#terribly pictured but she has a tennis racket

[s4sharkteeth]

SLASHED - day eleven, the hunter

Knows the killer's weakness and the best way to beat them. The Final Girl typically teams up with them to finally nail the killer. Usually, they're considered the other final character to survive.

After Morgan Fyres cracked the mystery on who was THE KILLER, Hayley Rocker was angry, very very angry and was out for blood, her and THE FINAL GIRL Journey Cassidy fought side by side and succeeded in making it out of Mt Komorebi and back home physically but not mentally

[whoiwanttoday]

When I was like 13 years old I went through a bit of an Eric Clapton phase even though my little punk heart felt like I should rage against Classic Rock (and if we are being honest my old punk heart still fucking hates the canonization of anything made between 1967 and 1976) but there was a certain draw to the guitar gods that emerged when Rock was at it's height and I still got to feel very special by digging the deep cuts of you know, super groups like Cream that were big deals at the time but my friends had not heard of so I was special. I really liked the song Anyone For Tennis which was only released for a soundtrack for a forgotten movie and was... well, I was pretty sure it was a sarcastic take down of the upper class or commercialism or something. It was good enough for me to feel like it was pretty biting and I was really onto something special here. There is a magic to Rock music that if you're in the backseat of a station wagon with headphones on it sounds like deep philosophy exposing the way the world really works and your parents are too stupid and lame to get it. Anyway, the song is here if you want to listen and decide if it's a deeply profound work or just a song that was used as the theme for a forgotten biker movie. I bring this up because I am posting Kara Del Toro today and saw some pictures of her on a tennis court with tennis rackets and my first thought was making a joke about, "Anyone for Tennis?" I chuckled until I realized it was a terrible joke. One, cause if you don't know that background then it is sorta meaningless other than an actual statement people say, which is not actually a joke even though unfunny people will often just reference things people say and think you should laugh because they are words that have existed in the past and now they are repeating them. Then I realized even with that background it still isn't actually a joke, I am just referencing a different thing that has nothing to do with this and adds no extra element to make it funny, which is the same as others. I bring all this up because it is all very lame but it's both what I thought of but also it will distract you from when I just admit she's here cause boobs. I think her boobs look great. And that also is a pretty low effort thing but maybe a rambling story about Ginger Baker's band will in contrast make someone go, "Wow, that's a good point about boobs. Boobs are round and nice to look at," and they'll walk away thinking that whoever runs this blog is some sort of devastatingly attractive, erudite genius. Which, besides boobs, is one of the great things in life. Today I want to fuck Kara Del Toro.

[teendollsquad]

*gasps* Is it true? Could it be? Is one of the Dusty’s I bought ~5 years ago finally getting a new body?!

Yes! But it’s not done yet lmao. I’m terrible at keeping a secret and wanted to share! More pics and details below the cut:

So. Dusty! I started admiring her years ago, and eventually happened upon a lot for a good price. She’s generally pretty cheap, I think that’s true because she’s remembered mostly as an oddity *and* her hard plastic body with rubber-y legs tend to melt together over time. Not a pretty sight! But I find her charming, and she’s an important part of doll history.

First things first: I got my torso ready. Dusty’s rubbery legs were removed, and the portion that her legs attached to was trimmed away with a craft knife. It was easy because the hard plastic was soft from the yucky legs.

I then used brute force (not smart!) to crack her torso open. I have two Dusty dolls: an original issue, which has a mechanism for her to “swing” her bat or tennis racket. The other is a mail-in doll with longer hair and no internal arm swinging parts. Her complexion is also different from Dusty Prime, in that it’s a slightly peachier tan than her original body which is tan-brown. So I cracked the peach-tan body apart. Her torso is stamped (not a raised “stamp,” but like an ink stamp) S 800. No idea what it means but fun fact!

These pictures illustrate how I modified the crotch and chest areas of the body, and ended where it is in the 1st picture. I trimmed a lot of the area underneath the chichis (trying not to get found by the bots!) away for a better look and range of motion. The midsection of the Obitsu male body is very thick, and was much too long. So I ended up cutting most of the middle away, and using epoxy to glue the top half (which holds the arm connector pieces) and the bottom half (holds hip/legs) together. They’ll most likely never come apart again but that’s great actually! The openings that hold the pins of the arms have also been trimmed down since this picture was taken, so her arms sit more close to her body than before.

I’ll do another post about dying her limbs and attaching everything, but I wanted to share my progress so far! ���

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Femslash February Day 9

Prompt: Shame Fandom: Avatar Pair: Azula/Suki Summary: Azula gets braces which causes her another struggle with self-image.

“Come on just one tiny little smile?” Suki requests.

Azula’s frown only deepens and she shakes her head. At any rate, her mouth is too sore for a smile.

“Not even a really quick one, like a two second flash?”

“No.” Azula mumbles.

“You’re cranky today.”

She imagines that Suki would be at least a little cranky too if she had her mouth poked and prodded at all morning. She would be even more cranky if she came out of the ordeal looking at least a percentage or so less attractive. She has decided that she won’t be smiling until the braces come off and no amount of coaxing would be changing that.

“Come on, you promised.”

“I did not.”

“You did so.” Suki insists. “You said that if I gave you the rest of my cinnamon sweet rolls that you would show me your braces.”

Azula clears her throat. “Yes, Suki. There is a term for what I did.”

“And what’s that.”

“Lied.”

“Seriously.” Suki crinkles her nose. She elbows Azula in the ribcage, “come on, I want to see them.”

“For what?” She grumbles. Likely so she can decide whether or not it would be worth it to kiss her ever again. Azula wagers that she will decide that it is not worth the risk of possibly cutting her lips on metal bits. Azula has already cut her own tongue on them. It has been only an hour and they have already made her suffer at least a day’s worth of pain.

“You can’t just never smile again.”

“Mai hasn’t smiled once since I’ve met her, it is very possible to never smile again.” Azula assures her. “And this abysmal school will make it very easy to stick to it.”

Suki laughs. “Well, what if, one day, we’re at tennis practice and Katara accidentally hits herself in the face with the racket again?”

“Then she’ll have to get more creative, because it’s only funny the first time.” Azula replies.

“Come on, Azula, I’m sure that they’re cute. TyLee would probably like them.”

“TyLee thinks that everything is cute and you are obligated to say so.”

“Obligated?”

“Because you are my girlfriend. Yue said that, that is one of the rules of a relationship…”

Suki rolls her eyes. “Yue lives in a daydream world and thinks that a relationship has to be all fluffy. That’s why she has a crush on Chan.”

Azula leans up against her locker and looks down the hall. The last buses are pulling out of the parking lot. “We should head to the courts…”

“We should. And we will. After you show me your braces.”

“Suki, they look ridiculous.”

“Wonderful!” She gives a mischievous grin. “They match well with the rest of your face, you like matching stuff.”

Her face flushes and she very nearly swats Suki with her assigned reading novel. Instead she tucks it into her backpack and folds her arms across her chest. She is already something of an awkward loner, the last thing she had needed was this. A mouthful of metal is probably just enough to tip the scales towards the lower end of the social spectrum.

And if she takes a tennis ball to the face it will hurt doubly so when the metal scrapes her lips. If she bites down the wrong way… She won’t even be able to enjoy her mochi. There is a whole list of things that she can’t have anymore. And the likelihood of food getting stuck in them… She bunches her nose in disgust.

She hasn’t even seen Zuzu yet. He is probably itching to make fun of her for her predicament, with or without having seen the braces. Spirits know that he has years of teasing and jesting to get back at her for.

“It’s shameful.”

Suki rolls her eyes. “Drama club is that way.” She thumbs down the hall.

Azula narrows her eyes. “I didn’t want to get them…” but she didn’t want misaligned teeth either… She wishes that she hadn’t been born with such an unfortunate dental situation.

.oOo.

Azula is stubbornly true to her word. Suki hasn’t seen her smile once since getting her braces. Pictures are almost entirely out of the question unless they let her do one of those little close-mouthed half smiles.

All of her attempts to make Azula smile naturally just miss the mark. Or maybe they haven’t missed; she thinks that Azula has spent too much time training herself to laugh in such a refined way as to not show her teeth.

Suki sighs, she is quite certain that she is going to have to find a quiet spot in the bleachers and sit her down for a little talk. The serious, heavy sort that she is no good at. The sort that involves bringing up her girlfriend’s stressfully high standards. She supposes that they have been long overdue for another one of those, she hasn’t been this dissatisfied with herself since leaving her father’s house to live with her mother. It would seem like old habits are never truly shed.

She feels a pair of arms wrap around her torso and lips brush against her ear. “Good morning, Azula.”

“It’s afternoon currently.” Azula corrects. “Here.” She holds out a small box. It smells sugary and sweet and rests warmly in her grasp.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

She tugs on the little ribbon and opens the box to see a lightly iced cinnamon bun with an arrangement of red sprinkles.

“What’s this for?”

Azula shrugs. “Since I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.”

Suki is both touched and saddened. She really hated her braces enough to spend time baking a new cinnamon roll to get out of her deal. “Thanks, Azula.” She bites into the treat. It is absolutely sublime, pleasantly warm and baked to a perfect golden brown. “This tastes amazing.” She smiles. “Did you make it yourself.”

Azula nods. “I had Katara help. But I did most of the work.”

“Well it’s really good. I’ll save the rest for after practice.”

Azula nods again. She is making it terribly difficult to request a difficult talk. For a while she is quiet, drumming her fingers against the lunchroom table. Maybe Suki ought to initiate the conversation now and get it over with.

Suki touches Azula’s cheek, rubbing it tenderly the way the girl likes. She gives her a soft little kiss and pulls back. “I don’t think that it’s shameful.” She starts. “You have braces. There are so many people who need them.”

“Yes, and it’s a shame that I am one of them.” She insists.

“You don’t always have to be perfect.” Suki says for what has to be the thousandth time. “Especially around me. You can just be you.”

“I am fine being me. I would just rather look like me but without braces.”

“And last year you would have just rather looked like you but with longer hair. And the year before that you would have just rather looked like you but with bigger boobs.”

Azula flushes again but Suki pushes on. “There’s always something, Azula.You always want to change something, and you don’t have to…”

“Yes, well this time I was fine with how I looked before…”

Suki quirks a brow. “Azula, you got the braces because you weren’t satisfied before. And you should be because…” she gestures to all of Azula. “Look at you.”

“I would rather look at you.”

“Cute, Azula. Super cheesy, totally a diversion, but cute.”

“I hope that you’re not expecting me to smile now.”

Suki shakes her head. “Not right now, no. But when someone makes you laugh, when you’re happy. When you win tonight’s game.”

.oOo.

She isn’t sure why this is so difficult.The change is so minor and so temporary. And yet she is feeling just as out of sorts and uncomfortable as she had when she’d cut her own hair. She still hasn’t smiled and she is almost sure that it has nothing to do with the people around her. She is decently worried about what they will have to say about her. But she is more worried about what she will say to herself if she looks in the mirror or sees her tainted smile in a photo.

She is tired of feeling this way. She wishes that she could just stop. She feels Suki’s hand cup over hers.

She is lucky that she has the girl, she would surely spiral if she didn’t. With her free hand, she touches her fingers to her lips. She certainly isn’t in the smiling mood. Not until Suki kisses her again, several times, once on the forehead, once on the lips, and once on the nose. She has always been fond of those little nose kisses. Suki knows this and she gives her a second.

She clutches Suki’s hand in her own. The girl had been right; there always is something that she wants to fix about herself. Even if it doesn’t need fixing. Most of the time she doesn’t even fix it, the desire simply passes. Such was the case when she wished that she were taller. And in that instance, she had actually grown quite fond of her small self. It makes her agile and speedy, a real menace on the tennis court. She had eventually grown fond of her shorter hair too, though she much prefers it long. She supposes that just because something isn’t preferable, doesn’t mean that it is horrible or ugly. Her therapist has assured her has much time and time again. She just has to get around to remembering it.

“I guess that you can look at them.” She mutters. She supposes that the only way to get reassurance would be to let at least one person see.

.oOo.

Her smile is more forced than any smile Suki has ever seen, but it is a smile no less. She had expected Azula to pick out the clear brackets. Instead she had chosen alternating golds and blues. For someone who is trying to avoid drawing attention, she has sure picked eye catching colors.

Somehow, Suki can’t picture it any other way. “They match your eyes.”

Azula blinks.

“They suit the rest of your face.” She clarifies. “Honestly, I think that they make you look smarter.”

“They do?”

Suki nods. “You should get Katara to let you try on her glasses! They’re blue so they would look nice too.”

Azula seems to fidget with the buttons on her uniform. “Good luck convincing her to let me, she hasn’t parted with those glasses since she got them.”

“Have you looked at yourself yet?”

Azula shakes her head.

“One step at a time, right?”

“Yes, one step at a time.”

“How about this, I get Katara to let you borrow her glasses, and you look at yourself in the mirror?”

.oOo.

Standing before the mirror, Azula wishes that she hadn’t made the deal. Katara promises that the glasses suit her well. And Suki swears that she looks amazing and sophisticated. When she finally brings herself to open her eyes, everything is a blur.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think that Katara and I don’t have the same prescription.” She takes them off and rubs her eyes.

“We can’t all have 20-20.” Katara rolls her eyes as she puts her glasses back on.

“I figured you’d say that.” Suki holds out her phone.

Azula swallows and takes the device. Her face, as it appears on the screen isn’t exactly unflattering. She supposes that Suki is right, the glasses and braces do add some degree of sophistication. Perhaps if she holds her head a little higher and makes her expression a little bolder she can do herself favors. “I...I don’t hate it.” She stuffs her hands into her pockets.

“That’s a start.” Katara smiles warmly.

“And by the time you finish, you’re going to miss them.”

Azula crinkles her nose. “I will not miss not being able to eat mochi. I certainly won’t miss these poking wires…”

Suki pulls her into a hug and ruffles her hair. “That’s fair. But at least you’ll be more comfortable by the end of it.”

“Define comfortable. There’s nothing comfortable about a mild but constant throbbing.”

.oOo.

Suki rolls her eyes. At least her complaints have shifted from a poor self image to the physical discomforts. She just hopes that Azula knows that she is perfect just as she is. That there is no shame in a perfect collection of imperfections.

She slings her arm over Azula’s shoulders and kisses her cheek. “Let’s get to practice.”

[raincloudinajar]

Unrequested Film Watch: Ashes

Perfect set up with “Based on Actual Events”. Stereotypical awful acting associated with a mockumentary. The story is set up with a family who has moved in with the wife’s mother to take care of her, shown interview style. There’s brief moments of showing daily life outside of the interview. Then Aunt Marion, who lives in Ohio, dies, and the family is told they will be receiving her ashes. Cue stories about creepy Aunt Marion, starts small with forgetting to turn the tv on and pats on the head, then a story of the nephew scaring the piss out of her literally, and then how Marion pulled her own teeth out. But where to put the ashes now that they have them??? 

The wife has a nightmare about her dad, while watching old horror movies, where he had a message for her. She claims that she has these dreams regularly though. But she needs to get rid of the ashes. Family refuses because obviously Aunt Marion knew she’d end up with the family, so they compromise with the attic. Let it begin. 

We’ve got noises in the attic during and old horror movie, we’ve got creepy fog machines, bloody noses (poor grandma) that lead to stroke, disembodied laughter, and this is just the first night. The mom and dad fully believe that it’s creepiness, while the daughters are like nope, just straight skeptics. Daughter A is moving out (because Aunt Marion’s ashes are creepy) and Daughter B is pregnant so let’s just throw in some good family drama! will this help the plot? Probs not.

Night 2 begins. Mom is scared. Daughter A is living with new boyfriend with old horror movies, and fight with boyfriend, who goes from nice to abusive and murdery in about five seconds. Straight up what the fuck? Cut to parents also watching old horror movies getting a text from Daughter A about psycho boyfriend. Dad to the rescue with shitty green lighting. Mom blames Aunt Marion, and now the rest of the family is on board. Daughter B has a miscarriage. 

Day 3... Time to get rid of the ashes, except they drop them and drop the ashes. Mom pulls out excessive hairball after being covered in ash. 

Day 4...Time to Vacuum Aunt Marion and watch more Old Horror movies. What could possibly go wrong. Mom walks in wearing a neck brace after falling. Gotta love the plot device of old horror movies. Semi convinced the mom is crazy at this point. Creepy fast moving camera through the house with disembodied laughter leads to Aunt Marion’s next move. Cue sleep walking and slamming doors. 

Day 5... Let’s make a ouija board... what could possibly go wrong? Shockingly most things go wrong. Mom gets possessed and rips her fingernails off and bites her husband. So even after all of this, mom goes to play by herself.... and you can see Marion standing behind her.  Mom asks for forgiveness and Marion says yes, and then good bye.

Day 6... Daughters are pissed. Time to get rid of the board. And now Marion’s friend shows up unexpectedly. And we find out Marion was into black magic, and her “special friend” had taken a picture of her dead body. Mom has a similar picture of her father...

Night 6.... Ouija board is back. Mom gets possessed and is banging her head against the board. Marion speaks through mom saying that “Am I funny now?” Don’t make fun of your family, folks. More disembodied laughter. Blood everywhere. Special friend commits suicide in the bathroom. 

Day 7..... We’ve got terrible zoom features. The real question is... what’s happening to her brother??? The one who was really a dick to Aunt Marion.

Night 7.... More creepy zooming. More fast camera through the house. More disembodied laughter. More possessions. But this time with murder. Or at least attempted murder.

Day 8... Dad leaves. Understandable. He’s been bitten, and now shot. Time to bring in the paranormal experts. Paranormal experts turn out to be dude bros, who say things like “Royally Sucks”. Used to be in a rock band, almost died, yada yada yada. Cue hypnotism and more possession. Grandma dies... Aunt Marion laughs saying that Grandma deserved it for laughing at Aunt Marion.

Day 9... Again why is brother not being effected??? But let’s try a seance with blood letting. Again... what could go wrong? More possession. More apparitions. More grouchy Aunt Marion bitter about being laughed at and hating mom because her brother didn’t even want a daughter. Break the seance circle. Bleeding from eyes...Paranormal dudes leave

Day 10... Time for brother to come into the picture! yassss you’re gonna die dude.

Night 10.... Mom looking extra possessed screaming “They laughed at me”, brother has been stabbed. Repeatedly. The worst staged scream from daughters holding onto each other. Let’s throw grandma’s ashes at her to get away. And then hide in the bathroom. Not sure how so much blood got on the walls. Possessed mom comes in but leaves girls alone. Bye uncle jay...... Ope no knocked her out instead. Maybe killed her?

Day 11... Yup. Mom’s been cremated. Time to go live with Uncle Jay.  Terrible acting and crying. and interview.

Night 11... You really think it’s over??? You fools!!! Ah yes.... a tennis racket is going to save you... Now Uncle Jay is possess and pours Mom’s ashes over them. But! Dad comes back!!! Cue happiness and now dead uncle jay. Did Dad shoot Jay?

Day 12. Another interview with terrible acting and a box of ashes on the table. End film with a disembodied laugh and dramatic Sarah McLaughlin style song. 

Overall: Grade B. this wasn’t terrible. The acting wasn’t awful the whole way through. It wasn’t really scary, but it wasn’t not scary either. Lots of death. 

[chiseler]

The Briefly and Occasionally Great Del Tenney

He wasn’t as culturally attuned as Roger Corman. He wasn’t as obsessively prolific as Jess Franco. He wasn’t as personally flamboyant as Ed Wood. Still, writer/producer/director Del Tenney is a legend in the annals of low budget horror. That he’s a legend is in itself legendary, given that he’s remembered for only four films, all of which were made during a two year stretch in the early 1960s.  I’m hard-pressed to think of another director with a filmography that brief who earned a legacy like Tenney’s. They weren’t great films, some weren’t even particularly good, but they had a spark to them, and they were undeniably memorable, sometimes for reasons that had nothing to do with the films themselves.

“My friends used to come up to me and ask, ‘How could you do all those terrible films?’’’ Tenney was fond of saying. “And I tell them, ‘I cry all the way to the bank,’”

He was born in Mason City, Iowa, but in the early ‘40s his family moved to Los Angeles. Tenney began studying theater in school, and by age 15 he was already working, both on stage and later as an extra in the likes of The Wild One and Stalag 17. His focus was on theater, though, so in the late ‘50s he moved to New York and found work in summer stock. A number of the young actors he worked with then, like Roy Scheider, Dick Van Patten, and Sylvia Miles, would later appear in Tenney’s films, many making their screen debuts with him.

By the early ‘60s Tenney and his wife, actress Margot Hartman Tenney, had also started directing productions of their own. After a conversation with a friend who was involved in (as it was described in polite company) “the exploitation film business,” Tenney took a job as assistant director on a couple of pictures, including the merely sleazy Satan in High Heels (a nasty little cheapie involving carnival strippers, junkies, robbery, sex, and murder) and nudie cuties like Orgy at Lil’s Place, (which concerned two girls who decide to get into the nude modeling racket). In later years, while Tenney spoke freely about the former, he rarely mentioned the latter. Still, his experience there inspired him to start making films of his own.

While in the theater he preferred to stick with Shakespeare and the classics, when he moved into film it was all about the bottom line. His goal was not to make great art, but to make a few quick bucks, and to do that he knew what audience he had to aim for. He was determined to give them exactly what they wanted.

Seeing potential in a story his wife had told him about a girl she knew in college who was found murdered, in 1962 Tenney sat down and began working on a script he initially called Black Autumn. Later it would be called Violent Midnight. Then shortly before its release the distributor changed the title to Psychomania, thinking it would cash in on Psycho and  pull in the kids.

Financed by his father-in-law and filmed (as all his pictures would be) in Stamford, CT,  Psychomania focused on a string of brutal sex murders in a small college town. The obvious suspect is that eccentric painter with a family history of mental problems who lives all alone out in the boonies and paints nude models who often end up getting stabbed (Lee Philips). The above-mentioned Dick Van Patten and James Farentino co-star as a couple of suspicious detectives, and Sylvia Miles appears, well, doing that great Sylvia Miles thing.

It’s a sharp and surprisingly stylish little b/w suspense thriller clearly influenced not only by Hitchcock in the camera work, but also by film noir and horror films of the ‘30s and ‘40s in its use of deep shadows. The shadowy murder scenes are especially shocking here. But none of that really mattered. The picture guaranteed its drive-in popularity by including plenty of nudity along the way. In fact prior to its release the same distributor who changed the title also insisted on more boobs, so without any tantrums about “integrity” or “artistic vision,”Tenney went back and shot another ten minutes of skin and mild sex and cut it in.

Although  Richard Hilliard receives the on screen credit as director and Tenney’s only credit is as producer, he would later say that  Hilliard  was a friend of his and a theater person who knew nothing about making films or dealing with actors, so he had to step in himself and take over, making this the first picture he wrote, produced, and directed.

The film made a lot of money (given its budget, anyway) but today is the least recognized of his films. That always confused me a little, given that in technical terms alone it’s the best thing he ever did. But I guess that’s not what people are always looking for in low-budget films.

There’s something else going on in Psychomania, though, that I’ve been touting for years even if no one seems to care.  In terms of genre film history, those self-satisfied types who concern themselves with such things comfortably and endlessly cite Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace as the first giallo, the film that launched a thousand copycats made by everyone from Fulci to Argento. The Bava film is the immovable cornerstone. Without taking anything at all away from what is undeniably a great picture, I’d still argue that Tenney beat him to the punch. Psychomania (released on DVD as Violent Midnight) contains everything that would later be cited as fundamental to any giallo picture: a string of sex crimes, an obvious suspect, several other obvious suspects, lots of boobs, savage violence, and a twist ending. But Psychomania was released in early ‘64, roughly  14 months before Bava’s picture. Okay, so maybe it’s not Italian, and maybe it wasn’t based on those tawdry little yellow paperbacks that were so popular at the time, but dammit it’s still a giallo, and it was the first.

I’ll shut up about that now.

After making a film with style, intelligence, and even a little class compared to the usual drive-in fodder, a film whose influence would be felt for the next twenty years (even if no one will admit it), and a film that made him a little money, Tenney took a hard left.

Filmed over two weeks in 1962, Curse of the Living Corpse was a  costume melodrama set in 1892 that’s  reminiscent of those AIP prestige numbers or early Hammer films. When a wealthy, possibly crazy, and just plain mean old man dies, his will stipulates that if the surviving members of his family don’t shape up and fly right, he’s going to rise from the grave and kill them off one by one. Well, they don’t and he does. Or at least it looks like that’s what’s happening.

It’s still a film with style, intelligence, and class, but of a different kind. While Psychomania was intense, sexy, and at times brutal, Curse of the Living Corpse was a very stagebound, theatrical piece, a bit slower, a bit more deliberate. A sitting room murder mystery heavy on the dialogue, punctuated here and there by a thematic murder. Plus most of the  characters are wearing too many layers for things to get terribly sexy.

Curse features Roy Scheider (in his film debut) as one of the profligate heirs in question,  Carnival of Souls’ Candace Hilligoss, and Tenny’s wife Margot Hartman. It’s one of the things that has always made Tenney’s films, cheap, fast, and DIY as they were, stand out. By pulling in friends from the theater, good, professional actors willing to work on a goofy movie for no money, he ended up with performances several cuts above what you’d normally find in something like this.  When none of the actors in a costume drama are, say, chewing gum, it just adds a layer of credibility to the story, no matter how ridiculous that story might be.

The other thing that made Tenney’s first two films stand out was the sharp b/w cinematography. The shadows are so deep here, the contrast so sharp and detailed, the film at times reminds me of those early Bava pictures (to go back there again). Even when the story lags a bit, the atmosphere carries it along. It’s something that can’t often be said about the low-budget pictures of the era.

Well, even as he was still working on Curse of the Living Corpse, pre-production was underway on his next film, The Horror of Party Beach. Shooting began about three days after Curse wrapped. If Tenney took a hard left from Psychomania into Curse, this time he had to jump all the way to the other end of the spectrum.

He admitted he wasn’t sure the genre-mashing satire, the horror musical beach movie, would work, but he charged ahead anyway. What made it work was sticking so tightly to the conventions of both the bug-eyed monster film and the beach blanket movie, while at the same time pointing up the ridiculousness of those conventions. Plus there’s a great fucking soundtrack provided by the Jersey-based surf band The Del-Aires.

In the film’s first five minutes he lays everything out. We meet an assortment of young attractive couples and character types on the beach, each with issues of their own. We meet the potential (human) villains in the form of a local motorcycle gang. And out in Long Island Sound, nuclear waste is being dumped into the water where it settles down on a shipwreck and transforms (with the aid of some neat in-camera trickery) the skeletal remains of lost sailors into an army of fishmen in search of human blood.

After that, well, there you go. The monsters are intentionally silly takeoffs on the usual “man in a rubber suit” creatures (note particularly the eyes and the teeth). But if the monsters are silly, so are the people, and in between  the two Tenney crams in as many drive-in standbys as he can fit: motorcycle chases, baffled scientists, malt shops, some of those crazy teenage dances, doomed drunks, convertibles, incredulous cops,  superstitious black maids who accidentally save the world. And he holds it all together with some editing that’s a bit more clever than you’d expect. The first victim, for instance, dies during a series of cuts between the attacking fishman and The Del-Aires performing the unbelievably catchy “Do the Zombie Stomp” to a bunch of dancing teenagers on the beach. For something this goofy it’s surprisingly disturbing.

(Jokes and surf bands aside, Humanoids From the Deep owes a serious debt of gratitude to Horror of Party Beach).

This and Curse of the Living Corpse were released as a double bill by 20th Century Fox later in ‘64, complete with a gimmick. Would-be audience members were required to sign a release before entering the theater absolving the theater owners of any blame should the viewer die of fright during the screening. It’s unclear if there were any casualties.

The double bill was the last thing to play at the legendary 3,000-seat Paramount Theater in Times Square, and Horror of Party Beach went on to become Tenney’s most successful film.  After that things started to slip.

His next picture, which he completed in ‘64,  was Voodoo Bloodbath, a horror comedy that can trace its roots directly back to Val Lewton’s classic I Walk With a Zombie, but with more bad jokes. William Joyce stars as a bestselling, wisecracking, playboy author of adventure novels. Given that he hasn’t turned anything in to his editor for months, his editor drags him onto a plane and flies him to, yes, Voodoo Island in search of inspiration. See, not only is a famed scientist conducting cancer research there, but the place is supposedly overrun with zombies, too.. It’s a million-selling novel in the waiting. When they arrive they discover three things:

1. The Caribbean island is actually populated by Mexicans for some reason.

2. The scientist has a beautiful blonde virgin daughter.

3. The local natives are preparing for a human sacrifice that night.

None of it bodes well for anyone, though no one realizes this yet.

The humor arises mostly from the editor’s shrill and boorish wife, and the author’s overbearing attempts to pick up any woman he sees (particularly the scientist’s daughter). Neither are terribly funny. The rest of the film is straight-faced and boilerplate, reminiscent of a dozen voodoo pictures from the ‘40s. It’s not very good, either.  Compared with his first two films in particular the production values and direction had gone straight to hell. It’s a clumsy, sloppy picture with very little charm. There’s not even much of a bloodbath. Drumming’s good, though. Up to this point he had worked near miracles with standard storylines and no budgets by bringing in good actors and skilled editors and cameramen. Here he didn’t seem to be trying all that hard. Of all four films, this one really did look and feel like everything else out there.

I wasn’t the only one who thought it could’ve been better. The picture sat on the shelf for nearly seven years until 1971, when low-budget distributor Jerry Gross came nosing around in search of a film to drop in the bottom half of a double bill he had in mind. After a quick and simple title change, the Tenney film was just the ticket he was looking for. As great and fun as those first three films had been, it was Gross who, if accidentally, helped make Tenney a legend.

Today Voodoo Bloodbath is all but completely forgotten. Even under its new title, I Eat Your Skin is less remembered for what it is as a movie than for being half (together with the utterly unrelated I Drink Your Blood)  of one of the most notorious double bills ever released. After seeing them we may not remember anything that happened in either, but we sure do remember those newspaper ads, and sometimes that’s worth a hell of a lot more.

Tenney didn’t talk much about the experience or the film after the fact, but while Voodoo Bloodbath was still sitting on the shelf he  all but completely stepped away from the film business, though he admits he kept the monster suit from Horror of Party Beach and wore it at parties. He and his wife had never strayed from Connecticut, never became part of the hobnobbing Hollywood crowd, so they simply settled down where they were all along, and returned to their first love. They founded what would become a very well respected theater company, putting on three or four productions a year.. Years later when they moved to Florida they opened another. In between Tenney got involved in real estate up and down the East Coast.

Then in the late ‘90s, over thirty years after retiring from motion pictures, he and his wife, together with producer/director Kermit Christman (Wicked Games) , founded DelMar Productions and Tenney began writing, producing and directing again. Between ‘99 and 2003, he made three pictures: Clean and Narrow, about an ex-con trying to go straight in a small town; an I Know What You Did Last Summer knockoff called Wanna Know a Secret?; and a supernatural thriller called Descendant,  in which a would be writer is haunted by the spirit of an ancestor who happens to be Edgar Allan Poe. The last was particularly dear to Tenney, because he’d always loved Poe and wanted to do some kind of movie about him.

Ah, but the movie business was a very different animal by then. It wasn’t merely a matter of borrowing a few bucks from your father-in-law to make a silly monster picture, then hooking up with an independent distributor. Now even making the smallest film meant raising a few million dollars. Worse, the lawyers had gotten involved. And forget about any kind of distribution if you aren’t connected to a major studio. The fun had been sucked out of the game, and this was evident in the films themselves. Sure those films he made in the ‘60s were blatantly, even cynically commercial, but commercial in a ragtag, adventurous, slapdash way.  The new films were commercial, but much more carefully so. They were  slick and serious. If they weren’t slick, audiences wouldn’t look at them, and you had to be serious about the whole process, because there were millions of dollars at stake. Hell, there was even a desperation evident on the screen. While before Tenney had been working with a bunch of young actors on their way up, now he was working with a bunch on their way down (William Katt, Sondra Locke, Wings Hauser), and you can almost hear their nails scratching as they scramble to hold onto anything at all before they vanish completely.

No, it wasn’t much fun,  But those aren’t the films Tenney will be remembered for, and they won’t take anything away from his status among fans. He’ll be remembered for those four pictures from back in ‘64 (even if one wasn’t released until ‘71). They weren’t as good as some, but a lot better than most.  In all four pictures he never once repeated himself. They were all radically different in mood and style and story, and there was a seductive, sloppy magic about them that’s inescapable. No matter how many times I go back to Psychomania/Violent Midnight (and I go back to it a lot) the ending still catches me off guard. After all these years “The Zombie Stomp” still gets stuck in my head.   I even find myself returning to I Eat Your Skin every couple years, not to laugh at it, but just to wonder. I guess that’s why Tenney, on the basis of only those four pictures, can now take his rightful spot among the pantheon of cult directors.

by Jim Knipfel

[hitchcock-eastern-hemisphere]

Tuesday 9.21.21

I feel like it's been a week since I got here. I've walked probably 20 miles in the last three days. Let's see where to start.

Sunday morning I went to Costa's for coffee and breakfast, apparently it's a big coffee chain here. Around lunch time, I went to meet a friend K (I will shorten all names for confidentiality) from my cohort on LSE campus. I'd never been on it before!

We immediately left and walked across the bridge to Southwark (pronounced Suthark, apparently). It was drizzling and everything was pretty grey, it felt pretty enchanting in a dreary London kind of way. The whole south bank of the river around there is super built up, it feels like the Yards or the Wharf in DC near where I'm from.

We eventually ended up at Ristorante Olivelli for lunch, we both really felt like having pasta for some reason. It was a cute restaurant. We meandered around Vauxhall and then crossed the river again toward Pimlico, and we walked by Big Ben (I hope my gold production is now increased by 25% [hah, Civ 5 reference]) and Westminster Abbey. Big Ben was mostly blocked by scaffolding. Eventually, I split off and took the train back up to Tufnell Park. For dinner, I ate granola out of a whisky tumbler with a fork, so that's the type of life I'm pursuing now.

On Monday, I went to meet my friend N from the cohort at LSE campus. He had literally just arrived from NYC, and couldn't check into his hotel until later. We walked around LSE campus a bit more, and both bought some LSE clothing/etc at the school store. It's funny, a lot of the buildings are quite modern, but the way they're all tucked in together, it still feels kind of like a medieval street. Lots of cobblestone-ish roads, no real quad like I'm so used to at UChicago or Columbia (though I only spent a couple months at the latter, and I always found that campus to be not terribly welcoming).

I wanted to go to the bookstore Hatchards in Picadilly, which I thought would be a 15 minute walk. Instead, I dragged my friend on a like 40-minute march (keep in mind, this man just got off a red-eye flight to a country five timezones away from home). We made it, and I bought two books that looked related to my dissertation subject.

We were supposed to do a lot of work on that this summer and I did none, because I needed a five month break from that truly exhausting nine-month slog of virtual class and quarantine isolation. Anyway, we chilled at a Caffe Nero nearby for a while, then I left and bought a tennis racket+balls and a basketball at Lillywhites nearby. Yesterday afternoon, I bought some plants. I'll be filling my apartment with as many as possible while I'm here. Pictures soon.

Yesterday evening, I wanted to try this Ethiopiean restaurant Lalibela on Fortress Rd nearby, but I stood outside for like 20 minutes after their supposed opening time of 6, and they never flipped the closed sign to open. I also realized I was slightly under-dressed wearing only a tank top and shorts. So I walked across the street and ordered from Blue Moon Thai instead. While I was waiting, I went over to Sainsburys to buy a few things, and I think the security guard thought I was a suspicious loiterer because he followed me around most of the time I was in there.

I forget what else I did yesterday, but I went to sleep at 10-ish and actually slept through the whole night!! Which is a big deal, because the first night I woke up at 1 am and fell asleep again like an hour later. And then Monday night I woke up at 2ish and proceeded to text one of my friend, L, until like 3:45 am.

This morning, I walked over to Rustique Cafe, on Fortress Rd right near all the other things on Fortress Rd that I talk about. Inside, they have a bunch of bookshelves and all the books are for sale. And you can walk out the back and sit in a wonderful garden they have.

I also saw a cute cat walking around outside my building.

I got a cappuccino (UK cappuccinos always seem to be like 12-16oz, a traditional capp is supposed to be 8 lmao). Also, it has just become apparent to me that tumblr or Firefox spell-check does not recognize cappuccino as a word. It's 2021, boys.

Today, I might my friend K came up to Tufnell park because she was thinking about trying to get a room in my building. We walked to Workman's Cafe (where I went the first day I was here) and got lunch, which was cute. I like the vibe. When we were paying at the counter, I asked the guy if I could tip them and he stared at me for like 10 seconds. Apparently, tipping isn't really a thing here. Also, I'd been wanting to get a picture of the train tracks from the bridge near my apartment for a few days. Got it today. It makes me think of Persona.

We then walked all the way down Fortress Rd, which eventually becomes Kentish Town Road, to Camden. My best description of Camden is that it's basically like the Greenwich Village of London, with some Times Square elements on a couple blocks. Parts of it were really cool, other parts were cheapo London/Britain knick-knacks shops that looked like they belonged in wherever the equivalent of Midtown NYC is in London. We walked by this cool lock on the way.

We went to an anime store!!! that she found called Japan Craft. Manga shelves took up like half the store, and they had some posters, t-shirts, and figurines as well. And for some reason, some Harry Potter merchandise? Anyway, I didn't buy anything, but that's probably the best manga selection I've ever seen short of Kinokuni-ya in NYC, so I want to go back. And somehow, I forgot to take any pictures.

Afterwards, we walked over to this Italian Cafe to get coffee, and instead got a Rosé (K) and Peroni (me). I also had a Portuguese custard pastry. I'm too tired to remember the name of this cafe, but it was cute. We toured another apartment she's looking at near there, then I walked all the way back up to my apartment.

And immediately got changed and got on the tube back down south to LSE campus again, to meet my friend C who flew in yesterday! After a brief tour of LSE campus, I led her too on a long and partly unguided walk through Picadilly and Soho, and we eventually landed at Kissaten bubble tea shop right near Chinatown. I definitely got us lost because I wasn't looking at the map, which she was not thrilled about lol. The bubble tea was good and there were so many super flashily dressed people there. But they only had caffeinated options which is why I'm now up at 12:40 writing this, oops.

We also walked by a pub called Duke of Argyll, which is where the Scottish part of my family is from.

Afterward, we walked through Chinatown, which was absolutely enchanting. My friend C is from Shanghai, and I really like food from places all over China, so we were both excited.

We ended up sitting outside at See Woo, a dim-sum restaurant that had mapo tofu, which I name as my favorite food in the world. That's also one of the first things she and I ever talked about when we were becoming friends. We both want to learn Cantonese and she suggested we take it together.

I took the train up and got home a bit after 9. I continued my multiplayer Terraria game with my stepbrother H for a couple hours, and now I'm here. And I think I might finally be ready to go to sleep.

[sambart93]

2017.05.16 Konchuuger Saien/ReRun Review!

I went into this on a little downer because of how disappointing my afternoon show (Dansui) was (see review here). And it didn’t help that I was super worried about 15 minutes before the show started because there was still no one in the first row and there were only like 20 people in the entire theatre! But somehow the last 5 minutes just everyone came in and it was full! Thank god...

Official Website here Official Blog here Official Twitter here Press Coverage 1, 2, 3, 4 Videos here and here PreOrder DVD here My Review of the First Run here

Cast and Characters

KONCHUUGER Moto Fuyuki as Tokiwa Suo Ebisawa Kenji as Banri Chouji Saito Shuusuke as Eiffel Thomas Shimizu Kazuki as Taajima Haruo Sudo Maasa as Sakurada ‘Familia’ Asuka Hondo Reo as Young Tokiwa Sou Itakura Takeshi as Joe Mitsuma Kohei as Konchuuger’s Boss

ENEMIES Ozeki Riku as Turtle Yasukawa Junpei as Chameleon Kadoshima Mio as Tokage Okuda Tsutomu as Snake Shougun

Ensemble: Fujio Kantaro, Hagiwara Tatsuro, Hori Yuki, Ayano Aya, Kudo Saya, Takahashi Naoto

NON-SPOILER REVIEW:

Overall: This is so funny you guys! I was LOUD laughing because it was so funny, I couldn’t keep it to polite girly laughing I was laughing HARD. I was cry-laughing at at least one part too. I didn’t think they could step it up all that much but I underestimated them and the Saien is just as amazing as the first run! While I don’t quite accept the new actor for Banri Chouji, everyone else did amazing. Especially Reo! He was the shiner in this stage for me <3 he really impressed me. It’s entertaining, ridiculous, very funny and I cannot wait for the second stage to begin! Rating: 8-8.5/10

SPOILER REVIEW:

I was sat on my own for at least the first 20 minutes too on either side of me. AND I was second row which didn’t help! xD I of course had an amazing view >.<

Also Reo had so many freaking flowers in the foyer! He ahd the most! I didn’t realise how POPULAR he was! =O

Luckily JP had some too so he wasn’t left out <3

ANYWAY! Onto the review with spoilers...

First some general comments about the play:

Seriously, I died of laughter watching this. I had already seen the first stage last year and had watched it on dvd a few times so I was convinced I wasn’t going to really laugh, but oh boy, oh boy I was wrong! I was laughing so hard that I cried at some parts. Luckily there were guys in the audience so I could laugh more naturally and loudly than I usually do in a theatre full of 2.5 Fangirls and to be honest I don’t think I could’ve kept quiet because of how hard I was laughing, so the men’s deep and loud laughter helped cover mine a bit. I could not hold it back xD lets look at some comedy scenes:

JP’s blue bottle coffee segment was back this time around! And I laughed just as hard as I did the first time! It’s such a good scene! I love it.

We also have Snake who has a romantic storyline going on and seeing him go all mushy and soft when she came into the scene was so funny and disgustingly cute.

The table tennis scene was back and was hilarious as usual. I LOVE this scene and I LOVE how Reo played a slightly different tennis supporter compared to what Ikkei did in the first run of this show. Reo was hilarious in this scene. He came on with angel wings and had this constantly little jump going on. It was funny. And then at the end after the captured Crocodile, Reo got his angel wings stuck as he got into the rope-made jail train/bus towards the end of the play xD

The lady at the beginning of the show this time was more abusive. She tries to get the audience to call the Konchuugers for help but we were super quiet and weak and she was like ‘you being fucking serious? YELL!’ xD

This time around also when they explained how the Konchuugers evolved, they used picture cards and when Tokiwa was trying to explain why he didn’t change and why he woke up first, he brought out some picture cards too.

They redid the pulling pegs off the poor actors nipples again! As soon as JP walked on stage with the actor I immediately put my hand over my mouth and was shaking my head and then just before they pulled the pegs, I put my hands over my eyes and looked away.

The Crocodile was hilarious this time because he just stood there while making ripples with either his pecs or his stomach muscles and it got the audience giggling hard.

Unfortunately this time around they cut out some of Maasa’s singing scenes. They were funny. They did it once with Saito and Kazuki which was funny though.

Okay now lets get to some actor/character break downs:

Moto Fuyuki as Tokiwa Sou: He was great as usual. Not much change to his character this time around BUT he had a fighting scene where he started it by cartwheeling off the higher stage and onto the lower stage and everyone in the crowd was like ‘woah!’ because he did it so damn well despite his older age. He was badass on the guitar again as usual. There’s also a scene where he was talking seriously but because he had a dog teddy in his hand which he was petting as if it was real, I was too busy giggling at that.

Ebisawa Kenji as Banri Chouji: Unfortunately,  I don’t like this guy who’s replaced Baba Ryoma. Sorry! I just feel Ebisawa had to try too hard. It felt very forced and like he was using too much energy. Baba is always able to have loads of energy but also appear and look very effortless while using that energy. I feel like Ebisawa was struggling to keep so upbeat and energetic. He wasn’t terrible but very different to what Baba gave us the first time around. Hopefully in the second stage he can make the character his own and have room to stretch now that he won’t be compared to Baba in the second stage.

Saito Shuusuke as Eiffel Thomas: As usual pretty as fuuuuck. He is flawless both in acting and in looks. He was so close to me that I died inside a lot. I really enjoy is character anyway because he’s so ridiculous. He’s this self-centered, showman who used to be a model. Also has sexual tension going on with Asuka and their dynamic is really great too!

Shimizu Kazuki as Taajima Haruo: Ise Daiki originally did this role but Shimizu took over this time (although it looks like both Ise AND Shimizu have been cast for the second stage AND neither of them will be playing Haruo(?!) so god knows how that’s going to work xD but I’m excited to find out!). I’ve only ever seen Shimizu do similar roles; someone who gets scared easily, a little clumsy and unaware of just how strong and powerful he is: this character was the same. I do like that he’s bee themed though and his costume is great and Shimizu really understand how to play cute, so he was good ^_^

Sudo Maasa as Sakurada ‘Familia’ Asuka: I am anoteher girl crush.. it’s Suda Maasa. She’s great. She’s pretty. She has amazing hair. She’s super lady-like as herself (wait for my Sakuratsubute review with her in), and I love her character and the costume. She’s a great character and actress. Like I said in Saito’s section; I love Sakurada and Thomas’ sexual tension and dynamic in this stage and I hope it continues in the second stage! Also in this Saien I feel like they made their clash more dramatic. This time around I feel Sakurada really stands up to Thomas and they have a real, meaty argument which I enjoyed.

Hondo Reo as Young Tokiwa Sou: This guy impressed me so much in this stage!! He brought so much freshness to the character while also keeping the character the same, but at the same timed made it so different to what Ikkei did! In fact, I think he did better than Ikkei! Reo was a good balance of pitiful and cute! He had a scene where he was a scaredy cat and spoke in a quivering sort of voice which was very very hilarious and then in the table tennis scene he was this hilarious tennis angel type role. I cannot give him justice in this review at how impressed I am with him! I haven’t seen Reo act since he left Tenimyu so it’s safe to say I don’t know his range (never doubted his skills in acting) but seeing him in this and just loving his character and loving the hilarious and sad parts he did. He definitely got me teary-eyed during his final scene as Tokiwa Sho, more than Ikkei did, because he’s just so helpless and he completely makes the mood sad and depressing. He did amazing you guys... just amazing. Shame he can’t come back in the second stage =[ OH! During the table tennis scene also, Itakura held up a GIANT table tennis racket and on the back it was a GIANT picture of Reo’s face which they only showed towards the end of the scene and it was so funny! Cannot wait to see that part on DVD. Seriously guys, Reo is an amazing actor!

Itakura Takeshi as Joe: He did amazing the first time and he did amazing this time too! I think he had more hilarity and adlibs this time. The scenes he had with Reo were all great!

Mitsuma Kohei as Konchuuger’s Boss: I don’t think there was much change to his character. But I did enjoy when the dog teddy got left on his cheese grator hand (he had a daikon and a cheese grator instead of hands at the ends of his arms) and he had to balance it as he walked off stage xD

Ozeki Riku as Turtle: Ozeki is another that impressed me and did better than his predecessor! Ozeki really brought the turtle out in Turtle. He was VERY turtle like/ One scene that got me laughing hard is when he tries to attack Taajima and Taajima knocks him onto his back and Ozeki, being a turtle, struggles rolling off his back so he can get back up. He’s just like ‘legs in the air’ like a turtle would be. It was very funny. He also had a part where one of the Konchuugers inspire him to make youtube videos instead of being a bad guy and some times he whips his camera out and Snake Shougun is like ‘what the HELL are you doing?! You can’t upload our schemes onto the internet! Get real boy!’ xD Ozeki also impressed me in the previous MMJ Production ‘Wakasamagumi’ (see review here) so I hope he continues to be with MMJ in productions for a little longer. *googles* He IS in the next Konchuuger with JP again so that’s great at least! ^_^

Yasukawa Junpei as Chameleon: JP... JP, JP, JP. I don’t know HOW he does it but he just revels in strange and hentai-like characters. I’m at a stage (<< pun intended) where I am so used to JP’s acting style that I know what facial feature and stuff he’s going to do and still I love his performances! His facial features alone in this stage are hilarious! And he got to redo his Blue Bottle coffee joke! But he also had extra comedic scenes. For example, when his team are in the Chinese restaurant trying to come up with a plan to defeat the Konchuugers, they run out of so many ideas that JP takes his phone out and goes ‘HEY SIRI! How do we defeat someone?!’ it was SO funny and Snake Shougun is immediately like ‘put that phone away!’ xD also his character kept his part English part Japanese lines so I enjoyed those a lot. Another scene I loved was when Snake Shougun is just so done with JP’s awful ideas that he wants to get his time back, so JP suggests they “go back in time” which just literally means they ‘rewind’ the conversation which was hilarious. which THEN leads JP to ask Snake ‘are you bad with boobs?’ and Snake Shougun is like ‘what’s that got to do with defeating the Konchuugers?!’ WTF?! But alas this is the JP I’m so used and so love. He always seems to do hentai-y roles and I want him to carry on doing them! So glad his character is back in Konchuuger 2! Cannot wait to see more Half-English discussions and ridiculous ideas from him xD

Kadoshima Mio as Tokage: I’m pretty sure they changed the actress on this one. But I still love her story line. She’s very much a ‘I have good ideas but you won’t listen to me because I’m a girl’ to which Snake Shougun is like ‘NO! I’m just going in member number order!’ yet she has great ideas. I also love she has this WEIRD romantic love story with the Goat member of the group (currently cannot find the actors name) and just seeing their relationship grow, especially during the table tennis scene, is hilarious to watch because they are a very opposite pairing. 

The Goat guy himself is very funny too because he just moans and has no confidence and cries all the time because he can’t do anything right xD

Okuda Tsutomu as Snake Shougun: I’ve already mentioned him a LOT in JP’s section so what I wanted to say about him has gone there. I really love this character and the actors performance for Snake! I love how this time around they gave him a romantic plotline too, but I already spoke about it. I enjoy this actors performance overall and cannot wait to see him in action again as Snake in the second stage!

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That’s the review and now for some:

AFTER-SHOW PARTS

Also seriously(!) me and Shiramata have got to STOP going to the SAME shows and the SAME performances. It happened in HakuMyu, it happened in this one, and happened in a few more too (probably Tegami). Seriously, we should not have the same days off xD here are some pictures of him there:

AND! At the end there was a handshake from the main cast (which is the Konchuuger group) which I did not realise was a thing!! So I knid started freaking out because being in the second row meant I’d be one of the first to handshake and let me just say: SAITO!!!  SAITO!!!! *dead* so I was pretty nervous but they were all very nice. So I got to handshake Moto Fuyuki, Ebisawa Kenji, Saito Shuusuke, Shimizu Kazuki and Sudo Maasa! I think the order went (Right - Left): Moto, Kazuki, Asuka, Saito, Ebisawa. Everyone gave great handshakes except Saito! He only does one handers! I mean I still got a handshake but come on! Two hander! He does look the type to be a germ-a-phobe though. Maasa gave a great handshake... and she’s so pretty.... lets get away from my new girl crush! Kazuki was super smiley and nice too ^_^

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GOODS

I only got the pamphlet so no picture sorry xD They had so many bromides but they were random =[ I’m hoping KBooks have the discarded JP ones.... hopefully for a decent price.

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Another one bites the dust! I hope you enjoyed it! anyone else loving MMJ’s productions as much as me?! But, I still haven’t seen the first run of their Poseidon no Kiba.

[todaynewsstories]

Tennis: Players must withstand test of time at U.S. Open

Rafael Nadal’s elaborate pre-serve routine will be put to the ultimate test at next week’s U.S. Open when a countdown clock makes its Grand Slam debut to help speed up play.

FILE PHOTO: Aug 12, 2018; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Rafael Nadal (ESP) returns a ball to Stefanos Tsitsipas (not pictured) during the championship in the Rogers Cup tennis tournament at Aviva Centre. John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports

Nadal is a creature of habit and as he prepares to serve the Spaniard bounces the ball a few times, tugs at his shorts, pulls at the shirt on his shoulders, touches his nose and tucks his hair behind his ears before having a few more bounces.

But at the Aug. 27-Sept. 9 U.S. Open in New York the world number one will not have time to add more moves to his lengthy repertoire as a 25-second clock will tick down immediately after the chair umpire announces the score.

Nadal showed he was not bothered by the shot clock during a U.S. Open tune-up in Toronto where he lost only one set en route to collecting a record-extending 33rd Masters title.

The 32-year-old is not a fan of the new measure, although not due to concerns about receiving a time violation but rather because he feels it will diminish the quality of play.

FILE PHOTO: Aug 19, 2018; Mason, OH, USA; Novak Djokovic (SRB) returns a shot against Roger Federer (SUI) during the finals in the Western and Southern tennis open at Lindner Family Tennis Center. Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

“My experience in the world of tennis at the matches that became part of the history of our sport are not matches where the duration… is one hour thirty, you know?” said Nadal.

“The matches that the people remember are matches that are epic, the matches that the people get involved (in).

“My experience is I don’t see people get crazy and involved in the match when the ball, all it goes (is) two or three times over the net every time,” he added.

“I see the people go crazy and enjoy and feel the passion for the sport when you have rallies of 15, 20 balls.

“…that’s my feeling. And when you have continuous rallies of that kind, you can’t be ready physically to play another point like this in 25 seconds. That’s my point of view.”

FILE PHOTO: Aug 16, 2018; Mason, OH, USA; Sloane Stephens USA) returns a shot against Elise Mertens (BEL) in the Western and Southern tennis open at Lindner Family Tennis Center. Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

MORE TIME

Novak Djokovic has also taken tennis idiosyncrasy to another level with a pre-serve routine in which he bounces the ball with his racket before shifting it to his left hand and bouncing it sometimes over 30 times before finally tossing it into the air.

The Wimbledon champion, who won last week’s U.S. Open tune-up in Cincinnati, said he was comfortable with the shot clock and did not feel it affected him negatively.

“On the contrary, I actually feel like there is more time now than before because the shot clock starts counting down once the chair umpire calls the score,” said the Serb.

“Sometimes it takes several seconds before the chair umpire calls the score if it’s a long exchange or a good point and the crowd gets in.”

If a player has not started the service motion at the completion of the 25-second countdown, the chair umpire will issue a time violation.

U.S. Open champion Sloane Stephens said the shot clock will not change the way she plays but felt it could add another level of distraction when you are awaiting serves from an opponent.

“It’s a lot of… can I say human error? If the umpire doesn’t start it right away, you think, ‘If they started it five seconds earlier, the person you’re playing would have got a serve warning’,” said Stephens.

“It’s things like that you don’t really want to be thinking about. It just adds another element if something goes wrong, it can go terribly wrong.”

Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Ken Ferris

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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[matayto]

Character Analysis

JP

Good Listener

Andre:  “What if I’m no good? What if today wasn’t a bad day, but my best day?’

J.P: ​“Well—what if?”

Andre:  ​“I think I’d rather die. I lean against the railing, sobbing. J.P has the decency, the wisdom, to say and do nothing and just listen.” J.P always takes the time to listen and understand what Andre is saying before he gives his advice.

Wise

Andre:  “When I hit the ball with this new racket, I don’t know where it’s going.”

“You’ll find a solution, J.P says.”

Andre:  “How? What?”

J.P: ​“I don’t know. But you will. This is a momentary crisis, Andre. One of many, there will be others. Bigger, smaller and everything in between. Treat a crisis as practice for the next crisis.”

Risk Taker

“J.P has made the leap from pastor to composer-musician. He’s moved to Orange County and rededicated his life to music” When seeing the risks J.P has taken to do what he loves one can notice that he is not afraid to take risks and go for what he loves.

Unlike Gil, J.P is seen more as friend towards Andre rather than a father. When Andre is emotionally beaten and torn J.P is the one who listens to every word out of his mouth without uttering a single word back.  J.P encourages Andre with words of wisdom and gives Andre very good advice when seeking for it. Also J.P has showed Andre that anything is possible if you have the right mindset and dedication like when he turned his life around to pursue music.

Wendi

Confused

Andre: “She doesn’t know who she is. She grew up Mormon, then didn’t believe the tenets of that religion. She went to college, then discovered that it was the completely wrong college for her.” Overall, Wendi had applied to 5-6 different colleges that even Andre had lost count.

Brave

Andre: “She does something no one’s ever done, something I always hoped my mother would do. She throws herself between us. She says “ Can we just not talk about tennis for 2 hours?”

Here, she steps up to Andre’s dad where no one has ever had the guts to do so.

Caring

Wendi: “I can’t be your traveling companion, she says, your sidekick, your fan, anymore. Well I'll always be your fan, but you know what I mean.”

Andre: “She needs to find herself, and to do that she needs to be free”

Wendi: “And so do you. We can’t realize our separate goals if we stay together.”

Wendi is thinking about both of them in this situation. They can’t achieve their own separate goals with each other in the way. So Wendi decides to break up with him so that they can individually focus on themselves

Wendi was his traveling companion, his sidekick and his fan. She was always there with him throughout every step of his journey. Wendi has always been Andre’s childhood crush. So to be a couple with her had always been Andre’s dream. Even though they broke up, we feel like their break up was a good thing for Andre because after that, he started fresh and focused more on his goal, to be number 1.

Gil

Easy-going

Andre: “Sometimes a workout with Gil is an actual conversation. We don’t touch a single weight. We sit on the free benches and free associate. There are many ways, Gil says, of getting strong, and sometimes talking is the best way.”

Loving

Andre: “On Christmas Eve, 1989, Gil asks if id like to come over to the house, to celebrate the holidays with his family. Being here Gil, with you, and your family, I feel for the first time in my life that I am where I belong.”

Gil: “Enough said. I’ll never ask again. Merry Christmas, son.”

Organized

Andre: “Gil keeps a careful record of my workouts. He buys a brown ledger and marks down every rep, set, exercise - every day. He records my weight, my diet, my pulse, my travel. In the margins he draws diagrams and even pictures.”

Gil has impacted Andre’s life in a positive way. He is one of the only people that likes Andre for himself and not only for tennis. Another way Gil has impacted Andre’s life is by replacing Emmanuel by acting like a father figure to Andre. He welcomes Andre into his home with open arms and lets him feel like a part of the family. He also invited Andre over for Christmas, something that Andre feels forever grateful for.

Brooke

Convincing

Brooke: “I think you should get rid of that hairpiece. And that ponytail. Shave your hair short, short. And be done with it”

- Andre was also insecure about his hair problems and always wore a hairpiece to cover up his head. Brooke convinced him to cut it off

Determined

Andre talking about Brooke: “Her run on Broadway is deemed a great success, and she doesn’t feel empty. She feels hungry, she wants more. She looks to the next big thing”

Funny

Andre talking about Brooke: “She’s surprisingly funny. She’s making me laugh, a lot, and making herself laugh”

We think Brooke affected Andre in a positive way because she brings out the best in him. She makes him work harder and again, she is someone that likes him for himself and not just tennis. Despite Andre’s breakup with Wendi, Brooke’s entrance into Andre’s life was at the point of Andre’s life where he was at his trough. Boozing, sleeping and eating junk food in his bachelor pad alone. His heart was broken until Brooke appeared. Where she distracted him from that and became his next girlfriend.

    Philly 

Caring:

Andre talks about Philly, “One night Philly asks me to promise him something.

Sure, Philly. Anything.

Don’t ever let Pops give you any pill.”Andre looks out for Andre and cares so much he tells him to look out for pills that his father would eventually give him.

 Sociable

Andre talking about Philly: “Philly will talk to anyone, and I often have to nudge and pull him when it’s time to go.”- Andre would have to pull Philly away from others because he would talk too much and waste a lot of time.

 Pessimistic:

Emmanuel Agassi: “You’re a born loser,”

Philly: “ You’re right, Philly says in a sorrowful tone. I am a born loser. I was born to be a loser.”

From this quotation one can notice that Philly does not have the same confidence that Andre has and that Philly does not have a positive outlook on himself.

 Andre says: “my brother sounds the way I imagine a father is supposed to sound.”

In Andre’s life he didn’t really have a proper father figure because of the way his father treated him. Since both Andre and Philly were both terribly treated they look out for each other and that is why Andre sees Philly as a proper father figure. That’s just one of the ways Philly has impacted Andre.

[olaabingdon]

Cricket history at OLA

I was recently contacted by a local historian, asking whether cricket was ever played at OLA during its long history as a girls’ school. The enquiry was serendipitous in that it came at the time of the death of that great pioneer of English women’s cricket, the indomitable Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who did do much to raise the profile of the game in the last decades of the 20th century, storming the male bastion that was Lord’s and establishing a women’s World Cup before the men did the same. I have since done some digging into old copies of OLA’s school magazine, ‘The Annual’, editions of which we have dating from 1927 to the 1960s. The results are fascinating.

Unlike football and rugby, cricket appears to have been well-established as a girls’ sport from an early date. Sr Penny Roker’s history of OLA, ‘Children of Mercy’, records several instances of the girls playing cricket in the school, including a match against the boys of the prep school in 1926. The result was not in dispute, but while the girls’ diary records imperiously: ‘Cricket match with the boys. Result obvious’, the boys comment tersely: ‘Naturally, we had to let them win’. Cricket was just as popular as tennis as a summer sport, with Sr Penny noting: ‘The girls preferred to play cricket regularly all summer, although it was really meant to be for the junior girls’.

My researches in the Annual reveal that, while tennis, hockey and netball generally ruled the roost as they continue to do today, cricket undoubtedly had its adherents. Each of the magazines has a ‘Games Report’, detailing the kind of triumphs that would now receive lavish treatment in the newsletter and on the website, with occasional photographs of girls holding sticks and rackets. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find any pictures of girls at the wicket. The fullest entries for the summer game are to be found in the 1927, 1943 and 1944 issues. The first of these has a breathless account by one Sheila O’Sullivan which begins: ‘Cricket is my favourite game and, when it is a question of a match, I simply put my heart and soul into it.’ The writer makes reference to there being a ‘Convent Cricket League’ with the girls’ team being captained, in a way that would raise eyebrows today, by the ‘father of an old girl’.

To make up for a regular fixture being cancelled, the girls arrange a repeat of the 1926 match against the boys of the preparatory school. Unfortunately, the boys manage to overhaul our heroines’ total at the conclusion of what sounds like a thrilling, two innings contest. The chronicler records nobly: ‘It was a terrible moment; we did not like being beaten, but we bore it in the fine spirit of sportsmanship.’ The girls cheer up immediately when their captain presents them with ‘several large boxes with sweets’ which they promptly share with the boys.

According to the 1943 Annual, ‘the school has taken its introduction to cricket very well’, the writer clearly being unaware of what went on in the twenties. A year later the girls manage four school fixtures and three house matches, with cricket receiving a longer report than any other sport. Each member of the team is profiled, including a no-holds-barred assessment of form that would hold its own in any newspaper sports supplement today. P. Woolliams, for instance, is described as a ‘hard hitter who has probably been the most prolific scorer in the team. Her slow bowling too is quite tricky, but she must concentrate more on length.’ Take note, P. Woolliams.

Curiously, there is no reference to cricket at all from 1945, the departure of one Mrs Kirtin mentioned the year before perhaps meaning that there was no member of staff to carry on the tradition. A rumour has, however, reached me that girls’ cricket underwent a brief revival at OLA in more recent times, perhaps even run by two current members of staff. I will now be pursuing my researches in this direction.

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