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fanficshiddles · 3 years

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Dangerous Night, Chapter 19

‘I’ve always wanted to try proper goulash.’ Melissa said excitedly as she sat down in a restaurant with Jonathan.

The group were all out sightseeing, but Jonathan took Melissa off just the two of them to get lunch. They were going to meet up with the others again in an hour.

‘What do you mean by proper goulash?’ Jonathan quirked an eyebrow.

‘I’ve had goulash before, but not in its home country, where it will be made properly. Like pizza and pasta is best in Italy. Y’know?’ She grinned.

‘Mm, makes sense.’ Jonathan chuckled and picked up the menu. Though he had a feeling he knew what he was going to end up having.

‘I’ve never tried goulash before, so I best immerse myself in the Hungarian experience.’ He winked across the table at her.

They had some fancy wine with their meal and they both really enjoyed the goulash, Melissa was so happy to have finally tried it properly. It was much better than her own version she had tried once before at home.

‘What other delicacies around the world would you like to try?’ Jonathan asked as they enjoyed the rest of their wine before leaving.

‘Well, I’d love to try pizza in Italy, like I mentioned earlier. I would love to go to India to try proper spices, can’t beat a good curry. I bet it’s amazing over there. Blimi in Russia, they sound so much better than our pancakes. Ohh and kushari in Egypt sounds delicious.’ She said excitedly.

‘Kushari is very yummy.’ Jonathan hummed. ‘You certainly seem to be rather clued up on your worldwide cuisine.’ He grinned.

‘Yeah… I read a lot, especially about food. I’ve just always dreamed about traveling, so of course I’ve looked into traditional food for some places.’ She laughed.

‘I’ll make sure that you get to taste every single dish in each and every country.’ Jonathan smiled and reached across the table, taking her hand and rubbing the back of it. Making her smile widely.

After meeting up with the rest of the group, they all took the cable car up to Buda castle for a wander around and some scenic holiday snaps. Then they went down to the Danube river and experienced a boat ride.

Jonathan was sitting with Roper, Sandy and Corky, they were watching Melissa, Jed and Carol leaning over the side of the boat, taking some selfies together and enjoying the ride. Tabby and Frisky were sitting not too far away, keeping an eye on everything and everyone as usual.

‘Quite impressive last night, your girl.’ Corky said to Jonathan.

‘I know. It turns out she knows a few languages that we don’t. Czech, Latvian, Thai as well as Hungarian, obviously. She says she knows a bit of Japanese and can recognise some Russian and Greek words.’ Jonathan said proudly as he kept his eyes on his wonderful girl.

‘Wow, that’s really impressive.’ Sandy said. ‘Perhaps, she might come in useful for future meetings… We could do with someone trustworthy to know some of those languages, someone that our investors wouldn’t expect.’

‘That’s what I was thinking, too.’ Jonathan hummed and tapped his lower lip.

‘Do you think she would do it?’ Roper asked.

‘I think she would.’ Jonathan nodded.

‘Do you not think our business would scare her?’ Roper then asked.

‘She knows.’ Jonathan said confidently.

‘She is a smart girl. But she trusts Jonathan, and us.’ Corky chimed in.

‘Hell, she gets the blood out of my shirt without even questioning what happened.’ Jonathan chuckled.

‘Really?’ Roper raised an eyebrow in amusement.

‘Yep.’

‘Bloody hell, Pine. You do always land on your feet as the lucky one… Maybe it is time we had a woman involved. It’s up to you, since she is your girl. If you want to involve her more, it could be a good opportunity for the both of you to run the business together.’

Jonathan smiled, he had been thinking that too… He would love nothing more than to have Melissa at his side, running the business.

‘You’d need to train her how to use a gun, for protection.’ Sandy said.

‘I can help with that.’ Frisky said from the side.

He was best trained with hand guns, a good teacher too. Jonathan knew he would be perfect for the job.

‘That would be good, thank you.’ Jonathan agreed. ‘I will speak to Melissa first, make sure it’s something she would want. I don’t know if she would even be interested.’

The men had to stop talking because their women all came over and sat on their respective man’s lap.

Corky started whining like a dog and pouted. ‘Is my lap not good enough for anyone?’

Everyone started laughing. Jed reached over and pinched his cheek. ‘Aww poor Corky.’ She teased.

That evening, the group all went along to the Szechenyi Thermal Baths. They paid a hefty sum and had the place cleared for the evening so they had it all to themselves, no questions asked from the owners or staff.

Jonathan and Melissa found a nice secluded spot in one of the large outdoor baths. It was all beautifully lit up at night, giving a peaceful and attractive atmosphere. Having the place emptied for them too made it even better.

Jonathan smiled widely as Melissa wrapped herself around him on his lap, arms draped around his neck and her legs around his waist. He lazily stroked up and down her back while they enjoyed the heat of the water.

‘The guys were really impressed with the way you helped us out last night.’ Jonathan said proudly.

Melissa smiled and leaned in closer to him, resting her chin on his shoulder. ‘As long as I helped you out and saved you from a lot of bother down the line, that’s all I care about.’

Jonathan’s smile grew larger and he slid a hand up so he could glide his fingers through her hair, making her moan a little.

��Feel free to say no to what I am about to ask. I want your honest opinion, don’t say yes just to please me or because you feel you have to…’ He said gently.

She quirked an eyebrow, intrigued, and leaned back a bit to look at him.

‘I’ve been thinking…’

‘Uh oh, that’s dangerous.’ She teased.

‘Cheeky!’ Jonathan growled and squeezed her sides, making her giggle.

‘Sorry… What were you saying?’ She said seriously.

‘It was also mentioned with the others, too. And I have been thinking about it as well. I was wondering, whether you’d maybe be interested in stepping in with us during future deals, to pick up on any conversations that we might not catch, that our supposed translator might miss. And also, you know I am going to be taking over the business in time... Well, how would you feel about running it with me, as partners in every aspect.’

Jonathan wasn’t sure what to think, as Melissa was just looking at him with wide eyes and her mouth open.

‘As I said, lovely. If you don’t want to, just say no. It’s merely a suggestion, if you wanted to. There’s no pressure at all.’ He said quickly.

‘No, no, I… I’d LOVE to! I just… Can’t believe you’d actually want me to run it with you… Like, the entire business? I wouldn’t even know where to start!’

Jonathan breathed out in slight relief, he thought she was completely repulsed by the idea.

‘Well, if you want to that’s a nice start.’ He grinned. ‘Why wouldn’t I want you to run it with me? Hmm? I know you know the truth, lovely, but I don’t know how I got so lucky with you. You’ve never questioned it, never questioned me. Your trust is something that I hold dearly to me, I hope you know that.’

Melissa felt her heart melting. ‘I do know that. And I am really pleased that you trust me too, it means a lot to me as well.’

Jonathan cupped her face and kissed her passionately, taking her breath away completely. They pressed their foreheads together and Melissa slid her hands down his chest, under the water.

‘Uhm, does this mean I will need to join all the boring meetings all the time?’ She asked with a slight smirk.

Jonathan laughed and brushed his thumb over her lower lip. ‘You can leave the boring meetings to me, if you’d prefer. You can be totally involved or as little involved as you like.’

‘Does that mean I can boss you around as well as the others?’ She smiled innocently and parted her lips, sucking on his thumb suggestively as she pressed herself against him more, feeling him starting to harden against her.

Jonathan’s eyes darkened in lust. He slowly slid a hand up her back, then her neck and into her hair. Tugging hard, he pulled her head backwards and attacked her neck with a deep growl. He then stood up in the shallow water and turned them around so she had her back to the edge, until he spun her around and bent her over it.

He folded himself over her back and wrapped a hand around the front of her neck, squeezing lightly as she moaned, her eyes fluttering closed as he started grinding against her backside.

‘You can certainly try to boss me around, pet. But you’ll always submit to me in the end.’ He chuckled and bit down on her shoulder.

With his free hand he reached down and pushed his trunks down enough to get his cock free, the water was just above his knees so they didn’t have that to contend with. He knew Melissa’s wetness would be more than enough as it was, and water was often more of a hindrance than a help.

She moaned in delight when he tugged her bikini bottoms to the side, giving him enough access to slide his cock up and down against her, and just as he expected she was wet already for him. So he pushed into her slowly, making her body mould around him as he squeezed her neck in just the right way that had her practically cumming around him already.

When Jonathan was more than sure she was ready, feeling her clamp around him was enough of a sign she wanted more, never mind how wet she was too, he started fucking her hard on the edge of the pool.

They didn’t care about keeping quiet, whether the others heard or not. In that moment, neither of them would’ve even cared if hundreds of people suddenly started piling into the baths.

Though it was rushed and needy, both of them just desperate for release, pent up from their talk and being so close together in the water, skin on skin. When Jonathan came, he squeezed her neck harder at just the right time, making her cum too as he angled himself as best he could, hitting her deep as he emptied into her, growling and panting against her ear.

She cried out in pleasure when he released her neck, letting her gulp down plenty of oxygen. Heightening her orgasm at the sudden rush. She felt tingly all over and like her mind was floating on a cloud. She barely registered Jonathan reluctantly pulling out of her, sorting her bikini bottoms and turning her around to face him so he could embrace her again and sink down into the warm water.

Melissa was able to weakly wrap herself around him, head on his shoulder as he lightly stroked her back until she regained herself.

‘I’m definitely going to be the boss.’ She whispered lazily, making Jonathan laugh.

‘I’m sure you will be, lovely. I’m sure you will be.’

#Jonathan Pine #Tom Hiddleston #fan fiction #dangerous night #the night manager #jonathan pine x ofc #jonathan pine x original female character

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pempeeeperem · 4 years

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Next chapter will be postponed

I really thought I had more time, but plot inconsistencies are catching up. I knew for a while that I had to do some revisions of the earlier chapters, but I had hoped to get more chapters done before that. I had planned to finish the early game first, before I did some bigger changes. Well, it can’t wait any longer.

Let me explain my troubles to you by going a lil deeper into Lulu’s character and chapter 18. Spoilers are waiting ahead.

Lulu, oh Lulu, my child of sorrow. She’s been the character with the most inconsistencies. That is stemming from me going into this story with little thought to her character. I began with this widely accepted fanon of her being childish, naive, a little stupid and basically annoying, but as you know... the widely accepted fanon isn’t always a good idea.

I knew Veigar was to be the tiny master of bullshittery, trying to get through life as smoothly as possible and constantly being caught up by plot. Teemo has revenge written on his plate and he also tries to get his girl. Tristana has to overcome what has happened to her when she was younger and learn that Lulu is not the helpless girl she got to know her as. Rumble is there to cause trouble, Ziggs is causing trouble, as do Corki and Heimer, latter providing an important plot point later on.

Although all of them go through changes and have character development, Lulu has no clear starting point. My initial idea was “Lulu smart” & “Lulu tricks people for funsies”. Which is where the problem lies. Lulu is too smart to be doing a mistake as gravely as giving out Veigar’s phone number and she is not resentful enough to do so as payback. I had tried to fix this by having Lulu being angry at Veigar for something that happened before the story starts.

Which doesn’t work.

Right now, Lulu has shown much empathy for everyone, lots of love for her friends and some mischief. I want her to be this really emotionally intelligent person, who could be less intelligent on other aspects, but she isn’t dumb. The plot catalyst of tmob doesn’t work.

Which now brings me to chapter 18. It is called “Black is the complementary colour to purple, right?” and I believe that tells enough about its content. It was meant to be their condonation moment, they say sorry and love each other again. Well. The first draft from months ago intended Lulu as the one asking for forgiveness, but Veigar has done just as much shit and even if Lulu doesn’t know about all of it, he needs to apologize as well.

So far, so good, but how should this chapter go then? Lulu apologizes for giving out his personal data (which I’m planning to redact because implausible) and Veigar apologizes for... cursing Tristana without possibility to help? For possibly aiming Ziggs’ revenge on her? For forcing Lulu to pick a side? There is a lot that is going on. Both sides aren’t completely honest.

Another problem, I don’t know how much initial knowledge I should give Lulu about Veigar’s past. She knows about the mothership, does she know about Tristana? No, because Veigar doesn’t view it as meaningful and will be majorly baffled when he finds out that he’s the cause for her trauma. Does Lulu know about Teemo? Some stories, nothing wild. Does Lulu know about Veigar’s trauma? No, she senses it, but he doesn’t talk about it.

Does it make sense for Lulu to forgive him? I... don’t know. I think they’ve been divided for long enough. I want them to make up in chapter 18 and do mischief together or whatever, but does it make sense? A reminder: love and nonsensical hormones aren’t involved yet. They’re friends and while that is also blending, it’s not that blending.

Veigar is not able to help with the curse. There is no way. And that pisses Lulu off majorly, rightfully so.

Now, if I’m to change the phone thing, make Teemo’s and Veigar’s feud the catalyst - which it is supposed to be - then Veigar screws over Lulu and has to fight for their friendship. How in the world is he gonna make up for that? Well, it is nothing personal to Lulu. It is Veigar’s and Tristana’s business. I know better than to mess with my friends’ business unless they ask/allow me to. So, Lulu learning that resolves it..? I don’t know.

Lulu’s initial burden to overcome is her childishness, her disregarding the consequences of her actions, but I don’t want that development to be her character arc. She’s 21 or 23 in the story. She entered the current timeline at age 14 and was thrust into a situation too heavy for a child, dealing with the nowadays world, providing for herself, her magical abilities being frowned upon, etc. It would make sense that she doesn’t want to grow up, because her childhood was stolen, but would it result in this?

Ugh.

Meanwhile, she still wants to play matchmaker because Tristana and Teemo are stupid, and involves Rumble - but how?

Oh, and btw Poppy’s hatred for Veigar makes no sense anymore either. I couldn’t come up with a plausible idea, so I might just spoil what I had initially planned: Poppy is Lulu’s first matchmaking victim. Lulu convinces Veigar to help her and gets caught by Poppy in their scheme, perhaps through a counterfeited letter, and gets his collarbone broken in the process. Poppy is hurt and aims her anger for her failed relationship at Veigar, because she thinks he did everyone for a laugh. And who did they set up for Poppy?

Kennen. Which explains their behaviour in chapter 2.

So, I need a new reason for that too. Oh well, so much work lies ahead of me. My brother (a highly emotionally intelligent person) once told me how easy it is for him to read people and to move their feelings into the direction that could benefit him, the only difference between him and a psychopath is that he chooses to not abuse it. I wanted to model Lulu after this description. She successfully manipulated the Piltovian police officer and Rumble with her puppy eyes, it’s implied that she’s done that with Tristana before. Chapter 18 would have revealed that she could do the same with Veigar. At some point I thought maybe it’s a spell, she can see aura, why not manipulate that. That’s less realistic and less scary, right? It’s such a spicy idea, but it’s also so evil and what is the consequence of it?

As you can see, it’s Lulu’s fault. Ahahahaha. In all seriousness, I need to rebuild her character. The inconsistencies are driving me crazy.

Check the schedule for info. I’m too lazy to post about update dates.

#author's note #I'm rambling again #spoiler #tmob #tiny master of bullshittery

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ginalover · 5 years

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Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon Revisit Their Lesbian Neo-Noir “Bound”

By Maureen Lee Lenker

Photos By Austin Hargrave for ET

June 06, 2019

Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly aren’t fans of watching themselves on screen — but they’ll make an exception for their 1996 film, Bound.

The Matrix masterminds the Wachowskis made their directorial debut with this noir about two women — femme fatale Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon) — who fall in love and team up to steal $2 million from Violet’s mobster boyfriend, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano).

Bound only made $3.8 million domestically upon its release, but it quickly became a cult classic in the gay community — long before each of the Wachowskis came out as transgender — and it catapulted the siblings to the highest echelons of directors.

We got Gershon, 57, and Tilly, 60 back together at Bibo Ergo Sum, a swanky bar with all the art deco vibes befitting these two femme fatales. There, the actresses vamped it up for a photo shoot, including recreating the iconic Sophia Loren-Jayne Mansfield shot, and had the time of their lives reminiscing as they rewatched the movie together. The enduring warmth of their friendship and their outrageous, heartfelt memories left us fit to be tied.

In the first scene, Violet and Corky share a sultry glance in an elevator, and a palpable connection is born — in fact, it’s still present today in their offscreen friendship.

Gina Gershon (Corky): My agents didn’t want me to do it. Literally, I was told, “You are ruining your career doing this movie. We will not let you do this movie.” I never get to play the hero and to get the chick. I mean, it’s the typical part that I’ve watched my whole life, and it’s never been a woman. I left my agents over it. Jennifer Tilly (Violet): I wanted my hair to have a violet sheen, so it’s black but if you see it in the correct light, it’s very dark. I got this nail polish. It had just come out, and I went into Chanel and they said, “Oh, we only have one bottle. We’re saving it [for] somebody, but they were supposed to pick it up yesterday. We’re going to sell it to you.” It was called “Vamp.” All my makeup is like shades of violet, like my lipstick is purple-y. Gershon: I was coming right off of Showgirls, and I was so ultra femme in that. [I cut] all my nails and my hair off, and I started boxing. I had been dancing for five months, so I was so floaty and I wanted to be in my body more like a boxer…Marlon Brando, Monty Clift, Robert Mitchum. I went to all those guys. There’s a certain quietness. I wanted to be like all the guys I project [my ideas of heroism and masculinity] on to. Tilly: It was a classic film noir, except instead of the lead being a male, it was Corky. A studio offered the [Wachowskis] a lot more money to make the movie, but they said that they had to make Corky a man. Gershon: As soon as I met Jen, I thought, “Oh my God, all I have to do is watch her.” She was so amusing and so fun. It’s just so easy to watch her, like her butt and her legs. It made my job easy to kind of objectify her. We liked each other as soon as we met. Tilly: Once they got the two of us in the room, I thought, “This is a girl that I can really see being in a relationship with.” Gershon: You’re the really, truly the only real actress I’ve stayed friends with…

Rattled by her attraction to Violet, Corky goes to a lesbian bar to try to pick up a date as a distraction. It fails though, and Corky stews at home alone while playing her Jew’s Harp.

Tilly: This scene here it was all [advisor and feminist sex writer] Susie Bright’s friends. That’s why the bar scene is so authentic — it’s all lesbians. Gershon: Susie Bright, she was supposed to take me around. The Wachowskis thought it was important that I meet her. She was an authority figure, and [a writer] in the lesbian community. I was really excited to talk to her. Tilly: I never met her. She was pretty much advising Gina. And the thing is, Gina’s character is a lot more hardcore lesbian than Violet. Gershon: We [Gershon and Bright] were going to go cruising around San Francisco. When I got there she couldn’t do it, so she pointed me in the right direction to go to certain bars [on my own]. I just went out and felt the vibe and met people. I actually had a really fun night [Laughs]. I’m definitely not talking about what happened. Just that I felt a lot more confident by the time I got back to L.A. Tilly: She’d come in and she’d be like, “Uh, you know, we need to come up with a new pick-up line. I tried that pick-up line on some chick last night, it didn’t work.” Gershon: I just thought I’d be inspired. I certainly was inspired with tattoos and stuff. I ended up choosing my own tattoos and where I wanted them and all that stuff. Tilly: Somebody said, “Oh, you know, females don’t have any sex organs.” [Susie] goes, “Yes we do; it’s called a hand.” So they did do a lot of shots of hands. Gershon: I really liked the hip [tattoo] that wrapped around my hip and crept up. You saw the top of it coming out of my pants sometimes. I thought that was really sexy. I had seen that on some girl at a bar, and I was like, “Oh that’s hot.” Tilly: That’s also her Jew’s Harp. Gershon: I’m always trying to get my Jew’s Harp in anything! It was the only movie I’ve ever actually had it in there…I needed something in my hands, and I liked the idea of when she’s thinking about the plan, to have something in my hand.

Violet asks Corky, who is at the apartment complex doing plumbing work, to help her fetch an earring she dropped down the sink. It turns out to be a seduction ploy and the two share a steamy first kiss.

Gershon: I’m doing the pipes. I was a little paranoid. I’m definitely not good at any of that stuff, so I just needed to be convincing…I kind of got into it. It’s so dirty and messy, and you’re shoving this thing in the plug. It was fun. I just wanted to look cool, like I knew what I was doing. I liked all the physical activity. It just made me feel like I was doing all the things that I wish I knew in real life. I remember my mom said, “You’re a really good actress.” I asked, “Why?” She said, “Because I believed the plumbing stuff.” Tilly: Look at this, we’re like equals. You know I’m full of s–t; I know that you know I’m full of s–t. We both know what you’re here for. Gershon: Look at your body. Honestly, whenever I wasn’t sure of what I was doing I would just stare at your chest. Tilly: Method actor. [Laughs] The Wachowskis wanted [an] extreme close-up of our lips. We finished shooting the scene, and the Wachowskis had to get a special camera that cost an extra $10,000. The dailies were coming in looking so good, [producer Dino De Laurentiis] finally got [it for them]. So, we went back and shot that — just a close up on our lips. We were a little nervous. I remember Gina was like, “The camera’s going to look up my nose!” But it’s such a beautiful shot. Gershon: I’m so comfortable feeling your boobs. Tilly: This scene where I take her finger — I just thought, “Oh, [I’ll] put it in my mouth!” I improvised that. She’s like, “Oh, where’s this finger going? Oh, it’s not going south, it’s going north. Ok, now it’s going south.”

Later that night, Violet comes to Corky’s truck to apologize for all the things she “didn’t do” to Corky that afternoon, and they kiss again.

Gershon: “I hate women who apologize for sex” — That’s a truthful line. I do hate women who apologize for sex. Why should they be like, “Oh my God, I’m sorry I really like this.” I thought it was a very smart line, because it was truthful, you know? Tilly: [Of all our romantic scenes together, we filmed this kissing scene first.] I had never kissed a girl before, onscreen or off. And I was a little bit nervous. Gershon: I brought her tequila and chocolate before our first scene that we were fooling around. Tilly: I was in my trailer like “an actress prepares,” and I hear, “Knock-knock, I got tequila and chocolate.” Gershon: I said, “Here’s your preparation.” Tilly: We actually had to reshoot that scene, but they said, “Not because you girls were drinking.” There was a problem with the camera work.

They go back to Corky’s apartment and have sex.

Tilly: A lot of times, as a young actress in Hollywood, you read the love scene, and it seems like the writer is just getting himself off. Like writing three pages of porn. When you’re reading this, it was very matter of fact. Gershon: [The Wachowskis] knew every angle, every cut. They came from doing graphic novels so they really had it in their heads. Tilly: They didn’t want it to be a man’s version. There’s a male version of what lesbians are, and you see it in the soft-core porn movies all the time. They really wanted to get it right. They wanted to be very respectful of the lesbian community. They wanted it to be very, very authentic and raw, not pornographic. Although it was pornographic because we’re hot. [Laughs] Gershon: It was like the four of us having sex. It was like: “Foot! Wall! Head!” It was so choreographed. The camera [is] moving around, and you have one wall go up, another wall went down. Tilly: They wanted to do it in one long continuous shot. They had guys pulling at the walls. It was like a ballet between the Wachowskis, the crew, [and us]. [They’d be] yelling through the megaphone, “Breast!” and then we knew the breast was in frame. Gershon: I knew I had to curl [my toes] on cue. I think it could have been a little bit more connected to an orgasm or to a sexual feeling. I felt it was more a mechanical thing. [But] it was very fluid. No pun intended. Tilly: Gina is like the coolest person to ever do a love scene with. She was playful. I would be like, “Can you put your hand here so my cellulite doesn’t show? Can you prop my breast to make it look a little more plump?” Gershon: In between takes, we’d talk about shoe [shopping], and we were laughing so hard. Tilly: Gina had weights on the set, so before a scene she would work out [with] weights to make her muscles [bigger]. Gershon: Every guy actor I’ve ever seen on set does pushups and stuff if he doesn’t have his shirt on. I was like, “Oh this is what the dudes do, so this is what I’m going to do,” because it kind of pumps your arms up. It’s all very macho too. You know Corky had a lot of armor on, she was very protective of herself. The more I could feel that, the better I felt as Corky. Tilly: We had a lot of problems. We almost got a NC-17. Gershon: There was one take that all four of us were like, “That’s the one.” It was like a real love scene. You didn’t see a boob. You didn’t see anything; it was all suggested. It really played on our face more than anything. Tilly: You can see my fingers on her crotch. You see nothing; you see a hand! Gershon: It was the emotionality. Tilly: [The rating board] said, “It looks like they’re really doing it.” And the [Wachowskis] go, “Let me get this straight. If the girls weren’t such good actresses, you wouldn’t have a problem?” They were embarrassed, and they said, “Yes.” Gershon: God forbid we have these two women actually in love. We had to go with the “f—ing” scene. In the “f—ing” scene, they were really going at it, and it wasn’t as emotional. They were okay with that, which is bulls–t. Tilly: The Wachowskis said, “It’s homophobia, pure and simple.” The shot that we used was so much more elegant. This one’s a lot more graphic. They sprayed more sweat on us. In the last part of the scene, my boob accidentally fell into frame, like, “I want to be on camera too!”

After making a connection, Violet floats the idea of stealing $2 million from her mobster boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), which he has left drying all over the apartment after a job gone wrong doused the money in blood. The scene cuts between Violet and Corky as they plot and the action of their plan unfolding in real time.

Tilly: There was a scene where Corky’s putting in all her little burglar tools [in her ears], and they intercut it with me putting on my lipstick and my mascara. The Wachowskis said, “Those are your tools. Those are Violet’s tools and [those are] Corky’s tools. This is how Corky gets by, by stealing, and this is how Violet gets by, by painting her face.”…Afterwards, they sold all the stuff. You go over to Joey’s house, and it’s like the set. He even bought the wallpaper and put it in the hallways.

Violet convinces Caesar that fellow mobster Johnnie (Christopher Meloni) stole the $2 million, leading to a sudden bloodbath in their apartment, as he kills both Johnnie and mob boss Gino (Richard C. Sarafian).

Tilly: There was also another shot that they wanted — when the head of the mafia gets shot, they said they wanted him to fall like a mighty oak in the forest. The stunt person said, “Nobody can fall that way, it’s too dangerous.” They had to get another $20,000 dollars from Dino De Laurentiis. They created this machine that was like a lever. So, they put him on the machine and then the lever went backward so when he falls, he falls straight back…Christopher Meloni and everyone, they’re shooting [the place] up, the [Wachowskis] wanted me to duck behind the bar. And I thought, “Oh, here’s where she can show ice water doesn’t run in [her] veins.” So I was going to do a thing like, “Oh she’s remembering when she was three and her mother shot her dad.” I thought This is a really good time for me to lose it. Like, “Oh my God, oh my God!” And they peak behind the bar, and they go, “What the f–k? Jennifer, what are you doing?” And I’m like, “Oh, I feel like I should be very upset here!” And they go, “No. Everything’s going according to plan. You planned it. You’re waiting for it to be over so you can move on to the next step of your plan.”

After Caesar murders his associates, including a mob boss, he realizes Violet has two-timed him and finds Corky next door. They fight; he ties Corky up and dumps her in the closet. But eventually, in the most metaphorical shot, she busts out, and the trio face-off in a final showdown, which Violet ends by shooting Caesar in cold blood.

Tilly: You’ve got to really adore your costar and have a good relationship and a trusting relationship because it’s a really violent scene…[Gina] sprained her wrist or finger or something like that. But you got to go for broke. You can’t be precious, you know? You’re doing fight scenes. You kind of have to go for it. Gershon: I definitely got whacked, and it hurt, but it was an annoying thing because I was just like, “I just need some ice.” But then there’s all this brouhaha on the set with insurance. They’re like, “Oh no, you have to go check it at the hospital.” I didn’t want to leave the set. It definitely hurt, but it would have been fine with ice. I didn’t need stitches or anything. I guess they needed to check that I didn’t break anything, which I didn’t. I just felt really guilty having to leave the set, and I was like, “We don’t have time for me to leave the set right now.” You’re bound to get a little bruised here and there. Not a big deal. Tilly: Oh! She explodes out of the closet! Gershon: I kick out the closet door. It was symbolic for so many women. The whole idea of coming out of the closet. It was very satisfying and very heartwarming. Many girls have come up and said that it helped them come out. It helped change their lives, and that’s really meaningful. Tilly: [The moment where I kill Caesar], they were saying like, “This is a Terminator, ‘I’ll be back’ moment.” Caesar goes, “You don’t want to hurt me. I know you don’t.” And she goes, “Caesar, you don’t know s–t.” They consciously put that in to be like an “I’ll be back” moment and they said, “That’s the Terminator moment when she says that.” It’s also really interesting in terms of some of the underlying themes that men think they know what women want.

Violet and Corky’s plot succeeds, and they ride off into the sunset together in the brand new red truck Corky bought with their money. All to the tune of Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady.”

Tilly: That was my dress. Those are my earrings. That’s my watch. I wore pretty much all my own clothes…After the movie, I gave some of the clothes to my sister. The dress, in the last scene, she shows up wearing it [one time] and I’m like, “You know how many lesbians would love to get their hands on that dress. That’s an artifact! It should be in a museum!” She’s like, “It’s my favorite dress!” Gershon: I love the end. I get the chick. I get a car. I get the money. You know what I mean? I was like a real hero. It’s not often, especially at that point, that the women get to be heroes. Those are always the guy’s part. I was just psyched. I’m like, “Hey, I got my girl. I’ve got a new car. We’re gonna go off into the sunset.” It was very satisfying. Tilly: When Gina goes, “Beep-beep” [and we see her new car]. In the audience, everyone laughs. I’m like, “Why is everyone laughing?” And they’re like, “That’s what every guy does when they get some money; they buy a red truck.” Gershon: I was pushing Sinatra, “The Best Is Yet to Come”. I was hearing that in my head, and I think they were toying with that, but then this is what they went with which was great. I mean you can’t go wrong with Tom Jones. Tilly: We had to reshoot the last scene too because, when they were driving away, you could see palm trees reflected in the windshield. Gershon: We always joked about what happens with the sequel. I think they had to split up when the mob was on them, and Violet ends up with some other rich guy at some point. Corky had to leave in order to protect Violet. They struggle, but I think they always come through, you know? Tilly: Everyone’s positive that they’re so in love, and they’re going to live happily ever after, but I really think in Violet’s nature, she’s a predator. I do not think it’s going to end well. Violet’s in love with Corky, but she’s very damaged and I just don’t think it’s going to be like one of those, “50 years ago, we met cute,” you know? Gershon: I’m really proud of this movie, probably more than any other film I’ve done. These women are sexy and they’re smart. They outsmart the bad guys. And they’re funny and witty. They were into each other; they didn’t need a man to help them. That was all a combination no one had really seen before. These parts weren’t around a lot. Tilly: I did have so many girls come up to me — and so many drag queens saying their drag name was Violet. It really made me feel, in a weird way, like I had a responsibility when all these girls would come up to me and say that they came out of the closet and realized they were gay after they saw this film. Gershon: [When we were making it], I kept thinking, “What do you guys, [the Wachowskis] know about being women? How did you write this thing?” And little did I know, at the time, they were really feeling something. They really were feeling bound up inside. So, it became that the metaphor had a deeper meaning. It wasn’t like, “Oh, aren’t they clever writers.” I thought, “Wow, they were going through this, and the world didn’t know.”

Celebrate 50 years of gay pride with Entertainment Weekly’s special LGBTQ double issue, on stands Friday. You can buy all six covers now, or purchase your individual favorites featuring Anderson Cooper, Wilson Cruz, Melissa Etheridge, Neil Patrick Harris, Janet Mock, and Ruby Rose.

#gina gershon #jennifer tilly #bound #PRIDE #entertainment weekly #are you kidding me look at these queens #please please make that sequel i'm begging

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switchcheek14-blog · 5 years

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‘Murphy Brown’ Cast Members Faith Ford And Joe Regalbuto: ‘When We Do Pick A Topic There’s No Sidestepping’

The wildly popular news sitcom Murphy Brown returns to CBS tonight after 20 years. Candice Bergen reclaims the role of Murphy Brown alongside Joe Regalbuto as Frank Fontana and Faith Ford as Corky Sherwood. It’s an entirely different media landscape since the last time the FYI team graced television sets and the whole gang is ready to tackle the modern world.

CBS Local’s Matt Weiss caught up with Faith Ford and Joe Regalbuto ahead of tonight’s premiere to discuss what it’s like to be together again, modern media and the humorous side of menopause.

MW- Good morning to you both, how’s it going?

FF- Great!

JR- Going good man, how about you?

MW- Doing well, doing well. Congrats on the big return tonight, how does it feel to have the gang back together?

FF- We love being together and it’s great to be in New York shooting the show now!

JR- It’s fantastic, every time we get together it’s a lot of fun.

MW- Coming from a local news perspective ourselves at CBS, you’re also covering news on the show. It’s scripted of course, so it’s a different form of news coverage but it’s there all the same. Do you all enjoy that task and what does it mean to you to be a source of information for people?

JR- That’s one of the most fun things that we can do. We’re at a critical time for news and we get to cover it. We’re playing news reporters on television and we get to cover any situation, any topic we want and without constraints…

FF- …Because it’s fiction, therefore we have more license to play.

JR- Our creative producer Diane English and Candice have both said that when we do pick a topic there’s no sidestepping. We’re able to go after it and we take a point of view, let’s put it that way.

MW- Obviously a lot has changed in the real world since the show’s been away but what has changed for your characters in the last 20 years?

FF- Well Corky’s in menopause, full on menopause [laughs]. So that’s different, but I can relate.

JR- It’s a funny menopause [laughs].

FF- So any woman out there who is there, getting there or knows what it’s like to be there should totally identify with Corky [laughs].

JR- You’ll get a few laughs between your hot flashes!

FF- That’s right!

JR- Listen, all the characters we’ve kind of built a history for them but we don;t spend a ton of time with that we want to get right to what’s going on now. Murphy and Frank along with Corky have been getting together since the show’s been over and we hook up and say hey.

FF- And Candice is so amazing as Murphy now as opposed to Murphy then. I mean there’s just sort of this ease and grace that she has, she’s so comfortable, so set in her ways, in the best way possible. She’s not shrill or anything like that and to see her in this energy dealing with these topics is pretty incredible to watch.

JR- You’re also reminded that the woman won five Emmy Awards. It’s no sort of magic that we’re all back here, she’s got a tremendous amount of talent.

FF- Her truth dealing with this is so genuine it brings tears to my eyes, she’s so genuine. She feels it in her heart for Murphy and you can see that it comes across.

MW- There must be such a comfort, I’d imagine it’s like getting reacquainted with an old friend I’d imagine.

FF- Oh yes.

JR- Completely. The set behind us when Faith walked in she started crying, Candice was weeping already and it’s very emotional. They really got down into the details for the set as well as Phil’s Bar it’s really remarkable.

FF- They recreated here (New York), not in Warner Brothers lot in Burbank which is what we were used to, it really made it feel like coming home again for us. It’s crazy, I was a heap on the floor when I first walked in.

MW- Even with all that comfort there have to be changes of course and today social media and news coverage has changed so much due to technology, how will that be reflected in this new iteration?

FF- From the get, That’s what Nik Dodani’s character is for, he’s our tech guy, he keeps us social in the media.

JR- We’re all amazed at how fast things are flowing. Even with the show and presenting the show and launching it, it’s unbelievable how many outlets there are now, how vast things are now. Candice will send out a picture and get like 80 texts back immediately, its nuts what goes on. So the show definitely has to catch up as well as us.

MW- Last question for both of you know, how would you describe this new version of Murphy Brown to all the prospective audience members out there?

FF- How would you describe it Joe?

JR- Smart as hell and very ambitious.

FF- No holds barred, but fun! We’re flawed, we’re definitely doing our thing but we’re human beings. We’re having fun but we’re dealing with situations head on and I think it’s a journey. Hopefully it won’t be divisive, I hope it will bring people together because that’s very important.

JR- And from some angles I actually look OK, I don’t look like I’m 120 on television. Some angles I look in my late 80’s and other’s I look good for a quick second and then it’s back [laughs].

FF- No! You look good Joe! Now he’s being Frank Fontana, he’s not Joe anymore [laughs].

MW- It’s obvious how much fun you all have together and I’m really excited to see that come through on the show again. Thank you both so much for talking to me today and good luck with the new season!

JR- Thank you!

FF- Thank you so much, take care Matt!

Murphy Brown returns tonight at 9:30 PM ET/PT, only on CBS. Check your local listings for more information.

Source: https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2018/09/27/murphy-brown-cbs-faith-ford-joe-regalbuto/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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caught-intherye · 7 years

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Cost Of Education

Sitting in a room that seems to have 50 times the square footage of my entire house, on the 5th row from the top, I can see everyone below me but the last person I pay any attention to is the professor at the bottom. The girl seven rows before me looks like she woke up before the sun, with blonde streaked beach waves falling from her braid, wrapped around her head like a crown. The irony of the girl to her right who looks like she woke up with ten minutes before this class started, wearing a beanie finding her palm to be a perfectly good pillow in the middle of this lecture about the laws against prostitution. I could never be a prostitute I think too much bang for your buck I chuckle out loud at my joke, if I don’t who will? Now I’m distracted by the scent of bad body odor, for a second I’m self-conscience about my own odor and I can’t remember whether I put on deodorant or not but then I notice a guy beside me opened his gym bag to pull out his phone charger (I judge him ever so slightly for having a Samsung, he’s probably super techy). Almost everyone has their laptop out, none of which are actually taking notes, I can see three people playing box head, five people on tumblr and a whopping 14 people just making those blue squares appear on their desktop page. The only reason my lap top is open, is because I’d rather have my hands resting on a key board than the table in front of me. My attention falls back on my professor as he’s pacing back and forth without talking, did he notice no one was listening? Did he ever really think we were listening? Then the short round man pushes up his glasses with a huff and looks at the ground shaking his head as if trying to remember something. My laptop makes the noise notifying me that I got an iMessage. It’s my manager from Starbucks, asking if I can come in early this afternoon at three; it’s already two thirty but if I leave now I can make it. I decide this lecture isn’t more important than an extra two hours on the clock so I pack up and leave.

On a bus that smells like sweat and urine, but I’d rather that than the other thing you do in the washroom. Now picking at my nails making a mental note to get them done after work, whenever I get fake nails no one can even tell because I ask for then to be as short as my real nails, I can’t do my everyday duties with unrealistically long nails. I look out the windows and can see the smog blurring out the hills of northern California, maybe the pollution here is getting out of hand. I watch as a girl who looks like she couldn’t have seen more than thirteen summers light a cigarette and hope her mom doesn’t find out. Finally at my stop, I swing my green and brown backpack around and over one shoulder, trapping most of my hair under my strap; I’m used to it. As I’m standing at the back doors of the bus before they open I look down at my converse and realize my shoe lace is untied. Stepping off the bus I bend down to tie my shoe and my blue jean’s button pops open and my belly button feels free for the first time all day. Quickly fixing the wardrobe malfunction I look up and find my co-worker with his face pressed up against the glass window on the door giving me a creepy yet welcoming smiling. I hit him with an equally as creepy double eyebrow wiggle. I love how silly I can act at this job, and no one will think I’m actually silly, they’ll just think I’m cute and corky.

“That’s cute” Jeff says while holding the door open for me to walk through, “I know” I say back without making eye contact. Jeff is a good looking man who always has the right amount of stubble, hair colour that matches the coffee we make, not quite an afro but pretty curly. His eyebrows thick and unkempt above his hazel coloured eyes, his smile is super cute but he’s such a goof ball that I could only think of him as a little brother. I throw my black t-shirt over my tank top and wrap the apron around my waist. Sara is working today, and she always has positive vibes and makes me appreciate life a little more every time I see her. With her blonde hair below her ears, she greets me with a warm smile that causes her blue eyes to squint a little. She has a tattoo of the solar system, with the sun on her left elbow and all the planets placed on rings circling the center. I couldn’t be happier working with these two.

I’m on a break with Sara and we’re sitting on the wooden deck, she’s sipping a green tea with her legs crosses and I’m having a black coffee. We’re sharing a laugh while reminiscing all the times we purposely pronounce people’s name wrong when I get a text from a woman who works at my other job. She says she won’t be able to make her shift tonight and wants me to take it for her, I debate for a couple second but agree that I can never make too much money in one day so I take her up on her offer. I need to be on stage by ten so I need to make sure Jeff can drive me home fast. All my clothes, or lack thereof, is already in a canvas bag because I’m always on call for my night job.

I get home at 9:45, if I take my bike I can make it in time. “Hey Ella, where yea going, sweetie?” my mother asks, “I promised some friends that I would meet up with them for some drinks.” I respond walking right by her in our crowded kitchen. My mom takes a break from washing the dishes in the huge sink as I back track a couple steps to pick up a couple tangerines. “Why are you in such a rush?” inquiring while wiping her hands, “they are already at the bar, mom, I don’t wanna miss anything.” and I close the door behind me as I enter the garage from our kitchen. I take my fixed-gear bike off the metal hooks on the concrete walls, and I’m off at least 55 miles an hour. I like going fast, it’s dangerous but it blurs everything around me out and does the opposite for my mental space, gives me room to think. I’m thinking about how far I’ve come turn left with my mom, she hasn’t given me shit for a while about going out, that’s just the beauty in growing up turn right I guess. Ok I should be thinking about something more productive. So no school tomorrow speed bump perfect time to get my nails done turn left I’ll ask Alex to come with me, she probably needs a manicure as well. Now I’m turning into a laneway where I enter through a backdoor. The same security guard gives me the same cut eye for bringing my bike in but I don’t trust people on this side of the city.

My bike is resting against the wall and now my regular clothes resting at the bottom of this grey locker. I slip on my pink string-like bottoms, this colour looks a lot better on me when I had a tan. I should plan a day to go to the beach soon, maybe with my mom – I feel like I never hang out with her anymore. As I pull my top over my head that cuts off right under my nipple, Amanda walks into the room. She’s one of my favourite girls who work here, today just keeps getting better and better! “Hey girl!” she says with her southern accent. “Hey Mandy, I didn’t know you were working tonight.” She doesn’t like being called Mandy (says it just doesn’t sound right) but I call her that partly to mess with her; mostly because it adds some innocence to what it sounds like we do here. Without acknowledging the nickname she says, “I didn’t know you were either” then she dropped her leather bag with tassels from her broad shoulder, she was the only girl I knew who could pair that bag with a pair of low cut pale pink cowboy boots and a short jean jacket and still look cool and casual. “Yea, I don’t usually work on Tuesdays, I’m covering Amy’s shift. God knows why she couldn’t make it.” Before responding Amanda already had her floral sun dress on its way over her head. “I know why couldn’t make it too.” She replied while bringing one finger up to her nose, closing nostril with it and sniffing the air, I could only laugh in agreement.

NOW PRESENTING …. CANDI DARLING

I strut out onto the stage, using my best bedrooms eyes and scan over every man in the audience until one man stops me dead in my tracks. My round, bald headed, four eyed Professor.

#jesswrites #shortstory #fiction #hehe #ohno

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pigfartsitsonmars · 7 years

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The End of an Era

I will start off by saying this is going to be a very long blog post #sorrynotsorry. Today is the final day of #Sourcefed, #Sourcefednerd and various other shows on the channels. I am so sad to see it go. I subscribed within the first week and have been watching ever since. You go through fazes over the years and sourcefed was a pretty strong force in my life for many years. They made me laugh, they made me cry, and most important they gave me people to look up to and admire when i was younger. Being almost 25 now i’ve grown with a lot of the hosts over the years and i don’t regret a single moment of it.

Now to write about how each host changed my life and some of my favorite memories. To this day and continuing on i will watch and re-watch all of my favorite episodes forever. (That’s the great thing about the internet)

Joe Bereta: When you started (and kinda throughout) you were labeled the jock of the group because of how athletic you are (which is mind blowing) but you were always so much more then that to me at least. I originally saw you on Barets and Beretta and since then i was smitten. You are incredibly funny and charming, and oh so handsome *wink*. You have this amazing gift to make people laugh and a work ethic i hope to one day achieve. When you left originally i was very sad. I still to this day miss seeing your face on my computer screen filling my days with joy. Some of my favorite memories are your many stories on the horrific ways you should have died (The canada story is my favorite) and the amazing relationship you had with all the hosts (especially the holy trinity of you Elliott and Lee) I love the work you are doing now and I know so much greatness will come to you.

Elliott Morgan: You have an amazing gift that no one else can match, your comitic timing is amazing, you are incredibly smart and witty and you are so damn perfect it makes my head hurt. I cried so hard during your last episode of comcom because i was so genuinely sad to see you go. However i still love your personal channel and I love the podcast with Lee (Oh and cant forget the excitement i had seeing you both on lipsync battles) I just wanted you to know how incredible you truly are. You may think that when you started everyone hated you but i loved you. (p.s. i’m single...your single. hit me up lol kidding) I am so excited to continue to watch your journey through life cause i know you are going to do such amazing and creative things. One of my all time favorite moments on sourcefed of you was the BooBee’s joke (don’t know why but it still makes me laugh) or your story with the detergent. both amazing and weird moments but perfect none the less.

Lee Newton: You are one of my biggest inspirations in life, you prove to the world that you are here to take change. There was not a lot of girls that looked like me when i was younger and then you came around and blew me away. Your beautiful you are so incredibly funny (and you influenced my jokes and proved that women can be just as funny or funnier then the men) When you left a small part of my heart went with you. But i know that it was the best move for you and now you can concour the world and take names while you do it. I just want to thank you so much for everything you have brought to my life and helping mold me into the person that i am today. I love you Lee. And good luck with the wedding (I loved the invitations). My favorite sourcefed moment with you would honestly be any truth or dare and i love your mad hatter and wrestler characters.

Steve Zaragoza: You are so wacky and crazy and just such a joy on the world. The knowledge and enthusiasm for all things nerd (especially the movies) is amazing. You bring just a joy and light to this world and i am really going to miss all of your dick and fart jokes. I know i will see you on other things but not seeing you in that building is going to be so hard. but i know that you are just going to take the world by storm weather the world wants it or not. My classic steve memory will always have to be “what is that a coffee machine” I know its not original but it is classic. Or of course Ben Franklin Time Traveler.

Trisha Hershburger: You are gorgeous and amazing and had a baby like 2 seconds ago and look like when you first started on sourcefed (which is incredible to me) You proved it was okay to be a nerd and a geek as a woman and i thank you for that. You brought a structure in the beginning which i think is super important especially at the beginning where you were all just trying to figure things out. I have loved seeing you thrive outside of sourcefed (as hard as it was to see you go) and see you meeting your dreams you always wanted to concur. Your little boy is amazingly cute (but who wouldn't have guessed that that was going to happen) and i’m just excited to see where life takes you. My favorite Trish moments were when you were on table talk and my favorite saying has to be the “no no” I use that on the daily and have for years now because of you.

Meg Turney: You are such a firecracker that brought so much love and knowledge to sourcefed. You introduced me to tons of anime i may not have ever seen before and gave light to the amazing-ness of cosplay and knowing that its okay to be your weird self. After seeing you i dyed my hair red and wanted nothing more then to be like you. When you left it was a different feeling for me then the others leaving simply because i knew you were going to Rooster Teeth and i would get to see you again and somehow being even more awesome as if that was possiable. My favorite memory involves you and Joe at the very end of a table talk when you and Gav were still in the early days Joe informed you on how #turnfree was not your ship name but that is #Gaeg or #Gag however he wished to spell it im not sure, however it made me laugh so hard and now i cant refer to y’alls relationship as #turnfree. And even though you left Rooster Teeth as well (which i a whole other blog post) I still will continue to follow and love you and perv out on your modeling pictures.

Ross Everett: You got shit on so much when you worked for sourcefed but i think that was so unfair of people to do to you cause you are very funny and creative. You brought a very different energy to the group that i think was needed and you are amazing. My favorite memory is the joke of you dating trisha’s baby and it made me smile so hard in the last table talk to see you finally see her baby. I also loved your periscopes.

Sam Bashor: You are the cutest little dork in the entire world. I feel like i grew up with you being similar ages and i loved watching you grow from a young little boy in a bow tie being the sweetest little guy in the entire world to this man that is so incredible and funny. You made it okay to be so into nerdy things and for that i thank you. I cant wait to see where this world will take you cause i know you will only do amazing things with your gifts. My favorite memory has to be any time you are with Maude (duh) and of course Sam chats and Sam has a point on the podcast. (And the Smaude kiss.....DAYUM)

Will Haynes: Like Sam i watched you grow up from this awkward little boy to afraid to be himself and grow up into someone who simply doesn’t give a fuck and has been truly incredible comedian. You finally found yourself which is amazing and i’m so happy to see this side of you. I have loved seeing your fazes and seeing the other more senior comedians helping morph you into the person you are today. I cant wait to see what you do next.

Matt Leiberman: You brought something very different to the group, you were not afraid to be yourself and unashamed of who you were. You were an amazing host and incredible cook (which i always made the mistake of watching when i was hungry) and you are just such a sweet man who wants the best for people. You and your girlfriend are the cutest and i’m excited to see what comes next in your life.

Maude Garrett: You brought a new light to the new gen of Sourcefed Nerd. You are unbelievably stunning and amazing and so apologetically nerdy. I was never really into DnD until i saw you as the mauderator and you showed me a great and fun way to enjoy DnD, I’ve missed seeing you regularly on the channel but i know that one day you will take over this world and we will see nothing but you. Because you are simply that powerful and amazing. (Sidenote: The Smaude kiss at 1,000,000 was to

Steven Suptic: You are probably one of the weirdest people on this planet in the best way possible. We have very similar senses of humor and dont mind being the butt of the joke sometimes. You are one of the only people i think that would openly piss there own pants in a serious moment just for the giggle (i’m going to pretend it was on purpose in the last table talk) I loved you on Super Panic Frenzy with Reina and the podcast was the best. I know you will do great things with your channel and now you can do more stuff with the Mindcrackers on the plus side.

Whitney Moore: You are just the most beautiful little pixie i think i have ever seen. You are so goofy and funny and quickly became one of my new favorite hosts. You have a corky edge to you and yet somehow so very cool at the same time. I love your sense of humor and i just think you are incredible. I know that this will only be a stepping stone in your life and i’m interested to see what is next for you.

Bree Essrig: You I have been watching for the longest back in the old days of youtube seeing you with Shane Dawson and Steve Greene, you have always been able to put a smile on my face with the different characters you play. You are not afraid to be “one of the boys” for lack of a better phrase and you were someone i looked up too when i was a young teenager just trying to figure myself out. Then you moved to pop trigger which you were amazing on you had me in stitches anytime you were on, and then when you got hired to Sourcefed I was so giddy because I had followed you for so long and just watching you change and grow over these years has just been a blast. I can’t wait to see what weird shit you and Steve decide to make cause you are really the best comedic couple and i’m sure whatever you do it will be amazing.

Mike Falzone: You like Bree i have been watching for years I believe since around 2007 i believe which is crazy to think. Your stand up is amazing you have such a cool air to you (even when you are geeking so hard about Wrestling) and you are unbelievably talented. And on top of that being an incredible musician it is unfair how talented you are and you are just going to keep growing and growing and doing bigger and badder things all the time. My favorite memories is just seeing you riff off of Steve and Elliott the three of you is just comedy gold.

Ava Gordy: I may not have known you for as long as some of the other hosts however your impact was still just as grand. You seems like such a sweet and compassionate person who really cared for those around you and still did everything in just such a funny way. I will admit i haven't seen every video you have been in but now i have time to go back and look at all of them and i’m pumped because you are incredible and just deserve the best in life. And I loved you in the people be like episode about Netflix and Chill

Candace Carrizales: You also I have may not have known as long as the others but you can keep up with them just as well. Its hard being the youngest sometimes but you didn’t let it stop you.My favorite video has to be your two truths and a lie with Steve and i bought one of those ginger drinks after just cause i was curious and you were completely right. You are a delight and brought some more fun energy to the gang. I like your don’t give a fuck attitude and you are just gonna continue to grow and be amazing

And lastly

Dani Rosenberg: I couldn’t not mention to you in all of this you have been the rock in all of this and keeping people from destroying everything. Not only do you keep Phils shit together but then you deal with all the people at Sourcefed and Sourcefednerd which i am sure is almost an impossible task. You have been a strong force behind all of this and i don’t think you get the credit you deserve you are amazing and beautiful and one of the most bad ass people on this whole planet. thank you for being you. And may i just say whenever i saw you in a thumbnail for table talk i have never clicked harder and faster then in those moments.

Final thoughts... One i’m sure the last 3ish hours i spent free handing this at work was well spent. I am going to miss these channels and people so very much and i cant tank each and every one of them enough. I love you all from the bottom of my heart and i hope to see you do the incredible things i know you are capable of. Good luck in future indevers and i will still go back every day and re watch the old videos cause they are still hilarious and can make me smile at the drop of a hat. thank you. also if my grammar sucked i apologize 2 hours of sleep and just writing as i went along.

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oselatra · 6 years

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Little Rock, cut low

The capital city lands on a ranking of the worst cities in the country.

Did you hear that Little Rock is one of the "50 worst cities to live in"? That's what a list USA Today published last month said. The capital city is "the worst city to live in in the state and one of the worst in the country," said the report, which was compiled by the website 24/7 Wall Street. The article placed Little Rock at No. 19, between Compton, Calif. (No. 20), and Gary, Ind. (No. 18). Detroit was atop the list — or on the bottom, from the city's perspective — and Fort Smith was ranked 50th worst, but only because Las Vegas, the previous No. 50, pointed out a data error that got it removed from the list.

The technical term for these rankings in the world of statistical analysis is "bullshit." Those who make the rankings use imprecise data, or data imprecisely, to cynically manipulate people's insecurities about the places they live. And the ploy often works. These meaningless numerical concoctions grab the attention of the public and, sometimes, elected leaders.

So it went in Little Rock, where news of our city's ignominy didn't make it here until last week, when the Arkansas Times published an online squib on the rankings. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette followed with an online article that included a humdrum defense from Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola: "I invite 24/7 Wall Street to come down and experience for themselves our downtown renaissance, generous and welcoming people, natural beauty and comfortable way of life. In the meantime, we'll continue working tirelessly to build an even better Little Rock."

On arkansasonline.com, the Democrat-Gazette's website, many commenters appeared to confuse the capital city with the bleakest version of Gotham City. From a commenter named Slak: "Napalm followed by bulldozers would clear out most of the violence and property crime. There's nothing of value; burn out the filth, clean up the debris, get a fresh start." Perhaps in response to Stodola's statement, CartoonDude said, "It is terribly irresponsible to suggest people come visit your downtown without warning them to always travel in a group, avoid alleys, and NEVER be downtown after dark." Hawk1945 wrote, "We will not even go to Little Rock if at all possible, because of violent crime."

Did you know Wally Hall, the Democrat-Gazette's longtime sports editor and columnist, occasionally offers trenchant social commentary, too? In a brief note last week, he said it was hard to argue with Little Rock's selection based on the "crime number and jobs" the article quoted (it didn't quote anything about jobs), but that USA Today obviously didn't take into account the Arkansas River Trail, Dickey-Stephens Park or restaurants like Corky's or Doe's.

"Little Rock tends to live better, for a lot of us, than its data indicates," John Brummett, the daily paper's centrist political columnist, wrote in another column. But he also said, "The city and others like it — where significant minority populations have been abandoned, isolated and neglected — deserve to be judged with appropriate harshness."

Others pointed out that Little Rock has often scored high in other similar rankings. After all, Movehub.com put it at No. 86 in its global ranking of "hipster cities," which it determined by counting the number of vegan eateries, coffee shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques and record stores per 100,000 residents. Meanwhile, one publication you may have actually heard of, U.S. News and World Report, had Little Rock as the 38th best city in the country last year.

After the recent media flurry around the USA Today article, Resonance, a consulting company that owns the website bestcities.org, tweeted at the Little Rock Convention and Visitor's Bureau that its best "small" cities ranking — "citing many more data points than many 'other' studies" — found Little Rock to be a great place to live. And, oh, by the way, Resonance would love to provide consulting services to the LRCVB, like it has for Visit Fayetteville, Destination Cleveland and Travel Portland. On the Resonance list, Little Rock was No. 23, between Wichita, Kan. (No. 22), and Greenville, S.C. (24). Honolulu was No. 1.

Leading with Honolulu, a large city with all the requisite cultural amenities and known for its beaches, at least passes the eye test. The No. 1 city in which to reside in the "best" city rankings from 24/7 Wall Street? Carmel, Ind., a well-to-do suburb where my sister-in-law and her family live in a lovely house in a lovely neighborhood that looks remarkably similar to many other lovely houses and lovely neighborhoods nearby. It has nice parks and a new downtown with all sorts of New Urbanist flourishes, but its proximity to Indianapolis is the main thing it has going for it.

University of Delaware Professor Joel Best, the author of "Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists," said the first time he became aware of city rankings was when he was living in Fresno, Calif., in 1984, and a geographer ranked Fresno last among 277 cities considered in a "Places Rated Almanac."

Best remembers that The Fresno Bee newspaper "got very excited" over the low ranking, in part because Bakersfield, Calif., near Fresno and widely seen, according to Best, as "a terrible place," was ranked higher.

"There was a powerful feeling something was amiss," he said, laughing.

The trend of ranking cities coincided with the rise of the personal computer and spreadsheet software. Anyone with those tools could assemble an index aimed at ranking various criteria. "It became a game of figuring out what statistics were available and cobbling them in some sort of ranking ... and predictably you get a lot of [media] coverage from cities that do well," Best said.

The internet made such lists ubiquitous. Turns out readers can't get enough of rankings coated in a veneer of math. Legacy media organizations, like U.S. News and World Report and Time's Money magazine, seem to promote their best cities and colleges lists ahead of everything else they publish — surely because that's what generates the most traffic and, in turn, advertising revenue. That appears to be the same business model for 24/7 Wall Street, the Delaware-based website behind the worst cities list in which Little Rock figured. It churns out more than two dozen stories a day, including many that rank things, and has syndication arrangements with Yahoo! Finance, The Huffington Post, USA Today and more. Everything the website publishes is transparently designed to generate maximum traffic to sell advertising against.

Then there are sites, like WalletHub, that compile endless "studies" on cities they distribute to media in a marketing-as-content strategy in hopes that people will read a story about the fattest cities in America (this year: Little Rock/North Little Rock) and remember the name "WalletHub" when they're looking for a site to help with personal finance.

The connective tissue among the endless city rankings? "They're absolutely meaningless," according to Best, who's spent much of his career writing about innumeracy — the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy — and how statistics are misused and misunderstood. Like U.S. News' and other groups' best colleges lists, the city rankings fit into a category Best calls "magical numbers."

"[W]e often turn to statistics for their magical ability to clarify, to turn uncertainty into confidence, to transform fuzziness into facts," Best writes in his book "More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues." "These statistics don't even need to be particularly good numbers. We seem to believe that any number is better than no number, and we sometimes seize upon whatever figures are available to reduce our confusion."

24/7 Wall Street explains that its methodology includes statistics that measure crime, demography, economy, education, environment, health, housing, infrastructure and leisure. It's impossible to truly dissect how the website arrives at its rankings because, unlike its peers, it doesn't explain how it weights individual categories. (After responding quickly to a question about methodology, 24/7 Wall Street Editor-In-Chief Douglas McIntyre didn't respond to a follow-up about how categories weighted.) But even if we could see how the website determines its scores, it wouldn't lend any authority to its conclusion because there aren't datasets that comprehensively track any of its chosen categories. The data 24/7 Wall Street and all other list makers are using is a proxy for what they claim to measure, and it's often a bad proxy.

Take the "leisure" category in the 24/7 Wall Street list. Part of the scoring claims to quantify the number of leisure activities nearby, but outside, a city. To account for that it adds up the number of zoos, nature parks, ski resorts and golf courses in the counties surrounding a city. That conception of how leisure time works might make sense for large cities that constitute most if not all of a county, but in a mid-size city like Little Rock, few of us would travel outside Pulaski County to do any of those things (because, sadly, the I.Q. Zoo in Hot Springs is closed and Garland County is not immediately adjacent to Pulaski County). And why the seemingly arbitrary choice to track ski resorts and not beaches or lakes? Probably because the data on recreational bodies of water is messy or not readily available.

Even harder numbers like crime rates aren't that great for determining how safe a city is. Crime isn't uniformly distributed. In Little Rock, what most of us would think of as violent crime is concentrated in the south and southwest parts of the city. In an interview, Mayor Stodola told the Times that about 60 percent of the violent crimes Little Rock reports are for misdemeanor theft of items valued at less than $1,000. For instance, in Stifft Station, where I live, it's highly likely that, if I leave something valuable in my car and don't lock it, someone is going to steal it. But it's highly unlikely I'm going to be robbed or hit by stray gunfire.

"We're like any urban city in the country; we have our challenges," Stodola told me. "But we also have our wonderful things we're very, very proud of and we continue to work on all of them."

The mayor has said he won't seek re-election. So far, four candidates have filed to run to replace him: former Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus, state Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock), Little Rock banker Frank Scott and LRSD employee Vincent Tolliver.

Only Scott publically weighed in on the rankings, tweeting that as a Little Rock native it hurt him to see Little Rock place on the worst cities list. But, he said, a change was going to come: "I wouldn't be running for Mayor of #LittleRock if I didn't believe in what's possible for our city, and the path we can take to unite each corner, strengthen our infrastructure, create safer communities, and make basic quality of life essential for families and neighbors."

And maybe that's the ultimate takeaway from these endless rankings: They may not add up to anything, but, especially in an election year, there's nothing wrong with getting provoked to debate all the ways in which Little Rock could be better.

Little Rock, cut low

#Little Rock #cut low

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the-firebird69 · 3 years

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The car show episode is ridiculous it shows how stupidly you're doing and how dumb you're being and corky went over there and wasted most of your ships cuz he's a fool you need power to retain power hey look if we can get there in 2 minutes and takes you 10 minutes to get there or 20 but I guess you can be on your e-bikes. The auto show is going great we have tons of interest huge interest in cells are special SUV limousine and he made his own, the sun's way is to try and get people to look so much they feel comfortable with it, not always effective that she likes it because she's using it now. She has her husband driving it so it just goes to show you. She says every single time you mention it she feels better so it's good and the car show is going great if lots of interest tons of cork here going so not allowed in because he's a fool trying to get into US shut out of the gate and he wants his grubby fingers in their cars us or them and decided to kick him out of the CIA cuz it doesn't make any sense and we've got so many people recorded saying it just all have to do is play to him in the idiot runs around forces him to do it so do that today this is wife wants it my wife's sister and he's hassling it all the time with it but she hassled him. But our sales are way up and they're way up in Europe tons and tons of people want our cheapo Bronx barrio car and the regular run of the mill Sim, very huge sales on the high end sedan huge sales it's going way off the chart here as well tons of people buy their sales shop is coming in at Kia today it's going to be huge people going to buy them they can be everywhere you going to see him especially that for women they love it and several beaches in Florida you can drive them on

Hera Zues

Okay so we have it you too I miscreants no there are some spots you can go and fish using your truck and things like that. We sold so many SIM cards already and it's the first day of the car show that I don't think we can keep up with production and we don't have to build more plants in Ireland is going to have to be filled up now today so I'm sitting with your Nuada Arianna right now we're going over how its done and he wants to do it himself. He's not laughing because he sees what you're doing and it's incredible and just figured out how you do it because he was watched and since it's a show but his kids need to see he's okay so he's going to do it himself that's what his kids need and it's his lands and you can do it his way too I'm sure he has a speeding noise you know you just make a big trough put it all in there that's on my way it says it's your way

Thor Freya

Infernal things but we've seen a odd of things that you guys do strange things. Huge huge troughs and just dump all these buildings into it and all the utilities are already in there and just hook them up it's incredible they hook them up from the side it's probably a better way to do it but they're exposed. I'm see what your saying. We do see you too you put this raceways on the outside of them or in the ground right in front and you just run it up side of the building in we're doing an all of them cuz it takes minutes from here to underground you don't have to match anything up just plop it down into a bed that's how you do it you're guessing it's pretty good guess who's King actually worked out stuff like that like you know but still when you raise it it's going to stay rigid so we're doing that now and we have hundreds and hundreds of them coming in and all of a sudden we hear this calling noise and it's the idiot and he's on the intercom in Florida screaming across several hundred miles of ocean you can just barely hear it get your asses off our Island so we're approaching him and ask Chinese and where see if he wants any Chinese food so Chris said I said no go away so we have a huge spreader so he goes over and like sitting there starting to eat it and his supervisor came over Mack and said get that s*** out of here they stopped eating and they ran over and started screaming again I was in the missile came and hit him and not screaming anymore. So they're amassing down there like the biggest idiots on the planet so I'm going to go ahead and start today and get it done cuz there's stuff underneath it has to go and some weird way of doing it put stuff on it to raise it but it looks like the Chinese might be trying to stop it

Nuada Arrianna

You have to respect a man who is doing things that their father and mother were not until now and he says you may have done things that are similar and Thor was saying that but they do a lot of that kind of thing and it's secretive and a lot of other people don't do it so you're actually right and he says it and I say it too these people who's working with are amazing they're big they're Giants and they respect them because he's smart like they are and no other Ariana are very smart people and they've been carrying a weight that is tremendous it is the weight of the world it's been on their shoulders and recently started helping and it gets kind of set back and said no we need you to go and poiny again now I said It to him today

Darth Maul Darth Talon

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kiradurbin · 7 years

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super short reviews -- Fall TV 2017 -- part one

The Orville (Fox) - we get to see Seth MacFarlane’s face!! I thought this was going to be a kind of parody of Star Trek... it’s not, although it’s clearly a copy of Star Trek. So it’s like Star Trek but in MacFarlane universe. It’s fun! But not funny.

Kevin Can Wait (CBS) - this is actually the second season of this show but its worth mentioning because apparently i wasnt the only one who hated the wife... so the writers killed her off and got Leah Remini and Kevin James back together. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!

Young Sheldon (CBS) - I really couldnt tell you what all the fuss is about here. I think they got really good ratings because everyone wanted to see what it was, but I’ll be curious to see if anyone comes back after a 5 week break. The actors are great, especially Zoe Perry, who is completely believable as a young Laure Metcalf... but the tone is very different that Big Bang Theory, and I doubt their main fan base wants to watch a kids show.

The Opposition with Jordan Klepper (Comedy Central) -- this is the new half hour show to follow the Daily Show. Based on the first episode, I need never watch it again. I’ll stick with Jim Jefferies.

The Good Doctor (ABC) -- eeeeeennnnnnnhhhhhhh. ABC really wants this to be more than a doctor show (an autistic man!) ... but its still a doctor show. It made me feel weird. I couldn’t decide if it was positive or offesive to autism.

Me, Myself, & I (CBS) -- yes please. I don’t believe for one second that Bobby Moynihan grows up to look like John Larroquette... but who cares when he’s so likeable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Great for age groups 35 to death, with plenty of nostalgia to keep you cringe laughing. I wonder if our beloved Corky’s in Sherman Oaks will see a surge in waffle business? Oh! and also... hello Urkel!! It’s about time Jaleel White was a series regular again.

50 Central (BET) -- i have no idea what this was. I think their was literally 8 minutes of content in a half hour show. I hope they figure it out.

Channel Zero: No End House (SyFy) -- bad title... super awesome creepy good show. It you like weird supernatural stuff definitely watch it. You know you’re sick of AHS!! Check this out along with last season (totally different story.)

Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders (NBC) -- I’m not sure what magic made Ryan Murphy’s OJ Simpson American Crime Story WORK so well... but this show doesn’t have it. It’s not bad, it just didn’t grab me. Disappointing.

The Brave (NBC) and Seal Team (CBS) -- so these are basically the same show: special ops who get a new mission each episode. One team is army, the other is Navy. One team has a female member, the other has a dog. One team is led by Anne Heche, the other has... i cant remember. One team has super hot Mike Vogel, the other has super jaded David Boreanz. Pick your flavour; you’ll certainly enjoy that one.

Marvel’s Inhumans (ABC) -- this show is SILLY!! And not in any kind of good way. I bailed at the first commercial break. Is Iwan Rheon doomed to play Mordred forever?! Ugh.

#corkys #bobby moynihan #jaleel white #channel zero #mike vogel #natacha karam

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ratherhavetheblues · 7 years

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ABBAS KIAROSTAMI’S TEN “Alright…”

Ten (2002) begins with a mother and her pre-adolescent son moving along the streets of Tehran in her car. Although a vicious, lacerating dispute takes place, which has an effect similar to stunning seasickness, we should, for the sake of the lucidity to be found in that stifling cabin cruiser (always seen from the inside) and the subsequent episodes of patrolling those roads, stand back, for a bit, from the opening emotional blood-letting and let ourselves be delighted by Corky, the LA cabby, and her fare, Victoria, the Hollywood talent scout, in the first episode of Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991). The foul-mouth boy is a sort of talent scout, scouting the prospect of inducing his open-road mother to play the part of a stay-at-home-mom in a story made to garner acclaim from those demanding dutiful piety. The philosophical driver, like Corky, runs over the crock that rigid matrimony (like rigid fame) constitutes; and she lives to drive another day, and many other days.

Whereas Victoria sees Corky’s point and wishes her well on her rocky road, Amin, the Tehran passenger—like the Idi Amin—discloses a vein of resentment toward interpersonal complication which, though aberrant, is also intrinsic. As such, Ten comprises a multi-faceted dialogue on the subject which could be termed, “How far do you want to investigate the phenomenon of love?” The first episode, labelled “10,” as affixed to the driver’s other drives which the film provides over a quite short period counting down to “1,” could be seen as a vividly dramatic study of the fallout of a divorce. (We learn, from the two major battles along that kinetic way, that the divorce occurred seven years ago, she has remarried, but her first husband—whom we see on several occasions, but always in a white jeep [evoking a UN bureaucratic Peace-Keeper, devoutly rule-driven, obsessed with an antiquated utopian end of strife]—an avid porn connoisseur, is less than able to contribute to putting together a serious support for his son; but that he has, in occasional contacts, become a factor nevertheless in inculcating Amin to a dogmatic primitiveness [linked to unpaid “activist” causes] which the driver had overcome. During the verbal brawl, she insists. “You’re like your father. He shut me away, destroyed me. He wanted me only for himself.” [At which point the clever primitive gives her a dagger-like sideways glance and commands, “Not so loud! Not so loud or I won’t listen to you…”] The skirmish turns to her demand, “I’ll say what I have to say” and his “I don’t want to listen” and cupping his ears.) However, as we look closely at the negotiations in the sanctuary of her smoothly-running vehicle, we realize that though Amin, true to his name, is a vicious, implacable thug, his mother (never named and thereby approximating an anonymity at the heart of her actions) is caught up in making an effort, an effort which has been repeated many times, to enlighten her son about the paradox of caring for a flesh-and-blood loved-one while belonging to something more. Episode 10, therefore, shows her (penultimate) folly in supposing a creature of Amin’s age and pathology would ever attain to anything resembling effective reflection.

The driver, as we first encounter her new bid for mutual understanding in a deadened history, repeats the parable of a friend’s parents dragging themselves into hate and enfeeblement when a divorce would have given them a new lease on life. “I’m talking to you, let me finish. When I talk, you raise your voice…”/ ‘So what?” (Amin’s brush-offs are supplemented by arrogant, menacing and insulting visages and bodily attitudes, including an often seen rippling touch to his mouth as he heckles a deadly enemy.) “It’s impolite. Let me finish and you’ll understand” [the cosmic, not domestic situation]. You listen to everyone but you refuse to listen to your own mother.”/ “Because you’re going to lecture me again. You always have to talk…” As we shall soon discover from the following encounters, the lady does bring to us an absorbing skill in silence and reticence. Accordingly, her next step in that trap she hasn’t fully figured out is to promise only two more sentences (“and I’ll shut up… never speak again…”). “I feel fulfilled now, like a flowing river. I was a stagnant pond. My brain was devastated.” The hardened midget (with a trace of a black moustache) shoots out, “That makes three sentences, and they’re all rubbish! I’ll never listen to you again!” The pact of silence now in shreds, there obtains a rapid-fire exchange, going nowhere. Picking up her dynamic priority as challenging Neanderthal stasis and old-time-family style, he sneers, “You only thought of yourself.” She fires back, “If you love yourself, you love someone else…” / “Enough! You talk too much!” the anointed thought-controller megaphones. She accurately posits, “You want me for yourself.” He declares, “I don’t want you to be mine! You screwed up… You stupid cow!” Once again, concluding much more than a family conflict, she drops him off at the swimming pool by saying, “A man who doesn’t love himself loves no one.” (Before that, she has broadcast to us, not him, “No one belongs to anyone. Not even you… You’re my child but you’re not mine. You belong to this world. We try to live here.” He cannily reconfigures the big picture to retail a comfortable little picture. “I have to grow up to attain an age that will allow me to belong to myself… You left. You crossed to the other side…”)

As he leaves the ride, with the expected, “You stupid idiot… I’ve never seen anyone so stupid…” his domain—he on camera the whole passage—we see her for the first time emerging from the fringes, a figure of physical attractiveness, gentleness, deftness and confidence. Those gifts are on fascinating display for the remainder of the film. Although the outset might suggest she’s just a parent ferrying her child, we come to realize that the car and its motions are her real home, only incidentally playing host to a relative in the process of being a stupid idiot she used to know. With Amin snarling about the stepfather who does a lot more than the imam he calls dad, she quietly maintains, “But in any case he’s my friend and a good [though sometime] companion.” Make no mistake, though her sensibility is tolerant, generous, witty and incisive, she is an ultimate loner. Cutting from the one you’d hope would drown, she’s calmly in cruising mode (Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin [2013] probably owing something to it). But once again a relative, her sister, is on camera first. This latter passenger, though not flashing murderous glances, is disconcertingly anxious and depressed—pulling at her cheeks, fidgeting with a paper fan and casting crisis-level eyes to the streets as if she were riding in a tumbril. She’s in grey and black all round, making a sharp contrast to her driver-sister’s decorative scarlet robe and creamy-toned scarf, not to mention (as in the previous episode) chic Ray-Bans. The protagonist enters the car with a large bag of fruit, not exactly a bacchanal but putting us on notice that, as with Kiarostami, the Ayatollahs could be largely ignored and circumvented. The gloomy one pronounces, “6000 Tomas wasted…” But after a spate with Amin, the protagonist has come to a party mode no one’s going to spoil. Rather than trying to lighten up her sister, she, in the first of many gracious inventions in face of bad behavior, appeals to her theological, breaking-bread leanings. “It’s for the guests” [soon we learn that the home-alone friend is having a 39th birthday party]. The ascetic arm of the family sniffs, “I give classes every day. I have a job…” [in connection to which her young child has to be brought to the workplace]. (During a later incident with Amin, we hear that the protagonist needs a lot of time for her photography and painting. Kiarostami was a photographer and painter of some renown and cash-flow. The upshot of our free-spirit’s convening such difficult transactions is an assurance that when she gets down to her métiers sparks will fly.) The protagonist’s job being something seen by the stodgy wing of her family as a pseudo-occupation, the contrarian ne plus ultra proceeds to offer up a sensibility, while cruising those streets night and day, to bring up to speed the superior products of her investigative craft. Now, if not a laughing matter, at least a broadly smiling matter, she quips, “He won’t accuse you of abandoning him at playschool.” On a roll and rolling her funereal sister for what might pop out, she moots, “Today, children accuse parents of all kinds of things…” The leaden one states the obvious, “They’re wrong to. I mean parents can’t kill themselves…” The driver hits two notes at once by calling out, “Ah, is this a dead end?” The practical one informs, “A day-nursery isn’t always a good thing…But for age 3, especially for an only child, it’s ideal…” More tiny news for the bemused: “You know what’s wrong with Amin, sis? Amin convinces himself he’s unhappy…” She, having already seen the end-game, despite the need to marvel that sanity is beyond most earthlings, hears from the worrier, “Leave him be, let him go to his father’s to get to know him better. Don’t fool yourself…” Cueing up, where this countdown will lead, the driver seems to be at a (temporary?) loss with the devastation which her career entails. “I don’t know…” Then the perceived expert ushers the crisis along. “You grow fond of what you love.”/ “That’s right. I can’t deny it” [and she can’t deny that this is a tough terrain to cover]. Therefore, we’ve had a taste of something better than birthday cake, namely, a sort of Socratic dialogue; but unlike Socrates/ Plato the stakes are truly problematic, giving rise to endless inquiries and adjustments. The driver’s statement, “I’m waiting for him to realize that,” is sheer dark comedy. On the heels of that impasse, we receive the more farcical exit as she turns back to the traffic in the street and the traffic in the universe. “Look at that guy! What an idiot!”

Down to story 8, she initially appears to us at ease in being silent and mobile and going along the prayer zone in a gown with a darker, black and gold design. (In the previous episodes she was wearing shades; in the rendezvous with Amin, a dark-red gown; in the soon-to-come being rid of him, a much brighter red gown and jade rings.) She stops to give a ride to an elderly woman, bent over and laboring, but with a resolve in her bearing which galvanizes our protagonist. “I’ll be like her one day,’ she says to herself with a cheery tone. She asks the lady, “Is this a dead-end?” And she’s shown in a roundabout way the path to the mausoleum/ prayer-room leaving open how beyond a dead-end this is. On first being seated, the passenger intones, “May God protect you,” the first of a stream of pious declarations. The driver affords this licence a patient and encouraging cordiality, seeking to find there a magical boost. “May He save us from all our worries…” follows quickly. Our guide for the duration is taken up with driving, not heart-to-heart troubles. “I’m lost. I don’t know this way…” Keeping a light tone, the ancient rattles off, “Well don’t go down here, it leads nowhere!” Now on the straight and narrow, the passenger delineates details of her, if not exuberant, prolific strivings. “I go in the morning, mid-day and sunset… I pray for the boys and girls… I pray for old ladies and men…” We know by now that Amin’s mother has large misgivings about such heavy zeal; and this episode wonderfully sets in relief the taste for gentle irony with which she hits the road. “You only go there to pray?”/ “I pray there and elsewhere.”/ “Are your wishes granted?”/ “God alone grants wishes. My prayers don’t need that [that is to say, the bid for union suffices beyond being rescued from death]. My husband is dead. My 12-year-old son, too… That’s why I pray [offsetting the calculus of loss]. I also sold my home to go to a pilgrimage in Syria…”

From a secular perspective, inattentive to the zealot’s heretical grace, she’s lost; and our protagonist is in the forefront of secularity. Nevertheless, our poised talent scout accentuates the possibility of calculative cowardice being shattered by the sheer visceral flare-ups of the ancient’s recognition that an elusive balance is worth going for broke. “I’ve known great misfortune. But I gave everything I owned.” The eccentric mom praises the stranger’s “pretty rosary” and endures the loopiness of the banal brio she’s hearing. She can’t, however, be indifferent to features of the saga like a daughter’s stomach tumor and being afraid of the upcoming operation. She can see the desperate egotism in factors like, “I swear on the Imam Reza, I gave away the mattresses…” and yet the very hopelessness of this distemper (like the poison of her own son) touches her as endlessly significant. She enthuses with her guest, “Very good! The fewer ties you have the better you live.” The simple soul offers to car-sit while the sort of soulmate goes to pray. “No thank you. I have a lot to do…” is the way their paths diverge forever.

Step 7, on the way to a blast-off of sorts, finds her at the wheel, beaming with the irony that, while cruising late at night on a hooker trail, she was mistaken for a John and invaded by a cynical entity; but, once again, a slice of something she wants to grasp. The poor vision of the “night worker” (in the parlance of The Wind Will Carry Us) traces straight to Corky’s Paris colleague in part 3 of Night on Earth, who, after losing his temper and throwing out a couple of delusional drunks in the night, gets hailed by a blind and Amin-like vicious, arrogant fare. “Stop here, I’m getting out,” the embarrassed pro demands. The driver, not surprisingly, answers, “I’m interested in talking with you…” In a sleepy voice, the reluctant conversationalist replies, once again (bringing to mind the blinded French stone wall), “Stop here, I’m getting out!” But when our protagonist takes special interest in being mistaken for a man, the night person gives out some inkling that she’s not totally benighted. She gleefully shrieks with the pitfall, again demands the ride end and the near-cabby promises, “A bit further on” [hoping that the cradle-dynamics of the drive and the volcano of that scream will produce some seismic information]. “I saw you come out of that Mercedes…” she hopefully cues some pop. First, the passenger draws the wall, “I’m going nowhere…Let me off!” But our guide is an ardent provocateur and hits pay dirt of sorts with, “Why do you do this?” After Amin-like bluster— “Give me a break… You want to lecture me?”—the wild card can’t resist declaiming, “An honest job, a decent job!” More squeals ensue. Then she feels a little needle: “It’s interesting… a girl like you [with aspirations I want to hear about]. Pretend that you’re a man…” She quickly insists, “I’m not working in that field yet!” Having seen a glimpse of her bourgeois self-justification, the protagonist persists, “No, really… What’s the reason you do this?” This elicits the hooker’s being hooked on two incompatible motives—the volatility of which perhaps leading somewhere for her own, far more comprehensive, study; and even more to the point, her ongoing bounce against the carnality of everyone she meets (a hooker’s body-contact being a dash of physicality with much on the ball). “Sex, Love, Sex” the captive blurts out. “That’s all life is?” the traveller, setting the horizon to be engaged, moots. “It’s a trade, it’s my job. And I like it [moreover]. What’s this ‘interesting?’” She goes on, from that confrontational stance, to assure the driver, “I’m not going to cry… It’s life or it’s destiny” [brutal zoology or subversive mysticism]. The driver assures her she’s not going to lecture. “I’m interested in your experience, what you feel, your sensations…” “What sensations?” she replies with some anger. “Don’t you think about sin and guilt” is the night-shift’s way of discerning how wild is the wild one (who, by then, has taken off her shoes to ease the pain of walking in shoes not made for walking). Though the passenger insists, “That was a stupid thing to say… Why don’t you try it yourself?” she shifts, by way of finding out that the near-cabby is married, into a screed about all men being traitors. “He says, ‘I love you,’ doesn’t he?” Her clients often say that when their wife calls, duped that he’s at the other office. This is where the flight hits real turbulence, the driver not apt to be greatly preoccupied with the low-key ways of her “friend and good companion.” The shoeless and rather clueless street walker even dovetails with Amin and that totally blind angry rider in Night on Earth: “You’re an idiot and I’m smart.” She purports to have no affection for any of her clients, nor anyone else. There is one more step to take and the protagonist takes it when inferring that her rough trade in the days before wholesaling touched her indelibly. “To wake up thinking about him! We were engaged. I was a fool.” The night may not have yielded any new talent; it did spotlight her close to frightening disinterestedness.

Corky was induced, by the talent-scout, to admit she’d love to have children, that she has an ardent dream centered upon domesticity. But her certainty about the perfidy of the male talent pool left us seeing her as a free spirit somewhat by default. The protagonist of our tale here clearly puts freedom first and evinces a highly eccentric but potentially fertile way of extending her powers, including interpersonal powers. The remainder of the snippet given to us largely pertains to ditching the monster from her craft. Accordingly, it sustains the sense of coping more effectively (which is far from coping more easily) in face of the impasses every ride must endure. Therefore, to deploy the motif of the protagonist’s vibrancy in a sharp light we’ll dip into the number four junket, where, in an atmosphere of very spare light, a woman relentlessly laments a man’s leaving her, with the kind of addictive melancholy seen in the last (Helsinki) phase of Night on Earth, where a taxi driver vies with his customers to be the saddest person on earth. Just as the error of the hooker’s drawing a blank with a badly recognized woman, the welcome of a dead loss might seem one of those bad days; but our guide of things mysterious proves to be a versatile and agile discoverer of what she needs to press forward the big picture. Knowing from the top there’ll be no sparkle in this outing, the driver runs past the veil of tears that structure of equiprimordial connection and aloneness. “You’re weak, very weak,” is her bid to snap her into some semblance of adult responsiveness. (She bemusingly adopts Amin’s phrases, “Give it a rest, so we can eat in peace” [giving us to understand that the passenger is not a one-off but a long-term piece of work].) The protagonist in a tight spot realizes she has misplayed this engagement and strikes a far more primordial, disinterested note. “We women are unhappy. We don’t love ourselves… You can’t sum it up in just one person. Life is so vast. Why depend on just one person?” “Why not?” the weak one blubbers—Jarmusch’s “jerking off” very much in play, with its hopeless cases and vast wastelands. Even here there is a moment of dark mirth: “Why not [the dead weight argues] be different?” [as if hopeless losers are few and far between]. The talent scout’s parting declaration, “You can’t live without losing. We come into the world for that” [dodging black holes like her], is entirely addressed to herself and her being on the spot to deal mercilessly with the poisonous while being warmly on the trail for hearts with some gold.

Another friend turns up, by day, this time—in hurdles 6 and 2—and our protagonist, unlike her keeping her distance from the theology of the old lady, dresses to seem ready to coincide with the pious passenger from her own generation. Perhaps struck briefly again by the pathos of that elder’s personal best, she opens the conversation with, “You come to the mausoleum, too?” After rather self-consciously tossing back-and-forth the vagaries of religious garb, the ascetic (in vast contrast to the divorcer of Amin with her chic upbeat and intrinsic warmth), strained, though gentle friend, of quite recent vintage, asserts that her pattern is once or twice a week. “I’m used to it…” Holding to irony as if a vitamin pill, the driver, only apparently onside, avers. “It hasn’t become a habit with me…” Then, being very devious by necessity, there is, “I never imagined I’d come to a mausoleum to pray.” The questioner discovers that though the promising friend (more promising than now) at first did not subscribe she does now, “to a certain extent… Actually, it soothes me.” At this, the driver gives her a wan smile and quips, “Anyhow, I haven’t found peace of mind, yet [neither, of course, in immortality, nor in a largesse in becoming extinct]. One day, maybe, who knows?” Showing very well that words can produce more assurance of being on the same page than they really mean, the religionist maintains, “I’ve been coming here for ages and I still haven’t had anything.” “Perhaps it’s a big wish… Too big…” is the secular learner’s way of getting on an open road where they can get down to business. This cut-off, however, immediately ends in a ditch. “It’s not a very big wish…” This is so because for the seeming or hope-to-be adventurer, all she was serious about was her on-again/ off-again marriage engagement. “I come here to pray to make it come true… I think he’s full of contradictions.” In one of those deft touches of street navigation landing in the face of a lousy navigator in a much wider sense, the driver shouts out, “How can I get by if you just stand there?” After a pause where the passengers of a wayward vehicle make rude gestures, she adds (to the jerks outside and the jerk inside), “And you think it’s funny? What an idiot!” Right about here, our guide has to be digging down to put natural motion into the “just stand there.” She takes up with her friend, notwithstanding, the “contradictions,” (and potential syntheses) of the case. The eligible one moots the factor of “fate” in all this. Taking another run at the stand-still, the driver takes liberties with the facts in claiming that she tells her son about fate, “come what may…” (yet she’s a paragon of radical resolve, too vigorous for her surround). “He says he doesn’t understand fate [a phenomenon with a purchase on freedom]. He just can’t accept it” [he truly doesn’t accept freedom per se]. “What’s his problem?” the dutiful domestic asks, no doubt providing a stiff shot of dark mirth. She improvises on that theme of absurdity. “He has no particular problem. Or maybe he does….” In this vein of tough roiling, she sketches out the bare bones of the count-down. “I divorced. One day he no longer wanted to live with me. And he left. He tells me I’m a bad mother. Mainly he couldn’t stand the atmosphere at home anymore” [the essences of “atmosphere” being a remarkable imbroglio for a film to tackle]. She covers this nightmare with the albatross of piety to see if richly-held disaster can disperse a bottleneck. “The first time I came to the mausoleum that feeling all but faded away. For now, all I do is pray.” Like her plodding sister, the new (and equally disappointing) half-wit, leaves her with what she considers to be deeply valuable reorientation. “I used to say, ‘You pray to force God to give you things.’” “That’s interesting,” the very alone convenor of talent offers. “Don’t mention it,” the problem solver replies as she leaves the car. There is a quick cut to the next bid. What would have been her response to this dullness? In the subsequent plunge down to stage 2, the patient sentimentalist must now trouble shoot the situation of having been unequivocally abandoned for another woman. “He said it wouldn’t work.” She has shaved her hair in a gesture of being done with the mad passion and creativity which she couldn’t embrace; but also, now looking more unusual, reaching for a strangeness which could be right for her, if she were not so constitutionally drab. “I told him, “You’ll regret it some day…” [sounding quite Helsinki]. “Am I hideous?” she asks. “No, it suits you,” the driver insists (regarding her nun-like presence), being both loving and cruel. “I think I’ll soon get over it,” the teary survivor declares; and with that the research and the friendship is pretty much toast. She puts out there, for old-times sake, “That’s hard, isn’t it?” / “Yes, it’s hard… The hardest part for me is admitting that it’s hard [that putting together an enriching life is not the way she had been induced to suppose]. I’m ashamed of saying that it’s hard [her dependencies now in painful doubt]. Because I thought everything I liked would happen…” “I understand,” the road warrior assures. She smiles warmly and reports, more to herself, “You lose at times, unfortunately…”

With a world heavily laced with the likes of Amin and his inspirations, dead-ends (farcical, appalling and hostile), “losses,” are the name of the game. The latter stages (5 and 1) where she finalizes the raging malignancy is more a tip-off of small mercies in a big picture than a family’s big deal in a little picture. So, when she greets Amin en route to “grandmother’s” day-care, she savors the irony of her ever being “weak” like the clinging vine of stage #4. “I don’t get a kiss?”/ “I don’t want to…” (She had played the same hand pretending to want to keep him for the evening, being denied by the UN dad and then, after realizing he could put his porn-dish and whatever else into play, being caught up with and told, “You can have him.”) This allows her to toy with what was once trouble. “Are you pleased to be staying with me tonight?” The reflexive “No” would roll off like rain on a duck. He commands, “When you come to pick me up from grandma’s don’t forget the tape of Hercules…” More cheeky marauding on his part follows, and her body language is a picture of aplomb. He brags about his new course of computing in school (for the new Hercules) and she, claiming to know a short-cut, annoys him in face of some of the improv she excels in. In retaliation, he mentions the sacred father’s “Satellite’ and the “very sexy scenes” in fact far more a laughing matter than a crying matter. She stops at the counsellor’s office and comes back with the predictable all-clear that the boy will be better off in the land of Hercules. She recites, “He’s a man. He has to grow up with a man” [a dutifully religious maniac as dictated by the regime]. “Man,” to Amin, being kicking ass, he rolls out a self-serving spiel of: pushing her to show fifth-gear macho; then he moots that the woman his father might eventually marry will be “better than you… She won’t be out all the time…” [“I get the message,” she pleasantly toys]; and brings up an old grievance, that she, the servant, was late for a pick-up. She pretends to be flustered and defensive. “I needed water for the battery” [the right fluidity]. His rant about, “She’ll do the dishes, cook good meals” [her response, “It’s good that life can be summed up [computed] in the stomach”], carries the phraseology of the dogmatist dad about to be history— “The problem is taking on responsibility at home.” She would love to be able to say, “I have more important things to do. A maid can do the housework;” and she does say that. Her “short cut,” instinctive ways getting on his nerves again, culminates with answering his tantrum and recriminations with a simple, “I was busy…” He snarls on reaching the drop-off, “Get lost! You’re lying!” And she calmly replies, “I’m a selfish person…” The very brief 1-spot, the last of the communiques to the man in white, the last of the demands, comprises, “Take me to grandma’s” and her kiss-off, a poised, “Alright,” poised for lots more trouble and windfalls. But now freed of some baggage she didn’t need at all.

#abbas kiarostami

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aestheticaly-sad · 7 years

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1:40am Story

I hope you live your life happy I hope you love your life for what it is I hope you love your family I hope you go your whole life feeling loved I can't tell you what the future holds, and if I could i'd make sure you were in it. In the sumner before you came into my life, I must be honest to reveal that I had no will to live. I mean that. The thought of getting out of bed in the morning felt complicated and useless. I felt i was getting out of bed to burden the world, my peers, my family. My mind taught me to neglect love young. My mind taught me to repel good young. In the summer before I met you I lost who I was. I lost the funny parts, I lost the will, I lost the spark, I lost the excitement of being alive. That was the summer I watched How I Met Your Mother. I watched Ted see a girl across the room and fall in love. Do you know what that was to me? Bullshit. Because life isn't that fair. Sophomore year came along and I was proud that I got through the summer alive. I decided to take the time day by day, as I moped up and down the hallways. The time seemed to slow, each day felt like laying down on red coals. I know you're anticipating the "BUT THEN". But it wasn't that, it was just a glance. It was a turn of the head, it was a blink of an eye that in that moment she stood in all its glory masked off by the open window. There she stood. It was a single glance, then another, then another. This wasn't a "Woah she's bomb" This wasn't a "Mm, I'd cop nudes". This wasn't something I have felt. It wasn't something I have experienced. It wasn't a few butterflies, it want a thousand butterflies, It was the whole entire species in my stomach flapping around and around. My cheeks went red and my smile grew. But I wasn't happy. I was so scared. Here we go, Grayson's gonna get hurt. Beep Beep. Here it comes, wait for it, wait for it. Boom. I walked away. The way we started talking is a little unorthodox but It was corky and weird and it was just who I was. Im not gonna sit here and tell you the last 1 year 3 months and 24 days of our relationship. But I'd like to share the difference from then and now. When I see her smile every single butterfly that was once there re appears. My cheeks get red when I see her, I smile dumb, I laugh weird. I make dumb jokes and I love her. I loved her then and I love her now. Except now I have a billion more reasons. Except now my skies are blue. Except now I have the will to live in my eyes. Except I have my reason. Except I have my future. This may be a broken love story. We may not be The Fairy Tale couple. But we are Grayson Chester and Jazlin Tye. And that sounds pretty damn good to me. We fight about dumb things, we say the wrong things, we get irritated often, we kiss, we hug, we love with all our hearts and none of it is perfect. And that makes us perfect. I hope we live our lives happy together I hope we spend our lives conjoined I hope we start our own little family I hope we live a life full of love. - To My Angel, Jazlin Tye - Sincerely, yours truly.

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switchcheek14-blog · 5 years

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‘Murphy Brown’ Cast Members Faith Ford And Joe Regalbuto: ‘When We Do Pick A Topic There’s No Sidestepping’

CBS Local’s Matt Weiss caught up with Faith Ford and Joe Regalbuto ahead of tonight’s premiere to discuss what it’s like to be together again, modern media and the humorous side of menopause.

MW- Good morning to you both, how’s it going?

FF- Great!

JR- Going good man, how about you?

MW- Doing well, doing well. Congrats on the big return tonight, how does it feel to have the gang back together?

FF- We love being together and it’s great to be in New York shooting the show now!

JR- It’s fantastic, every time we get together it’s a lot of fun.

FF- …Because it’s fiction, therefore we have more license to play.

MW- Obviously a lot has changed in the real world since the show’s been away but what has changed for your characters in the last 20 years?

FF- Well Corky’s in menopause, full on menopause [laughs]. So that’s different, but I can relate.

JR- It’s a funny menopause [laughs].

FF- So any woman out there who is there, getting there or knows what it’s like to be there should totally identify with Corky [laughs].

JR- You’ll get a few laughs between your hot flashes!

FF- That’s right!

JR- You’re also reminded that the woman won five Emmy Awards. It’s no sort of magic that we’re all back here, she’s got a tremendous amount of talent.

FF- Her truth dealing with this is so genuine it brings tears to my eyes, she’s so genuine. She feels it in her heart for Murphy and you can see that it comes across.

MW- There must be such a comfort, I’d imagine it’s like getting reacquainted with an old friend I’d imagine.

FF- Oh yes.

MW- Even with all that comfort there have to be changes of course and today social media and news coverage has changed so much due to technology, how will that be reflected in this new iteration?

FF- From the get, That’s what Nik Dodani’s character is for, he’s our tech guy, he keeps us social in the media.

MW- Last question for both of you know, how would you describe this new version of Murphy Brown to all the prospective audience members out there?

FF- How would you describe it Joe?

JR- Smart as hell and very ambitious.

FF- No! You look good Joe! Now he’s being Frank Fontana, he’s not Joe anymore [laughs].

JR- Thank you!

FF- Thank you so much, take care Matt!

Murphy Brown returns tonight at 9:30 PM ET/PT, only on CBS. Check your local listings for more information.

Source: https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2018/09/27/murphy-brown-cbs-faith-ford-joe-regalbuto/

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