#this ONE author is driving me insane how is she getting these past editors???

[monty-glasses-roxy]

I had a funny silly thing to say about something I found in past Discord conversations about some stuff I've been doing here but nah fuck that

Guess which FNaF author has apparently been tormenting me with frustrating plots, a love for wasted screen time and a lack of details needed to tell the fucking story, since Felix the Shark.

[wickedsrest-rp-archive]

Name: Ana Mohr Species: Human Occupation: Aspiring Author Age: 19 Years Old Played By: Sara Face Claim: Madison Bailey

“It felt like I was running towards a flickering candle and it was only a matter of time before it went out. Whether it was because of me or time, it couldn’t last forever.”

Ana was adopted by Marjorie and Kaleb Mohr. Her biological parents were far too young to take care of her at the time, so they put her up for adoption and the Mohr couple fell in love with her. They gave her everything she wanted, but made sure they didn’t spoil her too much as a child. All she knew was that she was loved and cared for at all hours – Marjorie was a nurse and Kaleb was a custodian. They were from two very different universes, but still shared the same love for their daughter. As far as Ana knew, they were fairly normal people with fairly normal lives. There had been no suspicions to tell her otherwise until she was fifteen years old.

In school, Ana was a straight-A student. She didn’t get involved in any kind of advanced courses and she certainly didn’t try to be the best out of everyone, but she had some smarts to her. She found comfort in writing when she turned thirteen, often times turning to writing short mystery stories that she would share with her friends late at night. In fact, there was rarely a night she spent away from her friends. Whether they were staying at her place or she was staying at theirs, they were always attached at the hip. Her most notable friend group contained five people, so there was always someone available and ready to hang out. This group was abandoned out of nowhere on the eve of her sixteenth birthday party. 

They had a big party planned for Ana for her birthday - all of her friends were supposed to attend it on that upcoming Saturday. It’s no shock that she had wanted more details about the surprise party the night before, so she was nearly leaping down the steps to the basement to press her parents for more details when she caught wind of a conversation she probably wasn’t supposed to hear. She heard something about how “this was the only way” and that “it has to be tonight.” Of course, she was the confrontational type, and continued down the steps and around the corner… only to be met with lit candles, books scattered across the ground, and her parents dressed in some very strange clothing. Something in her barely had time to register just what was happening, but she knew one thing for sure: she needed to leave. Whatever they were planning, whatever they needed her for - she knew it wasn’t good. A sinister-type of energy began creeping over her shoulder as her parents tried to convince her that this was something good for them, that everything would be okay, even though Ana had no idea what they had been talking about ever since they caught her listening in on the conversation. So, she left. Her legs carried her upstairs, out the front door, and she ran until she couldn’t anymore. 

For a while, she stayed with one of her closest friends, only returning home when her parents weren’t there to do some research on the books in the basement. The moment she started reading about dark rituals and demons was the moment Ana realized there might have been a reason why she felt like she needed to keep looking over her shoulder every five, ten, fifteen minutes. She thought leaving for good might help, so that’s what she did.

She became very withdrawn when she found a home in White Crest. She rarely left the home she could barely afford, often times feeling confined and trapped within the walls. The demon that couldn’t quite get a grip on her before seemed to be present at all times. Ana just couldn’t ever really see it or interact directly with it, which eventually led her to believe she was either hallucinating or driving herself to the brink of insanity. Still, she knows something’s there and she’s trying to get rid of it. Because of this kind of restriction, she’s limited herself to a strict routine. She does the same things every day. She writes whenever she gets the chance. She tries to be normal, but she’s still haunted by her past. That ritual was never finished, so the demon wasn’t satisfied with the results. While living her life in fear, Ana does her best to keep to herself by focusing on her routine without straying too much from it. She’s become something close to a recluse in fear of dragging anyone else into the darkness she felt she had been slipping into for years now. 

Character Facts:

Personality: Ambitious, compassionate, accepting, intuitive, impulsive, submissive, obsessive, withdrawn

Ana has written three murder-mystery novels. They’re very much so under the radar and not a lot of people know about them. For the most part, they’re only sold at small bookstores within the town. It’s her main job, but she also works as a part-time editor for the newspaper (only when they need her/when she’s available).

Her routine is basically like clockwork. She does the same stuff every day, goes to the same coffee shop, gets her groceries on certain days, works for about eight hours a day, goes to bed at the same time every night. It’s very rare for her to stray from her routine, as it makes her very nervous.

She doesn’t tell people about the fact that she potentially has a demon attached to her. It’s a very touchy subject. She’s also very scared of how people are going to react to it, just because she doesn’t want people to think she’s crazy.

Ana lives alone. It’s a small studio-esque space that’s tucked a little bit away from everyone. She did that on purpose, obviously, and tends to stay inside a lot of the time. It’s a cluttered space, as well, and she isn’t very organized, but she somehow knows where everything is at all times.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #374

“doctor, doctor, won’t you please prescribe me something?  /  a day in the life of someone else...”

Does someone have a crush on you but you don’t feel the same way? No. Who do you feel most beautiful around? No one. What’s one makeup item you cannot live without? I could live without any makeup. What’s the most expensive thing you own? My snake, I think. Or my laptop, idr. Are you more of a book person or a TV person? Book. Relationship status? Single. What color are most of your clothes? Black. Did you french kiss before you were 16? No, I was 16. Last song you listened to? "The Heretic Anthem" by Slipknot. Would you ever go back to any of your past relationships? Yes. What’s your favorite thing about life? That's a big question. I guess seeing acts of mass love and kindness, reminders that we're all in this together through all hardships. Who pays for the first date? Whoever asked the other person out, imo. Who has always been there for you? My mom. Have you ever written on a wall? No, at least not to my memory. Do you play any computer games, if so, what ones? I think anyone who reads these by now knows, haha. I don't much play anything else. I prefer console games. What would you name a baby boy if you had one? Probably Damien or Victor. What would you name a baby girl if you had one? Alessandra, no questions asked. What lyric means the most to you? I mean there's tons, but the first one that came to mind is "for such a little thing, you sure are in your own way" from "Get Up" by Mother Mother. Like in the big picture, we humans are so so so minuscule, but with brains that are too complicated for our own good. It's my own head that creates so many obstacles for me. Who is the smartest person you know? Probably my friend Girt. Have your parents ever been to jail? No. Do you share a bed with anyone? My cat, haha. Does it flatter you when guys open doors for you? It's flattering if anyone does, not just guys. Do you enjoy taking naps? Yeah. That's like part of my daily routine. If your friend asked you to hold their drugs, would you? Nope. Is there anyone you try to be a good influence for? My nieces and nephew, but I don't feel like I am. I'm a poor example of an adult. Do you own a pair of fishnets? No, but I have a pair of fingerless fishnet gloves. Which do you prefer: french toast, bagels, pancakes, waffles, bacon or cereal? All are great, but french toast. Yes or no: eyebrow piercings? I'd actually have one if I didn't have glasses. I think I'd look weird with one as I look now. When I say "The Beatles," what is the first song that comes to mind? "Hey, Jude." In your opinion, what is the very worst type of weather? Extremely hot and humid. You can only listen to one band for the rest of your life, who do you pick? Ozzy Osbourne, of course. Can you snap with both of your hands? Yeah, but it's harder with my left. What is something that you had to learn the hard way? For some people, promises don't mean shit. If you could re-paint your bedroom, what color would you paint it? Maybe like a light peach. When was the last time you got butterflies? I think not since Sara told me I look really pretty in eyeliner. ;_; <3 When was the last time you felt like your heart was actually breaking? There was this one time I was listening to "The Ghost of You" by MCR a while after finding out about Jason's mom's death and I just like... broke. When’s the last time you were in a line? When I was getting my second COVID shot. Do you trust the media? HA! Fuck no. If you could kill off one species of animal, which would it be? At first I was appalled by this question, but like... do wasps serve a purpose? Of all fauna, they annoy me the most. I mean bees are already endangered enough, and they prey on them. They don't pollinate, so like... why are you here. I may be mistaken and they have a valuable role, in which case I take all this back. Who’d you last say I love you to? My mom. What’s the most overpaid job in your opinion? I have on idea. Most jobs are underpaid. What’s the last thing you wrote down? I was doing some paperwork at the TMS office on my first day there. When’s the last time you heard a gunshot? I don’t know. What are you looking forward to? Now that my tattoo (which looks fucking stunning, by the way) is out of the way, I can focus on other things. I'm particularly looking forward to hopefully seeing the results of TMS manifest (which should take 3-4 weeks). It sounds horrible, but I'm also keenly awaiting this dog we're stuck with to go somewhere... The person who gave her to my sister to give my mom won't take the dog back, and we can't find another option that doesn't risk her being euthanized, which we absolutely do not want. We just don't know what to do, but she's driving Mom and me INSANE. Do you listen to online radio stations? No. Have you ever done something sexual that you regret? No. Have you ever said anything to the last person you kissed that you regret? Multiple things. Have you ever ate so much you puked? Ugh, no. That sounds awful. Do you care about what others think of your physical appearance? Very much, sadly. Would you rather eat cookies or brownies? I gotta say brownies. Which YouTuber have you learned the most from? I mean, this depends on the subject. From Mark, I've learned most about life and how (I think) to be a good person, but there's a lot of pet channels I watch that have taught me loads about proper husbandry. This answer just depends on what knowledge you're talkin' about. Who would you want to be the flower girl at your wedding? Probably a niece. Do you want to be married within the next ten years? It'd be nice. Do you feel like your life is too fast-paced, or do you wish it were busier? Ugh, I wish it was busier. My days are a COMPLETE, routine drag. What are some hobbies which you want to pick up? I want to just be more artsy. I wanna draw and write more, and I'd love love love to be in healthy enough shape to handle going on walks with my camera. There are sometimes I miss editing videos, too. I'm unsure about completely new hobbies. Does anyone encourage you to go after your dreams? My family and a few friends. Oh, and definitely my psychiatrist. What group are you most active in on Facebook? None, really. I mostly just observe. Are you ashamed of anything? A number of things. Primarily not having a job at my age or even being in school. What were your favorite Disney rides as a kid? I loved Splash Mountain, I think it was called. What were your favorite rides at Cedar Point? Never been. What are some places you want to visit that you’ve never been? South Africa, Alaska, Canada, Yellowstone National Park, Bahamas, Venice, Rome... What are some places that you’ve been that you’d like to go to again? Disney World, Chicago, and this one super clear lake I swam in once a few hours away that I don't recall the name of. Have you ever owned a succulent? No. While they're pretty, I've never been much of a plant person. Do you support small businesses? I REALLY want to start doing that more when I have the option to buy my own stuff/have my own income. As someone who wants to be a freelance photographer, I get it. Starting an independent business is hard as hell. If a brand were to sponsor you, which brand(s) would you prefer? Uhhh I dunno. Have you read the entire Bible? No. Do you make bucket lists for each season? No. That does sound kinda fun, though. How old were you when you first dyed your hair? I have no idea. Do you dye your hair regularly? No. :/ I desperately want to, though. It's just not something we can afford to spare cash on. What is the most comfortable type of pants, in your opinion? Pajama pants? haha Do you think you could ever be famous? No. I'm way too boring and don't want to be anyway. What are some jobs you’ve had in the past? Sales associate, cashier, and deli worker. None lasted long whatsoever. What are some jobs you want to or would like to have? List five. FIVE? I don't know. I just know I want to be a photographer. Well, being an artist or poet would be very cool. And a reptile breeder, maybe tarantulas, too, but that makes me kinda nervous with JUST how many babies they have. What are some jobs you have considered? In rough order from youth to now: paleontologist, vet, movie director, game designer, author/poet, artist, music video editor, wildlife biologist, photographer... Maybe there's more that just aren't coming to me. Are you thankful for social media, or do you wish it didn’t exist? Depends on the day for me, but I'm generally thankful for it so I can keep up with the lives of people who are important to me. It's just that it's a breeding ground for self-doubt and rampant comparisons that can easily depress me when I see some people are "further ahead" and more "established" than me. What are some of the best medications you’ve ever had? The combined efforts of Latuda and Lamictal saved my life. What was a video you watched over and over as a kid? There were lots of movies, like The Lion King, a certain Barney one when I was very young, and I watched Finding Nemo like crazy. Do you know a lot of people who were loving, and then turned cold? Jason????????????????? Is that you??????????????????????????????????????????? Do you own anything plaid? Ha, what a coincidence, I'm wearing my red plaid pj pants. Are you good at remembering names? Definitely not. Have the cops ever gotten on to you for anything before? No. What email thingy do you use? (yahoo, gmail, rock) ... Rock? lol anyway my main is Hotmail, but I inevitably have a gmail to have a YouTube account. What game system(s) do you own? PS2, Wii, Nintendo DS Lite, and a GameBoy Advance. Are you any good at Guitar Hero? I used to be; I played most songs on Expert, then some really tough ones on Hard. I was soooooo addicted to those games. I remember when I got the first one for Christmas, I literally played it all day. Have you ever played Call of Duty? Nah, not my jam. What is your favorite/most visited website? YouTube. Is your bed comfortable? Sure. I've definitely had way worse. Do you have a garage? No. Fun fact, I've never lived in a house with one. Should you be doing anything right now? What? There's a number of things I could be doing that are definitely more productive, like finishing decorating my damn room. Do doctors or dentists make you more nervous? Not really. I only ever get nervous to hear my weight at the doctor's. Did you ever think you were about to die before? I don't quite know. When I ODed, it was more like I didn't care if I did. Have you ever really had a near death experience? Was it cool? "Was it cool." Literally fuck off. I guess you could technically consider my OD a "near death experience," especially given how many pills I took, yet I somehow experienced almost no ill symptoms. Maybe because we got to the ER for fluids quickly enough, idk. I'm just glad I didn't die. What is your favorite kind of weather? Snowy! Like a steady snowfall of large flakes with no breeze and total silence. *chef's kiss* Ever tasted beer? Ugh, no. Just the smell makes me sick. It was my dad's drink of choice when he was an alcoholic so I just have a very negative association with it. Have you ever seen a dead body? Yes, at an open-casket wake. Ever poured salt on a slug? As kids, my sisters and I would get our parents to do it because they grossed us out. So, so cruel. I still have this weird but pretty extreme phobia of them, but I wouldn't torture the things like that.

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: Hanesaki Quitting Badiminton is the Ultimate Ending for HANEBADO!

We’re approaching the final episode of HANEBADO!, with Hanesaki facing off against Nagisa in the national finals. Each character has a compelling personal conflict headed into the match: Nagisa is on a mission to defeat her past self, who lost hope and gave up against Hanesaki last year. Hanesaki wants to prove her excellence at badminton through victory, forcing Uchika to return so that she can exact her revenge by turning away from her mother. Now with a 1-1 match score, the stakes are as high as they can get. Nagisa has shown she’s truly stepped up her play, and Hanesaki has revealed her own hidden weapon for the final game.

  We’re definitely headed for an insane final episode and conclusion to the match, but I can’t help but think about what will come after the final point has been scored?

Neither necessarily has to win to find a resolution to their conflict. So long as she battles to the end, Nagisa can be satisfied she overcame her own weakness, even in defeat. Hanesaki’s own path to victory has been paved with tears of friends and enemies alike. In this case, "winning" could actually be the poorer outcome for her, as she could use her triumph to justify her past actions and continue to drive a wedge between herself and others. The penultimate episode’s conclusion, with her team stubbornly cheering her on despite her abuse, could mean that the opponents may each find happiness regardless of the outcome, but no matter who walks away with the medal, the greatest conclusion for Hanesaki may be walking away from badminton entirely.

First and foremost, I think this is an important outcome since Hanesaki finding joy in the game could go a long way toward justifying the actions taken by her mother in abandoning her for the sake of her sports career, and later, Elena's manipulation of Hanesaki into joining the team after she had quit the sport entirely. Uchika’s plan has already been shown to be an abject failure: Hanesaki won the championship last year in what was a completely joyless victory, ending with her quitting badminton. If not for Elena, Hanesaki would have completely divorced herself from the sport already, and potentially found something else that brought her joy.

The actions of both, taken in the name of Hanesaki’s tremendous potential at the game, have quite clearly had immense negative emotional consequences for her. One of the greatest narrative qualities about HANEBADO has been showing how ignoring someone's feelings to do what you believe is best for them is actually a terrible idea. Neither Uchika nor Elena took the time to ask Hanesaki what she wanted, instead taking liberties with the close relationships they had with her to force her behavior. Hanesaki has realized both of their motivations and grown to resent them for it: they violated her trust, and in Uchika’s case, sacrificed literal years of the most formative period of Hanesaki’s life. Turning the corner in the final episode would undo much of the work the anime has done to negatively frame their decisions.

Whether or not Hanesaki actually enjoys badminton is something of an open question at this point. She certainly enjoyed playing with her mother as a child but, even since her mother left her, she hasn’t once been shown to have had any fun playing. Her own issues with losing aside, victory doesn’t seem to bring her any joy beyond that which she has begun to engineer by exacting revenge on her opponents--the only two things that have motivated her to reach peak form were her mother and revenge. After investing your whole childhood into a game, if you still find you can’t enjoy it on its own merits, odds are you probably never will, no matter what new perspective you take on it. The aspects of the game that Hanesaki doesn’t like aren’t going to magically disappear, either--her opponents will likely continue to snipe after her even if she accepts the support of her team.

Odds are badminton just isn’t for her, and that’s perfectly fine.

  Some truly untouched ground in sports anime, typically cast with endlessly passionate athletes, are players who quit due to lack of motivation. Injuries and life circumstances can and have driven characters out of sports series in the past, but telling the story of a player who fall out of love with their game, or realized they never loved the game to begin with, is as valuable as it is revolutionary, especially in the case of a character like Hanesaki, who has displayed world-class talent at badminton. You can have the skill to conquer the world, but whether or not that amount of success is worth the investment of time and effort into something you're not passionate about is a personal decision. You only live once, and fame and fortune may not match up against pursuing another path you might be able enjoy on its own merits.

  Regardless of its conclusion, HANEBADO! has been one of my favorite rides of the past season. The quality of the animation, the focus on a less popular sport, and the female lead cast are all rare for sports series, especially in combination. Hanesaki’s turn made me especially glad I stuck with the series, since it’s focused on aspects of competition rarely covered by sports anime. No matter the outcome, I’m confident I’ll thoroughly enjoy the ending, but I think showing that sometimes the best way to win is not to play at all will make for a truly memorable standout ending that will be remembered for years to come.

---

Peter Fobian is an Associate Features Editor for Crunchyroll, author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, writer for Anime Academy, and contributor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home And Drive-In Edition August 7, 2020 – AMERICAN PICKLE, THE SECRET GARDEN, THE TAX COLLECTOR, OUT STEALING HORSES and WAY TOO MANY MOVIES!

Holy Effin’ Ess. It’s August, and I’ve been writing this column mainly as a series of capsule reviews for four months now and amassed over 80 reviews, and this week seems to be the most insane week for new releases since COVID hit five months ago. I’m also starting a new job this week (Associate Editor at Below the Line), so I’m not even sure I’ll be able to continue this column to the degree I have been. I guess we’ll have to see how far we get this week, although I’m generally going with shorter capsule reviews this week. 

Seth Rogen plays a dual role in Brandon Trost’s comedy AMERICAN PICKLE, which will premiere on HBO Max this Friday. Based on Simon Rich’s short story “Sell Out,” the film starts in 1909 as Rogen plays Herschel Greenbaum, an Eastern European immigrant living in poverty in America when he falls into a pickle vat that’s sealed for 100 years, the brine keeping him the exact same age. He is put in touch with his great grandson Ben (also played by Rogen) who helps get him acclimated to the changes that have happened in 100 years, but it soon turns into a competition between the two relatives.

Using a fairly wacky take on the Rip Van Winkle-like premise, there’s a good chance that American Pickle will be more for the Seth Rogen diehards, myself included, because you get a LOT more Rogen maybe than ever before. His accent as Herschel might be a bit off-putting at first, maybe because you don’t want to laugh at him as a Jewish stereotype, but what ultimately makes the movie fun is watching Rogen playing two very different characters without being done in a way that the viewer gets distracted trying to figure out how they did it. (I guess ever since Moon, it’s become easier to have actors playing two different roles.)

Also, this is the first American movie in quite some time to shine a light on the Jewish faith and religion in a way we haven’t really seen in a while, going back to The Believer or Yentl. That’s nice to see in what started as a Hollywood release, although I’m just not sure this will connect with Rogen’s younger fans and probably was better off getting an HBO Max release.

Originally planned for theatrical release, STXfilms’ adaptation of THE SECRET GARDEN is instead getting a PVOD release this Friday just like many movies this past summer. Adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 book, it stars Dixie Egerickx as Mary Lennox, as a young orphan who is sent to live with her uncle (Colin Firth) in England. Once there, she contends with his disabled son Colin (Edan Hayhurst) and discovers a secret garden…that is basically just that. A garden.

I’ll make no bones that I was enthralled by the concept of Burnett’s being remade with “Harry Potter” producer David Heyman putting it together because it looked so fantastic at CinemaCon last year. The film is directed by Marc Munden, who has directed a ton of television but nothing particularly significant in terms of film, and it’s a wonderful-looking film but it just doesn’t have the heart and wonder of the 1993 movie. I just don’t see a lot of kids loving this, and this is from the guy who kinda liked Artemis Fowl. By comparison, this really doesn’t have much to keep one entertained as none of the child actors have much personality, and the adult actors (including Julie Walters) aren’t given much to challenge themselves. Maybe this would have played better theatrically but just watching it on my computer? Did very little for me. A generally pretty but ultimately dull kiddie movie.

Suicide Squad director David Ayer returns to the streets with his crime-thriller THE TAX COLLECTOR (RLJEfilms), starring Bobby Soto as David, the eponymous “tax collector” for an L.A. crime family who has to contend with his boss’s old rival, putting his own family in danger. David’s enforcer, played by Shia LaBeouf, goes by the name “The Creeper.”

Like his Netflix movie, Bright, I have a feeling Ayer is not going to get a fair shake by the current critics’ pool since they’ll be writing all their reviews based on previous biases. Nothing new there. Fact is that The Tax Collector is on par with movies like End of Watch and is far better than Harsh Times, showing that the writer of Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious has improved greatly as a director. (Honestly, this should have been proven by Fury six years ago, but you know how Hollywood is…)

I wasn’t particularly familiar with Bobby Soto before seeing this – he’s a fairly new actor – but he does a decent job carrying the movie and not letting the entertaining character played by LaBeouf completely steal the show. Likewise, Cinthya Carmona as Dave’s wife Alexis does a decent job keeping the film grounded with his domestic life. LaBeouf creates a fairly entertaining character that’s far more subdued than one might expect from LaBeouf.

There is one story decision made that I wasn’t crazy about, and honestly, it almost killed my enjoyment of the movie as a whole. Even so, the reason The Tax Collector works even as well as it does is because Ayer knows his shit, so instead of this being a tired tale of Crips vs. Bloods, it instead becomes one man’s journey, and in fact, he has to turn to his enemy for help in the final act, which is when it turns into more of a straight-up revenge thriller. If you like movies like Training Day and similarly authentic L.A. gangland tales, then The Tax Collector should be right up your alley.

Gillian Jacobs stars in Kris Rey’s comedy I USED TO GO HERE (Gravitas Ventures), playing first-time author Kate, who is contacted by her old college professor (Jemaine Clement) to return to her Illinois Alma Mater to do a reading. Once there, Kate ends up hanging out with a bunch of the students and getting a little too caught up in their lives.

I definitely was a fan of Kris Rey’s previous movie Unexpected (under her married name, Kristen Swanberg), and I was hoping this would be in similar vein, but it just seems like another self-reflexive filmmaker telling a story about a writer revisiting their past. In other words, one of the most overused indie movie plots ever used. Sure, Jacobs is good but not great, and the plot is so predictable, especially the fact that Clement’s professor is gonna be a sleazebag. Sadly, what might have brought more to the movie was getting to see more of Jorma Taccone and his girlfriend, played by Kate Micucci (who was so great with Jacobs in Mike Birbiglia’s improv comedy, Don’t Think Twice). They show up for one brief scene and they’re gone, leaving it up to Jacobs and the otherwise weak cast to try to do something with material that just isn’t particularly inventive. The only one of the students who really has much of personality is Josh Wiggins’ Hugo but again, the movie takes his relationship with Kate to the most obvious and expected place possible. 

I Used to Go Here has some fun moments but when you compare it to the Lonely Island’s other recent production, Palm Springs, it just doesn’t compare, and that’s kind of disappointing, in itself.

Liam Neeson and his son Micheál Richardson star in MADE IN ITALY (IFC Films), the directorial debut of actor James D’arcy with Neeson playing Robert Foster, a bohemian artist from England who travels to Tuscany, Italy with his estranged son Jack to sell the house they inherited from his late wife.

I have to imagine Sony Classics’ Tom Bernard and Michael Barker must be fuming that they’re not releasing this movie, because this is just so much their kind of movie. Listen, I didn’t hate this movie, but I also didn’t love it, and that’s mainly because it was so obvious and predictable, reminding me so much of Ridley Scott’s A Good Year (which I also didn’t hate, mind you).

The real draw is seeing Neeson doing a movie with his son in his such a major role, and they’re both very good with Richardson clearly having gotten his parent’s genes in terms of acting skill. (I don’t really remember him in the revenge thriller Cold Pursuit, but I could see him getting more roles from this.) Unfortunately, D’Arcy decides to throw the guys into a cutesie romance subplot with a local (played by Valeria Bilello), and that’s really where things start to unwind. It manages to recover nicely with a particularly emotional and dramatic last act, but it has to work hard to get the viewer back.

The fact that it took Ridley Scott decades to make a movie like A Good Year (and angering his fans for it), so the fast that D’Arcy can make a movie even comparable on his first foray into writing and directing makes Made in Italy something commendable.

In Order of Disappearance (and its remake Cold Pursuit, starring Neeson and son!) director Hans Petter Moland reunites with that film’s star, Stellan Skarsgård, for OUT STEALING HORSES (Magnolia), an introspective adaptation of Per Peterson’s novel about a man in his ‘60s named Trond, who is reflecting on events from his childhood, including his relationship with his father and the mother of three who lived next door. Skarsgard is great as usual, but the film spends so much time in the past, and it starts to jump around between flashback time periods so much that I can only wish you luck that you can keep up with what is going on with all the characters. It’s pretty obvious this is based on a (presumably) beloved book – hey, it’s been translated into 50 languages! -- and I’m guessing that it probably worked better in that format, since I’m not sure those who haven’t read it will get much out of this film. I really don’t have much more to say about the film except that it looks absolutely gorgeous, really taking advantage of its setting, but it just didn’t do much for me generally.

Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra’s WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (Samuel Goldwyn Films) may have the most apt title for a movie this week, because it feels like for a good long time, you are indeed waiting for those much-directed “barbarians.”   Adapted by J.M. Coetzee from his own novel (which may or may not be beloved) the film stars Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as “The Magistrate,” who is in charge of a remote outpost in the Gobi Desert. He begins to question his loyalty to the British empire when the visiting Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp) conducts a series of torturous investigations on the detainees. Robert Pattinson also stars in a film that’s very different from Guerra’s previous films, Embrace of the Serpent and Birds of Passage, but mainly because it’s his first film in English.

The Barbarians in the title are the Mongolians threatening the British soldiers who treat them horribly while trying to expand their empire. Due to the sentencing, the movie may remind you of films like Beau Geste or even Lawrence of Arabia without really being as good as either.Rylance’s character is somewhat of a milquetoast, at least compared to the cold and heartless torturer played by Depp, but it’s obvious almost from the beginning that the rebellious nature of Rylance’s Magistrate is going to come back to hurt him, and it does.

There is no question that Rylance gives a great performance, and Depp isn’t terrible, but it takes quite some time for the story to really get to any place that’s particularly interesting. With such a great setting and characters, I was hoping for something just a little more interesting, and in many ways, it reminds me of Scorsese’s Silence where there’s a lot of interesting ideas and gorgeous images, but it just doesn’t come together in the end…. And it does indeed just end.

Let’s get to some docs…

Scott Crawford’s doc CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ‘N ROLL MAGAZINE (Greenwich) looks at the venerable music mag of the ‘70s and ‘80s that offered an alternative to Rolling Stone with its look at punk, metal and non-conformist rock that fit with the nature of its staff, including the great Lester Bangs.

I’ve been looking forward to this doc for quite some time, because while I read Rolling Stone religiously, as well as Spin,every once in a while, some band or musician I liked would be on the cover of Creem Magazine, and I’d buy it. Granted, this was the mid-to-late ‘80s when the magazine was already not as cool, as it used to be but this doc, produced by founder Barry Kramer’s son JJ Kramer does a great job telling the story of how the magazine, originally based in Michigan, managed to shake up the mainstream music scene with its snarky sense of humor.

I was hoping to get more out of the doc, but I did like the music Crawford uses to tell the story of Creem, and there’s some seriously great talking heads along with it, including Thurston Moore, Michael Stipe, Chad Smith, Cameron Crowe, Joan Jett and more.  Maybe not the best music doc I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely very informative and recommended if you want to know more about music history.

The Russian hockey doc, RED PENGUINS (Universal Home), Gabe Polsky’s follow-up to his 2014 doc Red Army, covers how in the early ‘90s, the Pittsburgh Penguins decided to buy the Russian Army hockey team and how the new owners used marketing to make the Moscow Penguins world-famous – they even appeared in the ‘90s action film Sudden Death – before problems with the Russian MAFIA brought it all crashing down. Also a good doc, maybe not as solid as Red Army but Polsky once again has a lot of great characters to keep the movie entertaining, such as marketer Steven Warshaw and all the Russians who always seem to know more than they’re saying. If you’re a hockey fan, particularly this era in the ‘90s, you might enjoy Red Penguins.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Don Hahn’s documentary HOWARD (Disney+) about the late lyricist Howard Ashman, who wrote the words for many of the popular Disney animated films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin before dying of AIDS in 1991. I really wanted to see this movie because Hahn’s other documentaries have all been fantastic, but I got no response

I didn’t have a chance to watch Marion Johnson and Anne Flatté’s doc, River City Drumbeat, which will be available via Virtual Cinema this Friday, including the Maysles Documentary Center in New York. It follows Edwar “Nardie” White who has devoted his life to the African-American drum corps he co-founded in Louisville, Kentucky thirty years ago, as a new person, Albert Shumake, has to take up the mantle and lead the corps.

The Australian horror film BLACK WATER: ABYSS (Screen Media) is directed by Andrew Traucki and written by John Ridley -- not the John Ridley you probably know who actually can write -- but it deals with a group of friends facing a killer crocodile in the caves of Northern Australia. I normally would love this kind of movie, but this feels a lot like the type of schlock you might see on Syfy but it’s not because the writing or cast are particularly bad, just that it seems like something we’ve seen so many times before from Crawl to 47 Meters Down and its sequel that it doesn’t feel like this has much to offer. The problem is that it spends so much time making it seem like the water itself is dangerous to anyone who goes in it, but we always know that there’s a crocodile involved. Traucki goes so over-the-top trying to make this terrifying but there’s only so serious you can take a movie where people start shouting “Victor!” over and over while Victor is flailing around in the water being threatened by a crocodile we never really see particularly clearly. In other words, you get what you pay for on this one, so try not to pay too much.

After opening in select drive-ins last Friday, Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow (NEON) will be available digitally and On Demand this Friday. If you missed it, I reviewed it last week. It was okay. Also, Sony Classics is returning to theaters, specifically with Guiseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, which got a protracted release due to COVID but will now open up in some of the movie theaters that have reopened.

Then there’s all the stuff I didn’t get around to seeing…. And hopefully, I didn’t miss something good in favor of some of the mediocre movies above… (sigh)

As far as horror and genre, there’s Daniel Tucker’s Nothing but The Blood (Gravitas Ventures) about a journalist sent to investigate a controversial church. Rudolph Herzog’s How to Fake a War (Vertical Entertainment) stars Jay Pharaoh as a rock star who’s worried his charity concert might fail if peace breaks out in the Eastern European country where it’s taking place. 1091 is releasing the supernatural thriller Star Light, starring Scout Taylor-Compton from the Halloweenremake, and The Stand: How One Gesture Shook the World, which is actually not about the Stephen King novel but is in fact, Tom Ratcliffe and Becky Paige’s doc about Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ decision to raise their fist in solidarity at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, only to receive major fallout for the gesture. (Kind of wish I had time to see that one, actually.)

Uncork’d is releasing Paydirt and Limbo while Midnight Releasing is putting out Invasion Earth this week. All of these could be grand, but I just didn’t have the time to find out. Sorry.

Metrograph’s new Live Screenings series will continue this week with Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway’s Feed (1992) running through Friday along with a 10th anniversary screening of the Bill Withers’ doc Still Bill. Friday will begin the theater’s Satoshi Kon Retrospective, starting with Perfect Blue on Friday and then the equally-classic Millennium Actress starting next Monday.

Available via Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema is Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary A THOUSAND CUTS, that takes a look at the war between the Philippine government and the media after Filipino journalist Maria Ressa receives a guilty verdict in her trial. Ressa’s news site “Rappler” was investigating the government-sanctioned drug war against the country’s impoverished actors that had left the streets filled with bodies after Rodrigo Duterte is elected President in 2016.

Film Movement’s Virtual Cinema will be screening Peruvian filmmaker Melina León’s Song Without a Name about an indigenous Andean woman whose baby is taken from her.

Premiering on Netflix this week is the teen comedy Work It while Amazon Prime has the Scottish coming-of-age comedy Boyz in the Wood and Showtime has something called The Good Lord Bird.  All great I’m sure but this is what happens when you dump so much stuff onto the same effin’ weekend.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest

[i-breathe-therefore-i-read]

Sea Breeze series by Abbi Glines

Cage York has to choose between a love of the game and a love of the girl in this sultry Sea Breeze novel from New York Times bestselling author Abbi Glines. Cage York finally has everything he ever wanted. And Eva is at the very top of that list—the perfect girl with a temper as hot as her fabulously flawless body. But for Cage, a baseball scholarship has always been a close second. So when Cage finally gets his chance, he and Eva must endure a long distance relationship—and all the dangerous temptations that come with it. Temptations that former bad boy Cage York may not be able to escape. Then after receiving some illicit photos that show Cage has been behaving badly—very badly—Eva finds solace in the comforting arms of her insanely attractive neighbor Jeremy, who vows that he will take care of Eva in ways Cage never could. It’s an offer that may be too good for Eva to turn down. Torn between his baseball dream and the girl of this dreams, Cage must prove he’s worthy of Eva’s love, or risk losing her to Jeremy forever.

*What I thought: 3.5 out of 5 stars

read: 04/17

I was kinda surprised that they were going to get another story when I heard about it years ago because I thought they got their happy ended. I was interested to see what kind of drama unfolded. In all honesty it seemed a little far fetched that someone would go to those extremes to cause problems. They’re probably people like that and I don’t know about them because I’m not around shitty people like that.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I liked that it was a quick read. I flew through it like nobody’s business. Though I did think it was a good addition to their story, I had major eye rolls going on. All this talk about him being resentful if she said to stay, she was acting all resentful. What the hell do you want girl?!? Geez. Don’t tell someone to do something to hold against them later. I hated that.

After all said and done, I’m glad everything worked out. Poor Eva had a lot to deal with and I’d probably would have reacted the same way. Overall, I thought it was a sweet ending. 

Jason is sick of living in his rock star brother’s shadow. So when he ships off to Sea Breeze, Alabama, he’s looking for a much deserved escape and a chance to blow off some envious steam. Falling for the local bad girl was definitely not the plan. But as the new duo enjoys some naughty fun in the Alabama sun, Jason learns that even though Jax is the musician in the family, he’s not the only brother who can rock someone’s world.

*What I thought: 4 out of 5 stars

read: 04/17

What I liked:

It was very steamy throughout. 

I liked Jess knew what she wanted and went for it. She doesn’t hold back and she’s not shy. lol. 

I liked that this involved Jason, Jax’s brother. I liked him in Just for Now and was excited to see more of him. He was an idiot sometimes though lol.

What Jess did to help her mom out. Honorable in my eyes.

Jason was still a good person despite his horrible evil mother. 

Loved how they first met. 

Overall I liked this and thought they were a great couple. A very quick and fun book to read.

Innocence was never meant for the addictive… Addiction was something Krit Corbin accepted as part of his nature a long time ago. He decided to embrace it and flip his finger at the rules. Women had always been the number one thing on his list of addictions. He couldn’t get enough. Being the lead singer in a rock band had only made access to his favorite addiction that much easier. Being alone was the only thing Blythe Denton understood. The small town minister’s family that raised her hadn’t accepted her as their own. The minister’s wife had always made sure Blythe understood just how unworthy she was of love. When Blythe is sent away to college and given a chance to finally be free of living as an unwanted burden, she looks forward to having peace in her life. Being alone isn’t something that bothers her. She escapes reality in the stories she writes. However, the ridiculously sexy tattooed guy who keeps throwing parties in the apartment above hers is driving her crazy. For starters, he doesn’t treat her like she would expect a guy with a different woman always hanging on his arm to treat someone as uninteresting as her. She looks nothing like the gorgeous women she sees parading in and out of his apartment, but for some strange reason he keeps showing up at her door. During a party at his apartment, Krit’s new neighbor comes to the door with her long brown hair pulled up in a messy knot and a pair of glasses perched on her cute little nose. She wants him to turn down the music, but he convinces her to stay. Krit Corbin may have just found his biggest addiction yet. And Blythe Denton realizes too late that she’s finally been claimed.

*What I thought: 4 out of 5 stars

read: 04/17

Krit is a womanizer rock god until Blythe moves in. I didn’t like how he treated the woman even though they knew what to expect, it almost seemed wrong to read. I’m just glad he changed his tune after a while. Blythe, I felt so bad for. That’s something nobody should go through. It made her so naive to the world and thought the worst in herself. I just wanted to hug her sometimes. 

I liked how gradually they become more. Krit was just adorable around her and Blythe saw the best in Krit when no one else did. They honestly were like the perfect match. Can I say how awesome Trisha was? She wasn’t going to let anyone mess with her brother.

Another good book. I go through these books like nobody’s business. 

Six years ago, Dewayne Falco’s life changed. He lost someone he never expected to lose. Resigned to punish himself for something he felt he could have prevented, he goes through life without getting too close to anyone. What he didn’t expect was for the girl across the street to move back home and remind him of what they both lost: Dewayne’s younger brother Dustin. However, when a miniature version of Dustin opens the door to greet him, Dewayne realizes he might not have lost everything after all. Sienna Roy loved Dustin Falco most of her life. He was the boy next door, the high school basketball star and her best friend. But when his life was cut short, she realized he left a part of himself behind. Now, she’s back in Sea Breeze, thankful to have a home for her and Dustin’s son, but not sure if she can ever forgive the people across the street who abandoned her when she needed them the most — The Falcos. Betrayal, lies, and forbidden attraction might end Dewayne and Sienna’s story before it’s even begun.

*What I thought: 4 out of 5 stars

read: 04/17

Sienna was very naive. There was so many hints that she didn’t pick up that Dustin was a douche. I mean it sucks what happened to him but still she should have figured it out or kicked him to the curb. I felt bad for her. Her parents sucked big time, she was alone dealing with everything, and she was mourning still. But that didn’t stop her being an awesome mom. 

It was nice to see what Dewayne was thinking. I always found him interesting and funny in the past books and was glad he finally got his story and happy ending. He’s was such a tough guy but became mush whenever Sienna was around. It was so sweet. 

Overall, I liked it. It was such a good book and that ending made me tear up. 

The backstory that fans have been clamoring for—how Rock and Trisha fell in love—is the final installment in the Sea Breeze series from New York Times bestselling author Abbi Glines. And don’t miss the sizzling Epilogue, where Abbi wraps up all the Sea Breeze couples’ stories! Trisha Corbin always knew how to hide a bruise. With her momma’s boyfriends unable to keep their hands off of her, she had no choice. And as long as it meant the guys wouldn’t go near her little brother, Krit, it was worth it. But her days of dreaming that Prince Charming would ever come rescue her are far, far in the past. Rock Taylor always had a plan. Through football, he would rise above the life he was born into. A full ride to play for a major college team was within his reach—assuming he didn’t let anything get in his way. But scoring a date with the hottest girl in Sea Breeze was proving harder than expected. Trisha Corbin was every man’s walking fantasy, and she wouldn’t even glance his way. When Rock finally does get Trisha in his truck, it isn’t for a date. It’s because he picks her up on the side of the road, beaten and bruised and walking to the local hospital. Before Rock knows it, football is no longer his life. Trisha Corbin is. And he’ll do anything to save her. And keep her. In addition to Rock and Trisha’s love story, this special novel contains the wrap-up stories of all your favorite Sea Breeze couples: Sadie and Jax, Marcus and Low, Cage and Eva, Preston and Amanda, Jess and Jason, Krit and Blythe, and Dewayne and Sienna.

*What I thought: 3.5 stars out of 5 stars

read: 04/17

I thought it was an okay book. I thought it was going to be more on Rock and Trisha but they got such a small portion. I loved how they were with the siblings of Preston’s that they adopted. They were so sweet together. I did like it showed more of Trisha and Krit’s younger days and the crappy stuff they had to deal with. My issue was how unbelievable it was during their high school days. I find it hard to believe that every girl wants to get with boys of the books because back in my highschool days, boys didn’t look and act like the boys did in this book. lol

While I liked that every couple got an epilogue, it bothered me also. I’m sorry but sex does not fix fights or insecurities. And almost everyone that had some issues that was solved by sex. Deep sigh. Besides that, I liked that it showed 10 years in the future with everyone and their kids. They breed like a bunch of rabbits. lol. I also liked that it showed Bliss (Cage and Eva’s daughter) and her meeting Nate Finlay (Rush and Blaire’s son). I’m sure that will be an interesting book.

*On a side note- She needs a better editor. I understand typos and mistakes happen but in almost every book I read was something that needed corrected. My biggest issue was inconsistency. For example in one book: the character was putting on his shirt while talking then a few sentences later, he was putting on the same damn shirt. Like??? He came in with one and now he’s layering. lol

[chojin-cu-chulain]

Return to the Sea

My name is Carl Richardson, I work as a reporter for a magazine called Paranormal Pacific one of those weird stuff magazines you see sometimes at local stores around north California, and southern Oregon.

Most of the time I just do the typical bigfoot, and UFO sightings but my last assignment is something that I couldn’t possibly have imagined. but I must let everyone know now before it’s too late.

It started when I went to a small town in north California called Bayside city. It was one of those towns you would probably drive by on your way from say San Francisco to Portland. The kind of town that you would think you’d see the entirety of while driving past it.

I was there because there were stories about a ghost of a young woman named Jennifer Hanniver. Jennifer was a young woman mysteriously disappeared sometime in either the late 50’s or early 60’s.

Everyone had theories ranging from her accidentally falling off a cliff to somebody murdering her and dumping her body in the ocean.

But one thing everyone agreed with was that sometimes at night they would see her at night standing on the ocean like it was solid land calling out for people to come join her.

I wasn’t sure if it was true or not but hey a paycheck’s a paycheck, so I checked into a local hotel called the Mermaid’s Tail and rented a room from the lady who was working as the concierge.

That night I waited all night at the beach waiting to see if I could see Hanniver’s ghost, but it was getting to the point where I was more worried about being mistaken for some creepy weirdo and arrested than seeing some dead girl.

Just then when I was about to give up, I saw a faint figure out in the ocean. Sure, enough there was a woman walking on the ocean. I could barely see or hear her she was so far, but I remember hearing a faint mournful cry of “Come, please come”.

I found what I was looking for, I zoomed in with my camera, and took a picture of her. It wasn’t very clear because of how far she was but it was something.

I emailed the picture to Bruce my editor, and he replied with an email with a bunch of laughing emojis and the words “Are your insane man, nobody’s going to buy that. It’s probably just some crazy lady swimming in the ocean”.

I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I was going to rent a boat and ride out to where I thought I saw her. That was until I heard a weather report on the radio: “The national weather service has reported an unusual fog front forming in the north California, and southern Oregon areas. The event is expected to last until tommorow morning”.

“Well that’s just peachy” I thought out loud. I’ll have to try again tomorrow night. I decided to just screw it, and stay in my hotel to watch tv, and occasionally go out to eat. I thought it was going to be a boring day until night came.

It started when the fog came in. It looked green, and this is going to sound crazy, but I swear it was glowing on and off again in some spots. And that smell I don’t what it was raw sewage, rotten flesh I don’t know, and frankly I don’t want to.

I wasn’t the only one to notice the fog. A bunch of people like a cop, some homeless guy, and a bunch of other people came out to see it. I overheard some guy say, “What do you think that is Bob?” “Beats the hell out of me Jim” was all the other guy could say.

Eventually somebody got the idea to walk into the fog, and everyone started hearing the man scream in agony. Another person went in to rescue them but when they touched the fog. Oh god I don’t thing I’ll ever forget it.

It looked like they were melting into green slime. and the slime started oozing towards the fog. I was taking pictures while this was going on when the police officer ordered everyone to run back inside and close their doors. and windows.

That night I just looked at the fog on the ground outside my window thankful to whatever higher power that I had gotten a second story room. I waited all night by the radio hoping the fog would pass but all the radio said was “Residents are advised to stay inside until the fog event has passed, and authorities can find an explanation for the mysterious deaths that have occurred”.

Eventually I got tired, and fell asleep but as I did I swear I saw the fog climbing up to my window, and I heard that same fain mournful “Come, Please come, so lonely” only now it wasn’t just the girl’s voice it sound like some weird mishmash of other people including I swear some of the voices from the crowd that saw the fog.

That night I had a dream it seemed normal I got up, I went to work, I went home. But when I got home, I saw what looked like the girl from the ocean, she said “Hi honey how was work?” I replied “Oh you know same old same old” but then I accidentally cut my hand, and when I went to clean the blood, I realized it wasn’t blood, it was the green slime from the fog.

Before I could scream, I looked at the woman, and she was melting into green slime, and I looked back at myself, and realized I was melting into green slime. I ran out the door and realized everyone in town was melting but acting like nothing was wrong.

I also noticed my legs were melded to the ground, and it looked like everything not just me, and the townsfolk but seemingly the entire world was this giant blob like creature.

I woke up screaming my lungs out but when I looked, I was still in my hotel room, and me, and everything else was normal. But before I could breathe a sigh of relief a SWAT team busted through my door and took me.

When they removed the bag from my head some G-man looking guy started asking me some questions. The usual: Who I was, what I did, what I saw. I told him everything and said, “It doesn’t matter if I tell anyone they’ll just think I made it up anyway”.

The man thought it over and said “All right you’re free to go. But we’re confiscating your camera, and pictures, and any other evidence you have.”

After they let me go, I later found out that a third of the town had disappeared. The people left over blamed the local power plants, and chemical companies believing the fog was the result of chemicals being dumped into the ocean, and an environmentalist group helped the townsfolk launch a class action lawsuit.

I later did some research of my own, and I found out that at some point the government sent a satellite called “Iris” to find evidence of intelligent life in the universe but at some point they believed it fell into the ocean on the way back, and haven’t found it since.

The reason I brought this up is one of the reasons for the Iris mission was because some scientists believe that life originated in space and came to Earth in meteorites.

This is going to sound crazy, but I have a theory of my own now. We think that when life started out, it was trillions of small things, but what if it was one big thing. a giant creature made from at least trillions of the same cell clumped together.

But something happened to it, and it shattered, and its cells broke off, and mutated into the bacteria that evolved into life on Earth.

And somehow someway that creature found out about Earth, and us. And now this thing wants to put itself back together again.

Recently my mom, and my sister were on vactation somewhere in Oregon, and they sent me pictures of rock formations they took.

At first it seemed like nothing, but one picture seemed to show a weird looking rock formation way back where it was hard to see.

[thisdaynews]

The Iowa Town Where Marianne Williamson Is Already President

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-iowa-town-where-marianne-williamson-is-already-president/

The Iowa Town Where Marianne Williamson Is Already President

Photos by KC McGinnis for Politico Magazine

Adam Wren is a contributing editor atPolitico MagazineandIndianapolis Monthly.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa—Inside the Raj, an idyllic French country-style spa and resort nestled among cornfields in southeastern Iowa, I asked for the gemstone light therapy, which promised to deluge me with inner peace, expand my consciousness and increase my energy.

But they told me I wasn’t ready. So I had to settle for the tongue reading and pulse assessment. Several minutes into having a bald and shoeless Australian stranger peering at my papillae, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

I had traveled to Fairfield and nearby Maharishi Vedic City to try to understand the appeal of Marianne Williamson, a spiritual guru running for president. She’s been an object of fascination with the political pundit class, often as the butt of their snarky tweets, but also because her appearances attract hundreds on the campaign trail and thousands on the lecture circuit. She’s been a best-selling author for more than 20years and—not unlike the current president—has a powerful grassroots appeal in precincts far from the knowing zip codes of Washington and New York.

On Thursday, less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, Williamson laid off her entire staff but didn’t suspend her campaign. “The point of my candidacy has been to tell the heart’s truth and that does not cost money,” she wrote. There are a few places in the country where her heart’s truth resonates more than others. If you look at the highest densities of Williamson donors around the U.S.—as depicted in an August analysis by theNew York Times—most fall in the places you might expect: Northern California, Hawaii and seekers’ capitals like Sedona, Arizona. But one is right in the heartland—in fact within a short drive of the gabled white farmhouse made famous inAmerican Gothic.

In these neighboring southeast Iowa burgs of Vedic City and Fairfield—farming communities, dotted by a Family Video, a Pizza King and a Tractor Supply store—Williamson might as well already be president. Long before she declared her 2020 candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Williamson had been cultivating this part of Iowa, holding a number of events for herself-help business—drawing visitors to local haunts such as Revelations, a quirky cafe that prominently sells her books, and staying at the Raj, the resort owned by Williamson’s friends and donors Rogers and Candace Badgett. She campaigned here seven times in 2019—nearly a quarter of the town’s 29 presidential campaign stops, according to theDes Moines Registercandidate tracker.

Head northwest of the Fairfield town square a few blocks, past Everybody’s Whole Foods store, stocked with the finest foods from America’s first all-organic city, and you’ll begin to find out why this place has seen so much Williamson. This is the home of Maharishi International University, a school founded in 1974 by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a famous neo-Hindu practitioner and guru to the Beach Boys and the Beatles. On the edge of campus, the Maharishi Tower of Invincibility towers above the horizon. I would later learn it’s a sign of “perfect inner coherence and integration,” making the space around it “impermeable to disorderly outside influences,” according to MaharishiTower.org.

The tower guards two giant domes that hover above the flat Midwestern earth like golden, grounded flying saucers. Inside these two domes, twice a day, nearly 1,000 locals gather—women in one, men in the other—to take part in transcendental meditation, a key part of Maharishi’s teachings, and yogic flying, a kind of cross-legged hopping that practitioners say can mimic flying. It’s a practice they believe makes the world a more peaceful place. Adherents say that if they can get the square root of 1 percent of the U.S. population—about 1,900 people—here meditating simultaneously, their brain waves can materially improve the world and elevate humankind’s collective consciousness, staving off wars, recessions and, according to a recent dissertation published by a doctoral candidate at the university, car accidents.

“When people will practice meditation together in a large enough group, it has an effect of calming the atmosphere for an extended distance,” Ed Malloy, Fairfield’s nine-term Democratic mayor, told me on a recent visit.

“It’s very real,” said Fred Travis, a professor and chairman of the Department of Maharishi Vedic Science.

Of the nearly dozen residents I spoke with on my trip—from Malloy to a local café owner—all seemed to know Williamson and support her candidacy (though Sen. Bernie Sanders and, given her peacenik platform, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard drew some support, too). And, as remote as these followers of the late Maharishi might seem from in-the-know politics, they are also more relevant than you might think: The people of Jefferson County are classic Obama-Trump voters—Obama won the county by 16 points in 2012, but it flipped for Trump by half a point in 2016.

In September, on the International Day of Peace, Williamson spoke to a crowd gathered here at a local events center. “How insane is it that we have one day that we dedicate to peace?” She asked the audience. “International Day of Peace. One day. So much we could say that 364 days of the year seem pretty much dedicated to war.”

For the next hour or so, she outlined her vision for the country, before leading the audience in a 10-minute guided meditation. “As each of us, in our own hearts, in our own way, look to the creative force from whence peace comes, now we gather in that deeper place, in that perfect place, that place within the human heart, deep within the human psyche, we enter there. We enter there. We enter there.”

The crowd sat in silence.

***

If you build it, they willOm.That was more or less the sentiment that led Rogers and Candace Badgett in the early 1990s to build—in the middle of cornfields—a $7 million, 36,000-square-foot spa known as the Raj, a health retreatdedicated to Ayurvedic, an Indian school of alternative medicine advanced by the Maharishi. (“People don’t useom”in transcendental meditation,” Candace would later tell me, when I ventured the comparison betweenField of Dreamsand the Raj. “It’s a different type of meditation.”)

The Raj is in Maharishi Vedic City, a few miles north of Fairfield and the university. Vedic City, which Oprah Winfrey once called “America’s most unusual town,” follows “natural law”: It’s illegal there to sell nonorganic food and all the buildings face east—in accordance with a spiritual school of architecture believed to promote health and prosperity—and are topped by a golden architectural flourish called a kalash, better connecting residents to heaven. Incorporated as a city on July 25, 2001, Vedic City—named for the Sanskrit word “veda,” meaning life—is more or less the Raj and a collection of houses. Badgett is the town’s mayor.

As I pulled up to the hotel in the middle of seemingly nowhere, I found a half-dozen luxury cars parked out front. As I would later discover, the resort only accepts 15 guests at a time; the enhanced day spa experience is $595 a day, for up to 21 days. It is almost always full.

Inside, as I waited for Rogers and Candace, I perused a menu of spa treatments. My eyes settled upon something called Maharishi Light Therapy with Gems. For $120, I could get the Regular Beamer ($250 for the Big Beamer), a treatment which promised “higher states of consciousness.” After a long time on the campaign trail, it sounded nice, whatever it was. (I would later learn the treatment essentially sends light beams into your body through gems. Practitioners believe the stone’s crystalline molecular structure gives the light a restorative effect. The Big Beamer, by the way, “utilizes 12 times the number of gemstones for a more amplified and therapeutic effect.”)

Rogers, born in Western Kentucky, made his money in coal and oil investments and helped his family acquire the Boston Red Sox in the 1980s before moving here in the 1990s to deepen his transcendental meditation practice and be close to the university. In Iowa, he met Candace, a TM practitioner who grew up in Cleveland. (Their experience is not uncommon, I would learn. Everyone in Fairfield and Vedic City seems to come from somewhere else, drawn by the towns’ peaceful ethos: There are people from all 50 states here, and some 80 different countries. Filmmaker David Lynch, a TM devotee, is a town fixture, having established a master’s in film program at the university.)

Rogers and Candace took me into the parlor, the same room where they’ve entertained Williamson during her stays. The couple befriended Williamson years ago. The place has become something of a home away from home for the candidate, the Badgetts said. After her 2014 failed California congressional campaign, Williamson accepted an invitation from Candace to decompress here. Which treatments did Williamson prefer? We don’t have to go there,” Candace replied. “That’s kind of her private life.”

Over the next hour, the Badgetts sang the praises of Williamson. “I think they misunderstand her brilliance and her practicality because she talks about love, and love seems very kind of abstract,” Candace said. “Marianne’s understanding of love is much more profound than what people take it to be, because she’s just talking about an underlying field of intelligence in reality, and you come back to physics … that there is an underlying field of intelligence that gives rise to matter. … She understands the whole concept of collective consciousness, and that you need to raise collective consciousness to address issues.”

I kept the conversation more or less on politics and asked about Williamson’s lack of experience in most policy areas. The Badgetts informed me that transcendental meditation is more of a policy tool than you’d think:It has lessened conflict in war zones. From 1988 to 1990, 8,000 people known as the TM-Sidhas practiced meditation in the Middle East. Believers say this group was responsible for achieving a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the end of the Cold War and, in Mozambique alone, a “12.4% economic growth rate, inflation reducing from 70% to 2% and a liquidation of the national debt,” according to WorldPeaceGroup.org. “The biggest problem is that people probably think it’s a cult or probably New Agey,” Candace told me. “I don’t think people generally appreciate the way it’s evidence-based.”

Later, in the all-organic, non-GMO vegetarian dining room downstairs, I met with Travis, the Maharishi University professor and director of its Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition. He wanted me to know that what I had just heard from the Badgetts wasn’t bunk. He mentioned that one doctoral candidate at the college recently examined the number of car accidents surrounding Fairfield and found that accidents increased the farther you went from the city. “People here are aware that we don’t live in a classical world,” Travis told me over a meal of vegetarian lasagna, broccoli and turnips. “We live in a quantum world.”

The claim to be able to promulgate peace and safety through meditation is one of Williamson and Fairfield’s less controversial beliefs. Williamson has questioned mandatory vaccines. She has written that “sickness is an illusion and does not exist” and that “cancer and AIDS and other physical illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream.” None of this is “evidence-based” or backed by science.

Those pseudoscientific beliefs seem to be shared, in part, by residents of Fairfield. Immunization data from the Iowa Department of Public Health from 2013-2014 found that Maharishi School, the town’s K-12 school, had state’s the lowest vaccination rate, with only 47 percent of the school’s 178 students being vaccinated. Jefferson County had the state’s second-highest rate of vaccination exemptions that year, according to theDes Moines Register.

There is also no credible scientific evidence that sending light through gemstones can cure the body.

In my conversation with the Badgetts at the Raj, I asked what would happen to me if I purchased the gem therapy.

“Different people have different reactions,” Rogers told me.

Should I give it a try right now? I asked Candace.

“I don’t think so,” she said. It needed to be done with a larger program, she told me. I wasn’t ready. Instead, I got the tongue checkup.

I also underwent an Ayurveda Pulse Assessment, which, according to the Raj website, is a diagnostic exam in which an “expert can feel the level of imbalance in the body, even before specific symptoms of imbalance become manifest.”

“That’s your unique music,” Mark Toomey, an Australian with a doctorate in physiology from Maharishi University, told me after pressing on my radial artery and instructing me to close my eyes. I passed both diagnostics, but Toomey said he could tell I needed to get more rest. “Your pulse feels a bit tired to me, a bit rundown. Are you tired?” The campaign trail didn’t seem to be wearing well on me, he said.

Back at Everybody’s, in Fairfield, Mayor Malloy told me he goes to the Raj for three to five days a year as a matter of preventative health. He wears a ruby ring. (“It’s kind of related to more planetary influences,” he tells me.) He told me Williamson’s policies, including her plan fora new federal Department of Peace, are all built on these Vedic beliefs.

“We’ve had conversations about [mass meditation] as a technology,” Malloy said. He remembers talking with Williamson about the Department of Peace a decade ago. According to her website, Williamson’s new Cabinet agency would “dramatically ramp up the use of proven powers of peace-building, including dialogue, mediation, conflict resolution, economic and social development, restorative justice, public health approaches to violence prevention, trauma-informed systems of care, social and emotional learning in schools, and many others.”

Malloy didn’t strike me as awoo wookind of guy. He moved here from Long Island, New York, 18 years ago. He’s the CEO of fuel brokerage company that has operations in 10 Midwestern states. In 2016, he supported Hillary Clinton. This time around, he told me, Williamson’s ideas weren’t getting the kind of fair media coverage he thinks they deserve.

“All of her political ideas are well-formulated,” Malloy said. “These are things that Marianne has thought through for years. And I understand that mainstream folks listen to them and find them a little bit off-center, outside what they would normally think or say, but there is no debating, and she has thought about these things. They’re not whimsical ideas.”

We talked about the town’s economic surge. Fairfield saw a 4 percent population spike between 2010 and 2015, according to a 2016Des Moines Registerreport, and gained some 700 new jobs in that same time period, even as other rural parts of the state were hollowed out. I asked him whether he thought the meditation and the city’s way of life were responsible for its relative economic success. “When people are dedicated to developing their own growth and potential, there’s a lot of creative dynamism that comes out of that,” Malloy told me. “And the partnerships that are made in that essential relationship of creative dynamism gives rise to the entrepreneurship that you’ve seen here, to the expressions of art. That has the effect whether you’re practicing meditation or not.”

I mentioned the traffic accident study Travis had told me about. That was nothing compared to the other thing that happened, Malloy said.

“Did he tell you about what happened in the Washington, D.C., study?”

***

In the summer of 1993,4,000 practitioners of transcendental meditation descended on Washington with what seemed like a far-fetched aim: lower the district’s crime rate. They set up their two-month experiment in places such as a conference room at the Washington Hilton and at Gallaudet University. They had tried this with a smaller group for a period of 10 years, but it didn’t work. In fact, until 1991, the national office of transcendental meditation had been in Washington, but the Maharishi had grown irritated with the capital’s seeming intransigence to the powers of transcendental meditation; it had worked in war zones, why couldn’t it work in the District of Columbia?

“I would not advise anyone to stay in the pool of mud,” the Maharishi said in defeat.

Go west, the Maharishi told his disciples. And so the national TM headquarters decamped from Washington to Fairfield.

But in 1993, a group of adherents tried to rescue the nation’s capital again. “It would almost be irresponsible if we didn’t bring this knowledge to the leaders of Washington,” Kamal Sunev, a spokesman for the Citizens for a Crime-Free D.C., a TM nonprofit, told theWashington Postat the time.

Malloy was there, and so were the Badgetts. They meditated for up to four hours a day. “We were going to lower crime,” Rogers said. “In the summer. In Washington, D.C.”

The city’spolice chief at the time, Fred Thomas, said the only thing that would stem crime in the summer was a blizzard. But the adherents, undeterred, believed. And so they meditated.

Under the direction of John Hagelin of Maharishi International University, they spent $4.2 million on the program. “This may be the most far-out project we have endorsed, but it may be the most important,” Haeglin told theNew York Times.

Four weeks in, violent crime dropped by 23.3 percent. In news accounts from the time, the Police Department wouldn’t comment on the statistical drop. One Washington investigator raised an eyebrow at the findings, though: “There has been outstanding work by the officers and leaders of the patrol districts,” Winston Robinson, a commander of the 7th District, told the Post. “I’m not kicking meditation. Tell them to keep on meditating. Crime doesn’t stop.”

A 1999 peer-reviewed paper in the journal Social Indicators Research explored the phenomenon, showing that the drop couldn’t be attributed to police staffing. TM adherents and experts chalk it up to something called “super radiance,” in which the positive vibes from those meditating altered the nearby field of consciousness. As a bonus, researchers of transcendental meditation say, then-President Bill Clinton’s approval rating increased, while hospital trauma cases and accidental deaths decreased—all thanks to the meditating, they argue. But one of the paper’s authors compared crimes that occurred to crimes that might have occurred based on a time-series analysis, a suspect methodology.

“You raise the whole consciousness, the consciousness is going through the galaxy, every word coming through your mouth is traveling through the galaxy,” Mila Urana, a homemaker from Fort Salonga, New York, who did a two-week TM shift, told theTimes. “Everything is positive.”

There was a moment, earlier in the campaign, when America—or at least some of America—seemed readyto take a Williamson campaign seriously, envisioning her as a kind of spiritual Trump slayer who could marshal our better angels and point us toward a “politics of love.” Her campaign launched crystal memes and earned its share of mocking coverage. America is a complex place, not least because a town like Fairfield—with its picturesque white gazebo, town square and nine-term Democratic mayors—can coexist with even the most outré beliefs and candidates.

***

The last person I met in Fairfieldwas Betsy Howland, the owner of Revelations, the coffee shop and New-Agey bookstore where Williamson’s books are prominently displayed just off the town square.

Whenever Williamson is in Fairfield, she makes a stop at Revelations. A couple of years ago, Williamson had a secret to share with Howland: “I think I’m going to run for president,” she whispered across the register.

Howland’s three daughters have taken Williamson’s course in miracles offered online. A Methodist, Howland moved here in 1998, leaving her husband, who had the “old beliefs” and didn’t meditate. Before the move,she had run a department store in Sidney, New York, an old Montgomery Ward that, thanks in part to her meditation she said, set sales records. But one day, she asked herself:What’s the most important thing I could do for the world?She decided it was to sell everything and move to Fairfield to contribute to the group coherence and meditation program. Now, between shifts at the store, she meditates at 5 p.m. and 6 a.m.

“I see her vision,” she told me of Williamson. “That’s what we need.” She’s given somewhere around $1,000 to the candidate. “Every time she asks, I send some.” She caucused for Bernie Sanders in 2016. “I think they’d make a good team” in 2020, she told me.

“A lot of the anger and hate and partisanship comes from stresses in the system. And if nothing more, meditation, in my case TM, it helps relieve those stresses.”

After we talked for a while, I told her I had just one more question. Did she think Williamson was unfairly criticized in September when she suggested individuals could use the power of their minds to turn away Hurricane Dorian? “The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas … may all be in our prayers now,” Williamson tweeted on September 4. “Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

Minutes later the account deleted the tweet. Her team later said “it was a metaphor.”

In the pregnant pause between my question and her answer, Howland shot me a stern but quizzical look.

“You don’t think you can?”

Read More

[thejustinmarshall]

One-Star Amazon.com Reviews Of Moby Dick, As Free Verse Poetry

Lots of people love Moby Dick, which has long been considered a classic of American literature and one of the best adventure books of all time. But lots of people do not love Moby Dick, too. They hate it. Hating Moby Dick, with the advent of online reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, has become its own art form. Reading the reviews is fun, but it’s even more fun if you insert some spaces and format the reviews into free verse, which I have done below for your enjoyment. (All spelling and punctuation is quoted verbatim from the original reviews).

  Truth.

Jaws

is better

—Nicessist, July 31, 2015

  Do not like how it is written in old English

Do not like how it is written in old English.

Was not aware of that.

Also, the print is extremely small.

Tried to read it,

but

put it down.

—Eileen, August 29, 2016

  Weak Plot Line

This book moves very slowly.

She spent too much time

having the characters moon over each other.

It took a very long time

for each step of the plot to happen.

I finally skipped to the last chapter from about 50%.

I don’t think I missed anything.

—bjski, April 26, 2019

  Slow and Boring Story

I could not wait to finish

this book.

The characters

were not likeable

and

I found them annoying.

This should have been a short story.

—linda, April 2, 2019

  One Star

Small letters,

smelly pages.

—Florelis, January 3, 2018

  Moby-dick not favorite book

I didn’t like it

because

it was

too long

of a book.

I rate it 1 star

because a lot of parts in the book I didn’t understand.

—Tess, August 12, 2019

  Bad fish porn

Not into fish

porn

—bru, April 14, 2019

  One Star

Author droned

on

and on

and on.

Couldn’t get past

the second chapter

—Laurie G. Williams, September 24, 2015

  One Star

Horrible book,

never means what he says.

drives

me

INSANE.

—Amazon Customer, December 7, 2017

  One Star

no

—S. Nyer, September 5, 2016

  One Star

Horrible read.

Ramble, ramble and ramble.

I struggled

to finish

this book.

—Mark, May 25, 2016

  One Star

Poor acting by lead character,

the book was fairly good,

the movie

not so.

—janice kadushin, March 5, 2016

  One Star

very slow until

contact

with

moby dick

—john gerardi, February 20, 2015

  I SURE HOPE YOU ENJOY LEARNING ABOUT WHALES

I SURE HOPE YOU ENJOY LEARNING ABOUT WHALES!!!!

Listen

I read this book hoping to get a pretty good story

hoping to see some of the solidarity in man

by reading about his voyages in water

hoping to relate to some of the struggles from being solely focused on obtaining a certain goal etc.

But honestly

good Lord!

I swear 85% of this book is various lessons

on whaling

the origin of whales,

whale distinction,

whale body parts,

whale sperm,

different color whales.

Oh my goodness

the book starts off quick with the appearance of Queepeg

you think ok we might have something here

but NO!

this book drags on

and on

and on

and on.

Gets off topic ALL of the time.

The majority of this book is about how Ismael feels

and about whale parts.

And when Moby Dick does show up AT THE END OF THE BOOK

Captain Ahab vs. Moby Dick was as big a mitch-match

since the Super Bowl between Denver and Seattle.

It was anti-climatic

some people might get this book

but please don’t put me down as one.

SAVE YOURSELF THE TIME AND ENERGY

READ THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

A MUCH BETTER BOOK

—Oliver, September 27, 2014

  One Star

tedious

—Anne Wyatt, January 18, 2016

  One Star

Outstanding!

—Rogelio Lozano, September 7, 2017

  Obvious he was paid by the word

I tried.

I really tried.

Multiple times.

But the page

after page

describing all the different types of whales in the most minute of detail, and the sentences that stretch so long that by the end of them I’d realize I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what point he was trying to make.

I finally decided

life is to short to torture myself with a book

I’m just not enjoying,

and I moved on.

Maybe I’ll try again in another 10 years.

—Smurf, August 24, 2018

  One Star

The book

was fine

but

I hated the story

—Kasey Patton, April 15, 2015

  Meh.

Taxing

as well as underwhelming.

So many unnecessary side notes,

few of which really contribute to the plot itself,

but I’m no scholar

see for yourself.

—Kindle Customer, July 19, 2019

  One Star

boreing

—paul weaver, February 28, 2015

  I Could Be Wrong

But reading it

feels like being trapped

in a whale’s belly

with Chuck Klosterman.

—lori c. baughman, October 9, 2018

  boring

i had to read this book for school

it boring

dont read

why is this so famous.

cant even understand writing.

words too big i hate it not even interesting.

they just sit on a boat then get killed by a whale

stupid captian

knew they were gonna die

—Denali, August 1, 2013

  Moby Dick AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

It just went on and on and ON!

About rubbish!

SOme old guy

with one leg

hunts down a white whale

and in the end he kills the thing,

but at the expense of his life

and lives of his whole crew,

except one guy….

It may be liked by older people,

but it really isn’t for young people.

—atg, August 20, 2011

  Tedious

Do we really need

a 10 page analysis

of the color white,

or any of the other tedious digressions contained in this book?

I say

no.

I loved the poetic language Melville uses,

and there is no doubt

he was a great writer.

He did not,

however

have a great editor.

Getting through this book was like running a marathon,

where you are forced to stop every mile

and listen to a lecture on running,

running shoes,

knee pain,

gatorade,

or any other subject remotely related.

Finishing the marathon gives you bragging rights,

but not much more.

—vikingslayer, November 25, 2010

  Overhyped

Moby Dick is

an overhyped,

monotonous,

pretentious,

pseudo-intellectual

piece of crap,

in other words

an English lit major’s wet dream.

It’s the absolute meaningless ramblings

of a half wit,

not some great intellectual masterpiece.

Maybe Melville was the Justin Bieber

and “Twin Peaks” of his day,

talentless and meaningless

but few will admit

they were fooled.

—Tom Adams, December 6, 2011

  Not enough dicks

There were

no dicks

in this book.

—Ben Reser, March 21, 2015

  More stuff like this is in my new book Bears Don’t Care About Your Problems: More Funny Shit in the Woods from Semi-Rad.com, out now.

SHOP

The post One-Star Amazon.com Reviews Of Moby Dick, As Free Verse Poetry appeared first on semi-rad.com.

from Explore https://semi-rad.com/2019/09/one-star-amazon-com-reviews-of-moby-dick-as-free-verse-poetry/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[olivereliott]

One-Star Amazon.com Reviews Of Moby Dick, As Free Verse Poetry

Lots of people love Moby Dick, which has long been considered a classic of American literature and one of the best adventure books of all time. But lots of people do not love Moby Dick, too. They hate it. Hating Moby Dick, with the advent of online reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, has become its own art form. Reading the reviews is fun, but it’s even more fun if you insert some spaces and format the reviews into free verse, which I have done below for your enjoyment. (All spelling and punctuation is quoted verbatim from the original reviews).

  Truth.

Jaws

is better

—Nicessist, July 31, 2015

  Do not like how it is written in old English

Do not like how it is written in old English.

Was not aware of that.

Also, the print is extremely small.

Tried to read it,

but

put it down.

—Eileen, August 29, 2016

  Weak Plot Line

This book moves very slowly.

She spent too much time

having the characters moon over each other.

It took a very long time

for each step of the plot to happen.

I finally skipped to the last chapter from about 50%.

I don’t think I missed anything.

—bjski, April 26, 2019

  Slow and Boring Story

I could not wait to finish

this book.

The characters

were not likeable

and

I found them annoying.

This should have been a short story.

—linda, April 2, 2019

  One Star

Small letters,

smelly pages.

—Florelis, January 3, 2018

  Moby-dick not favorite book

I didn’t like it

because

it was

too long

of a book.

I rate it 1 star

because a lot of parts in the book I didn’t understand.

—Tess, August 12, 2019

  Bad fish porn

Not into fish

porn

—bru, April 14, 2019

  One Star

Author droned

on

and on

and on.

Couldn’t get past

the second chapter

—Laurie G. Williams, September 24, 2015

  One Star

Horrible book,

never means what he says.

drives

me

INSANE.

—Amazon Customer, December 7, 2017

  One Star

no

—S. Nyer, September 5, 2016

  One Star

Horrible read.

Ramble, ramble and ramble.

I struggled

to finish

this book.

—Mark, May 25, 2016

  One Star

Poor acting by lead character,

the book was fairly good,

the movie

not so.

—janice kadushin, March 5, 2016

  One Star

very slow until

contact

with

moby dick

—john gerardi, February 20, 2015

  I SURE HOPE YOU ENJOY LEARNING ABOUT WHALES

I SURE HOPE YOU ENJOY LEARNING ABOUT WHALES!!!!

Listen

I read this book hoping to get a pretty good story

hoping to see some of the solidarity in man

by reading about his voyages in water

hoping to relate to some of the struggles from being solely focused on obtaining a certain goal etc.

But honestly

good Lord!

I swear 85% of this book is various lessons

on whaling

the origin of whales,

whale distinction,

whale body parts,

whale sperm,

different color whales.

Oh my goodness

the book starts off quick with the appearance of Queepeg

you think ok we might have something here

but NO!

this book drags on

and on

and on

and on.

Gets off topic ALL of the time.

The majority of this book is about how Ismael feels

and about whale parts.

And when Moby Dick does show up AT THE END OF THE BOOK

Captain Ahab vs. Moby Dick was as big a mitch-match

since the Super Bowl between Denver and Seattle.

It was anti-climatic

some people might get this book

but please don’t put me down as one.

SAVE YOURSELF THE TIME AND ENERGY

READ THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

A MUCH BETTER BOOK

—Oliver, September 27, 2014

  One Star

tedious

—Anne Wyatt, January 18, 2016

  One Star

Outstanding!

—Rogelio Lozano, September 7, 2017

  Obvious he was paid by the word

I tried.

I really tried.

Multiple times.

But the page

after page

describing all the different types of whales in the most minute of detail, and the sentences that stretch so long that by the end of them I’d realize I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what point he was trying to make.

I finally decided

life is to short to torture myself with a book

I’m just not enjoying,

and I moved on.

Maybe I’ll try again in another 10 years.

—Smurf, August 24, 2018

  One Star

The book

was fine

but

I hated the story

—Kasey Patton, April 15, 2015

  Meh.

Taxing

as well as underwhelming.

So many unnecessary side notes,

few of which really contribute to the plot itself,

but I’m no scholar

see for yourself.

—Kindle Customer, July 19, 2019

  One Star

boreing

—paul weaver, February 28, 2015

  I Could Be Wrong

But reading it

feels like being trapped

in a whale’s belly

with Chuck Klosterman.

—lori c. baughman, October 9, 2018

  boring

i had to read this book for school

it boring

dont read

why is this so famous.

cant even understand writing.

words too big i hate it not even interesting.

they just sit on a boat then get killed by a whale

stupid captian

knew they were gonna die

—Denali, August 1, 2013

  Moby Dick AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

It just went on and on and ON!

About rubbish!

SOme old guy

with one leg

hunts down a white whale

and in the end he kills the thing,

but at the expense of his life

and lives of his whole crew,

except one guy….

It may be liked by older people,

but it really isn’t for young people.

—atg, August 20, 2011

  Tedious

Do we really need

a 10 page analysis

of the color white,

or any of the other tedious digressions contained in this book?

I say

no.

I loved the poetic language Melville uses,

and there is no doubt

he was a great writer.

He did not,

however

have a great editor.

Getting through this book was like running a marathon,

where you are forced to stop every mile

and listen to a lecture on running,

running shoes,

knee pain,

gatorade,

or any other subject remotely related.

Finishing the marathon gives you bragging rights,

but not much more.

—vikingslayer, November 25, 2010

  Overhyped

Moby Dick is

an overhyped,

monotonous,

pretentious,

pseudo-intellectual

piece of crap,

in other words

an English lit major’s wet dream.

It’s the absolute meaningless ramblings

of a half wit,

not some great intellectual masterpiece.

Maybe Melville was the Justin Bieber

and “Twin Peaks” of his day,

talentless and meaningless

but few will admit

they were fooled.

—Tom Adams, December 6, 2011

  Not enough dicks

There were

no dicks

in this book.

—Ben Reser, March 21, 2015

  More stuff like this is in my new book Bears Don’t Care About Your Problems: More Funny Shit in the Woods from Semi-Rad.com, out now.

SHOP

The post One-Star Amazon.com Reviews Of Moby Dick, As Free Verse Poetry appeared first on semi-rad.com.

[oldguardaudio]

Gun Control News -> How a gun-control group got the owner of Lock N Load in Oldsmar, Fla to quit the business

Why do conservatives own guns – Duh at HoaxAndChange.com

Wayne Lapierre NRA at HoaxAndChange.com

Help me with site cost, join today

Donald Trump NRA @ Hoax and Change

Gun Control

How a gun-control group got the owner of Lock N Load to quit the business

The first time Benjamin Bishop walked into Lock N Load and tried to buy a gun, employees at the Florida gun store turned him away — and rightly so. Bishop had been diagnosed with schizophrenia …

Washington Post4d

Why Gun Control Laws Fail

Cities such as Chicago and New York apparently have a gun control problem. Their extensive array of gun control laws continues to fail to prevent violent gun crime. However, there is a constant drone …

politicalforum.com2d

Gun Control

Gun control group launches web tool to track state gun laws

Everytown for Gun Safety this week launched an interactive online tool comparing gun laws between states over the past 25 years. The gun control group says Gun Law Navigator users can use the …

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More  News

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China North Korea

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Charlottesville Violence

Exeter Hospital Evacuation

Trump China Trade Practices

Neighbours

Nosy neighbours and the outsourcing of UK gun control

Police forces are cracking down on gun owners in the wake of heightened concerns over terrorism. Some lawyers are now claiming that the police are even revoking legal firearm owners’ licences and …

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Suicide Prevention

Pardon Me if I Find Gun Control Groups’ Concerns About Suicide Prevention Hollow

This article talks about how gun owners are more receptive to suicide prevention efforts that respect gun ownership. You don’t say? It’s not like this community is unaware or doesn’t care a whit that firearms are an effective tool in the hands of …

pagunblog.com3d

Michigan

Shock: Gun Control Icon Defends Second Amendment Rights of Grandparents Targeted in Michigan

UCLA law professor—and go-to gun control commentator—Adam Winkler is speaking up on behalf …

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Richmond

Gun control advocates ask Republican candidates for stance, candidates respond

The Democratic Party of Virginia and gun control advocates pressed the republican candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general today for their stance on gun issues. This comes after the National Rifle Association endorsed Republican …

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National Democrats

Repudiated at the Polls, National Democrats Continue to Push Gun Control

Recent weeks have seen a heated debate involving national Democratic Party figures over how to approach the issue of abortion in a manner that would allow the party to be more competitive in portions of the country dominated by Donald Trump and the …

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Greg Gutfeld

Greg Gutfeld notes CRPC research on Fox: Mentions how gun control laws prevent the poor from defending themselves

On Monday, August 7th at 9:09 PM, Greg Gutfeld discussed Dr. John Lott’s new op-ed in the …

crimeresearch.org5d

Letter To The Editor

Gun control facts and fantasy

In response to the Aug. 4 letter by Marlene Katz, “Stop the insanity; put an end to the gun violence”, I would like to commend her for pointing out the Second Amendment in its entirety. The second part is usually omitted by the gun control groups.

Bucks County Courier Times4d

Gun

Lawmaker Wants Gun Buyback Program To Pay 125 Percent Of Gun’s Value

There are numerous problems with gun buyback programs, though most gun control advocates are reluctant to speak about any of them. For one, the whole “no questions asked” policy that infest so …

bearingarms.com2d

Law

What A Backyard Submachine Gun Can Teach Us About Gun Laws

But what if the gun control advocates had a way to make sure they could get every single gun in this country not in police or military hands? What if they could guarantee that they could take every gun …

bearingarms.com4d

Gun Control

You Don’t Say: Gun Control Disarms Poor

I’m glad people are really starting to notice: When it comes to voting rights, any obstacles outrage liberals; even free government-issued IDs are viewed as disenfranchising poor and disproportionately black people. But when it comes to the right to own …

pagunblog.com5d

Reform

Pushing to Advance Gun Reform: One Person at a Time

Issue an invitation to take people shooting. You’d be surprised at how many people, even those you assume would support gun control, will take you up on the offer. On your way to range, go over the …

Ammo Land2d

New York

Fox News’ Stossel Rips NY Gun Control Demagoguery

Fox News’ John Stossel just ripped New York’s extremist gun laws. (YouTube, LibertyPen) Fox News’ John Stossel on Wednesday delivered another timely warning to law-abiding gun owners who may be traveling to New York, and in the process threw a verbal …

conservativefiringline.com3d

LGBT

Gun-control PAC announces fellowship in honor of LGBTQ activist

A gun-control political committee started after the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando announced Monday the creation of a new fellowship program in honor of Billy Manes, an Orlando …

guns.com3d

Public Health Groups Take Aim at Ban on Gun Violence Research

Health industry groups and gun control advocates will lobby the Trump administration and the newly confirmed surgeon general, Jerome Adams, to take up gun violence as a public health issue. Bloomberg BNA’s Alex Ruoff explains the strategy to Nancy Lyons …

Bloomberg2d

Gun Control Drives Gun Sales

Or so it seems. When it appeared that the Hlldebeest was going to be elected POTUS, gun sales were at an all time high. Now with Donald Trump the 2nd amendment is safe, at least for the next 2 years or so. There seems to be a direct correlation with gun …

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Maxine Waters

Congresswoman Maxine Waters talks how she got into politics, talks hip hop censorship, and gun control laws on #TheBreakfastClub [VIDEO]

In the wake of the new presidential administration, Maxine Waters has become outspoken. She is …

hip-hopvibe.com6d

Barry Michaels

Barry Michaels U.S. Senate Nevada 2018 – Challenges Federal Gun Control Act

Zapin filed their Opening Brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He alleges a provision of the Federal Gun Control Act as applied to him and millions of other similarly situated law-abiding …

einpresswire.com3d

Gun, With Occasional Music

Everytown for Gun Safety

Everytown For Gun Safety is one of many successful gun control organizations that is being very effective in the fight against gun violence on our streets and in our communities. More and more Americans are joining the fight against the right-wing gun …

democraticunderground.com1d

Combating Hate: A Radical Leftist Guide to Gun Control (Part 6)

Be sure to check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. While tackling issues of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, mental health, bigotry, and police brutality definitely goes a long way towards alleviating gun violence at the root, it still doesn’t account for …

c4ss.org5d

Czech Republic

Czechs take legal action over EU rules on gun control

PRAGUE (Reuters) – The Czech Republic filed a lawsuit on Friday against a new European Union directive tightening gun ownership, aimed at limiting access to semi-automatic and other weapons after deadly Islamist attacks in western Europe. The European …

Business Insider3d

Editorial

Editorial: The gun bill that did nothing

GUN-CONTROL advocates predicted that last year’s muchballyhooed bipartisan gun bill would do little to effect change in the commonwealth. Now there are numbers to prove it. The measure requires Virginia State Police to be available at gun shows to …

pilotonline.com5d

Crime

More gun laws are not the answer to gun crimes

Americans for Responsible Solutions claims to support gun ownership but wants more gun control laws. These organizations with their nice sounding names, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America …

The Times Herald5d

The United

The United States does NOT have a significant Gun Violence problem.

The gun control crowd is in already in the thralls of ecstasy at the prospect of another reason to attack the Second Amendment. For now, pretend we live in Bernie Sander’s world and the Second …

havokjournal.com6d

Gun Control

gun control

Trump said Monday he agreed “quite strongly” with Clinton on banning gun sales to people on terrorist watch lists. “You don’t know whether he really means it or not,” said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer.

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Government

Congressman Calls For Government-Funded Federal Gun “Buyback”

The truth is that HR 3613 is just the latest gun control scheme. As we wrote earlier this week, so-called “buybacks” are nothing more than smoke, mirrors and feel-good puffery. Guns.com reports that Payne’s bill has 16 Democratic sponsors and has …

www.americas1stfreedom.org3d

Gun, With Occasional Music

How the N.R.A. Manipulates Gun Owners and the Media

The N.R.A. is certainly at a crest in power today, with Republicans in control of Congress and Trump in the White House. The gun lobby was an early endorser of Trump and spent more than thirty million …

The New Yorker1d

Las Vegas Review-Journal

93 Days of Summer: Day 53 — Gun Ranges

Day 53 (Aug. 12) Gun Ranges — Ever shoot a gun … Day 34 (July 24) The Mob Museum – Learn the history behind organized crime’s original days trying to control Las Vegas at The Mob Museum. Day …

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Gun, With Occasional Music

Gun regulations are out of control in New York

Have a gun license? Plan to bring your gun to my hometown? Don’t. Mean New York authorities will make your life miserable. Patricia Jordan and her daughter flew here from her home state of Georgia. She wanted her gun nearby for protection. Jordan obeyed …

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Australia

Australian Gun Culture Part 11: Technological Response to Gun Legislation

The gun laws have accomplished little but make life inconvenient … The rural residents have serious need of firearms for pest control. The Internet revolution is well underway in Australia. The highly …

Ammo Land3d

Missouri

Ex-sheriff pleads to reduced charge in gun incident

The other thing is, in order to prove negligent use of a firearm — it’s a felony if the gun is loaded — at this point we had no way of proving whether the gun was loaded beyond a reasonable doubt …

News Tribune4d

Statement

Bogue releases statement on BB gun incident

The incident also was under investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Division of Drug and Crime Control, but investigators did not … Bogue said he was at home the night of the BB gun shooting when a deputy came to his door.

Quincy Herald-Whig1d

Milwaukee

NRA, Others Want Gun Classes

A GOP bill backed by the pro-gun groups that would let Wisconsin schools offer gun … and outside election support by the NRA between 2008 and 2016. Republicans control the Senate by 20-13 and …

Urban Milwaukee5d

Why not now? Addressing the U.S.’s gun epidemic.

People they know don’t have the training to fight back.” “We need leaders who will get rid of useless gun-free zone laws that give killers a clear advantage over the law-abiding. Leaders who …

knowable.com2d

Freedom First

First Gear | First Gun

Many folks will have no greater aspirations for their Buck Mark than smooth-shooting, reliable accuracy, or perhaps as a teaching gun (nearly any teenager or adult can handle one with ease). But another …

www.americas1stfreedom.org5h

US Congresswoman Calls Gun Rights Group ‘Domestic Security Threat’

Kathleen Rice, a Democratic congresswoman from NY, wrote on Twitter. “So if a white guy was shot dead during a routine stop w/ a legal gun & a joint in his auto, #NRA would stay silent?” I have no …

iphonefresh.com12h

Police

Online gun sale leads to felony theft charge

A prospective buyer was looking for a gun and found one for sale on Facebook, but something made him think it might be stolen. He asked the seller for the serial number and then contacted law enforcement. It turned up stolen July 13, according to court …

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Public Officials

Officials plead for gun safety, more community involvement in ‘fight’ against gun violence

Officials plead for gun safety, more community involvement in ‘fight’ against gun violence …

Courier-Journal3d

Gun

Man With a Gun Call Lands One in Jail

The subject then entered an apartment and attempted to close the door. It was at this time the pursuing officer deployed and fired a dart firing stun gun. The subject became incapacitated and was able to be placed under arrest While conducting a search of …

rickeystokesnews.com13h

State Law

VBC’s gun restrictions deemed compliant with state law

The state of Alabama has determined that gun restrictions at the Von Braun Center and Davidson Center for the Arts are compliant with state law. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall responded to complaints that firearms were prohibited inside these …

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Investigations

One Less Gun: YVSF Officers Recover Two Illegal Firearms in Two Separate Investigations

Yesterday, Friday, August 11, 2017, members of the Youth Violence Strike Force conducted two …

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WTXF-TV

Event held for boy shot 10 times last year and young victims of gun violence

Mahaj’s mother and grandmother who he affectionately calls “Stinka” came up with the event called “Superheroes Against Gun Violence Too Young to Die.” It’s also for the other children shot in …

fox29.com13h

Massachusetts

Police Recover Gun Decades After It Was Reported Stolen

The car and the man escaped from officers, but police say the man dropped a backpack containing a loaded .22-caliber gun and an ammunition magazine. Police later discovered the gun had been reported stolen in the nearby city of Brockton in 1981.

U.S. News & World Report1d

Gun Violence

GOP bill targets gun violence

Republican lawmakers who want to see decreased gun violence in Milwaukee are proposing to toughen penalties for gun crimes committed in Wisconsin. Last year in Milwaukee, 125 people died in gun …

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Cabell County

Indoor gun range opening in Cabell County

CABELL COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) — An indoor gun range is coming to Cabell County, according to the store’s owner. This will be the first indoor range in the county. Billy Bare owns Bare Arms Indoor Range in Ashland, Kentucky. The range opened in October 2016 …

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Whiting gun range triggers controversy

WHITING, Vt. (WCAX) “I was 12 years old when my grandpa took me out and we shot a BB gun for the first time,” said Nick Iocco of Whiting. That was decades ago. Now, Iocco shoots rifles that can hit targets in the fields in Whiting that he owns along with …

WCAX-TV1d

Gun Display

Walmart Apologizes For ‘Own The School Year’ Gun Display

“We are working to identify the store involved”. A Walmart gun display urging customers to “Own the school year like a hero” has drawn such a negative response that the company has spent the last 24 …

ismboard.com1d

Police

DSP, constable shot dead in gun attack

KARACHI: In yet another gun attack on law enforcers in the city, an officer of traffic police and his official driver were killed on their way to regulate traffic in Azizabad on Friday morning. The …

Dawn1d

India

SIG P229 IN 40 CALIBER BLACK STAINLESS GUN 40 CALIBER

SIG P229 IN 40 CALINER IN BLACK STAINLESS WITH NO RESERVE 30.00 SHIPPING TO A FFL DEALER GOOD LUCK 4% SURCHARGE ON ALL CREDIT & DEBIT CARD PURCHASES. CARD PURCHASES MUST BE MADE WITHIN 3 DAYS AFTER THE AUCTION HAS ENDED. …

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Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt and Doc

Doc’s health was failing by then and with it the skills and dexterity he needed to play cards or handle a gun. He was vulnerable in a whole new way. He drank to cope with his disease and his circumstances, and his temper led to a series of small …

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Gun

Juveniles Arrested For BB Gun Incident

Two 17-year-old males were arrested in Yankton Friday following an incident involving BB guns on W. Highway 50. Yankton County Chief Deputy Sheriff Michael Rothschadl told the Press & Dakotan that a report was received around 1:30 p.m. Friday of an …

Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan1d

Starting Pistol

Starting gun is fired on the grouse-shooting season

The grouse-shooting season is underway today in Scotland as hundreds of enthusiasts have flocked to the moors for the Glorious 12th – the traditional starting day in August. Full story on dailymail.co.uk

Gun Control News -> How a gun-control group got the owner of Lock N Load in Oldsmar, Fla to quit the business Gun Control News -> How a gun-control group got the owner of Lock N Load in Oldsmar, Fla to quit the business…

[greggsdiabetes-blog]

The Keys to Aging Well as an Athlete

New Post has been published on http://www.greggsdiabetes.com/the-keys-to-aging-well-as-an-athlete/

The Keys to Aging Well as an Athlete

No athlete looks forward to getting older, and although our peaks vary by sport—as early as 14 for gymnasts and as late as 38 for endurance athletes—eventually we all slow down. On average, our physiological function begins to decline at age 26. Some handle this inevitability with grace and grit, continuing to embrace a competitive spirit and enjoy an active lifestyle. Others, meanwhile, turn to the illicit use of performance-enhancing drugs or quit sports altogether. The difference: attitude.

“Someone’s attitude makes a huge difference in whether or not they stick with a sport or quit as they get older,” says Jessica Bunce, a clinical sports psychologist in Cincinnati, Ohio, who works with elite and recreational athletes. An athlete who is driven from within, who competes primarily for the joy of the sport and against themselves, she says, is significantly more likely to adapt their goals to the changes that accompany aging, as opposed to someone who is motivated by external results or recognition.

Interestingly, though your attitude may determine what becomes of your sporting lifestyle when you’re older, you often develop one of these two mindsets when you’re young. “The kids whose parents pressured them to play or who were always obsessed with their ranking and results tend to really struggle later on in life when their performance starts to decline,” says Bunce. “But those who pursued sports predominantly for the love of the game when they were young tend to have a much easier time with aging.”

People can shift their mindset from one driven by external performance to one driven by “internal fulfillment, health, and vitality,” Bunce says.Rather than try to fight aging,she encourages athletes to embrace it as a part of life and view it as a challenge and opportunity to focus on strategy and tactics, lean heavily on the wisdom they’ve accrued over the years, and try new sports. Do this, says Bunce, and you’ll see physical and psychological benefits: lower rates of injury and a dramatic reduction in stress.

In the end—and regardless of age—it’s important to remember that being an athlete is about more than qualifying for the Boston Marathon, counting the number of peaks you’ve bagged, or setting new CrossFit personal bests. It’s every bit as much about personal growth, community, and having fun. “Aging may slow you down,” says Bunce, “but it need not take your identity as an athlete.”

To learn more about aging well, I reached out to four veteran athletes with diverse backgrounds and at various life stages. Their collective wisdom brings to life the advice above.

Michael Joyner,59, is a physician-researcher and expert on human performance at the Mayo Clinic. At age 20, Joyner ran a 2:25 marathon in minimalist shoes. Today he’s happy to run a few miles, outfitted in army boots to accommodate a chronic condition in his feet.

At 59 years old, Michael Joyner doesn't let a chronic foot condition stop him from doing what he loves. Today, Joyner happily runs wearing army boots that help accommodate the issue and allow him to stay active. Photo: Courtesy of Michael Joyner

We all slow down, and for people who are competitive, there can be a bit of denial. But sooner or later, everyone either accepts it or gets caught in a cycle of injury after injury from trying to push beyond what their bodies can handle. After you get to acceptance, you can calibrate where you are and set new goals like holding off frailty, maintaining your independence, and being able to participate in water-balloon fights with the kids. You can also try new sports and activities and enjoy attempting to master something new. Eventually, you get to a truly minimalist approach, which is about just trying to do something active most days. I always come back to what the famous running coach Jack Daniels once said: “Ask what the purpose of your workout is.” I think it’s wise to extend this thinking to a larger context and ask: What’s the purpose of your active lifestyle?

Jordan Blanco, 45, is an entrepreneur and age-group triathlete who lives in San Francisco, California. She came into triathlon a little later in life, at age 30, and set an Ironman PR of 10:33:06 at age 37. But she’s starting to realize that her best times might be behind her.

Many triathletes peak at an older age than in other sports, but Jordan Blanco has come to terms with the fact that her best races might be part of the past. Photo: Courtesy of Jordan Blanco

While my body may age, weaken, and slow down, I have so much knowledge and wisdom accumulated from all the years of training and racing. I can stem the decline in performance through better, smarter training and through knowing myself. What’s the old adage? Train smarter, not harder? I’ve learned to pay more attention to sleep, diet, strength training, and the precise details of my overall plan than I might have in my 30s. I also have more cash flow, which means I can finally afford fancier equipment to keep me on the cutting edge of speed. Lastly, instead of judging myself against prior versions of myself, I compete against other women in my age group. I’m seeing more “success” in my 40s than in previous decades because many of my fellow competitors have dropped out…or I’ve just slowed down less.

Christie Aschwanden, 41, is a writer and all-around athlete who lives in Cedaredge, a small town in western Colorado. During her 20s and early 30s, she competed internationally for sponsored teams in both Nordic skiing and cycling. Today, Aschwanden is still insanely active, but for different reasons.

As Christie has aged, her reasons for staying active have shifted—and arguably for the better. Photo: Courtesy of Christie Aschwanden

I don’t care so much about performance now as I did in my 20s and early 30s; I care about how I feel. I still love to race, but I am in a different place. The absolute numbers just don’t matter as much anymore. What does matter is having that wonderful feeling that I get from a great day of trail running or skate skiing, and that means maintaining enough fitness so I can do what I want to do without it turning into a death march. I love the feeling of being fit, and more than anything, that’s what I want to hold onto as I age.

Amby Burfoot, 70, is an editor at large for Runner’s World. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Burfoot was not only a pioneering health and fitness writer but also a pioneering distance runner. At age 21, he won the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:20:17. Nowadays, Burfoot still runs a solid weekly volume, but he’s content to push a little less hard—most of the time, anyway.

Amby Burfoot is a renowned runner, but in his older age, he's learned that pushing limits is quite different from what it used to be. Photo: Courtesy of Amby Burfoot

I run about 30 miles a week. Sometimes I think about increasing my training to 50 or 60. Physically, I feel that I could do it. Mentally, maybe. But I don’t actually pull the trigger. I’m in a groove where I’m running fine, physically really strong, not a hint of an orthopedic problem, so why ruin a good thing? One thinks a lot like this at age 70. Maybe it’s the best way to think. Still, I would like to be faster. It’s not that I believe I would win anything significant. There are too many really impressive runners at every age. But my performances have tailed off over the past six or seven years, and I’d like to get them back where I think they should be. It’s a real challenge to balance my obsessive nature and drive to get better with also wanting an enjoyable relationship with running. I think about this stuff all the time.

Brad Stulberg (@Bstulberg) writes Outside’s Science of Performance column and is a co-author of the forthcoming book Peak Performance.

Original Article

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home and Drive-In Edition July 24, 2020: THE RENTAL, MOST WANTED, YES GOD YES, AMULET, RETALIATION and more

Are we all having fun yet? Does the fun ever truly begin when you’re in the middle of a pandemic, and no one can seem to figure out how to get out of it? While I love New York’s Governor Cuomo and the amazing job he did getting us through the worst of it, he just doesn’t seem to know how to get movie theaters reopened, nor does he seem to care. I mean, they’ve had four months now to figure this out and New York City is already in Phase 4 (which was supposed to be the last phase of the reopening).  It’s a real shame, because this has been a ridiculously hot summer and with none of the “cooling centers” from past summers being possible, it is brutal out there. Fortunately, there are a few decent movies this week to watch at home and some in the drive-ins that are popping up all over the country.

I gotta say that I’m particularly bummed that my favorite local theater, the Metrograph, won’t be opening any time soon, but starting Friday, they’ll be starting “Metrograph Live Screenings,” which will consist of the type of amazing programming the theater has gained a reputation for since opening four years ago. They are offering new “digital memberships” at $5 a month or $50 annually (about half the price of a normal membership) so that you can watch any of the movies being offered at home. The program begins on Friday with Claire Denis’ 2004 film, L’Intrus, which Metrograph Pictures picked up for release. That’s followed on Monday with St. Claire Bourne’s doc, Paul Robeson: Here I Stand.  You can see the full list of screening times and dates (many with filmmaker introductions) on the Official Site, and this will be a good time for those who can’t get downtown to the coolest area in New York City to check out the Metrograph programming until they reopen. (Apparently, they’re working on a drive-in to open sometime in August. Wish I had a car.)

If nothing else, it’s safe to say that IFC is killing it this summer. The indie distributor stepped right up to the pandemic and said, “Hey, we’ll play in those drive-in theaters that have mostly been ignored and didn’t play our films for decades!” It has led to at least two big hits in the past few months.

This week, IFC releases the horror/thriller THE RENTAL (IFC Films), the directorial debut by Dave Franco.  In it, brothers Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Josh (Jeremy Allen White) decide to take a weekend away with their significant others, Charlie’s wife Michelle (Allison Brie) and Josh’s girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand), who also happens to be Charlie’s creative work partner. They have found a remote house to rent, but they’re immediately suspicious of the caretaker (Toby Huss), who they think may be spying on them. He’s also racist towards Mina’s Arab lineage.

The premise seems fairly simple and actually quite high concept, and there have been quite a few thrillers that played with the premise of a creepy landlord/caretaker, including last year’s The Intruder, directed by Deon Taylor, and a lesser known thriller called The Resident, starring Hillary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Part of what makes The Rental different is that Franco co-wrote it with Joe Swanberg, so you know it’s going to be more of a character-based thriller than some kind of gorefest. Sure enough, this deals with the competitive nature between the brothers and the jealousy that arises when you have such a close working relationship with your brother’s girlfriend. It’s what happens between these two couples over the course of this vacation that makes you even more interested in their behavior after things start happening to them, but there’s a pretty major twist that happens just when you think you know where things may be going.

That’s all I really should say about the plot to avoid spoilers. Although the third act veers into the darker horror tropes we may have seen before, that’s also when it starts to get quite insane. Franco clearly shows he has the eye for the type of suspense and timing necessary for an effective thriller, and his cast, including wife Alison Brie, really deliver on all aspects of his script to deliver shocking moments that will keep you invested.

In some ways, The Rental might be the most obviously accessible movie of the weekend, and since it will be playing in drive-ins (and maybe a few still-open theaters?), it probably is worth seeing that way i.e. with others, although it will also be available via digital download, of course.

Another “Featured Flick” this week -- and I’m guessing this is one you won’t be reading about anywhere else --  is Daniel Roby’s MOST WANTED (Saban FIlms), a real-life crime-thriller starring Josh Hartnett as Globe and Mail journalist, Victor Malarek, who discovered that a French-Canadian junkie named Daniel Léger (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) had been sentenced to 100 years in a Thailand prison for drug trafficking in 1989.  As Daniel attempts to survive the violent conditions of the Thai jail, Victor tries to uncover the crooked practices by the Canadian federal police to get Daniel imprisoned for their own means.

This is one of two Saban Films releases that really surprised me, maybe because I’ve gotten so used to them releasing so much action and genre schlock meant mainly for VOD, usually starring fairly big-name action stars from the past, usually not doing their best work. Most Wanted is a far more serious crime-drama that tells an absolutely amazing story from North America’s famed war on drugs from the ‘80s. First, we meet Antoine-Olivier Pilon’s Daniel, a lowlife junkie who is trying to find a place to live and a job, something he finds when he gets into business with Jim Gaffigan’s Glenn Picker, a complete low-life in every sense of the word. It’s funny, because when Gaffigan’s character is introduced, you’re immediately reminded of the famous “Sister Christian” in PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and as we watch Picker completely humiliate and then betray Daniel, you realize that we might be seeing one of Gaffigan’s best performances to date.

What keeps Most Wanted interesting is that it tells the story on a number of concurrent storylines, ignoring the fact that one of the threads might be taking place years before the other. Through this method, we see how Daniel begins working with Glenn, while also seeing Victor’s investigation, as well as the sting operation being perpetrated by the Canadian feds, as represented by the always great Stephen McHattie. (McHattie’s appearance is also a telltale sign that this is indeed a Canadian production, as is the role played by author and filmmaker Don McKellar.)  I’ve always feltHarnett was a really underrated actor especially as he got into his 30s and started doing more mature roles, and while his reporter character may not always be the central focus of the story, his attempt to get his editor to respect his work is something far too familiar to far too many writers. One also can’t sleep on the fantastic performance by Antoine-Olivier Pilon, who really holds the film together by starting out as a scumbag almost as bad as Picker but through his troubles to survive in Thai jail, we start to become really invested in his story. (The only character who doesn’t get nearly as fulfilling a story arc is Amanda Crew as Victor’s wife Anna who gives birth just as he gets involved in this major story.)

I wasn’t at all familiar with Daniel Roby’s previous work but the way he broke this story down in a way that keeps it interesting, regardless of which story you’re following, makes Most Wanted as good or better than similar films by far more experienced and respected filmmakers. (For some reason, it made me think of both The Departed and Black Mass, both movies about Whitey Bulger, although Daniel’s story is obviously very different.)

Okay, let’s get into a trio of religious-tinged offerings…

Natalia Dyer from Stranger Things stars in YES, GOD, YES (Vertical Entertainment), the semi-autobiographical directorial debut by Obvious Child co-writer Karen Maine (expanded from an earlier short), which will open via virtual cinemas this Friday as well as at a few drive-ins, and then it will be available via VOD and digital download on Tuesday, July 28. The coming-of-age comedy debuted at last year’s SXSW Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize for its ensemble cast. Dyer plays sixteen-year-old Alice, a good Midwestern Catholic teenager, who has a sexual awakening after a racy AOL chat. Wracked by guilt, Alice attends a religious retreat camp where the cute football player (Wolfgang Novogratz) catches her eye, but she constantly feels pressure to quell her masturbatory urges.

I’m not sure I really knew what to expect from Ms. Maine’s feature film debut as a director. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did, nor did I think I would relate to Dyer’s character as much as I did --  I’ve never been a teen girl, nor have I ever been Catholic, and by the early ‘00s, I was probably closer to the age that Maine is now versus being a teenager discovering her sexuality. In fact, I probably was expecting something closer to the Mandy Moore comedy Saved!, which was definitely more about religion than one character’s sexual journey.

Either way, I went into Yes, God, Yes already realizing what a huge fan I am of coming-of-age stories, and while there were certainly that seemed familiar to other films, such as Alice’s inadvertent AIM with an online pervert early in the film. Even so, Maine did enough with the character of Alice to keep it feeling original with the humor being subdued while definitely more on the R-rated side of things. On top of that, Dyer was quite brilliant in the role, just a real break-through in a similar way as Kaitlyn Dever in Book Smart last year. (Granted, I’m so behind on Stranger Things, I don’t think I’ve even gotten to Dyer’s season.) The only other familiar face is Timothy Simons from Veep as the super-judgmental (and kinda pervy) priest who Alice has to turn to when confessing her sins. (A big part of the story involves a rumor started about Alice and a sex act she committed on a fellow student that keeps coming up.)

Yes, God, Yes proves to be quite a striking dramedy that I hope more people will check out. I worry that because this may have been covered out of last year’s SXSW, it might not get the new and updated attention it deserves. Certainly, I was pleasantly surprised with what Maine and Dyer did with a genre that still has a lot to tell us about growing up and discovering oneself. (You can find out where you can rent the movie digitally over on the Official Site.)

Another horror movie that premiered at this year’s Sundance is AMULET (Magnet), the directorial debut by British actor Romola Garai, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Romanian actor Alec Secareanu as Tomaz, a former soldier who is offered a place to stay in a dilapidated house in London with a young woman named Magda (Carla Juri from Blade Runner 2049) and her ill and dying mother. As Tomaz starts to fall for Magda, he discovers there are sinister forces afoot in the house with Magda’s mother upstairs being at their core.

I was kind of interested in this one, not just because it being Garai’s first feature as a filmmaker but also just because Sundance has such a strong pedigree for midnight movies, probably culminating in the premiere of Ari Aster’s Hereditary there a few years back. It feels like ever since then, there are many movies trying to follow in that movie’s footsteps, and while this was a very different movie from the recent Relic, it had its own set of issues.

The main issue with Amulet is that it deliberately sets itself up with a confusing narrative where we see Tomaz in the present day and in the past concurrently, so it’s very likely you won’t know what you’re watching for a good 20 minutes or so. Once Tomaz gets to the house, escorted there by a nun played by Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), the movie settles down into a grueling pace as the main two characters get to know each other and Tomaz explores the incongruities of the decaying house.

Honestly, I’m already pretty burnt out on the religious horror movies between The Lodge and the still-unreleased Saint Maud, and the first inclination we get of any of the true horror to come is when Tomaz discovers some sort of mutated bat-like creature in the toilet, and things get even more disturbing from there. Although I won’t go into too many details about what happens, the movie suffers from some of the same issues as Relic where it’s often too dark to tell exactly what is happening. As it goes along, things just get weirder and weirder right up until a “what the fuck” moment that could have come from the mind of David Lynch.

I don’t want to completely disregard Garai’s fine work as a filmmaker since she’s made a mostly compelling and original horror movie – I have a feeling some might love this -- but the grueling pace and confusing narrative turns don’t really do justice to what might have been a chilling offering otherwise.

Going by the title and the fact it’s being released by Saban Films, I presumed that Ludwig and Paul Shammasian’s RETALIATION (Saban Films/Lionsgate) was gonna be a violent and gritty crime revenge thriller, but nothing could be further from the truth. Adapted by Geoff Thompson from his 2008 short film “Romans 12:20,” it stars Orlando Bloom as Malcolm, a troubled ex-con doing demolition work while fighting against his demons when he spots someone in the pub from his past that caused a severe childhood trauma.

This is another movie that I really didn’t know what to expect, even as it began and we followed Bloom’s character over the course of a day, clearly a very troubled man who has been dealing with many personal demons. Make no mistake that this is a tough movie, and it’s not necessarily a violent genre movie, as much as it deals with some heavy HEAVY emotions in a very raw way.

Honestly, I could see Geoff Thompson’s screenplay easily being performed on stage, but the way the Shammasian Brothers have allowed Malcolm’s story to slowly build as we learn more and more about his past makes the film so compelling, but they also let their actors really shine with some of the stunning monologues with which they’re blessed. While this is clearly a fantastic and possibly career-best performance by Bloom, there are also good performances by Janet Montgomery, as the woman who loves Malcolm but just can’t handle his mood changes. Also good is Charlie Creed-Miles, as the young priest who tries to help Malcolm.

I can easily see this film not being for everybody, because some of the things the film deals with, including pedophile priests and the effects their actions have on the poor, young souls who put their faith in them, they’re just not things people necessarily may want to deal with. Make no mistake that Retaliation is an intense character drama that has a few pacing issues but ultimately hits the viewer right in the gut.

A movie I had been looking forward to quite some time is the Marie Currie biopic, RADIOACTIVE (Amazon Prime), directed by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and starring the wondrous Rosamund Pike as the famed scientist who helped discover radiation. Based on Lauren Redniss’ book, this is the type of Working Title biopic that would normally premiere in the Fall at the Toronto Film Festival, and sure enough, this one did. The fact it wasn’t released last year makes one think maybe this didn’t fare as well as potential awards fodder as the filmmakers hoped. It’s also the type of movie that works too hard to cater to the feminist resurgence from recent years, which ultimately ends up being its undoing.

The problem with telling Marie Currie’s story is that there’s so much to tell and Redniss’ book as adapted by Jack Thorne just tries to fit too much into every moment as years pass in mere minutes. There’s so much of Marie’s life that just isn’t very interesting, but trying to include all of it just takes away from the scenes that do anything significant. Maybe it’s no surprise that Thorne also wrote The Aeronauts, Amazon’s 2019 ballooning biopic that failed to soar despite having Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as its leads.

I’m a similarly huge Rosamund Pike fan, so I was looking forward to her shining in this role, but she does very little to make Marie Currie someone you might want to follow, as she’s so headstrong and stubborn. This is the most apparent when she meets Pierre Currie, as played by Sam Riley, and maybe you don’t blame her for being cynical, having had much of her work either discredited or stolen by men in the past. Shockingly, Pike’s performance seems all over the place, sometimes quite moving but other times being overly emotive. Almost 90 minutes into the movie, Anya Taylor-Joy turns up as Curie’s grown daughter, and it’s one of the film’s biggest infraction, wasting such great talent in such a nothing role.

While Radioactive could have been a decent vehicle for Ms. Satrapi to flex her muscles as a filmmaker, the movie spends so much time having Currie fighting against the male-dominated science field that it loses sight of why she was such an important figure in the first place. Radioactive just comes across as a generally bland and unimaginative by-the-books biopic.

Also on Digital and On Demand this Friday is Chris Foggin’s FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS (Samuel Goldwyn Films), another quaint British comedy based on a true story, much like the recent Military Wives. Rather than being about a group of singing women, this one is about a group of singing men! What a twist!

Daniel Mays plays Danny, a music biz exec from London who travels to the seaside town of Port Isaac, Cornwall with some of his record company coworkers. Once there, they discover a local group of singing local fisherman, known as “Fisherman’s Friends,” who Danny wants to sign to a label. He also wants to get closer to Tuppence Middleton’s single mother Alwyn, who, no surprise, is also the only pleasant-looking younger woman in the town.

Fisherman’s Friends isn’t bad, but if you’ve seen a lot of British movies from the last few decades, then you’ve already seen this movie, particularly the “fish out of water” humor of a guy from the big city trying to relate to the down-to-earth ways of folk in a fishing village. It’s the type of really forced humor that is perfectly pleasant but not particularly groundbreaking in this day and age with so many filmmakers trying to do cutting-edge work.

Instead, this goes for a very typical and cutesie formula where everything works out with very little real conflict even when it throws in a needless subplot about the local pub falling on hard times and selling to a rich man who has little regard for the ways o the town.  On top of that, and even if this wasn’t based on a true story, it’s very hard to believe anyone in the music industry or who buys records would be that interested in this group to make them worth signing a million-pound record deal. (Apparently, this really happened!)

I think it’s adorable that filmmakers are trying to turn character actor Daniel Mays (who you’ve seen in everything!) into a romantic lead, especially when you have James Purefoy right there! Instead, 56-year-old Purefoy is instead cast as Middleton’s father, while she’s put into a situation where she’s the love interest for a man that’s 23 years her elder. This kind of thing rarely bothers me as it does many younger female critics, but their romance is just ridiculous and unnecessary if not for the formula. As much as I enjoyed seeing Dave Johns from I, Daniel Blake as one of the singing fishermen, there really isn’t much for him to do in this.

If you like sea shanties and you are a woman over 60 (or have a mother that age) then Fisherman’s Friends is a cute butnever particularly hilarious British comedy that tries to be The Full Monty. But it never really tries to be anything more or less than the formula created by that movie 23 years ago, so it’s quickly forgotten after its saccharine finale.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t able to get THE ROOM (Shudder/RLJE Films), the live action directing debut from Christin Volckman (Renaissance), but it’s now available on VOD, Digital HD, DVD AND Blu-Ray! It stars Olga Kurylenko and Kevin Janssens as a couple who leave the city to move into a an old house where they discover a secret hidden room that has the power to materialize anything they want, but this is a horror film, so what might seem like a fairy tale is likely to get dark. (I actually think I saw the trailer for this on Shudder, so I’ll probably check it out, and if it’s worth doing so, I’ll mention it in next week’s column.)

Yet another horror movie hitting On Demand this Friday is Pamela Moriarty’s A DEADLY LEGEND (Gravitas Ventures) that stars Corbin Bensen as a real estate developer who buys an old summer camp to build new homes unaware of the dark history of supernatural worship and human sacrifice. I’m gonna take the fifth on this one, which also stars Judd Hirsch and Lori Petty.

Available via Virtual Cinema through New York’s Film Forum and L.A.’s Laemmle is Gero von Boehm’s documentary, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (Kino Lorber), about the photographer who had a nearly five-decade career before dying in a car crash in 2006.

From Colombia to various Virtual Cinemas is Catalina Arroyave’s debut, Days of the Whale (Outsider Pictures) set in the city of Medellin, where it follows two young graffiti artists, Cristina and Simon, who tag places around where they live but coming from very different backgrounds, but they eventually bond while part of a revolutionary art collective.

Danny Pudi from Community and Emily C. Chang from The Vampire Diaries star in Sam Friedlander’s comedy Babysplitters (Gravitas Ventures) as one of two couples who have mixed emotions about having kids, so they decided to share one baby between them. Okay, then.

Netflix will also debut the rom-com sequel, The Kissing Booth 2, once again starring Joey King as Ellie, who is trying to juggle her long-distance romance with Jacob Erlodi’s Noah and her close friendship with Joel Courtney’s Lee.  I haven’t seen the first movie. Probably won’t watch this one.

Next week, more movies in a variety of theatrical and non-theatrical release!

If you’ve read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com, or tweet me on Twitter. I love hearing from my “readers,” whomever they may be.’