#mi life style product list

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin In The Morning:

On Friday, numerous conservative accounts and news sources promoted headlines that the "American College of Pediatricians" had issued a statement against transgender care. A video accompanied the announcement featuring Dr. Jill Simons, who, wearing a white lab coat, states that there must be an end to "social affirmation, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones" for transgender youth. Despite the official-looking attire and name, the organization's name serves to mislead observers into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents tens of thousands of pediatricians. In reality, the ACP is a hyper-conservative Christian group of doctors created in 2002 to oppose gay parenting. In the announcement released on Friday, Simons called for an end to social transition and gender-affirming care for transgender youth. One video, which went viral, begins with a statement that the organization has released a "declaration" authored by the American College of Pediatricians, along with "hundreds of doctors and healthcare workers," opposing transgender care. It references the highly-politicized Cass Review from the United Kingdom, whose author controversially blames pornography for being transgender, as well as the Climategate-style leak of the “WPATH Files” to support the statement.

The video, which was viewed over 51 million times on Twitter, cuts off just before the next speaker is introduced: Dr. Andre Van Mol, who represents the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. Van Mol serves on the board of the Bethel Church of Redding, which made headlines in 2019 for attempting to pray a dead child back to life. He is followed by representatives from several other Christian medical organizations that also support banning transgender care. The website promoted at the event lists signatories to the statement, including the Catholic Medical Association, Genspect, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Family Research Council, and the Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design over evolution in schools.

The American College of Pediatricians has been hugely influential in the promotion of anti-trans policy in the United States, relying in part to its misleading name. Members of the organization testify in state houses and courtrooms across the United States, misleading legislators into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, the professional society that represents 67,000 pediatricians in the United States. In 2023, the organization inadvertently left a Google Drive public, leading to the leak of a massive trove of files showing their extremist roots. According to these documents, the group received significant donations from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing organization that has played a large role in the passage and defense of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the United States. It also received free video production from Family Watch International, a group of Christian fundamentalists opposing homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and sex education. The American College of Pediatricians itself has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2012, when the group’s leader stated that “homosexuality poses a danger to children” and that the group was “essentially a Judeo-Christian values organization.”

[...] Despite the widespread misinformation, every major medical organization in the United States supports gender-affirming care. In February, the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological association in the world, released a policy resolution stating that gender-affirming care is medically necessary and saves lives. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that transgender youth have access to gender-affirming care tailored to their unique needs. The Advocates for Trans Equality maintains a list of over 30 of the largest U.S.-based medical organizations that support transgender care, including the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Public Health Association, and the American Medical Association.

Anti-trans extremists such as X owner Elon Musk and numerous right-wing and anti-trans pundits and websites are touting a video from American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) Dr. Jill Simons issuing a statement opposing gender-affirming care for trans children.

In contrast to radical right-wing whacko group ACPeds, mainstream medical organizations support gender-affirming care as a medically necessary.

ACPeds is a radical right-wing medical group that is opposed to abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and transgender rights, and has trafficked in COVID denialism and anti-vaxxer extremism.

[monetizationpolicydotcom]

Top 10 Best Phones for Business in 2023: A Comprehensive Guide

Top 10 Best Phones for Business in 2023: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction: In today's fast-paced business landscape, having the right smartphone can greatly enhance productivity, communication, and efficiency. With numerous options available, choosing the best phone for your business needs can be a daunting task. To make the decision easier, we've compiled a list of the top 10 best phones for business in 2023 that offer a perfect blend of performance, features, and user-friendliness, all while catering to SEO best practices.

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max: The iPhone 13 Pro Max boasts impressive performance, a stunning Super Retina XDR display, and an advanced A15 Bionic chip. Its seamless integration with Apple's ecosystem makes it a favorite among business professionals. With its robust security features and extensive app selection, it's an ideal choice for those who prioritize productivity and style.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3: Combining the convenience of a smartphone with the utility of a tablet, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 offers multitasking prowess. Its foldable display provides ample screen real estate for managing multiple apps simultaneously, making it a unique choice for business users who require versatility.

Google Pixel 6 Pro: Renowned for its exceptional camera capabilities, the Pixel 6 Pro is a reliable choice for professionals who value high-quality video conferencing and photography. Its clean Android experience and prompt updates ensure a smooth and secure user experience.

OnePlus 9 Pro: The OnePlus 9 Pro appeals to business users seeking top-tier performance and a near-stock Android experience. With 5G capabilities and rapid charging technology, it's a reliable companion for those who are always on the move.

Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra: Packed with features, the Mi 11 Ultra offers a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a high-resolution display. Its impressive battery life and robust camera system make it a contender for business users with diverse needs.

Sony Xperia 1 III: The Xperia 1 III stands out with its 4K OLED display and unique photography features like the variable telephoto lens. For professionals in creative industries, this phone offers a visually stunning experience and innovative camera capabilities.

LG Wing: For the adventurous business user, the LG Wing's swiveling dual-screen design provides a fresh take on multitasking. It's a conversation starter that can enhance productivity through creative app usage across its two displays.

Microsoft Surface Duo 2: Designed with productivity in mind, the Surface Duo 2 features dual screens that can be used individually or together. It's particularly appealing to users who rely on Microsoft 365 applications for their daily tasks.

BlackBerry Key3: Catering to those who prioritize communication and security, the BlackBerry Key3 features a physical keyboard and enhanced privacy features. It's a nostalgic yet modern choice for professionals who value tactile typing.

ASUS ROG Phone 5 Pro: Even business professionals need to unwind, and the ASUS ROG Phone 5 Pro caters to this need with its gaming-focused features. Its high-performance specifications can handle demanding work tasks and provide entertainment during downtime.

Conclusion: Choosing the right phone for your business in 2023 involves considering factors such as performance, display quality, camera capabilities, multitasking features, and integration with essential productivity tools. By evaluating your specific needs and preferences, you can select a phone from this list that aligns perfectly with your professional requirements, helping you stay connected, productive, and ahead in the competitive business world of today.

[thrivefittribe]

Fit and Frugal: Best Fitness Tracker under $50 for 2023

Introduction:

Keeping track of your fitness goals can be challenging, but with the right tools, you can make your journey a lot easier. Fitness trackers have become increasingly popular over the years, and for good reason. They help you monitor your progress, set achievable goals, and motivate you to push yourself further. However, with so many options on the market, finding the right one that fits your budget can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best fitness trackers under $50 that offer quality features and functionalities without breaking the bank. In this article, we’ll explore the criteria for selecting the best fitness tracker under $50 and provide a comprehensive review of the top 5 products available in the market.

Criteria for selecting the best fitness tracker under $50:

When it comes to choosing a fitness tracker, there are several factors you need to consider to ensure that you get the best value for your money. Here are the key criteria to look for when selecting a fitness tracker under $50:

Design and aesthetics: The design and aesthetics of the fitness tracker can make a big difference in terms of its comfort and wearability. Look for a tracker that fits comfortably on your wrist, has a clear display, and has a design that matches your personal style.

Features and functionalities: While you may not get all the bells and whistles of a high-end fitness tracker, there are still several features and functionalities you should look for in a budget-friendly tracker. These may include step tracking, heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, calorie counting, and more. Consider which features are most important to you and ensure that the tracker you choose offers them.

User interface and compatibility: The user interface and compatibility of the fitness tracker are also crucial. Ensure that the tracker has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and understand. Also, check that it is compatible with your smartphone and other devices you plan to use it with.

Battery life and durability: Lastly, consider the battery life and durability of the fitness tracker. A good tracker should have a long-lasting battery that can go for at least a few days before needing to be charged. Additionally, look for a tracker that is durable and can withstand the wear and tear of everyday use.

By keeping these criteria in mind, you can select a fitness tracker under $50 that meets your needs and provides you with the best value for your money.

Read more about the Best Spin Bikes under $500: Affordable Options for Home Workouts

Top 5 best fitness trackers under $50:

Fitbit Inspire 2: The Fitbit Inspire 2 is a great choice for those looking for a budget-friendly fitness tracker with plenty of features. It offers 24/7 heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, step tracking, and automatic activity tracking. It also has a slim and lightweight design that is comfortable to wear all day long.

TRY NOW

Xiaomi Mi Band 6: The Xiaomi Mi Band 6 is a popular fitness tracker that offers a range of features at an unbeatable price. It includes heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, step tracking, and 30 different sports modes. It also has a large color display and a long-lasting battery life of up to 14 days.

TRY NOW

Amazfit Bip Lite: At around $50, this fitness tracker boasts a battery life of up to 45 days. It includes features such as step tracking, sleep tracking, and heart rate monitoring. It’s also water-resistant and has a lightweight design.

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Amazfit Band 5: The Amazfit Band 5 is a feature-packed fitness tracker that offers excellent value for money. It includes heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, step tracking, and 11 different sports modes. It also has a large color display and a battery life of up to 15 days.

TRY NOW

Fitpolo Smart Watch: The Fitpolo Smart Watch is a wearable device that offers a range of health and fitness tracking features. It can monitor your heart rate, track your workouts, and even monitor your sleep quality. The watch also has smart features like call and message notifications. It can be synced with your smartphone to access more features.

TRY NOW

These are our top picks for the best fitness trackers under $50. Each of these trackers offers a range of features and functionalities. We hope it will help you achieve your fitness goals without breaking the bank.

Comparison of the top 5 best fitness trackers under $50:

Let’s compare the top 5 best fitness trackers under $50 based on the criteria we discussed earlier.

Design:

The Fitbit Inspire 2 has a slim and sleek design, while the Xiaomi Mi Band 6 and Amazfit Bip Lite have a rectangular shape with a larger screen. The Amazfit Band 5 has a similar design to the Mi Band 6 but with a larger display. The Fitpolo Smart Watch also has a rectangular design, but with a more traditional watch look and feel.

Features

All of these trackers offer basic features such as step tracking, calorie tracking, and sleep tracking. The Fitbit Inspire 2 and Amazfit Band 5 also offer heart rate monitoring, while the Xiaomi Mi Band 6 and Amazfit Bip Lite include SpO2 monitoring. The Amazfit Band 5 and Xiaomi Mi Band 6 also have built-in GPS, while the Fitbit Inspire 2 and Fitpolo Smart Watch require a connected smartphone for GPS tracking. The Fitpolo Smart Watch also offers additional features like music control and remote camera control.

Battery Life

The Amazfit Bip Lite has the longest battery life, lasting up to 45 days on a single charge, followed by the Xiaomi Mi Band 6 and Amazfit Band 5 with up to 14 days of battery life. The Fitbit Inspire 2 and Fitpolo Smart Watch have a battery life of around 10 days.

Price

The Fitbit Inspire 2 is the most expensive option, priced at around $49 to $100. But the other trackers range from around $30 to $80.

Overall, each of these fitness trackers has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Fitbit Inspire 2 and Amazfit Band 5 are great options for those who want advanced features such as heart rate monitoring and GPS tracking. The Amazfit Bip Lite and Xiaomi Mi Band 6 are ideal for those who prioritize battery life and affordability. The Fitpolo Smart Watch offers a unique blend of fitness tracking and smartwatch features at an affordable price point.

Follow my blog: thrivefittribe | Health News

Conclusion:

Choosing the right fitness tracker can be a daunting task, especially if you’re on a budget. However, with so many great options available for under $50, you don’t have to sacrifice quality for affordability. We’ve discussed the criteria for selecting the best fitness tracker under $50. We also reviewed the top 5 options on the market. Each of these fitness trackers has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they all offer excellent value for money. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or just starting out on your fitness journey, a good fitness tracker can help you stay motivated and track your progress. By choosing one of the options on our list, you can take the first step toward achieving your fitness goals without breaking the bank.

[coco-colada]

Mes 32 albums préférés de 2022 classés selon leurs pochettes (2 sur 4)

23. Marie-Gold - Bienvenue à Baveuse City

(rap queb, hyperpop)

Définitivement un des albums que j'ai le plus écouté cette année. Excessivement l'fun, coloré et très catchy! ✨ Encore une fois, c'est assurément intentionnel que cette pochette soit laide. Ça se veut kitsch et cheapette, comme la star que personnifie Marie-Gold dans l'album, toutefois, le résultat n'est pas très attirant. Trop de trucs qui sont lancés mais pas grand chose qui collent...

Marie-Gold - La Presse (Baby Girl

22. Soul Glo - Diaspora Problems

(hip-hop, hardcore punk)

Difficile de trouver un album paru en 2022 qui aie attaqué la scène hardcore punk avec autant de mordant et de conviction que ''Diaspora Problems''. Cette pochette se marie bien à l'album, le visuel est trash et à priori pêle-mêle, à l'image de la musique chaotique de Soul Glo, mais étant donné que c'est difficile de repérer rapidement les éléments qui le compose, je pense qu'il manque de force et d'efficacité.

Soul Glo - Driponomics

21. Sloan Lucas - Oh shit sorry

(rap queb, féministe)

Pas loin de la découverte de l'année pour moi, Sloan Lucas offre un EP de hip-hop catchy sans faille. Elle livre des textes arrogants, intelligents et revendicateurs, mais elle le fait avec un style nonchalant et sarcastique, qui la rend immédiatement mémorable. La pochette de ''Oh shit sorry'' n'a rien d'extraordinaire, esthétiquement elle est même plutôt moche. Mais le collage de faces dégoutées complimente bien la vibe provocante-mais joueuse du projet.

Sloan Lucas - Party poop

20. Wet Leg - Wet Leg

(indie rock, post punk)

Solide première offrande de la part du duo indie rock anglais, cet album regorge de hits tout aussi catchy que quirky.

La pochette est assez simpliste, mais elle n'est pas mauvaise. Le simple fait que les filles soient de dos contribue à rendre le visuel plus intéressant, plus secret.

Wet Leg - Ur Mum

19. Zeal & Ardor - Zeal & Ardor

(black metal, blues)

Encore une fois, Zeal & Ardor arrive à habilement combiner black metal, blues et gospel afin de produire un album qui semble tout droit sortir d'un cauchemar western. Cependant, cette pochette laisse à désirer. Leurs autres covers étaient eux aussi minimalistes, mais soit ils utilisaient un symbolisme particulièrement clever et efficace, ou bien ils utilisaient une palette de couleur qui venait clasher avec les covers traditionnels du genre. Cette fois-ci, le cover manque d'impact.

Zeal & Ardor - Golden Liar

18. Brutus - Unison Life

(rock, post hardcore)

Le groupe belge livre ici un troisième opus aussi fort que les précédents. Évitant de tomber dans le piège de se ramollir avec le temps, le trio profite à nouveau des talents de Stefanie Mannaerts, leur drummeuse/chanteuse qui s’époumone sur chaque morceau, afin de livrer des tracks lourdes et énergiques. Le cover qui accompagne cet album fait bien sa job. Dynamique dans sa sobriété, il promet un projet habile et soigneusement composé. Toutefois, il ne passera sans doute pas à l'histoire.

Brutus - Dust

17. 070 Shake - You Can't Kill Me

(psychedelic hip-hop, r&b)

Comme l'album précédent de la chanteuse, ''You Can't Kill Me'' se traverse comme un voyage psychédélique, émotif et texturé.

Je ne crois pas que la pochette rende justice aux couleurs intergalactiques que la production suggère , toutefois, le rendu gâché de la peinture se prêtre bien au thème d'autodestruction abordé par l'artiste et le tout est assez efficace.

070 Shake- Cocoon

16. SeinsSucrer - Pushe le whipe

(rap queb)

J'étais réticent en écoutant ce projet là pour la première fois, je trouvais que la voix et les tics de langage de SeinsSucrer étaient un peu trop inspirés du rappeur américan Westside Gunn. Toutefois, SeinsSucrer a du charisme et ses textes crus et imagés ont finit par me charmer.

Du côté de la pochette, on est à mi-chemin de ma liste et on commence tranquillement à arriver à des œuvres qui me plaisent. Celle-ci ne présente pas de caractéristiques tant iconiques, mais le style illustratif aux proportions cartoonesques colle bien avec ce style de rap.

SeinsSucrer - Le finest piff

🥰 Lien vers la page suivante de la liste >>>>>>

[a-2-z-news]

कोरोनावायरस: 3 ओमाइक्रोन लक्षण जिन पर तुरंत ध्यान देने की आवश्यकता है | द टाइम्स ऑफ़ इण्डिया

कोरोनावायरस: 3 ओमाइक्रोन लक्षण जिन पर तुरंत ध्यान देने की आवश्यकता है | द टाइम्स ऑफ़ इण्डिया

यूएस सेंटर फॉर डिजीज कंट्रोल एंड प्रिवेंशन एनालिसिस के अनु��ार, खांसी, थकान, कंजेशन और नाक बहना ओमाइक्रोन वैरिएंट के चार सबसे आम लक्षण हैं। किंग्स कॉलेज लंदन में जेनेटिक एपिडेमियोलॉजी के प्रोफेसर टिम स्पेक्टर, यूके के ज़ोई कोविड अध्ययन ऐप के प्रमुख, ठंड जैसे लक्षणों से पीड़ित सभी से तुरंत परीक्षण करने का आग्रह करते हैं। उनके अनुसार, हल्का बुखार, थकान, गले में खरोंच, शरीर में दर्द, गंध और स्वाद की…

[lunathebee]

Pairing: Jake Lockley x fem!reader

Warning: fluff with a hint of angst (no more like major angst near the end), not 100% accurate medical conditions (pls acknowledge the fact that this is a fanfic only) ,Jake wants to hold you forever in his arms.

A/n: I have to put this part under so many edits and changes lol. A lot of inspiration was taken from LeeHi's song and the movie "Up" by Pixar.

Summary: Every fairytale have an ending.

Part 1 is here

"Be my only one

The name I want to call you by

Let's hold hands and walk along"

"I...I don't feel very comfortable here, Jake. I hate it when you bring me here, I'm not THAT sick." Y/n goarning while tightening her grip on the man's arm, her senses slowly getting overwhelmed by the smell of cleaning products and antiseptic.

Jake is too busy glaring back at some people who are giving him dirty looks so he doesn't notice what Y/n has said. But the moment she buried her face into his chest, Jake's entire attention focused on Y/n and Y/n only. "Baby, but we gotta check your health. See how it is, yea?" Besides, you can sit outside. I will be the one to talk with the doctor. "

Jake's answer and him planning a small kiss on your forehead soothe you a bit. They're not enough to make you stop whining like a baby, but enough to make you keep walking alongside him as you guys headed to the doctor's office.

"Now, you sit here and wait for me okay? It will be quick" Jake squeezed Y/n's hand while smiling to ensure her that everything would be alright.

But Jake is lying; it's far from alright and he knows it, your conditions keep getting worse and worse. At first it's just forgetting where the keys or wallet are, but somehow it turns into you getting lost and confused about time and places, unable to do some simple tasks, and so many more.

All the doctors told him that it's symptoms of early dementia, they even explained to him that your case is rare and the illness might get worse faster than elderly people, leaving Jake depressed and scared to tell you the truth.

"Your hat babe, it's crooked....there, all good" Y/n's voice snapped Jake out of his dazed, he saw her smiling while fixing the hat on his head, eyes full of adoration.

"Thanks, mi amor." Jake quickly gave you a kiss and turned his back to walk in the doctor's office, you failed to see how his smile turned into a frown.

===☾︎ ☾︎ ☾︎===

"What were you doing while waiting for me?" Jake asked while still keeping his eyes on the road and his hands gripping the steering wheel.

He wants the conversation to be about something else rather than "doctor" and "illness". Jake knows you're curious, but he would rather die than let you know what the doctor has told him today.

And to his luck, Y/n seems to be more interested in flipping the pages of her notebook than anything else.

Jake has opened and read some stuff in the notebook, it's not something too secretive or alarming, just your handwriting of cooking recipes and bucket list of daily tasks.

He wondered what you were looking for in the notebook. His questions were soon answered when you excitedly yelled out. "Ah! I found it! Here, I wrote down some dance moves to remember, well, more like copy them. It's the kind of dance that rich people be dancing in a big ballroom Jake! ...So elegant and pretty"

Jake watches you put the notebook on your chest and lets out a dreamy sigh. Moment like this is when he feels insecure the most, he failed to give you the life you deserve, and yet you still love him despite all the circumstances.

The rest of the ride back to home went silent as Y/n fell asleep, her head resting on the car's window.

Y/n truly is a heavy sleeper, to the point she didn't wake up when Jake carried her bridal style into the house; and when Jake hugged Y/n close to his chest as he pulled the blanket up to cover both of them, ready to fall into deep slumber, she still didn't wake up, only snuggled closer to him.

"Be my only love (My only love)

Every step we take

It's like a dance we perform together"

Ever since Y/n learned about the dance, she has been practicing it every day. It's not easy when you have to start over and over again, but luckily Y/n has Jake with her.

They practice the dance day and night, at their home and even at the hospital. It has slowly become a routine each night before sleep when Jake guides Y/n through each step, her head on his chest and his hand behind her back, soft music in the background.

"My only one, when I see you

Until one day, Jake checked the notebook and saw you had ticked the line "learn how to dance with Jake" in red ink. But sadly, it's also the very same day that he had to rush you into the hospital after you blacked out while talking with him.

I want to lean on you, I want to have you

A love like this would make

Even the most immature dream come true"

"Don't leave me... please don't..." Jake held Y/n's hand while whispering sweet nothings to her. He had been staying by her side for weeks, refusing to leave even when the nurse told him he needed some rest.

You're his angel. Without you, he wouldn't know what love is, and kindness, and all the good things in the world. God gave Jake a wonderful woman and now he is just going to take that away from him? From his life?

Jake is so frustrated to the point he breaks down in tears in front of you, his shoulder shaking slightly when his silent cries fill the room.

"J...ake" Y/n whispers, using her hoarse voice to call out. All the medicine that got injected into her body just made her feel even weaker, barely having the strength to speak.

But Jake can hear his name being called loud and clear, so he wipes away his tears and gets closer to you, ready to listen to your needs; anything you want, he will get it for you.

But to Jake's surprise, Y/n just smiles and lifts her arm up, hand reaching out to fix the crooked hat on his head until it's perfect, just like how she used to do in the past, with the same eyes full of adoration.

Jake can't help but hold Y/n's hand to his cheek, kissing the inner palm while giving her a sad look.

"You can rest now...you can rest now baby..."

Oh love....love truly is a powerful thing, but...not powerful enough to save a human's life, or fix a man's broken heart.

The day that you leave Jake's life, even God has to shed tears.

"당신의 달력이 멈춰있는 그곳에 머무르다"

"I stay where your calendar stopped"

_LeeHi - 'ONLY'_

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

The Duchess Of Sussex has discussed the trope of ‘the angry black woman’ in the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast. Meghan who – allegedly – has been characterised by royal aides as a “rude bully”, says she finds herself “cowering and tip-toeing into a room” because she worries about how she might be perceived by others. Interesting. I’m sure Harry was principally attracted to her because she was a “rude bully”. Not! This reminds me of a group of black, female wine lovers, who were on the Napa Valley train, excitedly looking forward to a holiday of wine-tasting (and buying!) What happened? They got thrown off the train because some white people said they were making too much noise and destroying the sanctity of the Napa Valley experience. This is very ugly cultural warfare. It’s not your way or it’s not your style, so you shut it down!

Temporary traffic lights are the bane of everybody’s life. Sometimes they’re necessary? Sometimes they’re erected just to cause frustration and misery? Manor Park Road is a crucial road than runs through Harlesden. Cars come off the North Circular with the express purpose of getting on to the Harrow Road and down into Central London. The 18 bus carrying people from Sudbury to Euston station has to come down Manor Park Road. Right now, during rush hour, we don’t just have temporary traffic lights, we have temporary paralysis and many non-productive hours! On Monday, I went to pick up The Trouble from the station and, after 15 minutes, I called her and said, “I can’t get to you! Start walking home!” I then tried to get home. No joy! The side roads and the side roads off the side roads were jammed with cars trying to get out of traffic. Our son called to say he’d been stuck on Neasden roundabout for 20 minutes! Just when you thought life couldn’t get any worse, the boss of some construction company makes it worse!

On Tuesday, WhatsApp went down for two hours and approximately two billion WhatsApp users lost their mind! And now they want answers from Facebook owners Meta! Show me a business that runs smoothly 24 hours of every day, 365 days of every year. It doesn’t exist. Show me a person that is totally efficient 24 hours of every day, 365 days of every year. Do me a favour!

University bosses have come under fire after they stopped using students’ names for their emails and usernames because it is not ‘inclusive’. The practice has been scrapped for reasons that include people changing gender part way through their course, the University Of York said. No, this is not a joke.

This time last Thursday, I said, don’t worry about Cruella Craverman. She’ll be back in an influential job in no time. And, lo and behold, Fishi Ballsack has appointed her Home Secretary and that really tells you all you need to know about him. If he’s endorsing pain, torture and cruelty, creating a functioning economy is probably not top of his priority list. Cruella doesn’t just want to restrict your human rights; she wants to deport you! As in every authoritarian state, dissenters are dealt with!

Yesterday’s status and comments was again dominated by farting and, as I listened to Luther’s ‘Never Too Much’ on Mi-Breakfast, I was amused by the lyrics. What if Luther sang, “ Woke up today, looked at your picture, just to get me started/The beans last night were very tasty but I almost farted.”

Have a throbbing and thrusting Thursday (with hopefully a few thrills through your thoroughfare?) I love you all.

[diegoalvesisgod]

Top 5 favourite places in your country (obv if you feel like sharing them!) 😊

Sure, sure...

1. Ostrava (My hometown, so obviously the best place... no, seriously, I love it. People think it's ugly, but I couldn't live anywhere else. It's very peculiar and very few people that weren't born here can get used to it.)

Ostrava is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic, and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 285,000 inhabitants. It lies 15 km (9 mi) from the border with Poland. Ostrava is the third largest city in the Czech Republic in terms of both population and area, the second largest city in the region of Moravia, and the largest city in the historical land of Czech Silesia. The wider conurbation – which also includes the towns of Bohumín, Havířov, Karviná, Orlová, Petřvald and Rychvald – is home to about 500,000 people, making it the largest urban area in the Czech Republic apart from the capital, Prague.

Ostrava grew in importance due to its position at the heart of a major coalfield, becoming an important industrial engine of the Austrian empire. During the 20th century it was known as the "steel heart" of Czechoslovakia thanks to its status as a coal-mining and metallurgical centre, but since the Velvet Revolution (the fall of communism in 1989) it has undergone radical and far-reaching changes to its economic base. Industries have been thoroughly restructured, and the last coal was mined in the city in 1994. However, remnants of the city's industrial past are visible in the Lower Vítkovice area, a former coal-mining, coke production and ironworks complex in the city centre which retains its historic industrial architecture.

2. Tábor (My family lives here, and it's the most charming town ever. The life is somehow slower there, I love it so much, there are such beautiful places there.)

Tábor is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 34,000 inhabitants. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation.

Though a large part of the ancient fortifications has been demolished, Tábor still preserves many memorials of its past fame. The historical centre is formed by Žižkovo Square and adjacent streets, and is delimited by remains of the town walls. Only very narrow streets lead to it; this rendered the approach to the square more difficult in times of war. Many architecturally valuable burgher houses decorated by frescos, sgraffiti and gables are preserved, and represent almost all architectural styles.

3. Lednice (The best school trip ever, we had so much fun and the castle and the gardens... oh my God. It's so beautiful.)

Lednice is a municipality and village in Břeclav District in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,300 inhabitants.

Lednice contains a palace and the second largest castle park in the country, which covers 170 km2. The surrounding park is laid out in an English garden style and contains a range of Romantic follies by Joseph Hardtmuth, including the artificial ruins of a medieval castle on the bank of the Thaya River (1801) and a solitary sixty-metre minaret, reputedly the tallest outside the Muslim world at the time of its construction (1797–1804).

4. Kunčice pod Ondřejníkem (Beautiful nature, immense peace, great food, COWS - I love talking to cows, okay.)

Kunčice pod Ondřejníkem is a municipality and village in Frýdek-Místek District in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,400 inhabitants.

There is an 18th-century wooden church in the municipality. It was relocated here from the Subcarpathian Rus in 1931.

5. Prague (Listen, I have a hate-love relationship with Prague, more hate than love, I can spend maximum 3 days there and then I feel like screaming into the void, but it's beautiful, not gonna lie. It's the most beautiful at like 4 in the morning when there are no people, though...)

Prague is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, the 13th largest city in the European Union[9] and the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated on the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 2.7 million.

Prague is home to a number of well-known cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence and destruction of 20th-century Europe. Main attractions include Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, the Jewish Quarter, Petřín hill and Vyšehrad. Since 1992, the extensive historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

[outoftowninac]

TOP O’ TH’ WORLD

1907 - 1908

Top O’ Th’ World is a musical by Mark E. Swan with music by Manuel Klein and Anna Caldwell and lyrics by James O’Dea, featuring songs with lyrics by Joseph W. Herbert. It was originally produced by J.M. Allison, staged by Frank Smithson, and choreographed by William Rock and Signor Luigi Albertieri.

The story concerns Maida, a little girl who finds herself mysteriously transplanted to the workshop of Kris Kringle near the city of Illusia. There is a love story in which a near discoverer of the North Pole resolves to find it, if only to rescue a maiden who has been frozen by Jack Frost at the command of Aurora Borealis, Queen of the Northern Lights. Guided by Kankakee, an Eskimo, and his little daughter Kokomo, the entire party proceeds to Illusia, accompanied by The Candy Kid and The Jack in the Box, who were brought to life in Kris Kringle’s  workshop, and who are paired up as travelling companions of the Friendly Bear.

The show was designed to appeal to both young people and their parents. The variety musical included:

The Collie Dog Ballet - “8 captivating, whirling misses and almost-human dancing dogs.”

The Candy Kid 

The Intelligent Bear ~ Kathleen Clifford and Arthur Hill as ‘Maida and the Friendly Bear’

Jack Frost

The Heart of Fairyland

In the Land of Christmas

The Top of the World - Santa’s Workshop

The Spring Time of Love

"By the sun that burns throughout the day and the moon that shines at night by the great caciques of the past and the present, by the rivers that flow through northern forests, and the rivers where the hunted deer doth quench his thirst, by all the brave and the true in Eskimo history, I bid you welcome this day in the beautiful month of the seasons to witness little Kokomo." ~ KOKOMO the ESKIMO (Anna Laughlin)

The musical opened in Toronto at the New Alexandria Theatre on August 26, 1907. It then moved to Buffalo NY, Rochester NY, Detroit MI, Cincinnati OH, 

On October 16, 1907, Top O’ Th’ World played Young’s Pier in Atlantic City. [Although this newspaper suggests the play tried out at Young’s Pier in Atlantic City, the newspapers there do not list any such performance on these dates.]

Top O’ Th’ World opened on Broadway on October 19, 1907 at the Majestic Theatre (5 Columbus Circle at 59th Street). The Majestic had previously housed the family-friendly hits The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland. Anna Loughlin, who plays Kokomo the Eskimo Princess in The Top O’ Th’ World, returned to the Majestic where she had played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Arthur Hill (the Bear) was her Cowardly Lion. 

About the Venue: The Majestic was built in 1903, one of the first theatres by Columbus Circle, which was expected to become another theatre district. It went through many name changes and owners until 1923, when William Randolph Hearst took over, changed the policy to cinema, and renamed it the Cosmopolitan. It was torn down in 1954 to allow for wider sidewalks in front of the New York Coliseum.

George Munroe cross-dressed to played the role of Aurora Borealis, Queen of the Northern Lights, in the style of a pantomime dame. 

On February 3, 1908, the show moved to the Casino Theatre (1404 Broadway at 39th Street) where it closed on February 22, 1908 after 156 performances. 

“’The Top O’ Th’ World’ is a bit of stage-jelly with powdered sugar spiced mildly with peppermint and wintergreen.” ~ INTERNATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION

Frost King (aka Dolly Dimples) is at large in the big city! 

The first week in December, a new song titled “Dinah” was added to the show. It was also announced that the production had arranged ‘closed automobiles’ to transport groups of 25 children or more to the theatre for free. To accommodate holiday audiences, the production offered daily matinees. 

“On Christmas Day a Santa Claus will distribute dolls to the little girls of the audience who are so fortunate as to draw tickets for them. Two dolls, of life size, are among the prizes in this ingenious lottery - these being described as ‘made in France, of the finest material and dressed for the occasion’."

The doll promotion was so successful it was continued at all Wednesday matinees. 

~ Fun and Feast for ‘Top o’ th’ World’ ~ 

“After last night's performance of ‘The Top o' th' World’ at the Majestic Theatre there was yet another performance for the benefit of the company only. A small stage had been built under the regular stage, and on this various members of the company made fun for the rest. Sam Diamond indulged in recitations from Shakespeare and George W. Monroe and Catherine Clifford were also on the program. Then Manager J.M. Allison and his wife treated the entire organization to a beefsteak dinner. Congressman and Mrs. James W. Rhlnock of Ohio Joined In the festivities” ~ January 1, 1908

About the Venue: The Casino Theatre was  built in 1882 for light musicals and operetta, but showed mostly vaudeville starting in 1892.  A 1905 fire necessitated much reconstruction. In February of 1930, the theatre was demolished to make room for the expanding garment district.

In an attempt to keep the show fresh producers staged a song contest. There were no winners except the show, which got free publicity from the stunt. 

After closing at the Casino on February 22nd, The Top o' th' World went on the road, opening with Philadelphia on February 24th, then visiting Baltimore, Washington, Boston, and stopping in Atlantic City. 

Top O’ Th’ World opened in Atlantic City at the Apollo Theatre on the Boardwalk on April 16, 1908. The theatre was supposed to host Miss Marlowe during this time, but her engagement was canceled. 

In 1910, the play morphed into The Top O’ Th’ World Dancers, extracting the more popular acts (including the Collie Ballet) into a variety / vaudeville production. 

[littlemisswonton]

How Shanghai is losing its mother tongue

In the past 20 years, Shanghai has surged to become an international commercial, cultural and transport hub with eye-opening speed. While gaining worldwide attention with its fast-growing economy and skyscrapers, the megacity is quickly - and silently - losing a precious part of its own: its mother tongue.

The Shanghai dialect is a part of an ancient language family, Wu Chinese, which originated in eastern China some 2,500 years ago and is spoken by roughly 80million people today.

Known for its soft and elegant sound, Wu Chinese is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialect. And because Wu Chinese has preserved some ancient pronunciations non-existent in Mandarin, classic Chinese literature from hundreds of years ago - such as popular poems from Tang and Ming dynasties - would sound more authentic and rhythmical when being read in it.

The Shanghai dialect, also known as Shanghainese, is a young but prominent member of Wu Chinese due to Shanghai’s prosperity as a colonial trading port between the mid 19th and 20th century. It was a fashionable tongue in the pre-Communist China and introduced many then-trendy Western items to Chinese people’s life through phonetic translation, for example “vez lin” for Vaseline, “fa le niong” for flannel and “kes mi” for cashmere.

It was associated with intellectual, entertainment and political icons, such as novelist Eileen Chang, singer Zhou Xuan and “the mother of modern China” Soong Ching-ling. It also spawned opera, comedy and entertainment productions enjoyed by generations of Shanghai dwellers.

But the distinct lingo, which could be heard in the city’s every nook and cranny up until three decades ago, is struggling to survive the rapid modernisation that has propelled Shanghai to its global status today.

(Soong Ching-ling, the wife of Sun Yat-Sen, was born in Shanghai and spoke the Shanghai dialect all her life. The above picture of her, via Wikimedia, was taken by British photographer Sir Cecil Beaton during the Second World War in China’s wartime capital, Chungking.)

A 2016 survey showed that only 30 per cent of Shanghai residents would use the Shanghai dialect in their daily conversation, while more than half of the locals preferred to speak Mandarin, China’s official language. Another study from 2017 found that nearly 80 per cent of local youngsters between the ages of six and 20 could not speak their mother tongue fluently, highlighting a sombre cultural crisis.

The dialect’s popularity was dealt with a sudden blow in 1992 when the central government launched a hard-hitting campaign to “promote Mandarin”. Aimed to establish a lingua franca for the country, the language movement, however, imposed heavy restrictions on the use of Shanghainese in Shanghai.

Among a list of mandatory rules, school children must receive lessons in Mandarin and were banned from speaking dialect in class and during breaks. Besides, public servants and service industry staff must stick to Mandarin at work. A few years later in 2001, Shanghainese programmes, beloved by the locals at the time, were pulled from TV and radio stations by a language law.  Only a few opera and comedy shows were permitted to be run in dialect.

Propaganda slogans, such as “Learn Mandarin, be a civilised person” and “Speak Mandarin is the symbol of civilisation”, appeared ubiquitously in Shanghai during the 1990s and early 2000s, leaving many youngsters feeling ashamed of using dialect.

Some of those compulsory policies were in place for more than a decade, others still remain effective.

(The above photo, via Vmenkov/Wikimedia, shows a ‘Mandarin-promoting’ slogan outside a kindergarten in Shanghai. It reads: ‘Everybody, please speak Mandarin, and standardise the language and writing.)

Qian Nairong, a Chinese language professor at Shanghai University, views the school ban a major cause of the dialect’s decline. He notes that the city’s primary school pupils were prohibited from speaking the Shanghai dialect on campus from the 1990s for over 10 years. As a result, several generations of Shanghai children grew up unable to express themselves well in their mother tongue.

“The inheritance of Shanghainese has met a rift when it comes to people born after 1985,” lamented Prof Qian during an interview with China News.

The ardent Shanghainese promoter authored a comprehensive dictionary in 2007 in a bid to romanise the dialect and standardise its written form. Five years later, he penned a petition with 81 other scholars, calling authorities to set up systematic regulations to protect Shanghainese.

Unfortunately, these grass-rooted efforts are yet to yield substantial changes in the government’s directives. Moreover, they might have come a little too late to alter millennials’ communication style.

Wang Kanyu, a 30-year-old Shanghai author, admits that it is difficult for her to hold a conversation purely in the Shanghai dialect because she talks to her friends and colleagues mostly in Mandarin.

Born in 1990 to a local family, Ms Wang began her primary school education in 1997 and was strictly forbidden from speaking the dialect by her teachers.

“I remember we promoted the using of Mandarin in my primary school. We had rankings with stars for pupils in our class. If anyone spoke Shanghainese, they would have a star taken away from them,” Ms Wang explains slowly using the Shanghai dialect.

“In middle and high school, all of my classmates were from Shanghai, but few of them would talk to each other in Shanghainese because most had got used to using Mandarin.”

She says as she grew up, she rarely conversed in Shanghainese with anyone outside her family. “Therefore, I am not accustomed to speaking it now. Besides, I feel that I cannot speak it well,” adds Ms Wang.

(I was among the very last generation of Shanghai children to be taught predominantly in my mother tongue throughout my school years. Above is my kindergarten graduation photo taken in the summer of 1989. I am in the front row, the fifth to the left.)

Apart from the tough Mandarin mandate, Shanghai’s swiftly shifting demographics pose as a challenge.

The city’s population ballooned by a third between 1998 and 2018, largely due to an influx of migrants from around the nation in search for work and better life. In other words, more than eight million out of Shanghai’s current 24million citizens did not grow up speaking the Shanghai dialect and rely on Mandarin to communicate in their daily life.

Huang Peide, a 37-year-old native, considers this a primary factor that prevents many Shanghai locals from using dialect.

“It is not that Shanghai people don’t speak Shanghainese any more. The fact is they have fewer and fewer people to speak it with,” Mr Huang points out using a mixture of the Shanghai dialect and Mandarin.

He says: “Environment can change people. For example, for people born after the 1980s, many of their friends, colleagues and clients are not from Shanghai. If they talk in Shanghainese, the listeners can’t understand. So what can you do?”

Mr Huang and his wife, both born in Shanghai, are encouraging their eight-year-old son to communicate with them in Shanghainese at home, “but he sometimes uses it, sometimes doesn’t”.

The father notes that around a third of his son’s classmates are from non-Shanghai-native families, and some 30 per cent of the teachers are non-Shanghainese speakers. Therefore it would not be practical for his son to speak the tongue while in school.

“In daily life, I insist teaching him the dialect, but he doesn’t have the environment to use it outside our home,” Mr Huang admits.

(The Shanghai dialect, or Shanghainese, could be heard in every nook and cranny of the city up until three decades ago. This picture, circulating on social media and believed to be taken in the early 1990s, shows pedestrians and cyclists on Nanjing Xi Road near the Jing’an Temple.)

Prof Qian believes it has become “urgent” to protect Shanghainese and the “key” is to encourage Shanghai youngsters to converse in it.

“The inheritance of a language relies on people, especially children,” the 75-year-old urged in a recent column. “We must let Shanghai pupils bring Shanghainese, which they have spoken with their parents since infancy, to their schools freely and allow it (the dialect) to be used after class. This is the key to passing forward Shanghainese.”

The academic, who has also developed a Shanghainese input method for computer users, stresses that promotion of Shanghainese is not aimed at marginalising Mandarin, but to build a society where the two can co-exist in a “harmonious” way.

“‘Bilingual people’ who can switch between Shanghainese and Mandarin can, for sure, have a more smooth, natural and free life in Shanghai. Furthermore, there are more and more occasions for [people to use] English. Therefore, Shanghai will certainly become a ‘multi-lingual’ society,” Prof Qian writes. “… In a diverse society, we need to build a harmonious, ‘multi-lingual’ life. Mandarin and Shanghainese can achieve a ‘win-win’ situation in Shanghai.”

Prof Qian’s comments echo the social stigma Shanghai locals face while talking to strangers in dialect. Out of fear that the addressees would not understand Shanghainese, and thus they would be regarded as “discriminating against migrants” - a sensitive topic in today’s Chinese society – many have now abandoned Shanghainese entirely in public and at work.

Mandy Chen, an analyst for a Fortune 500 firm in Shanghai, considers the discrimination topic “an interesting social discussion”.

“Normally, if we go to a less-fortunate place and hear the locals talk in their dialect, you won’t think they are discriminating against you. But if we go to a more developed area and hear the local use their dialect, you might feel that they are excluding you,” says the 36-year-old “new Shanghai citizen”, who can understand Shanghainese but has not actively learnt it.

(The Shanghai dialect spawned opera, comedy and entertainment productions enjoyed by generations of Shanghai dwellers. This picture shows Shanghainese stand-up comedy legends Yao Mushuang, right, and Zhou Baichun, left.)

Ms Chen grew up in northern China’s Inner Mongolia and has lived in Shanghai for 10 years on and off after moving to the city for university. She says she doesn’t mind - sometimes even prefers – her friends and colleagues speaking Shanghainese to her. But she acknowledges that some non-natives would, indeed, feel being looked down upon if spoken to in Shanghainese.

“This is more a psychological issue of the listener than a language issue. Often, the speaker doesn’t have any intention to show prejudice against the listener. It could be that they sound cold naturally,” she explains.

While the lingo-in-crisis is yet to be officially allowed in school or added into the curriculum, many of the city’s community schools have set up Shanghainese courses intended for “new Shanghai citizens” who moved to the city from other places.

“To pay more attention to teaching Shanghainese to new Shanghai citizens would be very beneficial to their children’s adoption of Shanghainese,” Prof Qian pens.

Ms Chen confesses that if she has a child in Shanghai, she would be happy to learn Shanghainese and the Shanghainese culture together with her son or daughter, so “my child can somehow relate to Shanghai as their hometown”.

She says that due to her family background, she grew up speaking only Mandarin. Still, she supports the idea of protecting Shanghainese because dialect is “a symbol of a region” and “a bridge between a person and their native culture”.

“I don’t wish to see Shanghai children unable to understand Shanghainese one day. It would be very unfortunate. For one thing, many cultural nuances and household gossips can only be expressed thoroughly through dialect,” Ms Chen points out in Mandarin. “In this regard, I am a sad example. If you ask me to talk, I can only use Mandarin.”

[dachi-chan25]

Are there any fairly obscure books, movies, plays, historical events etc. that haven’t been made into musicals yet that you would love to see made into musicals?

Well idk if they are obscure but I have TONS of things I would like to see as musicals. Honestly this question is so exciting.

First off I was gonna include "Como agua para chocolate" de Laura Esquivel but I found out throughPlaybill that is gonna happen so I am super excited to see how that turns out.

So yeah here is my list:

BOOKS:

"Mas rápido que el deseo" by Laura Esquivel. (This is a beautiful love story told from a dying father to her only daughter, and the way sound is used in the book always made me think how beautiful it would be to see it as a musical)

"Aura" by Carlos Fuentes (this one made me think how few "thriller" musicals we have and Aura would be incredibly easy to produce cuz there are very few characters and you wouldn't need a big production. It tells the story of a young man who comes to leave with a Window and her niece with whom he falls in love only to discover a reeaaaally creepy secret)

"Amor en tiempos de cólera" by Gabriel Garcia Marqués (This one is an epic and long love story, I think it has the potential to be as legendary as Le Mis or Phantom)

"Leonora" by Elena Poniatowska (this is the novelization of Leonora Carrington's life, she has a lot of contact with diverse artist of her time such as Miró, and deals w her struggles w mental illness)

"Duerme" by Carmen Boullosa (this one is about a young woman during Colonial era in México, she dresses as a man is quite unconventional . It's historical background is also super intresting )

"Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen (according to Google there has been a musical adaptation but I would like it if this was given more of a SIX or &Juliet approach, I mean c'mon Catherine is pretty young and has these wild fantasies cuz she is such a bookworm they would be so funny to see on stage)

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (this would be kinda hard to adapt but I just think it would be visually gorgeous)

"Middlemarch" by George Elliot (I think it has so much potential to be an amazing musical i just imagine the selfrighteous Dorothea singing about how she wants a pious and intelligent men who guides her and opposes her ideas at the beginning of the musical and then a reprise trying to pretend she has got her way in marrying Casaubon. Kind of like a "Thank Goodness" moment.)

"Foul is fair" by Hannah Capin (this one is quite a recent book, it's a retelling of Macbeth and it blew me away. It would be more of an edgy musical like Heathers, but the message is more about rape culture )

"Like a Love Story" by Abdi Nazemian (this one tells the story of 3 teens meeting on 1989 and bending through Madonna while fighting for LGTBQ+ rights. Ofc this would have to be a jukbox musical and honestly I can't think of a better way to make a musical w Madonna songs)

"The Queen of the Night" by Alexander Chee (maybe a bit too on the nose, cuz it already has a musical element, but honestly the story is just amazing and pretty dynamic)

"Space Opera" by Catherynne M. Valente (again quite a recent book but it draws so heavily from the Eurovision song contest, and it's fun and campy. Also why aren't there more Sci-fi musicals???)

MOVIES

"Ladyhawke" (I used to love this movie when i was younger and would love to see it as a musical)

"10 things I hate about you" (why isn't this a musical already??? The movie is iconic, it's a fun Shakespeare retelling, would have such fun songs)

"The lost boys" (ok so I know vampire musicals haven't fared well, but I think that's cuz the approach is waaay to serious, honestly this would make for a campy fun musical with some amazing costumes)

"Rocketman" (C'mon this writes itself. Like it would work perfectly for a stage adaptation)

"The corpse bride" (it already has a couple of songs and honestly it would be so cool visually)

"Twilight " (HEAR ME OUT!!! This one should only be made by Starkid cuz it shouldn't be taken seriously it should be a fun parody of the YA literature at the time with lots of selfawareness, and sarcástic humor. I put this one on the movie category cuz let's be honest the movies had some killer soundtrack)

"My Best friend's wedding" (I mean the Pretty woman musical was ok i guess but this one already has an iconic music scene, and I think the story work better for a musical)

"Dirty Dancing" (again c'mon why isn't this a musical but Ratatouille got so much hype on tiktok???? Like this would have gorgeous dance numbers, humor, heartbreaking scenes)

"Dangerous Liaisons" (I know there is a musical based on the modern adaptation "Cruel Intentions" but this movie was amazing! Like i think this version would work better for the stage)

PLAYS

"A Streetcar named desire" by Tennessee Williams (so there is an opera and that hillarious Simpson's episode but I really would love to see this one as a musical )

"El burlador de Sevilla" by Tirso de Molina (I am a fan of Don Juan Tenorio, but I think El burlador would work better for a musical, the ending works better and it's female characters are waaaaay more intresting and fleshed out)

"La casa de Bernarda Alba" (I think this would be amazing, I picture Bernarda as an alto the story is super character driven and there is a lot of internal monologues that could translate perfectly into songs)

"Turandot" (so this is an opera but I think this one would be an amazing option for a musical, the main themes of the show are love an revenge , ofc it would have to be re worked as much of the names and settings reek of Orientalism , like idk what Puccini was doing giving characters names like Ping, Pang, Pong but yeah it has the potential)

"Machinal" by Sophie Treadwell (this is one of my favorite plays, it's set on the 20's and I think it would make a great musical with a tragic ending we all see coming)

"Uncommon women and others" by Wendy Wesserstein (this is about a bunch of woman who reconect at a lunch and they start talking about their time as college students during the second-wave feminism and how they discovered themselves through it )

"Awake and Sing!" By Clifford Odetts (first off the title rocks so fitting for a musical, then we have the story of Jewish immigrants on the Bronx pursuing the American Dream)

HISTORICAL EVENTS

- I would love to see a musical about the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, like most productions back then were musicals and it would reintroduce to the world iconic mexican actors such as Pedro Infante, Silvia Pinal, Jorge Negrete, Dolores del Río, etc etc.

-A musical about the artists of the Italian renaissance. I would do this in the style/tone of Something Rotten!

-A musical about Leona Vicario .

-A musical about real pirates like Madame Cheng

-I know it's a Biblical story so maybe not true but I think it'd be cool to see a musical about King Ahasuerus, Vashti and Esther .

And that’s all I can think of the top off my head.

[not-a-christmas-tree]

i just watched the dallas theatre company les mis here are my observations

IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THIS PRODUCTION I SUGGEST YOU DO! DON’T READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS THOUGH!

so, in case you didn’t know: in 2014, Dallas Theatre Company did a modern interpretation of les mis. i just watched it on youtube (i will link it later, i promise) and took SO MANY GODDAMN NOTES so here they are!

ACT ONE 

(Look Down-WHID)

starting out strong! we got some HARSH TRUTHS ABOUT THE JAIL SYSTEM!! blatant police brutality happening BASICALLY the entire first part of the song. it hurts me. 

note on the cops costumes: they legitimately terrify me and they are dressed in like. full riot gear.

okay so,,,valjean wraps the rope from his bag around his neck at the end of WHID. this is interesting bc, a) he’s trying to find a solution as to what he should do after the Bishop and that’s a direction I’ve surprisingly seen no one take, but b) this part has the same melody as javert’s suicide, when javert is ALSO trying to figure out what he should do after his perception on life is altered. for a moment there, they both are on the same page, the page being suicide. however, only one of them takes that choice.

the above makes the lines (in both songs) “i’ll escape now from that world / from the world of valjean” ESPECIALLY interesting because. in two different ways, they did escape, but they ALMOST had the same conclusion for a brief second.

(At The End Of The Day)

in ATEOTD fantine ends up being the last one working, causing everyone to look at her with varying degrees of annoyance or frustration. She do be hardworking doe

OH SHIT KIDS IN THE FACTORY!! three little kids run up to the foreman when he’s giving daily stipends to the ladies!! (they’re also the last to be paid, giving significant sass to foreman who also sasses back)

Girl #5 mockingly calling fantine “innocent sister” when 5 is white and fantine is a WOC...that’s kind of interesting given that that can be read as SERIOUS racial profiling on 5’s part

foreman looks like bob’s boss in the incredibles but like. tall lmao

(I Dreamed A Dream)

her look of like,,shock-but-not when everyone from the factory exits and she takes off her bandana,,,that. that is good acting

her transitions from chest to head voice are so good

i’m kinda sad she isn’t younger?? or just. doesn’t look super young bc fantine is supposed to be like. early twenties. she’s not 45 and had a decently long life before she died, no, she’s young. she was taken advantage of. that’s the whole point. but that’s sUPER little like this lady is way too good

she has the perfect mix of sadness and regret plus anger and shameless hope. like. kudos to you allison blackwell you’re a dope fantine 

the cry on “killed the dream i dreamed” brb sobbing

(The Dock Scenes)

MALE PROSTITUTES I REPEAT!! MALE PROSTITUTES!! (no idea what wig he’s wearing tho. he was done dirty in the wig department) 

oh male prostitute is prostitute #1! 

oh damn there is. lady def on some bad drugs with her kid passing behind fantine on the bench. ouch.

hoo okay they did n o t censor lovely ladies!! (mini note: camera person has the camera down an AWFUL LOT on these docks scenes lmao)

there are cops on the docks. gross.

(Who Am I-Confrontation)

OH SHIT THEY HAVE A FALSE JVJ IN THE BACKGROUND OF WHO AM I 

jvj comforts not-jvj for a second!! (money note was FANTASTIC btw)

fantine being WOC and DYING in a modern hospital also is,,yeesh because. you know. racist doctors. 

jvj cries after fantine dies JUST STAB ME NOW OKAY—

confrontation is really funny when u see that javert has a GUN and jvj has A CHAIR

JVJ DID THE LIL RUN ON “live within my care” YAAAAY

(COAC-Master Of The House)

oh boy baby cosette,,so small,,so pure plus classic baby head shake when she sings I STAN

MADAME T LOOKS—OH GOOD GOD

DID SHE SPIT ON MY BABY--

cosette: “please do not send me out alone—“ madame t: “oooooh my gOOOOOD” omg 

what the fuck is thenardiers hair i—

WHAT THE FUCK IS THENARDIER IN G E N E R A L

random idea regarding thenardier’s prison tattoo: he has the same number on his chest that jvj has. Meaning he was in jail too. so why isn’t he as messed up as jvj? i wanna say maybe he was in for less time, but like. I doubt it. However, he has a whole ass gang. did the thenardier gang break their boss out of jail? please say yes 

him listing things for baby éponine to charge i love it

OH MY GOD THENARDIER FLAUNTS HIS NUMBER WHILE JVJ DOESNT!! jvj hides his past because he believes it will get him into better places (it does, he becomes mayor for god’s sake) while thenardier shows off his past with stubborn pride. while thenardier cheats his way to success, jvj lives an almost honest life where he ultimately suffers due to the stress all the hiding he does gives him

i love that éponine looks like neither of her parents,,,madame t got around huh? 

(The Bargain)

I JUST REALIZED THE STAGE HAS A CATWALK DOWN THE CENTER INTO THE AUDIENCE THAT IS THE COOLEST OMG

Instead of madame correcting thenardier on cosette’s name he asks cosette herself which prompts the CUTEST ANGRY YELL OF “it’s cosette!” I HAVE EVER SEEN

also thenardier fuckin MANHANDLING cosette i’m DYING

JVJ LOVES HER SM I AM SOFTTT

(The Beggars)

omg marius is so ADORABLE i love him

gavroche is a style icon

kid holding sign saying “my mom got laid off” POOR BB

i love éponine

that’s it that’s the note

wait a sec was that montparnasse with the prostitute earlier in beggars??

ALSO I SEE AZELMA AND OTHER THENARDIER KIDS PRESENT FOR “turn on the tears!!” THANK YOU FOR UTILIZING THAT LINE PROPERLY

why does enj have a bat?? If it;s not a bat then,,,what is it? someone please help me

marius saves cosette from bad guy gang!! 🥰🥰

bruh javert misses jvj running by like,,,MAYBE two seconds that is hilarious 

jav looks so done when thenardier is trying to get out of this lmao i love it

javert looks so cop-like it scares me

(Stars)

the line “safe behind bars” in stars kind of kills me here because as the audience you SEE the cruelty that the convicts face. you see the guy on the ground getting beaten you SEE the chains around their throats and yet. yet javert still somehow thinks that putting jvj in jail is safe? i think the thing to focus on here is not whether it’s safe, because it obviously isn’t. the focus is who it’s safer for, jean valjean or javert?

has it always been “your father” rather than “her father” when marius asks éponine to find where cosette lives?? if they changed it that is SMART because yk. jvj would be ALARMED if he found out he’d been found by éponine but he wouldn’t hurt her. he’s not the guy she has to worry about, it’s her own father. thenardier gave her a job and she’s straying from it, he’s what would endanger her.

THE PLAYFUL BOOP AND SHOVE FROM MARIUS 🥺🥺🥺

(The ABC Café)

“note-ruh daym”

hee hee pretty enjolras

pretty enjolras in skinny jeans even better

OOH we have,,,angry enjolras in this version o k a y

grantaire raises his hand before agog/aghast part omg

“i’ve never heard him ooOOOOh and aAAAAh *excited squeal*

“dan joo-wan” i love texas

bossuet spotted :)

longing gay looks NOT spotted :(

i love enjolras okay but this one is just,,,a little too aggressive. enjolras isn’t just angry all the time, he’s not that one dimensional. of course, there is more of the show to see and i hope he changes a little bit, but so far red and black isn’t doing much for me. enjolras is hopeful, not just angry.

A CAPELLA SECTION IN RED AND BLACK?? I think YES

the amis finding out lamarque is dead has “fuck trump just won the election” energy

okay i was hoping that enj would change his aggression thing when they find out lamarque is dead (bc that’s when most enjolrai figure out what may happen and kinda sober up yk) but. it doesn’t look like he did. there is hope for barricade scenes

OMG LIL NOTE ON COMBEFERRE GIVING OUT FLYERS TO AUDIENCE MEMBERS: that is fucking pERFECT and yk why?? because it’s a call to action!! it’s less obvious in DYHTPS because they’re mostly singing to each other but later in epilogue when the words and melody is repeated, it’s meant as a call to action! “will you join in our crusade, who will be strong and stand with me?” is a cALL TO ACTION AND THEY ARE HANDING FLYERS TO AUDIENCE MEMBERS—that’s officially the only way to break the fourth wall THANK YOU 

hey fantine doubles as a student i think!!

HARMONIES ARE C L E A N OOOOH

(In My Life-Heart Full Of Love)

okay yes i already love cosette because she plays awkward-teen-in-love-for-the-first-time PERFECTLY. 

book-ish cosette hell yes a cutie

father-daughter forehead kisses 🥺

awkward mARIUS TIMEEEEE

placing marius, éponine, and cosette in a triangle is a MARVELOUS decision thank u for that symbolism

marius checking if he looks good and ép giving him a thumbs up omg

*aggressively tries to sit normally* same cosette

*awkward curtsy* also same cosette 

(Attack On Rue Plumet)

robbery time let’s see how they do this

ooh marius and cosette run off but i can’t tell if they notice gang before running

thenardier fuckin SLICES éponine after her scream

NOOOO HER LIL WHIMPER AFTER BEING THREATENED AGAIN

(One Day More)

this lil part between robbery and one day more is interesting bc i legit have NO idea what jvj is thinking here. he keeps looking between his watch (i think it’s a watch idk) and cosette after she runs off to pack so like. what. is he doing here bc he looks like he’s choosing between two things but i don’t,,know,,what things

red berets on the amis are dope btw

i think marius is discussing what to do with éponine here, which is FUN because we all know why she goes to the barricade in the brick :’) éponine might be convincing marius to go to the barricade knowing this is her chance to die with him like in the book

omg

OMG

OMG

that stomp bit with the students was the coolest fucking thing i’ve ever seen

END OF ACT ONE

act two will be posted shortly :D

[mortuarybees]

What books do you recommend me to read?

I’m not sure what your tastes are but I’ll tell you some of my favorites! To be quite honest, I mainly return to the same books over and over again so the list is rather short and I doubt I have anything to recommend that you won’t have heard of already. I’ll recommend my favorites. It consists mainly of my usual rotation of things i read over and over or books that left an impression on me and I refer back to them often.

When it comes to the non-fiction section just like….keep in mind that most academic texts have many, many problems and I’m not presenting any of the texts I list as The Quintessential Must Read Best Flawless Overview of a topic, I’m mainly listing the books I have found to be approachable and reasonable introductions to topics. Read everything critically, always (and that includes everything else on this list, not just the non-fiction).

Plays:

An Oresteia, translated by Anne Carson (Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Elektra, Euripides’ Orestes)

Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides

I mean like. Shakespeare, obviously; my personal favorites are Hamlet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth; recently, thanks to the productions starring David Tennant, Much Ado About Nothing and Richard II have been added to the list

Doctor Faustus, Edward II, and Dido by Christopher Marlowe

Antigone, particularly Anne Carson’s translation, and after you’ve read Antigone, I’d recommend reading Antigonick, but not before

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (I feel like Lady Windermere’s Fan is also kind of necessary reading and I do love it of course but I’ve only read it the once, for the sake of it, whereas I’ve come back to the Importance of Being Earnest a million times and the 2002 movie is one of the things I watch when I’m down)

Novels (and Epics)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett if you haven’t yet, obviously

Maurice by E. M. Forster

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

VIRGINIA WOOLF. everything but particularly the Waves, Orlando, and Mrs. Dalloway. The Waves is my favorite, followed closely by Orlando, but I’d start with the Mrs. Dalloway because it gets you accustomed to Woolf’s writing style and the way she approaches her characters if you haven’t read her before.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (If you haven’t read it yet and you have seen 2005 P&P and love it and you’re opening the novel with the expectation that it’s similar to the 2005 film in tone and feel, you’ll be disappointed. If you’ve seen the 1995 miniseries, that reflects it very well. So just approach it with an open mind with 2005 on the back burner and you’ll find it an amazing and very repressed love story)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

The Iliad (the translation I own is Lombardo. It’s extremely approachable and colloquial and I enjoy it, and if you’ve never read the Iliad and you find it intimidating, I would very much recommend it, but my high opinion is not universal. Fagles and Lattimore are very popular translations and I like them both well enough)

I’m dying to get a copy of Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation. I don’t love the Odyssey personally but I am a big fan of Wilson and from what I’ve read about her translation and what she’s said about it, if anything could make me enjoy the Odyssey, it would be that translation.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I would personally recommend reading the Iliad first just because Miller takes…….liberties with it, but I also don’t think there’s a problem with that at all, so if you’re not interested in the Iliad, or you think tsoa would get you interested in it, there’s nothing at all wrong with reading it on its own or reading it first. I just think it’s a genuinely more enjoyable experience to read the Iliad first and then see what Miller does with it. And regardless of what order you read them in, if you read them both you will understand how very different tsoa and the Iliad are from one another and you will not be one of those people who talks about the Iliad when what they mean is tsoa. Again, there’s nothing wrong with tsoa, it’s one of my favorite novels, but it’s just a very separate thing and it gets just a little maddening.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. It’s both poetry and a novel but it’s got to go somewhere so

When I was 14 I got very into Les Mis and i will recommend it. I genuinely love it and it will always have a special place in my heart. I have read the entire brick only once however because as much as i love it. as much as i Relate to the infamous off-topic tangents. there is a limit to my patience.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is just like. extremely good. I really don’t know enough about it to recommend any specific translations; in high school I was given a stapled copy of the whole thing and I read that til I lost it and now if I want to reread it or refer back I just look it up online. I’m a fake fan.

Poetry

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson

The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson

Devotions, Felicity, and Winter Hours by Mary Oliver. Those are the anthologies that I have read and I adore them. I imagine that all of her anthologies are also amazing and all of them are on my to-read list. I don’t think you could possibly go wrong

I do not have the singular published collection of Elizabeth Siddal’s poetry (My Ladys Soul) but I have read all of her poetry and she is an amazing poet and I hold her very near and dear to my heart

Crush by Richard Siken

Useless Magic by Florence Welch……..yall knew what you came here for

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

Non-fiction and Essay Collections (again. None of these are recommended as the definitive, end all, be all, all-you-need book on any given subject, they’re just some of my favorites). I have limited myself to collection specifically because this is long enough already and if I start just adding essays it’ll never end. All of these were either purchased online for under $10, are available somewhere on the internet as pdfs, or were at my library, so if you look, you can probably find them somewhere (I say this bc while trying to find the authors of some of these I have been stunned by their retail prices and I’m assuring you, don’t be scared off by your initial search bc I sure as fuck did not pay $30):

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

Marie Antoinette: the Journey by Antonia Fraser (controversial but well-researched and approachable and I love it. I would recommend reading like. almost anything else first because Fraser does obviously focus on Marie Antoinette and her life and experiences; and while she does talk about the revolution, it isn’t the focus of this biography, and you won’t understand why it was necessary if you don’t come to it with a good grasp on the broader events outside Marie Antoinette).

A Day with Marie Antoinette by Hélène Delalex

Robespierre: a Revolutionary Life and Liberty or Death: the French Revolution by Peter McPhee

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James

If you’re at all interested in 18th century art, I recommend Rococo to Revolution:Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting by Michael Levey

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is controversial. But it’s approachable and well-researched and if you don’t know a lot about American history, I recommend it highly (especially for Americans).

Eros, the Bittersweet by Anne Carson (okay literally everything by Anne Carson. All her essays, her poetry, her translations, her weird mashups, all of it. There are a few things I haven’t read yet but. I very much doubt you’re going to be able to go wrong, so just take what I’ve listed as my favorites)

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematory and From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty (also the illustrations by Landis Blair are absolutely phenomenal. Look at this. I love it so much I pulled it out of the book to hang in my momento mori corner because it’s so beautiful.)

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Alexander of Macedon by Peter Green is. okay we have a love-hate relationship, me and this biography; me, and peter green, but I have major issues with every single Alexander biography I’ve read and this was the first so if you want to start somewhere, I guess go for it.

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

The Honey Bee by James L. Gould. It’s out of date in some respects but a good, simple introduction into honeybee biology and behavior

Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich

Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health by Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Kleinman

Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present by Neil Miller

Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski isn’t by any means perfect, but it’s a alright introduction to the Age of Revolution. Just don’t let it be the only thing you read. It’s here because it has a special place in my heart as my introduction to it.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Erotic Exchanges: the World of Elite Prostitution in 18th Century Paris by Nina Kushner

Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick S. Cheng

Our Lives Matter: A Womanist queer Theology by Pamela R. Lightsey

Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them by Paige Embry

At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell (I really do not know that much about philosophy or existentialism specifically or this subject generally, so I have no idea where the faults of this book are, but I really enjoyed reading it and it made me think a lot. I have a feeling it’s very simplified so take it with a grain of salt as I did?)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau (just. just. it’s enjoyable but don’t get too into it please for the love of God). My copy (and I think most copies?) includes his essay Civil Disobedience as well which is very good.

Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave by Ona Judge

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

The Diaries of Virginia Woolf: I’m currently in the midst of volume 2 (1920-1924). They’re very enjoyable, but they’re something of an undertaking as all diaries are if you aren’t already very familiar with the biography of the person in question, so like. If you find yourself moving slowly don’t worry about it.

Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachy

To Be Broken and Tender: A Quaker Theology for Today by Margery Post Abbott

The New Jim Crow byMichelle Alexander

The Environmental Case: Translating Values into Policy by Judith A. Layzer is a textbook that was assigned to me in my Enviornmental Policy class last semester and I really fkcing enjoyed it. It’s a book of case studies in environmental policy and it’s dense at times, but really interesting and enjoyable.

The Second Amendment: a Biography by Michael Waldman

Michelangelo’s Notebooks: the Poetry, Letters, and Art of the Great Master by Carolyn Vaughan. Just like. Genuinely. Genuinely. unintentionally hilarious. but also sometimes very sad, and very gay. I just adore Michelangelo. Just a shy foul-tempered repressed disaster. Jesus Christ.

[mahou-queen]

♡52 Weeks of Lolita Questionnaire♡

In a recent Lovely Lor video, Lor answered questions from Loliprompts’ questionnaire “52 weeks of lolita”. It seems like a fun list of questions and I thought I would answer them too~ ♡

1. What is your favorite brand, and why? What’s its history? ♡  I guess my favorite brand would have to be Angelic Pretty. I love a lot of other brands, but the majority of dresses in my wish list right now are Angelic Pretty. As for their history? I don’t really know haha, I guess I should research that a bit.

2. How would you describe lolita fashion to a curious person you met in passing? ♡ I always just say I am apart of a fashion club? People don’t generally require more than that but if they did I would probably tell them that it’s an alternative fashion based on Victorian fashion and we have a fashion club and we get dressed up and meet for tea and stuff.

3. What style do you think is the most underrated, and why? ♡ qi and wa lolita. I almost never see them, or see interest in them which is a shame because there are some really beautiful dresses out there that are suited for these styles.

4. What does the phrase “lolita lifestyle” mean to you, and do you, or would you like to, adhere to it? ♡ lolita lifestyle is when you try to bring lolita or lolita-esque aesthetics into every aspect of your life. Maybe wearing lolita every or most days, and having a very “loliable” home/room. I could never be a lifestyler because I have other fashion interests. Also lolita is not appropriate at my workplace.

5. What do you think constitutes lolita etiquette or good manners? ♡ I don’t believe there is any “lolita etiquette” I think you should just be yourself. Good manner are good manners, don’t be rude to your comm members, don’t dance on the tables at a tea party. But that’s just commonsense I don’t think there is a way to behave that is lolita.

6. Does your style change with the seasons, or do you dress the same and try to bear the cold/heat? ♡ I try, but admittedly I am awful at it. I try to keep berets in the cooler months, as well as long sleeves. BUT I’m a sucker for ankle socks and I wear them all year despite the cold and I do freeze my legs off at winter meets. 

7. Do you have a fashion role-model? What do you admire most about them? ♡ I actually have several! I will list them and their instagrams here: sleepyriri  - Her coords are so dreamy looking, very light floaty aesthetic which I love. She also has her own lolita brand! Le_verger_sucre - Her coords are so pink and princess-y. I find myself sharing her photos a lot. Fannyrosie - the classic lolita queen. Need I say more? Tokimeki.bunny - I love the cuteness of her coords. They always have a lot of extra elements and are so well balanced. She’s also really good at coordinating printed tights which I am awful at. Tsumikko - Lavender QUEEN! I love her use of aprons, layering, and color balancing. Very light, floaty vibes.  Milkcircus - Print QUEEN. Her use of prints and patterns absolutely inspires me. Coords are always very multi-dimensional  Cursed.Kaiser - They’re coords are honestly so cool, there’s a kind of drama in them that I really like. Darkxdelirium - She almost made me want honey cake with her impeccable coording skills. 

8. What are the top 10 things you love most about lolita? Can you also compile a list of things you hate? ♡ I don’t think I can come up with 10 but I’ll do my best. ♡ Loves: The community aspect, the ability to reclaim my femininity through lolita, the creativity that goes into building coords, crafting to make one of a kind pieces, being able to feel beautiful without being “sexy”, having a hobby to focus on when I need something to escape to.

♡ Hates: Second-hand market price fluctuation, brands still releasing dresses with a max 96cm bust, buying petticoats, storing my stuff (especially purses), brands who charge astronomical prices for low quality materials (AP purses, Q-pot jewelry, etc).

9. How strict are you in applying the rules to yourself? To others? ♡  I am pretty strict on myself. For a long time I was terrified to be seen as ita. I was even afraid to wear bodyline for fear of being ”ita” even though my coord was good. These days I am less strict on myself and worry much less about these things, but I still struggle to get out of the strict mindset from time to time. others? I love experimentation even if I am afraid to do so so I am really not too strict on others, if it works, it works, and I am not going to criticize anyone. 

10. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever incorporated into a coord, or the weirdest material you’ve ever worn? ♡ The weirdest thing I think I have ever worn in a coord were a pair of korilakkuma bell earrings. As you can imagine, bells on your ears? not great.

11. What’s the story behind your discovery of lolita fashion? ♡ When I was a senior in high school, a new girl started attending my school. She wore fairy kei and sweet lolita to school. We became friends through art class and eventually she ended up teaching me about the fashion. She sold me my first dress, and later my first brand piece. I am really glad to have met her and to have been exposed to lolita. You can follow her on instagram here

12. What is the one item that you’ve owned the longest? ♡ I still own my very first dress I got in 2012. Bodyline Squirrel Party. However, I am planning to sell it since I’ve worn it in everyway I can think of.

13. Do you think lolita is only about clothes, or does it also encompass a certain attitude or mindset? ♡ Lolita is about the fashion. All kinds of people are lolitas and they like it or wear it for different reasons. 

14. Have you ever decorated a room or other space (car?) with lolita aesthetics in mind? ♡ My old bedroom used to be very “kawaii”. I love pink so my car stuff, my desk, as much as I can get away with, is pink. 

15. Is it possible to be too obsessed with lolita? ♡ If lolita is interfering with your ability to pay your bills, or to be happy, or to focus on school or work or family then you should probably pull back. Some people do get very absorbed by things and in those cases it can become too much.

16. What are you favorite and least favorite trends? Do you think it’s important to follow them, or to do as you like regardless of them? ♡ My favorite trend ever is the chiffon half blouse. So comfortable, affordable, light, cute, and much more size inclusive. Least favorite trend? mis-matched shoes from the 2010 era. I like my shoes to get equal wear. I think these days more than ever, you can really just do whatever you want. Wear the fashion is right now is like anything goes which I think is great,

17. How do you define “lolita cosplay” and how do you feel about it? ♡ Lolita cosplay is stupid. sorry

18. Are there other fashions that you wear regularly, or are you an everyday lolita? ♡ I don't wear other street fashions anymore. I used to wear fairy kei and himekaji but these days I just dress regular outside of lolita.

19. Do you look for bargains to save as much money as possible, or are you willing to make sacrifices for high-quality products? ♡ I try to find the best prices when applicable but if I am in love with something I’ll do what I have to do.

20. When was the last time you wore lolita, and what did you do that day? If you wear it daily, when was the last time you went OTT or extra-fancy? ♡ The last time I wore lolita was in April lmao. For a virtual meet-up with my comm.

21. If you were to combine lolita fashion with an unrelated style or theme, what would your new creation be? ♡uhhhh I honestly have no idea at all. 

22. What is your favorite accessory, and why is it your favorite? ♡ I have 2, 2-way bow clips from back when bodyline had a massive “sundries” section. They're no longer available and haven't been for a long time. I am really glad I got them, I wish I had bought more sundries when that section was still there.

23. What’s your favorite online lolita community or forum? Are there any that you avoid?  ♡ I don’t have a favorite tbh. I have never been on 4chan and I never will be.

24. What is your favorite theme (e.g. school loli, pirate loli, nurse loli) or motif (e.g. deer, music notes, stars/constellations)? ♡ black and gold stars! Valentines day! fruits! gingham!

25. Is there any music that you associate with lolita? ♡ orange caramel lol

26. Will you ever be too old for lolita? ♡  never

27. Do you enjoy sewing? Why or why not? ♡ I don’t know how to sew :(

28. How does your location affect your involvement in the local lolita community? Would you like to move elsewhere to be closer, or perhaps farther away? ♡ I drive about 1.5 hours for meetups because that’s the closest active comm. I do not mind so much. I’d like to maybe be closer.

29. Does your sleepwear resemble lolita at all? ♡  not at all. I sleep in oversized t-shirts

30. Can you admit to any unpopular opinions regarding lolita? ♡ I hate peeking bloomers. I’m sorry :(

31. How do you feel about Visual kei or Jrock, and do you feel it’s related to lolita, or not? ♡ Love it, and absolutely. Visual Kei is like lolitas relative. 

32. Whether or not you wear them (looking at you, Ouji), do you prefer the look of skirts, JSKs, and OPs with or without prints? ♡ I like both, but these days I am appreciating non-printed items more.

33. How has your style evolved over time? ♡ It hasn't really, just gotten more refined. 

34. If applicable, what other communities do you belong to? What other identities do you adopt? ♡ I’m queer, so the LGBTQ community is important to me.

35. What are your favorite shoes to wear with your style, or what’s your dream pair? ♡ I love heels. I do not like flat shoes because I like to elongate my legs. I don’t have a dream pair.

36. Would you, or have you ever, dressed your pets in lolita? ♡ lol I’d try but I don't think it would work.

37. How do you feel about people who wear lolita for Halloween? Does it depend on whether that person is already a lolita? ♡ Wearing lolita for Halloween as a lolita is fine, but wearing it as a costume is kind of meh.

38. Excluding fashion shows, what’s the most amount of outfits you’ve ever worn in a day? ♡ just 1 haha

39. What’s your worst lolita horror story? ♡  I don’t really have any. I one time went with some of my college friends to a con and I left my dorm building in full sweet early in the morning. I was afraid my dormmates would see me cause I did not want to explain but luckily no one was awake and I made it to the van unscathed. 

40. Do you like sweets? If so, what’s your favorite dessert? ♡ I love angel food cake 

41. Do you have any beauty products, health routines, or special diet to keep you at your best? ♡ I take co-q-10 for my eczema, I like laneige lip sleeping mask, especially in the winter.

42. What were the best and worst meetups you’ve hosted? If you haven’t hosted, would you like to someday? ♡ I wanted to host a garden meet this summer but covid ruined that. Maybe next year.

43. Who is your favorite artist? If not famous for lolita art, do you think they have lolita appeal? ♡ I love a lot of artists, some of them I think are lolita-adjacent because their style is kawaii. I’ll list some here: jisaaaa!  ubokhee MISOART_ meowwniz gojio_ hanavbara Fancy Surprise Arcade Healer Yurie Sekiya and many many more. Go stalk my following on instagram for lots of kawaii artists.

44. How do you feel about wigs? Do you wear any, or style your natural hair? ♡ I used to wear wigs, but my hair is too long now so I use my natural hair with fake bangs.

45. What’s your favorite animal motif? ♡ bears?

46. Have you ever visited a brand’s shop/boutique? If so, what was your reaction? If not, what shop would you most like to visit? ♡ I want to visit AP San Francisco 

47. Do you think posting photos of your coord online is a crucial part of belonging to the community? ♡ YES, it’s how we all stay connected and inspired 

48. How has the lolita community changed since you became a part of it? Where do you see lolita heading in the future in terms of community and networking? ♡ I think it’s become way more accepting and accessible. When I got into lolita there were virtually no legit resellers, the community was entirely on livejournal, buying second hand was a nightmare. Buying anything! was a nightmare. There was so much stress around looking “ita”, and the superiority of brand. These days its just not like that. So much amazing taobao brands have really helped even the field for lolita. We have so much more access to the clothes, the community, everything. It’s great. I only see it getting better as years go on.

49. What advice would you give someone who is nervous about starting lolita? Or do you think they should learn their own lessons? ♡ I think too many lolitas today rely on seasoned lolitas to tell them everything. I would say, go watch lovely lor, read @lolita-tips and look at other peoples coordinates. Lolita Tips tumblr taught me basically everything I know back in the day and it a wealth of info and concrit. Part of what makes the lolita journey so great is the research, the learning, the mistakes. You don’t wanna be like someone else, you wanna be you. So you really need to do the work yourself so you can put your personal flair into the fashion. That’s when it’s at its best. 

50. What’s your dream dress/garment? Is it a faraway goal or have you obtained it? ♡ My dream dress was AP sweetie violet jsk in lavender. Which I got in 2019. My new dream dress is AP rose tea garden jsk in navy. It’ll probably be a while before I can afford to buy one.

51. How do you feel about the stereotype that lolitas are full of drama? What’s the worst drama you’ve ever witnessed or been involved in? ♡ I think any and all groups of people are bound to have drama. I don’t believe that’s specific to lolita at all. I personally have not been involved in any lolita drama.

52. Are you loyal to any particular makeup brands? ♡ I am very particular about my makeup because I do not like to use certain ingredients. I really like Pacifica. But I also like some Korean brands like The Saem, MISSHA, and TonyMoly.

This was super long but I had fun answering all the questions. Have you done this questionnaire? I’d love to see your answers~

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #1: Armand Hammer’s “Flavor Flav”

What are the Black purposes of space travel?

—Amiri Baraka, “Technology & Ethos”

Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix that thrives on opposites and oppositions, flowing lines and nonlinearity, conflict resolution and asymmetrical warfare. It prefers the mad dash on shifting sands while in pursuit of higher ground and safe havens.

—Greg Tate, “Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes Toward a 20 Volume History of Black Science and Afrofuturism”

Welcome aboard our spaceship, it’s so nice to have you here. —Newcleus, “Space is the Place”

Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but      for all times, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. —Walt Whitman

I’m so tired of being forced to promote the myth of white supremacy by performing works by old white men like Whitman who said blacks...didn’t have a place in the future of America. —Timothy McNair

Today is the shadow of tomorrow, today is the future present of yesterday, yesterday is the shadow of today. —Sun Ra, “Secrets of the Sun”

This highly allusive track from billy woods and ELUCID toys with itself—that is, allusions are a figurative means of collapsing time in and of themselves. Past and present history & culture don’t contend so much as support one another. A set of stilts to do the Dance of Death on, if you will. “Start downhill running.” The Seventh Seal hilltop silhouette danse macabre steez, though. The whooshing, metal-creaking beat—with all its haunted psithurism charm—is the backdrop for this sleeper Shrines track.

The name “Flavor Flav” is used metonymically here to mean time. This isn’t a braggadocio, low-key threat in the spirit of OC’s “Time’s Up.” This isn’t a Grandmaster Flashian “You Know What Time It Is” (though the hands on the clock tower do spin clockwise and counter-). Neither is this a Kool Moe Dee-esque rhetorical “Do You Know What Time It Is?” Armand Hammer are frustrated by time, by the “ideals and dreams that don’t work.” woods laments his “time machine [that] don’t go backwards.” This no-good lemon of a H.G. Wells contraption he’s steering. This isn’t some Christopher Lloyd-cum-El-Producto Delorean. There’s no Great Scotting going on, just stubbornness.

Progress isn’t made. Time stagnates. Like the “list of ill-fated quick licks under ’frigerator magnets.” And that “school trip permission slip”—likely a bus ride to a museum: a carefully curated collection of artifacts, most notable for its colonial muscling. The question remains: What is left out? What is excluded? What is ignored, discarded, or co-opted so as to not withstand the test of time? woods’ short-i assonance speeds the delivery up only to slow it down:

list | ill | quick | licks | ’frig | nets | trip | mis | slip | lick | split | skin | spliff

billy woods, son of a revolutionary, redefines Afrofuturism (re-re-re-defines—its brilliance is in how it remakes itself unconditionally). Afrofuturism becomes about birthing the next generation of Black revolutionaries, so he subverts the line and expectations when “big hand captured” refers to the clock, but “little man [not hand] chasin’” refers to a youngin. (Try to keep up.) Put the faith in the youth when our “ideals and dreams” stall out—when the days, months, years are fleeting and forceful (“It do tick faster / The hour coming rough”). The spliff that’s “[skinned] like an onion” turns the cypher into Perrault fairy tale “pumpkin,” Cinderella style.

“Don’t come ’round with that ‘Go slow’” is in conversation with Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” of course. It’s Nina who said “[she] can’t stand the pressure much longer,” who objected to those who “keep on saying ‘Go slow,” who had her band ironically chanting Do it slow. billy woods, like Nina Simone, decries reformism, incrementalism. Don’t do things gradually. We’re at the point where Nina stands up from her piano bench and shouts That’s it!

Forego the telephoto lenses, he insists, this is the “Battle of Algiers with the GoPro.” Urban guerrilla warfare uploaded and disseminated via YouTube. Again, time collapses. The struggle to decolonize continues. Watch for the This video is no longer available dead-end.

billy woods’ Nietzschean “loathing and fear” reverses the hallucinogenic time-warp of Thompson’s (and, in filmic relation, Gilliam’s) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “History is hard to know,” Thompson writes, “because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.” That flash will reappear in ELUCID’s verse.

If “all roads lead to Rome,” we’re settling into the inevitability of our moves. It’s a fatalistic shrug, but homophonically, all roads lead to roam—that is, the journey is prolonged interminably. It’s nomadic. Much static. So, naturally, you’re going to “[shake] the hourglass like a snowglobe,” distort time, and splurge on the “JC Penny Timex,” which is appropriately “flooded with rhinestones.” Flooded, because no more water: the fire next time. Don’t “lose track” and don’t “get trapped in the future.”

The chorus quotes the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side,” but it ain’t that simple, no. The history is as messy as we’ve come to expect amerikan music to be. “Time is On My Side” was originally penned by Norman Meade (Jerry Ragovoy), and trombonist Kai Winding first recorded it. Jimmy Norman, a Black songwriter, fleshed out the lyrics significantly, and Irma Thomas recorded that version in the same year as the Stones. The song followed a path similar to that of “Strange Fruit”—a composition written by a white Jewish man under a pseudonym (Abel Meeropol as Lewis Allan) but popularized by a Black female jazz singer (Billie Holiday). As author Jess Row has said about jazz—hip-hop applies, too—it is “by its very nature multi-racial, intermingled, and collaborative across color lines.” But this cognizance must always be contextualized with views of Black artists like that of Art Blakey: “the only way the Caucasian musician can swing is from a rope.” Hip-hop has always had its Paul Cs and Rick Rubins, but the racial heterogeneity of a genre, or even a single recording, can’t cloak the power dynamics still in play. The Stones’ version of “Time is On My Side”—undoubtedly the most popular version—is a rip-off of Irma Thomas’ version. Mick Jagger even jacks Thomas’ ad-libs, which is to say, her rawness and spontaneity. Even the band’s shadowed faces on the cover of 12 x 5, the album on which the track appears, suggest the racial problematics, the minstrelsy heist. Armand Hammer mock the British Invasion blues filchers by adding “they” to the chorus line: “They said time is on my side.” They being white institutions (especially within music publishing, production, and recording industries) who promised enough airtime for everyone. They who urged patience. (Go slow!) But, as history shows, the profits only lined certain pockets.

ELUCID begins at the “golden hour,” which is both the photogenic beauty of the sky after sunrise and before sunset—a beauty too good to behold. It’s the sun glare shining in your face on the winter commute from work. It’s your high-speed accident and then the golden hour is the paramedics and doctors trying to salvage your corporeal existence. ELUCID’s verse is a hypnagogic jerk, gasping for breath as he takes a “portal to Orangeburg, ’68.” It’s a reference to the campus shooting of young people in protest—South Carolina State University. Unlike Kent State, which came afterwards, Orangeburg didn’t get the attention keening white women in Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs do, despite “live ammunition,” three dead, 28 injured, and “nine acquitted assassins.” Unnoticed. Black invisibility. Not that H.G. Wells type of invisibility—the Ralph Ellison kind.

We’re told what this is: it’s the aggregate stress (“the load of the allostatic”) of Black life. It’s one’s personal Extinction Agenda, the “post-traumatic” of the gunfire “flashes” that double as flashbacks. The pain, stress, the brain that can’t rest, the pressure on the chest.

“The center won’t hold” lets us know this isn’t all PTSD reverie—it’s a rebel poem: surely some revolution is at hand. ELUCID channels Achebe channeling Yeats. Things might fall apart but not without struggle. The “Flavor Flav clock spins centrifugal,” as a gyre, as an apocalyptic (91…) voice. Turning and returning. The words have an air of insurrection, proclamation.

He misses “watching how a flat circle fold”—it won’t budge, won’t wrinkle. We’ve been here before: on “Hunter,” on Paraffin, when billy woods was on that “time is a flat circle” shit. That Nietzsche eternal recurrence shit:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain…will return to you. […] The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

“Can you find the level of difficulty in this?” suggests game playing, arcades. Calls to mind more Walter Benjamin’s Arcades, though. billy woods and ELUCID are gleaners and magpies of cultural cadavers in Benjamin’s way. Their bars are play and critique both. We’re left with a modicum of optimism at the song’s end. Even “only [moving] the pen six inches” is something, is struggle. The “pale faces beyond the fire” are ever-present, though. The “flinching, panic, [and] confusion” are committed to continue.

Is it the fool or the insurgent who thinks time is on their side? We want the life we live to be “more brilliant than a sunbeam.” That’s to say, we don’t want to wait for the golden hour or the golden years. We want what they say we can’t have. We want what they say we shouldn’t imagine. But Armand Hammer helps us take solace in the “drum skin stretched”—the rhythm, the rebel. The oft-quoted Douglass gem, If there is no struggle, there is no progress, is played out for a reason. The reason is because it needs to be played again, and again. Like a mantra, like a song.

Images:

Sun Ra’s Space is the Place (screenshot) | Flavor Flav (detail), courtesy of archivist Sean Stewart | Grandmaster Flash “You Know What Time It Is” music video (screenshot) | Kool Moe Dee “Do You Know What Time It Is?” single cover | Nina Simone live at Antibes Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival 1965 (screenshot) | The Battle of Algiers (screenshot) | The Rolling Stones 12 x 5 album cover | Flavor Flav, courtesy of Stewart

[ljones41]

"OCTOPUSSY" (1983) Review

"OCTOPUSSY" (1983) Review While perusing some of the Bond forums, I have noticed that 1983’s ”OCTOPUSSY” is not highly regarded by many fans. Personally, I have always found this hard to understand or accept, considering that the movie has been one of my favorite entries in the Bond franchise for years. But after watching it recently . . . I still do not agree with its low standing among the fans.

”OCTOPUSSY”’s pre-title sequence is merely a little teaser about Bond’s attempt to sabotage a missile system in the Banana Republic (aka Cuba). It was light, humorous and filled with plenty of solid action. I particularly enjoyed the fact that what started out as failure on Bond’s part after he found himself captured by enemy soldiers, ended up as a success partially through the actions of the enemy, when they attempt to shoot down the Acrostar Mini-Jet he used for a quick escape. Although entertaining, the pre-title sequence has nothing to do with the main story, which involves a power-hungry Soviet general, a mysterious and beautiful smuggler/circus owner and a duplicitous Afghan prince. Written by George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum, and Michael G. Wilson, ”OCTOPUSSY” starts out in East Germany with 009 dressed as a clown and being pursued by a knife-wielding villain. The villain turns out to be a pair of twins (Mischska and Grischska) who want something that 009 has – namely a fake Faberge egg called Property of a Lady. One of the twins manages to fatally wound 009 with a knife. But before he can die, the British agent manages to reach the local British embassy and deliver the egg in dramatic fashion. James Bond is assigned to investigate his colleague’s death. The investigation leads to an auction at Christie’s where the real Property of a Lady egg is being sold . . . and Bond’s first meeting with the villainous Kamal Khan, his henchmen Gobinda and the lovely Madga. Bond’s investigations lead him to India, where he makes his acquaintance with Kamal Khan for the second time. He survives several attempts on his life and incarceration at Khan’s Monsoon Palace and eventually meet the mysterious Octopussy, who turns out to be the daughter of a former rogue agent whom Bond had met years ago. Bond’s encounters with Octopussy and Khan provides him with clues that lead back to East Germany and Soviet General Orlov and Khan’s plot to detonate a nuclear bomb on a U.S. Air Force base in West Germany. Fortunately, Bond (with Octopussy’s help) foils Orlov and Khan’s plans. Roger Moore returned for the sixth time as British agent James Bond. At age 55 during the film’s production, he struck many Bond fans as too old to be portraying the super spy. Personally, I had no problems with Moore’s age around this time. He still looked handsome and healthy enough to star in the action-packed spy thriller. And he portrayed Bond with a world-weariness and style that seemed to befit his age. Even better, he managed to retain some of that gritty toughness that he utilized so effectively in his previous outing, ”FOR YOUR EYES ONLY” . . . and retained his sense of humor at the same. Speaking of that humor, I usually have nothing against Moore’s humorous style (unlike many fans and critics). But I can think of four occasions when even I found it a bit too much: -Chase sequence in Udaipur with street performers -Bond focusing short circuit camera on Indian operative’s cleavage -The Tarzan yell during Bond’s escape from Khan’s Monsoon Palace -Bond using fake crocodile submarine to sneak into Octopussy’s estate Despite the extreme silliness listed above, I still found Moore’s performance satisfactory. I enjoyed his sense of humor during his encounters with the West German citizenry, while trying to stop Orlov and Khan’s bomb. And I admired his dramatic skills in scenes featuring the discovery of Vijay’s body and his romantic scene with Octopussy. But I was especially impressed by his acting in the scene that featured Bond’s only encounter with General Orlov. Maud Adams returned to appear in her second Bond film, this time portraying the leading female character – smuggler/circus owner, Octopussy. I cannot honestly say I would consider Adams to be among the best actresses that appeared in the Bond franchise. The nine years between ”THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN” (in which she portrayed the villain’s doomed mistress) and ”OCTOPUSSY” seemed to have shown no real improvement in her acting skills. But she seemed competent enough to carry the role. And her looks and screen presence certainly helped. The secondary female lead – Kristina Weyborn – portrayed Madga, Octopussy’s right-hand woman and personal liaison to Kamal Khan. Like Adams, Weyborn is a tall Swedish-born beauty with limited acting skills. And like the leading lady, she possessed enough looks and presence to carry her role. Although I do wish that someone had given her more lessons in performing martial arts on screen. French actor Louis Jordan portrayed Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince who desire for a piece of the Imperial Russian treasure leads him to take part in General Orlov's plot to bomb a U.S. Air Force base and change the political landscape of Western Europe. Khan serves as the liaison between Orlov and Octopussy, who traveling circus/smuggling operation allows the two men to smuggle a nuclear bomb into West Germany. Like Yaphet Kotto and Christopher Lee before him, Jordan seems to be a doppleganger of Moore's James Bond - smooth, suave and very deadly. One scene in particular - Bond and Khan's game of dice at an Udaipur hotel - reflects the mirror image of the two men in a very effective manner. Not only did Jordan perfectly portray Kamal Khan's smooth style and sophistication, he did an excellent job of reflecting the Afghan prince's darker nature - especially his cold-blooded tendency to betray anyone who stood between him and self-preservation. Including Octopussy and his men. "OCTOPUSSY"'s cast of minor villains include Steven Berkhoff as the bombastic General Orlov, whose desire for completely Communist Europe and a higher position in the Soviet hierarchy sets off the movie's plot. Although I found his scenes with Moore, Jordan and Adams effective and subtle, Berkhoff unfortunately revealed a tendency toward hammy acting in a scene that feature a meeting between the Soviet premier and several generals - including Gogol. And when I mean hammy, I mean . . . ham served with eggs. Indian actor Kabir Bedi portrayed Khan's right-hand man, the silent and intimidating Gobinda. One of the Bond sites - "MI-6" Forum - stated the following about the character: "Kamal Khan's faithful bodyguard, big and tough but none too bright.". I do not know if I agree with that assessment. On second thought . . . I do not agree. Gobinda's flaw may have been that he was too devoted and loyal to Khan - after all, he actually obeyed the Afghan prince's order that he climb out of a plane in mid-flight and kill Bond. But less than bright? No, I do not agree. Gobinda struck me as a very observant and intelligent man. And the very handsome Bedi portrayed the henchman with a nice balance of intelligence and menace. In fact, Gobinda happens to be one of my favorite henchmen. Actors David Meyer and Anthony Meyer portray the knife-throwing assassins who killed 009, Mischka and Grischska. They did not say much in the movie, but both did a nice job of projecting competent and menacing killers. With the death of Bernard Lee in 1980, the character of M did not appear in "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY". The character returned in the form of actor Robert Brown, who began the first of his four movie run as the head of MI-6 in "OCTOPUSSY". Brown portrayed M with authority, but very little imagination. Personally, I think he was simply too young to be portraying an authority figure against Roger Moore, who was six years younger. Not until Timothy Dalton's tenure will Brown show that along with Lee and Judi Dench, he could also be an interesting M. Lois Maxwell returned as Moneypenny in one of the most amusing Bond-Moneypenny scenes in the franchise. The scene involved a 'Miss Penelope Smallbone' and Moore and Maxwell managed to inject a lot of humor and charm into the scene, as befitting two old friends. Desmond Llewellyn had once stated that "LICENSE TO KILL" was his favorite Bond film. Which does not seem surprising, since he had a strong role in it. But he also had a strong role in "OCTOPUSSY" and I could tell that he had enjoyed himself. Especially in the scene that featured his rescue of Madga and some of Octopussy's other followers. It seemed too bad that Q's embellished role in this movie seemed just as unecessary as his embellished role in "LICENSE TO KILL". General Gogol returned in the form of Walter Gotell. And he portrayed the Soviet KGB general with his usual competence. Tennis star, Vijay Amritraj made his screen debut as Indian intelligence agent . . . Vijay. Okay this is not exactly an example of original casting, but what the hell? He did a pretty good job, anyway. And he was rather charming. "OCTOPUSSY" marked John Glen's second time in the director chair. And like "FOR YOUR EYES", he did an admirable job. I have to give the man kudos for once again, bringing a touch of realistic grit in Moore's portrayal of Bond and in the franchise. Although I do feel that he made a misstep in allowing those silly moments I had earlier mentioned, in the movie. But I do wonder who had included those ridiculous little scenes? Was it Glen? Moore? Or were the screenwriters - Fraser, Maibum and Wilson - responsible? If the writers were responsible, it was a misstep on their parts. Otherwise, they created an admirable script. One of the scenes highly criticized by critics was the sight of Bond disguised as a clown to infiltrate the circus where the bomb was located. I never understood their criticism of this disguise. Perhaps they disliked the idea of James Bond dressed as a clown. If so, I find their attitude extremely shallow . . . and rather stupid. Also, I wonder why George MacDonald Fraser had been included in this project? Was it because he was a British Army veteran who had served in India? Or that he had incorporated his experiences in India in his Harry Flashman novels? I do not know what to admire more - the screenwriters' creation of the villains' objectives and Bond's efforts to stop the bomb, or Glen's direction of those scenes. Perhaps both. I wish I could say that I enjoyed the movie's theme song, "All Time High", which was sung by Rita Coolidge. But in the end, it simply bored me. However, I did enjoy John Barry's lush and exciting score. And I must commend cinematographer, Alan Hume, for the film's photography. His shots of India and the English countryside (serving as East and West Germany) made "OCTOPUSSY" one of the most colorful entries in the Bond franchise. Despite the low opinion held by many Bond fans, "OCTOPUSSY" remains one of my favorite Bond films. In fact, I consider it to be Moore's second best film (despite a few stupid jokes) and the franchise's sixth best. I give it . . . 8/10.