m a little nervous to say because I know they’re unpopular, lol. So little disclaimer there, but.

At age 15 (and likely the rest of their lives since growth spurts after 14 (female) and 16 (male) are rare):

FOR COMPARISON:US MALE AVERAGE: 5'9"US FEMALE AVERAGE: 5'4"

Arnold: 5'7"Helga: 5'6"Gerald: 5'10"Phoebe: 5'4"Harold: 5'5"Patty: 5'11"Stinky: 6'3"Sid: 5'6"Rhonda: 5'4"Curly: 5'12"Eugene: 5'3"

And those are the ones I’ve thought about and stand behind. I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory, they’re just based off their parents, but I’ll explain the ones I know most other fans are likely to be confused by. You can skip anything you’re uninterested in, Anon. ❤️I just like to be thorough.

It is controversial to propose Arnold and Helga end up about the same height–most everybody prefer one of them to be significantly taller than the other–but it’s… just not my preference, for a few reasons. The Shortmans are a tall folk, Craig has confirmed that, but I like to think the males on Stella’s side of the family run a little smaller just because the idea of Arnold tall seems strange. He’s been consistently small throughout his childhood, and even at age eleven didn’t really grow more than maybe an inch or two since the fourth grade. Specifically, I think Arnold’s namesake, Stella’s dad, was the same. That is to say, I think he was a shorter than average dude, and I like to think Arnold strongly resembles him. That’s a baseless personal headcanon, and I acknowledge that. Arnold could be a late bloomer. I just like him a little smol.

On Helga’s end of things, my reasoning is just that… Well, there isn’t really any wrong way to calculate Helga’s height because we know basically nothing about her roots apart from Bob and Miriam. And Miriam appears to be average-ish, maybe above, Bob actually isn’t too too much taller (maybe 3-4 inches, and 2-4 inches shorter than Phil who I imagine is about 5'12"-6'0"), and Olga’s either average or below since she’s noticeably shorter than Miriam, so it’s just easiest for me to headcanon Helga as a couple inches over 5'4". It’s safe, it’s comfortable, it’s funny because it subverts expectations a bit. But I will say this: Miriam’s family is from South Dakota, Bob’s probably is as well, and South Dakota boasts some of the tallest folks in the US. Bob is also some form of Scandinavian – Hungarian, German, Ukrainian, Polish, who knows – and men in those countries tend to float around the benchmark of 5'10", and women an inch or two below the US average. So, Helga could easily be tall. Helga could also be pretty short. I do enjoy it when people portray her as this hulking powerhouse of a woman who could lift Arnold with just one arm, it’s a high quality option I would like to see more of, but my thing is that I’m always trying to a) be realistic, and b) leave room for funny scenarios. And Arnold being literally just one inch taller than Helga and Helga being endlessly salty about it is hilarious to me.

Apart from all that, I hate to mention this, but: Helga isn’t consistently fed, and when she is fed, it’s usually with crap, so. When kids aren’t fed well or often, they don’t tend to grow quite as much as they might have otherwise. So, that is something to take into account. Moving on now.

About Gerald: thing is, there’s that stereotype of black men being absolute mountains because of basketball and I think that’s probably why most people see Gerald being like six feet, but… Gerald’s dad is a frugal numbers-obsessed business man. He’s nerdy. He’s kinda short. It makes a little bit of sense to me that Gerald might be tall-ish because for a nine-year-old boy, he is fairly big? But eh. I just try to split the difference, to honor both his genes and his onscreen rate of development, and I arrive at a little above average because the thought of Gerald being the sole Tol of his immediate family (taller than Jamie-O, especially) is funny to me, and I will always pick the option that is funny to me.

Aaaand both of Harold’s parents are tiny. I don’t really know why people always draw/write him tall--I guess it’s more attractive? he always refers to himself as big? he’s a part of the hulking bully/gentle giant archetype?--but people forget he’s 13 in-show and actually pretty small for his age. At least compared to, like, fifth and sixth graders. Wolfgang is at least twice his height, and I’m pretty sure Harold is older than him. This show is ridiculously confusing and inconsistent about age and child development, but, well. These are the only points of reference we have, so. Yep.

I love Patty… That’s it. That’s my reasoning. Let her tower over us all as she rightfully deserves.

I hope this was helpful! You don’t have to agree with me, of course, but I hope I at least gave a fair baseline for you to form your own conclusions. Thanks for caring about my dumb opinion, lol, and best wishes on all your projects.

#suprspeak #asks #jazzing #height #hey arnold #the patakis #i need to catch up on asks #i'm sorry if this took too long #i'm still working through things #may edit #take a shot every time suprsingr says ''tall'' or ''short''

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melfidraws · 6 years ago

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Talk Shit Get Hit.

Aight so my guy Arnold and my gal Helga is already in relationship here but they both keep in secret. I never thought or imagine that Wolfgang liking Helga, cuz he literally hit her in the New Bully On The Block, but i ran of ocs ideas so i pick him lmao.

#hey arnold #arnold shortman #wolfgang #shortaki #melarts #melcomics #uwu protective bf

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hillwoodcity · 7 years ago

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I read a fic of Helga and Wolfgang, so I would like to know what you think about that ship. How do you imagine? Or do you dislike it?

I’ve never thought about it before so I don’t have an immediate opinion of them.

I guess they’re both the big bullies of their grade, so that’s why people made a connection between them? I don’t remember Helga interacting with him in the show outside of wanting to crush him and the rest of the 5th graders in sports, however.

I think that you could make an argument that they both have the whole “rough exterior, secret soft gooey center” thing. But Patty Smith also has that to an extent, and Helga and Patty had more significant scenes together.

Then there’s just the fact that I can’t really see Helga loving anyone else but Arnold. Not for a long time, at least. Helga would have to be in a totally different emotional and mental state than she’s currently in to fall for someone else.

And part of that is because the reason Helga cares so much about Arnold is that she admires his kindness, integrity, and selflessness. “Arnold! So moral, so compassionate, so giving! If only I were good and kind like that… but I’m not, so that’s that.”

I don’t think that Helga could ever go for anyone that was less morally pure than Arnold. His desire to do the right thing inspires Helga to be better herself (shown most prominently in Arnold’s Christmas and The Jungle Movie), and she cherishes that. So I don’t think that Helga would want to be with someone who didn’t make her a better person. Because as hesitant as she may be to believe that she has a heart of gold, I think that she truly wants to have one.

#Anonymous #anon #asks

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magicofsimplestories · 3 years ago

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Supernatural 2.0: #20 Learning by doing

[Back to Foreword and #1 Meet Kira or #19 A new Job]

The archive of Evergreen Harbor was located at the renovated community center on the boardwalk. Dean and Kira (thanks to their fake fed badges, of course) spent the whole morning digging up information on the quarry.

There wasn’t much though. The quarry was built in the beginning of the previous century. The founder of the quarry (aka the father of Evergreen Harbor, as the media tagged him) Arnold Grims apparently was a responsible employer, a great entrepreneur, a workaholic, a wonderful family man and a loving husband - crystals clean, as Dean has put it.

Grims died inside the quarry building. The cause of his unexpected death, as the coroner claimed, was a heart attack. He was 65, so a heart attack sounded more than realistic. His family cremated the body and buried his ashes in the family mausoleum at the local cemetery.

“It seems like Grims’ death wasn’t violent”, concluded Kira closing the documents.

“Moreover, he’s cremated”, nodded Dean. “Can’t be him”

“It shouldn’t”, corrected him Kira. “However, it still might be him. Firstly, we can’t be sure Grims’ soul has actually made it to the other world. Secondly, there might be something left of him that wasn’t cremated. Thirdly, we have someone third with special powers over dead souls”

Dean exhaled. Kira could clearly see his struggle to make a decision that he apparently didn’t like. He exhaled again before speaking.

“I know that you’ve already figured out that I don’t like it”, said Dean watching Kira’s mouth corners jump up in a short smile. “But I have to admit that we will need to pay the quarry a visit tonight. It seems like learning by doing is our only option”

“I’m fine with that”, Kira shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, I’m not”, grumbled Dean. “Can you shoot?” He asked leaning closer to Kira and lowering his voice.

She shook her head negatively. He exhaled again.

“I’ll teach you”, he said getting up from his chair. “Come, I saw a waste-land next to our apartment building. We will practise there”

Dean’s car was parked next to the local night club. They were about to get into the car when they heard laughter and a girl’s voice exclaimed:

“Wolfgang, you idiot! Give it back to me”

Kira turned to the voice and saw two teens. The blondie boy in a large black hoodie was sitting on the fence. The girl with short hair dyed mint and a skull necklace on her chest was waiving playfully around the boy trying to get something back from him.

Wolfgang. Is it the Wolfgang, Brewer’s step-son?

“Hey, guys”, waived Kira to the teens. Dean exhaled but closed the door of his car and followed Kira.

The teens gave Kira and Dean wary looks and didn’t respond.

“May we ask you a couple of questions about the quarry?” Went on Kira taking out her fake badge. “Agents Santiago and Peralta”

“You’re too pretty to be a fed”, smirked the boy giving Kira another wary look.

Dean frowned. Kira preferred to ignore the comment and continued.

“You’re Wolfgang, right?” She asked the boy. “Mr Brewer’s step-son”

Wolfgang nodded positively.

“Fantastic”, smiled Kira. “Your step-father told us you and your friends used to hang out at the old quarry. Is that so?”

Wolfgang showed his white teeth in a witty smirk.

“Maybe”, he said.

“Have you ever witnessed anything strange there?” Asked Kira.

“Define strange”

“Weird noises, screams, unusual puddles, moving objects”

Wolfgang laughed.

“Are we in the X-files or what?”

“Just answer the question”, grumbled Dean.

Wolfgang gave Dean an evaluative look and turned back to Kira.

“No, never”, he said. “It was always calm and safe there at night”

“And in the daytime?” Asked Kira.

The teen exhaled and smiled. His mint-haired girlfriend strained, Kira’s question has certainly made her nervous. Wolfgang stayed calm. By his witty blue eyes Kira could say he knew something.

“I wasn’t a frequent visitor of the site in the daytime”, he said smiling meaningfully.

Kira’s eyes narrowed in a witty smirk too.

“Then maybe you can tell us who was”

Wolfgang hesitated studying Kira’s expression.

“Only if I get something in return from such a pretty lady”, he responded finally.

It was the final drop for Dean apparently.

“Oh, man!” He exclaimed. “You’d better go study math!”

Dean’s angry act of jealousy made Kira laugh.

“Before you follow my partner’s advice”, she said chuckling, “I would appreciate if you tell me what you know”

With these words Kira took out a 100 from her pocket and handed it out to Wolfgang. The teen hid the money in his hoodie and leaned closer to Kira.

“Bess Sterling used to visit the site at the sunset. No clue why, never asked. Just saw her many times exit the building”

Kira thanked the teens, Dean gave Wolfgang one last strict look and they drove back to their place.

The rest of the afternoon they spent at the waste-land with Dean teaching Kira to shoot. She appeared to be a talented student.

They arrived at the quarry at around midnight and chose the ground floor for meeting whatever-it-was. Kira made a safe-circle of salt (as both knew salt was the only effective protection against ghosts and spirits). Dean checked the guns (loaded with salt, of course) one last time.

“Fine. I’m ready for the rendezvous”, he said gripping his shotgun. He gave Kira a short serious look. “Are you all right?”

“Sure”, she nodded. She was all right. She was damn ready. After all, hasn’t she ever met a ghost before?

They waited for half an hour - nothing happened. Dean even started to doubt that whatever-it-was might not show itself at all.

“It will”, responded Kira. “Patience. I feel it. It’s here”

Dean’s eyebrows went up.

“Can you feel the supernatural?”

“Not all the supernatural”, she explained. “Only the presence of souls of the dead”

Dean nodded and wanted to add something else but at this particular moment a screechy sound came down from the upper floor.

They both froze and listened. Another screech came from the side of the entry door.

“It’s coming”, whispered Kira gripping her gun.

“Stay close”, said Dean with his voice sounded metal cold.

And then they saw it - a floating group of big and small blue bubbles. They felt a blast of wind when it started approaching.

“You son of a…”, spat Dean. Kira looked at him and her eyes widened. His shotgun was gone - just gone, disappeared into the thin air.

The wind was blowing stronger now as the spirit continued its approaching.

“Stay close”, repeated Dean taking out his other gun and stepping closer to Kira. “How did it steal my shotgun? We’re inside the circle”

“No idea”, responded Kira aiming at the spirit together with Dean.

“Shoot if it comes close to the salt line”, ordered Dean.

“But…”

“Just shoot”, he insisted firmly. “Or it might be…”

Too late he wanted to say. It was too late already.

Another blow of wind damaged the salt line and at that very moment Kira felt her right hand burning. She looked at it - the gun was gone. The spirit was floating directly at her with the screechy sound getting louder with every next second.

“I know a blocking spell”, screamed Kira though the terrible screechy sound. “I can…”

The next moment she wasn’t feeling Dean’s back on hers anymore. She turned around: it got him, its power grabbed him by his neck and raised over the floor.

“You… son… of.. a.. bitch”, husked Dean grabbing his throat. “Kira… the spell”

She reacted immediately stretching her arms towards the spirit in a spell gesture.

“Spirutus Immobi…”

A piercing pain chained her whole body, everything went dark in her eyes. She realised she was falling when her knee hit the concrete floor.

“Kira”, husked Dean.

She tried to stand up on her feet but the spirit attacked her with another blow of pain. She felt the deadly cold grow in the middle of her chest. She was paralysed, blind, she could barely breathe.

Get up. You must. Otherwise…

And then it was all gone. No darkness, no paralysis, no pain. A thud on her right and a flow of husky swearings meant that Dean was free from spirit’s powers too.

Kira exhaled, lifted her head up and in the dusk she saw a tall figure of a man in a trench coat and a hat with his hand put out. Right in front of him instead of the blue spirit there was only a small puddle of turquoise ooze. She blinked and the figure was gone.

“What the hack?” She asked out loud.

“Hell yes, what the hack”, grumbled Dean coughing. “Where did it go? Why did it leave us alive?”

Kira turned to Dean and came down to floor next to him.

“I think I saw the ghost of Grims”, she said thoughtfully. “And I think he has just saved us”

[Read next: #21 A natural Motive for a supernatural Crime]

#sims 4 #sims 4 supernatural #sims 4 stories #sims 4 evergreen harbor #sims 4 screenshots #sims 4 pictures #sims 4 story #simblr #ts4 simblr

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