O Superman- Laurie Anderson

863

Do you have any friends who are on and off with bfs/gfs all the time? Yeah, Jo and Aya don’t make the most stable couple. They had one really problematic stint last year where they would break up and get back together every week. They ironed it out eventually and they’ve been ok for a while, but lately I think it’s a little rocky again because I no longer see them interacting and they’ve been retweeting stuff that gives me a few hints. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve broken it off for good. When was the last time you almost cried out of exhaustion? Ohhhh boy. It was some day in Feb I think? and everything had just been going wrong for me. Andrew and I got yelled at by our thesis adviser because she didn’t like what we submitted and she gave us a day to revise three entire chapters. We stayed in the college working away from 3 PM to 10 PM then when I got home, I realized I forgot to bring with me a certain item that my org entrusted me with. Absolutely wasn’t allowed to lose it. Had a panic attack and this was when I started crying because it was so late and I just wanted to go to bed; though Andrew saved my ass by offering to go back to school at like 11:30 just to retrieve the damn thing. Lastly, that was a time when business reporting was still giving me hell and I was struggling to find a business story around campus to turn in for that week, so I was freaking out about that too. All in all a shit day. What`s a TV show you hate missing? Idk man, if I miss a show I don’t think there’d be hate attached to it. I imagine I’d miss a show because it made me happy, so this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Do you think it’s funny how people always say their pet is the best ever? It’s adorable haha but not necessarily funny. Whenever someone says it I totally believe them; I think all pets are the best :) When did you last brush your teeth? This morning.

What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited? I checked my Twitter right before this question. Do you have a friend who you think you’ll be best friends with forever? Yes, Angela is for keeps. Does it annoy you when you accidentally delete things? For the most part I can just undo and get the deleted thing back, but when that’s not applicable it can get super distressing. I know I was gloomy for a very long time when I accidentally wiped out my camera roll with photos from 2014-2016. What`s a movie / book / TV show / band / whatever you highly recommend? Movie: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Book: Got nothing in this department. Show: BoJack Horseman Band: Paramore ha. They got a sound for almost everyone! When did you last use a dictionary / thesaurus? Two questions ago when I was looking for an adjective to best describe what it’s like to lose your entire camera roll and, essentially, good memories that you’ve made. Are you anticipating or dreading anything? I ammmmmm anticipating dinner haha. I can’t think of anything I’m dreading.

If someone could randomly give you something right now what would you like? Baked sushi :( It’s a recent trend locally and it looks so gooddddd, I just don’t wanna spend the last of my savings on it or ask my parents to buy a tray for me. What`s the most annoying thing in the world? At the moment it’s people who refuse to wear masks because they claim that it messes with their oxygen level or because they find it personally uncomfortable. When did you last use one of those water slides you put on hills? I have no clue what you mean. What are you sitting on right now? One of the dining room chairs. What skills would you like to learn / develop? Adobe Indesign and iMovie. I dabbled with these recently – Indesign for a class and iMovie to make a video for Gabie – and though I was always too scared to start using programs like these, I actually found them fun and super useful when I finally had my hands on them. When we saw each other the other day Gab was talking about using this break to take up workshops in different Adobe programs so that she’ll have more stuff to put on her resumé, so I might follow her footsteps too. What is something other people say you’re good at but you think you’re not? Teaching. I always feel like I fumble a lot, but idk I get compliments on it so I guess I’m kinda okay but I just don’t see it. What does your bedside lamp look like? I don’t have one. I used to have a wall light though. It was a just tiny lil bulb that I had to plug in to give my room a light orange hue. What did you last take a photograph of? Myself and Cooper. When was the last time you got really frustrated with technology? Yesterday. My laptop was a bit slow when I wanted my YouTube video to go full-screen, and my impatient ass already got irritated with it. What was the last funny thing someone said to you? She didn’t technically ‘say’ it but my mom was singing a song earlier and had the lyrics wrong, and what came out of her mouth instead was so wrong and so funny.  Who taught you to tie your shoelaces? My grandmother. What was the last thing you bought? I bought snacks from my girlfriend’s dad Korean food business! I got myself odeng (fishcakes) and tteokbokki (spicy rice cake) :) Do you want to move to somewhere else? If so, where? Any country with a capable government at this point. What time is it where you are? 8:04 PM. What’s your favourite picture of yourself as a child? I’m not sharing that on here, but I do have my favorites.

Do you like your neighbours? I suppose they’re okay, in a sense that they haven’t done anything to annoy me. I’ve never talked to them in the last 12 years that I’ve lived here though haha I always felt like my mom could take care of the socializing stuff – and she has been. Does your room need to be cleaned? Nah I’m barely in it these days. It’s mostly spotless and things are stacked up neatly. Do you have a good relationship with your family? I wouldn’t say it’s good, but it’s not bad. Super lacking in the emotional aspect, though, and it’s a big reason why at the end of the day I can’t call it a good relationship. What is something people are surprised to hear about you? That I don’t like fruits. The horrified gasps and expressions never get old. Do you make judgments about people straight after meeting them? Only if they blatantly act like a jerk. Do you hate any particular groups of people? I mean I hate racists, abusers, rapists, Karens... but if you mean to ask if I hate any race or people of a certain sexual/gender orientation then most definitely not. Do you fall up or down stairs usually? Down :( Do you constantly break things? (By mistake or otherwise) HAHA yes. What was the last bug you saw? Kinda looked like a moth but I’m not sure what it was exactly. Are there any smells which make you feel nauseous? Rotten egg, any fruits lol. What is the scariest thing you`ve ever gone through? Random men play-lunging at me when I’m walking outside and then laughing once I jump or whimper. I don’t know if there’s a certain script that those fucking pigs follow, but I’ve had several of the exact same experiences through the years. That’s why my friends can always poke fun at the fact that I drive everywhere no matter how close my destination is – at least I feel safest that way. Do you have anything unusual in your bag? No. I only carried the essentials in the last bag I used when I went out the other day. Are there any people you know in real life that you only talk to online? Yeah, there’s a bunch of people I don’t really get to see irl. Some of them are friends who’ve migrated, some are my friends’ parents, my relatives who’ve always lived in the US, etc. Do you think people who don`t care about education are dumb? In the Philippines they will definitely be considered careless, dumb, and having no ambition. But I know education isn’t as big of a priority in other countries and that college isn’t a necessity in those places, so I guess there’s a cultural difference here. What`s your favourite key on a keyboard? I don’t pick favorite keyboard buttons lol. Do you always finish what you start? Nah I’m a little terrible at that, especially if we’re talking of passion projects. I collected Starbucks planners for like six years and was never able to completely fill up any one of them. Who`s your favourite character from The Simpsons? Or do you hate that show? I’m not a big fan of the show but just because I relate to her a lot and the fact that she’s intelligent and a goody-two-shoes, Lisa. Have you ever had any friends who always tried to steal your things? Nah wtf? I’d so easily stop talking to them if all they did was steal from me lmao What is something you will never understand? People!!! Who!!! Aren’t!!! Nice!!! To!!! Servers/Baristas/Anyone working in a job that has to directly deal with customers!!! When did you last laugh hysterically? Probably earlier this afternoon watching a Good Mythical Morning episode.

BILLBOARD: St. Vincent On Her Reworked 'MassEducation' LP & Her 2019 Plans: 'The Best Thing I'm Going to Do Is the Next Thing

12/17/2018 by Lyndsey Havens

[Photo: Shervin Lainez]

She tells Billboard about her personal highlights from 2018

As 2018 winds down, Billboard is asking some of the artists who helped define the year in music to look back on their accomplishments, their favorite memories and their pop-culture obsessions from the past 12 months. First up: St. Vincent.

St. Vincent is never satisfied. It’s why, she says, she is always creating in one way or another: She picked up DJing in June and spun her first live set by September; reimagined her 2017 knockout MASSEDUCTION as a stripped down, piano-driven album called MassEducation this October; started producing for other artists as a part of some as-yet-unannounced collaborations; and is gearing up for her feature-length directorial debut, in which she’ll bring a woman-led version of Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray to the screen.

“The best thing I’m going to do is the next thing I do,” she tells Billboard, just a few days before she picked up two Grammy nominations for MASSEDUCTION (the album's art director, Willo Perron, also got a nod for best recording package.) But while she has a few more plans on the books for 2019 -- including a Feb. 14 performance at Lincoln Center as part of its American Songbook series -- what that next, best thing will be in her own music is open-ended. “You know when you hear it,” she says. “When a ghost walks through the room or when you sing a certain line and it makes you all weepy. That’s when you know that something is special.”

Below, she talks about reworking her songs for MassEducation, the hits and misses of Auto-tune and why she's taking a break from social media.

“Slow Disco” now exists in three different forms: the original on MASSEDUCTION, a made-to-dance version called “Fast Slow Disco” and now a stripped-down take on MassEducation. Why is it important to show that your songs can have many lives?

I felt like that particular song wasn’t done telling its story in just the one version that existed [on MASSEDUCTION]. And to me, that’s a testament to songwriting. Like, “Can this song be stripped back to nothing and still be powerful?” I spent so much time really working on the songcraft of this album that I just wanted to live in [the songs], totally stripped bare. Recording in that way actually made me feel more free. We recorded it live over the course of a couple days, and we didn’t do very many takes of anything. We didn’t even talk about what we were going to do or how we were going to do it, so you’re actually hearing us discover the songs in real time. What happens oftentimes for me is I write guitar parts that are complicated and then vocal melodies that can be complicated, so my brain live is doing complex processing. But it’s such a joy to just sing. I just got to really live in the words and live in the space and take my time and live in the silence. That, to me, is really freeing and gratifying and gets to my heart.

You’ve taken up DJing recently. What has that taught you about reinventing a song?

I love DJing, because it keeps me voraciously looking for new music, going back to things that I love and trying to make connections between songs. Sometimes those connections are as simple as, “Okay, the BPM and vibe of this are in a similar place, this could be an interesting transition.’ And sometimes the things that the songs have in common can be really hilariously, lyrically thematic. I get to test my genealogy and go from Herbie Hancock into Tribe Called Quest into Kendrick [Lamar] or something -- tracing lines between music from totally different eras. I love it. I get to discover music and listen in a way that is just total pleasure and enjoyment and inspiration.

You’ve also started producing for other artists. What surprised you the most about that process?

Producing takes the preciousness out of music-making, and you can see the big picture because you’re not in any way blinded by your own fear or ego -- that thing that you run into when you’re doing something really personal, like singing or playing guitar. I can hear the bird’s-eye view of what something could be without having to perform it at all. So that’s great. I love the tech side of it, too. I love sitting and trying to get great sounds for hours, and I love trying different things and reaching and building and playing with space. Also, one thing I definitely have learned is to never ever settle. Never settle for what kind of artist you think someone is, never underestimate anybody. Always be listening, and push it.

What’s a musical trend you’d like to see go away in 2019?

Sometimes I find Auto-Tune really evocative, and then sometimes I find it really not evocative. But it’s all in the hands of the artist. I think that we’re going to see less trap beats in 2019. They are really cool, don’t get me wrong, but it seems like it’s reached max saturation.

What artist would you want to invite to a holiday dinner with your family?

This is going to sound braggy, but one of my favorite compliments that I ever got was from an artist who said: “So many things are pointless, and you’re not.” That was the biggest compliment I think I’ve ever gotten. But I don’t want to be gross and say who that was, so… who would I invite to dinner? Is this one of those ones where you’re supposed to say Jesus? I would love to invite Kerry James Marshall. I’ve never met him. I really loved his exhibition last year, it was just beautiful.

What’s the best performance you saw this year?

Nine Inch Nails.

What’s one song you could not get out of your head this year?

Currently, the 1975’s “Love It If We Made It” -- I like that they’re pushing. It’s ambitious and has so much heart to it. I really have enjoyed their new album.

What’s your favorite city that you visited this year?

I had a really great time in Guadalajara -- let’s give Mexico some love. I was on tour, I’d never been. I was there in October, but my brother-in-law is a chef, so he came and we just ate all the tacos and tried all the food. It was great.

What app did you use the most this year?

The podcast app. After I was done with touring and answering questions about records and stuff, I was taking a social-media break. I don’t have Instagram or Twitter or anything on my phone anymore. It’s wonderful. I used to, but the world doesn’t need me to weigh in on every outrage every day. I was like, “This is totally joyless. I’m doing this because it’s a thing that I got conditioned to think that I needed to do, and it gives me exactly zero pleasure.” It doesn’t feel good to my heart to do that kind of stuff.

Right now, what is the most important thing to you?

My family is the most important thing to me. What I spend the most time on is my art. You can read that however you like.

I’m sure they intersect at times.

They absolutely do, yeah. But my heart is making what I love and the people I love, and that’s kind of it.

During the rollout of MASSEDUCTION, you held a mock press conference and poked fun at music-journalism tropes. What do you ideally want out an interview?

The thing is, my ideal interview is actually an interview where I don’t talk about myself and get to ask other people about themselves. But I realize that’s not the structure, that’s not the exchange. I was trying to acknowledge the dance we were doing as artists and press and have some fun with that. Some people liked it, and I’m sure it was annoying to some people. It’s strange when you think [an interview] is one thing and someone has a completely different experience, and you’re like, “Oh dear God, do I lack that much self-awareness? Do I not understand facial cues, what’s happening here?” But it’s not in my control, and it’s not supposed to be.

Day 3 - An extensive recap

First, I want to extend my apologies to those who have been patiently awaiting this post. I had every intention of writing this yesterday, which got away from me (as you’ll see if you keep reading), and then I had every intention of writing this in the morning, which disappeared (again, as you’ll see if you keep reading). It’s now 5:38pm on Wednesday, February 20th as I’m typing this sentence, and I’m once again exhausted from a long day.

[Edit 2: TL;DR for the following TL;DR -- A bunch of cool stuff happened, including books, dragons, lions, motorcycles, KFC, banks, SIM cards, a Starbucks, public transit, and traveling to two opposite ends of Beijing in a single day. Also my trip went from horribly lonely and daunting to pretty freaking cool and slightly less daunting in less than 24 hours. Done typing this at 8:55pm]

Edit: It’s legit 8:37pm when I’m making this edit, only a bit after posting the original. I wanted to add a tl;dr for those not interesting in reading all of this shit. Basically, I made 4 friends in Beijing, none of them from the same country, only one of them is white, only one is male, and only one is from the US. All three of these descriptions describe CB, my supervisor. His wife, RB, is Indian and works with children orphaned due to birth defects. There’s ML, a half-Brazilian, half-Japanese Communications instructor at ICB, and her friend R, who is herself a former Chinese physician turned public health professional/liaison/something-or-other that seems far more impressive and is exactly what she wants to be. All of them are really cool, interesting people that I’m very glad I had the opportunity to meet. In no particular order, I went to several bookstores, a Starbucks, a KFC early in the morning, the supermarket (twice) and got beer (both times) for ridiculously low prices, experienced the Lantern Festival (still not entirely sure what this is, but there were dragons and lions and motorcycles doing crazy synchronized stunts in a metal globe) at an amusement park, rode 5-6 different subway trains and a city bus, ate 10+ new foods, bought a book (because of course I did) which has both the original English and the translate Chinese characters on each page, tried to open a bank account, then got a SIM card, then actually opened a bank account, finally unpacked my luggage, and spent 3 hours typing this blog post. Also the long flight and trip from the airport to my new apartment were mostly uneventful. See? Even this was super long!]

The last you all heard from me here was as I was sitting in a bar in the Vancouver Airport, Sunday morning. Which was sort of 2 days ago, but sort of 3. Time zones are funky, especially when you cross the International Date Line. *shrug*

After I finished writing that post, I lumbered over to my gate and waited to board with the other couple hundred passengers. At one point, I noticed an older woman (probably in her 60′s or 70′s?) trucking along on one of those things that I can only manage to call a human-conveyor-belt that you see in airports. I mention this as she, had she been on carpeted flooring, she would have been making good time; as it so happens, she was on the conveyor belt that was going opposite of her destination. She was still making progress, but every so slowly, and seemed maddeningly oblivious to the fact that the floor was fighting her at every step. Fortunately, she made it to the other end without incident, although the same cannot be said for when she attempted to enter the next belt; a concerned employee using that particular belt in the intended fashion beckoned that she stop and try the other. So she stopped walking. And didn’t do anything, even when her feet made it back to where she had started. Naturally, she took a pretty solid tumble, lessened only by the shocked, and rightfully flustered, employee, who managed to help her to her feet as half of the onlookers gawked.

The actual flight, all 9 hours of it, went off rather uneventfully. Especially compared to the above story. It was nice having the longer flight second, as completing the first gave me an unearned sense of accomplishment; I’m nervous for my return as I’ll have actually achieved something when I get back to Vancouver, only to have to sit back down for three more hours. Seems less enticing, especially as I won’t be going back to an apartment that I’m renting. Oh well: that’s a problem for Future-Me, as are most things. I will say that the food on the flight was quite satisfying, and the complementary wine was much tastier than expected! And I managed to read a good chunk of Dan Brown’s Origin.

After landing in the Beijing airport, I managed to get through customs without too much trouble and had my first several experiences of what I’ll just refer to here as stranger-staring. #sarcasticwoo

I was met near baggage claim by an undergraduate at the University who chose to call himself Paul. I would later find out that, although it is common practice for Chinese residents to give themselves “American” or “Western” names, they don’t seem to share those names with their fellow residents.

Needless to say, I was exhausted and just wanted to eat something and lie down without dealing with anymore people. To his credit, Paul was an excellent host, his English was quite good, and he helped me to my apartment without incident. I think he was expecting to escort me to dinner at one of the nearby dining halls on campus (Princess Building), but I (hopefully graciously) conveyed that I would really rather just go to bed. After he left, I took a stroll on campus to the Princess Building to check it out for myself, and then stopped at a nearby convenience store to grab some snacks. GUYS! THEY HAVE CUCUMBER-FLAVORED LAYS POTATO CHIPS!!! And so many other flavors that are mind-boggling, and somehow simultaneously vague and specific.

Once I was back in my apartment, I chowed down on some fruit bread, drank some water, had a moment of near paralyzing fear/anxiety/regret/shame/etc., scolded myself for being (I think understandably) pathetic, and then went to sleep. By that point, I had been up for nearly 23 hours, and it was somehow already 7pm on Monday, Feb. 18. I slept until 6am the next morning.

That morning, I got in touch with CB, my supervisor, who was more than happy to meet with me around 11am. So I spent the morning figuring out how to be an adult person in Beijing. Several standard things took place that were daunting only because I’m in Beijing: showering, brushing my teeth, grabbing some toilet paper to carry with me, deciding how much cash to keep in my wallet, etc. I also came to the disturbing realization that there are precisely three outlets, each with one port. One of them was occupied by the television, one by the mini-fridge, and one was free to charge my tablet; it was then that I decided to try to go shopping and track down a power strip.

Day 2: Merry Mart

First, I want to say one quick thing: the exchange rate from RMB (also called yuan) to USD is approximately 0.15:1. So, as an example, I spotted a can of beer for 5.90 yuan, or roughly $0.90. For those of you who know me, you may understand why this was my first example.

Now, the supermarket that I was heading towards is located on the other side of the north gate of the CAU (China Agricultural University, which houses ICB, or the International College of Beijing, where I’m living and instructing), and my apartment is in the very southeast corner of campus, about a 10 minute walk away. And it’s not even 8am yet. I mention this as, when I approached the supermarket, or rather the building housing the supermarket and a dozen or so other shops, I noticed a KFC right next door. Now, I shouldn’t have been shocked to see the advertisements were for food that you would never find at a KFC in the States, but I was. What I feel completely justified in being shocked at was that the KFC was already quite busy. Naturally, I stepped inside and saw that a “Chicken Burger” with a glass of milk (and maybe a side?) was going for 12 yuan, or $1.80. So cheap!!

I stepped out without buying anything and continued into the supermarket. Oh, the wonders I beheld. I’ll try to keep it short, but I’ll point out that I’ve never paid so much attention in the produce and meat sections of a supermarket as I did yesterday. Once I made it past these sections, I experienced an onslaught of packing that looked both familiar and foreign (yes, I realized how stupid that sounds as I typed it). As I was on a bit of a mission (for hand soap and a couple power strips), I contained my curiosity as best I could. But I did take a peak at all of the flavors of Lays Chips in the snack section...

Fortunately, I managed to find a power strip! They had Philips power strips going for 70 yuan (~$10.50) and some from a company I’ve never heard of for 30/40 yuan. Naturally, I grabbed on of the cheaper variety. It seems I didn’t bring enough cash the first time. I moved on, failing to find anything that I could guarantee was hand soap, but let me tell you: after being around people who I could not understand, guessing at products based on the images along, and recognizing that I’m waaaaay in over my head, I have never been so happy to see a can of Budweiser in my life!

Now, I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure a 3-pack 16-oz or 500 mL or whatever-their-volume cans came out to 9 yuan, or $1.35. What a deal! (Fast forward to this morning, and I stumbled an even better find: 500 mL cans of Guiness with nitrous rockets for 15 yuan ($2.25) a pop! In the States, those usually run $16 for four!)

After spotting way more milk (a recent trend, apparently) than I’ve ever seen, ultra-pasteurized so it can sit on an uncooled shelf for months at a time, heaps and heaps of “sanitary tissue” and slew of snacks that boggled my poor, unworldly mind, I made my way to the checkout. Fortunately, I stick out so damn much that people just expect that I don’t speak Chinese; the look of mild irritation isn’t grating at all, it just lets me know that I’m not the only one who feels moderately uncomfortable at my residing in Beijing for these next 4 months. The interaction at the stand was pleasant enough, and we mimed our way through the bits that weren’t communicable. Then I headed back home to meet with CB.

Day 2: The Book

So, I’m already feeling wildly unprepared to teaching a senior-level mathematics course, but one of the few things that was keeping me grounded was that the book was to be selected by administrators at ICB/CAU, so that would save me having to make most of the decisions regarding content for my Probability class. Moreover, the university would provide the textbooks to the students. Little did I know, and little did CB know, and little did the person supposedly in charge of retrieving said textbooks from the library, no textbook was on file for this class. #sarcasticwoo

FORTUNATELY (can’t believe how many lucky breaks I’m catching!), there happened to be a textbook titled Probability and Statistics for Engineers and something-or-other. To be honest, my eyes glazed over at “Engineers,” not because they are lesser scientists, because they are most assuredly not, but because they just don’t appreciate the fine nuances of theoretical mathematics. That is to say, they’re lesser scientists. ;) #allinjest #imsuretheyvegotsickerburnsforme So, I guess I’m teaching from an Engineering textbook.

During this brief window of time with CB, I learned how various countries measure the breathability of the air, acquired a facemask, and snagged an air purifier. Things necessary to life in Beijing! I was then invited out to lunch with CB and his wife RB; I was unaware that their would be fourth, ML. Having never met RB, and being unaware that ML existed, I waited for the 20 minutes that CB needed to get a couple things ready before lunch in my room, then headed down to the entrance of the Guest House (where my apartment and office are located, in case I haven’t mentioned it by name yet). Waiting there was a 30-something Asian-descent woman who somehow didn’t look like she was a native Chinese resident. Best guess: RB. She smiles at me and asks if I’m here to have lunch with R, to which I say confirm and ask if that’s her. Turns out it’s ML, and a reference to a particular Disney movie popped into my head. (I bet you’re not thinking of the same one I was, though!) Anyway, it’s 12:30pm at that point, and I wouldn’t spend the next 11 hours with ML, a Communications instructor for ICB who has only been in Beijing since September, barely speaks any Chinese and gets by reading it as she knows Japanese. Turns out she was born in Brazil, though! That certainly explained why her features were not quite Chinese.

CB and RB showed up a few awkward, mostly silent, minutes later as, not anticipating a fourth left me just socially awkward enough to just keep my mouth shut and let my mind wander. RB led the way to a Chinese restaurant around the corner, and we had a ridiculously cheap meal. Everything was delicious, even the rice noodles and cabbage dish! CB asked how open I was to trying things I’ve never had before, and I responded that I’m hear to make the make the most of this opportunity. He followed up with, “So, you’ll try chicken feet?” I’ve never so quickly doubted my convictions before! Fortunately, the food we order was basic enough fare for a Chinese restaurant, so I didn’t have to prove my grit just yet.

Day 2: The Big Adventure

During the meal, ML mentioned that the “lantern festival” was that night, and that she’d be joining a friend of her’s somewhere in Beijing, TBD. CB mentioned off-handedly that there was a 4-story bookstore several kilometers away. My interest was piqued, but having no means of transportation, I kept my mouth shut. ML did not. She expressed serious interest in venturing out to the store, and I asked if it would be in imposition if I joined. After lunch, CB and RB gave us a rough pin location for the building, walked us over to a bus stop, explained to me how to use my transit card (Thanks, CG!!!), and saw us off on our adventure. At this point, it seems relevant to mention that, although I have two cell phones (my usual American one, and a Chinese phone bought secondhand from ES) (THANKS ES!!!), I don’t have internet access or any real means to contact CB or RB. I also don’t access to a map app (see: I don’t have internet access). As it turns out, ML’s access is hindered by the fact that her iPhone is apparently dated enough to not operate at full capacity with a Chinese SIM card. So she has spotty internet. SPOILERS: Her cell phone would die later that evening. #dundundun

The bus ride was uneventful, and we got off where we thought was should. Without the name of the bookstore or any solid evidence to suggest precisely where the bookstore was, ML then confides in me that she has frequently found herself incapable of finding her destination, wandered around for several hours, then given up and went home. My confidence was soaring. But, as they say, “When in Beijing...”

After finding a map of the surrounding area and comparing it to a screenshot of the rough-pin-location of the bookstore in question, I managed to match shapes cut out by walkways and roads and spot where we should be heading. The pin led us to a bookstore. But this bookstore had only one floor, although the building housing it had 20 floors and an elevator that looked out over the surrounding area. Needless to say, we rode the elevator for a moment before deciding to continue exploring. Stepping outside, we tried to reach CB...and we did! He gave us a more accurate pin and the name of the bookstore. Only one of those two things wound up being helpful.

On our way over to the new location (2 more blocks West), we stumbled on a developed “alley” that housed a wide plethora of shops, including....A BOOKSTORE!!! Dudes and Dudettes: let me tell you, this bookstore was amazing!! Check out the pictures below:

So cool! But this wasn’t where the pin was located, only had two floors, and when we scaled the spiral staircase, some 20-something employees started walking towards us and speaking in Mandarin. ML goes, “I’m sorry, we don’t speak any Mandarin, but we think we know what you’re trying to say. Have a nice day!” And we walked out of the store with our tails tucked loosely between our legs.

I was I could accurately convey all of the things I saw that struck me as fascinating while we explored this area of Beijing, but honestly there was just too much, and I can’t imagine you all are still reading this carefully, given that I’m not exactly giving the “Reader’s Digest” version of events. Or so you may think. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m doing my best to keep this short while still conveying how crazy this day was. And we’re only a couple hours into my afternoon/evening with ML. I applaud any and all who keep reading attentively. I’ll try to make it entertaining.

I will say that in this alley, I got stared down by a police officer. Mildly intimidating and recalled to mind the other intimidating visual to grace me. Just after checking out at the supermarket that morning, while I was packing the couple of items I had purchased into my backpack, I looked up and saw, for the first time in my life, 4 full sets of riot gear. Helmet, vest, nightstick (or whatever it’s called), and some sort of gun in a padded case. Sure, I know that I’ve been around those things before in my life, but never were they in plain view, seemingly on display.

After a few more minutes, a few more crossed streets, and pulling ML out of the way of a car that didn’t seem to care that she was there, we made our way to the pin’s location. And none of the stores around us bore the name of the 4-story bookstore. But we did find another bookstore.........and it turned out to be the right one! Crazy!! Of course, this was after trying out what we guessed was a calligraphy shop that seemed to primarily sell books? The words on the door were somewhat misleading. Anyway, let me tell you: in spite of being in a bookstore filled with words that I can’t understand, I still felt so calm and secure being surrounded by all of those books!

At this point, ML and I seemed to have figured out each other’s senses of humor and made frequent jokes and shared stores as we roamed the shelves, looking desperately for books written in English. After searching all four floors, some twice, we find a section with no markings nearby that happened to have some books in English. After looking over all of the classics (pretty much all they had), discussing the ones we’ve read, conversing about those we haven’t, we each picked one out to buy. I’ve seen Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World referenced too many times in crossword puzzles and trivia questions to not have developed an absurd curiousity for this book I’ve never read. So naturally I bought it. It seems like a rather nice-looking copy, no artwork to speak of, but elegant in a somewhat formal-Chinese kind of way. It came to 26 yuan, or about $3.90. HOW AM I BUYING A BOOK FOR THAT CHEAP?! WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE?! *sigh* Well, I seem to be getting by without my Kindle fine enough for now...(THANKS AGAIN RS FOR SHIPPING IT TO ME!!! I’ll let you know as soon as it arrives!)

Day 2: The Lantern Festival

At this point, ML had heard from her friend who I will just call R (have yet to become privy to her family name), and we were given the name of the place we were headed towards: Happy Park. By now, it was around 4:15pm, and we needed to somehow figure out where Happy Park was, how to get there, and manage to not get lost in the process by 6:30pm. So we went for tea. The place we stopped in was what seemed to be a solid attempt at a German tea/coffee shop-slash-bakery. And I got a cup of English Breakfast Tea for 22 yuan ($3.30). Not the best deal, but I learned an invaluable lesson: just take a picture of what you want to order! So simple, so elegant, so effective!!! I was also by this time learning that most people make purchases using the main “social media” app, WeChat. In fact, many shops and restaurants don’t carry any cash as WeChat is just a more effective means of payment. You can link a debit card to your account and you’re good to go! (More on this in Day 3).

<I’ve been writing for almost 2 hours! Yikes!!!> <I wonder if I can get a book deal out of this...>

Without really knowing where to find a subway station, ML and I headed back to where the bus dropped us off, thinking at the very least we could head back to campus and the subway station there. (Also, for those of you who don’t know: I’ve never ridden a subway. Sure, I use RTD rails almost daily in Denver, but somehow this just seemed different. Especially given how many lines there are and that we didn’t actually know where we were going...) We found a bus heading back towards campus, hopped on, and almost immediately spotted a subway station. The bus didn’t drop us off for 2-3 more blocks...

After meandering back to the subway station, we found a map and lo-and-behold there was a stop dedicated to whatever Happy Park is. And it’s on the complete opposite side of town. #unethusedyay #adventuretime We plotted our course and hopped on the train without incident if you don’t count the pile of vomit that I would almost certainly have stepped in had ML not avoided it just before me! *phew* The subway itself was on par, if not nicer, than the trains in Denver, if only a bit louder. Confined spaces and all that. By the time we made our three transfers and got to the other side of Beijing, the sun had set, it was 6:20pm, and we had made it just in time! R met us at the station minutes after.

When we turned to see where we were headed, I was floored. Right in front of us with giant glowing words spelling out (in two languages) “Happy Park” was an amusement park that rivals some Disney parks in it’s show-y-ness. As it was dark, I can’t say precisely how big it was, but I was impressed. Tickets for entry were 145 yuan (roughly $20), which I fortunately had brought along that morning, not realizing precisely how crazy the day would get.

Once inside, R informed us that there’d be a show starting in a few minutes. We tried to find a spot, but the girls had trouble seeing over the heads of the people ahead of us. In fact, I had to stand on my tiptoes as most of the people in front of me were holding up their children, phones, and self-sticks. There was a small mound that almost certainly was not intended for foot-traffic, but nonetheless had a solid 75 people standing on 6-foot-tall trees. When we joined the crowd up there, hoping for a better vantage point, we were disappoint. That is, until ML decided to climb a tree. And I joined her. Naturally. I don’t have pictures of the entire show, sadly. I was too busy being floored and hoping that my one leg that was supporting my weight would hold up! I’m also not including them here as I have to format the videos. But stay tuned in the near future for videos!!

After the show, we wandered around the park for several more hours. I was quite impressed. And the food we got was quite delicious!! Small, fried potatos balls, and donut-hole sized balls loosely-based on a Japanese dish that I couldn’t possibly spell correctly, topped with dried fish. YUM! Check out the pictures of some of the attractions we saw:

This was the interior of an Aquariam-themed section of the park. It was a welcome respite near the end of the night, given that it felt like it was nearing 10F outside.

A Mayan temple, with a restaurant inside and, probably, a water-slide ride built into it? Hard to say. If only our phones hadn’t died and we weren’t so cold by the time we made it to the Athenian/Spartan-inspired section of the park! So many cool statues and buildings!

A still shot as 5 motorcyclists entered the arena after some drum-dancers! Stay tuned for videos of them riding inside the wire ball on the right! [Edit 3: the videos will likely get posted as gifs. Quality will probs be not great. One of them will involve the motorcyclists doing loop-stunts, and the other will involve a dragon-dance with dope fireworks. I didn’t get any video of the lion-dancers from earlier in the show, but take my word for it: it was dope as fuck. So much so that I don’t feel bad about dropping an f-bomb in this edit. I can’t possibly find the words after 3.5 hours of writing to convey just how cool this show was!]

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what this is, but it looked cool!

This was a small bridge, reminiscent of the bridges in Europe where people write their initials on padlocks and toss the keys into the river below. From what we could tell (thanks to R’s understanding of her native tongue), the pieces all talk about the love between family, friends or significant others.

After the Aquarium-themed building got us toasty warm, and it was ticking closer and closer to 10pm, we bee-lined it out of the park and back to to the subway station. Another three transfers, some more conversation, and we were back on campus. While on the trains, either to or from Happy Park, I don’t remember which, ML commented on how quiet I had been earlier that day while waiting for CB and RB before lunch. Given how quiet I was at lunch, she was understandably worried that the pattern would continue. If you know me, you know it just takes a bit for me to get comfortable and figure out how to talk to you. Needless to say, I told too many stories with a surplus of details in each of the bookstores, on each of the trains, and all of the time in between. I’m thinking ML is going to be a pretty solid friend these next couple of months, if I she doesn’t get sick of my stories first!

As I alluded to above, it was around 11pm before we were back in the Guest House. I was ridiculously pooped but not entirely unimpressed at how not-jet-lagged I was! I passed out soon thereafter and woke up for the third and final time around 7am.

Day 3: Merry Mart II, the Second Part

Alas, morning came; and with it came a surplus of energy to spent getting my life together in Beijing. I still hadn’t unpacked my luggage, there were too many things my apartment was still missing, and I didn’t have a reliable means of feeding myself as I had been warned (and witnessed) that many places just simply don’t carry cash. And naturally don’t accept American credit cards.

So I packed a small bag and headed out again. I stopped by Starbucks, attempted to order a Black Tea Latte from the girl who said “Morning” to me, and made the false assumption that this particular colloquialism implied English-fluency. I wound up with a regular Latte. Still good, though! After that, I made my way to the KFC near the Merry Mart only to find that this establishment is one described above. My cash wouldn’t do me much good there. *shrug*

In the Merry Mart, I grabbed several more bread-based food items, a microwavable meal in a bowl, another power strip, some gum, and more chips. Pringles. American flavors. Two cans of Guiness, and two bottles of hand soap. This time, I kept track of the price of each individual item so I knew how much cash to have ready at the register. This time went far more smoothly, and I filled my entire backpack with items that ran up to 134 yuan (~$20). HOW?! HOW AM I GETTING SO MUCH FOR SO LITTLE I LOVE THIS!!!

Day 3: Getting my shit together

After that, my mind was set on opening a bank account to connect to my WeChat account. I reached out to CB, who graciously offered his assistance for a small amount of time. Ideally, this wouldn’t take too long. After all, he has plenty of work to be getting on with!

Well, the first bank we tried didn’t work because I’m not staying in town for more than 2 years. The second bank was more accepting. He translated exceptionally while I filled out documents written completely in Chinese. I was having an internal panic attack as I did something that felt incredibly wrong or anything. No, not at all. It’s totally okay to sign your name on documents that you can’t read. Yup, totally okay...

As it turns out, the bank would need to send me verification texts, so I gave them my phone number. But my American phone number wouldn’t work for them (they didn’t even try!), so after 30 minutes of waiting and 10 minutes of paperwork, CB and I headed down the street to get a SIM card and a cellular plan. Oh boy. All told, I think I waited for another hour there while CB got some work done; the paperwork and discussions took another 20-30 minutes. Once I had my phone situated, CB assured me that I could handle the rest of the bank stuff on my own as the staff would certainly recognize me and remember what I wanted. Plus, most of the paperwork was already filled out, right? Right? *sigh

The staff at the bank were less than enthused to find that CB hadn’t joined me. This was gonna be a blast, let me tell ya...

All told, I filled out twice as much paperwork as the staff scrambled to find a way to communicate with the moronic American who didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on around him. Of course, filling out this paperwork and determining exactly what they wanted and whether or not I wrote down the right things (i.e. understood exactly what information they were after) included 5-8 different sessions with several different employees, each with somewhere between 10-70 min wait-times. On the plus side, I’m almost done with Dan Brown’s Origin. Not his best work, but certainly entertaining enough to pass the time in a bank surrounded by people who probably would rather I not exist. To be clear, I don’t begrudge them at all; their service was impeccable, and their patience was never-ending, and the entire thing was significantly less annoying than it had any right to be, given the language barrier.

I left their establishment many hours later with a debit card, Chinese bank account, and the means to buy stuff wherever I wanted to go. And a significant amount of confidence that I can get through the next four months quite contentedly. Granted, I didn’t do nearly as much to earn this confidence as the staff at my new bank did!

After the fiasco at the bank, I went back to the Guest House, unpacked my suitcases, and laid down in bed to type this novella. That was several hours ago.

Convinced that I’ve had a crazy few days?

A coworker from Denver asked me how China has been so far, and I told him that it “[w]ent from shit to fantastic so damn fast.” Hopefully my long, rambling story has here has justified that claim for those of you reading this.

There was only one other day in my life that I can recall feeling as justifiably petrified as I did Monday night. I described the feeling as trying to wake up from a dream only to find that you’re wide awake. I was encouraged earlier today to remember that I don’t have to get through all 4 months of this experience at once; I just need to take it one day at a time. I usually don’t find these adages and idioms to be particularly helpful, but this one seems to be true.

In the future, blog posts probably won’t be nearly as long. Thanks for reading!

Now to finish this beer and book!

Sláinte,

BeardyAllen

Happy Birthday to the man who probably saved my life (an ode to Bright Eyes)

14 February on this blog is Christian Eriksen day, but on 15 February we turn to another hugely important figure in my life. Someone who I feel like I’ve known on a deep spiritual level for close to half my life, just via his music, Someone who always knows the right thing to say and exactly what I need to hear.

Do you ever think sometimes that there’s someone out there in the world who you’ve maybe never met (or maybe you have, but not until you were well along your journeys) but somehow they seem to be living a parallel life? They bring the deepest parts of themselves out in their art and it’s exactly the art you would be creating if you knew how to create that art, because those are also the deepest, most raw parts of your soul?

Because I do. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t. I’d say that’s not real or you’re projecting or, in my younger days, that you were speaking twelve kinds of bullshit. EXCEPT! that I have had this person in my life. Different lives and different experiences and different places and different cultures, but at the same time I have never felt so understood by another human being, be it a friend or a complete stranger, than I have by Conor Oberst. And I will always love him for that.

So. Happy Conor Oberst day, friends. As is the tradition, I spent the day working my way through his music catalogue from early days onward. He’s so prolific that I didn’t even include side projects like Desaparecidos or Mystic Valley Band or Monsters of Folk and I didn’t even make it to any of his solo work, so this is Bright Eyes focused, which is fine, because Bright Eyes is the way I love Conor Best.

Behind the cut... a walk through life (mine and Conor’s running in parallel), time, and sound featuring my favourite songs from each album (arbitrarily selected by what felt right at this moment). Now that I am creating my own art, I can see Conor’s influence everywhere in the way I shape my thoughts, my imaginings, and my worldview, and I think that’s the best gift anyone could ever have given me.

First. A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995–1997. 

This is just... when I think about what I was doing from 1995 - 1997 it just... doesn’t even come close to this. Conor was age 15 - 17 at this point. This was all recorded on hi-fi equipment and a four track in his parents’ basement and it’s just... LEVELS above anything 99% of people produce at that age under those conditions. It blows me away. It blows me away and, as we’ve established, when I think about my life at that time, at ages 15 - 17 it just... it’s this. I didn’t know Conor yet, but I wish I had because the idea of someone else GETTING IT the way that he gets it would have made a world of difference to me at that age.

I mean... we have to go with this one. There’s another version of this on a different album, but.... this is the original and the best.

Feb 15 (Happy Birthday to Me) - Links to YouTube

If I had to pick a favourite lyric, I guess it’s this:

I'm sorry about the phone call / And waking you / I know that it's late / But thank you for talking / Cause I needed to / Yeah, some things just can't wait

Second... Letting Off the Happiness

This is the first Bright Eyes album to be produced by Mike Mogis (a man Conor likes to refer to as the Dr, Dre of indie rock, because he has become known as THE producer among certain circles). It’s not a studio album, still having largely been recorded in people’s basements, but this is really the first time we hear Bright Eyes becoming Bright Eyes. And also just... the FEELINGS being conveyed on this album. Once again, I wish I’d had this when it came out in 1998 because damn didn’t I need it.

Musically, this isn’t my favourite song, but lyrically... like... damn if that wasn’t my whole entire life in 1998, seriously.

If Winter Ends - Links to YouTube

Favourite lyrics like... damn if it isn’t the whole song. But as I think back on 1998 me and what she was working through and working with and everything new and trying to fit in and figure out what the fuck was even going on in life and what she needed to do to please everyone or even just SOMEONE just one time... this line rises to the top:

Just get me out of here / But you get six months to adapt / And you get two more to leave town / In the event that you do adapt /  We still might not want you around

Third... we finally get into the studio albums. The albums I love. The time when I found Bright Eyes or Bright Eyes found me or whatever. I love them so much that in 2015 as a gift to myself, despite owning all these albums digitally, on CD, and some of them on vinyl, I bought this:

That, friends, is ELEVEN OF THE MOST DEFINING YEARS OF MY LIFE commemorated on fancy, coloured vinyl.

We begin with...  Fevers and Mirrors

Of all the studio albums, this has slowly grown to be one of my least favourites. That said... there are still moments when I listen to this that I get chills. There are these moments of pure, raw, powerful emotion that I just can’t help but stop what I’m doing and sing along and feel and live and love. My c.a. 2000 self was figuring a lot of things out. She was learning who SHE was versus who she thought everyone else wanted her to be. She was turning into the give no fucks girl she would be in a few years and still is now and Conor helped her do that and I love her and I love him for it.

 Hands down my favourite song is this one:

Arienette - Links to YouTube

As for lyrics... ooooffff I will randomly select some for you, I guess.

So don't leave me here with only mirrors watching me / This house, it holds nothing but the memories / And the moon, it leaves silver but never sleep

Fourth... Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground 

My favourite Bright Eyes album. Out of all of them. My favourite. 2002 and I was angry at everything and Conor was angry at everything. I was a mess, and so was he. 2002 - 2005 were... important years on my journey. I miss them. I miss that girl. I sometimes think I want her back, but no. I don’t. She had fun, but it was all artificially created, chemically created fun. Without it... without it everything was darkness and anger and sadness and crippling feelings of ABJECT FAILURE. At everything. That girl, she had friends and they loved her, but she didn’t understand that. She had lovers and partners and none of them loved her, but she didn’t understand that. She lived and breathed music, every moment of every day. She made choices (good and bad... mostly bad) that made me who I am today. I wouldn’t be me without her, but because of her I sometimes wondered if I would ever be here. And I wonder what she would think of us now. Would she love this life of stability and security and contentment, or would she hate me for “selling out”, for being boring and old and “too settled”? I think she would hate the idea, but as that girl 17 years later, I can tell you that yeah, sometimes she still hates it, but also whenever she tries to live her old life, she retreats back into her boring life of stability and solitude. I love that girl, and I’m glad she’s still in her me with her defiance and her fire and her passions and her constant quest for something beautiful in the world. I’m not sure if she ever found the one she was looking for, but she sure can see more of it in more places now than she could back then.

Anyway, I love this whole album, but there has never been a question as to which was my favourite:

Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And To Be Loved) - Links to YouTube

I mean, even the title basically sums up where I was in life in 2002. Aside from the fact that the scathing political commentary at the end of this song is STILL HORRIFYINGLY ACCURATE, there’s just so much in here that once again I’m like... Conor are we living the same life? Are we?

Particularly resonant lyrics both now and back then:

And so I've learned to retreat at the first sign of danger / I mean, why wait around, if it's just to surrender? / An ambition, I've found, can lead only to failure / I do not read the reviews, no, I am not singin' for you

FIFTH (I skipped the Christmas Album).  I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

The album that was always my second favourite, and maybe still is. I think it’s the most popular one. The one that sort of launched Bright Eyes full force into the sphere of the indie rock scenesters. It’s their first trend towards a more mature sound. His calmest sounding album. Introspective and thoughtful, but still angry. Bringing in really big name people to collaborate. The production values higher and the budget bigger. Conor having moved from Omaha to New York and bringing with him all those big city sounds and ideas and feelings. This is honestly a GREAT album front to back. Absolutely fantastic. It gets political, it goes deep, it doesn’t pull back. Everything poignant and resonant and tinged with that particular Conor Oberst melancholy that I, too, carried with me throughout life.

This is the album with the most lyrics that at the time, and still do to this day, made me stand up and yell YES, CONOR, THAT!

A sampling, before we get to my favourite:

“We must memorise nine numbers and deny we have a soul.”

“We might die from medication, but we sure killed all the pain.”

“What seems so simple in the moonlight by the morning never is.”

“If I don’t come back, I mean if I get sidetracked, it’s only ‘cause I wanted to.”

“I’ll fight like hell to hide that I’ve given up.”

“The world’s got me dizzy again. You’d think after 22 years I’d be used to the spin.”

“The sound of loneliness makes me happier.”

Honestly...there is a solid TIE for my favourite song on this album so I will give you one and then another.

First Day of My Life - Links to YouTube

Honestly like... it’s just a beautiful song. And honestly the sentiments like... damn Conor this is basically what it was like to try to date me at this time in life. And sometimes Jonas and I (even though we knew one another by this time) will still say “I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you” because, honestly, it’s the truth, and it’s something that could easily have happened in our lives, but didn’t.

And then... the song I loved from the opening note and will always love for all time. Because I related to it, and because it’s angry, and because WE’RE STILL THAT ANGRY, honestly.

Road to Joy - Links to YouTube live version with an interview with Conor

Favourite lyrics:

No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter /  Sometimes that’s just the most comfortable place

AND

So when you’re asked to fight a war that’s over nothing /  It’s best to join the side that’s gonna win / And no one’s sure how all of this got started /  But we’re gonna make ‘em goddamn certain how it’s gonna end

Bless, boy. Bless.

SIXTH...  Digital Ash in a Digital Urn

So this album and I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning dropped on the same day and they COULD NOT BE MORE DIFFERENT. That is intentional. This is the point where the hardcore Bright Eyes fans divided themselves into factions... and some hated both. This album was a place for Conor to explore and Mike Mogis to SHINE. I... hated it. For a long time. Like, I didn’t even own it. I thought it was TERRIBLE. And... fun fact that will come up a bit later, little beknownst to me, one of Jonas’s friends LOVED this album and would play it non-stop, so THIS (the least “Bright Eyes” album of them all) was the album Jonas associated with Bright Eyes. So whenever I would speak about the band he would make these faces like... I hate that band, OMG why are you obsessed with them, they are TERRIBLE. (More on this in the next album discussion) 

At one point, I caved and bought this on a used CD for ridiculously cheap because I needed to be a completist about my Bright Eyes collection. Then I listened to it again. This was probably around 2011 or 2012 or so. And.. I DID NOT HATE IT. I mean, it’s not my favourite, but also like... I understand it. I feel like I really missed out at the time because there are some great songs here and some great things that my 2005-self would really have related to had she given it a chance.

I’m still not sure if lyrically I have a favourite song, so here’s the catchiest song on the album. One of the bigger singles, and probably the only one anyone who wasn’t super into the album paid attention to.

Take it Easy (Love Nothing) - Links to YouTube (live from SXSW)

Even that title speaks to the me of 2005. Like... if this wasn’t her life at that time I have no idea what was. She was WRONG about this album.

Lyric... like, damn how can you not love this?

Don't take it so bad it is nothing you did. / It's just once something dies you can't make it live. 

SEVENTH -  Cassadaga

Cassa-fucking-daga. Story time.

It’s two years since we’d heard from Bright Eyes. I’m working a real job and in grad school and living away from downtown and starting to settle. I’m at a weird place in life, really, because it’s like I’m trying to grow up and get over my shit and my mis-spent youth and my mistakes, but I’m still in the same city so it’s hard not to fall back into that life. For the first time ever, though, I have a circle of friends who ACTUALLY FUCKING CARE about me and I like them for them and no one is pretentious or fake, we’re just giant fucking nerds, mostly. I did this thing where I stopped being in relationships for a full year because I needed to know I could exist without it. I needed to find ME again. And I did, and it was great, and I wasn’t HAPPY, per se, but I wasn’t the hottest mess in the universe anymore either, so things were looking up. Jonas had gotten back from his time in South Korea and he’d also mostly figured his shit out and he was sometimes living with me after my roommate moved out and I had a rather nice 2BR apartment to myself and sometimes living elsewhere because of his commitments. We were maybe dating and maybe not, because we haven’t ever really defined our relationship like that. I mean, this was after the point in life that I called him and said “It turns out I hate everyone who isn’t you” so I think we define that as the start of our “relationship” AKA elevated friendship/sibling/weird roommate situation.

Also, I had my radio show at this point. Part of our tasks at the radio station were that we had to review CDs that came in (people would send us demos and full albums to pitch their stuff to us and see if we’d play it and all that and we all had to do a certain number of reviews per 6 months or something like that). Usually it wasn’t anything I’d ever heard of before, because when known entities came out the full-time staff would pull it and review because they knew we’d want to play it, so here’s unsuspecting me in late March like ehhhhh I need something to listen to at work, I guess... and what is there on that shelf? BRIGHT EYES - CASSADAGA. Like... how no one else had grabbed it is beyond me, but it was a FULL TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE RELEASE DATE, so I grabbed that thing and held it close to my chest like it was the fucking One Ring and took it with me. I didn’t listen to it at work, because I wanted the full experience in the privacy of my own home (and also to copy it to my computer so I had it to listen to until I could buy it outright).

This weekend, Jonas happened to be in town. So... unapologetically I told him “I know you hate Bright Eyes for some COMPLETELY MYSTERIOUS REASON, but this isn’t even out yet and I’m going to listen to it very loudly and I don’t care about your life.”

Two songs in, he LOVED this album and honestly kept saying “Wait this is Bright Eyes? No it’s not.” and this is when I learned he’d only ever heard Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. So I like to make fun of him for that whenever we listen to Cassadaga. It’s his favourite Bright Eyes album now.

I like it because the sound matured and the content matured, just like I had. This was an album about feeling unsettled and wanderlust and trying to find your place in the world, which is exactly what I was doing. Just today, in fact, when I was listening to this, I caught the line “ Better find yourself a place to level out “ and once again yelled out “YES, CONOR!” followed by “I NEEDED THAT THEN AND I NEED IT NOW!” 

It’s a different sound, a mature sound, less angry, less ambiance, less driving beat, more... song. A little alt-country. I can hear the Mike Mogis influence and the Nate Walcott influence, and it’s really just a lovely album that I can’t explain WHY I like, but I think it has something to do with it once again being exactly what I needed at the time, while still managing to be something different than all the Bright Eyes that had gone before, just like I was still me while still managing to be something different than before. We’d all done some growing in those two years.

Again, I have two favourite songs (more really) and I refuse to choose right now, so you get both:

If the Brakeman Turns my Way - links to YouTube

I never thought of running /  My feet just led the way

I Must Belong Somewhere - links to YouTube

Everything - it must belong somewhere. / And you know it's true - I wish you'd leave me here. / You know it's true - why don't you leave me here?

FINALLY - The People's Key

2011.. We’d had Mystic Valley Band and Monsters of Folk and solo work and I thought... fine, Bright Eyes is wrapped and done. Everyone has moved on. And that’s fine. Cassadaga was a good send off. Move out of your youth and into adulthood with a bit of wanderlust and feeling unsettled. That quarter-life crisis thing. I certainly got it.

By this time I’m married. I’m living here in Minneapolis. I’m working. I’m settled and re-settled and have more or less become the me that I am today. We’ve gone from the wildness of youth to fondly remembering it as we try to figure out the next steps.

And then Bright Eyes releases an album. On Conor’s birthday. At the time I’m coming up on the next junction of life... moving from my 20s to my 30s and figuring out WTF that means anyway and trying not to feel like I’m old and past it and have wasted my life.

Conor comes along and says something like, we felt like we owed it to all of you to close down that chapter in our lives. Because Conor is a brilliant genius who obviously lives the same life I do.

They put out an album, and it is weird, and it is dancey, and it is poppy, and it is synthy and I dance down the streets of Minneapolis with a giant grin on my face and I don’t care how ridiculous I look. And I go see Bright Eyes live in concert one last time. And I cry... because I am so happy. Because Conor is so happy. He’s an adult and he’s mostly settled and he’s like, hey, everyone, I’m going to be okay and so are you.

Everyone’s favourite song on this album is the track before this one, but this, for whatever reason, is the one I love.

Jejune Stars - links to YouTube official video

Every new day is a gift, it's a song of redemption / Any expression of love is the way to return / To that place that I think of so often, but now never mention / The one the voice in the back of my head says that I don't deserve

AND

Sure I have my doubts /  But I know it now /  We are Jejune stars / So it starts again / At our childhood's end / I'll die young at heart

And so we leave it there. There’s been much more from Conor since, all of it hitting exactly the right notes in my life as we journey on our parallel paths, but if that’s where Bright Eyes leaves me, then what an optimistic and hopeful place to move forward from.

My life, my love, my heart.

Darkness 2 For Mac

Gameplay Sound Graphics Value

Genre: ActionMin OS X: 10.6

‎Second issue in an four issue series! Each 24 page comic is published in print and digital at the same time! Don't miss the next chapter in this exclusive comics prequel to next summer's blockbuster STAR TREK movie! New characters and new conflicts threaten Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterpris.

The Darkness 2 game playable on macOS and Windows is published by 2K games has a Very Positive rating on Steam (out of 4106 user reviews). The Darkness 2 is a supernatural first-person shooter developed by developed by Digital Extremes( developers of co-op shooter Warframe) is based on a comic book series by Top Cow Productions.

I just got the Darkness II, and my wife wants to play it also. I didn't think it would be enjoyable for her to play over my save, I thought it would be better if she started off from the beginning.

360 controller works but, not in darkness II So i'm using big picture mode with my controller just fine but, i play darkness 2 the 360 controller doesn't work. The options menu shows support for it, it works great in other games but, i get nothing in darkness 2.

Buy The Darkness II as a Steam Key. It’s been two years since Jackie Estacado, now Don of the Franchetti crime family, used The Darkness to kill the men responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. He’s been unable to shake the memory of Jenny’s death since bottling up his supernatural power and now The Darkness.

The Darkness II April 26, 2012 | Jon Carr

Pages:123Gallery

Click to enlargeGuns Blazing

Mac OS X: 10.6.8 / 10.7.2 | CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo | RAM: 2 GB | HD Space: 11 GB | Graphics: AMD HD2600 / Nvidia 9600GT with at least 256 MB VRAM or higher

Reviewer's Rig:

27' iMac, Core i5 Quad 2.8Ghz, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD5750 1GB

What is perhaps most interesting about The Darkness, is that it started as comic book back in 1996 (It's actually quite good, and anyone further interested in the story and Jackie should check them out. But be warned, they are even more explicit and gruesome than the game). The comics got a makeover in 2002, and still remain successful. In 2007 Starbreeze Studios (of Chronicles of Riddick fame) developed a game based on the comic books, also named The Darkness. Sadly, this game was console exclusive and never made its way to PC or Mac. The first game's story is briefly covered in an opening flashback and should be paid attention to as it highly relates to what is going on in the second game.

Yes, The Darkness 2 is now out on Mac as of a few days ago thanks to the efforts of Transgaming and published again by 2K (And is of course available at GameTreeMac, as well as Steamplay). However, Digital Extremes developed the 2nd game, not Starbreeze Studios. How the two compare Mac gamers will never know, but you can know that The Darkness 2 is very good. Why? Read on!

As a quick overview The Darkness is an evil, sentient being, one of the two primal forces in the game's universe (his opposite being The Angelus, who is female and Light) Both forces inhabit male and female hosts respectively, granting them amazing powers, but also causing them to fight for their individuality and control, as both forces contend not only with each other, but to take over their host completely so it does their bidding.

In the first game, The Darkness awakens in Jackie Estacado on his 21st birthday. As a hit man for the Franchetti crime family this turns out to be particularly useful since The Darkness enjoys and is fueled by killing. Things take a turn for the worse, however, when the mob kills Jackie's girlfriend Jenny right in front of him while The Darkness forces him to watch. In turn Jackie goes on a murderous rampage and wipes out the whole mob. But by doing so he is completely consumed by The Darkness.

After the events of the first Darkness game, Jackie is now head of the Franchetti crime family and has been suppressing The Darkness for years. However, a spectacular ambush during an evening at a restaurant forces Jackie to awaken The Darkness once more, unleashing its awesome powers and imbuing our protagonist with scary Darkness arms and a predilection for shooting out lights.

As you can imagine The Darkness doesn't do well in the light. Anytime Jackie stands in, or is blasted with, light he is partially blinded and loses Darkness powers and abilities. So, it is in your best interest to shoot any and all lights, in addition to focusing on the light carrying foes you encounter later in the game. It's not quite Splinter Cell levels of lightbulb assassination, but it is part of things.

Perhaps the most interesting and compelling aspects of The Darkness 2 are the story and characters. Essentially, you are playing a criminal and a murderer. However, Jackie is extremely likable and easy to care for, especially when you see how tortured he is about Jenny's death. You have a number of flashbacks and possible hallucinations of Jenny throughout the game and these are surprisingly sweet and tender moments in contrast to all the brutal violence on display. Even without playing the first game it's easy to connect with Jackie and Jenny and care about both of them because it's so easy to see how much they loved each other, and how much Jackie still loves her. Not many games believably pull off romantic relationships, but The Darkness 2 is certainly one of them. You also get to interact with the men under you in your mansion between action missions and various other interesting characters who are all impressively voiced and animated.

Pages:123Gallery

Platform: Steam

In stock

Feb 6, 2012

Categories: Action, Most Popular, Most Viewed, New and Trending, Popular Games, Recently Updated, Top Selling, What's Popular

Darkness 2 For Mac Os

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Free The Darkness II steam key. Free Steam KEYS! Free Steam Games. Steam Giveaways. Free CD Key. Games Key. Free games to download. The Darkness II cd key free

About The Darkness II free steam key

Inspired by the popular comic book series produced by Top Cow Productions, Inc., The Darkness II is an intense first person shooter that delivers a twisted and gripping narrative of tragedy, modern crime drama, and supernatural horror. Players will be taken down the brutal and personal path of Jackie Estacado, head of a New York crime family and wielder of an ancient and ruthless force of chaos and destruction known as The Darkness. Its been two years since Jackie Estacado used The Darkness to kill the men responsible for his girlfriends murder. Hes been unable to shake the memory of Jennys death since bottling up his supernatural power and now The Darkness wants out. A sudden, unprovoked attack by a mysterious organization known as the Brotherhood heralds the start of a full-scale war and opens the door for The Darkness to reemerge, setting Jackie on a journey to hell and worse.

4-Player Co-op Campaign - Play as one of four unique characters each capable of wielding weapons infused with Darkness powers.

Quad-Wielding Chaos - Slash, grab, and throw objects and enemies with the Demon Arms while simultaneously firing two weapons, adding a new dimension to the FPS category.

Harness an Unstoppable Power - Master the Demon Arms and summon the powers of The Darkness for even more explosive gameplay.

Kill the Lights - The vicious powers of The Darkness manifest only in the shadows so use the environment to your advantage and watch out for enemies who will use light as a weapon.

Intense and Personal Journey - Experience a dark, twisted and gripping story written exclusively for the game by acclaimed comic book author Paul Jenkins whose credits also include The Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, and the original The Darkness game.

Distinctive Graphic-Noir Style - Graphic novel shading and color combined with the dramatic lighting of film noir pays tribute to the source material and brings the pages of the comic series to life. Inspired by the popular comic book series created by Top Cow.

Limited Edition Content

If you pre-purchased The Darkness II you are exclusively entitled to the Limited Edition, which includes free digital editions of The Darkness: Origins Volumes 1 and 2, collecting the origin of Jackie Estacado and the Darkness by Garth Ennis and Marc Silvestri! Please visit http://comics.comixology.com/redeem and enter your code. You must login to your comiXology account, or create one, in order to redeem. Once redeemed, you can download your comics on your smartphone or tablet device, as well as read on the web!

How to get The Darkness II key free

1 - First step is to register as the member 2 - Choose an offer available and make sure you choose the one that's giving you lots of coins 3 - Complete the offer you have chosen, you must use real information to complete an offer / survey 4 - Get coins instantly to your account

Darkness 2 For Mac Iso

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Darkness 2 For Mac Download

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OS: Windows XP/Vista/7

Processor: Intel Core 2 @ 2GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+

Memory: 1.5GB RAM

Hard Disk Space: 10GB

Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600 / ATI Radeon HD 2600

Sound: DirectX Compatible

Additional: Requires installation of Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable, DirectX and nVidia PhysX version 9.11.1107 (included with download)

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basic options trading course udemy kal Arkansas

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8% instead of 16. 4% (29,753 divided by 96k instead of 186k). But putting these accounting shenanigans aside, let�s see what the more conservative calculation of a 16. 4% return means. If I had invested my $186,000 into the S&P500 last July, I would have gained 5% ($9,300) as that�s the amount the index was up over that period. Just a month earlier, that number would have been in negative territory as the index was lower. In contrast, I locked in my revenue after each options trade was closed. I love that my profit is a real number added to the cash portion in my brokerage account rather than an abstraction based on the market trending higher. Another point to note regarding the capital at risk is that it doesn�t need to be sitting in your account in the form of cash. It will absolutely provide peace of mind if that�s the case, but you can invest it as you like to boost your returns. When I started this a year ago, my broker was paying me 1. 9% for idle USD in the account, so I was quite happy leaving it. However, that�s obviously not the case anymore, with interest rates at zero. But I could allocate that money into some safe dividend stocks and boost my returns that way. Which is somewhat the approach I�m taking. My Path ForwardTrading options may sound sexy, but it�s pretty tedious. I�ve entered over a thousand executions into my spreadsheet this past year, which is something I LOVE doing. I used to have to make manual trade confirmations at work. Now I do it to record my profits!I feel like a kid counting pennies added to his piggy bank. Except this one pays to feed my family!That said, the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. And that�s how I feel right now. Rather than patting myself on the back for profiting this past year, I feel hesitant to be proud. I realize how little I know and that I�m merely scratching the surface of the knowledge I need to feel fully confident in trading options for a living. And also how much more I need to hit the books. In terms of specific actions I need to take, they mainly involve expanding my arsenal of trading strategies. Before the market crash, I was exploring a couple that I would love to have in my rotation. One is the very cool sounding reverse iron condor, which is used to profit from significant moves around earnings announcements. When you think there�ll be a move either up or down, but are unsure of which way, this is the strategy to use. Another is deep in the money covered calls around ex-dividend days. The reason for my interest in these two strategies is that they are generally closed within just a couple of days, thereby minimizing market exposure. It�s, therefore, possible to increase returns while also reducing my exposure to the market movements.

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I read success stories of people starting a side hustle that allowed them to quit their job. I even knew a couple. But I couldn�t figure out what my side hustle superpower could be until I stumbled upon options trading. Trading options was something I considered for people with insane levels of intelligence. And unfortunately, that isn�t me. When I took the GMAT exams to apply for grad school, I scored in the top ten percentile for verbal (Yaaaay English Lit Class!) but the bottom ten for math. People were shocked when they found I worked in finance. Not surprisingly, I didn�t end up applying for grad school�But I said f*ck it. I�m gonna see if I can learn this options trading thing. And a year after trying it out, I�ve made $29,753. Here�s how it all went down.

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The only catch is that you cap your short-term gains. While you can�t lose money with this strategy unless the value of the underlying stock decreases (same scenario as someone who buys and holds without selling covered calls), you do cap your upside. If you set a strike price of $20 and the stock goes up to $25, you have to sell your shares at $20 each rather than at $25 each. If you bought at $15, you still get some considerable upside, but you can miss out on additional gains. There isn�t a chance of losing all of your money with a covered call strategy if you use the strategy on good stocks. That�s why I recommend starting here. Covered calls give you a deeper perspective of what can happen to the value of options. In a single day, a call or put can go down over 80%. Similarly, they can quintuple in a single day depending on what happens to the company. An index fund will never go down by 80% in a single day, but it will also never quintuple in a single day. And an option�s value can swing wildly within a few minutes depending on the price movement of the underlying stock. Nibble With Your Options BuysThe first time I bought options, I was extremely conservative. I bought a single Nikola put contract which did well. My logic for buying the put was that more evidence around Nikola�s fraudulent practices were emerging. I followed this stock for weeks before finally deciding to get started. I still buy Nikola puts to this day and will likely continue buying puts until the stock gets delisted. Due to Nikola�s premiums being higher than the average stock, I buy puts set to expire in 5�8 days. For stocks with lower premiums, I�ll buy options with further out expiration dates. The further your expiration date, the more time you have for the stock to move in your direction. There are a variety of risky options trading strategies such as buying an option on its expiration date that can quickly deplete your money. If you want to give the stock additional time to move in your direction, buy a closer to the money option with a further out expiration date. You�ll pay more for it, but the extra time is worth it. For a guide on what to not do with options, check out the article below. The Riskiest Way To Invest In StocksThis strategy is entertaining to watch but extremely stressful to implementProtect Your Portfolio From Downside With PutsOne of the best ways to buy options is through hedging. If you own shares of a company and are nervous about the short-term outlook, you can buy a put to cap your losses. This strategy is great for a few key reasons:#1: You don�t panic sell or end up selling a stock you wish you held onto.

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If you own shares of a company and are nervous about the short-term outlook, you can buy a put to cap your losses. This strategy is great for a few key reasons:#1: You don�t panic sell or end up selling a stock you wish you held onto. This has happened to me a few times before buying options. #2: If the stock goes down, you can hold onto the shares and eventually sell the put. The put will shield you from most of your losses. #3: If the stock goes up, your put will lose value and eventually expire worthless, but it took off a lot of stress from your shoulders. You could focus on other things instead of worrying about the stock price or panic selling your shares. If the stock price isn�t likely to hit the strike price of your put, you can sell the put early to protect yourself from some of those losses. The protective put that attributed to most of my gains thus far was a protective Fastly put. I bought this put right before Fastly lowered their revenue guidance and the stock tumbled in after hours. I talked more about Fastly�s after hours tumble and explained how I�ve been playing the stock moving forward.

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Bull Call SpreadA bull call spread involves the purchase of call options at one strike price and the writing of the same number of call options with the same expiration date but a moderately higher strike price. The profit from a bull call spread is maximized when the price of the security reaches slightly under the strike price of the written options, so that the written options expire worthless while the purchased options can be exercised for the maximum value within the window of the written options expiring worthless. The downside in a bull call spread is protected when both options expire worthless, but the premium gained from the written options helps to reduce the loss from the premium paid for the purchased options. Bull call spreads are used when a trader has confidence in the direction of an upcoming price change, but not in its intensity. If a trader foresees only a small increase in the price of a security, then they can capitalize on that small increase by purchasing call options while also limiting any potential downside and reducing the cost of the premiums paid by writing options at a higher strike price that is unlikely to be reached. The downside to the bull call spread is, of course, that any potential upside beyond the projected price increase is limited due to the corresponding increase in the cost to cover the written call options. Bear Put SpreadA bear put spread is the exact opposite of a bull call spread, where the trader purchases put options and also sells the same number of put options with the same expiry date but a moderately lower strike price. The profit from a bear put spread is maximized when the price of the underlying security reaches slightly above the strike price of the written put options, which means that the written options expire worthless while the value of the purchased options is maximized within the window of the written options expiring without value. The downside to a bear put spread is limited to the premium paid for the purchased options less the premium gained from the written options, which occurs when both of the options expire worthless. Traders use the bear put spread when they want to bet on a moderate decline in the price of a security. The premiums gained from the written options help to offset any potential losses if the security fails to fall in price significantly, and they are added to the profits if the price falls within the window of the written options expiring without value.

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Year End 2017 Wrap Up

I’m gonna be straight up honest with y’all, I almost didn’t do one of these for this year because this year has sucked horrifically and I just didn’t see a fucking point. But I’ve done one every year for like, at least four years now, and it’s tradition, and I for some reason feel it’s important, so by damn I’m gonna look back on my text posts from the year and my memories of what I was doing and see what happened this past year.

Jan 2017 - Was beginning my last ever semester of undergrad this month. At this point I still thought I’d be going to grad school hahahah so much can fucking change in a few months. Started my AC sideblog so that’s cool. and even this far back (: we still see me struggling with debilitating pain (: which has been a trend ever since I’ve been doing these year summaries I think, is seeing how bad my pain was throughout the year. jfc. looks like I was struggling with some depression symptoms here too, go fucking figure. I had an interview for grad school too and we know how badly that went…

Feb - Here’s where I decided I thought i might be on the autism spectrum. I now think I was wrong on that self dx, but you know, journeys of self discovery are important and all that. but here’s lots more pain and tired and “brain not working” which was lots of depression symptoms I believe, sigh I let that get bad for a while there. Oh and then I learned I didn’t get into that grad school I got the interview for.  so yeah that was Feb in a nutshell l o l

Mar - Breath of the Wild came out this month and dominated my life for a month or two, I still love this game very much and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart, ti’s just so good and sweet and lovely. I still haven’t even really beat it LOL and I need to but. still. that’s never been the most important part of Zelda games to me. OOO THO I had beginnings of existential crises this month!! cause I was getting so bogged down in my thesis research and didn’t know if research was what I wanted to do forever and ever anymore!! isn’t that fun!! (it was not fun). but the rest of this month seems like. a whole lot of bitching about pain. paaaain pain pain. like holy jesus bitching about pain. maybe if I printed off all these posts and gave them to my doctors they’d believe I have a problem LOL.

Apr - So I had shitty dr appointments that further hurt my chronic illness identity, and then other Ongoing Identity Crisis because of not getting into grad school and wanting a job in which I could help people. this is the month I in earnest started applying for jobs; research tech jobs mostly, but some adjacent jobs too (don’t remember what exactly). I didn’t branch out very far at this point though cause I was still McFuckin Terrified. and then I realized that I didn’t want to leave hundreds of miles away for work, cause as much as a lot of the culture of southern Appalachia can suck sometimes, it’s still home, /my/ home, and I don’t want to abandon it. I know I freaked out a lot about getting my thesis done and presented this month too bc I was soooOooOOoO unmotivated to do that shit LOL like. whew. did not want to, did not care any longer, but still had to do it.

May - GOT MY FIRST EVER TICKET LOL THAT FUCKING SUCKED SO BAD. sigh. otherwise I was mostly vague as SHIT with stuff this month. I know I graduated, didn’t walk though cause I could not give less of a fuck at that point. I applied for every job I could find that I remotely qualified for that was close enough I was willing to move to. I even had a Skype interview for one, either this month or in April. it fell through, of course.

Jun - One of my very first June posts is “who the fuck am I/how do I become who I want to be” LOL so that identity crisis was still rip roaring obvs. then that time when I tried to explain disability stigma to one of my previous (cishet white male) bosses. Had another phone interview this month for another job I didn’t get lmfao. Pretty sure this is the month where I started applying for mental health case management jobs, like a bunch of them, at different locations all in the company I’m currently in.

July - So I think it must have been around the beginning of this month that I had my first in person interview? I bombed that one hardcore. didn’t stop another location from interviewing me though, and I got a second interview with them, which I then proceeded to fail because I had no prior experience. It was brutal LOL. and the new person started at my old job, and I had to start training her, and that whole situation was just awkward and weird and Undesirable. to the maaax. it was this whole ordeal too where they’d scheduled my last day to be the 28th of July, so that’s what I was planning on and like, focused on… but then it turned out my coworker got national guard orders and had to be gone two months, so instead of having newbie there by herself, they were like (to me) “hey… just wanna… chill for two months longer or until you find a job…” which was admittedly hella cool of them.

Aug - Lots of blogging about pain, lots of general vagueblogging. I did announce publicly on tumblr that I’m intending to convert to Judaism so that’s still cool, and still a thing, even if life has been repeatedly crotch-punching me so I haven’t been able to make much actual progress on it. but then, I had the interview for my current job. that i somehow passed with flying colors. And my asthma started getting worse, and I started getting soooooo so done with my old IT job, but I /got my new job/. ALSO THIS MONTH WE GOT RADS MY SWEET NEW BABY so now our family is made of me, my husband, and two kitties.

Sept - September. Oh, September. started out so innocently, with starting orientation for my new job. I was all starry eyed and hopeful for the new job because I thought that it was a perfect home for me. then I got there. started doing things. realized that I was terrified of trying to meet my new coworkers and learn their dynamics. realized I was terrified of trying to meet my new supervisors/superiors and learn their expectations. realized that in general I just didn’t know the culture of the place at all and that fucking /terrified/ me. and then the job itself, the job itself was something I’d never done before, had no experience in /whatsoever/, had no FUCKING clue what I was doing. I was a fish out of water with no bloody idea where I was going, and hoooboy. I almost quit by the end of September, I truly did.

Oct - tw: miscarriage at end of month I started therapy for my anxiety!!! yay!!!! I had a lot of adapting to work in this time too that I didn’t really talk much about on tumblr too I think. I mean I was learning a lot, I was meeting more of my clients, some even time. I was still terrified, especially of my other coworkers because I didn’t know them or understand them, but even at that, I was learning. [Stop reading if you need to avoid tw miscarriage and skip to Nov.] The other horrifically sucky thing to happen in Oct happened not to me, but to my sister. She’d found out a few months perviously that she was pregnant, at 37 years old. they’d just recently gotten all the genetic testings back and found out they were going to have a girl. unfortunately though, the baby stopped developing at 15w. my sister discovered this at what would’ve been 17w. she had to have surgery to remove the baby. she’s still recovering from this trauma, she’s heartbroken and just. very upset. I’m still upset for her too.

Nov - Last month I was doing ok I think. I was doing pretty well at work, kinda just coasting along but mostly getting the hang of things. Therapy had been helping I think; it’d been teaching me somethings, mostly only small differences but I think having someone to talk to had been helping frankly. Work was going well, and we’d decided to start looking for a house to /buy/ (realtor.com) but hadn’t hired a realtor yet. probably for the best. as it turns out now…

Dec - Fuck you, December. the good news is, my new job’s health insurance kicked in Dec. 1st. which is great, considering I got admitted to the hospital  Dec. 7th, a Thursday. the Monday prior I’d tried to pop a zit, no big deal. WRONG. it got infected. not just any old infection, though, oh no. FUCKING MRSA. so I got cellulitis in my face, my whole right side of my face swelled up three times the normal, I got MRSA/pneumonia in my lungs, I had MRSA in my bloodstream. when I came in the ER I had very low blood pressure and heartrate of 130, so I was septic. like. shit was going down. I stayed in the hospital 6 days, and they released me with a PICC line and having to do vancomycin (really strong IV antibiotic) twice a day via the line. I went back to work too early for two days, but saw my PCP on the third day and he put me off that again. /Then the chest pain started/. I assumed it was a side effect of the vancomycin, since back and chest spasms/pain are a listed side effect, but NO, apparently NOT, at least not to this DEGREE. The home health pharmacy, who I called to ask about it, called the on-call at my PCP, who advised to go to the ER to get checked for a “pulmonary embolism.” Doesn’t sound scary at aaaaaaaaaall. Get in ER, go through the whole terrifying ordeal, CT scan, x-ray, shit and shebang - what do you fucking know. I have a septic embolism. very rare. much wow. fuck me. so here I am, once again, in a fucking hospital room, tied up to IV antibiotics, at the end of Christmas day. At least they’re keeping the pain meds going now. Oh at one point my kidney function tried to drop, then it turned out I had a pleural effusion so they drained 550cc (half a liter) of fluid off my lungs (painful as fuck let me tell you). Ended up spedning 5 days total in the hospital, home now, but still in like. the same amount of pain as when I went in. Having to fight with so many things to get medicines sorted and shit. while feeling like shit too. everything is awesome.

So that’s it. 2017. That doesn’t even get into the way 2017 has sucked on a global, non-personal scale, that’s just how it’s sucked on a mostly-immediately-personal scale, and I’ve even left out some of the immediately personal ones I think. and that’s just the shit I remember LOL jesus christ. I really need to do an effigy burning of this year.

I don’t want to be the strong female lead

By Brit Marling

Ms. Marling is a filmmaker.

Feb. 7, 2020

I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress at 24. These are character descriptions of roles I have read for: “thin, attractive, Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering”; “her breasts are large and she’s wearing a red sweater.”

I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.

After a while it was hard to tell what was the greater source of my depression: that I could not book a part in a horror film where I had three lines and died on Page 4, or that I was even auditioning to play these roles at all. After dozens of auditions and zero callbacks, my mom suggested I get breast implants. From her perspective, I had walked away from a coveted job at Goldman Sachs and chosen a profession of self-commodification. She wanted to help me sell better.

But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I felt it would allow me to become the whole, embodied person I remembered being in childhood — one that could imagine freely, listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly.

I continued to audition and continued to fail. My depression deepened. My self-esteem plummeted. My boyfriend would get drunk and punch holes in the wall next to my head. I let him. He spat in my face. I let him. He dissolved into tears in my arms. I let him. And then I sifted through the ashes of his anger and his father’s anger before him to help him uncover the forgiveness he needed to move on. I was auditioning to be “Dave’s wife.” I was “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering.”

After a day of running from men with chain saws in audition rooms and a night of running from the man I shared a bed with, I decided I was done auditioning. I felt I had to write my way out of these roles or I wouldn’t find my way in the real world, either. I could not be what I could not see onscreen.

So I went to the library in downtown Los Angeles and started reading books and watching films about how to write dramas for the screen. I clung to Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” to Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

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But aside from a handful of exceptions, I was overwhelmed by the number of dramatic narratives that murdered their female characters.

In “The Big Heat” she has a pot of boiling coffee thrown in her face and is then shot in the back. In “Chinatown” the bullet tears through her brain and out her eye. And in case this seems like a trend of the past, consider the more recent noir “Blade Runner 2049,” where the holographic femme fatale is deleted and the remaining women are stabbed, drowned and gutted like a fish.

Even the spirited Antigone, the brave Joan of Arc and the unfettered Thelma and Louise meet tragic ends in large part because they are spirited, brave and unfettered. They can defy kings, refuse beauty and defend themselves against violence. But it’s challenging for a writer to imagine a world in which such free women can exist without brutal consequences.

We live in a world that is a direct reflection of these stories we’ve been telling. Close to four women a day are murdered in America at the hands of their partners or former partners. One out of every four women in America has been the victim of a rape.

I am one of those one out of four. Our narratives tell us that women are objects and objects are disposable, so we are always objectified and often disposed of.

There are centuries of trial and error inside the “hero’s journey,” in which a young man is called to adventure, challenged by trials, faces a climactic battle and emerges victorious, changed and a hero. And while there are narrative patterns for the adventures of girls — “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz” — those are few and far between, and for adult women, even less so.

Even when I found myself writing stories about women rebelling against the patriarchy, it still felt like what I largely ended up describing was the confines of patriarchy. The more fettered I felt inside the real world, the more I turned toward science fiction, speculative fiction and lo-fi fantasy.

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I eventually co-wrote, produced and starred in two microbudget films, “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice.” Both stories left reality just far enough behind to give me the mental freedom to imagine female characters behaving in ways not often seen onscreen.

I emerged from the Sundance Film Festival with offers to act in projects I would never have been allowed to read for a week prior. Most of those roles were still girlfriend, mistress, mother. But there was a new character on offer to me as well, one that survived the story.

Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

Acting the part of the Strong Female Lead changed both who I was and what I thought I was capable of. Training to do my own stunt work made me feel formidable and respected on set. Playing scenes where I was the boss firing men tasted like empowerment. And it will always feel better to be holding the gun in the scene than to be pleading for your life at the other end of the barrel.

It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power.

I thought back to the films I watched and stories I read burrowed deep in the stacks of the library. I began to see something deeper and more insidious behind all those images of dead and dying women.

When we kill women in our stories, we aren’t just annihilating female gendered bodies. We are annihilating the feminine as a force wherever it resides — in women, in men, of the natural world. Because what we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: “Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.”

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.

I’ve played the Strong Female Lead in real life, too — as an analyst at an investment bank before coming to Hollywood. I wore suits, drank Scotch neat and talked about the women and the men I was sleeping with like commodities on an open market. I buried my feminine intelligence alive in order to survive. I excelled at my linear task of making more money from a lot of money regardless of the long-term consequences for others and the environment.

The lone female V.P. on my floor and my mentor at the time gave me the following advice when she left to partner at a hedge fund: Once a week, open the door to your office when they finally give you one, and place a phone call where you shout a string of expletives in a threatening voice.

She added that there doesn’t actually need to be someone on the other end of the line.

I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance? Or how do we evolve beyond the limitations that binaries like feminine/masculine present in the first place?

In 2014 I went back to the library and encountered Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” a sci-fi novel written in 1993 imagining a 2020 where society has largely collapsed from climate change and growing wealth inequality. Butler’s heroine, the 17 year-old Lauren, has “hyperempathy” — she feels, quite literally, other people’s pain. This feminine gift and curse uniquely prepares her to survive the violent attack on her community in Los Angeles and successfully encourage a small tribe north to begin again from seeds she has saved from her family’s garden.

Butler felt to me like a lighthouse blinking from an island of understanding way out at sea. I had no idea how to get there, but I knew she had found something life saving. She had found a form of resistance.

Butler and other writers like Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood did not employ speculative fiction to colonize other planets, enslave new life-forms, or extract alien minerals for capital gains only to have them taken at gunpoint by A.I. robots. These women used the tenets of genre to reveal the injustices of the present and imagine our evolution.

With these ideas in mind, Zal Batmanglij and I wrote and created “The OA,” a Netflix series about Prairie, a blind girl who is kidnapped and returns seven years later to the community she grew up in with her sight restored. She opens up to a group of lost teenage boys in her neighborhood, telling them about her captivity and the inter-dimensional travel she discovered to survive it. It turns out these boys need to hear Prairie’s story as much as she needs to tell it. For the boys face their own kind of captivity: growing up inside the increasingly toxic obligations of American manhood.

As time has passed, I’ve come to understand what deep influence shaping a narrative has. Stories inspire our actions. They frame for us existences that are and are not possible, delineate tracks we can or cannot travel. They choose who we can find empathy for and who we cannot. What we have fellow feeling for, we protect. What we objectify and commodify, we eventually destroy.

I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife. But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.

Sometimes I get a feeling of what she could be like. A truly free woman. But when I try to fit her into the hero’s journey she recedes from the picture like a mirage. She says to me: Brit, the hero’s journey is centuries of narrative precedent written by men to mythologize men. Its pattern is inciting incident, rising tension, explosive climax and denouement. What does that remind you of?

And I say, a male orgasm.

And she says: Correct. I love the arc of male pleasure. But how could you bring me into being if I must satisfy the choreography of his desire only?

And I say: Good on you. But then how do I bring you into being?

Then I hear only silence.

But even in the silence I dream of answers. I imagine new structures and mythologies born from the choreography of female bodies, non-gendered bodies, bodies of color, disabled bodies. I imagine excavating my own desires, wants and needs, which I have buried so deeply to meet the desires, wants and needs of men around me that I’m not yet sure how my own desire would power the protagonist of a narrative.

These are not yet solutions. But they are places to dig.

Excavating, teaching and celebrating the feminine through stories is, inside our climate emergency, a matter of human survival. The moment we start imagining a new world and sharing it with one another through story is the moment that new world may actually come.

Brit Marling (@britmarling) is the co-creator and star of “The OA.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/brit-marling-women-movies.html?fbclid=IwAR3DSJ3Q6shZQwE8jGHxNhuU5skF62SAcfJzXap0j_XPFdZHK4JKYa5n02E

How Jimmy Buffet Accidentally Charted a Course From Margaritaville to Corona to LandShark Lager

Jimmy Buffett’s entry to the beer world happened quite accidentally, as you’d expect most things do in Buffett’s life. It was 1984 and the laid-back rocker was sitting in the office of his manager, Howard Kaufman. As Kaufman spoke on the phone with Corona’s marketing team, trying to get them to be the beer sponsor for another client, The Eagles, on their upcoming tour, Buffett interjected:

“Hey, I’d like Corona to be my sponsor, too,” he said.

It was a curious choice because, at the time, most American consumers saw Corona as more of a Mexican workingman’s beer; not some cut-loose, sand-in-your-toes, party pounder. But, upon inking a deal with Buffett, Corona quickly started incorporating the Margaritaville beach lifestyle aesthetic into its ads and promotional materials. According to Forbes, “Corona hired him to flog its Mexican brew to young, cash-fat consumers,” spending more than $2 million on a radio campaign starting in 1984.

In turn, Buffett’s fans, known as Parrotheads, committed themselves almost exclusively to the light cerveza at shows, where, during the song “Cheeseburger in Paradise” a sign would illuminate on stage showing Corona bottles with limes wedged in their necks.

“Go to a Jimmy concert today, look around, and you’ll say, ‘Wow, this is all Corona imagery,” says John Cohlan, the longtime CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, LLC, in Palm Beach, Fla. “But, you have to remember, it wasn’t always like that.”

Realizing that it had inadvertently stumbled upon lightning in a bottle, Corona went so far as to co-opt the title of Buffett’s seminal 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” for a subsequent campaign. “Change your whole latitude” was the motto in commercials and on billboards all across the country by 1992. Corona trademarked that line without even informing Buffett.

“That ended up being the most successful Corona ad ever,” explains Cohlan, who still isn’t sure whether Buffett is aware of what the beer brand had done.

Corona’s “Change your whole latitude” campaign co-opted the title of Buffett’s seminal 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

Corona’s sales had been declining as recently as 1991, but once it adopted the “latitude” tagline, in 1992, business was booming. “The sponsorship of Jimmy Buffett … helped create a fun-in-the-sun image for the brand,” AdAge wrote in 1998 as Corona had just ousted Heineken to become America’s top imported beer.

By 1999, when Corona finally scrapped the Buffett-based tagline, it was the nation’s 10th best-selling beer, seen as the quintessential “vacation in a bottle.” Today, it’s one of the only macro beers still trending upward in sales.

“And it was all based on this IP that came directly from Jimmy’s tour,” Cohlan says. “That made us start thinking … maybe we should quit Corona and do our own thing.”

Room for more than one ‘Vacation in a bottle’

“Woodstock for people who like to drink heavily.”

That’s what Cohlan jokingly calls the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. It was there, in 1998, where he first met Buffett. At the time Cohlan worked with Triarc, a holding company that held shares in brands like Arby’s and RC Cola. Triarc had moved its operations to Florida in the early 1990s, and Northeast-raised Cohlan still wasn’t thrilled about it. But, as he watched Buffett perform for the first time, he had a revelation.

“I looked out and I saw all these people dressed up,” Cohlan says of Parrotheads’ signature, tropical-splattered beachwear, “and I said to myself, ‘This is more of a brand than the brands that we actually own.’ Buffett was their entire way of life.”

At the time, Buffett operated just three small Margaritaville restaurants in Key West, Fla., and Jamaica and didn’t seem that interested in expanding, especially after one foray into New Orleans had flopped. But, upon creating his role as CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, Cohlan brokered a deal with Seagram Spirits & Wine Group (which also owned Buffett’s label at the time, MCA) to license the name Margaritaville to a 20,000-square-foot space at the entrance to Universal Studios’ new Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando.

When it opened, in May 1999, it was a massive success. The empire began rapidly expanding, with Margaritaville restaurants popping up all across the country.

Capitalizing on that success and, after angering Cohlan by releasing a sounds-a-little-too-similar Parrot Bay Rum, Seagram quickly issued a line of Margaritaville Tequila in 2000.

Buffett’s tour, meanwhile, was still sponsored by Corona. In 2006, as the 8th annual Orlando Beer Fest (held at Universal CityWalk) approached, Cohlan realized it was finally time to make a move. It was time for Buffett and Margaritaville to have their own proprietary beer for the restaurant chain and, perhaps, the world. (“Let’s take our beach back,” he recalls Buffett saying.)

Cohlan initially approached Corona about contract-brewing their beer, but, as he recalls, they told him, “No thanks. We already have a ‘Corona.’” They moved onto sponsoring Kenny Chesney.

So Cohlan called up his buddy Dave Peacock, then-president of Anheuser-Busch. Conveniently, they had been looking for a “Corona killer” for years, having already failed with two previous challengers, Azteca in the late-1990s and Tequiza, a tequila-flavored beverage that was about to be discontinued.

“Thankfully, [Peacock] said, ‘There’s room in America for more than one “vacation in a bottle,”’” Cohlan says.

No one wants to drink a ‘Lone’

Parrotheads were both angered he’d dumped Corona, then a little confused by who was making his new beer, but, ultimately, they fell hard for LandShark Lager, which burst onto the scene at Buffett’s Feb. 10, 2007 Tallahassee concert.

Initially, the brand had called it Lone Palm Lager — based on the name of a song from Buffett’s “Fruitcakes” album and the outdoor seaplane bar near Margaritaville — but the name just wasn’t resonating. As Cohlan explains:

“When we did consumer research, people would say “I don’t want to drink a ‘Lone.’”

Calling it Margaritaville Lager would have been a little confusing, too. So they started thinking about some of his other songs. Then, just like now, one of Buffett’s most popular concert performances was for “Fins.” It’s about a woman at a beach bar who feels like prey to all the men trying to aggressively pick her up. Before each live performance, audience members place their hands in the shape of a fin on top of their heads and start swaying back and forth while Buffett would call out: “The LandSharks are coming!”

They were already selling concert merch with LandShark logos on it — a fin with squiggly waves underneath it, palm trees in the background— and it wouldn’t be too hard to adapt that for a beer. It would come in a clear bottle, just like a Corona, and be an inoffensive and easy-drinking “island lager.” Its slogan, written on the spur of the moment by Buffett, was “Let the fin begin!”

Even in this highly skeptical era, when most people still don’t realize what “crafty” beers are owned by multinational conglomerates, folks were onto LandShark Lager right from the get-go.

The first-ever review of Landshark Lager on BeerAdvocate, in January of 2007, reads, “Looks very much like [Anheuser-Busch]’s version of Corona, right down to the bottle and marketing.” Another early review notes: “[Anheuser-Busch]’s latest attempt to bite into the Corona market in the sunshine state. It’s got the pee yellow color, snappy name, and clear bottle.” By March, The Palm Beach Post was reporting that “Buffett’s new beer masquerades as microbrew,” explaining:

“At first glance, LandShark looks like a microbrew that’s produced by Buffett himself. After all, the name alludes to the Buffett song Fins, the product is displayed prominently on Buffett’s Web site and the bottle says the lager is made by Margaritaville Brewing Co. of Jacksonville. But LandShark is brewed by Anheuser-Busch Cos. of St. Louis, although the nation’s largest brewer seeks a stealth role.”

(Cohlan claims Margaritaville simply licenses its name out to the brewery.)

Reviews of the beer’s quality were even more dismissive.

“Like a bad Corona,” wrote one online review. “Could maybe see drinking this on a dive boat in Mexico … And it would have to be 95 degrees, with the beer temp just above freezing.” Doug Blackburn, Tallahassee Democrat’s online beer columnist, wrote. “LandShark Lager lacks taste and flavor. At best, it qualifies as a lawn mower beer, a post-workout thirst quencher.”

Almost since the beginning, it has scored a pathetic 1 (out of 100) on RateBeer.com.

Yet, none of this seemed to matter to Parrotheads who quickly began switching their allegiances. “You dont even need a lime to make it better to drink. (sic)” wrote one fan on an early beer forum.

Thanks to Buffett’s devoted fan base, despite its dismal reviews Landshark Lager sells close to 4 million cases a year in America, which makes it a better seller at retail than Guinness. Credit: Landsharklager.com

Initially it was only available at Margaritaville restaurants, Buffett concerts, and in Florida, but it quickly expanded nationwide, sitting on store shelves and in gas station coolers right next to Corona. By the 2009 NFL season, the Miami Dolphins were even playing in LandShark Stadium, a move the football team thought would make game day a more “multi-entertainment experience” for fans. It looked like LandShark Lager had a real shot to become the “Corona killer.”

But then … it never really did.

In fact, I literally thought the beer was no longer on the market when I began reporting this story, but that’s not true whatsoever. It may have never taken down Corona, but it still became a pretty big player in macro beer, all in a bit of a weird, “Florida man” kind of way. That’s why, if you’re a guy like me, who mainly goes to craft beer bars in urban environments, you aren’t really going to ever see it.

Yet Landshark Lager sells close to 4 million cases a year in America, which makes it a better seller at retail than Guinness. (Though, not as good as Corona, which reportedly sold 65 million cases in 2017 and is today the fifth best-selling beer in America.) It also sells well in Canada and numerous spots in the Caribbean. It’s not just boomer Parrotheads buying it, either — there’s a college ambassador program that has led the brand to pick up steam among our nation’s newest beer guzzlers.

(And all this without a single TV commercial. In fact, Cohlan claims they spend less than $1 million a year on marketing, compared to the over $100 million per year Corona spends on advertising.)

There are also currently 12 LandShark Bar & Grills (in such far-flung places as Branson, Mo., and Tulsa, Okla.), not to mention LandShark bars on six different Norwegian Cruise Line ships. LandShark Stadium relinquished the naming rights after just one year — it’s called Hard Rock Stadium today — though a rewritten version of “Fins” still does play occasionally after touchdowns, while the concession stands serve plenty of the lager. The beer is not going away any time soon and Cohlan thinks it still has room to grow to 10 million cases per year.

You could argue this was the first real celebrity beer, way ahead of its time compared to today’s era when Metallica is now partnering with Stone, or the Grateful Dead with Dogfish Head. LandShark Lager does a helluva lot better than all those beers, too, and will almost certainly still be around when they are not. That’s the power of Buffett, as a musician, businessman, and beerman.

“It ultimately works because Jimmy created one of few true lifestyle brands in this country,” Cohlan says. “It’s not a celebrity beer. It’s not called Jimmy Buffett Beer, and that’s intentional. That’s to his credit. His art form created an entire lifestyle around his lyrics. About working hard, but being able to still escape and enjoy yourself. A person’s name is not a lifestyle, but a person’s art can be. That’s why LandShark Lager works. You look at other celebrity beers, and he dwarfed the curve.”

Meanwhile, even if LandShark Lager didn’t win the initial race, Buffett, the indefatigable businessman, is still looking for ways to beat Corona. In September of last year he announced plans for his own marijuana line. It will be called Coral Reefer.

The article How Jimmy Buffet Accidentally Charted a Course From Margaritaville to Corona to LandShark Lager appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/jimmy-buffet-corona-landshark-lager/

So, the deal is done.

The biggest TV deal in Scottish football history.

Not the best, just the biggest financially.

Now I was writing a piece about this but James beat me to the punch. They said much the same anyway; I am not enamoured with this deal either.

There are a few reasons. But two main points.

Firstly, as James has said, Sky’s coverage of Scottish football is woeful, the pre-match and after match analysis is despicable. The only time any more than a few minutes is dedicated to it, even then with ad break galore, is when we play Sevco and it is then woefully skewed in their favour. James has discussed the individual “commentators and analysts”, he is spot on so enough said on that.

Secondly, it seems that £30m a year is the going rate. The product is worth it and anything less would have been even less inept than usual from Doncaster, so shouting from the rooftops is ridiculous and the backside licking he’s had from some people in the media who should know better is way over the top.

Our game has been disgracefully undersold and undervalued for decades, not just from outside Scotland, and by that I mean England. When you talk to fans outside England who actually watch our games, they talk it up more.

But our own administrators, media and certain clubs have devalued our product for a long, long time. Why would, or should, anyone else value our game when we have had those within denigrating it? Why have people done that with their own product?

I have always had a theory on it, and things I have learned and put together over the last few years have solidified it.

So let me take you back.

There has always been an attitude about Sottish football from down south, their arrogance about their league and their belief that they are the “Home of football” is not new.

Yes, they organised the game into Association Football certainly, in that most famous of years 1888, but they were galled at Scottish clubs and players abilities at the time.

The major arrogance goes back to the 60’s, when The Busby Babes would likely have won the European Cup had it not been for that terrible night in Feb 1958. But from there we became the first British team to win that trophy, in the same year Rangers were defeated in the Cup Winners Cup final; in a sense we took the gloss off Manchester Utd’s victory in the tournament the next year.

This stuck in the craw, and was, I think, part of the reason that Jock Stein was not knighted, whereas Matt Busby was, almost immediately. Oh yes religion and bigotry played is ugly part, but I do believe that was also part of it.

Through the 70’s and into early 80’s through Aberdeen, up to 87, when Dundee United were so unlucky against Gothenburg, Scotland always had a decent team every couple of years, a team who were at least in the running in Europe; even in 88-89 Hearts made the UEFA Cup quarter finals.

But the late 70’s into the 80’s was the golden period for English teams in Europe; Forest, Villa, Liverpool of course, but English clubs were roundly despised, due to their arrogance and, of course, their fans, the fans being prone to causing trouble everywhere they went.

Now at this point the late 80’s into the 90’s, the mis-management of Scottish football really began to take hold and we all know what happened to us and what Scottish football went through.

Now there was one club who seemed to thrive in the 90’s; Rangers.

They say the “revolution” started at Ibrox in 1988 when David Murray bought the club from Lawrence Marlborough, but it actually started in 1986 with the signing of Graeme Souness and the banning of English clubs from European competition.

Due to this, with Souness contacts down south, he was able to bring up top drawer English players to come up here. And it was a stroke of genius to get Butcher first, given his influence, because he managed to convince others.

Being totally honest, they were top class players, but money and Europe were the carrot, not the club. In fact it was only at this point in their history that they stopped insisting that all players join the Masons and Orange Order – yes it was this late – and the reason was Souness, who played all of his career down south and whose wife was Roman Catholic, and who downright refused, with the others being bemused about the whole thing altogether.

Now most, if not all of you know all of that, so I am sure you are, at this point asking “Dave WTF, what is your point?”

Well, here it is.

David Murray and Rangers solidified their position and attempted to kill us; yes our idiot board were easy prey at that time, but after winning the double in our centenary year and the Scottish Cup a year later, we were on a very slippery slope.

Other than Aberdeen, who ran them a close second in 90-91 (a game I have said before is up for review when the truth comes out), they had no challenge as David Murray was financially doping his club with all manner of monies from God knows where.

Then in 1992-93 everything changed. The EPL was born with Sky TV broadcasting.

Now, this is where David Murray and Rangers really stepped up. Those of you who are of my own vintage will recall that there was, then, an appetite for the similar coverage of Scottish football, from fans and Sky.

Sky knew, as I have said before, that Glasgow’s big two, were a threat and a draw for the viewer, so they wanted in … oh not to promote and grow, but to keep us in our place. As I have said before, you do not neuter a threat by ignoring it, you must control and denigrate, dividing and conquering.

David Murray knew Rupert Murdoch. Murray knew everyone. Murray’s ego and arrogance wanted the European Cup, that was his Holy Grail, and he was convinced they would win that while he was there, at that time. With the banks lending money left right and centre, the thought that he would ever run out of cash would never have entered his head. His influence at BOS and RBOS was such that he saw them as a personal account.

There is plenty of anecdotal proof for what I’m about to write, so don’t think this is coming off the top of my head. I assure you, it’s true enough.

When BOS had agreed to allow us to sign Willie Falconer from Aberdeen only to, after the contract was signed, demand personal assurances from Celtic directors and then insist that they have a BOS employee on the Celtic board, it was David Murray who pushed that and it was the start of the final steps to getting BOS to call in our debts. We know now that turned out be a silver lining for us and the very early beginning of the end of David Murray.

We got wee Fergus through the door because of it, who immediately called everyone in Scottish football out. Murray included. We know the second story that Fergus asked BOS, after wiring them the funds to save us etc, for a £7m loan, that he would personally guarantee, and it was refused.

He also approached RBOS, with the same request, again refused, at David Murray’s insistence.

So Fergus went elsewhere.

Now I may be wrong as I am not privy to the inner workings of Celtic’s banking, but I believe to this day we have never again dealt, in any meaningful way, with BOS.

(Dave is 100% right about that; JF.)

What is not widely known is that Fergus McCann attempted, on more than one occasion, to meet with David Murray, because he realised that if they could market things differently then they could run Scottish football properly and fairly, while also building for the future and competing in Europe.

I have heard from more than source, people who are never far off the mark, that Fergus wanted to start a joint “Old Firm” charity, something that would get fans onside, something that would have cut through the bigotry et al. Whether it ever would have I am not sure, but we were willing to try.

The Bhoys Against Bigotry campaign was another attempt to try.

Murray wouldn’t even dignify him with a response.

Murray’s attitude was about keeping his club dominant. At around that time he uttered his famous lines about “for every fiver …”

So what has this to do with Sky and TV money?

Well, Murray was utterly convinced that he could use MIM and the bank to bankroll them and that his hold on the press and Scottish football authorities was so strong that it just never occurred to him it would, or could, ever end.

What he did know was that we were still alive and a sleeping giant, he could not afford for us to open a lucrative income stream, so his influence on Sky, and Murdoch, was to ensure that our game didn’t get the credit or finance it deserved.

He used the archaic rules at the SFA, specifically through Jim Farry, to ensure that clubs, mainly ours, could not be shown on TV if the likes of East Fife were playing East Stirling in some nonsensical cup replay; it also meant football fans missed out on watching live European and International matches too.

All of this was used to drive down the value of the Scottish game.

And if you think this sounds far-fetched, don’t forget that half a dozen clubs in the league were banking with BOS and RBS at the time, and all were being squeezed to one extent or another. By who? For the purposes of what? We can guess.

What Fergus did at Celtic, putting in the foundations for one of the best financial structures of any club in the world, and continued by the current incumbents, has brought Scottish football back to a point where we are, again, getting what we are worth.

If you saw the latest profit league, nearly every club in the top flight is posting profits … there is one major exception, one club bucking the trend towards sustainability. And once again it plays out of Ibrox. Once again it is being bankrolled by God knows who or God knows how.

Sky’s relationship with Scottish football is so skewed towards Govan it borders on obscene, as can be seen in all of their reporting, specifically since 2012 when Rangers died and Sevco were born. Don’t ignore the fact that Sky had a massive influence on how that all went, and pushed the Survival Lie and the subsequent Victim Lie hard.

Sky do not really want Scottish football, they know that they need to deal with it, and specifically keep Celtic in check. Did you notice Lawwell’s comments last night, in his interview with the media, where he talked about how we are “committed to Scotland … for now”?

What keeps us here are long-term deals like the one Sky has. Without that, believe me, we’d be looking for the exit door already, and there are mechanisms we could try.

We are on the verge of becoming bigger than most of the clubs in English football, even without their TV pot of gold. We are an example of how their clubs should be run, not just by relying on huge TV money.

And if we do start bringing in more and more money from other sources, we will outshine England as much as we do Scotland.

Sky can’t have that.

The hand that feeds us is also the one that keeps us down.

Dave Campbell is a blogger and Celtic fan from Glasgow. He is deeply concerned about the TV deal.

You can discuss this and and all the other stories by signing up at the Celtic Noise forum at the above link. This site is one of the three that has pushed for the forum and we urge all this blog’s readers to join it. Show your support for real change in Scottish football, by adding your voice to the debate.

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Things around this year finally thank different

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hey remember back for femslash feb i was gonna do jemslash for the jemcord? haha me neither so here’s those prompts. they’re all 3(ish) sentences long and both the show/idw verse.

Jem and Pizzazz - sleepover (show-verse)

“Move your butt you pink-haired turkey!” Came not the first, but of the many grouchy commands by the other occupant in the currently shared bed: one Pizzazz, to which the “pink-hared turkey” known as Jem, stifled a tired sigh and inched ever so closely to her side, not there was much room left. Who knew a freak accident snowstorm could trap the bitter rivals in a small cabin with no power, or an even more freak accident caused their respective band-mates to be trapped in some other cabin down the mountain? Jem didn’t really care to understand, and just wanted this "sleepover” to end; however, her tune later changed when in the wee hours of the morning, she awoke to the green-haired singer’s arm lazily tossed over body, and snoring lightly in her ear.

Roxy and The Holograms behind the mask (show-verse/Roxy Rumbles-ish)

Roxy hated when she lost “herself”, that mask of her tough persona, her no-nonsense-I’ll-break-your-teeth-in facade, her “Roxy” mask she often called it. But those damned Holograms, for a brief moment, got to see under it: that not Roxy, but that “Roxanne” that’s a scared girl from Philly who can’t read. She wants to howl with fury, wants to smash things, break things, be angry but she wonders if that was as bad as she thought, as the “My First Book” in her hand is clutched to her swirling chest of emotions.

Jerrica and Stormer - no one else to turn to (idw-verse)

Stormer didn’t want to believe she couldn’t trust her band with anything, she knew she could, but sometimes they could get... rather “hard” to talk to, and this was an important issue, and she couldn’t turn towards her girlfriend Kimber since she was the “important issue”. The blue-haired singer bit her lip, and his dial on her cellphone and hesitantly held it up to her ear, hearing a familiar blonde voice on the other line answer. “Hey... Jerrica? I.. don’t have anyone else to talk to, so can... can we?”

Danse and Video - risqué photoshoot (show-verse)

Deep down, Danse knew why she agreed to this “ risqué photoshoot“, it was her immense crush on Video and wanting to please her in whatever she requested. But on the outside, she was a very un-dressed flustered mess despite trying to stay professional, as Video lifted one of the dancer’s well-toned legs into a better position. “This pose just screams take me, but you can’t have me don’t you think?” the blonde film student commented, stepping back to study her new suggestive pose (Danse didn’t miss the matching flush on Video’s cheeks too).

no one and The Misfits - the uncertainty of tomorrow (idw-verse)

Pizzazz knew deep deep down, the music world was fickle, ever-changing and cruel, that in a moment’s notice your shining star could be extinguished like it was nothing, and not a soul would care. Stormer would call it something silly and poetic like “the uncertainty of tomorrow” or something like that. Pizzazz shook her thoughts out of her head, and stepped out to the screaming crowd; tomorrow may be uncertain, but today isn’t, and today these people love The Misfits and no one else.

Pizzazz and Synergy - a gift you couldn’t give (show-verse)

So the secret was out, the Holograms are literally holograms or some stupid shit, Pizzazz didn’t care and hated every second of the fact she wasn’t allowed to tell ANYONE; but, at least she got a sweet deal from keeping the secret: any hologram she wanted, no questions asked. So, here she was standing before the giant (rather tacky she thought) supercomputer as the purple avatar conjured up her hologram.

With a flash, Harvey Gabor stood in front of a now very stiff Pizzazz, as he gently smiled and said. “I love you, Pizzazz.”

Pizzazz didn’t bother to hide her tears.

Minx and The Stingers - hurt and comfort (show-verse)

Minx failed to choke back a harsh sob as her fingers dug tightly into Rapture’s sleeping shirt and buried her face into her partner’s neck. She suffered another vivid nightmare of the the watery grave she almost died in. She knew the rough, but warm hand on her shoulder was her other partner, Riot, and the arms quickly wrapping around her were Rapture’s, in an attempt to comfort her through yet another sleepless night, as the ordeal was still fresh in their minds too.

Rapture and Minx - the sound of silence (show-verse)

What a relaxing day it’s been for me, Minx thought happily to herself as she sunbathed on the beach. No explosions or other mishaps, no shrill neon-hair harpies on her doorstep, no Riot’s always-intelligent-but-admittedly-wild schemes to win Jem’s heart, no... Rapture, huh? Minx shot up suddenly and jumped up, any sort of silence from her girlfriend was always, always, ALWAYS a bad sign, whether that was bad for her, or bad for their rivals remained to be seen.

Rapture and Astral - pushing you away (show-verse)

“You’re doing it again, Phoebe. You’re pushing me away.” Astral’s tone was not as hard as her stare as she watched  her bee-themed girlfriend, who gave her a forced smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about Maeve, “ her tone suddenly dripped with sarcasm whenever the “real” names came out. “I am perfectly fine and so are you.” The two-toned hair magician didn’t bother to hide her sigh as she stepped closer to cup Rapture’s face gently. “I’m going to make this work between us, even if you make it difficult.”

Shana and Jerrica - friendship (idw-verse)

A promise made years and years ago between teen girls that lasted well into adulthood was the two most responsible sisters taking a relaxing weekend to themselves (with phones off) at least once every year. This weekend just happened to be one of those promised ones, as Jerrica and Shana made their way to the mall. Shana was going on and on about the latest fashion trends, Jerrica was unable to follow, but she was happy enough to be in her sister’s company.

Astral and Jem - I trust you (show-verse)

Astral didn’t think she ever recalled seeing her pink-haired pop princess girlfriend so nervous before, not even before a big concert in front of thousands. She sat as Jem stood in her room, looking like she wanted to pace a rut in the floor. The concerned magician was about to what was wrong, before the other woman cut her off with a quiet “I trust you”, before a flash of pink light appeared and someone decidedly not Jem stood in front of Astral with a forced smile.

Roxy and Aja friendship (show-verse)

With an angry huff, Roxy slammed the black hood to the Misfits van shut and waved her hand to dismiss the last of the engine smoke that still lingered around her head. The other Misfits had trusted her to bring them their equipment for the show tonight, but now it looked like she somehow fucked it up... how could you be so stupid stupid STUPID-- her berating thoughts were interrupted by a honk from a very gaudy-designed yellow and pink car drove up next to her. The blue-haired Hologram (Abba? Or something), and Roxy prepared for the insult fight she knew was bound to happen, but to her surprised instead heard: “Hey, need a bit of friendship? I know a thing or two about cars.”

Blaze and Rapture - lost and found (idw-verse)

Blaze could not believe it, and never truly wanted to remember it. Previously, she had spent the better part of two hours scouring the mall for her missing yellow-and-black color scheme girlfriend, Rapture, only to hear over the cackling intercom “Ms. Leah Dwyer, you have a Phoebe Ashe waiting for you. Please come to the Music Store. Immediately.” Apparently, Rapture got a good amount of now angry people caught up in one of her scams, and they wanted their money back.

Now.

Annotated Bibliography

MLA7 Citation: A Brief History of Tattoos." A Brief History of Tattoos. N.p., n.d. Web.03 Mar. 2017. In “A Brief History of Tattoos” the Author gives a rough estimate of what year tattoos came into existence, which was around 12,000 BC. The author also talks about some of the interesting uses for tattoos back then and how they have changed over time. In the early days of tattooing, women were the first to be tattooed. They would get a symbol or letter on their forearm indicating their specific skill so that future partners were aware, and could see what they would offer in a marriage. In more modern times tattoo shops moved to places with a large military population. Few artists actually sterilized their instruments, and many diseases began to spread because of this. I liked how this article went from ancient time to modern times and took the readers though all of the struggles and hardships that came with being a tattoo artist. URL: http://www.powerverbs.com/tattooyou/history.htm Lineberry, Cate. "Tattoos." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, 01 Jan. 2007. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. In the article, “Tattoos, The Ancient and Mysterious History,” Lineberry talks mainly about tattoos in the ancient world of Egypt. She examined the tattoos on the fingers of mummies that had been discovered and interestingly enough, just like the article above, most of the tattooed mummies were female. Lineberry believes that these tattoo marks served as a form of protection through pregnancy and birth. She also discussed how the ancient egyotians would do the tattoos using small flattened bronze rods as the needles and char from burnt wood mixed with oil or breast milk as the ink. I thought it was interesting that they would prick themselves with soot from burnt wood. While reading I wondered if the skin had a reaction to it or if it made any of the Egyptians sick. URL: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/tattoos-144038580/#G02ueBzv6sOoWQL6.99 Contrera, Jessica. "This DIY Tattoo Trend Will Make You Wince - or Want One Yourself."The Washington Post. WP Company, 05 Jan. 2016. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. In “This DIY Tattoo Trend Will Make You Wince,” Contrera explains the new trend that is rapidly gaining popularity called Stick and Poke Tattooing. She explains how the technique originated from the prison setting because of its simplicity and few materials needed. Although it is very trendy, there are some health risk such as blood borne diseases and infections because the needles are not completely sterile, nor is the environment in which they are done. The atmosphere associated with stick and pokes is much more relaxed than it is at an actual tattoo parlor, because it seems to be done on a more personal level. This article made stick and pokes sound kind of dirty and gross, which I don’t necessarily agree with. I mean okay if done in prison maybe, but there are a lot of ways to do them cleanly and safely. Just because it is a DIY, doesn’t mean it’s bad. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/this-diy-tattoo-trend-will-make-you-wince--or-want-one-yourself/2016/01/05/2b252418-b315-11e5-a76a-0b5145e8679a_story.html?utm_term=.1097f880d6a5 Charlie. "A Sailor’s Life." Inked Magazine. Quadra Media, 10 June 2014. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. In the biography,” A Sailors Life,” Charlie tells the story of the famous Sailor Jerry and how he came to be one of the so called “Founding Fathers” of tattooing. In the article it goes through every stage of Jerry’s life from adolescence, to young adult, to matured man. Sailor Jerry first learned to tattoo on corpse’s at a morge that one of his friends worked at. From there, his love grew and he tried to open a few shops and start his own business but they didn’t ever last longer than a few years. After traveling and studying different styles of tattooing including Japanese, he settled down. Finally, in Hawaii he opened his first and last permanent shop where he did his best work, until he died of a heart attack in 1973. I loved reading about legends in the tattoo business because it shows how hard the profession really is and how long you have to work at it to be any good. URL: http://www.inkedmag.com/articles/sailors-life/ Tucker, Abigail. "Looking at the World’s Tattoos." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, 01 Oct. 2010. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. Abigail Tucker hits on some of the many different tattoo styles around the world in her article, “Looking at the World’s Tattoos.” Tucker talked about some of the regions like Polynesia, where tattoos show a belonging to something whether that be a religion or tribe. She tells a short story about a 12-year-old girl who was being forced to get a tattoo. She discusses sailor tattoos as well as Japanese tattoos. She breaks down Americans obsession with tattooing and how that came to be. At the very beginning of the article she explains how tattoos can be a symbol for so many things anywhere from family lineage in New Guinea to tear drops that could indicate murder on gang members faces. I loved that because it shows the diversity and variety of what each tattoo can mean. URL: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/looking-at-the-worlds-tattoos-60545660/ "Skin Stories." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 2003. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. This article focuses mainly on the Polynesian side of Tattooing. Many believe that is where tattooing originated. In the article “Skin Stories,” the different meanings of tribal tattoos are discussed. Long ago when tattooing was a tribal activity, the tattoos would be symbolic of a certain tribe that a person belonged to as well as a certain geographical area like mountains or water to show where the tribe resided. People would identify each other by these markings. In today’s modern world people are still very in touch with their cultural heritage. In places like Hawaii that have a strong Polynesian or Samoan influence, tribal tattoos are a big thing. I thought it was fascinating to learn about where they came from. URL: http://www.pbs.org/skinstories/culture/role2.html "Tattoo Ink." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Dec. 2016. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. In the article “Tattoo Ink,” it is quickly inderstood that there is a lot that goes into making the ink that gets needled into our skin. There are a few different but very important components to the ink like pigments made from iron oxides, soot, salts, ect… and also carriers which are basically the solvents that the pigment are mixed with to give the ink its liquid texture. These carriers could be things like ethyl alcohol, water, glycerin, water, and menthol. As I was reading this article I remembered what my tattoo artist told be about ink. She said that even once it is tattooed into your skin, it never changes what it is. It always stays a liquid and your skin just heals over it to protect it. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo_ink Legg, Dege. "Longtime Jailhouse Tattoo Artist Explains the Business of Incarcerated Skin."San Antonio Current. San Antonio Current, 03 Mar. 2016. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. The the article, “Longtime jailhouse tattoo artist explains the business of incarcerated skin”The author Dege Legg, interviews a jailhouse tattoo artist who spill what it is like to tattoo people in secret at a maximum security prison. He starts by explaining that the tattoos he gave in prison were much different than the ones you see advertised at the mall. They were usually vulgur, and sometimes violent. Thinks like gang signs, insignias, teardrop kill counts, interesting designs. He aslo explained how to make a tattoo gun out of a CD player motor and use the ink from pens to tattoo. This reminded me the show Orange is the New Black, and how strictly the inmates are taken care of, so it made me wonder how he got away with doing tattoos like this in prison. URL: http://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/longtime-jailhouse-tattoo-artist-explains-the-business-of-incarcerated-skin/Content?oid=2242278 Blaster, Master. "Criminals of Japan's Edo Period Were Often Punished by Getting Face Tattoos." RocketNews24. RocketNews24, 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. In the article “Criminals of Japans Edo Period,” the author takes the reader back in time to the Edo Period of Japan and its interesting punishment for its criminals. Law breakers back in those days were punished with a tattoo right in the middle of the forehead. The tattoo design was usualy chosen based on the area that the perpetrator was sentenced in so that everyone knew where that person was from. Since there were no prisons until the development of large cities, tattooing was Japans main form of prosecution at that time. I imagine that physically getting a tattoo like that was another part of the punishment because they didn’t have modern guns like we do today. They used sticks and would poke the person over and over again and it was probably very painful. URL: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/03/14/criminals-of-japans-edo-period-were-often-punished-by-getting-face-tattoos/ "Irezumi." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Feb. 2017. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. In the article “irezumi,” it defines Irezumi as any of several forms of traditional Japanese tattooing along with certain modern forms. This article covers the history of Japanese tattoos, along with another form of tattoo called Ainu Tattoos. Ainu tattoos are more cultural to the indigenous people of Japan, and are used for social or decorative purposes. Interestingly, there is no known relation to Irezumi. I liked that this article had not only a history of tattoos but also different types and technique specific to Japan, and their history. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irezumi Hossenally, Rooksana. "BBC - Travel - The Master of Japan's Ancient Tattoo Tradition." BBC News. BBC, 18 June 2015. Web. 04 Mar. 2017. In the article “The Master of Japan's Ancient Tattoo Tradition,”Hossenally starts out by talking about how tattooing is still very taboo. She explains that while tattooing is a popular form of art in the wester cultures, Irezumi is actually frowned upon in Japan. The people of Japan see piercings and tattoos as a sign of intimidation, and even a connection to the underworld. The article also touches on an artist who has spent the majority of his life tattooing to keep the traditional Japanese culture. Everything that he tattoos are exerts from history that some has chosen to use their body as a story teller. I thought that it was really cool that a guy dedicated basically his whole life to keeping this beautiful tradition alive. URL: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20150512-the-master-of-japans-ancient-tattoo-tradition Persad, Michelle. "What Henna Is, And Where These Beautiful Tattoos Originated." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 01 July 2015. Web. 04 Mar. 2017. In the article “What Henna is, and Where these Beautiful Tattoos Originated,” Persad begins by explaining that henna is basically a specific type of flower that is dried and ground into a fine powder and mixed with oil to create a paste. The paste is used for dying clothes and skin, and has also been used to treat some skin conditions. Some Henna tattoos date as far back as Ancient Egypt, and was used to paint the nails of mummies before they were buried. Today it is a very trend form of art because, it is permanent and also very beautiful. Designs are drawn with the paste in this lines and can also be made to do amazing detail. Henna tattoos are really popular right now, and they are so beautiful. I like that something like this can be very popular even though it is also so temporary. URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/01/what-is-henna-tattoos-history-where-to-get_n_7698546.html

FVLCRVM

Maybe it’s not as surprising as we first thought that Pišta Kráľovič (known as the artist FVLCRVM) transcended his roots of the gospel and Church music he performed during his childhood, and has gone on to produce bright, melodic, stadium-friendly electronic music. Both genres share a sense of reaching out to people, of appealing to the dual sense of collective spirituality and individual enlightenment.

We initially got put in touch with the RBMA alumni via GERGAZ, an independent label group based in Slovakia, who’ve put of releases by FVLCRVM, Jimmy Pé and other (presumably) MDMA-enthusiastic artists from Eastern Europe. Check out our interview below, including FVLCRVM’s Insight playlist and a pretty nifty remix of the Slovakian national anthem…

MusicMap: In ten words or less, how would you describe where you live?

FVLCRVM: Too small for some, cosy for the others. I’m somewhere between.

What got you involved in the local music scene, and what do you do in it?

Money and fame. Hah. I’ve enjoyed making music since I was like 15 and actually it’s the only thing that has stuck with me for so long – I’ll most probably die doing it too. My turning into the scene was quite natural. I started playing guitar with a gazillion bands and ended up with one, then I started DJing and ended up with this project of mine. So for now I’m doing music for FLVCRVM, my band, some other artists and some commercials. And from time to time I use my graphic design knowledge with some posters, covers and stuff.

What are the dominant music styles in your country, and are there any exciting new music trends currently emerging?

Hip-hop could be easily the most popular music style for years now. I haven’t really noticed any trends emerging here except reflecting what is going on in the world right now. But there’s some unique stuff I heard lately. Some artists incorporated traditional Slovakian music into modern arrangements. Which is ultra-difficult since most of the previous attempts sounded fairly awful.

Who are the key local acts we should be listening to right now?

I can’t speak for every genre but from my subculture these are my favourites right now:

Jimmy Pé is a beat producer that got attention from bigger artists like Gaslamp Killer and Baauer, and his tracks are being released on various labels around the world and are also played by big DJs in the field. We play together a lot. Not only as DJs but FIFA and Hockey on our PS4. I have to sadly admit that as a beat producer he beats me quite often.

This feels weird, but ‘Nvmeri’ is the name of my other project. It’s been around for some time. Long before I started FVLCRVM and we’re in the process of making a new album so I’m quite excited for that too. We always end up doing quite complex arrangements, but I’m glad we found our fans here and abroad.

Subtension is a modest D’n’B producer with huge sound. Drum and bass still has a massive fanbase in Slovakia. He’s also been recognised by big names. I’m not a particularly big fan of dnb but his production is so on point I have to listen to every new release of his.

Dalibor AKA Stratasoul is one of my most favourite producers I know from around here. He was one of the first participants of Red Bull Music Academy back when it started. He’s now working on his upcoming album and it kinda gives creeps to the rest of us. Because last time he did it we were quite humbled by what he put together.

Fallgrapp is a band that exploded to the scene 2 or 3 years ago. Singing in Slovakian language they’ve quite changed the perception of pop music here, cause to be honest our pop scene sounds a bit backwards. Their live shows are pretty interesting too since they are 9 people on the stage.

One of the names I have high hopes for is Bulp. His compositions are very mature and I like where his sound signature is heading to. He’s currently touring with his sister on vocals so I hope we’ll have our own Tennyson soon hah.

Lastly, The Ills are crazy mofos. I used to share a room with the guy who put this band together. Before that he was all into electronic music so we sort of switched the sides. Anyway their shows are as hilarious as [they are] technical. Pleasure to see and watch. Even if you’re not really into instrumental post-rock you should go see them if you have a chance because they’ve been touring around Europe pretty much lately.

What’s the live music scene/nightlife like?

As in most countries electronic music takeover is visible everywhere. People go out less since the smartphone era but I think of it as a temporary problem. We’re still very close to bigger cities abroad so a lot of ppl go there seeing bigger names which our promoters can’t afford. But we have a lot of skilled DJs playing fresh music from all genres so at least this part of the scene is well covered here.

Gospel performer turned @RBMA alumni @fvlcrvm talks about the insights of #Slovakia music subculture and shares this #ViewFromMyWindow → Link to interview in bio

Een bericht gedeeld door MusicMap (@musicmapglobal) op 25 Feb 2017 om 5:58 PST

For anyone visiting, what should they see and what should they eat (and drink!)?

Slovakia isn’t a big country and we are still a few hours from the seashore but we have beautiful seasons of the year. A lot of people visit High Tatras or other mountains. There is also a part of the country in the east where forests are untouched by humans and that’s pretty rare. But since we were part of the eastern bloc there are always interesting places which are quite unique so if you’re a fan of englishrussia.com you can find very similar places here too. Most of it has been rebuilt now so you have to hurry up.

Cuisine got a lot better in the cities over the last [few] years. The taste of people got more accustomed to cuisines like Indian, Turkish, Asian fusion or the Vietnamese. There are also places making more traditional stuff which is mostly made of potatoes, meat and this special sheep cheese we call bryndza. It’s actually more like you love it or hate it because of its specific taste and smell. And that’s exactly the reason why I love [getting] people to try [it] because either way it’s fun to watch them.

About the drinks, there’s a really popular drink here now called vodovodka which translates as “tap vodka” and it’s just vodka, soda and loads of limes all on rocks. The reason why it got so popular is that it’s one of the few things you can drink (since we drink a lot) without fear of your next day [being] ruined having a hangover. But hey, you’re in Eastern Europe. A good White Russian or local beers are never a dull choice.

What one song, past or present, sums up your country best?

Hm tricky one. But I just remembered, when me and my band were living in Berlin struggling to find a job and gigs a friend called us to join a project of remixing our national anthem. And some fan of ours made a dashboard timelapse video for it. So yeah, these are our mountains and our anthem. More or less.

How do most people prefer to consume music in your country? I think most of my friends use Spotify, Deezer or SoundCloud for finding new music and most of the new talents are covered by well established national broadcast playing all sorts of music named Radio_FM. But I presume the majority of people listen to music via YouTube. That is the only explanation why some local artists have multi-million views in such a small country.

What are the biggest challenges faced by musicians in your country?

It takes quite some time for people here to adjust to new trends or just new genres. And since we’re a small market and we don’t really cooperate much with countries around like Western Europe does, [so] it takes a long time to get a decent audience on tour and media coverage. Also there are very few artists who made it abroad. Almost none as far as I know. But I hope this will get better with time. I’ll be happy to pave the way lol.f

Gospel performer turned @RBMA alumni @fvlcrvm talks about the insights of #Slovakia music subculture and shares this #ViewFromMyWindow → Link to interview in bio

Een bericht gedeeld door MusicMap (@musicmapglobal) op 25 Feb 2017 om 5:58 PST

How Jimmy Buffet Accidentally Charted a Course From Margaritaville to Corona to LandShark Lager

Jimmy Buffett’s entry to the beer world happened quite accidentally, as you’d expect most things do in Buffett’s life. It was 1984 and the laid-back rocker was sitting in the office of his manager, Howard Kaufman. As Kaufman spoke on the phone with Corona’s marketing team, trying to get them to be the beer sponsor for another client, The Eagles, on their upcoming tour, Buffett interjected:

“Hey, I’d like Corona to be my sponsor, too,” he said.

It was a curious choice because, at the time, most American consumers saw Corona as more of a Mexican workingman’s beer; not some cut-loose, sand-in-your-toes, party pounder. But, upon inking a deal with Buffett, Corona quickly started incorporating the Margaritaville beach lifestyle aesthetic into its ads and promotional materials. According to Forbes, “Corona hired him to flog its Mexican brew to young, cash-fat consumers,” spending more than $2 million on a radio campaign starting in 1984.

In turn, Buffett’s fans, known as Parrotheads, committed themselves almost exclusively to the light cerveza at shows, where, during the song “Cheeseburger in Paradise” a sign would illuminate on stage showing Corona bottles with limes wedged in their necks.

“Go to a Jimmy concert today, look around, and you’ll say, ‘Wow, this is all Corona imagery,” says John Cohlan, the longtime CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, LLC, in Palm Beach, Fla. “But, you have to remember, it wasn’t always like that.”

Realizing that it had inadvertently stumbled upon lightning in a bottle, Corona went so far as to co-opt the title of Buffett’s seminal 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” for a subsequent campaign. “Change your whole latitude” was the motto in commercials and on billboards all across the country by 1992. Corona trademarked that line without even informing Buffett.

“That ended up being the most successful Corona ad ever,” explains Cohlan, who still isn’t sure whether Buffett is aware of what the beer brand had done.

Corona’s “Change your whole latitude” campaign co-opted the title of Buffett’s seminal 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

Corona’s sales had been declining as recently as 1991, but once it adopted the “latitude” tagline, in 1992, business was booming. “The sponsorship of Jimmy Buffett … helped create a fun-in-the-sun image for the brand,” AdAge wrote in 1998 as Corona had just ousted Heineken to become America’s top imported beer.

By 1999, when Corona finally scrapped the Buffett-based tagline, it was the nation’s 10th best-selling beer, seen as the quintessential “vacation in a bottle.” Today, it’s one of the only macro beers still trending upward in sales.

“And it was all based on this IP that came directly from Jimmy’s tour,” Cohlan says. “That made us start thinking … maybe we should quit Corona and do our own thing.”

Room for more than one ‘Vacation in a bottle’

“Woodstock for people who like to drink heavily.”

That’s what Cohlan jokingly calls the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. It was there, in 1998, where he first met Buffett. At the time Cohlan worked with Triarc, a holding company that held shares in brands like Arby’s and RC Cola. Triarc had moved its operations to Florida in the early 1990s, and Northeast-raised Cohlan still wasn’t thrilled about it. But, as he watched Buffett perform for the first time, he had a revelation.

“I looked out and I saw all these people dressed up,” Cohlan says of Parrotheads’ signature, tropical-splattered beachwear, “and I said to myself, ‘This is more of a brand than the brands that we actually own.’ Buffett was their entire way of life.”

At the time, Buffett operated just three small Margaritaville restaurants in Key West, Fla., and Jamaica and didn’t seem that interested in expanding, especially after one foray into New Orleans had flopped. But, upon creating his role as CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, Cohlan brokered a deal with Seagram Spirits & Wine Group (which also owned Buffett’s label at the time, MCA) to license the name Margaritaville to a 20,000-square-foot space at the entrance to Universal Studios’ new Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando.

When it opened, in May 1999, it was a massive success. The empire began rapidly expanding, with Margaritaville restaurants popping up all across the country.

Capitalizing on that success and, after angering Cohlan by releasing a sounds-a-little-too-similar Parrot Bay Rum, Seagram quickly issued a line of Margaritaville Tequila in 2000.

Buffett’s tour, meanwhile, was still sponsored by Corona. In 2006, as the 8th annual Orlando Beer Fest (held at Universal CityWalk) approached, Cohlan realized it was finally time to make a move. It was time for Buffett and Margaritaville to have their own proprietary beer for the restaurant chain and, perhaps, the world. (“Let’s take our beach back,” he recalls Buffett saying.)

Cohlan initially approached Corona about contract-brewing their beer, but, as he recalls, they told him, “No thanks. We already have a ‘Corona.’” They moved onto sponsoring Kenny Chesney.

So Cohlan called up his buddy Dave Peacock, then-president of Anheuser-Busch. Conveniently, they had been looking for a “Corona killer” for years, having already failed with two previous challengers, Azteca in the late-1990s and Tequiza, a tequila-flavored beverage that was about to be discontinued.

“Thankfully, [Peacock] said, ‘There’s room in America for more than one “vacation in a bottle,”’” Cohlan says.

No one wants to drink a ‘Lone’

Parrotheads were both angered he’d dumped Corona, then a little confused by who was making his new beer, but, ultimately, they fell hard for LandShark Lager, which burst onto the scene at Buffett’s Feb. 10, 2007 Tallahassee concert.

Initially, the brand had called it Lone Palm Lager — based on the name of a song from Buffett’s “Fruitcakes” album and the outdoor seaplane bar near Margaritaville — but the name just wasn’t resonating. As Cohlan explains:

“When we did consumer research, people would say “I don’t want to drink a ‘Lone.’”

Calling it Margaritaville Lager would have been a little confusing, too. So they started thinking about some of his other songs. Then, just like now, one of Buffett’s most popular concert performances was for “Fins.” It’s about a woman at a beach bar who feels like prey to all the men trying to aggressively pick her up. Before each live performance, audience members place their hands in the shape of a fin on top of their heads and start swaying back and forth while Buffett would call out: “The LandSharks are coming!”

They were already selling concert merch with LandShark logos on it — a fin with squiggly waves underneath it, palm trees in the background— and it wouldn’t be too hard to adapt that for a beer. It would come in a clear bottle, just like a Corona, and be an inoffensive and easy-drinking “island lager.” Its slogan, written on the spur of the moment by Buffett, was “Let the fin begin!”

Even in this highly skeptical era, when most people still don’t realize what “crafty” beers are owned by multinational conglomerates, folks were onto LandShark Lager right from the get-go.

The first-ever review of Landshark Lager on BeerAdvocate, in January of 2007, reads, “Looks very much like [Anheuser-Busch]’s version of Corona, right down to the bottle and marketing.” Another early review notes: “[Anheuser-Busch]’s latest attempt to bite into the Corona market in the sunshine state. It’s got the pee yellow color, snappy name, and clear bottle.” By March, The Palm Beach Post was reporting that “Buffett’s new beer masquerades as microbrew,” explaining:

“At first glance, LandShark looks like a microbrew that’s produced by Buffett himself. After all, the name alludes to the Buffett song Fins, the product is displayed prominently on Buffett’s Web site and the bottle says the lager is made by Margaritaville Brewing Co. of Jacksonville. But LandShark is brewed by Anheuser-Busch Cos. of St. Louis, although the nation’s largest brewer seeks a stealth role.”

(Cohlan claims Margaritaville simply licenses its name out to the brewery.)

Reviews of the beer’s quality were even more dismissive.

“Like a bad Corona,” wrote one online review. “Could maybe see drinking this on a dive boat in Mexico … And it would have to be 95 degrees, with the beer temp just above freezing.” Doug Blackburn, Tallahassee Democrat’s online beer columnist, wrote. “LandShark Lager lacks taste and flavor. At best, it qualifies as a lawn mower beer, a post-workout thirst quencher.”

Almost since the beginning, it has scored a pathetic 1 (out of 100) on RateBeer.com.

Yet, none of this seemed to matter to Parrotheads who quickly began switching their allegiances. “You dont even need a lime to make it better to drink. (sic)” wrote one fan on an early beer forum.

Thanks to Buffett’s devoted fan base, despite its dismal reviews Landshark Lager sells close to 4 million cases a year in America, which makes it a better seller at retail than Guinness. Credit: Landsharklager.com

Initially it was only available at Margaritaville restaurants, Buffett concerts, and in Florida, but it quickly expanded nationwide, sitting on store shelves and in gas station coolers right next to Corona. By the 2009 NFL season, the Miami Dolphins were even playing in LandShark Stadium, a move the football team thought would make game day a more “multi-entertainment experience” for fans. It looked like LandShark Lager had a real shot to become the “Corona killer.”

But then … it never really did.

In fact, I literally thought the beer was no longer on the market when I began reporting this story, but that’s not true whatsoever. It may have never taken down Corona, but it still became a pretty big player in macro beer, all in a bit of a weird, “Florida man” kind of way. That’s why, if you’re a guy like me, who mainly goes to craft beer bars in urban environments, you aren’t really going to ever see it.

Yet Landshark Lager sells close to 4 million cases a year in America, which makes it a better seller at retail than Guinness. (Though, not as good as Corona, which reportedly sold 65 million cases in 2017 and is today the fifth best-selling beer in America.) It also sells well in Canada and numerous spots in the Caribbean. It’s not just boomer Parrotheads buying it, either — there’s a college ambassador program that has led the brand to pick up steam among our nation’s newest beer guzzlers.

(And all this without a single TV commercial. In fact, Cohlan claims they spend less than $1 million a year on marketing, compared to the over $100 million per year Corona spends on advertising.)

There are also currently 12 LandShark Bar & Grills (in such far-flung places as Branson, Mo., and Tulsa, Okla.), not to mention LandShark bars on six different Norwegian Cruise Line ships. LandShark Stadium relinquished the naming rights after just one year — it’s called Hard Rock Stadium today — though a rewritten version of “Fins” still does play occasionally after touchdowns, while the concession stands serve plenty of the lager. The beer is not going away any time soon and Cohlan thinks it still has room to grow to 10 million cases per year.

You could argue this was the first real celebrity beer, way ahead of its time compared to today’s era when Metallica is now partnering with Stone, or the Grateful Dead with Dogfish Head. LandShark Lager does a helluva lot better than all those beers, too, and will almost certainly still be around when they are not. That’s the power of Buffett, as a musician, businessman, and beerman.

“It ultimately works because Jimmy created one of few true lifestyle brands in this country,” Cohlan says. “It’s not a celebrity beer. It’s not called Jimmy Buffett Beer, and that’s intentional. That’s to his credit. His art form created an entire lifestyle around his lyrics. About working hard, but being able to still escape and enjoy yourself. A person’s name is not a lifestyle, but a person’s art can be. That’s why LandShark Lager works. You look at other celebrity beers, and he dwarfed the curve.”

Meanwhile, even if LandShark Lager didn’t win the initial race, Buffett, the indefatigable businessman, is still looking for ways to beat Corona. In September of last year he announced plans for his own marijuana line. It will be called Coral Reefer.

The article How Jimmy Buffet Accidentally Charted a Course From Margaritaville to Corona to LandShark Lager appeared first on VinePair.

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