arbitrarygreay

[arbitrarygreay]

Culinary Class Wars

I prefer my food competition shows to sell me genuine hype (a concept of what next-level, upper-tier, relatively objective "best/special" food execution is). I want the show's execution to make me believe in that hype is being delivered by the competitors. Can I believe that the "best" chefs here can compete against the "best" chefs in the other shows? And I love learning new things, having my concept/knowledge of the hype expanded. Am I picking up new vocabulary, names of techniques, dishes, cuisines? Iron Chef Brazil remains the champ so far, but Culinary Class Wars also delivered enough to push Netflix Iron Chef USA down to third place. And I want you to understand what it means that CCW managed to do so even though NICUSA had a more consistent performance. That is, CCW had more elements I openly didn't care for than NICUSA, but CCW's highs were so much higher enough that they compensated. I got to see chefs at the top of their game demonstrate what being at the top of their game looks like, and like Iron Chef Brazil, lens that through core cultural assumptions around cuisine that differ from the European foundation. Even as CCW's champion won with a specialty in Italian, CCW sold to me the hype of Korean cuisine (and, very amusingly, secondarily Chinese cooking!). What I liked the most about CCW was actually the judging. Never has it been more explanation friendly, always using gimmicks designed to remove bias and make their decisions unassailable. And both judges also sold to me their hype: their qualifications and their extremely clear reasonings. And like ICB, they allowed a lot of spectatorship by contestants without an immediate direct stake in things, so that we can get joyful evaluations free from the need for drama. The ways in which the chefs punctured the hype machine (when they would talk to each other as companions rather than rivals) only increased the show's cred. Also the fact that CCW allowed themselves to namedrop Top Chef, Master Chef, and Iron Chef was great, hah. No franchise/network siloing here! The parts I disliked weren't even really mistakes or anything, where I would have done something differently. It was the unavoidable pacing issues of their ballsy structural decision to do every kind of competition cooking show in a single season with a truly gigantic cast, to where every challenge required multiple hour-long episodes and swaths of contestants not getting any focus. But because those decisions were a key part of selling the hype, I can't prefer that they did something different. I will say that those parts make CCW much less rewatchable than ICB or NICUSA.

[arbitrarygreay]

#and it feels like retailers stopped buying the experimental flavors from Lay's #because I guess they don't sell because americans are COWARDS

I still feel this pretty hard. Like, even some of the ones that used to be "basic" have disappeared from circulation. Although, this seems to only apply to potato chips. Corn chips seem to still experiment, but only like in an "esoteric abstract candle scents" kind of way.

American chip flavors are so basic I just had a bag of “Spicy Oyster Omelette” flavor potato chips from a Taiwan manufacturer It mostly tasted like canned eel to my insensitive palate, but canned eel is DELICIOUS, so git gud, America

[arbitrarygreay]

My Hobby

Drinking the tears from the tag reactions to the “Crying Amy Acker” gifset

[arbitrarygreay]

“Oh man, when Amy did that “fading smile” in Much Ado? Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”

[arbitrarygreay]

mobile really has supplanted javascript as “worst thing ever to happen to the web” huh

Credit given where credit is due, they fixed at least the input box width, even if total screen width is still a fraction of any standard monitor. And I still loathe the font of HTML input, but at least they still have it? Many HTML features don't work in it For Cursed Javascript Reasons, but it's still more than other social media sites have.

@staff

:))))))))))))

[arbitrarygreay]

#this is peak 'wtf is this shit' and not in a good way #I will take that wagner potshot though

The Cringe of Versailles

This opera is just embarrassing. To start with, it’s like a textbook case of “parody without subversion continues to propagate the tropes it parodies.” (wtf is that blatant potshot at Yma Sumac) But the real issue with The Ghosts of Versailles is just that the storytelling is not compelling. It wants to be a Mel Brooksian Broadway show so badly, and yet undercuts itself every time it gets close to that in order to shoehorn itself into an outdated sense of what an opera should be. And it would probably be much better musical than opera. The gaudy production value is executed in a bafflingly clumsy way, unless they were trying to come off as shallow and empty calories. It does nothing to service the characters. Some real amateur hour direction. The pacing is horrible. “Let’s do Mozart and Rossini, but with shittier melodies and muuuuuuuch sloooooooowweerrrrr paaaaaaaaaaciiiiing.” Fast-paced comedy is where it’s at, my dude, get the fuck on with it. The only good music parts are when Corigliano stops trying to write opera and completely stops the show to do it. His sincere attempts to write contemporary opera are just infuriatingly, and somewhat pretentiously, SLOW.

[arbitrarygreay]

Proof of concept only since, as you notice here, I already had to chop up the instrumental a lot to accommodate major structural differences. The ABBA sample is also too obnoxious in bulk for me to want a full version, anyways.

[arbitrarygreay]

The official Angerme channel uploaded 10 years of TTZZ lives in honor of Kamigrad, so obviously I should upload a mashup where Kamiko is not in it anymore :P

[arbitrarygreay]

Had a couple of reblog2015 posts ruminating on representation discourse that I will not be reblogging because I value not making my blog a lightning rod, but I thought that my 2020 addendum tags are worth repeating in the present:

#I stopped reading [redacted website name] years ago because they were so deep in the judgmental kool-aid that their posts had little to no value #nuance just can't get that ad revenue #here's a good rule; any internet essay with a headline that starts with How or Why is worthless #always question the motives of anyone who tries to tell you what you should or shouldn't watch #and discard any recommendations that do not include the phrases 'I enjoyed' or 'I liked'

[arbitrarygreay]

Our first look at the Biddies in 2x4 is the fact that Alder made them stop working on paperwork to loom menacingly behind Petra and Anacostia as they reported the Scylla op for the first time. Everyone was united on hands clasped in front.

Next, we have the interview at the testing site, the Biddies in two-column formation, roughly in height order. I do wonder if the production keeps track of who is in front across eps, as Dale and Lilian got to front this scene, while they're usually on the wings (as they were in the previous office scene!).

Outside the testing center, the Biddies stood to the left of the stage. While the entire international witch community should know that the Biddies are linked to Alder's life force (given that the Hague members all know), evidently the information hasn't spread to outsiders, or the agitator should have known to try pitching that Molotov cocktail at them first. But, maybe the Camarilla spread the reports that the Biddies made a man into goo in the Tarim, and Molotov would give them the justification to do so again.

Inside the testing center again, we see that Alder kept the Biddies outside of the exam room, and then outside of the office she talked to Petra in. Still united in hands clasped in front. Sadly, we never saw Shireen's reaction to the Biddies.

Next is the post-attack briefing with Petra, back in Alder's office. Dale and Dianne get to sit down at the fireplace, but they're watching, not playing chess or doing paperwork. Soheila and Lilian do seem to be working, as they cross across the office.

And finally, young ex-Biddy crashes the post-work drinking party, but Alder might be making the Biddies still work while she pounds the glass? Gwenda is at the front table, Lilian+Dale+Soheila at the window cabinet, Lynn and Devon/La Nein at the other corner desk, and Dianne with a book at the fireplace.

[arbitrarygreay]

Unlike with Taraji, this one has a reason that everyone in the production acknowledged: Sarah Shahi was pregnant. So now when you rewatch the S4A episodes, you can see all of the signs!

Also, poast about the simplified simulation! When a show straight up provides you with banter templates for your fanfic...

And yeah, prepare for the Shoot fic count to explode from here, since they got undeniable canon confirmation. I feel like this is where the femslash fandom really took off. (And it was in fact articles on AfterEllen about S4A and Shoot that convinced me to give the show a try.)

s2g if they've actually killed off Shaw I'm gonna be real mad. technically her fate is slightly ambiguous but like. only very slightly and I can't tell if this is just cope on my part. well hmm ok i can think of reasons that Samaritan might want her alive since it didn't manage to get the rest of them..... blease.....

if shaw is still alive and the root shaw sexual tension stops being fun now I'll also be pretty disappointed though! I've always been more of a bait kinda gal

that said that was a REALLY good episode, i totally bought the first fakeout with finch dying (honestly if i had to pick between him and shaw i do not know which way I'd land). the cinematography was good the episode structure was good just a really good episode!

[arbitrarygreay]

Forget all of the AI Risk, yuri, yaoi, doggos, it has already been determined that PoI's enduring legacy will be this....

OH RIGHT

THIS HAPPENED

I LOST MY FUCKING MIND I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS THIS SHOW!!!!

when the second gun started pointing i was like haha it would be funny if this went like that meme and then i heard reese's gun cock and the shot shifted to him and i was like WAIT JUST A GOD DAMN SECOND

[arbitrarygreay]

Do you have any issues with ctime?

I like to sometimes sort my music library by what date I acquired those files, but all of the programs I've tried so far for some reason map "Date Created" to ctime.

Right now the only solution I can think of is a script to grab the dates for birth time, date modified, the ctime and date modified for the file's containing folder, and then rewrite ctime with whichever is the earliest date (sometimes the date modified is older than the birth time if I carried it over from before I got this computer). I'll have to run the script just about every time I do any tag updates, which will still be annoying, but I haven't seen anywhere how to remap what metadata my music library software's columns point to.

using an automated script to discover improperly tagged files in my music collection

[arbitrarygreay]

#'what if we took an empowering tale and made it into misery porn; much arteestic; so prestige; wow' #'this bad boy can fit so much victim blaming in it' #gimme a break; edgelords

This is about Bluebeard's Castle

Ugh, the changes Bartok/Balazs made to the fairytale are infuriating.

[arbitrarygreay]

Which makes Vane Goemon and either Eleanor or Rogers is Zenigata, I guess.

[arbitrarygreay]

animeirl

[arbitrarygreay]

Obviously y'all think that the following don't go far enough, or this post wouldn't exist, but there are some cases besides JCS that might be worth considering:

This article specifically talks about the practice in West End revivals, shouting out Company and Oklahoma:

This one points out major aesthetic tweaks in Pippin, Company, and Cabaret:

And this year's Tony Award for Best Revival was a showdown between two productions for which the term "radically imagined/reinterpreted" was a common phrase.

All that said, what struck me when reading OP and in doing this research was the way "revival" was sometimes said as a bit of a dirty word. The reason that operas and Shakespeare plays get this treatment is not just because of the IP law era, though that obviously plays a large role, but because those regions of their mediums are ossified into a canon, outside of which new productions have a hard time getting made, much less becoming successful. There could not possibly be a Tony Awards for opera, bestowing a Best New Opera trophy every single year. Musicals don't need this kind of wildly divergent staging thing because musicals don't need to rely on the revival.

Instead, the musical is still vibrant with "innovation on a preexisting story" through brand new adaptations, and it always has been. West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet. Rent is La Boheme. Wizard of Oz/The Wiz/Wicked. Andrew Lloyd Webber's whole oeuvre is all adaptations already! This is a general trend that may be correlated with the way technology allowed higher and higher fidelity archival recordings to exist, changing peoples' relationship to novelty. OP mentioned Phantom, and there are many other Phantom adaptations out there, including the "Phantom of the Mall" movie.

What is the difference in benefits between a production of Bizet's Carmen with an all-black cast, Porgy and Bess, Carmen Jones, and Carmen: A Hip Hopera? Which isn't to say that the first thing still wouldn't be really cool, but I think the obvious answer is that non-revival new productions help more artists financially, by allowing more wholly new creators to enter the conversation.

Obviously, musical theater doesn't particularly need help, given that there are productions that are basically unchanged for decades. But I think musical theater could benefit from what regular theater and opera have, which is the ability to tell a very different story using the identical text. I don't think Romeo and Juliet would resonate nearly the same if every single production since the 1600s looked like Franco Zeffirelli's version. There are tons of different ways you can portray a sexual predator like Don Giovanni. And half the fun of going to see a new production of The Magic Flute is seeing what bonkers staging conceit they're going to take this time.

I think Jesus Christ Superstar gets this right. It's had some wildly different stagings which cut at different parts of the superstar experience, and I think the world is a better place for having one set in the actual sites of the Passion story, and another set in a hyperproduced theatrical style.

There are a few pieces that probably need to be stuck in their time and place, but probably fewer than you'd think. Hadestown is so deeply tied to the nature of its own musical origins that it would probably be weird to put it in any other context. in this case the answer is maybe "Write another Orpheus Story"

Sure, Phantom of the Opera is set in an opera house. But wouldn't it be interesting to stage it like it's set on Broadway, or possibly at the Grand Ole Opry, commenting on how musical tastes have constantly changed. And of course, there is nothing in Les Mis that might possibly be relevant in a setting that isn't Paris between about 1815 and 1832*. I could even see a contemporary The Sound of Music adaptation set in a country sliding toward authoritarianism.

Audiences are already suspending quite a lot of disbelief at seeing a musical. I think audiences would be willing to suspend a bit more to see their favorite musicals do something new.