#lyrics are from family from the ninth hour musical

[unvexes]

no one is going to take you away from me.

[1nd1gnant]

I was listening to some of your playlists the other day after you linked the Billy Lenz one and you asked for reccs for the Bubba one. The first one that I think works with the *sound* of the playlist would be Skinned by Blind Melon. This other one which isn't super country but has THE MOST fitting lyrics I've ever seen is "Family" from The Ninth Hour Musical. It's an adaptation of the story of Beowulf and in the song a mother monster is comforting/encouraging her son that they have to kill everyone else for their protection so that felt fitting lol.

Oh!! I actually didn't make that playlist, my sister did when we shared an account, but I'll pass this message along to her! Thank you :--)

[digihindnews]

Biggie Small Net Worth 2023: How Much Money Did The Notorious B.I.G. Have?

Born in the heart of Brooklyn, Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls, rose to fame as one of the most iconic rappers of the 90s. With a voice that commanded attention and lyrics that told tales of the struggles and triumphs of life, Biggie's impact on the music industry was undeniable. Even after his untimely death, his legacy lives on, and his music continues to inspire a new generation of fans.

How Much Money Did The Notorious B.I.G. Have?

At the time of his death, the Notorious B.I.G., an iconic American rapper, was worth $10 million. As of this writing, the circumstances surrounding his death from a drive-by shooting on March 9, 1997, at the age of 24 remain unknown.

Early Life Of Biggie Small

He was born Christopher George Latore Wallace on May 21, 1972, in Brooklyn, New York, and became known as The Notorious B.I.G. He was born to Voletta Wallace and Selwyn George Latore, two Jamaicans, and he was their only child. When he was just two years old, his father abandoned his family. As a child, Wallace lived in Clinton Hill, a neighborhood of Brooklyn not far from Bedford-Stuyvesant. In middle school, he excelled academically, earning a number of English-related awards.

Rap Career Biggie Small

After his release from prison, "Biggie Smalls" released "Microphone Murderer," a demo. The Source's Unsigned Hype editor featured Biggie after hearing the recording. The demo tape was also given to Uptown Records A&R and producer Sean "Puffy" Combs. After Combs signed Biggie, Heavy D & the Boyz featured him. Uptown fired Combs in 1993. He started Bad Boy Records soon. Wallace joined Combs' record label on launch day. Biggie's big break was appearing on Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" (remix). He garnered music industry notice as a guest performer. He remixed Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear" with LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes in July 1994.

Biggie Small Net Worth 2023 Biggie released Ready to Die, his first solo album, on September 13, 1994. The Billboard Hot 100 ranked the song thirteenth. "Big Poppa" and "One More Chance" from the album reached #1. Over 1.1 million units were sold in 1995. It went six times platinum. Busta Rhymes said Wallace gave away free copies of Ready to Die from his residence for self-promotion and grassroots marketing. You may also like: - Actress Annie Wersching Cause Of Death: Annie Wersching Played a Variety of Characters in Movies And Television Shows - Is Mayim Bialik Married? Height, Age, Net Worth And More Information About Mayin Bialik Biggie became pals with Tupac Shakur and Shaquille O'Neal on his debut album. Biggie and O'Neal created "You Can't Stop the Reign." A second album from Notorious B.I.G., recorded over 18 months starting in September 1995. He visited New York, Trinidad, and Los Angeles. He also worked on Michael Jackson's ninth album, HIStory. Biggie was jailed in March 1996 for chasing and threatening to murder two autograph seekers in a Manhattan nightclub. Community service was 100 hours. Biggie was arrested for drug and firearm possession later that year. Biggie's meteoric rise elevated East Coast rap despite West Coast rap's peak popularity. As expected, coasts clashed. After a falling out and diss recordings, Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. sparked the East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop battle. On September 7, 1996, six bullets killed Tupac in a drive-by shooting. He died six days later. Biggie's family dismissed the murder rumors. Death To promote his second studio album and film the music video for its lead single Hypnotize, Death Wallace jetted off to the Golden State in February 1997. Since he was concerned for his safety, he hired security guards. Biggie was shot and killed in a drive-by outside a Los Angeles museum on March 9, 1997, six months after Tupac had been killed in the same way. Earlier in the night, he had presented Toni Braxton with an award at the Soul Train Music Awards. At 12:45 a.m., as Biggie was leaving an afterparty, a black Chevy Impala pulled up next to his truck. When an unknown assailant opened fire on Wallace's vehicle, four bullets struck his vehicle. Biggie was rushed to Cedars-Sinai by his crew, but he was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m., at the age of 24. The funeral was held on March 18 in Manhattan, and 350 people attended to pay their respects, including Queen Latifah, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, and many more. Both rappers were brutally murdered, and no one has ever been brought to justice. There are many differing theories and perspectives on what really happened to the two men. On March 25, 1997, just 16 days after Wallace's death, his second solo studio album was released. It was certified Diamond in 2000, making it one of the rare hip-hop albums to reach the top spot on the Billboard album charts. In the end, this album would earn 11 platinum certifications. The Notorious B.I.G.'s rapping style was known for its relaxed flow, the apparent autobiographical nature of its dark lyrics, and its ability to tell stories. Several albums and compilations have been released in his honor since his passing. Biggie's estate would make tens of millions of dollars in the decades after his death. Posthumous album releases, re-releases, licensing deals, and other factors have helped increase Biggie's estate to an estimated $160 million today. His mom, Voletta Wallace, is in charge of the estate. Along with Biggie's former manager Wayne Barrow, a merchandising manager, and several lawyers, Biggie's widow Faith Evans helps manage the estate. Read Next:> Raquel Leviss Net Worth: When Did Raquel Leviss Join ‘Vanderpump Rules’?

Personal Life Of Biggie Small

The couple had broken up by the time Wallace and his high school sweetheart Jan had their first child, T'yanna, on August 8, 1993. On August 4, 1994, Biggie married R&B singer Faith Evans. Reports say the couple got married just days after meeting at a Bad Boy photo shoot. On October 29, 1996, Evans gave birth to Biggie's son, Christopher C.J. Wallace Jr.  After rumors spread that Evans had an affair with Tupac Shakur, she became embroiled in the East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry. As of Wallace's passing, he and Evans had been living apart but were not divorced.

Quick Facts

Net Worth in 2023 $160 million Full Name Christopher George Latore Wallace Nick Name Biggie Smalls, The Notorious B.I.G Birth Place  Brooklyn, New York, United States Birthday 21 May 1972 Death Date 9 March 1997 Age 24 years old ( 21 May 1972 – 9 March 1997) Occupation Rapper, Songwriter Sun Sign Gemini Spouse Faith Evans (m. 1994–1997) Height 6 feet 2 inches

Biggie Smalls’ Youtube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JZom_gVfuw&t=12s He created his channel on YouTube on March 12, 2006, and as of February 1, 2023, it had over 1,876,433,514 views and 3.3 million subscribers. Follow us on Twitter to check out our latest updates on our social media pages. Read the full article

[beemusik]

How David Bowie Invented Ziggy Stardust

Jason Heller’s book Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded is the story of how science fiction influenced the musicians of the Seventies. Out now in hardcover via Melville House, Strange Stars also examines how space exploration, futurism and emerging technology inspired the sometimes-cosmic, sometimes-mechanistic music the decade produced. In this section, Heller delves into the creation of Bowie’s most-famous alter ego, Ziggy Stardust.

A small crowd of sixty or so music fans stood in the dance hall of the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth, a suburban neighborhood in southwest London, on the night of February 10, 1972. The backs of their hands had been freshly stamped by the doorman. A DJ played records to warm up the crowd for the main act. The hall was nothing fancy, little more than “an ordinary function room.” The two-story brick building that housed it – “a gaunt fortress of a pub on the edge of an underpass” – had played host to numerous rock acts over the past few years, including Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, and Fleetwood Mac. Sci-fi music had even graced the otherwise earthy Toby Jug, thanks to recent headliners King Crimson and Hawkwind, and exactly one week earlier, on February 3, the band Stray performed, quite likely playing their sci-fi song “Time Machine.” The concertgoers on the tenth, however, had no idea that they would soon witness the most crucial event in the history of sci-fi music.

Most of them already knew who David Bowie was – the singer who, three years earlier, had sung “Space Oddity,” and who had appeared very seldom in public since, focusing instead on making records that barely dented the charts. His relatively low profile in recent years hadn’t helped his latest single, “Changes,” which had come out in January. Despite its soaring, anthemic sound, it failed to find immediate success in England. But the lyrics of the song seemed to signal an impending metamorphosis, hinted at again in late January when Bowie declared in a Melody Makerinterview, “I’m gay and always have been” and unabashedly predicted, “I’m going to be huge, and it’s quite frightening in a way.” Bowie clearly had a big plan up his immaculately tailored sleeve. But what could it be?

Before Bowie took the stage of the Toby Jug, an orchestral crescendo announced him. It was a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, drawn from the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. To anyone who’d seen the film, the music carried a sinister feeling, superimposed as it was over Kubrick’s visions of grim dystopia and ultraviolence. Grandiloquence mixed with foreboding, shot through with sci-fi: it couldn’t have been a better backdrop for what the pint-clutching attendees of the Toby Jug were about to behold.

At around 9:00 p.m., the houselights were extinguished. A spotlight sliced the darkness. Bowie took the stage. But was it really him? In a strictly physical sense, it must have been. But this was Bowie as no one had seen him before. His hair – which appeared blond and flowing on the cover of Hunky Dory, released just three months earlier – was now chopped at severe angles and dyed bright orange, the color of a B-movie laser beam. His face was lavishly slathered with cosmetics. He wore a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, revealing his delicate, bone-pale chest, and his knee-high wrestling boots were fire-engine red. Bowie had never been conservative in dress, but even for him, this was a quantum leap into the unknown.

Then he began to play. His band – dubbed the Spiders from Mars and comprising guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, and drummer Woody Woodmansey – was lean, efficient, and powerful, clad in gleaming, metallic outfits that mimicked spacesuits, reminiscent of the costumes from the campy 1968 sci-fi romp Barbarella. The Jane Fonda vehicle had been a huge hit in England, and it became a cult film in the United States, thanks to its titillating portrayal of a future where sensuality is rediscovered after a lifetime of sterile, virtual sex.

In the same way, Bowie’s new incarnation was shocking, lurid, and supercharged with sexual energy. Combined with his recent admission of either homosexuality or bisexuality, as he was then married to his first wife, Angela, Bowie’s new persona oozed futuristic mystique, which Bowie biographer David Buckley described as “a blurring of ‘found’ symbols from science fiction – space-age high heels, glitter suits, and the like.”

But what bewitched the audience most was the music. Amid a set of established songs such as “Andy Warhol,” “Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud,” and, naturally, “Space Oddity,” the Spiders from Mars injected a handful of new tunes, including “Hang On to Yourself” and “Suffragette City,” that had yet to appear on record. Propulsive, infectious, and awash in dizzying imagery, this was a new Bowie – cut less from the thoughtful, singer-songwriter mold and more from some new hybrid of thespian rocker and sci-fi myth. These songs bounced off the walls of the Toby Jug’s no-longer-ordinary function room. The audience, whistling and cheering, was entranced. A show eye-popping enough to dazzle an entire arena was being glimpsed in the most intimate of watering holes.

Although the crowd was sparse, people stood on tables and chairs to get the best possible view. The stage was only two feet high, but it may as well have been twenty, or two million – an elevator to outer space designed to launch Bowie into an orbit far more enduring than that of Major Tom in “Space Oddity.”

At some point, amid the swirl and spectacle of the two-hour set, Bowie announced from the stage the name of his new identity: Ziggy Stardust.

Like an artifact from some alien civilization, Bowie’s fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was unveiled on June 16, 1972. By then, Ziggy had become a sensation. After the Toby Jug gig in February, concertgoers embraced Bowie’s new persona in music venues around the UK. Attendance swelled each night, as did a growing legion of followers who dressed themselves in homemade approximations of Bowie’s outlandish attire.

Just as the album was released, he and the Spiders appeared on the BBC’s revered Top of the Popsprogram, performing the record’s centerpiece: the song “Starman.” For many of a certain age, watching Bowie on their family’s television that evening was tantamount to the Beatles’ legendary spot on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States eight years earlier. “He was so vivid. So luminous. So fluorescent. We had one of the first color TVs on our street, and David Bowie was the reason to have a color TV,” remembered Bono of U2, who was twelve at the time. “It was like a creature falling from the sky. Americans put a man on the moon. We had our own British guy from space.”

Musically, “Starman” was an exquisite and striking slice of pop songcraft, exactly what Bowie needed at that point in his career. Lyrically, he smuggled in a sci-fi story that centers around Ziggy Stardust, who was both Bowie’s alter ego and the fictional protagonist of the Rise and Fall concept album, as loose as it was in that regard – it is more a fugue of ideas that coalesce into a concept. Through the radio and TV, an alien announces his existence to Earth, which Bowie describes in lovingly rendered sci-fi verse: “A slow voice on a wave of phase.” The young people of the world become enchanted and hope to lure the alien down: “Look out your window, you can see his light /If we can sparkle, he may land tonight.” But that alien is reticent, and his shyness makes him all the more magnetic.

Bowie sang the song on Top of the Pops clad in a multicolored, reptilian-textured jumpsuit, which Melody Maker called, “Vogue’s idea of what the well-dressed astronaut should be wearing.” In that sense, “Starman” is a self-fulfilling prophecy: before he could truly know the impact the song would have, he used it to describe its effect on Great Britain’s young people in perfect detail. He was the starman waiting in the sky, and the kids who saw him on TV soon began to dress like him, hoping to sparkle so that he may land tonight.

If Bowie intended “Starman” to be an overt reference to [Robert A.] Heinlein’s Starman Jones, the book he loved as a kid, he never publicly confessed to it. But the admittedly sketchy story line of Rise and Fall parallels another Heinlein work: Stranger in a Strange Land, the novel that had influenced David Crosby in the ’60s and, later, many other sci-fi musicians of the ’70s. The book’s hero,Valentine Michael Smith, comes to Earth from Mars; in Rise and Fall, Mars is built into the title. And both Valentine and Ziggy become messiahs of a kind – androgynous, libertine heralds of a new age of human awareness. Bowie claimed he’d turned down offers to star in a film production of Stranger in a Strange Land and had few positive words to say about the book, calling it “staggeringly, awesomely trite.” Be that as it may, he clearly had read the book and developed a strong opinion of it – perhaps enough for some of its themes and iconography to seep into his own work.

The opening song of Rise and Fall, “Five Years,” elegiacally delivers a dystopian forecast: the world will end in five years due to a lack of resources, and society is disintegrating into a slow-motion parade of perversity and moral paralysis. It’s a countdown to doomsday, with the clock set at five years. The song’s ominous refrain, “We’ve got five years,” is sung by Bowie with increasing histrionics, his voice sounding more panicked and deranged as he repeats the phrase. “The whole thing was to try and get a mocking angle at the future,” Bowie said in 1972. “If I can mock something and deride it, one isn’t so scared of it” – with “it” being the apocalypse.

“Five Years” set a chilling tone, but Rise and Fall didn’t entirely wallow in it. The coming of an alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust is relayed in a multi-song story that’s equally melancholy and ecstatic, tragic and triumphant. On tracks such as “Moonage Daydream,” “Star,” and “Lady Stardust,” Bowie wields terms such as “ray gun” and “wild mutation.” He also claims, “I’m the space invader,” as though he were channeling the ideas of his sci-fi heroes Stanley Kubrick or William S. Burroughs, particularly the latter’s 1971 novel, The Wild Boys.

As Bowie explained, “It was a cross between [The Wild Boys] and A Clockwork Orange that really started to put together the shape and the look of what Ziggy and the Spiders were going to become. They were both powerful pieces of work, especially the marauding boy gangs of Burroughs’s Wild Boys with their bowie knives. I got straight on to that. I read everything into everything. Everything had to be infinitely symbolic.” The photos of the Spiders from Mars inside the album sleeve of Rise and Fall were even patterned after the gang of Droogs of A Clockwork Orange; Droogs are mentioned by name in the Rise and Fall song “Suffragette City.” Furthermore, Bowie posed on theback cover of the album, peering out of a phone booth – just as though he were that other cryptic British alien who regularly regenerates himself and is often seen in a phone booth (specifically a police call box), the Doctor from Doctor Who.

Bowie also drew from work of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Born Norman Carl Odam, the Texan rockabilly artist released a twangy, oddball 1968 single titled “I Took a Trip (On a Gemini Spaceship)” that Bowie wound up covering in 2002; it was from Odam that Bowie borrowed Ziggy’s surname. And after going on a record-buying spree while touring the United States in 1971, he bought Fun House by the Michigan proto-punk band the Stooges, whose outrageous lead singer was named Iggy Pop. He jotted down ideas on hotel stationary while traveling the States, resulting in a name that was a mash-up of Iggy Pop and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Ziggy Stardust was a fabricated rock star, one whose sleek facade flew in the face of the era’s reigning rock aesthetic of laid-back, unpretentious authenticity. Instead, Bowie wanted to puncture that illusion by taking rock showmanship to a previously unseen, self-referential extreme.

When it came to Bowie’s urge toward collage and deconstruction, Burroughs remained a prime inspiration. A pioneer of postmodern sci-fi pastiche as well as the literary cut-up technique, in which snippets of text were randomly rearranged to form a new syntax, Burroughs straddled both pulp sci-fi and the avant-garde, exactly the same liminal space Bowie now occupied. Rock critic Lester Bangs accused Bowie of “trying to be George Orwell and William Burroughs” while dismissing him as appearing to be “deposited onstage after seemingly being dipped in vats of green slime and pursued by Venusian crab boys” – a description that sounded like it could have been cribbed straight from a Burroughs book.

In 1973, Burroughs met Bowie in the latter’s London home. The meeting was arranged by A. Craig Copetas from Rolling Stone, and the resulting exchange was published in the magazine a few months later. In the article, Copetas observed that Bowie’s house was “decorated in a science-fiction mode,” and that Bowie greeted them “wearing three-tone NASA jodhpurs.” The ensuing conversation ranged across many topics, but it circled around science fiction – and in particular, the similarity Bowie saw between Rise and Fall and Burroughs’s 1964 novel Nova Express, a surreal sci-fi parable about mind control and the tyranny of language.

In an effort to convince Burroughs of the similarity, Bowie offered one of the most revealing analyses of Rise and Fall as a work of science fiction:

“The time is five years to go before the end of the Earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of a lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have all lost touch with reality, and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock & roll band, and the kids no longer wanted to play rock & roll. There’s no electricity to play it.”

Bowie went on:

“[The environmental apocalypse] does not cause the end of the world for Ziggy. The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I’ve made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole onstage.”

Curiously, it took him another twenty-six years before casually revealing in an interview that a sci-fi song called “Black Hole Kids” was recorded as an outtake during the sessions for Rise and Fall. He called the song “fabulous,” adding, “I have no idea why it wasn’t on the original album. Maybe I forgot.”

But Bowie dropped the biggest revelation about Rise and Fallin the 1973 conversation with Burroughs. Ziggy Stardust, according to his creator, is not an alien himself; instead, he’s an earthling who makes contact with extra-dimensional beings, who then use him as a charismatic vessel for their own nefarious invasion plan. But like Frankenstein’s monster being erroneously called “Frankenstein” to the point where it seems senseless to quibble with that usage, Ziggy Stardust continues to be widely considered the alien entity of Rise and Fall. Considering the shifting identity and gender of Bowie’s most famous alter ego, that ambiguity may well have been his intention. Talking to Burroughs, he ultimately labels Rise and Fall “a science-fiction fantasy of today” before reiterating its similarity to Nova Express, to which Burroughs responds, “The parallels are definitely there.”

Rise and Fall has always been as fluid as Bowie’s facade itself. Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cast a shadow over Ziggy Stardust, especially the glammy incarnation of the many-faced character known as Jerry Cornelius – who was adapted to the big screen in 1973 for the feature film The Final Programme. It coincided with Ziggy’s own ascendency, not to mention the New Wave of Science Fiction and its preference for fractured narratives and multiple interpretations over linear stories and pat endings.

During their mutual interview, Burroughs brought up the then-current rumor that Bowie might play Valentine Michael Smith in a film adaptation of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Bowie again dismissed it. “It seemed a bit too flower-powery, and that made me a bit wary.” For his part, Bowie’s fellow sci-fi musician Mick Farren of the Deviants later admitted he always thought Michael Valentine Smith was a major influence on Ziggy Stardust. “I was certain someone would call him out for plagiarism,” Farren said. “Nobody did.”

Bowie may have denied his affinity for Stranger in a Strange Land by his boyhood go-to author Heinlein, but he was not shy about professing his love for one of the authors Lester Bangs compared him to: George Orwell. Almost as a footnote, Bowie told Burroughs, “Now I’m doing Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on television.” That project would never come to pass, but it would lay the groundwork for his next, less famous sci-fi concept album – a jagged, atmospheric song cycle that plunged Bowie into the darkest extremes of dystopia.

[dweemeister]

Yi Yi (2000, Taiwan)

At the beginning of Edward Yang’s Yi Yi (translated as “A one and a two…”), the film samples a piece adapted from the final movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. That movement, containing the “Ode to Joy” (its lyrics from a poem of the same name), was the composer’s refutation of a belief he held when he was younger – the necessity for heroic revolutionary leaders to deliver freedom to the masses. Napoleon’s declaration of himself as Emperor and the decisions made by the Congress of Vienna in 1804 and 1814-1815, respectively, obliterated political freedoms across Europe in favor of repressive police states. Beethoven was disillusioned by these developments. By the time of the Ninth Symphony’s debut, he was completely deaf and had endured decades of intense suffering. Within the lyrics in the “Ode to Joy” was Beethoven’s statement celebrating Enlightenment ideals – universal brotherhood in diversity, liberty, and an individual’s right to the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness, of course, guarantees neither happiness nor self-fulfillment, as Beethoven himself must have known. In that spirit, Edward Yang’s final film follows a middle-class Taiwanese family as each family member grasps for meaning and purpose. Films as keenly observant of the daily joys and disappointments of life such as Yi Yi are rare. It is a masterpiece of filmmaking and human drama.

Just before the turn of the twentieth to the twentieth-first century in Taipei lives the Jian family. Father NJ (Wu Nien-jen), mother Min-Min (Elaine Jin), teenage daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), and eight-year-old son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) are attending the wedding reception of Min-Min’s brother A-Di (Chen His-Sheng). Shortly after the reception, Min-Min’s mother (Tang Ru-yun) falls ill and has a stroke. After emergency intervention and treatment in the hospital, she remains comatose following her discharge. But even before this development, Edward Yang has been laying the groundwork for his film’s intricate, but comprehensible, structure.

The film divides its time between the Jians, maintaining a delicate balance throughout (even if Min-Min is largely absent in the film’s second half). Downstairs from the wedding reception, NJ has a chance encounter with his ex-girlfriend Sherry (Ko Su-yun). Sherry wants to reconnect, answer lingering questions. Years removed from their relationship, NJ is busy with an unfulfilling job and an incoming visitor in Japanese businessman Mr. Ota (Issey Ogata). Min-Min – who falls into a depression upon seeing her mother’s comatose state – leaves for a Buddhist monastery well after Yi Yi settles into its rhythm. She only resurfaces just before the conclusion. At fourteen years old, Ting-Ting is witnessing others pursue romance as she develops romantic feelings of her own. As many former teenagers know, those are awkward years, guided by nothing resembling one’s present wisdom. The target of his classmates’ bullying and frequent condescending remarks from his teacher, Yang-Yang goes about his life mostly alone. Yet in his loneliness and quiet, he observes others astutely. “Daddy,” he asks, “I can’t see what you see and you can’t see what I see. How can I know what you see?… can we only know half of the truth?”

Yi Yi’s characters grapple with the unknowable, the misunderstood, and the unspoken truths that are just in front of them. Their stories interweave with each other’s, forming a current rippling gently through each of their lives. Characters are occasionally seen through windows with the camera positioned outside – at times obscured by a glare, at times seen clearly. In the former, the glare suggests the barriers of communication and temperament people develop for their own survival and sanity, or perhaps to delay something unpleasant and inevitable. When no glares are present, there is less conversational or behavioral pretense. But in those moments, the characters’ feelings of isolation – from family, friends, or society – envelop the frame. In each instance, Yang (who also wrote the film’s screenplay) and cinematographer Yang Wei-han (1985’s Taipei Story, 2008’s 1895) capture each character’s disorientation in navigating the course of their lives amid a bustling metropolis. These shots through the window also encapsulate how difficult it is for us to understand the perspectives of others. Yang-Yang could be onto something; maybe the best we can hope for is to know half of any human truth.

Those who have seen their share of Japanese cinema may already know what a pillow shot is (or at least the concept of one without knowing the term), and Yang uses something like this technique Yasujirô Ozu perfected in order to have the audience reflect on the scene that has just occurred. Instead of a silent moment intercut with shots of sides of buildings, power lines, neon signs, or tea kettles, Yang elects to have additional dialogue or music. Perhaps it comes in the form of Mr. Ota singing “Sukiyaki” (a song wracked with bitter disappointment in its lyrics) and following up by playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata while tipsy (Beethoven yet again!), Ting-Ting being annoyed by vocal patrons in a bagel joint, or Yang-Yang escaping his furious teacher by walking into a darkened auditorium where a different class is watching a science documentary. These moments, like Ozu’s pillow shots, have little to do with the film’s overarching storylines. They might serve as moments of characterization but they are, generally, instances of cinematic punctuation. Oftentimes, that punctuation is an ellipses, as many – not all – of the film’s most pivotal moments occur off-screen.

What does Yang unearth in these moments of reflection? The clash of Taiwanese and Western life elements is an aspect of Yi Yi – one could conceivably interpret the film of how the latter has disrupted the former to the detriment of the characters – but Yang does not seem interested in crafting a polemic. Some viewers who might not be as well-versed in modern Asian culture might be surprised by how simultaneously cosmopolitan and traditional Yi Yi may feel. A comedic trip to McDonalds, the Western cultural products, and the use of English in all conversations between NJ and Mr. Ota aside, the issues and conflicted feelings that arise are universal. Yi Yi does not challenge Confucian mores of family and traditional relationships, even if it occasionally pokes fun at tradition. Even though both of the Jian kids are largely left to their own devices (a combination of their father’s long work hours and their mother’s leave of absence to the monastery), they do not defy authority figures for the sake of defiance.

There are a handful of supporting figures in the film that are having sordid affairs. But these affairs, according to the film, are pathetic and self-debasing – no additional commentary required. Through the prisms of love or friendship, each character is lonely in some fashion. Each family member, with Yang-Yang the exception, acts upon their longing for connection, romantic or platonic, in search of their evolving (and, arguably, never fully-formed) idealizations of how their lives should be. Family life is not the sole defining foundation of modern human existence, as Yang is acutely aware of. And yet, even amid emotional strife and the flurry of activity across the film’s 173 minutes, it is the most stable, predictable, and life-affirming part of each character’s life.

At first glance, it might seem that Yang-Yang is a passive young boy, who only allows things to happen to him. It is difficult to describe this in a reasonable amount of time, but Yang-Yang goes about his life silently, undemandingly, without pursuing childhood notions of friendship or first crushes. It seems Yang-Yang is always observing with his eyes and the lens of his camera. The photos he takes capture things and facets of others that never appear in photographs – the other side of the half of the truth humans can understand. Upon the first presentation of these photos and the ideas behind them to his classmates and teacher, derision follows. But Yang-Yang’s wisdom appears in the film’s final minutes in solemn voice and an acceptance beyond his years. Maybe Yang-Yang’s motivations disappear with age and the pressing concerns of modernity, but his burden is now the viewer’s to bear.

Yi Yi cannot be as effective as it is without its ensemble cast. Though most of the cast are understated, each of their characters occupy their individual stillness and silences in their respective ways. As NJ, Wu Nien-jen portrays a middle-aged man better at internalizing a conflict of personalities than intervening in one. His presence always seems deep in thought, even if he cannot find the words to say immediately how he feels. For Kelly Lee as Ting-Ting, the character is soon to enter her early adult years to a world already so different from when she was younger. Lee’s elegant screen persona reminds me of the many silent film waifs – reticent, shy, earnest – that the likes of Mary Pickford might have played once. Jonathan Chang, the film’s anchor in Yang-Yang, portrays his character without any noticeable exaggerations in voice or physical movement. In silence, Chang makes his presence felt in translating a character exactly as written. And though just a supporting character with little screentime, Issey Ogata as Mr. Ota assumes a bilingual charm – and perhaps the closest the film ever comes to blurring the distinction between screenwriter and character.

This, Edward Yang’s final film before his untimely death in 2007, is the motion picture that cemented his reputation outside Taiwan. Premiering at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, Yi Yi garnered widespread acclaim, a nomination for the Palme d’Or, and a Best Director win for Yang. His reputation across the world has only increased in recent years, thanks to home media releases of this film, Taipei Story (1985), and the dramatic epic A Brighter Summer Day (1991).

Viewers could mourn Yang’s passing as an auteur who never lived to become an international living legend of a director, or the sheer democratization and globalization of cinema that has taken place in the early twenty-first century that would have made such a distinction possible. Instead, in just considering Yi Yi by itself, we have a complete movie – one where every frame has purpose, and the viewer can accept the person that they have become and may still be. Yi Yi affirms a message that Yang and composer Peng Kai-li quote, musically, in the film’s opening minutes. The individual freedom to find one’s own happiness and fulfillment will result in suffering. Such is to exist. Such is to be human. In that suffering, one experiences the possibilities of empathy and the fullness of their humanity.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Yi Yi is the one hundred and sixty-third feature-length or short film I have rated a ten on imdb. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #61: Elisabeth Báthory (Halloween)

Welcome back to Fate and Phantasms, where we’re bringing every servant in FGO to life in Dungeons and Dragons 5e! Today we’re building the Blood Countess Elisabeth Báthory, Halloween Edition! For this build, we have three goals:

Part-time Dragon: Because of the Báthory crest, Elisabeth is part dragon. This means she’ll need a sonic breath weapon, and the ability to fly.

Part-time Torturer: She may have been waifufied in FGO, but she still has trouble treating people like people, so she’s going to have plenty of ways to not only fight people, but make it hurt

Full-time Idol: As the pop star princess of Hungary, Elisabeth needs plenty of ways to frighten charm and drive to madness enthrall her captives audience.

As usual, a spreadsheet for this build can be found over here, and a full explanation will be below the cut!

Edited due to fitting casliz better; will be remaking lancer liz in a bit.

Race and Background

You start things off as a Dragonborn, giving you +2 Strength and +1 Charisma. Some people would say this is leaning too far into the dragon bit, but if we want that Breath Weapon, this is the race we need. Pink dragons don’t exist in DnD, so we’ll say the Báthory family is descended from a Red Dragon, making your breath weapon a 15′ cone of fire that requires a dex save of 8 + your constitution modifier + your proficiency. On a fail, creatures in your way take 2d6 damage, or half on a success. This bumps up to 3d6 at level 6, 4 at 11th level, and 5 at 16th level. You can use this once per short rest. You’ll also be resistant to fire damage, which is pretty cool since it’s a common element in dungeons and your stage productions. 

You’re also a Noble, giving you proficiency in History and Persuasion. A complete lack of empathy for the poor is not mechanically enforced, but appreciated nonetheless.

Stats

We use the standard array around here, but feel free to roll if you want to. I’d say keep multiclassing minimums in mind, but if you can’t this build isn’t going to work out for you anyway. Put your highest score in Charisma. It’s literally one of your skills, and you need it for most of everything you do. Next is Dexterity, you don’t wear armor, so your best bet for not dying is to not get hit. Follow that up with Strength. You don’t look it, but you can fly while carrying people, so you’re actually pretty buff. After that is Constitution; those dance sessions need stamina. Next is Intelligence, you don’t need no education to know the pointy end goes into the peasant. Finally, dump wisdom. You're so easily distracted you’ve accidentally wandered into the wrong servant class twice now.

Class Levels

1. Sorcerer 1: As a first level sorcerer, you are proficient in Deception, Arcana, and Constitution and Charisma saves. First level sorcerers also get their first spells. Grab Control Fire, Green Flame Blade, Create Bonfire, and Burning Hands for some offensive spells, as you won’t actually be able to use a spear all that well for a while. Also grab Friends for some early charm points and Jump for your first foray into flight. Don’t worry, you’ll get actual wings later.

Don’t forget about your Sorcerous Origin, which is appropriately enough a Draconic Bloodline. As previously stated, you have a Red Dragon ancestor, which at this level gives you some languages you already know and doubled proficiency when dealing with Charisma checks against dragons. You also have Draconic Resilience, giving you an unarmored AC equal to 13 + Dex mod, and you get an extra 1 HP when leveling as a Sorcerer. This is great for you, as idol dresses are not known for their combat protection.

2. Sorcerer 2: At second level, you become a Font of Magic, having sorcery points equal to your sorcerer level. Currently these can be used to make spell slots, but they’ll be more useful in a bit. For this level, grab Charm Person for your spell, bringing innocent bystanders under your thrall, if only to make you stop singing.

3. Sorcerer 3: You now have Metamagic, giving you customization options for your spells. Grab the Subtle Spell option so you can cast magic while wielding your spear, and Twinned Spell, because every good idol knows when an encore is necessary (the answer is always). For your spell this level, grab Shatter for reasons that are totally unrelated to your singing.

4. Sorcerer 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement for a higher Charisma score. For this level’s spell, grab Mending, in case your dress gets ripped, and Crown of Madness. The latter spell forces a wisdom save for one humanoid, otherwise they become charmed, and a must use their action each turn to make a melee attack against another creature you choose. If none are available, it can act normally. You have to use your action to keep the spell going, and the target can roll a new save each turn. They’re just so excited to hear you sing, they can’t keep their enthusiasm to themselves!

5. Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers get 3rd level spells. Grab Fear to force creatures within a 30′ cone of you to make a wisdom save or else become frightened of you for up to a minute. During this time the only thing they can do is run away from you as quickly as possible. To tell their friends about your talent, obviously.

6. Sorcerer 6: Sixth level dragon sorcerers gain an Elemental Affinity, so now whenever you cast a spell that deals fire damage, you deal extra damage equal to your charisma modifier. You can also spend 1 sorcery point to gain resistance to a damage type you’re already resistant to, if you really want to waste it. For your spell this turn, grab Fly, so you can finally spread your wings (for 10 minutes, at least). Make sure you keep track of that timer, because we won’t be getting feather fall for a bit.

7. Sorcerer 7: Grab your first 4th level spell Confusion. Create a mosh pit in a 10′ radius sphere, causing all creatures within to make a wisdom save or be affected. Affected creatures must roll a d10 before taking their turn. On a 1, they move in a random direction. on a 2-6, they can’t take actions this turn. On a 7-8, they attack a creature at random, or do nothing. On a 9-10, they can move normally. Crowds for top idols such as yourself can get a bit rowdy, so it’s best you get used to this now.

8. Sorcerer 8: Use your second Ability Score Improvement to grab the Dragon Fear feat, giving you an extra point in Strength, and letting you convert your breath weapon into a sonic attack. Creatures within 30′ of you make a wisdom save, using the same dc as your normal breath attack, or become frightened of you for 1 minute. Also, grab Charm Monster for those rare occasions where you actually sing well.

9. Bard 1: Now that we finally have your proper breath weapon, lets get to work on your idol abilities. As you multiclass into bard, you gain proficiency in Light Armor as well as one skill of your choice. I’d recommend Performance. Bards also have spellcasting, so check the multiclassing table to figure out your spell slots. Bards also also have Inspiration Dice, a number of d6 equal to your charisma modifier that you can hand out to friends to help with pretty much any roll of a d20. For cantrips, grab Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation. Your songs are so beautiful now, people see things when you sing! Hallucinations are a good thing, right? For spells, get Animal Friendship to help you deal with any deerlets you find, Dissonant Whispers which you frankly should have gotten a long time ago, Faerie Fire for some special effects, and Feather Fall. You are now free to move about the airspace.

10. Bard 2: You become a Jack of All Trades, adding half your proficiency to non-proficient checks. I say this a lot, but remember that this includes initiative rolls! I think this also is affected by the draconic ancestor bonus, but don’t quote me on that. You also gain a Song of Rest, enhancing your party’s healing during short rests with an additional d6. Turns out you sing really well when it’s for someone else, who knew? Grab Thunderwave for some more musical mayhem.

11. Bard 3: You graduate from the college of Glamour, giving you a Mantle of Inspiration and an Enthralling Performance. The former lets you spend an inspiration die to give a number of creatures up to your charisma modifier 5 temporary hit points (8 at 5th level), and those creatures can use their reaction to move up to their speed without provoking attacks of opportunity. The latter lets you charm up a number of humanoids up to your charisma modifier, causing them to give you glowing reviews and hinder those who oppose you. This lasts for an hour, or until it takes damage. The feature can be used once per short rest, and you’ll need to perform for at least a minute beforehand, so start brushing up on the lyrics to Akogare Tion now. 

You also gain Expertise in two skills, doubling your proficiency bonus for them. Pick Performance and Arcana for better knowledge involving songs and spells.

12. Sorcerer 9: With your idol career well underway, let’s head back to sorcery for a bit. At ninth level, you get your next spell Synaptic Static, a blast of white noise which causes creatures within a 20′ radius to make an intelligence saving throw or take 8d6 psychic damage and have muddled thoughts for 1 minute. For this minute, whenever it rolls an attack roll, ability check, or concentration save, it also rolls a d6 and subtracts that number from the d20 roll. 

13. Sorcerer 10: You get another Metamagic option! Grab Extended Spell to keep the party going for twice as long. Also, grab the Gust cantrip for a more powerful singing voice and the Wall of Stone spell to recreate Castle Csejte when you pull off your noble phantasm.

14. Sorcerer 11: Eleventh level sorcerers get a 6th level spell. Grab Investiture of Wind for Fly with benefits. You have all the movement of Fly, plus ranged attacks against you are made with disadvantage, and you can use an action to create gusts of wind around you. Any creatures within a 15′ cube of your choosing makes a constitution save, taking 2d10 bludgeoning damage on a failure or half that on a success. Large or smaller creatures are also pushed up to 10′ away on a failure. Now all of Hungary will fear the beating of your wings! Just keep in mind this also lasts for 10 minutes, and is a concentration spell, so keep feather fall handy, just in case.

15. Sorcerer 12: Use your Ability Score Improvement to buff your Charisma for stronger spells and higher saves.

16. Bard 4: Use your last Ability Score Improvement on Constitution, for more concentration, more health, and a stronger breath weapon. Grab the Thunderclap cantrip for another source of thunder damage, and Magic Mouth, so you can leave your mixtapes lying around for the adoring public.

17. Bard 5: Your inspiration dice become d8s, and you become a Font of Inspiration, regaining expended dice on short rests. Grab Tongues to make your inevitable international following easier to manage.

18. Bard 6: You now have a Mantle of Majesty thanks to your superstardom, letting you cast Command as a bonus action for free each round for a minute, with any previously charmed creature of yours automatically failing the save. You can use this once per long rest, and need to have concentration available for it. Grab Blindness/Deafness for your spell this level. With music this good, they probably wouldn’t want to hear anything else anyway. You also gain Countercharm, giving advantage to your friends against being frightened or charmed. Nobody gets to warp your deerlings’ minds but you!

19. Sorcerer 13: Grab your final spell from 7th level, Power Word Pain. With just a word, you can wrack a creature with less than 100 hit points with incredible pain, reducing its speed to 10′ and giving it disadvantage on attacks, checks, and non-constitution saves. Whenever the creature tries to cast a spell while in pain, it must succeed on a constitution save or waste the spell slot. At the end of each turn it may make a constitution save to free itself. It should be noted this is the only way to end the spell, aside from effects like dispel magic.

20. Sorcerer 14: Finally, 14th level dragon sorcerers get proper Dragon Wings, giving you a flight speed equal to your movement. The loss of speed is made up for by not requiring concentration, and not having a time limit. It’s just a bonus action to make them, and a bonus action to dismiss them. The one downside is any clothing you’re wearing needs to be made with wings in mind, otherwise you might cause some wardrobe malfunctions. That’s not too big an issue, though. It’s really just free publicity. 

Pros: Thanks to your draconic heritage you’re surprisingly sturdy for a mostly caster class, with just over 150 hp if you use the nonrolling option for health and resistance against a common damage type. You also have a lot of flight options, as well as plenty of reach weapons, helping you stay out of the front lines. Finally, you have an arsenal of different spell saves at your disposal, letting you handle many different kinds of enemies. You mostly have wisdom saves for charm spells, but there’s also Constitution saves and  Intelligence saves, so you’re not completely out of a fight against a monk or ranger.

Cons: Fire is a common damage type, but it’s also commonly resisted, meaning a lot of your combat power might not be that useful. You also need to pick which concentration spells you’re using, as most of your charm/madness spells as well as flight options require it. 

All in all, just keep your chin up and I’m sure things will work out for you. Just be ready to beat wings if you need to.

[philosophy-juice]

OMIGOSH @breadpunk7 i literally just saw this!!!!!!!! thanks for tagging me!! question time........

name/nickname: mya... can’t really do much with a three letter name (my middle name is rae tho and some people call me roo!)

gender: nonbinary (maybe genderfluid? not too sure about labels lately but it’s all good)

star sign: taurus sun, cap moon, sag rising

height: 5′4

birthday: may 5

time: 11:38 am aka i just woke up like an hour ago

favorite bands: ok HARD QUESTION but right now im listening to tons of taylor swift (cowboy like me and ivy have my entire heart), rilo kiley, liz phair (having a mid 90s moment i suppose), gorillaz (new album slaps), james blake, everything everything, georgia, joseph (THEYRE SO UNDERAPPRECIATED), xray spex, and the joy formidable.

favorite solo artists: ahhhhhh right now several of the people i mentioned above, also listening to lots of old blues and jazz artists like ella fitzgerald; hozier, marie-pierre arthur (she’s quebecois and her music is so pretty), and patti smith

last movie: fellowship of the ring for the nine millionth time, BUT i’ve been trying to find wolfwalkers cause i wanna watch it so bad..... i love cartoon saloon we stan small independent animation studios

last show: bridgerton, but only first ep so far

when did I create this blog: i’ve been on tumblr since like 2011 but i made this blog in...... 2016 i wanna say?

what do i post: who’s to say

last thing googled: adoption centres near my city cause my family’s trying to find a dog :))))

other blogs: @brushstrokebees my semi-cottagecore-y blog but it’s got a couple other things going on too and @garagesalerock where i [sometimes] make lyric edits [usually on request]

 do i get asks: sometimes!!

why i chose my url: dumb pun i drew in comic form in middle school about hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy and me being in the midst of a semi-intellectual phase; it was a glass of orange juice and it said ‘philosophy juice - only 42 calories in every half glass’

following: 466 but ive been meaning to go through them all again cause lots are inactive/blogs about things im not into as much anymore (i think that also includes my other two blogs?? not sure)

followers: 89 heck yeahhh

average hours of sleep: anywhere from 4 to 10 on the average day, but when uni is going usually like 7/8

lucky number: probably 5!!

instruments: ive played piano for a super long time, same with alto saxophone all through school but i haven’t played since i graduated; i also play guitar (but still super rusty) and i sing a lot!! i’d like to learn viola or violin, bass, and some other kind of wind instrument

what am i wearing: booty shorts and a thrifted sweater...... and some space themed earrings i just got in the mail from a really cool artist i follow on twitter

dream job: published author!!!! that’s my dream. but i’m hoping to get some sort of career in conservation, climate change research, sustainable planning and development, or something in those realms since i’m getting my degree in environmental sciences and geography :))

dream trip: iceland!! and i’d also love to do a road trip up to the arctic circle here in canada. my other top places i wanna visit are argentina (esp patagonia, and taking a boat down to antarctica), taiwan with my best friend who’s from there, new zealand, turkey, greece, egypt, and way too many other places. also back to scotland cause hopefully i’ll be living there one day!

favorite food: anything that is pasta. i also love creme brulee (for a favourite dessert) and this thing called cranachan that’s like, whisky and raspberries and homemade whipped cream and oatmeal and it is. sublime. way too many other foods tho............ (if astrology isn’t real why am i a taurus that can’t stop thinking about food)

nationality: canadian

favorite song: oof yeah no can’t decide that but a top contender that i listened to for the millionth time this morning is all these things that i’ve done by the killers

last book read: reading the scottish boy by alex de campi and i am VERY MUCH enjoying it (there’s def some kinda iffy aspects to it, but it’s gorgeously written. and im a sucker for lgbtq historical fiction. so) it’s literally about a knight and his semi-squire in medieval britain who fall in love amidst political turmoil. the other book im in the middle of is gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir and if you’re reading this you’re now contractually obligated to read it. PLEASE IM SO ALONE AND IT’S A MASTERPIECE

top three fictional universes i’d like to live in: lotr, zelda, animal crossing...... anything where i can be freed from the chains of neo-liberal capitalism and maybe have some magic as a treat

[deadfricnd]

◊ ♫ ◊— look what the cat dragged in! that’s ALEXA COX and SHE is an around 24-year-old REGULAR to the store, but they’ve been in the neighborhood for 3 YEARS. I think they’re a FRONTMAN FOR A PUNK BAND and I overheard them listening to WHITE CROSSES by AGAINST ME!, and, I dunno man, it seemed pretty fitting. Like, call me shallow but I look at them and think of ALICE PAGANI and A PACKED CONCERT VENUE, BLOODY AND BRUISED KNUCKLES, and BURNING YOUR FINGERS ON YOUR CIGARETTE . (ooc info: peyton, they/them, est, 22)

hello for those who don’t know i’m peyton!! i didn’t proofread any of this because i don’t know how to read this is all voice to text so all i can say is sorry i’m illiterate don’t bully me. please feel free to like this if you want to plot!! also hit me up on discord ilyinichna#9370 (((:

name: alexa sylvia cox age: 24 years birthday: october twenty ninth (scorpio) pronouns: she/her hair: dark brown eyes: brown height: 5'5 visible markings: septum piercing, scattered tattoos preference: pansexual virtues: laid back, ambitious, focused vices: crass, disloyal, inconsiderate

tw: suicide mention

Alexa was born in bumfuck, USA to working class, negligent parents but that wasn’t what bothered her about the small, shitty town. Initially living in a poor area, she learned to better herself by getting out of the house and getting involved in the community— that is, picking fights and committing petty theft.

If one wanted to find Alexa, all they had to do was look for any sight of trouble. With too much energy to spare and too much time on her hands, Alexa finds that there isn’t much to do but cause trouble. By now, one would think that she has learned her lesson due to all of the hours she’s already spent on community service, but time proves that such a thought would be false.

She picked up guitar as a teenager. She wouldn’t say there was a spark or she just knew or whatever bullshit she’d see artists say. It was something to do and it certainly took up less of her energy than running from the cops. While signing up for the local bar’s open mic night and playing to a crowd of three at one in the morning was less than ideal for any musician, she can’t say it didn’t humble her. If she was asked she’d say she misses those drunkards.

It just so happens that at one of these late night shows she meets her soon to be best friend, Mason. The two of them were too much for this town and they both knew it. Even if he vehemently disagreed with her life of petty crime which often led to heated arguments between the two, one was never seen without the other.

Soon Alexa began to genuinely pursue music and it’s still the only thing in her life she takes seriously. With Mason on drums the two of them turned out to not be a half bad duo, even forming a decent sized crowd that began to come regularly to see the two of them play. They wrote their own songs, their own music, and Alexa finally realized she found her passion.

Until Mason missed a Friday night show without telling anyone.

News in a small town spreads like wildfire and it wasn’t long until Alexa heard the word suicide going around. She chalked it up to a rumor at first because there was no way in hell that could happen. She skips town the same day of the funeral, not even stopping by, figuring there was nothing left for her now.

Alexa finds herself in new york and goes back to music for the first time in years and as it turns out she was pretty decent even if she was on her own now. Known for her chaotic stage energy and classic punk sound, it didn’t take long for her to get a following after playing at local venues and basement shows.

After playing a set at Allied bar, a place she regularly performed at, Alexa was approached by Zoe Levin and Theo Baptiste who told her they were forming a band and needed a guitar player. She gets the position of lead singer as well and the rest is history.

Tidbits

Alexa is the lead singer and guitar player for Eraserhead. She’s better at writing the music than writing song lyrics. Her stage energy is?? Chaotic. 

Huge, huge, huge fuckgirl asshole. She will play with your feelings for fun and will not feel bad about it. Has a history of cheating and not calling back after a hook up when she said she would, you have been warned.

She has a tendency to get into fights, sometimes for fun sometimes for “legitimate” reasons, and she sure knows how to throw a punch don’t let her small stature fool you.

Amateur tattoo artist and will gladly give you a shitty stick and poke if asked.

She doesn’t really take anything seriously except for music. It’s something she could go on for hours about 

Connection ideas

Connections from her hometown! She had a reputation so she was bound to leave impressions on people. It could be childhood rival, more delinquent friends, an ex, maybe another voice of reason they tried to get her to listen to, old classmates, patrons or workers to the bar she used to perform at, etc.

Family. Alexa doesn’t talk to her parents/they probably didn’t even notice that she was gone, but cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends, members of mason’s family she’d consider close, etc, are all welcome!

Hookups. Always fun, am I right? Currently Alexa is sleeping with Niamh Black but that’s all their relationship is. Let her break someone’s heart or give her someone as morally ambiguous as she is. Either way!

A partner in crime. She’s matured a little bit from her high school days but she’s still a delinquent at heart so she’d probably love to have someone she could drag along.

Honestly anything she’s so bad at genuine human connection but i’m begging her 

[nuestkings]

NU’EST interview with Arena Homme+

(Trans: Melodia_Muse | Original Article: Arena Homme+)

What does the door leading to adulthood look like? Nine years into their debut, we met up with NU’EST, who are returning with The Nocturne. We asked them what growth means to them, and we received wise answers. Right now, five men are singing about night.

Behind the Scenes - The Presence of NU’EST

Now in their ninth year together, NU’EST is on the path to the top. They experienced all sorts of ups and downs for such a long time but were able to overcome them and rise up, and the five handsome men became closer, their bond stronger. The fandom that has walked that path with them has become stronger as well. Maybe that’s why NU’EST has a formidable amount of “ride or die” fans. Those fans become strong and powerful roots for NU’EST to rise up even higher.

Despite the photoshoot taking place right around their comeback, none of them looked tired at all. Starting with JR, they stood in front of the camera one by one. The photographer captured each of their expressions, gazes, and movements slowly. Under his guidance, the photoshoot took place in a calm and detailed way. Each of them definitely have their own unique aura. Oh, they are are similar in some ways too. They all have an unconstrained masculine beauty. It’s not the boyish charms of a boy group that is still blooming, but the energy of youths who are already in full bloom. And then in an empty space, they sat with the right amount of distance between them. The empty space above them, their positions, and their relationship with each other all came together to become one. This felt like the presence that NU’EST has that you can’t deny.

JR

Memories of night

JR: The Nocturne is an album that expresses night. Interestingly, inspiration would find me quite often at night while working on the album. Even when I was walking home after rehearsals, I would look up at the night sky. I would look closely at how the shape of the moon was different from yesterday. I wanted to be true to the emotions I felt, and I brought back memories of when my emotions had come closest to the surface. I vowed to take out those emotions again one day, and imagined how I would use them. I worked on this album by taking moments of night that are engraved in my memories and adding more imagination to them.

Be prudent with decisions

JR: I started my social life quite early. I learned at a young age what kind of place society can be. I was able to define standards on things like how I should live and what actions were right. For my personality, I think starting my social life early was helpful. I’m usually quite prudent when making decisions, and I sometimes think of the worst-case scenario when I’m faced with a choice. If there’s a story I really want to tell, I tend to make a choice in its favor even if success can’t be guaranteed. It would be fantastic if things ended up working out, but everything can have variables. I tend to run simulations of various situations in my head when faced with a choice.

Source of confidence

JR: Making sure I have an alternative plan has been so helpful to me. It makes me feel more at ease. Feeling at ease makes my confidence grow. The confidence comes from knowing that even if this decision fails, I still have a back-up plan, so it’s okay. It gives me the strength to push forward with my decision until the very end.

Start again from the beginning

JR: There was a time when no matter how much effort I put in, I felt like I was woefully lacking compared to other people. I was facing a wall, and I turned to those around me for advice in order to overcome it. I asked for advice on how to overcome a slump, and that’s when I heard something that became a turning point in my life. “Go back to the beginning and start again.” It really spoke to me. After hearing that, I looked back on everything I had done up to that point and started from the beginning again. Of course, I had to reinvest my time and energy, but I was able to get over that wall in the end. Because I had that experience of reaching my limit, I was able to have a smooth start [the second time around].

Perfectionist

JR: Up until quite recently, I was a perfectionist. I didn’t want to put on a performance that wasn’t perfect. But there are times when imperfections can be pretty. I learned that perfection doesn’t always mean that everything is what it needs to be. Now, I’m trying to see things more broadly. I’m learning so much.

There is no right answer

JR: I think you become an adult when you start thinking of others first. Then again, there’s no right answer to the standard or conditions of what it means to be an adult. But once you reach the level of being able to think of others, you find that you’re able to look back on yourself as well.

Because we’re in our 9th year

JR: Now that we’re in our ninth year, there aren’t many people who will sternly critique things for us. Many of the people we work with are either younger than us or they haven’t been doing this as long as we have. Because of that, it must be difficult to give us directions or tell us things we need to fix when we’re rehearsing. But there are times when we need that kind of teaching. In moments when I’m not sure if I’m going in the right direction, I wish I had that kind of guidance, but the number of people who can give that to us continues to decrease.

Power source of growth

JR: Realistically, it’s lessons. (laughs) Through lessons, I’m learning and growing. I guess you could say that my growth comes from working on things that I had been idle about in the past. Now, I really enjoy learning. The more I learn, the more I feel like I’m building something up within me. My thoughts have changed a lot as well. The reason I find lessons fun is because my teacher critiques me. I love how they point out exactly what I need to do.

In the future

JR: I’m energized by seeing people listening to and enjoying me, my performances, and my songs. It’s in those moments that I feel glad that I became an idol. I want to keep being someone who makes others happy. Whether it’s on stage or elsewhere, whether it’s through a performance, a song, or anything else, I’ve left all possibilities wide open. When I see our fans being happy, it makes me realize that all of the efforts we’ve put in weren’t in vain.

Current concerns

JR: I’m in the process of thinking about how I should utilize everything I’ve learned until now. There’s a big difference between learning something and applying what you’ve learned. To complete the learning experience, I’m focusing on self-improvement and thinking about what I can do.

Unwavering faith

JR: Whenever we release an album, I show it to my parents. After playing the songs, I show them the music video and then the choreography, but I didn’t do that this time. I just wanted to do what I wanted rather than asking for someone else’s opinion. You could say that’s how much faith I have in this album. I’m confident that it will do well.

Ren

Preciousness

Ren: I wrote the lyrics for Must with my grandfather, who passed away, in mind. I was writing the lyrics when the realization hit me, about the depth and sincerity you bring when interacting with others. The Nocturne is an album that made me realize the preciousness of people.

In our 9th year

Ren: I experienced a slump around our fourth or fifth year. I couldn’t see any hope, and I even thought that this might not be my path. Being a celebrity is a job that hangs on people’s interest in you. We were supposed to be growing and gaining more recognition as time passed, but what we faced was diminishing response from the public. I used to call my friends and talk out my frustrations for three hours at a time. It was in the encouragement and comfort from the people around me that I found hope.

Inner thoughts

Ren: I’m very close with my family, so I don’t really share my inner thoughts, in case they worry. My parents have lives of their own. I don’t want to add baggage to their busy lives. Even when I was struggling, I would only tell them good things. I had no choice but to mature at a young age, because I started my social life at the age of 16.

The process of becoming an adult

Ren: It was always shocking. At first, I thought that once I became a trainee, I would live this flashy, shining life. But my days were filled with sweat and getting told off. (laughs) It was shocking going from being showered with love at home to being pushed so much. I thought to myself, this is reality, this is the process of becoming an adult.

Super positive

Ren: I didn’t have any complaints, though. Life is different for each of us. I’m just grateful to have been born. From a young age, I’d often follow my grandma to the temple. I heard a lot of good things and I learned how to meditate. I think that’s when I started to have a positive mindset about life.

Staying true to Choi Min Gi

Ren: I want to be someone who stays true to who Choi Min Gi is. I want to live a life where I do everything I want to do and I’m not held back by anything. I don’t want to care about what other people think, because this is the only life I get to live. Even if the results aren’t great, I have no regrets because it’s the path I chose and the challenges I decided to take on.

Guiding light

Ren: From a young age, I learned a lot from my grandparents. They were always such upstanding people who strove for perfection. See them made me want to be someone with good manners who listened closely to others.

Curiosity

Ren: I’m curious about our comeback and my musical, especially for the musical. It’ll be my first time in that field, so there are so many things I’m curious about. Oh! The musical is called Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. It will also be a story about growth.

Moments I want to reflect on

Ren: If I’d worked harder and taken on more challenges as a trainee, I’d probably be even greater than the person I am today? That’s something I always think about. I regret being lazy when I was younger. If I could go back to that moment in time, I would work harder. Foreign languages, dancing, singing, all of it.

To the mountains

Ren: There have been many moments when I wanted to run aways. Whenever I have thoughts like that, I just let them run their course and I go to a nearby park, mountain, or ocean and find peace. Breathing in fresh air and letting the wind blow past me helps me to change my mindset.

Half worried, half excited

Ren: There are times when I worry about what will happen next, but the future also brings new opportunities to take on, which excites me. Maybe I might end up not being a celebrity anymore and doing something else. Because I’ve been in this industry for a long time, I think I could be a producer or a stylist. Often, I think about wanting to be a producer for someone. I think it would be fun.

Happily

Ren: I hope that when people see me, they feel joy and happiness. I know it can be very difficult. (laughs) I think I’m able to spread happiness to people right now, but I want to be someone who can have a good influence on more people in the future.

Minhyun

My summer

Minhyun: My birthday is in the middle of summer. I’ve never really like hot weather, but summers have become special now because I celebrate with fans. Last summer, I held a birthday busking event at the Children’s Grand Park. The notice went up just three or four hours before the event started, and it was raining so much, but lots of people gathered celebrate with me. One night, I was suddenly struck with the desire to describe fans as my summer. I opened up my notebook app and wrote down lyrics. If I ever get to put a solo track on an album, I’d like to use these lyrics.

Clean

Minhyun: I can’t stand things being messy. I make sure to clean myself up first, and then I’ll tidy my surronudings. I feel like if I do that, I won’t catch colds and I get sick less often, and my quality of life gets better. If I don’t have anything scheduled for the morning, I usually wake up around 10 and clean. I try to get my cleaning done around then because of the noise that my vacuum cleaner makes. If it’s a nice day, I’ll open up my windows and get air circulation going as I clean, and it makes the day so refreshing.

Disciplined life

Minhyun: I don’t drink that much alcohol or coffee, and I don’t smoke. Our job is one where our appearance is important, so I have to maintain myself well. I want to always present myself in a cool and pretty light. That “disciplined life” title is one that was given to me by the agency as they watched over my trainee days, and thought I think it perfectly describes me, it can feel like a burden at times. Because I feel like if I limit myself to that title, I won’t be able to have a lot of different experiences. But I still think it’s true. (laughs)

Flaws

Minhyun: The people who are really close with me will know, but I have more flaws than people would expect. Although I try to be perfect when I work, I’m quite clumsy in my daily life. My fellow members and staff will tell me that side of me is so funny, but it’s not something that comes out that much when I’m on variety shows. I think I’m still not ready to show every aspect of myself in front of a camera.

No ups and downs

Minhyun: I don’t have a lot of ups and downs in my emotions. I rarely cry and if something bad happens, I’m able to brush it off after a few hours. When I see a malicious comment, I’ll think, “Why do they think this way?” but I’ll forget it a minute later. I sleep pretty well, too. If I put my mind to it, I can fall asleep in 30 seconds. Maybe that might sound like my mind is a bit blank, but I’m able to have a good time and not get stressed out because of that aspect of my personality.

Can’t let emotions bleed into attitude

Minhyun: I do have my own concerns, but I don’t let those concerns get in the way of other work or change my attitude. I always tell myself that I can’t let my emotions bleed into my attitude. Just because I’m not feeling good doesn’t mean I should make it obvious to those around me or negatively affect them.

Faith

Minhyun: On our fourth or fifth year, we faced difficulties both financially and mentally. We were holding lots of overseas concerts, but I could feel our venues getting smaller. But even then, I had faith that things would work out for me eventually. I didn’t want to waste the time I had, so I would go to the practice room every day and study Japanese when I got home. I’ve always had steadfast faith in my heart, so I can’t really say any moment was dark. That’s why I didn’t really experience growing pains when things worked out well. I always knew I would become a great star one day. (laughs)

How to live up to expectations

Minhyun: From a young age, I was a kid who always listened to his mom. I would study hard because my mom wanted to see good results, and I never swore because mom really hated swear words. I wanted to live up to my mom’s expectations. I worked hard, not for my own future, but because I wanted my mom to be happy. Now, fans have become that kind of presence in my life. I want to keep growing and showing a better side of me so fans don’t regret liking me. It’s because of our fans that were able to belatedly shine, so I feel even more gratitude and affection for them.

Seniors

Minhyun: We really are seniors at music shows now. There are so many more juniors than seniors when we go. But I don’t really see myself as a senior, more of a colleague. We have a lot to learn from our juniors as well. Even though Aron is older than us in our team, he has an American mindset, so things are more relaxed like we’re same-age friends. We’re all in this together, so I just want everyone to have fun without worrying about senior-junior hierarchy or age. Having that kind of heavy air between you can be uncomfortable.

Becoming an adult

Minhyun: I’ve grown up a lot. In the base, I would just do as I was told, but now I think of what I need to do. We choose our own set lists and we express our thoughts more now. I think perseverance is important when it comes to becoming an adult. I’s because of that perseverance that I’m able to stand on stage now. I’m an adult now.

Friends and foe

Minhyun: I treat other people well. Being sure to greet people is a given, and I say “thank you” a lot. I’m not very good at saying anything that may be unpleasant, but if it’s necessary, I’ll try to be soft-spoken about it. I try to not make enemies if possible. If I do have enemies, I try to win them over to my side. Maybe someone might not like me if they don’t know me well, but I can win them over once they get to know me. I’m confident about that. (laughs)

Small smile

Minhyun: I hope the music, projects, and whatever content I appear in will bring a small smile to people’s faces. I think it would be too greedy of me to hope that people can gain strength from me. I just want to be someone who makes people feel better and smile a little.

Baekho

Expectations

Baekho: What kind of response will this album get? Will our fans like it? We worked really hard to make it, and how will it sound? What will it be like on stage? I’m filled with these kinds of expectations these days. I’m excited to see each and every reaction.

Driving force

Baekho: When I meet with fans, a lot of them tell me, “In this song, these lyrics spoke to me. I liked that song because it felt different,” and hearing reactions like that brings me the biggest joy. Also things like, “It’s so nice to listen to this song on my way to work. It’s so nice to listen to this song before I go to sleep.” I’m grateful that our songs have naturally become a part of our fans’ lives and it makes me want to devote myself more [to our music].

Embrace the night

Baekho: This album is centered around the theme of night. I’m usually active at night. I usually work out, write lyrics, and compose music at night, and I though a lot about night while making this album. This album shows various different aspects of night, of me, my fellow members, and others.

Observer

Baekho: I thought long and hard about where I get my inspiration when I make music, but I don’t think I find it in a specific thing I can pinpoint. It sounds so simple, but I’m inspired by life around me. The people I meet, the thoughts I have while exercising, the landscapes that I’m seeing... small moments of daily life come together and become my music.

The power of habit

Baekho: Nowadays, I don’t feel refreshed if I don’t end the day with a workout. It’s not that I set myself a hard goal that I have to exercise, it’s more like an unconditioned reflex. The same goes for music. Working on music has become a habit for me, like how Kobe Bryant would practice his shots every morning.

On the right track

Baekho: These days, working on music is the greatest source of enjoyment for me. It’s just so fun. As there are many people who are waiting, I keep working as long as my body allows me to. I’ve been running nonstop since last fall’s The Table, but I’m not tired at all. People listen to the music I work on and share many different interpretations, and I find joy in watching that happen.

Classic

Baekho: I like classics. Rather than anything too shiny, I like things that have been worn in and have a story to them. That’s why I got myself an old car. It’s a Galloper that was at least 20 years old, and I added design elements that I wanted. Driving that car around made me fall deeper for the charm of classics. It’s such an old car that I had to send it to my hometown in Jeju because of emissions regulations. My brother drives it around now. I wanted to have it for longer, it’s a shame. If I start something that I like, I’m the type of person who will see it through until the end.

Silently

Baekho: If I look back on my trainee days now that we’re in our ninth year, I’ll probably feel like I had a hard time back then, but in that moment, it was the norm for me, so it wasn’t hard. Just like I do now, I used to eat food and drink coffee back then too. I just silently lived my daily life and that’s gotten me to where I am now.

Teamwork

Baekho: In our early debut days, we bickered a lot. Now that we’ve spent so much time together, we just accept each other for who we are. Even if another member things or acts differently, we just accept each other’s differences. He’s him and I’m me. So we don’t really have a reason to fight anymore. Things that aren’t possible alone become possible when the five of us get together. When we are all together, things don’t just increase by a multiple of five, it feels more like an infinite something is opened up to us.

Growth diary

Baekho: After our debut, we experienced some tough times. We belatedly grew thanks to our fans. I went back to my roots when I appeared in the variety show Let’s Go, Man Soo Ro. Watching over the soccer players as they did their best to go somewhere higher, I saw a lot of overlap between them and me and my members. They were probably tired and worn out from chasing after their dreams, but they never lost their smiles. Through Let’s Go, Man Soo Ro, I experienced yet another growth.

Role

Baekho: I want to be a good source of energy for our fans. It’s a small wish of mine, but I think I’d feel such a big sense of accomplishment if our songs are able to even get a small huff of laughter out of people. I want to show more growth in our music and ourselves in the future so that people can feel a sense of happiness. That is our role.

Aron

Noah and Kkotsooni

Aron: When I’m resting, I spend time with Noah and Kkotsooni. My pets became my source of motivation in life. I have to work hard so I can give them good food and snacks.

Music I listen to

Aron: I usually sleep late, but I recently began trying to go to bed earlier. I turn on peaceful music and I find myself falling asleep to it. So these days, I look up music that induces sleep, so I can immediately fall asleep the moment I start playing it.

Concerns these days

Aron: Our fans’ reactions. I’m always curious and worrying about it. That’s why I try to always be perfect, whether I’m recording music or standing on stage. Other than that, I don’t really have any concerns. If there’s one, it’s that I need some rest. We’ve had so many scheduled activities these days without any time to rest. Even just for one day, I want to hand out at home with my dogs without a care in the world. Take them out for walks, small things like that.

Greatest weapon

Aron: Whenever we’re recording for songs, our composer always tells me I have a great sense of rhythm. It’s why I’m usually in charge of the parts with a tricky beat. So I think my greatest weapon is my sense of rhythm.

Change in food preferences

Aron: Maybe it’s because I lived in the US, but I used to prefer western food. I still like it, but I recently opened my eyes to Korean food. Grilled short rib patties, bulgogi, and any type of meat dish is an automatic yes from me, and I also like raw abalone. I cook at home, too. From kimchi fried rice to soybean paste stew and kimchi stew. By the way, I prefer to put ham in my kimchi fried rice and not tuna.

Precious memory

Aron: We have fans who stayed by our side even during difficult times in our early debut days. I remember each and every one of them. They recently came to our concerts during our tour and I was so happy to see them. I got choked up thinking about how they’re still by our side. I’m grateful.

Things that have changed and things that haven’t

Aron: I think I’ve gotten much better at commanding the stage than when I first debuted. I’ve also grown in terms of my gestures and my visuals. It I was more childish in the past, I have a more adult aura to me now. And being with the other members has taught me to be more understanding. Now, I try to take care of others before I take care of myself. Something that hasn’t changed is how I never stop making an effort. I worked hard then and I still work hard now. Another thing that hasn’t changed is my height? My weight has changed, but my height is still the same.

Night over day

Aron: I prefer night over day. On a quiet night, I feel like I can do everything I want to do. After a long day, it feels so nice to wash up and lie down once I get home. I lay on the couch and watch TV, and I guess you could say that’s when “me” time starts? It’s really healing.

Desire

Aron: As someone who stands on stage, I want to show an even better and more mature side of myself. There are so many things I desire and want to achieve. I don’t want to disappoint my fellow members and the people who are precious to me.

Moments I want to cherish

Aron: When we performed for the first time at the KSPO Dome, I was so happy by nervous. I was overwhelmed by the sight of all our fans in front of us like a panorama in that large venue. The cheers we heard there were a big source of energy for me. It was a stage we’d dreamed of and it had taken us eight long years to get there. That might it such a meaningful and precious moment.

Music that brings happiness

Aron: I want to be a singer who always brings happiness to our fans. I think if our fans feel even a little happiness from listening to our music, we’ve done all the we need to do.

[rvdispatch]

EPISODE SEVEN SUMMARY

Episode Seven/The Finale Aired April 23rd, 2020, on MNet. It was a live event.

With the finale finally here, and being broadcast across the nation live, it seemed the entire nation was holding it’s breath to see who would make the final group. Live voting was integrated into the finale, with viewers being able to text in last-minute votes all through the episode, until the group number.

The finale began with a montage– a video of all 25 trainees, and the eliminations one by one– before the host came out and welcomed the live audience, outlining how you could vote last minute. Then the format of the show was outlined– one by one, the trainees would perform. Their final confessional would be broadcast, they’d talk a little with the host, and then a clip of their closest friends/their family cheering them on and wishing them well would be played for them to see.

Being the trainee in ninth place, Dita went first. She performed her solo song, and then her confessional played, with a montage of her best moments throughout the show– particularly her journey as the most inexperienced trainee. The family member they interviewed over video chat was Dita’s mother, who wished her well from Bangkok and cheered her on.

Next was Kaori, performing her song and then watching her confessional before her interview. Not only did her father give a few words from his home in Tokyo, but MNet also talked to Kaori’s cousin-- Terra’s Rosie. 

Jinhee went third, performing her song  before her confessional and interview happened. Her family clip was without a doubt the most emotional to happen yet– considering her history, her only living family member was her brother. After her brother spoke, MNet showed messages from her past groupmates, which reduced Jinhee to tears. 

Dokyoung was next. After all the usual proceedings, a video from her mothers was played. However, due to the stigma against same-sex couples in South Korea, only her biological mother was shown, with her step-mother being completely edited out, which resulted in a lot of backlash from international fans

Next up came Ginny. Her video showed her struggle between wanting her father to be proud and not wanting to be a rapper, and ended with her finally finding balance between all her skills. Her video contained both Andrew Woo and Nathan, and both had the same message– no matter what she wanted to do (be that rap or not), they would support her in that.

Seyeon was after that, performing her solo. Her montage had a bit of a different feel from the others– emphasis was put on the very obvious self-confidence issues she dealt with and the nerves she suffered through. Seyeon gets two videos– one from her parents, and one from her older brother, all wishing her the best. Seyeon cut her time early, running away before the cameras could catch her really crying.

After Seyeon came Nana. Her performance was followed by the montage and confessional, and her friendships with the other Spotlight girls is highlighted. Videos from her parents are played, with them cheering her on and telling her that they always knew she’d be a star.  

Jieun’s story was very much one of the underdog. After her song, they show news stories of the shock of her coming out against Spotlight, and it shows the struggle she had-- with being an independent trainee, and with how she worked her way up to the top from D grade. Her video is from her mother, who seems to be more emotional than even G1 is. 

Somi is next. She performed her song, and her montage tells a story of a girl under pressure, who is doing her best to live up to her family’s legacy. They show how far she’s come-- from messing up in her audition and getting D grade, to becoming the triple threat fans see her as today. Sona and Sowon do her video message, cheering her on.

Chase is second to last, and her montage is full of late hours– cuts of her sneaking out of the dorm to practice long after the others have gone to sleep (though her snapping at Dokyoung made the cut). Instead of family, Slash from Phantom is who is featured in the video. Said to be her main trainer, he is quick to say that he had no doubts she would make it this far. Chase almost looks a little stunned after her message, and needs escorting off the stage by her backup dancers.

Finally is Sola. Her montage is sweet– there are cuts of her being nice and giving advice to nearly every trainee. It is clear by her cut that she was one of the biggest cheerleaders for every trainee who participated. Her message comes from her parents and is in Thai– there are Korean subtitles for viewers at home, though. It is clear that she hasn’t seen them in a very long time– it takes her a while to collect herself after the video is finished.

The host reveals that voting is now closed. Montages of the best performances of the show are played, along with final cuts of all nine trainees. And then all eleven perform Very Very Very.

After the group performance, the host is given a card with the final rankings, and he reads them from #1 first, and #7 last.

Sola is ranked first place, followed by Chase– though that was the expected. The two had been fighting for the first two spots for much of the competition.

Somi is third, and after that comes Nana and G1-- it is revealed that before the finale, they were nearly tied.

Sixth is Seyeon. She breaks down, falling to the stage. Somi and G1, who were some of her closest friends in D grade, both have to run over and help her compose herself.

All the remaining trainees look absolutely petrified, but when Ginny is announced as the final trainee, she almost looks apologetic, hugging the others tightly before going to her spot. The other girls walk offstage as the host announces that the group will be named Unity. Their first single is said to already have music, lyrics and choreography– they will be recording it and learning it in the next few days, along with getting styled and taking promo photos, before they debut the next week.

The host says that the group will promote under MNet subsidiary, KWorks, and tells G1 that she has an honorary contract with the company until she can find another company to call home. He also announces the release of a two-disk Official Idol Project CD that will come out shortly after their debut.

[tetrakys]

Trois Allumettes - Chapter 8

I was late, my Personal Development lecture was going to start any moment now. When I entered the library, most seats were already taken. I quickly scanned the room until I spotted an empty seat and was just about to rush there when I noticed who was occupying the one right next to it.

I could still feel his hands on my skin, his voice whispering in my ear and his lips on my… damn! Calm down Candy! It was a dream… just a dream. An incredibly hot and completely crazy dream. Giving myself a mental shake, I made my way across the room.

“I think this is the first time we meet at one of these” I said, a little shyly, standing next to Lysander.

He raised his head from his notepad and smiled at me “Hi Candy.”

“Hi Lys, is this seat taken?”

He just shook his head, looking a little distracted.

“Were you writing a new poem? Lyrics maybe?” I asked sitting down.

“I am not sure yet” he replied pensive “I’ll know once it’s done.”

“I would really love to hear it. I mean… only if you want to.”

“Why?” he turned his head to me, surprised.

“I am a really curious person, I am sorry.” Embarrassed I looked down at my hands that, I just realised, were tormenting a poor innocent piece of paper.

“I know, that’s not what I meant. You specifically said hear, not read. Why?”

“Oh… I… I don’t know” my head still down, I didn’t have the guts to look at him in the eye “I think… Your poems are a part of you, you know? They are something deeply personal. If I were just reading them… I would feel like I was intruding somehow. Instead, if you were reading them to me I’d feel like you were letting me in.”

With the corner of my eye I could tell he was staring at me, moments went bye.

“You are amazing, you know that?”

I felt my jaw drop. What…

“Hello everyone!” Miss Paltry’s chirp voice interrupted my train of thoughts “Ready for a new invigorating discussion? I am really interested in hearing your thoughts about…”

“Can I have your number?” he whispered in my ear, and I felt his breath on my skin. A shiver ran through my spine. “There is an open mic night in a place nearby this weekend, and I was thinking of reading one of my old pieces.”

“Yes!” I replied, probably a little too quickly. I took out my phone and we quietly exchanged numbers. I hardly paid attention to class that day.

 //////////////////////////////

 Hi Candy, hope you had a nice week and classes didn’t keep you too busy. If you are still in the mood of coming to the reading, it’s going to be at 6pm at this place. I’m sorry I won’t be able to come with you since I will head there early. If you are free we could have dinner afterwards. I wish you a lovely evening.

I re-read Lys’s text for what was probably the 100th time. Of course I had said yes, to both the reading and the dinner. Having dinner together… was it a date maybe? I looked at myself in the mirror. I was dressed a little too casual for my liking if this indeed was a date: jeans, boots and a dark shirt. But from the address Lysander had sent me I knew I had to take the bus to get there and didn’t want to risk wearing heels. Also, I wasn’t 100% sure this was a date, so it was better not to go there and find out I was overdressed.

I had tied my hair in what, at first sight, looked like a simple messy bun, but that had required serious skills and hours of YouTube tutorials on my part. With a last touch to my lipstick, I put on a jacket and left for the pub.

The bus ride took longer than I thought, I should have taken into account the Friday evening traffic. When I stepped into the place I was twenty minutes late. Crap! The pub was packed and a guy was already on the stage. Fortunately he wasn’t Lys and I hoped with all my heart that I hadn’t missed it.

“Candy!” someone whispered-yelled on my left “here!”

I turned around and saw Rosa waving at me. She was sitting at a table close by with Leigh, the people around scowling at her since she wasn’t acting exactly inconspicuously. I made my way quickly before drawing even more attention to us.

“You are super late!” she whispered only for me to hear once I was sitting next to her “Didn’t Lys tell you it started at 6pm?”

“Yes, sorry, I got stuck in traffic.”

So… it wasn’t a date after all. Rosa and Leigh were here, and of course they were, they were his family after all. It was just a friendly outing. I had told him I wanted to hear his poetry and he had been kind enough to invite me to this event. An event that he had already planned to share with his brother and Rosa. I should actually feel pleased, flattered even, that he though our friendship was close enough to ask me to come... I couldn’t help to feel disappointed though.

Everyone started clapping and I realised the guy on the stage had finished. I hadn’t heard a single word.

“Here is Lys!” Rosa exclaimed. “You know… I am so happy he is finally doing this” she continued lowering her voice. “I have been pushing him to take part in one of these events for ages. He is so talented, but he is such an introvert! Castiel is the only person he shares more of his creations with, and probably not his most personal stuff. When a couple of days ago he told us he was finally doing this I couldn’t believe it!”

She went to add something more but stopped when the room became quiet again just as Lys stepped in front of the mic. To a stranger he looked perfectly calm and collected, but I had started to get to know him, and I could tell he was on edge. He quickly scanned the crowd and, when he found our table, his eyes rested on me for a few moments. I wasn’t sure from a distance, but I though he seemed to relax a little when our eyes met. Tipping his lips in a small smile, he stared ahead at the crowed and started reciting his poem.

He was… mesmerizing. Even Castiel with loud music and hundreds of screaming fans crying his name couldn’t compare. Just him alone, there on that stage, his voice deep and steady, soft lights highlighting his handsome features… And his words. It was a poem and a story at the same time. He was telling the story of a young boy who lived in a world made of glass, so fragile he couldn’t touch anything or anyone. I could feel all his sadness, and the guilt he felt for wanting to leave his home and his life behind. He just felt so… alone.

The poem ended with the boy stuck behind a tall wall of glass, looking forever at the real world and never able to reach it. When everyone started clapping I just stayed there unable to move. How could everyone cheer and smile? Didn’t they feel how sad the boy… he was? I felt my cheeks wet and realised I was silently crying. I couldn’t let anyone see me like this. I tried to pat my face with my hands but, when I remember that I was wearing make-up, I quickly excused myself and run to the loo.

Once there I took a few moments to collect myself. I shouldn’t feel like that, it was just a poem. But Lysander had been able to reach directly to my heart and touch it in a way I had never experienced before. Looking at my face in the mirror I was happy to find out that I didn’t look like a clown and my mascara was still were it was supposed to be, on my eyelashes. I took an extra couple of seconds to take deep breaths. When I was sure I was perfectly calm I went back to the table.

Lysander was there. Apparently the event was now over because no one else was on the stage, lights were on and most of the people had left, everyone who was still there was chatting loudly.

“Lys-baby you were great!” Rosa was telling him with big pats on his back. “I don’t know what finally made you cave but you should have done this a long time ago. Everyone loved your poem, the others had nothing on you.”

“It wasn’t a competition Rosa.”

“Still, if it had been you would have won hands down. No one was clapped as much as you were. Isn’t it right Candy?”

I nodded “You were amazing Lysander. I… I loved it.”

“Thank you Candy” a warm and slightly embarrassed smile on his lips.

“Let’s eat guys, steak and chips for me” Rosa added without even looking at the menu “I am starving! I could eat a whole cow!” She waved at us dismissively “don’t look at me like that, I am eating for two!”

We all laughed and spent a nice hour eating and chatting. We teased Rosa for her incredible appetite and she teased everyone else about this and that. We talked a lot about the pregnancy and their plans to move to the beach house after school. After a while, though, Rosa and Leigh decided it was time for them to head back home. We all left the pub together.

“I don’t think we are headed the same direction so… see you later, you two” Rosa said with a smirk and a laugh in her eyes. While Lys and Leigh said goodbye to each other she quickly whispered in my ear “Have you seen how he’s been looking at you the whole evening?” and with a knowing look she took Leigh’s arm and left.

Thank you Rosa… now I was completely flustered! Lys and I headed silently towards the bus stop. The trip back was way faster than the way there. We chatted a bit about classes and other light topics, but the times we were silent we were completely at ease with each other. It was one of the things I liked the most about spending time with him, we didn’t necessarily have to find something to talk about to not feel awkward, we always seemed to travel on the same wavelength.

“I was happy you were there tonight” he told me once we got back to the dorms. “Usually when I am with other people I feel strangely alone, it’s different with you.”

I smiled “M-Me too.” I stopped dead in my tracks “Oh no…” I groaned. A sign saying OUT OF ORDER was hanging over the elevator doors. “It was working when I left… my room is on the seventh floor!”

“You complain… I am on the ninth!” Lys looked terrified. Ha! I had never seen him at the gym, he probably hated physical activity as much as I did. Maybe I could take advantage of that, I was feeling a little mischievous “Last one who gets to my floor has to tell a secret!” and I started running up the stairs.

“Wh-What?” he replied dumbstruck. I just laughed and kept running, I was almost on the second floor. When I started to think that I was going to look very stupid running alone on these stairs if he didn’t indulge me, I felt quick steps behind my back.

Damn, for a guy who spent most of his days sitting and writing he was fast! And fit… now that I thought about it. I had seen him wearing just swimming trunks… that wasn’t the body of a sedentary writer!

Distracted by these thoughts I was surprised to find out he had caught up with me once we both got to the sixth floor. We were neck and neck. He got ahead and was just about to reach on the final step when I stumbled. I was about to fall head first on the steps in front of me when his strong arms reached me. My momentum was such, though, that I fell taking him with me. His body softening my fall.

“Ouch” I opened my eyes and I was lying on the stairs right on top of him. “I’m so sorry Lys!”

I quickly rolled over and sat on the step next to him, while he also took a sitting position.

“I’m such a klutz!” I was mortified. “Thank you for catching me. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine” he said, without looking me in the eye.

“I can tell you are not! I am sorry, really, I had the worst idea ever. Are you bruised anywhere?”

We were both panting heavily, we had just run seven flights of stairs and almost broke our necks.

“The only thing bruised is my ego. I should have caught you in a manlier way, instead of falling with you.”

I laughed “I basically fell on you with all my weight, I am surprised I didn’t break any of your bones.”

He laughed too and we spent a couple of minutes just catching our breaths.

“I believe you owe me a secret” he said looking at me with a playful smile.

“Uhm… no. Neither of us got to the seventh floor.”

“Only because I came back to save you. Risking my life and my poor bones. Now that I think about it my arm hurts a bit…”

“Ugh… fine!” I said feigning annoyance, but I was secretly enjoying this playful side of him. “What do you want to know?”

He looked at me serious for a moment then said “What did you really think about my poem?”

I was surprised… of all the things he could have asked me… that was difficult to answer sincerely. I didn’t want him to think me a weirdo because of how much it had affected me.

“I loved it, I told you. You are really talented.”

“I want to know what you really felt while you were listening to it.”

I took a few moments to think about how to reply, but then I decided that the truth is always the best way to go, at least with him.

“Overwhelmed” I said, my mouth suddenly dry “I had to go away for a few minutes to calm myself. I felt sad, desperate and utterly alone.” I looked at him straight in the eyes. “But you know… I would like to tell that boy… he is not by himself anymore. We can be alone together.”

Assuming that a gesture would be more clear than my blubbering, I placed my hand hesitantly on his chest.

He looked at me for a while, and I had no idea what he was thinking. Had I completely embarrassed myself?

But I didn’t move, we stayed there in the middle of the stairs, excessively close to one another, my hand still on his chest, our eyes locked. If ever someone walked by…

“We should go now…”

“We should. But…” his voice became soft “I would really like to kiss you before we go.”

I was left speechless and experienced a sort of déjà vu. For a few seconds it was almost as if time stopped. Not a sound and not a movement… then Lysander slid his hand under my chin and leaned towards me. I felt my heart pounding with the contact of his lips on mine, tender yet determined Lysander held me close. After a few seconds he stopped kissing me but didn’t let me go. My heart beating, I looked him in the eye without saying a word as he caressed my cheek.

“I really didn’t plan that…” he said “But…”

“Cough. Cough.”

We both turned around and saw Yeleen at the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t want to interrupt but you are blocking the passage.”

We instantly got up and walked up the stairs on the seventh floor. Yeleen headed directly in the room without sparing us a second look. When we were alone again Lys moved a lock of my hair that had escaped my bun from my face and tucked it behind my ear.

“Goodnight Candy.”

“Goodnight Lys.”

And with one last look he went up the stairs towards his room.

I quickly got into mine, luckily Yeleen was showering, so I had a few minutes for me to think about what had just happened.

Wow… we had kissed. Actually… he had kissed me. He caught me completely by surprise and I didn’t participate very actively, I was going to step up my game next time.

Well… was there going to be a next time? It wasn’t like we were together now or anything, maybe he just did it on the spur of the moment. Lys didn’t look like the kind of guy who had flings but… I didn’t know what to think.

I let myself fall on the bed looking at my phone. Maybe he was going to send me a text. I stared at my phone for a while, willing a text to appear. I clearly didn’t have Chani’s powers because I simply dozed off with the phone in my hand.

When I woke up the following morning a text of completely different nature was waiting for me.

////////////////////////////////

And with this we are all caught up with the story. Next chapters will come out after MCL episodes are out.

Back to Chapter 7

Go to Chapter 9

[antiquatedfuture]

Antiquated Future Distro Spring Newsletter

In brief: We picked up all three issues of Fred Thomas' (Saturday Looks Good to Me, City Center) Balcony zine series. The latest (We Need Emotional Labor) from Jennifer Williams' ever-popular workbook zine series is here. We brought our Summer Soul mixtape series out of retirement. The excellent Grand Terrace Photo League coffee table book is now much more affordable. There's new issues of some of our favorite literary and art journals: Big Big Wednesday, Incandescent, and We'll Never Have Paris. 

And in these trying times, we brought back our Protect Roe v Wade Zine Pack, but also encourage everyone to donate to organizations working directly against this, such as The Yellowhammer Fund, Access Reproductive Care Southeast, and National Network of Abortion Funds.

ZINES

Balcony #3- "A funny thing about regret is that it's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done." Interviews with long-running New Zealand experimental rock band The Dead C, cultish songwriter Edith Frost, and ambient musician John Daniel of Forest Management. ($6) 

Balcony #2- A public apology, an essay about Lewis Hyde's The Gift, an interview with left-field hip-hop musician Sterling Toles, in-depth record reviews, and a couple poems by Charles Gonsalves. ($6) 

Balcony #1- The issue that begin the Balcony series, a highly enjoyable take on the now-rare music-focused variety zine. Highlight: an interview with Chandra Oppenheim, who—at ten years old—headed up the New York no-wave band Chandra. ($6) 

Black Tea #5- A mixtape of Jason Martin's comics from recent years. Within: good-deed tollbooths, a tribute to San Francisco's Aquarius Records, and a really sweet one about a childhood business card collection. ($4)

Dogs of Brattleboro- Dogs busking with the punks, hanging out in cars, on walks, in laps, in arms. 22 images from photographer Bob George's Brattleboro, Vermont archives. Each zine comes with a dog button! ($4)

A Halloween Poem for Children- A short collection of short poems (in handsome mini-zine form) from Murder City Devils' frontman Spencer Moody. Metaphysical oddities that casually nod to centuries of counterculture writers. ($5) Safe Words- A lyrical mini-memoir of desire. Through a series of vignettes, longtime zinester Sarah Geo recounts her sexual experiences with men, traversing the good and the bad to shine a spotlight on sexual desire in all its complexities. ($8)

Somnambulist #31: Dear Mayor Wheeler- Letters to Portland mayor Ted Wheeler regarding Portland's housing crisis from the perspective of a long-time advocate for houseless communities. This far-reaching collection of letters brings in personal, literary, and historical viewpoints. ($5)

Sugar Needle #41- The zine of oddball candy reviews. Within: scorched rice, wagon wheels, Italian apertifs, bee-berry honey caramel chocolates, jujube nougat, and much more. ($3)

Tin Can Telephone #6- Another issue of historic lost oddities and present realities. The highlight: a short history of cardboard cut-out cereal-box records of the 1960s and '70s. ($5)

We Need Emotional Labor: Discussion Questions to Redistribute the Work that Holds Communities Together- An essential guide to understanding both the value of emotional labor and the imbalance of it. ($8)

We, The Drowned- In the vein of his Fixer Eraser zine series, We, the Drowned is Jonas' latest collection of curious short prose pieces. Under the banner of "wishes and ghost stories," the pieces within are filled with conversations, lies, playful tangents, and a lot of heart. ($3) We'll Never Have Paris #16: Food- The latest issue of the literary zine of all things never meant to be focuses on food. And within, there are personal essays about diets, the melting pot of culinary cultures in a textiles factory, an immigrant family's relationship to Filet-O-Fish, a French mother's relationship to endives, the morning of Freddy Mercury's death, a failed care package, and more. ($6)

BOOKS

Big Big Wednesday, Issue Six- An inviting literary journal of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art, each issue of Big Big Wednesday holds a little something for everyone. One of our all-time favorite journals. With work from (the one-and-only) Jo Ann Beard, Jane Wong, Erin Perry, Madeline ffitch, and many others. ($15) Incandescent: A Color Film Zine, Issue 15- Parking meters, pensive basketball players, proud dogs, explorative cats, tomatoes in a shirt, a swamp room, a shack. All gathered, figuring out how “to approach stillness,” the latest theme of Incandescent, our very favorite photography journal. ($14)

MUSIC Anna Burch- Party (Life Like)- Before her Polyvinyl pop gem, Quit The Curse, there was Party: the Beach Boys' Party-inspired solo debut from Anna Burch (Failed Flowers, Frontier Ruckus). (Cassette) ($8)

Anna Burch & Fred Thomas- St. Adalbert / Parkways (Polyvinyl)- A stunning indie-pop gem a piece from Michigan's finest: Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good to Me, City Center) and Anna Burch. (seven inch) ($8)

Bitpart- Beyond What's Left (Rumbletowne)- Thirteen songs from Paris-based post-power-pop punks, Bitpart. In your face, catchy, and raw, with big heavy basslines and lots of energy. (LP) ($12)

Bonny Doon- Classical Days and Jazzy Nights (Life Like)- A repress of the 2015 four-track home recordings of Detroit band Bonny Doon. Hazy, Echoplex-laden, alt-country-tinged pop anthems. (Cassette) ($8)

City Center- Spring St (Quite Scientific)- A long-lost record from the late great City Center. Four woozy, atmospheric, skewed dream-pop tracks. On clear, screen-printed, one-sided vinyl. So gorgeous! (12" EP) ($12) Cultural Fog- Self-Titled (Life Like)- Claire Cirocco, Emily Roll, and Fred Thomas combine to make pulsing, triple-synth soundscapes that are "strongly under the influence of Windam Hill." (Cassette) ($8)

Dominic Coppola & Fred Thomas- Enough Time Has Passed (Life Like)- A collaborative project between drone musician Dominic Coppola and musical chameleon Fred Thomas. (Cassette) ($8)

Land & Buildings- Huron River Eclipse (Life Like)- Like a chamber-pop band led by a synth player and inspired by Nico Muhly's Mothertongue and John Cale's Artificial Intelligence. (Cassette) ($8)

Make Like a Tree- Mothernight (This + That Tapes)- Hazy, ambient dream-pop from the Ukraine. Really, it's just such a pleasure. An album to get lost in. (Cassette + Digital Download) ($8)

The Max Levine Ensemble- Backlash, Baby (Rumbletowne)- Hyperdrive pop-punk packed with stories from songwriter David Combs (Spoonboy, Somnia, Bad Moves). (LP) ($12)

Mystery Cassette Tape Grab Bag- Five cassettes, from our back catalog and beyond, all for $10. What a deal! (cassettes) ($10)

Nick Keeling- Martha (Why the Tapes Play)- Three pieces of lo-fi instrumental piano on a three-inch CD. Music that exists beautifully outside of time. (3" CD) ($5)

Pleasure Systems- Terraform (Self-Released)- The latest from Pleasure Systems, the solo electronic project of Clarke from The Washboard Abs. Terraform takes the project into a place that sparkles and pops in digital melancholic bliss. A masterpiece in synth waves, pitch shifts, glitches, and stutters, all covered in pop song dreams. (Cassette + Digital Download) ($6) 

Somnia- How The Moon Shines On The Shit (Rumbletowne)- A full-throttle pop-punk supergroup that combines the songwriting talents of Erica Freas (RVIVR) and David Combs (Spoonboy, Max Levine Ensemble) to create an album to help you get through the day. (LP) ($12)

Songs for Moms- River (Rumbletowne)- Five tracks that captures Songs for Moms' enduring greatness. Adventurous pop-punk songs of scars and healing, grieving and celebrating. (12" EP) ($12)

Spencer Moody & Little Stray- Split Tape (This + That Tapes)- A split release from Murder City Devils' frontman Spencer Moody and Little Stray, the solo project of Rabbits to Riches' guitarist Chris Baldys. Two sides of smart, intimate bedroom folk in handsome handmade packaging. (Cassette + Digital Download) ($8)

Summer Soul, Vol. 9- The ninth volume of our long-running Summer Soul mixtape series. Twenty songs of apologies, thank yous, heartbreaks, and celebrations. An hour of lesser-known '60s and '70s soul. (Cassette) ($5)

[oramalong]

Pather dunia

#Pather dunia movie#

A drama is commonly considered the opposite of a comedy, but may also be considered separate from other works of some broad genre, such as a fantasy. In the context of film and radio, drama describes a genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone, focusing on in-depth development of realistic characters who must deal with realistic emotional struggles. While the album performed well on Billboard's Top Electronic Albums chart, peaking at number 21, it did not chart on the Billboard 200, the US Pop Albums chart. It was later released in the United States (both in retail stores and as digital downloads) in 2006. The album mostly incorporates pop and eurodance musical styles, with some synthpop elements. The second single, " Look on the Floor (Hypnotic Tango)", also hit the UK Top 40, and climbed to Number 2 on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart as an import, becoming Bananarama's biggest US dancefloor hit since "Venus" two decades earlier. The album's first single " Move in My Direction" debuted on the UK Singles Chart at Number 14, also becoming their first UK Top 40 hit since 1993. It features eleven newly recorded tracks, along with a remix of their 1986 smash hit " Venus" (done by Soft Cell's Marc Almond) and a 2005 remix of their 1982 hit " Really Saying Something", an underground bootleg club hit produced by Solasso.ĭrama is a comeback of sorts for Bananarama members Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin and is their first album to be released in their native UK since 1993. Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.ĭrama is the ninth studio album by the British female vocal duo Bananarama. It did, however, climb to number ten on the U.S. "Drama!" did not continue Erasure's chart success in the United States, where it failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100. In Germany the single also fared well, hitting number twelve. Released prior to Wild!, "Drama!" continued Erasure's winning streak on the UK singles chart, peaking at number four. The mob's vocals were added to by The Jesus and Mary Chain, who happened to be recording in the studio next door. Lines such as "your shame is never-ending!" are directed at the subject of the song. Lyrically the song addresses a person who could be considered a drama queen, experiencing "one psychological drama after another" about everyday struggles that are universal and are easily dealt with by most people. "Drama!" is known for its mob-shouted "Guilty!" exclamation throughout and Bell's intricate, multi-layered background vocals. As the song progresses, the instrumentation and vocals become more hectic, ultimately ending as a full-blown dancefloor anthem. Written by Vince Clarke and Andy Bell, the synthpop song begins with a low-key keyboard line and a subdued vocal from Bell. It was issued by Mute Records in the UK and Sire Records in the U.S. The twists and the turns in the tale carry forward the romance of Yusuf and Jameela Bano." Drama!" is the first single released by Erasure from their fourth studio album Wild!. Yusuf goes on to be a renowned singer Chand and Jameela Bano falls for him. In turn, Sheikhu’s parents plan to corner the entire wealth of the both the families. Khan Bahadur decides to marry off his daughter Jameela Bano with Yusuf. When the train arrives, the couple, with their son Sheikhu, dump Yusuf and catch the train and reach Nawab Jalaluddin home, passing off Sheikhu as Yusuf. As the arrival of the train is delayed by four hours, Yusuf and the maid fall asleep. The maid (Leela Chitnis) and the couple, who bring up Yusuf, meet at the railway station, on way to Nawab Jalaluddin’s home. Khan Bahadur also arranges a maid to look after Yusuf. But the amount is siphoned off for the upkeep of their own son, Sheikhu (Pran). It is under the aegis of Khan Bahadur that Yusuf is looked after by Sheikhu’s parents, paying Rs 300 to the couple. Nawab Jalaluddin’s friend is Khan Bahadur (Nasir Hussain), whose daughter is Jameela Bano (Nutan). So, the fourth son, Yusuf (Raj Kapoor) is sent away soon after his birth, to be brought up by another couple, the brother and wife of the Begum, for three years. Nawab Jalaluddin (Hari Shivdasani) and his Begum (Mumtaz Begum) lose three sons at birth. Equally admirably like his younger brother Shammi Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, too, acquits himself with distinction. Starring Shammi Kapoor and Kalpana, the plot is carefully laid out to pave the way for the breezy romance that follows, between the lead pair.Īnother striking similarity between ‘Professor’ and ‘Dil Hi To Hai’ is the hero playing the old man with his own lady love.

#Pather dunia movie#

It is pretty much like the movie ‘Professor’, made a year earlier in 1962.

[abdifarah]

Hotel Pennsylvania

Central Pennsylvania is weird. Homeowners string confederates flags as nonchalantly as Christmas lights. My mom, who moved to Central Pennsylvania against my protests, lives about ten miles from Spring Grove, PA, which we have to drive through whenever we visit my Aunt Darlene and Uncle Kenny right below the Pennsylvania–Maryland line. Spring Grove is a cruel joke of a name as the town perpetually smells of rancid cabbage. The smell emanates from the Glatfelter Paper Mill at the heart of the town. All the shops and services in the town either bear the Glatfelter name or use some corny paper pun in their signage. The old brick row homes that line Main Street have porches but no one sits on them. If you do see someone on the street they have an exhausted expression well beyond their years, perhaps from too many cigarettes, or possibly from years of hopelessly working at the paper mill. A cloud – both literal and spiritual – hangs over Spring Grove.

But there is another kind of small town in Central Pennsylvania. All the companies in this town are higher tech with little pollution to diffuse the sun. Power washed brick houses with immaculately manicured lawns line the small streets of Lititz, Pennsylvania. Voted the Best Small Town in America by AARP, every block has either an ice cream stand, or a guitar shop, or a quaint bed and breakfast. On any summer afternoon the sidewalks and streets are filled with happy people. Kids in their bathing suits weave through older pedestrians on Razor scooters. Fit and fresh faced adults in Tevas and Birkenstocks walk dogs, and still active older couples in Brooks Brothers hold hands while taking an evening stroll. It's the kind of town that takes the Fourth of July very seriously. Year round every house has the same 4 x 6 foot American flag fixed at the same 45 degree angle from a post of the white painted porches that wrap each facade, so as to clear up any confusion with one’s neighbor. “Oh, you’re American? I’m American too! What are the chances?” But around the Fourth somehow more American flags appear. They break out those pleated half-circle numbers with the concentric red, white, and blue ring with the star in the middle, and drape them over their porch railings. Little old ladies plant entire fields of miniature flags in public green spaces, in memory of fallen soldiers. (When exactly did the 4th of July merge with Memorial Day? Let there be no question, Lititz, Pennsylvania loves the troops. In Lititz the 4th alone cannot contain the fireworks, but anytime for about a week before and after you can expect to hear a random boom and see a starburst of red white or blue sparks in the sky.

Unlike Spring Grove, Lititz is thriving, bolstered by a constellation of steady companies offering both good paying blue collar work as well as more tech driven white collar jobs. There is a Rolex factory here. Lititz is what I assume Trump supporters envision when they pray Make America Great Again. Surprisingly, despite the overt patriotism and trappings of Americana, Lititz is not Trump Country. The cute coffee shops and overpriced bistros are populated by salt and pepper haired businessmen pissed that Trump’s steel tariffs are cutting into the bottom line, as well as woke college kids home for summer break shedding genuine tears over the separation of immigrant families at the border. Turns out a lot of white folks despise Trump as much if not more than us various minorities.

Despite the friendly faces and preponderance of liberal allies, my skin still crawls in this still uber-white small town. I am usually the only brown person in sight and while the eyes are kind I do feel all eyes on me wherever I go. I imagine walking into a dark divey bar in depressed Spring Grove and the proverbial record screeches and some grisled bartender asks acerbically, “What are you doing here!?” In Lititz the look on peoples’ faces asks the same “What are you doing here?” without the coldness, but rather with concern or surprise, as if to ask “Are you lost?” “How did you stumble upon our white oasis?” I come to Lititz regularly for work as a subcontractor for one of the big companies fueling the prosperity of Lititz, a company called Tait Towers. Most people will never hear about Tait Towers but they are ubiquitous. If you have gone to a big arena concert in the last 30 years you have seen their work, as they are the foremost supplier of decking and stage equipment for rock and pop concert tours. Anything sleek and shiny and automated that adorned the stage of that last concert you attended was probably Tait.  I get called in when they are working on something a little weirder, handmade, idiosyncratic. Over the years assisting Tait’s in-house Scenic Department, we have built a gold vinyl wrapped tiger and lion for Katy Perry, sculpted a 30 foot jungle Tree for Britney Spears, and created an ice crystal themed stage for Lady Gaga. Turns out the ladies of pop like hand made props to counteract their synthesized sound, for which me and my bank account are grateful. It's not the most avantgarde work, but the pay is decent. They put me up in hotel while I am there. For a while I had Hilton Diamond Status after a particularly long five month stay designing and building an inflatable tree for Cirque du Soleil’s Avatar themed show, Toruk. Strangely, I get asked to make a lot of trees.

This past Saturday I was leaving the local laundromat. My hotel has a washer and dryer but I still jump at any opportunity show my black face in town and mix it up with the townspeople. However awkward, I am a glutton for punishment. As I was turning the corner out of the laundromat parking lot I almost shocked myself into an accident as I witnessed a Chinese family on their porch within a row of houses. Where had these people been during those homogeneous 4th of July celebrations or during those awkward evenings I spent at the bar of the Bull’s Head, a local tavern? I suspected that there was a whole unseen community of minorities in Lititz. I remembered the handful of other black and brown people that worked at Tait. Why had I not seen this more diverse crowd during my daily coffee runs to the local bakery, Dosie Dough, or out walking their dogs or playing with their children in the evening? It seemed that the other people of color went to work, did their job, and immediately jetted home as soon as the day was done. Also, a lot of them probably chose to forego small town living in favor of the more urban Lancaster, Pennsylvania about seven miles south of Lititz.

After a few weeks in Lititz, I too found myself retreating to my hotel room after the work day. Should I go out for dinner for a little more ambiance or grab a drink at the bar with its potential for conversation. The pessimistic belief that I would be the only black person and the sole vessel to absorb the awkward stares proved exhausting. I would instead microwave an Amy’s Mexican casserole bowl for dinner and catch up on the last season of The Americans. At some point myself and the other people of color of Lititz made an unspoken pact with the white people of this sleepy town that we would do our jobs and go home immediately in order to perpetuate the belief that this was one of those ideal small towns, the kind that could be voted Best Small Town in America. When I imagine the best small town in America sadly I do not see a Chinese family, black welders, or even myself.

After years of coming to work with Tait I can confidently say that I hate classic rock. Tait is all about classic rock. The founder, Michael Tait, an Australian expat, got his start building stages for the band Yes in the 60’s. As an independent artist, my short stints with Tait represent my only times working in a real workplace with set hours. For years the shop was haunted by an omnipresent Muzak system that played classic rock incessantly. Everyday at around 4pm the Eagles’ “Hotel California”, a song written by Satan himself, would torment us. Working 10 to 12 to 14 hour days to meet a deadline, 4 o’ clock was our witching hour; too late in the day to bring any new energy or insights to the project, much too early to begin cleaning up for the day. The lyrics, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” taunted me, less because of their spot on description of my current predicament but more because they’re just stupid. Hearing the same “classic” songs day after day I realized the utter mediocrity of classic rock as whole. Just competently melodic enough to be easy to listen to, unlike say punk or metal (both far superior). Lyrically the stories ranged from completely meaningless, to embarrassingly infantile, to undeniably problematic. Somehow we decided that this was the American music, over jazz, blues, funk, and r&b. Classic rock will be playing on the space shuttle we board after we successfully destroy earth and it will be playing on whatever outpost we establish on the faraway planet we colonize.

Currently, I am working on a set of nine sculptures of Elton John that will array the proscenium arch above the stage for his upcoming tour. Overall, I enjoy this work. At least it is not another tree. And as far as pop music goes I dig Elton John’s music more than some of the other pop stars for whom I have made art. However, at the end of a long day sculpting his strange bulbous nose and thin lips for the seventh, eighth or ninth time I begin to sour a bit on Sir Elton. Elton John is 73 years old (probably older since, like most performers, I assume he gave a younger age when he started out) and we are building a stage for him for a projected three year tour that will net him millions of dollars. How many black artists or other musicians of color are still relevant and can sell out arenas into their 60’s and 70’s? Maybe Stevie Wonder? I can easily name 20 white (male) musicians. We already mentioned Elton John; how about Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, Sting, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Buffett? I can keep going. Were these giants of rock undeniably better than their female contemporaries or artists of color working at the same time so as to secure an undying career into infinity?

I read in an article years ago detailing some of the financial troubles of T-Boz and Chilli of TLC, that they did not have much money coming in outside of the $1200 royalty check they received monthly. TLC was a group notoriously mistreated and shortchanged by their management and record labels yet they still had $1200 a month in royalties arriving like clockwork. I can barely begin to fathom what a group like the Rolling Stones receives in regular royalties. At any moment a Rolling Stones song plays somewhere on this blue planet. I hypothesize that the proliferation of classic rock around the world may be the biggest form of white welfare. According to the website, Inside Philanthropy, Jimmy Buffett is worth $550 million. He has one terrible song that he has somehow parlayed into a fortune! He is then free to spread that money among various causes or toward organizations like the NRA. Or take rock and roll’s running joke that the Rolling Stones, despite their hard living are somehow, immortal. While humorous and perplexing we all know the reason for these artist’s longevity. Being wanted, having work to do, being asked to perform, and the monetary and emotional support they afford sustains one’s life. I cannot help but feel that the melancholy that we collectively share when a giant of black music dies – Prince a few years back and Aretha Franklin most recently – stems from the understanding that despite their great fame and success their talent deserved more. They deserved Rolling Stones level treatment. Is there a better rock and roll song that Franklin’s “Respect” or “Chain of Fools?” I should have been in Lititz making nine life-size sculptures of Aretha Franklin and not Elton John.

The last time I arrived at Tait to work on a project I noticed the absence of the Muzak system. Every department now controlled their own music. Sometimes someone plays from their Spotify or Apple Music or we just put on the radio. Much to my chagrin and confusion, somehow the Freddy Kruger of classic rock continues to haunt me even with my mostly young coworkers choosing the music. Someone will mindlessly put on the “Beatles Radio” on Pandora, or WXPN, a Philly radio station, will have a “Throwback Thursday” traversing the entire discography of the Rolling Stones. One day during WXPN’s regular offerings (usually a mix of new rock with a few eclectic curve balls thrown every now and then) Childish Gambino AKA Donald Glover’s “This is America” came on (I too am surprised by the ubiquity of this song as I viewed it less as something to casually listen to and more as the multi-level artwork that I was initially presented with through its graphic video. But alas, the song bumps). Almost instinctively, without prompt, fanfare, or commotion one of my coworkers changed the channel. After hours of absorbing banal rock something mysterious sparked a station change. I tried to put this incident out of my mind. Soon after someone put on an Itunes 80’s playlist. Somehow 80’s music has come to mean “White 80’s”; Culture Club, Billy Idol, and all that other Breakfast Club, Top Gun, Say Anything music, completely omitting black acts, save titans like Michael Jackson and Prince. Surprisingly, a Janet Jackson song slipped onto this mostly vanilla playlist, but almost as soon as I started bouncing my shoulders and popping my neck along with Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” someone calmly put down their tools, walked to the computer and skipped to the next song!

I work with genuinely good people. The same liberal minded white people that I would overhear furiously denouncing Trump in the coffee shop. But there was something unconsciously disturbing about a black voice coming out of the office speakers, and conversely something calming and reassuring about A-Ha’s “Take On Me,” which restored the stasis after Janet’s interruption. Was the promulgation of classic rock and other culturally white genres part of some conspiracy to entrench whiteness as the default and everything else an aberration? The truth was probably less insidious and more banal, but no less effective. Sometimes I’ll muster the courage to take over DJ duties and I will attempt to put on a more colorful station or playlist, but even I find myself squirming with embarrassment if a particular black song plays. I am conscious that, unlike those classic rock songs that we all know to the point of no longer hearing them, every word of an unfamiliar song from an unfamiliar voice conspicuously grabs the attention and appears in bold text before ones eyes, complete with a bouncing ball keeping place. This can become awkward when, say, Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” comes on during a 90’s Jams Playlist. I want a freak in the morning/ A freak in the evening, just like me/ I need a roughneck nigga/ That can satisfy me. Why should a song that boldly expresses black female sexuality be awkward for me? I listen to plenty of songs all day that foreground white male sexuality: AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” or Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” Or why should a rap song with explicit lyrics put the room in a frenzy? Eric Clapton literally has a song called, “Cocaine.”

White supremacy resides not only within the purview of avowed white supremacists; that resident of Spring Grove or Dover with truck nuts hanging off his gun metal grey Ford Raptor with the giant confederate flag waving. We are all complicit. The MAGA white supremacist is not the only one lying to themselves about America’s past. The liberal resident of Lititz is as well. So am I. Somewhere we all believed the wonderfully illustrative mid-century American propaganda that America was a white family behind a white picket fence and that everyone else is just borrowing space, when in reality people from all ethnic backgrounds have shared this country since day one. And to be more factual there was a time on this land mass before white people; before genocide, theft, and slavery. Us people of color need to combat this as well. We may be mathematical minorities, but we are not new here. We are not the cousin crashing on the couch, lying awake and hungry, afraid to go to the kitchen and make food, so as not to disturb the owners of the house. We need to not be ashamed of our music, our existence. We need to show up and be seen; at those corny 4th of July celebrations and especially at the voting booth, reminding all onlookers that we are just as American. Only then might we all imagine a more diverse picture when we think of the Best Small Town in America, and only then might I be freed from the hell of “Hotel California” playing on my radio into eternity.

[swynlake-rp]

“We are the Muses, goddesses of the arts and proclaimers of heroes.”

FULL NAME: Euterpe of Hesiod  Carolina “Linnet” Beau Blue BASED ON: The Muses (Hercules) FACE CLAIM: Rachel Zegler PRONOUNS: She/her BIRTHDAY: June 13, 2004 CURRENT STATUS: Taken

Character Information 

NORTHWEST ARTS STUDENT WINS PRESTIGIOUS SCHOLARSHIP 

For Northwest School of the Arts Musical Theater Senior Linnet Beau Blue, the character of Anastasia felt like it was written for her. Born and raised in a now retired fairy hollow in the Appalachian Mountains, only two hours from Charlotte, Beau Blue entered the foster system just one week after her ninth birthday. She was forced to start over in an unfamiliar world with no family beside her. Now, a decade later, she performed “Journey to the Past”  from Anastasia the Musical in the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway.  She won first place at the Jimmy Awards, a standing ovation, and a ticket to wherever she wants to go. 

With a melodious Appalachian drawl– which she can go in and out of with ease– Beau Blue described the feeling when she found out she was the first Magick from Northwest School of the Arts–and North Carolina– to win the award. 

“I just kept thinking, I sure hope my maw and paw see this one day!” she exclaimed with an upbeat laugh. “Wherever they are, I know they’re proud. And that’s why I sing.” 

Beau Blue entered Northwest School of the Arts in the fall of 2023, after previously attending West Charlotte High School. She was encouraged to apply to the prestigious arts school by her friends and foster parents, one of whom is Jesse Hornick, the drama teacher for West Charlotte High School.

“When I heard Linnet sing during her first audition, I knew she was something special,” said Hornick. “She’s a dream student for any theater director, screenwriter, musician, you name it. We were lucky she stayed at West Charlotte as long as she did, but we always knew she was destined for the big time. It’s wonderful to know the world hears what we hear.” 

Along with musical theater, Beau Blue is a multi-instrumentalist who plays the piano, guitar, banjo, and the fiddle. Her love of music was born in her fairy hollow and influenced by the local bluegrass sound of the High Country. Despite her prestigious theater award, Beau Blue intends to return to her roots as she looks beyond high school. That decision led her to apply for an early-admissions program across the ocean– at Pride University in historic, magic-friendly Swynlake, England. 

“Loads of people expect me to head up to New York City, but when I found the Merlin Fellows program and learned about Swynlake, my heart fluttered that way. There was no stopping it,” said Beau Blue. “I think it’s a little like my own “Journey to the Past.” Getting a chance to be part of a magical community, and a holler again. It’s something I’ve dreamed of.” 

Beau Blue has opted to take a summer class to help her get acclimated, and finished out her year at Northwest School of the Arts early. Now, the next step of her journey can begin. 

✓ Delightful, generous, playful  

✖  Disorganized, irresponsible, boastful

Character Suggestions

POC

Current Relationships

None

Possible Relationships

click here!

Magical Abilities

The Order of Hesiod ; Muse of Music and Lyrics – can play any instrument and inspire musicians.

Fairy – Music talent

[blackkudos]

Ronald Isley

Ronald Isley (/ˈaɪzliː/; born May 21, 1941) is an American recording artist, songwriter, record producer, and occasional actor. Isley is better known as the lead singer and founding member of the family music group the Isley Brothers.

Early life

Isley was born the third of six brothers (O'Kelly Isley, Jr., Rudolph Isley, Ronald, Vernon Isley, Ernie Isley, Marvin Isley) to Sallye Bernice (Bell) and O'Kelly Isley, Sr. Ronald, like many of his siblings, began his career in the church. He began singing at the age of three, winning a $25 war bond for singing at a spiritual contest at the Union Baptist Church. By the age of seven, Ronald was singing on-stage at venues such as the Regal Theater in Chicago, alongside Dinah Washington and a few other notables.

Career

By his early teens, he was singing regularly with his brothers in church tours and also first appeared on TV on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. In 1957, sixteen-year-old Ronald and his two elder brothers O'Kelly, 19 and Rudy, 18, moved to New York, recording doo-wop for local labels before landing a major deal with RCA Records in 1959, where the trio wrote and released their anthemic "Shout". By the summer of 1959, the Isley family had moved from Cincinnati to a home in Englewood, New Jersey.

For much of the Isley Brothers' duration, Ron Isley would remain the group's consistent member of the group as well as the lead vocalist for most of the group's tenure with sporadic lead shares with his older brothers. In 1969, Ron and his brothers reformed T-Neck Records in a need to produce themselves without the control of record labels, forming the label shortly after ending a brief tenure with Motown. In 1973, the group's style and sound drastically changed following the release of the 3 + 3 album where brothers Ernie Isley and Marvin Isley and in-law Chris Jasper permanently enter the brothers' lineup, writing the music and lyrics to the group's new sound. The younger brothers had been providing instrumental help for the brothers since the late 1960s. By the mid-1970s, Ronald was living in Teaneck, New Jersey.

After Kelly Isley's death in 1986 and Rudy Isley's exit to fulfill a dream of ministry in 1989, Ronald has carried on with the Isley Brothers name either as a solo artist or with accompanying help from the group's younger brothers, much more prominently, Ernie Isley. In 1990, Isley scored a top-ten duet with Rod Stewart with a cover of his brothers' hit "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)", and in 2003 Ronald recorded a solo album, Here I Am: Bacharach Meets Isley, with Burt Bacharach. In addition, Ron Isley became a sought-after hook singer for R&B veteran R. Kelly, and hip-hop acts such as Warren G, 2Pac and UGK.

Ronald released his first solo album Mr. I on November 30, 2010. The album includes the first single "No More" It debuted at number 50 on the Billboard 200, selling 22,243 copies. It was his first solo album to crack that chart.

In 2010, Isley received a "Legend Award" at the Soul Train Music Awards.

In 2013, Ronald released his second solo album This Song Is For You sign labels eOne. The album includes the first single "Dinner and A Movie". Second single, Premiere Song "My Favorite Thing" wrote, features and produced singer, Kem. Ronald received a nominees Independent R&B/Soul Artist Performance, at the Soul Train Music Awards.

In 2014, Ronald made a cameo appearance in the music video for Kendrick Lamar song "i".

Personal life

In 1993, Isley married producer/composer/singer Angela Winbush in Los Angeles, California. They quietly divorced in early 2002. When Winbush received chemotherapy following her ovarian cancer diagnosis, Isley was by her side giving her his support in her recovery. He has older children with various women, including daughters Tawanna and Trenisha. In 2004, while in London, Isley suffered a mild stroke, which halted an Isley Brothers tour there. In September 2005, Isley made headlines when he married background singer Kandy Johnson (of the duo JS/Johnson Sisters), who is 35 years his junior. Their son, Ronald Isley, Jr. was born in January 2007. In 2007, it was reported Isley had kidney problems. He still lives in St. Louis.

Tax evasion

In 2006, Isley was convicted of tax evasion charges and sentenced to three years and one month in prison. Isley's sentence was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Isley was imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terre Haute, Indiana, and was scheduled for release on April 13, 2010. He was moved to a half-way house in St. Louis, Missouri, following an early departure that October. After his sentence was completed, Isley was released from a federal half-way house on April 13, 2010.

Isley is listed as one of California's most delinquent taxpayers, with a $303,411.43 debt from a lien filed on October 22, 2002.

Wikipedia