#the venn diagram is small but NEVER ZERO!!!!!

[heartepub]

two deranged literature people going back and forth SOOOOO TRUE

but also, for your enjoyment/suffering (bc “to love is to turn around” got me knawing my hand)

in general i just wanna chew glass at any greek story/retelling that interacts w the notion of tragedy and fate (which is almost always LMAOADDJS) (“there is no other end to this story,” etc)

kae I am begging for orpheus minghao and eurydice reader scraps . also have u read/gone through either the sarah ruhl play or the gregory orr retelling cos---[heaves]

bonus but optional: not a specific fic, but which wip are u most excited about!!

i am familiar with the gregory orr retelling but i still have to dig my claws into sara ruhl's version <3 (un)fortunately, my orpheus!minghao x eurydice!reader wip is heavily based off this ↓ tumblr post & the hadestown musical

among my wips, i am probably most excited to hammer out academic rivals/teacher vs. teacher!wonwoo and we got married!jisung ≖‿≖ sharing some scraps from orpheus!minghao, which i do not doubt i will rewrite/rework in the longer run:

two titles i'm playing with: the path to paradise (likewise, the road to ruin) and right before the spring.

toying with making this a modern au. a down on their luck couple trying to make it another month. there's rent to pay, and the job market is shot, and love isn't enough. times may have changed, but these are still the same old gods and the same old problems. the world spins madly on, etc.

minghao is not a musician but an artist. he's more of a realist than canon orpheus. initially, he doesn't think his work can help bring 'spring', but reader convinces him otherwise.

minghao turns around. that does not change. it is a matter of why he turns around that i have to figure out. but minghao is orpheus, and orpheus always turns— because to love is to turn around.

[les-gnossiennes-fantomatiques]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thanks for the tag, @wheel-of-fish ! I’ll do my best not to sound silly here, but I am trying to get back in the saddle of writing again and this felt nice to do as encouragement.

How many works do you have on AO3?

A mere seven stories! I am absolutely pretending the FFN account I had twenty years ago does not exist anymore. (It does.)

What's your total AO3 word count?

161, 882

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

The Fly Agaric

Between the Lines

All Imaginable Pangs

Le Phénomène

All That is Solid Melts Into Air (this fic will haunt me until I die.)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try as much as I can to; I’ve honestly fallen behind this year, since I’ve been on hiatus for medical/mental health issues, but if you see me replying to your comment from a while back in the near future… I am so so sorry, but please know that I am SO deeply appreciative of every single comment that gets left on my stories.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Between the Lines! This one is a Leroux-canon insert that happens during the two weeks Christine is trapped in Erik’s house, and within the context of the fic, it ends badly, and within the greater context of the book… well! You know how it ends. It’s funny, because that was the first fan fic I wrote as an adult trying to get back into fandom after 15+ years of pretending I had moved on from it (spoiler: i did not.) and now I cannot bring myself to write dark endings.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Most likely Le Phénomène. This was written for fluff week and was a massive excuse to have Leroux E/C have sex during a rainstorm without having to worry too much about the plot lol. What can more i say.

Do you write crossovers?

I have! It’s The Follies! And I’m quite proud of it, but it gets zero hits haha, because it’s a Venn diagram of an already small fandom (Phantom) and an incredibly niche one (my favorite musical, Sunday in the Park with George, which is also set in early 1880s Paris and about a troubled artist/muse affair—which, if you’ve never seen it, GO NOW! The proshot is widely available and it’s life changing.). If you’ve ever wanted to see Erik get drunk with Bernadette Peters, then have I got a story for you.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

For the most part, no. I have had a couple of random people who don’t like what I’ll call “hate sex” blast me for writing Erik and Christine having it because, idk their love is pure or something, but that’s mostly it.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! I don’t know if I write smut for the sake of smut (save for the one fluff piece), but I love writing emotional, atmospheric sex into my stories—sex that deepens how characters relate to each other and who they are as a person; people are allowed to have their own interpretations, but for me, sex is such a massive underpinning of most versions of the story and also a big part of my own life’s journey, and I just find it fascinating to write. I don’t know if people find my writing hot though, because things tend to inevitably get a little weird.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

See above.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not since high school, and most of it was written to troll lol. I think now I’m just too picky and slow and set in my ways for anyone to want to collaborate with me, hahah.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Erik and Christine forever. It just is what it is, folks. Their dynamic is so specific and strange and fascinating and I will never get tired of exploring it/reading it/drawing it/writing it etc. Every other ship I love is basically just another iteration of them.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There’s this Kay!verse horror story (with a happy ending because I’m me) that I started writing; it’s inspired by the myth of La Llorona and takes place during the weekend adult Erik returns to Boscherville to burn his mother’s house down. I really WANT to write it, but I have a story I need to finish first. I also seldom write horror and had to put it on pause because the particular subject matter of this one did not help my mental state lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I feel so silly writing this out about myself, hahah. If I have to say, I am particularly proud of my characterizations, my prose, and the thematic arcs I try to put into every story I write.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot. Oh, god. Plot. Like anything that isn’t angsting, fucking, or fighting is SO hard for me to write. (Hint: call everything a “character piece” and you never have to explain why nothing happens in your writing lmao). Looooong ass sentences. I’m incredibly slow at writing, terrible at outlining, and I second guess myself with every sentence. Someone once told me to my face that my fic writing was purple prose and I guess that still haunts me a bit.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

For the most part, I think it’s a bad idea. Unless you have a genuine handle on the other language, I think you’re better off implying that said language is being spoken through other means. It otherwise usually just reads as really cringey to me, like “Woohoo I ran this through google translate”—especially in smut. A couple of words here and there are fine, especially if there is a word that doesn’t have a 1:1 in the primary language, but something about a bunch of Google translate sentences being pasted into the middle of a story takes me out entirely. Just my preference though, especially when it comes to my own writing; I’m not Tolstoy. I’m not Nabokov. I’m not gonna try. Anyway, end tangent.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I’d say Pharoga, but my current WIP leans into that ship on and off. I really, really want to writeErik and Meg. One day. Or Raoul/Madame Giry

What's your favorite fic you've written?

It’s really hard to say tbh—the process of writing every one of my stories (including Tubeman Rik) has taught me so much about myself as a writer and person. But it’s a split between The Fly Agaric and All Imaginable Pangs. The former was basically the fic I’d been wanting to read and struggling to write for twenty years, and I put so much of myself and my own life experiences into it that it feels incredible to have finally laid it all out and gotten it on paper, even if I worry that I now have nothing else to say about Christine and Erik, haha. But there is something about All Imaginable Pangs that made it so fun to write—I love the challenge of crafting an OC who makes sense in Erik’s past, I LOOOOOVE thinking about the period of Erik’s life where he was trying to live as normal person, before he was jaded enough to become a mole person, and I love that period of time in art and history. It’s been so fun to sit in that world. I expected no one to read it, because I realize that OCs are a very hard sell in this fandom, but I just wanted to create a POV character who was closer in age to me, who’d been dealt a lot of luxury and a lot of shit thrown her way, who also has gray hair and soft thighs lol. That it has gotten any comments, let alone some of the seriously incredible feedback I’ve received across platforms, surprises and delights me. I can’t say whether or not Augustine is a success in terms of a believable original love interest, let alone person, but I like her enough that I’m (slowly) re-writing the whole story from Erik’s point of view.

Well. That was a lot of chatter. I apologize if any of this comes off as pretentious, but I’ve taken such a long hiatus from writing fic and this was a nice little jab in the arm to finish. I’ve had to take a lot of time away from fandom for health reasons, but I’m doing so much better and (i think) finally getting back in the swing of things. If you’ve ever so much as read one of my fics, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Tagging @box5intern @ladystormcrow @flora-gray @muirin007 @antiquarianne . My apologies if you’ve already been tagged.

[bubblywriter0]

I’m your biggest fan! Bakugou x reader x Todoroki

Word count: 2.6k of filth 

Warnings: non-con, smut, degradation, double-penetration 

tagging: @twynity @tommy-braccoli​

You were his secretary. Katsuki Bakugou, the hot-headed, incredibly stubborn, and undeniably handsome Ground Zero. Being the number three Hero's secretary had its perks, as well as its (rather exasperating) responsibilities. Which consisted of late nights, piles of paperwork, and plenty of arguments with the short-tempered Hero. 

But you loved it. 

You couldn't deny that it had you completely stressed most of the time, or that you were up till ungodly hours of the night more than once a week cleaning up his messes. But there was something charming about the snooty blonde, however hard it was to admit, and you could proudly say no one could match his outrageous temper the way you could. 

Your manager could confirm this first hand, as she had been caught in the midst of one-two many yelling matches between the two of you and always silently thanked you afterward for being able to keep him in his place.  

You held your own with the number three Hero, and though he would never admit it out loud, you were one of the very few people that could get him to see reason when his temper took over. You were a strong, independent woman. Which is why you never imagined yourself in this position, at least not in this way. 

—

Katsuki Bakugou was undeniably attractive. And an insatiable tease. He could (to your annoyance) read you easier than you anyone, and he had made your knees go weak too many times with his low-tone remarks or "accidental" intimate touches. But, you never gave in. 

You never took action on the desires that bubbled right underneath the surface. Not when you were fuming, inches away from each other from some dumb, long forgotten argument, the tension so thick anyone who walked in would slam against it. You even humored the thought of going out on a date. Just two colleagues going out for a drink after work, if not only to scratch the itch of something more. 

But the blunt hero never took the bait, couldn't seem to ask you out like a regular person. Instead, he had to drive you insane with teasing touches and suggestive remarks, that damn smirk and low voice carrying into your bedroom late at night when you were by yourself. Yet, being the responsible little secretary you were, you never gave in.

And then today, he finally seemed to snap. 

It started in the middle of your meeting. Some bastard was going on and on about some dumb policies and Bakugou couldn't be less interested. He internally groaned as he checked his watch just to find that he would have to sit through twenty more agonizing minutes of this. Tch. If this shithead pulls out one more Venn diagram I'm gonna fucking lose it. He fought the urge to prop his feet up on the desk, instead letting his gaze lazily wander to you. 

Aw. Look at you, such a good little secretary. His good little secretary, his brain added possessively. He chuckled quietly to himself, noting the way your pencil was tucked behind your ear, your brow scrunched in concentration as you scribbled down notes like a diligent student. He smirked as his eyes wandered down to see your pretty little skirt hiked up those cute thighs of yours. He licked his lips as he watched you bounce your foot gently, your thigh slightly jiggling from the movement. God, he just wanted to sink his teeth into you. 

You barely caught the movement in the corner of your vision, too busy watching the presentation to pay attention to Bakugou -besides, you were more than used to him getting antsy during these long meetings. So it was safe to say you didn’t take note of the large hand making its way towards you. 

You almost squealed when you felt the warm palm slide into your lap, your mouth dropping open in surprise. You practically burned up on the spot, immediately panicking and trying inconspicuously to pry it off. This only encouraged Bakugou, prompting him to squeeze the plump flesh, his thumb dragging slow, precise, and agonizing circles into your inner thigh as you squirmed, his teeth flashing as he grinned manically. He was going to enjoy this.

You couldn't focus on a word said after that, which was rather inconvenient considering you were supposed to be taking notes. The warm blush on your face hadn't left but your heart finally had slowed to a normal pace as the meeting came to an end. 

You stood quickly and smiled at the men and women leaving, unsettlingly aware of the metal chair scraping away from the table and the flooding warmth as Bakugou shuffled across the room to stand next to you. 

He grunted out less friendly goodbyes, echoing you lazily, and your eyes flew wide as you felt a hand sliding up the back of your thighs to your ass. You tried to swat his hand away but he caught your hand easily, pinning it against your back, clicking his tongue disapprovingly in your ear as he stepped up behind you. You let out a small whimper of protest and his grip on your wrist tightened painfully, pulling you with it so your back smacked against his chest, eliciting a surprised yelp from you. 

He didn't even seem to care that the last man who was about to shake your hand flushed almost as bright as you, and you squirmed helplessly as Bakugou glowered over your shoulder at the hand that was still held out. The dumbstruck man didn’t move, Bakugou’s patience wearing thin as he bared his teeth and let out a low growl, 

“Are you just gonna stand there shitty extra? You waiting for a damn show, wanna watch me fuck her real good or something?” Bakugou taunted cruelly, a hand wrapping around your neck as he leaned down to you. ‘Wadya’ say princess? You wouldn’t mind, would you? Bet your fuckin soaked right now, thinking about this shitty loser watching me bounce you on my cock, bet you’d like that, Hah” But all you could do was whine pathetically, trying to hide your red face, looking anywhere but at the flustered man. 

���Oh?” His crimson eyes narrowed at the man who was still standing there. “So you do want a show? That’s fine with me, but let’s make sure that princess here is okay with it,” he grinned again as you were suddenly thrown forward, bent over, the blood rushing to your head as you felt rough hands traveling up the back of your thighs curiously. “Let’s take a little peek and see if I’m right, hm?” 

But the poor man was already backing away, practically tripping over his feet and muttering apologies over his shoulder as he burst out of the conference room, his face bright with embarrassment and arousal judging from the obvious tent he was shielding in his pants as he made a bee-line for the bathroom. 

As the clear door swung shut you were suddenly picked up from the waist, and it took a moment for your spinning head to adjust before you started kicking your legs out in an attempt to escape. “Tsk, such a fucking brat,” Bakugou growled as he swatted at your ass, a painful sting following as you let out a yelp. 

“Stay fucking still slut.” You felt a tear drip down your cheek as you gave up your attempt to evade his grasp, your small body not standing a chance to the pounds of muscle you were up against. 

Bakugou flopped your body onto the glass table, pulling your ass towards him and flipping up your skirt onto your back so he had access to your plump behind. His heated fingers traced the exposed skin and you bit back a groan as he ran a finger down your slit. Your body automatically shivered when he yanked your panties down, hiding your head in your hands as you felt cool air tickle your dripping folds. He was right. You were sopping. 

“Aw, look at this,” you wined with embarrassment at his coos, his husky voice going straight to your exposed heat. “All wet and needy for me, huh baby?” You practically sobbed, your head nodding with shame. “Don’t worry pretty baby, I’ll take care of this mess” He pulled your legs apart and cooed again at the way your messy cunt dripped down all over the table, running a finger up your leg to collect some of your juices, popping the finger in his mouth and groaning at your taste. 

“I’ll make it all better, yeah?,” he hummed, chuckling at your incoherent mumbles and sobs. He leaned forward so his hot breath fanned against your ear, smirking as he growled in a low voice, “I asked you a fucking question slut.” You gulped at his harsh tone. “You know how to use your words, right bitch?” You nodded violently, terror making your voice tremble stupidly as you tried to answer in between hiccups, “m’s-sorry, I c-can-” He clicked his tongue, cutting you off. “I-I I’m s-sorry,” he mimicked you, sneering at the way you trembled. 

“Sluts who can’t follow simple orders don’t need to talk, do they?” You shook your head no shamefully, your cute little sobs and whimpers going straight to Katsuki’s already tight pants. “Good girl,” he cooed at your obedience, smirking as he undid his navy tie, pulling you towards him roughly. He reached around to your face and grabbed your jaw, his thumb prodding at your bottom lip. “Open,” he demanded, and you complied. 

He smirked with satisfaction at how good you were being, how easily you were letting him handle you. Such a good little slut for him, he repeated the thought again as he coaxed the handmade gag all the way into your open mouth, drool seeping down onto your chin. “There.” He grinned at the image of you looking all fucked out, cunt all messy and oh so needy, throat stuffed full, with mascara running down those pretty cheeks. “Isn’t that better baby?” He rasped as he kneaded your hips, grinding his clothed cock slowly against your dripping sex. You whined around your gag as you squirmed, fresh tears running down your stained cheeks as your body begged for more, begged to be filled by something, anything.     

Luckily for you Bakugou seemed to understand, fingers attacking your swollen clit as he humped against you lazily. “Need something pretty baby?” He laughed at your silence, but made quick work of unzipping his slacks as he pulled himself out of his pants, jerking himself once before spreading your cheeks. He groaned at the sight of his fat cock slipping between them as your needy cunt sucked him in, your body finally relaxing a bit as he slid inside you fully.

 He gave you no time to adjust, pulling out halfway just to slam back in, making you squeal around your gag. You rocked yourself back and forth on the table, chasing your much needed release as Bakugou used you, pulling your hips back to try and fit more of him inside you, your eyes rolling back at how good he felt. He almost didn’t notice how close you were, focusing on the way your weeping cunt kept sucking him in, squeezing around him whenever he growled filthy obscenities into your ear. 

But when you started babbling mindlessly around your gag, pushing back against him, he caught onto what you were doing, smirking at how quickly he’d reduced you to this. “Gonna come for me pretty baby? You gonna come around this fat cock?” You nodded, sobbing at how close you were.  “Go ahead, make a mess slut,” he growled against your ear, teeth grazing your skin as his warm tongue slipped out and prodded at it. You shivered uncontrollably as your body convulsed, giving into the intense pleasure as you focused on the heat between your slick thighs combined with the way Katsuki’s mouth was working down your neck, your orgasm racking through your body in euphoric waves, your cunt squeezing around Bakugou's dick as you came. 

You trembled as you slowly came down from your high, your sticky fluids sliding down your cheeks as Bakugou continued to pound into you. Everything felt so sensitive and suddenly the immense pleasure you were feeling mixed with something else and it was, “too m-much Katsuki, please s’too much,” but your cries were muffled and there was no way in hell he was letting you go now, grabbing your hips tighter as he thrust in and out of you, the lewd squelches from your dripping pussy making him feral. 

“Aw, you can take it princess,” he grunted with a sick grin as you tried to crawl away from him, squirming hopelessly on the glass table. “You’re not going anywhere, you’re gonna stay here and take it all like a good girl, you hear me?” He slapped your ass hard, emphasizing his point while his hips drove forward to meet your messy hole, groaning at the way your cheeks tinted pink from the impact, spanking you again to hear to feel you squeeze around him even tighter. “You like that slut?” He sneered, “Of course you do.” 

But you were too distracted by the flash of red and white that caught the corner of your vision. 

You raised your head slowly, only to be met with the inquisitive gaze of- You gasped. Shouto Todoroki. The Shouto Todoroki, the number Two Pro Hero you’d watched on TV for years, fawned over, and now... 

Bakugou could only assume your small gasp was from how good he was making you feel, and he smirked at this, driving his hips into you wilder with a new sense of inspiration and pride feeding to his unbelievably large ego. But how wrong he was. 

Your breath caught in your throat as curious blue and grey orbs traveled along your form, his gaze cutting through the glass and heating your whole body up till you were almost positive it was on fire. You felt so exposed, so humiliated, and so utterly turned on. 

His eyes slowly raised back to meet yours and you swallowed nervously. His pink tongue darted out to lick his lips and his mismatched orbs held yours with such intensity and curiosity, it was so..dominant. 

And it was making your legs feel weak. It made you feel all hot and bothered as he watched the Ground Zero fucking into you without hesitation, shamelessly watching every move. And it didn’t take long for Bakugou to notice. 

Bakugou was observant, and the sudden reactions your body was having to him was a pleasant surprise, but a little random, and it didn’t take long for him to realize your attention was focused outside the room, which annoyed him. “Oi, shit head whadya..” he trailed off as he caught sight of the red and white boy standing outside of the room, and he suddenly remembered he had a meeting with him scheduled for this afternoon, in this room. 

He had half the mind too cover you up and go tell the icy-hot bastard off but, what was this? You certainly seemed to be enjoying the way the dual-colored Hero was watching you get fucked. Did this.. Get you off? A shit eating grin spread across Bakugou’s face at the realization, the wheels already turning in his head. 

So his pretty little secretary wanted to act like a whore, huh? Then he’d treat her like one. 

You hear Bakugou chuckle darkly, yanking your hips back to gain more leverage, sneering at the heat rising to your face. Lips brush against your ear and a raspy voice whispers, "Oh look, it's your favorite little hero, Shoto Todoroki. Wave to him, princess"

—

Hope you enjoyed! Part 2 coming soon:) 

[seenashblog]

Nash Watches & Rates Cheesy Hallmark Original Christmas Movies, So You Don’t Have To (2019)

This is the thing where I recap and rate cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies (mostly - if other channels do "original" holiday movies, like Lifetime, I may sneak those in there, too). This post will be updated with new entries as I go, all below the cut. I'm rating based upon The Cheesy Christmas Movie Bingo Card. Here it is, and feel free to use it for your own watching:

More quick clarification on ratings: 

When something's pulling in a 4 or 5 star, that means the Bingo only popped a few squares. When something's hitting at a 3, it's a handful of squares, maybe came in the ballpark of having a Bingo. The 2s mean definitely got a Bingo. The 1s mean anywhere from more than one Bingo to nearly filled the damn card. Outside of the card, stars can also get docked because of piss-poor writing, embarrassing acting, draggy flow, and shitty casting (read: lack of chemistry).

Put another way - 3 stars means they aren’t exactly a waste of time, 2 stars are debatable/up to personal taste, and of course 1 star means I will never get that time back and I’m that much closer to death because of the movie and what it drained from my soul.

Here's the 2018 list

And remember: never, EVER watch “My Christmas Love” 😉

Let’s roll. Most recent entries will be first.

#6

Once Upon A Christmas Miracle (Hallmark, 2018 - Brett Dalton, Aimee Teegarden - the latter of whom will make you think "I know someone who looks like her" because she looks like that girl you went to school with or worked with or was a friend of a friend, or maybe is a friend of yours - she's just got that look about her. My Aimee Teegarden's name is Jessica.)

This movie is infuriating.

Brett is a great actor, Aimee is serviceable, let's just get that out of the way. Matter of fact, you're not going to find any of the acting grating. Overall, everybody's fine.

Here's what you need to know: this is based on a true story, and that story is that a woman who needed a liver transplant gets a random donor (no one in her fam was a match apparently). And donor's this awesome dude, and they end up falling in love. Cool story, right?

Yeah, then Hallmark got their hands on it.

Everything is shmoop. Everything. The family (including the - way to go casting - sister who looks nothing like her, I mean NOTHING like her) is on Christmas like it's crack. Details include her hand-making wreaths, and oh by the way she does it for every holiday. Okay. Whatever. Some of us have more time on our hands than others. Look at me, I pause in housework to type this shit up when I could be doing said housework. It's all about priorities.

There's of course The Conflict, which is that he gets a job offer out of town. But before all that, he organizes a Christmas Eve party focused on fundraising for her because of the medical bills and because she won't go back to nursing school since money. Welcome to the USA, the only advanced, developed country on the planet where they don't consider investment in our populous as important as investment in, well, you pick. I'm furious. I'm also grinding my teeth over the gross medical inaccuracies in this one, but I won't go down that road or we'll be here all day. I bring that up because the thing upon which this story pivots is the medical issue, so some realism there is important so that we as the audience can understand the gravity of what they went through, the sacrifice he made for a stranger, why this bonded them, etc.

I hate this movie. I hate it. The family is insufferably perfect. It's so overblown it's unrealistic. And that wasn't needed - it's okay to show them stressed and worried, this is a big deal. But nope, they're just perfect. And she's perfect, everyone loves her, she's pretty and smart and sweet and EVERYONE LOVES HER. There's not one moment of her being, say, bitter and resentful  that she's having to go through this, and again - THAT'S NORMAL. Just some normalcy is needed to balance the "Wow!" of what happened which is that they ended up falling in love, because that truly is not the norm and is extraordinary.

So I got curious and wondered what, if any, of this - beyond what we know - was actually true. Okay: he and his motorcycle club did arrange a fundraiser. They did end up several doors down from each other at the hospital and would take their walks together (that's mandatory post-surgery, they want you up walking ASAP, just FYI). But here's what I was looking for: this didn't happen at Christmas. He overheard a coworker talking about a sick cousin in January 2015. The surgery happened in March. They started dating, and in July he actually asked her father for permission to ask her to marry him. And THEN at Christmastime, he proposed to her, which was the very last scene in the movie.

I guess what I'm getting at is, why couldn't this have just been a regular Hallmark movie at a random time of year. They made the focus Christmas instead of it being on Heather and Chris. They had an opportunity to dig in a little deeper than they usually do, they were handed a wonderful love story that was filled with a major REAL trial, and they blew it. They swapped true love and loyalty, for romance and fluff. Yeah, love and romance are on the Venn diagram together, but they ain't the same thing.

This can't be a 5 because it was so schlocky, not to mention because there were zero character arcs, our two leads were the exact same people at the end as they were at the beginning. I can't in good conscience make it a 4 because of what I've said above. But the production value was fine, the acting was fine, the script dialogue-wise was fine, and the pacing was fine. IT WAS FINE. You may be into this, but I was greatly disappointed, especially after learning about the material with which they had to work. So I have to drop it from a 3 to a 2. Be warned, though - if you google, everyone rates it off the charts. [shrugs]

2/5 stars

The Christmas Note (Hallmark, 2015 - Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Leah Gibson - the former of whom you better know, and the latter of whom is incredibly familiar to me - and there's also several other familiar folks, namely the guy who plays the lawyer who is a great actor and should be in more stuff)

Now, even though this isn't based on a true story it is a good example of how to dig into tough situations and allow people to be imperfect, along with elements of lightness and sweetness and happiness. (The next one does this well, too, but hang on let's knock this one out.) Both our leads - and thank god on high this isn't a romance for once - are excellent actors with great chemistry, so no worries there. This *is* a love story, however. Because not all love is kissing and sex and romance.

One more time for the people in the back: meeting someone and growing to love them is not always about sexy times and kissy face and shmoopy romance.

So here's the scoop, and I'm not looking up their character names: Jamie-Lynn, along with her son (who, despite being a good lil' actor, is mildly annoying, but it's the script, not him) has moved back to her small hometown and gotten a little house to be closer to her parents, because her army hubby got nearly blowed-up overseas and he's in the hospital recuperating enough to where it's safe for him to travel home. Next door lives Leah who seems stand-offish at first but it's just because her life is basically work-home-work-home, wash-rinse-repeat. They start to get to know each other because this dude shows up and knocks on Jamie-Lynn's door and is like "I can't get hold of your neighbor but her mom's died and she needs to come clean out the apartment, like, yesterday." Jamie-Lynn goes with her to do it, being all - Nobody should have to go through this alone - and Leah accepts the offer, because this is gonna be hard, and double-hard because due to a falling out, she hadn't talked to her mom in like 10 years. They end up finding a letter her mom left her, and in part of it, she tells that before Leah was born she gave up a child for adoption. That's it. No other leads.

And after Jamie-Lynn and various folks around town encourage her, Leah decides she'll make effort to find her sibling, and Jamie-Lynn helps, and as they follow up on various things in mom's possessions, they get closer and closer, and end up becoming friends. There's no silly misunderstandings as excuse to farm emotion - there's just actual emotion because jesus, did you read what this plot is?! Nothing is smothered by shmoop and nobody is shoving Christmas spirit up your ass. Nobody's family is perfect (you know the scoop on Leah, and as far as Jamie-Lynn's, turns out husband may not make it home for Christmas, and her parents are divorced and slightly cantankerous), so again - it's keeping grounded in the midst of what's about to be a (kind've) fantastical ending.

Skip beyond the next divider if you don't want to be spoiled.

While they don't look alike, they do both have dark hair and dark eyes (I can't tell if maybe some dark hazel is happening, but their eyes ain't blue and brown is my point). And note the way they occasionally part their hair (far to one side), the way they'll occasionally move in sync (standing from chair, for instance), similar style purses and coats. You may've guessed the ending - and it was mentioned early on though not heavy-handed that Jamie-Lynn is adopted - but Jamie-Lynn is Leah's older birth half-sister. And of course, husband makes it home for Christmas.

The only thing - and I mean THE only, even the music is on point - I would've changed about this (but it's based on a book, so Hallmark couldn't, so I guess I'm critiquing the author) is that I'd have made it that the husband is her older half-brother. So that when he gets home on, say, Christmas Eve the lawyer could've shown up at the house being like "Sorry if I'm intruding but my contact at blah-blah-blah agency came through, I just read the documents, and you have to know this right away", etc. Otherwise, this movie is solid, top to bottom. I would give it a 4 vs a 5 because it is highly, highly, HIGHLY improbable that they'd be neighbors. Better for them to have met via work or at the coffee shop or something. But let me tell you, the thing that puts this over the top? In the scene where they find out the truth, they nail it. In lesser hands (including the lawyer actor), this would've failed and ruined the entire movie. Instead, it actually made me a little teary-eyed.

5/5 stars

The Santa Con (Lifetime, 2014 - the very stacked cast of: Barry Watson, Melissa Joan Hart, Melissa Sagemiller, Jaleel White, Scott Grimes, Wendy Williams, Alimi Ballard, John Ratzenberger - every single one of whom you'll recognize or know right off the bat)

Lifetime does this better than Hallmark, and tenfold: casting. And this is a drama vs. a romance, but they all nail it. It helps that the director was Melissa Joan Hart, and I'll put in my disclaimer here that I said last year....

I am slightly biased because Melissa is a friend of a friend (sister-in-law, specifically) and she is good people, a hard worker, and a smart cookie. She knows what roles she nails (sharp wit, no shmoop, strong chicks), so that’s what projects she and her mother choose (they produce most everything Melissa’s in), she stays in her lane, is my point, so if you agree with that assessment, then you’re good to go, this is classic Melissa Joan Hart fare.

Except this time? It's not exactly her typical fare, but it's just as solid. Here's the basic summary, and I'm not going too far down the road because with all those characters, as you can imagine, there's lots of back-and-forth as far as who's interacting with whom at a given point. So Barry plays a conman who finally landed himself in prison but he charmed the warden (Ratzenberger) and the board and gets parole. His goes to live with his sister (Hart) and we meet his fellow conman buddy (White), and the job he gets is part-time gig as a Santa at the mall (sister has a shop there). He is just going through the motions, and he promises this kid - the only bit of poor casting, IMO, but kid actors are six of one, half dozen the other - that his wish of his parents being back together will come true (Sagemiller and Grimes).

Problem: Grimes' character is an alcoholic, and the kid finally gets an eyeful and quits being pissed at his mom for the separation when dad shows up absolutely lit to the school play. In any event, Barry feels like he needs to make good on the promise somehow because he feels guilty and he insinuates himself into their lives (I am absolutely going blank how, sorry), and he at least wants to give Grimes a fighting chance at being reunited with his family (Sagemiller says she would totally take him back if he got the drinking issue taken care of because she genuinely loves him, she just can't tolerate that shit anymore). So Barry's doing things like helping Grimes get to AA and revealing that his boss at work took credit for his awesome idea (that, coupled with the drinking, is why he got fired if memory serves, I'm writing this post-movie).

There's one angle that irritates me - the issue with Grimes shouldn't have been alcoholism. That's a tough topic to tackle, and I don't know that a Lifetime Christmas movie is the place to do it. I didn't mind him coming drunk to the play, I think that would've been in line with him being, broadly, Mr. Fuck Up. Like losing his job - we learn that the reason is because his idea was stolen, but from her perspective it's part of his pattern. And maybe he kept missing things he'd promised to do with the kid. Whatever, fill in all those blanks. In addition, it irks me that Sagemiller's romantic choices here are a felon and an alcoholic. Are all felons bad? No. Are all alcoholics bad? No. Because people vary. My point is, both of their lives are messy at this moment and they need to work on themselves before involving another person and her kid. Barry's also been lying to her this whole time, and regardless of the good intentions (and that's debatable, his reasons, at one point), it's still a bunch of deception.

But I have to give credit where credit's due. It's a very original plot, both the writer and Hart did a great job balancing it out and keeping it streamlined to the degree that they could, and, again, I cannot praise the casting enough. Because there is a distinct lack of shmoop, and because there's some humor, and because the pacing was on point, and because I think it maybe hit 2 squares on the card if that, I deem this not even close to being a waste of your time. Like I say, there's just that thing that I feel like could've been better, but it's kind've a big thing, so I gotta ding for it. I'll say this, though: seeing Urkel and Sabrina flirt cures a lot of ails.

4/5 stars

The Perfect Christmas Present (Hallmark, 2017 - Sam Page, who I recognize, and a gal called Tara Holt, whose parents should be popped upside the head for naming their child Terre Haute; I mean, unless they've got a real hard-on for Indiana, in which case you do you)

She's from Chicago (as in, grew up there) but then her mom moved them to L.A. (after dad died, so check dead parent box), but she's moved back to establish a charity there, and also because boyfriend lives there (I missed how they got together if she lived across the country). She wants to hold a charity event, and he helps arrange for a former client's historic home to be used for free. Pertinent info: he's essentially a personal shopper but his specialty is figuring out the perfect gif t for people (hence the subtle title ::sigh::) by getting to know them really well. My presumption is this usually happens by targeted questioning about said person via the client, the more obscure stuff, but I'm writing this after the fact so I can't be sure. But I get the impression it usually isn't - really, it can't be - direct interaction with the person themselves, because the surprise would be ruined. Unless he goes around being a lying liar all the time, and if there was a person - especially at the behest of a loved one - who integrated themselves into my life under false pretenses (read: anything other than they enjoy my company, I intrigue them, etc.) I would be both absolutely livid and absolutely crushed. We'll come back to this.

Side note: Let me tell you right now, re: former client - I love this chick, she is the highlight of the movie, the snark is real with her, she's upfront about the fact she's into our lead male, did I mention she's snarky? I liked her the minute she came on the screen, continued to like her up until her last scene (spoiler: no she's not a villain, she's just snark and if you don't like it, piss off).

Back to plot: basically, that's the "in" - she doesn't know that boyfriend hired him to figure out perfect present, all she knows is that this is boyfriend's old fraternity buddy who's a make-things-happen, got-connections-all-over sort of guy. And he's happy to help with the event, because that means he can use the opportunity of them working together to get info on her and essentially profile her - like for instance, when they were touring that house, when in kitchen, she snitches a macaroon (or one of those fat almond cookies from wedding showers with which I have a love-hate relationship), he makes a quick note of "sweet tooth".

Also to know, the relationship between her and boyfriend is struggling a little, so that's why he's going to the extra effort, and - spoiler alert - as I'm sure you've guessed he gets the shaft for his trouble. He's an okay guy, I guess, and I do give them props for not making him this complete dickhole or something, but with that comes the issue that you kinda feel shitty for him. On the other hand, it's only been a year and he's jonesing to get married and have kids, and she's like "Whooooaaaa". While I'm here, though, talking about secondary characters, I also have to shout out best friend who she's Skyping with off-and-on, she is dynamic and runs any scene they're in, every line is delivered realistically and casually, you feel like you're talking with a person in real life. Having said that? This is a weird, unneeded gimmick. Matter of fact, the character isn't needed at all, but if it had to be done then they should've just had her there, as the partner in the charity.

Regarding casting: it's cool that Terre Haute went into acting because she has these big, expressive eyes and I think it helps because she's not got an "it", if that makes any sense - as opposed to the ladies I mentioned above, there's not a dynamic presence, at least in this she's easily forgettable. Regardless of her character and dialogue, it's delivery that sells it, and while there's inflection and facial expressions (she's not flat, not at all), it still smacks of her just delivering lines. And that's fine! There's a need for actors who are on it and that the studio gets what they pay for, that they do what they're hired to do. My point is, she's serviceable and I think in a meaty role she could step up. He's great but also only serviceable in this particular movie, and I honestly don't know what else these two could've done - while the idea of the story is decently creative (though event planner - which he essentially is - has been done, and done better), it plays out as pretty much how you'd think. I'm typing this as I'm about an hour in, and here's my guess: Yes, she'll end up falling for him but she'll also be pissed when she finds out that he's been collecting facts on her, regardless of the reason. Also I predict that in rich gal's moves to get dude, she'll be the one to go "You know that he's stuck around because he's fallen for you, right? That this ain't about the gift anymore?" and be the one to give her a kick in the. At least, that's what I'd write.

Because the alternative is actually realistic, which is that she says what I said above: you ingratiated yourself under false pretenses, when we started having feelings for each other - or at minimum when we started being friends - you should've told boyfriend you couldn't help with the present anymore, and told me the truth. Period. End of story.

I'll leave it here, I think. Watch if you want to see how it ends - not that it matters, of course she ends up with him. And I gotta go with my gut, here, even though this doesn't hit a ton of bingo squares, not at all, but the issue is it's.... well, it's not dragging, the pace is decent, it's just.... well, it's boring. It's *shrug*. It's meh. There's just no spark to it. I can't justify giving it a "Don't miss this one!" type of rating. It's a "Maybe you'll enjoy it", "Not entirely a waste of time" sort of jam. Which makes me wonder why I wrote so much on this.... eh, I'm avoiding housework.

3/5 stars

Northern Lights of Christmas (Hallmark, 2018 - Ashley Williams, and that's the only cast that matters... besides, won't recognize anyone else)

Let it be said that anything with Ashley Williams, I'm giving a minimum of 3 stars. That's the lowest it can possibly get, merely due to her presence. She's a great actress, and I don't just mean by Hallmark standards, she should be in all the things, that's how magnetic and scene-stealing she is. No, I'm not her cousin or something. I've just yet to dislike her in anything I've seen her in, she even lit up the screen in How I Met Your Mother which going up against Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders and Jason Segel (I don't mention the guy that played Ted because beyond not liking the character, I will never understand that casting).

Now, stay with me, here. Because this is one of the more ridiculous summaries on one of these things (and by "things" I mean Hallmark and/or Lifetime Christmas movies, AND I MEAN IT WITH LOVE OF COURSE) that I've seen. *clears throat*

"Zoey has been working hard to own her own plane but everything changes when she inherits a reindeer farm."

If you're anything like me, my What The Fuck radar shot right up. The story is she's left a reindeer farm/ranch by the old man who taught her how to fly who has, obviously, died. And by "farm/ranch", I mean 2 reindeer and y'all, again, huge props when Hallmark bothers to have real animals on these farms and ranches they make their settings, double points when the characters interact with them. So by flying, they mean Cessna-type planes, though we're about 25 minutes in and I've seen no plane. Anyway, she lives in Seattle now (our setting is Alaska) and is a commercial pilot but as summary says, she wants her own. For crop dusting? I have no idea why, they don't really say (or haven't yet) if it's for personal reasons or a new career venture.

Ashley - and I won't be calling her by her character's name in any of these, get used to it - meets the live-in handyman/animal tender/etc. person who is a real pill. Like, he's not exactly rude but I'd just call him brusque and blunt. He initially wants to quit even though he's paid through the winter, but she convinces him to say explaining she needs him to be a partner of sorts, help her decide who she should sell the place to. Ashley grows on him when he sees that even though she had to move away, she genuinely cared about Gus and his wife (the dude who died and his wife who had died prior) and the farm/ranch (they call it both dunno why I think ranch suits better) and that she's a hard worker.

Gus and wife were beloved by the town, and they did it up right at Christmas - part of the barn where the reindeer aren't chillin' is filled with decorations, most notably a sleigh, and it's not lost on me that they're way up north, there's reindeer, there's that sleigh, and he taught her to fly. I mean, "Gus" and not "Kris" or "Nick", but we'll see where this is going. Oh, also? Wife had a box of recipes that Ashley's best friend (whose hubby is the son of the cranky man who owns the local hang-out diner, Americana-type restaurant in town, the menu of which she's always trying to nudge him to add new things) was dying in particular to find a certain cookie recipe that everybody in town loved because she's always wanted to know how to make them. Sounds like Mrs. You-Know-Who To Me. But again, not enough info, I'm writing this as I go, but I tell you I almost don't want it to turn out as that, I like the inference much better. May dock a star if they go full-court-press You Know Who.

I'm eating homemade soup for breakfast because it's getting really nippy here, and there's no oatmeal. I just felt the need to share this with you. I mean, it's hella awesome soup, I'm a good cook. I heated it up during the part where she's going around telling people she's doing up the old Christmas festival like it used to be, the one Gus and wife would host at the ranch. Her angle is, she wants to attract the right sort of people as buyers, people who get the small town mentality and want to keep the ranch essentially the way it is, and people are pumped and excited about the booths they'll have and the food and the post-fair barn dance, and I got bored. Not painfully bored, just wishing-they'd-speed-this-up bored. Put it this way: I was able to make coffee and walk the dog and flip the stove on and heat up said soup whilst only needing to pop in to look at the TV to make sure I hadn't missed something. I hadn't. I get it's necessary, I just think it could've been montaged instead of introducing us to a bunch of side characters by name and hearing what they're gonna do, all we need is showing us their faces during montage, then we'll see them and what they're doing at the fair. Because they're inconsequential to the story. This is classic Hallmark padding runtime when it's simply not needed, not everything has to take up a 2 hour time slot.

Hey, if you want good soup, go on and cook the veg you'll be adding a little more than halfway, and *then* add it to your base, which should consist of some water, yeah, but either beef broth or chicken broth (or I guess veg broth, but gross), your choice, and the other trick is to set it on low and go about your day, homemade soup's better when left to do its own thing over time. I've digressed.

Ah, charter flights. That's what she plans on doing. She mentions it because she's calculating how much she's invested getting stuff up to speed and cost of festival. We've still yet to see Gus' plane. Also, I don't care much for the leading man, he's Dollar Store Brett Dalton (Ward from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and if you're familiar with Dalton, I'm telling you that all you'll be thinking is "Damn, Brett Dalton would've cleaned up in this role", because this dude's a bit flat. Dalton's been in one of these cheese Christmas movies, too, so the chance is there; matter of fact, he should be either above or below this in one of the other recently reviewed. I can't be bothered to look for the title. None of this matters, moving on.

We see them ride his motorcycle together to go out to the local airport - mainly cargo and quick charters and such - and wouldn't ya know it, the dude that owns/runs it is retiring at the end of the month. Hmmm, wonder where that's going. And I also wonder if this is where the plane Gus flew came from, if he picked up work there, too. If it's been said, I've missed it. Anyway, owner needed her because his dude is sick or something and he says it's 6 towns, mail delivery gig, she is jazzed because as she says "This is the longest I've been on the ground in a long time". Our co-lead doesn't like to fly but he does like to take pictures, so that's how she sells him on coming with her to deliver the stuff.

Kinda like You-Know-Who. Ahem.

Kudos to Hallmark for (a) not going with shitty FX folks, re: the greenscreen for when they're in the cockpit, and (b) for some nice aerial shots of somebody flying a plane. The aurora/northern lights effect also ain't bad. I mean, if you've seen photos of it, it almost looks fake anyway because it's one of those too-good-to-be-true natural occurrences that shouldn't be that vivid. It's like reverse of animal camouflage, I'm thinking specifically of octopi (apparently you can say octopuses now and it's acceptable, but it's not in this house) and if you've not seen that, get yourself to You Tube and get ready to be shocked at those undersea aliens. We've (okay I've) digressed again.

There's a moment of her reminiscing about Gus, but it's short, and this is when our leading dude learns she's gonna be going to Florida to be with her parents for Christmas, and I like this for two reasons: one, these pseudo-dead parents have only been brought up once in a sorrowful way, people have been focused on remembering the good times, and second, she's not leaving because she gives no shits about Christmas and is gradually learning to love it or the usual garbage, nor is she being called away for some career-related thing, it's a legit, understandable reason. Neither of those are getting a bingo square, because even though they may skirt the line, they're being done well.

All right, I'm not going to tell you the ending, because you should put it on your list. As whack-a-doo as the summary has it sounding, they make it work. So because of good casting and a solid script and a unique premise and tied up something in a great way (and because I got ever-so-slightly teary-eyed at one point shut up), this one gets a score of....

4/5 stars

Here’s your 4-and-5 stars so far (in no particular order):

Trading Christmas - 5/5 stars Christmas In The Air - 5/5 stars Mingle All The Way - 5/5 stars The Christmas Card - 5/5 stars The Christmas Note - 5/5 stars Fir Crazy - 4/5 stars Small Town Christmas - 4/5 stars Switched For Christmas - 4/5 stars The Christmas Contract - 4/5 stars Rocky Mountain Christmas - 4/5 stars Christmas A La Mode - 4/5 stars Northern Lights of Christmas - 4/5 stars The Santa Con - 4/5 stars

#5

Christmas A La Mode (Lifetime, 2019 - Katie Leclerc who I've never seen before in my life but who is quite good in this, and  Ryan Cooper who is really hot depending on the angle, that's the best way I can explain it)

Let me be clear: the *only* reason I am watching this is for y'all. Well, and I'm mending dog toys and need something to semi-stimulate my brain. The title is incredibly off-putting, it's too sweet right out of the gate. But I shall give it a chance.

Your basics are that a dairy farm was left to two sisters by their deceased father and the farm's been in the fam for several generations. Older sister has long since been in the city and sounds like she's some sort of real estate flipper (acquisition, buff up, then sell) because she and her partner, Sometimes Hot Guy (who frequently drops his American accent), are going to sell the farm to a dairy corporation... well, that's what we're told. Put a pin in that, shiftiness comes up later unnecessarily. Anyway, the agreement has a provision that one sister can buy out the other's shares and fully own, so little sis has to raise a hefty six figures in a short amount of time. Older sis is a major dick; having said that, the farm has been circling the drain for awhile now, so she ain't totally out of line.

The summary I saw neglects to mention that they also own an ice cream parlor in town that's typically closed during the winter because of course it is. But, I mean, Baskin Robbins and fro-yo joints and Ben & Jerry's stay open year-round, and yup they bank in hotter months, but why not keep making money? Throwing out stock over, what, 4 months of slow time? Is just stupid. No wonder they're going under. But all right, we'll let that go. Anyhow, her plan is to get some money via opening the ice cream parlor and doing a little contest for people to submit their best Christmas-themed flavors, and she'll whip 'em up, people can try them, then vote on the winner and the winner gets a year of free ice cream. She also does a crowd-funding site.

The summary also neglects to mention (and this is okay, it's supposed to be a plot "oooh") that business partner Sometimes Hot Guy is from the family who is essentially like Mrs. Fields or some shit. So there's this cute moment where her co-worker friend is like - You know, now that we are aware of this, we don't really need his recipe (he won't - and I guess, legally, can't - give it to her), we can just get them from the store. Yeah, co-worker. Yeah. But we can't have pie-baking scenes where she wipes flour off his cheek if they aren't in the same room together.

Oops, left out that part: the killer flavor is this pie he made for her mom mixed in with their vanilla and they call it, fuck my life, Christmas A La Mode.

Compliment: This actress is likely average size IRL (camera adding pounds and all, plus wardrobe didn't do her any favors on her lower half) but I mean in terms of body shape? She's built like a farm girl, she's got actual thighs and rosy, round cheeks, she's not some coathanger in skinny jeans up in there. I am applauding casting department wholeheartedly.... though they whiffed in that she and sis look *nothing* alike. Sis is discount Eva Green, and mom and leading lady are redheads. C'mon casting, just the hair color, that's all we're asking.

Issue: She's a really good actress, I was very pleasantly surprised. But initially there's something slightly juvenile about how she's playing this - "this" being determined to save the farm. She's kinda petulant and refusing to accept reality - and, I mean, maybe they save the farm now but with a disinterested sibling and a mother that's getting older, unless she cranks out some babies (read: farm hands) like, yesterday, I'm not quite sure how this is gonna be sustainable long-term.  (Granted she'll end up with incredibly wealthy pie guy, but I'm saying if she's a business owner, this is something she needs to learn.)

I'll tell ya this, talking about characterization, the gal playing the sister can flip a switch and play the cunt card like a dream, she's a scene-stealer, though my issue here is we have zero background on why she's ice queen about the farm save a mention that when they were little, she was always dying to leave farm life and go to the city. Right, fine, lots of farm kids I am sure feel this way, but why the vitriol? Why not sit down and be kind and explain the financial situation to her mom? Even if little sis is being a brat, why wouldn't she be kind to her mother? I'm fine with her being Bitchy Mc Cuntface, I just wanna know why.

Continuing from above about the pie - it's not just once, he tells her three separate times, and one of them vehemently (and then a follow-up of "You can't tell ANYBODY where these pies came from, say you found the recipe online or whatever") that he ain't telling her the recipe so she can make it herself. Which, I suspect this is gonna come back to bite her in the ass if it's not her original recipe. And it should be - anything they come up with needs to be theirs or else they owe $$$ to whatever the featured product is in a given flavor. So like, early on one of the flavors is Christmas Kiss and she comments that she unwrapped all the Hershey's kisses herself. Well sugarsnap I hope you have some sort of blanket licensing agreement because that ain't cool. You can buy other company's ingredients, of course, but when it's the core of it, the key feature of it, you're in trouble. That's why if a product's "cincher" revolves specifically around another company's product, it'll be noted clearly with a "C" copyright or "TM" or whatever, because that company is - and should be - getting a kick off the profits.

I bring this up because this is an excellent opportunity for a plot point - unless they partner with the pie company or get direct permission (and no, random son saying it's cool matters nothing to a board of directors) then they're out of line. An interesting storyline would be if sister finds out and threatens her that she has to stop or it's gonna mean big legal probs for Sometimes Hot Guy so if she doesn't want that, needs to let sis sell the farm. Then of course Sometimes Hot Guy comes in and says "Hey meet my dad, he owns the company and not only does he give permission but he's investing by way of making up the difference of whatever sum's left over so she can buy you out, Dollar Store Eva Green."  They've not given us any real reason to empathize with our villain of the story so go whole hog, keep her the villain.

All in all, we've ticked a good handful of squares, but we're not in danger zone, miraculously. And even though it ticked the farm box, I have to give compliments that for once one of these stories involving a farm has actual animals shown and the characters interacting with them. The side friend character is also fantastic, I wish I could see her in more stuff, she was great. I know I was nitpicky about the stuff I didn't like (and my resolution is close to the ballpark of what they end up doing.... my tweak is more interesting #humbly), so overall my non-nitpicky complaints are that (a) Sometimes Hot Guy is hit-or-miss with his acting, and (b) the ending scene is fine but they tack on this weird post-end scene that completely takes you out of the moment and is wholly unneeded. But because this was a creative attempt at a unique plot and - above all - our leading lady sells the shit out of it, the score is.....

4/5 stars

Rocky Mountain Christmas (Hallmark, 2017 - Lindy Booth who is great across the board, Kristoffer Polaha who I swear I've seen in something non-Hallmark but I'm not looking it up, and Treat Williams who is and has always been a solid actor)

Let's get the tropey-ness out the way: the bingo boxes this ticks are as follows - family home in danger of being lost; character(s) not really into Christmas for reasons; town festival/celebration; dead parent(s); somebody's famous; somebody owns a ranch; playing in the snow; I stopped counting but I think that’s all.

Lindy is an interior designer and is back home on the horse ranch not only because she had a bad breakup that was really public (a Zuckerberg-esque computer dude who broke up with her for an actress) but it's good because also turns out uncle (who, with his wife, raised her and brother after their parents basically dumped them) has been growing increasingly bummed missing his wife who died recently, and he's gonna sell the ranch. Now this famous dude shows up (I refuse to type "Kristoffer" continuously) and he wants to stay at the ranch and learn the life and horses and whatever for an upcoming movie role, and uncle and brother are actually cool with it even though she's all "Ehhhh..." understandably. But props to them, they do it right, he's put to work and has to stay in the bunk house and the whole nine yards, they ain't just having him follow them and observe or whatever.

She also makes it part of the deal that he's gonna help her finish getting the Christmas parade organized - and by the way, this isn't because she's a Christmas fanatic, it's because her aunt did it every year and she's doing it in her stead. And he is good natured about it, and is happily taking pictures with fans while they're out running errands and afterwards giving them flyers and being like "Here's a couple more, share with friends, you better come!" etc., and basically using his celebrity for good - he also combos it with getting donations at the same time when he gives the streetside bell-ringing Santa a coffee break,  and I genuinely liked this little touch, these are the touches that these canned movies miss that endear us to characters by showing us who they are, not telling us who they are.

The only part that really made me roll my eyes hard in terms of plot is that Lindy's brother (and good casting here, they click really well and are believable as bro and sis) happens to have dreams of being a Hollywood stuntman in the field of horses. Oh and also, their mom was an actress (not Hollywood, I mean working actress). It's just a little too much, we got the point that she's meh on Hollywood types given what she just went through, and the second you hear about brother's deal it's like "Yup, Actor Dude's gonna learn cool shit from him and then he'll get him work on the upcoming movie." I mean, duh. It's overkill. It's fine if it was like - Hey you have taught me so much, have you ever thought about trying to be a stuntman? I'd recommend you, etc. And it was definitely unneeded for the mom part. It's like: we got it. Really. And the songs used (2 if memory serves) are grating, to me, at least but you may disagree.

Otherwise, this is a unique story to my knowledge and the production value is good, and kudos to them for doing a ranch vs. a tree or poinsettia farm, and they actually got horses and had the actors riding/interacting with them - some of these other movies say they're a farm and there's not an animal to be seen and it's fucking weird. So lotsa props in this respect. Also great is that the rando pseudo-girlfriend is actually just a nice person, she's not fake, though I will say this part of the plot is hamfisted and not needed, it just served as a tiny divide between them, that she's shown up wanting to have a real relationship with him (it was a publicity thing, them being together), when the divide of her being gunshy about being with a celebrity was already there, it was fine, the writers didn't need to add anything else. (And also, she seems to care not one flip that he's spending more time with Lindy than herself, and on top of that she is way more into the brother anyway. ???? Ya got me.)

On the whole, this one's really good, it's not a waste of your time, most all the dialogue felt natural and even if shaky it was delivered naturally, everybody's acting is solid across the board, he's not a douche, she's not a bitch, and most importantly your two romantic leads have chemistry, and they got to know each other gradually, and she wasn't all starstruck so if you're into this particular trope and wanna see it done well, then check this one out.

4/5 stars

Matchmaker Santa (Hallmark, 2012 - Lacey Chabert, two basic bitch white dudes, an old man playing Santa who can't act, two really good character actresses who've each been in a lot of stuff, Florence Henderson who I just love seeing in anything, and John Ratzenberger who played Cliff on Cheers and who is a breath of fresh air in this stupidity)

Yup, stupidity. You heard me. This is somehow about the third time I've caught it, so I'm giving in. Boy howdy, does it suck.

Surface area irritation: Everybody's hair is from the 90s. I hated 80s hair but at least it had distinct style; the style of 90s was nobody had any idea what the hell they were doing, particularly when it came to styling and color. Our lead guy's haircut doesn't suit him and is too gelled and sticky-outy in the front (and second lead male, the cut suits him but same with gel and purposeful cowlick look), then Lacey's looks like Helen Keller did the color (at least when she's standing in certain light).

Here's some summary according to googlings because I'm not taking the effort:

As a little girl, Melanie Hogan wished to find her own Prince Charming, just like her parents found true love. Now an adult, Melanie is running her own bakery and dating a handsome CEO, Justin. Although things seem perfect when Justin asks Melanie to spend the holidays together at his beautiful lake house upstate, and meet his mother, Melanie finds herself spending more time with Justin's best friend and loyal assistant, Dean, who just might be harboring a secret crush on her. When complications arise that throw Melanie and Dean together over the holiday, will the two realize they're meant to be?

They get thrown together because best bud went to pick her up from airport, they run into Santa along the way and give him a ride, the car breaks down in a little town that's en route back to the lake so they stay the night. They then have to share a room :::sigh::: And of course as movie goes on, boyfriend is more concerned about anything but her though I will say he's not acting particularly dickish, it's more that he invited her for a romantic evening then planned this party to essentially introduce himself to the board of directors and also to spring introducing her to his (difficult, bitchy) mom all in the same weekend and didn't bother to tell her that the plans had changed. Also in a convoluted turn, his high school girlfriend is the daughter of the head of the board and his mom absolutely loves her, and honestly? She's better suited for him than ol' Lacey is anyway, they click better.

Lacey Chabert, IMO, is not a good actress because she plays the same character in everything she's in (excepting Gretchen Weiners in Mean Girls), and that character is - I have to assume - Lacey Chabert. I mean she's fine in the sense of she isn't a talking stick, there's tone and inflection and actual facial expressions and all that, I'm saying that with the exception of Mean Girls I've never not been like "Yeah that's Lacey Chabert", I've never forgotten it's her. But I mean at least people know what they're gonna get when they hire her. Thing is, I've seen her in several of these movies now and I gotta say, if she's had chemistry with *any* of her male leads, I've yet to notice.

Bottom line: this story is just dumb. It's basic. There's nothing creative or noteworthy about it. Person makes Christmas (or birthday or falling star or New Year's or what-fuck-ever) wish when they were little and now it's coming true, and here comes romance. We've seen this and iterations of this a thousand times. Add in tropes, stir, bake at 350 til gold and bubbly. It is obvious nobody tried - except the Santa man, he tried, but he's ill-cast so oh, well. Flo Henderson and Ratzenberger ain't in it enough to help it skate by on charm. The pacing is bad, too, at an hour in we've only just gotten to the hotel.

Let me give you an example of how stupid this movie is: When boyfriend and old prom date are walking outside to leave to take her car to go pick them up from small town (where, by the way, they are presently dressed as elves and helping Santa I shit you not), glitter-shiny-whoosh-fade-in, it's a grizzly bear by the car growling, because ooooooh Christmas magic. I'm not against "magic" in these movies but can we be a little more subtle? I have no idea how the quality/old school actors got roped into this trash.

Also? If you make it to the end? The final scene is possibly one of the worst, most ridiculous, most implausible (yes, even for this movie) things I've ever witnessed in these movies. It gets a star for the good side character casting. 

1/5 stars

A Crown For Christmas (Hallmark, 2015 - Danica McKellar, other people)

The plot's what you think, re: see title.  He's a king, she's the nanny to precocious princess child. They have negative levels of chemistry, it's that bad.

As discussed last year, something's happened in the time since Wonder Years, and Danica McKellar absolutely positively cannot act. There was one exception (again, see last year) but that's one out of like, a half-dozen of these Christmas movies I've seen - or have *tried* to see - with her in them. 

This movie isn't worth a write-up, it's seriously that bad. The kid does remind me of a young Lindsay Lohan circa Parent Trap, and the guy playing the king is an okay actor. Problem is, the character of the king is a real bitch pussy. I hate this movie, even the sets and costumes look cheap. Ugh. Seriously, don't bother, it is garbage. 

0/5 stars

The Christmas Contract (Lifetime, 2018 - Hilarie Burton, Dannnnnnneeeeeeeeeel Ackles guest starring botox, a dude called Robert Buckley who seems familiar, apparently fourteen other people from an old-ass teen show called One Tree Hill which I never watched, Cheryl Ladd, Bruce Boxleitner, and Jason London who you will not recognize even a little, and you'll see this movie and think I'm wrong, and I'm not wrong, I swear it's Jason London, he's the brother in law, look it up)

I avoided this one last year for Reasons, but upon catching it again, it cannot be denied.

First, the ticked boxes: there's a Christmas festival. Pretend to be my boyfriend. Lots of Christmas activities. Someone is a lawyer. Someone is an author. Character demonstrates a talent.

Basically dude agrees to go with Hilarie back home and act like her boyfriend - they literally sign a literal contract - and while he's at it, he's supposed to be working on a ghostwriting assignment about romance wherein he's given a list of plot points and told that the characters have to tick off every item on the list. But he feels a little lost about how the scenes should play out so he starts sneaksy playing them out with Burton under the guise of "Hey we need to make this look good for everyone".  There's an ex boyfriend who reveals the plan, which, you know, whatever, by this point they're genuinely into each other, but it's when she finds out that he's essentially using her for a book plot, she understandably gets pissed.

I will give 'em this: no one went bugfuck crazy with affecting super thick Creole accents or something. And minus Ackles and some of the randoms (Ackles in particular cannot act in a natural manner to the point it's distracting in any given scene), everybody can act. Burton especially deserves to be in higher caliber stuff. And she and the lead dude have solid chemistry. She has chemistry with everybody, honestly, she's just a good actor, period. Well, at least in this, it's not like I've seen her in tons of stuff. But I recall liking her in White Collar. Okay, I digress.

Irksome is that music is a featured artist so I don't know if this is another friend of theirs from that old show, or something? If so then hey, meta. But his music plays a couple times, then they even have him in person at the festival or whatever it is, and we get to hear him sing "live" and so that all takes up precious minutes we'll never get back. I mean, he can carry a tune and all, it's just that it's basic bitch music. And he actually pimps his album, it's awkward. Now, I will say the score itself though is overall great, really a step up from the usual fare in these movies. They do have a moment where she is supposedly playing fiddle and it looks horrible. I don't care if she can play in real life (I'm not looking it up), the way it was filmed, then, made it look as if she can't, and I don't know why they did this, it was completely unnecessary.

There's some schlock (especially the end), and family's just a hair too far on the shmoop side, but it's not intolerable. Also good is that Ackles' screentime is limited. I can't express enough what a poor actor she is, but again, as I've said about others, this is a prime example: if you dream of becoming an actor, someone has hired this person and therefore you can get hired, too. Here's the thing: it is such a shitty plot, so lazy. This is one of the granddaddies of all the tropes. I mean, the official summary doesn't mince words--- "It’s Jolie’s first time going back home to Louisiana since her devastating break up with Foster . Seeing him is inevitable as their parents run the town’s annual Christmas Market together, but when she discovers Foster is bringing home a new girlfriend, Jolie cannot bear the thought of going home alone and seeing them together." ---so you can't say you didn't know what you were getting into.

But.

And I can't believe I'm saying this.

Minus a slightly stilted kick-off the pace is even, the chemistry of the leads (+ with her family) is there, they elevate some dialogue that in other hands could've been clunky, we've got a unique setting that isn't fucking Vermont and snowing (blessedly this means we have no awkward snowball fights and snowman making and pine tree cutting down and snow angel making and ice skating), they show her making hot chocolate but there's no big gingerbread cookie making scene so that's refreshing, and nobody is like coked-up elves about Christmas, they dig it, they run a fair at this time of year, but no one's foaming at the mouth over it.

I do have to dock it stars because of the music thing and because of the premise of it - we could've gotten to this same place differently, re: these 2 people who don't really like each other needing something that the other can provide without it having to do with the chick being insecure over another guy. On the other hand? Burton doesn't play it insecure, she is not weepy or looking longingly at the ex or what-have-you, she's actually dodging him for the most part. Because of that, I'll give a star back. And if they'd not done the hamfisted music thing with that guy it'd probs be 5. In any event, the ending was pretty damned good and creative.

4/5 stars

Here’s your 4-and-5 stars so far (in no particular order):

Trading Christmas - 5/5 stars Christmas In The Air - 5/5 stars Mingle All The Way - 5/5 stars The Christmas Card - 5/5 stars Fir Crazy - 4/5 stars Small Town Christmas - 4/5 stars Switched For Christmas - 4/5 stars The Christmas Contract - 4/5 stars Rocky Mountain Christmas - 4/5 stars Christmas A La Mode - 4/5 stars

#4

Fir Crazy (Hallmark, 2013 - Eric Johnson and Sarah Lancaster, both of whom I've liked in non-Hallmark stuff and both of whom are good actors, and Colin Mochrie who is typically a delight but is miscast here)

I could've sworn we did this one last year but nope.  Anyway, out of the gate we're kickin' it on the bingo card: somebody isn't into Christmas, family owns a tree farm, family business in danger of being lost, precocious children - but it doesn't tick too terribly many.

So she gets laid off from her big city exec job but it is kind've fortuitous because her parents' prime time for the family business is upon the horizon, because Christmas, and because they have a tree farm upstate (we're in NYC). Since she's got free time, she calls a headhunter and is like "Holla when shit comes up" (a side plot we don't need, as well as smarmy ex-boyfriend, neither were needed, just have her lost job), as she has to run the tree lot in the city this year because for some reason the parents can't, I forget why, so it's basically her and her cousin (who is great) trading off staying nights in the trailer they've got parked next to this sidewalk area that the fam has had an agreement with the city to rent for a bazillionty years now.

Okay, so, the store next to where the sidewalk area is, is some accessories-furniture-type thing (Restoration Hardware-esque, but more expensive, but looks cheaper) and the owner is a real Scrooge. That's Mochrie's role, which is why I say he's miscast, and it's a shame. He should've been allowed to be in a fun role because I think the intent was for his character to be snarky-funny but it's just coming off as obnoxious, so it's not fun (though of course, this is a Hallmark movie, so he un-Scrooges by the end). But as far as good characters - there is this one little girl who is a hoot and the barista had me chuckle once, too.  Then we meet this great couple who bounce off each other well and are just completely wonderful and they come in at about 45 til the end and it's a shame they weren't utilized more. Actually all the side characters are great, from the homeless man who they hire to the manager of the store to the customers.

And your leads click, both in ease of convo and believability that they could be romantic, though only to about the 90% mark - I could see them as best friends more (it's one of the poorer kisses I've seen in romance movies, eeeek), but both are charming and likable and nothing is shmoopy. Seriously, there's no barfy shmoop in this movie, there's sweetness and sincerity. Plus, even though it's tree farm trope, this is creative. It's putting them smack in the middle of NYC instead of everybody being upstate. I say that to say, it's a mix of hometown (a "forest" as it were) and the city (though we're not subjected to the typical ice skating at Central Park and the like) and hey, I'm even gonna give it props for the title being only mildly eye-roll cutesy and ::gasp!!:: not having "Christmas" or "tree" in it.

Guys, this one's solid. The only thing that's not smooth is the store owner being a PITA angle, so it gets a touch grating, like, you know what's coming so you're more than ready for them to get on with it, but that's really the only thing that is a hitch in the pacing, otherwise this one is worth your time.

4/5 stars

The Nine Lives of Christmas (Hallmark, 2014 - Brandon Routh, Kimberley Sustad)

Official Summary: 

Fireman Zachary Stone (Routh) is a confirmed bachelor who doesn’t believe in love or commitment. When a stray tabby cat named Ambrose shows up at his door, Zachary takes him in and slowly starts to see that a little companionship might not be so bad after all. Zachary’s commitment to solitude is further challenged when he meets Marilee (Sustad), an animal lover and veterinary student who teaches Zachary how to care for his new feline roommate.

Nope.

1/5 stars, don't even need to see it, and that 1 star is because Brandon Routh is awesome

Welcome To Christmas (Hallmark, 2018 - Jennifer Finnigan, Eric Mabius - both of whom I recognize from non-Hallmark stuff)

So, Christmas is the name of the town.

We're getting fucked, just right out of the gate. ::sigh::

Squares ticked: town in danger of being lost, dead parent, children, somebody's not into Christmas (the holiday, not the town), celebration/festival in town. shmoopy activities, main characters sing carols, etc.

All right, she's a real estate something-or-other who's there to scope out the joint for development purposes. They tell the town everything will be the same, just that they'll have a ski resort and it will bolster income. However, towards the end, she discovers the firm does want to modernize the town, and blah blah blah you know where this is going.

I thought of, right off the top of my head, three other movies with this plot, one of which we just covered in the last entry.

He is the handsome sheriff with the dead wife and two adorable daughters who, of course, immediately take to her. I mean, this is just basic bitch shit, there is nothing original whatsoever about any of this. The leads have chemistry and both are good actors. Matter of fact I really like Mabius, he is talented and haaaaaandsome, I wish he were the lead in all these.

It's the standard fare, you may like it, but otherwise it's fine background noise. Other than an intolerable song at about the 20 'til mark. * cringe *

3/5 stars

Switched For Christmas (Hallmark, 2017 - Candace Cameron Bure x 2, Eion Bailey and Mark Deklin, both of whom you'll recognize)

Mentioned this last year but for whatever reason didn't go over it. Again, and I'll keep saying it - no matter how shitty the script, Candace elevates everything she's in, but in this case the script ain't shitty, it's actually a solid premise, however fantastical. Chris and Kate (both Candace, of course) are identical twins and they decide to switch places for Christmas. Several people are in on the secret - Chris has 2 older (teen/pre-teen) kids and they are pretending to be her niece and nephew around the dude who becomes her romantic interest because... reasons? I'm not certain. But their dad also knows the scoop, which I actually liked because there ain't no way any of those 3 would've been fooled so it was - shockingly for Hallmark movie - sensible.

Here's Hallmark's summary that tells more about why they did it:

"Just because they are identical does not mean these twins even like each other. Estranged twin sisters get together for an obligatory pre-Christmas lunch, a year after their mother's death. Both women are unhappy and frustrated with their own lives. Though not close, each is envious of the other's life. What's a twin to do but take advantage of this? And who would be the wiser? They do what any identical twins in need of new outlooks would do: they swap lives until Christmas Day, and by doing so, each woman discovers the true meaning of her life and gains a deeper perspective and appreciation for what she already had."

They each fall for somebody, and the dudes in turn fall for them, but the issue is that the twins think they've fallen for the personality/the life/etc. of the opposite twin so they each kinda feel like they aren't the one the dude is interested in, that they're into the other sister.  These guys should be pissed but they aren't, not really. I'll let you guess the end.

Your three leads are awesome, all can act, and - as said - especially Candace, and this had to be exhausting to pull off. Not only is each scene probably done at least couple times to get a handful of takes, she has to double-back and do it more times because of the opposite twin role. The amount of lines she had to memorize is astounding, not to mention developing two different characters with different (although not drastically) personalities. She nailed it.

Bottom line: this movie could've gone trash in a hot minute, but it didn't, because they did some stellar casting (Candace's daughter Natasha actually plays her daughter) and everyone can actually act. The premise is unrealistic and likely unsustainable for longer than a couple days in real life (the mention of them being "estranged" is particularly odd to me because there's definitely no way they'd be able to pull this off without being close so that they knew a lot about each other's lives), but what saved it was, like I say, the sensibility of having some key players in the know who supported them. This also, surprisingly, didn't tick a ton of bingo boxes, and I didn't find it a waste of my time. It's a fun flick, I'm only dinging it for the making estranged thing and the dudes not being more upset for being lied to than they were because in whack-a-doo stories, you gotta write everything else as real as possible so that the audience is more accepting of the whack-a-doo, and they slipped a touch there.

4/5 stars

I have two stupid ones for you to avoid that are just over-acted and either totally ridiculous + poorly acted (the first one) and totally typical + poorly acted (the second one). Let's just make this quick for all our sakes:

Magic Stocking (Hallmark, 2015 - nobody you'll know... well maybe this dude called Victor Webster, he's actually decent, hate he got stuck in this dreck) Official summary:

"Lindsey, a single mom with an adorable daughter, is closed off to life after losing her husband a few years back. When she buys a stocking at her town’s Christmas craft fair, the family begins “magically” finding items in the stocking that they learn have importance in their lives."

It's schlock and just plain insulting to your intelligence, and I didn't give a shit if they got together or not, something about the leading lady worked my nerves. I didn't need her to believe in the "magic", I just needed her to be able to investigate it without being so dialed up to 11 about it, she looked like she was close to exploding in the majority of it.

And....

Christmas At Pemberley Manor (Hallmark, 2018 - that chick Jessica Lowndes from that movie we covered in prior entries who can't act, and Michael Rady who you may recognize, too)

I mean, she can't act, so it's irritating the whole way through the basic bitch plot. Also? Check what they did with the names, which is absolutely positively insulting, and Austen has triple Salchow'd in her grave. Official summary:

"As Christmas approaches, Elizabeth Bennett, a New York event planner, is sent to a quaint, small town to organize their holiday festival. When she arrives, she finds William Darcy, a high-profile billionaire lacking in holiday spirit, in the process of selling the charming estate she hoped to use as a venue. Determined to make her event a success, Elizabeth persuades the reluctant Darcy to let her hold the festival on the historical estate once known for its holiday cheer. When they wind up working together to arrange the festivities, the unlikely pair begins falling for each other. But when complications arise and the festival is unexpectedly shut down, the couple parts ways and Darcy moves forward with his plans to sell the estate. On the night before Christmas, a wistful Elizabeth hopes for a Christmas miracle to revive the festival, save the estate and rekindle her holiday romance."  

For both of them: 1/5 stars

Here's your 4-and-5 stars so far (in no particular order):

Trading Christmas - 5/5 stars Christmas In The Air - 5/5 stars Mingle All The Way - 5/5 stars The Christmas Card - 5/5 stars Fir Crazy - 4/5 stars Small Town Christmas - 4/5 stars Switched For Christmas - 4/5 stars

#3

Picture A Perfect Christmas (Hallmark, 2019 - Merritt Patterson who is familiar to me from other of these movies, and a dude who I've never seen before in my life)

We kick off the movie with single dad who has custody of his nephew, and they're talking about how they have to pick out a new nanny for him for the two weeks kid is off school for the holidays and Uncle Daddy has big shit going on at his office. Then we cut to her, and she's having dinner with her boyfriend, who she is completely uninterested in even though right now he seems like a pretty decent dude. We cut to see that kid's babysitter is an elderly woman (their neighbor) who is really nice and mentions her granddaughter... or niece, I can't remember even though I just heard it... and guess who she is, and she's coming to visit?

This is what kills me about Hallmark movies: They front load you with so much information that you're like "Baaaahhh!", and then they drag out the movie, and then it abruptly ends. 

Okay, it's her grandma. And she's on a Christmas pageant planning committee. (Box ticked) Kid's an orphan, so dead parents. (Box ticked) And of course, kid himself, who is precocious and will likely bring everyone together. (Box ticked) I have to take a shower, I bet money I can be away from this movie for 15-20 minutes and not miss a damn thing. Let's find out, for science.

[time passes]

Yeah, I've missed nothing. Here's what's kind've odd - it's like she's falling for the kid and not him. They have zero chemistry, and it's like she's wanting more to be the kid's mom than wanting to be this dude's wife. Also, his haircut is really distracting, it is some kinds of awful.

Okay, well, this is just cookie-cutter. There's nothing remarkable or original or super-egregious about it. So if you just want something to pass time, here you go.

3/5 stars

Mingle All The Way (Hallmark, 2018 - chick named Jen Lilley who should be in more shit, and dude named Brant Daugherty who is discount John Krazinski but still great)

I checked, and we talked about this one last year so I'll re-post the scoop below, but anyway it came on and I re-watched it while I was ironing, and it holds up, it's just solid from top to bottom. I rated it 4/5 last year, but it's getting top score this year upon reconsideration, because there's so few flaws. It's creative, the script has sharpness to it, and acting's good across the board, and most importantly our 2 leads click. Here's what I wrote last year:

Inventive concept here, though they kinda shit the bed with naming their business something affiliated with Christmas if it’s clearly a year-round affair, but okay. What it is: a dating app that’s not a dating app, it’s purely for folks who need a +1 to specifically business/work social events, but also more formal family and friend events (so, say, Christmas party where it’s not just family, or friend party that’s not just show up in your jeans and sweaters - the cocktail stuff, is my point). The thing is, no one is pretending to be the boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s supposed to be like “And this is Susie/Steve, an associate of mine from ____ business”. Nothing romantic, no false pretenses, no lying to others (well… not supposed to wink-wink).

The chick - who runs the biz/came up with it/helped develop it - is needing to take on investors, and one of them is like “Sold! But can I get some firsthand testimonial? Have you yourself tested your product?” and since she’s got shit coming up on her agenda, she does. Plus, her mom’s on her ass about working so much and not dating since a bad breakup years ago, and it’s compounded because baby sister just got engaged. (Mom is bionic woman Lindsay Wagner. She’s not really bionic. Google it, youths.)

Dude is in a situation where he’s not advancing at work because scuzzy kiss ass co-worker is shmoozing with boss during off hours because boss doesn’t invite the single people to brunch or whatever with him and his wife, he’s only inviting the ones who he knows has a partner to bring. I know to some of you this may sound absolutely ridiculous but, um, I’ve experienced this many times. This is not out of the realm. Not even a little bit. I had a gay boss who understood how this happens (likely because he experienced it) and he was wonderful about including everybody. Otherwise, yeah, I been there. I’ve digressed.

The leads have good chemistry, there was great snark and back-and-forth when they met each other a couple times prior to the set-up (‘cause you guessed it: the app paired them with a high %age of compatibility - his sister suggested he do it after he heard about it on the news and he told her of his situation) and they click really well. There’s touches of shmoop, of course, but this was an above-average story amongst the typical Christmas dreck.

5/5 stars

Last Vermont Christmas (Hallmark, 2018 - Erin Cahill, Justin Bruening - both of whom I recognize)

Hey guess what, this may be their last Vermont Christmas. ::sigh:: Main chick and her 2 sisters and her daughter (single mom, dead husband, box checked, as well as adorable child, check) have converged on the family home in Vermont to find that mom and dad are selling, and I get it, it's huge and they're ready to scale down because they're retired. But, selfishly, one of the sisters - oh, and PS? they look *nothing* alike, casting couldn't even be bothered to get women with the same hair color - decides to sabotage things. So like, when the inspector comes, she and her sorta boyfriend follow him around and make little comments about stuff like termites, then they made sure the fuse box had all kinds of fat wires with caps protruding out of it - you know, like what you'll find if you're changing a light fixture, which is not how fuse boxes work - and I think there was something with some steps.

Anyway none of this matters. What matters is that lead dude is a contractor and is also lead chick's ex from way-back-when, before she met man of dreams and had daughter and moved away to some far off state, I wasn't paying attention. But they get along great and are occasionally a little cheeky with each other, so that's fine. So now he's around doing these faux repairs and they're kind and looping him into their Christmas stuff, which they are disgustingly picture perfect. They cut down their own tree. They go caroling. They bake cookies. They hand-make their ornaments every damn year. I hate them. Well, the writers. It's too much. That was all in roughly the first 45 minutes, too. I'm sure some families out there take it to the mat with Christmas, but holy shit. Okay, add gingerbread houses from scratch (they made sure to show the baking pan with more squares so you know this) to the list. 

This is blowing up the bingo like 'Nam. There's now a snowball fight. Family tree decorating scene with, of course, these special handmade ornaments plus ornaments from years past where they're recalling special times. Ohmigawd, I need to fill out a card for this one, it's insane, I almost can't keep up. Oop, "Grandma's special hot chocolate". Character demonstrates talent (one of the sisters, singing). I legit am not lying, these are coming so fast I'm having trouble keeping up.

He's also somehow in cahoots with the realtor, because he had committed to buying the house, but he says it doesn't feel right now that he's back to getting chubs from his ex, and she's like "Well if you don't then we're still gonna settle up" and I have no idea what that means, does that mean she expects him to pay her the commission she'd have gotten? Is this normal practice? Realtors must have stuff fall through all the time, they'll end up selling and get a commission and who knows, maybe at a better price, so.... ????? The hell? 

Speaking of him, two things: one, his name is Nash (heh) and two, I went to imdb to check the summary to see if I forgot/missed anything and the reviews are hilarious, a ton of them mention how distracting his hair is - he just has lots of it, seems really thick, and it's shaved tight on the sides, so he's got a decent amount atop his dome, but it's only really noticeable when it's slicked straight back. But people were losing their shit over it. I don't find it that distracting, but you may, I find youngest sister's perpetually greasy 1970s hair (not her fault, that's hair and make-up's fault) more irritating.

Okay, so, there's no way this can get a 3, there's too much bingo hits. But aside from that, the acting - especially from youngest sister, who overacts - is very stilted and unnatural, and on occasion the editor left in these pauses in dialogue that are just a touch too long, so I think that's part of the issue. I don't mind the story at all, it's not something we see all the time and thank the lord it's not "family business in danger" - though oh shit, I forgot, this counts as "family home in danger", so there's another square. This is trope-a-palooza. Wait, snowman building. Town has celebration. Okay, I'm done listing, I think we all know where this has to go.

1/5 stars

Reunited At Christmas (Hallmark, 2018 - Nikki Deloach, who you'll recognize, and other character actors you'll recognize)

So lead chick's mom and dad are making everything weird with all these passive-aggressive comments about the past via mom and shmoopy comments about the past via dad. (They're divorced so I can't figure why they're all shacked up in this house for Christmas with their adult children and their partners.) Lead chick also agreed to her boyfriend's proposal - and he seems like a great guy - even though she's not ready, which is mature. At least within about 10 mins. of it happening she ponies up that she's not into being engaged, and he's a good actor, and it really is kinda sad, I feel for him. So he's all - Imma finish chopping this wood then head back to spend Christmas with my family and we'll regroup after the holidays, and she's all "For real?!" and I'm all "Are you surprised?!"

Y'all this one bored me, I didn't make it past roughly the first 45 minutes, I just didn't care if they got back together and I presume based on the title that they do. Nobody's acting was egregious or anything, it was just slogging and I wasn't engaged because this plot isn't creative at all - I mean, here's the official summary:

Frazzled and struggling with writer's block, novelist Samantha (Deloach), along with her boyfriend, heads home to her late grandmother's home to spend Christmas. While at home with family, her grandmother's wise words reveal the true meaning of Christmas with Samantha at a time when she most needs encouragement.

But again, based on the first part, that doesn't seem to be the plot - I mean seriously, we go through all this family activities stuff, and her and the boyfriend having several different conversations about the not wanting to be engaged thing (one at skating rink, one whilst he's chopping wood, one while back at the house), so there's literally no real mention of grandma by that point, and we're almost at an hour what with commercial breaks and such. So that's it. That's all they've accomplished in basically the first half of the movie. And they managed to hit a bunch of squares (someone's an author, someone gets engaged, skating, tree decorating, baking, etc.) and I'm sure there was more to come. It's the pacing that kills this one, as well as the basic bitch plot, but hey it'll serve as background noise.

2/5 stars  

Small Town Christmas (Hallmark 2018 - Ashley Newbrough who is poor man's Denise Richards, Ryan McDonell who you'll recognize and is a really good actor)

She's an author (check box) on a national book tour and her last stop is the town she's from, upon which the book is based, and her name is Nelle and you'll remember this because for some reason every time someone speaks to her they have to say her name. Okay, maybe not *every* time but it caught my ear, even when I was distracted doing something else or had stepped into another room, they just say her name *constantly* and I don't get it.  The bookstore owner is an almost-was from the past, and there was some mix-up back when they both lived in New York about her leaving him a note and saying to meet her for some reason but he didn't show because turned out he had to leave because his sister had unexpectedly died, but then also he'd written her a letter explaining that she never got but he assumed she got and never contacted him. But then she had texted him a few times over the years and he'd never responded. Because everyone is twelve. I'm not tracking with this completely, though I do get the feeling of just wanting to let something go and let it be in the past. 

Anyway, more drama is that his sister had died so he - name is Emmett - has custody of niece, who is a great little actress and not one bit irritating, she's very cool. Also, her dynamic with uncle is great and like I say, he's a fantastic actor. Poor man's Denise Richards is fine, too, I've got no complaints, honestly. Also pleasant are the peripheral characters of the townspeople. Seriously, across the board, nobody is annoying or eye-rolly, everyone's acting is natural. All right, so close-knit town and some drama is that Brad, this real estate agent who's repping a big dawg firm wants to essentially buy up the town, at least the entirety of the main street/the shops to redevelop, and the part that's cool is that they all talk about it reasonably - some of them being hold outs, some of them really considering it - like adults, nobody's fighting or being douchebags. Then it gets to where the last hold-out is Emmett and he's thinking of Marnie, the kid, because this was her mom's store and so it's technically hers though he has power of attorney. 

Also happening is that Brad is trying to sell the investors on the fact that this town is Ideal Christmas Place, that it's super traditional and the townsfolk do it up right and whatnot, and they are thus far not impressed by what they are seeing. ???? I don't get it, if they want to redevelop then aren't they more concerned about the land/the property value? I'm missing something. Emmett finally agrees and Nelle fusses at him and because Brad's been into her, he's shared what the plan really is with her, and she swipes his notebook and shows Emmett "Look this is some shitass mall or something, you dun goofed". And Brad whiffed because the promise was that the stores would be left alone and they'd all still work there/be the management, it'd just be owned by the corporation and - oh I get it now, they want it to be a big tourist town like thing during the winter holiday seasons. Okay, gotcha. Anyway, I'll let you guess how everything turns out in the end.

I actually liked this one, it could've gone majorly shmoop and tropey fast - I mean, it popped on more than a few bingo squares (bookstore owner, dead parents, author, Christmas tree decorating, town festival/celebration, family business is in danger of being lost, child character) but again, the whole vibe of this movie is casual and natural and it flows and the pacing is on point. The reason for their initial fall-out is a bit "Huh?" but I appreciate that it wasn't something complicated, it was more to real life which is that it is more often than not that it's silly little misunderstandings that drive us apart and if we'd just friggin' speak the hell up, we'd realize it's not a big deal. The two leads really clicked and that was so nice to see since the majority of these movies they don't. Guys, this is one worth watching, I'm only dinging it because too many squares were hit.

4/5 stars

The Christmas Card (Hallmark, 2006 - Ed Asner, Alice Evans, John Newton)

Ed Asner is a gift, and I won't hear otherwise. You'll also recognize the two leads, I've seen them in other stuff. And no, that date's not wrong, this is an oldie and by my estimation these Hallmark movies get more solid on the whole the further back you go, it's like they gave a fuck about nuance in the script vs. recycling plots for the most part so they can crank these babies out like rabbits in perpetual heat. I suspect that's the reason for the 2 star rating you'll see when you hit "info" on the remote. But fuck that, because here's a factoid - other than that I'm about to give this one a 5 (spoiler), Ed Asner was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for it, so I assure you, it's better than that 2 star will indicate.

So here's the first part of the plot from Wikipedia:

In the midst of war in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Master Sergeant Cody Cullen (John Newton) is given a Christmas card from a fellow soldier who had received it from his hometown, Nevada City, California. The card was sent by Faith Spelman (Alice Evans). As months pass, the card never leaves his side. Cody, who has no family, and whose father was killed during the Vietnam War, is deeply affected when the soldier who gave him the card is killed. A few weeks before Christmas, Cody travels to see the soldier's widow, back in Nevada City. Just as he is about to leave town, Cody runs into Faith at a local luncheonette, where they happened to have placed identical orders. They part, but on his way out of town, Cody saves Faith's father, Luke (Ed Asner), from being hit by a speeding car. Luke takes a liking to Cody and convinces him to stay on as temporary help at his family's logging company. Paul (Ben Weber), Faith's longtime boyfriend who travels much of the time, and who selfishly wants Faith to move away from her close-knit family in Nevada City, arrives to meet her.

Everyone nails it. You believe that a part of Faith genuinely cares about the asscrack who's been stringing her along, and that actor nails the whole dickbag routine without being so obnoxious it makes you want to drop-kick the TV. Cody is quietly charming and sells you on the fact that yes, he loves her, and so much that he's not willing to potentially ruin her life, even if it's a life without him. Ed Asner is perfection in his role as the loving and slightly meddlesome dad. The mom is great. The friend is great. All the side characters are great. There is not a bit of cheese in this movie, nothing is tropey, nothing is schlocky, it's just heartwarming. And there are *zero* of the typical cliche elements that arise in these movies featuring troops/veterans. It was so goddamned refreshing as compared to 95% of what Hallmark cranks out now, I genuinely can't believe this is from the same braintrust. 

If it comes on, do yourself a favor and watch it. 

5/5 stars 

Here’s your 4 and 5 stars thus far:

Trading Christmas - 5/5 stars Christmas In The Air - 5/5 stars Mingle All The Way - 5/5 stars The Christmas Card - 5/5 stars Small Town Christmas - 4/5 stars

#2

Christmas Made To Order (Hallmark, 2018 - THE DUDE WHO PLAYED AARON SAMUELS IN "MEAN GIRLS"!!!! and a chick who can't act even a little bit)

I cannot emphasize how bad an actress the leading lady is, it is painfully bad. It's not as intolerable as Kellie Pickler, but she's a close damn second. That's how bad it is. I looked her up to see who the fuck would've ever hired her, her name is Alexa Pena Vega, which I tell you so you can immediately change the channel if you see her name in the credits. The only thing from fairly recent past that's of note is that she appeared in 7 episodes of the TV show "Nashville", 90% of what she's done I've never heard of but she's had steady work since she was a kid, and I tell you this because you, too, can be an actor if this person can. 

This movie's plot is bland, the script is stilted, the tone is shmoopy, the pacing is draggy, and it hits way too many bingo squares. Everything about it is irritating. The part that irritated me most was where they're singing "Angels We Have Heard On High" and when getting to "in excelsis deo" they pronounce it "egg-shell-sees", which is wrong, it's more like "eck-chel-sees", hitting that "ch" and last "s" light. I've sang in choirs in Carnegie Hall not once, but twice, you can trust me. There, now you know. 

I feel sorry for Aaron Samuels (Jonathan. His name is Jonathan Bennett. I'm sorry also that everyone, including me, probably calls him Aaron Samuels). He ain't that great in this, and I feel like it's because of the material/people he had to work with. The peripheral family members are overall kind've stiff or something, too. So maybe this is also a director issue? But ol' Alexa, man, she is of the suck, high school kids do better than this. I'm not bothering to give you the summary... I mean, it's basically the title, she's a Christmas party coordinator who's hired by him. I will say I'm happy it reminded me I need to pull a recipe for crockpot mulled cider, so there's that. I'll give it a star for that. We'll file this under background noise, because if you pay attention to it, she's gonna work your nerves then squeeze the last. 

1/5 stars 

Holiday For Heroes (Hallmark, 2019 - Marc Blucas, Melissa Claire Egan)

This one ain't too terribly bad. It's the second military-at-Christmas movie that Blucas has been in for Hallmark (that I've seen) and I have to confess, I was subconsciously comparing that one to this one because that one was pretty damn good (see last year's list, linked above). But Blucas is a really solid actor, everything I've ever seen him in, it comes off naturally. Having said that, I feel like he's been some sort of military something-or-other in most everything I've seen him in (*waves to fellow Buffy fans*), so it could just be he's nailing this shtick. 

She's a little too Mary Poppins - you know, practically perfect in every way - except without the sass, so it's saccharine but I don't blame her, she seems a decent actress who's playing the cards she's been dealt. One of those cards is that her phone ring is a Christmas carol. ::sigh:: I actually laughed out loud at the skating part because any full shot to where you could potentially see her face coupled with a body that had feet wearing skates was either super-far away like they were filming from Mars or, I shit you not, her face was obscured by a hockey net. Girl, it's cool if you got weak ankles or were traumatized by a zamboni or something. But like, don't take the role, ask for a summer movie. 

Okay, here's the problem - this movie is pretty boring. I looked at the clock probably every thirty minutes because I kept thinking "This has to be getting close to the end, right?" These two don't have any romantic chemistry, but they click, it's just I could picture them playing more brother and sister. But the story is blah, I simply didn't care about her getting her party to happen and yeah, it's not for personal, self-serving reasons, it's for a good cause (kids! soldiers!), but I just couldn't find myself caring if she pulled it off or not.  And then he's struggling between choosing a teaching job  or re-enlisting, but he didn't seem particularly stressed, so I wasn't stressed, and you know what *would* have been interesting? How the whole thing started out: somehow (and I can't recall how - maybe through her brother? because he's in the same unit?) they were paired up writing letters while he was deployed and so they knew all this cool stuff about each other, not terribly intimate but definitely personal tidbits, and I could've gotten into a movie that kept them writing letters for a little longer - there was actually a brief thing about his last letter that was lost, and that definitely could've been something interesting, when it finally turned up, that he'd written something very personal/important that he opted not to tell once he met her in person, but that potential firework turned out to be a dud. 

Instead he's back and they meet in person in essentially the first 20 minutes, maybe the first 10 - it was fast, is my point. I think maybe if they had them meeting a little later, we could've gotten to know them better and then we'd be rooting for them in both their individual issues and be rooting for them to get together. Or not, fuck, I don't know. All I know is that the title is deceptive because there were no "miracles", not in a magical or spiritual sense, and also because nothing exciting or unexpected happened, everything unfolds precisely how you expect it will. No really. What you guess early on is exactly what happens. Eh. It didn't hit enough squares to launch it down to 1 or 2 stars, it's not a complete waste of your time, but man is it dancing on the line. 

3/5 stars

Merry And Bright (Hallmark, 2019 - Jodie Sweetin and her new teeth, Andrew Walker who's that guy in lots of these movies upon whose cheekbones one could cut diamonds)

She owns a candy cane company. That's it. That's all they do, candy canes at Christmas. The red and white standard kind. They have business at one time per year and are super successful, mega rich judging by the offices and the houses in which they live. 

Suspension of disbelief, check.

Classic "family business is in danger" story, bonus dead grandmother which is the catalyst for her taking over the company. Side storyline of her mom fostering a dog that's going to end up being her Christmas present. There is no reason for this side storyline, but doggie is cute as all-get-out, so we'll give it a pass. Of course there's a baking scene. Somebody who's not into Christmas gets converted. It hits multiple boxes. 

So, Cheekbones is a consultant sent to advise Jodie on where to cut costs and consolidate, and I hope he tells her first and foremost that one cannot sustain a business for, broadly, two months out of the year, not unless they are the monopoly on candy canes. Which, they aren't. So my first thought is "make flavored canes" and "make sprinkles of said flavored canes" and "make frosting and cake mixes based on said flavors" and liqueur and patent a certain stripe pattern for the canes, then sell wrapping paper in these patterns. You know, shit that sells all year. I majored in business and minored in marketing in undergrad, I can't control when it kicks in.

They find each other difficult, which means of course they'll fall in love. Let's just jump to the end: they diversify with different flavors and they fall in love. PS: no chemistry PPS: her last name is Merriweather and the town's name is Brightwell. Get it? Merry and Bright? Yeah, they didn't just mean the song.  ::sighs::  This is just Typical with a capital "T". I was bored, but it's well-made production value-wise and is fine for background while you're cleaning or something. 

3/5 stars

A Christmas For The Books (Hallmark, 2018 - people you've neither heard of nor will recognize... unless they've been in other Hallmarks, which I'm sure they have)

This one drags so, so badly. It hits too many boxes. There's a Christmas gala. Pretending to be someone's boyfriend. Somebody's famous. Somebody's an author. Did I mention it drags? It draaaaaaags. And I am 99% certain the plot is identical to another one of these movies I've seen (perhaps on a different channel, though). The deal is that she's a romance "expert" but her own relationship just fell apart so she asks her show's producer to pretend to be her boyfriend for the benefit of the higher-ups who are giving her said show, which he does but then his on-again-off-again girlfriend shows up. She's pissed, naturally, and our lead gal lies to her and says "No I'm counseling him so he'll be a better boyfriend to you" and she's an idiot and falls for it, and they end up being best buds. ??? Okay. But here's the thing: she still ends up with dude at the end. And they have zeeeeeero chemistry. Just skip this one. Draaaaaaag. The acting is flat across the board, excepting aforementioned girlfriend who is over-the-top. 

Swear I've seen this exact plot, though. I can see one of the early scenes clear as a bell in my mind. Beautiful brunette lady, they're all outside by a gazebo or some such, she's about to go live or tape in front of audience for her show, and fiance breaks up with her, and I want to say that the guy she pretends with is either a long-time friend, or that they dated in the past. Possibly both. I'm googling this. 

* time passes *

Holy shit, it's another Hallmark movie. It's called "The Convenient Groom" from 2016, summary: "Dr. Kate Lawrence, a celebrity relationship expert, plans to publicly announce her engagement to Bryan, a handsome and perfectly polished businessman. As Kate prepares to share the news, Bryan shocks her by breaking up with her and calling off the wedding. Wanting to save her from humiliation and protect her public image, Lucas Wright, Kate’s childhood friend, steps in and pretends to be Kate’s fiancé. Stars Vanessa Marcil and David Sutcliffe." It also looks like this one was based on a book. 

Ugh. We don't do plagiarism. 

0/5 stars

Christmas In The Air (Hallmark, 2017 - Catherine Bell, Eric Close)

I don't think we did this one last year, but even if so, worth mentioning again. If you don't know him by name, you'll recognize Close, he's a good actor, and Catherine Bell is just solid across the board in everything I've seen her in. So he's a single dad who owns a toy company with his brother and of course they're slammed at this time of year and on top of that they've got a new toy (a drone-type thing) that they're trying to sell an investor on so they're busting ass trying to perfect that, too (on top of, investor and wife are coming to town to see it and somehow they get roped into having them over for dinner). Plus the kids are of an age (looks like maybe 4th grade boy and 6th grade girl?) that they're really getting into activities they've chosen for themselves now so that's on top of the usual parent stuff and we all know it's a lot for single parents at that age, it's almost like they're back to the amount of work of toddlers, they're just back to going in all directions again and starting to get more independent and need more attentiveness. I am pleased to report the kids are not brats nor are they sugar sweet, they're just normal kiddos. Now, she's a professional organizer and they meet by chance at Target or wherever and I forget the circumstances but it is evident to her that he needs some organizing and she gives him her card. I bring this up because it is not a "meet cute", it's just somebody who's astute at networking and she's polite and so's he and it's a normal interaction. 

That's the thing I like about this movie - everything unfolds in a natural manner, nothing is far-fetched. Their jobs make sense, such as - see above - they aren't limited to the Christmas season, even though people do/may need more of their services at this time of year. Close and Bell click and they're both attractive in their own ways and it's believable they grow to fall for each other. Nobody's cutesy and precious and obsessed with Christmas and hyperactive, they're adults going about their daily lives who end up realizing they kind of need each other. And on that note, they don't portray her as this lonely 40-something single woman, it's just evident that she's maybe getting dissatisfied with her routine and maybe actually needs a some messiness in her life because sometimes a little messy can be interesting, if she lets loose to a degree when it comes to all her self-imposed rules that help her keep control on her life. The only thing that was eye-roll worthy was the cookie-making montage scene and the cheesy music that backed it, but! It was incredibly short.

She also has this adorbs little greenhouse out back of her house of which I'm jealous. Not that I can grow plants particularly well. But I'm good at keeping those suckers alive. I want an herb garden when I grow up. [checks watch] Shit, I'm a grown-up. Anyway, this is a well-made, well-written, well-casted (in addition to the leads, the brothers actually resemble each other and the kids click, too), well-paced movie with well-developed characters and my final verdict is that it is most certainly not a waste of your time.

5/5 stars 

Here's your 4 and 5 stars thus far:

Trading Christmas - 5/5 stars Christmas In The Air - 5/5 stars

#1

Once Upon A Holiday (Hallmark, 2015 - some chick, a guy called Paul Campbell who's vaguely familiar)

Princess of tiny country wants some Christmastime to herself without all the royal obligations, she of course has dead parents because somebody has to. But listen, the 2 leads can actually act, nobody's shmoopy, nobody overreacts when the truth comes out, the ending is simple, it's basically very... well, basic. It's calm. It's sweet. It's not *not* worth watching, though I'd classify it as simply nice, non-irritating background fare. You're not going to go ga-ga and love it, but you're not going to loathe it, either. 

3/5 stars

A Shoe Addict's Christmas (Hallmark, 2018 - Candace Cameron, the lady who played Charlene on Designing Women)

Candace Cameron is a solid actor and she elevates everything she's in. However. This one is just stupid. It's convoluted in its premise, which is this: when this chick puts on a pair of shoes, it takes her to a certain point in her life where pivotal decisions were made (whether or not she knew at the time), and is giving her an opportunity to play Choose Your Own Adventure and see what could've happened if she'd chosen differently. We don't need the shoes for this story to happen, is my point, because just have her hold an object or have a magical person take her there a la ghosts of Christmas past. Which, well, okay - here we go.

It's also *very* convoluted in how the magic happens and how the love interest comes into it, and is as follows: she works in a department store and gets locked in there randomly one night, and meets her fairy godmother-esque guardian angel who is klutzy and quirky and initiates this whole flashbacking in time with shoes jazz, and in addition Ditzy Angel Fairy is always there kind've interfering and being bumbling while Candace and love interest are working together planning some charity thing involving his firehouse (yeah, he's a fireman, there’s additional backstory for him about following in his dad’s footsteps and something-something-something), and the department store, which somehow necessitates awkward moments in stock rooms and whilst cookie baking, oh and by the way he's also her new next door neighbor. 

Did you follow all that? Congratulations, and pass the liquor. Holy shit. Again, Candace elevates this dreck, as does - oh damn, now I remember her name, it's Jean Smart! - so a star for that, and it doesn't tick like a thousand boxes on the Bingo, but those things don't rescue the bizarre nature of this one. It's all over the place. And so it loses its charm. The shoes are a stupid shtick to try to make this be *not* the same story that we've all seen and heard a million times. And then they piled on all that other extraneous stuff to distract us from that? I guess? Question mark? You may enjoy it because it's chipper and moves at a quick clip, but... yeah, it just didn't do it for me. This type of thing has been done elsewhere, and done better. You make the call.

2/5 stars

Jingle Around The Clock (Hallmark, 2018 - Brooke Nevin, other people)

Career chick gets overwhelmed trying to balance work and the holidays, then she and the dude who's one of many in a pool of potential candidates for a job she wants end up falling for each other. Nevin's a decent actress, and she and the other lead have decent chemistry, and the plot is... you know, it's... well, decent. The only thing that really irked me is that - as in a lot of these movies - there's a stupid misunderstanding that could easily be remedied by one person holding up their hands, interrupting the person who's doing the misunderstanding, and saying "Whoa, hold on. I know what you heard/saw, but here's what actually happened." 

And in this movie's case it was reeeeeally a stretch - like, in other movies, sometimes they'll have one person get pulled away or some other thing where the misunderstood person kinda doesn't have a chance to explain, but this time it's a convo where they're both standing there for minutes upon minutes. Fucking SAY SOMETHING. Anyway. Whatevs. Some of the acting from the peripheral characters is clunky, and pacing is a little off, but overall not intolerable. And it doesn't check a metric shitton of bingo boxes. So, it's cute, not a complete waste of your time.

3/5 stars

Trading Christmas (Hallmark, 2011 - Faith Ford, Tom Cavanagh, Gil Bellows)

Outstanding production value, above-average script, and the 4 shared leads can all act. It's one of those happenstance stories, where - as in real life - no one would've been expecting to meet someone they click with when they're doing what they're doing, and what they're doing isn't some fantastical thing, they’re just trying something new (traveling/staying somewhere else for the holidays).

Everybody behaves like the grown-ups they are, there's no drama, and a tiny spat that occurs between two of them is cute, not grating. Speaking of, particular kudos to best friend character who pulls off the nosy-sassy vibe without being irritating. Even the occasional pop-over scenes to the daughter and her boyfriend at college are fine, they also can act, and they're sweet together, no shmoop, just average folks you'd have been friends with in college, and boyfriend is supportive of daughter when she has a change of heart about them doing their own traveling for Christmas. 

Everything was balanced, no one interlude at a given location lasted too long before getting back to the parallel stories going on elsewhere, and since the scenes with daughter and boyfriend are secondary, even less time was spent with them, and good, that's as it should be. And here's the part I like the best, because it's *different* and *interesting* - your 2 primary leads? Ford and Cavanagh? They aren't each other's romantic will-they-won't-they, so how's about that? This barely hits anything on the bingo card, ergo the score is....

5/5 stars

Time For Me To Come Home For Christmas (Hallmark, 2018 - Josh Henderson, Megan Park) 

I should take off a star right now for the long title. You'll know by the end of the review what I've decided. Anyhow, out of the gate, understand that I had to make myself watch this one because the synopsis tells me part of this has to do with the dude being a country music singer and that means somebody's gonna sing - likely, him - and it'll probs be a Christmas song, and that also carries with it the risk of *original* Christmas song, which is infinitely worse. I also have no idea who this Josh Henderson person is - if he happens to be a singer by trade and this is what got him the role, well, I'm not looking it up, I'm reserving my judgment for when I actually hear him sing and see him act.  

Second thing to know, there's something very important that sold me on watching this: turns out Megan Park is the actress who played my favorite character in one of these Christmas movies so far - and some of you will understand the gravity of this, but if you don't then go now and read my write-up on the worst of the worst, My Christmas Love. Folks, Megan Park played Janet. *The* Janet. Light of my life during that shitstorm Janet. She who kept me afloat in a sea of dreck Janet. I owe this to Janet. 

Henderson's a fine actor, Park is way above average and should be doing more than Hallmark movies, and they click together, so good casting, there. (Also good casting? He's actually Southern, the accent isn't fake - though on the occasional word he bumps it up a bit but that could've been because of director, who knows - and for my Southern ears that is so re-fucking-freshing). The dialogue is better than usual for these movies (read: it sounds like things real people would say), and it's elevated by the fact that our two leads are delivering it well. The story unfolds in an easygoing, natural manner (as in, it's not smitten at first sight, they grow to fall for each other over the course of their journey), while at the same time moving at a nice clip. The quick and dirty: they're both from nearby towns/cities in the same state in the midwest, she thinks she knows him from local choir competitions so he's appreciating her treating him like anybody else vs. famous, they're both kinda dreading going home - her because breaking news to dad that the family business is in worse trouble than they thought, him because it's going to be first Christmas since his dad died, plus he's stressed anyhow because he's got songwriter's block. 

A run-down of the songs, so you're fully prepared.... I'll give you the length too because I'm a super nice person... okay not really, but Christmas miracles and hope and bleccccch....

Song one: Deck the Halls, piano, solo, shortish

Okay, he can carry a tune but there's nothing exceptional about his voice. I'm still not looking him up.

Song two: Jingle Bells, acoustic guitar, two old people harmonizing (poorly), short

Bless.

Song three: Joy To The World --> O Come All Ye Faithful, acapella, choir, shortish (but most part in background), they're ever-so-slightly flat which is worse than being completely flat (hi, choir nerd here)

Sigh.

Song four: Away In A Manger, him & 2 precocious children, acoustic, shortish

Twice.

Second time longer.

Second verse with him. 

Fuuuuuuuuu--------

Song five: 

The original song (which isn't entirely bad), acoustic, she inexplicably knows the tune and words well enough to harmonize and so does the mom and then there's inexplicable ability for sister to play 2nd guitar, and inexplicable background somebody to fiddle along, as well. It's a brand new song. He just wrote it. He essentially had just finished it in his mind. Length: Long, as it finishes the movie.

Stupid. So, so stupid. Just have him sing it. I don't mind the 2nd guitar or the fiddle because people skilled on such can pick up chords after watching another person run through it once, and can insert a little complementary medley in between verses, respectively - it's the people magically knowing the lyrics that's irritating and takes you out of the movie completely.

Major Complaint: there's three separate misunderstandings. One: she thinks he was trying to make a fool of her (huh?) by not telling her who he was (re: famous) and he reacts calmly; two: she sees a tabloid saying he had a girlfriend, acts pissy til he finally gets her to pony up what the hell is wrong, she says, and he reacts good naturedly; three, he offers to invest in the fam business so they don't have to rely on bank loans, and she gets all offended saying this must mean he doesn't believe in her (::sigh:: no, it doesn't), and he again takes it well. What annoys me is that all three of these are stupid and are on her, and she's not a stupid person, so her behaving this way is contrary to the other 90% we've seen. I don't get it. It was really odd.

Okay, I won't give it stars off because of the title, fine. But the title *is* cumbersome and kept me from this movie last year, it should've been called A Sweet Christmas Song or something of that ilk - sweet since she makes preserves and candy bars, then of course him writing the song, and also we can't possibly have one of these movies without Christmas in the title. 

Here's the problem: this ticks way too many bingo boxes. The family business is in danger of being lost. There's a dead parent (one for each lead, bonus sick spouse of random friend). There's Christmas songs sung by lead character. There's precocious children (three, specifically). One of the lead characters is famous. Character performs an instrumental talent. Group baking scene. Visit to a town with a holiday event. Characters make Christmas wishes. 

Those coupled with the annoying triple-play of Standard Hallmark Movie Misunderstanding Moment means this should be in negative star territory. But we're going to break the rules. I am docking it only one star for all the tropes, then another star specifically for song overload, as it would've been more impactful to hear his voice for the first time (bits in background as he comes on radio/TV notwithstanding) in the song he's been struggling to write when it happens at the end. All the music was just too much, between him and rando touring couple and choir and kids (twice), then the family sing-a-long. Good god almighty, I actually got tired just typing all that out. This movie is so strange because the components are of the suck, but afterwards you'll be like "Eh, that wasn't bad". 

Bottom line: if you're going to watch a Christmas movie, this one is way far from the worst, it's not a waste of your time, just beware the huge trope minefield and know it's only saved by the quick pacing and very natural acting on the parts of your two leads. 

3/5 stars (but just barely, and easily could've been 5/5 which is much disappoint)

Magical Christmas Ornaments (Hallmark, 2017 - people named Jessica Lowndes and Brendan Perry, the latter of whom I recognize from something)

So, I caught part of this last year and I don't think I went over it, but don't worry if I did because I am not going over it now. Brief synopsis: Mom, who has a real hard-on for Christmas, sends daughter ornaments and they turn out to be "magical", because they are reminding her of happy anecdotes from Christmases of her past so it's changing her attitude, plus coincidental great stuff is happening after she receives each one. To sum: anti-Christmas person starts to get into the spirit, lady lead is really focused on her career, falls in love with physician neighbor, precocious kids - it's trope-a-palooza from what I've seen (about an hour). 

Here's why I'm not bothering to get into it - well, beyond the fact that the lady lead couldn't act her way out of a paper bag, plus (and this is *not* her fault) her hair and makeup are poorly done and it's very distracting - it's a commercial for Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments. The very first one she opens, it's an over-the-shoulder shot and she's got the box tilted precisely to where the logo is clear-as-a-bell into the camera. Fuck that noise. I'm not sticking around for the rest of the ornaments, it may've only happened with that one but I don't care. Also, the pacing is soooo slow. 

1/5 stars (the one only because the male lead can act, and may make it tolerable for you)

[tippitv]

SPN 15.02 “Raising Hell” - TippiTV Recap

Welcome to the recap of episode 2 of the final season! As with the first episode, I will be providing descriptions of graphics I would have made if I didn't have a shitty pain-wracked upper body. I tried making graphics with my feet, which feel great, but it was... too artistic...

I didn't want to set such a high bar for myself.

Okay in the intro bit Belphejack describes his warding spell on the town as a mile-wide circle where "ghosts can't get in or out." Now I'm confused because the cemetery from which all the ghosts/demons erupted like a Dr. Pimple Popper compilation video is outside of this circle. Isn’t it? All the evacuees are also outside this circle. What's keeping all the people at the shelter from getting possessed by ghosts that didn't happen to be in the town? Wouldn't it have made more sense to get everyone into the shelter and then make the circle around that? All they've done is created a Venn diagram where the warded circle doesn't touch either the cemetery or the shelter.

[Graphic: just a terrible drawing of the above to illustrate my point.]

Actually screw it I need to make this graphic.

Or wait... Are they saying this bustling town AND the cemetery fill up a space of only 1 mile and are warded together?

And that somehow the majority of ghosts are in this area for some reason and that they hadn't managed to go much further than that after they were freed?

OH MY GOD WHY AM I THINKING SO HARD ABOUT THIS?

Anyway we now move to the present day, which seems to be soon after the evacuation. I'm actually slightly pleasantly surprised that they picked up here instead of moving on to the other three billion ghosts that need dealing with.

A woman sneaks around the supposedly deserted town, covering her nose and mouth with a scarf. Ah right... the "benzene." I actually did live through a few benzene leaks and you can smell it. The CDC describes it has smelling something like gasoline but to me it smells like... a certain kind of bandaging. Medcinal and rubbery. It seems unlikely that nobody in this town would know this and point out that there's zero benzene smell in the air. The woman runs into her neighbor, who's acting like a stone cold weirdo. She's wary but keeps chatting right up until the moment he stabs her a bunch of times.

A ghost pops out of him. He somewhat resembles the prophet who lost his soul so I was mildly confused for a moment. Also throughout this whole episode it's like he can't decide what his accent is and it's very annoying. Hell, he goes through like three accents just spelling the word "disembowel" here.  Because the neighbor lady had been chatting about spelling bees.

At the high school, Castiel tells Sam about the neighbor lady going missing. For some reason, Sam has trouble getting everyone's attention. Did this town only have forty people in it? The cafeteria isn't  remotely full. Sam reminds everyone to stay out of the quarantine zone. "Any questions?" Everyone raises their hands.

Sam's face makes a bunch of faces that can be summed up as "uh oh spaghettios."

Dean and Belph are in town bonding (not really) over being good soldiers who just wanna do their jobs. The mixed-accent ghost tries to make an escape through the warding whe Dean blasts him with rock salt. Belph points out they're not dealing with regular ghosts. "That was Francis Tumblety." Oh no the inventor of Tumblr!

[Graphic: Dashcon as Hell]

Turns out Francis is more famously known as Jack the Ripper. When Belph explains this Dean is like, "Cool," which seems like a weird reaction for him to have. Also wouldn't the soul of someone as bad as Jack the Ripper have become demonic by now?

High school shelter. They picked a really weird building for their exterior shots. It looks like a cross between an Alpine chalet and a city hall. Some of the antsy townsfolk with strong Canadian accents decide to escape back to their Kansan homes.

One of the homes is currently being used as a meeting hall by the ghosts. I cannot overstate how much I hate seeing ghosts in full daylight. The makeup looks straight out of a school play. Like Sam earlier, Francis has some difficulty getting everyone's attention. What kind of parallel is this supposed to be? He gets the other ghosts to agree to mount an attack against the hunters and then they can put on a production of The Importance of Being Earnest and Dead.

Two of the townsfolk sneak back home only to encounter two of the ghosts. They look terrified even though the ghosts look absolutely comical.

[Graphic: Photoshop these two ghosts into a Scooby Doo scene]

Sam and Castiel argue about what and when to tell the evacuees. Rowena walks in on them and acts like she just got a Samstiel idea for Whumptober.

After some exposition about God and his sister and the soul-bomb that Rowena made back then, Sam says he needs her to make something similar that will trap the ghosts. She says it will be very difficult and will take her until nearly the end of the episode.

Then Sam gets called away to join the other plot line. The two people who slipped out of the shelter are now possessed and oozing some CGI out of their eyes. Man, daylight really is unkind to everything except like Jensen Ackles's complexion.

Francis Tumbledore materializes and demands they erase the warding or the ghosts will start killing people. To make his point, the two recently possessed people get their innards turned into Hamburger Helper by the ghosts inside them. Someone offscreen shoots them with a confetti gun!

Ugh. It's that wanker Ketch, which I believe is his full name, and the confetti is actually a bunch of "iron flakes." The flakes just gently tickle the skin instead of penetrating and thus damaging it, which doesn't seem like it would harm ghosts. I mean, we have iron in our blood and that doesn't seem like a deterrent to ghosts but whatever. Even Ketch's dumb pocket square is annoying me. I don't remember why he annoys me but I feel it deep in my soul.

Everyone reconvenes at the school for a stand-n-chat. Rowena and Ketch reminisce and flirt. Oh, Rowena. You can do so much better. Ketch gets around to being surprised to learn that Jack's corpse is now being possessed by the demon Belphegor, even though he's currently on a mission to kill Belphegor. He had to be momentarily ignorant so we could get some clunky exposition. Blah blah blah a demon named Ardat was the one who ordered the hit but neglected to mention what Ketch would be looking for.

Cut to Reno where Amara is in her well-appointed hotel suite getting a temple massage from a masseuse named Kimiko. Kimiko's hands disappear to be replaced by slightly more masculine hands.

Amara sits up, startled and displeased to discover her brother. I don't care if y'all are billions of years old it's gross to show up in your sister's room when she's only wearing a sheet. Also it's rude to smite a masseuse in the middle of an appointment.

"Sooo how about that Game of Thrones ending?" Chuck small-talks. "Pretty great, right?"

[Graphic: Screenshot of my post about Supernatural's showrunner comparing the show's finale to GoT that inexplicably has 35,000 notes]

Amara, naturally, is suspicious of her brother's sudden appearance and wants to know why he's there.

You know, it's too bad Castiel doesn't have that power where he could touch someone on the forehead and make them sleep. Instead of dealing with all these angry evacuees he could just tap them all into a short coma.

Rowena wants Dean to tell her more about Ketch like he's the village matchmaker instead of a guy with three billion evil souls to deal with. He's nice enough to warn her away from him, but it just seems to make her more intrigued.

Time for Dean and Castiel to hash out their feelings. I mean the feelings where Dean is mad at Castiel for not telling everyone about Jack losing his soul, not the feelings where they keep staring at each other like "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel is playing in the background but they can never act on it because they live in a very heteronormative universe. Generally speaking, Dean is also just mad at this whole thing where free will is an illusion and they've been playing God's games. "Nothing about our lives is real."

[Graphic: Screencap of the Scoobynatural episode]

Dean dramatically stalks out of the room while Cas, his back turned like they're in a soap opera, calls out to him. They face each other. "You asked what about all of this was real... we are." Dean doesn't say anything to that and leaves the room heterosexually.

He goes out on patrol with Ketch and gives him an iron necklace to keep from getting possessed. Ketch wants to know more about Rowena.

[Graphic: I mean... can I do something with Dean as Bea Arthur in Fiddler on the Roof?]

Luckily he gets word about trouble down at the ol' abandoned meat-packing plant. Two hunters have gone missing. Ketch gets thrown into a concrete wall in such a way that would kill him or, at the very least, leave him with a spine made of oatmeal. Lizzie Borden aims to kill them, but a new, unseen ghost shouts at her to leave.

Aw, it's Kevin Tran. I like how he moves the plastic doorway strips with his hands instead of just blinking his way into the room. Turns out God sent him to Hell instead of Heaven, but at least it's given him sort of a badass reputation among the other ghosts so that they do what he says. Ohh I bet that gets pissed away pretty soon.

Reno. God is watching something on TV where the CC says "a sexy pastiche of fragrant tripe" which is often the tagline of Buckleming episodes. Amara is trying to get her yoga on but he wants to talk about taking a vacation together. She figures out he needs her for something. She zeroes in on his shoulder wound that mirrors Sam's. "You're not complete," she says. "You're not at full strength."

And this, my friends, is where I began to get this tingling discomfort that made me wonder if Sam is going to become the new God by the finale.

The switch from night to day to night to day is so weird in this episode. Or maybe it always is and for some reason I'm noticing it more. Anyway while Kevin is off doing recon on the other ghosts, Sam and Dean fret about the warding starting to fade. "We're gonna need you to charge it back up," Dean says to Belph. "Sorry guys it was a one-time thing," Belph says. And nobody asks any followup questions like "WHY?"

Belph also says, in regards to Kevin, that the default setting on Heaven is souls can't get in once they've been to Hell. God made exceptions for John and Bobby but he doesn't exactly like the Winchesters anymore. I feel like y'all really ought to talk to Billie about this. Also, doesn't that mean Sam and Dean would never get to go to Heaven? This just lends further credence to a Samgod hypothesis.

Ghost meeting. One of the ghosts logically points out that all they have to do is wait for the warding to fail completely and then just stroll out. Random ghost would be excellent at snarky recapping. But Francis Tumbledry is the Veruca Salt of serial killing ghosts.

[Graphic: Screencap from Willy Wonka where Veruca is saying she wants and Oompa Loompa right now except it's Francis and he wants to break through the warding]

Kevin pops up and tries to act tough but immediately gets found out as a spy.

Rowena and Ketch flirt and make rather strained sexual innuendos for a scene while working on the ghost vacuum. You can't make me transcribe any of it! Luckily she gets called away before anybody's pants come off.

And then she apparently goes, on foot, from the high school to the warded town some five miles away. Either that or she needlessly parks really far away from her destination. Either way, it gives Francis Tumbleforya a chance to intercept her and tell her the ghosts have Kevin. Oh and Ketch gets his ass ambushed.

She meets the Winchesters in the middle of the street to deliver the news. I mean, Kevin is in the same room with the ghosts but how do they "have" him? He could blip away. This was a dorky plan from the start but I guess I relate. I, too, took a lot of AP classes in high school and I can't plan for crap.

The Winchesters meet with Francis. He sticks his hand through Kevin and turns on his heart light. 

They let this go on for a weirdly long time instead of pretending to negotiate until Rowena runs into the room. She brandishes a Himalayan salt lamp at the ghosts and shouts, "Capare!" A couple get sucked in but the rest blip away. Only Kevin remains.

Everyone runs off to where the ghosts are planning to attack the warding in a mostly invisible, budget-friendly manner. Ketch shows up, too, but everyone's too busy dreading the imminent breach to notice he's not wearing his iron necklace anymore.

[Graphic: A catalog ad from GOOP dot com selling the iron necklace as a belt to keep your nethers from getting overrun with evil spirits]

He lets Rowena vacuum up a few ghosts before knocking her out. He reveals himself to be Francis Tumbleweed and says he's going to use the crystal as a bomb to knock out the warding because bad guys always talk too much about their plans. Indeed, Dean quickly shoots him in the arm and the crystal goes flying.

Dean catches it and hands it back to Rowena so she can finish Dirt-Deviling the ghosts.

Denouement. Castiel tries to heal Ketch but can't for some reason. Did he get some kind of cooties from trying to heal the godly bullet wound in Sam's shoulder? Is he just tired? Does he just hate Ketch as much as I do? Time will tell.

The Winchesters say their goodbyes to Kevin, who's decided to wander the earth like some kind of phantom Dr. Banner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33izVlIOgnQ

"I love you guys," Kevin says. They smile at him. Like dang, say you love him too! I mean just give a guy a moment of happiness before he leaves to gradually lose his sense of self and his soul fades to nothing. Also maybe hug him. He's solid-ish.

Man, what a bummer.

In Reno, Amara is saying her goodbyes, too, but in a much sassier and satisfying away. She gets to tell her brother off and wear magenta lip stick. She mentions that he's lost so much power that he can't even leave this world without her help. Oh honey just punt him into Apocalypse World, then. Leave his ass to flounder.

We end with a bunch of ghosts (red glowing nuggets of light) trying to break into the town from the top. But like... why? They have the whole rest of the world. Why are they bothering with this mile-wide circle of real estate? The Winchesters and associates fret about how they're going to stop all the ghosts.

It's a shorter season, so they better hurry...

***

If you enjoyed the recap and are able, please visit my virtual tip jar: paypal.me/TippiBlevins or https://ko-fi.com/A4017DA

[figjelly]

Comics, Pornography, and Communication: also, a discussion of why *Men* suck.

First, notice how I typed out *Men* up there. It is capitalized. There are asterisks around the word. I don’t describe myself as a “social justice warrior” because the label, to me, signifies lip service, mob mentality, and a lack of critical thinking. Second, notice how I qualified that definition with “to me.” It’s subjective. It’s about my experience with the term and the people who’ve I encountered who use it as an identity. Do I think social justice is bad? No. Do I think wanting social justice, equity, and all those buzz words is wrong? Nope. But do I think the world is mostly grey areas? Heck golly gosh, I do.

*Men* (to me) is meant to signify major societal trends, norms, and expectations that are grounded in patriarchal, misogynistic, and ableist rules, environments, and scripts that are written for *Men,* by *Men,* between *Men,* and with *Men.* *Men* are those who think the world works a certain way, so suck it up because that’s just the way the world is. *Men* (In. My. Experience.) have zero interest in critical thinking unless it is done so in a way that benefits them and other Men. Often times, *Men* engage in the lowest threshold of critical thinking or want to employ rhetorical techniques/classical logic to whatever is being discussed. *Men* is not limited to cis-men. This is important but not relevant to the following discussion. I’M ONLY GOING TO BE DISCUSSING AMERICAN COMICS. YES, I KNOW THE FIRST RECORDED SUPERHERO COMIC WAS MADE IN THE 1800s SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE. So, let me tell you that this entire position that I’m about to present is NOT about:

1. The history, merit, or discussion of why Comix (different from comics, for historical reasons) is important. Underground Comix is important for many reasons. There have been dissertations written on the subject. I’m not about to do that here. 2. Whether or not the goal of satire was/is achieved with Underground Comix. 3. Whether Underground Comix is “problematic.” I.e. was/is it sexist, ableist, racist, bigoted, and whatever other problems they could have. Again, another dissertation topic. Again, again, aaaagain: this is about my individual experience working in a comic book shop. Don’t act like I’m drafting a treatise on some objective truth that’s floating aimlessly around in a vacuum. Go watch Netflix. Eat pizza. This isn’t that deep. It’s me griping about things from a particular point of view. Some background: I’ve worked at a comic book shop in a small, midwestern city for almost five years now. The shop has been here going on over 20+ years. It’s the only game in town when it comes to comic books. Historically, this wasn’t the case but other shops didn’t adapt so, uh, they died off. Comics is a strange business to be in because while it is technically a bookshop, the industry came from a place of fun and general absurdity that was meant to be throwaway material for kids (especially the target market, young boys) to waste money on (hence, why Golden Age stuff, any of it really, is usually worth a little something--the newsprint wasn’t meant to be durable, so kids would throw them away, use it for drawing paper, etc.). Comics had been around before the Golden Age, but yanno, it’s called a Golden Age for a reason--it is the era in which comics became introduced as “suitable” for mainstream consumer consumption. I mean, we could argue on other reasons but that’s neither here nor there. Comic books, graphic novels, and comic strip utilize sequential art. Sequential art is a specialized term. Within the definition itself, the requirement of narrative is implicitly built into the term. There is no room for debate here. If a story is not being told, a body of work can be classified as art but it is not sequential. Art can tell a story, sure, but a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn’t a square. I run into a wide variety of people because of the strangeness of the product we sell. We’ve got readers (like myself), we’ve got collectors, we’ve got beginner readers, we’ve got artists (like me), we’ve got writers (like me), and we’ve got people who “haven’t been to a comic store in ages and, boy!, is it sure different than when I was young!” And, yes, we have the certified perverts. Once, I found out one of our customers was a registered child sex offender. I politely told my boss that if the person in question wasn’t banned from the store, I was quitting. As with all stores, as times change, so does business practice. One must adapt to the changes that are happening around them or they have to have a big enough, steady clientele to support them. This comic book shop, in particular, did not and does not have a large enough, regular clientele base that spends enough money for us to keep doing things the way it always had been. These are just facts. In the past, this store was ran in such a way that it was a dying business but the current owner would put their own money into it in order to keep it afloat. At that time, the store allowed some subscribers (note: to my knowledge, all cis-gender men) to order exclusively from publishers like Boundless Comics (publisher who specializes in “sexy, cool comics for adults”) with no advance payment. Which means if they never came to pick up their stuff, we were stuck with the responsibility to sell it because, well, we already paid for it. I don’t think I have to make a Venn diagram to convince anyone that the overlap between deadbeats (for our subscription service--basically, we never heard from someone ever again) and these men was pretty much two circles just a bit off-center from one another. These were not comics we could put out to be sold because they never would be. In over 20 years, our numbers have shown that Adult/XXX/Mature comics don’t sell well off the rack regularly. We do have one or two customers back from Ye Olden Days who still have subscriptions to mature comics, but they never look around. They never try out something new. They buy the comics they ordered because they wouldn’t get them any other way. Both of them are strongly against buying things on the internet, so my guess is we’re they’re only option. I wasn’t around during the time in which “boxes were kept under the counter” for “special comics.” Today: About a month ago, an older man (because all of the customers who ask for the “boxes under the counter” are older) came into the store. He looked around. He came up to the counter and asked me where the Underground Comix were. I showed him where we kept our collection of Underground Comix. He said that wasn’t what he was looking for. Did we have the “boxes under the counter.” Now, understand, I’ve been told about all of this because we don’t have it anymore but I needed to know the store’s history. Fair. I told him that we do not and have not in many years. But, when people ask me for Those Boxes, I know what they’re asking for. Not all of it was satirical Underground Comix. So, they usually stumble when I tell them that, no we don’t. This guy stumbled. I could assume a number of reasons as to why he did so, but it really doesn’t do any good. So, I try to ask a number of questions to find something else they might like to try. The conversation goes like this: Me: Are you looking for a comic or graphic novel with explicit sexual content? Him: Yes. Me: Okay, I can definitely suggest Saga and Sex Criminals.

At this point, I pull out the first trades of both and show the explicit sexual content in both. I mention the art, the story, and the writing. Sequential art is divided into four elements: design, drawing, caricature, and writing. Design, drawing, and writing are usually the most salient elements to a lay reader. Caricature has a lot to do with symbolic representation--how does one exaggerate an element of X in order to represent X? But some people lay people are interested in this element because of the comical effect it can play in a comic story. Him: No. Not like that. Me: What is missing from this then? Him: Something more adult. Me: Would you like explicit sexual content with more graphic violence? Him: Yeah, that sounds about right. Me: Okay, I’ve got Crossed.

!WARNING WARNING WARNING! THE LINK I’VE PROVIDED IS TO THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE WHICH IS ABOUT THE TAMEST RESOURCE FOR WHAT CROSSED IS THAT I KNOW OF. DO NOT LOOK INTO THIS COMIC IF EXTREME VIOLENCE, GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF DEATH AND DISMEMBERMENT, INCEST, BESTIALITY, RAPE, BLASPHEMY OF RELIGIONS, AND A WHOLE HOST OF OTHER THINGS REMOTELY BOTHER YOU. NOT EVEN TRIGGER--REMOTELY. BOTHER. So, yeah, I feel like I’d picked out a good contender considering. Him: No. Not like this. But, hey, wanna know something about Crossed? Everybody is a target for wanton humiliation, suffering, and all sorts of horrible things! Is this something I’m praising? No. It’s just a fact of the comic. And an important fact to know when guy says to me: Him: Well, the old Underground Comix I used to read were more sophisticated with the satire, like the sex in it was about humor with having sex with women. Me: So, you’re looking for comics about humorous sexual encounters that are also explicit? And as I start suggesting comics, he interrupted. Him: No, not like that. More like... *he pulls out a Robert Crumb collection we have and thumbs through it* that. The funny stuff, yanno? The picture in question (I won’t link it, because it is upsetting, as will be my description of it) is just in Crumb’s style--pretty distinctive--and it’s one panel of a skinny, naked man with a sizeable erection. He’s bent over backwards, his hips bent such that his back is practically parallel with the floor of the drawing and his erection (which, if I recall correctly is something like 1/5-1/6 of the height of the page) is pretty close to perpendicular with the floor. One of his hands is wrapped around a nude woman’s throat, the drawing exaggerating the woman’s body parts as if she were being squeezed through tube--the head is ballooned and her neck stretches out to her shoulders. her arms are ramrod straight leading down to outstretched hands. Her legs are equally straightened, bent ninety degrees at the hips. There are motion lines to indicate that the man is forcibly shoving the woman onto his dick over and over again. By her throat. He’s got a pretty happy expression. She does not. Please, read the part where I explain what this thing I’m writing is NOT. Because it is a grey area if you know enough about history and context. Divorced of context, it’s pretty disgusting. I’ll just say that outright. So, if we use the four elements of sequential art to think about what story is being told and how it’s being told, there are things I can understand. The design is good (lots of sharp angles). The caricature is good (Crumb is great with exaggerated forms, whether I like his style or not is irrelevant). The drawing is in Crumb’s style which I can understand why people like his art. So, that leaves the writing. It is wordless but there’s still a story being told. Me and this guy were have a disconnect about what kind of story he wanted to read. Cut to today, about a month after this. It seemed like he hadn’t internalized anything we’d gone over because he had similar questions. At one point, he finally picked up a book and bought it. Which led me to writing this humongous post for the last four hours (it’s been busy today!). Because the guy wasn’t asking for pornography. I’ve definitely straight up told people before we don’t sell pornographic material here. Besides, how we define porn depends on the era. To me, I define it as material that was created with the intention to arouse, stimulate, and to be used as an aid for sexual activity AND someone wants to consume it for said purposes. But, that’s not a definition that would fit all pornographic material. The guy was (again, my perspective. Why I have to keep saying that is important here in a moment) asking for satirical material where misogyny was humorous. Now, if you were to ask him to communicate what he wanted, I guess good luck on getting that answer. I’ve tried. I don’t think he could, to be quite honest because that’s how *Men* are (hey! I used it again). This guy is a *Man* and his answers to me when I probe are, “How it used to be, just how things are,” and the like. The comic book industry is usually fraught with the same problems regular prose books are, the big topics being censorship and purity politics. It’s not as bad as, let’s say, the 1960s and 1970s but there are still problems. Even books for readers of all ages come under scrutiny and are banned from some libraries and schools (Raina Telgemeier’s Drama, for example). To censor any material is a very murky grey area for me. To say that someone cannot create material because it contains material that I am not comfortable with is even murkier because, usually, I’m presented with these hypotheticals in the form of loaded questions (”So, have you stopped bad habit X?” which doesn’t allow me to engage in how I qualify my own habits); complex questions (”What is the legal age of consent to sexual activity?” assumes a LOT of things about legality, age of consent, consent, and sexual activity without consideration to context, to say the least); false dilemmas, suggestive questions, leading questions, and... *takes a deep breath* *exhales* Listen, there’s just a lot of things that make a lot of issues super murky and grey for me. That’s not to say I don’t have opinions and personal/societal biases that sway me toward one end or the other of a polemic (I’m human. We all do it).

When I say, “I hate *Men,*” it is hatred directed towards the skewed power dynamics and socialization that I’m cemented into (through no consent or fault of my own), that allows a *Man* to think (without a second thought) about showing someone the picture I described and not worrying about what he’s communicating. About what the comic is communicating. Let’s pretend that he knows the historical context and importance of Underground Comix. How does he know that I know those things? I mean, I do, but this guy doesn’t know that. “But, Ash!” you argue. “You literally asked him to show you an example!” My friend, there’s no shortage of Underground Comix either from Crumb himself or in similar style that showcases supposedly satirical humor where “battle of the sexes” comes into play. To show someone that image with no knowledge of what the other person knows is a little dicey imho But it sucks! I have to be okay with him showing me that! I asked for an example and I got it. In his mind, it was a smooth communicative exchange. Request for information? Information given! Because of *Men,* I have to watch the way I approach wanting to talk about this subject because I might become “emotional” or I might be accused of, gasp, showing bias! (Newsflash: we’re humans. WE ALL HAVE BIASES. If you aren’t willing to talk about and challenge them then THAT’S a problem. Another story for another day, I digress). And it’s a shame because I know this *Man* isn’t wanting to consume stories where rape is funny because he’s interested in engaging with content that is historically important but because it was created in the context of some socially-acceptable horrible crap there’s some interesting discussion to be had. No, my bet is the thought process looks like: “Heh. Yeah, I know that feeling. Sometimes you just want to have a girl ride you but she just doesn’t know how to slam that pussy down right, so you gotta help her!” “lol yeah sometimes you just wish pussy would magically work your dick into oblivion without you having to worry about the woman that’s attached to it! am I right, y’all?” laugh out loud satire right there someone give me my own netflix show (watch someone take this section out of context sigh) And, honestly, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I didn’t have a thesis or anything. Just me rambling. RIP moblrs

[libgds]

To be honest, there was a little more to my annoyance with the girls’ constant questions and demands the first night at camp. My resilience is getting better, but it is not 100% and sometimes it still dips. When I got to our site after filling up the water tank, I noticed the brakes took a little more of a push to do the job.  Now last Fall when I had the RV repaired (windshield, quickly drained engine battery, and winterizing), the brakes were hard to depress.  When I got it ready to take to brake place this summer, they worked just fine. With Old Unreliable’s propensity to breakdown as far from home as possible, I could not help but start to spiral on if the brakes were going bad at our furthest point.

I was able to enjoy yesterday since we were staying parked, but today we were driving about an hour around the bay to Peterson Park. I did not sleep worth a darn last night wondering if the brakes would be fine or if I was going to discover a big problem. There was lots of deep breathing and trying to be logical about it by thinking through the obvious reason it took a little more to stop like I suddenly had a full tank of water sloshing around the back to push the RV forward.

I got up a 8am and after getting ready, waited for the girls to get up and going. It was too wet from a night of storms to sit outside, so I had to try to clear a spot at the dinette. I swear their suitcases explode every morning. Making a place to sit while traveling with preteens means moving aside bras and Paw Patrol fruit snacks.

We were not ready to pull out until almost 11am.

I pulled out of our spot and the brake pedal was stiff just like in the Fall My resiliency was probably at10% at most. I could stop, but it just felt like I needed to triple my stopping distance. We were going to dump the water tanks for gas mileage because the sloshing of partially filled water tanks makes handling harder than a full tank. This gave me oh so much time to freak out. I kept trying to throw in positive thoughts with the worst case imaginings like “it is very humid this morning from the rain and that makes brakes weird for a little bit.” This must have been the magic words, because once we pulled out of the dump station, the brakes were acting normally again.

The girls snacked as I white-knuckled even though the scenery was gorgeous as we hugged the coast around the bay. Things were working out, but anxiety does not just dissipate that easily. Now I was worried about looking for a place for lunch that could also accommodate us in the parking lot. Old Unreliable is that size that is just big enough to be unwieldy. Add that once we got going, I now worried about holding other drivers behind me up as a slowed for every curve. Things just came up on me too fast to pull over and before we knew it, we were at our destination.

The one landmark I remembered from last time was a cute goat farm and it is what I used to figure out which of the multiple Peterson Park, Beach, Recreation Area was the one I wanted. I don’t know who Peterson was, but there are too many things named for him.

I was a bit worried when we parked that I had picked the wrong Peterson because we did not pass a goat farm and the park did not look familiar. I was relieved when we found the trailhead down to the beach and that looked exactly as I remembered. Whew.

The water was gorgeous. It was a blue green shade that progressed to a deep blue as you moved from the shore. It looked like the Caribbean Sea instead of Midwestern lake.

Each of us had a bag, since last time I ended up with pounds of fossils in my pockets that made it hard to keep my pants from falling down.

The girls took to fossil hunting right away. I described to them what a Petoskey stone looks like (it is a type of fossilized coral that formed millions of years ago when the Midwest was covered by a shallow sea.) I also told them aboutcrinoids since I had found a lot of those too last time.

Abigail took to it pretty quickly and found some beautiful small stones. Loralie took a little longer to find some. She was also filling her bag with just pretty rocks she found, too. For the first hour, the both made me verify every find. We walked the shore with our head to the ground. It was 2pm when Abigail commented that our bags could not take much more. About half an hour later, Loralie’s bag ripped completely in half.  It was then that I realized that I should have used my reusable bags instead of the thin plastic ones to collect rocks.

We made our way back slowly enjoying the view and water along the way and always finding “just one more” fossil to collect.

There was some regrets expressed as we headed back up the trail with our treasures, but none were left behind.

At the top, we spread things out on a table and caught our breath, retrieved some stronger bags, and the girls went to a playground for a few minutes. It as around 4pm before we had a snack. At this point, none of us had had a proper meal that day. I am an aunt, not a parent so regular feedings are not in my skill set.

I had used Google Maps to get to the park and there were several turns on back country roads lined with orchards.  We now had no signal to get back to the campground. That is the problem with traveling via the cell phone. The Venn diagram of places with no cell signal and places you ant to take an RV are almost completely overlapping.

We retraced the first turn and then I had no clue. I had Abigail watch my bars so she could hit search as soon as we had some. Somehow our simpler route took us straight into one of the little towns I could not park in for lunch. It was better than our guided route and I saw a sign for the highway we had come in on, so we were back on track. My mom has the most amazing built in compass, so I guess I got a little of it, too.

We were back on the coast and I told the girls I would try harder to find a place to stop on the way so we could eat. Then we hit a traffic jam and any hope of stopping was lost as I got stuck in the wrong lane. We just ended back at the campground and I looked up a drive-in Betzie had recommended and found it was a 15 minute walk, so the girls agreed and we started walking the 3/4 mile to Don’s Drive-In.

We did not drive, so we got a picnic table. They had a side called Fabulous Fries (by the carload.) We all wanted fries, so we decided to share that. OMG. I kid you not, it was a takeout bag filled 6+ inches with steak fries. With our sandwiches and real fruit raspberry shakes, we were only able to get the bag down to 3 inches of fries even with this being our first meal of the day at 6:30. So if you ever go, bring twenty of you closest friends before you order fries by the carload because they mean it.

Good thing we had a long walk back to work off those fries.

The girls wanted to visit the beach again before heading into the campground for the night. The firewood delivery never happened, so we had not campfire to look forward to. The water was beautiful and becalming sound of the waves finally brought my anxiety all the way back to zero.

Tomorrow we head for home and I feel fine about the drive.

Fun with Fossils To be honest, there was a little more to my annoyance with the girls' constant questions and demands the first night at camp.

[foundcarcosa]

ccxi.

1. Do your parents ever encourage you to hang out with people that you don’t like? >> He was invested in me making black friends. I wasn’t as interested in that when I was a teenager. I didn’t dislike them, I just didn’t have anything in common with the (alarmingly few) other black kids in my high school at the time. But by this time in my life, I think I understand what he was trying to do. It just didn’t work.

2. Would you think it was odd if someone got fabric paint to decorate their underwear? >> Well, sure, but I’m not one to judge.

3. Do you ever stalk old friends? >> Nah.

4. What year was your worst school picture taken? >> The one I remember best was in ninth grade.

5. What made it the worst? >> I... really don’t know what my face was doing. But I must forgive myself. That was a very tumultuous time in my life.

6. Do you think you could count all the freckles on your body? >> I don’t have any.

7. Do you ever crave a good cuddling? >> Sure.

8. Which of your friends has the coolest siblings? >> ---

9. Are you ever greedy? >> Sure.

10. How much would you pay someone if you never had to go to school again? >> You don’t have to pay me to do what I was already planning on doing.

11. Would you like to be home schooled? >> The opportunity for that is long past, but I want to unschool any child I raise.

12. Would you like to go to an all girls [or if you’re a boy then all boys] school? >> I wouldn’t want to go to any gender-segregated school.

13. Why or why not? >> I don’t see the purpose of dividing a student body based upon... well, the students’ bodies.

14. Is your school’s band any good? >> ---

15. Do you have a favorite lyric from any song >> I have a lot of favourites, but let me see if I can pull one up at random... Ah. “My soul brings tears to angelic eyes” is still a favourite of mine (God Called in Sick Today, AFI). Unfortunately, I just noticed that for some reason half of my digital copy of Black Sails in the Sunset is just... missing. So now I have to download a new copy, but TPB never completely recovered the seeder-ship that it used to have, so I’m stuck on “connecting to peers 0.0%”. :/

16. Who is the biggest attention whore that you know? >> I mean, probably someone in the Cluster B Discord.

17. Is your life no longer enjoyable? >> False.

18. Did you get to see your friends as often as you would have liked to? >> Aside from Sparrow, my entire social circle is online, so I guess I see them as often as they log in.

19. Does orange sherbet sound good right now? >> Not really.

20. Would black hair look good or bad on you? >> I’m sure it’d look fine on me. I’d prefer something more complementary to my colouring, though.

21. Are you on anyone’s hero box on myspace? >> ---

22. Who has the biggest eyes that you know of? >> I’m not sure.

23. Do your wrists ever hurt from typing too much >> No, surprisingly. Probably because I’ve been typing since I was very small.

24. What can you imagine as being the worst thing that could happen to you right now? >> Me falling violently -- like ER-level -- ill at any point today.

25. How many times did you go swimming this summer >> Zero.

26. Have you ever been to a hard rock cafe? >> I’ve been to the one in Times Square, back in 2006. I found it to be a sad sort of place -- overpriced and terribly commercial, lacking in personality. I’d rather go to literally any trashy bar on the LES. Or Duff’s, which boasts an extensive hard-rock history. 27. When was the last time someone called your cell-phone and you didn’t know them? >> The other day. I think it’s still people calling for whomever had this number before me. I haven’t even set up my voicemail on this phone yet because no one calls for me and I don’t feel like getting holiday-related voicemails meant for that other person.

28. Do you hate it when people overuse the phrase ‘lol?’ >> No.

29. Do you ever have those weird little dreams where you’re like half awake? >> Yes, all the time.

30. Do you ever push your pillow off the bed? >> No.

31. What’s more important to you living it up or getting good grades? >> ---

32. What do you think of little children? Annoying as hell or cute? >> I’m pretty fond of children, even when they’re annoying. I imagine it’d be a little different if said child was mine, since I’d never get a break. :p

33. Is there any song that makes you think of your dad? >> Anything by Marvin Gaye, since that’s his favourite singer. (I can honestly see why, his songs are timeless and his voice is lovely.)

34. Do you ever look for comfort in surveys? >> Not really. Mostly for space to think.

35. Do you like frogs? >> Sure, they’re neat as hell.

36. Have you had any really bad experiences while plucking your eyebrows? >> No.

37. Who of your friends acts the most like a prep? >> Can anyone even be a prep once they’ve long passed adolescence...

38. Is the whole prep thing overrated anyway? >> Probably. I wouldn’t know.

39. What’s up with Fergie’s song Big Girls Don’t Cry? >> I don’t know, I’m not familiar with that song.

40. Is it hard to stay friends with someone when one of your close friends hates them? >> It’s difficult when the hating friend doesn’t want anyone else to hang out with said hated friend, or when hating!friend trash-talks hated!friend all the time. When your social circle is closer to a single circle than a venn diagram (or two separate circles), it becomes messy after a while.

41. Have you ever read The Outsiders? >> I read almost all of it sometime in high school, then I dropped it and never picked it back up again. Maybe one day I’ll give it a try again, but it’s not a priority.

42. What did you think of it? >> I guess I didn’t much care for it, since I never finished it.

43. What does your backpack/messenger bag/whatever you use for school look like? >> I don’t go to school, but I have three backpacks. One is a tiny black Jansport for carrying small things hands-free, one is a tropical-print regular-sized backpack for carrying Normandy when I take it places, and the third is a heavy-duty black laptop bag (that one was for Heimdall, which is a fair bit bigger than Normandy).

44. Where did you last go shopping at? >> Meijer.

45. Would it be weird if a person’s real name was Cheeto? >> Well, sure.

46. Is there anyone you want to give a hug to? >> Aside from Xibalbans, I’m not sure. I haven’t initiated a hug in a very long time.

47. What is the difference between giving and receiving a hug? >> Initiation. Also, a hug you give is definitely one you desire. A hug you receive sometimes is just one you tolerate, lol.

48. What are you listening to right now? >> Christmas Canon Rock, Trans-Siberian Orchestra. God, I’m so hype for tonight. (I didn’t choose that song on purpose, though, iTunes is on shuffle.)

49. Do any of your friends have the same name as any of your family members? >> I mean, maybe. 50. Have you seen Talladega Nights? >> Yes.

51. If so what was your favorite scene in it? >> For some reason, “shut up, you little pot-licker, or I’ll put you in the microwave” is a line that punched me right in the funny bone, so I still remember it. I haven’t seen the movie in years, though, so I don’t remember any other favourite parts. I should rewatch it and see if I still find it as funny as I did.

52. How often do you paint your nails? >> Not very often. High effort, low return (the varnish starts chipping pretty fast because of how often and to what ends I use my hands). I might do them today.

53. Have you ever taken a picture of you kissing someone? >> Sure.

54. If you are one of those people who’s always single do you ever long for someone to sit around and take pictures of while kissing? >> ---

55. Can I buy you a ‘drank?’ >> ---

56. If you know what song I’m referring to, why do you think T-Pain says drank and not drink? >> Dialect.

57. How come boys never take surveys? >> They do. Just not as often, I suppose. I wouldn’t know why.

58. What is the last thing you did on powerpoint? >> ---

59. Do your grandparents know what myspace is? >> ---

60. When’s the last time you sprinted? >> I don’t remember.

[lunarmadison]

meaner than my demons | self-para

WHO: Madison McCarthy; mentions of Mason, Margaret, Aunt Lara McCarthy; allusions to LN students

WHEN: Monday, April 3; afternoon

WHERE: Undique Stadium, gym 

WARNINGS: Violence, blood. 

Madison ties her hair back and tapes up her hands before stepping in front of the punching bag. She’s tired of shooting at things from a distance. She’s tired of the inner peace and calm that comes from focusing her aim at a long range, tired of steady hands holding a bow. 

She’s tired of the lack of answers, of the people slipping away from her. One, two, three, right, left, right; she strikes the bag in quick succession, dust clouding up in pale puffs around her fist where it meets leather, and it doesn’t quite feel the way that it should. Her punches aren’t landing right. 

Madison rearranges her feet. Bends her knees. She shakes out her shoulders and elbows, to move like water through the thick gym air, heavy with the scent of sweat and chalk. 

One, two, three. Left, right, left. 

Madison was a firecracker of a child; a tiny girl with more energy than her body could handle. Dark eyes shone with rage, always, and her fists were ready to fly at any given moment, the slightest provocation. Bloodlines were bred for certain qualities, like show dogs, and Slayers were selected for their ability to do the job. Children born at the intersection of the Venn diagram were almost preternaturally dangerous. 

“Yeah, well, you’re ugly, and your stupid brother is stupid,” taunted the other boy, a Kindergartener who had already started his training. Four-year-old Madison was having none of that, and she launched herself at the child, tiny fists beating at his body, little fingers gripping and tugging at hair, nails scratching any skin she could find. She’d given him a bloody nose and deep scratches before a teacher had pulled her off of him, her arms still swinging at empty air, still thirsty for more. Still angry. Still unvalidated. Still absolutely certain that the boy hadn’t paid in full for insulting Mason like that. 

Punching bags don’t fight back. Madison takes a drink of water and squares her body against her immobile opponent. 

Margaret McCarthy dropped the small compound bow into her daughter’s open hands. Five-year-old Madison pulled at the string experimentally and loosed it with a satisfying ‘twang.’ 

“Never dry fire your bow,” Margaret admonished, without actually explaining what that meant. 

Madison figured it out when she did it again, and her mother turned stern eyes on her. 

“What did I just say? Madison.” Margaret stood behind the girl, watching her place her hands on the weapon. “Focus. Stand sideways. Keep your eye on the target,” she said, and that was all the instruction that Madison got that day, but she still wasn’t allowed to leave until she had actually hit the target. 

She had to be calm. She had to be steady and still, cautious and careful. She had to focus. 

Madison’s tired of caution and calm. She’s tired of holding it all in. Her fists land harder on the punching bag, blow after blow landing with more force, more violence; she shifts on the balls of her feet like a dancer, moving like a landslide tumbling to the ground. 

At eight the twins went into the field with their Aunt Lara, shadowing on a straightforward capture and contain mission. Madison ignored the curious questions that Mason whispered into her ear, keeping her eyes steady on the blonde ponytail swinging ahead of them so as not to lose their leader in the forest. 

She was quiet, listening for the sounds of their quarry: for rustling in the leaves or the hiss of a lamia enticing their prey closer. What she heard were screams, though, and she tore ahead of the small group, pushing through the underbrush with her singular focus on the mission ahead of them. She needed to end the suffering of the victims. She needed to protect the innocent. 

The bow strapped to her back forgotten, Madison flipped a knife and attacked. The rage was easy. The fight was comfortable. She didn’t hear the crying. She barely saw the blood spilling from leathery skin onto her own hands. She didn’t stop until she knew the innocent would be safe. 

When Lara arrived it was too late. 

Nothing Madison does now expends this awful energy. The arrows never meet their target. The punches never land quite right. 

She’s supposed to help L. Naturae. She needs to do right by them to wash the blood off of her hands. She needs to cancel out her inherent nature if she’s going to balance her karma. She needs all of them to believe that she’s a good person. She is a good person. She’s making things right. She’s making things better. 

Isn’t she? 

Madison fights until the tape is torn and her knuckles are raw. She fights until she’s out of breath, until her skin is slick with wasted sweat and her eyes are hot and wet. She fights, seeking a satisfaction that she hasn’t been able to fulfill for as long as she can remember. 

Her own breath cuts through her lungs as she sinks to her knees, her physical energy long since past the zero mark. She closes her eyes. 

She needs to get up and shower. She needs to get to class, no matter how far away or unreal her student life seems right now. 

And she’ll put herself together. She’ll assemble her proper self like an Instagram post, with her hair curled and tied back, with her glossy black nails and fine, simple jewelry. She’ll carry her books back and forth to ace her classes, and fill her quiver with smiles and compliments, networking with everyone like that’s what matters when you’re a Bloodline. She’ll slide her Slayer self into an old strongbox and lock it up tight, burying it underneath sweaters and a rainbow assortment of pens and mildliners, underneath new politics and protest signs, underneath the recently acquired knowledge that she’s beautiful, underneath layers of the person she’s becoming here at NYADA. 

And she won’t look at it. She’ll ignore it until it goes away, and she’ll pretend that it isn’t a seed that she’s buried inside herself, still growing, growing, with roots and vines twining around her veins and heart, growing until it strangles her with the truth of who she is. 

Of what she is. 

[samdukewieland]

Stuck Inside Media Diary Week 8

Something that’s been nice about going back through Mad Men has been re-reading/re-visiting old Sepinwall recaps on the episodes. I read him religiously throughout high school and college, amongst others, but have since drifted from the recap on shows, for no good reason. Probably because there’s generally a podcast I can just listen to rather than read something (jock at heart-sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). This supposed to be a lesson in “go back and experience stuff from your high school years?” man, I don’t know; the venn diagram of things I did in high school and the things I do now is not small (or is it not big? What’s the best way to convey a lot of similarities with a venn diagram, size-wise). 

Sunday, May 10 (Mother’s Day)

The Third Man, Reed 1949

I was not super digging this while I was watching, it was late when I started watching it and it’s not slow exactly, but I was real curious how egg-zacktly Orson Wells was going to fit into the picture. Mysteries! I tells ya. Anyway, I’ve been stewing in it and realized, “huh, I think I actually like this movie quite a bit.” I think the Britishness, while not in your face, was secretly chipping away at my brain, already war-torn by tiredhead and then having a second wave of dry, British storytelling. Pretty good li’l picture (you could say that about movies in the 40′s-this isn’t uncommon).

Top Chef, Season 17 episode 4

This was done in an attempt to help my mom catch back up with Top Chef, which somewhat moved the needle, but I don’t think an episode (on her end) has been watched since. Mother’s Day: ruined.

Mad Men, “Tea Leaves”

My mom also watched this one with me, only because she just happened to be in the room. Her biggest hurdle with this show and her refusal to watch it is based solely on the fact that phones are ringing “all the time” and that “no one ever answers them.” Hard to refute it. She seemed mildly entertained by this episode, considering she had close to zero context for what was going on, thought that it was Ginsburg’s debut episode played some part into that. Pretty disorienting episode to be thrown into, what with the whole....Fat Betty thing (I was going to say “elephant in the room of Betty” but that just seemed cruel and trying too hard to try and be clever. An interesting, though ultimately aimless direction to take Betty this season and everyone involved kind of knows it.

The Last Dance, Parts 7 & 8

That this was the penultimate week of new Jordan doc created an unusual energy around the episodes, which were exciting in their own right as they went over his father’s murder, his baseball career and returning to basketball. But the thing that induced the most goosebumps was the “cliffhanger” (I am a moron) showdown between the Bulls and Pacers. 

Monday, May 11

Icarus, Fogel 2017 [as of now this is available on Netflix]

Kinda nice going into a documentary knowing hints of what it’s about and trying to figure out when it transitions to being about “X” but then you slowly realize you misremembered that information your friend Tommy told you and are surprised that it becomes about the Russian state (very possible I am misusing that term; just trying to sound smarter than I actually am). I don’t watch or know enough about documentaries to confidently state what’s a good one and what’s a great one-I think this one received some kind of critical backlash after it won Best Documentary, which happens. There’s definitely an intellectual superiority to saying you think less of a documentary that either wins that award or a lot of people like (in this case, both!). It’s engaging and accessible (another thing snobs hate) and has a misdirect that doesn’t blind side you; I don’t even care about the Olympics, but I felt sucked in.

Monty Python: Almost The Truth (Lawyers Cut), “The Much Funnier Second Episode - The Parrot Sketch - Flying Circus Included”

This one had more focus on the influence Flying Circus had on writers/comedians who were watching it at the time as kids (primarily). Lotta dudes. I can not stress how there are few things less appealing than hearing Russell Brand describing why Monty Python was funny (this was very much made in 2009).

Mad Men, “Mystery Date”

Some more Sopranos karaoke, though constructed a little bit better this time. This is also the episode that decides to flesh out Dawn (Don’s secretary, a joke that is never not funny) a little bit more, however Mad Men only does this when there’s “something to be said” about being black, which didn’t look great in 2012 and *flips through pages of notes* nope, still doesn’t look good here either. I suppose an argument you could bring up that is awfully flimsy is that they didn’t want to paint themselves into a Nikki and Paulo situation, in terms of never actually caring about digging deeper into Dawn’s story. I dunno man, I’m not trying to cast stones here.

Tuesday, May 12

The Taking Of Pelham One, Two, Three, Sargent 1974

What a white whale this movie’s been for me and brother, it feels good to have finally caught it. It’s insanely cool to go into a movie not knowing that it’s the 1974 version of Inside Man with a little bit of Dog Day Afternoon spliced in (pre-DDA mind you). This movie is packed with so many sarcastic assholes all working together in the same place, I loved it! I loved this movie! Cataloged in my brain as a Stop-Down-And-Watch if it’s on cable. However, my biggest gripe here is that Walter Matthau’s character is named “Zach,” a name that has never once been mistook for Walter Matthau’s; like there’s no way that they had Matthau casted before they came up with his name.

Mad Men, “Signal 30″

Beginning of the end of having any remote kind of sympathy for Pete Campbell. Hitting on high schoolers and shit. He wants so badly to be what he considers to be the best version of himself and will never be there.

Parks And Recreation, “The Set-Up”

Don’t know what it was about this particular viewing, but it landed better than it ever has this time around. Usually when I watch it, Arnett is so distracting and a much different energy than the show has created, but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard watching this one as I did on this Tuesday morning. 

Wednesday, May 13

California Split, Altman 1974 [as of now this is available on Prime]

Hell yeh. Another movie I’ve been trying to see for a couple of years now, but feels nearly impossible to come across or find (note: to be fair, I have never checked to rent digitally, because I just don’t do that really ever, feels weird I don’t know why) and I found out on Tuesday night that it was put on Amazon Prime almost unceremoniously. I am by no means a gambler, so I have no idea if this is a good gambling movie, but it’s an incredible relationship and addiction movie. My introduction to Elliott Gould was Ocean’s Eleven where he is the opposite and still the same as the characters he played in the 70′s. The man has a debilitating incapacity to be effortlessly cool, even in a movie that he co-stars in with George Segal. I loved this movie.

Mad Men, “Far Away Places”, “At The Codfish Bowl”, “Lady Lazurus”

A great highlight of Don realizing he’s made a huge mistake marrying a 26-year-old. A great highlight of Roger Sterling is great with kids (and their grandmothers!). A great highlight of “Tomorrow Never Knows” fucking rules and uh, maybe wondering if Alexis Bledel is good? (certainly Rory Gilmore is good and it might’ve just been a “choice” to play this character so wooden, especially with what we know comes later on in the season)

Thursday, May 14

Cape Fear, Scorsese 1991

Apparently Spielberg was supposed to do this originally, but thought it was too violent and threw it over to Marty to get Schindler’s back from him (imagine trading those properties amongst yer friends-incredible). What’s real strange here is that he did’t give this to De Palma (I guess because it would’ve been in the wake of Bonfire), but it doesn’t really matter because Marty just goes and makes his version of a De Palma movie. It’s weird! However, when I wasn’t thinking about all of those things and being amazed at how much overt gore there was (overt for a Scorsese movie), I was shocked at the music I associate most with Sidewhow Bob (hold for Gilbert & Sullivan) is actually Max Cady’s music; like I knew that it was just Cape Fear but I had no idea it was just Cape Fear. 

Mad Men, “Dark Shadows”

Can’t go a season without a Don is actually Dick Whitman story/episode. That’s about it.

Friday, May 15

Becoming Mike Nichols, McGarth 2016 [as of now this is available on HBO]

This saved me a lot of time in the long run, should I ever read that new(ish) biography on Mike Nichols. It’s a pretty cut and dry interview focused purely on the prologue of Mike Nichols’s career, that’s a lot more interesting if you’re a theatre kid who doesn’t despise theatre kids (you know the type). Honestly, I was most engaged once Jack O’Brien pivoted towards his directing career outside of the theatre. Also gonna expose my ass here and say I didn’t realize Elaine May was that Elaine May-might’ve been a better interview if it was between two people who’re on equal level rather than a guy trying to kiss Mike Nichols’s and a bunch of theatre kids’ asses.

Mad Men, “Christmas Waltz”

This episode only exists to help punctuate how awful the next episode is, but damn if it’s not weirdly great. The Paul/Harry reunion was such a weird reunion, but only because it reminds you of how much time has passed since the beginning of this show (1960) to when it takes place now (1966); the total shift in aesthetic and thinking is massive, but it never feels shoehorned in.

Top Chef, Season 17 episode 9

Colicchio is pretty adamant about not having past challenges affect the decision of the current week’s choice in terms of sending someone home, but Melissa probably should’ve gone home this week if that were the case. They obviously weren’t going to after kicking Kevin off last week and Malarkey making the least offensive dish of the bottom 3. Melissa’s a front runner, same as Kevin was and you can’t have a competition where Malarkey is on but two frontrunners are kicked off back-to-back weeks (even if it was Kevin falling on his sword). Love Lee Anne, been with her since season 1 and hate to see her go, but she’s bigger than Top Chef-this is a loss that doesn’t make me think less of her.

Saturday, May 16

Notes On An American Film Director At Work, Mekas 2008 [as of now this is available on Vimeo]

I don’t know what to call this, honestly. It’s a videos of Martin Scorsese directing The Departed and it’s kind of fascinating. There are no sit down interviews, but snippets of conversations that you’re just thrown into the middle of. It could be that I just love him so much, but it was reaffirming to see that he (appears to be) is like a genuinely nice person. I don’t read about behind the scenes/making of’s, but I don’t really think he’s got any kind of reputation for being some kind of tyrant on set and this proves it (if he needs that proof for any kind of reason). It is one of those things though where watching actors, uh, act feels kina silly-apologies to Leo DiCaprio.

Mad Men, “The Other Woman”, “Commissions And Fees”, “The Phantom” [season 5 finale], “The Doorway” [season 6 premier], “Collaborators”

An incredibly harrowing stretch of episodes for Mad Men, maybe the best set-up for a finale the show has. The awfulness of the position they thrust Joan into and that Don is the only clear objector to this, be it that he only cares enough about the company is heartbreaking. Christina Hendricks wears so much disappointment and contempt on her face so well and that what happens is sandwiched between those interactions with Don is incredible. And awful. As is Lane’s suicide in the office (I still remember watching this episode for the first time when it aired and it’s as depressing now all these years later as it was back then; Lane and Bodie are probably my top-2 most upsetting television deaths that come to mind). Though it all seems worth it, despite how depressing it might be, for that scene between Peggy and Don where she resigns, an incredible parallel to Megan’s. I’m glad it wasn’t, but if they wanted to series wrap on Peggy there, they could’ve and it would’ve felt so incredibly earned, which you can see through both of those characters trying their hardest to choke down tears through a conversation smothered in so much understood in the unsaid. Now welcome, Bob Benson! (for the life of me, I can’t figure out if they introduce Bob like this intentionally, because it’s so fucking funny in how out of synch it is with everything else going on in the show)

Apocalypse Now, Coppola 1979 [as of now this is available on HBO]

It was either during my sophomore or junior year of high school when I became absolutely enamored with trying to watch this movie. I had built it up to such great heights in my head for whatever reason (I was very concerned with appearing knowledgeable about things like “important movies” and that this didn’t win best picture whatever year it was nominated fueled that fire even more ((I was also very concerned with being outraged over something like this)). I vaguely remember squeezing it in on a school night, but didn’t try and sneak it upstairs to my room to watch, like I tried to get this almost 3½ hour movie in under a reasonable bed time for a high schooler (I definitely didn’t have one, but I remember getting kind of dirty looks around the house if I was still hanging out past 10:30). So it was basically self-inflicted homework at that point, so I remember saying that I liked it, but I don’t know if I honestly believed it. And then that just gets all shaken up in your dumb high school brain that’s already trying it’s best to be super contrarian that you start believing that Apocalypse Now maybe sucks or at the very least isn’t as good as Hearts Of Darkness (a movie you won’t see for another 8 years). I had not watched this movie in its entirety since high school, and I knew all the big beats going into re-watching this, but it might as well have been that I had never seen it before. Man. I was a dumb as hell high schooler. This movie is electric and looks beautiful and I’m so glad that I never watched it all before this and decided to revisit it and I’m now furious at myself for letting the opportunity pass to not see it in theatres when it was remastered last year. 

The Adventures Of Tintin, Spielberg 2011 [as of now this is available on Netflix]

I was reading the oral history of Fury Road earlier that day and it got me really jonsing to watch Fury Road. For my mental health’s sake, I decided to not double feature Apocalypse Now and Fury Road, but rather Apocalypse Now and The Adventures Of Tintin. People of a certain generation really hate this movie and I kind of get it, but this movie rules. There’s maybe two sequences in it that I’d feel unashamed for putting up in the Spielberg Hall Of Fame.

[thisdaynews]

Why Is Andrew Yang Still in This Race?

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/why-is-andrew-yang-still-in-this-race/

Why Is Andrew Yang Still in This Race?

BEAUFORT, S.C.—Andrew Yang was sitting here in a rented silver Suburban outside a black chamber of commerce surrounded by five members of his rapidly growing campaign staff when he saw a new Fox News poll in which he was tied for fifth in the sprawling Democratic presidential primary.

He stared at the screen of his phone and scrolled.

Story Continued Below

“Three percent!” Yang said, in his characteristically dry, droll way. “This team. Is the team. That’s going to go … all. The. Way. To the White House!”

Yang breezily walked into the chamber building and got onto a packed elevator. To the county party chair squeezed into a corner, Yang excitedly passed along the results of the poll, listing in order the only people who were ahead of him—a former vice president (Joe Biden) and three high-profile senators (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris).

“And thenme!” he exclaimed, flashing a goofy, exaggerated smile.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but Andrew Yang is … surging? It sounds crazy, and who knows how long it lasts? But for now he is one of 10 candidates who have qualified through sufficiently robust polling and fundraising for this fall’s third and fourth debates. The exhausting cluster of Oval Office aspirants, at least for these purposes, has been whittled to this: the aforementioned top four, two more senators, a mayor, a former member of Congress and … this guy. Yang is a 44-year-old entrepreneur from New York and a father of two young sons who’s never run for any office of any kind before this, and whose campaign is fueled by a deeply dystopian view of the near future (trucker riots, anybody?), a pillar of a platform that can come off as a gimmick (a thousand bucks a month for every American adult!), and a zeitgeisty swirl of podcasts, GIFs, tweets and memes. Last week, as a successful governor from a major state dropped out and the bottom half of the bloated field continued to flounder, Yang passed the 200,000 mark for unique donors—outpacing an array of name-known pols. He’s gotten contributions, on average $24 a pop, from 88 percent of the ZIP codes in the country, and he’s on track, he says, to raise twice as much money this quarter as he did last quarter. Just the other day, he made his Sunday news show debut.

It’s a phenomenon hard to figure—until you get up close and take in some strange political alchemy. At the heart of Yang’s appeal is a paradox. In delivering his alarming, existentially unsettling message of automation and artificial intelligence wreaking havoc on America’s economic, emotional and social well-being, he … cracks jokes. He laughs easily, and those around him, and who come to see him, end up laughing a lot, too. It’s not that Yang’s doing stump-speech stand-up. It’s more a certain nonchalant whimsy that leavens what he says and does. Sometimes his jokes fall flat. He can be awkward, but he also pointedly doesn’t appear to care. It’s weird, and it’s hard to describe, but I suspect that if Yang ever said something cringeworthy, as Jeb Bush did that time in 2016—“Please clap”—the audience probably would respond with mirth, not pity. Critics ding his ambit of proposals as fanciful or zany (getting rid of the penny, empowering MMA fighters, lowering the voting age to 16) and question the viability of his “Freedom Dividend,” considering its sky-high price tag (“exciting but not realistic,” Hillary Clinton decided when she considered the general notion in the 2016 cycle). And his campaign coffers are chock-full of small-number contributors and even $1 donors. Still, at this angry, fractious time, and in this primary that’s already an edgy, anxious slog, Yang and his campaign somehow radiate an ambient joviality. Of his party’s presidential contestants, he’s the cheerful doomsayer.

His most foolproof laugh line—“the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math”—suggests that his candidacy is premised on distinguishing himself from the president the same way as his fellow challengers. But it’s not quite that simple. He’s attracting support from an unorthodox jumble of citizens, from a host of top technologists, but from penitent Trump voters, too. He’s one of only two Democrats (along with Sanders) who ticks 10 percent or higher when Trump voters are asked which of the Democrats they might go for—a factoid Yang uses as evidence that he’ll win “easy” if he’s the nominee come November of next year. Trump, of course, is the president, and Yang (let’s not get carried away) remains a very long long shot to succeed him.

But to spend any time with Yang is to grapple with this unexpected Trump-Yang Venn diagram. While Yang talks in different, far less overtly divisive ways, identifies different scapegoats (robots, not immigrants) and offers different solutions (cash, not walls), he’s zeroed in on the same elemental problem Trump did en route to his shock of a win in ’16: A large portion of the populace is being left behind, and it’s not remotely OK. Similarly, Yang’s campaign packs an anti-Washington, convention-bucking, on-the-fly, filter-free vibe. There are four-letter hats—not MAGA, but MATH (Make America Think Harder). And his Trump train? It’s the Yang Gang. Yang is not thenot Trumpof the 2020 trail. “Yang is thenewTrump,” a traveling Trump-voter-turned-Yang-Gang-YouTuber told me.

There are plenty of differences, too, of course. To wit: In the chamber building, after the elevator disgorged a floor up, a lobby was filled with the bouncy beats of line dancing emanating from a different room. One of his staffers joked that Yang should join in. And then … he did. Apparently unafraid of looking silly, or potentially creating an embarrassing, indelible, campaign-altering moment with the presence not just of me but also a state-based reporter from The Associated Press, Yang proceeded to team up with a handful of senior citizens for what most onlookers ultimately agreed was a quite credible, rhythm-keeping rendition of the catchy “Cupid Shuffle.”

“Down, down, do your dance, do your dance,” went the lyrics—and Yang did.

“Get it, Andrew!” the group leader called into her microphone. “Lookin’ good!”

When it was over, Yang jogged around the room to hearty cheers, grinning and giving everybody high fives.

“Thanks for letting me crash your class,” he said to the head of Family Slide Dancers.

“Thank you all!” he said to the members of her class.

By the time we got back to the Suburban, my phone was buzzing nonstop in my pocket. A tweet of the video I shot was starting to zoom around the internet.

***

“We are basically fucked,”Yang said, sitting in the Suburban, earlier in the day, not too long after we met, “unless we un-fuck ourselves, systematically and collectively.”

This blunt declaration didn’t surprise me. That’s because I’d read his most recent book. It’s one heck of a downer.

InThe War on Normal People, which came out last year, Yang sketched a stark picture of “broken people” and “jobless zones” and “derelict buildings” and “widespread despair” and “hundreds of thousands of families and communities being pushed into oblivion” and “a society torn apart by ever-rising deprivation and disability” and a “best-case scenario” of “a hyper-stratified society like something out ofThe Hunger Games.”

“It’s possible that we may already be too defeated and opiated by the market to mount a revolution. We might just settle for making hateful comments online and watching endless YouTube videos with only the occasional flare-up of violence amid many quiet suicides,” he wrote.

“The group I worry about most is poor whites,” he added. “There will be more random mass shootings in the months ahead as middle-aged white men self-destruct and feel that life has no meaning.”

My copy of his book is littered with my disconsolate scribbles.

“Yikes.”

“… bleak …”

“… hellscape.”

Know what else, though, I penned into the margins?

“Ha!”

“When I was 13,” Yang wrote, for instance, “I had to have four teeth pulled in preparation for wearing braces. I was actually kind of excited about it because I saw my dad’s teeth and was like, ‘whatever it takes, let’s not have those.’” He said the answer for out-of-place workers was not a career as a home health care aide because “former truck drivers will not be excited to bathe grandma.”

And as we traveled around, a busy, six-stop day in this sweaty, marshy terrain—from Bluffton to Okatie to Beaufort, from town halls to meet-and-greets with local Democratic clubs to a quiet, private stop at a shelter for abused women and children—the laughter never stopped for long.

Nibbling on a belVita vanilla oat biscuit, he praised the company for marketing the product as a healthy option. “It’s, like, you’re clearly good for me,” he said, “and then it’s a fucking cookie for breakfast!”

He referred repeatedly to his $24 average donation. “My fans are cheaper than Bernie’s!”

Entering a Mexican restaurant for a town hall, he said, “The best thing about running for president is I walk into a room and people clap!” The crowd roared.

He wasn’t always this way. His parents came to America from Taiwan. His mother was a computer services administrator before becoming a pastel artist. His father grew up poor on a peanut farm and got a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California at Berkeley and worked for General Electric and IBM in New York. Yang described him as a “workaholic” and “a brusque lab geek.” Growing up in the suburbs of Westchester County, Yang as a kid was “angsty,” “brooding” and “sad,” he said. He read science fiction and fantasy and Herman Hesse and listened to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Sarah McLachlan and played piano and decent tennis and lots of Dungeons and Dragons. He was, for a time, a tad goth. He suffered racist slurs. At prep school at Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, and then at college at Brown, where he majored in economics and political science, he began to come out of his shell. He started to lift weights, mostly to try to get dates, and was proud to be able to bench press 225 pounds eight to 10 times in a row.

Now, here in the Suburban, as we crossed the Broad River, I brought up “Rex and Lex.” That’s what Yang named his pecs, “Rex” for the right, “Lex” for the left, when he was lifting all those weights. I knew about this because he wrote about in his other, earlier book,Smart People Should Build Things. He “could jostle them on command,” he had written, “to make them ‘talk.’” Obviously, I wanted to hear more.

Yang obliged. Having shed his blue sport coat, he looked down at his chest, and he … channeled “Rex.”

“He’s, like, almost mute,” he said, “but he’s still like”—and here the candidate for president made his dad-bod-dormantpectoralisundulate under his checked, collared shirt and assumed a diminutive, sing-song cadence—“‘Andrew, I still have a little bit of voice left. You haven’t fed me in a long time. You used to looooove meeeeeee.’”

Zach Graumann, Yang’s 31-year-old campaign manager, looked some combination of mesmerized and mortified. “You’re such a tool,” he said.

Yang was undeterred. He was on a roll. He turned his attention to “Lex.”

“Oh man,” he lamented, “Lex is wimpier than Rex!”

Everybody inside the Suburban laughed and laughed.

***

At the town hall in Hilton Head—a standing-room-only crowd of mainly older folks wearing boat shoes and flip-flops—it was hard to miss the young guys in the pink hats.

They listened intently as Yang introduced himself. “Hello, everyone! I’m Andrew Yang, and I’m running for president! … I’m going to be honest. I’m the last person anyone thought was going to run for president, in terms of my high school, my upbringing. My parents were not like, ‘You’re gonna be president someday.’” This assertion drew laughs. After Brown and law school at Columbia and five unhappy months as a corporate attorney, he started a company (Stargiving.com) that failed, he said. He was the CEO of a company that succeeded. He launched a non-profit that did a little bit of both. Then Yang gave his political pitch, about truckers, and soon-to-be self-driving trucks, and so many other kinds of workers, and automation, and artificial intelligence, and the real reason he thinks Trump won—millions of jobs automated away in the most important Midwest swing states—and the coming “buzz saw” and “the race to the bottom” and “suicides, drug overdoses, anxiety, depression,” and how the average American life expectancy has declined for three straight years for the first time in a century, and how “D.C. is not up to it at all,” and about $1,000 a month for every adult.

“How am I doing so well?” he said. “It’s because Americans recognize the truth when they hear it.”

The guys in the pink hats were impressed.

“He nailed it,” Mike Gallagher, 29, told me after Yang finished.

“Awesome,” said Wayne Boyce, 28.

They had driven the hour or so up from Savannah, Georgia, and both of them said they had voted for Trump but would not be doing it again.

Ditto for their other friend. “He’s an asshole,” Jordan Snipes said of the president. “And he hasn’t done anything he said he was going to do.”

They were members, they all said, of the Yang Gang now.

I asked if there were others like them where they’re from.

“Most of our friends,” Snipes reported.

A few hours later, at the Mexican restaurant, I met the Yang Gang YouTuber. Russell Peterson, 43,from Union County, North Carolina, was with his wife, Elasa, who was wearing a MATH shirt, and their toddler son, Zephaniah—“country folks,” Peterson said, and “former Trump supporters.” He had a lot to say.

“We all saw a problem, and that’s why we elected Donald Trump,” he told me. “Because he was saying he was going to go in and he was going to drain the swamp. He was a larger-than-life figure, you know? We all knew that there was a problem. We just didn’t know what that problem was. But then, when you listen to Andrew Yang, you realize: Oh, yeah, it is automation—it’s not immigrants. It’s automation. We’re all losing our jobs. We’re all being phased out. I’m an ex-landscaper. I just saw yesterday they’ve got a mower that just goes and mows your yard, just like a Roomba, you know, does your house.”

And what’s he do for work now?

“This is what we do,” he said. “We follow Andrew Yang full-time.”

He doesn’t work for the campaign, but …

“This has become my passion. There is nothing more important than getting this man elected,” he said, breaking down his video equipment.

“I’m tired of politicians. I don’t want a politician. I want somebody who’s going to tell me the fuckin’ truth, tell me what’s going on, and thenprovidesomething that’s actually going to impact my life! Since I’ve been an adult, there’s not beenonepolitician that has directly impacted my life, but I promise you that freedom dividend and putting $2,000 a month into my household would directly impact my life. I mean,game over.”

He wasn’t finished.

“People are so disillusioned,” he said. “Donald Trump? He was the WWE superstar guy. You know, he was going to take his metal chair into Washington, and he was just going to use it on everybody. We were finally going to be working like we were supposed to be working—and I’ve only seen the country get more and more divided. And then when you have Trump acting like he’s acting, I can’t support that, bro’. And then there’s a lot of people in the center who are like me who are moving over to Andrew Yang because we don’t like what we see. Wedon’tlike what Trump has done to the country. He’s only divided us more and more. So now we actually have some solutions and a guy who’stalkingabout solutions—so, like, let’s get this guy in, because he makes too much damn sense!”

All day long, everywhere we went, Yang was asked about Trump. How was he going to handle him? How was he going to debate him? How was he going to beat him?

He said he “would make him seem ridiculous.” He said he “would just diminish him by dismissing his arguments and making him seem like the buffoon and joke that he is.” He said Trump was “fire”—and he said he was “ice.” He told people he was on the debate team in high school that went to the world championships in London. He said he would “use humor.”

And at the last stop of the day, here at the Grand Army of the Republic Hall, outside of which I spotted parked a red Ford F250 pickup truck with a bumper sticker that read TRUMP, the throng of a couple hundred that had gathered couldn’t fit inside. They spilled out onto the lawn off to the side. “Let’s do it!” Yang hollered. He had no microphone. “Let’s project!”

And at this last event the last question was about Trump.

“When you become the nominee,” a woman asked, “how will you stand up to that nastiness in the White House?”

“Voters around the country have said to me they cannot wait to see me debate Donald Trump,” Yang said. He was all about “logic and reason and problem-solving” while Trump was “all bluster, and Americans can tell the difference very quickly,” he said, snapping his fingers. “There’s a reason he hasn’t touched me,” Yang continued. “Because he knows I’m the wrong person to touch. His supporters are all coming my way. … I’m peeling off Trump supporters right and left.” And one more thing: “I’m better at the internet than he is!”

More laughter.

“On that note …”

A snaking line of people waited for pictures. The sun set. Through the buggy, muggy haze, a single orange orb of a streetlight glowed past clumps of spectral Spanish moss. Yang autographed MATH hats. Flashes from phones pulsed in the dark.

Read More

[jcmacri]

The Debate I Never Thought I’d Have

That’s it?

I’m assuming it was a Friday night, just because for most of my life, those were my dad’s days with me. Picked me up from school Friday afternoon, dropped me back off at mom’s Saturday for dinner. In between, there was basketball. From November to June, always basketball, starting in the Fall of 1992, the first time a kid who never wanted so much as to play catch in the front yard showed interest in sports of any kind. The local baseball and football teams were terrible, but something about this team in the orange and blue did it for me. It was the beginning of the most painful love affair I’d ever have. In the early days, that pain was mostly due to one man.

That’s all? That’s not that crazy.

I don’t remember why my half-brother was in from the city, but on this particular Friday, it gave me, him and our dad a chance to watch the Knicks play their rivals, the Chicago Bulls. I knew very little about basketball or the men who played it, so when my brother told me there was this guy on the Bulls that could literally fly, my ears perked up. “His name is Michael Jordan. You have to see him…he jumps with the ball, and then hangs in mid-air. It’s unbelievable.” I was pretty naïve, even for a nine-year old, so when my brother told me that the dude could fly, I was expecting some serious comic-book level shit. And then we watched the game, and, well…

Hs’s not flying…I mean, he jumps really high…but it doesn’t look like he’s that much better than everyone else around him. Is it time for TGIF?

Like I said, I wasn’t the worldliest kid. Over the next five years, my impression of the man I first witnessed that Friday night would change considerably. Like many others between the ages of 30 and 40, I came to regard Michael Jordan with something of a God-like reverence. Debating his place in the hierarchy of NBA history with someone close to my age is only slightly less fruitful than trying to convince a staunch Republican or Democrat to switch their party allegiance. There is no argument. There is the view that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player of all time, and then there is being wrong and stupid. There is no in between.

Figuring out the reasons why are both incredibly simple and incredibly complex. On one hand, there is a symmetry to his accomplishments: six championship battles, six rings, six Finals MVP’s, two three-peats, zero losses. A person who was dropped onto this earth from another dimension could sit and listen to a merits-based Jordan argument and walk away convinced in under a minute. There’s not much to it.

On the other hand, for those who grew up watching him, understanding the true measure of Michael’s greatness is to understand why The Godfather is considered the greatest movie ever made by anyone raised in an Italian American household or why New York City is a place without parallel to anyone who lives there. If you watched him, and experienced that sensation of “he’s not going to lose…he’s never going to lose…he can’t ever lose” - a premonition that never failed - then you know the feeling.

Well, it did fail. Once. To Orlando, in 1995, in a moment history remembers merely as footnote to Jordan’s dominance. Oddly enough, the way that loss ended up fueling his undying dedication to dominating everyone and everything he encountered from then on has rendered it another notch on his belt, not a knock on his legacy.

The other part of the narrative that gets swept under the rug is the Washington era, which I experienced as a 19 and 20-year-old, and in some ways is still my most vivid memory of him. Most choose to ignore those years, but I embrace them, not despite of their imperfection, but because of it. A 40-year-old man who had no business being anywhere near a basketball court could still, on any given night, be the best player on the floor. I was in attendance on one of those nights, his last as a visiting player at MSG. He scored 25 points in the first half, cut his chin diving on the floor for a loose ball, and the Wizards lost a game they needed to win to keep any remote playoff hopes still alive. To this day, it’s the only time I’ve ever rooted against the Knicks.

He would hang up the sneakers that bore his name once and for all a few weeks later, two months before a precocious kid from Akron landed with the franchise that Jordan tortured perhaps more than any other. Now, fifteen years into a career that is unparalleled in sports history for its combination of length and level of dominance, LeBron James finds himself in a similar position to Jordan on that final afternoon at the Garden. 

Much like Mike, James has no business being where he is right now. The Cavs, to put it politely, are not good. They just emerged victorious in a Game Seven in an arena that has historically been the toughest place to win one of those. Jeff Green, playing on a minimum contract that was (correctly) lambasted by the NBA illuminati the moment it was signed, was Cleveland’s second best player. Tristan Thompson, who might very well be playing on a minimum contract himself right now if it weren’t for James, was probably the third. The rest of the Cavs combined to go 7-of-24. Ty Lue, who stated last week that he didn’t put his best shooter in a game because he was waiting for a particular substitution from Boston, is the coach. It’s as far a cry from Riles and Spo and Wade and Bosh as you can get.

And yet here he is. Through what can only be described as sheer force of will, the Cavs will play in a fourth consecutive Finals, the eighth straight for James. The Knicks have not won eight playoff games since James has been in the league, so LeBron haters can forgive me for being the slightest bit in awe of his most recent accomplishment.

It has, of course, ramped up another round of debates, this time at levels not previously heard. The conversations have been getting gradually louder ever since Cleveland dethroned Golden State two years ago, and they have now reached a fever pitch. It seems, for the first time, that there is a place in the Venn diagram - ever so small - where previously staunch Jordan stans are willing to, at the very least, listen to opposing viewpoints.

That, in and of itself, is miraculous. It also isn’t going to make the debate go away any time soon. The Godfather is still The Godfather, New York is still New York, and Michael Jordan is still Michael Jordan to all who were lucky enough to watch him in real time. I’m one of those people, and for LeBron’s entire career, I’ve never been willing to budge on my stance regarding Jordan’s place atop the pantheon, not even a little. If I ever came close, LeBron’s performance in the 2011 Finals versus the Dallas Mavericks sent back the tide. LeBron scored eight points on 11 shots in Game Four. The Heat lost by three, and then went down with something resembling a whimper in games five and six. Game, set, match.

That series ended with LeBron, a petulant pre-teen in the body of a man, at the podium reminding everyone how shitty their lives were and reaching perhaps the lowest point that anyone who’s ever actively held the title of “Greatest Player of his Generation” has ever sunk to. Since that night, all James has done is dominate his sport unlike anyone before him ever dreamt of doing. The numbers don’t lie:

LeBron, 2011 to 2018, age 27 to 33: 26.5 points, 7.7 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.7 blocks, 36 percent from deep on 4.0 attempts per game, .615 true shooting, 31.2 percent usage, 37.1 minutes per game, 42 games missed, 143 playoff games, seven Finals, three rings, three Finals MVP’s, two MVP’s, seven All-NBA First Teams.

Michael Jordan’s age 27 to 33 seasons, years 1990 to 1996: 30.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.1 assists, 2.3 steals, 0.8 blocks, 37 percent from deep on 2.4 attempts, .575 true shooting, 33.2 usage, 38.2 minutes, 153 games missed, 105 playoff games, five Finals, five rings, five Finals MVP’s, three MVP’s, five All-NBA First Teams. 

Pretty close. If you add up the last five categories for each player – Finals, rings, MVP’s, Finals MVP’s and All-NBA First Team selections – its 22 for LeBron, 23 for Michael. If you throw in the preceding years, it’s James 31, MJ 29.

Here’s the point: if you’re planting a flag for the kid from Wilmington, the numbers are no longer a safe haven…but again, to Jordan’s staunchest supporters, those numbers were never the crux of the argument. No one gives a shit how many Oscars Godfather won. The numbers in an MJ argument have always been background noise. The memory of Michael and what he did -  the sheer inevitability of the result and the brute force with which he made it come to pass - has always been the trump card.

Until now. On the Lowe Post this week, Kevin Pelton wondered aloud, “How much can one man do?” We’ve seen the answer over these last six weeks. Never before has one player done so much for a team, and not in a Russell Westbrook, late-career Kobe, or yes, early-career Jordan kind of way. LeBron has extracted every ounce of what he can from this rag tag bunch, and every time that well runs dry, he dips back into his reserves and finds another pocket of energy. 

The difference between this postseason and 2007 is that those energy reserves are no longer endless. The gas light can go on, and it has, repeatedly. It’s as if he’s calculated, not only within games but over the course of entire series, when and how he needs to spend those precious last few pennies in the account so that he can still make rent. As he lay on the floor following his Game Seven win in Boston, it’s clear that he had been living on ramen noodles and saltine crackers for a few days just to make it past the finish line. 

Jordan needed to do this once, in the flu game (or the hangover game, depending on which story you believe). It is perhaps the moment that defines him more than any other. James has, in a way, had the equivalent of his own flu game since the playoffs began, and he is still standing.  

It has become clear that the man who cowered under the lights in Dallas is gone. The force of nature that has replaced him is in command of every faculty of the game, more so than anyone who has come before him. The most physically superior specimen in sports since Jim Brown has finally put it all together… 

..and yet, in roughly a week from now, in all likelihood, this man will have as many losses in NBA Finals as the man he is chasing has wins. It feels as inevitable as Jordan’s victories once were – the inevitability that defined him in my eyes and the eyes of so many others - and that, more than anything, is the hump some people can’t get over. 

Is it fair? Who’s to say. What’s undeniable is that the 35-year-old man I am is trying to reconcile what I’m seeing with what the 15-year-old boy in me refuses to let go. The answers that were once clear are no longer so. That, in and of itself, is a place I never thought I’d get to.

[dawnajaynes32]

2018 Design Trends: Predications from Top Creatives

Pulling these prediction pieces together every year gets more and more dizzying each time. In 2015, creatives were predicting the rise of animation and motion graphics. In 2016, we expected greater digital experiences and the solidifying of mobile-first technology. And now, in 2017, our focus turns greatly to augmented and virtual reality. Those little handheld computers we carry with us at all times are about to become even more important to designers everywhere.

Here are just some of the possible 2018 design trends we’ll be seeing after we ring in the New Year! 

Augmented and Virtual Reality

“Augmented Reality (AR) came back big this year and will continue to grow as one of the major trends in 2018. The comeback didn’t happen just because of all the hype related to Apple introducing it’s own framework ARkit to create AR experiences: With over two billion people currently using some kind of smartphone, AR growth came as a natural extension to 2D content we interact with on our screens.

“Apple’s ARkit definitely opens doors for app developers to create AR content faster and submit it into its store. At this point, it’s still the Wild West when it comes to quality AR content – and Apple is definitely picky when it comes to what type of AR app they want to see in its store. Functionality is definitely the key to success when it comes to creating a potentially popular AR app. It’s not just about one 3D model you can interact with on the screen, it’s more about  how you can change this 3D model, apply different textures to it in real time, and so on.

“The retail industry will definitely be a big consumer of AR, especially on the B2B level. Really soon we will see planners and architects picking up materials for their next project by pointing their phones on the floors (for example) and seeing how applying different types of hardwood or carpeting on it reflects on their screens. From furniture layout to games to education and entertainment, AR will play a major role in 2018 and beyond.”

—Denis Krylov, Co-Founder and Partner, Transparent House

“The period ahead is going to require a different type of sensitivity to users that goes beyond traditional UX and gets worked out on graffles with imaginary users behind digital surfaces. This is because neural networks are allowing computers to hear and see humans and react in more human ways. Companies like Google are turning AI into a commodity that can be integrated into a huge range of products that will quickly bring the intelligence into homes, cars and workspaces. Headphones will bring its far-reaching possibilities into the spaces that remain. Turning this technology into something legitimately helpful will require designers to interview, roleplay and research other people with specific tasks like never before. It’s going to require a whole new sensitivity.”

—David Lehman, Design Director, HUSH

“Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are coming to a museum near you! Used mostly for gaming and watching videos the last few years – and even as a design tool in the architecture and construction industry – museums are discovering how to use VR and AR to share educational content, tell stories, and give visitors a unique experience. Walk the floor of any museum conference expo and you’ll see vendors promoting VR and AR hardware, software, and content. The keynote speaker at the 2017 Association of Science and Technology conference was Brendan Iribe, co-founder of Oculus. We just completed a 10-person VR experience at the First Division Museum in Wheaton, Illinois, and visitors absolutely love it. Exhibit designers, and other creative professionals, will continue to explore ways for VR and AR to enhance storytelling.”

—Kevin Snow, Creative Director, Luci Creative

“Virtual Reality (VR) has been a big trend in the past years and is now established really well in medical, real estate and some parts of the entertainment industries. The challenge of VR remains that it requires additional hardware. With AR you can interact with content by simply using your phone screen.”

—Denis Krylov, Co-Founder and Partner, Transparent House

“The future demands multi-layered experts, individuals who can speak multiple technical languages and will use them to extend the penetration of the disruptive technologies that have defined so much of the past decade. Understanding websites alone or apps alone will not enable us to design meaningful interaction in the era of AI. The multi-touch interface will be replaced by voice and image even faster than touchscreens replaced the mouse and keyboard. Building the world that this new method of interaction will enable will demand that we broaden the horizon of imagined user experience and begin to understand what this foundational level of interaction will enable and the pitfalls that should be avoided. Attention spans are quickly reaching zero. People want the right information immediately and with minimal effort. Unlike touch interfaces, the world of AI is more dependent upon computational horsepower than slick, new, user-owned hardware. This means that designers will need to have a very functional understanding of the limitations of developing technology to make sure they design solutions that don’t invite unreasonable expectation. The boundary between functional AI and Star Trek AI is going to be murky for the next few years, during which time we can expect all sorts of awkward situations with people talking to machines that either don’t hear them or don’t understand their language.”

—David Lehman, Design Director, HUSH

“The biggest trend I see is bridging the gap between physical (analog/disconnected) and digital (connected).

“Of course, this is all driven by the internet, software and the next tech revolution, AI/AR. Making the inanimate – animated and the dumb – smart.

“But I actually see it as a two-way street. The physical experience is getting more digital and connected. But the digital experience is actually is taking on more physical qualities. What I mean by that is we are creating more immersive, human-centric and life-like experiences in digital world. One of the best examples of that this year was what Google did to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hip-Hop. The Google Doodle takeovers have been around for a while but this was on another level. They brought in innovative tech and created an immersive, lifelike experience that brought some “pixels” to life and and had them take on a whole new meaning. The experience transcended the Google brand and medium (Doodle) as evidenced by the sheer joy (and buzz) this created for people worldwide.”

—Ivan Entchevitch, Creative Director, SET

Branding + Business

“One 2017 trend that I very much hope will continue, is that clients came to us not simply to execute design, but to help concept the creative ideas from ground zero. We’ve been tasked with writing scripts and helping to develop key communication points, and most projects were totally turnkey. Our Cutters Studios family was vital to the success of much of our work this year because we were able to do everything from design to production and post under the same virtual roof. Our take on creative is executionally agnostic, and we found that our clients were very open to our unique way of approaching creative; many chose us specifically based upon our unique point of view. Personally, I love that the lines of what we are known for and what we are commissioned for keep getting blurred. Gone are the days of straight-up design and motion graphics execution. Moving forward into 2018, I hope that this trend towards more inclusive collaboration with our creative partners continues to grow with new and interesting opportunities.”

—Jason Cook, Creative Director, Flavor

“Two thousand eighteen will be the year that all brands become lifestyle brands. If KFC can get in on the enamel pin and pillow case game, anyone can make a go of it. And they should. Pushing your brand into every corner of your customer’s life is presumptuous and obtrusive. But if you can make yourself so integral (or maybe even just fun or easy), they might invite you along for the ride. I don’t need a Nutella sleeping bag, but do I want one? Maybe

“Some brands with enough existing clout might try to go it alone like KFC. But the really savvy ones, the ones that need it the most, will forge smart partnerships with similarly-minded companies, just like Coors Banquet and Brixton did this year.

“Then again, 2018 might yield more cross-archetype collabs like Star Wars and rag + bone, allowing folks to revel in the infinitesimally small cross-section of their own personal Venn diagram. These mash-ups are fun, as they expose two extremely niche, incredibly passionate, nearly opposite fanbases to one another just to see what happens.

“Expect the unexpected. It’s gonna be another wild year.”

—Kyle Kastranec, Associate Creative Director, Ologie

“As consumers become ever more accustomed to comparing prices, exploring options and ultimately making purchases online, real world retail environments will continue to be rethought and redesigned. Rather than simply facilitating transactions, brands will need to design their brick and mortar locations to let customers experience not only their products and services, but the essence of what makes their brand differentiated from the competition. Today, this often manifests into hands-on, digitally-led experiences that guide the consumer into the purchase funnel.”

—Dan Carter, Creative Director of North America, SET Live

“Expectations will rise for brands to use design to push beyond the expected and challenge the industries that they are in by pulling influence from emergent cultural, behavioral, and graphic trends outside of their category and using them to craft bold design statements that truly differentiate and tell a story. Whether it’s embracing human imperfection, custom crafted type, unexpected color palettes, or social media-influenced layouts, designers will be expected to think holistically, strategically, and find new ways to differentiate. Companies like Chobani have brought in house high-level talent to redesign their brand from the inside-out, which resulted in designs that at first glance may appear inappropriate for their category but is actually an immersive look into the brand, the product, and its audience. It’s embracing heritage and redefining the future, while also being very human and showing more than just products.”

—Karen Yau, Design Director, Brand Union

“People have grown weary of BS. Design that’s born from authenticity will cut through the over-thought clutter and resonate with consumers. Successful brands will continue to distill and refine their graphic language using it to create genuine experiences and honest social media, achieving clarity with minimal content.”

—Michael Nielsen, Senior Designer, Archrival

“Voice is quickly becoming the new interface for brand.

“Brands need to differentiate themselves like never before and one of the best ways for them to do this is through their brand voice. Brand voice is what makes customers feel as though they’re talking to a person vs. a machine, which is how you build trust and connections. Consider the differences between speaking to Alexa vs. Amazon.

“There are a few core principles to getting your brand voice right: simplifying messaging, empathizing with your customers, showing candor even when things aren’t going to plan, and embracing personality. The brands who have the courage to commit to these principles are the ones who will win the trust and attention of their customers in 2018.”

—Connie Birdsall, Creative Director, Lippincott

Animation & Motion Graphics

“2017 was an exciting and evolutionary year for us in a lot of ways, where the project opportunities challenged us and spanned across every aesthetic approach you can imagine… and some that defy description. Still, there is something awesome about knowing that animation and illustration remain at the forefront of innovative storytelling from the perspectives of many brand and agency executives. Take our project with Pereira & O’Dell for Timberland as one example. When you think about the unique brand positioning of Timberland, and apply a creative idea where hip-hop legend Nas takes on the role of spokesperson… the possibilities became endless. We may be biased (okay, we’re totally biased), but the approach from Pereira & O’Dell seems to be the best of the best. Collectively, we found the right way to tell the right stories, and they invited us to break new ground in creative, animated storytelling. Better yet, the work has struck all the right chords with the media, Nas’ own massive fan-base, and the target audiences for Timberland and Footlocker.

“This campaign is called “The Legend Continues with Nas,” and seeing how far the animated content has traveled through earned media, owned marketing channels, key influencers, across social media, in-store and even in massive and “out of home” executions, it seems safe to say that the overall effort is elevating the legends of everyone involved to higher levels. To us, this means that story-driven animations will continue to impress across platforms and mediums, breaking through on the snackable social outlets and allowing bigger, sophisticated brands to engage in more clever ways with their ever-younger audiences.”

—William Campbell and Will Johnson, Co-Founders and Co-Directors, Gentleman Scholar

Digital vs. Physical Experience

“In 2018 we’ll continue to see a growing trend of creating “Instagrammable moments” in museums, concert and sport venues, and hotels and restaurants. Since nearly everyone is now a real-time smartphone socializer, brands and cultural institutions are picking up on the lure toward photo ops, and how they can provide free mass-marketing. Popular attractions like LA’s Happy Place and the Ice Cream Museum – along with scores of new museum exhibits – are pulling in visitors eager to have experiences and share them online. Instagram and Snapchat aren’t creating smartphone zombies – they’re pushing people out into the world. With museums, we believe that there are ways to improve visitor experiences, offer learning opportunities and educational programming, and increase attendance through well designed photo ops.”

—AJ Goehle, Principal, Luci Creative

Numbers In Nature Exhibit Exhibit @ the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago

“Changing user experiences based on their behavior has always been the north star, but personalization also includes designing for our clients. We’ve pushed and will continue to push building sites, apps, and interactive experiences that feel unique to them and their brand. Custom photography, personal voice and tone, and interface design all need to reflect our client, not just the predefined standards of designing for web.”

—Joe Gray, Associate Creative Director, The1stMovement

“But another trend we hope to see in 2018 is as old as retail itself: remembering that well-designed brand experiences means having well trained, motivated and engaging employees. These people remain the best and most important part of any brand engagement: a good experience will dramatically raise the likelihood of a sale, whereas a rude or negative interaction will likely turn the consumer off your brand for good. Brands like Nike really understand this balance, keeping staff engaged, motivated and invested in making the consumer experience as exciting as possible, augmented by excellently designed (and regularly updated) digital and physical touch points that facilitate positive interactions and ultimately drive sales.”

—Dan Carter, Creative Director of North America, SET Live

“As larger amounts of content are absorbed online, I think we’re going to see more and more of a push toward linear experiences. The journey itself may be selected by the user, but storytelling within is already making a comeback. I think we’ll see more of this. To make a callback to Rich Animations, I think those will be the approaches we use to tell those more linear, narrative stories.”

—Joe Gray, Associate Creative Director, The1stMovement 

The post 2018 Design Trends: Predications from Top Creatives appeared first on HOW Design.

2018 Design Trends: Predications from Top Creatives syndicated post

[nathandgibsca]

Create High-Impact Data Visualizations: Nine Effective Strategies

I believe deeply in the value of making data accessible.

In service of that belief, there are few things that bring me as much joy as visualizing data (smart segmentation comes close). There is something magical about taking the tons and tons of complexity that lurks in our data, being able to find the core essence, and then illustrate that simply. The result then is both a mind and heart connection that drives action with a sense of urgency. #winning

While I am partial to the simplest of visualizations in a business data context, I love a simple Bar Chart just as much as a Chord or Fisher-Yates Shuffle. As we have all learned, tools matter a lot less than what we do with the tool. :)

In this post I want to inspire you to think differently. I’ve curated sixteen extremely diverse visualization examples to do that. By design none of them from the world of digital analytics, though I’ll stay connected to that world from a how could you use this idea perspective. My primary goal is to expand your horizon so that we can peek over and see new possibilities.

To spark your curiosity, the visuals I’ve worked hard to find for you cover the US debt, European politics, lynching and slavery, pandemics, movies, gun control, drugs and health, the Chinese economy, and where we spend our lives (definitely review this one!).

The sixteen examples neatly fall into nine strategies I hope you’ll cultivate in your analytics practice as you create data visualizations:

1: The Simplicity Obsession 2: If Complex, Focus! 3: Venn Diagrams FTW! 4: Interactivity With Insightful End-Points 5: What-if Analysis Models 6: Turbocharging Data Visuals with Storytelling 7: The Magic of 2 x 2 Matrices 8: Close Contextual Clusters 9: Multi-dimensional Related Line Graphs

This post has quite a bit of depth, and loads for you to explore, reflect and internalize. It will take a few visits to absorb all the lessons. In as much, my recommendation is to read one section per day. Take time to really understand what’s going on, go to the site, play, look at the higher resolution versions (click on the images), make notes of what you’ll do for the first time or change about what you already do. Most importantly, practice taking action. Then, come back, read the next one and take action. I promise, the rewards will be rich.

Let’s go make you an even more effective influencer when it comes to data!

Strategy 1: The Simplicity Obsession

One of the reasons so many visuals are so very complex is that the Analyst/Creator is trying to demonstrate how clever they are. Sadly in the process of demonstrating aforementioned cleverness, the visuals ends up being incredibly complex crammed with every little bit of amazesomeness they  are trying to demonstrate…

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Creator worked very hard, and, I sincerely mean this, they are very clever.

The problem is that the essence of what they want to communicate is probably only known to them, or to any person willing to take the time to first learn the job of the analyst, dig into the data themselves, create this picture and then understand what is being said.

It breaks my heart.

Go on. Scroll back up. See if you can understand what is being said.

In my humble opinion there is an additional subtle problem. The Creator was asked to plot the data, or perhaps share the insights, but it is unclear whose job it was to answer this simple question at the end: So What?

When you start with that as your destination, so what, as the creator of any visualization you are going to ask for a lot more context, you are going to make sure the visual is in service of the answer, you'll make sure your cleverness is focused on the outcome the data has to serve.

Please, please, please keep that in mind.

The complicated thing above is trying to highlight an important trend, is missing the context, and is simply not as dramatic as the reality of it actually is!

Here's a better visual showing the National Debt Burden, with four additional elements of context…

(Source)

Did you get what the point was in zero seconds?

Are you a whale-load more scared as you contemplate the red and the green?

Are you freaked out that if there is one thing both political parties in the US seem to be good at it is the red (!)?

That is what a good data visual does.

For the few of you that are a part of the team I lead, in addition to creating a visual for your analysis that is simple and effective, you know that my expectation is that you’ll come with recommendations on what to do.

To demonstrate that there are many paths to JesusKrishnaAllah… Here is another simple view of the debt, with a different x-axis, a stretched out y-axis, along with a different set of context…

(Source: CBO)

Different questions, different arguments, different outcomes. But, you'll get to them much, much, much faster than the first visual.

I can’t stress this enough: Don't try to earn your performance review from the client/audience. Earn it from your boss. Tell your boss how hard you worked, show her how clever you are, earn her praise. Spare your client/audience – show them the simplest manifestation of your brilliant insight, with the NACR criteria applied.

(For more on using NACR to identify out-of-sights, see TMAI #66.)

Strategy 2: If Complex, Focus!

You are going to see my deep bias for simplicity for the rest of this post (or in the 745,540 words written on this blog thus far). I do not want to come across as a simplicity snob.

Deployed well, there are instances where I love complexity.

I thought this was exceptionally well done…

(Source: Michael Paukner  |  His Flickr collection) (Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

While it is a little difficult to follow all the arrows back to the original country, the shape of the graphic is an homage to the visual's topic. The background color could not have been more prefect. And, notice there is just the perfect amount of information about every tree.

There are other more subtle things to admire. I love, love, love that Michael put the US on the right. When we “trip up” our audiences like this,  it gives them a pause and forces them to look at all the other information more carefully.

There is of course data itself that gives you many pauses. Notice the youngest tree in the graphic is older than Jesus Christ. Or, that we should all be so glad that the American West was settled last (by then we were more appreciative of nature as humans).

I am fine with complexity, if the essential makes it through. I am fine with complexity, if someone who’ll spend 1/100th of the time on the visual compared to you get’s it.

Strategy 3: Venn Diagrams FTW!

I love Venn diagrams. Ok, strictly speaking Euler. But, let's not get pedantic.

I've used them to simplify the presentation of complex topics. Ex: Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges

I am only slightly kidding but one of humanity’s most complex undertaking is to understand what the heck Europe is. One end's up ruing even asking, because you hear back EU, EEA, Euro Zone, Schengen, EFTA, and more.

I felt Bloomberg did a wonderful job with, what looks like an amoeba-inspired, Euler diagram…

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

The color schemes are contrasted enough to allow you to follow along nicely.

The context from the sizes of the economy is a nice touch. (This is embarrassing but I was surprised how big Italy is, and how small Sweden is.)

The clusters of countries next to each other, for the sake of cleaner lines, all by itself has a built-in message. Cyprus and Ireland. UK, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. So on and so forth.

Overall, this is a topic that has been tackled numerous times, with painful to see results. Bloomberg managed to make it as simple as possible, with valuable built-in context.

Staying in the same geographic area, and my Euler-love, here's another fantastic visualization of often a very complicated answer: What is each political party in the UK promising?

I adore this as the answer…

(Source: Economist) (Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

Would you have believed that the totally out there UKIP would have something on common with Labour? Or that Labour is completely alone in the minimum wage issue?

The visual makes it easier to understand what we might be most interested in from the thousands of pages that form each party’s manifesto. You, the audience, is now empowered to agree more passionately with your party or feel the uncomfortable squirming that comes with realizing what your party is solving for. Both. Fantastic. Outcomes.

Clearly this is a political picture, and someone has to decide what to include and what to exclude because the parties promise the Earth, Moon and the Andromeda galaxy. But that is the life of an Analyst… They have to make tough choices.

Two hopes.

1. I hope every single news organization in every single country in the world will copy this visualization and create it for their main political parties. (Also see related NYT example on Guns below.)

2. What will you do with this? Can you pull out all the content types from your digital existence and create a visual like this one for which goal (overlapping goals) each type is solving for? How about displaying countries and products purchased? Oh, or your main traffic sources and the visitor acquisition metrics?

So much to do, so simply, and so little time!

Strategy 4: Interactivity With Insightful End-Points.

There is a common belief that your company’s decision makers would use data more if they could explore it – more efficiently, deeper, etc. This is almost never true, primarily due to the problem outlined in the orange and blue triangles that outline skill/competency and insights/action.

Hence, in a business context I rarely advocate for initiatives whose only purpose is to allow the broad collection of company employees to go on random fishing expeditions.

Exploratory environments can be useful, especially when they are 1. sharply focused 2. have an ability to eliminate dead end-points and 3. allow for smart elements like modeling. Let’s look at the first two below and the third one in the following example.

Here’s a valuable dataset from the Equal Justice Initiative on Lynchings in America.

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

Even at a glance the data is useful, along multiple dimensions.

In this case exploration of the data makes it even more valuable. You hover your mouse over your area of interest, and click…

You get your data drill-down, but what’s of most impactful is that you also get an end-point with a valuable insight providing meaning to the data.

In this case the number 29 for Jefferson County would be an insufficiently valuable end-point. The inclusion of Elizabeth Lawrence’s story on the other hand provides meaning. That is what gives the exploration a purposeful end-point.

You can now zoom out, move on to exploring other areas, continuing to get enriched value from the data.

In a business context when you are working with interactive data visualizations, ask this very valuable question: In a sea of data, whose job is it to include a logical end-point with an insight of value?

Surely, your terabytes of Google Analytics data dumped into a Tableau exploratory thingamagigy won’t magically throw them out there.

Surely, lay business decision makers, even senior ones, won’t have all the context they need to have to convert thingamagigy fishing expeditions, sorry, explorations, into the brilliance you feel the data contains.

Interactive visualization are great, only when packaged with insights for actions at logical end-points in exploration. Tweet that.

[SIDEBAR] This is a difficult example to share because of the deeply emotional content it contains. But, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Beyond the value of the lessons from the visualizations, I encourage you to explore rest of the EJI website. At the very minimum please consider spending five minutes listening to the story of John Hartfield told by Tarabu Kirkland, and six minutes on the story of Thomas Miles Sr told by Shirah Dedman. Thank you. [/SIDEBAR]

Bonus: Another insightful visualization on this topic is at pudding.cool, The Shape of Slavery…

A bit more complex of a visualization, a function of the depth of data populated.

Follow the story of Louisiana as you reflect on the data.

Lots of data visualization, storytelling and life lessons in this data set as well.

Strategy 5: What-if Analysis Models.

Building on the thought above, if you create exploratory environments it can be exceedingly accretive to decision-making if we build in what-if type models. Rather than stopping at an end-point, provide an option of doing some type of sensitivity analysis with the goal of prodding the audience to take action.

For example… Let’s say they end up looking at Visitors, Conversion Rates, and Revenue. You can easily imagine how you want someone to explore that data by traffic sources or campaigns or geo or myriad valuable dimensions. You can create an environment where they press buttons to get that data.

Necessary, but not sufficient.

Why not build in a model where the decision maker can change Conversion Rates, to see the impact on Revenue? Move it from 1% to 1.5% to 8%. See what happens by traffic sources. Then, make a smarter decision.

Or, empower them to play with discounting strategies. What happens if they offer a 5%, 10% or 18% discount? Show impact on Revenue and Profit.

Even without bundling insights into your prepackaged environment, the what-if models allow your decision makers to play with scenarios, understand impact and make smarter decisions about what to do.

That’s the key. Don’t make visualizations with dead ends.

Here’s a great example of that from Mosaic. The visualization is about outpacing pandemics.

Quoting them: Vaccines are an essential weapon in fighting disease outbreaks. But how does the time taken to develop vaccines compare to the speed and frequency of outbreaks? And how can we do it better?

This is the simple view that greets you, outbreaks from 1890 to 2016 with vaccine development during that same time…

Each element is clickable.

As an illustration, the longest bar is Typhoid fever and the smallest, mercifully, is Measles. For each bar, click on Measles, you’ll see the first big outbreak (1917, 3,000 deaths) and the last (1989, 123 deaths). It is really easy to explore the data.

What I love is the sensitivity analysis.

Click on the yellow dot, and you’ll see that in action. First, you see what actually happened…

Simple exploration. Good reporting. Easy to understand.

The buttons with the number of weeks represent what I wanted to highlight here. Click on them, and it demonstrates what the outcome would have been if action was taken earlier.

I choose 22 weeks…

Even if the vaccine had been introduced after 22 weeks, a long time, we could have saved 1,628 lives!

The team also built in some hypothetical scenarios to help inform decision-making.

You can play with the implications of a fast-moving flu-like pandemic. It would have grievous overall impact, 30 mil deaths in 12 months.

But, what if we restrict 50% of the travel since we don’t have a vaccine yet. That would have an impact…

Not quite as material as one might imagine, but it slows things down.

What if a vaccine was introduced 22 weeks in?

Insanely helpful. 17 mil lives saved.

This type of modeling is rarer than seeing a rhino in the Ngorongoro crater. (We were there last week, you should go, it is pretty awesome.)

As an analyst, as a Big Data person, as a Data Scientist, pouring the right data on humanity is only marginally effective. In this example, in others above, I hope you’ll see the type of additional creativity we can bring to our work to power smarter decision-making. Starting with no dead end-points.

Strategy 6: Turbocharging Data Visuals with Storytelling.

You know this. Even if data is shared in a simple environment, most people are unable to internalize it. As has been hinted in most examples today, the problem is that the Analyst’s brain has not been packaged with the data.

The Global Gender Gap Report is a fabulous example how to solve this problem. The team nor only shares in a simple and beautiful environment, they also include the story they want to tell in that same environment. The output is not the reporting, the output are the conclusions from the Analyst’s brain.

It is very difficult for me to show the beauty of what they have done in static screenshots. You just have to go there and scroll.

Explore how the initial trend in the gender gap morphs into multiple visualizations, note the subtle but important emphasis on trends, and, most importantly, feel joy from how the story is presented with the data (text on the right).

The website and visualization will work on your mobile device (yea!), but it is best admired on the largest screen you can find.

To tempt you, let me just contrast the gender gap performance of the United States (precipitous decline in the last two years!) with… with… inspired by FLOTUS, the 10 year performance of Slovenia…

Play with the histogram and scatterplot options.

Go back and forth a few times (yes, gender parity is an issue I care deeply about), make sure you absorb the many nuances both in the story (why the above stinky performance by the US?) and the way the text (story) and the visualization (data) play together.

When you send data out, is it bundled with a piece of your brain?

Remember, you’ll be the last person with the intelligence and skills to understand the deep layers and nuances in what the data is actually saying (assuming you are an Analysis Ninja!). It is imperative that your brain go with the data.

Bonus 1: Another fantastic example of this type of sequential storytelling is Film Money….

Lars Verspohl takes you along on a wonderful journey through cost and profit structures of movies. Like me, you’ll love the simple and delightful visualizations, how gracefully flow it all flows, and that all the charts and data are primarily there to support the story that emerges from his analysis.

Please also note the thought put into the order in which the story is told, if and when the visualizations switch (from the one above) and the techniques deployed to keep you interested. All excellent, loads to learn.

Bonus 2: This is one subject, storytelling, that I just love, love, love. Indulge me as I pile on and share one more, dramatically different, example of storytelling where data and text go hand in hand.

The team at Reuters Graphics does a fab job of explaining China’s debt problem.

Almost all the visuals are extremely simple. As you scroll through, observe though how they peel back layers of the onion one by one, segment the data, and zero in on the core point they want to make.

Really lovely. Worth emulating.

Strategy 7: The Magic of 2 x 2 Matrices

If you’ve read anything on this blog, you’ve read the importance of seeking why answers to provide critical context to the what answers that you get out of Adobe or Google Analytics. Hence, the amazing value of Surveys, Usability Studies (on or offline), Heuristic Evaluations, shadowing Customer Service calls, and more.

Customers are an amazing source of problems they are having, sometimes they are also a good source of ideas. The challenge is that if you ask people for their opinions you get tons of ideas.

How do you value them? How do you present them? How fast can you get from data to action?

One solution I love is a visualization strategy used by the team at the New York Times. The example illustrates, simply, the ideas related to an emotionally charged topic: Gun Control.

Everyone knows this is a polarizing topic. Friend against friend. Blue vs. Red. Police and minorities and every other combination thrown in. It is a mess.

But. Is it really as fraught with angst as we believe?

No. It turns out if you ask Americans about individual ideas that will reduce gun deaths… A vast majority of us agree!!

The lowest supported idea is “Demonstrate need for a gun.” Support for it is just shy of 50%. A number that simply sounds unbelievable. 

Did you think vast majorities in our countries agree with these common-sense ideas? I have to admit I did not. It is hopeful data.

But, this is not the reason for the inclusion of this visual on our list.

Rather than just share the ideas, the NYT team added incremental value (remember packing the Analyst’s brain?) by asking Experts to opine on the effectiveness of each idea. That’s what you are seeing in the distribution above.

From the 2×2 matrix, here is the slice of ideas American’s support and the ones Experts say are effective…

There are only two ideas rated as ineffective by Expert, but are supported by over 70% of the Americans (national stand your ground law and honor out-of-state conceal and carry permits).

We all basically agree on ideas, and a lot of them will have an impact.

I love the presentation of the ideas and the fact that Experts were brought in to give valuable context. This is what I meant in my above example by not simply taking all the customer ideas and running with them. A wonderful way for you to visualize multiple ideas, and you can combine it with an Expert dimension or a Customer Satisfaction dimension or even a Revenue dimension to give context to the ideas.

One last element of value from NYT.

I’ve said that all data in aggregate is crap. I’m so happy that the NYT team also segmented the data.

What does Mr. Trump support…

What do American law enforcement support…

And, lots more slices that make the data even more meaningful.

Segment. Always, always, always segment!

It is beyond the scope of this humble analytics blog to explore why in the face of such unanimity that nothing actually happens when it comes to reducing gun violence in the US. But, for lovers of data, for believers in the power of data to drive smart decision-making, this is one more reminder on the limitation of data if you can’t tell the story properly.

Strategy 8: Close Contextual Clusters.

Let’s close with examples of work that you’ll normally include in your enterprise analytics efforts.

Usually data we have is lonely. Just the Visits or Assisted Conversions or Order Size. Without other contextual elements, it turns out this data is less useful.

Consider this, conversion rate could go up by a statistically significant percentage… While revenue actually goes down. Or, the overall Visits to the site stay steady… But drop dramatically from your usually second highest source.

The European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, also known by the gorgeous acronym EMCDDA (!), publishes a ton of data. Their Statistical Bulletin 2017 has a lovely collection of graphs and charts that we all use in some shape or form. The only difference is that we rarely report on Heroin Price and Purity. :)

Along with the use of (mostly) simple visuals to illustrate the data, I appreciated the context that they provide. Sometimes using the time dimensions, sometimes using geographic breakdowns, sometimes using two likely interplaying elements (like above), so on and so forth.

This simple strategy is quite effective at delivering insights – or at least causing the audience to ask relevant interesting questions.

I encourage you to take some time and explore the numerous examples on the site…

I’m confident the visualization strategies will spark upgrades to the work you are doing at your company to communicate data more effectively.

Our friends at the EMCDDA mostly avoid two things that I find as poor practices in data visualization. They triggered this in my mind, let me take the opportunity of sharing them with you.

1. Never ever, never, never, never create the loooooooooonnnnnnnggggggg infographics that seem to be in vogue these days. Essentially they are taking 69 “slides”/graphs/tables and shoving them into a 9-meter-long thing that no browser can render decently. By the time you absorb the third screen full of stuff in tiny font/image, you’ve already forgotten what’s on the second.  You have many examples in this post as to how you can avoid making yourself look like sub-optimal Reporting Squirrel.

2. Pie-charts are a very poor data visualization choice. Humans find comparison by angles significantly harder than, for example, by length. I explain this a lot more in the May 14th edition of my newsletter The Marketing Analytics Intersect: Eat pies, don’t share them.

[You should subscriber to TMAI for a weekly dose of intelligence that’ll keep you at the bleeding edge of our industry.]

Bonus: In the spirit of government data, I’ll be remiss if I did not share with you three examples of interactive scatter plots from Our World in Data (produced by the University of Oxford).

The second one is timely, it shows how when we look at health spending and life expectancy the United States is a massive outlier (and not the good kind)…

I love fusion charts, the first one on the site, Child Mortality vs. Mean Years of Schooling, is a good example of that as well. And, it shows great news.

Please review all three. Then, consider plotting one for your digital data. Conversion Rates by Discounts for Top Ten Traffic Sources. Time on Site by Visits to site for Content Types. And, more.

Strategy 9: Multi-dimensional Related Line Graphs.

One final example, to cause introspection about the final years of your life.

Wait. Things really got serious.

They did. But, I really do want you to lean into this one.

A small reason is that you are likely creating graphs like these every single day for your dashboards. I hope you’ll find lessons in how to make yours simpler. Notice the use of fonts and colors. Notice the labeling, or not, of the axis. And other little things.

A big reason is that I care for you deeply and I want this data to be a cautionary signal to all of us to possibly start making new choices.

The plots are from the American Time Use Survey, a multi-year study from 2003 to 2015 conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Age on the x-axis and hours we spend per day with on the y-axis…

(Source: halhen on Reddit  |  Github)

In our 20s we’ll spend most time with our friends and our parents. Our partner and co-workers will take over our lives from then on through our 50s.

I’ll let you internalize the rest, and please share via comments what you see as the lessons in this data.

Three things stood out for me, as I consider the larger latter chunk of life. 1. We might be giving an extraordinary amount of importance to our co-workers, perhaps worth a rethink. 2. I love my spouse, regardless of who goes first, I felt very sad after staring at the Partner and Alone graphs. 3. The data demonstrated the value of loving oneself – of being proud of who you are, of being comfortable in one’s own skin. After all each individual will spend huge chunks of a decade plus… alone. You have from now until you are 50 or so to get there. Hurry!

: )

The power of great data visualized simply.

Closing Thoughts.

The sixteen diverse sources and visualization strategies help you think differently about how you are bridging the critical last-mile when it comes to impact from data – from you to the person who’ll take and action of business value. We don’t give enough time and attention to this last-mile.

While some of these clearly take special skills (especially the ones that tell integrated stories), I hope you’ll note that most of them are simple and ones that you can create with just a little more effort.

What’s most important today is that I’ve sparked your commitment to upgrading your personal data visualization skills.

Good luck!

As always, it is your turn now.

Which one or two examples did you like the most? Why? Is there a visualization technique you deploy in your analytics practice that’s not covered in this post? What barriers prevent you from improving your data viz skills? What are your pet peeves when it comes to data visualizations? Do you have go-to sources when it comes to inspiring you?

Please share your tips, best practices, critique, and praise for the people who created the above examples, via comments.

Thank you.

PS: I was not kidding in the opening of this post… I've written a lot about data visualization and shared guidance for this type of storytelling in numerous different contexts. To continue your immersion, here's another collection of knowledge…

~ It's Not The Ink, It's The Think: 6 Effective Data Visualization Strategies

~ Great Storytelling With Data: Visualize Simply And Focus Obsessively

~ Data Visualization Inspiration: Analysis To Insights To Action, Faster!

~ 7 Data Presentation Tips: Think, Focus, Simplify, Calibrate, Visualize++

~ Excellent Analytics Tip #21: Convert Complex Data Into Simple Logical Stories

I hope you love it, and paint more beautiful pictures with your data.

Create High-Impact Data Visualizations: Nine Effective Strategies is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

from SEO Tips https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/create-high-impact-effective-data-visualizations/

[luxlisbonblog]

14 Things you may know or may not know about Charlie Austen

1. Charlie is a bit of a mean Cyclist and newly crowned Triathlonerererer (I think that's how you spell it), with a full set of 'genericlondonercyclingscars' and a well worn Strava account to prove it. 

2. After arriving at Lux reharsals or recordings (probably in full cyclist regalia), Charlie is at any given point as likely to start cooking some sort of egg-based dish as she is to crank out a funky bass riff. Sometimes she photographs the eggs, sometimes not. 

3. She will also have carried approximately THIS MUCH STUFF with her.. (presuambly balanced on the handles of a SadiqKahnCycle?)

4. Charlie has mad origami skills, often wipping up little treats for Lux gig goers. 

5. Unfortunately, Charlie has some sort of (as yet undiagnosed) quasi medical condition which means that she is literally unable to stop smiling.......

N.B (This photo = 'Song Titles, 'An Englishman in New York' - the significance of this information will become clear as we progress). 

6. ...It's a condition that persists even when reporting missing her latest batch of misplaced personal items in her seemingly bi-weekly short newsletter/facebook update (which now appears with such regularity she has entitled it 'losers news').

Fun Fact: Not many people know this but if you find a wallet, phone or item of clothing lost on public transport in the UK, there is a 13% chance that it belongs to Charlotte Austen. 

7. All the smiles do have one caveat however. And that is that firstly, the now-ubiquitous travel cafetiere will have had to have made an appearance. Yes, Charlotte has portable *high quality* coffee making facilities and she isn't afriad to use them (she is very afraid of not using them however).  

8. Fairs fair though. She maintains that her Caffine habit does win her alot of new friends - and she even has the photos to prove it. 

9. Charlie has serious (and I mean industrial strength) Excel skills. Of all the solutions to any given problem Charlie is most likely to suggest making a spreadsheet. We don't share her enthusiasm. 

And she once drew a visual representation of my description of her affliction in this easy to understand Venn diagram themed sketch...

10. Charlotte is a supremely talented songwriter and is working on an EP of her own material in time for Lux Lisbon's April Tour (where she will be opening act at most of the gigs). She always sings one of her own songs acoustically during Lux Lisbon's main set too. This is her at Bush Hall on a sweltering night in 2015 doing her song 'The Greatest Human Cannonball'.

This video is of her singing 'Devil Got Me Dancing' that same night. 

...Watch out for her 'wayward singing leg', as captured in these fantasically kinetic sketches...

11. Of course her (fantastically poetic and lyrical) writing process is obviously moleskine and caffine enhanced. You can visit her website here and keep up with what she is up to when not in Lux Lisbon! 

12. Charlotte is also often on tour with fantastic 1980s cult blues rockers (and first episode of 'The Young Ones' featured) 'Nine Below Zero' (this time on vocals and percussion (more cowbell etc etc)) - treading the boards from small clubs to the Royal Albert Hall. She takes the lead vocal on their last single. It sounds ace. 

13. Charlotte and Tom are actually Cousins and come from a genuine West Sussex(ian) Musical Dynasty! They spend their Childhoods gigging with their two hard-(bluesy)-rocking Dad's round pubs and clubs and are both pictured here with Charlie's Brother Oli (Guitarist with charttoppingdancemusicpeeps 'Sigma') and Tom's sister Emily (who sang with Charlotte for many year). Between the six of them it's genuinely unlikely there has been a weekend in the last 20 years that hasn't had one of the Austen/Cooper clan holding musical Court in a Sussex Socialhouse of some kind. 

...Except for August when they make their annual family pilgrimage to the South of France to play there, the sort of place where you may be passed notes by mysterious strangers called Coco....

14. Finally....and you have to understand this. Charlotte spends approximately 29% of her life making and wearing fancy dress costumes. She's probably wearing one now. Unfortunately there isn't enough server space to include all her creations, so here is a short selection...

Firstly this video of her doing her song 'The Greatest Human Cannonball'. 

THEN, hold tight......From left to right - Muppets Xmas Carol Sing Along/Christmas Tree (lost a bet), Harry Potter Party (Mad-eye Moody)

Pixar Party (Blowfish), Covered in Cycle Lyrca/Duct Tape and M and S back to school tights/Board Game Party (Battleship)..

Whatever this lot is (answers on a digital postcard....)

and finally this Computer Game Party as Toad from Mario Kart (from the vastly superior SNES version).

N.B Your eyes do not decieve you...that is Tom B Cooper to the left of Charlotte in this photo (I presume as Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2 but I have never checked with him directly, on the basis that I assumed he never wanted to talk about this photo ever again in his whole life). 

So that's Charlie. She's just so bloody ace. But you've read all the way to bottom of this - you don't need me to tell you that, you've seen, you've read, you know. 

Speak soon! 

Stu (from that band Lux Lisbon)

[ylangelegy]

kae I am begging for orpheus minghao and eurydice reader scraps . also have u read/gone through either the sarah ruhl play or the gregory orr retelling cos---[heaves]

bonus but optional: not a specific fic, but which wip are u most excited about!!

i am familiar with the gregory orr retelling but i still have to dig my claws into sara ruhl's version <3 (un)fortunately, my orpheus!minghao x eurydice!reader wip is heavily based off this ↓ tumblr post & the hadestown musical

among my wips, i am probably most excited to hammer out academic rivals/teacher vs. teacher!wonwoo and we got married!jisung ≖‿≖ sharing some scraps from orpheus!minghao, which i do not doubt i will rewrite/rework in the longer run:

two titles i'm playing with: the path to paradise (likewise, the road to ruin) and right before the spring.

toying with making this a modern au. a down on their luck couple trying to make it another month. there's rent to pay, and the job market is shot, and love isn't enough. times may have changed, but these are still the same old gods and the same old problems. the world spins madly on, etc.

minghao is not a musician but an artist. he's more of a realist than canon orpheus. initially, he doesn't think his work can help bring 'spring', but reader convinces him otherwise.

minghao turns around. that does not change. it is a matter of why he turns around that i have to figure out. but minghao is orpheus, and orpheus always turns— because to love is to turn around.