#some people do post the auto-translated subs on here and i could do that as well but i can't promise to alsways do it on time
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watching Tatort in English
in case there are insane people like me who want to watch Tatort but don't speak German, here's my process to translate the subtitles :
download the episode (mediathekview*)
download the subtitles (mediathekview*)
open the subtitles file in Subtitle Edit (free to download, easy to use)
select all the lines and copy+paste them in a word document (*)
open translate.google.com and translate the document (i usually do "detect language" so that it translates all the languages in case there are several)
download the translation and open the document
copy+paste all the text into subtitle edit
save the file as .srt (the usual format)
open the episode in vlc, drag & drop the sub file into vlc and voilà !
*mediathekview is in german but you can manage to use it quite easily even when you barely understand a word. if not, i also use internet download manager and its firefox/chrome plugin, it recognizes when there's a video in a webpage, and it'll even download the subtitles (vtt file) !
(*) if you want a better translation, before copy+pasting them, you can "unbreak the lines" with the "unbreak line" button just below the lines. subtitles are broken up into 2 lines, and sentences then lose meaning when google translates them as two different sentences.
if you need any further help, send me an ask or a dm and i'll happily help !
#tatort#tatort saarbrücken#tatort berlin#german tv#i know that someone translates the tatort saabrucken episode but if you're an impatient bitch like me this'll do#some people do post the auto-translated subs on here and i could do that as well but i can't promise to alsways do it on time
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So, Word of Honor, Episode 36 (and “Episode” 37) again, because I want to do a little bit more unpacking of this, particularly with some of the extra material and information that people have been able to point me to.
Spoilers, obvs. For right now, I mainly want to pull out this bit of my initial reaction to 36 & 37, because I think it remains a key point for me:
It would be nice, though, if the connective tissue from 36 to 37 made any sense. Or existed whatsoever. Just, like, throw me a bone, show, some kind of explicit hand-waviness that actually gets mentioned for why Ye Baiyi apparently was not as smart as he thought he was and didn’t really know what he was talking about when he was doomsaying about how one of the pair will surely, oh surely perish. None of this “Sooooo, they managed to figure out the technique and master it?” from some random shidi who never actually gets an answer. I mean, the door was left open for fanwankery on this one, with what looks to be a very last-minute conceit of all this being a story told by grown-up Chengling to his disciples, which begs the question of how much of what he’s telling them is totally accurate, given any number of issues …
I do feel like there’s an interesting meta thing going on here, in that the entire show has been about – let’s be honest, it was never really about the plot – queer-coding this couple in ways that supposedly fly enough under the radar that people can handwave them as Just Good Friends and Brothers (I mean, I guess) with a Bury Your Gays tragic ending (ugh) for good measure. And Chengling is telling a story in-universe that seems to conform to some of this same formula. And yet, we all know well and good that these guys were husbands … So are we supposed to carry the same assurance out of the show, on a meta level, that what appears to be happening in the story at the end of Ep 36 – what we discover we’re learning through Chengling’s story-telling, isn’t really the truth? Just, look: While we’re getting the Good Friends and Brothers push, there’s stuff like obvious voice-over work that doesn’t match the much more queer version of what the actors actually said, which is apparently blazingly clear to any viewers who know Mandarin and can manage to lip-read. The show has literally put de-queered words into these characters’ mouths. You can’t trust what you hear. But apparently the show has also made this obvious enough that, if you’re a good enough speaker of the language the show is being told in, and you have a good enough eye, you can see what is actually going on. Are we being taught to trust our eyes more than our ears, are we being told that what we’re being told – by the end of Ep 36 on a meta level, by Ye Baiyi-through-Chengling’s-story on an in-universe level, and by what we learn about what happened from Chengling’s story, itself, also on an in-universe level – is inherently untrustworthy, but that if we “speak the language” of this show well enough, and have a good enough eye, we can decode it and see what “actually” happened and is later made explicit in Ep 37?
So, that’s a lot, but the reason I wanted to pull it back out is because I feel like this no-homo, surface-level, smoke-and-mirrors effect that gets layered over a queer bedrock of “reality” is precisely what the show did with its ending, and I want to approach that on a couple of different levels. Particularly since I’ve seen several reactions from other people who didn’t seem to have seen/didn’t have access to the extra of “Ep” 37, or who also found it difficult and vaguely unsatisfying to make the leap from Ep 36 to full belief in, and commitment to, “Ep” 37.
When I first posted this, I was really leaning on the idea of a classic Rashomon effect, given that we see – imho – a final Zhou Zishu/Wen Kexing scene in Ep 36 that’s filmed to lead us to believe that Wen Kexing died, with a subsequent cut to Zhang Chengling wrapping up a telling of the “story” of ZZS and WKX to his disciples. The easiest fanwank on this is that all of what we’ve seen so far has been Chengling telling the story of ZZS and WKX to his disciples, making him an unreliable narrator who in fact doesn’t know the truth of what really happened. I was actually reminded of the contrast in The Untamed (god, I don’t need to warn for spoilers for The Untamed, do I, we’ve all seen Chen Qing Ling at this point, right? Anyway, SPOILERS FOR THE UNTAMED) between the cliff scene in Episode 1 when they make it look like Jiang Cheng stabbed Wei Wuxian, leading to his fall off the cliff, and you go back later and realize this is the version that the storyteller was telling to the people in the teahouse vs. Episode, god, what is it, 33? When we see the cliff scene in “real” time, and discover that’s not what actually happened, that what happened is that Jiang Cheng stabbed a rock and Wei Wuxian shook himself free of Lan Wangji’s grip to fall to his death. You can’t trust what you hear. Also … well, we’ll get back to Chengling in a minute.
The second level of uncertainty to unwind is Gao Xiaolian calling bs on Chengling’s story. So, I felt like the kid who’s practicing his forms in the snow and being coached by ZZS in “Ep” 37 might actually be someone, not just a random kid, and that might be important, but I could not for the life of me figure out who he might be. I wasn’t aware until I watched some of AvenueX’s wrap-up of the show (I think that’s the first place I heard this info pointed out) that this kid is supposed to be the son of Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan, and the dad who comes to take him home is Deng Kuan (formerly Da-shixiong of Yueyang Sect, who – let’s face it – Gao Xiaolian really wanted to marry). Seriously, I spent so much time making fun of ZZS’s stupid facial hair tricks in this show, and then they actually do just put a dumbass mustache on a guy, and I completely don’t recognize him. I have to admit, the mustache threw me enough that I had no idea that was Deng Kuan (well, and maybe only seeing him for three episodes also helped). But if that’s Deng Kuan, and if the kid is his and Gao Xiaolian’s son, then she would have some reasonable standing to know a story detailing WKX’s death was bs.
Finally, and most crucially – thanks to everyone who directed me to resources (including AvenueX and other fans who were able to do some translation) who were able to talk about the voiceover work in this final ep, because when I talk about how you can’t trust what you hear, but if you speak the language well enough and have a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on? When I talk about de-queered words being put into these character’s mouths? Apparently, this is what happens to Chengling in the final scene. That last scene - and the story he tells his disciples - apparently DOES provide the connective tissue from Ep 36 to Ep 37, but you can’t trust what you hear. Apparently, this is one of the places where you can see something different from what you hear if you’re able to lip-read, with Chengling telling the disciples something much closer to the idea that two people who love each other equally can equally support each other through this cultivation technique and both come out alive.
In the AvenueX discussion of this (Livestream #21, starting around 1:22:30), there’s an additional tidbit about the use of the word “cauldron” – I believe by Ye Baiyi - to describe one person in the pair, a word with a specific and widely-understood meaning within the genre that’s not necessarily known outside of the genre with, yes, sexual connotations. (Come on, slash fans, don’t tell me you don’t giggle every time you pass a perfectly innocent Jiffy Lube auto shop, at something that the mundanes don’t think twice about.) Apparently, “cauldron” is in the script, I believe it’s in the English subs, and it apparently was in the original Chinese subs, until too many people started talking about it and how it had been slipped past censorship, because it’s a perfectly common Jiffy Lube auto shop, right? and then it appears Youku went back and changed the character in the Chinese subs to something that doesn’t even make any sense. So again, we get an example of a case where if you’re a good enough speaker of the language this show is being told in – in this case the vernacular of wuxia – with a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on. Something that then gets no-homo’d. And has some nonsensical de-queered meaning laid over top of it. How many times do we have to do this until we learn the lesson that you can’t trust what you hear?
ANYWAY, I’m wondering if the visuals are important, too: Something we see in the last scene with ZZS and WKX in Ep 36, when WKX is either unconscious or dead (CLEARLY UNCONSCIOUS), is that ZZS – twice – doesn’t let WKX’s hands fall. He catches him by the wrists and then catches him again by the hands as WKX’s hands start to slip away from ZZS’s hands – aaaannnnd end scene. I have to wonder if that’s not a subtle but important detail, that we see ZZS refusing to let WKX physically slip away, and maybe, by implication, refusing to let WKX slip away from him into death.
Also, again with Ye Baiyi – in the flashback when WKX is yelling at ZZS, Ye Baiyi says “No one dies!” as he comes bursting into WKX’s sickroom. And then even reiterates it – “No one dies before me!” But then the voiceover during the qi transfer, he’s supposedly going on about here’s how WKX is going to have to kill himself to save his husband? I think the script has dropped the ball in a few places, but that would really be a tremendous flub. That also deserves some unpacking, but I’m running out of free time right now.
So, just some additional thoughts. I will probably have more, but next up, I think, will be a re-watch from the beginning.
One last thought, tho’: What’s the likelihood that Nian Xiang is Actual A-Xiang and Goa Xiaolian’s/Deng Kuan’s kid is Cao Weining, reincarnated?
#zhou zishu#wen kexing#zhang chengling#gao xiaolian#deng kuan#ye baiyi#word of honor#word of honor episode reax
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Hello again, same anon here as the one thanking you for reccing word of honor *waves* the thing is I've caught up with all the episodes on YouTube now and I seem to remember that you (or maybe someone else?) said that you could watch more episodes somewhere with premium access or something? Could you please point me in the right direction? Because I really don't want to wait any longer? Haha, it really got me I guess :D I'm in ep 21 and getting the plot a bit more now, like you said I would, and I'm just enjoying the show so much :) especially the character dynamics. It also doesn't hurt that zishu (sorry idk his actors name) has an unfairly perfect face, like esp his side profile is just oh my god, how is he even real
Hullo, Word of Honor anon! 👋
Youku has all of the Word of Honor episodes translated into english, although you need a premium VIP account in order to watch the later ones.
Although I think some people might have found a way around it if they have android phones now, in order to get a premium VIP pass outside of China you’ll need to be able to use Apple Pay. It’s also easier to make your account via an app on a phone or iPad - you can always access the site via a computer later to actually watch the series itself. Apple Pay is the way I brought myself an account, so I can say for certainty that it works. Since Youku’s website is completely in Chinese, there are tutorials about to help navigate the website and to both a) make an account and b) make a payment. The ones I used were:
@baoshan-sanren + @minmoyu‘s guides - the first is an incredibly useful tutorial on how to make an account, so I would follow that first. Make sure that once you get to inputting your phone number, you change the number in the drop down box for whatever area code your country is. For example, as I live in the UK, I had to change mine so the number was ‘+44′, as that’s the number which is used to contact someone when you’re outside that direct country. You then need to put in the next ten digits of your mobile number, cutting off whatever the first number is you usually have. The second guide which @baoshan-sanren kindly links to in the above linked post is one that guides you on how to get a VIP membership once you’re signed into your new account.
I also used this twitter tutorial - it goes through the same steps as the above one that was shared here on tumblr, but I particularly found this useful for knowing what sort of VIP package I wanted to subscribe to on Youku. Like most streaming services there are multiple packages, from the cheaper ones to more expensive, longer term ones. If, like me you only want to use your Youku subscription to be able to gain earlier access to watch Word of Honor’s episode ahead of YouTube and Amazon Prime’s releases, you’ll likely only need the very basic package, which is a months subscription. Make sure you collect the monthly subscription as labelled in the post - it’s a reduced rate (it’s actually a reduced rate for three months, but you can cancel it as soon as you’ve brought it to only pay for one month). My subscription payment came to £2.79 for a whole month, which is very reasonable! My only advice is that if you don’t intend to renew your subscription, make sure you turn off auto renewal via your phones subscription settings.
There’s also an easter egg episode 37, which is small but includes an additional ending for Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing that isn’t in episode 36. This is one of a few extra episodes I think they plan to release, but you have to also pay to access it (I think the price is something like 3 Yuan which isn’t very expensive). However, if by that point you want to watch the special episode but don’t want to buy it, it is floating around tumblr already with a subbed translation 😊
Hope this helps for you! If you have any questions at all do ask, as I know it can be a bit confusing. It took me a few tries to make sure I got everything right, but it definitely works!
As for Zhou Zishu and his perfect everything, I agree with you so much anon! It’s literally a case of ‘have you ever seen a man so beautiful’? 😭 No wonder why Wen Kexing fell for him so quickly. After all ...
#anonymous#replies#i really hope this makes sense!#if not the tutorials likely explain it better than i ever could
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WhatsApp's Privacy Policy changes explained for my dumb friends. Should you uninstall WhatsApp?
Note: This is long, so go down to point 16 if you want simple explanation. I've tried to keep it as simple and accurate as possible, apologies in advance if some things are incorrect.
1. Privacy on the internet is a myth.
2. Your data is not at risk. Files, photos, chats etc. are secured. Your WhatsApp metadata is transferred to FB servers, like: mobile model, OS, IP address etc. Most of them are shared to improve user experience and for security reasons, according to WhatsApp. 3. Breaking News: WhatsApp already has been sharing data with Facebook since 2016. In 2014 FB had "promised" that nothing would change in privacy policy of WhatsApp when they had acquired it. But, as expected, in 2016 they changed the policy, where sharing data with Facebook was "optional". At that time you could opt out. Many people agreed without checking, or had ignored it (auto-agree). Now in new policy there is no opt out, you have to agree, else uninstall. 4. The reason for new policy is because of many new things Facebook and WhatsApp have now, namely the WhatsApp Business Accounts, WhatsApp Payments, Facebook Pay in USA etc. It is just clarifying things in general. 5. Another reason is due to Facebook's focus of interoperability of FB, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. FB and Instagram were integrated long back. Instagram and Messenger already have interoperability, when in Oct 2020 they merged both. Now time for WhatsApp. 6. Facebook has monopoly of sorts in social media, only other strong competitor being Snapchat (w.r.t. personal communication). It also recently acquired Giphy, a gif sharing platform, integrating it with Instagram. Hence US Federal Trade Commission is considering splitting, which could force Facebook to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Some people believe this is the reason WhatsApp is being rushed into the Facebook universe as Facebook will get all of the metadata of WhatsApp personal and business users before the split (the split has low chance of happening, but still a chance). 7. Another problem is they may come up with something they have being doing with Facebook Shop in USA. Your metadata or third-party integration with WhatsApp may affect your experience in Facebook Shop or other Facebook Universe apps. They mention this in privacy policy:
WhatsApp currently shares certain categories of information with Facebook Companies. The information we share with the other Facebook Companies. includes your account registration information (such as your phone number), transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using our Services, mobile device information, your IP address, and may include other information identified in the Privacy Policy section entitled ‘Information We Collect’ or obtained upon notice to you or based on your consent.
8. So in the end nothing really is changing, just that WhatsApp's entry in Facebook interoperability plan is official, and some clarification regarding people-to-business communication.
Their statement is:
"We’ve updated our policy to be transparent and to better describe optional people-to-business features. We wrote about it in October -- this includes commerce on WhatsApp and the ability for people to message a business"
9. The need for change: Google and Amazon etc. also have reputation of bad privacy practices. Amazon's business itself is to sell things, they track your basic data and try to sell you more products, so nothing much here. And lets be honest the saying is true: Google knows more about you than you know about yourself. Google is integrated in Android and multiple web apps, so getting rid of it is impossible right now. (We can start with DuckDuckGo, privacy oriented search engine, there are other replacements for other Google apps)
10. Hence the need for change is now, people have now become aware that our privacy is at stake, plus Facebook has bad reputation of privacy issues (Cambridge Analytica, targeted advertising, surveillance, list is long), so it is right time to move on.
11. Another breaking news, FB and Instagram can use your images and videos for their own purpose.
For example in Instagram's terms of use:
When you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with our Service, you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).
12. You need to remove all Facebook Universe apps along with WhatsApp for complete privacy: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger. This is going to be tough, as massive amount of people are already on these platforms, forcing them to move on will be a tough task. Switching from WhatsApp for freelancers and small businesses may affect their business with clients. Elders who are already struggling with tech and had to learn Facebook apps will get frustrated when we tell them to learn a new app.
But people have migrated before, Orkut and Myspace are the examples, so there is hope.
However, moving from Facebook has become tough, as it has acquired it's competitors or copied them (ahem ahem Snapchat ahem) 13. Uninstalling WhatsApp would be great, but a good start would be people starting to use other messaging apps simultaneously, as some might argue such apps are essential apps and we can't risk privacy in that aspect. Currently good alternatives are Telegram and Signal (there are many, but others don't have much popularity)
14. I recommend Signal as it is built by a non-profit organization and hence can't be sold to organizations like Facebook, Amazon etc. Telegram has bad reputation of being loaded with movie piracy and can be acquired by another organization in future. Plus Edward Snowden, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk recommend Signal. 15. Another solution is Indian government steps in and tells Facebook what data can be shared and what cannot be shared, which is the case in Europe (EU).
People in EU did not get this privacy policy notification as WhatsApp is legally bound to not share data with Facebook in the European Region because it’s a contravention of the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
16. TLDR: Whatsapp has been sharing metadata with Facebook since 2016, nothing major in policy changes. If you care about privacy, get rid of all Facebook apps, you can start with WhatsApp first as it is a personal messaging app. If you are OK with sharing your metadata with Facebook and trust them, then just accept the Privacy Policy. Best case scenario is the metadata will be used for better targeted advertising.
Links: https://twitter.com/wcathcart/status/1347660768225841152 https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/whatsapp-says-latest-update-does-not-change-data-sharing-practices-with-facebook-11610194605143.html https://faq.whatsapp.com/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/09/facebook-lawsuit-antitrust-whatsapp-instagram-ftc
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How much more would i have to pay insurance for a cheve monte carlo?
How much more would i have to pay insurance for a cheve monte carlo?
Im 16 and i want to get a cheve monte carlo but my parents say that the insurance will be too much, but there are a lot of people my age with one and i am pretty sure we are more better off financial than they are
BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insureoptionsreview.top
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Im 16 and i want to get a cheve monte carlo but my parents say that the insurance will be too much, but there are a lot of people my age with one and i am pretty sure we are more better off financial than they are
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So I got a little carried away this time.
I had planned for this sixth installment of the Fantastic Four Re-Mix (previous chapters may be found at the link) to zip through several storylines in short form, to get my remaining ideas out of the way so I could go into the big finale in the next chapter. But then I started writing, and my quick synopsis for Arc Thirteen started sprouting ideas and details. One thing lead to another thing, and that thing lead to yet another, and another, and that fourth thing circled back around to make me see the first thing in a new light, so I re-wrote and added more details that lead to yet still more details, and… The next thing I knew, I had eight single-spaced pages (close to 5000 words), just for that one storyline.
I could go back and edit, I suppose, but… I don’t wanna. I like it as-is. It’s a tightly plotted thing, with dialogue, back-story, and scene descriptions that sometimes launch off into flights of super-heroic purple prose that I’d be embarrassed to have written in a less ridiculous setting. But this is a story about monsters and mutants, populated with Mole Kings, Sorcerers Supreme, lost Atlantean royalty, and a metric ton of obscure Asian super heroes that I pulled out from the dark recesses of the internet in a single feverish burst of research. It is sprawling and self-indulgent, and epic in a way that I don’t think previous installments of the FF Re-Mix have been. So I’m afraid you’re stuck with it.
First, though…
Hi! Hello! And welcome to the Fantastic Four Re-Mix! If this is your first time reading these posts… Well, hell. Hit that link above (or this one right here) to go back and see what this mess is all about. Briefly, it’s just me getting some fictional baggage out of my head, and rebooting the Fantastic Four from the ground-up. The FF is my favorite super-team of all time, and I evidently have a massive number of stories I’d like to tell about them. So these are those. Got it? Good.
Also before we get started, there’s a small mess to clean up from our last installment. After I posted that one to the site, I discovered an editing error that had omitted an entire section on the sub-plots that were supposed to be running through the Inhumans storyline. So before we continue on, I’m going to include that section here…
ARC TWELVE ADDENDUM: SUB-PLOTS
(Note: In the spirit of excess that this installment has embraced so fully, I’m expanding on these scenes from what I had written last time out. When you’re on a roll, you might as well go with it…)
Sexy Thing
Frankie Ray and her best frenemy Tura meet Alicia for drinks, and we learn a bit about Tura and Alicia’s past relationship. Tura gives her crap for “playing for the other team,” but Alicia says she’s always been a switch-hitter, and sees no reason to stop now. Frankie, meanwhile, wants deets on Alicia’s sex life with Ben. “He’s just so big, and the rocks… I mean, how does it work?”
Alicia pauses before speaking. But she’s a little drunk, and no shrinking violet even when dead sober. So she dishes.
“Well… The rocks… don’t go all the way down.” (Pause to let that sink in.) “So we’ve got that going for us. But, yeah. It can be a challenge, y’know? There’s things we just can’t do, and…” (shrug) “I’ll be honest. The chafing gets pretty bad sometimes. But overall… it’s good, you know? It’s really good. And I’m…” (lop-sided smile) “…equipped to deal…? With the size difference?”
Frankie’s eyes get big. “Whoosh. More power to ya, girl.”
(Note: This isn’t just salacious detail – though I did think it was high time we got back to salacious detail on the sex life of the Thing. Still, the information that the rocks don’t cover his entire body will actually become a plot point in the next story arc (it may also, if you’re reading between the lines a bit, say something about how much control Ben actually has over his appearance as the Thing – even if it is subconscious). Of course, Alicia’s confession that she has the capacity to have sex with a giant – especially after establishing that Sue very much didn’t – also plays into the on-going sub-plot about the possibility that Alicia’s a shape-shifting Skrull. Which brings us to…)
Puppets and Masters
Alicia’s father Phillip Masters (The Puppet Master, who has already been revealed as a Skrull agent) uses his fame as a puppeteer to arrange a meeting with the anti-Skrull demagogue Gabriel. Though Masters is a B- or C-list celebrity at best, that’s the only kind of celebrity endorsement Gabriel can get. But we also learn that he really agreed to the meeting because he’d like Masters to convince Alicia to float the idea of the FF appearing with Gabriel on television to discuss the Skrull threat. Masters tells him that his daughter is strong-willed, but he’ll see what he can do. But mostly, he just keeps Gabriel talking, so that his psycho-active clay (which he uses to make his puppets) has time to bond with Gabriel from its hiding place inside Masters’ briefcase.
The Temptation of Frankie Ray
After their night out with Alicia, Tura puts the moves on Frankie in the car on their way back to the racetrack. Frankie rebuffs her… but only after a couple of passionate panels. And honestly… Who could resist this?
(Note: The above scene should fall somewhere after Johnny’s attraction to Crystal becomes obvious. But more on that below…)
Love and Beauty
Alicia gets a visit from one of the Men in Black (two mysterious agents who’ve been interviewing people who know the FF for several issues now). It’s the white-haired Man in Black this time, and he asks some pointed questions about Ben’s erratic public behavior, and about why she’s attracted to a man most people would say was a monster. The conversation gives Alicia a chance to expound on her sense of aesthetics, how her curiosity about the way things look – she’s blind, remember – translates into desire. She’s attracted to beauty in whatever form she finds it, and what she “sees” when she touches Ben is beautiful to her. Moreover, what she sees inside him is beautiful, as well. He’s troubled and imperfect, but his flaws only put his kindness and heroism into sharper relief.
The Man in Black nods and smiles, seeming pleased. For the readers, however, her attraction to non-standard (even non-human) beauty could once again play into the suspicions that she’s a Skrull. But her feelings for Ben also seem genuine, which may muddy the field a bit. If she is a Skrull, is she one that’s going to betray her own kind for love?
(Note: At this point, the differences between the two Men in Black are becoming apparent. The dark-haired one seems to not like the FF, and tends to take everything he hears in the worst possible light. The white-haired one, while still asking hard questions, is pleased to hear about the good in Our Heroes.)
Political Doom
This covers a few different scenes, to be spread out over several issues. The Latverian rebels, using weapons given to them by Doom, take control of the southern province of Rotruvia, and declare themselves a sovereign state. Afterward, Doom meets with Namor about the possibility of Atlantis sponsoring their call for aid from the UN.
Meanwhile, with Our Heroes…
The Inhumans arc (as well as this week’s follow-up) will be narrated with excerpts from Lands of Confusion: Exploration Under Duress, by Susan Storm.
One of the big issues, starting with the Microverse arc and continuing on through this week’s storyline, is the question of how much the rest of the team can trust Reed. Or, more precisely, how much Sue can trust him. She still feels lingering resentment over Veronica, the ex-wife Reed never told her about. So when he overcomes Maximus’ charisma in the Inhumans arc and breaks from Sue and Johnny (who were still taken in by him), she takes it personally. Even after they escape Atillan, Sue and Johnny aren’t entirely convinced that they were on the wrong side of the fight.
Also in the Inhumans arc, we saw Johnny getting close to the Inhuman princess Crystal, which only makes sense. She’s a beautiful, intelligent young woman with a heart of gold, and her inherent nobility appeals to Johnny’s more heroic side in a way that the vivacious but (let’s face it) slightly amoral Frankie Raye never will. After Johnny’s moral crisis in the Microverse war, Crystal is exactly the kind of woman he thinks he needs. And Johnny seems handsome and exciting to her, just the sort of thrillingly unpredictable man she’d like to run to while escaping her arranged marriage to Triton.
But there’s something else to remember about her: while Crystal may just be entering adult life by Inhuman standards, that means she’s 70-year-old royalty from an alien culture who was, before she met the FF, slated to become the queen of Inhuman Hell. And as we go forward into the new storyline, that will begin to become apparent…
ARC THIRTEEN: HOT PURSUIT
After the intrigues of the last few arcs, this one’s going to be centered a lot more on action, as the Inhumans Karnak and Gorgon…
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…pursue the team out of Attilan to bring Ben back to stand trial for (the Inhumans believe) killing a ship full of Inhuman scouts during the Thingbeard Incident.
(Because, again… I can’t post this picture often enough.)
One other important thing about this arc: I decided to take inspiration for the current run of stories from another of my favorite Silver Age series: Doctor Strange. At that strip’s height, Steve Ditko plotted out an incredible series of cliffhanger adventures that linked together into an epic that ran for over a year, building on established characters and situations while still expanding the character’s universe, building to ever-greater heights that culminate in a battle between the Dread Dormammu and the living embodiment of everything(!). It’s exciting, bravura storytelling, and I wanted to emulate it here. This really started with the introduction of Medusa in the Frightful Four arc, straight on into the Inhumans arc, and running into this one. Will it go even longer? Read on, and find out…
ONE: THE CHASE BEGINS
An initial encounter with Karnak and Gorgon establishes the chase, and the danger: while the FF could most likely defeat their pursuers in open combat, Karnak’s ability to find the flaws in things enables him to plan devastating surprise attacks. So uncanny is their ability to find and attack the team, no matter how many miles separate them, that it makes them seem more threatening than they really are, and sets Reed to wondering how they’re pulling it off.
He’s got other distractions, though, thanks to Karnak’s psychological warfare. He and Gorgon very much play “bad cop” here, implacable minions of evil king Black Bolt, driving a wedge between the Storms (who were taken in by Maximus’ manipulations) and Reed (who saw through those manipulations). It also makes Sue suspicious of Crystal (a member of Black Bolt’s court), which further splinters the team because of Johnny’s growing affection for the Inhuman girl.
Karnak’s most dramatic psychological warfare tactic, however, is against Ben. In their initial encounter, Karnak punches the Thing square in the chest, putting a large crack in Ben’s rocky hide. While it was just a test-blow for Karnak, something to help him determine the limits of his foe’s toughness, he plays it as if he thought the attack would have split Ben open like a gutted fish. It doesn’t help matters that the crack slowly grows larger as the arc goes on, audibly cracking every time Ben exerts himself. This makes him hesitant in general, and over-protective in future encounters with Karnak.
And not without reason. Because we see Karnak, in several sequences over the arc, figuring out how to actually crack Ben open with a single punch. (Note: good opportunity for some trippy visuals here.) The real key, of course, is Alicia’s earlier confession that the rocks “don’t go all way down.” So while Ben’s protecting his chest, Karnak will eventually figure out that the place to strike is actually the groin.
At any rate. This initial encounter happens while the team is still in Triton’s realm (the Under-Sea), just after Triton leaves them, but before they enter the cave system he’s lead them to. So after a few pages of action, Triton returns to order Karnak and Gorgon off. They refuse, in defiance of Triton’s sovereignty, and the team escapes into the underground while their pursuers battle Triton behind them.
TWO: MOLES
Next, still traversing the caves, the team runs afoul of the MOLE KING, who has moved to his Asian home beneath Bangkok since his initial encounter with the team. There’s some monster-fighting…
…and we get to see the somewhat disturbing “do what thou wilt” society Elder’s outcast Mole People have built for themselves underground. We also meet the Moloids, a native subterranean race that serve as slaves. The Moloids subsist on a diet of pale fungus that the Mole King hordes to further control his underground slave-race. Not that he needs it; they worship him like a god due to his ability to control the monsters. He just limits their food supply because it pleases him to do so. (Scene: the FF break open the fungus vault, hoping to free the Moloids from Elder’s control. Instead, they attack the team for daring to interfere with their god’s plan for them.)
This whole situation breaks down when Karnak and Gorgon attack again. How did they get past Triton? Karnak hints that they won the fight, and have claimed the Under-Sea for Black Bolt. Crystal’s not buying it for a second, and neither is Reed (and they’re right). But things swiftly become too chaotic to give it much thought. Reed pits Elder and the Inhumans against each other, and the team escapes again as Karnak and Gorgon are tied up fighting the mole-monsters.
THREE: THE TOMB
Emerging from the underground miles off the coast, the team finds itself at the source of the Mole King’s strange menagerie of creatures: MONSTER ISLAND! They run afoul of bunches of bizarre Kirby creatures, and discover the source of the island’s strange mutations: a volcanic core composed of an unknown radioactive element. In trying to collapse the cave mouth behind them (thus thwarting Karnak and Gorgon’s pursuit), they unwittingly free the greatest monster of all:
FIN FANG FOOM! He Whose Limbs Shatter Mountains, and Whose Back Scrapes the Sun! Though he’d been trapped in peaceful slumber for centuries, something recently changed. He awoke one day in frozen agony, paralyzed as his flesh began to bubble and boil. And when the boils burst, they birthed monsters. These are the creatures, these SPAWN OF FOOM, that roam Monster Island and serve the Mole King underground, and they’ve continued to be born to this day.
(Scene: as FOOM tells them the story, he pops a boil on his shoulder in demonstration, and a massive, half-formed fetal monster falls, wet and dying, to the ground.)
FOOM thanks the team for freeing him, and in repayment, he deigns to let them live. The rest of humanity, it seems, will not be so lucky. His revenge for his years of torment will be genocide. The FF try to stop him, of course, but they’re badly outmatched, and he slips into the ocean, headed for the Chinese mainland.
FOUR: Pacifica
Giving chase, the team encounters a group of Atlantean soldiers under the command of NAMORA…
…Namor’s long-lost cousin, another human/Atlantean half-breed and a hero of the Pacific campaign in World War II. Namora rules Pacifica, a splinter kingdom that separated from their Atlantean cousins when Atlantis chose to hide from the world. The Pacificans moved halfway around the globe, with the intent of helping the Japanese rebuild after Hiroshima. An unexpected problem arose once they’d settled in, however: Monster Island. Post-war atomic tests caused strange mutations, Namora tells Our Heroes, and the monsters haunt the Pacific to this day, searching for prey. Devoting themselves to protecting the world from these creatures, the Pacificans live on a constant war footing, and (Reed surmises) suffer from more than a little PTSD.
Geographical Note: Back in the Atlantis arc, I said that Attuma’s people came from the Mariana Trench. Which I, mistakenly, thought was in the Atlantic Ocean at the time. Now I know better.
Just goes to show that research matters…
Reed explains (Reedsplains?) the truth of Monster Island: the atomic tests didn’t cause mutations. They affected that strange molten core above the TOMB OF FIN FANG FOOM, and caused the monsters to be birthed from his flesh. The SPAWN OF FOOM have plagued the Pacificans for decades (a span of time that seems “recent” to the immortal FOOM), and now the real cause of all their woes is headed for China.
Namora and her men join the hunt for FOOM, and they all fight him briefly in Taiwan, where he’s stopped for sustenance (they find him eating people like candy). But then Karnak and Gorgon attack once again, and FOOM decides that his little snack has fortified him enough to get him to the mainland. He wouldn’t want to spoil his appetite for the feast, after all…
FIVE: SPLITTING THE PARTY
Kind of a complicated issue here, with numerous small scenes moving the story forward. But we pick up where the last issue left off, with…
The Settling of Petty Concerns:
The team faces off against Karnak and Gorgon on the beach in Taiwan, filled with fear and resentment, and uncertain of the outcome. Gorgon blusters and Karnak taunts, still playing the villain, still working the psychological edge. They care not for human matters and human death. If FOOM wants to eat humans, let him! He’ll find Attilan no easy prey! This sets off Namora, who joins the face-off on the side of the FF. She doesn’t care what issue all these surface-dwellers have against each other, but if these two new interlopers are going to interfere in the chase for FOOM, she wants them dead. It looks like it’s about to go down when, suddenly, Crystal intervenes.
She tells (no, ORDERS) Karnak to drop the act. This is not the kind man she knows, the patient teacher who reveals his students’ shortcomings only to help them grow past their faults. And Gorgon is no lumbering monster! He’s a poet and a lover of animals, enemy only to the cruel. And cruelty is what they’re showing these fine people, these heroes, devoted to learning and the protection of the weak. A far greater threat than some centuries-old crime looms over them all now, a threat to all life on Earth, and as members of the Family Royale, the best Inhuman society has to offer, they had damn well better lend a hand to ending it.
Shamed, Karnak and Gorgon bow to Crystal’s superior morality. Their issue with Benjamin Grimm is not settled, he says. But if this FOOM is as great a threat as Crystal says, they can do no less than to follow her example.
Namora, exasperated, rolls her eyes. “If you’re done with all this idiotic posturing, can we please get back to saving the world?”
The Plan:
Karnak, though he caught only the briefest glimpse of FIN FANG FOOM, believes that fighting the monster is futile. His weaknesses are few, and inconsequential. The forces they have arrayed against him now could do little more than slow the beast down. They need more power to defeat him.
Reed agrees, but thinks that, more crucially, they need better intelligence. Someone put FOOM to sleep before, and they must discover how to do it again.
Namora says that she can help with both those things. She’s been working in the Pacific for 70 years, and has allies all across Asia. Allies she can gather quickly to fight the beast and, perhaps, to give them more information.
So they split up. With Ben piloting the Fantasticar, Reed and Karnak go to gather information. To aid them in this, Namora pulls forth a medallion in the shape of an eye, and calls on THE ANCIENT ONE, Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme!
Yeah, but… Never mind Ditko’s usual Ayn Rand crap. Once he hears their problem, the Ancient One tells them to meet him on Monster Island.
Meanwhile, Namora leads everyone else in the fight against FIN FANG FOOM, gathering allies along the way. To aid in this, Karnak reveals how he and Gorgon had been tracking the FF so easily: he produces a whistle to summon LOCKJAW, the Inhumans’ teleporting dog, who will happily follow the commands of Crystal and Gorgon.
Raising the Alarm:
Namora’s team heads out across across Asia, gathering a mismatched collection of heroes, villains, and everything in-between (Namora doesn’t care much about such fine moral distinctions). These characters won’t get much more than cameo appearances in the big fight scenes, but since I fell down the rabbit hole that is researching funnybook characters on-line, and did it for a full three hours, I figure I should at least give you a list of names and descriptions:
The Red Ghost (Considering that Russian communism is long-dead, I figure that a modern-day Red Ghost would probably be Chinese. And as long as we’re making changes, let’s make him female, too. Get a little gender parity up in this Asian Sausage Party. Like the original, she’s a government spy with the power of intangibility. Unlike the original, she has another, secret power to be revealed later.) Sunfire (Japanese pop star super hero, with flame powers!) The Silver Samurai (Troubled warrior with a laser-powered sword!) The Mandarin (Chinese megalomaniac, with ten rings of power!)
The Yellow Claw (Chinese crime lord!) The Jade Claw (Daughter of the Yellow Claw – and his greatest rival!) Jimmy Woo, Agent of SHIELD (Head of SHIELD’s Asian office!) Xorn (Mutant holy man with a sun for a head!) Colonel Fang (Lycanthropic Chinese military hero!) Chen Lu the Radioactive Man (Scientist hero of Red China!) The Iron Monk (Invulnerable Tibetan Holy Man!) The Monkey King (Trickster hero of legend!) Darkstrider (An eight-limbed Korean Spider-Man!) Khrag Thung the Enlightened Vengeance (Tibetan Ghost Rider!) Go of the Radiant Light (aka Go-Devil, a Japanese schizophrenic torn between good and evil!) Mystical Lao-Tse (Chinese sorcerer!) Fat Cobra (The Super-Sumo!) Brother Power and Sister Sun (Solar-powered leaders of a Vietnamese religious cult!) Red Ronin (Giant robot piloted by Japanese boy hero Rob Takaguchi!) The Head (The severed head of a genius, with a weaponized flying life support system!)
(Yes, all those guys are existing Marvel characters, albeit with a tweak here and there to make them fit the tone a bit better. But I figured you had to see The Head to believe it. He was a World War II villain who fought the Young Allies.)
At the Tomb of Fin Fang Foom:
Meanwhile, the fact-gathering team meets on Monster Island, at the TOMB OF FIN FANG FOOM. Reed takes some readings of the strange radioactive element, and Karnak recognizes it immediately: it’s irradiated Terrigen. Karnak speculates that the Terrigen may have lain dormant until the atomic tests. The Inhumans themselves have to activate the stuff after they mine it, and they use mild doses of radiation to do so. This gross over-exposure, however, may have caused it to birth monsters. He doesn’t understand how this batch could have been here, though. His grandparents’ generation mined out all the local Terrigen deposits more than 400 years ago, and now have to travel the globe to find it.
Before they can explore the implications of that, however, the Ancient One arrives, mystically teleporting in from afar. He apologizes for the delay, explaining that he thought it best to collect a friend:
AGED GENGHIS, a man older even than the Ancient One himself! Genghis seems distracted. Lost in thought. “A very wise man,” the Ancient One says. “In his day. He taught me everything I know. But he had the misfortune to discover the secret of immortality.” When asked why that’s a misfortune, the Ancient One seems startled. “Ah! Yes. I forget sometimes. You are men of miracles, men of science. But you see… Immortality has its limits. Aged Genghis endures, but the human mind can only hold so much time, so many memories. And he’s lived so very long. Longer than any other human being in history, I suspect. So now he’s senile. And quite mad. But if anyone knows the story of FIN FANG FOOM, it is him.”
(Note on Aged Genghis: He swings unpredictably from comedic to scary, cheerful to grumpy, addlepated to deadly serious. And though he’s supposedly a senile old hermit who has no contact with the world outside his cave, his speech is peppered with modern phrasings and slang, much moreso than the Ancient One. He’s in the background of every panel, usually levitating, hovering in mid-air with his legs in the lotus position, not seeming to really pay attention to his surroundings. But before every new revelation or turning point (even in panels that cut to other locations), he makes a small mystical hand gesture that goes unnoticed by everyone else (and maybe by the reader as well). It may be something he does in his madness, or he may be shaping events with magic on a deeper, more subtle level than even the Ancient One can perceive. He takes a particular liking to Ben.)
“I know this place!” Aged Genghis suddenly exclaims. “This is where Tensu buried the dragon!”
Pressed for details, he can’t remember much. Only that they fed the dragon something to make it docile. “Something Tensu made. Clever, clever, that Tensu. Mostly, it was those mushrooms. The ones I had to go underground to find. Deep down where the mole-men live. They weren’t happy to give up their food, oh no indeed.” (Close in on his face, which suddenly looks hardened and dark.) “But I can be very persuasive.”
Reed knows immediately what he’s talking about: the Mole King’s fungus-horde. And something else clicks into place: if the mushrooms could be used to make FIN FANG FOOM docile, surely they could be used to command his Spawn. Another good reason to control the Moloid food supply.
And luckily, the Ancient One knows who Tensu is: an ancient being now known as Dragon Tensu, a dragon trapped in human form. Truly immortal, and with a dragon’s gift for memory. The Ancient One has only met him once or twice, but he thinks Tensu will help them… if they can find him.
So they split the teams again. Karnak whistles for Lockjaw, and travels to where Namora is gathering her forces to meet FIN FANG FOOM at the coast. There, he recruits Sue and the Red Ghost for a stealth mission back to the Mole Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Ben, Reed, the Ancient One, and Aged Genghis search for Dragon Tensu.And at the coast, the fighting begins. FIN FANG FOOM ravages the mainland, even with the full might of the the Asian super-powered community arrayed against him. It’s clearly a hopeless battle, one that can only buy time for the others…
SIX and SEVEN: THE LONGEST DAY
These two issues will jump back and forth between the three missions, but I’ll handle each separately here, for matters of simplicity.
The Mole King’s Larders: The Mole Kingdom is still in disarray after the fight with Karnak and Gorgon. Three of the mole-monsters lay dead in the central square, Moloid slaves out butchering the corpses. Whether for food or easier disposal, it’s hard to say. But the chaos means that things aren’t very well-guarded. So, as Sue makes them all invisible, they head directly for the larders. The Red Ghost passes through the walls and starts handing mushrooms out to the others. Unknown to them, for every one she collects for the mission, she’s collecting another two for the Chinese government, passing them along via her secret power: the ability to open up holes in space, ala the Spot.
Thaaaat’s right. Respect, bitches!
She lets the others know when the Larder is empty, and Sue seems confused. There were a lot more mushrooms in there than this when the FF opened it earlier. Assuming that the Mole King moved the rest, and hoping they have enough, they prepare to leave. And that, of course, is when the Mole King confronts them. Karnak explains what’s happening on the surface, but Elder doesn’t believe him. It looks like they’re going to have to fight their way out, but Karnak, ordering the other two back into the Larder, delivers a kick to the entrance, bringing down tons of rock to block passage. They’re sealed in, but it gives Karnak time to summon Lockjaw, and they’re gone. The Mole King rages behind them, gathering an army of Moloids, and calling for a mole-monster known only as The Mountain…
The Search for Dragon Tensu: Reed and his team retreat to the Ancient One’s Sanctum Sanctorum high in the Himilayas, where he works a complex spell of location. “If a dragon does not wish to be found, it is not an easy thing to pry him out of hiding.” (Note: good opportunity for some crazy Ditkoesque imagery as he works his magic.) The spell succeeds, and they find Tensu in Hong Kong, where he lives a life of opulent seclusion among that city’s sea of humanity, admitting only the occasional petitioners of favors, people who seek the miracles of Dragon Tensu.
(Tensu is such an insanely obscure character – appearing in, as far as I know, only one eight-pager from the Timely era – and being a very different character than the one I’m writing, besides – that I don’t have a picture of him. So I’m gonna suggest you just picture Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China, and have done with it.)
Tensu greets the Ancient One with a sort of distant respect, but obviously sees Our Heroes as little more than another set of humans coming to him with their petty concerns. He either doesn’t recognize Aged Genghis, or pretends not to.
The Ancient One explains the issue to him, and Tensu flies into an arrogant rage, angered that some foolish mortals have undone his hard work (See? Now the Lo Pan thing is easier, isn’t it?). Ben cracks a joke about his attitude, and Tensu declares their audience with him over. And that’s when Aged Genghis walks up and slaps him. “Get over yourself! All you did was mix the damn potion! I’m the one who gathered the ingredients! The one who tricked the dragon into drinking it! I even picked the location of his tomb! And WHY?” He starts poking Tensu in the chest, and the Dragon suddenly seems cowed in the face of the old man’s assault. “Because YOU. WERE. LONELY!”
And so the truth comes out. Tensu, trapped in human form and outcast from other dragons, conjured up FIN FANG FOOM for companionship. FOOM was tiny at first, no bigger than a finger. He rode in Tensu’s pocket, and learned from Tensu’s wisdom. But over time, he grew. As Tensu’s arrogance and power increased, so did FOOM. Eventually, he was a giant. Seven stories tall. All of Tensu’s power and pride, given physical form. He ripped it all away from his creator, and set off to conquer the world. That’s when Tensu, diminished, sought the aid of Genghis, then Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. Together, they laid their plans against FOOM. Tensu had made him indestructible, to protect his tiny, weak companion from harm. But now that he was a giant, that invulnerability made him unstoppable. So Tensu concocted a potion to control him, Genghis tricked him into drinking it, and Tensu ordered him to sleep, far away from people, where they thought he would never be disturbed.
Appropriately shamed, Tensu agrees to help.
Front Line Combat:
As all this quieter action’s going on, Namora leads the assault on FIN FANG FOOM. We’ll see this in short scenes of escalating desperation, FOOM laying waste to the Chinese coast, and advancing toward Hong Kong in spite of the heroes’ attempts to stop him. He’s constantly eating people, as well, scooping up soldiers and civilians alike in great handfuls, whenever he gets the chance. Namora takes notice, and comes to believes that he needs to eat to replenish his power. And she’s right. FOOM has radiation sickness from his time under the Terrigen Core, and is eating prodigious amounts to fight off its effects. It won’t kill him, but he needs food to keep his power levels up. So Namora calls for an evacuation in advance of his assault, getting as many people out of his way as possible, and her team falls back. In response, FOOM simply goes back out to sea to eat a few whales, and resurfaces in Hong Kong harbor, replenished. Issue seven ends with a desperate last stand in an abandoned Hong Kong, as FIN FANG FOOM rises from the depths.
(Like this, but less… Turtle-y…)
EIGHT: FOOMWAR!
The Double-Sized Conclusion!
It all comes together in Hong Kong. Karnak’s team delivers the mushrooms to Tensu’s sanctum. The potion is mixed, but Tensu warns that they may not have gathered enough mushrooms to make it effective. Karnak and Sue turn to confront the Red Ghost about the shortage at the Mole King’s Larder. But she’s gone.
Meanwhile, the Battle of Hong Kong has begun. Namora and her allies, desperate and exhausted, fight a losing battle, and are on the verge of defeat when Ben pilots the Fantasticar on a suicide dive directly into FOOM’s face. There’s an explosion and a scream from FOOM. The Fantasticar, wrecked, goes bouncing off to crash in the street below. The demoralized super-army looks on in horror. But when the smoke clears, they see Ben standing in FOOM’s screaming mouth, holding it open by the teeth. Reed, wrapped around Ben’s waist, tosses the potion bottle down FOOM’s throat and Ben leaps away to land safely on the street below.
FOOM staggers in disbelief, choking and clutching at his throat. The Ancient One, Aged Genghis, and Dragon Tensu materialize in mid-air, before his blinking eyes. Tensu speaks. “Hello, old friend. I believe you’ve caused enough trouble for one day. Time to rest.” He smiles and waves his hand…
And FIN FANG FOOM laughs.
The potion didn’t work! FOOM shouts in triumph, and swats the three sorcerers from the air. The fighting starts over again, the exhausted heroes having lost hope. All seems lost.
But then there’s a rumbling from below, and up, through the streets of Hong Kong, toppling buildings in its path, THE MOUNTAIN emerges from the depths! The Mole King and an army of Moloids ride its mighty back as it rises. Up, up… Taller than the city! Taller than FOOM! It towers over the great beast, its every movement a creaking, crumbling roar!
Then the Moloids, in numbers too vast to count, go running up its back, off the cliff of its brow, onto FOOM’s head… and into his waiting maw. FOOM laughs in triumph again, these tiny creatures like lemmings, feeding his strength! Feeding his power! Feeding his… Then his rant trails off, and his eyes grow cloudy. Something’s wrong. The Mole King steps to the edge of the Mountain’s brow, smiling. “Hello, my friend. My name is Rupert. But you can call me…” (the smile twists) “Master.”
Down below, Reed puts it together. The mushrooms allow control of FOOM, and the Moloids eat nothing but the mushrooms. So Elder fed him Moloids until he choked on them. And now… The Mole King controls FOOM!
Thinking quickly, Ben gets Red Ronin (the giant robot) to throw him to the top of the Mountain. Flying through the air, fist-first, shouting…
…he damn near takes Elder’s head off. The Mountain, not much of a thinker left to its own devices, withdraws below. Ben leaps off before it goes, but the Mole King goes down with it.
Back on the streets, FOOM still stands, dazed, waiting for instructions. Dragon Tensu, bloody but unbowed, appears at his feet. “As I was saying, old friend. It’s time for you to rest, now.” FIN FANG FOOM sits, obedient, and gazes upon Tensu like a loving hound.
The crisis over, we end with a series of epilogues:
The Pacificans aid the people of Taiwan and Hong Kong in rebuilding after FOOM’s assault.
The Red Ghost reports to her superiors on the mind-control potential of the subterranean mushrooms, and tells them where they can find more. In the background, we see three caged apes…
Dragon Tensu and his allies return FIN FANG FOOM to his tomb on Monster Island, and order him to sleep. The Ancient One sets wards on the volcano to ensure that he’s not disturbed again.
The Inhumans remove the Terrigen core from Monster Island, taking it back to Attilan for study, ensuring that no more monsters will be birthed from his flesh.
Jimmy Woo directs a SHIELD operation to cordon off Monster Island, keeping the curious out, and the monsters in.
Namora, suddenly freed from the responsibility of protecting the world from Monster Island, ponders what Pacifica will do next. Perhaps it’s time, Reed suggests, to contact Atlantis.
Johnny works to repair the Fantasticar, which is already starting to pull itself back together.
The Inhumans prepare to leave with the Terrigen Core, but Crystal elects not to go with them. Karnak acquiesces to her desires. Her wisdom, he says, has proven itself superior to his own.
Then Karnak turns to thank the FF for their role in the crisis, apologizing for his earlier manipulation of them. He takes special care to thank Ben, offering him a handshake. Ben hesitates, nervous, then accepts.
Karnak: “You are a mighty warrior, Benjamin Grimm. A worthy adversary, and a great ally. It has been my pleasure to work with you through the recent crisis.”
Ben (smiling): “Y’know, I had you all wrong, Karnak. Yer a soldier. Ya had a job ta do, and you were doin’ it. No shame in that.”
Karnak (smiling): No shame, indeed. There is, however–”
Ben’s smile becomes frozen. He coughs blood. Then his face splits in two.
Karnak (face now impassive, and splattered with Ben’s blood): “…much shame in this.”
We pull back to see that, while shaking Ben’s hand, Karnak has issued a ONE-INCH PUNCH just below the belt, and Ben’s rocky hide has split down the middle. He falls to the ground, unconscious, his outer shell of rocks falling away on both sides. Beneath is a bloody mess.
Before the rest of the team can react, Lockjaw teleports Karnak and Ben away. As they fade out, Karnak’s voice informs the team that they have earned the right to attend Ben’s trial in three days’ time, and offer whatever defense they can…
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
NEXT: Time Travel! Treachery! Doom Triumphant! And… THE TRIAL OF THE THING!
Fantastic Four Re-Mix, Part Six: Hot Pursuit! So I got a little carried away this time. I had planned for this sixth installment of the…
#Aged Genghis#Alicia Masters#Clobberin Time#Crystal#Dr Doom#Fantastic Four#Fantastic Four Remix#Fin Fang Foom#Gorgon#Jimmy Woo#Karnak#Mole Man#Monster Island#Namora#Red Ghost#Red Ronin#The Ancient One
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Amazon FBA | Ninja Course Student Group Q&A #4 – Amazon FBA Q&A
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What is, everyone, go live, i am the quickest share to the brown belts group, where, i’m going to be answering, everyone’s question, what’s up everyone, michael clay Omak T-Roy Kyle Chaz Steven Ray Peter, gabriel Trevor yomo Sean when Lisa Orlando Clio Yulia Jamie, stan, canada is now, what’s up everyone I’ll be answering questions for about an hour, i’m going to be answering them in the brown belts, group, what is, all right I think I’m not, facebook live, alright Brad you’re the first person to comment on it, answering questions, i’m not answer some questions from YouTube and tell everybody signs on to, the student group, play oh my day’s been amazing sub at 8 a.m. in Guam what’s up Jamie, do you know you found a product that’s awesome congratulations, yeah I needed that YouTube window cleaner thank you, how many students are in your course, about 500 we take the course down once it hits a certain number, I mean I’ve always been I’ve always said that I’ll take, the courts down when I felt like I was getting overwhelmed and couldn’t answer everyone’s questions no, with, the same level of attentiveness and you know one-on-one how I always have been and we haven’t reached that point yet, have you bought any products in Canada, yeah chorus, jenna is basically just, lower volume, virgin of the USA, a lot lower volume, martin yeah I use a purchase order agreement so, include closets like, if the first inspection fails the supplier has to pay for the second inspection, just try to make sure that they actually are really cognizant of, no quality assurance and things like that, flash sale on your corset Be Heaven do you think of, will happen, probably not Saline, but I feel like it’s super affordable compared to everyone else’s, Especially when you, consider the actual level of consent, nY1 help, like that, spotify no package yesterday how do I join the black belt group, denny there’s a link in your fulfillment email to join the black belt, group so I’m just click that or message me and I’ll get you in, do you think it’s possible to sell jewelry on Amazon yes possible but it’s really hard, is a $5,000 one-time fee and you have to have proof of a brick-and-mortar jewelry business, what business model did you start at, i started a private labeling, tDCJ, what steps should I first take before I’m ready to sell, i’m just a lot of first steps, if you have your Seller Central account up you know if you have your LLC made and things like that you know just depends where you’re at, what’s up Kevin, Big fan brother I don’t think you can appreciate that.
My auto PVC has a high a cost when I used to converting keyword into a manual Campana and no sales I only have 7 keywords, chaz sometimes when you create a campaign in manual, it will, it will be a little bit early. Evaluate your campaign if you don’t get the first initial Impressions that turn into Converse, so if you create a manual campaign and just, for whatever reason people see the ad, click it but don’t buy Amazon basically says okay this isn’t relevant until they stop giving you Impressions and they stop serving your eyes, so try creating a new campaign what does converting keywords from Auto, set bid Plus on and turn it on to a high bid, and use phrase match and then tell me what happened, hey how Amazon received my products to ship then, I’m use I mean I shipped directly from China to Amazon FBA Warehouse I never use any Middleman, it’s by far the cheapest and best way to do it is just, the first time is a little tough, you always have state inspections done Orlando yeah absolutely, if you wanted a percent always said Hey Kevin when will you refund the modules if we have already bought the full course, students life Justin just message me anyone whoever buys, an individual module whatever you decide to buy the actual course, i’ll respond all of the individual modules no questions asked, what’s up with the 250 characters in The back-end search, no absolutely is not true I tested it and prove it all my students and it’s not I’m currently raining, 625 characters, or more in a number of my different listings and I verified it myself so I’m 100% sure that that is not true of the 250 character, Interesting, what places have you been to in the world Mike, helot, i just went to Asia for, 4 months and then I just got back from South America I did, carnival in Brazil Colombia Costa Rica Nicaragua Argentina, nH ride to Thailand, cambodia Olive, and no, all of the Philippines we did Singapore Hong Kong how much is it, places, is JS able to accurately, quantify, quantify what cowgirl, can you show inside the back end of Amazon how we check on PP, aBC, yeah Michael I definitely could that would be something like that I probably created for the students though cuz, i don’t want share like all my back and QVC stuff with like thousands of people on YouTube, do you recommend Shopify also at what point did you evolve to different, business models yeah I definitely recommend Shopify I have I have Shopify sites right now it’s if you know it’s an interesting way to do it, You can fulfill on your Shopify sites with Amazon FBA warehouses also and then you don’t have to pay the 15%, referral fee that you do have to pay on Amazon, basically for Amazon bring you organic traffic, steve-O that’s a great question do you think of translating your course is Spanish or other languages, i’m actually currently in the process of translating it to Spanish German and Japanese, so that’s coming soon, depends on changes the rules on a subject you communicate only via Facebook group or do you update update the course saline I do both I, i tell all my students hey young this changed, you know release a new video and say this is where you can find it within the student membership platform, when we message you Danny just shoot me a message on Facebook I’m the admin of you know the 20,000 person group Advanced group and then, As well.
Do you have any certain categories are private label, yeah I definitely do I share that my product research videos and with all my students I’m going to jump over to the student group really quick, where’s the official chat window, this is it, josh, so, answer questions here first we can laugh about 5 minutes looks like there’s about, 50 people watching in the student group right now, so whenever you guys have questions in the Sudan group, post them in the chat, of the brown belt group, and if some if one with one of my students with a mine, tell the Blackwell group that we live here, the questions that I’m answering right now Josh her from YouTube cuz there’s no questions from the student group yet it takes people a couple minutes to get online, And it’s only, 5302 Pacific so, i’m going to give people a few more minutes, youTube vicious, hundreds and hundreds of people, on so they asked a lot more, with full-course do we have access on both black belt and brown belt groups, under the branco group is linked in the actual membership platform, on the blackout group you get in your fulfillment email when you purchase the full course, it’s a lot smaller and I answer every single one of the questions in there, approximately how many products do you have on Amazon about 62 right now, thank you for your interesting, 625 all in the first line of between V Line, it doesn’t really matter you can put a thousand characters for line, does not a difference really, then, i do already private-label and I make nice money is there anyway I can make more money with your course I know all the tricks, I mean if you know all the tricks then you probably wouldn’t need any course right but I mean I have a ton of stuff that I’ve never seen anyone else talk about, the TPC course allowing people have a lot of people have messaged me saying hey like I paid for your course, in a week with, pVC section alone so, yeah check it out if you’re interested, does a money back guarantee too so I always stand behind, everything that I’m teaching, shut up from Barbados, would love to have you down here one day thanks for all the noise, o matic Barbados, so amazing seeing all the different, people out there, give a mobile version for your courses yet you can watch it on iPad on iPhone it’s the same thing that the videos play both, both ways, All right imma jump back into the, student group, can you pick the category if you want to sell any of the certain product might not have as many reviews in one, yeah definitely Josh I mean this is a great question because, a lot of people, you know this is generally a gray area between white and black hat but a lot of people, well, purposefully, categorize their their product, in a smaller category to get the number one bestseller badges right because, you have to outsell the people in organic positions one to get that badge, but if you know it’s, significantly easier to outsell someone in a smaller category with less volume, if you have a better product right so when you’re doing your giveaways at the beginning during product launch at things like that if you, give a small category that you’re more likely to get the best seller badge and people don’t actually look, At the sub-category node all they see.
Get the best seller badge, right at the other cool part about Miss categorizing a purpose, display is, if you have if you miss categorized into a smaller category and enough people are organically finding your product, through of the main path to the larger subcategory, amazon will actually automatically assign you dual subcategory knows which basically means you’ll have, yeah, you’ll have a categorization in like sports and outdoor patio whatever and then you also have like, sports outdoor patio and then like a smaller subcategory, simultaneously, brad says that the reason is no questions in the brown belt group his kids were also will train after your training, exactly, how can you ungate a product category on JSO like if you want to sell in beauty or grocery or things like, Amazon needs a little bit more information, and, all of my students have a really good contacts on Gates, super quickly, in the different, category soap, if you guys need, dawngate just message me and I’ll introduce you to the team I work with to do that, do you look at student potential products and give your opinion on what you think honest opinion, bentley absolutely that’s why I created the six steps of product research, if you guys haven’t seen the common questions document definitely runs through it I link all might you know graphic artist cycling, all of my Freight forwarders, i talked about you know the six steps of product research that really takes out all of the guesswork, involved, when you actually are picking a product, so if you haven’t taken a look at that look at those six steps and then for all my students after you find the, How to take screenshots of those six datapoint, send them to me and you know we can have a really, detailed conversation about whether or not I think it’s worth it to jump into that product, or you know move on to a different one, about how much is your profit from your sick, 62 products do you have any failures and mediocre products, my Prophet is a lot more than I was making my nine-to-five job, stavros, yeah I’ve had products that were mediocre and failures for sure, i mean, it’s kind of hard to avoid that sometimes you know there’s things out of your control like, you know a ton of competitors will come in that weren’t there originally or you know it was it was a fad or if things like that right, writing this ways to mitigate the risk of those potential things happening but, For the most part the things that, naproxen have chosen that have had failures, have come from kind of like external factors that were outside of Michael, control the even when you do your due diligence, you’re still not going to be able to avoid some of those you know, out of your control factors, hi Kev do you comply, do compliance short titles get better ring from the I run in those that are long and non-compliant, no absolutely not Jake you should use all 200 characters 100% of the time, amazon actually has this algorithm now that they’re using that goes through in like basically weeds out these like, keyword stuffed titles and then it’s really annoying to change it back but, you should always, you should always be, using all of your available space in your title in the reason for that is, because Amazon weights, keyword, Strength.
Differently in the different sections of your listing right so the product description has the lowest wait right so I have to, lowest impact the lowest amount, of, kind of like, bang for your buck as far as keywords go as far as, indexing for Dusky rose right, augustus, description of the lowest, mangos products, bullets, and then it goes back and keywords and then your most important, place to put keywords is your title so the title should always be iterating always be changing, based on your PPC search term report right so if you have, if your keywords that are getting a ton of clicks, write interconverting gray and you have low a cost, those keywords should appear, first intertitle right because you want Amazon to wait those heaviest, and you want people to see those, right and then click through to your product, cuz it I mean it’s important to know Jaden is the long answer but I hope this is helping, It’s important to note that if you get a ton of clicks right and you can see that in your search term report, for specific keyword putting that first in your title so more people, see it, right you know that that’s what they’re looking for you know because you can see with hard data from your search term report that is what they’re looking, and then you can put it in the title, increase your click, conversion rate even further because they, see that for that word that’s in their mind, when they’re searching for your product and eclipses during a buy right so it’s, it’s an iterative process but you can use your search term report said it’s a really step it up, you’ll see two products selling on Amazon FBA if you don’t mind how much you make in Revenue per month and how much is profit a lot a lot, More than I was making at my nine-to-five job, i always I always avoid this question right because, yeah I think that it’s kind of private what people have built, i obviously have you know multiple stores, more than two, you know, my students know how many stores I have but, if you want to stay with in terms of service you can have one and then you can ask for an approved second so I always recommend, doing what you’re comfortable with, how’s the initial lost video coming I’m chomping at the bit, brad let’s talk about that right now so all show you guys details about the launch video but let’s, let’s get a little Caesar going right here, so, essentially launching a product on Amazon is like this, UI track or you use the product tracker in Jungle Scout to get a very clear and accurate, number of sales per day, for the top five people, it organically renting for your listing right, once you have that, you can basically know for sure, how many units does people are selling on Amazon FBA, per day I want you to know that then you all you have to do to launch app I can get to the page 1, is you just sell one to two more then that average, per day, for three to seven days if you want to get the page one for sure do it for 7 days so if, if the average people in position 1 through 5 organiclear selling 5 per day, then you spend you give away at you run giveaways for 7 per day, for 7 days, and you will 100% get to page one right, my students and I will go into a little bit more detail about how to rank for specific, Keywords we’re going to talk about glean. Io if you want to run really targeted giveaways.
And you want to really, yo step up your game right clean. IO is definitely a very advanced, method butt, we’re going to, start getting into the more advanced stuff my student group, so when I make that product launch video I’m going to go really in-depth, even further about how to launch, how to run giveaway so you can, you write for your keywords rather than just a PSR increase and then we’re going to talk about Killeen. I’ll which I think is one of the most important, ways to launch a product and not only launch a product but then collect those emails to, you know half horizontally, related future product launches which once you have an interested, The customer base, is so much easier, how accurate is your experience with jungle Scout sales estimate, i know that is essentially based on algorithm that calculates sales estimates based on sales rank, i wish I could some product it seems like jungle Scout is usually accurate within 10%., so, the jungle Scout product tracker, is quite accurate, when it’s, possible to run the eye track, 999 trick, right if they have above, 1000, 999, or their merchant fulfilled, amazon, sorry excuse me jungle Scout estimator, their sales, right in the product rapper and the sales estimate based on their BSR, category specific BSR, so if you got a junglescout.com I think, scout.com estimate, dot-com, can I be estimator to, yes oh okay here we go so junglescout.com estimator so you can see, based on you know what category it is, you enter the sales rank for baby or whatever right so you enter the BSR and there and then it’ll estimate the the, Selling for months and it does that with a PSR rating right, in the one-off cases where it doesn’t if not able to get the true number that estimates based on PSR and then you’re seeing less, which is why I always recommend, you know before diving into a product, you can use the product tracker, before you make a final dive manually track that product, 3 days using GI tract 9.9 carb method trick, right and then you’re going to be feeling a lot safer that you’re 100% getting actor, not did I answer your question, not sure if you got it about as marjawan Mercier Amazon but I just got approved not wondering, and not wondering if there are resources out there and get you started from A to Z, i had a few, spell down there, Yeah Josh, if your, just go to the bonus modules, there’s a really detailed write-up that I did on everything merge how to check you no copyright and trademark stuff, how to see you know the best sellers and then how to make choices about what you want to sell to change up those bestseller design, your own, original design which is, based off things you know are selling well and, that’s it all on 10 yet, the same thing it’s in the bonus modules there’s a video there’s also a resource PDFs in there, how did help you guys find that you can, thanks for the add when you change the title do you need to change the UPC, e-cigarette whatever it’s called that Amazon provides, no you don’t, way to change the title, the title that has nothing to do with the the UPC and the offense, use the term BSR I’m not familiar with this term is this sales rank, Yes it’s called best seller ranking that.
Amazon back in the YouTube real quick cuz the, there’s no more questions in the brown belts group, oh my gosh all right there’s a lot of, la questions on YouTube, do you do private coaching, for my full course students it’s as close as I get to private coaching, but I felt that I can help more people and enabled more people to create, these are businesses on Amazon and leave the 9 to 5 grind behind, buy kind of appealing to the masses and, focusing more of my time on, videos that everyone can watch and more of my time on YouTube that you know can reach more people and essentially help more people, when when Comes Your German course version it’s coming I promise in Spanish and Japanese are coming to guys, It’s going to take me a second but it’s coming for sure, oh my gosh all right I’m scrolling, i’m screwing up really quick I want to, i want to catch, trying to catch all of these, 62 product how you keep track, with assistance and width, really, well-organized inventory forecasting Martin, would you always recommend to do a product inspection even if it’s your first test order for a product in the quantity of small, i mean it’s cost-benefit right, there has been times that I have not been an inspection to get the super simple product, and I just say hey, show me pictures, and show me videos of the products show me videos of your of your factory and I feel okay about that fit 10, no everyone comes back when I say things like that says you’re not to inspections are you like never seriously, No guys, you should always be a inspection unless it’s a tiny order right or it’s an incredibly simple product., that’s what I said, and that’s that’s how I feel about it, so I normally always recommend inspection, is answer but yes I have in the past just gotten, hD videos and pictures, and felt okay about it, should I pay less bids on the PPC after I started getting some, some cells, not no I mean if you’re getting if you’re getting profitable sales from PVC increase your beds don’t don’t decrease then you, you want to be served, you want your ads with your first for those words that you’re converting so raise your bids for those, how do you call your PVC course where can I find it, and what do you mean about 100% money back guarantee, yeah so yummy you have 30 days to try to coerce you get access to our student groups which are Super valuable right, You had access to a ton of PDFs, very in-depth step-by-step and then a bunch of videos on everything PPC, and this very unique stuff in here bad at no one else is talking about this anywhere that I’ve ever seen and I taken pretty much every course, out there, it just doesn’t compare in my personal opinion, and hopefully my students would agree so ask them if you want, how to go from there, and you can find it in the comments of this, description of this YouTube video, it’s called Amazon FBA ninja course modules, and you can look at all the different modules or if you want the full corset, spell bizarre as well, is brand registry essential for a first product if not can a listing still be created, you can create a product without, Brand registry brand registry actually his updated recently to.
But now it requires a trademark, so, it’s a little bit harder for brand new size right because trademarks in USA can take, 6 to 10 months, so, if I purchase your course can I access it anytime I want her to have a duration for them, video yesterday everyone versus my Courtside lifetime access forever right and I, updating it, at least weekly with all the brand new stuff and you get that all once you purchase, is the course completely for free I’m on never there’s no hidden charges or anything like that, once you’re a member of the Ninja family you always will be and you’re always going to get all of the newest updates completely for, jeffrey, how do you get quick reviews on your first private label product, john Amazon actually launched a program called the early reviewer program right so if you look in your advertising menu, Even sellercentral they have a program at $60 to get your first 5 reviews, i’m just a few requirements like it has to be $15 or more and you pretty much went 0, u10 reviews for it, but it can see your first 5 a lot of other people will use friends and family right this is technically against terms of service but, if you choose people that you’re not friends with on Facebook and you’re not related to in any way, then it’s pretty low-risk and then you can just reimburse them on PayPal whatever, and so a lot of people do that I don’t press the recommended right because it is against terms of service but, a lot of people are doing it and it’s important for everyone to know you know what people are doing, regardless of whether or not that is, Let you know within the terms of service and are personal record, is your from Europe to do still selling Germany or UK or should you go to the US Marketplace, you can do both I mean Europe is a beautiful expanding market right with, significantly less competition, and Incredibly, lower barriers to entry as far as, pBC right there’s a lot of very intelligent marketers in the USA when it comes to pay per click advertising, but in Europe for some reason on Amazon the PPC is just, ripe for the picking you can get you 10% a cost, huge huge margins on these, and you don’t even have to, create, well well done, easy campaigns to do this, which is of great part about the Europe Market, imma jump back to the student group it looks like there’s about 75 people watching now, see where I was, if you click on the livestream is a whole other comment section that Kev can’t see, Why the quest, answer, amber are people are people asking questions on my actual Facebook page, others not many though, leslie Mario’s Brittany and creme come to the come to the brown belts group and ask the questions there I’m sure, trying to read them all from the same place, all right, why you creating multilingual version when you say, that you will soon close the chorus, because I want to know enable people from other countries, used to be able to do it and I haven’t decided for sure about whether or not I am closing the course, tentatively planning for the end of the month, but you know, does this always, some other options, out there so what we’ll see what happens, stavros but, i want to try to enable people from other countries, To be able to.
No experience how amazing Amazon FBA is and how can, change your life, for you from, you know that corporate spiral that too many people, think it’s normal, cuz it’s not it’s not normal to work this ER weeks at all at all, it’s normal to travel the world and have time with your friends and family and loved ones in, and to be able to do whatever you want really live, i’m tracking a product right now that is getting like 84,000 hits on merchantwords but it’s turning out so far to knock it, not getting good sales, what does normally mean, the products wouldn’t be getting 84,000 hits on merchantwords the word would right Josh so, the keyword would, i mean I need to, see more information to be able to answer that but based on the high volume keyword, remember, merchant words is an estimate, Write the estimate, the keyword volume, again based on PSR and based off Amazon, auto search fill feature, for the search bar soap, don’t take what merchant words are anything besides Google Keyword Planner says, as gospel right because, it’s not it’s not always true the only accurate volume predictor, is Google Keyword Planner and the search engine, southern strategy, the picnic category but when doing research you have to search for the highest volume keyword in all departments are there ever a Time, definitely always time to do keyword research in these categories, i mean I like to look for, products, that hit not only one set of keywords, but hit multiple right so, it would be like a product like a humidor, right, so you can say humidor as the keyword, humidor, you know like, low-moisture humidor travel humidor and then if you think about a humidor right what is a humidor, Who is the target market for that, humidor also is a perfect, qR is a perfect product, for the keyword set, gifts for Grandpa gifts, retired dad gifts for dad right, so it is hitting on his multiple, levels of keywords, as you have a lot more to play with, when it comes to pee, bBC right so I always feel, extremely comfortable investing in a new product, when I have multiple Avenues, i’m to be able to, pursue, for that product, from a PVC perspective from a key or perspective is a lot more testing I can do, and I feel very comfortable that I can out optimize anyone out there when I have more to play with with nuc products like the angle, ruler right and like there’s literally nothing else, besides the keyword Anglers ruler, so it it’s, if tougher people cuz there’s multiple competitors with this only one key words I just dropped the, PVC cost, and you know there’s just no there’s no way to iterate, and it’ll create value through optimization when there’s so few, when is Sao Kirito, what’s up Kevin I’m wondering if you can make a video tutorial on or Q&A on some of your most effective negotiation tactics, what manufacturer, a problem I’ve been having is that one’s closer and most manufacturers don’t seem to have much wiggle room on pricing, and consequently I’m struggling to find a park with 30, percent plus margin, yeah let’s talk about that right now Andrew, the best ways, negotiate with a manufacturer or anyone in life right is to actually be, comfortable walking away, right so if you have one manufacturer you’re talking to and then you know that the only one you kind of like spend a lot of time for a lot of time, And they’re saying you don’t know we can’t go down.
That’s on you right because you should be having, 5 to 10 manufacturer that you’re constantly you’re talking with, you should be getting, formalize quotes, you know at least your top five, and then with those quotes I’m taking Photoshop right and I’m changing moq from 5000, 2 500 and I’m changing the cost per unit, from 3 to 1 and then I’m showing that photo shops, yeah that stuff Photoshop quote, to my other for manufacturers and saying hey can you match this I want to work with you but you know I’m getting this I’m getting this, specific quote from his other manufacturer and I just know I like you the best but I can’t, i can’t rationalize going with someone else when they’re offering so much less than you are so is there anyway that like you know you, You are your boss would be able to, you know okay a discount list, specific case to form a long-term relationship, being willing to walk away truly and having other options and in leveraging them against each other, the kind of break it down right and then there’s there’s more advanced ways like, using 1688 and free shopping China to 2, view the cost per, per product in RMB, right and then show them hey like I could buy this, exact same product for this much, once you convert 2 RMB to USD, we talked about that we talked about all that in the course, i’m for supplies and shipping and how to find the best guys out there and protect yourself right, when using the eye tracker method and wanted to know do I need to track all the sellers, edward III track the top 5 and if I’m really serious and sometimes I even took the top 10, You want to make sure by tracking more than just that one Park you found, right because you want to make sure that there’s, spread out sale Dennis notches, one person, right that’s getting all the sales you want to make sure that if you do come into the market and you can get to page one, even if you get the page one right if only the person in position 1 on page one is getting any sales, that’s usually a bad sign you want to be that you want to have the sales, spread out amongst all the different guys, are all the different offerings in Tatum, is it possible to create an Instagram following if Instagram Saint Archer shut down, yes possible but it’s obviously a lot harder now you have to actually like manually Post in manually, and get people into, Which stockings are basically just, have slowed down my set my Instagram, you said I still have some brands that you know 10,000, or so followers but, night I use Instagram to build all that I just don’t have time to manually, handle Instagram, there will eventually be a viable alternative to Instagram, and when when I do find that I will share obviously with all my students, josh yes the keyword can you canoe, can you rephrase or tell me what you mean below, we plan on making a video about starting up in the Australian FBI jianye I absolutely will once it become, once we get more of us solid answer from Amazon about when that launched is, amazon’s usually late, from their initial estimates expanding into new markets, so I wouldn’t, see, you know what that happening for, a while so, but yeah once once I get more information on when that actual launch is, I definitely 100% will make a video about that.
Translate your course of Russian we are in need of good coaches and courses and not many Russians, english actually have some, i have probably like five Russian students that have that have offered a translator for me maybe I will do that I just wanted to hit kind of the, the big, the Big Three, first but then maybe maybe you down the line, weekend, expand, you ever recommend see shaving I’ve been quoted, what’s the shipping at 1/8 the cost of air shipping but I’m not sure about all the other costs added on to see Shiva, yeah I see she’ll probably 90% of the of what I said, right once you once you get to the level we are shipping containers right 20 or 40 foot containers, you can’t release it by air, feasibly anymore right to all s***, Oh Ship, 10, 20% of my product, via air, just to get that initial momentum get the launch right you have to, plot it out how much you ship by air, right, the plot out, how long you going to stay in, in stock, in relation to your giveaways rights after giving away 10 per day, and then you’re selling 10 today so if you’re giving 10 per day away for the first, 7 days that 70 units right and then if the top, guys, top 1 through 5 organically are, selling 10 units per day and you know you need 70 for your giveaway, and then you need 10 per day how long it takes, the ship the rest of your unified by feisty right so everything’s 30 Days by C 30 * 10, 300 + 74 give away so I ship 370 units, via air and then I have the rest come by see and save a bunch of cost, increased my profit margins by saving money on the sea shipment but also you can get your product moving, Get those initial reviews get that initial momentum via are too kind of hit the ground running when your products to arrive by sea, how do you feel about launching a variant of an existing product that is competitive and has a lot of sales variance currently not available on Amazon, what do you mean by variant Leslie, can you tell anymore, detail about Duty fee how to calculate when you ship by Express, yeah I mean, use my Freight forwarders and just tell them yo I want to see every single cost that I’m going to incur right, there’s your Customs Bond whether it’s continuous or one time there is port, right, did all these little hidden costs, stop with all shipping right, tell them hey I want an exact estimate right some of the stuff is going to change, But I want to see as, exact of an estimate as it’s possible to tell him you want to see the port fees, tell him you want to see estimated customs, write telling me you want to see every single little thing, from the second they pick it up from the China for it to the second that it arrives in the Amazon FBA warehouse and they should be able to at least, please give you an estimate right they won’t be able to give you exact cuz it changes but they will be able to give you an estimate, i heard you have a million-dollar secret Facebook group Doss, nick, i love you, yes I do have a mastermind for people doing seven figures or more of those currently, about 80 of us in there, that’s why I hope to add you all one day once once we all reset plan, What is up Kevin live video for the win.
Thanks Justin good to see you, what should I do if I have unsold product after 6 months, i mean six months is when long-term storage kicks in which is like, 22 times more expensive, then your regular Source fees, so you can ship them you can make an exit order from Amazon ship them like to your house or to a different Warehouse, and then Amazon has a minimum number of days that you have to basically have you that inventory that unsold inventory, out of an FBA Warehouse before you can give it back in, i think it is 45 days currently, i’m not 100% sure on that but I’m pretty sure that it’s 45 days to ship it to your house in 45 days and then ship it back, or you know you can make a destruction order if it’s just that you know a terrible product or it’s just not working at all, Would you say it’s a fat shoes are shipping most of the time if our final product order from Alibaba is under 200 lb, it’s not it’s not about whether it’s a family it’s about whether it’s, if cost, efficient right, if you if you can ship a product, baisi, for you know, ten times cheaper than do you want that extra profit margin built into your unit when they arrive, or, do you want to get started now be able to, selling in cement that you know that lead that barrier to entry of your reviews and getting the momentum to maintain, position on page one, bright is a cost-benefit analysis, it’s not really about being safe, that’s a good question., i’ve heard of Thomas net not being user-friendly have you heard of any tags or finding mom-and-pop manufacturers locally on the US side not really there I mean, The best way by Forest Thomas that your rights not user-friendly but at the same time it’s not that, you know that you eat Jenny, any intelligent person can, figure out thomasnet, all you have to do is just kind of, you know, wander around it for an hour and then you’ll feel you’ll feel comfortable about it, how important is getting a Facebook group going with many likes beer brand, types of Facebook groups, specifically for light campaigns is, essentially, not as important as that you, facebook, change their algorithm to not allow Facebook group, bikes, to actually reach that target market right so, years ago if you had a Facebook group with a million likes and you’ve made a post, all million of those people would get a notification right but now if you think about it you liked pages, We ever get notifications about it it’s because, you know, you don’t actually get notified as a liger of a page anymore Facebook change that Albert look at those annoying too many people right they, they made all these changes to edgerank and things like that so it is, it is, yeah reasonably important but it’s not as important as, that used to be, like I say in my in my full-course right building a Facebook group, for you know people who are passionate about your hobby, in general is actually much more important then, creating a Facebook group specifically for likes, what up Kev can you tell us about taxes do you have to register to pay taxes, any other test, all right so this is obviously a very complicated question, i have to be like everyone else and say this is not official tax advice like you should talk to your CPA, What I’ve heard.
That people do, is you establish Nexus in whichever States, but you hold inventory right to Amazon has a report, but you can see where you have Nexus where you have the most, quantity of your inventory, what I’ve heard, a lot of people do is they’ll use taxjar, to see in a witch, states are getting the most, sales in, choose like you know if there’s three that make up 90% of your sales usually it’s like California New York Texas Florida, things like that, then you can file state returns in those, most, you know those most, the majority of your sales States, file returns in nose, and then you know call it good basically that’s what I’ve heard people are doing, technically if you wanted to do it perfectly, if you sold one unit in Rhode Island for the entire year, You technically would have to file a Rhode Island return, and pay like a Santa tax, but no one in their right mind is going to do that right so it’s a cost, did the cost-benefit, like everything else in business, i hope that kind of answers your question do you learn it’s a complicated question no one else is, is ever say anything about it but that is what I’ve heard, if you find a party that has good sales, fur Day and there’s no competition is that an opening is that an opportunity to jump in early or is it risky because one offering may not judge, just fly high enough mark, that’s a great question, so there’s ways to indirectly find data, about, you know whether that is just a one-off case, or there is other Demand right so Google Keyword Planner, If you are searching on Google also, merchant words also it in high enough volume then that’s a good indicator, you can look at Google Trends right, if if there’s an upward Trend or if there’s a trend you know hovering above 5275 out of a hundred then you know that people, google searches, so there’s ways to find indirect information, but you know if you find out if you find a product with low reviews in a ton of sales, didn’t think of that as like a great thing how you found a diamond in the rough, you have to do a little bit more research to be really comfortable about jumping in, how do I find the top sellers at the item has 20 sellers, edwards basically just, type in the highest volume keyword in to amazon.com the search bar, and then you’ll see, you know the person who’s ranked first organically rights with not a sponsored and he’s not a sponsor, ABC the person who’s not an ad in position 1 is the top seller for that for that keyword, for that nice, the video is no longer working for me only on YouTube at work, i can see the Facebook group, video, confirm can you guys see the brown belts video right now somebody was just saying it didn’t work, cav jsoc on the particular seller selling about five to six hundred years per month for the past 3 weeks, is it at same seller showing 6500 sales a month, how’s that possible, okay it’s working, britney I’m not sure why it’s not working for you it sounds like it’s working for other people, but yeah just go onto YouTube and working for you there I’ll switch back to YouTube and asking questions oil read your questions here, As well.
So it’s I mean it’s possible because maybe they maybe they went, you know they’re above the 909 limit or they have a Max order quantity and jungle Scout trying to estimate based on, bSR instead of like the exact actual 909 I track method, i’m so sometimes it’s a little bit off again which is why I always say, suggest manually tracking, 3 days, even after using the jungle Scout product tracker, just to be sure, can your item get destroyed by sea shipping if your pockets made of paper for example, i mean, going to be like a loose right there going to be in cartons in Palace, yes obviously you can, you can’t yeah that’s actually a great Point Beyond, ami prime.day affected that, so you can buy insurance Yulia and it’s usually extremely cheap because it rarely does anything ever happened to, do you know, Ships, it’s Alex ships sinking every once in awhile right it’s very very rare, you can buy insurance, are super cheap if you’re worried about it but no it’s not it’s not likely your attitude, get destroyed by shipping, bSC, the only thing I don’t understand about the facts section is number 6 included calculation of your talk competitor showing profit margin using this FBA fee calculator, okay so what does means Josh, is, let’s say that we’re selling a humidor right so we’ll go out to some supplier someone say hey, how much is it going to cost per unit to give me 502 medoras right, say okay it’s it’s $5 unit, so you can, obviously you’re going to negotiate that down later right but initially, you can say okay, so then you going to say, how many, humidors 51 car in and they’re going to say, 50 right in this is all I’m just making this up, 50 humidors per carton right now you’re getting 500 right, so you have 10, of those cartons and then you go to my Freight forwarder, you fill out the, the exact little paragraph that I that I asked for that they’ve been afraid for their needs and say hey, achieving 10 cartons, they weigh this much there’s this big how much is going to cost to get from, china from the, port to, long Beach, right and then we can talk about the ground shipping later, so now you have $5 per unit which is your cost of goods sold and now once the freight for the response has okay it’s going to be 5, $500 to ship those 10 cartons, and you know, okay I’ll get them in the shipping is $1 for unit so now you have $5 for cost of goods sold $1 for shipping now you know it cost you, $6, the land that product in the USA right now and shipping, And then Amazon FBA fee calculator will say hey, it’s going to cost you $4 for us to package and ship this out for you, the five, one for shipping, 4 for the Amazon Fulfillment fees so you know it’s going to cost you $10 right, to get that unit to your customer, and then if they if you charge 1999, can you know you’re making $9.99, prophet, on that overall sale, prices that make sense Josh, i think that’s a very important question that everyone needs to understand when they’re formulating these profitability metrics and proper, what abilities calculations before investing in a Prada, what happens if I can’t find item on Alibaba and DHA, well Edwards I mean, you can find manufacturers out there that are, the make similar products, right and then you can ask them hey I want to make this I know you guys make something similar, Could we do that if so let’s talk about it.
Is there a way to, how successful last, is there a way to see how successful ask you for seasonal products were in case you want to jump in, yeah definitely too I actually literally, did a video exactly on that, i’m continuing the other students maybe tell through how to find that video I did on cue for that was one of the, questions that the students voted, for for me to make a video specifically on, that’s why did make that until, exist, my next video I promise I will make for you guys soon is going to be talking about this, super advanced stuff for Glendale tile for product launch, and any other clarifications as far as you know giveaways keyword rank in product launch how to get to page one guarantee, He’s right you just have to have the budget, till I give away the number of units, required to get you there and then once you have you know three, the 5 to 10 reviews, you can maintain it at organic position on page one, if you do create a high-value product, but is more valuable than the other competitors which everyone always should be doing, always be adding value, two products NeverBeast be copying right, you absolutely, you absolutely positive you heard only that, yeah I definitely I definitely heard that right is, eOS, you want to be careful with tax stuff cuz, it’s just like legality advice right, you, is it just you going to be able to liable for what you’re saying, variant as in for example the fidget being the main hot selling products and watching a. Of it that is smaller kid a small ham, yeah you want to be careful with that bill Leslie, Did you guys do as a customer do I care, right that’s the biggest question to answer for yourself, do I care that it’s, the smaller product is the keyword volume therefore that variance, if so then definitely, i heard that Amazon TOS they require all professional seller account to have limited liability insurance, so Amazon TOS requires a lot of things, jeff, if I if I adhered perfectly to every single one of them, i would probably, be a crazy person, because there’s so many, closet importance of TOs, i know, multimillion-dollar sellers right other multi multi million-dollar cars that don’t have any liability insurance and I know people that, that sell one product, and it’s a knife, and then they have to have limited liability insurance right it depends on what you’re selling if you’re selling teddy bears, it’s much less likely that somebody is going to, Yo cut someone’s head off with a teddy bear, versus you know tonight so you want to just be logical and again cost-benefit, what do we do if JS Park soccer and then we do I-9, inventory for three days, i-99 has all computers with over 9, emily it sounds like, you’ve had this issue for a while so, it’s tough because if no one on the front page, has, have any amount of inventory you can track right there all merciful they all have Max order quantities, unfortunately I would probably let that product go because you, can’t see for sure what’s happen, exodus so many products, so many products out there, that you know, there’s no reason to invest, your time and money and upfront capital, if you don’t know for sure, answer the only way you know for sure is but with the I-99 method so, Stop.
Jake clickfunnels Vs leadpages, price per month for simple finals, i mean if you know me you know that I’m clickfunnels 120% Russell Brunson is one of my, you know Idols all eventually meet him in the neck, year or so but, clickfunnels is, incredibly, powerful, incredibly powerful, one of the next, course modules a time to create is everything clickfunnel so it’s going to be dropshipping is going to be how to collect email, it’s going to be forming membership site, it’s going to be you know conversion tactics, is going to talk about, yeah redirects for timers, to go to other pages, how to integrate yellow Facebook pixels in Google analytics and Google AdWords remarketing do you know, serve your ads, two incredibly targeted audiences you know and how to, thank you page visits right, cuz you can put event codes and gold pixels, Art student goals, from Google on your thank you page and then you can see you know this person was on the order page for my product, but he never actually bought it so you can exclude people who’ve been to your thank you page cuz you know they bought it, and you can retarget people who only made it to your order page but never saw you thank you page you know that they were interested but they didn’t, incredibly powerful stuff so clickfunnels, 100% Jake I have, discount for clickfunnels in the student group, that we can use, as well, how does working with Freight forwarders work do I link them up with my Chinese manufacturer and do they take care of everything, yeah definitely a framing, i couldn’t even imagine doing, amazon FBA without, freight forwarder it would just be ridiculous, they take out, so much of the hassle and a headache, It’s just so worth it, 100%, if you find a freight forwarder that is, you know you trust, and has the right price is right so, the problem is a lot of new sellers, will find the freight forwarders who, spend a ton on marketing right like fbaforward and the America base, freight forwarders, who will charge you, three to four times, more, to do the exact, same thing the exact, same thing, you know you find the top wind, is that Forest, you know that China side or internationally based freeporters who will get you the exact same results your products from 8, to be, for 1/4 the cost of American, frank Fordyce and I just goes, straight to your bottom line, it’s going to make you a ton more profit so worth it, will you up at eight any videos in the course now they have outdated information, Yeah definitely I mean I can buy Super URL video in the course, talks about how super URLs don’t work so that is up to date, brand registry is something that I do need to change thank you for bringing that to my attention I’m actually going to know that right now, cuz brand registry does require a trademark now so thank you always guys if you’re seeing things that are out of date with the chorus or you know you, have any question about stuff asked me I always want to make sure that this is absolutely, best available course by far with all the most up-to-date information that I’m trying streaming hard to make sure, that that is always the case with a, did you ever see something, tell me I love hearing from you guys, i’m so always make sure to, make sure that everything is be most up-to-date, Cutting Edge.
Cutting-edge best of available Amazon FBA, alibaba on average what percentage do you usually receive is a final price per unit in relation the manufacturer’s list price on Olive, the manufacturer’s list price on Alibaba is complete b******* means nothing, it literally means nothing, velcro shoe 10 times higher and no CO2, you know sometimes lower it’s nothing, so whatever they tell me first, but say that they’re going to go for 500 units we could do it for $5 per unit, then I’m going to say you know on average I usually end up, paying, about 50% of what they initially quote me on Skype, what software do you use for Merch and is it worth it Outsourcing t-shirt ideas to fiber up work, yeah I mean I always have my graphic artist actually, creative Design Josh but Outsourcing like the, design idea, no you shouldn’t do that you should be, You should definitely be designing the, the design themselves, excuse me you should be thinking of the designs themselves but actually, designing it physically like on Adobe Illustrator I use my graphic artist, so you don’t worry about low-balling and you’re absolutely not I love I love all like crazy, you know there’s a there’s a point that you have to stop, but, you know you want to you want to be, cognizant of low-balling, but you also want to have quality right so you can kind of start to feel it out, what you know is a good, combination, alright imma go back to YouTube, oh my gosh, is a lot of messages I’m going to go to the bottom Guy starts if you have a really important message on YouTube, copy and paste it again, into the code right now, what do you think of Tanner j.fox, I don’t really have much thoughts on him I think he’s done a good job marketing himself and marketing its course I have a lot, students who come to my course, from his chorus, so you can think of, you can think whatever you want from that, but yeah I don’t have anything against them at all, i think he’s done a great job marketing, while you’re at it, dude I’m so close to buying your course I myself worked 70-hour weeks and I’m done body is tired. Joseph I mean, you not meant to work, 70 hour weeks as a human being like you you should be traveling you should, in the world you should be working from, thailand on the beach, sipping a $1 Mai Tai getting a massage, for 3 USD for an hour like you shouldn’t be, killing yourself at work and anyone can do it you just have to use how to commit you have to know how you have to have the right knowledge, Right and that’s what I’m working hard to do to spread the knowledge, people who want to break free, from that horrible cycle that so many people, i’ve been brainwashed into thinking that is normal, do you use 80/20 for inspections Kev Jason I’m not sure what you mean, signing up right now do you have a promo code hehe yeah I do Dan mace in the description, its final 150, and sometimes the promo codes are kind of, finicky because I had to custom code that into clickfunnels they don’t offer, promo codes for some reason, if it’s not working copy and pasting, then just type in final 150 and then it should show you the final of the promotional code, price, any advice on how to lower a cost and yeah that’s a really that’s a really broad question does a lot of stuff you can do, Right so.
Let’s talk about that in the student group cuz that would be like a 30-minute question but the PPC module teaches you exactly how to do that right, loquera big campaign, you know negative exact matching the keywords that aren’t converting based on your search term report right, an auto campaigns is a ton of stuff, is Canada a lot of good products only have a few sellers that necessarily a bad thing in the low-volume Canadian Market, americans are so in love with, amazon, such an incredible job, at creating, incredibly loyal customers, in America so I always say you know America first but, do you want to sell in Canada you can do that too, are you familiar with the amazing selling machine method, i’m yeah I am I you know they’ve done an incredible job in marketing as well I’ve taken it, You know their actual content is not nearly as in-depth they don’t show you their actual screens right they’re not, they’re not taking you in-depth enough, that new Sellers and even Advanced sellers need to be able to implement some of this advance, methodologies writing Sol, i think that’s what differentiates are corsets, very very in-depth in the details in the trenches I’m showing my actual screen sharing my screen, in my account right showing you exactly how to do it, 80/20 sourcing does pre-shipment inspection in China for you for a small fee I’ve never used them I use different, inspection companies but yeah if it if it’s a cheap fee and you feel comfortable with the report they give you, as far as example equality and things like that then go for it Jason, does Amazon accurately for their inventory their only seller of this product inventory shows above 99, Yeah they definitely accurately report it right but Amazon Buys in 30000 unit quantities once they’re asked, slowly sure about a product cowgirl so, i’m not surprised at all that they have above 999, i have a review of the course on my page if anyone’s on the fence, nice that guy be red, i just want to let you know that you are great thank you very much for all you do you me, oh thank you you me and I appreciate that, hey Kevin that is more critical question but where do you see the limits regarding scaling in Germany how many parks in a person recently managed, thought about 25, you can really manage a lot more than you think thorben, i mean when you have va’s and you train them well right for inventory forecast management, It’s not as hard as you think Amazon, makes it so much more possible imagine trying to do this with a warehouse right that would be, incredibly difficult you have to hire employees you have to train you have to do with overturn, right turn over, so Amazon mixing, credibly easier than it ever been at any point in history to do it and you can do a lot more than you think, by yourself, especially with you know a couple well-trained virtual assist, knesset ask ask your question again sorry there’s so many questions on YouTube I’m trying to answer them but, they’re coming really fast, i need to keep the same selenium if we have four or five different products, you don’t have to write I recommend having two different seller accounts right one for your brand that you love and care about what, expand exactly you know the horizontally like make Nike, Sporting Goods.
Clothing that is a brand and then you want to have one, seller Central account that where you have, you know a bunch of just high margin products, do you have a toaster oven garlic press you have, you know a toilet see whatever, you have a bunch of different stuff just depending on what’s profitable, is it possible to compete with Amazon in the same listing, you don’t want to compete with Amazon in the actual same listing but the same niche, is definitely possible, amazon doesn’t love their products they don’t care about they don’t respond to customers on the reviews right, so you can compete against Amazon in the same niche, very well actually because Amazon just doesn’t, have the capacity to care and love their products like we do, oh I’m going to switch back to, hey Amy oh nice I saw you join the chorus ask you this morning one more Thai jungle jungle Scout Ranch Market intelligence, Market intelligence has one cool feature that jungle the jungle that doesn’t currently have and I’m actually going to I’m actually going to text Greg, drake right now, sol Market intelligence has a feature, it says, how many units you have to give a way to reach page one and it’s obviously in the beta it was not super accurate, but, it is important, to know that they have that cool feature that junk was that doesn’t currently have right so, the infinite scroll feature I’m going to talk to Greg about adding so we don’t have to press extract page million times on the jungle Scout Chrome extension, and also the giveaways, jungle Scout Amy is much more accurate as far as products right, it has the most expensive product, The product database, it has the most expensive options as far as filtering, but the market intelligence is, probably the best, second competitor in second place jungle Scout is still absolutely the best, product out there, my question is about product bundling specifically from two different suppliers I may have to, do that with my first product, yes the best way to do this connector I’ve answered, fashion a bunch of times is shipped from your, your manufacturer you trust less, to your manufacturer you trust more, have your manufacturer you trust more, assemble the bundle of the products and then shift to Amazon as a final product, both both items going to one box, 1 UTC, one by one, product listing and you ship like that and you’re welcome Baby I’ma jump back to the to the student course, play me if you have more questions or any students on the YouTube page have more question, Coming to the brown belts group that’s going to be answering all the main question, tennis courts is a rip-off compared to Kevin’s agreed Tanner, so as a beginner how long did it take you to, between product launches, i launched I simultaneously launch 7 products, at once, like my I spent $6,100, on my very first ever Amazon launch, and I liked simultaneously launched seven different products, and I got that $1,000 a day, in about 3 days, so, i always recommend it, why would you have money just sitting in your bank account, making, less than 1%, right, when you could be investing in product are you making, 30 40 50, 60%, profit margin, it just, it doesn’t make sense, keep enough money in your bank to live, and then invest the rest of it, inter products you’re doing due diligence on and you know are going to work, But you already had some experience with Amazon FBA when I first started.
My very first ever launched, do you ever ask for specific price upfront always way to leverage other quotes, i always ask for price if I’m talking to, 10 different manufacturers, hey one second, okay so I have about I have about 10 more minutes left, so I’m going to try to get through everything, what are your thoughts on electronic and electrical products, i mean I personally stay away from them they have, probably the highest return rates of anything, have any product category on Amazon because you know somebody can’t figure out how to connect to their Wi-Fi router, sent you know somebody says it arrived broken, you know there’s battery issues, there’s different, yo this different Hoops you have to jump through as far as, you know, in for it, laws it is still just a lot of complexity, And there’s also a lot of competition, the scummiest of the scum sellers on Amazon, are the electronics rights OUC undercutting UC, 100 hijackers on one listing all undercutting each other to the point where they have no margin whatsoever, i always suggest staying away, i’m finding some, rate product options I just need more Capital to launch them just wanted to say that, just wanted to say that for anyone who thinks it’s saturated, yes absolutely not saturated, i mean yeah everyone you guys tell everyone who says it’s saturated that it is right cuz we want to keep it for, is absolutely the farthest thing from saturated, is your girlfriend camera shy, they’re asking about you, amazon just deliver, yMCA, yeah maybe we’ll introduce her in a little bit but she’s, she’s a little nervous cuz there’s a lot of people watching, how do we get a ninja shirt, Oh you like the ninja start Leslie, i’m so actually gave away a couple of these, for like a little contest I did, i’m sure you’re probably watching right now, so Nick and one other guy Ryan one, the t-shirt that I had for the competition I just asked like a ridiculous question, in, are 20,000 person group, so don’t go ahead and find the immortal snail question if you want to try to win a shirt, but I will I will be giving away shirts to people soon so just yesterday I had like kind of an interesting idea, create like a ninja Hall of Fame, i’m so over everyone who’s part of the chorus right who gets, i’m $2,000 a day Mark and gross sales right not not profit or just talking about Revenue here, every single person who gets to $1,000 a day, get the place in the Ninja Hall of Fame is going to be a website page that I’m hosting rights going to have like a little picture of the Ninja, Is going to have a little description you know about when they started how long it took them to get to $1,000 a day, and so everybody who gets it at thousand dollar a day mark, just message I support, support at official Kevin david.com and with a screenshot of your sales, and we will get you added to the ninja Hall of Fame, forever live in immortality, in that in that amazing ninja Hall of Fame, customs duties is there a set percentage are all variables haven’t seen it yet in the full course, custom duties Christopher are based on devaluation of your products right to what you pay and if there’s no set, percent right because different product categories, have different percentages, You can just go to a customs duties at estimator just.
Just Google search customs duties estimator, put in what your product is finding Associated category, type in you know what your product value is in at the front of your paying your cost of goods sold right now if you’re going to sell it for, your cost of goods sold, into the customs duty calculator and you’ll be able to find it, make a note right now that I should add that, products with no experience in that cost you a ton and moq kasparaitis most supplies that offer a good price won’t go, lower than 500, it seems like you needed that much anyways, you’re going to do a giveaway do you agree, yeah I mean I talked about I talked about how to how to estimate, how many products should buy right there, it’s basically, you take, your giveaway budget, You take how many that the top people already in that needs are selling per day the average right and then you multiply that average by, 180 days cuz you don’t ever want to go over long-term storage right, camp Verde 480 days, and you’re going to buy 1800 units, plus your giveaway right, plus how many that you allocate for your giveaway so I can get their son 10 per day you want to give away 12 per day or 11:40, for 7 days, seadoo 787, plus the initial 180-day margin and that’s how men feel comfortable buying, once you’ve done your duty., is there an issue, with importing products that have built-in batteries, i stay away from Bad batteries Andrew I just there’s so many options out there that you don’t need, you don’t need to mess around with you know lithium ion batteries and all this extra Hoops you have to jump through, Associated with that, oh snap High jazz, yes just says hi, no Jazz that sided talking about you, you should send all your students ninja shirts, i should send all my students ninjasaurus Emily that’s true, i want to save them for like special stuff though like for a little contest and fun little giveaways that we run, i need a ninja hat, yanik, you definitely do need to knit a ninja hat so you should do something else for me and maybe I’ll get you one, i cough during your initial launch ever did you use all PPC and all the tricks you preaching your chorus, yeah well I mean I didn’t know all of them then Bentley but I knew some of them, joe Hazeltine and get a shirt for the thousand-dollar day Club maybe maybe I’ll do that okay, how about this guy’s everybody who gets the $1,000 a day Club, Into the ninja Hall of Fame I will send you a t-shirt all right, is there anything in Amazon TOS is making it harder to include ebooks, yeah I mean Josh it definitely they added the opt-out, right so people, i knew anyone on Amazon now can opt out of third-party seller emails which is why we’re getting all those thousands of emails or how, however many year, you’re selling right, you’re getting a bunch of email saying this customers opted out of receiving emails so so you can’t deliver the ebook because they have opted out and see, you can’t attach it as an attachment to your Fallout campaign so that’s a little bit harder, just curious how old are you Kevin, i’m 27 but my birthday is actually pretty soon, salmos 28, how do you find the HS code for a perspective, products, hS code I’m not sure what you mean by Andrew, Add me to the Hall of Fame.
Yanik send it to our support, and I’ll add you, with love, lithium can’t go are neither can ping pong balls in Mass quantity right because of pressure that’s a great Point Christopher, i heard about people getting Magnus stopped at customs, i mean like I said on the last Q&A people, amazon so terrible about certain things like you know, if you look at the little or the little magnetic balls that are like a toy it doesn’t say anything about it being gated, right it has great numbers, and then you ship in your you know, 500 units of little magnetic balls for toys and then Amazon Chester listing down and says, you know you’re not allowed to sell it on Amazon but there’s like a hundred other people selling it on Amazon currently and you’re like what the hell, So I always suggest guys listen up, i always suggest, for buying a product, before investing in a product, message Amazon Seller Support with an ace in of a currently selling products, related to your product, hey is there, any type of restriction, to sell this product for me specifically, and then get in writing, i’m saying yes you can or no you can’t sell this practice, so much better than shipping 500 units in the Amazon and then having Amazon say, you know by the way you can’t sell this, seems like there’s a market for Ninja shirts someone make that listing, yeah you guys what a great idea to maybe up maybe I’ll make that into my merch into one of my, merch by Amazon listings and I’ll make it I’ll make it as cheap as possible, my first goal be to get a ninja star that good Leslie AR, You guys I love all my students I want to send out a million shirt so everyone get there please, watching, 50 days in my issues going to go from zero to a hundred real quick. Yeah I bet, is is beauty worth getting ungated in, absolutely I mean getting ungated in grocery, immediately, remove, 50 to 75% of your competition right because most, people won’t know how first of all to get into Beauty and then, even more people won’t want to pay what it cost to get ungated, right and so you just have so much less competition immediately and it’s the, it’s a beautiful thing, all right. So one more question we’ve been going for about an hour and 20 minutes let’s take our last question in the brown belts, group and never going to say goodbye and I hope you guys all have, a wonderful amazing Sunday, The one more question, are you on adderal, just became a ninja cap I wear XL for my black belt thanks, main, yeah I’m get to that thousand-dollar Damar Jackson and I’d be more than happy to send you out a, delicious ninja shirt, and add you to the ninja Hall of Fame, the last, last question here guys, he’s on ninja roll, alright Nick, good idea focus on parks that run out in the customers I need to buy more soon customers consumer products and keep buying more, google does a great idea, write the most consumable type products is like beauty or grocery right so you need to be ungated, to be able to let you know, selling a consumable space, but subscribe and save is a, great you know you always want customers, again it’s a hundred times easier selling a product to a customer that you’ve already sold a product to, Right then getting a brand new customer that’s like that’s marketing 101 it’s a million times easier to sell a second product.
Customer get that first initial sale, what’s your five-year goal Emily, okay guys this is my last question, my 5-year goal is just to do exactly what I’m doing I want to help, 10000, people quit their job and be able to live the life that they always knew that they could and they deserve I don’t want to, people to, never be dreading going to work on a Sunday ever again for the rest of the lifestyle, truly that is what I want, i am extremely happy my businesses are doing very well, you know it’s never going to be like a financial issue for me again it’s literally just about helping people at this point if I can free 10, thousand people from corporate slavery, In five years that I would be, the happiest, ninja in the world, i got so thank you so much for our Q&A number for I hope that helps I tried to get to everyone’s answer, i got the every single question in the suit and groove so I’m really happy about that, i will post the replay of this video, in, the student groups and then again on YouTube, and in the Facebook page so everybody can re-watch it but I hope you guys enjoy joining live so I can answer your specific, questions and we will see you next time so enjoy the rest of your beautiful Sunday and I’ll see all of you and me, amazing people very, soon.
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Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong
It’s true! Everything you know about tea is wrong—or at least, if you’re me. I grew up on tea bags; I can still see them right now, a yellow box of Lipton tea bags, hanging out in the back of the middle shelf of the bank of cupboards in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe this article should have been titled “Everything Jordan Knows About Tea Is Wrong”—I apologize for making assumptions by using the royal you.
Until a very short time ago, tea was this very ancillary, secondary, overlooked thing in my life. I usually drank it (if I drank it at all) served as iced tea, sweetened of course if I was in the American South, or served dry as a bone over great hulking chunks of ice with a lemon wedge on that rare hot day in the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. I didn’t take tea seriously—I ignored it on coffee shop menus, I didn’t make it for myself at home, I couldn’t really tell you anything about the various styles and varieties. I didn’t own a gaiwan or any tea-making gear, even at the entry level. I was oblivious to its many cultures and subcultures and rich history.
I was fucking up and I didn’t even know it.
And then very suddenly, everything changed. It started, like literally every major event over the last decade in my life, because of coffee. More specifically, because of a story I was assigned to write for Sprudge. We had noticed an uptick in tea quality at high-end cafes, specifically here in Portland, where the San-Francisco-based tea company Song Tea was showing up on the menu at a couple of the good local coffee bars. We started following Song and realized they were being placed in several well-respected cafes around the country. A hypothesis emerged.
In the early days of Sprudge you could tell if a coffee shop was any good just by the gear. If you walked into a coffee bar in 2009 and they had a La Marzocco and a Mahlkönig, you knew they likely gave a shit. Nowadays it’s harder to tell quite so easily, as the third wave coffee movement has exploded and things like gear and interior design have become more copycat. But maybe this tea brand was on to something; maybe Song was sort of like a third-party quality control vetting system, and that by only going into good coffee shops, we could look at them as a kind of hack. “If a cafe serves Song, they must be good.”
Photos from our 2016 interview with Peter Luong by Zachary Carlsen.
And so I went to San Francisco and interviewed Peter Luong, Song Tea’s founder, who grew up in his family’s tea shop and has been traveling for tea sourcing since he was a kid. You can read the interview here—it’s an okay interview, I think, and it helped turn more people on to the good work Peter is doing. But the subtext of that interview is what leads us here today. Because throughout it, while I asked Peter rudimentary questions about Song’s approach to tea in a coffee context, he was making tea the entire time. Teas like I had never, ever tried before—wonderful buttercream oolongs and chocolatey roasted tieguanyins, Cypress smoked black tea like a campfire jujube and endlessly complex Sichuan greens, all of it served in a procession of simple, stunning, utterly pleasurable teawares. Peter was serving me his own personal take on gong fu cha as I interviewed him, and honestly, it changed my life.
I left high. Floating. Tea drunk, tea stoned, whatever you want to call it. (Although if we really want to get into what psychotropic most mimicked by a sizable consumption of tea, I think it’s closest to a gentle microdose of psilocybin.) Blowing like a feather in the wind around Pacific Heights, with a laptop full of notes and no particular place to head next, clutching my backpack now full of teas for steeping back home.
And steep back home I did—pot after pot, with a strict 10:00pm cutoff so as not to mess with my sleep schedule, chasing the sensory memory of that incredible experience in San Francisco. I love a rabbit hole, a new world to explore, and tea—like coffee, and like natural wine—offered a vast and never-ending beverage culture to soak up like a sponge.
Tea quickly became a daily part of my creative and personal life. I found myself writing better, or at least writing more voluminously (which I know should not be mistaken for “better” but often feels like it) while consuming an ever-growing raft of teas. I started exploring different brands, seeking out interesting tea accounts on Instagram, pouring through websites big and small, from tea purveyors based in China to tea purveyors based a few blocks from my house. I started collecting teawares, began following talented ceramicists from around the world, and started—slowly at first—to begin making tea for others, as a form of expression for this new passion.
I also began traveling with tea in mind, seeking out tea experiences in different parts of the country and digging out time for tea alongside Sprudge’s busy travel schedule. An hour here, an hour there, ducking out of a festival on my lunch break or landing with an extra day to explore tea shops across a city. Along this path I started talking with the people who run these tea shops and bars, asking them about their own journeys with tea, their own perspectives on the drink and the multitudes it contains.
And through it all, I learned a couple of surprising things.
First, tea people are by and large kind to each other. I learned this first by haunting the Instagrams and Reddit forums for tea drinkers, and by taking on some local tea writing for the alt-weekly here in Portland, which got me into more and more local tea bars, begetting more and more happy, sunshiney, tea-stoned conversations. On the internet, and IRL, tea conversations appear at least to this outsider to be mostly full of positivity and kindness. It’s one of the nicest Reddits, which is really saying something, and on Instagram you have to look hard to find tea people being shitty to each other. I can assure you this is not always the case in coffee, and it is really not the case in wine.
Tea scoop and rest inside Floating Mountain. Photo by the author.
The notion of tea’s inherent kindness landed while I was sitting in a tea bar on New York’s Upper West Side called Floating Mountain, whose owner, Lina Medvedeva, escaped the world of Manhattan finance to open a serene, meditative, beautiful little second floor tea bar and gallery above W 72nd Street. Over a single pot of Phoenix Dan Cong (I can still taste its warm red comforting flavors now, months later writing this) we talked about her past life, her upbringing in Russia’s far east, near Vladivostok (“We grew up drinking tea like water”), and how Floating Mountain came to be. It was once a tailor shop, and today is imbued with the most glorious Manhattan light, streaming in through floor to ceiling windows, like an oasis of energy and calm in the middle of the city, just blocks from The Dakota and Central Park.
Lina’s gong fu cha is minimalist, with everything just so—nothing extravagant, nothing loud. A tea scoop from the Czech Republic, made from vitrified bogwood. A simple porcelain gaiwan. A glass water kettle. An hour became two, and I was then hopelessly late for my next appointment, but I remember asking: “Is it just me, or do tea people seem rather content? Like as a culture, it seems to be a pretty positive place…do you agree?”
“You can never know the inside of another mind,” she replied, “but the tea speaks. There isn’t much left to say.”
The house of Liquid Proust. Photo by the author.
A few weeks and a thousand miles later I sat for another tea experience, where I learned a lesson on tea’s power to transform our very souls. This time it was inside an unassuming house, on a nondescript street amongst a row of clapboard little boxes in suburban Columbus, Ohio. This is the home of Andrew Richardson, who goes by Liquid Proust on Instagram and runs a fast-growing digital tea company of the same name. His focus is on rare and aged teas, typically from Yunnan but also some truly remarkable oolongs from Taiwan and eastern China. His entire business and network of tea community happens online, and walking up to the house, you would never in a million years guess that inside it dwells one of the foremost young American collectors and distributors of vintage single-origin tea.
Nearly every surface inside of Andrew’s house is covered in tea: tuongs, satchels, bags, parcels, caddies, ceramic resting jars, wooden commemorative chests, boxes and boxes and boxes with China Post shipping labels affixed (oh, what the mailman must think!) and enough shipping material to ensure safe passage between here and Mars and back, Express Class. There is more tea in this house than one person could drink in a thousand lifetimes, though I suspect Liquid Proust would die happy trying. In his cluttered office (tea, tea everywhere) across an industrial minimalist metal tea table, Andrew brewed me a procession of increasingly rare and fine teas, and talked to me at length about his growing business.
Liquid Proust began as a side hustle from Andrew’s full-time job, which is as a business advisor and student in a corporate MBA program. He fell down a particular sub-section of the tea rabbit hole, chatting with tea purveyors in China and Taiwan and Malaysia using auto translate programs, assuming financial risk by purchasing lots–large and small–of vintage tea, and documenting all of it on Instagram. Today his website is an ever-changing array of tea offerings, collaborative buys and special lots, handpacked from his home in Ohio.
Tea has been a transformative force in Andrew’s life. “Tea has taught me to be accepting,” he told me. “I grew up in a very conservative religious family, and without tea, I think I be like… somebody totally different. A Christian conservative Trump supporter, most likely.” He grew up drinking Bewley’s tea bags with his family, he tells me sheepishly, and I can relate. As tea gained more and more prominence in his life, the old vestiges and relationships of his past life fell away. He fell into a new world of tea drinkers and tea lovers—diverse, international, accepting, kind. His doors are always open to fellow tea heads on the same journey.
“People come to this house from around the world,” he tells me, as we look over jar after jar, bag after bag, an entire living room given over to boxes to ship, every square inch of kitchen counter overflowing with tea from his remarkable collection. “We just start laughing together, and talking. It’s almost like drinking beer—if you drink enough tea you get silly after a while, and then you get to really hear about people’s lives, their views on religion and love, and who they truly are. I would have never had this conversation before—I would have never known you.”
Too soon I was back outside in the Ohio chill, waiting for a Lyft to take me back into the city, my bag and mind and heart crammed full to bursting with tea. I started crying in the back of the car.
As a Western tea drinker, tea doesn’t need me. Not economically, not culturally, and certainly not spiritually. Indeed, there is something almost comically absurd about obsessing over tea here in America, thousands of miles from where it’s cultivated and revered, separated by a vast ocean both literal and cultural, although I’d like to think it’s kind of modern and cool too—bridging language and culture gaps digitally over a shared love for something truly good. But the economy and language of tea is quite happily percolating along in the countries where tea is produced, a brisk market of sales and consumption and obsession. Tea is not, like coffee, primarily an export crop. It’s more like wine—the cultures that grow it most revere it, and typically keep all the good shit close to home. Indeed, as I understand it is only relatively recently that truly great teas from China and Taiwan have even been available for mass consumption in the United States. General access to premiere quality tea in America is a fairly new thing informed by the opening up of China’s flexible take on communism vis-a-vis small business growth, the linking of our world through the towering modern marvels of online shopping, international shipping (thanks China Post!) and global free trade.
Tea prices, trade wars, globalism: all of this is made possible by international commerce and the free movement of goods and services and ideas through international markets. Like coffee, tea is an unexpectedly and explicitly political product to consume in the best of times. And today? When these trade freedoms are imperiled by tariffs and racism and shudderingly incompetent political leadership? Drinking good tea in America right now is a profoundly political act, more so than at any time since the American revolution.
Tea doesn’t need the West but I think we need it. I think we could all stand to sit with this stuff as a regular part of our lives; not to replace coffee in the mornings, or instead of wine at night, but as a bridge and a complementary force alongside the other drinks we already love. Tea is a vast, bottomless, endlessly complex world of styles, producers, history, modern expression, accoutrement and idiosyncrasy. It is a lifetime—indeed, many happy lifetimes—of culinary inquiry. Drinking good tea can make your life better. Drinking good tea has definitely made my life better, made me a happier person and a more creative thinker, a better friend and colleague and partner. It has comforted me in times of sadness and tragedy, and I have celebrated good news with it, and it has been there for me as alacrity fuel of the highest order on plain old boring work nights.
I strongly recommend drinking a lot of good tea to anyone who wants to better know their own mind. Bathe your brain in theanine any possible chance you get. Think of it almost as like a performance-enhancing drug for your life.
I will end this essay by telling you a secret. I’m “the guy from Sprudge” which means that every so often at an event (be it family or promotional) someone expects me to make coffee. And I can do it serviceably well enough. I’m okay at it, but I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, or that I approach it with the easy confidence and muscle memory of a champion barista or anything. My coffee brewing prowess is nothing special, and I always kind of dread being asked, because it comes with a lot of expectations that frankly I’ve done nothing to deserve beyond stringing lots of flowery words together.
But I love making tea. Adore it, really. I love making it for myself, for my friends and family, for guests at our Sprudge offices in Portland, at parties or brunches or pretty much wherever. I love (and I mean love) the ceramics; I love the tactile change from dry to porous; I love the flavor variation across a long session; I love the steeping rhythm; I love the intimacy it creates, the way you really get to know someone somewhere between the fourth and seventh cup. Some of the very best conversations of my life have taken place over the last two years, with friends new and old, across a gaiwan.
My dream is that someday I will be able to give my own personal expression of gong fu cha to someone else and change their life, too, by opening their eyes and mind up to what tea can be, just as Peter Luong and Lina Medvedeva and Liquid Proust have done for me.
It’s the least I can do.
Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.
Editor: Liz Clayton.
All photos by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace) unless otherwise noted. The top image for this feature depicts a ceramic teascoop “chahe” from Russian ceramicist Anton Filonov, distributed in the United States by Liquid Proust.
Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.
The post Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong appeared first on Sprudge.
Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee
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Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong
It’s true! Everything you know about tea is wrong—or at least, if you’re me. I grew up on tea bags; I can still see them right now, a yellow box of Lipton tea bags, hanging out in the back of the middle shelf of the bank of cupboards in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe this article should have been titled “Everything Jordan Knows About Tea Is Wrong”—I apologize for making assumptions by using the royal you.
Until a very short time ago, tea was this very ancillary, secondary, overlooked thing in my life. I usually drank it (if I drank it at all) served as iced tea, sweetened of course if I was in the American South, or served dry as a bone over great hulking chunks of ice with a lemon wedge on that rare hot day in the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. I didn’t take tea seriously—I ignored it on coffee shop menus, I didn’t make it for myself at home, I couldn’t really tell you anything about the various styles and varieties. I didn’t own a gaiwan or any tea-making gear, even at the entry level. I was oblivious to its many cultures and subcultures and rich history.
I was fucking up and I didn’t even know it.
And then very suddenly, everything changed. It started, like literally every major event over the last decade in my life, because of coffee. More specifically, because of a story I was assigned to write for Sprudge. We had noticed an uptick in tea quality at high-end cafes, specifically here in Portland, where the San-Francisco-based tea company Song Tea was showing up on the menu at a couple of the good local coffee bars. We started following Song and realized they were being placed in several well-respected cafes around the country. A hypothesis emerged.
In the early days of Sprudge you could tell if a coffee shop was any good just by the gear. If you walked into a coffee bar in 2009 and they had a La Marzocco and a Mahlkönig, you knew they likely gave a shit. Nowadays it’s harder to tell quite so easily, as the third wave coffee movement has exploded and things like gear and interior design have become more copycat. But maybe this tea brand was on to something; maybe Song was sort of like a third-party quality control vetting system, and that by only going into good coffee shops, we could look at them as a kind of hack. “If a cafe serves Song, they must be good.”
Photos from our 2016 interview with Peter Luong by Zachary Carlsen.
And so I went to San Francisco and interviewed Peter Luong, Song Tea’s founder, who grew up in his family’s tea shop and has been traveling for tea sourcing since he was a kid. You can read the interview here—it’s an okay interview, I think, and it helped turn more people on to the good work Peter is doing. But the subtext of that interview is what leads us here today. Because throughout it, while I asked Peter rudimentary questions about Song’s approach to tea in a coffee context, he was making tea the entire time. Teas like I had never, ever tried before—wonderful buttercream oolongs and chocolatey roasted tieguanyins, Cypress smoked black tea like a campfire jujube and endlessly complex Sichuan greens, all of it served in a procession of simple, stunning, utterly pleasurable teawares. Peter was serving me his own personal take on gong fu cha as I interviewed him, and honestly, it changed my life.
I left high. Floating. Tea drunk, tea stoned, whatever you want to call it. (Although if we really want to get into what psychotropic most mimicked by a sizable consumption of tea, I think it’s closest to a gentle microdose of psilocybin.) Blowing like a feather in the wind around Pacific Heights, with a laptop full of notes and no particular place to head next, clutching my backpack now full of teas for steeping back home.
And steep back home I did—pot after pot, with a strict 10:00pm cutoff so as not to mess with my sleep schedule, chasing the sensory memory of that incredible experience in San Francisco. I love a rabbit hole, a new world to explore, and tea—like coffee, and like natural wine—offered a vast and never-ending beverage culture to soak up like a sponge.
Tea quickly became a daily part of my creative and personal life. I found myself writing better, or at least writing more voluminously (which I know should not be mistaken for “better” but often feels like it) while consuming an ever-growing raft of teas. I started exploring different brands, seeking out interesting tea accounts on Instagram, pouring through websites big and small, from tea purveyors based in China to tea purveyors based a few blocks from my house. I started collecting teawares, began following talented ceramicists from around the world, and started—slowly at first—to begin making tea for others, as a form of expression for this new passion.
I also began traveling with tea in mind, seeking out tea experiences in different parts of the country and digging out time for tea alongside Sprudge’s busy travel schedule. An hour here, an hour there, ducking out of a festival on my lunch break or landing with an extra day to explore tea shops across a city. Along this path I started talking with the people who run these tea shops and bars, asking them about their own journeys with tea, their own perspectives on the drink and the multitudes it contains.
And through it all, I learned a couple of surprising things.
First, tea people are by and large kind to each other. I learned this first by haunting the Instagrams and Reddit forums for tea drinkers, and by taking on some local tea writing for the alt-weekly here in Portland, which got me into more and more local tea bars, begetting more and more happy, sunshiney, tea-stoned conversations. On the internet, and IRL, tea conversations appear at least to this outsider to be mostly full of positivity and kindness. It’s one of the nicest Reddits, which is really saying something, and on Instagram you have to look hard to find tea people being shitty to each other. I can assure you this is not always the case in coffee, and it is really not the case in wine.
Tea scoop and rest inside Floating Mountain. Photo by the author.
The notion of tea’s inherent kindness landed while I was sitting in a tea bar on New York’s Upper West Side called Floating Mountain, whose owner, Lina Medvedeva, escaped the world of Manhattan finance to open a serene, meditative, beautiful little second floor tea bar and gallery above W 72nd Street. Over a single pot of Phoenix Dan Cong (I can still taste its warm red comforting flavors now, months later writing this) we talked about her past life, her upbringing in Russia’s far east, near Vladivostok (“We grew up drinking tea like water”), and how Floating Mountain came to be. It was once a tailor shop, and today is imbued with the most glorious Manhattan light, streaming in through floor to ceiling windows, like an oasis of energy and calm in the middle of the city, just blocks from The Dakota and Central Park.
Lina’s gong fu cha is minimalist, with everything just so—nothing extravagant, nothing loud. A tea scoop from the Czech Republic, made from vitrified bogwood. A simple porcelain gaiwan. A glass water kettle. An hour became two, and I was then hopelessly late for my next appointment, but I remember asking: “Is it just me, or do tea people seem rather content? Like as a culture, it seems to be a pretty positive place…do you agree?”
“You can never know the inside of another mind,” she replied, “but the tea speaks. There isn’t much left to say.”
The house of Liquid Proust. Photo by the author.
A few weeks and a thousand miles later I sat for another tea experience, where I learned a lesson on tea’s power to transform our very souls. This time it was inside an unassuming house, on a nondescript street amongst a row of clapboard little boxes in suburban Columbus, Ohio. This is the home of Andrew Richardson, who goes by Liquid Proust on Instagram and runs a fast-growing digital tea company of the same name. His focus is on rare and aged teas, typically from Yunnan but also some truly remarkable oolongs from Taiwan and eastern China. His entire business and network of tea community happens online, and walking up to the house, you would never in a million years guess that inside it dwells one of the foremost young American collectors and distributors of vintage single-origin tea.
Nearly every surface inside of Andrew’s house is covered in tea: tuongs, satchels, bags, parcels, caddies, ceramic resting jars, wooden commemorative chests, boxes and boxes and boxes with China Post shipping labels affixed (oh, what the mailman must think!) and enough shipping material to ensure safe passage between here and Mars and back, Express Class. There is more tea in this house than one person could drink in a thousand lifetimes, though I suspect Liquid Proust would die happy trying. In his cluttered office (tea, tea everywhere) across an industrial minimalist metal tea table, Andrew brewed me a procession of increasingly rare and fine teas, and talked to me at length about his growing business.
Liquid Proust began as a side hustle from Andrew’s full-time job, which is as a business advisor and student in a corporate MBA program. He fell down a particular sub-section of the tea rabbit hole, chatting with tea purveyors in China and Taiwan and Malaysia using auto translate programs, assuming financial risk by purchasing lots–large and small–of vintage tea, and documenting all of it on Instagram. Today his website is an ever-changing array of tea offerings, collaborative buys and special lots, handpacked from his home in Ohio.
Tea has been a transformative force in Andrew’s life. “Tea has taught me to be accepting,” he told me. “I grew up in a very conservative religious family, and without tea, I think I be like… somebody totally different. A Christian conservative Trump supporter, most likely.” He grew up drinking Bewley’s tea bags with his family, he tells me sheepishly, and I can relate. As tea gained more and more prominence in his life, the old vestiges and relationships of his past life fell away. He fell into a new world of tea drinkers and tea lovers—diverse, international, accepting, kind. His doors are always open to fellow tea heads on the same journey.
“People come to this house from around the world,” he tells me, as we look over jar after jar, bag after bag, an entire living room given over to boxes to ship, every square inch of kitchen counter overflowing with tea from his remarkable collection. “We just start laughing together, and talking. It’s almost like drinking beer—if you drink enough tea you get silly after a while, and then you get to really hear about people’s lives, their views on religion and love, and who they truly are. I would have never had this conversation before—I would have never known you.”
Too soon I was back outside in the Ohio chill, waiting for a Lyft to take me back into the city, my bag and mind and heart crammed full to bursting with tea. I started crying in the back of the car.
As a Western tea drinker, tea doesn’t need me. Not economically, not culturally, and certainly not spiritually. Indeed, there is something almost comically absurd about obsessing over tea here in America, thousands of miles from where it’s cultivated and revered, separated by a vast ocean both literal and cultural, although I’d like to think it’s kind of modern and cool too—bridging language and culture gaps digitally over a shared love for something truly good. But the economy and language of tea is quite happily percolating along in the countries where tea is produced, a brisk market of sales and consumption and obsession. Tea is not, like coffee, primarily an export crop. It’s more like wine—the cultures that grow it most revere it, and typically keep all the good shit close to home. Indeed, as I understand it is only relatively recently that truly great teas from China and Taiwan have even been available for mass consumption in the United States. General access to premiere quality tea in America is a fairly new thing informed by the opening up of China’s flexible take on communism vis-a-vis small business growth, the linking of our world through the towering modern marvels of online shopping, international shipping (thanks China Post!) and global free trade.
Tea prices, trade wars, globalism: all of this is made possible by international commerce and the free movement of goods and services and ideas through international markets. Like coffee, tea is an unexpectedly and explicitly political product to consume in the best of times. And today? When these trade freedoms are imperiled by tariffs and racism and shudderingly incompetent political leadership? Drinking good tea in America right now is a profoundly political act, more so than at any time since the American revolution.
Tea doesn’t need the West but I think we need it. I think we could all stand to sit with this stuff as a regular part of our lives; not to replace coffee in the mornings, or instead of wine at night, but as a bridge and a complementary force alongside the other drinks we already love. Tea is a vast, bottomless, endlessly complex world of styles, producers, history, modern expression, accoutrement and idiosyncrasy. It is a lifetime—indeed, many happy lifetimes—of culinary inquiry. Drinking good tea can make your life better. Drinking good tea has definitely made my life better, made me a happier person and a more creative thinker, a better friend and colleague and partner. It has comforted me in times of sadness and tragedy, and I have celebrated good news with it, and it has been there for me as alacrity fuel of the highest order on plain old boring work nights.
I strongly recommend drinking a lot of good tea to anyone who wants to better know their own mind. Bathe your brain in theanine any possible chance you get. Think of it almost as like a performance-enhancing drug for your life.
I will end this essay by telling you a secret. I’m “the guy from Sprudge” which means that every so often at an event (be it family or promotional) someone expects me to make coffee. And I can do it serviceably well enough. I’m okay at it, but I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, or that I approach it with the easy confidence and muscle memory of a champion barista or anything. My coffee brewing prowess is nothing special, and I always kind of dread being asked, because it comes with a lot of expectations that frankly I’ve done nothing to deserve beyond stringing lots of flowery words together.
But I love making tea. Adore it, really. I love making it for myself, for my friends and family, for guests at our Sprudge offices in Portland, at parties or brunches or pretty much wherever. I love (and I mean love) the ceramics; I love the tactile change from dry to porous; I love the flavor variation across a long session; I love the steeping rhythm; I love the intimacy it creates, the way you really get to know someone somewhere between the fourth and seventh cup. Some of the very best conversations of my life have taken place over the last two years, with friends new and old, across a gaiwan.
My dream is that someday I will be able to give my own personal expression of gong fu cha to someone else and change their life, too, by opening their eyes and mind up to what tea can be, just as Peter Luong and Lina Medvedeva and Liquid Proust have done for me.
It’s the least I can do.
Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.
Editor: Liz Clayton.
All photos by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace) unless otherwise noted. The top image for this feature depicts a ceramic teascoop “chahe” from Russian ceramicist Anton Filonov, distributed in the United States by Liquid Proust.
Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.
The post Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong appeared first on Sprudge.
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Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong
It’s true! Everything you know about tea is wrong—or at least, if you’re me. I grew up on tea bags; I can still see them right now, a yellow box of Lipton tea bags, hanging out in the back of the middle shelf of the bank of cupboards in my mother’s kitchen. Maybe this article should have been titled “Everything Jordan Knows About Tea Is Wrong”—I apologize for making assumptions by using the royal you.
Until a very short time ago, tea was this very ancillary, secondary, overlooked thing in my life. I usually drank it (if I drank it at all) served as iced tea, sweetened of course if I was in the American South, or served dry as a bone over great hulking chunks of ice with a lemon wedge on that rare hot day in the Pacific Northwest, where I grew up. I didn’t take tea seriously—I ignored it on coffee shop menus, I didn’t make it for myself at home, I couldn’t really tell you anything about the various styles and varieties. I didn’t own a gaiwan or any tea-making gear, even at the entry level. I was oblivious to its many cultures and subcultures and rich history.
I was fucking up and I didn’t even know it.
And then very suddenly, everything changed. It started, like literally every major event over the last decade in my life, because of coffee. More specifically, because of a story I was assigned to write for Sprudge. We had noticed an uptick in tea quality at high-end cafes, specifically here in Portland, where the San-Francisco-based tea company Song Tea was showing up on the menu at a couple of the good local coffee bars. We started following Song and realized they were being placed in several well-respected cafes around the country. A hypothesis emerged.
In the early days of Sprudge you could tell if a coffee shop was any good just by the gear. If you walked into a coffee bar in 2009 and they had a La Marzocco and a Mahlkönig, you knew they likely gave a shit. Nowadays it’s harder to tell quite so easily, as the third wave coffee movement has exploded and things like gear and interior design have become more copycat. But maybe this tea brand was on to something; maybe Song was sort of like a third-party quality control vetting system, and that by only going into good coffee shops, we could look at them as a kind of hack. “If a cafe serves Song, they must be good.”
Photos from our 2016 interview with Peter Luong by Zachary Carlsen.
And so I went to San Francisco and interviewed Peter Luong, Song Tea’s founder, who grew up in his family’s tea shop and has been traveling for tea sourcing since he was a kid. You can read the interview here—it’s an okay interview, I think, and it helped turn more people on to the good work Peter is doing. But the subtext of that interview is what leads us here today. Because throughout it, while I asked Peter rudimentary questions about Song’s approach to tea in a coffee context, he was making tea the entire time. Teas like I had never, ever tried before—wonderful buttercream oolongs and chocolatey roasted tieguanyins, Cypress smoked black tea like a campfire jujube and endlessly complex Sichuan greens, all of it served in a procession of simple, stunning, utterly pleasurable teawares. Peter was serving me his own personal take on gong fu cha as I interviewed him, and honestly, it changed my life.
I left high. Floating. Tea drunk, tea stoned, whatever you want to call it. (Although if we really want to get into what psychotropic most mimicked by a sizable consumption of tea, I think it’s closest to a gentle microdose of psilocybin.) Blowing like a feather in the wind around Pacific Heights, with a laptop full of notes and no particular place to head next, clutching my backpack now full of teas for steeping back home.
And steep back home I did—pot after pot, with a strict 10:00pm cutoff so as not to mess with my sleep schedule, chasing the sensory memory of that incredible experience in San Francisco. I love a rabbit hole, a new world to explore, and tea—like coffee, and like natural wine—offered a vast and never-ending beverage culture to soak up like a sponge.
Tea quickly became a daily part of my creative and personal life. I found myself writing better, or at least writing more voluminously (which I know should not be mistaken for “better” but often feels like it) while consuming an ever-growing raft of teas. I started exploring different brands, seeking out interesting tea accounts on Instagram, pouring through websites big and small, from tea purveyors based in China to tea purveyors based a few blocks from my house. I started collecting teawares, began following talented ceramicists from around the world, and started—slowly at first—to begin making tea for others, as a form of expression for this new passion.
I also began traveling with tea in mind, seeking out tea experiences in different parts of the country and digging out time for tea alongside Sprudge’s busy travel schedule. An hour here, an hour there, ducking out of a festival on my lunch break or landing with an extra day to explore tea shops across a city. Along this path I started talking with the people who run these tea shops and bars, asking them about their own journeys with tea, their own perspectives on the drink and the multitudes it contains.
And through it all, I learned a couple of surprising things.
First, tea people are by and large kind to each other. I learned this first by haunting the Instagrams and Reddit forums for tea drinkers, and by taking on some local tea writing for the alt-weekly here in Portland, which got me into more and more local tea bars, begetting more and more happy, sunshiney, tea-stoned conversations. On the internet, and IRL, tea conversations appear at least to this outsider to be mostly full of positivity and kindness. It’s one of the nicest Reddits, which is really saying something, and on Instagram you have to look hard to find tea people being shitty to each other. I can assure you this is not always the case in coffee, and it is really not the case in wine.
Tea scoop and rest inside Floating Mountain. Photo by the author.
The notion of tea’s inherent kindness landed while I was sitting in a tea bar on New York’s Upper West Side called Floating Mountain, whose owner, Lina Medvedeva, escaped the world of Manhattan finance to open a serene, meditative, beautiful little second floor tea bar and gallery above W 72nd Street. Over a single pot of Phoenix Dan Cong (I can still taste its warm red comforting flavors now, months later writing this) we talked about her past life, her upbringing in Russia’s far east, near Vladivostok (“We grew up drinking tea like water”), and how Floating Mountain came to be. It was once a tailor shop, and today is imbued with the most glorious Manhattan light, streaming in through floor to ceiling windows, like an oasis of energy and calm in the middle of the city, just blocks from The Dakota and Central Park.
Lina’s gong fu cha is minimalist, with everything just so—nothing extravagant, nothing loud. A tea scoop from the Czech Republic, made from vitrified bogwood. A simple porcelain gaiwan. A glass water kettle. An hour became two, and I was then hopelessly late for my next appointment, but I remember asking: “Is it just me, or do tea people seem rather content? Like as a culture, it seems to be a pretty positive place…do you agree?”
“You can never know the inside of another mind,” she replied, “but the tea speaks. There isn’t much left to say.”
The house of Liquid Proust. Photo by the author.
A few weeks and a thousand miles later I sat for another tea experience, where I learned a lesson on tea’s power to transform our very souls. This time it was inside an unassuming house, on a nondescript street amongst a row of clapboard little boxes in suburban Columbus, Ohio. This is the home of Andrew Richardson, who goes by Liquid Proust on Instagram and runs a fast-growing digital tea company of the same name. His focus is on rare and aged teas, typically from Yunnan but also some truly remarkable oolongs from Taiwan and eastern China. His entire business and network of tea community happens online, and walking up to the house, you would never in a million years guess that inside it dwells one of the foremost young American collectors and distributors of vintage single-origin tea.
Nearly every surface inside of Andrew’s house is covered in tea: tuongs, satchels, bags, parcels, caddies, ceramic resting jars, wooden commemorative chests, boxes and boxes and boxes with China Post shipping labels affixed (oh, what the mailman must think!) and enough shipping material to ensure safe passage between here and Mars and back, Express Class. There is more tea in this house than one person could drink in a thousand lifetimes, though I suspect Liquid Proust would die happy trying. In his cluttered office (tea, tea everywhere) across an industrial minimalist metal tea table, Andrew brewed me a procession of increasingly rare and fine teas, and talked to me at length about his growing business.
Liquid Proust began as a side hustle from Andrew’s full-time job, which is as a business advisor and student in a corporate MBA program. He fell down a particular sub-section of the tea rabbit hole, chatting with tea purveyors in China and Taiwan and Malaysia using auto translate programs, assuming financial risk by purchasing lots–large and small–of vintage tea, and documenting all of it on Instagram. Today his website is an ever-changing array of tea offerings, collaborative buys and special lots, handpacked from his home in Ohio.
Tea has been a transformative force in Andrew’s life. “Tea has taught me to be accepting,” he told me. “I grew up in a very conservative religious family, and without tea, I think I be like… somebody totally different. A Christian conservative Trump supporter, most likely.” He grew up drinking Bewley’s tea bags with his family, he tells me sheepishly, and I can relate. As tea gained more and more prominence in his life, the old vestiges and relationships of his past life fell away. He fell into a new world of tea drinkers and tea lovers—diverse, international, accepting, kind. His doors are always open to fellow tea heads on the same journey.
“People come to this house from around the world,” he tells me, as we look over jar after jar, bag after bag, an entire living room given over to boxes to ship, every square inch of kitchen counter overflowing with tea from his remarkable collection. “We just start laughing together, and talking. It’s almost like drinking beer—if you drink enough tea you get silly after a while, and then you get to really hear about people’s lives, their views on religion and love, and who they truly are. I would have never had this conversation before—I would have never known you.”
Too soon I was back outside in the Ohio chill, waiting for a Lyft to take me back into the city, my bag and mind and heart crammed full to bursting with tea. I started crying in the back of the car.
As a Western tea drinker, tea doesn’t need me. Not economically, not culturally, and certainly not spiritually. Indeed, there is something almost comically absurd about obsessing over tea here in America, thousands of miles from where it’s cultivated and revered, separated by a vast ocean both literal and cultural, although I’d like to think it’s kind of modern and cool too—bridging language and culture gaps digitally over a shared love for something truly good. But the economy and language of tea is quite happily percolating along in the countries where tea is produced, a brisk market of sales and consumption and obsession. Tea is not, like coffee, primarily an export crop. It’s more like wine—the cultures that grow it most revere it, and typically keep all the good shit close to home. Indeed, as I understand it is only relatively recently that truly great teas from China and Taiwan have even been available for mass consumption in the United States. General access to premiere quality tea in America is a fairly new thing informed by the opening up of China’s flexible take on communism vis-a-vis small business growth, the linking of our world through the towering modern marvels of online shopping, international shipping (thanks China Post!) and global free trade.
Tea prices, trade wars, globalism: all of this is made possible by international commerce and the free movement of goods and services and ideas through international markets. Like coffee, tea is an unexpectedly and explicitly political product to consume in the best of times. And today? When these trade freedoms are imperiled by tariffs and racism and shudderingly incompetent political leadership? Drinking good tea in America right now is a profoundly political act, more so than at any time since the American revolution.
Tea doesn’t need the West but I think we need it. I think we could all stand to sit with this stuff as a regular part of our lives; not to replace coffee in the mornings, or instead of wine at night, but as a bridge and a complementary force alongside the other drinks we already love. Tea is a vast, bottomless, endlessly complex world of styles, producers, history, modern expression, accoutrement and idiosyncrasy. It is a lifetime—indeed, many happy lifetimes—of culinary inquiry. Drinking good tea can make your life better. Drinking good tea has definitely made my life better, made me a happier person and a more creative thinker, a better friend and colleague and partner. It has comforted me in times of sadness and tragedy, and I have celebrated good news with it, and it has been there for me as alacrity fuel of the highest order on plain old boring work nights.
I strongly recommend drinking a lot of good tea to anyone who wants to better know their own mind. Bathe your brain in theanine any possible chance you get. Think of it almost as like a performance-enhancing drug for your life.
I will end this essay by telling you a secret. I’m “the guy from Sprudge” which means that every so often at an event (be it family or promotional) someone expects me to make coffee. And I can do it serviceably well enough. I’m okay at it, but I don’t think I’m particularly great at it, or that I approach it with the easy confidence and muscle memory of a champion barista or anything. My coffee brewing prowess is nothing special, and I always kind of dread being asked, because it comes with a lot of expectations that frankly I’ve done nothing to deserve beyond stringing lots of flowery words together.
But I love making tea. Adore it, really. I love making it for myself, for my friends and family, for guests at our Sprudge offices in Portland, at parties or brunches or pretty much wherever. I love (and I mean love) the ceramics; I love the tactile change from dry to porous; I love the flavor variation across a long session; I love the steeping rhythm; I love the intimacy it creates, the way you really get to know someone somewhere between the fourth and seventh cup. Some of the very best conversations of my life have taken place over the last two years, with friends new and old, across a gaiwan.
My dream is that someday I will be able to give my own personal expression of gong fu cha to someone else and change their life, too, by opening their eyes and mind up to what tea can be, just as Peter Luong and Lina Medvedeva and Liquid Proust have done for me.
It’s the least I can do.
Jordan Michelman (@suitcasewine) is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.
Editor: Liz Clayton.
All photos by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace) unless otherwise noted. The top image for this feature depicts a ceramic teascoop “chahe” from Russian ceramicist Anton Filonov, distributed in the United States by Liquid Proust.
Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.
The post Everything You Know About Tea Is Wrong appeared first on Sprudge.
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Dodge Demon Unboxing: A First-Hand Customer Experience
In the music world, Kenny Wayne Shepherd is known as one of the most dynamic recording and performance artists in the blues rock arena. You’ve likely heard his music (even if you can’t place the name), and you may even count yourself as a fan. What you may not know is that Shepherd is also a bona fide gearhead and a hardcore Mopar nut who spends all his free waking hours (when not performing!) working on and driving his Dodge and Plymouth machinery. We were lucky to tag along with Shepherd as he navigated the special-order procedure and took delivery of his personalized 2018 Dodge Demon. What follows is his account of that very special experience—a process that was the clever vision of Dodge’s Tim Kuniskis (previously president and CEO of the Dodge and SRT brands), and which has had the very intended effect of creating a legion of dedicated über fanatics. Down the line, we hope to bring you more from Kenny as he gears up to hit the drag strip later this year! – Johnny Hunkins
Three hundred and eighty days. That’s how long the journey was from the first viral video of the Dodge Demon to having one in my garage. It’s been a fascinating experience and the wait has been more than worth it. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the highlights of the new Dodge Demon: 840 HP, the quickest production car ever made, 0-60 in 2.3 seconds, a quarter-mile of 9.65, and banned by the NHRA.
Over a year after jumping in line for a 2018 Dodge Demon, it arrived at Dependable Dodge on a Reliable Carrier truck. The dealership thoughtfully stored it in the showroom for two days before we could pick it up.
After watching every video Dodge spoon fed us leading up to the unveiling of the Demon at the 2017 New York International Auto Show, I became more convinced this car was for me. The day after the debut, I secured an allocation for an SRT Demon—number “18” in the sequence, and significant for denoting the 2018 model year. When order banks opened on June 21, 2017, many placed their orders at that very moment, hoping that being an early submitter would help them be one of the first to take delivery, but that’s not exactly how the process works. The build sequence considers many factors when deciding which Demons get built in what order. I don’t claim to know the secrets of how that all works out, so my resolve was to be as patient as possible and my car would get here when it gets here.
Passenger-side ac vent is serialized and matches the VIN as car number “18.” The number is significant as the model year is 2018. Once the “Demon crate” arrives, the surround will be replaced with the updated one with Kenny’s name.
Once I was 100-percent sure of the options, I formally placed the order on what would be Demon number 18:
White Knuckle paint: Some will slam me for not choosing a high-impact color for a car like this. One of my best friends was dogging me as soon as he found out I was considering it. I love a Challenger in white. It reminds me of the movie Vanishing Point. I’ve had a couple of black Challengers and the struggle to keep them clean is real. Half of my driveway is dirt and gravel, so just imagine what that’s like if you keep your car clean like I do. White just looks cleaner longer. All the available colors look great on the Demon, but my short list was White Knuckle, Octane Red, F8 Green, and B5 Blue. White won out for both looks and practicality.
Comfort Audio group ($2,495): This includes the passenger seat, adds leather instead of the base cloth material, an 18-speaker Harmon Kardon stereo system (as opposed to the standard two-speaker system), heated and cooled front seats, heated steering wheel, power tilt column, floor mats, and bright pedals.
Rear seat ($1): This is the practical thing to do since one can always remove the passenger and rear seats, but buying them after the fact would most certainly cost more than a dollar.
Demonic Red Laguna Leather interior ($295): This provides a rich two-toned red and black interior that gives the car a splash of color, which looks perfect.
Power Sunroof: Some refer to it as the “golden sunroof.” Dodge priced it at $4,995 to discourage people from buying it. All my previous Challengers had sunroofs and I used them frequently on nice days. That extra 35 pounds isn’t going to slow the car down enough for anyone to notice.
Trunk carpet ($1): This can easily be removed in a matter of moments. Why wouldn’t you get it for a buck?
Demon Storage Package: Includes a custom Demon car cover and Mopar-branded battery tender for $495.
Mopar-branded battery tender was part of the Demon Storage Package, which also included a custom Demon car cover.
The only three options I didn’t opt for were the Satin Black hood ($1,995), full graphics package ($3,495), and the engine block heater ($95). Once I placed my order, the real waiting began. I passed the next few months by joining www.hellcat.org, which has a Demon section full of other soon-to-be Demon owners sharing excitement, knowledge about the car, order details, and the constant refreshing of the Demon Concierge page to get updates on production status—which is a whole lingo unto itself. There’s even an anonymous insider who gave everyone loads more detailed information as the factory got things moving. As production slowly ramped up, we all watched a saga unfold via the forum.
Only time will tell what all these scribbles and initials mean on the Demon’s UPC-code windshield sticker, but we’re documenting this one for posterity.
There were lots of people who wanted their cars yesterday and seemed to have little patience for the process. Many compared notes as to what date and exactly what time their orders were placed to try and make sense of why someone else’s car is moving along the queue before theirs. Once the cars are built, they have to go to an up-fitter for the 18×11 wheels (with drag radials) to be installed. The wheels and tires are too big for the factory assembly line to accommodate. Also, if you choose the full graphics package (satin black hood, roof, and trunk lid) an up-fitter does that paint work as well. At some point there’s a secondary QC inspection that takes place and the car is cleared for shipment. Reliable Carriers then has to schedule an empty truck to come pick up five or six Demons at a time that are being delivered along a route that makes logistical sense.
Kenny points out this clear blue plastic protective sheet placed over the Demon’s supercharger, presumably to protect the engine while it was being installed at the factory. It was tagged with a white marker: “30 OKF.”
There are many steps in the process of making a Demon that are new to the SRT program. Tim Kuniskis (now head of Maserati and Alfa Romeo) stated that production would be a slow ramp-up, most likely to ensure they figure out the best way to get these cars built right and to a high standard. Finally, on Halloween of 2017, we caught wind that the first truckload of Demons was making its way down the road when tragedy struck. Three of the cars caught fire and were reported a total loss.
We don’t have an exact report as to the cause, but it’s been clearly stated that the cars were not the culprit. An unfortunate event? Yes, but in my opinion this only adds to the mystique and urban legend for what could be a once-in-a-lifetime vehicle. (Demons experiencing spontaneous combustion on Halloween?! You just can’t make that up.) Day after day, it was exciting watching the reports of VONs (vehicle order numbers) being turned into VINs as the cars rolled through various stages of production.
All Dodge Demons arrive at dealerships in enclosed Reliable Carrier trucks. This paper floor mat was left by the Reliable crew to safeguard the carpet while being moved.
It turns out there’s a whole new alphabet of secret code to decipher. If you want to know what’s happening to your Demon build, you can translate the order status code into real information. Here’s a list of those posted on the Hellcat.org message forum:
Demon Order Status Codes
BA new order that hasn’t been checked BB review by fleet department BD special equipment processing BE edit error BG passed edit n/a for schedule BGL edit ok, parts unavailable BX passed edit, available for schedule C sub firm, tentative schedule D firm schedule, dealer has allocation and all parts available D1 gateline schedule, scheduled to be built E frame F paint G trim I built not ok’d J built ok’d JB shipped to upfit center (for stripe) JE emission check JS shipped to storage KZ released by plant, invoiced KZL released, not shipped KZM first rail departure KZN first rail arrival KZO delayed/received KZOA plant holds KZOB zone/distribution holds KZOC carrier delays KZOD carrier holds KZOE mis-shipped vehicle KZOF show/test vehicle KZOG damaged vehicle KZOH all other reasons KZT second rail departure KZU second rail arrival KZX delivered to dealer ZA canceled
As the weeks went by, we saw production begin to ramp up, just as Tim K said it would. Once the factory really got into their groove, my car hit the queue. The condensed timeline of events for my car unfolded like this:
August 12, 2017 order submitted October 26, 2017 VIN assigned December 6, 2017 car enters the build process December 11, 2017 detailed inspection January 25, 2018 Demon arrives at the dealership via enclosed carrier January 27, 2018 I take delivery
Once the car hit the line, it didn’t take long for it to be built. Considering it had to go to the up-fitter for wheel installation, it needed to be inspected, it had been stored for shipment, and the plant was closed from December 23 to January 15 for holidays and an inventory adjustment, it was built and delivered in a reasonable amount of time, especially for the quality of the product.
A technician at Dependable Dodge in Canoga Park, CA performs the pre-delivery check while we look on. We asked the dealership to wait on this until we could be there, and they happily obliged us.
Having waited for this moment just over a year, we wanted to document every detail of the car in its as-delivered condition. I asked the dealer not to do any prep work and keep the car “as is” so we could see the little details of what a car looks like fresh off the truck. There were a number of interesting little signatures, decals, and protective plastics on various parts of the car that we documented and saved. Aware of the new secondary QC inspection process Dodge was implementing, I crawled over the car searching for a flaw and couldn’t find one. I’m impressed, and would say the hard-working people at the Brampton assembly plant should be proud of the product they’re turning out.
What will certainly be a sought-after piece years down the road is this protective yellow spoiler guard. It’s different than the Hellcat’s protective corner pieces (which are already collectibles). It’s used only during shipping, but it’s actually pretty attractive.
Ordering a Demon has been an unforgettable experience. The passion and talent that come together to make a car like this could be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Thanks to everyone at Dodge who made this car a reality for all of us enthusiasts. Now another wait begins for me: the Demon Performance Crate. It’s time to go drag racing!
Standard Demon trunk goodies include floor mats, license plate bracket (we’ll bet these never get used!), and a pair of Demon supplemental booklets.
Besides the standard stuff, Kenny got the Demon Storage Package (car cover and battery tender) which are the two white boxes. The brown box is the pedal kit, which is a customer-installed item.
The happy new owner sits behind the wheel of his new Dodge Demon for the first time. Note the “caution” hang tag warning delivery personnel of the scraping hazard from the front spoiler.
Ahh! That new-Demon interior smell will be long remembered.
The Dodge Demon pedal kit is an owner-installed item, and strangely does not come with parking brake and dead-pedal covers as similar aftermarket kits do.
Demon pre-delivery inspection at Dependable Dodge’s service department, Canoga Park, CA
Heat-shrink wrapped Dodge Demon owner’s manual supplement.
Dodge Demon number 18 awaits its new owner in Dependable Dodge’s showroom.
Hieroglyphics on the plastic sheet protecting the Demon’s supercharger read “30 OKF.”
Part of the Demon Storage Package is this boxed car cover, labeled as Mopar part number 82215727.
Also located in the trunk was the 2018 Dodge Demon Driver Supplement booklet.
Dodge Demon fender flares house extra-wide 315/40R18 NT05R Nitto Drag Radials. Kenny says those will be replaced for street driving by a set of 20-inch Widebody Hellcat wheels and tires for better tread life.
Window sticker claims 22 mpg on the highway. Who has that kind of self control? According to the graph on the window sticker, the Demon does NOT have the worst fuel economy in its class.
This box in the trunk contained the stainless steel accelerator and brake pedal covers, and was labeled with part number 05181565AB. They appear to have been sourced from Sequoia Tool in Clinton Township, MI.
This pick ticket was found in the trunk, and is a list of items to put in the Demon’s trunk prior to leaving the Brampton, Ontario assembly plant.
The post Dodge Demon Unboxing: A First-Hand Customer Experience appeared first on Hot Rod Network.
from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/dodge-demon-unboxing-first-hand-customer-experience/ via IFTTT
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Hello friends and fans!
Welcome to my 5th newsletter: May 2017!
Coming up in this edition of Another Round @ The Crow Bar, some regular updates, “Trumpocalypse“, a look at my latest release “Panic! Horror In Space #1” and a monthly spotlight on one of my books, this time “Demonspawn“, the much maligned second title in the Galaxii Series! I say ‘maligned’ because in the past few months I have had some drama with trolls on social media who (while clearly never having read the book) have been attacking me and labeling me using some pretty spurious labels, among others that I am ‘recruiting’ people into the ‘gay lifestyle’ and even that my books turn people transgender – and (according to some ‘experts’ in Texas and South Africa – self-styled of course) that this book in particular encourages devil worship! As I said, it is pretty clear from their comments that they have never read this book, since the title “Demonspawn” refers to the nemesis of the characters in the story – which is a sci-fi horror tale, and which has ZERO to do with anything occult! That rather strange episode aside, let’s look at the news for April-May 2017!
New Releases
There were no more new releases during April 2017, but my latest two titles “Panic! Horror In Space #1” and “Prodigal Sun” are still on my “Just Released” list on the Shop page of my website.
The first episode in my new sci-fi horror series called “Panic! Horror In Space” was released on Thursday 6 April! This ongoing series will tell the tale of the starship Mercury, which is perhaps the unluckiest Terran starship in history!
“Panic! Horror In Space #1” is already distributed via various channels in paperback and ebook formats. The funny thing is, I only started working on this story at the beginning of 2017, and I’m already well into the draft of the sequel “Panic! Horror In Space #2”, so stay tuned for news on that title. “Panic! Horror In Space” is a series of science-fiction-horror stories in the same setting featuring some of the same characters. The concept was to create a horror-scifi story in a series of short fiction installments.
While on an otherwise routine deep-space mission to chart new territory on the frontier of unknown space, the Pioneer Fleet starship Mercury is probably the unluckiest ship in history. Not once, not twice, but many times over, the same hapless crew – give or take a few dozen casualties – on a supposed voyage of deep space exploration, stumble into the weird, wake the creepy and trip over the downright terrifying and possibly even supernatural…
“Mercury Rising” and “Mercury Resurgent” appear in the first installment (#1), where the reader is introduced to main characters Stuart Flane and Vic Chapman, and some of the crew of the ill-fated starship Mercury. More stories are to follow in subsequent installments (#2 is due to be released by end 2017 or during 2018). But knowing me, it could be sooner. Or later. I’ll let you know.
Still under new releases, “Prodigal Sun” book 5 in The Quantum Series was released in early March and is available on Lulu, Amazon, Goodreads, Kobo (prices in ZAR ), Lybrary, iTunes, Nook, eBookMall and Indigo – and in fact everywhere you can find all my books!
Prices are very reasonable, especially for ebook versions, and even if you live in good old “Souf Efrika” and pay in good old “Ronts”! Even while it has been relegated to ‘junk status’, the prices are still affordable, especially the ebooks!
“High Steaks“, the next book (number 6) in the series, is due to be released in June 2017. In the meantime, if you want to know more about the story being told in “Prodigal Sun“, you can find more info here: NEW RELEASE: “Prodigal Sun” and What Readers Can Expect In “Prodigal Sun”, “High Steaks” & “The Last Hurrah”.
For those of you who are following this series and who enjoy the characters and this particular story line, there may be a surprise coming! This may involve the addition of an extra title between “High Steaks” and “The Last Hurrah“… but don’t quote me on that just yet 😉 This extra title might be called something like “Fortitude”, but don’t pass that around yet either. Sssh it’s a secret! 😉
The Galaxii Series
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Print copies of all three Galaxii titles already published are now available alongside the ebook versions on various distribution platforms. Previously print copies were only available through Lulu.
The Quantum Series
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Print copies of all five Quantum titles already published are now available alongside the Kindle versions on various distribution platforms. Previously print copies were only available through Lulu.
Panic! Horror In Space
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Print copies of the first title already published are now available alongside the ebook version on various distribution platforms. Previously print copies were only available through Lulu.
As of the 1st of May I completed the first story for the second volume of Panic!, “Dead Center“, and have already started on the next story for the same volume, “Through A Dark Glassy“. I’m really enjoying this new series, and I must say as a fan of paranormal investigator TV shows, I especially enjoyed writing “Dead Center”!
Short Fiction
Progress on other short fiction, especially the shorts due for “Space Really Sucks!” is still ongoing. I can’t say I’m not disappointed that “Code Red” received a rejection letter for an anthology I subbed it to last week – that kind of thing still happens even if you are a published writer. I guess it just wasn’t funny enough for the editor! It’s simply not possible to cater to everybody’s tastes, and after all, editors are still only human… well, most of them are anyway!
Poetry
The poem I submitted to “Trumpocalypse” (Horrified Press), “State Capture“, has already received some very welcome free publicity from several notable sources, including President Tweety his self!
Another more notable media personality, Sean Hannity, appears to have picked up on this too! 😉
You can also find the ebook version here.
Non-Fiction
Nothing to report in this section this time!
Collaborations
Nothing to report in this section this time!
Translations
Nothing new to report in this section for now. Several translations into Afrikaans are currently available for free on the shop site’s Afrikaans page.
Editing
Both “Vampyre Bytes – voices from the South African Vampyre Community”, which I have edited for LightBearer Publishing, and “Embracing Justice” (Riot Pink) appear to have stalled on account of slow submissions and are still open. Please mail me your entries/submissions at [email protected] .
Competitions
There are no competitions currently running.
On A Personal Note
My fiancee’ and PA Wendy K. Gloss, who also handles the majority of my marketing through DarkLady Marketing, has been a tremendous inspiration and help to me!
On the side however, sometimes I manage to do something right on my own (haha). This last month saw the opening of my Facebook shop function on my Page, where I am now able to advertise each individual title as ebook or paperback with a purchase link to Lulu.
Fan Mail & Honorable Mentions
Noticed in the past month by my long-suffering PA Wendy K. Gloss, were the following honorable mentions:
Wikia seems to have a page listing my bibliography, which is missing one or two of the latest items and has a few minor inaccuracies. Nice work though!
My good friend Alex S. Johnson named a starship in his story “Planet of the Volcano Spiders” after me – the U.S.S. Engela!
Hate Mail
April was an active month! It seems a certain hysterical hate church in the USA’s “bible belt” thinks I am turning people into “demon possessed homosexualist transgender freaks“, at least according to the photos I was sent by a facebook friend, which seem to show pages from a church newsletter from February. I think I’ll print them out and frame them!
Also, due to a post I made on Facebook about a South African homophobic hate preacher, I’ve endured about two weeks of trolling from literally a few hundred of his fans and supporters – some of whom were thoughtful enough to send me threatening emails. The ironic thing is, I never once mentioned the religion of the ‘preacher’ in my post, but simply pointed out the gullibility of so many swarming to one of his gatherings to be encouraged to treat women and LGBT people like lesser beings – and paying for the privilege. This resulted in flocks of ‘Buchanites’ descending on my post in droves! Aside from the swearing and threatening (and positively creepy) “I’ll pray for you“‘s, several calls were made to encourage people to not buy or read my books, with one even calling for a book burning! By all means, if you feel the need to burn my books to prove to yourself what a solid supporter of that preacher you are, go right ahead! 😉
Having been a human rights activist for quite a while, I’m used to pissing people off occasionally, but as long as it’s the right (or right wing) people that get pissed off, that’s fine by me. After all, as a friend of mine once advised me, “it is far better to be pissed off than to be pissed on” and these are words I live by! Many disproportionately angry Angus Buchan groupies made concerted personal attacks thinking – well, who knows what actually goes on in some people’s heads? But I think the intent was to hurt my widdle fee fee’s or something! 😛 A barrage of “fuck you“‘s and “stupid bitch“‘s from a horde of trolls attacking me for daring to criticize a local South African hate-preacher on facebook while simultaneously claiming to be “Christians” and therefore “better” than I, only proved me right in the first place, while being highly amusing to me in the second! The one true Levitican who said he wishes for my fiancee’ and I to be attacked and brutally raped to “teach us a lesson” reminded me exactly of why I became an activist in the first place. One even alleged – much to my amusement, that “Christina Engela probably doesn’t even exist ! This is how Satan works !” Well there you have it, folks – mystery solved! 😛
Others left me a whole plethora of comments and private messages containing the usual unimaginative transphobic comments about my gender and being in a relationship with another woman intended to hurt – but which were no more than impotent hot air to put it best.
Coinciding almost exactly with the above tea-cup-sized storm, it seems my old Capetonian ‘fan’ Becca made and distributed another meme-type poster warning people that my children’s book about bullying is ‘child abuse’ because it ‘teaches kids it is okay to be deviant and gay and to stop trying to help other kids to not become gay & compares helping kids to not adopt the sinful lifestyle to ‘bullyiing’!!!” At least it looks a lot like her previous attempt. This time round there were fewer grammatical errors, although just as many exclamation marks!
Thanks for the free publicity, folks! Please keep it up! 🙂
Reviews & Interviews
Nothing new during this past month! If you would like to do an interview with me about my works, please do get in touch!
New Videos
No new videos for this month.
New Listings
All my books now seem to be listed just about everywhere – except for the ones I haven’t published yet! As of this month, new listings include Foyles Bookshop chain (UK), Book Depository and 24 Symbols, who now also stock my books.
Monthly Book Spotlight [Spoiler Alert]: Galaxii Series 02 – “DEMONSPAWN”
The second title in the Galaxii Series, “Demonspawn” centers on a star ship crew in a seemingly hopeless situation. Adrift and stranded in deep space with no hope of rescue, the I.S.S. Mordrake has six month’s worth of food on board, but less than two weeks of air, and things look pretty grim. Morale, although low before the incident that resulted in their present predicament, is at an all-time low.
The I.S.S. Mordrake
The ship is not the only thing breaking down however, and pretty soon Commander Joe Lofflin – who has perpetually faced a degree of scorn from his crew because of his sexual orientation and faces a daily struggle to control his romantic attraction to a junior crewman almost half his age – takes on the roll of acting-Captain after the untimely death of Captain Blaine, and must deal with solving a murder on top of everything else! As if there is not enough on his plate already, just as things are looking hopeless beyond the pale, something dark and mysterious drifts into their path! An ancient derelict ship of alien origins presents an all-too convenient and timely solution to their problem, offering the desperate castaways the spare parts they need to repair their ship.
The alien derelict ship that ‘just coincidentally’ drifts into the path of the stranded and desperate Terran starship Mordrake.
In the midst of conducting an investigation into the murder of Captain Blaine, in an atmosphere where nobody is above suspicion and each senior officer has reason to suspect every other senior officer, the survivors of the Mordrake actually do find usable parts on board the derelict. In a difficult to reach part of the long dead alien ship – with the only way in or out littered with the dry and dusty remains of the long-dead alien crew – lies the answer to their problem. And much more than they expected. Just when things start to look hopeful again, one by one, the salvage team members begin to experience mysterious accidents… Gradually, it becomes apparent that ‘accident’ is not even remotely accurate.
In order for them all to survive, the crew of the Mordrake must work together – even though any one of them could be the cold-blooded killer who murdered the Mordrake’s Captain. The parts required to repair their own vessel must be retrieved by any means necessary – no matter what it was on board the derelict ship that seemed to want to keep them there!
This is a story of survival and the fight to survive. It’s also a tale that encourages people to look at life in perspective. The challenge of coming out or admitting to a love-interest that there is an attraction is compared to the challenge of surviving combat and facing the unknown, alone in the dark.
Replete with dark, deserted and spooky corridors, a few ghosts, aliens and robotics, a horror stalking its victims in the dark, lasers, explosions, dead bodies and a murder mystery thrown in, “Demonspawn” pretty much has it all!
In Closing
I’m curious to see how things have progressed sales-wise in the past month! During April I took out two paid FB ad campaigns which got a lot of hits, so hold thumbs for luck! In the meantime, keep your chins up and keep on keeping on! Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction! Until next time,
Cheers! 🙂
If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website. If you want to know what Christina Engela’s focus group or target market is, please read here. If you would like to read more about Christina’s life and experiences, please go to her Biography and the article “Timeline of Milestones, Awards & Achievements“. To leave her a message, please use the Contact form. Visit her Shop. ‘Add’ Christina Engela on Facebook (Profile). ‘Like’ Christina Engela on Facebook (Page). All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2017.
Another Round @ The Crow Bar #5 – May 2017 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 5th newsletter: May 2017! Coming up in this edition of Another Round @ The Crow Bar, some regular updates, "
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