#rick atkinson

[smashpages]

The Omega Eleven #1 variant covers by Zac Atkinson -- a "Rick & Morty" tribute and a "Calvin & Hobbes" variant. The time-travel heist comic is currently being funded on Kickstarter.

[dykesynthezoid]

The amount of material George S. Patton on his own has given me bc he was just that fucking evil is crazy. Every new anecdote I read about this guy is like being hit in the head with a brick

Like????? HELLO????????

Been researching both ancient Rome and the allied invasion of Sicily for an original story idea bc drawing a throughline interrogating the connections between fascism, nationalism, patriotism, patriarchal masculinity, queerness, etc across time and space is deeply interesting (especially if it’s using vampires. don’t worry about it) but also the more I read the more I end up going “god I wish there wasn’t so much to work with here.” Bc it’s actually devastating. Just me out loud going “what the fuck” and having to get up and walk around my house every five minutes. Incredible for me trying to build a story and fucking harrowing for everyone else

[mariacallous]

Right-Wing Media Sails On Despite Russian Scheme

It was the day before the most recent presidential debate and Benny Johnson, the popular right-wing podcaster and YouTube show host, was amplifying the latest falsehood—soon to be heard direct from Republican candidate Donald Trump’s mouth���that Haitian immigrants were dining on people’s cats. “This story is insane, all right!” Johnson chortled on The Benny Show. “I doubt any corporate media is going to go and tell the story of Springfield, Ohio, but we have to, actually, as our social obligation to you.”

The Sept. 9 video racked up more than 132,000 views and helps explain why The Benny Show has more than 2.4 million subscribers on YouTube. It also illuminates why its host—once the viral political editor of BuzzFeed before he was fired for multiple instances of plagiarism in 2014—was recruited by Tenet Media, a right-wing Tennessee-based media company identified by the US Department of Justice this month as a “covert project” of RT, the Russian state-controlled media outlet. “Benny used to say, ‘Do you know the difference between a good click and a bad click? They’re just clicks,’” recalls Bubba Atkinson, founder of Bubba News, a daily center-right newsletter, who worked with Johnson in the past. “I think that’s demonstrative of the ethos he lives by, where, you know, almost all attention is good for him.”

Johnson has issued a statement saying he was unaware of Tenet’s Kremlin ties. So have several of the company’s other prominent commentators, most notably the self-described red-pilled former leftist Dave Rubin and skateboarding libertarian Tim Pool. That may very well be true. Still, that such relatively big names in right-wing circles could find themselves entangled with anti-American forces—wittingly or unwittingly—speaks volumes about the state of conservative media in the age of Trump.

If you think of the hierarchy of the right-wing media world, particularly on the personality side, as a three-tiered pyramid, the top is occupied by Fox News figures like Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity. Go down a level, and you’ll find Ben Shapiro and his co-hosts at the Daily Wire, the Nashville company aspiring to be a right-wing Walt Disney Co. Then there’s a third tier of self-employed figures like Johnson, Pool and Rubin. Without the protection or the guardrails of an employer, they must compete for traffic with everybody else and have a financial incentive to go to extremes.

That could mean Johnson mocking the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney and Trump nemesis Fani Willis as “Big Fani,” or Pool hosting alt-right figures such as Richard Spencer and former Breitbart News senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who’ve been largely shunned for good reason elsewhere in conservative circles. But that only seems to have made Tenet’s commentators more attractive to RT. According to the indictment, their messages “are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying US domestic divisions.”

“Look, the Russians were not stupid,” says Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a former Republican political consultant. “They recognized that these guys are very much influencers who can spread the kind of messages they wanted distributed to a wider audience, to drive social media engagement through the roof.” (Neither Tenet nor Johnson, Pool or Rubin responded to interview requests for this story.)

Given the nature of their businesses, the Tenet figures were also clearly more susceptible to the dangling of large checks—in at least one instance, $100,000 per video—than their peers with cushier employment arrangements. As Pool put it in an appearance on The Ben Shapiro Show after the indictment’s unveiling, he gets these kinds of offers all the time. “When someone reaches out to us, I say, ‘Great, cool. Someone handle it and talk to the lawyers,’” Pool told Shapiro. “The lawyers come back, do their due diligence, and then we say sure—or whatever.”

He added, “We have people tweeting at me, like, give the money back. Like dude, let me put it this way, we’re talking to our legal department.”

None of this impresses Cenk Uygur, founder of TYTs, a progressive online news network, who has appeared on Pool’s show—or at least he did before the news of the host’s RT connection. “Come on, man, somebody gives you $100,000 a video?” Uygur says. “That makes me ask, are other people giving you $100,000 a video? And who are they? If this is so normal, how often does this happen for right-wing media? And who else is giving you money for propaganda?”

As for Johnson, he’s continuing to rack up views on YouTube. Despite his association with Tenet, he’s had little trouble getting prominent Republicans to appear, including sitting members of Congress. The Benny Show goes on.

[deadpresidents]

Are there any historians who you make sure to get every book that they write no matter what the subject is and if so who?

Oh yeah, most definitely, there are a number of them. Just to name a few: Doris Kearns Goodwin; H.W. Brands; Jon Meacham; Rick Atkinson; Nathaniel Philbrick; Bob Woodward; Robert Caro; Robert Dallek; Rick Perlstein; Ron Chernow; Peter Baker; Fergus M. Bordewich; David I. Kertzer; David McCullough; Ben Macintyre; Edmund Morris; Erik Larson; David O. Stewart; James F. Simon; James Holland; Antony Beevor; Joseph J. Ellis; Christopher Hibbert; Douglas Brinkley; Lawrence Wright...the list goes on-and-on and I'm undoubtedly forgetting some important names, but I definitely have every book published by all of those authors (except for Beevor, who I'm missing a few titles from). Not only am I a book lover and book collector, but I'm kind of a completist, so it's often hard me to resist going out of my way to get everything by certain authors.

(And they aren't historians, but I also am a completist when it comes to Sam Shepard, John Steinbeck, Robert Greene, and Hunter S. Thompson.)

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

I love reading your asks, so I wanted to ask you if you had any favorite female characters from Rik and Ade projects?

Helloooo! Thank you, that's so sweet. ❤️ Let's see... I'm going to single out some TYO characters specifically and then talk more generally. This post is absolutely going to become a big, incoherent mess. 😂

Sue from Sociology is my favourite minor TYO character. Don't get me wrong, I love Helen the Murderess too, but there's something that draws me to Sue. To be fair, I'm just seriously weak for Jennifer Saunders in general, and she's basically done up as a female Rick here, if Rick was actually cool. I like inserting her into fanfic sometimes (okay, once... but I have plans). She's very much a background character for the majority of Interesting, but Interesting itself is one of the first (and only, possibly the only?) time there are lots of women in a TYO scene at once, even if they're not getting to do much. Shout out to Dawn's Christian who gets crushed by the gigantic sandwich too, of course! (As an aside, I find it funny that both Jennifer and Dawn got to strangle/smother Mike on the sofa on different occasions.)

Vyvyan's mum. Pauline Melville pops up a couple of other times in TYO as well, and she's just very good whenever she does. I believe she gave French & Saunders a bit of guidance when they were all on the standup circuit. Vyv's mum is a great character because she's just SO awful. Let female characters be awful! She's so spiky and sharp in every way, and she's probably the only semi-developed female character who appears on the show. I think letting the audience meet her gives Vyvyan a bit of texture and depth - sure, we could imagine any family background for any of them, but we're being told THIS HERE is Vyvyan's. Poor Vyv. Pauline Melville herself, of course, is a prize-winning writer now! The dream.

The devil and her condemned soul is one of my favourite TYO cutaway segments. The condemned soul is Helen Atkinson-Wood, who is most well-known for playing Mrs Miggins in Blackadder the Third. She also has a small role in the Comic Strip episode Consuela (and possibly others, but I looked up the cast list to that one yonks ago because it's my favourite). I wonder if Lise wrote this sketch, considering the subject matter. Either way, Dawn and Helen's delivery is great, especially the faux discrete way Dawn says "period pains". I hope it put stuffy men's heckles up.

Aside from TYO, Jen and Dawn were often the only female presence in the Comic Strip episodes, particularly the earlier ones. Of the first two series, Dawn wrote Summer School and Jen wrote Slags - neither were standout episodes of their series, the kind often recalled today, but with Slags especially, the female characters within them were given more agency and stake in the plot than usual. Jen played five different characters in Happy Families in 1985 - a little gem written by Ben and also starring Ade.

I'd like to give a little shout out to Helen Lederer, who popped up a lot in Rik and Ade's - and French & Saunders' - comic output, while never really being given her own opportunity to shine on TV. Oh, and I'd also like to give a shout out to Marsha Fitzalan, who played Sarah B'Stard in The New Statesman - she did such a good job of playing an intensely flawed, funny female character. There are countless male characters who are basically terrible people - I mean, Alan B'Stard for one - and it's vital women are also allowed to be that awful in comedy.

Comedy has always been a pretty male sphere. Even these days, there are definitely still men Ricky Gervais who believe women can't be funny. Misogyny is still massively prevalent in society. Male comics attract female attention; female comics attract male abuse. That's a simplification and generalisation, of course, but it's broadly true. And I don't see younger generations of men getting better with this, to be honest. Actually, I see them getting worse (thanks, Andrew Tate). Sorry to be all doom and gloom!

When Rik and Ade started out in comedy, women getting to play characters other than wives or the like - that is, straight characters and caricatures there largely for the male characters to bounce off of for their laughs - was still uncommon. Despite the existence of successful female comics across the pond like Lucille Ball, and beloved 1970s sitcom The Good Life having a main cast split evenly gender-wise (I know Richard Briers technically had first credit, but Penelope Keith as Margo Leadbetter was absolutely the funniest of the four of them), there was a genuine belief that women couldn't (and maybe shouldn't) be doing comedy.

Women like Victoria Wood were pushing boundaries in important ways around the time of the alternative comedy boom by writing specifically about women (and, quite often, northern women - which I personally think is important, since Last of the Summer Wine had such a chokehold on portraying almost all of its female characters as ostensibly the same). Her sitcom dinnerladies was both melancholic and hilarious. Her sketch shows and other comic output, quite often featuring Julie Walters (her friend and muse), Celia Imrie, and many others, were all written entirely by her. She was also a gifted pianist and wrote several comic songs.

All of this is to say, Victoria Wood definitely helped pave the way for French & Saunders. She even referred to herself as an alternative comedian in her material. But honestly, I don't think it was until much later that women stopped being regularly restricted to straight roles in comedies created by men (which, of course, most comedies were). This was part of why Absolutely Fabulous, written by Jen, was such a breath of fresh air in the 1990s. For once, every single major character was a woman - men were the scarcity! And Jen has mentioned before that producers would constantly pressure her to write more roles for men. Meanwhile, we can observe that Girls on Top (dubbed the female TYO, which is... sort of true and sort of not), which Dawn and Jen starred in with Ruby Wax and Tracey Ullman in the 1980s, isn't very well-known today. I'm not 100% sure how well it was received at the time, but clearly it wasn't as popular as TYO had been before it. Ruby Wax and Tracey Ullman have both also had successful careers in comedy, but I'd argue that's mainly thanks (particularly in Tracy's case) to opportunities in America.

So I'm not saying women never got to be the funny (also I'm just talking about the UK), but the fact is: if your comedy has a completely/majority male cast, with women only popping up in supporting roles or in guest appearances, it's obvious which characters are going to be better developed, more beloved, and just funnier. I mean, even the Vicar of Dibley, which was obviously written for Dawn and showcases her comic prowess, features a supporting cast of funny men (there was also Emma Chambers as Alice and Liz Smith as Leticia - before she was killed off - but the women were outnumbered by the men). I get that this perhaps fits with the idea of a tiny, slightly backwards village in Oxfordshire - and the fact Geraldine was a female vicar shocking these men was very important to the premise - but still.

We know certain men just REALLY struggle at writing women, too, so they've either done a really bad job or just avoided trying altogether. I do have an example for this, but I don't want to name them since I do love the show they created - it's just, y'know, writing women is definitely not their strong suit! And I'm really not trying to poo poo any shows here by pointing this out. I'm just making observations. All of these comedies I'm referencing here are very old now.

So! To get back to where I started with this!

I love that Lise Mayer was one of the writers of The Young Ones. In some ways, the fact one of the writers was a woman feels pretty incredible for 1982. At the same time, though, it's not surprising that she's often the forgotten one when people talk about who wrote TYO.

Rik and Ade were/are feminists, and it obviously wasn't their fault as individuals that comedy was so male - comedy was also restrictive in other ways before them. In terms of social class and political attitudes, they were definitely something refreshing and new. That said, it wouldn't be until later, with people like Caroline Aherne (who really changed the fundamentals of the sitcom genre with The Royle Family), that working class voices who weren't fucking Bernard Manning actually got some notice in comedy. And I've not even mentioned race in this ramble. If comedy was male, it was even more pale. There were comedies starring black and Asian comics in the 1980s and 1990s that started to break through - The Lenny Henry Show, Chef!, Desmond's, The Real McCoy, Goodness Gracious Me - but there's no denying BAME people, BAME women especially, have had to struggle a lot for a voice in comedy. Comedy is more diverse today than it was 40 years ago. There has been progress. But it's absolutely still male dominated, and still very white, at the top.

Rik was pegged as the golden boy of the alternative comedy movement, and he was and is undoubtedly remembered for so many different comedies. But in terms of pure success and fame? Actually, I think Dawn and Jen have been the standouts of their cohort. I don't think anyone would've predicted this 40 odd years ago - I mean, Christ, Rik had to speak up just to ensure they got equal pay at The Comic Strip. The boys were given their chance to shine first, there's no doubt about that. But it was Dawn and Jen who were the subjects of a BBC documentary last Christmas.

...Maybe there is hope for funny women, after all.

[directdogman]

Heya, been watching Mr bean lately and thought I'd ask you if there's anything I should know about the bean lore

i deadass almost responded 'why are you watching mr bean' on its own, but hey. it's not every day i get an ask like this. it's actually a common fan misconception that I like Mr Bean all that much, but I'll still attempt to answer this question in good faith. first question to ask is, animated or live action?

for the live action show, I could talk about it for quite a long time, but long story short, it was created by the same creative team as Blackadder's first season (more or less), with Rowan Atkinson starring, Atkinson and Richard Curtis co-writing and Howard Goodall scoring the show. The famous chorale arrangement of the Mr Bean theme is actually real Latin too. Something people forget about Rowan Atkinson is incredibly well educated. In fact, him, Richard Curtis and Howard Goodall all met in Oxford college iirc.

The first line of the live action series theme literally translates as 'behold the man who is bean'. Beyond that, the only real surface level live action lore I can really think of, off the top of my head, is that Mr Bean has co-acted with Willem Dafoe, has destroyed priceless artwork, has been driven around downtown LA while flipping the bird at people he passed, was almost briefly named 'mr cauliflower', etc. Oh, also, Mr Bean isn't fully mute in the live action series, like in the pilot, where he speaks at length before sitting for a university math examination that he isn't prepared to take. So, yes, Mr Bean has canonically attended a university.

I do have a pretty big theory that alleges that Doug Walker's relationship with the Nostalgia Critic is more or less the same as Rowan Atkinson's with Mr Bean, but I refuse to explain Mr Bean lore if I feel it may come up later on in a trial or contribute to me ending up in a padded cell somewhere, so you'll just have to sit and wonder, I'm afraid.

OKAY, onto the cartoon series. The important thing to remember about the cartoon series is that it had two iterations. The run of the Mr Bean cartoon was aired in the early 2000's. Rowan Atkinson was apparently in the writer's room for it, and Mr Bean, like in official media, is semi-mute in it. He often just emotes using various grunts, but can utter short sentences. The animation is very fluid and the characters frequently go off model in order to appear more expressive. The episode plots were also pretty off the wall in comparison to the second iteration. You know the Citadel of Ricks in Rick and Morty, where Rick meets a whole space ship full of identical clones of himself? Yeah, it's canon to Mr Bean too, but y'know. It's the Citadel of Beans, I guess.

In case the embedded timestamp doesn't automatically work, jump to 9:02 and watch until at least 9:13. Or don't watch any of it at all. Your call. Also no, it's not a dream sequence or anything like that, it's fully canon and really happening. It also implies that Mr Bean remembers that he's an alien for the rest of the series. The scene even ends with the direct implication that the fan theory that live action Mr Bean is an alien IS correct. (Some have speculated that he was perhaps a fallen angel too.) By the way, I'm linking to a shitty fan reupload so this Mr Bean clip instead of any of the readily available public resources because fuck YOU Mr Bean, I refuse to give you your now undeserved 10th of a cent in ad revenue after your DISGRACEFUL NFT line. More on that later.

After they finished up with the early 2000's cartoon series, the show went off the air for a literal decade and then they brought it back, out of nowhere, with rigid (and decidedly cheaper to produce) digital animation. You could compare the change in animation to, say, The Simpsons or Family Guy, where the art style remains the same for every design/background that's borrowed from the older seasons, but now everything moves stiffly/robotically. Newer one-off character designs are also way flatter and less cartoonish, as if the creative juices that went into the original cartoon series are... gone.

I have to say, I haven't seen all of these episodes because they're really not very good. The writing is a lot worse. Mr Bean just constantly talks for some reason, which feels like a pretty stark abandonment of the core tenets of the character imo. Come to think of it, the other recurring characters (like his landlord, Mrs Wicket) is also strangely out of character. Long story short, they just don't care anymore.

The funny thing about the baffling Mr Bean NFT line is that, well, there's basically 4 'eras' of Mr Bean... at least, according to how I group it. Era 1 is the live action series, era 2 is made up of the 2 feature length Mr Bean movies (I group them together, despite them coming out over a decade apart as they don't really connect directly to the main Mr Bean lore and take place outside of London), era 3 is the early 2000's run of the cartoon, and the era 4 is the 2010's cartoon reboot.

Of ALL of the 4 possible places they could pull content from, only ONE iteration of Mr Bean contained digital, pre-cropped assets... The cartoon reboot, which the production company that owns the rights to the character (Tiger Aspect Productions) obviously had, leading to this really strange revisionism (more or less gaslighting) from the Mr Bean brand, like "hey, remember Mr Bean? Remember him? He has an NFT line now! Remember Mr Bean? BUY BUY BUY" Which is funny, because statistically, of all of the four eras, the shitty cartoon reboot is the only era that does not contain anything that interesting to talk about, and is the only one that doesn't contain memorable Mr Bean media, arguably.

Some people 100% remember the time Mr Bean put an armchair on TOP of his car and drove it around in the live action series. Some people remember watching the movies in the theater as a kid and some people remember the zany episodes of the early cartoon series, which aired on Nickelodeon owned channels in the early 2000's... Nobody remembers the time Mr Bean set up a pizza place called 'pizza bean'. Seriously, there's several episodes in the new animated series where the guy just starts up a get rich quick scheme, which falls apart by the end of the episode. It's like Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, except instead of the Ed boys, you're stuck in an elevator alone with an our of character Mr Bean.

So, yeah, the company REALLY milked the final seasons of the cartoon, despite it being the worst Mr Bean content, because that way, they could produce easy content that didn't require any more work. They don't even get Rowan Atkinson in for voices most of the time they make 'new material', just using recycled clips from a Mr Bean soundboard. The entire NFT line, by the way, is just random frames from the cartoon reboot placed against re-used backgrounds from the show, or just in front of a gradient/solid colour. Pretty cheeky given that they minted these NFTS for, get this, over $100 each. I personally wouldn't even accept someone else's money in exchange for having to own a Mr Bean NFT, so I can't imagine who'd actually spend their hard earned money on such a thing.

I could keep going, but sooner or later, an Al-Qaeda sniper is gonna take me out if I keep typing, so best quit while I'm ahead. You were a FOOL to have read this

[dustedmagazine]

Dusted Mid-Year 2023, Part Three (The Lists)

Natural Information Society

Swapping records is fun, but when it comes down to it, we like what we like.  What’s that?  Glad you asked.  Read on for our writers’ mid-year favorites.    

Jennifer Kelly

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Robert Forster — The Candle and the Flame (Tapete) 

The Drin — Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom (Feel It)

En Attendant Ana — Principia (Trouble in Mind)

Stella Kola—S-T (Self-Release)

Mudhoney — Plastic Eternity (Sub Pop)

Sleaford Mods — UK Grim (Domino)

The Tubs — Dead Meat (Trouble in Mind)

Nighttime — Keeper Is the Heart (BaDaBing)

Purling Hiss — Drag on Girard (Drag City)

Lonnie Holley — Oh Me Oh My (Jagjaguwar)

The Toads—In the Wilderness (Upset the Rhythm)

Dan Melchior—Welcome to Redacted City (Midnight Cruiser)

James and the Giants—S-T (Kill Rock Stars)

Ben Chasny and Rick Tomlinson—Waves (VOIX)

Bill Meyer

Natural Information Society — Since Time Is Gravity (Eremite)

Elkhorn — On the Whole Universe in All Directions (Centripetal Force)

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Robert Forster — The Candle and the Flame (Tapete) 

The Necks — Travel (Northern Spy)

Milford Graves — Children of the Forest (Black Editions)

Peter Brötzman  Heather Leigh — Naked Nudes (Trost)

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)

Magic Tuber Band — Tarantism (Feeding Tube)

Drew Gardner — Flowers in Space (Feeding Tube)

Jozef Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch — American Landscapes (Incunambulum)

Dave Rempis/Elisabeth Harnik/Tim Daisy — Earscratcher (Aerophonic)

Alasdair Roberts — Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall (Drag City)

Jonathan Shaw

BIG BRAVE — nature morte (Thrill Jockey)

Wound Man — Human Outline (Iron Lung) 

Gel — Only Constant (Convulse)

Home Front — Games of Power (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Sleaford Mods — UK Grim (Domino)

Spirit Possession — Of the Sign… (Profound Lore)

Bryon Hayes

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)

Big Blood — First Aid Kit (Feeding Tube / BaDaBing)

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Califone — Villagers (Jealous Butcher)

M. Sage — Paradise Crick (RVNG Intl.)

The Reds, Pinks & Purples — The Town That Cursed Your Name (Slumberland)

John Atkinson — Energy Fields (AKP Recordings)

Joseph Allred — What Strange Flowers Grow in the Shade (Feeding Tube)

The Far Sound — The Far Sound (Centripetal Force)

Ulaan Khol — Milk Thistle (Desastre)

Powers / Pulice / Rolin — Prism (Cached Media)

Lia Kohl — The Ceiling Reposes (American Dreams)

Tim Clarke

Jana Horn — The Window Is The Dream (No Quarter)

Arrowounds — In The Octopus Pond (Lost Tribe Sound)

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Pile — All Fiction (Exploding In Sound)

Tim Hecker — No Highs (Kranky)

Califone — Villagers (Jealous Butcher)

King Krule — Space Heavy (XL/Matador)

This Is The Kit — Careful Of Your Keepers (Rough Trade)

Cory Hanson — Western Cum (Drag City)

Andy Shauf — Norm (Anti-)

Patrick Masterson

Pile —  All Fiction (Exploding in Sound)

Yves Tumor — Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) (Warp)

Wednesday — Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans)

Jayda G — Guy (Ninja Tune)

Ryuichi Sakamoto — 12 (Milan)

Malla — Fresko (Solina)

Skech185 — He Left Nothing for the Swim Back (Backwoodz Studioz)

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru — Jerusalem (Mississippi)

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Andrea — Due in Color (Ilian Tape)

Memphis LK — Too Much Fun EP (Remote Control)

BigXthaPlug — Amar (United Masters)

Andrew Forell

Algiers — Shook (Matador)

King Vision Ultra — Shook World (Hosted by Algiers)

Asher Gamedze — Turbulence & Pulse (International Anthem)

99LETTERS — Makafushigi (Disciples)

The Drin�� Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom (Drunken Sailor)

Comet Gain — The Misfit Jukebox (Tapete)

billy woods & Kenny Segal — Maps (Backwoodz Studioz)

Kevin Richard Martin — Above the Clouds (self-released)

SQÜRL — Silver Haze (Sacred Bones)

The Murder Capital — Gigi’s Recovery (Human Season)

Parasite Jazz — Paradise Jazz (Disques de la Spirale)

Christian Carey

The Reds, Pinks, and Purples — The Town that Cursed Your Name (Slumberland)

Aaron Cassidy —  A Way of Making Ghosts (Kairos)

Arrowounds —  In the Octopus Pond (Settled Scores)

V/A – Red Hot and Ra: Nuclear War LP (Red Hot)

Oval —  Romantiq (Thrill Jockey)

Meg Baird —  Furling (Drag City)

Black Duck —  S/T (Thrill Jockey)

Mother, Sister, Daughter —  Musica Secreta (Lucky Music)

Natural Information Society – Since Time is Gravity (Eremite)

Alasdair Roberts —  Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall (Drag City)

Fever Ray —  Radical Romantics (Mute)

James Romig —  Spaces (Sawyer Editions)

Brad Mehldau —  Your Mother Should Know (Nonesuch)

Nina Berman and Steve Beck —  Milton Babbitt: Works for Treble Voice and Piano (New Focus)

Marc Ducret —  Palm Sweat (Out of Your Head)

Jennifer Grim —  Through Broken Time (New Focus)

Erkki — Sven Tüür: Canticum Canticorum Caritatis (Alpha Classics)

James Ilgenfritz —  #entrainments (Frequent Seams)

Brandon Lopez —  vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile (TAO Forms)

Lonnie Holley —  Oh Me Oh My (Jagjaguwar)

John Liberatore —  Catch Somewhere (New Focus Recordings)

Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes —  A Short Diary (ECM Records)

Frederic Rzewski —  Late Piano Works (Naxos)

Rebecca Saunders —  Skin (NMC)

Guided by Voices —  La La Land (self— released)

Susan Narucki and Donald Berman —  This Island (Avie)

Chamber Music From Hell —  Chris Opperman (Purple Cow)

Elkhorn —  On the Whole Universe in All Directions (Centripetal Force)

Purling Hiss —  Drag on Girard (Drag City)

Caterina Barbieri —  Myuthafoo (light-years)

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)

Ian Mathers

Fifteen, in alphabetical order:

Aarktica — Paeans (Projekt)

Acid King — Beyond Vision (Blues Funeral)

ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT — “Darling the Dawn” (Constellation)

Avalon Emerson — & the Charm (Another Dove)

Brìghde Chaimbeul — Carry Them With Us (Tak:til)

The Drin — Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom (Feel It)

Ladytron — Time’s Arrow (Cooking Vinyl)

loscil // Lawrence English — Colours of Air (Kranky)

Meg Baird — Furling (Drag City)

Mute Duo — Migrant Flocks (American Dreams)

The National — First Two Pages of Frankenstein (4AD)

Tacoma Park — Tacoma Park (Self Released)

Tørrfall — Tørrfall (De Pene Inngang)

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)

Yves Tumor — Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) (Warp)

Derek Taylor

New releases

Kirk Knuffke & Joe McPhee Quartet + 1 — Keep the Dream Up (Fundacja Sluchaj)

Natural Information Society — Time is Gravity (Eremite/Aguirre)

Aruán Ortiz — Serranias — Sketchbook for Piano Trio (Intakt)

Mark Dresser — Tines of Change (Pyroclastic)

Andrew Cyrille — Music Delivery/Percussion (Intakt)

Steve Millhouse — The Undwinding (Steeplechase) 

Archival Releases

The Jazz Doctors — Intensive Care/Prescriptions Filled: The Billy Bang Quartet Sessions 1983/1984 (Cadillac)

Milford Graves w/ Arthur Doyle & Hugh Glover — Children of the Forest (Black Editions)

Abdul Wadud — By Myself (Bisharra/Gotta Groove)

Sirone — Artistry (Of the Cosmos/Moved By Sound)

Marion Brown — Mary Ann: Live in Bremen 1969 (Moosicus)

Steve Swell’s Fire Into Music — For Jemeel: Fire From the Road (2005-2006) (RogueArt)

Margaret Welsh

Wheatie Mattiasich — Old Glow (Open Mouth)

Rozi Plain — Prize (Memphis Industries)

Glass Triangle — Blue and Sun-lights  (Relative Pitch)

Andy Shauf — Norm (Anti)

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)

Horse Jumper of Love —Heartbreak Rules (Run for Cover)

Bill Orcutt  — Jump On It (Palilalia)

Lana Del Rey — Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (Interscope)

[the-handsome-stranger]

Outside of George C. Scott's iconic opening speech, is Patton really a good movie?

Mega spoilers.

“PATTON” won 8 Academy Awards, which is a pretty good haul. Patton’s children both wept watching the film. Patton’s daughter Ruth Ellen said the way that Scott did her father’s “mirthless grin” was startlingly on target.

The mirthless grin directed at Montgomery

Best actor

“Patton” does have a good three act set up and it does create some dramatic tension as it goes along. Patton arrives in Tunisia and everything is a shambles. They did a lot of set decoration with dead GI’s and one of the aides says that the losses were “40 tanks and 25 self-propelled guns, belt buckles, GI socks, blah blah and “one thousand eight hundred men,” or whatever.

In reality the U.S. Army had some initial failure due to faulty deployments ordered by British general Anderson. German attacks were soon stymied and they didn’t get into any of the giant supply dumps that had been set up. Then straight into the scene where the German planes strafe Patton’s meeting with AVM Coningham.

Here on the right. Coninghmam was an excellent officer and did a great job with the Desert Air Force.

What really happened was that Coningham sent an message belittling the American troops and Patton was very upset. Ike sent Gen. Spaatz and AM Tedder to Patton’s HQ to try and smooth things over. Patton, Spaatz, Tedder, Bradley and others were in a meeting when several FW-190s flew down the street dropping bombs and strafing. “How the devil did you manage to stage that?” either Spaatz or Tedder said. Patton did say that he he would “give those Nazi sumbitchs a medal if he could.”

Some major Patton biographies do not mention it, but “An Army At Dawn” by Rick Atkinson does note that Patton did run outside and fired at the German planes.

The movie made some hay with this by having the strafing attack happen when Coningham was onsite the next day. General Buford seems to have been fictional.

Read more>>> http://tinyurl.com/3stam498

[shoshiwrites]

Late spring warmth had returned, and fleecy clouds drifted above the gray seawalls and church steeples. The scent of brine and timber creosote carried on a brisk breeze that straightened naval pennants and tossed quayside poppies, reminding the veterans of Tunisia. Semaphore lights winked from ship to shore and back to ship. Silver barrage balloons floated over the anchorages, sixty-five in Falmouth alone, and destroyers knifed hither and yon across the placid sea in an ecstatic rush of white water.

— Rick Atkinson, from the prologue to The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

[vaicomcas]

A Hellhound at Dawn

“Juliet, I have a top secret mission for you. I need you to remember Castiel’s scent. Whenever he is on earth, I want you to track him down, keep tabs on him, and report his whereabouts to me. Keep your distance, and don’t let him know your presence.” “Papa, you got it.”

A set of snapshots or drabbles about Juliet, Crowley and Castiel in the Season 6 universe, during Crowley and Castiel’s alliance while Castiel fought the civil war with Raphael’s army. Not always cannon-compliant. Some of the chapters are continuous, some are stand-alone. Written for the @juliet-hellhound-week but I am terrible at following prompts, so we’ll see how many prompts I can honor.

The title is stolen from the book “An army at dawn” by Rick Atkinson, which described the emergence of US army as a true military power. Sadly, no such parallel for Castiel’s army; instead, this collection describes the beginning of Juliet’s eventual friendship with Castiel.

First 3-4 chapters are posted on AO3.

cw blood

[jgcully]

Finished at last. An exceptional book on the liberation of Europe during World War 2. I started reading it in 2021 🤦🏻‍♂️. Life got in the way 🤷‍♂️. But an excellent book, worth the effort.

The Guns At Last Light by Rick Atkinson. Part of the Liberation Trilogy.

#writerslife #readersofinstagram #worldwar2

[inktober-of-a-fan-girl]

Day 12: Christian Borle

This is from 2009.

More information in Keep Reading.

It started as a book series…

The "Starcatchers" books by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson...

...are an unauthorized series reboot that was published by Hyperion Books (a subsidiary of Disney) in the US and by Walker Books in the UK.

The first book is Peter and the Starcatchers (2004). Set on a ship called Never Land featuring Peter and an earlier group of Lost Boys. In 2005, the publisher announced plans for Disney to adapt the book as a digitally animated movie. Second and third are Peter and the Shadow Thieves (2006) and Peter and the Secret of Rundoon (2007). The fourth book is Peter and the Sword of Mercy (2009), where twenty-three years since Peter and the Lost Boys returned from Rundoon. The Bridge to Never Land (2011), is an expanded part and fifth book where a pair of siblings, Sarah and Aidan Cooper drawn from the modern world as they follow clues left by an ancient coded document. The "Never Land Books" by Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, and Greg Call (ill.), is a series of unauthorized spin-off chapter books. Based on the continuity established by the "Starcatchers" novels, for a younger audience. The books are: Escape from the Carnivale (2006), Cave of the Dark Wind (2007) and Blood Tide (2008).

Captain Hook becomes this…

In the novel Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, Captain Hook is distinguished by halitosis, beady black eyes, a pock-marked face, and perpetual filth of his person and surroundings contrasting strongly with J. M. Barrie's Etonian gentleman. The novel, which takes place before the Captain meets Peter Pan, calls Hook "Black Stache" for his prominent moustache, and his ship is called the Sea Devil; he captures the Jolly Roger, originally a British ship called the Wasp, later. Black Stache is renamed "Captain Hook" in the second instalment, Peter and the Shadow Thieves. In Barry and Pearson's book, his left hand is accidentally cut off by Peter.

But then it got adapted into a musical/play….

The first book, "Peter and the Starcatchers" was adapted into a play similarly titled "Peter and the Starcatcher" winning several Tony awards. It debuted in the winter of 2009 at La Jolla Playhouse as part of an arrangement with Disney Theatrical. It was re-staged Off-Broadway in 2011 and opened on Broadway on April 15, 2012, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

Captain Hook was made into this…

In Rick Ellis' theatrical adaptation of the Barry-Pearson novel, Black Stache (portrayed in the original production by Christian Borle, who won a Tony Award for the role) is a witty, poetical, but psychotic pirate prone to malapropisms and the occasional pratfall. Similar to the Disney film character, Black Stache resembles both a dangerous villain and a comic buffoon. The last of a line of villains, he seeks to become a great villain by fighting a great hero and finds one in Peter. His hand is cut off not by Peter, but accidentally severed when he slams the lid of a trunk in a fit of rage.

I am very disappointed in the creators.

But there is also this one...

Black Stache: A highly intelligent but malapropism-prone pirate chief, so-called due to the black mustache that is a trademark in his family. In search of a great hero who he can oppose to become a great villain, Stache is given to scenery chewing and anachronistic jokes and has a hook in his future. The name ‘Black Stache’ is a reference to the pirate Blackbeard.

Blackbeard will be mentioned in another Inktober.

At least the actor has blue eyes….but there is nothing else in Barrie's character here...just the mustache from which he gets his name.

Anyways, here are the play trailers and at the Tony awards….

"And I bet your milkshake brings all the boys to the yard but I'm not interested!" is the best.

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 11.15

Beer Birthdays

Grant Wood (1962)

Five Favorite Birthdays

J.G. Ballard; English writer (1930)

Daniel Barenboim; Argentinian-Israeli pianist & conductor (1942)

Georgia O'Keeffe; artist (1887)

Wayne Thiebaud; artist (1920)

Sam Waterson; actor (1940)

Famous Birthdays

Franklin Pierce Adams; journalist & author (1881)

Eusebius Amort; German poet (1692)

Edward Asner; actor (1929)

Gemma Atkinson; actor, model (1984)

Joanna Barnes; actress (1934)

Cynthia Breazeal; computer scientist (1967)

Kevin S. Bright; director (1954)

Carol Bruce; singer & actress (1919)

Mary E. Byrd; astronomer (1849)

Văn Cao; Vietnamese composer, poet & painter (1923)

Jimmy Choo; Malaysian fashion designer (1948)

Petula Clark; country singer (1928)

Gerry Connolly; Australian comedian & actor (1957)

Beverly D'Angelo; actress (1951)

Emma Dumont; actress and model (1994)

Tibor Fischer; English author (1959)

Gloria Foster; actress (1933)

Felix Frankfurter; U.S. Supreme Court justice (1882)

Judy Gold; comedian and actress (1962)

René Guénon; French-Egyptian philosopher (1886)

Arthur Haulot, Belgian journalist and poet (913)

Gerhart Hauptmann; German writer (1862)

William Herschel; German-English astronomer (1738)

Joe Hinton; singer (1929)

Rick Kemp; English singer-songwriter, bass player (1941)

Yaphet Kotto; actor (1937)

Emil Krebs; German polyglot (1867)

Johann Kaspar Lavater; Swiss poet & physiognomist (1741)

Virginie Ledoyen; French actress (1976)

Joe Leeway; English pop singer-songwriter (1955)

Curtis LeMay; air force general (1906)

Anni-Frid Lyngstad; pop singer (1945)

Mantovani; Italian composer (1905)

C.W. McCall; country singer (1928)

Clyde McPhatter; singer (1932)

Bill Melendez; Mexican-American animator & director (1916)

Jonny Lee Miller; English-American actor (1972)

Marianne Moore; poet (1887)

Kevin J. O'Connor; actor (1963)

Ol' Dirty Bastard; rapper and producer (1968)

Daniel Pinkwater; author & illustrator (1941)

William Pitt "the Elder"; English politician (1708)

Alvin Plantinga; philosopher (1932)

Seldon Powell; jazz saxophonist, flautist (1928)

Joseph Quesnel; French-Canadian poet, playwright & composer (1746)

Erwin Rommel; German field marshall (1891)

Randy Savage; wrestler (1952)

Madeleine de Scudéry; French author (1607)

Johannes Secundus; Dutch poet & author (1511)

Sacheverell Sitwell; English author (1897)

Antoni Słonimski; Polish journalist, poet & playwright (1895)

Randy Thomas; singer-songwriter, guitarist (1954)

Rachel True; actress (1966)

Joseph A. Wapner; television judge (1919)

James Widdoes; actor & director (1953)

Thomas Williams; author (1926)

Shailene Woodley; actress (1991)

[radiomaxmusic]

Feature LP / Earth, Wind & Fire - Spirit (1976) / 4pm ET / 10-22-24

Spirit is the seventh studio album by American band Earth, Wind & Fire, released on September 28, 1976, by Columbia Records. The album rose to No. 2 on both the Billboard 200 and Top Soul Albums charts. Spirit has also been certified Double Platinum in the US by the RIAA. Isaac Hayes called Spirit one of Earth, Wind & Fire’s five essential recordings. Rick Atkinson of The Record placed Spirit at…

[deadpresidents]

I asked a question a few weeks back about the authors who you have the most books by and in a related question it made me wonder which authors of multiple books are there who you have every book in their catalogue? And are there certain authors that you Do Not have their complete collection but really want?

Oh boy, well, there are a lot of authors who I have their complete bibliography. I'm not going to list all of them and even some of my favorite authors don't have scores of books to collect. Like I go out of my way to pick up Robert Caro's books when they are released, but there are only six total. There are lots of examples like that: Ron Chernow, Erik Larson, Rick Atkinson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Rick Perlstein, Peter Baker, Richard Norton Smith, David I. Kertzer, etc. Lawrence Wright is one of my favorite authors, so I get everything he puts out.

When it comes to authors with a bigger number of books in their catalogue, I have all of David McCullough's books -- I think there's at least a dozen of them. I have everything by Hunter S. Thompson and H.W. Brands and Nat Philbrick. I've tried to get physical copies of everything Sam Shepard released, and that includes various collections of his plays or both hardcover and paperback editions of his releases.

As for whose on my wish list of getting complete collections of their books: John Steinbeck is a main one. I have every volume of the Library of America collection of his books, but I'd like to get individual copies of each of his books. Same with Joan Didion. Richard Francis Burton is a really difficult one because they are so old and some of them are tough to find (or super expensive), but I'm trying to get a physical copy of all of his books. I'm still slowly working my way through trying to read all of his works. It was a goal I set for myself that began in the pandemic and it's taking forever because, quite frankly, a good deal of his books are BORING. But I don't like not completing a task (even dumb ones), so I'll keep at it even if it takes the rest of my stupid life. I don't make Burton's books a priority, but I'd probably work harder at it if I had more physical copies.

It's hard to give a solid answer to that question because I'm a book collector in general, so I basically try to get my hands on everything by anybody who I have an interest in!

[w6ir0q4f]

halfway through Rick Atkinson’s Army at Dawn and already daydreaming about being a foppish and flamboyant yet bloodthirsty American army general in WW2 North Africa who is admonished by his peers and respected by his men for his heavy whiskey and roast mutton consumption that results in his postwar death. His epitaph simply reads “He was not a man of peace.”