#on my life i will photograph or illustrate anything that even vaguely shows me any line on that record

[c-suvroc]

The engine grinds its song

One lonesome drone...

-"Fire & Gold" by Wayfarer

Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado

2023

[guylty]

Or maybe it’s rather a touch-up subject… Yes, she is going there. She is going to address the elephant in the room. The filteri-filtera that is going on. But let’s start properly.

We all wouldn’t be fans if we didn’t scrutinise the images of our favourite actor to the nth. For a while, I – although I fancy myself as an observant photo reader – didn’t even really see what was going on. That images are touched up when they are taken on professional photo shoots, is a given. And it has to be said that retouching is usually not demanded by the sitters, but is an essential part of the process in digital photography. In fact, there are plenty of celebrities – mainly women – who have publicly spoken against retouching, mainly because it creates unhealthy images, stereotypes and expections of women in terms of beauty, body and appearance. Among them are well-known actors such as Kate Winslet or performers like Lady Gaga. However, photographers rarely let go of their images without editing – because it is in their own interest to create an all-round beautiful image. The better/smoother/prettier the image, the higher the chance that the photographer can sell it. An easy calculation. But unfortunately the criticism by celebrity against photoshopping already shows that there is an ethical dimension to the issue. How much editing is “normal”? Especially given that photography still has a vague reputation of being “documentary” and “reflecting the truth”. The latter can really not be said (anymore). With digital photography, retouching has become part and parcel of post-production. And not only that, it actually has become somewhat automatic, thanks to the ubiquitous filters that are now available for any app that offers photography features. And that is what I am going to address today. Because the filters on Instagram are what pulled the wool over my eyes. It took me a while until I really copped on, mostly because I know from my own photographic practice that photoshop/editing/retouching was a time-consuming, detail-rich process – one that I really did not enjoy at all. I am a minimal invasive photographer myself – if I can get away without retouching, I am happiest. Thus I never liked editing – or filters. And because I wasn’t using them, I didn’t realise how good they were.

Amusing coincidence: RA also stands for “Retouching Academy”. No further comment *sniggers*

And boy, are those filters good. Coming back to the scrutiny from the beginning, it was only due to the in-depth familiarity with my favourite actor’s face, that I eventually could not ignore the truth any longer. Mr A is a filterer. Or a filteRA? In any case, he likes the automatic filters, judging by his output on Instagram. But until recently, there was never really any tangible proof that he was putting filters across his pictures. Sure, there were indications – however good the years have been, but the smoothness around the eyes just sometimes looked a little bit too pixel-fresh – but it’s hard to find evidence when you don’t have anything to compare with, i.e. an original photo beside a filtered one. But a while back, the evidence finally surfaced. And I think this is absolutely fascinating. During Richard’s visit to Sundance Film Festival 2019 he was photographed by Ryan Pfluger, and this is the image that was taken for the Vulture feature The Faces of Sundance.

Picture by Ryan Pfluger for Vulture

Gorgeous, right? I could go into full *ooof* mode here and talk about what *I* love about this photo although many people would consider a “floating head” as bad photography. I don’t. You just have to look straight to the right to see my own version of a floating head, taken in Leeds. I love b/w, especially on a man who has got a few edges and lines in his face to be illustrated with light and shadow, creating a beautiful historical map of a life lived. B/w is boring when it doesn’t have contrast to work with. And I like how this “floating head” simply draws attention to everything that is remarkable about this face – the intense gaze, that seems to hold a slight glint of danger; the eyebrow, almost quirked; a few straight lines coming from the corner of the eye, like rays of the sun; a memorable nose that is not just a sharp line but has some interesting curves; a hint of grey on the temple;  There are beard hairs to count and pores to pore over; and a forehead that shows signs of some worthy thinking going on behind.

Apparently not an aesthetic that Richard himself likes. Compare this:

This is the Ryan Pfluger image again, posted by Richard on his Weibo page, a little later. And a little different. Wait, I’ll show you.

I wish there was an eye shadow filter for when I get up in the morning

I have focussed on the essentials in my gif here. It is a montage of the two images, dissolving into each other. There is no editing otherwise on my part, but it is quite apparent in my gif that some filtering is going on: The filter lightens up the shadow – which essentially means that some of the lines are filled with light and the skin appears smoothed out. Let’s have a look again, side by side.

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Interesting, right? I am not going to get into the ethics of this; and I don’t really want to be judgmental about it, either. Richard can do whatever he wants on his social media outlets, and the important thing always remains that he himself has to be happy with the choices he makes. His choice of photographs – as well as filters and poses – have always fascinated me because they often do not match with my favourite pictures of him. Likewise, whether you prefer the original image or the one reposted by Richard, is completely up to you. My own hunch is that I prefer the first version. Not least because I firmly believe that an image that has been officially published, constitutes the “definitive”, final version of a work of art/creativity as it has been intended by its creator. But also because it appears to have character while picture number 2 looks kind of… washed out? Eroded? I suppose those words already are loaded with meaning, and I do not want to judge. I emphasise again, that this is merely *my* approach and my preference. And  circling back to the beginning, maybe this isn’t really as big a thing as we make it out to be. As fans, *we* notice. But do others who are less familiar, do? Probably not. Touchy subject…

Sorta *ooof*: A Touchy Subject Or maybe it's rather a touch-up subject... Yes, she is going there. She is going to address the elephant in the room.

[mzhong2014]

Weekly reading digest (7/28-8/3)

A break to remember: Stanford faculty reminisce about their college summers:

Reading about the faculty members whom I admire so much, this was a humanizing post that reminded me that everyone has struggled through the routine and impossible just like you have. My favorite quote from Ambassador Eikenberry about his summer learning how to jump out of an aircraft while at the US Army Airborne School. Ambassador Eikenberry is the embodiment of poise, humbleness, and courage, so I particularly enjoyed reading his blurb:

“As the aircraft rumbled toward the drop zone, one of the cadre, a very seasoned sergeant, gets in front of me, grabs my two shoulder straps, looks me in the face and because of the deafening engine noise, shouted at me: ‘Airborne,’– which is how all students are addressed – ‘are you nervous?’

And although I was nervous, I gave the answer I thought he wanted to hear.

‘No, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘I’m not nervous.’

The sergeant looked at me and very calmly said: ‘Airborne, I want you to be nervous. This is your first jump.’

I’ll never forget that expression on his face and his sincerity.

‘Every time you jump out of an airplane in the future, I want you to be nervous,’ the sergeant said to me. ‘Because when you are nervous, you are thinking hard about the challenge you are facing. In your mind, you are going through all the training you had – what is the next thing to do and what to do should something go wrong.’

And then he said: ‘What I don’t want you to do is be afraid. Be nervous, but don’t be afraid. If you let your fears control you, then you are going to make a mistake.’”

To be great, you must first be vulnerable. 

The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court

I started listening to this on audiobook when I spontaneously decided to drive to San Diego at 10;30 pm on a Saturday night and back Sunday afternoon (totaling 5 hours of driving).

The Brethren is written by Bob Woodward, yes, one of the reporters of the Wategate Scandal. Earlier this year, I grabbed coffee with a litigator in an effort to shed light on the mysterious question of what does it mean to be a lawyer. He recommended this book to help elucidate this question, and only 30 minutes into the audiobook, I understood why. It is perhaps the most intimate account of the prestigious Supreme Court, uncovering the day-to-day scenes hidden behind the white marble columns and impressive wooden bench. In contrast to my other readings that cover the intellectual origins of the judiciary branch, The Brethren shows how the justice system works in a very raw and real-life manner. Spanning 1969-1975 during Burger’s early years as Chief Justice, it shows exactly how politics mixes with the supposedly nonpartisan judiciary system, the nitty-gritty of how varying legal philosophies translate to vastly diverse approaches towards handling legal issues (especially during a very contentious period with the civil rights movement), as well as how the different personalities impacted the very tactical routines of the Supreme Court.

No specific quotes because, unfortunately, I do not have the auditory version of photographic memory, but initial reactions:  

I was surprised by how the Justice’s different opinions extended beyond the question of whether something was constitutional, but also the question of how do policymakers tactically carry out a Supreme Court decision. For example, the first few chapters focused on the decision around how to issue a court order regarding Brown v Board of Education as Southern states dug their heels in to prolong the delay of integration of schools. Because of the vague phrasing used in the ruling opinion, “with all deliberate speed,” lawyers were using this language to justify these 15-year delays. The court order had to achieve and balance a number of objectives: avoid appearing submissive to the delay and admonish any attempts to prevent integration while balancing the practical concerns for allowing time to let schools create and implement a sound plan for integration to minimize the chaos / violence during this time. But should these practical considerations be up to the judiciary branch to decide? 

As a junior consultant, it was interesting to see how exactly the Justices manage their clerks and how each Justice’s personality dictated their working norms -- shows how collegial the Court is but also how political it can be 

It was also interesting to see the different philosophies that the Justices had towards being a judge. To grossly generalize, the Justices had very different opinions on the degree to which they cared about being legally rigorous in their opinions versus arriving at some legal conclusion with considerable political and social implications

The Brothers Karamazov: Ivan’s Rebellion

One of the most famous passages in The Brother’s Karamazov is Ivan’s rebellion, where he rejects God of his justice system. The dialogue occurs between Ivan, the intellectual of his three brothers, and Alyosha, the most spiritually pure of the three. Ivan focuses his argument on the suffering of children to illustrate the injustice of God. 

“I won't speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation—they've eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become 'like gods.' They go on eating it still. But the children haven't eaten anything, and are so far innocent.”

Ivan proceeds to provide anecdotes that he has collected of children suffering – which are based on true stories that Dostoevsky collected from the newspaper. Ivan recounts tales of how the Turks cut open “the unborn child from the mother’s womb,” skewering babies with their bayonets in glee. He tells another story of a five-year old girl beaten to pulp by her parents, her mouth smeared with excrement, left to sleep in the cold frost of an outhouse. With relentless momentum, Ivan recounts his last story about a serf-boy who throws a stone at a kennel of hounds, and hurts the paw of a general’s dog. The child is summoned to the general and stripped naked.

“He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry… 'Make him run,' commands the general. 'Run! run!' shout the dog-boys. The boy runs…'At him!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's eyes!”

The Bible reasons that all, including children, must suffer for man’s sin. Even the most innocent, children, “must suffer for their fathers' sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple.” These damned children, Ivan continues, some may twistedly suggest that “the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old.”  

Ivan concludes that he cannot accept God if his justice requires children to suffer for an “eternal harmony.”

“I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That's a question I can't answer.

[…]

While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.”

And that is the crux of the passage – the prospect of an eternal harmony is not worth the suffering of the innocent to repent for the Sin of Man.

In face of our inability to find the meaning of seemingly meaningless suffering in the empirical and physical world, we are faced with two options: 1) consult the transcendental for truths that lie outside of our physical world or 2) turn inwards to provide meaning ourselves. Both are fairly unsatisfactory frameworks, in my opinion. An argument against the first is well illustrated above, and there is little that I can add of intellectual value to Dostoevsky’s work. 

As for the second point, everyone tells you during intense moments of suffering that you will always learn something in hindsight -- in an attempt to imbue seemingly meaningless suffering with meaning. After all, the human mind cannot fathom the possibility of meaningless suffering -- that all of this pain is for nothing; that there is no such thing as karma or justness in the world. This seems equally absurd because why does learning have to require so much suffering? Are humans just too dumb to learn from happy experiences? 

For the meantime, I’m not sure what exactly sure why there is so much suffering in life and whether it is justified by some external or internal truths. For now, all that I know is that a lot of terrible things in life happen, and all that humans can do is simply react to them. 

[thesinglesjukebox]

LUKAS GRAHAM - LOVE SOMEONE [1.50] After three songs covered here, their combined score has now reached [4.09]...

Will Rivitz: The epsilon-delta definition of a limit is, in layman's terms, generally as follows: if one plugs a number x into a function, that function's limit as x approaches some other number a is L if, no matter what arbitrarily small number ε you can come up with, you can find some x near a such that x plugged into the function is within ε of L. This is somewhat confusing, so a non-math example to illustrate: Let x be a band, and let the a that x approaches be Lukas Graham (for notation's sake, we'll call it the Graham limit). We find that the limit L of the function f(x), as x approaches a, is in fact negative infinity. To understand why this is, consider any arbitrary ε, and we find that no matter how low f(ε), the Graham limit allows for a lower f(x). For example, if we set ε fairly low, at, say, Five For Fighting, we find that a lower f(x) is possible. If we set ε even lower, at, for example, Meghan Trainor, we find that a lower f(x) is still achievable. In this sense, "Love Someone" is an effectively didactic example, as it uses an almost unimaginably low ε -- Train, in this case --- and demonstrates that the Graham limit is lower still. Math is wonderful, isn't it? [0]

Andy Hutchins: The exchange rate on Lukas Graham members to Jason Mraz is 3:1, in case you have interest in playing what I'm sure is the booming market for sub-Sheeran wedding dreck. (Play a song that includes the sniffing refrain "You've probably never loved someone like I do" at your wedding at your own peril.) [1]

Julian Axelrod: As long as dads are having first dances at their second weddings, Lukas Graham will have a career. [3]

Alfred Soto: Well, isn't he the hateful little shit: she should learn to love like he does. It's not Graham Cracker's first time stepping on a rake. Ed Sheeran is Otis Redding. [1]

Katherine St Asaph: Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself" is not improved by 50,000 times more singing. [1]

Jonathan Bradley: Imagine I had just fallen head-over-heels for someone. You know, right in the mushy marshes of new affection. A time in which I had been so disarmed by this new presence in my life that I grasped for sincerity and earnestness to account for it; a time when hearing such sentiments drawn with careless and vague strokes would make them seem nonetheless truthful and important. Even at such a time, I think that I would find Lukas Forchhammer's quivering soul tenor to be impossibly, intolerably weedy. [2]

Nicholas Donohoue: I could revert to my hate mindset and be a pedantic, over-intensive jerk, but the only thing that needs said is Lukas Graham should refrain from long, high notes. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Jason Mraz-type schlock that's too boring to hate passionately. Since the music's too boilerplate, the lyrics come through with some solipsistic narcissism. Terrible, but easy to laugh at, which makes it a little less terrible. [2]

Taylor Alatorre: All three of Lukas Graham's self-titled albums feature the same painting of a nude woman on their cover but with a different color palette, like a lazier, hornier version of Weezer. The painting, entitled Damen med flaskerne (Lady with the Bottles), is Lars Helweg's depiction of Swedish-Italian actress Anita Ekberg, best known for her starring role in La Dolce Vita. Painted in 1992 but based on a 1956 Playboy photograph, it's become a minor cultural touchstone in Denmark; the hard rock band September also used the artwork for their 1995 album Many a Little. The original resides in Copenhagen's Cafe Wilder, which Lukas Graham's lead singer often visited as a child. He says the album art is intended as a tribute to his childhood, as well as a representation of the band's music: "naked and beautiful." Each of these facts is more interesting than anything found in this song, which devalues love by implying that yours isn't genuine unless you can squeeze a saccharine pseudo-devotional out of it. [2]

Alex Clifton: Is this the worst song Lukas Graham have ever recorded? No. That's either "7 Years," "Strip No More," or their newest single, which is an anti-suicide ballad (?) that involves the line "my stage show can light up the clouds," because somehow it has to have the self-aggrandizing turn that most Lukas Graham songs have. It depends on the day which song I hate more. But "Love Someone" is insipid and boring and clichéd and bad. It's like if the sappiest Jason Mraz song (also incidentally named "Love Someone") had a baby with Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" and a guy with less charisma than Pat Monahan tried to reassure you his Hefty bag of love is real. It's meaningless. It's supposed to be tender and kind but I can't get past the fact that this is the guy who once sang "HOW COME YOU DON'T STRIP NO MOOOOOOOOORE" so goddamn enthusiastically. Moreover, this song made me realize why I specifically hate Lukas Graham: they commit the sin of believing they're the only people in the world who have ever experienced feelings. "You'll probably never love someone like I do," Lukas Forchhammer sings, and in that moment I know he believes every word he says. It's the same story they've told with every other song: my emotion is the strongest and the worst and the most bad and the most valid, and you'll never understand. Lukas Graham have long left a bad taste in my mouth and this song makes me hate them more, to the point where it's a personal insult that Lukas Graham keeps releasing music. If they really loved someone other than themselves, they'd leave us alone. [0]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[mst3kproject]

812: The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and became Mixed-Up Zombies

Okay, first off, fuck that title.  You know how I write out the full title of Attack of the The Eye Creatures every time I refer to it, out of sheer spite?  I'm going to do the opposite here.  I'm not even going to type out the full acronym. From here on, this movie is known simply as Mixed-Up Zombies, which would be a perfectly good title for a movie made by somebody better at movies than Ray Dennis Steckler.  Apparently the title he originally wanted was even longer, being a riff on the full title of Dr. Strangelove. You can google if you want to know what it was, because I'm not typing that either.

The posters bill MUZ as the First Monster Musical, which is a big fat lie.  I'm pretty sure that to qualify as a musical, a movie has to include more than one song-and-dance number that helps to tell the story, in situations where no sane person would be singing and dancing in real life. Horror of Party Beach (which billed itself as the First Horror Monster Musical) is also not a musical, because its songs have nothing to do with the plot and are all performed by the Del-Aires, who are presumably getting paid for it.  I Accuse my Parents is closer to being a musical, because the songs do express the status of the relationship between Kitty and Jimmy – but it's still not quite there, because Kitty only sings as part of her job.  Mary Poppins is a musical.  Singing in the Rain is a musical.  Fucking Jeeves is a musical.  MUZ is not.

The actual plot of MUZ is somewhat mysterious.  I can tell you that this is the movie where Alex the Chimp's creepy robot double wants us to get our tickets here! and the episode in which Mike and the bots keep making transvestite jokes that really didn't need to be made, but I'm not entirely sure what's actually going on in the story. I guess there are these two carnival performers: Carmelita is an exotic dancer luring men into the clutches of her sister Estrella, who turns them into zombie slaves and sends them out to kill people. Why the two of them do this I have no idea.  Possibly it has something to do with Estrella seeing the deaths in her tarot cards.  If her predictions won't come true on their own, then damn it, she'll make them come true!

This rather vague story is told to us through a character named Jerry, played by writer/director Steckler.  He bills himself as Cash Flagg, which is only slightly less stupid of a stage name than Touch Connors. Jerry can't touch Watney Smith on the Hate-O-Meter but he still scores a solid eight out of ten – he's a rat-faced, lecherous man-child who refuses to work because “life is meant to be enjoyed”.  I imagine this is what Steckler himself would say whenever his parents asked him when he was going to stop making terrible movies and get a real job.  Jerry takes his rich girlfriend Angie to the carnival and then ditches her in order to watch Carmelita's strip show.  I think we're supposed to believe that Carmelita hypnotized him into it but nothing in his prior behaviour suggests that this isn't something he would have done anyway.  Under Estrella's mind control, he murders a couple of dancers and then almost kills Angie when she obnoxiously twirls her umbrella at him.  In the end he is unceremoniously shot by the police, who do that a lot in these movies.

One thing that is unavoidably noticeable in MUZ is that somebody, possibly the costume designer and possibly Steckler himself, has a thing about female body hair.  We never see any actual body hair in the movie (even on the men), but the female dancers wear costumes that almost seem designed to make up for the lack!  Marge the dancer's outfit consists mainly of black mesh with a few opaque patches where something naughty might show, and the bit that covers her crotch is a black inverted triangle that looks much more like pubes than it does lingerie.  I thought this might be my own pervy imagination, but then we see the lead dancer at the girlie show.  She also has a black triangle on her groin, with a feathery top to it that makes it look like her pubes come up past her belly button, plus she's wearing that feathery thing around her shoulders that often looks much like armpit hair.  I don't know what to make of this. It's really weird.

Another thing that draws the attention is how tediously uninspired the nightclub scenes are. These, as Tom Servo observed, make up a significant portion of the movie, but they're just not very interesting to watch.  The comedian has the same repertoire as your divorced uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.  Marge and her partner look like they're at their first ballroom dance class and are doing their best to follow the teacher but have no idea what's going on.  The girlie shows Jerry attend consist mostly of dancers walking in circles or doing very limited steps in place, and singers who just stand there.  It's like we're watching video of a junior high talent show.  It's hard to say who's at fault for this... the direction certainly isn't very interesting, but neither is the lighting or the choreography, and the performers are okay-ish at best.  I think we're just looking at a paucity of talent across all fronts.

The various nightclub acts are irrelevant, anyway.  They're nothing but filler, and the movie uses filler to try to distract us from the fact that we never have any idea why these things are happening.  What is it that Estrella and Carmelita are trying to accomplish through their seduce-and-zombify routine? We don't know, because the two of them never talk to each other.  The sisters ought to have some kind of symbiotic relationship.  Carmelita brings Estrella gullible men to make into zombies, and we'd assume that this must also benefit Carmelita in some way – but how?  Is Estrella eliminating competition by killing other dancers who might rise into Carmelita's starring role?  If so then Marge, who is a drunk on the verge of losing her job anyway, was not the best victim to illustrate that.  If the two of them have some kind of larger plan, like world domination (or at least carnival domination), then we never see any hint of it.

The movie would honestly have been way more interesting if it had actually been about whatever the sisters' evil plan is, but instead, it's about fucking Jerry. I think Jerry's story is supposed to be a tragedy, in that Estrella and Carmelita take this happy young man and completely destroy him, but it's impossible to make that work when Jerry really doesn't start off with anything to lose.  He has no job, no ambition, no hobbies... he seems to live as a leech on the ass of his pompadoured, foreigny friend Harold, and his idea of a good time is watching bargain-rate strippers.  There are probably plenty of real people much like him, but they're not the people the average movie-goer likes or admires. A tragic hero is a man who loses everything, but Jerry never had anything except for his romance with Angela, and he ruined that all by himself.

Jerry is not only a singularly un-likeable character, he's not even any fun to hate.  The rednecks in Giant Spider Invasion were so absolutely awful that it was a good time just watching them scream and get eaten.  Jerry is too bland for that, even at his worst.  We fundamentally do not care what happens to this asshole, and as a result, his story is not at all compelling.

As dull and unfocused as the movie is, I think it might have an intentional theme.  Recall that Jerry doesn't want to get a job – he's a free spirit who wants to do his own thing and enjoy himself.  You occasionally hear self-proclaimed free spirits refer to those of us with real jobs as 'zombies'.  Maybe this is a story about Jerry finally having to bow to capitalism, which ultimately destroys him.  The scene about Jerry's joblessness and the fact that the movie bothers to contrast the semi-squalor in which he lives with Angela's wealthy family is just enough to make me think Steckler could have had some kind of economic point to make.  If so, the metaphor is not sufficiently well-developed to really say anything, and we aren't interested enough in Jerry to care in any event.

A lot of MSTies think this movie visually resembles Manos: the Hands of Fate. The two films do share a lack of decent lighting, a warm late 60's/early 70's pallet, and a general 'somebody's last known photograph' feel.  But while Manos' cinematographer was a guy named Robert Guidry who had never done the job before and never did it again, MUZ was shot by fucking Vilmos Zsigmond. You've never heard of him, but only because nobody knows the names of cinematographers – him doing MUZ is kind of the equivalent of finding out Hans Zimmer wrote the Haunting Torgo Theme.  Fifteen years after MUZ, Zsigmond won an Oscar for cinematography on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and he went on to be nominated three more times, for The Deer Hunter, The River, and The Black Dahlia.

Ray Dennis Steckler also kept making movies, but his have titles like The Thrill Killers and The Sexorcist. Unsurprisingly, these have been nominated for zero Oscars and are too obscure even for the Razzies.  I'll see if I can find a couple of them for Episodes that Never Were.

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | SESSIONS HOV CHICAGO |  JUNK YARD

We’re talking to some of the awesome artists who have been involved in SESSIONS at the House of Vans Chicago and House of Vans Brooklyn! First up we’re checking out the works of Chicago based artist Junk Yard whose twisted and humorous characters have been on everything from paper to walls to apparel.��We’re stoked to chat with JUNK YARD about the piece he did for SESSIONS, his early influences, and what he jams to when he’s working on art! 

SESSIONS features live painting, open skate, emerging musician showcases and more, so make sure to check out and RSVP for upcoming SESSIONS in HOV CHICAGO and HOV BROOKLYN.  

Photographs courtesy of the artist. 

Introduce yourself? (Name, occupation, location and any funny or interesting tidbit about yourself?) Hi,  I go by Junk Yard and I’m an Illustrator currently living in Chicago. I’m originally from South Africa but have been in Chicago for the last 16 years.   You recently were a part of SESSIONS at the House of Vans Chicago. Can you tell us a little about your involvement in SESSIONS?  What was the overall vibe at the event like? Well, the night started off very calmly, but almost in an instant people began showing up. The place filled up very quickly and before I knew it, it was absolute chaos. Although it was chaotic, everyone was having fun and enjoying the bands, and of course the skating. I was in awe of everyone skating at the same time.

How did you design and come up with the piece you ended up creating at SESSIONS? The character started out as just a little dude skating, but as the night went on I began feeding off of the crazy energy around me. That’s why it turned out the way it did; this limp-limbed devilish character pulling off a trick over a tombstone.

When did you first get into drawing?  And who were some of your early artistic influences? I always get asked this, and honestly, it’s hard to give an answer. I don’t really remember a time in my life when I didn’t draw. I don’t have sophisticated influences when it comes to my art. I grew up watching cartoons in the morning. 

My biggest influences as a child were the Looney Tunes. When I got a bit older I discovered Ren & Stimpy, and that changed my life. Once I saw the signature episode with the ‘Happy Happy Joy Joy’ song, I knew that was how I wanted to draw.

 If you look at my current style of drawing I would say my biggest influence is Max Fletcher. He’s the original old school black and white cartoonist, creator of Betty Boop etc. Other than that I love Adventure Time, The Marvelous Misadventure of Flapjack and Superjail just to name a few.

Describe your artistic process for us. I’ll usually have a very vague idea in my head, then I simply pull out a pen and paper and start drawing. It’s like molding a piece of clay, I just keep adding and removing things that I like or dislike. Sometimes I have no idea whatsoever what I’m going to do. When that happens I draw a circle and let my process take over, ideas will start to roll in and the drawing will take place.

What type of music do you listen to when creating? Share with us your top 5 bands/songs you’ve been drawing too?  Oh man, this is where I’m supposed to tell everyone the cool music I listen too. This may be disappointing. But I listen to just about anything, from Bluegrass to Metal, to 80’s synth pop to Reggae. I even listen to classical music sometimes, or movie soundtracks like Braveheart or Lord of the Rings. The reasons for this is that I don’t actually hear much while I draw. I go into my own little world. So when I’m listening to cool new music or bands, it is when I’m not drawing.

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist? I would rather not think about it! That would be a parallel universe I’d rather not visit.

What are your favorite VANS? I’ve always loved the trusted Slip-On's, and always in black. Right now I’m wearing black Authentic Vans.

What do you think is an essential quality that any new or established artist should have? Be consistent! Sure you can try new things, but for the most part stay consistent in your style, message, and especially in your delivery.

How are you not just ONE thing?  (basically, what other things are you interested in? Or perhaps involved with?) Well not to tease too much but I actually have a completely new project, that’s not related to Junk Yard at all. I don’t want to give away too much, as it’s in the beginning stages of development. But stay tuned.

What advice would you give someone thinking about art as a career? Be ready for hard work and lots of disappointment. This advice works with plenty of other careers but I feel that with art it’s really hard because it’s personal. It can sting when you create something you love and you don’t get the same reaction out of the viewer. 

Prepare yourself for it, because it will happen sometimes, no matter what stage you’re at in your career.

What’s on the horizon for the rest of the year? Right now I’m focused on getting my online store up and running. It’s fun but I’ve had many sleepless nights and basically no social life. It’s all ok though, it will be worth it in the end once I can reap the rewards. Other than that, just creating as much as I can. I would like to have a bigger international presence.

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[playthatthing]

It’s probably the new royal wedding that’s made me remember now that last summer I read a whole entire issue of Tatler. (They were giving out free copies at the Saatchi gallery at a giant advertisement weakly masquerading as an exhibit.) I had known of its existence before but had vaguely thought it was just another glossy magazine about fashion and whatnot. And in a way it is, but it’s so much more than that: it’s a glossy mag that is written exclusively for the RICH UPPER-CLASS TOFFS of Britain. I am linking this Vice article as it’s a great illustration of what goes on in there, but nothing tops reading the actual magazine.

I didn’t think it could get more ridiculous than Country Living magazine, but now I know that’s basic, humble, reasonable middle-class shit. Literally every single page of the Tatler is dripping with a kind of poshness that you thought was surely becoming extinct among people who aren’t literally the queen. The royals are constantly referenced in every section in a tone of barely contained breathless fawning, whether it’s about an artist that, by the way, Prince Charles loves, or about idk horses that are favourites with lady whoever. all of the ads are for expensive private schools, crazy real estate or the Chelsea Flower Show. Everyone plays polo. Everyone.

The issue i looked at had something called ‘English Roses’ as its main feature, which promised to show you “the next it girls, a portfolio of England's new beauties” and with the exception of a few legitimate people (like actual models who do modelling for a living, or really anything for a living), it was just a bunch of aristocrats (“Sabrina, whose third cousin once removed is the Duke of Northumberland,” I shit you not) and daughters of rich celebrities. The descriptions are hilarious self-owns:

“Lana, 26, is Lord Palumbo's daughter and currently works for fashion brand Muzungu Sisters. She dreams of opening a café in Portobello and wants it to be 'a bit different' - possibly even sans wi-fi.” Wow. So much ambition.

“Alexandra, the 20-year-old daughter of Peregrine Moncreiffe of that Ilk, recently began a course in nutrition and holistic healing, which she hopes will be helpful with her charity work.” ._.

“Laura, 19, a granddaughter of Lord Braybrooke, is a keen photographer with a place to study history of art at Edinburgh in the autumn.” an aristocrat who’s been accepted to university????? golly!!!

“Bee, 21, is something of a polymath - an artist, writer, model, photographer, actor and, newly, an astrologer.” Exceptional! Except, you know, I’m also a writer, artist, model and photographer by Tatler standards, namely, that I do these things and literally nobody knows or cares except for some of my friends. And I also reblog astrology shitposts, which makes me an astrologer - it’s, like, the rules. (but tbf Bee is openly into women and has a cat called Gucci which honestly makes her one of the most sympathetic figures here.)

“Her father, Harry Herbert, is the Earl of Carnarvon's brother and runs a racing syndicate, while Frankie works at Debonnaire von Bismarck's luxury-gift showroom in Knightsbridge, Debonnaire.” this can’t be real.

“Lady Eliza Manners” nor this.

Reading this magazine is a completely bizarre experience, because I think it’s probably all for real but can’t shake the feeling that maybe they’re having a laugh at us having a laugh at them. But they can’t be, because these aren’t the ruthless investment bankers or career politicians, it’s the people who really have never known anything but idleness their entire lives, and they don’t know anyone else unlike themselves, either. The spoilt brats of entertainment celebrities are probably the least out-of-touch people this magazine targets and covers, because at least their parents will dimly remember what not being rich and having to work for a living felt like back when they were young and trying to make it. But the aristocrats? Oh boy. These people just go on and on, holding on to their social calendars for dear life while the erstwhile function of their traditions has completely disappeared. Back when the Marquess of Snotting and the Earl of Bottomley-Titts owned 10% of all British land, and land was the primary source of wealth, their banquets had a point, and putting on a show mattered as alliances were negotiated and displays of power and wealth towards their serfs and each other had actual ramifications. Now they just keep living on in complete irrelevance to anyone but themselves as the parasites they truly are, playing at being celebrities and wishing they were members of the royal family (apex parasites AND celebrities at once).

Oh, and I loved how there was a mixed-race cool girl somewhere else in that issue, and she articulated her experiences as, basically, “yes, i’ve dealt with racism, which is really hurtful, people have been mean to me even though i clearly am posh and well-educated and therefore deserve better!”

so... it’s hilarious but they are having the last laugh with their champagne glasses and stupid hats and diamonds 

[hashtagblogfan]

How To Find The Motivation ? 5 Mistakes To Avoid

How To Find The Motivation ? 5 Mistakes To Avoid

  How to find the motivation? We would like to have enough motivation in us to do everything we want to do, without asking any questions. Unfortunately, we are more used to having to fight against this idea that we do not want to do anything or that we can not do anything. Our batteries are flat. Here are 5 mistakes to avoid to get moving for a better motivation :

  Mistake # 1 – Believe that motivation is a quality

We believe that motivation is a quality. That is, it would be more or less innate. Some of us would be more motivated than others. Such is life.

In fact, believing this is a limiting belief. Saying that: Thin then,it seems like I’m not motivated, it gives us an excuse not to do what we know we need to do to move forward in our lives.

We make a very serious mistake. Indeed, when we repeat ourselves: I do not have the energy, I’m tired, I want to do nothing … We postpone our life, our happiness to later.

“Kiss every hour. […] While you differ, life runs. » Seneca

So, no, motivation is not a quality. Motivation is a flow of vitality. I would even say a geyser of vitality to which we all have access. Just know how.

  When we are motivated, in fact, we are thirsty to live. In other words, to be motivated, you have to want to live!

I invite you to ask yourself these questions:

What is important to me?

Why is my life worth living?

What can I do today and make me proud tomorrow?

What would I like to do and would make me thirsty for life?

you’ve already seen children slumped on the couch: We’re bored. And, did you see them jump from the couch to the idea of ​​going to the park or buying a toy? Your goal is to do the same thing: move from weariness to excitement. How to find the motivation? By understanding that it is the expression of our desire to live and that we must take care of it.

  Mistake # 2 – Focus on the result

When we work towards a goal, we have in mind a more or less precise result: here is what I am doing today, in order to obtain this.

Unfortunately, you’ve probably noticed, life is very strange. We are both masters of our destiny and subject to destiny. In other words,finding motivation is our responsibility, but the results that result are subject to destiny.

To have expectations is human. Moreover, it is advisable to visualize our results. Yes, it keeps us motivated because we know why we are making efforts.

Unfortunately, everything does not always go as planned. Besides, nothing is going as planned.

  So the real question is how to find motivation when our expectations are not met? What to do when results are late?

Yes, when everything does not go as planned, we have the right to be sad, angry or afraid. But, very often, these emotions are exhausting us and we find it difficult to motivate ourselves.

  First, I invite you to live your emotions fully and express them. See your anger, your sadness or your fear. Accept it and express it either to someone you trust or in a newspaper. Put words on what you feel, describe the situation, describe your anger,your fear or your sadness.

Then, reassure yourself! Yes, the results are slow to arrive. Yes, we can not help it. But, finally, what is important to you? To stay there on your couch to rehearse your emotions or to continue living by doing things that are important to you? How to find the motivation ? By understanding that it is doing things and not getting results that makes us truly happy. Stay in motion. Do not stop !

  Mistake # 3 – Do not write your goal

For a long time, I made the mistake of not writing my goal. Quite simply, because I had the impression that it prevented me from remaining free of my movements.

I understood that to find motivation, we need to write our goal. Yes, we need clarity.

Find motivation is finding what makes you thirsty for life. And what’s more powerful than a written goal?

I know it’s not easy to write your goal. There are steps to follow.

First, list on a sheet all the things you would like to do before you die. Yes, write your famous bucket-list. Write at least 50 dreams.

Then,choose one. The one that makes you feel the most, the one that makes the most sense for you today.

Now, it’s all about formulating your goal. Imagine that your goal is to lose weight, we realize that it’s vague. And any vague goal is a goal that will never be achieved.A good goal is clear, precise and dated. In other words, when you read your goal, you need to know exactly what you have to do and how long you have to do it.

  Let’s return to the goal of losing weight : When will you know that you have lost weight and that your goal is reached?

The goal is to achieve a goal like this: I decide to lose 5 pounds in 6 months. For that, at first, I will stop eating Nutella and I will run once a week.

How to find the motivation? Knowing exactly what we have to do and writing it somewhere where we can read it again and again.

  Read Also On Hashtag3r.Com : 

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  Mistake # 4 – Do not know why we do things

We often do things because we think we should do them. For example, many of us say all year : I have to lose weight, I have to go on a diet, I have to play sports …

So,we start a diet or we will register at the gym and we are motivated 1,2 or 3 weeks. And then nothing. Why ?

Because we know what we have to do, but we do not know why we do things.

We repeat: I have to do this or this. It must be understood that to find motivation,the word “must” does not work. On the contrary, it scares us, it stresses us, in fact, it extinguishes our thirst for life.

We must not do things. Yes, when we do things, we do them because it’s important to us, simply.

  So,when you need to find motivation for an action or project, ask yourself why you want to do this thing ? Why is it important for you? What can it bring you? How can it improve your life?

I urge you to write all your answers on a card and keep it close to you. So, as soon as you feel your motivation wobble, you can find it by reading your why.

How to find the motivation? By knowing and remembering why you do things.

  Mistake # 5 – Doing Too much!

What a dream ? Oh no, believe me. Because we do not keep this kind of rhythm, worse, we endanger the balance of our lives.

Of course, to be happy, we need to feel that we are moving forward. Also, having and achieving goals is essential. But,we need something else to be happy: good relations with others, good health, time to take care of oneself …

Also, it is a serious mistake to ask too much.

What is it to do too much? I take the example of losing 5 pounds in 6 months. It is an ambitious goal.

  To overdo,it would be to start the first week, remove all caloric foods from our diet and go out and run every day. You realize it’s TOO, way too much.

To find the motivation, we need to move slowly, but surely. Too much,it is to take the risk of exhausting ourselves and disgusting ourselves with the effort.

Life is made to be sweet. So, let’s respect and respect our life.

How to find the motivation? Moving slowly, but surely. Yes, it’s not about doing too much, but doing enough: one step at a time.

  source https://hashtag3r.com/how-to-find-the-motivation-5-mistakes-to-avoid/

[whatdoesagoodgirllooklike-blog]

Girly Essays

Essay: Lolita

Girly: Sarah K. Cleaver on Tumblr nymphets

BY SARAH KATHRYN CLEAVER ON 18 NOVEMBER 2014.

These girls are wasting their youth fetishising it, treating it as a theme to be curated, collected and carefully documented.

In August 2013, paparazzi snapshots of Bradley Cooper and Suki Waterhouse were posted on the Mail Online and several other gossip sites. The two were pictured in various sprawling poses as they relaxed in a park in Paris reading - here's the crux - Lolita. The accompanying headlines all reported a similar narrative, but none more hysterically than Perez Hilton; 'Bradley Cooper’s Life Imitates Art As He Reads Lolita To Barely Legal Girlfriend Suki Waterhouse.' The already easy to grasp point was hammered home with the aid of Hilton’s famous Photoshop paint skills -  '21 is just 12 backwards.’ One of these images in particular, - Waterhouse sitting with Cooper's head resting between her denim dungarees-clad legs as he presumably reads a favourite passage aloud - has multiplied endlessly on Tumblr, liked and reblogged hundreds of thousands of times. fallinhardforhim reblogged this from withloveclaudia, yourlittlegirllala reblogged this from moody-nymph, goodbye-lolita liked this. Spot the trend?

A controversial book since its publication, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is considered by many to be one of the 20th century's greatest novels but is widely famous largely due to its controversial subject matter - a man in his thirties sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old girl.

According to an interview in the New Yorker with John Bertram, co-author of Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl: Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel in Art and Design, there have been roughly two hundred Lolita covers since its original blank canvas, which featured black lettering over a shade of green reminiscent of old school exercise books. Somehow, in failing (or not even attempting) to illustrate what was inside, erotic fiction publishers Olympia Press managed to create the dirtiest of dirty book covers. Almost sixty years, two film adaptations and countless references and misrepresentations in popular culture later, it's still a book that garners a curious glance or two from fellow commuters on the tube.

The conflicts inherent in Lolita stem from the impossibility of re-capturing what has been perfectly expressed by Nabokov in those 300 or so pages; the co-existence of obsessive love and self-serving tyranny. Writer Mary Gaitskill in the introduction to The Story of a Cover Girl cites this as the reason why Lolita cover art is so often poorly attempted; 'such impossible, infernal combinations there are in all of us, and we know it. That Lolitarenders this human condition at such an extreme, so truthfully… is this book's most shocking quality… It is also why no one will ever succeed in describing it fully on a book jacket.' Despite this difficulty, references are rife, from pop song lyrics to the long-standing Japanese 'gothic lolita' fashion The young women who have appropriated Lolita on Tumblr are practically a trope in their own right.

The nymphet community is an online subculture revolving around Lolita, its themes and its accompanying imagery. The fandom spans a diverse range of Lolita interpretations, from superficial feeds of anything pastel-coloured, to the almost inventorial, right through to the pornographic and upsettingly dark , As with any following, the community contains those die-hard fans who insist on authenticity alongside those who are along purely for the aesthetic. As one blogger complains; 'whenever I see people that think Lolita is romantic I wanna cry. Have u even read the book/ seen the movie or are you just in the nymphet community to be kool #nymphet #lolita.'

While the spectrum is broad, the average nymphet blog will usually contain at least one of a list of typical references. Firstly, and obviously, Lolita. Quotes from the book, stills, memes and GIFs from either film. Kubrick's 1962 is better stylistically, but Adrian Lynne's 1997 version is the more popular, probably because it's closer to the book, darker, more sexual and far less perfect. Dominique Swain's screen test from the same film denotes a real Lolita buff, as do the deleted scenes found on the DVD. Other 'age-gap' films seen over and over include Pretty Baby (1978), The Crush (1992), My Little Princess (2011), Sleeping Beauty (2011) and Jeune et Jolie(2013). Then there are vintage signifiers, pulp novel covers ranging in levels of bad taste (my personal favourite Daddy I'm Coming), photographs of vintage underwear, Parisian street photographs. There's the personal posts, 'I dropped my pen in a lecture today and two guys and the lecturer went to fetch it for me and is this nymphet power or what? #nymphet #thoughts.' And finally, the porn - huge amounts of porn. 'It's all American Beauty and cum!' exclaims a colleague as we scroll through one of the afore-mentioned pages belonging to a girl named ‘pulp-princess’. All this content is displayed on blogs that have been painstakingly coded to pink-tinted perfection (no basic Tumblr templates for these girls) and soundtracked by the mournful strains of Lana del Rey: 'I'll wait for you babe, that's all I'll do babe, you don't come through babe, you never do. 'Cause I'm pretty when I cry.'

Del Rey pops up a lot on these blogs. She’s a fellow, if honorary (given her age), nymphet. When interviewed, the singer-songwriter, whose real name is Lizzie Grant, cites Lolita as a reference, describing the sound of her first album as 'Lolita lost in the hood.' There is even a track on Born To Die named Lolita, but it's Off to the Racesthat borrows most heavily from both the book and the 1997 film. 'Swimming pool, glimmering darling' - a deleted swimming pool scene, 'Light of my life, fire of my loins' - a direct quote from page one, 'Give me them gold coins, Give me them coins' - another scene in which coins spill over an unmade bed as the couple fight over money that Humbert has bribed Lo with in return for sex. The list continues, even the songs that don't reference Lolitastill evoke that same type of doomed love.

Over the years many young women have probably read Lolita, liked the book and maybe even identified with aspects of the character, but it's only with the prevalence of the internet that you can observe the vast, primarily young and female fandom. Why this character? She has no agency or voice of her own in the book or either film, most of her lines are responses to what is being done to her. But it's her they're interested in, not so much her step-father/lover/abuser Humbert Humbert (affectionately known as Hum) even though the nymphets claim to be interested in older men. And though Tumblr is an aesthetically-led form of social media, for many of these users it's not quite as simple as style over substance either.  This isn't a tentative grasp on the vague and various meanings attached to Lo over the years. Theirs is an informed obsession, not just an attraction to Bert Stern's pictures of Sue Lyon in heart shaped glasses.

With its vast proportion of teenage users, Tumblr is an angsty place. When discussing nostalgia and the internet in a panel discussion on Marques Almeida’s S/S 15 show, SHOWstudio founder Nick Knight pointed out that Tumblr’s community appear to fixate on the dark, the unhappy and the melancholy. 'There's a certain obsession with sadness on Tumblr, sadness seems to be kind of around at the moment… You see things that magazines on the whole won't show. Self harm, food obsessions. Things that are personal. A fascination for death. I do think it ties in with a global movement.'

Western young women today arguably have more options than ever before, but there's a pressure that arises from that to accomplish more. When you never quite feel like you’re getting enough right it makes sense to fetishise the wrong. It's not unusual to find something upsetting enough to make you close the tab in a nymphet blog; the gruesome dismembered body of Elizabeth Short (aka The Black Dahlia) just down the page from a pinterest-y shot of pastel colour silk dresses hanging in a vintage wardrobe. A violent pornographic image transformed into a meme with the darkly romantic Arctic Monkeys lyrics 'crawling back to you', then later a GIF of spindly spiders fighting in the corner of a ceiling. Reading Lolita in Tehran author Azar Nafisi points out that Lolita's real name Dolores means sorrow, and Lolita blogs are always sad. While at face value a curation of the sexualisation of young girls, on closer inspection nymphet blogs document tragedy. The type of femininity these young women – and for that matter Lana del Rey - have chosen to identify with is one that is doomed from the start. Either Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw said youth is wasted on the young. These particular girls are wasting theirs fetishising it, treating youth as a theme to be curated, collected and carefully documented. 

It's this juxtaposition of the cute and girlish with the violent that expresses the core theme of Lolita better than any blonde teen sucking a lollypop on numerous book jackets ever can.

This is an essay written alongside ‘Girly’ - the fashion film. It remarks on the ‘Lolita movement’ and really converses the message I am aiming to portray in my concept as well. I italicised and made bold, key points that I thought really struck a chord with what is going on. The polar opposite ideal I am discussing, and how the sweetness and innocence of ‘Lolita’ is so revolting against the sinister darkness of the paedophilic behaviour occurring in the story. Dolores is a minor, it’s just a game to her,

[vincentpennington]

Ready or Not: Our New Cookbook!

I’m not a patient person. I try not to power off my computer ’cause it takes too long to boot up again. Can’t stand bumper-to-bumper traffic, long grocery checkout lines, or extended commercial breaks. And I’ll always choose pressure cookers over slow cookers. So after three solid years of carefully crafting our new cookbook and keeping it under wraps, you can imagine how antsy I’ve been to blab about it to you. Our publisher had advised us to keep things on the down-low until about two months before the release date—but after months of keeping the news (relatively) hush-hush, the day has finally come for me to shout it from the mountaintops:

READY OR NOT*, OUR NEW COOKBOOK ARRIVES ON AUGUST 1!

*Really—that’s what our book is called: Ready or Not! 150+ Make-Ahead, Make-Over, and Make-Now Recipes by Nom Nom Paleo. I know that’s a mouthful, so you’ll usually see me referring to it as Ready or Not! or R.O.N. (though Henry thinks R.O.N. sounds like the duller, middle-aged cousin of TRON.).

Of course, the launch of our new cookbook isn’t a surprise to those of you who follow me on social media. You know that we’ve been hard at work on this tome for literally years—ever since our first book, Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans, was published waaaay back in 2013. The Paleo cookbook scene has changed dramatically since then (heck, the world has changed dramatically since then!), when our debut was proudly sharing shelf space with just a handful of my friends’ first books, including perennial bestsellers like Practical Paleo, Well Fed, and Against All Grain. Now, there are literally hundreds of Paleo titles in bookstores. Pick up just about any one of them, and you’ll find plenty of healthy recipes, useful guides, and meal plans.

So with all these options out there, you’re probably wondering: How is Ready or Not! different from all the other cookbooks out there? Should I buy it?

Let me list the reasons why you shouldn’t miss out:

1. IT’S ACTUALLY THREE BOOKS IN ONE!

In 2014, when Henry and I started brainstorming about what we wanted our second cookbook to be about, we had a hard time deciding whether to focus on “make-ahead” recipes, “leftover makeovers,” or “quick-and-easy” weeknight meals. Should we cater to home cooks who like to prep ahead? Those who are sick of their boring leftovers? Or those who find themselves constantly scrambling to get food on the table? It didn’t take us long to figure out why we were having trouble landing on a theme:

Most home cooks face all of these scenarios throughout the week.

Think about it. Some days, you’re fired up and ready to cook; other days, you dread the very thought of making dinner. More often than not, you find yourself bouncing between inspiration and desperation. What’s a crazy busy (but kind of lazy) home cook to do?

We wrote Ready or Not! to help make healthy home cooking a breeze, no matter if there’s time to prepare or just minutes to spare. Whether you’re a fastidious planner or a last-minute improviser, you’ll find plenty of deliciously nourishing options in our new cookbook, from make-ahead feasts and treats to lightning-fast leftover makeovers and make-now meals.

In fact, we’ve organized Ready or Not! into five color-coded sections that correspond to your level of readiness on any given day or night, starting with:

GET SET!

In this section, we help stock your kitchen with essential building blocks, from store-bought necessities (and cooking tools) to D.I.Y. ingredients that’ll set you up for anytime cooking. Here, you’ll find recipes for deliciously versatile sauces and staples like All-Purpose Stir-Fry Sauce, Sriracha Ranch Dressing, and Duxelles—as well as blueprints for how to mix ’n match these basics to make quick meals.

READY!

Getting a head start on the week by prepping meals in advance? Or are you on the hunt for more complex dishes or special occasion treats to dazzle your guests? When you have time to play around in the kitchen, turn to the recipes in this section for make-ahead feasts and spectacular crowd-pleasers like Salt + Pepper Fried Pork Chops, Pressure Cooker Bo Ssäm, Primetime Rib Roast, and Strawberry Almond Semifreddo + Berry Balsamic Sauce.

KINDA READY!

When you poke your nose in the fridge and see all those tired-looking leftovers, do you scrunch up your face and reach for the phone to call for takeout? Don’t do it! In this section of the book, I’ll teach you how to transform pantry staples and leftovers into impromptu meals that’ll satisfy the most discriminating palates. I’ll also show you how to flavor-boost your meals with the building blocks from the “Get Set” section.

NOT READY!

After a long day, it can be tough to muster up the energy to make dinner. When that happens, turn to this section of our book, and we’ll prove to you that emergency meals can be delicious, too! Here, you’ll find super-fast recipes like savory stir-fries, sheet pan suppers, and even quick snacks.

Most of the recipes in this section take no more than 30 minutes, like Chicken Curry in a Hurry, Honey Harissa Salmon, and Red Hot Onion Rings. In fact, some of ’em can be on the table in 15 minutes or less!

BEYOND READY!

So you’ve stocked up your fridge with make-ahead meals, made over your leftovers, and know how to whip up emergency rations. How do you take your cooking to the next level? With both detailed weekly meal plans and “no-recipe” recipes, we’ll show you how to go “beyond ready”—no matter if you aspire to be a meticulous planner or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants cook. By the time you’re finished with this section, you’ll be a true kitchen ninja.

Long story short: Ready or Not!’s got you covered—no matter if you’re ready to cook or not.

2. THIS BOOK MAKES COOKING DELICIOUSLY FUN AND EASY!

I’m a cookbook hoarder. Cookbooks are strewn throughout my (exceedingly messy) house, and I keep a big stack of ’em on my nightstand for bedtime reading. But to be honest, even some of my favorite cookbooks can be a bit intimidating at times. I’ve come across plenty of vague or puzzling recipes, with techniques that I can’t quite picture in my head. I’m a visual learner, so when I’m trying to grasp a new method or concept, I gravitate towards recipe books that show me—in photographs or illustrations—precisely what to do. After all, cookbooks should inspire confidence and allow for improvisation—not generate confusion or require guesswork.

For this reason, Henry and I packed the hundreds of free recipes on this site (and in our iPhone and iPad app, too) with step-by-step photos. And when we produced our first cookbook, Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans, we did the same; in it, you’ll find over a thousand full-color photographs that demonstrate how to prepare its 100+ recipes.

But with Ready or Not!, we went even further.

Each step-by-step image in our new book is accompanied by an encouraging and easy-to-understand caption that explains exactly what’s going on and what to do. It’s like I’m right there in the kitchen with you, holding your hand through each step of the process. All along, our mission has been to deliver recipes in the most fun, delightful, and easy-to-follow format possible, and we hope you’ll find that Ready or Not! hits the mark.

To make sure our recipes are accessible and appeal to a broad audience, we also made sure we focused on foods and ingredients that are widely available, and provided alternatives for anything that’s more difficult to source. For Instant Pot fans, we included a dozen IP recipes, but we also made sure to include alternative cooking methods for those of you who don’t use pressure cookers.

We steered clear of super-hardcore Paleo dishes, too, ’cause while offal and insects offer lots of nutrition, we figured most folks would prefer more chicken recipes instead. This is, after all, meant to be a cookbook for everyday use. As longtime readers know, we’re not Paleo perfectionists. As I say in Ready or Not!, “the recipes in this cookbook were designed with these principles in mind: healthfulness, mindfulness, practicality, and deliciousness—and zero patience for dogma or deprivation.”

You don’t even have to be Paleo to dig this book. Ready or Not! focuses on one basic life skill that can make a huge impact on your health: cooking your own food—whether you’re ready to cook or not. Getting healthy, tasty, made-from-scratch meals on the dinner table can sometimes seem impossible, which explains why so many of us opt for unhealthy convenience foods. But with Ready or Not!, you’ll always come home to plenty of healthy and delicious options—from make-ahead, reheat-and-eat dishes to super-fast pantry creations.

3. THIS IS THE BEST THING WE’VE EVER MADE (OTHER THAN OUR KIDS)!

If you liked our first cookbook, I bet you’re going to LOVE this one. Ready or Not! is bigger and better, with more than 150 recipes and almost 2,000 images in its 352 pages. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then this cookbook contains the equivalent of 2 million words.

We made sure that our cookbook looks like no other. Once again, our publisher, Andrews McMeel, gave us ultimate creative control over every aspect of the book, which meant we could do things with this cookbook (like include photos for every step of every recipe) that others usually can’t, due to the harsh economics of cookbook publishing.

One cookbook author recently explained how production costs affect the look and feel of most cookbooks:

The photography, color correction, layout and proofs are exacting and time consuming… [and] pages that are full-bleed, 6-color printed drive up the printing costs. That is why most cookbooks — even the best — do not include photographs of every recipe… Next time you pick up a cookbook, try to estimate how many pages are all or mostly words, then page through the book. You’ll be surprised. And now you’ll know why there isn’t a picture of every recipe and dish, even though the ones with pictures tend to be the only recipes readers actually cook.

There is, baked into the structure of the publishing agreement, a mutual incentive to reduce costs. For the authors, it is to cut corners on photography and design production to retain more of the advance money. This helps the publisher to keep the printing cost as low as possible.

In contrast, with Ready or Not!, we didn’t cut any corners. In fact, we purposely didn’t try to save on our costs at all. (As many of my longtime readers know, I’m money-stupid.)

Ready or Not! is a coffee-table-quality, full-color, hardcover book with lay-flat, double-reinforced binding, a bookmark ribbon, and the thickest heavyweight pages we could source. It’s super-hefty, containing 22% more pages than Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans (and about 20 times the number of photos in most other cookbooks), all while keeping the cover price the same as our first book. We pulled out all the stops because we don’t plan on writing a bazillion books. Who knows? Ready or Not! could very well be our last cookbook, so we figured we might as well go all-out.

See? It’s 22% thicker!

Luckily, I had a secret weapon: my husband and co-author, Henry. While I wrote, developed, and tested recipes, he got to work on Ready or Not!’s distinctive design, photography, editing, and illustrations. Whenever Henry wasn’t busy at his day job, I had him cranking away on the book. On nights and weekends, he shot, edited, and color-corrected photos, re-worked my prose, plotted out comic-book-style layouts for each recipe, and drew cartoons to punch up the pages. Henry painstakingly laid out every square pica of every page—a process that took over a year. Flip open the cookbook, and you’ll see why: The pages aren’t padded with tons of empty white space. Wherever possible, we maximized the available real estate with information, photos, cartoons, and sass that’ll put a smile on the faces of every reader who’s not an inveterate grump.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Along with kitchen tool and ingredient guides, meal plans, shopping lists, and cartoons, this book contains some of my favorite new recipes, including Mok Mok Wings, XO Pork with Blistered Green Beans, Rustic Chocolate Cake, Sunday Gravy, and many others that I’ve been dying to share with you.

The vast majority of the recipes in Ready or Not! are brand-spankin’ new, along with just a handful of Nom Nom Paleo classics that are appearing in print for the first time (like Ollie’s Cracklin’ Chicken and Pressure Cooker Kalua Pig). If you’re curious to check out the complete listing of recipes in Ready or Not!, go take a gander over yonder. Our book’s Recipe Index specifies which recipes are nut-free, egg-free, nightshade-free, and freezer-friendly—and Whole30® fans will see that over 120 of the recipes in this book are Whole30-friendly! 

In summary, even though I hate tooting my own horn and rarely do it, I’m going to get musical about our new book: It’s really, really good! Don’t just take my word for it, either; GoodReads members who got an advance review copy of Ready or Not! have already started sharing their unvarnished opinions about our new book, so you can go check out what they have to say.

Okay—are you properly hyped? Have I convinced you that you need to be the first one of your friends to cook through Ready or Not!? If so, please preorder our new cookbook from wherever cookbooks are sold, including:

                   Need additional incentive to preorder our book? Okay, then: I HAVE BONUS GIFTS FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO PREORDER!

If you preorder Ready or Not! and fill out the form at this link, I’ll send you these awesome exclusive bonuses ASAP:

ONE AND DONE: 10 HEALTHY, HASSLE-FREE MEALS MADE IN ONE POT OR PAN BY NOM NOM PALEO

One and Done is our exclusive 40-page e-book with 10 brand-new, never-before-seen recipes that can be made in just one pot or pan! Recipes include Joe’s Special, Kimchi Fried “Rice”, Thai Curry Chicken Casserole, Paleo Chicken Chow Mein, Shrimp Tacos, Sheet Pan Salmon Supper, One-Pan Pork Chop Dinner, Meatza, Sweet ’n Spicy Pork Medallions, and Instant Pot Yankee Pot Roast. These recipes don’t appear in our cookbook (we developed them after the book had already gone to print)—but they’re not to be missed.

This 40-page e-book is crammed with over a hundred step-by-step photos and designed with the same cheeky comic book style as our new cookbook. Plus, all of the recipes are Whole30-friendly (with the possible exception of Meatza, depending on whether you’re coming off an addiction to pizza). None of the recipes take more than 30 minutes of hands-on prep time, and all of ’em are complete meals that won’t leave you with tons of extra pots and pans to wash!

50-PAGE SNEAK PEEK AT READY OR NOT!

For those of you who are champing at the bit to get your hands on Ready or Not!, we also put together a 50-page preview so you can scratch that itch! Some of our favorite new recipes are included in this sneak peek, including All-Purpose Stir-Fry Sauce, Spicy Thai No-Nut Sauce, Hot + Sour Soup, Mok Mok Wings, Paper-Wrapped Chicken, Bangin’ Baby Back Ribs, Pot Sticker Stir-Fry, Tex-Mex Beef and Rice Casserole, Tangerine Dream Tart, and “PB&J” Energy Balls. We hope these recipes will whet your appetite, and get you even more excited for the arrival of our new book!

These exclusive bonus thank-you gifts are available ONLY to my true Nomsters—those who preorder our new book before August 1, 2017. (This includes those of you awesome people who already preordered before today!) This offer will vanish into thin air once August rolls around, so DON’T MISS OUT: Get yourself a copy of Ready or Not! right this second, and then hit the button below and submit your info so I can send you these preorder bonuses. (Or use this link!)

While you’re shopping, don’t forget to order a copy of our 2018 Ready or Not! Wall Calendar, too! 

This Amazon exclusive is a companion to our new cookbook, containing a mix of recipes from my books, blog, and app. It’ll inspire you to cook all year round, and features cheeky cartoons and a different Paleo recipe each month, ranging from hearty suppers to easy snacks and sides. This 16-month calendar covers September 2017 to December 2018, so you can start using it before the end of the summer!

Best of all, this colorful wall calendar also includes a big sheet of Nom Nom Paleo stickers—which aren’t available anywhere else—to keep you motivated throughout the year. Hang this calendar on your wall, and Ready or Not! will make cooking a habit you’ll never want to break.

Last but not least: Book tour!

I plan on hitting the road on a book tour in August and September, so keep your eyes peeled for me. Henry and the kids will be joining me at a bunch of tour stops, too. I’m still ironing out all the details, but I’ll be updating my Book Tour & Events page with the latest info about each event, so check it out if you want to come hang out with me (and pick up some exclusive free Nom Nom Paleo swag)!

Okay—that’s it. That’s the end of our once-every-four-years pledge break. Our little mom ’n pop operation is supported by readers like you, so we’re incredibly grateful for everything you do to keep our family’s little venture afloat. We can’t wait to get Ready or Not! into your hands, and we hope you’ll love it as fervently as we do.

Now, go buy our book and tell your friends about it! Happy cooking!

The post Ready or Not: Our New Cookbook! appeared first on Nom Nom Paleo®.