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valeskakingdom · 4 years ago

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Request

Could I request a part 3? Jerome keeps the reader as his hostage for popularity and attention. Reader is really fond of the attention she gets as well and eventually sleeps with Jerome again? In the end she sees how Galavan kills him and is really sad?

Requested by @violentvaleska

So guys, here's part 5!!

Credit gif: @jokersbabe27

Jerome x female reader (part 5)

Warnings: mentions of violence and murder, depression

Word count: 3378

*Later that day at the charity*

"Already excited for my show, doll?" Jerome grinned through his magician costume. you hated that costume. It hid Jerome's beautiful face with a shitty beard, his hairs were under a stupid wig and a black cylinder. And that tuxedo...gosh, you hated it thought not as much as the wig or the fake beard. The worst on it was his name...'Rodolfo'. You were disgusted by that name.

No magician in that universe would ever call himself like that! It sounds so ridiculous!

"Of course! Though I already know you'll be amazing as always." You smirked pressing a kiss on his cheek "Give them the best show they've ever seen!"

"That ain't be a problem for me" Jerome grinned "Even Hundini wouldn't have seen such a great show." You giggled at his comment.

"Without further ado, please allow me to present you the Great Rodolfo!" Immediately, Jerome walked on stage, everyone was applauding - even you. You were excited for how he was acting as a magician. Of course, you knew he was doing it well anyway. Jerome was professional. He could play every role in this Earth perfectly!

"Ha! Greetings ladies and germs," Jerome walked on stage "I am indeed the Great Rodolfo! Please ogle my lovely assistant. Ohh, for my first act, I'll require a volunteer. Let me see. Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, goose!" Jerome pointed at Bruce Wayne, the richest orphan in Gotham that was hated by every villain - really, everyone wanted to kill him.

"Hello, young man. Does this handsome gentleman have a name?" You heard Jerome saying after she went out to the crowd to bring him back.

"Bruce." The boy responded.

"Bruce! Well, Bruce. This won't hurt a bit." He clapped two great blades together "Is there a doctor in the house?"

Jerome sticked one of the blades in the box along with the other one. The audience gasped, them applauded him.

While watching you were astonished about Jerome's well, acting. Nobody noticed it was him. Neither Bruce nor the other guests recognized anything. Almost unbelievable for you.

"Some people say Bruce has a split personality." Jerome laughed loud while Barbara brought the little kid back to his actual place "For my next illusion, I'd like to call to the stage esteemed Deputy Major Harrison Kane."

Barbara pushed a rolling table, covered with a tarp, forward that it stood in front of Jerome. She pulled the tarp back and you could see any kind of knives laying down there. You were thinking about what was coming next. Is Jerome still playing with him or is he about to kill that guy?

Barbara bended down making the others noticed the next illusion was incoming. But a mistake happened, her mask fell down.

They're fucked!! You thought panicking. If anyone of the guests recognized them, they all would have a big problem. People would call the police, others die, the police finds you and eventually become informed about Theo, as well.

But Barbara kept being professional. Nobody made a move to start panicking or to call the police. Everything stayed normal.

"By the way, nobody is getting out here alive." At first the crowd laughed because they thought he was just joking - of course, he did not. Jerome killed the Deputy and the gunfire started. People were screaming and hiding in hope they weren't the next victim.

You flinched a little in surprise, although you might have expected it. Who would Jerome not kill expect you? He killed his mother, now the Deputy Major...it was just a matter of time to see who was his next victim.

For you, that all was pretty exciting, but also a big feeling of unpleasantness came over you. This situation reminded you of the day Jerome kidnapped you. You had flashbacks. You fear, you uncomfortableness, the nervousness, the wish to go home...everything came back - you knew best how the victims felt right now, and.

And as the last time, something told you that this situation wouldn't turn out well.

You wanted to be with Jerome right now. You just wanted to hug him, you wouldn't care whether he liked it or not, you just needed it.

But you couldn't go to him. You promised him to stay backstage to watch his marvellous show. And you knew, as everyone else knew what would happen if you broke the promise. His mood would change again and you needed to see whether it would turn out well for you or not.

You just stared at your lover. Finally he took the cylinder from his head as the wig, his black mask and the beard. Finally he presented himself again. You couldn't help but smile. You saw him being excited, being happy. He was the star in the show as he was the boss. You loved to see this: him standing there calm and managing everything while around him was pure chaos.

He was so professional you thought.

Out of nowhere, another woman was brought on stage, it was Lee Tompkins.

She was handhuffed, her gaze expressed fear and panicking.

They probably have taken her from behind as she was about to call the cops to tell what was going on.

You saw Jerome gazing at her with a smile - immediately, you hated her. You hated how you Jerome looked at her, how he smiled at her. It looked the same as every time he was smiling at you.

"Hey, darling" You felt shivers down your spine and jealousy came over you as he said that, you hated when Jerome was acting kinda flirty with other women. You always got the feeling they'd be much better than you but you also that your thoughts are wrong "I need to borrow your phone for a moment. We wanna tell Jimbo how the show's going on, don't we?"

And so he called him:

"Sorry Jimbo, it's just little old me!" He said nothing for a moment, then "Are you outside? You are, aren't you?" He cackled" Oh, goody!"

"Breathe, James. I haven't touched a hair on your girlfriend's pretty head." See for yourself. This is live television after all." You heard Jerome laughing after he responded to 'Jimbo'.

Then Jerome and Barbara tied Lee up on that big wheel pretending to shoot her head. It was all to entertain the crowd, to make them love. No one loved though - besides you. You loved their show. It entertained you and you loved to see your lover in action.

"True, but not the point. Hey, let's talk about what I want." Jerome walked down the stage closer to the camera "$47 million, a helicopter, obviously, the dry cleaning I left at Mr. Chang's be careful, the man is a crook, and mm, I don't know, a pony. Uh, you got ten minutes or I start killing people. Remember this is being broadcast to every home in Gotham, so, don't let people die. Bye!" Jerome laughed into the phone as he hung up "I think that went well." Jerome looked at you giving you a wink with a smile.

"Enough! You need to pack up your pathetic little sideshow and leave!" You suddenly heard Theo yelling from the other side of the stage. You were confused. What was he doing here? He told them to do this! Or did this still belong to the show?

"Is that right?" Jerome asked with a smirk.

"It may be presumptuous to speak for all citizens of Gotham. But we are sick of you! You're a small, vicious man with a pathetic need for attention. Enough man, for God's sake, enough!"

You were even more confused about Galavan's words. Something was in the bush. In his tower he spoke in high claims of Jerome that he was the star in the show, that he trusted Jerome most that he'll do it. What was wrong now?

"I'm curious what your leverage is here, Mr.?"

"Theo Galavan"

"Well, Mr. Theo Galavan, if you don't sit down, uh, I'm gonna shoot you. In your face."

"I know there is some human decency left in you. If you need a hostage, take me. But let these people go home! To their families, to their children." Before Theo could continue his speech, Barbara knocked him out with a some kind of pan. You giggled for yourself, almost laughed loud. It looked so stupid for you how he fell on the ground. It was like in a real blockbuster.

"Boring" Barbara stated.

"Right" Jerome cackled loudly, then he made his way to you with a big grin in his face. Automatically you grinned, too.

"How do you like the show doll?" Jerome grabbed your hands and pulled you close to him. You felt a slightly blush spreading over your cheeks as he pressed his lips against yours. His hands grabbed your cheeks softly to intense the kiss.

"I love it! It's very exciting" You grinned wrapping your arms around his neck while he wrapped his arms around your waist "But I'm much happier about you not wearing this cruel costume anymore. It covered your face, I hated it."

Jerome just chuckled about your comment and kissed your forehead.

"I have an idea," You just raised your brows looking at him in interest "Wanna be the star in my show?"

"Of course I do!" You smiled wide before he pressed his lips against yours quickly, then you both walked out. Gasps filled the room, all eyes were on you. They all knew who you were. You were the missed girl everyone was looking for. They either thought you were dead or that you were left at a lost place. But now you stood there - healthy, happy, self-confident.

"I know what you all think: That's (Y/n)! What is she doing here?! Where has she been?! I tell you all a secret: She was with me all the time." Jerome grabbed your face soft making you giggle "She's gorgeous, isn't she? Always has a pretty smile in her face."

Barbara pulled a next man up on stage positioning right in front of you and handed you a gun. Then she placed an apple on the man's bald.

"You know how to hold a gun, doll?" Jerome grinned wrapping his arms around you from behind. You felt his lips and his warm breathe touched your cheek. It was giving you chills in arousal.

"I'm not that stupid, Jerome." You made sure the gun was loaded. You positioned yourself to keep stable and pointed the gun at the apple. That was what Barbara and Tabitha have taught you over the days you were at Galavan's.

The man in front of you was shivering with wide eyes, his sweat was dripping down his forehead. His eyes expressed fear and you could see he wished you didn't kill him.

"Hold very still." Jerome growled at the man, then he covered his eyes with one hand "I can't look! Someone tell me how it turns out."

You inhaled deeply and concentrated on the apple. But as you pulled the trigger, just water came out and splashed into the old man's face. At that moment, you thought that Jerome jerked you around with tell you time the star.

Jerome just sighed in annoyance grabbing your gun and gave you a new one assuring you that he didn't know the gun was fake.

"Damn! Turn around." The man looked at you in fear and turned around. With his eyes he literally begged you not to shoot or at least to hit the apple. He was about to stop moving as you shot the apple from his head. The crowd gasps in shock and relief that the guy wasn't dead yet.

"Whoo!" Barbara cheered happily. You knew she was proud of you that you didn't blame yourself and missed the apple. You were proud of yourself, too. You shot without hesitation, not even thinking of missing the apple and accidentally shoot the guy.

Every one else kept quiet tho.

"Well, clap!" Jerome shouted kinda aggressively to the crowd - then they did it. Nervously and fast. He laughed slightly pressing a kiss on your cheek "Well done, doll."

"Thank you, Jerome." You grinned. He took the gun out of your hands and placed it on the table with the knives. Then he kept staring at them for a while, you could see he was thinking about something.

"Do you know how to use a knife? Just wondering." Jerome smiled at you.

Before you could answer though, you saw Lee kicked Barbara in the stomach making her grunt.

As Barbara looked up at Lee, you could see fury was written in her face. She was angry, mad...these words just described a very small part of her feeling. It was incredible how much hate a person could express.

You looked at Lee. You could see she didn't give a fuck about her consequences.

"Haven't been ten minutes," Jerome hissed holding Barbara's arm tight that she was unable to stab Lee "We need to buy you a watch." Soon as Jerome turned around back to you Barbara punched Lee in her face. The crowd and you all gasped in surprise. Jerome instead, just looked at you shaking his head in disappointment what made you chuckle.

"Well, I think it's time for tonight's first official victim. You all know and love. Poor rich boy...Parents murdered in an alley, and my favorite volunteer: Where is Bruce Wayne?" Jerome claimed waiting for the little boy's appearance - he didn't come though. Everyone looked around for the boy hoping he would come. They, as you, knew what would happen if he did - someone will die.

"You know, I'm an orphan, too, Bruce? I killed my parents, though." Jerome spoke to the microphone, then stepped away from it "Where are you hiding?"

"Bruce!" Jerome screamed in anger making you flinch a little - you were always surprised about his temper. It came rapidly and was gone after a few seconds "Where are you buddy?!"

"That little kid's afraid of you, Jerome." You giggled wrapping your arms around his torso kinda in hope to calm him down a little. You had no idea his temper could ride that fast. "Give that boy some time to realize how much fun he's gonna have with you."

"We don't have time, right now. We have a plan to follow." Jerome grumbled looking around for Bruce and slightly pushing you away from him. In your eyes, Jerome was a mix of an infant and a monster or the evil itself. His impatience reminded you of a child that didn't get his will. And his eye expression expressed fury, evil and the strong wish to kill the kid. It was fascinating, and almost frightening.

"Kill his butler!"" Barbara suggested.

"Alright, last chance Bruce but it's about to get very butler-brainy out here." Jeromekept looking around. While that, some of Jerome's colleagues grabbed the butler's arms right pushing him forward to Jerome. He was an older tall man in a black tuxedo looking very concerned for the little boy - understandable.

"Brucey!" Jerome yelled looking through the crowd but the boy still didn't appear "I'm bored. Shoot the butler." Jerome turned to you with a grin, not even really paying attention to what was happening around him. He just wanted you.

"Stop!" Bruce claimed panicking and ran fast in front of the stage to his poor butler.

"Let's get this started, huh?" Jerome gasped pulling Bruce back while pointing a gun at his head "You! Check behind the curtain! Make sure no one's playing silly buggers"

One of Jerome's colleagues nodded and walked to the curtain. He moved it aside the entrance, he got shot.

"Drop the knife!" James Gordon shouted pointing a gun at Jerome, but he just laughed and pressed the young Bruce Wayne in front of his body, a sharp blade was pressed on his throat almost cutting his thin skin.

"I don't have a clean shot!" Gordon shouted.

"Stay calm, Bruce." The butler tried to encourage the little boy after he took a gun, as well, pointing it at Jerome. He totally ignored what Gordon said. His mind was all around Bruce.

"It seems like we've got ourselves a pickle." Jerome stopped laughing but pressing a knife against Bruce's throat. "What do you say Brucey boy? Wanna boost our ratings, huh?" Jerome cackled insanely again "Smile."

"I said enough!" All of a sudden Theo appeared behind Jerome. He looked mad, very mad. Again you got that feeling of uncomfortableness. And again you got that feeling that something bad will happen now. You saw it on his gaze. This devilish grin. Something was in the bush.

And you weren't wrong. Shortly after Jerome turned to him slowly, Theo stabbed a knife into his neck.

Everyone gasped in shock, you were the loudest though. You heart dropped, you couldn't move for the moment, your legs became weak, cat got your tongue - you weren't able to breathe normal. You felt poor as you stared at Theo's hand that pressed the knife in Jerome's throat deeper and deeper - and that all right in front of you. Your whole body shivered, you were about to throw up every minute.

Tears built up in your eyes and some even streamed down your cheeks. This couldn't be real, this mustn't be real! You couldn't loose him, not now, not again, not forever.

Things have happened not quite perfect and you were mad at him, you didn't want to be with him, you even hated him for a moment, you were afraid of him... everything. You could say for one moment he was your biggest fear in your life because you were scared he'd kill you every minute, or every time you did something wrong. But that faded, it was forgiven, your love was refreshed. It was stronger than the night you two met for the first time. Your connection was stronger than ever before - you knew you belonged together. Why else did fate decide to let you two meet again? Why else would you fall for him again? Why else did he all you his doll, his girl, his queen? That weren't just words...it was more, a lot more.

You knew Jerome couldn't show love as usual people did, but you knew he loved you. His soft side towards you, him trying to make you smile, him protecting you when Greenwood teased you or harassed you..,that was all real. He didn't act at all!

All the memories came up. His smile, how you two hold a conversation for the first time at the circus, you felt the warmth on you hand again when you remembered how he held your hand. You could feel his arms wrapping around your body, and you could hear him calling you 'doll'.

And all this was gone forever now.

"I know, I know." He pressed Jerome down to the ground "Im so sorry, Jerome. You have real talent. But now you see, the plot thickens. Enter the hero." You saw Theo grinning slightly.

You could kill him for what he has done to him - and to you. He took all your joy away, he ripped your heart in two and three it away that it shattered in thousands of pieces. He had to die in your eyes. He just deserved it. You wanted revenge. You wanted to make him feel what he has done to you. You wanted to make him feel how you felt - sad, broken, shocked.

"I was gonna be.." With his last breath and his last courage, he looked up to you still having a grin in his face. His mouth opened shortly as if he was about to say something to you, but too late.

He was dead - dead as your happiness, your joy, you will to live. Your heart felt so heavy that every beating was exhausting you, as your breathing. The world was spinning around you. You body and your psyche couldn't handle what has happened just a few seconds in front of you.

He died, your love, your everything - your Jerome. And he will never come back.

And you died - inside.

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chiseler · 5 years ago

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Puttin’ on the Ritz

No fame is more fleeting than the showbiz kind. Some entertainers are just too much in and of a particular time. In the 1920s Harry Richman was a big star, billed as the Greatest Entertainer In America. He could sing and play piano, dance and act a little; he ran a hugely successful nightclub, was the toast of Broadway and, very briefly, a star in Hollywood; he wrote or introduced several songs that are still sung. But most of all he just personified the Roaring Twenties. He was the sleek, rakish, vaguely smarmy bon vivant in top hat and tails who was enjoying the decade's non-stop party as much as you were. It's been said that he was to the 1920s what the Rat Pack were to their era. Harry's career peaked just as the party crashed to a halt at the end of the decade, and he faded out in the 1930s. If his name comes up at all today, it's probably less often as an entertainer than as a footnote in aviation history.

He was born Harry Reichman in Cincinnati in 1895. His dad, a Russian Jewish immigrant, started out peddling eyeglasses door to door, carrying all his equipment on his back. He worked his way up to a prosperous wholesale business and real estate empire, and developed a taste for the high life. It killed him by the time Harry was an adolescent. In his thoroughly entertaining (sometimes suspiciously so) 1966 autobiography A Hell of a Life, Harry paints himself as a fecklessly scheming kid who grew up quick. At nine, he writes, he was a weekend ticket taker at an amusement park, shortchanging every customer he could because he was saving up to marry his childhood sweetheart. One night he showed off his ill-gotten riches by taking the girl out on the town. They stayed out too late to go home, so Harry got them a hotel room. When the cops burst through the door in the wee hours they found the kids sleeping fully clothed on separate beds. A doctor confirmed that the girl's honor was intact. Her dad put the kibosh to their romance anyway.

Harry's mother bought him piano lessons, dreaming he'd be a concert pianist, but like most kids at the time he was more interested in ragtime and jazz. He left home at around fourteen and headed to Indianapolis. There he and a kid who played fiddle went door to door in the kind of neighborhoods where an upright in the parlor wasn't uncommon. They'd bang out a few popular tunes for spare change. As Remington & Reichman they were soon touring the very small-time Webster circuit of vaudeville theaters in the Dakotas and Canada, known to vaudevillians as the Death Trail. Harry kept working his way around the west, singing at the piano in saloons and whorehouses, working as a singing waiter in restaurants, as part of a "Hawaiian" hula act in a circus sideshow. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco he was in a musical act that opened for Harry Houdini, fifteen shows a day. Playing in Los Angeles clubs favored by the movie crowd he got to be pals with Charlie Chaplin and Al Jolson, whom he idolized. Jolson got him a shot at Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic, the late-night club revue that gave Eddie Cantor his big break. Harry raced to New York, but flopped and was canned after only one night. He was so despondent he ran off and joined the Navy.

He arrived back in New York in 1920, just when Prohibition did too. Now he and the city were ready for each other. On vaudeville stages he found work as an accompanist for headliners like the singer Nora Bayes and the beautiful twin Dolly Sisters, and for a while was Mae West's on-stage pianist and straight man. He was reluctant to speak lines at first because he had a lisp that he could hide more easily when singing. West convinced him it was a distinguishing feature. He soon got top billing on his own on the Keith-Albee circuit. He also played at ritzy speakeasies like the Beaux Arts, where, he claims, Prohibition's hostess with the mostest Texas Guinan stole her signature line "Give the little girls a big hand" from him.

Nils T. Granlund, known as NTG, was both a radio pioneer and the publicist for Marcus Loew's movie theater empire. He hired Harry to headline live radio shows from Loew's State Theatre, the movie palace in Times Square. Harry plugged new songs on air, like Billy Rose's "Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?" With NTG's help he opened his own Club Richman just behind Carnegie Hall. Harry made it one of the most opulent and exclusive nightclub/speakeasies in town. A lot of Broadway and movie stars became regulars, as of course did Mayor Jimmy Walker, and the Vanderbilts and Whitneys, and foreign royalty -- you saw everybody who was anybody there.

Or wanted to be somebody, like the chorus girl Lucille Le Seur. Accounts vary as to how Lucille got into the swank club. In one version, she convinced NTG, her sugar daddy at the time, to get her a spot in the club dancing the Charleston. NTG introduced her to Loew, who arranged a screen test at MGM, where she'd get her first tiny roles in 1925. Studio chief Louis B. Mayer decided her name sounded like Le Sewer, so the studio ran a publicity campaign in which the fans got to give her a new name: Joan Crawford. She never liked it.

For his part, Harry claimed that he discovered Crawford. He did have an eye for the beauties. He was one of the first to spot Jean Harlow, Sally Rand and Maureen O'Sullivan. Harry was an infamous ladies' man, bedding a long line of beauties from chorus girls to socialites to Harlow, maybe Rand, and Clara Bow. According to Harry, his office at the club had a secret door for sneaking them in and out while their husbands or dates drummed their fingers at their tables thinking they were just taking a long time powdering their noses. He says that the Hollywood Bowl couldn't hold all the women he had, and classes himself "a specialist in man's favorite sport."

Between the club and his other gigs Harry minted money and became the playboy nonpareil. He wore the finest bespoke suits and carried a gold cigarette case with his initials on it in diamonds. He commuted in a Rolls from Manhattan to his big house out on the water in Beechhurst, Queens, where he had a yacht and threw Gatsby-like parties for celebrities, beauties and millionaires. He learned to fly and kept a growing fleet of planes at nearby Flushing Airport. Harry worked hard, played hard, drank oceans of booze and smoked whole fields of tobacco. Everyone marveled at his stamina and joie de vivre even in that over-the-top decade.

In 1926, while still playing the host at his club, Harry got a featured role on Broadway in George White's Scandals, one of several knockoffs of the Ziegfeld Follies. After a boffo year it toured other cities, including Cincinnati, where, he notes ruefully, it tanked. In 1930 he headlined Lew Leslie's International Revue, where he introduced "On the Sunny Side of the Street." And in 1931 he made it, finally, into the Follies as well. He got his choice of songs to perform, including "Lullaby of Broadway." He was at the top of his career in those shows, the king of Broadway; his friend Eddie Cantor memorably said he wore Broadway like a boutonniere.

He didn't do so well in Hollywood. He starred, playing himself as "Harry Raymond," in the 1930 musical Puttin' on the Ritz, in which he introduced the song by his pal Irving Berlin. The movie did mediocre business then and is barely watchable now except for that number, Harry gliding around in front of an army of dancers with his top hat tilted over one eye. His recording of the song, which some consider the best, was a hit. (Among his other records are Berlin's "Blue Skies," his own "Muddy Waters" and a pretty wonderful Jolson-ish rendition of "Ain't She Sweet.") While in Hollywood to make the film he met Clara Bow. Teamed up at first for publicity purposes only, they became a hot item and got engaged. Then she suddenly married someone else. Hearing the news, he says, was the only time in his life that he fainted.

He'd make only two more feature films and one short. He sums them up this way: "All were forgettable. It became clear to me that whatever I had was best projected in person, either on the stage or in a night club." By the time he made the last film, released in 1938, he was well past his prime. When the Depression hit and then Prohibition ended, guys like Harry, icons of the Roaring Twenties, just didn't fit the new reality. To his credit, he didn't hang around like some other ghosts of the 1920s did. He left New York and settled in Miami, which was booming and lousy with new nightclubs where he could coast for a few years on his dazzling past. He went fishing with Hemingway and played with his airplanes.

His real fame in the 1930s came in fact as a flyer. In the mid-1930s he'd set altitude and speed records. Then in 1935 he and the pilot Dick Merrill made the world's first round-trip transatlantic flight in a single-engine plane. They filled the plane with tens of thousands of ping-pong balls as flotation devices should they land in the soup. Harry being Harry, after reaching Wales on the outward leg of the trip, they flew on to Paris to party all night with Maurice Chevalier before making the return flight. They landed upside-down in a Newfoundland bog, but they made it. It wasn't as big a deal as Lindbergh's one-way crossing in 1927, but Harry calls it the high point of his life.

Harry didn't make much news after that. He played some clubs through the 1940s, his looks and voice rough from all that carousing and smoking. He still had lots of friends in the show business who tried to engineer comebacks for him, but the public had long since forgotten him. By the time A Hell of a Life came out in 1966 he'd spent the millions he'd made in his heyday and was living alone, quietly and frugally, in Burbank, an old guy who'd gone full-tilt as long as he could, had a hell of a lot of memories and not too many regrets. He died in 1972.

by John Strasbaugh

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jaydcstories · 5 years ago

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Read this and other stories on my blog: JOHN DEE COOPER'S ALL-MALE SLAVERY STORIES

Chapter 10 ‘LEON’S STORY’

Leon was born somewhere in the depths of Africa. Where exactly he wasn’t sure because when he was seven years old his village was burnt to the ground by slave hunters.

They took everyone, the whole tribe, men, women and children. They were bound and fettered and led across country, naked, some of them dying from exposure, some beaten to death. The ones that were too weak to go on were abandoned, left to starve or to be eaten by wild animals. Those that had the strength and good fortune to survive were put up for sale at various slave markets along the way. Leon’s parents were the first to be sold, then his sister and his two older brothers. After that he was on his own.

He was sold and resold so many times over the next few years that very soon he could hardly remember what his family looked like, let alone his birthplace. He’d become an insignificant object, a nameless child, handed around from one cruel Master to another — until he was about the age of ten. He’d grown considerably by then and acquired some tough young muscles that were beginning to attract attention.

It was around this time, at an Algerian slave market, that he was spotted by an agent of the American Government who was struck by the boy’s physical development, especially in one so young. He had him shipped over to the United States and installed him as a house slave at the White House.

Life wasn’t too bad for a while. He was fed well and given a smart uniform to wear. His chores were mostly carrying messages and running errands. He was hard working and disciplined and responded well to punishment when it was called for, which was not often. It’s not surprising that eventually his obedience and good looks caught the eye of the President who immediately took a liking to him. He became the President’s personal slave, accompanying him everywhere. This was a highly honoured position for any slave and Leon served proudly and diligently earning his Master’s care and affection. This was perhaps the happiest time of young Leon’s life.

But Presidents come and go, while Leon was government property and had to serve them all whatever their personal or political needs. Mostly they kept him to themselves, but eventually he found he had a Master with radically new ideas.

This president’s primary concern was the promotion of the American slave trade and he was keen to exploit the young Negro’s rare physical beauty. He had the boy, who was by now a full blooded, muscular and very well-endowed fifteen-year-old, to be stripped naked and paraded in front of visitors and dignitaries from across the world so that they could admire the finest of American slave stock. He was fitted with a solid gold collar and a matching gold cock ring and his stunning physique and smooth ebony skin won many admirers. In fact, it wasn’t long before he was being offered as a plaything to visiting VIPs for their private amusement.

I couldn’t help wondering how this sudden change in his treatment might have affected Leon. He just shrugged it off when we asked him. But it must have been a huge shock to suddenly find himself on public display — totally naked, for strangers to gape at and admire — even to touch and fondle. And he had to learn very quickly how to satisfy all kinds of sexual appetites. Matters of state sometimes depended on it. If a visiting emissary or a difficult senator was causing a problem, Leon would be dispatched to his hotel room to help soothe the waters. It must have been a strange and awesome sight, this handsome black boy striding naked down the busy corridors of power, or being passed around amongst the honoured guests at a state reception. Other slaves were found to join him in these arduous duties, but Leon was the first and remained the most popular.

However hard it was to adjust to this new role — and at first it must have been as terrifying as it was humiliating — he took advantage of the special status it gave him by spending as much time as he could working out and building up his body until by the time he was nineteen he had a physique that was the envy of his fellow slaves and the delight of all those that managed to get their hands on it.

But there was growing criticism in some quarters that the White House was becoming too extravagant and stringent measures were introduced by a new administration to cut back on all but the most essential slaves. Leon had just turned twenty when it was decided that he was surplus to requirements.

He was saved the indignation of being exposed to public auction by the intervention of a senior official who was taking early retirement and was planning to spend his financial settlement on setting up a slave rodeo. It had been a lifetime dream of his, and he was able to purchase Leon at a very favourable rate as his star turn.

Like Pepe’s pony thing, we’d never heard of a slave rodeo, so, to save Leon the trouble, Pepe gave us a quick but breathtaking run down of what they were about.

A slave rodeo is a kind of travelling circus, but with slaves instead of animals and acrobats and clowns. There are sideshows were you can watch slaves at work or being tortured and customers can pay to operate the machinery or practice their own skills with a whip. They can even hire slaves by the hour and submit them to ordeals of their own devising.

The main attraction, though, is the central arena where the public can pit their own slaves against the rodeo’s livestock in races and contests of endurance. There are chariot races (with the slaves pulling the chariots of course), and races where the slaves have to sprint across assault courses with loads of varying weights tied on their backs. There’s even one where the slaves have to race carrying riders like jockeys. There are endurance contests where the slaves have to hold enormous weights above their heads while being teased with cattle prods and beaten with canes. There are torture games where they find the slave who can endure pain the longest before making a sound. There are crucifixions and stake outs and burials up to the head — just about everything you can imagine — even gladiatorial combat like in the old Roman days. It all sounded incredible to us, but Leon was the living proof that it was true and nodded proudly as we listened enthralled — and not a little terrified (after all, we were slaves now and who knows if we might not one day end up at a rodeo!). Leon was with the rodeo for five long years, travelling the States and South America facing brutalising punishment every day of his life but never losing his natural instinct for survival.

Too begin with his owner confined him to the booths were he could be kept on show to draw the crowds. Then, after some intense training and preparation he put him the arena where he excelled at almost all the events and became a great attraction, triumphing against all challengers. With determination and discipline he grew stronger and ever more resilient until he became the rodeo's undisputed showpiece. He would march proudly into the arena at the head of the other slaves, his head held high, his beautifully sculpted muscles glistening in the sun, and his hefty cock swaying stiffly against his neatly hanging balls. What a sight he must have been!

But all good things must come to an end. The owner of the rodeo developed a taste for gambling and in a rash moment while he was in South America he lost Leon in a wager over a game of pontoon. It’s horrid to think that your fate can be determined by a gambler’s idle whim, but I suppose that’s what happens to slaves. It happened to Leon. I suppose it could happen to me.

Leon’s new owner was a Spanish businessman who specialised in the financial exploitation of slaves. He brought Leon back to Spain with him and trained him up as a wrestler. But after a few months he decided he could make more money by renting him out as a stud.

The more I learned about this dark new world I was trapped in, the more incredible and terrifying it seemed to get. Pepe filled us in on a lot of the details of what followed, otherwise Leon would probably have just shrugged it off as of little consequence. But it made me shudder to think that slaves like Leon — and I suppose like all of us — are really little more than livestock and can only expect to be treated like farm animals.

And so for the next three years Leon was rented out as a stud, to breed with female slaves all over Spain. His class-one physique, his strength and proven endurance made him excellent pedigree and highly desirable and he was always in demand, fetching a high price for his semen and siring a whole new generation of healthy young slaves and making his owner very rich.

Usually he was rented out for just twenty-four hours, but hardly a week went by without at least three or four breeding sessions. He was fed supplements and chemicals to ensure that his supply of semen kept flowing. He had to practice hard to maintain a peak level of performance, and on the rare occasion that he failed to meet the demands put on him, he would be whipped mercilessly. I’m surprised he lasted three years!

And yet the amazing thing is, in all that time he never once made physical contact with a female slave. Sometimes he was just locked away in a barn with a machine strapped to his cock pumping out his semen, which was immediately frozen and stored. Other times he would be “milked” by hand, the hirer taking pleasure in manipulating that magnificent body himself.

In smaller homesteads, where there were probably only one or two female slaves to impregnate, Leon’s arrival would be treated as something of a local event. He would be paraded before the family and their guests, some of whom might entertain themselves by taking it in turns to “milk” him - always being careful to catch and preserve every last precious drop of semen. Sometimes the female slaves (or “dams”) would be brought in so that the family could admire them alongside Leon and imagine how handsome and strong the offspring were going to be.

However, it’s a fundamental rule that the stud’s cock should never actually enter the dam. This isn’t just a health issue, it’s supposed to be a compassionate one. It’s supposed to prevent the slaves from forging an attachment — at least that’s the theory. But necessity is the mother of invention and a whole culture of merriment has built up around these events. So the female might be stretched out naked on the floor and Leon made to stand over her and masturbate, dropping his semen on her stomach so that it could be immediately scooped up and inserted artificially; or he might be suspended above her, his cock dangling inches from her body while guests jacked him off; or family members might have fun arousing the female with their fingers while Leon’s cock was being stroked so that their bodies heaved in unison. Wagers would be made about the length of time it would take for Leon to cum, or how much noise he would make, or how far he could shoot — there were hundreds of variations, apparently! And they all sounded horrific! I hope I never end up a stud.

While we were being told all this, we couldn’t help but gaze in wonder at Leon and imagine his great muscular body humping away and that mighty engorged cock (which always seemed to be in a state of semi or full erection whenever I looked at him) thumping and spurting cum everywhere while onlookers cheered and slapped his backside to urge him on. It was an image that haunted my dreams for days after.

Anyway, Leon’s story ends like Pepe’s. The Spanish businessman added Pepe to his stable and after a short time went bankrupt. All his slaves had to be sold and for some reason Pepe and Leon were being shipped as a single lot to an auction house in England.

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47xclusive1-blog · 6 years ago

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The Golden Rules for Booking Live Entertainment For Your Event

Booking Live Entertainment

The Golden Rules When Booking Live Entertainment for Your Event

Tips & Tricks For The Entertainment Buyer

Having worked as a professional magician and mind reader for the past sixteen years, I have seen hundreds if not thousands of venues all over the world. From Boston, where I am based, to Singapore, where I work for a few weeks once per year, and many cities and countries in between. A similarity that crosses all borders is the consistent lack of knowledge the client has when booking live entertainment. This is true for that of a variety type. (e.g magicians, jugglers, clowns, etc.).

Now this can be forgiven (to an extent), as most people have not booked live entertainment before and know absolutely nothing about how the process works. These individuals can be forgiven and kindly instructed by the performer on how the smooth the process can and should be. That said, when you as the entertainer are working through a seasoned booker (e.g someone who works for a company that plans all large and small functions), there is really no excuse for poor booking processes.

After speaking with several performer friends from all areas of entertainment, we have come up with a list of guidelines any future client should be at least familiar with before hiring professional entertainment.

When To Book Live Entertainment

So you want to hire some entertainment for your party, event, graduation, anniversary, etc. Whatever the case may be, you want to spice it up with something live and fun! First thing you should know is that performers of all varieties whether magicians, fire eaters or live bands, need time to prepare their shows. Most of us specially design our performances around your event, and this does take some time and will go into the price of the performance. You will want to give at least 3-4 weeks notice to a performer before booking. This is my suggested time frame for me, other performers require much earlier notice, and some can take an event with just a couple days notice. It depends on our schedules, current bookings and flexibility and of course, the performer himself (or herself). Our schedules are very strange, and totally non-traditional - we can have gigs at all hours of the day, night, and even into the very early mornings. Please Note: If you call a performer a day or two, or three, or even four before your event, they will most likely charge a little more for the short notice. It takes time to make your event special, whether by creating custom routines as I do, setting up a music set list, or getting required licenses or permits for more dangerous acts like fire eating and sideshow stunts.

What Are You Looking For

Hiring entertainment for your event can really enhance your guests' experience. Whether it's a live band, DJ, caricaturist, or magician, live performances create a truly unique experience that your guests will share with their friends and families when they leave. You want to determine what kind of entertainment best suits your particular event. For example: If you're getting married at a golf resort. With 200 guests and a traditional setup (cocktail hour, plated dinner, speeches, dancing, etc.), then you will want to determine where and when entertainment makes sense. If you're interested in magic or mind reading, which is very popular at weddings, then you would be best to place it into the cocktail reception for what is called "strolling" or "walk-around." This is where the performer wanders through your cocktail hour performing small, up close effects and routines for small groups of guests. This offers a personal experience you sometimes lose with a full length show. It also breaks up the occasional repetitiveness of such portions of the event. Magic, mind reading or a little light music can really make a difference. Have an idea of what you want, lay out your event, and see where it makes the most sense. Maybe a full length comedy mind reading show after a three day corporate retreat? Or perhaps you're celebrating your child's birthday and want some entertainment to keep all the little guests entertained? A children's magic and balloon show is a perfect fit here. Look into my other article on Magic & Mind Reading for Adults vs. Magic for Children, for more detailed information.

Determine Your Budget

This is by far one of the most important points a soon-to-be entertainment buyer must understand. It should be known that every performer, no matter what persuasion, charges differently. A fire eater will charge differently from a juggler or clown. A mentalist will charge differently from a magician or stilt walker. This is based on how they value their time and expertise.

Have at least a rough idea on what you're looking to spend on entertainment. Do not be afraid to ask a performer if he or she can work within your budget. Be realistic about it and think about your event and the kind of image that you want your guests to take home with them, and try to get a rough idea on what you would be willing to spend achieve that image. You will not insult us with your budget. We will just say no politely or even recommend someone who could better work within your financial parameters.

Entertainers usually know each other and bounce work around quite a bit. We almost always know what our friends and competitors charge. The more unique the performance style, the smaller number of performers. If you have $200 for a full length hypnosis performance, you may want to look into another form of entertainment. Most hypnotists don't leave home for less than triple that amount. If you have $5,000 for entertainment, then you're in a whole new bracket of entertainers. More on that later.

Details, Details, Details

Now you know what you want. The next thing to do is get your details together. These include the following in order of importance for the performer to know:

1. Date of the Event

2. Time You Want The Entertainer To Arrive & To Begin Performing

3. Type of Event (birthday, corporate lunch, trade show, etc.)

4. What You Want From The Entertainer in Detail

5. Budget!

6. How Many Guests You're Expecting

7. Description of the Venue (indoors, outdoors, theater style seating, tables, etc.)

8. Will There Be Other Entertainment (what kind, how long, etc.)

9. Have All Of Your Info Available (phone number, email, mailing address, etc.)

Having this information ready when you call an entertainer will make your booking process go much, much smoother and usually result in only one, maybe two phone calls or emails. Missing information does happen. Maybe you don't have your venue nailed down yet? No problem, try to give us a rough idea of where you're looking so we know how to prepare. If you're thinking a typically busy, dark restaurant but then go for a show at the beach, in the sun, with wind... This will be a little frustrating for the entertainer.

Know Your Venue

As stated above, the venue is very important. To most of us, we can perform practically anywhere (within reason). I've worked on moving boats, trains, and even on a private jet. Some of us who work with dangerous items, such as sword swallowers or fire breathers, require very specific environments in which to work safely for themselves and the guests in attendance.

Let's look at a few examples of common venue locations for a mentalist or magician:

1. The Country Club - always a popular location for a little walk around magic/mind reading or even a full length performance. Usually everyone is well-dressed, having formal meals, and looking for a more sophisticated form of entertainment. This is not the best place for a chainsaw juggler.

2. The Nightclub - usually dedicated to bachelor/bachelorette parties, adult birthdays, company buy-outs, holiday parties and practically any event you'd book to have some serious fun! Usually it is very loud, crowded, and drinks are flowing. This is not the best time to have a palm reader or full length magic show. Instead you could opt for some strolling entertainment, live music, or even a dance group.

3. Your Residence - Probably the most common location for family events, graduations, anniversaries and private holiday parties. You won't normally see a lot of craziness as you would in the nightclub. Such events are normally filled with family members, friends and children. Everyone knows each other, is very comfortable and is not scared of being a little silly from time to time. A great time for a hypnotist! Or even personal tarot readings. Definitely a great time for a mind reading performance.

The point is to use your venue to its absolute potential. Play out the scenario in your head with the entertainment you have in mind. If it seems like it could work, go for it. Chances are you're right!

Price Shopping

As performers we all work insanely hard to provide the absolute best entertainment for the best possible value. Our prices are all different, but with variations based on what we offer, where we live, how much equipment we have to transport, etc. Customers should know that there is A LOT more that goes into the booking on our end then you might think. This can include organizing our material, writing up contracts, invoices, and riders, getting to and from the gig; setting up; tearing down; packing at home; unpacking at home; re-setting our equipment; writing emails; making phone calls; updating schedules and social media; and more. What the customer sees is a small portion of the work performers do for a single booking. All of that goes into our fees as well. Please keep this in mind if you live in northern Maine and you really want the face painter from New Jersey at your party.

That said, price shopping does not mean you will get the best show for the lowest price. Also, the highest price artist out there is not necessarily better than the one who charges half or more less than that. Your selection should be based on recommendations, referrals, skill-set, and your budget. Not everyone can afford to book Aerosmith. For example; say you are hiring a children's magician for a birthday party. In New England, the rough booking fees range between $275 and $500 for an hour long show, with the ability to have add-ons like balloon animals, teach-a-trick, or magic goody bags. If you're getting offers at $100 or even Less! you should seriously consider what you're getting. Watch videos, call past clients, check the quality of their website, marketing materials, etc.. Do your homework! You wouldn't by 100 pairs of socks for $1.00 would you?

Referrals VS Resume

This can be a tricky section for a buyer. A lot of entertainers, especially when they're just starting out tend to fluff their resumes with big name clients to draw attention. In many cases they're not totally accurate. That doesn't mean they're not good performers, they're just trying to get some business. Then again, a lot of professionals out there have very thick resumes that are all 100% legit. You can usually tell from observation who's on the level and who isn't.

The best way you can make a decision is through referrals, testimonials, video demonstrations and reviews. Any magician or mentalist worth his salt will post a video of a portion of his show, as a teaser. This is the hardest hitting material that makes the audience go wild. I would be leery of a performer who didn't have at least some kind of video, even a poor-quality one. It's 2014 after all; most of us have cameras in our phones that shoot better than handheld cameras just a few years earlier.

I've found that the best way I book events is through word-of-mouth and my website with a link to my YouTube channel.

Actual VS Perceived Value

Like referrals vs. resume this can be a tricky section to explain correctly. As a quick definition, the actual value of a performer is connected to the following: his or her performance quality, attitude (courteous, respectful of clients needs, friendly without being annoyingly friendly or overly familiar, etc.), dress sense/style, and uniqueness of the performance. Now these are just examples and include quite a few other points that you'll notice after you hire entertainment. Notice how price was not a part of the actual value. The fee a performer requires for the event is based around the points I made above in point 6. You will not know the actual value of your performer until you've hired him or her to perform. Now, perceived value is what we do when we look at the artists' website, bio, pictures, videos, social media pages, etc. We determine if we like them within the first minute - or usually a lot sooner.

It should be known that the perceived value can absolutely work against you. There are performers out there who spend thousands of dollars on top quality websites, advertising materials, search engine optimization, and promotional videos, but when you see them live, you are quickly hit with just how bad they are. This happens quite a bit, especially amongst the younger generation of performers. Video editing software and the right person behind the keyboard can make anyone look amazing. Do not let the perceived value of a performer determine whether or not you want to book them. Use that information as a reference to what you can probably (not always) expect when the show begins. Focus on referrals, reviews (from real people), media write-ups, and recommendations from friends or family that may have booked entertainment in the past. The best advertising for a performer is word-of-mouth!

Free Work VS Donated Work

Ask any performer how many times they're offered "great publicity" in exchange for performing for free. It happens to all of us, a lot. I personally am asked to perform for free at least once a week. Nine times out ten I have to decline the event. Entertainers who are starting out may take the booking even though it doesn't pay. They're looking for "flight-time" or time in front of a real audience to practice, rehearse material and get comfortable in their field. This is perfectly acceptable and should be encouraged to young or new performers. However, a professional entertainer, be it a magician, mentalist, juggler or human blockhead, will probably not take a free show in exchange for an ad in the magazine, free publicity, or free food.

Almost all of us entertain as a full-time job. We work solely as performers and we expect to be paid for our time, just as you expect to be paid where you work. You will probably insult a performer if you offer publicity in exchange for money they'd use to pay bills and buy food. After all, you found us so the publicity is already working right?

Now when it comes to donated work, it's a much different story. At least for me. Please be aware I am not speaking for ALL performers working. Everyone is different and structures his business differently. Some performers will probably not agree with things in this article and it's totally fine! Donating our time to a cause is something in which a lot of us take great pride. Every year I donate at least 10 hours of performing to various charities around New England. These are ones that are very close to me, such as The American Cancer Society, Horizons for Homeless Children and The American Red Cross. I love giving my time to these organizations and being a small part of making a difference. We entertainers are all full of emotion and big hearts and we love to see the expression of happiness on people's faces who otherwise would be sad or in pain.

Be aware of your situation when offering an event to a performer for very little or no money. If it's a cause that we believe in and we can spare the time on our schedules, we will jump at the chance. If not, please do not take it personally and understand we need to work and earn as much as possible in order to keep providing entrainment to people around the world.

Contracts, Invoices, Agreements, Riders

The boring details of the booking process, lots of invoices, contracts and specifications that almost every performer requires are vital to the quality of the performance. Contracts are absolutely essential for a performer to have, and we will use them for the smallest to the largest event. Most of us have had the experience of "being burned" on bookings because we didn't have an agreement in place. We learn quickly (well most of us do) and adopt the contract policy to ALL bookings, even donated time bookings. Do not take offense if your children's magician requires a contract for his performance.

Most of us keep very detailed records of every gig we work. Invoices, contracts and emails are all essential pieces of material for our tax purposes, marketing strategies, and general peace of mind. I personally require a contract, invoice and performance rider for my shows. Most of the points in my agreements do not apply to every single show. However, a lot of the time they do. If we ask for a table or access to plugs, that the windows be closed, or that we're in the shade if outdoors, understand these are important factors that will go into the quality of our performances. We can usually perform in most places under most conditions, but some entertainers can not be indoors without proper licensing (such as people who work with fire or dangerous objects) or outdoors without a tent or waterproof area. Basically, it's common sense. The DJ you hired for your daughter's wedding will not want to work in the middle of the sun for five hours with hundreds of feet of extension cords running all over your event. Plan accordingly and your event will be a huge success!

Understanding What You're Paying For

I know I have covered this in earlier points but it is very important to understand what you're actually paying for when booking a performer. Remember we spend years and years perfecting our skills to make them look flawless when showtime comes. Some of us live far away from your venue and have to travel quite a distance to get to the gig. I personally drive about 35,000 miles a year just for performances, and fly about 40,000. We spend a lot of our time in airports, cars and traffic! Our fees are constructed by us based on what we believe our performances are worth. This includes the years of practice, travel to and from the event, all the work we do before the show itself, what kind of event it is, and how popular and in demand we are. Cheaper does NOT mean better!

Paying Your Entertainer(s)

I would say I've waited probably two years' worth of days on being paid for some events. That does not happen anymore. It is not acceptable to make a performer wait longer than the agreed upon time of payment. As I said before, we are full time entertainers and expect to be paid before or immediately after we perform. Our shows are all one-of-a-kind demonstrations and no show is the same (at least as a mentalist). So what you're getting is a totally unique experience. A good way of looking at it is this: If you worked for a week straight and your boss said "Sorry, but would it be okay if we paid you in three weeks for this week?" You would probably lose your sh*t. That is exactly how we feel when we have to wait for payment for our services. We arrived on time, performed, and were professional, and we expect to be paid accordingly.

It is customary to pay an entertainer prior to the start of the performance. Most of us require a deposit of some kind along with our contract or invoice signed. Those who don't require a deposit (well, they should) should be paid in full on the day of the event. Please be aware of this when hiring entertainment for your next party. Not only will your performer thank you kindly, he or she will be sure to make your event a huge success.

Tipping: Gratuity for a performer, DJ, or artist lets us know you really enjoyed our work. We do not factor gratuity into our fees (at least I and my friends don't) so any extra tip you have for us will be greatly appreciated. Don't be afraid of what to give for a tip - we are grateful you thought of it at all. Most people don't usually think to tip entertainment, so when it comes we are always very happy. This is especially important amongst entertainers you didn't book, like street performers and carnival or fair artists. Most of them accept tips and some get paid ONLY in tips. Keep that in mind after you watch the street performers in Fanueil Hall in Boston during the spring and summer months.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8554328

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pitviperofdoom · 7 years ago

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Thoughts on the new chapter below, under a cut and untagged so my picky overcritical ass doesn’t end up in the tags where everyone’s trying to have a good time. Thanks @argetcross for listening to me complain about fiction written by someone way more successful and popular than me.

So yeah not a great arc so far. The education method that’s been introduced here is already pretty stupid and ineffectual, and considering that Kouta’s arc was fantastic and we just came out of an arc with another really engaging child character, it’s really surprising and disappointing that I feel nothing but irritation for this new crowd of children being pushed on us.

I was really hoping for some quiet emotional drama in this new arc in order to diffuse the tension after the nail-biting tension of the previous one--proper emotional transition, in other words. Horikoshi did this really well after Kamino. After that arc’s frankly earth-shattering developments, we got a few solid chapters to diffuse the tension before going into some lighthearted slice-of-life interactions as they got settled into the dorms. The dorm shenanigans were lighthearted and funny, but they didn’t push my patience or creep too far into absurdity. It was a great way to break the tension because it played to one of Horikoshi’s strengths--his vivid and engaging cast--and simply let that cast play off of one another in a way that was natural and enjoyable.

Here, we’ve gone straight from the death of a major figure and the intense emotional fallout among characters that I already know and love, all in the wake of the incredibly high stakes of Eri’s rescue, to frustrating and cringe-worthy hijinks involving two, maybe three characters who I actually care about. The shift is INCREDIBLY jarring, and the tone of the overall story suffers for it.

It doesn’t help that so much got introduced at the end of the last arc. A hero has fallen, Eri is still sick, the League is on the move and more dangerous than ever, Kurogiri has been captured but a new unforeseen threat is emerging, and Endeavor is reappearing to push himself back into Todoroki’s life. But all of it got interrupted by a bunch of so far thoroughly unlikable child characters, and everything has ground to a halt so that four teenagers with zero childcare training can... try to remedy the failings of this world’s educational system? I guess? It’s a terrible idea both in-universe and on a meta level.

I’m honestly disappointed by what this arc isn’t. I was so excited to see Endeavor again, because he represents a more personal and emotional struggle in Todoroki’s life and the comic as a whole, and I hoped that the arc would reflect that tone. Can you imagine how amazing and heart-wrenching it could have been if Endeavor had attended an actual training session? The reintroduction of the parallels between Bakugou and Endeavor, a more grounded understanding and reconciliation between Todoroki and Inasa, and maybe a call-back to the fact that Bakugou knows about Todoroki’s abuse? Instead we have a bunch of children who are spoiled and entitled to the point of being non-entertaining turning that struggle into a comic-relief sideshow, Shouto’s attempts to buck the cycle of abuse and treat children with honesty and kindness is mocked, and all the emotional weight and conflict gets played for laughs instead of developed in a more engaging manner.

I still love this manga and I’m still going to keep reading it, but I can tell this arc is probably going to end up my new least favorite. So... good news for the Final Exam arc I guess.

#pitviper rants a bit

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uomo-accattivante · 7 years ago

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The troupe — a roving band of actors, musicians and directors who produce a variety of plays and entertainment — is centuries old. So why has this generation of stage, television and cinematic impresarios found new resonance in this old form of communalism?

IN “HAMLET,” WHEN the hero wants to put on a play to “catch the conscience of the king,” he engages the services of a band of itinerant actors, a motley troupe of entertainment professionals instructed by the Danish prince to “hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

As the Renaissance scholar Siobhan Keenan notes in her 2002 study, “Travelling Players in Shakespeare’s England,” the author of “Hamlet” based that fictitious company on something “he had lived for real.” Troupes of mimes and acrobats, musicians and mummers were ubiquitous in early modern Europe. Their performances were both religious and profane, encompassing everything from passion plays to puppet shows to commedia dell’arte sketches. They cobbled together material from various sources — Shakespeare’s own compositional method — and tailored their performances to local tastes and prejudices. Tradespeople as well as artists, the troupes operated according to a flexible organizational chart. In their working relationships they were companions more than colleagues, forging quasi-familial ties (including love affairs, of course) as they wound from town to town. The whole village would come to the show, and the community onstage, with its exaggerated conflicts and beguiling harmonies, served as a mirror for the audience, binding its members, at least for an evening or two, in common troubles and delights. A few young people might run off with the troupe, further blurring the boundary between the players and their public.

For centuries, these troupes defined popular culture in much of the world. They show up now and then in modern paintings, novels and films: in Seurat’s “Circus Sideshow” and Picasso’s “Family of Saltimbanques”; in novels such as Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” and Barry Unsworth’s “Morality Play”; in Theo Angelopoulos’s “Travelling Players” and Fellini’s “La Strada.”

Those works evoke nostalgia for the rough magic of a bygone way of life, one that slipped away silently and suddenly, like the circus setting off for the next town at daybreak. Over time, the troupe aesthetic fell victim to the usual forces of modernity. Art, even when it depended on collective labor, became increasingly individualized in Europe after the Middle Ages, and the consumption of art followed the same fate. Culture now travels, for the most part, electronically — reaching the public through the invisible corporate workings of television networks, streaming services and movie studios. Live theater, where it still flourishes, is concentrated in commercial or philanthropically supported institutions. The scrolling credits and the fine print in the playbill record a strict division of labor. Though there is, technically, a “company,” it’s often an ad hoc confection brokered by agents, producers and other offstage dealmakers. The artists are individuals, and so are the members of the audience. The romantic idea of performing artists as a vagabond tribe, commingling with the rest of us and then moving on, has been dissolved in the medium of modern celebrity. And the corresponding ideal of the public — gathering to share in a common treasury of imagination — has withered as tastes have fragmented.

BUT THE HUNGER for that older way of doing things persists. Movie studios and television networks are soulless, monstrous entities, ravenous heads of a corporate hydra. A Broadway theater is an empty shell. There is not much we see that commands our loyalty, or inspires our solidarity. The unsatisfied, atavistic part of ourselves that harbors a dim memory of those wondrous nights in the village square experiences a special frisson, a jolt of recognition and excitement, when we witness the work of players who seem loyal to one another.

This is why we react with a special kind of excitement when we encounter what looks like the work of a genuine troupe in the crowded, highly mediated, aggressively monetized postmodern landscape where we scavenge for beauty, fun and enlightenment. What connects certain television shows, movies and stage productions to ancient folkways is a particular blend of novelty and familiarity. You see the same faces again and again in new disguises. The afternoon’s clown is the evening’s tragic hero; yesterday’s princess is tomorrow’s wicked stepmother.

To be more specific: The young actor Evan Peters, who creeped you out as a sweet-faced, homicidal teenager in the first season of “American Horror Story” on FX, returns in subsequent seasons as a falsely accused murderer, a reanimated fraternity brother, Charles Manson, Andy Warhol and Jesus. This is not an exhaustive list. In the same series — the flagship production of what we might call the Ryan Murphy Troupe — Jessica Lange has been a sinister nun, a witch and a maniacal, musical mistress of ceremonies.

To take another example: Ben Stiller, a fixture of several distinct, overlapping quasi-troupes (including his own), shows up in “Greenberg,” Noah Baumbach’s 2010 romantic comedy, as the misanthropic, underachieving brother of a successful Los Angeles hotelier. He cycles back into the Baumbach universe in 2015’s “While We’re Young,” playing the somewhat less misanthropic, not as spectacularly underachieving son-in-law of a prominent documentary filmmaker. And then, a couple of years later in “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” he’s the successful sibling, a financial adviser based in L.A., struggling to keep his misanthropy in check and dealing with the narcissism of his father, played by Dustin Hoffman. (Hoffman was accused late last year by several women of sexual misconduct or assault. He has apologized to one of the women and has denied other allegations through his lawyer.)

If you are a habitual visitor to Baumbach’s galaxy, you are accustomed to seeing some of the same faces in altered guises. Florence Marr, played by Greta Gerwig in “Greenberg,” is not the same person as Frances Hamilton, Gerwig’s character in “Frances Ha” (2013) or Brooke in “Mistress America” (2015). But these young women stand in relation to each other like conjugations of the quintessential millennial verb “to adult.” They are melodies played on different instruments in the same family: clarinet, oboe, bassoon.

After “Greenberg,” Baumbach and Gerwig began writing together (they also now live together). “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America” are the fruits of that partnership, a fusion of complementary, but also distinctive, styles and sensibilities. “It’s like we’re standing on the beach picking up the same kind of rocks,” Gerwig says of their collaboration. (Gerwig’s solo voice as a writer and director burst forth in “Lady Bird,” one of the defining movies of last year.)

“Part of what’s great about working with the same people is that it’s an ongoing conversation that you’re having from movie to movie,” says Baumbach, whose troupe of repeat collaborators includes crew as well as cast. “How can we continue this thing we’ve been developing? And then there’s also the thing of explaining yourself to new people, which is good too. So you want some healthy dose of both.”

Baumbach’s characters are defined by their idiosyncrasies and imperfections, by their snowballing failures of communication, planning and insight. Bringing them to life demands precisely those things in heroic measure, and an enormous amount of work: endless rewriting, numerous takes, an editing process that begins while the script is still being written.

Ryan Murphy, by contrast, likes to surprise his actors, to spring ideas, situations and scenes on them in medias res — midseason and even mid-episode. “It’s always a little hair-raising,” says Jessica Lange. “With ‘American Horror Story’ we often wouldn’t get the first pages of the episode until the day we started shooting. I think anybody who’s worked with Ryan, especially on ‘American Horror Story’ — I mean, it is kind of by the skin of your teeth.”

“He can get sort of uninterested in a story he’s telling,” Sarah Paulson said, “and then decide to take it in an entirely new way that does interest him. So you can be going along, playing a particular thing and then all of a sudden you find out, oh, you really did kill your sister, and you ate her for dinner, and you didn’t realize that because you’d been playing the whole time that you really loved your sister. But it actually adds a beautiful nuance to your work.” The result is an ever-expanding, theoretically limitless multiverse of stories, and a thorough reinvention of the possibilities of serial television. “American Horror Story” derives its coherence not from a stable set of characters and situations but from the opposite. The through line is stated in the title — horror, a property that can be found in serial killers, witches, nuns, Charles Manson and our country’s current political climate. More concretely, it flows through the faces and voices of actors like Peters, Lange and Paulson, who discover, from one chapter to the next, the thrilling and spooky dimensions of their own talent. “It’s an incredible gift that you get to work for four to five months on something very, very intensely,” Paulson says, “just like you would on a film or a play, and then it’s over.”

A TROUPE, YOU will have noticed, is not necessarily a democratic phenomenon. Someone has to be the boss, providing both vision and connective tissue for the work of fellow artists. The current golden age of television has seen the rise of showrunners like Murphy as objects of critical scrutiny and fan obsessions, much in the way that movie directors were elevated to the status of artists during the postwar blossoming of film culture. Previously they had been seen as guns for hire in an anonymous industrial system.

Theater is an older art form, with a more complicated distribution of creative authority. Supremacy is habitually granted to the writer, who is sometimes also the star, and therefore a physical presence on the scene, but who more often is dead long before the curtain goes up. The popular image of what happens backstage involves a flurry of activity involving directors and dramaturgs, producers and impresarios scrambling to boost morale, prevent disaster and keep the bills paid.

Oskar Eustis is all of those things and also something else. The artistic director of the Public Theater since 2005, he leads in the tradition of two great New York showmen: George C. Wolfe, who directed “Angels in America” (1993) on Broadway and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2017) for HBO, and Joseph Papp, the Public’s founder, who grew free outdoor performances of Shakespeare into a mighty civic institution. Under Eustis’s aegis, the Public, now housed in the former Astor Library in Lower Manhattan, has incubated such future Broadway hits as “Fun Home” (2015), “Hamilton” (2015) and “Latin History for Morons” (2017). It has been a home base and R&D facility for the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Lynn Nottage and Suzan-Lori Parks. Season after season, it’s a whirring carousel of diverse, ambitious and politically urgent theater.

Eustis’s vision of the Public is of a kind of city within the city, a community open to new arrivals who settle in and stay for a long time. He likes to keep up with old friends and partners and to fold new talent into the mix. His relationships with playwrights like Tony Kushner and Nottage go back decades, predating his arrival at the Public. In the time he’s been there he has gathered in artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Oscar Isaac, John Leguizamo, the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright and actress Lisa Kron (co-creators of “Fun Home”).

These artists and others collaborate in a process that is intensive and exhaustive, a kind of rolling workshop that can continue for years. Theater, Eustis told me, “has to go through every phase of human experience, from the writer alone in their room chewing on their pencil to the conversations with the director or dramaturg as the piece is written, to the reading aloud with actors once a draft exists. So step by step until finally you have something that literally hundreds of people have been involved in putting together that’s being performed for hundreds of thousands. There is almost no example of a great work of theater that doesn’t involve many great collaborations.”

And that process has a meaning that extends beyond the theater itself. “This is such a transactional, atomized world,” Eustis said at the end of our conversation, “where everything gets a dollar value put on it. Everything is ‘I’ll give you this if you give me that’ and ‘What have you done …’ And to try and really build a counter to that, to say there’s actually a better way of people relating to each other, and while we can’t completely remake the world in our image, we can try to remake the theater in our image, and by doing that hold, as ’twere, a mirror up to nature.”

What we see on the stage and on the large and small screens are reflections of human social interaction. Every play, every film, every television show, is about a group of people — a family, a workplace, a neighborhood, a nation. The purpose of those art forms is to show us to ourselves, in glory and disgrace and at every point on the spectrum in between. The ethic of the troupe provides another, less obviously visible but no less powerful mirror. What we witness in the collective pretending is the result of individuals working together at a common task, in circumstances that, however grueling and disharmonious in the moment, are also utopian. This looks like the opposite of alienated labor, not just because it seems like fun — it’s not called “playing” for nothing — but because it transcends both the narrow individualism and the impersonal corporatism that defines so much of our working lives. The enchantment that we experience, craning forward in the audience, is not just with what we’re seeing, but with what we intuit about how it was made. Look: This is what we can do. This is who we might become.

#oscar isaac #the public theater #adam driver #lin-manuel miranda #evan peters #greta gerwig #sterling k brown #sarah paulson #angela bassett #jessica lange #oskar eustis #ryan murphy #matt bomer #noah baumbach #ben stiller #dustin hoffman #john leguizamo #kathy bates #new york times

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mattsammonsez · 5 years ago

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Brass Tacts: Making Your Mark

Historians often point to 1968 as a crossroads in America’s history. There’s no doubt with the political and social strife domestically and internationally that 1968 was and still remains a crucial fork in the road in our nation. But to see what got us to 1968, you have to rewind a bit to 1967 when the hot water was soon ascending to a rolling boil. In broadcasting, 1967 was quite the warm-up act as a medium that was founded by the Depression generation and made popular by the “silent” generation after World War II, was seeing its clashes with the first wave of 20-somethings from the Baby Boomers.

In September 1967, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was in its 6th month of a ground-breaking 2-year run on CBS, challenging society’s and the entertainment industry’s sense of norms. That envelope would be pushed more with Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, which had its pilot episode debut on September 9th before setting the standard for counter-culture TV in 1968 on NBC. As newer, progressive, and edgier shows started pulling in younger audiences, the granddaddy of them all was in its final stages of cultural significance.

The Ed Sullivan Show premiered on CBS in June 1948 as Toast of the Town, and starting in 1949 it would air live on Sunday nights from 8-9 p.m. Eastern, a time slot it would hold until June 1971. Its namesake host was born in 1901, and the variety show format was alive and well around the same time in the Vaudeville era. On September 17, 1967, the senior citizen host of the bygone entertainment format on the maturing medium watched primarily by older white conservative audiences was about to crash head on with the next generation of entertainment and the nation. His name was James Douglas Morrison, and the band he co-founded was called The Doors.

The Ed Sullivan Show was America’s Got Talent 60 years before AGT was even dreamed of. Before The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or Saturday Night Live, a career could be made overnight if you got the chance to perform on Sullivan’s program. Sullivan was more than the executive producer of the show, he was the king maker and the king. Nothing cleared the airwaves on his show without his blessing, the basis of nearly two decades of kid-friendly and family-safe entertainment with live music, comedy routines, and sideshow acts. While the show was not as popular in 1968 as it was in its glory days in the mid-1950′s, the program still averaged more than 13 million viewers per episode. But those days of 13 million+ viewers were soon going to end, as what was considered “popular entertainment” in the late 1960′s was a far cry from what Sullivan spotlighted just a few years before.

At the same time, Jim Morrison and The Doors were taking off. Co-founded with keyboardist Ray Manzarek in Los Angeles in 1965, the band recorded its self-titled debut album in the summer of 1966, and scored its first hit song “Light My Fire” in the summer of 1967. After three weeks in the #1 position on the Billboard pop chart, the band wanted to carry the momentum of that song with the release of the next single “People Are Strange”. If you needed a popularity boost, and had a little tail wind with a #1 song already on your resume, The Ed Sullivan Show was the place to go for national exposure. But the home of safe entertainment was a square peg to the counterculture round hole.

As the story goes, shortly before the show went live, the band was informed that CBS’ sensors were not too keen on the lyric “Girl we couldn’t get much higher”. Keep in mind the sensors had their hands full with The Smothers Brothers, so they were a little on edge with the rock band featuring the shaggy-haired lead singer casually suggesting a drug-related feeling of getting high. A producer informed the band they would need to change the lyric to “Girl we couldn’t do much better”, although a 2017 unearthing of show notes claims the lyric was supposed to be changed to the ridiculous “Girl there’s nothing I require”. The band stewed over the suggestion that their poetic lyrics should be scrubbed clean for the audience, even though the song was #1 in pop music for three weeks.

Near the end of the program, following a stand-up routine by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Sullivan cued up The Doors and their new single “People Are Strange”. After Morrison chillingly sang the song, the band launched into “Light My Fire”, and a moment in TV history was etched into stone:

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With Morrison refusing to change the lyrics, he had defied the censors. Worst of all, he had defied the great Ed Sullivan. And nobody, no matter how popular they were, defied Ed Sullivan. In fact near the end of the clip before the commercial break, Sullivan says something to the effect of, “Just you wait” before his microphone is totally opened up for airplay. It wasn’t just a line of vengeance from the storied show host, it was a command to the youngsters on the stage. “Just you wait...” Sullivan was suggesting those little bastards weren’t going to go anywhere. HE was in charge of the situation.

When the show ended, and the band was in its dressing room, Sullivan and his producers came storming in to the room. Threats were made, insults were thrown, and the gauntlet came down. Sullivan claimed The Doors would have been booked for several more shows, but because of their defiance the deal was off. There was no turning back, as Sullivan declared that the band would “no longer do the show”. The reply from Morrison is legendary. In the who-could-care-less attitude of Morrison, he calmly declared that the Doors had “already done” The Ed Sullivan Show. Nothing more was said, but a lot was said in all of the statements if you read between the lines.

The message was clear from Morrison-- The Doors didn’t need Ed Sullivan or his outdated show. The band was a smash before they appeared on the show, and there was no need for them to come back. The statement was more than just Morrison and company feeling their oats, it was a blanket statement on entertainment and media in America as they all careened into 1968. What was popular, necessary, a must-see and a must-have in the first years of post-war America was no more. The train had left the station, and if you were still square enough to need programs like Ed Sullivan than you were a dinosaur. Take your milk-drinking Pat Boone if you want America, the cool kids are dropping out to Jim Morrison and The Doors.

The message was also clear to Sullivan and those like him from his time-- he held no more power. The paradigm had shifted to the younger and edgier consumer, and would continue to do so for decades. Sullivan, once the king and king maker, no longer had his crown or a crown to give. In one live music performance, the torch wasn’t passed, it was snatched away by the dashing prince of the new revolution. Sullivan was old, hunched, and too conservative. Morrison was young, sexy, and a poet speaking to the masses of the Boomer generation.

Ironically, even though Morrison’s life was short, he outlived Sullivan’s show. The Ed Sullivan Show aired its final live episode on June 6, 1971. On July 3rd, Morrison died of heart failure in his bathtub in Paris. Sullivan’s show spoke for an entire older generation of Americans for 23 years. The 27-year-old Morrison spoke to the more diverse younger crowd. Both Morrison and Sullivan are well-remembered to this day as pillars of entertainment that started at different times, crashed into each other in 1967, and faded away from the public scene just weeks apart.

Although you don’t necessarily need a “Light My Fire” moment in your career, a broadcaster or content creator can see how Morrison and The Doors not only made their mark to cement a legacy, they made a mark in the bigger picture of life. The Doors could have been like any other rock band cranking out music in the mid-to-late 1960′s, but one reason why they rise above the rest of the bands is this seminal moment with their charismatic leader. Like any band, you too continue to make one broadcast after another, or one content piece after another. But always be on the lookout for the chance to make your mark.

It may not be a generational mark like Morrison had in that one moment, but when the band was challenged to change what was working simply to satisfy one person at the top, they rose to that challenge by staying true to themselves. You too will go head-to-head with challenges, sometimes directed by the lone person at the top who is wrestling to keep that remaining bit of control in his hands. But stay true to yourself, make your mark, and as Jim would say... break on through to the other side.

This is the end, my only friend, the end... of the column. Tell all the people to visit SammonSez.com to see how we can help you make that mark in your broadcasting or content creation career path.

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iamwilliammorris-blog · 6 years ago

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The Golden Rules for Booking Live Entertainment For Your Event

Booking Live Entertainment

The Golden Rules When Booking Live Entertainment for Your Event

Tips & Tricks For The Entertainment Buyer

When To Book Live Entertainment

What Are You Looking For

Determine Your Budget

Details, Details, Details

Now you know what you want. The next thing to do is get your details together. These include the following in order of importance for the performer to know:

1. Date of the Event

2. Time You Want The Entertainer To Arrive & To Begin Performing

3. Type of Event (birthday, corporate lunch, trade show, etc.)

4. What You Want From The Entertainer in Detail

5. Budget!

6. How Many Guests You're Expecting

7. Description of the Venue (indoors, outdoors, theater style seating, tables, etc.)

8. Will There Be Other Entertainment (what kind, how long, etc.)

9. Have All Of Your Info Available (phone number, email, mailing address, etc.)

Know Your Venue

Let's look at a few examples of common venue locations for a mentalist or magician:

Price Shopping

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barbosaasouza · 7 years ago

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E3 2018 PC Gaming Show Recap: Stormland, Maneater, Sable, and All Other Trailers and Reveals

Shacknews knows PC gaming, which is why we were standing at full attention during the E3 2018 PC Gaming Show presentation. During the briefing, players were treated to a number of massive reveals for all-new games as well as fresh DLC content, including new trailers for Just Cause 4, Stormland, Maneater, The Forgotten City, Sable, and many others.

Star Control: Origins

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Stardock's director of production Patrick Shaw was on hand to discuss the latest details of the action RPG Star Control: Origins, which lets you visit thousands of different, unique planets in the galaxy.

Satisfactory

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Coffee Stain studios took the stage during the PC Gaming conference at E3 2018 to talk about their newest game Satisfactory. Satisfactory is clearly influenced by recent simulation and building games, and has a pretty strong multiplayer component. If you missed the alpha earlier in the year, head over to the game's official site to register for the next alpha.

Mavericks: Proving Grounds

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In 2018, every game seems to be a battle royale experience or an established franchise that is adding a comparable mode. Mavericks: Proving Grounds hopes to stand out from the crowd by offering a large map and seemingly insane player counts. The developers promise that up to 1000 players can compete in its take on the battle royale genre.

The Forgotten City

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The Forgotten City mod came to be one of the most popular mods ever created for Skyrim, garnering over 1.6 million downloads and even earning a screenwriting award from the Australian Writer's Guild. Though the new standalone game is based around Skyrim, developer Modern Storyteller has crafted it as its own sort of adventure based around the Unreal Engine. Within, players will be able explore ancient Roman ruins and make use of mechanics like wall climbing that can't be found in Bethesda's RPG.

The Sinking City

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At this year's PC Gaming Show, The Sinking City developer Frogwares Game Development Studio rolled out a gameplay trailer for their new Lovecraftian-influenced title.

Warframe: The Sacrifice

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The Sacrifice is Warframes latest DLC, and will have players going toe-to-toe with the vengeful Umbra. The DLC is free to all and will become available after completing The Second Dream, The War Within, Chains of Harrow and the Apostasy Prologue.

Jurassic World: Evolution

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Jurassic World: Evolution had a brief showing at the PC Gaming Show, complete with a trailer narrated by everyone's favorite Jurassic Park star, Jeff Goldblum.

Stormland

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Stormland's big hook is a huge open world that's fully explorable in VR. You'll navigate a cloudscape in your robotic body, gaining new abilities by augmenting your body as you fly around the world. That world can change, however, thanks to gameplay elements that Insomniac chief creative officer Chad Dezern revealed at today's conference. One enemy, the Tempest, alters the world in various ways every week, giving you reason to return to areas you've already explored to see what's changed, and how.

Sega: Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles, Shining Resonance, and More

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Sega has plans to port some of Japan’s most popular games to the PC on Valve’s Steam platform. The announcement confirmed that Yakuza O, Yakuza Kiwami, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Shenmue 1 & 2, and Shining Resonance Refrain would all be coming to the PC via Sega.

Killing Floor 2: Treacherous Skies

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The Killing Floor 2 crew is bringing the Summer Sideshow back with the Treacherous Skies DLC pack. The latest content will include the usual types circus freaks with a distinct steampunk style as well as new weapons and weapon modifications. The Doomstick four-barrel shotgun is one such weapon, as are the Static Striker gauntlets and new M99 sniper rifle. Players will also note the addition of Mrs. Foster to the available character roster. The Treacherous Skies DLC will be available tomorrow, and PC players will be able to enjoy it for free over the weekend.

Maneater

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Tripwire president John Gibson came on stage to announce that Tripwire has begun publishing games, bringing their own experience to other developers in order to help with everything from marketing and promotion to long-term support. The first title under their new publishing efforts was also revealed: developed by Blindside Games, the game is called Maneater, and it's a shark-based RPG where players assume the role of a powerful aquatic menace.

Sable

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Fans got a new trailer for Sable, a game that takes the focus off of combat and zooms in on themes of solitude and exploration. The game is being developed by the two-man team of Shedworks, which is composed of Daniel Fineberg and Gregorios Kythreotis. The game sports a beautiful art style inspired by French and Belgian comics, along with Studio Ghibli.

Telltale's The Walking Dead: The Final Season

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Developers from Telltale joined PC Gaming Show Sean "Day9" Plott, the show's host, to tease story and gameplay details ahead of Telltale's The Walking Dead: The Final Season's August 14 release date. Fans can pre-order the game now.

Overkill's The Walking Dead

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Today, during the PC Gaming Show 2018, we got a look at Overkill's The Walking Dead with a new gameplay trailer as well as a release date: November 6.

Don't Starve: Hamlet

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Klei Entertainment’s Don’t Starve became an indie smash hit on Steam several years back thanks to its unique take on the survival genre and its endearing graphical style. The team upped the ante by adding multiplayer to the experience with Don’t Starve Together. Now, the team is preparing a new DLC expansion for owners of Don’t Starve called Hamlet.

Just Cause 4

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The latest Just Cause news comes from developer Avalanche, who has taken to the stage at the PC Gaming Show to demonstrate the capabilities of the open-world Apex engine used in upcoming title Just Cause 4. The series' iconic Wingsuit and grapple hooks will make a return in Just Cause 4, but players will note that the development team has basically fine-tuned everything that fans have come to love about the Just Cause formula.

Hitman 2

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Agent 47 travels to Miami in the newest Hitman 2 trailer, where he's up to no good. He's attending the Innovation Race in Miami as he works to eliminate two targets: Robert and Sierra Knox.

Two Point Hospital

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Two Point Hospital, the new hospital management game from Sega, is nearing its official launch and some of the developers took the stage at the PC Gaming Show to give the crowd a quick look at how the business of fixing the sick works. A short snippet of gameplay footage was shown, giving players a sneak peak at some of the hilarious ailments and conditions that patients at the Two Point Hospital suffer from and how the staff handles them.

Rapture Rejects

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TinyBuild Games' Rapture Rejects, a charmingly funny take that follows those who are doomed to miss out on eternity in paradise, is entering into an alpha test. The latest trailer shows off what players can expect from the newest version of the Cyanide and Happiness inspired game.

Realm Royale

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The battle royale genre is hot right now, and for developers to break into the scene, they need to bring something fresh to the table. Luckily, it seems like Hi-Rez Studios has a few ideas. Taking to the stage during the PC Gaming Show at E3 2018, executive producer Rory "Drybear" Newbrough showed off the latest footage of Realm Royale, the team's latest battle royale experience.

This isn't the end of Shacknews' E3 2018 coverage — not by a long shot, so be sure to keep it tuned right here to stay on top of the latest video game news, previews, trailers, reveals, and hands-on impressions from this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

E3 2018 PC Gaming Show Recap: Stormland, Maneater, Sable, and All Other Trailers and Reveals published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

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itsworn · 7 years ago

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Mooneyes Xmas Party 2017: An Epic Going-Away Bash

In its January 2018 issue, Hot Rod Deluxe announced that Irwindale Event Center—the home of a dragstrip inaugurated in 2001—would cease operation in early 2018. Another track bites the dust. Southern California has indeed lost several of them over the last couple of decades, including Carlsbad and L.A. County Raceway in Palmdale. Thankfully, our friends at Mooneyes, led by Shige Suganuma and Chico Kodama, managed to squeeze in a final major show at Irwindale a couple of weeks before Christmas: the aptly called Mooneyes Xmas Party.

It seems that enthusiasts felt the urge to visit, one last time, the beloved venue, turning out in droves at the gates as early as 3 a.m. Ultimately, more than 1,500 vehicles and 15,000 visitors joined the organized mayhem to enjoy a busy schedule of activities. Mooneyes’ extravaganza is a great way to sample SoCal’s custom car culture, as it mixes a most eclectic array of cool rides: hot rods, kustoms, lowriders, vans, muscle cars, air-cooled VWs, and more ape-hanger-equipped motorcycles than we’ve seen in a long time. It looks like some bikers chose to attend the Mooneyes show rather than the Chopperfest that was scheduled for the same weekend, but canceled due to the terrible fires dangerously close to the event’s venue in Ventura.

The Xmas Party also offered a huge vendor area, which enabled the crowd to buy new car parts, artwork, vintage clothing, and even haircuts. Mooneyes had an impressive booth, of course, to promote its diverse product line, some going as far back as the company’s early days when Dean Moon opened shop in 1962. The same part of the vendor area was home to the stage used by several invited bands and, later, by the always popular Pinup Contest.

The Mooneyes Xmas Party is more than a static show. Some folks came to watch—and participate in—the Run-Whatcha-Brung drag races, which once again combined a vast range of cars and a handful of bikes. The A/FX sideshow, led in part by gasser guru Dale Snoke, proved entertaining as usual with plenty of wild wheelies.

With the demise of Irwindale Event Center, Shige and Chico are now on a hunt for a new venue. We’ll keep you posted.

Oh yes, it got crowded. In fact, we don’t remember such a turnout at Irwindale since Mooneyes adopted the site in 2006. The awning on the right covered Mooneyes’ booth, while bands played on the left. (They included Dynotones, Hot Rod Trio, Gamblers Mark, Colony Boys, and Delta Bombers.)

With unseasonably warm temperatures in the 80s, visitors came by the thousands to see great rides in the vein of Robert Rojas’ trick ’31 Ford roadster (left). The venue quickly filled with spectators’ cars as well. By mid-morning, the less fortunate had to find a spot outside Irwindale Speedway—some miles away.

Longtime journalist Pat Ganahl (who’s now retired and very happy about it) has been the owner of the Ike Iacono dragster since 1988, though he completed its restoration much later, with help from various heroes of the hobby such as Pete Eastwood. The attractive six-cylinder racer graced the cover of HOT ROD in January 1959 and ran 150 mph on 50 percent nitro. Many will recognize the yellow rail sitting behind it. That’s Mooneyes’ replica of the dragster campaigned by the company circa 1963.

In the foreground, you can admire the GMC six that propels the Iacono dragster, equipped with a 12-port Wayne head and Hilborn injection. The vehicle shares the space with Billy Crewl’s Model A on ’32 rails, an accurate tribute to Jack Calori’s iconic roadster. Built in the 1940s, Calori’s roadster ran 128 mph at the lakes in 1947. One of the most distinctive details of the car remains the set of exhaust pipes sticking up on each side.

The success of the event should be attributed in part to the numerous car clubs onsite. The Gearheads displayed a handful of excellent hot rods, such as Rick Tokiyeda’s ’25 Model T (left), flanked by a trio of ’28-’29 Model As driven by Carlos Marin, Kirk Munday, and Bryan Bailay. The Gearheads are based in the city of Glendale, a hotbed of rodding activities since the 1930s. Think SCTA’s Sidewinders and Stokers clubs.

Dubbed “The Dirty Farm Truck,” Jeff Martin’s pickup has a unique appearance, courtesy of a heavy channel job, suicide-mounted I-beam, and unusual choice of wheels. It first sat on 16-inch rims, later replaced with tall 21-inch wires, plus skinny rubber front and aft.

If you had $26,500 burning a hole in your pocket, you could have purchased this frame-off-built ’30 Model A, which hints at the 1960s gasser scene and occasionally ran at Irwindale. Interesting features include a 383ci stroker, 700R overdrive trans, Moon tank fitted in front of the grille, and bobbed rear fenders, although you cannot see them in this photo due to the XXL-sized slicks!

What a great-looking hot rod! Chopped top, Deuce grille, no hood, triple 97 carbs: It’s all there. Peter Rodriguez drove from nearby Azusa in his ’30 Ford, which made some waves in the Suede Palace at the 2017 Grand National Roadster Show. He belongs to the Throttle Kings, a club that co-promotes the annual Rhythm Collision music festival and car show in Riverside, California. v

Built by Sinister Hot Rods in Lewisburg, Ohio, this ’33 Ford coupe (with 1934 grille) belonging to Conrad Garcia relies on a stout 283ci motor with a nice, lopey cam and a four-barrel Holley. The ’33 roadster behind it, formerly owned by Lynn Pew of Pews Place, is the property of Ray Dunham, a gearhead known for his good taste in cars (’39 Lincoln Zephyr, supercharged ’36 Ford, and so on).

The staging lanes remained busy all day long, with more than 130 participants enjoying the eighth-mile. They drove a wide range of vehicles as exemplified by this picture, with domestics representing the bulk of the entries. In the foreground sits Ryan Brown’s ’55 Chevy looking excellent with its gasser attributes: lack of front bumper, nose-high attitude, headers poking through the fenderwells.

Here is a cool lady. North Hollywood’s Kendra Fleharty wanted a hot rod and eventually bought the body of a ’29 Ford roadster about a decade ago, thanks to a tip from friend and Burbank Choppers Car Club member Aaron Kahan. Kendra built most of the channeled jalopy herself in her garage, installing a Cad engine and a windshield from an old wooden boat. Jimmy White at Circle City Hot Rods built the headers and a handful of other components.

The Don Waldron collection focuses heavily on original gassers. He purchased the Silly Willy four-door sedan six years ago as a bare shell and eventually managed to trace its racing history all the way back to 1959. In 2013, Don installed a rolling chassis from another Willys and a 409ci motor. He sold the gasser to Mark Sladovich in 2015.

Yep, that’s the back of the driveshaft resting on the asphalt. No luck indeed for Galpin Auto Sports/Steve Carpenter’s entry, a ’57 Ford equipped with a 502-horse Ford 302ci bored over to 331ci. The car has all the elements of a genuine gasser, from the Moon tank in front to the straight axle from a 1950s Ford truck. Its finish is better than most, including the Pearl White diamond pattern upholstery.

“What can be better than racing your buddy?” asked Dale Snoke when we showed him this picture. Dale competed with his well-known ’64 Comet, seen burning rubber against the green ’62 Dodge Dart, which he co-owns with U.K. resident Brian Gibson. (“When he occasionally comes to the States, he hops in and races it.”) For the occasion, Dale elected to let his friend Nick Magaña play with the genuine 1960s So-Cal Super Stock entry. v

Todd Hoffman’s ’64 Plymouth Savoy named Sayonara competes with American Nostalgia West Drag Racing, a group devoted to 1960s vintage A/FX and Super Stock racers. (“Our cars are larger, heavier, and have huge American motors compared to their modern-day counterparts,” explains their website.) Powered by a 528ci Max Wedge motor, the coupe leaves many in the dust with its 6.00 e.t.’s at 112 mph over the eighth-mile.

Arizona’s Glenn Gibbons returned to the Xmas Party with his popular ’64 Pontiac LeMans. He based his “Pouncin’ Poncho” contender on a hulk found in a salvage yard. Notice the rear wheel opening moved toward the door, in true A/FX fashion. Motivation comes from a 455ci Olds V8, punched to 462 ci and topped with Hilborn injection. Like most class entries, the Pontiac performed some fantastic wheelies to the delight of the crowd.

Nicknamed “The Fat Lady” by the A/FX gang due to its sheer size, Ernie “The Attorney” Algorri’s ’67 Ford Fairlane makes it down the track thanks to a 440ci Windsor-based small-block, which delivers 1,000 hp. Ernie has been racing his steel-wheeled beauty for years, managing a personal best of 9.15 at a blistering 150 mph, mighty impressive for a heavy car occasionally street-driven.

Chuck Hoffman and Cliff Lozis teamed up to build this very red ’69 Mustang, with Chuck typically handling driving duties. They juggle with different powerplants, but when they drop in their 460ci V8, the wheel-standing A/FX crosses the quarter-mile finish line in 9.70 seconds.

Car Craft magazine teamed up with several established names from the custom world to build a nasty Street Machine with a cool 1960s vibe, using a ’71 Dodge Demon. They based their exercise on an unfinished Pro Street project car, purchased dirt cheap on Craigslist. Among the shops involved: Circle City Hot Rods (fabrication), The Harpoon (paint scheme and patterns), and Grant Petersen of Born Free (welding). The twin-turbo Hemi coupe runs deep in the 9s over the quarter.

We remember seeing the Victor Cacho ’50 Merc at the 2013 Grand National Roadster Show, an elegant build by Cacho Customs by all accounts. Look closely and you might notice the discreet flames over that PPG Sunburst Orange. The lake pipes pretty much rest on the ground once the Firestone airbags are deflated.

Originally a Business Coupe model, Jesse Loera’s Pearl Copper–colored ’50 Ford received a heavily chopped sedan roof, along with other traditional lead sled alterations: frenched front and rear lights, smoothed bumpers, and a ’49 grille. Under the shell modified by Los Diablos hides a Ford 302ci V8 hooked to an AOD trans, in addition to an Air Ride suspension kit.

Founded in 1996, the Rumblers have become a prominent hot rod and custom car club, as demonstrated by this clean ’54 Chevy. Robert Miret has been the driving force behind the group; you might know his name if you listen to punk music and the band Agnostic Front in particular. The Rumblers have chapters across the United States and Europe as well.

We couldn’t find the owner of this ’55 Cadillac convertible but feel compelled to show it to you. It looks excellent sitting low to the ground on airbags. The vintage trailer happens to be severely lowered, too!

Mooneyes’ Xmas Party gathered an impressive troupe of lowriders based on pre-’55 GM products, aka “bombs.” Here, Lorenzo Dominguez’s ’49 Chevy truck keeps company with Gerry Orozco’s topless ’39 Pontiac, which he purchased from the original owner. The rare convertible runs a 222ci inline-six. Gerry belongs to the Bridgetown Oldies Car club.

We dig the appearance of this ’54 Chevy truck, looking bone-stock until the owner lays it on the asphalt thanks to an airbag setup hidden in a box above the rear axle. Under the hood lurks a Chevy 235ci motor. Nothing wrong with this inline-six, being the engine of choice on early production Corvettes, with slightly different specs. Note the contrast between the nicely painted truck and the other Chevy pickup (and ’38 five-window Ford) parked next to it.

When Studebaker introduced its new truck in the late 1940s, characterized by its round shapes, who would have thought it would continue inspiring customizers 70 years later? The design of the model did not evolve drastically during the following decade, though the ’55-’60 version (aka E-series) seems to be a favorite within our scene. Here is a tasteful ’59 hauler.

The lowrider scene encompasses an eclectic assortment of vehicles, with 1970s and 1980s barges playing a key role. Even HRM devoted pages to the subject, as far back as the April 1974 issue, featuring the Imperials Car Club. Check out this arresting lineup, dominated by cars running wire wheels, with a few sets of Cragar five-spokes thrown in for good measure.

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