#and being in singing in the rain at my community theater was the only good thing I had in my life where I felt I had a place again | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

alilbihh · 5 years

Text

hocus pocus — 1

masterlist previous part next part

pairing: maknae line x reader

summary: jungkook wags his tail and his eyes look like truffles. jimin drinks blood out of juice boxes and bendy straws and tries to wink but ends up blinking both his eyes closed. taehyung likes the ocean and all kinds of art and apologizes to rocks. you don’t know if they want to take you out the date way or the assassination way and somehow you think it’s both.

genre: werewolf!jungkook, vampire!jimin, hybrid!taehyung, witch!reader; crack (lmao); humor (??); poly!au (in the future!)

words: 6.3k

a/n: this is entirely self-indulgent. this will benefit no one but me and will have 3 parts. thank u

This kind of patience better earn you a great seat in heaven, you think offhandedly.

"Please help me! The test was only announced today and I don't have much time, I need a potion that gives me photographic memory!" Says a desperate looking girl, hands clasped together as she repeatedly whispers a mantra of pleases under her breath, as if worried she'd push you over the edge if she were to say it any louder.

Little does she know she's, metaphorically speaking, already pushed you. Hard. With no remorse. Probably followed by a series of stabs to the back.

"Please, I would do anything!" She looks frantic. The only time you've seen her unclasp her hands was to pull desperately at her hair. She's pretty, you'll give her that, the kind of pretty that makes people more easily soft and influenced to her desires. But you're no sucker, and you're certainly not soft.

"Anything?" You whisper, leaning forward a bit. She nods, hope pooling in her round, pretty eyes.

"Anything!" You're not really used to people interrupting you during your free time. She at least has the decency to keep her voice down in the library, but you have a feeling the librarian and usually easily irritable students would easily succumb to her puppy dog eyes and let her scream all she wants.

You don't tell her that there is no such thing as a potion for photographic memory. You don't tell her that, even if such a thing were to exist, it would have drastic long-term side effects. As in, death.

"Anything anything..?" You lean forward a bit more, the female eagerly mimicking the action. You stare into her pretty eyes, the honey gold of her skin. "...even study?"

The female deflates, shameful as she twirls at a strand of her hair. This girl is just one of the many reminders on why you should never have been known as the campus witch in the first place.

You also should have just stayed in bed, despite the uncharacteristically calm day you've been having. You should have slept through your subsequent assignments and uncountable morning classes; but Jungkook had pulled the sheets out from over your head that day almost knowingly, reminding you how much you're paying for tuition. Curse that familiar of yours.

(Jungkook's voice also seemed to be the one to coax you into giving the girl a discount on your widely known all-nighter potion; which really just mostly consisted of a monster and some ground coffee beans, but she didn't need to know that. But you're still definitely, definitely not a soft witch.)

Three years ago you started a shop of your own, one typical of a witch like yourself. All herbs and tea leaves and scented candles and crystals, ground sunflower seeds and fruits and, later on, potions; the thing that's gathered the most attention in your community, from both supernatural beings and, as harry potter so delicately put it, muggles alike.

On Sundays, you sit behind the shop's counter on the red cushioned bean bag chairs that Jungkook likes so much, taking in the low hanging vines of your small, dainty little shop, the smell of old parchment and the sound of fluttering pages, the shelves of books barely anyone but yourself reads but are familiar and comforting nevertheless.

On Sundays, people stop by; sometimes for tea, mostly for potions, and one time someone asked for a potion to help him get laid but even so, business is buzzing, Sunday or not.

On Sundays, you tolerate Jungkook's grunts and groans of boredom, the boy taut as violin strings until he starts arm wrestling with the plants and reading books by the corner, his long hair obscuring your view of his features as he bounces all over the place.

In the corner by the bookshelves sits a fish tank you'd gotten over a year ago, courtesy of Jungkook, now barren of fish of any kind. (The male managed to get a goldfish at some point. He named it ironman. It died a week later, now buried in Yoongi's greenhouse, and you coaxed some flowers into sprouting around its grave for his sake. Mostly lavender, reminiscent of your familiar. Lavender helps you sleep. Lavender soothes small hurts.)

Sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll hear little snippets of a singing voice, murmuring when he thinks no one can hear him — and you can almost feel the creaking of the floorboards and bookshelves ceasing, the books shifting about in their spines halting at the mere sound of it — as if even the walls are straining to hear the tiny little sounds of your familiar's voice.

And although Sundays are meant for that, meant for all of that, on one particular Sunday you find yourself out of faerie tears to mix into your concoctions. An odd ingredient it is, but important nevertheless. And you know just the faerie willing to hand over some more.

"Yoongi!" You squeal as you enter the greenhouse, messenger bag over your shoulder, glass vials inside of it clinking together as you walk.

The greenhouse isn't big— not as big as Yoongi would have liked it to be, anyway— but it's tall enough to make room for trees of all sizes. Certain panes have been removed on its walls to allow the branches to carry through towards the sky, as if Yoongi would rather tear the place down than tear off a branch. Vines curl around your feet as you walk, tickling at your legs, and the plants greet you softly as you pass, (except the roses. They don’t like you too much and they tend to gossip quite a bit).

You tip your head up to stare at the hazy sky through the glass. It's humid and will probably rain later, another late summer storm.

You hear a grunt.

Hunched over a flowerbed sits a tuft of black, the endearing sight bringing a smile to your face that remains even as the male in question notices your amusement, frowning as his brows furrow and his nose crinkles.

He stands up as gracefully as his little faerie ass can manage, wiping the accumulated sweat on his forehead away with the back of his hand, a streak of dirt on his cheek and, somehow, on his nose. "Yes?" He mutters, grumpy and all, despite his patience as you move to grab an empty vial from your bag.

You stretch the empty glass expectantly, "I'm in need of some faerie tears, my good man."

The man waddles towards you in typical Yoongi fashion, inspecting the vial for a second before his gaze shifts to you, eyes squinted. "You know I don't cry," He says stubbornly.

"Oh, please. You’re one of the softest boys I know. Didn't you take theater in high school? The tears don't have to stem from real sadness, you heathen."

His cheeks redden at your reminder, grabbing the vial from your hands with a huff. "I just messed with the lighting for a while. Fixed the sound. It's not like I acted, damn you."

"But still! You gotta feel some sort of.. kinship. Come on. I'm not asking for much!"

"You're asking for my bodily fluids. It seems like quite a bit to me."

You hide your smile with your hand as you watch the male grunt and grimace, trying to get the tears out by sheer force. His body is shaking a bit at the strain, and you finally laugh when he lets out the breath he'd been holding with a dramatic, Yoongi flair. "Can't do it?" You ask through laughter.

"Shut up." He shoves the vial onto your chest. "Anything else for you to humiliate me with?"

"Huh. I am in need of some pixie dust, now that you mention it."

"Hobi probably has some of that, he's full of pixie friends." You, personally, aren't a fan of those tiny little rascals. The ones around your hometown were known for trouble, pulling at your ears and pushing objects off tables.

Though you suppose the ones around your current home weren't all bad. You've caught a few helping motivate your plants by your window to sprout, and sometimes you find petals by your windowsill that weren't there before, all layered with pixie dust. Sometimes they simply flutter overhead, tossing pink dust at passersby, and sometimes you hear them sneezing by your ear, drunk on plum blossoms.

They hang around Hoseok almost regularly, and it's not uncommon to find a few napping on his head and shoulder, warbling softly in their sleep. That merman attracts a whole bunch of creatures, so you don't blame them, really.

"Well. Walmart probably has some faerie tears, anyway. Thanks, Yoongs!" You pat at the now frozen male's chest thoughtfully, the man blinking slowly with wide eyes. You take off into a sprint at his bewildered WHAT? from behind you, laughter on your heels.

"Here, noona." Your familiar mutters as he walks into you finishing some paperwork, your form hunched out of view under the shop's counter, red bean bag hardly a chair for such a feat but at least it's comfortable. He places a cup of tea by the coffee table beside you, still steaming, the smell wafting through the tiny expanse of your homey shop.

"Thanks, Guk." You murmur in response without looking up, but you still catch his tail let out a tiny wag at that before he nods and shuffles away, almost like a waddle, and disappears into the closet-sized kitchen, large clothes swallowing his form adorably.

He shuffles back a few minutes later with his own cup, sinking into the bean bag beside you. He stretches the cup towards you after a second of hesitation, "Sorry, but could you heat it up please? Do that thing?"

You chuckle, sitting up straight to drop your papers on the counter before turning back towards the werewolf, "'course." You take the cup, fingers brushing against his, and you see him recoil in his seat as he sinks further into it.

Your fingers cup the mug lightly, and you feel the liquid slowly heat up, becoming darker in color. Your eyes catch his gaze as you hand it back, his eyelashes trembling as he looks down, cheeks dusted a shy pink, taking the drink generously. "Thank you," he mutters.

The moment is interrupted by the gentle chiming of the wind chimes tinkling in welcome as someone opens the door, and you stand up with a groan the second you hear it. Gently placing your cup on the coffee table, your attention shifts to the customer tripping into your shop, the smell of rain and autumn and wonder on his heels.

"Can I help you?" You ask, albeit uselessly as he continues inspecting your array of books without a word, pausing at the poetry section.

Maybe you shouldn't have bought those bean bags. They're low enough to hide you completely from view of anyone if you were to sit and you, being the one to sit by the register, kinda have to do that a lot. You take to standing, taking occasional sips from your tea when you think the boy that stumbled in isn't looking.

The boy suddenly marches towards you. Eyes you for a minute. Blinks profusely. "Morning," he says after a moment, voice soothing and soft, like melting butter and dripping honey. He slides a book onto the counter. Poetry.

"Good afternoon," you answer with a twitch of your lips, "Is this all?"

He clears his throat, his cheeks a bit flushed, "Yes."

You can feel his eyes on you. They flick over you quick and then again slower and then again one more time, dragging like a lip being pulled through teeth. You feel tingly.

With a hum, you mutter the price you know by heart as you stuff the book into a bag. His voice interrupts you. "Do you sell blood here?"

You blink, catch Jungkook freezing from where he's seated. The boy in front of you at least has the decency to look sheepish after a moment, smiling with just a twitch of his lips, and it's then you notice the ever protruding fangs that line the sides of his teeth.

"Uh, nope, sorry."

"Hm." He hums. "How long has this been here? It's, well. Nice. Must be nice to work here."

You scoff out a laugh, "It has its downsides. Pay is shit, mostly. You're mostly just making drinks and making sure no one is doing anything stupid or trying to hide a body in one of the vanishing bookshelves."

"I already disproved that theory, noona!" Comes Jungkook's interjection from somewhere below you, voice laced with an odd sort of pride. "I sat there for an hour and didn't disappear."

"That... okay." Maybe you would scold him in any other setting, seeing as the bookshelf was completely capable of actually making him disappear — but seeing his pretty, honest eyes, his cupid's bow pulled into a smile, well.. who were you to take that away?

It's only then you remember the strange vampire you still have yet to know the name of was here for a reason. Your eyes stray to the book he'd bought, and you notice he seemed to dwell on which to buy for a bit too long. "Do you like poetry?" You mutter as you hand over his purchase.

"Nope." He grins. "I'll be back!" The boy says it like a promise before closing the door behind him, nimble as a cat and grinning like one, too, giving the dream catcher by the entrance a dangle and, in a blink, he's gone.

"That was weird." Jungkook mutters through the rim of his cup, and you agree with a simple nod of the head. “He was pretty, though,” he adds thoughtlessly. You nod again.

You spend your lunch, as you usually do, in a coffee shop close to campus, Jungkook sipping on a milkshake beside you and Yoongi sitting opposite you both, the latter pumping an unreasonable amount of sugar into his coffee.

"So Hobi's in this wack exercising mood these days. He signed us both up for couple's yoga classes."

Your lips twitch upwards at that before you purse your lips, trying to hide your smile. "That's.. wild."

"Yeah. Worst part is that I don't even mind going that much 'cause I know it'll make him happy. Gross, huh?"

"Super gross, dude."

Yoongi picks up his spoon and promptly stabs at the thick layer of sugar in the bottom of his cup, stirring glumly. "Anyway, how's the shop? Anyone walking in asking for condoms again?"

"Well, no, but I was asked if I sell blood bags."

Yoongi raises a brow, probably more surprised that there's a vampire on campus than he is surprised at the question. "Huh. That is weird. Was he cute?"

"Yoongs, you are not asking me if my vampire customer is cute. Tell me you're not." The man promptly starts to sip loudly at his coffee, avoiding eye contact stubbornly. You sigh. "Yes. Yes he was. Damn you." The man grins.

"He really was, though," Jungkook speaks up for the first time since you all sat down — not counting the little hello he'd whispered to Yoongi — and you watch as he sinks down his seat, smiles this shy little thing, cheeks and nose all scrunched up, trying to hide it as he sips aggressively at his oreo milkshake.

You smile knowingly at him and he all but melts, looking out the window, the tips of his ears a pretty pink.

"That so?" Yoongi says, watching you over the rim of his cup, "I was starting to think you two were cave gremlins incapable of feeling. How nice for you."

You scoff out a laugh, "Easy for you to say, you met Hoseok on Grindr."

"And we are positively thriving, thank you for asking."

"Oh!" The tiniest sound, whispered more to himself than anything but you manage to catch it anyway, your familiar's eyes widening prettily as he spots something out the window as his whole face breaks into a smile, cheeks crinkling at the edges, "It's Hobi-hyung!"

"Where?" Yoongi asks but sees him immediately after, the man in question spotting them through the glass and waving frantically, like he thinks you all might not see him.

Hoseok opens the door to the coffee shop cheerily, both the dulcet soft chime above the door and the usual light he carries on his shoulders alerting others of his presence. There are remnants of pixie dust on his shoulders, strapped to his clothes, glued to his hair. He smells of salt water and chlorine and dried flowers and something like pomegranate, just on the edges. The smile that always seems to be perpetually glued to his face brightens as he power walks towards your table by the corner.

"Hey! What're you all doing here?" He asks with a laugh as he slides on the seat beside his boyfriend, and Yoongi allows himself to be hugged by Hoseok, who hugs everyone.

"We're the physical manifestations of Y/n's inner demons." Yoongi says before Jungkook snorts out a laugh endearingly.

"How're classes, Hobi?" You ask, managing to ignore Yoongi only due to several years of training.

Yoongi groans at your question. Pretends to be annoyed. "His yoga classes or his dance classes?" Hoseok laughs at that, a loud and confident thing.

Hoseok laughs a lot. Dances a lot. Smiles a lot. Sometimes helps his dad teach little kids how to swim. Sometimes sea foam sticks to his eyelashes. Knows nothing about flowers but listens patiently when Yoongi talks about them, when Yoongi talks about his greenhouse and his love for jasmines and sweet sweet bubble tea.

You watch as Yoongi listens to Hoseok's ramblings, very much enamored and very much enraptured, eyes filled with love love love, a shy but fiercely sure thing. He's watching with the same soft, scrunched eyes he tends to be looking at everything with these days; at his plants and his friends and his music, like they're something precious, something to be cherished. You watch and it fills you with a not-jealousy, an almost-jealousy, an almost-want.

You want that kind of love, and yet you stray away from it at the first chance you get.

Yoongi leans in close, whispers something in his ear, and it's then that Hoseok snorts the coffee he'd been drinking through his nose, flushed from the tips of his ears down to his collarbones and suddenly they're all laughing, the two sneaking glances at each other. Glances you feel are private, intimate, probably something you weren't meant to see. You look away, feeling as if you're intruding.

Your eyes catch shifting from your peripheral vision, and you turn to see Jungkook moving hesitantly about in his seat, nibbling at the straw of his now empty milkshake. He stops. Purses his lips. Makes eye contact for a second before looking away.

You sigh. "If you clean out the backroom at home tomorrow for twenty minutes, I'll buy you another drink."

Jungkook perks up immediately. "How about if I clean out the backroom for ten minutes?"

"Twenty."

"..Fifteen?"

"Twenty."

"Seventeen."

You consider it. "...Deal."

Jungkook bursts into a celebratory dance as Yoongi tries hard to rein in his smile. You flip the two off before catching Hoseok's eye. WHIPPED, he mouths, enunciating it heavily just to be annoying, so you flip him off, too.

Two years ago, Jungkook entertains a visit to the town's newest herb shop; his expectations low and, despite his pack sending him out to search for medicine, his eyes were mostly searching for amusement.

Witches. A funny lot, all of them. They gather leaves for a living and use brooms as a means of transportation and they sprinkle basil into their soups and they think they know how to — how to herb.

The werewolf approaches the wooden door — printing paper taped to it with 'open' written in sharpie — and in he steps, wind chimes tinkling in welcome. If there was one thing he was expecting, it wasn't this.

The air smelled like wood and scented candles, paint that's just beginning to dry. Shelves lined the walls from top to bottom with potions and tea and crystals and, well, herbs, and in the far back stood a nearly empty bookshelf, only half the books on the shelves and the rest still sitting in a box not quite in plain sight but not exactly hidden, either, as if the owner hadn't quite finished packing them.

If Jungkook holds his breath just right, he can feel his heart beating in sync with something in the air. Something living.

Jungkook approaches the counter, searching left and right. No one in sight. "Hello?" He calls out. Flinches when he feels a thud, followed by a very abrupt, very loud—

"OW."

He leans forward tentatively after a moment of hesitation, glancing beneath the counter and, sure enough, there you are. This small thing curled on the floor, rubbing at your head from when you'd just tried to stand. No pointy hat or a big nose or dozens of moles, no evil laugh threatening to tumble out your lips, hidden just under your tongue.

It was just you. Wide eyed you. Sweet smelling you; sugar cookies, his brain supplies even though he didn't ask it to. Sugar cookies and vanilla and dark woods and something like coriander, just on the edges.

"Why were you sitting on the floor?" He asks you, the first thing he asks you.

You look up at him. Stare for a while. Your eyes don't linger on his ears stretched up in curiosity, black fur tipped with brown, or his tail wagging a bit behind him. He grabs at it to make it stop.

"I don't have any chairs." Is all you say, the lilting tone of home in your words. Jungkook laughs that terrible laugh of his, the one with his grin stretched ear to ear, his nose and eyes crinkled terribly. His laugh makes you laugh. Your laughter is terrible too, he notices.

He gets the medicine, tossing a pouch of coins onto the counter, courtesy of his pack. They have a knack at bringing the most inconvenience possible and living as if it were the nineteenth century.

Jungkook thought that would be it. But his father needed more scented candles and his brother needed more tea and his mother whined, like, once, that they were out of basil. And of course there are other shops that sell scented candles and tea and basil, but yours happened to be on his way every time.

True to his word, the vampire does indeed come back.

Despite barely talking to the boy, you know a bit about him from his interactions with Jungkook and what Jungkook, himself, shares with you. There's a dog with angry and very expressive eyebrows as his lock screen. His lips are naturally pouty and his hands are never quite still. Jungkook once stepped into the kitchen with peppa pig bandaids on his knees and despite knowing fully well that it could be any one of your friends, Yoongi is the least prepared person you know, Hoseok was working at that hour, and Jin only carries hello kitty bandaids from down the street, so you have a pretty clear idea of who's responsible.

And despite all that, you know little to nothing about the man personally.

"Noona, he's.. so nice. He's, like, my weekly reminder that I am, in fact, bisexual." Jungkook speaks as he polishes a crystal, sky blue in color and warm in his palm, and you watch him from between the bookshelves, placing your newly ordered volume of Jim Morrison's books through the available spaces.

"That's nice, Guk-ah." And it is, it really is. He's starting to move on and he's happy and his eyes are shining brighter than the crystal in his hands, tiny constellations hidden behind his eyelids, his eyelashes. "Tell me more?"

And so he does. He explains in a tiny voice, a soft one, occasional giggles and nose crinkles and bunny teeth as he talks about this mysterious boy and it all just feels like. So much.

The shop's lights dim the slightest bit. Jungkook doesn't comment on it.

It goes on until you both hear a loud gurgle from the closet-sized kitchen followed by the scent of smoke, and it's only then you remembered the potion you'd left brewing in the cauldron. You trip only once in panic, and Jungkook's laughter echoes through the walls and it follows you the whole way there.

It's a small little thing. A typical witch cauldron in its finest, smaller than average, sitting over your stove and under the kitchen cupboards. They're all filled to the brim with color-coded tupperwares, its ingredients labeled in sharpie in each respective container; because otherwise you wouldn't be able to distinguish the luck potion from the mashed potatoes, the health potion Jungkook thinks tastes like dirt from the apple sauce.

Somewhere between you opening your window to let the smoke out and your attempts at dwindling the damage, your familiar approaches you from behind and looks over your shoulder curiously, ears moving about in alert. "Can you save it? Is it still good?"

"Yeah, no thanks to you." You say in response, but there's no bite to your tone. He bites your shoulder playfully, a tiny howl slipping from his throat. You chuckle, fully endeared.

You grab a nearby measuring cup. You'd prefer glass vials, but they were all being used at the moment, sitting somewhere in your cabinets. You should probably move them somewhere else. Last time they were left alone too long, one exploded and ruined everything else you'd left in that cabinet.

"Do you know if we got any crystal orders recently?"

Jungkook hums at your question, chin propped on your shoulder, his arms still and unsure at his sides. You should probably nudge him off. Some selfish part of you, the bigger part, doesn't let you.

"Um. I think so. Maybe last week? I think you shoved them in a box somewhere." You probably did. It's starting to become a bad habit of yours.

"Dammit."

Jungkook laughs. "What do they do, anyway? Do they predict the future or something?"

"No, unfortunately. Only specific kinds of witches can do that. Divination is pretty hard so I'm pretty sure, like, only Namjoon is capable." You huff out a laugh, "And they're for curses, mostly."

"Namjoon-hyung can do everything so he's the only exception." He pauses. "Except context clues. He's very bad at context clues."

"And taking care of plants," you add. Just last year you'd given him a succulent because you figured it was the easiest thing to keep alive. It died within a week.

You grab a ladle and scoop up some of the liquid from the cauldron, bringing it to your lips before blowing softly. Probably a bad idea to taste test unknown substances, especially in its early stages, but you decide that it's as good a day as any to challenge death, so you swallow some determinedly. It doesn't burn in your throat, just fuzzes and warms a bit on your tongue, so that's a good sign.

"Are we cursing someone?" Jungkook says with a toothy grin before then resolutely, decidedly, adamantly, rests his hands on your hips, twisting his head so his cheek is on your shoulder instead of his chin. You can feel his breath on your neck, goosebumps prickling at your skin, his touch burning even through your clothes.

"No." You say, feeling small. "Not today. Crystals aren't made for that, Gukkie." You mix the wooden spoon through the concoction absentmindedly as you continue, "Plus, curses need a lot of magic. Usually more than one witch. And don't ask Namjoon because I know he would say yes if you asked."

"I think you can do it yourself." He mumbles, nose pressed to your neck.

"Sweet talk isn't going to make me curse someone." You say but your eyes are wide and lovely, as if you'd give in with just a bit more persuasion. "Who do you have in mind, anyway?"

"No one," he hums for a bit, lips pursed, and they tickle your neck a bit in a not-kiss. An almost-kiss. "Yet."

A hearty laugh bursts from your chest and Jungkook giggles along, giggles, the sound delightful and lovely and the cacti on your windowsill hum, leaning into it. You find yourself doing the same. The kitchen gets a tad bit warmer and the lights get a tad bit brighter.

"Any crystal can curse someone if you throw it hard enough." He grins, bright and unreserved. His eyes look like the chocolate truffles he drools over when commercials for it show on TV.

Some days it hurts more than others. This intimacy you have with Jungkook, how safe he makes you feel. How sometimes is hurts just a bit, just around the edges, where it's easy to hide. How sometimes it hurts too much, when the words are all up in your throat and blocking your airway, no space to let your rib cage expand when you try to draw in a breath.

"Guk- grab me some aloe vera roots, please? Please." You whisper, afraid that if you talked any louder the other words would come tumbling out. Your heart sits so big in your chest it's taking too much effort to hold it in place. Hands claw around it incessantly, some squeezing at it and others making it harder for you to breathe.

Jungkook untangles himself from you just as the lights overhead flicker indecisively. His hands don't linger. They feel like they might linger. They hover over your hips for a second, as if he stopped them from lingering.

He says something that sounds like okay, noona but the words get lost somewhere between his tongue and his teeth and only half of it makes it out. You hear cupboards opening and closing—feel Jungkook lingering in the air you breathe in.

You turn around and the werewolf is moving aside your many tupperwares, reading the label of the ones he finds the strangest. He picks up one with a soft pink color, the liquid bubbling unpleasantly. He places it right back, brows furrowed.

"How do you know how to make all this stuff, anyway?" He exclaims with a huff, closing another cupboard with a thud.

"Pinterest. Yoongi. Years of training, maybe. Or not. I think I stopped paying attention after seventh grade."

He laughs a bit at that, a soft thing. Hands you the tupperware with the root you asked for, which ended up being shoved somewhere in the fridge. You really should reorganize your things.

You take trains sometimes.

Faraway trains, hidden somewhere in the deepest part of the city. Trains taken straight out of Ghibli films, splashes of watercolor and pencil art drawn by hand. You take them when you feel like getting away, like outrunning the heartbreak chasing you down, like you want to go somewhere but have no destination in mind. You get off on stops where you don't know where you are.

The train sometimes takes you to farms, where the horizon is burning against the tips of the wheat, setting the world on fire. Sometimes it takes you to towns you haven't even heard of, where everything is homey and everyone knows each other and the flowers sitting on windowsills to bask in the sun greet you softly.

Everything is nice. Calming. You like when the train goes through tunnels, the dark inviting and comforting, a childlike wonder. The sound of the rail wheel on the track almost lulls you to sleep at times, white noise in your ears, and the few people in the train agree — most already doing exactly that, slumped against the seats.

The train skids to a halt. Nothing compels you to get off, so you don't.

People are leaving, a mother sitting in the seat in front of you urging her daughter awake, the old man sitting a few seats back getting up slowly, with kind eyes and laughter lines. You stay slumped by the window, sunlight warming the side of your face.

Amidst your daydreaming and despite the available seats, a man gets on board, spots you, sits beside you. He watches your side profile for a bit, as if waiting for you to complain or call him out on it. You don't, so he gets comfortable in his seat, closes his eyes. His skin is the color of honey and gold.

He looks absolutely horrible. Well, not outwardly—not outwardly at all. He's wearing slippers with little rabbit ears drooping horribly endearingly, a flannel and basketball shorts, two articles of clothing that don't match at all, as if he grabbed them last minute, but he makes them work. You have a feeling he would look good dressed in cardboard and trash bags.

His ears are a light brown color, and on his head sat a pair of antlers, the tip of one broken off a bit.

But his aura. His aura is absolutely horrible. It's gloomy and so unbelievably dark, hovering over his form and twisting into something ugly.

Maybe this strange man is like you. Maybe he likes to take train rides to the middle of nowhere in early mornings, when the clouds are still blurring over the horizon. You catch him staring at it, the horizon; right when you look up and see him looking not at you, but just past your head up to the skies.

You stare, too. The silence stretches, and a voice—thick and smooth like honey—breaks it. You're comparing him to honey a lot, you notice. His voice and his skin. You'll call him honey boy for now. "Blue."

The sky is awfully blue today, only a few clouds hovering overhead. "It'll rain soon," you reply thoughtlessly.

"How'd you know?" You sense a lilting tone of comfort in his tone of voice. He has a bit of a lisp. His eyes are big and open and honest.

"The leaves are turned on their back, the crickets are chirping, there were some colorful streaks on the sky today." You can tell he's processing the words, taking them to heart, listening gently.

"Oh." Is all he says. The silence stretches again. It doesn't last long. "Are you sad, too?"

Your eyes are wide with surprise when you turn to look at him. A grin splits across his face at your unintentional open admittance, and it's so pretty you can't look away.

The man explains he hasn't gotten more than four hours of sleep for the past two weeks. That he hasn't properly interacted with another human that wasn't his roommate and his mom probably since last Wednesday ("Maybe, that might have been a fever dream," he adds. You laugh). That he's been functioning solely through chocolate, granola bars and vitamin gummies—not coffee, no, he can't stand caffeine—and you laugh until he opens his backpack and pulls out, like, thirteen kitkats.

Describing honey boy is some new word you don't know. Like all the gentle love in his heart has manifested itself, is seeping out through his skin. You wonder how many strangers he's charmed in his life.

Honey boy hums a song absentmindedly from beside you, probably unaware that he's doing it. His voice is a deep timbre that fills the silence in a quiet way. His voice is nice and the train ride is nice and for a second it feels like you've run so far ahead from the heartbreak that it's likely impossible for it to ever catch up.

"Do you like the ocean?" He asks after a bit. The train is getting closer to it, to the ocean, and you can see the line where the blue of the sky blurs into the blue of the ocean. He answers before you get the chance to, "I really like the ocean. I would come here a lot with my grandparents. I like how my dad used to chase me around the sand and my mom would sing to me and my grandma would buy me cotton candy from the vendors that walked by and my grandpa would playfully pull at my antlers. And how the pretty scaled mermaids kept the tide gentle when I was learning to swim and it's, just. A cradley sort of place."

The way he views the world is so gentle. "It'll kick your ass, though," you mutter.

He giggles, really giggles, and it comes out as a ehehe kind of sound. It's cute, your mind supplies even though you didn't ask it to.

"It will, won't it?" He says between laughter. "Sorry, I'm talking too much, aren't I?"

"No!" You say too quickly. Clear your throat at the realization. "No, you're not. I like when you ramble."

Pretty pink on his cheeks. He looks small, somehow. "You sound like someone I know."

"That's good. You should have those kind of people in your life or else you'll go mad."

He laughs. The train skids to a stop the same way it always does, but it feels different. The man goes to stand up, hesitates, sits back down. Looks at you, almost as if to ask for permission. "Will I see you again?"

Your breath hitches in your throat. "I don't know."

"Gram says that people that are meant to find each other, will." He looks determined. One of his ears twitch. "See you soon."

And with that he gets off the train, doesn't look back for even a second, is saving that glimpse for when you see each other again. A part of you doesn't think you will. Another finds itself wishing for it.

#poly!au #poly bts #bts x reader #bts taehyung #taehyung x reader #bts jimin #jimin x reader #bts jungkook #jungkook x reader #maknae line x reader #werewolf bts #werewolf au #werewolf jungkook #vampire bts #vampire au #vampire jimin #hybrid au #hybrid bts #hybrid taehyung

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imagitory · 5 years

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Review: The Lion King (2019) [spoilers]

NAAAAAANTS IGONYAMA BAGITI BABA -- !

Ahem. So...I just got back from seeing the new Lion King remake, and I guess it’s time to talk about it. For those of you who wish to avoid spoilers... *exhales heavily* how do I say this kindly, um -- you don’t need to go see this. Like, really, you don’t. Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but you would miss absolutely nothing watching the original instead of this one, and honestly, I think it’s fair to say you’ll have much more fun watching the original too. As much as I haven’t loved Disney’s line of recent remakes, I at least found something in most of the films I saw that I could praise, but with this one? I don’t recall ever being so utterly bored sitting in a movie theater in my life.

If you would like a more detailed opinion, here’s a cut!

The Good!

+For once, Disney decided to hire a cast full of singers that don’t require autotune, including Donald Glover, Billy Eichner, and of course Beyonce, as well as quite a few lovely people in the chorus like Brown Lidiwe Mkhize (who sang The Circle of Life). Even some of the performers with weaker singing voices like John Oliver were able to hold their own well enough.

+The voice acting overall wasn’t bad. I’ll have to leave it at that, though, since this is supposed to be the positive section.

+The Circle of Life and Can You Feel the Love Tonight? were well-performed, though I will be getting to other issues I had with them later.

+Zazu was actually given a bit more pathos rather than just exclusively being comic relief. He not only tries to protect Nala and Simba from the hyenas, but he also rushes to go get the lionesses when Simba’s in trouble, makes a distraction for Nala so she doesn’t get caught by Scar, and even helps a little more in the final battle. I won’t act like he was an improvement on the orginal exactly, as the best compromise would’ve been to have him be both funny and supportive, but at least there was an attempt to give him some depth.

+As much as I’ll critique the animation further down, I will give the animators credit for its realism. A lot of hard work was obviously put in, and it shows.

The Not-So-Good...

+The number one problem with this movie is, as I feared, the animation. I can respect that this is my opinion and many others might find some charm in how “real” everything looks, but I’m sorry -- musicals =/= realistic . Musicals are supposed to be over-the-top. They are supposed to be theatrical. Hell, even the Broadway production of The Lion King understood that to tell this story without animated lions, you had to treat it like a folktale. The story was never about lions -- it was a human story told with lions. The ideas of family -- responsibility -- duty -- leadership -- grief -- hope -- these are human values. The Lion King was inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It also has ripples of the Moses story, given that it revolves around someone running away from their home and responsibility, only to realize their true calling and go back to save their people. And you know something? I am positive that the filmmakers knew full well how ridiculous these National-Geographic-esque animated creatures would look suddenly bursting into song -- that’s why they tried at every single opportunity to depict the musical sequences in wide, impersonal shots that barely correspond to the rhythm or mood of the song at all. Unless it’s The Circle of Life, which is literally a shot-for-shot recreation of the original sequence accompanied by a song sung by none of the characters on screen, the only way that these supposedly “realistic” creatures could communicate energy or emotion during the song sequences was by running and climbing things. And in the end, it just looks lazy and dull. There’s no energy in either the shots or the editing. Hakuna Matata and I Just Can’t Wait to Be King suffer the most because of this, as those songs were so dependent on bright colors, spontaneity, and enthusiasm, but none of the songs are done justice with this animation.

+Another issue with the animation is in the characters themselves. As realistic as it looks in the textures of the fur and the way the animals move, it is utterly lifeless in practice. I swear to God, there are points where these animals looked stuffed, they’re so blank and hollow. You know those live action movies, like Cats and Dogs, where they would have real dogs and cats play the characters and then just “fix” their mouths with post-production CGI to make it look like they’re talking, even if their eyes and faces still end up looking so blank that it never looks like they’re saying what’s coming out of their mouths? THAT’S THE ENTIRE MOVIE. It didn’t matter how good the voice acting was, because it was invalidated by the lack of expression of the characters who were supposedly saying the lines. The only character in this movie who seemed to have any emotion in his eyes was Scar, and that was because his animated model was apparently given permission to narrow his eyes more, presumably to look more “eeeeeviiiiiiil~.” Even the hyenas were just given hollow black eyes that only ever looked alien and inhuman most of the time (clearly to remind you that they’re the bad guys) -- there were no emotions other than “mwehehehe we’re gonna eat you” on their faces the entire movie. But yeah, think of all the really emotional scenes in this movie. Think of Mufasa seeing Simba hanging on that tree -- the fear in his face as Simba almost loses his grip on the branch -- the pain and fear in Simba’s expression when Mufasa puts him up on a small ledge, only to get yanked backward by the wildebeest and disappear from view -- the struggle in Mufasa’s body language as he tries to climb up the edge of the gorge -- the betrayal and horror in Mufasa’s expression when Scar reveals his true colors -- the desperation, disbelief, horror, and grief in Simba’s face when he finds his father and screams at the open air for help. ...Yeah. Now imagine all of those scenes being acted out by EMOTIONLESS PUPPETS. That’s even what Mufasa looks like when he’s thrown backwards off the cliff -- a puppet. A scene that has left people in tears almost made me snort with laughter because of how bad it looked!

+The animation’s realism also, as others pointed out when the trailers first came out, made it very difficult to pick out individual characters. When Nala grew up, there wasn’t even a way to tell that she was the youngest of the lionesses -- they all looked like clones of each other. There’s a bit where one of the hyenas (I guess he’s supposed to be Banzai, but I guess he’s been renamed something else?) confuses Scar for Mufasa at a distance and I almost burst out laughing because it was like the movie characters themselves even realized how identical all of the lions look. Simba’s face “turning into Mufasa’s” in the water had no emotional impact at all because you could barely tell that anything had just happened.

+Geezus, and I thought that Beauty and the Beast took too many ideas from the original? Oh boy. This movie took so much from the original, it was like the filmmakers copied something they found on the Internet for a school assignment and then added and switched around a couple of lines just so they wouldn’t be accused of plagiarism. There were quite a few points while watching this where I was going, “Oooookay, and this is where Simba sees a lizard. ...Yup, there it is. He’s gonna try to roar twice. ...Yup, and...yup. And on the third try, he’s going to roar loud enough for it to echo, and we’ll cut to the top of the gorge. ...Called it. And wildebeest in three, two, one...” Now, of course, knowing what’s going to happen shouldn’t reduce suspense -- if anything, when something suspenseful is done well, it doesn’t matter if you know what happens, because now you’re excited to see those things happen. But in this? How could I be excited when they recycled almost every joke, almost every shot, almost every scene, only with half the energy and sincerity? Even Beauty and the Beast tried to throw in some twists now and again, even if I didn’t end up liking most of them...the only things I can think of in regards to “changes” were some extra scenes that didn’t add much of anything, such as Scar leaning even more into his “Claudius” role and trying to court Simba’s mother Sarabi. Oh, and on that note...

+...The original movie was about an hour and a half long. This one was two hours. You want to know how they stretched that run-time out? Largely by adding in extended nature sequences. Perhaps if you really like the “realistic” animation, you might enjoy the gratuity of it, but some of them just got ridiculous. Remember how in the original, Scar caught a mouse and kind of taunted it? Now we get almost a whole minute just watching the mouse running around and doing nothing before Scar even shows up. Remember how we got a short, smooth transition from Pride Rock to Rafiki’s tree with a rainfall and soothing music? Have one that’s twice as long and is devoid of any of the epic, solemn atmosphere. Remember how we got a cute little giggle when Timon and Pumbaa sang The Lion Sleeps Tonight, only for it to get interrupted by Nala’s arrival? Now that song is treated like a full musical number with lots of danc -- sorry, walking around aimlessly, because it’d be stupid if animals actually danced or something. Remember how Simba collapses into some leaves, which sets loose some dust which in a ten-second-long cut scene is blown through the wind into Rafiki’s hand? Now it lasts almost two whole minutes and involves a tuft of Simba’s fur landing in a river, being picked up by a bird, becoming stuffing in a nest, being tossed out of the nest, being accidentally eaten by a giraffe, being shat out by that giraffe, being picked up by a dung beetle -- OH, COME ON. NOW YOU’RE JUST SEARCHING FOR EXCUSES TO DRAG THIS MOVIE OUT.

+I love James Earl Jones, but he should not have reprised his role as Mufasa. I’m sorry, but the man is 88 years old now, and he just sounded so tired. He didn’t show even half of the energy and enthusiasm he had playing the part the first time. If he was Simba’s grandfather, that’d be one thing, but he’s not. Half of what makes Mufasa’s death so tragic is how alive and young he seemed and how close his bond was with his friends Rafiki and Zazu and his family Simba and Sarabi, but thanks to Jones’s low-key performance and the lack of emotion in Mufasa’s animation, all of that is lost.

+Just like with Jafar in the recent Aladdin remake, this movie tries to give Scar some depth, but the halfhearted attempt only serves to take away what made Scar a great villain in the first place -- namely, his dry wit, ruthlessness, talent for manipulation, dynamic attitude, arrogance, immaturity, and most of all passion. Combine this not-deliciously-evil-but-definitely-not-sympathetic characterization with such bland animation that neither conveys energy or intrigue, and we’re once again left with a very forgettable, uninteresting villain. Come on, Disney, you used to be so good at writing villains -- just because you’re trying to make a more “realistic” story doesn’t mean your villain can’t crack a smile every-so-often, geezus!

+If Sarabi was chasing off hyenas with the lionesses, how in the world did she and the lionesses get back to Pride Rock fast enough for them to be lounging around when Simba came to get Nala? Scar and Simba’s interaction isn’t nearly long enough to encompass Sarabi finishing up with the hyenas and returning home. This is a problem that comes from how much this remake copies from the original -- because it wants so many scenes to play out identically to the original, it gives any subtle line changes the writers do make the potential to create plot holes.

+Oh yeah, and the joke of Simba pouncing on Zazu really doesn’t work if we see Simba getting ready the entire time and Zazu makes it easy for Simba by spinning around in circles looking at nothing. One would think Zazu was trying to let Simba pounce on him.

+There’s no kind way to put this -- Timon and Pumbaa were just flat-out INSUFFERABLE in this. Not only were their deliveries of lines from the original movie pretty awful, but they also added in a bunch of new, often fourth-wall-breaking jokes that just made me hide my face in my hands and groan. In Hakuna Matata in particular, they act offended by Simba not being more excited when they first say the phrase, ruin the joke of Pumbaa farting by having him say it and Pumbaa then being upset that Timon didn’t interrupt him, AND give Simba a hard time for continuing the song until it fades out by saying that Simba’s “gained 400 pounds” since they started it! This isn’t even touching on how TERRIBLE Seth Rogen was as Pumbaa while singing -- like, I know that’s supposed to be part of the joke, but Ernie Sabella was “a bad singer” by being over-the-top, not by being off-pitch and painful to listen to! Not to mention that Sabella packed so much more characterization into his line deliveries -- the chasm of quality between Sabella and Rogen’s performances all the more highlighted to me the difference between an actor and a voice actor. You can’t just get away with speaking your lines in an ordinary voice when you’re voice acting -- you need to emote solely with your voice, as your face is not doing any of the work, and with animation this emotionless and bland, one really needed to have given 120% in their voice work for it to be even passable. (And honestly, none of the actors stood out well performance-wise...not that they should have to singlehandedly bear the burden of depicting their characters’ emotions just with their voices: this is an animated movie, not a radio drama!) As if breaking the fourth wall for no reason, telling bad jokes, and singing poorly wasn’t enough, Timon and Pumbaa also come across as infinitely more selfish and mean-spirited. They say they’re outcasts, and yet there’s a whole friggin’ community of animals in their jungle home. Simba actually hears Timon and Pumbaa selfishly decide to “keep him” because having a creature bigger than them around might help them out. Timon flat-out tells Simba to only look after himself and no one else. Whereas in the original film, Timon and Pumbaa almost raise Simba like adopted parents, having fun with him and genuinely showing concern for him -- here, Timon and Pumbaa act more like a pair of frat boys who adopted the “new kid” in college and induct him into their friend circle, even though, yeah, Simba first meets them as a cub and they’re already adults. Rather than just laugh at the thought of “royal dead guys watching them” for a quick moment, they openly roar with laughter at Simba, dragging it out even when it’s very clear Simba is hurt by their amusement and not even bothering to apologize. At least in the original, Simba acted like it was funny and then left abruptly, but here? Simba never laughed or showed any amusement, so it came across as Timon and Pumbaa bullying him. Oh yeah, and speaking of bullying, remember how there was that one-off pop culture reference where Pumbaa gets mad at being called a pig? Now that’s been replaced with Pumbaa saying he doesn’t like bullies -- seems like that would’ve been a lovely thing to set up earlier, maybe to give that line some emotional pay-off, but nope! There’s no joke AND there’s no point. But you want to know what made me hate these two beyond reason in this movie? You want to know what finally pushed me over the edge? They broke the fourth wall beyond repair by -- rather than randomly putting on a hula skirt and dancing goofily, because of course we’re a SERIOUS animated movie, one that’s so REAL -- singing Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast, French accent and all. ...Excuse me for a minute. *buries her face into a pillow and screams in rage*

+By the way, those other animals who live in the jungle Timon and Pumbaa are from and therefore invalidate their assertion of being “outcasts”? Completely pointless. They don’t even come with Timon and Pumbaa and fight for the Pridelands! You could have cut them completely and lost nothing.

+As much as Hakuna Matata was the most irritating of the numbers, I Just Can’t Wait to Be King and especially Be Prepared were just pathetic. I Just Can’t Wait to Be King largely suffered, again, due to the “realism” of the animation, but the slow editing and even the vocals slowed the whole sequence down and sucked out any energy or excitement from the piece. I’ll give credit to Nala and Simba’s voice actors for their vocal quality, but there was still none of the spontaneity and recklessness in their voices that the song requires, so it just came across as Disney karaoke, rather than anything professional. But Be Prepared was easily the worst of the lot. It would be a challenge to try to evoke the level of dread and demented thrill you get from the original song sequence, but here, the filmmakers didn’t even try. Not only do we only get part of the song, but Scar’s voice actor Chitwetel Ejiofor barely sings a word of it and brings none of the dynamic, power-hungry, conniving, almost hypnotic mania that’s supposed to define Scar in that moment. He’s mostly just shouting like an old man yelling at a kid to get off his lawn -- there’s no attempt at persuasion or temptation in his voice at all. And just like in most of the other musical numbers, the only way Scar’s character model can emote during his song is to climb on things. Even in songs that were performed well, there were notable problems. The Circle of Life was basically animated on autopilot, replicating every single shot without taking any time to show any genuine emotion anywhere, whether when Zazu and Rafiki greeted Mufasa or when Simba sneezed away the dust in his face...and Can You Feel the Love Tonight? Haha, yeah, right -- more like “Can You Feel the Love in the Mid-Afternoon”! It was absolutely comical, hearing them sing “tonight” when the entire sequence was done in daylight!

+I’ve always liked The Lion King, but...wow, after seeing this remake and how much they tried to lean into the “hyenas as outsiders” idea in this, I have to acknowledge that there are some uncomfortable elements to this story. In the original, we solely focus on Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed with other hyenas in the background, so them being outside the Pridelands could just be seen as the case of a few bad apples, rather than it being an indictment on an entire group. But here, in this version, Shenzi is depicted more seriously as the leader of all the hyenas and it’s established that the war between lions and hyenas has gone on for a long time. Basically this movie turns Shenzi into Zira from The Lion King 2...and yeah, that makes it so that the hyenas -- as the outsiders -- should theoretically be slightly sympathetic, right? You know, to show that it’s wrong to cast others out because they look or act different from you? Nope! Nope, they’re all just evil! They’re manifestations of greed and hunger with no potential for redemption whatsoever. They’re not like our good, pale-colored lionesses who all look the same -- they’re dirty, and conniving, and they seek to creep out of the shadows and leech on everything the lions hold dear. I could very, very easily see how some vile, disgusting people could embrace such a narrative in this current climate, seeing themselves in the lions trying to “take their land back” from the shadowy, evil hoard of creatures who have come from outside to tear down their way of life. I can’t act like this adaptation added something that wasn’t at all in the original movie, as, let’s be honest, it plagiarized most of it...but perhaps because of how they reused this story and in some cases leaned into some elements of that story, this remake has very, very bad timing in when it was released. Those elements of the story probably wouldn’t have been read into it back in the 90′s, given the relative stability of the political landscape, but now? Now I could see how people could read it that way. It’d be like trying to make a movie like Independence Day, where national monuments get blown up, right after 9/11.

Looking back on what I just saw, I’m still absolutely stunned. Never before have I felt like my time has been more wasted than when I decided to sit down and watch this movie. I’ve tried to find shreds of praise, but whenever I try, it feels like I’m grasping at straws, only to fall back into a big pool of “blah.” I have never been so bored by a movie in my life -- and if there’s anything Disney, and especially Disney musicals, should never be, it’s boring. I would still say Maleficent makes me the most angry of Disney’s recent remakes, considering that that one openly insulted the original it was based off and this one is just clearly so up the original’s ass that it’s obnoxious...but this one was easily the biggest disappointment. I went in with almost no expectations, and yet still came out disappointed in the result. That, I think, says a lot. I could see someone who simply wants to see some cute animals and ride a bit on the nostalgia train enjoying this...but forgive me, but that bar is way too low. Disney is capable of doing so much better -- the true Lion King, the 1994 classic that broke records and surpassed all audience expectation, is more than enough evidence of that.

Overall Grade: D-

#the lion king (2019)#the lion king #disney #the lion king spoilers #opinion #oh boy here i go #reviews #disney remakes #remakes

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cecilspeaks · 5 years

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139 - The Birthday of Lee Marvin (I)

To err is human. To forgive is also human. The possibilities of human action are a multitude. Welcome to Night Vale.

Today is a very special day, listeners. Yes, for once your calendars are not deceiving you. Today is the 30th birthday of longtime Night Vale resident and Hollywood legend, Lee Marvin. Mr. Marvin is on break from the filming of “The Rise of the Hobbits, Part 4,” the anticipated next chapter of Peter Jackson’s 8-part film series, based on the copyright page of “The Hobbit”.

The town has declared the birthday a civic holiday, and are holding a fair in honor of Mr. Marvin in Grove Park. The man himself is said to speak later today, but head over now to play fun carnival games and eat local snacks. John Peters – you know, the farmer – will be there selling boiled imaginary corn dipped in theoretical butter. A tasty and extremely healthy snack, containing practically no calories at all. More on these birthday celebrations, as there continues to be a birthday to celebrate. Ah, I’m just so excited! I’m sorry, I really get into birthdays, always have. I just, I wish I could remember when mine is.

But first, some important facts about the moon from local moon scientist, or moon-ologist, Ross Sutherland. The moon is a weak egg, set to crack at a glance. The moon is a maniacal scent sniffed out by tidal waters. The moon is a barbarous necklace upon the neck of our barbarous world. The moon is a (ritzy) cloak, too gaudy for daywear. The moon is an accidental height, one that may some day be catastrophically adjusted. Thank you, Ross, for those fascinating facts.

The birthday celebration is in full swing. This is a town that loves our local legends, and no one is more local or legendary than movie star Lee Marvin. And not only a movie star, he has also been doing work in the theatre. Just this year, he staged a one-man version of “Angels in America” at the community theater, playing every single character over seven and a half hours, except the angels. Angels have a strong union and it turns out that no one is allowed to play an angel, unless they are themself an angel. The angels who participated in the production also found the play offensive, saying that it stereotyped angels as flying beings shouting prophecies and wrestling with divinely chosen humans. “Yes,” said an angel who once was the town’s richest man. “I have shouted a prophecy or two in my life, and yes, I wrestled a human over a divine message. But that’s a tiny part of my lived experience, and I want this work to better represent my whole being.” As such, the play was drastically rewritten and was mostly about angels attending school board meetings, throwing dinner parties, and hanging out at the parking lot of the Ralphs. I was deeply moved.

Anyway, come on down to Grove Park. You don’t wanna miss this birthday party. The angels brought sheet cake.

And now a public service announcement. Trish Hidge and Simone Rigideau are seeking volunteers for their new community service organization that puts cute paper hats on dogs. “Sure,” said Trish Hidge from within her darkened house, speaking through a narrow gap she had pulled in her blinds. “Dogs are cute, but have you ever seen a dog in a paper pirate? Or, or, or a chef’s hat? Wha-wha-what about a paper the shaped like another dog, perched on top of the first dog’s head. It is these kinds of experiences we wish to bring to the world with our new organization. What was that?!” she finished, suddenly snapping the blinds shut and disappearing. There was a series of loud thuds and a slow dragging sound from inside, and then the whites of her eyes against the blinds again as she hissed: “Did you see that? What did you see? You saw it, didn’t you?” Until your friendly reporter decided it would be best to back away from your house and then, having reached the sidewalk, turn and run, his breath rattling in and out of his chest. Simone Rigideau only commented that she is happy to devote her time to such a good cause. And that also, the world ended a long time ago. “This isn’t the world,” she said. “I don’t know what this is, but I know dogs are in it and so that’s what I’ll focus on.” Anyone wishing to sing up with the organization should just tell the next dog you see, and they’ll take care of the rest.

And now, traffic. A scattering of roads in the desert, far from human habitation. These roads are only roads in the most theoretical of senses. They are merely packed down dirt, cleared of plants, and no vehicle has passed over them in years. Is a road that is never used still a road? Or is it something else? A marking, a monument to movement that never came to be? One of these not-roads meanders its way over a rise and back down through chapallar.

From high up in a plane or sitting in the clean white interior of a flying saucer, it would appear as though someone had taken a pen and let it trail loosely over the earth. Eventually, it meets up with another scattering of dirt roads. These have a few farms and businesses along them, not many but these roads are sometimes used. Maybe the people here are aware that one of their roads drifts off far into the desert, ending at an abandoned cross-hatching of lanes. But more likely, they only know that one of their roads goes nowhere, and they ignore that road. From this barely populated area, one of the dirt roads heads out, becomes paved, goes its two-laned way into a small town with a high school and a Walmart. This small town has a road that ends at the highway.

The highway merges eventually onto the interstate, an 8-lane river of cars pouring into and out of the city, a vast pool of life. Some of that life is only there for the day. Others will live and die never having left their neighborhoods. And you could, if you wanted, get in your car in the heart of this metropolis and take the interstate to the highway, to the two-lane road, through the small town, to the sparsely populated dirt roads, and follow that one meandering road over the rise and come to an intersection of markings that are only roads in the most theoretical of ways. And you could get out of your car and walk along these roads, the first human to touch them since their creation, and perhaps even then, but no one ever has, and no one ever will. This has been traffic.

The party is still rolling along down in Grove Park. Martin McCaffrey, local representative of the TSA, has set up an art sale with some of his works, all of which contain strange dark hunched figures. It seems wildly inappropriate that he has chosen to set up a private art sale at a public birthday party for someone else, but you go Martin, I guess.

Oh, oh! The crowd is buzzing! Lee Marvin has arrived. Everyone stop buzzing, I’m trying to hear what Lee is saying! He must be so happy about celebration. Uh he’s approaching the mic, it appears he has prepared a speech to thank us for this party. Ah, that’s wonderful. We will return with that speech in just a moment, but first, we absolutely must Check in on the weather.

[“Impasse” by Juliana Finch, https://music.julianafinch.com]

Lee Marvin: Hello. Thank you for coming to my birthday party. [chuckles] It has been my 30th birthday for a long time. Hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years. Continuously my 30th birthday. [chuckles] I never grow a day older. I don’t know why this of all the days that are my birthday is the one on which you chose to throw a party, but it’s sure nice of you to think of me. That cake looks fine.

How is a person supposed to track time outside of the context of the world? If it was my 30th birthday when George Washington declared himself god-king of America, and it was my 30th birthday when Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landing. And my 30th birthday today, then how old am I? How much time has passed? It is impossible for me to have a sense of time, I’m not on a ship sailing to some great destination, I am floating on my back in the sea of time staring up at cruel and alien stars. The currents take me. I will never wash up on any golden shore. Perhaps I will someday sink. Without the context of history, my memories are flat, each holding equal weight. Each with the possibility of having taken place the same amount of time ago.

I remember standing on this land, when no one else was here. Even the land wasn’t quite here yet. It was still part of a larger land mass that would shiver out all over the earth, holding in the contour of its coast lines the memory of its schism. The air was heavy and warm and breathing felt like drinking. It was my 30th birthday that day. I sat under a few branches to protect myself from the rain. This was thick forest then, the sea lapped up against it and all of this, all of that, has dried up. It hardly ever rains.

On my 30th birthday, I stood with the town elders as they declared the formation of this community. I signed on the original charter. Go see for yourself in the civic history museum, in the lobby of city hall, admission is free. And anyone with a secret or top secret clearance with any major government agency is welcome to take a look. There you will see that tattered bit of paper and on it, among the scrawls of men whose names have decayed along with their bones is a signature that remains as clean and clear as the day I wrote it. It says “Lee Marvin”, and in parentheses it says “30”, with several exclamation points.

Perhaps we were wrong to create this town. Even in the moment of signing, we were avoiding each other’s eyes, there was much we didn’t understand about this place that we were naming and giving boundaries to, but we felt in debt to something much larger than us. And the town of Night Vale was one of its demands. Later, on my 30th birthday, I watched missiles streak across the sky and knew we were all doomed. And then we weren’t doomed, and it was still my 30th birthday. I don’t know what happened. I only know what it smelled like. There was a smell like cloves on the wind, and a smell like plastic wrap that has gotten warm in the sun. A-and a smell like an elevator just after it’s been cleaned. I stood outside and I took great whiffs of air, understanding that by all rights I shouldn’t have been able to do that anymore. In that moment, I shouldn’t have existed. But I did. And so I breathed and breathed. Maybe it had smelled like that before outside, maybe it always had and I just never truly noticed until that moment.

I love Night Vale. But I’m afraid of Night Vale. I-I think many of us feel that way, although we don’t speak of it. We announce our love of civic leadership and of our town pride but – sometimes we find that we are standing in front of a shed in our garden, and the door is cracked open a little and in that darkness of the shed there is a depth of terror so great that no one world could contain it. And we stand barefoot in grass made sharp by drought and we gape at the shadows within the shed, without knowing what we are seeing and by the time we realize what we are doing, the sun has long gone down and the stars have infested the sky and we are still standing in front of that garden shed with the door ajar. Or, well, maybe that’s just me. [chuckles] Certainly that has happened to me on, on many of my 30th birthdays, but no more. I seek for my unchanging life to change. I seek context, I seek one moment in which I understand what time it is.

Thank you for coming to my birthday. Well, I don’t believe it’ll be my birthday much longer. Looks like the cake is all gone now.

Cecil: Wwwwwwwwwhatt is there to sayyy about ssomeone on the date of their birth Iiii.. I suppose, uh the same things to say about them on any other day although – too often we don’t. He is… a kind man. Uhhh, a good friend. He helps sometimes, and thinks about helping often. He tries. It doesn’t always work, but he tries, or he doesn’t. But he thinks about trying. He is, in other words, like any of us, and today is his birthday, and so for today we say about him the warm things that we perhaps should be saying about each other all of the time. Why wait for a single day to say a kind word?

Lee Marvin, happy 30th birthday. Here’s to many, many more.

Stay tuned next for this one weird click that your elbow makes if you turn it just so. Did you hear that, that click? What do you think that is? Better search online and read the most frightening answers and sit in your bed for long waking hours of dark, moving your elbow and listening. Click, click, click.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Every example of irony in the song “Ironic” is completely correct, because that song singlehandedly changed the common parlance definition of “irony”.

#welcome to night vale #welcome to night vale transcripts #episode 139 #the birthday of lee marvin

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13-brandino-blog · 5 years

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Its 2006, and Taylor Swift's debut album just released. I was just a ten year old boy sitting in the back of his grandpa's car listening to Teardrops On My Guitar on the radio for the first time. Ten year old me was singing the lyrics as if he could actually relate to them. Unbeknownst to that ten year old boy, the name Taylor Swift was going to pop up in his life way more than he knew.

Two years later, a poster of a blonde, curly hair teenage girl would be plastered all over my cousins bedroom wall. The poster said 'Fearless' and at the time, we thought we were fearless. We dreamt of becoming actors and being in movies. We said we would do impossible things, and we imagined lives much more grand than we were likely to get. We dreamt of perfect dates and kissing in the rain, white horses and love stories. At the time, we didn't realize that perfect was overrated.

It's 2010, and I was now fourteen years old. The Speak Now era was upon us! Little did I know, this era would bring me long nights listening to 'Mine' underneath my tree in the front yard. It would bring me memories of jumping around my best friend's room singing 'Better Than Revenge' while cursing our exes that we could have swore we would marry. Before the end of the Speak Now era, I would be enchanted by a girl at a community theater. She would be the first girl I would ever fall in (what I thought) was love! She would later break my fifteen year old heart, and convince me that love was not worth the pain that came after. Little did I know that the real pain was yet to come.

I am sixteen and a junior in high school. I am sitting in chemistry class when my phone rings. 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' plays loudly and everyone in class looks around to see whose phone is going off. Embarrassingly, I turn my phone off. From then on, I became the butt of an ongoing joke regarding that song, not that I minded. It is December, and I am positive that I have met the love of my life. The only problem is that he is a guy! After much courage, I come out to all my friends and my family as bisexual. I remember sitting on my best friend's bed listening to the acoustic version of State of Grace, and talking about the guy that I was sure was the one. I wish I knew then that things would take a turn for the worse. The Red album would eventually play a huge part in helping me overcome one of my hardest breakups to date. Songs like 'Begin Again' would be drown out by anthems like 'All Too Well' and 'Sad Beautiful Tragic'. But life moved on.

It is 2014, and I am fresh out of high school. Life could not get any better. I spend literally all of my free time with my friends by throwing parties, taking late-night joyrides, and travelling to places on our bucket lists. Summer is slowly starting to come to an end, and the overwhelming pressure of college begins. The date is August 18th, 2014 and I am sitting in the living room of my new apartment when the music video for 'Shake It Off' releases. The song instantly becomes my favorite! For months to come, the song stays on repeat. I have vivid memories of my mom and I riding through the city with the windows down singing it at the top of our lungs. Months later, Swifities are blessed with 1989.....Flash forward a year, and I am in the car with a guy who is supposed to be my best friend, but its slowly and unexpectedly turning into something more. 'You Are In Love' is playing through my car's bluetooth. Taylor sings "One night he wakes, strange look on his face. Pauses, then says, you're my best friend. And you knew what it was, he is in love". This was the turning point in our friendship that would later become something more, something it probably shouldn't.

(1,2,3...Let's go bitch!) The beginning of a new era is emerging! After a few more breakups and parting ways with certain friends, the era of the snake comes into view. 'Look What You Made Me Do' comes to slay, and I honestly couldn't relate more. Not only was the old Taylor dead, but in a way, another version of me had taken hold. A version of me with a whole new set of friends! A set of friends who would sing every last song on Reputation along with me! On June 30th, the moment had come! I was finally attending my very first Taylor Swift concert. That night would be filled with many raw emotions. Her B-stage performance of 'Mine' would take me right back to memories of sitting under the tree in my front yard eight years before. I thought this was as good as it was going to get! Until...my friend invited me to sit stage side with him at the Nashville show! Even though I had seen the tour before, I had never experienced anything like this. It was a total different experience sitting stage side. For the first time, I was actually fully immersed into the action of the confetti cannons and the heat from the fire! August 25th was officially one for the books!

It is now April 19th, and we are plagued by the theories and the hype of April 26th! When will it all make sense?! We only have 5 days and 21 hours until we can finally step out of the darkness and into light!

#taylornation #taylorlurking #taylor swift #ts7 #ts7iscoming

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Althea Gibson

Althea Gibson (August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and the first black athlete to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first person of color to win a Grand Slam title (the French Open). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals (precursor of the U.S. Open), then won both again in 1958, and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments, including six doubles titles, and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived," said Robert Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. "Martina couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters." In the early 1960s she also became the first black player to compete on the women's professional golf tour.

At a time when racism and prejudice were widespread in sports and in society, Gibson was often compared to Jackie Robinson. "Her road to success was a challenging one," said Billie Jean King, "but I never saw her back down." "To anyone, she was an inspiration, because of what she was able to do at a time when it was enormously difficult to play tennis at all if you were black," said former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. "I am honored to have followed in such great footsteps," wrote Venus Williams. "Her accomplishments set the stage for my success, and through players like myself and Serena and many others to come, her legacy will live on."

Biography

Early life and education

Gibson was born on August 25, 1927, in the town of Silver, in Clarendon County, South Carolina, to Daniel and Annie Bell Gibson, who worked as sharecroppers on a cotton farm. The Great Depression hit rural southern farmers sooner than much of the rest of the country, so in 1930 the family moved to Harlem, where Althea's three sisters and brother were born. Their apartment was located on a stretch of 143rd Street that had been designated a Police Athletic League play area; during daylight hours it was barricaded so that neighborhood children could play organized sports. Gibson quickly became proficient in paddle tennis, and by 1939, at the age of 12, she was the New York City women's paddle tennis champion.

In 1940 a group of Gibson's neighbors took up a collection to finance a junior membership and lessons at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. In 1941 she entered—and won—her first tournament, the American Tennis Association (ATA) New York State Championship. She won the ATA national championship in the girls' division in 1944 and 1945, and after losing in the women's final in 1946, she won her first of ten straight national ATA women's titles in 1947. "I knew that I was an unusual, talented girl, through the grace of God," she wrote. "I didn't need to prove that to myself. I only wanted to prove it to my opponents."

Gibson's ATA success drew the attention of Walter Johnson, a Lynchburg, Virginia, physician who was active in the African American tennis community. Under Johnson's patronage—he would later mentor Arthur Ashe as well—Gibson gained access to more advanced instruction and more important competitions, and later, to the United States Tennis Association (USTA). In 1946 she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, under the sponsorship of another physician and tennis activist, Hubert A. Eaton and enrolled at Williston High School. In 1949 she became the first black woman, and the second black athlete (after Reginald Weir), to play in the USTA's National Indoor Championships, where she reached the quarter-finals. Later that year she entered Florida A&M University on a full athletic scholarship.

Amateur career

In 1950, in response to intense lobbying by ATA officials and Alice Marble—who published a scathing open letter in the magazineAmerican Lawn Tennis—Gibson received an invitation to compete in the United States National Championships (now the U.S. Open) at Forest Hills. She was the first black player ever selected, and made her debut on her 23rd birthday. Although she lost narrowly in the second round in a rain-delayed, three-set match to Louise Brough, the reigning Wimbledon champion and former U.S. National winner, her participation received extensive national and international coverage. "No Negro player, man or woman, has ever set foot on one of these courts," wrote journalist Lester Rodney at the time. "In many ways, it is even a tougher personal Jim Crow-busting assignment than was Jackie Robinson's when he first stepped out of the Brooklyn Dodgers dugout."

In 1951 Gibson won her first international title, the Caribbean Championships in Jamaica, and later that year became the first black competitor at Wimbledon, where she was defeated in the third round by Beverly Baker. In 1952 she was ranked seventh nationally by the USTA. In the spring of 1953 she graduated from Florida A&M and took a job teaching physical education at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. During her two years at Lincoln she became romantically involved with an Army officer whom she never named publicly, and considered enlisting in the Women's Army Corps, but decided against it when the State Department sent her on a goodwill tour of Asia in 1955 to play exhibition matches with Ham Richardson, Bob Perry, and Karol Fageros. Many Asians in the countries they visited—Burma, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, and Thailand—"...felt an affinity to Althea as a woman of color and were delighted to see her as part of an official U.S. delegation. With the United States grappling over the question of race, they turned to Althea for answers, or at least to get a firsthand perspective." Gibson, for her part, strengthened her confidence immeasurably during the six-week tour. When it was over, she remained abroad, winning 16 of 18 tournaments in Europe and Asia against many of the world's best players.

In 1956 Gibson became the first African-American athlete to win a Grand Slam event, the French Open singles championship. She also won the doubles title, partnered with Briton Angela Buxton. Later in the season she won the Wimbledon doubles championship (again with Buxton), the Italian national championship in Rome, and the Asian championship in Ceylon. She also reached the quarter-finals in singles at Wimbledon and the finals at the U.S. Nationals, losing both to Shirley Fry.

1957 was, in her own words, "Althea Gibson's year". In July she won Wimbledon—considered, at the time, the "world championship of tennis". She was the first black champion in the tournament's 80-year history, and the first champion to receive the trophy personally from Queen Elizabeth II. "Shaking hands with the queen of England," she said, "was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus." She won the doubles championship as well, for the second year. Upon her return home Gibson became only the second black American, after Jesse Owens, to be honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City, and Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. presented her with the Bronze Medallion, the city's highest civilian award. A month later she defeated Brough in straight sets to win her first U.S. National championship. "Winning Wimbledon was wonderful," she wrote, "and it meant a lot to me. But there is nothing quite like winning the championship of your own country." In all she reached the finals of eight Grand Slam events in 1957, winning the Wimbledon and U.S. National singles titles, the Wimbledon and Australian doubles championships, and the U.S. mixed doubles crown, and finishing second in Australian singles, U.S. doubles, and Wimbledon mixed doubles. At season's end she broke yet another barrier as the first black player on the U.S. Wightman Cup team, which defeated Great Britain 6–1.

In 1958 Gibson successfully defended her Wimbledon and U.S. National singles titles, and won her third straight Wimbledon doubles championship, with a third different partner. She was the number-one-ranked woman in the world and in the United States in both 1957 and 1958, and was named Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years, garnering over 80% of the votes in 1958. She also became the first black woman to appear on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time.

Professional career

In late 1958, having won 56 national and international singles and doubles titles, including 11 Grand Slam championships, Gibson retired from amateur tennis. Prior to the Open Era there was no prize money at major tournaments, and direct endorsement deals were prohibited. Players were limited to meager expense allowances, strictly regulated by the USTA. "The truth, to put it bluntly, is that my finances were in heartbreaking shape," she wrote. "Being the Queen of Tennis is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown. Nor can you send the Internal Revenue Service a throne clipped to their tax forms. The landlord and grocer and tax collector are funny that way: they like cold cash ... I reign over an empty bank account, and I'm not going to fill it by playing amateur tennis." Professional tours for women were still 15 years away, so her opportunities were largely limited to promotional events. In 1959 she signed to play a series of exhibition matches against Karol Fageros before Harlem Globetrotter basketball games. When the tour ended she won the singles and doubles titles at the Pepsi Cola World Pro Tennis Championships in Cleveland, but received only $500 in prize money.

During this period, Gibson also pursued her long-held aspirations in the entertainment industry. A talented vocalist and saxophonist—and runner-up in the Apollo Theater's amateur talent contest in 1943—she made her professional singing debut at W. C. Handy's 84th birthday tribute at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1957. An executive from Dot Records was impressed with her performance, and signed her to record an album of popular standards. Althea Gibson Sings was released in 1959, and Gibson performed two of its songs onThe Ed Sullivan Show in May and July of that year, but sales were disappointing. She appeared as a celebrity guest on the TV panel show What's My Line? and was cast as a slave woman in the John Ford motion picture The Horse Soldiers (1959), which was notable for her refusal to speak in the stereotypic "Negro" dialect mandated by the script. She also worked as a sports commentator, appeared in print and television advertisements for various products, and increased her involvement in social issues and community activities. In 1960 her first memoir, I Always Wanted to Be Somebody, written with sportswriter Ed Fitzgerald, was published.

Her professional tennis career, however, was going nowhere. "When I looked around me, I saw that white tennis players, some of whom I had thrashed on the court, were picking up offers and invitations," she wrote. "Suddenly it dawned on me that my triumphs had not destroyed the racial barrier once and for all, as I had—perhaps naively—hoped. Or if I did destroy them, they had been erected behind me again."

In 1964, at the age of 37, Gibson became the first African-American woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour. Racial discrimination continued to be a problem: Many hotels still excluded people of color, and country club officials throughout the south—and some in the north—routinely refused to allow her to compete. When she did compete, she was often forced to dress for tournaments in her car because she was banned from the clubhouse. Although she was one of the LPGA's top 50 money winners for five years, and won a car at a Dinah Shore tournament, her lifetime golf earnings never exceeded $25,000. She made financial ends meet with various sponsorship deals and the support of her husband, William Darben, brother of best friend and fellow tennis player Rosemary Darben, whom she married in 1965 (and divorced in 1976).

While she broke course records during individual rounds in several tournaments, Gibson's highest ranking was 27th in 1966, and her best tournament finish was a tie for second after a three-way playoff at the 1970 Len Immke Buick Open. She retired from professional golf at the end of the 1978 season. "Althea might have been a real player of consequence had she started when she was young," said Judy Rankin. "She came along during a difficult time in golf, gained the support of a lot of people, and quietly made a difference."

In 1976 Gibson made it to the finals of the ABC television program Superstars, finishing first in basketball shooting and bowling, and runner-up in softball throwing. With the advent of the Open Era she began entering major tennis tournaments again; but by then, in her forties, she was unable to compete effectively against younger players. She also attempted a golf comeback, in 1987, with the goal of becoming the oldest active tour player, but was unable to regain her tour card. In a second memoir, So Much to Live For, she articulated her disappointments, including unfulfilled aspirations, the paucity of endorsements and other professional opportunities, and the many obstacles of all sorts that were thrown in her path over the years.

In 1972 she began running Pepsi Cola's national mobile tennis project, which brought portable nets and other equipment to underprivileged areas in major cities. She ran multiple other clinics and tennis outreach programs over the next three decades, and coached numerous rising competitors, including Leslie Allen and Zina Garrison. "She pushed me as if I were a pro, not a junior," wrote Garrison in her 2001 memoir. "I owe the opportunity I received to her."

In the early 1970s Gibson began directing women's sports and recreation for the Essex County Parks Commission in New Jersey. In 1976 she was appointed New Jersey's athletic commissioner, the first woman in the country to hold such a role, but resigned after one year due to lack of autonomy, budgetary oversight, and adequate funding. "I don't wish to be a figurehead," she said. In 1977 she challenged incumbent Essex County State Senator Frank J. Dodd in the Democratic primary for his seat. She came in second behind Dodd, but ahead of Assemblyman Eldridge Hawkins. Gibson went on to manage the Department of Recreation in East Orange, New Jersey. She also served on the State Athletic Control Board and became supervisor of the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. In 1983 she married Sydney Llewellyn, her coach during her peak tennis years. That marriage also ended in divorce, after five years; she had no children.

In the late 1980s Gibson suffered two cerebral hemorrhages and in 1992, a stroke. Ongoing medical expenses depleted her financial resources, leaving her unable to afford her rent or medication. Though she reached out to multiple tennis organizations requesting help, none responded. Former doubles partner Angela Buxton made Gibson's plight known to the tennis community, and raised nearly $1 million in donations from around the world.

In early 2003 Gibson survived a heart attack, but died on September 28, 2003, at the age of 76 from complications following respiratory and bladder infections. She was interred in the Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey, near her first husband, Will Darben.

Legacy

It would be 15 years before another woman of color—Evonne Goolagong, in 1971—won a Grand Slam championship; and 43 years before another African-American woman, Serena Williams, won her first of six U.S. Opens in 1999, not long after faxing a letter and list of questions to Gibson. Serena's sister Venus then won back-to-back titles at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2000 and 2001, repeating Gibson's accomplishment of 1957 and 1958.

In 1980 Gibson became one of the first six inductees into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame, placing her on par with such pioneers as Amelia Earhart, Wilma Rudolph, Gertrude Ederle, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Patty Berg. Other inductions included the National Lawn Tennis Hall of Fame, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the Florida Sports Hall of Fame, the Black Athletes Hall of Fame, the Sports Hall of Fame of New Jersey, the New Jersey Hall of Fame, the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame, and the International Women's Hall of Fame.

In 1991 Gibson became the first woman to receive the Theodore Roosevelt Award, the highest honor from the National Collegiate Athletic Association; she was cited for "symbolizing the best qualities of competitive excellence and good sportsmanship, and for her significant contributions to expanding opportunities for women and minorities through sports." Sports Illustrated for Women named her to its list of the "100 Greatest Female Athletes". In August 2013 the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp honoring Gibson, the 36th in its Black Heritage series.

In a 1977 historical analysis of women in sports, New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden wrote, "Althea Gibson and Wilma Rudolph are, without question, the most significant athletic forces among black women in sports history. While Rudolph's accomplishments brought more visibility to women as athletes ... Althea's accomplishments were more revolutionary because of the psychosocial impact on black America. Even to those blacks who hadn't the slightest idea of where or what Wimbledon was, her victory, like Jackie Robinson's in baseball and Jack Johnson's in boxing, proved again that blacks, when given an opportunity, could compete at any level in American society."

On opening night of the 2007 U.S. Open, the 50th anniversary of her first victory at its predecessor, the U.S. Championships, in 1957, Gibson was inducted into the US Open Court of Champions. "It was the quiet dignity with which Althea carried herself during the turbulent days of the 1950s that was truly remarkable," said USTA president Alan Schwartz, at the ceremony. "[Her] legacy ... lives on not only in the stadiums of professional tournaments, but also in schools and parks throughout the nation. Every time a black child or a Hispanic child or an Islamic child picks up a tennis racket for the first time, Althea touches another life. When she began playing, less than five percent of tennis newcomers were minorities. Today, some 30 percent are minorities, two-thirds of whom are African American. This is her legacy."

Gibson's five Wimbledon trophies are displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The Althea Gibson Cup seniors tournament is held annually in Croatia, under the auspices of the International Tennis Federation (ITF). The Althea Gibson Foundation identifies and supports gifted golf and tennis players who live in urban environments. In 2005 Gibson's friend Bill Cosby endowed the Althea Gibson Scholarship at her alma mater, Florida A&M University.

In September 2009 Wilmington, North Carolina, named its new community tennis court facility the Althea Gibson Tennis Complex at Empie Park. Other tennis facilities bearing her name include Manning High School (near her birthplace in Silver, South Carolina), the Family Circle Tennis Center in Charleston, South Carolina, Florida A&M University, and Branch Brook Park in Newark, New Jersey. In 2012 a bronze statue, created by sculptor Thomas Jay Warren, was dedicated to her memory in Branch Brook Park. "I hope that I have accomplished just one thing," she once wrote, "that I have been a credit to tennis, and to my country." "By all measures," reads the inscription on her Newark statue, "Althea Gibson certainly attained that goal."

http://wikipedia.thetimetube.com/?q=Althea+Gibson&lang=en

#Althea Gibson

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abbajane · 4 years

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I hope everyone had an informative and reflective Black History Month! This month for the Own Voices Global Reading Challenge we read for Black America (#ownvoices selections from Black American authors). Here’s what I read, listened to, and who I followed this month!

What I Read

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: My favorite of the month! This book has been on my TBR for ages, and I finally sat down to it and read it all in one sitting. Following the life of Janie from her idyllic but illusionary childhood, through her marriages, through her adventures and travels, Their Eyes radiates with beauty, love, and self-discovery. The story was so vibrant and moving, so complex and philosophical. I loved Janie and her story; she’s probably one of the most interesting and complex characters I’ve ever read. I was thinking about her and her story long after I closed the book.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones: Another that’s been on my TBR for ever. I was working at the library when this book exploded in popularity — it was almost never on the shelf. With Jones being a local author, I was excited to read her Atlanta and this book did not disappoint. Moving between the lives of a married couple, Roy Jr. and Celestial, the novel navigates the complicated terrain of love while the characters navigate the even more complicated terrain of a wrongful conviction and imprisonment. I was riveted to the last chapter, unsure how it was going to turn out well for anyone with only a few pages left. A moving portrait of love, loss, and the effects of the criminal justice system on Black lives, this novel is an instant classic.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine: I had the honor of meeting Claudia Rankine while I was in college. She was a guest at Agnes Scott College’s Annual Writers’ Festival in 2017 while I was interning with the program. I was amazed by her wisdom and quiet grace, and I thoroughly enjoyed her reading though I had never read her work. When I devised this challenge, she was immediately at the forefront of my list for this month. Citizen is a moving collection of experiences, reflections, and essays in which Rankine lays bare the Black experience. There was so much I learned not only about the physical and casual experiences that Black women face, but also about historical events of racism and violence that I had never heard about before.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange: I found this book from a bingo card for Black history month by @diverseclassics on Instagram (see below!). I had heard about this book here and there, but I didn’t really know what to expect from it. It was unlike anything that I’ve ever read. Written and performed on stage originally in the 1970s, For Colored Girls is a moving and flowing collection of Black women’s experiences. It can be hard to read. I will admit that the form of this book really inhibited the experience of it for me. I have no experience in theater, I don’t read plays, and I only read poetry when forced. I’d love to watch this book performed, as it was intended.

Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson: Another that’s been on my TBR for a while! This book came to my attention more seriously when the film was released, but I had watched it dance around on Bookstagram for a while. I found a copy at my library book sale recently, so I had it up farther on the list. I knew it would be good, but I had no idea how moving, how emotional, and how mindset changing it would be for me. The book follows the experience of the now-famed civil rights lawyer Brian Stevenson as he became involved with Death Row cases and began his organization the Equal Justice Initiative. The stories Stevenson told about the people he met on Death Row, the injustices they faced, the outright racism that warped their lives was truly harrowing. I cried a lot reading this book. It truly changed how I think about the world and the experiences of others in it.

What I Listened To

Ella Fitzgerald (with Louie Armstrong): a classic! I love nothing more than dancing around the kitchen cooking dinner while Ella and Louie sing their jazz.

H.E.R.: I’ve been a fan of H.E.R.’s award show performances for years. Her style and skill and attitude and persona on stage is electric and empowering. I’ve just gotten around to listening to her music more casually and I’ve really enjoyed the experience!

Bobby Hebb: I found the song “Sunny” on instagram’s music feature while I was looking for a happy song to put with a video of one of my cats rolling in the sun. The rain and cold and whisper of spring this month has me listening to this song literally once a day.

The Birth of Rhythm and Blues (Spotify playlist): I love this Spotify playlist! So much good music!

Women of Motown (Spotify playlist): Another classic. Gladys Knight and Diana Ross — need I say more?

Who I Followed

@booksbythecup: This Bookstagram is so dreamy! Creator La’Shell posts photos daily of Black-authored books with cups of tea. She’s been working through the alphabet this month, posting a photo each day with a theme.

@nedratawwab: Nedra Glover Tawwab is a therapist and writer who posts amazing graphics about mental health, healthy relationships, and living to your truth. This is a great entry way into therapy for someone considering it, and a great resource for those who can’t invest fully in therapy at the time.

@rachel.cargle: Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is a writer, academic, and lecturer. For the month of February, in honor of Black History Month, she posts prompts for folks to research Black History for themselves. I love this idea! It’s an amazing way to bring attention to topics in Black history that aren’t well known and to practice your researching skills.

@diverseclassics: A staple of Bookstagram! This account is dedicated to highlighting marginalized voices in the literary world as well as redefining what the “classic canon” is. I’ve discovered so many new authors and books through this account. They also shared this amazing bingo-card style list for Black classics which was very helpful in building my TBR!

Further Reading

Here are some topics in Black America that need to be talked about. Obviously, this short list doesn’t begin to cover the traumas and injustices and realities that Black Americans face each day living in this country, but it is a good place to start to bring awareness to targeted and vulnerable people in this community. DISCLAIMER: Many of these issues deal with violence against Black people. Read the links at your discretion.

Violence against Transwomen of Color: MTV has recently launched a new show in their primetime slot on Wednesdays called MTV True Crime in which Dometi Pongo, the host, investigates crimes against young people, largely people of color. The show is hard to watch at times, but it brings a lot of light to issues that the modern American teenager faces, especially when they are from marginalized groups. One episode covers the murder of Kedarie Johnson, a gender-fluid teen in Iowa in 2016. The episode largely focuses on Kedarie’s murder, but also highlights a major issue in the Black Community today — violence against transwomen and gender non-conforming people. Often, the woman or person’s race and gender identity puts them at greater risk for violence, and their murders are not being solved, reported on, or brought to public attention.

Books in Prison: Reading Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson already had the prison system on my mind, and then articles began to come to my attention that discussed the censorship and banning of books in prison, which appear to be largely racially motivated. Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and history books about racism in America are among those on banned lists across the country. Obviously, being such a huge proponent myself of freedom to read, this was a big issue for me. People in the prison system not only still have the right to read and pursue learning and education and art, but they have the right to access stories that resonate with them and reflect their experience and identity. The Equal Justice Initiative has fought the courts in many cases and has gotten bans lifted on what books prisoners are allowed to receive in prison, but most states still have racially biased banned lists. If you are interested in donating books to prisons, check this link for a list of organizations you can support. To learn more about the history of racism in the prison system, check out Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13TH, which is currently available on Netflix.

Violence against Black children in schools: The Black body is safe almost no where in America. In schools, headlines recently have been bombarded with news about children of color, especially Black children, facing extreme and unbelievable violence in schools. Increasingly, this violence comes at the hands of police. All ages are risk: 6-year-olds, 11-year-olds, teenagers. Black youth are more likely to be arrested at school than any other group. This report from an activist group called We Came to Learn reports on the history of violence against Black children in schools, highlighting that our current situation stems from segregationist beliefs and practices. The violence is not only physical: ‘spirit-murdering‘ of youth of color takes place when school systems, teachers, and administrators denigrate the identity and experience of their students in a racially discriminatory way. This action kit by We Came to Learn can provide you with resources and support for fighting racial discrimination against children in your schools.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s reading as much as I did. I got around to books that had been on my list forever, discovered new favorites, and learned more about the experience of my Black siblings in America. There is so much work to be done. Let’s get going!

Black America: Wrap-up! I hope everyone had an informative and reflective Black History Month! This month for the Own Voices Global Reading Challenge we read for Black America (#ownvoices selections from Black American authors).

#black america #black authors #black history month #classics #georgia authors #southern literature #wrap-up

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the-girl-who-likes-musicals1 · 5 years

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A Song of Sisters - Part 3

Description: Claire and her little sister Deb have been through so much in their lives. A singing, dancing apocalypse should be a no brainer, right? When Claire receives a panicked call from Deb in the middle of the school day, she races to save her from the Apotheosis.I was in my second year at Hatchetfield Community College when it happened. I had been working late, and it was raining cats and dogs when I left work. Deb had plans with Alice to go see a play at the Starlight. Alice’s dad was apparently saying, so I didn’t dare say no. As I arrived home, I could swear I heard a crash. It sounded far away though, so I didn’t think anything of it. I sat my tired ass on the couch and turned on the TV. It wasn’t long afterwards when I heard Deb come through the door. I checked the time. “Wait, you’re like three hours early…the play shouldn’t even have started yet, should it?”

“Turn on the news!” Deb said. I turned the channel to Dan and Donna, and I saw the headline across the bottom of the screen: METEOR HITS IN HATCHETFIELD.

"Shit.” I said, “Well that sucks.”

“We didn’t even get to the theater. Apparently that’s where it hit. The police had it blocked off, no one could get within a block of it. Alice said we could go get McDonalds or something tomorrow after school to make up the date. Can I borrow the car?”

“Of course!” I said, offering up half the blanket. Deb sat down and settled in. We both had long days, and were asleep within minutes. How Deb planned to get through the play, I didn’t know. The next morning, I woke up after Deb had taken the bus to school. I didn’t even hear her leave, I was sleeping so soundly. I was usually always awake to say goodbye and tell her to have a good day as she left for the bus. I got out of bed with a sigh. I got ready and was about to leave when my phone rang. I looked down at the screen and Deb’s photo smiled back at me. This worried me. Hatchetfield High was notoriously anti-texting in class. She would only be calling me in the middle of the day if…

“Deb! What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s…the teachers…” She said, panting. I could tell she was running, “They’re…they’re…”

“What, Deb?” I said, frantic. I ran to my car, ready to rush to the high school. It was then that I heard it, coming from the direction of downtown. The song itself wasn’t scary, I suppose, but when a whole town is singing the same song…it’s a little unnerving.

“They’re…singing.” Deb said.

What the fuck?

I kept my windows rolled up as I drove through town, but I could still hear it.

La dee dah dah day

… What the hell was going on? It fully dawned on me what was happening when I saw a scene that made my stomach churn on one of sidewalks downtown. Two people, dancing and twirling down the street, singing all the while, had blood dripping down their face. A man that followed them, dancing along to the same tune, had a gaping wound on the side of his neck. I watched with horror as it began bleeding…blue? I had seen enough zombie apocalypse movies to recognize one when I saw it. Deb and I would watch these and then make up stories about how the two of us would go through with a machete and slice up zombies as we made our way through it. We’d be brave, fearless. In reality, though, we were just scared. I remembered, though, what my parents had told me that day when I first met Deb and they put her in my arms.

You two are going to have to stick together, Dad had said, no matter what happens, you have to be there for each other. That’s what having a sister means. You have her back, and she’ll have yours.

I shook the horrifying scene out of mind as I kept on driving towards the high school with Deb’s softball bat in the back of my car. I had to have her back now. I grabbed the bat as I got out of my car near the school. There was a way to sneak in and out around the back. I remembered from when I went there, and I could hopefully make it in without being noticed.

-Where r u? I texted Deb.

-Bathroom. 2nd floor.

-Almost there. U safe?

- For now. Alice is here

- Singing?

- No. Scared.

- Shit is going on downtown. Be there soon.

I put my phone in my pocket as I opened the car door. I gripped the bat tight and tried to block out the sound of singing as I head into the school, climbing through an open window in the teacher’s lounge. It was, thankfully, empty, and I stepped out into the hallway. There, the singing became louder. I wondered how many teachers and students were already infected as I noticed that my shoes were beginning to stick to the floor. I looked down, and almost retched. My shoes were sticking in a pool of blood. I had been to focused on what was ahead of me to notice it. I looked down again and saw that there were patches of red lining the hallway, along with spots of blue goo. Was this how they infected people? In some cases, the two touched, making a swirl of purple. I pressed on. I had to get to the second floor. The bathrooms were by the choir room, I remembered. There should be a stairwell near here…

“Are you looking for Debbie?” Said a voice behind me. I turned to see Miss Carter, a blue streak down her chin and front of her clothes. Was she…?

“You know she hates when you call her that.” I said. “What I call her won’t matter,” Miss Carter said, “She’ll be with your parents soon. You poor, orphaned children. Would you like to join them?” I gripped my bat tight and raised it above my head.

“D…Don’t come closer.” I warned, ready to run.

“Or what?” She asked, “You’ll give me a bump on the head? Claire, I’m trying to help…you know I am. I know that ever since your parents died, you and Deb have been in so much pain…join us and we can help you. Both of you.” She inched closer and closer until she was finally within striking distance.

“Fuck that!” I yelled, swinging the bat as hard as I could. I saw her fall to the ground, out cold. I knew it wouldn’t be long until she came back, so I ran up the nearest stairwell, ignoring the occasional squishing sounds of blood beneath my feet. I was out of breath when I reached the top. I saw a girl with a yellow dress go into the bathroom at the top of the stairs. I could make out a blue stain on her face.

“Deb! Alice!” I heard her say, “It’s Grace! Please…let me in…I’m scared. All the teachers, they’ve gone crazy…” I ran into the bathroom.

“Deb!” I yelled, “Don’t open the door!” I swung the bat again and it made contact with the side of Grace’s face. She fell and I knocked on the door of the stall to let Deb and Alice know it was safe to come out, if the thud of Grace’s fall wasn’t an indication. The stall door opened and I experienced the much more pleasant attack of Deb’s arms around my neck.

“Claire, oh my god…” Deb said into my shoulder, “You made it!”

“Of course I did, I’ve got your back! Now let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve had enough creepy singing to last me a full lifetime.”

“Right, let’s go. Come on, Alice.” Deb said, taking Alice’s hand.

“Stay behind me. This place is filled with those things.” I said, brandishing the bat. My heart sunk as I turned to exit the bathroom. 4 or 5 high schoolers were blocking the entrance.

“Shit.” I heard Alice say behind us.

“The Drama club.” Deb said. There was no way we could get through. If I would have hit one of them with the bat, the others would have been enraged and attacked us. We’d be dead. Things got even worse when I heard Deb yelp behind me, “She’s got my leg!” She screamed. These things were resilient, and they didn’t stay down long, as evidenced by the fact that Grace had her hand wrapped around my sister’s ankle. Grace yanked her leg and brought Deb to the ground. Before I could react, Grace had her pinned down.

“Deb! NO!” I smashed Grace’s face with the bat again and she fell to the side. It was too late. There was blue goo smeared around her cheeks. She began heaving and coughing. I went to her side and took her hand. Alice ran to her other side.

“I’m sorry…” Deb said, clearly struggling. The zombies around us left us alone. They knew what was happening. Every instinct told me to run, but I couldn’t leave Deb here alone. If there was anyone who could possibly fight this thing off, it would be her.

“Come on, Deb…fight it, I know you can!” I yelled as Deb began to writhe in pain. Her grip on my hand tightened until my circulation was completely cut off. Alice, across from me on the other side of Deb, was crying too. I was Deb’s sister, but Alice most likely knew more about her than I did. Those two were inseparable, and I knew her heart was breaking too. Then, all of a sudden, Deb’s grip on my hand loosened. Alice looked at me in horror as she felt it too. Her hands slid back and Deb sat up. Her eyes opened, and I could tell that her eyes were…bluer than normal. “Deb…no…” I said as she stood.

“I’m sorry, Claire…” She said with a sneer that I knew from the start was not my sister. “You lost.”

READ PART 2: https://the-girl-who-likes-musicals.tumblr.com/post/183737205575/a-song-of-sisters-part-2

READ PART 1: https://the-girl-who-likes-musicals.tumblr.com/post/183556142765/a-song-of-sisters-part-1

#tgwdlm #the guy who didn't like musicals #fic #jaime lyn beatty #starkid #lauren lopez #claire #deb

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lovepoemsforjaehyun · 7 years

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B1A4 2017 Live Space: 4 Nights in the U.S. - San Francisco, CA

<Live Space 2017> 19 February at the Warfield

Start time: 8:05pm End time: 10:03pm Hi-touch: 10:20-30pm

NOTE: This was written the night of the concert, so all of the moments here and what I remembered from that very night. I didn’t have time to post it up until now. Also, no photos because @strongchanpion has already posted the ones I’ve took.

== Pre-show ==

The really, really crazy thing @strongchanpion and I had ever done was to wait six hours for a concert!! The weather wasn't too well because it was windy and sprinkling/continuously rains. Besides, there so many sirens that went on that annoyed the daylight out of me. One thing that was cute was the fact that a police car strolled around and asked a question. Then later they came back and put 'What is Going On?' through their intercom. So cool! (Go ahead and check out @strongchanpion‘s fan account!)

During the wait, I have done most of the talking. It was so easy to keep things occupied but later I have gotten tired. The Warfield employees made things complicated because they did not announce about splitting the line in two: the VIP and the G.A. purchasers. It happened like this: I saw people running and I was confused and ran too. I knew it was something involved with VIP because I heard people saying it.

6:54pm was the estimated time that I have gotten in. I went by quick through security because I had nothing to be checked. I almost walked pass a lady by the doorway that was supposed to check my ticket (because I was too excited to get a good seat). Once I came into the Warfield theater, the pit was already full. (B1A4′s Only One was playing!) I walked out from the pit and walked to the GA standing because it was empty! I had to take my chance and did! FRONT ROW SEATS! YES!!

@strongchanpion and I talked about how excited we were for this. We were both ready for the concert! (A quick observation I’ve made during the pre-show was I saw someone looking behind the curtain on stage left. I think it is even staff or B1A4 looking at the crowd! OMG!) Around 7:45pm, the crew volume the B1A4's music louder in the theater. A few songs such as Good Night Baby (I think that is the song), O.K, What is Going On? that played for BANAs to sing along. They did and they were so GOOD! After that, the lights dimmed down at 8:05pm. It was SHOWTIME! And I was so super excited!

== CONCERT ==

8:10pm was when B1A4 came out. They exited stage-left and waved to greet us. The entire theater echoed with cheers! I was in shock because B1A4 were real (and they are)! (My reactions:) I saw Jin Young and said, "No way!" Then my eyes went to San Deul and thought, "San Deul??" I then saw Gong Chan and said, "Oh god, Gong Chan is real!" To Baro, "What? Baro?" And CNU, "It's really CNU!' Overall reaction: "B1A4 is really on stage!!!!" <3

Their first opening song was Melancholy. (I am shocked about this because I thought it was O.K or Lonely was going to be the opening.) They are all so freaking cute!!!

In the Air, Oh my Go, 악몽 (Nightmare), You, and네에게 한번더 반하는 순간 (The Moment I Fall For You Again) – To sing along with B1A4, I looked at how B1A4 sang and copy the words coming from their mouth to go with the melody. And if I don’t know the lyrics, I will hum the tune.

Sweet Girl – A song that’s never my favorite (but I learned how to like this song), so I rested my voice well during this song.

When the lights fade to black-out, I saw CNU in the center downstage and pulled a long white string out. I knew right away that the upcoming song was Lonely. Just as the beat came on, I heard Lonely and screamed so much!! They are so synced and well-rehearsal! Perfect as they are!! After, they sang 거짓말이야 (A Lie)! My heart died and I screamed even more because this was what I’ve been waiting for! To see them perform this! The chorus and the bridge got me the most (and it always does)!! (Clearly remembered Gong Chan handsomely walking forward to the center. Left hands holding onto the microphone and right hand in his pockets.) One thing I clearly remember was B1A4 was dancing in a dark-ish blue stage (lighting) and once the chorus, the lights changed to red/orange look. From that point on, the lighting started to brightened up a bit more. I loved the song choice between Lonely and A Lie. Good transition!!

꿈에 – The song that B1A4 sat down for a slow song! One thing I remembered from this performance was the members were going to sit. Baro said, "OK, let's sit." And then he clarified and said, "No, no, you guys don't. Only members."

If (너만 있으면) – This was the HIGHLIGHT of the concert for me! I’ve been telling @strongchanpion about if B1A4 performed this song, I will be in tears and cheers! And I did! (Expect for the tears, LOL!) Hearing B1A4 performed this song live in videos from their concerts and live sessions were amazing but not as much as this one (even if it is not live music played)! I loved when Jinyoung and San Deul vocalized together, having a mini duet during Baro’s rap. The best part on Earth for this song! And especially when Gong Chan is being a cutie that was in between them and pointed back and forth to show that the two got those notes!!! One of the most anticipated song I have longed for! And one of the reasons why I wanted to go since they announced this concert back in December!

The Time Machine –I knew they were going to perform O.K when Baro told us, "We're going back in time when we were young. To our debut days." About eight/nine songs were mixed together into a medley. It was awesome. (Though I couldn’t really remember what had happened!)

몇번을 (How Many Times) – Oh yes! I was glad that they have performed this because I like how CNU did an amazing job pitching that second verse! *Cheers!*

내가 널 찾을게 (I’ll Find You) – Another good one (again)! I fell in love with this song when I heard it passing by in my iPod, while reading and studying. Once I heard I live, it was mind-blowing! Jinyoung’s pitch was phenomenal! He sounded so much better in live because I saw his gestures and emotions poured. (And he sat in the middle, which was a perfect view from where I stood which was the middle of the G.A. standing.) I was touched.

Drunk on You & Sparkling – From this day on, both songs reminds me of Baro. The excited squirrel! <3 And like what @strongchanpion said, Sparkling was when the shower began. What’s funny was when Baro asked about showering. I rhetorically answered, “Yes, I do need a shower.” (At that time, I was sweating in my sweater.) I didn’t know that B1A4 will literally give us a shower but once it started, there was no stopping.

Good Timing - Water bottle splashes and confetti flew everywhere. The song was repeated over 4x. A beautiful way to end this! (Jinyoung couldn't get over the fact that the concert was ending so he stood on stage so long even if the towels were long gone. He continuously waved by and then did a ten second pose for the audience. This leader is too cute!) The part that the members kept on throwing water to the audience was great! It was hyped and refreshing. I loved how strong Baro and Sandeul was. Every time they were to swing the water bottle to the center, the water reached to the GA standing! Amazing talents that have! LOL!! (Baro was really cute every time he brought a crate of water bottle to the stage for the members. Really well-prepared! :D)

Since the concert was based off from their 3rd album, Good Timing, this album has made a beautiful memory with these fellas! I am glad that the songs I liked are performed: O.K, Lonely, A Lie, If, How Many Times, Yesterday, I'll Find You, Good Timing, and What is Going On?, and Solo Day. Worth it!! They are such great performers and interactive beings! I love the fact that they threw water (from water bottle) and threw towels. So freaking cool and fun! Amazing people. I always wanted to see them live because I always see them through videos. They have done beautifully (tonight).

== Members ==

Specifically talking about the members, Baro - I must talk about this guy first because he is just everything in this concert. I love the way how he communicates with us and his word choices are really simple and clear! I love when he told Jinyoung to stop playing with Sandeul. He said, "Hey, stop playing around." So cute, like a teacher. LOL. Also, when he threw the towel and it came all the way towards us and some ladies were fighting over it, Baro said, "No fighting." Geez, this guy is too cool and funny!! If I had a day to hang out with Baro, I definitely will! He seems pretty awesome to hang with!

Gong Chan is really handsome in reality. I couldn’t stop looking at him during the concert. At first sight coming on stage, I was shocked because he is really matured looking – much better in live!!

Jinyoung is a cutie pie. He really likes to have fun and is mischief. I like how he did all sorts of things that are amazingly adorable. It was really cute when he said, "SF BANAs, you are the best!" And he did a thumbs up. A really cute leader! (If I remember correctly, he did the Sprout Dance.)

CNU is so tall and handsome, just like Gong Chan. Yet at the same time, CNU is really interesting. His dance moves and body waves on stage. However, I was so glad to see him did so well for A Lie. And I love his vocals for How Many Times and really glad to hear that live!!!

San Deul, this kid is adorable. This kid really is!! (: I love his live performance and pitch! They are so perfect and well done! So proud! I was so glad to witness his Jo Jang Hyuk smile and singing gestures. Loved it really much. Especially when he sang, "Stay the way you are." Masterful.

== Hi-touch ==

It happens so quick. We went to the pit but then got lined up. Everyone cheered so loud when they came. Gong Chan and CNU high-five fans from the pit and the far GA standing. When they lined up, I was scared. The line was moving so quick. It happened all too fast.

Gong Chan was first. I thought to myself, “Why does Gong Chan have to be first?” He was intimidating. He was the first person I remember but I had forgotten what to say, even to all of the members. Once I came, I interlocked fingers with him and we made eye contact. I then moved on to Baro. That guy looks extremely friendly! (He really looks like a squirrel too!) We made eye contact and interlocked fingers. Sandeul was the third person. I slightly only remember giving small interlock fingers with him. I couldn’t remember how Sandeul looked like except for smiling (I think he stood where there were no lights.) Moving on to CNU, by this time, I stop to interlock and slap his hands. (I might’ve done that to Sandeul too.) Then Jin Young and his booming music. (I think I got disturbed by Jinyoung's music. Erg...that leader. LOL.) The entire time, I only said, "Thank you.” It was a flash. I knew I could have slowed down but it was better than nothing.

They are all really cute kids and handsome ones. They are so enthusiastic about everything too! The stage and all - they killed it and it was a total live tonight. Love this experience! The fans are the best element in this concert too!!

Also, applaud to their production staffs! The lighting was amazing! Every time B1A4 wanted us to sing, the stage lights will shine toward us. Naturally, as audiences, we know that the light means that we are also included into this show and it’s just not about those on stage. It was a really cool way to tell us that it was time for interaction. (Breaking that fourth wall!)

Overall, a beautiful night. Loud cheers from left to right, top to bottom. Bright lights that made my heart shine because we can see each other clearly. Songs were even better in live than the audio. B1A4 and BANAs made it happen together! One of the BEST moment in 2017!!

#B1A4 #Concert #Live Space 2017 #4 Nights in the US #SF #San Francisco #Fan Account #Experiences #2017 #Make Every Moment Count #Thankful

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thebluesideofthemoon · 7 years

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The Wall #47: LA LA LAND

I feel like I was due for this. This was originally going to be the last movie I wanted to watch last year, but due to some complications (mainly that none of my theaters in town were playing the movie for... whatever reason) that didn't happen. But hey, now that La La Land is getting serious Oscar buzz, and this IS my most anticipated movie of the year (if you've seen Whiplash, you'd know why), I'm happy that I got a chance to cover it. So, what do I think about the movie set in the land of fools who dream? Take a few steps forward and one back, wing your arms and spin on your heels- let's dance to the music of the generation and get on with the show!

You know what? This movie is good. Maybe even great, but it's definitely good. What this movie is not is perfect, and I'll explain why that is because I have some issues with this movie, some pretty big ones at that.

This is a movie about Mia (played by Emma Stone), and Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling), two struggling artists in Los Angeles who are both trying to hit it big in their respective careers- Mia wants to be a big name actress, while Sebastian wants to open up his own restaurant and save the dying art that is jazz. After blowing it in his last job, Sebastian and Mia run into each other and continue to see each other as they keep trying out for different gigs, only to eventually end up together and trying to fulfill their dreams as a couple. However, bad luck and poor planning starts straining their relationship hard. Will they make it through on following their dreams or will the curtains forever close on their final act?

I normally like to start off with the bad stuff first, but I feel this is case where I should start off on a good note considering all of the praise that this movie is receiving, but first a bit of plot.

For one, I find this to be one of the most beautiful-looking movies to have come out this year- this movie looks amazing. This movie, much like one of my favorite movies from last year, The Revenant, is absolutely gorgeous- the combination of beautiful cinematography and editing allows for some truly stunning colorful, breathtaking shots of Los Angeles (when in the reality, the city is kind of a dump, but hey this is a movie). Speaking of which, this movie is full of really vibrant, eye-catching colors which really help convey the tone and mood of every scene, especially when it comes to all of the sequences of the characters dancing. Not a single shot is wasted, and it also adds to the fun of the musical.

Speaking of which, the choreography in this movie is also spectacular. Seeing Gosling and Stone’s scenes where they dance together is nothing short of absolutely joyful. It does manage to harken to spirit of fun in musicals where, sure, it might seem ridiculous for people to break into song and dance for no reason, but it works thanks to the choreography being fun to watch as it plays out… even if the songs are ho-hum at best (don’t worry, I’ll complain about those in a minute).

Acting-wise it’s pretty solid, though if anyone in the cast deserves the most recognition of all, it’s Emma Stone. A couple of things- one, I’m now convinced that she’s a Disney character that’s come to life, and I’m not just saying that because of her eyes. She’s really animated as an actress, and this movie is a great vehicle that shows her impressive range, from joy to sadness, to betrayal and in being in love. This is a movie where she’s playing an actress and manages to really capture the emotions that allow the audience to root and care about her. There’s a really heartbreaking scene in which Stone has lost all hope and you can see it on her face that her dreams have crumbled. She’s also a really good singer, she has an absolutely wonderful voice, and when she takes the lead of the songs my ears have nothing but my fullest attention to her. To me, she’s the real star of the show, not that Ryan Gosling is bad but he’s just… okay, that’s about it. As far as performances from him are concerned, I preferred his role in The Nice Guys, and not just because he was funny (he gets some funny scenes in this movie too), but he also plays a character that isn’t just… kind of a two-dimensional whiny asshole.

I think this is about as good a time as any to transition into the things that I wasn’t as hot about in the movie. Strap in, we have a lot of ground to cover.

Let’s start with the things that I thought were just okay- I already covered Gosling, so let’s talk about the songs. I wasn’t that impressed by them. Sure, the songs aren’t bad by any means, and they sound really nice. They can be pretty fun to listen to as well, but they just didn’t stand out to me. Comparing it to the other musical that I’ve seen this year (not Sing, because most of its songs were licensed), Moana, the songs are more fun to listen to, there’s more variety in how they sound as well as the genres that they come from make then all more unique to each other. You’re Welcome, doesn’t sound the same as Shiny, which doesn’t sound the same as How Far I’ll Go. A Lovely Night? City of Stars? These sound the same to me. Funny that the song that is meant to be played off as the “bad sellout pop song” (which is performed by JOHN LEGEND, HELLO?!) is one of the more distinct and fun songs from the movie. Though I also really loved Audition (The Fools Who Dream), which is truly the best way to cap off her plot. They’re not all very catchy, and songs don’t need to be catchy to be good, but they’re mostly unmemorable.

This whole thing about Sebastian trying to save jazz? That really goes nowhere. I don’t understand why that was even part of the movie because it’s not really that developed in the least, until it’s used a kind of cheap way to force Gosling to have a conflict with John Legend prior to joining his band in order to make some money to support both himself and Emma Stone. This is not they reason why he ends up leaving the band. I honestly have no idea WHY he ends up leaving the band, but it happens and it all goes into the true conflict of the movie… which doesn’t even start until the LAST thirty minutes. Yeeeaaah, it’s time for the big problems with the movie, and it’s three-fold:

One, the movie is too light in conflict, and too light on the consequences. For the second act of the movie, which is about a good forty minutes or so, it’s just glorified montage. We see Sebastian and Mia’s new life as a couple, which definitely seems pretty sweet and it is, but problems don’t start to arise until the end of the second act. Structure-wise this makes sense because I get that they’re trying to show that this life really is magical and wonderful like… something out of a musical. However, it goes on for too long and when we find out what the actual conflict between them is, it’s just something that happens because these two never bothered to communicate with each other. I have a serious peeve with movies in where couple don’t bother to communicate problems, but this one especially bugs me because at no point do they decide to confront each other about it until it’s too late, and even then it should been easy for them to work out but it’s not.

The second problem I have is that this movie is highly predictable. Now, I don’t have a problem with predictability as long as I’m given something like characters to really enjoy, themes that are interesting and worth discussing, or it’s just entertaining. To La La Land’s credit, it does succeed in the latter- it’s really enjoyable, but it fails at the interesting character portion because of Sebastian being a deadbeat. You know what’s going to happen, and it would be fine if they did something new or interesting but they don’t. This ties into the previous point of there being a lack of conflict when things like this should have either brewed from an earlier point, or they should have actually opened their mouths.

And the third, final, and BIGGEST problem I have with this movie by far is that it relies far too heavily on nostalgia. Did you see Singing in the Rain? Or An American in Paris? This movie has, and it’s going to remind you of that. A LOOOOOT.

I have serious problems with movies that rely on nostalgia as a tool to get the audience invested in the movie. I had serious issues with this earlier in the year with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, and I had serious problems with it in another musical, Rock of Ages, where they think that all they have to do is remind people of things from the past in order to excuse any shortcomings that the movie suffers from- which is some pretty big, nasty ones. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how this bothers me here and not in something like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Well, for one it’s not crucial to the plot- they don’t stop the movie just to remind you of something else the audience might be familiar with just for the sake of doing so, whereas this movie does it pretty deliberately. I’ll admit, I’m not exactly very familiar with Old Hollywood, and I probably should spend more time with older movies, but even if I haven’t this movie gave me the nagging feeling of someone elbowing me shoulder and going: “remember this? Remember? Reeeemember?” and that made my enjoyment of the movie felt kind of thankless and hollow. It’s like the movie is saying that the only way I can really appreciate it is by seeing these older movies that it’s going out of its way to reference- which it shouldn’t because I can tell you for a fact those movies were better and more original than this one.

I know this is a pretty negative note to end the review on, and it’s going to also seem a little confusing considering what I rated the movie, but I want you to keep this in mind: I did have a good time watching it. There were a lot of fun moments, and I think the movie is total eye candy, not to mention Emma Stone is simply amazing through and through, but it just fell really short in what it could have been. Whiplash, this movie is not. (1,731 words. Music: Pokemon Black and White- Route 10)

By every sense of the word, I would consider this movie a disappointment. Now I did expect a good movie, and it was, but I thought that this movie was a shoe-in for my Top 10 of the year, it could have easily been #1, and at this point it's going to be lucky if it even manages to get an Honorable Mention.

This rating may still be surprising to some of you, but not to me. Yes, it's good, it's fun, I recommend you to see it, but it's really not the masterpiece that it's called out as being. If you want a better musical movie to enjoy, go watch Moana, it has stronger characters, stronger conflict, better songs, and it's also just as great to look at. Speaking of Disney... I have some unfinished business to take care of, don't I? Yes... it's finally time... next time, of course. On The Wall. Toodles.

#The Wall #Movie review #La La Land #Damien Chazelle #Catch Up January

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aberooski · 11 months

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ABBY TELL ME ABOUT YOUR COMMUNITY THEATRE'S PRODUCTION OF SINGING IN THE RAIN I SEE YOUR TAGS AND I'M INTRIGUED AND HERE TO SUPPORT YOU!!!

AAAAAA THANK YOU CHAZZY !!! 🥰🥰🥰

I just got home from opening night, It went super well! One minor mishap where a prop table fell over while it was being taken offstage during a scene change and it was really loud but it's fiiiine we made it work 😂😅

I play Dora Bailey, the radio celebrity news reporter so I spearhead the entire show by basically being the first scene introducing all the stars at the movie premiere at the beginning which is kinda scary but I didn't screw up and actually I think tonight was the best performance I've given so far so I'm super happy about that! 😄 I also don't have to dance which is perfect because I can sing very well and I can act pretty good but I cannot dance to save my life 🤭😅

I would've loved to have been Lina Lamont, she's my favorite character in the film and the stage show, but I can only do that voice for a short amount of time so whoops 😅 but the girl we have playing her is incredible! Literally the perfect casting for that role, and super nice which is awesome! 😁 but honestly everyone in the cast is just awesome!

We play 6 more shows between this weekend and next week, it's super fun!! I haven't done any shows like this since my senior year of high school like 5 years ago so it's been so nice to get back into musicals, and I've never done any community theater before so it's a completely new experience for me! But so so cool and fun and I'm so happy!!! 😄😄😄😄

#a sucessful night 1! now on to 6 more 😅#aaaa I love musicals so MUCH !! 😭/pos #aberooski asks #abby after dark #answered

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silverhands-etcetera · 5 years

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After Midnight.

I’m the first one to wake up today. This is a rare thing in any house. The ticking of the clock and the tapping of the letters on my keyboard are the only sounds. Rain is coming down steadily outside, but the sky is still bright, it’s easy to be in the kitchen without any lights on.

Every morning when I walk to this kitchen, I half expect Tommy to be in here -reading his book, pot of coffee started. Tommy being the designated early riser of Joy Mills band tours, his was often the task of putting the first kettle on. Today it’s me. I’ve got the press stewing on the table in front of me, waiting for the big hand to get to the 4, so I can drop the plunger & strain out a cup of precious elixir.

We’re at a place in our travels that doesn’t particularly coincide with what is happening on stage. I’ve reached that point in a trip where the most accessible feeling of normalcy is in the van. There’s a nagging fatigue in all of the days, -nothing strong enough to dull the edge of the the excitement of just being on the road, and nothing even coming close to lethargy, but more of an awareness of always being slightly hungry, always slightly too full, running in a cycle of consumption that squeezes every last drop of enjoyment out of each part of every day. We’re all drinking a lot of coffee.

Our day-to-day is in an easy flow, we know the drill when packing up the van, all of the things and the order in which they go. We’ve long forgotten the origin of the catchphrases & inside jokes we tell, but we keep saying them and they keep cracking us up. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to remember where we were yesterday, but then sometimes it’s the same at home, so maybe that’s not strange at all.

Life itself is currently a well-oiled and streamlined operation, -the difference right now is that on stage we’re starting up a brand new show. I have to crawl out of the shadows and be the face of the band for the next couple weeks. An abrupt shift happens in my mind when I come from basically any other task into singing my own songs. I have been enjoying just playing the bass -not “just” playing the bass as if it is an element of little consequence, but the singular focus and purpose behind doing something that I feel I’m good at, and more importantly, something that allows me to find my feet beneath me quickly when I go astray.

When I am singing, there are more variables, some of which I’m not as good at reigning in -which is why it’s important to have a band that can roll with anything I toss out. If I have any rule at all in my band, it’s that we play everything the way it comes to us naturally. If something doesn’t work, that’s probably a sign that it’s not a thing that’s meant for us to do. I’ve spent a lot of energy in former times trying to duplicate a phrase or a pocket from songs that are special to me, only to eventually realize that the most captivating part of it is how very different it is from my self.

I don’t know where the influence comes from, and what synapses between my memory and my hands are firing or missing to make things happen the way they do. It’s not just what you listen to, it’s how you have processed it. My favorite players are the people that appear as though the music is just happening to them -being a conduit for something bigger than themselves. The way Jack’s riffs can freak you out while simultaneously tucking you into the fluffiest, most comfortable resolutions you’ve ever heard. Or how Esme can play rests like Danko on the bass, while she dangles vocal melodies over both ends of a measure as though she’s got two people on the job.

I’m not someone who is good at directing musicians, but I think I’m smart enough to know something that works when I hear it. Silverhands in this incarnation is not a wall of sound, we’re a vessel for the songs. I’m playing the guitar, and sometimes I like to leave holes in the guitar part, or just let a particular chord finish what it has to say for several measures. This is where the rhythm section keeps things glued together. I don’t try to analyze it too much, it just works.

—

We rolled back into Lovenich, the serene low rolls of the hills and lazy windmills beautiful now in their comforting familiarity more so than in any feeling of exotic landscape. It was still early afternoon, and it was a clear day, so we opted to postpone rehearsal and head out for a bike ride through Rurich & Baal and through the woods back to the house. Our bodies were feeling the constriction of a day in the van, and a little bit of air & exploration was in order. In the end, we managed to put off any kind of rehearsal until the next day, about two hours before the first gig. We wrote out a rough set list & ran through a few of the fresher numbers -all in all, about 100% more rehearsing than we did when the 2016 tour came over here.

The first gig was back at the scene of the first Del Vox show, two weeks and several lifetimes ago, at the Kultus cafe in Grevenbroich. Veronika was waiting for us -actually since 6 pm, due to a lapse in communication somewhere, but I made it up to her by not asking for any kölsh beers all night. Hien was ready for us with the sound, and I was itching to bust the rented Fender Twin amplifier out of its case. The room was starting to fill in, so we busted out a quick verse of soundcheck and laid down our instruments until showtime.

When we finally went on, the place was full up. I had the expected variables of playing a borrowed guitar through an unknown amp, but any jitters cleared up quickly. We were solid right out of the gate, busting through our openers and feeling the warm approval of the room at our first pause. The amp sounds great, a lot like my Music Man twin back home, with a little more of a bark, but also with a really great functional vibrato. Having this at my disposal while I’m here is gonna make me really want to get the vibrato fixed (redesigned) on my own amp when I get home.

At the break we ran into our Irish friend John, who came down from Rees to see the show. The gig went by like several blinks, and we were hanging out in a room full of friends that we had acquired in just the last two weeks. Veronika made me promise that we’ll come back next year, -there’s a lot of talk like this.

—

At Nagelhaus, breakfast turns into conversation that burns through no less than 4 pots of coffee every morning, and often runs straight through to lunchtime. Saturday was a morning much like this. (I enjoy the times when I notice that I have been in Europe long enough for the English spoken by the locals to impact my phrases as I write) It was another brisk fall day, but free of precipitation. The gig is only an hour away, so the band headed to the stable and saddled up the bicycles for a ride up to Erkelenz. We can only go roughly 45 minutes at a time without eating or having coffee at this point, so the 30 minute ride was safely within our window.

It was chilly, only Aimee was wise enough to pack a pair of gloves on this trip, so when we locked up the bikes our interest was first drawn to any store that might have some handwear to sell us. First up was a fancy clothes joint that offered some really nice leather gloves, -which I considered, even at an asking price of 80 bucks. As it happened, a drugstore-looking establishment down the street sold me on a pair of $2 garden gloves.

What I find amusing (about myself) is that both glove options had an almost identical chance of being what I went home with. Ultimately it’s not that I ain’t prone to drop a chunk of money on a random accessory that I didn’t know I needed, it was more that I just can’t be trusted with gloves and things that get stuffed into pockets and lost before I even get home. Whichever direction I go, I go all out -I’m riding with a pair of bright green, plastic-dipped knit gloves, the cheapest and ugliest in the store. Sherri opted for the $5 mechanic’s gloves, in a stylish black & grey. Aimee bought a can of wine.

Back in the square we met our daily soup needs, and broke the seal on lagers, before heading down the street for coffees at a little bakery with a familiar-looking poster in the front window. By the time we’d topped off our tanks, it was time to get back home & get ourselves to work.

—

Maartje and Ronnie are two of the longest-held friendships I have in the Netherlands. We shared a gig in Landgraaf on my first visit here in 2013. The bands have changed a bit, but tonight we are back at the Theater Landgraaf, where we all first met.

We rolled up right on time. Ronnie had his many Gretsches all out on display, framing a persian-style rug front & center on the stage. There was much discussion with Wick, our engineer for the evening, over how to set up and backline the drums & bass amp. Eventually we settled on drums at stage left, forcing me & my guitar to the center. Not my favorite place to be, but I can roll with it.

Right about then, a woman in a red felt cloak walked in carrying two pans of lasagne and about a dozen jars of custard. She introduced herself & said “I have made your food for tonight, but I am going out for supper, so make of that what you will.” I appreciated her sense of humor, and in the end, I appreciated her cooking as well. We all took a break for supper & made ourselves comfortable at the bar, serving ourselves and hanging around on both sides, staff & artists alike. The room had an easy vibe of camaraderie to it. We took an interview for a local radio program, and I was still behind the bar talking with the DJ when a white-haired fellow with a collared shirt under his sweater turned the corner, speaking almost a full paragraph of Dutch to me as he slowly stepped closer & closer until he was right at my shoulder, looking at me sternly.

At a bit of a loss, I said “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch most of what you said there”

“oh” he said, & his face turned a bit. “you stay on the other side with your friends and not on this side of the bar”

It was only then that I noticed he had a sticker nametag on his sweater. Good thing he doesn’t have a badge…

—

Maartje & Ronnie soundchecked first, the venue has a new mixing desk & much time was spent in squaring up the monitor mix -which I appreciated when we got up to check ourselves & I walked right up to the lead vocal mic and immediately had a perfect balance -which never happens. Maartje & I are the same height, apparently, as I didn’t even need to adjust the mic stand. I was feeling pretty good about things when I saw Wick coming over to me with another mic & stand, reaching for the one I was singing into.

“You can’t use that mic, it’s the one I have checked for Maartje”

“but it’s perfect”

“it is EQ’d for her”

“but it sounds great. I’m really happy with it like it is. You can leave it exactly how it is”

“…”

I don’t like telling people how to do their job, but I also don’t like creating needless variables, especially when there’s new technology in play, and lots of options for producing more chaos than necessary. The fact was that it sounded great & I didn’t feel like taking the time to start again from zero to get a different mic to sound exactly like this one already did. In the end, I was able to convince Wick to just leave the same mic up. It was pushing 8pm, doors were in just a few minutes.

Both bands would play around 45 minutes, but there were no rules. We could play whatever length of set we wanted. Ronnie told me that the only important thing that was that we need to be out of the theater by midnight. I told him that wouldn’t be a problem.

—

They’ve got a nice new batch of songs, and a new album in the works. Ronnie’s got some great new folk rock numbers & Maartje keeps producing beautiful songs with universal truth and timeless settings. Her voice sounds like it comes straight out of the american experience, I don’t know how she does it.

Silverhands up on that big stage,.. we had a lot space between us. I felt a bit like I was on an island in the center, but the sonic support came in from both ends. I reckon I was in the sweet spot. There’s a couple of small differences between my electric guitar at home & Sherri’s guitar that I’m playing on this tour. The tone is coming from the same location on the spectrum, it doesn’t do anything unexpected. The things that I need to adapt to are purely architectural -the bridge doesn't lay down as low as my G&L does, and I find that the volume knob is a lot higher up the body, leading me to punch it when my downstroke gets too animated. As usual, the band held it down while I was cracking myself up over my unexpected antics.

We closed the night joined by Maartje & Ronnie for a couple numbers, and just like that another show was over. It was one of those gigs where you are in no hurry to tear down & pack up. Ronnie was doing an interview with the radio guy. Sherri, Aimee, Maartje & I were chatting with Wick & the equally jovial light tech on the stage, while we all casually wrapped up our business.

The crowd finished their beers & we had a round of photos on the stage, eventually talking about our influences & the paths we took to get here, standing around our piles of gear when Wick tapped me on the shoulder.

“Can you bring the van & begin loading? The staff would like to go home”

I looked at the time. It was after 12. How did this happen?

Hugs all around. Let’s do it again.

—

We were starving when we got home. Aimee made us popcorn & we cracked a couple of crispy Jupilers from the fridge. The nights get so long, even when they aren’t. The story keeps going, I’m sure I’ve missed a lot, but this brings us back to the beginning of this chapter.

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drmicrochp · 5 years

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New York, New York

What destination offers the greatest variety of culture and night life, breath-taking views, and culinary delights? Why, New York city, of course. Visiting my own country, the U.S, isn’t the exotic destination that I ordinarily seek when leaving Chile. Yet, New York, this Elysium beyond the clouds, holds the most unique stratum of humanity that I know of. Walking down streets where I feel like an ant, surrounded by the most professional culture of money and the arts, knowing that this is where most of the decisions are made that matter, all of it combines to make me feel insignificant and a privileged visitor.

Victoria, Chile is one of the smallest towns that I know. New York, the largest. I would like to say that I´m at home in either place, but it´s a case of opposites. In New York there are too many choices -where to go, what to do, how to get there. In Victoria, there are too few -all of the restaurants and stores resemble one another in their offerings.

Arriving at JFK airport I was struck at how little attention I attracted from customs, police, and airport security. Customs barely looked at me. Nobody checked what I was carrying. Compare this with Lima, Peru, with its drug sniffing dogs, TSA x-raying my shoes and my crutch, patting me down in an all too familiar way. This time it was as if I was traveling with an express pass. Joaquin, my son, and Abena, his wife, greeted me at the airport gate and we detoured to the nearest food stop and I had a chance to devour a doughnut. Doughnuts are one of my recurring dreams in Chile because they have none. There are some pasty counterfeits, but the doughnut shops that I remember would take offense at them. I should have bought a dozen.

Brain dead, as I always am, after the marathon which is a trip from Victoria to anywhere out of the country, I was happy just to have Joaquin, my son, and Abena, his wife, help me with my suitcases and show me to my sister's apartment where I would mostly be staying. Traveling from the 40 degree weather of Victoria to the 90 degree weather of New York required a shower and a change of clothes. Soon I was able to clean up enough to accompany my sister, Stephanie, to a performance of interpretative dance by the Mark Morris company and enjoy a modest bowl of chile beans at a diner. Yes, prices have gone up. That bowl of chile cost the same as a full dinner anywhere in Victoria.

Accompanying us to the performance was Christopher Ryan, the author of the divamensch.com blog, who blogs about the arts in New York city. Christopher sees all of the best performances in the city and knows all of the back stories. He and Stephanie shared all of their latest arts gossip. The interpretive dance numbers portrayed everything from a jellyfish capturing its prey to fishing, racing, tennis, and golf. With music of Eric Satie as a backdrop, Morris evoked an imaginative pantomime of different activities using only the dancers' bodies to express abstract impressions. Charles Ives, the composer whose music graced the other pieces was amazing. All of the music was played live and this added a lot to the performance. Some of them left me scratching my head, wondering what I had just seen. After the performance, walking past Rockefeller Center, I mused once again that I had landed in Elysium, a land envisioned by the Greeks as their version of heaven.

On another night, we attended a Yiddish language version of "Fiddler on the Roof" with English and Yiddish subtitles projected on the sides of the stage. Hearing this favorite musical in Yiddish gave me a feeling of authenticity about each of the challenges faced by the small community of a shtetl or village. On another day we visited a small theater in Manhattan to see "The Sword of Trust," a movie with Marc Maron, also enjoyable. Stephanie enjoys small out of the way gems when seeking out experiences in Manhattan, thinking as I do, that the blockbusters will find their way to us, rather than us finding our way to them.

Visiting the "Tenement Museum" in the oldest part of New York with Stephanie was my chance to imagine the inhabitants of old New York. I have been to the museum a few times before to see the actual apartments where early immigrants lived and to hear their stories from guides who had researched the names and histories of the original occupants. Visualizing Jacob Riis´s photographs from "How the Other Half Lives" (1889) and documentation of the "Five Points" neighborhoods from the those times calls up my imagination of how it might have been. I urge you to visit this museum if you ever have the chance.

Another item on my checklist was to find a Mexican restaurant and we visited three of them. One of them was a fancy boutique restaurant where everything was on the menu, but nothing seemed authentic. Growing up in Stockton, California where there are dozens of Mexican restaurants, has set the bar rather high for me, but (like my love of doughnuts) my memories persist. A second restaurant had spectacular burritos, but only burritos. On our third try, we found an authentic place and I realized the unique flavor of the sauces and spices that make up Mexican food. Our culinary demands come with other difficult conditions. Stephanie has high expectations for any dish, while David and I are vegetarians. I was willing to abandon the vegetarian preference on this occasion if it mattered. Finding cheese enchiladas or chile rellenos to my liking is a tall order. My dad, John Jutt (deceased) was the same way with his Chile Verde. In Victoria I can recreate burritos, cheese enchiladas, nachos and Mexican salsa with chips to my liking, helped by an excellent Chilean artisanal lager, but now I have come to a new conclusion. Don´t leave the American southwest if you love American-style Mexican food.

David, my brother, was also a generous host. On one night we enjoyed a Korean restaurant and on another a gourmet vegetarian restaurant. Spicy Korean noodles check all of my boxes, but not knowing much about Korean cuisine is a disadvantage for me. Korean barbecue is all the rave, but I will probably never try it. The gourmet vegetarian restaurant was an eye opener. They had recreated many fancy French dishes using only vegetarian ingredients. Faux steak, faux chicken, and even faux foie gras, had us all stumped as to how they evoked these flavors. It was a memorable meal showing how far this cuisine had evolved. David has not yet tried an "impossible burger," which I have heard so much about, but promised to try one. I think that always trying to mimic the flavor of meat is somewhat of a fool´s errand. Once you have tried an Argentine steak house you will know what I mean. Or maybe if you have tried soy bacon. Good luck.

David, his wife, Susan, and his son, Alexander, are members of the Scarsdale community, north of NY city. David teaches choir and music at a nearby high school named "New Rochelle." If you're looking for the perfect place to retire in the New York area, Scarsdale is a safe bet. The location is so middle class, staid, and quiet that it is typecast as the model community and the butt of a few jokes. Being accepted into the "condominium cooperative" that is the organization of these tall apartment buildings is the hallmark of stability.

Another artist in the family living in New York (if my wife´s extended family may be included) is Nelson Andres Rivas, a.k.a. Cekis, who brought his former wife, Karen, and his daughter, Maya, to lunch at Stephanie´s building. Karen found some Chilean-style empanadas from a bakery and Stephanie made a salad and we all had libations. My favorite was the Negroni (equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari), Stephanie´s was the Aperol Spritz and everyone else enjoyed Pisco Sours in honor of Chile. From the rooftop where we dined a magnificent skyline could be viewed. The Dakota hotel, where John Lennon died, is visible from one side. Some construction cranes atop the buildings were visible. Some buildings we could not identify, such as crystalline, insectoid structures. Cocoons waiting to be born.

The centerpiece of my "only in New York" visit would probably have been the "Diner en Blanc," a dinner where hundreds of exclusive ticket holders converge upon a secret location where they enjoy musical performances and they, themselves, are also a spectacle. Stephanie, my niece Francesca and her husband, Brian were the members of our little band. I had to find all white attire, not something I ordinarily enjoy in Victoria, Chile. Some party goers bring their preparation to perfection with all white tuxedos and ladies wearing all white formal gowns. Also, the tables are magnificent presentations, with branches, candles, lights, flowers, and chuppahs or canopies marking them. Everything was perfection. On stage a crooner, perhaps a Frank Sinatra double, sang "New York, New York" as everyone stood and danced. Just as he finished the song, with everyone singing along, a thunderous typhoon struck with raindrops coming down in buckets and thirty mile per hour winds. Everyone was drenched in an instant. Our preparations for the event were rather meager in comparison with the exaggerated chuppahs, silver dining ware with warming trays and other gourmet dinners surrounding us, but it was all for the better. Blinded by the rain and frozen by the winds, we were able to tear down and hustle out of there fairly quickly. It resembled a scene of "The Titanic" with everyone scrambling to leave. I, with my one crutch, found special reserves of energy to assist with the evacuation. The metaphor was clear. Elysium is a fragile construct, easily replaced by Hades, given a catastrophe. New Yorkers know this better than anyone.

One last additional enjoyable part of my visit was staying with my Joaquin, who has the best (or worst) location for an apartment in New York, a bohemian enclave located on Saint Mark´s Place in the East Village. Sort of a birdcage, Joaquin´s apartment has a shelf-like layout on the fifth floor of an ancient building with space for a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and studio for his artwork. Just he and his wife, Abena, a singer, live in the heart of it all, in an area some refer to as America’s hippest street. Not too hip if you´re trying to get some sleep, but iconic nonetheless. Our first night out, programmed for a live concert in Brooklyn, I had to figure out how to navigate the subway on my own using an alternate route, this portion of the subway having shut down due to technical problems. Google maps and improvisation got me there, but not in time to see the concert. It ended just as I got there, but the whole spectacle had a weird psychedelic feel, seeing all of these concertgoers and having just ingested one of New York´s special cocktails, a "Nutcracker." This fruit flavored bombshell is sold out of portable ice chests by entrepreneurial hipsters for $15 a bottle, guaranteed to get your head straight. I loved all of the after concert banter with Jamaicans, Namibians, and Nigerians hanging out at the park, telling their stories. The concert must have been something else. Too bad that I missed it. Joaquin has found a niche as an artist and illustrator for the African American renaissance in New York and has introduced me to a number of their vanguard, such as Wangechi Mutu, a highly regarded Kenyan artist living in New York. Such an interesting life. Livin' the dream. My second night with Joaquin we went to a concert at the Nu Blue. At this venue, all of the performances were live and spontaneous. All of the freestyling rap and incredible jazz that I heard was inspired in the moment with people coming up on the stage and adding to the mix. I even made it down to the floor and busted a few moves myself. Intoxicated dancing I find to be the truest expression of my inner self. Just kidding.

Every time I look out of the main window in Stephanie´s apartment, with its incredible skyline of Manhattan, I can hear George Gershwin´s "Rhapsody in Blue." I began my vacation there and finished it there, like bookends. So many different pieces of the collage that come together in that city. How so much of my family started in Stockton, California and ended up there, I can hardly fathom. Such a glorious place to visit and how wonderful to see so much of my family there. We still belong to California in a way and now my roots are in Chile, but New York is a place where we have also found a connection, a place where dreams have no limits.

#fatcity #fatcityrefugee #newyork #expat #expatlife

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laraimaustria · 7 years

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Why Don’t You Know This Already?: The continued adventures of European customer service

Well unfortunately it looks like our bus ticket to Paris problem is in fact not solved yet. We went to the bus station and after searching in vain for the Eurolines office we decided to just ask the person in the international bus terminal ticketing office where we should go/what we should do. For some reason this man thought we wanted to go to Prague, was confused when we didn’t, and seemed to have no idea what we were talking about when we asked about being able to change the name on the bus ticket. All he did was give us the Eurolines phone number. However, the last time we called they told us we had to go down the office, so we’ve descended back into the first level of hell, this time in a weird kind of “Go ask your Mom, go ask your Dad” loop. At this point I am seriously considering just cancelling both tickets and starting from scratch. I will try calling one more time on Monday. In other, less frustrating news, I saw my first opera on Thursday! It wasn’t at the big state opera, their season hasn’t started yet, this was a showing of Carmen in the krypt of Peterskirche, one of the old churches near St. Stephen’s cathedral. Courtney and I have both never been to an opera, and we got great student discounts for these tickets (only 15 Euro instead of 39!) so we decided to go for it. The krypt was not as krypty as I thought it would be, meaning that there weren’t literally skeletons embedded into the walls, this was more kind of like a really old basement. But it was still cool to be in the church and we actually got to meet the director who turned out to be from Montana and was very excited to meet two American ladies. Luckily for us, since we both forgot to read the plot synopsis of Carmen, he gave us a run-down of the show so that we wouldn’t be totally lost. We might even get to do some community service for the opera company, which would be extremely cool! The opera itself was extremely good. Maybe if you’ve been to a lot of high-end operas it would be on par with a community theater production, but I haven’t been to a lot of high-end operas, so I thought it was great. The amount of physical power it takes to be able to sing like that must be astounding, and they all make it look so effortless. Even though it was in french the plot really wasn’t that complicated and we were able to follow along pretty well. Am I cultured now?

Since this is was supposedly the last nice week before fall weather starts, we decided to see a bunch of parks that will be gross and not fun once it gets cold. On Friday we went to Prater, which is probably the Viennese equivalent of Central Park. There’s a small amusement park with rides and a ferris wheel, but tickets are kind of pricey so we didn’t go in. Instead we just walked along the footpath and soon realized just how massive Prater is. We walked for about an hour and I’m pretty sure we barely made a dent. The best part of the day was we stopped to rest on a little playground merry go round and a little girl offered in German to spin the merry-go-round for us. Her adorable “Bittteschon!” when she was finished is probably the most heartwarming thing I’ve ever seen. It started to rain just as we made it back to the underground station, but unfortunately for me I didn’t have a raincoat and still had to walk a few blocks to get back to my house and was drenched. There was also thunder that was so strong it shook our apartment building, it literally felt like a small earthquake. For dinner we went out to Vapiano, a famous italian chain restaurant where they make the pasta right in front of you when you order, so everything is hot and fresh and extremely delicious.

Originally we had planned to go to the Kino am Dach, or rooftop movie screening that they have on top of one of the libraries during the summer. They were going to show Casablanca (In English!) and we thought it would be fun to go, but the screening was cancelled due to the rain. So instead we stayed in and watched Casablanca on Netflix which was still fun. Afterwards we went out to an Australian pub, which was also really fun, and interesting because the owner seemed to be neither Australian nor Austrian, and spoke to everyone in plain English (nice for us, but it seemed to confuse two Austrian ladies at the table next to us). I tried a peach wine spritzer which was very good, and a Jameson and ginger mixed drink which was also very good. In Vienna it doesn’t feel creepy or dangerous to walk around later in the night because so many bars and even regular cafes are still open, and it’s very common for people to stay out until 4 or 5 am here. The streets are well lit and there hasn’t been a time yet when I’ve been walking alone and felt like I could get jumped at any minute, which I have experienced in pretty much every American town, even at Linfield. Isn’t being a lady great? Saturday the rain held off so we went to Stadpark, which was also very pretty and filled with lots of nice statues of artists and musicians, including the famous gold statue of Johann Strauss. (Honestly he looked a lot like Mark Twain). Then, because this is Europe, we stopped in a coffee house and I had some delicious hot chocolate and we shared a really rich Mozart cake, which is the cake version of Mozart Kugeln, a very popular chocolate here that’s like a little truffle with a pistachio filling in the center. I’m going to have to bring some back. We then went back to Courtney’s and made dinner together, which felt very grown-up and was a big success, except for the fact that we boiled enough spaghetti to feed a horse. (Just as a side note, I ate pasta for dinner every night this week, just in case you had any doubts that I was a real college student.) I’d call my second full week in Vienna a success, and if I could just get this stupid bus ticket problem figured out everything would be great. Our regular class schedule starts next week, which means more homework, so I’m glad I got to go all these places now before I have less free time. Every day I’m here in Vienna I find new things to love.

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purplesurveys · 7 years

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140

Did you have the urge to slap someone in the face very hard today? Not at all. I had been alone for the most part of today. Did today mean anything special to you or anyone else you know? Nothing special. I was literally in school for three hours and went home immediately because I was sick of being in that particular part of the city, then spent the rest of the day being by myself. I guess for Angela and her cousin it was a bit special, since they got their tickets for Nam Joo Hyuk today. What is one movie you're wanting to go watch in theaters at the moment? None of them are interesting enough. Do you own anyone money? What did you borrow the money for anyway? Yeah. I had no money in Bohol so when I wanted to buy a necklace, I had my mom pay for it first. She’s since forgotten about the debt though, so hah. What was the most interesting or colorful birthday cake you've had? I haven’t had a lot of cakes that stood out, but my three-tier cake on my 7th birthday and the one loaded with sprinkles on my 18th were really pretty.

What was the last thing someone bought you? Was it expensive? My parents got me a Macbook Air since I was going to start dying in college if I continued to go on without a laptop. This costs twice my tuition, so it better last long with me lol. Do you think people who can’t sing, shouldn't try in the first place? No. Why rain on their parade? Do you ever look up to the sky and wonder what's up there? Yeah. The existence of trillions of stars and billions of galaxies amazes me every time I think about it. When was the last time you embarrassed yourself in front of someone you like? Uhhhh idk I rarely feel that way about Gab anymore. Is there anyone in your life who asks you really personal questions a lot? Sure. Filipinos in my age group are very open and it’s not considered intrusive if personal questions are asked between good friends. Do people seem to underestimate you because of something in your past? No, there’s nothing in my past that should serve as reason for them to underestimate me. Do you like surprises or do you like to know everything that's going on? I do like surprises, it’s just that I’m naturally observable and will know when something’s up. I usually ruin surprises for myself because of that. I’ve only ever been genuinely surprised once and that was mostly because Gab had help from people I barely know. When was the last time someone kissed you on the cheek? Who was it? This noon, coming home from school. It was my dad. Do you ever go camping with a bunch of friends and tell ghost stories? Hahahaha I think I’ll pass. Hans is good at telling scary stories but I think everyone would just be lobbying for him to shut up. What is one decade (if so) you wish you had lived in? Why is this? I don’t know, I guess the 20′s. I’d have loved to watch silent films and enter jazz clubs, but I’m also curious as to how the Great Depression played out as well. What college are you going to or planning on going to in the future? I’m in University of the Philippines, studying in the College of Mass Communication, majoring in journalism. Second year. We do this too many times for introductions, so it’s second nature to announce it by now. What is your favorite kind of chocolate out of milk, dark, and white? White, then milk, then dark. Do you know anyone personally who is too pretty to even seem real? Hah sure, my girlfriend and my dog. When was the last time you finger-painted? What'd you paint anyway? (continued from last night) I don’t think I ever did that in recent years. Do you have any interesting moles anywhere you don’t want people to know of? Nope. I do have a birthmark right on my butt, and I’m a little shy about it except maybe for Gabie. Have you ever gotten high or drunk in a really formal place? No. Would you consider yourself more of a giver or a receiver in situations? Depends on the people. I’d give anything for my friends, but I’m a little hesitant towards anyone else I don’t know all that well. What was the last party you went to? Did you meet anyone new? Well the last debut I went to was in February, but I was with my friends for the most part. If I recognized a familiar face that night, I didn’t talk to them. Have you ever made up any long, words all by yourself? I haven’t, I was never that creative. Do you call yourself names when you do something you said you wouldn't? No...? When were you last confused with something or someone? We watched a Chinese film titled Hero in Asian history class. I didn’t get the entire thing, and I really only minded the excellent cinematography and use of colors it had. Apparently Gabie also watched that film in their Film class last year, so I understood it a little better when she explained it to me. What kind of ice cream did you eat last? Where'd you get it from? Cookies and cream. We always keep a tub in the freezer since my family never gets tired of it. Have you ever told a huge lie, then had someone figure it out? I wouldn’t dare to make it that big in the first place. Have you ever been to a strip club before? Are you even old enough? No, but sometimes their doors are open so I've seen strippers doing their thing from outside in the past lol. Yes I’m old enough, in the Philippines at least. Do you have any pet peeves that are odd to any other people? I don’t think so. My pet peeves are pretty common. What is the most used emoticon you'll use in a conversation? :) Do you like flowers? What is your favorite kind to receive? I do like them but don’t really have a preference. I’m happy to just receive them at all. Has anyone ever considered you to 'wear the pants' in a relationship? No. Where I live that concept is rarely raised, although it’s often assumed the woman does. Does your father's job force him to travel all over the place at times? Obviously. He works at a cruise liner, so for six months he’s out jumping from one country to another. He’s been to North America, Europe, all over East/Southeast Asia, and I think South America too. When was the last time you were out of your home country? April 2016. When was the last time someone attempted to cheer you up? Tuesday, but I pushed it away because I didn’t need it at the time. Do people who act like they're misfortunate get on your nerves a lot? If they’re really not misfortunate then yes it would annoy me. What is one sport you hate playing, but love watching live/on television? It’s not that I hate playing it, but I don’t play tennis at all and yet I love it on TV. What did the last piece of cake you had look like? Was it colorful? It looked...brown, I guess. It was chocolate cake. Do you ever write poetry and post it on any certain websites? No. I’d be ashamed to post any attempt on poetry I’ll ever make. Do you ever think you're being cheated on by a significant other? Nope. Have you ever had someone pick on you or bully you at any time in life? Yes, I was teased and bullied a lot in my childhood, and to this day I still believe it’s the reason why I’m afraid of socializing. I was picked on because of my name, my short hair as a kid, and my love for wrestling so I became naturally afraid to approach people first.

#survey #surveys

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