#review of trump legacy treasure

[blog405095]

🚫 TRUMP LEGACY TREASURE 2024 REVIEW IT IS WORTH IT?

[trumpinatorbobblehead]

Trumpinator Bobblehead - Proud Patriots Trump Collectibles Reply to client

Have you ever wondered what makes the Trumpinator Bobblehead not just a collector’s item but a piece of political history? You’re holding a figurine that’s more than its nods and wobbles. With 711 glowing reviews, its charm and the craftsmanship behind it are undeniable. As you explore further, you’ll find that this bobblehead stands at the gateway to an array of Trump-themed merchandise, each with its own story and legacy. Dare to journey beyond, and you’ll uncover treasures that are not only investments but also rare glimpses into the Trump era. What will you discover next?

Product Overview

Among the plethora of Trump-themed merchandise, the Trumpinator Bobblehead stands out not only for its unique design but also for its high-quality resin construction, making it a must-have for collectors and enthusiasts alike. You’ll immediately notice the exceptional attention to detail that went into crafting this piece. The resin material not only adds a premium feel but also ensures durability, meaning this bobblehead can stand the test of time as a prominent display item or a cherished collectible.

What sets the Trumpinator Bobblehead apart is its limited availability. With only a finite number produced, owning one becomes a symbol of exclusivity. This aspect appeals to collectors who are always on the lookout for rare finds that could potentially increase in value over time. Plus, the regular price of $29.99 makes it an accessible yet valuable addition to any collection.

The bobblehead’s popularity is evidenced by its 711 reviews, a testament to its appeal among Trump supporters and memorabilia collectors. Each review highlights the bobblehead’s quality and the satisfaction of purchasers, indicating a high level of customer satisfaction.

Bestselling Trump Merchandise

Diving into the world of best-selling Trump merchandise, you’ll find that the Trumpinator Bobblehead leads the pack, boasting an impressive 711 reviews that underscore its popularity among fans and collectors alike. Crafted from high-quality resin material and priced at a consistent $29.99, its appeal lies not just in its craftsmanship but in its representation of a political icon in a playful, yet respectful manner.

Following closely, the Trumpinator Teddy Bear, with 446 reviews, captures hearts with its unique blend of softness and political statement, making it a favorite among both young supporters and those young at heart. Its popularity speaks volumes about the diverse audience that finds common ground in Trump-themed memorabilia.

The Trump 2024 Black and Gold Coin, though holding a lower review count of 110, shines in its own right. This piece taps into the collector’s spirit of those who appreciate the blend of political fervor and the timeless value of collectible coins. Its aesthetic appeal and symbolic gesture towards a future campaign make it a must-have.

Not to be overlooked, the Trump Mugshot Collector Trading Card, with 212 reviews, and the Donald Trump 2024 Bobblehead, featuring Trump hugging the American flag and gathering 312 reviews, round out the top selections. These items, with their detailed craftsmanship and emotional resonance, underline the fervent support and the nostalgic hope many hold for Trump’s political journey.

Analyzing these bestsellers, you’ll notice a trend that goes beyond mere collectibility. Each item, in its own way, tells a story, captures an ethos, and holds a promise of belonging to something greater than oneself. The enthusiasm surrounding these items isn’t just about owning a piece of memorabilia; it’s about making a statement and holding onto a piece of political history.

Limited Edition Finds

Moving beyond the realm of popular collectibles, let’s explore the unique allure of limited edition finds that cater to the most discerning of Trump merchandise collectors. These rarities, often marked by their limited quantities and distinctive features, beckon enthusiasts into a world of exclusivity and prestige. Imagine owning a piece of history, like the Trump Physical Trading Cards - Collection #2, with a mere 2,500 units in existence. Each card isn’t just a collectible; it’s a testament to the fervent support and the cultural phenomenon surrounding Trump’s persona and presidency.

Diving deeper, the Trump Mugshot Golden Proof Coin, featuring a MAGA Privy Mark, is not merely a collector’s item; it’s a bold statement piece. Its limited availability, coupled with its intricate design, makes it a must-have for those who value rarity and craftsmanship. This isn’t just about collecting; it’s about investing in a piece of the legacy that will only appreciate over time.

Moreover, the allure of the Trump Triple Image GOLD Hologram Trading Card, numbered from 1 to 2,024, cannot be overstated. Graded Gem Mint 10, these cards offer not just visual appeal but also the thrill of owning a piece of a very limited series. It’s these elements of scarcity, quality, and uniqueness that transform them from mere objects into coveted treasures.

For collectors, it’s not just about the item itself, but the story it tells and the exclusivity it represents. Limited edition finds like these aren’t just purchases; they’re investments in a piece of political and cultural history.

Exclusive Trump Items

For the aficionado of Trump memorabilia, exclusive items like The Talking Trumpinator, which voices 10 distinctive phrases, represent not just unique collectibles but a deeper engagement with the political and cultural impact of Donald Trump’s persona. These aren’t mere trinkets; they’re artifacts of a tumultuous era, embodying the fervor and divisive spirit of Trump’s tenure. Each piece, from the whimsical Donald Trump Elf to the more solemn Trump 2024 items, serves as a testament to the indelible mark left by Trump on American politics and society.

Diving into the specifics, The Talking Trumpinator stands out not only for its novelty but for the craftsmanship involved. Made with high-quality resin, it’s durable, meticulously detailed, and designed to last, making it a centerpiece of any collection. The inclusion of phrases known to rally supporters or provoke conversation encapsulates Trump’s unique communication style, offering owners a slice of presidential history.

Beyond the bobblehead, exclusive items like the Proud Patriots VIP Club benefits and automatic entry into giveaways add an experiential layer to the collection. They’re not just purchases; they’re passports to a community, a shared identity among those who cherish Trump’s legacy. This exclusivity heightens the allure, making each item not just a collector’s dream but a symbol of belonging.

These exclusive Trump items aren’t merely memorabilia; they’re milestones, capturing the essence of a political phenomenon. Their uniqueness lies not in rarity alone but in their ability to evoke discussion, nostalgia, and even controversy—hallmarks of Trump’s era. As collectors invest in these pieces, they’re securing a part of history, a tangible connection to a presidency that, regardless of one’s political leanings, changed America.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews serve as the lifeblood of the Trump merchandise world, offering you a firsthand glimpse into the quality and appeal of each collectible. The Trumpinator Bobblehead, with its 711 reviews, stands out not just for its quantity but for the glowing sentiment shared by its buyers. You’ll find an overwhelming number of these reviews highlight the high-quality resin material, a detail that isn’t just about durability but also the finesse in its craftsmanship. This isn’t just another piece of memorabilia; it’s a collector’s gem, cherished for its detail and precision.

Diving deeper, enthusiasts have pointed out the meticulous attention to detail in the design. From the caricature’s expression to its stance, every element has been crafted to evoke a sense of both humor and admiration. The consistency in positive feedback about the product’s aesthetic and build quality suggests a level of satisfaction that exceeds mere ownership—it borders on pride.

What’s equally fascinating is the comparison to other items in the Trump merchandise universe. While the Trumpinator Teddy Bear and the Trump 2024 Black and Gold Coin have their share of admirers, the Bobblehead’s appeal transcends. It isn’t just seen as a collectible but a statement piece, a conversation starter, and for some, a symbol of political allegiance.

Moreover, the enthusiasm in these reviews often mentions the fair pricing. Despite its popularity, the Bobblehead’s price has remained accessible, a factor that likely contributes to its best-selling status. In sum, the customer reviews don’t just endorse the Trumpinator Bobblehead; they celebrate it, highlighting its unique position in the pantheon of political memorabilia.

Conclusion

In wrapping up, it’s clear that the Trumpinator Bobblehead isn’t just a collectible; it’s the gateway to an unparalleled array of Trump-themed merchandise. Each item, from the beloved Teddy Bear to the regal 2024 Black and Gold Coin, not only celebrates a unique aspect of the Trump legacy but also offers fans a tangible piece of political history. Whether you’re drawn to limited edition treasures or exclusive finds, customer reviews attest to their undeniable appeal, making each purchase a worthy investment for enthusiasts and collectors alike.

Visit 2024patriotsforpresident.com for more knowledge about Trumpinator Bobblehead.

[uprootedandrelentless]

2020 Review  - Miraya

2020 was a year we’ll always remember. At first glance it’s the year of COVID-19, a global pandemic, Trump, BLM, shelter in place, businesses closing and so much loss and sickness. Future textbooks will need many pages to cover the history of this year. Zoomed in (get it?!) at the smaller scale of my little bubble it has also been a year of lots of virtual experiences, career change, working from home, and sweatpants. Obviously there were so much bigger and more monumental issues than my own but for the sake of this year in review I’m just zooming in on my day to day life. There is so much out of our control, that this year was a reminder to be grateful for our relationships. Despite the craziness of the year, there were many joyful and happy moments that I want to remember of 2020, so I’ll focus on those. 

It’s hard to think about this year pre-Pandemic/pre-March, but I am grateful that I squeezed in so much in the beginning of the year. In the first few months before lockdown, I luckily got to see so many friends and travel to all my favorite cities (London, New York and Palm Springs). Matt and I rang in the New Year in London, so we started 2020 there! I celebrated Claire’s Bachelorette party with 20 of her friends in Los Angeles, went to New York for my first Dessert Goals corporate event on Valentine’s Day, spoke at Alt Summit conference, and planned Clarissa’s bachelorette in Palm Springs. These trips feel like distant memories besides scrolling through photos on my phone. I can’t wait until we can travel again.

Since March my days have been much less glamorous, but there have still been moments I’ll treasure. Matt and I love watching movies, playing games and eating and luckily got to do a lot of these from the safety of our home. Some favorite moments of the year:

Snuggling on the couch with Matt and Rocky, watching movies and eating popcorn with Trader Joe’s ghee spray and truffle salt

Working out while playing Just Dance with Matt, our favorite song is “What Does The Fox Say”

Lots of cooking - using our air fryer, crockpot and Matt becoming a mixologist and creating a 50+ page Google Doc cocktail book

Every time we leave a grocery store with a giant cart full of food and I say “we will not starve”

Supporting small business with fun experiences at home, like Pop Up Mag in a Box and Mama’s Date Night Kit 

Playing Pandemic Legacy co-op game season 1 and 2

Celebrating my 30th birthday at Claire’s house and learning a choreographed dance of Aaron Carter’s I Want Candy with Claire, Evan, Matt

Creative socially distanced activities like picnics with my parents and friends, playing croquet with Matt’s family, renting out a nail salon for Claire’s birthday 

Virtual events like Six Degrees Society, monthly Pizza Party mastermind group, Dreamers & Doers, The Assembly entrepreneur group, my 30th Birthday with friends and family across the country 

Solo workouts and dancing on my rooftop in the middle of the day

Home improvements like painting our bookshelf blue, getting a new coffee table and buffet table 

Sleeping With Other People 5 year anniversary watch party with Rom Com Fest and IFC Zoom with Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis 

Seeing Instagram Story photos of people across the country receiving Dessert of the Month boxes

Spending a week in Los Angeles in an Airbnb with a pool and hottub and going to our favorite restaurants while working from a different desk than our usual at home

Finding our wedding venue and booking a date for March 2022

Sadly the year has also included many not so great moments:

Closing of Eco Goods, my parent’s shop of over 20 years

Closing of The Assembly, my co-working space and slice of heaven in SF

Clearing out my LA storage unit of all my event supplies, many of which I just purchased in November for Dessert Goals and have sat unused since then

Getting Covid in May - luckily it was mild I just had a high fever and was achy and sick for a few days then quarantined for 10 days

Having to let my employee go because I couldn’t keep paying her

Having to cancel all of my festivals

Moments of feeling totally defeated and lost and not sure how to keep my business going

Shock at the country and that there are so many stupid and selfish people

In my little world, the hardest part about this year for me has been my struggle with my identity as an event planner when I can’t plan events. I’ve always felt such an association of what I do with who I am and when I suddenly am forced to stop doing what I love, with no end in sight, it’s been really tough, both for my identity and my business. I had my year all mapped out, three festivals, sponsors, and first I just postponed my events, and now they are cancelled until the foreseeable future. I tried some virtual events, launched a Dessert of the Month club, but nothing was enough. Dessert Goals and Rom Com Fest are so much about the IRL experience and I couldn’t figure out how to translate that at home. 

With a wonderful stroke of luck I was connected with someone in August looking for help with his event hosting software platform, Mixily, and he brought me on to do customer success and marketing. It’s the first “real job” I’ve had since 2014, and first time I’ve worked at a software startup. It’s been like MBA training, sink or swim. We have a small team all across the world and it’s been exciting getting to Slack and Zoom with others all working on the same project together. I’ve transformed a corner of our bedroom into an office (with a desk from The Assembly), bought a laptop stand, keyboard and mouse, and it’s the most official work setup I’ve had in years. Considering this crazy year and not being able to plan events, I am so  grateful I got this opportunity to keep working and flexing my muscles in a new industry. I’ve joined many new communities to connect with others in the software world, such as Indie Hackers, and have learned a lot of new perspectives about startups, that sometimes you’ll work on something for years and then have to call it quits. With Dessert Goals and Rom Com Fest I hope it’s not quits forever, but I’m coming to accept that they can be on the back burner for now. 

This year I turned 30. The biggest milestone the year has had in my mind is the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which I never made it on. Obviously it would have been great, and I can’t say I’m not bummed that I didn’t, but I do know it’s not everything. Besides that, and wishing I could have a big party for my birthday which wasn’t totally possible, 30 hasn’t felt dramatically different yet. I know that I compare myself to others more than it is healthy, it’s hard to prevent it, especially when scrolling through Instagram. I hear from others as you get into your 30s you feel more confident in your skin, I hope this clicks for me and I quit the comparison game soon. I’ve started paying attention to my phone’s screen time and it’s pretty scary how many hours of each day I spend  on Instagram. I’m juggling accounts for my personal, Rom Com Fest, Dessert Goals and Mixily, so it’s a lot. A mix of research, posting, and inspiration, but it’s not a good use of time. Over the holidays I logged out of all my accounts, so if I wanted to check I had to go through the extra step of logging in, and it’s decreasing my scroll time drastically. I know Instagram is not a good use of time and adds to my comparison feelings, so it is something I want to decrease next year.

One of the new communities I joined because of Mixily, Reality Bites, asked me what three things I want more and less of in 2021. Here they are, plus a few more. 

More: travel, exercise, picnics, walks with friends, outdoor time

Less: stress, snacking, guilt, Instagram, comparing myself to others, sweatpants 

Last year I included lists of my favorite books, movies and TV shows of the year and want to keep the tradition. I’ve been tracking books in Goodreads, movies in Letterboxd, and TV shows in Notes. Here are my top picks of the year. 

Books

Last year I read 27 books and set a goal for 30 books this year. I ended up reading 32! My top 5:

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner  

Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han

Not Like The Movies by by Kerry Winfrey

Body Love Every Day: Choose Your Life-Changing 21-Day Path to Food Freedom by Kelly LeVeque

The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick 

Movies

Matt and I watched A LOT of movies this year! Many older movies, including many from 1999 and a ton of Tom Hanks. Matt always creates his top 10 movie list of new release films. Here’s my top 2020 movies in alphabetical order: 

An American Pickle

Bad Education

How to Build A Girl

On The Rocks

Palm Springs

Save Yourselves!

Soul

The Half Of It

The One and Only Ivan

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You

TV

In between movie watching, and while multitasking, I was able to watch quite a lot of TV shows this year, some with Matt and some on my own. Matt and I watched all the seasons of Veronica Mars which started a marathon of all other Rob Thomas (the creator of Veronica Mars) shows including Party Down and iZombie. Of new 2020 shows, here are some of my favorites, in alphabetical order: 

Dash & Lily

Dead To Me season 2

Emily in Paris

Love Life

Never Have I Ever

PEN15 season 2

Queen’s Gambit

The Bold Type season 4

The Home Edit

The Morning Show

Trinkets

At the end of my post last year I wrote of all the things I was looking forward to next year including 4 weddings and 3 festivals, all of which were cancelled. 2020 felt so planned out and yet everything was changed. I have no idea what next year will bring. It could feel exactly the same as this year, working from home and wearing a mask all year. Or we could be able to host events by summer. Every virtual event I’ve attended about the future of events seems like a similar level of uncertainty. It feels impossible to set goals or make plans for 2021. We just have to roll with the punches, be kind to one another, stay safe, wear our masks and ride this out.  

Here’s to a brighter and safer 2021!

-Miraya

[musemash]

1/ Peter Jackson's The Return Of The King 2/ Bob Dylan's Masked & Anonymous 3/ Argo, directed by Ben Affleck 4/ The Purge: Election Year, by James DeMonaco 5/ David Lynch's Twin Peaks 6/ Unreleased reboot of Jesus Christ Superstar 7/ Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror 8/ The Leftovers, by Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrotta 9/ Jupiter Ascending, by the Wachowskis

THE KNOWN UNIVERSE OF THE CINEMAGICAL By David D. Fowler & Aeon 999 / revised June 30

Multi Facet Fables proudly introduces CINEFACETS, our upcoming new series paying tribute to the known universe of challenging and innovative filmmaking. Starting in July, we will be posting embedded videos of the best available free movies, for your enjoyment and edification. We plan to include all genres, and will strive to offer quality works spanning the entire history of film.

We will also occasionally include television and multimedia presentations. While some rigid purists evidently still make a big division between "pure cinema" and other media, we reject this distinction as antiquated and unhelpful. To cite a recent example, we agree with those who classify David Lynch's Twin Peaks revival series as a single 18-hour film.

Indeed, we are convinced that the very finest examples of "peak TV" – such as Good Omens, Stranger Things, Person Of Interest, Carnivale, The Leftovers, and Lost – are every bit as "cinematic" as the best of Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Welles, Deren, Eisenstein, or Malick. We would say the same for audiovisual spectacles by gifted and versatile musicians such as Pink Floyd, Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, and U2.

To whet your aesthetic appetites, we offer an archive of our own blog posts related to film, television, and multimedia works, featuring some 100 different topics. These include highly opinionated reviews; homages to filmmakers we admire; unhinged rants; smartass pranks; and in-depth explorations of important subjects – often utilizing dozens of film clips.

You'll also be able to access free viewings of more than two dozen full-length films – ranging from METROPOLIS, ALICE’S RESTAURANT, THE AFRICAN QUEEN, PUNISHMENT PARK, UN CHIEN ANDALOU and GALLIPOLI, to INTOLERANCE, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, BEN-HUR, FAIL-SAFE, A FACE IN THE CROWD, and CITY LIGHTS.

Below, you'll find a baker’s dozen of our personal favorite posts; after that, the remainder are presented in alphabetical order. We hope you will find them entertaining, astute, and/or provocative. But first, if you're curious about the films that have had the biggest impact on us, we invite you to check out our lists of favorites.

David D. Fowler's Top 10: 10 Satyajit Ray - The Apu Trilogy 9 John Huston - Treasure Of The Sierra Madre 8 Orson Welles - The Trial 7 FW Murnau - Sunrise 6 Francis Coppola - The Conversation 5 Lotte Reiniger - Adventures Of Prince Achmed 4 Akira Kurosawa - Ran 3 DW Griffith - Intolerance 2 David Lynch - Dune 1 Peter Jackson - The Lord Of The Rings

Aeon 999's Top 10: 10 Sergei Eisenstein - Que Viva Mexico 9 Luis Bunuel - L'Age D'Or 8 Maya Deren - Meshes Of The Afternoon 7 Wim Wenders - Wings Of Desire 6 Fritz Lang - Metropolis 5 Jean-Luc Godard - Oh Woe Is Me 4 Bob Dylan - Renaldo & Clara 3 Werner Herzog - Lessons Of Darkness 2 Terrence Malick - The Tree Of Life 1 Andrei Tarkovsky - The Sacrifice

LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/181194464475/images-from-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-courtesy https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/181194366715/images-from-the-two-towers-courtesy-of-new-line https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/181194289630/images-from-the-return-of-the-king-courtesy-of https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/181194210475/the-rings-trilogy-multi-facet-appendices-in https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/775996549217287/ TARKOVSKY’S POETIC LEGACY https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/47096630230/images-from-the-passion-according-to-andrei https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/47096656616/remembering-andrei-tarkovsky-the-awe-inspiring MALICK'S ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/463597847123827/ BOGIE: AMERICA ON A GOOD DAY https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/73294897742/bogie-america-on-a-good-day-on-the-worlds-movie MASKED & MISUNDERSTOOD https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/45053892065/bob-dylan-performs-as-jack-fate-in-masked https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1650015651687136/ THE DARK KNIGHT'S LONG SHADOW https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/184026753150/the-dark-knights-long-shadow-revised-april-13 GROTESQUE END TIMES PORN NOW MAINSTREAM https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/99606825810/grotesque-end-times-porn-now-mainstream-this THE TWILIGHT ZONE’S GATEKEEPER https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/183205304690/pictured-1-nick-of-time-2-hes-alive-3-eye-of BE SEEING YOU, NUMBER SIX https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/96689385805/above-is-a-gallery-of-key-photos-from-the THE RED PILL CHRONICLES https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/184026974480/the-red-pill-chronicles-the-pop-cMulti SHOWTIME FOR THE DANCING DWARF http://musemash.tumblr.com/post/100033998960/this-gallery-showcases-some-of-the-more-compelling https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/161052773595/welcome-back-cooper-diane-i-once-held-in-my-hand https://www.facebook.com/259922680696447/photos/a.337095876312460.79325.259922680696447/936067946415247 https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717.38176.163265400490408/481662735317338 https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1588407097847992/ THE LEFTOVERS' SECULAR RAPTURE https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717.38176.163265400490408/949991201817820/ THE MANY FACES OF THE SAVIOR https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/184290140460/pictured-are-scenes-from-franco-zeffirellis-jesus —————————————————————————————— ALICE'S RESTAURANT https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/170792133020/alices-restaurant-massacree-is-the-much-lauded ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/170791986685/all-the-presidents-men-the-much-acclaimed-film APOCALYPSE THEN, NOW, AND LATER https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/38432675169/apocalypse-then-now-and-later-youre-looking-at ARGO WIN DISGRACES THE OSCARS https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/43976238317/argo-win-disgraces-the-oscars-once-again ARONOFSKY'S NOAH https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/79845349511/noahs-powerful-international-trailer-can-be ATHENA ARISING https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/42992626977/athena-arising-inspired-by-the-extraordinary-one AVENGERS ENDGAME https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/184493101585/spoiler-alert-avengers-endgame-directors-cut AVENGERS REASSEMBLE! https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/pb.163265400490408.-2207520000.1425001383./461682557315356/ BANGS & WHIMPERS https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/45905290522/bangs-whimpers-or-its-my-karma-ill-die-if BEN-HUR https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/154615486610/from-the-top-1-a-vengeful-judah-hellbent-on BRIXTON BOY ON MARS https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1039904639364910/ BUNUEL MEETS DALI https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/170791849930/maverick-cineaste-luis-bunuel-began-his-storied THE CASE FOR CHRIST https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1494472660574770/ A CENTURY OF INTOLERANCE https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1230519243636781/ CITY LIGHTS: THE LITTLE TRAMP AT HIS PEAK https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/175893851135/the-little-tramp-at-his-peak-by-david-d-fowler CLAUDE JUTRA: CAN ART SURVIVE DISGRACE? https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460.79325.259922680696447/1100185333336840/ COLD WAR REALITY CHECK https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/175854191095/cold-war-reality-check-one-of-the-greatest THE CUSTOM MARY https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/172474376300/would-you-ever-consider-joining-a-religious-sect DEATH IS NOT LOGICAL, CAPTAIN https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/pb.163265400490408.-2207520000.1425131004./462390237244588/ DISGRACING FREEDOM OF SPEECH http://musemash.tumblr.com/post/32380384269/this-actor-had-no-idea-that-he-was-being-used-to DOCTOR WONDROUS STRANGE https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/155614694440/wondrous-strange-by-the-beard-of-the-ancient-one ED WOOD TRIBUTE https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/878082242342050/?type=1&theater ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/61548748595/the-mouse-meets-his-match-the-big-buzz-is-getting THE ETERNAL GREAT WAR TO END ALL WARS https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/179990327920/this-gallery-displays-recruiting-posters-from EVERYBODY KNOWS HE’S IN TROUBLE, EXCEPT TRUMP https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/170830134135/everybody-knows-hes-in-trouble-except-trump A FACE IN THE CROWD https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1232587593429946/ FANTASTIC BEASTS https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/155613938085/rowling-trips-the-light-fantastic-by-david-d FIFTY SHADES OF BOYCOTT https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/111134973830/1-dakota-johnson-anastasia-steele-and-jamie FIRESIGN THEATRE: BOX OF DANGER https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/169498809205/nick-danger-third-eye-was-arguably-the-most GALLIPOLI https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/170792052380/gallipoli-is-a-much-acclaimed1981-film-directed-by GAME OF THRONES PREVIEW https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/176511566145/game-of-thrones-fans-are-preparing-themselves-for GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR CHRIS https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/50453157780/ground-control-to-major-chris-welcome-back HARRY DEAN STANTON TRIBUTE https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1774161239272576/?type=1&theater HOLLOW PRO-WAR PROPAGANDA https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/109867014810/pro-war-propaganda-with-a-hollow-heart-of-gold HOLLYWOOD IN CHAOS! https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/34433538283/hollywood-in-chaos-this-important-piece-of HOW NEO ARAGORN GROOT WENT VIRAL https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/185830985010/how-neo-aragorn-groot-went-viral-by-david-d THE INTERVIEW: FRAT BOY PRANK GONE WRONG https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/105840593250/the-interview-a-frat-boy-prank-goes-terribly IT HAPPENED HERE https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/169499363735/it-happened-here-is-an-extraordinary-1964 JESUS CHRIST MEGASTAR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-lCR95-TLk https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/81272721325/jesus-christ-megastar-is-an-upcoming-musical https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/483562991793979/ https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/488125114671100/ https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/489912674492344/ https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/517019791781632/ JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/172617846090/jesus-christ-superstar-has-undergone-many JESUS CHRIST TV STAR https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717.38176.163265400490408/461801233970155/ JUPITER ASCENDING REDEEMED https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717.38176.163265400490408/452654001551545 KRISTALLNACHT: THE YEARS OF BROKEN GLASS https://www.facebook.com/omentidethreads/photos/a.176778582778792.1073741828.155138144942836/200616143728369/ LAURIE ANDERSON: THE ULTIMATE PERFORMANCE ARTISTE https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/874820396001568/ LEGACIES IN MEMORIAM https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/106784139980/legacies-in-memoriam-part-1-visual-arts-robin MARS ATTACKS https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/175045593700/ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak METROPOLIS AT 80 https://www.facebook.com/omentidethreads/photos/a.176778582778792/320829295040386/ MORTAL ENGINES https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/183513682635/mortal-engines-audience-missing-in-action-by-david THE NATIVITY STORY https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/168882910640/the-nativity-story-a-2006-movie-directed-by NINA PALEY'S SEDER-MASOCHISM https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1521542181201151/ NONE SHALL ESCAPE https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/174076320185/none-shall-escape-released-in-early-1944-was-the ONCE UPON A TIME https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/174076369160/once-upon-a-time-they-lived-happily-ever-after PASOLINI TRIBUTE https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/568462803303997/ PATHS OF GLORY https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717.38176.163265400490408/830499530433655/ PATRIOT PORN IS ALIVE & WELL https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/37327596766/red-dawn-was-the-ultimate-expression-of-jingoistic PINK FLOYD’S WALL https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/169650840140/the-wall-has-been-rightly-hailed-by-some-critics A PROMISE TO ARMENIA https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1540736549281714/ PUNISHMENT PARK https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/169498977730/punishment-park-is-an-uncompromising-nightmare PURGING THE GUN CULTURE https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1230524413636264/ THE RIOT OF SPRING https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/174363509050/the-riot-of-spring-it-started-a-riot-in-a-paris THE RIPPER & THE MURDER CASTLE https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/943921839091423/ ROMERO https://www.facebook.com/fugue999/photos/a.337095876312460/1774136719275028/?type=1&theater THE RUDY SCHWARTZ PROJECT https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/183205177455/the-rudy-schwartz-project-rsp-is-an-all-too-real SCATTERGOOD SURVIVES A MURDER https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/170478882655/scattergood-survives-a-murder-is-an-entertaining SHOCK OF THE NEW https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/175317056275/cinema-the-shock-of-the-new-by-david-d-fowler SOUND OF MUSIC: THE HORROR, THE HORROR https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/171619305210/many-consider-this-film-a-hollywood-classic-but STAR WARS: THE EWOK REBELLION https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/478415242308754/ SUPER-ANON http://musemash.tumblr.com/post/67199182210/exposing-the-dark-underbelly-of-the-comic-book SURVIVING A FEARSOME CENTURY OF SAVAGERY https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/180225563300/surviving-a-fearsome-century-of-savagery-by TARANTINO’S TWILIGHT GAMES https://musemash.tumblr.com/post/48005780327/according-to-a-reliable-source-the-promoter-for THERE'S DARK MAGIC IN THOSE WOODS https://www.facebook.com/Aeon999/photos/a.163268977156717/474245762725702/ THEY LIVE! 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[itunesbooks]

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2018 - Sarah Janssen

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2018 Sarah Janssen Genre: Almanacs & Yearbooks Price: $10.99 Publish Date: December 5, 2017 Publisher: World Almanac Seller: SIMON AND SCHUSTER DIGITAL SALES INC The 150th Anniversary special edition of the best-selling reference book of all time! The ebook format allows curious readers to keep millions of searchable facts at their fingertips. The World Almanac® and Book of Facts is America's top-selling reference book of all time, with more than 82 million copies sold. Since 1868, this compendium of information has been the authoritative source for all your entertainment, reference, and learning needs. The 150th anniversary edition celebrates its illustrious history while keeping an eye on the future. Praised as a "treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information" by The Wall Street Journal , The World Almanac and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs—from history and sports to geography, pop culture, and much more. Features include:   • 150 Years of The World Almanac : A special feature celebrating The World Almanac 's historic run includes highlights from its distinguished past and some old-fashioned "facts," illustrating how its defining mission has changed with the times. • Historical Anniversaries: The World Almanac 's recurring feature expands to incorporate milestone events and cultural touchstones dating to the book's founding year, from the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson to the publication of Little Women . • World Almanac Editors' Picks: Greatest Single-Season Performances: In light of Russell Westbrook's unprecedented 42 regular-season triple-doubles, The World Almanac takes a look back at athletes' best single-season runs. • Statistical Spotlight: A popular new feature highlights statistics relevant to the biggest stories of the year. These data visualizations provide important context and new perspectives to give readers a fresh angle on important issues. • The Obama Presidency: A year after Barack Obama’s second term came to a close, The World Almanac reviews the accomplishments, missteps, and legacy of the 44th president. • The World at a Glance: This annual feature of The World Almanac provides a quick look at the surprising stats and curious facts that define the changing world. • Other New Highlights: A biography of the 45th president and profile of the Trump administration; 2016 election results; and statistics on crime, health care, overdose deaths, shootings, terrorism, and much more. • The Year in Review: The World Almanac takes a look back at 2017 while providing all the information you'll need in 2018. • 2017— Top 10 News Topics: The editors of The World Almanac list the top stories that held the world's attention in 2017. • 2017—Year in Sports: Hundreds of pages of trivia and statistics that are essential for any sports fan, featuring a preview of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, complete coverage of the 2017 World Series, new tables of NBA, NHL, and NCAA statistics, and much more. • 2017—Year in Pictures: Striking full-color images from around the world in 2017. • 2017—Offbeat News Stories: The World Almanac editors found some of the quirkiest news stories of the year, from the king who secretly worked as an airline pilot for decades to the state that's auctioning off its governor's mansion. • World Almanac Editors' Picks: Time Capsule: The World Almanac lists the items that most came to symbolize the year 2017, from news and sports to pop culture.           http://dlvr.it/R1RXwP

[savetopnow]

2018-03-13 19 GAME now

GAME

Attack of the Fanboy

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Already Catching Up to the Sales of the First Game

Goat Simulator Developer Announces New Game

Phil Spencer Wants Xbox/PlayStation Cross Platform Play in Fortnite

NieR:Automata’s Contentment in Purposelessness

Fortnite Going Cross-platform With Xbox and PlayStation, Separately

Brutal Gamer

Tesla takes on Lovecraft in new twin-stick shooter

One:12 Collective Deadpool (Action Figure) Review

Fresh Halo miniseries on the way from Dark Horse Comics and 343 Industries

Okami HD comes to Switch with motion control, touchscreen painting

The Walking Dead 811 “Dead or Alive, Or” Recap

Game Banshee

State of Decay 2 Preview

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Curious Case of Saviour Schnapps

Titan Quest Console Release, Collector's Edition Details

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Steam Launch Date Announced, Livestream Recap

Paranoia: The Official Video Game Announced

Game Informer

Hearthstone Expansion The Witchwood Announced

Nintendo Switch Firmware 5.0 Released

Microsoft Wants Fortnite Crossplay With PS4 And So Does Epic

Mark Hamill And Rian Johnson Talk About Luke In The Last Jedi

Former Eshop Head Explains What He Feels Are Nintendo's Inconsistent Indie Policies

Game Watch

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Patch Notes - Patch 1.02 Released

The Best PC Games of 2018

Motorbike Garage Mechanic Simulator Review

Games Workshop car combat strategy Dark Future: Blood Red States reveals first gameplay

Coffee Stain Studios Teases Their New Game

Gematsu

Famitsu Review Scores: Issue 1528

Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai: Library Party coming to Switch on July 26 in Japan

Dragon Ball FighterZ DLC character Broly trailer

Ys VIII for Switch launches June 28 in Japan

Lode Runner Legacy coming to Switch this spring in Japan

IGN

Don't Miss Any Secrets With Our Complete Bloodborne Walkthrough

Kingdom Come: Every Secret Treasure Location

Sims 4 Jungle Adventures Guide: Jungle Temples

Bloodborne: How to Slay Every Boss

Fortnite Snobby Shores Treasure Map

Niche Gamer

New Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Trailer Introduces Roland

State of Decay 2 Collector’s Edition Announced

New Alpha Screenshots for Insurgency: Sandstorm

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet First Paid DLC and Season Pass Detailed

Bethesda Announces New Studio in Austin

Nintendo Life

Lode Runner Legacy Dashes Onto Switch This Spring In Japan

Review: Neonwall (Switch eShop)

Atari Flashback Classics Is Due To Launch On The Switch Later This Year

Shantae And The Pirate’s Curse Comes To The Switch Next Week

Nintendo Switch System Update 5.0.0 Is Now Available

PC Invasion

Coffee Stain Studios’ new game tease is Satisfactory

Trump’s meeting with video game industry was not exactly productive

All Oculus Rifts have stopped working. Oh dear

Battalion 1944 major update lands tomorrow with new map and more

City of Titans team ready to show the avatar builder

Playstation Blog

PS4 Exclusives Guide: 14 Games to Watch

Play Time Management and Other PS4 Tips for Gaming Families

Exploring the High School Survival Skill Book in Super Daryl Deluxe, Out April 10

Control Day and Night in Vibrant Side-Scroller Planet Alpha

The Drop: New PlayStation Games for 3/13/2018

Reddit Gaming

"What game was your childhood?"

The White House uploaded a compilation of violent video games last week, so here's my favorite WH picture by contrast: a young dev at the 2016 Science Fair proudly showing her game to Obama

My best friend left for the Air Force today. We decided to play one last game together. Godspeed brother <3

Pfffff... Video games don't kill peop... GTA put that down

[Artwork] My good friend asked me to turn her family into RPG characters!

Xbox News

New Preview BETA 1804 System Update – 3/12/18

New Preview Alpha 1804 System Update – 3/12/18

Xbox Unveils World’s First Pirate Blaster in Attempt to Break Guinness World Records Title

Survive with the State of Decay 2 Collector’s Edition

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet Tips and Tricks

[welcometoyouredoom]

20 Fearless Groups Fighting on the Frontlines

Here are 20 fearless groups fighting on the frontlines who aren’t crippled or muted by their allegiance to favorite politicians, political parties or big politically-connected donors and foundations.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies P. O. Box 505 Helena, MT 59624 https://allianceforthewildrockies.org/

From the grizzly to the bull trout, the grey wolf to the lynx, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies is the last line of defense for the largest swath of unprotected wild lands in North America.

Anti-Police Terror Project Oakland, California http://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org

Beatings, taserings, illegal arrests, chokeholds, and shootings are a daily occurrence in urban America. The police won’t police themselves. With Trump in power, the Justice Department will probably stop doing even cursory investigations of such brutal actions. The Anti Police-Terror Project is building a replicable and sustainable model to end state-sanctioned murder and violence against Black, Brown, and poor people.

Beyond Nuclear 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400 Takoma Park, MD 20912 http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.

Buffalo Field Campaign PO Box 957 West Yellowstone, MT 59758 1-406-646-0070 http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/

The annual slaughter of buffalo that migrate out of Yellowstone Park is one of the more horrific traditions in practice in the West today. Buffalo Field Campaign is perhaps the only group working tirelessly to defend the right of bison to wander to lower elevations during winter, without the threat of being killed by Montana bureaucrats.

Campaign to End the Death Penalty PO Box 25730 Chicago, IL 60625 http://www.nodeathpenalty.org

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) is the premier national grassroots organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment with active chapters and members across the United States—including California, Texas, Delaware, New York, and Chicago. The campaign has placed those who have experienced the horrors of death row first hand–death row prisoners themselves and their family members–should be at the forefront of their movement, arguing that those experiences help to shape their political strategies.

Civil Liberties Defense Center 259 E 5th Ave, Ste 300 A Eugene, OR 97401 (541)687-9180 http://cldc.org/

Increasingly the Civil Liberties Defense Center, a small, non-profit law firm based in Eugene, Oregon, has become the last line of defense for radical activists in America during this age of government repression and prosecutorial crack-downs on dissent.  CLDC has led the legal fight against the McCarthy-like Green Scare attack on the constitutional rights of environmental and animal rights activists. They have defended the rights of Rastafarians to practice their religious rituals in prison. They successfully defended a mosque against the FBI’s first-ever attempt to subpoena religious records. CLDC has also developed  and distributed much-needed “Know Your Rights” outreach material, and presented more than 150 “Know Your Rights” trainings.

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund P.O. Box 360 Mercersburg, PA 17236 http://celdf.org

Communities facing fracking, pipelines, factory farms, and other threats are recognizing that these seemingly “single” issue threats share something in common – the community doesn’t have the legal authority to say “No” to them. The existing structure of law ensures that people cannot govern their own communities and act as stewards of the environment, while protecting corporate “rights” and interests over those of communities and nature.

Family Farm Defenders P.O Box 1772 Madison, Wisconsin 53701 http://familyfarmers.org

Family Farm Defenders mission is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice. To this end, FFD supports sustainable agriculture, farm worker rights, animal welfare, consumer safety, fair trade, and food sovereignty.  FFD has also worked to create opportunities for farmers to join together in new cooperative marketing endeavors and to bridge the socioeconomic gap that often exists between rural and urban communities.

Fatal Encounters 3375 San Mateo Ave. Reno, NV 89509-5046 http://www.fatalencounters.org

Fatal Encounters is an incredibly vital project by D. Brian Burghart, the editor/publisher of the Reno News & Review, to create a national database of out how many people are killed by law enforcement, why they were killed, and whether training and policies can be modified to decrease the number of officer-involved deaths. Fatal Encounters’ efforts to collect information about officer-involved homicides going back to January 1, 2000, is completely funded by donations.

Guardians of Our Ancestors Legacy (GOAL) P.O. Box 30000 #360 Jackson, Wy, 83002 http://www.goaltribal.org

GOAL, the Tribal Coalition to Protect the Grizzly, may be the last best hope to save the grizzly. This fierce, small, grossly underfunded outfit has pulled together over 40 tribal nations in an effort to keep the Interior Department from removing the grizzly from the Endangered Species list.  With many of the big green groups missing-in-action, GOAL has mounted a powerful legal and cultural defense of the bear, arguing that allowing trophy hunting of the grizzly infringes on tribal sovereignty and violates the federal trust responsibility by disregarding tribal interests and pursuing a policy that benefits three states over a coalition of tribes from Montana to Arizona.

Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions (USA) PO Box 8118 New York, New York 10116 http://icahdusa.org

Since 1967 and the beginning of the Occupation, the Israeli government has demolished over 28,000 houses belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These demolitions are part of a web of policies designed to force Palestinians off their own land to make room for expanding Israeli settlements, construct a 26-foot high “separation barrier” that cuts deep into Palestinian territory, create a network of Israeli-only bypass roads, and generally “thin” Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants. Largely obscured in U.S. politics and the media. ICAHD-USA works to educate the U.S. public about the realities of the Israeli Occupation.

Living Rivers PO Box 466 Moab UT 84532 http://livingrivers.org

From the Rocky Mountains through seven states and Mexico, the Colorado River is the artery of the desert southwest. Its canyons, ecology and heritage render an international treasure. However, ignorance, greed and complacency are robbing the Colorado of its ability to sustain life. Living Rivers empowers a movement to instill a new ethic of achieving ecological restoration, balanced with meeting human needs. They work to: restore inundated river canyons, wetlands and the delta and repeal the antiquated laws which represent the river’s death sentence.

Los Alamos Study Group 2901 Summit Pl. NE Albuquerque, NM 87106 http://www.lasg.org/contact.htm

Since 1989, the Los Alamos Study Group community—our staff and board, volunteers, interns, and supporters—has consistently provided vital leadership on nuclear disarmament and related issues. Their work includes research and scholarship , education of decisionmakers, providing an information clearinghouse for journalists, organizing, litigating, and advertising, with particular emphasis on the education and training of young activists and scholars.

Middle East Children’s Alliance 1101 Eighth Street, Suite 100 Berkeley, CA 94710 US https://www.mecaforpeace.org

The Middle East Children’s Alliance is a non-profit organization working for the rights of children in the Middle East by sending  humanitarian aid, supporting projects for children and educating North American and international communities about the effects of the US foreign policy on children in the region.

Migrant Justice 294 N. Winooski Ave, Ste. 130, Burlington, VT, 05401 http://migrantjustice.net

The seeds of Migrant Justice were planted in 2009 after young dairy worker José Obeth Santiz Cruz was pulled into a mechanized gutter scraper and was strangled to death by his own clothing. This tragedy inspired the production of the documentary film Silenced Voices and led to the formation of a solidarity collective organizing to partner with farmworkers to gather the community to share food, discuss community problems, envision solutions and take collective action.

Nevada Desert Experience 1420 W Bartlett Ave Las Vegas, Nevada 89106-2226 http://www.nevadadesertexperience.org

Fighting drones at Creech Air Base, nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site and radioactive waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nevada Desert Experience is trying to keep the Great Basin from becoming a national sacrifice zone for the Nuclear-Military-Industrial Complex.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign 174 W. Diamond St. Philadelphia, PA 19122 http://economichumanrights.org/

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is building a movement that unites the poor across color lines. Poverty afflicts Americans of all colors. Daily more and more of us are downsized and impoverished. We share a common interest in uniting against the prevailing conditions and around our vision of a society where we all have the right to health care, housing, living wage jobs, and access to quality primary, secondary, and higher education.

Solitary Watch Community Futures Collective: Attn. Solitary Watch 221 Idora Ave., Vallejo, CA 94591. http://solitarywatch.com

While polls show that a decisive majority of Americans oppose the use of torture under any circumstances, even on foreign terrorism suspects, the conditions in U.S. prisons and jails, which at times transgress the boundaries of humane treatment, have produced little outcry. The widespread practice of solitary confinement, in particular, has received scant media attention, and has yet to find a firm place in the public discourse or on political platforms. Solitary Watch is a web-based project that brings the widespread use of solitary confinement out of the shadows and into the light of the public square. Their mission is to provide the public—as well as practicing attorneys, legal scholars, law enforcement and corrections officers, policymakers, educators, advocates, people in prison and their families—with the first centralized source of unfolding news, original reporting, firsthand accounts, and background research on solitary confinement in the United States.

Stand With Standing Rock Standing Rock Sioux Tribe #1 N. Standing Rock Avenue Fort Yates, ND 58538 http://standwithstandingrock.net/donate/

The battle at Standing Rock isn’t over. In fact, it’s just beginning.

Voices For Creative Nonviolence 1249 W. Argyle St. #2 Chicago, Illinois 60640 773-878-3815 http://vcnv.org/

Since Obama’s election, the anti-war movement in the United States has withered away, even as the wars and interventions have expanded with rising body counts. Yet one group has never wavered. You’ll find activists with Voices for Creative Nonviolence leading protests at the White House, blocking the entry to Drone Operational Centers, occupying nuclear missile silos, educating inside US prisons,  and organizing for peace inside war zones, from Afghanistan to Syria. Most crucially, Voices for Creative Nonviolence recognizes that war is waged by many means. Almost alone among US anti-war groups, Voices For Creative Nonviolence is mounting a resistance to the economic war machine.

[morganbelarus]

As Law That First Saved Grand Canyon Turns 111, Trump Takes Aim At Its Legacy

WASHINGTON Today marks the 111th anniversary of the Antiquities Act, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt and used by him and 15 other presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, to designate more than 150 national monuments.

The magnificent treasures that have been protected by the act include Wyomings Devils Tower, Arizonas Grand Canyon,Idahos Craters of the Moon and Alaskas Glacier Bay.

Rather than celebrating that legacy, President Donald Trump has taken aim at the 1906 law, claiming that recent administrations have abused it to lock up millions of acres of land and water.

Twenty-seven national monumentsdesignated or expanded since 1996, spanning more than 11 million acres of land and about 760 million acres of ocean, are threatened by a pair of executive orderssigned by Trump in April. By Saturday,Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is due to make a recommendation on what he thinks should happen to the 1.35-million-acreBears Ears National Monument in Utah, which is at the center of the current fight.

In announcing his monuments review, Trump spoke as if a Bears Ears reversal was a done deal, saying the Obama-era designation had been doneover the profound objections of the citizens of Utah and should never have happened. No previous president has tried to revoke a monument designation and legal scholars argue that Trumplacks the authorityto do so.

Conservationists and lawmakers took to social media on Thursday to celebrate the Antiquities Act, with many using the hashtag#MonumentsForAlland expressing outrage over the Trump administrations actions.

On a day when we should be celebrating the anniversary of the law used to protect places like the Grand Canyon, Zion, and the Statue of Liberty, its outrageous that were facing down an unprecedented attack on our national parks and monuments by President Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke,Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters,said in a statement.

People understand that this review is nothing more than an attempt to give away our public lands to the fossil fuel industry, he added.

See below for some celebratory posts:

More From this publisher : HERE

=> *********************************************** Read Full Article Here: As Law That First Saved Grand Canyon Turns 111, Trump Takes Aim At Its Legacy ************************************ =>

As Law That First Saved Grand Canyon Turns 111, Trump Takes Aim At Its Legacy was originally posted by 16 MP Just news

[wandashifflett]

Guess What? I’m a Liberal

No, I haven’t had a change of heart. I’m just taking back the word “liberal.” The Left can’t have it anymore. They have hijacked the word. They aren’t liberal, and we all need to realize that and stop calling the very illiberal left “liberal.” You can call them leftist. You can call them progressives, fascists, or Marxists. You can call them late for dinner, but please stop calling them liberal.

I am liberal. America’s “conservatives” are the only ones fighting to preserve America’s liberal tradition today. We are fighting to conserve your God-given rights, no matter what your views may be. We are fighting for your constitutional rights, and, at this moment, your First Amendment rights especially. You should be able to say whatever you want, whenever you want. I know there are exceptions, like falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater, but ever since we added “hate speech” to our vocabulary and our laws, we have been weakening the First Amendment in ways that would have pleased the former Soviet Union.

I don’t give a flying frankfurter what adults do in their own bedrooms, how many tattoos or piercings you might have, or what color you want to apply to your hair. If you want to peacefully protest, I may not agree with what you have to say, but have at it. I live in a weed state, and though it’s not my thing (and you are breaking federal law), I don’t really care if that happens to be your thing. Just don’t drive or break any laws when you do it. If you ride motorcycles, listen to rap, gamble or dance the tango, you do you. If I don’t believe it is right for me or my family, I won’t do that activity. Protecting the Constitution should be every American’s goal, not stifling someone else’s speech or keeping anyone from believing what he wants to believe.

This country increasingly has moved further and further away from our Constitution. Some of us saw this coming and tried to warn you, but we were also duped about who were friends to liberty. We once thought we could trust the now NeverTrump Republicans. Like the fair-weather friends they were, these illiberal Republicans just wanted our votes, our viewership, and our click-throughs; they never really cared about our rights slowly dissolving or how far we were straying from our founders’ intentions. They might have tolerated the likes of us in their now-defunct magazine as long as we were writing about how wrong the Democrats were, but Tea Parties and 9/12 Projects were a bridge too far for them.

In the election of 2016, the one thing they couldn’t stomach was how plainspoken President Trump was—how uncaring about their feelings and the “normal Republican” way to do things (which, incidentally, was just the same as the “normal Democrat” way to do things), and how unattached President Trump was to the corporations, power, and money that made their lives worth living. The bureaucracy, red tape, and outright denial of justice our president and this country have been put through in the last four years was as much a plan of the Democrats as it was the NeverTrump Republican swamp creatures.

NeverTrumpers and powerful Democrats have something besides their hatred of Trump in common. They both have a disdain for regular people who think they deserve a say in how their government is run (simpletons!) and both Democrats and NeverTrumpers share a deep love for the system that made them powerful. Their aim is to silence you, not to protect your right to speak. They want to make the rules, not let you have a hand in your own government. They want to dismantle the constitutional process that made it possible to elect a non-swamp nationalist like Trump, not preserve your right to elect who you want. They are the furthest thing from liberal, and I’m calling them out.

President Donald Trump is the most liberal president (in the sense I’m using it here) we’ve had in decades. He cares about how many lives and how much treasure we spend on endless middle-eastern wars. He cares that we all have jobs, that everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, and he fights back against the constant lies the media tells about him and this country. He has reexamined and acted upon established deals with Russia, China, Iran, and others that have worked against America’s interests.

Trump ran on draining the swamp, but unfortunately, he didn’t realize how deep that swamp really is. As a brand new president, he tended to believe that our systems were based in the Constitution, our bureaucrats were not corrupted, and our judicial system was fair. I was afflicted with the same naiveté. I feel robbed by the Left of what an unfettered Trump presidency could have looked like. 

An eternal optimist, I never would have thought President Trump’s entire presidency would be plagued with unfounded rumors, illegal spying by the former administration and unelected career bureaucrats, as well as continual deceit by the progressive legacy media. I am angered by the endless investigations into the Trump Administration and the delayed and possibly never coming justice.

Protecting the Constitution is the most important thing we can do right now. If you believe you are liberal, whatever party you may vote for, you really need to think long and hard about which candidate is most likely to continue to protect the Constitution and which candidate is a sad dementia-riddled puppet for extreme leftists who will protect your right to free speech only if you say what they want you to say.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/guess-what-im-a-liberal from The Ray Field https://therayfieldreview.tumblr.com/post/623416076972244992

[blog405095]

⛔ REVIEW TRUMP LEGACY TREASURE 2024 (IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?)

[therayfieldreview]

Guess What? I’m a Liberal

No, I haven’t had a change of heart. I’m just taking back the word “liberal.” The Left can’t have it anymore. They have hijacked the word. They aren’t liberal, and we all need to realize that and stop calling the very illiberal left “liberal.” You can call them leftist. You can call them progressives, fascists, or Marxists. You can call them late for dinner, but please stop calling them liberal.

I am liberal. America’s “conservatives” are the only ones fighting to preserve America’s liberal tradition today. We are fighting to conserve your God-given rights, no matter what your views may be. We are fighting for your constitutional rights, and, at this moment, your First Amendment rights especially. You should be able to say whatever you want, whenever you want. I know there are exceptions, like falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater, but ever since we added “hate speech” to our vocabulary and our laws, we have been weakening the First Amendment in ways that would have pleased the former Soviet Union.

I don’t give a flying frankfurter what adults do in their own bedrooms, how many tattoos or piercings you might have, or what color you want to apply to your hair. If you want to peacefully protest, I may not agree with what you have to say, but have at it. I live in a weed state, and though it’s not my thing (and you are breaking federal law), I don’t really care if that happens to be your thing. Just don’t drive or break any laws when you do it. If you ride motorcycles, listen to rap, gamble or dance the tango, you do you. If I don’t believe it is right for me or my family, I won’t do that activity. Protecting the Constitution should be every American’s goal, not stifling someone else’s speech or keeping anyone from believing what he wants to believe.

This country increasingly has moved further and further away from our Constitution. Some of us saw this coming and tried to warn you, but we were also duped about who were friends to liberty. We once thought we could trust the now NeverTrump Republicans. Like the fair-weather friends they were, these illiberal Republicans just wanted our votes, our viewership, and our click-throughs; they never really cared about our rights slowly dissolving or how far we were straying from our founders’ intentions. They might have tolerated the likes of us in their now-defunct magazine as long as we were writing about how wrong the Democrats were, but Tea Parties and 9/12 Projects were a bridge too far for them.

In the election of 2016, the one thing they couldn’t stomach was how plainspoken President Trump was—how uncaring about their feelings and the “normal Republican” way to do things (which, incidentally, was just the same as the “normal Democrat” way to do things), and how unattached President Trump was to the corporations, power, and money that made their lives worth living. The bureaucracy, red tape, and outright denial of justice our president and this country have been put through in the last four years was as much a plan of the Democrats as it was the NeverTrump Republican swamp creatures.

NeverTrumpers and powerful Democrats have something besides their hatred of Trump in common. They both have a disdain for regular people who think they deserve a say in how their government is run (simpletons!) and both Democrats and NeverTrumpers share a deep love for the system that made them powerful. Their aim is to silence you, not to protect your right to speak. They want to make the rules, not let you have a hand in your own government. They want to dismantle the constitutional process that made it possible to elect a non-swamp nationalist like Trump, not preserve your right to elect who you want. They are the furthest thing from liberal, and I’m calling them out.

President Donald Trump is the most liberal president (in the sense I’m using it here) we’ve had in decades. He cares about how many lives and how much treasure we spend on endless middle-eastern wars. He cares that we all have jobs, that everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, and he fights back against the constant lies the media tells about him and this country. He has reexamined and acted upon established deals with Russia, China, Iran, and others that have worked against America’s interests.

Trump ran on draining the swamp, but unfortunately, he didn’t realize how deep that swamp really is. As a brand new president, he tended to believe that our systems were based in the Constitution, our bureaucrats were not corrupted, and our judicial system was fair. I was afflicted with the same naiveté. I feel robbed by the Left of what an unfettered Trump presidency could have looked like. 

An eternal optimist, I never would have thought President Trump’s entire presidency would be plagued with unfounded rumors, illegal spying by the former administration and unelected career bureaucrats, as well as continual deceit by the progressive legacy media. I am angered by the endless investigations into the Trump Administration and the delayed and possibly never coming justice.

Protecting the Constitution is the most important thing we can do right now. If you believe you are liberal, whatever party you may vote for, you really need to think long and hard about which candidate is most likely to continue to protect the Constitution and which candidate is a sad dementia-riddled puppet for extreme leftists who will protect your right to free speech only if you say what they want you to say.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/guess-what-im-a-liberal

[thomasroach]

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Review – The Complete Package

Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment’s looter shooter returns with the release of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Hoping to build on a legacy of rewarding combat, immersive environments and varied end-game, The Division 2 launches in a more hostile environment for the genre, but does it have the pedigree to pull it off anyway?

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Review

The Division 2’s story follows the events from the original game as Agents, members of a special elite task force, head to Washington D.C to restore power to the SHD Network – a global network acting as the central source of intelligence and assignments for Agents of The Division. What follows is the discovery of a cure for the Green Poison, and subsequently all viral infections, which acts as the primary driving force behind the games challenging story campaign. The Division 2’s story is easy to follow, and while it maintains a level of quality throughout, it lacks any memorable punch and feels more a prelude to the games end-game content than a stellar standalone story. While somewhat disappointing initially, the “play it safe” story quickly fades to black as the games true intentions become clear.

Much like the original game, The Division 2 is, at its heart, a cover-based looter shooter that relies nearly entirely on its combat mechanics and grind loops to entertain and enthrall. Thankfully, it nails both. It nails them in such a way that The Division 2 is arguably one of the best cover shooters available, and one of Ubisoft’s greatest works ever.

The over-the-shoulder combat relies heavily on two major factors. Ducking, diving, sliding and jumping between different forms of cover as a huge variety of enemies ambush and approach your location from multiple sides, and combining a massively impressive arsenal of weapons with an equally impressive array of skills and abilities. While the bullet-sponge issues that often plague the genre are still very much present in The Division 2, the combat is satisfying, rewarding, and immersive from start to finish. And, it’s brutal. During my many runs as a solo Agent, I found myself outgunned, outmanned, and outplayed, feelings that heavily push the player towards grouping with other Agents. While enjoying many of the games activities solo is a definite possibility for the hardcore among us, it’s ill-advised in many situations.

Accompanying the impactful cover and shoot combat is a diverse list of skills and abilities that can be customized, enhanced and improved throughout the game. Agents unlock skill point as they progress through the main campaign, accessing advanced technological assistance for future battles. One group could be heavily focusing around their squad leader leading the charge behind a huge shield, while another sits at a distance and coordinates drone strikes and seeker mine attacks. While some of the skills and abilities would greatly benefit from a bit of balancing, there’s already plenty of opportunity to experiment and explore a robust skill and progression system.

One of the biggest problems facing Agents looking to restore order to the nations capitol is the frustratingly “intelligent” AI. Instead of facing enemies that adapt and react to the threats they face in a realistic and believable way, I too often found myself battling seemingly psychic soldiers that could read my every move from behind a container 50 meters away.

Approaching an enemy checkpoint, I hear calls for help from my nearby allies. Pinned down by heavy enemy sniper fire and a hulking mess of armor and firepower, my allies were unable to advance onto the machine gun nest that had been the primary cause for our failure to capture the checkpoint earlier in the day. I grip my controller tightly, I begin to hum the Mission Impossible theme tune, I take several side alleys and a small underground passage to approach our enemies from the opposite angle. I was straight up ready to Tom Clancy those fools.

I draw my heavily customized and camouflaged sniper rifle, line up the perfect shot on the enemy sniper then, just like that, he’s gone. This expertly trained and highly attuned sniper, that had been providing covering fire for nearly two minutes straight, randomly had the immediate instinct to duck behind cover as soon as a gun is aimed at his location – despite being out of his line of sight. I wait, and wait, and wait. There’s no sign of movement from his location. I decide to switch my attention to the heavily armored enemy rocking the minigun, but no sooner do I change weapon does that sniper rear its ugly head once more. A quick switch of my weapon back to my trusted sniper and, what? Once again, as if from divine intervention, the enemy sniper instantly returns to cover.

These types of events are not random, it’s not the result of some cascading AI scripts resulting in random psychic reactions from enemies, it happens in nearly every fight. I press the button to activate one of my abilities, the enemies react and move before humanly possible. Enemies will rush and advance on your position with absolutely zero care for their own survival. This makes sense for some of the units designed to rush, such as the lunatic that straps explosives to his chest and charges your location, but for other enemy types it becomes frustrating, predictable, and boring. A situation made worse when you face squads of enemies that take 200 bullets from an LMG to fell one soldier. On the surface The Division 2’s AI seems intelligent, responsive, and varied, but dig a little and you’ll find very limited AI behavior that is easily its biggest shortcoming.

The Division 2 truly stands head and shoulders above the competition with its myriad of activities and flurry of end-game content. It still bears the mark of Ubisoft as Agents head to new areas, repeating activities to free yet more civilians from tyranny – a formula used in practically every Ubisoft game of this generation – but it’s fine tuned to perfection. In previous Ubisoft games, I often found myself pushing to complete that first region 100%. Hunting down that last side quest, defeating that last high value target, only to feel exhausted to repeat the process a second, third, fourth and fifth time. In The Division 2, the team put just the right amount of content in each area to keep things fresh and engaging throughout the experience.

A single phrase often thrown around the industry today best describes The Division 2. Content is king, and The Division 2 is the king of content. From launch, there’s a massive variety of objectives and activities as you progress, objectives and activities that expand, evolve and improve continuously throughout the campaign and even moreso when you reach end-game. Never before have I been so excited to complete a games main campaign. As soon as you hit level 30 and complete the main story you are bombarded with prompts and unlocks, each exposing something more interesting and exciting than the last.

Real-time conflicts and territory changes between the games multiple factions, hidden boss enemies that hold special cosmetic loot drops, evolving checkpoints that increase in power the more your presence is known in the area, strongholds that act as challenging dungeons with multiple boss battles and fantastic rewards, bounty targets that require the gathering of intel to locate, collectibles, the content just keeps going, and going, and going. And that’s just from the perspective of the PvE fan, there are entire areas dedicated to PvP. The content itself is only trumped by a single other aspect, the loot.

The Division 2 boasts incredibly interesting loot and advancement systems that allows players to truly specialize, customize, and improve their characters in a variety of ways. Tons of weapon customization options, the ability to switch talents and perks from one weapon to another, random chances of hitting the “critical” success when crafting, there’s no end to the ways you can improve your character in the game.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 raises the bar for the looter shooter genre. Put simply, it is the complete package.

This The Division 2 Review was done on the PlayStation 4. A digital version was purchased from the PlayStation Store, though a code was provided by the publisher (and returned) after purchase.

Game Reviews

Posted 42 minutes ago by Blaine Smith in Blaine Smith Reviews, Game Reviews, PlayStation 4 Reviews

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Review – The Complete Package

Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment’s looter shooter returns with the release of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Hoping to build on a legacy of rewarding combat, immersive environments and varied

Posted March 18, 2019 by Casey Scheld in Casey Scheld Reviews, Game Reviews, PC Reviews

Enchanted Path Review

NanningsGames proves that it can be tough to find the right footing in his new puzzle platformer Enchanted Path. With an endless abyss and only one way to proceed, should you set out to guide this

Posted March 14, 2019 by Casey Scheld in Casey Scheld Reviews, Game Reviews, PC Reviews

Unsung Warriors – Prologue Review

Treasure awaits all those who seek to enter a crypt in the prologue of Osarion and Mountaineer’s Unsung Warriors. Should players step into the shoes of this Iron Age-inspired warrior, or should this

Posted March 11, 2019 by Casey Scheld in Casey Scheld Reviews, Game Reviews, PC Reviews

The Crown of Leaves Review

Thebrokenhorn puts players into a strange predicament in their new point-and-click visual novel The Crown of Leaves. Anthropomorphic animals meet supernatural stylings, but does it prove to be more

The post Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Review – The Complete Package appeared first on GamersHeroes.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Review – The Complete Package published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[lookbackmachine]

Home on the Range

Home on the Range

0:00:00 John Sanford: When I still had my office there in that hat building, the Director's offices were made in such a way that if you were agile enough, you could actually jump up on top of those offices. And I jumped up on top of my office and I took a sharpie and I wrote in 2004, and I gave the date that we approved our last scene. We completed the very last hand drawn animated movie that Disney will ever make and I signed it. And that doesn't mean anything 'cause they gutted that whole floor and threw everything away. [laughter]

0:00:31 Speaker 2: Before its release, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' have been nicknamed Disney's folly, expected in many circles to fail and take casualties. Instead the film launched the company into the stratosphere in the world's zeitgeist. As of 2018, there have been 56 animated Disney feature films and there is no end in sight. It is the life blood of the Walt Disney company. But in 2004, Disney animation was facing an identity crisis, they were confronted with stiff competition and features for the first time in their history, from both inside and outside the company. The most obvious threat was former executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was dead set on revenge against his former employer after an ugly public and lucrative falling out with Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

0:01:25 S2: Katzenberg founded DreamWorks in 1994. Shortly thereafter, he made a biblical epic and a few films that were quickly forgotten. Then the studio stumbled upon Shrek in 2001. The film's earnings were massive, and even better for Katzenberg, the movies foundation was a bitter criticism of the sacred Disney classics, and even better yet, Michael Eisner was drawn as the evil villain. The second threat however was more dangerous and from inside the company. Disney had been distributing Pixar films since 'Toy Story' revolutionized the industry with computer animation. Pixar movies were doing monumentally better in the press and at the box office than Disney's own 2D films. 2D animation movies simply weren't the box office juggernauts they once were. In fact, the opposite was true. From 2000 to 2003, four Disney animated features earned less than $100 million in the States.

0:02:22 S2: Most famously there was 'Treasure Planet' nicknamed 'Treasure Plummet', which perfectly fit its $38 million gross. Worse yet, Pixar was thinking about leaving Disney and setting out on its own. Disney was only marketing and distributing the films, and Pixar was nearing the end of its 10 year, five film deal with Disney. Because of this relationship, Pixar was now an established household name. Disney's only leverage was that they owned the rights to the sequels and were threatening to make them without Pixar. So they pitted Pixar against itself instead of crushing Pixar movies with, say, Disney movies, as they would have in the past. It was in this climate that Disney's 'Home On The Range' hit theaters. Only a month before the film's release Disney closed its animation studio in Florida, firing 258 animators.

0:03:11 S2: Disney assured the press that it would continue to make traditional 2D animation, but the press saw blood in the water, and it would dominate the conversation about 'Home On The Range'. 'Home On The Range' wouldn't be completely savaged by critics, but there were plenty of cow based puns to express their distaste. Although most critics were simply nonplussed and bemoaned the rumored end of traditional animation and Disney. Coincidentally, the film happened to be about three cows trying to save their beloved farm, their home from destruction. The film didn't directly kill hand drawn animation at the company, but distinctly marked the end of an era. The Walt Disney Company was again in uncharted territory with its legacy on the line.

0:03:54 S2: But that's only part of the film's story, it's also the story of two directors, John Sanford, Will Finn, who tried to live up to the Disney legacy in the face of tremendous obstacles that impossible legacy creates. Disney animation directors are rarely lauded and hardly praised. If they succeed, they made a Disney film, not a John Muster film or a Clyde Geronimi film, or a Wolfgang Reitherman film, a Disney film, pure and simple. If the director fails, then and only then is it their film. Because to direct a Disney movie is at once a lifetime opportunity and a possible death sentence. And now the story of two directors, three cows, and a $110 million.

[music]

0:05:07 JS: Whatever you wanna know, it's up for grabs, I'll name names, I'll say uncomfortable things. So shoot. [laughter] One of my problems is I have a big mouth and I like to talk. I'll be honest, because I've discovered that honesty makes people laugh. I'm kind of one of those guys that will do anything for a laugh sometimes. So one of the reasons I'm dishonest about that movie and my career is that there are stories in it that make people laugh, and maybe people can take away a nugget of wisdom about how things went.

0:05:40 S2: That devil may care attitude belongs to John Sanford. Sanford shoots from the hip, he's a lifelong animator, a fierce Trump critic on Facebook, and is a chief purveyor of gallows humor.

0:05:52 JS: I don't think it's ever gonna find any kind of cult following unless somebody has a fetish for colorful westerns. It's meh. I've got 20 DVDs in my drawer, I hand them out as joke kits now. Any time there's a white elephant gift, somebody's getting a 'Home On The Range'.

0:06:08 S2: The man is his own biggest internet troll. Nobody wrote a review of 'Home On The Range' as savage as that. The way he looks at his biggest professional failure is a masterclass in humility and self-reflection. Then again, maybe he's separated himself from the film, and is still in denial that he directed it.

0:06:27 JS: Whenever I run into somebody and they say, "What have you done?" And I go through my resume, and then somebody will go, "Well, you know, he co-directed a Disney feature," and I went, "Yeah, I directed 'Home On The Range.'" And it went, "Really? I never saw it." And I said, "Yeah, because you weren't five." You know, whatever. [laughter]

0:06:45 S2: It's most definitely the former. His co-director on the film is Will Finn. Will has the same sense of humor, and pension for self-reflection. He's a little bit closer to the vest than John, and there's points when he has a little bit more difficulty talking about the film.

0:07:01 Will Finn: Like I said, I try to avoid making commentary about it a lot, because like I say, it's very hard to speak for yourself on something that's a collaboration, and something that has as much negative vibe out there as that film, which obviously I'm well aware of, and not happy about, but what can you do?

0:07:31 S2: To recall the film is an emotional experience for him, and yet he does it with dignity and grace.

0:07:37 WF: The thing about directing gigs is it's really hard to talk about them, because you don't direct alone. And the other problem is the only features I've directed have all been disastrous bombs. So, I can either be accused of falling on my sword and taking all the blame or I'll get accused to passing on blame to other people, which I don't want to do in either case. So, I'm grateful for having the experiences of directing on all three of the movies I've directed on, and I think they've helped me in the work that I've done since. But it's obviously a huge disappointment across the board when a film performs poorly. And they all performed quite poorly, and fortunately, most people sooner or later just wanna forget that they even happened. So I think what I learned from it is that I probably won't get to direct again. [chuckle]

0:08:41 S2: The years before 'Home On The Range' are crucial to their stories, because the Disney legacy they were chasing is one John and Will helped rehabilitate during the Disney renaissance.

0:08:51 WF: Well, I wanted to do animation from my earliest memory, because everybody in my family drew and I love to draw cartoons, and all the old classic cartoons were heavily on rotation. So I went to not the most prestigious art school in the world, it's Art Institute of Pittsburg. So, I went there in '76 to '78, but the single most remarkable thing to happen was, Eric Larsen, who was one of Disney's nine old men, visited the school to canvas for anybody who was interested in animation. And no one wanted to see, [chuckle] because if anything, the school back in the late '70s discouraged people from getting into animation, because people just all figured it was dying. So I got to monopolize his time for half a day and strike up a rapport with him, and he was very frank. I always say that the great thing about Eric was he offered me just as much encouragement as I deserved, because he told me my portfolio was weak and I wouldn't be able to get hired with what I had in my kit at the time. But he said, "When you do graduate, you gotta get out to California whatever way possible, and you can write to me, you can call me," he says, "'Cause despite the shortcomings in your portfolio, I can tell this is... Your passion for this is very genuine and that's as important in some cases."

0:10:07 WF: I managed to ride cheer out to California in October of '78, and couch surfed around LA. And the first time I got to visit the Disney Studio in person was on my 20th birthday in 1978, and I got to show Eric what I was doing, and I think I submitted three formal portfolios and five informal. So a total of five tries, and then finally I got a foot in the door at the studio and the training program. This is in '79 now. And that was sort of the start, it was a rocky start, 'cause I was kind of a borderline case. The training program was very strenuous and a couple of people I came through with got thrown off pretty quickly, but I managed to hang on by the skin of my teeth. But the competition was fierce. I'd been there a month when Tim Burton started. So Tim Burton came out of CalArts with an entourage already dusting his shoulders with a whisk broom, so he was already a superstar and I was a low man on the totem pole.

0:11:07 WF: What you did was, you were in there for eight weeks, and you worked with Eric. The trainees were in a room right off of his office. You're supposed to make a short piece of film that demonstrated something, and you could do whatever you wanted to. The first thing I did was around almost a minute, which was excessively long, but it was a little man who looked like Robert Benchley and he was having trouble with a vending machine. It's a long and unremarkable thing, but it was where I finally got to animate and get lessons from Eric. And I think the thing that I heard later, the thing that saved me was, there was a point where he took his coat off and rolled up his sleeves to punch the machine and that felt natural, and that little whatever that was, six seconds was what got me another eight weeks. Again, I just made it through on the skin of my teeth.

0:11:56 WF: The Bluth thing was going on at that time, the Bluth guys all quit. There was that war. Don had been a sequence director on 'Rescuers' and then he directed the animation for 'Pete's Dragon' and a short called 'The Small One', and he developed an incredibly loyal following, really talented up-and-coming artists, including John Pomeroy, and Linda Miller, and Skip Jones, and people like that. And the opposite side of the hall were the Brad Birds, the John Lasseters, the John Muskers, the CalArts crew. And they sort of... I think over the course of... I wasn't there yet, so I can only fill in from what I was able to figure out, but I guess there was a lot of division between the CalArts crew, who dubbed their group "The Rat's Nest" 'cause they didn't cooperate with him as readily as his own unit did, so there was a big division there. Don, overlapping with that time, started developing his own projects at his home and inviting people to come work with him on them after hours and on weekends, which of course all of his devoted followers did, but none of the CalArts guys wanted to do that.

0:13:05 WF: I don't wanna define this era for anybody, so I'll just leave it at this. I think Don had an incredibly reverent and traditional approach to animation that really revered looking backward, and a lot of the guys that were the hires and what he called "The rat's nest", were people that wanted to push into newer things. And Don's thing was always embracing classical Disney as Disney. There really was no other point of reference for him, and the other group wanted to bring in other influences and other ideas. Even referencing something as seemingly innocuous as Chuck Jones or Looney Tunes to Don was heresy, because to Don, Disney was everything, Walt was everything. I think I sort of wound up on the wrong side of that. I'd gotten kind of stridently pro-Bluth in the middle of this war, and it was not the way to be if you wanted to stay at Disney, and I think that was probably finally what sank me.

0:14:02 WF: They figured, "If you're so pro-Bluth, why don't you go work with him?" And when they all quit, I was still too green and untried to be part of the exodus of that. I kept feeling like the turtle in 'Snow White', I kept feeling like I'd made it to the top of the stairs just as all the animals were coming running down. And I always felt like I was a step behind everybody. I was really struggling, even though I'd gotten through the program and everything, I was still pretty green compared to most of the other talent in the studio. When I got let go I wasn't surprised, but it was devastating. [chuckle] The head of animation was a guy named Ed Hansen, who could be kind of a scary guy. He was affable enough, but he was a hard nose, he was... People towed the line when Ed walked down the hall. And when he let me go, I asked him if it was possible ever to get hired back, and he said, "Well, from time to the time that happens, but I don't think that's gonna be the case." [chuckle] I thought, "Wow".

0:14:55 WF: So I got let go in November of '79 and managed to talk my way onto the Bluth crew, and I was at that studio for the next five years. I got to do some animation, nothing really spectacular, and then I also got into the story department, writing some of the sequences for 'Secret of NIMH', and then some other things. Then I left and I freelanced around for a couple of years, and when I got hired back Ed Hansen was still the supervisor at Disney, and he was the one who called me and offered me the job back 'cause I'd submitted a portfolio that passed. Just proves time heals all wounds, I guess. I considered myself just lucky to be there. I was doing really like nothing sensational on 'Oliver'. I managed to pull off... Actually, the best scene I did was of the poodle, but it got cut out of the movie. Katzenberg took the original directors off 'Beauty and the Beast' and put Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale on, and they liked me, and they saw me as Cogsworth, and doing that character, which completely baffled me when they asked me to do it.

0:15:57 WF: I just didn't think 'Beauty and the Beast' was a good idea. [chuckle] When I first heard we were doing it, I think part of it is my prejudice for the old Jean Cocteau black and white movie which is so good, and I'd seen it a few years before, and I thought, "Why are we remaking a movie that's perfect?" But we were, and I had problems with the character design, the shape of the body on Cogsworth was really awkward and difficult to draw on, his arms were too long, and they wouldn't let me alter it. And then finally there was a big blow up, and I finally said, "Just give it to somebody else." And they said, "Well take one more stab at what you think would be a good design and we'll see whether we can settle this." Ultimately I solved the design problems to my own satisfaction and everyone else, and then from that point on I really had a ball doing the character. It was very rewarding because people were very complimentary of the work I did do on the movie. And the movie turned out great, obviously I was wrong.

0:16:51 WF: I would always look down the road, I'm always nervous about what's coming next. So, 'Aladdin' was being cooked up in another building, and I had seen the treatment of the outline for it and I liked the idea of the parrot character. It was like a Cogsworth character, he was sort of a fussy, dry butler character again. I asked John and Ron if they'd consider me for it, and they'd seen some of my footage of Cogsworth, which was a big improvement over what I'd been doing before. They said, "Yes." And to make a long story short, I got to do Iago right after that, which back to back, two of my favorite projects ever. So I got into story on 'Punch Back', then that led to a directing offer at DreamWorks. I was always on the short list to direct or co-direct, but never the actual bride, so I was antsy to see what that was like. That's why I really finally left, which was ultimately a disaster, and it's been up and down ever since. 'The Road to El Dorado', if you wanna call that a movie, which I was on for almost three years, and I resigned from 'El Dorado'. Really the less said about it the better, as far as I'm concerned.

[music]

0:18:15 JS: I got started in the film business like many of us do. I went to CalArts because I wanted to work in animation. It's the same old story, I grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, I loved those, those were inspiring. I loved Bullwinkle and Rocky. I liked the Disney stuff. Ironically, not as much, but there are two big sentimental things for me, 'Roger Rabbit' and 'The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse', which Ralph Bakshi, John Kricfalusi were a big part of, those were super inspirational for me. Then I was going to at the time, an art school in downtown Denver, and there was a lot of animation festivals that were playing at a theater that was right around the corner called the Ogden theater. There were all sorts of cool movies, they were crazy quirky things, and a lot of the films were from students that went to CalArts. People like Andrew Stanton, who went on to direct 'Finding Nemo' among other things.

0:19:03 JS: And so I thought, "That's the place to go." Also, I saw an interview with Glen Keane, he said he went to CalArts. So I applied and studied animation, I was in the same class as Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky. When you go into CalArts, every person that goes to CalArts was probably the best artist in their school. And then you discover that there's loads of people out there who are super talented, and you have to raise your game on a daily basis. While at CalArts, I managed to make a couple of films, one of which got into the Producers Show, which is the big show that they put on there at CalArts for all the animation studios and they come and they recruit. Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, they directed 'Beauty and the Beast', liked my film, asked me to submit a portfolio to Disney, they hired me and hired me as a story trainee on to 'Hunchback of Notre Dame', and that's how I got into Disney, as a story board trainee. Those guys were my mentors.

0:19:54 JS: The training was interesting because at CalArts we had a class for story and story boarding. But when you go to Disney features as a story trainee, they treat you like you're a story artist. They're like, "Here's your office, here's your desk, here's your paper, this is the supply room, here's your time card." All that stuff. They treat you like an employee. And you're invited to story meetings and you're encouraged to give ideas and all that stuff. It was interesting to have to show up for work at 9:00 AM and stay till 6:00. [chuckle]

0:20:23 JS: Kirk and Gary gave me a scene. They were still developing Hunchback, and they were still going through script revisions, but they gave me a section of the script, and they said, "Board this, we wanna see a rough pass in two weeks." That was the way I was trained. They would give me assignments like I was a real story board artist. They would critique me like I was a real story board artist. That's kinda how it was, and then we would have reviews where all the directors would get together and we'd have to pitch to them. We'd leave the room, and then they'd talk about us, and review us, and say, "Ah, he doesn't draw very well." But we managed to get through that training program and were promoted to real story artists in, I think, six months. And then we were thrown right onto production. Went right onto 'Hunchback of Notre Dame', that was the first movie I ever boarded on. It was interesting, I enjoyed it because Kirk and Gary are good directors, they're very supportive. They also let you, as a story artist, play. There are a lot of directors who when you sit down with the sequence, they say, "Okay, let me tell you what I want." And they'll literally dictate the sequence to you shot by shot.

0:21:17 JS: Whereas Kirk and Gary will say, "These are the emotional beats that we wanna hit. Here's the dialogue, some of it's great, some of it's not. If you have a better idea, pitch it. Go have fun." That's an amazing amount of rope [chuckle] that you can hang yourself with or it's an amazing amount of freedom to show what you can do. I was a young guy and I learned a ton, but that was my experience on that movie, is I got to work with Will Finn, who's an animator on Cogsworth, animated Iago the parrot, he was head of story on that movie. I learned tons from Will, it was school all over again, but I got paid for it. Mulan ate up from '95 to '97, I think I was on Mulan which included some time in Florida. Then I was on Atlantis. I was just a story artist. But later I was promoted to head of story.

0:22:03 JS: It was a fun movie to make. We were making a big crazy action movie. I think the big problem we had, and the big mistake we made was it was a plot-driven movie and we didn't let the characters drive that movie that was a big mistake. We were thinking in terms of it being a Disney action movie. And so, if you put Atlantis next to say the action movies of the time it doesn't really compete it doesn't compete with Star Wars, it doesn't compete with Indiana Jones, it's just kind of like a... Filmically, it's really strong as far as cinematography and how shots one shot leads into another. And all of those choices, I think were really good. I don't think that the Atlantians are that interesting still. That crystal which we were in a room and we argued about it, I think we were erring on the side of ambiguity, because if you remember correctly, 'The Phantom Menace' had just come out, George Lucas decided to explain how the Force worked through midi-chlorians. We were kind of resistant to any super explain-y reason as to why that thing worked and how it worked, and I think we went too far the other way with that. [laughter] So it's not really clear what's going on with that thing. And after Atlantis, Don Hahn called me into his office and said, "So what do you wanna do next?"

0:23:18 JS: And I said, "Well, I'd love to work with Kirk and Gary, again, but I'm also keen to try directing something. I have a story idea." And so Don encouraged me to write it up and pitch it, so, I pitched an idea for a superhero movie back in I think this is '98 '99. I pitched it to then President of feature animation, Tom Schumacher, and Tom was... Tom is interesting because I worked with a development exact name Leo Chu, who's an awesome guy, great exec which you don't hear very often and you almost never hear from me. He warned me, he said "Okay, Tom hates superheroes." And I said, "Why does Tom hate superheroes?" and he said, "He doesn't think they are emotional, he thinks it's too serious and he doesn't think that they would work in animation, because we've already seen them in live action."

0:24:00 JS: And I said, "Let me go away and write something that will change his mind." Having worked with Chris on 'Lilo & Stitch', Chris developed 'Lilo & Stitch' was really interesting, because I'd never seen an animated movie developed this way before. He started with the two central characters, and just kind of developed outward from there. All the plot, all the story came from the needs of those two characters and where he wanted to go with them. Everything was character, character, character and relationship. So I sat down and tried to think of a relationship I wanted to tell a story about and I went backwards and made a relationship story that happened to be about superheroes, and they responded to that really well. Unfortunately, Tom sat me down and said, "Okay, we're already making a superhero movie at Pixar." And that was 'The Incredibles'. And he said, "You've managed to accidentally reproduce certain plot elements from that movie. So we love this, but put it aside, what else do you have?" And during the time I was trying to figure out what else I had, 'Sweating Bullets' hit a story snag.

[music]

0:25:04 JS: The original story of 'Sweating Bullets' was about... It was kind of like Captains Courageous, only in the Old West. So the story is about this rich young guy from the East Coast, whose dad sends him out to the Old West and he gets kind of shoved into a cattle drive. It was kind of an amazing little story they had, it was all with people, the stories centered on an actual guy. They still had the talking rabbit in there, but they also had ghosts. The villains in the movie were these ghosts who were stealing cattle. And so, you'd see all this amazing artwork in the hallway and you'd say, "Wow, we're doing a western with ghosts? That's cool." And Michael Eisner, when they gave him the big pitch, he went, "Oh, well, I thought this was gonna be a movie about cattle. Why don't you make the movie about one of the cows?" And so, they went, "Okay." And they started making the movie about this little calf named Bullet, that's on this cattle drive.

0:26:00 JS: So the whole movie shifted from the people down to this one calf named Bullet in the movie. So Michael back in those days was infamous for giving notes that upended productions. Like, on Chicken Little for instance, when they first started making the movie, the character was played by Holly Hunter, it was a little girl chicken and Michael for some reason, couldn't get it... Couldn't wrap his head around a female protagonist. Michael is a fairly savvy business guy, but when he'd come in to a creative meeting, he'd give like these really ham fisted notes to be honest. [laughter]

0:26:35 WF: For whatever reason, the studio gradually fell out of love with that story and added more people, then they took the people out, and then they added more animals. It was basically an animal story with a ghost villain. And then there was this almost mutiny in the story department where some of the newer story guys refused to embrace the ghost villain, because, how do you kill a ghost? And that became sort of a deadlock for months.

0:27:03 JS: If your directors don't have the confidence behind their vision, story artists will eventually kind of... They'll revolt. It happens on a lot of productions. You'll have a little mini kinda coup. The management team was already seeing a movie that wasn't making sense. So the story team would go into those meetings, those story meetings where everybody's there and just kinda hammer away at it until finally the management said, "Okay, this clearly isn't working. Everybody go away and come up with an idea for the movie." Literally, that's what they said. So everybody went away and a couple of the artists pitched the idea with the three cows, trying to save the farm, which is what the movie became. And they said, "Great, go, that's the movie." That story was kind of forced on Mike and Mike.

0:27:44 WF: Then it was at the point where he says, "Okay, you're up, you gotta go into production." [chuckle] And at that point I could tell Mike and Mike were really miserable on it, and they didn't... I'm not very close with those guys, it's not like I was talking to them, but I knew they were hating it. And the one thing I learned from directing on El Dorado was, you cannot direct material you hate. They were just going through the motions in my view. Not that they weren't dedicated and talented, but they really felt robbed of the movie they intended to make, and they were now just sort of being forced to make this other movie they didn't like.

0:28:20 JS: And they tried to make that work until they couldn't and were removed. And I think that that was a hard time. I think Mike and Mike kinda got a raw deal a little bit, but it's hard to say. I did say, and I believe this, that if they had given those guys the rope to make and the freedom to make that first movie they pitched with the guy and the ghosts, I think that could've been just as good a movie as Home On The Range. And I think it could've been as everybody is entertaining, maybe more so. I'd like to see that movie. On the other hand, I also say management was right to kind of move them off, they couldn't make any progress. So something had to change, and they decided to replace the directors, nice though, they were... Mike Gabriel is an amazing designer. Mike Giaimo is an amazing production designer and art director. But they couldn't get the movie to move forward. The movie was just awash in problems, and so they couldn't get the movie to go past act one. So they removed them, and they brought in Will Finn.

0:29:21 WF: And since I liked it. I thought, well maybe if I like this concept, I'll be able to bring something to it. So when they ask me about it, I said okay, because it was gonna happen. I've been around it that much to know the attrition level with directors. I think it engendered a lot of resentment between me and the Mikes, which probably exists to this day. I feel bad about that, but I didn't feel bad about taking over the movie, because I just... I could tell they didn't wanna make it and I did.

0:29:51 JS: They asked, "Will, who would you like to co-direct with?" And Will said, "How about John Sanford?" And they said, "Okay." And that's how I got... [chuckle] That's how I got to direct 'Sweating Bullets' which later became 'Home On The Range', is I kind of proved my mettle with both in story meanings on 'Atlantis', and basically writing that treatment and pitching it so they gave me a shot.

0:30:10 WF: We've been friends. John came in on Hunchback, he was a new hire, that was his first full time gig at the studio. And I always liked him, we always got along really well, and I could see they were trying to figure out where to bump him up to. So when I got offered that, I asked about it and they said yes, immediately. So we were already in production, and there was one sequence being made and there was nothing really of the story that worked, so we were gonna have to write the story as we went along, and it was just constant triage.

0:30:40 JS: It was really hard, especially said Mike Giamio was my favorite teacher at CalArts. He taught me characters design, for two years and I had to come in and take over, and then there was some people on the crew that were happy to see us take over. And then there's some people who are outwardly hostile, and didn't understand why we were there, and it's like "Why are you here? Why are you promoted?" What was interesting is, at the time I was 32, to most of the crew, just kind of promoted out of nowhere. They didn't know what I'd done, they didn't know me, I was younger than a lot of the folks I was directing, and that as we all know, goes over real well. When you're telling a guy whose [chuckle], the guy who's 10, 15, 20 years older than you are, has 15 years more experience than you do in the business and you have to listen to some punk. That's... [chuckle] That's hard for a lot of people to swallow.

0:31:31 JS: So what's interesting is that when I walk into situations like that, a lot of times I'm incredibly naive and don't see the problems, I'm kind of stupid that way. I just walked in and went, Okay, this is what I'm doing and didn't really see the problems until much later I went, "Oh wait. Hey. I think these people don't like me." [chuckle] And with the story team, fortunately with a lot of those guys I'd worked with them before and so they trusted us, and when they didn't, when they had questions, I remember... Will, and I had to go through a ton of meetings that first week. Will and I were with the story crew, we worked with them in the morning to work on a new beat outline that we were gonna pitch to the executives later that week and we had to go through some other things and we said, "Okay, you story team and had a story and writers work on this outline, we'll be back." I came back later that afternoon and they were all sitting around the table kind of just silently I said, "So how's everything going?" And I looked at the board, and they hadn't gotten past act one and they said, "Well, we've got some problems."

0:32:33 JS: And they started telling me what the problems were, and I said, "I hear you, but this is what we asked you to do, so do it." And I was basically too dumb to know that I was throwing my weight around, I guess [chuckle], so but that's what they needed, they needed somebody to tell them, "I hear your issues, but let's just do what we agreed to this morning and just start moving forward and once you have everything up, then we'll start to try and tear it apart." But what was interesting is this particular group of people would tear something apart before they could even get something done. If you ask any novelist, any writer, any musician, the hardest thing is just to get an idea on a page and get a complete thought on the page, so what you have to do is just get it down. Once it's down, once you got everything up there, then you can tear it apart and edit and tweak and stuff. But if you're gonna just say no to every idea that comes out of somebody's mouth, you're never gonna get something done. And I think that was the problem with this particular group of people was they just were really good at talking themselves out of ideas.

0:33:31 WF: Oh, we fired somebody which is not something I relish doing. And it wasn't like they were fired without warning, it was like there was a lot of sitdown and let's talk this through. And yet we were still getting tons of pushback.

[music]

0:33:46 WF: This just sort of just gets into the whole question of why did I say yes to this thing. I hate westerns. I really... I really think they're stupid, and it's just not... I'm not exactly a city boy but I'm definitely someone bound for the great indoors. I'm not an outdoorsman, or any of that. And the whole western thing just never really... I kind of liked the Italians spaghetti westerns 'cause they're just so off the wall but I didn't... We didn't play cowboys growing up. That was all very corny to me. So, I was intrigued because I thought well we can make an inside out Western, it'll be an anti-Western. Cows are the heroes and the cowboys are the bad guys, I thought that was really funny. But in order to do that, you have to understand what a Western is. And it took me over a year to figure out what a Western is frantically on my own time reading about them and watching them. And basically, a Western is the lone individual, against the group and the wilderness. And when I got that finally, I was like, "Okay. Well, then everything in this movie will be about the opposite of that. This will be about a group against lone individuals, mercenaries, and the ideal of the western the lone individual is the classic individual." But by turning it on its head, the individual becomes a mercenary.

0:35:03 WF: And so all the individual characters in the story are villains and all the good characters are community. And that's something that I believe to an extent, but it's not something I believe across the board, but I thought for the purpose of this story, we're gonna say the community is good, the individual is suspect at best. If I'd known that earlier on [chuckle].. I think that would have helped. But that for anyone who's bothered to sit through the movie which is not that many people, that's what's happening all through the movie is, individuals, as mercenaries, are making life difficult for community characters and the community has to pull together to thwart them. And then that sort of helped make sense for the cow story, it also made sense of the horse's story because the horse wanted to be with the cowboy, be the lone gun and all that, but then he realized that that guy was a fake and he had to come in and help the group and become part of the group and when that sort of came out, someone in development wanted to make the horse have a speech about that, and I was just like [chuckle].. No.

0:36:00 WF: The whole point of the story is to make the point. If we have to stop and say it, then we're doing a bad job which maybe we did anyway. So it was such a risky idea even though nothing panned out to make an anti-Western, where everything about a Western was going to be called into question. And so the cows which are usually just passive background characters, are gonna be the heroes and they're also female. Westerns, of course, are dominantly masculine. Here we're gonna make three females, the heroes, against a whole wilderness of hostile, masculine characters. I liked all those things. And on a purely just silly level, the idea that cows would be the heroes of their own western was funny to me because I like things that are silly. I'm a Gilbert and Sullivan fan and they always do the topsy-turvy world where the things are turned on their heads and that's immediately how I reacted to the story about the cows was that we were turning a western on its head.

[music]

0:37:08 WF: It was one of the things that appealed to me about the movie 'cause not only was it this topsy, turvy, very silly story but we had to do it for an extremely compromised budget, which isn't what shows up on paper but a lot of the money that is always quoted for that movie was already spent, so we had to do this on a lot less money than a lot of the other movies that have been made, and I thought that would be appealing because it would enable us to do things that were a little bit sillier and take the movie less seriously. I think from Pocahontas on there was a sense of grandeur, and gravitas which was the word that got thrown around a lot back then about Disney movies that was starting to make me sick to my stomach, frankly. And the one thing, that that the 'Home On The Range' story had was a complete absence of gravitas and I thought, "Great, let's make a Woolie Reitherman type stupid movie." For better or worse I kept thinking of the Woolie movies while I was making it and those are terribly uneven movies too. And I guess I just misjudged public because everyone wanted a full on musical with a fairy tale and a princess and the Prince and they really resented getting this stupid cartoon with Roseanne Barr. And a lot of uneven shenanigans. [chuckle] Yeah, you know what... That's as much as I'll say about that.

0:38:30 JS: There's a strange way that Disney makes movies. They kind of buy off on a plot. And then in the old days they used to approve it sequence by sequence into production, they would find what they called tent poles and it was usually song sequences. If you're at all familiar with the movie 'Home On The Range', there's a song sequence called Little Patch of Heaven, where they... All the animals sing and dance and sing about how wonderful that dopey farm is that they live on. They had recorded that song with Katy Lang, they'd approved character designs, they'd approved backgrounds, and so they were fast animating and laying out and all that stuff for that sequence. So when I got onto the movie, I was told, "Okay, you can't touch this... Because this is already in. Everything else is fair game but we're making this, this is gonna help you set the style of the characters, it'll help set the style of the movie, and it's a song and we've got it and so leave it alone." [chuckle]

0:39:21 JS: So we basically jumped onto a moving train. At the time they were telling us that the casting was set in stone too, but we later learned that that wasn't true. [laughter] One of the original cows was Grace the cow, which was the skinny yellow one, who was voiced by Sara Jessica Parker. We discovered that that wasn't working, it wasn't a clear characterization, and when we rewrote the character and made her a certain way, Will tried to record her, and she was like, "I don't understand this, this doesn't make sense." And we hired Jennifer Tilly. And Jennifer Tilly came in and was in like, "Oh I get it. I know who this is. Gotcha. Boom." And from the jump, Jennifer Tilly was great. Understood it, she was sharp, she always plays those ditzy characters, but Jennifer Tilly is no dummy, has this really smart way of approaching a dumb character, [chuckle] if that makes sense.

0:40:07 JS: And then, the main character Maggie the cow, was originally an actress named Ja'Net DuBois, who some folks will remember from Good Times, that TV show from the '70s. She was good, but we just needed something different. So when we started rethinking the character Maggie, we're thinking, "Well, what if she's from another farm, and she's bringing an alien point of view, and she doesn't quite fit in?" And I looked at the farm animals and how they were and I said, "You know what would really pop comedically? What if she was Rosanne Barr? What if that character was like Rosanne Barr and she comes in?" And Will said, "Well, why don't we try and hire Rosanne?" I said, "Do you think they'll let us do it?" And he said, "Well, why don't we try?" What's interesting is, Will gives me all the credit for the Roseanne thing, but I just remember all I kept doing was saying, "What if she was Roseanne?", and I guess just kept trying to write the character as Rosanne.

0:40:55 JS: I really think it was Will who said, "Let's cast her." And I went, "Okay." [chuckle] Will likes to give me credit for that, but it was really the two of us in a room figuring it out. Some people love that choice and some people hate it. So whatever. [chuckle] The very first time I met with Alan Menken, I argued with him, and I was told that I should not argue with Alan. So after that any time I was in a meeting with Alan, I kept my mouth shut. So that was a please your boss moment. Here, there, and everywhere, I've talked about Alan Menken, and I didn't enjoy a lot of my experiences with Alan because I was out of my depth. This comes as a surprise whenever I say this, having worked at Disney for 11 years, I'm not a fan of musicals, I don't like musicals, and I don't like songs and movies. For 11 years I worked on musicals, even though I hated musicals. I can tell you how to set up a song, how to ramp into a song, I can board a song, and I can get out of a song, but I don't like them.

0:41:50 JS: Here I am working with a guy who writes songs for movies, [chuckle] and I'm telling him I don't like it when characters break into song in movies. I actually said that to Alan Menken. This is a guy who has made some of the most famous songs in movies, he's got nine Oscars. Here I am telling him that I hate what he does. [laughter] That was me trying to be cruel, that was me like saying, "Man, I'm gonna do what I wanna do, and I'm gonna tell this guy what's up." I was basically told, "Don't argue with Alan Menken like that. You can raise your concerns, and please don't, that's not cool." Pretty much any time from then on when we were dealing with Alan, it was me in please your boss mode.

0:42:33 WF: The worst thing about directing an animated movie for a big studio is, it isn't really a creative job, it's a political job. And that's been my experience of it, and maybe that's my feeling as a creative person, but that's the way I always had to treat it. And I either survived or didn't, based on my ability to understand the politics of doing it. And one of the things I noticed at Disney during that time, in the Tom Schumacher years, was that as a director you could defend your own idea once. You could defend anybody else's idea, as long as it was clearly someone else's idea and you went to bat for it, but if you defended your own idea more than once, you were dead. Because the director could only stand up for themselves to a point.

0:43:17 WF: And if you kept coming back to something you really wanted to do, then that meant you were... What do they call it? Difficult? [chuckle] It's an incredibly stressful and tenuous job because there's tons of money on the line and nobody knows what's going to happen when the movie's done until it happens, and so nobody knows what the right decision to make at any given time is. Again, maybe it's just a feeling of my own personality, but I always had to come across as someone who was a partner and a collaborator in a team, rather than the person in charge, because that sort of thing didn't work for me.

0:44:00 WF: You know, this is why so many production assistants become producers is, they won't fire a production assistant unless they're incredibly incompetent, which you don't get to be a production assistant unless you are competent. They know where everything is, they know where all the numbers are, they know where all the scenes are, they know the flow charts. The director is just like, "You don't know anything. [chuckle] You're just the person ostensibly in charge." So they can put anybody in and have them start taking orders. I don't mean to sound so cynical and negative about it, but obviously, I didn't do a great job at it, and it wasn't fun. [chuckle]

0:44:40 WF: Well, the whole structure of directing on an animated movie at a studio, especially like Disney is that you're in peril the entire time. I'm not saying that speciously, you are the most replaceable person on the film as they'd already demonstrated, they'd replaced the two directors before and they would have happily replaced us at any given moment, and they nearly did. I know I was nearly let go at least twice, but I always found out after the fact. [chuckle] It wasn't like like, "Oh really?" I just assumed we were on the razor's edge the entire time anyway.

0:45:11 WF: There was a couple of different things. I'd said the wrong thing the wrong way at the wrong time to the wrong person. And I'm pretty circumspect about dealing with people in charge, so it was a surprise. One time it wasn't a surprise because I just lost my temper and said something glib I shouldn't have said, but the other time was not, and I was like really over that. And then there were plenty of times where I saw the writing on the wall, and I took John inside and said, "They're not asking us to do this, they're telling us." And we had to do things that really upset him. And so I think I was basically just tying to get us through to the end, which is sort of the... The endurance test is you get to put your name on the movie at the end, that's your consolation prize, I guess.

[music]

0:46:09 JS: You know, they kept saying, "You're making a Western," and I'm like, "Okay, cool. I know what a Western is." "But you can't have guns." "Okay, so Western without guns." One of the reasons why they changed the movie from 'Sweating Bullets' to 'Home On The Range' is because McDonald's would not sell Happy Meals with the words 'Sweating Bullets', 'bullets' on their Happy Meals. So that's why the title changed. One of the reasons why we knuckled under to McDonald's is that McDonald's represented $30 million of "free advertising". If McDonald's is selling Happy Meals with your toys in them, then they get to play a clip of your ad, and that's literally $30 million worth of advertising. Great.

0:46:48 JS: Well, we got the cows. What's the biggest threat to a cow? Being turned into steaks and hamburger. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that, you can't threaten them with eating them. And I said, "Really?" And I literally said this, I said, "That's like making Finding Nemo, only dad fish is never threatened with being eaten." The whole movie somebody's trying to eat that fish and they even get swallowed by that whale at one point. Can you imagine Finding Nemo if the dad wasn't threatened with life or death? There were no stakes. That's part of the problem, there was no stakes in that movie, and that's why it plays soft and that's why it plays dumb. Whenever we would try and put any kind of [0:47:24] ____ into the movie for any type of edge, it would always get ground off. In the movie we were like, "Well, what's the scariest thing Slim can do with an army of cows?" And somebody said, I think it was of all people Ralph Zondag, who was just on the movie for two weeks. He's like, "Well you know, General Custer really wanted to be President in the United States." We're like, "Whoa, what if Slim wants to take over the United States, and he's gonna do it with an army of hypnotized cows. Maybe that's why he's stealing the cows, maybe he was building an army so you can stampede Washington and insert himself as president." And that made him scary, that made him sinister, and it raised the stakes.

0:48:01 JS: But you gotta remember, this is when we had a Texan literally steal the presidency of the United States. So we were told, "No, that's too political. You can't do it." So we dropped it. And at a certain point I just kind of resigned myself to like at some point I probably should have went in and said, "You know what? This isn't for me, and I should quit." Pixar at the time knew how to make movies about stuff that made people go, "Ooh, what's that?" Like 'Monsters, Inc', it's about monsters, right there in the fucking title. Monsters. Yeah, I wanna see that. 'Incredibles', it's about superheroes. Fuck yeah. Nobody was making superhero movies back then except for Bryan Singer and those lame X-Men movies. When I heard about Finding Nemo, I'm like, "What's Finding Nemo about?" They were like, "Well, it's about fish," I went, "Oh." They were like, "Yeah, it's about fish and the ocean and this kid gets captured and put in a fish tank in Australia and he needs to get him back." I went, "Really? How the fuck is that fish gonna get that little kid out of that tank? I wanna see that movie."

0:48:53 JS: Just the problem, it's so insurmountable. It's like, "This guy has to go there to get his kid back? Sign me up. I'll see that movie. Who gives a shit about three cows?" We had a screening where Michael just didn't like the movie and the movie was very close to being finished. And he said, "You know what I think? Wouldn't it be funny if the whole movie was told from the point of view of those stupid nephew guys?" In the movie, the villain is Alameda Slim, and he's got these three idiot nephews. And for some reason, Michael got it in his head that the movie should be told from their point of view as a flashback, and they're in prison telling the story about how these cows bested them. And Will and I just went, "Oh my God." The interesting thing is that's kind of a funny idea, but when you've got six months left to production, you can't suddenly remake the movie. You just can't do it. So in the room we told Michael, "Well, that's an interesting idea, but maybe not." That was the weekend before we went away.

0:49:46 JS: We had this big creative retreat where they had all the then current directors are flown to Michael Eisner's property in Aspen, and we were to talk about the future of Disney feature animation. So it's a bunch of execs, a bunch of us directors, and we're in day-long meetings on Michael's beautiful property in Aspen, Colorado, talking about the movie. And so it's the last day and they're like, "Hey, we have cake and pie." So I went and got myself a piece of pie and a cup of coffee and I sit down at a table all by myself. And Michael Eisner, who's... I don't think much has been made of this, but Michael Eisner is a massive human being. He's like 6'2, 6'3, just giant. He's got hands as big as pie pans. And he sits down next to me, and I'm not a big dude. I'm 5'10. And at the time I weighed 145. He sits down next to me and it's like Andre the Giant sitting next to like "Mean" Gene Okerlund. He's just towering over me and he says, "Tell me why we can't do my idea?"

0:50:43 JS: And I had to carefully explain to Michael why we couldn't do his idea all by myself. I looked to... Like where's Will? Where's Tom Schumacher? They're like way across the way getting pie, and I had to like... Little old me has to look Michael Eisner in the eye and tell the guy who can fire me with a stroke of the pen or just pick me up by my collar and my belt loop and throw me into the Aspens, I have to tell him why we can't do his idea. So I very calmly explained to him, "Well, you know Michael, we've been doing this and we spent this much of the budget," and I just talked, I tried to talk in his terms. He went, "Oh, okay. Yeah, you're probably right." And he just left it be. I remember at the time when we did all the press for 'Home On The Range', this is years later, so I don't care, I'll say whatever I want. All the press kept asking was, "Is this the end of 2D? Is this the end of 2D?" And of course we knew, "Yes, it's the end of 2D." All the animators were being retrained, this cleanup crew was being laid off. 'Home On The Range' is gonna be the last movie animated on paper, it was the last movie using that pipeline, using that system.

0:51:42 JS: It was very clear that we were gonna make CGI movies from then on. I think it was two weeks in that Will intimated to me that he had a conversation with Tom Schumacher and they had decided that 2D was done at the studio and that they were gonna move to CG and that was just the way it was gonna be. If the movie had made like $300-$400 million, I don't think they would have gone back on that. I think they were ready to just move on to the next chapter.

0:52:09 WF: That sort of leaked out gradually. I think that's another thing of course, in my view, that hurt the film tremendously, because that became the story when the movie was released, "This is the last 2D movie." And that was terribly embarrassing because nobody, including myself, wanted to see a tradition that started with 'Snow White', 'Pinocchio' and 'Fantasia', and with this little farce about cows. And early on I asked if we could possibly make the movie in CG, and that was turned down flatly because I could just see the way the world was going.

0:52:42 WF: I always felt that if the movie... [chuckle] It's kind of a moot point. If you had made the same film frame-for-frame as 'Home On The Range' in CG and released in 2004, it would have made at least twice as much money, which isn't to say it would have been a huge hit, but it would have done better because CG had such a novelty at that point that almost any CG picture was getting an enormous pass.

0:53:08 JS: So we all knew at that retreat there was no arguing. I think the only person who said, "You know, I really think the public needs to see drawings," was Glen Keane. Glen's the only one who was still kind of really pulling for that system. And God bless him, I think in a way Glen's right. But at that time the public just didn't care. 'Iron Giant' came out and it was poorly promoted, but it was a great movie that at the time nobody went and saw. 'Lilo & Stitch' came out. 'Lilo & Stitch' is arguably one of Disney's greatest movies and it did moderately well at the box office. It was Chris Montana, who was the head of music, said to Roy Disney, "You know, if 'Lilo & Stitch' were a CG movie, it would have made $300 million." And Roy said, "Well, don't say that too loud. These guys aren't ready to hear that yet." Roy knew. Roy had his eye on the future. The public had kind of cooled on 2D animation. That can be argued that that was a thing. People were just kind of, "Oh, you know, what else is out there?" And then when you had put out a movie like 'Bugs Life', which is not a great movie, but it made tons of money, people got excited about it now because there's an immersive quality to CG. It was understood at that retreat that that was gonna be our future. The most contentious points at that retreat was, what kind of movies going forward, what kind of stories?

0:54:25 JS: I remember arguing vehemently that Disney had lost touch with the culture at large. There was a thing that Disney at the time did and they finally got past it, Disney had a problem at the time of thinking only in terms of Disney. Like, when we were making 'Atlantis', "This is Disney's big action movie." When they made 'Treasure Planet', "This is our science fiction movie." And they didn't seem to understand that outside the walls of the studio people were making action movies and science fiction movies that were far more daring, far more interesting. 'Hercules' came out and the very same weekend 'Men in Black' came out, and I think it was Ed Gombert that said, "You know what? 'Men In Black' should have been the movie we made," because it was interesting, it was dynamic, it captured the minds of the public, because it was a way of seeing the world that they weren't used to, whereas 'Hercules' was, "Oh, it's another one of those. It was another one of those Disney musicals. There's five songs, and who gives a shit?"

0:55:19 JS: That was kind of the wake up call. We put what we thought was our best foot forward as a company, and nobody cared. A lot of that retreat, I remember, was just trying to just discussing, "What does the public want from us? What should we be making?" And I can't remember whether we ever came down on anything. [chuckle] It was a really crazy strange weekend, 'cause we'd have these meetings and then Michael put us up in a house, bigger than any house I've ever lived in. In order to get to where the meeting was, they gave us an SUV that was parked out front.

0:55:55 WF: It was a group bonding thing, and it was very... It was two and a half days we desperately needed to get work done [chuckle] that we couldn't work. I just wanted to get back to the studio. I remember they made us sing karaoke at one point and I refused. And I think at one point Roy Disney was as turned off by the karaoke as I was. Sorta looked at me like, "You wanna give it a go?" And I just let it pass. So I never got a chance to sing karaoke with Roy Disney, which I half regret and half feel like maybe it was the right thing to turn down. John picked a song for my behalf which was very nice of him. They picked the song 'Life's Been good to me so far' by Joe Walsh.

0:56:33 JS: Generally speaking, previews went well overall, we had good scores. They were like, "Would you see the movie when it comes out?" "Yes." "Would you recommend this movie to a friend?" "Yes." Overwhelmingly, our scores were positive. Now, that means jack shit truthfully, because if you put out a movie and folks that don't know about the movie look at your poster and go, "I don't care." To be perfectly honest, it was a movie I wouldn't see. If I saw our poster, if I saw our billboards driving around in California at the time, I was 32 years old, I didn't have kids, I wouldn't wanna see it. What's interesting is that most people say, "Well, who cares? You're a 32 year old man. Who gives a shit?" But even as a 25 year old guy dating, I wouldn't take my date to see 'Home On The Range." I would have taken a date to see 'Aladdin', I would have taken a date to see 'Beauty And The Beast', I would take somebody to see 'Lilo & Stitch'. Me and my wife went and saw 'Ice Age' opening weekend. 'Home On The Range' didn't appeal to... It just didn't appeal to people.

0:57:30 JS: I remember Tom Schumacher at one point said, "It plays young and dumb." So it plays for little kids, and there are folks at Disney who said, "Well good, 'cause that's our core audience." And I used to say, "No, that's not... " Jeffrey Katzenberg knew well enough to know that when they made 'Little Mermaid', they said, "You're not competing with other animated movies, you're competing with the latest Tom Cruise movie. You're competing with Top Gun." That was a smart savvy thing to say. And what was interesting is, when I sat down with the marketing people, we were about to release 'Home On The Range' that weekend, we were going up against 'Hellboy', and I said, "Well, we're gonna lose all of the audience to 'Hellboy'." They were like, "That's really not our audience." And I said, "Bullshit that's not our audience. Those are people with money. People with money, you should wanna try and get everybody into your movie."

0:58:15 JS: Back then nobody wanted to hear that, but Jeffrey knew it. Well, back then they thought the core audience was 10 year olds, and that's why Disney nearly had to... It nearly shut the lights off. 'Home On The Range' didn't make money, 'Chicken Little' didn't make money, there was a long dry period of years there where the company was in trouble, and it's because they did not understand who their real audience was.

0:58:34 WF: One of the last memories I have of the movie is when marketing was doing the trailers. They showed us a bunch of trailers. And one of them was non-linear. And it was like, "Yes, this will sell this movie." And the others were all very straight forward, "This is the story of a cow. " And the non-linear one was Eisner's pick. And I was like, "Well, we agree with Michael," and we thought that would get it over, but marketing vetoed Michael and us, and got linear trailers, which was depressing.

0:59:05 JS: Would I still have my office there in that hat building? The Director's offices were made in such a way that if you were agile enough, you could actually jump up on top of those offices. And I jumped up on top of my office and I took a sharpie and I wrote in 2004, and I gave the date that we approved our last scene, we completed the very last hand drawn animated movie that Disney will ever make, and I signed it. And that doesn't mean anything 'cause they gutted that whole floor and threw everything away. [laughter] They had an animation open house when I was between jobs, and we were there on the second floor in what they call now the Caffeine Patch, which is, they renovated that building and it looks nothing like it did when I was there. And I swear I stood exactly where my office was, and I think there was a foosball table there and a bunch of chairs. [laughter] And it's just different, it's all different now.

1:00:01 JS: We got everything done on time, we delivered it under budget. I'm gonna tell tales out of school. We had a budget of 125 million for that movie, 'cause that's what animated movies cost back then. And we delivered it, I think at 115, maybe 120, because we were told to hold the line and try not to overspend, and we did what we were told. When you finish one of these movies, you're extremely happy, it's a jubilant time, so the premiere was lots of fun. The thing was that you don't realize until much, much later, [chuckle] that whether you've got a failure or a success, so everybody treats it like it's a success. We walked down the red carpet, I met Leonard Maltin who I loved.

1:00:42 JS: Maltin reviewed it and Maltin liked it. He thought it was a great movie, he told me that we had a movie that felt like one of the classics. I've had people tell me that since, they respond to the look of the movie, which I think the look of the movie is flawless. The art direction is great, David Cutler, and the background painters did a really great job with the look. Joe Moshier was a character designer, and he happened to capture a really classic yet stylized look for that movie. Story-wise, it's at least coherent. Maltin said he really enjoyed it. I think that other critics weren't so kind, and rightfully so. [laughter]

1:01:18 JS: Good or bad, we delivered the movie, it didn't perform. I think that the company was okay with just saying, "Okay, that's that chapter of animation done. We'll close the book and we'll move on." There are two different ways it used to go. Under Tom Schumacher, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Peter Schneider, because they understand that it's a collaborative medium, a lot of the way the movie is, is because of the notes they give. Tom Schumacher was very fond of saying, "We're gonna join hands and take this step forward together." And what that meant was, it was a team effort, and if the team won, the team won, and if the team lost, it was a team failure. He truly believed that the success was a team success, failure was a team failure, and you couldn't pin it on any one person, that was his philosophy. David Stainton on the other hand, you could tell that when the movie came out and the movie didn't perform, what was interesting is that our standing fell dramatically. Suddenly we weren't invited to meetings anymore. Will was pitching an idea for a movie and I don't think it was received very well. I pitched an idea for a movie and they were like, "Thanks, but no thanks."

1:02:22 JS: It was very clear that that regime run by David, if your movie didn't do well, he was gonna dump it in your lap. Pretty easy to blame us for the failure of that. He was like, "Well, it was begun under Tom and these two idiots. It was obviously their fault, and we're not gonna let them direct another movie." So yay, I worked on one more movie after that, it was pretty clear that they weren't really interested in having me around, and I wasn't interested in being there any more. So when I left, it was mutual. They offered me a bunch of things and so then I was like, "No, I'll just go." [chuckle] So I left.

1:03:00 WF: Well, he was there for a couple of years after. I was let go right away after the movie came out. We kind of went our separate ways after the movie finished. The movie was really wrapped six months before it came out. And John was already developing other stuff and we were friends, but we weren't like comparing notes, and he'd made it clear he didn't want to collaborate again, not with me anyway. Whereas, I think there's a good version of that movie. I don't know if John feels the same way. I think John basically said yes, and I don't wanna speak for him, but John wanted the opportunity to write and he was willing to do it with me, and so we did it together. But I think on some level he's probably more regretful about the whole experience than I am.

1:03:45 JS: I look back on it. I can't watch that movie, [chuckle] because to me it reflects a lot us trying to please our bosses and it also... I think there's a lot of learning that I did, but there's also stuff I'm very proud of in that movie. There are jokes that I can point to, there are sequences, there's characters that I can point to that I go, "I did that, that's my influence."

1:04:08 S2: If there's one thing that makes Disney, Disney, it's its ability to transport viewers from their own harsh reality to wonderlands, where happily ever after is just around the corner. It's a formula that's worked wonders since 1937. Interestingly enough, 'Home On The Range' had all the elements that Disney uses to create magical illusions. Talking animals, songs, villains, heroes, and that Disney happy ending. However, 'Home On The Range' doesn't manage to capture that blinding Disney magic. Because the film fails to take the viewer on the immersive vacation from reality, it actually grounds them in the stark reality of life, a reality in which you spend every day wondering if you'll be fired, a reality in which cows taking over Washington is too political, a reality in which McDonald's has a significant creative input on art. The circumstances that John and Will encountered were begging for that Disney happy ending that never came. Instead of that happy ending there are innumerable questions about the elusive nature of magic.

1:05:13 WF: I never hated it. Like I said, I always felt good about the things that appealed to me about the movie. It was difficult to be objective about the movie itself while making it, 'cause we were so steeped in it for so long and it was such an intense period. I think there's a good version of that movie, we just didn't manage to find it. I actually would like to think that under the right circumstances where fewer things were going drastically wrong and probably at a different studio, you could make that story into a very entertaining movie.

1:05:46 JS: I don't have any complaints about anybody on that movie. I think everybody worked hard. I mean, that's kind of the lesson there. Everybody did their best and yet the movie's not that good. That's the sort of thing that fascinates me, the fact that people can work so hard and everybody's trying hard, and there's no laziness at all. Everybody's doing their damnedest, and yet the movie comes out, it's not that good.

[music]

[demitgibbs]

Love and Understanding: A Conversation with Cher

Cher is so low-key about being Cher that calling her is like calling your mom. “Hi,” she purrs with signature simplicity when I phone her presidential suite. We are speaking matter-of-factly about gay things, political things, Twitter things (“I’m finished with the emojis that we have”). About going to Walgreens and trying to remember why she went to Walgreens. This seems so very … normal?  

Certainly, Cher is the most multi of multi-hyphenates – fiery human rights activist, Auto-Tune pioneer, a unicorn, the Phoenix – but no, not at all normal. Not from down here, where we’ve basked in the long-reigning diva’s treasure trove of film and music and bedazzled Bob Mackie costumes, and admired her ability to get down, do a five-minute plank (seriously), and somehow get back up again. That motion is the time-tested motion of Cher’s enduring six-decade career. It’s where grit meets guts meets glitter.

Our Oz, our Wonderland; a safe, shimmering space providing escapist refuge since the 1960s, a span which has seen Sonny (Bono, her late ex-husband) and Cher, anthemic rock and gay dance, inventions and reinventions – Cher’s mere existence brought us closer to those within our own community, and closer to ourselves.

She has three Golden Globes, a Best Actress Oscar (for Moonstruck), a Grammy (for “Believe”) and an Emmy (for Cher: The Farewell Tour), and in December, she’ll be the recipient of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor for her indelible contributions to culture. But Cher’s superheroine, Hollywood-royalty sheen isn’t without genuine normal-person realness. Unlike “Believe,” there is nothing artificially manufactured about Cher’s no-nonsense, everywoman, Walgreens-shopper persona. Because even when her sequins glisten like a galaxy of stars on a lit Vegas stage, when she’s floating high above you in majestic-goddess fashion, and when she’s still wearing a variation of her “If I Could Turn Back Time” music video one-piece at her current age of 72, Cher does the least pop icon thing a pop icon can do: remind you she’s still living in your world.

In July, she did her gay-icon due diligence by helicoptering onto the set of Mamma Mia 2! Here We Go Again to play the role she’d been playing in front of the world, most discernibly to generations of baby-gays and grown-up gays: maternal pillar. When I met Cher in 2016 on Halloween at a fundraiser stop for Hillary Clinton in the suburbs of Michigan, I was struck by her Cher-ness, the glitzy legend momentarily eclipsed by her warm, inviting humanness.

Armed with a cannon of glittery ABBA bops, Cher has come to our rescue once again with an ode to the Swedish disco-pop supergroup titled – what else? – Dancing Queen, her 26th album and first since 2013’s Closer to the Truth. In December, The Cher Show, the musical about her life, which she is co-producing, officially opens on Broadway. And next year, because she just can’t help herself, she will embark on a tour appropriately titled Here We Go Again.

The night we spoke, Cher was laid-back, reflective and full of hearty chuckles as she talked about that Walgreens detour, kissing Silkwood co-star Meryl Streep, the wedding dress she’d wear to Trump’s impeachment party, the “breadcrumbs” of her legacy, Twitter, the devil, jumping out of a window – and not only her long-standing influence on the LGBTQ community, but our influence on her.  

Cher, I have a story you probably haven’t thought about in some time: its 2016, you’re at a Walgreens in Flint, Michigan, on Halloween. You were there campaigning for Hillary and some Walgreens shopper told you they loved your Cher costume.

Yes! Oh my god! Wasn’t that, like, the weirdest experience at the Walgreens?!

You tell me. I wasn’t there!

Haha! I needed to go into the Walgreens for something. Or: I had a moment to breathe …  I don’t know. I went into Walgreens and I was looking for something, and then the girls who were helping me realized it was me, and then there was a whole kind of hubbub thing and all these little trick-or-treaters came in as I was leaving. So they were all outside and I piled them into the limousine and we were hanging out in there. I mean, I was supposed to be going to a whole bunch of fundraisers – I ended up making them, of course – and I was busy playing with the kids.

Are you frequently mistaken for a Cher impersonator? Because, I mean, how often would the real Cher be at a Walgreens?

Right? And in Flint! Well, probably not often. Ha! But you know, the minute I start talking, they pretty much know it���s me.

You’re hard on yourself when it comes to your music. Are you happy with Dancing Queen?

I think I did a good job. Now whether people are gonna like it…

Less studio drama than that time you stormed out on producer Mark Taylor after recording “Believe”?

Well… yes. Haha! But I have to tell you something: These songs are not easy. You’d think, “Oh, they’re pop-y and Björn (Ulvaeus) and Benny (Andersson) and the girls start to get into them,” and they’re not. No more Mr. Nice Guy! They’re rough songs. And they’re much more intricate than I thought, but I had a great time. Some of them are easier, and some of them have some rough spots.

You could’ve easily found enough inspiration in the world’s current plight for another album like your 2000 indie album Not Commercial, which was dark.  

But we don’t need that right now! We need ABBA right now! If anything, we need to not be brought down because everything is so terrible. I was just talking to this one boy who came in and he was asking me what did I really think and I said, “Babe, I think the picture’s bleak. I think everyone’s gotta vote.”

Thankfully, Dancing Queen is a slice of gay heaven in hell.

Well, look, I wasn’t doing it for that, but I’m happy if it can make people happier than they were before they heard it.

When were you first aware that the LGBTQ community identified you as a gay icon?

I don’t think I was when I was with Sonny. I think it happened on The Sonny and Cher Show (which ran from 1976-1977), somehow. I don’t know – I don’t know how that happens. I mean, how does it happen? I have no idea! It’s just like, we made a pact and we’re a group and that’s it.

But you were seeing more of the LGBTQ community come out at some point? There was a switch?

Yeah, there was a change, there was definitely a change. And I think it was when I was not with Sonny anymore, and then somehow it all started to click. But I always had gay friends. I actually almost got arrested at a party with my best friend at school. He was gay but he couldn’t let anybody know, and he wanted me to go with him to a party and the party got raided. And we jumped out the bathroom window! It was high. We had to go over the bathtub into the window and jump out.

And you got away?

Yep.

Do you recall the moment that galvanized you to stand up as an ally for the LGBTQ community?

I’m not sure there was a moment; I’m not sure what it was. I just feel that, probably, there was a moment where guys thought I was just one of you. It’s like, there’s a moment where you’re either part of the group and you’re absorbed into the group and people love you as part of the group, or they don’t even know you’re alive, you know? Gay men are very loyal.

Look, I have a friend (makeup artist) Kevyn Aucoin – he’s dead now – but he told me when he was young, he was growing up in some place in Louisiana and said how horrible it was to have to hide and be frightened, and he said he loved listening to Cher records. I think that’s a dead giveaway! Haha! If you want to hide being gay, do not buy Cher records!

And I had another friend who had a Cher poster on his wall. I don’t remember where he came from – some small town too – and his dad ripped it off the wall and he bought another one, put it inside his closet and said it was a way to really be who he was in spite of who his dad wanted him to be.

When in your life have you felt like the LGBTQ community was on your side when the rest of the world maybe was not?

Always. I remember when I was doing (the play) Come Back to the Five and Dime (in 1976) and we had standing room only before we got reviewed, and after we got reviewed nobody came except the community – the community, and little grey-haired old women who came to matinees. We managed to stay open until we could build back up the following. Also, the gay community, they just don’t leave you, they stay with you; that’s one thing that always keeps you going.

What does that loyalty mean to you?

There’s been sometimes where I was just, you know, heartbroken about things, but it always gives you hope when there are people who think that you’re cute and worthwhile and an artist. It’s a great thing to have in your back pocket.

Your mother once told you when you were a child: “You won’t be the prettiest, you won’t be the most talented, you won’t be the smartest, but you are special.” What kind of mark did that leave on you?

It just left some sort of indelible, interior tattoo. Because I have gone through so much shit in my life. I can’t tell you how many times people have written, “She’ll be gone by next year.” I remember I got really pissed off at somebody and I went, “I’ll be here and you’ll be gone.” I don’t think I believed it at the time, but I was just angry.

So what you’re saying is what I’ve longed to hear: You’re immortal.

Well, no, I’m not saying that. Ha! I’m just saying I can be really pissy.

At the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again premiere in July, you and Meryl Streep kissed on the lips. Was that meant to be the Silkwood reunion the internet wanted it to be?

Haha! No! We were just thinking it was stupid! It was so dumb! Meryl came behind me and I didn’t know it, and then we turned to each other, she looked up at me and she said, “You weren’t this tall yesterday!” And we laughed. And we just kissed! I had on my 10-inch heels, and you can see how tall I am next to her and we just thought it was funny. I said, “Kiss me!” And we just kissed!

I have to tell you something: She is funny. She is wicked funny! And I don’t know that she gets to show that side all that often, but she’s wicked funny and she just will do anything for a lark. She’s got a really great serious side, but she’s got this really hysterical side too.

How do you hope your role as the mother of a trans son, Chaz Bono, has influenced other parents of LGBTQ kids?

This is what I think, and this is what I would hope: I would hope that, look, I didn’t go through it that easily. Both times. When I found out Chaz was gay, I didn’t go through it that easily; when I found out Chaz was (transitioning) … except we talked about it a lot, actually. But then Chaz didn’t mention it anymore, so I kind of forgot. And what I think is, there’s such a fear of losing the child you love, and what will replace that child.

I think it’s about the fear, mostly. I felt, who will this new person be? Because I know who the person is now, but who will the new person be and how will it work and will I have lost somebody? And then I thought of something else: I thought, my god, if I woke up tomorrow and I was a man, I would be gouging my eyes out. And so I know that if that’s what you feel then that must be so painful that it doesn’t make any difference what anyone else feels or what anyone else thinks. Chaz is so happy now and we get along better than ever.

You’re known to speak your mind. When’s the last time your mouth got you into trouble?

I think it was my fingers that got me into trouble last time. I had to delete a couple of things that I tweeted, which now what I do is: If I’m gonna just go off on a rant, I do it first, I look at it, I delete it, but I take a picture of it first and then I have it. Then I decide if I really wanna put it on my Twitter or if I really wanna tweet it – or if I got it out of my system. I said something that I thought was really funny but obviously the people on Trump’s side didn’t feel it was funny and I got so much shit that I didn’t expect.

There seems to be a fair amount of homophobes who you end up calling out.

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what they are. There’s just so much phobia of everybody. You’ve gotta be the same color, you’ve gotta like the same things, you’ve gotta be the same religion. It’s like if you’re not one of them, you’re an enemy.

You’re known for your emojis – do you have a go-to?

Well, I have a few of them. I have cake when I’m really happy, I have a ghost when I’m really happy, and when I’m really, really happy I put them together. I wish I had something that was more than the guy who’s got the blue head that is screaming. I wish I had somebody with a scream and his head was coming off the top of his body. I really wish there were better emojis. I’m finished with the emojis that we have.

Am I hearing right: You’re done with emojis?

Yeah, stick a fork in ’em! I just want there to be more. I like the emoji that’s the red-faced one with all the little signs over his mouth, which I always imagine is “fuck.” That’s what I put instead of the letters because they just get so angry. But also, I use the guy with the zipper across his mouth because I can’t say that. I have little fans, so I have to stop using that.

You could send out the shit emoji and you know what, Cher, the gays would go wild.

Oh, I’ve done that before! I put a bull and that together for when I think, “Oh, this is such bullshit.”

What will you be wearing to Trump’s impeachment party?

Well, I think that we’re all a little bit too premature for that, because I don’t think that’s gonna happen. But in my dreams I will be wearing something – oh, I think I’ll wear a wedding dress! Haha! I think I’ll just wear a white wedding dress. And a veil.

To symbolize?

Just purity and excitement and something new. A new phase!

And we’ll all go on a honeymoon after.

Yes, we’ll go on one big honeymoon forever afterwards. I don’t see that happening because I think that there too many really smart people, in the devilish kind of way. All those people who are advising him, they’re really smart. But they’re really from the dark side. I don’t mean the actual devil in reality – not that I think that there is a devil in reality – but just a real dark side of gutting the entire government and gutting everything that was meant to preserve our safety and the water and the air and the land and schools and healthcare and all of it.  

When it comes to our current pop landscape – Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, et cetera – who do you think does or doesn’t have the staying power that you’ve demonstrated throughout your entire career?

Gosh, I don’t know. It’s really hard to know until there’s more time under their belts, do you know what I mean? There’s got to be a little bit more time under their belts to know that. I think they’ve all done a pretty good job so far, but I think you’ve gotta have … like, I’m 54 years into this business, so I think we have to wait a minute.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we interpret an artist’s legacy after Aretha passed, and every time an icon passes on. Do you think about yours and what you hope that will be?

You know, I don’t really think about it. The only provision I’ve made is: I want all my friends and family to go to Paris and have a big party. I’m gonna fly everybody to Paris and have a big party. But no, I don’t think about it too much because it’s like, thinking about it can’t do me any good. It is what it is, and to think about it, what will that get me? Kind of nothing. Also, what’s really great is there’s music left behind and there’s film left behind, you know? I’m gonna leave a trail. I’ll leave breadcrumbs.

Cher’s new CD “Dancing Queen”  is available for purchase and her new tour “Here We Go Again Tour” hits 4 Florida cities: Fort Meyers (Jan 17); Fort Lauderdale (Jan 19); Orlando (Jan 21); Jacksonville (Jan 23). To purchase the new CD or tickets to her tour go to: Cher.com.

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/10/11/love-and-understanding-a-conversation-with-cher/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.tumblr.com/post/178950420815

[cynthiajayusa]

Love and Understanding: A Conversation with Cher

Cher is so low-key about being Cher that calling her is like calling your mom. “Hi,” she purrs with signature simplicity when I phone her presidential suite. We are speaking matter-of-factly about gay things, political things, Twitter things (“I’m finished with the emojis that we have”). About going to Walgreens and trying to remember why she went to Walgreens. This seems so very … normal?  

Certainly, Cher is the most multi of multi-hyphenates – fiery human rights activist, Auto-Tune pioneer, a unicorn, the Phoenix – but no, not at all normal. Not from down here, where we’ve basked in the long-reigning diva’s treasure trove of film and music and bedazzled Bob Mackie costumes, and admired her ability to get down, do a five-minute plank (seriously), and somehow get back up again. That motion is the time-tested motion of Cher’s enduring six-decade career. It’s where grit meets guts meets glitter.

Our Oz, our Wonderland; a safe, shimmering space providing escapist refuge since the 1960s, a span which has seen Sonny (Bono, her late ex-husband) and Cher, anthemic rock and gay dance, inventions and reinventions – Cher’s mere existence brought us closer to those within our own community, and closer to ourselves.

She has three Golden Globes, a Best Actress Oscar (for Moonstruck), a Grammy (for “Believe”) and an Emmy (for Cher: The Farewell Tour), and in December, she’ll be the recipient of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor for her indelible contributions to culture. But Cher’s superheroine, Hollywood-royalty sheen isn’t without genuine normal-person realness. Unlike “Believe,” there is nothing artificially manufactured about Cher’s no-nonsense, everywoman, Walgreens-shopper persona. Because even when her sequins glisten like a galaxy of stars on a lit Vegas stage, when she’s floating high above you in majestic-goddess fashion, and when she’s still wearing a variation of her “If I Could Turn Back Time” music video one-piece at her current age of 72, Cher does the least pop icon thing a pop icon can do: remind you she’s still living in your world.

In July, she did her gay-icon due diligence by helicoptering onto the set of Mamma Mia 2! Here We Go Again to play the role she’d been playing in front of the world, most discernibly to generations of baby-gays and grown-up gays: maternal pillar. When I met Cher in 2016 on Halloween at a fundraiser stop for Hillary Clinton in the suburbs of Michigan, I was struck by her Cher-ness, the glitzy legend momentarily eclipsed by her warm, inviting humanness.

Armed with a cannon of glittery ABBA bops, Cher has come to our rescue once again with an ode to the Swedish disco-pop supergroup titled – what else? – Dancing Queen, her 26th album and first since 2013’s Closer to the Truth. In December, The Cher Show, the musical about her life, which she is co-producing, officially opens on Broadway. And next year, because she just can’t help herself, she will embark on a tour appropriately titled Here We Go Again.

The night we spoke, Cher was laid-back, reflective and full of hearty chuckles as she talked about that Walgreens detour, kissing Silkwood co-star Meryl Streep, the wedding dress she’d wear to Trump’s impeachment party, the “breadcrumbs” of her legacy, Twitter, the devil, jumping out of a window – and not only her long-standing influence on the LGBTQ community, but our influence on her.  

Cher, I have a story you probably haven’t thought about in some time: its 2016, you’re at a Walgreens in Flint, Michigan, on Halloween. You were there campaigning for Hillary and some Walgreens shopper told you they loved your Cher costume.

Yes! Oh my god! Wasn’t that, like, the weirdest experience at the Walgreens?!

You tell me. I wasn’t there!

Haha! I needed to go into the Walgreens for something. Or: I had a moment to breathe …  I don’t know. I went into Walgreens and I was looking for something, and then the girls who were helping me realized it was me, and then there was a whole kind of hubbub thing and all these little trick-or-treaters came in as I was leaving. So they were all outside and I piled them into the limousine and we were hanging out in there. I mean, I was supposed to be going to a whole bunch of fundraisers – I ended up making them, of course – and I was busy playing with the kids.

Are you frequently mistaken for a Cher impersonator? Because, I mean, how often would the real Cher be at a Walgreens?

Right? And in Flint! Well, probably not often. Ha! But you know, the minute I start talking, they pretty much know it’s me.

You’re hard on yourself when it comes to your music. Are you happy with Dancing Queen?

I think I did a good job. Now whether people are gonna like it…

Less studio drama than that time you stormed out on producer Mark Taylor after recording “Believe”?

Well… yes. Haha! But I have to tell you something: These songs are not easy. You’d think, “Oh, they’re pop-y and Björn (Ulvaeus) and Benny (Andersson) and the girls start to get into them,” and they’re not. No more Mr. Nice Guy! They’re rough songs. And they’re much more intricate than I thought, but I had a great time. Some of them are easier, and some of them have some rough spots.

You could’ve easily found enough inspiration in the world’s current plight for another album like your 2000 indie album Not Commercial, which was dark.  

But we don’t need that right now! We need ABBA right now! If anything, we need to not be brought down because everything is so terrible. I was just talking to this one boy who came in and he was asking me what did I really think and I said, “Babe, I think the picture’s bleak. I think everyone’s gotta vote.”

Thankfully, Dancing Queen is a slice of gay heaven in hell.

Well, look, I wasn’t doing it for that, but I’m happy if it can make people happier than they were before they heard it.

When were you first aware that the LGBTQ community identified you as a gay icon?

I don’t think I was when I was with Sonny. I think it happened on The Sonny and Cher Show (which ran from 1976-1977), somehow. I don’t know – I don’t know how that happens. I mean, how does it happen? I have no idea! It’s just like, we made a pact and we’re a group and that’s it.

But you were seeing more of the LGBTQ community come out at some point? There was a switch?

Yeah, there was a change, there was definitely a change. And I think it was when I was not with Sonny anymore, and then somehow it all started to click. But I always had gay friends. I actually almost got arrested at a party with my best friend at school. He was gay but he couldn’t let anybody know, and he wanted me to go with him to a party and the party got raided. And we jumped out the bathroom window! It was high. We had to go over the bathtub into the window and jump out.

And you got away?

Yep.

Do you recall the moment that galvanized you to stand up as an ally for the LGBTQ community?

I’m not sure there was a moment; I’m not sure what it was. I just feel that, probably, there was a moment where guys thought I was just one of you. It’s like, there’s a moment where you’re either part of the group and you’re absorbed into the group and people love you as part of the group, or they don’t even know you’re alive, you know? Gay men are very loyal.

Look, I have a friend (makeup artist) Kevyn Aucoin – he’s dead now – but he told me when he was young, he was growing up in some place in Louisiana and said how horrible it was to have to hide and be frightened, and he said he loved listening to Cher records. I think that’s a dead giveaway! Haha! If you want to hide being gay, do not buy Cher records!

And I had another friend who had a Cher poster on his wall. I don’t remember where he came from – some small town too – and his dad ripped it off the wall and he bought another one, put it inside his closet and said it was a way to really be who he was in spite of who his dad wanted him to be.

When in your life have you felt like the LGBTQ community was on your side when the rest of the world maybe was not?

Always. I remember when I was doing (the play) Come Back to the Five and Dime (in 1976) and we had standing room only before we got reviewed, and after we got reviewed nobody came except the community – the community, and little grey-haired old women who came to matinees. We managed to stay open until we could build back up the following. Also, the gay community, they just don’t leave you, they stay with you; that’s one thing that always keeps you going.

What does that loyalty mean to you?

There’s been sometimes where I was just, you know, heartbroken about things, but it always gives you hope when there are people who think that you’re cute and worthwhile and an artist. It’s a great thing to have in your back pocket.

Your mother once told you when you were a child: “You won’t be the prettiest, you won’t be the most talented, you won’t be the smartest, but you are special.” What kind of mark did that leave on you?

It just left some sort of indelible, interior tattoo. Because I have gone through so much shit in my life. I can’t tell you how many times people have written, “She’ll be gone by next year.” I remember I got really pissed off at somebody and I went, “I’ll be here and you’ll be gone.” I don’t think I believed it at the time, but I was just angry.

So what you’re saying is what I’ve longed to hear: You’re immortal.

Well, no, I’m not saying that. Ha! I’m just saying I can be really pissy.

At the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again premiere in July, you and Meryl Streep kissed on the lips. Was that meant to be the Silkwood reunion the internet wanted it to be?

Haha! No! We were just thinking it was stupid! It was so dumb! Meryl came behind me and I didn’t know it, and then we turned to each other, she looked up at me and she said, “You weren’t this tall yesterday!” And we laughed. And we just kissed! I had on my 10-inch heels, and you can see how tall I am next to her and we just thought it was funny. I said, “Kiss me!” And we just kissed!

I have to tell you something: She is funny. She is wicked funny! And I don’t know that she gets to show that side all that often, but she’s wicked funny and she just will do anything for a lark. She’s got a really great serious side, but she’s got this really hysterical side too.

How do you hope your role as the mother of a trans son, Chaz Bono, has influenced other parents of LGBTQ kids?

This is what I think, and this is what I would hope: I would hope that, look, I didn’t go through it that easily. Both times. When I found out Chaz was gay, I didn’t go through it that easily; when I found out Chaz was (transitioning) … except we talked about it a lot, actually. But then Chaz didn’t mention it anymore, so I kind of forgot. And what I think is, there’s such a fear of losing the child you love, and what will replace that child.

I think it’s about the fear, mostly. I felt, who will this new person be? Because I know who the person is now, but who will the new person be and how will it work and will I have lost somebody? And then I thought of something else: I thought, my god, if I woke up tomorrow and I was a man, I would be gouging my eyes out. And so I know that if that’s what you feel then that must be so painful that it doesn’t make any difference what anyone else feels or what anyone else thinks. Chaz is so happy now and we get along better than ever.

You’re known to speak your mind. When’s the last time your mouth got you into trouble?

I think it was my fingers that got me into trouble last time. I had to delete a couple of things that I tweeted, which now what I do is: If I’m gonna just go off on a rant, I do it first, I look at it, I delete it, but I take a picture of it first and then I have it. Then I decide if I really wanna put it on my Twitter or if I really wanna tweet it – or if I got it out of my system. I said something that I thought was really funny but obviously the people on Trump’s side didn’t feel it was funny and I got so much shit that I didn’t expect.

There seems to be a fair amount of homophobes who you end up calling out.

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what they are. There’s just so much phobia of everybody. You’ve gotta be the same color, you’ve gotta like the same things, you’ve gotta be the same religion. It’s like if you’re not one of them, you’re an enemy.

You’re known for your emojis – do you have a go-to?

Well, I have a few of them. I have cake when I’m really happy, I have a ghost when I’m really happy, and when I’m really, really happy I put them together. I wish I had something that was more than the guy who’s got the blue head that is screaming. I wish I had somebody with a scream and his head was coming off the top of his body. I really wish there were better emojis. I’m finished with the emojis that we have.

Am I hearing right: You’re done with emojis?

Yeah, stick a fork in ’em! I just want there to be more. I like the emoji that’s the red-faced one with all the little signs over his mouth, which I always imagine is “fuck.” That’s what I put instead of the letters because they just get so angry. But also, I use the guy with the zipper across his mouth because I can’t say that. I have little fans, so I have to stop using that.

You could send out the shit emoji and you know what, Cher, the gays would go wild.

Oh, I’ve done that before! I put a bull and that together for when I think, “Oh, this is such bullshit.”

What will you be wearing to Trump’s impeachment party?

Well, I think that we’re all a little bit too premature for that, because I don’t think that’s gonna happen. But in my dreams I will be wearing something – oh, I think I’ll wear a wedding dress! Haha! I think I’ll just wear a white wedding dress. And a veil.

To symbolize?

Just purity and excitement and something new. A new phase!

And we’ll all go on a honeymoon after.

Yes, we’ll go on one big honeymoon forever afterwards. I don’t see that happening because I think that there too many really smart people, in the devilish kind of way. All those people who are advising him, they’re really smart. But they’re really from the dark side. I don’t mean the actual devil in reality – not that I think that there is a devil in reality – but just a real dark side of gutting the entire government and gutting everything that was meant to preserve our safety and the water and the air and the land and schools and healthcare and all of it.  

When it comes to our current pop landscape – Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, et cetera – who do you think does or doesn’t have the staying power that you’ve demonstrated throughout your entire career?

Gosh, I don’t know. It’s really hard to know until there’s more time under their belts, do you know what I mean? There’s got to be a little bit more time under their belts to know that. I think they’ve all done a pretty good job so far, but I think you’ve gotta have … like, I’m 54 years into this business, so I think we have to wait a minute.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we interpret an artist’s legacy after Aretha passed, and every time an icon passes on. Do you think about yours and what you hope that will be?

You know, I don’t really think about it. The only provision I’ve made is: I want all my friends and family to go to Paris and have a big party. I’m gonna fly everybody to Paris and have a big party. But no, I don’t think about it too much because it’s like, thinking about it can’t do me any good. It is what it is, and to think about it, what will that get me? Kind of nothing. Also, what’s really great is there’s music left behind and there’s film left behind, you know? I’m gonna leave a trail. I’ll leave breadcrumbs.

Cher’s new CD “Dancing Queen”  is available for purchase and her new tour “Here We Go Again Tour” hits 4 Florida cities: Fort Meyers (Jan 17); Fort Lauderdale (Jan 19); Orlando (Jan 21); Jacksonville (Jan 23). To purchase the new CD or tickets to her tour go to: Cher.com.

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/10/11/love-and-understanding-a-conversation-with-cher/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazin.blogspot.com/2018/10/love-and-understanding-conversation.html

[amybkirkusa]

July 2018 Top Articles

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?:“For China, Tech Giant Tencent Is Both a National Champion and a Threat” (WSJ, 7/9/18)

Money Laundering Scandal (Danske Bank): “Danske Bank’s money laundering scandal spooks investors” (FT, 7/8/18)

U.S. Stock Bubble:“Stock Buybacks Are Booming, but Share Prices Aren’t Budging” (FT, 7/8/18)

Money Laundering Scandal (Danske Bank): “Danske dented as claims of money laundering swirl” (FT, 7/7/18)

Bribery Investigation of Glencore: “Glencore targeted by US Department of Justice” (FT, 7/7/18)

Public Pension Funds:“Two public pension funds ‘wasted $5.5bn on Wall St fees’” (FT, 7/7/18)

Public Pension Funds: “Pennsylvania state treasurer condemns $5.5bn pension fee ‘waste’” (FT, 7/7/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?: “Wireless speaker pioneer Sonos files for U.S. IPO” (LAT, 7/6/18)

China Economic Crisis: “China market turmoil revives memories of previous carnage” (FT, 7/6/18)

CFPB: “Leandra English resigns from CFPB and drops her legal fight to be its acting director” (LAT, 7/6/18)

CFPB: “Consumer Bureau Official Who Sued Trump to Step Down and Drop Her Suit” (NYT, 7/6/18)

Bribery Investigation of Glencore: “Glencore: an audacious business model in the dock” (FT, 7/6/18)

China Debt Bubble: “China deleveraging: shocking the boondocks” (FT, 7/6/18)

Africa Bribery Case: “Law firm accuses ENRC of bribes, sanctions-busting and overpayment” (FT, 7/6/18)

$230M Russian Money Laundering Scheme: “Bill Browder to launch criminal complaint against Danske Bank” (FT, 7/6/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?: “Xiaomi IPO a cautionary tale for other Chinese companies” (FT, 7/6/18)

Europe Junk Bonds: “Europe’s stressed junk bonds are of a recent vintage” (FT, 7/6/18)

Money Laundering: “The EU is losing its battle against money laundering”  (FT, 7/6/18)

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency: “Swiss bourse launches cryptocurrency platform” (FT, 7/5/18)

Cohen’s Insider Trading Legacy: “Steven Cohen blocked by UK regulator from reopening fund” (FT, 7/5/18)

SEC $77 Million Settlement of CS Bribery Case: “Credit Suisse Fined $77 Million in Corruption Inquiry” (NYT, 7/5/18)

New Global Economic Crisis?:“Is the dollar to blame for the global market malaise?” (WSJ, 7/5/18)

Litigation Finance Firms: “The new hot law job: litigation finance” (WSJ, 7/5/18)

$77 Million Settlement of Credit Suisse Bribery Case: “Credit Suisse Fined $77 Million Over ‘Relationship Hires’ in Asia” (WSJ, 7/5/18)

Hedge Funds: “‘This Is Unbelievable’: A Hedge Fund Star Dims, and Investors Flee” (WSJ, 7/4/18)

1MDB Corruption Investigation: “Malaysia’s former prime minister charged in corruption case” (FT, 7/4/18)

 Private Equity and Public Pension Funds: “Private equity sleight of hand makes so-so investments look superb, critics say” (LAT, 7/3/18)

 KPMG Audit of Abraaj Group: “KPMG Has Close Ties to Troubled Private Equity Firm” (WSJ, 7/3/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?: “IPO market posts blistering first half” (WSJ, 7/2/18)

Big Bank “Stress Tests”: “Morgan Stanley, Goldman got help from fed on stress tests” (WSJ, 7/2/18)

$625.3 Million Judgement PwC: “Judge rules PricewaterhouseCoopers must pay $625.3 million in damages” (WSJ, 7/2/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?:“Switzerland looks to liberalise cryptocurrency banking access” (FT, 7/2/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?: “Lyft follows Uber into bike-sharing lane, buying owner of CitiBike” (NYT, 7/2/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?: “Lyft buys Motivate, the nation’s biggest bike-share business” (LAT, 7/2/18)

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Bubble: “What crypto downturn? ICO fundraising surges in 2018” (WSJ, 7/1/18)

New IPO and Private Valuation (Unicorns and Decacorns) Bubble?: “Wall Street’s strong run of IPOs fueled by technology listings” (FT, 7/1/18)

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Bubble:“Look out, Bitcoin has lost its tether” (WSJ, 7/1/18)

Financial Crisis 1o Years Later: “The Fed and Lehman Brothers’ review: When the Bailouts Stopped” (WSJ, 7/1/18)

Big Bank “Stress Tests”: “Warren Buffett is big winner after US bank stress tests” (FT, 7/1/18)

Deutsche Bank Legal and Regulatory Woes: “Stress-testing banks is not just a numbers game” (FT, 7/1/18)

Blockchain and CB: “Wyoming’s pioneering crypto cowboys beef up the supply chain” (FT, 7/1/18)

Emerging Market Debt Bubble: “Bond funds butchered in emerging markets rout” (FT, 7/1/18)

from News About Securities Fraud https://corporatefraud.usc.edu/2018/07/10/july-2018-top-articles/