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colin-therightstuff · 5 years ago

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‘The Right Stuff’: Nat Geo’s Mercury 7 Drama Series Moves To Disney+ For Fall Premiere

EXCLUSIVE: National Geographic Channel’s upcoming series The Right Stuff will become a Disney+ original. The period drama, starring Patrick J. Adams and Jake McDorman, will premiere in the fall under the Nat Geo brand on the SVOD platform. Adapted from Tom Wolfe’bestselling nonfiction account of the early days of the U.S. space program, The Right Stuff is produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Warner Horizon Scripted Television.

The first Nat Geo Disney+ show, docu series The World According to Jeff Goldblum, also had been greenlighted for the linear cable network before migrating to Disney+ to become one of the platform’s original offerings at launch. The Right Stuff marks Nat Geo’s first scripted original series for Disney+. It will provide the platform with a high-end original drama series in the fall when streamers will feel the effects of the current coronavirus-related production shutdown with a dwindling volume of new originals.

The eight-episode The Right Stuff examines what would become America’s first “reality show,” as ambitious astronauts and their families become instant celebrities in a competition that could kill them or make them immortal. The two men at the center of the story are Major John Glenn (Adams), a revered test pilot and committed family man with unwavering principles,, and Lieutenant Commander Alan Shepard (McDorman), one of the best test pilots in Navy history.

At the height of the Cold War in 1959, the Soviet Union dominates the space race. To combat a national sentiment of fear and decline, the U.S. government conceives of NASA’s Project Mercury, igniting a space race with the Soviets and making instant celebrities of a handful of the military’s most accomplished test pilots. These individuals, who come to be known as the Mercury Seven, are forged into heroes long before they have achieved a single heroic act. The nation’s best engineers estimate they need several decades to make it into outer space. They are given two years. (Watch below a behind-the-scenes video featuring footage from the series.)

The rest of the Mercury Seven includes Lieutenant Gordon Cooper (Colin O’Donoghue), the youngest of the seven who was selected to everyone’s surprise; Wally Schirra (Aaron Staton), a competitive pilot with a gift for pulling pranks; Scott Carpenter (James Lafferty), a soulful man who was dubbed “The Poet” by the other astronauts; Deke Slayton (Micah Stock), a taciturn but incredibly intelligent pilot and engineer; and Gus Grissom, (Michael Trotter), a no-nonsense test pilot who eventually becomes the second man in space.

“This true story of scientific innovation and human perseverance could not be more timely,” said Courteney Monroe, president, National Geographic Global Television Networks. “National Geographic’s The Right Stuff is an aspirational story about exploration, ambition, determination and resilience and reminds us that human beings can achieve the extraordinary when united by a common purpose. This series provides a compelling behind-the-scenes look at the flawed, but heroic Mercury 7 astronauts and we are thrilled that it has found its perfect home on Disney+.”

The rest of The Right Stuff‘s ensemble cast includes Nora Zehetner as Annie Glenn, the wife of John Glenn and his childhood sweetheart who has a speech impairment that can sometimes make communication difficult; Eloise Mumford as Trudy Cooper, Gordon Cooper’s wife and an accomplished pilot herself, with her rocky marriage to Gordon providing conflict throughout the season; and Shannon Lucio as Louise Shepard, Alan Shepard’s devoted and long-suffering wife.

Patrick Fischler plays Bob Gilruth, a soft-spoken rocket scientist who is the partner of the more brash Chris Kraft, who is portrayed by Eric Ladin. They are critical members of NASA’s Space Task group. Danny Strong plays John “Shorty” Powers, NASA’s omnipresent PR man, constantly taking the astronauts on glad-handing trips; Josh Cooke plays Loudon Wainwright Jr., LIFE Magazine’s star reporter, who is tasked with writing the biographies of all seven astronauts and has the keenest look at what’s really transpiring.

“As our audiences around the world turn to Disney+ to find inspiration and optimism, we believe the true-life heroism of the Mercury 7 will showcase the tenacity of the human spirit and inspire a new generation to reach for the stars,” said Ricky Strauss, president, Content & Marketing, Disney+. “The wonderful team of storytellers at National Geographic, Warner Horizon Scripted Television and Appian Way have crafted a compelling and entertaining tale and we are honored to give it a global home as the first scripted Disney+ original series from National Geographic.”

DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson are executive producers, along with showrunner Mark Lafferty. Chris Long directed and executive produced the first episode. Will Staples and Howard Korder are also executive producers. Thelma Schoonmaker and Danny Strong are consulting producers. Michael Hampton shepherded this project on behalf of Appian Way and is co-producer.

“Tom Wolfe’s book brilliantly captured a critical moment in American history that really resonated with all of us at Appian Way and Nat Geo,” said Davidson. “Disney+ is the perfect partner to bring forth this story of what it takes to truly achieve something extraordinary, but also the personal costs of that ambition.”

Added Lafferty, “The Right Stuff evokes the wonder and awe of the moment we first escaped the bounds of our only home and ventured into the unknown. But the show is as much about who we are today as it is about our historic achievements. At a time when the world is confronted with significant challenges, this story reminds us that what seems impossible today can become the triumph of tomorrow.”

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#colin o'donoghue #the right stuff #the right stuff news

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slippinmickeys · 5 years ago

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I’m obsessed with your Drabbles and Ch 3 of the Tumblr prompts (where Mulder is married when Scully joins the X-Files) has me feeling some kind of way. I’d love to read the same thing from Scully’s perspective. Also, I’d love to know more about how they get from 9 to 10 (since clearly a lot happened 🤣). Thank you for being amazing!! 🥰

1. He wore a ring, but never mentioned a wife. Nor should he, she supposed; they’d only just been assigned to each other, they’d only just met.

She considered that perhaps he was a widower, but didn’t feel comfortable asking. She thought maybe he was just a closed off, private man, until she found herself on his hotel bed in her robe, and he was telling her all about his family, his missing sister.

Then they had been three cases in, and there was still that ring. She finally asked him his wife’s name.

“Lauren,” he said.

She’d heard enough men talk about their wife in that tone of voice to know the relationship was not one like her parents, was not one she’d want herself.

She felt something close to pity.

2. He saved her life in the Twin Cities.

Donnie Pfaster was something more than evil, and when he told her he’d prepared himself for what he was going to see, she’d wished he’d prepared her, too. She was so thrown by the case that in addition to seeking out Karen Kosseff and availing herself of the therapist services supplied by the Bureau, she had plowed right past the fact that her partner had taken on the case for the sole purpose of taking her to the Redskins/Vikings football game.

A date.

3. She’d been with married men. She’d seen what havoc could be wreaked from the pursuit of such a relationship, and she had decided long ago that she would never do it again.

Mulder had become her best friend. Lately, her only friend. Their reassignment had been difficult, but she talked to him more days a week than she didn’t. She tried not to notice that she was number one on his emergency contact list, and Laura was number two.

She loved him as a friend, loved him as perhaps something more, but wasn’t convinced of his feelings for her until she was sitting atop Skyland Mountain with her hands tied in front of her, bound and gagged, and amongst a confusion of lights and sound, Mulder stumbled onto the scene, appearing as if from a TARDIS, and threw a haymaker so vicious it knocked Duane Barry out cold. He kicked him in the gut for good measure, and then tenderly removed her bindings, scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the mountain despite her shaky protestations that she could walk.

4. She had met Lauren only once, near the beginning of their partnership.

Lauren had dropped by their office to take Mulder to lunch on his birthday and had arrived 30 minutes early. As Mulder had told Scully he’d planned to meet his wife in the lobby, she concluded that Lauren had shown up early on purpose, most likely with the sole intention of meeting Scully in the flesh.

She’d given Scully an assessing once-over and then smiled at her with barely concealed conceit and distaste. She then turned on her clippy Manolo’s, and purred Mulder’s first name.

He had the look of a man headed to the gallows.

5. Scully had tried dating. For a while she accepted every offer, let her mother set her up on blind dates, went through the produce section of her local market with a wandering eye.

In the end, she had a few second dates, two one night stands, and a heart that was closed to all but one.

Each night she would soak in the bath until she pruned, cry until the water turned cold and lament her role as Eponine. In the morning, she would meet her partner at the airport, hand him a coffee and a cheerful smile and board the damn plane.

6. “You’re in love with your partner.” Missy said it as a statement rather than a question.

They were trying an organic tapas restaurant her sister had found and Scully’s appetite disappeared before Melissa had finished the sentence.

“Missy!” she said with horror and embarrassment, which Melissa brushed aside with a flick of her wrist.

When Scully was 12 and 13, she kept a diary. No matter how well she hid it, Missy would always find it, pick the lock, and read it back to her whenever she walked in her room.

Now that they were older, it didn’t matter if Scully’s secrets were at the center of a maze; Missy was forever Theseus, gaining its center and slaying the minotaur. Scully could keep nothing from her--she didn’t even know why she tried.

“I can hardly blame you,” Missy plowed on, popping an olive into her mouth, “he’s a dish.”

Scully slumped in her seat.

“So’s his wife,” she said.

Missy narrowed her eyes at her sister.

“Is she mean?” Missy asked.

Scully wouldn’t answer.

“I knew it,” Missy said, then, “how mean? Like on a scale of Heathers?”

Scully touched a napkin delicately to her lip. “Shannon Doherty” she said, with all the dignity she could muster.

Missy leaned back in her chair. “You and I are going shopping,” she said.

7. On an airplane over the arid West, Mulder told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was in love with her.

When their plane landed, she called Skinner and requested a week of PTO and an immediate transfer. She would not be a homewrecker again. She would not.

After three days next to a pool in Key Largo, Skinner called with an offer: Salt Lake City, take it or leave it.

Three days later, drained of tears and out of sunscreen, she called him back: leave it.

She returned to work on Monday. She pretended she never heard.

8. Two months later, Mulder stood in the doorway of their office and told her he was on his way to divorce court.

Scully sat at her desk, dazed, thrilled, scared out of her mind. A laugh bubbled up from inside her and burst into the dusty air at the bottom of the Hoover building.

9. Six weeks after the paperwork went through, Mulder showed up at her door at 9:00pm on a Friday and kissed her soundly on the mouth.

Five minutes later they were completely undressed, each het up to the point of frenzy. When she sunk down on him, took him all the way inside of her, she felt something pass between them, something heady and true. From that moment on she would always be a little less of a skeptic.

Later, when he was tracing lazy patterns over her skin with his fingers, their heads just touching on the pillow, he asked thoughtfully, “Is this what forever feels like?”

She took a moment to just look at him. Then, “Yes,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“I never knew,” he said, his voice full of wonder.

10. Two years later, in a bed in Bellefleur, Oregon, in the place where it all started, he looked up from in between her legs and licked his lips thoughtfully.

“You taste different,” he said.

She did some quick math in her head, then reached down and ran her fingers lightly through his hair.

“I think we should go back to DC,” she said with a tremulous smile

#the x-files #fanfic #prompts #my fic #msr

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ayoda · 4 years ago

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Ten years later

I don’t remember exactly what I was doing, but I received an alert on my desktop that a major earthquake had hit Japan. I immediately logged into the website of NHK (the CNN / PBS of Japan). I watched a live feed from a helicopter just as the tsunami had crashed onshore.

(This is a picture of the wall that was supposed to protect the village below. I took this pic as well as the others posted in this entry.)

It was unreal to see a massive wave destroy everything in its path. The wave kept traveling further and further inland. The reporter remained professional but his shock was obvious.

I’ve told some of this story before, please forgive me for being redundant.

We started hearing numbers. 12,000 dead (later revised to 17,000+). 2,500 missing. 6,000+ injured. 150,000+ residents displaced. Tommy Dyo, then director of Cru’s Epic Movement ministry, asked me to help train student teams being sent to Japan. Glad to be of service.

Then in April, Tommy was heading to Japan for a first-hand look. He said “dude, you’re coming with me.” Say what? How? “Send out a support letter.” Could I raise the support in a month? I received over $4,000 more than I needed (applied to future visits). Then my wife ruptures her Achilles (this time, the other leg). I thought that ended my plans. But she said “I’m not going to deprive you of this opportunity.”

I admittedly went to Japan skeptical as to what I’d see and questioning God as to why this had happened. I wasn’t prepared for what was ahead. The photo above is Rikuzentakata. A complete neighborhood, gone. When I shared later about my visit, I was asked if there were any photos I couldn’t take. There was one in particular, some kids’ toys that had been scattered. Even now, it’s admittedly difficult to think what may have happened to those children.

Some cleanup had already taken place, though there was still a lot to do. There were lots full of recovered vehicles lined up so survivors could either see if they could salvage something from the vehicle, or to identify victims who were swept up in the wave.

The government primarily provided cleanup for the damaged buildings (mostly condemned), we helped clean out houses and churches while also packaging meals and goods for those in evacuation centers.

While in Kamaishii, we saw buildings where an “X” was spray painted. An “X” indicated bodies had been found, an “X” with a circle meant the bodies had been recovered.

Most people have heard of the Fukushima nuclear reactor that’s still not shut down. We went to the Palette Center, a convention center where 10,000 people were housed, evacuated from neighborhoods surrounding the reactor. Most of the evacuees lived on different level of the arena, primarily within cardboard partitions.

This ship washed ashore at least 2 km inland. After debating whether or not to preserve the ship as a memorial, the decision was made to remove the ship to help rebuild the city. It had to be taken apart piece-by-piece, there was no crane or anything else that could move the ship. That provides some perspective on the power of the tsunami.

Worth noting: The shaking was incredibly severe, but Japan is very conscious about structural integrity in earthquakes. But there’s really no defense to a tsunami that reached as high as 40 meters (about 133 feet). That was the source of the major destruction and loss.

I’d already mentioned I was trying to understand the age-old philosophical question as to why would God allow this kind of suffering. I was blessed to have many help me find answers.

A group shot of the 2011 team, outside of the CRASH Japan (Christian Relief, Assistance, Support and Hope) headquarters:

Tommy, who I’ve already credited / blamed for getting me involved.

Shannon, a wonderfully talented friend who I’ll see on TV in the future (Tommy and I serve as her Stateside Uncles).

Pastor Jonathan, then President of CRASH Japan, our relief agency, now heading OpSAFE Int’l helping kids after disasters and trauma. I still work with him and his organization.

Urs, the son of missionaries, now happily married and living in Germany (?).

Some guy who once had more hair and darker hair.

Dr. Gary, formerly a Southern Baptist missionary based in Tokyo and our guide through the disaster areas, we damaged his van driving through areas where the roads were heavily damaged. Now back home in Chicago.

Pastor Levi and Diane Velasco, head of GLINTS (Global Intercultural Services), with whom we now serve as volunteers. They also head CRASH Midwest. They’ll be back in Japan sooner than later.

This photo features Jill, a nurse who joined us for much of our journey through the Sendai area, along with Tommy and Gary.

Ten years later, I’m still a small part of the volunteer effort. We’ve expanded to serving also in Kumamoto, which was hit with a major quake in 2016. I continue to work with OpSAFE Int’l and Pastor Jonathan, GLINTS with the Velascos, CRASH Japan under the direction of Nagai-Sensei, and we’ve been able to be part of the Kyushu Christ Disaster Relief Center based in Kumamoto. We try to go every summer, unfortunately the pandemic has interrupted our visits for the time being. I hope to post some more memories soon.

And what did I learn? Disasters don’t discriminate. We have to plan ahead. Maybe I can be helpful, even in a small way.

As for the “big question.” I still don’t have an answer for the question as to why this happened. Perhaps I was asking the wrong question. God will answer the question “why” in his time, but when asked He will answer “what’s next>”

I worked with so many incredible people over the past decade, from all over the world, all ages, all denominations, as well as all faith backgrounds. Their work taught me the importance of how to respond to the question “what’s next.” I’m hoping I’m doing my best to answer that question.

We found this mural (that’s my boys and super volunteer Emily) outside of a building in Kobuchihama. Translated: “Volunteers, thank you! Look at how strong Kobuchihama has become.”

どいたしまして。You’re welcome.

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dustedmagazine · 6 years ago

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Voting with our ears: Dusted spends the rent on Bandcamp.com’s Voter Registration day

On September 25, Bandcamp.com held a fundraiser for the Voting Rights Project, seeking to raise both money and awareness around voter registration. For the day, all profits on everything you bought on Bandcamp.com went to this worthy cause. Dusted writers saw the opportunity to a) buy stuff and b) promote democracy and said, “Hell yes, we’re in.” Participating writers included Ian Mathers (who is Canadian!!), Justin Cober-Lake, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Isaac Olson (who definitely wins) and Ethan Covey. Check out what we bought and then, for the love of god, vote. We’re depending on you.

Ian Mathers

IDLES

For various reasons I wasn’t able to shop quite as avidly as I did last time we got together for one of these, but I managed to make one impulse purchase of a record I hadn’t heard yet (but had transfixed me with its singles) and combine that with two long-awaited additions of old favorites to my Bandcamp collection (and my hard drive, after having lost track of the files in one move or another).

IDLES — Joy As an Act of Resistance

Joy as an Act of Resistance. by IDLES

As you might guess from the fact that it just came out at the end of this August, Bristol’s IDLES is the impulse buy of the three, one that so far has worked out just wonderfully. Having been recommended the mockingly anti-Brexit(/xenophobia) “Great” on YouTube and being drawn from the immediately bracing, invigorating likes of that to this album’s more openhearted ode to the greatness of not hating people you don’t already know, “Danny Nedelko,” and the more Protomartyr-ish opening track “Colossus” (the latter of which also probably has my favorite music video of 2018), I couldn’t imagine any band capable of those three songs would somehow whiff the rest of a reasonably-lengthed LP, and the often political, always heartfelt Joy As an Act of Resistance. proved me right. There are certainly places where it gets darker (particularly “June,” where singer Joe Talbot relates in heart-wrenching fashion his wife losing a child to a miscarriage), but the overall feel of the album can be summed up by Talbot barking repeatedly at the listener to “love yourself” over a careening, punkish anthem. The album title isn’t a piss take, which is a relief in itself.

The Silent League — But You've Always Been the Caretaker...

But You've Always Been The Caretaker... by The Silent League

Back in 2004 I first heard of the Silent League, as I think most people did, because frontman Justin Russo had been in Mercury Rev (for 2001’s All Is Dream, the last Rev record I can say I fully loved), and their debut, The Orchestra, Sadly, Has Refused was interesting, lysergic chamber pop with some proggy and/or post-rock elements. I lost track of them for a bit after that album and was surprised that when I heard about them again it was because of an entirely different musician I was a fan of. Shannon Fields, then of Stars Like Fleas and since of Family Dynamics and Leverage Models (the last of which made my favorite record of 2013 and which is, incidentally, about to return), maker of a ton of records I both love and think have been overlooked, let me know that he’d also been a contributor to the Silent League for quite a while and that with their then-current album, 2010’s But You’ve Always Been the Caretaker… he thought they’d made something that represented a bit of a leap forward for the band. Not only do I agree, but the Silent League’s swan song (to date) now represents one of the most frustratingly overlooked records I know of, 15 sprawling songs in any number of registers, styles and tones tightly packed into less than 49 minutes that, fitting the circular and slightly foreboding title, packs a bunch of richly interwoven thematic and sonic depth into what feels like a whole universe of popular music. There’s proggy/ELO overture “When Stars Attack!!!,” the sound of a glam rock band practicing a particular soulful jam down the hall and four walls away on “Sleeper,” at least one just perfect string-led “perfect pop” song in “Resignation Studies,” and literally a dozen other things here. And yet But You’ve Always… never feels scattered or showoff-y. It’s a whole world, dense and rich and worthy of being studied in detail for its brilliance. I was thrilled to see it on Bandcamp, not least because this is exactly the kind of record that could easily slip through the cracks.

Tamas Wells — A Plea en Vendredi

(PB024) Tamas Wells: A Plea En Vendredi by Popboomerang

It’s been over a decade, but when I was in university I am pretty sure I first heard Australian singer-songwriter Tamas Wells because I saw the song “I’m Sorry That the Kitchen Is on Fire” somewhere and thought the title was hilarious. To my surprise the song itself was gorgeous, a gently folky little waltz with Wells’ high, gentle voice, carefully picked acoustic guitar, a lightly hypnotic piano refrain, and sparing hand claps. I fell hard enough for it that even back when the internet wasn’t at all what it is now I tracked down Wells’ 2006 album A Plea en Vendredi and found a shimmering little suite of song, some as gnomic and vaguely unsettling in their implications as “I’m Sorry That the Kitchen is on Fire” (like “Valder Fields,” which is apparently a place where our narrator and others mysteriously regain consciousness, or whatever you can make of “Lichen & Bees”), some much more plainspoken (including the slight political bent running through “The Opportunity Fair,” “The Telemarketer Resignation,” and the gorgeous little instrumental “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Ruling Class”), all just as twee-ly beautiful and enrapturing as my initial exposure had been. At the time Wells was working in Burma on a community development project, and from what I’ve been able to find his moving around and focus on non-music work has occasionally kept his album on the back burner, although he’s found an audience at home and in Japan and China (and of course, sometimes as far as Canada where I ran into his work). He’s kept releasing records since, most recently 2017’s The Plantation on a small Japanese label, but even if A Plea en Vendredi was all I’d ever been able to find it’d still find a regular place in my rotation; even when things get a bit darker, on “Valour” and the closing “Open the Blinds” there’s something so soothing about Wells’ music and this particular set of gem-like miniatures has been a go-to album for me during difficult times ever since.

Justin Cober-Lake

David Ramirez

Ashley Walters — Sweet Anxiety (Populist)

Ashley Walters // Sweet Anxiety by Ashley Walters

I’d been wanting to hear this one for a while. I first noticed cellist Ashley Walters on Wadada Leo Smith's America's National Parks, a remarkable album that I spent considerable time with while writing a couple features on it and Smith (including interviewing Walters). I was even more impressed after understanding what went into the work and seeing that ensemble perform it live. Walters writes of this album, “I seek to challenge your perception of what the cello, a stereotypically gentle instrument, is capable of,” and it's fair to say she succeeds. It's a demanding listen, more aggressive than expected, but Walters and her composers blend technical challenges with theoretical ones. At times, Walters cuts loose, and at times she works with tonality, often using nonstandard tuning to odd effect. Smith composed one of the brightest numbers here, making a nice shift in sound without lowering the difficulty level. Luciano Berio's “Sequenza XIV” provides the most interesting piece, not only for the actual performance but for the reconstruction work on the score that Walters highlights in the liner notes. This one's well worth a focused listen, and I'll need to give it quite a few more to properly process it.

The Beths — Warm Blood (Carpark)

Warm Blood by The Beths

In August, the Beths released one of my favorite albums of the year, Future Me Hates Me, a blast of pop-rock easily good enough to warrant going back, more or less, to the beginning, with 2016's Warm Blood EP. Both lyrically and musically, the group hasn't quite found its footing, but that says more about the focused energy of the full-length than it does about these five songs (including “Whatever,” which reappears on the album). The hooks are there now; the guitar on “Idea/Intent” represents the band as well as anything. The vitriol of that track fits in less well with the attitude the band generally puts forward, one that's self-reflective and confident without claiming to know all the answers. Some of the joy of the music is in Elizabeth Stokes' searching, but that's turned around on a track like “Rush Hour 3,” a comedic bit of come-on (and the rare track not written by Stokes). Warm Blood works as a nice look back at a band, but it's not just a history lesson — it's an enjoyable set that adds to the playlist of a group with only one album out.

David Ramirez — The Rooster (Sweetworld)

The Rooster EP by David Ramirez

I've been working my way backwards with David Ramirez, too, starting with last year's We're Not Going Anywhere (which didn't adhere to his previous folk-ish sound but did make me wonder why I hadn't found my way to the songwriter earlier). After spending time with the fantastic Fables, there was the live show that utterly sold me on him, in part because he has a bigger voice than you might notice at first, even in his sparser productions. The Rooster EP, a fitting complement to that album, feels like an ascent. His vocals are assured, even as he searches for clarity, or at least anchor points amid turbulence. Tracks like “The Bad Days” and “Glory” offer unrequested hope, and “The Forgiven” provides a meditation on performance, art, and faith that's central to his work. The five cuts on this EP have the gravitas of something bigger and strengthen my sense that Ramirez should be a songwriter that everyone listens to.

Grand Banks – Live 8-25-2018

Grand Banks live 8-25-2018 by Grand Banks

Any sort of bonus shopping day provides a good excuse to support local music. This time I went with the latest release (such as it is) from Grand Banks, their live recording from August 25. The duo don't shy away from volume, but their focus on minimalist ideas and sonic experimentation makes for unusual experiences. Over this single 30-minute track, the pair builds with patience, even when developing a haunted-house sort of melody on the keys. The second half of the piece increases the challenge, with guitarist Davis Salisbury pulling an odd series of sounds out of his instrument (for the curious, you can try it at home with an electric guitar, a tuning fork, and a fuzz pedal, and probably some sort of sonic laboratory). The effects build on Tyler Magill's creepy keyboard work – maybe this one's an unintended seasonal release. The study in space and harmonics gives way to a chirpy conversation and surprisingly (in this context) guitar-like guitar moment before placidly drifting away, an apt conclusion for the performance.

Jennifer Kelly

The Scientists

I bought five different records this time, mostly, but not all, falling somewhere in the punk/garage continuum. I liked them all in different ways, but the one that absolutely killed me was…

IDLES—Joy as an Act of Resistance (Partisan)

Joy as an Act of Resistance. by IDLES

This is Ian’s fault, really. He talked me into it. Plus, it turned up on the Bandcamp recommendation engine. Which, by the way, is just so much better than Amazon’s recommendation engine. (I see you like the Pixies. Wanna buy every Pixies album ever?) But turns out, they’re both dead on. Idles is vitriolic and literate like the Sleaford Mods but backed by a ripped-to-the-teeth full band a la Protomartyr. Yes, two of my favorite current bands in one, plus a whole other thing of jagged, jitter-drunk percussion and wind tunnel howl. There is a song called “Never Fight a Man with a Perm.” So glad I got to hear this. Score one for voter registration.

The Sueves—R.I.P. Clearance Event (Hozac)

R.I.P. Clearance Event by The Sueves

Butt-simple garage rock from Chicago, punctuated by weird little intervals of found sounds. Beautifully unhinged and uncomplicated, it reminds me the most of Demon’s Claw and after that maybe the Hunches and then the Monks. I bought it partly because I wanted to get those “we have a new record” notices from Hozac, but they know what I like.

The Scientists—Blood Red River 1982-1984 (Numero)

Blood Red River 1982 - 1984 by Scientists

Guess who got to see the Scientists last week? They were awesome. They played “Frantic Romantic” in the encore (which is not on this disc, by the way). I knew some of the early stuff from the Do the Pop compilation of Australian punk, but immersing myself in these clanking, droning, post-punk juggernauts was the best and most enjoyable concert prep ever. “Solid Gold Hell” and “Swampland” were my two faves, and they played them both.

Mike Pace and the Child Actors—Smooth Sailing (Self Starter Foundation)

Smooth Sailing by Mike Pace and the Child Actors

This one, from the former Oxford Collapse frontman, was a little more Raspberry-ish power pop than I was expecting, but it’s growing on me. “Escape the Noize” is my go-to track, a lush jangle of melancholy, a tetchy bristle of palm-muting, then a sweeping swooning chorus. It’s about leaving the music behind, which Pace clearly hasn’t, and good thing.

Onoto—Dead Ghost (Taiyo)

DEAD GHOST by ONOTO

Let me the first to admit that I haven’t gotten to the bottom of this one, a swirling, enveloping miasma of guitar tone, wrapped around confoundingly weird vocal samples. “Shake Well for the Eye,” is droned-out chaos that parts like fog for bits of mid-20th century menstrual advice (avoid vigorous exercise, horse-riding, skating, cold showers, hah!). Other cuts eschew narrative for slow moving landscapes of instrumental tone. The title track lets guitar notes hang for unmovable eons, with only sharp shards of harmonics to break up the endless vistas. As a straight through listen, the disc makes more sense as you go along, meaning, you have to adapt to its oddity and it changes you.

Bill Meyer

Canary records

Kemany Minas and Garabet Merjanian — When I See You: From the November 1917 Recordings, NYC (Canary)

When I See You: From the November 1917 Recordings, NYC by Kemany Minas & Garabet Merjanian

Various Artists — And Two Partridges II: From the Earliest Turkish-, Arabic- Armenian-& Kurdish-Language Recordings in America, Feb-Aug, 1916 (Canary)

And Two Partridges II: From the Earliest Turkish-, Arabic- Armenian-& Kurdish-Language Recordings in America, Feb-Aug, 1916 by Canary Records

Various Artists — Oh My Soul: Armenian-American Independent Releases, vol. 1: ca. 1920-25 (Canary)

Oh My Soul: Armenian-American Independent Releases, vol. 1: ca. 1920-25 by Canary Records

Various Artists — Why I Came to America: More Folk Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, ca. 1917-47 (Canary)

Why I Came to America: More Folk Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, ca. 1917-47 by Canary Records

I buy stuff via Bandcamp fairly often, and my purchases are nearly always hard copies. Downloads may be convenient, but a record you can’t hold in your hands seems to me to be one of those bad 21st century ideas like a Trump presidency or an unrepentant frat-creep on the supreme court. But when Bandcamp puts its income behind a cause, I relent, and when I do, I buy downloads from Canary Records. These albums are all compiled from recordings made by Anatolian exiles who fled genocide, war and poverty to take their chances in the USA. Many of these recordings predate the first blues records, and collectively they make a case that our notions of what constitutes American music are needlessly exclusive. After all, why should the music of people who came here from the Ottoman Empire be any less American than people who came here from the British Empire?

Billy Gomberg — Live Sets 2016-18

live sets 2016-18 by Billy Gomberg

Well, there go the rules. This DL-only compilation of concert performances by one of my favorite ambient recording artists of recent years shows that the carefully wrought, ultra-deep atmosphere of his recent cassettes is no fluke.

Various Artists — Two Niles To Sing A Melody: The Violins & Synths Of Sudan (Ostinato)

Two Niles to Sing a Melody: The Violins & Synths of Sudan by Various Artists

Back on solid ground at last! This hardcover book + 2 CDs (there are also vinyl and DL versions) shows how sounds blur from one culture to the next when people live along the same rivers and coasts. These recordings from the Sudan blend the nimble rhythms and ardent longing of Arabic pop with just a hint of the sinuous melodic quality of Ethiopian popular music.

Tashi Wada with Yoshi Wada and Friends — FRKWYS Vol. 14—Nue (RVNG)

FRKWYS Vol. 14 - Nue by Tashi Wada with Yoshi Wada and Friends

If you’ve caught Tashi and Yoshi Wada in concert, you know that there’s no louder or more mind-melting drone that a drone that incorporates multiple bagpipes and alarm bells. This record puts Wada fils in the composer / arranger’s seat, and while it uses the same materials as those live performances, the music is much gentler. Sometimes you want to boil your blood, sometimes you just want to kick back and zone out. A portion of the proceeds from this record will go to the National Immigration Law Center.

Isaac Olson

Ustad Abdul Karim Khan

Toshiya Tsunoda/Taku Unami — Wovenland (Erstwhile)

Wovenland by Toshiya Tsunoda/Taku Unami

I bought this collection of chopped and screwed field recordings on the strength of Marc Medwin’s review and the fact that Erstwhile dedicated their profits for the day to the Voting Rights Project. Pieces like “Park cleaning / Crickets chirping,” “In The Park”, “From the rooftop, railway terminal station” are both ear-tickling and intellectually stimulating. The rest are more stimulating intellectually than auditorially.

The Weather Station—S/T (Paradise of Bachelors)

The Weather Station by The Weather Station

I slept on The Weather Station in 2017 because the music didn’t grab me enough I wasn’t interested enough in the music to tune into the lyrics. I’m not sure what compelled me to give it another try, but I’m glad I did. Songwriter Tamara Lindeman has crafted a compelling take on early adulthood in an anxious age, one that, once I started paying attention, resonated with me in a highly personal manner I haven’t felt or sought in years. The b-side is almost too subtle, but Lindeman is a sharp enough writer to bring it off.

Red River Dialect—Broken Stay Open Sky (Paradise of Bachelors)

Broken Stay Open Sky by Red River Dialect

This is another record where the words carry the music, which means, like The Weather Station, I initially passed it over only to connect with it in unexpectedly personal ways after honing in on the lyrics. While I loved the fiddling from the jump, it took time for the rest of Broken Stay Open Sky to grow on me, but grow it did. (Check out Eric McDowell’s review here).

Ustad Abdul Karim Khan—Ustad Abdul Karim Khan (Canary Records)

Ustad Abdul Karim Khan: 1934-1935 by Abdul Karim Khan

Classical Indian vocal music is a complex, highly systematized artform that I can’t pretend to understand, so rather than take my recommendation that you should listen to these recordings, take LaMonte Young’s: “When I first heard the recordings of Abdul Karim Khan I thought that perhaps it would be best if I gave up singing, got a cabin up in the mountains, stocked it with a record player and recordings of Abdul Karim Khan, and just listened for the rest of my life”.

VA—100 Moons: Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930-55 (Canary Records)

100 Moons: Hindustani Vocal Art, 1930-55 by Canary Records

A traditional performance of a raga can last hours. A 78 can hold about three minutes of music.

As such, the performances on this collection lack the the breadth and depth of a traditional raga performance, but they more than make up for it in intensity.

Ross Hammond and Jon Balfus— Masonic Lawn (Self Released)

Masonic Lawn by Ross Hammond and Jon Bafus

Sacramento guitarist and improviser Ross Hammond (whose record with Hindustani vocalist Jay Nair is also worth your time) teams up with percussionist Jon Balfus for a set of blues and folk inspired improvisations that manage to feel spacious despite the dense polyrhythmic approach. Masonic Lawn’s improvisations are optimistic, wide-eyed meditations on Americana.

Melvin Wine—Cold Frosty Morning (Roane Records)

Cold Frosty Morning by Melvin Wine

Old-time music, like most folk traditions that arose in relative isolation and pre-date the record industry, isn’t particularly well suited for album-length listening. That said, if you’re in the mood for scratchy, crooked, dance and trance tunes, West Virginia fiddler Melvin Wine is a great introduction to the distinctly non-bluegrassy mysteries of this music.

Note: This recording features a minstrel tune titled “Jump Jim Crow”. How we’re to deal with this in the modern, right-wing nightmare age we inhabit is a complicated question, so if you’re digging this music but that title bothers you (and it should), check out these articles by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Mechanic.

V/A—Usiende Ukalale: Omutibo From Rural Kenya (Olvido Records)

Usiende Ukalale: Omutibo From Rural Kenya by Various Artists

Like the Melvin Wine recording above, Usiende Ukalale exhibits a local folk style that evolved in relative isolation and is, for the non-local and non-expert, enchanting in small doses and merely pleasant over the course of a full album.

VA—I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits: Guitar and Folk Styles from Botswana (Piranha Records)

I'm Not Here To Hunt Rabbits by Various Artists

I reviewed this one back in May and I’ve listened to it so many times since that it was high time to buy it. Highest recommendation.

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One—Our Garden Needs Its Flowers (Awesome Tapes from Africa)

Our Garden Needs Its Flowers by Jess Sah Bi & Peter One

This unusual gem combines the loping rhythms, slide guitar and harmonica of American country music with traditional Ivory Coast village songs. Its breezy Bakersfield meets Yamoussoukro vibe belies its anti-apartheid lyrics. Mp3s of this one have been floating around the internet for a few years, so it’s great to see it get an official re-release.

Ola Belle Reed—FRC 203 - Ola Belle Reed: Recordings from the collection of Ray Alden and the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music

FRC 203 - Ola Belle Reed: Recordings from the collection of Ray Alden and the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music by Ola Belle Reed

From the indispensable Field Recorders Collective, this release documents a 1973 performance by Ola Belle Reed. Reed’s music exists at the nexus of old-time, bluegrass, early country, and gospel, but it feels wrong to box in the wisdom, humor, and generosity of spirit that shines through this release with anachronistic genre tags. Best of all is the Reed original, “Tear Down the Fences”: “Then we could tear down the fences that fence us all in/Fences created by such evil men/Oh we could tear down the fences that fence us all in /Then we could walk together again.” Amen.

Ragana— You Take Nothing

YOU TAKE NOTHING by RAGANA

I don’t listen to as much metal as I used to, but while this fundraiser was happening, Brett Kavanaugh — case study in patriarchal resentment and mediocrity — got one step closer to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. Ragana’s raw, sludgy, anarcha-feminist take on black metal really hit the spot that day.

Ethan Covey

Weak Signal

Omit — Enclosures 2011-2016 (Pica Disk/End of the Alphabet)

Enclosures 2011-2016 by Omit

Clinton Williams, the New Zealander known as Omit, has been quietly releasing nocturnal electronic compositions of uncompromising quality for the past couple of decades. Enclosures 2011-2016, released jointly by Lasse Marhaug’s Pica Disk and Noel Meek’s End of the Alphabet labels, provides an overview of five years of Williams’ output in a 30-track, six-hour package, available digitally and as a limited 5-CD set. Omit has previously been anthologized on two compilations courtesy of the Helen Scarsdale label, Tracer and Interceptor. And past releases have popped up via Corpus Hermeticum and PseudoArcana, as well as — most prominently — Williams’ own Deepskin Conceptual Mindmusic imprint. Great listening, all, if you can find ‘em. For those curious to dive in without too much digging, Enclosures is ideal. Much of Williams’ genius lies in composing tracks that are edgy, yet beautiful, creepy and experimental, yet profoundly listenable. It’s forward-thinking electronic composition that checks a lot of avant-garde boxes without feeling like a task. There’s a subtle, krautrock propulsion to the best tracks — the opening “Turner,” the “Echo Dot” pieces — where the listener gets locked into the rhythm and time slows to an elegant crawl — like a soundtrack for night driving on an Autobahn upended.

Weak Signal — LP1 (self-released)

LP1 by WEAK SIGNAL

Weak Signal are NYC’s Sasha Vine, Tran Huynh and Mike Bones. Bones has previously released a pair of strong albums of indie songwriting courtesy of The Social Registry. As a guitarist, he’s done time with Endless Boogie, Matt Sweeney’s Soldiers of Fortune and Prison. This album was a tip from Danny Arakaki of Garcia Peoples, and it’s a swell one, 30-minutes of slack fuzz pop bashed out with energy and swagger. The majority of the tracks strut by on solid riffs, backed by boy/girl vox that slide into chant-along choruses. Like new wave bled dry, leaving a beautiful bummer. The eight-minute “Miami/Miami Part 2” stretches out into a haze of increasingly rapturous guitar soloing, string screeches and a spoken word coda. Lotta promise here, for sure. Here’s hoping they stick around for an LP2.

Raising Holy Sparks — Search For The Vanished Heaven (Eiderdown Records)

Search For The Vanished Heaven by Raising Holy Sparks

Seattle’s Eiderdown Records has been releasing some of the best contemporary psychedelia around, and the latest by Raising Holy Sparks is no exception. The project is the work of uber-prolific Irishman David Colohan, and is offered in double and triple cassette, as well as digital, versions. The “short” cut of the album is an hour and a half long, and the triple cassette and download versions stretch that to well over two hours. Per the credits, the album was recorded in somewhere around 40 different locations over four years. Colohan is credited with over 30 instruments and is joined by baker’s dozen of likeminded collaborators. What they deliver is, like most of Colohan’s music, long, slow and often eerily beautiful. “I Am In The Mountains While You Are In My Dreams” passes in its 23-minutes through Popol Vuh-style ambience, spoken word incantations that sound like Coil if they’d truly embraced the countryside and a whole lot of birdsong. It’s a good overview of the general proceedings — accented occasionally by louder blasts of synths, random percussion that sounds like drum machine presets and banjo-plucking krautrock. On paper, that sounds like a head-scratching combo, but it works. One gets the impression Colohan’s dedication and attention to detail is such that the grab bag of sounds weaves together into a surprisingly fascinating whole. Listen with attention and you’ll want to follow along as each stretch and segue unfolds. Oh, and as is typical with Eiderdown, bonus points for exceptional artwork, this time courtesy of Aubrey Nehring.

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Canada reinstates border COVID-19 testing requirement for short trips as omicron spreads (Detroit Free Press) Canada announced it is reinstating its COVID-19 testing requirement for trips less than 72 hours starting Tuesday, just days before Christmas holiday travel. Previously, fully vaccinated Canadians were allowed to depart and re-enter the country within 72 hours without a pre-entry test. However, as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads, Canadian officials announced Friday that all travelers would need a negative PCR test to re-enter. The test must be taken in a country other than Canada, according to the government's website. Travelers are still required to fill out the ArriveCAN form, which requires them to confirm which port of entry they’re using, upload vaccination status and submit their COVID-19 test result. The form is available through a mobile app and online. Unvaccinated travelers returning to Canada also are still required to quarantine for 14 days.

Troops find religious exemption for vaccines unattainable (AP) More than 12,000 military service members refusing the COVID-19 vaccine are seeking religious exemptions, and so far they are having zero success. That total lack of approvals is creating new tensions within the military, even as the vast majority of the armed forces have gotten vaccinated. The services, urgently trying to keep the coronavirus pandemic in check by getting troops vaccinated, are now besieged with exemption requests they are unlikely to approve. Meanwhile, troops claiming religious reasons for avoiding the shots are perplexed because exemptions are theoretically available, yet seem impossible to obtain. Obtaining a religious exemption is rooted in a process that predates the pandemic. In addition to discussions with chaplains to determine whether they have a “sincerely held belief,” troops must meet with commanders and medical personnel. The final decision is made higher up the chain of command and is also based on whether the person’s vaccine exemption will pose a risk to mission accomplishment, unit cohesion, the health and safety of the force, and military readiness. Even in the past, few troops have cleared those hurdles to get religious exemptions.

From masks to book banning, conservatives take on educators (AP) A recent Wyoming school board meeting was again packed with opponents of mask mandates when things took an abrupt turn and a parent started reading aloud sexually explicit passages from a book available in school libraries. “Parents like myself had no idea this stuff was here,” the parent, Shannon Ashby, told trustees of Laramie County School District No. 1 in the capital city. The push to remove objectionable books from school libraries is part of a renewed conservative interest in public education as a political issue since the start of the pandemic. Parents who first packed school board meetings to express their opposition to mask mandates and other COVID-19 measures have since broadened their focus to other issues they say clash with conservative values, including teachings about social justice, gender, race and history. “If you put pictures to the material that was read, our superintendent would be in jail for trafficking in kiddie porn,” said Darin Smith, a local attorney and former Republican congressional candidate whose wife is on the school board.

Agency: Haiti Missionaries Made ‘Daring’ Escape to Evade Kidnappers (AP) Captive missionaries in Haiti found freedom last week by making a daring overnight escape, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow. The group of 12 navigated by stars to reach safety after a two-month kidnapping ordeal, officials with Christian Aid Ministries (CAM), the Ohio-based agency that the missionaries work for, said Monday at a press conference. The 12 who fled last week carried the infant and 3-year-old, wrapping the baby to protect her from the briars and brambles, said CAM spokesman Weston Showalter. “After a number of hours of walking, day began to dawn and they eventually found someone who helped to make a phone call for help,” he said, his voice beginning to choke. “They were finally free.” The 12 were flown to Florida on a US Coast Guard flight, and later reunited with five hostages who were released earlier. The hostages had chosen the night of December 15 to flee. “When they sensed the timing was right, they found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked, filed silently to the path they had chosen to follow, and quickly left the place they were held, despite the fact that numerous guards were close by,” Showalter said. After the news conference, a group of CAM employees stood and sang, “Nearer My God to Thee” in the robust, four-part a capella harmony that is a signature of conservative Anabaptist worship.

Leftist millennial vows to remake Chile after historic win (AP) Former leftist student leader Gabriel Boric will be under quick pressure from his youthful supporters to fulfill his promises to remake Chile after the millennial politician scored a historic victory in the country’s presidential runoff election. Boric spent months traversing up and down Chile vowing to bring a youth-led form of inclusive government to attack nagging poverty and inequality that he said are the unacceptable underbelly of a free market model imposed decades ago by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The bold promise paid off. With 56% of the votes, Boric on Sunday handily defeated his opponent, far right lawmaker José Antonio Kast, by more than 10 points and at age 35 was elected Chile’s youngest modern president. Boric’s ambitious goal is to introduce a European-style social democracy that would expand economic and political rights to attack nagging inequality without veering toward the authoritarianism embraced by so much of the left in Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela.

Hong Kong legislative polls close amid lower voter turnout (AP) About a third of voters in Hong Kong cast their ballots Sunday in the first election since Beijing amended the laws to reduce the number of directly elected lawmakers and vet candidates to ensure that only those loyal to China can run. The semi-autonomous territory was rocked by pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019 that were crushed by the security forces, followed by the imposition of a sweeping national security law that silenced most of the city’s opposition activists and led others to flee abroad. Low turnout was widely expected, with 1,309,601 registered voters, or 29.28%, casting their ballots by 9.30 p.m., an hour before polls were due to close.

Flying high in the Australian charts: An album of endangered bird songs (Washington Post) Music stars Adele, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift have been topping the Australian Recording Industry Association’s music charts. No surprise there. But now they’ve been joined by 53 of Australia’s most endangered bird species. “Songs of Disappearance”—“a chorus of iconic cockatoos, the buzzing of bowerbirds, a bizarre symphony of seabirds, and the haunting call of one of the last remaining night parrots,” per the album’s website—debuted in Australia on Dec. 3. The compilation of rare squeaks and squawks quickly rose in the charts, surpassing such global stars as the Weeknd and Justin Bieber, and Christmas favorites like Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey. It’s the first of its kind to make it into the Australian Recording Industry Association’s top five albums—and its 54 tracks even briefly edged out Swift to make the top three.

With hunger, poverty growing in Afghanistan, Biden pressured to ease sanctions (Washington Post) The Biden administration is facing mounting pressure from lawmakers, aid groups and former officials to restart the flow of billions of dollars in aid and cash to Afghanistan, where a humanitarian crisis is growing increasingly perilous. Last week, three former U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan and four former U.S. ambassadors to Kabul, along with other former senior officials, called on the administration to consider relaxing policies that froze the Afghan government’s foreign assets and cut off U.S. financial assistance that, along with other donor funding, once accounted for three-quarters of that nation’s revenue. “What is needed is the courage to act,” the authors said in a statement published by the Atlantic Council. They noted United Nations estimates that only 5 percent of Afghanistan’s about 40 million residents have sufficient food as well as that 97 percent of the population will fall below the poverty line in the next 18 months, saying the United States has “a reputational interest and a moral obligation” to help save them.

Super Typhoon Rai death toll in Philippines rises to 375, police say (Washington Post) The death toll from Super Typhoon Rai, which exited the Philippines on Saturday, has risen to at least 375, with another 500 injured and 56 missing, police said Monday. The typhoon, known here as Odette, made landfall Thursday on the southeastern island of Siargao, a tourist hot spot popular among surfers, then moved northwest, passing through major cities including Cebu and Cagayan de Oro. More than 700,000 people were affected by the typhoon in central island provinces, and many perished amid flash floods, landslides and falling trees.

Israel to ban travel to US, Canada over omicron variant (AP) Israeli ministers on Monday agreed to ban travel to the United States, Canada and eight other countries amid the rapid, global spread of the omicron variant. The rare move to red-list the U.S. comes amid rising coronavirus infections in Israel and marks a change to pandemic practices between the two nations with close diplomatic relations. The U.S. will join a growing list of European countries and other destinations to which Israelis are barred from traveling, and from which returning travelers must remain in quarantine.

TikTok algorithm onslaught (WSJ) A Wall Street Journal investigation set up a dozen automated accounts registered as 13-year-olds on TikTok, and found that after programming the bots to briefly pause on content related to weight loss, the app’s algorithm began to serve up an onslaught of fasting, crash dieting and eating disorder content. Out of 255,000 videos served up, the algorithm threw 32,700 weight loss videos at the bots from October to early December. A third of the weight loss videos—11,615 videos—offered up by TikTok to the bots were about eating disorders, and 40 percent of those—4,402 videos—made disordered eating appear normal. Of the 2,960 eating disorder videos served to the, again, accounts of 13-year-olds, 1,778 were subsequently removed.

#headlines #news

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westworld-daily · 7 years ago

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Welcome to 'Westworld': Inside the HBO Drama's Season 2 Hollywood Premiere

The cast and crew of Westworld brought themselves back online Monday at the world premiere of the HBO drama's second season, with the red carpet rolled out at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

"We're in a new loop," series co-creator Jonathan Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter, standing alongside his co-creator and wife Lisa Joy, both of whom were minutes away from delivering a speech in front of an auditorium filled with hundreds of their contemporaries and loved ones. "This loop looks a bit like the last loop. It's the same carpet ... the same shade of red."

The carpet was a soft red, a far cry from the blood-stained hues that coat season two of Westworld, launching April 22 on HBO. The premiere, titled "Journey Into Night," marks the first new episode of the genre-bending hit since it went off the air in December 2016 — almost a year and a half since Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) launched a revolution against her human oppressors.

"You're getting a much darker version of Dolores this year, that's for sure," Wood told THR about what's next for her human-slaying host. "Now she's well and familiar with all sides of herself: the Dolores that we love, the darker Wyatt version, and she's also building herself anew as we watch her throughout the season. We'll be seeing more and more of who she really is."

Fans are understandably eager to know not only Dolores' next move, but the greater narrative's next steps. Many of the actors count themselves among the fans awaiting the show's twists and turns, given how little the cast members know about the series as they're shooting it.

"I feel like there are three phases for someone who takes part in the show," said Ptolemy Slocum, who plays the selfish lab technician Sylvester. "You read it. Then you shoot it, and it's a totally different story. Then you watch it, and it's a totally different story. I'm about to embark on one of my favorite parts of being on the show: watching the show. It might sound like I'm bullshitting, but I'm not. It's fascinating. So much changes."

Indeed, much is changing as Westworld enters its second season, shattering the previous status quo in favor of a new narrative filled with expanding notions of consciousness, empowerment, oppression, war and what it means to be alive.

"For me, one of the fascinating things about season one is we were looking at hosts trying to understand the nature of their own reality as they come into power," co-creator Joy said. "By the finale of the season, Dolores has claimed some power for herself. Some agency. All of the hosts are moving toward agency. And the question now is: once you have power, what do you do with it?"

"Season one was very much about setting up the world and the characters in it, and the structures that we're working with," said Simon Quarterman, the actor who plays narcissistic narrative director Lee Sizemore. "This season, we're tearing down that structure. The container we created in season one is blown open. It's so much more expansive this season. It's an awful lot of fun."

Based on the 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name, Westworld takes place in a far future where human "guests" visit a park populated by robot "hosts." Unlike the film, the TV series finds its roots in the perspectives of the hosts, originally presented as malfunctioning antagonists in Crichton's movie. Over the course of the first season, various hosts embarked on journeys of self-discovery, all thanks to the designs of park founder Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), who realized far too late in his life that his creations could be both physically and morally superior to humanity.

In engineering his own death at the hands of Dolores, and in unshackling the programming that prevented the hosts from harming the guests, Ford created a new status quo in which the hosts could not only rule Westworld and the surrounding parks (and yes, plural: beyond Westworld and the already teased Shogun World, the existence of at least four other parks has been confirmed by viral marketing for the show), but the wider world itself.

"There are awakenings happening," said Clifton Collins Jr., who plays Lawrence, the host who often acts as the Man in Black's gunslinging wing man. "How do you think Lawrence would react if he started developing a little bit of a conscience?"

Those are the kinds of questions the cast members loved chewing on over the course of filming season two, and certainly the same questions fans devour with insatiable appetites. Among the many reasons why Westworld captured imaginations with its first season, the fervent desire to solve the show's riddle-filled narrative stands close to the top. Reddit detectives and other sleuths all over the Internet spent weeks embedded in the theory trenches, in an attempt to figure out the biggest mysteries ahead of the show's reveals. Among the solved cases: the Man in Black's true identity as William (Jimmi Simpson), Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) secretly being one of the hosts, and Bernard also being based on the likeness of park co-founder Arnold Weber.

In the spirit of the online theory culture that's developed around the show, Nolan and Joy recently had some fun at their fanbase's expense, promising Reddit users a full-blown spoiler video if they received enough support from the community. With more than enough of the support they requested, the duo behind Westworld instead trolled the fandom with one of the Internet's greatest memes: the Rickroll.

"I've been a fan of the Reddit community from the beginning," says Nolan. "That community in particular rallied around the first season in a way like none other: dissecting and breaking apart the story, spending almost as much time thinking about it as we did while writing it. For us, it was a special thank you to that community, in a language perfectly tailored to them."

For the crowd gathered at the Cinerama Dome, there's no longer any need to theorize about what's ahead in the season two premiere, as the episode (clocking in at 70 minutes) unfurled in front of a packed audience. Before the screening, HBO programming president Casey Bloys introduced Nolan and Joy for some remarks about not only the world in which Westworld takes place, but the real world that inspires the show.

"Our show is about human nature — the dark side of human nature," said Nolan. "Our task was made vastly more difficult every day by the people we work with on our show. We were trying to hold onto [the darkness], and every day we had to work with the most talented, positive and generous collaborators — from the incredible writing-producers to the directors whose ambition never let up."

Saying it would be impossible to talk about "the professional without the personal," Joy concluded the opening remarks with a moving expression of appreciation for the human nature of the people who have brought Westworld online.

"We're a group of advocates, and we're a group of feminists, not just in the large and incredible sweeping gestures — the heroism of testifying before congress, the heroism of advocating for communities, and the heroism of battling injustice — but also in the small private gestures," she said in her opening remarks. "The ways we listen to each other. We enrich each other off of each other's experiences and perspectives. The way we are continually thriving, in art and in life, to do better and be better. We see examples of it every day on set. Jonah and I ourselves are beneficiaries of this kindness. Nothing in the world makes us prouder. Thank you for being collaborators who help us explore the dark themes of humanity while actively embodying and reaching the light. There are more stories to tell, more strides to be made, and we cannot wait to make them."

Following the speeches, and the premiere itself (which will remain unspoiled here, except for this innocent tidbit: there was at least one major laughing fit during the episode, thanks to a scene between Thandie Newton's Maeve and Simon Quarterman's Sizemore), attendees were invited out to the after party, held at NeueHouse Hollywood.

Bartenders and wait staff were outfitted in dark uniforms branded with the word "Delos," the same company that runs the show's parks. A DJ controlled the upbeat music from a balcony station high above the main floor, surrounded by robotic vultures and multicolored horses. Drone hosts lorded over several different corners of the space, and iconography from the series (including Arnold's maze) were studded throughout the party as well. Food items on display included sliders and endives with beet hummus, and reserved seating for members of the HBO family featured edible centerpieces, including olives, prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks, and more.

A litany of celebrities were spotted at the party, including Christopher Nolan and Liam Hemsworth, both of whom were supporting their respective brothers Jonah Nolan and Luke Hemsworth (who plays QA expert Ashley Stubbs). Also in attendance: Lea Thompson (Back to the Future), Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), James Tupper (Big Little Lies), David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) and Silicon Valley stars Martin Starr and Thomas Middleditch.

But the most buzzed about star who came out in support of Westworld was none other than Katy Perry, who was photographed at the party and inside the theater alongside Shannon Woodward (who plays behaviorist Elsie Hughes, missing in action since the first season's sixth episode). As is the case with the award-winning music artist, fans will hear Westworld roar when it premieres its second season on April 22.

#westworld #articles #the hollywood reporter #season 2 #articles 2018 #s02

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phoenixmayorcandidates-blog · 6 years ago

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Mayor of Phoenix & Family

As he forges ahead in an effort to become the first Ahwatukee resident to be elected the mayor of Phoenix, Moses Sanchez has made City Hall’s unresponsiveness to families and neighborhoods a big part of his campaign.

That’s not hard to understand.

Family and neighborhoods have comprised a major part of life for the 41-year-old father of three.

His youngest daughter is his business partner. His oldest daughter lives next door. He brags how his son is probably one of the few people in the nation to have had his father not only present him with his high school diploma at graduation but sign it, too.

He credits his kids and physician wife with helping him readjust to civilian life after the E-6 noncommissioned officer took part in counterinsurgency operations in war-torn Afghanistan as part of his duties in the Navy Reserve.

He is a member of the Ahwatukee Kiwanis Club and was its president for four years running. He worked on the Kyrene K-8 Committee for a number of years. He was a member of the Tempe Union High School District Governing Board. He’s coached school soccer and volleyball teams.

In other words, family and service are all over Sanchez’s resume.

And those two interests explain why Sanchez is running for mayor: He says it’s time City Hall pays families and neighborhoods more than lip service.

“I think it’s time we have someone who represents Phoenix families,” he said in an interview with AFN. “City Hall has done a real great job fighting – for City Hall. There’s a real disconnect between City Hall and the rest of us.”

“Most of the Phoenix families I’ve talked to feel the same way. It’s about time we have an outsider with a different perspective,” he added. “It’s about time we have someone who fights for the community. We haven’t had a mayor who came from outside City Hall in 34 years.”

The way this year’s mayoral race is shaping up illustrates the point stressed by Sanchez, a Republican in the nonpartisan election. He likely will be running in a three-way primary runoff with two longtime City Council members in August, leading to a two-way race in November.

A grateful immigrant

When he was 5, he and his family moved to the U.S. from Panama.

Even before he began a 25-year stint with the Navy Reserve that won’t end for three more years, he was determined to serve his newly adopted country by enlisting in a Navy Sea Cadet program in high school.

“I’m an immigrant and we’ve always had certain values,” he explained, adding that “a commitment to service” was one of them.

When he moved to Ahwatukee 14 years ago and his kids started going to Kyrene schools, Sanchez figured it would be a good time to do what he could for the school system serving them. So, he joined the committee of parents and educators who met regularly to discuss various district issues.

He got so interested that he ran for the Kyrene governing board. And after losing the election, he decided he was through flirting with politics.

Then his youngest daughter, Shannon, changed his mind.

But before that, Uncle Sam intervened.

The Navy shipped him off to Bagram, home of the U.S. military’s largest base in Afghanistan.

There, he worked in a detention facility, where his job was to “extract and collect information through direct questioning” of enemy captives.

“Ask anyone in our family and they all will say the most difficult year of our life,” he said.

He relied on Facebook and other social media to stay in touch with his family while neighbors in Ahwatukee frequent checked in with his and wife, Dr. Maria Manriquez, who was working her way up from a registered nurse to become a gynecologist. She now is interim associate dean for clinical curriculum at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

Sanchez also couldn’t put aside his concern for the immediate community.

While in Afghanistan, females had just recently been allowed to go to school, but they didn’t have any classroom supplies.

He rallied his fellow servicemen and women, collected a few thousand dollars, then enlisted then-Ahwatukee Kiwanis President Mike Schmitt to buy pencils, paper and other supplies. At his own expense, Schmitt, who packed the supplies he bought with that money, shipped them off to Sanchez.

When he came back, Sanchez learned why the military had stressed to homebound service personnel the importance of family in readjusting to a life where rocket fire was a daily fact of life.

He was sitting on the lawn at Foothills Country Club with his wife and his children for the Red White and Boom celebration in 2012 when the first rocket exploded.

“I had a visceral response to it, very unexpected,” he said, recalling the “very difficult year for our family” that followed.

“It was tough, but it was rewarding as well,” Sanchez added. “It brought us together. Often deployments can tear up families, but this brought us tighter than we’d ever been.”

So tight that he let Shannon talk him into running for Tempe Union school board.

A big career change

“She told me, ‘If your dad is on the board, you get to give her the diploma.’”

So, he ran and won, achieving an even bigger big deal in 2015 when his son was graduating from Desert Vista High School, the same school where his daughters got their diplomas.

“I was board president and the board president signs the diplomas,” Sanchez said. “So, he is one of very few kids in America whose father signed their high school diploma.”

Sanchez, who holds an MBA and teaches business at South Mountain Community College, attributes his Tempe Union election victory and a big career change to Shannon’s knowledge of social media.

A banker at the time, he kept hearing from his small-business customers, who asked him if he knew how they could grow their social media footprint.

A graduate of ASU Barrett the Honors College, Shannon had become so adept at social media that she was his campaign manager in the Tempe Union race and used it to help him win.

When those business owners started asking him about social media, he suggested to Shannon, then 19, that they start a business and that he’d be her operations manager. They named the business Nonnahs – her name spelled backward.

“The growth in our family business has happened in the last three years. We went from managing six or seven accounts to well over 100,” he said. Now, “we manage hundreds – a lot of small business owners and we have some have some larger accounts and franchises in the Valley. We’ve gone from just the two of us to a company with 12 employees.”

Sanchez quit the Tempe Union board to run for a seat on the Maricopa County Community College Board in 2016.

And after losing that bid, he again decided politics was in the rearview mirror.

‘It’s been a ride’

Then, people last year started approaching him after Mayor Greg Stanton announced he would be resigning soon to run for Congress.

“People kept saying, ‘Would you consider it?’ I’m thinking I have a great company. I’m blessed. I have a great life. I considered it. What it would take? Once we started picking the brains of people who are smarter than I am when it comes to this, we saw a path to victory.”

After many talks with his family and other as well as “a lot of prayers,” he said, “I decided, ‘OK, this is what we want to do.’ It’s been a ride since.”

Sanchez said he’s learning a lot about the parts of Phoenix he didn’t know, logging an average of 18 meetings a week with groups and others across the city.

“I’ve handed over my duties as operations officer to my daughter, and she hired some more people. I’ve dedicated full-time work to this.”

“There’s lots of long nights, but it’s important for me to talk to as many people as possible. And whoever will let me in their homes, in their communities, we’re there.”

The reason is simple: “If you’re gonna fight for Phoenix families, you’ve got to talk to Phoenix families, not developers and City Hall.”

He has found “the one thing everybody had in common was the disconnect from City Hall. City Hall is focused on these national issues, these state issues, but they’re not addressing the issues that matter to Sunnyslope or to Maryvale or to the West Valley or even out here in Ahwatukee. That was a consistent theme.”

He sees mayors elsewhere – such as those in the East Valley – “more focused on their community than the mayors in Phoenix.”

“If you called the local council members and asked them what’s the No. 1 call you get, it’s never about developers. It’s about water leaks, roads, potholes, the lack of police officers on their streets – especially here in Ahwatukee. City Hall’s not talking about that ... These have been ongoing, long-term problems.”

And, he added, “That’s what the mayors should be leading in.”

Those beliefs were forged by his work in both school districts.

“We focused on what we’re doing for our schools, the individual sites, not getting involved in the national debates.”

He said a recent meeting with some small-business owners convinced him that his campaign is on the right path. They told him that it would be nice to have “maybe a roundtable discussion, even an informal one, with the mayor.”

“I sat there and said, ‘How did that not happen?”

Sanchez said he’s found enthusiasm for his candidacy.

“People didn’t know there was a third option, there’s a viable option, there’s a better option. We’ve been very much welcomed with open arms.”

He’s had to make some sacrifices – like not cooking much at home even though cooking and physical fitness are his two favorite pastimes.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said. “I think I’m blessed that I have a lot of energy and a family that’s extremely supportive. They understand the sacrifices they have to make for this campaign.”

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ashbournerp · 3 years ago

Photo

From the ashes, rises Louisa Macaulay (Rosamund Pike FC), The Diamond of The First Water, Duchess of Stone Garden. Penned by Shannon.

The myth and legend that is the Duchess of Stone Garden has proved the prophecy right! Louisa’s rise to power was one of sacrifice and loss, and the betrayal that has defined her as a leader is so interesting to us. Truly a worthy ruler who brought the lawless land together. We can’t wait to see how our Duchess turns the Kingdom of Ashbourne on its axis.

Out of Character (OOC)

Name/Alias: Shannon

Age: 21

Pronouns: She/They

Timezone: BST

Triggers: Removed

Please fill the appropriate section from one the two below

1.) For a Skeleton Position: In Character (IC)

Character Name: Louisa Macaulay

Age: 35

Selected Skeleton: Diamond Of The First Water

Dukedom: The Stone Garden

Faceclaim: Rosamund Pike

Pronouns: She/Her

Biography:

Amidst the enterprising tricksters who vie for the bounty of the Stone Garden's mines are the "oracles," the "third eyes," who claim to see clearly the mysterious and misted-over matters of this world, those beings who (in a time of vilified magic) dare to peek from behind their veils of shadow for profit.

For it has long been said that you reap what you sow in the soil, and the Kingdom — and its Dukedoms — is forged upon a woven basis of mythos and legend, is it not; so why ought telling the future be so unbelievable, in a land where dragons surely had once soared? And where else to place your gamble than the sect of those believed to be the lawless and the greedy; those who would believe they were destined for greatness if told so, take any validation of their dreams and run for miles?

One of these charlatans was one Nicholas Macaulay, who had seen with his own eyes how far men would stretch for riches; rip them free with blood oozing from the shredded skin of their hands if necessary, and he began — very successfully — whispering rumours into ears upon the winds, and lining his pockets.

Yet the primary flaw of men, tainted blood through us all like a primal instinct, is the unerring connection between money and power. And so came the prophecy, first passed to a group of gossiping wives and then thrumming through the kingdom surely as a river runs: one of a pair of twins ( where one must die for the other to thrive ) who would, at long last, bring unity to the unrest-ravaged Stone Garden.

However, the land preferred its own laissez-faire methods of ruling, and they sneered.

Decried these lies and "mystic whispers" while the third eyes contemplated if the fool had — in his very foolishness — set wheels turning, and unveiled truth.

So, when Nicholas Macaulay's wife, Matilda, gave birth to twins ( one boy, one girl ) nothing much was thought of it, or expected of them; they would get by, and little better, as merchants' children did. The daughter would get an education, as rich children did, and then be married, as daughters did.

Louisa, however, always had other plans.

She clutched the prophecy others bullied her for close to her chest, used it as fuel and motivation to excel in all that she could; the girl was quite driven by the idea of attaining any skill possible — and keeping close as 'friends' those she believed to be most useful — and no one knew why.

Did she not understand her inevitable fate, the way that the wiles of the world worked to keep its women in their place?

"But it's not real," she would say, while keeping a close relationship with her twin brother, Lucius, her closest confidante and best friend.

They always had been together. They always would be, wouldn't they?

Her father's "moronic prophecy" wasn't real, she wouldn't have to kill him, but she could take the story of greatness as a sign that she could be destined for better than the world desired.

( This, of course, was her hamartia. It was always about her, wasn't it, first and foremost. Just as it had always been said that you reap what you sow, it has often been said that you should never give power to those who most desire it. Unfortunately, it is often these people who are willing to go furthest to grasp it. )

Louisa, throughout her life, blossomed into a skilled woman, perhaps with a reputation for a blazing temper, not unlike lava.

( In fact, she has been nicknamed so. )

She and her brother came to believe that bringing the previously mentioned "moronic prophecy" to reality may be the best way to ensure the future prosperity of not only the Stone Garden, but of course, themselves, and in secrecy earnest plans with their closest collaborators — known as the Macaulay Circle — were made, to make even the most fear-inspiring men and women bend the knee to them, and bring it all together.

Lucius, however, became certain that the prophecy was as mystical as it seems. ( To this day Louisa is sure this is because of his mistress, desiring power for herself as his Duchess. )

So — at the last hurdle — he attempted to murder his sister, forcing her hand to stab him through the heart.

The sight of Louisa Macaulay ending the life of her dearest collaborator proved to be the catalyst for the rest falling in line behind her, and her cementing for herself the title of Duchess of the Stone Garden.

From one man's foolish whispers, and the butterfly effect, unity at last came to the lawless Dukedom. Yet, as it began, it has continued with stories, and how many of the whispers about her ascent, and her power, are true, and how many are muddying the water?

Personality:

+ Ambitious: The first trait you think of when imagining the Duchess of the Stone Garden; how can it not be, with the wildly-spun tale of her ascent to power, her aura of wanting more, the people's dreams — and her dreams — of self-sufficiency and freedom from the Kingdom's outstretched hand?

+ Confident: The last trait you would think of when imagining her is insecurity. She walks a certain way, with the aura of a woman who knows she is good enough, who knows she will achieve all that she sets out to do. She is known for a smirk playing across her lips, and a certain melodiousness to her voice at play . . .

- Manipulative: If the story of her ascent should bring you any concerns, it is her ability to move people like chess pieces, to convince you that her way is the only option and blind you to all others, whether that be by playing the political game or by threats you cannot doubt she will follow through on. How do you know what a woman who has it all in a world of men is planning? If you work it out, everyone is dying to know.

- Distrusting: It is difficult to get on the right side of the Duchess of Stone Garden; the betrayal of her brother has gotten to her much deeper than she will ever care to admit to, and even if she permits you into her circle you had best believe she will be looking over her shoulder. Some of the court might call it paranoia, and no one is sure if it is.

#accepted #fantasy rp #original rp #rosamund pike fc

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djshannonc321 · 4 years ago

Link

I was recently reviewing a website offering a DJ service with my team when it occurred to me that the 1-Stop-Wedding-Shop is becoming more and more popular in the Wedding Industry. As I was reviewing the site, it became rather obvious to me

that this particular shop was run by photographers who had added additional services to make things more convenient for their clients. In fact, this is definitely not a new idea; I had a business coach suggest that I add additional services to my offer list for the same reason just a couple years back. At that time, I made the decision to move forward offering only Event DJ services AND to make sure they were one of the best services you could avail in my area. That coach and I ended up going our separate ways, as she felt that I was leaving money on the table by not adding Photography, Catering, Lighting, Videography, Etc. to my roster of services. And I stand before you today with a different business coach and full confidence in my decision. Let me tell you why!

I personally look at a One-Stop-Anything-Shop as sort of the Walmart of its industry. Not that there’s anything wrong with Walmart. I shop there from time to time. I can get groceries, duct tape, a fishing rod, and new bicycle all in the same place. And when you’re in a pinch and you need groceries, duct tape, a fishing rod, and a new bicycle and don’t want to run to multiple stores, Walmart (or Target if you’re a little boujee) can be your very best friend. Let’s all just stop and appreciate it for what it is. Convenience.

But let me give you another scenario. Above — that’s my day to day life. That’s my grocery list and a few random things that I need for my week. It doesn’t really matter if the duct tape isn’t the best on the market because it was cheap and I can always get better duct tape if it’s really that important. At the point when I was getting these things, my primary concern was time and convenience.

Let’s now say that I’m looking to buy a new Sound System for my business. I know that Walmart sells speakers in their electronics department. I could slide through and peruse the weekly deals as part of my convenience trip the next time that I’m in need of groceries. But I won’t. Because when it comes to my sound system or anything that I’m using in my business, my primary concern changes from convenience to quality. I’m no longer interested in finding something that will just get the job done as long as it fits into my normal shopping routine. Instead, I’m worried about having the best quality sound system possible available for my clients. I want to make sure I get the highest quality speakers with the best warranty at the best price from a reputable seller. It’s no longer about convenience. It’s about top quality.

This brings me to you as you sit there considering the details of your wedding day. I know that it can be super overwhelming with so many different options and so many different vendors. But it’s also a special occasion. It’s likely something you hope to do just once and also to fondly remember for the rest of your life. It’s not just another dinner party. This is much more important. So with that said, I’m wondering why you’d even consider putting such an important event in the hands of anyone other than the best you can afford.

“But I’m a Busy Bride on a Budget! So, What’s Wrong With 1-Stop-Wedding-Shops?”

The honest answer is that there’s nothing wrong with them. Especially if convenience is primarily what you’re looking for. (Not necessarily budget because often times their one-size-fits-all packages are more expensive when compared to the itemized services of multiple specific vendors.) A company that will provide your DJ, Photographer, Videograher, Catering, and Draping will definitely be more convenient as far as booking your services. However, the risk for you comes around understanding that just because a company offers multiple services doesn’t mean that each of those services will be the quality that you’re looking for.

This brings me back to that website I mentioned earlier in the article. The company I was reviewing looked like they knew their stuff from the perspective of photography. But when I got to their DJ page — they had several Djs listed as tenured Djs who I’d never heard of, couldn’t find anything online about, and didn’t have any images of them even touching DJ equipment. This made me seriously contemplate whether their offering was really worth the convenience. Yes, I’d only have to make one phone call, sign one contract, and submit one payment. But, would the convenience really matter when I discovered that my Big Day was in the hands of an amateur who had little more knowledge than pressing pause and play? Anyone who’s ever been to a wedding with a bad DJ will quickly know the answer to that question.

I’m not saying that ALL one stop shops are bad. But what I am saying is that doing too many things makes it very difficult to become GREAT at any one of them. Ever hear the phrase, “ A Jack of all trades but a master of none.” ? This is the risk you run with 1-Stop-Shops. This is the reason that I decided to move against the direction of my former business coach. For me, my goal is to be one of the strongest event Djs in the area. I don’t have time to focus on strengthening my company’s DJ services if I’m also trying to manage and offer Catering, Photography, Draping, etc, all of which have nothing to do with the other. Hyper focus and repetition breed excellence. A little of everything can offer little more than convenience. Like the crab legs at a Chinese buffet, which are edible at best. They’re Not the best crab legs you’ve ever had, but convenient to be able to get with your dinner.

Remember that the key to executing a successful event of any kind, including a wedding, is to take the time to research and check out the vendors to find the best match for you. Check online, ask for samples, references, and reviews. Before you’re locked into contracts, you’ve got the power to make sure your vendors are quality. So keep in mind if you do decide to go with a one-stop-wedding-shop that you should still take the time to check out each branch of the company and the people who will actually be working your event. Research is one of the only defenses that you have in seeing the truth through a catchy website and good marketing. As for me, one of my team members put it best when he said, “If I wanted to buy my wife a fancy dress, I wouldn’t take her to a Walmart or a Ross store. I’d take her to the best possible dress maker or designer because she deserves the best.” And for your wedding, so do you.

Ps. Need help planning your next event or hiring the right DJ? Download my FREE DJ Hiring and Event Planning Workbook here!!

Learn more — https://www.djshannonc.com

#dj #female dj #lady dj #girl dj #Tampa Bay

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

Text

Opinion: This town powered America for decades. What do we owe them?

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/opinion-this-town-powered-america-for-decades-what-do-we-owe-them/

Opinion: This town powered America for decades. What do we owe them?

Moving away from coal is essential to fighting back against worsening droughts, storms and sea-level rise around the world. That fight will only get harder if America keeps burning coal.

I drove here in January after Steve Gray, a 56-year-old resident who’s been laid off from both the coal and oil industries in northeastern Wyoming, left Appradab a voicemail after the 2020 presidential election. I’ve been exploring your questions about the climate crisis as part of an ongoing series for Appradab Opinion, and Gray’s message seemed to bring up some of the toughest questions concerning what must be a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

“Everybody in this town is afraid that it is going to become a ghost town,” he said.

Implicitly, Gray seemed to be asking: What will happen to Gillette — and other fossil fuel towns — as the coal industry recedes and clean-energy goals are realized? And what difference could the Biden administration or Congress make for a dying town built on coal?

Climate advocates tend to lump solutions to all of these issues under an umbrella term: “just transition.” Not like, “just get on with this transition already.” “Just” as in fair.

Gray, the man who called Appradab, doesn’t see anything fair about it.

“People are getting left behind,” he told me.

He and others I met in Gillette want the rest of the country to realize that they’ve worked hard, for decades, to supply the United States with electricity. They didn’t own the companies that got rich off the boom in coal and other fossil fuels — companies that hid research showing the disastrous effects of climate change, or that funded disinformation campaigns.

They were just working.

Working in an industry created by federal policies that failed to price carbon pollution — that encouraged the mining of coal on land owned by the US government.

And now they’re being asked to stop.

Both by markets, which value cheaper energy sources.

And, importantly, by climate advocates like myself, who understand, based on science that’s been amassing for decades, that global warming poses an existential threat to humanity.

What do we owe Gillette and its workers?

Boomtown

There’s an important irony hidden in the story of Gillette.

The US government willed much of this place into existence.

This nudge came in a few forms. One was federal support for domestic energy production in the early 1970s — a time when overseas markets were seen as volatile and problematic.

Another was environmental regulation.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 and its 1990 amendments targeted, among other pollutants, sulfur dioxide, which is a component of smog and acid rain. Powder River Basin coal just so happens to be naturally lower in sulfur than coal found in Appalachia and elsewhere.

Before 1970, there were a few coal mines and oil rigs in the Gillette area, Robert Henning, director of a local history museum, the Campbell County Rockpile Museum, told me. We were standing in front of a wall-sized image of 1920s Gillette, which had the look of a sepia-tone Western outpost — a dusty landscape with wooden fences and magnificent rolling hills on the horizon. Gillette was founded in the late 1800s as a railroad town — named for a surveyor. But after 1970 and the Clean Air Act, Henning told me, the then-localized mining industry exploded.

In 1960, the population of Campbell County, which includes Gillette, was about 5,800.

By 1970, it had more than doubled — to nearly 13,000.

During the boom, the town was so crowded and chaotic that some families lived in tents, said Jim Ford, a Gillette resident who advises local government agencies and non-profits on economic and energy issues. Ford told me that when he was a child, his elementary school adopted a two-shift schedule to accommodate all the students. One group started at 6:00 AM and went until noon. Then the other started, ending at 6:00 p.m.

Steve Gray told me that his family was one of the ones that came to the region to work in the fossil fuel industry in the early 1970s. His dad worked in the oil fields, and so did Gray, at least for a time.

That was when life was good. Work was free-flowing. Wages were high.

The coal in the Powder River Basin sits near the surface and is mined with giant trucks carrying shovels so big you can fit a large family inside. The scale of the operation is difficult to comprehend. “Our largest mine is roughly 90 square miles,” said Shannon Anderson, staff attorney at the Powder River Basin Resource Council, an environmental group.

These mines grew and grew.

But any boomtown worker knows that kind of growth can’t last forever.

‘The economy just collapsed’

The year 2016 — that was the worst of it, according to the mayor.

That was when the “economy just collapsed.”

“The energy industries always have been boom-and-bust, but this was a big one,” said Gillette Mayor Louise Carter-King, who keeps an image of her father, who also was mayor of Gillette, hanging behind her desk. Her roots in the community are deep, and her husband works in coal. From her office window, you can see one of two coal-fired power-plants puffing smoke into the sky. “It was like a perfect storm because oil went down, coal went down, natural gas — everything.” The bust was caused primarily by lower natural gas and renewable energy prices, less demand from coal-fired power plants, which continue to close, and concerns about climate-change regulations, according to economists.

Most of the coal mined near Gillette sits on public land, meaning that the state government collects royalty payments and other taxes on its production. Wyoming doesn’t have a state income tax and its property and sales taxes are notoriously low. Many years, well over half of the state’s tax revenue comes from the coal, oil and gas industries.

After the bust, Carter-King said she knew Gillette would have rethink everything.

Gray told me that his call to Appradab was influenced by how things fell apart with the oil and coal industries shortly before and after 2016, the year US voters elected President Donald Trump — who’d promised to bring back “beautiful, clean coal.” Nearly 90% of Campbell County residents voted for Trump again in 2020. But you won’t find too many people in Gillette who believe Trump kept his promises to coal workers — or that it was even possible to keep them.

Wyoming coal production peaked in 2008 at 468 million short tons, according to the US Energy Information Administration. By 2016, it was 297 million tons, creeping down to 277 million in 2019, nearing the end of Trump’s term. Last year’s figures are not yet available, but the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on demand for energy is known to have contributed to widespread collapse in the energy industry.

Gray says he was laid off from an oil field job in 2015, then subsequently from another job in oil and then one in coal last year. His wife left him shortly after the first layoff, he said.

These days, Gray is working again, driving railroad workers to and from job sites — part of a broader industry that supports the mines and fossil fuels. (Mayor Carter-King estimates most people’s jobs in Gillette are linked to coal and other fossil fuel industries — whether directly or indirectly). But Gray said that he’s eaten through his savings.

My “bank accounts were drained — lost my house, all the repossessions,” he said.

“It was tough.”

He’s living on the razor-thin margins of a bust economy.

‘The coal industry’s on its last leg’

Here’s an inconvenient truth: Towns like Gillette tend to fail.

I asked economists, environmentalists and policy experts. None could provide a sunny case study — the story of a town whose main industry didn’t take the initiative to remake itself.

“There’s not a sterling example,” said Jake Higdon, a senior US climate policy analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund who has contributed to several reports on fossil fuel communities.

Timber towns, auto towns, military town, mining towns — the logical progression is toward “ghost town” status if the town isn’t big enough, or industries aren’t diverse enough.

In even trying to rebuild, then, Gillette aims to do something unprecedented.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. “Maybe our chances of remaking our community in a generation — so my kids have something to come back to — are 10%,” said Ford, the county consultant. “But I know if we don’t try, the chances are zero.”

On a recent snowy morning, I dropped by Lula Belle’s Café — “non-smoking as of 4/1/2020” — near the railyard in Gillette. It’s a welcoming, chatty kind of place — fruit pies on display behind the diner counter. I wanted to learn whether people here were in denial about coal’s demise.

“Will the mines bounce back? No,” said Doug Wood, a retired coal miner with a mustache that’s twirls at the tips. “The coal industry’s kind of on its last leg.”

What’s next then?

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with a TV show called ‘The Jetsons?'”

I found that sentiment — the coal part, not the Jetsons — to be a common refrain in Gillette. Frankly, I was stunned by the degree to which the mayor, county development officials and people like Gray accept the unsettling facts of coal’s decline.

Phil Christopherson, CEO of Energy Capital Economic Development, a local non-profit that’s funded by industry as well as city and county government, told me that he hopes children who are growing up in Gillette 50 years from now won’t even know that this was a coal town.

“It’s going to be a tough transition for this community,” Christopherson said, “and we’re doing our best to prepare for that, so we still have a community here in five, 10 or 50 years.”

Carbon Valley

Yet, Gillette remains conflicted.

While claiming it wants something new, local and state leadership continues to push coal products and technologies — many of them expensive and unproven — as the future.

You’ll hear some people calling Gillette “Carbon Valley” — as in the Silicon Valley of coal. Coal research, they say, is what’s next. As are new and supposedly cleaner uses for coal.

One such project, called the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, or ITC, sits at the base of a coal-fired power plant — painted blue and white as if it might blend into the sky.

Jason Begger, the project’s managing director, told me to think of the site as an “RV park” for researchers interested in capturing carbon-dioxide pollution from the power plant and doing something else with it — potentially “sequestering” the gas deep in the rock underfoot.

The idea is that if most of that CO2 pollution is captured and stored away somewhere, coal can keep burning, because it wouldn’t contribute heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. It’s reasonable to place some hope in the technology given the fact that carbon pollution needs to reach “net zero” by about 2050 in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. But carbon-capture and storage has proven to be costly and troublesome compared to alternatives.

Begger told me the world needs to recalibrate its expectations.

“I have a 2-year-old daughter, and it’s kind of like saying, ‘Well, in 20 years, she’ll be in the Olympics,” he said. “We [would] have to see if she can crawl and walk” before signing her up for the Olympics.

The state has been trying coal-spending technology for years, said Anderson, the environmentalist, with little to no results. She says she remains “very skeptical” of it — as do I.

Wyoming, meanwhile, also has some of the nation’s greatest potential for wind energy, according to the American Clean Power Association, an industry group. PacifiCorp, the massive power company that is retiring some of its coal power plants in Wyoming, recently opened a large wind farm — 520 megawatts, enough to power about 150,000 homes, according to Laine Anderson, the company’s director of wind operations — about an hour-and-a-half drive south of Gillette.

Yet, Wyoming is a rare state that also taxes wind power — rather than incentivizing its production as a much-needed clean energy source.

“Wyoming’s leaders have done little to pivot our state’s economy away from this volatile industry,” the Casper Star-Tribune’s editorial board wrote of coal in 2019.

Just transition

Perhaps Gillette is less a place of contradictions than one of surprises.

Steve Gray lives in a small apartment complex near the highway. He answered the door on a recent blizzardy morning wearing a denim, pearl-snap shirt and fuzzy red slippers.

After his layoffs from the oil and coal industries, he lost the house he shared with his ex-wife and son, who is now 25. For a while, he moved back in with his father. But now here’s here, and when he welcomes you in you can feel the pride he takes in the place.

On the living room walls are the portraits he’s taken with his son, an oil field worker in a community south of Gillette, and Steve’s grandchildren. In these photos, Steve wears his trademark cowboy hat, a broomstick mustache and a contented grandfather’s grin.

Nearby, you’ll find the military honors — a Purple Heart and Bronze Star — bestowed on his elder relatives. Gray says he, too, served in the Navy and he values service to country.

It’s hard to talk here about a “just transition” for fossil fuel workers — as if any transition for workers in dying US industries ever has been “just.” Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which aims to unite labor and environmental interests around the issue of a transition for dislocated fossil fuel workers, told me there’s no justice in what happened to auto workers or timber workers — or in what’s happening to fossil fuel workers now.

“We are insisting that policy makers pay attention,” Walsh said. “It is not acceptable to leave any workers or any communities behind. We have an obligation to fulfill to workers and communities that have powered this country for generations and have often paid a very stiff price in terms of the health of their environments and their people and their workers.”

I agree with that sentiment. In seeking a transition away from fossil fuels — which, again, is required by science if we want to continue living on a habitable planet — we must learn from the mistakes of the past. That’s the only way America can inch closer toward justice.

Among history’s lessons, according to Walsh: The investments must be bigger than before.

Walsh advised the Obama administration on a grants program — called the POWER+ Plan — that aimed to help diversify the economies of coal towns in the Appalachian Mountains.

That program and others failed to fully address the full needs of these communities, according to policy experts I interviewed. But there’s a consensus emerging on what’s needed now, including: job retraining, community college investments, wage replacement, healthcare extensions, pension extensions — and jobs that help repair land scarred from decades of intensive mining. Advocates are, smartly, in my view, pushing the White House to create an office focused on this economic transition — assisting fossil fuel communities and creating new jobs, according to advocates involved in these efforts.

Colorado recently took a step in this direction by creating an Office of Just Transition. Wyoming and other fossil-fuel states should do the same. And, importantly, it would be wise of the Biden administration to make good on its campaign promises to fight climate change aggressively — getting to “net zero” emissions as soon as possible — while also creating jobs.

Their focus should be on struggling towns like Gillette.

Listening to them — and helping — could be both a political and moral victory.

Wyoming is a state as red as they come.

President Joe Biden and the Democrats who now control Congress could earn respect, if not votes, for telling coal country the truth — that coal must be phased out of the national energy mix, but that workers will not be left behind. That means they should get job training, health care, wage replacement and, when possible, jobs in the new industries that are popping up to replace fossil fuels. This suite of policy solutions is complex, but they must be taken seriously, and the discussion must forward the voices of fossil-fuel workers. Workers need to know that climate advocates respect and support them before we can move forward.

This requires risk.

It requires trust.

That’s something Gray showed when he reached across cultural lines to call Appradab.

“I figured, well, yeah, I’m going to call. I’ll never get any return, but it’ll make me feel better, you know?” Gray said. “I just — I’m kind of glad that you guys did contact me.”

The Biden administration should answer the call, too.

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losbella · 4 years ago

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news-ase · 4 years ago

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supergirlmelbenoist · 5 years ago

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Melissa Benoist Wants to Use Her Platform as an Actress, on Supergirl and Waco, to Remind Women That They Are Strong In march, it will be exactly three years since Glee, the unexpected, yet completely world-dominating a cappella TV hit, aired its final episode. But for Melissa Benoist, it feels like it was a lifetime ago. “I was a baby,” said the actress, who appeared on the show for the final two seasons. “It was my first foray into any on camera work and I knew nothing. I was so naive. It was like a massive, ten car pile-up crash course.” Benoist said this while sitting in a New York photo studio—a location that may be somewhat triggering of musical flashbacks; “Sometimes I’ll hear the songs [we sang] in the grocery stores, like ‘New York State of Mind,’” and I’ll be like, ‘Wow, this is so weird," she noted. Now, Benoist's recent work is eons away from the family friendly show that catapulted her career. Case in point: her latest project, the new mini-series Waco, which debuted on the Paramount network just last night. Benoist wears Carven dress, Grainne Morton charm necklace, Paul Andrew shoes. Photo by Zachary Chick for W Magazine. Styled by Caroline Grosso. Hair by Josue Perez at Tracey Mattingly. Makeup by Min Min Ma using CHANEL Palette Essentielle. In the show, Benoist plays Rachel Koresh, wife of David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians religious cult, who was the center of a 51-day standoff with the FBI and ATF in Texas that resulted in a deadly fire—a far cry from William McKinley High School. “When my managers said the word Waco, immediately I remembered,” said the 29-year-old actress, who was just four when the 1993 events occurred. “There were a few sensationalized events in the beginning of the ‘90s that I vividly remember where everyone was glued to the TV, and Waco was one of them, so that peaked my interest. Then when I spoke to [the directors], the Dowdle brothers, who are fantastic and compassionate people, and they told me what their vision was and how they wanted it to be this gray area where people were able to make up their own minds about really happened and how they felt about it, that was very much a draw for me. After that, I fought pretty hard to play Rachel.” Benoist co-stars alongside an impressive cast that includes actors Michael Shannon, Andrea Riseborough, John Leguizamo, Julia Garner, and Rory Culkin. Her on-screen husband, and the lead of the show, if played by another actor who has had his own experience starring on a fan-favorite TV show: Taylor Kitsch, aka Friday Night Lights’ beloved Tim Riggins. “He was so dedicated and he cared so much, and I don’t think people have ever seen him like this,” said Benoist. ”He was wonderful. On set, he was Koresh… You have to justify when you are trying to get under someone’s skin like that, and try to portray them with integrity and honesty and respect, and that was what Taylor did really well, and really passed on to the cast.” For her own portrayal of Rachel, Benoist looked to the few photos and first-hand accounts of the real life person, filling in the blanks where she could. “She was born a Dividian and died a Dividian and she had never really been anything else besides David’s wife, which she was chosen to be when she was 14,” she said. “She left with him in the middle of the night and traveled the world with him. This girl’s existence perplexed me. I was so fascinated by her.” Benoist wears Carven dress, Grainne Morton charm necklace. Caroline Grosso. Hair by Josue Perez at Tracey Mattingly. Makeup by Min Min Ma using CHANEL Palette Essentielle. The six-part mini-series filmed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, last spring, and over the course of three months, a time period during which Benoist also happened to be consecutively filming another project—a little TV show you may have heard of called Supergirl. “It was a miracle that it worked,” she said. “Luckily I have this amazing team who worked their butts off to make it happen, but it overlapped and for a moment I almost didn’t think it was going to work.” Beyond the minor logistical challenges of time and space, Benoist also was the faced with the task of switching between an iconic alien superhero and real-life, mysterious figure. But somewhere in-between, some similarities emerged. “They are different, and obviously they have extremely different circumstances and they are in extremely different worlds. But Rachel is perhaps even stronger than Supergirl,” she said. “Supergirl is this unattainable, idealistic optimist of an alien, and all of us can escape into her world, and she always saves the day. Rachel is stronger because she is dealing with all of these circumstances that aren’t normal, for lack of a better term, and are sometimes not palatable to what you would call a quote unquote normal life. What she went through in the FBI siege is unimaginable." “Essentially what I do on Supergirl is I’m acting out comic vignettes,” she continued. “That is its own muscle to flex, and it is its own skill. [Playing Rachel] was difficult, but I loved it. You get to live in these quiet moments. Even though the men in this show are doing most of the talking, the women are not invisible, despite being silent.” Benoist wears Erdem jacket, shirt, and pants, and Faris petal drop earrings. Styled by Caroline Grosso. Hair by Josue Perez at Tracey Mattingly. Makeup by Min Min Ma using CHANEL Palette Essentielle. Unlike her character, Benoist is far from silent. Just last week, she penned a poignant piece for Time’s Motto about the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March, where her sign, with the words, “Hey Donald, don't try to grab my pussy—it's made of steel” emblazoned in capital letters, went viral. “I always considered myself really non-confrontational and shy and introverted. But now I just can’t help but be active and participate," she said. "I always try to have my mother’s voice in my head, because I am very proud of the morals that she tried to instill in us. She has always been my moral compass, so I talked to her about it, and so I try to imagine what she would think about what I was saying. And I also imagine a daughter, if I have one, and what I would want her to feel and see. If it is an inappropriate word like ‘pussy,’ which our president used, maybe they need to see it to know that it is not okay and the reality of, ‘This is someone who is not being respectful and this is the wrong word to use and this is something that you shouldn’t accept because you are better and worth more than that, and you are capable and strong.’” In the year since the Women’s March, Hollywood itself has undergone a major shift, stemming from the Harvey Weinstein expose; subsequently, Supergirl showrunner Andrew Kreisberg was fired after sexual harassment claims were made against him. “I feel a shift, and I feel a shift at work, on set,” said Benoist when asked if she had noticed a change in Hollywood. “I am very hopeful because PGA just released the new set of rules about sexual harassment, and that is a really good start in the right direction. I’m just happy that conversations are more frequent and that honesty is being favored over shutting people up.” As for the shift she’s felt in her own life since first slipping on Supergirl’s cape three years ago? “I feel more transparent than I ever have. I’m not as worried about being a yes man, which I was for a very long time, and now I feel a sense of ownership of the role and the position that I have.” Melissa Benoist Wore a Technicolor Dreamcoat on Her Birthday

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pass-the-bechdel · 7 years ago

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LOST season four full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

57.14% (eight of fourteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

33.17%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Four (episode two ‘Confirmed Dead’ (40.9%), episode four ‘Eggtown’ (42.1%), episode six ‘The Other Woman (40%), and episode ten ‘Something Nice Back Home’ (42.1%)).

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-nine. Twelve who appear in more than one episode, five who appear in at least half the episodes, and zero who appear in every episode).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Forty-three. Twenty-four who appear in more than one episode, twelve who appear in at least half the episodes, and zero who appear in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

A number of episodes include plot threads connected to a certain unsavoury spinal surgeon make me very pissy, but ultimately not enough to drag the rating down. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in particular here to push the rating upwards either (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Kinda-sorta my favourite for the series - the abruptly shortened season wreaks a little havoc, and there are definitely some questionable points, but at the end of the day this was a fascinating and daring reinvention of the storytelling on this already fascinating and daring show.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Let’s talk about dead people.

Specifically, let’s talk about dead women, because as much as I love this show I can’t deny that not only does it have a wildly imbalanced male:female ratio, it also has a serious problem of killing off its major recurring female characters at a much greater rate than its males. And with a distinct difference in mode, as well! Consider the heroic sacrifice of Charlie or the noble death of Boone, both dying in the process of valiantly trying to get contact with the outside world so that everyone could be rescued. Even Michael dies while doing his utmost to protect everyone else by keeping the freighter bomb cooled for as long as possible, giving the others time to escape the blast. Compare to Shannon, who is accidentally shot. Ana Lucia and Libby, shot by a man in the course of his efforts to achieve a goal. Danielle and Alex, ditto. I’m seeing a pattern.

I’d like to take an extra-special moment of silence for any woman who has sex with Sayid, because evidently that’s a death sentence that violently delivers within like, a year. In addition to Shannon’s unceremonious deletion in season two, Sayid lost TWO women this season, one by his own hand! It’s not like they had to give him a love story with Elsa in Berlin, but there they went, because It’s Sad when he has to shoot her and then be upset about it. Hoorah for male angst! And of course the only reason he was doing the job he was doing that led to his deception of Elsa in the first place was because of his Manly Vengeance against the people who KILLED HIS WIFE, Nadia. The Nadia storyline ties up nice and neat and quick when she and Sayid are reunited only for her to be murdered shortly thereafter. I guess it would have been too tricky to treat her like a person instead of just a motivational tool.

In dead-but-not-female news, I would also like to elaborate on the death of Michael, and register my displeasure. Not only because I loved the character in the first season, not only because I was saddened by where they took his story in season two, but because of how dispassionately they portrayed this whole ‘redemptive death arc’ thing. Yeah, Michael did a terrible, unforgivable thing when he killed Ana Lucia and Libby. In revisiting his character we see how what he’s done haunts him; within a very short period he’s confessed his crimes to Walt, lost custody, gone off the rails, attempted suicide, and been recruited by Tom Friendly to join the freighter crew. Michael has had a super-rough time, as well he should. That said, is just, eh, killing him off really the way to go? Couldn’t we have done better with him as a character, brought his story around more fully, been less predictable? Redemptive death arcs have their place and can be powerful when done right (hat-tip to Farscape), but this was just so noncommittal. A more fitting arc for Michael would have been one in which he is able to be part of Walt’s life again, even if he didn’t have custody - living in the same city and meeting up periodically to slowly mend their relationship, letting it be a long and difficult bittersweet road. Since his story was always about how he wanted to be a father to his son but never got the chance, etc., him going to extraordinary lengths for his child only to make an awful mistake and destroy his relationship with his kid anyway so then he’s depressed and basically just commits ‘redemptive’ suicide is...not a very strong arc in totality. If this was a grimdark rubbish show, it’d fit, but on a philosophical all-things-connect type show like LOST I’d expect better. With all the murderers right there in our main cast, it’s pretty hypocritical to decide that Michael is the one who has to suffer and pay the highest price for his crimes, and I’d have preferred they just never acknowledge his character again, rather than giving him this long-walk-off-a-short-pier-type return. I don’t want to say it’s because he’s black, but...is it because he’s black? Only white boys get twelve hundred second chances.

ANYWAY there sure is a lot of death on this show, and a lot of characters killing other characters, and a lot of questionable narrative consistency in regards to how characters react to the murderous ways of those around them, and the tone the show takes with the same. Obviously, different scenarios, different justifications, different consequences, but I’ma still flag trends when I see them. And the trends I’m seeing involve an awful lot of white dudes both surviving the slaughter AND receiving narrative forgiveness for their sins, while the women and the men of various colours die, usually without their deaths serving some Important Heroic Purpose, and usually with themselves having been judged as morally impure and punished for it rather than absolved to sin another day. I’m just saying. I love you, show, but your fucking prejudice is showing.

#LOST #LOST season four #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review

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