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Top 20 2021

My Favorites (updated)

Hello my readers, it’s been a while since I just posted something not related to a headcanon and I am doing one right now. I just wanted to take a bit of a break to just get SOMETHING on here on my days off work. Plus I’m just trying to find my groove when it comes to writing again so hopefully this helps me just get back into the mood of making a post more often lol. I wanted to revisit this topic for a while just because we’ve had a lot more events and a lot more alts in the game were added. And I know for a fact LifeWonders reads these posts in some capacity because I have meme’d an AR into the game with my top picks from the last list I did for Christmas 2019. No I didn’t. I’m just joking around and I know LifeWonders doesn’t read this.

Anyways rather than just make up a list on the spot like last year I decided to use the Housamo Sortmaker (Link: https://club.housamo.xyz/sortmaker/ ) to try and make a list that’s more revealing to what I was thinking at the time. Since I talked about 20 characters ish last time I’m just gonna read from my 20th place to my 1st place spots and try to justify whatever I was thinking at the time. Anyways-

20: Marchosias and Susan: This one was a surprise for me if I’m being honest but I’m just gonna blame the fact on Shukou’s recent involvement with LifeWonders in the form of Live A Hero and how Ryekie and Mokdai live in my headspace rent free whenever I think about the characters in that game. Maybe we can see about getting some LAH headcanons since that’s a LifeWonders property too). So out of all the characters Shukou drew for Housamo why did I pick Marchosias? Easy, it’s been 4 years and this poor man has yet to receive a proper alt or any kind of skin for that matter and I think that it’s a crime. Sure he’s not my favorite but he’s definitely grown on me because he’s just a gentle dad kind of character and his design has grown on me over the years. I just hope he doesn’t get left behind since he has a lot of really interesting and potential things to look forward to in the future given how the main story has unfolded.

19: Shiva/Algernon: The helmet heads are together because DAI XT quickly became my favorite artist for Fire Emblem Heroes and I really just like their designs. DAI XT just knows how to draw robots, armor and muscles well. Also Chapter 11 with Shiva you can read into some interesting perspectives. I don’t want to spoil any of the untranslated content for anyone who’s waiting for the official english translation. But if you are curious Roureem has a blogspot where he posts summaries of the newly released events.

Link: https://housamosummaries.blogspot.com/

18: Cthugha: I love this goober so much. He’d constantly try to act super sentai just trying say good morning everyday. He may not be very bright but that just adds to his charm and honestly I enjoy how he always tries to play the hero in a lot of scenarios because it’s refreshing when they implement him after a bunch of heavy hitting story stuff. I’m not gonna spoil too much about it but I will say he’s more than welcome after everything Chapter 10 and 11 put the reader through.

17: Mineaki: I’ve made a post about him being one of my least favorites way back when I first started this blog and let me just say how times have changed and I’ve learned the value of not judging a book by it’s cover. I still think there’s something a bit off about Kowmei’s style for his characters, but Mineaki has definitely grown on me. He’s a caring instructor who does watch out for his students even if it’s not always in the most direct way possible. Not to get into too many spoilers he’s got a lot of intrigue around him as well and I am curious to see his role get expanded down the line.

16: Ded: Housamo is the reason I really like christmas. The Christmas stories despite following a similar structure to each other do tend to be my favorite stories. Ded himself is also just another good dad character. He’s also two guys for the price of one, so I mean… you know… you’ve got the forever ask your other dad situation. There wasn’t much thought put into this choice I just like santa as a concept because I think the outfits are cute, it’s always nice to get something for people you care about on Christmas and Ded is the perfect embodiment of both sides to Christmas.

15: Shinya: Everyone we need to manifest buff Shinya for 2021, this is not a drill. This is legitimate. We must make Taromati’s and my wish come true. To be more serious again he’s just a sweet and gentle character. He’s also drawn by my favorite Housamo artist. Their characters always just look so naturally good. I’m just surprised he hasn’t gotten much of an alt given he’s perfect material for Valentine’s day. He’s just a soft boy and I would love for him to be in more things because I just enjoy seeing him.

14: Jacob: I have to be honest Jacob is on here because every time I look at him he just gets more handsome to me. I wasn’t all that impressed with his introduction and we don’t know much about his background but I’ve just been drawn to him more and more. Maybe it’s just because he’s drawn by GomTang? I just like looking at him and I can’t help it. To speak a bit less crass he’s another gentleman kind of guy and those are always nice.

13: Shennong: Yeah I like the doc a lot. Firstly, I’m a huge sucker for big bulls and Shennong fits the bill. The white fur really adds to his appeal visually and the purple horns give off a bit of an unnatural appearance. Shen feels like someone who’s been touch starved and alone for a long time given how he acts as a character and when we actually hug him I just lost it. He always has others well being on his mind so he’s not afraid to jump in and help, or give a much needed lecture about when you need to take better care of yourself. He just comes across as very well balanced overall.

12: Heracles: I won’t lie- at first he didn’t interest me much. He looked incredibly plain when among the rest of the cast and he seemed like the typical “bait” character since the banner had Echo, Barguest, Gyumao and Snow. But after reading the translation for Valentine Time Slip I was taken aback at how much of a gentle giant he turned out to be and I just really liked his interactions with the others in that event. And honestly his special quest from that year was one of the more unique ones given the slower pace and more romantic vibe it had. After the event warmed my heart I did a complete 180 and I just knew I really liked him.

11. Yasuyori: Before I start praising him I feel I have to justify why he didn’t quite make top 10 and it will have some mild Chapter 10 spoilers. To be as vague as possible his resolution just didn’t vibe with me at the end of Chapter 10. Like it wasn’t a bad resolution and it was the right choice to make but in my opinion there really wasn’t a moment I felt was clear where he made a choice for himself. Everything just sort of happened around him and it felt like he didn’t really do much to improve his situation. To an extent I kind of see that being the idea given his origins and the story he’s based on and there is some semblance of him coming to terms with himself alongside his isolation being portrayed pretty well, but I just wasn’t satisfied with it as much as I would like to be. With that out of the way, oh my god I just want this boy to never stop smiling and I just want to give him hugs constantly please he just deserves to be happy!!! Yasuyori is a character who’s got a lot of baggage and he’s just trying to find ways to properly cope with his trauma and not repeat past mistakes and I just really like that idea. His role in Xmas 2020 (sorry I just forgot the name of that event, but its when he gets his alt) was a much better representation for his character in my eyes. I’m not gonna spoil anything like I keep saying but he isn’t one to disappoint in future appearances and I just hope this lovable lug keeps getting the support he deserves.

10: Hephaestus: A spicy way to start the latter half of the list. I just want to give this lad a hug and tell him he is worthy of love. But at the same time he is a little shit… and I love that. I can’t fully explain why I grow a paternal instinct in me seeing this grown man sob about his mother but I just do. I want to keep him safe and give him all the affection he wants. Though I am aware a lot of Hephaestus’s interest in his parental figure is… questionable. I am just gonna say I would accept his love for what it is and he just wants approval.

9. Shuten: I’ll be honest I have no proper reason for why I like Shuten so much. He’s just a cool and reliable guy. He just seems like a go with the flow kind of person most of the time and he’s a bit more direct than most of the characters which I always appreciate. Plus I have an unspoken bias for naop guys in Housamo.

8. Durga: While not number 1 on this list, I still really like Durga. She’s quirky but not to an annoying degree, she’s determined and definitely very confident in her own abilities. Her growing to be more sociable throughout her events is something I enjoy seeing because it really creates this sense of growth.

7. Kyuma: I get a lot of people don’t like Kowmei’s art but I really think we should look past it because Kyuma is one of the sweeter picks. He’s someone who just wants to prove himself for his own worth and not what David can provide, but David is part of him and it just creates the potential for a good arc. Plus this boy is unintentionally smooth and will just take your heart when possible. I honestly want to see Kyuma more in events because he’s honestly the jock that carries 3 of the 4 brain cells. He’s also the last one without an alt so I’m just hoping he gets one in 2021 because he really deserves one in my opinion. (Also fan art makes him really cute).

6. Tomte: Tomte is relatively new but honestly his event in 2019 really endeared me to him. I’m trying to be spoiler free because the best way to enjoy these stories is for yourselves but let me just say his arc in the event was really endearing to me and much more than I was expecting. His fan service is also incredibly hammy and I love it. Visually Tomte is one of my favorites, I love his multi colored hair and starlit pupils cuz it makes his otherwise more generic look have some flare. I knew I liked him out the box and when I read about him in the summaries and can’t wait to read the official translation for him. I was just very endeared.

5. Tetsuya: Tetsuya fucks. Moving on…

Jokes aside this one’s a bit simple. I have no shame in admitting I think he’s attractive and his whole resistance towards wanting a relationship is cute in a weird roundabout way. When he says no I just want it MORE. I just really like duo haired tsunderes.

4. Kengo: Kengo 3rd alt 2021. Please LifeWonders I need my favorite Summoner. He’s a bro and that’s what counts. Kengo has got your back, not afraid to rely on you, a very fun and dynamic guy. Sure he’s not that bright when it comes to making plans or any book smart, but there are times where he’s the best at being able to read the room or just understand what someone needs to hear even if it isn’t always what someone wants to hear. His bullheaded nature is actually one of his redeeming qualities because it’s nice to just not overcomplicate things and just understand what’s actually going on. Yes the early story didn’t do many favors for him but to me the events, especially the later ones, do much more work for his character. To me, at least.

3. Ashigara: Ashigara is best bear, and I will defend that stance in 2021. The main thing that draws me to Ashigara is that I can see a bit of myself in him. He gets very emotional when he gets left alone, he’s very loud when with his friends, has a tendency of speaking his mind- just someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. I also appreciate that in spite of the negative he isn’t someone who backs down when the going gets tough and in a few instances he’s able to hold his ground physically at least.

2. Wakan Tanka: Love at first sight. This ray of sunshine still persists as the number 1 husband, but number 2 character. Firstly I am a huge fan of the partial beast aesthetic. The buffalo ears and the horns  are absolutely adorable. Secondly he’s a perfect body type; he’s not too muscular but not exactly flabby. Third he is just so positive and I love that. He’s someone I admire and wanna hug.

1. Taurus Mask: The more things change the more they stay the same. I’m still a big Taurus Mask fan for all the same reasons as last time. I just… relate to this boy. He is an incredibly shy boy who uses his public persona for confidence. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but it’s like we’re soul bros!

So yeah, my tastes haven’t changed in a year and a half.

best seen in 2020.

My usual caveats from previous years are still applicable here: I don’t watch most of the major nominations the years they come out, and I’m usually not much for theaters and/or current TV. However, due to the pandemic, we watched a loooooooot of content. Here’s just a list of movies that I watched or rewatched this year, that were neither terrible, nor great, but I want to make note of:

Toy Story 4, The Brothers Bloom, Happiest Season, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Moana, Mr. Right, Moulin Rouge, Ocean’s Eleven, Spring Breakers, X-Men: Dark Phoenix (this might have been the worst movie I watched this year?), Widows, Gattaca, Black Klansman, Primer, It 2, Shazam (this maybe should have gone on the Honorable Mentions - it was fun), Training Day, Parasite (OK, now I have to update my Honorable Mentions), The Green Book, Strange Days, Elf, Love & Basketball, Above the Rim, Coach Carter.

That being said, there was some bad stuff, and I try not to shit on any artist’s creations too much, because I know no one sets out to make something bad, but these didn’t work for me. 

Anti

Uncut Gems - It’s not that it was BAD, it was just too stressful for me to enjoy.

Brick - It wasn’t even close to enjoyable on a rewatch that I encouraged my partner to take on for the first time. I felt bad. 

Hereditary - Neither a scary movie, nor a good movie.  

The Witch - Same, but maybe better made?

Under The Skin - Jesus, this was terrible. Maybe I’m not artsy enough to get it?

Now, however, let’s get to the good stuff. 

Honorable Mention TV

Avatar - I can’t legitimately put it on the Best Of list, because I’m not done yet, but I’m on Book 3, after finally actually getting started. I think I tried to start this in 2016, and i know all my nerd friends have been yelling at me for a long time because I haven’t gotten to it yet, and as someone who’s almost done, I can say: they were right! It’s great. 

Ozark - S1 was great. It fell off a fucking CLIFF after that. Ignore people who tell you that you HAVE to watch this. They’re wrong. It’s fine. 

The Last Dance - I know the world is obsessed with Michael Jordan, and I’m glad it came out when it did, but really, all it did for me was confirm that he’s an asshole who was very fortunate to play when he did. And also that the Bulls were fucking phenomenal. 

His Dark Materials - Neither as bad as some of my friends think, nor nearly as good as the books (obviously) but also not good enough that I’ve even started S2 yet, so....I guess it’s fine? 

The Mandalorian S2 - I think they know what they’re doing, and it’s super enjoyable, and I loved the ending, but I’m also curious as to where they’re going now. 

Fargo S3 - Given how good the rest of the series is (other than my distaste for S2, dealt with below, and out of step with pop culture) I thought this one was a misstep, 

Orphan Black - I cannot believe how late I was to this, and how good it still was. It really fell apart toward the end, but the acting was incredible, and the fact that they got to tell the story they wanted to was amazing. 

Best TV

7. All the Smoke with Kobe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3KIyEgCgc) - Maybe it was just his death, but it hits hard, and I miss him. Does this even count as TV? 

6. Looking for Alaska - It felt like gratuitous masochism to watch this and enjoy it, being 20 years older than when I fell for it, and feeling ashamed of the young person I was, but even knowing what was coming, I was weeping when it happened. Even knowing that they were ultimately going on a fruitless search and yelling at the TV while the Colonel and Pudge were searching for “signs” and hating them for it, I remember feeling like everything HAD to happen for a reason when I was this young... So yeah. It’s pure nostalgia for me. I’d be super interesting in hearing how kids responded to it. 

5. Locke and Key - I get that some people feel like they don’t need old shit in a new medium, but for me, I’m always up to try it out. If it’s fun, I’ll stick with it. And this is. It’s fun, it’s got some of the old shit, it’s got some new shit, and it’s a treat to see my favorite comic of the last decade in a new medium. Haters need a new bit. 

Fargo s1 and s4 (I didn’t love S3) - I know that I’m in the minority here, but I think 1 and 4 are the best and 2 was good, and 3 was fine. I literally watched all of this show this year, though, so I didn’t have the same time to digest as others. But I think that’s a benefit in some regards? 

4. Magicians s5 - One of the saddest conversations of the last year to two was when a nerd friend of mine said he didn’t like The Magicians because all of the characters were whiny and self-indulgent. For me, that was almost literally the point: they shoved Q into the corner and told the story of the others (at least one episode quite self-referentially so) and it was so much better for that. I wish it hadn’t ended, but I’m glad they left it where they did, because it was so good.  

3. Devs esp. The beginning of e5 - Jesus. The show of the year? Except for the fact that Watchmen came out at the tail end of last year, and I didn’t have it on my 2019 list? I mean, honestly, is there a show more tailored to me? I’m not gonna get into any spoilers, but it’s a quick watch, and it’s fucking fantastic. Watch it, have your mind blown by the concept, especially in the beginning sequence of E5, and then stick around for the subpar ending where basically all of the threads are resolved in the least good way. 

2. Watchmen - This deserves multiple re-watches and all the praise that people heaped upon it. 

1. The Good Place - I know, objectively, that Watchmen was a better show than The Good Place. But this is my list, and I’ll be damned if anything overtakes my favorite sitcom (maybe of all time?) for best of the year. I know it barely just ended this year, and there’s plenty of acclaim to go around for this show, but honestly, every time I talk to anyone about it, it feels like they kind of laugh it off. This show is not only worth your time, but should almost be considered must-watch material. If more people watched this show, we wouldn’t need the insult “sophomoric” to describe people who’ve just had their minds blown by Philosophy 101, and we’d be better off as a species. 

Honorable Mention Movies

In this order, and you can take the comedies and make them the only honorable mentions, if you’d like to make a nice, even top 10. (Until I saw Tenet the night before I posted this.( (And then I looked back at the playing cards that we use to randomly choose movies and I found that I needed to modify the Honorable Mentions and the Best Of lists.) 

21 and 22 Jump Street - In general, I’m not a fan of comedies. So I’m happy I watched these, thanks to Nathan Zed, and they’re funny. Good work guys. 

Palm Springs - Apparently there’s now backlash against Groundhog Day? I dunno, man, it was fun, and all the actors seemed like they were having a good time, and I was down for it. 

Parasite - I can’t add anything to this that hasn’t already been shouted from the rooftops, so let me just briefly say that I thought it was great, but it didn’t quite make the list of best. The combo of genres was great, the cast was fantastic, but what I loved the most about it was how quiet it was.

Best Movies

10. Blinded by the Light - Way more resonant than I thought it’d be from the previews, and I already thought it was gonna be stellar. I didn’t take into account TIME along with place, and that made a hell of a difference for this movie. 

9. Shoplifters - Yeesh. What a tough watch, but so good, and so necessary. For me, I think we watched it back to back to back with Parasite and I, Tonya, and this one just stood out so much more. The storyline was softer all the way through, but really had gravitas simultaneously. 

8. Tenet - It was fucking fun! I don’t get the hate! I liked it, I’ll like it more next time I see it, and I wish I’d seen it on the big screen, but I’m super glad I could see it on my TV! 

7. I, Tonya - Geez, what a powerhouse of acting. Not only did they get me to feel good about the villain of my childhood, they got me to feel good about Margot Robbie, who I’d only thought of as a hot lady before. Superb acting from everyone else, too, and what a great pick up to be like, yeah, this is the story we’re gonna tell. 

6. I Am Not Your Negro - I avoided watching it for so long because I was already depressed this year, and I didn’t think I needed any more of that, but it turns out I did, and I always do, from Baldwin. He’s a master for a reason. 

5. Hamilton - I know there was some backlash with the time difference, and I’m sure it was better to see it pre-2016 in the theater, where it’s meant to be seen, but I’m not a billionaire New Yorker, and I was plenty happy to see it when and where I could. 

4. Won’t You Be My Neighbor - I mean...what do you think? It’s so much exactly what you’re thinking it is, but then it’s even better, because it’s the real deal, and he was so good, and it’s so pure. Watch it. 

3. Her Smell - Elizabeth Moss has already gotten all the acclaim, but to play this different of a role, in a movie that felt as stressful as Uncut Gems, but pulled off an actual plot so much more successfully? I can’t believe this one didn’t get more pub, but then again, yes I can: it’s a movie about a girl band that rages against the machine, and she’s got severe issues. Small surprise that the people didn’t react well. Seek this one out! 

2. Arrival - Yes, I am going to totally cheat and put a movie that’s appeared on my list (sooooo long ago) as the #2 entry this year. You know why? Cuz fuck 2020, and this is a great movie, and it’s the movie that made me feel second best this year. It’s incredible, and I know people appreciated it in its time, but I feel like they should appreciate it even more. 

1. Moonlight - It’s not a shock, nor am I trying to appease anyone with anything. It’s just that I finally watched it, and it’s the best movie I saw this year. I don’t think I could possibly add anything to the authentic critics who have already heaped praise upon it, but I do have to say that it’s all due, and so much more. The acting obviously stands out, but the direction, from the color palettes, to the choice of when and where (and how) to break it up, are all masterful choices.  

Part 3 - “ I thought we had some kind of agreement but with you it was just prurience”

So, where were we. Ah yes....Record Store Day 2019.

It was, perhaps inevitably, a heavy day for Fall fans. Lead-in times both for the manufacture of vinyl records and for participation in RSD are such that Smith's death came too late for the impact to be evident in the 2018 event but for 2019, we were absolutely flooded in a way that caused some, quite rightly, to question the judgement of the organisers in allowing so many obvious vultures to swoop in for an easy bite. 

The “monitor mixes” from the 2CD edition of “The Unutterable” were pressed to vinyl for the first time. “Whoo-fucking-pee” quoth the faithful and you will have absolutely no difficulty acquiring it today should you be down to few enough marbles for it to seem like a good investment. BMG hold the rights to the group's Rough Trade recordings and went with a box set of five 7” singles under the awful title “Medicine For The Masses”. This was the exact same format as “The Rough Trade Singles Box” from 2002 although with the bonus of containing the correct Peel Session versions of “Container Drivers” and “New Puritan” (Castle/Sanctuary had updated the 5 disc CD edition once they had acquired the rights to the BBC tracks but the vinyl edition of Italy's Earmark Records retained the Grotesque and Totale's Turns versions used in the initial pressings). Given not only that none of this material is any way scarce but that an excellent single LP release had been given to all 10 tracks in the box (Peel takes included) by US imprint Superior Viaduct in 2018, it was perhaps inevitable that “Medicine For The Masses” pretty much flopped on the day and can now be acquired brand new for a good £10 less than the asking price on the day itself.

Ah yes, Superior Viaduct, let's not forget them. A well-regarded reissue label with a smattering of current artists, they had already issued some Fall vinyl in 2016/2017, putting all the studio albums up to “Perverted By Language” back onto vinyl as well as the first 2 singles and the eternally category-defying “Slates” 10”. Following Smith's passing, they have (almost) completed the task with the aforementioned “Rough Trade Singles” LP and a new pressing of “Totale's Turns”. These editions have been very well received and have been praised for the quality both of the mastering and of the pressings but they remain largely inaccessible to UK fans due to licensing restrictions preventing the editions from being imported. As such, you'll hafta pick these up on a one-to-one basis off your own bat.

Right, back to Record Store Day 2019. We also had the “opportunity” to buy a number of live albums. 5 of them, in fact. All of these had previously been released on CD towards the end of 2018...so this was going to be called Crap Rap Part 14 but it's now called “Stop Releasing Every Gig You Can Find On Some Mouldy Third Generation Maxell C90 on a double LP”

Live albums have always been canon with The Fall. “Totale's Turns” was their 3rd LP release, “Live In London 1980” was issued by Chaos Tapes with the group's permission in 1982, “Fall In A Hole” was allowed until copies were exported. We had “Seminal Live” and “The 27 Points” mixing live with studio, as did “I Am Kurious Oranj” with several tracks recorded during the original Edinburgh run of the ballet. Even the “Perverted By Language Bis” video was largely live material. Even once the shark was jumped in the late 90s/early 00s with the endless recycling of those outtake/live compilations, there were official live missives, such as the excellent “Last Night At The Palais” in 2009, the wonderfully titled but patchy “Uurop VIII-XII Places in Sun & Winter, Son” in 2014 though to the terrible “Live In Clitheroe” in 2017. So, all in, it comes as no surprise at all that over 20 more live albums have been added to The Fall's discography since Smith's sad departure from this realm.

There were no less than 5 live albums dumped merrily onto the shelves for RSD 2019, 3 of them doubles. On their own, this would have been an outlay of over £100...in fact, if you wanted the full RSD Fall, you'd have had little or no change on the day from £250. For exactly no unreleased music. No unreleased music? What were these live albums then? Let's wind back to late in 2018... (I told you this was tough to do in any kind of linear fashion).

Arriving via the PledgeMusic site, “Set Of Ten” released by “Cog Sinister”, worked like this: 10 previously unreleased live recordings were contained in a sturdy square box with spiffy new artwork from Pascal LeGras. The tariff? £100. Ouch. Now, a handful of them were announced as separate releases, however, if you bought the box you would receive an exclusive disc – a recording from Derby, 1994. Cometh the hour, the Derby CD was one of the first to be released on its own. Huh.

A small amount of digging revealed that this set was the work of Rob Ayling. With the dates running from 1980 to 1999, the general opinion re: Set Of Ten was that these tapes were very likely to be in Ayling's possession due to the “Live From The Vaults” series on Voiceprint, Ayling's previous imprint, from 2005. When that series was announced, the five releases were said to be simply the first batch.  It could therefore be deduced that these tapes had been destined for future batches. At the time, there was a minor dust-up over them and no further volumes were issued. Whatever the motivations, presenting an 11 CD set of old bootlegs with so little quality control being put into the audio and asking £100 for it felt like cold ash in the mouth. Worse still, PledgeMusic went bust before many customers could receive their sets, leaving them to either claim chargebacks on their credit cards or simply out of pocket as ordinary creditors to the failed business. It must have been galling for those who lost money to see the CDs arriving on their own and several cut onto expensive vinyl.

I've picked up a couple of the CDs separately and these have been largely fine. Recording quality is listenable but obviously audience derived. The best one by far of those I've heard is “Live 23rd June 1981 @ Jimmy's Music Club New Orleans”, a great recording of a full-tilt Fall performance from a critical time in their existence (pictured) . There's a palpable tension, possibly due to the return of Burns, brought back not just out of practicalities but also to even the group up a bit, now that Smith was beginning to reconsider the wisdom of having a team of childhood friends for a group. Rehiring Burns was designed to put some grit back into the machine and it worked. Having a full set from this line-up is a worthy addition to the canon and it should be snapped up before it vanishes – this is the only one of the “Set Of Ten” CDs that seems to be thin on the ground. The artwork and credits show the level of care taken over the release; that is – pretty much none. The CD artwork has the 6 piece “Hex” line-up – Karl Burns is the only drummer here as Paul Hanley was at home doing his O Levels. However, the sleeve credits Paul Hanley and not Burns, adding a credit for Duncan Burndred, who was the group's driver at the time. The info had been sourced from the “Slates & Dates” press release which credited Burndred with “the rest” (ie anything other than music and management). Likely pilfered from thefall.org, this missive was retooled for the artwork without any real consideration.

However, it seems there was sufficient demand out there and, cometh the tail end of 2019, cometh another Set of Ten, given the snappy title...”Another Set Of Ten”. They must have been up all fucking night thinking of that one. Again, it has 11 discs. It does get interesting here insofar as most of the tapes come from between 2009 and 2013 suggesting not only that there wasn't much left from the original “Vaults”- destined batch but also making it unclear from whom these tapes were being licenced. They are, of course, under no obligation to discuss such matters publicly and, indeed the current incarnation of Cog Sinister would likely feel aggrieved at having the question asked. They are, after all, a legitimate enterprise. 

A quick skwizz at the Discogs page tells you that “Another Set Of Ten” is not a triumph; all the tapes are listed as being audience tapes, one disc has just six songs from the gig and several others are also incomplete and/or mislabelled. The main contributor to the Discogs entry (to whom, hello!) notes that the tracklistings appear to be taken from photographs of setlists uploaded to thefall.org's justly revered and thoroughly sublime gigography but, where the setlist didn't match what was played, no attempt has been made to correct this. They haven't even matched up the content with the tracklistings!!! At time of writing, these ones are just starting to slip into the shops on their own, possibly Covid delayed as you could get them via online retailers for a while. The cover for a Manchester gig from 2009 looked like a sick joke and it was hard not to think similar (albeit at lower pitch) about the inclusion of an infamous Motherwell gig at which MES was completely plastered and Brix had quit the band an hour or so before the show. What's next? Worthing? Brownies?

Yet it is very hard not to be continually tempted. There's some juicy setlists in these discs and the artwork at least has some effort – Pascal LeGras has done a very fine job here and his art certainly gives the right feel to the releases. I'm guessing that was the plan. I’ve got my eye on a few. It’s a disease this, I tell you...

Anyway, one way of the other, 5 of the “Set Of Ten” discs found their way onto vinyl on RSD, courtesy of reissue imprint Let Them Eat Vinyl and all of these are still easy to score, should you wish. The whole Gonzo/Let Them Eat Vinyl hookup is interesting for scholars of who-owns-what in terms of The Fall's catalogue. As above, we know that BMG have the Rough Trade recordings but LTEV's “Grotesque”, issued in 2017, states it is licensed by Sanctuary.

LTEV have also been putting some of the other lesser releases from the catalogue onto vinyl, including 2 mid 90's live albums (Phoenix 1995 and “The Idiot Joy Show” - nothing that was wasn't available for buttons on CD in the early 00s) as well as “Interim”, the demos and live cobble-together that attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2004. The latter had never been pressed to vinyl before and with bloody good reason.  Yr mileage, as always, may vary.

Whilst not The Fall, acolytes will doubtless want to know that Ed Blaney issued a 2CD edition of “The Train”, containing the full 40-minute “(Part Three)” CD, a similarly lengthed alternate version and a clutch of remixes. Blaney also uploaded a properly touching tribute to Smith on YouTube, including reminiscences with other friends of Smith.

One more part to come, in which we burn the spotlight of shame onto a couple of the worst products ever to have had the name The Fall unwillingly emblazoned upon their sleeves and take a quick look over some of what we know is in the pipeline.

Jenny’s Belated Live Blogging - 31st October 2019

- well that was boring

- First of all...not nearly enough Aaron and no Seb even though they talked about him a lot. 

- Good on Seb for having like 3 cars by now though. He really is Robert and Aaron’s son. However, the fact that we yet again did not get to see Seb in a Halloween costume is a travesty. 

- Since I’ve seen the anons on my dash already, I don’t know how I feel about the idea of Seb being with Aaron tomorrow for the visit either but I’ll wait and see what the scenes are I guess. I genuinely expect nothing. It really does feel like he’s just already gone and it has since friday of week 42 to be honest. I mean of course I want a final emotional scene and I want him to get a final shot of the episode or something if this is his last one but I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll be annoyed when it doesn’t go well and everyone here hates it but I just sort of expect it to be disappointing and for them to be the E plot even though that’s dumb but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I just feel like we had our goodbyes in the woods and that phone call and everything after is really just fuel for Aaron’s story. As much as that’s frustrating from a Robert fan perspective. But we shall see tomorrow. 

- I really hate that Luke is Lee’s brother. I mean obviously the family of a rapist is not inherently evil, see all the conversations surrounding Aaron and Vic’s baby etc but the idea that they might make Vic’s next relationship be with the brother of her rapist after also giving her the baby she always wanted through said rape, it’s just gross and I’m not a fan. But if that’s not where they’re going with it, then I don’t know what the purpose of Luke is. So...

- I do like Vic and Aaron being friendly though. Obviously the spiral is probably going to throw a spanner in that but I miss the friendship they used to have and when Vic isn’t being thrown under the bus for plot purposes, she’s actually a tolerable character and I like her and Aaron being there for each other in this sad sad post Robert world. 

- As for the rest of the episode...ugh

- I mean I like Vinny with the Dingles but I have no clue where they’re trying to go with that. I feel like even if they found out he wasn’t her son, they’d be mad at Mandy for lying, not so much at Vinny who just wants to be part of their family. Although, I didn’t like the way he was looking at Belle. That was creepy. 

- I’m glad that, on screen, Aaron and then Robert were the first people to drink from the Welly because now it’s so overused. And after Lachlan they should really be more discerning with who they let drink from it. 

- The weed story...sigh...I’m glad it’s sort of mostly come to an end aside from telling Nicola and it did bring up some interesting stuff between Jai and Laurel that wasn’t immediately resolved so that has some mild potential. But I’m still just sort of confused by the whole thing and why it has gone on quite so long. And why would you just burn the weed in a barrel to get rid of it??? And then stand over the smoke and breathe it in??? Haha. 

- All the kids were out in this episode again. The Arthur/Archie rivalry reminds me of when Arthur was getting jealous of all of the attention April was getting back in the Laurel/Marlon days. Similar thing with Archie having just lost his mum. Also...hi Dotty...you’re like a real little person now. 

- As for Jacob...like, I’m glad they haven’t totally forgotten about Maya and that he’s still dealing with the after effects of that whole story, but I’m still really mad that they never properly resolved anything with him or had him make any kind of breakthrough. Even if he eventually does have one, it’s way too late. I do think it’s interesting exploring the possibility of a new age appropriate girl liking him though. There’s definitely good potential content there, I’m just still mad they messed up that original ending so badly. 

- I just don’t know what to make of Kerry. She was back sort of being her quirky side character self in this episode and it worked apart from the fact that I’m still thinking about the Frank story and how they’ve done nothing to properly resolve that either. Same thing I felt with Amy and Cain before she left. It just doesn’t work. And Tracy has been MIA along with Vanessa so we haven’t even had them around to know the truth and Charity who does hasn’t been involved with them at all. And I still think the Sharma’s deserve to know the truth. I just really don’t get that story, especially if they never really do anymore with it. 

- And then we have more convoluted backstories from the Home Farm gang! Hooray! I just...it’s so bad. I mean I want them to burn Home Farm to the ground so we never have to deal with these families again but god even the Whites worked slightly better for me. At least they had present day problems that didn’t entirely rely on convoluted off screen backstories. I mean there was some with Lawrence not being Chrissie’s dad but that linked back to Edna and Harold and there was just more there for me that made sense rather than just having Graham be a cryptic robotic exposition machine all the time. First with Joe, Kim owns everything. Then Kim and Graham had some on and off relationship for years despite the fact that they never really seem like they’re together. Then Andrea was suddenly working for Graham. Then Graham is possibly Millie’s father. Then Jamie was the one who got Kim sent to prison. Like...enough. Do something in the present. At least when Kim was taking control of the factory it was in the present. The rest of it is just not good. Not to mention they tried to give Jamie and Kim a little drama today and then she immediately went back on her threats and went to read Millie a story. At least do something with these revelations if you’re going to keep bringing them up. I don’t know. I just don’t get what they think they’re doing with that character group. They all work better outside of Home Farm and with other characters. Stop trying to force it or at least stick to something. Sigh...

- I mean I guess Kim is going to go after Graham now but since it’s all based on practically nothing, I don’t expect it will be very interesting. 

- And Al is such a waste without the Ellis stuff. I don’t know what they’re going to do with him because him just hanging around Kim and becoming sort of the new Graham doesn’t work. I’d much rather they actually had a Kim/Al romance or something but like make it legitimate with real feelings. Something...

- Anyway....I’ll just reiterate that this episode needed way more Aaron.

Sonic X, Sonic Heroes, and IDW, or: How a bad anime from 2004 spoiled a comic from 2019.

Now, I haven’t been following IDW Sonic all that closely. I get regular updates from Nemesis via Discord, and additional info from some of the Tumblrs I follow that are invested in it, but I don’t really have a desire to touch it myself. Here’s why.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this. Starting with the background of Sonic Forces wasn’t really a good place to begin from, and being based on present-day game lore in general was always going to hurt it, mainly because SEGASonic canon is currently a confusing mess of retcons brought on by Iizuka taking the J.K. Rowling approach.

Wait, no, he’s just saying stupid shit that contradicts previous canon, not trying to score woke points and hoping nobody notices the frankly terrible stereotypes and TERF tweets. Iizuka is taking the Greg Farshtey approach.

Added, as anyone that’s had experience with my opinions will tell you, I started falling out of love with Ian Flynn’s writing somewhere around Issue 200, and moved to outright dislike during Mecha Sally, and to make matters worse I started noticing that some of the flaws in the 200-247 era were also present in the 160-199 era, retroactively making those harder to go back to.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I kept up with Archie for the SatAM cast. SatAM reruns back in 2004 were my Sonic, moreso than anything else, and even now I still have way more attachment to those two seasons of animation than I do to most other aspects of the franchise, warts and all. So Archie providing me with additional content for said characters was a major draw for me. I’d generally put up with a lot just to get myself more SatAM content.

That in itself is a large part of why I fell off the Archie train during Mecha Sally. The entirety of the SatAM cast were removed from the regular lineup, just leaving three SEGA characters with their personalities stunted, even if that didn’t make sense in-universe. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So being written by someone whom I no longer enjoyed the writing of, set in a mess of a canon with a thoroughly shite game as the main basis, without the cast I read the previous comics for gave me little reason to invest in IDW Sonic. It wasn’t for me, I’d just keep reading Transformers and move on.

Then MTMTE/LL ended with a heart-twister and Ex-RID ended with a giant Unicron-shaped fart, and the new comic is dull as fucking dishwater and started by killing off one of my favourites, who was also one of the franchise’s confirmed LGBT characters. So now IDW is getting none of my money. Which is good because I’m broke.

Tangents aside, my lack of interest wasn’t something set in stone. If it turned out that the comic was actually really good, then sure, I’d try it. I was up for being proven wrong. But so far, I haven’t felt compelled by the responses from the internet. If anything I’ve been more turned off.

I could talk about how zombies are really fucking boring. I could talk about how SEGA’s recent confusion over what to do with Amy has combined with Ian’s need to include a Sally-esque character to make IDW Amy into Sally Lite. I could talk about how Ian seemingly fundamentally misunderstood everything that was cool about Neo Metal Sonic and somehow managed to reduce him to a boring Eggman minion in an arc where Eggman was out of action due to amnesia… But I won’t.

Instead I’m going to talk about how the comic has done something that would legitimately make me think twice about picking it up even if the FF were to debut tomorrow.

Yeah, I would pass up a SatAM fix because of this, that’s how much this ticks me off.

Now, I presume that if you’re reading this, you have a favourite Sonic character. And you probably feel pretty strongly about how your favourite character is portrayed. If they get a bad run in a game or two then you probably get a little salty about that. Tails and Knuckles fans in particular, as of late, seem to be the ones getting the short end.

Well, my favourite character in the entire franchise is Emerl the Gizoid. I will take Gemerl as a worthy substitute, they’re basically the same character. And the comics have been doing them dirty since the Archie reboot.

(Sidenote: I will be referring to Emerl with male pronouns from this point on. The Maria-soul thing isn’t as widely known as I’d like it to be, so I’m going to compromise for the sake of keeping the focus on the actual point)

However, not everything about this can be laid at the feet of Ian Flynn. Arguably his portrayal of said character is merely a symptom of a long-running issue that has plagued Sonic storytelling for roughly 15-16 years now.

But before we get into that, let’s get into something important: Why Emerl is my favourite Sonic character.

Part 1: Emerl in Sonic Battle, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Gizoid”.

This game doesn’t get enough love.

Now, I totally understand why it doesn’t get enough love. There are game design choices, like the grinding and the repetitiveness of the story mode that really drag it down, and because of that, Battle can become a slow-going and tedious experience, and that’s a real shame, because the story that’s hidden in this game is a thing of beauty.

Like most Sonic games from the 2000s, this game introduces a new character to join Sonic’s list of friends. Unlike the games that aren’t SA2 and Sonic Rush, this new character is actually good (This is hyperbole, Omega, Silver, and Shade were fine too).

Emerl enters the story as a mute, barely-functional robot that doesn’t do much of anything for a while, and only seems to come to life when Sonic locates it and attacks it. However, as the robot absorbs more Chaos Emeralds, slowly a personality starts to form, largely pieced together from other characters’ traits.

Emerl, as he is dubbed, is initially childlike and naive, but as he grows he develops a sassy streak, and his speech becomes a lot more developed. Maturity sets in, as Emerl grapples with his own nature, particularly the legacy he carries from the ARK, and Shadow’s ongoing turmoil with regards to the whole “Living Weapon” deal. Ultimately he becomes a hero, following in the footsteps of his mentor, parental figure, and closest friend, Sonic.

That’s right, Sonic, not Cream, is Emerl’s closest friend. We’ll get to that.

But this heart-warming story of Sonic becoming a dad for a robot doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Shadow and Rouge finding a way to neutralise Emerl’s destructive Gizoid programming, Eggman has a way to reactivate it anyway, driving Emerl into a berserk rampage. This is kind of the one sticking point I have with the game’s plot, Eggman shouldn’t have been able to do this after Shadow and Rouge neutralised Emerl.

Additionally, while Emerl was on the ARK getting Maria’s soul crammed into him, Gerald also added a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if he ever went Ultimate again.

So with Emerl quite literally exploding with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, but his destructive programming forcing him to turn Eggman’s latest Death Star knockoff on Mobius/Earth/Sonic’s World, Sonic races up to confront his mecha-child, and things take a turn for the Old Robot Yeller.

In a moment that really deserves more attention, Sonic confronts his own child on the bridge of a space station, while Emerl is running on the power of the Chaos Emeralds and outputting more energy than he can physically take, and they fight. In the space of thirty seconds, they have a ten-round knock-down, drag-out brawl, and at the end, Sonic stands triumphant. Without using a single transformation. Yeah, that’s how powerful this guy is, that’s not travel speed, that’s combat speed. Looking at you, Death Battle.

It’s not really clear whether Sonic outright defeats Ultimate Emerl, or just survives long enough for his opponent to reach his limit and self-destruct, but the end result is the same. Sonic cradles a robot that became his own child over the course of the past few weeks, someone he raised from a baby-like state into a mature and heroic individual, and Emerl looks up at him and asks “Sonic… am I going to die?” And despite Sonic desperately trying to get him to keep it together, Not only does Emerl die, but he’s aware that the end is coming, and bids farewell to all of his friends as Sonic pleads with him to hold on. Shadow is equally distraught, his only friend with a connection to the ARK, someone he can call a brother, someone who carries the soul of his deceased sister within him, is dead.

Emerl: “Sonic I don’t feel so good.”

Like it’s canon that Eggman basically murdered Sonic’s kid.

And goddamnit this ending hits me hard. It frustrates me that Eggman was able to pull a means to drive Emerl into his Ultimate freakout mode out of his arse, but other than that, it’s so gutwrenching, I love it.

Gamma’s story from SA1 gets a lot of praise on the Internet, but for me, this is even better. It’s like Gamma’s story, but if Gamma was actually central to the plot of the game and the characters other than Amy gave a shit about him, and gave a shit about him for longer than a single cutscene, after which they are never mentioned again. Hell, due to Chaos Gamma being a thing, Gamma gets more love from the other characters in Battle than he does in SA1.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.

Part 2: (Sonic) Anime was a Mistake, or: “Sonic X ruins everything.”

I’ve made my dislike of this anime quite clear in the past. The characters are flanderized, Sonic is a B-lister in his own damn show, the villains are weaksauce or boring or both, the plot is only remotely close to good when its cribbing from two videogames which told the stories in question better, and for the first two seasons the entire show actually revolves around not Sonic, but the least relatable audience surrogate ever made. The third season would continue to include him, but shove him (And everyone else) to the side in favour of a Pokemon whose only move was “Flashback”, making audiences the world over question why he was even there in the first place.

Oh, and it also near-singlehandedly destroyed the thin shreds of character development that Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman had received in Sonic Adventure 2.

All four of these characters had been significantly enriched by the then most recent console game. Eggman had been revealed to be motivated by an admiration for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, but in the same game learned that Gerald had lost his marbles and programmed the ARK to smash into the planet and kill everyone on it, probably including his surviving family, i.e. little baby Ivo Robotnik. Gerald betrayed Eggman posthumously, and it’s clear from Eggman’s interactions with Tails during the credits of the game that this is giving him a lot to think about.

Knuckles is a weird case because most of his characterisation in SA2 is conveyed via… the lyrics to his rap music. Yes, really. He gets minor growth through the cutscenes, most notably in his decision to shatter the Master Emerald early on. Having already reassembled it once after it was broken in SA1, he’s now confident that he can do it again, so is willing to break it to prevent Eggman or Rouge stealing it. Via the rap lyrics, however (Yes I just wrote that), we also learn that Knuckles is slowly warming up to Sonic, gaining a greater respect for him, that he is more in-touch with his history and ancestors after SA1 (Though fortunately not in a Ken Penders way), and that he’s also struggling with feelings for Rouge, a plot element that went completely out of the window after this game.

Tails and Amy, however, get it the worst, as both went through arcs in SA1 that are followed up on and expanded in SA2. Amy had come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to rely on Sonic for everything, and that she would make him respect her as a hero in her own right. And while Amy is clearly in way over her head throughout the events of SA2, she still makes a significant difference, not only freeing Sonic from his cell on Prison Island, allowing Tails’ invasion to be a distraction and stealing a keycard to facilitate it, but of course, she later saves the world by motivating Shadow to join the fight to stop the ARK drop.

Tails had a similar plot, about learning to believe in himself as a hero, without having to rely on Sonic, and in SA2 he gets to prove it, not only partaking in the same rescue operation as Amy and fighting Eggman on even footing, but effectively taking command of the heroes and becoming their new leader, and for the first time, Sonic defers to him.

And then Sonic X came along and fucked it all up.

Eggman became a clownish antagonist with no semblance of nuance, and he actually got off the easiest.

Knuckles became a loud, dimwitted loner who got tricked by Eggman constantly, which would go on to be his personality for the rest of the franchise, ultimately culminating in the travesty against all sense that was Boom Knuckles.

Tails was reduced to a wimpy taxi driver, incapable of doing anything without his giant mecha plane to sit in. This was largely exacerbated by the presence of Donut Steele, who usurped his role as Sonic’s best friend and sidekick for two seasons, a problem which only got worse in the third season when Donut Steele suddenly became a genius inventor too, encroaching even more into Tails’ territory. Tails did get himself some more focus in S3, but only to make googly eyes at the Pokemon, a role which frankly could’ve gone to literally anyone else and would have made no difference on the plot. I would say that Tails being involved in a romance story at all is weird, but given the comics and Boom the weirdest thing about this latest tragic love story for the kid is that the Pokemon was actually close to his own age, because outside of this it really does seem like Tails goes for older ladies. Though she did turn into an adult at the end so I guess that counts?

But Amy arguably got the worst of it. Not only was her crowning moment in SA2 taken away from her and given to Donut Steele, but the poor girl had her promising character arc cut short and replaced with an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on Sonic, combined with a violent temper and an eagerness to smash anything that displeased her, Sonic included, with a giant hammer. Her admiration and crush on Sonic were warped into her being a possessive, mean-spirited stalker, whom only got away with it because she was an anime girl and therefore it was cute rather than creepy.

I want to take the time at this point to stress that stalking is not okay, under any circumstances. A girl obsessively following an older guy and threatening him and everyone around him with violent assault if they ever so much as imply that he isn’t interested in her is not cute, it means it’s time for a restraining order. Sonamy is not cute.

Now that I’ve swatted that particular hornet’s nest with a cricket bat, let’s move on!

I’ve always found it ironic that, despite being the adaptation with the most oversight from SEGA and Sonic Team, and the most endorsement from them too, Sonic X had easily the worst characterisation of any of the shows at the time. But, for all its faults, I can’t blame everything that went down in the aftermath on it. It had a comrade-in-arms. Mediocrely-written arms.

Part 3: Partner in Crime, or “Sonic Heroes also ruins everything.”

Sonic Heroes has a lot to answer for. And I mean a lot. It was the beginning of the franchise’s obsession with references to the classic games, it codified the really awkward ages for certain characters, and it seemed to be dedicated to completely unpicking everything established in the Adventure duology.

Shadow’s sudden resurrection is one thing, at least they had the graces to include a means to preserve his sacrifice via having him be an android, the blame for that not taking should be laid at the feet of his own game.

But the rest of the cast? Ohhh boy. Sonic’s still fine, he didn’t change much in the Adventure games, but then there’s Tails. Despite all the development he went through in SA1, in this game he needs to turn to Sonic when Eggman returns, and honestly this whole setup could’ve been fixed if Tails sought Sonic out not for the sake of having him lead the charge, but rather simply to recruit him into the counterattack he was already planning. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the game Tails is almost as wimpy as his X counterpart, not helped by the voicework he’s given. No offense to William Corkery, who was probably like six when he recorded his lines, but this what you get when you choose actors via nepotism, rather than talent. But at least he does something.

How about Knuckles? As the other side of his derailment, Knuckles just turns up in this game, buddy-buddy with the characters he was only just starting to warm up to before, and blatantly not caring about the Master Emerald until Rouge mentions she’s going to steal it at the end. This will combine with his becoming a dumbass in Sonic X and become basically his entire character for… ever. Even in Forces, where he’s supposed to be doing slightly better as the leader of the resistance… but he’s a dumbass, and even Ian Flynn, who kept Knuckles as competent and intelligent in the Archie comics (Making the best version of Knuckles we’ve had in forever), kept this ongoing in the IDW comic. The Forces prequel portrays him as deciding to become leader of the Resistance (To an empire that hasn’t actually formed yet) purely to be a glory hound, and then goes on to establish that he was basically a figurehead while the real work was done by Amy, of all people.

And speaking of Amy…

Yeah, poor Amy is basically her Sonic X counterpart. But worse. I didn’t think that was possible, but at least X’s Amy seems to care about her friends. In Heroes, we’re treated to an equally violent and stalkerish Amy, who ostensibly starts searching out Sonic because he’s implicated in the abduction of Cream and Big’s pets, but when they actually catch up to him, Amy clean forgets why she is looking for him in the first place and tries to force him to marry her. Despite being twelve.

Y’know when Amy said she wanted to marry Sonic in SA2, she was joking, right?

This is why I find the idea of Amy being the real leader of the Resistance frankly absurd: Because the only time she led anything, it was a team that consisted of herself, a small child, and a man less intelligent and aware of reality than said small child, and she completely forgot their actual objective the moment she set her eyes on Sonic. Add in an unfortunate stint of very poor eyesight that got less and less understandable with every instance, and we got Amy’s rough personality for the next decade.

While Knuckles mostly stagnated at the same level of stupidity during that time, Tails got worse and worse, losing all of his badass traits with every game, a factor only increased by the “Sonic only” mentality costing him playable status, until he reached his nadir in Forces, cowering in terror from Chaos 0, and crying out to Sonic to save him, despite knowing full-well that Sonic was captured already.  Amy, meanwhile, limped along at the same level until about 2014, where it seemed someone at SEGA finally realised that A) Having the only female character you regularly use be a pink-coloured gender-bent version of your male hero whose only function is lusting after said hero doesn’t and shouldn’t fly in this day and age, and B) violent stalkers aren’t cute, and dropped this trait. Unfortunately, this has been more of a lateral move than a fix, as, much like Antoine in the comics, they forgot to give her anything substantial or fitting after she lost her negative traits, leaving her a bland and dull character, and when you’ve had a character be consistent for ten years, even if they were consistently bad, then changing it without cause or warning is still going to be jarring and awkward.

Part 4: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, or “Why the fuck did this happen?”

As I said in Part 2, Sonic X was made under heavy oversight from Sonic Team, and was heavily endorsed by them at the same time. There were promos for the show inserted into Sonic Adventure DX, a few episodes were released on GBA cartridges, and it received a long-running comic from Archie that ran alongside the main book, even after the show had ended. Additionally, characters that debuted in games from 2002-2004 were restricted from appearing in Archie’s main book for years afterwards (Which will become relevant later). The third season was commissioned solely off of the response to the first two, and primarily overseas response, hence why the original sub was never aired in Japan.

Sonic X was huge. And with that in mind, it’s plain to see that the portrayals of the characters in Sonic X were intended by SEGA. Yeah, all that horrible characterisation was intended as the vision for the franchise going forwards, and subsequent games were adjusted to match it.

And unfortunately, not only did this have a serious impact on the main cast of the games, but it had an even worse effect on Emerl.

Part 5: Emerl in Sonic X, or “Emerl vs. ‘Emel’”

Sonic X’s original mission statement was to adapt Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Battle. Why they skipped Sonic Heroes, despite Shadow being a major player in Battle’s story, I don’t know.

For whatever reason, the show took a full season to actually get to the first game adaptation, SA1, and instead spent the first 26 episodes on bland episodic “adventures”, in some kind of strange reverse-Isekai series. However, once it got there, the adaptation work was fairly faithful to the source material, which the exception of Donut Steele’s being crammed in to the plot. However, he mostly followed Big around, and since Big was the least involved in the game’s plot, he didn’t disrupt too much.

Sidenote, after 26 episodes of filler, the actual SA1 adaptation only lasted six episodes.

SA2 was likewise only six episodes, but with the exception of Amy’s big scene, it likewise wasn’t too bad. Tails suffered this time around too, which is somewhat surprising since he was mech-dependent in the anime anyway.  

After some more filler, which introduced the Chaotix and then did nothing with them, Emerl finally made an appearance, albeit they got his name wrong.

‘Emel’ looks like Emerl, and somewhat works like Emerl, but might as well be completely  different. ‘Emel’ stays completely mute for the entire time he’s around, never advancing much beyond Emerl’s initial silent, pre-first Emerald persona. He does get better at fighting, but he’s limited to only absorbing a single skill at once (Except for when he isn’t).

Dispensing with Battle’s interesting, rich, and heart-twisting plot, Sonic X instead has ‘Emel’ linger in ensemble for three episodes, before condensing the entire game’s premise into a two episodes of really bland tournament arc, where Sonic himself doesn’t actually fight and we get two rounds of Donut Steele being a dick to his friend and his father.

‘Emel’ wins the tournament, and is given a Chaos Emerald, and just when you think it might kickstart him becoming an actual character, instead it just drives him insane and he immediately becomes a pathetically weak version of Ultimate Emerl. After kicking the crap out of the entire cast, he is defeated by Cream and Cheese, because even though he can take on Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge at the same time and win, along with Tails, Amy, Donut Steele and everyone else, he… can’t handle two opponents at once.

This is stupid.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about Sonic’s relationship with ‘Emel’, and that’s because he doesn’t have one. The wonderfully-written parental bond that these two characters share in the games is completely excised, and instead the focus is put on Cream. Bare in mind, Cream is so inconsequential to the actual game that she doesn’t even get mentioned individually in Emerl’s dying speech like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow do. Instead she’s just grouped in with Amy.

This is also stupid.

And as a result of this, it means that what is arguable base form Sonic’s most impressive feat just doesn’t happen in the anime, instead Emerl dies because he is lightly kicked a bit by Cream. Yeah, unlike the Advance games, Sonic X’s Cream is not an unstoppable engine of destruction, she’s basically just a small child who can sometimes fly.

Instead of Emerl’s tragic speech and Sonic’s desperate attempts to keep his son alive, we get treated to a prolonged scene of Cream crying over the death of her “friend”, something that is probably meant to tug at heartstrings but doesn’t because Cream’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

And Shadow isn’t even there! He doesn’t come back until a third of the way through Season 3, and never meets ‘Emel.’

This is really stupid. And, for those keeping track, that means of Sonic X’s originally commissioned 52 episodes, and the full series run of 78 episodes, a stunning total of seventeen of them were actually adaptations of the games that the series was supposed to focus on, leaving us with 61 episodes of what might as well be filler.

And, unfortunately, that franchise-wide initiative had damning consequences for Emerl.

Part 6: Gemerl and Sonic Advance 3, or: “An incomplete resurrection.”

So, Gemerl. I know his name is apparently G-Merl now but fuck that I’m calling him Gemerl. If the comics can do it then so will I.

Gemerl is the worst thing Eggman has ever done to Sonic. Like, there is no contest. Some of his other schemes might be more destructive and generally evil, but in terms of personal pain inflicted, nothing has topped this.

Eggman salvaged Emerl’s corpse, and brought him back to life as a mindless murderbot under his control. So not only did he kill Sonic’s robo-son, but he also brought him back as a weapon.

Come the conclusion of the game, Gemerl predictably betrays Eggman, steals the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, and goes on another rampage. I have… headcanons about this fight, but that’s something to worry about later. What’s important is that, once again, Sonic is victorious, and Gemerl’s defeated body plunges into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Tails is able to bring Emerl back properly this time, presumably using the Chaos shard that was left over at the end of Battle’s finale. So, it’s all a happy ending, right? Sonic has his child back, Shadow has his connection to his history restored, and Emerl is alive and well, right?

Wrong.

See, the vile spectre of Sonic X rears its ugly head once more, and sabotages this conclusion. Gemerl doesn’t return to Sonic, in fact we never see him reunite with his father. Instead, Sonic X’s version has enough clout now to take precedence, so Gemerl is now Cream’s playmate.

Bear in mind that Emerl’s idea of a fun game is all-out combat against his friends, and Cream doesn’t like fighting (Even if she’s really good at it in Advance 2 and 3).

And then he never shows up again. Even when Cream is part of the game’s plot, like in Rush or Generations, he’s not there, and most egregiously, in Sonic Chronicles, where Cream is not only an active player in the plot, but so are Gizoids, the creators of said Gizoids are the main antagonists, and Emerl himself is mentioned… Gemerl is not there.

But he did make it into the comics, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Part 7: Embargos, knock-offs, and misused tropes, or: “Ian Flynn dun goofed.”

For a long while, Emerl/Gemerl was barred from the Archie comics, due to the Sonic X embargo, and when it was lifted, he didn’t appear until the reboot. We did, however, get a suspiciously similar substitute in the form of Shard.

Shard was the original Metal Sonic, but when he was brought back and rebuilt for the Secret Freedom arc, he was given a colour scheme ostensibly derived from Metal Sonic 3.0, but one shared with Gemerl, and a personality that was a lot like a watered-down version of Emerl’s own.

On some level I can understand Ian’s decision to bring back Metal Sonic v2.5, rather than use the character that seems to have been an inspiration for this new incarnation in some way. He’d need a fully-formed Emerl, necessitating a skip over the whole story, since there wasn’t room for an adaptation during the Mecha Sally arc that the Secret Freedom story was framed within. Heck, for all we know, the similarities between them may simply be a pretty sizeable coincidence.

But then the reboot happened and Gemerl finally joined the comic cast. And to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

You’ll notice that I said “Gemerl” rather than “Emerl”, because his entire story was indeed skipped. The events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3 had both happened already. This wasn’t Ian’s decision, as far as we know, his intention was for the comic to start over from the beginning. However, due to the interference of Paul Kaminski, who wanted a softer reboot, Ian was forced to fill the characters’ active histories with a large chunk of the games’ stories. Battle and Advance 3 were among those that had already happened, so Emerl made cameos in both incarnations via flashback… which unfortunately led to a plot hole.

See, Advance 3 and Sonic Unleashed are rather difficult to keep in the same continuity, because both share a common plot element: The world breaking into seven pieces.

For a long while, it was generally assumed that the handheld games and console titles were only semi-canon to each other. This avoided the awkward question of “If the Gaias were already there, why didn’t they emerge when Eggman broke the planet in Advance 3?”

Ian shoved them blatantly into the same continuity, and gave no attempt to explain what was different about the Advance 3 world-break compared to the Gaia incident, which served as the backbone to the reboot’s three year long Shattered World Arc. Why didn't the Gaias wake up during Advance 3? Because that's now a question we have to ask of the comics' world.

When Gemerl finally showed up doing something other than yard work for Vanilla (Despite allegedly being Cream’s friend, Cream spends all her time with the rest of the cast, and Gemerl is basically Vanilla’s maid), it was to get effortlessly dispatched by a brainwashed Mega Man with a terrible name in the extremely lacklustre Worlds Unite event.

This one was more than a little bit of a slap in the face, considering that Emerl and Mega Man are very similar in concept- robots that can copy the abilities of other characters- but Emerl is demonstrably more powerful. Now, if Ian had established that Gemerl had been nerfed when he was rebuilt, either by Eggman or by Tails, that would be fine. But he didn’t. In fact, Gemerl is given the title bubble “Super Gizoid”, implying that he’s stronger than a regular Gizoid.

Worlds Unite is generally pretty bad for having its corrupted heroes easily curbstomp every other character around, to the point that the only thing that can stop them is each other, but in Gemerl’s case it really serves no purpose.

This is the only thing that he actually does in Worlds Unite. He shows up to get beaten up and make Mega Man look stronger. That’s it.

This is something that TV Tropes refers to as “The Worf Effect”, a trope wherein an established powerful character is defeated easily by a new character, in order to demonstrate the latter’s power. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using this trope, but please note that I said establishedpowerful character, which Gemerl wasn’t.

At the point that this comic released, Gemerl’s last appearance in any Sonic media was over ten years prior. None of the comic’s intended target audience would remember him, and they wouldn’t know why defeating him was impressive. And this was, in addition, a terrible way to introduce him to new fans. Though the worst part is easily that this was unnecessary. Mega Man had already defeated everyone else, and had established his power pretty well just on them, and he was about to get removed from play permanently in the next issue. There was really no reason to throw Gemerl under the bus for this.

He made one more appearance in the event, getting controlled by the Zeti along with every other robot, and after that he got bopped on the head and just flew away.

Later, he’d make another appearance in the Panic in the Sky arc, and while his portrayal was far from the worst thing about Panic in the Sky, it only adds to the issues caused by the previous showing.

Gemerl makes one appearance, and promptly gets pinned down by the Witchcarters and Team Hooligan. Bear in that one of those groups are the joke villains who nobody takes seriously, and the other are a gang that was defeated by Tails before he met Sonic.

Archie Gemerl was a character who only existed to lose to villains in a vain attempt to make them look better, and that’s legitimately all Ian ever did with him, which makes me wonder whether he disliked the character. And it didn’t even make the villains look good, when you think about it. For anybody that was actually the intended audience for this book, Gemerl had no significance. He was just a robot that got beat up all the time. But for anyone like me, who does remember the games he appeared in, it stands out, not as good writing, but as a blatant narrative device and misused trope.

In this situation, I would simply rather Gemerl never appeared in Archie. At all. If Ian wasn’t going to give him time to shine, or at the very least be an adequate member of the supporting cast, he shouldn’t have used him at all.

Part 8: A Fresh False Start, or: “Wait, how did this get worse?!”

And now we arrive at IDW.

The one nice thing I can say about Archie Gemerl is that at least his personality was mostly on point. He read like a generally accurate take on the character that Emerl was at the end of Battle, which is what he’s supposed to be.

The same cannot be said for IDW.

In the pages of IDW, Gemerl acts like the most generic robot. He speaks in emotionless, stilted sentences with little in the way of actual grammar, leaving him to read like a poor man’s Soundwave, or Soundwave in one of those comics where the writer can’t decide whether they want him to speak normally or adopt his speech pattern from the G1 cartoon, so they just sort of do both.

Emerl pretty much never talked like this, as far as I can recall. His speech development is much more reminiscent of a child learning words, and the only time when he did adopt a more robotic speech pattern, it was a clue that he was slipping back into his destructive programming. He only spoke like a generic robot when he was in mindless destroyer mode.

He gets thrown for a loop by a simple logic flaw, unable to reconcile “Protect Cream and Vanilla” with “Don’t kill the zombots”, and has to be talked out of killing everything around him, when the entire point of Gerald’s modifications to the Gizoid was to make him a bringer of hope rather than destruction, and give him a compassionate heart.

The part of Battle’s story where Cream imparts a pacifistic mindset doesn’t frame her as being right. In that part of the game, they are cornered and under attack by hostile but ultimately mindless drones, and when she convinces Emerl to stop fighting, he almost dies. It’s Cream that learns the lesson there, that sometimes fighting is okay.

This character is already compassionate, he shouldn’t need to be talked into not killing the zombots by a small child, nor should he need her to point out that they’re innocent people who have been made this way by Eggman, because he was made into a killing machine by Eggman twice, and the first time he did die because of it. The character that lay dying in Sonic’s arms, scared and bidding his last goodbyes to his loved ones shouldn’t be the one experiencing this struggle when Omega is also in this arc.

That’s it, really. He’s not Gemerl. He’s a second, less goofy Omega. And it boggles my mind that, despite getting Gemerl’s character, if not his combat abilities, down almost perfectly in Archie, Ian is now subjecting us to this travesty.  

Like with the Archie example above, therein lies the crux of why the steady decline of Emerl/Gemerl that began with Sonic X is pushing me away from IDW: I don’t want to read Ian’s take on this character, because, to me, No Gemerl is better than Badly-Written Gemerl,

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, either.  Way back in 2016, when I complained about Ian’s portrayal of Gemerl in Panic in the Sky, I said that the way he handled characters that I liked tended to make them the least likeable parts of the stories he wrote. As well as stating my dislike for his handling of Gemerl, I also stated that I used to really like Fiona Fox, moreso in concept than in execution, but under Ian’s pen she was largely an insufferable antagonist, little more than a trophy to make his pet recolour look better, and almost every story she was in only added to the “List of reasons she needs to stop lying to herself and just start the redemption arc already”. Additionally, I said that I didn’t want to see him bring back Neo Metal Sonic or Mephiles in any context, and we got the former, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, that’s basically why I don’t want to read IDW. That’s why, even if the aspect that was a big sticking point for me back when the comic launched was to be undone soon, I still probably wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to see my favourite Sonic character continue to be written badly by a guy that should know better, and has done better in the past.

If he were simply screwing up Gemerl’s personality the first time he wrote him, I would file it away under the same category as “Emel”, but the fact that he’s done better before, in a book where he had greater restrictions on what he could do with the characters, really settles this as an interest-killer for me.

Well done, Mr. Flynn. I legitimately didn’t think you could make me actually miss SEGA’s tighter control, but you somehow managed it. I would be impressed if it weren’t so sad.

LANA DEL REY - THE GREATEST

[7.71]

The discourse is lit...

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Lana Del Rey's embrace of decades-old American culture has always been a window into the present, so it's no surprise that her invocations of rock music and Dennis Wilson's deaths on "The Greatest" are signposts for our own inevitable demise. But even before she concludes the song with ruminations on California wildfires, Hawaii's false missile alert, and the possible necessity of colonizing Mars, you can sense the knowing dread in the midsong guitar solo and her affected vocalizing. She declares that she's "wasted" with poise and romantic longing, stretching the word out into a rallying cry; she intimates that debauchery is not just an expected response to contemporary anxieties, but an empowering action in times of seeming powerlessness. She channels that same depressing spirit in her semi-ironic delivery of the song's most memorable couplet -- "The culture is lit and I had a ball/I guess that I'm burned out after all" -- toying with its dual meaning to succinctly portray how escapism in end times isn't indecent behavior, but a necessary means toward survival and acceptance of one's fate. The sparse guitar strums and piano melodies that close out the song anticipate the somber eventuality that awaits us, but can that be much worse than right now? Worse than a time when "dancing with you" and "doing nothing" can be nostalgic pastimes due to never ending stress? Whatever the case, we'll collectively watch as it happens; it's the "live stream" that Lana hints at in the final line, and it'll be of cinematic proportions: "the greatest loss of them all." [9]

Joshua Copperman: "The culture is lit, and if this is it‚ I had a ball." This line is everything I hate about the aesthetics of this decade, but it IS the aesthetic of this decade, at least the latter half. Apart from rare, usually unintentional exceptions, something about 2010s voice-of-a-generation songs always felt pat, apparently because they had hope. We need songs for an age when everything is so overwhelming and impossible that there's nothing left to do but give up, give in, and bide your time until the flames -- the literal ones or the David Foster Wallace ones -- consume you too. (Who by fire, who by water vapor.) The cool, detached gloominess of "The Greatest" sends the opposite message to the one producer Jack Antonoff sent years ago; I don't want to get better, because there's no time left and no point. Lana was "doing nothing most of all," and that's why she's become the figurehead for this decade's music. Not Gaga. Not Beyonce. Not Lorde. Lana. Lana won the race to the bottom because she was there first; maybe a writer once took her sadness out of context, yet if someone said "I wish I was dead already" today, the response would not rise beyond a shrug of 'mood.' I don't even like this song that much as a song. It's slow and dreary, and that "culture is lit" line sounds hackneyed and pandering in its own way. But it's because of that artificiality that the line feels authentic, which was Lana's whole thing in the first place. Maybe I'm just bitter that she became so important when I wasn't looking. To paraphrase another, equally 2019 line, I hate to see it. Especially when I was so blind the whole time. [7]

Josh Buck: "I miss New York, and I Miss you. Me and my friends, we miss rock and roll." As Lana del Rey laments her Big Apple days, it feels like a lifetime since she was a Brooklyn Baby, singing Lou Reed with her boyfriend's band. She ventured out west to create an entire California fantasia and over a handful of albums, she built a cinematic version of the Golden State that was vibrant and full of endless sun and limitless romantic possibilities; even if it was all tinged with just a dab of noir-ish danger. It was a world as fully realized and teeming with mythology as a great novel. And "The Greatest" is where she watches it all burn down. "I'm facing the greatest loss of them all." California dreams are beautiful, until you have to wake up, so she sparks a cigarette and raises a glass to the ride. But if "The Greatest" is a moment of personal reflection, it's also a celebration. It's a toast to a new Greatest Generation. A generation that created and protested, that fucked and traveled and loved in spite of a planet threatening to burn them alive, and world leaders determined to end things even quicker. It's an anthem for thriving in the face of the apocalypse. It's my favorite single of 2019, and just thinking about it triggers a million competing emotions. If all somehow make it through this moment, we'll have one hell of a story, and a hell of a song to go with it. The culture is lit, but we had a ball. [10]

Michael Hong: A couple of cycles ago, that line probably would have drawn mass scorn from critics, but for now, it may very well be the lyric of the year. Part of that may be attributed to the way the culture has shifted their view on Lana Del Rey, but another part of it is that Lana sounds the most honest she's ever sounded. "The Greatest" is an ominous but sincere reflection of the current state of the world, and Lana no longer seems content with empty depictions of American touchstones. Lines like "I miss New York and I miss the music" still rely on those same symbols, but they now feel like lived experiences rather than empty nostalgic musings. Hell, Lana Del Rey even manages not only to make "me and my friends, we miss rock 'n' roll" work but sound like one of the most profound statements you've ever heard. Lana Del Rey's hushed vocals paired with the gauzy instrumental are quietly disarming, playing out like the cinematic zoom-out at the edge of the apocalypse. And if this is it, those final laments on the outro might be the greatest way to go out. [9]

Alfred Soto: She's not the greatest, nor does she think she's the greatest, so long as she thinks the "culture is lit" and she's "having a ball," whatever that means, but I suspect it means more than the guitar solo. Narcissism as plaint. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: The core Lana Del Rey problem is that she confuses narcotic with dramatic and droning with sweeping. "The Greatest" mitigates those faults a little, but only a little, and only by borrowing some faults from classic rock. The track also smothers what could have been a fine torch song in overproduction -- the culture can't be lit if you snuff it out with a million moles of echo. It shouldn't happen that I felt more genuine things about ghosts and missing things from a perfume newsletter than this. [4]

Ian Mathers: So here's the thing; I originally wrote about and scored this song before the more exhausting parts of the whole Lana Del Rey Conversation that engulfed Music Twitter last week had happened, and I was basically saying, yeah, the conversation is interesting and has some good points but I mostly receive the song outside of it and I just like that song (and generally do, with her singles). But then... it got worse. And between the artist herself showing her ass and all of the assorted takes, the thought of listening to any of LDR's music just got more and more enervating. Some would say it's unfair or incorrect to adjust my opinion of this song, or at least to admit that those events have, in fact, adjusted my opinion of the song. But I'm a guy who wrote a Master's thesis at least partly on the idea that the context around a work of art justifiably changes not only our aesthetic relationship to it but the ontological status of the work of art itself (which is not a physical thing, not even as data). The classical example is finding out, say, a painting is a forgery, but honestly this whole thing is a great example too. Doesn't make me outright dislike "The Greatest", but does legitimately move it from being a real bright spot to a song I enjoy that I need a bit of a break from. [7]

Stephen Eisermann: Hats off to Lana and Jack for really creating an atmosphere of nostalgia that you fall into the second you hit play. Lana's vocal is tender and understated, further reinforcing the sense of longing the track aims to create; but, hearing her sing the word "lit" and the Kanye West reference stand in stark contrast to that moody guitar lick and I... I just can't reconcile the two. [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Lana Del Rey is deeply aware of the fickleness of the music industry. On Born to Die, that manifested in her almost-trolling approach -- aggravating, almost-rap cadences, weird production choices, even weirder lyrical ones -- that wormed its way into the pop consciousness. For her middle three albums, she refashioned herself as a thinking person's pop star, working with more respectable (and more male) figures like Dan Aurebach and A$AP Rocky as a way of positioning herself as adjacent to prestige. The music was better but also more boring. Now, with Norman Fucking Rockwell!, she has cashed all the checks that a decade of practice and following the rules of pop earn you. "The Greatest" is a thesis statement for the album's ambition. It's not just the title -- although that is a helpful indicator. It's everything: the classic rock guitars and big drum fills, the nostalgia for doing nothing of the lyrics, the way she sings them. On "The Greatest," Lana sounds done. Not exhausted, but complete, as if she could walk away from this all and not miss a second's worth of sleep. It's a big damn classic rock song that's aware of how bombastic it sounds, and yet its self-awareness does not undercut its narrative and sonic heft. It's the kind of song you can't make without making a lot of worse songs that dance around the same topics. But here, where it really counts? Lana nails it. It's a buzzer-beater of a song, rattling around the rim four times before falling in -- all the sweeter in glory for the bumps on the road before it. It's likely not the last Lana Del Rey single we'll review, but if it is, it's a fitting send-off: in response to all the fickleness of the industry, Lana rewrites her story on her own terms, and makes it sing. [9]

Jackie Powell: Norman Fucking Rockwell started as such a fascinating paradox, but didn't really continue building and evolving on what made its first third so successful. "The Greatest" is lyrically relatable and sonically beautiful. Jack Antonoff, being the wizard that he is, finds a way to wean Lana Del Rey of her noir and whining tendencies. He overdubs her potential for a beautiful vocal pairing it with brighter arrangements. It's pellucid and mellow but not a snoozefest. But its placement on this album really sold the track short. NFR loaded its most compelling tracks at the top of the project. Del Rey placed "The Greatest" after "Fuck it I love you" in a double feature of a music video, which where it should have been placed on the album. In the visual, Del Rey floats around and almost above her surroundings contemplating what's next. The haunting but gorgeously comforting guitar solo brings the listener along with Lana herself back down to earth. Lyrically and through its soft piano, the outro is what gives this song its weight and a sense of profundity. Her cultural references which include Kanye West's physical and emotional transformation and David Bowie's "Life on Mars" allow us to reflect on what we've become. Lana Del Rey does that here and on almost every record. I just wish "The Greatest" was given the proper stage to achieve the status of its moniker. [6]

Joshua Lu: The majority of "The Greatest" feels unbound by time, as Lana Del Rey reuses Extremely American words that apply to the '80s as much as today: Long Beach, New York, the Beach Boys, rock 'n' roll. Only the outro plants the song firmly in the current year -- with mentions of Mars, Kanye, global warming, and that time Hawaii thought it was about to get bombed -- and with this passage of time, these signifiers bring no joy to Lana anymore. Her sprawling sense of nihilism seeps through in her languid voice and the turgid, psychedelic guitar as she laments how her generation's time is ticking away. Tempting as it is, I'm wary to read into this song as some kind of political statement, in part because the epochs that Lana fetishizes were also rather shitty, and also because I think Lana herself wouldn't prefer this reading, as it would play into that "p" word she, erm, has expressed adversity to. Maybe that's the song's trap, that despite how alluring it is to try to ascribe some deeper meaning, it's better to just do what the song does: sit back, observe, and mourn. [8]

Alex Clifton: Lana Del Rey has a beautiful and occasionally overwhelming voice. It's haunting but for me it can be like ingesting too much cake in one sitting -- extremely rich to the point where it feels exhausting to listen to more than one song at a time. Having said that, "The Greatest" is a song that works well with Del Rey's vocals. When the first pre-chorus hits -- "those nights were on fire, we couldn't get higher" -- her breathiness feels less like an affect but sadder and more wistful, the awareness that she'll never be able to get that life back again. It's a grandiose song, strings and languid piano and a chorus of a dozen Lanas sighing "if this is it, I'm signing off," but for once the grandiosity of the production fits the message. My issue with Del Rey's persona back in the Born to Die days was that I couldn't quite make out who she was under all the artifice, flower crowns and American flags. I know that's the appeal of artists like Del Rey, whose entire careers are built off of specific personas (despite what they claim to the contrary), but I don't deal well with facades that are built that tall. Arguments about personas and performativity in music can quickly dissolve into arguments about authenticity and how much that matters to the music, and I want to stress that I don't care about authenticity in the slightest -- I just like the moments where artists aren't invincible but human. In "The Greatest" those walls crumble down and Del Rey revels in her sadness in a way that hits close to the heart. She's vulnerable and mourning over a real love rather than a fantasy, and for once I feel like persona or no, I understand the appeal of Lana Del Rey. [8]

Vikram Joseph: At 2am this morning I found myself in the smoky bedroom of a guy I hadn't met until two hours earlier, half a bottle of red wine deep and still high off the fumes of the MUNA show I'd just been to, discussing the aesthetics of Lana Del Rey's music videos (as a kind of emotional foreplay, I guess?). It struck me that this, right there, was actually a pretty good representation of Lana's aesthetic -- unlikely moments that shimmer at the fringes of reality, a doomed romanticism that bleeds into a laconic, blissful sort of nihilism. There's so much heightened emotion (close to melodrama) in her music, and yet there's a simplicity too in what she craves -- men, bars, California, sun -- that Vice described as a "revolutionary pleasure." It feels like an extremely LDR move to draw a direct parallel between lost love and the end of the actual fucking world, but it's testament to her songwriting, those aesthetics that she's worked so hard on, and the spellbinding, crystalline production on "The Greatest" that she pulls it off so completely. From the opening bars -- dignified piano chords, soft-focus acoustic guitars and cinematic strings -- it feels like an elegy; I can't help but see the crumbling, sunlit edifice of a gorgeous building when I hear this song, especially during that billowing, washed-out guitar solo, or the slow nuclear decay of the outro. "The Greatest" feels like a culmination, and a kind of closure. It's a veteran of an iconic club scene reading the memoirs of her golden years out loud, or the last time two people who once loved each other ever speak, or a beach scene at the end of civilisation. Sonically and aesthetically, it sounds cast adrift in time, and that's why it's so effective. It's the end of the world as we know it -- I don't think Lana feels fine, exactly, but maybe there's a certain comfort in finally knowing for sure that it was all for nothing. [10]

Will Adams: Lana Del Rey made a career writing elegies to American culture, which is what makes "The Greatest" as moving as it is heartbreaking. The patriotism of "American" has turned bitter. The sprawling luxury of "Shades of Cool" has fizzled. The worries expressed in "Coachella -- Woodstock In My Mind" have been realized in twisted, terrifying ways. So it makes sense that, after a few minutes of misty-eyed farewells presented with a smile ("I had a ball"), it all collapses to rubble. The gleaming classic rock evaporates into three descending chords. This, it turns out, is the greatest loss of all. Not rock 'n' roll, not a past lover, not Long Beach, not Kanye West, but everything. In that final minute, the song sinks to the ocean floor, the flaming city fading from view, the monuments and culture blurring into nothing. Del Rey is gone, too, as there's nothing left to say. There is nothing except the brutal end. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

Let’s Get Ready to (Review the Royal) Rumble!!

I watched all 11 hours of this thing, so I might as well jot down some thoughts

Rusev w/Lana vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

This was the first WWE pre-show I’ve watched in a long time. Lots of banter from the panel, which included Shawn Michaels. I’m not sure how often I will watch the pre-shows going forward. This match existed, and it concluded with a title change. Nakamura is your new United States champion. Lana took a bump and hurt her ankle in storyline. “Lana, get up!” Rusev yelled at his prone wife after she was knocked off the apron. Show a little more concern there, Rusev. Later in the show this would turn out to be a momentous ankle injury

Hideo Itami vs. Buddy Murhpy vs. Kalisto vs. Akira Tozawa

I haven’t watched 205 Live in forever, but I hear Mike Kanellis is there now. This match was not as sensational as I had expected, but it had some good spots. No reason for these guys to go full-tilt, I guess. They’re wrestling as the crowd files in to Chase Field, and when it’s done they go back to 205 Live. Kalisto should have won by default, as he is the only member of this quartet who weighs 205 pounds or less. He did not win, though, and Buddy Murphy remains your cruiserweight champion. In a year, perhaps this match will feature Kushida, Trevor Lee, Sonjay Dutt, and Kalisto. Always Kalisto. Poor, lost Kalisto.

Asuka vs. Becky Lynch

Although it would later become clear why this went on first, it was still a little surprising. And, to be honest, I did not love this match. It finished up very well, but until the last five minutes or so it was a lot slower and more tentative than I would have expected from these two. It ended on something of a surprise note, with Becky tapping and Asuka retaining. They’ve  succeeded in bringing Asuka back from the foggy post-Wrestlemania wasteland in which they stranded her. What happens to her now? Another feud with Charlotte? They should bring up Io Shirai and Kairi Sane and form a new version of Triple Tails. They will not do this.

The Bar vs. Shane McMahon and The Miz

Mark and I watched this entire match barely 12 hours ago, and now all I can remember is Shane McMahon doing a credible Shooting Star Press. Few things in pro wrestling are more boring, in 2019, than the state of the Smackdown tag team title picture. And now there are new champs. Perhaps this is the beginning of splitting up The Bar. They’ve been a tag team since September 2016. They’re both terrific wrestlers and have had many good matches, but there’s nothing about them that really sticks with me. It doesn’t help that they have one of the worst tag team names in the history of pro wrestling.

Ronda Rousey vs. Sasha Banks

I was surprised to see this match was almost 14 minutes long. It felt like it went by quickly. This was the best Sasha Banks match I’ve seen in a looooong time, and maybe Rousey’s best WWE match to date. She looked really good. The work with Gulak is paying off. Sasha also looked like the relentless competitor we remember from her NXT days. I enjoyed this match a lot. Based on what happened the last time I mentioned Ronda Rousey, I now expect to get several anonymous messages calling me a fucking imbecile. That’s OK. It’s true, I am a fucking imbecile, but Ronda Rousey is still good in a wrestling ring. After the match, Sasha held up the Horsemen/women sign. If Rousey is finishing up at Wrestlemania, I’m not sure they’re going to have time for the epochal Clash of the Horsewomen. Hey! One good thing about this match in particular is that Rousey didn’t win with her armbar. That’s good storytelling; it establishes her as a multi-tool threat. 

Royal Rumble (women)

The last 5-10 minutes of this were an absolute blast, with Lana being unable to walk out because of her ankle, and Belfast’s Fit Finaly giving the green light to Dublin’s Becky Lynch to enter the match in Lana’s place. Cue a recording of the Wolfe Tones’ “We’re On the One Road.” When the field narrowed down to Becky, Charlotte, and Nia, it was a great moment. I am not a big Nia Jax advocate, but based on the crowd reaction, she is the top heel in the women’s division. Becky winning was a legitimately cathartic moment, and kudos to leathery madman Vince for making the right call. Unfortunately, the rest of the match was kind of a slog. The surprise entrants were great, and I was particularly pleased to see Io Shirai, Kairi Sane, and Candice LeRae. I once saw Candice LeRae wrestle in a tiny performance space that normally hosted noise bands and avant-garde literature readings. People on Twitter were complaining there weren’t enough “Legends” among the surprise entrants, but come on. The pool is not nearly as deep for the women as it is for the men. The biggest women stars of the Attitude Era tended to not be wrestlers, which actually was kind of true of the WWE women’s division even after the Attitude Era. They’ve already had Trish and Lita at the previous Rumble and the Evolution PPV; at some point, it’s not a surprise anymore. It’s also good to build up the future than to be like “Remember Kelly Kelly?? Well, here she is for three minutes of listless punching!” Maria Kanellis counts as a legend by that math, and she was in the Rumble. That was kind of a surprise. I had no idea what she and Alicia Fox were doing. It seemed like challenging absurdist theater, like they spontaneously decided to act out a scene from an Ionesco play. Talk about going into business for yourself. Swoggle also appeared and chased Zelina Vega around with a lascivious look on his face, which was, uh, unexpected. 

Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles

First, let’s consider how great it is that a WWE championship match featuring two of the most popular wrestlers on the roster is in the cool-down spot after a women’s match. That genuinely rules. That would have been unthinkable as recently as two years ago. As the women get more and more popular, those Saudi shows are going to get harder to pull off. Hurry up with those reforms, Prince MBS! Haha, just kidding, they’re not going to reform their brutal autocracy. Oh, right; this match. This was a chore to watch. It was so boring. It was not helped by its spot on the card, but this listless, will-this-do performance wouldn’t have been good in any spot. These are two of the best wrestlers of the last 30 years, but sometimes it just doesn’t click. It did not click here. I was relieved when Erick Rowan made his mysterious (re)appearance because I knew it signaled the match was almost over. It seems they’re going to make Rowan some kind of eco-brute, helping Daniel Bryan advance his monstrous agenda of caring about the planet. Fine. At least he’s not dressed like a second-tier TMNT villain anymore.

Brock Lesnar w/Paul Heyman vs. Finn Balor

By contrast, this was a hoot. They knew they had to recapture the crowd, and they went at it full-tilt for eight minutes. The story here was great: Brock was surprised to find himself being pushed to his limits by this lithe little Irishman, and so after he won, he lashed out like a petulant, over-the-hill bully. An example of how you can tell a great story in an eight-minute match. Not every big match has to be 25 minutes. Especially not that dogshit Daniel Bryan-AJ Styles match. It would have been great to see Finn win, but the Irish have to content themselves with Becky’s Rumble win tonight.

Royal Rumble (men)

This moved along at a quicker clip than the women’s rumble, perhaps because it was nearly 11 p.m. EST when it started. Damn and heck, this was a long show. It was lots of fun to see Jarrett come out in his ridiculous 1990s gear. HUGE missed opportunity by not having Honky Tonk Man come out, but you can’t have everything. Johnny Gargano looked great, Andrade looked great, Kurt Angle looked very, very old. The best moment was when Mustafa Ali eliminated his current antagonist, Samoa Joe. The incomprehension and fury on Joe’s face were magnificent grace notes. Joe is such a great addition to the roster. It’s crazy that it didn’t happen sooner. No Way Jose was essentially used as a quick punchline. Boy, that guy’s main roster tenure has not been pretty. The big surprise I guess was an enraged Nia Jax coming out and entering herself in the Rumble and then taking four guys’ finishers. CUE: CONTROVERSY. WWE’s been dipping its toes in intergender wrestling for a bit, but it’s hard to see them going whole hog. Nia is one thing, but imagine the response if it was Alexa Bliss being ethered by Randall Keith Orton. Seth Rollins was the odds-on favorite to win (although I picked Drew McIntyre, going with my heart rather than my head) so it feels a little anti-climactic that he actually won, but whatever. Afterwards, he pointed to the Wrestlemania “sign,” which was a computer graphic visible only to people watching on the network, so to those in attendance it looked like he was pointing out the place where he spotted a UFO. 

The White Sox hired Tony La Russa for all the wrong reasons

Photo by Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images

A White Sox team on the brink gave into their worst tendencies by hiring Tony La Russa.

Jerry Reinsdorf tried to hire one of his good ole’ boys to lead a young, rising team primed for the game’s modern era once before. The Chicago Bulls were looking for a new head coach months after cashing in a 1.7 percent chance to win the 2008 NBA draft lottery for the pick that would become Derrick Rose. After balking at Mike D’Antoni’s salary demands, Reinsdorf appeared to settle on a man who had held the same position for the franchise decades earlier: Doug Collins.

Just when it appeared Collins and his glacial offensive philosophies would welcome the organization’s new supercharged point guard to the league, Reinsdorf had a change of heart. It’s not that he doubted Collins was the right man for the job; instead, Reinsdorf couldn’t bear the thought of one day having to fire his friend.

“I love Doug Collins,” Reinsdorf told the Chicago Tribune at the time. “It’s not a great thing for friends to jeopardize a relationship for business. And relationships with coaches always end at some point.”

Reinsdorf’s ability to restrain himself from falling back into the comfort of his worst tendencies was perhaps the best hope for the other pro sports team he owns when rumors began circling that the White Sox were interested in 76-year-old Tony La Russa as their next manager. The similarities with Collins were undeniable: both were in charge of Reinsdorf’s teams during the 1980s, both left their franchises in ways that haunted the owner ever since, and both maintained a close friendship with Reinsdorf through the years.

This time, the nightmare scenario of the fanbase Reinsdorf feels so disconnected from actually played out. La Russa is the next manager of the White Sox after agreeing to a multi-year deal on Thursday. He immediately becomes the game’s oldest manager, and takes on his first managerial job since leading the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series in 2011.

There was a time when bringing back La Russa would have been a cause for celebration for White Sox fans. That time passed about 25 years ago. The White Sox have one of the baseball’s most exciting teams after a long and painful rebuilding effort that went 12 seasons without making the playoffs. That pitiful streak finally ended last season as the team’s excellent young talent started to coalesce at the same time. The decision to fire incumbent manager Ricky Renteria was met with jubilation from the fan base earlier this month.

Finally, it felt like the White Sox would be more concerned with winning than profits. Finally, it felt like they were set to hire an accomplished manager at a critical inflection point to take the team from up-and-coming to true contention.

Now so much of the good will the White Sox have spent years building toward suddenly feels tarnished. There are already reports that members of the White Sox organization are concerned about La Russa’s hire. It makes sense. This is why La Russa feels like such a poor hire for Chicago’s South Siders.

La Russa will likely have trouble connecting to the White Sox’s best players

The White Sox have one of the youngest and most diverse rosters in the majors. They are led by 27-year-old shortstop Tim Anderson, the AL batting champion in 2019 who nearly won it again in 2020. In addition to being among baseball’s most electric players, Anderson is also one of its strongest personalities. He bat flips after every big home run, and then defends his right to do so on social media. The joie de vivre he plays the game has made him the team’s beating heart, but it’s easy to see La Russa’s old school approach clashing with the team’s star.

La Russa is no fan of bat flips. When San Diego Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. drew the ire of baseball’s old guard for hitting an awesome grand slam on a 3-0 count earlier this season, La Russa was one of the voices critical of the young superstar:

In the past week, La Russa had conversations with friends in the game who agreed with Tatis’s actions and those who didn’t. La Russa believed Tatis was in the wrong. If Tatis took a strike, La Russa reasoned, he still would have had two pitches to hit. Swinging 3-0, in his line of thinking, was attacking at a moment when the opponent was vulnerable, more for personal reasons than needed team gain.

“It’s just not sportsmanlike,” La Russa said. “The way it was described to me was, it’s team against team. That’s what our sport is, with these very talented individuals matching up. What it isn’t, though, is an exhibition of your talents. You swing 3-0 in that game, and you’re up by seven, you’re trying to drive in more runs.”

La Russa also made troubling comments about Colin Kaepernick’s peaceful protests during the national anthem when he was a member of the San Francisco 49ers. Anderson in particular has been outspoken in the fight for racial equality. The White Sox clubhouse also includes burgeoning young stars like Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert.

How will the players respond to a manager who once said this?

“I would tell [a player protesting the anthem to] sit inside the clubhouse,” La Russa told “The Dan LeBatard Show.” “You’re not going to be out there representing our team and our organization by disrespecting the flag. No, sir, I would not allow it. … If you want to make your statement you make it in the clubhouse, but not out there, you’re not going to show it that way publicly and disrespectfully.”

La Russa said he is not racist at his introductory press conference with the White Sox, which is not even the type of the thing that should need to be clarified.

It’s true that La Russa once handled big personalities in Rickey Henderson and Jose Canseco when he was in Oakland, but that was 25 years ago. At 76 years old, La Russa is the game’s oldest manager by half a decade over Dusty Baker. These should have been legitimate concerns the White Sox vetted inside their clubhouse before making the hire.

The game has changed since so much since La Russa last managed

The fight over the use of advanced statistics in baseball ended a long time ago: those who embraced them won. Leveraging all the information available is a big reason why the Tampa Bay Rays were able to make a World Series run on one of baseball’s smallest budgets. The big market Dodgers’ front office also obviously embraced every bit of information available on their way to a championship.

La Russa doesn’t appear fully against advanced statistics — he was once on the cutting edge of baseball’s use of numbers to make decisions. But that was long ago. He still represents baseball’s old school in many ways. Here’s what he said about the use of advanced numbers in baseball in 2018:

“If you think your info is so strong that it can forecast once the game starts, on how it’s going to flow, how hitters and pitchers are going to react in game situations, then you’re foolish. It’s great stuff until the first pitch is thrown, and then what you have to do is invest in your managers and coaches.”

Perhaps La Russa won’t be an anti-analytics manager, but regardless the game he’s stepping back into next year certainly has changed since the last time he was a big league manager.

La Russa was infamous for his many pitching changes during his years with the A’s and Cardinals, something he won’t be able to do anymore. MLB now has a rule that each pitcher must face at least three batters. This was a common joke after the announcement the White Sox had hired him.

La Russa is 100% going to try to take a reliever out after one batter

— Eric Freeman (@freemaneric) October 29, 2020

It feels like the White Sox went over their general manager’s head

Jerry Reinsdorf is not supposed to be the person making baseball decisions for the White Sox — that’s Rick Hahn’s job. Hahn was promoted to vice president and general manager ahead of the 2013 season, with the team’s long rebuild happening under his watch.

La Russa sure doesn’t seem like a Hahn hire; it’s a Reinsdorf hire all the way. Here’s what Hahn said when the team began looking for a manager after it let go of Renteria.

“The ideal candidate is going to be someone who has experience with a championship organization in recent years,” White Sox General Manager Rick Hahn said. “Recent October experience with a championship organization would be ideal. But we’re going to keep an open mind. Over the next several weeks we’ll diligently pursue who’s on our list and go from there.”

There was no shortage of candidates who fit that description, most notably A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora, two recent World Series-winning managers who were now available after a year-long suspension from the Houston Astros cheating scandal. If the stain from that scandal was too much for the Sox, there were plenty of other rising young managerial options the team could have went with.

Reinsdorf said the hire was not based on his friendship with La Russa, but it’s hard to believe him:

White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement the hiring of Tony La Russa "is not based on friendship or on what happened years ago." pic.twitter.com/awnOEwCiNy

— Chris Emma (@CEmma670) October 29, 2020

It’s possible the White Sox will still be great anyway

The Sox are seen as a rising contender in the American League for a reason. There is so much young talent on this roster, headlined by Anderson, Robert, and Jimenez in the lineup and Lucas Giolito on the pitching staff. This should still be a very good team next season and beyond regardless of who they hired as manager.

What will likely matter more than the manager is who the White Sox sign in free agency. Reinsdorf has had big market Sox playing with one of baseball’s lowest payrolls over the last decade. Part of that can be chalked up to the team’s rebuild, but now the rebuild is over. If the White Sox want to contend they need to get serious about signing big money free agents. Starting pitcher Marcus Stroman and outfielder George Springer are two names who should be on their radar.

Of course, Stroman sure seems like he’s turned off by the hire of La Russa:

Yeah... Stroman ain’t coming here if they hire La Russa. Good job Jerry. pic.twitter.com/3dkL6cTmuQ

— EWS (@everything_sox) October 29, 2020

The Sox ranked No. 20 in payroll last season. Their payroll will be higher next year, but there should still be plenty of room in the budget for another big signing or two. Sox fans have been extremely patient through so many bad seasons. Now is the time to spend and capitalize on all the young talent they have been grooming.

Perhaps La Russa will prove the fans upset about his hiring wrong. He’s a three-time World Series champion and four-time MLB Manager of the Year. He speaks fluent Spanish. If the White Sox win with him or win in spite of him, the emotions of the fan base will certainly be overshadowed by their love of young stars like Anderson and Robert.

We don’t know how the results will play out, but this sure feels like terrible process from the White Sox. The team spent years building towards this moment when a young team was supposed to get serious about trying to compete for a championship. At such a critical juncture, the team’s out of touch owner decided to go over the head of his GM to hire his friend as manager.

When the White Sox should be looking to the future, they went back to their distant past so their owner could feel closure and conciliation for letting La Russa go back in 1986. If the partnership works out well this time around, Reinsdorf will be the only one who isn’t surprised.

These Are the People Making Porn Out of Your Favorite Childhood Memories

This article appears in VICE Magazine's Stupid Issue, which is dedicated to the entertaining, goofy, and just plain dumb. It features stories celebrating ridiculous ideas, trends, and products; pieces arguing that unabashed stupidity can be a great part of life; and articles calling out the bad side of stupidity. Click HERE to subscribe to the print edition.

Missy Martinez is painted hot pink in places it doesn’t seem possible to get paint: edged up to almost the inside of her vulva, across her anus, and certainly everywhere that her scene partner Brenna Sparks has put her face so far. Right now, Martinez’s anime costume, which includes a soft mound the size of a large squash glued to the top of her head, is getting between her and Sparks’ clitoris. Her six-inch foam headpiece is slipping. But she perseveres.

Martinez is retired from porn now. She set aside her 10-year career in May 2019, one year after her debut as Vagin Buu, the pornified version of Dragon Ball Z’s Majin Buu.

“You can only do the sexy stepmom or babysitter—these contrived roles that are cookie-cutter—so much,” she said. “To not take porn so literally and seriously… Sex is supposed to be fun. If you’re not laughing while you’re having sex you’re doing it wrong.”

It looked like something someone might only do on a lost bet, but ultimately, Martinez asked for this. In fact, when Lee Roy Myers, the cofounder of the porn production studio WoodRocket, asked her to star in one of his freak-show-esque parodies, she leapt at the chance.

As a die-hard DBZ fan, she considered this a dream role, pink paint and all.

“When they were airbrushing my genitals, I was like, ‘Ohhh, no…,’” she said.

Martinez is not alone; everyone I spoke to who’s been subjected to a WoodRocket costume treatment or roped into Myers’ madness said they have that moment she described—the point of no return.

There’s a controversial theory among historians that parody porn brought about the French Revolution. Robert Darnton’s “pornographic interpretation” of the events of late 18th century France suggests that smutty literature depicting the monarchy in pornographic cartoons—as just as base and sex-crazed as the subjects they thumbed their noses at—emboldened the people to revolt.

“Sex is democratic,” the sex historian (and VICE contributor) Hallie Lieberman told me. “There’s a reason why we have the saying the emperor has no clothes: It reduces him to the same status as everyone else.”

But porn-as-parody goes back hundreds of years before the 18th century. An anonymous author in 16th century Italy published Ficheide, an erotic parody of Homer’s Illiad. Another erotic text of the Italian Renaissance, La Cazzaria, featured disembodied genitals satirizing political figures, and its relative virality (or as viral as something could be in the 1500s) sent its author, Antonio Vignali, running into exile. The 1748 novel Fanny Hill, regarded as the first example of English-prose pornography, is political parody. The Pearl, a monthly pornographic magazine published in London in the late 1800s, featured parodies and was itself a parody of a family magazine. The British authorities shut the magazine down after two years, citing obscenity laws.

In the early 20th century, small porno pamphlets called “Tijuana Bibles,” which peaked in popularity during the Great Depression, contained raunchy parodies of pop culture icons like Popeye, Superman, Lois Lane, and Wonder Woman getting into all sorts of hijinks. Fast-forward to the 90s and early 2000s, and everything in the porn world exploded with the advent of the VHS tape (and porn viewing from the comfort of one’s home), including parody films like Forrest Hump and Everybody Does Raymond.

“Class and sexuality are closely associated in our society, so things we deem respectable inherently have some kind of discretion when it comes to sex,” said Laura Helen Marks, a porn scholar and professor of English at Tulane University. “It can feel exciting and fun to watch the ‘low’ genre of pornography expose the perversions and hypocrisies of mainstream media… It feels like a momentary and satisfying leveling.”

Today, we have WoodRocket. The Vegas-based studio has made a name for itself in the last eight years in part by being pseudonymous with parody porn. If you hear about a new video featuring SpongeBob SquarePants or life-size Lego figurines fucking, you can bet it’s WoodRocket’s doing.

People have been using parody, satire, and sexuality to punch up at the systems and institutions that surround them for hundreds of years. Today, things are no different. Only now, we’re punching backward, at our own nostalgia.

In the late 90s, Myers was working in a video store. He’s worked a lot of jobs since then, from camera equipment guy to executive for a pay-per-view company. But he points back to that place and time in the video store as the earliest inspiration for his current work.

“I was in the store, and I was watching Edward Penishands, and he has these horrifying giant dildo arms, and it’s so ridiculous… It’s so gross, and weird, and funny, and I don’t know what parts were supposed to be intentionally funny or not,” Myers said of the film, directed by Paul Norman. “But it always stuck in my mind like, Oh, if I could do this, that would be amazing.”

For years, Myers worked roles he can only describe as “a job.” He’s never felt suited for the nine-to-five grind. But during programming and production gigs, he was making a lot of friends and connections in the adult industry. One of them was Scott Taylor, founder of a porn studio called New Sensations, who in 2008 was looking to take the studio in a comedic direction—and tasked Myers with making an erotic parody of the same nine-to-five grind he felt trapped in. Myers came up with The Office: An XXX Parody, the first of eight pop-culture television parodies he’d churn out for New Sensations that year.

“Fuck yeah, man, that sounds fucking ludicrous”

Things snowballed from there. By 2012, Myers had a front-row seat to the adult industry’s seismic shift from VHS tapes to DVDs and then to something else entirely. The internet was changing everything, and suddenly fewer and fewer people were willing to shell out money for smut. They could get it for free, on any number of tube sites filled with stolen clips and full films.

Instead of fighting against this unstoppable sea change, Myers and his industry partners started thinking of new ways to ride the wave of free internet content while still making enough profit to keep paying for cast, crew, and the lights. After years of hustling out dozens of porn parodies for other studios, Myers founded WoodRocket in 2012, with the goal of bringing comedic, silly porno to the mainstream—for free.

Myers is Canadian, and defines his directing style as “scary public access television,” with shows like The Hilarious House of Frightenstein influencing his low-budget, single-room sets and makeup that looks like it’s been applied by an overly enthusiastic high school theater student. WoodRocket launched its first film, SpongeKnob SquareNuts, in January 2013, with a press release complete with a “safe for work” trailer and a link to the full, X-rated film on WoodRocket.com.

From top to bottom: Aladdick, Dragon Boob Z, Mr. Rimjob's Neighborwood, The Loin King, Red Dead Erection.

This included a theme song that would toe the line of parody homage without crossing into copyright infringement. For that task, and most WoodRocket musical scores and lyrics, Myers has entrusted the Brooklyn-based sound designer David DeCeglie.

When Myers approached him to write the parody version of the iconic SpongeBob theme song, DeCiglie still remembers his response: “Fuck yeah, man, that sounds fucking ludicrous.”

And it was. Within an hour of the film’s release, the newly launched WoodRocket website crashed under the server load of people clicking to watch it.

The runaway success of the studio’s first original parody was doubly shocking, because Squarenuts was the “most fucked-up thing to date, at the time,” that Myers and his crew had made. The construction of the giant square costume was the work of Tom Devlin, who’s been involved with WoodRocket since the beginning. The directive from Myers, Devlin told me, was to make it look kind of like Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs. In other words, like an actor is trapped inside a repulsive homemade costume that swallowed him whole. The result was a poly-foam fabrication glued onto a box.

“It was just… creepy.” Devlin said. “It was really hard for him to move around, and really hard for him to perform. But it just adds to the weirdness and uncomfortability of the parody.”

“He looked like a monster,” Myers said, of SpongeKnob. “And, you know, it was funny—or at least, we found it funny—and people either loved it or hated it. But they watched it.”

Devlin and Myers share a similar ethos: Don’t think too much about how the performers will perform. Just make the costumes and see what they do in them.

“Sometimes it’s not about whether or not the actors can be comfortable. It’s about what is the silliest thing we can put out there,” Devlin said. And at this point in the studio’s reputation, a performer signing up for a WoodRocket shoot knows what they’re getting into.

Rizzo Ford’s role as “Dikachu” in Strokémon XXX is unforgettable. She looks like one of Dr. Seuss’ cartoon mice if it ran into traffic. Her head hangs a little. She hunches forward. The mass of foam latex and thick yellow and black paint molded to her head and nose is forcing her to breathe through her mouth and keep her eyes partially shut.

“Dikachu! Dikachu, Dikachu,” she squawks. She and “Fisty,” whose pubic hair is shaved and dyed into a neon orange landing strip to match her anime-orange hair, are together going down on “Gash,” played by Tyler Nixon. As I watch the video online, I’m legitimately concerned about her ability to come up for air.

“I feel like comedy and porn should go hand in hand,” Ford told me. “Sex is silly. We make silly noises with our mouths and bodies. I think that by having comedic porn it normalizes things that might make us embarrassed if they were to happen with a new sexual partner.”

Ford not only survived this shoot, but would do it again “in a heartbeat” even after taking multiple showers and soaking in a tub to get all that makeup off.

“He’s not going to stop being Super Mario because his flying raccoon dick is out"

There’s really no preparing oneself for the process of a WoodRocket costume and makeup session.

Just ask Will Tile, who answered a casting call to be a WoodRocket extra in 2018, for Red Dead Erection. Just a few months prior, he was a virgin in the adult industry, looking for a new way to make a living. He’s since played a cop in Dick Hard (the Die Hard parody) and a lip-syncing genie in Aladdick, released May 2019.

When he got to the set of Aladdick, Myers told him to head to makeup. “I’m thinking they’re just gonna like, spruce me up,” he recalled. Instead, he spent half an hour getting spray-painted bright blue from the waist up.

Tile thought he could get into porn and be “one of those big scary black male performers,” nondescript beyond a stereotypical male performer, virtually anonymous at his level. But after Aladdick, things changed. “That’s when everything went to hell. That’s when everything went straight to shit,” he said.

Now he can’t walk onto most sets without someone pointing out that he was the genie. Or a cop. Or Simba. Or a reptilian creature from Ten-Inch Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Tile’s mom has even seen him painted blue and half-naked in a porno.

Tile is an ex-Marine, a former wildland firefighter, and an EMT-in-training, so his family is accustomed to worrying about him. Now they can rest easy knowing he’s perfectly healthy and happy, playing a cop with a glued-on mustache or a raunchy blue genie.

“For two years they had to worry about me coming home in a box, if I came home at all. And then when I took the wildland job, it was like, ‘Is he gonna get burnt up, or fall off a cliff and die?’” he said. “Now they’re like, ‘Oh, porn? Yeah, that’s fine.’”

Tommy Pistol’s erect penis juts out from a green spandex bodysuit. He’s moaning from inside a fully enclosed alien mask, while April O’Neil and Lauren Phillips—two glittery trespassers who look like they’ve wandered out of a Burning Man camp onto Area 51—caress each other and his body, laid flat on a surgical table. He waggles the long, floppy fingertips of his bodysuit in pleasure.

Pistol’s been friends with Myers since 2010, when they met during production of a Sex and the City parody for New Sensations. He’s played a variety of roles for the company since then, and somehow keeps ending up playing characters that involve poking his boner through the most unsexy full-body costumes.

Having convincingly good sex for the camera is a feat of athleticism even on a normal set. Having sex while in character as a childhood memory is a whole other thing.

“If you came to see Super Mario fucking the princess then you’re going to see Super Mario fucking the princess,” Pistol said. “He’s not going to stop being Super Mario because his flying raccoon dick is out.”

Lance Hart, who played “Mr. Rogers” in the studio’s most recent film, Mr. Rimjob’s Neighborwood, said that even this mindfuck of a role was easier than wearing a heavy BDSM mask or leather apron, as he’s had to do in other movies.

“It’s definitely a little weird when something felt really good and I needed to moan but also pretend to be Mister Rogers, but I’m kind of into it,” Hart said.

Adding to the ego-death exercise of wearing a glued-on mustache and painting one’s butthole neon, WoodRocket’s studio is in Las Vegas, where to film, they have to cut off the noisy air conditioning. Full body paint, elaborate costumes, and hours of rigorous sex when it’s over a hundred degrees has made for some interesting moments.

“With this job, it can’t just all be buttholes and elbows. You can actually get to do the good stuff"

“I’m pumping away, and I can feel myself about to pass out,” Tile said, recalling his role as Simba in The Loin King, where he and Kira Noir wore thick, fuzzy lion hats and gloves during their sex scene. “I’m like, I’m about to pass out on set. This is how I go out.” He didn’t, and made it through to the cut, and said he would still do it all again.

Holly Myers recently started stepping in to direct films for WoodRocket. With Holly behind the camera, the movies are no less hilarious, and she still takes a lot of care to make performers comfortable and safe.

“Generally, I try to keep the mood on set light and positive,” she said. “We are already asking them to put themselves in front of a camera to have sex—already a brave step—then going beyond and asking them to do it in a potentially uncomfortable costume, while staying in character.”

During Martinez’s headpiece-impaired performance of Vajin Buu, they stopped and reshot new takes at least five times when the paint and glue started slipping. She said, “It’s like, ‘Cut, OK, same intensity, aaand go!’ when I was in the middle of an orgasm or leading right up to it.” It’s challenging, not just physically, but mentally.

“We always know it’s not going to be easy, no matter how much you adjust things,” Myers said. [Porn] is not like real sex, it’s opening up and making sure the camera and lights get in there… I’ve heard it described as fucking around a corner.”

But it might also just take a special kind of performer to work through the giggles, and the discomfort, and the sweaty paint. Pistol said he feels like sex in these costumes comes “weirdly natural” to him. “It honestly keeps me sane after doing this for so many years,” he said. “Laughter is my therapy… I understand jerking off at home while laughing out loud isn’t for everyone. But comedy porn breaks down barriers.”

At this point (or likely, a lot earlier), you may be wondering who gets off to this stuff? Is there an audience craving a sexualized Mister Rogers? Are there people out there who are horny for a grotesque Pikachu, or a nightmare simulacrum of SpongeBob with a hard-on?

That question is flawed from the start. First of all, yes, undoubtedly, there are people who seek out WoodRocket because they’ve always had a Lego fetish or the like. But humor has always been a part of porn. Sex is fun and, often, funny.

“Humor and porn share a lot of similarities,” Lieberman, the porn historian, said. “The end goal of both is an involuntary physical reaction: an orgasm or a laugh. We watch comedy and we watch porn to experience pleasure.”

To laugh along with the people in porn can be a subversive act, said Marks, the porn scholar. “Within the context of a sex-negative, censorious society, pornographic material is politically antagonistic—unavoidably so and regardless of intention—and this frequently means poking fun.”

For the performers themselves, doing a parody shoot can be a release they don’t get in other studios. For Tile, having WoodRocket as his first studio experience showed him a different way of performing—one that most people don’t associate with porn. “With this job, it can’t just all be buttholes and elbows,” he said. “You can actually get to do the good stuff.”

I’ve seen a lot of the buttholes and elbows and painted labia that WoodRocket has put into the world, but there’s still one work of theirs that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch. Mr. Rimjob’s Neighborwood opens with Hart lip-syncing, “Welcome to my neighborhood, where we’ll ruin your childhood,” and I fear it would be true. I loved Mister Rogers as a kid.

There was a moment during production of Mr. Rimjob, Myers told me, when he did hesitate. The man has likely ruined hundreds of childhoods with his releases, and this was the one that gave him pause.

“As we started getting closer to making it, it was the first one where I started to feel a little regret,” he said. “I grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I was a PBS kid in the late 70s and early 80s… but, I thought I could do it in a way that it’s not really him, it’s spoofing the genre as much as it’s spoofing the ‘land of make believe…’ I don't think it’s insensitive to him being who he was as a person.”

It turns out there are only three things Myers said he’ll never touch in future WoodRocket productions: anything that’s intentionally punching down, anything where the characters doing the fucking aren’t clearly over 18, and any more Donald Trump stuff. He’s “so tired of that,” he said. Everything else is fair game.

“We have to find a balance,” Myers said. “Actually, I don’t know if there is a balance. But we had to find a balance between porn and whatever that was. And so we, in the process, created our own balance, and it’s something different to everybody.

“So some people will love it. Some people hate it. Some will be disgusted by it. But I think everybody can agree that we’ve ruined everyone’s childhood.”

These Are the People Making Porn Out of Your Favorite Childhood Memories syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

Dickheads of the Month: April 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of April 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

It was one calamity after another for The Independent Hashtag Change Group Ltd throughout the course of the month, starting with the party limited company being informed that they would not be allowed to use their logo on European election ballots due to some genius having the idea to put a hashtag slogan on the logo.  If that wasn't bad enough, soon the party leader Heidi Allen (not to be confused with the bloke who keeps turning up to meetings of party leaders Chuka Umunna) declaring that they would both support Theresa May in the face of any No Confidence vote in Parliament and they were opposed to a general election, which served to make an easy punchline out of them calling themselves Change UK...except when they keep calling themselves TIG, which is the exact reason they weren’t allowed to use their chosen logo on the European election ballot papers.  And then when they announced their candidates for the European elections things rapidly went south when Nora Mulready was found to have posted Islamophobic comments and shared far-right material online while Ali Sadjady was found to have described all Romanian migrants as pickpockets and thieves - and then the ultimate irony came when antisemitic comments from Frances Weetman came to light, meaning that evidence of racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia were evident from their candidates, and all that the party limited company could do was bleat about “smears” as if a sizable percentage of their MPs has not been screeching “Corbyn’s an antisemite!!!” for over a year

With crocodile tears in her eyes Anna Soubry told the BBC how terrible it was that Nick Boles’ customs union proposal lost in parliament by 21 votes and that, with Boles being bullied out of the Tories by UKIP entryists in his local party, he would be welcome in The Independent Group Ltd - somehow neglecting to mention that she and her ten mates in The Independent Group Ltd all voted against Boles’ proposal, which is not just a funny way to show how welcome he would be in the party but also means that those eleven votes were the reason his proposal failed in parliament 

Waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage announced his new political party that would oppose the EU by having him re-elected to the EU Parliament so he could continue collecting his MEP’s salary in spite his long-standing record of only bothering to turn up if he’s got a video to film for his Youtube channel (before he promptly buggers off as soon as he finishes speaking), but his party is completely legitimate and clearly represents the views of the common man based on their unveiling of their first candidate...Annunziata Rees-Mogg

All the work that Jacob Rees-Mogg has put in to proving himself to be the Europhobe’s Europhobe for the last couple of years came crashing down when he started sharing Alternative für Deutschland posts on Twitter - so not only could he be criticised for sharing material from a far-right group, but the support he’s cultivated for the past two years were frothing at the mouth because he had the gall to share material from a foreign far-right party

Seemingly emboldened by bullying both Boles and Dominic Grieve out of the Tory party, doing a lap of honor Andy Wigmore took to Twitter to threaten any Tory MP who opposed Britait would face deselection - which, considering Wigmore is not a member of the Tory party, immediately confirms the entryism into the Tory party from Arron Banks’ far-right mob that has been taking place

With Labour once again surging in the polls Margaret Hodge took the only action she could think of, which was to secretly tape her talking with Jeremy Corbyn on the subject of antisemitism and then promptly leak the tape to the Sunday Times to prove...I have no idea what she was trying to prove, because releasing the audio strengthened Corbyn’s position while making her look like her agenda has made her legitimately deranged

The far-centre extremists at The Guardian decided, quite coincidentally the day before the local elections, that JA Hobson’s Imperialism was antisemitic all because Jeremy Corbyn wrote a foreword for the 2011 edition - somehow failing to consider that not only had several other people written forewords for this edition, but previous people to speak favourably of the book include Gordon Brown in 2005, Tony Blair in 1995 and...well this is awkward, The Guardian themselves, not least because Hobson previously wrote for them

Having announced his retirement from MMA competition Conor McGregor wanted to give his fanbase one final reminder of what he was like at his peak - but once again making bigoted comments about Khabib Nurmagomedov’s religion, knowing full well that his retirement means Khabib wouldn’t be caving his face in like the last time McGregor spent months making bigoted comments about his religion

Of course Alan Sugar was going to take to Twitter and voice his opinion of Jeremy Corbyn, it’s what he does - and just like every other time he made a complete bellend of himself, first by suggesting that renationalising the UK rail industry is “communism” in spite of the minor fact that countless countries across Europe have nationalised rail industries that are significantly cheaper and more efficient than the privatised mess in the UK, and he followed that up by saying how terrible socialism is while speaking fondly of growing up in a council flat...you know, things that were provided due to social housing programs

Somehow not learning that exposing his ignorance of subjects he mouths off about on Twitter doesn’t work out well for him, it wasn’t long before Alan Sugar once again took to Twitter to give his opinion on Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for income tax - where he demonstrating an alarming lack of understanding of how income tax works, not least with his belief that those earning £100k p/a would pay the same rate as those earning £1m (they wouldn’t) and then veering off into outright making shit up about 70% tax rates

In response to Moise Kean being racially abused by Cagliari fans, Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri and centre back Leonardo Bonucci both came to the same conclusion: Kean was at least 50% responsible for celebrating the goal he just scored, which is the exact thing that a player who has been racially abused wants to hear from his manager and one of his teammates

Having apparently not seen the Brass Eye special from 2002 Gordan Strachan came out in defence of convicted child molester Adam Johnson by saying that if he ever set foot on the pitch again the abuse he would receive is just another form of racism...this being the Adam Johnson who was jailed for grooming an underage girl for sex, who has been barred from any activity where he comes into direct contact with youngsters (i.e. ballboys and mascots for football matches), has to sign on the sex offenders register for several years, and contrary to what Strachan said has not served his sentence as he was released on license

Proving that some politicians really haven’t figured out that people can see what they post on social media was prospective Labour councillor Bob Murray who thought it was a very, very clever thing to post that Hitler had the right idea about travelers and asked if anyone could rustle up some gas canisters, a post which subsequently saw him suspended from the party for being a bigoted moron - although quite why The Board of Deputies of British Jews felt the need to issue a statement about this considering that he did not make any antisemitic comments, especially when they did not feel the need to issue statements when Tory councilors such as Bob Frost and Mike Bird made equally bigoted comments, does beg to be asked

Sentient testicle Toby Young appears to be really, really triggered by Greta Thunberg based on him spending several days tweeting any half-baked insult he could think of about her, all of which culminated in deciding that, as her mother once represented Sweden at Eurovision, this makes Greta “privileged” and she should shut her trap - which only serves to underline the complete lack of self-awareness the sentient testicle has, given he only got into Cambridge because his life peer father had a word with the head of admissions after his son tanked his A-Levels

In the space of an interview with The New Statesman Roger Scruton managed to use bizarre conspiracy theories about George Soros that were dripping with undercurrents of antisemitism, be incredibly Islamophobic while also claiming that Islamophobia doesn’t exist and is merely used as a gag to avoid criticism, and wrapped the whole thing up with the old chestnut of saying all Chinese people look the same - so of course, after the Tories removed him from his role of housing tsar we got the usual crap from the usual crapheads, with Paul Joseph Watson agreeing that Islamophobia doesn’t exist so he shouldn’t have been sacked, while GuidoBlog talking of his “greatness”, his treatment was “appalling” according to Melanie Phillips howling into the void, according to Adrian Hilton he’s one of our greatest aesthetes so apparently can be an ignorant bigot to his heart’s content, and sentient testicle Toby Young bawled something about political correctness gone mad...oh, and The Board of Deputies of British Jews weren’t rushing to issue a statement, even though they couldn’t get one out fast enough about Bob Murray the previous day

Of course Roger Scruton wasn’t quite done, as he followed up with some blather about conservative voices being silenced in the media...in a series of radio interviews, which were in response to the criticism he received for an interview with The New Statesman and other comments from interviews with The Spectator, all of which undermines his comment just a tad...

On a similar note Fraser Nelson opined in the Telegraph that the young have never heard the case for Conservatism in the media...especially not in the Telegraph, Daily Mail or Daily Express which do nothing but espouse Conservatism, let alone the BBC and their continued dereliction of duty that now has them straight up pretending Labour policy announcements don’t exist so they can continue telling the world the wonders of Conservatism and let various Conservatives speak unopposed no matter how many lies and falsehoods they litter their interviews on the Today programme with every single week.  Or, you know, the fact the Tories have been in power since 2010, which is surely the case for Conservatism as being in power is the only thing the Tories care about 

Of course the Notre Dame fire led to the usual “iT wUZ teRRurIzm” howling from the usual suspects from the alt-right, with Michael Savage, Jesse Lee Peterson and Mindy Robinson all being quick to tweet that out while Paul Joseph Watson spammed the exact same tweet accusing Buzzfeed of lying a dozen times in the space of an hour that somehow didn’t trigger Twitter’s spam filters, but the prize turkey has to be Glenn Beck for his assertion that it was Islamic terrorists who started the fire but we aren’t ever going to hear about it, which is the perfect example of Morton’s Fork but certainly not a good example of a reasoned, coherent argument supported by facts or evidence

With the Easter weekend approaching both The Sun and Daily Mail needed something, anything, in order to tide their readers over for a potential long weekend without their constant dogwhistling - which has to be the only logical explanation for running the story that Diane Abbott was seen drinking a tinned mojito on the train, which only led to it being unearthed that Mike Neville had, prior to photographing people sitting on trains having a tipple, was kicked out of the police for sharing far-right material

The only conclusion you could reach after watching the BBC coverage of the Spanish election was that the far-right Vox party had won, given how the headlines and so much of the piece was devoted to them and their supporters - when in actuality Vox finished fifth, while the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) not only won the election but also won the popular vote with 3m more votes than the second-place People’s Party (and almost three times more votes than the fifth-placed Vox) while also picking up a majority in the Senate with 139 of 265 seats

To the surprise of absolutely nobody WWE responded to John Oliver tearing down their widely-known use of “independent contractor” status for wrestlers under contract with the company and the complete lack of health insurance they receive by...not addressing anything he said on those subjects and instead talking about their Wellness Program, which implies that WWE really aren’t too familiar with how the Streisand Effect works

Keeping within the WWE bubble we have “Superstar” Billy Graham making a really helpful suggestion to Kofi Kingston ahead of WrestleMania 35 that, if he wants to look credible, he needs to use steroids - and in the wake of widespread condemnation for making such an idiotic suggestion, Graham did what any sensible person would do - double down on his idiocy by saying that, just because he said Kingston should use steroids, he didn’t mean he should abuse them

Although it does appear that McGregor’s general shitehousery did inspire at least one fighter to follow in his footsteps, which is probably the most logical explanation for Zachary Madsen thinking the best idea to advance his career in the whole wide world would be to assault Bret Hart during the WWE hall of Fame ceremony

It seems that Sky News’ newsreaders really aren’t a happy bunch lately judging by their recent interviews with people outside their increasingly insular bubble, first with Jayne Secker laying in to somebody critical of Article 21 by being patronising and condescending and attempted to turn the interview into an attack on all letters that definitely didn’t make it worth mentioning that Secker is a multiple property landlord herself, soon followed by Adam Boulton harrumphing his way through a trainwreck of an interview with a member of Extinction Rebellion where he huffed and puffed about “incompetent, middle class, self-indulgent people” without a hint of irony as well as trotting out the old chestnut of the left sounding like right-wing fascists...and seemed surprised when the interviewee walked out on him - which led to Sky producer Thomas Newton acting like a smug tosser on Twitter about it while echoing Boulton’s non-arguments

Not wanting to be left behind, the BBC unleashed Nick Robinson to kvetch to another member of Extinction Rebellion how his morning commute is far more important than the climate or the planet’s long-term future

Glorified Twitter trolls Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman hit on a novel idea to politically engage people: by offering people money to falsely accuse Democrat nominee Pete Buttigieg of sexually assaulting them

Already the butt of a constant stream of jibes over Anthem things got worse for Bioware when a Kotaku article revealed the hellish working conditions at the studio during the game’s development cycle that led to numerous members of the team needing to take weeks or months off due to stress-related issues, some of them leaving altogether, yet the company not only had a blase attitude to these issues at the time but responded to the article with a boilerplate statement that focused entirely on one inconsequential point of the article and ignored the more serious allegations altogether 

It appears that Nancy Pelosi thought she had too much credibility judging by her decision to hold a meeting discussing the rise of antisemitism with the credibility devoid trio of Ian Austin, Mike Gapes and Chris Leslie - because apparently Rachel Riley, David Baddiel and Matt Lucas were unavailable

So Wayne Hennessey hit upon a brilliant defence for being caught performing a Nazi salute: claim he had no idea what a Nazi salute even was - which somehow The FA accepted, in spite the claim being even less credible than his previous attempt at denying it where he was merely waving at somebody while covering his mouth so they could hear them which just so happened to look like Basil Fawlty entertaining the German guests at his hotel, and the fact that Hennessey has previous for doing the same gesture

Does it need to be explained that Julian Assange is not and never has been a journalist?  I have to ask, since Julian Assange’s fanboys have been howling that their narcissistic god being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy is a freedom of the press violation.  And that’s the most credible argument they’re trotting out, because they soon devolve into conspiracy theorist drivel after that...

According to Liz Truss the customs union bill lost by more votes than Theresa May’s Britiait proposal...somehow ignoring that the customs union bill lost by just eight votes, while May’s lost by 58 - and I’m sure this will be brought up for the next two years just like Diane Abbott flubbing her figures back in 2017 was...

Having spent the whole of March loudly telling everyone they didn’t understand the offside rule, after losing to Everton Arsenal fans decided now was the time to loudly proclaim they don’t understand what a foul throw is either

And last but by no means least, still finding it difficult to accept that when a report states numerous times you attempted to obstruct the course of justice that does not mean you are cleared on all charges is the inventor of flying water tankers Donald Trump who devoted a lot of time and energy into his oh-so-charming decision of using footage of 9/11 so he could harass Ilhan Omar on Twitter

My race to catch the Oscar films was on… Host or not! Here’s my take on the contenders.

2018 was the first year I managed to watch every Academy Award Best Picture nominee before the award ceremony. It wasn’t just a 90th edition thing – I’d been trying for years, even after a category increase doubled the pain at the start of the decade. Last year, it helped that many of the contenders surfaced at the right time (Awards Season, right?), but that’s not always a given. This year I had a glimmer of a chance, having caught just one film when the field was announced, and that was Marvel’s chronological outlier.

Controversies

This year’s shortlist made for a rather extraordinary year even if not for the quality of the films, which fell below last year’s bar. But behind the scenes… Marvel’s powerful Black Panther surfaced just after last year’s ceremony and was a surprise addition to the list, mainly because it wasn’t even the blockbuster studio’s best film of 2018. But it had a swagger and an incredible weight outside its narrative that Oscar was astute to pick up. Vice was the most polarising film to earn a Best Picture nomination, but its vivid and startling approach to political biopic is tellingly two Presidents old.

While the ultimate Hollywood remake, A Star Is Born, found its star fading as the Award Season approached, Roma‘s credentials were bolstered by a Best Film BAFTA win earlier in February, which promised a remarkable shift in the industry as a streamed Netflix production – albeit from one of the great directors. Green Book emerged at the end of 2018, as incapable of avoiding incidents on its journey to awards as the road trip it portrays. Many critics piled on apathy, others accused it of taking huge liberties, playing a racism card they thought had disappeared or forcing a purposefully white perspective. This wasn’t helped by criticism from (supporting character) Don Shirley’s family, or Viggo Mortensen’s poor choice of words on the promotion circuit. Discredited tweets surfaced from the co-writer’s 2015 stream, expressing some extraordinary opinions on 9/11. And director Peter Farrally was dogged by revealtions of sexual misconduct on film sets during the 1990s. The odds seemed stacked against it, but the man behind There’s Something About Mary did survive to hit the podium.

Unlike Brian Singer who was removed from history – possibly the first director not to receive a tribute from his Oscar-winning lead actor. He was removed from the troubled production of Bohemian Rhapsody a fair way through shooting (which I thought was a major contributor to its extremely dodgy editing until it picked up Best Editing!). This was more than compounded by the mounting sexual assault allegations that saw his name removed from the BAFTA director shortlist just days before that ceremony. None of this dented the film’s prospects. Bohemian Rhapsody has powered on through critique and sing-along alike to more than double its musical rival’s box office haul – second only to Black Panther on the list.

Allies

But box office isn’t everything, and certainly not something that links these films. Of course not, the Oscars hardly ever rewards those numbers. Still, there are many themes that do connect them. The Trump-era hasn’t made its presence truly felt yet (as proved as it is disproved by Vice), but true stories, or adaptations of them, dominated five of the eight films. Social justice and civil rights were also strong, nothing new in itself, but certainly in the diversity shown by Green Book and BlackkKlansman and Black Panther. Gender and LGBT politics were alive and well and represented in five of the picks, at least. And the age-old story of fame, perhaps now confirmed as Hollywood’s greatest story, was key to two of the shortlist’s big box-office hitters.

Autocues

The ceremony itself was surprisingly hitch-free; in fact, it could hardly have set a better argument for a revolving stage, from Queen’s loaded opener to Julia Robert’s professional farewell. The effective Me Too suite of dresses that filled the Dolby Theatre in 2018, highlighting poor red carpet questions as much as Frances McDormand’s speech, was replaced by a wave of pink, all the way to Jason Momoa’s dapper Karl Lagerfeld tux. Naturally, there were jabs at Trump, but the appeals for love outnumbered them. A particular emphasis fell on the song nominees, and not just because of May, Taylor and Lambert’s opening of Champions. There was also Cooper and Gaga’s laidback gossip-grinder.

An eclectic number of hosts popped out to introduce the Best Picture nominees – I was particularly taken by the brilliant Tom Morello introducing Vice. No questions there, he’s one of the most articulate political performers out there. More of him please. There were peaks and troughs, lulls and guarantees, but the broad smattering of surprise results crept up as the ceremony progressed. Few expected Bohemian Rhapsody to claim Best Editing (least of all Twitter memes), but absolutely no one expected it to claim the most awards. It was clear as the balance grew that the shortlist of potential Best Picture Winners had broadened by two-thirds of the way through, prompting me to lay down the pizza and fried chicken to Tweet:

https://twitter.com/Jokermatt/status/1099874223277907969

Here’s my verdict on the Oscar picks of 2019:

Black Panther

Limited by the near-year that’s passed since its release, Black Panther remains a stunning film, but rather more for the way it transcended the Marvel mould. You may argue, correctly, that the tent-pole perfection of the MCU‘s highest grossing film (and fourth highest of all time) outshone it, but that’s to miss the point that Infinity War was a part-sequel to this Wakandan epic. Black Panther deserved its nomination whatever naysayers maintained in the run-up, but more for what it represented than the solid and occasional sparkling content.

For me, its inescapable error comes right at the end. Enduring a decade of valid complaints that MCU villains rarely stray from the hero-opposite or mundane, Black Panther produced a believable, three-dimensional villain with legitimate complaints that resonated in the early 21st century. And then killed him. A huge mistake, and interestingly one not repeated in DC’s December smash Aquaman. Hugely entertaining fun, DC’s effort wouldn’t trouble the Oscars (surprisingly on the special effects scale) and drew comparisons with Marvel’s Thor and Black Panther. But what it lacked in social metaphor, it reprieved when it managed not to (spoiler ahead) massacre its Royal pretender.

BlacKkKlansman

BlacKkKlansman will be remembered for Spike Lee’s antics during and after claiming a long-deserved Oscar on the 24 February as much as for being a brilliant and charged film. Entertaining, powerful, exquisitely cast and supremely directed. It’s arguably Lee’s most outwardly accessible film and brought many back to the director’s work, but it’s also tricky. The ending stutters leaving a dissatisfaction that questions Lee’s rage at Green Book.

But, it’s confidence isn’t lacking, probably only matched by The Favourite on this list. In the central role, John David Washington brings quiet and captivating gusto, brimming with risk and charisma. Adam Driver makes for solid watching as always, extending the potential for mainstream mumblecore with every performance. While BlackkKlansman is glorious in embarrassing the Klan, the threat never softens, the commentary is full of rage and there is far more than one aspect of civil rights and anti-discrimination in its long sights. That’s an astonishing achievement but then there’s also… The mighty Harry Belafonte in cameo of the year.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Before the Oscars, The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw mischievously suggested Rami Malek’s central and overwhelming performance has a bit of “Tonight Matthew” about it. Even if many of us know very well what he means, to represent Freddy Mercury is to present the ideal and the concept as much as the man. Malek balanced that with super-real brilliance. Only the Chinese censors can begrudge him that. And BoRhap brought that same zeal to almost every area of its production, troubled or otherwise. That mostly  includes stretching the elastic of artistic license further than any other fact-inspired film here. I can forgive the odd dramatic addition of say, a false band break-up, or the bringing forward of Mercury’s diagnosis by two years. But the sheer short-hand cheek of suggesting Queen set the phone’s ringing at Live Aid is really beyond the pail. I’m sure the brevity of those scenes is a sign of its embarassment.

Somehow, which is testament to the legend of Freddy Mercury as much as the ridiculous artistic license, it really does stay with you in the days that follow. There’s something there… Which certainly helped it to its four awards to join its near $900m haul.

The Favourite

Brilliantly named, as Joanna Lumley failed to make sound hilarious at the BAFTAs earlier this month. I have to say it. Apart from the gloriously entertaining camerawork, performances, and production design, this is the Best Picture nominee that made me laugh most.

The Favourite basks in its silliness and unsettling period menace.  The balance of Yorgos Lanthimos’ direction and the creeping surreality that never slips to parody, marks it as another classic view of England that’s cast pitch perfectly by a foreign eye (see also, the Rachel Weiss-starring Meirelles classic, The Constant Gardener). There may be moments that Olivia Colman is incredibly and unmistakably Olivia Colman, but it’s true – she turns in a performance here that has never been seen before. In a way the balance to Bohemian Rhapsody this season, major award for major award, regally and factually.

Cannot wait to see what Yorgos can bring back to the Oscars. He will.

Green Book

At last, a film about fried chicken! Well, a couple of scenes, anyway. Well, one scene and a punchline.

All finger-licken food of the gods aside, there’s no doubt Green Book starts with a heavy-hand, and that lasts well into the picture. Easily seen as a sign of old-fashioned racial storytelling, it didn’t endear it to many but it may be a necessary trade-off. Whether it’s a pointless throwback or unnecessary and unwanted addition to the genre, by the end of film, for all the keys it hits and misses and many of the more obvious detours it takes along the way, it really has gone on a journey and swept you along with it. It could be a number of factors that provide that warmth, from Christmas to the pinpoint period to the stirring of wonderful piano, but they all combined to overcome the wave of bad-publicity it brought with it to the Awards circuit. I’m pretty sure its broad old-fashionedness is what elevated it in a year marked with several other film pitfalls. Two highly classical, to the point of stylised, performances certainly helped. Whether it will stay in the memory remains to be seen.

Roma

Here was one of the category’s creeping controversies. Roma‘s success at the BAFTA’s triggered a protest from the Vue cinema chain at the accolades bestowed on a film born from streaming. Roma has received a limited theatre release, one that will no doubt grow and many pine for, but its home will always be at Netflix. the home giant will make sure of that.

As such, it could never sit comfortably in an Academy berth. Like Green Book, Roma takes us on a period journey, this time deftly exploring early 1970s Mexico through Alfonso Cuaron’s breathtaking cinematography and frequent, stunning pans and tracks. It’s a gentle giant in many ways and particularly notable for the unique black and white mix, intended by the helmer to be quite different to anything seen on screen before. That really shouldn’t have been a surprise from the Oscar-winnng director of Gravity, it may be to legions of home viewers. I feel a tad bad suggesting that it wasn’t the best monochrome feature in consideration at the awards. For me, it doesn’t capture the sparse dramatic brilliance of Cold War, though I’m aware my European eyes could be blinding me – it’s not the only film I’ll be watching on its post-awards trajectory with interest.

In many ways, this year’s Get Out. While it had the power and momentum to shake the Academy’s tree (streaming versus young pretender Blumhouse), it lacked the sizzling contemporary resonance or genre-twisitng.

That said, Roma is a rare film in capturing a past and fictional life and tracking it perfectly to our everyday. That’s a mean feat and it comes with such simple, brilliant catharis at the end that reaffirms it all, before pouring into the most restful closing scene and credits in living memory.

A Star Is Born

Here’s where the story’s blown… Sorry, I haven’t seen A Star is Born.

That’s despite being offered a free ticket outside a cinema when I was about to watch Halloween (again, and Oscar-shunned that is too!). Outside a cinema is simply the worst place to offer a cinema ticket, but I digress.

Falling just outside my viewing range (Halloween!), I just couldn’t muster up the effort, mainly because of THAT song I find inexplicably popular.

I will try, and I will update. All credit to Bradley Cooper for steering a familiar story to big numbers and big reviews.

Vice

What a treat Vice is. Bravura film-making, that takes the time to craft, with shocks, as it walks the tightrope between humour and terrifying reality.

Yes I know: It’s not for everyone.

It was always easier to predict the accolades falling to the actors in this piece (Bale! Rockwell!) rather than the magicians behind the camera. It’s a shame the film’s Oscars will be mostly remembered for the make-up crew’s absolutely abysmal speech. Bless them.

Some of Vice is utterly audacious and jaw-dropping, doing exactly what film-making should. Here’s hoping this is the start, or perhaps the next evolutionary step, of new studio-backed and overtly challenging craftsmanship, than it is the promise of more vice presidents of the Cheney-mould to come.

Honourary mentions

Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse

I fitted in Spiderverse because, well, word of mouth and the Best Animated Picture nod. Oh and that and the Sony-renaissance that has signalled a real change of fortune and quality two years after the peak of misfiring Ghostbusters and Pixels.

Maybe they were right all along, Spiderman can rival the MCU on his own. Pulling Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man into the theatres and packing in a ridiculously number of canon-stuffed in-jokes under the guidance of Phil Lord, and not least a tonne of heart and soul and laughs. it proved to be a good instinct – almost supernaturally spider-sense eerie. Is this really Sony? Would they take that kind of risk? they did and it paid off in Rhinofulls. AT last comic book films are both the serious potential and opportunity for fun they should be. This was the Oscars that recognised that.

Spider-verse‘s animation takes a while to adjust to and the stakes and concept sets a minefield for a follow-up. But it earns a slight claw back on an earlier comment that buries that. Sure, The Favourite was the film that made me laugh the most among the Best Picture nominees. But this is the one that made me laugh the most full stop. that’s mainly down to Nic Cage, and possibly a hayfever jab.

Cold War

This hits the list thanks to Paweł Pawlikowski’s nomination for Best Director, even as it was cruelly denied a slot in the Best Picture category. Perhaps there wasn’t room for two films with a monochrome palette AND subtitles.

Cuaron may have won that slot with Roma, and ultimately claimed the Directing award in this category, but Pawlikowski could feel slightly aggrieved. Called an intimate two-hander by its director, it’s so much more than that. The language is reduced to the bare minimum, the time jumps and assembled scenes are immaculately precise, but brimming with emotion. There’s an extraordinary atmosphere captured in its 90 or so minutes, a good half an hour shorter than most other films here.

Pawel draws out the longer time frame from near the start of the Cold War to tell a simple love story that crosses more than borders and time to an ending of exquisite metaphorical ambiguity. It’s sublime, rivetted into place by intoxicating central performances and I’m probably being terribly obvious to place it in the grand tradition of Kieslowski. I just wish a Best Picture nod had brought it to the attention of more people.

Oscars 2019 – Catching the Best Films, Round 91 My race to catch the Oscar films was on... Host or not! Here's my take on the contenders.

Watched in 2019

Big Little Lies (Season 1): This is such a solid cast and story, albeit predictable. I loved it as a mini-series and do not understand why it needs a second season; but I’ll be watching regardless. 

Taylor Swift Reputation Stadium Tour (2018): IIIIIIIIIII don’t think this setting is the best for Taylor. I go back and forth on her as a person often, but dig over half her catalog. The big theatrical show doesn’t quite suit her particular stage presence. She is great when just talking to the crowd with her guitar or piano. Regardless, she was definitely having fun, it was entertaining enough, and it’s cool she put this up on Netflix so I don’t have to amputate a body part to afford a ticket.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018): Without a doubt, this is perhaps the most genuine and fulfilling depiction of a (hetero) romantic love story put to film I’ve witnessed in recent memory. The actors and their chemistry were breathtaking. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018): Hands down the best Spider-Man movie to date. Soundtrack was perfection. Story was great. Characters were amazing. I want to protect Miles with my dying breath. Unique animation. Deservedly kicked Disney’s ass this award season.

Bumblebee (2018): Oddly endearing? Easily the best Transformers movie, and the only one I’ll recognize.

A Star is Born (2018): I’m sure I’d like this more if I weren’t a fan of the other 3. Lacked subtlety. Overhyped. It’s fine. The only best part was the rehab scene.

Fyre Fraud (2019): The Hulu documentary about the disastrous Fyre Festival. Superior of the two, in production and scope.

Abducted in Plain Sight (2017): WHAT. THE. FUCK. A must-see for true crime enthusiasts. 

Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019): This is more or less the same thing if you have already spent a little more time on this case than the average person. Good content for first-timers.

Girlfriends Day (2017): A nice, fast watch to pass the time.

Fyre Festival (2019): The other Fyre Festival documentary. To me, the lesser because it is produced from people who were on the inside. Which you’d think, “Oh so then they’d know.” But their bias and attempts to scrub themselves from the narrative are obvious.

The Favourite (2018): This made my little queer heart so happy. Great characters. 

Everybody Knows (2019): A little on the nose in the mystery itself (just watch the actors in the background). But the performances were great. Loved the setting. Appropriate ending. Good job.

Isn’t It Romantic (2019): I loved this. I feel like I’ve written something exactly like this before. Very endearing and satisfying to watch.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019): It felt a little long, unsatisfying at some parts and rushed. But it’s a great bookend to a great series.

They Shall Not Grow Old (2019): Very impressive filmmaking and editing. I loved learning how they accomplished it in the featurette at the end of the screening.

Arctic (2019): Now THIS is how you make a survival movie. 90 minutes. No romance. Brutal reality without becoming melodramatic. Mads Mikkelsen cast in the lead...

Don’t Knock Twice (2016): Pleh. I hated the pacing and editing. Called out the “twist” immediately as a joke because I didn’t expect this movie to be that nuanced (magic done without permission, even with the intent to be good, is bad magic).

Captain Marvel (2019): My god this was so much fun and rejuvenated my interest in the MCU. I’m absolutely dreading Endgame and not for the reasons you think.

Greta (2019): Great performances, absolutely tense, very creepy and fun.

1922 (2017): What a great fucking motif.

Climax (2019): This was quite the sit. A literal 90 minute bad LSD trip from an up-close perspective. God I hated it.

Michael Che Matters (2016): I’ve never seen a standup special start so strong and progressively get weaker like this before...

Us (2019): As I said on Twitter --  it seems to me primarily casual or non-horror fans think Us is the greatest horror film of all time and is going to rejuvenate or “save” the genre. Then primarily veteran fans think it’s weak and vague. I think both viewpoints are shortsighted and formed from either category being stuck in their perspectives. For me, the movie was neither. (I loved it).

The Beach Bum (2019): Another movie I can’t believe I sat all the way through.

Leaving Neverland (2019): I stand with Wade and James.

Queer Eye (Season 3): Who needs antidepressants? Not me!

Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé (2019): Beychella reigns once again!!

Dancing Queen (Season 1): This was very sweet. I never thought I could sit through anything with insufferable dance moms, but Justin/Alyssa makes it so engaging and watchable. Stupid to end on a cliffhanger, however.

Avengers: Endgame (2019): ..............B+ At least it was a million times better than Infinity War. And I had fun.

Booksmart (2019): This hit so close to home. Sure, the coming of age movie is nothing new. But there was something liberating about the characters in this one that were terribly stereotypical and much more relatable. To me, anyway.

Long Shot (2019): Great music, great relationship, great laughs. This was a fun, solid watch of a romcom.

Hail Satan? (2019): I want to inject this documentary directly into my veins.

Amazing Grace (2019): The live footage of Aretha Franklin recording her Amazing Grace album at the church in Watts.

Meeting Gorbachev (2019): I got to see this documentary at a theater where Wener Herzog himself was hosting a Q&A and introduced this film. Maybe it made me more biased to liking it. But I honestly felt like I learned a lot.

Missing Link (2019): First movie of the year I didn’t complete/walked out of. I let it have an hour. First time I’ve ever been disappointed in Laika. I can’t believe it. It was so dull and I kept waiting for something to happen.

Little (2019): This was sweet. Issa Rae is dipped in gold. BUT it felt like there was an outline, not a script. Lots of dropped threads. And a weirdly out of place, glaring, punching-down trans joke??!

Tolkien (2019): Wow. I really liked this. Great pacing, shifting between time frames. Even better performances and relationships. Made me think of my own fellowship a lot. This is how biopics should be done.

The Biggest Little Farm (2019): WONDERFUL documentary covering the years of building up a sustainable farm from less than scratch.

The Hustle (2019): God, this was a long, humorless sit. At least Anne looked stunning.

The Sun is Also a Star (2019): This isn’t more realistic than romantic comedies, or teen love films. But it’s more enjoyable than most. The leads are great and have electric chemistry. New York is framed beautifully.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019): I am blessed by this Keanu Reevessance.

Fleabag (Season 1): This is probably going to be the best thing I watch this year.

Fleabag (Season 2): Yup. Confirmed. Something very special would need to come along from June to December to change this mindset. I highly recommend this. Watch it. Go in blind. Watch it!!

Pavarotti (2019): I enjoy documentaries where I feel I really learn about the subject. Beautiful music, beautiful memories, beautiful life.

Rocketman (2019): I wish more biopics were like this. It was wonderful and such a grand time.

Lorena (2019): A deep dive into the Bobbitt case, including the woman herself. I have such empathy and love for Lorena. You should watch it and learn about the incident yourself.

The Last Man in San Francisco (2019): Go in blind. Don’t look it up. Just go. it’s the most beautiful film I’ve seen so far this year. I wish there were more male protagonists like this.

Toy Story 4 (2019): I was so skeptical. It more than exceeded my expectations. Just go in prepared to have your heart ripped in two.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): They’re learning. Out of the newer films, this one has the less amount of people. Now make another film like this, only extend the monster fight scenes. Less. People.

Child’s Play (2019): This was fun. Not much more to say. More Aubrey in things!

Men in Black International (2019): Honestly, this was better than the second or third ones. I legitimately enjoyed myself. It was funny. The cast was charming. The otherworldly aliens were interesting. And I’m so proud of Les Twins.

Grace and Frankie (Season 5) :This is always a good time for me. I love watching this show when I want to take a break from more dedicated watches. I love these actresses with all my heart. June Diane Raphael is goals.

Midsommar (2019): This was such a fun aesthetic to watch. I was so uncomfortable throughout.

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019): Ugh, my hearrrrrtt.

Maiden (2019): Documentary about the first all-female crew who competed in the 1985-86 Whitbread Round the World Race. The woman next to me in the theater was the same age as the women featured in old footage and modern day talking head interviews -- and she was just sobbing by the end. Solidarity.

Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein (2019): 30 minutes well spent. Fucking hilarious.

Stranger Things (Season 3): God, what a fun season. I am still Steve.

Queer Eye (Season 4): I need 54 more seasons, kthx.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019): My absolute favorite battle sequence in a Marvel movie. Such a good time.

Hobbs & Shaw (2019): My first and last Fast movie. Goddamn I was so bored.

Bring the Soul: The Movie (2019): Wow, this was brutal. I get it wasn’t all of the footage, but they seemed to mostly focus on members being sick and injured and miserable. I didn’t understand the love for this movie when all it did was highlight how exhausted the boys are. I suppose it was meant to be inspiring, but I only felt bad for them. I just ranted about them needing a break and thank god they finally have one -- apt timing!

Burn the Stage: The Movie (2018): I went back to the earlier film with the hopes of... Higher hopes. And they were fulfilled. Such cute and uplifting footage.

Blinded by the Light (2019): God I love Springsteen. This movie is a great homage to his music. It’s not a straight-up musical, and that’s lovingly the point. Some things never change.

It: Chapter Two (2019): This was a slog compared to the first part. Much like the miniseries. Much like the book.

Parasite (2019): I, a college student with very little free time -- let alone free time to go to the movies -- saw this in theaters twice. I tried to go a third time but then finals happened. Go see it. Go see it blind. I'm not really doing end-year lists anymore but this is without a doubt my favorite film from 2019.

BTS World Tour: Love Yourself (2019): Most fun I've had in a theater in some time. I feel like I curled up into the tiniest ball at some point out of pure joy that couldn't be contained.

Frozen II (2019): This was quite plot-heavy for a sequel. I loved how many songs they were. It's an acceptable sequel. A lot of weak themes and choices, however, if you think about it for more than a few minutes. Overall delightful. 

Jojo Rabbit (2019): Speaking of delightful. Taika Waititi continues to be my favorite living writer-director. This is such a solid portrayal of Nazism without glorifying it. Always go the Mel Brooks route and make it a comedy; they can't turn it around and make the imagery propaganda. I have high hopes for Roman Griffin Davis and his future career.

Knives Out (2019): This was quite fun. I love a good mystery with a large ensemble cast like this. It didn't blow my mind of anything -- I saw every turn coming -- but that's just because I credit it to being such a lonely kid who read so many mystery novels.

2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014

Analytical Reflection

Intro

Throughout the semester we have covered a variety of topics centered around Techno Futures, ranging from Artificial Intelligence all the way to Bio art made fusing life and technology. This essay is going to be a reflection back on all the phases we have covered. I will be identifying connections between the phases using assigned readings and a collection of related artifacts and class discussions. The topic of Techno Futures is a polarizing one, there’s a huge variety of opinions surrounding the umbrella that is Techno Futures. There is also a lot of layers of complexity to Techno Futures, from the ethics of new technologies to the nuances of the technology at hand. There are some interesting connections to be found between topics of Techno Future as they all seem to be interconnected and all have at least some overlap if nothing else.    

Techno-Panics throughout history

           It seems that whenever a new technology comes about there are those who oppose it. The justification for this could be fear, nostalgia, money or any number of things in between. But when we find our society in fear of a new technology that is thought to bring a change, big or small, we call this a Techno-Panic. “Humans have a habit of stalling their own progress. From coffee to mechanical refrigeration to genetically altered food, history is littered with innovations that sparked resistance before becoming fixtures in everyday life” (Overly, 2016). In the bigger picture, Techno-Panics tell the story of humanity blatantly slowing its own progress due to fears of the repercussions of its own creations. The process is cyclical, a new technology is introduced to be torn apart by critics and fear mongers after a time passes people start to become more accepting of the technology and realize its benefit, finally, it becomes a part of our every day and no one questions it. Regardless of the promise of new technologies, it seems that apart from technical marvels one of the hardest obstacles to overcome is the Techno-Panic, the fear the people instill in themselves, justified or not. When reading student responses in the 2.4 Questions and Answers it’s interesting to read just how varied the responses tend to be from student to student, with some taking the mindset that technology isn’t bad but it can be beneficial to wait, or others showing a fear that the tech might bring harm to the systems that are currently in place. People tend to have such varying opinions on topics of Techno-Panic that it can be hard to generalize any group's opinion. So perhaps not only is it fear that prevents progress but a lack of unity regarding the technology at hand.

Future of the Body

           When one ponders on the future of mankind, of course, one of the biggest mysteries is how technology will impact the Human body. The possibilities in our imaginations are endless; the potential to edit our genome to eradicate disease, using cryogenics to preserve our bodies for the future when we can be brought back, even being able to replace limbs with fully functional prosthetics. The allure of the future can be fascinating, but we often jump too deep into our fantasies before considering the practicality of what we implement and if low tech solutions are more feasible. In the case of cryogenics, we must wonder if the technology is worth the investment of time and resources compared to something that could legitimately extend lives like genetic modification. In my artifacts for the Future of the Human body, I compiled a collection of content ranging from an image of a man with a robotic arm to a video explaining Crispr and its benefits to humanity. Separately these ideas are all great but together they paint an idea of the idealized human, one past where we currently are. The message to be interpreted is a type of Manifest destiny, through technology we are taking control of our own evolution for better or for worse. “The gulf between ‘human’ and ‘machine’ is closing” (Waterhouse, 2016). I think this quote brings my thoughts on the future of the body together, in that the only way up is to use our creations to better ourselves. The interesting part of this progression is the level of ‘Techno-Panic’ that arises around these new ideas. Through both, our readings and our class discussions concerns of irreversible consequences are apparent and not unwarranted. This goes to show how regardless of the topic a certain level of moral panic or in this case ‘Techno-Panic’ is always to be expected.  

Intelligent Systems

           Intelligent Systems or Artificial Intelligence as they are commonly referred to are some sort of machine with the ability to interpret data. This doesn’t necessarily manifest as the science fiction movies may lead some to believe but in actuality, it can be a variety of things from recommendation algorithms to a Roomba finding its way around your living room. Regardless of what we may think Artificial Intelligence has found its way into many aspects of our regular everyday life. An artifact I collected for this phase listed many different everyday applications; Email Filters, Virtual Assistants, Fraud detection, Airline Autopilot, Smart Homes and as I previously mentioned even Recommendations on platforms like Netflix or Hulu (Mills, 2018). Again, here we find the rhetoric of ‘Techno-Panics’ stronger here than any other phase we have covered. People find the possibility of creating something smarter than us incredibly scary and would like to avoid that possibility to keep humanity in ‘control’. The reality behind this is that a machine is not motivated, has no feelings, it would have no reason to make any negative advances against humanity.  Despite some fears we may have the advancement of intelligent systems that can bring many advantages, such as systems like Driverless cars or Artificial Intelligence for use in Medical research, complex calculations, and other research uses. “The automakers and tech companies developing driverless cars feared that premature regulatory requirements might inhibit their testing of the vehicles, but Congress felt a need to step in as more test cars populate highways” (Washington Post, 2018). Above is a statement from an article on public opinion of driverless cars and safety regulations surrounding driverless car testing. The message shown here is clear, companies want to move forward with testing to make the cars safe, people don’t trust companies to regulate themselves and the government is too slow yet too premature in trying to regulate a technology that isn’t yet there.

Making and Things

           3-D printing and the Internet of things are creating technologies that enhance our lives. This phase of our Techno-Futures theme could be seen as a miscellaneous catch-all, but you would be mistaken to think that this phase doesn’t have its own place in the overarching rhetoric of said Techno-Futures. The phase making and things is the most attainable future that we have covered, the technologies covered here are natural progression to technologies we have had for a long time, therefore, less prone to the hooks of ‘Techno-Panics’. This statement doesn’t mean that there isn’t any Techno-Panic surrounding some of the technologies featured here. “The 3D-printed gun controversy is fast-paced and oft-changing … Theoretically, the guns Wilson's plans make are untraceable. If the metal parts, such as the firing pin, are removed, you could probably put a Liberator in your carry-on luggage and walk through airport security checkpoints” (Zhou, 2018).  People have managed to create scarily effective and untraceable firearms through the use of 3D printers, this could well fall under the Techno-Panic. However, the fear presented from a situation like this is fully justified as it poses a real danger to the public and not just a proposed or unreal danger. When we think of Smart Systems, we think of some of the things covered previously like Artificial Intelligence and Self Driving cars. The Internet of Things is another great example of Intelligent systems, IoT or the Internet of Things is a connected system of sensors of computers that work together to gather data from things around us a basic example of IoT would be a smart home. “In a nutshell, the Internet of Things is the concept of connecting any device (so long as it has an on/off switch) to the Internet and to other connected devices. The IoT is a giant network of connected things and people – all of which collect and share data about the way they are used and about the environment around them” (Clark, 2016). Of course, even IOT comes with its own set of concerns, in a class discussion around IoT there was a question concerning the use of an IoT app from a covered article, the student consensus seemed to be that in this case, the old method was more effective. So, the main challenge to all of Making and Things is striking a balance between convenience and realism.

Cyborgs and Bioart

           As the idea of Techno-Futures become more ingrained in the minds of people, some take their pursuits to the next level. It is here in this phase where we find some of the most outlandish pursuits we have seen, with the likes of Cyborgs where people choose to become part machine and part human, and Bioart where people decide to use technology and biology to create artistic representations. These two could be seen as progressions to our previous the future of the human body, moving past the obvious where we find beneficial progressions to humanity, we now have people making changes to their bodies or the bodies of animals to create some sort of art or give themselves a new superficial ability that isn’t necessarily practical but is interesting. “a cyborg is any human being who incorporates—imports into one’s body—artificial devices or machines … Landre plans to install in himself a system of his own design: an apparatus that senses the cosmic rays that surround us, unseen” (Cohen, 2019).  This is from an article describing a young adult who decided to design and implement a system in himself allowing him to ‘hear’  cosmic rays making him into a ‘cyborg’, the reasoning was that he has always been with technology and wanted to be one with it. In reading the class discussions surrounding these two topics an underlying theme was is it worth pouring resources into these types of pursuits while the practical uses of these technologies in medicine still aren’t deliverable. The majority answer to the previous question was ‘of course it's not reasonable to get sidetracked from the practical use case’. In my artifacts, I have a picture of a cyborg portrayal in a movie, a lot of times we tend to think of cyborgs as these decked out futuristic beings, but realistically everyone of us is a cyborg of some type with cellphones in hand the future of becoming ‘cyborgs’ in a sense of the word seems inevitable.

Conclusion

           So, when we think on the topic of ‘Techno-Futures’ we now have an understanding of a wide range of interconnected topics that fall under the vast umbrella which is ‘Techno-Futures’. When thinking back I can see that some topics covered are a subset of another, for example, I would group ‘Cyborgs and Bioart’ as a subset of ‘Future of the Body’ is the same topic with a more narrow focus, rather than body improvements in the general sense these shoot for artistic or idealistic goals to satisfy ones self. Techno-Panics are the bane of Techno-Futures, yet you cannot have one without the other. throughout these phases, it has become amazingly apparent that every topic of Techno-Future every advancement will always have a push back before it becomes the normal every day. Intelligent Systems are one of the most important things that we are working on today, yet it also receives some of the greatest pushback in the public. Intelligent systems, however, are everywhere, right under our noses and implemented into things that make our everyday lives better Including ‘Making and Things’ such as the Internet of Things. In Conclusion, Techno-Futures tell a story of Humanity and our creations, of us being our greatest adversary and our greatest enemy. In the end, progress will not slow, but perhaps the inevitable push back should be seen as a new challenge to conquer rather than an annoyance that always seems to creep up when progress moves too fast.

References

 Clark, S. (2017, September 19). What is the Internet of Things, and how does it work?. Retrieved from https://www.ibm.com/blogs/internet-of-things/what-is-the-iot/.

Cohen, N. (2019, December 9). Lessons From a Teenage Cyborg. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/lessons-from-a-teenage-cyborg/.

Mills, T. (2018, March 7). The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence In The Everyday Lives Of Consumers. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/03/07/the-impact-of-artificial-intelligence-in-the-everyday-lives-of-consumers/#60b13b3a6f31.

Overly, S. (2019, April 17). Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration. Here's why we often hate new stuff. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/07/21/humans-once-opposed-coffee-and-refrigeration-heres-why-we-often-hate-new-stuff/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.71896d039551.

Washington Post. (2019, August 22). As driverless car crashes mount, fear of riding in them rises, too. Retrieved from https://www.tampabay.com/news/As-driverless-car-crashes-mount-fear-of-riding-in-them-rises-too_170344568/.

Waterhouse, D. (2016, December 22). How technology is merging with the human body. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/22/how-technology-is-merging-with-the-human-body/.

Zhou, M. (2018, September 25). 3D-printed gun controversy: Everything you need to know. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/the-3d-printed-gun-controversy-everything-you-need-to-know/.

THIS IS THE 26th in a series of dialogues with artists, writers, and critical thinkers on the question of violence. This conversation is with Martha Rosler, an American artist who works in video, photography, text, installation, and performance, and whose work focuses on the public sphere, exploring issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women. She has for many years produced works on war and the national security climate, connecting life at home with the conduct of war abroad.

¤

BRAD EVANS: I would like to begin with a question on the issue of violence. What role do you think artists have when confronting this all-too-human problem?

MARTHA ROSLER: First, I’d like to be sure I know what we mean by violence; it’s such an elastic term. I often think, though, that the term “violence” has become reified, overly broad, and is losing its contours. We may feel that although we can’t really define it, we know it when we see it. We don’t generally associate violence with humanity alone, as I’m sure you’d agree. We have a fairly complex or differentiated ranking of acts of violence and who or what is likely to use it. So let’s say violence is the excessive use of force, in one form or another, beyond a certain accepted baseline, so we can see violence as exerted even by natural events, such as storms. Violence, then, is sudden force that is likely to break things — or rules or norms.

Our system itself glorifies a kind of violence to the what-is that is now modishly called disruption or creative disruption; in the thinking of the age, disruption is to innovation what automobiles are to buggy whips, to haul out a favored comparison. It is clear that capitalism cannot sustain itself without violence, the violence of expansion and change, which along the way chews up a lot of lives, lays waste to the natural and the built environment, and demolishes the folkways associated with settled ways of life, all at varying rates of speed.

Humans, as carnivores, have a long history of violence simply in the pursuit of living. To look at violence in the context of human societies, violence is related to both law and justice. It assumes there is a power differential among people and groups or classes and that certain uses of force are legitimate — the very word attests to the structure of laws — while others are unacceptable and thus classifiable as violent. More informally, we can class violence as an expression of conflict that in our society at least is regarded as inevitable and inbuilt, on the one hand, but on the other is possibly controllable or (perhaps, aspirationally) eradicable.

If you are asking me how do artists, and even ordinary people — citizens, residents — cope with violence against them or others, on the part of the state or state-like actors, or, conversely, on the part of lawbreakers and other criminals, the answer here is that art can present a certain degree of distilled clarity in the face of what may be felt as chaos. Art can open a space for a new framing of information, it can work to delegitimate uses of violence widely regarded as legitimate, such as attacking and killing protesters — themselves often treated as posing a threat of imminent violence against the established order — or criminal suspects, carrying out a death sentence on people convicted of common crimes, or on a grander scale, invading other countries by use of force or manipulation, or even, more broadly and less anthropomorphically, against the natural world.

I am writing this at a moment when our government uses law as the justification for forcibly removing children from parents crossing without papers at our southern border, yet a shocking number of people are willing to pretend this is justified because it is exercised against a class of people repeatedly dehumanized by this administration and its enthusiastic press and supporters. This is an instance of psychological violence, a category that can slide into metaphor but also is a perfectly reasonable way to talk about the use of authority, law, or ideological messaging to weaken others in pursuit of a desired result — commonly the creation of a stereotypical enemy or interloper.

Conversely, the tactics of delegitimation of others is matched by a concerted campaign of legitimation of the actions of state, often by naming (we’re straying into the “alternate truths” universe here). Dead civilians are labeled collateral damage. The US was long a vocal opponent of torture — until we were caught doing it, at which point it was renamed, following the Israelis, as harsh, stressful, or (most egregious of all) enhanced interrogation techniques, and a White House attorney or two obligingly crafted an opinion proclaiming it legal. The military — the arm of legally sanctioned violence — is a fantastically rich source of calling things by other names in order to control the narrative and hence the reactions on the part of the restive. The new tactics of drone warfare have led to many new terms of art, such as “painting a target” or “blue on blue” that hardly disclose their meaning to the uninitiated.

Those examples you just cited clearly indicate how the aesthetic field is intimately bound to the power and violence of discourse. Politics in this regard, we might argue, is always aesthetic insomuch as it is bound to the creation of images of thought. As an artist, what is it about the discursive field that commands your attention?

Control of language in the face of war extended some time ago to the popular press. Early in World War I, for example, the war minister, Lord Kitchener, threatened to kill any journalist found on the front lines. But exercising war censorship proved far less valuable than recruiting publishers and journalists into collusion with the government by suppressing bad news and disseminating government propaganda — (fake news). President Wilson maintained tight control through his new Committee on Public Information and the support of the new Sedition Act of 1918, which specifically criminalized antiwar expression. But today’s public has been less trusting of war reportage, and the aphorism “In war, the first casualty is truth” (of uncertain attribution), has been in wide circulation since the Iraq/Afghanistan War, although it long precedes that.

And then there is the practice of disinformation — really fake news — (as opposed to more guileless misinformation), the stream of confusing and often irrational targeted messages deployed by state actors and designed to produce confusion in unguarded populations, often foreign ones, for the purposes of electoral or other means of “regime change.” Although diplomacy is itself a highly coded system of negotiation over what labels and narratives to hang on events in the interest of international relations, it is conducted among a cadre of the highly trained; disinformation is a weapon wielded against whole peoples without their consent. Both Russia and the United States deployed this tactic even well before the Cold War.

In the preface to my videotape Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained of 1977, heard over a black screen, I try to draw a distinction between the crime of mass murder and the “ordinary” crime of having people — women in particular, but also non-European foreigners — tagged with “not measuring up.” This voice-over was intended to suggest that violence resides on a spectrum only part of which is regarded as outright violence.

I am mindful here in the importance for stressing (as you have continually done in your own work) the resistive potential of art in response to the oppressive triangulation between discourse, aesthetics, and their affective human registries. What can we take from alternative histories in terms of rethinking the very possibilities for viable resistance?

Opposing civil protests, actions, and uprisings of various sorts simply on the grounds of violence leaves us in a quandary of doubt and certainly goes against “history” — as it tends to assume, shortsightedly, that all human conflict can be captured under the rubric of violence erupting in an otherwise orderly civil society. I leave aside religious violence, against oneself or sacrificial others, meant to actualize the divine. I am also ignoring the use of torture against captives or sacrifices as a ritualized embodiment of group solidarity or even, as in Roman jurisprudence and later, the use of torture on witnesses or the accused to prove — that is, to test — the verity of testimony and confessions extracted from slaves and plebs. Uprisings, revolts, riots, and revolutions, as well as invasions and wars, punctuate human history, and artists — if not employed or commissioned by royals and rulers — often have partisan involvements beyond mere opinions. Historicizing forms of representation, such as “classical style,” and the tradition of history painting use both formal styles and narrative content to glorify certain incidences of violence and decry others. A signal example is the painter Jacques-Louis David, well known for his paintings in support of the French Revolution (and later of Napoleon); I recently saw his rapidly executed sketch of deposed queen Marie Antoinette in the tumbrel on the way to the guillotine.

A question closer to us is whether artists during the (slightly earlier) American Revolution should have deplored the rebels’ use of violence? These questions seem paltry, if not juvenile, against the backdrop of world events. Poets and painters have made political choices in support of war — Lord Byron lost his life in Greece’s fight for independence from the Ottomans, and the Italian Futurists, who glorified violence or simply the shock of modern life, joined the Italian army in World War I, many losing their lives on the battlefield. Famously, Marinetti became an enthusiastic fascist, and many other fascists glorified the aesthetic effects of war. Conversely, as we can see from governmental action against war resisters (refusers, dissenters, opponents) in many countries, just speaking out against war can be seen as actionable and often includes charges of inciting others similarly to resist.

At various times in the US, those who refused army service were arrested and imprisoned; a notable example is the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, imprisoned for advocating draft resistance during World War I. In World War II, however, pacifism was not widely supported by the populace, in part because of the global threat posed by Hitler and the Axis powers. But now, especially after the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II, there is deemed to be an absolute imperative for even members of the armed forces to refuse an illegal order.

Looking back to your powerful series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, which provided a more personal and intimate critique of the war imaginary, how do you think these works resonate in a world seemingly governed by media spectacles that are no less mediated in their suffering?

I take your use of the term “personal” here to mean centered on individuals, not masses of people. The photomontages you are referring to can perhaps be characterized as familial or on the level of daily life, but to ask how they resonate in a world seemingly governed by media spectacles — I have to remind you that that is an apt description of the world in the period from which those works emerged. By the 1960s, advanced industrial economies like ours had already entered a human-made environment that can be characterized as mass spectacle, as numerous observers, many of them Europeans — Siegfried Kracauer in the 1930s, Adorno and Horkheimer in the 1940s, Herbert Marcuse and Guy Debord in the 1960s are notable examples — had decried both before and after its emergence, and at many opportunities since.

I would like to call attention to your use of the word “powerful” in relation to those works; some have also labeled them, and other works I’ve done, such as the satirical video Semiotics of the Kitchen, as violent. That requires a strong degree of projection (though I would agree that in the case of the video, there is a certain gesturing toward a release of repressed violence, without any particular recipient). But there are no violent acts depicted in any of those photomontages, and you haven’t suggested there is. They conjure recognition of violence in the viewer as a means of arguing against war and repression but still refusing to reproduce it. I would say the same about the video A Simple Case for Torture, or How to Sleep at Night, which has no scenes of bodily torture but a great deal of information — too much information to take in — about state violence, both legitimized and covert.

You have drawn attention here to a very important point concerning the difference between violence (directly physical or psychological) and the power of critique, as then presented as violence because it offends a certain dogmatic sensibility, and often in such cases speaks truth to those who impose power relations through violent means. I am especially taken by the notion that the purpose of art is precisely to confront what seems intolerable, yet to do so in a way that refuses to reproduce the logics of violence. Do you think this is what art should aspire toward?

I wouldn’t begin to propose what art should aspire toward, but I think you have described my intentions in using my work to address injustice, to expose its inherent violence, if you will, without resorting to its tactics, but also to outline the matter at hand as a problem possibly with solutions within human reach. In other words to frame as comprehensible those matters that have been globalized, demonized, naturalized, rendered intractable, without sensationalizing them — but not necessarily following a formula. I want to establish always a space for reflection, even if only after a person’s direct confrontation with the work. This does not apply to my political activities, where I am much less circumspect if the occasion warrants. Sloganeering and appeals to sentiment have their place. However, it is worth noting that it was precisely as immediate antiwar propaganda that I conceived of the works we’ve just discussed, House Beautiful, where my approach had nothing to do with replicating scenes of violence.

Another distinct aspect of your work is to address social and structural inequalities. From the perspective of the arts, how might we recognize such inequalities as a form of violence? And why have you also felt compelled to subvert stereotypical representations concerning those on the margins of existence?

Even if people recognize the inherent violence that poverty and powerlessness impose on others, that realization may not be at the forefront of their assessments of economic and social inequality. A steady flow of ideological messages obfuscates the nature, sources, and scope of inequality. Among those messages is a consistent stream of reductive, counterfactual, and demoralizing images of people — many of them on the margins, not of existence, perhaps, but of everyday middle-class life, but also including the majority group: women! These stereotypical representations have been “naturalized,” sunk into the fabric of everyday life as simple, common sense observation. Rationalized, unacknowledged, discriminatory representations signify what has lately been called implicit bias, which cannot be divorced from structural violence. It’s necessary to highlight and deconstruct these representations.

The structures of feeling, to borrow a phrase, are hung around the verities of general society, which insistently do violence to the lives and understandings of others. The opioid/heroin crisis presents an unmistakable case in point, unfolding before our eyes: when the long-suffering participants in the drug crisis (heroin and crack) were primarily poor urban-dwelling people of color, and a ferocious “othering” was the considered opinion promulgated about those populations. The victims were blamed for exhibiting failure of morality, character, and integrity; possessing outright criminal tendencies, whether learned or inherited — and countenancing poor family structure. Liberals pitied them, documentary photographers captured their agony and ruin, do-gooders argued for them, and politicians denounced them. Once the crisis of drug dependency (heroin and opioid drugs primarily) began to affect largely white rural and small-town populations, denunciations ceased in favor of a great clamoring on the part of local politicians to obtain assistance without blame and treatment without the unconscionably harsh and pitiless policies of long incarceration and often the concomitant loss of voting rights, tied to the previous drug “wars.”

Addressing the objectification of women and the naturalization of everyday forms of abuse this engenders, what have been your thoughts on the #MeToo campaign, which moved quickly from Hollywood onto the arts more generally?

I’m always interested when workplace issues come to dramatically highlight inbuilt systematic abuse. Or to put it another way, when patriarchal prerogatives, which center mostly on the bodies of young women, prerogatives that are known and tacitly acknowledged by everyone while simultaneously denied and individualized (by which I mean put down to individual quirks or predatory behaviors) are thrust into the spotlight and rendered criminal, actionable, immoral, reprehensible, and so on. And then non-celebrity women, non-executive, non-professional women, but rather employees of an entirely different service class, say, “Me too.” And in fact, those women, who are women of color in far larger proportions than the middle-class or Hollywood workforce, said, “Me too,” first, under the initiative of Tarana Burke, as we learned after the celebrity #MeToo movement was launched.

Actresses gained attention by insistent complaints that suddenly captured public attention (in no small part because a confessed groper, raunchy talk-show regular, and “reality”-show host became president of the country, while similar accusations of long-standing, perverse abuse by male celebrities had failed to win court cases for complainants and sometimes even to gain indictments). But this movement helped magnify the voices of other groups of women — poor women, women of color, immigrant or undocumented women, hotel maids, farm workers, waitresses — who achieved little attention or sympathy for their stories about the sexual predations they must endure to keep their jobs.

These working-class jobs are generally in industries where people won’t get cowed into signing Non-Disclosure Agreements, since not much is at stake for bosses in regard to fire-at-will workforces. The point is clear: there are sexual and other gender-centered costs for women who venture into the paid workforce outside their own homes. The arts followed the example of Hollywood, or more properly the Anglo-American theater and film nexus, in that some high-profile men in theater, dance, radio, and television were accused of sexual aggressions and quickly let go. It is too soon to assess the validity of those dismissals. The academe, however, including art departments, have hardly followed suit.

But we’ve been around this “Me too” block quite a few times before: looking just at the United States, there was a concerted patriarchal and right-wing backlash in the 1980s against the women’s and gay liberation wars, attacking abortion rights and gender identity (inciting sex panics), which met with concerted forms of pushback. The attacks continued through the 1990s, symbolized by efforts to derail Bill Clinton the candidate as a sex offender and an advocate of the (permissive, libertine) “values of the 1960s” (including acceptance of gay rights), a narrative thread that eventually led to his impeachment as president on sex-based charges. Women continued to resist, but since the 1980s the mainstream women’s movement has largely focused on the advancement of professional and other middle-class women — think of “power dressing” and “breaking the [corporate and military] glass ceiling” — mostly downplaying the defense of poor women and working mothers.

The political right, while often led by sexual predators, transgressors, adulterers, and so on, continued to use outrage over sexual identity and behavior as weapons to marshal their base. Finally they settled on anti-abortion politics as their main mobilizer after younger voters increasingly accepted gender-centered matters, especially LGBTQI identities and gay marriage. Now, as a result of the continued attacks on women’s bodies at the point of the right-wing spear, Roe v. Wade will likely be brought down at the hands of the Supreme Court. We don’t know what will follow, except that once again poor women will suffer the most.

At present, we have to ask once again, and slightly tiresomely, Is this time different? — will there be major change in gender relations and an end to sexual aggression and harassment? My answer is that many in the age cohort of people we call “millennials” are restive and want to see change immediately and that that’s a good thing: the women’s movement, like most movements, is largely peopled by young women, and this movement is widening as more women of color and transgender women take part. And now, inevitably, the predatory sexual and workplace issues have publicly converged, in light of the ever-growing importance of the culture industries on the one hand and the service industries on the other — though I will predict that middle-class women will continue to fare better than working-class women.

Before we rejoice, however, we ought to keep in mind another growing form of backlash that in many respects echoes the patriarchalism of evangelicals but is associated with racial and political grievances, often borrowing from right-wing and neo-Nazi movements, reactionary social thinkers, and their ilk. This movement of young white men, centered on the internet but all too often moving into the real world, has often viciously targeted young women also in the online world (see “Gamergate” for an exploration of one such early eruption of hatred). This cohort of enraged young men, demanding that women recognize their right to sexual intercourse, calls itself the “incel” movement, from self-denominated “involuntary celibates” who abet their views on the strictly neo-Nazi social media site Gab as well as Reddit and its 4chan or 8chan websites inhabiting the otherwise largely unnoticed corners of the internet.

We are now over two years into the presidential election victory of Donald Trump. What still seems to be a defining feature of his power has been a veritable blurring between the fictional and the real. What role do you think art plays today in this seemingly absurd and yet dangerous setting?

The man was, as you say, elected. He has always been a liar, a bully, and a braggart, and his celebrity persona seems for many voters to have given him a pass on truth. Authenticity in theatrical performance is judged not on the basis of truth value but rather on a form of “convincingness”: how well he fits a familiar role — domineering, authoritarian masculinity paradoxically under threat — as he himself has defined it. Someone like that, demonstrably of low moral character, a con man and dishonest businessman, proved able to perform it well enough to trump probity. This process is not about rationality: Democrats, in their latter-day technocratic, neoliberal mode, appeal to rationality; Republicans don’t. Democrats are afraid to bait the populist beast, Republicans aren’t — the Republican Party recognizes the benefits accruing to their politicians and donor class by policies supported by Tea Party passions. But I have to point out that it is our powerful mass-culture industry that helped boost the popularity and visibility of this personality type, which has in modern days included such figures as Ronald Reagan, Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger (not to mention those who ran as overt racists throughout the 20th century), all men running as authoritarian-populist patriarchs before Donald Trump.

Scapegoating the powerless, our present catastrophic leader has badgered, bullied, and belittled — as a tactic for deflecting attention from searing attacks on policy on many fronts. Those in whose interest he governs have spent decades practicing the seizure of public goods and the destruction of even the idea of community. They’ve built grassroots organizations on the basis of ruralism, resentment, racism, and rage; they’ve bought and paid for academics and think tanks to advance reactionary legislative and judicial agendas, voter-suppression tactics, racist mythologies, anti-woman and anti-LGBTQI rules, and science denialism. Like any Republican since Reagan, he ran as the opponent of the federal government itself, on the promise of crippling its reach while still somehow fulfilling extravagant promises to his followers.

As the ongoing chaos campaign continues, we have little choice but to be there too, constantly showing up, in whatever way we can. Marches, protests, and demonstrations are powerful and absolutely necessary — as is showing up at the polls. But we need an organized movement to continue agitating, not just as resistance and repudiation, but to engineer lasting political change.

So let’s keep on protesting and countering the fairy tales and lies that are so essential to the con game being unleashed on us wherever it can find an audience. Art doesn’t change society, but it can crystallize opinion in the context of citizens’ movements. Art in the modern era is often born of resistance.

¤

Brad Evans is a political philosopher, critical theorist, and writer, who specializes on the problem of violence. He is the founder/director of the Histories of Violence project, which has a global user base covering 143 countries.

The post Histories of Violence: When Art Is Born of Resistance appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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SEO Wise Links can automatically link crucial terms in your posts plus comments with corresponding posts, webpages, categories and tags on your own blog. 41. An effective cultural media strategy needs a strong SEO plan. Google does make a few of this data obtainable in their own free Webmaster Tools interface (if you haven't set up a free account, this is a very important SEO tool both for unearthing search query data and regarding diagnosing various technical SEO issues). AI and Tone of voice Search Impact SEO, Lets notice how voice search analytics Impact's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and can impact in the particular coming time. A great many businesses choose to hire external help for you to get the full benefits associated with SEO, so a large element of our audience is understanding how to convince their consumers that search is a good investment (and then prove it! ). Nevertheless, SEOs tend in order to prefer links higher on the page. Because your site, credited to the nature of the business is going to always be more image orientated than textual content heavy, you will end up at a moderate disadvantage when it comes for you to employing SEO techniques such because keywords, backlinking and so on. One thing is usually crystal clear: if you desire people to discover your function, you need search engine marketing (SEO). This almost all means when you're thinking regarding your SEO strategy, you require to think about how your own social media marketing strategy fits into the particular puzzle, too. As your visitors slowly increases, be sure to include additional SEO strategies (like adding exterior and internal links, guest publishing, etc) to engage more customers and keep your metrics higher. Google has remaining a very narrow band associated with opportunity when it comes in order to SEO - and punishments are made to take you out associated with the game for some period while you cleanup the infractions. Head of Marketing, Shiny Edstrom, at BioClarity, a San Diego based health-science company, feels that SEO is going in order to see a decreased importance within 2019, and SEOs should begin ensuring they're competent in SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING. The best rank that you could notice the profile with contact information and maps on right hands side of search result web page is achieved after long process for using SEO tactics. Numerous search engine search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of customization a website for search motor discovery and indexing. SEO is actually a technique which search motors require that sites must enhance properly, so that they show up high in search results. The European Search Honours is an international competition that will shines the spotlight for the best SEO and Content Marketing firms in Europe. You may generally see outcomes of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts once the webpage proceeds to be crawled and listed by a internet search motor. Possibly the best form of sociable media to pay attention in order to when turning to SEO is definitely Google Plus. 1 of the most successful methods to ensure your clients get your photography business is simply by implementing an SEO strategy, this particular is more than just doing it to number 1 about Google, it means ensuring that will a varied and steady flow of traffic is proceeding to your site, over and even above that of your rivals. If you are usually willing to improvise your internet site search and boost up your own Google ranking, but do not really have time or resources regarding doing that, hire an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialist for the same objective. Mobile SEO is usually mobile search engine optimization or even optimizing content for a much better search ranking. Titles on pages and explanations affect what people see within search results, so it's important to check these out within any SEO audit. Search motors give some guidelines for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, but big search engines maintain result ranking as a business secret. Along with $80 billion forecast to turn out to be spent annually on SEO — and content marketing set for you to become a $300+ billion industry simply by 2019 — it might always be tempting for stakeholders to discover SEO and content marketing since cost centers rather than earnings centers. While that will theory is sound (when concentrated on a single page, when the particular intent is to deliver energy content to a Google user) using old school SEO strategies on especially a large web site spread out across many webpages seems to amplify site high quality problems, after recent algorithm modifications, and so this type associated with optimisation without keeping track associated with overall site quality is self-defeating in the long run.

Given that research engines have complex algorithms that will power their technology and our marketing needs are unique, wish unable to provide specific SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION advice to our customers. We all think SEO in 2019 might find a shift to focusing much more on user intent, problem resolving, and hyper locality in purchase to capitalize on the carried on rise of voice search. Private demographic information would come in a great deal handier in 2019 as considerably as the ranking of key phrases is concerned. Links are one of the particular most important SEO ranking elements. However, more advanced that will readers will recognize the reduced quality of sites employing dark hat SEO at the expenditure from the reader experience, which usually will reduce the site's visitors and page rank over period. So - THERE IS SIMPLY NO BEST PRACTICE AMOUNT OF CHARACTER TYPES any SEO could lay down since exact best practice to GUARANTEE a title may display, in full in Search engines, at least, because the search little title, on every device. While getting as many pages listed in Google was historically the priority for an SEO, Search engines is now rating the high quality of pages on the site plus the type of pages this really is indexing. Jerrika Scott, Digital Marketing Specialist with Archway Cards Ltd, also feels in voice being the tendency of 2019 rather than 2018. Today, regardless of all the hype about whether or not SEO is dead, we discover that organic search is nevertheless one of the highest RETURN ON INVESTMENT digital marketing channels.

There are usually lots of ways to discover keywords for SEO. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION article writing guidelines number two. Keywords, they are little concealed subliminal messages within the composing which are to be within conjunction with the topic which usually is being written on. Key phrases are extremely important to the particular SEO article writing guidelines. SEO is often component of an overall internet marketing and advertising strategy and complements other techniques like social media marketing, content material marketing and more. The conference brought together thirty-six speakers, 15 sponsors and more than 1500 of the search industry's brightest and the best associated with search for a day involving actionable SEO advice and market place leading content. A principal benefit associated with SEO is its cost-effectiveness because there is no payment in the direction of the search engine for becoming placed within it. This will be very important for the 'search head', high volume low purpose searches that are expensive within paid search. In 2019, I believe that will Google will continue to drive paid search ads and declare the majority of the over the fold organic SERP. Since, paying a search motor to put your business site at the top of the list doesn't come cheap, the particular next smartest thing one may do is to use research engine optimization or SEO methods to increase the clicks in the direction of the website and help this work its way up the particular search engine's results page. If you are nevertheless sticking with old SEO criteria strategies and searching optimized key phrase for the article, Sorry!

Voice research is going to be one particular of the main parts of concentrate for SEO in 2019 plus beyond. By 2019 mobile advertising will represent 72% of all US digital advertisement spending. They will should realize that SEO Internet advertising mandates a business website, given that it is a necessary on the internet marketing tool. Eventually you can send these pages on various SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION sites or simply submit the particular web page so that the particular search engine spiders can get on your created content. The history of SEO will go back to the 90s whenever the search engines emerged with regard to the first time. High quality content material is critical in any lengthy term SEO strategy. Successful SEO includes on-page strategies, which use intent-based key phrases; and off-page strategies, which make inbound links from other sites. So, along with content advertising, SEO now must be deeply lined up with your company's PR initiatives. Information will be a good introduction to and introduction to lookup engine optimization (SEO), a greatly important tactic for driving visitors to your blog. There is definitely a large amount of misinformation about exactly what an SEO campaign (company) may accomplish when it comes in order to search engines engine rankings. But using the particular SEO analysis tools, you may increase the chances of your own website's high ranking that may provide you with more traffic and ultimately, more business and revenue. Those who have the many to get are small businesses that will before a new harder period breaking into the snug SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION world.