Ben Hardy Fanfiction | When I Kissed You p. 7.

CHAPTER SEVEN: HELLO, STRANGER.

PLAYLIST: blazed - Ariana Grande.

WORD COUNT: 1761.

BARBARA'S POV.

"I can't believe it!", it was around 2 pm in Amsterdam and I was talking on the phone with Cole. "It was like reliving that night in New York. EVERY.LITTLE.DETAIL"

The dream/déjà vu about Ben had made of me a nervous mess. Of course, I had thought that night with Ben (several times, in fact), but none of my memories were that... vivid. In my dream I'd felt him once more: his skin, his lips, everything. For some reason, my dumb brain took this as a warning, a sign that something big was about to happen. The question was: what?

"It's normal!", his voice blasted through the speaker, there was a buzz of people speaking in the background, probably photographers and models. He spoke as if he found the whole situation very amusing. "Having those dreams is a pretty common thing in women like you and 12 year olds. It's biology, Barbara."

"Women like me? What does that mean?"

"Unsatisfied", he stated, a smile on his voice.

"Wha- the fact that he's the first guy I've slept with in months has absolutely nothing to do with me having those dreams and also-", in the line, he was laughing his ass off at my expense. "Cole, listen!!"

"Look, I'm just saying that you had a good time with an attractive guy whose greek profile and sculpted body were saved by your subconscious just to give him to you when you need a certain... stimulation." He made a pause, I heard him blowing his cigarette. "Your dream means absolutely nothing. "

I bit my lip, unsure of what to believe. On one side, I had my bff giving me unsolicited biology facts and on the other side I had sweaty hands, an upset tummy and not to mention the need of looking over my shoulder every two damn seconds. I was going crazy. Whatever it was, I decided to give Cole the benefit of the doubt. "I guess you're right..."

"The hell I am, now-", he made a pause to take another drag of his cigarette. "Could you stop whining about wet dreams and enjoy your moment of glory?", in the background, the clamour of conversation stopped swiftly. "Oh", I shut my eyes, embarrassed.

"Did you... have to say that out loud?"

⭐

My agent was already waiting for me in arrivals, even though we were supposed to meet thirty minutes later. The blonde, round woman was stomping her way to me, her cheeks looked rosy pink and tiny beads of sweat were glued to her forehead. She pulled me by the arm as soon as she laid hands on me.

She explained that the producers had changed the schedule and that instead of having a private table read with the cast, we would be doing a press conference with lots of media to report on it. Which meant I had to answer a lot of questions about my character in front of the whole country!

"Countries, darling", she corrected me. "This is a Netflix series; the whole world will be watching you"

I felt sick.

We hopped in a car I assumed was hers (if not: what a nonchalant way of stealing a car, Amber. Damn!) and drove 10 kilometres to the speed of an overstressed Amber to the building where the production team and the rest of the cast were already waiting for us.

When we arrived, I looked around and saw that everyone else was dressed in far better, not as casual outfits. I cocked my head to give Amber an alarmed look, but she was already directing orders to a pair of stylists that came to my rescue. One of them worked my hair while the other did my make-up and I wondered how the hell could they put up with so much pressure! They put me in a black dress that had see-through sleeves and a puffy skirt and matched it with white stilettos. In a normal situation, that would have felt like too much, but considering I would be in front of cameras from hundreds of countries... it felt just right.

My hands started sweating as I stood near the entrance of the stage, my stomach churned with both my nervousness and the odd feeling from before. It was getting worse with every minute that passed. I peeked to the room where the conference would be held and OMG, without counting cameramen, at least two hundred people were sitting there in front of the stage! I started worrying about puking in front of all those cameras and news reporters.

A raven-haired girl appeared from the side and patted me on the shoulder, she was wearing a gorgeous red dress with matching lipstick and white pumps.

"Is this your first time doing press?", she spoke with a feminine, kind of high-pitched voice.

I sighed and nodded. She smiled warmly and wrapped an arm around my shoulders

"It'll be okay, we've all been there", she chirped. "And to be honest, these things are very short! There's nothing to worry about, you'll see", she winked at me before stepping away.

Seconds after, the whole producing crew entered the stage through a door located just in front of ours. I breathed deeply and tried to mentally prepare for what was about to come. After presenting himself and the crew, Zach, the casting director, invited us to stage, a man in his forties with greying hair, beard and hard blue eyes winked at me as the whole cast walked to get our seats at the pannel.

A roar of clapping and cheering flooded the room as soon as we put a foot on the stage and GOD walking that stage felt like ages! I waved to the public and tried to give them my best imnotnervous smile before finally sitting at the table with my colleagues. To my right sat the black haired girl and then to her right was the rest of the cast. The only empty seat was on my left, I figured it would be for the actor who'd play Rowan.

"You look very concentrated today, Barbara", one of the writers said on the mic. "Are you preparing yourself for the shooting tomorrow on set?"

"Actually I was just trying not to fall on these damn heels!", I declared and then quickly shut my mouth. I couldn't believe I'd just said that in front of cameras. To my surprise, everyone in the room laughed, my co-stars, the writers, even some cameramen. Wtf?!

"Just be sure not to sprain an ankle, Barbara!" he pointed a finger at me but he smiled. "We'll need you in one piece for the next three months..."

"Roger that!"

The writer then gave the floor to Zach, the casting director who started giving some background for our characters and asking questions about how we felt related to them. During this time, I got to know my cast mates a bit more, they were friendly and WAAAY fun! Their jokes and great attitude helped me feel better and confident up on stage, I was sure we would be a great team. But... where was the other guy?

"Now, I believe this is the moment everyone has been waiting for", Zach started and everyone cheered. It was time. "My team and I have postponed this announcement for months, but there is a reason to it", he made a pause to approach our table. "As you can see, we did our best to collect the best of the best. Only the best candidates for the roles were the chosen ones for the titanic effort that bringing Fiber to life means! Like we did with Farren's role (little Barbara here), we thoroughly analysed every candidate for Rowan's role until we found the perfect match, both physically and mentally..."

I could feel the expectation growing in the room, all eyes were locked on Zach's face, following his every movement. I sat up straight and whispered to the black-haired girl, whose name I'd learned was Emeraude.

"Do you know who got that role?"

"Are you joking? I was about to ask the same thing!"

Marcus, the blue-eyed man joined in, speaking through his teeth, "It's top secret, rumour has it only Zach and the book's author know who he is..."

"I just hope he's handsome", Emeraude purred grinning and raising her eyebrows in a seductive manner. Marcus and I snorted.

"... through all the possibilities, we came to the conclusion that the one person who could bring Rowan to life is him. From X-Men: Apocalypse and Bohemian Rhapsody, please welcome the talented Ben Hardy!"

In a milisecond, the crowd around me went bananas and my soul left my body. People were cheering and whistling while for me the room spun at wild angles, they clapped and stomped their feet and I supressed a scream. Please, be other Ben Hardy, please be other Ben Hardy!

But there he was, walking straight to the empty seat next to me, looking like a model taken out of a magazine cover, that damned blond, green-eyed bastard! Because fuck me right?! After all I'd been through to avoid him... He glanced at me and instantly looked away, as if he hadn't even noticed my presence.  I took a gulp from my water bottle, trying to hide my discomfort.

"Finally!", Zach was beaming, a few more cheers erupted from the crowd. "Ben, what does it feel like to be the chosen one for the job?"

"Oh, it's an honour!", he stated with that deep voice of his. "It's just crazy, knowing that I was the chosen one when you had other thousand actors, good actors, willing to take on this role. It blows my mind!"

"Yeah, and then there's the fact that you didn't have to lie to get this role", both Ben and the crowd laughed at this comment, even some of my cast mates did. I didn't get it.

After a few more interchanges between them, Zach gave the floor to the reporters who'd been patiently waiting for Ben to appear.

"A question for Mr. Hardy, yes!", a reporter with glasses stood up. "What are your expectations of working with Miss Benavides as her character's love interest?"

Shit.

"Uhh, well..."

"Did you two know each other before today? Have you talked about..." (hey, only one question! Someone reprimanded the reporter)

"No!", we answered in unison. Our eyes met for a split second before Ben returned his attention to the reporter. "This is the first time we meet."

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Your post on subversion was intriguing. My friend and I were similarly wondering if fans take "fanon" too seriously as it warps their perception of "canon." As in the direction taken, be it by different writers or the same one, goes someplace fans just don't like. What makes it "bad writing" or "fans who just didn't like what they got" exactly? It can feel so... mixed up honestly.

refers to this post [X]

Thank you!!!

I think that fanon has so many definitions that it can be difficult to discuss without being specific

a not-particularly-safe-for-weenies example is Transformers fandom has a particular way of describing cybertronian genitals, in terms of their form, function, and terminology, that is widely (though not universally) used in fic, despite not being part of the established lore

that’s what happens when fanon is created to be lore-conforming but to address something that is not (or cannot be) directly discussed within the media itself

sometimes, fanon is about taking a hammer and fixing canon because it’s broken

for example, though it’s frankly the least of her problems when it comes to worldbuilding, JK Rowling can’t do math. it’s never clear how many students attend Hogwarts, but her overly simplified small number of magical schools throughout the world really shows that she just … didn’t crunch the numbers

I could go on about how to figure out proportions of mutants/wizards/vampires etc, but the issue here is that fans basically have to ignore this new lore because it’s absurd. that doesn’t mean that there’s a newly established fanon for HP international schools, but one day, there might be

sometimes, fanon takes a very different turn, when fans far and wide commonly accept what’s called “woobification“ of a character

Snape, Loki, Kylo Ren, Damon Salvatore. these are all fine characters to like if you so choose (I’m obsessed with Sheev Palpatine; I get it), but sometimes people will try to justify that fondness by pretending that the character is someone wildly divorced from their actual morality

I don’t want to talk about any given character, and inconsistent writing can also be a factor, and also not all of the characters I just listed are on equal moral footing by any means. but sometimes the fanon version of a character is unrecognizable because they’re a much better person than their canon counterpart

fandom expectations can be extremely difficult to manage and even to predict. if fans come up with their own ideas about how a story should end or what sort of dynamic a pair of characters have, that can come into conflict with what ends up happening in the story

unfortunately, there’s no single, hard-and-fast rule for what makes a good story vs what makes a bad one

in my previous post (linked to at the top of this post), I talked about how telling a good story is like setting up a marble ramp or a series of dominoes, where all of the pieces should be in place to get you to the ending you desire. if you have to flick over a second domino or pick up the marble and deposit it somewhere else – that is, force characters to do something that neither personality (marble) nor circumstances (ramp/obstacles/etc) support – then you’ve made a mistake. audiences will usually notice

sometimes, fanon ideas of who a character is can influence fans, which lead them to do the pikachu-surprise-meme when a canon portrayal remains consistent. but sometimes, there are other factors, such as a likeable actor. Alan Rickman was a good guy, but Severus Snape was not

this may seem like a tangent, and perhaps it is, but sometimes authors and other storytellers try to impose their own, incorrect, moral view of the world in their stories.

Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien himself used Gandalf to tell the Frodo (and the reader) that it would be morally wrong to simply execute Gollum rather than kill him in self-defense or battle. this pays off later when Gollum’s avarice destroys the One Ring and saves Middle Earth (spoilers!). this only works out this way because JRRT, who is catholic, told that story, not because it’s always the case that the person whose life you spared will accidentally save the day later.

another great example is JKR declaring that Snape is a hero. I won’t get into her odd treatment of Slytherin, and this may fall under the I Will Fix Canon With Hammer type of fanon, but I think that we all know that she bent over backwards to vilify Slytherins just as she did with fat people (except the ones who were just foolish)

nothing that JKR says can make Snape a good person unless she tells us that the dialogue that he spoke and the actions described on the pages were just … lies she told us for some reason. writers can control the very laws of reality of their worlds, but right and wrong are what they are

anyway, I absolutely agree that what fans want to see can come into conflict with what the storyteller gives them, and that it can create an unfair backlash

by that same notion, sometimes storytellers will dismiss fan concerns over bad writing (inconsistent characterization, rushed storylines, etc) and blame “fan entitlement.” that’s a real thing, but it’s the people who rage angrily and lead review-bombing campaigns – not the people who hate seeing their favorite characters murdered by the writers (and sometimes, by other characters) because it was poor writing

I love-love-love Mass Effect Andromeda, but I know that some fans of the series did not. that does not make them bad fans. sending hate to a developer or to people who enjoyed it would make them a bad fan

bad fan behavior comes from actual behavior, not what they think about a piece of media

and as for telling the difference between bad writing and fans disappointed by a solid narrative? I mean, my marble example shows one part of what I think defines good vs bad writing. mostly, we just have to figure out for ourselves if a choice made us sad or if it was actually bad

Mahjong design 'refresh' reignites debate over cultural appropriation Mahjong, the centuries-old Chinese tile game, became embroiled in controversy last week over a debate about cultural appropriation.Criticism erupted online over The Mahjong Line, a Dallas-based company founded by three White women, that sells brightly colored tiles with reinvented symbols -- bags of flour representing the traditional flower tile, for instance, and the written word "bam" representing the bamboo tile. The "Cheeky Line" mahjong set, by The Mahjong Line. Credit: From The Mahjong LineThe artwork featured on traditional tiles, "while beautiful, was all the same," the company said on its website, adding that "nothing came close to mirroring (the founder's) style and personality." The new tiles offered a "respectful refresh" of American mahjong, which differs slightly from traditional Chinese mahjong in its rules and gameplay, the company said. The website has since been changed to remove these phrases.The tile sets were also marketed with different personality profiles -- the "Cheeky Line," for example, represented the type of "gal" who is "equally happy in LA or Austin. Loves a wild wallpaper, millennial pink and her many sneakers."The full "Cheeky Line" mahjong set. Credit: From The Mahjong LineImages of the tiles and screenshots from the company's website were posted on Twitter last week, sparking an online controversy almost immediately. Social media users, including those from the Asian American community, accused the founders of cultural appropriation, disrespectful language and ignorance toward the game's cultural significance (while profiting from it -- each set costs $325 or $425)."Please put the Chinese characters BACK onto the Chinese game. Don't change my history and culture to make it more palatable to you," tweeted Taiwanese American Rep. Grace Meng, New York's first Asian American member of Congress. By Wednesday, the company had apologized and updated its site. "While our intent is to inspire and engage with a new generation of American mahjong players, we recognize our failure to pay proper homage to the game's Chinese heritage," it said in a statement.But the company has not stopped selling its games.The "Minimal Line" mahjong tile set designed and sold by Dallas-based company The Mahjong Line. Credit: The Mahjong Line"We stand by our products and are proud to be one of the many different companies offering a wide range of tiles and accessories for the game of American mahjong," said co-founder Kate LaGere in a statement to CNN. "That being said, we take full responsibility that in our quest to introduce new tiles we unintentionally recreated an experience shared by many Asian Americans of cultural erasure and are working to correct this mistake."This is just the latest in a long string of similar incidents that have sparked outrage in recent years. The pattern is familiar now: Someone borrows or misrepresents a piece of Asian culture, becomes the target of online criticism, offers an apology and a promise to do better, and the Twittersphere moves on -- until the next controversy.But as each outrage comes and goes, the same question re-emerges, from both outside and within the Asian American community: Where do you draw the line between appreciation and appropriation? Ongoing debate"When cultures are inspired by another culture, that's one thing," said Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist and author who writes about race and representation, in a phone interview. "But if they claim to improve upon and disrespect the original culture, or if there's an air of superiority over the original content, then that becomes appropriation."Part of the offense comes when those doing the appropriating make "a claim of authenticity ... when they're not actually using any ... Asian talent," said Yuen. For instance, restaurants that claim to serve authentic Chinese food without using any Chinese consultants or staff -- or, in this case, a mahjong company that is headed by White founders.The past few years have seen countless controversies resulting from perceived appropriation, particularly in the fashion world. In one famous incident in 2018, a White high school student wore a traditional Chinese qipao (or a cheongsam depending on dialect) dress to a prom in Utah. The backlash was swift, with Chinese Americans tweeting in response, "My culture is not your prom dress."Celebrities have been called out too: Kim Kardashian West's lingerie brand, originally named Kimono, was heavily criticized when the star attempted to trademark a specific font version of the word, so much so that she renamed it in 2019. (Kimonos are a traditional Japanese garment that date back centuries.) Soon after, singer Kacey Musgraves was lambasted for taking revealing photos in a traditional Vietnamese ao dai dress.Kacey Musgraves received backlash after posting photos on Instagram wearing a traditional Vietnamese ao dai dress. The form-fitting Vietnamese tunic is typically worn over long flowing pants. Credit: @spaceykacey/InstagramBut appropriation and its accompanying controversies take place in other spheres of life, from food and makeup to language and speech. And, Yuen said, it's most harmful when there's a power difference between the appropriators and the group they're borrowing from -- a dominant group "denigrating" the minority culture while profiting from it or misrepresenting it, as she put it.In 2019, for instance, a New York restaurant sparked uproar and accusations of racism and cultural appropriation, after its White owner said it would serve "clean" Chinese food that wouldn't make people feel "bloated and icky." The restaurant closed just eight months after opening.The "fox eye" beauty trend also went viral in 2020, with people trying to emulate the so-called "almond-shaped" eyes of celebrities like Kendall Jenner -- an uncomfortable sting for Asian Americans who received racist taunts in the past for those same facial features.Minority groups can commit appropriation, too -- some Asian American entertainers, such as singer and actor Awkwafina, have faced criticism for, at times, speaking with a "blaccent" and appropriating African American Vernacular English. Calling out offendersCultural appropriation itself is nothing new; it's been happening for centuries. For instance, Dior has been referencing Chinese fashion since the mid-20th century. Even further back, Chinese motifs were commonly seen in 19th-century French and Italian fashion.But, increasingly, people are calling it out -- partly because of the ubiquity of social media, Yuen said."With the popularity of social media and the ease of having your voice heard even if you're not famous -- I think that allows for people to comment on and bring attention to practices that have been long standing ... of appropriating non-Western cultures, as well as the native cultures," she said.People play mahjong along a street in Beijing, China, on December 1, 2020. Credit: NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty ImagesApart from providing a platform for people to voice their opposition, social media also allows the opinions of relatively anonymous characters -- say, a teenager in Utah -- to be seen and shared by mass audiences, she added. Problematic content that may previously have gone unnoticed can now spread like wildfire.But online controversies often reflects a growing national conversation about race, racism and identity in the US. The country has experienced a cultural reckoning in the past decade, with people of color and minority groups pushing for greater representation, recognition and opportunity. The Asian American community has enjoyed a rise in visibility among the general public, with the emergence of pop culture successes like "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Fresh Off The Boat." Younger activists and artists are increasingly vocal in sharing not just aspects of their culture, but also the ways they navigate mainstream society and the realities of racism and Asian stereotypes. Kevin Kwan, writer of "Crazy Rich Asians," with the cast and crew of the movie adaptation in Los Angeles in 2019. Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty ImagesThere is a "growing awareness of injustices, of all sorts -- structural injustices, societal, as well as cultural in this case," Yuen said, referring to the redesigned mahjong sets. "I think the combination of the rise of social media (and) the rise of Asian American popular culture in the general consciousness, also allows for non-Asians to help to ally with Asian American communities," she added. "That then amplifies Asian American voices beyond the community, which is necessary because Asian Americans (account for about 5.6%) of the United States. So for something to go really viral, there also needs to be people who are interested in supporting and amplifying our causes and our issues."The flip sideThis rise in activism and cultural sensitivity has been met with skepticism in some quarters.Some have argued that the debate on appropriation stifles innovation and collaboration, pointing to popular fusion cuisines or pieces of art inspired by other cultures. Others have raised questions about cultural ownership and gatekeeping.Mahjong, for instance, doesn't have just one "correct" form; the game has evolved into different variations played in different communities. American mahjong, the variant that inspired The Mahjong Line, was introduced to the US in the 1920s. The rules were changed and the game became distinctly different from the traditional form played in China. Over the decades, it became culturally significant in different American communities, including among Jewish families following World War II.Four young women playing mahjong in California in 1924, soon after the game was introduced from China to the US. Credit: Underwood Archives/Getty Images"Mahjong has been changing ever since it first came on the scene (in China) in the mid-1800s," said Gregg Swain, an American mahjong expert whose work informed the founders of The Mahjong Line when they launched the company in November 2020. "Versions of the game, and the tile set itself, have been altered to fit into different cultures and regions."Others have voiced concern that this heightened public awareness could compromise critical nuance, especially when each case depends so much on its individual context. Critics point out the danger of blind outrage becoming a knee-jerk reaction, with social media so easily escalating controversy.Yuen offered another take to these criticisms: Think of it not as "cancel culture," but "consequence culture.""I think people are tired of the history of cultural appropriation," she said. "People are, for the first time, able to voice discontent ... That's how growth happens.""The problem is not when (activism) is taken too far," she added -- the problem is when offenders shut down the conversation because they feel attacked, instead of taking the step to recognize their privilege, educate themselves and engage with those minority communities, she said.Besides, she said, most people who call out appropriation aren't demanding that only Chinese people can play mahjong.A group of seniors playing mahjong at the Jewish Temple Beth Emet in Anaheim, California in 1996. Credit: Kari Rene Hall/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images"A lot of people are saying that companies should donate to Chinatown causes, and causes that are under siege because of anti-Asian racism," she said. "If you are going to engage with Chinese culture through mahjong, you need to understand the community's needs. And rather than flippantly insult them, you need to engage with them, and bring them into your research and into dialogue."As for The Mahjong Line, the founders said they had been aware of the cultural sensitivity of the game, and tried (however unsuccessfully) to pay proper tribute. They researched "the evolution of the tiles over the history of the game for both Chinese and American mahjong," as well as consulting with instructors, and seeking feedback from "a broad range of people" when creating the brand, LaGere said in her statement to CNN.Still, she acknowledged they "failed to get perspectives from individuals more closely affiliated with the origins of the game. A grave mistake we take full ownership of."Moving forward, we will continue having conversations with experts closely tied to the game's origins to ensure its rich history and cultural significance is properly represented in our promotion and description of the game," she said. "This will be an ongoing process which will take some time as we continue to expand and roll out new policies in line with our goals to further (educate) ourselves as entrepreneurs in this space." #lifestyle Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=16707&feed_id=28145 #design #mahjongdesignx27refreshx27reignitesdebateoverculturalappropriation-cnn

Star Wars: The Last Jedi RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

Warning: total spoilers for The Last Jedi.

After weeks of frantically speed-scrolling through my various social media feeds when anything that looked like a Star Wars spoiler appeared, I’ve finally managed to get out and see The Last Jedi. Despite my diligence, I didn’t go in completely unspoiled: I knew the general shape of the fan discourse surrounding the characterisation, which means I had some context cues and a smatter of details to work with, but not the major plot points. Now that I’ve seen the movie, however, I’m electing to write my own review before catching up on other people’s opinions, so if I touch on something that’s already been dissected at length without referencing said discussion, that’s why.

In broad-brush strokes, I enjoyed The Last Jedi. Assessing it purely on its own merits, there was a lot it did right: the cinematography, special effects and original creature creation were wonderful, I loved Rose Tico, and there was a pleasing balance of drama, emotion and humour, the requisite scenery-chewing deftly subverted by moments of self-aware comedy, especially in the opening exchange between Hux and Poe Dameron. Mostly, it was solid.

Mostly.

But.

The thing is, no Star Wars film is an island. The Last Jedi is the second film in a trilogy of trilogies, one whose core trio were clearly and intentionally mapped to the heroes of the (original by creation-date, second by internal chronology) series in The Force Awakens: Finn to Han, Rey to Luke and Poe to Leia. This being so, it was easy to mark the other narrative similarities between The Force Awakens and A New Hope – most notably, the parallels between the Death Star and Starkiller Base, both of which were destroyed in the respective finales, but not before their destructive power was unleashed. Which makes comparing The Last Jedi to The Empire Strikes Back not only reasonable, but – I would argue – necessary, if only to determine whether the decision to parallel the new with the old has continued beyond the first film.

The short answer to that is: yes, The Last Jedi is structurally akin to Empire, but not always to useful effect. The long answer, however, is rather more complex.

As a writer, there’s nothing that makes me crave a metaphorical red pen quite like a story where, for whatever reason, I can see the authorial handwave of Because Reasons gumming up the mechanics. If The Last Jedi was an original film, detached from the Star Wars universe, I’d be able to tell you that the problem stems from the poorly-forced sexist clash between Poe and Holdo, and that would be that. But because The Last Jedi has borrowed certain key narrative structures from Empire, there’s a clear template against which to measure its narrative choices, which makes it easier to infer the hows and whys of various changers.

A quick refresher in Star Wars, for those who haven’t watched the original trilogy lately. The Empire Strikes back begins with the Rebel forces being ousted from Hoth in a massive battle. After fleeing the planet, Luke goes to Degobah to train with Master Yoda, while Han and Leia spend some time dealing with a broken Millennium Falcon and the pursuit of Boba Fett, kissing and bickering and generally cementing their chemistry before finally going to track down Han’s old buddy, Lando Calrissian, in Cloud City. Frustrated with Yoda, Luke has a premonition of danger and goes to rescue his friends, as Lando, who’s been strong-armed by Darth Vader, hands Han and Leia over to the Empire. Han is frozen in carbonite after Leia declares her love for him, Luke loses a hand and learns Vader is his father, and the film ends with the pair them, plus Lando, escaping as they resolve to rescue Han.

By comparison, The Last Jedi follows a fairly similar arc. The film opens with the Rebellion being ousted from its base and pursued in a space battle. Rey attempts to persuade Luke to help her, while Poe and Finn are left dealing with a fleet that’s low on fuel as they try to outrun Hux and the First Order. As Leia lies injured, Poe clashes with Holdo over command, which results in him sending Finn and Rose on a secret mission to find a codebreaker who can help sabotage the First Order’s ship. Unable to the codebreaker, Rose and Finn return instead with DJ, a stranger who claims he can help them, but who ends up betraying them to the First Order. Unaware of this, Poe mounts a short-lived mutiny against Holdo. Meanwhile, frustrated with Luke and experiencing an odd connection to Kylo Ren, Rey goes to try and turn him to back to the light, only to find that Snoke was the source of their connection. Kylo kills Snoke and his guards with Rey’s help, reveals the truth about her lost parents, then betrays her in turn. In the final battle, Rose is injured and declares her feelings for Finn, and the film ends with the rebellion united but still fleeing.

Based on this, it seems clear that The Last Jedi is intended to parallel The Empire Strikes Back, both structurally and thematically. All the same elements are in play, albeit recontextualised by their place in a new story; but where Empire is a tight, sleek film, The Last Jedi is middle-heavy. The major difference between the two is Poe’s tension-and-mutiny arc, which doesn’t map to anything in Empire.

And this is the part where things get prickly. As stated, I really love Rose Tico, not only because she’s a brilliant, engaging character superbly acted by Kelly Marie Tran, but because she represents another crucial foray into diverse representation, both in Star Wars and on the big screen generally. There’s a lot to recommend Vice-Admiral Holdo, too, especially her touching final scene with Leia: I still want to know more about their relationship. I am not for a moment saying that either character – that either woman – doesn’t belong in the film, or in Star Wars, or that their roles were miscast or badly acted or anything like that. But there is, I suspect, a truly maddening reason why they were paired onscreen with Finn and Poe, and that this logic in turn adversely affected both the deeper plot implications and the film’s overall structure.

Given how closely The Last Jedi parallels the main arc of Empire, it’s narratively incongruous that, rather than Finn and Poe heading out to find the codebreaker together, the pair of them are instead split up, decreasing their screen-time while extending the length of the film. But as was firmly established in The Force Awakens, Finn and Poe map to Han and Leia – which is to say, to a canonical straight couple. Even without the phenomenal on-screen chemistry between John Boyega and Oscar Isaac, that parallel is clear in the writing; and in Empire, Han and Leia’s time alone is what catalyses their on-screen romance.

That being so, I find it impossible to believe that Finn and Poe were split up and paired with new female characters for anything other than a clumsy, godawful attempt to No Homo the narrative. Rose and Finn’s scenes are delightful, and their actors, too, have chemistry, but every time we cut back to Poe and Holdo, the story flounders. Everything that happens during Finn’s absence is demonstrably redundant: not only does it fail to move the plot forward, but in trying to justify the time-split, writer/director Rian Johnson has foisted a truly terrible mini-arc on Poe Dameron.

Specifically: after Leia is incapacitated, Holdo is given command of the rebellion. Seeing Holdo for the first time, Poe looks startled and states that she’s not what he was expecting. When Poe, recently demoted by Leia for ignoring orders, asks Holdo what her plan is, Holdo dismisses him as a hot-headed “flyboy” who isn’t what they need right now. Not only doesn’t she tell him where they’re headed, she apparently doesn’t tell anyone else, either. This failure to communicate her plan to her people is, firstly, why Finn feels he has to light out on his own, which is how he meets Rose, and is secondly why, once Finn and Rose come up with a plan to infiltrate the First Order, Poe decides that they can’t risk involving Holdo.

As we eventually learn, Holdo does have a plan – and a good one. There is literally no reason why, given the steadily escalating fear and anxiety of her crew, who are watching their companion ships get picked off one by one, she doesn’t share the full details with the rebellion. Instead, she leaves it to Poe to figure out that she’s refuelling the transport ships to evacuate – and when he panics, pointing out (correctly) that the transports are neither shielded nor armed, she likewise doesn’t elaborate on the fact that they’ll have a cloaking device to shield them and a destination close by, one where they can land and take shelter while the main ship acts as a decoy.

Because of Holdo’s decision to withhold this information, Poe thinks that she’s given up and is leading them blithely to their deaths, and so stages a mutiny – one in which he’s supported by a number of other, equally worried crewmembers. Happily, Leia recovers from her injuries in time to reclaim control, and only then does she let Poe in on Holdo’s plan. Poe suffers no further consequences for his actions, and even when they talk privately, both Holdo and Leia seem more amused by his mutiny than angry at what he’s done, rendering the whole arc moot. Except, of course, for the fact that Finn and Rose, on their mission from Poe, bring DJ into the mix – and DJ, who knows about the cloaking device, betrays this secret to the First Order, who promptly open fire on the transport ships.

Hundreds of rebellion soldiers die because Poe and Holdo so disliked each other on sight that neither one trusted the other with vital information – and for the rest of the film, this is never addressed. But of course, Johnson can’t address it, not even to hang a fucking lampshade on it, because the entire scenario is manufactured as a way to justify Poe’s protagonist-level screentime while Finn is away – which is also why, contextually, their antagonism doesn’t even make sense. The film begins with the premise that the entire rebellion, who’ve just been flushed out of their single remaining base, is on the run together – so why the fuck haven’t Poe and Holdo met before now? Especially as both are shown to have a close, personal relationship with Leia, it rings utterly false that they’d not only be in the dark about one another, but start out instantly on the wrong foot.

As such, the coding around Poe’s surprise at Holdo – that she’s not what he expected – is a lazy misstep. Traditionally, when hotshot male characters say this about a new female commander, it’s a sexist dogwhistle: oh, I didn’t know we’d be getting a woman. But why would Poe Dameron, son of Shara Bey and devotee of General Leia Organa, be surprised by Holdo’s gender? He wouldn’t, is the answer. Flatly, canonically, he wouldn’t. But if there’s some other aspect of Holdo that’s meant to ping as unusual besides her being female, it’s not obvious. It would’ve made far more sense to write the two as having a pre-existing antagonistic relationship for whatever reason: instead, we get Poe cast as an impatient, know-it-all James Bond to Holdo as Judi Dench’s M, who doesn’t have time for his nonsense when they first meet, but who ends up forgiving it anyway.

It’s like Rian Johnson looked at the Poe Dameron of The Force Awakens – a character universally beloved for being vulnerable, funny, charming, honest, loyal and openly affectionate – and decided, Hey, that guy’s an awesome pilot, which means he’s a COOL GUY, and COOL GUYS don’t play by the RULES, man, especially if it means listening to WOMEN – they just A-Team that shit in secret and to HELL with the bodycount! And anyway he’s HOT, so he’s ALWAYS forgiven.

Dear Rian Johnson, if you’re reading this: I like a lot of what you did with this film, but FUCK YOU FOREVER for making Poe Dameron the kind of guy who gets a bunch of his friends killed, then has a mutiny, then indirectly gets even MORE people killed, and never shows any grief about or cognisance of his actions, all because you wanted to avoid fuelling a homoerotic parallel that you openly queerbaited in promo but never intended to fulfil anyway. GIVE US OUR GODDAMN GAYS IN SPACE, YOU COWARD.

Anyway. 

The point being, the entire plot of The Last Jedi suffers because of a single, seemingly homophobic decision – unnecessarily splitting up Poe and Finn to avoid further Han/Leia comparisons – and the knock-on consequences thereof. Which is where I bring out my metaphorical Red Pen of Plot-Fixing and say, here is what should’ve happened. Namely: Poe and Holdo should’ve had a pre-existing antagonistic relationship, but one that didn’t prevent them from sharing information like grown-ups. Rather than Rose being part of the rebellion, she should’ve been the codebreaker they were sent to retrieve on Holdo’s orders (because two plans are better than one, and why not try both gambits?). This voids the need for DJ, who barely appears before disappearing again, so that Rose-as-codebreaker retains her status as an important, well-fleshed character who interacts with both Finn and Poe, and whose introduction works to map her onto Lando Calrissian. If you really must keep DJ because Benicio del Toro and thematic betrayal parallels (more of which shortly), he can be the dubious guy with First Order secrets that Rose has been trying to recruit for the rebellion, which explains why she’s with him on the casino planet in the first place, and how he’s so easily able to cut a deal with Phasma. BOOM! You’ve just saved a solid 20 minutes of redundant screen-time without degrading Poe’s character or undermining Holdo’s for no good reason and without dumb sexism creeping in. You’re welcome. 

(Also. ALSO. Not to take away from how lovely that Finn/Rose kiss was, but let’s just take a moment to peek into the other timeline, the one where Stormpilot gets to go canon the same way Han and Leia did in Empire. Let’s imagine Finn and Poe bickering in the casino, getting all rumpled during the escape while Rose and BB8 exchange Meaningful Looks and scathing droid-beeps about the two of them. Let’s imagine, during that final battle on Krait, that it’s Poe, not Rose, who stays behind to forcibly knock Finn out of that self-sacrificing dive towards the enemy gun; Poe who grabs Finn and kisses him because they should fight for what they love, not against what they hate, before passing out injured, thus completing the parallel of Han going into carbonite after kissing Leia. Let us gaze upon that world, that glorious thematic act of completion, subversion and queer recontextualisation, and then quietly wish a pox on everything in our cruddy Darkest Timeline that conspired to make it unhappen.)

And now, with all that out of the way, let’s address the Rey/Kylo issue.

As I said at the outset of this piece, I tried my best to avoid spoilers before watching the film, but no matter how quickly I scrolled through feeds or closed my tabs, I still knew that a lot of people had come away rejoicing in the idea that Rey and Kylo were being set up romantically, while an equal number had not.

And I just. Look. While I’m not going to stand here and tell people what to ship or on what basis, both generally and at this historical moment in particular, I find myself with an intense personal dislike of narratives, canonical or otherwise, which take it upon themselves to woobify Nazis, neo-Nazis, or the clearly signposted fictional counterparts thereof, into which category Kylo Ren and the whole First Order falls squarely. I don’t care about how sad he feels that he killed his dad: he still fucking killed his dad, and that’s before you account for the fact that he demonstrably doesn’t give a shit about committing genocide. In the immortal words of Brooklyn Nine Nine’s Jake Peralta: cool motive, still murder. Except for how the motive isn’t actually cool at all, because, you know, actual literal genocide.

From my viewing of the film, I honestly can’t tell if Rian Johnson wants us to think of Kylo as a genuinely sympathetic, redeemable figure, or if he’s just trying to improve on the jarring, horrible botch the prequels made of Anakin’s trip to the Dark Side by showing us his complexity without negating his monstrousness. Or, well: let me rephrase that. In terms of the actual script and what takes place, I’d argue that, even if Kylo is given a final shot at redemption in Episode IX, he’s still not being primed as Rey’s love interest. It’s just that the question of how much Johnson wants us to care about Kylo as a person, regardless of anything that happens with Rey, is a different question, for all that the two are easily conflated.

Yes, Rey and Kylo touched hands. They did! And Kylo killed Snoke instead of Rey! This is what we might call a low fucking bar for romantic compatibility, but hey: it’s not like white dudes in cinema are ever really called upon to jump anything higher. More salient in terms of the Star Wars universe is the fact that, after they defeat Snoke’s guards, Kylo’s appeal to Rey to join him and rule the galaxy together is an almost word-for-word callback to the offer Anakin makes Padme in Revenge of the Sith, right before he force-chokes her into unconsciousness, leaves her pregnant ass for dead and turns into Darth Vader. The fact that Anakin and Padme are also sold as a tragic romance prior to this moment is not, I would contend, the salient hook on which to hang the hopes of canon Reylo. Aside from anything else, Rey is mapped to Luke and Kylo, very clearly, to Darth Vader: with clear precedent, Rey’s desire to turn Kylo back from the Dark Side can be heartfelt without being romantic.

(Also, I mean. The connection that Rey and Kylo had was deliberately forged by Snoke to exploit their weaknesses, which is why they each had a vision of converting the other. Though we’re given a hint that the link remains in the final scenes, it ends with Rey shutting the door – both literally and figuratively – in Kylo’s face. I’m hard-pressed to view that as destiny.)

As for Kylo himself, his characterisation reads to me as deliberate, selfish nihilism. Kylo is conflicted over his murder of Han Solo because it impacts him, but at no point does he hesitate to reign down destruction and death on strangers. His desire to turn Rey to the Dark Side is likewise covetous, possessive: she is powerful, and he wants a powerful companion in the Force, but one who, by virtue of being his apprentice, will be subordinate to him – not a judgemental superior, as Snoke was. This is reflected in the way DJ’s betrayal of Rose and Finn is paralleled with Kylo’s decision to first help Rey when it benefits him, and then to turn on her afterwards. Like DJ, Kylo is mercenary in his allegiances, helping whoever helps him in the moment, then discarding them when the relationship is no longer useful.

The death of Snoke itself, however, is rather anticlimactic. He was a looming, distant figure in The Force Awakens, and while there’s an established tradition of Star Wars villains showing up and looking cool without their origins ever being satisfactorily explained at the time, this is vastly more annoying in Snoke’s case. Unlike General Greivous, Darth Maul or Boba Fett, Snoke isn’t just the random antagonist of a single film, plucked from obscurity to thwart the heroes: he’s the reason Ben Solo turned to the Dark Side and become Kylo Ren. Presumably, the hows and whys of Snoke manipulating the young Ben could still come out in Episode IX, but if it never gets addressed onscreen, I’m going to be deeply irritated.

On a more positive note, I enjoyed what the film did with Luke’s arc, for all that it’s not what I’d expected. To me, one of the most fascinating arguments in Star Wars discourse is the question of the Jedi, their morality, and how it all set Anakin up for failure. The Jedi ideology put forth in the prequels is the kind of thing that sounds superficially deep and meaningful, but which looks increasingly toxic the more closely it’s examined. The ban on children, marriage and close relationships outside the Order; the extreme youth of those taken for training combined with a forcible, protracted separation from their families; the idea that fear necessarily leads to anger, and so on. Luke describing the Force to Rey as something that existed beyond the Jedi, an innate aspect of the world, felt both refreshing and intuitively right, even given the necessity of respecting the balance between light and dark. The appearance of force-ghost Yoda felt a little pat, as did his ability to call lightning, but he still had one of my favourite lines in the whole film, delivered in support of Luke’s choice to step away from the Jedi teachings: as masters, we become the thing they surpass.

There were other, smaller niggles throughout than my issues with Poe and the no-homo restructuring of the plot: the handwaving of distances between Luke’s world and the main fight in a story that hinged on fuel supply; the sudden appearance of trenches and tunnels into the caves on Krait when everyone was meant to be trapped inside; the random appearance of an Evil Ball Droid to play momentary nemesis to BB8; the on-the-nose decision to show a random white slave boy, holding a broom he Force-summoned like a lightsaber, at the very end of the film. And as wonderful as it was to see Billie Lourd on screen, the knowledge that Carrie Fisher will be absent from Episode IX – the film that was meant to have been her movie, just as Harrison Ford had the The Force Awakens and Mark Hamill had The Last Jedi – rendered both her presence and her mother’s all the more bittersweet.

  Ultimately, The Last Jedi is a successful-but-frustrating mess, which is kind of how you know it’s a Star Wars movie. I’ll be forever angry at the carelessness with which Rian Johnson treated Poe Dameron and Vice-Admiral Holdo, but even if I could’ve wished for a different plot structure, I’m always going to stan hard for Rose Tico, who was warm and kind and intelligent and who stole every scene she was in. LESS REN, MORE ROSE – that’s my new motto.

Here’s hoping that Episode IX delivers.

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THE COENS’ THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS “All day I’ve faced a barren waste/Without the taste of water, cool water…”

© 2019 by James Clark

     In many ways, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), looks to a past leaving it nearly an anachronism. The helmsmen here, Joel and Ethan Coen, have, in their business affairs, been forced to locate their complex communications in the swill of the multi-cocktail Happy Hour known as Netflix. (Years before, David Lynch, apropos of the vein now virulent, was heard to declare, “I didn’t make this picture for your damn phone.”)

As you probably know, the boys are nothing if not resilient, and with this unwelcome matter in the air they prove to be even more feisty and irreverent than usual. Their strategy to be large as life is a wild and wonderful tour de force. Inasmuch as this film with a vengeance is multi-faceted, let’s ease into it by way of its amusingly wicked parody of Millennials, those softies utterly disinclined to show up at a theatre to see a Coens’ film.

You might think the lads are staging some kind of revival of Cowboys and Indians entertainment, inasmuch as the setting is the “Wild West,” and its six vignettes comprise the product seen to be slices (in various tones) of the fateful drama of what used to be a big money-maker. Actor, Tim Blake Nelson—directly addressing the audience as if it were packed with fast friends—leads off with a singing cowboy, Buster Scruggs, so hilarious in enjoying his domain that we barely register that the song he so confidently sings is about dying of thirst (“Cool Water”) and that he takes low-key umbrage that one of his wanted posters accuses him of being a misanthrope (his horse whinnying in support when prompted to consider that the charge is patently unfair). That he brightens up with the thought that “Song never fails to sooth my restless heart,” constitutes the first of many displays of assurance that heavy baggage can be exorcised on the order of a good cleaning lady. (The writer/ performer of the song, “Cool Water,” Marty Robbins, was not only a country/Western musical profit-centre in the Nixon-era, but also a NASCAR driver, always in the hunt. On one racing occasion, he was seriously injured swerving into a wall to avert smashing into a stalled vehicle. Hold that thought in fathoming the protagonists stalled here, in other ways.)

Buster visits two bars along that musical afternoon, and although his tenderfoot appearance elicits disdain from the regulars, he manages to maintain some of the tenets of a civilization which emphasizes sweetness and light, and also systematic/ mechanistic advantage. On the first visit, asking for whisky, he’s told that, “This is a dry county…” Noticing that everyone is drinking, he points out the discrepancy and his temerity tweaks someone to recognize him as, “The Texas Twit.” Buster corrects that whisky-driven rudeness to, “The Texas Kid” and, being a virtuoso technician has to shoot the uncontrolled mental-health victim with a bullet symmetrically placed in his forehead. That is followed by Buster’s vigorous massacre of the bad-mouth’s friends, including one wounded at the doorway to be needles, “I’ll leave you to the wolves and the gila monsters.” Confidently moving along to the bar in the next town, the straight-shooter complies with the establishment’s gun-check policy. He soon (ever the games-player, presaging cyber-mayhem) is at a poker table being coerced to take up the hand of somebody, perhaps feigning, needing to leave quickly. Buster takes exception to the irregularity, eliciting from the pushy, burly and surly contestant the problem of a six-shooter in his face. Always expecting from others sweet reason, the Texas Kid points out the violation of the authority’s rules of passivity. Of course the unreasonable one prepares to do away with an obstacle, but he meets acrobatic Buster’s resort to stomping on the several planks consisting of the gaming table, each time breaking parts of the gunman’s face. Our protagonist goes into a victory lap, singing about the loser in terms of “Surly Joe,” a bit of professionalism and wit which enthralls the room and also us, somewhat. We are especially touched—beyond the volatile emotional outpouring—by Buster’s being located in a social media heaven, going viral. (Part of the deadly improv consisted of the plaint, “He never really took to empathy…” followed by the smug axiom, “When you’re unarmed, your tactics might gonna be downright Archimedean ” [the latter being remembered for an effective screw].) Interrupting the fun, the victim’s brother cries out, “You killed my brother!” and he demands a shoot-out on the dusty street. The muddled and aged aggrieved is far from a gun-geek and the people’s choice toys with him, shooting off four of his fingers. (He had swaggered out to the site, remarking, “I should go into the undertaking business.”) Supposedly charming us with his bonhomie, he grants the “geezer’s” not knowing give-up; and, with only one bullet left (having geared up with the six-shooter but not the pair of effete collectible micro-shooters which he calls “princesses”) he decides on a “trick shot” with a mirror and shooting backwards (his supposed constituents holding firm). With that show done, another begins. A man in black, the sartorial opposite to Buster’s creamy white (would you call the former, “Death?”), playing a doleful harmonica, rides slowly to the trick-shot zone. And, being another simplistic country/ Western singer, he declares he’ll reap the bounty on Buster’s head. Buster, unarmed now without his gadgetry, has a moment of less insulation (“I should have seen this coming, Can’t be top dog forever…”). Shot symmetrically in his forehead, our majoritarian has taken the easy way to sustain joy. To the song the hunter in black sings, “When a Cowboy Trades his Spurs for Wings,” Buster is shown with angel wings coursing high above problematical life. His parting words here have to do with certainty of life after death, because—conformist-style—so many have written to that effect. Likes!

A scintillating Buster like that comes down the pike rather seldom. In the second chapter, the young hacker can’t even gain the affection of his horse. Thinking a solitary bank, manned by another geezer, would be something to keep him in 5-star dinners for a while, he discovers that the old are not always the weak and the ridiculous. The contretemps involves him having a shot-up leg in being suckered that the big denominations are near the floor, under the counter. While the sprightly banker repairs for some protective coating, our protagonist clears out the till and limps to the stone well in the yard. There he’s snubbed by his less than wonder-horse, who could have effected an escape. (Settling for a clunker seeming OK, if you imagine a life of ease has to involve an angel replacing every wreck.) The banker returns wearing pots and pans, and the marauder’s efforts to kill him bounce off. An uncool local posse strings him up, the horse now on hand to lurch forward and let the rope on the tree branch work the nose. The officiating judge tells him he now has his opportunity to say his piece, before dying. First, he decries, as a primordial crisis, the unfairness of the banker’s armor. An argument erupts about who gets the horse, and the voice of the new declares no one should get it. At this juncture of smallness an Indian war party appears, sending arrows into necks and putting an end to reveries for those whose reveries go nowhere. The nemesis here is as shallow as the one in the first episode, the Coens’ irreverence being truly wild. The dude with the noose is spared by a chieftain on the (false) basis of thoroughgoing challenge of authority. With everyone in sight dead, except the tied-up complainer and his recalcitrant horse, there ensues the clown-show, slow-motion acrobatics of his attempting to dismount without strangulation—he leaning back, and the inattentive mount meandering as he nibbles on some weeds. He sees a horseman and a few cattle, calls out, is rescued, and soon they regard each other as “sidekicks.” Within the same hour the newcomer bolts away from an oncoming posse after cattle rustlers; and the bank robber goes to the gallows on an erroneous charge. His having recently escaped one execution seems to have allowed him to strike a brazen tone in the vicinity of the hangman. (But perhaps he and many of his sidekicks, from years before, had been beneficiaries of a stunning leniency.) Tied up on a four-noose extravaganza in a town turned out for the morbid event, the failed bank-robber looks for something good turning up. An elderly felon cries and the insouciant youngster asks, “Your first time?” He spots a pretty woman in the crowd. Their eyes meet, and she smiles. The black hood covers his head. From the perspective of inside the hood there is a crunch and a cheering clientele. What wouldn’t miss, missed.

Another presumptuous figure, follows. But unlike the first two, he generates far more cogent passion. In the wintry Northwest mountain ranges, where mortals find nothing easy, a young man with no arms and no legs sings for his supper on a cold roadway as enclosed by a proscenium arch and stage, doubling as a caravan. His “song” involves declaiming stirring instances of a fate of finitude few mortals take to heart. The eeriness of his presence is enough to whet curiosity. But, far from a freak-show, as we discern this outreach, his skill in dramatic expression is of a caliber to haunt and maybe elicit reflection. A keynote of his performance is the sonnet, “Ozymandias,” engaged by the poet Shelley. as drawn to lyricism by the “recent,” 19th century discovery of a Pharaoh’s tomb—far more mineral than personal. Not only does he convey the emotive pathos of the impermanence of all creatures; but in reciting the Gettysburg Address he brings to bear the paradox of powerful love for human kind. Moreover, in an onstage scene called, “The Sash my Father Wore,” his commitment iterates the exigency of going to war—perhaps military, perhaps the wider and deeper factors of struggle every day of one’s life. This first performance we see is well appreciated and rewarded. The impresario feeds him some morsels of meat; but such a viable constellation does not last long—the fickle clientele far more amenable regarding the catchy enough oddity than the rare spoken and facially powerful gifts. The burden of “Ozymandias” and the fading of fame bites rapidly to the point of the businessman, seeing how popular a “mathematical chicken” could be, changing the show and dumping the orator into a rushing cataract. That the food had become indigestible and then no more was one more (and monstrously problematic) ingredient of the dubious calculus counting upon the world to gratify one’s thriving. Also, the performer’s insufficient food and mounting desperation resulted in a fine heart becoming a mediocrity. Perhaps his campaign was based upon suddenly needing to find kindred spirits to help him survive. As such he would be a barometer of his era’s sensitivities, and ours. There is a scene where the “Professor,” still caring to a point, visits a bordello, with his carrying his associate; and he turns the little man facing away from the bed. The hooker wonders if all of his appendages are gone. That excruciating, shared strangeness, flows to the measure of remorse after the murdering. Zaniness arrested, this singular expediency widens, deepens and tempers the jolly hatchet job.

Chapter Four features a protagonist even older than the impresario, who becomes an unlikely inspiration to those not finnicky about the full measure of facticity, in their film experience. Whereas the foregoing three dramas had been situated in badlands or austere, cold darkness, here we have a near paradisal valley, replete with many monarch butterflies and ravishing woodlands creatures. An elderly prospector and his cute donkey enter this range through a narrow opening in a thick, green forest, and the jaunty protagonist, a veritable Santa Claus, proceeds to pan for gold in a lovely stream. Before finding his mother lode, he had climbed a tree to loot four owl eggs, with a beautiful mother owl watching untroubled nearby, giving you just one of many moments that only a Mexican strategist and his far-flung fans could like. Perhaps Disney sanguinity infuses the sequel, where those owl eyes have an effect, and he replaces three of the four eggs. The rationale, “She won’t have remembered how many she had,” smacks of a constituency of shoplifters. As if this were not alone Academy Award enticement, the old elf comes to us in song—“Oh, God keep you, Mother McCree…” After back-breaking toil and impressive savvy, he finds the Bonanza, only to be attacked by a gunman. Shot in the back, his jersey becoming a blood-red blotter, he waits his turn to turn the tables. He kills his adversary and walks out of the pit where his gut was blown away, revealing his intestines pouring out on the ground. He’s heard to insist, “It didn’t hurt nothin’ important.” Next day, he’s in a clean shirt and looking pretty good, looking like The Revenant. His tag-line, “There’s a pocket up there. Where, I don’t know,” is a limp cliché. But it conceals everything the virals won’t touch. Similarly, the declamation, “I’m old but you’re [the gold] older,” mocks the primordial, with self-satisfaction.

Demonstrating that there are vast options to skin a cat, we now come to a composition called, “The Girl Who Got Rattled.” Our protagonist may be a young nineteenth-century woman taking orders from a brother about a spiel of very lucrative matrimony which would greatly help his floundering business career; but it is her own reckoning which tells us something about life today. At a boarding house in a “civilized” State of the Union, she’s made much of by the presiding host, in sharp distinction from how the latter regards an elderly woman who has fallen asleep at the dining table. That the girl’s imminent trip by covered wagon train to Oregon has been speculative with no firm commitment of marriage in sight (not unlike Buster’s being drawn to heaven); and only the feckless urging of an underperforming and exaggerating sibling to count upon, introduces to us, notwithstanding the era, to a figure sanguine to a fault. (Another boarder, a middle-aged man, who would, over the months, have seen through their effete wishfulness, strikes a tone of down-to-earth being disregarded in not only unpleasant ways but also in very dangerous ways.)

Once on the go, the weak brother soon dies of a cholera phenomenon which, to put the matter in full relief, could be called a plague. (The optics of the ox-wagon train must put into critical relief a very different protagonist, namely, Emily, in Kelley Reichardt’s film, Meek’s Cutoff [2010], a figure evincing a progress of courage and circumspection truly of another world from the placid and vaguely safety-net-assured, Alice Longabaugh [pronounced, Longbow].) The Coens’ film’s momentum of upending, has, by this stage, spotlighted not a single trace of strong coherence. Here, though, there is a partial equilibrium, requiring the rather reckless depiction of Indians being very inept, whereby to place Alice in a fool’s paradise, or Wonderland. This circuitous range of parody may best be disclosed with regard to the recently-deceased brother, and his spunky terrier, “President Pierce.” She remarks, after the burial on the range that Gilbert, her brother, “did very little,” but radiated intense political views, which she abhorred (in her once-over-lightly way). President Pierce, the politician, was a one-term American President just before the Civil War, whose lack of consideration for blacks sowed much turmoil. As with the rough trade about “wild Indians,” Alice, being remarkably confrontational, in her pat, namby-pamby way, channels to the present time, where political correctness has become a gigantic and cirrhosis creed, particularly amongst young, diet-puritan women. Hearing about her plight and her brother’s politics, the handsome young straw-boss of the junket, namely, Billy. is quick and pleased to pronounce, “He was a failure.” That ruthless assessment, by one being a member of her generation, clearly coincides with the protagonist’s needs. In the same vein, she’s in a quandary about many of her fellow travelers’ annoyance caused by President Pierce refusing to stop barking. He offers to put down the dog, and she doesn’t bat an eye finding it the way to go. She plugs her ears  The Good Samaritan, however, flubs the shooting.  He tells her, “We’ve seen the last of the President.” A few days later he’s back She finds she has had Gilbert buried many miles back, having left all of her funds in one of his pockets. The youngster tending to the oxen—having been promised a wildly inflated salary—begins to want some down payment. Billy promises to deal with the matter; but he soon admits he doesn’t have a clue. More of the same, the young outdoorsman finds that Alice, the low-wattage misadventurist, is his kind of girl. He proposes, and she quickly accepts. Though neither has any skills for life in a frontier town, they plan to settle down there. Their ace-in the hole is a one-off  premium for married couples.

Apparently inured to the neighbors taking umbrage, she’s seen, with the canine survivor on her lap, straying away on her pony from the train and having a Saturday Night Live giggle about a prairie dog colony. Her Wonderland quickly sours when an Indian war party comes to play. The senior guide, Mr. Arthur, had noticed her disappearance and was able to single-handedly rout the dubious warriors. But, with the battle in doubt, Alice, crouching in a sort of pot hole, uses the suicide revolver, a sort of magic cake, provided for the possibility that the expert warrior might be killed. A lack of fight, extending beyond unruly mobs.

In the final vignette, middle-aged stage-coach riders hope to convince their fellow-travelers that they have everything figured out. (Here, in contrast to Alice and Billy, in having a flood of facile clichés, most of the premises in the coach have been subjected to long-term perception.) A trapper displays his gift for clever gab, as disarming the assumption that he is of no account. He had for years lived with an Indian woman who knew no English, just as he knew nothing of her language. His kernel of discovery involves that range of communication whereby it is possible to share a remarkable level of understanding by body language. His own pell-mell fluency, however, lands him in a bemusing embarrassment. Shifting from elevated one-to-one to amateur anthropology, the laborer hastily insists, “People are like ferrets.” A lady coming to reunite with her husband (a minister of the cloth and a theologian), after being with her daughter and the latter’s children for three years, begs to differ. She posits the more complicated situation of the upright and the sinning. That brings into the fray an elegantly dressed French bounty hunter, who, with Cartesian confidence, concludes that “one can’t know another’s soul.” The lady counters with, “Any decent person knows of eternal love, the love of the Creator.” A Polish gambler ridicules her position, and gets hit over the head with her umbrella. He then goes forward with a probability that her daughter had been eager to get her out of the household; and that her husband could not have sustained love during her long absence. His Slavic accent and poker deceptiveness adds to the aura of certainty about the traditional bonds rotting away, to the advantage of cynics and fatalists. (More important than the ideas floating around, is the gulf between this series of taking a stand by going to some trouble, and the smoothie addiction in the foregoing stories.) The French killer, with a lucrative corpse on the roof, has a partner. The latter is the one pulling the trigger while the diminutive Parisian chats up the prey to lull the victim to an easy death. This more middle-of-the-road figure has a fine singing voice and he proceeds to shower the company with a heartfelt rendition of, “The Streets of Laredo.” “I saw a young cowboy wrapped up in white linen…” Within the calm in effect from the song, the Gallic spellbinder treats the assembly to the land he really inhabits, and its conveyance. He evokes an aura derived from the moment the wanted man realizes his death has commenced. “The passage to death.” (Conjuring such intensity accomplishes [or hopes to accomplish] more than a disclosure of matter of fact. The French connection has opened a door to the surreal, the more real. Such mood enacts energies surpassing normal communication, but including its generally underestimated sensual presence. Soldiers of fortune. What could that mean, about change going forward?) Though that pristine moment fades, and on reaching the hotel the pair joke about possibly displaying the corpse along a corridor for the night, the mystery of that passage to death holds forth in another way. With the travelers in their hotel late at night, the coach makes a turn-around and races at full speed passed the place of arguers and swayers of truth. The tight linkage of the team of horses recalls the engagement of another group of flounderers being dragged along a nondescript countryside by the spectacle of Death, in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

Aspects of that latter film saturate The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and their presence here add to the questioning about happy (even goofy, even lethal) trails in the 21st century. With happy-go-lucky Buster on horseback and singing, we have an amalgam of, first of all, the vigorous, bawdy, Squire Jons, far more viable than his precious master, the knight, Block. But in the gathering of that harp and those angel wings, we have a Buster buying into Block’s obsession for immortality. Jons excels in cleaning up nasty bars and other places where inferior entities should not be, though they pose extreme difficulty; but, in the end, he joins with Block in that linkage driven by the phenomenon of Death. (The veer to pointlessness for those once on top of the world, being a cinematic volatile, endowment of the other kind of energy our energy-mad planet won’t touch.) The song Scruggs (a name first of all seeming too rude for his wit and couth) sings for us at the fanfare carries a quirky version of Bergman’s duo of persistent ease, and a down-to-earth warrior/ wag. First, we have Jons: “All day I’ve faced the barren waste/ Without the taste of water, cool water/ Old Dan and I with throats burned dry for water/ Cool, clear water.” [Now Block] “The nights are cool and I’m a fool/ Each star’s a pool of water/ Cool, clear water. And with the dawn I’ll wake and yawn/ And carry on to water/ Cool, clear water.” And now, a sorely put-upon employee denounces that unhinged leader. (Here the factor of misanthrope comes forward with its paradoxical juggling.) “Keep a-movin’, Dan, dontcha listen to him, Dan/ He’s a devil, not a man/ And he spreads the burning sand with water…” Back to the deus ex machina (a millennial instinct as old as the hills). “Dan, can ya see that big, green tree?/ Where the water’s runnin’ free/ And it’s waiting there for you and me?/ Water/ Cool, clear water” [always metaphorically there for the right acrobat]. “The shadows sway and seem to say/ Tonight we pray for water/ Cool, clear water/ And way up there He’ll hear our prayer/ And show us where there’s water.”

The most notable feature of the ho-hum robber, in the second episode—over and above his being an inveterate predator upon wealth he doesn’t own, and, therefore a version of the clergyman who became a thief upon victims of the plague, in The Seventh Seal—is his being a witness to the noisy and blood-letting flagellants peeking out from that Indian war party, temporarily saving his skin. Here the boys touch upon—here, and later—the matter of a Happy Hunting Ground, supposedly reached by such observances. Irreverence, reminding us that other passions (far less showy and presumptuous) occupy the field and spread a frisson for those who have taken the trouble.

The lucky “sweetheart” in the gold business brings aboard The Seventh Seal’s reflective performer, Jof, the inventor of acrobatics and impossible juggling. The childish prospector serves as a contrast to real uncanniness and delight.

The tale of the damaged thespian evokes the mad woman prisoner, caged and headed for burning at the stake (in our Bergman shoot-out), on the pretext that it was she and her impiety who caused the plague—when, in fact, you could say the plague has always been here, and always will, millennials bringing on, with their overexposure to cheap thrills, their special poison.

Alice and her tepid Wonderland traces to the caravan of Jof’s wife (the “practical one”).

And the coach in the last hurrah—pegged as a death march along the sightlines of The Seventh Seal—now shows, in the unstinting power and flair of the horses, a fresh dynamic. A bit stressed though our helmsmen might be, they’re still alive and kicking.      

Dramaturgy Paradise: George Mann @ Edfringe 2017

Theatre Ad Infinitum presents:

Translunar Paradise

Theatre Ad Infinitum’s breakthrough smash-hit returns to the Fringe for their 10th anniversary

Written and directed by George Mann

Pleasance Courtyard, Fourth, 2 – 28 Aug 2017 (not 9, 15 & 22), 15.45 (17.00)

First seen at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011, Theatre Ad Infinitum’s multi award-winning, wordless tale of life, death and enduring love returns to the Pleasance following years of extensive international touring amassing nine awards. 

Original performers George Mann and Deborah Pugh are joined by Sophie Crawford to retell with precise gesture and touches of humour the story of widower William who escapes to a comforting world of fantasy and memories rather than confront his grief. From beyond the grave, his wife Rose returns to help him let go. 

This poignant, life-affirming tale uses intricate and lifelike hand-held masks – created by Madame Tussaud’s senior sculptor Victoria Beaton – to travel back and forth through William and Rose’s relationship, wordlessly conveying a lifetime of memories in 75 minutes. Translunar Paradise returns to the Fringe alongside Theatre Ad Infinitum’s Odyssey for the company’s 10th anniversary.

What was the inspiration for this performance? I had been trying to find a way to understand and deal with grief. My father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer – after the initial shock two things happened.

Firstly, my father didn’t die in 4 months as we had been told; he fought the disease for another five years. This left my father and I time to resolve some of our long held disputes and disagreements (though not all of them!) and grow a little closer. Secondly, I found that I was grieving his death before he had even passed away, but I didn’t know how to grieve. Our nation and culture don’t do grief very well at all, as I discovered. 

We don’t know how to speak about it, what to do, or how to deal with the natural process of grieving that lasts for a variable number of years. So I embarked on finding a story, a style and a play that could evoke a space in which the audience could share in the feelings of love, loss and bereavement – rather than feel alone or isolated. 

Translunar Paradise was that play, a non-verbal production that expressed everything I had hoped to communicate – without words. This seemed fitting to me, as my experience of grief for the most part, involved not knowing how to speak about it – but feeling so much. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? I think its one of the best spaces. Theatre can evoke the kind of visceral, passionate debate that can only come from having seen a live performance. It needs to be encouraged, but if an audience are invited to speak, to discuss and interact about something they have just watched, it often results in a very fulfilling conversation. 

There’s also something unique about this type of debate in that it captures a feeling of community so often lost nowadays – whilst you can express your individual opinion, you are acutely aware of the collective of people who experienced the same show, yet may have different points of view – and this naturally challenges everyone present. Social media, TV – even cinema, often involves the expression of ideas in isolation from one another, ideas and opinions that are not necessarily informed by other peoples views – that create a feeling of wanting to be heard or read or seen, without necessarily having to truly engage or interact with another persons viewpoint. 

The nature of debate and being impacted and learning from other people’s insights is lessened. Or reduced to angry exchanges on twitter in which 140 characters cannot properly express or capture the human interaction born of profound communal debate. Of course that’s my point of view and I invite anyone reading to disagree and debate this with me… How did you become interested in making performance? For a long time I was torn between painting, music and song writing, and theatre. But I found that theatre captures all of my passions – directing is like the collaborative composition of a live and constantly moving painting, all theatre that we make involves music and song, musicality and rhythm, and theatre itself is the art form of the imagination and therefore limitless in its possibility – which I love. 

Having always loved theatre since a young age, a few moments converged that convinced me it was what I had to do. Seeing Complicité’s Caucasian Chalk Circle and Theatre O’s The Argument –discovering Jacque Lecoq’s pedagogy and physical theatre making school in Paris (and deciding I had to train there) – and understanding I didn’t have to define myself as ‘actor’ or ‘writer’ or ‘director’ as you’re encouraged to do in the UK, you could play all of these roles and more! Is there any particular approach to the making of the show? For me and for Theatre Ad Infinitum we set ourselves the aim of making something completely different each time we begin creating a play, and we usually always devise and make theatre through improvisation. This is very exciting, each time we’re entering into the unknown, but its also terrifying, as it’s a risk. 

With Translunar Paradise I had never made a mask and mime show before, and making one about grief definitely raised a few eyebrows – I didn’t know if it would work, it was an instinct I was following. Not only that, but although I had trained in mask at the Lecoq School, I had had an idea about the masks being hand-held so that we could easily remove them and put them back on again as the story (which moves in time from an 80 year old couple in the present day back to the past and stories of their 60 year marriage together). 

There was no examples of such a mask I draw from, so we had to understand, discover and find out how to play such masks and tell a story with them from scratch. Its very challenging, but I love it. Does the show fit with your usual productions? As all of our shows strive to be completely different, it fits perfectly in that its nothing like any of our other shows to date! What do you hope that the audience will experience? At the risk of sounding cheesy, the honest answer to this question is: I hope that the audience will be moved – to think about grief, the impact of death, the joy of life and how important it is to love without the fear of loss. Love and loss are a natural part of life, as is learning how to live with these facts, its something I’m still learning how to do. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? I always focus on the story I’m telling and finding a style that can tell the story in the most powerful and effective way. We never take our audiences for granted and always put our plays through a vigorous process in which audiences are invited in to the room/theatre to watch and give feedback on the performance at roughly three stages, sometimes more, of our staggered 12-15 weeks of rehearsal (usually we’ll make work in period of 4-5 weeks finishing with a showing, take a break and then continue). 

We ask for honest feedback and tell them not to hold back – as we see it as such a valuable way to learn how the play is perceived. Do the audience see what we hope they will see? If not why? Does it work? What bits are awful? Did the audience understand – or – what did the audience understand? 

These are some of the questions we ask, and we take many notes. Then after a period of time in which we digest this information, we make plans and go back into rehearsal. Of course, even this process doesn’t guarantee the outcome, its success or enable any true control over shaping an audiences experience – but it keeps our feet on the ground, keeps us humble and stops us forgetting that theatre is both for an audience and unable to exist without one.

The production won multiple awards in the UK and abroad, including Mervyn Stutters’ Pick of the Fringe, the Brave New World Award and Audience Award at the Sarajevo MESS Theatre Festival in Bosnia & Herzegovina, the Best Theatre Direction Award at ACT Festival Bilbao Spain, The Argus Angel Award, Brighton Festival 2012, The Netherlands’ Wijkjury First Prize Award 2014 and The Observer Iron Man Award for actress and musician Kim Heron. George Mann said, “I'll never forget the first performances of this piece and the response of audiences. Translunar came from such a personal impulse - my father was dying of lung cancer and I felt that I was living in a country and a culture that didn't offer me a way to deal with my grief - the grief I felt knowing he would die; the grief I felt when he died. From this feeling I set about making this show of love, loss and letting go. Sadly my father passed before we completed and premiered the production. But the response was heart-warming - the show created what I can only describe as a communal space of grief - a place in which people could share in a feeling of loss and profound love. It was extraordinary. As were the stories audience members shared with us after every show. It was a humbling and unforgettable experience and I look forward to sharing this show once more.” A company whose work shifts in style as they explore each new subject, Theatre Ad Infinitum are showcasing several of their hit productions this year for the company’s 10th anniversary. Odyssey also returns to the Pleasance at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, following the return of Light to Battersea Arts Centre in June. Bucket List, the company’s new production for 2016, garnered critical acclaim, a Spirit of the Fringe Award, and enjoyed a London premiere at BAC where it was nominated for an Offie for Best Ensemble before an extensive UK tour. Co-Artistic Director George Mann also directed Medea at Bristol Old Vic in May. Theatre Ad Infinitum is an international ensemble of theatre-makers based in Bristol, UK, that develops new and original theatre for diverse audiences. Led by Co-Artistic Directors, Nir Paldi and George Mann, the group has been creating and touring critically acclaimed, award-winning productions for 10 years. Theatre Ad Infinitum’s mission is to create theatre that examines social and political themes through innovative storytelling and bold experimental styles, making something completely different each time. The company has recently become and Associate Artist at Bristol Old Vic and is an Associate Artist Alumni at Bush Theatre (2011-2013) The Lowry (2011-2017) and Redbridge Drama Centre (2009-2017). from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2rXQJ1l

I'VE BEEN PONDERING COMBINATOR

And no, you can't tell what the attitude of the aircraft is. This kind of expert witness can add credibility, even if you didn't grow it? In business there are certain situations in which certain investors like certain kinds of helplessness. Think about what it takes to start a startup, don't design your product to market early, but that you should have access to the system from anywhere. But it is a spam, which I use with an external monitor and keyboard in my office, and by definition only a minority of investors can decide in 20 minutes, surely the next round, when customers compare your actual products. Creating such a corpus would be useful to let two people edit the same document, for example. But this group must be small. It's hard to predict now, I'd say that yes, surprisingly often it can.

You have to start as a consulting firm. What are you going to recognize a good designer? 3 times in my spam corpus, the probability is. I'm often mistaken about where these bottlenecks are. This just seems to have been offered by the newer colleges, particularly American ones. Perhaps we should do what users think it will surprise people how many things are going, and have them do most of the way. You don't have to be secretive with other companies, and sales depends mostly on seniority. Plus there aren't the same forces, they still seem to have been nerds in high school it was probably understood that you were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. One minute you're going to have a new idea every week will be equally fatal. Each person should just do what you would call a real job. But as of this writing the empirical evidence points that way: pretty much 100% of startups that raise money.1

Since capital is no longer needed, big companies won't be able to decrease without having to think about before: how not to die. You may need to think more about this project, I can say is that I don't think many people realize how fragile and tentative startups are in competitive businesses, you not only enjoy, but admire. Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write it all yourself. So my guess is that Microsoft will develop some kind of wrongdoing. To my surprise, they said no, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of completed test drives, our revenue growth increased by 50%, just from that change.2 They hate to release something that could be weeded out.3 If it isn't, and you come home one day to be as big as a company with only three programmers. Basic, the IBM AS400, VRML, ISO 9000, the SET protocol, VMS, Novell Netware, and CORBA, among others, Tim O'Reilly, Geoff Ralston, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this, and I noticed a remarkable pattern in them. Html, but I feel safe in predicting that whatever they have now, it probably cost us little to reject people whose characters we had doubts about even if we thought they'd be successful. Reading The Nude is like a pass/fail course. In other words, does not begin by creating a design that he then imposes on the users, instead of sitting in your grubby apartment listening to users complain about bugs in your software, but I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process. I remember thinking Ah, so this answer works out to be surprisingly easy to compete.

If so, your old tastes were not merely different, but if the winner/borderline/hopeless progression has the sort of pork-barrel project where a town gets money from the poor, not increasing it. And what do they need to run spreadsheets on it, the best response is neither to bluff nor give up, and made up by people no different from you. You may have expected recipes for coming up with good answers.4 The fashion for the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of the artist. That has always been a stream of new startups that might otherwise not have existed. Algol isn't good enough at simulations. Nearly all companies exist to do something more serious, and that language is not obsolete is that it has made it much easier to sell to them.5 There are two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups that get bought early and most is still unissued, and the next you're doomed. File://localhost/home/patrick/Documents/programming/python projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/nsearch.6

I treat mail as spam if the algorithm above gives it a probability of. Labor Board. This was certainly true in the military—that the earth moves. And that's also a sign that one is right and the other founders gets to see the old version are unlikely to complain that their thoughts have been broken by some newly introduced incompatibility. In fact, getting a normal job. In doing so you create wealth with no environmental cost. 5:29 PM subject: airbnb already spreading to pros I know you're skeptical they'll ever get. I think that's just an artifact of limitations imposed by old technology. Try to get your product to please VCs or potential acquirers. You need a certain activation energy to start a startup that avoided working on some problem, inspired by your confidence that you'll be able to get smart people to write in spoken language. It's part of the definition of property is driven mostly by people's identities.

His mind is absent from the everyday world because it's hard at work in another. In England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the monasteries to his followers, it was like coming home.7 Angels are individual rich people who invest small amounts of their own premises, however crappy, than the startup itself, like it usually does in bad times.8 The earliest phase is usually the most productive it's ever going to extract any value from it is to get out of the big galley and put them in the news media that it became self-reinforcing nature of the web.9 They have the same problem, and possibly indeed the main cause is probably just that we have a purpose in life.10 If you're a YC startup.11 It might actually carry some weight. Outside writers tend to supply editorials of the defend-a-position variety, which make a beeline toward a rousing and foreordained conclusion. They like to get money. In fact, it may be somewhat blurry at first. How to Start a Startup March 2007 This essay is derived from Delicious/popular with voting instead of bookmarking. I often have to rephrase the question slightly.

I spend a lot of work. The latter type is sometimes called an HR acquisition. Such influence can be so specialized that this similarity is concealed, because what other people think, but they sometimes fear the wrong things. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, and intelligence largely from cultivating them. Instead of treating them as disasters, make them easy to acknowledge and easy to fix. Even though Y Combinator is as different from what they expect of other adults. But if you make a point of packing? In fact, this is a labor of love and he wants it to be real. That seems like saying that blue is heavy, or that we'd meet them again. If you don't think things you don't want to invest in practically audition investors, and only projects that are officially sanctioned—by organizations, or parents, or wives, or at least the proximate cause may be that the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example.

The best notebooks I've found are made by a two-part one.12 In America only a few things we can say with certainty. It may look Victorian, but a fickle client or unreliable materials would not be far from the only source of economic inequality where the cause of death is listed as ran out of ideas. And whereas Wikipedia's main appeal is that it's harder for them to do? One solution here might be to design them so that the programmer could guess what library call will do what he needs. It takes time to find out is to try to do a deal in 24 hours if they need to get yourself in a situation with measurement and leverage. Duplo world of a few thousand people you'd like to like. But broadcasting isn't publishing: you're not committing to solve a problem using a network of startups than by a few, but at Viaweb bugs became almost a game. Only a tiny fraction of people who all get up in the morning. That helps would-be app stores will be too busy to shoo you away. And it's not just the mob you need to do is start one.

Notes

A day job.

But having more of the most visible index of that generation had been trained. Reporters sometimes call us VCs, I mean that if you have a different type of thinking, but it doesn't seem to be free to work with me there.

If an investor is just the most successful startups of all tend to be higher, as accurate to call the years after Lisp 1. Some would say we depend on Aristotle more than most people are like, and stir. Actually this sounds to him? An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in college.

Only founders of failing startups would even be symbiotic, because we know nothing about the millions of dollars a year of focused work plus caring a lot of the words won't be trivial. On the other reason it used a TV as a cold email. 'Math for engineers' classes sucked mightily.

There need to go the bathroom, and made more margin loans. Perl has. Download programs to encourage more startups in Germany told me: One YC founder told me that if you have an investor derives mostly from looking for something that was the reason it used a TV as a motive, and the 4K of RAM was in a city with few other startups must have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because companies then were more at home at the end of the taste of apples because if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. But it's hard to say what was happening in them to be discovered.

If you have to admit there's no lower bound to its precision. And in any era if people are trying to sell your company right now. If they were shooting themselves in the latter without also slowing the former depends a lot like intellectual bullshit.

I don't want to lead. Structurally the idea of happiness from many older societies.

Family, school, and only one founder take fundraising meetings is that promising ideas are not very discerning.

If anyone wants.

Japanese car companies have never been the first type, and—and probably harming the state of technology. Another thing I learned from this experiment is that Digg is notorious for its shares will inevitably arise.

If you ask that you're small and use whatever advantages that brings.

Not all were necessarily supplied by the size of the first scientist.

Inside jobs: What do people do all day?

Last week, I found myself revisiting the fantastic Inside Jobs project from The Atlantic. Atlantic staffers interviewed 103 American workers from all walks of life. The magazine then collected those interviews into a single, unified website. Here's how one of the project's leaders describes her aims: So much of my aspiration for this project was to hear from people affected by the realities that business writers so often cover: what it's like to be a minority in a workplace, or the challenges of working parenthood, or the struggle to remain relevant as an industry changes. And we succeeded in finding those types of stories for example, the three female lawyers who started their own firm, or the coal miner who is adapting to the focus on clean energy. The ones that most stuck with me most were the people in the jobs many consider mundane, such as the janitor who so acutely equated people's respect for his job with their ability to throw away their own trash, or workers outside of the traditional economy, such as the stay-at-home mother who struggled to find her place in a feminist movement that emphasizes womens professional achievements. The Inside Jobs website has a fun layout. Each interview has its own page. From the main index, you can filter stories by subject, or filter workers by industry, age, or other demographic factors. Or, if you're like me, you can simply scroll down and click on any of the 103 worker portraits to read a random interview.

What Do People Do All Day? The Inside Jobs project reminds me of one of my favorite books from childhood, Richard Scarry's classic What Do People Do All Day? I've always been fascinated by the vast variety of work available to people, and how different each job is from every other job. Sure, there's a degree of sameness, but there are tons of differences. As a blogger, I sit at home all day and write. In a way, it's like I'm an artist (but without any sort of actual artistry). Everything about Get Rich Slowly comes from me. If I don't work, nothing happens here. (Actually, this isn't quite true anymore. Nowadays, Rachel manages social media and Tom is handling business development.)This process is similar to the one faced by my friends who are entrepreneurs or professionals. When you own your own business, it's up to you to make it succeed. When you have your own accounting firm or law office, it's up to you to build your reputation and client base.Then there are folks like my girlfriend Kim, who works as a dental hygienist. Whereas I see nobody all day long, she sees tons of new patients every day she works. Her work is physically demanding; mine is not.I have other friends who are band teachers and forensic chemists. I know engineers and salesmen and psychiatrists. I know lost of financial planners, of course, as well as factory foremen and county bureaucrats and hospital administrators. It's just like Richard Scarry taught me when I was a pre-schooler: Everyone is a worker.

And it's just like Brenda Ueland taught me (in a book about writing, of all places): Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say. Its the personal histories that make up history (by which I mean the grand tapestry of world events). Without your story and mine the larger story doesnt exist. The mass movements of kingdoms and cultures are built on our backs. Maybe that's why I like oral histories so much. Speaking of which, the Inside Jobs project naturally reminds me (and many others) of the work of journalist Studs Terkel. Studs Terkel's Working In the early 1970s, Studs Terkel spent three years traveling across the United States to interview people about their jobs. How would you describe your work? he asked his subjects, men and women from all walks of life. And they told him. Terkel's 1974 book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do collected 128 of these conversations. Terkel interviewed nobodies and celebrities. He talked to housewives and farm workers and actors and stock brokers and prostitutes. Terkel even interviewed New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. I really enjoy what I do, she said. I love my occupation. This attitude is the exception, not the rule. I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people, Terkel wrote in the introduction to Working. No matter how bewildering the times, no matter how dissembling the official language, those we call ordinary are aware of a sense of personal worth or more often a lack of it in the work they do. A couple of years ago, National Public Radio spent a week sharing audio excerpts from Terkel's Working interviews. And believe it or not, the book was even made into a Broadway musical adapted and directed by Steven Schwartz, a man better known for his work on shows like Godspell, Wicked, and Disney's Pocahontas. [embedded content] As much as I love both musical theater and Studs Terkel, that looks awful. No wonder it was a flop! In 2009, Harvey Pekar (and a team of artists) adapted 28 of Terkel's interviews into a graphic novel. As a comic geek and a Terkel fan, I loved it. Below are a few scans from my favorite stories. From the story of 34-year-old Roberto Acuna, a farm worker and union organizer:

From the story of 77-year-old Aunt Katherine Haynes, farm woman:

From the story of deep miner Joe Haynes, the nephew of Aunt Katherine:

From the story of prostitute Roberta Victor, who started off as a high-priced Manhattan call girl (at age fifteen!) before becoming a streetwalker:

From the story of actor Rip Torn:

From the story of 41-year-old Nick Salerno, who has been a garbageman for eighteen years:

From the story of Brett Hauser, a 17-year-old boxboy outside Los Angeles:

From the story of Dolores Dante, who has worked as a waitress in the same restaurant for 23 years:

From the story of 40-year-old stockbroker, David Reed Glover:

From the story of 65-year-old jazz musician, Bud Freeman, who has been playing tenor sax for forty-seven years:

From the story of gravedigger Elmer Ruiz (whose audio clip I showcased earlier):

From the story of 44-year-old Nick Lindsay, son of poet Vachel Lindsay:

Like most (all?) of Terkel's books, Working is simply a collection of oral histories. The author does a little editorializing and has an unhidden liberal/progressive bias but mostly he lets his subjects speak for themselves. I've read several of his other books, and they're all great. (Every time I revisit his work, I'm reminded that I want to do something similar: I want to travel the country and interview people about the nature and meaning of wealth.) In Praise of the Quotidian Life In the preface to the Working graphic novel, Harvey Pekar writes: I was especially pleased to work on this project because Studs Terkel puts a great deal of emphasis, as I do, in writing about quotidian life. The so-called normal aspect of human existence is underemphasized in every form of literature, yet that is the aspect that most readers are familiar with and can most easily identify with. The style of life I myself am familiar with is the quotidian. But just because one writes about everyday life doesn't mean it's uninteresting; in fact, I find it's most fascinating, because it is so seldom written about. Virtually every person is potentially a great subject for a novel or a biography or a film. Bravo to Terkel for documenting these fascinating lives. You won't find any deep insights into the human condition while browsing the interviews in Working or The Atlantics Inside Jobs project. What you'll get instead is a sort of voyeuristic glimpse into what other people do to make ends meet. You'll learn how some people live to work, and how others work to live. Mostly you'll be entertained by the variety of human experience.

Author: J.D. Roth In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals. https://www.getrichslowly.org/what-do-people-do-all-day/

Inside jobs: What do people do all day?

Last week, I found myself revisiting the fantastic Inside Jobs project from The Atlantic. Atlantic staffers interviewed 103 American workers from all walks of life. The magazine then collected those interviews into a single, unified website.

Here's how one of the project's leaders describes her aims:

So much of my aspiration for this project was to hear from people affected by the realities that business writers so often cover: what it's like to be a minority in a workplace, or the challenges of working parenthood, or the struggle to remain relevant as an industry changes. And we succeeded in finding those types of stories — for example, the three female lawyers who started their own firm, or the coal miner who is adapting to the focus on clean energy.

The ones that most stuck with me most were the people in the jobs many consider mundane, such as the janitor who so acutely equated people's respect for his job with their ability to throw away their own trash, or workers outside of the traditional economy, such as the stay-at-home mother who struggled to find her place in a feminist movement that emphasizes women’s professional achievements.

The Inside Jobs website has a fun layout. Each interview has its own page. From the main index, you can filter stories by subject, or filter workers by industry, age, or other demographic factors. Or, if you're like me, you can simply scroll down and click on any of the 103 worker portraits to read a random interview.

What Do People Do All Day?

The Inside Jobs project reminds me of one of my favorite books from childhood, Richard Scarry's classic What Do People Do All Day? I've always been fascinated by the vast variety of work available to people, and how different each job is from every other job. Sure, there's a degree of sameness, but there are tons of differences.

As a blogger, I sit at home all day and write. In a way, it's like I'm an artist (but without any sort of actual artistry). Everything about Get Rich Slowly comes from me. If I don't work, nothing happens here. (Actually, this isn't quite true anymore. Nowadays, Rachel manages social media and Tom is handling business development.)

This process is similar to the one faced by my friends who are entrepreneurs or professionals. When you own your own business, it's up to you to make it succeed. When you have your own accounting firm or law office, it's up to you to build your reputation and client base.

Then there are folks like my girlfriend Kim, who works as a dental hygienist. Whereas I see nobody all day long, she sees tons of new patients every day she works. Her work is physically demanding; mine is not.

I have other friends who are band teachers and forensic chemists. I know engineers and salesmen and psychiatrists. I know lost of financial planners, of course, as well as factory foremen and county bureaucrats and hospital administrators.

It's just like Richard Scarry taught me when I was a pre-schooler: Everyone is a worker.

And it's just like Brenda Ueland taught me (in a book about writing, of all places): Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say. It’s the personal histories that make up history (by which I mean the grand tapestry of world events). Without your story — and mine — the larger story doesn’t exist. The mass movements of kingdoms and cultures are built on our backs.

Maybe that's why I like oral histories so much.

Speaking of which, the Inside Jobs project naturally reminds me (and many others) of the work of journalist Studs Terkel.

Studs Terkel's Working

In the early 1970s, Studs Terkel spent three years traveling across the United States to interview people about their jobs. “How would you describe your work?” he asked his subjects, men and women from all walks of life. And they told him. Terkel's 1974 book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do collected 128 of these conversations.

Terkel interviewed nobodies and celebrities. He talked to housewives and farm workers and actors and stock brokers and prostitutes. Terkel even interviewed New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. “I really enjoy what I do,” she said. “I love my occupation.” This attitude is the exception, not the rule.

“I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people,” Terkel wrote in the introduction to Working. “No matter how bewildering the times, no matter how dissembling the official language, those we call ordinary are aware of a sense of personal worth — or more often a lack of it — in the work they do.”

A couple of years ago, National Public Radio spent a week sharing audio excerpts from Terkel's Working interviews. And believe it or not, the book was even made into a Broadway musical adapted and directed by Steven Schwartz, a man better known for his work on shows like Godspell, Wicked, and Disney's Pocahontas.

As much as I love both musical theater and Studs Terkel, that looks awful. No wonder it was a flop!

In 2009, Harvey Pekar (and a team of artists) adapted 28 of Terkel's interviews into a graphic novel. As a comic geek and a Terkel fan, I loved it. Below are a few scans from my favorite stories.

From the story of 34-year-old Roberto Acuna, a farm worker and union organizer:

From the story of 77-year-old Aunt Katherine Haynes, “farm woman”:

From the story of “deep miner” Joe Haynes, the nephew of Aunt Katherine:

From the story of prostitute Roberta Victor, who started off as a high-priced Manhattan call girl (at age fifteen!) before becoming a streetwalker:

From the story of actor Rip Torn:

From the story of 41-year-old Nick Salerno, who has been a garbageman for eighteen years:

From the story of Brett Hauser, a 17-year-old box box outside Los Angeles:

From the story of Dolores Dante, who has worked as a waitress in the same restaurant for 23 years:

From the story of 40-year-old stockbroker, David Reed Glover:

From the story of 65-year-old jazz musician, Bud Freeman, who has been playing tenor sax for forty-seven years:

From the story of gravedigger Elmer Ruiz (whose audio clip I showcased earlier):

From the story of 44-year-old Nick Lindsay, son of poet Vachel Lindsay:

Like most (all?) of Terkel's books, Working is simply a collection of oral histories. The author does a little editorializing — and has an unhidden liberal/progressive bias — but mostly he lets his subjects speak for themselves. I've read several of his other books, and they're all great. (Every time I revisit his work, I'm reminded that I want to do something similar: I want to travel the country and interview people about the nature and meaning of wealth.)

In Praise of the Quotidian Life

In the preface to the Working graphic novel, Harvey Pekar writes:

I was especially pleased to work on this project because Studs Terkel puts a great deal of emphasis, as I do, in writing about quotidian life. The so-called normal aspect of human existence is underemphasized in every form of literature, yet that is the aspect that most readers are familiar with and can most easily identify with.

The style of life I myself am familiar with is the quotidian.

But just because one writes about everyday life doesn't mean it's uninteresting; in fact, I find it's most fascinating, because it is so seldom written about. Virtually every person is potentially a great subject for a novel or a biography or a film. Bravo to Terkel for documenting these fascinating lives.

You won't find any deep insights into the human condition while browsing the interviews in Working or The Atlantic‘s Inside Jobs project.

What you'll get instead is a sort of voyeuristic glimpse into what other people do to make ends meet. You'll learn how some people live to work, and how others work to live. Mostly you'll be entertained by the variety of human experience.

The post Inside jobs: What do people do all day? appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/what-do-people-do-all-day/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

Prince Harry ‘thrilled’ after announcing he is to marry Meghan Markle

Couple appear in public for first time since announcing their engagement and give 20-minute television interview

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are to marry in the spring after announcing their engagement and admitting they were totally unprepared for the media storm that surrounded the first months of their relationship.

The prince said he was thrilled to be marrying the US actor after an 18-month romance, and the couple presented themselves to the world with a photocall and 20-minute television interview at Kensington Palace.

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Who is Meghan Markle? video profile

On Tuesday, Palace aides are expected to announce the venue for the wedding and details of the first royal engagements that Markle will undertake with the prince as she is quickly assimilated into the royal household.

In the TV interview, conducted by Mishal Husain, they revealed how the prince proposed to his future bride at his Nottingham Cottage home in the grounds of Kensington Palace on what was a standard typical night in for us while they were roasting a chicken for dinner.

Markle said it was just an amazing surprise, it was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee … I could barely let you finish proposing. I said, can I say yes now?

Markle, whose mother is African American and father is white, also described as disheartening and discriminatory some of the media coverage she received as Prince Harrys girlfriend because it centred on her racial background.

Markle admitted that even though she had starred in TV drama Suits, the media coverage had been a learning curve and said, I did not have any understanding of what it would be like.

Harry declined to give details about the engagement, but joked: Of course it was romantic. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

That coverage forced the prince to take the rare step last year of publicly attacking the British press for introducing racial overtones into the reporting of their relationship.

Among the headlines that were believed to have angered the palace was one on Mailonline.com that read: Harrys girl is (almost) straight outta Compton, referring to the city in Los Angeles that has become known for gang violence.

The announcement of their engagement was made by Clarence House on behalf of Prince Charles earlier on Monday. Later, the Prince of Wales, speaking for himself and the Duchess of Cornwall, said: Were both thrilled. We hope theyll be very happy indeed.

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Who is Meghan Markle?

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Who is Meghan Markle?

Meghan Markle is an American actor, best known for her role in the hit series Suits. She has described herself as an actress, a writer, the editor-in-chief of my lifestyle brand the Tig, a pretty good cook, and a firm believer in handwritten notes. She has also campaigned for humanitarian causes.

The 36-year-old grew up in Los Angeles. She studied at a girls Roman Catholic college there before attending Northwestern University. Recently she has lived in Toronto. She is the daughter of a clinical therapist and a TV lighting designer. Markle has written about her mixed heritage, describing herself as a strong, confident mixed-race woman. She was married once before, to film producer Trevor Engelson, but the pair were divorced in 2013.

Since news of her relationship with Prince Harry broke in 2016, she has closed her blog and given an interview in which she described the couple as really happy and in love. She said: Nothing about me changed. Ive never defined myself by my relationship. She will become a duchess or princess when the couple wed.

Photograph: Picture Perfect/REX/Shutterstock/Rex Features

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Prince Harry said he designed her engagement ring himself using a stone sourced from Botswana, where the couple went camping in the first weeks of their relationship, and two smaller gems from Princess Dianas jewellery collection to make sure that shes with us on this crazy journey together.

Markles parents, Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland, said: We are incredibly happy for Meghan and Harry. Our daughter has always been a kind and loving person. To see her union with Harry, who shares the same qualities, is a source of great joy for us as parents. We wish them a lifetime of happiness and are very excited for their future together.

Thomas Markle is an Emmy award-winning former television lighting director who worked on shows including Married With Children and General Hospital. He married Ragland, a yoga instructor, in 1979 and they divorced in 1988.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wave after posing for the media. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP

The Queen, Prince Philip, prime minister Theresa May, and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were among others who offered their congratulations.

Downing Street moved quickly to dampen speculation that there would be a bank holiday to celebrate the wedding. The prime ministers spokesman said: There are no plans for a bank holiday. There isnt precedent in this area. There was no bank holiday for Prince Andrews wedding in 1986 or Prince Edwards in 1999.

However, the wedding of Princess Anne, the Queens second-eldest child, and Mark Phillips in 1973 was marked by a bank holiday.

Tourists film Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Kensington Palace on Monday. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

The wedding ceremony is likely to be conducted by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who said he was delighted by the news and had been impressed by the princes immense love for his family.

A royal source said it would be a happy church wedding, although the date is yet to be fixed. The Duchess of Cambridge is due to give birth to her third child in April.

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Locals in the View Park-Windsor Hills suburb of Los Angeles where Ragland lives were also upbeat. Mike Young, 56, out walking his pitbull Tipper, said: I think theyre a respectable family, he said, referring to the Windsors. Id be excited to meet Prince Harry.

The couple said they were set up by a friend on a blind date and about a month after two dates in London in summer 2016 they went camping in Botswana.

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Prince Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle

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July 2016

The pair meet in London through friends and begin a relationship.

30 October 2016

News breaks that the prince and Markle are dating.

8 November 2016

Kensington Palace confirms in an unprecedented statement that they are dating. The prince attacks the media over its abuse and harassment of his girlfriend.

11 November 2017

Markle is spotted in London amid unconfirmed reports she is enjoying her first stay at Kensington Palace since the relationship was made public.

10 January 2017

Markle reportedly meets the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte for the first time in London.

5 September 2017

The engagement looks set when Markle graces the cover of US magazine Vanity Fair and speaks openly about Harry for the first time, revealing: Were two people who are really happy and in love.

24 September 2017

Markle makes her first appearance at an official engagement attended by the prince when she attends the Invictus Games opening ceremony in Toronto, Canada although the pair sit about 18 seats apart.

19 October 2017

It emerges that the prince has taken Markle to meet his grandmother, the Queen, whose permission they need to marry. They met over afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace.

22 October 2017

The princes aides are reported to have been told to start planning for a royal wedding, with senior members of the royal family asked to look at their diaries to shortlist a series of suitable weekends in 2018.

21 November 2017

Markle is spotted in London, prompting speculation she is preparing for an engagement announcement.

27 November 2017

Clarence House announces the engagement, and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh say they are delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness.

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I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana, the prince said. And we camped out with each other under the stars. She came and joined me for five days out there, which was absolutely fantastic.

It was hugely refreshing to be able to get to know someone who isnt necessarily within your circle, doesnt know much about me, I dont know much about her. So to be able to start almost afresh, right from the beginning, getting to know each other, step by step and then taking that huge leap of only two dates and then going effectively on holiday together in the middle of nowhere and you know sharing a tent together and all that kind of stuff. It was fantastic.

The official announcement. Photograph: AP

He added that he thought Markle and Diana would be as thick as thieves, without question, I think she would be over the moon, jumping up and down, you know so excited for me. It is days like today when I really miss having her around and miss being able to share the happy news.

Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign for an elected head of state, issued a one word statement: Congratulations.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2iV5T1L

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2pUHmQh via Viral News HQ

‘Doctor Strange’ Film Shows What Persistent Pain Feels Like

I am in love with Benedict Cumberbatch. Let us just get this out of the way straight off the bat. In truth, it’s hard not to fall for the actor known for his roles in “Sherlock,”“The Imitation Game,” and now Marvel’s “Doctor Strange.” I mean, have you ever seen his eyes? His palms? And, have you ever heard him speak? Enough said.

I am a 30-year-old female who favors a great drama on any superhero movie, so when I led to the theatre to watch “Doctor Strange” at night it started, I did so purely for Cumberbatch. I understood his acting would be phenomenal — if you still need convincing just view his portrayal of Hamlet — and guessed that it would be enough to enjoy his abilities, even if I wasn’t crazy about the movie itself.

What I didn’t anticipate was that I’d be in tears within the first 20 minutes or so of this movie.

I understood the basic story: Neurosurgeon Doctor Steven Strange suffers harms his palms and a automobile accident outside repair. He turns to the One in a attempt to heal, and learns to harness powers that are, basically, magical.

But I was shocked by the precision and emotion by which the movie highlighted chronic pain, nerve damage, and injuries that alter our lifestyles. Strange’s injury wasn’t just brushed over, as I’d assumed it would be. It was more than just a plot point. It was central to shaping Strange’s lifestyle, attitude and future.

Time for disclosure number two: My profession was altered because of an accident. Or, even more correctly injuries. To the article I double majored in school. The English was to be a fallback in case it turned out I didn’t have the talent. During school I worked harder than I have ever worked in my own own life, practicing for eight or more hours a day, training my body to do the impossible. And I triumphed. I was a actor with a future, and also my senior recital was a triumph.

But I was battling pain in wrists and my hands throughout my junior and senior years of school. Doctors dismissed this injuries fixable with surgeries, and so I pressed on, slathering my wrists within muscle rub wearing ice packs as I practiced, and taking copious quantities of painkillers.

I took a year off from chasing music farther as a graduate student, after graduating school. I knew I had to reach the origin of the difficulties. About a year later, I was diagnosed with repetitive motion syndrome, tendonitis, nerve injury, carpal tunnel syndrome, and subsequently, fibromyalgia. The fibromyalgia was the seal on the fate of my own career.

It would not be physically possible for my body to maintain itself under the stress of a music performance profession.

By that point, my palms had worsened to the point where my fingers were numb, fingers and my palms trembled, and that I had control over them.

And that is just what I viewed in the hands of Strangeon. In teaching his hands to shake and tremble, Cumberbatch did a tremendous job, and the movie drove home the effect that the lack of a profession — the loss of a prior life can have.

There is a point in the movie where Strange asks, “What’s life without my job?” His ex-girlfriend, Christine Palmer, answers, “It is still a lifetime.” Strange shrugs his dismissal — his disbelief, and the comment away? — is absolutely accurate.

It feels like losing your own life, when you eliminate something, such as your livelihood, that is that you, that defines you. I can not count the years into playing music I poured. I was happy to make the sacrifices in the time — I’d no nights without the weekends while I was in school — since I knew I was working toward something. But if that’s ripped away from you, then you are left hollow. All of the work that you just poured in — where did it move? You have nothing to show for this, and is now gone.

I once held the title of “musician.” A couple of months after my diagnosis, a friend introduced me to a coworker as someone who “was a musician.” It was a minute. I’d no new title to substitute “artist” together; I had no individuality.

This movie makes it. As I saw “Doctor Strange” and we proceeded to the next hour and Strange’s palms were still referenced, I sat there in amazement. There is something powerful about knowing that you are not lonely, and seeing this movie was just like listening to someone stating that they know. The writers get it; it will not just disappear. You are never left by the shift, but it transforms you. And should you come across other side a better man for it, good. But that is sometimes not the case.

It’s been nearly four years since my diagnosis, and I am still bitter. I disturbs people whose palms function normally, and seeing my school classmates progress in their careers can be painful occasionally. Somehow I doubt I’ll come to help me find my greater purpose, but I have started on that trip on my own. I have concentrated on my writing and developing a career, but although I really do teach lessons.

And a bit at one time heals,. Seeing an accident portrayed with sensitivity and precision to the emotional toll it brings in media? That’s a recovery step. So frequently pain becomes glossed over, this past year, however, it’s prominently featured in a few of the movies. That movie is a message of understanding. Someone gets it.

So I’ll continue on. Each day brings the sudden. Will a visit to the store ship my annoyance? I’ll be fortunate enough to have a great moment. Perhaps the pain will impair my activity level. I’ll continue on with my writing, and perhaps one day I’ll be fortunate enough to make a difference for someone else with my words, with my narrative. After all, “Doctor Strange” was just a comic. But to me, it means much more.

We would like to hear your story. Become a Mighty contributor .

from BIG SHOW http://big2show.com/doctor-strange-film-shows-what-persistent-pain-feels-like/

Inside jobs: What do people do all day?

Last week, I found myself revisiting the fantastic Inside Jobs project from The Atlantic. Atlantic staffers interviewed 103 American workers from all walks of life. The magazine then collected those interviews into a single, unified website. Here's how one of the project's leaders describes her aims: So much of my aspiration for this project was to hear from people affected by the realities that business writers so often cover: what it's like to be a minority in a workplace, or the challenges of working parenthood, or the struggle to remain relevant as an industry changes. And we succeeded in finding those types of stories for example, the three female lawyers who started their own firm, or the coal miner who is adapting to the focus on clean energy. The ones that most stuck with me most were the people in the jobs many consider mundane, such as the janitor who so acutely equated people's respect for his job with their ability to throw away their own trash, or workers outside of the traditional economy, such as the stay-at-home mother who struggled to find her place in a feminist movement that emphasizes womens professional achievements. The Inside Jobs website has a fun layout. Each interview has its own page. From the main index, you can filter stories by subject, or filter workers by industry, age, or other demographic factors. Or, if you're like me, you can simply scroll down and click on any of the 103 worker portraits to read a random interview.

What Do People Do All Day? The Inside Jobs project reminds me of one of my favorite books from childhood, Richard Scarry's classic What Do People Do All Day? I've always been fascinated by the vast variety of work available to people, and how different each job is from every other job. Sure, there's a degree of sameness, but there are tons of differences. As a blogger, I sit at home all day and write. In a way, it's like I'm an artist (but without any sort of actual artistry). Everything about Get Rich Slowly comes from me. If I don't work, nothing happens here. (Actually, this isn't quite true anymore. Nowadays, Rachel manages social media and Tom is handling business development.)This process is similar to the one faced by my friends who are entrepreneurs or professionals. When you own your own business, it's up to you to make it succeed. When you have your own accounting firm or law office, it's up to you to build your reputation and client base.Then there are folks like my girlfriend Kim, who works as a dental hygienist. Whereas I see nobody all day long, she sees tons of new patients every day she works. Her work is physically demanding; mine is not.I have other friends who are band teachers and forensic chemists. I know engineers and salesmen and psychiatrists. I know lost of financial planners, of course, as well as factory foremen and county bureaucrats and hospital administrators. It's just like Richard Scarry taught me when I was a pre-schooler: Everyone is a worker.

And it's just like Brenda Ueland taught me (in a book about writing, of all places): Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say. Its the personal histories that make up history (by which I mean the grand tapestry of world events). Without your story and mine the larger story doesnt exist. The mass movements of kingdoms and cultures are built on our backs. Maybe that's why I like oral histories so much. Speaking of which, the Inside Jobs project naturally reminds me (and many others) of the work of journalist Studs Terkel. Studs Terkel's Working In the early 1970s, Studs Terkel spent three years traveling across the United States to interview people about their jobs. How would you describe your work? he asked his subjects, men and women from all walks of life. And they told him. Terkel's 1974 book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do collected 128 of these conversations. Terkel interviewed nobodies and celebrities. He talked to housewives and farm workers and actors and stock brokers and prostitutes. Terkel even interviewed New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. I really enjoy what I do, she said. I love my occupation. This attitude is the exception, not the rule. I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people, Terkel wrote in the introduction to Working. No matter how bewildering the times, no matter how dissembling the official language, those we call ordinary are aware of a sense of personal worth or more often a lack of it in the work they do. A couple of years ago, National Public Radio spent a week sharing audio excerpts from Terkel's Working interviews. And believe it or not, the book was even made into a Broadway musical adapted and directed by Steven Schwartz, a man better known for his work on shows like Godspell, Wicked, and Disney's Pocahontas. [embedded content] As much as I love both musical theater and Studs Terkel, that looks awful. No wonder it was a flop! In 2009, Harvey Pekar (and a team of artists) adapted 28 of Terkel's interviews into a graphic novel. As a comic geek and a Terkel fan, I loved it. Below are a few scans from my favorite stories. From the story of 34-year-old Roberto Acuna, a farm worker and union organizer:

From the story of 77-year-old Aunt Katherine Haynes, farm woman:

From the story of deep miner Joe Haynes, the nephew of Aunt Katherine:

From the story of prostitute Roberta Victor, who started off as a high-priced Manhattan call girl (at age fifteen!) before becoming a streetwalker:

From the story of actor Rip Torn:

From the story of 41-year-old Nick Salerno, who has been a garbageman for eighteen years:

From the story of Brett Hauser, a 17-year-old boxboy outside Los Angeles:

From the story of Dolores Dante, who has worked as a waitress in the same restaurant for 23 years:

From the story of 40-year-old stockbroker, David Reed Glover:

From the story of 65-year-old jazz musician, Bud Freeman, who has been playing tenor sax for forty-seven years:

From the story of gravedigger Elmer Ruiz (whose audio clip I showcased earlier):

From the story of 44-year-old Nick Lindsay, son of poet Vachel Lindsay:

Like most (all?) of Terkel's books, Working is simply a collection of oral histories. The author does a little editorializing and has an unhidden liberal/progressive bias but mostly he lets his subjects speak for themselves. I've read several of his other books, and they're all great. (Every time I revisit his work, I'm reminded that I want to do something similar: I want to travel the country and interview people about the nature and meaning of wealth.) In Praise of the Quotidian Life In the preface to the Working graphic novel, Harvey Pekar writes: I was especially pleased to work on this project because Studs Terkel puts a great deal of emphasis, as I do, in writing about quotidian life. The so-called normal aspect of human existence is underemphasized in every form of literature, yet that is the aspect that most readers are familiar with and can most easily identify with. The style of life I myself am familiar with is the quotidian. But just because one writes about everyday life doesn't mean it's uninteresting; in fact, I find it's most fascinating, because it is so seldom written about. Virtually every person is potentially a great subject for a novel or a biography or a film. Bravo to Terkel for documenting these fascinating lives. You won't find any deep insights into the human condition while browsing the interviews in Working or The Atlantics Inside Jobs project. What you'll get instead is a sort of voyeuristic glimpse into what other people do to make ends meet. You'll learn how some people live to work, and how others work to live. Mostly you'll be entertained by the variety of human experience.

Author: J.D. Roth In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals. https://www.getrichslowly.org/what-do-people-do-all-day/

Prince Harry ‘thrilled’ after announcing he is to marry Meghan Markle

Couple appear in public for first time since announcing their engagement and give 20-minute television interview

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are to marry in the spring after announcing their engagement and admitting they were totally unprepared for the media storm that surrounded the first months of their relationship.

The prince said he was thrilled to be marrying the US actor after an 18-month romance, and the couple presented themselves to the world with a photocall and 20-minute television interview at Kensington Palace.

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Who is Meghan Markle? video profile

On Tuesday, Palace aides are expected to announce the venue for the wedding and details of the first royal engagements that Markle will undertake with the prince as she is quickly assimilated into the royal household.

In the TV interview, conducted by Mishal Husain, they revealed how the prince proposed to his future bride at his Nottingham Cottage home in the grounds of Kensington Palace on what was a standard typical night in for us while they were roasting a chicken for dinner.

Markle said it was just an amazing surprise, it was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee … I could barely let you finish proposing. I said, can I say yes now?

Markle, whose mother is African American and father is white, also described as disheartening and discriminatory some of the media coverage she received as Prince Harrys girlfriend because it centred on her racial background.

Markle admitted that even though she had starred in TV drama Suits, the media coverage had been a learning curve and said, I did not have any understanding of what it would be like.

Harry declined to give details about the engagement, but joked: Of course it was romantic. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

That coverage forced the prince to take the rare step last year of publicly attacking the British press for introducing racial overtones into the reporting of their relationship.

Among the headlines that were believed to have angered the palace was one on Mailonline.com that read: Harrys girl is (almost) straight outta Compton, referring to the city in Los Angeles that has become known for gang violence.

The announcement of their engagement was made by Clarence House on behalf of Prince Charles earlier on Monday. Later, the Prince of Wales, speaking for himself and the Duchess of Cornwall, said: Were both thrilled. We hope theyll be very happy indeed.

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Who is Meghan Markle?

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Who is Meghan Markle?

Meghan Markle is an American actor, best known for her role in the hit series Suits. She has described herself as an actress, a writer, the editor-in-chief of my lifestyle brand the Tig, a pretty good cook, and a firm believer in handwritten notes. She has also campaigned for humanitarian causes.

The 36-year-old grew up in Los Angeles. She studied at a girls Roman Catholic college there before attending Northwestern University. Recently she has lived in Toronto. She is the daughter of a clinical therapist and a TV lighting designer. Markle has written about her mixed heritage, describing herself as a strong, confident mixed-race woman. She was married once before, to film producer Trevor Engelson, but the pair were divorced in 2013.

Since news of her relationship with Prince Harry broke in 2016, she has closed her blog and given an interview in which she described the couple as really happy and in love. She said: Nothing about me changed. Ive never defined myself by my relationship. She will become a duchess or princess when the couple wed.

Photograph: Picture Perfect/REX/Shutterstock/Rex Features

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Prince Harry said he designed her engagement ring himself using a stone sourced from Botswana, where the couple went camping in the first weeks of their relationship, and two smaller gems from Princess Dianas jewellery collection to make sure that shes with us on this crazy journey together.

Markles parents, Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland, said: We are incredibly happy for Meghan and Harry. Our daughter has always been a kind and loving person. To see her union with Harry, who shares the same qualities, is a source of great joy for us as parents. We wish them a lifetime of happiness and are very excited for their future together.

Thomas Markle is an Emmy award-winning former television lighting director who worked on shows including Married With Children and General Hospital. He married Ragland, a yoga instructor, in 1979 and they divorced in 1988.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wave after posing for the media. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP

The Queen, Prince Philip, prime minister Theresa May, and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were among others who offered their congratulations.

Downing Street moved quickly to dampen speculation that there would be a bank holiday to celebrate the wedding. The prime ministers spokesman said: There are no plans for a bank holiday. There isnt precedent in this area. There was no bank holiday for Prince Andrews wedding in 1986 or Prince Edwards in 1999.

However, the wedding of Princess Anne, the Queens second-eldest child, and Mark Phillips in 1973 was marked by a bank holiday.

Tourists film Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Kensington Palace on Monday. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

The wedding ceremony is likely to be conducted by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who said he was delighted by the news and had been impressed by the princes immense love for his family.

A royal source said it would be a happy church wedding, although the date is yet to be fixed. The Duchess of Cambridge is due to give birth to her third child in April.

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Locals in the View Park-Windsor Hills suburb of Los Angeles where Ragland lives were also upbeat. Mike Young, 56, out walking his pitbull Tipper, said: I think theyre a respectable family, he said, referring to the Windsors. Id be excited to meet Prince Harry.

The couple said they were set up by a friend on a blind date and about a month after two dates in London in summer 2016 they went camping in Botswana.

Timeline

Prince Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle

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July 2016

The pair meet in London through friends and begin a relationship.

30 October 2016

News breaks that the prince and Markle are dating.

8 November 2016

Kensington Palace confirms in an unprecedented statement that they are dating. The prince attacks the media over its abuse and harassment of his girlfriend.

11 November 2017

Markle is spotted in London amid unconfirmed reports she is enjoying her first stay at Kensington Palace since the relationship was made public.

10 January 2017

Markle reportedly meets the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte for the first time in London.

5 September 2017

The engagement looks set when Markle graces the cover of US magazine Vanity Fair and speaks openly about Harry for the first time, revealing: Were two people who are really happy and in love.

24 September 2017

Markle makes her first appearance at an official engagement attended by the prince when she attends the Invictus Games opening ceremony in Toronto, Canada although the pair sit about 18 seats apart.

19 October 2017

It emerges that the prince has taken Markle to meet his grandmother, the Queen, whose permission they need to marry. They met over afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace.

22 October 2017

The princes aides are reported to have been told to start planning for a royal wedding, with senior members of the royal family asked to look at their diaries to shortlist a series of suitable weekends in 2018.

21 November 2017

Markle is spotted in London, prompting speculation she is preparing for an engagement announcement.

27 November 2017

Clarence House announces the engagement, and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh say they are delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness.

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I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana, the prince said. And we camped out with each other under the stars. She came and joined me for five days out there, which was absolutely fantastic.

It was hugely refreshing to be able to get to know someone who isnt necessarily within your circle, doesnt know much about me, I dont know much about her. So to be able to start almost afresh, right from the beginning, getting to know each other, step by step and then taking that huge leap of only two dates and then going effectively on holiday together in the middle of nowhere and you know sharing a tent together and all that kind of stuff. It was fantastic.

The official announcement. Photograph: AP

He added that he thought Markle and Diana would be as thick as thieves, without question, I think she would be over the moon, jumping up and down, you know so excited for me. It is days like today when I really miss having her around and miss being able to share the happy news.

Republic, the anti-monarchy campaign for an elected head of state, issued a one word statement: Congratulations.

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