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lakersnewsonline-blog · 5 years ago

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NBA Los Angeles Lakers Team Page At VegasInsider.com, The Leader In Sportsbook And Gaming Information.

Fans collected outside the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles to pay tribute to Kobe Bryant as news spread of the basketball star's death. I likewise think you are spot on about the advantages to the college game. I utilized to be a devoted college basketball fan. Prior to KG came out of high school in 1995, nearly all the star gamers stayed in school for four years. As a result, there were numerous identifiable players who constructed their traditions and names up in college; college basketball had that star power that you mentioned, which made it simpler to follow. It was so a lot more fascinating. Nowadays, there are no more recognizable players since they leave for the NBA Draft the second they begin to construct that star power. Philadelphia 76ers Los Angeles Lakers live rating (and video online live stream) starts on 26.1.2020. at 01:30 UTC time at Wells Fargo Center arena, Philadelphia, USA in NBA - USA. Here on SofaScore livescore you can find all Philadelphia 76ers vs Los Angeles Lakers previous results sorted by their H2H matches. Links to Philadelphia 76ers vs. Los Angeles Lakers video highlights are collected in the Media tab for the most popular matches as soon as video appear on video hosting sites like Youtube or Dailymotion. We're not accountable for any video content, please contact video file owners or hosters for any legal grievances. Even though the Clippers have been much better on paper in years past, the Lakers constantly been the favored destination. The Lakers and Clippers are neck and neck in regards to preference among free agents and basketball cache for the first time in NBA history. Likewise, this is the very first time that the 2 finest teams in Basketball have been in the same city. This produces an intriguing dynamic. It was a informational and well rounded short article, it's simply that while you raise the gamers Kobe had around him, MJ had a terrific two Hall of Famers with him too. Kobe has actually likewise been the primary player a bulk of the league keeps in mind having admired and designed their game after so because way he has actually also gone beyond the game. The gamers that can have that type of impact are typically remembered as being fantastic. Kobe blended his game from all those prior to him and included his own flare to it which is why he was so terrific.

The Sacramento Kings would complete second to last in the Midwest Division where they were in at the time completing with a record of 29-53. Only the San Antonio Spurs had a worse record in that department finishing at 28-54. This game that I'm blogging about is a game that occurred during that season however it revealed simply how dominant the Los Angeles Lakers could be at their best. I think they are both amazing gamers and I doubt Kobe will ever be considered top, however not for his capability to play basketball. Because he revolutionized the game, I think the primary reason that Jordan is number one is. Kobe is playing in a different era than Jordan, so I don't believe there can be a comparison between Jordan and Kobe. Jordan didn't play almost the number of incredible protectors as Kobe does, however Jordan still has sllightly much better stats. I think that if the NBA lockout can end and Kobe wins another champion many people will then consider him the very best, however only if he gets that next championship. I do happen to believe tha Kobe's days as a player are numbered because of this lockout, ideally he'll play a few more seasons but he may just play a couple of more. Sure the NFL is a reflection of society, as is any social group. In any social group, there are the great apples and the bad ones. There are a lot of NFL players who are frequently doing deal with charities and such, simply as there are players who remain in the news for being causing difficulty (although it looks like the same players over and over once again). The thing with the world we live in today is that the media selects to make stories out of the "bad apples" i.e. gamers getting apprehended and other numerous selfish acts, while seldom, if ever, giving credit to those who utilize their platform to do their part in making the world a better place. And this is why high-profiled people in general have the stigma of "low morale" put upon them deservedly or not. Simply put, a couple of bad apples ruin it for the rest. Kobe Bryant is known for his amazing athleticism and clutch shots. You can discover emphasize tapes of vicious dunks and game-winners with no time left on the clock. What can't be seen on an emphasize reel is the laser focus and psychological strength he possessed. Kobe is well-versed in many languages, including English, Spanish, and Italian with complete confidence. Kobe is notoriously known for discovering French so he could trash-talk Tony Parker, and was just recently heckling Luka Doncic from the sideline in his native tongue of Slovenian. Bryant's mind was as hazardous as his physical abilities any given game during his profession. After leaving the game, Bryant had more time to play coach to daughter Gianna, who had a budding basketball career of her own and, her father stated, wanted to one day play in the WNBA. They were seen sitting courtside at a Brooklyn Nets game late in 2015, Bryant plainly passing along his wisdom to his daughter. He frequently showcased her talents on the court on social media. The Los Angeles Lakers (15-2) head to New Orleans (6-11) to take on the Pelicans Wednesday night. Typically, a game in between a championship contender and a restoring roster would not draw much attention, however this isn't just a regular game. Lakers' star Anthony Davis, AD, go back to the team who prepared the Kentucky product in 2012, after going on a rocky roadway trying to get to Hollywood. The concern all of us are asking is what will the return of Davis bring to the arena? Will it be cheers, boos, or silence? The heavily awaited game has actually caused a great deal of discussion in between the media and Davis.

#La lakers #lakers #los angeles lakers

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shimmerjjang · 6 years ago

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VIP Diaries: (Meeting Seungri!!!) The Great Seungri Show in Manila 2019

Hello 안녕 안녕 shimmers and VIPs! Wow, I’ve been wanting to publish this post for a while now because this experience I had during The Great Seungri Show in Manila is a FIRST in my whole life as a BIGBANG VIP! I met Seungri and I got the sweet sweet chance to be in a photo with him. Not a standee, not a poster but the real Seungri!! Gurlll, I could go on and on about this but let me compose myself for a bit and talk about The Great Seungri Tour which happened in MOA Arena last January 19, 2019.

So, if you know me or if you’ve been following my SNS and happened to see one of my posts from last year, you’d know how much I loathe this area. I swore I won’t even go anywhere near Mall of Asia after the trauma I had from this horrible incident. And after that, I never attended any sort of event if it’s held around this area.

THIS IS MY FIRST TIME back here in months. Only BIGBANG can bring me back! The bitter memories are now replaced, thanks my Panda Seungri!!

This VIP concert experience is made possible by K-Music Insider! I’m beyond grateful for this chance because the truth is, my budget didn’t allow me to shed 10k upfront that time for the VIP seats and photo-op opportunity. I would’ve settled for a cheaper lower box ticket but I still made sure I hop into giveaways with the goal of getting a photo-op pass in mind. And dear heavens K-Music Insider blessed me with one! 넘너무 행복해 ㅠㅠ

Gates opened at 7pm and I entered the venue at around 7:15. There weren’t crazy lines so I just went straight to the entrance. There weren’t any chaos (thank goodness) and I know it’s a good thing, but I’m kinda sad too because we weren’t able to fill the entire arena. The show was announced late so many VIPs weren’t able to prepare them fundsss (including me haha)

BUT when the show started, it didn’t feel like the arena isn’t full! It was a whole new party out there!! Just exactly as how I expect a BIGBANG concert should be. I mean, Seungri is a total charmer and I’m sure all VIPs know that he’s the best at sweeping the crowd off their feet compared to the rest of the members. Seungri has been my bias wrecker since 2012! Oh well, but yo gurl is tough and my heart for G-Dragon won’t be swayed by anything!!!! \\(^^,)//

Here are some fancams I managed to take. I know, I wasn’t able to take that much because I really want to savor the moment. Also, this is my first time to attend a concert without my sister or cousin (huhuhuhu) so I don’t have someone to take turns with recording. But then again, all throughout my life as a K-Pop fangirl, I have learned how important it is to really get into the moment instead of recording each and every part of the show. So yep, enjoy my mini fancams!

Opening MV - Where R U From

BANG BANG BANG

Intro Talk (Some in Tagalog)

GG BE

If You

Where R U From

Fire - 2NE1 Sandara

I am the BEST - 2NE1 Sandara

Go Away - 2NE1 Sandara

Dahil Sa’yo Tagalog Cover - Pandara (Seungri & Sandara)

Seungri calling his mom (haha!)

Tagumpay (Seungri’s self-composed Tagalog song LOL)

We Like 2 Party

셋 셀테니 (1,2,3)

In My World

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I’m so proud of Seungri! This is his first ever solo world tour and I can see that he did so well in pleasing and wowing the crowd despite the absence of his hyungs.

Did you watch the whole video? BOYYY I CHOKED WHEN HE SLAYED THAT TAGALOG SONG!! I swear that song by Inigo Pascual annoyed me for a while because I hear it everywhere. But gurllll, who would’ve thought that I’d learn how to love it. I’ve been singing it subconsciously right after the concert. I mean, I’m gonna be honest, he sounded more native than Sandara and Ryan Bang (he showed up briefly on stage too along with Anne Curtis) LOL

Dara was also a guest for Seungri’s show. Well, Sandara has always been a steady guest whenever BIGBANG would show up here for a tour! That’s OG YG Family for you, children! The 2NE1 songs she performed were immensely nostalgic. How can my eyes well up over happy songs? I’m still hoping for a 2NE1 reunion to fulfill my empty Blackjack heart! :(

Seungri has always been the life of the party and he’s so good at being in variety shows! That’s what he served us during his concert. For a short moment we all thought we mistakenly entered a comedy bar, not a concert LOL Seungri made my stomach burst out of laughter the entire night. He’s just GOLD! He even savaged his fellow BIGBANG members in front of us. haha! Ang lakas ng loob kasi everyone’s in the military haha

Seungri showed us funny photos of every BIGBANG member for him to roast... EXCEPT for T.O.P... So naturally, us VIPs will ask and look for him. When he wrapped the photos up without including TOP, all of us went “Where’s TOP?!!!” I honestly thought he’ll just brush it off, considering all the crazy controversy surrounding TOP, I won’t be surprised if he’ll just ignore us. But Seungri didn’t. He heard us and he gave us a very reassuring answer.

VIPS: “TOP!!! TOP!!! Where’s TOP?”

SEUNGRI: “Ah, TOP? He’s fine! I just wanna say he’s okay.”

ME: Wooooh!!! OMG OMG *hyperventilating*

SEUNGRI: “He’s super okay. Yeah. He will come back soon, don’t worry!”

VIPs: *crying and going wild*

SEUNGRI: “You know what, now in BIGBANG, TOP is MOST OKAY! hahaha We are all okay..”

ME: LAUGHING WHILE CRYING UGLY TEARS

Watch the full clip of that comedic/unexpectedly emotional part here..

The entire show lasted for around 3 hours, I think. Seungri gave us major K-Pop throwback as he also sang a lot of his great hits from his early solo career (Strong Baby, Gotta Talk to U, GG BE..), as well as BIGBANG’s! It was an amazing show full of nostalgia.

Here’s my only #OOTD shot from the concert, together with my fellow mod at BIGBANG Philippines - Chi!

We, along with the ladies of 2NE1 PH, as well as other VIP friends lined up for the photo-op right after the concert. Each photo with Seungri will be done by 10s and we’re fortunate enough to be the last ones in line so there were just 8 of us.

AND NOW! TADAAAAAA!! Here’s our official group photo courtesy of LOONG Studio, the official promoter for Seungri’s Manila leg of the tour.

I mean, let that sink in for a short moment. Gurl, MY EXISTENCE GOT PULVERIZED! I wasn’t sure of what was happening and if it really was happening at all. For the first time in my 10-year VIP fangirl life, I was able to see and interact with a BIGBANG member. INSANE!

As I was walking towards Seungri, my mind went blank. I just stretched my hand for him to shake and I told him that he did great on stage. OH DEAR I remember him just looking back at me, smiling and thanking me for coming to his show. I’m in a trance! And because I went straight to him and approached him first, I totally forgot everything I initially planned. I have my phone in hand to secretly record everything just for my personal memento but totally forgot!! Also planning to stand beside him (I was 2nd in line so I could’ve done that) but chose to just talk to him first so by the time I was done talking, everyone got settled already while I’m still lost in front of him! Also planned to stand on his right side because that’s my freakin’ angle but totally forgot!!! HAHAHAHA Basically, my mind stopped functioning LOL but I’m so happy I got to interact with the King of all Maknaes, SEUNGRI. Everything happened so fast and when we were asked to leave, I made sure I told him I love him! HAHA He’s probably tired of hearing that from everybody but at least I let it out my chest. ^^

Say hello to my very nervous smile!!!! HAHAHA My heart was about to pop out of my mouth! SEUNGRI is just super handsome and I’m not just saying this because I’m a fan. Like he’s legit handsome and his smile is so dreamy. He’s just genuinely friendly and there’s this warmth from him that makes you forget he’s a star. I guess I’m used to seeing K-Pop stars being cold in real life, but definitely not Seungri!

Ah, seeing him so close is definitely one for the books! Ah also, I would like to thank my Moonshot x Innisfree combo for keeping my foundation on point despite going crazy the entire night. hihihi~~ (I will review these two soon, promise!)

I’m beyond happy to see Seungri’s last show before he enlists. Their OT5 comeback may take a while because of their military schedule and all these sad controversies that still stir everything up unnecessarily! But hey, we’re all waiting at the Flower Road (꽃길) so I can only hope that the kings stay healthy and happy.

My next goal is to see all BIGBANG members in their Final world tour in Seoul - 2020, 2021, who knows! Really hoping to have the same amazing opportunity like this to meet all of them next time. IT WILL HAPPEN I CAN FEEL IT! <3

Read more of my VIP Diares here or my other K-Pop shenanigans here.

#seungri #bigbang #seungri in manila #BIGBANG VIP #VIP Diaries #VIPDiaries #BIGBANGPH #BIGBANG Philippines #The Great Seungri #the great seungri tour #kpop #event #VI #Victory

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jobrosupdates · 6 years ago

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‘Sucker’ Punch: The Behind-the-Scenes Players to Launch Jonas Brothers’ First No. 1 | Variety

The trio's manager, A&R and label chief explain how an authentic thaw in sibling relations led to a strategy of silence, then shock and awe.

March 11, 2019 by Chris Willman

America is collectively a sucker for the Jonas Brothers again — or at least that’s the strong indication from first-week results for their comeback, a full decade after the trio last had a top 30 single. “Sucker” just became their first song ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, and the first by any band to debut at the top of the chart in more than 20 years. According to Buzz Angle Music, the first seven days for “Sucker” racked up a combination of 30 million audio streams, 16 million video streams and 88,000 digital sales, on top of a fast radio start that found nearly every pop station adding the tune.

How’s it possible one of the biggest phenomena of the late 2000s never had a No. 1? Back in their original heyday, radio and older fans were both mutually suspicious of any act coming out of the Disney camp, no matter how massive the ticket sellouts or record sales (they had four straight platinum or double-platinum albums, if you count the “Camp Rock” soundtrack). Ten years later, pent-up fan energy is meeting no such gatekeeper resistance.

“As big as they were previously, they’ve never seen this kind of chart action, which is pretty wild at this point of their career,” Monte Lipman, the chairman/CEO of Republic Records, tells Variety. “They were an arena act, but in terms of the traditional record flying up and down the charts, they never had that. From the outside looking in, I was always intrigued by their success and thinking about what would happen if they had a record that stormed the charts on top of all of that, like they do now. So we’ve been having a blast.”

Crucial parts of the campaign: “Having Nick’s and Kevin’s wives and Joe’s fiancée be a part of the video was really powerful, and that visual provided a lot of fuel at launch that was beneficial to the whole campaign,” says Phil McIntyre, founder/CEO of Philymack, their management company. “And the platform of James (Corden, whose show featured the Jonas Brothers for an entire week) was phenomenal and made for great, fun content that travels.” The “Carpool Karaoke” was even revealing enough about the brothers’ personal story to make up for a lot of interviews they could have done and didn’t. But prior to the video and Corden, the perhaps even more critical component in the plan was… silence. “It was definitely part of our strategy, to try to keep it under the radar, and it was helpful that it stayed there,” says McIntyre, “because we were totally expecting that it wouldn’t.”

“As hard as it is to keep a secret in 2019, especially when you’re three of the most followed guys online,” says Republic’s EVP of A&R, Wendy Goldstein, “they did a great job at keeping it quiet. And the Jonas Brothers as a band may have been dormant, but their individual development and success probably contributed to amplifying excitement. They’ve been out there for six years in the public eye, but not as Jonas Brothers,” she says. “It was the perfect tease.”

Adds Lipman, “Because when you think about the marketplace, nearly 150,000 new songs are made available every single week, and the greatest competition we’ve got right now is that sheer volume — the static, the noise. So in this case the best thing to do was almost the opposite, something without any messaging, and literally just drop it out of the sky — and ka-boom, it’s the loudest bang you can create.” But everyone was concerned the secrecy could be blown at any moment. “Any time the guys were ever seen in the same room together, the rumors started flying. So there was a lot of denial, absolutely.”

Plausible deniability, though, because the Jonases really did have another reason to be in one another’s company — a documentary — and the recording was an outgrowth of the unofficial on-camera therapy sessions undertaken for that.

“A year ago, we started making a documentary with just the intention of telling what an incredible story these brothers have of taking this journey together and growing up in the public eye together as a family, and the ups and downs of it,” says McIntyre. “And it was not to necessarily make new music or anything like that. So it unfolded in the most authentic way possible, and I think that’s part of why there was an element of surprise, because for the most part when they were seen together, most people thought it was for the documentary.”

When did a documentary shoot turn into a resumption of the Jonas Brothers as a commercial and artistic enterprise? “I would say it was toward the end of the summer last year,” McIntyre says. “Because we probably did four or five different trips with the brothers: They went to Australia where Joe was shooting ‘The Voice.’ They went to Jersey and to a couple other locations, and probably after the fourth or fifth location, they had sort of processed through so much of the things that tore ‘em apart earlier in their career, and just started to get honest with each other. And there’s a magic to when they’re together, and as much success as anyone’s had on their own solo journey, it doesn’t necessarily compare to what they’ve experienced as brothers. So it was toward the end of summer that they started to have the conversations around it, and it was at that point that I said, ‘I’ve got to get with Monte and talk through this.’ Because in my mind, there was only one place to do this, and that was with Republic. I just knew that they would they would be able to nail it.”

Finding a new label home for the Jonas Brothers, many years after their departure from Disney’s Hollywood Records, wasn’t a stretch. Republic had had Joe’s interim project, the group DNCE, and been jointly involved with Island Records on Nick’s solo career.

Lipman says he didn’t offer any preferences for which stylistic direction the Jonas Brothers should take their new music, once he was brought in. “Monte Lipman? No,” he chuckles, as if the idea that he’d get personally involved in their A&R is a laugh. “I learned a long time ago just let them let them do their thing. The cool thing about working with the Philymack camp in particular and the Jonas Brothers as their partners is that when they come to the table, so much of it is been vetted, and ‘Hey, this is the way we’d like to present the music. This is the aesthetic.’”

But Goldstein did get highly involved as recording continued — and had a strong preference when it came time to pick a single out of the supposed two albums’ worth of material the trio has recorded. “There are some really powerful bangers ready to go,” she says. “But ‘Sucker’ just had a vibe. It felt like a great way to come out. I think everybody agreed on that.” After her persuasiveness, anyway. “There definitely was a debate as far as what the first look would be,” says McIntyre, “and to Wendy’s credit, she was the one who said, ‘I feel strongly that “Sucker” is the right first sound and first song.’”

“Sucker” is much more akin to the dance-oriented material Nick and Joe have done in the interim years than the guitar-based, power-pop sound the brothers played in the 2000s. At recent “secret” shows in New York and L.A., the group sounded like they did in the first part of their career — that is, like a straight-up, heavy-on-the-hooks rock band — and they rearranged the one new song they played, “Sucker,” just enough that it fit in with the guitars-and-live-drums ethos of their old sound. But that may not be an indication of where the eventual album will be headed.

“Creatively, they’ve evolved, as any artists would after a decade,” says Goldstein, not quite willing to commit them to a genre. “I don’t think it’s tied to any era in particular. They were adamant about making an honest, real and somewhat raw comeback. They draw on their history together, but it’s an exciting new chapter.” McIntyre is a little more committal about how fans shouldn’t expect the new material to exactly revive the 2000s: “I would say that you will be able to see and hear the influences of what Joe did in his solo career and what Nick did in his solo career come together in a very natural way.”

It was a good time for the brothers to reunite, personal reasons aside, because although their solo endeavors had kept them somewhat in the limelight — Nick as a solo artist and Joe with DNCE had both made the top 10, and had ongoing success on the dance charts — neither had had such an ongoing run of hits that a resumption of the brother act would seem like a step backward. Nothing was guaranteed: The last time the Jonas Brothers tried coming back after a layoff, in 2012-13, on an indie label, the media and radio weren’t much interested, and their personal disagreements took such a toll that a planned album and tour were canceled as they officially broke up. But clearly a few years of their absence as a collective made the public heart grow fonder.

“They were part of a lot of people’s most influential years, of their childhoods or beyond,” says McIntyre, “and so I think that the timing of them bringing those positive, good times has resonated, and people appreciate them now for being the soundtrack to their lives.” Plus, there’s the small matter of the song being good, “so we do get the opportunity to get a whole new audience that isn’t there for nostalgic reasons. It’s very much a two-pronged strategy.”

As for an album, “We’re working through the timeline now,” McIntyre says. “I think everybody would like to get it out as quick as possible, so I would look to the first half of this year.” As for a live return, the brothers had 35 minutes of material very solidly rehearsed for their secret El Rey show last week, but the nature of a tour is still under discussion. Picking up where they left off at the height of their careers, in arenas, has been part of the conversation, but so have more modest venues. Nick leaves this week to shoot a “Jumanji” sequel, which may put a slight speed bump in those discussions.

Will the documentary, done in partnership with Amazon, come out simultaneously with the album? “As of right now they’re separate things,” McIntyre says, “but we’re looking at it. Because as you tell this story, you realize that so much of the story revealed itself through the process that then led to the music. So we’re playing with just how to kind of roll out the two bodies of work.”

McIntyre says some healing had gone on before work on the documentary started, but the filming process caught any sense of alienation further breaking down. “I think that they are like most families out there — that they had touched on the issues enough to be able to move forward, but they didn’t really get into it,” says the manager. “They didn’t go into the depth of where the hurt was each one of them really felt in those moments, and being able to articulate it and explain it to each other. That was a discovery along the way of making this. It wasn’t something that we knew was there, necessarily; it was once we got into it, we sort of all looked at each other and were like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of layers to this that need to be discussed.’”

Lipman also says the documentary will further reveal that the reunion “is not a marketing ploy. It’s not anything that was calculated. It wasn’t a money grab.” But if they’re able to mint some out of the finally refreshed brotherly love, that will be a significant Jonas bonus.

Source: Variety

#jonas brothers #phil mcintyre #monte lipman #text #article #2019

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thehonoraryamerican · 7 years ago

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Gold Is Relative: Aly Raisman’s journey to Olympic redemption

Here it is, my final ever university assignment! I’m so pleased with how its turned out. Huge thank you to @categoricallyunsound for being essentially my editor and giving me advice on how to make it even better, couldn’t have done it without you!

So without further ado, here it is! Hope you enjoy it, and feel free to let me know what you thought (be nice though :P)

Late in the afternoon of August 11th, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Alexandra ‘Aly’ Raisman completed the floor routine that would finally bring her to closure on a long awaited dream. As tears cascaded down her cheeks, she didn’t need confirmation of what the watching world already knew: she would be bringing home the Olympic silver medal.

It was the culmination of a curious string of events; what would lead a young gymnast to aspire to and be moved to tears by an Olympic silver medal, as opposed to the gold? Competing against Simone Biles, arguably the world’s greatest female gymnast, was certainly a factor. Aly herself stated at the 2016 P&G National Championships that “when you compete against Simone, she’s so above and beyond everyone else, that the person who comes second is the real winner!”. But for Aly, the emotion ran much deeper than proving that behind Simone Biles, she was the best in the world. It was the final stop on a journey that had started all the way back in 2009, the moment where a dream became a reality.

Years before the Olympic Games were even a glimmer on the horizon, Aly was just a little girl in gymnastics class. Born to Rick Raisman and Lynn Faber in Needham, Massachusetts, on the 25th of May, 1994, Aly’s entry into gymnastics came as simply as her mother signing her up for a ‘Mommy and Me’ class at the age of just two years old.

The year was 1996: a year that, in the gymnastics community, would become famous for the accomplishments of a team known as the Magnificent Seven. On July 23rd, Amanda Borden, Amy Chow, Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, Dominique Moceanu, Jaycie Phelps, and Kerri Strug battled their way to the United States of America’s first ever team gold medal in major international competition. They became household names, and a team that many of Aly’s generation of gymnasts would go on to cite as their biggest inspiration. Certainly they were for Aly, who watched her mother’s recording of the team final until the tape had almost worn out.

Aly started her life in gymnastics at a gym called Exxcel, but just a few years later, one of her coaches recommended a move to Brestyan’s American Gymnastics Club. Possibly, he saw potential in Aly, who says herself that she was never the most naturally gifted athlete. However, one of Aly’s best traits has always been her work ethic: once she sets her mind on something, she works tirelessly until she achieves it. Her coach at Exxcel had seemingly sensed that determination in his young athlete throughout the years. And maybe, guided by Romanian expatriate, Mihai Brestyan, Aly’s work ethic would grow into something incredible. During this period, Romanian gymnastics was in its heyday. Romanian coaches carried a certain reputation with them to whichever corner of the globe they travelled. While never having a claim to any of gymnastics’ superstars, American or Romanian, Mihai Brestyan was a man with a plan, and when Aly entered into his tutelage, he put that plan into action.

It took years of training before, in 2009, Aly entered into the world of elite gymnastics. For the first time, the gymnastics community began to mull over the possibility of Aly’s world-class potential. What was odd about her entry to elite was how late in her life it came. At 15 years old, Aly would be eligible for senior competition at events like the World Championships and Olympic Games just the following year, when she would turn 16. By the time Aly qualified to elite, her coach had already produced an Olympian: Alicia Sacramone. Alicia had been part of the silver-medal-winning American team at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and also had a handful of World Championship medals to her name.

As a junior elite in 2009, and then as a first year senior in 2010, Aly wasn’t considered a star. Compared to some of her compatriots, like Alicia and Rebecca Bross, her gymnastics was considered just okay. She wasn’t the most flexible, the most artistic, or the prettiest gymnast to watch. Her technique was not exactly the best, and her execution during her skills could often be questionable. In short, she wasn’t really a standout. But what she came to be known for, and still is known for today, is her consistency. No matter the meet, no matter the event, Aly could always be counted on to deliver a solid routine for the United States. It was that consistency that helped the American team to a world silver medal in 2010.

Throughout the 18 months that followed her first World Championships, Aly solidified herself as not only an extremely consistent and reliable gymnast, but as a leader of the US women’s national team. Nowhere did she prove herself more than during the 2011 World Championships. Challenged by the last-minute injury of Alicia Sacramone, the team captain, Aly was left as the only remaining member with Worlds experience. Exuding all the confidence of a natural leader, Aly stepped up to the plate. What transpired was the beginning of a legacy when she led her young and inexperienced team to the World gold medal.

The 2012 London Olympic Games

On the back of her success in Tokyo, which also included a World bronze medal on the floor exercise, Aly’s prospects for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London became clearer. A second place finish at the American Cup in March solidified her status as a capable all-arounder for the US team. The result further impressed national team coordinator, Marta Karolyi. All throughout the selection process, which is composed of the US Classic, the US National Championships, and the Olympic Trials, Aly remained a strong and steady competitor. Nationals saw her place third in the all-around, as well as pick up national titles on the balance beam and the floor exercise. She followed that up with a third-place finish at the Olympic Trials, behind Gabrielle “Gabby” Douglas and Jordyn Wieber. On July 1st, 2012, at the conclusion of Trials, Aly was named to the women’s team for the Olympic Games. Alongside Gabrielle Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Kyla Ross, and Jordyn Wieber, she was a member of the youngest team the US had sent to the Olympics since the minimum age was raised to 16, following the 1996 Games. The pressure was mounting, but all five girls were up for the challenge.

Just 28 days later, the newly named ‘Fierce Five’ marched into the North Greenwich Arena in London to take part in the first round of Olympic competition: qualifications. The rules of the qualification round seemed simple enough; four gymnasts per team competed on each of the four apparatus, and the best three scores counted towards the team totals. Individually, the gymnasts’ scores would qualify them into the all-around and event finals.

In women’s gymnastics, the all-around score is the accumulation of all four apparatus scores; in everyday terms, it is the best of the best. Or, it was, until a FIG ruling in 2001 limited how many gymnasts from each country could qualify to the all-around final. After a Romanian sweep of the podium at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the limit was reduced from three to just two gymnasts per country.

After her success in Tokyo, which saw her become the World all-around champion, talk had been drummed up all year of Jordyn Wieber being a threat for the Olympic all-around gold. The American media had heavily focused on Jordyn being the lead all-arounder for the USA, with Gabby Douglas just behind her. At that point, no-one was really giving Aly any sort of look-in.

What happened in qualifications, therefore, was surprising to all. All it took were a few shaky connections on beam for Jordyn to lose some of the value from her routine’s difficulty score. Favoured to challenge for the gold, Jordyn ended her qualifications in fourth place, with Aly ahead of her in second as the highest-placed American, and Gabby between them in third. Due to the two per country rule, for the first time in gymnastics history, the reigning World all-around champion would not advance through to the final. Publicly defeated, Jordyn was reduced to tears. As her one of her best friends, Aly was understandably conflicted: should she be happy to have made the final, or sad for her friend missing out? But she couldn’t dwell on it, for the Games had only just begun.

Two days following, the American team marched into the North Greenwich Arena as if the surprises of qualifications had never occurred. Led by Aly, the Fierce Five dazzled their way through 12 stunning routines. As was clear would happen after their runaway lead in the first rotation, they ended up making history. A five-point victory led them to become the first US team to win Olympic gold since the Magnificent Seven, and only the second ever to do so. For Aly, it was a moment of uninhibited emotion, for the last sixteen years of her life had finally culminated in her very own Olympic dream.

After the gold medal victory in the team competition on Tuesday evening, Thursday evening meant it was time for Aly and Gabby to tackle a new battle: the all-around final.

Even as the uproar over Jordyn not making the final continued to swirl in online forums, Aly and Gabby had a job to do. With game faces to rival even the best poker players, the two girls walked out into the arena, clad in metallic pink and ready to fight to the bitter end.

Aly’s nerves of steel stayed in check as she worked her way seemingly calmly through her competition. She put her vault, the hardest being performed in the day’s competition, to her feet with only a small hop. From there, the top group moved to the uneven bars. Bars never were, and never would be, Aly’s strong point. Just the previous year in Tokyo, during the all-around final, she had had a tussle with the apparatus that one could assume she’d rather forget about. But on this day in London, she stayed on, delivering a routine that seemed to be enough for her goal of a medal.

In the third rotation, however, the top group were faced with the nerviest apparatus in all of women’s gymnastics: the balance beam. The beam has famously been the undoing of many a great gymnast, and in London, it was no different.

Performing last, Aly surely didn’t watch the competitors before her, preferring to keep her head down and her mind focused. Even so, the rise and fall of the noise from the audience told her the story as it unfolded. Once an incredibly talented young athlete, later plagued by injury, Russia’s Aliya Mustafina had fallen from the beam on a skill that most thought she should have been able to save. With a fall deducting an entire point from one’s routine, it seemed the battle for the podium had now leveled from four, to just three; Gabby, Aly, and the second Russian, Viktoria Komova.

At the end of the rotation, Aly mounted the beam as the final competitor. She carried an air of confidence about her in the way she attacked the apparatus, punching out each skill with the surefootedness of a mountain goat. Just moments later, her nerves of steel melted under the pressure. Maybe it was the audience, maybe it was the weight of the competition, maybe it was the Olympic rings plastered in every direction the eye could see… whatever it was, it sent Aly reeling. On a front pike which, at that level, should be a simple skill, her foot slipped. As her weight went entirely to the side amidst gasps from the audience, Aly threw her hands down to the beam to support herself. The rest of the routine was steady, if not a little wobbly, but the damage had been done. While video replay would later show her hands never actually touched the suede top of the apparatus, the judges had scored what they thought they saw. Her mistake was not as costly as Mustafina’s fall, but, perhaps to Aly, it was.

The final rotation brought the top competitors to the floor exercise. As the second highest qualifier, Aly was to be second to last. She waited somewhat anxiously through the routines from the lower qualified top six. The routines were good, but after performances from Aly’s teammate Gabby, and Mustafina, it was clar Aliya was back in the hunt for a medal. The podium was now certainly a fight between the two Americans and the two Russians.

After Gabby’s score was in, Aly mounted the podium and took to the floor. As the highest qualifier to the floor event final, and the US national champion, she was expected to bring in a great routine to make a push for the bronze medal. Over the following 90 seconds, Aly flipped and soared her way to the conclusion of what truly was a confident and masterful exercise. The wait for her score was somewhat tense. While Aly wanted to reach for her absolute best in medal potential, she mostly wanted to prove that she was more than capable of being internationally competitive in the all-around.

But moments later, the final hit a snag. Aly’s score was 15.133; exactly the score she had needed to equal, but not best, the total score of Russia’s Aliya Mustafina.

The two were tied. The arena was still abuzz with activity, for there were still at least two gymnasts left to compete. Excited chatter filtered down from the watching crowd as Aly looked up at the scoreboard. It was as if she already knew what was going to happen: ties are not awarded in Olympic gymnastics. The technical committee would have to break the tie, in a manner that is controversial at best amongst the gymnastics community. For both Aly and Aliya, the lowest of the four scores would be dropped. For Aliya, this was beam, and for Aly, it was bars.

By totaling the remaining three scores, Aliya came out on top, meaning that Aly was leaving the final with a score that equaled third, but no bronze medal to show for it. At first, Aly seemed to brush the disappointment away. She left the Olympics with two more medals – a gold in the floor exercise, and a bronze on beam, which she ironically won through a second tiebreak with Romania’s Catalina Ponor. But even after her success in London, it became clear over time that the sting of the all-around had left Aly feeling more than just a little jilted.

The Comeback for Rio 2016

Aly’s return to gymnastics in late 2014 was doubted by many. Not since 2000 had an American gymnast made a second Olympic team. Even Mihai Brestyan didn’t immediately see the sincerity in her return to the sport. His idea was simple; he left Aly alone in the corner of the gym without any instructions, and waited to see what she what do. What Aly did was push herself to condition, rebuilding and strengthening the muscle she had lost since the London Olympics. Once Mihai was satisfied that she was serious about returning, he started her back in the elite program at his gym.

After a year of hard training, Aly’s comeback plans came to fruition when she was named to the team for the 2015 World Championships in Glasgow. As the first step in team qualification to the Olympics, the competition was more important than ever.

As a consistent and reliable all-arounder, Aly was selected to compete all-around in qualifications over national silver medalist, Maggie Nichols. This decision would later cause friction in the gymnastics community; Aly made sizeable mistakes on every event in qualifications, preventing her from advancing to any of the individual finals. Had Maggie competed on bars in the qualification instead of Aly, she likely would have advanced to the final over reigning Olympic Champion, Gabby Douglas.

Like the true competitor she was, Aly shook off the disappointment of the qualification round to help the team win gold for the third time running, this time without the mistakes. With Team USA now directly qualified to the 2016 Olympic Games, it was time for Aly to knuckle down in the gym and iron out the kinks that had emerged in Glasgow.

But the turnaround didn’t come until later in the 2016 season. Opening her season at the City of Jesolo Trophy, a small meet in Italy, Aly again had issues in the competition. Most notably, she sat her vault down, which encouraged fans of the sport to beg for her to downgrade the skill. However, like the steely competitor she is, she soldiered on.

She again fell at the US Classic early in the summer, counting a fall on bars in the first rotation. But with Simone Biles only competing two events, Aly was able to clamber back to win the all-around competition. By the time Nationals rolled around towards the end of June, Aly had her competitive head on straight and was finally hitting all her routines. Her renewed consistency later earned her a spot on the Olympic team headed to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, alongside Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Lauren “Laurie” Hernandez, and Madison Kocian. Alongside Gabby Douglas, Aly made history as one of the first American gymnasts to make a repeat Olympic team in 16 years.

The 2016 Rio Olympic Games

In Rio, Aly again led her team to greater than imaginable heights. As the final team to be sent to the Olympic Games by Marta Karolyi before her retirement, they later named themselves the Final Five. They qualified to the team final a clear 10 points ahead of their closest competitor, China, the gymnastics equivalent of completing a swimming race a full lap ahead of the second place finisher. Even calmer and more confident than the Fierce Five had been in London, the five young ladies entered the team final clad in leotards calling back to the historic achievements of the Magnificent Seven. In an incredible victory, they again netted team gold, by a staggering 8 points.

Aly entered the all-around final as an American record holder; she was one of only two American gymnasts to ever win three Olympic gold medals, the other being her own teammate, Gabby Douglas. Throughout the final, Aly seemed much more relaxed than she had been in 2012. Working cleanly through her routines, she smiled and laughed her way through the competition with Simone at her side.

Coming in to floor, with gold all but locked up for Simone, silver was Aly’s to lose. Aliya Mustafina, the gymnast who had won the tiebreak in 2012, was holding the lead when Aly stepped up to the podium. But the margin Aly needed was only just under 14 points – well within her capabilities if she performed at her usual standard. So she struck a confident pose, smiling as her music filled the arena and her parents clutched at each other out of nerves up in the stands.

It was just seconds after her feet touched the mat on her final tumbling pass that Aly was overwhelmed with emotion. Her music ended to rapturous applause from the Brazilian crowd that had so come to love the American girls. Through tears, she saluted the judges, before managing to wave to the watching audience even as she battled for her own composure. Somewhere up in the stands, her family was also in tears, as they embraced out of joy and relief. They knew firsthand how hard Aly’s journey back to the Olympics had been, and to see it come to fruition was an incredible experience for them all.

Just a few minutes later, the confirmation of Aly’s dream was clear to all: she scored 15.433, putting her easily into the top spot above Aliya Mustafina, with only Simone Biles left to go. No matter how Simone’s floor routine went, Aly had finally secured an international all-around medal - at the Olympics, nonetheless! The smile on her face proved that no matter the colour of that medal, it was more than enough.

After an electrifying routine that seemed to defy the laws of physics, Simone also completed her competition, and her own quest to become the colloquially-known “queen” of gymnastics. It felt like a long wait down on the floor, but sure enough, the final standings confirmed everyone’s predictions: Simone Biles was the Olympic all-around champion, and Aly, beaming from ear to ear, would take the silver medal.

That same smile never left Aly’s face throughout the victory ceremony just a short while later. When her name was announced as the winner of the silver medal, she received an enthusiastic cheer from the surrounding crowd. Just moments later, her hard-earned prize hung from a bright green ribbon around her neck. Lifting it to her lips, she kissed the silver disc with all the appreciation of an athlete who truly never gave up.

Aly finished the Rio Olympic Games with the team gold, all-around and floor exercise silver medals under her belt, making her the second most decorated American Olympic gymnast with six medals overall. She says that a second comeback for the Tokyo Olympics is still a possibility for her, but right now, she’s happy enjoying her downtime from the sport. In recent months, Aly has become an outspoken advocate for the victims of the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, as well as furthering her reach into empowering young girls and promoting body positivity. Whether she’s clad in a leotard and dancing her way around the floor to traditional folk music, or using her platform to make a difference, there’s no doubt that she’s an inspiration to many.

If there’s one thing that anyone can learn from Aly’s achievement, it’s that gold is relative.

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cyberkevvideo · 5 years ago

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Throne of Night, Annex of Encounters Part 2 (Book 4)

Today’s entry discusses some of the additional encounters found in book 4, that I haven’t already done builds for. From what I’ve been looking at, I saw just enough extras that I couldn’t combine two books in one entry. Sometimes it just works out that way.

That said, there’s one piece of art that I just couldn’t put stats to because I have no idea what Gary had in mind for her. She is a bald drow, called the Jezzavon drow, that has a very particular tattoo that covers parts of her head, forehead, and ends at the bridge of her nose. Given that Gary has created his own class archetypes, traits, feats, and racial abilities, I’m guessing this drow was an original design. She also appears to be an NPC that the PCs would talk to only, and might not have any actual stats because she’s not meant to be engaged physically.

Like the last one, the post will contain art and links to the bestiary stats.

As always, for space reasons, I’ll be cropping the entry.

All images shared here were done by the forever fantastic and amazingly talented Michael D. Clarke, aka SpiralMagus

I do not have a Patreon or a Kickstarter, but I do have a Ko-Fi page (linked) for those who wishes to support me monetarily. There is no pressure or obligation to do so.

Finally, before I get to it, I hope everyone’s staying safe right now.

Continuing the style of blog entries, bestiary encounters will be divided up by book and (hopefully) order of when the encounters might occur. This is a sandbox AP so there’s no expected linear direction. While none of the books from this point explicitly state it, I’m going to estimate that these were all written with the same mindset as “Way of the Wicked”, and as such, will put down the approximate levels PCs might be expected to be at.

Starting things off, it’s Book Four: City of Night (Level 13-16):

The PCs either learn of the threat of a nearby drow city, Taaryssia, or perhaps bring their plans to get revenge against the queen of the drow who banished them to fruition. The journey to the city is not without is perils, but they pale compared to the countless dangers within this haven of evil. The drow city is a roiling cauldron of intrigue and treachery.

Five drow nobles house vie for control of the city. The PCs (if they’re drow) likely come from the destroyed sixth house. Each house proudly wears amulets made of mithral and various gemstones to show their allegiances.

It should noted that Taaryssia is also known as “The City Without Mercy” in some of Gary’s original notes from back in 2012.

After appearing within the city, the PCs might want to unload some of their gear and hunt down a merchant of some sort. This brings us to our first NPC

Slimy Demodand Merchant (CR 16)

What’s actually kind of interesting is, if you don’t think this creature’s build to be “merchant” enough, you could add 1 level of expert, and it’d leave the stats alone and CR alone. Having “Will +16″ and “hp 251″ isn’t going to break the game in the slightest, especially since, again, he shouldn’t be fought. Just put the 8 skills ranks to Diplomacy, Linguistics (for Undercommon), and Profession (merchant).

Quasit Demon (CR 2)

To be perfectly honest, there’s two ways this could go. My immediate thought was this was someone’s familiar, or a lost quasit that the PCs might encounter and make into their own familiar with the feat, Improved Familiar, assuming they aren’t an archetype that already gives them a quasit for free (ie. Demonic Apostle). It’s the route I’d go, but I can see a GM or two wanting to take a completely different route, and using this little buy as a spy for one of the drow houses. In which case, the GM will be looking for more of a sneaky quasit build. After all, one of the story threads is that if you’re dwarf, someone rats you out and you end up being capture, and thrown into their gladiator arena.

House Sathys Drow (CR 6)

While I can’t say for sure, this is either a high ranking captain from the drow house, which as we see from the emblems legent, fail at stealth missions, or the drow noble of the house. If you use the latter, he’ll need to be given the extra abilities that drow nobles have compared to the standard lesser drow, making him CR 7. More levels of fighter could be added if he’s someone the PCs square off again, but he seems like someone that is to be negotiated with, and his house is to be added to the final battle against the tyrant house that oppresses all of the drow houses thanks to their squad of demons backing them up. If the PCs are playing the drow, they might even have some history with him, and he could possibly owe their house a favour.

Shemhazian Demon (CR 16)

This is easily my favourite picture done by SpiralMagus. It looks so incredible.

Sandbox adventures are very interesting. Given the background, it was likely once an incredible drow city. Maybe once the home of the overlords. The shemhazian could be one of the pets of the tyrant queen, and taking this down before it joins in the final battle might be something that adds favour and potential victory to the PCs’ side. There might even be a rumoured minor artifact there for the explorer dwarves, or something the drow PCs definitely know they need to find, but it’s hidden under all that rubble.

Ancient Magma Dragon (CR 17)

Again, less of a personal encounter, and more of a “come and get us!” move. Hopefully. There’s always the chance that the PCs decide to not wait for the dragon to leave and hunt for food, and just attack it outright, provoking it and getting it to chase them (or hunt them if they’re using teleport). I’ve brought this up before, but given the art for the dragon and the egg...

I believe that the intended purpose was less to fight the dragon, but more to get it to attack the enemy for you. If this egg was stolen and placed within enemy lines? Even if they have high ranking demons, a magma dragon will severely mess them up. As for the type of dragon chosen, it’s straight out of the bestiary and it’s high enough level to be an actual threat.

As for how the PCs would even know to go looking, talking to someone from House Vakazar might provide them with some answers.

Drow Cultist Troop (CR 11)

Fiendish Drow Cultist Troop (CR 12) (as above, but with the Fiendish Simple template)

If everything has gone well, the PCs have gathered their own army (if they’re playing drow, hopefully it’s under their House’s banner too), and they’re taking down the tyrant queen. While I only list one of each, it’s more likely that there’s 2-3 of each group. This isn’t including any demons that are hiding in the background, or any drow that might (possibly) have the half-fiend template. Chances are that the drow armies will fight amongst themselves while they go after the queen herself, and her demon bodyguards.

It should be noted that the troop subtype came out with the release of Bestiary 6, so chances are this isn’t what Gary original envisioned. Looking further, there was supposed to be a mob creature template in the Advanced Bestiary, but never made it to printing. Maybe because it’s too much like it’s 3.5 counterpart. Thankfully we do have troops now, so that deals with a lot of the issues that could have presented themselves.

As for how exactly this would go down, my recommendation is read Book 6 of “Way of the Wicked” because something very, very similar happened near the beginning of that, and it’s more than likely that a lot of the same mechanics would have been used here too.

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That does it for this post. If there’s any other encounters that take place in this book, I am currently unaware of them. Next time we do Book 5, and given how many pics I’ve found for that one, chances are Book 6 will be mixed in too. No guarantees though. Just a strong feeling.

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the-guccidamn · 5 years ago

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a decade; an entry.

it’s december 31st and weirdly enough, i just want to cry. over what? i have no idea, i am still trying to figure out. maybe because it’s not only the year ending, but a whole ass decade. maybe because exo is having a concert right now and i stopped streaming because i am afraid it might really be their last. maybe because the holidays, in general, are making me upset. i don’t know, i just feel upset.

but i wanted to do a recap just for the sake of it. scratch that, tbh i am just one of those sentimental human beings who love going back and remembering.

so here goes.

2010

graduated elementary with flying colors. valedictorian. i remember being just so eager to learn, to be the best, to achieve and achieve and achieve things - as many as i can. i remember entering high school and being blown away by the presence of new people. high school made things more interesting - socially. i belonged to squads. i had legit crushes that turned into heartbreaks (or so i thought back then). high school drama was also prominent, was it even high school without it? everything was just so new, refreshing, interesting and there i was still trying to be on top of it - in a good way. or not. i tried to blend in, to belong, whilst aiming for that first honor medal. this was also the year i cried for the first time because i was not able to attend a damn concert. i hate u justin bieber for making me feel distraught that day in may. i also hate the fact that i did not know it was going to be our last annual family outing. corregidor was still a place to revisit though, thanks to the history attached to it - no, i don’t think i liked their beach very much.

2011

a continuation of the eager version of me. you know this year might have been my calmest and chillest year had it not been for the fact that my family’s life turned upside down. my dad got diagnosed with cancer and well, you can say nothing has been the same ever since. it wasn’t until i am typing this that i realized how traumatic that year was. sudden visits to the hospitals. me being on edge all the time. me trying to be the same eager vane who wants to achieve as many as she can to make her parents proud, while trying to hide the fact that she is so so SO SCARED of what might happen. looking back, i tried so hard to busy myself with academics, with friends, just so i wouldn’t have to dwell with my family’s current situation. home made me so stressed - emotionally and mentally, but i couldn’t just run away because i knew back then that it would be such a waste of time and energy and just - i did not wanna regret anything. it was also the year when i sprained my ankle during sparring. we took Taekwondo classes - would have been a black belter or somewhere close to that if we continued it though, i mean maybe.

2012

the inevitable happened. 5 became 4. and i don’t know. to be honest, i am currently contemplating whether or not i have cried enough during that year, or even allowed myself enough time needed to just feel the pain because i don’t think it has healed yet. or will it ever be healed? does time really heal all wounds, or does it just make them more tolerable? it is pathetic but i can trace everything that i have been hurting about lately to this year alone. my heart literally breaks every now and then, and every now and then i try so hard to mend it because who wants to live the rest of their lives with a shattered heart? goodness me. i spent the summer of it acting though, and preparing for my first ever musical appearance. the workshop was satisfying as i got compliments for my acting. little did they know that every day i attended it was me already acting out that i was, in fact, okay and not on the verge of crying. it’s funny because 2012 was also the year when a huge turn point of my whole identity happened. it was during the time when i was tolerating the pain of having my wisdom teeth removed, and out of boredom i searched One Direction on Youtube - the rest was history. One Direction literally became my savers, distraction, whatever you can call it. It was unhealthy, in some part, yes, but at least I do not feel devastated, at loss, sui***al. It was such a big change. I am still the eager vane who tried to achieve and achieve but now a new reason was added, it’s to be worthy of asking a concert ticket just in case 1d decided to pay Manila a visit. I was such a sucker for them. it was when i discovered stan twitter, new people who are also “like me”, exposed to new cultures, time differences, the fangirl culture - oh the fan parties what fun. I hated and loved niall, louis, liam, zayn and harry (OH HARRY) at the same time. along with my fangirl awakening, 2012 was the year when i attended my first ever concert. it was of the jonas brothers. i won the ticket through twitter out of sheer desperation (i even skipped school because i was just so upset at the thought of not going) and then there i was. found myself inside moa arena, alone, in lowerbox. and when when you looked me in the eyes played, a wave of feelings hit me. i felt at home. the moment, i left the arena, there was a newly discovered need of attending concerts inside me already. i also got braces this year.

2013

if this was the peak of 1d, this was the peak of my high school life i guess. or was it because i was in my fourth year? nonetheless, i remember just feeling so high that year. figuratively. i was so busy with academics and fangirling i had no time to feel low. do you get what i am saying? it was sort of the year where everything in my life is fitting into places. i really busied myself with trying to achieve as many as i can because i wanted to be the class valedictorian. i joined the interschool youth month event - there’s a fake council meeting we had back then, and i remember feeling so giddy that they picked my proposal. i also made friends with the people i met there. i had felt accomplished when i was able to write and finish a script for a play - which i also directed, and played in. i felt so so sooo proud of myself for performing a monologue during the talent contest of the most outstanding student of muntinlupa, and even more so when i learned i placed 12th. i felt so accomplished for being the student council’s president, for contributing to the choreo of our cheerdance, for winning the field demonstration, for having lots of hohol with friends, for getting a passing score during the mock UPCAT, and even more so for passing UPCAT, and even UST (damn you, Ateneo). 2013 made me feel i had everything figured out.

2014

Assumption College - man, I did not expect to end here. an all girls’ school, really? but it’s still a prestigious one so...... i hated myself for not pursuing UST or UPLB. talk about culture shock, this was what this year was all about. it’s a blur now, honestly. i remembered just trying so hard to belong again. i tried to blend in to the elite girls there - whilst sticking to my identity. i did not join any clubs, although i wanted to, because as an academic scholar, i had to see if i would be able to balance them out if ever. but i also remember trying to fulfill my uaap dreams - it was the year i became so obsessed with uaap men’s basketball (hello, von pessumal), i went to real games (thank u sweet anne and vhon) and i event went to the cheerdance competition. and it did not happen again lol. 2014 was just the year of frosh vane and everyone in college being surprised that i do well academically.

2015

now this is a pretty interesting year. would i like to relive it? 95% yes. the 5% is because this was the year zayn left 1d, broke my heart and had me healing it for 4 months. anyway, to start, i attended two concerts this year. 1st was The Vamps - this was just impulsive. i liked them but did not really stan. now idk the main reason why i pushed myself so hard to find a gen-ad ticket for their show - but hey their music was my jam back then, also i learned that gen-ad was for desperate people only because it was so high my acrophobia was shaking so there you go. i attended Graphika as well that year - i was enlightened of what my program could do, guess it was the start of falling in “like” for my program which i also chose impulsively. the second concert was the one and only, of One Direction. BEST DAY STILL. ONE FOR THE BOOKS. AN ACTUAL CONCERT I WAITED FOR. I REMEMBER HOW HAPPY I FELT THAT DAY DESPITE THE SHITTY EXPERIENCE OF LINING UP UNDER THE SUN FOR 11 HOURS (little did i know it was nothing compared to what i would be doing now). BUT MY GOODNESS, SEEING THEM FOR THE FIRST TIME LIVE, EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE ONLY FOUR, WAS ENOUGH. I FELT SO HIGH AND JUST GENUINELY HAPPY I WAS SCREAMING AND CRYING THAT NIGHT. I LOVE ONE DIRECTION 5EVER. I FELT SO LOVED BACK THEN IDK EXACTLY HOW IT HAPPENED BUT I JUST DID AND I ALSO REMEMBER NOT WANTING TO LEAVE THE CONCERT GROUNDS AND NOT WANTING IT TO END. but zayn left, 4 days later. man, it felt like a real breakup, and i did not even have a boyfriend so. thankfully, my school went through an academic calendar shift meaning we had 4 months of vacation so i was able to mend it during that time and enjoyed watching tons and tons of movies and series. also, my family was able to go to Baguio after so many years, there’s that. anyway i went back to school with a newly appreciation and knowledge for films whilst sporting my new short hair look. the first semester of my sophomore year was a blast - i felt like a real communication arts student for the first time. we spent our days editing, shooting, script writing, acting, concept making, IT WAS FUN AND I LOVED IT SO SO SO MUCH. even more so when my pieces got compliments and praises from my professors, i was so pleased with myself. the second half of 2015 was me putting a twist to my college life. i joined a club, and not just any club, i joined the school’s dance company. hip-hop team. with a legit coach (no pun intended). and dare i say it was life changing? i learned a lot since then. values that only a dedicated student-athlete can understand. looking back, auditioning for tadc (no matter how scary it went) was an A+ decision. i would audition again tbvh. it opened me to a new community and experiences not everyone has the privilege to have. trainings may have been tough but the bliss you feel after every successful run was enough to keep going.

2016

I TURNED 18. it was the year i had my jade west phase. i had no regrets. it was the year when i had my first ever dance competition - we lost 1st place though, but it was motivation for me to not leave the group and continue to strive for the better. 2016 WAS THE YEAR FOR FANGIRL VANE. I SAW 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER. LIVE. IT WAS AS AMAZING AS EVER. after camping out for the first time just for the sake of buying a ticket with soundcheck inclusions, did not buy it myself though because i had a performance at the same time, I FINALLY GOT TO BE IN THE VIP MOSHPIT OF THE BAND I LOVE THE MOST. IT WAS A THRILLING ROLLERCOASTER NIGHT. I DANCED SO HARD. CRIED BECAUSE THE SONGS BROUGHT SO MUCH MEMORIES. FREAKED OUT BECAUSE LUKE MY BOYFRIEND HEMMINGS WAS JUST AN ARM AWAY. I ALSO GOT MICHAEL’S GUITAR PICK. I CAN SAFELY SAY I WON THAT DAY. I WANTED TO DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. 2016 was when i really busied myself in dancing. my first crissa competition and let me tell you how fulfilling it was to compete with top schools and perform on the same stage as them. who could have thought i would be performing at the big dome, right? it’s really just me and my growth as a dancer for 2016. oh and my slowly coming back to the kdrama/kpop world.

2017

EXO. THE PLOT TWIST OF MY 2017. the moment i impulsively attended THE EXORDIUM IN MANILA, i was in it for life. it was 1d all over again. I SPENT DAYS FANGIRLING, KEEPING UP, WATCHING FANCAMS AND VIDEOS. READING SEKAI FICS. ACTUALLY BUYING ALBUMS AND MERCH. AND WOW JUST A NEW FANDOM CULTURE TO LEARN AND DROWN MYSELF IN. EXO was meant to be though, knew it when i danced to Growl back in 2013 but never did i think i would be in it SOOOOO DEEP. THE IMPULSIVE DECISION TO ATTEND THEIR CONCERT WAS SO WORTH IT. I FELT SO SO SO HIGH AGAIN AND ANOTHER KIND OF BONAFIDE HAPPINESS. i am thankful to have found another distraction/motivation especially when things are getting hard in school. campaigns here, campaigns there. and thesis. stupid thesis. it’s really that thing in school that will make you cry. 2017 was also my last academic year. my senior year in college. and it changed a lot in school especially when you are part of organizations, it gets busier than ever, more schedules, you cannot keep up. i cannot believe i was able to balance thesis, academics and tadc especially on the last quarter of the year. had to study, submit requirements, train endlessly, at the same time i was honestly going insane. HOWEVER, TADC CAME IN 4TH PLACE DURING CRISSA FINALS with a team consisted of half rookies HU TO THE RRAH. I also became more committed to the team than ever :( i never expected it but i guess such things happen when you actually do like what you are doing. coach vimi also acknowledged me a lot this year :( i felt so pleased again.

2018

i really don’t wanna remember this year. after graduation, my mental health dropped to an all time low. i was paranoid, insane, anxious. it was the start. i also got an appendicitis and underwent appendectomy this year. but hey, on december i got a stable job at a well-known accounting firm (uh, what? right). earlier during this year though, i saw exo again for the 2nd time. it was bittersweet, i swore to do better for the next tour. and yes, for all it’s worth, for all those times i strived so hard to get an uno whilst being surrounded by org commitments and pagod na ako moods, i graduated magna cum laude from assumption college. still, a win for me. oh and 2018, i finally got my braces off.

2019

here it is, the last year year of this decade. what can i say? to be honest, it was just me holding my mental health in. there were worst days, but there were also the best days. best days include me lining up for 30 hours for an exo ticket (with camila, and surprisingly, my mom). it ended up with me feeling blessed and grateful, and my heart full. of course, there’s the concert itself. seeing exo for the third time doesn’t really feel different compared to the first time i saw them last 2017. they were down 3 members yes, but i still felt so happy to share that moment with them. that’s when i knew i was really in it for life. best days also include me accomplishing my tasks in my work with flourish, getting compliments from my boss. oh and it also includes the outings i had with my family. went to the beach twice this year - first in batangas, second in pagudpud. cried in batangas because it has really been so long and beaches remind me of the good old times. in ilocos, it went well, i am glad we got to see that despite our situation, outings like this are still possible. i am so glad to say, or rather write, that i am ending this year and this decade, with a calm heart. i am happy, as happy as i can be this year. we had a pleasant staycation during Christmas. and i finally handed in my resignation, plus i got to have 2 weeks off thanks to my approved VL. exo made me cry though :( i hope to see them still next year.

for 2020, and for the next decade, i hope to be happy. the genuine happy. i pray that my family would be healthy, stress-free and happy, and complete. i pray that everything will go well with my new job. i pray that i will be able to do more outings with my family (even internationally, please). as for the little things, i hope i can fix my back problems, i hope i can continue to write (even just sekai fics), i hope i can visit south korea for an exo concert, i hope i can attend more concerts, i hope for the little things that will make me happy. i hope nothing more but a healthy and bounty new year and decade for me, my family, my relatives, and my friends, especially to those who cared. i will also include the people who need it the most, and this country as well, because i just can’t stand seeing people have less while some have more. anyway, cheers.

#personal #rant #um idk i felt like writing so here it is #wow it has been so long since my last essay #actually willing to let people read this ooft #ok happy new year yall

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saucylittlesmile · 8 years ago

Text

Interview with Scott Livingston. Please excuse any typos or errors on my part. I did omit some of the transitional language (um, like, etc) and some of the reaction laughs, and there were times when Scott, in particular, would say something that would sound like agreement while T was talking but I would miss the exact words.

SL: Okay, hi everybody. Scott Livingston here for Culture is Queen Reconditioning HQ. I am very lucky to have two people I get to work with all the time, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who are wonderful skaters in ice dance and they have won a gold medal and a silver medal and are going for another gold coming up this next February in the next Olympics that are to come. So I asked them to come today, spend some time talking with me talking about culture. Um, but what I really want to talk about and prefaced before we got together was the concept of what it takes to win a gold medal. And the reason that I want to talk about it, and what I sort of talked to [Tessa] about on the table was, everybody has this picture of goal, and you get to the goal and everything is going to be wonderful and you did it, and so then what was if feeling like afterwards. So I sort of want to take apart through a couple of different questions, first of all, what does it take to win that gold medal, and then after you do it what that feels like, and then we'll go around the circle after that. But the one is, what do you think it really takes, when you think of the things that you had to do, you had to commit to, to make yourselves win that gold medal, what does it take?

Scott: That's a tough question, and I think that when we think back to 2010, there were so many firsts for us. We had never been world champions, we'd never been to an Olympic games, so in a lot of ways leading up to 2010, we weren't sure what it takes, so we had to rely on different mentors - Marnie McBean, David Pelltier - to kind of guide us in a way. And I think in 2010, we were fantastic skaters, and we knew that we wanted to win at all costs, and I think that's what really got us through, we just found a way. I remember Tessa's quote for the year was, "I don't know how, but we just have to win the Olympics in February." And I think kinda that faith was a big key to our success, but I think when we look back, we were such -- our strength was in our skating, and not so much the team around us.

Tessa: Also, I think even from a young age, we made incredible sacrifices. We moved away from home at 13 and 15, um, we didn't do prom, movies, sleepovers, parties, things like that. I'm not sure I thought of it as a sacrifice at the time, because we just wanted to be the best novice skaters we could be, we wanted to be the best junior skaters we could be, but looking back, I'm impressed that as teenagers -

Scott: Right.

Tessa: - we did that and wanted that, there's almost a disconnect, and I think, just that internal drive, it was within us, we were competitors, and early on, we were willing to do things our competitors weren't, which was probably a bit of a differentiator.

SL: So what do you think those things were, when you think back -- was it more hours on the ice, was it a greater commitment to what you reflected on when you were on the ice... like, how do you differentiate what the other skaters were doing and what you did?

Tessa: We observed a lot. And we committed to working differently as a team, more efficiently, more effectively, in a more supportive partnership, at least in comparison to those around us. We had the opportunity to train with many different types of teams and I think for us, a lot of the root of our success has been the foundation we've built our partnership on, and that's not something we take lightly; we're still working on that to this day. But that really, kind of set the tone, and then we both knew that we were committed to this one common goal, and then every single day, we didn't doubt that we were each showing up to give everything to invest in that one purpose. So I don't think that we were bogged down by too many other thoughts, you know, we weren't fighting, we weren't battling in other ways, it was just, 'this is our goal and how do we get there'.

Scott: It was very clear.

Tessa: Pretty simple.

SL: So to play off that, because that plays off the idea that somebody has a particular goal, maybe it's losing weight, maybe it's building a business, whatever you're doing, it doesn't necessarily have to be a gold medal, but then you get it, then what? Like, did you feel, the way you expected to feel and what changed for you after?

Scott: I think the magical thing about 2010 is that it felt exactly how I thought it would feel. I dreamt of that moment, being on the podium together, being in that position together, being in Vancouver being surrounded by Canadians, and it was exactly how I dreamed it would be, and I think that's pretty rare in life. And the medals, I remember when they put the medals around our necks it was just as heavy as I thought it was going to be, and at Worlds they put the medal, and it was like [Scott mimes a very light medal], this is it? and we did all this? But it felt right, and seeing all the school kids was a great experience, but then re-setting after that was a lot different than I thought. There was a huge come-down period, what we called an Olympic hangover, that lasted probably for the better part of a year and a half, it was a lengthy time to try and get re-motivated. And going into those next four years -- we always say we learned more in those years between 2010 and 2014 than in our whole career before that. And we were trying to reinvent ourselves, trying to push ourselves to skate to different music, to move differently, to try and figure out what was behind Tessa's leg injuries, so there's a whole bunch that went on in those four years.

Tessa: But interestingly, while that Olympic experience lived up to our expectations, it didn't change us -

Scott: [?]

Tessa: - and I'm not sure we had talked openly about that before the Olympic games, but there is some anticipation that you have this perfect recipe, this quick fix to success, or that you'll just be happier, that people will treat you differently, but like -

Scott: Yeah.

Tessa: - I don't know what the expectation really is, but nothing did, like nothing really changed, because the people that were in our lives on a daily basis remained the same, we were just Tessa and Scott -

Scott: Hopefully.

Tessa: (laughs) Yeah, and I remember that, just to fast forward to the second time we won the world championships in Nice, France, 2012, and we won the competition and there we were in the South of France, with a few days off, and nothing could be better, and I was sitting with my mom having lunch, and she looked over and I was just crying, bawling my eyes out, and she said, "What's wrong?" and I said, "It just didn't feel like I expected it to feel," so I think we do set ourselves up sometimes, and if there's one thing we could tell younger skaters, having had a bit of success, that it has to be about the process, that the feeling of getting the medals, that external validation, is nothing compared to gratification you get simply from hard work, or from chasing a goal...

Scott: Which brings us kind of to 2014, because that's what we did exceptionally well, because now when we look back to 2014, I think that people think we're less excited because we're silver medalists, but the way that we prepared for that and how much we enjoyed the process, we really took in the experience, we only have fond memories of Sochi, and kind of being really in that Olympic experience and taking full advantage of it, I mean, that's priceless to us.

SL: That's awesome. You mentioned something about feeling the medal weight. Did you guys see winning a gold medal before it happened, did you envision it, was it part of getting you there, seeing it?

Tessa: Seeing it.... and also falling flat on our faces and coming dead last was a vision -

Scott: Yes.

Tessa: - was something we had to deal with. I think we saw every possible scenario, but the overreaching one was gold, and living through that, and trying to visualize everything, from the smell of the arena to the feeling when we'd walk in to the look we'd give each other before skating, all of that had been visualized so many times that it felt like we had lived it by the time we did go through the motions...

Scott: And then when we did live it, it felt normal, and we knew, as soon as we were in that venue, we knew. I mean, we probably would have slept easier if we really knew, but we had that energy because we'd envisioned it so many times.

SL: So one of the things I want to try and transcend into, from what you're doing now, that helps someone that is in business or trying to achieve something, is now you've achieved these things now, just like someone who has taken a business to the next level, it's making money, how do you reframe it so again it's exciting, interesting, something you want to achieve and going back to the process, what's different now for now about the process than for you then?

Tessa: Well, one the critical things in evaluating our comeback, so to speak, was the why, and why are you doing this and what are your intentions and what are you hoping to get out of this, and once we realized that those intentions were totally pure.... I mean, it was for the love of the sport and to push ourselves and see how capable we are to skate differently... all those things just gave us so much room for growth in every different facet of our training, and that's what exciting for us.

Scott: I think the biggest reason we came back was.... we had success in our career, and I mean a lot of people thought why not just hang your hat on that, but I think in our minds, we hadn't explored our complete and full potential, and we have more to give, and when we watch tape - [laughs] which we don't do very often - of old programs, but when we do watch tapes, we just think, there's more than that, and we owe it to ourselves to at least try, and then also... just because we can, I mean we owe to to ourselves to try to live to our full potential, and we couldn't even dream of sitting at home on the couch while Canadian athletes march in Pyeongchang.

Tessa: It's funny, I'm just realizing now, that even after these next Olympics we're still going to feel that way -

Scott: I know.

Tessa: - you know, we're always going to be chasing that, here will be some void or feeling that, if only we'd tried this, or if only we could do this in our skating... I'm not sure we'll ever be fully satisfied, but I guess that's the nature of...

Scott: We'll be ready for four years. [all laughing]

SL: We'll see. To finish then, I don't want to get into post careers, that's always an interesting question, but when you look at the things that you're learning as you go through your journeys, about how you've set yourselves up for success, do you feel there are two, three fundamentals you could leave people with, that you feel are intrinsic to success, like what you really have to do to commit yourself to that?

Scott: Well, I think one of the big things would be constantly evolving. I mean what's so interesting about our story is that what won in 2010 wouldn't have won in 2014 and definitely won't win in 2018, and I know in 2014 I definitely thought we were better but wasn't quite good enough to win, but we're constantly --

Tessa: Better than ourselves in 2010.

Scott: Yes. Yep. Sorry, thanks for clearing that up [.....] [Tessa and SL laughing] But that's what sports is, to me, constantly evolving, and you talked about getting that skill set that will help you in life, and that we're hopefully setting ourselves up, that we'll be able to problem solve and create a life for ourselves outside of sports.

Tessa: And I think that as athletes, 95% of feedback we get is constructive criticism, and we're constantly looking at sort of our faults, and being self-aware enough to realize building those things and making them strengths, and working on your weaknesses, you know, sometimes it's not fun, to face, but that can be a difference maker -

Scott: Absolutely.

Tessa: - and for us, building a team around us, that's given us a huge advantage, and a big edge, in so many ways, mentally, physically and emotionally. You need the right people around you who lift you up, inspire you and you can kind of tap into as a resource, you know... we acknowledge that we are not experts in these fields so we need to bring in this team...

Scott: Well, and that's what's so cool... I mean, you have to be willing to do what your competitor is not. Usually, what your competitor isn't willing to do, neither are you, so going into something we just learned last weekend [nudges T]....

Tessa: [laughing] But now we're preaching it.

Scott: But I mean, that's so important, and I think what we try and do, we're not completely successful by any means, but it's something we've focussed on and trying to do what our competitors won't and patch up our weaknesses.

SL: Process, not perfection.

Tessa: Totally.

Scott: [laughing] We know somebody who says that.

SL: Well, I thank you both, this was awesome, lots of learning pieces, and thank you for taking the time.

Tessa: Thank you, Scott [Livingston].

[pause]

Scott: All right.

Tessa: That was a fun one. I felt like we could talk forever.

SL: We could.

Tessa: [laughing] Did you mean to press record, or...?

SL: I did. Thirteen minutes.

#my own thoughts here #I think they were relaxed because they know him better than most of their interviewers #so it's more like hanging out than official interview #this was a chat with many 'check in' looks between VM #I LOL'd at Scott's oops #and speaking of Scott your hair is so much better without product

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figureskatingqueen · 8 years ago

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My Worlds recap

Here I was, on March 30th, in my hometown Riga with bus and ferry tickets and most importantly - tickets to Ladies practice and Short Dance in my pocket. I could not believe I was going to Worlds after many years of living and breathing figure skating. This was a dream of mine that I thought would never come to life. It felt so surreal I had to pinch myself a few times. 😅

When me and my mom made it to the arena at 8 AM on March 31st, it was so difficult to hold back tears ( i am literally tearing up as i'm writing this 😂). Watching figure skating has been one of the biggest parts of my life for five (!!!) years now and I don't think I can put my feelings towards it in just some sentences. It is better than all the movies because it's the real life - but with the spectrum of emotions I only get to see in the cinema. It doesn't only show "the movie" (aka the performance) but also every behind the scenes action (like the emotions before and after the performance, the training process, the challenges along the way) which makes it so much more interesting. So when I walked in the arena it felt like a dream come true. They didn't have doors heading to each sector, but a curtain instead (to not make a sound every time someone enters or exits) and because it was the practice time for Ladies the curtains weren't closed but fully open instead. So even when I had just come in the arena, I could already see a glimpse of the ice rink which felt so surreal and that was the first time it hit me so hard that I was actually really here - at the World Championships.

It felt fantastic to see stars like Ashley Wagner, Kaetlyn Osmond, Gabrielle Daleman, Evgenia Medvedeva, Anna Pogorilaya and Carolina Kostner skate so close to me (we were seated really close to the ice), to see their determined faces and to live through their great performances. Incomparably mesmerizing.

Before the short dance there was some time to kill so we just walked around and enjoyed the atmosphere which is SO unique! There is this buzzing feeling which makes you feel warm and welcomed and everyone looks nervously excited. We walked through every booth/shop there was, I even got some beautiful postcards from John Wilson Blades booth (they were handing them out for free?! 😧) with Ashley, Patrick, the Shibs and Chock/Bates. There I met a lovely French fan and we had a brief talk about our journeys as fans and let me add that it feels so weird to actually talk with someone about figure skating after you've mostly only shared your opinions online and have never had a legit conversation live??! 😂

Then it was the time for the short dance (oh my, hearing the ISU fanfare live was hands down the best experience ever 😂😂😂) . I have been a massive ice dance fan since forever and I am a big supporter of Tessa&Scott. They are the main reason I was actually here - I can't put into words what they've done to me in these past years - they have held me up every time I felt down in various ways - with their performances, life stories or just small interviews. I just wanted to give back to them a little with my heartfelt support. However, I joined the V/M fandom in 2012 when everyone was furious about D/W and their success (which would happen in 2013 and 2014) and I quickly learned to be as bitter as everyone else. It feels sad to look back now and think that we used so much time to just talk about Meryl and Charlie - more than about great things of Tessa and Scott. I only understood this after T&S took a break after 2014 and I just became this casual ice dance fan who wanted to see the best in everyone and was listening to everyone's stories of ups and downs. It was the same fantastic atmosphere - just without all the rage. During this period of time I really fell in love with Kaitlyn&Andrew, Maia&Alex and Gabriella&Guillaume. When Tessa&Scott came back I couldn't believe how great I felt during the season - it was now 100 times more exciting as I had so many couples I loved and supported throughout (...well, i did love t&s a little more than anyone else though 😆) . And you have NO idea how much I loved the theme of this years SD. SOOOO much spunk and sass! I hope you don't mind me saying that pretty much all of these were the best short dances I have ever seen from the top teams.

First of all, let me say a word about the atmosphere live. It is absolutely incomparable to the TV. The audience noises are lowered for about ten thousand times and are almost inaudible in the TV which is the biggest change. The ovations are so impressive you can't believe them at first. Second of all, the skating skills and the speed is insane live. And thirdly of all, the costumes look SO. MUCH. DIFFERENT. (they are much more sparkly and colorful 😍✨).

I was actually worried that I might not last for seven freaking groups but the time went so fast. I still can't believe the zamboni breaks. I swear to god they didn't last more than five minutes 😅 (I always get cranky during the resurfacing breaks when I watch TV - feels like hours). From the first four groups couples that stood out for me the most were Smart/Diaz, Kaliszek/Spodyriev and Lauriault/Le Gac - they all had great stage presence and superb feel to the music.

Then the fifth group came. All of a sudden Tessa and Scott were on the ice and I was like one of these crazy Bieber fans who can't stop their tears. I tried my hardest to bring the tears back but I miserably failed (I had promised myself that I would act NORMALLY NOT START CRYING ON MY FIRST OPPORTUNITY I AM SO WEIRDED OUT OF THE SUDDEN EMOTIONS THAT CAME OUTSIDE IN THAT MOMENT - I am a very reserved person who always puts herself together 😂). Tessa's costume is SO much more beautiful live. I wasn't a fan of it when I first saw it but DAMN she looked hot. Also the golden sparkles around the cutouts on the pants are basically not seen at all in the usual professional pics but they were actually unbelievably shiny. And Scott just has this amazing aura around himself. He seemed to ooze confidence but also some sort of humbleness. And OMG - they're fast. But the thing that struck me the most was the non-touching step sequence. They did it once in the warm up and I legit thought it was some "easy version of this sequence without the hard steps just to get warmed up" and you can't imagine how surprised I was when they performed it in the actual dance. It WAS the sequence. I swear it looked like anyone could do it. So light and easy. Now THAT was the moment I understood how superior they actually are. Everybody else's StSq looked, you know, like a StSq should look like - a hard element hard to execute (don't get me wrong - they were mostly done beautifully but it was visible that this is a hard element - which it is 😆). After the warm up ended I was probably still in shock so I have no recollection of the first two pairs in that group. Sorry. 😁 Then they came up on ice for a short warm up again while the previous teams scores were announced. And this includes the moment I think nobody has caught on camera (I don't think I have seen any pre-sd videos at all which is such a shame). They were just gliding on ice separately with Tessa slightly in front of Scott. Then they started to slow down because they were coming to Marie France. And while they're slowing down, Scott skates right in front of me with the biggest grin ever and his lovey-dovey eyes focused on Tessa's back slightly in front of him. And that is the moment I calm down. His eyes bring the sense to me that everything is going to be okay and he is confident about it (i swear to god he's a magician or whatever but that look was SO calming and surreal). And Tessa just turns her head, looks at his face and literally rolls her eyes with a smile on her face (okay i might've imagined the eye rolling but you all know that face when tessa looks at scott and thinks 'god you're such an idiot i love you') and then they're already with Marie France with last words before performance. The actual performance was unreal. They did their beginning moves right in front of me and that was SO sharp. Also when they did these moves there were quite few "eeeaaaww" kind of shouts or whatever the Michael Jackson kind of short screams sound. That was superb and I'm so sad NONE of them are audible during the actual recording. It gave a great atmosphere. Scott did the kneeling thing right before the end of the first section right in front of me which left such an impact. SOO much control. The blues sequence was hella smooth (and twizzles were ok but i was so scared about them) BUT THE LIFT. THE STADIUM FREAKING ERUPTED DURING THE LIFT. I felt as if I had wings and had been accepted into paradise. And then it ended and I was on my feet and there was an ocean of tears (whoops😅). It was an experience I will never forget.

Then it was time for Group number 6. I have to be honest - I was a little disappointed with Stepanova/Bukin. I've been a huge fan of their SD but seeing it live was a little bit underwhelming. It's the way of skating - they skate "small". However I still loved the choreography and their chemistry is certainly the best in the younger ice dancers field. If they can improve their skating skills, I'm completely on board.

Piper and Paul were a huge surprise for me. Even when they were warming up with everyone else, you could feel their presence the most. And let me just say this - Canadian men are superior dancers. Scott, Paul and Andrew all felt a bit similar to me. They makes themselves look extremely confident (i mean their skating skills also are 😍) and they lead their ladies better than anyone else - it just feels extremely natural. So, back to Piper&Paul. This was a huge hit in the arena (and for me!). The feeling was great throughout the performance and I just want to say it one more time - the skating skills (piper has improved so much)!! the twizzles! they took my breath. I have to admit I didn't think this dance would actually work for me but it did.

Another team which surprised me in a good way were Bobrova&Soloviev. As the season progressed, I always felt as this program was a little "pushed". They tried to bring the sass, but instead it came off as a vulgarity. However the forms they create on ice are very clean and blade work is beautiful so I was actually scratching my head after watching these two because I've never really liked them but somehow they look better live (I just don't understand why?)

I was also delighted by Anna&Luca's performance. That dress looked even more beautiful live and they also made me like them more than on TV. They just draw you in and you can't do anything about it. I just wish they would be more versatile (but i still love them!)

The seventh group started with the Shibs who I think had the very close second short dance choreography-and-idea-wise behind T&S. I've absolutely adored this dance all the times this season and this was no exception. That lift was badass and man, those twizzles... I didn't think that was going to leave such a big impact on me. SO sharp in every movement. Alex just needs improve his facial expressions a bit and then they'd be even more perfect (also maia is a literal goddess).

I have to say my sentimental favorites of the night were Kaitlyn&Andrew. Their skating on TV looks a bit like Stepanova/Bukin's so I was a little bit worried that it would fall flat. It was the DIRECT opposite. I think their skating skills were second only to VM that night because damn, they skated with so much speed. And their chemistry just went sky high. Also that lift made the arena erupt (again😂). It looked so much more powerful than on TV. The move where Andrew just rolls Kaitlyn on his back was hands down one of the coolest of the night. I was just so happy to see them perform the best they can after some disappointing starts. It was truly wonderful and after they finished I was standing and in tears again. I thought they were terribly underscored, but oh well, #twizzles. (they are both also incredibly hot 😏🔥)

Gabriella&Guillaume were also amazing live. I loved that they did the most program to the blues music which I truly respect because it is so much harder to keep an audience interested with blues than with hip hop. But the slow section was amazing - the attention to details and the blade work was soooo smooth. I've got to say although Guillaume's skating skills and dance moves are through the roof fantastic, he doesn't "lead" his partner that well - the Canadian guys do it so much better. I don't think he has any rivals in the "best male ice dancer by himself" category, but he has a lot to learn to be the best in the "best male partner in ice dance" nomination - he isn't the full package yet. However I'm a big fan of hard work and dedication (and I'm sad people only appreciate Guillaume's because he is the more gifted one) so I'm a big fan of Gabi, her personality and facial expressions during the performance. She sells everything better than Guillaume but I don't think she's being recognized enough for that.

Madi&Zach also surprised me live by looking far more polished than on TV. The movements were sharp and they've got this weirdly different blade quality compared to others that I can't explain (but i liked it). I certainly was a bit cringey about the music at the beginning of the season, but I've got to say that crowd really appreciated it and I was also on board. I smiled so hard when the scores came up because I absolutely love it when underdogs show everyone what they're capable of.

Last up were Madi&Evan and this unfortunately turned out the same way I felt about Stepanova/Bukin. I had also been a big fan of this SD all season but their way of skating didn't seem to impress me. I had also liked how Evan just tossed around Madi various times in the program but live it just seemed a little too much? BUT I totally respect that they have worked so much with their chemistry because it was nonexistent some years ago but now they just scream the word "FIIIIREEEEEE". 😉

Afterwards there were about a hundred of people making a crowd close to the door which skaters entered to go to the draw for the FD. Well, I think it's not a very good way to get a skaters autograph. They are very tired after the competition and it's not even over - there's still the FD so they got to keep focused. I think a moment between a skater and a fan should be much more personal than just blocking an entrance just to get your autograph. I don't know, it just made me a little uncomfortable when everyone was waiting for them just to come like they're some sort of zoo animals or whatever. I didn't want any autographs or anything, it was just SO hard to get through the far-too-excited crowd (to the exit of the arena) I decided to wait until they go away. I didn't even register that I was standing right after the entrance to the draw (where it wasn't crowded at all, in fact I was like the only person there) and the wall was from glass so you could see the skaters after they entered the "closed zone". And then I turned my head and saw FREAKING TESSA AND SCOTT in the closed zone. About a meter from me there was this crazy crowd waiting for skaters and turning their heads in the other direction while I was enjoying my view of Tessa and Scott having a conversation. 😄 They were kind of afar from me though and I was trying my best not to stare ('they are not animals and it is rude to do that' I muttered to myself) - I don't think they even saw me because they looked completely in ease as the glass wall separated them from everyone. Then they left further for the draw and I couldn't see them anymore. Tessa&Scott were already in the closed zone because they skated early but the skaters from the last group still had to come. I've got to say it was a bit sad to see the guards having a hard time taking the skaters from the crowd to the closed zone. People went crazy every time someone came. But I, still not accompanied by anyone, just had the best view of my life of skaters like Maia&Alex, Kaitlyn&Andrew, Gabi (Guillaume didn't show up because he was getting his hand stitched) , Piper&Paul, Madi&Evan and Madi&Zach after they had gone through the crowd. Madison Hubbell actually turned around to see the crowd once again, laughed, then turned in the other direction, saw me all by myself, smiled and waved at me! 😎😱 I was so surprised but also very thankful for such a nice gesture! (jeez, but I hope I didn't look like those weird, creepy stalkers 😁). The crowd finally went away and I got to walk out normally.

My journey was over but the memories were never going to fade. It was an experience I wouldn't trade for anything in the world as it brought the whole spectrum of emotions to me. It was the best day of my life. I can never thank enough to my mom who came up with this idea and travelled with me. We had the most fantastic time ever. ❤️

(thanks for reading, this was suuuuper long 😂)

#Tessa Virtue #Scott Moir #and all the other great skaters!!#ice dance #personal

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ddrkirbyisq · 8 years ago

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Well, it could have been worse. I could have spent =more= than 2 hours thinking about the past instead of sleeping... ===== Yesterday was a really interesting day...I had a really hard time getting out of bed for some reason, and fell pretty soundly asleep during the morning train ride as well. After getting off the train the city was oddly quiet in a way that made me wonder whether there was some holiday going on that I was totally unaware of. I was feeling pretty cranky too, for some reason, imagining negative scenarios in my head, as one is prone to do when feeling grumpy. Maybe I just have some sleep to catch up on. Feedback has been coming in for our game, Raven Delivery Service, and people have been liking it! I'll try to do a post-mortem post about it, as well as just advertise it via posting in general so we can get some more plays. Aivi & surasshu are performing later this month at Fanime! What a pleasant announcement to hear -- it actually makes me quite excited to go. Steven Universe is also getting an official soundtrack release next month -- about time! More importantly, I overheard that their next original artist album has a name, "valk hollow"? That's actually more exciting than anything, as you know the main reason I'm a fan of aivisura is because of their debut album "The Black Box". I am not-so-secretly hoping that once they release their next album I will be able to do a full remix album of their works again, as I did with "Love Everlasting". That album was one of the most interesting and rewarding projects that I've undertaken as a musician and I'd love to try something like it again. Big dance is also coming up this Friday! Everyone should enter the dance contests, especially the ambi ones! Looking back at my records, here were the themes for those years, to help people remember: 2011 was Firefly 2012 was Star Wars 2013 was Last Airbender 2014 was Game of Thrones (2015 was a Little Big Dance) (2016 was a Little Big Dance) 2017 is Back to the Future (old-timers will remember some other ones, like pride and prejudance, etc) Remember, Little Big Dances do NOT count as all-nighters! (since they didn't last all night, of course) So this'll be my 7th Big Dance, but my 5th all-nighter. Hopefully it'll be fun, despite the fact that I've been shying away from people interactions lately. I was half-wondering whether I should take a page out of the past and try and compose a song real quick for big dance so that Richard could play it. But I don't think that will happen, hehe. Not ruling it out as a possibility though -- inspiration could strike at any moment! It would actually be pretty cool to start a tradition of writing a new dance song every year for Big Dance specifically. Maybe! Speaking of dance music, next month I'll be going to a ballet performance set to my Celestial Melodies album! Super interested to see how that will be, and never thought as I was writing it that my music would ever be used that way. This is also a good point for me to try to design some (long overdue) business cards. Hopefully I'll be able to use the All in a Day's Work 3 artwork, as that has become so iconic to me, but perhaps there are other options as well. I'll have to decide what urls to put on there as well -- probably ddrkirby.com and ddrkirbyisq.bandcamp.com for sure, but I should really clean up the ddrkirby.com landing page. I guess if I make a more proper landing page for ddrkirby.com I can just feature that, DDRKirby(ISQ), my name, and possibly a contact email (?) and have the landing page direct you to everything else. More work that needs to be done! Looks like a lot of designery work is in my near future... My birthday having passed now, I decided to go ahead and order a whole bunch of stuff online as I was in need/want of quite a lot of things here and there. Yesterday those shipments finally started to get to me, so I now have an anova sous vide machine, a whetstone for sharpening my knives, a jaccard meat tenderizer, a mortar & pestle, new earbuds, a car vent mount for my phone, and a zojirushi vaccuum-sealed food container. I also did a ton of grocery shopping last night, so I basically have a ton of new stuff to play around with and eat, whee! I'm pretty excited about all of the items, haha. The Risk of Rain devs are apparently working on RoR2, in 3D??? (using Unity, as of course is the trend for everyone and their mothers now) That's...cool, I guess? Of course, it's still a project early in development, so it's barely even worth thinking about when or whether they'll finish, but...I guess that's cool? It's not the most -exciting- thing because I don't think 3D is really necessary, or even a boon to the gameplay, but maybe they are just trying to take a page out of Overwatch and such games. It makes me a little sad for my pet project Zenith Fighter which I abandoned, which was aiming to be an arena-style game with platforming and RoR-style abilities, as well as a bunch of upgrades. Speaking of pet projects, Rhythm Quest is on very shaky footing now as I haven't touched it in so long. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but the fact that I'm not regularly working on it is a red flag and I wonder whether it will actually become a thing, or whether it's not actually exciting anymore. We'll see I guess, but for now I am going to remind myself that the reasonable thing to do is not to worry about it because I have other projects that are more pressing -- namely, finishing up my Sentience album, designing the business cards and redoing my landing page. Speaking of my Sentience album -- it's getting close to being complete! I'll probably aim to do one or two more songs and then package it all up for release. Very exciting to be doing another original artist album that is getting a full physical CD release, especially since this one has such a strong theme and could be called my first ever "concept album", I guess. I've been continuing to make my way through Hyper Light Drifter, which has still been great! It's cool that, just like with Shovel Knight, I feel much more well-versed in the sort of "vernacular" of its level design, and am starting to really become familiar with where to look in order to find hidden areas and secrets. I'm currently in the last of the four main "areas" (at least, that I know of!), though the game has made it very clear that even when I've beaten the boss there I will have to do quite a bit more searching and exploring. ===== I told someone recently that while many people find themselves needing to let go of their past before they can move forward, I find myself unable to move forward if I feel like I am letting something go. I've been asked before just =why= the past is so important to me and there are many reasons -- I think loss is painful, letting go is painful, I'm strongly motivated by nostalgia and memory, I would much rather stick to what I know than embrace new experiences, I value lasting connections, I genuinely want to believe that things will last, etc. -- but in the end the answer basically is just that's the way that I am and I have learned that that is the way it has to be. After many years of questioning myself and my feelings toward the past I came to a realization that even if it "slows me down", connecting with my past is ultimately something that I just have to do, out of necessity. And if I try to avoid it and break free, I would only end up circling back again and not moving anywhere at all -- because "breaking free" is something I would never want in the first place. And that is the reason that I can be so sure when I tell people I will always be here. Always and forever. ...or at least, that's what I'd like to think. After all, the girl of the stars also chose to leave her tower. The story of the star and the girl is one that is incredibly important to me because represents a central conflict in life that I must always come to terms with. The fact that "always" is not forever, and that despite my feelings and intentions, in the end I must accept that I cannot bring the past forward with me, and that I =must= by the nature of life move forward. It pained me a great deal thinking about how the girl left the tower. It still does, and always will. But it's something that I need to understand too. I think in the end, sinking deep into memory, holding traditions, treasuring artifacts, and "living in the past" are all ways of coping. Who can say where the girl is now? But no matter where she is, the tower and the star will always be an important part of her. Maybe she will be able to come back to the tower someday. Maybe she will be able to see the star again someday too. But even if she does not, it will still be in her memory, as something precious and treasured. In the same way, my friend Kiki is someone who is always on my mind when I think of the past. My relationship with her, in many ways, represents my relationship with the past, and that is a reason why it has always held such significance to me.

=====

I actually feel significantly better today. Maybe all I needed was to feel like I am paying my respects to my memory...

(More to come later.)

#Blogger

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emma-what-son · 8 years ago

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Interview Magazine

From Interview Magazine April 2017: You can go on the site to see the pictures from the shoot. I’m only going to post her interview where she got asked questions by Jessica Chastain. I’m peppering my own comments throughout.

It's been almost six years since the release of the last Harry Potter film, and still it can be difficult for people to separate Emma Watson from Hermione Granger, the character she played in all eight installments of the hit franchise, from the time she was 11 until she was 21. Maybe there's a reason for this. In the "fantasy" that she says became her life and the lives of her co-stars, Watson, like Hermione, has displayed unbridled passion, natural talent, and—thank goodness for us—a defiant determination to do things her way. Whether that has meant taking time away from a white-hot film career to pursue a degree from Brown University or addressing the issue of gender inequality at the U.N. General Assembly, in her role as a U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador, Watson has been steadfast in her authenticity. And if she's made some mistakes along the way, as she insists she has, they haven't been onscreen for us to see—certainly not in her two stunning post-Potter films The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) and The Bling Ring (2013), which gave us tiny glimpses of her future in film. That future is now here. In March, Watson played Belle in Disney's live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, and she can currently be seen opposite Tom Hanks in the surveillance thriller The Circle, based on the novel by Dave Eggers. If the former was a return to the magical universe in which we first met her, the latter has given Watson the welcome opportunity to question how we live today, in the real world. As she tells her friend, the two-time Oscar-nominated actress Jessica Chastain, the struggle to live up to her onscreen persona—to become a spokesperson, a role model, for an entire generation of girls—might all be worth it if she can still be herself.

JESSICA CHASTAIN: Hi, honey. Where are you right now? EMMA WATSON: I'm thrilled that you asked, because I didn't want things to get weird. I'm in the bath. In Paris. I didn't want you to hear swishing water and be like, "Uh, what are you doing?" I'm very relaxed. Where are you?

Why was she thrilled? I don’t get it.

CHASTAIN: I am in a hotel room. There are bags of hair extensions and makeup and clothes everywhere. WATSON: As long as there's a clear line across the floor so that you can actually get into bed at night, you're good. CHASTAIN: Are you on vacation, or are you working? WATSON: I'm working. I just did the photo shoot for this with Peter Lindbergh, who I know you've shot with. I love him so much. He's the Ferrari of photographers—really thoughtful, engaged, and then boom boom boom. He is so quick. He does not mess around. During the day, I asked him, "What are your plans after this?" And he said, "I'm going to go do another meditation retreat." I was like, "Of course you meditate! You're like the Buddha. You're, like, one of the happiest people I've ever met."

No “...and next up I’m doing” comment from Emma. Just the shoot.

CHASTAIN: Talk to me about your relationship to fashion and photo shoots. It must have been such a different experience for you when you started, because you were so young.

Really? We’re really doing this?

WATSON: Fashion is something that I love, and I find it to be so expressive and creative, and it's obviously a way into my characters, so I'm always deeply engaged with it. What I find difficult about photo shoots is the line between playing a character—you're being asked by the photographer to take on a role like you would in a movie—and being a fancier version of yourself. It's about finding that line between being spontaneous and open to direction, but also trying to explain to photographers that the "me" is often taken out of context because it has all of this other stuff attached to it. The fact that I was a child star is difficult for most people to understand, and it can be really conflicting for me. Photographers want to reinvent you, to take you somewhere else, to show you in a completely different way. They look at your previous work, and try to figure out what they can do to show a new side of you. CHASTAIN: I wonder if I have freedom in a way that maybe you might not. Because people grew up watching you become a woman, are you held to certain standards of having to be the same as you always were? WATSON: I think I am. It's one of the things that I struggle with, because the three of us—Dan[iel Radcliffe], Rupert [Grint], and I—were kids when we got cast in this fairy-tale series, and what happened to us was kind of a fantasy story in itself. Outside of the movies. So the story of my life has been of public interest, which is why I've been so passionate about having a private identity. When I step into a character, people have to be able to suspend their disbelief; they have to be able to divorce me from that girl. And not having everyone know every single intimate detail of my entire life is part of me trying to protect my ability to do my job well. Generally, I've been fortunate, like when Sofia Coppola offered me a role in The Bling Ring, which was so wonderfully different. Artists have given me a lot of freedom—have been able to imagine me in other ways—but it's something I am aware of, for sure.

CHASTAIN: I've learned so much about acting and theater and films—life in general—from making mistakes. Do you feel the freedom to do that? WATSON: I know that I'm under a different microscope, a certain level of scrutiny, which I find really hard at times. And sometimes the fear of doing things is overwhelming. I get incredibly overwhelmed, and sometimes feel hemmed in by that, afraid of that. But I know that if I live in that fear, then my life as an artist, as a human being, really, is over. Ultimately, it will silence me, and it will silence what is in me—which I have yet to explore and uncover. People couldn't believe it when, after Harry Potter, I was like, "I'm going to school." Essentially, I took five years out to study, doing only a few smaller projects, and, to a lot of people, it seemed like I was passing up a lot of opportunity. I received a lot of angry phone calls. But I needed the space to go and explore who I was, without being under the microscope. And I did a play at Brown. I did Three Sisters. I loved it. I loved working with other people my age who were figuring it out. As you say, I loved being able to make mistakes. To be able to step away was pretty key. When I was auditioning to play Hermione, I had this fearlessness, because I wasn't aware of anyone else. I just knew I loved that girl and I loved that role and I loved that world, and I went for it. But now I have this other thing to overcome, like in Beauty and the Beast I sang for the first time, and journalists would ask me, "Do you think you're going to be able to pull it off?" There's an incredible awareness that I have to push through. The night before I gave my speech at the U.N., I was an emotional wreck. I thought I was going to hyperventilate. [laughs]

We took that whole route from young girl to Harry Potter to Brown again. Cue admiration for said speech:

CHASTAIN: That speech was such an important moment. I know it must be really stressful when so many people are telling you what is right for you, what you should be doing, but it seems to me that you've always listened to yourself and followed what you thought was right. Also, people will love you for your mistakes. I used to be terrified of making mistakes, and now I realize that if I make one, there's a lot of respect to be earned for throwing yourself 100 percent into something. WATSON: There's a Theodore Roosevelt speech about the importance of being in the arena, whether you fail or you succeed, or you make a complete idiot of yourself, as long as you're doing the best with what you have, using whatever knowledge you have to bring to the table at that moment. And you continue to keep learning. I think my mistakes have made me much stronger. It's nice to know that things don't ultimately break you; that you need to go there to know. I was talking to a friend of mine recently, like, "Okay, I've had a really hard couple of weeks, and I just want to figure out what I've learned here, what the lesson is." And he looked at me and said, "You realize that you're trying to skip the stages, right? You need to feel shitty for a day or two and be angry and upset and hurt and grieve a little bit. And then you may or may not figure out there's a lesson in it, but you don't get to skip ahead. You need to cry a bit and get angry. And then you can intellectualize and self-analyze." I was like, "Damn you, friend-who-tells-me-the-truth!" [laughs] CHASTAIN: It's so important for you to allow that to happen. It's good to intellectualize something but ... WATSON: You need to be in your body, as painful and annoying as that is. No one wants to go through not feeling so great, but I do ultimately think it's essential.

“Philosophy Emma” has made a comeback I see. CHASTAIN: The speech you made at the U.N. for the HeForShe gender equality campaign, how did that come about?

The speech was 2 and a half years ago!

WATSON: I've been working with an organization called CAMFED, run by this amazing woman named Ann Cotton, which provides scholarships and money for families that traditionally would only send their sons to school. So Ann would find these girls, who were being taken out of school at 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, and try to help support them—not just through their secondary education, but with small business loans, all sorts of other things. I had been approached by a lot of charitable organizations, but I wanted to understand something from the inside out, not just dive straight in to being the public face of something, and I wanted to work with a small organization. So I took a trip to Zambia with a few friends, and we stayed in the school. I sat at the back of classes, and I spoke to the mothers of the daughters who were in the program and in the community, and I tried to understand the challenges. And then U.N. Women asked if I would be a Goodwill Ambassador for women and girls. I talk about it in the speech, but I remember watching Hillary Clinton's genius speech on women's rights, saying they were human rights, and they showed the audience, and there were almost exclusively women there. Why do we think that this conversation isn't something that all human beings need to hear? And they said, "We'd like you to make a speech." I thought, "Oh, god." I must have spent six months writing it, from journal entries that I'd been keeping since I was 12 or 13. CHASTAIN: I remember how moving it was. I could feel that you were speaking from your heart. I keep coming back to the word authenticity ... WATSON: It's one of my favorite words. CHASTAIN: It's interesting that you say that, because that's what I think of when I think of you. WATSON: Gosh. CHASTAIN: I think in society there's a danger where everyone feels like they have to be the cool one. I don't feel that with you. You speak from your heart. And your open heart forced my heart to open. WATSON: Well, there's no higher honor or compliment you could have given me than using that word. No one likes feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable and weak. But I really have found that it's in those moments when I go there that there's a kind of magic. [The scholar and speaker] Brené Brown does an amazing TED talk about vulnerability, how it's the single most important way of connecting to other human beings. CHASTAIN: A lot of people talk about acting as lying—which I don't believe—because you're pretending to be someone else. WATSON: Ugh, no! Acting is telling the truth under imaginary circumstances. I cannot think of a worse way to describe acting. Also, I'm the worst liar ever. I remember trying to get into clubs when I was just about to turn 18. They'd ask my age—and my friends were already in the door, it was not even a big deal—and I was like, "I can't do it." It's terrible. They were like, "You're an actress, what's wrong with you? Get it together, woman!" [laughs]

Bringing this quote from 2013 back because I’m petty: "You sort of accept certain things about your personality," Watson said of growing older. "I don't need to beat myself up about not wanting to go out (at night). I thought there was something quite peculiar about me because I was this insular person. But that's just how I am. You learn to be okay with the way you are." (X) CHASTAIN: I was the same way. A friend of mine had an ID, and she gave it to me to use to go into a club. And the second the guy looked at the ID he goes, "Is this you?" And I went, "Nope." [laughs] WATSON: Oh, I'm the worst. CHASTAIN: When choosing your roles, do you look at the part with a team? Or is it more instinctual? WATSON: People sometimes talk about me as being a brand, having a strategy and whatever else. I wish. Seriously. I wish I had it together enough to have a strategy. But it's so instinctual. It usually comes down to two things: the person I'm working with—the director is really important to me—and a line in a script. There's usually one line that I read and I'm like, "Okay. I have to say this line. I have to tell this story." It's an instant click. And if there isn't that line, even if the story is great, I'm always a bit meh. Whenever I've gone against my instincts, it's been a bit of a disaster. If there's a script I'm considering, I will get everyone to read it. I will get my mom to read it, I will get my friends to read it, I'll get the person doing my manicure to read it. [laughs] I'm someone who really needs to talk things through. And then, obviously, I have a wonderful manager and agents, and I listen very carefully to what they have to say as well. But it's a bit of a free-for-all. I would honestly get my cat's opinion if I could. Anyway, if it's something I need to say, I say it. If it's something I feel genuinely connected to, then I'll do it. But I generally feel uncomfortable being the topic of conversation and try to steer away from that. CHASTAIN: The difficult thing with that is that when you play a character that really hits a nerve, then you will be talked about. WATSON: Completely. My friends know this about me, and they're like, "You realize that's ridiculous. You're doing totally the wrong thing." I'm aware that I'm kind of a paradox, and at times a bit ill-suited to my profession. But there's something that brings me back. There's something in me that feels like I have to do this, that this is what I'm meant to be doing. If I didn't feel this way, I wouldn't do it. But it's full of contradictions, for sure. CHASTAIN: Is there anyone who gave you a lasting piece of advice, maybe on acting or how to navigate this social media society? WATSON: I remember being like, "Am I crazy? Am I masochistic? Why am I doing this to myself?" But one of my mentors was like, "In life, things happen. And as much as we can try to fight to make our lives a certain way, there are things that will keep coming back to you, and you have to follow your marching orders." I think our fears find us and force us to confront them over and over again. In terms of social media, it's a minefield! Technology is moving so fast right now. Everyone is scrambling around trying to understand what it means to have an avatar, how to live our lives on the internet, what it means for privacy, for citizens of a political universe. I think that we're trying to find rules now, as we speak, and it's difficult. But, like everything, the internet is an incredibly powerful force that needs governing—not to restrict our freedom, but to protect people. CHASTAIN: Yours is a very positive message on social media. I can't help but be grateful that young women have someone like you to look up to, someone who prioritizes education and authenticity over the empty calories of what social media can be. WATSON: Gosh, I can't even imagine what it's like for the generation after me, whose parents document their whole lives as they grow up. It's kind of crazy to think about how quickly things are changing. Doing this movie, The Circle, made me think about all of this in so much more detail. I read the book first, and I could not stop thinking about it. It's not like a dystopian future—it could be tomorrow. Someone recently said he thought it was The Truman Show meets The Graduate with a dash of Kardashians. And I said I would describe the movie as The Social Network meets All About Eve meets Panic Room. The Social Network because it deals with how technology intersects with basic human needs: to feel loved, to feel seen, to feel a connection, to feel that you belong. All About Eve because it deals with the complexity of the female relationship in a patriarchal world; usually there's only one woman or two women in a boardroom. And Panic Room because it's intense. CHASTAIN: Have you used technology any differently since making the film? WATSON: Oh my god, yes. I set even more boundaries than I had before between my public and my private lives. It made me think a lot about what I would do if I had children. A lot of children of this generation have their entire lives made public before they have a say about what they would want. I think it should always be a choice. I love social media, and I love what it can do and how it brings people together, but used in the wrong way, it's incredibly dangerous. And, increasingly, our attention is our most important resource. Before the press tour, I deleted my e-mail app from my phone and really tried to create serious boundaries from it, because it is addictive. We need to make sure that we are using technology, and technology is not using us. CHASTAIN: Besides deleting your e-mail, what do you do to relax? When no one's watching, when no one's thinking about you as a movie star or as a role model, what do you like to do? WATSON: When people call me a role model it puts the fear of god into me, because I feel like I'm destined to fail. CHASTAIN: But remember, you can teach people that our failures are our greatest gifts in life. WATSON: Very true. Steve Jobs has a great speech where he talks about how the wrong turns in his life truly set him on the path that he needed to be on. Anyway, what do I do? I bake. I'm pretty competitive about my chocolate chip banana bread. I don't think anyone can believe how good it is. It's really on another level. And I hang out with my cat. I love to travel. I went on safari before I did my tour, which I loved. I love to dance. I'm the girl who will get up and dance with zero alcohol in her system. You need give me no excuse. A great song comes on and I'm there; it's happening. CHASTAIN: What's your jam? WATSON: I like a lot of hip-hop. Everyone's always like, "Really? You know all the words to this?" I'm like, "Yes, I do." And Beyoncé, Gaga. CHASTAIN: You've got to get out of the bathtub now, because you're going to turn into a raisin. WATSON: [laughs] Thank you. See you very soon. Lots of love

What even was this interview? It was both boring and ridiculous at the same time.

#interview

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spectrumscribe · 8 years ago

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So adding to the list of things I wanted to get my name on, I’m slapping my name on this AU before anyone else to my knowledge at least and releasing my spin on

The 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters set as Voltron Paladins (and co.)

(long post, sorry about that.)

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First is the most obvious selection, Donnie.

He’s the Green Paladin, an easy choice. Intuitive, creative, and curious, can and will engineer/build his way out of any situation, and also glasses. He’s the most like Pidge in personality, and his character also lines up easily to be her parallel. And since I don’t have to justify my reasoning behind his placement, I’ll give a quick tid-bit on his part in the story-

In the AU, he’s a trans male character, and has gone undercover as a woman in the garrison after getting himself banned from the premises. Much like Pidge did by pretending to be a boy. Basically he plays all of Pidge’s role in things, but with a side of getting crushes on aliens and being unsure of what to do with that. cue drama

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Second selection, Raph.

He’s set as the Yellow Paladin in my version of the AU, despite the fact that most people in the fandom would assign him to Red right off the bat. My reasoning behind it is that he’s solid, steady, dependable when needed, and won't move period, even if you push him. Plus, him being put into the heavy tank like lion will force him to better think his moves in battle, and suits his role as the heaviest hitter on the team.

He’s not as quick to anger as most people portray him, either. His temper is fearsome yes, but he doesn’t get angry without good reason majority of times. Usually, its because someone or something has pushed him there that he snaps. Further point for not putting him as the Red Paladin, he’s got a firm control of how he expresses his anger. Red wouldn’t have much impulsiveness to work with there. And that leads me to the next choice.

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Third selection, Mikey.

Another twist for most fans I think, I’m placing him in the AU as the Red Paladin. My reasons behind that is because of how I view his character in 2012. He’s more than a bit brash, definitely impulsive, very quick to react to the situation, and has 0 to 60 emotion. He's deadly af, but uses it recklessly so it's not as effective as it could be, much like Kieth. Over all, the Red Lion’s method of fighting (charge in head first and just go for it) matches best with Mikey’s method of fighting, and temperament in general.

He’s also the most likely to pull a Keith, and bugger off into the unknown without telling anyone where he is. He’s done it before, with Dimension-X and all that. It’s not hard to see him being the rebellious youngest brother, and hiding out in the desert on his own. (and without telling any of his siblings he was alright, either. for shame.)

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Fourth selection, Leo.

I’m realizing that basically all my choices are plot twists for everyone except me. Point being, I’m assigning Leo to the Blue Paladin role for the AU. He’s good with morale, relatively level-headed in a fight majority of the time at least, and already holds place as the sharp-shooter in TMNT canon anyways. It’s a better fit than being the Black Paladin would be, in my opinion, because while Leo displays some qualities for leadership, he’s not always the completely even-tempered influence he tries to portray.

He’s impulsive and vain at times, and often fails to use his team members’ full potential. His foresight is short sighted, though that could likely be remedied with better training. He still makes an excellent second in command though, and a good fall back leader when their actual one is out of commission.

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Which brings me to the final pick. I’m sure you’re all wondering at this point “But there’s only four brothers, who fills the fifth Lion position?”

See, I wondered that too for a long while, until it came to me:

They have a sister.

Fifth selection, Karai.

She’s the Black Paladin for a number of reasons. In TMNT canon, she was groomed her whole life to step into the role of a leader, and was trained subsequently. Her prowess in battle is notable for both planning and adaptability, and not to mention, she has unrelenting perseverance towards her goals. Summarized: she's a leader, she's calm in a fight, she's got a plan and will follow it, and has indomitable spirit. Karai’s overall tenacity, determination, and leadership abilities make her an excellent Black Paladin, and a good fit for the leader of Voltron.

Plus, she’s got two toned hair, an under-cut, eyeliner on fleek, and was forced to undergo unwanted changes to her body by the series’ Big Bad. She and Shiro would probably have a lot to talk about together.

-----

That being said, the other characters fall into place relatively easily:

April is the last princess (soon to be queen) of Altea, fresh from hyper-sleep. And, she’s accompanied by her adviser, mechanic, closest companion and general repair-man, Casey. (there’s a lot of requirements for a common born soul to make it into the palace, and Casey some how managed to meet them all. Some how.)

April having the ability to grow to seven plus feet tall excites me as much as the drama of Donnie’s crush on her. Similarly how Casey’s jury-rigging to keep the castle airborne excites me. who let this boy even near the controls, honestly

Splinter is the missing father, (Hamato Yoshi in this AU), lost somewhere in space, and is the parent to all five Paladins. Said five paladins are all siblings, though Karai is the only biological child of Yoshi. Adoption or something more mysterious idk yet was involved in the boys’ heritage/addition to the Hamato family.

Similarly lost with Yoshi is Shini (nickname of her nickname, Shinigami), placed in the role of Matt in the AU. She also happens to be Karai’s sort of un-voiced major crush and best friend. the arena scene will be fun to write for those two, i’m hype for it

And Shredder obviously plays the role of Zarkon in this AU, with his miscellaneous lackies spread throughout in general villain roles. The Foot Clan = The Galra Empire basically.

Other characters of TMNT yet to be assigned, but are definitely around. Somewhere.

-----

Long post, apologies, but I figured I’d give a sort of quick once over of my version of things before other people did. Also: fanfiction. By me. It will be happening soon. It’s too tempting to not.

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kevintalexander · 4 years ago

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The Friction-Free Way To Recruit Without Prospecting Or Selling

Share It!

There’s an easier, friction-free way to promote your products and business without experiencing rejection.

If you’re still prospecting by bugging friends, family or complete strangers to grow your business then this may just be the most important post you read today..

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Imagine how it would feel to never have another one of those ‘catching up’ conversations with old acquaintances…

Just waiting for the right time to pounce with your offer.

I read somewhere a long time ago that there’s ONLY 1 Way We As Humans Learn… and that’s by making mistakes.

The mistakes can be yours or someone else’s so learn from other people’s mistakes because you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

I can’t remember the author’s name to give credit so if you happen to know who said this let me know in the comments.

That message of learning from other people’s mistakes had a massive impact on my life as well as my business. It’s why I decided to get a mentor who had already been where I was and could help me avoid pitfalls and get to success faster.

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My search led me to find my mentor Ferny Ceballos. Ferny has been in the industry since 2008.

He’s a top producer in his company and has a very successful networking business.

Before I let Ferny talk about the top 5 WRONG ways to recruit on social media (as well as what to do instead), let me quickly tell you my story…

I started dabbling with network marketing way back in 2008. Between 2008 and 2010 I joined numerous companies because truthfully I hated all of the options I was taught to grow my business.

I did not want to contact my warm market

I did not want to reach out to strangers

I did not want to do home meetings

I did not want to babysit… sorry, I mean motivate a bunch of people in order to grow my team

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I wanted to find a company that solved these problems for me.

In 2012 I found Empower Network (EN) and went ALL-IN.

If you knew about EN then reading the phrase ALL IN either made you smile (because it’s funny now in hindsight) or it made you cringe and possibly even increased your heart rate… and not in a good way.

If you’ve never heard of EN and you’re curious you can google it and my statement will make a lot more sense then.

Anyway, the point of meniting EN isn’t to rag on them. It’s to explain what made me decide to go all in and why that matters to you.

EN promised to solve all the problems I faced with growing my business utilizing the power of the internet.

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We were going to draw people in towards us utilizing content marketing… namely blogging.

Long story short, EN ended up crashing and burning… and along with it all my hopes for growing my business in a way where I could avoid doing the things I disliked.

Back then I knew very little about the internet in terms of using it to attract and influence other like minded people.

For almost the next decade I did a deep dive with how to run paid advertising profitably so it was no longer an expense but an investment that paid me back in spades.

Along the way I quit my job, went full time as an entrepreneur, got distracted and left the network marketing altogether and picked up affiliate marketing.

I had a few successes and a bunch of failures. Too many failures to mention here. Overall, the few successes I had outweighed all the failures.

Not too long ago I stumbled across an interesting post from a lady on Facebook.

I clicked on it and read her blog post. She had successfully built her networking business utilizing the internet.

I studied everything she was doing. I read all her emails and blog posts and even watched her videos on social media.

This was the missing piece!

What she was doing was both simple and brilliant!

It solved all the problems I had over a decade ago that made me turn my back on network marketing.

Her name was Brandy Shaver. I dug in a bit deeper and found her mentors were 2 guys (Tim Erway and Ferny Ceballos). I immediately hired those guys to mentor me as well.

Now let me turn this over to Ferny so he can tell you a bit about himself and what qualifies him to talk about this topic.

*************************

Hey guys, Ferny here.

It’s been over a decade since I entered the network marketing arena and my life took a crazy detour into the world of entrepreneurship.

I’ve undergone deep personal development and experienced more negativity than any human should have to endure, but the good news is that my story in this industry has a happy ending.

I quit my job as an engineer 2 1/2 years after joining the industry in 2008, became a 6-figure earner in direct sales by 2009, built a 7-figure internet company by 2012, and I am now the co-owner of an online direct sales company.

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My journey was filled with many fumbles, embarrassing moments, and more prospecting “faux pas” than I care to share

I hope my friends, family, and strangers I have attempted to prospect have long forgotten the things I did. LOL!

But here’s a few, so you have an idea…

Have you ever invited friends over for some beers and very unsmoothly transitioned to showing the business plan to a very angry audience?

I have.

Have you ever tried to prospect your bartender, a few too many beers past ‘buzzed,’ and have him respond with, “Is this Amway?”

Doh! I have.

Here’s a good one… have you ever, while on a date, prospected a girl as a “test,” because your upline told you that if a girl is not positive about your business, she’s not a keeper?

Yep… that didn’t turn out well!

And that’s about as much as I’ll reveal because I’m starting to get really depressed remembering all this right now. Haha.

The point is, before I cast some heavy stones at some networkers, but I just wanted to let y’all know I’ve made mistakes too.

But that doesn’t mean we should go easy on those that are committing some MAJOR mistakes when recruiting with social media.

In my day, my fumbles happened offline and there is no record…thankfully!

Unfortunately, today…

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The Internet Never Forgets and It’s Ruining It for Everyone Else!

I once heard that success in business is all about ‘time’ and ‘place.’

As a professional marketer, I would add ‘message’ to the equation as well.

Network marketers today are being taught methods of recruiting with social media. Unfortunately, these so often include the wrong message, at the wrong time, at the wrong place.

Here’s the truth!

There is a VERY fine line between recruiting with social media and spamming people.

I’m sorry to say that most network marketers have been turned into human spam bots by their upline and company leaders…

‘Disposable distributors’ tasked with the job of spreading the word about their company’s products or opportunity at the expense of the individual’s reputation and risking the suspension of their social media accounts.

Just recently, I asked affiliates of my company to share examples of the WRONG WAY to prospect online by sending me screenshots of the poor attempts at prospecting they receive every day…

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The WRONG Way to Prospect and Recruit

Have a look at these…

Successful entrepreneurs and networkers alike eventually learn the true secret to success, and it becomes the foundation upon which their entire prospecting, recruiting and business building strategy is founded.

That secret being:

“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care” – Theodore Roosevelt

The screenshots above are an example of a weak attempt from people recruiting with social media…

People who haven’t yet figured out that building a business is not about tricking people or finding the right copy/paste FB messages to send to strangers.

It’s about actually caring about people, becoming a person of value, and being someone uniquely positioned to help someone with their problems!

That last part is critical: “uniquely positioned to help someone with their problems.”

Any idiot can copy and paste a message into the Private Message function on Facebook.

What sets you apart from the rest of the desperate reps hitting people’s inboxes with their new “ground floor” opportunities or cash programs?

Now, this doesn’t mean prospecting online doesn’t work.

I know some very skilled recruiters who are excellent at online prospecting, but just like offline prospecting, they’ve devoted the time and effort to learn this very difficult skill and have mastered it.

And if that’s the strategy you want to deploy, you need to do it right or else!

But if you’re still a little fuzzy on whether you are a spammer or not, here’s a guide of sorts…

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Top 5 Warning Signs Your Social Media Prospecting Efforts are Actually SPAM

1.) Your first private message to a stranger on social media includes a link to join your opportunity.

2.) You get angry replies via private messaging and/or you have been reported as a spammer.

3.) You post links to your opportunity or website in the comments section of other people’s social media posts.

4.) You compulsively want to talk about your company or products without anyone asking you to share.

Finally… this one is the most important one…

5.) You engage in interactions online with a hidden agenda hoping to transition the topic to something that would get people interested in your opportunity without caring about knowing the other person.

This last one for me is a big one but could also be controversial.

After all, #5 is the very definition of prospecting (online or offline) that even when done right… can still feel awkward, result in people getting angry at you, and very unleveraged.

That is why I eventually decided to stop prospecting altogether.

But here’s the interesting thing…

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“When I Stopped Prospecting People, My Business Started Growing!”

I can’t tell you how relieved and at peace I felt, when I once again, was able to go out with my friends, visiting a family member’s home, or be in a public place without having to think about prospecting anyone.

Just enjoying being normal again was incredible after two years of being taught by my upline that “everyone was a prospect” and approaching every conversation with a hidden agenda; I was free!

That’s because it wasn’t until I STOPPED prospecting that my business actually started growing!

Weird, right?

At this point, you may be asking…

“Then how the heck did your business grow? How can you grow a network marketing business without recruiting with social media and spamming your friends and family?”

Well before I answer that, I have to say that there are people who are very skilled prospectors and recruiters who completely disregard the issues I mentioned above.

They knowingly and unashamedly, approach every interaction with a stranger as a prospecting opportunity.

Getting yelled at or cursed out by prospects is no big deal, as long as some people say ‘yes.’

And just like doing it right offline, there’s a way to successfully do it online as well. After learning and becoming very good at prospecting, I decided that I didn’t want to build my business this way.

The problem with prospecting in general, as it’s normally taught, is that the mindset going in is still about what YOU want people to do and about manipulating people into doing what you want them to do.

In other words, it’s about YOU, not them. I didn’t like that, but I still did it for a little while… until I found a better way.

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The More Leveraged Alternative to 1-on-1 Prospecting, Which Won’t Make You Feel Like a Cheap Salesman

Now, I am not trying to be high and mighty about all this prospecting stuff because I’m not.

If it came down to either feeding my family with ‘stone cold’ prospecting tactics or my kids starving, I would choose stone cold prospecting every time, without remorse.

But the reason I was able to quit prospecting was that, with the help of some extraordinary mentors,

I eventually discovered an online recruiting strategy which enabled me to recruit more people in one day than the most skilled recruiter in the world can do in a month.

I was able to passively generate leads, customers, and new reps even when I was out having fun with friends and family.

(Hence why I didn’t have to worry about prospecting them!)

Rather than spending hours spamming or private messaging people on social media, I learned how to legitimately get Facebook and other networks to actually help me attract the people who are most interested in what I have to offer by using their own ads platform! (i.e. going legit!)

In fact, every day for almost 8 years now, I’ve awoken to an email inbox full of notifications for new leads, new customers, new team members, and commissions I earned while sleeping!

All without resorting to the odious and deceitful tactics commonly used when recruiting with social media in our industry.

This strategy is called ‘attraction marketing’, which is an internet marketing strategy designed for networkers and people in direct sales!

You see, if your business depends on you being on social media, sending private messages, or commenting on people’s posts all day, you are NOT doing internet marketing… despite what you may have been led to believe.

Online prospecting and internet marketing are NOT the same thing! Internet marketing is a passive strategy, which works, even when you are not.

So if you want to learn how to PASSIVELY build a business by attracting the prospects you want online, then get access to my free 10-Day Online Recruiting Bootcamp available here.

There, I reveal the strategy I’ve used for the past decade, plus.

You’ll also get more details about a book I wrote that goes into the nuts n’ bolts of my recruiting & selling formula.

Now if traditional prospecting online or offline is your thing and you want to stick to that, by all means, go for it.

There are many top trainers and earners of mine in the industry that focus on cold market recruiting skills…

(And they do ‘attraction marketing’ too!)

For me, there was simply a certain way I wanted to live my life and that was more important.

I would much rather make a ton of money in my business first and then have my friends and family beg me to tell them more about it.

It’s much better than begging my friends and family to join a business which isn’t making any money.

Which would you prefer?

Exactly!

Sincerely,

Kevin Alexander & Ferny Ceballos

FREE INTERNET RECRUITING COURSE

Finally, An Easy Way To Recruit – Rejection FREE – Without Wasting Your Time & Money Chasing Dead Beat Prospects & Leads…

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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The Super Bowl Is Problematic. Why Can’t We Look Away?

AUSTIN CONSIDINE Friends: I know what I’m doing Sunday. I know what you’re doing Sunday. As full-time culture journalists, to ignore the Super Bowl would be a gross dereliction of duty. That’s because the Super Bowl isn’t just a game. It’s the halftime show; it’s the ads; it’s the chips and guac. It is sport but also music, dance, costumes, TV production and stage design — a pop culture event greater than the sum of its parts.

Perhaps most important, it was watched last year by roughly 100 million people: In a world of on-demand entertainment, the Super Bowl is one of the last true vestiges of an era when we all watched the same things at the same time.

But I, like a lot of sports fans, have struggled in recent years to reconcile what is beautiful about the game with what is ugly. First, there’s the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head hits — not only to concussions — which the N.F.L. actively worked to conceal. Then there are the league’s troubles with domestic abuse and race. We could unpack those for days, but let it suffice to note that Tyreek Hill still has a job and Colin Kaepernick does not.

Some fans have learned to tolerate the cognitive dissonance, or to square their free enjoyment with the ostensible free will of the players. Others, like me, have trouble shouldering our complicity with football’s worst elements and have mostly stopped watching. But regardless, fans or not, we mostly show up for the Super Bowl. Why is that?

WESLEY MORRIS Austin, I, too, have consumed less football in the last five years because the hits can be hard to watch, because the punitive, allegedly apolitical stances of the league are themselves paradoxically political. There are many amazing physical achievements in this sport. There’s endless ridiculousness. The choreographed end-zone celebration, for instance, has gleefully migrated to other sports. And the league, in spite of itself, has a muscular charitable wing.

This is to say that loving the N.F.L. means putting up with a lot. But its outsize popularity also seems a partial answer to the moral riddle that’s so openly vexed us these past two or three years. How do we enjoy the work of bad, unpleasant, corrupt people and institutions? Of criminals? Does opting into the Super Bowl experience then condone the problems of football? Can spectatorship be anything but an endorsement? It’s the conundrum of a capitalist society to the extent that it’s truly a conundrum at all.

CARYN GANZ Football is the quintessential problematic fave. And like Michael Jackson, it’s too challenging to cancel, too big to fail, too embedded in the fabric of American leisure to rip out. (For now, at least.) The Super Bowl is drama, emotion, identity, catharsis, spectacle, skill, power: It’s nearly impossible to find a viewer beyond its scope. It’s no longer possible to keep up with everything happening in television, movies, music and digital media, but the Super Bowl is one of the last gasps of the monoculture. It’s a given and a gimme: It has almost no barrier for entry — one network channel, one block of time when nobody is expected to be doing anything other than watching the Super Bowl.

And as for the ethical conundrum, ethics are under siege in every corner of our society: on social media, in Washington, in college admissions, on the music charts. In an era of “LOL nothing matters,” where does football rank on the scale of horrors? Even if your answer is “quite high,” there are 100 million other viewers willing to share the shame.

CONSIDINE Still, let’s be cleareyed: If you watch the Super Bowl, you are financially and ethically supporting the N.F.L. And yet, I rarely hear these issues surface when we talk about the Super Bowl as pop culture. I wonder why we’re so deferential? Has any Super Bowl happening or halftime show made a truly lasting cultural impact?

GANZ Oh yes, they have. Part of the power of the halftime show is its sheer reach. Music (like sports) is a powerful uniter, but so much of the way we experience it now is in isolation: via playlists shaped by our personal listening habits that are beamed directly into our headphones. A live stadium show allows 100,000 people to share an experience; the Grammys attracted 18.7 million viewers to its live broadcast. With the exception of the Eurovision song contest (which was watched by 182 million people last year), the Super Bowl is as big as it gets now for live music.

Few people (other than me) may recall which songs Madonna played during her set in 2012, but her halftime yielded a landmark pop culture moment: M.I.A. extending her middle finger on national TV. In the past decade, halftime’s meme-able mini-events have become almost as memorable as who won the game: Adam Levine’s bare torso (2019), Lady Gaga’s leap (2017), Beyoncé’s fierce “Formation” (2016), Left Shark (2015), even Bruce Springsteen’s crotch slide (2009). And we could talk about Prince’s Super Bowl all day long.

MORRIS Caryn, don’t play. You know I know Madonna’s set list from that night.

I also remember how the emotional properties of the Boston bar where I watched that game completely changed as her halftime show began. The Patriots were about to lose another Super Bowl to the Giants, and even though they were up (by a point) going into the second half, that woman and her friends seemed to lighten the mood. Men were mouthing along to “Open Your Heart.” But they were also happy to partake in the spectacle of a 53-year-old imposing her sexual-identity gender circus (a phalanx of beefcake transported her to the stage) upon a sport whose stated orientation points, non-negotiably, one way.

This is to say that the halftime show can be received multiple ways at once. It’s an event complicit in all that dismays us about American football as a whole and the N.F.L. especially: players’ physical and mental health; compensation and exploitation; the sanctioned conflation with the league and our military; the names. Kansas City’s excellent Super Bowl team is the Chiefs; and when fans are feeling confidently vicious, half the arms in the stadium begin to tomahawk chop. They’re not the so-called Redskins, and yet the team brings with it many centuries of terrible history anytime it plays — anytime its “merch” is sold.)

But the halftime show is also an event wholly outside the problems of the sport. Its stars have been imported and occasionally seem eager to practice subversion, as Madonna and Beyoncé have; to practice an exuberant nothing, as Katy Perry has. It is what its stars fight for it to be. I’m enormously excited to see what J. Lo and Shakira have fought for.

We are, though, at a really fascinating place now. An aspect of the culture is asking these entertainers to consider what it means to partake in an event that could feature any number of problematic figures. (Tyreek Hill is a star Chief.) And on Madonna’s night, in 2012, Aaron Hernandez scored one of the Patriots’ touchdowns. Six months later, he shot and killed two men.

GANZ Halftime may hover in a space outside the problems of the sport, but it has its own crises related to football’s troubled racial and gender dynamics. Consider how the Super Bowl completely reshaped Janet Jackson’s career. Jackson had five No. 1 albums and was known as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, but less than three seconds in 2004 — so-called “Nipplegate,” when her bare breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake during the last moments of their performance — rewrote her entire history, plunging her into years of purgatory. It only briefly affected Timberlake’s, since he has the luxury of being white and male. (Remember, he returned to headline halftime in 2018.)

CONSIDINE Does making Jennifer Lopez and Shakira the halftime show headliners — a first for Latinas — feel like a transparent scramble by the N.F.L. to virtue-signal? To be more charitable, it makes sense that the league might simply want to pay tribute to the Hispanic heritage of this year’s host city, Miami. But wasn’t the N.F.L. probably compelled to do something a little extra after the outspoken way in which multiple artists last year turned down the opportunity in support of Colin Kaepernick? And after Rihanna did the same this season?

GANZ Sports and music are two arenas in which the stars are mostly young and black but work in a structure still largely controlled by older white men. The idea that some of the most powerful players in the music industry shunned halftime last year is a compelling one. (Maroon 5 agreed to perform and paid some sort of karmic tax.) This year is the first under the partnership between Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and the league, an attempt to smooth over tensions and bring a crumb of social-justice work to the game. And it’s interesting that this year’s headliners are both Latin pop stars, and neither black nor rappers. The halftime show hasn’t had a black headliner since Beyoncé in 2013; the closest it’s come to a hip-hop headliner is the Black Eyed Peas. If football fans are perceived to be so conservative they’d switch the channel rather than watch rappers, why hasn’t country music ever been very welcome at halftime? Its last appearance came 17 years ago with Shania Twain.

CONSIDINE The dearth of country music at halftime is interesting when you consider that the singer most associated with the N.F.L. in recent years has been Carrie Underwood — and before that, Hank Williams Jr. For that reason, I suspect that country music wouldn’t actually be unwelcome by most football fans at halftime. I’m also interested in a reverse question: Why has non-country music always been welcome?

My guess is that with the exception of one Trump-fueled moment in which some conservative fans skipped a game or two, the league knows it has that demographic locked down, no matter who performs at halftime. The billing, then, is a chance for the N.F.L. to snag some extra eyeballs, and pop is a surefire way to do it.

In racial or political terms, I’ll wager many of those fans who objected to Kaepernick’s knee-taking fancy themselves quite open-minded — or at least magnanimously indifferent — regarding the race or style of the performers, same as with the players. If I’m right, then the N.F.L. risks little in ignoring those fans’ musical preferences for 15 minutes. Intolerant people make low-stakes claims to tolerance all the time. But that tolerance reveals its limits when, say, a black man takes a knee.

MORRIS Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett and their fellow protesting players knelt for ideals that I, too, believe in. Pleas for justice and equality are controversial coming only from black athletes expected — hired — to run, throw, catch and dunk. But the culture has moved past the protests. Kaepernick still has a sports job of sorts. He works for Nike. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl remains this idyllic vestige of who we thought we were. It’s Americana that like lots of Americana is built on a cemetery of sorts. We flock to it as we do because it’s a spectatorship department store — sports, ads, music.

A lot of us remember the alleged simpler times when it was easier to pretend that entertainment was all it was. On one Sunday, we can pause Everything Else and just enjoy a miraculous helmet catch or a commercial for a job-finding company. It’s also a stable structure. We all know it. We know it will never change and therefore never challenge most people to confront more than their losing team. There’s no M.C. to be urbane or smug or real. Setting aside the violence at its center, it’s safe, a haven from so much. History in the making but also passionately ahistorical. Americana on the one hand, sure. But also just America.

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torentialtribute · 5 years ago

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Konta’s attention to detail is why she is on a journey to win Wimbledon

There are reasons why Jo Konta enters this Wimbledon as Britain's only top 100 ranked female player, let alone the only one who has made the seedings.

A lot of it is down to a relentless worth of ethic and attention to detail, and we get onto the latter subject when discussing the merits of traveling by Tube.

Konta, who lives in south London would like to use more and took a couple of journeys in April, but has reservations about this mode of transport. It transpires this has nothing to do with fear of being hassled or recognized, but worry that it might be jeopardize the training or preparation.

Jo Konta is determined to go and win Wimbledon this year as Britain's only top 100 player

The British No. 1 has a relentless work ethic and wants to win her maiden Grand Slam at SW19

'The reason I avoid it most of the time is that times when I'm at home it's usually in pre-season in the winter or during the summer, when I can't afford to get sick because I'm playing either tournaments or because I'm training intensely, my body is taking a beating and my immune system is low, "she says.

'So if I don't use it because it is a bit of a germ box and you can easily pick something up. Also I took my dog on it and it turns out he is not a very good traveler and did not enjoy it, so that was all a bit stressful. "

Konta is in a lounge at the All England Club that looks across at the Center Court, where this fortnight she will be the renewed focus of attention after the dramatic upturn in the form that this Spring saw her reach the final of the Italian Open and the semi-final of the French Open.

She is, by a long distance, the best domestic hope in the women's singles, and it was on that same arena that she reached the second of the three Grand Slam semis before being stopped by Venus Williams. The draw this year has promise, although the immediate grass form has been middling, not scintillating.

There is an element of the tortoise and hers in how she has got to this position, having tasks a long journey across continents to get here without being flagged up as a serious prospect. Now 28, it is half a lifetime ago that she landed in the UK, but only four years since she started to suggest that she might be a player of the highest caliber.

SHE'S GOT THE GAME, IT'S ALL ABOUT CONSISTENCY NOW

EXCLUSIVE BY JOHN LLOYD : Jo Konta wildly surpassed my expectations at the French Open, but she choked when she got to the semis.

She had a huge chance and let it slip – it's not a crime, it can happen – but I would be concerned about that frailty which showed itself when she got into a winning position.

It is possible to conquer that, as players have done in the past, but for me that would be the difference between getting beyond the semi-finals of a Slam.

Her game could have a little more variety, as she tends to be a little bit predictable at times. But the serve is good, I don't see any problems with it.

The ground strokes are fabulous, she's got a lot of power in both wings and takes the ball on. The return in Paris was particularly impressive.

It is all about consistency, I don't know why she has gone off the bush a bit on grass, but I am not sure it's that much of a bad thing to have gone out early in Eastbourne and had a few days off.

The game is there. She really is ready game-wise. But she did not hesitate when the time comes.

At the time she started to make her move up the rankings there was more British hope invested in the likes of Laura Robson and Heather Watson. That reckoned without the truism that the ability to consistently apply oneself is a huge skill of its own, and it turns out that she has this in a quantity comparable to that of Andy Murray.

Not all comparisons with the Scot are, however, accurate.

"I've never considered the next big thing through my whole career so I was never paid that child or attention since I was little," she says.

'So I never really had to deal with that sort of assumption, I had my own challenges in trying to find the player and the person I am and how to deal with it. It's not something I resent (being under-rated) it's just how it was.

'I play for myself and the enjoyment the game gives me, that wasn't always the case or that easy because when you are younger it's a lot harder to play for yourself. You play for your parents, or for sacrifices that have been made on your behalf.

"For sure I had to go through my own self-discovery in finding the real reasons that I played and enjoyment of it. I can now say that I don't play for other people's opinions or to justify myself or for the status. "

The trigger for Konta was meeting up with Spanish coach Esteban Carill and sports psychologist Juan Coto. The latter tragically took his own life in late 2016, but his influence on her lives on.

"The biggest impact on me was Esteban and Juan who gave me the tools to figure things out and discover myself," says Konta. "It was in that period that I definitely felt I was becoming my own person and individual and self-sufficient and playing for myself. It was late 2014, the beginning of 2015 working with themes that I just started to put in consistent days of good habits, nurturing that perspective. I've had to re-align myself since at times but that was the period I found the good path. "

As is the case with many successful tennis players, it was the parents who made the aforementioned sacrifices to afford her the necessary opportunities.

When they arrived in the UK her father, Gabor, took a job at a hotel near the Excel Arena in East London, and the love of music was partly kindled by the buzz around the acts who used to stay there. The mother Gabriella had an easily transferable skill from their roots in Sydney, working as a dentist.

She gets her work ethic from both as well as the athletic gene. The maternal grandfather, Kersetz Tamas, played two games for the great Hungarian side of the fifties alongside Ferenc Puskas while the father was also an accomplished footballer.

"Part of it is nature and part nurture. My Dad is an absolute workhorse, the work ethic he has and hours he puts in, he works in hospitality and it's a brutal job the hours you have to put in. There were periods of him working late, doing overnight nights, he has always worked long hours. My mum as well is very dedicated to her job, which is very demanding.

"When I was young I would go running with my Dad, I used to train with him. On Sundays he used to play football for an Austrian club in Sydney and I would go on my bike with him while he was playing football, and he had a good ice hockey player. Sadly I never got to meet my Mum's Dad just died before I was born. "

The first tennis experiences were not of Wimbledon, but the pre-Australian Open event at White City in Sydney.

'I remember going there about seven or eight with my Mum and getting Lindsay Davenport's autograph. I did not have an understanding of Wimbledon and that has been quite the education because I fully grasp the weight of Wimbledon – special does not really do it justice.

[1945923]

Perhaps oddly, her most vivid Wimbledon memory is not the run to the semi-finals but the eventful debut as a little known wildcard in the main draw back in 2012.

'I played Christina McHale and lost 10-8 in the third set after it had stopped for bad light in the third set the night before. It was the first time I had played a match over two days.

THREE GAMES NOT TO MISS IN ROUND ONE

Venus Williams v Cori Gauff

On Friday, Cori Gauff became the youngest player to qualify for the main Wimbledon draw since the Open era ground in 1968.

While she said she would love to share the court with her idol Serena Williams, it's pretty certain she will be thrilled by facing her sister Venus instead.

Ana Bogdan v Johanna Konta

She came so close to the French Open when reaching the semi-finals, so Britain will be hoping Johanna Konta can go one better here by making the final.

She reached the semis at SW19 two years ago and should start well against Romanian Ana Bogdan.

Harriet Dart v Christina McHale

Having tasks from a set of seventh seed Karolina Pliskova on her Wimbledon debut last year and reaching the semi-finals of the mixed doubles, big things are expected or 22-year-old Briton Harriet Dart. Certainly one to keep an eye on.

"I remember it was my most tiring Wimbledon, I played doubles and mixed and the whole experience, the emotion and the excitement, meant that I was absolutely exhausted at the end."

Should she get another run this year then what happened two years ago – when she beat Simona Halep under the roof in the quarter finals before losing to Williams – will be of inestimable value.

It will also help that she can return every night to the house she shares with her boyfriend and dachshund, Bono.

'That experience of 2017 was probably the best I have ever managed everything, there is nothing I would change about it. After that tournament I didn't feel drained, it was only later on that I definitely had residual fatigue (she went into a prolonged form slump later in the season), but immediately afterwards I actually felt fine.

' The more times I make it to the second week of Grand Slams can only be good, it doesn't matter how many times you can do it. I sometimes wonder if Roger and Rafa get almost bored with it, they have done it that often, but for me it never becomes less special.

'This time at Wimbledon I get home to my dog and I' m really looking forward to that. I get to close the door and be at home, very few players get to sleep in their own bed and play a Grand Slam at the same time. "

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