False Identity

Danny knew that if he wanted to escape Amity and all the chaos that was his life he needed to get a fake identity, move and go as far away as possible. He could probably ask Tucker or Technus, but he felt it was something he had to do on his own.

He made arrangements, destroyed the portal, said goodbye and ended up moving to Gotham. However his hacking job wasn't so good and he was discovered in an instant by the bats.

They decided to investigate him instead of confronting him directly, following Jim's advice that not everyone was running because of something malicious, Danny didn't do anything out of the ordinary.

He seemed to be adjusting to Gotham which was weird on it's own but the strangest thing he did was get a job in Penguin's Iceberg Lounge but that was more because of his job search than anything else.

His past records also showed nothing more than a child with poor grades and troubling injuries, probably caused by neglectful parents.

Damian began to fear the worst and hid the adoption papers.

Moon

“Don’t step into the moon,” was the cryptic message left by her predecessor, scrawled on the paperwork.

“Great help,” Sally Effords muttered as she stepped out of her car and looked up at the building her temp agency had contracted her out to. She stopped. “Oh, shit, no.”

The whole street was residential - including this… house? - but it stood out like a sore thumb in the morning sunshine. Gadgets and things-she-had-no-name-for stuck out everywhere from the two story brick home. Some strange sort of craft perched on top, and a huge sign hung into the street. Code violations obvious everywhere. 

Too bad she wasn’t working for the city anymore. She’d gotten paid by the violation. She’d have made two month’s rent on his place.

She glanced down at the paperwork, pointlessly rechecking the address. “Hate my job sometimes,” she whispered before hiking up her skirt and walking up the front steps of this monstrosity. “Secretarial work my ass.” She knocked. Perhaps nobody would answer the door and she could go back and find something else.

For the longest time, nobody did answer. 

She raised her hand to try knocking again when the door was wrenched open. An impressively large man was standing there, his bulk covered in some sort of bright orange overalls, a weird glowing headset over his eyes, and a thick head of gray hair. He filled the doorway, and was a half-step too close for comfort. “What?”

“Ballast sent me to fill your secretary job?” Sally asked, raising her chin and refusing to take even the smallest step backwards. She’d been employed by weirdos before, and this job offered a stellar bonus for making it through a week. “Sally Effords.” She held out her hand.

The man pushed back the headset. Handsome pale blue eyes were framed by an honest, open face and a pleasant smile. “A new one! MADS WE GOT A NEW ONE!” he shouted.

Sally set her jaw at the bone-rattling shout. “Yes,” she said, uncertain what else to say. She’d certainly been expecting a handshake, or a welcome, or something beyond a shout that woke up the entire neighborhood. 

A woman appeared in the small space left by the man’s bulk. She was in blue coveralls, gray peppering her red hair, with a pleased smile that was very like the man’s. “Excellent, Jack, but you could welcome her inside instead of making her stand in the street.”

A little knot in Sally’s stomach relaxed slightly. At least one of her new employers was normal-ish. She set the lady a smile. “Sally Effords,” she introduced herself, holding out a hand.

The woman didn’t shake her hand either. “Come on in,” the woman said. “I’m Maddie. Maddie Fenton. This is my husband, Jack.”

Sally let her hand fall to her side with a mental shrug. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. She stepped inside, trying to survey her surroundings without looking nosy. It was a living room, kitchen visible through a doorway, stairs that led up to a second floor. “Ballast said you were in need of a secretary.”

“Yes,” Maddie said. “Our business is in the basement, and I’m afraid the three of us are just lousy at paperwork. DANNY!” Her voice went from pleasant to a shout in a heartbeat. Sally had to fight down a flinch.

“What?” came a new voice from right next to her.

Sally did flinch this time. She was quite observant, had looked around, and there were only the two people nearby seconds ago. She glanced to her left, spotting a twenty-something man leaning against a wall. He had black hair that was longer than the typical male, a lean build, and normal clothing. How had she not seen him there? 

“She clean?” Jack asked.

“Obviously,” the younger man - Danny? - drawled. “She got in the house without setting off everything.” He smiled at her, blue eyes almost glowing. “Danny,” he said, holding out his hand for a handshake. “Are you enjoying meeting my parents?”

Sally shook his hand. “Quite.”

“It’s a pretty average FentonWorks greeting,” Danny said. “They don’t stand much on normal behavior.”

Maddie laughed. “We’re plenty normal, Danny.”

“Plenty,” Danny agreed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why don’t you show Sally the lab?”

“Yes,” Jack piped in, heading through the living room and towards the kitchen. Maddie was a few steps behind, talking about some sort of project they had going on.

Sally lingered near the door, wondering if she was expected to remove her shoes. She turned to ask Danny, but the man was gone. She spun in a little circle, convinced she hadn’t heard him head up the stairs or through the door, and knowing he hadn’t followed his parents. “Creepy,” she whispered, and kept her shoes on. 

Through the normal - if a bit outdated - living room was a kitchen that was similarly outdated, and quite a bit more beat up. Cabinet doors weren’t closed properly. Several drawers had long scratches. The table looked like it had been fixed several times by someone who didn’t quite know what they were doing.

She heard her new employers talking through an orange door. Sally walked over and found stairs leading down into a basement. “Okay,” she whispered, hesitating. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to head downstairs in this odd home. But she squared her shoulders and set her feet on the stairs.

The basement was lit with bright fluorescent lights. Shelving units lined most of the walls, and tables were scattered everywhere. Some sort of freaky closet was along the back wall, with round doors and hazard lights around it. Electronic bits and bobs were everywhere, wires and things scattered across the tables and shelves, and a general sense of haphazardness everywhere. 

“This is your desk,” Maddie said, pointing to the table closest to the stairs. Unlike the other tables, this one was covered in papers. A phone and computer was barely visible behind the stacks. “Jack and I work over there,” she gestured with a hand towards the other tables, “and Danny over there.” She pointed towards a spot on the other side of the stairs, a smaller table that was noticeably cleaner than everywhere else. 

Sally blinked, spotting the younger man already sitting in a chair. He gave her a little wave. How had he gotten down here so fast? Was there a back way down?

“So, yes,” Maddie said, walking over to the paper-covered table and studying it with her hands on her hips. “I suppose the first thing you’ll need to do is organize it. The last one left in a bit of a hurry...” She dug through the piles, pulling out a random piece of paper and holding it out.

Sally took it, glancing down at it. A basic listing of secretarial duties with almost no detail. ‘Answer the phone’ was on there, but nothing about the standard greeting for the business or where to route calls that came through or how to take memos. Her mouth twisted. Businesses like this set up temps for failure. 

She now understood the nice bonus for making it through a week. This place was a kooky disaster. “Sounds like a plan,” she said, aiming for a brisk and business-like tone and giving the woman a smile.

Maddie smiled back, that same open and honest expression she’d had before. “Jack and I will be over there. Yell if you need us.”

Sally nodded. ‘Yell’ was likely not an overstatement. Then she turned to the table, studying it. Organization was one of her talents - it’s why she loved the library jobs. She cracked her knuckles, wishing she had chosen something a bit more practical than a pencil skirt and heels to wear today. She’d know better for tomorrow. First things first, figure out what she was organizing.

Halfway through cleaning off the table, sorting the papers into a dozen stacks on the floor and debating whether or not ‘by date’ or ‘alphabetical’ would be a more logical sorting system, she glanced over at her new employers. The two elder Fentons were busy tinkering one something-or-other. The younger Fenton was doing something on his computer.

So far, the people were kooky and the house was weird and full of odd hazards she would have to start making a list of, but the job seemed relatively standard. Why had they run through two dozen temps in just three months?

Her mouth twisted into a frown as she picked up another bit of paper. Perhaps she should have done a little more research on this business before she arrived. The paperwork had made it seem like a scientific company that did research and development for the government. 

“How’s it going?”

Sally flinched, glancing over her shoulder. The young man was standing next to her, studying the piles she was making. She hadn’t heard him walk over - he was an impressively quiet walker wearing those thick boots on the hard floor. “This is quite a stack of papers,” she said.

Danny laughed and crouched down, picking up one of the stacks and flicking through it. “My parents collect a few things. Paperwork seems to be one of them.” He set the papers down where he’d found them, then picked up a different stack with a blanch. “Is this really a whole stack of warning letters from the city?”

“Yes.” Sally watched the disbelief settle onto the man’s face. “Didn’t you know you were getting them?”

“Not really,” Danny muttered, setting them down and moving on to a new pile. “It’ll be really nice to have this organized and in some sort of working order. My parents waste a ton of money each year because of this,” he gestured towards the mess. 

“Can’t get a stable secretary?”

“Can’t convince my dad we need one.” Danny shot her a smile. “My mom’s on board. She hates answering the phone and doing paperwork. My dad still thinks he’s handling it just fine.”

Sally had to fight to keep the expression on her face bland - this mess certainly wasn’t just fine, but she wasn’t going to offer negatives against her boss on the first day. “I enjoy organizing, so this works for me,” she said.

Danny chuckled. “That good.” Then an odd expression settled on his face. “Do you have any idea what we do here?”

“Not particularly. It’s a private R&D company for the government, according to the paperwork.”

His head tipped to the side. “You live in Amity Park and you’ve never heard of FentonWorks?”

Feeling like it was some sort of trick question, Sally hesitated. But the smile on his face was polite and nice, and so she answered honestly. “No.”

He nodded slowly, the smile growing. “Excellent.” 

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re the first person we’ve hired that’s… actually done work.”

Sally blinked up at him. “What?”

“Well, there were a couple that pretended. And there was the one that, I think, was actually going to work but she wouldn’t step foot in the lab. But the rest? Nah. They just straight-up were trying to steal stuff.”

Sally glanced around. Wires. Gadgets. “Why?”

Danny shrugged, then pointed at the piece of paper in her hand. “Like that. Next-generation, million-dollar patent.”

She glanced down at the paper she’d picked up. It was the third or forth such piece of paper she’d found. Sure enough, it was a patent. “Million-dollar?” she repeated, trying to not sound doubtful.

“There’s people that would pay you a hundred thousand bucks if you’d just slip that into your bag and bring it home.” Danny’s eyes glittered, like he was holding back laughter. “I’m surprised none of them stopped you on the way here and offered.”

“Are you actually being serious, or tugging my leg?”

“Nah, honestly.” A shoulder went up and down. “My parents don’t give one little rip about it. They used to, but they’ve made so much from their government contracts that they’ve stopped paying attention.”

Sally thought about the broken, out of style house she’d walked through to get here, still skeptical about the man’s claims. 

“Yeah, all they care about is this lab,” Danny said, seemingly following her train of thought. “The upstairs is simply a place they sleep, and sometimes eat.”

“Oh.” Sally set down the patent - perhaps a little more carefully than before - and studied the piles of paper. If the young man was being honest, this paperwork was worth tens of millions of dollars. Still thinking about all that money, she absently asked, “Do you think they’d like it organized alphabetical or by date?”

Danny broke out laughing, a genuinely happy sound that made the other two Fentons pause and look over. “I don’t think they have any idea what either of those are. Organization is an alien concept for them. You decide.”

“I can do that. I might need some containers for all this, otherwise it’ll just get messy again.”

He stood up and grabbed the phone, turned the receiver over, and pulled off something taped to the bottom. It was a credit card. He held it out to her. “Maybe take a long lunch break. Stop at the store and get what you think is best.”

“Uh…” Sally stared at him. She’d worked here for a few hours, and he was handing her a credit card already? The credit card was a shiny silver, with ‘FentonWorks’ listed on it. “How much-”

“It’s got a quarter million dollar credit limit,” the man said with a grin. “Spend what you want. Don’t go nuts, but get something that’ll last. Avoid the dollar stores. It goes back under the phone when you’re done. Unless you have a better plan so it doesn’t get lost.” With that, he walked away, stopping next to the strange, lighted closet. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he told his parents. “Gonna go grab a friend.”

“Yup,” Jack said, waving a hand. “I’ll save some lunch for you.”

He glanced at her, smiled, and pushed a button. The doors of the closet opened on their own - but it was no closet behind the doors. It was a mass of swirling gas that seemed to glow like the full moon on a dark night.

“Don’t step into the moon?” she whispered, remembering the odd comment scrawled on her paperwork. “What is that?” And assuming his story was true, what had her predecessor tried to steal from inside the closet?

The young man took a large step backwards and vanished into the mist. The doors of the closet slowly closed behind him. 

Sally waited, watching, wondering what in the world was with the doors and the weird moon-shine gas behind it. When nothing happened, she shook her head and went back to sorting through the paperwork. Alphabetical she decided, nodding to herself. She glanced at the credit card, wondering if this whole thing was some sort of joke. She’d try it out at lunch, just to see.

She was mentally planning through what she’d get - she had a bit of a knack for design, after all - when the closet doors swooshed open again. She looked up into the shine, and two somethings stepped out of the moon. One resolved itself into Danny Fenton. Then other…

Papers fluttered from her nerveless fingers, as she suddenly put together the name FentonWorks and the local news she’d read about over the last decade. “Oh my,” she whispered. “Oh... shit.”

Crash Course | Chapter 04: A Busy Queen Bee

Fandoms: Danny Phantom, Batman,  

Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton,

Characters: Danny Fenton, Jazz Fenton, Ghost Writer, Clockwork, Observants, Pariah Dark mentions, Random ghosties mentions *boo*

Words: 2′549

Tags: BAMF Danny, BAMF Jazz, Sibling bonding, Shenanigans, Swearing

Summary: He swore his sister was trying to make him go into cardiac arrest - considering his halfa status that was quite the accomplishment-

But there was no other explanation to his sister’s stubbornness, and if he knew her at all there was just no talking her down from interning at goddam Arkham.

A/N: The academy location is what the Gotham Academy Comic brought up to the table on it’s pages. Gotham Academy IS across the road on that comic.

 Complete madmen, I’m telling you. That’s child endangerment right there and like HELL I’m passing up this opportunity HAHAHAHA.

 This is going to be a disaster.

CHAPTERS: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

-.-.-.-

Danny was quickly writing down on his journal every single little thing that could be helpful to deal more efficiently with his workload, had been rather busy lately, and normally he would just wing it and be done with it, but this time there were some things he had to take into consideration before he started to poke bears with sticks. 

One of the most important?

When you are dealing with ghosts, you have to take into account that they have a thing called obsession. 

It’s their drive. The reason behind their actions and continual existence upon this world, and as such, a good way to guess what makes them tick.

Danny liked to pretend he was not a slave of a fucking obsession, but considering he was still fighting the ghosts, with no payment to speak of, and after the massive amount of times someone had used his face to scrub the streets-

The fake it ‘till you make it ideology only carried you so far in life.

His friends called it a hero-type obsession. 

Danny didn’t think that fit quite right. 

When he couldn’t turn a blind eye on one of his, particularly reckless, actions he preferred to describe it as a protection streak.

Obsessions were ‘born’ the moment of one’s death, after all. 

And there had been nothing heroic in the way he had died. 

He had been scared shitless.

The moment it had clicked in his head that he would most definitely die right there, all the reasons why he didn’t want to die yet flashed by his mind, all those places left to visit, his dreams of going to space, going out with his friends, his family- My god, Jazz …

He would leave his sister behind.      

He was leaving her alone in this godforsaken house with their parents. 

Even after all the years the Fenton siblings spent calling living in the Fenton household ‘survival’ they had only been playing around. It was supposed to be just a joke. Something to lighten and make fun of their weird family dynamic. 

It wasn’t supposed to escalate like this.

And now- n-now their parents had demonstrated that they were apparently more than capable of killing off — if accidentally — one of their children, what the fuck would prevent them from murdering the other one?  

Who was going to protect his sister?

The fear for his well being had rapidly transformed into dread for his sister’s future. A tremendous and sudden rush of protectiveness had inundated his being. 

And that was it for him.

The next time he had recovered some semblance of coherence he had awakened as a fully minted halfa and there was no going back. 

 Some months later, after learning more about his situation and what it meant, he had been capable of identifying what was the drive behind his ghost half. Jazz had been the catalyst, but apparently the sheer feeling of protectiveness had been what his soul had latched onto. So while his sister was a big priority, he recognized that he still felt somewhat inclined to protect in general. 

He still refused to call it an obsession, though. 

So Protection Urges it was.

Apart from keeping a constant watch on their house —for both their sake’s, truly—, when the ghosts started running wild all over the place his new ghost instincts had come to the conclusion that a safe town meant a safe sister — and a happy sister. Jazz would blow a fuse worrying about getting lynched by the town when they realized the older Fentons were at fault of the destruction of their homes. And he would worry about his sister getting skewered. An intervention was in order —, so, most of the time this protection was reserved for the humans, considering the weak things tended to get trapped in the crossfire between the ghosts and their obsession or even other ghosts.

There were also moments when humans would turn against other humans. But in a place like Amity — where the citizens felt a certain level of kinship against the ghostly invaders and tended to stick together — those tended to be scarce and far between.     

The occasions where his protection streak would show up in favor of ghosts weren’t as numerous, but they existed. They tended to be either when the G.I.W. got their imbecility involved, his parents were hell-bent on getting subjects for dissection or when other fucking ghosts insisted on being fucking assholes.

After all the time he spent dealing with ghosts it was undeniable there were good ghosts out there, and no matter the reason, when he helped these ghosts out most of them tended to be openly grateful. Some promised him their allegiance, others gave him their respect, and a good bunch of them would find subtle ways to stay under his protection. 

Once the almost disaster that had been Pariah Dark was over, some of the ghosts had started to actively request  his protection.  

Some of the most aggressive ghosts had started to back down, shit, even Walker was not bitching at him as much as he used to these days. He would think he was going soft, but he still looked at him like something the dog had dragged in — which, ok, that was true sometimes because Wulf, or even Cujo, but there was no need to be rude —, Danny didn’t really mind, Walker wasn’t his favorite person either. 

So things were a little better for him when he visited the Ghost Zone, and he could make things somewhat better for the weaker ghosts that relied on him for protection. As far as Danny was concerned he was doing fine in his protection duties. Fast forward a pair of months and the Ghost Writer was kind enough to inform him that while he was doing an excellent job with the fighting aspect, he sucked in all the others.

Apparently, when a ghost asked for the protection of another ghost they were requesting a lot more than just a ‘fight for me’. — And how the fuck was he supposed to even know that? — This, of course, also meant that they were willing to offer a lot more in exchange. But Danny wasn’t as focused on what he could get in return as in the fact that he was apparently lacking on his role as protector. 

Not on his goddamn watch.

Damn his fucking urges.

Later on, with more time and experience to sort through this wreck waiting to happen and after he finally got the chance to met more of the sovereigns of the Infinity Realms and personally witness their interactions with their people, he would start to understand what exactly this new role he had stumbled upon meant. 

For the moment the only thing he deemed as the first priority was supplying the ghosts under his care with a safe space to exist. 

According to the Ghost Writer, giving them a safe space would normally translate into welcoming them into his lair, because the weaker ghosts that normally requested protection didn’t have the proper energy levels to make one of their own.

The problem with that was that he didn’t have a lair. 

…Not necessarily.

GW hypothesized that, as he was so attached to his hometown and spend the most part of his time in there, it was likely that his ghost half recognized the entirety of Amity Park as his lair, and as such his instincts hadn’t seen the construction of one for his own use in the Zone as necessary. Or something along those lines. 

That had been a bump on the road for his plans. 

Nonetheless, a Fenton does not know when to fucking stop, so he kept at it. 

When he nagged clockwork about it the older — or younger, whatever he was at the time — ghost had said that winning a fight against a ghost king meant inheriting their lair by right of conquest. So technically speaking, Danny did have a lair now, no matter how creepy the thing was.

That was all good and dandy but didn’t quite resolve the main problem.

Because now the problem was that Pariah’s goddamned keep — now Phantom’s —,   was ‘guarding’ one sleeping murderous king, and two fucking powerful artifacts. And opening the doors to what amounted to a small army of random ghosts while those things were there was not a good idea. 

But, seeing as Danny was not about to expose ghosts or humans to each other, there was no way he was letting his ‘people’ into Amity, so the castle it was.

Considering the significance the crown, ring, and even fucking Pariah held for the zone, the Observants would have to get involved for decision making, because of course, they had to shove their nonexistent noses on everything.  

As anyone would have predicted, it was a goddamn pain to reach some kind of agreement when such uptight guys were involved. The halfa acknowledged that finding a place to these things was important but after two hours of debating back and forth over it, the situation was getting ridiculous. 

Danny, being pretty annoyed already, had asked if they could just melt the damn things and be done with it. 

The Observants nearly had a coronary. 

Clockwork would have succeeded in looking chastising if he hadn’t been so busy trying to hide the smirk blooming in his face from witnessing the eyeballs’ ruffled distress. 

They explained to him exactly why doing something like that was completely foolish, Phantom retorted that leaving two ancient artifacts of immeasurable power, and a psychotic slumbering ex-king in a creepy castle guarded by fear factor alone was fucking foolish.

The Observants countered saying that if the new high king would just fucking accept his position and wear them then they wouldn’t have to worry about the artifacts. Phantom disagreed in principle because the new high king would have to be as imbecile as the last one to let himself get possessed by a fucking ring.  

The halfa dutifully ignored most of the implications thrown in that particular conversation.

Happiness belongs to the ignorant.

In the end, they had all acquiesced 

A good thing, because Danny had been more than prepared to throw the tantrum of the century if any of them tried to get that goddamned cursed ring anywhere near his fingers, and there was no fucking way he was going to parade around wearing a fucking crown on fire — or otherwise—, he had an ice core for ancients’ sakes.   

In the middle of the ghost-catfight, Danny had stated that he would only agree to use the damn artifacts as long as they found a way to get rid of the goddamn curse of the ring and make the gaudy crown less of a fire hazard.

The Observant sniffed pompously, saying that the notion of them not knowing how to do such a simple thing was ridiculous, Danny’s eye twitched as he sneered, because ‘Why the fuck haven’t you done it already then?’

The Observants shifted nervously. Danny sneered harder. Clockwork stopped trying to pretend he was not enjoying himself. 

One of the Observants finally disclosed that the issue was not the knowledge but the power needed to pull off such a thing. With newer things, transferring powers from a thing to another was relatively easy. With millennia-old artifacts with such amount of power inside, though? Near impossible. Not even taking into account that the artifacts Danny wanted to ‘mess with’ were — however cursed  — an ancient heritage of the Infinity Realms.

“Then we ask for help.” Phantom said curtly, crossing his arms over his chest. 

This declaration resulted in a row of rapid blinking among the Observants. It was fucking weird to watch. 

“Ask who for help, exactly?” Came the uneasy reply.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he drawled, pushing his hand through his already messy white hair and massaging his aching temple while he was at it. 

“I think what Daniel is trying to say is,” Intervened ClockWork after letting Phantom loose on the Observants as long as he could get away with. The boy was a real wonder. “If we need power and permission to ‘ mess with the ancient heritage ’ then the better option would be to consult with the Kings and Queens of the Infinity Realms. Wouldn’t you agree?” the ghost of time finished sending a playful little smile to the ruffled Observants. 

At the end of the day, all this chit chat resulted in the official formation of the High Council of the Infinity Realms. 

For Danny, the best thing about this Council was that most of them, like him, had a bone to pick with the Observants.  

Which didn’t mean that they agreed with him on everything he put forward, but it still makes him quite satisfied, all things considered. 

Once established the first order of business had been, of course, dealing with the artifacts and Pariah. 

Phantom suggested from the get-go stashing pariah into a more discreet, less flashy location than his previous castle, and transferring the powers of the ring and crown into new non-cursed-or-flaming-and-better-named jewelry. 

These things had been a trademark of the ruthlessness of Pariah’s reign, after all. 

Taking into account that all of the ghosts sovereigns had either been present for Pariah’s carnage or were more than aware of the repercussions it caused, it was not much of a surprise when it was an almost unanimous vote in favor of the notion. It would have to be discussed further to decide on the precise details, but for the most part that was the general sentiment. 

The Observants had seethed for a while, but they couldn’t do more than resign themselves after the majority of the votes cast were in favor of a complete change.  

They had still insisted on keeping a goddamn crown as mandatory, and he could have kept going with his bitching but Jazz had been trying to teach him how to pick his battles, and this one was not worth more of a sore throat.

All of this hassle because he wanted to give some homeless ghosts safe heaven into his previously non-existent lair. 

Once done, with the artifacts and Pariah taken out of the keep, he realized some redecoration was in order before anyone lived in this place. He thought about asking ClockWork but decided to let him deal with the Council Shenanigans and went to bother the Ghost Writer instead.  

The dude sure had some strong opinions on color schemes and furniture. 

Danny shook himself out of his daydreaming, he had gotten carried away. 

He put his pen down, taking advantage of the little break in writing to stretch his cramped limbs and back like a cat before looking over his chicken scrawl spread all over the journal’s pages. 

If he dealt his cards well a single chat with the High Council and a visit to the castle would be more than enough to start the preparations. 

Danny’s eyes zeroed in the last column of names he had written on the page.  

That only left the more- mmh, particular cases. 

He let his chin rest on the palm of his hand, releasing a low hum while a little smirk slowly made itself comfy on his features.

Now, for the fun part.

-.-.-.-

NOTES:

You might be wondering, “Did she just made Jazz the root of Danny’s obsession?” And the answer is yes. Yes, I did. -.-.-.-

Frostbite’s name in the Latin American (Or is it from Spain? Don’t know :v )dub is “Congelación” (which means ‘freezing’) and I don’t know how to fucking deal with that. It does not sound anywhere as cool as the original :’v

Maybe it’s because I’m not used to hearing “congelación” applied to something as awesome as a goddamn ghost yeti.

Or maybe not.

Who knows. -.-.-.-

I swear I’m trying to get these two to Gotham, but It feels like I’m dragging Danny there kicking and screaming. Which is- appropriate, I suppose. -.-.-.-

There would be more details of the High Council integrants later (I think?) and the dynamic I’m going to put here, not like you can’t guess some of them already *wink wink nudge nudge*

Doctor Sleep - Review

11/11/19

Directed by Mike Flanagan (Intrepid Pictures)

Based on the relatively recent Stephen King novel from 2013, Doctor Sleep is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, a film adaptation also based on a King novel of the same name. Danny Torrance has grown up into Ewan McGregor and is still haunted by the ghosts from the Overlook Hotel. An alcoholic, and his life going nowhere, he finally finds an AA support group and turns his life around. He gets a job as an orderly, where he comforts people (along with a cat) as they die. Danny discovers another shining person, a teenage girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) who is probably the most powerful shiner anyone’s ever seen. She is discovering her abilities, and struggles with how much she reveals to her parents. A nomadic group of soul-sucking vampires lead by a woman named Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) is searching out people with the shine to kill and consume them. 

I haven’t read the book Doctor Sleep, so any judgement of characters and plot I can only attribute to the film adaptation. It’s like signing a death warrant to try and make a sequel to such a legendary and over-analyzed film, but I’m surprised and happy with how well it turned out. Doctor Sleep is full of fan service, and it’s best to go into it knowing as little as possible. The most  memorable parts of this movie take place in the final 40 minutes, and for those who are familiar with Kubrick’s Shining, you’ll be able to appreciate the ending the most. I’m not going to say or spell out were or in what nature of this final locations is, as it’s worth discovering on your own. Doctor Sleep is a long film, about two and a half hours, and just like every Stephen King book I’ve read, I feel like some of the movie could have been trimmed down. It takes a while for adult Danny to begin his journey and purpose for this film, but once it gets there, the movie became much more effective for me.

The second most memorable element of the film, for better or for worse, are the villains. Rebecca Ferguson is beautiful and alluring, but her acting isn’t anything incredible. However, her gypsy mannerisms and lifestyle did remind me of many people I know in real life who identify as hippies, yogis, and other new age “spiritual” people, so I give a lot of credit to the film for recreating such a specific kind of people I know. Her and her band of a dozen soul eaters felt like something from another film though. Their glowing eyes and psychic abilities felt a little like something out of an X-men or superhero horror story. There is one scene that shows how despicable and irredeemable these nomads are, and all I can say is its one of the most gruesome child death scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. Knowing this is par for the course for these villains, and how many times they must have done this for hundreds of years cements their deep level of inhumanity. I love to hate their unsympathetic nature, and brief expositional dialog reveals one member in particular may have been the source of vampire and other monstrous myths throughout history, living for at least a thousand years.

Even Abra and Danny have their powers expanded on, but I felt like they had too much agency and control over their shine, and the movie felt a little too superhero-like, demystified the supernatural stuff too much. Some characters even have powers that go beyond reading minds and acting as a conduit for spirits. Telekinesis, Jedi mind tricks, and astral projection are just some of the specific abilities different shiners have in this film. I did like how they talk about how many people in the world have a bit of shine, such as passing a test without studying, or unwittingly bringing home flowers for your wife who’s had a bad day. Also according to the movie, apparently these days people have less shine than they used to, with an offhand remark about Netflix or smartphones dulling people’s magic. I’m not sure what makes someone a great shiner, but it seems like the story is saying the more dull your mind, or the less empathetic you are, the less you shine.

Something I love The Shining for is that it’s a horror movie with zero jump scares. I was hoping Doctor Sleep would honor that style of fear, but I was dead wrong. One of the things I like the least about this movie are the countless jump scares, especially ones disguised as scene transitions. Many times a loud noise or musical queue would get a jolt out of me, and I found it to be incredibly cheap. Maybe I’m just sensitive to those sorts of things, because everyone online is going out of their way to say how this movie is not scary, I feel like I walked into a trap. I thought these sorts of moments would be dulled closer to the end at “that” final location, but it only exasperated the jump scares. I was hoping for the more subdued style of the original, but maybe only Kubrick could have pulled that off.

Doctor Sleep has a lot of great cinematography and serves as an excellent source of fan service for those who love The Shining. While I don’t think any of the acting is particularly great, all the actors do a good enough job, and I was a particular fan of the actors who played Dick Hallorand’s ghost and Danny’s mom in flashbacks (representing Shelly Duvall’s mannerism’s very well). There are some nit picks I have about the events taking place in the final act of the film, but talking about those would fall into spoiler territory. I’d say this is entirely an optional movie to see for fans of The Shining. The soul eating vampire clan feels out of place for a Shining sequel, but I do like how horrifying they were portrayed, and appreciated how sexy Rebecca Ferguson was. I have my issues, but this is still an effective horror movie that I think general audiences will like, but it certainly won’t be as revered and analyzed as the movie it follows. 

7.5/10

Ten Guilt Free Minecraft Server Host Tips

Naturally, you will need to subscribe to the Switch's online service to take full benefit of the game, but Nintendo is at the very least providing a yr-long subscription with the $70 Mario Maker 2 bundle. Nintendo also did a surprisingly good job of adapting the extent editor to the Change's controllers, something you will want to make use of each time the console is docked to your Television. Ludwig, Sam, Senior Editor Jess Conditt and Contributing Editor Danny Cowan hunkered down for one more episode of the Tremendous Joystiq Podcast. In 2015, Facebook launched M, an AI-powered personal assistant inside the company's Messenger app, solely to shut down the platform after two-and-a-half years. In accordance with Fb, the simplicity and sandbox nature of Microsoft's well-liked title make it the perfect coaching ground for a generalist assistant AI. Life seems excellent for Boomer. Still, as I talked to him, he noted the big affect his father’s dying has had on his life.

The core sample of a typical life in Infestation: Survivor Stories is this: Log in, spend twenty minutes running although repetitive, boring environments, discover something fascinating, get killed by a sniper whereas attempting to strategy that one thing interesting, log out, repeat with new character. As I write this, there are 8,000 individuals taking part in Infestation: Survivor Stories on Steam. There aren't really many surprises both -- you may find a couple of warp pipes and extra coins, but that is about it. That provides a layer of depth that you don't find in the opposite trendy MMOs which have used extra simple list kind crafting methods, where you get the identical results the entire time. Many will be bought with in-sport currency, but the prices are so astronomical that you are more likely to have provides fall from the sky and land in your bag than to have the coin available to make the acquisition.

Adult MMOs have begun so as to add related techniques more just lately, however KingsIsle was doing it years earlier than. You will have experience searching the appropriate institute to join a level course or a career course. Won’t be able to affix Realms or servers unless a dad or mum modifications their account settings. 3D Realms and Gearbox cannot seem to resolve who owns the Duke Nukem license, so after all they're taking the dispute to the authorized realm. And like the remainder of our Shared Internet hosting plans, we additionally supply full help for Premium Shared Internet hosting customers. The original Tremendous Mario Maker debuted on the ill-fated Wii U in 2015, and it additionally made an appearance on the 3DS (with the sad omission of online assist). Thankfully, the Swap is a much better gadget for really building Mario ranges than the Wii U or 3DS. Principally, that's as a result of it has a capacitive touchscreen show, so selecting options and moving items around the stage is more like swiping your fingers in your cellphone. The in-game store gives numerous helpful gadgets and upgrades similar to ammunition, meals, drinks, and drugs. The listing exhibits all of the objects you can craft, what supplies they require and the amount of mentioned materials you presently possess.

The game additionally provides just a few multiplayer choices: You can create stages with a good friend. The objective of this sport is to discover, collect resources, craft and fight. Arcane Legends pulls from Darkish Legend's twitch-based combat. It is inconceivable to play Super Mario Maker 2 with out having a huge smile on your face. minecraft servers was the ultimate take a look at of a rogue's skills, and i loved having full management over my group's success and failure. I did not get an opportunity to test these out for this overview, unfortunately. If you are plum out of ideas, there are also some helpful tutorials to information you through early stage improvement. And, on high of it, there isn't only one however loads of how to earn cash with this thrilling sport. That's why we carry you first impressions, previews, hands-on experiences, and even comply with-up impressions for practically every recreation we stumble throughout. The early games' reliance on generic animations -- i.e. treating characters primarily as entities inside a recreation system -- put a lot of strain on the dialogue, whereas in the present title the essence of an idea can come throughout in a glance on a character's face, leaving gamers free to take their time learning all the names and allegiances.

2021 Fantasy QB Sleepers

Finding value at the quarterback position during your draft provides a major edge. It’s tough to pass on flashy skill players in the early and middle parts of the draft, but in single-QB leagues, reaching for a quarterback often starves you or a premier wideout or running back. You can find good value on those positions in the later rounds, but it's easier to find a legit sleeper or breakout candidate at QB. Even if you prefer to draft a QB early, dipping down in the rankings for a potential steal late can pay off in the form of a trade once the season starts. The perfect picture of a sleeper quarterback is Justin Herbert last year. In single-QB redraft leagues, he was often undrafted, only to finish as a top-10 option at the position. Speaking of guys going undrafted, if you’re not in a deep league, be sure to keep an eye out for some of the sleepers below during the early part of the season. At least a few will be available on the waiver wire, so be ready to pounce if they have a hot start.This year's list features six players locked in quarterback battles. All have major upside if they run away with their respective jobs.  Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins People were quick to write off Tua after a lackluster rookie season, but remember that he was coming off a serious hip injury suffered during his final year at Alabama. Although his rookie season wasn’t what many hoped, he did show off his ball placement and accuracy skills. The Dolphins went out and got him two receivers that excel in getting open deep, Jaylen Waddle and Will Fuller V. They play more to Tua’s strengths than DeVante Parker or Preston Williams. Tua already has experience hitting Waddle in stride, and they should pick up right where they left off. Mike Gesicki and Hunter Long are more than serviceable options at tight end, too. Put simply, Tua wasn’t set up for success in 2020. In ‘21 he is, and he could easily outperform ADP. Baker Mayfield, Browns Mayfield finished behind the likes of Cam Newton last season at QB17. It’s not that Mayfield doesn’t have weapons or isn’t a promising young passer; he just doesn’t get the volume. He’s in the Ryan Tannehill range of passing attempts.However, there's no shortage of firepower on the Browns’ roster, and Baker has shown capable of making big plays.PlayerProfiler.comranked Baker as the No. 2 quarterback in "money throws" last season (throws requiring "exceptional skill and athleticism" or "throws executed in clutch moments"). That can’t be ignored. With household names like OBJ and Jarvis Landry, the Browns offense always has the potential to explode. Behind an elite offensive line, Baker should sit comfortably in the pocket regularly. Additionally, the Browns offense will be among the league leaders in red-zone attempts, resulting in some easy passing touchdowns. He’s accurate and he’s not afraid to make big throws. Any increase in passing volume could mean a great year out of Mayfield. Daniel Jones, Giants Jones definitely has things going in the right direction. Saquon Barkley is coming back and Kenny Golladay is added into the fold. Whatever your opinion may be on KaDarius Toney, he’ll help the offense move the ball. If Danny Dimes can get the ball in the hands of his playmakers, he could enjoy a fantasy-relevant season, especially if he averages north of 30 rushing yards per game again. At his low price in drafts, he’s a low-risk, high-reward player -- optimal for a backup if you take a QB early. Jameis Winston/Taysom Hill, Saints Winston, with his newfound eyesight, has a ceiling as high as a top-10 QB. Assuming he wins the quarterback battle with Taysom Hill, a Sean Payton offense led by a gunslinger has a nice ring to it. If he limits his turnovers, he could easily see 5,000 yards passing with close to 40 touchdowns in a 17-game season. (Though Michael Thomas'ankle injury clouds the optimism a bit.)Even in his disastrous 30-INT season with the Bucs in 2019, Winston put up a QB3 finish. Of course, Winston could just as easily lose the starting job and Hill could be a top-10 candidate, like he was during his starting run last year,thanks to his rushing floor. Winston would be the higher-ranking, higher-reward player, but Hill would likely be more consistent if he winds up starting. Drew Lock, Broncos Lock, like Winston, is another ‘throw caution to the wind’ gunslinger, but he hasn’t had any past success, even with solid weapons around him. He completed just 57.3 percent of his passes in 2020 and hasn’t shown much promise. But as we know, crazier things have happened in fantasy football. Does Josh Allen turing into an elite passer in 2020 ring a bell? Lock has nowhere close to the rushing upside as Allen, but another year in Pat Shurmer’s offense could turn the tide. Shurmer isn’t a sexy name, but he did lead a 2017 Vikings offense that produced a QB7 season from Kirk Cousins. With the weapons around Lock, he surely has the potential to do something similar. Jimmy Garoppolo/Trey Lance, 49ers The Jimmy G era is coming to an end in San Francisco, but when? In the year the 49ers made it all the way to the Super Bowl, Jimmy G finished at QB14. With even more weapons now, his ceiling is even higher if hewinds up being the full-time starter for the 49ers this year. But that’s okay. According to FantasyPros, Garoppolo is coming off the board at an average draft position (ADP) of QB33. We could see an Alex Smith/Patrick Mahomes situation where Lance sits for a year to be groomed as the future starter. If that’s the case, Jimmy G will absolutely shatter that ADP. On the flipside, Lance has tremendous upside if named the starter early in the season. His rushing upside presents a solid fantasy floor. At NDSU, Lance posted 48 total touchdowns, over 1,100 rushing yards, andjust one interception. That’s not a typo. This suggests he won’t throw himself out of the game very often. He’s coming off the board before Garoppolo, and it’s probably a smart move to draft both of them if you draft either, depending on your league’s format. Justin Fields, Bears Fields could vastly outperform his QB19 ADP. He has the tools to be a stat stuffer, and his low ranking is an indication of the unknown. Mobile rookie quarterbacks have a solid floor, but his success will depend on how long the Bears coaching staff pretends Andy Dalton is worth keeping in there. If Fields wins the job early in the season, he could be the best guy on this list. Read the full article

The Blues Project - Projections

The band name implies the blues, and that form of music was certainly part of The Blues Project’s repertoire, but their eclecticism was apparent in everything they did. Projections was their second album, and the first one created in a recording studio. By this time they had received some national attention from their first album, a live one that lead to some touring around the U.S. Their first time in a studio lasted all of three days. While the tracks they produced included songs that they had been playing, new songs were written by band members that ended up on the album. None of these songs were blues numbers, but rather drew from folk, jazz, rock, R&B and pop elements; even a touch of classical. Steve Katz, who played guitar, harmonica and sang, wrote his first ever composition for Projections. Intended to be called September Fifth, it ended up on the album as Steve’s Song due to some confusion between the label and the band’s manager, Jeff Chase. It is a folk-pop composition which has an extended minute and half intro featuring Andy Kulberg’s flute playing plus Roy Blumenfeld’s underpinning on drums, which also comes off with a classical feel to it as well. Al Kooper wrote the other two original numbers. The album’s closing track, Fly Away, was apparently about Kooper’s failed marriage, but ends the record in somewhat of a light and flowing manner. It was his jazzy composition, Flute Thing, that got a lot of attention. This again featured Andy Kulberg on flute, with good counterpoint from Kooper’s organ playing, and the suitable percussion work of Roy Blumenfeld. The uniqueness of this piece made it an “underground” favorite among the growing number of “experienced” music listeners. In a 2015 interview with Frank Mastropolo for Ultimate Classic Rock, Roy Blumenfeld said “The lead-up to the song Flute Thing, that became the Muzak to a lot of folks' acid trips out there on the West Coast. It was, so to speak, their metaphoric elevator.” Both sides of Projections open energetically with blues/gospel songs arranged and sung by Al Kooper. Blind Willie Johnson’s (Lord) I Can’t Keep From Crying starts the album off, first implying it is the blues, but moving at a frenetic pace, it quickly goes psychedelic; the band propelling it to a high crescendo as lead guitarist Danny Kalb brings it to a close. Wake Me, Shake Me comes from a traditional gospel song, but it too builds into high energy. It was a song the band liked to improvise on and was often the closer for their performances. The band’s energy level alternatively rose and fell with the four numbers on side one. After Steve’s Song came the Chuck Berry rocker, You Can’t Catch Me. One of the band’s first big gigs was opening for and then backing up Berry. Kooper said, “That one had a really cool kind of groove to it that we got into. Danny (Kalb) did a real sterling job of knockin' that one out of the park when he would do it.”. Finishing side one, it was all Kalb in this slow-paced tribute to Muddy Waters, playing his Slow Train Running. Al Kooper said of it, “We started playing it and as we became a better band it became a better arrangement. And there were amazing things in it. It was a really great arrangement. It's nothing like the Muddy Waters version.” Even though the recording was nearly eleven and a half minutes long, it stayed powerful and moving right to the end. Kooper goes on to say, “What's really funny is on the version that's on the album, Danny's string went out of tune and as part of the arrangement he tuned it back up. It was fabulous, we didn't have to stop. Normally you would stop. But he made it part of the arrangement. That was a great moment.” Danny Kalb added, “We were up there in the studio and there's magic in the air. We were right before the end and I hit one bad note, but I quickly made the bad note into a good note in a quarter of a second. And the thing comes together and ends right and we've got a masterpiece.” No credit to the engineers, who were setting up for the next artist, Eric Burdon, to come into the studio, according to Steve Katz. The Blues Project had an opportunity to be on a bill with Muddy Waters and they played Two Trains Running. Reflecting on this, Danny Kalb said that when he later saw Waters leaving the club, “So right before Muddy opened the door to go, I went up to Muddy Waters and I said to him, "Mr. Waters - well, what did you think?" And I knew at that point that he knew what I was asking him. And he said to me, "You really got to me." If I had died then, it would have been enough.” Another slow blues number on the album was Caress Me Baby by Jimmy Reed, which The Blues Project also put there own spin on, with Danny doing lead vocal and guitar once again. Another folk-pop song rounded out the album, Cheryl’s Going Home by Bob Lind. Lind had released the hit song, Elusive Butterfly, and that song was the B-side of the single. Kalb says of it, “That was a song by another composer, Bob Lind, I just listened to recently. The Blues Project version is excellent, Bob Lind's version is excellent, it's the best of both worlds.” In the 2015 interview with Mastropolo, Kalb, Katz and Kooper all had derogatory comments about their experience with the record label. Kalb: “Unfortunately, the record company just wanted to make a few bucks. They were not interested in the artists, and on the back of Projections, one of the great albums of the '60s, I don't think our names are on it. That's criminal.”, and “I think that the way the Blues Project has been either forgotten or dissed is disgraceful. We were one of the most exciting bands in the period. We took big chances, spiritually and musically”. Katz: “I have to say that our record company was really awful. There were things like that that were missed. From changing the name of my song, from not giving us enough studio time, not putting our names on it. There were just a lot of mistakes. There always were with Verve Folkways.” Kooper: “We never saw the cover until it was in the store, and all stuff like that. We had zero control. We never heard the mixes 'till it was in the store.” Despite that the album did moderately well on the Billboard Top 200, hitting No.52. With a producer like Tom Wilson, who had already worked with Boy Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, The Velvet Underground and The Mothers of Invention, it was too bad that he and The Blues Project weren’t given a reasonable opportunity in the studio, and to have their say about the finished product before it was released. With all that, they still managed to create a tour de force.

I suppose in buying this album I basically thought I was getting a “blues” record. I had heard some of the music from The Blues Project’s  Live at Cafe Au Go Go when I was at the home of a friend of mine, Kenny Wardell, and so was familiar with their name. Kenny, who was older than me went on to become a radio personality at stations in Sacramento and the Bay Area, including KFOG back in the ‘90s. That record was mostly blues, but there were a few folk-pop songs on it as well. When I finally got around to it, I mail ordered Projections, and along with the first Grateful Dead album, made this the first time had personally purchased multiple albums and used mail order to buy them. My mom had been doing so for quite some time through Columbia and RCA record clubs. All I remember is that it was some company in New York City.  By the time I purchased Projections, Verve Folkways had changed to Verve Forecast, but my album was apparently in the midst of that change. The back cover said Verve Forecast and a slightly off-kilter Verve Forecast sticker had been applied to the front cover, but the end panel still had Verve Folkways on it. The record itself says Verve Forecast. Considering some of the concerns the band had about their treatment by the label, this was of little consequence. I had heard rumblings about the song Flute Thing before I got the album. I may have even heard it, but once I got the album I began to really appreciate it, even if I wasn’t using LSD. It was the first piece of music I ever recalled hearing that featured flute, except perhaps its’ role in Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolf suite. The rest of the record grew on me very quickly. I've learned a lot about the blues since I got this record, and I still appreciate the way these Greenwich Village Jewish white guys played it. Of course it wasn't all blues, what with the jazzy Flute Thing, and songs that were pop and folk based, R&B and rock and roll, plus some gospel to spice things up. I hadn’t thought of it as having anything psychedelic to it, but it turns out indeed it did. Both I Can’t Keep From Crying and Flute Thing fit that bill. Projections was my introduction to “long songs”, something that attracted me to future albums at times. At a total length of over fifty minutes, it was likely the longest album I had heard of up to that time. I had a few records that topped out at nearly half that long. The two songs on the album that were long, Caress Me Baby at 7:12 and Two Trains Running at 11:20, were both slow-burn favorites of mine. I have a special memory regarding Caress Me Baby. As time went by as a young man I always thought it would be a cool slow dance song. In 1968 my best friend and I decided to DJ a New Year’s Eve dance for an organization we belonged to. Another friend’s dad loaned us his great home sound system and we alternated as DJ throughout the evening. Not long before that event I met a an attractive young lady and invited her to be my date. She hung out with me while I spun discs and we partied and danced while John did the honors. By request he finally gave me the opportunity to dance with my pretty date to Caress Me Baby. Soon the young lady was my girlfriend, and four years later to the day, she became my wife. Thank you Blues Project, and thank you John. Can’t Catch Me was the first Chuck Berry composed song I ever had, and it too is a favorite of mine. Overall, the eclectic variety of the music, weaving in and out of fast and slow, jarring and relaxing, bluesy and folksy, worked well for me. It is still one of my favorite all time albums. It was ironic to see band members complain that their names weren’t on the album. Somehow I managed,  back in the day, to figure out who they were. Perhaps I read something in the SF Chronicle. By that time changes started occurring, such as Al Kooper leaving, forming Blood Sweat and Tears along with Steve Katz, and eventually recording Super Session with Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills. Turns out not long after I got the album Kooper left the band, but I didn’t learn that until later. Eventually he went on to produce Lynyrd Skynryd’s first three albums. I didn’t hear of the band Seatrain until quite some time later, but as it turns out the roots of that band tied in directly with the demise of The Blues Project. Andy Kulberg and Roy Blumenfeld had formed Seatrain with four other musicians in 1968, after one more Blue Project album had been issued. When they released their first album on the same label, Verve Forecast, the label insisted it be under the name Blues Project. Essentially this was the first Seatrain album, but the next year they officially released their “first” Seatrain album, Sea Train on A&M Records. The band was formed in Marin County, CA. Ironically Roy Blumenfeld, a New Yorker, eventually ended up living in Marin County. I became aware of this when I went to Don Quixote’s International Music Hall in Felton, CA in 2011 to see the Joe Cohen band with Greg Douglass, Bruce Barthol and Roy on drums. I had never ever thought I’d meet up with a member of The Blues Project, but I’ve seen Roy several times since as well.

The formation of the band came about after a compilation album called The Blues Project was released by Electra Records in 1964. Danny Kalb was paid $75 for recording two songs on that album. With the British Invasion, things began to change musically. Kalb changed from acoustic to electric guitar and in early 1965 formed the Danny Kalb Quartet, which included rhythm guitarist Artie Traum, bassist Andy Kulberg and drummer Roy Blumanthal. Steve Katz replaced Traum soon after, when Artie went to Europe for the summer. After adding singer Tommy Flanders the group became The Blues Project. They auditioned for Columbia Records who summarily declined to sign the band. Al Kooper had been hired by Columbia’s Tom Wilson to play keyboards as a session musician at the time of the audition. Kulberg and Blumenthal had worked with Kooper during the recording of another compilation album put together by Electra and was invited to join The Blues Project. Meanwhile producer Tom Wilson left Columbia and went to Verve/Folkways, then signing The Blues Project to that label. This soon lead to the first album project for the band. In November ’65 and January ’66 the live recording was done. By the time of its’ release Tommy Flanders had left the band, thus he was only in a few of the tracks. That release occurred quickly after the last recording was done, the album coming out that very January. It had some reasonable success and the band ended up touring to support it. That April they received rave reviews after their appearance at The Fillmore in San Francisco. The recording of the next album, Projections, took place in the fall and was released in November. By spring of ’67 Kooper left and the band completed their next album, Live at Town Hall without him. That album was not all it seemed to be. There was only one actual Town Hall live cut, while other cuts were from other venue live performances, plus recording outtakes using canned applause. The album did contain the band’s only charting single, Al Kooper’s No Time Like the Right Time. It has been called one of the "great hit singles that never were”. Kooper left after a disagreement with Danny Kalb about Al wanting to add a horn section. Kalb then disappeared for a few months after a bad acid trio, but he resurfaced in time to play with the band at Monterey Pop. It was said that he was in a deeply depressed state just prior to that event. Not long after that Katz left the band followed by Kalb. This lead to the Planned Obsolescence album that was in reality the new band Seatrain. With a modified lineup  (including Kalb and Blumenfeld, plus Flanders on the 1972 album) three Blues Project albums were released in 1971-73, the final one being called The Original Blues Project Reunion In Central Park, which included Kooper, but not Tommy Flanders.

Jeff Tamarkin sums it up well in his 2018 review of The Blues Project in Best Classic Bands, “Sadly, the band is not well known today among younger rock fans, but many who were around at the time still cherish their small but potent output, particularly the one studio set that encapsulated everything that made the Blues Project a great ’60s band.” I firmly believe they were a great band for any time period, and that there is still time for younger generations to know and appreciate their music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blues_Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_(The_Blues_Project_album)

https://bestclassicbands.com/blues-project-projections-6-20-18/

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-blues-project-mn0000041899/biography

https://www.allmusic.com/album/projections-mw0000202605

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/blues-project-projections/

http://www.theblues-thatjazz.com/en/blues/796-bluesproject/24626-the-blues-project-projections-1966.html

https://www.discogs.com/artist/252489-The-Blues-Project

Flute Song Live at Monterey Pop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oIE95Ro9Ms

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCCF5F612C7F6E73F

LP20

How Roger Corman Finally Restored His Uncensored Vision for The Masque of the Red Death

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The Masque of the Red Death, Roger Corman’s masterful 1964 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, has been fully restored and can now be seen in all its diabolical splendor. The seventh of eight “Poe Cycle” films Corman made in the 1960s, Masque is arguably the best. Before its release, Poe had already delivered Corman from the low budget black and white films he shot in 10 days in the 1950s to the relative luxury of three-week shoots and psychedelic underworlds. 

The new DVD/Blu-Ray is the first fully uncut, extended version of the film to be available. Besides restoring cinematographer Nicolas Roeg’s sumptuous camerawork, we get extra scenes which were cut by censors. The package also includes a 20-page booklet with a new essay from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ film preservationist Tessa Idlewine.

The original “The Masque of the Red Death” short story was published in 1842, and it is only 15 paragraphs long, shorter than a Cracked article. To fill out the horror feature, screenwriters Charles Beaumont, who wrote episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, and science fiction author R. Wright Campbell incorporated Poe’s short story “Hop Frog” as a subplot, and added elements of the short story “Torture by Hope” by Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

While Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death has discovered new life as a comforting modern parable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was released in 1964, many took the film to be a comment on the nuclear nightmares of the Cold War era. It did open the same year as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. And atomic bomb fallout resulted in its own “Red Death,” leading to an entire generation to be assured the living would envy the dead. The film was filmed during the Profumo Scandal of 1963, and British tabloids were filled with stories of “Man In The Mask Parties” in Hyde Park Gate.

“I have Tasted the Beauties of Terror”

As an Anglo-American horror movie, The Masque of the Red Death continues European genre progressions set by the Italian Gothic film, Beatrice Cenci, directed by Riccardo Freda in 1956, and Mario Bava’s 1963 film La frusta e il corpo (The Whip and the Body). Corman’s influences went beyond genre, however, incorporating the post-apocalyptic imagery of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. In Masque, Death’s messengers report survival rates to their Master, who calculates only “a dwarf jester and five other people remain alive in the world.”

In an interview about the film’s restoration with Den of Geek, Corman admits he “should watch more genre films to keep up with it. But I’m more inclined towards somewhat more serious films, and particularly foreign films.”

The Masque of the Red Death also appears to owe a great debt to American experimental independent filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome (1954), and recalls Michael Curtiz’s 1933 horror film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, which was shot in the pink-and-green two-color Technicolor process.

After years of black and white exploitation pictures for American International Pictures (AIP), Corman’s Poe cycle began his move to color, and the exciting new challenges of shooting beyond monochrome. The adaptation of The Masque of the Red Death set a new level of excellence in Corman’s use of set dressing, lighting, and costume design. They are given a fuller palette.

Says Corman, “I always thought that Poe represented the unconscious mind, and I shot according to that. It was one of my themes.”

In Poe’s story, the pride of Prince Prospero’s palace is seven rooms. Each is decorated and illuminated in a specific color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet. The last room is black and bathed in light which shines a deep color of blood. All of the furniture is black, including a clock, which chimes each hour. At the chime of the clock, the revelers at the masquerade freeze. The musicians stop playing. The dancers strike a pose, and all conversations stop. Revelry resumes when the chiming stops. The rooms represent the human mind, the blood and time infuses corporeality. Corman’s direction manages to let that seep into every frame. The tone is both mischievous and chilling.  

The Masque of the Red Death is atmospheric. The dialogue is more important than the action, but the settings and framing are paramount. “I felt the unconscious mind doesn’t really see the world,” Corman explains. “The conscious mind sees the world with eyes, ears, and so forth, and simply transmits information. So, I made a point on all of the Poe films of never going outside unless I absolutely had to. I wanted to have full control, to shoot within the studio. Whether it came through to the audience, I don’t know. But at least in my own mind, I was able to deal with special effects with a number of things, with the concept of the unconscious mind.”

The cinematography was done by Nicholas Roeg. While Corman hadn’t yet become acquainted with Mario Bava, Roeg’s camera allows the Italian horror director’s psychedelic influence to surge through the camera. The Masque of the Red Death “was the first I had done in England,” Corman tells us. “And they showed me a work of a number of English cameramen, and I thought Nic was the best of the group. And the collaboration went very well. I thought he did really, a brilliant job [with the] camera work.”

Roeg would go on to direct classic independent cinema with films like Don’t Look Now, Performance starring Mick Jagger, and the David Bowie cinematic encapsulation, The Man Who Fell to Earth. “I never knew, did I inspire him to be a director, or did he feel ‘if Roger can do it, anybody can do it?’” Corman wonders.

While Corman had a bigger budget and more time to make the film, cost- and labor-cutting alternatives occasionally provided fortunate outcomes. “Danny Heller, my art director, and I, always went to what was called a scene dock in studios where we’re going to work,” Corman says. “The scene dock contained flats from previous pictures, just individual flats. When we did Masque of the Red Death, we found these magnificent flats from Becket.”

The Price of Evil

Vincent Price has the most delicious delivery in this film. His devil worshipping Prince Prospero is the cruel sovereign of a village plagued with an all-consuming Red Death, and Price’s inflections are infectious. His voice is seductive, and his cruelty brims with good humor.

“He had the character pretty much set in mind when he came into it,” Corman remembers. “Vincent always did a great deal of preparation. We would discuss the characters, just Vincent and me, before the rehearsals. He and I were in agreement on the character, and then he would bring that character to the rehearsals. We did not do a great deal of rehearsing because of the Screen Actors Guild rules. They charge you as if you are shooting when you rehearse.”

Price played Roderick Usher in Corman’s first Poe adaptation, The Fall of the House of Usher. For The Masque of The Red Death, the director only gave one note. “As I remember, I said, ‘The really key to Prospero’s character is that he believes God is dead,’” Corman says. “And everything stems from that belief. That with the absence of God, he was free to do anything he wanted.” 

Ultimate power breeds ultimate corruption. The film is set in a country decimated by an epidemic. While the prince of this unnamed land offers refuge for his courtiers, he derives perverse satisfaction in condemning his subjects to death by their exclusion. While Prospero is making his annual deign-to-see-the-peasants day, one of the townspeople dies of Red Death. 

The prince intended to offer peasants some crumbs in appreciation of their labor, but young Gino (David Weston) mocks him. To make matters worse, the ungrateful worker’s lover Francesca (Jane Asher) defends the man, prompting Prospero to label both of them insurrectionists. He burns the village to the ground, throws Gino and Francesca’s father into one of the most foreboding castle dungeons in horror history, and puts Francesca up at his palace. Tempted by the idealism and faith of the village’s “resistance,” Prospero corrupts and sacrifices for sheer joy.  

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Meanwhile the prince promises his aristocratic guests that they will be immune to the scourge, unless they displease him. He throws a masked ball and forbids anyone to wear red, as it would be in bad taste. He is actually preparing a mass sacrifice in exchange for Satan’s favor. Asher’s Francesca is an incorruptible innocent who seems to have perfect faith. The Satanic prince will not tolerate any Christian worship on his estate, so he delights in tempting the faithful into the “velvet darkness” of evil. Prospero hopes to turn her into a Satanist or drive her mad.

For the Uninvited, There is Much to Fear

The film was hit with heavy censorship. In the U.S, the Catholic Legion of Decency sent a list of changes, and in the UK, the British Board of Film Censors required a separate set of cuts. The Legion of Decency bemoaned the “Satanism and erotic costuming” on the screen, according to the booklet which comes with the DVD/Blu-Ray package. Father Sal Miraliotta, a separate reviewer from the Legion of Decency, first approved the film and then changed his grade to a B, which meant morally objectionable. He ultimately downgraded it to a full Condemned rating, blasting the Satanic worship and its malignancy of the soul, and mocking the screenwriters’ “strung-together gibberish” and “mumbo-jumbo Latin.”

Hazel Court’s Juliana is captivating and as conniving as Prince Prospero. She’s also more subtly insidious. Juliana dedicates herself to the service of Satan and receives the ultimate payoff. While most of Juliana’s satanic invocation was left in, censors wanted the word “Alleluia” removed. The U.S. version also censored the film’s climax. When the Man in Red is talking with Prince Prospero, the dialogue was changed from “Each man creates his own God for himself. His own Heaven – his own Hell” to “Each man creates his own Heaven – his own Hell.” This takes out the idea that God could be created by man, something Ian Anderson would explore on Jethro Tull’s classic 1971 album, Aqualung.  

When asked whether all this divine intervention made Corman think he just might be going to hell, he says, “No, that never occurred to me. I’m sort of a lapsed Catholic, and I don’t believe there is a hell.”

Some of the cuts had nothing to do with blasphemous ideology. The tiny dancer Esmeralda is played on camera by young actor Verina Greenlaw, but her dialogue was dubbed over by an adult woman. Skip Martin’s clever Hop Toad character plots vengeance over her royal mistreatment at the hands of Alfredo, campily played by veteran actor Patrick Magee. One unsettling scene was removed from the U.S. version because it seemed Esmerelda’s relationship with Hop Toad was more than friendship.

Corman also cut nine frames from the scene where Francesca is stripped down and thrown into a bathtub because it gave the illusion of nudity. The removed frames ensured Asher’s breasts would not appear on screen.

“I’ve Already Had That Doubtful Pleasure“

The irony, upon seeing the restored scenes, is how they actually feed into the surprisingly righteous conclusion of the film. The Masque of the Red Death is rife with blasted, unholy incantations, but the prince’s callous sacrifices and lifelong debauchery mean nothing to a master who answers to no one. Talk about moral relativity! The hero of The Masque of Red Death is Death, and Death worships no gods and no devils. The depths of Prospero’s belief turn out to be mere demonic delusions.

Corman shot the low-budget Poe pictures through bulky Mitchell cameras on 35mm film and the restoration breathes a new life to each underfunded frame. Composer David Lee’s soundtrack of tambourines, fifes, and brass evokes the medieval period, as do the elegant costumes by Laura Nightingale. The restoration highlights the lushness of both, as they mix to underscore the “velvet darkness” with subliminal subtext of renewal and hope. At the same time, the restored cut actually makes the darkness darker.

The Masque of Red Death ends with the words “Sic transit gloria mundi,” Latin for “thus goes the glory of the world.” Corman’s take on Poe’s apocalyptic parable is a truly inglorious achievement. The film is proof that no budgetary restrictions hold back artistic vision when lunatics get the run of the asylum. They can create and destroy a whole crazy world.

The Masque of the Red Death is available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital now.

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The post How Roger Corman Finally Restored His Uncensored Vision for The Masque of the Red Death appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #235 - White Christmas

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: DVD

0) I know Christmas was a week ago but I’m just getting the chance to write this now so thanks for your patience everyone! :D

1) This was actually the THIRD film Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” in after Holiday Inn and Blue Skies.

2) This film’s opening scene does well to establish the tone of the picture. It’s hopeful and sweet against a harsh backdrop, with showmen Bob Wallace and Phil Davis doing their best to bring some Christmas cheer to WW2 soldiers. It also establishes what kind of a man General Waverly is, which is important. The entire motivation for the film is helping this man out, this great men who all those soldiers care about so much. We understand why in this prologue.

3) The first singing of “White Christmas” also does well to play up the movie’s heart. It gives a sense of the sentiment and kindness that permeates the two hour run time.

4) Danny Kaye as Phil Davis.

Kaye is the ultimate scene stealer of the entire show and was actually the third choice for the role. He is incredibly funny, bringing a much welcome energy and charisma to the part. He’s crafty (manipulating Bob in a harmless yet devious way), clever, and has a great chemistry with Bing Crosby’s Bob Wallace. Of the main four stars, Kaye is definitely my favorite.

5) Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace.

The straight man of Wallace & Davis, Crosby still gets to show off a nice sense of humor in the film. He gets the chance to be serious, fun, kind, a little sad, a little mad, romantic, and pulls all of them off well as the film’s solid lead. Obviously his vocal chops were a big part of the character, but he’s Bing Crosby. I don’t think there was ever a doubt he could sing.

6) The montage which follows the prologue does well to establish the post war rise of Wallace & Davis in showbiz. It’s an important aspect in the film which could have really slowed done the part but the montage is sleek and fun so as not to bore the audience.

7) The conversation with Bob and Phil about how the latter wants the former to start dating so he can have some time alone really defines their relationship moving forward. We understand how good of friends they are that they can be candid but fun with each other. They joke, they tell it like it is, they play, and I just really like that.

8)

Betty: “Benny’s got a job in Alaska. He’s been out of the country for three months.”

9) The relationship between Betty and Judy is wonderfully defined - not by their song - but by their conversation before the song. We understand how this relationship works much as the conversation with Bob & Phil established their friendship. We get how Judy sees Betty and vice versa and it’s great. A nice female friendship where there’s no bickering over a guy, a rare treat in the 1950s. Although I will say I never bought Vera-Ellen as being the younger sister here.

10) Rosemary Clooney as Betty.

Clooney is an extremely kind, likable, charismatic, and endearing performer who really elevates the role of Betty. She has a very nice chemistry with Crosby and is just so damn interesting. Which is good, because on paper Betty is freaking awful. I’ll talk about this more, but we get a sense of what’s to come with her holier-than-thou attitude when Bob begins talking about “angles”. Basically I love Rosemary Clooney in this movie, but I hate how Betty is written. It’s frustrating to say the least.

11) “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing”

This early number shows off one of the film’s weakest and strongest elements simultaneously. Most if not all of the numbers do nothing to actually motivate the plot forward, instead just filling up the two hour run time. HOWEVER they’re almost all so damn entertaining it’s hard to actually find fault with this. You’re too busy enjoying the show!

12) According to IMDb:

According to Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye's "Sisters" performance was not originally in the script. They were clowning around on the set, and director Michael Curtiz thought it was so funny that he decided to film it. In the scene, Crosby's laughs are genuine and unscripted, as he was unable to hold a straight face due to Kaye's comedic dancing. Clooney said the filmmakers had a better take where Crosby didn't laugh, but when they ran them both, people liked the laughing version better.

13) Ah, the only person of color in the movie. And they’re servers.

14) “Snow”

Snow is probably the second most Christmas-y song in the film after “White Christmas”. It shows off the four leads unity well (although Vera-Ellen didn’t do her own singing) and is one of my favorite numbers in the whole film. It’s charming and sweet, filled with winter charm and spirit. I dig it.

15) I like that the greenness of Vermont is a detail but not a focus of the film. Yes it’s called “White Christmas” and yes snow does bring in business to the hotel, but the conflict isn’t about trying to get it to snow it’s about trying to make an old friend happy for the holidays.

16) Dean Jagger General Waverly.

Waverly is the personification of the movie’s heart and sincerity, while also being my favorite character in the movie. You see how caring he is through subtle ways. He’s not one to express his emotions or his heart but you can see it clearly in Jagger’s performance. He is able to be commanding when necessary but more than that he is a kind, sometimes sad, honest man. I love it.

17) This was always one of my favorite gags in the film.

Bob [after hearing over the phone how much something will cost]: “Wow.”

Phil […]: “How much is wow?”

Bob: “Right in between in between, ‘ouch,’ and, ‘poing.’”

Phil: “Wow.”

18) The Minstrel Number.

This is one of the longest, most pointless numbers in the entire film. There is a great amount of entertainment and production value but it adds nothing to the story. While it is probably the strongest out of the three “performances” (the rehearsals Wallace & Davis are holding at the hotel), like the other two you can cut it and lose absolutely nothing from the film.

19) According to Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby improvised almost all of his dialogue in the scene where she meets him in the kitchen. You can tell and I mean that as a compliment. There is an honest spontaneity to the conversation which pulls you in because it’s so interesting.

20) “Count Your Blessings” is a wonderfully kind and moving number which has you invested in the romance between Bob/Betty quickly. Too bad the writing with Betty has me totally DISINTERESTED in them actually ending up together. But more on that later…

21) The scene where we learn that Waverly wanted back in the army but gets rejected not only develops him as a character (his motivations, his desires) but the heart of the film as well.

22) I mentioned that “The Minstrel Number” was one of three totally pointless numbers in the movie. “Choreography” is by far the worst offending of those three. It is not nearly entertaining enough to warrant its run time and serves as close to offending filler. Honestly just cut it.

23) Ah yes, what I’ve been hinting at this whole recap. The bane of my existence, the thing I hate in this movie above all else: freaking Betty becoming such a passive aggressive shit head! If you haven’t seen this movie let me recap:

Betty hears some BS about Bob out of context which paints him in a negative light

She takes this half-assed rumor as fact and immediately accepts it

She never ONCE actually talks to Bob about it

And then she just LEAVES! She runs away WITHOUT ACTUALLY SAYING WHY SHE’S UPSET!

BOB LITERALLY DOES NOTHING WRONG DURING THIS ENTIRE FILM, BETTY NEVER APOLOGIZES, AND BOB SPENDS THE REST OF THE MOVIE FEELING BAD OVER SOMETHING HE DIDN’T ACTUALLY DO!

It is infuriating and I hate Betty because of it. I hate her I hate her I hate her! BUT Rosemary Clooney is so damn charming I love her performance in the movie! But on paper alone Betty is being a passive aggressive shit who Bob devotes way too much energy into trying to appease her. IT’S NOT WORTH IT BOB! Of all the contrived pieces of bullshit in an attempt to add conflict in their relationship, this is the most painfully obvious piece of crap I have ever seen. I love this movie but dear god I freaking hate Betty in the last act.

24) I love that Judy basically cons Phil into an engagement with her and how freaked out he gets by it. Suddenly the dynamic of their relationship just shifted and it’s glorious.

25) A fine piece of 50s BS sexist writing: suddenly Judy is a weeping hysterical woman because her plan didn’t go the way she thought. Which literally matches with NOTHING we learned about her before this moment.

26) “Love You Didn’t Do Right By Me”

First of all, this is such a melodramatic and shitty move. “Love You Didn’t Do Right By Me?” SERIOUSLY!? Maybe it would’ve IF YOU TALKED TO BOB! I know that Betty asks to sing a different song when Bob shows up but clearly the filmmakers are trying something with this and I just, ugh, I HATE IT!

Second of all, the number is actually a great tune and a wonderful showcase for Rosemary Clooney’s talents. It’s her only solo in the entire film and she absolutely nails it. So again, a great example of how I love Clooney but I hate Betty in this film.

27) Phil keeping Waverly away from the TV set is an excellent showcase for Danny Kaye’s comedic talents. He may not be Charlie Chaplin but he’s damn good.

28) “What Can You Do with a General?”

Leonard Maltin called this composer Irving Berlin’s least memorable tune. I disagree and in fact really enjoy it. It’s got a sense of cleverness to it. It’s sweet, a nice tune. A little slow but it gets stuck in your head. So in short: I disagree with Leonard Maltin.

29) The look on Waverly’s face is everything this film was about. EVERYTHING.

30) “Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army” is a fun and fitting near-climactic musical number for the film. It’s fun, funny, representative of the joy and humor that Wallace & Davis wanted to bring Waverly. Also, according to IMDb:

For the song "Gee, I Wish I Was Back In The Army", there is the lyric, "Jolson, Hope And Benny all for free". This is a reference to three wartime entertainers: Al Jolson, Bob Hopeand Jack Benny. The original words were "Crosby, Hope and Jolson all for free", but the lyric was changed because with Bing Crosby in the cast the original lyric would break the fourth wall.

31) While obvious from the film’s title, the snow fall at the end is a sweet way to wrap the story up. It’s not made into a big deal, they just enjoy it’s beauty. This leads into the final performance of “White Christmas” which acts as a poignant and fitting finale to the story.

White Christmas is a holiday classic with a great heart and sense of fun. The cast knock it out of the park and the music is great, and although I may have issues with some character writing (freaking Betty) I still love the film as a whole. I definitely recommend it.

Food-Adjacent TV to Stream This Weekend, According to Eater Staff

Actor Sandra Oh, wearing a black chef beanie and a white t-shirt, talks on an iPhone outside a restaurant kitchen. | BBC America

“Killing Eve,” reality TV favorites, classic sitcoms, and more

We at Eater spend a lot of time thinking about food, so when it appears on our TV screen, we take special interest. If you’re looking to stream some non-food TV that happens to be — at least tangentially — about food this weekend, here’s what we recommend.

Terrace House: Tokyo, Episode 11 (available to stream on Netflix)

Terrace House, the Japanese version of The Real World, has had a long history of food-related misdemeanors and crimes, but the most recent one entails broccoli, pasta water, and egg. Ruka, one of the housemates of the Tokyo house, is a complete enigma of a human being and maybe the most naive person to ever grace Terrace House (or the world?). In an attempt to cook broccoli pasta carbonara, he cracks an egg into the pasta water with the pasta, then adds broccoli. It seems he read the ingredient list, skipped the instructions, and simply winged it. Nothing matters, you know?!

In Netflix’s latest batch of episodes (Netflix US runs a couple of months behind Japan), Ruka attempts broccoli pasta carbonara again. I gasped when I saw he was making pasta FROM SCRATCH and squealed when he presented something that not only looked edible, but delicious! His housemates were (understandably) pleasantly shocked and I got very emotional. It’s rare when you see such dramatic growth. I imagine this is what parents feel when they see their children walk for the first time. — Pelin Keskin, Eater associate producer

Community (available to stream on Hulu and Netflix)

In 2009, when Community first aired, I was actually taking classes at a community college. Yet, somehow I’ve made it this long without watching this series created by Dan Harmon and featuring some of the current era’s most memorable actors (See: Donald Glover, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, and Ken Jeong). The first season hinges on narcissistic student Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) starting classes at a Greendale Community College, where he’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree in an attempt to reclaim his suspended law license. Winger joins a Spanish 101 study group (remember when people still gathered in groups?) to incessantly hit on Britta Perry (played by Jacobs). But as the show evolves, episodes become more unhinged, playing into pop culture tropes observed by TV and movie obsessed student Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi). After a while, it becomes easier to view this show as sort of a live-action version of Harmon’s later work Rick and Morty, but with a slightly less noxious fandom attached. This is particularly encapsulated in episodes like Season 2’s “Epidemiology,” in which the whole student body is transformed into zombies after eating expired military rations. Season 2 also features an excellent example of weird TV sponcon in “Basic Rocket Science,” where the study group gets trapped inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken-branded space flight simulator. — Brenna Houck, Eater.com reporter and Eater Detroit editor

Killing Eve (Season 3, Episode 1, available to stream on BBC America)

Killing Eve, a BBC show that for two seasons has been about feminism, fucking, and fighting, has added a fourth “f” to its roster: food. When we reunite with the show’s titular “Eve” (Sandra Oh), we watch her shopping the aisles of an Asian grocery, grabbing ramen cups and snacks from shelves that seem preposterously well-stocked to my pandemic-warped eyes. The multitudes the store holds are intoxicating. We then discover that since we last saw her — left for dead by Villanelle (Jodie Comer), an assassin with whom she is/was mutually obsessed — Eve’s fled her job at MI5 for a gig as a dumpling chef at an Asian restaurant, a perfect place, perhaps, for an Asian American woman to make herself invisible in a city like London. As audience members, we get to watch her deftly pinch pot sticker after pot sticker as she eavesdrops on her relationship-impaired colleagues (once a spy, always a spy, perhaps), a rote activity that probably has a lot more in common with tradecraft than most espionage-based thrillers would have us believe. It’s a nice job for a perfectionist like Eve, one that’ll do well enough until (one assumes) Villanelle returns to her life and again throws it into chaos. — Eve Batey, senior editor, Eater SF

Difficult People (Season 1, Episode 5, available on Hulu)

Much of this criminally short-lived sitcom starring comedians Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street) and Julie Klausner takes place in a restaurant where a struggling-artist version of Billy works to pay the bills. But this episode stands out for its art-imitating-life plot: Julie, who has “the palate of a seven-year-old” stops by Billy’s place of employment to eat, but finds the menu too fancy for her liking (“everything on [the] menu has some kind of chutney or jus on it,” Julie complains).

So, when Billy’s boss leaves town for a few days, the duo convert the restaurant into a pop-up named the Children’s Menu, serving items that would belong on a kids’ menu someplace like Applebee’s. The pair set about marking up chicken tenders and fish sticks and peddling it to food blogs. And because Difficult People is set in New York, home to many people with poor taste but lots of money, crowds lap it up. It’s a fun skewering of a side of the food world that values creatively bankrupt novelty above all else. Looking at you, “cereal bars” and Museum of Ice Cream. — Tim Forster, editor, Eater Montreal

Lodge 49 (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

I‘m not surprised Lodge 49 was cancelled after two seasons on AMC last fall; I’m delighted it aired at all. This shaggy dog show stars Wyatt Russell (the waggish spawn of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell) as Dud, an adrift surfer in recession-hit Long Beach, who finds connection through a fraternal lodge along the lines of the Freemasons. Meanwhile his sister Liz (Sonya Cassidy) works at a shitty Hooters knockoff called Shamroxx, run by a ghoulish regional corporate conglomerate, Omni Capital. These days, I’m reminded of Liz’s Season 2 story arc: She’s made manager of Omni’s replacement for Shamroxx, a stupid new steakhouse concept called Higher Steaks. When the restaurant struggles, the way Liz sticks up for her colleagues, who are some of the show’s best minor characters, is an inspiring rebuke of winner-takes-all capitalism — no surprise, as the whole show is basically a socialist document. Ironically it’s not streaming for free, but Lodge 49 is special and well worth buying to watch. — Caleb Pershan, Eater.com reporter

Frasier, Season 1, Episode 3 (available to stream on Hulu)

I know I’m incredibly late getting into Fraiser (most of my coworkers are obsessed with it), but it’s been about a week now and I’m already halfway through the second season. I can’t get enough of it. While Frasier’s advice to his listeners can be a little “meh,” it’s absolutely delightful to watch the main characters give each other therapy through their conversations. And watching each episode unfold feels like much needed therapy right now.

I could go on and on about all the episodes I love, but “Dinner at Eight” is my absolute favorite. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) decide to take their father Martin (John Mahoney) out to dinner as a way to spend more quality time with him. When the restaurant loses their reservation, they decide to visit a steakhouse at Martin’s suggestion. His pitch: “You can get a steak this thick for $8.95.”

The Timber Mill is nothing like the trendy, pretentious restaurants Frasier and Niles frequent and the duration of the entire meal is a culinary culture clash. For example, when the beef trolley arrives and everyone at the table has to pick their cut of steak, Frasier asks, “How much extra would I have to pay to get one from the refrigerator?”

It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch Martin get more and more aggravated as Frasier and Niles make ridiculously elaborate orders (a petite filet mignon “very lean, not so lean that it lacks flavor but not so fat that it leaves drippings on the plate”), poke fun at the restaurant, and give the servers a hard time. That’s why it’s so satisfying to watch Martin skewer Frasier and Niles for their snobbery, leaving them to eat the rest of their dinner alone under the scornful eyes of the Timber Mill’s servers as “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” plays in the background. — Esra Erol, senior social media manager, Eater

Real Housewives of New York, Season 8, Episodes 6 & 7

In times of uncertainty, we seek comfort in consistency: The sun will rise in the east, the tides will ebb and flow, and rich women will scream at each other for our enjoyment on Bravo. Recently, I’ve been rewatching old episodes of Real Housewives of New York and am currently in the midst of its landmark eighth season (“Please don’t let it be about Tom.” “It’s about Tom”). Practically every episode is a hit, but “Tipsying Point” and “Air Your Dirty Laundry” conveniently double as a lesson in the booze business. When jack of all trades/master of none Sonja Morgan announces that she’s releasing a signature prosecco called Tipsy Girl, she faces the wrath of Bethenny Frankel, founder of the Skinny Girl brand. As even the most casual Housewives watcher will tell you, Bethenny is famously protective of her business and turns vicious at any perceived attack on it. “I thought the alcohol was a great idea. I really looked up to what you did and I thought it would be a great way for me to get ahead,” Sonja blubbers to Bethenny in her Skinny Girl brand-blazoned office. It’s because of this episode, and this fight in particular, that I know what a “cheater brand” is.

By the way, I’ve tried Tipsy Girl prosecco and it’s... not the worst wine I’ve had. — Madeleine Davies, Eater.com daily editor

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Actor Sandra Oh, wearing a black chef beanie and a white t-shirt, talks on an iPhone outside a restaurant kitchen. | BBC America

“Killing Eve,” reality TV favorites, classic sitcoms, and more

We at Eater spend a lot of time thinking about food, so when it appears on our TV screen, we take special interest. If you’re looking to stream some non-food TV that happens to be — at least tangentially — about food this weekend, here’s what we recommend.

Terrace House: Tokyo, Episode 11 (available to stream on Netflix)

Terrace House, the Japanese version of The Real World, has had a long history of food-related misdemeanors and crimes, but the most recent one entails broccoli, pasta water, and egg. Ruka, one of the housemates of the Tokyo house, is a complete enigma of a human being and maybe the most naive person to ever grace Terrace House (or the world?). In an attempt to cook broccoli pasta carbonara, he cracks an egg into the pasta water with the pasta, then adds broccoli. It seems he read the ingredient list, skipped the instructions, and simply winged it. Nothing matters, you know?!

In Netflix’s latest batch of episodes (Netflix US runs a couple of months behind Japan), Ruka attempts broccoli pasta carbonara again. I gasped when I saw he was making pasta FROM SCRATCH and squealed when he presented something that not only looked edible, but delicious! His housemates were (understandably) pleasantly shocked and I got very emotional. It’s rare when you see such dramatic growth. I imagine this is what parents feel when they see their children walk for the first time. — Pelin Keskin, Eater associate producer

Community (available to stream on Hulu and Netflix)

In 2009, when Community first aired, I was actually taking classes at a community college. Yet, somehow I’ve made it this long without watching this series created by Dan Harmon and featuring some of the current era’s most memorable actors (See: Donald Glover, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, and Ken Jeong). The first season hinges on narcissistic student Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) starting classes at a Greendale Community College, where he’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree in an attempt to reclaim his suspended law license. Winger joins a Spanish 101 study group (remember when people still gathered in groups?) to incessantly hit on Britta Perry (played by Jacobs). But as the show evolves, episodes become more unhinged, playing into pop culture tropes observed by TV and movie obsessed student Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi). After a while, it becomes easier to view this show as sort of a live-action version of Harmon’s later work Rick and Morty, but with a slightly less noxious fandom attached. This is particularly encapsulated in episodes like Season 2’s “Epidemiology,” in which the whole student body is transformed into zombies after eating expired military rations. Season 2 also features an excellent example of weird TV sponcon in “Basic Rocket Science,” where the study group gets trapped inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken-branded space flight simulator. — Brenna Houck, Eater.com reporter and Eater Detroit editor

Killing Eve (Season 3, Episode 1, available to stream on BBC America)

Killing Eve, a BBC show that for two seasons has been about feminism, fucking, and fighting, has added a fourth “f” to its roster: food. When we reunite with the show’s titular “Eve” (Sandra Oh), we watch her shopping the aisles of an Asian grocery, grabbing ramen cups and snacks from shelves that seem preposterously well-stocked to my pandemic-warped eyes. The multitudes the store holds are intoxicating. We then discover that since we last saw her — left for dead by Villanelle (Jodie Comer), an assassin with whom she is/was mutually obsessed — Eve’s fled her job at MI5 for a gig as a dumpling chef at an Asian restaurant, a perfect place, perhaps, for an Asian American woman to make herself invisible in a city like London. As audience members, we get to watch her deftly pinch pot sticker after pot sticker as she eavesdrops on her relationship-impaired colleagues (once a spy, always a spy, perhaps), a rote activity that probably has a lot more in common with tradecraft than most espionage-based thrillers would have us believe. It’s a nice job for a perfectionist like Eve, one that’ll do well enough until (one assumes) Villanelle returns to her life and again throws it into chaos. — Eve Batey, senior editor, Eater SF

Difficult People (Season 1, Episode 5, available on Hulu)

Much of this criminally short-lived sitcom starring comedians Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street) and Julie Klausner takes place in a restaurant where a struggling-artist version of Billy works to pay the bills. But this episode stands out for its art-imitating-life plot: Julie, who has “the palate of a seven-year-old” stops by Billy’s place of employment to eat, but finds the menu too fancy for her liking (“everything on [the] menu has some kind of chutney or jus on it,” Julie complains).

So, when Billy’s boss leaves town for a few days, the duo convert the restaurant into a pop-up named the Children’s Menu, serving items that would belong on a kids’ menu someplace like Applebee’s. The pair set about marking up chicken tenders and fish sticks and peddling it to food blogs. And because Difficult People is set in New York, home to many people with poor taste but lots of money, crowds lap it up. It’s a fun skewering of a side of the food world that values creatively bankrupt novelty above all else. Looking at you, “cereal bars” and Museum of Ice Cream. — Tim Forster, editor, Eater Montreal

Lodge 49 (available to purchase on Amazon Prime)

I‘m not surprised Lodge 49 was cancelled after two seasons on AMC last fall; I’m delighted it aired at all. This shaggy dog show stars Wyatt Russell (the waggish spawn of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell) as Dud, an adrift surfer in recession-hit Long Beach, who finds connection through a fraternal lodge along the lines of the Freemasons. Meanwhile his sister Liz (Sonya Cassidy) works at a shitty Hooters knockoff called Shamroxx, run by a ghoulish regional corporate conglomerate, Omni Capital. These days, I’m reminded of Liz’s Season 2 story arc: She’s made manager of Omni’s replacement for Shamroxx, a stupid new steakhouse concept called Higher Steaks. When the restaurant struggles, the way Liz sticks up for her colleagues, who are some of the show’s best minor characters, is an inspiring rebuke of winner-takes-all capitalism — no surprise, as the whole show is basically a socialist document. Ironically it’s not streaming for free, but Lodge 49 is special and well worth buying to watch. — Caleb Pershan, Eater.com reporter

Frasier, Season 1, Episode 3 (available to stream on Hulu)

I know I’m incredibly late getting into Fraiser (most of my coworkers are obsessed with it), but it’s been about a week now and I’m already halfway through the second season. I can’t get enough of it. While Frasier’s advice to his listeners can be a little “meh,” it’s absolutely delightful to watch the main characters give each other therapy through their conversations. And watching each episode unfold feels like much needed therapy right now.

I could go on and on about all the episodes I love, but “Dinner at Eight” is my absolute favorite. Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) decide to take their father Martin (John Mahoney) out to dinner as a way to spend more quality time with him. When the restaurant loses their reservation, they decide to visit a steakhouse at Martin’s suggestion. His pitch: “You can get a steak this thick for $8.95.”

The Timber Mill is nothing like the trendy, pretentious restaurants Frasier and Niles frequent and the duration of the entire meal is a culinary culture clash. For example, when the beef trolley arrives and everyone at the table has to pick their cut of steak, Frasier asks, “How much extra would I have to pay to get one from the refrigerator?”

It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch Martin get more and more aggravated as Frasier and Niles make ridiculously elaborate orders (a petite filet mignon “very lean, not so lean that it lacks flavor but not so fat that it leaves drippings on the plate”), poke fun at the restaurant, and give the servers a hard time. That’s why it’s so satisfying to watch Martin skewer Frasier and Niles for their snobbery, leaving them to eat the rest of their dinner alone under the scornful eyes of the Timber Mill’s servers as “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” plays in the background. — Esra Erol, senior social media manager, Eater

Real Housewives of New York, Season 8, Episodes 6 & 7

In times of uncertainty, we seek comfort in consistency: The sun will rise in the east, the tides will ebb and flow, and rich women will scream at each other for our enjoyment on Bravo. Recently, I’ve been rewatching old episodes of Real Housewives of New York and am currently in the midst of its landmark eighth season (“Please don’t let it be about Tom.” “It’s about Tom”). Practically every episode is a hit, but “Tipsying Point” and “Air Your Dirty Laundry” conveniently double as a lesson in the booze business. When jack of all trades/master of none Sonja Morgan announces that she’s releasing a signature prosecco called Tipsy Girl, she faces the wrath of Bethenny Frankel, founder of the Skinny Girl brand. As even the most casual Housewives watcher will tell you, Bethenny is famously protective of her business and turns vicious at any perceived attack on it. “I thought the alcohol was a great idea. I really looked up to what you did and I thought it would be a great way for me to get ahead,” Sonja blubbers to Bethenny in her Skinny Girl brand-blazoned office. It’s because of this episode, and this fight in particular, that I know what a “cheater brand” is.

By the way, I’ve tried Tipsy Girl prosecco and it’s... not the worst wine I’ve had. — Madeleine Davies, Eater.com daily editor

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Sean Doolittle Biography, Wiki, Age, Wife, Net Worth, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Fast Facts You Need to Know

Sean Doolittle Biography, Wiki

Sean Robert Doolittle is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball (MLB). The Oakland Athletics selected Doolittle in the first round in the 2007 Major League Baseball Draft, as a first baseman/outfielder. He made his MLB debut in 2012. He previously played for the Athletics and was an All-Star in 2014. Sean Doolittle Age He was born on September 26, 1986, and he was 33 years old. Sean Doolittle Early life Doolittle grew up in Tabernacle Township, New Jersey. Sean lived close to the baseball field and often would go there to practice. He played Babe Ruth Baseball and excelled as a pitcher. Sean Doolittle Education, Early Career He attended Shawnee High School, in Medford, New Jersey where he was a stand-out pitcher. A great hitter, Doolittle led Shawnee to a state championship. Doolittle played for the University of Virginia as both a starting pitcher and first baseman. He formerly held the record for wins in a career for a Virginia pitcher — 22 — which has since been passed by Danny Hultzen. In 2005 and 2006, Doolittle was named to the USA National (Collegiate) Baseball Team. Sean DoolittlePersonal life Doolittle is active off the field with a number of charities and was recognized for his work in 2016 by being nominated for the Roberto Clemente Award. Doolittle supports Operation Finally Home, a nonprofit dedicated to providing housing for U.S. military veterans and their families, and Swords to Ploughshares, a Bay Area organization devoted to helping veterans with housing and employment. In June 2015, when the Oakland Athletics Pride Night received backlash from some fans for the team's support of LGBT rights, Doolittle and then-girlfriend Eireann Dolan bought hundreds of game tickets, which they donated to local LGBT groups, and raised an additional $40,000 in donations. Sean Doolittle Married, Wife Doolittle and Dolan married on October 2, 2017, eloping the day after the Washington Nationals' last game of the regular season. In November 2015, Doolittle and Dolan hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in Chicago for 17 Syrian refugee families. In October 2016, he was one of several professional athletes to denounce Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's comments about non-consensual groping of women as not being "locker room talk". Doolittle identifies as independent politically. Of his charity work, Doolittle told the New York Times: "When I was a kid, I remember my parents would say, 'Baseball is what you do, but that's not who you are' — like that might be my job, but that's not the end-all, be-all. I feel like I might even be able to use it to help other people or open some doors or explore more opportunities." Sean Doolittle Father Doolittle's father is an Air Force veteran, and his seventh cousin is pilot Jimmy Doolittle, famous for the Doolittle Raid of Japan during World War II Sean Doolittle Brother Sean's brother, Ryan Doolittle, was also a part of the Athletics' farm system at the same time as he.

Sean Doolittle Career

Minor-league career The Oakland Athletics selected Doolittle in the first round, with the 41st overall selection, in the 2007 Major League Baseball Draft, as a first baseman/outfielder. He made his professional debut on June 18, 2007, and was expected to make his major league debut in 2009. Despite being injured for most of the 2009 season, Doolittle was ranked tenth in Oakland's farm system according to Baseball America. Doolittle missed the entire 2010 season while rehabbing from 2 knee surgeries. In the 2011 offseason, he was placed on Oakland's 40-man roster to be protected from the Rule 5 draft. After missing more than two years, Doolittle converted back to pitching, making his professional pitching debut in the instructional league in Arizona in 2011. Major-league career Oakland Athletics After only 26 professional entries, 25 of them in three minor league stops in 2012, Doolittle was summoned to the majors on June 5, 2012 against the Texas Rangers throwing one and a third-inning while striking out three with all the balls Fast and none. below 94 mph. He quickly became a key piece of the bullpen as the best left-handed specialist who obtained his first professional rescue on July 21 against the New York Yankees. He served as a preparer for the A Grant Balfour closer the rest of the way while Oakland won the American League West on the last day of the season. Doolittle signed a five-year, $ 10.5 million extension with Athletics on April 18, 2014. Doolittle and right-hander Luke Gregerson entered the regular season as late-entry setup pitchers for the new closer Jim Johnson. However, after an abysmal April, Johnson was removed from the exclusive closing role. Doolittle, Gregerson, and Johnson spent the next 3 weeks throwing closer by committee. Doolittle finally named A's closer on May 20. Doolittle was one of the six A players named for the 2014 American League Star Team; He faced three batters at the end of the game, striking out two. Doolittle started the 2015 season on the disabled list due to a shoulder injury. Sean Doolittle Gnome Day was April 30, 2016. The first 15,000 fans received a Doolittle Gnome that plays a brief sound of Metallica, Doolittle's incoming music. While on a rehabilitation task with the Nashville Triple-A Sounds, Doolittle threw the seventh inning of a game without hits against the Omaha Storm Chasers on June 7, 2017. Starter Chris Smith threw the first six innings and then went followed by Doolittle, Tucker Healy, and Simón Castro, who launched an entry each. Washington Nationals On July 16, 2017, Doolittle was traded to the Washington Nationals, along with Ryan Madson, for Blake Treinen, Sheldon Neuse and Jesus Luzardo. On July 18, Doolittle recorded his first save for the Nationals in a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Angels. In 30 games for the Nationals, he was 1-0 with a 2.40 ERA in 30.0 innings and 21/22 in save opportunities. For the 2018 season, he was named closer to start the season and until July 11, he had 22/23 opportunities to save before falling on the disabled list with an inflammation of his left finger. He was activated from the disabled list on September 7. In 2018 it was 3-3 with 25 saves (7th in the National League) and 1.60 ERA since in 43 relay appearances he threw 45.0 innings and struck out 60 batters (12.0 for 9 innings). He threw a fast four-stitched ball 88.8% of the time, the best in MLB. In 2019, he was 6-5 with 29 saves (sixth in the National League) and 4.05 effectiveness, since in 63 relay appearances he threw 60.0 innings and struck out 66 batters, and led the National League in finished games ( 55), empowering his Nationals for an appearance in the World Series and a save in Game 1. Awards 2008 California League Mid-Season All-Star 2008 Arizona Fall League Rising Stars 2008 Arizona Fall League All-Prospect Team Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle declines White House visit National pitcher Sean Doolittle has refused to visit the White House on Monday for a ceremony honoring the historic victory of his team in the World Series, citing President Donald Trump's rhetoric as the reason he will not attend the celebration. "There are many things, policies with which I disagree, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with divisive rhetoric and the empowerment of conspiracy theories and the widening of the gap in this country," Doolittle said in an interview. Friday with The Washington Post. "At the end of the day, as much as I wanted to be there with my teammates and share that experience with my teammates, I can't do it," Doolittle told the Post. "I just can't do it." The relief pitcher told the newspaper that he did not want to be a distraction for his teammates who want the experience of meeting with the president. "People say you should go because it's about respecting the president's office," Doolittle told the Post. "And I think in the course of his time in office (Trump) he did many things that may not respect the office." Doolittle told the Post that he feels "very strongly" about "Trump's problems in racial relations," mentioning Central Park Five, the Fair Housing Act and Trump's comments following a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Doolittle, who spoke at the time of condemning the Charlottesville demonstration, told the Post that Trump's rhetoric has allowed and enhanced racism and white supremacy. "I don't want to date someone who talks like that," he said. Doolittle also told the newspaper that his wife has two mothers involved in the LGBTQ community and that he "didn't want to turn his back on them." "I have a brother-in-law who has autism, and (Trump) is a guy who made fun of a disabled journalist. How would that explain that I dated someone who made fun of the way he spoke or the way he spoke? What moves your hands? I can't get over those things, "Doolittle told the Post, referring to Trump's 2015 attack on a New York Times journalist who has a physical disability. Quick facts you need to know Read the full article

The story behind a success always makes for good reading. And, if such a story is presented like a drama, interspersed with audacious ambition, envy, struggle for control, rivalry, lawsuits, accusations, counter-accusations, and some humour, it would most likely make for some very engrossing reading. To top it all, this is not a work of fiction - in fact, it is not even a dramatization of reality. It is a chronicle of events that happened behind the scenes of what in the words of the author is the 'hottest business, media and technology success of our time'.

The book starts with describing a scene in 2003, where the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, address a high school in Israel. They explain how Google was born.

Page and Brin were PhD students at Stanford University. The idea of Google was born when Page conceived of downloading the entire web on to his computer to try and devise a search program for it. It was an audacious idea. While he had planned to finish the exercise in a week, he could manage only a portion of it even after a year. "So, optimism is important," Page told his audience, "One must have a healthy disregard for the impossible."

It was this optimism that helped Page persist with his plan. He kept downloading the web on to his machine, and Brin helped him mine the data and make sense of it. According to the duo, it took a lot of effort, a lot of night-outs, and a lot of working through holidays.

After this brief prelude-like beginning, the story goes back to the beginning - when Page met Brin.

Page and Brin were both PhD students at Stanford, and they had a lot in common. They were both from families which placed great value on scholarship and academic excellence. They both had fathers who were professors, and mothers whose jobs revolved around computers and technology. Computers, mathematics, and intellectual debates and discussions were part of their genetic codes as well as their day-to-day lives. It was only natural, then, that they got along with each other quite well, and started working together.

They also had an environment that was very conducive to innovation, experimentation and ideation. Stanford is known for churning out several successful technology ventures, including HP and Sun (Sun stands for Stanford University Network). People in Stanford are firm in their belief that sometimes, making a business out of a technological innovation delivers a much greater effect than writing a paper on it.

Also, at the time the two were together, there was a major IT revolution happening. The likes of Netscape were creating waves outside with unprecedentedly huge IPO's, and the Internet was touted to be the next big thing. As a result, venture capitals were skewed heavily towards funding technological start-ups. These circumstances created a setting ripe for research and innovation relating to the Internet, and Page and Brin believed that a robust search application was the one thing that Internet users most needed.

Search engines prevalent at that time provided service that was far from satisfactory. There were many in operation - the likes of Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite and a few others. All of them fell short. They would only display a slew of results that made little sense to the searcher.

At that time, another duo from Stanford was running a company which they had named 'Yahoo'. They devised a better search algorithm, by creating an alphabetized directory of Web Pages. Also, another new search engine called AltaVista came up. Its search algorithm was based, like other search engines, on the number of times the key word figured in the web page, but it displayed results using the now popular concept of web links. A link, essentially, is a kind of a pointer to another web page.

The idea of using links for a search engine excited Brin and Page. They started thinking of it on an entirely new dimension.

Coming from families that treasured academic research, Page and Brin looked at links as something akin to citations in academic research. In academia, a paper was considered good if it had citations. The more the citations, the better the paper. Also, not all citations were equal. Citations from quality sources enhanced the paper's value.

Using the analogy, the pair developed their search algorithm, called PageRank. It depended, among other things, the number of links that pointed to the web page. The more the links, the higher the rank. Also, links from the more renowned websites, such as Yahoo, would carry more weight than a link from a lesser known website.

Initially, the Google Guys named their search engine 'BackRub', as it was based on the links pointing backward to the site. However, they eventually decided that they had to come up with a new name. Because it dealt with vast amounts of data, they decided to name it 'Google'. Googol is a very large number - 1 followed by 100 zeros. 'Google', is actually a misspelling of 'Googol', something which many people do not know.

Google was first released internally in Stanford. From the beginning, it has maintained a clean and simple homepage, free from flashy animations and the like. It was an instant hit in the Stanford network.

As their database grew, Brin and Page needed more hardware. As they were short of cash, they bought inexpensive parts and assembled them themselves. They also tried all they could to get their hands on unclaimed machines. They did everything they could to keep their hardware cost at a minimum.

Initially, the duo attempted to sell Google to other major web companies like Yahoo and AltaVista. However, both companies could not accept Google, because, among other reasons, they did not believe that search was a vital part of the Web experience.

In the initial days, the Google guys were not sure of the business model. They did not know just how Google could make money. The motto of the company was 'Don't be evil'. They believed that advertisements on web pages were evil, and hence wanted to avoid having ads on their webpages. They were hopeful that in the future, other websites would want to use their search engine, and they could profit by charge these websites. They were also relying purely on word-of-mouth for their marketing. They did not advertise at all.

Google's database kept growing, and they started buying more hardware and recruiting more people. Initially, Google was funded by a $1 million investment by an angel investor named Andy Bechtolsheim. Eventually, though, they ran out of it, and needed more money.

They did not want to go public and raise money like many other companies did, for they had no intentions of letting their information go public, and they also wanted to have full control over the company. The only option, then, seemed to be to approach venture capitalists. The duo was convinced that they could get VC's to fund them, and at the same time continue to retain their control over the company.

They approached two VC companies, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Both companies were impressed with the idea, and were ready to fund Google. However, because they did not want to give up control, the Google guys demanded that both companies invest jointly in Google.

In Wall Street, two major VC companies would hardly consent to a joint investment in a fledgling firm owned by a couple of unrelenting youngsters. However, due to the inherent attractiveness and workability of their idea, and through help from some of their contacts, the Google guys pulled off a coup that was unheard of. They got the two companies to invest $25 million each, and they still retained full control of Google. The only condition that the two VC's placed was to hire an experienced industry person to manage their business. The Google guys agreed, hoping that they could push such an appointment to as late a date as possible.

As Google progressed, several improvements came up. The now famous Google Doodle - an image that appears in the Google homepage to signify an important event or to honour a person - started out as a signal to employees that Brin and Page were away. When Brin and Page went to a party called Burning Man, they left an image of a burning man in the homepage to signal to employees that they were away. After this, they experimented with replacing the two O's of Google with Halloween pumpkins, to signify the festival of Halloween. It was an instant hit with Google's users. Since then, the logo is often decorated with a doodle to signify or honour important occasions/landmarks/persons.

Google started recruiting people for specific roles. There was an employee dedicated to making doodles, and another to polishing and improving user design. Significantly, they recruited Dr.Jim Reese of Harvard to manage operations. His responsibility was to ensure that Google's burgeoning hardware requirements were consistently met. Since Google saves a lot of money by buying cheap computers and assembling them themselves, it was important that they be maintained, monitored and managed properly. To ensure reliability, Dr.Reeves spread data over several computers, managed them all from a central system, and used redundancy to insure the company against system crashes. By minimizing hardware costs, and using free to use Linux based operating systems over expensive ones like Windows, Google had earned for itself a major cost advantage.

Google got more and more popular. It won the support and admiration of Danny Sullivan, editor of an influential newsletter focused on Internet search. It had built for itself a very loyal user base that gave feedback on even the slightest of modifications to the site. However, it had yet to come up with a way of making money.

At that time, a company called Overture caught Brin's attention. Overture was the company that provided the search results that accompanied searches of Yahoo and AOL, among others. The Google guys liked the idea of having ads based on search, rather than flashy and distracting banner ads. However, there was one practice of Overture's that they did not approve of - Overture guaranteed that if a company paid a certain amount of money, it would find a place among the advertisements. It went directly against their motto of 'Don't be evil'.

They decided, therefore, to go it alone. They developed an algorithm for search-based advertising on their own. True to their motto, they ensured that there was a clear demarcation between the actual search results and the advertisements. Like the search results, the advertisements, too, would be ranked. The ranking of the advertisements would be based not only on the amount of money paid, but also on the number of times it is clicked. Hence, popular ads would appear more prominently.

Prices for Google's ads were fixed through a nonstop auctioning process. Auctions were done for every search phrase. A phrase like 'investment advice' would cost a lot more than a phrase like 'pet food'. Companies started having dedicated employees to carry out Google auctions. There were several subtleties involved. For instance, 'digital cameras' would be auctioned for a higher rate than 'digital camera', because a user googling 'digital cameras' is more likely to buy one.

Google advertising policy was not without its share of problems. Once, an insurance company named Geico filed a lawsuit against Google, on the grounds that it had allowed other companies to bid for its name. A user searching for 'Geico' would see in his results all insurance companies that had made a winning bid for it. Geico claimed that Google did not have a right to let Geico's competition take advantage of searches on its name. Google's defense was that Geico's understanding of consumer behavior on the Internet was incorrect. A user googling 'Geico' is not necessarily looking only at Geico's website. Besides, Google was not the publisher of the ads, and it also had systems in place to protect trademarks. It did not allow ads to contain trademarks in their heading or text. Google ended up winning the case.

It has also been alleged that Google's naming of the advertisement section 'Sponsored Links' misleads many users. Many users confuse ads with actual results, and click on them without even knowing they are ads. The ethicality of this lack of clear distinction has often come under question.

With the business model set straight, innovation and new ideas flourished at Google's expanded office, called the Googleplex. One employee came up with the idea of retrieving a person's phone number if his name and zip code are entered. Another came up with the idea of auto-correcting spelling mistakes. If, for instance, you misspell a celebrity's name, Google would automatically correct it and display search results for the corrected name. If a less obvious mistake is made, Google comes up with a "Did you mean...?" link at the top of the page.

Google also launched its Google Image Search, which again was revolutionary. Millions of images are stored in Google's database and can be retrieved at the click of a mouse.

The Google guys created an infrastructure and a culture inside the Googleplex that would make employees want to stay there for most part of the day - and night. Mean as they were with spending on computer hardware, they spent unrestrainedly when it came to creating the right environment for their employees. There were free meals, unlimited snacks, toys, roller hockey, scooter races, and lots more. Even the buses were equipped with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity, so that employees could be productive even while they commuted.

External happenings also helped Google. The dotcom crash of 2000 left several extremely talented software developers unemployed, giving Google access to a vast talent pool. Also, around that time, Microsoft was facing a legal dispute regarding its anti-competitive practices. This made the image of Microsoft take a beating. Google, with its 'Don't be evil' motto, suddenly overtook Microsoft as the ultimate place for a software developer to be in. The creme-de-la-crème of the software profession started preferring to work in Google.

Google also actively encouraged and fostered innovation inside the Googleplex. Employees were free to spend 20% of their time on innovative tasks that interested him. They did not have to worry about whether it could be made profitable, or have any fear about its acceptance or workability. They could so just work on anything that was of interest to them. Ideas were often discussed in bulletin boards and over lunch. As an idea grew, it would get bigger and bigger. Google also provided the resources to carry out innovation. Out of this culture were born several ideas. An avid reader of news came up with an idea of providing users with multiple sources of news clustered together, to help them analyze and understand news better. Thus was born Google news. Interestingly, unlike Google search results, the Google news results are cramped close together. This denseness is intended to give the user as much news as possible. Ranking is based on relevance, and also the source. Another innovation was Froogle, later renamed Google Product search, which helped users search for retail products to shop.

Google soon became a verb in several languages, including English, German, and Japanese. A lot of debates about Google were triggered. With information on people only a Google search away, there were issues related to online stalking of individuals. Google's advertisements, despite the company's checks, included certain obscene websites. In academia, the use of Google by students in preference to the classically used specialized databases was looked at, on one hand, as increasingly easy and wide access to information, and on the other hand, looked down as a shortcut method that fostered laziness.

For all its popularity, Google hardly spent on advertising. Marketing happened only through word-of-mouth. Google kept its homepage clean and free of ads, foregoing millions of dollars of revenue. It avoided a graphics-heavy homepage which would slow down retrieving search results. It focused on getting users fast results, unlike other sites which wanted users to stay on their respective pages for as long as possible. It did not have a user lock-in - there was no need to register to be able to use Google search. By offering a superior product aimed primarily at satisfying the user, Google had eliminated any need for advertising. The only promotion it did was through selling caps and T-shirts with the Google logo.

Google launched a new program, to be able to pull users towards Google rather than just wait for them to find Google. Under this program, any website could register to use the Google search box in its page. Called the affiliate program, it promised to pay websites 3 cents for every search that they added to Google. Google, would, of course, earn from ad revenue.

Ever since they had got funded by the two VC firms, the Google guys had been under constantly increasing pressure to hire a CEO who would manage the business aspects of the company. Google had crossed the threshold beyond which a company was required to go public, and the VC firms were particular about having an experienced business professional as the public face of the company before it went public. Several candidates were sent to Brin and Page by the Venture Capitalists, but none of them managed to please the Google guys.

As pressure mounted and time kept running out, Eric Schmidt, CEO of the software company Novell, stepped into the Googleplex to meet Brin and Page. He had consented to see them only because of the insistence of top people from one of the VC firms, a good relationship with whom he knew was important. He had no interest in the meeting at all. The Google guys were equally uninterested in meeting him. They were expecting another of the dull and boring kind of which they had already seen many.

When Schmidt entered, his biography was projected against the wall, and his strategy at Novell was openly criticized. Schmidt argued back vehemently, and there started a heated debate that went on for a long time. After he left, Schmidt realized that he had not had an intellectual debate of that kind in a long time. Brin and Page, too, found Schmidt to be refreshingly different from the rest of the candidates they had interviewed. The Venture Capital people knew that Schmidt could do the deft balancing act of giving a business structure and direction to the company, while at the same time ensuring that the freedom that Brin and Page so wanted remained unaffected.

Soon, Eric Schmidt was made CEO of Google. He put all his experience into play and acted most maturely. He knew when to push, when to agree, when to back off, and when to argue. He still gave the Google guys a lot of leeway. He realized that they had created in Google a culture of innovation which it would be unwise to tamper with. All he intended to do was to build a business and management structure around the strategy and the culture that Brin and Page had so meticulously built.

There were, of course, points of disagreement between Schmidt and the Google guys. It took a lot of convincing from Schmidt to persuade Brin and Page into appreciating that the payroll system of the company, which was based on free software, needed an overhaul. Schmidt wanted to purchase packaged software of Oracle, which he believed was a necessity, given Google's size and rate of expansion. Brin and Page, however, did not see any merit in paying thousands to Oracle when free software was available.

There were also cases when Brin and Page had their way stubbornly. There was once a violent bidding war going on between Google and Overture over AOL's search business. Google eventually won it by offering AOL guarantees amounting to millions of dollars. Schmidt was worried about this, as the company's cash balance was fast shrinking. Brin and Page, however, went on with the deal, as they firmly believed that search and search-related advertising with a company like AOL was well worth the risk. Eventually, it turned out to be the right decision.

This apart, Google also inked a deal with Yahoo to provide its search results. It also signed a $100 million deal with AskJeeves.com, a competitor, to provide it with search-based advertising. It showed maturity and confidence on Google's part to get into deals with competitors.

In April 2004, Google promised to launch an email service which it promised would be markedly superior to existing email services. Brin and Page knew that, with the abundance of email service providers already functioning, a new email service had to be significantly superior to be able to succeed. Google Mail, or Gmail, they believed, was significantly superior.

Gmail's unique features included easy retrievability through a Google-like search of emails, 1 GB of free storage, which was several times the storage space of existing email service providers, and a unique way of representing a series of emails, resembling a conversation. Gmail was first given to 1000 opinion leaders for testing. They could then give Gmail to a limited number of people on an Invite basis. This gave Gmail a kind of exclusivity which made it a much desired item.

However, just as all seemed to be going well, Gmail ran into troubles. Google had planned to have ads in Gmail similar to those in Google. The ads would be context-specific, based on the content of the email. This announcement led to a hue and cry among privacy groups. Law suits were threatened and there were calls to close down Gmail. The issue was with the scanning of emails. It was felt that by reading every email, Google was infringing on the privacy of individuals. It was also feared that security issues might arise because of the huge storage space and the subsequent long retention period of emails.

Google's clean reputation till then took a beating for the first time. The timing could not have been worse, as Google was soon to go public. Brin and Page, who were expecting positive reception for what they believed was a superior product, were taken aback. They hoped that the protests were only a passing cloud, and that things would settle down soon. They clarified that the scanning of emails was automated, and that they would not be informed about the content. They explained that every email service provider scanned emails for displaying emails itself, and for detecting viruses.

As time passed and more and more users started using Gmail, they started finding the experience highly satisfying. The bad publicity started dying down slowly, and Gmail eventually became a big hit.

When the time came for Google to go public, Brin and Page wanted to play it their way, again. A typical IPO in USA is done with the help of big investment banks. These banks do the publicity with the help of what is called a road show, help price the stock, and guarantee a minimum amount to the issuing company. However, there was a conflict in the goals of the investment bank and the issuing company. While the investment bank would want the stock to be underpriced, so that it rises in value and favoured investors gain. The company, on the other hand, would want the price to be as high as possible, so as to raise the maximum possible amount.

Google did not want investment banks to call the shots. They were ready to pay only half the price investment banks usually demanded, and they wanted to dictate terms in the IPO. They wanted the IPO to be egalitarian - anyone could invest. The minimum number of shares was only 5. Pricing would be based on an auction, just like Google ads. They felt that the road shows unfairly divulged information only to a select few. To make things fair, they released all relevant information on the Internet, for everyone to see. Also, to retain control, they issued two classes of shares - Class A and Class B. Class A shares were for regular investors, carrying one vote each. Class B shares were for themselves, carrying ten votes each, and giving them absolute control.

As the date of stock issue neared, skepticism started arising regarding Google's stock. The price band - $110-$135, about 150 times its per share earnings, started being seen as too high. It was feared that after the stock issue, employees of Google would exercise their stock options and leave the company. To make things worse, Playboy magazine released an informal and very casual interview of Brin and Page. It was an interview taken a lot earlier, but was timed to cash in on all the publicity surrounding Google. Besides being a violation of SEC rules, it also sowed seeds of doubt in potential investors' mind about the seriousness of the guys at the top of Google's hierarchy.

Google's venture capitalists, who had a lot at stake, had to step in. It was decided that the Playboy article would be attached as appendix to Google's registration documents, to circumvent the violation of the quiet period. Also, the venture capitalists decided to hold back all Google stock they had planned to sell - a signal that they expected the stock price to increase. Finally, Google's IPO was completed and the stock went out at $85 per share. It currently trades at $530 per share.

Google kept going from strength to strength. It won AOL's European business almost from under Yahoo's nose, buy offering AOL million dollar guarantees after Yahoo had nearly consummated a deal with AOL. The deal was made by Sergey Brin. Sergey Brin's responsibilities mainly involved making deals, cutting costs, and handling issues relating to culture and motivation. Larry Page, on the other hand, was involved more in hands-on work. He also supervised hiring of employees, and identified innovative projects that showed most potential. Eric Schmidt, the CEO, for his part, took care of operations. He ensured that projects were on schedule, and that deadlines were met. He also looked after the finance, accounting, and other systems.

Innovations kept coming. Google Suggest guessed what you wanted to search. Google desktop gave a comprehensive search solution for your PC. Google video search and Google satellite map came up. Google Scholar was introduced to help search for scholarly articles. The list just kept getting longer.

In between all this, Google started out on an ambitious project to digitize all books in leading libraries and make them available to Google users. Starting with the University of Michigan, a few libraries were selected. Books were scanned using technology that was gentle on the books, and did not affect them. After scanning, these books would be made available in a form which would not allow copying. For books still in copyright, users would be able to view only snippets of pages.

To win the support of publishers, Google came up with a compelling value proposition. It would cover the costs of scanning and indexing books in return for the right to be able to show them in its search results. It would then present them in a form which would not allow copying. It would also provide direct links to booksellers, from whom the book could be bought. Thus, Google was, in effect, giving the user a flavor of the book's content and enticing him to purchase it. It eventually got support from publishers. The project was named Google Books.

In the future, we might see Google use its massive computing power to help research in the field of genetics. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome, and is exploring possibilities with biologists. Millions of genes, combined with loads of biological and scientific data form a combination which only a system of Google's power, processing capacity, and storage space can execute.

The book is exceedingly well written. From the beginning, and till the end, the author makes sure that the reader is kept interested and enthralled. And he does so by using no dramatization whatsoever. By just sequencing events logically, occasionally switching focus to ancillary characters, and by simply describing articulately how the Google phenomenon unfolded, the author gives the reader every reason to keep reading the book. The characters of Larry Page and Sergey Brin are sketched beautifully. The book is written like a novel, so the reader never gets bored. The author should also be given credit for his neutrality. While he is generous in his praise for Google in general and its founders in particular, he is also critical of them on occasions, such as their unseemly interview to Playboy.

On the flip side, the author sometimes goes to a level of detail that tests the reader's patience, such as the detailed description of the Burning Man Festival. Also, certain characters, such as Charlie Ayers, the chef, are given undue importance. While it is understandable that the chef's stay at Google created an entirely new food culture and helped motivate employees, dedicating an entire chapter to him and including one of his recipes in it are neither necessary nor justified.

So there you have it. The story of Google. Looking how to make google your homepage? Visit http://makegooglemyhomepage.org/ for more info.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6630148

The Google Story - An Inspiring Journey in Time

The story behind a success always makes for good reading. And, if such a story is presented like a drama, interspersed with audacious ambition, envy, struggle for control, rivalry, lawsuits, accusations, counter-accusations, and some humour, it would most likely make for some very engrossing reading. To top it all, this is not a work of fiction - in fact, it is not even a dramatization of reality. It is a chronicle of events that happened behind the scenes of what in the words of the author is the 'hottest business, media and technology success of our time'.

The book starts with describing a scene in 2003, where the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, address a high school in Israel. They explain how Google was born.

Page and Brin were PhD students at Stanford University. The idea of Google was born when Page conceived of downloading the entire web on to his computer to try and devise a search program for it. It was an audacious idea. While he had planned to finish the exercise in a week, he could manage only a portion of it even after a year. "So, optimism is important," Page told his audience, "One must have a healthy disregard for the impossible."

It was this optimism that helped Page persist with his plan. He kept downloading the web on to his machine, and Brin helped him mine the data and make sense of it. According to the duo, it took a lot of effort, a lot of night-outs, and a lot of working through holidays.

After this brief prelude-like beginning, the story goes back to the beginning - when Page met Brin.

Page and Brin were both PhD students at Stanford, and they had a lot in common. They were both from families which placed great value on scholarship and academic excellence. They both had fathers who were professors, and mothers whose jobs revolved around computers and technology. Computers, mathematics, and intellectual debates and discussions were part of their genetic codes as well as their day-to-day lives. It was only natural, then, that they got along with each other quite well, and started working together.

They also had an environment that was very conducive to innovation, experimentation and ideation. Stanford is known for churning out several successful technology ventures, including HP and Sun (Sun stands for Stanford University Network). People in Stanford are firm in their belief that sometimes, making a business out of a technological innovation delivers a much greater effect than writing a paper on it.

Also, at the time the two were together, there was a major IT revolution happening. The likes of Netscape were creating waves outside with unprecedentedly huge IPO's, and the Internet was touted to be the next big thing. As a result, venture capitals were skewed heavily towards funding technological start-ups. These circumstances created a setting ripe for research and innovation relating to the Internet, and Page and Brin believed that a robust search application was the one thing that Internet users most needed.

Search engines prevalent at that time provided service that was far from satisfactory. There were many in operation - the likes of Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite and a few others. All of them fell short. They would only display a slew of results that made little sense to the searcher.

At that time, another duo from Stanford was running a company which they had named 'Yahoo'. They devised a better search algorithm, by creating an alphabetized directory of Web Pages. Also, another new search engine called AltaVista came up. Its search algorithm was based, like other search engines, on the number of times the key word figured in the web page, but it displayed results using the now popular concept of web links. A link, essentially, is a kind of a pointer to another web page.

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The idea of using links for a search engine excited Brin and Page. They started thinking of it on an entirely new dimension.

Coming from families that treasured academic research, Page and Brin looked at links as something akin to citations in academic research. In academia, a paper was considered good if it had citations. The more the citations, the better the paper. Also, not all citations were equal. Citations from quality sources enhanced the paper's value.

Using the analogy, the pair developed their search algorithm, called PageRank. It depended, among other things, the number of links that pointed to the web page. The more the links, the higher the rank. Also, links from the more renowned websites, such as Yahoo, would carry more weight than a link from a lesser known website.

Initially, the Google Guys named their search engine 'BackRub', as it was based on the links pointing backward to the site. However, they eventually decided that they had to come up with a new name. Because it dealt with vast amounts of data, they decided to name it 'Google'. Googol is a very large number - 1 followed by 100 zeros. 'Google', is actually a misspelling of 'Googol', something which many people do not know.

Google was first released internally in Stanford. From the beginning, it has maintained a clean and simple homepage, free from flashy animations and the like. It was an instant hit in the Stanford network.

As their database grew, Brin and Page needed more hardware. As they were short of cash, they bought inexpensive parts and assembled them themselves. They also tried all they could to get their hands on unclaimed machines. They did everything they could to keep their hardware cost at a minimum.

Initially, the duo attempted to sell Google to other major web companies like Yahoo and AltaVista. However, both companies could not accept Google, because, among other reasons, they did not believe that search was a vital part of the Web experience.

In the initial days, the Google guys were not sure of the business model. They did not know just how Google could make money. The motto of the company was 'Don't be evil'. They believed that advertisements on web pages were evil, and hence wanted to avoid having ads on their webpages. They were hopeful that in the future, other websites would want to use their search engine, and they could profit by charge these websites. They were also relying purely on word-of-mouth for their marketing. They did not advertise at all.

Google's database kept growing, and they started buying more hardware and recruiting more people. Initially, Google was funded by a $1 million investment by an angel investor named Andy Bechtolsheim. Eventually, though, they ran out of it, and needed more money.

They did not want to go public and raise money like many other companies did, for they had no intentions of letting their information go public, and they also wanted to have full control over the company. The only option, then, seemed to be to approach venture capitalists. The duo was convinced that they could get VC's to fund them, and at the same time continue to retain their control over the company.

They approached two VC companies, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Both companies were impressed with the idea, and were ready to fund Google. However, because they did not want to give up control, the Google guys demanded that both companies invest jointly in Google.

In Wall Street, two major VC companies would hardly consent to a joint investment in a fledgling firm owned by a couple of unrelenting youngsters. However, due to the inherent attractiveness and workability of their idea, and through help from some of their contacts, the Google guys pulled off a coup that was unheard of. They got the two companies to invest $25 million each, and they still retained full control of Google. The only condition that the two VC's placed was to hire an experienced industry person to manage their business. The Google guys agreed, hoping that they could push such an appointment to as late a date as possible.

As Google progressed, several improvements came up. The now famous Google Doodle - an image that appears in the Google homepage to signify an important event or to honour a person - started out as a signal to employees that Brin and Page were away. When Brin and Page went to a party called Burning Man, they left an image of a burning man in the homepage to signal to employees that they were away. After this, they experimented with replacing the two O's of Google with Halloween pumpkins, to signify the festival of Halloween. It was an instant hit with Google's users. Since then, the logo is often decorated with a doodle to signify or honour important occasions/landmarks/persons.

Google started recruiting people for specific roles. There was an employee dedicated to making doodles, and another to polishing and improving user design. Significantly, they recruited Dr.Jim Reese of Harvard to manage operations. His responsibility was to ensure that Google's burgeoning hardware requirements were consistently met. Since Google saves a lot of money by buying cheap computers and assembling them themselves, it was important that they be maintained, monitored and managed properly. To ensure reliability, Dr.Reeves spread data over several computers, managed them all from a central system, and used redundancy to insure the company against system crashes. By minimizing hardware costs, and using free to use Linux based operating systems over expensive ones like Windows, Google had earned for itself a major cost advantage.

Google got more and more popular. It won the support and admiration of Danny Sullivan, editor of an influential newsletter focused on Internet search. It had built for itself a very loyal user base that gave feedback on even the slightest of modifications to the site. However, it had yet to come up with a way of making money.

At that time, a company called Overture caught Brin's attention. Overture was the company that provided the search results that accompanied searches of Yahoo and AOL, among others. The Google guys liked the idea of having ads based on search, rather than flashy and distracting banner ads. However, there was one practice of Overture's that they did not approve of - Overture guaranteed that if a company paid a certain amount of money, it would find a place among the advertisements. It went directly against their motto of 'Don't be evil'.

They decided, therefore, to go it alone. They developed an algorithm for search-based advertising on their own. True to their motto, they ensured that there was a clear demarcation between the actual search results and the advertisements. Like the search results, the advertisements, too, would be ranked. The ranking of the advertisements would be based not only on the amount of money paid, but also on the number of times it is clicked. Hence, popular ads would appear more prominently.

Prices for Google's ads were fixed through a nonstop auctioning process. Auctions were done for every search phrase. A phrase like 'investment advice' would cost a lot more than a phrase like 'pet food'. Companies started having dedicated employees to carry out Google auctions. There were several subtleties involved. For instance, 'digital cameras' would be auctioned for a higher rate than 'digital camera', because a user googling 'digital cameras' is more likely to buy one.

Google advertising policy was not without its share of problems. Once, an insurance company named Geico filed a lawsuit against Google, on the grounds that it had allowed other companies to bid for its name. A user searching for 'Geico' would see in his results all insurance companies that had made a winning bid for it. Geico claimed that Google did not have a right to let Geico's competition take advantage of searches on its name. Google's defense was that Geico's understanding of consumer behavior on the Internet was incorrect. A user googling 'Geico' is not necessarily looking only at Geico's website. Besides, Google was not the publisher of the ads, and it also had systems in place to protect trademarks. It did not allow ads to contain trademarks in their heading or text. Google ended up winning the case.

It has also been alleged that Google's naming of the advertisement section 'Sponsored Links' misleads many users. Many users confuse ads with actual results, and click on them without even knowing they are ads. The ethicality of this lack of clear distinction has often come under question.

With the business model set straight, innovation and new ideas flourished at Google's expanded office, called the Googleplex. One employee came up with the idea of retrieving a person's phone number if his name and zip code are entered. Another came up with the idea of auto-correcting spelling mistakes. If, for instance, you misspell a celebrity's name, Google would automatically correct it and display search results for the corrected name. If a less obvious mistake is made, Google comes up with a "Did you mean...?" link at the top of the page.

Google also launched its Google Image Search, which again was revolutionary. Millions of images are stored in Google's database and can be retrieved at the click of a mouse.

The Google guys created an infrastructure and a culture inside the Googleplex that would make employees want to stay there for most part of the day - and night. Mean as they were with spending on computer hardware, they spent unrestrainedly when it came to creating the right environment for their employees. There were free meals, unlimited snacks, toys, roller hockey, scooter races, and lots more. Even the buses were equipped with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity, so that employees could be productive even while they commuted.

External happenings also helped Google. The dotcom crash of 2000 left several extremely talented software developers unemployed, giving Google access to a vast talent pool. Also, around that time, Microsoft was facing a legal dispute regarding its anti-competitive practices. This made the image of Microsoft take a beating. Google, with its 'Don't be evil' motto, suddenly overtook Microsoft as the ultimate place for a software developer to be in. The creme-de-la-crème of the software profession started preferring to work in Google.

Google also actively encouraged and fostered innovation inside the Googleplex. Employees were free to spend 20% of their time on innovative tasks that interested him. They did not have to worry about whether it could be made profitable, or have any fear about its acceptance or workability. They could so just work on anything that was of interest to them. Ideas were often discussed in bulletin boards and over lunch. As an idea grew, it would get bigger and bigger. Google also provided the resources to carry out innovation. Out of this culture were born several ideas. An avid reader of news came up with an idea of providing users with multiple sources of news clustered together, to help them analyze and understand news better. Thus was born Google news. Interestingly, unlike Google search results, the Google news results are cramped close together. This denseness is intended to give the user as much news as possible. Ranking is based on relevance, and also the source. Another innovation was Froogle, later renamed Google Product search, which helped users search for retail products to shop.

Google soon became a verb in several languages, including English, German, and Japanese. A lot of debates about Google were triggered. With information on people only a Google search away, there were issues related to online stalking of individuals. Google's advertisements, despite the company's checks, included certain obscene websites. In academia, the use of Google by students in preference to the classically used specialized databases was looked at, on one hand, as increasingly easy and wide access to information, and on the other hand, looked down as a shortcut method that fostered laziness.

For all its popularity, Google hardly spent on advertising. Marketing happened only through word-of-mouth. Google kept its homepage clean and free of ads, foregoing millions of dollars of revenue. It avoided a graphics-heavy homepage which would slow down retrieving search results. It focused on getting users fast results, unlike other sites which wanted users to stay on their respective pages for as long as possible. It did not have a user lock-in - there was no need to register to be able to use Google search. By offering a superior product aimed primarily at satisfying the user, Google had eliminated any need for advertising. The only promotion it did was through selling caps and T-shirts with the Google logo.

Google launched a new program, to be able to pull users towards Google rather than just wait for them to find Google. Under this program, any website could register to use the Google search box in its page. Called the affiliate program, it promised to pay websites 3 cents for every search that they added to Google. Google, would, of course, earn from ad revenue.

Ever since they had got funded by the two VC firms, the Google guys had been under constantly increasing pressure to hire a CEO who would manage the business aspects of the company. Google had crossed the threshold beyond which a company was required to go public, and the VC firms were particular about having an experienced business professional as the public face of the company before it went public. Several candidates were sent to Brin and Page by the Venture Capitalists, but none of them managed to please the Google guys.

As pressure mounted and time kept running out, Eric Schmidt, CEO of the software company Novell, stepped into the Googleplex to meet Brin and Page. He had consented to see them only because of the insistence of top people from one of the VC firms, a good relationship with whom he knew was important. He had no interest in the meeting at all. The Google guys were equally uninterested in meeting him. They were expecting another of the dull and boring kind of which they had already seen many.

When Schmidt entered, his biography was projected against the wall, and his strategy at Novell was openly criticized. Schmidt argued back vehemently, and there started a heated debate that went on for a long time. After he left, Schmidt realized that he had not had an intellectual debate of that kind in a long time. Brin and Page, too, found Schmidt to be refreshingly different from the rest of the candidates they had interviewed. The Venture Capital people knew that Schmidt could do the deft balancing act of giving a business structure and direction to the company, while at the same time ensuring that the freedom that Brin and Page so wanted remained unaffected.

Soon, Eric Schmidt was made CEO of Google. He put all his experience into play and acted most maturely. He knew when to push, when to agree, when to back off, and when to argue. He still gave the Google guys a lot of leeway. He realized that they had created in Google a culture of innovation which it would be unwise to tamper with. All he intended to do was to build a business and management structure around the strategy and the culture that Brin and Page had so meticulously built.

There were, of course, points of disagreement between Schmidt and the Google guys. It took a lot of convincing from Schmidt to persuade Brin and Page into appreciating that the payroll system of the company, which was based on free software, needed an overhaul. Schmidt wanted to purchase packaged software of Oracle, which he believed was a necessity, given Google's size and rate of expansion. Brin and Page, however, did not see any merit in paying thousands to Oracle when free software was available.

There were also cases when Brin and Page had their way stubbornly. There was once a violent bidding war going on between Google and Overture over AOL's search business. Google eventually won it by offering AOL guarantees amounting to millions of dollars. Schmidt was worried about this, as the company's cash balance was fast shrinking. Brin and Page, however, went on with the deal, as they firmly believed that search and search-related advertising with a company like AOL was well worth the risk. Eventually, it turned out to be the right decision.

This apart, Google also inked a deal with Yahoo to provide its search results. It also signed a $100 million deal with AskJeeves.com, a competitor, to provide it with search-based advertising. It showed maturity and confidence on Google's part to get into deals with competitors.

In April 2004, Google promised to launch an email service which it promised would be markedly superior to existing email services. Brin and Page knew that, with the abundance of email service providers already functioning, a new email service had to be significantly superior to be able to succeed. Google Mail, or Gmail, they believed, was significantly superior.

Gmail's unique features included easy retrievability through a Google-like search of emails, 1 GB of free storage, which was several times the storage space of existing email service providers, and a unique way of representing a series of emails, resembling a conversation. Gmail was first given to 1000 opinion leaders for testing. They could then give Gmail to a limited number of people on an Invite basis. This gave Gmail a kind of exclusivity which made it a much desired item.

However, just as all seemed to be going well, Gmail ran into troubles. Google had planned to have ads in Gmail similar to those in Google. The ads would be context-specific, based on the content of the email. This announcement led to a hue and cry among privacy groups. Law suits were threatened and there were calls to close down Gmail. The issue was with the scanning of emails. It was felt that by reading every email, Google was infringing on the privacy of individuals. It was also feared that security issues might arise because of the huge storage space and the subsequent long retention period of emails.

Google's clean reputation till then took a beating for the first time. The timing could not have been worse, as Google was soon to go public. Brin and Page, who were expecting positive reception for what they believed was a superior product, were taken aback. They hoped that the protests were only a passing cloud, and that things would settle down soon. They clarified that the scanning of emails was automated, and that they would not be informed about the content. They explained that every email service provider scanned emails for displaying emails itself, and for detecting viruses.

As time passed and more and more users started using Gmail, they started finding the experience highly satisfying. The bad publicity started dying down slowly, and Gmail eventually became a big hit.

When the time came for Google to go public, Brin and Page wanted to play it their way, again. A typical IPO in USA is done with the help of big investment banks. These banks do the publicity with the help of what is called a road show, help price the stock, and guarantee a minimum amount to the issuing company. However, there was a conflict in the goals of the investment bank and the issuing company. While the investment bank would want the stock to be underpriced, so that it rises in value and favoured investors gain. The company, on the other hand, would want the price to be as high as possible, so as to raise the maximum possible amount.

Google did not want investment banks to call the shots. They were ready to pay only half the price investment banks usually demanded, and they wanted to dictate terms in the IPO. They wanted the IPO to be egalitarian - anyone could invest. The minimum number of shares was only 5. Pricing would be based on an auction, just like Google ads. They felt that the road shows unfairly divulged information only to a select few. To make things fair, they released all relevant information on the Internet, for everyone to see. Also, to retain control, they issued two classes of shares - Class A and Class B. Class A shares were for regular investors, carrying one vote each. Class B shares were for themselves, carrying ten votes each, and giving them absolute control.

As the date of stock issue neared, skepticism started arising regarding Google's stock. The price band - $110-$135, about 150 times its per share earnings, started being seen as too high. It was feared that after the stock issue, employees of Google would exercise their stock options and leave the company. To make things worse, Playboy magazine released an informal and very casual interview of Brin and Page. It was an interview taken a lot earlier, but was timed to cash in on all the publicity surrounding Google. Besides being a violation of SEC rules, it also sowed seeds of doubt in potential investors' mind about the seriousness of the guys at the top of Google's hierarchy.

Google's venture capitalists, who had a lot at stake, had to step in. It was decided that the Playboy article would be attached as appendix to Google's registration documents, to circumvent the violation of the quiet period. Also, the venture capitalists decided to hold back all Google stock they had planned to sell - a signal that they expected the stock price to increase. Finally, Google's IPO was completed and the stock went out at $85 per share. It currently trades at $530 per share.

Google kept going from strength to strength. It won AOL's European business almost from under Yahoo's nose, buy offering AOL million dollar guarantees after Yahoo had nearly consummated a deal with AOL. The deal was made by Sergey Brin. Sergey Brin's responsibilities mainly involved making deals, cutting costs, and handling issues relating to culture and motivation. Larry Page, on the other hand, was involved more in hands-on work. He also supervised hiring of employees, and identified innovative projects that showed most potential. Eric Schmidt, the CEO, for his part, took care of operations. He ensured that projects were on schedule, and that deadlines were met. He also looked after the finance, accounting, and other systems.

Innovations kept coming. Google Suggest guessed what you wanted to search. Google desktop gave a comprehensive search solution for your PC. Google video search and Google satellite map came up. Google Scholar was introduced to help search for scholarly articles. The list just kept getting longer.

In between all this, Google started out on an ambitious project to digitize all books in leading libraries and make them available to Google users. Starting with the University of Michigan, a few libraries were selected. Books were scanned using technology that was gentle on the books, and did not affect them. After scanning, these books would be made available in a form which would not allow copying. For books still in copyright, users would be able to view only snippets of pages.

To win the support of publishers, Google came up with a compelling value proposition. It would cover the costs of scanning and indexing books in return for the right to be able to show them in its search results. It would then present them in a form which would not allow copying. It would also provide direct links to booksellers, from whom the book could be bought. Thus, Google was, in effect, giving the user a flavor of the book's content and enticing him to purchase it. It eventually got support from publishers. The project was named Google Books.

In the future, we might see Google use its massive computing power to help research in the field of genetics. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome, and is exploring possibilities with biologists. Millions of genes, combined with loads of biological and scientific data form a combination which only a system of Google's power, processing capacity, and storage space can execute.

The book is exceedingly well written. From the beginning, and till the end, the author makes sure that the reader is kept interested and enthralled. And he does so by using no dramatization whatsoever. By just sequencing events logically, occasionally switching focus to ancillary characters, and by simply describing articulately how the Google phenomenon unfolded, the author gives the reader every reason to keep reading the book. The characters of Larry Page and Sergey Brin are sketched beautifully. The book is written like a novel, so the reader never gets bored. The author should also be given credit for his neutrality. While he is generous in his praise for Google in general and its founders in particular, he is also critical of them on occasions, such as their unseemly interview to Playboy.

On the flip side, the author sometimes goes to a level of detail that tests the reader's patience, such as the detailed description of the Burning Man Festival. Also, certain characters, such as Charlie Ayers, the chef, are given undue importance. While it is understandable that the chef's stay at Google created an entirely new food culture and helped motivate employees, dedicating an entire chapter to him and including one of his recipes in it are neither necessary nor justified.

On the whole, the Google story takes you on a journey - a journey in time of the biggest Internet success story till date. It is a journey that will keep you engrossed, and it is one you will enjoy.

WONDER WOMAN THOUGHTS! SPOILERS!

1. special shout out to the parents who brought with them the best I can tell 6 year old male child who spent the entire movie crying or yelling while the mommy put her feet on the chair in front of her and kept eating peanuts out of the bag that made so much noise. I'm in Poland so there was a dubbed version available but no, let's bring the offspring to subtitles. It's too fucking bad this didn't happen during Logan because if someone interrupted my Jackman experience I'd call the cops.

2. special shout out number two to the sequence that I feel illustrates female grace vs male brutality better than Amazons vs Soldiers - me walking home from the movie while wearying my cute red shoes and lacy dress passing the guy who was sitting down on the bus stop and puking and holding his nose to let the snot fall on the sidewalk. Forget murdered children - show this to Diana and ask if humanity is worth saving

I need to think about this but this may be the best CBM Origin movie yet. I'm not big on Batman Begins. But as for CBM in total Logan wins it all though this movie moved me almost as much. But there was something that kept really annoying me and that's editing. There is one really great thing they did where after Diana killed Danny Huston she left the sword there. Then she meets real Ares and goes for the sword on her back and the scene cuts and you go 'well the sword isn't there' and then when the scene comes back it's evident that she flew back and got the sword. So that's nice continuity. Which makes two other scenes so infuriating: 1. Steve's secretary noticing someone is following them - that cut away so fast I didn't realize what the hell happened 2. The bullet bouncing off Diana's bracelet and killing some guy and her standing there with 'oh no' look on her face. That was way too short. That's her realizing people die by accident because of her powers and it was maybe 4 seconds I normally don't notice things like that but here for some reason this stood out to me probably because everything else was so well done. Another thing that I don't think worked was the secretary character which was funny but I felt they expected me to find her much more amusing than I did. Other than that: 1. The score is tremendous. It's noticeable in 'what a great score!' kind of way. It's epic and what's most important - it's memorable. I really love 'Is she with you?' theme, imho it's one of the most distinctive superhero movie themes there. I LOVED the way they incorporated it - first the notes, then the drums, then the guitar and finally that amazing rendition of drums and then guitar. Brilliant. 2. Robin Wright was amazing in her short screentime - that smirk before she rides into the battle was fantastic 3. The villain was pretty awesome given that he had a good point. But because Diana was brought up to value life and would never kill the innocent you never question why she doesn't join him 4. The humour landed almost the entire time - it felt natural and it was very funny not just the lines but the actors did great work - like Pine's expression after she emerges in a coat and a hat basically wearying the same thing he is wearying 5. Diana's sweetness never felt annoying and was so endearing. Seeing it clash with the horrors of war was so moving and Gadot was perhaps the most impressive showing that just with her face like when she sees the wounded soldiers 6. And it's because of that why No Man's Land sequence is so badass -because she walks in there after seeing that woman with a child.We saw practically the entire scene in trailers but because of Diana's reasons to walk there and the score it's so powerful 7. There was a lot of slow mo but it didn't bother me because the fight scenes were so beautifully choreographed and there was not too much editing so you could actually see what was happening 8. the third act was great because it wasn't disjointed between too many different characters. It was also loaded with moving scenes like her sparing Dr Poison and that biggest punch of the movie - Steve laughing as he is about to sacrifice his life and doing just that and Diana seeing it and reacting to it. The whole thing with repetition - first seeing their goodbye when we cannot hear it and then it coming back in pivotal moment was brilliant. And goddammit that 'wish we had more time' line.Between this and 'you still have time' from Logan I feel I will cry the next time I simply hear the word 'time'

9. The film looked beautiful - the colors, the costumes, all of it was just lovely 10. The little girl who played the youngest Diana was ADORABLE 11. And finally Gal was great. I think Pfeiffer and Robbie delivered better work in CBM genre but it's hard to imagine anyone else playing her character. She sold every single emotion to the audience and had excellent chemistry with the cast. And that smile! That alone captured the nature of the character so well So those are my initial thoughts but I really liked it and cannot wait to see it again. I also thought it did an admirable job in making such a pure, good heroine feel so likable and interesting and also in delivering the message - not excusing humanity but saying you should stand up for what you believe and do the right thing according to your rules and morals and don't look at what the others do. As for the grade it's somewhere between 8,5 and 9 for me so so far I can just say 9/10