#the first thing that came to mind was team ABC because of our names but. I don’t know.

[weheartchrisevans]

BOSTON — So you're Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina who opposes Roe v. Wade and wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and you get a call from Chris Evans, a Hollywood star and lifelong Democrat who has been blasting President Trump for years. He wants to meet. And film it. And share it on his online platform. Can anybody say "Borat?" “I was very skeptical,” admits Scott. “You can think of the worst-case scenario.”But then Scott heard from other senators. They vouched for Evans, most famous for playing Captain America in a series of films that have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. The actor also got on the phone with Scott’s staff to make a personal appeal.

It worked. Sometime in 2018, Scott met on camera with Evans in the nation’s capital, and their discussion, which ranged from prison reform to student loans, is one of more than 200 interviews with elected officials published on “A Starting Point,” an online platform the actor helped launch in July. Not long after, Evans appeared on Scott’s Instagram Live. They have plans to do more together.

“While he is a liberal, he was looking to have a real dialogue on important issues,” says Scott. “For me, it’s about wanting to have a conversation with an audience that may not be accustomed to hearing from conservatives and Republicans.”

Evans, actor-director Mark Kassen and entrepreneur Joe Kiani launched “A Starting Point” as a response to what they see as a deeply polarized political climate. They wanted to offer a place for information about issues without a partisan spin. To do that, they knew they needed both parties to participate.

Evans, 39, sat on the patio outside his Boston-area home on a recent afternoon talking about the platform. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and spent some of the interview chasing around his brown rescue dog. Nearly 100 million people didn’t vote in the 2016 general election, Evans says. That’s more than 40 percent of those who were eligible.He believes the root of this disinterest is the nastiness on both sides of the aisle. Many potential voters simply turn off the news, never mind talking about actual policy.“A Starting Point” is meant to offer a digital home for people to hear from elected officials without having the conversation framed by Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow.

“The idea is . . . ‘Listen, you’re in office. I can’t deny the impact you have,’ ” says Evans. “ ‘You can vote on things that affect my life.’ Let this be a landscape of competing ideas, and I’ll sit down with you and I’ll talk with you.”

Or, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has appeared on the site, puts it, “Sometimes, boring is okay. You’re being presented two sides. Everything doesn’t have to be sensational. Sometimes, it can just be good facts.” Evans wasn’t always active in politics. At Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, he focused on theater, not student government. And he moved away from home his senior year, working at a casting agency in New York as he pushed for acting gigs. His uncle, Michael E. Capuano, served as a congressman in Massachusetts for 20 years, but other than volunteering on some of his campaign, Evans wasn’t particularly political.

In recent years, he’s read political philosopher Hannah Arendt and feminist Rebecca Solnit’s “The Mother of All Questions” — ex-girlfriend Jenny Slate gave him the latter — and been increasingly upset by Trump’s policies and behavior. He’s come to believe that he can state his own views without creating a conflict with “A Starting Point.” When he and Scott spoke on Instagram, the president wasn’t mentioned. In contrast, recently Evans and other members of the Avengers cast took part in a virtual fundraiser with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala D. Harris.

“I don’t want to all of a sudden become a blank slate,” says Evans. “But my biggest issue right now is just getting people to vote. If I start saying, ‘vote Biden; f Trump,’ my base will like that. But they were already voting for Biden.”

(In September, Evans accidentally posted an image of presumably his penis online and, after deleting it, tweeted: “Now the I have your attention . . . Vote Nov. 3rd!!!”)

Evans began to contemplate the idea that became “A Starting Point” in 2017. He heard something reported on the news — he can’t remember exactly what — and decided to search out information on the Internet. Instead of finding concrete answers, Evans fell down the rabbit hole of opinions and conflicting claims. He began talking about this with Kassen, a friend since he directed Evans in 2011’s “Puncture.” What if they got the information directly from elected officials and presented it without a spin? Kassen, in turn, introduced Evans to Kiani, who had made his fortune through a medical technology company he founded and, of the three, was the most politically involved.

Kiani has donated to dozens of Democratic candidates across the country and earlier this year contributed $750,000 to Unite the Country, a super PAC meant to support Joe Biden. But he appreciated the idea of focusing on something larger than a single race or party initiative. He, Kassen and Evans would fund “A Starting Point,” which has about 18 people on staff.

“There’s no longer ABC, NBC and CBS,” Kiani says. “There’s Fox News and MSNBC. What that means is that we are no longer being censored. We’re self-censoring ourselves. And people go to their own echo chamber and they don’t get any wiser. If you allow both parties to speak, for the same amount of time, without goading them to go on into hyperbole, when people look at both sides’ point of view of both topics, we think most of the time they’ll come to a reasonable conclusion.”

“What people do too often is they get in their silos and they only watch and listen and read what they agree with,” says John Kasich, the former Ohio governor and onetime Republican presidential candidate. “If you go to Chris’s website, you can’t bury yourself in your silo. You get to see the other point of view.” As much as some like to blame Trump for all the conflicts in Washington, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) says he’s watched the tone shifting for decades. He appreciated sitting down with Evans and making regular submissions to “Daily Points,” a place on the platform for commentary no longer than two minutes. During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Coons recorded a comment on Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the Affordable Care Act.“ ‘A Starting Point’ needs to be a sustained resource,” Coons says. “Chris often talks about it being ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ for adults.”

It’s not by chance that Evans has personally conducted all of the 200-plus interviews on “A Starting Point” during trips to D.C. Celebrities often try to mobilize the public, whether it’s Eva Longoria, Tracee Ellis Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus hosting the Democratic National Convention or Jon Voight recording video clips to praise Trump. But in this case, Evans is using his status in a different way, to entice even the most hesitant Republican to sit down for an even-toned chat. And he’s willing to pose with anyone, even if it means explaining himself on “The Daily Show” after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas posted a selfie with Evans. (Two attempts to interview Trump brought no response.) Murkowski remembers when Evans came to Capitol Hill for the first time in 2018. She admits she didn’t actually know who he was — she hadn’t yet seen any Marvel movies. She was in the minority.“We meet interesting and important people but, man, when Captain America was in the Senate, it was all the buzz,” she says. “And people were like, ‘Did you get your picture taken?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I sat down and did the interview.’ ‘You did an interview? How did you get an interview with him?’ ”What impressed Murkowski wasn’t his star power. It was the way Evans conducted the interview.“It was relaxing,” she says. “You didn’t feel like you were in front of a reporter who was just waiting for you to say something you would get caught on later. It was a dialogue . . . and we need more dialogue and less gotcha.”

“Starting Points” offers two-minute answers by elected officials in eight topic areas, including education, the environment and the economy. This is where the interviews Evans conducted can be found. “Daily Points” has featured a steady flow of Republicans and Democrats. A third area, “Counterpoints,” hosts short debates between officials on particular subjects. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, debated mail-in voting with Dusty Johnson, the Republican congressman from South Dakota.

“Most Americans can’t name more than five members of the United States House,” says Johnson. “ ‘A Starting Point’ allows thoughtful members to talk to a broader audience than we would normally have.”

The platform’s social media team pushes out potentially newsworthy clips, whether it’s Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) discussing his meeting with Barrett just before he tested positive for the coronavirus, or Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, criticizing Trump for his comments on a potential peaceful transfer of power after November’s election. Kassen notes that the King clip was viewed more than 175,000 times on “A Starting Point’s” Twitter account, compared with the 10,000 who caught in on CNN’s social media platform.

“Because it’s short-form media, we’re engineered to be social,” says Kassen. “As a result, when something catches hold, it’s passed around our audience pretty well.”

The key is to use modern tools to push out content that’s tonally different from what you might find on modern cable news. Or on social media. Which is what Evans hopes leads to more engagement. He’s particularly proud that more than 10,000 people have registered to vote through “A Starting Point” since it went online.

“If the downstream impact or the byproduct of this site is some sort of unity between the parties, great,” says Evans. “But if nobody’s still voting, it doesn’t work. We need people involved.”

[gra-sonas]

Down to Earth With Tyler Blackburn

I‘ve never met Tyler Blackburn before—except that I have. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I’ve met versions of Tyler Blackburn. I’ve spent time with the actor on multiple occasions while covering his TV series Pretty Little Liars, the soapy teen-centered murder mystery that regularly generated more than a million tweets throughout its seven-season run. Just two weeks ago I reconnected with him in a lush meadow of flowering mustard outside Angeles National Forest, the site of his PLAYBOY photo shoot. But the Tyler Blackburn I’m meeting today at his home in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles is in many ways an entirely different man.

When he greets me at the front door, Blackburn is relaxed, barefoot and still wearing what appears to be bed head. His disposition is unmistakably freer—lighter—than it’s been during our previous encounters. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Six days earlier the 32-year-old actor came out publicly as bisexual in an online interview with The Advocate.

The announcement is clearly at the forefront of his mind as we sit down at his dining room table.

Almost immediately he starts to gush about the positive, and at times overwhelming, feedback he has received over the past few days. Within minutes he’s in tears. He tries to lighten the mood with a self-effacing quip, but now I’m in tears too. Then he tells me he can’t remember my question.

I haven’t even asked one yet, I reply.

“It just makes me feel, Wow, the world’s a little bit safer than I thought it was,” Blackburn says.

The most affecting response he’s received thus far has been from his father, whom Blackburn didn’t meet until he was five years old. Although he avoids offering any more details about that early chapter, he says, “Feeling like I’m a little bit different always made me wonder if he likes me, approves of me, loves me. He called, and it was just every single thing you would want to hear from your dad: ‘That was a bold move. I’m so proud of you.’ It was wild.”

Blackburn can’t pinpoint the exact moment he knew he was bisexual but says he was curious from the age of 16. It wasn’t until two years ago, though, that he decided to approach his publicity team about coming out publicly. At that point, Pretty Little Liars had wrapped, and the actor was without a job. So Blackburn and his team agreed they needed to hold off on making an announcement until his career was stable again. The lack of resolution weighed on him. “A year ago I was in a very bad place,” he says, adding that he has struggled with depression and anxiety. “I didn’t know what my career was going to be or where it was going. My personal life—my relationship with myself—was in a really bad place.” His casting on the CW’s Roswell, New Mexico, adapted from the same Melinda Metz book series as the WB’s 1999 cult favorite Roswell, seems to have come at the right time. Blackburn portrays Alex, a gay Army veteran whose relationship with Michael, a bisexual alien, has attracted legions of “Malex” devotees since the show’s January debut. Roswell, New Mexico has already been renewed for a second season—a feat for any series in this era of streaming, let alone one involving gay exophilia. Playing a character whose queerness has been so widely embraced by fans no doubt nudged Blackburn closer to revealing his truth for the first time since becoming an actor 15 years ago. (As he told The Advocate, “I’m so tired of caring so much. I just want to…feel okay with experiencing love and experiencing self-love.”) Still, he was somewhat reluctant. His hesitation was rooted in the fact that he wouldn’t be able to control what came next: the social pressures that often come with being one of the first—in his case, one of the first openly bisexual male actors to lead a prime-time television series. “If you stand for this thing, and you say it publicly, there’s suddenly the expectation of ‘Now your job is this,’ ” he says. “Even if someone’s like, ‘Now you’re going to go be the spokesperson’—well, no. If I don’t want to, I don’t want to. And that doesn’t mean I’m a half-assed queer.” Full disclosure: I previously wrote for a Pretty Little Liars fan site. In 2012 I published a listicle that ranked the show’s hottest male characters. Blackburn cracks up when I tell him this and wants to know whether he bested Ian Harding, his former co-star. After I inform him that his character (hacker with a heart of gold Caleb Rivers) finished second behind Harding’s (Ezra Fitz, a student-dating teacher) I promise to organize a recount. The always-modest Blackburn concedes that Harding is the rightful winner. (If anyone ever compiles a BuzzFeed article titled “Most Embarrassing Moments for Former Bloggers,” I’ll be offended if I’m not in the mix.)

Blackburn makes it clear that he has not always been comfortable with his status as a teen heartthrob. Knowing he was queer made it “hard to embrace it and enjoy it.” Growing up, he was bullied for being perceived as effeminate and was frequently subjected to slurs and homophobic jokes. He describes himself as a late bloomer who took longer than usual to shed his baby fat. He didn’t have many friends, nor did he date much in high school. A lifelong fan of musical theater and the performing arts, Blackburn signed with a Hollywood management company at the age of 17. His team at the time warned him that projecting femininity would hinder his success. An especially painful moment came after he’d auditioned for a role as a soldier and the producers wrote back that Blackburn had seemed “a little gay.” “Those two managers were so twisted in their advice to me,” Blackburn says. “They just said, ‘We don’t care if you are, but no one can know. You can’t walk into these rooms and seem gay. It’s not gonna work.’ I remember the shame, because I’ve been dealing with the feeling that I’m not a normal boy for my entire life.” After landing a recurring role on Days of Our Lives in 2010, Blackburn scored his big break when he appeared midway through the first season of Pretty Little Liars. “I was in Tyler’s first scene, so I got to be one of the first to work with him,” Shay Mitchell, who starred opposite Blackburn, tells PLAYBOY. “Right away, I knew he was special. Since the day I met him, Tyler always struck me as very authentic and very true to himself.” Fans instantly adored his on-screen love affair with Hanna Marin, played by Ashley Benson. The pair became known as “Haleb,” and Blackburn went on to win three Teen Choice Awards—surfboard trophies that solidify one’s status as a teen idol—in categories including Choice TV: Chemistry.

According to Blackburn, during the show’s seven years on the air, he and Benson bonded over their mutual distaste for the tabloid stardom that comes with headlining a TV phenomenon lapped up by teens. Today he fondly reflects on their on-camera chemistry. “It felt good,” he says. “It felt real.” Of course, rumors swirled that the pair’s romance was actually quite real. “We never officially dated,” he tells me. “In navigating our relationship—as co-workers but also as friends—sometimes the lines blurred a little. We had periods when we felt more for each other, but ultimately we’re good buds. For the most part, those rumors made us laugh. But then sometimes we’d be like, ‘Did someone see us hugging the other night?’ She was a huge part of a huge change in my life, so I’ll always hold her dear.” Blackburn also shares a unique connection with Mitchell outside their friendship. Similar to what Blackburn is now experiencing with Roswell, Mitchell was embraced by the LGBTQ community for playing a lesbian character, Emily Fields, whose same-sex romances on Pretty Little Liars were among the first on ABC Family (the former name of the Freeform network). Over the years, Blackburn had come out to select members of the Pretty Little Liars cast and crew, including creator I. Marlene King. But as the show approached its swan song, he started to recognize how hiding a part of himself was negatively affecting his life. He entered his first serious relationship with a man while filming the show’s final season. Not knowing how to tell co-workers���or whether to, say, invite his boyfriend to an afterparty—caused him to “go into a little bit of a shell” on the set.

“My boyfriend was hanging out with me at a Pretty Little Liars convention, and some of the fans were like, ‘Are you Tyler’s brother?’ ” Blackburn says. “He was very patient, but then afterward he was like, ‘That kind of hurt me.’ It was a big part of why we didn’t work out, just because he was at a different place than I was. Unfortunately, we don’t really talk anymore, but if he reads this, I hope he knows that he helped me so much in so many ways.” At that, Blackburn tearfully excuses himself and takes a private moment to regain his composure. “I never remember a time when I didn’t enjoy being with him,” says Harding, Blackburn’s former co-star. He says he saw the actor “start to become the person he is now when we worked together” but believes Blackburn needed to first come to terms with the idea that he could become “the face” of bisexuality. “Tyler’s discovering a way to bring real meaning with his presence in the world,” Harding says, “as an actor and as a whole human.”

Once the teenage Blackburn realized he was attracted to guys, he began “experimenting” with men while taking care not to become too emotionally attached. “I just didn’t feel I had the inner strength or the certainty that it was okay,” he says. It wasn’t until a decade later, at the age of 26, that he began to “actively embrace my bisexuality and start dating men, or at least open myself up to the idea.” He says he’s been in love with two women and had great relationships with both, but he “just knew that wasn’t the whole story.” 

He was able to enjoy being single in his 20s in part because he wasn’t confident enough in his identity to commit to any one person in a relationship. “I had to really be patient with myself—and more so with men,” he says. “Certain things are much easier with women, just anatomically, and there’s a freedom in that.” He came out of that period with an appreciation for romance and intimacy. Sex without an emotional component, he discovered, didn’t have much appeal. “As I got older, I realized good sex is when you really have something between the two of you,” says Blackburn, who’s now dating an “amazing” guy. “It’s not just a body. The more I’ve realized that, the more able I am to be settled in my sexuality. I’m freer in my sexuality now. I’m very sexual; it’s a beautiful aspect of life.” Blackburn has, however, felt resistance from the LGBTQ community, particularly when bisexual women have questioned his orientation. “Once I decided to date men, I was like, Please just let me be gay and be okay with that, because it would be a lot fucking easier. At times, bisexuality feels like a big gray zone,” he says. (For example, Blackburn knows his sexuality may complicate how he becomes a father.) “I’ve had to check myself and say, I know how I felt when I was in love with women and when I slept with women. That was true and real. Don’t discredit that, because you’re feeding into what other people think about bisexuality.” He clearly isn't the first rising star who's had to deal with outside opinions of how to handle his Hollywood coming-out. I spoke to Brianna Hildebrand just before the release of 2018's smash hit Deadpool 2, and she explained that she had previously met with publicists who had offered to keep her sexuality under wraps, even though the actress herself had never suggested this. Meanwhile, ahead of the launch of last fall's Fantastic Beasts sequel, Ezra Miller told me that he's "been in audition situations where sexuality was totally being leveraged."

Fortunately for Blackburn, his recent experiences with colleagues have largely been supportive ones. He came out to Roswell, New Mexico showrunner Carina Adly Mackenzie when he first arrived in N.M. to shoot the pilot but after he had earned the role of Alex, which for him was the ideal sequence. "I think he takes the responsibility of being queer in the public eye very seriously, and waiting to come out was just about waiting until he was ready to share a private matter—not about being dishonest to his fans," Mackenzie tells PLAYBOY. "I have always known how important Alex is to Tyler, and I know that Tyler trusts me to do right by him, ultimately, and that’s really special." Blackburn finds it funny that he’s known for young-skewing TV shows; the question is, What might define him next? He’s grateful for his career, but he grew up wanting to make edgy dramas like the young Leonardo DiCaprio. He also cites an admiration for Miller, the queer actor who plays the Flash. “I most definitely want to be a fucking superhero one day,” Blackburn says a bit wistfully. His path to cape wearing does look more tenable. The day before his Advocate interview was posted, he booked a lead role in a fact-based disaster-survival film opposite Josh Duhamel. Blackburn jokes that his movie career was previously nonexistent, though his résumé features such thoughtful indie fare as 2017’s vignette-driven Hello Again. There, he plays a love interest to T.R. Knight, who tells PLAYBOY that Blackburn “embraces the challenge to stretch and not choose the easy path.” For now, Blackburn’s path appears to be just where he needs it to be. “I may never want to be a spokesperson in a huge way, but honestly, being truthful and authentic sets a great example,” he says. “To continue on a path of fulfillment and happiness is going to make people feel like they too can have that and it doesn’t need to be some spectacle.” As it turns out, he may already be a superhero.

- Playboy

[thesportssoundoff]

“The XFL is a thing. Should you care about it?”

Joey

February 2nd, 2020

Another winter, another money mark attempt to figure out winter football.

The NFL has wrapped up another successful season and now it's Vince McMahon's turn to try once more with a brand new football league. In 2019, the son of his friend Dick Ebersole tried with the AAF which fell apart before the season finale could even take place. Vince McMahon seems more prepared than Charlie Ebersole and his backers, especially when you consider that the XFL apparently has long term financial backing place to absorb what figures to be some money losing seasons. The XFL's rule set which features things like a revamped overtime, a double forward pass concept, a continuously running game clock and a variety of different special teams related rules designed to entice an improved pace of play. Is the XFL going to revolutionize the NFL? Probably not. Will it provide some concepts that inevitably get stolen? I'm going with a pretty solid "oh yeah absolutely." It's live sports and chances are if you're reading this you know that the SportsSoundoff is all about live sports and activities that are able to cosplay as sports (axe throwing and chainsaw-ing come to mind).

If you're looking for more football to take in then the XFL figures to give you that and with readily-ish available-ish games across FS1/2, Fox, ABC and ESPN/2 platforms. Long story short, games will be out there for ya if you want to spell some time between the NBA's second half kicking off and the start of baseball and college basketball's tournament run. With a neat and tidy eight teams across a variety of markets, I'd like to go team by team and detail why you should try your hardest to give each team the benefit of your time. Some teams figure to be easy and some teams figure to be impossible BUT I've got free time and I gotta do something, right?

The Dallas Desperados The most intriguing coaching staff in the entire league

Let's start from the obvious; if Bob Stoops truly wanted to, he could be coaching in the NCAA right now. This is a guy who left Oklahoma as an insanely successful well liked legacy coach who won a national title and 10 conference championships. Bob Stoops took Oklahoma football to a level not seen since the Barry Switzer run and is clearly one of the greatest coaching minds of his era. Health and perhaps a general all around malaise for football led to Stoops stepping down but when you look around the number of college teams divided by the number of quality of minds currently available for head coaching jobs, there's zero doubt Stoops could've been the guy at any school he wanted to over the past two years. Hell, I would NOT be surprised if Stoops would've been on the radar of NFL teams if he did an Urban Meyer-esque TV gig as opposed to just falling off the face of the Earth and living life in the shadows. Instead he re-emerges in the XFL as the GM and head coach of the Dallas Desperados. Stoops admittedly took this gig because of its proximity to his recruiting trails of the past and just general all around comfort with the area. Stoops was the prized announcement of the XFL, the first coach they revealed and put in the biggest football media market of the entire XFL league. Long story short? Bob Stoops was a rare coup for the XFL and he's being advertised and promoted as such. So much so in fact that when Stoops stopped appearing in XFL promotional material for a short spell, there were rumors that the XFL was going to lose the only drawing card it had with Stoops maybe making a move all the way up to the NFL for the Cowboys head coaching gig. The fact the XFL has Stoops gives it something the AAF never had; a familiar well liked face who isn't tired or old hat; the two knocks that basically hurt the AAF when Steve Spurrier was limping around on the sidelines for the Orlando Apollos.

The intrigue goes beyond JUST Bob Stoops as the Bob Stoops coaching staff is genuinely pretty ridiculous. If you love the Lincoln Riley and Mike Leach style offenses then you know of the name of Hal Mumme. Mumme is the father of most of the modern air raid offenses you see today, the likes of which that get mediocre-y college coaches like Kliff Kingsbury head coaching gigs in the NFL. Mumme is a bit of a college coaching legend with concepts that have bled into the highest levels of football. Stoops will be the offensive coordinator for Stoops' offense and with a few years away from the coaching circuit, I'm intrigued to see if Mumme has anything new left to offer. Defensively, Chris Woods and Jim Jeffcoat have long ties to Bob Stoops or Hal Mumme. The offense has a mastermind, the defense has a glut of former defensive coordinators and there's a damn good chance that Bob Stoops could turn a solid run in the XFL into a head coaching job elsewhere. Just keep an eye on the Desperados coaching staff as a potential breeding ground for coaches into the next level.

DC Defenders Name defensive talent = ???

It seems like the XFL is going to make it a lot harder for defenses to really play a meaningful part in the games with rules clearly designed to go for more of a high paced scoring first and foremost brand of play. That said, the DC Defenders do have some defensive talent to keep an eye on. They've got a name defensive line with guys like former Giants starter Jay Bromley, USC's Kenny Bigelow, Washington Huskie Elijah Qualls and a linebacking core with Arizona undersized legend Scooby Wright, former Atlanta Falcons player Jonathan Massaquoi and former Bills player and early retiree from football AJ Tarpley. In the secondary is where things really have "could play in the NFL potential" with former draft picks Jalen Myrick and Bradley Sylve and former starters Shamarko Thomas and Matt Elam at the safety spots. Most of the attention will be on former National Championship winner Cardale Jones at the QB spot with name weapons like Malachai Dupree and Rashad Ross but in truth, I'm curious to see if their defensive talents can find their way back into the NFL.

Houston Roughnecks Actual NFL name talent

Soooo yeah, let's take a second to talk about the Houston Roughnecks. There's a WEALTH of NFL level talent on here, if not in actual talent but in name value. We can start at the QB spot where the Roughnecks at the very least boast an interesting "What if?" scenario. Going into the 2016 NFL Draft, a lot of teams needed QBs and the draft boasted some really interesting ones. The top two were pretty much locked in (Carson Wentz and Jared Goff depending upon your preference) and Paxton Lynch seemed like a solid lock as the #3 QB. After that? Free for all! The likes of Cardale Jones, Dak Prescott, Jeff Driskel, Connor Cook, Nat Sudfield and Christian Hackenberg were all fighting for spots to try and eek themselves into that next tier. There was a belief of sorts that Cook was the leader in that clubhouse but concerns about his personality and how teammates viewed him at Michigan State dogged him all the way down to the 4th round. The Cowboys were going to take Cook (who they had as a late 2nd round pick on their draft board) but he got snagged up as the Raiders as a developmental QB behind Derek Carr. The Cowboys, not exactly heartbroken but not exactly thrilled, moved to taking Charles Tapper out of Oklahoma and then with their comp pick (thanks Eagles! Thanks DeMarco Murray!) picked Dak Prescott at the behest of their coaching staff, bucking scouts who had him behind Jeff Driskel. Dak Prescott will likely earn anywhere from 30 to 40 million next year and Cook is trying to carve out his path in the XFL after failed stints in Oakland, Cincinnati and Detroit. It's a fun "What If?" scenario to toss around while Cook can perhaps reset his career in the XFL.

Beyond Connor Cook? Houston boasts a kicker in Sergio Castillo who as an all star in 2019 and boasts an NFL quality leg potentially. Kickers come and go in the NFL and if Castillo is good then he probably has a chance to pop up somewhere. RB De'Angelo Henderson was a 7th round pick who has bounced around the NFL and figures to probably get similar looks as a 3rd round COP back somewhere if he's good in the league. Cam Phillips and Kahlil Lewis are former NFL camp bodies while Sammie Coates played in the NFL for the Pittsburgh Steelers. SS Marqueston Huff played in the NFL for a variety of teams and has a pedigree as a former 4th round pick. DL Kony Ealy, Gabe Wright and Walter Palmore could probably fill out the back end of an NFL defensive line rotation right now. There's some actual NFL talent lurking in these waters, even if most of it is probably training camp filler variety. Those guys still have merit!

LA Wildcats The Josh Johnson Situation

So let's chit chat a spell about this. Josh Johnson is one of those guys that seems to pop up once a year on an NFL roster. He's been in the league since the dying days of the Gruden Era in Tampa Bay, a former fifth round pick who carved out a career as a somewhat competent-ish back up. He bounced around, played in the United Football League (consider THAT one) and seemed set to flame out. When the Redskins brought Josh Johnson in in 2018 after injuries to Alex Smith and Colt McCoy, Johnson stepped into the starting role and actually played pretty well! Not well enough to get brought back but well enough to earn another shot in the NFL as a back up for the Detroit Lions. Johnson was let go and continued his playing days by adding onto the XFL. I think Josh Johnson is the only dude to play in all three short term gimmick leagues (the UFL, AAF and XFL) but that's not where our story ends. Injuries to Jeff Driskel and Matt Stafford opened the door to play the NFL again when the Lions came calling. Surprisingly the XFL refused to follow the AAF's lead and kept Johnson to his XFL deal, forcing him to pass on a Lions opportunity. Josh Johnson basically has to be the best QB in the league to justify the XFL's decision to force him to stay in the league. Otherwise they'll probably be looked at unfavorably by future players for robbing a guy of an NFL opportunity. Also keep an eye on Nelson Spruce to be a big third down guy who racks up 1st downs.

New York Guardians ???

So I've looked over the roster a bunch, taken a gander at the coaching staff and honestly? I mean I don't have anything. This team on paper is pretty boring with no real flashy star name value and a head coach and offensive coordinator in Kevin Gilbride who had his best years some fifteen years ago if not longer. I suppose there may be some interest in seeing former AAF names like Jamar Summers and Luis Perez do stuff? This team is boring but boring teams can win games and boring games can win championships. Just don't expect the Guardians on paper to be something you'll feel compelled to go out of your way to see. In a way the Guardians match up pretty well with Vince McMahon's current WWE product; a severe lack of storylines and star power that compel and force you to go out of your way to tune in on a weekly basis.

St. Louis Battlehawks Football is BACK in St. Louis!

The Rams left St. Louis for LA in 2016 and to be entirely honest, I'm not sure if it worked out any well for the NFL. Surely the Rams bring in more money and notoriety in theory but it sure feels like the Rams have not exactly caught on with the locals in LA who are clearly baseball fans during the summer/fall and basketball fans every other time else. The Rams boast a tremendous team and watching a city like Kansas City enjoying its first Super Bowl win (in the great state of Missouri or Kansas or Kansourri) has me wondering how much more fun the NFL would be if the Greatest Show On Turf stayed in St. Louis as opposed to venturing out west and had kept up the tradition of having two teams playing in a rather "small" market. The fans of St. Louis will get to show how much they support football when the Battlehawks take flight (Ugh) in a few days. The Battlehawks have an intriguing roster with plenty of Mizzou names on it like WRs L'Damian Washington and former TE turned WR Markus Lucas. They also have swagmaster Marquette King trying to rebuild his NFL case after his falling out in Oakland. To add to the madness, the Battlehawks boast the most QBs on any of the 52 man rosters in the XFL and are led by Ole Miss QB legend Jordan Ta'amu who is coming off a failed stint in the NFL. I still really like Ta'amu and think he's got developmental upside for what it's worth but that's neither here nor there.

Seattle Dragons Holy shit Jim Zorn is still around?

The Redskins have a rather....interesting history in the modern era. Outside of a few brief periods of success from the likes of Joe Gibbs and Mike Shanahan, the Redskins head coaching history is rather no bueno. Among those bodies lost to the annals of history you have Jim Zorn. Zorn was a bit of a QB whisperer for the likes of Mike Holmgren and Dennis Erickson before surprising folks by making a massive leap from QB coach to head coach for the Washington Redskins in a stunning move. Zorn's move went...about as well as you'd expect. Jim Zorn became the latest victim of Redskins incompetence and then sort of just disappeared. He coached QBs for a bit after getting fired and then became the NFL equivalent of a ghost. Well Jim Zorn's back and back in Seattle where he led Matt Hasselbeck to some insane-o Seahawks records. The Dragons roster overall isn't exactly must see as it's mostly AAF leftovers with the occasional 2019 UDFA but at the very least seeing if Jim Zorn can wash off the Redskins stench some 10+ years later might be a bit of fun.

Tampa Bay Vipers A Florida all star team

The Vipers have the world's most name recognizable pseudo all star squad in the entire XFL. With former Bears head coach Marc Trestman at the helm, the Vipers boast a wide array of talents from various schools in the state of Florida. Miami Hurricanes WR Stacy Coley, Florida OL Martez Ivey and TE DeAndre Goolsby, South Florida QB legend Quinton Flowers will be trying his hand at RB as well as FSU RB Jacques Patrick and DB DeMarcus McFadden. That doesn't even begin to cover the number of Central Florida, South Florida and FAU players on this team as well. Also Aaron Murray is here and it seems like people are still going to try and make him into a thing after being a 4th round pick back in 2015.

[katalina27ua]

THE BEGINNINGS

"Cannell agreed. "The story was told okay," he said, "but there was no relationship with anyone in the pilot sсript. There was a romantic skirmish with (Steelgrave's niece) and we considered trying to embellish on that. Then I said, "Why don't we write Sonny Steelgrave as the relationship? Frank looked at me and said, 'Butch and Sundance...'" И тут Бутч и Кид  В деле настоящей мужской дружбы без них никуда)) Upd. Тут в одном фике напомнили, что сцена из концовки "No one gets out of here alive" как-то уж больно явно намекает нам на концовку фильма про Бутча и Кида)) Ну, за исключением того, что Винни формально не умирает, а продолжает жить дальше.

THE BEGINNINGS Innovative. Intelligent. Unpredictable. These are words that come to mind when discussing WISEGUY and for good reason. The CBS series, in the midst of its third season at the time of this writing, is doing its bit to revolutionize the medium, transforming episodic television into something along the rather paradoxical lines of an anthology with continuing characters. The show's premise is simple. The execution of it is not. Ken Wahl portrays OCB(Organized Crime Bureau) agent Vincent Terranova, who's spent 18 months in prison to help create his cover as a "wiseguy." Upon his release, he begins a series of undercover investigations which have involved him with a variety of society's undesirables, ranging from the Mob to white supremacists, from international arms dealers to ruthless music industry power brokers. The difference between this show and every other cop series is that the characters deliver a visceral quality not usually found on the tube. Whether you're talking about Terranova, his field director Frank McPike or Lifeguard, the behind the scenes operator who has saved Vinnie on more than a couple of occasions, realism is the name of the game. In addition, the villains aren't dispatched after one or two episodes. In fact, there have been instances where it's taken nine installments of a WISEGUY saga--or arc, as it is referred to by the show's creative team--for a tale to be resolved. In addition, there isn't always a clear-cut separation between good and evil, and there have been moments when the audience could well have wondered which side of the fence Terranova would land on. "That's the whole point of the series," actor Ken Wahl once explained, "to show that everybody's not all good, not all bad. These things intertwine, and therein lies the conflict." "In the beginning," states co-executive producer Les Sheldon, "a lot of people thought we were doing a Mob show, but found out real quick that we weren't. The idea of the show is to kind of do it as an anthology, but string it together with this guy as he runs into these different types of human beings and peels away at them. The result is that we, through him, find out who they are and not just what they are. Because of that, he has some tremendous conflicts going on inside and--right, wrong, or indifferent--he gets to see them as human beings, not as statistics on an FBI file." In a way, Vinnie and his co-stars are often on equal footing, which is rather unusual for network television. "I knew as a writer that it would create a situation where (he) would be a counterpuncher, as opposed to carrying the action in a story," executive producer and co-creator Stephen J. Cannell told ROLLING STONE. "My idea was that we would reinvent the show every half year." Cannell had approached ABC with the series premise, but was rejected and then went to CBS who accepted the idea. He set upon the task of writing the pilot, but found that he was saddled with end of the season "burn out" and needed a co-writer. So he approached Frank Lupo, part of the creative team behind such series as HUNTER and HARDBALL.

"Stephen and I had worked together for years," explained Lupo. "We created THE A-TEAM, RIPTIDE, and HUNTER together. After I did HUNTER, Stephen went off and did a couple of things on his own, and I did my thing even though I was working for his company. We were both great fans of police dramas, mysteries, that type of thing and he came to me one day with an idea about doing a show about an undercover cop. But he wanted to do it from the point of view from inside the Mob. I believe that Stephen originally had an offshoot of this idea where it would be a show about Mobsters which is something he'd always wanted to do. But there had been a number of shows that had tried that. The problem was always the morality of the hero. He wasn't sure if a show like that could be done on a week to week basis. Sure, you could go in on something like THE GODFATHER and could buy it for three hours and walk out, but he wasn't quite sure if every week we could maintain the morality of a hero who was totally on the wrong side." "Anyway," he adds, "Stephen originally came to me with the idea of a cop who infiltrates the Mob. I was buried in scripts and told him so, and he said that he had thought it was something we could have fun doing together, but he left. I remember driving home that night thinking about it and I started writing stuff in my head. Two days later I walked into his office and said, 'Do you still want to do that WISEGUY idea?' We realized that it was well into the development part of the season, but we went in, pitched it and they said okay. I think we pitched in early December and had to have the sсript done by Christmas. It was very fast, and we slammed it out very quickly, each of us writing half the pilot. We put the two halves together, and I think I was the first one to read it and I found that we had somehow missed the Vinnie/Sonnie relationship because we wrote it so quickly. Stephen came into my office and said, 'Well, how did we do?' And I just gave him the sсript to read and he recognized the same problem with it I had." Cannell agreed. "The story was told okay," he said, "but there was no relationship with anyone in the pilot sсript. There was a romantic skirmish with (Steelgrave's niece) and we considered trying to embellish on that. Then I said, "Why don't we write Sonny Steelgrave as the relationship? Frank looked at me and said, 'Butch and Sundance...'" Revisions were made. Lupo adds, "What we came up with was the idea of an undercover cop. We wanted to come up with a character he could truly admire on the other side of the fence. As the whole Sonny Steelgrave story started it was almost like a miniseries rather than the pilot for a TV show. We knew that in the pilot he would meet Steelgrave and that he would displace one of Sonny's lieutenants. We also knew he would move up to be his right hand man and, at that point we talked about the idea of doing a number of heavies each year in five or six episode arcs, so we had to come up with that concept. We did know that we were going to build up the relationship between Vinnie and Sonny so that by the time we hit the end, it wasn't going to just be an hour episode where someone pretends to be on someone's side, and at the end of the hour when he's busted, there's a tear in the eye of the cop, but he's saying, 'We got you, asshole.' Needless to say, this kind of thing raised a few eyebrows at CBS, and they said to us, 'Couldn't Vinnie really be faking Sonny Steelgrave out? He doesn't have to truly admire him,' We said, "you don't understand where we're coming from,' and their response was, 'It's going to be real clear that Vinnie's not going over, right?' We said, 'We're not sure. We will redeem him, but it has got to be enticing.' So it was that kind of reaction, but there wasn't a tremendous amount of resistance. All we really wanted was a relationship between Sonny and Vinnie and if we could get Vinnie through some of the dirt, he'd be able to see what made up the individual people. "When we were putting the pilot together," Lupo continued, "we couldn't figure out where to start. We had one draft which started in Quantico when Vinnie first entered the Academy, and we have one where he's in the middle of the scam that he's in prison for at the beginning of the pilot. I would say the first half hour of the show would have been the one that got him locked up, and that was kind of material we were testing, but in a pilot you have to give the network an idea of what the show will be like. Had we handed in these stories, it would say, 'Okay, this tells us that the series is coming, but not what the series would be.' By the time we were getting closer, working on the second story I mentioned, we felt it wasn't as far developed as the two hours that would eventually air. Then we said, 'You know, we've got to keep going; we short-cut the front end, with the intent of always being able to do a flashback one day; a flashback which reveals how he went to Quantico and then to prison." Second season Executive Story Editor John Schulian believes that the character relationships with the Steelgrave arc originally attracted public attention to the series. "It proved that (Executive Producer) David Burke was right in what he wanted to do with the show," he says. "He's really the guy who shaped this. He didn't want to make it a constant series of car crashes and gun fights. He subscribes to Stephen Boccho's theory of emotional violence being infinitely more powerful than overt, physical violence. When Sonny looks at Vinnie after he's found out he's a cop and says, 'I loved you, man,' and then electrocutes himself, it's a perfect example of this. That really is what the show is about." "I just love characters," Burke concurs, "and I thought the relationship between Vinnie and Sonny was one he would like to maintain as a friendship, but can't because he knows the true stripes of the man. That was enticing. I'm not a big fan of gunplay, and WISEGUY presents the opportunity to actually spend time with characters and develope them fully. I think one of our greatest strengths is that we are able to give actors material they can really enjoy and sink their teeth into. That, for me, is the essential strength of what we do, and we've been real fortunate with performers; people who aren't afraid to play big moments and to play dialogue that is not traditional television." Breaking with tradition has become the norm with WISEGUY.

[malexfan10]

I absolutely love Tyler Blackburn

New article today

He is such a gem ❤

So genuine. Deserves all the love and support!

You can tell how much Alex means to him.

Please don't destroy this amazing character or this wonderful ship Carina!

It's a long read but well worth it

https://www.playboy.com/read/down-to-earth

❤

Down to Earth With Tyler Blackburn

The star of the CW's 'Roswell' reboot isn't a poster child of anything but his own path

Written by Ryan Gajewski

Photography by Graham Dunn

Published onJune 11, 2019

I’ve never met Tyler Blackburn before—except that I have. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I’ve met versions of Tyler Blackburn. I’ve spent time with the actor on multiple occasions while covering his TV series Pretty Little Liars, the soapy teen-centered murder mystery that regularly generated more than a million tweets throughout its seven-season run. Just two weeks ago I reconnected with him in a lush meadow of flowering mustard outside Angeles National Forest, the site of his PLAYBOY photo shoot. But the Tyler Blackburn I’m meeting today at his home in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles is in many ways an entirely different man.

When he greets me at the front door, Blackburn is relaxed, barefoot and still wearing what appears to be bed head. His disposition is unmistakably freer—lighter—than it’s been during our previous encounters. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Six days earlier the 32-year-old actor came out publicly as bisexual in an online interview with The Advocate. The announcement is clearly at the forefront of his mind as we sit down at his dining room table.

Almost immediately he starts to gush about the positive, and at times overwhelming, feedback he has received over the past few days. Within minutes he’s in tears. He tries to lighten the mood with a self-effacing quip, but now I’m in tears too. Then he tells me he can’t remember my question.

I haven’t even asked one yet, I reply.

“It just makes me feel, Wow, the world’s a little bit safer than I thought it was,” Blackburn says.

The most affecting response he’s received thus far has been from his father, whom Blackburn didn’t meet until he was five years old. Although he avoids offering any more details about that early chapter, he says, “Feeling like I’m a little bit different always made me wonder if he likes me, approves of me, loves me. He called, and it was just every single thing you would want to hear from your dad: ‘That was a bold move. I’m so proud of you.’ It was wild.” 

Blackburn can’t pinpoint the exact moment he knew he was bisexual but says he was curious from the age of 16. It wasn’t until two years ago, though, that he decided to approach his publicity team about coming out publicly. At that point, Pretty Little Liarshad wrapped, and the actor was without a job. So Blackburn and his team agreed they needed to hold off on making an announcement until his career was stable again. The lack of resolution weighed on him.

“A year ago I was in a very bad place,” he says, adding that he has struggled with depression and anxiety. “I didn’t know what my career was going to be or where it was going. My personal life—my relationship with myself—was in a really bad place.”

His casting on the CW’s Roswell, New Mexico, adapted from the same Melinda Metz book series as the WB’s 1999 cult favorite Roswell, seems to have come at the right time. Blackburn portrays Alex, a gay Army veteran whose relationship with Michael, a bisexual alien, has attracted legions of “Malex” devotees since the show’s January debut. Roswell, New Mexico has already been renewed for a second season—a feat for any series in this era of streaming, let alone one involving gay exophilia.

Playing a character whose queerness has been so widely embraced by fans no doubt nudged Blackburn closer to revealing his truth for the first time since becoming an actor 15 years ago. (As he told The Advocate, “I’m so tired of caring so much. I just want to…feel okay with experiencing love and experiencing self-love.”) Still, he was somewhat reluctant. His hesitation was rooted in the fact that he wouldn’t be able to control what came next: the social pressures that often come with being one of the first—in his case, one of the first openly bisexual male actors to lead a prime-time television series.

“If you stand for this thing, and you say it publicly, there’s suddenly the expectation of ‘Now your job is this,’ ” he says. “Even if someone’s like, ‘Now you’re going to go be the spokesperson’—well, no. If I don’t want to, I don’t want to. And that doesn’t mean I’m a half-assed queer.”

Full disclosure: I previously wrote for a Pretty Little Liars fan site. In 2012 I published a listicle that ranked the show’s hottest male characters. Blackburn cracks up when I tell him this and wants to know whether he bested Ian Harding, his former co-star. After I inform him that his character (hacker with a heart of gold Caleb Rivers) finished second behind Harding’s (Ezra Fitz, a student-dating teacher) I promise to organize a recount. The always-modest Blackburn concedes that Harding is the rightful winner. (If anyone ever compiles a BuzzFeed article titled “Most Embarrassing Moments for Former Bloggers,” I’ll be offended if I’m not in the mix.)

Blackburn makes it clear that he has not always been comfortable with his status as a teen heartthrob. Knowing he was queer made it “hard to embrace it and enjoy it.” Growing up, he was bullied for being perceived as effeminate and was frequently subjected to slurs and homophobic jokes. He describes himself as a late bloomer who took longer than usual to shed his baby fat. He didn’t have many friends, nor did he date much in high school. 

A lifelong fan of musical theater and the performing arts, Blackburn signed with a Hollywood management company at the age of 17. His team at the time warned him that projecting femininity would hinder his success. An especially painful moment came after he’d auditioned for a role as a soldier and the producers wrote back that Blackburn had seemed “a little gay.” 

“Those two managers were so twisted in their advice to me,” Blackburn says. “They just said, ‘We don’t care if you are, but no one can know. You can’t walk into these rooms and seem gay. It’s not gonna work.’ I remember the shame, because I’ve been dealing with the feeling that I’m not a normal boy for my entire life.”

After landing a recurring role on Days of Our Lives in 2010, Blackburn scored his big break when he appeared midway through the first season of Pretty Little Liars. “I was in Tyler’s first scene, so I got to be one of the first to work with him,” Shay Mitchell, who starred opposite Blackburn, tells PLAYBOY. “Right away, I knew he was special. Since the day I met him, Tyler always struck me as very authentic and very true to himself.” 

Fans instantly adored his on-screen love affair with Hanna Marin, played by Ashley Benson. The pair became known as “Haleb,” and Blackburn went on to win three Teen Choice Awards—surfboard trophies that solidify one’s status as a teen idol—in categories including Choice TV: Chemistry.

According to Blackburn, during the show’s seven years on the air, he and Benson bonded over their mutual distaste for the tabloid stardom that comes with headlining a TV phenomenon lapped up by teens. Today he fondly reflects on their on-camera chemistry. “It felt good,” he says. “It felt real.”

Of course, rumors swirled that the pair’s romance was actually quite real. “We never officially dated,” he tells me. “In navigating our relationship—as co-workers but also as friends—sometimes the lines blurred a little. We had periods when we felt more for each other, but ultimately we’re good buds. For the most part, those rumors made us laugh. But then sometimes we’d be like, ‘Did someone see us hugging the other night?’ She was a huge part of a huge change in my life, so I’ll always hold her dear.” 

Blackburn also shares a unique connection with Mitchell outside their friendship. Similar to what Blackburn is now experiencing with Roswell, Mitchell was embraced by the LGBTQ community for playing a lesbian character, Emily Fields, whose same-sex romances on Pretty Little Liars were among the first on ABC Family (the former name of the Freeform network).

Over the years, Blackburn had come out to select members of the Pretty Little Liars cast and crew, including creator I. Marlene King. But as the show approached its swan song, he started to recognize how hiding a part of himself was negatively affecting his life. He entered his first serious relationship with a man while filming the show’s final season. Not knowing how to tell co-workers—or whether to, say, invite his boyfriend to an afterparty—caused him to “go into a little bit of a shell” on the set.

“My boyfriend was hanging out with me at a Pretty Little Liars convention, and some of the fans were like, ‘Are you Tyler’s brother?’ ” Blackburn says. “He was very patient, but then afterward he was like, ‘That kind of hurt me.’ It was a big part of why we didn’t work out, just because he was at a different place than I was. Unfortunately, we don’t really talk anymore, but if he reads this, I hope he knows that he helped me so much in so many ways.” At that, Blackburn tearfully excuses himself and takes a private moment to regain his composure. 

“I never remember a time when I didn’t enjoy being with him,” says Harding, Blackburn’s former co-star. He says he saw the actor “start to become the person he is now when we worked together” but believes Blackburn needed to first come to terms with the idea that he could become “the face” of bisexuality. “Tyler’s discovering a way to bring real meaning with his presence in the world,” Harding says, “as an actor and as a whole human.”

Once the teenage Blackburn realized he was attracted to guys, he began “experimenting” with men while taking care not to become too emotionally attached. “I just didn’t feel I had the inner strength or the certainty that it was okay,” he says. It wasn’t until a decade later, at the age of 26, that he began to “actively embrace my bisexuality and start dating men, or at least open myself up to the idea.” He says he’s been in love with two women and had great relationships with both, but he “just knew that wasn’t the whole story.”

He was able to enjoy being single in his 20s in part because he wasn’t confident enough in his identity to commit to any one person in a relationship. “I had to really be patient with myself—and more so with men,” he says. “Certain things are much easier with women, just anatomically, and there’s a freedom in that.” He came out of that period with an appreciation for romance and intimacy. Sex without an emotional component, he discovered, didn’t have much appeal.

“As I got older, I realized good sex is when you really have something between the two of you,” says Blackburn, who’s now dating an “amazing” guy. “It’s not just a body. The more I’ve realized that, the more able I am to be settled in my sexuality. I’m freer in my sexuality now. I’m very sexual; it’s a beautiful aspect of life.”

Blackburn has, however, felt resistance from the LGBTQ community, particularly when bisexual women have questioned his orientation. “Once I decided to date men, I was like, Please just let me be gay and be okay with that, because it would be a lot fucking easier. At times, bisexuality feels like a big gray zone,” he says. (For example, Blackburn knows his sexuality may complicate how he becomes a father.) “I’ve had to check myself and say, I know how I felt when I was in love with women and when I slept with women. That was true and real. Don’t discredit that, because you’re feeding into what other people think about bisexuality.”

He clearly isn't the first rising star who's had to deal with outside opinions of how to handle his Hollywood coming-out. I spoke to Brianna Hildebrand just before the release of 2018's smash hit Deadpool 2, and she explained that she had previously met with publicists who had offered to keep her sexuality under wraps, even though the actress herself had never suggested this. Meanwhile, ahead of the launch of last fall's Fantastic Beasts sequel, Ezra Miller told methat he's "been in audition situations where sexuality was totally being leveraged."

Fortunately for Blackburn, his recent experiences with colleagues have largely been supportive ones. He came out to Roswell, New Mexico showrunner Carina Adly Mackenzie when he first arrived in N.M. to shoot the pilot but after he had earned the role of Alex, which for him was the ideal sequence. "I think he takes the responsibility of being queer in the public eye very seriously, and waiting to come out was just about waiting until he was ready to share a private matter—not about being dishonest to his fans," Mackenzie tells PLAYBOY. "I have always known how important Alex is to Tyler, and I know that Tyler trusts me to do right by him, ultimately, and that’s really special."

Blackburn finds it funny that he’s known for young-skewing TV shows; the question is, What might define him next? He’s grateful for his career, but he grew up wanting to make edgy dramas like the young Leonardo DiCaprio. He also cites an admiration for Miller, the queer actor who plays the Flash. “I most definitely want to be a fucking superhero one day,” Blackburn says a bit wistfully. 

His path to cape wearing does look more tenable. The day before his Advocateinterview was posted, he booked a lead role in a fact-based disaster-survival film opposite Josh Duhamel. Blackburn jokes that his movie career was previously nonexistent, though his résumé features such thoughtful indie fare as 2017’s vignette-driven Hello Again. There, he plays a love interest to T.R. Knight, who tells PLAYBOY that Blackburn “embraces the challenge to stretch and not choose the easy path.” 

For now, Blackburn’s path appears to be just where he needs it to be. “I may never want to be a spokesperson in a huge way, but honestly, being truthful and authentic sets a great example,” he says. “To continue on a path of fulfillment and happiness is going to make people feel like they too can have that and it doesn’t need to be some spectacle.” As it turns out, he may already be a superhero.

[dailydaveeddiggs]

Today, thanks to “Hamilton,” Diggs, 35, may be the more established half of the “Blindspotting” duo, but that wasn’t the case when he moved back to Oakland after earning his theater degree from Brown. Though four years younger, Casal had already made a name for himself on the Bay Area spoken-word scene, from which he was plucked to appear on HBO’s “Def Poetry.”

Casal had set up a recording studio with the aim of finding other musicians to collaborate with, reaching out to Diggs on the strength of a demo CD the rapper had recorded in his college dorm room. The friendship took hold almost immediately: That first night, they created a few songs, which led to albums, live performances (with a group they dubbed the Getback) and countless sketches and online videos.

“Rafael was the most famous person I knew,” Diggs recalls. “He had really tapped into the YouTube audience pretty early.”

Casal’s videos caught the attention of Jess Calder (then Jess Wu). The young producer, partnered in Snoot with her husband, Keith Calder, had seen a couple of his spoken-word performances and was struck by both Casal’s charisma and the fact that he appeared to be a natural-born storyteller.

“In my mind, anyone who can tell a great story can definitely translate that to film,” explains the producer, who contacted Casal and proposed they meet for coffee. She asked if he’d ever thought about writing a screenplay.

“I’d thought about theater a lot, [but at that age] you’re trying to get $5 for something at McDonald’s. A movie is millions of dollars away,” says Casal. But he was definitely intrigued, and began fleshing out a character that was loosely autobiographical. Things started to click about a year and a half later, when the Snoot duo asked Casal to perform at a screening of their documentary “Thunder Soul” at a January 2009 presidential inauguration event in Washington, D.C. Casal couldn’t make it but suggested they book Diggs in his place.

“Daveed came and did like 15 minutes of freestyle at the event and kind of blew our minds,” recalls Keith Calder. “We were immediately like, ‘Rafael, the movie’s gotta be about the two of you!’”

And from that moment forward, “Blindspotting” became the story of two friends of different races forced to consider the world from one another’s viewpoints, all set against the rapidly changing Bay Area backdrop.

Casal hails from Berkeley, the city directly north of Diggs’ Oakland. But they both attended Berkeley High School and later split a four-bedroom house with two other friends for $1,200. “I can’t even imagine what that place would cost now,” Casal says.

Gentrification, fueled by the tech boom, has transformed the neighborhoods they once knew. “Seventh Street is just a BART station and a post office now, but in the ’30s and ’40s, that was one of the jazz and blues centers of the world,” Diggs says. The last of the local music venues, Esther’s Orbit Room (where Diggs’ brother had been a bartender), finally shut down in 2010. His mother and father (also born in Oakland) both had to move, priced out by the newcomers.

Though not a musical in the conventional sense, “Blindspotting” was born out of a desire to translate spoken-word poetry into cinema. “There are versions where it was damn near a poem the whole time,” Diggs says.

From 2009 onward, he and Casal worked on the script together, huddling over the same laptop since they had only a single licensed copy of Final Draft between them.

“We were trying to find a recipe for a world where verse could exist without it feeling like there’s a deliberate shift every time it goes into a number,” Casal explains. “The Bay Area is known for slang and for turn of phrase. It’s the evolution of pimp culture, so heightened language is already very prevalent in the way people relate to each other.”

For the next several years, Diggs and Casal spent their time driving up and down Interstate 5 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, parking out front of wherever Snoot headquarters happened to be at the time and sleeping in their car if needed. They wrote draft after draft of “Blindspotting,” pitching the changes to the Calders while using Snoot’s facilities to work on music videos and other projects.

“I’ve always felt like our offices were a place where they should feel safe to create art,” says Jess Calder.

Before Diggs and Casal could complete a shooting version of the script, they were pulled away by other professional opportunities. Casal went off to teach verse-driven theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years. And, for Diggs, “Hamilton” happened.

“The thing about this business is you never know if something’s a break,” says Diggs. “I met Lin-Manuel Miranda because of a clerical error.” Diggs showed up for the same substitute teaching job as one of Miranda’s friends, Anthony Veneziale, who was also a rapper. They hit it off, and Veneziale invited Diggs to freestyle with his group, of which Miranda was a member. Later, when it came time to do an early reading of “Hamilton,” Miranda remembered Diggs and his rapid-fire delivery. “I was invited because I have this particular skill set that allows me to learn a lot of things very quickly,” recalls Diggs, who had just five days to memorize the show’s most demanding part. “I assumed they would replace me because they had plenty of Broadway performers to choose from.”

Except that Miranda didn’t replace Diggs, who spent nearly a year and a half with the production. “Before leaving ‘Hamilton,’ I made this comment to one of my agents,” Diggs recalls. “I was ready to go, but scared that I wouldn’t make any money again, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ and promptly booked my life with all these things.”

The day after his last “Hamilton” performance in mid-2016, Diggs found himself shooting the movie “Wonder,” starring Julia Roberts. The following week, he began working on ABC’s “Black-ish.” That was swiftly followed by a recurring role on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” which had to be juggled amid a long-planned national tour with his experimental rap group, Clipping.

Into the midst of this whirlwind came the moment for which Diggs and Casal had long been waiting. Last March, the Snoot producers told them they had the greenlight to make “Blindspotting,” provided the duo could get their script in shape to shoot in June.

“What if I move to L.A. in two days and I write it for a month?” Casal recalls asking — and that’s exactly what he did, undertaking a page-one overhaul while Diggs’ fledgling screen career kept him busy.

“I was on airplanes every other day,” says Diggs, “so really the only through line were these midnight phone calls from Rafael to talk about this thing we’d been talking about for a decade.”

Excited about the prospect of finally making the movie, Diggs kept a rare 25-day window open in June for the shoot. Casal managed to get the rewrite done in four weeks. Reaching out to another old friend, they brought in director López Estrada, who immediately began pre-production.

The project’s Oakland focus attracted some production talent whom the producers normally couldn’t afford, including DP Robby Baumgartner, who had worked in the lighting department for Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alejandro González Iñárritu, and who brought the lighting crew from “Moonlight” aboard.

“We suddenly had this amazing team of people from the Bay Area,” says Diggs. “Doing something with your friends at a high level, that’s a dream.”

After production wrapped, Snoot submitted a rough cut to Sundance, which recommended the music-driven film for a Dolby Family Sound Fellowship. “Blindspotting” is one of two 2018 Sundance selections to have earned the generous post-production grant, making it possible for the filmmakers to upgrade their mix in time for its festival debut. (Past recipients of the grant include “Mudbound” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”)

Thanks to the grant, Diggs, Casal and other members of the production team — including López Estrada and the Calders — spent late December camped out on the Paramount Pictures lot on the same Technicolor stage where Michael Bay mixes his “Transformers” films.

On the same day of Variety’s visit, Diggs and Casal wrote a short piece of original music to replace a few seconds of temp score. Since they came up with the cue themselves, that means they can later expand it into a full-blown song for the soundtrack.

It’s the kind of on-the-fly challenge that has fueled the duo’s creative partnership for more than a decade — though “Blindspotting” is the first time they’ve been able to combine their writing, performance and musical talents to such a degree.

“As an artist, the only thing you ever want to do is something that requires every part of yourself,” Diggs says. “And it is so rare when that happens.” (x)

LOVE the insight as to how this all came together.

[restorerjourney]

FREEDOM

April 13, 2021

I slept at 9:30pm but woke up at 4:30am again. Perhaps it was because I was anticipating ending our quarantine. I can’t imagine what 14 days of quarantine is like. I usually start my morning doing my quiet time since it is literally quiet and peaceful. I usually have a lot of thoughts and prayers as well during that time. I’m not normally a morning person so this adjustment is something to get used to. 

Each room was assigned a certain time to get their rapid covid test and we all were negative! I was so relieved and immediately walked out. This quarantine not only allowed us to form a good foundation with each other, but it truly made me have a deeper gratitude for the so many things I take for granted...walking outside and enjoying the weather, the beautiful creation that is everywhere around us, SALAD, and the freedom to purchase what I needed. We decided to treat ourselves and eat downtown and wanted to get this well known sushi restaurant but we couldn’t because they were so busy and ran “Hawaian time”. For those who do not know, “Hawaiian time” is describing someone who is lax has no urgency and the total opposite of the east coast culture. This restaurant had one phone line and even when calling 20x right when they opened, when they finally picked up, ordering 3 rolls takes 2.5 hours...I was shocked and we decided to just eat at an American restaurant. I also was able to finally try Kona coffee for the first time! We went to Kona Coffee Cafe and I was able to sample so many different types and learn from the local the definition of Kona peaberries. These precious peaberries are grown on the volcanic slopes of Kona. They are expensive because they are rare and also require a lot of labor to harvest these peaberries. What you get though is the smoothest coffee I’ve ever tasted. I don’t like acidic coffee like Blue Bottle so this was perfect. Their dark chocolate covered roasted kona peaberry was amazing. I just got black macadamia nut vanilla ice coffee ( the additional flavors are natural oils added to the mixture). 

I also was reaffirmed by speaking to the local how much the locals really feared COVID because the majority lived with their elders. Yesterday all the students attended a zoom meeting where we were instructed the importance of wearing our masks when we are downtown because it is mandated by the state of Hawaii but also to respect and show love to the locals. Unfortunately YWAM last quarter did have an outbreak of 30 people, but thankfully we were able to contain it. Speaking with the local who ran the cafe, I heard her frustration of how some previous YWAMers (probably teenagers) didn't abide by the mask rule and how it can really hinder us from demonstrating the love of Christ to them. That meeting we attend really reminded me that wearing the mask was more than politics but a way to show Christ love to those around us and to represent the God that we serve. I pray that even the youth here will be obedient and despite the inconvenience to serve the locals this way. 

We then walked to the beach nearby and it was breathtaking. We sat down and just took the beauty of God’s creation in. The turquoise water, the  perfect weather we were experiencing, the clear blue sky were all perfect. I really felt that I was in Hawaii and I could not stop staring at the waters. On our way home we grabbed lunch at this American bar/grill restaurant since we didn’t have much time. I got a spinach salad with MahiMahi ( it was dry but I didn't’ care because it was VEGGIES). We also tried gelato at Gypsea Gelato for the first time. I got passion fruit and toasted coconut with chocolate shavings. It was really good and there we ran into the other team members that we haven’t met since we were quarantined. It was nice to see that the girls in our team were all truly sweet and kind to each other. I can see us getting along and I look forward to what God has in store for us. We realized soon that we had to meet back at the base to our work duty (which was the sustainable farm). Literally since we were downtown, we were DOWNTOWN..meaning the base was uphill. I quickly grabbed watermelon drinks for my other roomies who had one more day of quarantine and we ran up the hill. Since I’ve been out of shape, I was dying going up that hill. It was also pretty sunny and wearing that mask going up 5 flights of stairs was torture. We quickly dropped off our belongings, changed clothes, and went to the sustainable farm.

Thankfully we made it on time! I was sweating like a pig but I was so glad we were able to respect their schedule. Let me tell you about the farm.. It is amazing… I am astonished how everything is not wasted and the creative ways they utilize every component to make this base sustainable. I absolutely love their mission theme which is to train students the importance of sustainability, how to steward these gifts to teach underserved countries how to also become self-sustaining, and to feed the homeless here in Kona. All vegetables grown here are used to feed the students. They have sheep, pigs, rabbits, fish, and chicken but they are used to educate how to raise animals. One rule that we had to remember was that the animals are kind and we need to treat them with respect. If there is any misbehaving animal, they will be offered to the locals who can provide a donation and more likely will be eaten. 

We also get to learn the basics of aquaponics which was really cool and something you won’t really learn elsewhere. I pray that this experience will help me to appreciate food that is put at the table, the importance of knowing how to steward what God has provided. There were 6 restorer team members ( Winnie, Chloe, Chlo, Eunhye, Yaedam, and KC) and there were 6 other students who were part of a christian graduate farming sustainability program. 

Side note: Chloe changed her name to Chlo because there were 2 Chloes LOL. What a funny kid...this is my spunky roomie btw.

What’s funny though is that I had an epiphany why I was placed in the Restorer program with a bunch of Koreans. I focused on how it would benefit me, but little did I know how I was also sent to help translate for the other restorer students since I was the most fluent Korean American. Yes, me. I am surprised and my friends are probably laughing while reading this but the other students are so encouraging saying that I am doing a good job that it motivates me to really try my best. We were all given chores to do and I picked feeding the chicken and picking their eggs. Did you know chickens lay different colored eggs based on the color of the ears? Yes chicken has ears and earlobes LOL. I did not know. I saw pale blue and brown eggs for the first time. I will also help raise the rabbits and we have one male rabbit, 2 large female rabbits, and a bunch of teenager rabbits. Each day, one rabbit gets to run around the garden while the rest are caged and at the end of our shift we have to catch the rabbit LOL. I will one day catch the rabbit with my bare hands. We also have sheep, dogs, and cats all over this farm hanging out with us! 

A lot of us wore shorts so we were a buffet for the mosquitos so now we know long sleeves and pants are much needed. After orientation we went to the sustainable garden and helped reuse the pots that held the harvested cabbages and sort out roots, the pots, and the rocks. Tired, covered in bug bites, bug spray, sweat, and sunscreen, we walked back weary but excited to see how much we would learn. I’m glad to meet the other team members and to get to know them more as well. My roomies and I missed dinner at the cafeteria since it is still closed and they were packing them which we had to pick up so Winnie and I went downtown again to ABC to pick up dinner. We picked up oranges, egg sandwiches, and water. The sink water even with the strongest brita filter tastes pretty bad. It’s because the island is covered by salt water so it’s harder than other areas. Chloe stayed behind since she was working with the pigs that she voluntarily chose to do. Although she seems girly, she has a spunky side that is ready for challenging adventures which I love about her. Winnie is similar to me in that we love to exercise so we carried our groceries all the way up and enjoyed the exercise. Winnie and I had some one-on-one time which was nice and after we ate dinner, Chloe and I went to go see the sunset while Winnie showered. Although they are literally 20 (yes I feel like a great grandma), I am amazed at their maturity level and how it was so easy to connect with them. I was so blessed to hear that Chloe before she came to YWAM prayed earnestly for one of her roomies to be an American. I told her I prayed for diversity LOL, but perhaps it’s a different kind of diversity that God has in mind.

After seeing our first beautiful sunset, I showered (the water is still intermittent cold and hot) and we did our first load of laundry. Now we are working on our homework which is assigned for tomorrow. Wow this is the most I’ve written and I hope I can look back and remember such a wonderful day it was. We walked 17,327 steps. During quarantine it was 4,000 LOL. I will be sleeping well tonight :) 

Prayer request

Tomorrow our homework requires us answering very vulnerable questions to our team. This will be emotionally taxing and as much as I am looking forward to it, I am also nervous. Please pray that God would hold our hearts as we share probably the most deepest thoughts and events to each other and that this vulnerability will be sealed in His name so that this would be the first step of healing. 

Mahalo,

Alicia

[tefltraininginstitute]

Going From Teacher To Buisness Owner (with Ed Dudley, Jake Whiddon & Peter Liu)

Have you ever thought about starting your own school, start-up or just going freelance? As the educational landscape changes due to Covid, branching out on your own is becoming a necessity for many teachers. This week I speak with three people who have gone from being teachers to becoming their own bosses. Peter Liu tells us how he got the inspiration for his online education company, Jake Whiddon tells us why he founded his own school after fifteen years of working for other people and Ed Dudley tells us what kind of people should avoid going freelance.

Links

Ed in the Crowd -  Ed Dudley's blog

ETpedia Teenagers - Ed's book on teaching teens

Owl ABC - Peter Liu's Ed-tech company

Going From Teacher To Buisness Owner (with Ed Dudley, Jake Whiddon & Peter Liu)

 Peter Liu from Owl ABC on starting a start-up

Ross:  Peter, you started your own business a year and a half ago. Before you tell us about what it is, what made you want to start your own company?

Peter Liu:  My current co‑founder and I, we've been good friends for several years. He's also in education. He's got 15 some odd years of experience. We saw this trend of thousands of Chinese kids going abroad to study.

There was a study done several years back that showed 25 percent of Chinese students going to an Ivy League school fail, 25 percent. When I read that statistic, that blew my mind.

There's a gap in skills that Chinese students have, who are attending school abroad. There are tons and tons of services that help kids in China improve their English. They can help with their test‑taking of the IELs and the TOEFL. It only ever seems to go as far as your first day of university so you can get into school.

How do you actually stay in and succeed? I've been working at this education technology startup. We built a whole bunch of fancy tech. I worked very closely with the product and the engineering teams. I had a little bit of experience building an online product.

Ross:  This is almost like working in a startup prepared you to start your own startup?

Peter:  Yeah, you could say that.

Ross:  Did that take some of the fear out of it, as well?

Peter:  It's that and also our product is not technically that challenging. We're not building a technology company. We're building a services company.

Ross:  How has what your company does changed from what you originally visioned, compared with now?

Peter:  The biggest change was our business model. Originally, we were focused on a B2C model, basically, selling our services and our content directly to consumers. We quickly found that we don't have the local knowledge of how to message, how to create marketing channels to reach these consumers.

We made the decision to shift our focus to B2B, licensing our content and our teaching to other education companies so that they could do the heavy lifting of marketing directly to their students. They already have students who are, perhaps, learning English from them, but who need to build their critical thinking skills. That's where we come in.

Ross:  Can I ask you a question about money and stuff? Let me give you an analogy here. I remember once climbing a mountain. When you're climbing a high mountain, it's a little bit dangerous. You have a turnaround time. If we don't get to the top by four o'clock, we're going to turn around. Because if we're walking down in the dark, it's really, really dangerous.

Do you have that with the business where you're like, "If we're not starting to make money, or if we're not able to break even within 12 months or two years, then I'm going to quit this and go back to teaching English." How does that work?

Peter:  It depends what scale company you're doing, and also how disciplined you are with finances.

[laughter]

Peter:  Basically, how much money do you have in the bank, and how long can that sustain you? What is your burn rate? How much money are you spending?

Ross:  Cool. Can I ask you then what would you say if there's one thing I really wish I knew or I paid more attention to when I first started this, I should have done this. What do you think that would be?

Peter:  I'm a big proponent of the lean startup methodology which is, basically, applying the scientific method to operating a business. You form a hypothesis. You run tests to either validate or invalidate that hypothesis. Then you either proceed if you validate your hypothesis or you change course.

I wish we'd applied that methodology a little bit more rigorously to the early stages of our product development, because of the business environment that we're operating in. We were very cautious in marketing, and putting ourselves out there, and putting our product out there.

Ross:  In case someone stole the idea.

Peter:  Precisely.

 Jake Whiddon on starting your own school

Ross:  Hi, Jake.

Jake Whiddon:  Hi, Ross.

Ross:  You started your own kids' school recently. You've been involved in TOEFL for about 15 years. What made you want to open your own school now at this point in your career?

Jake:  Honestly, I felt that I had worked for long enough for big companies. I wanted to have some control over the output of what I was doing. I felt I reached, not a ceiling, but a point where there was nowhere else I could go with what I personally wanted to do with education. That's the reason.

Ross:  Jake, how did you choose the people to go into business with? There's so many people you know, but why did you choose the people who work with you now?

Jake:  It's really interesting. For a long time, I'd always wanted to start a business with another one of your ex‑guests called Dave Welleble. I realized that we were too similar. We were very similar. What I had to do was find someone who could complement my skills. I've got some skills that come up with creative ideas in trying to have operations experience.

I needed someone who knew how to network, do finances, work with people, and communicate better, and then that person came along. It's someone I'd worked with 10 years ago, and they just came out of the blue and said, "Hey, by the way, I'm actually looking for someone who can work together."

I think the best decision was finding someone who I knew well but can complement the way they work. That old adage of never work with your friends, I don't think that that's true. I think that you should work with your friends.

A point a friend was making to me the other day was, I met this person through working with him, not through being a friend. I knew I could work with him. I think that's worked really, really well.

Ross:  How did you go about getting an investor then, because, obviously, opening a school requires a lot of funds?

Jake:  You don't find people to invest in your school, they find you. There's a lot of people in China with a lot of money that they don't know how to spend. They need to spend it on something, whether it's a gym or a hairdresser, or something they want to do. For us, it was someone who knew they wanted to do something in education, but they didn't know how to.

They came to us and said, "Can you guys do something with education for us?" Which is what I find most people say. On saying that, though, people are still looking for investors.

The way it happens in China is you're just constantly networking. You never know why the person that you're talking to might be the person who can invest money in you one day. That's something to remember.

Ross:  What skills do you think you've learned in other parts of your career that helped you the most in running your own school?

Jake:  Well, none. No, I want to say none. No, I say that as a joke. It's amazing how little I knew. I mean, I ran five, four different schools as a [inaudible 08:20. I ran 12 schools as a regional manager. I ran 40 schools as a national manager. I controlled budgets of two million dollars. You know what? A lot of those skills didn't help me at all.

What they helped me with was operations. They helped me with efficiency. They helped me with things, like knowing that you're using classrooms at the right efficiency. You're using teachers at the right amount. You're utilizing people in the right way.

It didn't teach me how to run a business. With all the experience in the world, I have learned more in the last eight months of how much I didn't know.

Ross:  What have you had to learn when your started your business? Is there anything that you've never experienced before, or something that you felt, "Oh, this is something brand new to me, and I have to start learning"?

Jake:  I'm learning that without a big budget for marketing, for example, we can't go and afford a math/science and blanket. You have to think everything we're thinking. We have to flip it over and think about it from the bottom up. That's probably the first one. The other one is people don't want to work for a company that no one's heard of.

People want to work for big name companies. Who wants to work for a place that has only one school? Lastly is how much relationships matter. The relationship you have obviously with the customer but also mainly with everyone around you, everyone. The Fire Department, the Visa Office, everyone you have to have a relationship with.

You're constantly having to deal with each of these people. We talk about bureaucracy, but bureaucracy might be a good thing because, at least, it means there's some bureaucratic process. Here, it all comes back to relationships.

Ross:  Finally, Jake. What advice do you have for teachers thinking about starting their own school?

Jake:  Remember, that's my last advice. The industry is never as caught up as you are. Whatever you're thinking, the market is probably two steps behind you. The market needs to be educated to get to where you are first.

Ross:  Thanks, Jake. Bye‑bye.

Jake:  Bye, Ross.

 Ed Dudley on going freelance

Ross:  Ed, you obviously started off as a teacher teaching full‑time. Do you want to tell us about how did you go from teaching full‑time to becoming now a freelance teacher trainer and author?

Ed Dudley:  You're right. I began teaching full‑time. Then very gradually, I began to be invited to speak at local conferences and to do, perhaps, weekend events for teachers in the local area. Then gradually I was invited to do more work, which involved going to another country for a few days to do some teacher training. I would balance that with my school work.

I would rearrange my classes, or I would get colleagues to cover my classes in my absence, which was, again, a difficult balancing act. There was no masterplan there for me. I simply did it slowly and incrementally over time. The amount of teaching that I was doing gradually reduced. The amount of training and materials writing that I was doing gradually increased.

Ross:  There are a lot of teachers considering becoming a freelancer. Are there any tips or recommendation for this group of people?

Ed:  It has the potential to cause sleepless nights if you're going to suddenly do it cold turkey. I was in a position where I could try out freelance work, freelance life with a safety net. I tend to have the philosophy that if you focus on doing a good job on what's in front of you, then that will lead to good things in the future.

I've always remembered that it's important to be aware of what your strengths are. If I'm asked or invited to do something that I don't think is aligned with my strengths, then I say "no" to that. It can be tough when you're a freelancer to say "no" to something.

There's a lot of pressure on us to take every opportunity that comes our way. It is important not to bite off more than we can chew as well, and to make sure we do a good job by saying "yes" to the things that we're confident we can do well, and "no" to the things that we don't think we can do well.

Ross:  What do you think are the advantages of the freelance life?

Ed:  The key advantages, that if you have the mentality or you have the personality that can deal with the uncertainties of the freelance life.

In other words, if you're not too freaked out by the fact that you're not quite sure what's going to be happening 12 months from now, then that gives you an awful amount of freedom. It gives you a chance to focus on your own professional development.

I find that I'm able to do a lot more reading. I'm able to find time to plan my work with much more freedom and less frazzledness than when I was balancing my training work with my full‑time job. It gives you a chance also to make last minute decisions as well.

Very often, you'll find that an opportunity comes up at very short notice to travel somewhere and do some work. You have this really exciting opportunity to go somewhere you've never been before, to work with people you've never met before. That's an incredibly stimulating and enjoyable way to work.

[survivor-tierradelfuego]

Ep. 7: “The LIES” - Amy A

Pedro A

omg so i have 10 coinssssss....and kalle has 9...she just needs to get one more coin...and we can open the jewerly box...and see whats inside....at this point i accept anything....a steal vote ..an idol..whatever...chillleeee this is a mess im going insane...and i hope we win this next challenge

Cody A.

https://youtu.be/gQAhK73mjRc

Cody A.

https://youtu.be/GGtNE0x87pQ

Pedro A

we really need to win this challenge im scared af

James Hayden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcvdxZYYvZU

James Hayden

We finished our immunity challenge about twenty minutes ago and now we wait. We got a score of 48, which I think is a solid score. Ryan was great at final guessing, Najwah and Amy were great at helping put the questions in the best order, and as a tribe we worked well together. I hope that 48 is enough for us to avoid tribal and for me to make the merge. If we have to go to tribal, I think it could be me. Let's hope 48 is enough to make me dateable. 

Ryan

Once again, I am very proud of my tribe. Honestly, if we were to lose I wouldn't mind it, I might actually rather that, maybe that will be my plan for the next challenge. We need the numbers back on Maolas side

Pedro A

omg i hope the other tribes did worste than us...cause chillleeeee im in danger Olivia A.I’m super bummed about losing but also not too worried. As long as Maddison and Grae stick w our original 3 we should be fine. It’s just a matter of whether to vote out Aimee or Sarah. I’ve grown to like them both a lot so this sucks but it is what it is I guess.

Kalle N

I didn't compete in the challenge bc I'm currently moving across the country by myself and I honestly have no idea what happened today. I know Zack was gunning hard to vote me out but we won so oh well. hopefully we merge soon.

Ryan

Soooo i am very happy with the outcome of this challenge. We don’t have to go back to tribal, but Maola do. Hopefully the pre-swap Maola can band together cause I still have faith for my relationship with Maddison and Grae, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Olivia leave (even though she’s sweet)

Ryan

sooooo... fml

Ryan

I should really stop making confessions before I know what’s happening

Ryan

AHHHHHHHHH

Zack M

oh look. another challenge that's a survivor super fan's wet dream. and again, i didn't really contribute because i hate survivor wiki. BUT WE CAME IN 2ND! so we are safe. i honestly knew that james was the biggest threat and i'm not surprised his team won. i'm glad. clap clap for you james! now that means sarah and aimee are in trouble because i don't see the original maola tribe turning on each other. truly hoping sarah has talked her way in and it's aimee unless something crazy happens. i just want my original 5 alliance to be reunited! pedro opened up a little more and said he was down to work together going into the merge. he wants revenge for john being voted out and not being part of the vote? i think. regardless, i did not watch all 4 seasons of revenge on abc for no reason. i'm here to help him get that revenge because then that also give hanuha the numbers again and BAM. back to my 5, then to my 4, and then to my 3. could this actually work? please god let it for my ego. excited to see what comes out of tribal tomorrow. 

James Hayden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3SDeVmuzJ8

Zack M

scratch that last confession. new scores and the palena tribe is going to tribal again. i think? maybe it will change again but this is the last time i'm confessing. 2 original maola and 2 original hanuha. hopefully james has the idol because i see najwah flipping so quickly. but it will be interesting to see where she stands going into the merge. i will get justice for you james if she takes you out! again, excited to see what happens at tribal tomorrow. 

James Hayden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjRxkFkAuQI

James Hayden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBg5F786DK0

Sarah

Wow! The Guess Who challenge tonight was so close and at first, we were going to tribal. After advantages and disadvantages were factored in, we were BARELY safe! 😅 During the idol hunt today, I knew that I obviously couldn’t find another idol but I knew that this challenge was going to come so close and that I needed to buy advantages to ensure that I was safe another round. I honestly don’t know where everyone’s head is at on my tribe because they are so quiet so I needed to buy those advantages because I really don’t want to have to play my idol before Merge.... Buying those advantages could be my subtle move in the game. I am so hoping for Merge time soon! I miss my alliance and I miss talking to my best friend for hours about everything. 

Ryan

I was planning on voting out Amy, but something Najwah said irked me. She seems very sure that she doesn't want to vote James, which doesn't fill me with confidence if we go to tribal again next challenge. idk what I'm gonna do

Ryan

I genuinely don't know if im cut out for this game. I'd feel alright with cutting most people, but Najwah and Amy seem so genuinely sweet, it'll break my heart to betray either of them

Amy A

This tribal is going to be INSANE. It’s 5 odd hours to tribal council and I DON’T know who I am supposed to vote for. Ryan told me he and James are voting Naj and she told me she and James are voting Ryan and then Ryan told Naj he’s voting me! I know it’s a lot to take in! The only one I’ve Not been told to vote for is James and I don’t even wanna vote him cos he was an absolute rockstar at yesterday’s tribal. I know I’m the reason we’re here so I’m kinda bummed out about it and I trusted Ryan so much I shared my steal-a-vote with him but someone has to go and fingers crossed it isn’t me. 

Amy A

Convincing the whole tribe I didn’t get the DA has been hilarious so far. Once Jay confirmed she wouldn’t reveal the name, I was set. The LIES 😂😂😂😂😂. Even insinuated Ryan cos he was scrambling so much today. Didn’t know I had it in me but I guess survivor brings out the best in you. Anyway, all the best to myself for tonight. Hope I’m still here 24 hours from now  

Pedro A

im so tired...i havent been sleeping well..i just hope the next challenge is due tomorrow....rn i feel like im fourth in the tribe, which is good

Maddison

Got some good advice on my game and looking forward to implementing strategies to minimize my threat level until the end of the game.

Ben Kessler

I am hoping merge is at 12. After tonight 13 people will be left, and who knows who will have the numbers advantage. I'm currently working on Pedro who wants revenge on his old tribe and I cannot wait to break up those 3 old maolos that are on new maolo. Hopefully if we lose Pedro will be an easy vote out. And then I can slither my way in.

Najwah Last night's challenge was a real bummer. I mean, we were SO CLOSE. It's getting harder to vote people out now and even harder to trust anyone so hopefully the plan tonight works itself out. Whichever plan that is. There are a few plans floating around. Either way, whatever the outcome, I'd just like to sleep in peace tonight. I'm tired. 

Ben Kessler

Pedro said that me and him were talking too much game and to "talk about ourselves". I didn't want to tell him I did not want to discuss the vacation that he is on. So now I need to vote him out next. People like talking about themselves I guess.

Pedro A

okay so i have talked with ben, zack and cody LOL.....and they all seem cool...one thing i noticed in bens profile ..is that he only has 2 contacts...that i have....weird...maybe im thinking too much

James Hayden

https://youtu.be/oGcQdHpBzhY

Aimee

https://giphy.com/gifs/gIlUSzpqN9xVhekR2r/html5 Whew!!! Just when I thought we lost this last challenge, Jay really went “GOTCHA” and gave us all whiplash. Looks like advantages and disadvantages really can make the difference in these challenges! This tribe swap really did provide a new opportunity for me in this game. Everyone here is so kind, fun-loving, and have similar vibes with me, I love it! We really all get along on a personal level and are bonding on things that aren’t game related, which is a breath of fresh air. Despite being in the minority on this tribe and coming into it with a tribe number disadvantage against three others who I suspect are aligned, it was still honestly such a blessing swapping out with less neurotic people that aren’t constantly draining me for their attention. I feel like a giant weight is off my shoulders and I can focus more on having fun. Even Sarah has been great now that we swapped and is more active, and is now chatting with me daily. I’m so relieved we haven’t had to go to tribal yet as I truly would work with each one of these people if we could all make it to merge!🌈💞 https://sinnohqueen.tumblr.com/post/166307617197 I love that the Hail Mary Reem guess really saved the day. She is iconic! A word we all love to say on this tribe 😊

Grae G

Thank god we didn’t have tribal! I’m really liking all the girls I’m playing w but my allegiance lies w my OG girls for now

Ryan

I think I’ve finally made up my mind

[soullesswithoutyoux]

I MATH YOU

This might be too cheesy to handle. Please forgive me for i am about to share my feels for the past six months.

Math is really my favorite subject. One reason is that i fully understand things. Another reason is that it does not involve too much memory like verbally attaining all the wordings and punctuations bec it just involves understanding and application. And the last reason is it gives happiness.

And with it, I found you.

October 1, 2016 was surely a date to remember. It was the beginning of everything between you and me (or mostly me bec you dont even know my name😢). I dont know when it started or how did i even ended up admiring you. You’re not that good looking nor even well mannered. Still, it chose you.

It started when our prof entered the room discussing ultimate techniques in which my mind wasn’t able to absosrb the techniques he actually called “warm up problems” so i decided to be the ‘GIRL WHICH IS AFFECTED BY UTTERMOST-OBSERVATIVE SYNDROME-WHICH-OBSERVES-EVERYHING-IN-A-SHORT-AMOUNT-OF-TIME-OR-WHEN-HE/SHE-IS-BORED-AND-HAVE-NOTHING-TO-DO’. And so there i was observing shits again. Then my eyes saw a familiar face and figure. 'Ah it was him again. The one i am always competing with since elementary days’. We were both from privte schools before which always put me at second or third place in every contest. But if you remember, i actually won when in grade 2. I was first and your teammate was second. Then everythig follows

October fourteen came and i saw you again. It was my birthday that day. Shocked to see you and your fellow contestants, i did not notice that my coach was adressing me. My coach told me to put these things here and there and since my coach is a judge in one of the contests, i was told to put the necessary things at the last room. While on my way, i saw you. That was our first eye contact. We had it for like 5 seconds? But we broke it right away. Too awkward to look back and say hi, i continued my way until the last room. You were a damath contestant which shocked me because with all your brains and stuff, you could compete anywhere but then you chose damath.

Every satuday, i would see you and sometimes while dozing off, i would actually see you looking at my side or was it just my hallucinations? Anyway, it made my hreart flutter. And i think since then, i started stalking and knowing things about you through my seatmate. My seatmate was your former classmate if you would notice.

The saturday classes continued and somtimes i would be disappointed in failing my expectation to see you. Things were okay that time. I consider you as one of my crushes. I only know you by name and you dont know me. Simple as abc, our lives are that far apart.

Since then we would only see each other during saturdays. You only attended one session in the saturday program which disappointed me again. I was eager to attend those saturday sessions hoping to see you for at least 4 hours.

Then time came when we submitted our requirements for the scholarship exam at your institution. Waiting for my parents to meet me at robinsons, i decided to walk around the mall. While walking, i saw you eating with your friends at KFC. I was excited that i saw you again.

Another contest then came up and it was abouth math. Hoping that you would paticipate, i tried my best to not be eliminated. The contest was held last february 17, 2017. And again on that day, i saw you. Unable to control, I unconsciously smiled. Hoping that we would not be at the same room, because i would be distracted if so. And luckily, we are not on the same room. After the competition, i wasn’t eliminated. And later did i know, you weren’t too. Excited to meet again on the division finals, i couln’t contain the feels.

1 month came so fast and it was march 17, 2017 and the division finals at your institution. I was nervous and happy at the same time. Once inside the competition venue, we were strangers for 2 hours. Then we won second place and your team as fifth. Going towards the exit, we walked on the corridors and i saw you 1 meter close. It made my heart flutter at the situation. We had eye contact again and then you were called by your teachers. Unable to maintain a straight face, i silently hid my face so no one can notice the happiness.

After the contest, i was no longer hoping to see you again. Then the stage 2 qualifiers were then announced. I joned and the day i heard you were joining too, i jumped from my seat celebrating like its an achievement. The in house training happenings is too long to repeat it again but we had our picture and i was contented. We actually cursed at the same time while taking the picture when your friend said 'lxxz, akbay na’.

Not hoping to see you again, i am too shy to add you at facebook because you would know that i have these feelings a big HAHA for me tho. Anyways, i hope that we would be close to one another.

'Til we see each other again or at any contest, lxxz

(P.s. Still hoping that we would meet one day and be friends) oh nvm.

[ambreignsfans]

Roman Reigns rolls with the Falcons, wants Romo for the 49ers and doesn’t mind if you boo him (The Undefeated)

The WWE superstar talks crowd reception, beef with John Cena and those dad jeans

Love him or hate him — and some really hate him — Roman Reigns is one of the top performers in the high-flying, death-defying world of WWE. Reigns, whose real name is Leati Joseph Anoa’i, signed with the professional wrestling juggernaut in 2010 and has risen to the top of the card in a very short time.

Since he debuted on television in 2012, Reigns has beaten down some of the industry’s most prominent names in wrestling — Daniel Bryan, Randy Orton, Triple H, John Cena and even his cousin, The Rock. Reigns, 31, is a former U.S. champion, tag team champion, and three-time WWE heavyweight champion. For nearly two years, he was a part of one of the most popular and era-defining stables in wrestling, The Shield. Alongside fellow young superstars Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, the trio ran roughshod over the entire company, gaining the adoration and respect of millions along the way. He won the 2015 Royal Rumble and has been the headliner for the past two WrestleManias, the company’s largest promotional event each year.

Before signing with WWE, Reigns was a three-year defensive starter on the football team at Georgia Tech, nabbing All-ACC honors in his senior season alongside future Hall of Fame wide receiver Calvin Johnson. He later signed free-agent contracts with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Minnesota Vikings in 2007 before turning his attention to professional wrestling.

What’s helped accelerate his ascent in WWE has been a mixture of a revered family tree, unparalleled athleticism and Hollywood leading-man good looks. The half-Samoan, half-Italian Florida native favors Justice League’s Jason Momoa and is built like an NBA small forward. With the strength to easily lift up 400-pound men like Big Show and the verticality to clear 5-foot-high ring ropes in a single bound. Most of his abilities, though, can be chalked up to genetics: Reigns comes from a respected Samoan wrestling heritage that includes ersatz Japanese sumo wrestler Yokozuna, master-of-the-stinkface Rikishiand box-office magnet Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. While Reigns was one of the hottest commodities the WWE had in the early months of 2014, his popularity has nosedived over the past 2 1/2 years. He’s loathed by hard-core male fans who believe Reigns is being force-fed to the audience by WWE chairman and CEO Vince McMahon and executive vice president Paul “Triple H” Levesque. Crowds have booed Reigns out of almost every arena across the country. That has not stopped Reigns, though, as he’s set to compete for the Universal championship on Sunday at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view in San Antonio, looking to become just the third competitor to ever hold that championship belt.

tweets: @wweromanreigns

Super Bowl pick?

A-T-L. I played at Georgia Tech, so I’ve got to stick with Atlanta.

Favorite team that always disappoints you?

[San Francisco] 49ers. I’m a 49ers fan and a [Los Angeles] Lakers fan, so it’s been a hellacious year. Nothing good so far.

Who do you see as the quarterback next year for San Francisco?

Oh, man. Let’s get [Tony] Romo. Why not? I don’t even know if we can get him.

Favorite throwback TV show?

I was huge on [ABC’s] TGIF: Family Matters, Boy Meets World, all those. Saved by the Bell, that’s up there, too. My [kid is] still watching Saved by the Bell. My kid actually watches Full House still.

She watches it on Netflix?

Yeah, well, they actually have a Fuller House, and D.J., one of the little girls, is the main character now. What’s old is new, I guess, right?

Who’s the most famous person following you on Twitter?

There’s a couple of porn stars that follow. I don’t know if we can use that. I don’t follow anyone. There’s no line of communication from me. [Minutes later.]

Mr. Belding [from Saved by the Bell] is following me. I don’t think he’s the most famous, but he’s the one I have off the top of my head.

Is it better to look perfect and late, or just OK and on time?

I’ll be late. Island time, man. If I have a flaw, it’s not being on time. Sometimes. If it’s very important, and it’s a hard call time, then you’ve got to be there. But if it’s just a standard day, then I’ll probably be an hour and a half late. So, I’m not the most punctual, but I show up looking pretty good, though.

How do you handle all the ladies’ attention?

I ignore it. It’s weird because it came out of nowhere. When I played football, I was a little bit heavier, so I was a ham. With this role, I’ve lost my weight. I’m a married man. I love my wife and I love my [daughter]. That’s the most important thing. It’s flattering to have women who are attracted to you and like what you do, but at the end of the day, it only takes one woman to make your life right.

Who has the best spear in professional wrestling?

Me, no doubt. You can’t ask me that.

Who’s second?

I’d have to say Goldberg.

What type of injuries have you had to perform through?

All kinds of little stuff. That’s one thing in our profession: Nobody’s healthy. Everybody’s nicked up, everybody’s got bruises and little tears. For the past couple of years, my knees have been a little banged up. It’s tough running in that ring, because it bounces. It’s not like running on a nice grass turf or anything. Every once in a while my elbows will swell up. If you ever meet a healthy wrestler, it’s because he’s not wrestling.

What’s with those dad jeans?

Those things were expensive, man. I got them in Las Vegas. I’m not a jean guy; I actually just started wearing them more often now, [and] they’re definitely not those jeans. Those were, like, my first pair of jeans I ever bought that were supposed to be fashionable, and I was like, ‘What the heck? These are supposed to be cool jeans.’ They’re stretchy a little bit and they had all sorts of cool bedazzles and stuff on the butt. I was like, ‘Man, these are going to be a hit.’ Next thing I know, they’re on the internet making fun of it, and I was like, ‘Man, I wasted almost $250 on these things … This sucks.’

You recently got into a war of words with John Cena on Twitter. What are your thoughts on him?

In real life, he’s a nice guy … but it is what it is. He’s an alpha male, I’m an alpha male. We’re both kind of in the same territory, so we’re going to bump heads. I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to dominate and hold it down for me and my family. I’ll do whatever it takes to do that, and I’m not going to let anybody — and that includes John Cena — get in my way.

[blschaos3000-blog]

Its 11:06 pm dark/rainy/writing

Welcome to 8 Questions with…….

Recently I had a chance to review a wickedly funny short film called “Basic” which was written and directed by our next guest,Chelsea Devantez. Oh yeah,she also starred in it as well. While Chelsea has been compared to Tina Fey and Amy Schumer,I found myself thinking she is like Chelsea Devantez. I found Chelsea to be warm,witty and very gracious as well as very funny. Of all the different acting genres in today’s world,I have to say that comedy is the hardest. It takes a lot of blood,sweat and tears to work your way up through the ranks of being a good comedian. Chelsea has done that and more. Be it working with the famed Second City comedy group in Chicago,to co-hosting a podcast and now becoming a comedy writer on TV where Chelsea is rapidly becoming well known for her own unique take on what comedy is .  It hasn’t always been easy but then again,when has comedy in its many forms ever been easy. While Chelsea has been compared to Tina Fey and the late Gilda Radner,I don’t think that is right…I think Chelsea is her own woman with her own voice and she can do whatever she sets her creative heart on.  You can see her writing talent on display in the hit comedy “Bless This Mess” which stars Lake Bell and Dax Shepard and airs on ABC. Now it’s time to ask 8 Questions with the multi-talented Chelsea Devantez…..

         Please introduce yourself and tell us about your current project.

   What’s up! My name is Chelsea Devantez, I am a writer, director and comedian. I made a short film called BASIC that was set to screen at SXSW, which of course got cancelled. Now you can see it online at www.shortoftheweek.com and it’s also a Vimeo Staff Pick and a Lady With Lenses pick! 

What three things drew you to comedy?

  There’s an old adage that comedy comes from pain, and that’s very true with me. I had so much pain inside me that it never even came out as pain, it tipped into comedy and that’s been the way I’ve been able to express myself. I find comedy/sadness is like a water faucet — the water can be really hot but then you turn it a little more and suddenly it’s cold again. I came up in comedy at The Second City, Chicago which specializes in satire. Satire is about turning an unfair situation on its head, heightening it, and putting the punchline on the abusing power, in order to shed light on the underdog. So I found comedy was a way to get people to listen to a political opinion they might otherwise not be open to, or an opinion people would have if they just had all the information. It was also a way to get people to listen to me at all, being a woman, ha! Finally I just love to fuck around and I love to laugh and have fun and now I sound like a Tinder profile. 

What is a “comedy troupe” and how does one get invited?

   A comedy troupe is an ensemble of comedians whose comedy comes from working together — either writing sketch shows, or doing long form improv, or short form improv, or making videos etc… You don’t have to be invited — you can just create your own if you want. My journey is that I took improv classes from every single improv theater I came near. I met friends in those classes and we formed our own shitty comedy troupes that would perform in basements of sandwich shops. Then as I got better I auditioned at iO for a Harold Team and for The Second City in Chicago and got my first job performing for them, and then I worked my way up at Second City where I eventually did three Mainstage shows. 

What is a “Writer’s Room” and how does it work?

  A writer’s room is a room of writers who work on one specific project — literally a room that everyone sits in, with hopefully other smaller rooms and offices you can break out into. A showrunner runs the room, and pitches out stories, themes, characters, basically the show they want to make. And that room of people helps them break the stories and create the season, from making episode outlines, to writing episodes, to pitching jokes. It can be a very serious place where you spend 16 hour days meticulously mapping out a story, or it can be a place where people are standing on chairs competing for who can do the best impression of Lindsay Lohan dancing in Mykonos as two other people eat shrimp cocktail and someone naps in a corner with a glass of whiskey. 

Do you write for a character or the actor who plays the role?

  I think you write for character first, and then as soon as it’s cast, you write towards this new character that the actor created when they embodied them. 

In your opinion, why is it easier for a comedian to do drama rather than a dramatic actor doing comedy?

   Man, I really tried to articulate this, and I’m not sure I can, even though I do agree that’s true. I personally think more people can be taught how to be a dramatic actor because it’s human to have emotions like sadness and joy and love, and you can tap into them. But comedy doesn’t exist in every single human, there’s only so much it can be taught, and it definitely can be taught, but only to a certain degree. Someone truly truly funny has it inside them.

If offered a starring role as an actress in a show, would you take it and why.

  Hm. Really depends if the contract would allow me to still be able to make my own work. I love acting and love being able to take on a role and just focus on that, but I do always need to be writing and making my own stuff, for my own heart and mind to be happy and survive this business. There are stories and points of view that are really important to me to tell and I hope I get to tell them all one day.

What do you like about making films?

   So many parts are my favorite. I think the moment everything is set and you’re on camera or other actors are and they improvise a magical moment, is always my favorite. I also love the moment in editing that you realize you made something great. I find that every time I look at the first cut I’m just horrified and regretful and it seems like it’s all garbage. And then there’s always a certain point as you revise and move everything around where suddenly the film you imagined emerges, and it’s a great feeling. 

What do you do for fun when you’re not working?

   I’m a weirdo and I love working. For me, making art is the joy and the fun I pursue. Being onstage and writing a script are my favorite things to do. I also love to just LOUNGE. My boyfriend Yassir Lester is also a writer and actor on Black Monday and Duncanville, so when we get a break together we love to read, watch movies, hate watch terrible shows, and go to dinner with friends. I also love to play Mario Kart on switch and we just fostered a dog and we’re walkin’ his ass all the time. 

Aggies or Lobos?

Hahahhaa you looked up New Mexico sports! This makes me so happy. But I’m gonna have to say LOS Lobos — the band.  

The cheetah and I are flying over to watch your latest film but we are a day early and now you are playing tour guide, what are we doing?

   I live in Los Angeles but my family is still in Santa Fe, so I’ll pretend we’re there. You gotta go to the farmers market and join the African dance class in the community center. Tomasitas is phenomenal for classic New Mexican food, order your enchiladas Xmas style — both green and red chile, you’ll have to fight through tourists and locals for a seat though. Harry’s Roadhouse is a great little diner and their coffee cake is to die for. Ten Thousand Waves is where you get your hot spring on, and then make sure you walk Canyon road for the incredible art and then stop at the Teahouse and get the oatmeal. Go see a healer, there’s so many of them and then get a burrito and watch the sunset because it’s just like the post cards.

  I like to thank Chelsea for taking the time off her Covid-19 lockdown to sit down and chat with us.  I’m looking forward to seeing “Bless This Mess” and taking a chug of iced coffee whenever we see her name in the credits. Chelsea’s star is one to watch and hopefully we’ll see her name on a big studio feature right after this flu gets done with wrecking havoc on America.

You can can up with Chelsea by various means….like her own personal website. Read other reviews and stories about “Basic“. (where is our review,cheri?) Join Chelsea on her InstaGram page. Follow Chelsea on her Twitter page. And see what Chelsea has upcoming by following her IMDb page.

Thank you for supporting Chelsea and the other folks that we have chatted with. If you are new to the “8 Questions” interview series,you can catch up by clicking here. Feel free to drop a comment or three.

8 Questions with…………writer/director/comedian Chelsea Devantez Its 11:06 pm dark/rainy/writing Welcome to 8 Questions with....... Recently I had a chance to review a wickedly funny short film called "

[samanthasroberts]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/12/27/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

[adambstingus]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181456618922

[allofbeercom]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

[newagesispage]

                                                            JULY       2018

 PAGE  RIB

***** Pete Davidson has gotten himself engaged to Arianna Grande. He has new tattoos to prove his love.

***** The first wall was raised for the old Conklin’s barn dinner theatre in Goodfield, Illinois. After a struggle to raise money after the old barn was destroyed and a fight with the insurance company, the day has finally come. The new structure which is part of a whole new complex will open in 2019. I can’t wait!!!

***** Vikings QB, Kirk Cousins is still driving his great old van and proud of it.

***** Check out Rotten apples, a website that is a database for consumers to learn if those involved in movies or TV have allegations against them.

***** The Daily show had a good idea. Every time that Scary Clown 45 does his daily dose of fucking everything up, call Fox news.  Calling your congressmen and protesting will have to continue, of course but it seems he mostly listens to Fox. Perhaps if they get tired of listening to us bitch, they will try to get their boss/fan to change a few things. 1-888-369-4762.** How far down will he and his cult drag this country?

***** A personal note: I heard a comedian the other day talking about jerks in all parts of our lives. Whether it be church, work, school, concerts, an AA meeting or whatever there is always an asshole in the mix to ruin stuff. This really resonated with me because I have seen a situation lately that perfectly illustrates this. A local store has a department with 3 managers. Manager #1 keeps hiring in his friends that mostly create their own schedules and do not often break a sweat. Manager #2 has been there a while and things run pretty smooth and fair when they run the day. Manager #3 is new to the position and often seems like they do not know what the fuck is going on and it was recently learned that this one has been backstabbing #2 so much that # 2 was fired. Now, we can’t know, of course, the reason for the firing but it just shows that a perfectly nice place to work and shop with a company one can believe in can go all wrong because of one or two bad apples. Manager #2 who is also battling illness (so does not often have the strength to fight back) has lost a career and many employees who respect them are now stuck working with people they know will run the place into the ground or having to find another job. I have seen a few similar situations thru the years and of course, asshole in chief in D.C. is like the all time perfect example of this but why can’t we weed out the jerks?  

***** Days alert: Is Paul leaving? What? They need to bring in a good mate for him. He is arguably the most honest person in town and he deserves the best. Let Will and Sonny have each other and find a better match for Paul but don’t let him go. I mean Sonny treats Paul like he isn’t even in the room half the time and they were going to marry?!  But, yes.. Chris Sean (Paul) is going and Bryan R. Dattilo (Lucas) may go soon too. Marci Miller (Abby) is out and will be replaced by the old Abby, Kate Mansin. Arianne Zucker (Nicole) will be back. Will she have a baby for Eric? Olivia Rose Keegar (Claire) has released a single titled ‘Just my type.’** Are they really gonna do a Ben and Ciara thing?** Sephen Nichols (Patch) is out as well as Greg Rikkaart (Leo). Farah Fath (Mimi Lockhart) is back. Sheila, Shawn and Belle will show up soon.  Kyle Lowder who used to play Brady will return as another character. There is a rumor that Allison Sweeney (Sami) will swing in for a bit and will she be pregnant with Rafe’s baby? I am betting so since Hope just mentioned something about Raif not having any kids.

***** Antarctic ice loss has tripled in just a decade.

***** The Philadelphia Eagles were cancelled at the White House because most of them would not come. Philly’s mayor countered with:” Trump is not a true patriot but a fragile egomaniac obsessed with crowd size and afraid of the embarrassment of throwing a party to which no one wants to attend.”  The night before, Fox news showed pics of Eagles kneeling when in fact they were praying as they always do. Nobody said there was anything wrong with that before so the players would like to know what is wrong with praying? This particular team never took a knee all season as protest. And what about the 10 players who wanted to go to the White house and worked hard to get there?** Scary Clown says he won’t even invite the NBA champs.

***** Illinois ratified the ERA. Just 1 more state and 36 years after the deadline to adopt legislation we may get there.

***** So, I see Domino’s latest stunt is fixing the roads? Somebody has to work on the infrastructure so it might as well be them.

***** The MtV awards best dressed to me were Alison Brie and Kristen Bell. While the chaos engulfed our country, the young people at the awards (the so called Hollywood elite), spoke out for real super heroes, acceptance for all and an end to bullying.

***** Should we be giving Dennis Rodman airtime to show how stupid he is? I hear the argument  over and over lately that someone was nice to them so they must be ok. This could be said of Trump, Kim Jung Un or a serial killer. How fucking selfish can people be?  The ignorant seem to be incapable of seeing the horror right in front of them as they pick and choose facts.

***** Why have I seen a rash of first cousins as lover’s jokes? Why is it ok to make fun of this?

***** Artifacts were found in Springfield, Il. which came from the 1908 race riots. First found in 2014 when work was being done on an underpass, officials hope to soon have them on display. After working to preserve the items, they are looking to the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress.

***** Is there a new serial killer in Massachusetts?

***** The Koch brothers are apparently waging war all over the country against Mass Transit. They use paid activists to push similar thinking voters to vote it down. It is funny that these big government haters don’t mind that the Koch Brothers have made a well thought out data service to help control their voters.

***** The Tony’s were pretty rockin’ this year. Robert DeNiro got everybody going with a Fuck Trump sentiment. Most awards went to The Band’s Visit, Harry Potter and the cursed child and Angels in America. Once on an Island won best revival and other winners were Glenda Jackson and Nathan Lane (who I love but was really pulling for Michael Cera and Brian Tyree Henry). Tony Shalhoub, Laurie Metcalf and Andrew Garfield also took home awards.  The most beautiful moment was from the students of Stoneman Douglas and their teacher who was honored.** A Trump supporter went to A Bronx tale: The musical after the DeNiro incident which is codirected by Mr. D. The supporter held up a Trump 2020 sign. My son chuckled, “At least he bought a ticket.”

***** IHOP has become IHOB. They think they are Red Robin. More $ in burgers than pancakes, I guess.

***** Stephen Colbert sang the National anthem at a Mets game.** Trump is taking swipes at the late night hosts now. Conan, Colbert and Fallon teamed up to do a funny about that.

***** So some people think that Roseanne’s racist remarks and Samantha Bee’s ‘cunt’ comment are the same? Both should lose their show? NO.. big difference.  Other countries do not get our outrage.. The word ‘cunt’ is not as big a deal in Canada and Great Britain. If there is fall out shouldn’t standards and practices at TBS be in trouble for letting the ‘feckless cunt’ comment go to broadcast? I mean Roseanne did this on her twitter on her own. Trump cult members think they can all go to twitter and spout their racist, hateful rhetoric and get away with it. If one is going to be successful in the mainstream world, they may not get away with that like Scary Clown. Anyway, Go Samantha Bee!!**BTW,  Love the letter that Michael Moore put out about Trump and Roseanne, it is worth a read.** ABC will let the others serve out their contracts after a settlement with Roseanne when they bring us The Conners.

***** Jim Carrey and Showtime will give us ‘Kidding’ on Sept. 9. The dark comedy will cast Carrey as Mr. Pickles, a children’s host who is falling apart. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’s Michel Gondry will direst and the cast will include Catherine Keener, Judy Greer and Frank Langella.

***** Michael Myers, Jamie Lee Curtis and Halloween are back and wipes out all the sequels.

***** George Clooney received the lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute.

***** Illinois man, Jay Smith claims he may have coyotes, wild dogs, a mix or hybrid or a unique unknown species in the woods around his home. The U.S. Dept. of agriculture and Chicago’s field museum are now interested in the 40 or so creatures. Smith describes them as bigger than wolves with dark coats. You can see for yourself on youtube : Kanahoe wolves of forgottonia.

***** Atlanta has been renewed for season 3, of course!!

***** Reese Witherspoon will soon be back in the Legally Blonde world for the third time.

***** I truly love to hear Louie Anderson laugh.

***** The President is Missing, a novel by James Patterson and Bill Clinton is #1.

***** Terry Crews talked to the Senate about sexual assault.

***** Secret Service is temporarily keeping an eye on Sarah Sanders and more staff members may get their own agents.

***** The Environmental media association Benefit gala honored Elizabeth Olsen, Ray Halbritter, Mike Sullivan and Jane Fonda who danced on stage with the musical guest Snoop Dogg.

***** Redmond O’Neal was arrested on June 8 for assault with a deadly weapon, criminal threat, brandishing a knife, battery and attempted murder.  Police say he went on a violent spree in Southern California.

***** Watch for Shock and Awe from Rob Reiner in July. People have been floating his name for President and U know the opposition would immediately call him meathead. I say embrace it, Meathead for President!!!!!!!**I Love that Reiner calls out Trump with’ the art of the lie.’

***** The much anticipated Old man and the gun will be out in September. The comedy filmed in Texas stars Robert Redford, sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck, Danny Glover and Tom Waits. I can’t fucking wait!

***** Look for the new film, An Actor Prepares with Jeremy Irons, Mamie Gummer, Larry Pine and Jack Huston.

*****The special council has piled more charges onto Paul Manafort. It was after this that he went back to court for violating the terms of his house arrest and his bail was revoked. The 40 charges now include witness tampering. All charges were about incidents before the Presidential campaign.

***** We have to know that people are not really paying attention when Scary Clown and Gulliani babble on incoherently on national television and their supporters do not seem to care or they really don’t get it. These voters seem to think that it is easier to stay with the devil you know and just refuse to bend. ** Ivanka keeps gathering more new trademarks in China and refuses to answer questions about it as the trade talk rages on.** Why do people keep trying to normalize all this behavior?

***** So.. Supposedly Trump told a friend that porn is not allowed in the White House and it his biggest complaint. Some reporters submitted this as an official question to the White House. It seems the subject has never really come up so no one has thought to ask before. So far there has been no response. ** Word is that Scary Clown rips up papers after he reads or uses them. The problem is that Presidential papers have to be preserved for history so 2 people work just to tape those papers back together.  They were fired this month.

***** Sexual misconduct controversy abounds in Illinois under Mike Madigan with Tim Mapes under the microscope.

***** Justify won the Belmont Stakes and is just the 13th horse in history to win the Triple crown.

***** Senator Jeff Merkley is telling us that immigrants are being held in small cages in Texas. Is this our country? Is this really happening?

***** Recording academy President, Neil Portnow will step down from his post next year.

***** Mystery Science Theatre 3000 will tour in the fall. Joel Hodgson, Jonah Ray, Tom Servo and Crow will begin riffing live on October 9 in Portland, Maine.

***** I wanna be in New Orleans for Voodoo fest on October 26-28. The lineup rocks with Marilyn Manson, Janelle Monae, Zeds dead, Elle King, Mumford and Sons, Arctic Monkeys and Childish Gambino.

***** Next year Brian De Palma is going to start filming ‘Predator’ about the Weinstein scandal.

***** Convicted drug trafficker Alice Johnson was pardoned by Scary Clown.  Who’s next?

***** Trump called Canadian PM Trudeau, meek, mild and weak. ** True to form, Trump showed up late at the G7 for his meeting on women’s empowerment.** Rep. Steve Schmidt said that ‘Trump beclowned himself.”** Trump quote: “Kim Jong Un is a great guy” and “ North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat.” I don’t think he will ever hear the end of it over those statements. Saying it does not make it so. I wrote this and then I heard Chuck Schumer say it. ** Big evidence of wrong doing in the Trump charity organization. He is now being sued by the attorney General for persistent illegal conduct.** Trump now says he wants to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. He is being such a good little boy by helping Putin check things off his list. Destroy NATO, Destroy EU, Destroy the UN, Eliminate U.S. leadership. ** As June ends, there are new reports that North Korea has ramped up its Nuclear production.

***** This whole mess with 2,000 kids being taken from their parents at the border is an outrage. I can’t help but think of our ‘well meaning’ Christian folk trying to convert the Native Americans back in the day. They tried hard to make the natives dress like the white man, pray like the white man and go to our schools. As well as leverage for scary clown’s wall, are they trying to fill these children’s heads with their own propaganda while they are in foster care or residing in the white man’s warehouse? **When will the loyalists realize that a wall cannot be built? Private citizens own some of that land. There are bodies of water on the border. No matter how much the racists wish for it, it just can’t be done.** There is something about the way he grins crazily when he is called out on something. It seems like he is so proud of his lies and the way he conducts himself so unethically. I am reminded of Manson and the way he would light up when asked about his crimes or when he was shown footage from other family members talking about him. This is such a fast moving story that some are equating to the way the Jewish and the Japanese were treated in the past. ** It is obvious that no planning went into any of this new policy. It is wonderful that so many reporters are watching the facilities they know about and staying at the border. It takes time to get the facts and it isn’t easy when the administration is being so secretive. The lawsuits have started. Can we get Sessions, Nielsen, Pence and Trump on child neglect??** People of all nations will not want to be here soon and we will be left with the racists and bullies. Do we leave or do we fight?  If everybody left the Trumpers alone in this country what would they have to complain about? They have no empathy, it is like they thrive on others suffering. ** Multiple on air personalities cried at the stories of the children as their emotions came to the surface. I think many of us feel helpless as that sinking feeling we all had on election night has come to the point we all feared.** The Red Cross has not even been allowed in to these FOR PROFIT facilities. Protesters are staying on the case of Krisjen Nielsen. The administration and their defenders have been so flippant about the whole thing especially Corey (womp, womp) Lewandowski.** It costs the government over twice as much to house the kids without their parents.** Melania visited the kids and wore a jacket which read ‘I really don’t care, Do you?’ This started a whole new mess. I thought of those Turpin monster parents. Why on earth does anyone want to put kids in cages?  Does it make someone powerful to torture children?

***** June ended with about 700 protests for the kids in cages. Family’s Belong Together marches were overflowing in the heat with inspiring messages and a lot of heart. I was so proud to be there.

***** New York has sued the federal government over zero tolerance.**The U.S. has withdrawn from the UN human rights body. Many do agree with this one for they feel there is not equal punishment for nations when it comes to human rights.** A lawsuit was filed on April 23 alleging kids were held down and injected to render them helpless and keep them calm.**It seems that we should leave the immigrants alone and enforce swift, harsh penalties for those who hire undocumented workers. These employees aren’t paying their fair share on these employees.**The Pentagon has been asked to prepare housing for 20,000 immigrants.** I mean, this is not a simple subject but basically if you come in illegally, you go back. If you seek asylum, you should not be separated from your child or be in detention. More judges would help get this backlog caught up and ankle bracelets had seemed to be helping the situation. Take some of this ‘traveling to Mar a Lago $’ and hire more judges. And let’s help stabilize these regimes so folks will feel safer in their own countries. Some are even saying they should abolish I.C.E.. Some of those speaking out with that thought are I.C.E. agents themselves. I.C.E. spokesperson James Schwab has been speaking out. He claims he resigned because although he was asked to spin for both administrations, the current administration asked him to outright lie. Thank you James! ** Immigrants add 63 billion to the economy.** A federal judge has declared the kids must be reunited with their parents in 30 days, for younger kids it is 14 days.** Justin Trudeau tells refugees they are welcome in Canada.

*****  Ok.. Read the next item before this one!!!... So Stuttering John AKA John Melendez has a podcast and he claims he called air force one and he got thru.  He pretended to be Sen Bob Menendez and Trump told him he would have a Supreme Court pick in 2 weeks. While people wondered if this was true, Trump announced he would have his pick on July 9.

***** The Supreme Court upheld the travel ban including Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Somalia and Libya. They (5-4) claim it is not a Muslim ban and allows for them to get off the list. This reverses the lower court’s rulings but at least it is the third incarnation as the first two were struck down. Even though the Supreme court said the President has the authority it did put it somewhat in check. Still wrong.  0 people have been killed in our country by a person from one of these countries.** The Supreme Court also tells us you don’t have to pay your union dues. ** Justice Kennedy is set to retire. Trump’s private banker at Deutsche bank for 12 years is Justice Kennedy’s son. JS

***** The country gets more liberal and the power in the country gets more conservative. WTF?** Rod Rosenstein seemed very confident in his questioning this week. This is good news for the country!

***** Sean Spicer is putting together a talk show.

***** The Trump administration is backing insurance companies to eliminate the pre- existing condition protection.

***** The 2019 Hollywood walk of fame will add Robert DeNiro, Anne Hathaway, Michael Buble, Tyler Perry and the trio of Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton.

***** Sara Netanyahu has been indicted on fraud charges.

***** Take a listen to the Ear hustle podcast and get the dirt inside prison.

***** Studied show that 97% of rapists never go to jail.

***** Women can drive in Saudi Arabia but arrests are up for women who protest there.

***** Jerry Springer is finally done with his show.

***** The republicans govern without shame. The democrats shame without governing.  –Bill Maher

***** From what I see it seems that America to the Conservatives means guns and Christianity should be included in our governments and our schools.  They seem to like everyone to take care of themselves financially except in extreme cases and outsiders should not be a part of this country. America to the liberals seems like the same rights for all like health care, ruling our own bodies and that love is love. They believe in high taxes and programs to help others.

***** Jeff Sessions of the United Methodist church has been charged under church law with violating paragraph 270.3: child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist church. In the 50 years of the church as a denomination, no case can be found that has gotten this far.

***** It seems that there was always a bit of a separation between Fox news and the rest of the company. This latest border mess has crumbled that particular wall. Artists who have at one time or another  worked for Fox Studios are speaking out. Modern Family creator Steve Levitan, director Payl Fieg and Seth Mcfarlane are among them.

***** If we don’t make peace with our wounds, we’ll be tempted to despise the wounded.  – Father Gregory Boyle

***** No one is illegal on stolen land.   Thanks Kim

*****  Trump is not much on tradition. The man cancels the congressional picnic for lack of time but is gung ho for rallies and fund raisers .A scrawl on Fox news dressed down CNN and MSNBC for not airing the latest Trump rally. Who the fuck wants to see that nightmare?

***** Peter Fonda’s emotions got the better of him and he tweeted: WE SHOULD RIP BARRON FROM HIS MOTHERS ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH A PEDOPHILE AND SEE IF HIS MOTHER WILL STAND UP AGAINST THE GIANT ASSHOLE. He deleted it but the damage was done. He apologized to the family.**Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant** Maxine Waters is asking people to call out Trump workers when they see them. This is getting ridic but I think the right thinking people of this country are feeling trapped and desperate. Civility is hard keep in check when our country is being taken over by racists, thieves and bullies. We must try to do this right though. We must get this right!

***** Scary Clown 45 claims that crime in Germany is so high, perhaps because of the refugees? In fact, crime is at a 30 year low? Similarly, a report commissioned by Scary’s own administration shows how much immigrants put into our economy but since the numbers were good, they buried that report.** A story claimed that WH staffers show the President only what he wants to see and that John Kelly tells people to just let him keep going as he is and if it leads to impeachment then our country will be through this horrific time.** His rallies and speeches get crazier if that is possible. Does he travel with an audience?** Trump claims that the Dems want immigrants because they see them as potential voters. Genius, years of red tape and possibly letting gang members (his words) in just for a vote! ** He will say anything to divert attention from himself and his cohorts using this country as their personal piggy bank and taking our rights away.** The UN has declared that the policy of separating children from parents at the border, “may amount to torture.”

***** White house.gov has an agenda for a complete reorganizing of the Federal government full of privatization, major cuts and consolidated power.

***** I-95 in Maine has been getting shut down so border patrol can check your citizenship. WTF?

***** OK.. This is a very unimportant note and I try to never watch commercials but I love the new Progressive ad where the dude is turning into his dad. So cute!

***** I wish that there was a little more backbone on the Sunday morn political shows. I mean the weekend of the big outrage at the border, there were big Trump loving infomercials, why are Bannon and Kelly Ann even invited on these shows?  I have no earthly idea how anyone could have an ounce of respect for any of them.

***** A NY Times story finds that Scary clown 45’s prison cutbacks have been so severe that teachers, secretaries and nurses have had to act as prison guards. ** Economists estimate that Iowa soybean farmers alone could lose up to $624,000,000 as a result of the tariffs. **Harley Davidson has moved some of their work to Bangkok because of the trade war.

***** Thank you James Corden for the Carpool Karaoke with Paul McCartney. It is the first time in a while that I let go of all the worry over this country et al and really got engrossed in something sweet and fun.

***** Disabled vets are being docked on their disability checks for an insurance they were forced into that they and their families can’t even redeem.

***** Kevin Vernardo has started his own circus.

***** Vince Vaughn was arrested June 19 for DUI and resisting arrest.

***** The BET awards winners include D J Khaled, Black Panther, Migos and Sza. Best dressed to me were Meek Mill, Remy Ma, Trevor Jackson, Storm Reid and Janelle Monae.

***** Mystery Race day theatre with Michael Waltrip????

***** John Legend tweeted a Fuck You to Paul Ryan!

***** The electoral college must go!

***** March 2019: Tim Burton will bring us Dumbo with Michael Keaton, Colin Farrell, Alan Arkin and Danny Devito.

***** Stan Lee has gotten a restraining order against his business manager claiming elder abuse.

***** A 94 year old Elgin woman put up a large sign in her yard that read ’Impeach Trump now!’ The city told her that it exceeded the size limit for signs in the city ordinance. She put up a smaller sign claiming that she just wants to draw attention to his foreign policy, trade policy and domestic policy. The woman, Myra Becker said that he’s a disaster. “I’m on a walker and there are all the things I can’t do but I can put up a sign.

***** Larry Kudlow had a heart attack.

***** The new season of Comedians in cars getting coffee includes Dave Chapelle, Alec Baldwin, Dana Carvey, Ellen DeGeneres, Zach Galifianakis, Jerry Lewis, Kate McKinnin, Tracy Morgan, Hassan Minaj, John Mulaney and Brian Regan.

***** So John Cena is really a pig! There was a clip of the man telling his girlfriend that he would make the sacrifice of giving her a child. This was a regular clip from a show she does so at least he owns his pig status, I guess. Sure, it is a ‘reality’ show that is supposedly all scripted but I don’t think that would matter to me if I was that kid.  I guess all their money will help. Good luck kid!

***** Boundaries will star Christopher Plummer, Peter Fonda and Vera Farmiga.

***** Mike Pence was invited to the big gay dance party in Ohio that was in the street just outside his hotel.  

*****  Brockmire continues to make me laugh out loud. A great line: Orange juice is a glass of vodka wasted.  How will sobriety play in the next season?

***** Trump staffers seem to have trouble unwinding and having personal lives since most of D.C. wants nothing to do with them. Recently it was revealed that they have found a bar called Rebellion where they feel welcome. Oh what clever clogs.  I imagine that since this has been revealed , it won’t be fun there for long.

***** Better Call Saul season 4 will have a mysterious Breaking Bad character that was never seen named Lalo. A couple more characters will be introduced when the show returns August 6.

***** The Traverse city film fest will honor Jane Fonda with Lifetime achievement.

***** Acura is sure using a lot of vintage Stones in their advertising as of late.** BTW The Stones have a new boxed set of all their original material albums from 1971 on. It is all cleaned up and lookin’ pretty!!

***** The new Whtney doc about Whitney Houston has some honest revelations . In a posthumous Me Too moment, it is revealed that she was molested by her cousin Dee Dee Warwick.

***** Maryland was home to the latest shooting. The AP has declared they will help the Capital Gazette continue to publish until they get back on their feet. Now that is what this country should be about.

***** The table in the Vietnamese noodle shop where Obama and Bourdain dined has been put under glass. Fans have come to the shop to pay tribute.

***** Mia Farrow proposes we move to saying ‘succumbed’ to suicide instead of ‘committed’ suicide because depression is an illness. The legacy of suicide is cruel enough for all involved. The national suicide prevention hotline number is 1-800-273-8255.

***** R.I.P. Glenn Snoddy, Alan Bean, Joe Jackson, Ella Brennan, Dwight Clark, Kate Spade, Alan O’Neill, Danny Kirwan, Eunice Gayson, Murray Frumson, Koko, Jackson Odell, Gena Turgel, Jerry Maren (last of the lollipop guild) , DJ Fontana, Neal Boyd,  Matt ‘guitar’ Murphy, Nick Knox, Jimmy Wopo, Charles Krauthammer, Vinnie Paul, Richard Harrison, Richard Valeriani, victims of the Maryland newspaper shooting,  Anthony Bourdain, Steve Soto, Willie Lee Rose, Richard Allan Greenberg and Eva Kirchgessner.