#also it went right over my head that I posted this near the 20th anniversary because once again I know nothing of this series | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

therenlover · 3 years

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Heartsick (A James Patrick March/Reader Oneshot)

Synopsis: When you fall ill, James is given a forceful awakening about how he’s been neglecting your needs and what he must do to prevent harm from befalling you again

Tags: Fluff, Sickfic, Cuddling, Marriage Proposal

Rating: 16+

Warnings: Language, Potentially Triggering Mentions of the Reader Being Ill for a Long Time/Almost Dying of an Unnamed Illness, Planning Your Own Death

Word Count: 3700~

This was crossposted to my AO3 under the same title!

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James Patrick March considered himself a fairly patient man. He had to be, in his line of work. Some things didn’t deserve his patience, like lazy workers or angry hotel guests, but when it came to things that did matter, he was willing to go to extremes. Murder, for example, deserved his patience. Once upon a time, the Countess did too. Yes, patience was a rare virtue Mr. March had possessed all his life.

When it came to you, though, he found his patience running short.

You had been a revelation all your own when you first walked through the doors of the Hotel Cortez with not even a suitcase to your name, radiating purity with every shallow breath. James had been excited to find you in some dark corner of the hotel and rip the life from your body. That is until you found his little nook at the Blue Parrot Lounge and seduced him with your charming personality and sweet smile. From that moment on the Countess didn’t matter anymore. The whole world was just him, you, and all of the deliciously naughty ways he wanted to debauch you.

James had insisted on moving you into your own suite on the seventh floor that very night, just a few short hallways away from his own, and given every luxury he could offer. He was nothing if not a gentleman. It just wouldn’t be right to move the one he intended to court directly into his bedroom, especially while he was still married to his previous wide. Despite the distance, things between the two of you went swimmingly. Even the murder, which James initially worried could drive you apart, was now a delightful shared activity when you chose to grace him with your presence during a kill.

That’s where the problems started.

Mr. March was a man stuck in his own time. That’s why, after 5 splendid years with you at his side, you still weren’t moved into room 78. This also meant your suite was a place he wouldn’t enter unless he was invited. Sure, you had a healthy sex life, but the Countess still had the March family engagement ring tucked away somewhere. He wouldn’t move you into his quarters or impose himself on yours until the two of you were at the very least engaged. The plans for his and the Countess’ divorce were moving, albeit slowly, when you stopped opening the door for James.

The first day he thought perhaps you were simply elsewhere, but after a week of nothing, he began to get angry. It was one thing to deny him your company, but to ignore him while he made a fool of himself banging on your door? That was a punishable offense in the March family playbook. So, he decided if you wanted to play hard to get, he would too. In his mind, James could practically envision you rushing back into his arms once you got over whatever was souring your mood. It wouldn’t be long until the whole nasty affair was behind the both of you once and for all, right?

Wrong.

A month since he last dined with you, James sat at his table in the Blue Parrot lounge alone nursing the remains of his 4th glass of scotch.

Liz was slow to walk out from her place behind the bar. “You want another?” she asked, holding out a crystal decanter, “or should I fish out the absinthe fountain a little early this year,”

“No, no I do believe I’ve had quite enough. Besides, it’s not as if I can actually get drunk anymore,” he huffed. Whether it was the drinks or his growing rage, Mr. March found his collar feeling a bit tighter. He reached up to pull at his cravat but paused when thinking about the ghastly wound it hid. In the end, he let his hand return to its place on his glass.

“Suit yourself,” Liz quickly returned the decanter to its place and began polishing glasses.

Somewhere in the distance, Iris picked up a phone and began to take an order for room service. James had an epiphany.

“Liz!” he shouted, getting her attention, “has Y/N been ordering much room service lately?”

Liz shrugged. “Only once a day for the past month. Why do you ask?”

“I find myself in a bit of a predicament. You see, Y/N began ignoring me about a month ago. I’ve been giving her a taste of her own medicine for quite some time now, and yet she has made no attempts to seek me out. Do you think, perhaps, there could be something wrong?”

The energy in the room began to still.

“Wait, Y/N hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?”

The dirty glasses were abandoned as Liz let out a humorless laugh.

“Damn you, woman!” James rose with a shout, slamming his glass down on the table, “what is she hiding!?”

“She’s sick,”

James’ heart would have stopped if it were still beating. He sat down again, bewildered. “What?”

“She’s sick. Fever, puking, tremors; the whole shebang,” As she spoke, Liz came back to the table and sat down on the plush booth across from him.

“But it’s been a month! Influenza shouldn’t last that long…”

“Well, it’s definitely not the flu, I can tell you that. Last time I brought down her dinner she nearly choked on her toast. She was so weak that I had to sit there feeding her soup because she couldn’t lift up the spoon long enough to feed herself,”

It was as if James’ whole world had come collapsing down on him all at once. Mortified, he let his head drop into his hands. “Why didn’t she inform me? Am I that pathetic a lover that she would rather suffer in silence than tell me she was ill?”

“Well, to her credit, you don’t exactly look like the most comforting type. When did she move in again?”

“Almost five years ago, it’ll be the anniversary of her first entering the Cortez on the 20th,”

“And how many times in the past five years have you, I don’t know, cuddled with Y/N,”

“You insolent-”

Liz lifted her arms, offering up a white flag. “I’m just asking a question,”

James opened his mouth to offer up a rebuttal but found he had no way to defend himself.

It was true that his relationship with Y/N tended to fluctuate between chaste and lecherous at the drop of a hat. Once they had made love, it was the only habit for him to leave her in bed and return to whatever was keeping him busy at the moment. Post-coital intimacy was simply something he had never experienced or needed. Unfortunately, seeing that the only time he spent with Y/N outside of their trysts were formal meetings or dinners, there had been no time for gentility or softness between just the two of them. If ghosts could blanch, he would have.

Noticing his sudden shift in mood, Liz rose, backing off. “Now, usually I like to stay out of your business, but because your little relationship makes Y/N happy I’ll give you some advice. Go down to the kitchen, have Ms. Evers heat some broth, and give Y/N her dinner personally, maybe even give her some extra attention as a little treat. That should fix the bulk of your issues. Got it?”

He was never one to take orders, but surprisingly James nodded. He stood quickly, smoothing his suit. “Thank you for your advice, Ms. Taylor, but I must depart. My paramour needs me,”

She nodded. “Any time,” James began to hurry down the stairs, but suddenly Liz shouted. “Wait a second,”

James paused. “Yes?”

“Only the living get sick, Mr. March. Maybe, after five years, it’s time for Y/N to extend her stay at the Cortez... permanently. Just something to think about,”

He gave her a sharp nod before disappearing down the stairs to the kitchen. 15 minutes later he was waiting outside your door with a rolling cart in hard. He had already been stalling there for 5 minutes when he finally, with a deep, steadying breath, unlocked the door.

The room was dark and silent, almost like a tomb.

Your voice rang out like a bell as James pushed the cart forward. “Iris?” you called weakly, “is that you?”

“No, darling,” he responded, closing the door behind him. Slowly, he bent down at turned on a small lamp. “You won’t need Iris to bring you your dinner any longer,”

“James,” You whispered, half reverent and half shocked.

He was far too taken aback by the severity of your condition to form an immediate response.

You were curled up in bed, folded in on yourself as you wheezed for breath. As Liz had mentioned your body was weak and wracked with near-constant tremors while you tried your best to prop yourself up on the headboard. James had to abandon the cart with your dinner on it in favor of rushing over and helping you sit up. As he took in your gaunt face, his heart broke.

Your soft voice snapped him from his thoughts.

“Am I dead?”

James shook his head. “No my love, not yet,”

Tears began to spill from your eyes. “I thought you’d left me, James. I thought I was going to have to rot in this awful, dark room for eternity, that maybe ‘cause I died while I was sick my ghost was too damn weak to get up,” As you spoke, you tried to grip the back of his suit, but found you were far too weak to actually hold the fabric. Your inability to even do the simplest of tasks only made you cry harder.

Mr. March was quick to pull out his handkerchief and wipe your eyes. “Oh, my dearest, that couldn’t be farther from the truth, but none of that matters now. I cannot apologize enough for my abhorrent behavior as of late,”

“Will you stay?” your words were laced with desperation, “just for a little bit?”

“Of course, my dearest. I think you’ll find it very difficult to get rid of me from now on. Besides, I couldn’t leave my beloved paramour without doing what it is that I set out to do,”

“Which is?”

James stood and quickly returned with the room service cart. As he removed the silver tray-topper, you found he had brought you a bowl of soup, a small plate of crackers, and a tall glass of ice water.

“I intend to make sure you are well-fed and taken care of,”

“James, you don’t-” you tried to argue, but he cut you off.

“Nonsense! There is, unfortunately, no way to sugar coat this, but I will try my best,” he whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed beside you, “I have neglected you, darling, not just for the past month when I found my pride and ego keeping me away from you, but also for the past five years. I ignored your needs out of a false sense of propriety by bending to rules that are long dead and considered inconsequential. For that, I fear I may never forgive myself. Things will be different from now on, though. I hope to win back your heart properly now that I have realized the severity of my mistakes. Would you…” he paused, gulping, “would you be willing to humor me?”

You offered him a soft smile. “Oh, my beloved Mr. March, there’s no need. My heart has always been yours,”

Your words soothed him, and he offered you one of his debonair grins, the kind where his little mustache scrunched before his lips parted that never failed to sweep you off your feet.

“Now where were we!” he exclaimed.

“Dinner,” you responded.

“Ah, yes! Soup!” He was quick to get a spoonful of the warm broth and bring it to your lips. “You needn’t worry, my sweetling, I watched Ms. Evers prepare this herself. Nothing but the best for you,”

It was easy to accept the spoon into your mouth. Something inside of you knew that James would be taking care of you from now on.

The rest of dinner passed in relative silence, but you didn’t mind, far too tired to take part in any meaningful conversation. Instead, you simply enjoyed the attention. James had never been shy about his affection, but that affection always tended to come in the form of gifts or sex instead of close, intimate touch. It hadn’t bothered you enough to tell him. You always just assumed he didn’t enjoy that kind of love. Now that you’d had a taste, though, of his gentle yet constant affection, you knew you could never get enough.

Too soon the bowl was empty.

James stood, returning to the door with the cart as you relaxed and rolled onto your side. “When will you be back?”

He chuckled, opening the door. “Did you think you could be rid of me so soon, darling?” The cart was quickly pushed out into the hallway as James turned back towards you.

Your face flushed. “I just assumed…”

“Assumptions, assumptions,” he tutted, “It hurts that you have such little faith in me, but I admit I haven’t given you much reason to. As I said, things will be different now,” James perched himself on the edge of the bed with a smile as he untied his shoes and slipped them off.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking off my shoes, darling, so I can join you in bed,”

Your heart skipped a beat. You had been imagining the first time James would actually stay in your bed to cuddle since the beginning of your relationship, but it had been years since you had given any thought to that silly fantasy. Could it really be happening?

Apparently, your surprise was evident on your face because Mr. March paused once both his shoes were settled neatly on the floor. “Is something wrong, my dearest?”

“Nothing, darling, nothing at all,” you were quick to explain, “we’ve just never done this before,”

James smirked like a predator who had just found his prey. “Such an innocent gesture from such a naughty little minx. I don’t recall you being so… flustered the night we met when I took you up to my suite and-”

“James!”

“Alright! Alright, my love, no more vulgarity from me until you’re fully healed and back on your feet. Well, hypothetically on your feet,” he emphasized his words with a dirty wink. Then he crawled into bed beside you as if he belonged there, scootching over until he was resting pressed against your side. You slotted into place, with your face resting in his neck and your leg thrown haphazardly across his hips as if you were made to fit his body. Holding James was like coming home.

You let out a soft, pleased sound at just how good it felt to be held.

James took this as positive feedback. As he settled in, he began running his fingers through your bedhead, combing through the loosest of the knots. Sensing something strange, he paused to put his hand on your forehead. It was uncomfortably hot. “You’re still feverish. Do you need anything? A cold compress? A wet washcloth? Some water?”

It was funny to hear him fussing over you, but it also warmed the deepest parts of your heart.

You made a negative huff against his neck. “No! You’d better not move. Your skin feels too good. It’s nice… cold. The only thing I could possibly want right now is for you to dim the lights and take your damn shirt off so you can cool more of me off,”

“I would, darling, believe me, but there’s just the small issue of the wound on my neck,”

“James,” you glared up at him, “I have literally ripped a dying man’s dick off in front of you. We have dinner with Jeffery Dahmer on your birthday every year, where I have to eat my salad as he zombifies whatever poor sap wandered into Sally’s clutches across the table. Hell, just a few months ago we fucked in that bathtub filled with some businessman’s blood. Your neck is just another part of you, James, it doesn’t bother me. Shirt. Off.”

“Have I ever told you that I adore when you take charge?”

You grinned as he undid his cravat and the top few buttons of his dress shirt. “Once or twice,” The thrill only lasted a moment, though, because before he finished unbuttoning his shirt he pulled away from your arms and got off the bed. A high-pitched whine escaped from your lips. “I thought you said you were staying?”

“I may be a ghost, dear heart, but my clothes can’t just disappear,” Always one for the dramatics, he shed his shirt and suit jacket to the floor with gusto. The sight of his bare torso made your heart beat faster. You had to remind yourself that you were sick and it would probably kill you to go for even a gentle round with Mr. March. Ah, but what a way to die…

James dimmed the lamp before returning, undoing his pants, and stripping down to his boxers. “Is this better for you darling?”

You nodded and reached your trembling arms out to your lover. “Much. Now come back to bed. You have five years’ worth of cuddling to make up for Mr. March, and I don’t intend on letting you wheedle your way out of even a second of it,”

He gave you a gentle smile as he found his way beneath the covers again. “I wouldn’t dream of it,”

Your face quickly found its way back into the crook of James’ neck. It was inhumanly cool, easing the constant burn of your fever and soothing your sore skin. The slit across his throat truly didn’t bother you. As you said, it was just another part of him for you to love, nothing more than a cosmetic imperfection.

Nuzzling closer, you took a deep inhale of his intoxicating scent. Perhaps it was the cologne he wore at the time of his death or even just what he naturally smelled like, but his pulse point radiated notes of sage and bergamot. God, how you loved him.

The pair of you were quiet for a moment with only the sound of your ragged breathing breaking through the air, but something urged you to speak your mind.

“You know, James, when you walked into my room tonight I assumed you were here to kill me,”

He chuckled. “I can’t say I didn’t think about it, my pearl,”

“Of course you did…” you went silent for a moment, “I wouldn’t have minded. This sickness is hell. I’m wasting away by the day and the pain never stops. I don’t mind dying, not when it means I get to spend the rest of time here in the hotel with you, but I don’t want to go out like somebody normal. My death needs to be special… I want to be the crowning glory of your murders, the most fantastic piece of art you’ve ever created,”

Pressing a chaste kiss to the top of your hair, James sighed. “Perhaps it’s selfish of me, but the moment I thought of you, wasting away in the darkness and succumbing to some common germ, I knew I couldn’t kill you. Not yet. I refuse to have my bride accompany me through eternity bearing a constant reminder of my failure,”

Your breath hitched. “Bride?”

Slowly, his hand made its way to your throat. There was no threat in it, he wasn’t using even an ounce of pressure. It was more of a gentle reminder of his presence; a physical conduit of his passion.

“Yes, bride. I don’t mind if you can only become Mrs. March posthumously, though I would prefer to wed you alive and enjoy your last moments of warmth in the throes of carnal delight on our wedding bed, it all depends on where your illness takes you next. Until then I will be glued to your side. No more harm will come to you. I shall nurse you back to health with my own hand so that you glow with life long after your death. Yes, Y/N, your death will come, but not until I have done my best to atone for my mistakes in your life,”

“Was that a proposal?” You gazed up at James with wide, misty eyes.

He huffed out a laugh. “I suppose it was, and a poor one at that! To think I stalled for years in the hopes of finding the perfect moment to present you with my mother’s ring only to pop the question in bed with no ring in sight. I do hope you’ll say yes. I’d be rather crushed if you rejected me after all this time,”

You nodded, small tears escaping as you pressed your face into his soft skin. “Of course I’ll marry you, you idiot. I would’ve married you if you were the poorest man in the world and proposed with a ring-pop,”

“Then it’s settled. You shall be my wife as soon as you are well enough for me to fuck you again! I quite hate that Will Drake, but I believe he’s our best, quickest option if we wish to get you a dress commissioned. I have a few ideas drawn up already waiting in my office… perhaps I should call Ms. Evers and have her take them to him,”

“Shhhh,” you smiled into his neck, pressing a kiss to his collarbone, “we can figure out the details later. For right now, though, your fiancée is sick and she needs some TLC. What are you gonna do about it, Mr. March,”

He growled. “Well, I suppose ravishing you is off the table. Hmmm... what to do to my darling girl to make her feel better?” With a gentle nudge, he tilted your head up and pressed a sweet kiss to your lips.

“That’s a start,”

-------

a/n: I hope you liked it! I’m really leaning towards writing a second part of this where the reader actually dies, so let me know if you’re interested. Also, my requests are open if you want to see any of Evan’s other characters!

Please don’t post my work to other sites, thank you <3

#ahs #ahs hotel #james march x reader #james patrick march #james march #james patrick march x reader #I wrote this instead of something incredibly filthy and terrible I have planned for later...#evan peters #evan peters x reader #american horror story #american horror story hotel #I love this man

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theonyxpath · 4 years

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Here we are at the end of the year with our last Monday Meeting Notes blog. Salut to you all!

A few things before we get to celebration preparation. First, the V5 Cults of the Blood Gods KS is doing fantastic, with over 1700 backers and a whole passel of Stretch Goals achieved – and we still have more than two weeks to go!

You can check it out here, if for some wacky reason you haven’t yet: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/cults-of-the-blood-gods-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed

But, if you’d like some more info before heading over to the KS page, well, do we have options for you! They are just the links for this week to interviews and reviews…there are even more out there!

(These links are also below in the Onyx Path Media section curated by the irrepressible Matthew Dawkins).

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a V5 Cults of the Blood Gods design diary! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Plus, Polyhedron Podcast interviewed Matthew Dawkins regarding V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here on their show: http://metahedronstudios.com/polyhedron/2019/12/26/polyhedron-ep-101-who-are-the-hacata?

And Gehenna Gaming did the same thing just yesterday over on their Twitch channel twitch.tv/gehennagaming, and you can catch up with that interview by subscribing to them!

And circling back around to the Story Told Podcast, here’s their interview with Matthew Dawkins regarding V5 Cults of the Blood Gods: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/bonus-21-vampire-the-masquarade-5th-edition-cults-of-the-blood-gods-interview-with-matthew-dawkins

While Flames Rising interviews a whole bunch of the writers of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here: http://www.flamesrising.com/discussing-faith-among-the-dead-with-onyx-path/

And even more Matthew Dawkins interviews (if you haven’t had enough) over here on booknest.eu, in respect of (you guessed it) V5 Cults of the Blood Gods: http://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/1758-interviewwithmatthewdawkinsii

Lunars art by Priscilla Kim

End of the year “look-back” from the OP crew as to what could have gone better:

To sort of match and compliment our look back at the good stuff from 2019 that I put up in last week’s MMN blog, here are the thoughts from our Onyx Path crew as to what things in 2019 maybe weren’t so good – or at least are something we can look to improve.

Now this sort of retrospective can be seen as a downer, but for us, we want to be always looking for ways to improve what we do. In fact, a lot of the “Goods” from last week’s list were “Needs Improvement” in previous years! So in a lot of ways, these are snapshots of where are crew sees our issues right now, and are extremely useful for us:

Dixie:

For me personally, I hope to do a better job in 2020 than I did in 2019 of managing the stable of incredibly talented editors with whom we work. Personally, I love talking with each and every one of them, but anyone who watches the blog knows there have been weeks here and there when 12 projects were in editing at once, and that’s a lot! Anticipating a project’s needs weeks or months out is something we should all keep in mind so that no one department, be it art, approvals, development, or editing, ever gets bogged down for too long. I want to deliver books that are not only beautiful and well-done, but timely and efficient!

Monica:

There’s so many channels we have to communicate, it’s difficult to sync up and get the same message. On some of our convos, we’ll have three people posting almost the same thing. I’d like to see better coordination so we’re not either jumping the gun or over-responding to what’s already been addressed.

Ian:

I don’t know how to do this effectively, but we need to try to do a better job of shaping conversation so it’s more productive. During the Aberrant Kickstarter, a lot of forum discussions got pretty heated and just went around and around in circles even after a given topic had already been addressed. I want people to be able to consider concerns so we can make a better game, but the way the conversation took place made me want to avoid it instead.

Mighty Matt:

This is mostly on me, but we could have been a lot more proactive in explaining how our expansion into local game stores rolled out this past year. We could have had more tools for retail stores to communicate with us and our distribution partners. Something of a personal goal of mine to do more outreach to stores and work with distributors in more ways.

Deviant art by Michael Gaydos

Mirthful Mike:

Even though we have been doing the “put the books into stores” thing with out KSs since the Cavs KS, I’m still not seeing a lot of our product out in the wild. While I’ve seen Pugmire and Mau every now and then… I’ve seen nothing of CtL2 or Scion. I don’t know if that is a shortcoming on our end… or maybe stores are hesitant to order anything other than OGL and 5e titles.

Matthew:

Travel and conventions. It’s becoming a running joke / curse that whenever I travel internationally to attend a convention, I suffer flight delays, lost luggage, missed connections, and other such mishaps. This year saw everything bar an actual plane crash, so here’s hoping for an exemption from that when I fly to Milwaukee for Midwinter in January! I’m staying at a hotel near the London airport I’m flying from the night before I depart, I’m building more time in for my connections, and I’m taking everything as carry-on luggage, just to try to alleviate some of this travel hell!

Eddy:

One thing that we could have done better: Focus on the positive. It’s understandable that we get derailed by a shitty vocal element or focus on a project that’s on fire, but sometimes that ends up dominating our discussions, and making things seem like they’re worse than they really are. V5 is a good example — it’s been a slog to deal with all the problems with that property, so much that I was genuinely surprised with how good Chicago by Night turned out to be.

Lisa:

The bad for me is being at PAXU and having a freelancer have to tell me who they are or worse be there and not know they are present at all. Many fans enjoy being able to tell writers, artists and developers how much they enjoy their work on our games and even get an autograph. It would be nice to be able to introduce them at the booth if I know they are there. Some sort of communication to let us know who may be in attendance and find out if they want any sort of recognition would be great.

Dark Eras 2 art by Luis Sanz

RichT:

Most importantly, these and other thoughts on how we can better do what we love to do are going to be part of our Onyx Path Summit in just a week – right before we attend Mid-Winter. So, part of my job is to get discussions going there as to our team’s concerns, and believe me – these are just the first ones they sent me, as well as other changes we might be positioned now to implement.

We’re also doing a panel there in the intimate surroundings of the Hilton’s Founders Room, so if you have questions and/or concerns, praise or problems, please feel free to add them in the Comments for this blog and I’ll pass them along!

Talk to you all next year, as we prep for all that and continue to create our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

V5 Cults of the Blood Gods has passed $100,000 and 1700 backers, and has trumpeted forward passing through Stretch Goal after Stretch Goal despite the holidays!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a V5 Cults of the Blood Gods design diary! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Today we give special focus to the Story Told Podcast‘s recent review of Book of Oblivion for Wraith: The Oblivion. It’s a glowing review (four ghosts out of five, or eight oboli out of ten), and you can listen to it right here: https://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-43-book-of-oblivion-review-for-wraith-20th-anniversary-edition

And Gehenna Gaming did the same thing just yesterday over on their Twitch channel twitch.tv/gehennagaming, and you can catch up with that interview by subscribing to them!

Our Twitch channel continues with its streams of fantastic content, including a behind-the-screen special for Scion, a new year’s special for Scarred Lands, and regular games of Changelign: The Lost, Hunter: The Vigil, Mage: The Awakening, and more Scarred Lands!

Likewise, continue to tune in to us on YouTube for actual plays of Changeling: The Lost, Pugmire, Vampire: The Masquerade, and much much more!

Subscribe to us on youtube.com/user/theonyxpath

And of course the Gentleman Gamer, Matthew Dawkins, continues his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on his channel, youtube.com/user/clackclickbang

Here’s the ever-increasing trove of Occultists Anonymous actual plays of Mage: The Awakening, expanded even further!

Episode 68: Who Are You? Wyrd the Seer takes stock of her cult and Labyrinth, calling on Stephen Klein to get to know more about him… and to begin instructing him in the higher mysteries.https://youtu.be/gke84fsDxuo

Episode 69: What Have I Done? Wyrd the Seer calls upon Shodel, the Consilium’s Herald, to speak about her work at the theater and then returns to her search for the Other World.https://youtu.be/jDOsgHmGWLI

While Flames Rising interviews a whole bunch of the writers of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here: http://www.flamesrising.com/discussing-faith-among-the-dead-with-onyx-path/

Discussing Faith Among the Dead with Onyx Path

Don’t forget Red Moon Roleplaying have two actual plays of Vampire: The Masquerade and one of Changeling: The Lost going, with all locatable on redmoonroleplaying.com

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the PDF and physical book PoD versions of Tales of Good Dogs, the Pugmire Fiction Anthology on DTRPG!

Conventions!

2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

More talk about this next week!

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

RUST (Scarred Lands)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Finals coming in.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Art is in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – Working on finals.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Art notes and contracts finishing going out this week.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn

Scion Mythical Denizens – Need sketches for fulls.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Sketches coming in, should see some finals soon.

Vigil Watch

Legendlore (KS)

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Got notes out to artists for halfs and splats.

Scion Companion – Working on art notes for that.

In Layout

Chicago Folio – Halfway through layout.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – At WW for approval and they will be back after the New Year.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

VtR Spilled Blood

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. PoD proofs ordered.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Being printed.

Geist 2e Screen – Being printed.

DR:E – Being printed.

DRE Screen – Being printed.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – PDF and PoD versions on sale Wednesday!

Memento Mori – Gathering errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity Continuum Storypath Nexus Community Content – Getting it set up.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today in 1920, Jack Lord – of Hawaii 5-0 fame – was born. He was “a groovy lady-killer”.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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grimelords · 5 years

Photo

My April playlist is finished! Please allow me to take you on a journey from the heaven of THP Orchestra to the hell of Inter Arma over three action packed hours. Specially sequenced for maximum enjoyment, there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ll love - I guarantee it. Listen here.

Good To Me - THP Orchestra: I've said it before and I'll say it again, the number one way to find good songs is to go through the whosampled page for Duck Sauce's 2013 album Quack because every single thing they put into that album is a bonafide classic.

I'm Your Boogie Man - KC & The Sunshine Band: I saw Jungle last week and they were absolutely amazing, and the venue started playing this song as soon as the house lights went up after the show which is an extremely good way to get people to not leave your venue and boogie instead. My favourite part of this is near the end of the second verse where he gets even lazier than normal with the lyrics and just says "I want to love you.. ah.. from sundown.. sunup".

Work It Out - A-Trak: I love this new A-Trak song that sounds like a secret lost bonus track from Discovery right down to that specific wah sound on the guitar.

Starlight - The Supermen Lovers: There was all this news last year that Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust was getting remastered and rereleased for its 20th anniversary and was going to finally be on streaming services that seems to have just.. not happened. It never materialized so now I'm stuck listening to the 2nd rate but still extremely good Music Sounds Better With You knockoff, Starlight by the worst named band ever The Supermen Lovers. The songs aren't even that similar particularly but that's just my personal feelings.

Girlsrock - Siriusmo: A friend of mine is a sort of expert on the whole Ed Banger mid-late 2000s electro scene and it's extremely good because he'll just send me songs like this every now and then that are totally sick and make it feel like there was somehow thousands of hours of this kind of music produced at that time and only the tip of the iceberg made it to public consumption.

11:17 - Danger: Somehow I didn't even notice that Danger had a new album in January but I'm finally listening now and it's a proper return to form and really, really good. This song sounds like if the haunted VHS tape from the The Ring was taped over an 80s workout video.

Ultrasonic Sound - Hive: I went to a 20th anniversary screening of The Matrix at The Astor and great news: that movie still kicks ass and rocks completely and has possibly gotten better in the two decades since its release. Someone had curated a really good mix that they were playing in the foyer after the movie and this song was in it. A heady mix of drum and bass and nu-metal guitar crunch that feels like a 1999 calendar picked up by a strong wind and slapping you in the face.

Homo Deus VII - Deantoni Parks: STILL loving and finding new things to love about this Deantoni Parks album for the third month in a row. I'm repeating myself but this music is just so good and feels so completely original to me. It's a great mix of complete technical mastery and the self imposed limitations of a restricted sample palette. Forcing himself to do absolutely everything he can with the sound and fairly well exhausting it over the course of 9 minutes.

Catacomb Kids - Aesop Rock: There's a good line to trace between this and Acid King by Malibu Ken where Aesop Rock's been thinking about Ricky Kasso for like ten years now which is interesting. There's lots of just very nice sounding lines in this like "Crispy the godsender who thunk over a quarter plunk to local Mortal Kom vendor". Just good weird word combos painting a very impressionistic picture of growing up. "deplanting cadavers" "zoo-keeper facelift". Very nice.

Mask Off - Future: I've never listened to Future much which is weird because he's very good but this is a song that just comes into my head pretty often. Metro Boomin's brain is huge and the vibe he created on this is just amazing. Wringing this sort of atmosphere out of the sample without sacrificing any of the trap beat at the center of it is such an achievement.

Old Town Road (Remix) - Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus: Everything that could ever be said about Old Town Road has probably already been written by now but my favourite part is finding out that the sample is from Ghosts by Nine Inch Nails which means it's also Trent Reznor's first writing credit on a #1 song. Absolutely praying for Trent and Atticus to join Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus on stage at the Grammys to perform this.

Claudia Lewis - M83: Every so often I remember just how good Hurry Up We're Dreaming is and listen to it on repeat for a while. It's absolutely amazing. Start to finish (except for Raconte-Moi Une Historie which SUCKS) it's just fantastic. I looked up why this song is called Claudia Lewis and it turns out that has an extremely good answer "I was surfing the web & found this website with space poems – Claudia Lewis had 3-4 space poems on this site. They were pretty bad space poems but I found it super moving, there was something very innocent about it. She’s probably super young like 12 or 14 but I don’t know her or how she looks or anything about her. I just know that she writes cheesy space poems."

OK Pal - M83: Every single musical element of this song is just perfect. I love the huge broad chords, the synth bends, the massive drums, the inverted Dead Flag Blues monologue. It's just beautiful.Little Secrets - Passion Pit: Passion Pit is currently on a 10th anniversary tour for Manners and I feel age 100 which is no good. But this song is good and it contains in my opinion one of the all time greatest drum fills after the first chorus. Huge, super air-drummable, and very functional: perfect.

Blood - City Calm Down: I think "I'm the one who wants your blood" is just such a great an evocative refrain and I wish he said it one million times more in this song.

Television - City Calm Down: Absolutely love the idea of writing a song about how bloody TV is the bloody opiate of the masses that sounds like a Clash cover in 2019 and sounding so deliberately out of the zeitgeist and doing it so well and with such conviction that it’s absolutely great.

I Am The Resurrection - The Stone Roses: We went to Andrew McLelland's Finishing School and he played this as his last song in honour of Easter Sunday and described it as the greatest piece of acoustic dance music he's ever heard which is honestly not a bad description - it's an absolute jam.

Daisy - Pond: It's very cool that there's like an evil, mirror version of Tame Impala that exists in Pond. I think every band should have that.

Crying Lighting - Arctic Monkeys: Basically the reason this song is on this list is because I got stuck in a loop of saying "your pastimes, consisted of the strange and twisted and deranged and I hate that little game you had called "crying lightning" in a Werner Herzog voice to myself and I thought it was funny.

Keeping Time - Angie McMahon: Angie McMahon is so damn good at songs and I cannot believe it! She's only got like 5 and they're all incredible. She’s gonna be huge!

The House That Heaven Built - Japandroids: Sterogum had a really good writeup the other day about Post-Nothing turning 10 years old that turned into a wrap up of why Japandroids are such a good band and why Celebration Rock is a perfect album and it really crystallized a lot of my feelings about them. They're number one on my list of Bands That Make You Want To Start A Band for a good reason and this article really nails the whole young men figuring it all out feeling of Japandroids' music. I really think both Japandroids albums should be called Youth And Young Manhood but Kings Of Leon already took that name. I remember when my friend first turned me on to Post-Nothing he said he didn't want to tell anyone else except me because it was so good and it was Best Friends Music and I really believe that. It’s best friends music through and through. When I saw them a couple of years ago it was as part of a sort of impromptu road trip with my best friend and I think that was the best context I could have given it. It's absolutely one of the best shows I've been to in my life and also Osher Gunsberg was in the crowd behind me but that's not part of the story. https://www.stereogum.com/2041439/japandroids-post-nothing-turns-10/franchises/the-anniversary/

Motor Runnin - Pist Idiots: The pub rock revival just keeps getting better and better. At the minute it's basically just Bad//Dreems, West Thebarton and these guys but I'm sure there's a million other bands bubbling under that are just about to break as well. I love this song, it's just straight up old fashioned pissed off rock and roll that somehow doesn't feel old fashioned at all.

Chains - As Cities Burn: As Cities Burn have reunited and have a new album coming out and I'm extremely wary of it because they're potentially ruining their previously discussed perfect streak. This is the first single and it's.. good I guess. It's kind of just normal and sort of outdated, a little bit of a step backward into safety for a band that was always changing and moving forward. I think I have a worm living in my brain though because I keep listening to it just because I really love the drum sound. They're very nicely mixed. Some very nice sounding drums.

Whacko Jacko Steals The Elephant Man's Bones - The Fall Of Troy: I was talking with some friends about young musicians because of Billie Eilish, and so we were talking about how Alanis Morrisette won a grammy when she was 21 and Taylor Swift won a grammy when she was 20 and Lorde made Royals when she was 17 and all that but what people don't realise is Thomas Erak wrote Doppelganger when he was 20 and it was his second album. He's 34 now and his music sucks badly. That's insane. What will happen to me when I'm 34? Chilling to think about.

A New Uniform / Patagonia - Tera Melos: I think Patagonian Rats is still my favourite Tera Melos album. Toss up between that and Untitled actually. But I love this one for how cohesive it feels. For a band whose whole ethos is chaos it's amazing how well it all comes together as a complete work tied up with a bow by the Skin Surf reprise near the end. I love this song because it's two sketches of songs tied together into one little chaotic lump and the big Primary! Secondary! finale is just so satisfying.

Talking Heads - Black Midi: Black Midi finally have actually proper recorded songs on spotify! The way Black Midi is getting talked about at the moment really feels like the days of blog buzz are back, it's crazy. If you haven't seen it yet here's the KEXP session that's rightfully getting them so much attention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMn1UuEIVvA I've watched it so many times and it's really something. The best part is the comments are full of music dudes just naming every band ever. "this sounds like if slint, polvo and hella did crack and had a gangbang" yuck "imagine them opening for Swans and/or Daughters" yuck "they're like if Minute Men and Frank Zappa had a baby and that baby dated the child of Talking Heads and Can but then got dumped for their best friend who was adopted and raised by their single parent Voivod but they were cool and stayed friends and listened to Tortoise and Thelonious Monk and got stoned and started a band and conquered the world." yuck "Slint meets Sonic youth meets Pere Ubu meets drive like jehu meets Beefheart...these guys took all that is deranged and twisted in rock and made one big soup of it!" yuck. Anyway the point is they rock completely and here's my addition to the band names: the way he sings sounds like Sting lol.

Walking On The Moon - The Police: This song makes you dumb I think. It's like the dumbest song in the world and listening to it makes your brain mushier, which makes you dumb and stupid. It's very good.

Rubber Bullies - Tropical Fuck Storm: I saw Tropical Fuck Storm opening for Kurt Vile the other day and it was absolutely incredible. My first time seeing them properly, not counting the live soundtrack they did for No Country For Old Men which was was a whole different kind of amazing. It feels like Gaz has finally put together a band that can keep up with is ferocious energy and the result is scary - they basically tore the place apart which makes them a funny opener for Kurt Vile who was as chilled out, relaxed and fun as you'd expect. They played this song near the end of their set and somehow I hadn't really noticed it when I listened to the album but now I can't stop listening to it. It's so good. I love the increasing paranoia of the backing vocals, especially in the last verse as it builds and builds.

Taman Shud - The Drones: This might be the best Drones song. It's a list that's constantly being revised in my head but it's top 5 definitely. It's nice listening to Feeling Kinda Free now knowing what he was going to do with Tropical Fuck Storm because it's all here. Fighting against the constraints of his regular sound and regular songwriting and eventually finding the solution in forming a whole new band. I love this song for a million reasons but the escalation of the disregard is very good. “I don't care about Andrew Bolt or Ned Kelly or the southern cross or the union jack” and you're nodding and then he says ‘I don't really care if you're a pedophile’ and you're nodding but slower. I get what he means in terms of media hype and whatever but it's still a very funny line. Anyway "why'd I give a rats about your tribal tats? You came here on a boat you fucking cunt" is grade A.

Dawn Patrol - Megadeth: The best thing about Megadeth is the sort of half baked politics. Dave Mustaine is the best kind of moron, he engages with everything at a gut level but believes he's being very cerebral about it at the same time. This little intro song about a nuclear post-apocalypse is so good because it's a legitimate warning and a response to legitimate worries but it's also like.. wouldn't that be sick if we had to wear gas masks and carry assault rifles around because all the nukes exploded and everyone was dead. What if there was zombies.

Rust In Peace... Polaris - Megadeth: The story behind Holy Wars... The Punishment Due is so good. "Mustaine has said that at a show in Antrim, Northern Ireland, he discovered bootlegged Megadeth T-shirts were on sale. He was dissuaded from taking action to have them removed on the basis that they were part of fund raising activities for "The Cause", explained as something to bring equality to Catholics and Protestants in the region. Liking how "The Cause" sounded as was explained to him, Mustaine dedicated a performance of "Anarchy In The UK" to it, causing the audience to riot. The band were forced to travel in a bulletproof bus after the show" I just love him. I'd like to share a Dave Mustain quotes about this song also. "I was driving home from Lake Elsanon. I was tailgating somebody, racing down the freeway, and I saw this bumper sticker on their car and it said, you know, this tongue in cheek stuff like, ‘One nuclear bomb could ruin your whole day,’ and then I looked on the other side and it said, ‘May all your nuclear weapons rust in peace,’ and I’m going, ‘'Rust in Peace.’ Damn, that’s a good title.‘ And I’m thinking like, 'What do they mean, rust in peace?’ I could just see it now – all these warheads sitting there, stockpiled somewhere like seal beach, you know, all covered with rust and stuff with kids out there spray-painting the stuff, you know." Goes ahead and writes a kick ass song from the perspective of a nuclear warhead containing the line "rotten egg air of death wrestles your nostrils".

Planet B - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: King Gizz are Megadeth now and I love it! The cold war is global warming now and we desperately need new thrash metal about it to save us!

Primodial Wound - Inter Arma: If you can't tell by me including three of their songs on this playlist I'm still having an absolute time with Inter Arma. Something I really love about this band is their ability to sit in a vibe for so long and expand on it. They're not songs with narrative arcs and multiple contrasting sections, they're songs that just kind of dig deeper on themselves. This one starts deep and then by thinning out entirely at around 6 minutes in only gets darker.

Howling Lands - Inter Arma: This song made me dream of a Dark Souls game where Inter Arma does the soundtrack. It's a peabrained thought but it's one that really got me thinking. This is boss music of the highest order: a song seemingly about itself and the hellbound denizens cursed to perform it in the arena of hell.

Sulphur English - Inter Arma: It's extremely funny to listen to this song a bunch of times and be completely blown away by the total power and ethereal majesty of it and then look up the lyrics to find out that it's about Trump in that very good way of putting normal thoughts through a metal lyrics filter "The charlatan sets his eyes towards the throne / tongue adrip in revolting ecstasy" "Sever the corrupt tongue of the imperious fool / silence the gangrenous root of his abhorrent voice"

Peepin' Tom - Courtney Barnett: When I saw Kurt Vile he brought out Courtney Barnett to play Over Everything as an encore and it was so good to see just how much a hometown crowd loves her. Everyone lost their shit! We love our good friend Courtney! I think I've written about this before but Peeping Tom is one of my favourite Kurt Vile songs and I think Courtney's version is even better. Her voice is perfect for it and she really has to show off her range to do it which I love. The super deep 'peeping' to the high cascading 'tom' is a perfect musical moment to me.

listen here

#playlists

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snowpatrolfanclubbrazil · 6 years

Link

Gary Lightbody’s moment came two years ago in a gym in Santa Monica. The Snow Patrol frontman has long had a reputation for indulging his appetites. But even he was going at it on a bigger scale, with a fierce, Valhallan vigour.

The band’s last tour had finished in late 2012. And then: “I started drinking,” he says, “with a gusto that a professional boxer might train for a prize fight. It’d be mostly beer. I was quite a happy drunk. There was a hell of a lot of fun. Until it wasn’t.

“I’d get to 2am sitting on my own, have a cry, and then a glass of something [stronger]. I didn’t have any relationships and I wasn’t having sex either. I was very hermetic. Around 2015/2016 I was drinking every day and also I was hating it. I regret doing it even though I knew I was doing it out of compulsion.”

He was hitting the gym in the mornings to sweat it off. Then came the moment.

“I bent down to touch my toes and everything started spinning. It felt like the floor beneath me was moving. I thought it was an earthquake. But it kept going on. I phoned a friend who lived around the corner. I was like, ‘Are we having an earthquake?’ He said ‘Something’s going on here’.

“I had a bunch of CT scans on my head. My whole head was infected – sinus, ears, eyes, everything. I’d been having styes and stuff on my eyes. Stick a teabag on it. This was the week before I was going to France to see Northern Ireland play in their first tournament in 30 years. I said to the doctor, ‘I’m flying to France in five days’. He’s like, ‘No you’re not. If you flew with the air pressure it’d feel like daggers ripping into your head’. I was still thinking maybe I’ll be alright. I spoke to a friend, Gabrielle, an acupuncturist, an extraordinary human being. She’d been trying to get me to stop drinking for a while…”

So he stopped. Or at least, he began to stop. And in flooded the dark realities he’d been masking.

In recent weeks, as he’s been working around the release of Wildness, Snow Patrol’s first album in seven years, Lightbody has started to talk for the first time about the mental health problems which have plagued him for years. (“I didn’t talk about anything; nobody knew, the band didn’t know.”) Last year, after 12 months sober, came another key moment.

“Last summer,” he says, “I thought I’d be relieved to get the album done. We’d just finished. But I wasn’t. I was devastated. I’d opened a place in my psyche and I didn’t know how to shut the door. It was like the ark of the covenant was opened [from Raiders Of The Lost Ark] and there were melting faces left and right and I didn’t know how to shut the thing down. So instead of talking to somebody I tried to shut myself out. Let my own face melt. And the band knew something and they flew from London and arrived at the door and I broke down and told them everything.

“I have a depressive personality that has no relationship with reality. I could be having the best time on the surface and yet my depression goes, ‘You’re still a cunt. Don’t forget that. I’m dragging you down into the ink and the dirt and the darkness’. I could be playing to 15,000 people and three hours later be on a hotel room crying on the floor. That’s happened a bunch of times. The depression and the success have no relation to each other. It’s just part of me. I’ve learned that rather than running from it, which you can never really do – you can never run away from yourself – is you have and turn and face it and look it in the eye and say I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

And so he went home. Back to Northern Ireland, to North Down where he was brought up. It’s the place he was desperate to leave in 1994, when he ran to Dundee to start university, to start the band, to start years of chipping away with no success. Then he wrote Run, and everything changed.

It’s easy, given their time away, to forget just how huge Snow Patrol were for a period from the mid-to-late Noughties. Nobody, really, was bigger.

The song Chasing Cars, from fourth album Eyes Open, was picked up for US hit TV show Grey’s Anatomy and propelled them to huge fame. Lightbody moved to Santa Monica around 2009 (“Soon as my feet hit the sand in Santa Monica something just hit and I thought, I want to live here”).

Recently he claimed he’d moved back to Northern Ireland because the band were getting ready to work again and he needed to be near them. But it feels like the truth is a little more complicated.

It’s a time in Northern Ireland as well when it feels like we’re at a bit of a crossroads again.

“You’re right. There are quite a few reasons. My dad isn’t well, my mum isn’t coping very well and my niece is going to be 11 in July. I’ve missed most of her life living in LA.

“And I missed home. It’s a time in Northern Ireland as well when it feels like we’re at a bit of a crossroads again. I felt a bit of calling back here. Not that I figure I can help in any way, but I certainly won’t feel connected if I’m 5,000 miles away. I wanted to reconnect.”

We’re meeting today in the Crawfordsburn Inn, the picture-postcard hotel not far from Gary’s shorefront home, overlooking Belfast Lough.

It feels timely. We meet on the 20th anniversary of a concert in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall, hosted by U2, that helped deliver a huge YES vote in the referendum for the Good Friday Agreement. In a nation where defiant NOs had been the lingua franca, a YES was significant. A political statement and a cleansing.

On that day, John Hume and David Trimble were ushered onstage by Bono, a man with a keen eye for a moment. U2 sang Don’t Let Me Down. Ash were there too, being young and hopeful. Twenty years on, as Lightbody says, Northern Ireland is at a bit of crossroads. And he’s found his way home.

The album, Wildness, is worth the wait. If Snow Patrol had touched on themes of running and movement in the past, Wildness has a leitmotif of finally settling. The word ‘home’ is laced through several songs. Two tracks in particular illustrate what Snow Patrol can really do – the anthemic reach of the huge, wondrous opening track Life on Earth (a track that took Gary five years to complete), and the intimacy of What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?, a piece with just Gary on piano, a heartbreaker written for a friend going through a divorce.

The song Soon marks another significant theme. It deals with Lightbody’s father Jack’s battle with Alzheimer’s. It’s a simple builder, full of grace notes and sadness. There is something quietly heroic in it. The video, filmed in Lightbody’s apartment, sees him and his father watching old home movies his dad recorded through the years. As well as the sadness over what his father is losing, there is an understanding of a farewell to lost youth, that the hopefulness of that other country is worth revisiting for both of them.

I have a lot of respect for him so I wanted to honour him, but at the same time I also have a lot of guilt for being away for most of my adult life.

“I love my dad,” he says. “I have a lot of respect for him so I wanted to honour him, but at the same time I also have a lot of guilt for being away for most of my adult life. I don’t just mean LA, I mean Glasgow, London, or on tour constantly. And there is probably a place in my head where I go when I’m feeling homesick and that is both a place of calm and nostalgia and also a place of guilt and some shame.

“I’ve felt I’ve been running away, most of the time from myself. So (he pauses)… some of the home references are me feeling disconnected rather than connected…. feeling like I’d never really found a home. I never truly felt at home when I was growing up in Northern Ireland. Then I left and never really felt at home anywhere else. And then I moved back to Northern Ireland and now I do feel at home here, but that has also coincided with me feeling at home inside my own body. Which was the whole problem the whole time. I wasn’t comfortable with myself. I didn’t like myself. So you have to figure that out before you can feel at home anywhere.”

The band’s influence and legacy goes beyond their own work. They’ve helped shape the sounds that have become pervasive in post-millennial pop. Lightbody and band member Johnny McDaid have written with, among others Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and One Direction. Snow Patrol took Sheeran on the road in the States in 2011, helping him break through. They remain close.

“Between myself and Johnny McDaid we’ve written a lot of things for other pop acts, him more than me,” he says. “I would say Ed came fully formed from his first album. He’d done the groundwork. All the grafting that you need to do, when you’re a young band. He busked his ass off from the age of 15 on the streets of London, sleeping on his mate’s couch. He had turned up to gigs and said to promoters can you give me 15 minutes after the doors open. And promoters say aye. That’s how he started. He grafted harder and still does to this day – harder than anyone I know.”

Sheeran is returning the favour, taking Snow Patrol on an American stadium tour this autumn.

Refusing to accept Snow Patrol as fountainheads of a sound, Lightbody says they are more like Zelig, “probably bystanders”.

One got away, though. Mutual friend James Corden introduced Lightbody to Adele.

“It happened to be a birthday of somebody that James and Adele knew.… and I sat down with her and she said when are we going to do [a song]. We did two days – Adele, Johnny McDaid and me – the bones of three really amazing fucking songs. But we never got round to finishing it. And then the album came out and obviously we weren’t on it.”

While his own album has just come out, there is already pressure to get busy on the next. Longtime producer, friend and mentor Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee has been in touch (“he says we need to get cracking on the next one”).

For now, ahead of their own arena tour in the winter, Lightbody is learning to cope, listening to podcasts (“Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks is my favourite one”) and Bon Iver (“I think he’s the finest songwriter alive”) and working things out.

“Me, now not drinking, I like myself but I’m socially awkward. I’d rather be sitting with bandmates, my family. I’m 41. I know what I want.”

And that is?

“Peace. I want to make sure that every day of my life I take a moment and realise everything is calmer. I’ve learned how to meditate, learned how to do qigong. Learned a whole load of practices that I do every day. They mitigate the madness. The greatest thing I ever did for my own emotional wellbeing was to talk.”

And if we went back 20 years as this all started, and said here are the successes, here are the demands it’ll make on you mentally, personally, physically – would you have taken it?

“I would have taken it for half the successes. I can’t believe what happened to us. I still can’t believe when I look back at it, at everything that is successful that has been good. At everything that is still happening. It’s a dream. It’s a bloody dream.”

Wildness is out now. @pauldmcnamee

#snow patrol #gary lightbody #article #news

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Thursday, September 9, 2021

Americans warier of US government surveillance: AP-NORC poll (AP) As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Americans increasingly balk at intrusive government surveillance in the name of national security, and only about a third believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new poll. More Americans also regard the threat from domestic extremism as more worrisome than that of extremism abroad, the poll found. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that support for surveillance tools aimed at monitoring conversations taking place outside the country, once seen as vital in the fight against attacks, has dipped in the last decade. In particular, 46% of Americans say they oppose the U.S. government responding to threats against the nation by reading emails sent between people outside of the U.S. without a warrant, as permitted under law for purposes of foreign intelligence collection. That’s compared to just 27% who are in favor. The poll found bipartisan concerns about the scope of surveillance and the expansive intelligence collection tools that U.S. authorities have at their disposal. The expansion in government eavesdropping powers over the last 20 years has coincided with a similar growth in surveillance technology across all corners of American society, including traffic cameras, smart TVs and other devices that contribute to a near-universal sense of being watched.

Young Sikhs still struggle with post-Sept. 11 discrimination (AP) Sikh entrepreneur Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed at his Arizona gas station four days after the Sept. 11 attacks by a man who declared he was “going to go out and shoot some towel-heads” and mistook him for an Arab Muslim. Young Sikh Americans still struggle a generation later with the discrimination that 9/11 unleashed against their elders and them, ranging from school bullying to racial profiling to hate crimes—especially against males, who typically wear beards and turbans to demonstrate their faith. Young Sikhs often face bullying by classmates who try to yank off their turbans or mock them as “Osama’s nephew” or “Saddam Hussein.” They often struggle with the Sikh philosophy of “chardi kala,” which calls for steadfast optimism in the face of oppression. Tejpaul Bainiwal, 25, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside, is studying the history of Sikhs who first began arriving in the U.S. in the late 1800s. “One hundred years ago we were labeled Hindus, then Saudi Arabians, and when Iran was in the American eye we were called ‘the ayotollah.’” Media images of turbaned and bearded Taliban leaders who recently regained control of Afghanistan with the withdrawal of U.S. troops have made Sikh Americans nervous again.

Silicon Valley finds remote work is easier to begin than end (AP) Technology companies that led the charge into remote work as the pandemic unfurled are confronting a new challenge: how, when and even whether they should bring long-isolated employees back to offices that have been designed for teamwork. “I thought this period of remote work would be the most challenging year-and-half of my career, but it’s not,” said Brent Hyder, the chief people officer for business software maker Salesforce and its roughly 65,000 employees worldwide. “Getting everything started back up the way it needs to be is proving to be even more difficult.” According to Laura Boudreau, a Columbia University assistant economics professor who studies workplace issues, “We have moved beyond the theme of remote work being a temporary thing.” The longer the pandemic has stretched on, she says, the harder it’s become to tell employees to come back to the office, particularly full time. Because they typically revolve around digital and online products, most tech jobs are tailor made for remote work. Yet most major tech companies insist that their employees should be ready to work in the office two or three days each week after the pandemic is over. The main reason: Tech companies have long believed that employees clustered together in a physical space will swap ideas and spawn innovations that probably wouldn’t have happened in isolation. That’s one reason tech titans have poured billions of dollars into corporate campuses interspersed with alluring common areas meant to lure employees out of their cubicles and into “casual collisions” that turn into brainstorming sessions.

16 die as floods swamp public hospital in central Mexico (AP) Torrential rains in central Mexico suddenly flooded a hospital early Tuesday, killing 16 patients, possibly due to the loss of oxygen equipment as the power went out, the national Social Security Institute said. A video posted on the agency’s social media feed said about 40 other patients survived as waters rose swiftly in downtown Tula, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Mexico City, and flooded the public hospital around 6 a.m. Video recorded inside the hospital showed knee-deep water as staff frantically tried to move patients.

At Brazil rallies, Bolsonaro deepens rift with Supreme Court (AP) Tens of thousands of supporters of embattled right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro heeded his call and turned out at rallies Tuesday as he stepped up his attacks on Brazil’s Supreme Court and threatened to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis. Bolsonaro has been locked in a feud with the high court, in particular a justice who has jailed several of the president’s supporters for allegedly financing, organizing or inciting violence or anti-democratic acts, or disseminating false information. Bolsonaro got a rousing reception from demonstrators in the capital, Brasilia, and in Sao Paulo, as he lit into the Supreme Court and Justice Alexandre de Moraes for making what he characterized as political arrests. He declared he will no longer abide by rulings from de Moraes, who will assume the presidency of the nation’s electoral tribunal next year, when Bolsonaro will seek reelection. “Any decision from Mr. Alexandre de Moraes, this president will no longer comply with. The patience of our people has run out,” Bolsonaro said. “For us, he no longer exists.”

Bataclan trial begins (Le Monde) Beginning on Wednesday, the French will spend months reliving a night from hell: the attacks of November 13, 2015, which plunged Paris into the abyss of mass terrorism. Nine months of hearings are scheduled to take place before the Special Assize Court of Paris—a courtroom inside the Palais de Justice, the busiest appellate court in France located on the Parisian island of Ile de la Cité. Exceptional security measures will set the scene for a judicial event to match the barbarous night concerned. Twenty defendants, 13 of whom come from the jihadist cell responsible for the operation, will answer for attacks that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more during three brutal hours at the Stade de France stadium, the iconic Bataclan concert hall and at the patios of nearby bars and cafés.

Kremlin critic decries doppelgangers at St Petersburg election (Reuters) Boris Vishnevsky, a veteran opposition politician, was gearing up to run in elections this month when he learned that two of his opponents would not only have the same name and surname as him, but even the same facial hair in their official portraits. The 65-year-old seeking to renew his seat in St Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly accuses authorities of fielding “spoiler” candidates to confuse his voters and reduce his vote haul. He said the two other Boris Vishnevskys had changed their names and surnames, and even altered their appearances in their election photographs to look more like him. He posted a photograph of the three of them on Twitter. Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova condemned the incident as an “embarrassment and an outrage” in comments to Kommersant FM radio. But she said they would still be able to take part in the vote because of the wording of the law.

Hong Kong police arrest organizers of Tiananmen vigil (Guardian) Hong Kong police arrest senior members of the group that organized the city’s annual Tiananmen Square massacre vigil, accusing them of foreign collusion. The arrests early Wednesday come amid an increasing crackdown on political, professional and civil society groups accused of unpatriotic conduct or national security offences.

Fire kills 41 inmates, 80 hurt at crowded Indonesian prison (AP) A massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison near Indonesia’s capital early Wednesday, killing at least 41 inmates, two of them foreigners serving drug sentences, and injuring 80 others. Most of the 41 killed were drug convicts, including two men from South Africa and Portugal, but a terrorism convict and a murderer were also killed, Indonesia’s Justice and Human Rights minister Yasona Laoly told reporters. He expressed his deep condolences for the family of the victims and pledged to provide the best treatment for injured victims.

Taliban form government of old guard members (AP) The Taliban on Tuesday announced an all-male interim government for Afghanistan stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule from the 1990s and the 20-year battle against the U.S.-led coalition, a move that seems unlikely to win the international support the new leaders desperately need to avoid an economic meltdown. Appointed to the key post of interior minister was Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head and is believed to still be holding at least one American hostage. He headed the feared Haqqani network that is blamed for many deadly attacks and kidnappings. Drawn mostly from Afghanistan’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, the Cabinet’s lack of representation from other ethnic groups also seems certain to hobble its support from abroad.

Cargo bikes (CityLab) Cargo bikes are in high demand the world over as more and more companies try to efficiently tackle the last mile of delivery. Vans are often stuck inefficiently circling a block for a convenient place to park and unload—one study found this accounts for up to 28 percent of a van driver’s day—where the more nimble cargo bikes can manage that easily. As a result, a London study found cargo bikes could deliver seven packages per hour compared to four for a van in a similar situation. About $900 million worth of cargo bikes will be sold this year—Europe, and especially Germany loves them—and all that’s needed for the U.S. to follow suit is, in many places like New York, legalization of the bikes.

#headlines #news

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zdbztumble · 6 years

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Ah yes...this one...

Well, I was writing posts back when the Japanese release was imminent about how spoilers painted M20 as overstuffed, that I wasn’t happy about swapping in two new characters for the OS cast, etc., so I obviously didn’t come to my viewing without baggage. Still, I kept as open a mind as I could about I Choose You.

And there’s credit to be given here. Aside from the usual stellar animation - which may be at its best to-date in this flick - I Choose You is, ironically enough for a film that’s part-retelling, different. Volcanion laid bare just how stale the typical pattern these movies follow had become, so even a look back to the start of the series represents a welcome break from routine. And the divergence from those early days comes fairly early in the film. Even having been spoiled on the broadstrokes of the plot, I didn’t feel like I knew exactly how things would play out, which was another pleasant change of pace.

FROM HERE, THERE BE SPOILERS

And those first few scenes, telling an abridged version of the first episode, are delightful. This is the most personality Pikachu’s shown in quite a while - cheeky, mischievous, even bratty. Voice acting and animation work together beautifully to sell that side of him, and it’s easily one of the highlights of the film. Ash is given some great lines unique to this telling (”There’s something wrong with this Pokemon,” Oak tells him. “That’s alright - I was late, so there’s something wrong with me, too!”), and if you overlook the absence of a certain redhead, this is about as nice a retelling of Ash and Pikachu’s first meeting as you could ask for.

I Choose You earns credit on another score - it actually has Ash as the protagonist. It’s still shocking to me how rarely the main character of the anime gets the through-line, or even an arc, in these movies, but he certainly does here. The plot isn’t as laser-focused on his and Pikachu’s friendship as some of the comments by staff would have you believe, but I wouldn’t say that’s bad in and of itself. Reviving the “Chosen One” angle for Ash was something that wasn’t spoiled for me, and seemed appropriate for a story featuring the second member of the Legendary Duo.

And there are Easter eggs aplenty here for hardcore fans. I suspect there are many more that went over my head, me still being so far behind on the series.

But these highlights can’t compensate for all the defects. I Choose You is a seriously flawed film, in ways that could be predicted from the synopsis, and in unexpected ways as well.

Everyone who’s reported that the film is overstuffed is correct, but that doesn’t hurt the film in the way one might think. An overstuffed plot will often feel overbearing and unrelenting - too much going on for there to be any focus. Diancie is a good example of this from the Pokemon canon. This is the odd overstuffed film where, too often, it feels like nothing is happening. And I blame this on the way the film structures the middle section. After the abridged first episode section, the movie falls into what I can best describe as the almost-montage. An example: Ash and Pikachu are battling the Celadon Gym, but instead of leading into a montage of Gym Battles, we go into Ash calling his mom at the Pokemon Center. Or, when Ash and his friends are battling some Trainers after getting together - instead of leading into a montage of traveling and battling, it leads into an encounter with Cross. Time and again in the middle of the film, vignettes that feel like they should be part of a sequence instead segue into scenes that introduce plot elements. This isn’t an inherently wrong way to plot the film out, but these elements never get followed up on immediately; they just peter out into another vignette, which in turn leads to a different element. The effect, then, is one of momentum getting lost over and over again, and nothing substantive happening until the last third of the movie. It makes watching the middle section extremely tedious.

Worse, many of the elements introduced don’t have much of a purpose for being here. The abridged recap of Ash’s Butterfree’s story is probably the worst example. It’s devoid of any of the rough times or more quirky, humorous moments that played out in the series, it’s so compressed that it’s impossible for their departure to carry the impact it did in the original, and it’s completely unconnected from everything else in the film. It’s a lushly-animated abridgment of a well-known OS arc, just for the sake of having it.

But while Butterfree’s inclusion is probably the most disparate meaningless plot thread, the Legendary Beasts are the most frustrating for me, because there was a lot of potential there. Exploring the origin story of those Pokemon and how they tie in to Ho-Oh was a wonderful concept, and Entei at least provides a decent action scene. But it all amounts to nothing. The Beasts do not in any meaningful way affect Ash’s journey to find Ho-Oh, and their connection to him only serves as a neat bit of trivia. Like Butterfee, they’re just shown for the sake of showing some Legendary Pokemon - Legendaries that had already been used in previous films.

I Choose You also struggles with forced moments. I know some people were moved by how Ash dismisses Pikachu in his moment of frustration after losing to Cross, but I found that scene a dreadful piece of writing. Ash’s reaction to that loss - especially compared with how OS Ash would’ve reacted - is rather muted. It isn’t nearly strong enough to suggest that it’s eating away inside of him and tempting him down Cross’s path. This in turn makes the rest of the group’s impatience with him seem needlessly harsh, which makes Ash’s continued muted reaction seem like a failure to move his character forward, which makes his comment to Pikachu a random, unearned moment of anger rather than a significant moment of weakness springing organically from his character. It takes a lot of the impact away from the subsequent dream sequence, because Ash never feels like he’s fallen low enough to have that sort of nightmare or take away any lesson that he really needed.

And then...there are the new guys.

Let’s get this out of the way up-front: being upset that Brock and Misty aren’t in this movie is a pet peeve. In and of itself, creating new characters to be Ash’s first friends on his journey is not a writing flaw. And Sorrel, at least, is very much his own character, not a cheap stand-in or replacement for Brock. He has an interesting personality and a shockingly dark backstory. Verity is a less successful character. A tomboy with a Water-Type who gets into a bickering/teasing relationship with Ash right off the bat and has family she wants to prove something to - she does feel like a replacement, and a rip-off, of Misty, with a bit of Dawn thrown in. (Side note: if her mother really is meant to be Cynthia, then that photo could’ve looked more like her.)

But the thing is: both of them are expendable. If you took them out of the film, Ash would still get the Rainbow Feather from Ho-Oh and be on his way. You could say that he wouldn’t get the background on Ho-Oh that Sorrel provides, but old man Bonji could’ve done those honors. Neither of their backstories factor into anything in the main plot, they don’t have arcs for themselves; they’re just there to be Ash’s friends, provide some brief character moments, and drop exposition now and again. I would have rather this been Ash’s solo journey than have two new characters with some potential but no payoff, but if there had to be traveling companions...with all the other homages to the OS, why not use two characters from the OS? Two characters well-loved by much of the audience and who played an important role in the show’s history, I might add.

I don’t have much to say about Cross. He’s what I imagine many fans think Paul is, if you took away any humanizing characteristics. Cross’s turn to the side of right at the end was an arbitrary change that didn’t really sell as organic character growth to me. Leaving him as the villain would have been preferable to the sudden heel turn by Marshadow, something that felt very much as if the staff felt obligated to have a big battle with a Mythical Pokemon. It’s a point where the old formula rears its ugly, tired head. As is Ash’s not-death, a concept that should be retired permanently. At this point, the only way Ash dying can have any impact anymore is if he really dies.

Oh, and the TRio were there. They were a waste of screentime. Nothing else to say.

All in all, I can’t say the film isn’t without its charms. And I do hope anyone who’s refused to see it thus far over Brock and Misty’s absence will give it a chance. But if it isn’t the worst of these films, it’s far from the best, and outside its opening moments is a very flawed if well-meaning effort at a 20th anniversary.

5/10

(You may have noticed I didn’t comment on The Speech. Frankly, I don’t see what’s so offensive about it. It was a dumb idea poorly executed, but nowhere near the low point for me.)

#critique #commentary #pokefilm #pokemon #M20 #Pokemon the movie: i choose you!#film school training at work #z's crits

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asterinjapan · 6 years

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A Magical Evening

Good evening!!!!!!! Well, it’s more like night now, but as you might have noticed from my use of exclamation marks, I am too excited to go to sleep yet, haha. I don’t have a lot of pictures from today, but I also don’t care, because…

Today was the day of KOKIA’s concert ‘The Christmas Season with the Orchestra’, and as a long-time KOKIA fan (10 years and counting), I was super excited to attend and this is in fact the main reason I’m in Tokyo right now. So let me tell you all about it!

This will be a long report, because it was a very exciting (and long) day. Just a head’s up before you decide to press Read More, haha.

EDIT: since I share this post on a KOKIA site, I have edited it to only refer to the concert (song by song). I’ll make a second post about the rest of the day and make sure it’ll get posted on this day as well (I can backdate my entries).

I hope you’re not hoping for an unbiased review here, because I kind of love KOKIA a lot, haha.

The orchestra started with an Overture, which consisted of Have yourself a merry little Christmas, smoothly transitioning in a gorgeous arrangement of KOKIA’s song Anshin no Naka, to finally roll into Arigatou…, which was the first song KOKIA wrote herself (she’s written almost all of her own songs ever since). That alone was awesome, because the arrangement was lovely, and how cool must it be for KOKIA to have a full orchestra play this song which she wrote almost twenty years ago? (Her 20th anniversary is coming up this April.)

KOKIA now arrived on stage and immediately started with Ookina senaka (‘broad back’), a song I haven’t heard from her in quite a while. It took me a while to recognize it, as the orchestra gives it a brand new feeling and just, wow. This orchestra is amazing, as is KOKIA of course. What an amazing combination.

The next song was a Christmas song, Seinaru yoru ni~Holy night, her own song from her Christmas album Christmas Gift. The orchestra was equipped with bells to set the mood, and it’s a very pretty song overall, working us up into a Christmas mood for the next song: Christmas Medley! This song is also from that album, but it is completely rearranged and the songs in the medley changed too. Going by memory, I heard have yourself a merry little Christmas, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Let it snow, I’ll be home for Christmas, Akahana no tonakai (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer in Japanese), Jingle bells, and The Christmas song. The transition from one into another was so smooth (my only complaint about the CD version is how one song basically stops before the next one picks up, which isn’t exactly a medley). I really loved it, and it was super fun to hear Rudolph in Japanese (I think it’s one of the first songs I learnt in Japanese, ever). So cute! Jingle Bells was very awesome because the orchestra threw in Joy to the World, in full power, and then it blended into Jingle Bells. So that was really surprising and so cool. The Christmas Song was lovely already, but then it ended in this big, overwhelming ending, wow.

Up next was Family Tree from her album I Found You. This was quite the change, because the song is in Japanese and KOKIA just – easily overpowered an entire orchestra with just her voice? Wow. This was such a strong performance, with some pitch changes compared to the CD (and previous live) arrangement, making it feel brand new again. Her opera roots became more evident here.

Next up, a song I hadn’t heard in a while either: Chiisana uta (‘small song’). This is. Not a small song at all, haha, since it’s pretty long on the album (6 minutes? Maybe 7? There was a 7 minute long song on the album, I know that). Today, though? After I realized what song it was, I just felt overwhelmed again. The swelling of the music was just amazing here, indeed going small in places before coming back in full force. I fell in love with this song all over again.

Next up, percussion picked up a bell. Then the harp struck a couple of chords. Next up, a lone flute. What song was this going to be? It turned out to be Oto no tabibito (‘Sound traveller’), a song with instrumentals that feel very traditional. Even with more western instruments, the orchestra replicated the feeling amazingly well, and once again KOKIA gave a powerful performance with this wonderful song.

KOKIA sometimes took the time between her songs to talk a little. I think the first time was after the medley, and the second time was here. She talked a bit about the Christmas season, and her gratefulness for people coming over, and then she transitioned to Arigatou… (‘thank you’), which we got a sneak-peek of in the overture. And just… wow. This was the first song of KOKIA I ever heard along with Shiroi yuki (‘white snow’, which seems awfully appropriate given the season and the fact I keep getting sent pictures from the Netherlands under a snowy cover tonight, haha). As mentioned, it was the first song she wrote herself, and she’s rearranged it several times. It’s not the first time I heard it live, but it was the first time I heard it live with an orchestra backing her up. The flow in music was absolutely beautiful, and I started to tear up a little.

Of course, that was when all the lights went on for intermission, pff. I quickly went to the restroom and then returned to hastily type out the track list on my phone and my impressions. (I was super proud I knew the entire list from memory still, and then it turned out that the set list was printed on one of the photos in the lobby… which I entirely overlooked. Oops.)

Speaking of the intermission, the harpist had stayed behind to tune her instrument. She took almost the entire break too – I feel her pain, haha. It’s a lovely instrument, and featured prominently tonight to my delight, but yeah, the tuning… Such fun.

The rest of the orchestra had returned by now, barring the pianist and the conductor. Which was kinda odd, because it wasn’t the first violinist who arrived last now, and doesn’t an orchestra need a conductor period? However, KOKIA re-entered the stage and the lights went off – except on KOKIA and the pianist. KOKIA is amazing with an orchestra, but her going back to her core with just a piano by her side is always magical. The song turned out to be Kasa o kashite agete (‘please lend me your umbrella’), which is a song I must confess I don’t listen to very often. (It’s only on one album, which is a live registration of a very emotional concert.) It’s a wonderful song, however, and stripped back to only KOKIA’s voice and piano it was so pure and soft. It didn’t sound particularly fragile, but I still got the feeling it was a bubble – sparkling and beautiful, but thin and likely to burst the moment you touch it.

The next song was Faraway, which is a B-side to a single and actually quite the slow song, so it hasn’t made as much an impression on me as it’s A-side (Hikari o atsumete (‘gathering lights’), for those interested). Now, however? Suddenly power had seeped into this song, and I hadn’t realized it could even sound like that. Gone was the slow, soft and dreamy song I remembered, it was more like a power ballad. Whoa.

Next was Atatakai basho (‘cozy place’), which is another gentle song. It’s from her album aigakikoeru, which was also released in France (actually ahead of the Japanese release) and the first album I physically owned, and this is one of my favourite tracks. Once again, it was completely rearranged, and my notes call this ‘movie-esque’. And it does feel like a movie soundtrack all packed into one song – introduction, main conflict, climax, resolution. This orchestra has done soundtracks before (I own two more albums with game music covered by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra), and it definitely gave off this feeling. I loved it. KOKIA showed off her powerful voice again and I was blown away.

Next up, usaghi (‘rabbit’). This is an odd little song in that it’s always sounded a bit – French? To me. I can’t really put my finger on it, but it’s pretty fast-paced and definitely feels exotic compared to the rest of the album, mostly due to the instrumentals. The new arrangement gave it a new, fresh feeling, but I can’t really say what changed for me (aside from the instruments, obviously). The refrain still came off a little French, but once again, also more movie-like. Dang, it’s only been a couple of hours and I already have a hard time retelling, haha. KOKIA does really like France though, so I’m not stretching it super far!

There was still a song from the overture we hadn’t heard yet, and it was Anshin no naka (‘in peace’). I feel like I keep repeating myself, but the magic of KOKIA’s vocals and a full orchestra… it’s just amazing. I already really love this song (…which loses its impact if I keep saying so every other song or so, but ssh), and I wanted to wrap it up and keep it close.

After that, KOKIA held a little talk again and mentioned her next song: moment ~ima o ikiru~ (‘live in the moment’). I’m very glad she did, because I need to be emotionally prepared for this song. The album moment came out during a time I really needed it, and this really picked me up when I needed it most. As a result, that entire album hits close, and I was already reduced to tears when she sang it live during the first time I had the privilege to attend a KOKIA concert back in 2014. She outdid that performance here. This song was a victory march – it started with an upbeat riff you often hear in the ‘let’s go end this battle’ songs in movies and musicals, which continued all the way until the very end. The orchestra came on powerful and just swelled and swelled until every single instrument was participating, including the big percussion and the big gong. KOKIA still managed to overpower the instruments, her voice amazing and strong and holding the long tone in the song for about 20 seconds (I tried counting, but I was – pretty emotional by this point). She went back to sounding so very small and near fragile, though she still kept her underlying strength, before it swelled up again and finally quieted down entirely, but not before the riff had the last word. I’m not entirely sure if this was the song that ended with a harp solo, but it might as well be, I was already in tears anyway.

After her final words, KOKIA sang one more song: Eiga no you na koi deshita (‘it was a love like in the movies’). Which, yeah, sounded exactly like a movie song. Actually, maybe it was this song with the harp solo. It was so sweet and lovely, I wanted to give it a hug. (And KOKIA too while I was at it.)

KOKIA took her final bows, left the stage, came back, left again with the conductor, came back again for the final bows this time for real! … Only to reappear once more, haha. After that, the orchestra also packed up, and it was time to leave the hall.

I barely had any time to recover (especially from moment), because I still had a piece of paper burning in my pocket! We queued up immediately, although the line for the autograph session was pretty long already. I was in a prime view spot to see KOKIA arrive, maybe a meter and a half removed from me. I was – kind of shaking at this point. It’s really surreal to be a fan for so long, invest so much time and energy in running a fan site and talking to others about her. It’s almost like I know her personally (I’ve been translating her blog consistently for over six years now, enough to easily grasp her words during her concert even if my brain is woefully behind on Japanese vocabulary. I am pretty attuned to her way with words at this point). I owe her a lot. Actually, I wrote her a letter saying so, and I’d prepared a little bag with said letter, some candy from the Netherlands and two small gifts. I asked, and I was allowed to give it to her, so I got excited over that already, haha.

Finally, I made it to the front of the line, where I got introduced. She shook my hand, and I think she thanked me for my work on the blog? And then she shook my hand again? I was reduced to just saying ‘thank you’ in Japanese over and over again and I did manage to stutter out I brought her a gift bag from the Netherlands, and I also did eventually remember to ask her to sign my booklet for me, haha. I’m typing this and I can still hardly believe I actually met her, and shook her hand, and she was so nice and kind! She must have seen hundreds of people face to face today, but she chatted for a little with everyone who wanted to, and she actually remembers people by face and name.

We stuck around long enough for KOKIA to wrap up, and she walked right past us and thanked us for coming (in English too), and she’s just – so nice. Ahh. Never meet your heroes, they say, but I kinda disagree here.

I’m just so happy, guys. I got to attend an amazing concert, I got to meet KOKIA (which is still so surreal and I’m never washing this hand again – metaphorically at least), I made new friends, and I just. I’m just flailing my hands wildly right now, haha.

I’m sorry if this entry was a little incoherent and a little (very) long, but since this was the whole reason I went back to Japan again so soon, I hope you can forgive me.

Gosh, this was so, so worth it. I’m so happy and I keep staring at my signed booklet, it’s actually happened.

Only now KOKIA’s anniversary concert is April 29-30… I don’t think I can return again so soon, haha.

But KOKIA, if you’re reading this, thank you so very, very much for an unforgettable evening. It was a privilege to actually meet you and express my gratitude face to face, even though that was pretty much the only thing I told you, haha. Your music means so much to me that I don’t think I can express it in words properly, although I tried to do so in my letter. I can genuinely say I’ll always be a fan, and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have seen you perform live on multiple occasions now. Thank you for allowing me to meet many new and wonderful people, today and in earlier times, and for sharing your music with the world.

#tokyo 2017 #report: tokyo 2017 #report: KOKIA concert #report

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mattbrothersscriptwriter · 6 years

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My Top 20 Films of 2017 - Part Two

Ok, so about ten minutes ago I finished watching my last 2017 film of the year. For my FULL list - all 127 films watched in order of preference - jump on over to my Letterboxd page: https://letterboxd.com/matt_bro/list/films-of-the-year-2017/

Alright, top 10:

10. Logan

In a time when a lot of people still bemoan the existence of so many comic book movies (occasionally, with a point) this has been a stellar year for them. Marvel’s triple whammy of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spiderman Homecoming and Thor Ragnarok were all excellent, heartfelt, fun knockouts and Wonder Woman was a terrific showcase for both Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins (not to mention hugely important in its own right). Only Justice League really fell back on old tired habits and resulted in a bizarre mashup of tone and purpose and featured the single most damning piece of CGI buffoonery ever conceived in Henry Cavill’s ‘we’ll fix it in post’ deleted moustache. That really is one for the ages.

But I could never have foreseen the power and beauty of something like Logan, a near-perfect capper to a spinoff trilogy that began with the God-awful Wolverine Origins. It’s strengths come from it’s convictions – this isn’t an episodic story servicing a franchise, this is a true stand alone character piece, focusing on the rarest of things – an actual ending to a beloved, previously untouchable, immortal superhero. Played out as a tragic western with claws, the film beautifully champions the importance of family and love, seen (at last) through the eyes of those that never dreamed they would experience it, let alone fight for it. With some fantastic action set pieces to boot too, this one really has its cake and its eat and is also a real sight to behold – I saw it for a second time in it’s gorgeous black and white ‘Logan Noir’ cut and every frame is a revelation. Huge props to Patrick Stewart too, delivering a devastating performance of a character is has also lived with for the past SEVENTEEN years.

9. Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

This film is a heartbreaker. My God. Definitely the most surprising cinema-going experience I had this year. I went with a friend of mine and by the time the credits were rolling, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house – best encapsulated by a burly scouser sat behind us who was openly saying “Fuck me, didn’t expect that for a Sunday afternoon. Jesus! How bloody brilliant was that!? Got any tissues?’.

Focusing on the later years of Hollywood starlet Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening on Oscar sweeping form), it finds her semi-washed up and treading the boards in London where she meets and falls for Peter Gallagher (Jamie Bell – never better than this) another actor, half her age. The tenderness and straight forwardness of their pairing is so refreshing, never making an issue or point about the older woman/younger man dynamic unless directly challenged by other characters (including Gloria’s bratty sister Joy) or themselves. The most effective emotional beats of this film aren’t signposted and drawn out for Oscar clip schmaltzyness but instead hit you in a sudden burst of passionate regret; hurtful words said in anger or defence – truly proving that the most harmful things you can say to someone you love are all too easy to let slip out before you’ve had a chance to think about what you’re saying. But the damage is done.

The film-making here is exceptional too. What could have been a rather dry biopic is given such momentum through brilliantly executed scene transitions and a flashback-enhanced narrative that keeps us embroiled in the present day scenes of Gloria succumbing to cancer whilst we watch their initial courtships and brutal arguments from the months and years leading up to it. The supporting cast that includes Julie Walters, back as Bell’s mother and Stephen Graham as his brother are brilliant but this is Bening/Bell’s movie and they knock it out of the park.

8. Baby Driver

My big birthday blowout screening of the year, following last year’s Aliens 30th anniversary showing, Baby Driver did not let me down. All the usual energy, narrative foreshadowing and tightly controlled construction you’ve come to expect from an Edgar Wright flick blown out onto a much bigger and more confident scale. The genius pairing of getaway driver crime heist flick and vehicular musical allows for some hugely inventive set pieces, from the opening police chase set to Bellbottoms by the John Spencer Blues Explosion to the car-on-car parking lot duel with Queen’s Brighton Rock echoing through the tunnels.

Ansel Elgort delivers a breakout turn and everyone from Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx and Kevin somebody-or-other are having a ball playing bad. The romance with waitress Lily James initially feels a little under cooked but it all plays into the escapist fairytale of the action and seeing them dance together in a laundromat whilst sharing headphones is one of this year’s purest joys.

7. Get Out

Where It soaked up much of the straight spooky horror acclaim this year, Get Out walked a much more tantalising and complex line between thriller, social drama, satire, comedy and horror – and pulled it all off effortlessly. Jordan Peele has long had grand cinematic aspirations as evidenced in some of the larger scale sketches in his fantastic show Key and Peele but this clearly represents everything he wanted to say and do in a debut feature. I think the odds of so perfectly nailing your voice and intentions in your very first film is astronomical but damn, he must be proud, not only of the film itself but the cultural reach, impact and resonance it has had with audiences.

Daniel Kaluuya is excellent as the everyman battling his own (rational) fears and paranoia before his instincts slowly become the domineering voice in the back of his head. Trust in oneself is the saving grace here and it’s great to see an array of other ‘traditional’ characters for this genre twist the knife and reveal their true colours. The “Rose, where are my keys” turning point is perhaps the tightest I’ve gripped the arm of my chair all year. And the eventual climax is one of the best examples of subverting expected genre tropes. Brilliant.

6. Raw

Speaking of confident debuts, Julia Ducournau’s is equally astounding. Not for the faint hearted, this queasy, cannibalistic coming of age tale is a near perfect slice of fucked up fever dream. It follows a young vegetarian attending veterinary college who is forced to eat rabbit meat in a sick hazing ritual – one that her fellow student and older sister has clearly already experienced. Slowly but surely, a triggering of her animalistic appetite grows, coinciding both with her own first steps into a sexual awakening as well as a growing sense of unease that something isn’t right in her family to begin with.

The plot takes some nutty turns, not least in the last few minutes, but everything works; from the gorgeous imagery to the tonal juggling to the assured performances. This would make an excellent entry in an ‘arthouse does horror subgenre’ triple bill, doing for cannibals what A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night does for vampires and The Witch does for... witches.

5. Jackie

This is a breathtaking biopic - interested less in the broad strokes of history and what we think we know about the aftermath of one of the most infamous events of the 20th century and more in the nuanced, private, personal moments of grief in the public eye. Natalie Portman is astounding as Jackie Kennedy, nailing everything from the look to the voice to the affectations, and its the dreamlike, woozy way that the film unfolds that really draws you in and positions you in the eye of a hurricane. The JFK assassination was a monumental cultural milestone but this story asks you to put yourself in the shoes of a woman who was unavoidably trapped at ground zero - and largely all alone with her memories and emotions, despite the surrounding pressures of aides, the press and the American people.

This is supremely confident filmmaking, incredibly affecting and features another stand out score from Mica Under the Skin Levi.

4. 20th Century Women

The second film on my list for both Annette Bening and Greta Gerwig, this is a wonderful story about the strengths and flaws found in both the family we’re given and the family we choose. With an anecdotal, episodic structure, it is less focused on plot and more on the individual moments that the characters in our lives provide us with; how they affect our own life story and evoke memories of a certain time and place.

It’s highly emotional, with touching asides and rambling voiceovers telling us numerous stories whilst keeping a sense of an anchor through the relationship between Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) and his mother Dorothea (Bening). The supporting cast is uniformly great, from Elle Fanning as the girl next door to Billy Crudup as a lonely tenant/handyman, this one really hit me hard. The late 70s period details, along with the soundtrack, and the sun bleached cinematography recalls the joy of discovering yourself through questionable music, bad decisions and rebellious behaviour. Check it out.

3. A Ghost Story

I doubt any other film this year left quite a long lasting impression as this one did. I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards and became rather obsessed with pretty much everything it accomplishes. It’s a fairly straight forward tale of a couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) whose relationship begins to feel the strain as they quietly realise they might want different things in life. We’re not privy to many more details, positioned as a voyeur which will continue as things unfold but before long, Affleck is killed in a simple car accident outside his home and seemingly rises from death to haunt his old home, dressed entirely in the hospital bed sheet his corpse was covered in. It’s a genius depiction of the traditional ghost - simultaneously off-putting, amusing, whimsical and ridiculous - and it’s also rooted in logic too. As the ghost continues to watch his Mara grieve for him (mesmerisingly encapsulated in an unbroken take of a depressed Mara eating an entire pie that her neighbour brought round), he (and us) slowly begin to notice time... breaking.

The way the passing of time is visualised here is beautifully simple - rather than the long slow fades that normally indicate transitions, here it is as sudden as the ghost turning around to look over his shoulder, through a series of hard cuts or sometimes, no cuts at all. That feeling of time literally slipping away is brutal and the ghost can do nothing but wander about, seemingly helpless to how fast things change. One moment, Mara packs up and leaves, the next a new family of three have apparently been living there for months. Ultimately, the film becomes a meditation on the importance we embue in places, not so much people. The house is the anchor - the core - of what the ghost latches on to and if you’ve ever had the feeling of wondering who lived in your home before you and who will be there after you’ve gone, this film will dig deep into your mind.

I found this to be a brilliantly low-fi way to tell a huge thematic story and the use of music throughout - including one central track in particular - only adds to it. If you can get past the pie-eating without thinking ‘da hell is this’, you’re in for a treat.

2. Dunkirk

I’m almost scared to put this so high. I’ve no doubt in my mind that it’s a five star film and it’s certainly the most visceral, immediate cinema going experience I’ve perhaps ever had (I caught it at the BFI IMAX, opening night, at a late showing and it truly does fill your entire periphery vision) but a part of me wonders if it will hold up on second viewing - i.e. if seeing it anywhere other than the IMAX will diminish it. Well, I’m sure it won’t be the same but I’m also convinced it won’t matter either because this is clockwork precision film making of the highest order; an exercise in narrative structure as well as simply being the most accurate representation of the event in question as there possibly could be.

Some people have complained that this film does a disservice to its characters but I disagree. The power of this story is that it’s the tale of the everyman - how all of these people, no matter the extent of their involvement or the merits of their bravery, became heroes. I don’t need to see the ‘movie’ version of this - where characters chat about their backstories or show photos of loved ones or do every other cliche around. I KNOW all that is going on within the frame but I don’t need to see it. What we’re seeing is the immediacy of these events, which heightens the terror and the hopelessness felt by everyone on that beach or in those boats or in those planes. The land/sea/sky split is impeccably done and the devotion to practical battle scenes is stunning. The aerial dogfights - in full IMAX - practically made me feel like I was strapped to a wing. But even looking past the spectacle, the performances DO bring out the heart of the characters we’re presented with. From Cillian Murphy’s PTSD riddled soldier to the steely determination of Mark Rylance to the rather genius casting of Harry Styles - the exact kind of kid who would have been swept up in this war - everyone is all in and they all blew me away. Especially Tom Hardy, in perhaps his most restricted role yet (it’s like Bane meets Locke), who garners the biggest cheers.

And Hans Zimmer’s epic score can make me sweat just thinking about it. A perfect compliment to the tightening framework and increasing stakes of the action.

1. La La Land

Where do I even begin with this? Full spoilers ahead, I couldn’t help myself.

Clearly, this isn’t a film for everyone. And I get that. Some people think it’s fine but kinda hate musicals. Others get frustrated with the character’s choices. Others would have preferred it to actually remain a musical throughout. I understand all of these criticisms but for me, it does perfectly what it sets out to do.

First of all, I personally love the musical numbers - from the jaw dropping opening of Another Day of Sun to the kinetic, glamourous rush of Someone in the Crowd to the heartfelt yearning of City of Stars. I think they’re great tunes, wonderfully performed and exceptionally shot. I think of the long one-shot takes of the first, the swimming pool splashdown of the second and the little smack on the shoulder of the third. They’re rooted in feeling, in character and in the tradition of Hollywood. They wear their influences on their sleeve but never feel like a parody. And to me, the sudden shift away from being a flat out musical at the end of the first act is not a misstep but entirely organic - this is the rare love story that has its head in the clouds (romantic dating montages, dreamlike dancing through the stars) as well as being brutally honest about what we want, how we get them and the sacrifices these things cost.

The movie starts out as this fantastical anti-meet-cute before morphing into a romantic fable full of wonderment but the moment the characters get together, it switches gears and becomes more grounded in reality. The music largely stops and the real world catches up. Arguments are had, compromises are made, promises are broken. This is the harsh truth of getting what you want at the cost of losing what you’ve perhaps always wanted. The tension between Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) becomes uncomfortable - he’s lying to himself about doing what he must to achieve his real dream, even despite Mia’s support and she is battling her own demons in chasing hers. It’s only when the film brings them to their lowest points does it slowly turn back into being something more magical. Sebastian returns to Mia with the news of a new audition, which results in the most raw song/anecdote of the film ‘Audition (The Fools Who Dream), and just as we’re swept into the happy ending we were promised from decades of these movies, the pair realise they have to do their own thing. “We’ll just have to wait and see”...

The film’s extended epilogue is where it really doubles down on this idea. As we’re treated to a return of the ‘full blown musical’, we see the true Hollywood version of this entire story, played out in dreamlike fast forward. Sebastian leaping off his piano to kiss Mia the second he meets her, the villainous J.K. Simmons snapping his fingers and stepping aside, Sebastian giving a standing ovation at Mia’s one woman show that he missed entirely before, the two of them travelling to Paris and crafting a life together that Mia actually did alone. On the surface, it’s a joyous, colourful, happy finale but the final curtain reminds you that it’s all been... a daydream. The road not travelled. So while the film ends with them both achieving their own desires, they’ve lost one another. This is the all-too-often-true cost of creative pursuit and fulfilment and it’s so rare to see it held aloft in the final reel of an Oscar winning movie that appears to be the exact opposite on the surface.

It’s daring, brave and imaginative and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe I’m too soppy and maybe I’ve just ruined the entire plot for you (I definitely have) but I just couldn’t see anything topping this the moment I saw it. And I guess I was right. Damien Chazelle is a wizard and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

#top 10 #Films of 2017 #2017 #logan #film stars don't die in liverpool #baby driver #get out #raw #jackie #20th century women #a ghost story #dunkirk #la la land

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gyrlversion · 5 years

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20 years after Columbine, former Principal Frank DeAngelis is still learning how to move on

There are letters from President Bill Clinton, another from President Barack Obama and one from Vice President Joe Biden. There’s a photograph of Frank with Clinton, another of him with Hillary Clinton, and one of him beside Celine Dion.

The torch holder he carried for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City is mounted near a matching newspaper clipping. And there’s an autographed photo of baseball great Derek Jeter, wishing Frank well in the run-up to his retirement in 2014 as the principal of Columbine High School.

“It’s a little bit of history,” Frank said.

At first, he was bound by a promise to stay at the helm until every student who’d been at the school that unimaginable morning had graduated. Then, he expanded that vow, remaining until every local child who’d been in class that day, down to preschoolers, had earned a diploma.

Since stepping away from the principal’s office, he has continued his commitment to collective recovery — and expanded his flock far beyond Columbine High School.

Five years after retiring, the 64-year-old is as busy as ever, traveling the country to shepherd principals and communities that have fallen victim to the scourge of school shootings. It’s the latest iteration of an evolving role, however unwelcome, he has pioneered since April 20, 1999.

“Columbine offers hope,” Frank told CNN. “And that’s what I hope, 20 years later, that we’re doing, that we’re reaching out to other people — the Parklands, the Santa Fes, the Sandy Hooks, the Virginia Techs.”

“I feel I was chosen to do that.”

But he’s also given so much of himself to Columbine, several people close to him said. And with the 20th anniversary of the shooting and the publication of a new memoir, “They Call Me ‘Mr. De,'” Frank’s wife, Diane DeAngelis, hopes he soon considers slowing down.

“It always comes to a head right before the anniversary,” she said. “And I just hope that with the 20th, that maybe this is the last anniversary that is as big as it is and that we can move on a bit.”

A devoted educator faces the unthinkable

When Frank was 13, he got a job in a pizzeria. In high school, he delivered newspapers. Frank’s parents taught hard work and dedication, and when he got sick, he hardly ever missed work.

Diane, who dated Frank in high school, said he was nice but very serious. He didn’t have a sense of humor. The couple spent all their time together, and while still in high school, Frank gave her a promise ring and said he wanted to get married. Diane didn’t want that, she said, so they broke up.

“I had no spontaneity … I was so serious,” Frank admitted. “I was 15 or 16 going on 30, and I had to plan my whole life out.”

Even so, Frank was unsure what he wanted to study in college, his brother said. But they had both played sports growing up, so when Frank told his brother he’d become an educator, Anthony DeAngelis assumed it was for the sake of athletics.

“I thought, ‘He’s probably going to be pretty good at this,'” Anthony said.

As with all things, Frank dove in deep. Early in his career, Frank’s principal once forced him to fork over his keys to the school for a weekend. “He said, ‘I do not want to see you around this school. Frank, you need to get away,'” he remembered.

Frank displayed that same commitment to each of his students and the baseball players he coached, said Tom Tonelli, one of Frank’s former pupils and a Columbine High School graduate who went on to teach at the school.

“It was always: Be a good student, be a good athlete, but above all else, be a good person,” said Tonelli of Frank’s expectations.

Still today, when Frank’s brother hands over his credit card at restaurants, servers often ask if he’s related to Frank, Anthony said. A waitress last year told him Frank had been her principal.

“And she goes, ‘You could talk to any of my friends. What we appreciated was how he treated us,'” Anthony recalled.

That sentiment holds whether before or after the shooting, said Tonelli, who was on staff at Columbine the day gunfire erupted.

“Do I think the shooting transformed him? Absolutely,” the teacher said. “But to say somehow he became a totally different type of person, I don’t think so. The character he exhibited in the wake of the tragedy is just a reflection of who he was before it happened.”

When ‘the world didn’t believe in us,’ he did

Columbine High School serves a middle- and upper-middle-class community in Littleton, Colorado, where the mountains in the west rise into a wide open sky. Before the massacre, it was an “ideal” community, Frank said, with a lot of parental support and where he “could count on my two hands the number of fistfights we had in 20 years.”

After the shooting, Frank “felt this enormous burden to go rebuild that community,” he said. That’s when he made the promise to stay at Columbine until the Class of 2002 had graduated. Other staff members made the same commitment, he said.

But in 2001, Frank felt he hadn’t accomplished what he’d set out to do.

“There were so many people deeply impacted, even the kids in elementary school,” he said. “So, I made a promise that I wanted to be there until that last class graduated, which would be 2012.”

Two years after that, he finally left.

Frank’s promise to stay gave him “so much credibility in the community,” Tonelli said. The faculty and staff, along with the students and the whole community, looked to him as a leader, as someone who was “persevering for a cause greater than himself.”

The perception stuck, even in the face of criticism that the school’s administrators and faculty had fostered a student culture “where something like this could happen,” Tonelli said, referring to the shooting and calling the claim “unjust.”

The notion “that there were certain segments of the population we didn’t care about was so untrue,” the teacher said.

Through it all, Frank’s “leadership meant everything,” he said. “He was the biggest believer in our kids and in their teachers and in our community at a time when we felt like the rest of the world didn’t believe in us anymore.”

A leader battles darkness at home

But as he worked to help Columbine recover, Frank was also an ordinary survivor. At home, his heroic veneer vanished, giving way to the reality of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I tried to do everything to protect what I call the Columbine family,” Frank recalled. “But when I would come home, I just wanted to be left alone.”

He didn’t want to talk with his first wife and two stepchildren about what happened; they just didn’t understand the aftermath, he said.

“It cost me my marriage,” he said. “My wife was saying, ‘You’re not the same person I married. You’ve changed.’ And I did. I felt so much guilt.”

His trauma manifested in other ways, too. Months after the shooting, Frank and his brother went to a Colorado Rockies game. When fireworks lit up the sky, Anthony said, “My brother nearly took cover.” Later, Frank told Anthony the celebratory display took him right back to the attack.

More shell shock set in when Frank returned to Columbine the summer after the shooting to prepare for the new academic year. Bangs and rumbles echoed as construction crews repaired damage to the building.

“I would have to go back to my office,” he said, “and I would cry.”

Hope thrives in ‘tough love’

Ahead of the massacre’s third anniversary, as he was pushed by divorce proceedings to the edge of emotional and financial “ruin,” Frank began pecking away at the mountain of unopened letters he’d gotten in its wake. Among the first he picked up was from his high school sweetheart, Diane.

They began talking regularly by phone, often late into the night, but agreed not to see each other until Frank’s marriage was dissolved.

“There was still a spark,” Diane said, and she could tell Frank had grown up. “I could see that he had a sense of humor,” she laughed, but also that his core traits hadn’t changed. “Some of the good things that brought us together were there from the beginning.”

But as their relationship developed, Frank continued to wrestle with his trauma. As with many Columbine survivors, it always got harder in the advent of April, a month in which Frank has gotten into six car wrecks and when his attention always jerks back to the terror.

He leaned on counseling and his Catholic faith, but he was living alone in a nearly vacant house, with only a few pictures and a single bed left after most everything else was sold off.

“Twenty years of my life was in shambles,” he said. “I was struggling,” and he eventually started to drink.

Diane, whose father was a recovered alcoholic, quickly caught on. Frank started hanging up the phone around 4 in the afternoon, she said, and telling her they would talk the next day.

“Immediately, I knew,” she said. “I thought, I don’t know if I’m going to have to end this, because I can’t go down that path again.”

Diane’s father died that April; Frank attended the visitation, and they began seeing each other. Soon, Diane caught him drinking. “I can’t do this,” she told him.

“It was justifiable,” Frank said, looking back. “That was what I needed, that tough love … I was so fortunate she came back into my life. And I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. It was a wake-up call.”

Leading the ‘Club Nobody Wanted to Join’

When he talks to others who have lived through school shootings, Frank mentions the risk of using alcohol or drugs to cope, and he emphasizes the importance of finding positive sources of support.

It’s just one of many pieces of advice he gives to members of what he calls in his book, “A Club Nobody Wanted to Join.”

Columbine wasn’t the first school shooting, and it obviously wasn’t the last. But every time another mass murder happens at a school, Frank said, his phone begins to ring with calls from reporters seeking insight from one of the nation’s most seasoned campus attack veterans.

“Not that I’m an expert,” he said, “but I lived through it.”

He was called on as recently as this week to address the news media when a Florida teenager — who authorities said was “infatuated” with the Columbine massacre — traveled to Colorado and bought a shotgun, prompting the shutdown of Denver-area schools, including Columbine.

Frank also reaches out to school leaders thrust into the role he knows so well. Last year, he said he connected after deadly shootings with administrators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as well as Santa Fe High School in Texas and Marshall County High School in Kentucky.

Getting that call carries a lot of weight, said Andy Fetchik, the former principal of Chardon High School in Ohio, where three students were killed in a shooting in February 2012.

The first thing Frank said was, “We are now members of the same fraternity that neither one of us pledged,” Fetchik told CNN. “And the second thing he asked me to do was to write down his cell phone number.”

Months later, as Fetchik prepared to start the next school year, he gave Frank a call, he said.

“There was a peace of mind in speaking with someone that went through it,” Fetchik said, noting that Frank validated the steps he’d taken to help his Ohio school community heal.

Several years later, Frank visited Chardon High School to talk with faculty members about the recovery process.

“One of the things I struggled with in the recovery was addressing the needs of staff. We didn’t always know what they needed,” Fetchik said. “Frank was that voice of somebody who’s been there, who said, ‘Where you’re at is OK. Mental health recovery is not something you could control. There’s no calendar.'”

‘Columbine is not going to define me’

Today, Frank and Fetchik are members of the Principal Recovery Network, a new group of 17 current and former school administrators who have lived through school shootings and their aftermath. Unlike activists who have sought to change gun laws following campus attacks, these officials simply aim to offer themselves and their combined experience as a resource.

It falls in line with the work Frank has undertaken since he retired. Last year, he gave about 50 presentations in the United States and Canada about the recovery process. He also serves on the boards of school safety and other organizations, he said, knowing his name and connection to Columbine carry weight.

But he’s tired, Diane said, and she’s made it clear she hopes he slows down after the 20th anniversary of the event that has served as the pivot point for his life’s work.

“He’s doing a lot of good out there, and he has a lot to bring to the table,” she told CNN. “But I worry about his health, because it hasn’t been great. I see it in his face, how exhausted he is.”

For a man who’s been working since he was a kid, “I can’t imagine myself being completely retired,” Frank said. And he knows he’ll always want to help suffering communities. But he admits he needs to lighten his load.

“I’m looking at the 20-year remembrance as, I need to reevaluate,” he said. “I need to be able to give myself permission to relax. I need to give myself permission.”

When he retired, Frank said, Diane told him she worried he would fall into a depression because he would no longer be associated with Columbine. Around that time, he began worrying about his own health and suffered with anxiety. But the doctor told him he was fine.

Then, he visited another expert who pinpointed the problem. “You have been a part of Columbine for 35 years,” Frank’s therapist told him, he recalled. “And you feel that Columbine is Frank DeAngelis.”

That perspective set the stage for a new outlook, Frank said. It’s one he says he wants to embrace, though it may require as much determination as any hurdle he’s conquered yet.

“He made me realize that Columbine is not going to define me. And that helped a lot,” the former principal said. “I’ve just got to get it in my mind that it’s OK.”

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tebbyclinic11 · 6 years

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The National Vegetarian Museum and Chicago’s Forgo...

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The National Vegetarian Museum and Chicago’s Forgo...

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A few weeks ago, Vienna Beef opened a history museum in Chicago as part of the company’s 125th anniversary celebration. Among the artifacts on display are hand-painted advertisements of mid-century vintage, a meat grinder dating from 1859, a gold-plated cocktail weenie, and a photo of the stand at the city’s world’s fair in 1893, where the Vienna Beef hot dog made its debut. Visitors who work up an appetite during a tour can head over to the factory store cafe and tuck into a Chicago-style dog.

On a recent afternoon, a mile east of the Vienna Beef museum, Kay Stepkin swung open the front door of the Lincoln Park library, where a very different Chicago food story was on view. The sprightly 75-year-old made a beeline to a small, carpeted room at the building’s rear that was the temporary home of the National Vegetarian Museum, which she founded in 2016 and debuted last year. The first vegetarian museum in the country, its name nods at grand ambition—but its present is rather humble. The nascent institution’s first travelling exhibit, “What Does It Mean to Be Vegetarian?,” has been on a tour of libraries across Chicago. It’s a modest display, made up of a dozen seven-foot-by-three-foot panels littered with archival materials (a reproduction of the 1974 debut issue of Vegetarian Times, featuring a recipe for mushroom loaf), persuasive factoids (“Up to 51% of greenhouse gases come from livestock”), and quotes from notable vegetarians (quoth Einstein: “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet”). There’s also a small video installation that traces plant-based eating through the ages, from Pythagoreanism in the 6th century B.C. to the present day.

Having spotted Stepkin passing through the foyer, a librarian stepped out from behind a mountain of books on the front desk and sheepishly approached. “I’m so sorry, Kay,” she said in a whisper. “I turned off the video. Honestly, no one was watching it.”

The report didn’t seem to trouble Stepkin. “Oh, that’s okay,” she said, smiling. “Would you mind turning it back on?” The librarian fired up the monitor and the chirpy voice of the video’s narrator, vegan author and podcaster Victoria Moran, filled the otherwise empty room.

A longtime vegan raised in Chicago whose father who made his living as a wholesale meat dealer and delivery man, Stepkin always knew a vegetarian museum would be a tough sell here. The city’s most well-known culinary identity is deeply anchored in flesh—in slaughterhouses and steakhouses, in Polish sausage and Italian beef, in hot dogs and deadly serious hot dog condiment orthodoxy. But there’s another, long-neglected, chapter of Chicago food history: Around the turn of the 20th century, even as the city’s South Side was the capital of the U.S. meatpacking industry, Chicago emerged as the center of the American vegetarian movement. During that period, the city saw a then-unparalleled surge of new vegetarian restaurants, vegetarian grocery stores, vegetarian social clubs, and vegetarian publishing houses. To Stepkin, these facts add up to a kind of counterhistory, and a response to the prevailing narrative of Chicago as “Hog Butcher for the World”—poet Carl Sandburg’s enduring description of the city circa 1914.

Stepkin was first acquainted with vegetarianism in the mid-1960s, during a two-year stint living in Berkeley, California. Upon returning to Chicago, she secured a loan from her father, and in 1971 opened the Bread Shop, a bakery and natural food store in the Lakeview neighborhood on the city’s North Side. “Until I opened the Bread Shop, I had never met another vegetarian in Chicago,” she says. “But as soon as I opened the doors, they started coming in.” Stepkin soon spun off an adjacent vegetarian restaurant, the Bread Shop Kitchen, which she shuttered in 1982. For more than 40 years, Stepkin had believed that the Bread Shop, which she closed in 1996, had been Chicago’s first business catering to vegetarians. To her knowledge, no one disputed the claim.

In the summer of 2012, Stepkin was writing a regular vegan recipe column called “The Veggie Cook” for the Chicago Tribune and began to receive invitations to speak publicly about vegetarian history. “I went to the library to see what there was that I didn’t know, not only about vegetarian history in Chicago but nationally,” she says. “I was absolutely stunned by my findings.”

Stepkin learned that Chicago was where American vegetarianism was first put on the international stage, during the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the so-called New World. That exposure helped the city swiftly develop into the U.S. hub of organized vegetarianism. During the fair, a meat-free boarding house opened near the fairgrounds in the south-side Englewood neighborhood, catering to the delegates of vegetarian organizations who had arrived in the city from England, Germany, Switzerland, India, Australia, and beyond. That, it turned out, was Chicago’s first fully vegetarian business. It was soon joined by a handful of vegetarian clubs, local offshoots of the Vegetarian Society of America (VSA). By 1900, the VSA was compelled to relocate the headquarters of its national publication, The Vegetarian Magazine (formerly known as Food, Home and Garden), to Chicago from Philadelphia, the nation’s first capital of the meatless movement. That same year, Chicago’s first vegetarian restaurant, the Pure Food Lunch Room, opened in the downtown business district known as the Loop.

“I was just amazed! I thought I would’ve heard something—anything!—about this history,” says Stepkin, who had served as president of the Chicago Vegetarian Society from 1994-1998 and again in 2000. The experience planted in her the seed of the idea for the National Vegetarian Museum. “If I didn’t know the truth about Chicago’s vegetarian history, I thought, neither did anyone else.”

Stepkin was right, of course. Chicago’s vegetarian past “is forgotten,” says Tim Samuelson, the city’s official cultural historian. “It’s not written about. You don’t hear people talk about it at all. It just doesn’t come up.”

“There’s a real historical amnesia there,” agrees historian Adam D. Shprintzen, author of The Vegetarian Crusade, a woefully under-read book that delves deeper than any other into Chicago’s improbable rise as a hub for the meatless movement. “Vegetarians themselves have a kind of amnesia about this time period in Chicago, because it doesn’t fit neatly with our popular ideas of vegetarianism. We associate Chicago with industrial modernity—and people’s assumptions are that vegetarianism is this back-to-nature movement.” The modern vegetarian movement that grew in Chicago after the Columbian Exposition, Shprintzen explains, happened in lockstep with the industrial growth of the city. “There was a breaking away from vegetarianism with a social reform agenda and a move toward vegetarianism as a way to reform the self—to be competitive in an increasingly corporate society.”

In his book, Shprintzen charts this critical shift in vegetarianism in the 19th century: From 1817—when a migration of 41 meat-abstaining Bible Christians first brought organized vegetarianism to Philadelphia from England—until the start of the Civil War, various U.S. groups saw dietary reform largely as a route to progressive social reform: the abolition of slaves, women’s suffrage, gender and economic equity, an end to war. But the strain of vegetarianism that later took root in Chicago had a more commercial and individualist bent. In June 1893, during the world’s fair, some 200 vegetarian delegates representing groups from around the globe gathered at the newly opened Art Institute of Chicago for what was called the World’s Vegetarian Congress. Throughout three days of lectures, movement notables such as John Harvey Kellogg—the same Kellogg responsible for Corn Flakes was superintendent of the pioneering Battle Creek Sanitarium health spa and developed early meat substitutes such as Protose—extolled vegetarianism as a way for individuals to achieve health, physical strength, and industriousness, as well as economic success and social advancement.

“Chicago as a vegetarian center kind of made sense, because people there were more intimately involved in the implications of the modern meat industry,” Shprintzen says. “If you read accounts from the time period, during the summer, people could smell rotting meat wafting into the Loop.” In the classic muckraking novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair described the odor from the meat factories as “like the craters of hell.” The horrors depicted in the book led to the passage, in 1906, of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act—two landmark pieces of regulatory legislation.

“The Jungle led to a lot of people becoming vegetarian,” said Stepkin, gesturing toward a small image of the book’s iconic olive-green cover displayed in the exhibit. On the same panel is an advertisement for the Pure Food Lunch Room, which ran in the September 1900 issue of The Vegetarian Magazine. It billed Chicago’s first veg restaurant as “clean, airy,” with “good ventilation,” “quick service,” and “appetizing food” at “moderate prices.” The restaurant’s claim of serving “pure food” projected the healthful properties of vegetarian cuisine and also exploited a growing anxiety among people at the turn of the 20th century about the handling and processing of meat and milk. Neither Stepkin nor Shprintzen was able to dig up a Pure Food Lunch Room menu, but Shprintzen theorizes, based on the vegetarian cuisine of the time, that “lunches were pretty simple: things like asparagus on toast, broiled tomatoes—light fare. The idea was that a heavy meal would lead to less productivity in the afternoon.”

The opening of the Pure Food Lunch Room ushered in a boom of vegetarian businesses in Chicago in the early 1900s. The publishing house Vegetarian Company produced The Vegetarian Magazine, vegetarian cookbooks, and other pro-veg literature. Chicago’s vegetarian restaurant options, according to advertisements and classified listings in The Vegetarian, expanded to include such establishments as Mortimer Pure Food Company, the Ionia, the Vegetarian Good Health Restaurant, the Hygeia Dining Room, Robertson’s Physical Culture Restaurant, as well as scores of private vegetarian dining clubs. Popular vegetarian grocers included Benold’s Pure Food Store, an Old Town “bakery of the genuine unfermented whole wheat bread,” according to one ad. Berhalter’s Health Food Store and Bakery, also located in Old Town, asked Vegetarian readers, “Would you like to be a successful vegetarian?” The store pitched its products—wheat bread, rice, raisins, figs, olives, olive oil, et cetera—as “in accordance with Vegetarian Dietetics,” promising “progress in physical health and spiritual wealth.”

The salad days of Chicago vegetarianism would last until only the second decade of the 20th century. “When I finally found out the city’s vegetarian history goes back to the 1800s, I also realized the movement kind of came to a halt in the early 1920s,” Stepkin said as she concluded the exhibit tour. “It was World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and then vegetarians as a movement didn’t pop up again until the 1960s. I thought, This could easily happen again. I don’t want our history to get lost again.”

She held a grim expression for a moment. Then, suddenly, her face brightened. Something remarkable had happened: a real, live person had strolled into the room to check out the museum—the first in more than an hour. Stepkin watched intently as the woman browsed the exhibit panels.

“Hi! I just wanted to say hello!” Stepkin said after several minutes. “And to let you know we have fliers over there.”

“Thank you,” the woman said. “I came in to use the Internet, and I saw the sign as I was leaving the restroom.” She was in town from the Bay Area to escort her son, a DePaul University student, back home to California for the summer. “We’re both vegans,” she said. “It’s good to see information about it.”

“Well, California might be a bigger vegan center,” Stepkin said, “but this is the first vegetarian museum in the country!”

“Make sure it gets on the back of a truck and gets to lots of libraries,” the woman said. “Get the word out there any way you can.”

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monkeyandelf · 6 years

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New Post has been published on Buzz News from Monkey & Elf |

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A Year in Fashion: 2017’s Biggest Stories

2017 has undoubtedly been a big year for the fashion industry and there has been plenty to talk about. From the surprise departure of Christopher Bailey at Burberry to the death of Azzedine Alaïa, the year has seen some of the more shocking things to have happened in the industry in recent years. Suprise collaborations between the likes of Louis Vuitton and Supreme were also shocks. Here we round up the biggest stories that have rocked the industry in 2017.

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2017 was a big year for the fashion industry and there were a few shocks to be had. There were deaths, collaborations and departures from posts you never thought you’d see, and there was plenty to keep the fashion lot talking. We’ve rounded up the biggest talking points and the things that we think were notable for the year, from collaborations between Louis Vuitton and Supreme to the departure of Christopher Bailey at Burberry.

Azzedine Alaïa’s Death

On the 18th November, the fashion industry was rocked by the death of legendary designer Azzedine Alaïa. The Tunisian-born designer had been a figurehead in the industry for many years and passed away at the age of 82 in Paris. He was famed for his clothing, notably his dresses, and he was dubbed the ‘king of cling’ due to the way his clothes wrapped around a woman’s body.

It was confirmed that he had suffered a heart attack. Edward Enninful, the recently appointed editor-in-chief of British Vogue, said of the death, “Azzedine Alaïa was a true visionary, and a remarkable man. He will be deeply missed by all of those who knew and loved him, as well as by the women around the world who wore his clothes”.

Azzedine Alaia with Kim Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

Alaïa was born in Tunis in 1940 (although this date is unconfirmed as he frequently lied about his age) and has had a very illustrative career. He initially started at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Tunis to study sculpture, but soon realised that his ambitions to be the best were above him and so he moved towards the fashion industry. In 1957 he moved to Paris and after building up client base of his own he began assisting Christian Dior. However this was ended after five days as his immigration papers were incorrect.

From Dior he went on to Guy Laroche, Thierry Mugler and eventually he started his own atelier. In the Seventies he became a hit with Hollywood stars, including Greta Garbo, and in the early 1980s he put out his first ready-to-wear collection for women, which was met with critical acclaim. Over the years he did his own thing and in 1992 he completely dismissed the seasonal timeframe of the fashion industry. He said ““When the collection is ready, it’s ready. Unless I have a length of fabric in my hand and a girl in front of me, I really can’t come up with a lot of ideas.”

Azzedine Alaia PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

Christopher Bailey resigns from Burberry

One of the big shocks of the year was Christopher Bailey‘s decision to depart from British fashion house Burberry. After 16 years of working for the brand he decided that it was time to depart and move down other creative paths. He will see out his position as president and chief creative officer and Burberry said Christopher will remain president and chief creative officer until March 31, 2018, when he will step down from the board. He will provide his full support to chief executive officer Marco Gobbetti and the team on the transition until Dec. 31, 2018.”

Christopher Bailey PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

It has been rumoured for some time that Christopher Bailey was to leave Burberry, especially after he handed over the CEO role to Gobbetti. It came as a shock that he was completely leaving the company as since 2001 he had been a key player in transforming the company’s image and fortunes. He is praised with turning the brand around, stripping it of its ‘chav’ image and giving it a new lease of life. Thanks to him campaigns have been stronger than ever with the brand working alongside the likes of Cara Delevingne, Naomi Campbell, Brooklyn Beckham, Eddie Redmayne and Rosie Huntington Whiteley.

Cara Delevingne PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

On the decision to leave, Bailey has said “it has been the great privilege of my life to be at Burberry, working alongside and learning from such an extraordinary group of people over the last 17 years. Burberry encapsulates so much of what is great about Britain. As an organization, it is creative, innovative and outward-looking.” He continued “I do truly believe, however, that Burberry’s best days are still ahead of her, and that the company will go from strength to strength with the strategy we have developed and the exceptional talent we have in place led by Marco. I am excited to pursue new creative projects, but remain fully committed to the future success of this magnificent brand and to ensuring a smooth transition.”

There is still speculation about who will take over the creative director position, but the key player seems to be Phoebe Philo of Céline.

Supreme x Louis Vuitton

2017 was the year we saw one of the biggest collaborations ever between two brands. Supreme and Louis Vuitton hooked up after rumours were flying about and Kim Jones finally confirmed the collaboration.

Kim Jones and the Supreme team presented the collaboration in January 2017 and it immediately became the talking point of Paris fashion week. It was sold across the world at pop-up stores in June of the same year. With Louis Vuitton Kim Jones has introduced street wear to high end, using brands like Umbro and Fragment Pieces to do so. Supreme was his biggest player yet. When asked about the collaboration he said “You can’t have the conversation of New York men’s wear without Supreme right now, because it’s such a massive global phenomenon. I just feel that the strength of their graphic versus the strength of the Louis Vuitton graphic, and that kind of Pop Art feeling — it works together perfectly.”

Louis Vuitton x Supreme PHOTO CREDIT: PAUSE Magazine

Supreme x Louis Vuitton has been hailed as one of the greatest collaborations ever, but prices were not kind to those fans who wanted to get a slice of the action. Kim Jones decided that prices would fall under the Louis Vuitton price point, rather than Supreme‘s and so things were not cheap.

Versace honours Gianni Versace

To mark the 20th anniversary of Gianni Versace’s death, Donatella pulled out all the stops. For her catwalk show in September 2017 the Versace creative director got the old gang back together and her catwalk show saw the original supermodels team up. Walking down the catwalk at the end of the unveiling of Versace‘s collection which was in tribute to Gianni Versace, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell and Carla Bruni were the picture of Nineties glory.

Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell and Carla Bruni for Versace PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

Kaia Gerber dominated fashion week

Kaia Gerber, the daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, made her catwalk debut in 2017, walking first for Calvin Klein. At 16 years old she is one of the youngest models on the circuit, but the Spring/Summer 2018 shows proved that she was the most buzzed about. She basically walked for every designer, from Valentino and Fendi to Chanel and Alexander Wang.

Kaia Gerber walking for Calvin Klein, making her debut PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

Edward Enninful takes over British Vogue

In August, Ghanian-born Edward Enninful became the first black male Editor-In-Chief of British Vogue. He became the 11th editor of the fashion magazine, taking over from Alexander Schulman who had been at the helm of the magazine for 25 years and stood as the longest serving editor of Vogue. Prior to joining British Vogue Enninful had been creative and fashion director of US magazine W since 2011.

When Edward Enninful was just 19 years old he became the youngest fashion editor in the game when he became that at ID magazine. For his first issue of British Vogue he had model of the moment Adwoa Aboah on the cover and completely changed the way the magazine worked. It was a celebration of all things Britain and he worked with the likes of Kate Moss, Cara Delevingne, John Galliano, Victoria Beckham and Skepta. Prior to his first issue coming out, he had completely overhauled the Vogue office, firing all those he thought were elitist and the “Sloaney sloths” and making it a more diverse place.

British Vogue, December 2017 PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

The revival of the dad trainer took place

2017 was the year that unlikely happened and the so-called “dad trainer” became on of the most popular shapes in the game. The likes of Gucci, Prada, Balenciaga, Raf Simons and Acne Studios have all got involved and it has seemingly been a game of who can get the ugliest and biggest trainer silhouette. Even Kanye West took a step away from his Yeezy Boosts and began to show off a new range of Yeezy wave runners which look more appropriate on the foot of a 40-year old father of two. Yet this is 2017 and the chinky trainer is the shoe that everyone wants and wore. We reckon next year will see more of the same.

Balenciaga Triple S PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

Balenciaga took on Ikea

2017 was the year that Balenciaga essentially ripped of Ikea’s shopping bag – you know those blue ones you get to carry your purchases in when you’re walking round one of the giant stores. The Internet went into a meltdown when the fashion house, head up by Demna Gvsalia of Vetements, started to sell near-identical bags to those at Ikea for a price of £1600.

Ikea was quick to respond and they even went as far as putting out an ad to highlight the fact that Balenciaga has essentially copied their design. The ad basically highlighted how to differentiate the £1600 Balenciaga design from one of Ikea’s 40p carrier bags, highlighting the durability of the Ikea “original”.

Ikea’s advert in response to Balenciaga PHOTO CREDIT: Pinterest

Nike x Off-White

Louis Vuitton and Supreme weren’t the only big brands collaborated in 2017 and Virgil Abloh’s Off White teamed up with the Nike team on a collection of ten trainers. The collab saw the creation and release of ten special editions of previous trainers, from rehashed Air Jordan 1s and Blazers to Air Max 90s and Prestos. The collab was spotted being worn by everyone from Kendall Jenner and Naomi Campbell to Justin Bieber and was undoubtedly (sitting just behind Louis Vuitton and Supreme‘s hook up) one of the biggest of the year.

PHOTO CREDIT: Modern Notoriety

On That Note

2017 proved to be a big year for fashion, with the death of Azzedine Alaïa seeing everyone come together to mourn the untimely passing of a true fashion icon. Edward Enninful became the first male Editor-In-Chief of British Vogue, replacing Alexandra Schulman and beginning a new era for the fashion bible. Collaborations were aplenty and two that really stood out were those between Supreme and Louis Vuitton and Nike and Virgil Abloh’s Off-White. It has been a mixed year though, with Ikea coming to heads with Balenciaga and let’s not forget those moments that made us quite literally question the fashion industry (those Vetements bum zip jeans anyone?)

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footyplusau · 7 years

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‘New Dusty’ a draft prospect with a rocket

THE FRAME of the ‘Connect Four’ board game stands ready to play in the corner of the kitchen in Cam Rayner’s family home. Rayner’s battles with his mum, Nicole, are renowned in the household, described as almost a Collingwood and Carlton-like rivalry.

Rayner’s strategy relies on dropping the first coloured disc in the middle column and building from there. “A couple of times when she’s off-guard she’ll let me get three in the bottom row next to each other,” Rayner said. “It’s good fun.” But it’s also competitive, a side of the 17-year-old that exists in everything he does.

“I’ve always been like that. I don’t like to lose in anything: it could be a PlayStation game, playing in the backyard with my brother, footy tipping, a wrestle, a game of Connect Four or on the field,” he told AFL.com.au this week. “That won’t ever change.”

That’s been obvious in the past 12 months, as Rayner’s form has seen him rocket into being a likely early pick at November’s NAB AFL Draft. He’s even a contender for the No.1 selection, such has been his ability to impact games with his explosive and powerful streak. It’s happened quickly.

Rayner put his name firmly on the radar at the end of last year’s TAC Cup season, when he kicked seven goals for the Western Jets against Bendigo and followed it with five the next week against the Calder Cannons. He was recognised by being added to the NAB AFL Academy.

He announced himself as a leading prospect at the MCG in April, when he kicked three goals from 23 disposals in the NAB AFL Academy’s 20th anniversary match. The 187cm Rayner was the standout, a performance made more noteworthy given he was carrying a toe injury.

Days before the contest, Rayner tripped and fell down some stairs. The tumble split his right big toe and ripped the nail off, and left him in doubt to feature in the celebration game. He barely trained in the lead-up, and kept out of his boots until game-day.

He kicked as much on his non-preferred left foot as he could, and at times forgot about the piercing pain. “I was never going to miss playing in that game. It was a real chance to showcase my talents against the best players, and I think I took advantage of that,” he said.

His ability to push on despite the injury didn’t come as a surprise to those who know Rayner well.

Rayner was a fearless kid. He first split his head aged 10 months, after being a little too ambitious and getting the wobbles, and it started a run of times he needed stitches to his head: after falling from the tree in the backyard, when he hit himself on the family’s piano, on his first day of school in prep, misjudging a backflip into a pool, and even after a pillow fight with his dad, John.

“We were mucking around and I went into the cupboard, and felt a bit of a knock. I looked up and said, ‘Dad, have I done it again?” Rayner said. “My head was stuck on the corner of a drawer and as dad pulled my head the drawer moved out with me.”

Sport has come naturally to Rayner. He was always one of the better players for his local club Hillside, near his home in Sydenham in Melbourne’s north-west.

He moved to the Doutta Stars in Essendon for a season as an under-16s player and kicked three goals and was named its best player in the Grand Final. Two weeks later, as a 15-year-old, he played in the club’s under-18 Grand Final, booted eight goals and again claimed the best afield medal.

Recruiters nominate Rayner as one of the main draft hopefuls to have elevated their stocks this season. And they have continued to rise in the past two weeks, with the damaging midfielder/half-forward dominant in Vic Metro’s first two games in the national under-18 championships.

He prides himself on playing well in big games, and opened the carnival with 23 disposals and six clearances against Western Australia at Domain Stadium. He played more as a forward last week against Vic Country, and kicked three first-half goals and finished with 21 disposals.

Rayner is a unique mix of traits. He’s strong and tough, can bang the ball a mile on both feet, and has a natural spring in his legs that makes him tough to stop in the air. He’s also quick off the mark, and enjoys the physical stuff. Clubs keep telling him he needs to improve his endurance base, but he’s confident that will happen.

Cam Rayner’s competitiveness shows through in everything he does. Picture: AFL Photos

“I see myself as a player who can impact a game. Even if I have 12 or 13 disposals, I use the ball well when I get it and think I can influence the game,” he said.

“This is the first year where I’ve been predominantly a midfielder, so I’m still getting used to that side of things. My running has been getting better and I’m learning more about playing there.

“I haven’t been fazed by the pressure of going into the championships, even though it does make you think things are getting closer.”

Other things have made him feel like an AFL career might only be around the corner. He has signed with a player agent (Robbie D’Orazio at Connors Sports), at a local game of footy recently he had plenty of people he hadn’t seen for years come over and wish him well, and he has even won comparisons to Richmond’s Dustin Martin for his on-field style (his pre-championships haircut is also very similar to the Tigers’ star).

“I’ve seen that mentioned a couple of times,” Rayner said. “I definitely model my game around his ability to impact a game with a couple of big possessions and moments. He bullocks through the midfield and has that clean outside game too, and I like to use my body ‘inside’ and then hit targets by foot.”

Making the top level felt more realistic to Rayner on draft night last year, when he and his family went to close friend Daniel Venables’ place to watch proceedings unfold. Venables, a school mate of Rayner at Penleigh and Essendon Grammar and teammate at the Jets, was picked by West Coast with pick 13.

“We came home after that and had a chat about it and said that a year from today we could be in the same position,” Rayner said. “I’m nearly finished school and everyone there is thinking about what they’re going to do next year and I just try to keep it to myself what I want to be doing, even though I think about it a lot.

“It gets me excited to realise I could be playing out on the MCG or Etihad Stadium or wherever around Australia. I watch footy on the TV and see blokes I played against last year and think, ‘I reckon I could do that as well’. I’m excited to see what happens.”

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