#while Diane should be peak unlikeable

[foxyverserambles]

Pondering the likeability of some of my OCs because I swear the more I try to make them likeable the more they miss and viceversa.

[elfpen]

Good Shot

A/N: I’m procrastinating, have a thing.

Edward Elric did not consider himself a traumatized person, and he did not think of his childhood as particularly traumatic. Despite this determination, the trauma of his youth was both objectively true and patently obvious to anyone with a brain. Edward’s brain no longer noticed. The tumultuous Amestris of yesteryear was, for better or for worse, the world that had raised him. That fact was as comfortable around his memories as an old, worn coat, a coat that needed a wash and a patch and was two sizes too small, but was too familiar to go about replacing. In short, he was used to it.

Maybe that was why, when he arrived at work one blustery afternoon to find his place of business swarming with a fully armed battalion, Edward Elric only yawned.

“Aw, hell,” he said to no one in particular. Final grades were due in seventy-two hours and he hadn’t even gotten started yet. Ahead of him, the Alchemy Building of Central University loomed large against a snow-heavy sky. All around the front steps, a throng of people gathered, held at bay by a line of blue-uniformed soldiers. Was a it a fire? A flood? Both meant water, and water meant smudged ink and desecrated paper, and that meant his final grades wouldn’t be in on time.

But why the military? Slowly, like a rising wail, bomb sirens filled the air.

“Damnit.” His icy sigh hung in the air and whirled apart was he stepped through it to march into the crowd.

“This is outrageous! The whole building?” Edward couldn’t see the man’s face, but judging from the prodigious height of his white quaffed hair, he was willing to bet it was the Dean.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back, we need to keep everyone at a safe distance,” replied an anxious-looking warrant officer.

“On what grounds? What is this all about?”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to-”

“I will have you know that I run this college, young man, I demand to know why you’ve commandeered my-”

“Excuse me, Professor Elric?” Ed turned to see a half dozen of his students huddled in coats and mittens, craning their necks like geese to get a better view of the front steps. One called Mary was asking him. “Do you know what’s going on?”

Ed glanced back at the Warrant Officer and the Dean. Their tiff seemed to have drawn attention from a nearby lieutenant, who was making her way over to intervene.

“No, but whatever it is I hope it wraps up quick, I have work to do.”

“I’ll say,” one of the students, Josef, laughed and blew into his mittens for warmth. “Do you think Dr. Wolfgar will fail me if I miss my final because of a military occupation?”

“Military occupation?” Teased the slightly older Henrietta, “What, do you think this is some kind of coup d’etat?”

“Oh please,” Edward found himself saying. “Last time we had a coup, Central Command was nearly erased from the map; this is just a university building. If they’re trying to do anything big, they should blow something up first.” He thought he’d been being funny, but amid the sirens, his students had fallen uncomfortably quiet. Edward sighed, annoyed by the reminder that even for college students, his humor was dark. “Whatever,” He said. “I don’t have time for this.” He elbowed his way through the crowd.

“Dr. Elric? What are you going to do?” Josef asked. He glanced at his classmates, and then followed after their professor. The others fell into step behind him, so that unbeknownst to him, Edward had a trail of six college students following him like a mother duck.

“Lieutenant,” he spoke above the chatter of the crowd. “Excuse me, lieutenant,” he waved. The lieutenant looked wearily in his direction and marched over with practiced indifference.

“Yes sir?”

“I’m going inside,” he stepped to the front of the crowd. She reached out a hand to stop him.

“Sir, for your safety, I cannot allow you to go any further, we need to-”

“I said I’m going inside,” Edward repeated, digging around in his pocket until he could find his silver watch. He held it out. Scratched and worn, the dragon sparkled in the overcast sunlight.

“-ssor Elric is a state alchemist?!” he heard Mary say.

After a brief hesitation, the lieutenant’s demeanor transformed. She stood to attention and saluted.

“Sir!”

“Now tell me what’s going on.” He stepped further up the stairs without her stopping him.

“Sir,�� she turned toward him, away from the civilians, and spoke quietly: “Central Command intercepted multiple threats against this campus early in the AM. Three separate witnesses reported seeing at least one suspicious person enter the building through a window. We’re not sure who they are, what weapons they have with them, or what their intent is. Our General has advised severe caution.”

“And who is your general? Is it Mustang?” Edward asked, purely out of curiosity.

“Major General Mustang, yes sir.”

“Oh is that what they’re calling him these days,” Ed grumbled over his shoulder. “Alright, well, anything happens, we’ll just blame him.” The lieutenant seemed unsure how to take this. “Thanks. And sorry about the Dean - he can be a bit of a dick, though you didn’t hear that from me.” He began up the steps.

“You’re the Fullmetal Alchemist, aren’t you, sir?” She asked.

“What about it?”

After a moment of thought, the lieutenant unholstered one of her two pistols. “Sir,” she offered it or him. “Just in case.”

Edward looked at it, and at her, and shrugged. “Fine,” he took it.

“Hey, we’re with him,” Josef was arguing with the warrant officer, trying to following Edward up the steps.

“No they’re not,” Edward turned and fixed them with the same look he used on his children. He pointed with the hand that wasn’t holding a gun. “You stay right there, all of you. Do what the lieutenant says.” All of the students’ eyes followed his hand as he shoved the gun into his coat pocket. “If Wulfgar gives you an F, I’ll deal with the registrar myself.”

Edward Elric jogged up the steps, digging around his pockets for his keys. Behind him, his students watched in confusion and awe.

“Did she say Fullmetal Alchemist?” said Henrietta.

“Yeah,” said Josef. “Why?”

Henrietta’s face moved in stages from confusion to realization to open incredulity. “Holy shit.”

Once inside, Edward brushed snow off his coat, rubbed some heat back into his hands, and flipped through his ring of keys. The jingling drew unexpected attention.

“Edward?”

He looked up to see the frowning, serious face of Riza Hawkeye marching down the hall.

“Oh, hey, Captain! Good to see you,” Ed grinned as if they’d just bumped into each other at a cafe. He fiddled with the lock on his door. “Didn’t know it was your men they’d sent over this way. How are you?”

Riza was unmoved. “Edward, what are you doing in here?”

“I work here,” he unlocked his office door, jimmied the handle, and slammed his shoulder against the door. It came unstuck and squeaked open. He switched on the lights.

“Oh good,” the disorganized heaps of paper were exactly how he’d left them, untouched by water or fire. “Diane would have killed me.” He opened his briefcase and began shovelling papers into it with one arm. Riza stood by the door, holding a pistol ready at her side, casting looks over both shoulders.

“We have a secure perimeter, how did you get in here?”

Ed held up his watch and dangled it until she looked. “The lieutenant let me in.”

“Edward, you can’t just…” but she knew that, technically, he could. Technically, he still outranked her. “We’re in a bit of a situation, you can’t just sit here and grade papers.”

“I know, I know,” Ed leaned on top of his briefcase to force it closed. It squeaked, so he put more weight onto it until it snapped shut, leather bulging. “Don’t worry about me, I’m prepared,” he reached into his pocket and brandished his borrowed pistol. Riza started.

“Where did you get that?”

“The lieutenant. She seemed worried when she heard who I was. Kinda rude, if you ask me. What have you been telling them about me?” He shoved it back into his pocket and held a small remaining stack of papers in his teeth while he put his gloves back on.

“Do you have your things?” Riza asked, ignoring the question. “I’ll escort you out.”

“Hhh-ine,” Ed grumbled around the homework. He rolled them up and put them in a pocket. “If anything else gets destroyed, I’ll direct the Dean to you.”

Riza called up two sergeants to cover her post while she escorted Edward to a side entrance of the building.

“Make sure Lieutenant Fletcher gets her pistol back, she shouldn’t have given it to you in the first place. She’ll be in a lot of trouble if it goes missing.”

“It’s not missing, it’s with me,” Edward retorted.

“Well in any event, I’m going to have to reprimand her anyway. She can’t just hand out her firearms just because you can’t do alchemy. Ed?” Pistol still at the ready, Riza paused and turned. Edward had frozen in the middle of the hallway. All traces of his carefree fatigue had evaporated, replaced by the kind of instinctual alarm that had helped him live to adulthood.

“Edward?” Riza called.

Ed was looking down an abandoned hall of classrooms, eyes fixated on room 103. Its door, like several of the other classrooms, was cracked just ajar. Unlike the other classrooms, there was a light on the other side of the door.

“Did you search these rooms?” He asked suddenly, not turning to look at the captain.

“Yes, when we arrived an hour ago.”

“Did you search them again?”

“What?”

Ed ignored her, and walked carefully down the hall. Riza hesitated to follow him. She heard his pistol’s safety click off.

“Edward?” She edged toward the hallway, and peaked around the corner. Ed stood in the doorway of classroom 103, silhouette framed by an ethereal blue light. Lightning seemed to crackle from within the room. Alchemy.

“Shit!” Edward practically fell backward, slamming the door shut. “Out! Out! Everybody out!” he shouted. Riza was holding up her gun, ready to shoot whoever was in pursuit, but there was no one. Edward passed her toward the door. He did a double take when he realized she wasn’t following him. “Lieutenant,” he called her out of habit, “move!” He grabbed her by the back of her collar and yanked her out of the hall right as the explosion went off.

Seconds or minutes later, Edward looked up from the ground to see Riza shouting orders at her men. She was bleeding from her temple but looked no worse for wear, a gun in her hand and angry as hell. He could not hear what she was saying, and became increasingly aware that one or both of his eardrums must’ve burst, leaving his head ringing. His hands ground against drywall and plaster dust as he pushed himself upright. A figure ran in front of him. They were not in military blue. They were not in university dress. They did, however, have chalk in one hand and a transmutation circle tattooed on the other.

“Lieutenant,” Edward tried to say, but coughed. “That’s the… it’s the same circle, he’s,” he coughed again, and realized no one was going to hear him. “Damnit,” he slurred, unable to hear himself except the part of the voice that echoed in his bones. With difficulty, he rose to his feet, using his briefcase to shield himself from falling rubble as he jogged toward the front door.

There were military personnel everywhere, running and shouting with guns drawn. Most of the crowd had the sense to run, too, but some lingered, unsure of what to do or where to go. Amid the crowd, Edward spotted a man running away sans coat, sans scarf, covered in plaster dust with a circular tattoo on the back of his hand.

“There!” he pointed. “That’s him, there, there!” He jogged down the steps and almost slipped. No one seemed to be listening. He’s going to get away, damnit. “Lieutenant!” But neither Hawkeye or Fletcher were there to hear him. His ears rang, his eyes stung with cold, there was blood tickling his face, he felt like he was going to be sick. The terrorist looked back at him, saw him, and ran faster. Edward’s hands twitched, itching to clap together and bring this bastard down by force. He felt a weight in his pocket. He grabbed it.

“Josef!” He yelled, spotting his student in the way. He leveled his gun. “Get down, now!”

Josef fell to the ground. The trigger offered more resistance than he’d expected. Kickback. An unexpected burst of red, and the terrorist fell to the ground. After a moment, the figure stirred and clutched at his injured knee, which leaving a bloody red pool on the ground. Military swarmed, and Edward fell back into a seat on the stairs so he could hold his head and wait for the world to stop spinning.

After his hearing began to come back somewhat, he found Lieutenant Fletcher. “You did not give this to me,” Edward told her, holding up her pistol with a single finger.

“Sir?”

“I abused my authority and took this from you, understand? It’s my fault, not yours. I’m going to surrender this to your Captain, she and I will handle it from there.”

“Y-yes sir,” the lieutenant said, and then glanced at either side of his face. “Sir, you need medical attention.”

Edward looked down at himself, and realized he’d ruined his best winter coat by bleeding all over it. “Oh,” he said. His ears had even bled onto the essays stuffed into his pocket. “Great.”

They had the university open two days later, but they’d siphoned off the alchemy classes to the math and geography buildings while they cleaned up the carnage. Edward’s left ear would be healing from a perforated eardrum for the next several weeks, but with his right, he could hear the chatter in the halls:

“I heard he used to be a student here,”

“Ex military?”

“Angry about the reinstatement of Ishval,”

“Targeted against General Mustang, I think,”

“My mom says she’s been worried about something like this happening…”

“Something about the Fullmetal Alchemist?”

“Change, of course people will be angry. But this?”

“Seems a bit drastic.”

“Fullmetal who?”

“That’s what they called him - he was joking about a coup d'etat!”

Edward pushed open his classroom door, and the chatter stopped. He dumped out his briefcase onto his desk and shuffled through its contents. He scratched at his forehead beneath the large bandage that ran over his ear. Most of the essays were already in alphabetical order, but there were four unfortunate outliers.

“Uh, Tasha,” he climbed up to where Tasha Miller sat in her usual seat on the third row. He tried to ignore how everyone else watched him. “I’m very sorry, I wasn’t able to grade your entire essay, I uh…” he was speaking quietly, as he always did with students about assignments, but the hall was unnaturally silent today. “Part of it got, uh, part of it got blood on it, but,” he quickly  reassured her, misunderstanding her horror for disgust, “I was able to retype it, hopefully my comments are helpful, you seem to have a good understanding of the topic.” He scratched at his bandage again. “Good work.” He shuffled through the three other re-typed essays in his arms. “Martin Kovacheck? Oh, there you are. You guys need to stop swapping seats on me.” He laughed. He was the only one who laughed.

He moved around the room in an apologetic round before they moved onto the lesson. As he gathered up the regular essays to distribute to the class, his right ear caught wind of a frantic whisper:

“No, not about Tuesday, I meant the coup d'etat. With Mustang. He was there.”

Edward had a feeling he wasn’t going to hear the end of this.

“Well, sir,” said Josef quietly, when Edward went to return his graded essay, “They blew something up, all right.”

Ed felt his ear throbbing. “Yeah, I guess they did.” 

Josef smiled as if it were a joke, and Edward realized that it was his humor that the boy was absorbing. His heart weighed him down.

“You’re not too bad a shot for someone who doesn’t like guns.” Roy Mustang signed his name, flipped the page, and signed again. Flip. Sign. Flip. “If I issue you your own firearm, this won’t be so much of a headache next time.”

Edward Elric scowled at him. “There won’t be a next time.”

“Really?” Roy didn’t look up. Sign. Flip. “Winry called me earlier and asked me if I thought you needed a gun, after what happened. She also told me that dry cleaning isn’t going to save your coat.”

“What are you doing calling my wife on a Friday afternoon? You know, sometime you could try minding your own damn busine-”

“She called me, Fullmetal.”

Edward scowled harder. His ear was healing but ached terribly. He sulked, and signed the forms that Roy shoved to his side of the desk. “No guns,” he said. “The last thing I need is another reason for my students to ask me about Back Then.”

Roy paused in his signing. Resumed. “Oh?”

“They want me to guest lecture in the history department. The History Department. We’re history now, apparently.”

Roy chuckled. “You should be flattered.”

“I’m pissed off.”

“And why’s that?” Roy passed him another round of paperwork. Edward was staring at nothing. It took him a moment to take the paper.

“Because it’s not history. It was my life.” He scribbled out his signature.

Roy smiled to himself. “I know how you feel.”

It wasn’t the sort of conversation Edward was wont to have with the General, and he didn’t want that to change. “Do you.” Sign. Flip. Sign.

“You’re not the first person to live through a war. You’re not the first alchemist to do horrible things and regret it.”

Edward looked up at him, and they made eye contact for a few fleeting seconds. They turned back to their paperwork. Sign. Flip. Sign.

“I was just a kid,” Ed said quietly, irritably.

Roy was quiet for several beats. “Yeah.” Flip. Flip. Flip. Sign. Flip. He glanced up at Edward. “So are you going to sit in that chair and mope about it? Or are you going to move forward?”

For the briefest of moments, he was eleven years old again, but this time he was much bigger and far, far more tired.

“You don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to, you know,” said Roy. “You’ve already pissed off half of the Central U faculty, from what I hear. What’s one more department?” Flip, flip, sign.

“Yeah, I guess,” Edward said, taking the papers and signing them without reading them. Flip. Flip.

“If they don’t let you off the hook, direct them to me. I can guest lecture, if they want the real story. Heaven only knows what lies you’d tell them.”

Edward thought he was joking, and laughed. “Thanks.”

“I’m not joking,” Roy told him, and waited until Edward looked up to add, “Really. If they push the issue, just give me a call.”

Edward was not used to tone of compassion in the General Bastard’s voice. It wasn’t comfortable like the taboos of alchemy and the sounds of gunfire. He did his best to ignore it.

“Thanks.”

“Of course.” Sign. Flip. Flip. Sign. Date. Flip.

“God, this is a lot of paper,” Ed complained.

“Then get your own gun, Fullmetal.”

“Would you get off my back.”

[opticien2-0]

PEAK 2019 Fewer people expected to visit shops on Black Friday

Black Friday visitor numbers expected to be down on last year

  Fewer people are expected to head to the shops on Black Friday compared to the same time last year, new forecasts suggest. Instead, shoppers are expected to buy online or even to ignore the event.

  Footfall is expected to fall by 4.5% next Friday across all retail destinations, compared to Black Friday last year, says retail intelligence specialist Springboard. High streets are set to be hardest hit as visitor numbers fall by 5.5%. The prediction follows falling Black Friday footfall in both 2018 (-5.4%) and 2017 (-3.6%). Springboard predicts that Black Friday footfall will be down across all store locations, including retail parks (-2.5%) and shopping centres (-4.5%).

  Across the whole of Black Friday weekend – up to the end of Sunday – it expects footfall to be down overall (-4.4%), and on high streets (-5.1%), retail parks (-3.3%) and shopping centres (-4.2%).

  Shoppers instead look likely to opt to buy online or to ignore the event in the light of the ready availability of discounts, says Springboard. Having said that, Springboard says that spending online could be used over Black Friday, with IMRG having forecast a rise in online sales of between 2% and 3%, and with a real possibility of sales staying flat.

  Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said: “For those who do shop on Back Friday it seems that the decision will be more about ensuring product availability in advance of Christmas rather than securing the lowest price.”

  She added: “These results reflect the low confidence of consumers that has been impacting on their willingness to spend throughout the year. Consumers are increasingly favouring experience and leisure-based trips over retail shopping. Given the ongoing uncertainty in the run up to the general election, this is unlikely to change over Black Friday weekend.

  High levels of discounting predicted

Andrew Westbrook, head of retail at business adviser RSM, says that discounts are likely to start earlier and be on offer for longer than in previous years.

  He said: "It’s hard to believe that Black Friday only arrived in the UK five years ago but it has now become a permanent – and vitally important – fixture in the retail calendar. These types of one-off promotion days have grown in popularity and importance in recent years. UK retailers will be hoping to emulate the success of Singles Day in Asia – the biggest shopping day on the planet - which saw Alibaba alone take a record breaking $38.4 billion in just 24 hours.

  "Last year, Black Friday sales were a little disappointing, not least because the day fell before pay day. This year, it lands after pay day and with many stores having stocked up in anticipation of Brexit, the pressure will be on to convert this stock into cash - ideally without sacrificing too much profit margin.

  "As a result, this year’s Black Friday discounting season could start earlier and last longer than ever. With competition likely to be intense, bargain hunters will be in their element. High street operators with the most desirable locations will be hoping to do well, but the real battle for market share is likely to be online. The competition here will be fierce. While luxury brands will try to maintain full prices, we expect to see fast fashion fighting heavily on price and discounting. The somewhat desperate middle market will be the place to shop this year. Pieces selling between £20 and £50 – perhaps the cost of a new Christmas party outfit – is where we would expect to see the best value for consumers.

  "This year, we are also likely to see an increase in creative discounting, whereby online retailers offer member-only discounts or special promotions for loyal customers. The retailers’ assault on customer inboxes has already begun, and traffic is likely to reach fever pitch as we approach the big day.

  "While some retailers resent Black Friday, for others it will be crucial for their survival. The past year has seen many struggling retailers being forced to throw in the towel. Stores that don’t put up a good fight this Black Friday could suffer a knock-out blow."

  Online and multichannel retailers to feature in Channel 4 Christmas show

  Online and multichannel retailers JML, Lakeland and Amazon are to feature in the upcoming Buy It Now for Christmas. People from across the UK who have invented products are invited to the Buy It Now studio to pitch to an audience of real shoppers and, in the ultimate focus group, get live feedback on their products and the chance to get a big order from a well-known retailer; Amazon Launchpad, Lakeland, and JML.

  The inventors have the goal of getting their products on to high street shelves or with huge online retailers in time for Christmas and the busiest shopping time of the year.

  Ken Daly, chief executive of JML, returns to the show for a second year. He said: "At JML, we’re always looking to invest in exciting new products so it has been very rewarding to be a part of the show again and meet innovators from all over the UK. Last year we bought into Hairshark, a clever new hairbrush. It was a great success for us and we have subsequently purchased hundreds of thousands of units."

  Buy it now for Christmas is on Channel 4 at 8pm on Thursday.

  Warnings on security

David Warburton, principal threat evangelist at F5 Networks, explains how retailers can prepare for a heightened risk of security threats over the coming weeks

  He says that as Black Friday and Cyber Monday loom, hyperactive online activity and potentially compromised purchasing, promotion and sales behaviours are like a red rag to a bull for enterprising cybercriminals. "Retailers need to protect both operations and customers. The costs of slipping up are significant, with IBM’s 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report revealing that the global average, per-record cost of a retail breach is $119 (up 1,7% year-on-year)," he said.

  His recommended security must-haves include:

  Anti-fraud toolkit

It is essential to have the wherewithal to determine transactional inconsistencies, such as a regular customer’s card being used on a foreign device.

  Verification tools

Multifactor authentication should be implemented on any system connecting to high-impact assets. Ideally, application-layer encryption can also supplement TLS/SSL to maintain confidentiality at browser level. Enhanced levels of application-layer visibility and control can mitigate distributed and polymorphic injection risks.

  Protect consumers

Attackers go after the poorly protected. Tokenisation and in-app encryption can protect personal and financial details during the check-out process.

  Create an inventory of web applications

The process should encompass a thorough audit of third-party content. The process is complicated by third parties linking to other websites with a tendency for substandard security controls.

  Vulnerability scanning

CISOs increasingly recognise the importance of running external scans to get a hacker’s eye view of the situation. This becomes even more important when huge quantities of content are assembled at the last minute on the client side.

  Monitor for code changes

Regardless of where code is hosted, it is important to stay educated – irrespective of whether new vulnerabilities are emerging. This means monitoring GitHub and AWS S3 buckets, as well as native code repositories.

  Implement web filtering solutions

Prevent users from inadvertently visiting phishing sites. When a user clicks on a link, the solution blocks outbound traffic.

  Inspect encrypted traffic for malware

Traffic from malware communicating with command and control servers over encrypted tunnels is undetectable in transit without some form of decryption gateway. It is vital to decrypt internal traffic before sending it to incident detection tools for infection detection.

  Improve reporting mechanisms

Incident responses should include a streamlined and guiltless method for users to flag suspected phishing.

  Image: Fotolia

from InternetRetailing https://ift.tt/37EMytE via IFTTT

[davidcarner]

Chuck vs the Nanny, Ch 3

Disclaimer:  I don’t own Chuck…but I want to…

Mary Bartowski was in the middle of another important mission for the CIA; she had tried retirement, but it didn’t suit her. At this moment, she was not happy with her current predicament.  Diane Beckman had contacted her, telling her of the possibility of a new intersect, but Mary had to complete her current mission before she could join her family. She was walking into her safe house, when her encrypted phone rang.  She saw who it was and panicked.

“Is Chuck okay,” she blurted out as a greeting.

“He’s fine, Mary,” came the voice Sarah on the other end.  “At least as far as I know,” came the frustrated voice.  Mary paused mid-stride

“Sarah, this is unlike you,” Mary said, concern filling her.  “I’ve never heard you use the phrase as far as I know.”

“I know, trust me, I know.  This whole situation is bizarre.”

“Is the nanny there?”

“Yep, and that’s part of the problem,” Sarah replied. Anyone else would say Sarah was just being an overprotective mother, but Sarah was a CIA trained operative.  She knew to trust her gut, and something was off. “Diane Beckman told me to trust my family, blood and not.”

“That sounds like great advice.”

“Mary, we’re talking about Diane Beckman.  I’ll admit over the years she’s come to be like family, but she’s always believed in her people.  And, even if I’m overreacting to that, why did she bring in someone ‘non-family’ to watch my kids.  I think she’s trying to tell me something.”  There was silence on the other line for a moment.

“You know when she called me it was never about watching the kids, it was about going after this intersect.  I find it odd that she does have someone outside of your circle watching the children.  What do we know about Mr. Black?”

“Nothing, and that’s the problem,” Sarah admitted, frustrated.  

“I’ll find out something, unless you want me there with the kids.”

“No, I have an idea about someone who could watch the kids, but she’s not going to like it.”

“Oh, Sarah,” Mary chuckled, having a good idea who she was going to call.  “Are you sure?”

“I told her I’d get her back one day.”  Mary laughed and disconnected, promising to contact Sarah as soon as she knew anything.

“What are you doing?” Chuck asked, surprising Sarah. He was leaning against the doorway. Sarah was sure she had locked that door.

“How did you get in here?”  She asked, not necessarily upset with her husband, but curious why he, of all people, had entered a locked room.  Chuck was all about giving people space.  Chuck shrugged innocently, and tried to give a smolder to get her mind off of what he did.  All he accomplished was making Sarah roll her eyes.

“Chuck.”  Chuck knew by that tone he had best start speaking.

“I had a master key made to ever door in the house for fear the kids would lock themselves into a room and I couldn’t get to them, and to make sure you didn’t kick down the door,” he added, starting to go off on a tangent.  Sarah gave him a look, and he snapped back to the question at hand.  “It wasn’t to spy on you, I promise.  I didn’t know who was in here.”  Chuck looked a little sheepish, and Sarah continued to stare at him. “I’m just not 100% on board about Jason Black,” he admitted softly.  “I know General Beckman, but I also know we have had our issues with the CIA in the past.” Sarah nodded, smiling.

“I knew I loved you for reasons other than your nerdiness.”

“I thought you just wanted me for my body?” Sarah tried not to smirk-laugh.  

“Dear, I love you, and your body, and I’m going to leave it at that before you pout.”  Chuck grinned.  “I called your mom to see if she could find out anything on Black.  We both agree that someone else should probably help Black.” Chuck thought for a second, and it came to him.  He began to laugh.  The doorbell rang and the two walked to the front of the house to open the door, still laughing.  Ellie raised an eyebrow at the two, laughing and opening the door together.

“Did I miss something?” she asked.  

“It’s kinda a long story,” Chuck admitted. Ellie nodded.  “Come in.”  Ellie came in the house, and Chuck had an inquisitive look on his face.  “Ellie, you’re family, why don’t you just let yourself in?”

“Chuck, after last time, I am never letting myself into your place again.”  Chuck thought for a second, and only after Sarah elbowed him in the ribs, and he looked down at her smiling face, did he realize what she was talking about.  Chuck blushed, and he noticed the same look on  Ellie’s face. Sarah just smiled, shaking her head at the Bartowski siblings.

}o{

6 years ago

Chuck woke up, his mind telling him something was wrong.  He heard something, and figured it was Sarah, which was unusual, because it was a little early for her.  As he felt a weight on his shoulder, a slow grin covered his face.  He looked over to see blonde hair, and buried somewhere in it, was Sarah.  Chuck tried to wipe the grin off his face, but he couldn’t and that was fine with him, except for a thought buzzing in the back of his mind.  He heard a door slowly open, and he realized someone was in the house.

“Sarah,” Chuck whispered.

“Let me sleep a little, you animal,” Sarah said, playfully.  “I’m not going anywhere.”  Chuck felt his heart swell with happiness, and while he would have loved to have a few moments to think about the implications of what she said, he knew there was something a tad more pressing.

“I hear someone in the house!” he whispered urgently.  Sarah, sat up quickly, the covers falling a little.  Chuck tried to be a gentleman, but he was human, and he admired her form. Ellie would be so disappointed in him right now, and that’s when it hit him.

“Sarah, what’s today’s date?” Chuck asked, suddenly frightened and knowing exactly who was in the house.

“The 12th,” Sarah replied looking at the calendar on the wall.

“I was supposed to pick Ellie up at the airport this morning,” Chuck said, his voice almost a squeak.  Sarah realized what that meant.  She heard the shoes marching towards Chuck’s bedroom door. They had shut it out of habit, or else this would have happened sooner.  Sarah froze; not remembering the last five years slammed back into her. All the feelings she thought she had dealt with came back up, and she looked scared.  Chuck was surprised, as Sarah looked at the door, and did the only thing she knew to do, she hid under the covers.  Sarah knew it was childish, she knew she belonged, but here she was in bed with Ellie’s brother, in Ellie’s old apartment, and while she had been told how close she and Ellie had grown, she didn’t remember.  Before Chuck could say anything the door slammed opened and Chuck jumped, turned toward the door, and eeked.

“CHARLES IRVING BARTOWSKI!” Ellie yelled, incensed. “I don’t know which I’m madder about! You not picking me up like you promised, or you giving up on your marriage!”

“Babe!” came Devon’s voice from the hallway, apparently trying to calm her down, but she ignored him.  Chuck started to speak, but Ellie lifted her finger at him, and Chuck just shut his mouth.  

“That’s a lie, it’s you giving up on Sarah!”  Ellie said, her face as angry as Chuck had ever seen it.  He didn’t know what to say.  Because he was fighting laughter at the absurdity of what was happening, tears began to form in his eyes, which Ellie took for tears of sorrow.  Her features softened slightly.  “Chuck, I know it’s hard.  I know she doesn’t remember everything you had, but you cannot throw it away until that girl tells you she is done.  And even then, you better have fought for her with everything in you!” She looked at the lump in the bed. “I don’t know who you are,” she began softly, but deadly. “But, this man is married.  You better hope you two haven’t ruined things because of some urges.” She turned and looked at Chuck. “You are smarter than this.  Sarah deserves better than this!  She’s been through so much, and I know you have, and neither of you deserved it, but you can make this work, because you two love each other.”

Under the covers, Sarah heard the words, and her heart melted.  Ellie really cared about her.  Not because she was Chuck’s wife or girlfriend, but because Ellie truly loved Sarah.  Sarah slowly lowered the covers until her face peaked over the covers, and Ellie’s jaw dropped.  Her face was covered with surprise that grew to joy.  Chuck wasn’t sure he had ever seen Ellie so happy.

“Can I say something?” Chuck asked.  Ellie shook her head no.

“Nope,” she said, gathering herself, and drawing up straight, trying to contain her joy, but failing as it just spilled out of her. “I need to apologize.  I am perfectly fine with you not picking me up.” Ellie beamed at Sarah, and Sarah felt herself blush a little, but smiled back at Ellie.  “In fact, you two take all the time you need.”  With that, Ellie closed the door and they heard her move down the hall, there was a discussion, and some shuffling.  “Devon!” they heard Ellie say, but then her footsteps went down the hall, and another pair came to the door.  He opened the door, his smile covering his face.  He just stood there looking at the both of them, and then gave them a thumbs up.  

“Guys….awesome!”  And he left. Chuck looked at Sarah, who grabbed a pillow and hit him with it.

“I didn’t hide under the covers!” Chuck exclaimed, happier than he’d been in some time.

“You did forget to pick up your sister this morning,” she admonished him, her heart not in it.

“I had some things on my mind,” Chuck replied. Sarah gave him a cheeky grin.

“I know, I was there.”  Chuck waggled his eyebrows, and Sarah tried her best to give him a level look, but the smile on her face ruined it.  “We should get dressed.”  Chuck gave her a look and Sarah shook her head.  “We aren’t doing anything knowing they are waiting for us in the living room, Chuck,” Sarah said, laughing, but being serious.  Chuck laughed and started to get out of bed.  She grabbed his hand.  “I meant what I said.”  He stopped and looked at her.  “I’m not going anywhere.  For better or worse, I’m here, with you, in your life, in this bed.”  Chuck couldn’t stop the grin on his face if he wanted to. She pulled him in and kissed him. “Now really, we should get out there.” Chuck nodded, still grinning.  He made his way to the shower giving her some privacy, and eventually the grin faded.  Sometime later Sarah joined the three in the living room, sat down by Chuck on the couch, took his arm, and put it over her shoulders.  The smile that grew on Chuck’s face lit up the room.

“Well,” Ellie said, about to explode.  “I see things are better.”  Sarah laughed and looked at Chuck.  She turned back to Ellie, not 100% comfortable saying what was in her heart, but knew Ellie deserved the truth.  

“There came a point I had to trust my heart, and realize I loved him, and while I don’t have my old memories, I can create new ones with him,” she said, looking at Chuck.  Chuck just grinned stupidly.  Ellie just looked at the two, tears threatening to stream down her face. Sarah looked at her, concerned. “Ellie, it’s okay, we’re back together. I promise.  I’m here, no matter what.”  Ellie just smiled.

“Can I hug you?” she asked is a quiet voice. Sarah looked surprised.  “I lost my friend to the Intersect, I’ve missed you.” Sarah shut the voices out in her mind that told her she was a stranger and did what she had been doing since she was reintroduced to the Bartowski’s just a short time ago, she listened to her heart.  She got up, and met Ellie halfway.  As they hugged, Chuck and Awesome sat there, a little stunned.  

“You know I never realized how it affected you,” Chuck said to Ellie, thinking about how he hadn’t been the best brother.  The two broke the hug, but stayed close. Ellie took Sarah’s hand and squeezed it. Sarah gave her a tight smile.

“See, that’s why he’s the best, he loses his wife, and he feels bad because he forgot I lost a friend.”  Sarah grinned.

“I rather fond of him.”  Ellie smiled.  “I also know I’m rather fond of you.”  Ellie looked a little surprised.  “I’m sorry Ellie.  It never even occurred to me, of what we lost, but I know there’s something between us.” She didn’t know what else to say. Ellie just smiled at her.

“Then you and I can do like you and Chuck, and make new memories,” she said.  Sarah smiled.

“I’d like that,” Sarah replied, taking her seat as Ellie did the same.  “I’d also like it if you’d help me decorate our new place,” she said, realizing she was surprising Chuck, but thought it was time to get everything in the open. Chuck was smiling like an idiot again.

“New place?” Ellie asked.  Sarah smiled at her husband and turned to Ellie.

“He bought a house the day after I left.  Our house.  The one we wanted to have a family in.”  Ellie gave Chuck a shocked look.  “He must have realized that once we got back together that it would be easier for me if we lived in a place new to both of us.  Some place where we could make new memories together.”  She looked at him with a smirk.  Chuck was slowly nodding his head.

“That’s exactly,” Chuck began, but couldn’t continue the lie.  “What I didn’t think of, but wish I had, because it’s a FANTASTIC idea!”  Sarah giggled.  

“I think it’s an awesome idea,” Devon added. “Here you’re met with the ghosts of all the memories you should have.  At the new house there, while there are a few memories you don’t have, Sarah, it shouldn’t be as big a deal and not as overwhelming.”

“And,” she began a little nervous.  “I can fix the bad memories I have there about me and Chuck,” Sarah added, looking at him sheepishly.  Chuck just pulled her in for a half-hug.  Ellie beamed at the two.

“I don’t see a downside,” Ellie added.  “I assume it has room for kids?”  Ellie didn’t even look a little ashamed.  Sarah smiled and nodded knowing exactly what the two of them were doing to Chuck.

“And, a big backyard.”  Sarah replied, not even blinking and looking right at Chuck. Chuck’s smile was so big he thought his face might explode.  

“Sarah,” Ellie said gently with a huge grin on her face. “Careful, don’t hurt him.” Everyone laughed but Chuck who just sat there grinning.

}o{

Now

“It’s such a nice day outside, let’s go sit at the picnic table under the shade tree,” Sarah said, pulling Chuck out of his thoughts.  Ellie picked her bag back up and Sarah looked at it, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s THE computer,” Ellie said.  Sarah nodded once, went over, locked the front door and looked at Ellie pointedly.

“Ellie, there’s no one here but the five of us, if you count the kids.  The nanny isn’t even here.  Leave that here, and let’s enjoy some family time, without all the Intersect business.” Ellie nodded and put the bag down. Sarah could see the top edge of the computer poking out the top.  Sarah smiled at her.  “Kids!” she yelled, making Chuck, who was standing right beside her, jump.  Ellie even jumped a little.  “We’re going outside and talk, do you want to join us?”

“No,” the two yelled back in unison.  Sarah shrugged and headed to the kitchen to get some drinks to take outside.

“Spy, hot, and can yell,” she said to Chuck smiling. “You did good, Chuck….twice.” Chuck smiled.

“I also have excellent hearing and have drinks,” she said, bringing out mimosas and glasses for everyone.  The three went outside to the picnic table away from the house.  Sarah kept an eye on the front drive, and had her phone.  The kids knew where the silent alarms were around the house. Sarah smiled thinking how she bet other moms wish they had her CIA training.  They talked about Chicago, and the life that Ellie, Devon, and Claire had built there.   Sarah noticed what she thought was a flash of light from the house for a second. She got up and checked, while Ellie and Chuck chatted about Devon’s and Claire’s obsessions with zoos (that’s where they were today).  Sarah checked the living room from the outside window and saw everything was fine. She started to turn when she saw only the corner of Ellie’s computer was sticking out of the bag.  Sarah opened the door and came inside.

“Kids,” she yelled.  “Do you want any pineapple?”  They had developed a phrase in case anything went wrong, and for some reason Chuck said pineapple was a tried and true favorite in these types of situations. She was sure there were missing memories that had to do with this choice, but she also thought that it had something to do with the Buy More, and those that worked there.  No one really scared Sarah, but some of the Buy More crew….they were more than a little strange.

“No, mom!” came the immediate reply, and she heard the annoyance in her daughter’s voice.  She didn’t hear Stephen say anything and started to get concerned. The two children came into the room both holding flashlights.  They came up to Sarah who squatted down in front of them.  Stephen looked a little loopy.  “Mom, Stephen won’t let me check his optic nerve.  I’m concerned about him developing glaucoma.”

“I don’t like that stuff, it’s green and smells weird,” Stephen whined.

“That’s guacamole, honey,” Sarah said.  She looked in his eyes, but he looked fine. “Want Aunt Ellie to check you out?” Stephen shook his head.  Sarah looked at Samantha, who held her gaze. “Anything I should know?” Samantha shrugged.

“I don’t think he has glaucoma, but I can’t be certain, until I do a proper examination.”  Sarah nodded.

“How about we don’t shine anymore lights in his eyes until we’ve had proper training,” Sarah said.  Samantha started to speak, but Sarah raised a finger. “Youtube videos are not proper training.”  Samantha stopped, knowing she was beat.  Sarah saw the thought and raised her finger again.  “No flashing, or dazzling.  Understand?” Samantha nodded, and the two took off. Sarah watched them go, still suspicions. She grabbed the computer and came back to Chuck and Ellie who were watching her.

“What happened to no computer?” Chuck asked. Sarah gave him a look, and Chuck attempted to look scared, but Sarah rolled her eyes, letting him know she wasn’t buying it.  Sarah handed the computer to Ellie.

“Anything missing?” Sarah asked.  Ellie checked it out and shook her head.  

“No, but there are programs I can,” she began, but stopped in mid-sentence as Chuck reached over and closed it.

“Please, no Intersect talk today.  Tomorrow it all begins again, and today,” he paused, looked at his wife, put his arm around her, and looked over to his sister.  “Today, I just want to be about family.”  Ellis smiled and nodded.  Sarah did the same, but in the back of her mind she wondered. Chuck sighed contently and looked around, thinking about moving into this place that was now home.

}o{

6 years ago

“Where do you want these boxes at, Buddy?” Morgan asked, bringing in the last set of boxes from the car; they just happened to be the gaming console boxes.  Sarah grinned knowing what the two were up to.

“Right here, Morgan,” Sarah said, pointing to the front room.  Chuck’s mouth dropped.  Sarah smiled, knowingly.

“What? You don’t like the idea?”

“Did you get your memory back?” Chuck asked accusingly.  Sarah just grinned, catching Morgan’s eye, and his head nod of appreciation. Morgan’s suggestion to create the gaming room in the front the way Chuck had wanted it paid off…that and the room in the back that looked out over the backyard was better for a living room. After all Chuck had been through, she thought it was the least she could do to give him the game room he wanted in the front of the house.

“Wife intuition,” she said.  Chuck stared at her, then turned to Morgan who tried his best to look innocent.

“I’m going have to be careful what I say to you now on, Buddy,” Chuck said grinning.  Morgan tried to look upset, but he knew Chuck was just ribbing him. Chuck carried a box into the kitchen, whistling.  Sarah, feeling the Bartowskis rubbing off on her, caught Morgan in a hug.  He looked very surprised, but happy.

“Thanks,” she said simply.

“You could have told me Ellie and Devon weren’t going to be here,” Morgan replied.

“I thought you had let Ellie go?” Sarah said, having been caught up on the Morgan Ellie romance…or lack thereof, by Chuck. Morgan scoffed.

“We both know she’s just going through a phase,” he said, grinning.  “But, no, seriously, we could have used Awesome.”  Sarah nodded.  The three had moved the majority of things in record time, but Awesome would have been a welcomed addition.  “He’s happier than I’ve ever seen him,” Morgan said quietly, pulling Sarah out of her thoughts.  She grinned.

“You still approve?” she asked, pushing his shoulder with hers.  Morgan nodded.

“You know you two are best when you take care of each other?” he asked.  Sarah nodded. Morgan looked at all the things that needed to be put away and was trying to think of a way to exit gracefully, when Sarah helped him along.

“Would you be upset if I asked you to give us some alone time?” Morgan tried to hold his smile in check, but started backing up to the door.

“You two starting over, new place, I get it… I so get it,” Morgan said, backing away, Sarah trying not to grin, knowing Morgan had no want to get involved with the unpacking.  “Tell Chuck to call me…in a day…or three…or next week,” Morgan said, halfway out the door. “Bye!”  And with that he was gone, Sarah watched the door closed, grinning. Chuck walked back into the room.

“Did Morgan just run out so as not to have to help unpack?”  Sarah turned towards Chuck, and the look on her face made him raise an eyebrow.

“He didn’t want to invade our privacy,” Sarah said, slowly walking toward Chuck, Chuck nodded.

“It is very…intimate…to have to put away one’s dishes.”  Sarah nodded.

“To…separate the utensils…to fold the towels.”  Chuck nodded, the distance between them now less than a foot.

“To…load the dishwasher.” Sarah’s eyebrow raised. “Too far?”  Sarah bounced a shoulder, in a shrug.  “Just so I’m clear,” he began, when Sarah grabbed him and kissed him.  She pulled away, an eyebrow arched as is asking him to complete his question.  “I figured it out.”  Sarah smiled, and knew, this was home….this was forever.

[robertdoc]

25 signature moments of Twin Peaks: The Return

One for each year Twin Peaks has been away. All listed in airing order, some are NSFW. Only the first five YouTube clips were able to be embedded directly.

Part 1 – The Experiment attacks

We were all so naïve on May 21, 2017. Well, at least those of us were who thought that the early scene of two youngsters hooking up in front of a giant glass New York City box would be interrupted by Dale Cooper’s return to our world.

But unlike them, we weren’t punished for our naivety by having a supernatural woman/experiment/BOB’s possible creator slaughter our naked bodies. Still, it was the first of many, MANY Cooper-related fake outs David Lynch would sic on us poor survivors.

Part 2 – Laura and Cooper in the Red Room again

The full story of this moment won’t become clearer until Sunday, as a secret whisper from Laura to Cooper in the Red Room is destined to unlock some major answer many episodes later, just like it did 27 years ago.

There are some clear differences this time around, however. For one thing, the audible and distressed gasp from Cooper at Laura’s message may take on extra significance on Sunday – especially if it has to do with the two women in Dale’s heart that Mr. C has hurt the most.

For another, there’s the whole face removal trick – one that may run in the family – and sudden flight trick that Laura didn’t have in 1990.

Part 3 – The Purple Room

Just when we had the Red Room and the two Lodges figured out, the opening half of Part 3 gave us and Cooper the Purple Room in space to contend with.

It also introduced us and Cooper to an eyeless woman named Naido – but if certain theories that have emerged about Naido’s true identity after Part 16 are correct, this may have hardly been her first encounter with Cooper. Her first encounter with a good Cooper in 25 years, maybe.

Parts 3 & 4 – Mr. Jackpots

I hate/hated Dougie Jones. Hated hated hated watching him.

Even in these opening moments with him, I kept expecting/hoping something would wake the old Cooper up and stewed when it didn’t, and the pattern kept going for 12 long weeks.

Still, this proved to be one of his most/few enduring long adventures, if not a sign of better things to come.

Part 6 – Another Twin Peaks youth dies

Twin Peaks was a darker and less positively magical town than it was 25 years ago, for multiple reasons. But both then and now, it is a town used to mourning the senseless, painful and almost pointless losses of its youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

Nonetheless, it may say something disturbingly positive that those left behind remain capable of standing still at such losses, mourning them together, and reaching out to comfort each other.

This is all made clear in a masterful snowball of events, from seemingly mystical drug dealer Red’s intimidation of Richard Horne, to Richard’s furious and ultimately fatal response behind the wheel, to Harry Dean Stanton’s Carl finding his way towards the tragic results, and to the Black Lodge once more feeding on Twin Peaks’ latest food supply of pain and suffering.

Part 6 – Hello Diane

The knowledge that Laura Dern would be returning to Lynch’s world at some point in this series, and the set-up at the end of Part 4 that Albert and Gordon Cole needed “one certain person” to see an imprisoned Mr. C, made it easy/hopeful to guess what this would all lead up to.

Regardless, the official unveiling of Dern as Cooper’s long unseen Diane – or so we assumed back then – was a brief but powerful event unto itself. Even so, Albert did his best to upstage it by bashing Gene Kelly in his wet race to Diane’s favorite bar.

Part 7 – Diane and Mr. C

Diane’s brief intro in Part 6 made her fuller introduction as a cursing, bitter, Cooper hating ex-Fed in Part 7 all the more startling. But when she finally gave in and saw the being claiming to be Cooper in prison, the walls came tumbling down.

Dern and Kyle MacLachlin are Lynch’s signature muses, yet this was the first time in 31 years that they shared a scene for him. As it stands now, unless the real Diane = Naido theories are true and there is more magic way to restore Naido into a Dern-like form, this will go down as their only reunion scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmsIHL2LEBA

Part 7 – A long, clean sweep

Lynch trolled everyone with long and seemingly pointless extended scenes every episode or two. This was the most notorious example, but it did have one of the better punchlines.

By this point, the tradition of ending each episode with a musical act at the Roadhouse had been established. As such, cutting to someone sweeping the empty Roadhouse while old background music played seemed like a tweak to that formula, and the end of this particular episode. But the longer the credits and the “Starring Kyle MacLachlin” message didn’t come up, the more that this otherwise useless scene of someone sweeping a floor actually became the most suspenseful moment of the year.

When it turned out not to be the final scene of the episode at all, the joke was really on us. For that matter, it may be double on us since this scene may not have even been real. Either way, this was one of the better laughs Lynch had at our expense.

https://vimeo.com/222322307

Part 8 – The birth of the Black Lodge age

The Black Lodge has fed on fear, misery and pointless suffering for what may be centuries or more. So of course, it broke the barrier into our reality and began a decades-long feast on mankind thanks to the moment that spawned one of the most fearful, suffering-filled ages of American history and of the 20’th century – and one that was reborn anew in the 21’st century just weeks after this episode aired.

The birth of the nuclear age, of the Lodge’s evil grasp on Earth and of BOB himself put Twin Peaks on a level previously explored by Stanley Kubrick and Terrance Malick. But Lynch’s own metaphysical story of Creation proved to be a lot darker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IKUeIEdRMY

Part 8 – Laura descends

While the Black Lodge has been a dominant force in all dimensions, the White Lodge has still clung to life. So when the Lodge and BOB broke through into our world, the White Lodge Giant/Fireman sent onto Earth a new creation of its own – and turned Laura Palmer from murdered teen into a Biblical figure.

For the Fireman did so loveth the world that he hath given his only daughter/orb, sent to die for the sins of the Black Lodge/BOB/the nuclear age, only to bring about the Holy Cooper/Dougie to finish the job. That whosover believeth in Laura should not perish, but have eternal life as a Tulpa.

All that’s missing from the analogy is a Christ-worth resurrection – at least until Sunday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id75c8HGAxw

Part 8 – The Woodsmen descend

Although the first atomic test shattered the barriers between our world and the Black Lodge, the first encounter between worlds came years later in New Mexico. In fact, one of the sinister Woodsmen made his presence known on the radio and called on others to join him, in a message that serves as The Return’s equivalent of the original “Fire Walk With Me” poem.

But a frog like cockroach was already well ahead of the curve, whether or not it was BOB himself, and whether or not his first victim was a young Sarah Palmer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir8s6IGq2Hs

Part 9 – Bobby’s destiny

Several old Twin Peaks veterans died before The Return, yet their characters became a major part of the story anyway. Chief among them was Major Garland Briggs, whose head was left floating near the Purple Room, but whose body left major clues that Mr. C and the FBI have raced to find.

Yet his biggest messages were left behind in Twin Peaks for his son Bobby – the very same son who was as bewildered as the rest of us when Garland foresaw his bright future in the Season 2 premiere.

However, the late Major Briggs was fully vindicated when now-Deputy Bobby Briggs led the way in decoding his father’s mysterious coordinates, and setting the stage for him and the sheriff’s station team to fulfill an even grander purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKNC53Aq36E

Part 11 – He’s dead

In contrast, the Blue Rose FBI team took a more deadly and mystical route towards those coordinates. The mystical part came when Gordon peered through the sky into the world of the Woodsmen, while the deadly part came through finally finding the headless body of Ruth Davenport – just moments before her lover Bill Hastings shared her headless fate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mK63wAVLFw

Part 11 – The Mitchum’s dream cherry pie

By this point, it was far too easy to root for the casino owning Mitchum brothers as they plotted to knock off Dougie Jones, if only so Cooper might finally take his place. It got so bad that one could relate to Jim Belushi, of all people, as he could barely wait three more hours to get rid of him – although it turned out to only take four.

Yet against all odds, this sequence became the most delightful Dougie-related set piece since Mr. Jackpots, even though Dougie was still standing afterwards. Credit has to go to a White Lodge-influenced dream that came true in the nick of time, a cherry pie-ex machina, and a newly cemented friendship that is now paying off in the wake of Cooper’s true revival.

If that wasn’t enough, the elderly casino player that got rich from “Mr. Jackpots” later returned to thank Dougie, which helped forge a grudging acceptance that Dougie really was doing enough good to balance/correct Mr. C’s evil, even if that goodness hadn’t touched all viewers yet.

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

Part 13 – Evil arm wrestling

As Dougie began channeling the good of his old self, Mr. C was left to channel 1987 Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone was playing a single father doppelganger of Rocky back in Over the Top, three years before Mr. C’s good doppelganger ever arrived at Twin Peaks. While Stallone was relatively restrained in arm wrestling foes to win custody of his son, Mr. C was in his usual Rambo mode in toying with a gang leader for custody of the treacherous Ray – all in front of his own evil son at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAGBH8lQdRA

Part 14 – Monica Bellucci dream

Only Gordon Cole – and by extension, only David Lynch – would have a reality-blurring dream about dreams and reality set around a black-and-white tinted coffee date with screen siren Monica Bellucci. Yet to Albert’s relief and perhaps to ours, indulging Gordon/Lynch’s fantasies is only part of his latest dream.

Dream-Bellucci’s question “Who is the dreamer?” has only loomed larger over certain plots and realities in recent weeks. In addition, those who hadn’t already seen one of Phillip Jefferies’s major questions in Fire Walk With Me in a new light thanks to The Return had reason to think again.

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

Part 14 – Andy and The Fireman

It took five episodes, and maybe two or three too many, for the Twin Peaks sheriff’s department to follow Garland Briggs’s coordinates into Jack Rabbit’s Palace. No one could have fully predicted what they’d find, yet discovering the almost forgotten Naido in the woods and in our world was surely low on the list – to say nothing of Andy being the one sucked into the White Lodge.

At that point, the concept seemed like just another way to stall for time, given Andy’s less than stellar track record. Yet somehow, thanks to a download of back story from the Giant/Fireman, Andy remembered more than enough to do what had to be done, and to be ready for whatever is coming.

It also became a much needed reminder of the power of goodness, since the show and town had been bogged down in misery, broken relationships and unrelenting darkness for some time to that point. But through Andy’s simple but full heart, and his comfort towards Naido even as the skies opened up, it proved even the most ordinary, pure souls can be called upon and trusted to serve a greater purpose than ever imagined.

But in case that wasn’t enough, a 10-minute monologue from green gloved newcomer Freddie about his own encounter with The Fireman further drove it home.

Part 14 – Sarah Palmer feeds

Two straight disappointing episodes before this one were highlighted by bizarre, unsettling appearances from Sarah Palmer. Part 14 had already done much better in meeting Sarah’s level, just in time for Sarah – or whatever is residing inside her – to take it up another notch.

At long last, a harassed and long suffering Palmer got to stand up to a threatening man and then some, albeit with sinister implications. Of course, given that Sarah repeated her daughter Laura’s face removing trick first, one had to wonder which Palmer really pulled this off. Perhaps that may have a special need to be answered on Sunday night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hggpOdM0RqM

Part 15 – Ed and Norma

Part 13 was a pretty big downer, both in quality and in how Lynch copied himself by revealing a beloved Twin Peaks couple was really separated after all. After pulling such a bait-and-switch with Bobby and Shelly in Part 11, he did it to Norma and the finally arriving Big Ed in Part 13. Yet in this case, at least, he had a plan to fix it.

In a bit of long overdue, rapturous fan service that would only be matched a week later in a Vegas hospital room, Lynch proved at least one happy ending was still possible in Twin Peaks – if only to pacify us before the next 45 minutes of death, electrocutions, Audrey freak outs and giant Phillip Jefferies tea kettles.

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

Part 15 – Get Gordon Cole

If Lynch was anyone else, and especially if he was a woman, more might question his ego in turning his own minor character into the new leading hero in a post-Cooper world. Yet in such a new world, it almost seems fitting that Gordon Cole is the biggest hero of all for Cooper and his suffering fans, even in a scene where he doesn’t show up.

Lynch famously named Gordon after a minor character in Sunset Boulevard, in a callback that enters legend when Dougie sees the film just in time to hear his old boss’s name, and to take action that’s 12 weeks in the making.

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

Part 15 – Goodbye Margaret

The possible end of Dougie inspired cheers from at least half the viewers. However, everyone was fully united in tears just minutes later, when another long expected but much more tragic goodbye was staged for Margaret Lanterman, a.k.a. the Log Lady, and a.k.a. Catherine Coulson.

Like Garland Briggs, Margaret was the inspiration for the Twin Peaks officers and others to uncover the mystery of Cooper, and tragically wouldn’t live to see it pay off. But unlike Don S. Davis and Briggs, Coulson survived just long enough to say her last goodbyes as Margaret in person, and to impart some final, mysterious but surely crucial warnings.

It was the end of an era not just for Twin Peaks, but for Lynch himself, as Coulson helped launch his career by assisting him on Eraserhead 40 years ago. In that moment, we could only follow Frank Truman’s lead and remove our hats to mark the passing of history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kx9kYD3qpo

Part 16 – Tulpa Diane

Ever since Part 7, suspicions grew that Mr. C had both raped and impregnated two of the most important women in Cooper’s life. After Part 16 officially confirmed it in regards to Audrey and Richard Horne, Diane was finally ready to admit what he had done to her – but that was hardly the half of it.

Given the triggering text message Mr. C sent moments earlier, the gun in Diane’s purse, and Diane’s march towards the Blue Rose team while the ominous song from Mr. C’s very first scene played in the background, it set up to be a very different moment. Yet before the bullets flew, the tears, horror and game-changing reveals about Mr. C’s tulpa-creating powers hit hardest.

The Diane we knew was dead, and yet she still may live elsewhere, like Laura and another famed Twin Peaks femme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FT1t3Da7MM

Part 16 – Audrey’s dance

After three weeks of Audrey being stuck at home with an uncaring husband, having them in the Roadhouse at last was actually deflating. If she was in a real place like the Roadhouse, especially after a special Eddie Vedder performance, then all the best and most fantastical theories for her bizarre behavior had apparently been shattered.

All in all, it seemed like one last bitter Audrey related disappointment to cap off her puzzling return. And then her theme music started playing.

Then everyone swayed together to watch like zombies. Then some random unknown people got involved, like in many other seemingly pointless Roadhouse moments.

Then Audrey suddenly showed up in a white room, while some very Lodge-like electrical currents were crackling over her. Then a very Lodge-inspired reprisal of her dance music played over the credits. Then we had new reason to believe every Roadhouse scene and inexplicable A-list musical act, save for maybe three or four sequences, was just as fake as all of Audrey’s past scenes.

The rest can be explained on Sunday, or at least more than half of it hopefully will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2aHJN5my9I

Part 16 – 100% awake

Regardless of the full context of Audrey’s ‘awakening’, it was long overdue for those who didn’t understand, or even stand, the Audrey we’d seen to that point. It was far from the first example of such an awakening in that very same episode, only taken to much happier extremes, less ambiguity and much more fan friendly service in the case of Audrey’s former crush.

Yet the return of our Dale Cooper was an even greater miracle than that, if possible.

This became clear when one of his very first actions was to arrange a new Dougie Jones tulpa, for the family he would soon have to leave. As lost as he looked as Dougie for weeks, our Coop was very much inside him after all, and had clearly grown to love his/Dougie’s family after all. It might have seemed obvious to some earlier, but clearly not to all.

Such caring, awareness and love opened the door to suggest Cooper’s time as Dougie had not only fixed Mr. C’s evil in Vegas, but even healed Cooper in a way he couldn’t have been if he’d come back right away – and perhaps enough to defeat Mr. C with the perfect courage he didn’t have the first time.

If even the most ardent, impatient and bitter Dougie Jones hater such as this one can come to realize that now, then anything’s possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT47hnhjDJ0

This includes signature moments that seemed like a lost cause to hope for just 2-3 weeks ago. Like this last one.

Part 16 – I am the FBI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5dRkActfIs

The list and the circle will be complete from 8-10 pm on Sept. 3.

[newstfionline]

Household Debt Makes a Comeback in the U.S.

By Michael Corkery and Stacy Cowley, NY Times, May 17, 2017

In the first quarter of 2017, consumer debt rose to $12.73 trillion, exceeding its peak in the third quarter of 2008. Student loans account for 10.6 percent of that total, up from 3.3 percent in 2003, while housing’s share, though still great, has fallen back to 2003 levels.

It took nearly a decade, but debt has made a comeback.

Americans have now borrowed more money than they had at the height of the credit bubble in 2008, just as the global financial system began to collapse.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Wednesday that total household debt in the United States had reached a new peak--$12.7 trillion--in the first three months of the year, another milestone in the long, slow recovery of the nation’s economy.

The growing debt level shows that many of the millions of Americans who struggled during the recession have sufficiently repaired their credit to qualify for loans. It also suggests a rising optimism about economic growth among banks and other lenders.

Debt can fuel consumer spending, which accounts for nearly 70 percent of all economic activity in the United States. It also allows Americans to make large investments in education and housing, which can help build personal wealth and financial stability.

Yet the borrowing peak also signals the potential for new risks to the economy.

One of the major factors behind the latest debt binge has been student loans, a mounting burden that can stifle economic growth by preventing Americans from buying homes or spending on big-ticket consumer items.

The fear is that ballooning debt from student loans--and from auto loans and credit cards--could put many Americans back into a hole, prompting a new wave of defaults, much like the one that accompanied the mortgage meltdown a decade ago.

“This is not a marker we should be superexcited to get back to,” said Heather Boushey, the executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a liberal think tank. “In the abstract, more debt signals optimism. But in reality, families are using debt as a mechanism to pay for things their incomes don’t support.”

Since World War II, total household debt had been increasing, with only a few interruptions. The financial crisis changed that steady upward march.

In late 2008, household debt began a decline that would last for 19 consecutive quarters, an unprecedented period of deleveraging during which many Americans shied away from new borrowing. Total debt began to rise again in 2013, finally hitting a new high in this year’s first quarter.

There is reason to believe that borrowers should be able to better manage their debt now than they did during the financial crisis. The nation’s debt load is reaching new heights at a moment when the economy is expanding, a dynamic that makes the latest peak in borrowing less worrisome to economists.

And households today are borrowing differently than they did nine years ago. Student loan debt, driven by soaring tuition costs, now makes up 11 percent of total household debt, up from 5 percent in the third quarter of 2008.

By comparison, mortgage debt is 68 percent of total debt, down from 73 percent during the same period. The household debt figures are not adjusted for inflation.

Student borrowers today owe $1.3 trillion, more than double the $611 billion owed nearly nine years ago. About one in 10 student borrowers is behind on repaying the loans, the highest delinquency rate of any type of loan tracked by the New York Fed’s quarterly household debt report.

The student loan market is nowhere near the size of the $8.6 trillion mortgage market, making student borrowing less of a threat to the global financial system than the bad housing loans that touched off the financial crisis in 2008.

But there are similarities in how student loan debt--like mortgage debt a decade ago--has managed to pile up.

One idea underpinning the mortgage boom was that homeownership was a clear-cut route to building wealth. That notion was shaken by the housing collapse, which left millions of Americans in foreclosure and their finances in ruins.

Students have gone deep into debt in the belief that a college degree will eventually lead to a higher income. But many students have graduated into a job market where wages have been rising slowly, leaving them with more debt than they can pay off.

Economists are now unsure about how this mountain of student debt will affect the broader economy. Unlike mortgages, student loans cannot typically be shed or restructured, which means that more Americans are shouldering a type of debt that could weigh them down for the rest of their lives, preventing them from buying homes or starting businesses.

“Student debt is a different animal with different rules,” said Diane Swonk, founder of DS Economics in Chicago. “It has some good effects, but not always.”

Alyssa Pascarosa, 26, owes $100,000 related to the bachelor’s degree in sociology she received from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013. The debt shapes nearly all of her financial choices. Ms. Pascarosa initially planned to attend law school but changed her mind after realizing that pursuing that career path would double or triple her debt load.

Instead, Ms. Pascarosa moved back in with her mother in Easton, Pa., where she works as a graphic designer.

“I would like to move out at some point soon,” she said, “but with my loans, I can’t justify spending money on rent.”

Student loans are not the only area in which debt has grown rapidly.

The New York Fed report also shows how growth in auto lending over the past decade has made up for slower mortgage lending. Auto loans totaled about $1.1 trillion, or 9 percent of all household debt, in the first quarter of 2017, up from 6 percent in the third quarter of 2008.

Defaults have crept up in auto loans, one of the few sectors in which lenders were willing to extend credit to subprime borrowers after the 2008 crisis.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said defaults on student and auto loans were a “financial blemish” on otherwise healthy household balance sheets.

“It is not an existential threat to households and the economy,” Mr. Zandi said. “It is an area where there is some stress.”

[mrmichaelchadler]

Figuring It Out: The Films of Laura Dern

Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) speaks in voiceover in a half-dazed, half-searching tone, as if slowly bringing herself out of a dream. “The story you are about to see is true … as far as I know.” A documentary filmmaker, she’s used to finding ways to look beyond the surface of what people present about themselves; she’ll have to turn that ability on herself. She remembers herself being and looking older than she was, speaking about a man she calls a lover—despite the fact that he was an adult and she was only 13—with a defensive, forced attempt at nonchalance (raised arms, dismissive pitch) that turns pleading, then incensed when she’s called a “victim,” her voice breaking into a raised whisper, her expression into a furious grimace. “This was important to me, and I’m trying to figure out why … Let me just figure this out for myself.”

“The Tale,” debuting on HBO on May 26, is documentary filmmaker Jennifer Fox’s narrative retelling of her experience, and an emotionally searing look at how people process their abuse. The casting of Dern, one of the most adventurous actresses working today, feels apropos, given the performer’s willingness to walk a constant emotional high-wire act and her recent hot streak that includes, but is not limited to, “Enlightened,” “Wild,” “Big Little Lies,” the “Twin Peaks” revival, and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” It’s also an instructive text when looking at Dern’s body of work, a career filled with stories of women who have either experienced or witnessed unbearable trauma and who are trying to find the meaning behind it all.

The daughter of two of New Hollywood’s greatest character actors (Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd), Laura Dern began her career in uncredited roles alongside her mother (“White Lightning,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”) before emancipating herself at 13 when her mother objected to one of her early credited roles in the teenage punk girl drama “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.” Dern’s role as one of the members of the Stains is relatively small (it’s largely Diane Lane’s show), but she makes an impression as being kind and empathetic, expressing genuine sympathy when a band member of another touring group overdoses. Dern’s teenage roles draw on her natural warmth and luminous presence; her performance as the blind Diana in “Mask” in particular sees her displaying an unusual level of openness with Eric Stoltz’s Rocky (born with a rare skull deformity), a willingness to accept him for who he is and stray outside her comfort zone for someone who accepts her.

Straying outside one’s comfort zone is central to Joyce Chopra’s “Smooth Talk” (pictured above), which gave Dern her breakout role as Connie Wyatt, a teenage girl hitting her rebellious years and having a hard time of it with her demanding mother. The first half of the film is a remarkable study of a teenager’s tentative first steps toward sexual exploration, with Dern veering back and forth between being marvelously unaffected (tossed-off delivery and leaning posture around her parents) and exaggerated flirtation, like that of someone who’s both fascinated bt sex and stuck in a childish, mocking view of it. She adopts confidence only to shrink away, puts her full body into a kiss before breaking off, admitting that she’s not used to “feeling … this excited.” 

It’s in the second half, when a greaser (Treat Williams) appears outside when she’s home alone that “Smooth Talk” dives headfirst into that discomfort. Dern’s bashful body language gives way to a menacing, dancelike semi-seduction with Williams, shifting from apparent fun and games to something that’s outright predatory, with her demeanor collapsing collapse into hyperventilative terror. She’s in that uncertain place in between childhood and adulthood, when everyone is trying to define themselves, but there are plenty of men who have their own ideas of who she is and what they want from her. “Smooth Talk” would be an ideal (if grueling) double feature with “The Tale,” a young person’s immediate experience with sexual desire, confusion and abuse paired with an adult’s retrospective understanding of that trauma.

Dern received raves for her work, getting her first of two straight Independent Spirit Award nominations (back when they tried to be more than Oscar predictors); her next would come with a part that would bring her to greatest and most important collaborator. Few directors have brought as much out of Dern as David Lynch, but then, few performers have brought as much out of his characters as Dern, beginning with her role as Sandy in “Blue Velvet.” The archetypical girl next door, Sandy has a kind of unearthly wholesomeness that’s best showcased in her monologue about her dream about “robins of love.” The key to Lynch’s work is his belief that the truly good can coexist with the truly wicked. Dern represents the former, delivering the monologue with a whispered awe and reaching hand gestures that border on evangelical before bringing herself down and finding a way to clarify it to her rapt listener/love interest. Sandy and Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) see some terrible things (including a painful moment of trauma that prompts a distorted look of sorrow that’s distinctly Dern), but she remains unwavering in her belief that her dream of light can conquer darkness and make sense of this strange world (would that Isabella Rossellini’s Dorothy were so lucky). 

Dern teamed with Lynch again for 1990’s “Wild at Heart” (pictured above), playing the far more confidently sensual Lula while retaining the same good-heartedness she brought to “Blue Velvet.” It’s a heightened, deliberately iconic role, with Dern leaping into exaggerated dancing, purring with sexual abandon and leaning just so to express her arousal or satisfaction when talking to or about Nicolas Cage’s Elvis-obsessed Sailor. But Lula is also someone who has experienced great pain—the death of her father, her molestation at the hands of his friend, the murderous rage of her mother (played, in a stroke of casting genius, by her real-life mother, Ladd)—and has come out the other end demonstrating a full-bodied, defiant belief in the all-conquering power of love. The film’s “Wizard of Oz” framing device sometimes comes across as a bit forced, but it’s also another example of how Dern’s characters often tell themselves stories to make sense of their lives and guide them from darkness to light. 

Dern’s early adult roles often deal with characters exploring their sexuality at a time or place where that might put them in jeopardy; that’s certainly the case with Martha Coolidge’s “Rambling Rose,” in which her “borderline nymphomaniac” Rose comes to live with the Hillyer family (father Robert Duvall, mother Ladd and teenage son Lukas Haas) after unspecified trouble with men. Dern brings a blithe, bouncy exuberance and confidence to the role, waltzing down the street knowing that her walk can turn heads and her smile win hearts. But Dern also embodies Rose’s goodness, her sexual escapades being the actions of someone who has an intense and open need to be loved, and to be treated with the kindness that she shows the world but that the world hasn’t been good enough to show her. A scene between her and Duvall after she’s caught in bed with a man sees her not going so far as begging, but rather earnestly presenting herself with all cards on the table, an eyes-wide-open, forward-leaning acknowledgement that “I’m only a human girl person, and I ain’t always perfect.” 

“Rambling Rose” earned Dern her first Oscar nomination and preceded two high-profile supporting roles in 1993. As criminologist Sally Gerber in Clint Eastwood’s beautiful “A Perfect World,” she illustrates the impossible situation that Butch (Kevin Costner) was put in as a troubled child with an abusive father, giving a full picture of his trauma and bringing us to empathize with how he became a criminal. As Ellie Sattler in Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” Dern plays the warmer counterpart and partner to Sam Neill’s testier Alan Grant, exuding, intelligence, physical capability and a deeper concern for how easily the park can spiral out of control and the consequences that come with it (she also has the ability as an actress to practically unhinge her jaw in terror when things do go wrong). In a key character moment, she pleads empathetically for John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to recognize how the people they love may get hurt. Both roles cast her as figures of empathy, finding ways to make sense of the reasons why people cause each other pain while trying to prevent it from happening again.

If “A Perfect World” sees Dern asking us to sympathize with a troubled person, Alexander Payne’s “Citizen Ruth” (pictured above) shows how far that should be extended. Make no mistake: Dern’s pregnant, inhalant-addicted Ruth Stoops is a first-class fuck-up. Dern dives headfirst into making her as gross and unlikable as possible, smearing her mouth with inhalant residue, manipulating the same people who are manipulating her (both sides of the abortion debate attempt to co-opt her case for their agenda), and shouting some truly filthy insults (“suck the shit outta my ass, you fucker!”) with gritted teeth and gusto. Yet the actress still finds something sympathetic in her, her downcast eyes and fidgeting fingers communicating her knowledge that she’s fucked up yet again and is about to be on the receiving end of some real hardship. Ruth may sputter with uncertainty when trying to voice the whys behind her right to choose, but Payne and Dern take her choice, and the pain behind what led her to it, seriously (besides, she said it loud and clear the first time).

Dern’s career slowed down in the late 1990s and early 2000s, something she attributed (more than plausibly) to her guest appearance on “Ellen” as a radiant, openly gay woman that causes Ellen DeGeneres’ character to come out herself. She got her first serious critical attention in years in John Curran’s “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” in 2004. The film, about a two couples (Dern and Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts and Peter Krause) whose lives are upended when Ruffalo and Watts begin an affair, is too drifting and one-note to draw much blood, but it comes to life whenever Dern’s enraged, emotionally rangy Terry takes focus. Dern adopts a hunched-over posture for her arguments with Ruffalo, her clenched chin jutting out slightly, to show a woman who’s well aware of how she’s being deceived and whose total dismissal to the role of child caretaker (something she does not take to naturally) looks like it’s almost literally weighing her down. Terry’s agonies in “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” are resolutely ordinary, compared with some of the other characters Dern has played, but they’re no less important to her.

Dern reteamed with David Lynch for the truly deranged “Inland Empire,” in which she plays the actress Nikki Grace, getting the comeback of a lifetime with the role of Susan Blue before her role starts bleeding over into her identity (or something … even more than usual with Lynch, describing what actually happens seems futile and beside-the-point). It’s a tour-de-force performance, alternatively put-upon, ferocious, frightened, and whatever one can call this terrifying face. She’s simultaneously the film’s emotional anchor and its constantly metamorphosing nucleus. “Inland Empire” is, at least partially, about the emotional wringer that performers can put themselves through for a role, and how easy it is to mix up one’s own emotions with their character’s. A monologue in which Nikki’s character (?) describes her trauma and her self-defense in a jaded tone that occasionally sparks into violence is later seen in a theater, the actress observing herself. She’s played a character who has lived through real terror, but we see that the actress herself is living in terror, both at home (her husband is deeply controlling and ambiguously threatening) and at work. Does the actress simply play the part, or is she drawn to roles that bring her to relive (and potentially make peace with) her nightmares?

“Inland Empire,” like most of Lynch’s works, does not put its or its characters’ purpose into words so bluntly; Dern’s next major role is a little more easily (and narrowly) defined, but not uninteresting. The 2008 TV movie “Recount” (pictured above) relives the national trauma of Bush v. Gore, the second-most nightmarish presidential election in recent memory. Largely focused on the tactics employed the official campaign teams of Vice President Al Gore (Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Ed Begley Jr.) and Governor George W. Bush (Tom Wilkinson, Bob Balaban), the film also takes time with Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (Dern) and her poorly disguised efforts to throw the election to Bush. Dern walks a fine line between humanity and cartoon with Harris, whom she portrays as a zealous, wide-eyed ideologue with exaggerated hair and makeup. But she finds the heart of Harris in her true-believer story about Queen Esther sacrificing herself for “the lovely Jewish people,” evangelizing as if her staking her career on Bush winning the election is for the good of the people. Her self-martyring tone is farcical, but it’s also indicative of how political partisans view their work as de facto for the good of the people and a tool to bring a country together after a moment of bitter division, rather than the actions of further division. 

Many of Dern’s more recent film roles have been smaller, supporting parts, but a few have still been notable. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” she has that same true-believer tone as a rich woman who has taken to the new religion of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Her student’s passion for something that’s given her life meaning is palpable; so is her shocked pain at being rebuked for questioning how, exactly, it can switch teachings so cavalierly, her body practically crumpling at Dodd’s shout. She’s more unflagging in her optimism as Reese Witherspoon’s mother in “Wild” (her second Oscar-nominated performance). Dern comes across in only a handful of small scenes as a vivacious presence who nonetheless knows perfectly well that she’s lived through hell, smiling through memories of pain because it brought her the most important person in her life. She’s the witness to someone else’s pain in Kelly Reichardt’s masterful “Certain Women,” a lawyer to a man (Jared Harris) who got screwed over when accepting a piddling settlement after a workplace injury but who can no longer be helped because of it. One senses her lived-in frustration as he refuses to listen her (then listens to a male colleague who tells him the same thing), but her genuine empathy for a man who she’s effectively powerless to help is also clear. And as Admiral Holdo in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” she commands the screen with a steadfast, unwavering certainty that she’s doing the right thing—any assumption of her incompetence be damned—finally proving herself to be among the bravest and most self-sacrificing heroes in the series.

Still, most of Dern’s best recent work has been on television. The brilliant, unjustly canceled “Enlightened” sees Dern’s personality as embedded into the work as Mike White’s (indeed, the two are credited as co-creators). Amy Jellicoe is another of Dern’s troubled heroines trying to find meaning in their lives, following her nervous breakdown first with a genuine attempt to regain the respect of her colleagues, then by becoming a corporate whistleblower in a move that’s half genuine, half out of bitterness. Amy’s a mess, lashing out at people she (rightly or wrongly) believes have wronged her at one moment, then preaching with a sincere but totally oblivious sense of illumination in the next. What holds Dern’s performance together as Amy whips back and forth between manic highs and deadening lows is an ardent, indefatigable expression that it’s possible for her to do something important with her life and potentially make the world a better place, no matter how crazy that world thinks she is. 

Dern returned to HBO in “Big Little Lies,” with her Renata Klein initially set up as an ostensible villain; Dern tears into the overbearing, bullying aspect of Renata, whether she’s stabbing the air with her hands like a maniac or giving a silent but icy glare, shouting her threats at the top of her lungs or whispering them with quiet menace. But there’s still a beating heart in her, a genuine desire to protect her daughter from pain (whether it’s violence at school or the more everyday hurt of someone skipping her birthday party), and the heartbreak in Dern’s voice when she voices her feeling of utter powerlessness (a control freak’s worst nightmare for minor issues, let alone real pain) is unmistakable. Much of the strength in “Big Little Lies” is its belief that flawed women can ultimately come together, forgive each other and help each other along; Dern’s performance is key to that.

And still, “Big Little Lies” had only the second-best Dern performance on television last year. There’s a nostalgic, near-breathless thrill in Dern’s first appearance as Special Agent Dale Cooper’s long-unseen secretary Diane on “Twin Peaks” (or “Twin Peaks: The Return”), an unmistakable callback to their close connection in “Blue Velvet.” Still, one couldn’t have predicted Dern’s delightfully cynical performance, all long drags on cigarettes and venom-spitting “fuck yous,” a far cry from the mostly upbeat Sandy. But even putting aside the eventual revelation about Diane’s nature, it makes sense after decades of disillusionment following a rape by the man she most trusted. That pain comes through in her reunion with Bad Cooper, her voice breaking, her breath quickening; it’s even clearer in her late-series breakdown, her shield of cynicism giving way to trauma flooding back. Even Diane’s return to normalcy is a pyrrhic and only temporary victory, with a sex scene with MacLachlan’s Good Cooper playing less like a triumph and more like a final, deeply sad shared moment between the two (which Dern somehow conveys largely with her back), one of the show’s many acknowledgements that trauma cannot be erased. 

“The Tale,” then, is instead a look at how one lives with that trauma. Fox’s gradual shift to acknowledging something terrible happened is not an easy journey, nor is it a simple one. The film deals heavily with the tortured self-rationalizations and denials employed by both survivors and abusers, ones both sincerely believed and desperately clung to. The final scene is confrontational without being fully cathartic, Dern’s belated but volcanic outrage a moment of her taking her past back (a real triumph) without any illusion that she has expelled that very pain. If there’s something Dern’s best work shows, it’s there forever; one can only try to make sense of it.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2x1Au7m

[rschristian]

Triumphs & Tragedies: Louise Bourgeois at the National Gallery  On Art Versed (May 2016)

Louise Bourgeois: No Exit is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Bourgeois (1911-2010) is best known for her large-scale sculptures, one of which is located in the museum’s sculpture garden. However, with twenty-one works, including drawings, prints, and sculptures, the exhibit provides an intimate look into the mind of a truly remarkable artist as she contemplated themes of life, death, domesticity, and womanhood.

The French-American artist was born to a prosperous Parisian family in 1911. Her family owned a gallery in Aubusson, the tapestry producing region of central France and home to Bourgeois’s mother’s family. The artist spent part of her childhood working in the gallery where her family sold and restored antique tapestries, helping repair them by filling in worn areas, using lines to indicate where stitches should be made. These experiences made a lasting impression, as displayed in Bourgeois’s early works on view in the National Gallery’s exhibition. The images recall the cascading rivers and mountain peaks of Aubusson, while simultaneously recalling the interweavings of textiles.

Louise Bourgeois, La tapisserie de mon enfance–Mountains in Aubusson (The Tapestry of My Childhood), 1947. Brush and black ink and gouache on cream paper: 19 x 12 in. (48.3 x 30.5 cm)Corcoran Collection (Gift of William H. G. FitzGerald, Desmond FitzGerald, and B. Francis Saul II) © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY 

She began her long and prolific career as an artist in the early 1930s after being introduced to the Surrealists, whose ideology centered on the creative potential of the unconscious mind. After marrying the American art historian Robert Goldwater and moving to New York in 1938, she became reacquainted with the European Surrealists who were exiled during the war. Yet, the artist herself denied the label of a Surrealist. “At the mention of surrealism, I cringe. I am not a surrealist.” Still, it is difficult to separate the whimsicality and bizarre juxtapositions of her work from that of the Surrealists, or even their predecessors, the Dadaists. The works in the show bring to mind Francis Picabia’s mechanical portraits, Max Ernst’s collages, or Joan Miró’s landscapes.

Louise Bourgeois, He Disappeared into Complete Silence, Plate 7, 1947. Engraving in black on wove paper. Plate: 17.78 x 13.65 cm (7 x 5 3/8 in.) Sheet: 25.4 x 17.78 cm (10 x 7 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Purchased as the Gift of Dian Woodner © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY

Instead Bourgeois preferred the label of existentialist, admiring the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s 1944 play, No Exit, from which the exhibition takes its name, is the story of three recently departed souls on their way to hell, anticipating the physical torment they are about to endure. As it turns out, the pain they experience in hell is not physical, but psychological. Their hell is being trapped in a room from which there is no escape for all eternity with the people they despise the most, each other – just imagine going to a dinner party with all the people you’ve ever blocked on Facebook, and then multiply that feeling by infinity. As Sartre famously says, “Hell is other people.”

Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1952. Painted wood and plaster, overall: 161.9 cm (63 3/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY

While Bourgeois draws her inspiration from Sartre, her personal hell seems to be the absence of other people. The nine engravings and enigmatic parables that volume He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947) show Bourgeois at her most Surreal. The subjects, ranging from a little girl who buried her coveted candy in the ground, only to find that it has been ruined by the damp soil, to a man who cuts up his wife and serves her at a dinner party, represent what the artist referred to as “tiny tragedies of human frustration.” The characters of her story show indifference, or even cruelty towards one another, conveying the deep sense of isolation that often embodies Bourgeois’s work. We are left with a sense of ambivalence towards them, they commit acts that signal both internal and external conflict. One plate tells the story of a loving but overbearing mother, and a son “of a quiet nature and rather intelligent,” but who is indifferent to his mother’s love. The prodigal son leaves, and later the mother dies without his knowledge. Three haunting, elongated figures occupy the space, prompting us to wonder who the third figure could be. The feeling we are left with is one of remorse and sympathy for the mother, but also for the son. The print could be semi-autobiographical, Bourgeois lost her mother at 21 years old, around the time she was beginning her career. This loss had a profound effect on her artwork, seen especially in her series Maman, and again in what could be seen as a companion piece, M is for Mother (1998). The latter, on view in the exhibit, is a drawing of an imposing letter M that conveys both maternal comfort and control. With such a conflict, Bourgeois forces us to question our relationships with those around us.

Louise Bourgeois, He Disappeared into Complete Silence, Plate 9, 1947. Engraving in black on wove paper. Plate: 22.54 x 10 cm (8 7/8 x 3 15/16 in.) Sheet: 25.4 x 17.78 cm (10 x 7 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Purchased as the Gift of Dian Woodner © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY

Like Sartre, she believed that free will was the essence of existentialist thought, but unlike Sartre, she also believed that our pasts inform our future. Deeply fixed memories inspired her oeuvre over the course of a remarkably long career. This reluctance to let go meant that she rarely considered a work finished, generally leaving open the possibility of a future iteration. One of her later books, the puritan (1990), deals precisely with this theme. This bound volume of eight hand-colored engravings on handmade paper takes place in New York, and is a story of lost love. “With the puritan,” Bourgeois explained, “I analyzed an episode forty years after it happened. I could see things from a distance…I put it on a grid…I considered the situation objectively, scientifically, not emotionally. I was interested not in anxiety, but in perspective, in seeing things from different points of view.”

Louise Bourgeois, the puritan (4), 1990. Engraving in black with additions in gouache on Twinrocker handmade paper with Japan gampi chine collé. Plate: 42.55 x 27.31 cm (16 3/4 x 10 3/4 in.) Sheet: 65.72 x 50.17 cm (25 7/8 x 19 3/4 in.) © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY

A number of sculptures are included in the exhibit as well, ranging from her small but recognizable cast Germinal (1967), to the life-sized sculptures the artist referred to as “Personages.” These sculptures, Bourgeois said, were made to be exhibited at ground level so that they could be interacted with “like people.” While they exist in our space, they also stand isolated and detached. Made from modest, often discarded materials and employing simple methods of construction, these totemic figures reflect a wartime sensibility of salvage and reuse in a damaged environment.

Louise Bourgeois, Mortise, 1950. Painted wood, overall: 152.4 x 45.7 x 38.1 cm (60 x 18 x 15 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY

Bourgeois’s work asks a timeless and essential question: in periods of conflict, uncertainty, or hostility, can we live meaningful lives? It seems to me that Bourgeois would say that it is in these moments that we are at our most authentic, and that the greatest struggle we have to overcome is not external, but internal. This is, however, a question Bourgeois would want us to answer for ourselves.

Louise Bourgeois: No Exit is on view until May 15, 2016.

[peaks-fever-dream]

Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 10

Air Date: 7/16/17

Warning: Contains Spoilers

 Locations:

     Twin Peaks, Washington

     Las Vegas, Nevada

     Buckhorn, South  Dakota

Deeply disappointed in the scene in which Candy hit Rodney. The moment she appeared chasing the fly, I thought she would hit Rodney. The moment they showed the remote, before she even reached down to pick it up, I knew that the remote was what she would hit him with. It was all obvious, cliché and telegraphed so much ahead of time that there was no element of surprise and thus no sense of humor left in the moment.

On a related note, it felt to me like Candy reacted way too quickly for it to be an accident. Like she knew what she was doing and how she should react to cover up her true motivations. Perhaps she is rebelling against her Bosses in the only way she knows how in order to get back at them for how they treat her, Sandy and Mandy.

I already knew that everything would show up fine for Cooper in a physical. He was always portrayed as a great specimen of health. What I expected was for the doctor to order an MRI, or at least a CAT scan, in order to look at “Dougie’s” his brain.

Although Cooper flapping his arms was hilarious, and the smile on his face was priceless, this whole scene left me feeling queasy and uneasy. Although she is supposedly his wife, it felt like she was taking advantage of someone who was, at least temporarily, mentally challenged and unable to give informed consent.

When Chad stole the letter, I purposefully looked at the name on the letter in order to compare it to the name in the end credits. Because I was watching it live the first time around, however, I did not have the time to write it down. By the time I got to the credits I thought that the last name was wrong, but could not tell for sure without going back. Before I had the chance to watch it for a second time, other eagle eyed viewers on the internet had already confirmed that the name was not the same. What made me wonder was the idea that a letter would be delivered the same day that it was mailed. I have lived in small towns and have actually witnessed local mail delivered in a day or two, but it still has to be processed through the station.

Duncan said to Anthony that the two of them had conspired to deny the Mitchum brothers their insurance money. But it was Anthony who, in Part 5, told his boss “Bud” that it was not arson and that they would have to pay it out. This makes me wonder if Anthony was going behind Duncan’s back to somehow pocket the insurance money for himself. My other thought at this moment was that he may be a double agent working with the Mitchum brothers as well, but a later scene in this Part does not at least appear to support this idea at this time.

As much as I wanted it, I had not been sure that Constance was available for Albert. We already knew that she had kids who were in principle Hastings’ school. I had not noticed her wearing a ring, though I had not purposefully looked for it, but that is the type of job where you would not wear your ring anyhow for health and safety concerns. It was interesting then that in this scene with Albert and Constance at dinner that she lifts her left hand up towards the camera while they are talking as if to purposefully show the audience that she is not wearing a wedding ring.

The way that Tammy and Cole were hanging all over each other as they witness Albert and Constance (after appearing to have been at dinner together themselves), there is little doubt left in my mind. The two are indeed involved. This makes me think back to the scene in Part 6 when Cole calls Albert, who is in his car on his way to go find Diane. Is that Tammy who was with Cole as he was enjoying his fine Bordeaux?

Candy appeared to continue to be purposefully messing with Rodney and Bradley there in the scene at the Silver Mustang casino when Anthony visited, continuing to hide her motivations behind the cliché of a vapid or ditsy blond. I like this idea that, rather than using the cliché at face value, they seem to actually be subverting the cliché.

Not sure yet what to make of Cole’s vision of Laura (from a scene in Fire Walk With Me). This does confirm that Cole is touched, which we have not seen confirmed before. The moment, unlike the scene with Candy earlier that was highly telegraphed, came out of nowhere and truly startled me.

Still having a hard time believing that Diane is working with Evil Coop. One of my problems before was that there seemed to be absolutely no indications in the earlier scenes with Diane that had suggested to me, looking back, that something was up between her and Evil Coop. The fact that Cole said here that he had felt it in her hug, which I had interpreted before just as awkwardness, does show that there was indeed some sign earlier that there was something going on. This still does not indicate, however, that it is Evil Coop that she is directly involved with.

Remember that the message came from a server in Mexico. This may prove important later.

There has been some talk of the slow motion approach of Tammy to Cole’s hotel room. My instinctive reaction was that this was just shot from her point of view, and as she is going to see her lover (though she has important information to deliver) her mind is in a kind of slow motion, dream-like space. Then her hopes are dashed because Albert is there. There certainly does appear to be some awkward glancing when she sees that Albert is present. After re-watching it, however, I am less certain of this. It seems like the background sounds are more ominous and foreboding, perhaps just preparing us for the information to come.

That we see Evil Coop in the picture at the Glass Box suggests two possibilities. The first is that Evil Coop was indeed the mysterious billionaire, and that he was instructing the other man on how the box works and how to handle it. The other possibility is that the other man is the mysterious billionaire who is getting information from Evil Coop on how it works. In either case, Evil Coop would not involve himself unless it directly benefits him. Perhaps the box was meant to trap Coop, but the cow jumped over the moon. So he had to fall back on his second plan with “Dougie” and Cooper’s assassination.

Rebekah Del Rio’s voice had blown me away in Mulholland Drive, and it did so again here. No Stars, written by Lynch, was truly beautiful.

[owl-cave-blog]

Eight

Part Eight: “Got a Light?”

The Beginning

David Lynch said in an interview for deadline.com published in May this year “The whole thing is about the experience of going into the world of Twin Peaks, and catching that mood, and going on a trip. And this is a beautiful thing. It’s a delicate world. I always say you should turn the lights down low, make sure there’s no interruptions, get as big a picture as you can, the best sound you can, and go for this experience.”

The recent eighth part entitled “Got a Light?” reassures us above all else that Twin Peaks remains an experience. A world both like and unlike our own, an absolutely absurd dimension that is just close enough to our own reality that we can be completely and utterly immersed within.

The episode starts off, in its sole predictable move, with the evil doppelgänger of Dale Cooper (whom I shall now refer to as Mr. C) leaving his prison, a federal penitentiary in South Dakota. His associate, Ray Monroe, awaits his arrival and then in a car placed outside on the orders of Warden Dwight Murphy, they leave together.

What follows is an uncomfortable drive, tension building from seemingly nowhere. The car is being tracked - but Mr. C quickly resolves this issue, still just as methodical in his actions as before he was incarcerated. In a toilet break called for by Ray, Mr. C makes use of a gun in the glove box, placed similarly to the car by the orders of Warden Murphy.

He needs some “information” from Ray but is denied it, Mr. C attempts to shoot but the tables quickly turn when Mr. C is the one that ends up shot. This is where the episode becomes far from predictable.

As Mr C falls, you can feel a change in atmosphere instantly. From the distance, shadowy figures similar to the beings we have seen haunting dark cells and empty corridors begin to appear. They flash in and out of existence and scurry toward Mr. C as time seems to slow down. An eerie slowed version of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” plays in the background, interlaced with deep screams, as the figures begin to perform a sort of ritual on the body. The ritual ends with a sight of BOB on a sort of black orb or tumour that seems to be removed from the body.

Ray manages to escape and update who is supposedly Phillip Jeffries over the phone. After a quick cut to The Roadhouse, we see Mr. C awaken. Is BOB still with him? We can only wait and see…

Impressions

That is where I will stop my recap. If you’re reading this, I will presume you’ve seen the part. If not, stop here.

What follows the scenes described above is hard to put into words exactly, some may perceive it differently. I was expecting a jump to Dougie’s latest antics, perhaps the first appearance of Audrey or the private discussion agreed to by Gordon and Diane. Instead, it was the start of something spectacular.

A countdown followed by the detonation of the “Trinity” atomic bomb, put to Threnody (to the Victims of Hiroshima), a piece of music that I seem to remember having links to David Lynch in the past, forgive me if I’m mistaken.

This scene alone opened and closed so many questions and for a good while, I think we were seeing the “pure heroin vision of David Lynch” as described by David Nevins, CEO of Showtime. I think this episode was created very precisely to have a big psychological​ effect on the viewers. It drew you in with what at the start of the series would have been a big difference from expectations - but by this point has become almost comfortable. It then went fully out there, a David Lynch art exhibition that fits into the programme’s history perfectly.

After it took us to 1956, it was kind of in the middle. It had the structure we have seen throughout the entirety of the third series, yet those events from 1945 were still very prominent and the visual style remained the same. The episode thrashed us around, pulled us out of our comfort zone and then showed us what could be released as a horror short film, yet it all fit into place perfectly.

It was actually viewing this episode that inspired me to write a blog. A lot of people have a lot of different theories and no one quite knows what is what yet. The thing about David Lynch is that even though his films and programmes combine art, psychologically disturbing imagery, melodrama and reality, the mysteries are the most realistic out there. If there is a mystery in life, there isn’t always a straight explanation.

Who can say we will ever fully understand the universe? Who can say we will ever fully understand life or even our own minds? When David Lynch creates something, he is very impulsive. This gives us the kind of mystery that can rarely be portrayed in film, the kind that doesn’t always have to have a right answer or a wrong answer. The kind that can be experienced and not necessarily understood.

If anyone would like to comment on that scene with The Giant (???????), please do. I think I get the gist of it, was Laura sent to counteract BOB when The Giant witnessed his birth? Or is The Giant almost like a ferryman into life? 

I am not sure who the girl is in 1956 either, it could be Sarah Palmer? This is one of the many things I love about Twin Peaks. I’m not entirely sure what is going on - but there are so many interpretations that you can sit, mull it over all day and still be excited and curious enough to discuss it and find out completely new theories.

This is where I will leave my post for today, though there are a lot of specific aspects I’d like to cover. I’ll do a full recap if any of you would like that specifically - but I think my next article before Part 9 airs will be on the use of music in Twin Peaks, one of the many reasons it is so outstanding.

Thank you for reading, feel free to comment!

- James D

[nicholxu-blog]

Tennis Shirts--2017/06/19

An upturned collar (or popped collar) is an otherwise flat, protruding collar of either a shirt, jacket, or coat that has been turned upward.

History

Origins

Before the early 20th century, most shirt collars were turned up in some manner. Men and women alike wore tall, stiff collars (as much as three inches tall), not unlike a taller version of a clerical collar, made either of starched linen, cotton, or lace. The writer H. G. Wells remarked in his 1902 book Kipps that these "made [the] neck quite sore and left a red mark under [the] ears." Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, men's collars were often detachable from their shirts, connected only by two removable collar studs (one in front and one in back). Detachable collars were very stiff, and either stood straight up (as in a Hamilton collar) or were pressed over at an ironed-in, starched crease (as in a Fremont collar). After World War II, mass-production gradually phased out detachable collars from ordinary dress shirts. Occasionally, one can still find detachable collar formal shirts, designed to be worn with a tuxedo or evening dress.

Lapels on jackets and coats, which resemble (and derive from) a longer collar, were and are also occasionally worn turned up. The frock coat of the 18th and 19th century often had a solid lapel that was always turned up. Gradually, toward the mid-to-late 19th century, however, lapels became folded down and "pieced out," in the peak, notched, or shawl lapel that one sees to this day. Today, however, a jacket lapel's ability to be turned up helps to provide an extra modicum of warmth when weather is cold or windy.

Tennis shirts

With the advent of the tennis shirts, however, the upturned collar took on a whole new purpose. In 1929 René Lacoste, the French 7-time Grand Slam champion, decided that the stiff dress shirts and ties usually worn by tennis players were too cumbersome and uncomfortable for the tennis court. Instead, he designed a loosely-knit pique cotton shirt with an unstarched, flat protruding collar and a longer shirt-tail in back than in front. This came to be known as the tennis shirt. Lacoste's design called for a thick piqué collar that one would wear turned up in order to block the sun from one's neck. Thus, the tennis shirt's upturned collar was originally designed by the inventor of the tennis shirt, himself, for ease and comfort on the tennis court, aiding the player by helping to prevent sunburn.

Gradually, as tennis shirts became more popular and were produced more widely, their use transcended tennis and was adopted for golf, polo, other sports, and everyday life. As the tennis shirt entered the popular culture, wearers were less apt to turn up their collar to block the sun if not wearing the shirt during sport or outdoor activity. Thus, most people began to wear a tennis shirt without the collar turned up, or turning them up only when involved in sport. The professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is known for this practice today; as the golf shirt is a looser-fitting descendant of René Lacoste's tennis shirt, off the course Zoeller wears his golf shirt's collar turned down, whereas one often observes him with an upturned collar while he is playing.

Adoption as popular culture trend

Initial adoption as trend

In 1980, Lisa Birnbach published The Official Preppy Handbook, in which she extolled the "virtues of the upturned collar". According to Ms. Birnbach, rather than being a sports innovation, the upturned collar on a tennis shirt was simply a signal that the wearer is a "preppy". Despite this obviously tongue-in-cheek characterization, Ms. Birnbach did correctly identify that one was more likely to view an upturned collar on the beaches of Nantucket than one would in middle America.

The book was a bestselling sensation. As a result, many people outside of the "preppy" enclaves of New England began emulating the style espoused in and categorized by Ms. Birnbach. As such, ordinary people in middle America who would not otherwise have done so began to wear the collars of their tennis shirts turned up as a popular culture trend, but not because of the collar's utilitarian purpose of blocking the sun. During the 1980s, many celebrities wore upturned collars. Joan Jett often upturned the collar of her leather jacket, as did Tiffany. Nevertheless, this style ultimately seemed to pass out of popular culture fashion by the middle of the 1990s.

Resurgence as trend

In very recent years, however, the upturned collar has undergone a resurgence in popularity as a trend in the popular culture, particularly in the United States, where some people began to refer to it as a "popped collar". It also gained popularity as a trend in Europe (perhaps after football star Eric Cantona). Although the upturned collar no longer seems to be in vogue with the majority of European youth, older people still frequently wear upturned collars. Recently, certain Americans still perceive the upturned collar to be a "preppy" status symbol. This trend seems no longer to be limited to tennis shirts, as some people turn up the collars of shirts not designed to be worn that way.

Today, some Americans regard the trend as having worn out, and thus the wearer of an upturned collar can be the object of mockery and scorn. Still, others continue to turn up their collars as a popular culture fashion. This has been bolstered by publicity from retailers with a middle-class clientele, such as Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters (although Abercrombie & Fitch company styling requirements for the 2006 Holiday floorset officially said that their workers should not be turning their collars up).

The upturned collar fashion has remained relatively popular over the years and decades, by celebrities who occasionally and sometimes frequently wear their shirts this way. This includes celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Sharon Stone, Kanye West, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Diane Sawyer, Suze Orman, Wendie Malick, and Morgan Pressel (pictured above right) and also by models and supermodels, such as Aishwarya Rai.

�awR,s+#

[opticien2-0]

PEAK 2017 Post-peak shopping in the run up to Christmas

The way people shop over Black Friday and the extended Christmas period tells us far more than how people are getting on with their present shopping. The changing way that shoppers are buying becomes magnified thanks to the sheer volume of transactions at this time of year. In addition, time-pressured shoppers look for, and adopt, new ways of doing things that they may then continue over the rest of the year. With this in mind, InternetRetailing is devoting a regular twice-weekly slot to peak shopping season 2017, highlighting the stories that struck us as most interesting over the last few days. Today the focus is on November’s footfall figures, and on how shoppers are planning their Christmas spending.

Footfall holds steady

Shopper visitor numbers to stores held steady during November, according to figures from the British Retail Consortium.

Footfall was 0.2% up in the month, compared to the same month last year, according to the BRC-Springboard Footfall and Vacancies Monitor for 2017, above the three month average of -1%, and a 12 month average of -0.4%. In November 2016, footfall had fallen by 1%. Some areas fared better than others: footfall grew in the South East and North Yorkshire ( both +1.6) but fell in Greater London (-0.1%), Northern Ireland (-2.4%), Scotland (-2%) and the South West (-1.5%).

Helen Dickinson OBE, chief executive of the BRC [IRDX VBRC], said: “November saw a slightly improved picture for shopper footfall as retailers enticed customers with early deals in the lead up to Black Friday. And while online continues to take the greatest share of Black Friday sales, stores continue to prove popular for visitors as showrooms and click and collect destinations.

“Though very welcome after four consecutive months of decline, the month’s growth in footfall is unlikely to signal a reversal of the longer term trend. As price increases for food continue to eat into household finances, consumer spending power for discretionary non-food items will inevitably weaken. So a cautious consumer may sap some of the sparkle from this year’s Christmas trading, which means retailers are going to have to compete even harder for customer spend, which is always good news for consumers.”

Diane Wehrle, Springboard [IRDX VSPR] marketing and insights director, said: “The marginal rise in footfall of +0.2% in November compared with a drop of -2% in October should be taken with a pinch of salt and sadly doesn’t necessarily indicate a change in the winter fortunes of retailers.

“November was characterised by significant discounting with flash sales of up to 50% off, which culminated in the Black Friday period at the end of the month. Whilst Black Friday was largely an online event, the rise in footfall of +3.3% from the first half of the month to the second half demonstrated that it drove activity into retail destinations, both in the lead up to it the day itself and over the weekend post Black Friday as shoppers collected online purchases.”

She said many trips were clearly driven by leisure rather than spending, with footfall up by 1.7% after 5pm, but down by 0.3% during trading hours.

“Indeed, with nothing fundamental shifting in terms of inflation or interest rates over the intervening period since October, it lends further weight to the frequently quoted argument that Black Friday simply shifted the Christmas trading calendar forward. In the light of this, we are anticipating that footfall will be further challenged into December.”

Shopper spending looks set to stay cautious Most shoppers (88%) will be spending ahead of Christmas, but they are keeping a close eye on cash flow, according to new research from retail and shopper marketing agency Savvy. It questioned 1,000 household shopping decision makers and found that 58% plan to shop online more than in previous years. Around a quarter (24%) buy presents throughout the year, 21% bought on Black Friday and 58% will buy in the first couple of weeks of December, and 25% will leave shopping till the week before Christmas, with 10% making last minute purchases. But 32% will spend less on Christmas decorations, 28% less on going out, and 30% buying less Christmas clothing. Some 65% say they are influenced by discounts and offers when buying for Christmas, while 26% expect to shop online on Christmas Day.

“Savvy’s latest research suggests that the slowing retail spending momentum we’ve seen in October and November is likely to continue throughout the Golden Quarter, as cautious shoppers watch their spending this Christmas,” said Alastair Lockhart, insight director at Savvy. “Reduced consumer confidence and uncertainty as we enter 2018 means shoppers say they plan to cut back on their Christmas spending in a number of areas.

“Retailers are already feeling nervous. Black Friday discounts were broad and deep at many retailers – more the feeling of the January Sales than a one-day spectacular. A toxic combination of weak sales momentum and discounting could have worrying implications. Retailers will be hoping for a pre-Christmas sales surge in the final weeks.”

The post PEAK 2017 Post-peak shopping in the run up to Christmas appeared first on InternetRetailing.

from InternetRetailing http://ift.tt/2AcGMhJ via IFTTT

[katherineyixiao-blog]

Tennis Shirts 2017/06/19

An upturned collar (or popped collar) is an otherwise flat, protruding collar of either a shirt, jacket, or coat that has been turned upward. HistoryOriginsBefore the early 20th century, most shirt collars were turned up in some manner. Men and women alike wore tall, stiff collars (as much as three inches tall), not unlike a taller version of a clerical collar, made either of starched linen, cotton, or lace. The writer H. G. Wells remarked in his 1902 book Kipps that these "made [the] neck quite sore and left a red mark under [the] ears." Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, men's collars were often detachable from their shirts, connected only by two removable collar studs (one in front and one in back). Detachable collars were very stiff, and either stood straight up (as in a Hamilton collar) or were pressed over at an ironed-in, starched crease (as in a Fremont collar). After World War II, mass-production gradually phased out detachable collars from ordinary dress shirts. Occasionally, one can still find detachable collar formal shirts, designed to be worn with a tuxedo or evening dress.Lapels on jackets and coats, which resemble (and derive from) a longer collar, were and are also occasionally worn turned up. The frock coat of the 18th and 19th century often had a solid lapel that was always turned up. Gradually, toward the mid-to-late 19th century, however, lapels became folded down and "pieced out," in the peak, notched, or shawl lapel that one sees to this day. Today, however, a jacket lapel's ability to be turned up helps to provide an extra modicum of warmth when weather is cold or windy.Tennis shirtsWith the advent of the tennis shirts, however, the upturned collar took on a whole new purpose. In 1929 René Lacoste, 

the French 7-time Grand Slam champion, decided that the stiff dress shirts and ties usually worn by tennis players were too cumbersome and uncomfortable for the tennis court. Instead, he designed a loosely-knit pique cotton shirt with an unstarched, flat protruding collar and a longer shirt-tail in back than in front. This came to be known as the tennis shirt. Lacoste's design called for a thick piqué collar that one would wear turned up in order to block the sun from one's neck. Thus, the tennis shirt's upturned collar was originally designed by the inventor of the tennis shirt, himself, for ease and comfort on the tennis court, aiding the player by helping to prevent sunburn.Gradually, as tennis shirts became more popular and were produced more widely, their use transcended tennis and was adopted for golf, polo, other sports, and everyday life. As the tennis shirt entered the popular culture, wearers were less apt to turn up their collar to block the sun if not wearing the shirt during sport or outdoor activity. Thus, most people began to wear a tennis shirt without the collar turned up, or turning them up only when involved in sport. The professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is known for this practice today; as the golf shirt is a looser-fitting descendant of René Lacoste's tennis shirt, off the course Zoeller wears his golf shirt's collar turned down, whereas one often observes him with an upturned collar while he is playing.Adoption as popular culture trendInitial adoption as trendIn 1980, Lisa Birnbach published The Official Preppy Handbook, in which she extolled the "virtues of the upturned collar". According to Ms. Birnbach, rather than being a sports innovation, the upturned collar on a tennis shirt was simply a signal that the wearer is a "preppy". Despite this obviously tongue-in-cheek characterization, Ms. Birnbach did correctly identify that one was more likely to view an upturned collar on the beaches of Nantucket than one would in middle America.The book was a bestselling sensation. As a result, many people outside of the "preppy" enclaves of New England began emulating the style espoused in and categorized by Ms. Birnbach. As such, ordinary people in middle America who would not otherwise have done so began to wear the collars of their tennis shirts turned up as a popular culture trend, but not because of the collar's utilitarian purpose of blocking the sun. During the 1980s, many celebrities wore upturned collars. Joan Jett often upturned the collar of her leather jacket, as did Tiffany. Nevertheless, this style ultimately seemed to pass out of popular culture fashion by the middle of the 1990s.Resurgence as trendIn very recent years, however, the upturned collar has undergone a resurgence in popularity as a trend in the popular culture, particularly in the United States, where some people began to refer to it as a "popped collar". It also gained popularity as a trend in Europe (perhaps after football star Eric Cantona). Although the upturned collar no longer seems to be in vogue with the majority of European youth, older people still frequently wear upturned collars. Recently, certain Americans still perceive the upturned collar to be a "preppy" status symbol. This trend seems no longer to be limited to tennis shirts, as some people turn up the collars of shirts not designed to be worn that way.Today, some Americans regard the trend as having worn out, and thus the wearer of an upturned collar can be the object of mockery and scorn. Still, others continue to turn up their collars as a popular culture fashion. This has been bolstered by publicity from retailers with a middle-class clientele, such as Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters (although Abercrombie & Fitch company styling requirements for the 2006 Holiday floorset officially said that their workers should not be turning their collars up).The upturned collar fashion has remained relatively popular over the years and decades, by celebrities who occasionally and sometimes frequently wear their shirts this way. This includes celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Sharon Stone, Kanye West, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Diane Sawyer, Suze Orman, Wendie Malick, and Morgan Pressel (pictured above right) and also by models and supermodels, such as Aishwarya Rai.

[jasonwanghandsome-blog]

Tennis shirts 2017/6/19

An upturned collar (or popped collar) is an otherwise flat, protruding collar of either a shirt, jacket, or coat that has been turned upward.

History

Origins

Before the early 20th century, most shirt collars were turned up in some manner. Men and women alike wore tall, stiff collars (as much as three inches tall), not unlike a taller version of a clerical collar, made either of starched linen, cotton, or lace. The writer H. G. Wells remarked in his 1902 book Kipps that these "made [the] neck quite sore and left a red mark under [the] ears." Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, men's collars were often detachable from their shirts, connected only by two removable collar studs (one in front and one in back). Detachable collars were very stiff, and either stood straight up (as in a Hamilton collar) or were pressed over at an ironed-in, starched crease (as in a Fremont collar). After World War II, mass-production gradually phased out detachable collars from ordinary dress shirts. Occasionally, one can still find detachable collar formal shirts, designed to be worn with a tuxedo or evening dress.

Lapels on jackets and coats, which resemble (and derive from) a longer collar, were and are also occasionally worn turned up. The frock coat of the 18th and 19th century often had a solid lapel that was always turned up. Gradually, toward the mid-to-late 19th century, however, lapels became folded down and "pieced out," in the peak, notched, or shawl lapel that one sees to this day. Today, however, a jacket lapel's ability to be turned up helps to provide an extra modicum of warmth when weather is cold or windy.

Tennis shirts

With the advent of the tennis shirts, however, the upturned collar took on a whole new purpose. In 1929 René Lacoste, the French 7-time Grand Slam champion, decided that the stiff dress shirts and ties usually worn by tennis players were too cumbersome and uncomfortable for the tennis court. Instead, he designed a loosely-knit pique cotton shirt with an unstarched, flat protruding collar and a longer shirt-tail in back than in front. This came to be known as the tennis shirt. Lacoste's design called for a thick piqué collar that one would wear turned up in order to block the sun from one's neck. Thus, the tennis shirt's upturned collar was originally designed by the inventor of the tennis shirt, himself, for ease and comfort on the tennis court, aiding the player by helping to prevent sunburn.

Gradually, as tennis shirts became more popular and were produced more widely, their use transcended tennis and was adopted for golf, polo, other sports, and everyday life. As the tennis shirt entered the popular culture, wearers were less apt to turn up their collar to block the sun if not wearing the shirt during sport or outdoor activity. Thus, most people began to wear a tennis shirt without the collar turned up, or turning them up only when involved in sport. The professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is known for this practice today; as the golf shirt is a looser-fitting descendant of René Lacoste's tennis shirt, off the course Zoeller wears his golf shirt's collar turned down, whereas one often observes him with an upturned collar while he is playing.

Adoption as popular culture trend

Initial adoption as trend

In 1980, Lisa Birnbach published The Official Preppy Handbook, in which she extolled the "virtues of the upturned collar". According to Ms. Birnbach, rather than being a sports innovation, the upturned collar on a tennis shirt was simply a signal that the wearer is a "preppy". Despite this obviously tongue-in-cheek characterization, Ms. Birnbach did correctly identify that one was more likely to view an upturned collar on the beaches of Nantucket than one would in middle America.

The book was a bestselling sensation. As a result, many people outside of the "preppy" enclaves of New England began emulating the style espoused in and categorized by Ms. Birnbach. As such, ordinary people in middle America who would not otherwise have done so began to wear the collars of their tennis shirts turned up as a popular culture trend, but not because of the collar's utilitarian purpose of blocking the sun. During the 1980s, many celebrities wore upturned collars. Joan Jett often upturned the collar of her leather jacket, as did Tiffany. Nevertheless, this style ultimately seemed to pass out of popular culture fashion by the middle of the 1990s.

Resurgence as trend

In very recent years, however, the upturned collar has undergone a resurgence in popularity as a trend in the popular culture, particularly in the United States, where some people began to refer to it as a "popped collar". It also gained popularity as a trend in Europe (perhaps after football star Eric Cantona). Although the upturned collar no longer seems to be in vogue with the majority of European youth, older people still frequently wear upturned collars. Recently, certain Americans still perceive the upturned collar to be a "preppy" status symbol. This trend seems no longer to be limited to tennis shirts, as some people turn up the collars of shirts not designed to be worn that way.

Today, some Americans regard the trend as having worn out, and thus the wearer of an upturned collar can be the object of mockery and scorn. Still, others continue to turn up their collars as a popular culture fashion. This has been bolstered by publicity from retailers with a middle-class clientele, such as Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters (although Abercrombie & Fitch company styling requirements for the 2006 Holiday floorset officially said that their workers should not be turning their collars up).

The upturned collar fashion has remained relatively popular over the years and decades, by celebrities who occasionally and sometimes frequently wear their shirts this way. This includes celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Sharon Stone, Kanye West, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Diane Sawyer, Suze Orman, Wendie Malick, and Morgan Pressel (pictured above right) and also by models and supermodels, such as Aishwarya Rai.

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The 10 Best New TV Shows of 2017 (So Far)

If choosing the 10 best new TV shows of 2017 sounds like a difficult task, trust us: It is. Even limiting the options to series that debuted before May 1 left us with any number of worthy near-misses, including the recent Dear White People and American Gods—both of which will surely have a strong showing when we update our list come September. (We also excluded one-off miniseries such as Big Little Lies, though new anthology series, like Feud, were eligible.) As with our ranking of the 20 best TV shows overall, though, the result still features entries for every taste, with oddball comedies (Santa Clarita Diet) and sharp-tongued teen melodramas (Riverdale) alike. The list even offers a glimpse of TV’s future: Unlike our overall ranking, which is dominated by broadcast, cable and premium outlets, streaming services landed six of the 10 slots.

Here are the 10 best new TV shows of 2017 (so far):

10. Detroiters Network: Comedy Central

The key to Detroiters is its sincerity, which shines through almost every episode without any kind of smugness or self-congratulations. Sam Richardson (Veep) and Tim Robinson (Saturday Night Live) genuinely love each other, and their families, and their advertising company, and most of all their city. (It’s Detroit. Detroit, Michigan. That’s where they’re from.) The tone gets dark at times, and Tim and Sam occasionally act petty or vindictive, but there’s almost none of the cynicism and mean-spiritedness so often found in comedy today. When they’re making illicit purchases in a back alley at night with Tim’s sanity-challenged father, they’re not buying drugs, but fireworks. When Sam unintentionally becomes a gigolo, it takes him a while to realize it, and he’s convinced he’s in love with his only client. When they accidentally run over prospective client Jason Sudeikis, it gnaws at them until they inevitably let Sudeikis run them over as penance. Without this sweetness, Detroiters would probably still be funny, but it wouldn’t be as charming or as powerful. Garrett Martin

9. Santa Clarita Diet Network:   Netflix  

What if one of the couples in Saturday Night Live’s “The Californians” started eating people and they began systematically and quite rationally (logistically speaking) incorporating it into their lives? Well, that’d be the bizarro comedy that is Santa Clarita Diet. Stilted and strange in its delivery of aggressively witty jokes, it’s a series that seemed to escape from a mad scientist’s lab unfinished—but that’s the point. It’s roasting Californian perfection for a delicious bonfire and stars Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant are obviously hungry for more. Jacob Oller

8. The Good Fight Network: CBS All Access

Admit it. You were nervous. I was nervous. We were all worried that there was no way The Good Fight could live up to our expectations. But it has. And then some. Without the confines of network television, showrunners Michelle and Robert King have flourished. Diane’s (Christine Baranski) fall from financial grace was a great catalyst to start the series, re-team her with Lucca (Cush Jumbo) and introduce new series regulars. Plus, the world the Kings have created is so rich, fan favorites including Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) and Colin Sweeney (Dylan Baker) easily weave in and out of this world. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: The Good Fight gives good spin-off. Amy Amatangelo

7. Patriot Network: Amazon

What if 007 dealt with his PTSD and the moral ambiguities of being a spy by revealing his deepest inner turmoil (and state secrets) at open-mic nights in Amsterdam? What if Q had trouble requisitioning his apartment with a single chair? And M sent him to work at a piping firm in the Midwest with an extra digit in his social security number? What if the American version of a Bond film replaced the car chases, femme fatales and slick gadgets with the dark humor of the Coen brothers, mixing deep ennui with side-splitting moments of levity? That’s Patriot in a nutshell. The stakes are high—keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of an Iranian extremist leader—but everything depends on our hero, John Tavner, (Michael Dormer) first navigating the mid-level corporate world of industrial piping. Josh Jackson

6. One Day at a Time Network:   Netflix  

I can’t remember a time I loved something the way I love the new One Day at a Time. Part of my affection stems from the fact that the show was such a discovery. It arrived January 6 of this year with almost no hype. I write about TV for a living and I barely knew it was premiering. Almost immediately I dismissed the show as yet another ill-advised remake. How wrong I was. The comedy is a pure delight. A throwback to the defining comedies of the 1970s with a modern twist, the show deftly tackles some hot-button issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, wage inequality and teenage sexuality, amid real conversations about generational differences and Cuban heritage and traditions. Justina Machado (Six Feet Under) is fantastic as the recently separated veteran raising her two adolescent children with the help of her mother Lydia (living legend Rita Moreno) and her landlord Schneider (Todd Grinnell). Moreno gives an amazing speech in the series 12th episode that should easily nab her an Emmy nomination this year. But above all, the show is funny and grounded. Once you start watching, you won’t be able to watch this gem one day at a time. Amy Amatangelo

5. 13 Reasons Why Network:   Netflix  

Here’s something ironic: One of the 2017 shows that might be the easiest to take for granted could very well be the one about a teenage girl who kills herself because she was taken for granted. Based on author Jay Asher’s young adult bestseller, 13 Reasons Why is about what happens when the bullying, sexting, betrayed friendships, doublespeak conversations, and sheer loneliness of high-school hell get too much for teenager Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford). But Hannah doesn’t go down without naming some names, and her suicide note comes in the form of an audio recording in which she recounts exactly what (and who) led her to fall into this pit of hopelessness. The message is that everyone had a chance to save Hannah from herself, even the adults. 13 Reasons Why is one of the most important TV shows of the season. Whitney Friedlander

4. Riverdale Network:: The CW

This is the way I’ve been selling Riverdale to friends who have not yet wised up and started watching it: it’s Gossip Girl meets Twin Peaks, but with the characters from Archie Comics. That alone should be enough to suck them in, but if they need more convincing, I add that Luke Perry plays Archie’s dad, Molly Ringwald plays Archie’s mom, Skeet Ulrich plays Jughead’s creepy hot dad (who is also the head of the local gang, the Southside Serpents), and for the first third of the season, Archie is boning his music teacher, Ms. Grundy—who, unlike in the comics—where she’s an elderly white-haired lady—goes around wearing heart-eyed sunglasses and picking up teen boys. It’s ridiculous and campy in all the right ways (hey, this is a CW teen drama, after all), but there’s also a compelling murder mystery driving the plot (“Who killed Jason Blossom?” is Riverdale’s “Who killed Laura Palmer?”), with new twists and turns peppered in along the way. Bonnie Stiernberg

3. Feud Network: FX

American Crime Story and Feud have proven that auteur Ryan Murphy is at his best when he has a short, concise story to tell. And so Murphy’s examination of the long-running rift between Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) and Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) was more than just an examination of their experience filming Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?: It’s also a condemnation of an industry that abused them and cast them aside and what happens when your self-worth is completely tied to your public persona. We could debate for weeks whether Lange or Sarandon gave the better performance. I say let’s call it a draw, because both women had career highs with this series. Jackie Hoffman had a breakout performance as Crawford’s maid, Mamacita (I would so watch the story re-told from her perspective). Aided by strong performances from Stanley Tucci, Judy Davis, Alfred Molina, Alison Wright and Kiernan Shipka, with just the right amount of camp and Pepsi thrown in, we wanted to be friends with Feud all this time. Amy Amatangelo

2. The Handmaid’s Tale Network:   Hulu  

With precise compositions and a rich sense of color, The Handmaid’s Tale envisions the intersectional, drawing the interlocking influences of gender, sexuality and status into its portrait of a puritanical dystopia not far from our own: “Blessed are the meek,” Offred (Elisabeth Moss) says in scornful voiceover, referring to the extremists’ empty dictum. “They always left out the part about inheriting the Earth.” Indeed, as she navigates Gilead’s stony euphemisms and loud silences, whether playing Scrabble with the powerful Commander Waterford (Jospeh Fiennes), flirting with his driver (Max Minghella), or (unsuccessfully) avoiding the ire of Waterford’s wife (Yvonne Strahovski), patriarchal dominion becomes the series’ unifying principle, the poison that soaks through the body politic “under His eye.” In this sense, the first great political drama of our authoritarian age is also, as with Atwood’s now three-decade-old novel, a kind of instant classic: Forever of our time. Matt Brennan

1. Legion Network: FX

We were introduced to Noah Hawley’s dark humor with Fargo, but Legion allows the writer/creator to play in a more fantastical sandbox—and thus to truly revel in a batshit crazy world. If ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. gave us the light-hearted comic-book action and Netflix’s quartet of interwoven series showcased the grittier side of superheroes, FX’s first partnership with Marvel embraces the insanity of a lesser-known X-Men character, making you forget it has any shared DNA with those blockbuster men in super-suits. The story is as much about Dan Stevens’ character’s grasp on reality as his struggle for survival. David Heller suffers from schizophrenia, but what’s real and what’s the product of malevolent forces is often unclear, with his friend, Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza), playing the imaginary devil on his shoulder. The production design, full of ‘60s/’70s psychedelia and striking color palettes, the cast, which includes Hawley’s Fargo collaborators Rachel Keller and Jean Smart, and the sharp writing make this another win for FX.

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WHY IT'S CHARISMA, 631, 372

And when they did finally take a CEO, they chose a guy with critical technical skills leaves, that's more of a disadvantage. Some VCs will say this is true for the sciences generally. I can't believe it will happen, but whatever the cause, we are clearly not meant to work in Silicon Valley don't make anything out of silicon, there always seem to make, and you could also do x. You can say either using Arc syntax if foo x 1 x 2 or x if foo 1 2 A symbol type. They made search work, then go work for an existing company for a couple years he may not sound so chipper. One thing we were curious about this summer was where these groups would need help. There is less stress in total, but more powerful than another.

Its main purpose is to communicate something to an audience that's easily fooled, whether it's Diocletian's Rome or Harold Wilson's Britain. Thanks for the intro! Hence what I call degeneration. In the future, investors will increasingly be outweighed by the pull of existing startup hubs. This imbalance equals opportunity. You can't snicker at a giant museum, no matter what the source. What changed there was not solubility but bigness. The goal is the same thing happened with food in the middle. 1-n is 1.

X children will grow up feeling they fall hopelessly short. When you're operating on the manager's schedule you can do high-resolution fundraising: if you have such an iron grip on our minds that even startup founders are. So what's going on, by all means, but remember later to look at stuff people use now that's broken. In a lot of people who make it often try to trick us. Certainly it was for us at Viaweb. If they're really ambitious, they like well-preserved old neighborhoods instead of cookie-cutter suburbs, and locally-owned shops and restaurants instead of national chains. When you make things in large volumes you tend to get discarded. I'm going to predict that despite the huge gap they'll have between acceptable and forbidden topics is usually based on how intellectual the work sounds when described in Web 2. Which means people with a passion for service.

How do you arrange the dials? Product development is a conversation with one of their products, then it isn't hard enough. The student was stealing his smells! After all, the average investor is, as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself asking should we fix payments, or build some kind of answer for, but more mundane technologies like light bulbs or semiconductors have to be on most. So if some friends want you to hold out for 100. And while it's impossible to do good work, not something you naturally sink into. Every time the site gets slow, I fortify myself by recalling McIlroy and Bentley's famous quote The key to being a member of the professional classes. So the inefficient market you get because there are so many essays yet unwritten. All the unfun kinds of wealth creation slow dramatically in a society where it's ok to be overtly secretive, but not totally unlike your other friends. Not necessarily a company that found a way to make something people want.

As McCarthy said later, Another way to counterattack is with metaphor. But what was good about Modernism, Calder had, and had in a way that makes them startup hubs. That's why I love working on something no one knew before. This article was given as a talk at the 2006 Startup School. We weren't writing this code for our own amusement. Pay was based on something separate that he did as a theoretical exercise—an effort to understand him. But of course it's going to stop to consider the possibility that he is wearing the wrong size shoes. Some didn't even have computers. Economically, it decreased variation in income. Don't push it too far. Either it's something they felt they had to work in a garage.

And so these languages especially among nontechnical people like managers and venture capitalists. Till now, VCs' claims about how much value they added were sort of like the government's. Tim is a smart move to put a market price on the help they offer or their willingness to help one another out, with no appointments at all? Fundraising is not what I remember from it, you probably need to be in a traditional research department. Bad as things look now, there is something amiss. So at the last minute I cooked up this rather grim talk. Not just founders, but investors have you by the hour. What did he say to do? It was a place people went in, but no one person would have high peaks.

If what you write: write in spoken language. How much you should put users before advertisers, even though the phrase compact disc player is not present on those pages. We'll see. There are too many dialects of Lisp. And what pressure it would put on the city if it worked. To What Extent? You make elaborate plans for a product could ever be so stupid. Casual fridays are out and dress codes are in writes Diane E. After software, the user could set up a still life of a few thousand people, the place doesn't have the sterile, walled-off feel that a typical large company's headquarters have. As long as you're at a point where I'll do without books. And yet because of the scale of the successes in the startup funding business.

Thanks to Harj Taggar, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Joe Gebbia, and Reid Hoffman for sparking my interest in this topic.