#skate america 2021

[figureskatingcostumes]

Young You skating to Les Misérables for her free program at the 2022 World Championships, 2021 Skate America and 2021 NHK Trophy. Her costume was designed by Lisa McKinnon.

(Sources: Ester Ayerdi Photography, Danielle Earl Photography, Getty Sport and sn_figure)

[kaleidodreams]

Updated 100 Memorable Skating Programs

Back in 2018, I created the original version of this list. (You can find the master post here.) Since 2024 marks my 30th year as an official fan of figure skating and there have been some more great programs created since the last time, I thought it was about time to update the list in honor of World Ice Skating Day. Same rules apply as last time:

Only senior competitive programs starting from the 1993-1994 season are eligible, since that's the first season I really started watching figure skating.

Each skater may only be listed once, unless a partner/discipline switch is involved.

Choice of music may also not be repeated. (Yes, there are two James Bond programs on the list, but Yuna and Wakaba use different music for the most part, so I'm letting it slide.)

I debated long and hard about whether or not I should still include programs from skaters who have proven themselves to be not so great people. I'm someone who has little difficulty separating the art from the artist, so in the end, I decided to keep them listed (although most of them got knocked down a few pegs). This list is more about the choreography than the skater anyway, although there are certainly some problematic choreographers out there, too. (Looking at you especially, Morozov!) So, just because a skater is listed doesn't mean that I'm a fan of them or that I condone their actions! I just think certain programs are still great regardless of the skaters' terrible behavior off the ice.

Choreographers are noted if known. If you know who choreographed the programs without a choreographer named, please let me know!

I've also created a handy playlist on YouTube if you don't want to click on all these links.

Ashley Wagner - Moulin Rouge (Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2016 Worlds

Jason Brown - Melancholy (Rohene Ward) 2023 Nationals

Patrick Chan - Phantom of the Opera (Lori Nichol) 2011 Canadian Nationals

Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje -Je suis malade (Pasquale Camerlengo) 2012 Worlds

Meryl Davis/Charlie White - Kajra Re/Silsila Ye Chahat Ka/Dola Re Dola (Marina Zueva, Igor Shpilband, and Anuja Rajendra) 2010 Olympics

Mao Asada - Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 (Tatiana Tarasova) 2014 Olympics

Sui/Han - Rain, In Your Black Eyes (Lori Nichol) 2019 Worlds

Marina Anissina/Gwendal Peizerat - Romeo & Juliet 1998 Olympics

Cain/LeDuc - W.E. (Pasquale Camerlengo) 2022 US Nationals

Daisuke Takahashi - Blues for Klook (Pasquale Camerlengo) 2012 Worlds

Kurt Browning - Casablanca (Sandra Bezic) 1994 Olympics

Michelle Kwan - Salome (Lori Nichol) 1996 Worlds

Alexei Yagudin - Winter (Tatiana Tarasova and Nikolai Morosov) 2002 Olympics

Jamie Sale/David Pelletier - Love Story (Lori Nichol) 2002 Olympics

Jeremy Abbott - Exogenesis (Jeremy Abbott and Yuka Sato) Nationals 2012

Oksana Grishuk/Evgeni Platov - The Feeling Begins 1997 Worlds

Yuzuru Hanyu - Seimei (Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2015 Grand Prix Final

Chock/Bates - Egyptian Snake Dance (Marie-France Dubreuil, Ginette Cournoyer, and Sam Chouinard) 2019 Grand Prix Final

Javier Fernandez - Guys and Dolls (David Wilson) 2016 Worlds

Vanessa James/Morgan Cipres - Sound of Silence (John Kerr and Silvia Fontana) 2017 Euros

Evgenia Medvedeva - Anna Karenina (Daniil Gleichengauz) 2018 Olympics

Nathan Chen - Philip Glass medley (Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2021 Worlds

Gabriella Papadakis/Guilliame Cizeron - Elegie (Saxon Fraser and Marie-France Dubreuil) 2022 Olympics

Aljona Savchenko/Bruno Massot - La terre vue du ciel (Christopher Dean) 2018 Olympics

Kevin Aymoz - Bolero (Brice Mousset and Kevin Aymoz) 2023 Skate America

Julia Lipnitskaya - Schindler’s List (Ilia Averbukh) 2014 Olympics

Elena Berezhnaya/Anton Sikharulidze - Lady Caliph 2002 Olympics

Yu-na Kim - James Bond medley (David Wilson) 2010 Olympics

Shoma Uno - Buenos Aires Hora Cero (Mihoko Higuchi) 2016 Grand Prix Final

Michal Brezina - The Way You Look Tonight (Jeffrey Buttle) 2016 Skate Canada

Shae-Lynn Bourne/Victor Kraatz - Riverdance 1998 Olympics

Adam Rippon - O/Fly On (Benji Schwimmer) 2016 Trophee de France

Jeffrey Buttle - Bells of Moscow (David Wilson) 2005 Worlds

Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier - Vincent (Carol Lane and Juris Razgulajevs) 2019 Canadian Nationals

Rudy Galindo - Swan Lake (Sharlene Franke) 1996 US Nationals

Sasha Cohen - Malaguena (Tatiana Tarasova) 2004 Worlds

Aljona Savchenko/Robin Szolkowy - Pina (Ingo Steur) 2011 Grand Prix Final

Samantha Cesario - Carmen (Inese Budevica) 2013 Trophee Eric Bompard

Tatsuki Machida - East of Eden (Phillip Mills) 2014 Worlds

Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao - Turandot (Lea Ann Miller, Renee Roca, and Gorsha Sur) 2003 Worlds

Kaitlin Hawayek/Jean-Luc Baker - Liebestraume (Pasquale Camerlengo) 2018 Nationals

Olga Mikutina - My Nocturnal Serenade (Rostislav Sinicyn) 2023 Europeans

Lu Chen - The Last Emperor (Toller Cranston) 1995 Worlds

Giada Russo - Red Violin (Edoardo de Bernardis) 2016 Europeans

Junhwan Cha - Fate of the Clockmaker/Cloak and Dagger (Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2022 Olympics

Han Yan - La La Land (Yuka Sato and Kurt Browning) 2019 Chinese Interclub League

Wakaba Higuchi - Skyfall (Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2018 Worlds

Kazuki Tomono - Die Fledermaus (Misha Ge) 2022 Japanese Nationals

Yuma Kagiyama - Believer (Shae-Lynn Bourne) 2024 Worlds

Karen Chen - On Golden Pond (Karen Chen) 2017 Nationals

Maia Shibutani/Alex Shibutani - Coppelia (Marina Zueva and Cheryl Yeager) 2016 Nationals

Yuko Kavaguti/Alexander Smirov - Manfred Symphony (Peter Tchernyshev) 2014 Skate America

Philippe Candeloro - The Three Musketeers (Natacha Dabadie) 1998 Olympics

Alexander Abt - Songs from the Victorious City 1998 Nations Cup

Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir - Prince medley 2017 Worlds

Ekaterina Gordeeva/Sergei Grinkov - Moonlight Sonata (Marina Zueva) 1994 Olympics

Satoko Miyahara - Madama Butterfly (Tom Dickson) 2017 Japanese Nationals

Marjorie Lajoie/Zachary Lagha - The White Crow (Romain Haguenauer and Ginette Cournoyer) 2023 Four Continents

Anjelika Krylova/Oleg Ovsiannikov - Masquerade Waltz 1997 Worlds

Alena Kostornaia - The Departure, November (Daniil Gleikhengauz) 2019 Grand Prix Final

Nelli Zhiganshina/Alexander Gazsi - Two from the Grave (Ilia Averbukh) 2013 Worlds

Ksenia Stolbova/Fedor Klimov - The Man and The Shadow (Nikolai Morozov) 2015 Grand Prix Final

Stephanie Rosenthal - Rockit (Stewart and Christi Sturgeon) 2006 Nationals

Madison Hubbell/Zachary Donohue - Across the Sky, Caught Out In The Rain (Marie-France Dubreuil) 2018 Nationals

Mikhail Kolyada - The Nutcracker (Ilia Averbukh) 2021 Gran Premio d'Italia

Sinead Kerr/John Kerr - The Landing/Turn Around/Gravity of Love (Evgeni Platov) 2008 Worlds

Kaetlyn Osmond - Sous le ciel de Paris, Milord (Lance Vipond) 2016 Grand Prix Final

Carolina Kostner - Ave Maria (Lori Nichol) 2014 Olympics

Karina Manta/Joe Johnson - Sweet Dreams (Christopher Dean) 2019 Nationals

Gracie Gold - Firebird (Lori Nichol) 2016 Nationals

Charlene Guignard/Marco Fabbri - Atonement/Song For A Little Sparrow (Barbara Fusar-Poli and Corrado Giordani) 2022 Europeans

Keegan Messing - Singing in the Rain (Lance Vipond) 2018 Worlds

Elizabeth Punsalan/Jerod Swallow - Astor Piazolla medley (Igor Shpilband) 1998 Olympics

Rika Kihira - A Beautiful Storm (Tom Dickson) 2018 NHK Trophy

Mariah Bell - Chicago (Rohene Ward) 2016 Skate America

Brian Joubert - Rise (Evgeni Platov) 2009 Europeans

Stephane Lambiel - Poeta (Antonio Najarro) 2007 Worlds

Kaori Sakamoto - The Matrix (Benoit Richaud) 2020 NHK Trophy

Akiko Suzuki - O (Pasquale Camerlengo) 2012 NHK Trophy

Qing Pang/Jian Tong - The Impossible Dream (Shae-Lynn Bourne and David Wilson) 2010 Olympics

Takahito Kozuka - Io ci saro (Lori Nichol) 2014 Japanese National

Smart/Diaz - Mask of Zorro 2022 Europeans

Matt Savoie - Ennio Morricone medley (Tom Dickson) 2006 Nationals

Deniss Vasiljevs - Puttin’ On The Ritz (Benoit Richaud) 2016 Worlds

Caroline Green/Michael Parsons - Violin Concerto No.1 Eso Concerto, Clouds, The Mind on the Wind (Elena Novak and Alexei Kiliakov) 2022 Four Continents

Tara Lipinski - The Rainbow (Sandra Bezic) 1998 Olympics

Denis Ten - SOS d'un terrien en détresse (David Wilson) 2017 Shanghai Trophy

Valentina Marchei/Ondrej Hotarek - Tu Vuo Fa L'Americano (Massimo Scali) 2018 Europeans

Krisztina Czako - The Addams Family (Igor Bobrin) 1997 Europeans

Cheng Peng/Yang Jin - My Drag (Lori Nichol) 2016 GPF

Bradie Tennell - Mechanisms, Chronos (Benoit Richaud) 2020 4CC

Evgeny Plushenko - Tribute to Nijinsky 2004 Russian Nationals

Vanessa Gusmeroli - Rats D'Hotel 1999 Worlds

Julianne Seguin/Charlie Bilodeau - Monde Inverse (Shae-Lynn Bourne and Shae Zukiwsky) 2015 Skate America

Isabeau Levito - Dulcea Și Tandra Mea Fiară (Yulia Kuznetsova) 2022 MK John Wilson Trophy

Elizaveta Tuktamysheva - Batwannis Beek/Sandstorm (Tatiana Prokofieva) 2015 Europeans

Kana Muramoto/Daisuke Takahashi - Soran Bushi (Marina Zoueva, Ilia Tkachenko, and Koyo Yanai) 2021 NHK Trophy

Amber Glenn - This Time (Kaitlyn Weaver and Randi Strong) 2024 Lombardia Trophy

Ivan Righini - You Raise Me Up (Ivan Righini) 2016 Europeans

Anna Cappellini/Luca Lanotte - Life is Beautiful (Liudmila Vlasova) 2017 NHK Trophy

[rinkasisopods]

Congrats to Wakaba Higuchi for winning gold 🥇 at Skate America 2024!

This marks the first senior Grand Prix gold this season and Wakaba's first senior Grand Prix gold since her senior debut 8 years ago. This is also her first Grand Prix medal since 2021! Congrats again to Wakaba 🎉🎉

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

a list of some winter movies/series ❄️

hello! your friendly neighbourhood little organisation freak of a goblin is here again to give you a list of winter movies and series. this isn't a christmas focused list, just winter vibes, there's only a very very small handful of christmas centred stuff on here. as always, just close your eyes and point somewhere on this little list, or even put the numbers in a generator and go with whatever the result is ♡

spring | summer | autumn

🧣 ‧₊˚ ⋅ movies ⋅˚₊‧

star wars franchise (1977-)

the shining (1980)

edward scissorhands (1990)

beauty and the beast (1991)

the muppet christmas catol (1992) 

batman returns (1992)

the bodyguard (1992)

the cutting edge (1992, 2006, 2008)

while you were sleeping (1995)

titanic (1997)

anastasia (1997)

snow day (2000)

bridget jones’s diary (2001)

save the last dance (2001)

monsters, inc (2001)

peter pan (2003)

the day after tomorrow (2004)

family stone (2005)

ice princess (2005)

the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe (2005) 

the holiday (2006)

last holiday (2006)

eastern promises (2007)

the curious case of benjamin button (2008)

the time traveler’s wife (2009, 2022)

sherlock holms (2009)

black swan (2010)

inception (2010)

new year’s eve (2011)

the girl with the dragon tattoo (2011)

red riding hood (2011)

they grey (2011)

captain america: the first avenger (2011)

the vow (2012)

anna karenina (2012)

snow white and the huntsman (2012)

frozen (2013)

the wind rises (2013)

iron man 3 (2013)

snowpiercer (2013)

the drop (2014)

winter’s tale (2014)

the grand budapest hotel (2014)

carol (2015)

the age of adaline (2015)

the revenant (2015)

everest (2015)

krampus (2015)

split (2016)

phantom thread (2017)

wind river (2017)

murder on the orient express (2017)

atomic blond (2017)

the mountain between us (2017)

night hunter (2018)

hold the dark (2018)

the nutcracker and the four realms (2018)

alita: battle angel (2019)

anna (2019)

little women (2019)

five feet apart (2019)

last christmas (2019)

happiest season (2020)

the world to come (2020)

silver skates (2020)

spider-man: no way home (2021)

the mauritanian (2021)

black widow (2021)

something from tiffany's (2022)

ghostbusters: frozen empire (2014)

🛷 ‧₊˚ ⋅ series ⋅˚₊‧

criminal minds (2005-2020, 2022-)

downton abbey (2010-2015)

game of thrones (2011-2019)

orphan black (2013-2017)

peaky blinders (2013-2022)

critical role (2015-)

daredevil (2015-2018)

wynonna earp (2016-2021)

war and peace (2016)

godless (2017)

the punisher (2017-2019)

anne with an e (2017-2019)

the bodyguard (2018)

killing eve (2018-2022)

the mandalorian (2019-)

young royals (2021)

shadow and bone (2021-2023)

vikings valhalla (2022-2024)

the last of us (2023-)

masters of the air (2024)

[myjunkisyuzuruhanyu]

ISU released an article about Shoma

Two-time ISU World Champion and three-time Olympic medalist Shoma Uno of Japan has announced his retirement from competitive skating after a long and distinguished career and is ready to open a new chapter in his life.

“I have decided to retire from active competition,” Uno wrote on Instagram. “I am very grateful to have been able to continue skating for 21 years since I was 5 years old, and to have had a wonderful athletic life.”

The Japanese star will talk in more detail about his retirement and future plans in a press conference scheduled for May 14.

The 26-year-old looks back at a career with many highlights and also difficult times, but he always came back, proving his talent and showing resilience. When five-year-old Shoma went to the ice rink in his hometown of Nagoya with his father to have fun, he had no idea that he would become a World Champion, Olympic medalist and super star of the sport. He only knew that the enjoyed skating and kept coming back to the rink, taking lessons. He trained with Machiko Yamada, the coach of Japanese skating icon Midori Ito and also with Mihoko Higuchi for many years and worked his way up in the skating world.

Uno debuted in the ISU Junior Grand Prix in 2011 and was so tiny that he was unable to look over the boards. He won a few medals on the Junior circuit but his breakthrough came in what was his last Junior season in 2014/15 when he qualified for the first time for the ISU Junior Grand Prix Final where he claimed gold. Shoma went on to take the ISU World Junior title in 2015, in what was his fourth and final appearance at the event (climbing from 10th in 2012, 7th in 2013 and 5th in 2014).

Once at the senior level, Uno quickly became one of the top Skaters in the World. In his World debut in 2016 he placed 7th but then the next year won silver, his first of a total of four World medals. In his first Olympic Winter Games in 2018, Shoma skated off with the silver medal and returned on to the Olympic podium four years later, earning the bronze. In 2022 and 2023 Uno crowned himself ISU World Champion.

However, in between there was a time of struggle. In the 2019/20 season, for the first (and only) time in his career, Uno finished off the podium in the ISU Grand Prix Series. He had left his coaches since childhood and struggled with confidence.

“At first, to be honest, I was thinking about finishing my career,“ he said in an interview at Skate America 2021 about this time.

“I did not know how much longer I would keep going. But imaging the end (I thought) maybe I'll enjoy the rest of this career as an athlete.“

Uno started to work with two-time World Champion Stéphane Lambiel as his coach and choreographer in fall 2019 and soon came back strong. He grew as an athlete and a performer with beautiful programs that highlighted his versatility: “Turandot” (Free Skating 2017/18), “Great Spirit” (Short Program 2020/21), “Bolero” (Free Skating 2021/22) and “Spiegel im Spiegel” (Free Skating 2023/24) to name a few.

At the same time, the Japanese star always pushed the limits technically and made history by becoming the first Skater to perform a quadruple flip in competition in 2016.

“When I train and want to become better, it's not good for me to work on what I can already do. If I'm satisfied with just giving 80 per cent, I'm not good. The right training for me is to push my limits,” Uno said in an interview.

The Japanese Skater has an independent mind and a fun personality. He has a Youtube Channel where you can meet his three toy poodles Emma, Baron and Toro.

“When I am on the ice, I am totally focused on my sport, but when I'm off the ice, I am sure most people know I am just a lazy slacker, but I thought that would be a good way to show to the people how I am off the ice, but still this is Shoma Uno,” he explained.

When asked who inspires him the most, Shoma’s surprising answer was:

"Myself. Of course, I think I am inspired by many people and heard some good words from everyone, too, but in the end when you break it down, I do feel that it is myself that inspires me and sadly, I don't listen to anyone. Sometimes I listen, but mostly I go with my own mind,” he added.

For sure Uno will follow his own ideas in the years to come but you can certainly expect to see him gracing the ice in shows for a while.

[sunskate]

CPom RD at 2020 Skate America (link to higher quality w vpn) -- i was looking back at their first season at IAMO with Scott and wanted to see what they were like before - so this is the only event they competed in the 2020-21 season. it was nearly an all-USA event with the cardboard cutouts instead of an audience due to covid - CPom scored 78+ on this RD. H/D won the event scoring 85+ RD and 126 FD - this event was scored like a Nationals. H/B were 2nd, C/B had withdrawn - Madi C was injured

CPom already were a cohesive team in their 7th season, their 3rd as seniors. they skate close, their unison and sense of each other is good. oof it stands out that last quad had teams skating more in hold than is required these days �� there was still a half pattern requirement - i miss it! they twizzle well, they were doing a variation of a RoLi that we’ve seen this quad. the edges and curves aren't as deep, she's on flats here and there, there's a little bit of him pushing and pulling her - it's not something he needs to do any more in 2024

this Igor/Pasquale RD reminds me of a Pate/Bye program - a lot of smaller steps. Anthony's not going into the ice as much, they're getting less out of each push compared to what they look like now. they have spark and charm and are giving a lot to their performance. they were already a good team when they moved to IAMO shortly after this, but there had been a feeling that they weren’t making an impact or progressing in results as seniors. they missed Nationals because someone in a dance class had covid, and they couldn’t go if they’d been exposed iirc. they changed camps in early 2021 and trained in Canton and with Scott and IAM coaches over zoom til they could move to London in March

[figureskatingfanblog]

Japan went 1-2 at Skate America. Wakaba Higuchi came up from fourth to win the free skate, and her first GP gold, and her first medal since 2021. Rinka Watanabe came up from third to win the silver. Isabeau Levito of the US won the bronze.

[thanktrusova]

american media: its effects on the teenage prodigy

For those who don't know, one of my favorite skaters is Alysa Liu.

Alysa is a 2x US national champion, junior and senior world bronze medalist, and 2022 Olympian.

But, one thing about her is when you look her up, one of the subheadings on her wikipedia is "2021–22 season: International senior debut, Beijing Olympics, World Championships, and retirement".

What happened to her? What was so troubling about the 2021/22 season that caused this all to happen at once, and at the age of 16?

From my limited research but somewhat extensive knowledge, the one thing I can connect this early retirement to is the American media.

Before I start, I just want to preface that I am very glad they retired on their own terms, and not due to injury or something worse. Though I do miss them.

-

Alysa was 13 when she won her first senior national title in January 2019, the youngest female to win US nationals as of today. She defended her title the next year, winning back-to-back nationals at only 14 years old.

Also in the 2019/2020 season, they had their international junior debut. During this, they became the first woman to complete a triple axel and quadruple jump in competition, as well as achieving the status of the first non-Russian girl to win a Grand Prix event for around 20 competitions. They went on to win bronze at the World Junior Championships in March 2020.

This bout of success caused eyes of every American media outlet to be focused on young Alysa. They started deeming her as an American prodigy, the only hope to have an Olympic medal in Ladies' Single Skating at Beijing 2022. This was still two years away from the Winter Olympics, and she was only 14.

The next year, 2021, Alysa underwent a growth spurt, which, obviously, is normal for a 15 year old girl. Because of this, she lost her triple axel and quadruple lutz jumps, causing American media to forget her, or worse, doubt and even berate her. If she can't beat the Russians at the next Olympics, who can? The media gave up hope on her and did not care about the effects of doing so.

Cut to the 2021/2022 season, Alysa's international senior debut. She officially secured the third spot for US ladies at the Olympics, and performed average at her Grand Prix assignments, placing fourth at both. She had to withdraw from US Nationals due to COVID, but still managed to petition for a spot on the 2022 Olympic team thanks to her performance history. Once again, she was America's "only hope" for a spot on that podium.

Overall, she placed 7th, the highest out of the three American female skaters. She claimed she was pleased with her performances, and that she was just happy to be in Beijing. A little over a month later, she won bronze at the 2022 World Championships, being the first American woman to medal since 2016.

Months later, they announced their retirement, and have not (publicly) skated competitively or professionally since.

They also archived all social media.

While other reasons can be argued for this happening, the main one is the pressure put on Alysa at such a young age to be the saving grace of American figure skating.

I know you're wondering, has the media learned and changed?

And as an answer, I will point you in the direction of 18 year old Ilia Malinin, who media has dubbed "heaven-sent for US figure skating", or even tell you to keep an eye on 15 year old Isabeau Levito, "America's new hope".

[an-odd-idea]

Oh my gosh the men! (Figure skating)

I suppose it was about time they had the seasonally required short program flop fest (the ice demands sacrifice) Flashbacks to Skate America 2021, oh my gosh NOBODY had a clean skate, not one single person

Also what is up with the judges assigning GOE, like Jimmy Ma’s step sequence got +1 and +2 from all but one judge- what did that one see to give it -2? Also Kao Miura’s spin that got several +3’s, another random -2? And his other spin with the random -1 in a sea of high pluses? AND Koshiro Shimada’s step sequence with lots of +2’s, here comes a sudden -1. Honestly I don’t usually look at those numbers so it might be the case like that often, but it just jumped out at me this time with the bulk of sudden anomalies, all from the same judge

Judge 3 was NOT in a good mood!

(Or there may be more serious shenanigans afoot, but I’m going to wait another round before saying something like that- it is interesting, however, that it was pronounced enough for me to go “hey wait a minute-“)

He was also harsher on Matteo Rizzo’s and Liam Kapeikis’s spins than other judges, but there at least one or two others were also with him? (They truly didn’t know what to make of Matteo’s camel spin lollll, how does an element get the same number of +2 and -1? I can’t wait to see it for myself)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Blacks for Trump demonstration at the Miami Federal Courthouse yesterday

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

“DONALD TRUMP UNDER ARREST, IN FEDERAL CUSTODY.”

It was quite a chyron from CNN, marking the first time in the history of the United States that a former president has been charged with federal crimes. And in this case, what crimes they are: the willful retention, sharing, and hiding of classified documents that compromise our national security. Trump’s own national security advisor John Bolton said, “This is material that in the hands of America’s adversaries would do incalculable damage to the United States. This is a very serious case and it’s not financial fraud, it’s not hush money to porn stars, this is the national security of the United States at stake. I think we’ve got to take the politics out of this business when national security is at stake.”

Cameras were barred in the courtroom as Trump pleaded not guilty to the 37 charges in Miami today. Presiding magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman ordered Trump not to communicate with witnesses about the case, including co-defendant Waltine Nauta, then released him on his own recognizance, that is, without needing to post bail. Special prosecutor Jack Smith was in the courtroom; ABC’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott reported that Trump did not look at Smith.

Then Trump went back to his residence in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he gave a speech that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who is close to the Trump camp, described as low energy, focusing on his insistence that he had a right to keep the classified documents (which experts agree is nonsense and amounts to a confession) and that the indictment was “the most evil and heinous abuse of power.” Right-wing Newsmax and the Fox News Channel (FNC) carried the speech; CNN and MSNBC did not.

FNC has been hemorrhaging viewers since it fired Tucker Carlson, a threat to its bottom line that might have been behind its chyron tonight attacking Biden by claiming “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.”

In statements similar to the one from FNC, right-wing pundits spent the day flooding Twitter and other social media with furious insistence that Trump is being unfairly prosecuted, followed by attacks on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and with allegations that there are tapes of President Biden accepting bribes—allegations that Biden openly laughed at this evening.

But that performative outrage among leaders did not translate into support on the ground in Miami. Law enforcement had been prepared for as many as 50,000 protesters, but only a few hundred to a thousand turned out (one wearing a shirt made of an American flag and carrying the head of a pig on a pole).

The lack of supporters on the ground was significant. Since the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, much of Trump’s power has rested on his ability to call out his base to silence opponents by threatening violence. That power was in full force on January 6, 2021, when his loyalists set out to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president, believing they were operating under the orders of then-president Trump.

Since then, though, more than 1,000 people who participated in the events of January 6 have been charged with crimes, and many have been sentenced to prison, while Trump, who many defendants say called them to arms, has skated. That discrepancy is likely dampening the enthusiasm of Trump’s supporters for protest.

Today Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out that the audacity of Nevada’s militia-related Bundy family simply grew as family members launched successive stands against the federal government without significant legal repercussions. Republican politicians cheered on their attacks on federal officials for political gain, while Democratic politicians didn’t push to go after them out of concern that a show of federal power would alienate Nevada voters.

Trump’s threats and determination to stir up his base seem to reflect a similar consideration: if he can just rally enough support, he might imagine, the federal government will back off.

Federal officials permitting politics to trump the rule of law in our past have brought us to this moment.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[figureskatingcostumes]

Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii's Malagueña costumes at the 2021 Skate America and 2021 Internationaux de France.

(Sources: 1 and 2)

[mediaevalmusereads]

Bone Rosary. By Thomas Lynch. Godine, 2021.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: poetry

Series: N/A

Summary: Thomas Lynch spent his career as an undertaker in Midwest America—and in his off-hours became a writer of exceptional insight. Publishers Weekly calls him, “A poet with something to say and something worth listening to.” This collection presents 140 of his greatest poems drawn from his previous books, Skating with Heather Grace, Still Life in Milford, Grimalkin, The Sin-Eater, and Walking Papers. This is a collection for readers who love all life’s questions and mysteries—big and small.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: references to suicide, child death, rape, animal death

I first heard of Thomas Lynch while watching interviews with the mortician Victor M. Sweeney. When recounting the story of how he became a mortician, Sweeney mentioned Lynch's books and I immediately became interested; not only is Lynch an undertaker and essayist, but he also wrote poetry. I decided to check out his work.

Overall, it's very clear that Lynch pays attention to craft. Though I normally don't enjoy modern blank verse and free verse, Lynch has an ear for language and flow, and he makes use of various techniques such as assonance, internal rhyme, etc. As a result, the poems feel more deliberately constructed - not the meaningless statements with line breaks that one tends to see nowadays.

His topics are also beautifully chosen with a lot of focus placed on the mysteries of everyday life. One might expect that Lynch would write primarily about death (given his profession), and there's some poems about that. But Lynch is clearly contemplating the vast complexities of what it means to be alive and how we come to be the way we are, all through the lens of deceptively simple, easy-going language.

Still, I can't say all the poems were for me. Some of them got sexual in a way that I don't think was wrong, it just wasn't appealing. The Catholicism, too, was not quite resonant with me, though I respect that faith means a lot of things to a lot of people.

But even if I didn't enjoy every poem, there's a lot to like about Lynch's style and his outlook on life and death. I have great respect for his craft, and I look forward to reading more from him in the future.

[bestsellingproperties]

Shriram Properties Electronic City: Modern Homes in Bangalore

Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India is a town bustling with innovation, possibilities, and a colorful lifestyle. In the coronary heart of this dynamic city lies Chandapura, home to the imminent Shriram Properties Electronic City project. Set to redefine modern living, this residential apartment complex guarantees a harmonious combo of consolation, comfort, and network living. Let us delve into what makes this property a coveted deal for homebuyers searching for the best balance between urban connectivity and serene living.

Project Overview of Shriram Properties Electronic City

This residential property is developed by Shriram close to Electronic City. It is poised to provide 350 units of 2 and 3 BHK apartments. Catering to the diverse wishes of contemporary households in Karnataka, this project offers something for absolutely everyone. Are you a younger expert? Or perhaps a developing family? Look no further. The flats feature current architecture. Designed with careful consideration, each rental maximizes comfort and capability. Therefore, it's a haven you may like to stay in.

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Chandapura, strategically positioned just 6 kilometers from Electronics City, enjoys seamless connectivity to key areas in Bangalore. Situated along NH 44, additionally known as Hosur Road, Chandapura offers clean access to major IT hubs, academic establishments, and healthcare facilities. Despite its proximity to city centers, Chandapura keeps its attraction with lush greenery and tranquil surroundings. The predicted arrival of Namma Metro offerings by 2021 will further enhance connectivity, making commuting a breeze for residents.

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Leisure and pastime are seamlessly integrated into ordinary life at Shriram Properties Electronic City. From sports enthusiasts to nature enthusiasts, there is something for each person to revel in. Imagine yourself gambling basketball in the courtroom, enjoying the hammock garden surrounded by greenery, or throwing unforgettable events in the garden. You can also enjoy a game of sand volleyball, soccer, or skating. Plus, there's a butterfly garden, a BBQ region, a natural lawn, and a park for seniors. With these types of amenities, citizens will constantly have something amusing to do!

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Behind the vision of the residential property In Bangalore stands Shriram Properties, a famed name in the real estate enterprise. They absolutely devote themselves to excellence in every endeavor, delivering satisfactory projects that surpass expectations. Therefore, their attention to detail, revolutionary designs, and client-centric approach have earned them the belief of discerning homebuyers across the United States of America.

The Promise of a Bright Future

As the metropolis of Bangalore continues to adapt, Chandapura emerges as a promising locality poised for growth and development. Investing in Shriram Properties in Chandapura is a smart move for the future. Infrastructure improvements and connectivity enhancements are coming soon. This project offers the perfect combo of luxury, convenience, and cost. Whether you are looking for a valid investment or an area to call home, it has everything you want. It's now not just a purchase; it is an investment in your future. With its prime location and promising trends, it's a selection you may not regret.

In conclusion, this residential challenge represents a lifestyle improvement for folks who value pleasant living amidst urban conveniences. This project, with its prime location, array of services, and trusted developer, is poised to redefine current dwelling in Bangalore. Don't omit your risk to be part of this exciting adventure closer to a brighter destiny. Envision your dream home at Shriram Properties Electronic City and make it a fact these days!

[lizzygrantarchives]

Mojo, April 2021

Is Lana Del Rey – the Springsteen-approved laureate of L.A. darkness – lightening up? In 2021, a new album opens a sunnier chapter in her controversial roman-à-clef, and folk legend Joan Baez advocates her acceptance in the pantheon. But while serenity seems almost in reach, some wounds still burn and grievances rankle. “Fame can put you on the peripheries,” she tells Victoria Segal, “where the vultures can pick at you. It’s dangerous on the edges.”

IT’S MIDNIGHT IN MODESTO AND LANA DEL REY HAS swung into the backyard, pulled up in her fast car. “I told my boyfriend I was going to go out and sit in the car because I hate it when people listen to me talk,” she says. “I’m at his parents’ farm, so we’re in, like, the guest house. It’s pretty idyllic: Northern California, pretty cold, 40 degrees and a little fireplace. We had a sweet little night singing all the old Disney and holiday songs – not what I expected after a long car ride, but everyone was in a good mood.”

Tomorrow, Del Rey will hit the road back home to Los Angeles, preparing to spend Christmas Eve “with my sister and brother and just two girlfriends.” After the holiday, it will transpire she fractured her arm while spinning on her “beautiful skates” through the “twilight of the desert”: that’s why she’s wearing a sling in MOJO’s cover photograph.

Ever since she studied philosophy at New York’s Fordham University in the late 2000s, there’s been a question lurking in Del Rey’s mind: what if something happened to make the world stop? “So when it did,” she says, “I was kind of shocked.” The pandemic has inevitably hampered her movements – festivals cancelled, studio time with producer Jack Antonoff truncated – but it hasn’t slowed down her creative jumps (or her willingness to crash into social media).

September saw the publication of her poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass. In November, she covered Summertime as a fundraiser for the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras; covering all bases, she also recorded You’ll Never Walk Alone for a documentary about Liverpool FC.

The most significant landmark, however, was the completion of Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the album she has been promising (sometimes as White Hot Forever) since the release of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! Bruce Springsteen, who knows a bit about the flipside of the American dream, loved that album: “She just creates a world of her own and invites you in,” he said. The cover showed Del Rey standing on a boat, one arm around Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke, the other reaching towards the camera as if to save the viewer from the water. Behind her, the Californian coast is on fire. The Greatest, Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s defining song, was the cover’s aural analogue: “Hawaii just missed that fireball/LA is in flames it’s getting hot… Kanye West is blond and gone/Life On Mars ain’t just a song/I hope the livestream’s almost on.” But where do you go after burning America down? Did she know what was next?

“No,” says Del Rey lightly. “I felt totally fucked.”

YOU’D HAVE GOT LONG ODDS, IN 2012, on the internet phenomenon of the previous year’s Video Games becoming the decade’s most remarkable and provocative pop star. Back then, Lana Del Rey was more think-piece cipher than Boss-approved songwriter: “a young fiction,” sniffed the Los Angeles Times, “daughter of a domain-name magnate.”

The record states that Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was born in New York in 1985; as a baby, she moved with her parents upstate to Lake Placid. Music was around, but not unusually so. “From what I was told,” she says, “I sang verses before I spoke words, but I don’t think that necessarily meant I had to, or was going to be a singer.” Much else in her supposed biography, she says, is misinformation.

“People said I came from money,” she recounts. “It was really tough to get over some stigma of this idea of having my dad buying my album and giving me a record deal and us being some rich white family when we fought over money constantly when we were young.” Later, she says “I was not from the right side of the tracks, period.”

Sent to boarding school to address an alcohol problem – a period she captured in This Is What Makes Us Girls from her Born To Die album of 2012 – she “was made fun of mercilessly for being white trash. It was so hard, every minute of it was super-tough, not having come from Greenwich. Being super straight-edge in college was just, like, crazy. It’s been the road less travelled the whole time.” She has no interest, she insists, in properly telling her own story, “beautiful” though she says it is: “I don’t give a fuck about people knowing [mocking little voice] my inner thoughts as a third grader.”

Early detractors, chasing down a narrow idea of “authenticity”, were bothered by her musical prehistory – stalled experiments and false starts that might once have been called “paying your dues”. In 2006, she made Sirens under the name May Jailer, spindly alt-folk with a Linda Perhacs wobble that was never officially released. Her next ‘first’ album, Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant, was removed by her managers from the internet in 2010, preparing a clean slate for the post-Video Games era.

Yet as the plausibly deniable satire of Brooklyn Baby from 2014’s Ultraviolence indicates (“Well my boyfriend’s in a band/He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed”), she put in the hours on New York’s grottiest stages.

In 2008, Del Rey was living in the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in New Jersey. She would also take the light rail to record with producer David Kahne on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District – sessions that would ultimately become her first EP, Kill Kill, and the since repudiated Lana Del Ray. She had a deal with David Nichtern’s 5 Points Records; Lady Gaga’s manager Bob Leone secured her some classes at the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame; her senior year of metaphysics at Fordham was ending. Odd little paths opened up: she auditioned for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the musical scored by Bono and The Edge, and “maybe thought about Broadway. You’d get like a hundred dollars for singing background on records that would lead to nowhere. There was this company that emerged called The Orchard that was taking submissions for, like, toilet paper commercials and I probably did one, like, under a pseudonym. Definitely the happiest I’ve ever been. Stay in the middle, no dog in the race, people would even hire me for background stuff. I tried to act so cool on every sofa I sat at.”

It was only in 2010, when she met her current manager Ben Mawson at the CMJ Festival in New York’s Chinatown, that gears shifted and she glimpsed a significant future for herself: “Then I moved to London with him that week and he got me out of my deal that day.”

Success was not immediate. “I lived in a shitty flat with no heat, it was so awful – but they told me it was on Camden Road near where Amy Winehouse used to play at the Roundhouse, and I loved Amy.” Her voice softens dreamily. “I loved Amy.”

Fed up with trying to write songs for other people, one day she “just said ‘fuck it’” to her collaborator Justin Parker: “‘I’m going to write what I want to write now.’” In a Dolly Parton-style fit of productivity, within 72 hours she had Video Games, Born To Die, Blue Jeans and Ride.

On July 23, 2011, just under a month after Video Games appeared on the internet, Del Rey was on a train to Glasgow when Mawson told her she had received her first review. “I had 10 seconds of the most elated feeling,” she remembers, “and then the news everywhere, on all of the televisions, was that Amy had died on her front steps and I was like no. NO.” She breathes in sharply. “Everyone was watching, like, mesmerised, but I personally felt like I didn’t even want to sing any more.”

TEN SECONDS OF ELATION seems to be as much pleasure as Del Rey has ever taken from her press. When she covered Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood on 2015’s Honeymoon album, it was not casually chosen: anger at the way she feels she has been misrepresented surges through her conversation, despite the four billion streams, the four UK Number 1 albums, and the validation of famous fans from Stevie Nicks to Courtney Love.

Even Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s ecstatic reception was no antidote. “I knew they were going to like Norman… because there’s kind of nothing not to like about it,” she shrugs. “Norman…’s just cool, it’s easy to cheer for that.” She doesn’t, however, believe people are cheering for her: in September, she declared she still felt like an “underdog”.

“When I’m in London I’m reminded of what other people think of me in a great way. Being on the cover of MOJO – I fucking love MOJO. It’s crazy to me, crazy to me, crazy to me that I could be on the cover of MOJO but it’s a little different – ha! – over here,” she says, ie, in America. “I mean, I guess I’ll never forget my first four years of interviews. They just fucking burned me.”

There was the one where the journalist “made fun of me mercilessly, for like, five hours about how I adopted a New York City accent and that everyone knew it was fake, so just give it up. It was embarrassing – he humiliated me. So by the time he asked me about feminism, I said I just wanted to talk about aerospace travel.”

A 2014 Guardian interview headlined “I Wish I Was Dead Already” is another thorn in her psyche. “I didn’t say I wanted to die because of the 27 Club – I said I was having, like, a fucking hard time. The way people talk about mental health in 2020” – she makes the noise of an explosion – “mind blown. Talk about a different world compared with five years ago. You said anything remotely like you’re not feeling so good that day and it’s like, ‘Woah, you’ve set women back like 200 years.’ Or ‘Witch!’ It was super-hard to be a real person.”

Instead, Del Rey continued to build her musical world, creating a reality nobody could dismiss. ‘Evolution’ suggests dramatic Bowie-like shape-shifts; instead, her six albums have been a process of refining her core material – the palette of upcycled hip-hop, vintage Hollywood glamour and Laurel Canyon classicism. But Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s widescreen dazzle was a dead end of sorts – “I had to turn back inward,” she says – and Chemtrails Over The Country Club appears to reveal a more vulnerable Del Rey: lighter on the LA menace, more innocently emotional: “We did it for fun/We did it for free,” she sings sweetly on the song Yosemite, “we did it for the right reasons.” It’s an album that looks at the road ahead, but also, back to where she’s come from, making her strongest connection yet with her antecedents.

“I’ve been covering Joni and dancing with Joan,” she sings on Chemtrails…’ Dance Till We Die – and it’s all true. In October 2019, Del Rey duetted with Joan Baez on her 1975 song Diamonds And Rust at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre; a night of non-stop dancing with the 80-year-old folk hero followed. And as promised, Chemtrails… includes a Joni Mitchell cover from Mitchell’s 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon. Reprising their October 2019 performance at the Hollywood Bowl, Del Rey shares the verses out with Arizonan singer-songwriter Zella Day and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering. A bittersweet commentary on the value of art, Mitchell contrasts her “velvet curtain calls” with a busker’s purity – it’s a song, says Del Rey, that means “everything” to her.

“The way things started off for me in the way I was portrayed was that I was feigning emotional sensitivity. I really didn’t like that,” she says coldly. “Because I didn’t even get famous ’til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a fuck.”

For one, Natalie Mering doesn’t doubt Del Rey’s investment in For Free. “I think the verse that Lana sings – “Me, I play for fortunes” – it’s her story too,” she says. “She understands the ephemeral quality of music and that it can’t be completely commodified, even though she’s done such a great job of doing that. I think Joni is very similar.”

BAEZ AND MITCHELL, DEL REY says, are “like unicorns”. “Joan, Bob, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, it’s less the albums and more the songs – the single perfect songs. Like Diamonds And Rust or Woodstock.” She rummages on You Tube to find a “staggering” 1962 coffeehouse performance from Baez. “I see a lot of people now wanting to be like other people – and hey, it’s not like I don’t want to be like other people too – but I think there were so many less options to look at in the ’60s, so you kind of just got what you got. You got a Janis or you got a Joan or you got a Jimi – it wasn’t like there was Jimi One, Jimi Two, Jimi Three. When I’m producing things alone, it’s impossible for me to sound anything other than a singer-songwriter. Actually, that’s not true,” she corrects herself. “I’ve got my own little ways about me.”

Mering, comparing Del Rey to Peggy Lee “if she was, like, I’m just going to write everything myself,” agrees. “She’s very free and she’s loose. What she goes for in terms of when she’s writing and working, it’s very magical and intuitive and it’s not very calculated – even though I think maybe she’s been accused of that in the past.”

That looseness – a willingness to wander – feels more present on Chemtrails… than previous albums, yet she insists it has been “so much harder than any other record I’ve made.” Covid separated her from Antonoff – also a collaborator with St. Vincent and Taylor Swift – in the final stages of recording and she missed him. “Everything that could be terrible is hilarious in Jack’s world. I think that’s why he does so well. It’s a rare quality for a man to have that softer kind of side – all hilarity and no inappropriateness.”

She says she finds listening to the new album “a fight”, conceding that she’s offering a pre-emptive critique. “It wasn’t so much that I thought the songs fantastically fit together with like seamless, sunkissed production – but you know, there’s a life lived in there.”

Del Rey has long used Los Angeles to colour and contour her songs. But Chemtrails roves further – Tulsa, Nebraska, Florida – a fitting backcloth for a record about freedom in a world where everything has a price. Not All Who Wander Are Lost – a song whose sky-high trill reminds Del Rey of “Cinderella in the movie where she’s holding the bluebird” – romanticises wanderlust. Wild At Heart and the title track (“I’m not unhinged or unhappy/I’m just wild”) hint at something untameable. If For Free is the record’s presiding spirit, you can also feel the vibrations of Mitchell’s Cactus Tree, a song that acknowledges the hard work of “being free” – shedding compromise, swerving control.

It’s a struggle Del Rey maps onto her folk and country influences, most explicitly on Breaking Up Slowly. A mournful lament riffing on Tammy Wynette and George Jones’s notoriously turbulent relationship, it was written with Tennessean singer-songwriter Nikki Lane, who supported Del Rey in 2019. In a hotel room, Lane mentioned that somebody told her she was “breaking up slowly”. Del Rey immediately sang “…is a hard thing to do”.

“One of the most incredible things about being around her is like, she is a song,” says Lane of Del Rey. “It’s just coming out of her at all hours of the day.”

They have written four more originals; there is also, says Del Rey, “a cover album of country songs” and one of “other folk songs”. Del Rey expects “scepticism,” but explains her father and uncle Phil Madeira (one of Emmylou Harris’s Red Dirt Boys) exposed her to country music in her youth. Her tastes are “stark and blue, somewhat outlaw”: Hank Williams, Bobbie Gentry, Patsy Cline, Wynette. “With a little Marty Robbins and Johnny Paycheck. I went back and listened to Ride [from 2012 EP Paradise] and Video Games and thought, you know, they’re kind of country. I mean, they’re definitely not pop. Maybe the way Video Games got remastered, they’re pop – but there’s something Americana about it for sure. So let’s see how these things come out – I’m not going to have pedal steel guitar on every single thing, but it is easy for me to write.”

A YEAR OR SO AGO, DEL REY attended a party with Jack Antonoff and St. Vincent at the house of Guy Oseary, manager of Madonna and U2. “Something happened,” she says, “kind of a situation like – never meet your idols. And I just thought, ‘I think it’s interesting that the best musicians end up in such terrible places.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to try my best not to change because I love who I am.’ I said, ‘Jack, it’s dark.’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s dark – but I mean, it’s just a game.’”

The incident inspires a song on Chemtrails… Dark But Just A Game mixes Portishead, Ricky Nelson’s song Garden Party and Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl (“The best ones lost their minds”) into a potent statement of defiance.

“Dark But Just A Game is so her to me,” Antonoff will tell MOJO: “fly down the rabbit hole and smile in the same breath.”

The game, however, takes its toll. As Del Rey talks, it frequently feels as if she’s dusting herself down from past humiliations, brushing off old slights.

“People are constantly inferring that I’ve done so much to myself, when I’ve never even been under anaesthesia or whatever,” she says unprompted, apparently still stung by 2012 speculations over the size of her lips. Occasionally, she makes grand statements: “I wanted music to change in the early 2000s and I wanted it to be better than it was. I think it is and I genuinely think I had a hand in it for female singer-songwriters.” They don’t land like shots from a weaponised ego – more the affirmations of someone who still feels as if she doesn’t say it, nobody will.

On a Chemtrails… song called White Dress she sings in a breathlessly rapt whisper of being “only 19”, working as a waitress, listening to The White Stripes and Kings Of Leon. “Look how I do this,” she sings with trembling innocence, “look how I’ve got this.” Then comes the fall: “It kind of makes me feel that I was better off.”

“I’m sure the grass is always greener,” Del Rey says, looking back on her waitressing days, “but I had a lot of fun dreaming about what was going to come next. Also, I really liked being of service and I still do – I do lots of little things in my spare time that put me back sort of in that service space. How I kind of grew up was to be a man amongst men and a grain of sand on the beach and I preferred to stay in the middle of the boat in that way. Sometimes I feel, with fame, it can put you on the peripheries, where the vultures can pick at you. It’s dangerous on the edges.”

“It’s not that I aspire to be the girl next door,” she says later, “but it’s just that I actually was and I think what some people don’t understand is that the girl next door has things going on, too. A lot of these other people who I see portraying that image are not that way at all – they’re like the biggest bitches who live in, like, insane mansions and who rip people off. This is not bitterness speaking at all. It’s literally just kind of just the facts, ma’am.”

In May 2020, Del Rey posted a “question for the culture” on Instagram. In it, she expressed her belief that artists including Beyoncé, Cardi B and Kehlani were applauded for portraying their sexuality in all its messy complexity, while she was accused of “glamorising abuse” in songs like Ultraviolence, where she quoted the title of The Crystals’ Goffin & King classic He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss). The culture’s answer was not sympathetic: Del Rey was held to account for appearing to single out artists of colour, and criticised for asking feminism to save a place for “women who look and act like me… the kind of women who are slated for being their authentic, delicate selves.”

“I wasn’t saying white like me,” she insists, emphasising that the women she mentioned are artists she loves. “I was saying people who are made a joke of like me.”

SHORTLY AFTER SPEAKING TO MOJO, Del Rey issues another pre-emptive social media strike, pointing out the new album’s artwork – a photograph of the singer surrounded by her friends – does feature women of colour. Three days after that, she posts a video railing against magazines suggesting she told Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac that she didn’t believe Donald Trump meant to incite the Capitol riot. In fact, she says, she was accusing him of sociopathy – a subject, she tells MOJO, she studied for six years, along with “psychopathy and narcissism and delusions of grandeur”.

“When Trump became President, I was not surprised,” she says, “because the macrocosm is the mirror of what goes on in our bedrooms. In our inner lives.

“A lot of the things I was writing [songs] about, people shamed me for,” she continues, “but I like to think now I was actually writing about what thousands of housewives were experiencing and no one ever said a thing from Brentwood to Boca Raton. I just dyed my hair black and talked about it and I got a lot of shit for it.”

She declares that “It takes a more dignified-looking person with a better reputation to call out the world, or the President or some guy who runs a restaurant. I’m going to be the person who corroborates that story, the blonde at the end of the bar… The reason why I can’t be a person who starts certain movements is because of what people have written that isn’t true. And that’s too bad – because I know a lot.”

Does she feel she’s been discredited?

“I was discredited for seven years,” she says, her voice rising so fiercely it’s briefly unclear whether she’s laughing or crying. “There’s no other way of looking it.”

In the poem SportCruiser from Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, Del Rey wonders if learning to fly could help her navigate life, if learning to sail would show her which way the wind was blowing. Then she realises writing is all the adventure she needs.

“I certainly have to circumnavigate the globe quite a few times to come back to the fact that what I do is that I write, that I live here in LA, that I know who I am,” she says. “I think I’m very hopeful that I’ll feel more and more serene, because that is an objective for me. I just like the idea of waking up peacefully, rather than waking up in a sweat, throwing my feet down on the ground and being like, ‘Oh, what’s going wrong today!’”

Talking earlier about her whispery vocal on White Dress, Del Rey said it was not only close to unedited “journaling” but “also, not too afraid about being kind of stupid. The way I sound in the chorus – because I know it’s… not great, you know,” she laughs.

It sounds perfect for the song, though – trembling, awestruck. The voice of somebody on the brink of something. She agrees – not because it catches her teenage perspective, but because it speaks to her now.

“I actually said to a friend the other day I feel something brewing,” she says. “And that’s the first time in a long time. I have no idea what it is. But I know that it’s good.”

Originally published in the April 2021 issue of Mojo with the headline Wild at Heart.

[sunskate]

CPom on Polina Edmunds's podcast pt 2:

Choreo from last year- what did it feel like to have the newness in choreography and those names inspiring you C: they're the best choreographers in the world - they produce good programs after good programs - it was a dream to work with them, they bring such a creative energy every day, from Marie-France, Madi, Sam- they have such a vision and a genius about skating. it's a dream to work with A: last year I was coming from an injury and a shortened off season, so everyone came together to strategize what the best music was and how to connect everything together. We're really happy to have had the team we had, because it made my comeback very good

Last season was a breath of fresh air after a couple challenging seasons- missing Nationals in 2020 because of covid, then 2021 finishing 7th at Nationals, Anthony's injury, though you finished the season strong at 4CC with a bronze medal- You came back brilliantly this season- you went to your first Worlds - talk about the impact-

They were in contact with someone who had covid and found out 3 days before they left, didn't have covid but couldn't go to Nationals. C: i wish my test came back positive because at least then would be missing because i was sick. perfectly healthy but had to sit at home. was crying all the time A: pretty devastating - felt like they were in the best shape they could be in. wanted to redeem themselves from not the best performance at Skate America that year. so having that opportunity taken away was devastating. that was when we made the decision to move on from Igor. hard times make better people, but it was hard. also wouldn't have my dog George if it wasn't for that. C: when they got the call [that they couldn't go, Anthony] didn't say anything, but stood up, said I'm getting a dog, and left my house A: i stayed off social media that week [of Nationals], and as soon as it was over, i drove to Ohio to get my dog, George

Support systems- what was it like to move to Michigan without your parents at a young age- how has that impacted your life? C: when I moved, I didn't really speak English (!!!) was really hard communicating with people, i missed my parents so much. now I'm grateful for the experience- I'm super independent, I can easily live by myself, it's taught me a lot, but back then it was hard A: for me I lived with a host family for 2 years. so it was definitely different but it wasn't a big shock. once i moved away around the age of 15/16, it got difficult quickly, because I missed that family dynamic. I missed my parents, my brother - I took it for granted before. time difference [to California where his parents live] made it difficult. learned a lot of valuable lessons. learned independence earlier

Anthony's injury, what was your mental state through surgery -- A: ankle - 2015 a bad sprain early in their career. neglected it. were finally getting international competitions, didn't want to take valuable time away - fought through the pain, some days it was really bad. got worse year after year. got opinion after opinion saying get surgery. then finding time to do it. figured the end of the olympic quad was the best time. and it was a great decision because able to do things now he wouldn't be able otherwise. [about mental space] - we just had had a pretty rocky season. it was a really difficult 3 months of recovery- really was unsure where the partnership was going, if I even wanted to continue skating. took a lot of evaluation of my life, where I wanted to go. beneficial to take a step back and look because i established clear goals for myself and my life To Christina, what was your mental space then- how did you approach the following season after-- C: the transition season from changing coaches was really difficult. the approach to training was so different from what we were used to. before we did it to please other people or out of fear (!!!) and then once we moved, we didn't have that aspect any more. you kind of have to do it for yourself because you like doing it and because you want to get better yourself. and learning that transition was really hard, and you saw that struggle in most competitions. and getting to Nationals, that was a really hard Nationals, The offseason was hard for me as well - there were a few shaky moments, and I was training by myself, long and sometimes it's boring, but once we made clear goals for the following season and got together, we approached training with a completely different mindset, we dove into what the coaches were saying, of trusting their process, trusting their training and really giving everything we have, and it's really paid off. I'm happy we had that rocky season because it's taught us so much, and now our mindset for training and competition is so different than before

What were the goals you set out- C: we had some results goals, but we mostly focused on trusting the process. trusting what we were given that day, if we were tired, that's ok, it's normal, just trusting what our coaches wanted. that was one of our main goals. approaching competition differently -doing it for ourselves, whatever the outcome with judges, points - as long as we're happy with what we did, that was enough. Results- make the world team. we always told ourselves, if we don't make it but we skated our best then that's ok, and it just didn't work out, we'll try harder next season. those were our goals

And you guys did it, congratulations, high five

[worldofwardcraft]

As usual, he skates.

November 20, 2023

One of the most frustrating things about Donald Trump is that he commits so many crimes and breaks so many laws it's virtually impossible to hold him to account for them all. So, he avoids being criminally charged for many of the offenses of which he is so obviously guilty. Like his numerous violations of the Hatch Act, his years of money laundering, his income tax evasion or his various bribery schemes. Sometimes the fault lies with an overworked, overstretched legal system.

But all too often, Trump is simply handed a pass with the connivance of his fellow Republicans. That is, after all, why he escaped conviction in his two impeachment trials, despite the mountain of evidence against him. And it explains why the Federal Election Commission has repeatedly let Trump off the hook for breaching campaign-spending laws.

For example, one Democratic fundraising organization filed a complaint with the FEC in which it accused Trump of spending political funds for a 2024 presidential campaign without officially declaring his candidacy. Said the complaint, “His failure to timely file a Statement of Candidacy with the Commission is a clear violation of the [Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.]”

In addition, the complaint stated Trump had been illegally using his "Save America" leadership PAC not for other candidates as required, but to raise and spend funds to advance his own presidential bid. The nonpartisan staff in the FEC's Office of General Counsel recommended that of the 58 allegations against Trump, his committees and his family, 28 should be investigated. You'll never guess what happened next.

Don't bother guessing. In a statement issued earlier this month, FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub reported that the "number of times a Republican Commissioner has voted to approve an OGC recommendation against Mr. Trump" was zero, indicating that "at the FEC, Mr. Trump is in a category by himself."

He sure is. In 2021, the FEC dropped a case looking into illicit hush-money payments in the lead-up to the 2016 election by his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Even though Cohen testified that Trump arranged the payments, it was he, not Trump, who went to prison for violating campaign finance laws. Here's what Newsweek had to say.

While the Office of General Counsel said it had "reason to believe" violations of campaign finance law were made "knowingly and willfully" by the Trump campaign, the FEC voted not to proceed.

The FEC may let Trump get away with nonstop criming, but let's hope Jack Smith, Fani Willis and Letitia James won't be so forgiving.