#*calvin's dad's voice* it builds character

[ploncc]

I hated getting told "take the time to do it right the first time" and similar as catch all rules for every possible situation when I was a kid. Every answer to "how do I fix this" came down to "don't fuck it up."

Not to mention that yeah, sometimes you know how to do it right, and you have the time and your crop of spoons is luscious, and then yeah, shit tends to work better when you take the time to do things right the first time so you won't have to do them again. Sure. Why not.

But sometimes you don't have the time to do things right.

Sometimes you need to do a field patch so your problems can get sent to the (hopefully metaphorical) hospital to get a proper fix.

Sometimes you don't have the energy to keep your eyes open for more than five minutes and "doing things right" takes thrice that, at least.

And sometimes you don't know what the fuck you're doing, and there isn't a manual for what you're doing, and there isn't anyone you can ask for help, and making mistakes is the point. And when that situation comes around, trying to "do things right so you won't have to do them again" is the kind of rule that's going to make you into a fucked up little perfectionist terrified of trying anything because what if you mess up, and when that happens you're going to start missing all kinds of journeys being frozen by the fear of fucking up even though messing up is the only way you're going to figure out how to do the thing right, and is the entire fucking point.

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

3, 6 and 9 for the Pearl Jam ask game! 😊

Yayyyy, thank you for asking, M! :'D

3.) I WAS HOPING SOMEONE WOULD ASK ME THIS SO I COULD CLIMB ONTO MY PROVERBIAL SOAPBOX AND SCREAM "JACK FUCKING IRONS"!!!! :D Even though he was only in PJ for less than four years (if I remember correctly), I just feel like his personal style of drumming brought something so FRESH and new to PJ's overall sound (and was especially PERFECT for No Code, no matter my overall opinion/preference toward that album), and I fucking love it and appreciate it so much. And I also know that PJ mostly appreciated him for his mediating skills between them, lmao, but I feel so strongly that Jack's drumming deserves to be recognized for what his style brought to PJ's style and sound - something undoubtedly different and unique, and to me that makes listening to it all the more worthwhile. I also feel like, because of that, the rest of PJ became more willing to relinquish control over how polished their music sounded which was, to me, A REALLY BIG DEAL and made it so much more INTERESTING for, imo, pretty much the first time. Because how are you really going to have "grunge" if it doesn't actually sound grungy (grunge defined as: "grime; dirt") ? And since Eddie (and Jeff) pretty well came from the school of DIY punk rock, you also can't really have brass tacks punk rock if it sounds all perfectly smoothed out and polished. YA NEED TO HAVE, AND KEEP!, EDGES, and imo Jack Irons contributed greatly and so interestingly to that. :') So yes, obviously I'm saying a grungy, unpolished sound is a good thing. It doesn't just *Calvin's dad's, from Calvin and Hobbes, voice* build character - it ADDS character, and that's important and good and necessary!

6.) "Corduroy" is probably one of my favorite PJ songs to sing at the top of my lungs!

9.) I've been a fan since...I hate to say it like this, but it's pretty much the truth, so...Chris Cornell's death. When he died, my mom played me "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog, and since TOTD is all made up of PJ (plus Chris), it was kind of a natural transition for me to then get into PJ (but unfortunately I have never gotten into Soundgarden, which would've been the other "natural" transition to make from there, although I've tried to listen to their music, but it's just...not for me 😞). But I also feel like sharing the fact that I spent over a year listening to nothing but PJ's first three albums and remaining a casual fan. It was until the months after I graduated from college, where I was feeling really lost and depressed, when I finally went "CASUAL FAN? WHAT'S THAT, NEVER HEARD OF HER" and sold a bit of my soul to them, ya know.

Pearl Jam ask game

[meloromantics]

care to share your fav lat exercises? cable rows always hit for me but i've finally accepted that bent over barbell rows just don't feel right for my body, so i need that inspo 🙏

ofc! glad you’re loving cable rows. i’m a pulldowns queen personally, i try to make sure i have at least 2 variations in a given program. right now i do heavy sets of 8 with a supinated grip on my full body day and i usually do high volume wide grip with a pause on my upper body day. on my last full body day, the regular pulldown machine was too much of a hassle to wait for at my work gym, so i did a kneeling one-arm variation on an adjustable cable machine. i was able to focus on moving slow + noticing the difference in engagement between my stronger and weaker side.

working overhead in some way, whether pushing with a shoulder press or training towards pull-ups/chin-ups is good here and also *calvin’s dad voice* builds character

benching, esp with a wide grip, teaches + reinforces good lat engagement. if barbell benching isn’t accessible to you, you can get a lot done w. dumbbells, and the variations in modality (angling the bench at an incline, regular, or decline; grip width or neutral grip with dumbbells; etc) give you lots of room to roam and find what works for you.

in fact, switching up the modality of a lift is an excellent general tip that’s almost always applicable! if you already love a seated cable row, supinate your grip and see how that changes it for you. if you’re willing to give barbell rows one more shot, see if a seal row or pendlay row is a bit easier to groove with consistently.

good luck + happy back day!

[kahran042]

…and another gargantuan batch of incorrect JCGTL quotes!

Stephen and Deborah Bernhardt are renewing their marriage vows Stephen: I promise, when you start to sag, to subject you to risky elective surgery. Deborah: And I promise to be with you only if you make money and stay healthy. Stephen: Alzheimer's runs in my family. Deborah: You'll be dealing with that solo. (Source: American Dad!) (Stephen Bernhardt, Deborah Bernhardt)

Morgan: Oh, so suddenly you DON'T have a death wish? Connor: Morgan, I've never had a death wish. It's just that I don't believe that I personally even can die. (Source: Archer) (Morgan Urquhart, Connor Urquhart)

Adrian: Kiera is full of sunshine and sweets and hope, and every time I try to tell her the world is on fire, she just hands me a marshmallow to roast. (Source: Arrested Development) (Adrian Bernhardt)

Thom: I lose at everything. I even lost my glasses. Courtney: staring at the glasses on his head I’ll help you find them for five dollars! (Source: Arthur) (Thom Anderson, Courtney Anderson)

Jonas: I'm not jealous! I just get this weird burning feeling in my chest whenever I think about Kiera being with someone else! Brad: Yeah, that's jealousy. (Source: Austin and Ally) (Jonas Corbin, Brad Thompson)

Nick: Hey, cool glasses. Thom: Thanks, I need them to see. (Source: Bob's Burgers) (Nick Murphy, Thom Anderson)

Adrian: We should make Mom a Mother's Day card. Kiera: Okay, I'll draw a picture of her on it. Adrian: Hmm…make her mouth bigger. She usually looks angrier than that. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes) (Adrian Bernhardt, Kiera Bernhardt)

Jonas: Another gorgeous, brisk fall day in New Hampshire. What a waste to be going to school on a day like this. Donna: What would you do if you could stay home today? Jonas: Sleep right through it. (Source: Calvin and Hobbes) (Jonas Corbin, Donna Corbin)

Valerie: John, have you seen my glasses? I can't find them anywhere. John: I haven't seen them. Chloe enters, wearing her mother's glasses. John and Valerie look shocked Chloe (in Valerie's voice): Chloe, go do some stupid girly thing you hate! Being miserable builds character! (Source: Calvin and Hobbes) (Valerie Seaver, John Seaver, Chloe Seaver)

Samantha: What's this story you're going to read me, Dad? It doesn't have any violence in it, does it? Richard: Uh… Samantha: Edit it out if it does. I hate violent stories. Does it have any boring description in it? Richard: Well… Samantha: Skip it if you see any. I like my stories fast and gripping. It doesn't have a moral, does it? I hate being told how to live my life. Skip the moral, too, ok? Richard: Does her majesty prefer color pictures, or black and white? (Source: Calvin and Hobbes) (Samantha Corbin, Richard Corbin)

Monica: I can't get a baby-sitter anywhere! What should we do? Richard: We won't be gone long. Couldn't Samantha be left for a couple of hours unsupervised? Richard and Monica: Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho hoo hoo har ha ho! Monica: wiping tears of laughter away Seriously, what should we do? (Source: Calvin and Hobbes) (Monica Corbin, Richard Corbin)

Justin: Bad news on your campaign to stay dad, Dad. John: Oh? Justin: Yep. The latest poll of twelve-year-olds in this household shows that they don't care about issues this year. It's character that counts. John: So why the bad news? Justin: Who's the bimbo with you in this old picture? John: That "bimbo" is your MOTHER! Valerie: Who's a bimbo?! John: Pretty funky hairdo, Mom! (Source: Calvin and Hobbes) (Justin Seaver, John Seaver, Valerie Seaver)

Brad: Someone has to go to Nick and Jared and confront them. Chloe: I vote we all look at Jonas at the same time. (Source: Community) (Brad Thompson, Chloe Seaver)

Kiera: You're like the mom I never had… Valerie: You don't have a mom? Kiera: I mean, I do, but she sucks. (Source: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) (Kiera Bernhardt, Valerie Seaver)

Mark: You gloss over everything with a cynical joke and no one knows what you really believe in. Connor: A-ha. So my evil plan is working. (Source: Daria) (Mark Seaver, Connor Urquhart)

Chloe: We have some things in common. Mia: Breathing. (Source: Daria) (Chloe Seaver, Mia Thompson)

Samantha (after getting in trouble): I'm only five! (Source: Diary of a Wimpy Kid) (Samantha Corbin)

Jonas: Uh oh. I just had a bad thought. Nate: What? That you might grow old, never get married, and die alone? Jonas: No…but thank you for pointing out that possibility. (Source: Drake and Josh) (Jonas Corbin, Nate Kellerman)

Morgan: Where have you been?! Connor: Emotional hell. (Source: Friends) (Morgan Urquhart, Connor Urquhart)

Chloe: I hate you with every inch of my being. Connor: That's not a lot of inches. (Source: Fullmetal Alchemist) (Chloe Seaver, Connor Urquhart)

Zoe: I’m back! Did you miss me? Nina: Yes, I did, Zoe. In fact, I wasn’t done missing you. Would you mind leaving again? (Source: Garfield) (Zoe Chapman, Nina Chapman)

Chloe: Hey! I was here first! Mark: On the planet? No? I win. (Source: Gilmore Girls) (Chloe Seaver, Mark Seaver)

Chloe: Yes! We did it! hugs Jonas Jonas: is confused Chloe: quickly releases hug Um…can I pay you to pretend that never happened? (Source: Gravity Falls) (Chloe Seaver, Jonas Corbin)

Connor: So, is this thing between Morgan and Lydia supposed to be a secret? Mark: Pfft…hardly. The only people who don't know Morgan and Lydia love each other are Morgan and Lydia. (Source: Grey's Anatomy) (Connor Urquhart, Mark Seaver)

Mark: What's with you and Connor? Chloe: Oh, don't. Mark: Do you have a thing for him? You know there's a thin line-- Chloe: No, there is not a thin line between love and hate. There is, in fact, a Great Wall of China with armed sentries posted every twenty feet between love and hate. (Source: House) (Mark Seaver, Chloe Seaver)

Kiera: Hi. Connor: Don't touch me. (Source: Jem) (Kiera Bernhardt, Connor Urquhart)

Monica: Jonas, I think it would be nice if you took Samantha with you tomorrow. Jonas, narrating: I offered a convincing argument. Jonas: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (Source: Life with Loopy) (Monica Corbin, Jonas Corbin)

Brad: You’ve gotta be nice to people. Mia: N-nice? Brad: Yes, nice! It's not that hard. (Source: Miraculous Ladybug) (Brad Thompson, Mia Thompson)

Tristan: Yeah, tell me something I don't know. Adrian: Um… female kangaroos have three vaginas. (Source: Musical Hell) (Tristan Markham, Adrian Bernhardt)

Connor (to Morgan): Those kids at school tease you because they’ve never tasted hell. Today, we turn the tables! (Source: Mystery Science Theater 3000) (Connor Urquhart)

Jonas: You're like an angel with no wings. Kiera: So like a person. (Source: Parks and Recreation) (Jonas Corbin, Kiera Bernhardt)

Kiera (about Adrian and Karin): Wow, you guys are really cute together. Adrian: Kiera, I'm cute together with everybody. (Source: Parks and Recreation) (Kiera Bernhardt, Adrian Bernhardt)

Alicia: You're nice. I can see why Kiera likes you. Jonas: Wha -- When did she say … Likes me? (Source: Parks and Recreation) (Alicia Ramsey, Jonas Corbin)

Mia: doing something nice for Brad They could throw me out of the little-sister union for this. (Source: Pelswick) (Mia Thompson)

Jonas (about Mark): It’s not what you think. We’re not enemies, we’re just bad friends. (Source: Phineas and Ferb) (Jonas Corbin)

Richard: Sometimes being an adult can really suck. That’s why we’re allowed to drink alcohol! (Source: Puella Magi Madoka Magica) (Richard Corbin)

Alicia: Sometimes it takes a more mature person to stop a fight than one who started it to begin with. Chloe: Right, Alicia. Why don't you go home and watch more of those Mister Rogers reruns? (Source: Rugrats) (Alicia Ramsey, Chloe Seaver)

Jonas (about Kiera): Oh my god, here she comes. Okay, this is easy, just compliment her. Tell her she has a square head. Wait, that’s not a compliment! What shape is a compliment? Triangle? Uh, pyramid? Circle! Circle head! Oh my god, you’re stuck on shapes and Square-Head’s almost here! (Source: Scrubs) (Jonas Corbin)

Robert: Aren't you too young to be bitter? Connor: No, you can be young and bitter. (Source: Seinfeld) (Robert Urquhart, Connor Urquhart)

Chloe: Can the young woman break the glass ceiling and prove once and for all that a female can be just as good an athlete as a male? Nick: You know, Chloe, anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo.” everybody stares at Nick Nick: What? Just because I’m a meathead doesn’t mean I’m not a feminist. (Source: Sonic Boom) (Chloe Seaver, Nick Murphy)

Lydia: Pass me a napkin, please. There really is no way to eat spaghetti in a dignified way. Kiera: eating one noodle at a time Not if you do it right! (Source: Spork of Creation) (Lydia Renfrew, Kiera Bernhardt)

Adrian: Look, I'm not really good at, actually I'm terrible at, expressing…I don't know what you'd call it-- Karin: Feelings? Adrian: Yeah, sure, okay, the point is I don't really have good, uh… Karin: Social skills? (Source: Stargate Atlantis) (Adrian Bernhardt, Karin Michaux)

Nick is about to beat Jonas up Nick: Do you have any last words, Jon-ass? Jonas: …You're a jerk. (Source: Suikoden II) (Nick Murphy, Jonas Corbin)

Jonas: What the fuck is wrong with you? Connor: Do you want me to go chronologically or alphabetically? (Source: Texts from Last Night) (Jonas Corbin, Connor Urquhart)

Jasmine: Describe Jonas in one word. Mia: Mine. (Source: That's So Raven) (Jasmine Kessler, Mia Thompson)

Jonas: My love for Kiera burns with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. But I can’t tell her that. Donna: But I can, thanks to my parental battering ram! It’s the latest thing in tough love parenting. typing Burns with white hot intensity of a thousand suns, SEND. (Source: The Fairly Oddparents) (Jonas Corbin, Donna Corbin)

Mark: The only way to get rid of a bully is to stand up to them. Trust me, I’ve bullied a lot of people. (Source: The Office) (Mark Seaver)

Chloe (skiing): Okay, don't panic. Remember what Coach said. an image of the ski team coach appears in a thought bubble Coach: If you get in trouble, all you need to do is… an image of Kiera in her ski gear pushes aside the coach Kiera: Feels like I'm wearing nothing at all… nothing at all… nothing at all… Chloe: Stupid sexy Kiera. (Source: The Simpsons) (Chloe Seaver, Kiera Bernhardt)

Jonas: I’m not jealous, I’m envious. Jealousy is when you worry someone will take what you have. Envy is wanting what someone else has. What I feel is envy. Nate: checking a dictionary Wow, he's right. (Source: The Simpsons) (Jonas Corbin, Nate Kellerman)

Mia: Alright, Chloe. I don't like you and you don't like me. Chloe: I like you. Mia: Um, alright. You like me but I don't like you. Chloe: Maybe you'd like me if you got to know me. (Source: The Simpsons) (Mia Thompson, Chloe Seaver)

Kiera: Dad? Stephen: Yes, son? Kiera: … Stephen: I mean…girl-son. (Source: The Simpsons) (Kiera Bernhardt, Stephen Bernhardt)

Nate: I have a life! Zach: chuckles (Source: The X-Files) (Nate Kellerman, Zach Kellerman)

Kiera: You've read this book forty-two times? Adrian: Yes. Kiera: Doesn’t that make you sad? (Source: The X-Files) (Kiera Bernhardt, Adrian Bernhardt)

Connor: Why would I make them so uncomfortable? Morgan: Probably has to do with your reputation. Connor: I have a reputation? (Source: The X-Files) (Connor Urquhart, Morgan Urquhart)

Chloe: Studies have shown that putting on your best judgmental frown while checking out your crush means they are less likely to figure out you like them. (Source: Tumblr) (Chloe Seaver)

Jonas: I would take a bullet for cheese fries. Brad: …Who the hell would shoot a basket of cheese fries? (Source: Tumblr) (Jonas Corbin, Brad Thompson)

Mark: Only geniuses can say these words really quickly. Eye. Yam. Stew. Peed. Jared: Oh, come on, no ones’s falling for th- Nick: IAMSTUPID (Source: Tumblr) (Mark Seaver, Jared Murphy, Nick Murphy)

Mia (about Chloe): I really hate that girl. Jasmine: She didn't even do anything. Mia: She's here, she's breathing, that's enough. (Source: Tumblr) (Mia Thompson, Jasmine Kessler)

Jonas: Valentine’s day is just a time when greeting card companies and candy companies get a boost in sales and couples get all mushy and gross with each other. Kiera: I made you a card. Jonas: shoves everything off the shelf and gently places the card there I’m going to frame this and look at it every day! (Source: Tumblr) (Jonas Corbin, Kiera Bernhardt)

Chloe: I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Connor: I’d take that more seriously if you didn’t put “feelings” in air quotes. (Source: Tumblr) (Chloe Seaver, Connor Urquhart)

Jonas: Today is just such a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the birds are- Brad: Kiera texted you "have a good day", didn't she? Jonas: With three heart emojis. (Source: Tumblr) (Jonas Corbin, Brad Thompson)

Mark: You know, you can solve your problems without violence. Nick: Okay, but consider: I'm really, really good at violence. (Source: Tumblr) (Mark Seaver, Nick Murphy)

Jonas: My friend thinks you're cute. Kiera: Really? Which friend? Jonas: Me. I'm the friend. (Source: Tumblr) (Jonas Corbin, Kiera Bernhardt)

Jonas: Yeah, you're my best friend, but I would fuck you if you asked. Brad: What? Jonas: What? Chloe (eating chips in the background): You said you would fuck him if he asked you! (Source: Tumblr) (Jonas Corbin, Brad Thompson, Chloe Seaver)

Brad: Jonas, we need to talk to you! Come out! Jonas: I'm bisexual! Brad: Not what I meant but I still support you! (Source: Tumblr) (Brad Thompson, Jonas Corbin)

Kiera: Adrian! I can fit the whole world in my hands! Adrian: That's impos- Kiera: cups Adrian's face Adrian: …Get the fuck off of me. I have a reputation. (Source: Tumblr) (Kiera Bernhardt, Adrian Bernhardt)

Mark: When I was born, God said: “Too pure, much perfection.” Chloe: Wrong. When you were born, the devil said: “Ooh, competition!” (Source: Tumblr) (Mark Seaver, Chloe Seaver)

Mark: How have you been coping with everything? Connor: With sarcasm, mostly. Mark: Has it been working? Connor (sarcastically): Yeah, it's been super great. (Source: Twitter) (Mark Seaver, Connor Urquhart)

Alicia: You are not alone. There’s bugs. (Source: Twitter) (Alicia Ramsey)

Mia: I’m a cold-hearted bitch. Nothing gets to me. Jonas: Hey! How’s it going? Mia (internally): OH NO, HE'S CUTE. (Source: Twitter) (Mia Thompson, Jonas Corbin)

Connor: How am I sensitive and an asshole at the same time? (Source: Twitter) (Connor Urquhart)

Peter: Who are you? Nick: I'm you, but stronger. (Source: Twitter) (Peter Gardner, Nick Murphy)

Jonas: Sorry I’m late. I broke down on the way. Kiera: Oh, is your car OK? Jonas: What car? (Source: Twitter) (Jonas Corbin, Kiera Bernhardt)

Jonas: Who ate all the cookies? Samantha: Ninjas. Jonas: I didn't see them. Samantha: No one ever does. (Source: Twitter) (Jonas Corbin, Samantha Corbin)

Jonas: Name a way to be nice to others. Mark: Don't kill them. Jonas: …Setting the bar a little low, but I'll allow it. (Source: Twitter) (Jonas Corbin, Mark Seaver)

Morgan: What am I going to do for Halloween? Colin: I'd love to go as your boyfriend! Morgan: Thanks, I'd rather be dead. (Source: Vine) (Morgan Urquhart, Colin Gardner)

Lauren: Mark's not really my type. Sarah: What is your type? Lauren: Girls, mostly. (Source: YouTube) (Lauren Reinholt, Sarah Reinholt)

Jonas: You wanna beat me up? Then do it. It's not gonna change things. Nick: It'll change your face. Jonas: Touché. (Source: Zoey 101) (Jonas Corbin, Nick Murphy)

Connor: I wear trench coats to look mysterious and scary and powerful and-- Morgan: You wear them to look like a prick. Connor: Did I ask for your sass? (Source: Unknown) (Connor Urquhart, Morgan Urquhart)

Adrian: Jonas, would you do me the honor of becoming my brother-in-law? Jonas: Did you just propose to her FOR ME? Adrian: Someone had to do it, Jonas! (Source: Unknown) (Adrian Bernhardt, Jonas Corbin)

[kintatsujo]

Some of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes single strips off the top of my head

"Calvin! Go do something you hate! It builds character!" "Okay, the voice was pretty funny, but that's still one sarcastic kid we're raising."

Calvin's dad fishing in the pouring rain

"That's not a baby, it's a rabbit!!" "It's our child!" (Bill flexing his art muscles by drawing something that looked like old school Mary Worth while Calvin and Susie argue about whether or not Mr Bun should be playing the baby when they play house)

The trees are sneezing

The one where Calvin and Hobbes were talking about seeing each other in their dreams. It's not meant to be a gag, just sweet.

Susie trying to ask Calvin the capitol of Poland and getting the right answer for the wrong reason

Calvin grousing about always coming up with good comebacks way after an argument

Honestly anytime he's being an undiagnosed adhd mood, which is a lot

The strip about high art versus low art, which altered my worldview as a small child

[forehead-enthusiast]

[5:34pm] Lucas sat on the floor, leaning back against the couch you were sitting on. You leaned forward to perch your chin on the crown of his head, your nose scrunching as his hair tickled it. You'd slung your arms over his shoulders in a kind of lazy hug, and relaxed with him in your embrace.

"So then Calvin's dad says, 'Bug bites build character,' and then..."

It'd started as a joke when you were discussing your childhoods and the comics you'd liked, but now you were just enjoying the sound of Lucas's voice as he read to you. He wasn't a great storyteller. He tended chuckle through lines and would add in his own commentary ("I used to have a lion stuffed animal I called Hobbes, 'cause I figured, y'know, lion, tiger, what's the difference?"), but you wouldn't have wanted it any other way. 

You alternated between fiddling with the ends of his hair between your fingers and smoothing it out, idle hands seeking entertainment in all aspects of him.

"And thaaat's the end."

"I'll give you a B+. I guess I'd hire you to babysit my kids in the future."

"You won't have to," He tilted his face up to press a casual kiss to your cheek, and only got a little caught up in your dangling hair. He grinned up at you. "I mean, they're gonna be mine too."

[dailyskyferreira]

Sky Ferreira Returns With an uncompromising vision and the studio hours to back it up, the enigmatic singer is back with a new single—and a promise that her first album in six years will be worth the wait.

So, what’s Sky Ferreira been doing all this time? Well, for the last 35 minutes or so, she’s been in the bathroom.

“I’m so sorry,” she says when she finally emerges, eyes wet, arms full of winter layers. It’s a late-February afternoon at New York City’s Russian Tea Room, the fabled blini-and-caviar haunt of candy-red banquettes and eternal Christmas ornaments where Madonna once worked the coat check. About a half hour ago, the 26-year-old singer turned up for our afternoon-tea reservation only to disappear in an immediate whorl, as if a czarist vortex sucked her into the basement. What she had thought was an asthmatic flare-up, she now explains, was actually a pretty severe anxiety attack. A panicked twinge remains in her expression, like the distant memory of tasting a lemon. In town from Los Angeles for three days, she tells me, “I’ve been anxious to the point that I haven’t slept at all.”

It’s a nerve-wracking moment for Sky, a pop artist, actor, and model who’s lately been keeping a low profile. This is partly because she seems to find the social contract of the PR exchange stressful, but also because she doesn’t want to suck up all the air before she gets a chance to breathe. “You really can get sick of someone’s face,” she says, as only someone who has loaned their own to Jimmy Choo and Calvin Klein could. “I don’t see the point of doing a bunch of photoshoots or press when I don’t have anything out.”

The fact that she hasn’t had anything out might be the biggest stress of all. Signed to Capitol Records at 15, Sky spent years in teen-pop A&R purgatory—groomed as a naughty-girl-next-door type with mall-Shakira hair and prefabricated singles with names like “Haters Anonymous” and “Sex Rules” (“We are animals/No matter what we deny/Our bodies strong, like magnets” are actual words she sang)—only to have her minders decide she wasn’t worth the trouble and shelve her long-promised full-length debut. Rather than give up, she used money she’d earned modeling and finished the album without their help.

Released in October 2013, Night Time, My Time was a rare major-label triumph of craft over product, a purposeful barrage of seething recriminations coated with ’90s-grunge textures and ’80-pop incandescence. It sounded like “My So-Called Life”’s Angela Chase mainlining John Hughes films and channeling her existential anguish into a record—except Night Time was the vision of a 2010s 21-year-old, and the truths were all hers.

The right people loved it. In the spring of 2015, Sky announced her second record’s name was Masochism and promised its first single that summer. The summer came and went, then the fall, and some winter too. On that New Year’s Eve, she addressed the delay obliquely on Instagram (“I refuse to put out something that isn’t honest”) and promised “in 2016 you will hear it.” In 2016, you did not, and now it’s 2019, and, still, no album. At this point, she can’t post online without some commenters popping up to heckle, “where’s the album sky” or “MASOCHISM!!?” or “still waiting,” like they’re hungry people rage-texting Seamless.

These impatient fans aren’t alone in their enthusiasm. “She’s one of those beautiful, rare people who can probably do anything,” says Debbie Harry, who’s had Sky open for Blondie. “If there’s anybody I would ever be jealous of, it would be her.”

Naturally, all of this—the anticipation, the unfulfilled promises, the time lapsed since her last release—is adding to the pressure she puts on herself. She feels like she has to explain. “It wasn’t by choice.” It wasn’t creative paralysis, nor was it a creative hiatus. “I wasn’t just taking time for myself the last five years.” During that time, she landed a half dozen movie roles, but she says she didn’t decide to focus on acting instead. “I never stepped away from music.” She alludes to vague external hindrances: “I’ve been at the mercy of people the last few years”; “gatekeepers”; “the rug pulled out under me”; a “someone at my label” who undid the generous arrangement she had to work with Kanye West musical director Mike Dean; and the very real issue of a young woman telling men what she wants and not settling for less. Then the labyrinthine nature of her production process is, as you’ll see, akin to playing charades blind-folded while riding a dog, and everyone else guesses with kazoos. Plus, she’s a perfectionist. Obsessive. She’ll do 800 takes. She’ll consider every option—and then she’ll consider it again.

But the primary reason it’s taken so long: Sky doesn’t just want her new songs done, she wants them to be good. By good, she means, executed the way she intended, no matter how long she waited to find the right violinist. Properly mixed so they don’t accidentally sound like pop-punk in the car, because “someone puts some shit on my voice” and she forgot to play them in an Uber. (Sky never learned to drive.) Songs that know their place in the broader pop continuum, not what’s hot on streaming. “I’m not looking for ‘a moment,’” she says. “I’m looking for a career—and real careers, you build them.”

She’s deemed two songs good enough to share with me. The first single, “Downhill Lullaby,” is a five-and-a-half-minute, goth-noir, chamber-pop piece—with strings!—that could have easily closed an episode of the revived “Twin Peaks.” (The association may be deliberate: Sky appeared in the show’s 2017 return, deeply admires its director, David Lynch, and the series’ music supervisor, Dean Hurley, produced the song alongside her.) Another forthcoming track, tentatively titled “Don’t Forget,” is a new wave time warp, a lovely bit of nostalgia therapy for people who were never there—even if it is, according to Sky, “about burning down houses.”

By now we’re settled into a booth, one Sky has selected in the empty part of the restaurant, far away from her manager and publicist, who’ve come along to chaperone. Her natural espresso roots have outrun her hair’s blonde highlights, and her dark T-shirt reads “CHICAGO METAL MANIA.” We’ve managed to order tea by asking the waiter to bring what he likes (a nice, orangey, spicy chai) and then momentarily horrify him when Sky asks if, instead of sending the teeny triangular sandwiches with mayonnaise back to the kitchen (she hasn’t touched them, and mayo makes her gag), we can give them to someone who’s homeless. “I’ll get you the ones without mayonnaise,” the waiter says, taking them away.

“I don’t have a back-up plan,” Sky says. “I never have. I don’t have an education. I don’t know how to, like, play music in the [traditional] sense. I’m socially awkward and stuff—I couldn’t really do a lot of other jobs either,” she says. “Literally, there’s no other option for me. So this has to work.”

There are many Sky Ferreiras. There’s Sky the model, a Hedi Slimane muse who’s walked the runway for Marc Jacobs and perfected a glare so haunted the Bates Motel must be jealous. There’s Sky the actor, who played a key supporting role in director Edgar Wright’s big-studio heist flick Baby Driver, but doesn’t have an agent. There’s Sky the live performer, who battles stage fright, but who also opened a 2014 Miley Cyrus arena tour, fell down an elevator shaft on night three, and still took the stage the next day.

There’s also the Sky here at the Russian Tea Room, whose left dimple comes as a surprise because, come to think of it, you’ve rarely seen photos of her smiling. The Sky who shouldn’t eat gluten because of an autoimmune condition, but doesn’t really tell people about it because it sounds like bullshit. The Sky who’s watched enough “Game of Thrones” to see her pets’ personalities reflected in the show’s characters. (For the record, her cat Egg would be a Lannister, while his brother Squirrel would be from the North.)

This Sky speaks in em dashes. It’s less that she loses her train of thought, and more that her thought train is screeching onto a new track. Sometimes you’re right there with her, but other times you’re watching the conversation from a distance like a detached caboose that just kept going straight. “I know I keep going in circles,” she says, “but my mind kind of always does that—spins.”

You don’t interview this Sky as much as steer her, but first you listen. “I’ve always been really shy,” she says, six minutes in. “I was actually mute for years when I was a kid.”

Little Sky Tonia Ferreira hummed along to the radio before she could talk. Raised around Los Angeles, mostly Venice Beach, her young parents split when she was a baby. Her dad tended bar, sometimes with her in tow, and when his roommates got cable, she devoured MTV. “I always hung out with a lot of adults,” she says. “I was, like, one of those kids.”

Being one of those kids meant she didn’t know how to talk to the kids who knew how to talk with each other. She was bullied constantly. She also had trouble with numbers and spelling—she suspects she’s dyslexic, but never got tested—and for a while, was so unhappy, she stopped talking altogether. “I had really long hair, didn’t speak, and had dark circles around my eyes,” she says, describing herself as a child. “I looked kinda feral.”

As the story goes, Sky’s first-grade classmates didn’t know she could talk until she sang “Over the Rainbow” in school. “As long as I can remember, I’ve felt the most like myself when I was singing,” she says. (Roughly 18 years later, she covered the Wizard of Oz ballad at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and the director still raves about her version, telling me, “It was incredible. So beautiful.”)

She lived with her grandmother, who worked as a hairdresser. One time when Sky was around 7, she sang for one of her grandmother’s clients. Impressed, the man suggested she join a gospel choir. The man was Michael Jackson. So she did. Jackson also gave a 9-year-old Sky some grown-up advice that’s shaped her approach to art and music ever since: “He was like, ‘Don’t focus on things that are just around you—you need to look back to the history of music.’ And that’s what I did.”

Yes, Sky went to the Neverland Ranch—“a lot.” She also went to Jackson’s other houses. No, she didn’t witness anything untoward. “It wasn’t just because I was a girl,” she tells me, a few days before the controversial HBO documentary Leaving Neverland aired. “I was around a lot of kids.”

Yes, she’s grown hesitant to talk about her grandmother’s larger-than-life client—for all the reasons you’d expect, along with a few you might not. Like, that it’s difficult for people to wrap their minds around the fact that the King of Pop could be a formative elder acquaintance in the casually anodyne way of, say, a dancing-school teacher or a little-league coach—someone whose small encouragements could be so big. “I was really quiet, but when someone sees something in you...” she says of Jackson, before abandoning the thought. “I had a connection to him, but I’m not, like, his family.”

Sky has also routinely been asked to account for the bad behavior of men in her orbit. A dominant narrative surrounding Night Time, My Time’s 2013 release was her relationship with indie rock band DIIV’s frontman, Zachary Cole Smith—an ex-boyfriend with whom she was arrested that September. He was the driver of the vehicle in which heroin, ecstasy, and a stolen license plate were found (and someone who’s since publicly acknowledged his struggles with addiction). Throughout that album cycle, the arrest became a more delicious red herring than anything Sky had actually done.

“The thing that’s still so fucked up about that: I didn’t have a drug problem, I dated someone who had a drug problem, I was in a car with someone who had a drug problem,” she says. “No one wants to talk about how my charge got dropped.” And the whole Kurt and Courtney star-crossed mythos that dramatized the headlines around the arrest? Spare her. “I was really young; I wasn’t even 21 yet for most of it. That wasn’t my great love story of my life,” she says, adding, “The people that have treated me so much better—they’re the ones who deserve the attention, not that guy.” (Presumably, one of those people is her current partner, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, frontman of the Danish punk band Iceage.)

Those who have followed Sky’s personal life could easily read “Downhill Lullaby” as an extended metaphor about a tumultuous relationship: “I can see that you want me/Going downhill too/Going downhill into a lullaby.” But she’s adamant about distancing her songwriting from the egos of her ex-boyfriends. “That’s the one rule I made,” she says. “The one thing that I’ve always had is my music. If someone treated me badly, they don’t get to have that. I don’t want to drag the weight of what they did around forever.”

For Sky Ferreira, time is not a flat circle, but rather a sticky mass of saltwater taffy. She tends to run late, but once she’s present and engaged, she can summon an Iron Man endurance. At the Russian Tea Room, two hours of conversation easily floats into six-and-a-half, and eventually we’re the last diners to leave. Somewhere in this elasticity, she talks about her refusal to give up on the work. “I’ve literally been using my life savings to do this record.” She is not motivated by money—to her, time isn’t money, but money is a thing to buy more time.

This springy relationship with time can make Sky seem almost anachronistic. In conversation, her offhanded pop-cultural mentions span director Todd Solondz’s 1995 cult indie Welcome to the Dollhouse, Courtney Love, the 1980 Loretta Lynn biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter, the 2018 iteration of A Star Is Born, and the cheerful ’60s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” (which she concedes, “No one my age knows”). Sky’s reference points, like Michael Jackson once advised, exist within a totality, not a blip.

One of her artistic lodestars glows brighter than the others: When Sky was 13, she discovered David Lynch. “He’s the first person who ever saw the world the way I saw it,” she says. “It was the first time anything made sense.” You can see Lynchian dream logic throughout her work. In fact, the staggering, airy title dirge from Night Time, My Time came to her in a dream. “I wrote it in the middle of the night, half-asleep,” she remembers about the album closer, which was built around a line spoken by the doomed girl at the center of the “Twin Peaks” saga. “Then I woke up the next day and I finished it in an hour. I still have the notes; the handwriting’s all fucked up. ” When she finished the song, she knew the album was finally done.

So Sky’s cameo in “Twin Peaks: The Return” had the meta-ness of astral projection. She played Ella, an enigmatic bar patron who talked about a penguin and flaunted a “wicked” armpit rash. “She played that scene so perfectly,” Lynch tells me. “She inhabited that character and made it real from a deep place. When she scratched that rash, you could really feel the itching!”

“Downhill Lullaby” summons the creeping orchestral gloom of “Night Time, My Time.” A sweeping arrangement in five parts, Masochism’s first single begins with a sashay of strings and an interpolation of the unmistakable squee of the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” followed by a murmuring, angered bass. Sky exhales a numb indictment—“You leave me open/When you hit me”—and amid the layers of kettle-drum thunder and keening violins, there’s seduction and revenge, confusion and queasiness, silkiness and elegance. It sounds like the last thing Daniel Day Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock hears before the poison takes hold in Phantom Thread.

This habit of visualizing music—Sky does it too. Except for her, it’s the first step of many in the song creation process: “I see it like it’s projected in a movie theater.” “Downhill Lullaby,” in particular, began with a vision of water in darkness. “Lakes kind of terrify me,” she explains, recalling a childhood memory of feeling lost in a Maryland forest that packs a similar unease. “In a lake, by yourself, you look at the bottom and it’s murky and still and you can’t really see anything or feel anything—and if you do, it’s fucking terrifying. It always feels like something will grab you and pull you under.” The eeriness became the foundation for the song.

She likens the ordeal of making “Downhill Lullaby” to Mickey Mouse’s Fantasia turn as the sorcerer’s apprentice. “You know how all the brooms are making a gigantic mess and the water starts rising and rising and rising and rising?” she says. “It was sort of like that: Magical, but at the same time, ‘What is going on?’ And then cleaning it all up.”

Her technique is more like a collagist—one who both scavenges her raw materials and oversees the fabrication—than a traditional songwriter. Conceptually, she works backwards, starting a song with an imagined outline of the final arrangement, isolating each sound element, and then embarking on the oft-laborious task of identifying studio musicians with the time and patience and willingness to conjure each sound individually, so that once she’s gathered all the pieces, she can begin the meticulous process of putting them all back together.

This unorthodox approach to songwriting has led to recurring logistical difficulties for Masochism. Namely, figuring out how to articulate what she hears so that someone who’s not in her brain can actualize it. “Nobody really understood what I was trying to say or wanted to do on paper,” she says. “It was a really long process.”

Sky never learned how to read music and she’s too self-conscious to use instruments that aren’t her voice in front of others. So if there’s an obvious reference point—like a certain note in a ’90s-radio staple she wants imitated—she’ll play that for her collaborator. But when there’s not, she’s often like a conductor asking to summon a mood.

In the case of Danish violinist Nils Gröndahl, who recorded all the strings on “Downhill Lullaby,” she recalls telling him: “‘Play it as if you’re one of the birds in Snow White, singing underwater, while slowly being suffocated by plastic.’” And you know what? In the end result, it’s easy to hear all that.

Additionally, Sky is even more particular about her final mixes. She will only be satisfied after she’s evaluated her song in seven different listening contexts: a car stereo; a smartphone with “regular” headphones; a smartphone with Apple earbuds; a smartphone’s built-in speaker; on a laptop; through “really bad, bad computer speakers—like the ones that came with Dells back in the early 2000s”; and the lush splendor of the studio, which is a personal luxury because, as she notes, “most people aren’t gonna listen that way.”

And she goes through this convoluted course of action for every song. It’s no wonder Masochism has taken so long. Says Sky, “I’ve accepted this is how I work and stopped feeling bad about it.”

Two Fridays after her insomniac New York trip, Sky is on the line, self-confidence restored, completing a high percentage of her sentences. Earlier in the week, she received the “Downhill Lullaby” master, immediately dropped her phone and shattered its screen, so now she’s on speaker. “I was like, I hope this isn’t a metaphor?” At least she’s laughing.

As for Masochism. She tells me she produced most of it herself, wrote with Los Angeles-based dream-pop artist Tamaryn, and worked with Ariel Pink collaborator Jorge Elbrecht. The proper album is coming, Sky swears, almost positively in 2019. Granted, she said the same thing last year—and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that—but this time, she has finally loosened her grip on some songs.

“Downhill Lullaby” may sound like dying Disney birds and “Don’t Forget” may be electro-pop arson, but Sky promises “more poppy” songs on Masochism too, as well as more “abstract,” orchestral stuff. “It’s very big, but also very violent,” she says, half-chuckling. “But not all the songs are super-dark.” Beyond that—the number of songs, tracklist, other credited collaborators—who can say? Sky can’t yet. She has some songs in mind she’d still like to write.

[thelmasirby32]

Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection

30-second summary:

Quarantine and the COVID-19 crisis have totally rewritten our cultural rules of communication. But the frantic ways we’re corresponding now will likely shift the way we connect long beyond the end of lockdown. 

Open Mind Strategy’s Megan Routh shares four crucial shifts in online behaviors with examples of how brands like Skittles, Frito Lay’s, and many other popular faces have quickly adapted their communication to these shifts.

Read on for some refreshing insights and lessons that will help your brand pivot successfully in the “new normal”.

Talk to any Millennial or Gen Z’er two months ago, or… text them, they would say there are fewer things more anxiety-provoking than actual, in-real-time phone calls. The abruptness, the awkward pauses, and the very fact that they’re beyond control.  

But that was the old world.  

In the solitude of quarantine, a craving for intimacy and personal connection means consumers, once notoriously adverse to spontaneous, face-to-face communications, are now clamoring to hear each other’s voices and see each other’s face.  

Verizon fielded over 800 million phone calls per day within the first two weeks the country was locked down. The word “Zoom” has become a stand-in to mean any “video chat” and apps like Houseparty have seen downloads increase 70 fold.  

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, but they’re also increasingly unannounced, unplanned, and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-pandemic habits. It’s communication chaos.  

Quarantine and the COVID-19 crisis have totally rewritten our cultural rules of communication. But the frantic ways we’re corresponding now will likely shift the way we connect long beyond the end of lockdown. 

Shift one: A quest for intimacy in digital communities

Your bestie going live. Your boss going live. Your bank going live. When we were ordered to stay home, it only took a matter of days for everyone to start broadcasting themselves, most times to seemingly chaotic and confusing ends.  

Recently on IG live, comedian Whitney Cummings agreed to talk to anyone in attendance: She wound up chatting with baby squirrels.

The official, verified account of Skittles has, on more than one occasion, stirred up drama in the comments section of Bowen Yang and Julio Torres’ Instagram Live chats.  

Club Quarantine, a daily digital Queer dance party that happens every night via Zoom allows virtual clubgoers to join in with their cams, or just watch from behind a black tile, eliciting exhibitionism that can be traced back to the random recklessness of the bygone Chat Roulette era.  

But while it seems haphazard, each call, chat, and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of real-life intimacy and democratizes digital communities. 

As more white-collar workers are beginning to wonder not when they’re going to return to the office, but why they would ever return to an office at all, major coastal cities are staring at an exodus of their creative class and a bit of their cultural capital. 

What the migration offers brands

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.  

Take The Wing, a women’s co–working space founded in New York City with offices in chic urban hubs like San Francisco and London. When forced to close, they quickly pivoted from millennial-pink meeting rooms to Zooms, making the interconnectedness of their community and celebrity-speckled programming accessible online for people all over. 

Shift two: Consumers are rejecting content that screams aspiration

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID-19 crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings. 

The highly-filtered, everything-is-perfect image that is the hallmark of influencer and celebrity marketing has never been less appropriate than it is now. 

In a global crisis, consumers are rejecting content that screams aspiration and are instead looking for ways to share in and mitigate our collective exasperation. So what’s to fill this anti-influencer void? More unpolished, even unhinged, content.  

64-year-old character actor Leslie Jordan has seen his following balloon from 80k to 4.2 million thanks to a stream of monologues showcasing the absurd mundanity of lockdown – ironing for fun, baton twirling for exercise, watching porn while eating cereal.  

But we’re the stars, too. From live baking and hair-coloring tutorials to yoga flows in cluttered bedrooms, to organized weekly Zoom sessions, we’re all content creators and each other’s influencers, now more than ever. “Coming to you live” from the physical and emotional messiness of quarantine is recalibrating our relationship with reality, causing us to consciously avoid unreasonable expectations and embrace “doing the best we can do” as the new form of “living our best life”.

Heineken’s recent spot montages the relatable pain points of our endless digital gatherings and nods to the fact that quarantine life isn’t great, but we’re all trying to make it through. 

Shift three: Optimistic content has become a balm to cure anxiety

Optimism was already growing as a countertrend to the vitriol on the internet, but today, it’s flourishing.  During the pandemic, against a backdrop of endless doomsday news, we’re clamoring for more optimism. The sarcasm and troll-like tone that was once the hallmark of the internet is being replaced by content that uplifts.  

For a moment this week, “Duck Pool Party,” a stream of ducks playing in a pool, was the most viewed Reddit live stream. Even notoriously snarky brands like Wendy’s have shifted their Twitter strategy, at least temporarily, to encourage camaraderie through games, activities, and shared stories.  

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, making it a great way of communication, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.  

Shift dour: Fascination with facts

In March, consumers were letting out a collective sigh of exhaustion as their inboxes filled with branded emails detailing how we were all “in this together”. But against the background of a pandemic, these vague platitudes have a counter-effect, reminding us all just how much these companies haven’t been there for us in the past, what little cooperation and communication we received from airlines and car companies before, and what little practical application they have in this stripped back version of reality.  

Instead, we want to hear the straightforward truth. Unlikely figures like Dr. Fauci and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo have emerged as the leading men of the pandemic, and Cuomo’s curt, distinctively Dad-toned Powerpoint slides have found a cult following of their own. Frito Lay’s COVID-spot “It’s About People” has won praise for saying what they were doing to help employees, instead of selling chips. 

But the most trustworthy brand voice comes from a most unlikely player: Steak Umms. The frozen meat company has emerged as a “voice of truth” thanks to their straight-forward, no-nonsense tweets that are at times, radical, at least for a corporate brand. Their willingness to tweet bold opinions– and not mild platitudes–earned them double their pre-COVID audience and the admiration of the internet.  

When we emerge post-crisis, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands. Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the “new normal”.

Megan Routh is a cultural anthropologist, writer, and strategist at Open Mind Strategy whose expertise lies in translating cultural insights and trends into actionable strategies for Fortune 100 companies including PepsiCo, Calvin Klein, JP Morgan Chase, Mondelez, Target, and the United States Postal Service.

The post Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/06/11/chaotic-communication-covid-19-is-rewriting-our-cultural-rules-of-connection/

[wikimakemoney]

Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection

30-second summary:

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, they’re increasingly unannounced, unplanned and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-COVID habits. It’s communication chaos.

While it seems haphazard, each call, chat and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of IRL intimacy and democratizes digital communities.

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings.

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.

When we emerge post-COVID, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands. Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the ‘new normal.’

Talk to any Millennial or Gen Z’er two months ago, or… text them; they would say there are fewer things more anxiety provoking than actual, in-real-time phone calls. The abruptness; the uncontrollableness; the awkward pauses. But that was the Old World. In the solitude of COVID induced quarantine, a craving for intimacy and personal connection means consumers, once notoriously adverse to spontaneous, face-to-face communications, are now clamoring to hear each other’s voices and see each other’s face.

Verizon fielded over 800M phone calls per day within the first two weeks the country was locked down; the word “Zoom” has become a stand-in to mean any “video chat,” and apps like Houseparty have seen downloads increase 70 fold.

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, they’re increasingly unannounced, unplanned and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-pandemic habits. It’s communication chaos.

Quarantine and the COVID crisis have totally rewritten our cultural rules of communication. But the frantic ways we’re corresponding now will likely shift the way we connect long beyond the end of lockdown.

Shift 1: A quest for intimacy in digital communities

Your bestie going live. Your boss going live. Your bank going live. When we were ordered to stay home, it only took a matter of days for everyone to start broadcasting themselves, most times to seemingly chaotic and confusing ends.

Recently on IG live, comedian Whitney Cummings agreed to talk to anyone in attendance: she wound up chatting with baby squirrels.

I just did an IG live with anyone who asked me to join and I was scared but then the person I picked had baby squirrels and I will now be doing these a LOT pic.twitter.com/MztHwbIkYZ

— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) May 2, 2020

The official, verified account of Skittles has, on more than one occasion, stirred up drama in the comments section of Bowen Yang and Julio Torres’ Instagram Live chats.

Club Quarantine— a daily digital Queer dance party that happens every night via Zoom– allows virtual clubgoers to join in with their cams, or just watch from behind a black tile, eliciting both an exhibitionism and vouyerism harking back to the random recklessness of the bygone Chat Roulette era.

But while it seems haphazard, each call, chat and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of IRL intimacy and democratizes digital communities.

Club Quarantine is not just a fun party; it’s a way for young queer people all over the world to be exposed to a community they may never have been able to access, or even imagine, before.

As more white collar workers are beginning to wonder not when they’re going to return to the office, but why they would ever return to an office at all, major coastal cities are staring at an exodus of their creative class and a bit of their cultural capital.

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.

Take The Wing, a women’s co-working space founded in New York City with offices in chic urban hubs like San Francisco and London.

When forced to close, they quickly pivoted from Millennial-pink meeting rooms to Zooms, making the interconnectedness of their community and celebrity-speckled programming accessible online for people all over. 

Shift 2: Exasperation with asperation

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings.

When the crisis hit, Influencers and celebrities were among the first to draw our ire for using their privilege to improve their situations: fleeing from (highly infectious) cities to (highly staffed) second homes, and broadcasting (off-tune) singalongs after just a few days of being confined to their sprawling estates.

The highly-filtered, everything-is-perfect image that is the hallmark of influencer and celebrity marketing has never been less appropriate than it is now.

In a global crisis, consumers are rejecting content that screams aspiration and are instead looking for ways to share in and mitigate our collective exasperation. So what’s to fill this anti-influencer void? More unpolished, even unhinged, content.

Sixty-four year old character actor Leslie Jordan has seen his following balloon from 80k to 4.2 million thanks to a stream of monologues showcasing the absurd mundanity of lockdown: ironing for fun, baton twirling for exercise, watching porn while eating cereal.

But we’re the stars, too. From live baking and hair-coloring tutorials, to yoga flows in cluttered bedrooms, to organized weekly Zoom sessions, we’re all content creators and each other’s Influencers, now more than ever.

“Coming to you live” from the physical and emotional messiness of quarantine is recalibrating our relationship with reality, causing us to eschew unreasonable expectations and embrace “doing the best we can do” as the new form of “living our best life.”

Heiniken’s recent spot montages the relatable pain points of our endless digital gatherings and nods to the fact that quarantine life isn’t great, but we’re all trying to make it through.

Shift 3: Optimism is self-care

Optimism was already growing as a countertrend to the vitriol on the internet, but today, it’s flourishing.

During the pandemic, against a backdrop of endless doomsday news, we’re clamoring for more optimism. The sarcasm and troll-like tone that was once the hallmark of the internet is being replaced by content that uplifts.

For a moment this week, “Duck Pool Party,” a stream of ducks playing in a pool, was the most viewed Reddit livestream. Even notoriously snarky brands like Wendy’s have shifted their Twitter strategy, at least temporarily, to encourage camaraderie through games, activities and shared stories.

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.

Shift 4: Fascinated with facts

In March, consumers were letting out a collective sigh of exhaustion as their inboxes filled with branded emails detailing how we were all “in this together.”

But against the background of a pandemic, these vague platitudes have a counter-effect, reminding us all just how much these companies haven’t been there for us in the past: what little cooperation we received from airlines and car companies before, and what little practical application they have in this stripped back version of reality.

Instead, we want to hear the straightforward truth.

Unlikely figures like Dr. Fauci and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo have emerged as the leading men of the pandemic (and even more bizarrely, sex symbols), and Cuomo’s curt, distinctively Dad-toned Powerpoint slides have found a cult-following of their own.

Frito Lay’s COVID-spot “It’s About People” has won praise for saying what they were doing to help employees, instead of selling chips.

But the most trustworthy brand voice comes from a most unlikely player: Steak Umms.

The frozen meat company has emerged as a “voice of truth” thanks to their straight-forward, no-nonsense tweets that are at times, radical, at least for a corporate brand.

Their willingness to tweet bold opinions– and not mild platitudes–earned them double their pre-COVID audience, and the admiration of the internet.

When we emerge post-crisis, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands.

Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the ‘new normal.’

Megan Routh is a cultural anthropologist, writer and strategist at Open Mind Strategy whose expertise lies in translating cultural insights and trends into actionable strategies for Fortune 100 companies including: PepsiCo, Calvin Klein, JP Morgan Chase, Mondelez, Target and the United States Postal Service. With a decade of experience conducting research, moderating workshops and cultivating trend and cultural intelligence across countries in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, Megan has helped clients uncover emerging directions in culture, business and consumer behavior to develop strategies and innovate products, services, and experiences.

The post Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection appeared first on ClickZ.

source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/05/25/chaotic-communication-covid-19-is-rewriting-our-cultural-rules-of-connection/

[thelandofffanfictrash]

Real Talk: Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie

Name: Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie

Fandom(s): Calvin and Hobbes

Chapters: 11

Description: When Calvin's Duplicates manage to turn themselves back into humans, they team up with Moe so they can take over the world and get payback on Calvin and Hobbes. Join Calvin and Hobbes as they go on one of their biggest adventures yet in this thrilling story! Be sure to read the author's note inside.

Summary: This author takes a crack at speculating what a Calvin and Hobbes movie would be like, featuring Calvin's Duplicates and Moe trying to take over the world.

This fic makes me scared to think of what would happen if Hollywood got their hands on Calvin and Hobbes.

Not because it's realistic in the slightest. No. Because it literally uses every Hollywood cash-grab trick in the book.

This fic is a terrifying abomination of every single trope present in these kinds of movies, plus even more crap that makes absolutely zero sense in any and every context. It's honestly ridiculous how much this author hits the nail on the head while at the same time throwing their own fic completely off the rails in the most illogical way possible.

We'll start with the plot. The plot starts off fine, with Calvin and Hobbes having a normal day like they would in the comic strips. At the same time, though, the duplicates come in and, without any context, say they want revenge on Calvin (even though I DEFINITELY remember from the comic strips that they were totally fine with being worms to the point of being ecstatic), so they immediately go to Moe and team up with him to...take over the world????

There's the first thing that doesn't make any sense for a Calvin and Hobbes movie. Calvin is a six-year-old kid with an ordinary life in an ordinary town. It makes NO sense for him to suddenly be thrown into a “save the world” plot, ESPECIALLY one as convoluted as this one's going to get.

After teaming up with Moe, the duplicates then start wreaking havoc...in three different cities and a “snow desert” (as Calvin called it). We start in Calvin's hometown, where one of the duplicates is wrecking buildings with a wrecking ball. We then get on a train to chase down another duplicate before Calvin somehow manages to derail the train and they end up in Chicago. Another duplicate then steals Calvin's magical flying box and flies all the way to Las Vegas, where another duplicate already is framing Calvin and stealing millions of dollars from casinos...somehow. Calvin and Hobbes catch up in the Ferrari from Ferris Bueller, get back the box, stay in a hotel in a VIP room, get chased down by the police, and get two of the duplicates arrested. They then fly their box over the “snow desert” before encountering another duplicate and quickly (as in the span of a couple paragraphs) defeat him and find a GPS that leads them to the location of “Moe's fortress”. They get to the fortress to find mechanical versions of themselves that they quickly beat (in another couple paragraphs) before Calvin gets shot by a ray gun that makes Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, and Tracer Bullet appear from out of nowhere for no reason. Team Calvin then follows the bad guys to their space fortress where they figure out Moe's dad, Dr. Scientist (dumbest name ever by the way) was also in on the plot. Team Calvin defeats Dr. Scientist, Moe, and the duplicates one final time before the space fortress crashes and the government arrests the bad guys. We end off with some other weird Calvin with no stripes on his shirt finding the remains of the robots and I guess setting up a sequel or something.

Do you see what I mean about this plot being a mess? It goes absolutely everywhere and tries to be everything without understanding what it's doing. It just ends up being unfocused and terrible. There's also absolutely no logic to it either. Why do the duplicates scatter this much? Why does every duplicate get taken down in linear succession from Ohio to Chicago to Las Vegas and then to wherever this snow desert place is? Why is this evil scientist character a thing? Why do the bad guys have a ray gun that makes Calvin's imaginary alter-egos appear? WHY ARE CALVIN AND HOBBES OKAY WITH ANYTHING THAT'S HAPPENING????

This fic doesn't fit in with the tone of Calvin and Hobbes at all. Calvin and Hobbes is supposed to just be about two buddies that enjoy life together with the occasional imaginary side-trip every so often. There aren't any world-ending stakes involved and trying to stick them in just feels awkward.

Speaking of imaginary, author doesn't seem to get the meaning of that word. In this fic, everything that was once only part of Calvin's imagination suddenly becomes real. It's really jarring, especially when author states Hobbes is Calvin's imaginary friend in the first paragraph of this fic. Making all these things real feels like a huge cop-out because author wants to have the references without having to be creative with it.

On that note, let's not forget the references. This fic graces us with the duplicates, Moe, Spaceman Spiff, Tracer Bullet, Stupendous Man, the box (which is the Time Machine in this fic, but also functions as the Duplicator and the Transmogrifier), a particularly dangerous wagon ride, Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and even a mention of Susie (and probably even more references I either forgot about or didn't catch). I get wanting to have these kinds of references in your fic, but you don't need to throw in every single one of them at once. It gets to be a bit of sensory overload after a while.

Oh, but we're not done yet. Author really wants us to FEEL like this is a soulless cash-grab movie by throwing in as many pop songs as possible, although a lot of their song choices are kind of strange. A lot of the songs are actually Michael Jackson songs, which is pretty baffling. There's also stuff like “Kung Fu Fighting”, “Danger Zone”, and “Eye of the Tiger” (which is the most on-the-nose song choice possible for a Calvin and Hobbes movie, meaning author definitely uses it multiple times). The strangest choice was in chapter 2, when author decided to use “Escape from the City” from Sonic Adventure 2. I still don't really get that one.

And, as the final nail in the coffin, while it starts off fine, the grammar gets pretty bad toward the end of the story. I don't even know how a story starts off so well only to devolve into such a mess by the second chapter.

Overall, “Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie” captured the feeling of watching a soulless Hollywood cash-grab movie while simultaneously being completely and utterly baffling and painful to read through in its own right. Nothing made sense, there was no shame, and any critic would rate it so ridiculously badly that it would be the biggest box-office flop in the history of cinema. 0/10 would not watch again.

Also, I'd rather die than live in a world where Calvin is voiced by Tom Kenny. Just putting that out there.

[ninatodita]

1. Name 1 thing you miss about being a kid. Being in the present 2. What was your favorite musical group when you were a kid? probably the black eyed peas or smth 3. When was the first time that you had alcohol? like 10  4. What is your worst dating experience? a guy showed me a picture of himself on a motorcycle as a way to “impress” me. i got like second hand embarrassment  5. What is the craziest thing you have ever done? if i ever told my mom that i smoked cigarettes in my room when i was younger she would hit me. so probably that 6. Name one thing that not many people know about you. i’m scared my ass is starting to sag 7. What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? being quietly powerful 8. Do you have any phobias? heights  9. Name three countries you would like to visit. greece, peru, and india 10. If your house was on fire and you could grab only 3 things before leaving, what would they be? id, credit card, a sweater for later 11. Do you believe in extraterrestrials or life on other planets? ya 12. Do you believe in the paranormal? ya 13. What would be your dream job? having a desk in an office and i just do paperwork and input data in a computer. i get an hour for lunch and there’s parking right outside the building.                                               

14. If you could have 3 wishes granted, what would they be? money, the desire to work out, and better natural eyebrows/ eyelashes

15. If you HAD to change your name, what would you change it to? i like my first name but i would drop my dad’s last name and take my great-grandmas 16. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? new orleans 17. If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left. eat, cry, listen to haydn 18. What crazy activities do you dream of trying someday? adopting a baby

19. If you could go on a road trip with any person (dead or alive), who would you choose and where would you go? i would choose prince and we would go where ever he would want to go 20. Any tattoos or pierced body parts? piercings on my face 21. What’s your favorite color? like that 70s mustard color and pastel purple 22. What is your favorite flower? plumeria 23. What is on your bedside table? lamp, glasses case, hand lotion, mouth guard, sleep mask, headphones, vicks, and 2 stuffed animals  24. What was your best Halloween costume for Halloween? dressed up as lydia from beetlejuice 25. If you could be any cartoon character, who would you be? gene belcher 26. Are you a morning or night person? neither 27. Name a singer whose voice you can’t stand. iggy azealia or however u spell that bitchs name

28. If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do? trapeze 29. What do you remember about your high school prom? my pretty dress and how there was no food  30. What’s your favorite holiday? halloween  31. Have you ever been mentioned in a newspaper? yes actually  32. Have you ever gone skinny dipping or streaking? no 33. What body part do you get caught staring at? asses and boobs ..the usual 34. Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? boringly, the latter  35. What is your most treasured possession? my car 36. Adult Beverage of choice? cider 37. What is your favorite food? pasta the way i make it tho 38. Can you fake any accents? thick irish but only for like 30 secs  39. What’s the first thing you notice about the opposite sex? their ugly ass faces 40. Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? eat ass..im sorry im not brave enough 41. If you had to live under the sea what kind of an animal would you be? starfish 42. Most hated chore on the household chore list? buying groceries 43. In life who has had the most influence on you? my grandma 44. If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do?  45. If you could be one kind of beer which one would you be and why? i dont know beer  46. What extremely difficult life situation have you overcome and how did you do it? uhhh pass 47. What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? i didnt wear underwear one time and then wore a dress like a fucking moron. it was windy...etc 48. If you could choose, how would you want to die? laying in bed with clean sheets 49. If you could change the world what would you do? lmao 50. Name 1 thing you love about being an adult i take better care of myself now than when i was younger obv 51. Which would you rather have, $50,000 or true love? my instinct is to go for the money  52. Do you believe everything happens for a reason? no not always 53. What song always makes you happy when you hear it? heart love -albert ayler 54. Who’s the funniest person you know? my old coworker  55. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? the voicemail at my dentist office 56. How big is your bed? its literally 2 military cots pushed together and held in place with 2 mattress toppers 57. What is the wallpaper on your cellphone? a painting of a dog gnawing at the cork of a wine bottle 58. What’s the first thing you thought about this morning? will i be forced to do errands with others 59. Are you afraid of the dark? sometimes 60. 3 things you cannot live without? this list is making me realize how boring i am. i cant think of anything besides the obvious: credit card, headphones, clean underwear etc 61. Favorite song? if i cant have you -etta james and harvey fuqua 62. Are you a giver or a taker? a lil bit a both  63. Virgin or not? no  64. Are you very sarcastic? sometimes 65. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? pfft no i slide those mf right off 66. Which you favorite icecream flavor? coffee  67. What was the last drink you drank? water 68. Do you prefer hugs or kisses? uhh by who? in general, none. 69. Have you ever gone cow-tipping? no im not a total loser 70. Do you like to sing in the shower? always 71. What’s your favorite midnight snack? captain crunch cereal 72. Whats your favorite movie? the first thing that came to mind was waynes world  73. Have you ever gambled at a casino? no and i never will 74. Have you thrown up in a car? no? 75. Do you scream on roller coasters? no 76. When did you go to your first funeral? 7 yrs old 77. Where did you go on your first airplane ride? 6 yrs old 78. Whats your favorite season? fall 79. Who was your imaginary friend? no one 80. Date someone older or younger? older 81. If you don’t know the words to a song do you improvise? usually 82. What turns you on about the opposite sex? chris hemsworth & winston duke 83. What turns you off about the opposite sex? arrogance and lack of self reflection 84. What scares you the most and why? dying and knowing im dead cuz its scary yo 85. What do you do in your free time? lay in bed and waste time 86. Name 3 things in nature you find most beautiful? birds chirping early in the morning, fog, and when sunlight peaks through thick canopies in the rainforest 87. Tell me about something you really regret? oh god so many little things  88. Tell me about your favorite book, magazine or comic? calvin and hobbes is nostalgic  89. Something or someone you miss the most from childhood? does myself count 90. Your best friend dies, what would you do? mourn  91. What is your zodiac sign? cancer 92. Name a couple of T.V. shows you watch a lot? the office, jane the virgin, the nanny, living single 93. Name a movie or movies you can watch over and over? beverly hills cop, zodiac, contagion, the princess and the frog 94. Would you ever go skinny dipping? if the water is warm 95. Have you been told you can sing well more than once? no lol  96. What is the strangest dream you’ve ever had? ballerinas were sitting on the banister and then one jumped on my back and tried to murder me 97. What were you doing the last time you really had a good laugh? teaching kids origami 98. What is your happiest childhood memory? the summer in mexico 99. If you could take a one month trip anywhere and money was not a consideration, where would you go? new york  100. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? consistency 

[hottytoddynews]

Growing up in a small town in the ’90s, I don’t think Christmas could have gotten any better for me. I’m originally from Flagstaff, Arizona, one of the only cities in Arizona where it snows. I’m fortunate enough to have had plenty of white Christmases. My family always got a real tree and made a day out of decorating it. We would go to Christmas Eve mass and then to the neighbor’s annual party right after.

Christmas day usually consisted of waking up early to open gifts at our house and then head down to Phoenix to my grandparents’ house for a day full of eating the biggest Italian spread that you can imagine as well as gift-giving with first, second and even third cousins. 

All of these traditions have one thing in common. There were always Christmas movies playing in the background. I definitely have more than three favorites, but for all of our sakes, I’ll only share a few. 

The Santa Clause

The one with Tim Allen. There’s three of them, total, but obviously the original is the best. Allen’s character, Scott Calvin, his ex-wife and her new husband focus on making the Christmas season great for their son Charlie. This screams cliche Christmas for me. From the moment he puts on the Santa suit, the movie reflects most of the stories you hear about Santa growing up, including his crazy-fast weight gain and shaving every morning only to turn around and have a full head of white hair and a bushy beard right away. But Charlie knows what’s up: His dad is now the real Santa Claus. 

I believed in Santa Claus until I was 12 years old. I’ll never forget the day my older sister told me he wasn’t real. We were in our kitchen, and I was devastated, unsure if I’d ever recover from that bomb being dropped. I’m pretty sure that’s another reason why I love this movie so much: It brings Santa Claus and Christmas to life for me. Have you seen the way the North Pole is portrayed in this movie? How is that not a real place? It’s got to be.

Charlie never stopped believing. That is probably my favorite thing about this movie. Sweet Charlie, with his bowl cut – believe it or not, when I was growing up, I had a bowl cut, too! I can’t believe I just told y’all that. People thought I was a boy. I may be scarred for life – another reason why I identify with Charlie so much. Anyways, back to the point of this whole thing…

Santa Claus may not be a real person, and the North Pole, although geographically real, is obviously not a place where Christmas-obsessed elves spend 365 days a year building doll houses and Tonka trucks. But the spirit of Christmas is real, and I believe in it. The feeling of hope and happiness around Christmas is real. It brings families and friends together to celebrate and spend quality time. All gifts aside, what is better than those memories that you’ll have forever?

Jack Frost

Another one of my favorites – again, chock full of cliches – is “Jack Frost” with Michael Keaton and Kelly Preston. The Jack Frost band gets their big break right as Jack’s son Charlie starts Christmas break. (Woah, the son in this movie is also named Charlie. Mind = Blown.)

After a terrible car accident, Jack (played by Keaton) is reincarnated as a snowman when Charlie plays on a magic harmonica that his dad gave him. (Jack had told him that, no matter where they were, he could hear it if Charlie played it.) Charlie gets his dad back – at least for a while – and Jack gets a second chance to spend time with his son instead of hitting the road with his band. If that doesn’t tug on your heart strings, then I don’t know what will. 

I love watching Jack and Charlie get to have fun together. They go sledding, play tricks on the bullies from Charlie’s school and dominate snowball fights – all some of the most fun things about Christmas break. They build their relationship under the most unorthodox circumstances. Again, that’s a part of Christmas that just makes you feel good. 

Elf

Okay, so my final movie wasn’t made in the ’90s, but I can’t leave out “Elf.” I begged my coworker, Randall, not to write about it because it’s one of my all-time favorite movies. I could watch it in March and recite every single word. I love it that much. 

I know that my first two movies include plenty of Christmas cliches. I feel like “Elf” is almost satirical. It takes the story of the North Pole – and the naive elves that devote their lives to tinkering and caroling – to the next level. 

The quotes from this movie are the best! These are quotes you hear people using throughout the year, like “Bye, Buddy, hope you find your daaaaad” (uttered in the slowest, most drab voice, as if a narwhal said it). Oh wait, he did!

“Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?” Man, I wish it was socially acceptable to answer the phone like that every time it rings. What would you do if someone you were calling answered like that?

Then there’s the song Buddy sings when his dad mistakes him for a Christmas-gram. I know every word, and I’m not sorry. 

Once again, we find ourselves enveloped in this story of a family that comes together to believe in the true meaning of Christmas – so much so that it powers Santa’s sleigh after an aftermarket engine can’t pick up the slack anymore. 

In case it’s not blatantly obvious by now, I’m a big softie for family. I’m fortunate enough to come from a big, loud Italian family that is always in each other’s business. It can be a big pain sometimes, but there’s always a big love there, even when it isn’t the holidays. 

Writing this list of my favorite movies helped me realize a few things. For one, they all have that father-son bond thing going on. They all have that grand epiphany at the end, that family is the most important thing around the holidays, which just gives me all the feels. Finally, they all strive to spread the word about the magic of Christmas. Because, after all, ‘The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.”

Just another bit of advice from Buddy the Elf. 

Merry Christmas, y’all. Don’t ever stop believing in the magic of Christmas.

Elyse Lenaburg is HottyToddy.com’s social media manager. Email her at elyse.lenaburg@hottytoddy.com.

The post Best Holiday Movies: It’s Not Christmas Without Family appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[njawaidofficial]

'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Is a Relief From the Marvel Universe's Movie Baggage

http://styleveryday.com/2017/07/11/spider-man-homecoming-is-a-relief-from-the-marvel-universes-movie-baggage/

'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Is a Relief From the Marvel Universe's Movie Baggage

Tom Holland’s first solo outing succeeds by not getting bogged down 10 year’s worth of drama.

Marvel Studios has been building their cinematic universe framework for many years now and it’s expected to hit a fever pitch when Avengers: Infinity War hits in 2018. What officially started in 2008 with a mechanical man has grown to include gods, space adventures, and magic, as well as more down-to-Earth (literally and figuratively) television tales. As much as I love canon and long-form storytelling, Spider-Man: Homecoming made it feel like I was playing hooky from school. And I loved it.

Most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films have (even if it’s only their mid or after credit scenes) pushed forward the larger story of superheroes existing in the fictional world Marvel created, which is not unlike our own. In comics, and in other mediums, I appreciate “canon” stories. World building can be very exciting, not to mention lucrative. It’s why Universal is attempting a Dark Universe filled with monsters. But a well told, one-off tale can be just as enjoyable. Homecoming sort of falls in the middle and reaps the benefits of both worlds.

We pick up post-The Avengers (2012) as Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes is working with his crew on cleaning up the massive wreckage in New York City. Through the film we see the decommissioning of Stark’s Avengers tower and move to their post-Age of Ultron facility as well as an alternate view of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker cameo in Captain America: Civil War. And of course, just like every other iteration, there’s tons of Easter Eggs not just for the MCU, but Marvel Comics. Marvel has an official timeline so they don’t get confused about what’s happening when but the timeframe of Homecoming has made many of us scratch our heads by stating it picks up eight years after Avengers. It’s not a make or break issue for me in the grand scheme of things, but it did make me think back to all that’s happened in the MCU so far and what’s still to come. It’s a giant story.

I’ve never been a big Spider-Man lover, but one thing that always stuck out to me was the character’s fun-loving nature, despite the usual superhero struggles. Homecoming captured that fun and it made me feel like a kid again. I attached myself to superhero stories at a young age so when a film can bring me back to that time and those specific feelings, it gets bonus points in my book. This isn’t to say I didn’t have fun watching The Avengers, Guardians, or Thor but, when I watched those, I was viewing adults as an adult. Homecoming has an obvious youthful energy to it, and that’s credit to the screenwriters of course but also due to the film being populated by a much younger cast than Marvel is used to for its epics. Holland, Laura Harrier, Jacob Batalon, Zendaya, and Tony Revolori all hit the right notes as high schoolers, even though the roles are filled with actors in their 20s (Harrier is their “senior” at 27). From the Academic Decathlon to the homecoming dance and being underestimated by adults, Spider-Man: Homecoming created its own well developed mini-universe around Peter Parker’s “nerd school” and made me feel like I was part of it, even though I’m far removed in my age bracket.

The film has been compared to John Hughes’ classic works many times over (it even has some great 80s songs on the soundtrack) and has two actors who came up in the 80s, Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei, as stand-in dad Tony Stark and mother figure Aunt May. Having that authority figure or mentor voice is another reason this film feels so different from other MCU films. Tony had Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) in a similar role in Iron Man but with a different dynamic. And yes, there’s been a lot of talk over “young” Aunt May. Age, as they say, is but a number and truly subjective. (Calvin Stowell pointed out on Twitter Tomei is a year older than Rue McClanahan was when Golden Girls began.) There’s obviously a larger issue of age and gender in Hollywood I won’t get into here, but this latest incarnation of Aunt May comes off very heartfelt and genuine. She’s someone we’d all want in our lives and someone most of the Avengers don’t have. They have complicated, adult relationships, something Peter hasn’t really had to deal with yet.

Homecoming left me feeling energized in an otherwise adult-skewing superhero film world and for that I’m thankful. I loved Deadpool and Logan, but sometimes it’s nice to watch something that’s truly for everyone. The Guardians of the Galaxy films feel the furthest away from the MCU continuity at this point and another “fun” spot in the MCU to be sure, but things will evolve once Infinity War rolls around. After almost ten years, the franchise is understandably bogged down in drama. Interesting drama, sure, but it’s heavy too and while some of the films are more easily digestible for kids, they’ve gone to some pretty dark places. And as an adult living in our current political landscape, I would actually prefer for everything to not be so serious all the time. I need an escape from that. As much as I’ve grown to love the characters over the years, I’ll admit to having grown a bit weary over Tony and Steve arguing about what’s right every five minutes. And sure, Spidey will have baggage of his own if Marvel continues their deal with Sony (we technically don’t know what happened to Uncle Ben, we haven’t explored all of Peter’s powers, MJ was only barely introduced) but for now I’m content with this vivacious interlude.

Jill Pantozzi is a pop culture writer, critic and host focused on geek-friendly topics.

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#Baggage #Homecoming #Marvel #Movie #Relief #SpiderMan #Universes