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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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MARY WICKES

June 13, 1910 - October 22, 1995

Mary Wickes (nee Mary Isabella Wickenhauser) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to parents who were theatre buffs. A smart student, Mary skipped two grades and graduated from High School at age 16. In college, she majored in English and Political Science, though shifted her career goals to acting at the suggestion of a professor.

Wickes’ first Broadway play was Spring Dance in 1934, acting alongside Phil Ober, who married Vivian Vance in 1941. Her second Broadway role was in Stage Door (1936) although she was not asked to repeat her role in the 1937 film. One of the RKO contract players cast in the film version was Lucille Ball.

In The Man Who Came to Dinner, her seventh Broadway show in 1939, she played Nurse Preen, a role she repeated in the 1942 film, her Hollywood debut. She did the role twice more on television in 1949 and 1972. During her busy film and television career, she often played prim, professional women, secretaries, nurses, nuns, and housekeepers, who made sarcastic quips. She left Broadway in 1948, and did not return for another 30 years.

Wickes did not do nearly as much radio work as many actors in Hollywood did, probably because she was busy on Broadway, but she did act opposite Lucy and Desi’s friend and house guest Orson Welles doing radio plays for the “Mercury Theatre” program. She was also sometimes heard in the 1950 series “Crime Does Not Pay.”

On December 19, 1949, in a one-hour live “Studio One in Hollywood” presentation on CBS (a weekly anthology series), Mary Wickes became the first actor to play Mary Poppins, almost 15 years before Julie Andrews immortalized the magical nanny on screen.

Lucille Ball and Mary Wickes were more than just co-stars. Wickes was a close personal friend to Lucille Ball, who often went on vacation with the family. According to Ball’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, Wickes was her mother’s most constant friend throughout her life.

Wickes was actually a regular on television a couple of years before Lucille Ball, as part of the cast of “Inside U.S.A.” (1949-1950). Lucille Ball guest-starred on the series in November 1949. The show was done in New York and Lucy was delayed in getting to the studio for rehearsals, so Mary Wickes was asked to stand in for her. When she finally arrived, Lucy observed Wickes and was impressed with her work. They were friends from then on.

A year later, Ball joined her film co-star Bob Hope on his television show, “The Star Spangled Revue”, which also featured Mary Wickes.

In February 1952, Ball hired Wickes to play one of her most memorable characters, Lucy Ricardo’s ballet mistress, Madam LaMond, on “I Love Lucy.” This would be Wickes’ only performance on the series.

Although she did not return to “I Love Lucy”, Wickes still maintained a relationship with Desilu, appearing on 21 episodes of “The Danny Thomas Show” from 1956 to 1958. She played Danny’s no-nonsense Press Agent, Liz O’Neill.

At the end of the first season of “The Lucy Show,” however, Wickes returned to Lucy’s TV family. In her first appearance, her character actually used her birth name, Mrs. Wickenhauser in “Lucy and the Runaway Butterfly” (TLS S1;E29) in 1963.

A few months later, Wickes is back. This time as Frances, one of Lucy’s friends, at the start of season two, which was shot (but not aired) in color. Fran takes the role of Charmian, opposite Lucy’s Cleopatra, at the Danfield Community Theatre.

Fran was also a member of the Danfield Women’s Auxiliary Fire Department, alongside Lucy and Viv. So when they form a softball team, Fran and Audrey (Mary Jane Croft) also get involved.

Fran’s final appearance finds her and the other volunteer fire fighters taking life-saving courses in order to impress Mr. Mooney and the bank trustees to save their brigade. When that fails, Lucy sets a small fire in the bank, intending to be the hero and put it out - but naturally the plan fails.

When the series re-set the action in Los Angeles, Fran was left behind, and Wickes instead appeared as a series of different characters, starting with Lucy’s Aunt Gussie, in “Lucy and the Sleeping Beauty” (TLS S4;E9) in 1965. The dozing beauty of the title is not Wickes, but guest star Clint Walker.

In 1966, Lucille Ball’s favorite game show, “Password”, hosted not one, but two ‘Lucille Ball & Friends’ weeks! Mary Wickes played during the November week. When Mary Wickes learns they are playing for money, she says “We have to give it to Lucy and Gary.” Lucy says “That’s not true!” Lucy and Mary win the second game in 28 seconds.

In 1967, Wickes returns to “The Lucy Show” to play Mrs. Winslow, a mother in urgent need of a babysitter. Lucy answers the call, not knowing her little ones are actually chimpanzees! Oh, and there’s a baby elephant, too!

A few months later, when Robert Goulet guest stars, Wickes plays his frazzled assistant, Miss Hurlow. With Goulet having three personalities, it’s no wonder she’s frazzled.

On her final “Lucy Show” appearance (her 8th), Wickes plays another eccentric aunt of Lucy Carmichael’s, Aunt Agatha, a mystery guest who comes to visit and makes turns Lucy’s life upside down by making her take part in her strenuous health and fitness routine.

Once Lucille Ball re-boots “The Lucy Show” as “Here’s Lucy” there is an attempt to make Wickes into a recurring character. She plays Isabel, a secretary in the same building as The Unique Employment Agency.

The attempt only lasts two episodes, however: “Lucy Goes on Strike” (HL S1;E16)...

...and “Lucy Gets Her Man” (HL S1;E21). Wickes only has 40 seconds of screen time at the very start of the episode. Mary Jane Croft joined the show shortly afterwards as Mary Jane Lewis, serving much the same function.

A few months later, however, she was back. This time returning to her nurse’s uniform she filled out so expertly in The Man Who Came To Dinner (inset photo), to play Nurse Hurlow in “Lucy and Harry’s Tonsils” (HL S2;E5). Perhaps coincidentally, Wickes uses the same surname she used as Robert Goulet’s secretary on “The Lucy Show.” Perhaps it was the same woman who got fed up with the craziness of show business and went into nursing? Or, more likely, the writers just ran out of names!

For the first time, Wickes’ character doesn’t have a name, but she gets most of the laughs, as the personal care attendant of a germ-phobic little old lady with a gigantic diamond that needs cutting. Wickes spends most of her screen time spraying everyone she meets with an aerosol disinfectant! Wally Cox plays the nervous jeweler.

Wickes then gets into a habit she finds hard to break, when she plays Lucy’s sister-in-law, Sister Paula, in “Lucy’s All-Nun Band” (HL S4;E8) in 1971. Although Wickes only played two nuns on the big screen, in The Trouble with Angels (1966) and Sister Act (1992), both films had sequels where she reprised her roles.

“Women like me. They think I'm wholesome or something.” ~ Mary Wickes

At the start of season 5, with Lucille Ball / Lucy Carter’s leg in a cast, she naturally returned to her whites to play Nurse Sylvia Ogilvy in both “Lucy's Big Break” (HL S5;E1) and the next episode, “Lucy and Eva Gabor are Hospital Roomies” (HL S5;E2). The two episodes are both linked by Lucy’s recovery in the hospital.

In “Lucy Plays Cops and Robbers” (HL S6;E14), Wickes plays Violet Barker, Lucy’s neighbor. Her husband is played by sitcom veteran Al Lewis of “Car 54″ and “The Munsters”. They are part of Lucy’s neighborhood watch group. The surname Barker will also be used for Lucy’s character on her final sitcom, “Life With Lucy.”

In her final appearance on the series, Wickes goes to the old west when Lucy is elected honorary sheriff of a one-horse town called Cartridge Belt. Wickes plays Clara Simpson, the town philanthropist.

In the last episode aired of “Here’s Lucy” there is a character named Mary Winters, a character written to be played by Mary Wickes, or at the very least, with Mary Wickes in mind. The role was filled by a very Mary Wickes-like actress, also named Mary, Mary Treen.

Lucille Ball and Mary Wickes collaborated one last time on television in “Lucy Calls The President” a 1977 TV special that reunited Lucy with many of her favorite supporting cast members. Wickes once again plays Lucy’s aunt, Miss Millie Baker. The special has the Whittaker family rolling out the red carpet because they believe that President Jimmy Carter and family are going to visit!

Life after Lucy included appearing as a recurring character on “The Father Dowling Mysteries” from 1989 to 1991, as well as her film roles in Sister Act and Little Women.

In 2013, Steve Taravella wrote a biography of Wickes titled Mary Wickes: I Know I’ve Seen That Face Before.

Mary Wickes died of complications following hip surgery on October 22, 1995, aged 85. She made a $2 million bequest in memory of her parents, establishing the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts at the Washington University in St. Louis.

“I love playing good comedy with a heart, comedy which touches the audience.” ~ Mary Wickes

#Mary Wickes #Lucille Ball #I Love Lucy #The Lucy Show #Here's Lucy #TV #The Man Who Came To Dinner #Stage Door #Broadway #film #character actress

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Luther Vandross

Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr. (April 20, 1951 – July 1, 2005) was an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. Throughout his career, Vandross was an in-demand background vocalist for several different artists including Todd Rundgren, Judy Collins, Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Ben E. King, and Donna Summer. He later became a lead singer of the group Change, which released its gold-certified debut album, The Glow of Love, in 1980 on Warner/RFC Records. After Vandross left the group, he was signed to Epic Records as a solo artist and released his debut solo album, Never Too Much, in 1981.

His hit songs include "Never Too Much", "Here and Now", "Any Love", "Power of Love/Love Power", "I Can Make It Better" and "For You to Love". Many of his songs were covers of original music by other artists such as "If This World Were Mine" (duet with Cheryl Lynn), "Since I Lost My Baby", "Superstar" and "Always and Forever". Duets such as "The Closer I Get to You" with Beyoncé, "Endless Love" with Mariah Carey and "The Best Things in Life Are Free" with Janet Jackson were all hit songs in his career.

During his career, Vandross sold over 35 million records worldwide, and received eight Grammy Awards including Best Male R&B Vocal Performance four different times. He won a total of four Grammy Awards in 2004 including the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for a song recorded not long before his death, "Dance with My Father".

Early life

Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. was born on April 20, 1951, at Bellevue Hospital, in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. He was the fourth child and second son of Mary Ida Vandross and Luther Vandross, Sr. His father was an upholsterer and singer, and his mother was a nurse. Vandross was raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the NYCHA Alfred E. Smith Houses public housing development. At the age of three, having his own phonograph, Vandross taught himself to play the piano by ear.

Vandross's father died of diabetes when Vandross was eight years old. In 2003, Vandross wrote the song "Dance with My Father" and dedicated it to him; the title was based on his childhood memories and his mother's recollections of the family singing and dancing in the house. His family moved to the Bronx when he was nine. His sisters, Patricia "Pat" and Ann began taking Vandross to the Apollo Theater and to a theater in Brooklyn to see Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin. Patricia sang with the vocal group The Crests and was featured on the songs "My Juanita" and "Sweetest One".

Vandross graduated from William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx in 1969, and attended Western Michigan University for a year before dropping out to continue pursuing a career in music.

Career

While in high school, Vandross founded the first Patti LaBelle fan club, of which he was president. He also performed in a group, Shades of Jade, that once played at the Apollo Theater. During his early years in show business he appeared several times at the Apollo's famous amateur night. While a member of a theater workshop, Listen My Brother, he was involved in the singles "Only Love Can Make a Better World" and "Listen My Brother". He appeared with the group in several episodes of the first season of Sesame Street during 1969–1970.

1970s: Back-up vocalist and first groups

Vandross added backing vocals to Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway in 1972, and worked on Delores Hall's Hall-Mark album (1973). He sang with her on the song "Who's Gonna Make It Easier for Me", which he wrote, and he contributed another song, "In This Lonely Hour". Having co-written "Fascination" for David Bowie's Young Americans (1975), he went on to tour with him as a back-up vocalist in September 1974. Vandross wrote "Everybody Rejoice" for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz.

Vandross also sang backing vocals for artists including Roberta Flack,Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, and Donna Summer, and for the bands Mandrill, Chic and Todd Rundgren's Utopia.

Before his solo breakthrough, Vandross was part of a singing quintet in the late 1970s named Luther, consisting of former Shades of Jade members Anthony Hinton and Diane Sumler, as well as Theresa V. Reed, and Christine Wiltshire, signed to Cotillion Records. Although the singles "It's Good for the Soul", "Funky Music (Is a Part of Me)", and "The Second Time Around" were relatively successful, their two albums, the self-titled Luther (1976) and This Close to You (1977), which Vandross produced, did not sell enough to make the charts. Vandross bought back the rights to those albums after Cotillion dropped the group, preventing them from being re-released.

Vandross also wrote and sang commercial jingles from 1977 until the early 1980s, for companies including NBC, Mountain Dew, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, and Juicy Fruit. He continued his successful career as a popular session singer during the late 1970s.

In 1978, Vandross sang lead vocals for Greg Diamond's disco band, Bionic Boogie, on the song titled "Hot Butterfly". Also in 1978, he appeared on Quincy Jones's Sounds...and Stuff Like That!!, most notably on the song "I'm Gonna Miss You in the Morning" along with Patti Austin. Vandross also sang with the band Soirée and was the lead vocalist on the track "You Are the Sunshine of My Life"; he also contributed background vocals to the album along with Jocelyn Brown and Sharon Redd, each of whom also saw solo success. Additionally, he sang the lead vocals on the group Mascara's LP title song "See You in L.A." released in 1979. Vandross also appeared on the group Charme's 1979 album Let It In.

1980s: Change and solo breakthrough

Vandross made his career breakthrough as a featured singer with the vaunted pop-dance act Change, a studio concept created by French-Italian businessman Jacques Fred Petrus. Their 1980 hits, "The Glow of Love" (by Romani, Malavasi and Garfield) and "Searching" (by Malavasi), featured Vandross as the lead singer. In a 2001 interview with Vibe, Vandross said "The Glow of Love" was "the most beautiful song I've ever sung in my life." Both songs were from Change's debut album, The Glow of Love.

Vandross was originally intended to perform on their second and highly successful album Miracles in 1981, but declined the offer as Petrus didn't pay enough money. Vandross's decision led to a recording contract with Epic Records that same year, but he also provided background vocals on "Miracles" and on the new Petrus-created act, the B. B. & Q. Band in 1981. During that hectic year Vandross jump-started his second attempt at a solo career with his debut album, Never Too Much. In addition to the hit title track it contained a version of the Dionne Warwick song "A House Is Not a Home".

The song "Never Too Much", written by him, reached number-one on the R&B charts. This period also marked the beginning of songwriting collaboration with bassist Marcus Miller, who played on many of the tracks and would also produce or co-produce a number of tracks for Vandross. The Never Too Much album was arranged by Vandross's high school classmate Nat Adderley, Jr., a collaboration that would last through Vandross's career.

Vandross released a series of successful R&B albums during the 1980s and continued his session work with guest vocals on groups like Charme in 1982. Many of his earlier albums made a bigger impact on the R&B charts than on the pop charts. During the 1980s, two of Vandross's singles reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts: "Stop to Love", in 1986, and a duet with Gregory Hines—"There's Nothing Better Than Love." Vandross was at the helm as producer for Aretha Franklin's Gold-certified, award-winning comeback album Jump to It. He also produced the follow-up album, 1983's Get It Right.

In 1983, the opportunity to work with his main musical influence, Dionne Warwick, came about with Vandross producing, writing songs, and singing on How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye, her fourth album for Arista Records. The title track duet reached No. 27 on the Hot 100 chart (#7 R&B/#4 Adult Contemporary), while the second single, "Got a Date" was a moderate hit (#45 R&B/#15 Club Play).

Vandross wrote and produced "It's Hard for Me to Say" for Diana Ross from her Red Hot Rhythm & Blues album. Ross performed the song as an a cappella tribute to Oprah Winfrey on her final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show. She then proceeded to add it to her successful 2010–12 "More Today Than Yesterday: The Greatest Hits Tour. Vandross also recorded a version of this song on his Your Secret Love album in 1996.

In December 1985, Vandross filed a libel suit against a British magazine after it attributed his 85-pound weight loss to AIDS. He weighed 325 pounds when he started a diet in May that year.

In 1985, Vandross first spotted the talent of Jimmy Salvemini, who was fifteen at the time, on Star Search. He thought Salvemini had the perfect voice for some of his songs, and contacted him. He was managed by his brother, Larry Salvemini. A contract was negotiated with Elektra Records for $250,000 and Vandross agreed to produce the album. He contacted his old friends - Cheryl Lynn, Alfa Anderson (Chic), Phoebe Snow and Irene Cara - to appear on the record. After the album was completed, Luther, Jimmy, and Larry decided to celebrate. On January 12, 1986, they were riding in Vandross's 1985 convertible Mercedes-Benz on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, in the north section of Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. Luther was driving at 48 mph in a 35 mph zone when his Mercedes veered across the double yellow center line of the two lane street, turned sideways and collided with the front of a 1972 Mercury Marquis that was headed southbound, then swung around and hit a 1979 Cadillac Seville head on. Vandross and Jimmy were rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Larry, who was in the passenger seat, was killed during the collision. Vandross suffered three broken ribs, a broken hip, several bruises and facial cuts. Jimmy, who was in the back of the car, had cuts, bruises and contusions. Vandross faced vehicular manslaughter charges as a result of Larry's death, and his driving license was suspended for a year. There was no evidence Vandross was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs; he pleaded no contest to reckless driving. At first, the Salvemini family was supportive of Vandross, but later filed a wrongful death suit against him. The case was settled out of court with a payment to the Salvemini family for about $630,000. Jimmy Salvemini's album, Roll It, was released later that year.

Vandross also sang the ad-libs and background vocals, along with Syreeta Wright and Philip Bailey, in Stevie Wonder's 1985 hit "Part-Time Lover". In 1986, he voiced a cartoon character named Zack for ABC's Zack of All Trades, a three Saturday morning animated PSA spots.

The 1989 compilation album The Best of Luther Vandross... The Best of Love included the ballad "Here and Now", his first single to chart in the Billboard pop chart top ten, peaking at number six.

1990s

In 1990, Vandross wrote, produced and sang background for Whitney Houston in a song entitled "Who Do You Love" which appeared on her I'm Your Baby Tonight album. That year, he guest starred on the television sitcom 227.

More albums followed in the 1990s, beginning with 1991's Power of Love which spawned two top ten pop hits. He won his first Grammy award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1991. He won his second Best Male R&B Vocal in the Grammy Awards of 1992, and his track "Power of Love/Love Power" won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song in the same year. In 1992, "The Best Things in Life Are Free", a duet with Janet Jackson from the movie Mo' Money became a hit. In 1993, he had a brief non-speaking role in the Robert Townsend movie The Meteor Man. He played a hit man who plotted to stop Townsend's title character.

Vandross hit the top ten again in 1994, teaming with Mariah Carey on a cover version of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's duet "Endless Love". It was included on the album Songs, a collection of songs which had inspired Vandross over the years. He also appears on "The Lady Is a Tramp" released on Frank Sinatra's Duets album. At the Grammy Awards of 1997, he won his third Best Male R&B Vocal for the track "Your Secret Love".

A second greatest hits album, released in 1997, compiled most of his 1990s hits and was his final album released through Epic Records. After releasing I Know on Virgin Records, he signed with J Records. His first album on Clive Davis's new label, entitled Luther Vandross, was released in 2001, and it produced the hits "Take You Out" (#7 R&B/#26 Pop), and "I'd Rather" (#17 Adult Contemporary/#40 R&B/#83 Pop). Vandross scored at least one top 10 R&B hit every year from 1981–1994.

In 1997, Vandross sang the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", during Super Bowl XXXI at the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana.

2000s

He made two public appearances at Diana Ross's Return to Love Tour: at its opening in Philadelphia at First Union Spectrum and its final stop at Madison Square Garden on July 6, 2000.

In September 2001, Vandross performed a rendition of Michael Jackson's hit song "Man in the Mirror" at Jackson's 30th Anniversary special, alongside Usher and 98 Degrees.

In 2002, he performed his final concerts during his last tour, The BK Got Soul Tour starring Vandross featuring Angie Stone and Gerald Levert.

In the spring of 2003, Vandross's last collaboration was Doc Powell's "What's Going On", a cover of Marvin Gaye from Powell's album 97th and Columbus.

In 2003, Vandross released the album Dance with My Father. It sold 442,000 copies in the first week and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. The title track of the same name, which was dedicated to Vandross's childhood memories of dancing with his father, won Vandross and his co-writer, Richard Marx, the 2004 Grammy Award for Song of the Year. The song also won Vandross his fourth and final award in the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance category. The album was his only career No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. The video for the title track features various celebrities alongside their fathers and other family members. The second single released from the album, "Think About You", was the number one Urban Adult Contemporary Song of 2004 according to Radio & Records.

In 2003, after the televised NCAA Men's Basketball championship, CBS Sports gave "One Shining Moment" a new look. Vandross, who had been to only one basketball game in his life, was the new singer, and the video had none of the special effects, like glowing basketballs and star trails, that videos from previous years had. This song version is in use today.

Personal life

Vandross was never married and had no children. His older siblings all predeceased him.

Vandross's sexual orientation was a subject of media speculation. Jason King, writing in Vandross's obituary in The Village Voice, said: "Though he never came out as gay or bisexual, you had to be wearing blinders." According to Gene Davis, a television producer who worked with Vandross, "Everybody in the business knew that Luther was gay". In 2006, Bruce Vilanch, a friend and colleague of Vandross, told Out magazine, "He said to me, 'No one knows I'm in the life.' ... He had very few sexual contacts". According to Vilanch, Vandross experienced his longest romantic relationship with a man while living in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In December 2017, his friend Patti LaBelle confirmed that Vandross was, in fact, gay.

Illness and death

Vandross suffered from diabetes and hypertension. On April 16, 2003, Vandross suffered a severe stroke at his home in New York City and was in a coma for nearly two months. The stroke affected his ability to speak and sing, and required him to use a wheelchair.

At the 2004 Grammy Awards, Vandross appeared in a pre-taped video segment to accept his Song of the Year Award for "Dance with My Father", saying, "When I say goodbye it's never for long, because I believe in the power of love" (Vandross sang the last six words). His mother, Mary, accepted the award in person on his behalf. His last public appearance was on May 6, 2004, on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Vandross died on July 1, 2005, at the JFK Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey, at the age of 54 of a heart attack.

Vandross's funeral was held at Riverside Church in New York City on July 8, 2005. Cissy Houston, founding member of The Sweet Inspirations and mother of Whitney Houston, sang at the funeral service. Vandross was entombed at the George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, New Jersey. He was survived by his mother, Mary Ida Vandross, who died in 2008.

Voice

Possessing a tenor vocal range, Vandross was commonly referred to as "The Velvet Voice" in reference to his exceptional vocal talent, and was sometimes called "The Best Voice of a Generation". He was also regarded as the "Pavarotti of Pop" by many critics.

In 2008, Vandross was ranked No. 54 on Rolling Stone magazine's List of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Mariah Carey stated several times in interviews that standing next to Vandross while recording their duet "Endless Love" was intimidating.

By popular vote, Vandross was inducted into The SoulMusic Hall of Fame at SoulMusic.com in December 2012.

Tribute

In 1999, Whitney Houston sang Vandross's "So Amazing" as a tribute to Vandross as he sat in the audience during the Soul Train Awards. Johnny Gill, El DeBarge, and Kenny Lattimore provided background vocals. On July 27, 2004, GRP Records released a smooth jazz various artists tribute album, Forever, for Always, for Luther, including ten popular songs written by Vandross. The album featured vocal arrangements by Luther, and was produced by Rex Rideout and Bud Harner. Rideout had co-authored songs, contributed arrangements and played keyboards on Vandross's final three albums. The tribute album was mixed by Ray Bardani, who recorded and mixed most of Luther's music over the years. It featured an ensemble of smooth jazz performers, many of whom had previously worked with Vandross.

On September 20, 2005, the album So Amazing: An All-Star Tribute to Luther Vandross was released. The album is a collection of some of his songs performed by various artists, including Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige, Usher, Fantasia, Beyoncé, Donna Summer, Alicia Keys, Elton John, Celine Dion, Wyclef Jean, Babyface, Patti LaBelle, John Legend, Angie Stone, Jamie Foxx, Teddy Pendergrass, and Aretha Franklin. Aretha Franklin won a Grammy for her rendition of "A House Is Not a Home", and Stevie Wonder and Beyoncé won a Grammy for their cover of "So Amazing".

The violin duo Nuttin' But Stringz did a remix of the song "Dance with My Father" for their album Struggle from the Subway to the Charts, which was released on October 3, 2006.On November 21, 2006, saxophonist Dave Koz released a followup to the earlier smooth jazz GRP tribute album, this time on his own Rendezvous Entertainment label, an album called Forever, for Always, for Luther Volume II, also produced by Rex Rideout and Bud Harner. Dave Koz played on all the featured Luther Vandross tracks, which were recorded by various smooth jazz artists.

In 2007, Deniece Williams included "Never Too Much" on her Love, Niecy Style CD. Williams said that she recorded the song to say "I love you" to her old friend. In the music video "Bye Bye" from Mariah Carey Vandross's picture appears in the closing images. His image was included as a tribute along with various other deceased people with whom Carey had collaborated.

In 2008, Keyshia Cole sang the outro to "Luther Vandross" on "Playa Cardz Right", which featured rapper Tupac Shakur from her 2008 album, A Different Me. Guitarist Norman Brown did a rendition of "Any Love" on his 1994 album After The Storm. R&B band 112 sampled Vandross's "Don't You Know That" to make their song "Love Me" on their second album Room 112. Saxophonist Boney James covered his rendition on his final track "The Night I Fell in Love" on Backbone in 1994.

Vandross has been cited as an influence on a number of other artists, including 112, Boyz II Men, D'Angelo, Hootie & the Blowfish, Jaheim, John Legend, Mint Condition, Ne-Yo, Ruben Studdard, and Usher. Stokley Williams, the lead singer of Mint Condition, has said that he has "studied Luther for such a long time because he was the epitome of perfect tone." On his influence, John Legend has said, "All us people making slow jams now, we was inspired by the slow jams Luther Vandross was making."

In 2010, NPR included Vandross in its 50 Greatest Voices in recorded history, saying Vandross represents "the platinum standard for R&B song stylings." The announcement was made on NPR's All Things Considered on November 29, 2010.

Author Craig Seymour wrote a book about Vandross called Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross. The book includes numerous interviews with Vandross.

New releases

J Records released a song, "Shine"—an upbeat R&B track that samples Chic's disco song "My Forbidden Lover"—which reached No. 31 on the Billboard R&B chart. The song was originally slated to be released on the soundtrack to the movie, The Fighting Temptations, but it was shelved. A later remix of the song peaked at No. 10 on the Club Play chart. "Shine" and a track titled "Got You Home" were previously unreleased songs on The Ultimate Luther Vandross (2006), a greatest hits album on Epic Records/J Records/Legacy Recordings that was released August 22, 2006.

On October 16, 2007, Epic Records/J Records/Legacy Recordings released a 4-disc boxed set titled Love, Luther. It features nearly all of Vandross's R&B and pop hits throughout his career, as well as unreleased live tracks, alternate versions, and outtakes from sessions that Vandross recorded. The set also includes "There's Only You", a version of which had originally appeared on the soundtrack to the 1987 film Made in Heaven.

In October 2015, Sony Music released a re-configured edition of its The Essential Luther Vandross compilation containing three unreleased songs: "Love It, Love It" (which made its premiere a year prior on the UK compilation The Greatest Hits), a live recording of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with Paul Simon and Jennifer Holliday, and a cover of Astrud Gilberto's "Look to the Rainbow."

Discography

Luther (1976)

This Close to You (1977)

Never Too Much (1981)

Forever, for Always, for Love (1982)

Busy Body (1983)

The Night I Fell in Love (1985)

Give Me the Reason (1986)

Any Love (1988)

Power of Love (1991)

Never Let Me Go (1993)

Songs (1994)

This Is Christmas (1995)

Your Secret Love (1996)

I Know (1998)

Luther Vandross (2001)

Dance with My Father (2003)

Tours

Luther Tour (1981)

Forever For Always For Love Tour (1982–1983)

Busy Body Tour (1984)

The Night I Fell in Love Tour (1985–1986)

Give Me the Reason Tour (1987)

Any Love World Tour (1988–1989)

Best of Love Tour (1990)

The Power of Love Tour (1991)

Never Let Me Go World Tour (1993–1994)

Your Secret Love World Tour (1997)

Take You Out Tour (2001–2002)

BK Got Soul Tour (2002)

Awards

Grammy AwardSoul Train Music AwardsAmerican Music AwardHollywood Walk of Fame

Inducted: Star (Posthumous; June 3, 2014)

See also

List of quiet storm songs

Luther Burger

Craig Seymour

#04/20 #07/01

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ageofevermore · 4 years ago

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1-96

(1) Do You Sleep With Your Closet Doors Open Or Closed?

it’s a dual sliding door, so usually one sides open. but preferably, both doors are closed.

(2) Do You Have Freckles?

sometimes in the summer, not often though.

(3) Can You Whistle?

yes!

(4) Last Song You Listened To.

well for some reason there’s a guy on my TV singing God Bless The USA

(5) What Is Your Favourite Colour?

purple

(6) Relationship Status.

single because my favorite omegle guy won’t answer me

(7) What Is The Temperature Right Now?

48F / 9C

(8) Did You Wake Up Cranky?

i woke up wishing i was still asleep

(9) How Many Followers?

835

(10) Zodiac Sign.

Sun: Capricorn, Rising: Aries, Moon: Aquarius

(11) What Is Your Eye Colour?

brown / hazel

(12) Take A Vitamin Daily?

(13) Do You Sing In The Shower?

obviously, i’m not completely insane

(14) What Books Are You Reading?

whatever fucking book my english class assigned...

(15) Grab The Book Nearest To You, Turn To Page 64, Give Me Line 14.

i literally only have a text book by me and opening it is triggering

(16) Favourite Anime?

i don’t watch anime

(17) Last Person You Cried In Front Of?

my mom...about greys anatomy...but still my mom about christmas and my birthday. i cry alot, but i like REALLY cried about those two topics

(18) Do You Collect Anything?

chapstick, trauma, candles

(19) What Did You Have For Lunch?

it’s only 10am and i haven’t even thought about breakfast

(20) Do You Dance In The Car?

yes, and then my mom yells at me because i do nothing “subtly” and the entire car shakes

(21) Favourite Animal?

white siberian tigers, snow leopards, dolphins, and now elephants

(22) Do You Watch The Olympics?

unfortunately. i love gymnastics, but like, i’m not trying to watch men in toboggans and swim caps

(23) What Time Do You Usually Go To Bed?

anywhere between 12pm and 3am

(24) Are You Wearing Makeup Right Now?

no, i never wear makeup because it makes me look more ugly

(25) Do You Prefer To Swim In A Pool Or The Ocean?

ocean

(26) Favourite Tumblr Blog?

besides my friends i don’t really have a favorite blog, i stick to my circle and don’t venture very far

(27) Bottled Water Or Tap Water?

bottled.

(28) What Makes You Happy?

i couldn’t tell you...

(29) Post A Gif Of What You’re Currently Feeling Right Now.

(30) Do You Study Better With Or Without Music?

without, but i always start with it on. it never lasts more then two songs.

(31) Dogs Or Cats?

dogs

(32) If You Were A Crayon What Colour Would You Be?

a shade of purple from the crayola 200 pack

(33) PlayStation Or Xbox.

wii

(34) Would You Swim In The Lake Or Ocean?

ocean

(35) Do You Believe In Magic?

hell mothering fucking year i do baby, lets take that train to hogwarts

(36) What Colour Shirt Are You Wearing?

its a friends pj crop, so black and white stripped with the central perks logo

(37) Can You Curl Your Tongue?

yup

(38) Do You Save Money Or Spend It?

save money

(39) Is There Anything Pink Within 10 Feet Of You?

my cup

(40) Do You Have Any Obsessions Right Now?

stranger things ig

(41) Have You Ever Caught A Butterfly?

no, those assholes scare me, but i’ve grown + released them

(42) Are You Easily Influenced By Other People?

um chile, i would follow my best friend off a cliff with no hesitation

(43) Do You Have Strange Dreams?

all the fucking time

(44) Do You Like Going On Airplanes?

ITS MY FAVORITE FORM OF TRAVEL

(45) Name One Movie That Made You Cry.

the hannah montana movie

(46) Peanuts Or Sunflower Seeds?

peanuts

(47) If I Handed You A Concert Ticket Right Now, Who Would You Want The Performer To Be?

one direction

(48) Are You A Picky Eater?

yes

(49) Are You A Heavy Sleeper?

yes, but it takes me forever to fall asleep

(50) Do You Fear Thunder / Lightning?

yea, depends on the day and the level of scardy bitch i feel like being

(51) Do You Like To Read / Write?

i love both

(52) Do You Like Your Music Loud?

hell yeah, let me feel the beat in my kidneys

(53) Would You Rather Carve Pumpkins Or Wrap Presents?

carve pumpkins

(54) Put Your Music On Shuffle, What Is The First Song That Came Up?

no tears left to cry by ag

(55) What Season Are You In Right Now? (Weather)

fall

(56) What Are You Craving Right Now?

a churro + peppermint mocha frap

(57) Post A Screenshot Of Your Tumblr Feed.

(58) What Is Your Gender?

female (she/her)

(59) Coffee Or Tea?

iced coffee / sweet tea

(60) Do You Have Any Homework Right Now? If So, What Is It About?

yeah, i have environmental homework and US I homework and Algebra II homework

(61) What Is Your Sexuality?

bruh, idk

(62) Do You Make Your Bed In The Morning?

no, that shit’s never made

(63) Favourite Pokemon?

jigglypuff

(64) Favourite Social Media?

pintrest

(65) What’s Your Opinion On Instagram Stories?

they’re okay

(66) Do You Get Homesick?

no. i don’t miss thins very easily, i’m away from home for a week and i have no doubt that i could spend the rest of my life without going back.

(67) Are You A Virgin?

yes sir

(68) What Shampoo And Conditioner Are You Using Right Now?

idk, some really thick and heavy in hydration set

(69) If You Were Far From Home And Needed To Sleep For The Night, Would You Choose To Rent A Crappy Motel Room For $60 Or Sleep In Your Car For Free?

sleep in my car, though both options scare me

(70) Are Both Of Your Blood Parents Still In Your Life?

i have a strained relationship with my bio dad, but unfortunately i still have to associate myself with him a few times a year

(71) Whats The Next Movie You Want To See In Theaters?

black widow or spiderman 3, but i’m willing to see anything just take me back!

(72) Do You Miss Your Ex?

i’ve never had an ex, but i do wish krystian would stop ignoring me. stupid scotland boys

(73) What Is Your Favourite Quote Right Now?

“friends dont lie”

(74) What Eye Colour Do You Find Sexiest?

green / brown

(75) Did You Like Swinging As A Child? Do You Still Get Excited When You See A Swing Set?

i loved swinging, but a few years ago it started making me dizzy so i don’t swing very often anymore. but tire swings especially are my shit

(76) What Was The Last Thing You Ate?

chicken flavored ramen

(77) What Games Do You Have On Your Phone?

yes

(78) Would You Give A Homeless Person CPR If They Were Dying? Why Or Why Not?

yeah...because they’re dying and if i have the skills to save them...why wouldn’t i?

(79) Been On The Computer For 5 Hours Straight?

honey, i do full virtual high school. we stan a pandemic (we don’t)

(80) Stalked Someone On A Social Network?

social media stalker is my middle name. not anymore though, i haven’t been asked to find a boy in a while

(81) Do You Like Meeting New People?

no. i hate it. anxiety city man.

(82) Do You Wear Rings? If You Do, Take A Picture Of Them.

i don’t wear rings, but i really want to.

(83) Do You Sleep With Your Bedroom Door Open Or Closed?

closed

(84) What Are Three Things You Did Today?

woke up, watched stranger things, made ramen

(85) What Do You Wear To Bed?

whatever i fall asleep in.

(86) List All Of Your Different Beauty Products You Have Right Now.

are beauty and skincare the same? because i don’t own much makeup.

(87) Are You A Day Or Night Person?

i used to be a night person. but this pandemic has hit hard with depression and i’ve become a stay in bed all day person

(88) List All Of Your Video Games On Your Phone, Console Etc.

2048 balls, among us, ball sort puzzle, bubble shooter, bubble sort, color roll 3D, drag n merge, fit and squeeze, hole.io, mario kart, match 3D, nonogram.com, paint the cube, roof rails, solitare, spit, stacky dash, stair run, timber run...

(89) Tell Me About A Dream That You Had And When It Happened.

After my moms fiance died, I had a dream that he was able to come see my fifth grade play (he died just before it happened) and when we were walking out he got into the white car from fast and furious (we watched the movies together) and said he would see me again soon, then he drove off...like talk about weird

(90) Favourite Soda Drink?

rootbeer

(91) What Sounds Are Your Favourite?

i like a good clicking sound

(92) Do You Wear Jeans Or Sweats More?

sweats everyday all day

(93) How Do You Look Right Now?

like a fucking wreck

(94) Name Something That Relaxes You.

netflix

(95) What Tattoo Do You Want?

i want a bunch of little symbols, and i think it would be cute if i got a T for my mom, but i can’t tell her that because she might think i’m going soft and exploit my show of affection (jfc why am i like this lmao)

(96) Favourite YouTuber?

colleen ballinger

#soapy tag #pink tag #ask game

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years ago

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New from Jeff York on The Establishing Shot: APPRECIATING THE SUBLIME NASTINESS OF STUART GORDON’S “RE-ANIMATOR”

With the passing of filmmaker Stuart Gordon this past week, I was inspired to re-visit his darkly comic horror film RE-ANIMATOR. A loose adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s horror short Herbert West – Reanimator, Gordon made it his own by amping up the comedy and the grotesque in equal measures for a modern horror classic. When it came out in 1985, America was settling into a comfortable groove with a second term of the Reagan administration, a nationwide obsession with music videos on MTV, and a steadying economy. Gordon likely wanted to shake audiences out of its complacency, and he did just that with his hellzapoppin horror show.

The film was probably too controversial by half to be anything more than a qualified hit at the time, but nonetheless it still had quite an impact. Not only did it achieve instant cult status, and lead to a number of sequels, but it cemented Gordon’s artistic reputation as a provocateur and set his film career up to continue to shock and awe. (He’d already done a lot of similar things in Chicago with his Organic Theater Company where, among other things, he introduced the world to the equally edgy playwright David Mamet when he produced his first play entitled Sexual Perversity in Chicago.) 35 years later, the chills and laughs Gordon put out for the world to see in RE-ANIMATOR still stand tall, and if anything, the entire enterprise seems even more outrageous than it did when it opened during that comfy and conservative Reagan era.

The idea of reanimating corpses wasn’t exactly the edgiest subject for the horror genre. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which helped start the genre back in 1818, was about that very idea. Nor was excessive violence and gore new to films or even TV shows in the genre. The Hammer horror films dumped buckets of blood all over the screen in the ’60s. THE NIGHT STALKER made-for-TV movie in 1972 pushed the boundaries of violence transmitting into people’s homes with its tale of a vampire on the loose in Las Vegas. And God knows that John Carpenter was raked over the coals by critics for the spectacularly graphic deaths in his remake of THE THING in 1982. RE-ANIMATOR didn’t do anything all that new by being excessively violent. What was novel about it was how viciously it was employed, and how glibly. It was gross, sure, but mostly, it was served with a sense of humor.

In a word, RE-ANIMATOR was nasty.

Nasty in tone, look, and physicality, not to mention its treatment of death, the medical community, patriarchal society, ingenues, and yes, the classic hero’s journey. It was a sniggering and snide middle finger to propriety, daring audiences to watch, laugh, and stay till the end of a film wall-to-wall with outrage. Some did, some didn’t. I had to chase after my date who walked out during it due to being so offended. I returned the next day to see it on my own. It was a very polarizing movie.

The story concerned a brilliant but certifiably cuckoo medical student named Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) who has invented a reagent that can re-animate deceased bodies. He pulls his classmate and roommate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) into his twisted world when cat Rufus ends up dead by accident and West brings it back to life with his DayGlo green goop. Unfortunately, the lovable personality of the frisky feline doesn’t return as easily as his body. Instead, the sweet kitty’s personality is replaced by a savage and mutated one, a zombie-cat driven by bloodlust. As the two roomies dig deeper into experimentation with reanimation, human bodies start to pile up all over campus, all becoming as vicious as poor Rufus. It’s a film with a pretty sizable body count, one that ends with most of the cast dead, or at least dead for the moment. Dr. West’s formula glows in the dark in the final fade to black.

Combs gave one of the greatest horror film performances ever, a snide sociopath somewhere between Tony Perkins’ boyishness and Christopher Lee’s silken menace. West was arrogant, tart-tongued, and incapable of even showing a speck of human empathy, By the end, he’s not become a better person one iota. Instead, he’s grown even more obsessed and dangerous. And he’s the lead. (Gordon was all but taunting Joseph Campbell, if not Robert McKee.)

Dan, while a cliched handsome hero in appearance, is little more than a feckless fool throughout. West all but leads him by the nose the entire time. Dan’s girlfriend Megan (Barbara Crampton) is introduced as a sweet, innocent girl and then promptly gets pulled into one humiliation after another. She’s bamboozled by Dan, has to watch her kind father, the dean of the school (Robert Samson), die and then turn into a vicious zombie. West treats her with derision, and the film’s villain Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) will spend the entire hour and 45-minute running time trying to get into her pants. Today, they’d give her a Katniss Everdeen moment or two to counter such victimhood, but not in ’85.

RE-ANIMATOR is a film that at every beat of its story, exuded in its politically incorr ect attitude Gordon, and his fellow screenwriters Dennis Paoli and William J. Norris threw all the sacred cows out the window or against the wall. (Literally and figuratively, truly.) Rufus’ death is played for grisly laughs. So are all the human deaths. The story also ridicules people in mental institutions, padded cells, and morgues. The character of Megan’s father goes from a sweet, caring man to a drooling, lobotomized caricature in about 10 minutes. And to justify its adult rating, Megan ends up nude for a great deal of the third act. It should be noted too that the film has no problem lingering on Crampton’s comely figure either, including her pubic region. The film takes no prisoners and laughs all the way to the dank.

Most horror comedies tend to play more cute than cruel, like BEETLEJUICE, GHOSTBUSTERS, and ZOMBIELAND. RE-ANIMATOR, however, emphasizes humor that often plays as mean as the bloodletting. Nowhere is this more evident than in how Gordon treats the film’s villainous Dr. Hill. When West catches him trying to steal his reagent, he attacks him with a shovel, and then for good measure, decapitates him too. Still, Hill stays in the picture. The lascivious villain is reanimated and soon both his head in a pan, as well as his foot shorter body, are plotting more nastiness.

The film ends with a phantasm of violence and craziness, chock full of multiple corpses attacking and spraying blood and guts around like the top was left off of a Cuisinart. Yet, even that over-the-top ending cannot compete with the single most memorable set piece in the film. That is when Dr. Hill’s decapitated head tries to, ahem, give head to Megan as she’s strapped to the slab. (Thankfully, my girlfriend left before that scene!)

When the film was originally presented to the review board, it received an X rating because of such scenes, as well as its violence. Gordon trimmed some bits and pieces here and there to scale back such offenses, and thus ensured the video release of the film got an R rating that made it acceptable for Blockbuster and mom & pop stores nationwide. In rentals is where the film really took off and built its reputation that it enjoys today.

Gordon and his producer Brian Yuzna consciously went for the shock and delivered it in spades. They spent a considerable amount of their meager $900,000 budget on the gruesome makeup effects, ensuring that they were as disgusting and graphic as the photos they discovered in a forensics pathologist manual. John Naulin, the film’s effects supervisor, said it was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on. In past horror films, he never used more than two gallons of blood. For RE-ANIMATOR, he used 24.

And, dare one say, it was bloody effective. By not pulling its punches, RE-ANIMATOR was true to Gordon’s vision of splitting skulls and being side-splitting too. And for such a brazen film, it’s got dozens of quotable quips, particularly those uttered by West. When he discovers the headless Hill trying to get it on with Megan, West admonishes the bad doctor. “I must say, Dr. Hill, I’m very disappointed in you. You steal the secret of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble-headed coed.” Snark like that is comedy gold. And it’s in a horror film.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but then Gordon wasn’t interested in the status quo.

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ramajmedia · 5 years ago

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Jim Carrey's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Despite being one of the biggest movie stars in the world with countless box office hits, Jim Carrey is a pretty divisive actor. Some fans appreciate his knack for rubbery expressive comedy, but others criticize this performing style as overacting.

While he was once possibly the most bankable star in the world, his status has dropped in the past few years and he hasn’t really starred in a major hit since 2008’s Yes Man. Still, he’s left behind a very impressive body of work and there’s every chance his star could rise again. So, here are Jim Carrey’s 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes.

RELATED: Jim Carrey’s 10 Most Hilarious Characters, Ranked

10 Man on the Moon (63%)

It was a dream come true when Jim Carrey was cast to play one of his idols, comedy legend Andy Kaufman, in a biopic. Directed by the great Milos Forman, this biopic plays around with the rules a lot.

There are dramatic moments and it follows a familiar formula, but there’s also a lot of Kaufman-esque comic trickery at play. As a recent Netflix documentary can attest to, Carrey went a little cuckoo on the set as he refused to break character for the entire shoot, even when the cameras weren’t rolling. But it’s hard to deny that Kaufman himself would’ve been proud.

9 Dumb and Dumber (67%)

This road comedy by the Farrelly brothers should never have gotten a sequel. The original stands perfectly on its own as one of the funniest movies ever made and no sequel could live up to that (especially the trainwreck we were eventually served in 2014).

Few comedies have a gag rate this rapid and even fewer have such a high rate of gags actually landing. Everything in the screenplay for Dumb and Dumber is carefully considered to deliver an infinitely funny moviegoing experience: the plot as a whole is funny, the individual scenes stand alone as funny, and each of those scenes is filled with hysterical one-liners and wordplay. Frankly, in terms of laughs, Dumb and Dumber is up there with Airplane! and The Naked Gun.

8 I Love You, Phillip Morris (71%)

This real-life story of con artist Steven Jay Russell has a darker sense of humor than Jim Carrey’s fans are used to, and it’s got a lot more dramatic elements than his usual work, but it’s still a lot of fun. Russell went to prison, fell in love with a fellow inmate named Phillip Morris (who, here, is played by Ewan McGregor), and when Morris was released, he broke out of prison a whopping four times just to be with him.

It’s a delightful story with more complex acting than Carrey is usually given the chance to do. Critic Steve Persall described it perfectly: “Catch Me If You Can mashed up with Brokeback Mountain if Mel Brooks directed.”

7 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (72%)

Jim Carrey found Count Olaf, the lead antagonist role in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, to be the perfect part for him to play. He loves character work, and Olaf isn’t just an eccentric character on his own – he’s a bad actor who disguises himself as other people.

RELATED: The 10 Best Episodes Of Netflix's A Series Of Unfortunate Events

So, Carrey got to play a bunch of different characters who were being played by another character. He was eager to do a sequel to the movie, and he never likes to do sequels, but unfortunately, due to its unusually dark tone for a kids’ movie, it didn’t perform so well at the box office.

6 The Mask (77%)

The movie that made Jim Carrey’s career was a comic book movie, but not the kind of comic book movie that now floods theaters every couple of weeks. The Mask is about an ordinary man who is granted extraordinary powers, sure, but he doesn’t use them to save the world. The Mask is more like The Nutty Professor than Spider-Man, and obviously, a slapstick-based Jerry Lewis-esque role is right in Carrey’s wheelhouse, so it’s a brilliant movie.

On a side-note, Carrey isn’t the only A-list star whose career began with The Mask. You’ll also see a young Cameron Diaz make her starring debut in the film.

5 Horton Hears a Who! (79%)

This animated adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic (funnily enough, the first-ever fully animated feature-length adaptation of the author’s work) takes the gloss of CG animation but gives it the whimsy of the iconic illustrations from Seuss’ work. Jim Carrey voices the titular elephant, who realizes that a tiny civilization lives on a speck of dust on top of a flower and will do anything to protect them.

Steve Carell plays the mayor of this civilization, while Seth Rogen lends his voice to Horton’s mouse sidekick, the aptly named Morton. It’s a heartwarming movie that tells us that even the smallest people matter.

4 Liar Liar (81%)

Jim Carrey loves high-concept movies that he can dig his teeth into. A prime example of this is Liar Liar, in which he plays a lawyer who, thanks to his son’s birthday wish, is unable to lie for 24 hours. This led to hilarious scenes like Carrey rattling off a comprehensive list of offenses he’d just committed to a cop who pulled him over and beating himself up in a men’s room to get out of court.

But ultimately, the movie carries a strong message. You shouldn’t lie to your kids – or anyone, for that matter – and Fletcher learns that the hard way in this movie. It’s far from a flawless movie, but fans of Carrey will definitely get their fill.

3 Peggy Sue Got Married (85%)

Directed by The Godfather’s Francis Ford Coppola, Peggy Sue Got Married stars Kathleen Turner as a woman in her 40s who is ready to divorce her husband, Charlie, played by Nicolas Cage and is filled with regret about how her life has played out.

Then, she gets the opportunity to go back in time and start all over again. She can prevent herself from ever marrying Charlie in the first place. That is, until she finds herself charmed by him all over again. Jim Carrey plays a minor role as Walter Getz, and since the movie came out almost a decade before Carrey became a star, he’s virtually unrecognizable.

2 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (93%)

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has made a career out of taking something we can all relate to, like the feeling of despair and hopelessness after a relationship, and spin it into something cinematic, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jim Carrey stars as Joel, a guy who falls head over heels in love with a girl, played by Kate Winslet, who breaks his heart.

RELATED: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind: 10 Quotes That Can Never Be Erased From Our Memories

Unable to get her out of his head, he hires a company to get her out of his head using experimental new technology. Naturally, it goes wrong and he ends up trapped in his own memories. It’s very strange, but also very powerful.

1 The Truman Show (94%)

This trippy work of social science fiction could easily be an episode of Black Mirror. Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, a regular guy who has never left his small town and lives a quiet existence. He starts to notice unusual things about his life and soon realizes that there are cameras on him at all times, broadcasting his every move to a world filled with adoring viewers.

When he discovers the truth and tries to escape, the director of the show becomes mad with power and would rather kill him than see him leave town and experience the real world. His fans all rally behind him. It’s very satirical, yet also very moving stuff.

NEXT: Cate Blanchett's 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

source https://screenrant.com/jim-carrey-best-movies-rotten-tomatoes/

#screenrant

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westcoastbroadway1443 · 6 years ago

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Be More Notes: my very long ramblings on BMC as I finally listen to the whole thing

Ok! I’m finally doing it! Now that the cast album is out I’m going to really give all of Be More Chill a listen, try to put the things that annoy me about the show aside, and give it a fair chance. And have decided to do running commentary here for the nobody who gives a shit lol. Going in I wanna say I’ve heard 4 full songs and random bits of other songs from the original soundtrack. And I’ll be listening now to the OBC album plus watching a b**tlg, I’m not totally sure when it took place I just know Will Roland is in it so at the very least New York. Keep in mind whatever I think of this show, if I end up hating it, if you like it you’re right. My opinion in no way invalidated anybody else’s or is above anyone else’s in my eyes, frankly I don’t enjoy not liking things, it just means I don’t get to come to the party and that’s not fun. So I might be poking fun at the show sometimes but if this speaks to you, that is fucking awesome! Also I’m old now and I guess no longer the target audience for stuff like this.

Spoilers for those who haven’t watched the show and don’t want to know stage stuff because I’ll be commenting on that. This ended up being really long, eh.

More Than Survive -ok this song I’ve heard before, and it both turned me off the show and also made me respect the hell out of it, because much like I give a salute to Black Mirror having the balls to make pig sex their pilot, I salute a musical that starts with jerking off -So far like Roland a little more than the previous guy. From what I’ve gathered from clips, while that dude is hella talented and cute as a button I kind of buy Roland as a terrified, desperate, frustrated high school kid more -Man I really do dig the hell out of the score and there is no denying this is catchy but some of these lyrics are so cringe -WHY IS A TEEN IN 2019 REFERENCING JOE PESCI?! -Ok I love the idea of a short bully calling somebody “tall ass” -I do like Jeremy’s body language better in this one. Also does he vocally remind anyone else of Max from Goofy Movie? Maybe this song just reminds me of “After Today” for no reason. -“super pimp” “mac daddy game”....OK! I’m going to try not to list every time I cringe. I just have questions -You don’t want to be Clooney...high school child in 2019 is Clooney really your reference for cool? Sorry I just struggle with this stuff because I keep hearing how this show is so in touch with kids these days but I just see:

-lol Michael came on and people went apseshit in the audience. All my nitpicks aside I bet this room probably has some great energy. -..Michael the clerk at 7/11 doesn’t pour your slushie, it’s self serve. Are you trying to seem cool to Jeremy right now? -Aah the boyfriend backpacks. I know of this ship -Yeah Christine brings the flutes!!! I was a flute player, we never get love -HAHA when Christine is doing her weird ass dance, in the recording I’m watching somebody right in front of the person recording just went “I don’t get this show”. Like me too darlin, but you got 2 hours left so suck it up -Oh but sir, check the playbill. The story is indeed about you -in summation this song kind of encapsulates everything I feel about this show, good performances and catchy as fuck and musically interesting and a lot of me asking “why”.

Play Rehearsal -Well Christine is adorable -wow wait what? wtf was that weird self harm comment??? Are we just gonna skip that??? -Ok I was a band kid in HS so I guess I don’t get this level of extra. Band rehearsal is just tuning and then fucking around until somebody makes you play Bach -...is Christine ok??? -Ok I think at least for now I may hate her. But I like that Jeremy likes her, likes her passion and such. I approve of her conceptually! I just don’t wanna be around her -I thought play rehearsal was gay, Rich?! WHAT YOU DOIN AT PLAY REHEARSAL RICH?! -...I mean I’ve seen Romeo and Juliet as a zombie wasteland movie, I would watch Midsummer zombies

More Than Survive Reprise -”least I didn’t have a breakdown and have to go the nurse” Ok fair, I can relate to that high school experience -this set is kind of working for me, basic but fun and the floor is neat -I know high school bullies are a thing I guess? But I always just saw them in movies? Now Middle School bullies were legit and terrible and I got the shit kicked out of me, but by HS I feel like everybody was too into their own shit to care much about anyone else?? Maybe that was just my school -Will Roland’s body language is real good in this show

The Squip Song -Oh! Surprise Rich lisp. Creative way to show how this thing alters you -..ok now we know about Rich’s dick size. I mean hon your short, maybe your penis is just proportionate? -DO I DETECT SOME THEREMIN IN THIS ORCHESTRATION?! Gimme all the theremin! -Ok so the squip made him be an asshole? Does he secretly want to be buddies with Jeremy? -Ok what the fuck are the people in the background doing here?!? -I know people ship Michael and Jeremy but I feel like Rich kinda wants to jump that tall ass??

Two Player Game -Ok the little sign for the game that came up was cute -These guys are kinda cute, even if I wish they’d tone down Michael’s “I’M QUIRKY!! YOU GET IT?!?” shtick -That is accurate! Y’all will be cool in college and I don’t see that brought up often -This is the first time I’ve found the choreography fun -...why is this dad allergic to pants?? -ah. Depression=no pants. And now I get why Jeremy’s so desperate not to stay as he is. Well points for making it not just about the girl -awww Michael is his bae -bro I’ve heard Loser Geek Whatever, you’re tellin lies right now to your buddy -LOL! WTF IS THIS WINDOWS SCREENSAVER OF A VIDEO GAME?!? -oh wow dancin went off the rails here at the end

Squip Enters -Mountain Dew? Well, better than Surge I guess. -Ok the Ecto Cooler line legit made me laugh. And I guess I could come down on the show for making Michael psyched about a drink that came out before he was born, but I have a pretty intense Crystal Pepsi obsession and that shit came out when I was maybe 4? So I get it Michael, you go enjoy your liquid ghosts -well that squip thing doesn’t look fun -Oooooh Ok Keanu is like factory setting, alright I’ll accept this. Though I will say this show would be 35% better if he was dressed like Keanu from Bill and Ted

Be More Chill Prt 1 -Hey stop shitting on Jeremy. I think I kinda like him -wow Keanu, I didn’t think you’d be so mean -I mean everyone chanting “everything about you sucks” is just how peeps with anxiety feel constantly. Eminem shirt ain’t gonna fix that -”Jerry-me” ok Will Roland is kind of making this work for me. -Him repeating everything the squip said is a fun little sequence. Like I dig this conceptually, scifi musicals are rare and can be neat - Lol the hate who they hate thing is pretty accurate

Do You Wanna Ride? -hey Jeremy what about Christiiiiine

Be More Chill Part 2 -the beginning of this song broke me a little. Hey! I’m feelin a thing! -this song is pretty fun! It works! -though the cast of like 10 people that just keep putting on different wigs make it feel like a high school play or a starkid production

Sync Up -ok so now I know I’m watching previews? Because sync up isn’t here -I do think this song is a really good addition. I mean it’s not like a stand out fantastic song but it does a good job getting across the themes and drives home the whole “everybody has problems” thing too which I like -Ok..dairy line was weird.

A Guy I Could Kinda Be Into -Ok the weird girl fighting stuff about Jake is unpleasant and sort of unnecessary -a squip gives you a deep voice and the ability to kinda do accents. Cool -ooo this is catchy, this is gonna make the spotify playlist -the goofy background hearts are cute. I still don’t know why she’s into Jake or why she’s friends with Jeremy or if they should be together since legit the only thing she thinks they have in common is theater which he doesn’t care about..but this song is still cute -lol squips understand friend zone

Upgrade -DID THIS SHOW JUST KILL EMINEM?! -How did the squip know that?! Does Eminem have a squip?? I mean it kinda makes sense.. -Don’t you see Jerbear?! The key to popularity is in this girl’s vagina! Happy they cut the “I’ll tenderly guide you just take me inside you” thing, little creepy -Why did Jake make a kicking motion to illustrate cricket? I’m like 85% sure Jake doesn’t know what cricket is... -the “feel all the feels” like is a little goofy but I really like the rewrite for this song, showing some depth of character. Good job, show! And I’m seeing some chemistry between these two, but I don’t know if I’m meant to? -Oh no! The whole “you looked at me” thing from Brooke was so sweet and sad. And the player two thing. Yeah this OG version of this song can go fuck off, the rewrite is a really good tune. I’ll admit the original maybe built up the horror a little, the squip sounds more threatening coming in at the end but I like where there going making this about everyone and not just Jeremy

Loser Geek Whatever -Squip blocked Michael?? You’re a dick, Keanu Reeves -I didn’t love this song when I first heard the single but hearing the version on the album and the stripped down piano version, I really really like it. Gives me some of those old geek feels from back in the day -sort of surprise by how little is happening on stage though? I sort of assumed something was happening as the song built? But nope, just Will rocking his wee heart out -LOL! What is Squip’s new outfit???

Halloween -Ah, it’s this show Big Fun. This is a lot catchier than Big Fun though -I went to exactly one of these kinds of parties in HS, just replace Halloween with punks after a rock show and add a lot more drugs. I didn’t hide in a bathroom but I did hide next to the stairs until my mom came and got me. Memories!! You know what this show is succeeding I suppose, it’s making me have HS feels -...is Jake dressed as Thomas Jefferson? -Jenna you’re too cute for that costume. You should get to wear something sexy too! Unless you just dig clowns in which case enjoy yourself hon -Ooooooh Prince, I get it -this is not this show’s fault at all but I struggle with dancing in shows. I mean the title of my blog is The Girl Who Used to Hate Musicals because I did, and while I love them now extended dancing sequences still take me out of a show real fast. I know I’m in the minority here -...what the fuck is that weird fuzzy thing with the big teeth -Hot damn! Go Rich! Dancin fool

Do You Wanna Hang? -I don’t like any part of this plot line... -Ok! Didn’t realized she was dressed like a “sexy baby” so the diaper line sort of horrified me. I mean it still does! I just understand it now

Michael in the Bathroom -hey the bathtub! Ok I know enough to know what happens now -Jeremy why you gotta be so mean -I mean what is there to say, great song. I wondered if they’d change anything for the new recording and I dig the arrangement, especially the stripped down acoustic guitar and piano parts!! Also as a lady who maybe once or twice since discovering this song has gotten tipsy and sung it karaoke-like, appreciate the slower and the higher. It’s not a lot, just a bit, but makes it less of a struggle to match. Thanks bro!

A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into (Reprise) -Finally! They’re both giant doofs but I see some connection! And I mean my roommate and I have noises we always make at each other like a call and response, so I gets it -He asked it! So proud. Rejected but proud of the boy, and rejected for good reasons

The Smartphone Hour -Heard part of this song before. Really like this Jenna more than original Jenna, her performance was a little much for me -This is one of those songs where I really do feel like I’m watching a HS original production..but a good one? Maybe cause I haven’t seen something like this on Broadway, but that’s a good thing. Always good to see new kinds of things on Broadway -lol what is the middle of this song?! I feel like I’m suddenly watching a cheer squad or like a John Waters inspired musical, which from what little I know of Joe Iconis I think he’d be cool with that comparison

The Pants Song -Jeremy don’t be mean to your dad! -Yipes is this the Break in a Glove or Dead Gay Son of BMC?? -....yeah it totally is -”Do you love him??” Has Jeremy’s dad finally given up on finding a girl in Jeremy’s room? -Ok ok I’m gettin the ship

The Pitiful Children -So squip just looks like this now, I thought maybe he was just being fancy for Halloween -Hot damn Jenna! Why were we savin that voice?! -I feel like I’m missing something with these weird hand motions the squip is always, do they actually mean something? -goosestepping...alright. Oh no Jeremy did the hand motions, I think that means a thing

The Play -Jeremy is being so creepy but he means well? I guess? -lol using the play to spread the squips is pretty clever -wtf red mountain dew? Really? You know what fuck it, discontinued drinks for the win. Maybe my saved bottles of Crystal Pepsi will stop an apocalypse one day! -Michael’s entrance was cute, and hey he just happens to have code red. I wish ecto cooler was what shut it off. -The glitching voice is crazy when Jeremy is fighting Michael and I love the way Jeremy is sort of bobbing up and down in fighting stance like a video game character, Fun touch -squip is making Jeremy go all Idle Hands! -I prefer the recording version of the guys making up, the whole “I just wanted to be liked” “I just wanted to be seen” thing -the squip has to be so extra even in death

Voices in My Head -hey lispy Rich is back! And bi now I guess? -Oh is that why people think Michael/Jeremy are a thing? The squip blocked Rich’s bi thoughts from him and it blocked Michael from Jeremy’s vision? I mean it would be an interesting story, I’d take it. -This might be my favorite song and I don’t really know why, I don’t super love that Jeremy still gets Christine in the end but I just love how this song sounds -I’ve never heard a character wearing pants get an applause? -improved lyrics in the Broadway version, and since it got more into the popular kids as people you can kinda see why they’d still stay friend with Jeremy -”I’ll throw you a rope home slice if you need some dope advice” like is this parody? What is this?? Well..still my fav song despite this line. A line they liked so much it’s the one original popular kid line they kept in the new version??? -don’t know if I see much future for these two, but Jeremy’s reaction to the kiss was cute -”Of the voices in my head the loudest one is mine” is my favorite line of the show -lol Rich’s little sneak hug. I feel like Rich always wanted to be friends with Jeremy? Or had a crush on him and that’s why his squip made him beat Jeremy up? Is this pairing a thing?

Final thoughts: This was so stupid long, nobody read this but that’s ok! It was fun to take notes anyway. Listening to it all, I liked it more than I thought I would, especially with the lyric changes. I don’t know if I would like it as much if it wasn’t Will Roland, the dude just really made this character likable when he could very easily not be. Some of the lines still bug me, there’s still a lot of cringe here but there’s also a lot of good stuff. This show introduced me to Joe Iconis and I’m slowly falling in love with him from his other work and CANNOT WAIT for Broadway Bounty Hunter because that sounds so like my jam. Overall I do get why people like this show, especially younger people because you can relate to the characters but maybe you want something a little peppier than DEH. I don’t think this is a soundtrack I’m going to ever listen to all the way through, but I’m for sure grabbing a handful of songs and sticking them on my musical play list. And when this thing goes on tour and ends up in LA, I think it would probably be worth checking out if I can, looks like a fun watch. Though with all the young fans and internet fans if they’re smart they’re gonna record this bitch.

#Be More Chill #BMC #joe iconis #Will Roland #musicals #musical review #jess babbles about a thing

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spongebobsins · 6 years ago

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Everything Wrong With The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

(Full disclosure: I actually did this before on DA a few years ago, so this is a spruced up version of that post. It’s been updated with my current standards and some new jokes but isn’t totally different. Still, hope you enjoy)

1.Viacom

2.There’s a whole opening scene with pirates, yet Patchy is nowhere to be seen

3.This guy thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to step out of the way of the door before the guy came out.

4.Because this is a SpongeBob movie, I can ignore a lot of stuff here, but there are like 50 pirates here, and only like 6 tickets.

5.These pirates are making a huge rowdy mess…and yet if I was there, it wold still be one my better theater expereinces.

6.Wait, the movie within the movie just starts with no title? There’s s no title in the credits, which is part of the movie within the movie, so what kind of movie has no title in it at all?

7.Also, the screening just starts with no trailers?

8.Why wasn’t the manager here to begin with, if the place was open.

9.They seriously called the cops about the cheese? Can’t someone else just…put cheese on it

9.“Weird sound in dream turns out be normal sound waking them up” cliché.

10.It being a dream forgives a few sins…but it’s still a dream cliche so..

11. Let’s talk about the Krusty Krab 2. How could have a hugely popular restaurant, function for this only with only ONE in existence?

12 Also, at no point do we see them hire extra employees for the other KK, there’s just a new manager, but there’s like 2 employees in this place besides Mr Krabs. …How did a place like this ever function with only two employees, anyway?

13.Spongebob has underwear in this shot, but when his pants…open up, he’s nude.

14.Also, Butt joke.

15.SpongeBob’s teeth should not be in good shape if he only brushes his eyes.

16.Even for SpongeBob, barging in Squid’s shower is…creepy.

17.There’s nothing under this rock so where did Patrick’s pants come from? 18.All this excitement over a place that has never been mentioned before now.

19.Wait, KK 2 is next to the first one? That’s really stupid.

20.”Lord knows I’ve tried” Which lord though? Is relgion a thing under the sea?

21/know Plankton doesn’t always have common sense, but he seriously has never heard of the letter Z?! Or at least he hasn’t seen that file clearly there.

22. Plan Z seems to be Plan Porn, ew.

23.The Chum Bucket isn’t directly across the street like it should be.

24.How he does not hear his screams?

25.Also, the plankton smear vanishes in the next shot.

26.“I paid 9 dollars for this?” ‘I paid ten”. That’s racist.

27.I know SpongeBob is” immature” but Squidward is literately the worst worker ever, so why was he picked? At least SB is a good worker.

28.If you listen really closely, you near hear Mr Krabs whispering jackass. That’s sinful because he said swearing is bad back in Sailor Mouth and got trouble with his Mom over it.

29.Another butt joke. 30.Wait, he doesn’t like people touching the crown yet he hired someone to clean it?

31.Even if this is meant to a different character than the God Neptune, why are we only just now knowing there’s a King of the sea, especially since he’s so close to a place the leads apparently go to a lot?

32.How the hell did no one notice Plankton taking the crown? Mindy is looking in the general direction of it, and while plankton is tiny, they should at least hear it moving or something.

33.There’s no guards outside to possible see the crown flying away.

34/Goofy Goober has a lollipop in this shot, but when that hand thing comes out, it’s gone

35. There’s only one row of chairs in the nut bar here, but when SpongeBob starts to leave, there’s another corner where more chairs are over there. 36.And they’re drunk, in a family film.

37/They didn’t kick them out for getting drunk in front of kids?

38.Wait, if they’re at the KK 2, who is taking care of the first one right now?

39.”You left one DAMNING piece of evidence-” Whoa, Language!

40.We did not see Plankton bring paper with him at all so I must question this.

41.Also, Mr. Krabs could try to find some stuff he wrote to show this isn’t his handwriting. 42.There’s never a phone here but it’s now there for this joke.

43.How can Plankton hear over anything over the phone if Mr Krabs hung up?

44.Mr Krabs’ clothes magically grow back

45.Discount My Leg!

46.Everyone in the Krusty Krab magically appears before that part, and disappears right after. Hell, you can see two fish eating in the background like nothing’s happening!

47.Patrick, out of nowhere!

48.Patrick being horny for Mindy goes nowhere and is a bit creepy.

49.The wheels are made of pickles in this shot, but when they leave, they are real wheels.

50.There’s seriously no one at the Krusty Krab or even outside to see this?

51.Stereotypical hillbillies are Stereotypical, and a bit annoying.

52.”No Patrick they’re laughing next to us” Hey, only I get to be pedantic around here!

53.How did no one see that guy coming?

54.How did she get that footage?

55.I like that the airhorn from the previous scene is sitll here but it was nowhere to be seen before than so..

56.The thug doesn’t recognize Patrick from earlier.

57 No one in the bar is seen with any tools normally used for bubble blowing, and since they somehow don’t know it came from the bathroom, no one in that room should be suspected.

58.They were standing in place the whole time and everything was far away when they beat up the double dude, so how did Patrick get the key?

59.Villain asks who can stop them now and it cuts to the heroes cliché.

60.A monster having an part that looks like a talking old lady makes no sense and you know it, so let’s move on.

61.How did the bubble soap get outside?

62.The stairs to the trench randomly appear and reappear throughout this scene.

63.Patrick has only worn those underpants once in the whole show…and it was in an episode after this movie!

64.Even with that carriage, how did Mindy get here so fast? She has no mermaid magic.

65.“Did you see my underwear?” “No Patrick ‘ “Did you want to?” …Ew.

66. The plankton statue in complete in this shot, but in the next shot it’s under construction.

67.I know Plankton wanted Neptune to fry Mr Krabs, but since he controls everyone, couldn’t he storm the castle and use the bucket on Neptune to get the job done quicker?

68.Hate to get critical, but sometimes these cuts to Dennis ruin the flow of scenes.

69.How does that seaweed stay on?

70.“Why did we jump over the edge instead of taking the stairs?” Spongebob would be great at SpongeBobSins.

71.This song is awesome until you realized they lazily reused some title card music from the show.

…But it’s still awesome, so..

71. ”Even the hideous disgusting monsters!” That’s racist.

72.“That way you’ll never found out that he stole the crown” Dennis is an idiot.

73.Man, what is with this movie and characters appearing without being heard?

74.You know, randomly walking around underwater in a desolate area with barely any fish isn’t really that efficient, given what he’s using them for as we find out in a minute.(Although it clearly worked before so this sin is debatable)

75.Why does he wear his diver’s outfit while on land?

76.“Alexander Clam Bell!” Booooo

77.Okay, so how did Plankton get the crown all the way here anyway?

78.How the heck did they not see that huge crown this whole time?

The entire scene is insanely emotional, especially for SpongeBob. I’m not made of stone so…yeah.

78.The pirates ruins it a tad though.

79.Discount Potty, which makes the lack of Patchy worse. He’s even voiced by Stephen!

80.“Tears bring someone back to life” cliché.

81.Also, these detectors do not work that way.

82..Because a bit of water will bring dead fish back to life, right? It makes sense for the duo but not the ones that have been dead for ages.

83.Poop joke.

84.The Hasselhoff cameo is funny but how many kids even know him, even I 2004?

85,I’m not even gonna ask how Dennis got here with the boot. Still sinning it, of course.

86.Hoff barely feels this epic battle going on, on his back.

87.You’ve got a time limit but sure, 10 seconds to liftoff.

88.They made a big deal out of that lock but now it’s just gone.

89.Karen isn’t there before SB and Pat show up, but now she’s here.

90. Why didn’t he put the bucket on Neptune beforehand? Would have made this a lot easier, makes my previous sin more of an issue.

91.Now the talking cheese is gonna preach to us!

92.This is amazing, one of the best things ever…but it’s also the biggest Deus Ex Machina ever.

93.”No freakin’ way!” The soundtrack version changes this because freakin’ is just too intense for kids I guess.

Eh screw it, sin removed!

93. From the looks of it, the town literally fixed itself in a matter of hours.

94.“I was just tell you that that your fly is down!” …He doesn’t wear pants. 95,Freeze frame ending.

96.The credits feel the need to inform us that Karen is a computer wife.

97. Way too many minutes of credits for the sake of padding the soundtrack. 98.Post credits scene. SpongeBob is my favorite Marvel movie.

MOVIE SIN TALLY: 98

SENTENCE: Beaten senseless (by every able boded patron in the bar)

And after a slight delay, this is finally done. Even though I had to refurbish something I already did, this sitll took some more, to see what new sins to add and what to keep I tried my best to make sure the sins are good here and hopefully only a few are weird/filler.

This is certainly a few easy movie to sin, but is still highly enjoyable. Might do a win post for it someday, we’ll see. But for now, here are the sins of a good representation of the series.

With that out of the way come back in about mid February or a bit later as dive into Season 4 and see how sinful it ends up being. I’m judging all SpongeBob on the same level, so we’ll see how the sins are.

See ya then.

(Dedicated to Stephen Hilenburg)

#SpongeBob #Movie #Sins

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hellobengski · 6 years ago

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THAILAND: POST COLLEGE ADVENTURE 2017

The last time I felt clouds in my presence was in the year 2012, month of December, in which the airplane landed to Hong Kong. The dilemma of life and death in an open space was merely forgotten, where everything you could see was tranquility. I never wanted to stop looking at cottony clouds. They made me feel safe. It was 5 years later when I felt it again. I remember how it feels to fly without wings, appreciating the beauty of nature beyond what I imagine.

Thailand was the next stop on my travel bucket list all over Southeast Asia. It was a place that had similar atmosphere with my very own country. EDSA was the first thing that came into my mind when I walked outside the airport. I heard various honking of buses and cars, but in a more disciplined way, I guess. But more than that, I had a view of a new horizon of tradition and culture.

My mom, sister, and aunt had to travel 2 hours away from the airport so we could check in to the hotel where my sister booked through the online. I was assuming somehow it could be near a quiet place, or maybe a road of consecutive coffee shops, but I failed. It was entirely different than what I anticipated. Khao San Road was a place where small bars and party houses were all located. Abstract shirts, different items with elephant designs were displayed along the narrow road of which tourists could experience a good bargain with merchants. I have seen discrete races all over the world who stayed for quite some time in their respective hotels. I could turn my head 360 and whichever direction I bumped into, I could always see unfamiliar but lovely faces.

We met Ms. Nancy, our tour guide for the 1st day. She had a medium short hair, showed a very long glittery eyelashes in her face, and a pale pink lipstick on her mouth. She had a pleasing personality, I could say, or maybe she needed to be because it was part of her job. She was shorter than me, maybe an inch, and was in her typical shirt and pants with Chuck Taylor shoes to stay comfy.

I only had 2 hours to prepare and fix my baggage before I travel with Ms. Nancy. I swiped the card through the doorknob, allowing me to embrace a very relaxing and convenient 1 single room with 2 large soft beds and pillows. I put my sister’s make-up kit in front of the mirror with a hairdryer beside it. My personal hygiene necessities were located just outside our bedroom, in the midpoint of two comfort rooms, so it would be easier to grab just in case we’re in a hurry to take a bath. My aunt placed some leftover biscuits all the way from Philippines next to the huge flat screen TV. My mom being my mom, tried to clean some of her stuff, but there was no enough time left. Angela, my sister, did some of her retouch on her face to make her feel fresh even when she already felt exhausted. We left the room and ate one of the most popular Thai food called, “Pad-Thai” along the road.

The value of respect of Thai people for their King was the very first thing I ever noticed. As I was riding in an outsized van, I spotted some black and white colored curtains hanged outside the gigantic temples of the individual kings who passed away, and for the royals who are still living. Ms. Nancy shared some of her ideas about Thai’s history, telling us that these long curtains represent grief and condolences for the King who died due to his old age. And this will last for a year, until they go back to the feeling of relief.

I went inside historical temples of different images of Buddha, taking pictures for a remembrance to my relatives when I get back home. I tried eating coconut ice cream for P50 baht, which savored my starving throat into something refreshing. Tuk Tuk, a classic Thai vehicle, impressed me with its three wheels, although Ms. Nancy recommended us not to ride on it. Even if I wanted to stay longer in a certain place, we only had limited time to grasp some of the stories that were in there.

Alarm clocks in our own phone woke up us too early. I didn’t have enough sleep. Maybe because of too much excitement, or maybe because of the extreme coldness inside our room. I woke up at 4 in the morning holding my phone, checking some news and updates in the Philippines. It was a never-ending extra judicial killings on my newsfeed, letting me feel the frustration and agitation for my government’s administration. And few days from now, ironically, I would be home in a place where I wouldn’t feel safe. I didn’t want to think about overthinking, so I tried to wake up my mom. I went directly to the bathroom, thinking about the plans and places Ms. Nancy listed for us the day before she left us in the hotel. Everyone else seemed to be freaking out when I finished taking a bath, considering the only time we had to eat for a buffet breakfast. I chose to wear an orange shirt and shorts with floral design, supposing it would match the places we would be visiting.

Just by the time the restaurant open its door, I hurriedly walked into the different kinds of food. I was truly overwhelmed seeing complete set of breakfast that made my stomach perfectly full. Sausages on my left, croissants and toasted bread on my right, a problem of choosing between fried rice or pasta, and slices of watermelons and pineapples were put into my plate. I wasn’t even contented at all, I made my own coffee to match my croissants, even bother to get cucumber juice just in case coffee wouldn’t give me satisfaction. The question of time never crossed my mind when all these food were prepared in front of me. Although it was a must to rush, a Thai man, who works with Ms. Nancy in the same travel agency, fetched us. It was a group tour, consisted of two couples, one from America, and the other from Malaysia.

The tour started by introducing Mr. Thai’s name. I forgot, though. He considered making jokes out of telling stories, associated with historical Thai’s exotic food too. He is a 55-year old man, who has 3 kids. All I could remember was every time he gets to see me smiling, the memory of his daughter blissfully retains in his mind. He shared about how he got involved into a travel agency, which I think a lot of Thai people are working at. He was not as chatty as Ms. Nancy, nevertheless, he was entertaining. He showed us the famous Floating Market in Thailand, where tourists needed to ride on a boat to purchase some stuff. I have seen amazing paintings in all sizes, carved vases, coconut ice cream with nuts for its toppings, “lansones” which was sold by an 85-year old woman, weaved hats, and a lot more. The biggest Eureka moment was, all I thought Thailand has only one floating market. By the time we had to leave the place, Mr. I forgot-the-name actually revealed that in every town, has its own one. Well, not a thing was bought during the boating experience, all I know was my heart was fulfilled seeing people enjoying moments that could only last once in a life time.

The magical performance in theater happened at night after the tour in Floating Market. We entered a huge closed room with people wanting to witness such beauty in arts and entertainment. Siam Niramit, is a state-of-the art theater yielding one of the largest stage productions in the world. It’s a captivating adventure through Thailand’s history and culture in high-flying fashion, with live elephants, acrobatics, pyrotechnics and stunts – all performed by a troupe made up of thousands of performers adorned in great costumes. I would never forget my mom’s unexplainable reaction and experience throughout the entire show. She wanted to cry out of joy most of the time. It’s as if she didn’t want to go home in the hotel. I never saw rejection from her face, telling me that next time she comes back, it would be with my dad. We captured moments with several actors and actresses after, leaving us a souvenir with elephants, making this as her favorite art of the travel.

Off my bucket list was also riding an elephant. One of the many animals I have always wanted to experience, carabao was supposed to be the first. I think elephants were made to listen closely to everything, to everyone. They were made to be friends with people most especially when you treat them with care and respect. They love watermelons and coconuts. They like being splashed with water after taking us into a routine. They were also trained to take pictures with various poses of their trunks, and that’s how they get to be attractive for locals and foreigners.

The famous Thai massage will never be forgotten. So my brother’s friend who happens to work in Bangkok accompanied us after a very long day in market. This has got to be the most effective massage in my whole life. At first I thought it was brutal, since it was my first time the legit Thai massage. I was taking it easy for the first few minutes but later on, it kinda felt horrible. In a matter of seconds, the compress became weapon and I was literally cringing under the pressure. I actually found myself concentrating on regulating my breathing. The way they provide Thai massages are with entire body. They leverage their own body weight with certain movements in order to provide enough pressure to the body. I did fall asleep several times but still ended with a very soothing cup of tea.

Of course, our vacation wouldn’t be complete without the “party.” Prior to shopping in Chatuchak Market, my sister and I had been planning to socialize with people. We were really after drinks and fries, although it wasn’t our first time doing this, we wanted to make sure to at least meet good-looking guys from Europe. Our mom was subtle with her words but still she allowed us to explore. By the time we went down from our room, that’s when the party started. I thought we were courageous enough to do things beyond our control, but surprisingly, we were like high school students who just stayed in a corner of the street to observe how a street party works. There were people who literally danced as if it was their last day on earth, girls and guys French kissing each other while tossing their drinks, Asians and Americans twerking as if they’re showing off to every person they’d bump into. There was also robbery that happened in 7 Eleven Convenience store, unknowingly grabbing sodas and fresh milk from the fridge, to ease their drunkenness. After all, I saw emptiness. I felt emptiness. The superficiality of society where people wants to fit in to get accepted because after all, no one wants rejection. The façade of being proud “in” but in reality, they’re slowly dying. And for me, street party seemed to be an outlet of frustration, sadness, anxiety, and depression. People always long for something in the end. But life should be more than a night of drinks and smoke. It should be more than meeting temporary people.

Four days and three nights was a short term goal achieved in knowing and living the life in Thailand. More insights were added to my unending learnings in life. It was more than the feeling of being grateful of what the life has more to offer for people like us who seek for journey mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Life is really full of surprises and adventures and I couldn’t wait for my next destination. Until next time, Thailand!

#thailand #bucketlist #vacation #vacationtrip #asia #asianculture #thaifood #floatingmarket #party #travel #travelexperience #travelblog #travelstory

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doomandgloomfromthetomb · 6 years ago

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The Ballad of Spike & Jerry: Bob Dylan & Jerry Garcia, 1980-1995 / Dylan & The Dead: 2003

A very special treat for you today — the estimable Jesse Jarnow has gone long on the tangled tale of Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, and put together two essential comps for your listening pleasure, with great art by John Hilgart. Before we get started, you should know that Jesse has a new book coming out soon: Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul, scheduled for publication by Da Capo on Election Day, 2018. He’s also just started a podcast — Alternate Routes, featuring “independent music not found on major streaming services, all tracks approved by artists.” And of course, you can still catch his Frow Show, weekly on WFMU. OK, I think that covers it — take it away, Jesse!

The Ballad of Spike & Jerry: The Frequently Secret & Always Misbegotten Adventures of Bob Dylan & the Grateful Dead, 1971-2003 by Jesse Jarnow

You might love Dylan. You might even love the Dead. But that says nothing about how you might feel about Dylan & the Dead, the 1989 live album documenting the 1987 tour where Jerry & co. backed Bob. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more hours listening to Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead than any other two artists combined, and I’m quite sure I don’t dig Dylan & the Dead. Perhaps presumptuously (but I’d bet accurately!), I assume the vast majority of Dylan and Dead freaks I know feel the same way.

So, as Doom & Gloom From the Tomb rolls through the Never-Ending Tour, which started the year after Dylan’s ’87 tour with the Dead, I was inspired to dig into the moment where it intersected with the equally endless Summer of Dead, which has trucked on now for more than two decades since Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death. Specifically, I wanted to hear the appearances Dylan made with the post-Garcia configuration calling themselves “The Dead” in the summer of 2003, playing 18 different songs during eight performances. And so I did, and enjoyed it quite a bit, the two acts’ idiosyncratic tendencies lining up more sympathetically and far more enjoyably than the 1987 onstage train wreckage.

But, of course, there was the missing void of Jerry Garcia, and it seemed silly to stop there. What I wanted--what I want--is Jerry and Dylan. And there’s actually a fair body of that, over 14 hours worth. Inside that, I went a-questing for at least a single disc’s worth of highlights, of performances that I actually want to listen to and could maybe internalize in the same way that I do with my favorite recordings from either. Listening back to what I put aside, I think what I wanted were tracks where neither side overpowered the other, where Dylan doesn’t shout, and where the Dead quit rolling their thunder. I’m sure the expanded Bootleg Series version of Blood on the Tracks will be plenty bloody, but these might be Dylan’s bloodiest tracks of all.

There’s also the plot point that Dylan has repeatedly credited his collaboration with the Dead for turning around his own career, leading directly to his critical and commercial reemergence a decade later. And I also wanted to piece together the story, which--as it turns out--goes back nearly a full decade before the first Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia played together onstage.

1. Reckoning with Dylan & the Dead

Dylan & the Dead is one of the bigger missed opportunities in rock history, but the even bigger missed opportunity probably came about 15 years earlier, when the Dead were at their peak as a nimble Americana/jazz quintet, and Dylan was simultaneously retired and in the process of becoming something of a Deadhead.

The first inklings that Dylan might be gettin’ heady came in spring 1971, when Rolling Stone reported him hanging out by the Fillmore East soundboard during the Dead’s five-night run that April. “Fuck, they’re damned good,” the Stone reported him saying after watching the band jam with the Beach Boys. According to Levon Helm’s autobiography, on New Year’s Eve that year, when Dylan showed up to play with The Band at New York’s Academy of Music, he told the drummer that, “I’m thinking of touring with the Dead.” “Dylan Stalks the Dead,” the Village Voice reported on Dylan’s presence at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium for one of the Dead’s summer ’72 shows, but nothing materialized. Jerry Garcia was elusive when asked about their chillage.

Jerry Garcia was a serious grade Dylan freak, which maybe seems obvious, but it wasn’t ever thus. In fact, Garcia was one of those purists who thought Dylan’s new directions in folk music were impure and walked out on one of Dylan’s legendary folk festival sets in disgust. For Garcia, though, it was the Monterey Folk Festival in May of 1963. By the time Dylan plugged in two years later, Garcia was likewise in the process of going electric, and was totally on board. When Dylan returned to the road in ’74, Garcia caught him with the Band in Oakland and, according to Rolling Stone, headed down to LA to see him again at the Forum a few days later, only to discover that some enterprising beardo had shown up at the box office, claimed to be Jerry, and ganked his ticket.

In the intervening years, Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia continued to circle one another, traces of their developing friendship emerging in the marginalia of rock history. Grateful Dead Records employee Steve Brown told me (when I interviewed him for my book, Heads) about how he and Garcia scored an invitation to a mixdown session for Planet Waves, after Dead crew chief Ramrod befriended some roadies for the Band at their joint gigs. They saw them working on “Going, Going, Gone,” Steve notes, which went almost directly into Garcia’s solo sets. Sometime later that year, it seems, Dylan looked up David Grisman and arrived in Stinson Beach for mandolin lessons, and--at some point--made his way up the hill for a jam session with Garcia at San Souci, cookies by Mountain Girl.

But it wasn’t until 1980 that Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia showed up on a stage together and, by then, things had changed. Bob Dylan had been born again. Jerry Garcia was sliding into a deep heroin addiction. Like star-crossed lovers, the pair continued to cross paths for the next 15 years, playing together from time to time--most notably during Dylan’s six show run with the Dead in the summer of ’87--but never achieved the sustained burst of magic that one might hope for from the two. Bummer.

I’ve revisited their first pairing a few times over the years, a 1980 show during Dylan’s 14-show stand at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, beginning only a few weeks after the Dead had finished their own 15-night run that would end up, in part, as the great acoustic album Reckoning. Dylan, though, was on his second pass through the Bay Area with his expanding repertoire of born again Christian songs. The previous year, he’d performed only his gospel music.

By 1980, for the first time in Dylan’s performing career, though, shows weren’t selling out. A few of his old favorites soon returned to the setlists, and promoter Bill Graham started to tap into his phonebook for guests that might spice up the proceedings and sell more tickets, which would come to include Carlos Santana, Roger McGuinn, Maria Muldaur, and Dylan’s final performance with Highway 61 Revisited guitar hero Mike Bloomfield. And Jerry.

The first song they played together, “To Ramona,” is fairly magic. Garcia takes over for the solo, shifting into a mode that’s perfect Jerry, simultaneously fully in charge, but finding voicings and turns that also push the song open, making it sound like a limitless conversation -- for 85 seconds or so, anyway. After that, though, Garcia’s contributions are bit more nebulous. Setlists differ about when he was actually onstage, and the recording is of mixed help, his guitar sometimes sinking into the murk, sometimes punctuating thoughts, but never with the confidence of “To Ramona.”

A few months later, Garcia spoke to David Gans about the performance. “I was surprised that the tunes were as difficult as they were,” he commented. “A lot of the tunes that he writes are deceptively simple-sounding, when in reality they’re not. There was really only maybe two or three of the five or six that I played on that I wasn’t doing anything besides trying to learn the tune.”

Little Feat guitarist Fred Tackett, then serving in Dylan’s band, assessed it similarly to Clinton Heylin, if more harshly (and not fully accurately): “Carlos played a song--thank you and left. Mike Bloomfield came out, played ‘Like A Rolling Stone’--thank you--left. Jerry Garcia came out, played and stayed. The whole two-hour show. [Not quuuite --ed.] He didn’t know any of the songs and he was higher than a kite... We finished the show and Bob said, ‘I’m never going to have anybody sit in with us again.’” (Roger McGuinn and Maria Muldaur would sit in over the next few nights.)

Their semi-public paths converged again in 1986. Garcia checked out a Dylan show at the Greek, hung with Bob backstage, planted the seed for the next summer’s tour, and offered some song-by-song notes. Another story from around that era has Dylan showing up at an Oakland Dead show with his Greenwich Village-era roommate, Wavy Gravy, and going unrecognized until he slipped his sunglasses on.

Finally, when the Dead shared a few stadium bills with Dylan (backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for his own summer tour), Dylan showed up onstage with the Dead in Akron and Washington, DC.

But ye Gods I don’t recommend listening. Only a week later, Jerry Garcia would fall into a diabetic coma and nearly die. He sounds better here than I would’ve suspected, but there is no clickage happening whatsoever between Dylan and the Dead during either of these performances as Dylan tries and often fails to duet with Garcia and Bob Weir on his own songs.

Even still, Dylan arrived at the Dead’s Club Front studio warehouse in the San Rafael industrial zone in January 1987 and jammed with the Dead, landing (according to Dennis McNally) in a version of the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” that thrilled both parties. Dylan proposed a tour together, and showed up in June for three weeks of rehearsals.

Dylan’s entrance into the Dead’s world was typically absurd and would get no less so. The band’s infamously cliquish road thugs immediately signaled that Dylan was on their turf, deciding that--since the Dead already had one “Bob,” and two if you count Hunter--that they would need to find a new name for Dylan. They settled on “Spike,” and would only address Dylan as such.

Dead roadie Steve Parish remembered Dylan as private, “content to write songs, play guitar, and smoke a little pot,” and enjoyed the surreality of being assigned to hang as Dylan crashed on the Front Street couch, inherited from Parish’s parents, where little Big Steve had once sat and argued that Dylan was the voice of his generation.

While a banner year for the Grateful Dead, scoring their only top 10 hit, 1987 was a terrible year for Bob Dylan. Later, he would tell Newsweek that he was going through a complete musical freak-out, suffering onstage panic attacks, “I-- I can’t remember what it means, does it mean -- is it just a bunch of words? Maybe it’s like what all these people say, just a bunch of surrealistic nonsense...” As Paul Williams points out in his wonderful chapter on the 1987 collaboration, this amnesia is audible throughout Dylan’s performances with the Dead during this period, both onstage and off. Perhaps the most sympathetic Dylan listener the world has ever known, Williams’s Dylan/Dead assessment comes in the third (and sadly final) volume of his Performing Artist series, 1986-1990 & beyond, Mind Out of Time, and I don’t totally agree with it.

In Chronicles, a book to which perhaps shouldn’t always be taken literally, Dylan’s freak-out continued palpably as he arrived at Front Street and discovered the band wanted to dive far back into Dylan’s songbook. “I could hear the brakes screech,” Dylan wrote in his 2004 account. “If I had known this to begin with, I might not have taken the dates. I had no feeling for any of those songs and didn’t know how I could sing them with any intent... I felt like a goon and didn’t want to stick around.”

And here Dylan slips into what sounds more like a parable than an actual story, describing how he escaped to a seedy bar somewhere nearby, not intending to go back, ordered a gin and tonic, turned around to watch the jazz combo onstage, and was struck dumb with musical revelation. “All of a sudden, I understood something faster than I ever did before,” Dylan wrote, and spends time in Chronicles explaining how this sudden download would cause him to rethink his career and approach to performing. He returned to Front Street a new man and had a blast. “Maybe [the Dead] dropped something in my drink, I can’t say, but anything they wanted to do was fine with me. I had that old jazz singer to thank.”

In 1997, Dylan would tell a more believable and practical version of what he gained from the rehearsal sessions. “[Garcia would] say, ‘Come on, man, you know, this is the way it goes, let’s play it, it goes like this,’” Dylan described. “And I’d say, ‘Man, he’s right, you know? How’s he getting there and I can’t get there?’ I had to go through a lot of red tape in my mind to get back there.”

The five hours of music circulating from these sessions at the Dead’s Club Front rehearsal space represent the Basement Tapes of the Dylan/Dead continuum, filled with delights, strange covers, experiments, shop talk, almost four dozen different songs, and a few performances that are, to my ears, just wonderful. I don’t think Dylan’s revelation is necessarily audible here, and I tend to imagine the real story being a bit more prosaic, closer to the second version, as the tape record bears out, but I find almost all of the rehearsal recordings to be enjoyable on some level.

My personal keeper takes come almost entirely on songs that neither act is known for, played in a far quieter manner than either had demonstrated onstage in those years. (Dylan had spent time a earlier that spring working with former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.) I’m especially taken with the songs where Garcia plays pedal steel and banjo. With Jerry on the banjo, they turn out some primo folk revival sunshine by way of “John Hardy” (as performed by the Carter Family on the Anthology of American Folk Music) and the jug band standard “Stealin’” (part of the Dead’s early electric repertoire and revisited by Garcia with his pal David Grisman a few years later). With Garcia sitting down at pedal steel for the first known time since 1972, they would play beautiful versions of 1967’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and the half-lost 1962 gem “Tomorrow Is A Long Time,” both delivered with far more intimacy than the onstage versions performed over the summer, even if Dylan seems to remember almost none of the words. Paul Williams hates this version of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time,” and it’s true that Dylan doesn’t remember, really, any of the words and invents a few new phrases on the spot. Williams attributes it to the amnesia, but there’s a softness and spirit in Dylan’s voice I don’t hear many other places. It reminds me more of how--during the Basement sessions--he would sing songs he hadn’t yet finished, grappling for words, and sometimes not make full sense, but still capture some kind of feeling.

There’s raucousness, too. “Nowhere Man” doesn’t show up, but I was also grabbed especially by solid take on the communal favorite Buddy Holly’s “Oh Boy,” a sweet and casual “Watching the River Flow,” and a deliciously Basement-y romp through Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble.” The lead song from Simon’s recent mega-comeback Graceland, it’s a gas to hear Jerry, Bob, and Spike try to remember the words, a song they’ve all clearly spent time with. Plus-one to Garcia for remembering the third verse and alternate chorus about “lasers in the jungle” and powering through even when the Bob section doesn’t recall it.

I wish there was more ethereal music like “Under Your Spell,” the Dead exhibiting surprising comfort with Knocked Out Loaded’s closing song, released the previous year and never played live, which Dylan seems to deliver with an entirely different set of lyrics. They almost hit that spot again doing Ian & Sylvia’s “The French Girl,” which Dylan and the Hawks had played in the Basement era, too, here with Garcia on pedal steel. The music stays nicely moody -- at least until the drummers figure out how to drum it up. Somewhere between the ethereal and the raucous is a take on the Rolling Stones’ 1965 song, “I’m Free,” with the Bobs joining on the chorus.

“You really have to pay attention to him to avoid making mistakes,” Garcia said after the rehearsals, “insofar as he’s doing what he’s doing and everybody else is trying to play the song. If you don’t do what he’s doing, you’re doing something wrong. In that sense, he de facto becomes the leader of the band... I don’t know whether two weeks with us is going to be able to change twenty years of that kind of conditioning.”

“By the end, I had a notebook filled with chord sequences, form diagrams, and lyric cues,” Phil Lesh remembered the sessions in his memoir. It “also confirmed that, hey, this guy’s at least as weird as any of us.” To that end, Spike also fell in love a pink Modulus guitar, later seen on stage in the company of Bob Weir. “This one’s really the right color, isn’t it?” Spike remarked.

It was during these sessions, too, that video director Len Dell’Amico got to screen the first cut of the “Touch of Grey” video during the sessions, and remembers that Dylan and Garcia’s relationship seemed to run deeper than it might’ve seemed. “I got the sense from Jerry that the two of them had a closer relationship than has been revealed by either one,” Dell’Amico recalls. “Because once I got him talking, it was clear they had talked on the phone a lot and they had spent time together in New York when [the Dead] played in New York. Bob had even given him a tour of New York City in his van. I think that was somewhere between ’78 and the Christian tour in 1980.”

Whatever Dylan and Garcia’s connection, and whatever transformation he may’ve undergone at a seedy San Rafael bar, when they got onstage, it was more or less chaos. For starters, Dylan was right back to shouting again and, yeesh Spike, chill out, in addition to setlist chaos. “That seemed like poetic justice for a band that took pride in its flexibility and in not using a setlist,” Lesh would say.

The resultant tour album is so harsh that it scared me off the rest of the tour and, as I dip back into it, it’s not unrepresentative, and that reaction wasn’t unwarranted. But there are also a few takes from the tour that I do actually like. On the “Ballad of a Thin Man,” during the first chorus, Dylan approaches something like the lovely voice he’d find again in the ‘90s, and lays into it, finding a harmony for the verse melody, and suddenly he’s stopped shouting and is singing.

On Sonicnoizelove’s mix of tour highlights, I found two versions that are right for me, both songs that I virtually never need to hear anybody sing ever. I recognize myself as being in the minority, but I’ve always loved Dylan’s versions of “All Along the Watchtower” above all others, but what pulls me in here is Garcia’s utterly over-the-top power shredding, totally ‘80s, but also pure Garcia, like the photo-inverse of the delicate colors he’d added on “To Ramona” the first time he’d joined Dylan. Sung by pretty much anybody, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” has almost always sounded like “Kumbuyah” to me. But the Dead (whose versions of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” is likewise one I don’t often need to hear) fuckin’ nail it here, perfectly ragged, perfectly graceful. I think it’s ‘cuz Garcia’s leading the oooohs, and Dylan almost accidentally slides back into his purdy style of singing.

But of the six shows, those are the only three performances I really wanna hang out with more. For Dylan-heads, the sets included some big bust-outs, including the first ever live versions of “Queen Jane Approximately” and the first versions of the unreleased “John Brown” since the early ‘60s. Garcia apparently had his own favorites, which he assembled for the proposed live album -- and which were rejected by Dylan, recompiled by Sonicnoizelove on the Albums That Never Were blog. “What am I going to do, pop him one?” Garcia apparently shrugged. Unusually, given how I often I tend to agree with Garcia’s tastes, none of his picks resonated with me, either.

The real importance of the Grateful Dead on Bob Dylan would only become clear after the tour. Through the ‘80s, including his tour with the Dead, Dylan’s live setlists had barely varied. As Paul Williams pointed out, in Dylan’s first two shows of the fall, back with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, that changed, only repeating four songs on the second night of the tour, adding 13 more to the setlist.

Around the time of the ’87 shows, too, he set music to a pair of unrecorded Robert Hunter lyrics, “Silvio” and “The Ugliest Girl in the World,” both included for 1988’s Down in the Groove. “Silvio” featured Garcia, Weir, and Brent Mydland on backing vocals and became the album’s only single. Played nearly every night during large vital stretches of the Never-Ending Tour(s), I think “Silvio” is one of the songs that helped Dylan find his voice again, and even the down-on-his-heels character that would occupy 1997’s Time Out of Mind and 2001’s “Love & Theft.” Paul Williams thinks the song might be about Dylan himself.

By 1989, Dylan’s Deadheaddom had turned to something of an obsession. That February, he arrived at the LA Forum, inviting himself to sit-in and demanding to play “Dire Wolf.” (Perhaps he was inspired by the two nights Neil Young invited himself to play with Bob the previous year.) Dylan joined the band for the first half of the second set, but--for the most part--only played guitar. When they got to “Stuck Inside of Mobile,” the other Bob took the mic, Spike only stepping in when Weir forgot the words.

The next day, Dylan personally called the Dead’s office and asked if he could join the band, like, as a member. They had to have a vote, and it had to be unanimous. Perhaps obviously, it wasn’t. (Phil Lesh has been cited as the likely dissenter.)

Dylan himself became even more of a Deadhead after his tour with them. The Dead influence on his live shows is undeniable. In the early ‘90s, he began to integrate Garcia/Hunter covers into his live sets, including “Friend of the Devil,” “West L.A. Fadeaway,” “Alabama Getaway,” and “Black Muddy River.” A friend of mine has posited a theory about the first half of a particular Dylan show in the fall of ’92 being a shout-out to Garcia, with the first 7 songs being a combination of Dead tunes (“West L.A. Fadeaway”), Dylan tunes Jerry and/or the Dead covered (“Positively 4th Street”), and material they shared (“Peggy-O”). And even if it wasn’t intentional, the math says a lot.

Garcia sat in with Dylan a few more times, too, one in ’92 at the Warfield (a misfired but still enjoyable “Idiot Wind”) and ’95 at R.F.K. Stadium, on Garcia’s final tour (“Train to Cry” is especially the right pace, “Rainy Day Women” has a crashing little jam-off). It’s sadly fitting that Garcia and Dylan’s friendship was only seeming to deepen during these years, ending with yet another heartbreaking missed opportunity: a proposed fall ’95 acoustic duo tour, which both had orally agreed to, according to Dennis McNally’s bio. It was Dylan, too, that provoked what proved to be Garcia’s last studio session in July of 1995, Garcia gathering himself for a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #9” with David Grisman and pals for a tribute album Dylan put out on his own infrequently invoked Egyptian imprint.

“There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player,” Dylan said in a statement a month later, following Garcia’s death at the age of 53. “I don’t think eulogizing will do him justice.” It remains one of the most articulate and beautiful pieces of writing about Jerry Garcia. “To me he wasn’t only a musician and friend,” it reads in part, “he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know. There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There’s no way to convey the loss.”

Dylan stayed with Hunter while visiting for the funeral, the two great lyricists supposedly starting to write songs together, a thread the two would officially pick up on Dylan’s 2009 album Together Through Life, where the two are credited as songwriters on all but two of the album’s songs. Whatever connection Garcia and Dylan shared, it was one that Dylan has continued to carry with him at a deep level. The year after Garcia’s death, he drafted former Jerry Garcia Band drummer David Kemper into his own band, who played with Spike for a half-decade in my personal favorite iteration of the Never-Ending Band. As Dylan entered his pastiche period, Dylan scholar Scott Warmuth has posited that “Love & Theft”’s opening “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” is an answer song to “Uncle John’s Band” by way of a 1961 single called “Uncle John’s Bongos.” Really!

I haven’t seen much evidence of the Dead’s influence since Dylan shifted into his later career mode of covering pop standards. His setlists have ossified again, too. But it’s hard not to be influenced by Jerry, and, in the equally never-ending hunt for Dylan’s sources, I’m sure Garcia’s bemused beardo grin will show up somewhere.

2. Reckoning with Dylan & “the Dead”

As post-Garcia incarnations of former Grateful Dead members go, the 2003 squad called “the Dead” was one of my favorites. I only caught one show, but there were long jams, weird drumz and spaces, new songs, and no blues yodelers in sight. Looking back, it was the only year where Jimmy Herring acted as sole lead guitarist. I thought it was great.

But, even more, the early 2000s remain one of my favorite periods in the Never-Ending timeline, before Bob Dylan shifted over to keyboards full-time. His mode of improvising new melodies on the fly can be harsh and shouty, and there’s no better example of that than Dylan & the Dead. But, for nearly a decade of the Never-Ending Tour of tapes, I find his inventions to often be gorgeous, especially when he employs a soft and sweet lilt that I simply can’t hear as any derivative of “harsh.” (Check out the “Desolation Row,” especially on the recent Doom & Gloom NET Choice Cuts, vol. 1 mix.)

Spike didn’t join the band for any big jams (though Willie Nelson joined for a 10-minute version of Miles Davis’s “Milestones” that summer), wouldn’t allow his sit-ins to be included in the soundboard CDs sold after after show (again, big ups to Willie), and didn’t exactly sing in that soft, sweet Never-Ending voice (give or take the vitriolic “Ballad of a Thin Man,” ironically). But, listening to it as a compiled disc, they do jump into a great and convincing range of material. They do Garcia favorites (“Señor,” “Tangled Up in Blue”), shared standards they’d tried at the ’87 rehearsals (“You Win Again,” “Oh Boy”), Garcia/Hunter tunes Dylan loved (“Alabama Getaway,” “Friend of the Devil,” “West L.A. Fadeaway”), and more. It’s all a blast to my ears.

In many places, Bob Dylan does something totally remarkable by his standards: he sings songs such that, if a listener knows the words and wanted to, they could sing along. He doesn’t do it every time, certainly, but riding through “Alabama Getaway” on July 29th, Dylan does so with authority, a growling frontman. (Of course, the other two takes are wildly different.) “Subterranean Homesick Blues” didn’t make its live debut well into the scrambled ‘80s, but here sounds shockingly close to the 1965 Bringing It All Back Home version, give or take the Berklee-trained shredder Jimmy Herring in place of Bruce Langhorne, which is hilarious in its own way.

On “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” he takes Garcia’s lead vocal with Joan Osborne matching him gamely, and on “Oh Boy,” the Bob section links up successfully. Sometimes it’s a little clunky, like when the Bobs trades verses on “Around & Around” -- never a Dead cover I particularly cared for, though I like Spike’s contributions a good deal. Occasionally, we get hints of what Dylan might be like as a jamming contributor to the Dead, had they taken him up on his 1989 request to join the band, in which he proves himself to be perhaps a more beguiling lead/rhythm hybrid than even Bob Weir, adding clonking piano interjections to “Thin Man” and “Gotta Serve Somebody.”

While perhaps not one of the great collaborations in the history of rock, Dylan and the 2003 Dead managed to achieve what they’d never done before, and--for once--didn’t miss their opportunity. Opening seven shows, Dylan sat in with the band at all of them. The musicians sound competent, the songs are usually recognizable from their first notes, and the music remains enjoyable in recorded form. If achieving competency doesn’t seem like a remarkable achievement, I suspect you might not be a fan of later period Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan, in which case I’m pleased you, dear reader, made it past the first sentence, let alone to the last.

Wall of Sound-sized #deadfreaksunite thanx to Tyler, John Hilgart, Sean Howe, James Adams, Joe Jupille, & Scott Warmuth for pointers / assistance / encouragement.

#bob dylan #The Grateful Dead #Jerry Garcia #jesse jarnow #the neverending tour

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banshee-cheekbones · 6 years ago

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standrew high school au!

is there a more hallowed high school tradition than having your first kiss on a school bus on the way back from a field trip? probably, but that’s what I went with for this!

no warnings, because this is just pure goddamn fluff, like approximately 85% of what I write.

exactly 2.5k, on ao3 here.

an endless yearning in your heart.

Ordinarily, by this time of night, Andrew would be in bed.

If he wasn’t already asleep, he would probably be under the covers, reading a book by the dim glow of his bedside lamp and absently petting his cat. Maybe, depending on the night, he would be lying in the dark, talking to Steven on the phone and trying not to drift off or say something incredibly stupid, something like I love you or I wish you were here with me.

Tonight, however, is no ordinary night.

Even though it’s just past midnight on a Friday, he’s in the back seat of a school bus, an hour and a half away from home. They were supposed to be back from their field trip, which was a full day of museum hopping followed by a movie, three hours ago, but barely five minutes after they’d left the theater, the back tire on their bus had abruptly exploded. They’d had to wait in the empty parking lot of a big-box store for a replacement to arrive, swathed in a sickly yellow glow from the towering lights overhead. At first, there had been an excited energy to the air, an energy that manifested itself in shouts and sudden explosions of laughter and darting movements as people chased after each other, an energy brought on by the sheer novelty of the situation.

By the end of the first hour, the energy had waned. By the time they all trooped back onto the bus, it had almost vanished. While some of his classmates had gotten a brief second wind once they were back on the road, it had quickly died, plunging the bus into a near-silence that has persisted for the most part, broken only by snippets of whispered conversation and the occasional snore or snuffle (some coming from across the aisle, where Adam and Annie are fast asleep).

Outside, the world whizzing by the dirty windows is dark. The traffic is light at this time of night, and only occasionally does a lit-up billboard appear on the side of the road, as bright as an artificial moon. Inside, the glow of a laptop screen coming from a few rows up is illuminating a small patch of the riveted ceiling in eerily blue light. The glow doesn’t quite reach to the back row, but it provides enough illumination for Andrew to make out the outline of Steven’s face, mere inches away from him. From there, his mind is more than able to fill in the details, able to sketch in Steven’s dark, expressive eyes and the upturn of his nose and the slight quirk of his mouth.

Even though the seat is wide enough to fit two people without them touching, Steven is leaning against Andrew’s side, with his head canted over to rest on Andrew’s shoulder. His hair is tickling Andrew’s neck, impossibly soft, like a butterfly kiss. His knees are braced against the back of the seat in front of them, and every so often, when they go over a particularly large bump, one of his dangling feet bumps into Andrew’s thigh.

They haven’t talked since they got on the interstate - trying to carry on a conversation at such a low volume felt like more effort than it was worth - but they’re listening to music from Steven’s phone, sharing a pair of earbuds. Andrew’s heard the album before, usually in the background of their study sessions; the music itself is soft and quiet, mostly acoustic guitar and piano, but the singer has a soaring, melodic voice perfectly suited to the bittersweet lyrics of heartbreak and love.

If Andrew was sitting beside anyone else, he’d be trying to get some sleep, with his sweater stuck between his head and the window to try and absorb some of the bumps. As is, even though he is tired, even though his eyes ache to close, there’s nervous energy coiled underneath his skin, concentrated in the places where him and Steven are pressed together. Every time one of them moves, no matter how minutely, the touch buries under his skin and flushes him with heat. When Steven moves his head slightly, so that his cheek is resting against Andrew’s chest, Andrew has to try and disguise his sudden gasp as a cough.

The thing is, he should be used to this by now. This thing isn’t new; he’s had a crush on Steven since ninth grade, practically from the first time he saw him. He should have trained these reactions out of himself long ago, should have figured out how to keep his skin from igniting every time Steven so much as brushes against him.

Should have, but hasn’t.

And now, even though he should be trying to get some sleep, all he can focus on is Steven: on the pale smudge of his hand where it’s resting against his own thigh, on the way his lips are moving soundlessly to the lyrics, on the way his shoulder presses into Andrew’s whenever they go over a bump. In fact, he’s so distracted by Steven’s general existence that, when the album draws to a close and a muted kind of quiet fills the earbud, it takes him a few moments to realize it. He waits to see if Steven will find something else for them to listen to, but aside from rubbing his cheek gently against Andrew’s chest (probably to scratch an itch), he remains motionless.

It’s all too possible that Steven simply hasn’t noticed yet - maybe he’s too busy caught up in his own thoughts, thoughts of the post-graduation world that awaits them in only a few months, or something less ominous. Maybe he’s on the verge of dozing off. Either way, when the silence starts to become oppressive, Andrew turns his head and gently knocks his shoulder against Steven’s.

“Steven?” he asks, pitching his voice low so that he doesn’t wake up the people sitting in front of them.

“Yeah?” Steven straightens up slightly and turns his own head, so that his chin is resting on Andrew’s shoulder.

Just like that, Andrew forgets what he was going to say.

They’re close enough that their noses are almost brushing. Andrew can feel Steven’s breath ghosting against his mouth, and they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip.

Andrew’s heart feels like it’s going to stop or catch on fire.

“Uh,” he says as he struggles to find his voice again. The smartest thing for him to do would be to pull away before he does something stupid, but there must be a miscommunication between his mind and muscles, because he doesn’t move. “The album is over.”

“Oh.” Steven glances down at his phone but doesn’t make a move to turn it on. “You’re right.” The words are shaky as they leave his mouth - Andrew is familiar enough with Steven’s vocal patterns to know that he doesn’t imagine it. But he doesn’t have a definitive answer as to why they’re shaky. It could be from being tired or it could be because he’s feeling uncomfortable.

Or it could be from something else. Maybe, just maybe, the unsteadiness in Steven’s voice is being caused by the same thing that’s making Andrew’s chest too tight.

Perhaps it’s because of the darkness surrounding them and the lack of prying eyes, but while Andrew would normally be quick to dismiss that possibility as wishful thinking, tonight, he wants to know with certainty if that possibility is reality.

Carefully, he inches his hand out of his own lap and moves it over, bit by bit, until it’s bumping against the side of Steven’s leg. He pauses for a moment, both to gauge Steven’s reaction and to take a deep breath of preparation to move a little further.

Before he can let the breath out, Steven’s hand lands on top of his.

Andrew glances down, unable to see more than the faint outline of their hands, and pauses again, just in case Steven made a mistake. Instead, Steven wiggles his hand underneath Andrew’s and flips it over, palm up. Without thinking, Andrew shifts slightly, and that’s all it takes for their fingers to slot together. He can almost hear them click together in his mind.

He’s pretty sure that his whole body is going to catch on fire, never mind his heart.

“Do you want to listen to something else?” The words stumble out of his mouth; he’s pretty sure the only reason he manages to get them out at all is because he’s still looking down at their intertwined hands, not at Steven’s face. When he glances back up, he swallows heavily. Shaking his head, Steven’s chin momentarily digs sharply into the meat of Andrew’s shoulder before he moves closer.

“No,” he stutters. He’s so close that Andrew nearly swallows the word. “Do you?”

Andrew shakes his head, takes a deep, steadying breath, and squeezes Steven’s hand.

“No.” His head feels barely attached to his shoulders, and his stomach has dropped to the floor. This isn’t his first kiss - that particular honor went to Eugene during a round of truth or dare in freshman year - but he’s never been this nervous to kiss someone, never been so worried about fucking up. After using his free hand to tug his earbud out so that it doesn’t get in the way, he carefully turns slightly and, with shaking fingers, drops his palm to the smooth curve of Steven’s cheek. Steven makes a quiet sound, an unsteady oh that is quite possibly the loveliest thing Andrew has ever heard.

“Andrew,” he whispers, craning his cheek into the contact. Andrew’s imagined what it would be like to hear Steven say his name like this, breathy and quiet, but what he created in the confines of his mind barely holds a candle to the real thing.

“Can I?” He’s fairly certain that he knows the answer, but he needs to be sure - there’s no way that he’s going to take a step over this line on a hunch, even if it’s one he’s mostly confident about.

Steven nods fervently and abruptly moves forward. With a quiet clunk, their foreheads collide, and even as Andrew momentarily winces, he can’t help but laugh, barely louder than a huff.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Steven begins. Before he can keep going, possibly launch into an apology that will wake up the entire bus, Andrew leans in and does what he’s been dreaming of for literal years.

Namely, kisses Steven.

Steven makes another one of those tiny sounds, a quiet oh, and squeezes Andrew’s hand, almost to the point of pain, before he slumps against Andrew’s side and opens his mouth a little wider. His lips are chapped, and there’s a slight divot on the bottom one from where he’s always pressing his teeth in. Andrew wants more than anything to gently press his own teeth there, see how they fit, but he’s not going to ruin this by moving too fast.

Hopefully, there will be plenty of time in the future for him to explore all the possibilities filling his head. For now, his only goal is to make Steven’s first kiss something that he won’t regret.

All too soon, when the bus goes over another particularly large bump, they break away from each other. Andrew slowly opens his eyes and rubs his thumb along the ridge of Steven’s cheekbone. There’s a lump in his throat that feels suspiciously like his own heart, and he has to swallow before he can speak.

“Was that okay?”

Steven nods and bumps his nose against Andrew’s. “Can we do it again?”

Andrew almost laughs, not because it’s an absurd question, but because he can’t believe he’s lucky enough to hear it.

“Yeah,” he answers, tamping the laugh down and leaning back in. “Definitely.”

After their second kiss comes to an end, Steven actually laughs, quiet but giddy. He doesn’t ask for a third; he simply leans in for it, and Andrew meets him halfway, has to try and quell his grin so that he can kiss Steven properly.

Eventually, once their kisses have turned open-mouthed and firm, Andrew decides to take a chance on something. Carefully, he brushes his tongue against the swell of Steven’s bottom lip, as gently as he can manage.

He’s prepared for Steven to have some kind of reaction, to maybe sigh quietly or gasp or tighten his fingers around Andrew’s. Instead, he shuddersfrom head to toe. The movement reverberates through Andrew, where they’re pressed together, and he fails to bite back a moan from deep in his chest. Already, if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that Steven is so damn responsive, and while Andrew doesn’t want to get ahead of himself, his mind is racing with thoughts of how beautifully Steven might react if Andrew got his mouth on the long curve of his neck or the smooth skin of his chest.

As much as he doesn’t want to, he thinks that maybe it’s time for them to pull back a bit, before things get a little too heated or they manage to wake someone up. After another gentle brush of his tongue (and another shudder in return), he backs away and presses a softer kiss to the corner of Steven’s mouth. He opens his eyes, wishing that the lights were up so that he could actually get a good look at Steven, so that he could memorize the image of his flushed cheeks and his swollen lips panting for breath.

“Wanna come over tomorrow?” Steven asks, bracing his forehead against Andrew’s. He sounds breathless, overwhelmed, and for a moment, Andrew almost rethinks his decision to put a pause on things.

But they can always pick up where they left tomorrow, in Steven’s bed, which is a hell of a lot more comfortable than the bus seat.

“Yeah,” he answers. A grin blossoms across his face, a grin that he couldn’t restrain even if he wanted to. “What time?”

“As soon as I wake up. Whenever that’s gonna be.”

“Maybe we should try and get some sleep now then, so that we don’t sleep in as late tomorrow.” Even in the dark, Andrew is able to see the flash of grin that Steven shoots him before he leans for another quick kiss.

“You always have the best ideas.” Scooting down lower in the seat, which sends his knees further up the back of the seat in front of them, he drops his head back to Andrew’s shoulder. Bringing their still intertwined hands up to his mouth, he presses another soft kiss against Andrew’s knuckles before he lowers them back down to his lap and starts thumbing at his phone with his free hand. After a moment, the album that they were listening to before starts playing again. “Goodnight, Andrew.”

With an utterly content sigh, Andrew drops his head on top of Steven’s, presses his face into the soft mop of Steven’s hair, and closes his eyes.

“Goodnight, Steven.”

#standrew #mine #mine: fic #fun fact: i've written these two having their first kiss 5 (five) times #technically six if you count an upcoming flashback in the vegas verse #once i finish the other two prompts in my inbox it will be eight #i have a problem

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partwayhappy · 7 years ago

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Movie Date

A few headcanons for Part 7 of @freshxbloom‘s lovely “Stories from Summer” series.

• The first time El went to the movies was the summer of ’85. She was only halfway into her year of hiding and still had to avoid being seen in public. However as summer rolled around, the rules loosened a little. Kids were off for the summer. Other kids were in Hawkins visiting relatives. It was only natural for El to blend in with the seemingly endless crowd of young people that invaded Hawkins’ social areas. Eventually Hopper decided it was ok for El to go to the theater with rest of The Party because: 1) The people there would be more focused on the movie than the other patrons and 2) Hopper was ready to shoot himself if he had to watch one more soap opera on his day off.

• Mike agonized for weeks over what would be the perfect movie for her to see. Sci-Fi? (”No, what if I’m the only one who likes it and she’s just humoring me. I don’t want her to be bored.”) Drama? (”She’s been through so much already. Do I really want to show her something that might bring back bad memories?”) Animated? (”Aww no, I don’t want her to feel like I’m treating her like a child.”) Horror? (”Hmmm, maybe she’ll be scared and cuddle up to me...no, No, NO!!... that’s a creepy Steve move. Besides...she’s faced off against a Demogorgon and a Mind Flayer. A rubber monster’s not gonna faze her.”)

• As Luck would have it, The Hawk Theater was having a special showing of The Breakfast Club Saturday night. The Party had loved the movie when it had first come out and Mike figured El (being a soap opera fan) would like the characters and story.

• From the very first moment, El fell in love with going to the theater. As she approached The Hawk she marveled at the sight of it: The brightly lit marquee, the glass cases housing the gorgeous movie posters, even the sight of the ticket booth with it’s staff in their pressed uniforms. As she walked in she savored the smell and crackle of the popcorn. She walked slowly as she felt her beat-up, white Converse sink into the plush red carpet underneath her feet. Inside there were different hallways lined with even more posters. To El, each one seemed like a portal to another world. And she wanted to visit them all.

• As they settle into their seats, Mike smiled as he watched El peering at every little detail around her. She bounced up and down on the folding seats. She crinkled her nose at the sticky sounds of her shoes pulling off the floor. She grinned at the fact that she was finally able to see a movie, an actual movie(!), like any other teenager. As the lights dimmed and the red curtains in front of the screen parted, Mike could hear a small gasp of anticipation escape from her.

• For a moment, El’s face tightened with a sad look; an advertisement for the Hawkins National Laboratory displaying on the screen. Mike squeezed her hand and reassured her that it was an old advert that the staff had yet to take down. He tells her that the lab was gone now and they could’t hurt her anymore. Ever.

• When the first trailer began, all fears left El. Although she’d seen advertisements for movies on television, something about seeing it on a big screen just captured her attention. With each trailer, El made a mental note of what she would like to see next (Next Week: Goonies. Next month: Back to the Future and Silverado. August: Weird Science and Teen Wolf.)

• Throughout the entire movie, Micheal Wheeler couldn’t stop staring at El Hopper. He was struck by the concentration in her eyes. And he found himself falling even more in love as he watched her unknowingly repeat the lines from the movie. Midway through, she caught him staring at her. As he quickly looked down and blushed, El smiled and leaned over to give him a quick peck on the cheek before going back to the movie.

• At the end of the film, El insisted on staying and watching all of the credits. She was fascinated by the sheer number of people it took to make such a beautiful piece of art. All throughout, she peppered Mike with questions. What’s a gaffer? Who’s the “best boy”? Is there a “best girl”? Can *I* be a “best girl”?

• As they walked out of the theater, El declared she wasn’t ready to go home yet and asked Mike to walk with her. They circled the town center for almost an hour talking about the movie. They thought about what happened to the characters the following Monday after detention. Did Claire and John stay together? Did Allison and Andy? Or did they just get caught up in the moment and would be too embarrassed to hang out in front of their normal friends? How did Carl go from being the school hero to a janitor? Maybe The Party should go dressed as the Breakfast Club for Halloween. Can we take a bus and visit Shermer, Illinois?

• After watching several films, El discovered she had a unique talent. She’d impress the boys with her ability to quote lines word-for-word from a movie after having only seeing it once (Mike completely melts when he says he’ll try to spend more time with her and she gives him the Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.”).

• In the months (and years) to come, El would find the movie theater to be a favorite place of comfort and escape. She’d save every ticket stub of every movie she had seen and keep them in a small box under her bed. And the day when she and Mike move in together, she hangs up a picture frame with the tickets from their very first date from the summer of ‘85.

To the SFS cool kids who were kind enough to let me stick around:

@freshxbloom @strange-thangs @maplestreet83 @martiegalwrites @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold @janeswheeler @cstlebyrs @formerlyjannafaye @michael-hearteyes-wheeler @jane-el-hopper @themikewheelers @elizabthturner @the-proud-princess @itcouldbendoritcouldbreak @scottsclarke @the-most-beautiful-broom @hannahberrie @dancingskygreen @mileven-and-contemplation @mikeswheeler @moodyandmoonyeyed @jopper-chopper @earlgreyteagirl @stevemossington @thezoomermax @bubblynancy @mothersnail @writer-lia

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lunacyofdukevenomania · 6 years ago

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Chapter 3-Gumina Glassred; Scene 2

The Lunacy of Duke Venomania, page 85-93

Today a new beauty arrived in Sateriasis' mansion.

There was a town called "Lisa-A" to the east of Lasaland. Like Lasaland, it was a town that flourished on trade, and had a marked influence from eastern culture.

Lolan Eve was a star dancer who belonged to a big theater in Lisa-A. Her beauty was such that it even became the talk of Lasaland from time to time, and as such Sateriasis had always wanted to see her with his own eyes at least once.

When Sateriasis visited, the theater had prepared a special seat for him, as he was the local lord. It certainly had a great view, but as he'd been set in the farthest spot from the stage it had been a little dissatisfying to him.

The show began, and at one look at Lolan Eve when she got on the stage, Sateriasis decided that he would make her his third lover. At the sight of the lovely girl dancing with healthy, swarthy skin, he had been extremely captivated by her appearance, and charmed. He figured that she must mesmerize a lot of men.

After the show was over, Sateriasis had talked to the manager of the theater and arranged to meet with Lolan. Two days after that, she vanished.

"Thank you for coming, Lolan. Come here."

In response to Sateriasis' inviting hand Lolan quickly ran into his chest, and then exchanged a passionate kiss with him.

Lolan was much older than the other two women there, but it seemed she'd had no experience with men up to this point. Naturally, she had been courted by many men, but Lolan had never paid them any mind.

That wasn't out of any virtue, or because she was particularly prideful--it was simply because she was a lesbian.

But even her inclinations had been easily redone by Sateriasis' "Lust" spell. Right now Lolan had transformed into a naïve virgin who only single-mindedly wanted Sateriasis' love and body, as well as a lewd tramp.

"Let's go to bed right away, Lord Sateriasis."

"Haha, I'd like to do that too, but let's save it for tonight. First I want to show you around the mansion. This is the place you'll be living in from now on."

While Lolan seemed cross at being made to wait, she quietly followed Sateriasis down the mansion stairs.

The basement was as inhospitable as ever, but here and there certain womanly decorations had been set up, and the cleaning had been very scrupulously carried out. Lukana and Mikulia had worked with their own hands to make it a little bit more livable.

As Sateriasis and Lolan came down, there waiting to greet them first was a girl in pigtails. Mikulia.

"Welcome home Lord Venomania!"

Each time Sateriasis came down to the basement, Mikulia would always come to greet him with those words. She did that when Sateriasis had really come home from somewhere, and even when he hadn't.

Mikulia and Lukana were forbidden from going to the first floor of the mansion. So to her, the upper floor was part of the "outside world". So that meant that whenever he came down Sateriasis was returning from the "outside world".

And so, she told him "welcome home" each time.

When she'd first come to the mansion, Mikulia had always called Sateriasis "My prince". But Lukana had chided her for it many times, and so eventually she stopped calling him that and started calling him "Lord Venomania". Her choosing "Lord Venomania" and not "Lord Sateriasis" had been at Lukana's coaching.

"Look, look at my outfit♪ Lukana made it for me!" Mikulia said.

What she was wearing was a dress that exposed her skin much more like lingerie than an outfit. On her neck she wore a turquoise decorative flower, similar to her own hair color.

As point of fact, it was something Lukana had tailored under Sateriasis' request.

When Mikulia and Lukana had come to the mansion, their outfits had been extremely humble and plain. He had thought about buying them some new clothes somewhere, but the biggest tailor shop in Lasaland was the "Octo" shop, and Sateriasis had little wish to show his face there. Its owner was Lukana's uncle, who she had been very close to, and though he'd had his memories erased there was no guarantee that he wouldn't recall everything upon seeing Sateriasis' face.

And so, since he had her with him, Sateriasis had requested Lukana to make some clothes. The design embodied Sateriasis' desires, and as such he was quite pleased with it.

"…Whoo's this?"

Mikulia's expression hardened a little bit at finally noticing that Lolan was there. She asked her question to Sateriasis with a bit of suspicion.

"This is Lolan. She's going to live in this mansion with you two from now on."

"Oh, okay. Nice to meet you, ma'am♪"

Mikulia might not have meant anything by it, but the corners of the thirty-two year old Lolan's eyes went up almost a centimeter at being called "ma'am".

"Nice to meet you…Lord Sateriasis has some unexpectedly bad taste, I see♪ Keeping around a little girl who stinks of the countryside."

This time Mikulia's eyebrows hiked.

The two of them were both smiling. But even the thickheaded Sateriasis could tell that an impenetrable air had begun to drift between them, and so he quickly left Mikulia with Lolan in tow.

Next the two of them visited the kitchen. There was a place to prepare food upstairs as well, but as there were no servants in the mansion they didn't use that one. All of the meals that the women ate were prepared by Lukana in the basement kitchen every day.

Today as well Lukana was working hard cooking there. She was wearing a sexy dress like Mikulia's, but she had an apron on over it. Generally Lukana as her true self might make a prostitute-like outfit such as that, but she would never have worn it herself.

"Oh my, Lord Venomania. Is this…a new guest?"

Lukana took a break on cooking, politely greeting Sateriasis and Lolan. Unlike Mikulia there didn't seem to be any wariness towards Lolan.

"I'm quite busy again, ha ha… …Ah--yes, that's right, Lord Venomania."

Lukana made a face like she'd suddenly remembered something, and then handed to Sateriasis several books that had been left on a desk in the kitchen.

"I found these in a room down here earlier. Though they seem pretty old."

"Huh…Which room?"

"The one deepest in, with the iron bars affixed to it. I'd finally found the master key the other day, so I had been cleaning the inside…I only read the first few pages of the one on the top, but it seems like they're someone's diaries."

It was rare for a commoner like her, but Lukana was able to read simple letters. It was probably necessary for her work as a tailor.

"Thank you. I'll read it later."

He still hadn't found Sateriasis'--his own--diary. He had let that slip to Lukana earlier, when they'd been in bed. She must have remembered that.

Though I can't imagine a diary that was in a place like that could be mine.

After exchanging a few more words with Lukana after that, they left the kitchen.

"Now then."

"Is that everyone, Lord Sateriasis?"

"No, there's one other person here...Well, there's no need to deal with her."

"Oh, well I'd like to introduce myself to her while we're at it."

"…I'm not too inclined to, but alright."

At Lolan's badgering, Sateriasis gave in and took her to a certain room.

He knocked, but there was no answer.

"IR, I'm coming in."

Sateriasis opened the door and entered before obtaining the permission of the room's owner.

IR was inside. She was controlling her human body and quietly kneading a mud-like substance inside a container using the end of a cane.

"…What is it?" IR asked with displeasure, still continuing to knead the mud as she noticed Sateriasis there.

"I've gotten a new wife. I came to introduce you."

As Sateriasis' prompting, Lolan greeted IR from behind him.

"I am Lolan Eve."

"…The dancer of Lisa-A, huh? Well, nice to meet you…So this makes three women."

"No, four. Including you."

"Don't just add me into the headcount as you please."

"No matter how much time passes you still won't give up your body to me."

"…If you want me to burn you to ashes, you should try it."

After giving Sateriasis a stern glare, IR once more continued to determinedly churn the mud, wordlessly.

"Is that preparation for some sort of spell?"

IR replied without stopping her work to Sateriasis' question. "…Well, it is, and you could say it isn't."

"Interesting. Tell me more."

"…It doesn't have anything to do with you. …Well, I guess that's not entirely true…"

"Putting it that way just makes it all the more interesting, doesn't it?"

Sateriasis insistently hung on to the subject, but when he did IR thundered at him that he was distracting her and to get out--so he obediently left the room with Lolan.

Finally, Sateriasis led her to one more empty room.

"This will be your room."

"My my, it's quite big. …Although a little dreary."

There was just a single bed inside, and nothing else.

"If you want anything just tell me. I'll arrange for you to have it right away. Well then…Shall we get started?"

Sateriasis pushed Lolan onto the bed.

"Oh? Isn't it still a little early for it to be night?"

"Did I not say? There are no windows in this basement. In other words--at all hours this place is a land of the night."

Done kneading the mud, IR poured it into a mold that she'd prepared previously, and then poured the excess mud into the container again.

…Time for it to dry for a little while.

After wiping off the mud that had gotten on her hands using a piece of cloth, she sat down in her chair and sighed.

I can only get so far with what I can do here. For the full-scale manufacturing process...If I recall, there is a Gine workshop here in town. Perhaps I can borrow their kiln.

She was trying to make something. The impetus for that was related to the existence of Mikulia Greeonio.

The girl herself doesn't seem to have any awareness of it...Could her true identity really be that? It's a little surprising…or rather, extremely surprising.

Her human body was little more than a puppet for IR to control. But even so, it could get tired while she was controlling it, and if she worked too hard her back would hurt. IR held out her arms and stretched to relieve her fatigue.

And Lukana Octo…She's got some considerable makings as well. Just like the body of my own host, Haru Netsuma…No, perhaps greater.

High latent magical potential. That was the key talent to serve as intermediary for IR's puppet. Lukana had that on hand.

If I ever end up giving up on my current body,, I'd like to make her a replacement. As a new doll--a doll, yes a doll, ha ha ha…

IR joyously gazed at the mold full of mud that she'd placed in the corner of the room.

<<prev------directory------next>>

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blackkudos · 6 years ago

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Luther Vandross

Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. (April 20, 1951 – July 1, 2005) was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. Throughout his career, Vandross was an in-demand background vocalist for several different artists including Judy Collins, Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Janet Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Ben E. King, and Donna Summer. He later became a lead singer of the group Change, which released its gold-certified debut album, The Glow of Love, in 1980 on Warner Bros. Records. After Vandross left the group, he was signed to Epic Records as a solo artist and released his debut solo album, Never Too Much, in 1981.

Early life

Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. was born on April 20, 1951 at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, New York City. He was the fourth child and second son of Mary Ida Vandross and Luther Vandross, Sr. His father was an upholsterer and singer, and his mother was a nurse. Vandross was raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the NYCHA Alfred E. Smith Houses public housing development. At the age of three, having his own phonograph, he taught himself to play the piano by ear.

Vandross's father died of diabetes when Vandross was eight years old. In 2003, Vandross co-wrote the song "Dance with My Father" and dedicated it to him; the title was based on his childhood memories and his mother's recollections of the family singing and dancing in the house. His family moved to the Bronx when he was nine. His sisters, Patricia "Pat" and Ann began taking Vandross to the Apollo Theater and to a theater in Brooklyn to see Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin. Patricia sang with the vocal group The Crests, and was featured on the songs "16 Candles" and "Sweetest One".

Career

In high school, Vandross performed in a group, Shades of Jade, that once played at the Apollo Theater. During his early years in show business he appeared several times at the Apollos infamous amateur night and was booed by the audience. While a member of a theater workshop, Listen My Brother, he was invoiced in the singles "Only Love Can Make a Better World" and "Listen My Brother". He appeared in the first series of Sesame Street during 1969. Vandross graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1969, and attended Western Michigan University for a year before dropping out to continue pursuing a career in music. He added backing vocals to Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway in 1972.

Vandross founded the first Patti LaBelle fan club, of which he was president.

Vandross sang on Delores Hall's Hall-Mark album (1973). He sang with her on the song "Who's Gonna Make It Easier for Me", which he wrote, and he contributed another song, "In This Lonely Hour". Having co-written "Fascination" for David Bowie's Young Americans (1975), he went on to tour with him as a back-up vocalist in September 1974. Vandross wrote "Everybody Rejoice" for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz.

Vandross also sang backing vocals for artists including Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, and Donna Summer, and for the bands Chic and Todd Rundgren's Utopia.

Before his solo breakthrough, Vandross was part of a singing quintet in the late 1970s named Luther, consisting of former Shades of Jade members Anthony Hinton and Diane Sumler, as well as Theresa V. Reed, and Christine Wiltshire, signed to Cotillion Records. Although the singles "It's Good for the Soul", "Funky Music (Is a Part of Me)", and "The Second Time Around" were relatively successful, their two albums, the self-titled Luther (1976) and This Close to You (1977), which Vandross produced, didn't sell enough to make the charts. Vandross bought back the rights to those albums after Cotillion dropped the group, preventing them from being re-released.

Vandross also wrote and sang commercial jingles from 1977 until the early 1980s, for companies including Mountain Dew, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, and Juicy Fruit. He continued his successful career as a popular session singer during the late 1970s.

In 1978, Vandross sang lead vocals for disco band Greg Diamond's Bionic Boogie on the song titled "Hot Butterfly". Also in 1978, he appeared on Quincy Jones's Sounds...and Stuff Like That!!, most notably on the song "I'm Gonna Miss You in the Morning" along with Patti Austin. Luther also sang with the band Soirée and was the lead vocalist on the track "You Are the Sunshine of My Life"; he also contributed background vocals to the album along with Jocelyn Brown and Sharon Redd, each of whom also saw solo success. Additionally, he sang the lead vocals on the group Mascara's LP title song "See You in L.A." released in 1979. Vandross also appeared on the group Charme's 1979 album Let It In.

Vandross finally made his long-desired career breakthrough as a featured singer with the vaunted pop-dance act Change, a studio concept created by French-Italian businessman Jacques Fred Petrus. Their 1980 hits, "The Glow of Love" (by Romani, Malavasi and Garfield) and "Searching" (by Malavasi), both featuring Vandross as lead singer, opened up the world for Vandross. And there was no doubt about whether Vandross liked the song "The Glow of Love". In an interview that Vibe Magazine did with him in 2001 Vandross said, "This is the most beautiful song I've ever sung in my life." Both songs were from Change's debut album The Glow of Love.

Vandross was originally intended to perform on their second and highly successful album Miracles in 1981, but declined the offer as Petrus didn't pay enough money. Vandross' decision led to a recording contract with Epic Records that same year, but he also provided background vocals on "Miracles" and on the new Petrus-created act, the B. B. & Q. Band in 1981. During that hectic year Vandross jump-started his second attempt at a solo career with his debut album, Never Too Much. In addition to the hit title track it contained a version of the Dionne Warwick song "A House Is Not a Home".

The song "Never Too Much", written by himself, reached number-one on the R&B charts. This period also marked the beginning of songwriting collaboration with bassist Marcus Miller, who played on many of the tracks and would also produce or co-produce a number of tracks for Vandross. The Never Too Much album was arranged by Vandross's high school classmate Nat Adderley, Jr., a collaboration that would last through Vandross's career.

Vandross released a series of successful R&B albums during the 1980s and continued his session work with guest vocals on groups like Charme in 1982. Many of his earlier albums made a bigger impact on the R&B charts than on the pop charts. During the 1980s, two of Vandross' singles reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts: "Stop to Love", in 1986, and a duet with Gregory Hines—"There's Nothing Better Than Love." Vandross was at the helm as producer for Aretha Franklin's Gold-certified, award-winning comeback album Jump to It. He also produced the follow-up album, 1983's Get It Right.

In December 1985, the singer filed a libel suit against a British magazine after it attributed his 85-pound weight loss to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Vandross said he weighed 325 pounds when he started a diet in May that year.

In 1985, Vandross first spotted the talent of Jimmy Salvemini, who was fifteen at the time, on Star Search. Vandross thought Salvemini had the perfect voice for some of his songs, and contacted Salvemini, who was managed by his brother Larry. A contract was negotiated with Elektra Records for $250,000 and Vandross agreed to produce the album. He contacted his old friends Cheryl Lynn, Alfa Anderson (Chic), Phoebe Snow and Irene Cara to appear on the album. After the album was completed, Vandross, Jimmy, and Larry decided to celebrate. On January 12, 1986, they were riding in Vandross's 1985 convertible Mercedes-Benz on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, in the north section of Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. Luther was driving at 48 mph in a 35 mph zone when his Mercedes veered across the double yellow center line of the two lane street, turned sideways and collided with the front of a 1972 Mercury Marquis that was headed southbound, then swung around and hit a 1979 Cadillac Seville head on. Vandross and Jimmy were rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Larry, who was in the passenger seat, was killed during the collision. Vandross suffered three broken ribs, a broken hip, several bruises and facial cuts. Jimmy, who was in the back of the car, had cuts, bruises and contusions. Vandross faced vehicular manslaughter charges as a result of Larry's death, and his driving license was suspended for a year. There was no evidence Vandross was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs; he pleaded no contest to reckless driving. At first, the Salvemini family was supportive of Vandross, but later filed a wrongful death suit against him. The case was settled out of court with a payment to the Salvemini family for about $630,000. Jimmy Salvemini's album, Roll It, was released later that year.

Vandross also sang background vocals in Stevie Wonder's 1985 hit "Part Time Lover". In 1986, Vandross voiced a cartoon character named Zack for three Saturday morning animated PSA spots for ABC Television called 'Zack of All Trades'.

The 1989 compilation album The Best of Luther Vandross... The Best of Love included the ballad "Here and Now", his first single to chart in the Billboard pop chart top ten, peaking at number six. He won his first Grammy award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1991.

More albums followed in the 1990s, beginning with 1991's Power of Love which spawned two top ten pop hits. He won his second Best Male R&B Vocal in the Grammy Awards of 1992, and his track "Power of Love/Love Power" won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song in the same year. In 1992, "The Best Things in Life Are Free", a duet with Janet Jackson from the movie Mo' Money became a hit. In 1993, he had a brief non-speaking role in the Robert Townsend movie The Meteor Man. He played a hit man who plotted to stop Townsend's title character.

In 1997, Vandross sang the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", during Super Bowl XXXI at the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana.

In September 2001, Vandross performed a rendition of Michael Jackson's hit song "Man in the Mirror" at Jackson's 30th Anniversary special, alongside Usher and 98 Degrees.

In 2002, he performed his final concerts during his last tour, The BK Got Soul Tour starring Vandross featuring Angie Stone and Gerald Levert.

In the spring of 2003, Vandross' last collaboration was Doc Powell's "What's Going On", a cover of Marvin Gaye from Powell's 2003 album 97th and Columbus.

In 2003, Vandross released the album Dance with My Father. It sold 442,000 copies in the first week and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. The title track of the same name, which was dedicated to Vandross' childhood memories of dancing with his father, won Vandross and his co-writer, Richard Marx, the 2004 Grammy Award for Song of the Year. The song also won Vandross his fourth and final award in the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance category. The album was his only career No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. The video for the title track features various celebrities alongside their fathers and other family members. The second single released from the album, "Think About You", was the Number One Urban Adult Contemporary Song of 2004 according to Radio & Records.

Personal life

Vandross was never married and had no children. His older siblings all predeceased him.

Throughout his career, Vandross was very guarded about his private life and sexuality; on the many occasions he was confronted by interviewers about it, he'd become defensive and short-tempered. After his death in 2005, many media outlets began to focus on Vandross's sexuality, including The Advocate—who was the first major publication to explicitly call him a "gay artist"—and The Village Voice. "Though he never came out as gay, bisexual, or even straight, you had to be wearing blinders—as many of his fans, particularly female, must have been—to overlook his queerness", Jason King wrote in Vandross' obituary in The Village Voice. According to Gene Davis, a television producer who worked with Vandross several times, "everybody in the business knew that Luther was gay". Bruce Vilanch, a friend and colleague of Vandross, later said Vandross confided details about his personal life to him; "He said to me, 'No one knows I'm in the life.' ... He had very few sexual contacts", Vilanch told Out magazine in 2006. He added that Vandross experienced his longest romantic relationship with a man while living in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Illness and death

Vandross suffered from diabetes and hypertension, both of which may have been brought on by family genetics as well as lifestyle and nutrition. He had just finished the final vocals for the album Dance with My Father when on April 16, 2003, he suffered a severe stroke at his home in New York City. The stroke left him in a coma for nearly two months, during which time he also had to fight both meningitis and pneumonia (which required a tracheotomy). The stroke also left Vandross with difficulty speaking and singing, as well as confined to a wheelchair.

On February 8, 2004, at the Grammy Awards held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Vandross appeared in a pre-taped video segment to accept his Song of the Year Award for "Dance with My Father". In addition to thanking his fans for their support throughout his illness and recovery, he said, "When I say goodbye it's never for long, because I believe in the power of love" (Vandross sang the last six words). His mother, Mary (1922–2008), accepted the award in person on his behalf. Following a May 6, 2004 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he was never seen in public again. Vandross died on July 1, 2005, at the JFK Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey, at the age of 54.

After two days of viewing at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, his funeral was held at Riverside Church in New York City on July 8, 2005. Cissy Houston, founding member of The Sweet Inspirations and mother of Whitney Houston, delivered a heartfelt rendition of "Deep River" at the funeral service. Vandross was buried at the George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, New Jersey. He was survived by his mother, Mary Ida Vandross, who died in 2008. Vandross's estate left an undisclosed major gift to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Voice

In 2008, Vandross was ranked No. 54 on Rolling Stone Magazine's List of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Mariah Carey stated several times in interviews that standing next to Vandross while recording their duet "Endless Love" was intimidating.

His vocal talent led him to be compared to much younger R&B singer Tevin Campbell and even to those some considered his female counterparts like Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Patti LaBelle and mostly Whitney Houston.

By popular vote, Luther Vandross was inducted into The SoulMusic Hall of Fame at SoulMusic.com in December 2012.

Tribute

In 1999, Whitney Houston sang Vandross' "So Amazing" as a tribute to Vandross as he sat in the audience during the Soul Train Awards. Johnny Gill, El DeBarge, and Kenny Lattimore provided background vocals. On July 27, 2004, GRP Records released a smooth jazz various artists tribute album, Forever, for Always, for Luther, including ten popular songs written by Vandross. The album featured vocal arrangements by Luther, and was produced by Rex Rideout and Bud Harner. Rideout had co-authored songs, contributed arrangements and played keyboards on Vandross's final three albums. The tribute album was mixed by Ray Bardani, who recorded and mixed most of Luther's music over the years. It featured an ensemble of smooth jazz performers, many of whom had previously worked with Vandross.

The violin duo Nuttin' But Stringz did a remix of the song "Dance with My Father" for their album Struggle from the Subway to the Charts, which was released on October 3, 2006. On November 21, 2006, saxophonist Dave Koz released a followup to the earlier smooth jazz GRP tribute album, this time on his own Rendezvous Entertainment label, an album called Forever, for Always, for Luther Volume II, also produced by Rex Rideout and Bud Harner. Dave Koz played on all the featured Luther Vandross tracks, which were recorded by various smooth jazz artists.

In 2007, Deniece Williams included "Never Too Much" on her Love, Niecy Style CD. Williams said that she recorded the song to say "I love you" to her old friend. In the music video "Bye Bye" from Mariah Carey Vandross' picture appears in the closing images. His image was included as a tribute along with various other deceased people with whom Carey had collaborated.

On A Different Me, Keyshia Cole sang the outro to "Luther Vandross" on "Playa Cardz Right", which featured rapper Tupac Shakur. Guitarist Norman Brown did a rendition of "Any Love" on his 1994 album After The Storm. R&B band 112 sampled Vandross' "Don't You Know That" to make their song "Love Me" on their second album Room 112. Saxophonist Boney James covered his rendition on his final track "The Night I Fell in Love" on Backbone in 1994.

Author Craig Seymour wrote a book about Vandross called Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross. The book includes numerous interviews with Vandross.

New releases

J Records released a song, "Shine"—an upbeat R&B track that samples Chic's disco song "My Forbidden Lover"—which reached No. 31 on the R&B chart. The song was originally slated to be released on the soundtrack to the movie, The Fighting Temptations, but it was shelved. A later remix of the song peaked at No. 10 on the Club Play chart. "Shine" and a track titled "Got You Home" were previously unreleased songs on The Ultimate Luther Vandross (2006), a greatest hits album on Epic Records/J Records/Legacy Recordings that was released August 22, 2006.

On October 16, 2007, Epic Records/J Records/Legacy Recordings released a 4-disc boxed set titled Love, Luther. It features nearly all of Vandross' R&B and pop hits throughout his career, as well as unreleased live tracks, alternate versions, and outtakes from sessions that Vandross recorded. The set also includes "There's Only You", a version of which had originally appeared on the soundtrack to the 1987 film Made in Heaven.

Discography

Never Too Much (1981)

Forever, for Always, for Love (1982)

Busy Body (1983)

The Night I Fell in Love (1985)

Give Me the Reason (1986)

Any Love (1988)

Power of Love (1991)

Never Let Me Go (1993)

Songs (1994)

This Is Christmas (Luther Vandross album) (1995)

Your Secret Love (1996)

I Know (1998)

Luther Vandross (2001)

Dance with My Father (2003)

Tours

Luther Tour (1981)

Forever For Always For Love Tour (1982–83)

Busy Body Tour (1984)

The Night I Fell in Love Tour (1985–86)

Give Me the Reason Tour (1987)

Any Love World Tour (1988–89)

Best of Love Tour (1990)

The Power of Love Tour (1991)

Never Let Me Go World Tour (1993–94)

Your Secret Love World Tour (1997)

Take You Out Tour (2001–02)

BK Got Soul Tour (2002)

Wikipedia

#Luther Vandross #04-20 #07-01

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