#virtual reality is weirder than fiction

[woodstoneb-b]

OK, so it turns out that when you've got a B&B the Christmas season is hella busy - which seems like something that should have been obvious. But yeah, the wife and I have been run off our feet.

But, I've finally had a chance to play the game so let's get into it!

Not gonna lie, this hits a bit too close to home, we just started the game and the kitchen sink is already broken!

Flower: Wow...a waterfall indoors, this is totally groovy, man!

Hetty can be...kind of dramatic.

Hetty: I did not give permission for such an image to be shown... Although...are there Cheetos in this game?

Afraid not...but that looks pretty good.

Hetty: Yes, as you can see I'm simply thrilled.

Hetty: I will say that I very much appreciate the punctuality of the workmen is this game... Certainly not Irish.

Hetty: When I was alive I never would have allowed outsiders to see me in my swimwear, but...seeing as this is not actually me, I suppose I can allow it. And I'll even admit that I was most fond of swimming, a very refreshing pastime indeed! I can't say I ever went swimming on the ocean however...which is a shame if the scenery is like this!

Meanwhile back at the Mansion, these two are fully immersed in reading.

Isaac: I say, that's a most accurate representation of myself! These computers are amazing.

Thor: Isaac speaks for himself, Thor does not read.

Sass (low voice): It's more like he can't.

OK, I'm not sure why No-Pants went down to the beach...

Trevor: All the babes hang on the beaches!

Hetty: I'm not sure if I should be flattered by that...?

Trevor: Your Simself obviously thinks so, you got me a little gift!

Hetty: Well, now I understand why it's called virtual reality...

Thor: This is more like it! In life Thor was well-regarded as a fisherman, Thor could name all varieties of cod in the area, there was the -

He had a lot more to say, but...yeah, there's a word limit on these posts, so...

Hetty: Why on earth am I sleeping on the beach like some sort of vagrant?! And why am allowing you to show such outlandish images of me?

Trevor: Sleeping on the beach is totally cool.

Hetty: In the middle of summer? I'd think not.

Thor: Jay's game is learning, Thor does not abide messiness! If only Thor could clean in real world...Jay leaves sink in unspeakable state.

For any current guests and possible guests reading this, this is not true.

Sam: It really, really isn't, our B&B has received the highest hygiene certification.

Hehehe, Sims have to do whatever you tell them to, so here's No-Pant's being useful.

Trevor: Seriously?!

Trevor: Oh hey, I did it! Not that I'm surprised, I've got the magic touch.

Hetty *giggles*

My eyes! MY EYES!

Trevor: Hey, just giving the ladies what they're asking for.

Pete: Why am I there?

Trevor: Well, it's my bedroom, so...you tell me.

After that horror, I sent my man, Pete, downtown to the library, now I feel like this is a Sims 3 thing, because the one nearest us sure doesn't have tropical drinks!

Pete: Wow...somewhere that's not the mansion?! It's so...weird. Almost as weird as me drinking out of a coconut. That's strictly a vacation activity

Pete: This takes me way back! Identifying animals out in the wild was something I was a master at in the Pine Cone Troopers.

Sass: As much of a master as you were with archery?

Thor: Heh, burn.

Isaac: Thorfinn, you're asking about my book! :D

Thor: Game has once again not lived up to reality.

Alberta: I am loving my look here, Jay, you've got everything right.

Thor: Even funny hat.

Alberta: I'm pretty sure Sass is telling me a secret about you, Cod-man, so watch it.

Flower: Hey, Trev! Isn't this so cool? We're in a game!

Trevor: Totally.

Flower: Except...why do you still have no pants?

Sass also headed out...and proved to be pretty good at pool.

Sass: I did hear a phrase once... "Talk softly and carry a big stick" and that's a pretty big stick. I approve!

Thor: By Odin's beard why so much mess?! Why is puddle even in room of Jay and Sam?!

Sam: I really don't want to know...

Okay, and on that note, I've reached the image limit, so I think I better wrap this up here...

And yeah, we totally have that hygiene and safety certificate, and can produce it on request, I swear.

Until next time.

[tayfabe75]

Hi! I happened to be on the Taylor and Matty reddit and aside from discussing the usual stuff, I noticed a few interesting things that reminded me of your theory.

1.Travis called himself Jabroni several times. And turns out it’s a term from wrestling. Wrestling?? Same as kayfabe, your theory. If it's just a coincidence, it's the biggest coincidence that has ever happened to this world.

https://www.reddit.com/r/taylorandmatty/comments/1cvskm5/ok_so_travis_keeps_calling_himself_a_jabroni/

2. Several theories from twitter that went there to reddit that Taylor is making her own version of The Truman Show. And I remembered that I saw a similar theory based on the Matty and the 1975’s show. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/taylorandmatty/comments/1cswvn1/taylor_matty_and_the_truman_show/

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4_69NQsyT3/?igsh=eWptdmd3eWQ1NnF3

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5AttiyOOv7/?igsh=YWNiZHVlaGM2M3Fp

3. Florida. It seems this is the only song that no one fully understands. Taylor said something like Florida is just a place where people escape from law, but she also originally said that folklore and evermore are fictional stories, so now I always take her explanations with a grain of salt. And The Truman Show was filmed in Florida, so this all refers back to the same theory. And the mention of Florida also appears in Fortnight.

Either reddit is just making me crazy, or it can't be a coincidence, there are too many overlaps for it.

Plus, after Taylor’s concerts started again, it all got even weirder. Overly obvious staged photos of Taylor and Travis, articles about engagement, strange song mashups that I can't believe don't carry any message. I used to think that if your theory turns out to be true, then all this will last until the end of the eras tour, but now I don’t see how it will last so long when so much has already happened in less than a month. Again, maybe I’ve just read a lot of theories, but it feels like something is coming

Hi anon! Wow, this is quite a question to tackle! Maybe to save space I'll throw it under a cut.

There we go! I did notice the "jabroni" talk! Which definitely appears to be a wrestling term, specifically. Devil's advocate! Regardless of any kayfabe, it seems like the man is a fan of wrestling so might've just picked up some of the lingo… it is a pretty popular form of entertainment in America, but who knows! Maybe it's a hint that he will end up a jabroni on behalf of Matty. Here's what I will say about that… the moment I saw Matty's face next to Taylor's, before knowing virtually anything about either of them, I said to myself, wow... this pairing has the power to completely shatter a lot of harmful narratives you hear about women from the manosphere… which so happens to be the very thing Matty was critiquing or tackling with ATVB. But I'll stick a pin in that thought for now and revisit it another time, perhaps... I digress!

To add to the Truman Show theories, Matty has referenced The Truman Show on occasion! Here's a yet-archived clip from circa 2014 where he confesses to thinking it was real:

Pair that with this quote from the New Yorker piece:

"The Truman Show," in which Jim Carrey plays the unwitting, lifelong star of an always-on reality series, came out when Healy was nine, and he developed an intrusive fear that the movie was, in some way, about his own life. His parents were actors—what if everything was a loveless farce? On a vacation in Spain, in a taxi, his dad teased him about this ongoing neurosis, and Denise turned around from the front seat and told Tim to stop it. "She meant, Don't wind him up, he's obviously freaking out about this," Healy explained. "But I read that as one actor saying to another actor, 'Hush, you're going to give up the gig.'"

It seems this warped sense of reality due to fame is just another thing Taylor and Matty likely share in common.

I transcribed Taylor's quote on Florida!:

"Florida is a song that I wrote with Florence + the Machine and I think I was coming up with this idea of like, what happens when your life doesn't fit, or your choices you've made catch up to you? There's just… you're surrounded by these harsh consequences and judgment and, and circumstances did not lead you to where you thought you would be, and you just want to escape from everything you've ever known. Is there a place you could go? I'm always watching like, Dateline… people, you know, have these crimes that they commit where they immediately skip town and they go to Florida, you know, they like, try to reinvent themselves have a new identity, blend in, and I think when you go through a heartbreak there's a part of you that thinks I want a new name, I want a new life, I don't want anyone to know where I've been or know me at all. And so that was kind of what… That was the jumping-off point behind, where would you go to reinvent yourself and blend in? Florida!"

I'm happy you see the strange coincidences, too, anon! I agree that it feels like something is coming. I feel like some kind of bombshell awaits us in the Rep vault! And I hope you're right that we won't have to wait until the end of Eras, but it truly could be that the storytelling is wrapped up in Eras and the re-recordings. I suppose we'll see! Thanks so much for the ask, that was a fun one! 🤍

[signourneybooks]

February was a weird short month where Merijn went to his grandparents for a week and husband had his vacation a week later (this week actually). It went a little up and down for me personally. Depression is no joke. But at least we had some Spring weather. Now March will bring back the snow, lol. (I joke, I hope.)

The Numbers

# Read 60 Books Read this month: 12 Total: 24 /60

King of Scars (Nikolai 1) by Leigh Bardugo / 3,5 stars // Sapphicathon read // Devour Your TBR read

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children 2) by Seanan McGuire / 3,5 stars // Novella // Sapphicathon read // Devour Your TBR read

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children 3) by Seanan McGuire / 4,5 stars // Novella // Devour Your TBR read

Second Star (Neverland Transmissions 1) by J.M. Sullivan / 2 stars // ARC

All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries 2) by Martha Wells / 5 stars // Novella X Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History 1) by George R.R. Martin / DNF

Wildcard (Warcross 2) by Marie Lu / 4 stars

The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One (Woman Are Some Kind of Magic 3) by Amanda Lovelace / 3,5 stars // ARC

Firestarter (Timekeeper 3) by Tara Sim / 4 stars // Devour Your TBR read

The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate 1) by J.Y. Yang / 3,5 stars // Devour Your TBR read

Sorcerer to the Crown (Sorcerer Royal 1) by Zen Cho / 5 stars // Reread // Devour Your TBR read

Ceremony in Death (In Death 5) by J.D. Robb /  4 stars

Vengeance in Death (In Death 6) by J.D. Robb / 4 stars

Average rating: 3,87

Fire Breathing Dragon: 6/20 Prompts Completed This Month: Shapeshifters / Portal Fantasy / Gods

Complete Alien: 4/20 Prompts Completed This Month: On a different planet / A.I. Point of View / Virtual Reality

Generic Robot: 5/12 Prompts Completed This Month: Novella

Total: 15/52

Read more about my own reading challenge here.

Level: Mt. Vancouver (36 books) Read this Month: 6 Total: 14/36

Rules: Books Owned Prior to 2019 / No Library Books / Rereads can count (but not in the last 5 years read)

⌘ My whole semi-hiatus thing didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it to (and only messed with my stats). I honestly couldn’t find the motivation to fix the broken photos. It is so much and boring work. I did end up doing some when Merijn was at my parents for a few days. But now I need to do more. Meh.

⌘ Also photobucket was being stupid with new rules for free accounts, when trying to delete a sub album I deleted all the photos of the whole blog album and I couldn’t download whole albums anymore. I ended up cutting my losses and deleted my account.

⌘ This month was also a bit hard with the group therapy course. I was awake a lot of nights or I dreamed weird things. I rarely remember my dreams/nightmares but now I did so that is a bit weird… But apparently it is also a good thing in relation to the therapy so yeay.

⌘ My friends twins turned two. Yeay~

⌘ On the up I worked ahead to about May and for my bookshelf tours I’d like to do an intro post with a FAQ. If you have any questions pleave leave them in the linked form. I’m probably going to bug you guys about this in the next few months in quite a few blog posts #sorrynotsorry

⌘ I won a book from The Reading Hobbit’s giveaway. ❤

Reviews

⌘ Cogheart (The Cogheart Adventures 1) by Peter Bunzl // ARC ⌘ Down Among the Stick and Bones / Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire ⌘ The Ingenious by Darius Hinks // ARC ⌘ Second Star (Neverland Transmissions 1) by J.M. Sullivan // ARC

Top Ten Tuesday Five 2019 Releases I Am on the Fence About / Some of My Favorite Couples / Some Books I Read in 2018 With Less Than 2000 Ratings  / Places Mentioned In Books I’d Like to Visit

Other Posts Dancing out of January 2019 / Best of the Bunch // January 2019 / What Could Possibly be My Favorite – This Is My Genre, Tell Me Yours / Six Reasons to Pick Up Sorcerer to the Crown NOW / Book Haul #41 – The First Two Months of 2019 / Books I’d Like to Get From the Library in 2019

⌘ The Passage / Season 1 / Ep 3-6 They are drawing it out a little now…

⌘ Zoo / Season 2 / Ep 5-7 I mean, it just keeps getting weirder…

⌘ Daphne & Velma / Movie This is a weird prequel to Scooby-Doo where Daphne and Velma met each other before the others (so no scooby here). It really doesn’t fit in with any of the other live action movies so that is just weird. It was cheesy, awkward and I laughed hard. Its not a good movie but it did have some good bits.

⌘ Aquaman / Movie While Merijn was at my parents husband and I went to one of the last viewings of Aquaman here in the theatres and we really liked it. Jason Momoa ❤ But seriously, that kissing scene ruined a lot. Like who kisses for 30 seconds on the battle field???

⌘ Beautiful Creatures / Movie I was bored. This was free on our On Demand so I watched it. Sometimes I do watch cheesy romance things lol. I never read the book though.

⌘ Ready Player One / Movie Another one I found free on our On Demand and where I haven’t read the book (lost my interest because Ernest Cline bleh). It wasn’t too great to be honest. There were only a few good moments for such a big movie.

Blogs

⌘ Aentee from Read at Midnight designed some pretty phone wallpapers inspired by The Gilded Wolves. ⌘ Jackie B. from Death by Tsondoku talks about YA not being a genre. ⌘ Ely from Of Wonderland asks where she fits in the book community? ⌘ Greg from Book Haven talks about cloning. ⌘ Michelle from The Writing Hufflepuff shared some blogs to love for Valentine’s Day. ⌘ Kaleena from Reader Voracious has been doing the Read Around the Globe feature and this month I answered some questions. ⌘ Rachel from Rec-It Rachel sorted some books into Hogwarts Houses. ⌘ Fadwa from Word Wonders created a book rec list based on Emoji. ⌘ And Imyril from x+1 continues with the rec list for my reading challenge. You can find part two here!

Dutch Blogs

⌘ Sue from Boekenz let me show my bookshelves on her blog.

Booktube

⌘ Hailey in Bookland did a relaxing book shelf tour.

⌘ March is going to be the month I focus on some of my middle grade as you can see from the photo above. Certainly these. I am also finishing The Darkest Legacy (my buddy read with La La in the Library) and The True Queen. At the end of the month I had a hard time focusing and I wanted to take my time with The True Queen. Other than that I have one more review copy and a bunch of other books like Legendary

⌘ I also really need to work more on fixing the broken photos. I am on my way with the reviews. I have all the photos uploaded somewhere new and now I just need to replace the broken links.

This monthly wrap up will be linked up with the monthly one by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction. This so we can blog hop to each others wrap ups easier.

Dancing out of February 2019 February was a weird short month where Merijn went to his grandparents for a week and husband had his vacation a week later (this week actually).

[miyoron]

Miyo’s Anime of Note 2018 Rainbow Edition

2018 was some kind of a year wasn't it? It was long and a pain in the ass but there was some anime out this year I really enjoyed. I'm here to write down a bunch of shows I enjoyed in no particular order. I might put them in the order I watched them in, or I might not. I guess we'll see huh?

Also, I think there's WAY more this year than usual which means I either like things easily, there were a lot of good shows, all of the above or some other reason. Hope I don't get too long winded on you! Also I'm using whatever names I feel like for naming things off, translated, still Japanese...whaaatever~

Pop Team Epic

Pop Team Epic was everything I wanted it to be and more. I've been a fan of Bkub's work since the early days so to see these two shitty girls finally show up on the anime screen week to week was a pleasure and a delight. The decision to make two separate half episodes with different voice actors for Popuko and Pipimi was a wonderful decision that let us experience things like Aoi Yuki as Popuko and Norio Wakamoto as Pipimi. It also shot the wonderful team of ACBU into the spotlight. Their Bobunemimimmi segments were so disgustingly perfect and fit the tone of the show perfectly. It also gave us one of the best moments in anime this year:

Needless to say, I really hope they are doing a season 2 like it's been rumored. I'm on board for SO much more.

Yuru Camp

This was a show I actually watched twice this year and have subsequently watched multiple episodes just on my own. It is one of my favorite things this year and maybe it's just because of how unassuming it is. There's honestly nothing deep to the show. Cute girls dress in warm winter clothing and go camping. However, the way everything is paced with nice warm colors and chill ass music nestles its way into your heart and fills you with a nice cozy feeling. It's like a blanket, the anime. Just wrap yourself up in the wonderful friend times and maybe you'll learn a thing or two about camping and friendship along the way.

Mitsuboshi Colors

Are adults letting you down? Sure, they're not up to the challenge pretty much all the time. But that's why you should just stay out of the way and let Colors come in to save the day! This trio of girls are ready to save their town and to let shitty cops know what's up. Seriously, it's a cute show with a cute group of friends getting into big adventures, even if those adventures are often due to their own misconceptions. It's a good show with kids who act like kids and are always either talking about poop or are sucking at video games. It's a nice show and has some good performances, as well as the best sunglasses of 2018 in my book.

Karakai no Jouzu Takagi-san

A series about a boy and a girl who are totally crushing on each other, even if one likes to keep it deeply hidden and the other would never admit it really. Oh, also she owns him every chance she can get with teasing. It's like a reverse Tonari no Seki-kun if Seki was not in his own world and was actively trying to make Rumi blush or stumble over herself. This premise may sound mean but it's honestly all in good fun and there's something really cute about the pair's friendship with each other. The way the manga apparently goes makes me really want to check it out sometime too.

Oh also there's a great side trio of friends with and I love how dumb of a baby one of them is.

Hinamatsuri

What happens when a yakuza becomes the dad of a psychic girl who crashed in an egg in his apartment and broke all his vases? This series! Hinamatsuri was a show that got me really hard this year at a couple points where I know I had to either fight back tears or take a few minutes to sit their with a quivering lip and watery eyes. It's an incredibly funny show from  the premise alone but when you have the put upon character of Nitta having to take care of the force of nature that is Hina it just escalates it. On top of that though, there's a good heart to it as well. Anzu is a wonderful character and I love her story and her many grandpas. Also Hitomi's story actively hit me hard to where I felt bad for a fictional child to please just be a child for a little while. It was powerful stuff and I loved it.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

I hate Sword Art Online. I've only watched the first series with the original and faerie times, but I hated it so much. That being said, hearing that the new one was actually good made me seek it out and...thank God it is. Llenn/Karen is just a much more compelling character than the power fantasy that is Kirito. The story of a woman who does not like herself in the real world, but finds a new home and life in virtual reality is a nice little story. On top of that, ditching the stupid "if you die in the game, you die in real life" really helped the show out in my eyes. This show is not about stop some huge over arcing villainous plot to fuck over the whole world or whatever. GGO is about trying to save someone from hurting themselves and honestly, that's a lot more relatable. A recap episode in this day in age IS silly though for what it's worth.

Let's take a short break shall we? For a little section I'm gonna call, Fuck, You Let me Down Man.

Amanchu Advance

I put Amanchu on my list two years ago of Anime of Note because I really enjoyed the tale of friendship it told. Amanchu Advance continues that story and shows Teko slowly becoming more of her own person thanks to that friendship. She wants to become a stronger person, a better version of herself and it's through her friends she's able to do this. The series is still very good at showing these moments but the last few episodes of the show are bogged down in a weird supernatural plot with a ghost boy that I wish they would have just tossed down the shrine steps. The twist at the end with it was not worth sidetracking the story for three episodes in a 12 episode story and soured my experience as a whole. I've been told the author likes doing these sorts of things and I didn't mind the lucid dreaming episodes, but this bit just did not land for me and it's a big bummer.

Here's Another Side Category Called Old Anime I Watched And Enjoyed. Yes, that's the full title.

G Gundam

I don't know why it took me so long to watch this series, but I am glad I did. Maybe I just needed friends to be there to watch it with, who knows. Either way, I'm thankful I got to join Domon on his journey searching for the man in the photograph and to experience the Undefeated of the East in his most powerful form. G Gundam is a goofy setting with a bunch of weird but fun characters and their even weirder mobile suits. I don't know how much I can really say on it since I'm sure most people have probably checked it out years ago on Toonami. It's still fun and good and it has a Gundam who is a boxer and a football man at the same time. Gundam Fight, Readdddddy....GO!

Back to my normal list, though I have grouped the next couple shows in a block I am calling the "I wish these had a full 24 episodes even though I understand why they didn't but please make more I'd love it, ok thanks" block.

A Place Further Than The Universe

This show had...a lot of moments where I was sitting there and just processing all that was going on. A group of girls become friends and join a civilian expedition to Antarctica, one of whom is going there to basically go where her mother had spoken of years ago and never came back. It's a show that I felt compelled to keep watching even though I knew I should have stopped for the night, telling myself "I can watch one more episode..." . It just gripped me and sank its penguin fangs into me. Shut up, I know what I said. Seriously though, the cast of secondary characters are just as fun as the main ones and I enjoyed every minute of it. It definitely destroyed me in one of the more heavy moments near the end though so keep a box of tissues handy ok?

Wotakoi

Love is hard for otaku. It's in the show's translated title and everything. Let me tell you, I'm very happy seeing so many anime featuring adults in the work place these days. Wotakoi is a show I felt a very personal connection to, especially its humor levels. Not going to lie,  I am a Kabakura through and through when it comes to my anime watching and purchasing habits. It's a cute love story with a couple of characters getting together out of convenience before realizing maybe there's something more than that to it. The interactions are great and it's very relatable if you've ever had a friends' game night or anime watching session. It's a show that just feels like it knows just how to speak to you if you've been a fan of anime for a long time.

Hisone to Masotan

Hey, you into dragon vore? Then have I got the show for you buddy. All joking aside, Hisomaso is a show with one of the more fun protagonists I've run into in a while. Hisone's blunt and to the point to the detriment of anything that comes out of her mouth most of the time, but there's something about her honesty that's very endearing. The show's pilots are a great cast and their dragon friends are just as charismatic even if they spend a lot of the time cosplaying as aircraft. This show has a nice story about trying to find just where you fit in within the world and sometimes that's hard. Sometimes the best thing to do is dive into the gullet of a big scaly F-15 and ride the free skies to your heart's content. I love you Masotan.

Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight

This show I think more than any others in this block I wanted more of, even though I know why I don't have more of it. From episode one, I got Utena vibes with the music, the auditions, Hell, even the prefight wardrobe transformations. Stage girls do battle with all of their shine to prove who is truly the top star. That's the basic premise and the cast of characters really helps to flesh it out with their own motivations of what makes them keep going to be the very best they can be. I loved all of the imagery in the auditions and the music and the big doofy giraffe just watching from the stands and enjoying the whole thing. Revue Starlight is a stylish show with some amazing animation and choreography that puts most of the things I watched this year to shame and I need more things like it.

STOP IT'S PRECURE TIME

Go Princess Precure

This is me and Cheapsteak's "old Precure" of the year and it's wonderful. It's a story about dreams and fighting for them. The Princess Precures are maybe not the most relatable of characters as they attend a very prim and proper high class school. One is a business conglomerate's daughter, one's a super model, one's a Princess from another plane entirely. But there is something wonderful how they all work together as friends and work to save everyone's dreams, I don't know there's something very good and wonderful about that. I love that even when it comes to one of the villains, a character in the show goes out of her way to help him with his self esteem (and make up). I don't know, I've got a few episodes left but I just love it. Haruka is my favorite Pink Precure I've met so far and she is gonna be tough to beat.

Hugtto Precure

Very similar to Go Princess is Hugtto, with its message of hope for the future because you can't just stay in the present. There's a great cast of characters and they all work so hard to cheer each others' dreams on, all while taking care of a baby and a hamster from the future. I think this show also has the best mid-seasons Cures I've met so far and just...everything with how supportive and good everyone is to each other has me smiling the whole time. Also in the episodes leading up to the anniversary movie this year, we got some of the best big moments I've seen in a show in a while. A lot of the episodes have some amazing animation work as well and just...I like this show a lot especially what it did to show Hana's pre-show back story as well. Pink Cures are really good huh?

Back to business!

Asobi Asobase

Along with PTE, this was one of the weirder comedies that I watched this year. It's often crass or just outright weird, but that's one of its strong points I think. The show's opening is a giant fakeout from what seems like your ordinary "cute girls doing club things" chill show because you're soon hit with some of the weirdest faces and shrieks that I've run into in a while. The characters are a troublesome group of weirdoes who try to do activities like a normal club but fail horribly at it, often due to one or more of them sabotaging it with their own dumbness. It really says something that the sweetest and most relatable characters are the witch girls who practice curses all day. They're really the best though but so are all of the fucking weirdoes in this show. Also there's ass lasers so if you're into that...

Cells at Work

Learn about the human body while dangerous viruses and germs get fucking iced like they walked into the wrong anime. Follow a red blood cell make her way through the blood stream and lose her way every single time. Thrill at the amazingly adorable platelet crew as they get to work each day. Cells at Work is a weird science shounen show with some great character designs and interactions. The way the cells just are working hard and doing their jobs as best they can is great and you want to root for them so hard. Those Killer T and White blood cells and Macrophages just love killing SO much. It's a fun show that teaches you about biology and anatomy in a somewhat rudimentary but enjoyable manner.

Plus I will stress again, the platelet design is beyond cute.

Skullface Book Seller Honda-san

Honda-san is a cute little series you could watch in an afternoon due to its episode count and length, but it's one I could see myself watching multiple times easily. It's a fun window into the window of book store retail and the Japanese publishing industry. The characters have fun designs, mostly normal bodies with some kind of weird mask/helmet on but they're very relatable. Honda-san does his best to help out the customers, even when their requests tear at his very sanity some times. But that's retail huh? It's fun though, go check out this good skeleton!

Bloom Into You

I think this was the show that intrigued me the most this year because I was just hooked on the relationship between Yuu and Touko and seeing how it advanced. Yuu is a girl who wants to be able to fall in love like everyone else her age seems to be able to and when she finally meets a girl who she thinks feels similarly...that darn senpai falls in love with her. It's a very relatable tale even if you haven't been in a lot of relationships. Seeing Yuu realize her own feelings slowly grow towards Touko and the issues that come up because of was something that had me wanting to find out more each week. It also was the show that took me the longest to come to my final thoughts on too due to its ending but ultimately, I'm glad I watched it.

Zombieland Saga

Honestly, I'm glad to start and end this list with certifiable bangers. The concept of zombies becoming idols sounds like it could just go so wrong but it doesn't. It's so good and fun and goofy. The characters are all really fun and goofy but still have depth to them, even zombie brained legend Yamada Tae. I love this show and every character in it and if there were Franchouchou concerts done like a Hatsune Miku tour, I'd go so hard. Zombieland Saga is a good and powerful show and it even has a good ending with a sequel hook. Watch these girls and cheer them on, that is an order.

I normally do a "Shows I'll Watch Next Year" section but I realize I never end up doing it so I'm just going to add one of my current ones I know I'll continue watching.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind

Come on, you knew this was going to be on here right? I'm curious where this gangster plot line is going and can't wait to continue next year.

So that's my list, I hope you enjoyed it. For a special treat to go into 2019, I leave you with the best moment in anime 2018. Peace!

Ah well I got copyright striked so here’s a mirror

https://streamable.com/87z73

[kristinkisska]

Zero Dark Thirty

Today on SleuthSayers blog, I posted the following (you can read the original post here):

I have a confession to make. Eleven weeks into our weird safe-at-home reality, and I've barely scratched the surface of my (admittedly) ambitious quarantine To Do list. Way back in mid-March, I had such grand plans with all the extra time on my hands.   ~ Finish revising my WIP novel.   ~ Draft a short story for an upcoming anthology   ~ Read the TBR books that threatens to overtake my nightstand. You may even remember my debut SleuthSayers post <here> wherein I suggested several productive writerly activities. Did I listen to myself?  Nope. As March blended into April, my day job commitments dwindled along with the tanking economy. I found myself with even more unstructured time available for writing. Did I tick anything off my To Do list?  Double-nope. Processing the pandemic seemed all-consuming. Instead of revising, I devoured a constant stream of COVID-10 news updates. I watched in horror as New York hospitals overflowed with patients. Instead of writing, I sewed masks to donate to frontline staff who were desperate for PPE. Instead of reading, I helped my kiddos with their online schooling.  Don't even get me started on Zoom-fatigue or strategizing about our family's once-per-week stealth grocery shopping adventures. Honestly, I didn't think fiction--even the dark kind we crime-hounds write about--could get any weirder than our post-apocalyptic reality. Then came the murder hornets.

Something weighed heavily on me, beyond the underlying anxiety from our crazy new normal. About a month into our quarantine, I had an ah-ha moment. I missed writing. For me, not only has writing always been my link to sanity, but it can be an escape from my day-to-day worries. Without it, I felt a little lost. But since my quarantine time seemed to be occupied from sunrise to way past sunset, how would I carve out a routine dedicated to writing?

The answer hit me in the form of my good ol' writerly friends at #5amWritersClub (a.k.a. my writing tribe). In case you're not familiar with #5amWritersClub, it's an informal support group of early-riser writers on Twitter. If these pre-dawn writers could be stereotyped, I'd say they tend to be self-deprecating coffee-aholics who cheer each other on through missed alarm clocks, writers block, life's hiccups,and of course, chasing words. How does one join #5amWritersClub?

Fortunately, it's easier than hitting snooze when your alarm goes off.  This informal group works on a drop-in-when-you-can basis. Over the years, I've participated when my daily writing time vanished, usually when my kids' schools were on summer or winter breaks.  Here's how:

Join Twitter. Have an account?  If yes, then you're all set to roll.  No? Just go ahead and setup your free account and Twitter handle. Don't forget to upload a profile photo.  Need help? Step-by-step instructions can be found <here>.

Tweet. Sometime between 5am and 6am in your time zone, Tweet a check-in note.  You can wish people good morning, mention your project, something motivational, or even complain about accidentally sleeping through your third alarm.  No pressure, just be sure to include the hashtag #5amWritersClub in the Tweet so other group members can find you.  Bonus points - add a humorous or coffee-related gif video clip to your Tweet.

Write. Log those words. This is your golden hour.

Like. Once or twice during the hour, hop back on Twitter to like other #5amWritersClub Tweets from that morning.  Pro tip -- if you're new to Twitter, this is how you will find lots of other writers to follow.

Friday donuts. The group's tradition is to celebrate T.G.I.F. by sharing virtual donuts. Since the pandemic started, some members have even met virtually on Zoom on an occasional Friday.

Done. At the end of your hour, there's no need to report back or check out, but fee free to like a few more #5amWritersClub Tweets to support others in your same trenches.  And don't forget, the next time zone to the West's members will be checking in behind you.

Since rejoining #5amWritersClub, I've gotten my writing mojo back. With even a few new words on the page each day, endorphins would rush through my psyche in a feel-good wave. In a world that was getting weirder by the day, writing was something I could control. I was creating again. I've even checked off one of my To Do items, drafting the new short story. Progress on several fronts! What have you been doing in our New Normal to bolster your writing?

[weekendwarriorblog]

Weekend Warrior Home Edition – April 3, 2020 – Slay the Dragon, Tape and More

Well, things sure have gone to hell since I last wrote this weekly column that I’ve now been doing in some form or another at one place or other for over nineteen years! For the first time in those 19 years and probably a good 80 or 90 years before that, there were no movies in theaters. In fact, there were no movie theaters. Because of this, the last two weekends have been the first in history with ZERO BOX OFFICE. It’s kind of tough to write a column about the box office and theatrical releases when there are none, n’est ce pas?

So I’m going to try to evolve for the time being, and we’ll see how that goes. I’m not too thrilled about having to watch movies as screeners, let alone writing about movies that will probably never get a theatrical release, but I’ll try to make the best of it. (Oh, and Disney’s Onward, which opened in theaters less than a month ago will be available ON DISNEY+* tomorrow.) (*corrected)

This week’s “Featured Movie” that you absolutely must see, especially if you’re reading this from one of the “red states” and feel like government just isn’t doing things the way you’d like them to do, is Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance’s political documentary SLAY THE DRAGON (Magnolia).  It covers how gerrymandering is being used in census years (like this one) to maintain a Republican majority in local and state government.  Goodman’s doc begins in Michael Moore territory of Flint, Michigan and shows how gerrymandering was used to create a Republican majority that led to the town getting water from the nearby Flint River which contaminated the pipes and leaked lead into the system.

The film does a good job explaining gerrymandering in an easy to understand way by following a few specific cases of people fighting against the policies.  Counties and voting districts in different states aren’t just a straight grid on a map. Instead, the districts are drawn up to cause an unfair advantage to a party. This was especially true of the REDMAP program instituted in 2008 by the GOP after Barack Obama was elected President to make sure Republicans could dominate Congress as well as politics on a state level.  

Much of the film deals with Katie Fahey’s group Citizens United that has decided to take on the politicians with its grassroots campaign to allow the people’s voices and votes to start counting. (One of the programs that grew out of REDMAPping was that thousands of voters were not able to vote since a few states passed a law that ID was required to vote, thereby keeping black and brown voters from the polls.)

Yes, it’s a rather complicated situation but it’s one that people in the primarily liberal states like New York, California and others really need to know about, since it’s why we have a reality TV host as our President right now as well as why we have a Republican Senate that just prevented him from being impeached. All of the bigger politics goes back to the individual state politics and how gerrymandering and REDMAP unfairly sways the vote against those who win on the state level in census years (essentially every ten years including 2020). Originally, this was going to get a theatrical release in March but now it will only be available on digital and On Demand, so you can find out how to see it on the official site.

I also want to give a little extra attention to Deborah Kampmeier’s TAPE (Full Moon Films), which skipped its theatrical release instead to do an interesting “virtual theatrical run,” playing every night On Demand via CrowdCast. It’s available every night at 7pm eastern followed by discussions with the filmmakers and then will be on Digital and VOD on April 10. Again, these are changing times, but this is a haunting and powerful thriller based on true events, starring Anarosa Mudd as a woman trying to catch a sleezy casting agent (Tarek Bishara) who is preying on actresses and one in particular, played by Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan). Both of their performances are pretty amazing, Mudd playing a shaven-head whistleblower and Fuhrman playing an ambitious young actress who think she’s finally gotten her much-needed break, but finding out there’s a lot darker side to the business than she expected. While a lot of people have raved about The Assistant as a response to #MeToo, this is a much starker and direct look at the abuse of power to take advantage of young women. The movie is not going to be for everybody, because it takes some time before you realize what Mudd’s character (who could just as easily be Rose MacGowan) is up to, but the way how things play out in the film makes it unforgettable. It’s a fantastic new movie from Kampmeier, who famously had an underage Dakota Fanning have a rape scene in her earlier movie, Hounddog.

A movie that was released last week that I didn’t get to write about (but it’s still available On Demand and Digitally, as many movies currently are) is Lorcan Finnegan’s VIVARIUM (Saban Films), starring Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. It’s a virtual two-hander in which they play a couple who look at a house in a suburban housing complex where every house looks the same. They soon learn that they can’t escape and things get weirder and weirder from there. I can’t say I loved the movie, because it just got weirder and weirder, almost to a fault at times.

Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska’s THE OTHER LAMB (IFC Midnight) is another movie about a religious cult, this one a group of women that live in a remote forest commune led by a man they call “Shepherd” (played by Michiel Huisman from Game of Thrones and The Haunting of Hill House). It follows a teenager named Selah (Raffey Cassidy) who begins to question her existence when she starts having nightmarish visions. This was okay, but I really have hit my limit in terms of movies about religious cults. They’ve just been overdone.

Mike Doyle’s rom-com ALMOST LOVE (Vertical) is about a group of middle-aged friends trying to navigate love and relationships with a cast that includes Scott Evans, Kate Walsh, Patricia Clarkson, Augustus Prew and more. Some of the characters are having marital issues, others are dating or getting into early feelings of possible love. It’s a nice distraction from all the serious stuff going on in the world today.

A great music doc now On Demand, digital and other formats (Blu-ray/DVD) is Brent Wilson’s STREETLIGHT HARMONIES (Gravitas), which takes a look at the early doo-wop vocal groups of the ‘50s and ‘60s that predated and formed the basis for Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues and other music genres as we know them today. It deals with acts like The Drifters, Little Antony and the Imperials, The Platters, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. It includes interviews with some of the more recent acts influenced by it including En Vogue and N’Sync as well as Brians Wilson and McKnight. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this despite doo-wop not being my preferred music style. (For the sake of transparency, I helped out with a little bit of publicity on this film.)

Also, Olivier Meyrou’s fly-on-the-wall doc Celebration (1091) is a movie that was commissioned by Yves Saint Laurent’s former lover and business partner, Pierre Bergé, more than ten years ago but was shelved for being too revealing. It was filmed over the course of three years where Laurent was at his most frail and mostly separated from the world as we get a look inside one of the last great haute couture houses. It’s now available On Demand and digitally.

Jon Abrahams directs and co-stars in Clover (Freestyle Digital Media) opposite the great Mark Webber, playing bumbling Irish twins trying to pay off their father’s debt to local mob boss Tony Davolo, played by Chazz Palminteri. Things get more complicated when a teen girl named Clover (Nicole Elizabeth Berger) shows up and the brothers need to protect her from Tony’s “hit-women.” Looks like a fun dark comedy.

Unfortunately, Saban Films didn’t offer advance review screeners of the action sequel, Rogue Warrior: The Hunt (Saban Films), directed by Mike Gunther, but it stars Will Yun Lee.  I’m not sure if this is a sequel to 2017’s Rogue Warrior: The Hunt, but I haven’t seen that either. It involves the leader of an elite team of soldiers being captured by terrorists, so his team needs rescue him. Oh, and Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) is in it, too.

STREAMING AND CABLE

This week’s Netflix offerings include the streaming network’s latest true-crime documentary series, HOW TO FIX A DRUG SCANDAL, directed by Erin Lee Carr (Dirty Money), which covers the 2013 case of Sonja Farak, a crime drug lab specialist who was arrested for tampering with evidence but also accused of using the drugs she was supposed to be testing.  (It’s on the service as of this writing.)

Stuber and Good director Michael Dowse helms the action-comedy COFFEE & KAREEM, starring Ed Helms as police officer James Coffee, who begins dating Taraji P. Henson’s Vanessa Manning while her 12-year-old son Kareem (Terrence Little Gardenhigh) plots their break-up. Kareem hires criminal fugitives to kill Coffee but instead ends up getting his whole family targeted, so the two must team up. Also starring Betty Gilpin, RonReaco Lee, Andrew Bachelor and David Alan Grier.

Also on Friday, Disney Plus will stream two Disneynature docs, Dolphin Reef and Elephant, in honor of Earth Day taking place later this month. Previously, one or both of these movies might have been released theatrically but hey, earth is going to hell right now.

Now playing on Hulu is the latest installment of Blumhouse’s “Into the Dark,” Alejandro Brugué’s Pooka Lives, which ties in with “Pooka Day” (no idea what that is) but apparently, Pooka is a fictional creature like “Slender Man” that was created on Creepypasta  by a group of friends that goes viral but then manifests into creatures that become real. It stars fan faves Felicia Day, Will Wheaton, Rachel Bloom and more.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

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

[gregorygerwitz]

          I don’t typically talk about Agents of SHIELD much anymore, at least not on here, and especially not about canon, but I’ve recently dived head-first into a new otp and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. And a little bit about Pure Genius, because I miss it.

          It’s honestly really weird to me that Holden Radcliffe is the Bad Guy™ right now, especially considering everything that happened in the most recent episode. Then again, that might just be because I’m used to the fandom brushing off everything Coulson does wrong as if it never happened, and the fact that everyone seems to hate Radcliffe right now rubs me the wrong way. Just looking at what each of them has done in the last season and a half alone makes it seem even weirder.

Since the beginning of s3, Coulson has:           -- told Fitz to let go of Jemma and move on, and then proceeded to compare the loss of a best friend to the loss of his hand. is now saying that he won’t ever let go of May, and would probably kill anyone who tried to compare her to any body part           -- murdered Ward. even Coulson himself admitted that it was a mistake, in the opening scene of the newest episode, that he snapped, that he knew it was wrong but he enjoyed it anyway. no, I will not apologize for calling it “murder” because that’s what it is           -- admitted that the thought of brainwashing Agnes to get her to help them get to Radcliffe crossed his mind. he admitted that a few options crossed his mind, none of them ethical, and then proceeded to completely manipulate her in order to get her on their side. similarly, he held Thomas Ward at gunpoint last season, which could have gotten both Fitz and Jemma killed.           -- all of this was done for his own selfish gain

          I’ve noticed the fandom brushing most of this off as nothing, that it’s okay because Coulson is one of the Good Guys™ and anything he does can and will be justified even if he himself says that it was a mistake, or that he shouldn’t have done it, or that it was a line he shouldn’t have crossed. And, honestly, if you believe that, I don’t care. It’s fiction, justify it however you want, it’s entirely open to interpretation, but be consistent. Don’t be the person who says that Coulson killing for selfish reasons is justified simply because the person he took out is “evil,” and then turn around and say that Ward being manipulated to kill on orders isn’t justified in its own way. I wasn’t going to bring Ward into this, originally, so I do apologize for that tiny tangent

          Yet, even after all that, people are still defending Coulson but hating on Radcliffe, who, as far as I can tell, hasn’t done anything worse than Coulson has.

In the first half of s4, we found out that Radcliffe has:           -- redesigned Terrigen crystals so that they don’t kill or harm regular human beings anymore. he took the chemical make-up and changed it just enough that it can still put someone through terrigenesis, but it won’t cause harm to someone who doesn’t have the gene, potentially saving hundreds or thousands or millions of lives down the road           -- devoted years of his life to researching any way to save the woman he cares about from dying of cancer, up to and including implementing the technology on himself so he knows first hand how it would affect someone           -- built a “shield” in the form of a perfect human decoy in order to save lives and make up for all the ones lost because of his advancements when he was working with Hive           -- created a practically perfect virtual reality with the help of aforementioned perfect human decoy that could be used for so many different purposes besides what we’ve already been shown

          It can be argued that everything Radcliffe has done since we first saw him in 3x18 could have been with the goal of helping Agnes in mind. His motivation for virtually everything he’s done has been to save a life. Is it selfish? Potentially. It’s the woman he cares about and loves that he’s trying to save, I’m not saying that his motivations are as good and pure as someone who wants to, say, bring world peace to everyone -- on earth or elsewhere -- but it’s clear that he’s not evil.

          The thing about Pure Genius, a show I dearly miss that deserved to get more than one season is that it deal with exactly this kind of dilemma: does doing something for selfish reasons inherently make it bad? James Bell, a tech billionaire, created a hospital specifically to find miracle cures. His motivation was to create a team of people smart enough and inventive enough to come up with a cure for the disease that he has, but he saved so many lives in that search.

          James created this place of miracles for himself, and it was selfish, but does that erase the fact that it ended up saving so many other people, as well? Radcliffe has devoted years to finding a way to help the woman he loves, and it’s arguably selfish, but does that erase the fact that his technological advancements will do good for so many other people?

          I’m not saying that Radcliffe hasn’t made mistakes, and I’m not saying that he’s the perfect representation of a Good Guy™ character, but maybe he shouldn’t rank below the guy who literally commits felonies and then shrugs it off.

[biofunmy]

‘People Were Bleeding All Over’: America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park

Amusement parks are designed to deliver thrills. They are places for splashing and screaming and laughing, often on rides that defy common sense, not to mention the laws of physics.

But a park in New Jersey routinely delivered a lot worse — bloody noses, bruises, broken teeth and bones, concussions and even death. People who spent a day at Action Park in its prime, in the 1980s and 1990s, often left with something to show for it: scars.

“People were bleeding all over the place,” said Susie McKeown, who is now 52 and remembers going to Action Park after she graduated from high school more than 30 years ago. “People were walking around the park with scraped elbows or knees.’’

She went home with her own badge of honor, having broken one of her front teeth on a ride that ended with a 15- or 20-foot plunge into a chilly pond. “You went so fast that if your chin hit the water at the wrong angle, you chipped your teeth,” she said.

She is hardly alone, as far as injuries go — or memories. Sports Illustrated recently published a 3,300-word article under the headline, “Remembering Action Park, America’s Most Dangerous, Daring Water Park.”

And in 2014, Cory Booker, a United States senator from New Jersey and a Democratic presidential candidate, wrote on Twitter, “I’ve got stories 2 tell.”

Now a documentary is on the way. Its title is “Class Action Park,” a reference to one of the many nicknames for Action Park. The park, about 50 miles northwest of New York City in Vernon, N.J., was long ago replaced by a far tamer destination, with different owners and a new name, Mountain Creek Water Park.

Action Park “was funny, it was weird, it was hysterical, but there was a darkness to it,” said Seth Porges, who made the documentary with Chris Charles Scott.

“People got hurt there. The hardest part of making this movie was: How do you portray that? A lot of people look back fondly on it as a coming-of-age experience. How do you reconcile the fun of it with the human toll?”

Mr. Porges’s parents put Action Park on their vacation itinerary when he was a teenager growing up in Bethesda, Md. “I have these memories of impossible machines, water slides that seemed like they came from a Looney Tunes cartoon and this crazed atmosphere of chaos,” he said.

He also remembers the way Action Park promoted itself in the 80s and 90s. “The ads portrayed the place as a family-friendly, wholesome, great place to bring your kids,” he said. “You’d get there and realize the reality of the situation was anything but.”

The website WeirdNJ said two of the touchstones of growing up in New Jersey were being able to name all the places in the opening montage of “The Sopranos” and being seriously injured at Action Park. At least 14 broken bones and 26 head injuries were reported in 1984 and 1985. Action Park eventually bought the town new ambulances to handle trips to hospitals.

But there were deaths at Action Park: six between 1978, when it opened, and 1996, when it closed. (It reopened under different owners a few years later, only to close and reopen again.) Two deaths occurred within a single week in 1982. One victim was a 15-year-old boy who drowned in the notorious Tidal Wave Pool. The other was a 27-year-old man who was electrocuted on a ride called Kayak Experience.

“There was virtually no action taken against” Action Park, said Mr. Porges, the filmmaker. “Eventually it shut down, not because of some regulator who said ‘You’re through.’ But because it went bankrupt.” (The state Labor Department found no violations in the kayak case, but said that electric current from an underwater fan could have caused serious bodily injury.)

Mr. Porges, a former editor at Maxim and Popular Mechanics magazines who has a degree in journalism, saw Action Park as a good story. “I’m a journalist by trade,” he said. “I realized this is a great opportunity to apply my trade, so we began to dig. The true story of Action Park — it’s weirder and crazier than the legend.”

But it is the nostalgia-tinted legend that remains in people’s memories. Alison Becker, 42, an actress and writer best known for a recurring role on the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” said the risks at Action Park were part of the appeal. She said she had gone to Six Flags Great Adventure, which is also in New Jersey, and nothing equaled the fear factor at Action Park.

“You know the scene in ‘Footloose’ where they’re playing a game of chicken with tractors and going at each other?” said Ms. Becker, who grew up about 30 miles from Action Park in Allamuchy Township. “Most people look at that and say, ‘What dumb kids.’ I look at it and say, ‘That’s like a day at Action Park. They could’ve charged an extra five for that, and we would have paid it.”

Action Park was so notorious that there are stories about a test dummy that was sent through a ride before it opened. The dummy came out missing something — its head, in some versions; a leg or an arm in others.

Andy Mulvihill, 56, the son of Action Park’s longtime owner, said the tale about the dummy’s head was true. He said he knows this because he was there. He was the first person to go on that ride, he said, after the dummy came out decapitated.

“I was wearing my hockey equipment when I did it,” he said. Speed was essential. “If you didn’t have enough speed,” Mr. Mulvihill said, “you’d fall and smash your face, and if you smashed hard enough, you could break your nose or knock out some teeth.”

He said that ride was open for only a few weeks at a time. “Generally, the rides were very tame,” he said. “But there were some where you controlled the speed and the action, and if you were reckless, you could get hurt.”

Action Park was created by Andy Mulvihill’s father Eugene, whom Mr. Porges described as a “showman-huckster businessman, a mixture of P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney, with a little bit of Trump.”

Andy Mulvihill said “the intent certainly was not to make it dangerous.”

He also said the deaths did not deter his father, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to insurance policies in 1984 and whom the Securities and Exchange Commission banned from the securities business in 1986.

“He didn’t build Action Park just to make money,” Mr. Porges said.

Nor did he “build Action Park just to break rules,” he said. “He really wanted to create an incredibly fun place. He had a vision for the most fun place in the world, unhindered by common sense or safety. A lot of people romanticize it about him and the park. They say there are too many rules now, too much regulation, stuff used to be fun. Yeah, stuff used to be fun — if you survived.”

Andy Mulvihill called the deaths at Action Park “devastating to me.”

But he added, “three of those deaths were drownings. We pulled out thousands and thousands of people who were people who had no business in the water.’’

And yet, it was exhilarating. For some, the conversation in the car on the way there “was about who’s going to do this, who’s going to do that, who do you think is going to get hurt,” recalled Kris Brennan, who is now 45 and lives in Westfield. “It wasn’t ‘If someone gets hurt,’ it was ‘Who’s going to get hurt?’”

Mr. Brennan had “a chunk of skin taken out of my hip” on the 2,700-foot-long Alpine Slide.

“Class Action Park” will probably bring on a flood of memories. But Andy Mulvihill is looking to tell the story his way, and next summer Penguin Books will publish “Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park.”

He said it was “nonfiction for sure,” even if it read like fiction.

“When you do something as crazy, as cutting-edge” as Action Park, he said, “and you put it in the metro New York area, where New Yorkers are pretty much crazy anyway, you have stories.”

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

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[caveartfair]

My Novel Was Shaped by the Unforgettable Way These Artists Saw America

U.S. 10, Post Falls, Idaho, August 25, 1974, 1974. Stephen Shore Phillips

About a dozen years ago, I began to write a novel about a troubled wandering car thief, and for even more years, I had known where this thief would roam—through the part of the country where I was raised, the endless flatlands of the Texas panhandle, the region of the state known as the Staked Plains, or Llano Estacado.

The story would be true in spirit to the land as I knew it: desolately beautiful, eerie in its immensity and isolation, dry, lonesome, windblown, politically and socially conservative, and, at least for the book-loving teenager I was, devoid of much in the way of high or even pop culture, with the significant exception of music (Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, the Flatlanders, Terry Allen, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy).

Until cable came along, it was tough even to score a functioning television signal in my hometown, Plains, and the lone movie theater was—like the one in Larry McMurtry’s Thalia—shuttered. My book would be about how I remembered myself when I was growing up, all but disconnected from the urbanizing currents of postmodern American life.

But on the way to writing it, something strange happened. About the time I began, I’d started to write for the New York Times about art, a subject I plowed into as a passionate neophyte, trying desperately to fill the truck-sized holes gaping through even my basic knowledge.

Stephen Shore, Room 316, Howard Johnson’s, Battle Creek, Michigan, July 6, 1973, 1973. © Stephen Shore. Courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York.

My early education had involved little in the way of art history; the 20th century was a virtual void. But then, in college, I happened into the Menil Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and after moving to New York in 1991, my brother-in-law, the artist Larry Krone, introduced me to his art world—disorientingly electric places like Exit Art, Artists Space, the New Museum, White Columns, and P.S. 122. Purely because of my position at the Times, I was granted entrée to the studios of dozens of groundbreaking artists whose time I had no real business taking: Nan Goldin, Richard Prince, Ida Applebroog, Isa Genzken, Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy, Valie Export, Carl Andre, Kerry James Marshall, and several—like John Chamberlain, Vito Acconci, and Chris Burden—who are now no longer among us.

Slowly, and without my realizing it at first, pieces of the day job began to slip into what I was doing at night, from about midnight to 2 a.m., when I worked on the novel which would become Presidio. Initially, the seepage was visual. I needed concrete detail about the look of the West—specifically from the years in which the book is set, the late 1960s and early 1970s, along the road, in the motel rooms and café booths where my thief spends his days. Stephen Shore’s photographs from “Uncommon Places” and “American Surfaces” had already begun to supplant my own memories of the West in the 1970s, when I was a child, so it felt only natural to turn to them for guidance. Eventually, I began to inhabit specific pictures fully as settings, both in homage to Shore and because doing so grounded me more deeply in reality—and history—than half-remembered scraps of my own. A motel room where my character falls ill is—down to the Japanese wallpaper and gold brocade bedspread—the one rented and photographed by Shore in Room 316, Howard Johnson’s, Battle Creek, Michigan, July 6, 1973 (1973). My thief’s preferred breakfast, where available, is the short stack with whipped butter, half cantaloupe, and cold milk (in a wavy diner glass) from Shore’s Trail’s End Restaurant, Kanab, Utah, August 10, 1973 (1973), one of the most indelible depictions of a meal in post-war art.

Breakfast, Trail’s End Restaurant, Kanab, Utah, August 10, 1973, 1973. Stephen Shore The Museum of Modern Art

Naturally, I had to enlist William Eggleston, too, because of his light—light that feels somehow irretrievable, like the color of light from my youth. I needed the sun-dappled boy from his Untitled (Supermarket boy with carts), Memphis, 1965 (1965) to shoulder a row of shopping carts into a rural grocery on a Texas fall afternoon. In less specific ways, the work of other photographers played a part—particularly the raw, humane honesty of Goldin, Danny Lyon, and Jim Goldberg.

A few years into the writing, Alec Soth published Broken Manual (2010), a powerful book based on his years of work among American dropouts, objectors, eremites, and survivalists, people trying to disappear themselves from society for reasons both understandable and abhorrent. My thief, Troy Falconer, was likewise trying to flee conventional conceptions of contentment and progress, to give up identity and possessions, after suffering a breakdown. Finding Soth’s book made me feel as if I were tapping into something, a shared wavelength, a feeling reinforced around the same time when I came across Seth Price’s strange little black hardcover, How to Disappear in America (2008), an “appropriation” by Price culling various how-to advice from off-the-gridder websites and tracts.

Concurrences like these became important to me. Other writing and art began to chime unexpectedly and subtly make their way in. This wasn’t because of any interest in Joycean puzzle-making. And the references didn’t seem like appropriation to me—they still don’t. But they did have something to do with the feeling Richard Prince articulates in his 1977 essay “Prior Availability,” where he writes about how “certain records sound better when someone on the radio station plays them, than when we’re home alone, and play the same records ourselves.”

Untitled [Supermarket boy with carts], Memphis, 1965. William Eggleston "William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color," at Musée de l'Elysée (2015)

Untitled (Girlfriend), 1993. Richard Prince Sotheby's

At its most basic, it was, maybe, about understanding how artificial it was to think of certain experiences as not belonging to me simply because I had soaked them into my skin by reading them, listening to them, looking at them on a wall or a screen. This might have been just capitulation to an over-mediated existence. Maybe it was warmed-over existentialism. But it felt weirder, and older. There’s a line from the Swiss writer Robert Walser’s The Walk, published in 1917, that I’ve always loved in this regard: “I was no longer myself, I was another, yet it was on this account that I became properly myself.”

There’s no Richard Prince foregrounded in the novel or even easily discernible beneath the surface. But the way he reads the subtext of certain American things—pulp fiction sharing the same high-literary register with Ginsberg and Plath, with muscle-car design and stand-up comedy routines—ends up hovering over my descriptions of roadside landscape. In one instance, I also used him for the make of a stolen car: a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T, the one driven by Barry Newman in the movie Vanishing Point, which Prince told me several years ago I needed to watch. (“‘Do you see what I see?’ asks the deejay.”) A few other stolen cars got art-world harmonics, as well, mostly just for my entertainment; for example, a black 1950 Ford Business Coupe taken from a farmhouse halfway through the book is the make Robert Frank drove across the United States beginning in 1955 when he shot “The Americans.”

Alec Soth, The Arkansas Cajun’s backup bunker, from the book “Broken Manual,” 2007. Courtesy of Magnum Photos.

Alec Soth, 2007_10zl0006, 2007. from the book “Broken Manual,” 2006-10. Courtesy of Magnum Photos.

Once in a while, a borrowing came in wholesale. I thank the late, great Chris Burden in my acknowledgments for the loan of a good name. Burden’s 1980 video gem Big Wrench is a nonfiction account of his wayward obsession with a truck he owned briefly in Venice, California. The truck’s seller, as the artist relates, was a small-time drug smuggler named Jim Quaintance, though Burden later discovered this was not the man’s real name. The automotive association and the pseudonymous con were more than enough for me. In Presidio, my Quaintance runs a car-theft ring in eastern New Mexico; who’s to say he’s less real than the man who sold Burden a cursed tractor-trailer rig?

If I were pressed to name a deity from the art realm who presides generally over the book—one I almost had to try to keep out—it would be Robert Smithson, though it’s hard to explain exactly why. I’d read Smithson’s writings in fits and starts for years, often getting bogged down in what Peter Schjeldahl calls his “mystagogical” dandyism, his way of writing as pseudo-anthropological stand-up.

But the older I got, the more his pieces—especially the ones that read as travelogues—began to speak to me about where I grew up, a place where the final remnants of the American frontier closed after the Comanche tribes were forced out; where Manifest Destiny seemed to have petered out and finally exposed its farcical aim, a faith in delusions called expansion and progress.

Big Wrench, 1980. Chris Burden Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)

Smithson (whose untimely death in West Texas, in an airplane crash in 1973, probably also played a part in my thinking) talked about the idea of entropy in a way that felt very much like the land I knew, in a way that made the land seem more consequential, at least more interesting—a kind of conceptual test site. He wrote about the allure of “the flat surface, the banal, the empty, the cool, blank after blank,” about a place “devoid of all classical ideas of space and progress,” where “Descartes’ cosmology is brought to a standstill.” (After Coronado’s expedition across the Llano Estacado in 1541, his chronicler, the soldier Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera, described how the barren flatness provoked a psychological disorientation in Europeans so acute it practically terrified them: “Even if a man only lay down on his back he lost sight of the ground.”)

If nothing else, Smithson’s writing provided me in the lonelier hours with the pleasant pretense of my car thief as a kind of artist himself, a performance artist, a cowboy flâneur crisscrossing a Minimalist earthwork twice the size of Switzerland in search of an enlightenment he knows he might never gain because it keeps receding into the distance. As Smithson asks rightfully in “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan” (1969): “How could one advance on the horizon, if it was already present under the wheels?”

from Artsy News

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More than just a captivating source of entertainment, comic books have been looked at as escapism, learning tools, and a way to provide commentary on relevant social or political topics. One way that comic books have rarely been looked at is as history textbooks, but there are so many allusions to current times in comic books that we can’t help but look at certain issues of comic books as strange time capsules. Or we can even go as far as to call them crystal balls. Pop culture has a knack for making wildly accurate predictions of the future. The Simpsons were the first to depict a world where Donald Trump became President of the United States, several Apple creations first appeared in the original Star Trek series, and the Back to the Future series was the first to depict technological advances such as virtual reality and hoverboards. With that said, let’s take a moment to consider that a lot of these moments can be explained as simple coincidences or even just inventors taking inspiration from pop culture to create real things. These are moments of life imitating art, if you will. However, sometimes mediums in pop culture tend to make insane predictions, which not only turn out to be incredibly accurate but also occur in real life so exactly as portrayed that it makes us wonder if there are oracles in pop culture who are predicting such moments. Many of these moments happen in comic books, and here are 16 examples of such occurrences happening.

#1 DC Kills Princess Diana… of Themyscira Superheroes die all the time in comic books. Superman, Batman, Captain America, you name ’em — any superhero name that springs to your mind at this very second has probably died and come back from the dead at least a handful of times in the wonderful world of continuity-depleting, retcon-inducing comic books. We can add Wonder Woman to that long and ever-growing list thanks to issue #126 from her 1997 comic, but what makes this particular death so significant is the fact that it came just three days before Princess Diana of Wales died in a fatal car crash. This wouldn’t seem like such a striking coincidence if not for how Wonder Woman is often referenced as Princess Diana of Themyscira in light of her death. DC Comics killed their version of Princess Diana shortly before the real Princess Diana was killed.

#2 New X-Men Predicts 9/11 Days Before Event There are several images from comic book lore which can be cherry picked for alluding to the 9/11 tragedy, but none are quite as visually striking as this one captured in issue #115 from Grant Morrison’s critically acclaimed New X-Men. The image features a Sentinel plane flying headfirst into a skyscraper building in Genosha. While that image alone brings up awful memories, it gets even weirder when taking into consideration that this issue, in particular, was released in September of 2001 — within days of the attacks on the Twin Towers. While the attacks take place in two different countries, the parallels between this moment in comic book history and the all-too-real disaster that befell us in American history are too similar to deny.

#3 The Secret Service Predicts Oscar Pistorius Incident The Secret Service was a comic book series by Mark Millar that ran from 2012 until 2013 and would go on to be adapted as the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. Though it was a critically acclaimed series, it was still underground for the most part. However, one moment that caught viewers’ attention was one that looked eerily similar to a moment regarding the tragedy surrounding Oscar Pistorius. In one issue of the comic book, the character of Gazelle shoots his victim with his silencer pistol piercing through the door and into his target. Gazelle happens to have bionic legs, similar to Pistorius’s prosthetic legs. It’s also worth noting that this issue was released in the same week that Pistorius killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, by unloading four bullets through a locked door in the same way that Gazelle kills his victim.

#4 1986 Batman Comic Predicts 2012 Theater Shooting In 2012, the release of the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, was dampened by a tragic theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. The mentally disturbed James Egan Holmes walked into a Century movie theater and caused a violent uproar that left 70 people injured and another 12 people dead. This fiasco was eerily reminiscent to an issue of The Dark Knight Returns (which, ironically enough, went on to inspire The Dark Knight Rises) from 1986. The scene saw a gun-toting lunatic shoot up a p-rn theater and the news media going on to blame Batman for inspiring the killer to kill. That in itself is reminiscent of how several news programs blamed the content of The Dark Knight franchise for inspiring Holmes to kill.

#5 Lex Luthor Builds Atomic Bomb Before US Department Early depictions of Lex Luthor saw him more as a scientist rather than the politician and businessman whom we know him as today. His most shocking invention came in 1944 in Action Comics issue #101 where he built an atomic bomb. The bomb was the first of its kind in the comic world and in real life. Coincidentally, the comic book depiction of an atomic bomb was strikingly similar to what the government had been working on with the Manhattan Project at the time. When word got back to the United States Department of Defense, they politely asked DC Comics to push the publication of this issue back a little. They refused to reveal why but demanded that this issue not hit the shelves regardless. They got their wish, and a year later, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The comic storyline was delayed from publication until 1946.

#6 Superman & The Challenger Disaster If one were to delve deeper into who wrote the issues featured on this list, one would find out that most of these titles were penned by John Byrne. Somehow, he just has a knack for predicting major events in the confines of his comic books. It almost seems like it could be more of a coincidence. From the very beginning of his career, he had this hidden talent as in 1986, the first issue of Superman he ever wrote saw Superman saving a NASA space shuttle from crashing. Days before he was ready to turn in the final draft of his story, the Space Shuttle Challenger was obliterated after taking flight with seven of its crew members killed. Out of respect for those who passed, Byrne changed his story at the last minute. One key detail he could not change was the fact that a non-astronaut was onboard the shuttle. In the comic, it was Lois Lane, while in real life, it was teacher Christa McAuliffe. It’s like Byrne’s an all-knowing oracle or something.

#7 The Eagle Predicts Modern Computers While some readers may not remember this comic or possibly never even heard of it, it did do an accurate job of predicting modern technology. The Eagle was a British anthology comic that originally ran from 1950 until 1969 and followed the sci-fi adventures of pilot Dan Dare. The Eagle used its unique science fiction elements to provide a glimpse into what technologies may look like in the somewhat distant future. Surprisingly enough, the writers behind the comic were wildly accurate as computers in the panels look almost exactly like they did early in the computer’s evolution from the bulky screen monitor to the keyboard. The comic also predicted that computers would eventually replace television and stereos as basic home entertainment systems. In the age we live in where TV/movie streaming services and digitally downloaded music are all the rage, this couldn’t be truer.

#8 Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane Predicts 3D Printers 3-dimensional printing seems to be the latest, hottest craze to be sweeping the world as we speak. This unique framework of revolutionary technology once seemed to be an impossible feat to achieve when conceived in 1964, but it seems like the idea didn’t sound too crazy to the writers behind the Superman spinoff, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane. Not only does the 3D printer get featured in the 1960s comic decades before it is actually brought into reality, but Superman actually defines it for what it is today. He says that the 3D printer is “a processing machine that creates busts from photo-images!” Amazing to think that technologies that the general public struggled to even comprehend in the 60s were practically invented by comic book writers.

#9 From Tom Tomorrow to the Patriot Act of Tomorrow Under the pseudonym of Tom Tomorrow, Dan Perkins penned a comic strip for Spin Magazine in 1994 that eerily alluded to the Patriot Act, which went into effect in 2001. In fact, it alluded to numerous things regarding privacy, which we started to deal with in the 2000s. This comic was a direct comedic response to the news that a revolutionary “clipper chip” was being developed by the NSA to make it easier for governments to listen in on phone call conversations. At the time, it may have been hilarious to read this comic and even think that the government would go a step further and have the gall to allow police to search any civilian’s home at any time for no particular reason, but reading it now in a 2017 post-Obama, post-Snowden world where our privacy seems to be the government’s least concern, this comic merely echoes the paranoia we feel regarding our government today.

#10 Archie Comics Predicts Digital Age of Music When we think of Archie Comics, we think of one of two things: 1940s-50s swing and the show Riverdale. Even if you think of the latter, you can’t think of Riverdale without thinking of the original comic which debuted in 1942, and that brings us right back to the 1940s-50s era. Point is that the last thing that will ever spring to mind when thinking about Archie Comics is digital music. Yet, an issue released in 1972 gave us perhaps the earliest depiction of digital music to ever be theorized in pop culture. In the issue, Archie is given a groovy glimpse into the future, and in the future, there’s “computer music,” which is described as “new sounds” that get picked up straight from the computers, leaving modern instruments obsolete. While we still use basic instruments like drums and guitars, EDM is huge nowadays. It seems to be exactly what the writers of Archie Comics had in mind when writing the comic book.

#11 Kingpin Inspires Electronic Tagging This may actually be less a case of prediction and more a case of inspiration. In the early 80s, a new concept called electronic tagging was being developed. Electronic tagging refers to a form of surveillance that uses an electronic device to track a person. There was a newspaper comic strip where a supervillain, Kingpin, used a similar type of device against his nemesis, Spider-Man, by attaching an electronic bracelet onto the hero’s wrist to track Spidey’s every movement. That same comic strip was used by Judge Jack Love to convince Michael Gross, a computer salesperson, to monitor such a system for the sake of observing five offenders in the New Mexico area. Gross accepted the task and the monitoring system in question would become what we know today as electronic tagging.

#12 Marvel Team Up Predicted NY Blackout of 1977 In 1977, on July 13th and 14th, New York was overtaken by a city-wide power outage following a flurry of lightning strikes that took place near key voltage points. No one would have ever thought that the City of Lights would ever go lightless — well, unless you happen to be the writers behind Marvel Team-Up issue #60. Then you would have predicted it much earlier in advance as the comic was released a week prior to the blackout. The comic book blackout occurred in a similar manner as well as the supervillain at the center of the comic, Equinox, has the ability to fire blasts from his arms. One of these blasts happened to hit a power transformer, causing the city-wide blackout.

#13 Uncle Sam Comic Predicts Surprise Pearl Harbor Attack We’re not sure what’s stranger: the fact that this comic managed to predict such a specific and tragic event or the fact that someone actually took the time and effort to pen a comic book starring Uncle Sam himself. Yes, Uncle Sam was the face of the flagship National Comics brand, and it seems oddly ironic that the face of America also happened to star in a comic depicting the surprise attack on American soil. The issue was #18 and the year was 1941, the same year that Pearl Harbor was attacked. The issue came a month before the attack. The only difference between the real-life attack and the comic premise was the fact that the comic saw Nazis attack Pearl Harbor while in real life, it was the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. That small detail aside, this one is eerily specific.

#14 Juggernaut Crashes Twin Towers in X-Force #4 In 1991, the fourth issue of X-Force featured resident X-Men villain, The Juggernaut, cause enough destruction in the city to bring The Twin Towers crashing down. There’s something about the Twin Towers being destroyed that seemed to evoke a recurring image in comic books long before the Twin Towers were destroyed in real life. Perhaps, American writers thought that the visual of the Towers being destroyed was such a horrifying idea that it would add something captivating to their stories. Maybe it was because the idea was horrifying enough to actually happen. And lo and behold, 10 years later, it did. Whatever the reason for this recurring comic image may be, the fact remains that there’s a long list of comic books that alluded to the 9/11 tragedy years before it ever happened, this being one of them.

#15 Uncanny X-Men Predicts Japanese Earthquake As many comic book fans know about John Byrne, the images that he has inked on the pages of comic books have often amounted to some strangely accurate moments happening in real life. If Byrne inks it on the page, there’s a chance that it might happen in real life as well. His take on Wonder Woman’s death was released days before Princess Diana’s death. New York City experienced a blackout days before Byrne depicted such an occurrence in Marvel Team-Up, and he predicted a 1978 earthquake in Japan shortly before it actually happened. In an issue of Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine finds himself in Japan where archrival Moses Magnum uses his powers to cause an earthquake. Shortly after, Japan was hit with a number of earthquakes.

#16 Heavy Metal Builds A Wall Before Donald Trump Prior to his shocking election win, the idea of Donald Trump being the President of the United States had been a long-running gag in pop culture, most notably on The Simpsons. While that can be foretold as more life imitating art rather than a prophetic prediction, the imagery evoked in a July 1990 issue of Heavy Metal seems all too on the nose to not have been whispered in the writer’s ears by some all-knowing prognosticator. Aptly titled “The Wall,” the story saw Donald Trump and Harry Hemsley conspiring to build a wall to “keep the peasants at arm’s length.” Trump was not depicted as a President in this comic book, but the rhetoric used to single out a marginalized people as “other” and then separate them from “us” via a wall is a promise that dominated much of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Source: TheRichest